Self criticism must be my guide to action, and the first rule for its employment is that in itself it is not a virtue, only a procedure.

Never despise a drink because it is easy to make and/or uses commercial mixes. Unquestioning devotion to authenticity is, in any department of life, a mark of the naive - or worse.

The rewards for being sane may not be very many, but knowing what's funny is one of them.

It is natural and harmless in English to use a preposition to end a sentence with.

Now and then I become conscious of having the reputation of being one of the great drinkers, if not one of the great drunks, of our time.

Death has this much to be said for it: You don't have to get out of bed for it. Wherever you happen to be They bring it to you—free.

When that ineffable compound of depression, sadness (these two are not the same), anxiety, self-hatred, sense of failure and fear for the future begins to steal over you, start telling yourself that what you have is a hangover. You are not sickening for anything, you have not suffered a minor brain lesion, you are not all that bad at your job, your family and friends are not leagued in a conspiracy of barely maintained silence about what a s**t you are, you have not come at last to see life as it really is and there is no use crying over spilt milk.