The only thing that really worried me was the ether. There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible and depraved than a man in the depths of an ether binge. And I knew we’d get into that rotten stuff pretty soon. Probably at the next gas station.

Whoever gulps down wine as a horse gulps down water is called a Scythian.

Better sleep with a sober cannibal than a drunken Christian.

Sobriety diminishes, discriminates, and says no; drunkenness expands, unites, and says yes.

That which the sober man keeps in his breast, the drunken man lets out at the lips. Astute people, when they want to ascertain a man’s true character, make him drunk.

An old man is twice a child, and so is a drunken man.

I have sometimes thought that the laws ought not to punish those actions of evil which are committed when the senses are steeped in intoxication.

My advice to people today is as follows: if you take the game of life seriously, if you take your nervous system seriously, if you take your sense organs seriously, if you take the energy process seriously, you must turn on, tune in, and drop out.

I am sure of this: that if everybody was to drink their bottle a day, there would not be half the disorders in the world there are now.

Moderation in all things.

If you were to ask me if I’d ever had the bad luck to miss my daily cocktail, I’d have to say that I doubt it; where certain things are concerned, I plan ahead.

Some writers take to drink, others take to audiences.

There was a great deal of drinking among us but little drunkenness. We all seemed to feel that Prohibition was a personal affront and that we had a moral duty to undermine it.