“I suppose if I gave myself the chance I could be an alcoholic.”

“I don't like the word 'alcoholic'. I like to think of myself as an advanced drinker.”

“In 1969 I gave up women and alcohol - it was the worst 20 minutes of my life.”

“I try to convince myself that it's the alcohol talking. But alcohol can't talk. It just sits there. It can't even get itself out of the bottle.”

“I wonder if I could eat a child if I had the chance.'
'I doubt if I could cook one,' said Constance.”

“I don't blame you for this and I don't think there's anything you could have done to stop it. I am what I am, which is an Alcoholic and a Drug Addict and a Criminal, and I am whats I am because I made myself so. You did the best you could with me, and you loved me the best you could, and that's all I could have ever asked for from you. I have no excuses for what I've done or for who I am or for what I put you though all these years.”

“Now, that these descendants of Perdiccas are Greeks, as they themselves say, I myself chance to know.”

“[Writing] is an addiction more powerful than alcohol, than nicotine, than crack. I could not conceive of not writing.”

“I wanted movement and not a calm course of existence. I wanted excitement and danger and the chance to sacrifice myself for my love.”

“In the past directors have always portrayed me as this strange girl who hardly talks but who has a great effect on people. They don't give me a chance to do something more, let more out of what is inside of me. The time is only coming up now when I feel I can open up. I have been almost a creature of these directors' imaginations. I guess that is what they saw in me and why they picked me. But if I was an object at moments in movies, I was also alive. I wasn't dead. I always gave everything I could while I worked. I could give maybe more today, but I gave what I could then.”