The actual American childhood is less Norman Rockwell and Walt Disney than Nathaniel Hawthorne and Edgar Allan Poe.

There is some consensus: There's obsession, there's never satiety, and there's always remorse. For me, the big thing is that you're always breaking a promise - for example, you promise yourself you're just going to have coffee with a man, then before you know it, you're in bed together.

Obsession is so extreme and so hard to imagine with the rational mind that it has a science-fiction-like quality to it-it's almost as if the obsessed one has been taken over by a replica, a pod, a facsimile of the rational person.

I think 12-step programs really work, rehab really works, certain types of therapies and talking to other addicts really work. There are a lot of things that work - that isn't the problem. The problem is getting the addicts to say they're addicts. The problem is admitting it.

You mustn’t be so open-minded that your brains fall out.

There were a number of books about Bill Wilson, and by him, but a lot of the basic biographical tasks had not been done.

Guilt is petty; I am above guilt.