One should never go back to a place one has loved; for, however, rough the going forward is, it is better than the snuffing out-of-love return.

I don't trust sentimentality in men; it goes with tyranny; you can't have one without the other.

There is a brotherliness about a drinking person, which is coldly lacking in the straight and narrow enemies of drink; the difference between the two is more marked than nationality or belief: it is an opposite species altogether. It is against the unwritten laws of congeniality for them to mix. For me, a man who does not drink is distinctly indecent.

When the desire is on for one particular person, nobody else will do.

none of what I know is out of books. ... I prefer tactual learning. Touching, on the quick of the sore nail, of present, mobile life. To toy, to gnaw, to tear: at the living element of pain. Like at a living drumstick.

anybody who drinks seriously is poor: so poor, poor, extra poor, me.

Between threading a needle and raving insanity is the smallest eye in creation.