Quotes about whiskey (79 quotes) | Quotes of famous people

“Too much of anything is bad, but too much good whiskey is barely enough.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

“I always take Scotch whiskey at night as a preventive of toothache. I have never had the toothache; and what is more, I never intend to have it.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

Night

“I wish to live to 150 years old, but the day I die, I wish it to be with a cigarette in one hand and a glass of whiskey in the other.”

Ava Gardner (1922–1990) American actress

“Whiskey is for drinking. Water is for fighting over.”

Mark Twain (1835–1910) American author and humorist

It seems likely that the attribution to Twain is apocryphal. It is not listed as authentic on Twainquotes http://twainquotes.com/, and is not listed at all in either R. Ken Ramussen's The Quotable Mark Twain (1998) or David W. Barber's Quotable Twain (2002)
Misattributed

Drink , Water , Fight

“After the failure of his first experimental explorations around Vicksburg, a committee of abolition war managers waited upon the President and demanded the General’s removal, on the false charge that he was a whiskey drinker, and little better than a common drunkard. “Ah!” exclaimed Honest Old Abe, “you surprise me, gentlemen. But can you tell me where he gets his whiskey?” “We cannot, Mr. President. But why do you desire to know?” “Because, if I can only find out, I will send a barrel of this wonderful whiskey to every general in the army.””

Abraham Lincoln (1809–1865) 16th President of the United States

Statement first attributed in the New York Herald, (September 18, 1863) in response to allegations his most successful general drank too much; as quoted in Wit and Wisdom of the American Presidents: A Book of Quotations (2000) by Joslyn T. Pine, p. 26.
When some one charged Gen. Grant, in the President’s hearing, with drinking too much liquor, Mr. Lincoln, recalling Gen. Grant’s successes, said that if he could find out what brand of whisky Grant drank, he would send a barrel of it to all the other commanders.
The New York Times, October 30, 1863
Major Eckert asked Mr. Lincoln if the story of his interview with the complainant against General Grant was true. The story was: a growler called on the President and complained bitterly of General Grant’s drunkenness. The President inquired very solicitously, if the man could tell him where the General got his liquor. The man really was very sorry but couldn’t say where he did get it. The President replied that he would like very much to find out so he could get a quantity of it and send a barrel to all his Major Generals. Mr. Lincoln said he had heard the story before and it would be very good if he had said it, but he did not, and he supposed it was charged to him to give it currency. He then said the original of this story was in King George’s time. Bitter complaints were made to the King against his General Wolfe in which it was charged that he was mad. “Well,” said the King, “I wish he would bite some of my other Generals then.
Authenticity of quote first refuted in “The Military Telegraph During the Civil War in the United States” by William R. Plum, (1882).
Disputed

War , Failure , Waiting , Falseness

“I have left off crying, and giggling as well. Now make up your mind. I don't care anything for all this talk. You told me what your price for the job was and I have come up with it. Here is the money. I aim to get Tom Chaney and if you are not game I will find somebody who is game. All I have heard out of you so far is talk. I know you can drink whiskey and I have seen you kill a gray rat. All the rest has been talk. They told me you had grit and that is why I came to you. I am not paying for talk. I can get all the talk I need and more at the Monarch boardinghouse.”

Charles Portis book True Grit

Source: True Grit (1968), Chapter 5, pp. 82-83 : 'Mattie Ross' to 'Rooster Cogburn'

Money , Game , Drink , Cry

“But to hear Kennedy when he was grandstanding in front of the McClellan Committee you might have thought I was making as much out of the pension fund as the Kennedys made out of selling whiskey.”

Jimmy Hoffa (1913–1982) American labor leader

Source: Hoffa The Real Story (1975), Chapter 7, Gangsters and the "Irish Mafia", p. 121

“Suddenly he saw them, the bottles of aguardiente, of anís, of jerez, of Highland Queen, the glasses, a babel of glasses—towering, like the smoke from the train that day—built to the sky, then falling, the glasses toppling and crashing, falling downhill from the Generalife Gardens, the bottles breaking, bottles of Oporto, tinto, blanco, bottles of Pernod, Oxygènée, absinthe, bottles smashing, bottles cast aside, falling with a thud on the ground in parks, under benches, beds, cinema seats, hidden in drawers at Consulates, bottles of Calvados dropped and broken, or bursting into smithereens, tossed into garbage heaps, flung into the sea, the Mediterranean, the Caspian, the Caribbean, bottles floating in the ocean, dead Scotchmen on the Atlantic highlands—and now he saw them, smelt them, all, from the very beginning—bottles, bottles, bottles, and glasses, glasses, glasses, of bitter, of Dubonnet, of Falstaff, Rye, Johnny Walker, Vieux Whiskey blanc Canadien, the apéritifs, the digestifs, the demis, the dobles, the noch ein Herr Obers, the et glas Araks, the tusen taks, the bottles, the bottles, the beautiful bottles of tequila, and the gourds, gourds, gourds, the millions of gourds of beautiful mescal...”

Malcolm Lowry book Under the Volcano

Source: Under the Volcano (1947), Ch. X (p. 292)

Beauty , Training , Sea , Dead

“The French are a smallish, monkey-looking bunch and not dressed any better, on average, than the citizens of Baltimore. True, you can sit outside in Paris and drink little cups of coffee, but why this is more stylish than sitting inside and drinking large glasses of whiskey I don't know.”

P. J. O'Rourke book Holidays in Hell

Holidays in Hell (1989)

Coffee , Drink

“All I ever did was sell beer and whiskey to our best people. All I ever did was supply a demand that was pretty popular. Why, the very guys that make my trade good are the ones that yell the loudest about me. Some of the leading judges use the stuff.”

Al Capone (1899–1947) American gangster

Guy , People , Beer , Making love

“There's no trouble in this world so serious that it can't be cured with a hot bath, a glass of whiskey, and the Book of Common Prayer.”

Elizabeth Gilbert book Eat, Pray, Love

Source: Eat, Pray, Love

Books , World

“Love makes the world go round? Not at all. Whiskey makes it go round twice as fast.”

Compton Mackenzie (1883–1972) Scottish writer, cultural commentator, raconteur and nationalist

Love , World

“There is no bad whiskey. There are only some whiskeys that aren't as good as others.”

Raymond Chandler (1888–1959) Novelist, screenwriter

“He liked to read with the silence and the golden color of the whiskey as his companions. He liked food, people, talk, but reading was an inexhaustible pleasure. What the joys of music were to others, words on a page were to him.”

James Salter (1925–2015) American novelist and short-story writer

Source: All That Is

People , Pleasure , Food , Music

“A loss of any kind is horrible. Not because it takes away, but because it makes you believe- in newspapers, in tomatoes, in empty whiskey bottles.”

Anosh Irani (1974) Canadian writer

Source: The Cripple and His Talismans

Loss

“I say, when Mercury arrives, we just pretend we’re not here.” Lawe
tipped back his whiskey and swallowed in a single drink. “Stay real quiet.
Don’t make eye contact.”
They all nodded.”

Lora Leigh (1965) American writer

Source: Mercury's War

Law , Drink

“Every day I ran to that book like it was a bottle of whiskey and crawled inside because it was a world that I had at least some control over, and slowly, in time, it began to take shape.”

Craig Ferguson (1962) Scottish-born American television host, stand-up comedian, writer, actor, director, author, producer and voice a…

Source: American on Purpose: The Improbable Adventures of an Unlikely Patriot

Books , World , Time

“Ya got cigarettes?” she asks. “Yes,” I say,
“I got cigarettes.” “Matches?” she asks.
“Enough to burn Rome.” “Whiskey?”
“Enough whiskey for a Mississippi River
of pain.” “You drunk?” “Not yet.”

Charles Bukowski (1920–1994) American writer

Pain

“Everybody who tells you how to act has whiskey on their breath.”

John Updike book Rabbit, Run

Source: Rabbit, Run

“The one conclusion I have reached is that whiskey is a great leveler. You might be a hotshot advertising executive or a lowly foundry worker, but if you cannot hold your drink, you are just a drunkard.”

Vikas Swarup book Q & A

Source: Q & A

Drink

“When the weather's rough and it's whiskey in the rain it's best to wrap your savior up in cellophane.”

Tom Waits (1949) American singer-songwriter and actor

Weather

“I like whiskey. I always did, and that is why I never drink it.”

Robert E. Lee (1807–1870) Confederate general in the Civil War

Drink

“whiskey makes the heart beat faster
but it sure doesn't help the
mind and isn't it funny how you can ache just
from the deadly drone of
existence?”

Charles Bukowski book The People Look Like Flowers at Last

Source: The People Look Like Flowers at Last

Help , Heart

“There were happy days, with watermelon, and sad days of whiskey.”

Lewis Nordan (1939–2012) American writer

Sadness , Happiness

“I know some who are constantly drunk on books as other men are drunk on whiskey.”

H.L. Mencken (1880–1956) American journalist and writer

Men , Books

“There is no such thing as bad whiskey. Some whiskeys just happen to be better than others. But a man shouldn’t fool with booze until he’s fifty; then he’s a damn fool if he doesn’t.”

William Faulkner (1897–1962) American writer

Fools

“Sleep late, have fun, get wild, drink whiskey and drive fast on empty streets with nothing in mind but falling in love and not getting arrested.”

Hunter S. Thompson (1937–2005) American journalist and author

Love , Drink , Sleep

“It was so quiet, a reservation kind of quiet, where you can hear somebody drinking whiskey on the rocks three miles away.”

Sherman Alexie book The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven

Source: The Lone Ranger and Tonto Fistfight in Heaven

Drink

“I always keep some whiskey handy in case I see a snake… which I also keep handy.”

W.C. Fields (1880–1946) actor

“Always carry a flagon of whiskey in case of snakebite, and furthermore, always carry a small snake.”

W.C. Fields (1880–1946) actor

Source: W.C. Fields by Himself

Funny

“Crooked cards and straight whiskey,
Slow horses and fast women.”

Kenneth Rexroth (1905–1982) American poet, writer, anarchist, academic and conscientious objector

Women , Horse

“Sometimes the Bible in the hand of one man is worse than a whiskey bottle in the hands of another.”

Harper Lee book To Kill a Mockingbird

Source: To Kill a Mockingbird

“the psyche has been burned
and left us senseless,
the world has been darker than lights-out
in a closet full of hungry bats,
and the whiskey and wine entered our veins
when blood was too weak to carry on”

Charles Bukowski book The People Look Like Flowers at Last

Source: The People Look Like Flowers at Last

World , Light , Wine

“Black coffee’s a lot like whiskey, you know? All devil and no trimmin’s. Always liked my sins pure and take it as it comes.”

Jack Ketchum (1946–2018) American horror writer

Coffee

“Whiskey, like a beautiful woman, demands appreciation. You gaze first, then it's time to drink.”

Haruki Murakami book Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World

Source: Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World

Beauty , Drink , Time

“They're a dark people with a gift for suffering way past their deserving. It's said that without whiskey to soak and soften the world, they'd kill themselves. (Irish)”

John Steinbeck book East of Eden

Source: East of Eden

People , World , Way , Suffering

“Linden Arden stole the highlights
With one hand tied behind his back.
Loved the morning sun and whiskey
Ran like water in his veins.
Loved to go to church on Sunday,
Even though he was a drinkin' man.
When the boys came to San Francisco,
They were looking for his life.
But he found out where they were drinking,
Met them face to face outside.
Cleaved their heads off with a hatchet,
Lord, he was a drinkin' man.
And when somebody tried to get above him,
He just took the law into his own hands.
Linden Arden stole the highlights,
And they put his fingers through the glass.
He had heard all those stories many, many times before,
And he did not care, nor know, to ask.
And he loved the little children like they were his very own.
You say 'Someday, he may get lonely,
Now he's livin', livin' with a gun.”

Van Morrison (1945) Northern Irish singer-songwriter and musician

Linden Arden Stole the Highlights
Song lyrics, Veedon Fleece (1974)

Love , Life , Children , Law

“That the American, by temperament, worked to excess, was true; work and whiskey were his stimulants; work was a form of vice; but he never cared much for money or power after he earned them. The amusement of the pursuit was all the amusement he got from it.”

Henry Adams (1838–1918) journalist, historian, academic, novelist

The Education of Henry Adams (1907)

Money

“I hoped I might become a debonair, hard-drinking, poetic Irishman like him. I'd be a New York character. I'd set the table on a roar and dominate the bars of Greenwich Village with song and story. At the Lion’s Head Bar I drank whiskey after whiskey to give myself the courage to be colorful. Bartenders suggested I slow down. Friends said they didn't understand a word coming out of my mouth. They lifted me out of the bar and into a taxi, paid the driver and told him to drive nonstop till I reached my door.”

Frank McCourt book Teacher Man

Teacher Man (2005)

Hope , Color , Courage , Drink

“They said get back honky cat,
Better get back to the woods.
Well I quit those days and my redneck ways.
And oh the change is gonna do me good.You better get back honky cat,
Living in the city ain't where it's at.
It's like trying to find gold in a silver mine.
It's like trying to drink whiskey from a bottle of wine.”

Elton John (1947) English rock singer-songwriter, composer and pianist

Honky Cat
Song lyrics, Honky Château (1972)

Way , Cats , Drink , Wine

“I drink this [whiskey glass] and I'm just another JBL? you don't get it, I'm not like you. I'm not JBL, I'm CM Punk!”

Phil Brooks (1978) American professional wrestler and mixed martial artist

WWE Raw

Drink

“Grand pappy told my pappy back in my day son
A man had to answer for the wicked that he'd done
Take all the rope in Texas, find a tall oak tree
Round up all of them bad boys, hang them high in the street
For all the people to seeThat justice is the one thing you should always find
You got to saddle up your boys, you got to draw a hard line
When the gun smoke settles, we'll sing a victory tune
And we'll all meet back at the local saloon.
We'll raise up our glasses against Evil forces singing
Whiskey for my men, beer for my horses.”

Toby Keith (1961) American country music singer and actor

Beer for My Horses, written with Scotty Emerick.
Song lyrics, Unleashed (2002)

Men , People , Justice , Boy

“Cause I've got friends in low places
Where the whiskey drowns
And the beer chases my blues away.
And I'll be okay.
I'm not big on social graces;
Think I'll slip on down to the oasis.
Oh, I've got friends in low places.”

Garth Brooks (1962) American country music artist

Friends in Low Places, written by DeWayne Blackwell and Earl "Bud" Lee.
Song lyrics, No Fences (1990)

Beer , Thinking

“The whiskey on your breath
Could make a small boy dizzy;
But I hung on like death:
Such waltzing was not easy.”

Theodore Roethke (1908–1963) American poet

"My Papa's Waltz," ll. 1-4
The Lost Son and Other Poems (1948)

Death , Boy

“Drinking’s funny. When I look back on it, all of our important decisions have been figured out when we were drinking. Even when we talked about having to cut back on drinking, we’d be sitting at the kitchen table or out at the picnic table with a six-pack or whiskey.”

Raymond Carver book What We Talk About When We Talk About Love

What We Talk About When We Talk About Love (1981)

Drink , Decision

“Got my ticket at the airport
Well I guess I've been marking time
I've been living in another country
That operates along entirely different lines
Keep me away from porter or whiskey
Don't play anything sentimental it'll make me cry
I've got to go back my friend
Is there really any need to ask why?”

Van Morrison (1945) Northern Irish singer-songwriter and musician

Got to Go Back
Song lyrics, No Guru (1986)

Time , Cry , Country

“You see a guy with one leg, he's got a story. "Land mine '69." You see a guy with one arm, he's got a story, too. "Snow blower, bottle of whiskey." You see a guy with one tooth, what would the story be? "Well, uh, I like a lot of taffy."”

Dave Attell (1965) comedian

Comedy Central Presents: Dave Attell

Guy

“She ain't into wine and roses
Beer just makes her turn up her nose and
She can't stand the thought of sipping champagne
No Cuervo gold margaritas
Just ain't enough good burn in tequila
She needs somethin' with a little more edge
And a little more pain
She's my little whiskey girl, she's my little whiskey girl
My ragged on the edges girl, ah but I like em rough.”

Toby Keith (1961) American country music singer and actor

Whiskey Girl, written with Scotty Emerick.
Song lyrics, Shock'n Y'all (2003)

Pain , Girl , Beer , Wine

“There are battered husbands. Apparently this happens when the woman is real big, the man is very small, and they each drink a quart of whiskey a day.”

George Carlin (1937–2008) American stand-up comedian

Playing With Your Head (1986)

Drink

“Keep your best whiskey in a bottle marked ‘mouthwash.”

Pat Cadigan book Synners

Source: Synners (1991), Chapter 5 (p. 57)

“I’ve read Rudin before, but that was fifteen years ago in university. Rereading it now, lying all bandaged up, sipping my whiskey in bed in the afternoon, I felt new sympathy for the protagonist Rudin. I almost never identify with anybody in Dostoyevsky, but the characters in Turgenev’s old-fashioned novels are such victims of circumstance, I jump right in. I have a thing about losers. Flaws in oneself open you up to others flaws. Not that Dostoyevsky’s characters don’t generate pathos, but they’re flawed in a way that don’t come across as faults.”

Haruki Murakami book Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World

Source: Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World (1985), Chapter Fifteen: Whiskey, Torture, Turgenoev

Way , Lying , Fashion , Universe

“The whiskey is amazing to me. I wonder why I never realized that I would like it. I wonder why I never tried it before. Liking it so much is dangerous now, and so I hold it and look through it, and drink it very slowly.”

Katherine Dunn book Geek Love

Geek Love (1989)

Drink

“The realities of globalization can be seen in something as simple as the investigation of a car crash. If a patrolman investigated a fatal accident in the 1970s, the victims and the witnesses were both likely from the local community; and if the officer climbed into the wreckage, to look for some malfunction in the vehicle, he would probably see from the serial numbers that the car was made in the U. S. He could put all that together, and make his case. But Consider the death of Princess Diana. This accident involved an English citizen, with an Egyptian boyfriend, crashed in a French tunnel, driving a German car with a Dutch engine, driven by a Belgian, who was drunk on Scotch whiskey, followed closely by Italian paparazzi, on Japanese motorcycles, and finally treated with Brazilian medicines by an American doctor. In this case, even leaving aside the fame of the victims, a mere neighborhood canvass would hardly have completed the forensic picture, as it might have a generation before.”

Mark Riebling (1963) American writer

The New Paradigm: Merging Law Enforcement and Intelligence Strategies (2006)

Death , Cars , Communication , Reality

“I'd stop a train just to watch you get off,
Don't leave me alone with my whiskey thoughts.”

Greta Gaines

"Whiskey Thoughts", on Whiskey Thoughts (2008) http://www.allmusic.com/album/whiskey-thoughts-mw0000787033 · Video at YouTube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CIEA4mjwRik&spfreload=10

Training

“The more the Dakota have to do with the white, the worse. The whites give him whiskey to get his furs and bimeby he don't want to trap so many furst but he want plenty more whiskey. The white traders take his girl, and all he get in swap is a disease. They take his land, and all he get is a leetle annuity so he don't do any work and starve slow. The Indian gets white man's gun an he is drunk and kill his own brother and they call him sinful. That's what he get from the white man—fine kettle, fine gun, fine blanket, the big pox, the small pox and religion.”

Sinclair Lewis (1885–1951) American novelist, short-story writer, and playwright

The God-Seeker (1949), Ch. 20

Disease , Religion , Girl

“The whiskey tasted like bear steaks and river mud and the flesh of an oak tree. I had another swallow because it tasted so good.”

Michael Chabon book Wonder Boys

Wonder Boys (1995)

Tree

“If I have done anything for the colored people, it is in a great measure due to my having had the good-fortune, when I escaped from slavery, to become acquainted with William Lloyd Garrison, and with Wendell Phillips, and with our friend Oliver Johnson, and with Dr. Bowditch. The home of Dr. Bowditch, I may say, gave me the first shelter I received in this city. I have often been asked where I got my education. I have answered, from the Massachusetts Abolition University, Mr. Garrison, president… I meet with colored men on all sides smoking and sometimes drinking. That is not the way to rise in the world. For my own part, I neither smoke, nor chew tobacco nor take snuff, nor drink whiskey; and I should be delighted if I could make the same statement with regard to my whole people.”

Frederick Douglass (1818–1895) American social reformer, orator, writer and statesman

Speech at the Wendell Phillips Club http://teachingamericanhistory.org/library/document/the-nations-problem/ (11 September 1886).
1880s

Men , People , World , Education

“Compassionate fellow-feeling … can soon become self-indulgent and lead to spiritual pride. It imparts an inner glow, like a shot of whiskey on a cold day, but like whisky it can prevent the clear-headedness which we need at least as much as we need warmth of heart.”

Theodore Dalrymple (1949) English doctor and writer

Migration: Multiculturalism and its Metaphors (2016)

Feeling , Heart

“Meanwhile back at mama's.
The porch light's on, come in if you wanna.
Supper's on the stove and beer's in the fridge.
Red sun sinkin' out low on the ridge.
Games on the tube and daddy smokes cigarettes.
Whiskey keeps his whistle wet.
Funny the things you thought you'd never miss.
In a world gone crazy as this.”

Tim McGraw (1967) American country singer

Meanwhile Back at Mama's
Song lyrics, Sundown Heaven Town (2014)

World , Game , Beer , Light

“His among the clouded faces seemed unperturbed. He looked over the Americans, their gear. In truth, they did not look like men who might have whiskey they hadn't drunk.”

Cormac McCarthy book Blood Meridian

Blood Meridian (1985)

Men , Truth

“There are people who read too much: the bibliobibuli. I know some who are constantly drunk on books, as other men are drunk on whiskey or religion. They wander through this most diverting and stimulating of worlds in a haze, seeing nothing and hearing nothing.”

H.L. Mencken (1880–1956) American journalist and writer

71
1940s–present, Minority Report : H.L. Mencken's Notebooks (1956)

Men , People , Books , World

“I hear if you make friends with Jesus Christ, you will get right up from that chalk outline. And then you'll get dolled up, and you'll dress in white all to take your place in his chorus line. And then in you'll come with those marching drums in a saintly compromise. No more whiskey slurs, no more blonde-haired girls for your whole eternal life. And you'll do the dance that was choreographed at the very dawn of time. Singing "I told you son, the day would come you would die, you'd die you'd die you'd die you'd die."”

Conor Oberst (1980) American musician

Arc Of Time
Digital Ash in a Digital Urn (2005)

Life , Girl , Singing , Time

“When I was a young subaltern in the South African War, the water was not fit to drink. To make it palatable we had to put a bit of whiskey in it. By diligent effort I learned to like it.”

Winston S. Churchill (1874–1965) Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Aboard the Presidential train during the journey to Fulton, Missouri (March 4, 1946); quoted in Conflict and Crisis by Robert Donovan, University of Missouri Press (1996), p. 190 ISBN 082621066X
Post-war years (1945–1955)

War , Drink , Effort , Learning

“Bernard always had a few prayers in the hall and some whiskey afterwards as he was rarther pious but Mr Salteena was not very adicted to prayers so he marched up to bed.”

Daisy Ashford book The Young Visiters

Source: The Young Visiters (1919), Chapter 3

““They say that they’re a punishment on godly people for allowing sin to walk the earth unanswered—”
“Who is this ‘they’ you’re always referring to?” Stanton glared at Rose, his eyes gleaming with unhidden malice. “Your mongoloid Aunt Kindy? Your drunken Uncle Sal? Or are you talking about the slack-jawed hacks who bang out those dime novels for a bottle of whiskey and the price of a flophouse?”
Rose stared at him, her mouth open in astonishment. But Stanton pressed on, his voice flat and awful.
“Or maybe you’re just using the word ‘they’ as so many pea-brained idiots use it, as a cowardly rhetorical device, an excuse to say the things you really believe without giving anyone the chance to judge you for the narrow-minded, stupid creature you are.””

M. K. Hobson book The Native Star

Source: The Native Star (2010), Chapter 15, “Ososolyeh” (pp. 211-212)

People , Stupidity , Chance

“With the dried blood stiff on my temples I climbed the hill, cursing the satanic way of men, yet knowing myself vile, for they had not known what they were doing, but I betrayed an innocent; and the tears— weak, whiskey tears— would not wash from my brow the blood of a little brother.”

Henry Williamson (1895–1977) British ruralist and natural history writer

The Village Book (1930) – after a killing of a badger by villagers.

Men , Way , Tear

“Over the years I'd surrendered many vices, among them whiskey, cigarettes, and the various non-Newtonian drugs, but marijuana and I remained steadfast companions. I had one fragrant ounce of Humboldt County, California, in a Ziploc bag in the glove compartment of my car.”

Michael Chabon book Wonder Boys

Wonder Boys (1995)

Cars , Marijuana

“And it's certainly bad, but when a man spends his relief checks on green whiskey his children have a way of crying from hunger pains. I don't know of any landowner around here who begrudges those children any game their father can hit. Of course he shouldn't, but he'll never change his ways. Are you going to take out your disapproval on his children?”

Harper Lee book To Kill a Mockingbird

Pt. 1, ch.3
Atticus Finch
To Kill a Mockingbird (1962)

Hunger , Pain , Children , Way

“It ain't like midnight and cigarette smoke.
It ain't like watered down whiskey and coke.
I guess some things just don't mix like you hope.
Like me and you.
And diamond rings and old barstools.”

Tim McGraw (1967) American country singer

Diamond Rings and Old Barstools
Song lyrics, Sundown Heaven Town (2014)

Hope , Water

“We come late, if at all, to wine and philosophy; whiskey and action are easier.”

Mignon McLaughlin (1913–1983) American journalist

The Complete Neurotic's Notebook (1981), Unclassified

Wine

“I was in a slightly befuddled state by this time and the potent combination of watery beer and whiskey was bringing on a severe attack of drawing, as always happens when I start seeing unusual faces through a haze of controlled drinking. My body becomes a protective casing and lets me observe through the two keyholes on the front of my head.”

Ralph Steadman book The Joke's Over

The Kentucky Derby, p. 14
The Joke's Over (2006)

Drink , Beer , Time , Drawing

“They were both more than twenty-seven in those enthusiastic years of nineteen hundred and thirty-five, yet neither had as much as ever kissed a girl. Not that kissing was much in favour in that district. Reading about lovers kissing, Tarry often reflected on the fact that he had never seen anyone kissing anyone, except poor old Peter Toole whom he once saw kissing a corpse in a wakehouse in the hope of getting a couple of glasses of whiskey.”

Patrick Kavanagh (1904–1967) poet

p11
Prose, Tarry Flynn (1948)

Hope , Girl , Lovers , Kiss

“New York: Prison towers and modern posters for soap and whiskey. Pittsburgh: Abandon it.”

Frank Lloyd Wright (1867–1959) American architect (1867-1959)

On New York and Pittsburgh, The New York Times (27 November 1955)

“Ammu had an elaborate Calcutta wedding. Later, looking back on the day, Ammu realized that the slightest feverish glitter in her bridegroom's eyes had not been love, or even excitement at the prospect of carnal bliss, but approximately eight large pegs of whiskey. Straight. Neat.”

Arundhati Roy book The God of Small Things

The God of Small Things (1997)

Love , Wedding

“…in the Executive, Grant and Boutwell were varieties of the type — political specimens — pathetic in their helplessness to do anything with power when it came to them. They knew not how to amuse themselves; they could not conceive how other people were amused. Work, whiskey, and cards were life. The atmosphere of political Washington was theirs — or was supposed by the outside world to be in their control — and this was the reason why the outside world judged that Washington was fatal even for a young man of thirty-two, who had passed through the whole variety of temptations, in every capital of Europe, for a dozen years; who never played cards, and who loathed whiskey.”

Henry Adams (1838–1918) journalist, historian, academic, novelist

The Education of Henry Adams (1907)

Life , People , World

“Two key rules of Third World travel: 1. Never run out of whiskey. 2. Never run out of whiskey.”

P. J. O'Rourke (1947) American journalist

All the Trouble in the World (1994)

World , Travel

“Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys.”

P. J. O'Rourke book Parliament of Whores

Source: Parliament of Whores (1991), pp. xviii-xix.

Money , Cars , Boy

“Some of you say religion makes people happy. So does laughing gas. So does whiskey.”

Clarence Darrow (1857–1938) American lawyer and leading member of the American Civil Liberties Union

In a debate with religious leaders in Kansas City, as quoted in a eulogy for Darrow by Emanuel Haldeman-Julius (1938)
Context: Do you, good people, believe that Adam and Eve were created in the Garden of Eden and that they were forbidden to eat from the tree of knowledge? I do. The church has always been afraid of that tree. It still is afraid of knowledge. Some of you say religion makes people happy. So does laughing gas. So does whiskey. I believe in the brain of man. I'm not worried about my soul.

People , Religion , Happiness

“Because it has Societies for the prevention of physical cruelty to animals,and none with the object of preventing the moral cruelty practiced on human beings. Because it encourages, legally and tacitly, vice under every form, from the sale of whiskey down to forced prostitution and theft brought on by starvation wages...”

Helena Petrovna Blavatsky book The Key to Theosophy

The Key to Theosophy (1889)

Animals