Alcohol Quotes

I understood drinking to be the gasoline of all adventure.

~ Sarah Hepola

Perhaps that was just a hunch.Barbee shivered again. He knew that he himself possessed what he called the nose for news - an intuitive perception of human motivations and the impending events that would spring from them. It wasn't a faculty he could analyze or account for, but he knew that it wasn't unusual. Most successful reporters possessed it, he believed - even though, in an age of skepticism for everything except mechanistic materialism, they wisely denied it.That dim sense had been useful to him - on those summer field trips, before Mendrick turned him out, it had led him to more than one promising prehistoric site, simply because he somehow knew where a band of wild hunters would prefer to camp, or to dig a comrade's grave.Commonly, however, that uncontrolled faculty had been more curse than blessing. It made him too keenly aware of all that people thought and did around him, kept him troubled with an uneasy alertness. Except when he was drunk. He drank too much, and knew that many other newsmen did. That vague sensitivity, he believed; was half the reason.

~ Jack Williamson

Far above him a few white clouds were racing windily after a pale gibbous moon. Drink all morning, they said to him, drink all day. This is life!

~ Malcolm Lowry

But what of Ham? It didn’t matter if he told anyone about his drunken father or not, if he chided him or tried to dress him, if he lifted his struggling body back into bed, if he took his hand and told him where to place his feet, none of this changed the fact of what he’d seen. It’s possible he opened a door innocently, followed the sound of Noah’s voice cursing God and the sky, possible he didn’t even look, that he turned away before seeing. And it’s likely that Noah hadn’t noticed the door opening, couldn’t have told you who had come in, which son, wouldn’t remember anyway. Apparently it’s God’s call. Ham saw his father drunken and naked, and for this he was cursed, and all of his offspring, and the races that led from these offspring, accursed forever.

~ Nick Flynn

Write when drunk. Edit when sober. Market it with the persistence of a drug peddler.

~ Ashwin Sanghi

A friend comes over with a Ouija board.It spells out: Bourbon. Where’s the band?Just because you’re dead doesn’t mean you can’t have fun.

~ Kelli Russell Agodon

I need a drink. Now.”After tossing—fine, throwing—my purse and keys on the couch, I march straight into the kitchen. No more delays; it's time to forget tonight. It’s been yet another night like all the other first dates that never meet a second one. When you begin to lose count, that's when it's really time for a drink.Adrian stands there, leaning against the counter in an unbuttoned dress shirt and dark wash jeans. He glances at me as I walk in. “How was your date?” he asks, taking a swig of his scotch.I brush past him on my mission, opening the cupboard and moving a couple bottles around. I reiterate, “I need alcohol.”Out of the corner of my eye, I catch him hiding a smile before he says, “That bad?”My face twitches as I ignore his line of questioning. It is more like a statement he wants me to clarify, even though he already knows the answer. Instead, I ask, “I have vodka left, don't I?” I stand on my tiptoes in hopes of spotting something in the very back. Nothing.He waltzes over and looks with me, his chin almost touching my shoulder. “I think you polished that one off after last week's date.” His voice is low right next to my ear, very nearly causing a shiver.

~ Lilly Avalon

Because the world all twisted up and wrong, like distorted glass, only came back into focus if you looked at it through the bottom of a bottle.

~ Terry Pratchett

My problem was not only drinking; it was selfishness. The booze was leading me to put myself ahead of others, especially my family. I loved Laura and the girls too much to let that happen. Faith showed me a way out.

~ George W. Bush

Hi, this is Ganymede, cup-bearer to Zeus, and when I'm out buying wine for the Lord of the Skies, I always buckle up!

~ Rick Riordan

I looked at mother with adoration in my own eyes, and when she had taken the kerosene lamp and had gone away, and when we boys were all again curled quietly like sleeping puppies in the bed, I cried a little, as I am sure father must have cried sometimes when there was no one about. Perhaps his getting drunk, as he did on all possible occasions, was a way of crying too.

~ Sherwood Anderson

Think champagne, drink champagne!

~ Ellen Dean

Texting and phone calls, fireworks, blends, café au lait, and music. Yesterday's television. Work and beer. The neighbor's dog, or those strange flowers, the way it smells at Maisen. Those ordinary things I talk about with you. With you... I want to talk about love with you.

~ Tomoko Yamashita

That's the problem with drinking, I thought, as I poured myself a drink. If something bad happens you drink in an attempt to forget; if something good happens you drink in order to celebrate; and if nothing happens you drink to make something happen.

~ Charles Bukowski

It’s a great advantage not to drink among hard drinking people.

~ F. Scott Fitzgerald

I began to think vodka was my drink at last. It didn’t taste like anything, but it went straight down into my stomach like a sword swallowers’ sword and made me feel powerful and godlike.

~ Sylvia Plath

I don't have a drinking problem 'Cept when I can't get a drink.

~ Tom Waits

I think I need a drink.''Almost everybody does only they don't know it.

~ Charles Bukowski

One more drink and I'll be under the host.

~ Mae West

Frankly, I was horrified by life, at what a man had to do simply in order to eat, sleep, and keep himself clothed. So I stayed in bed and drank. When you drank the world was still out there, but for the moment it didn’t have you by the throat.

~ Charles Bukowski

Fill with mingled cream and amber, I will drain that glass again.Such hilarious visions clamber Through the chamber of my brain —Quaintest thoughts — queerest fancies Come to life and fade away;What care I how time advances? I am drinking ale today.

~ Edgar Allan Poe

Alcohol, taken in sufficient quantities, may produce all the effects of drunkenness.

~ Oscar Wilde

it provokes the desire, but it takes away the performance

~ William Shakespeare

They're professionals at this in Russia, so no matter how many Jell-O shots or Jager shooters you might have downed at college mixers, no matter how good a drinker you might think you are, don't forget that the Russians - any Russian - can drink you under the table.

~ Anthony Bourdain

Scotch whisky is made from barley and the morning dew on angel's nipples.

~ Warren Ellis

Jon:'What are you doing up there? Why aren't you at the feast?'Tyrion: 'Too hot, too noisy, and I'd drunk too much wine', the dwarf told him. 'I learned long ago that it is considered rude to vomit on your brother.

~ George R.r. Martin

The stains could be seen only in the sunlight, so Ruth was never really aware of them until later, when she would stop at an outdoor cafe for a cup of coffee, and look down at her skirt and see the dark traces of spilled vodka or whiskey. The alcohol had the effect of making the black cloth blacker. This amused her; she had noted in her journal: 'booze affects material as it does people'.

~ Alice Sebold

The light music of whisky falling into glasses made an agreeable interlude.

~ James Joyce

I once heard someone say that the concept of moderation seems a little extreme, and tonight...I agree.

~ Koren Zailckas

Beer dulls a memory, brand sets it burning, but wine is the best for a sore heart's yearning.

~ Patrick Rothfuss

But in college, we can wear our alcohol abuse as proudly as our university sweatshirts; the two concepts are virtually synonymous.

~ Koren Zailckas

Take a drink because you pity yourself, and then the drink pities you and has a drink, and then two good drinks get together and that calls for drinks all around.

~ H. Beam Piper

When a man who is drinking neat gin starts talking about his mother he is past all argument.

~ C.s. Forester

That's what was wrong with drinking too much. You became immune to drunken delights. There was no solace in liquor. Before you got happy, you collapsed.

~ Richard Matheson

Love is alcohol.

~ Katherine Applegate

Meanwhile the 3 a.m. drunks of the world would lay in their beds, trying in vain to sleep, and deserving that rest, if they could find it.

~ Charles Bukowski

It was like a Russian party, Arkady thought. People got drunk, recklessly confessed their love, spilled their festering dislike, had hysterics, marched out, were dragged back in and revived with brandy. It wasn't a French salon.

~ Martin Cruz Smith

Gordie, the white boy genius, gave me this book by a Russian dude named Tolstoy, who wrote, 'Happy families are all alike; every unhappy family is unhappy in its own way.' Well, I hate to argue with a Russian genius, but Tolstoy didn't know Indians, and he didn't know that all Indian families are unhappy for the same exact reasons: the frikkin' booze.

~ Sherman Alexie

The one conclusion I have reached is that whiskey is a great leveler. You might be a hotshot advertising executive or a lowly foundry worker, but if you cannot hold your drink, you are just a drunkard.

~ Vikas Swarup

I was enjoying myself now. I had taken two finger bowls of champagne and the scene had changed before my eyes into something significant, elemental and profound.

~ F. Scott Fitzgerald