If you were to ask me if I’d ever had the bad luck to miss my daily cocktail, I’d have to say that I doubt it; where certain things are concerned, I plan ahead.

There was a great deal of drinking among us but little drunkenness. We all seemed to feel that Prohibition was a personal affront and that we had a moral duty to undermine it.

Sobriety diminishes, discriminates, and says no; drunkenness expands, unites, and says yes.

The only thing that really worried me was the ether. There is nothing in the world more helpless and irresponsible and depraved than a man in the depths of an ether binge. And I knew we’d get into that rotten stuff pretty soon. Probably at the next gas station.

My advice to people today is as follows: if you take the game of life seriously, if you take your nervous system seriously, if you take your sense organs seriously, if you take the energy process seriously, you must turn on, tune in, and drop out.

A true German can’t stand the French,

Yet willingly he drinks their wines.

Better sleep with a sober cannibal than a drunken Christian.

Drinking with women is as unnatural as scolding with ’em.

There are two things that will be believed of any man whatsoever, and one of them is that he has taken to drink.

Let your boat of life be light, packed with only what you need—a homely home and simple pleasures, one or two friends worth the name, someone to love and someone to love you, a cat, a dog, and a pipe or two, enough to eat and enough to wear, and a little more than enough to drink; for thirst is a dangerous thing.

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

Drink today and drown all sorrow;

You shall perhaps not do it tomorrow.

Some writers take to drink, others take to audiences.