“I found some consolation or narcotic. Sometimes it was a woman, sometimes a good friend — yes, you too once helped me that way — at other times it was music or applause in the theater. But now these things no longer give me pleasure and that is why I drink. I could never sing without first having a couple of drinks, but now I can also not think, talk, live and feel tolerably well without first having a couple of drinks.”

— Hermann Hesse , book Gertrud

Source: Gertrude (1910), p. 225

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Hermann Hesse 168

German writer 1877–1962

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