A town with more drinking joints than reading joints has a problem reading can solve

— Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

Avoid using cigarettes, alcohol, and drugs as alternatives to being an interesting person.

— Marilyn Vos Savant

Bad days my memory functions no better than an out-of-focus kaleidoscope, but other days me recall is painfully perfect.

— Mordecai Richler

Being crazy, for the rest of us, is a form of sanity.

— Dave Matthes

Blackouts can be fun if approached with the right mindset. You just can't sweat the fact that you've lost a small portion of your life for all eternity. Occasionally, little bubbles of memory will float up like surreal Mylar party balloons at unexpected times throughout the net day and start piecing together a colorful, if incomplete, version of reality.

— Josh Kilmer-Purcell

Bourbon, Kentucky bourbon especially, is like Dante’s Inferno in a glass, fire walks down your throat, lungs, and heart and everything in between with an unpleasant after-taste. We got along just fine.

— Bruce Crown

But I'm not a saint yet. I'm an alcoholic. I'm a drug addict. Furthermore, I'm homosexual. Furthermore, I'm a genius.

— Truman Capote

By all accounts Race's life had been shattered by the loss of his brother Peter. But whereas she turned away from drink when Draven died, Race had simply upended a barrel of brandy on his head and hadn't taken that hat off since.

— Eloisa James

Carla's description was typical of survivors of chronic childhood abuse. Almost always, they deny or minimize the abusive memories. They have to: it's too painful to believe that their parents would do such a thing. So they fragment the memories into hundreds of shards, leaving only acceptable traces in their conscious minds. Rationalizations like "my childhood was rough," "he only did it to me once or twice," and "it wasn't so bad" are common, masking the fact that the abuse was devastating and chronic. But while the knowledge, body sensations, and feelings are shattered, they are not forgotten. They intrude in unexpected ways: through panic attacks and insomnia, through dreams and artwork, through seemingly inexplicable compulsions, and through the shadowy dread of the abusive parent. They live just outside of consciousness like noisy neighbors who bang on the pipes and occasionally show up at the door.

— David L. Calof

Drink a bottle of cheap champagne. Mix with orange juice. A large Glenmorangie. Milk and blackish toast. Half a bottle of Blue Nun. Budweiser. Budweiser. Go to church. Say I do etc. Budweiser. Murphy’s. Jameson. Budweiser. Stella. Stella. Cake. Stella. Jameson. Stella. Vodka and orange. Vodka and black. Speech, speech. Vodka. Vodka. Double Jameson. Double vodka. Double vodka. Get carry-outs of barley wine. Say goodbye to aunties. Uncles. Mothers etc. Stop car on M18. Vomit. Sleep. Dream of dim-lit hallways and a black door. Wake up between Scarborough and Robin Hood’s Bay. Her not saying much. Driving.

— Dean Lilleyman