“But where hope rises, fear must lurk behind.”

“I am satisfied that if a book is a good one, it is so whatever the sex of the author may be. All novels are or should be written for both men and women to read, and I am at a loss to conceive how a...”

“I possess the faculty of enjoying the company of those I - of my friends as well in silence as in conversation.”

“Preserve me from such cordiality! It is like handling briar-roses and may-blossoms - bright enough to the eye, and outwardly soft to the touch, but you know there are thorns beneath, and every now ...”

“Well, but you affirm that virtue is only elicited by temptation; - and you think that a woman cannot be too little exposed to temptation, or too little acquainted with vice, or anything connected t...”

“[B]eauty is that quality which, next to money, is generally the most attractive to the worst kinds of men; and, therefore, it is likely to entail a great deal of trouble on the possessor.”

“The challenge lies in knowing how to bring this sort of day to a close. His mind has been wound to a pitch of concentration by the interactions of the office. Now there are only silence and the fla...”

“Disillusioned, people simply carried out their work as intended, drinking away sobriety at the end of each hard shift and repeating the process until death.”

“My mind feels like a beehive without the buzz.”

“An alcoholic is someone you don't like, who drinks as much as you do.”

“I resolved to come right to the point. "Hello," I said as coldly as possible, "we've got to talk.""Yes, Bob," he said quietly, "what's on your mind?" I shut my eyes for a moment, letting the raging...”

“I remember, when I was about ten years old, working out that I would be thirty-six in the year 2000. It seemed so far away, so old, so unreal. And here I am, a fucked, crazy, anorexic-alcoholic-chi...”

“The worst disease which can afflict executives in their work is not, as popularly supposed, alcoholism; it's egotism.”

“I'm sitting in front of the TV, watching Jerry Springer, and it makes me think of how many mad people there are in the world, and whether everyone is mad deep down, they just pretend they're not, a...”

“This is a good place," he said."There's a lot of liquor," I agreed.”