there is this malign curse laid on dipsomaniacs. That they must absolutely have a drink: in order to feel strong enough to stop drinking.

money ... is only important when you have none; and though it may not be everything, it goes a very long way towards blocking up the winter draft of age.

My bitterness is not an abstract substance, it is as solid as a Christmas cake; I can cut it in slices and hand it round and there is still plenty left, for tomorrow.

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

There is, happily, no limit to the faith of human nature in believing what it wants to believe.

there is no gaiety as gay as the gaiety of grief.

Anyone who has attempted to create knows the hellishness of it, which consists in the final inescapability from it. Knows that anything, however deadly humdrum to drug the senses, is preferable to it. Knows the gigantic effort to get started on the boundless, unwieldy, shapeless material; the forest of hesitations; of what to keep and what to throw out; the running-out terror and reluctance in one of finishing.