Now, being in Africa, I was hungry for more of it, the changes of the seasons, the rains with no need to travel, the discomforts that you paid to make it real, the names of the trees, of the small animals, and all the birds, to know the language and have time to be in it and to move slowly.

The brown blotches of the benevolent skin cancer the sun brings from its reflection on the tropic sea were on his cheeks. The blotches ran well down the sides of his face and his hands had the deep-creased scars from handling heavy fish on the cords. But none of these scars were fresh. They were as old as erosions in a fishless desert.

Modern life ... is often a mechanical oppression and liquor is the only mechanical relief.

Drinking is a way of ending the day.

Religion is like an ice cold whiskey on a hot day.

The telephone and visitors are the work destroyers.

it wasn't by accident that the Gettysburg address was so short.