“As a young child Audrey Carsons wanted to be writers because writers were rich and famous. They lounged around Singapore and Rangoon smoking opium in a yellow pongee silk suit. They sniffed cocaine in Mayfair and they penetrated forbidden swamps with a faithful native boy and lived in the native quarter of Tangier smoking hashish and languidly caressing a pet gazelle.”

“That’s why I don’t very often drink, or even smoke. I want to try cocaine, though because that’s suppose to sharpen the brain, isn’t it?”

“In Rangoon
The heat of noon
Is just what the natives shun,
They put their Scotch
Or Rye down
And lie down.”

“I'm not an author, I'm a writer, that's all I am. Authors want their names down in history; I want to keep the smoke coming out of the chimney.”

“I smoked in those days because, like everyone else in the world who smokes, I wanted to die at least as much as I wanted to live. – G. D. Roberts, Shantaram.”

“All governments lie, but disaster lies in wait for countries whose officials smoke the same hashish they give out.”

“I was uncomfortable with smoking too much because a lot of young kids watch and I didn't want to make that cool.”

“Writers around the world protested when two Communist writers, Siniavski and Daniel, were sentenced to prison by their own comrades. But not even churches protest when Christians are put in prison for their faith.”

“There is that mirror−world ingestion of archaic substances, she thinks: People smoke, and drink as though it were good for you, and seem to still be in some sort of honeymoon phase with cocaine.”

“This diary is my kief, hashish and opium pipe. This is my drug and my vice.”