Being crazy, for the rest of us, is a form of sanity.

I knew that I had been partially right in the storeroom above the bar on Christmas Day. Whoever I had become had to die.

When people view their lives as insignificant, they escape using pleasure.

Getting sober is a radically creative act.

Mendacity is a system that we live in,' declares Brick. 'Liquor is one way out an'death's the other.

Whether I or anyone else accepted the concept of alcoholism as a disease didn't matter; what mattered was that when treated as a disease, those who suffered from it were most likely to recover.

A man who drinks too much on occasion is still the same man as he was sober. An alcoholic, a real alcoholic, is not the same man at all. You can't predict anything about him for sure except that he will be someone you never met before.

I'm sick of the ignorance that lack of funding has generated, of the fathers who apporach me at dinner parties with their four-year-old girls clasped to their pant legs and say, 'Yeah, but studies say kids can buy drugs more easily than they can buy alcohol.' To which I always respond, 'I guess that means you keep heroin in your liquor cabinet?

If you can stop using substance or stop your addictive behavior for extended periods of time without craving, you are not dependent. You are dependent only if you can't stop without physical or psychological distress (you have unpleasant physical and/or psychological withdrawal symptoms) or if you stop and then relapse.

The mentality and behavior of drug addicts and alcoholics is wholly irrational until you understand that they are completely powerless over their addiction and unless they have structured help, they have no hope.