I believe that always, or almost always, in all childhoods and in all the lives that follow them, the mother represents madness. Our mothers always remain the strangest, craziest people we've ever met.

We, her children, are heroic, dersperate.

No other human being, no woman, no poem or music, book or painting can replace alcohol in its power to give man the illusion of real creation.

What stops you killing yourself when you're intoxicated out of your mind is the thought that once you're dead you won't be able to drink any more.

When you wept it was just over yourself and not because of the marvelous impossibility of reaching her through the difference that separates you.

She had lived her early years as though she were waiting for something she might, but never did, become.

Drinking isn't necessarily the same as wanting to die. But you can't drink without thinking you're killing yourself.