When the world is too dark And I need the light inside of me I’ll walk into a bar And drink fifteen pints of beer — Shane MacGowan, “Streams of Whiskey”

“I had three cans of beer along. I drank them slowly in the increasing, savage heat of midday, dropping the empties into the slow river. I was not a good citizen. I didn’t flatten them first.” — Shepard Rifkin, The Murderer Vine

“Burgundy makes you think silly things; Bordeaux makes you talk about them; and Champagne makes you do them.” — Brillat-Savarin

ANNA: Gimme a whiskey—ginger ale on the side. And don’t be stingy, baby. LARRY: Shall I serve it in a pail? ANNA: That suits me down to the ground. — Eugene O’Neill, Anna Christie Recalled to mind by the Web log of Ms. Iris Iris, who refers us to a third location, where you may [...]

I throw in my lot with Bill Ott, who writes, “teetotaling fiction tastes flat to me.” In memoriam, a scribe who never dried up: “When I finally caught up with Abraham Trahearne, he was drinking beer with an alcoholic bulldog named Fireball Roberts in a ramshackle joint just outside of Sonoma, California, drinking the heart [...]

“I saw her for the first time that afternoon. It was too hot to do much but sit in an air-conditioned apartment. I’d spent the morning waking up and writing checks to creditors, and in another hour it would be four o’clock and I could add brandy to my coffee without feeling guilty about it. [...]

The bartender came over. It looked like the wrong bar for cognac but that’s all I drink. I asked for Courvoisier. “You want the Three-Star or the VSOP?” Life is filled with surprises. — Lawrence Block, The Naked and the Deadly

“Colin Miller pulled out a hip flask, took a swig, then offered it to Logan: rusty nail, the mixture of whisky and Drambuie going down like alcoholic central heating.” — Stuart MacBride, Flesh House

“I spent a lot of money on booze, birds and fast cars. The rest I just squandered.” — George Best

“The best advice on touring I ever got came from the publisher of my children’s mystery books . . . Very simple advice. She said, ‘Use the minibar.’” — Peter Abrahams