The proper behavior all through the holiday season is to be drunk. This drunkenness culminates on New Year’s Eve, when you get so drunk you kiss the person you’re married to.
The drink made past happy things contemporary with the present, as if they were still going on, contemporary even with the future as if they were about to happen again.
That’s the problem with drinking, I thought, as I poured myself a drink. If something bad happens you drink in an attempt to forget; if something good happens you drink in order to celebrate; and if nothing happens you drink to make something happen.
Talking to a drunk person was like talking to an extremely happy, severely brain-damaged three-year-old.
Often people display a curious respect for a man drunk, rather like the respect of simple races for the insane. Respect rather than fear. There is something awe-inspiring in one who has lost all inhibitions, who will do anything.
No animal shall drink alcohol to excess.
Never refuse a cup of wine or a horn of ale, it may be a year before you see another.
Money, like vodka, does strange things to a man.[Деньги, как водка, делают человека чудаком.]
Man, being reasonable, must get drunk; the best of life is but intoxication.
It’s a great advantage not to drink among hard-drinking people.
If you want to know where God is, ask a drunk.
If you drink much from a bottle marked “poison,” it is almost certain to disagree with you, sooner or later.
