The Lost Weekend του Charles Jackson

"He thought again of Wick and Helen. Funny relationship. Closer than if they had been lifelong friends; but not because any real affinity or interest in each other. In fact, each was the kind of person that the other did not care for at all. The only thing that held them together was him, of course. Aside from himself, they had no common meeting ground. And he was able, by his bad behavior no less than his good, to bind them closer than if they had been brother and sister. How they were one, when things were going well with him. How they were united even more, when he was on the loose." P.11

"He only felt relaxed, for the first time in days-so relaxed that it was almost fatigue" P.12

"Nights when he had finished a poem, what could have been more natural, more necessary and urgent, than to go and look at himself to see if he had changed?" P.14

"How could he have been seduced, fooled, into dreaming up such a ridiculous piece; in perpetrating, even in his imagination, anything so pat, so contrived, so cheap, so phoney, so adolescent, so (crowning offence) sentimental? Euphoria! Faithless muse! What crimes are committed in thy-" P.18

"He had pictured himself as the sensitive gifted man going to the dogs with practically noble abandon, seeking destruction with gallant and charming and even amused resignation. Balls! He was a drunk, that's all; a soak and a dip; and the dangers that he skirted were picayune, no more threatening or perilous than the twigs and leaves which the night-flying bat, like the drunk, avoids so skillfully, with such ridiculous and unnecessary ingenuity, darting about in the darkness reckless but safe, always safe..." P.43

"And waiting, knowing that the remorse would pass and high spirits return with the first drink of the day, he deliberately reviewed and explored that remorse, as if self-abasement were a kind of expiation, as if this was his last chance at self-search, as if the promised drinks were justified provided he faced the facts and knew in advance what he was in for." P.45

"Instead of the fellow everyone had always been so fond of - friendly, social, good company, bright, lively - he had developed into a crafty sly masquerader, artful and elusive, presenting a front so different from his real self that they pretended to believe out of sheer embarrassment, as much to save his face as their own." P.47

"These were not the fancied fears that had become fashionable, lately, among his class and his generation. Quick to spot the fake in others as in himself, he had only contempt for those fondly-cherished phobias which drove their nourishes to dangerous distraction when they heard whip-pool-wills, which prevented them from sitting in crowded theaters or entering subways, which kept them forever in the country or forever  in the city, which forbade them eating anything but ice cream ever, which allowed them to hear only a very little bit of fine music at one time (a whole symphony at a sitting was more than one could bear and to hell with the composer's design), and which culminated in what their creators shyly-proudly spoke of as their "weekend psychoses". Meaning nothing more than boredom and irritation at having to spend two days at home with their wives and children. These carefully nurtured aberrations were supposed to signify a refinement and sensitivity superior to the temperament (or lack of it) of maddening well-balanced mates; in reality, they provided a compensation and screen to frustration, inferiority, and failure." P.50

"It wouldn't have left a trace of guilt behind , it would have been taking such an easy advantage." P.57

"He knew he couldn't have been smoother, cagier, more the master of his every smallest move - as only the drunk can be who is just drunk enough, just enough to know what he is doing, with the clarity denied to the sober." P. 65

"-Frigid? It's one of nature's little tricks of revenge, dear. One of woman's tricks. It's all terribly terribly nice and proper, and keeps a lady a lady. Oh, always a lady. And makes a bloody monkey out of the poor sap who happened to marry her-because he loved her." P.78

"Always something to run away from, no matter what, no matter why, as though you'd been born with a consciousness of guilt and would find that thing to feel guilty about regardless. Feel? Be." P.85

"For once, he was in the driver's seat, because-as always happened when drinking with someone else- the tighter the other got, the soberer and clearer he became." P.87

"Like all other moments of crisis, of course, the incident had never ended. It sent its reverberations down to this very second, to this very place, and all but shook the glass from his hand." P.89

"Oh there it was, all right. On the table. A great big quart. Large as life and twice as empty." P.93

"Here there was no escape from the crowd of looking strangers; you stared straight ahead and went on; and if you did not see them looking, perhaps they were not." P.101

"What fiend ever gave the name portable to a portable?" P.102

"Kids had covered the base of the walls with chalk, communicating to one another and to the adult indifferent world the gossip, imprecations, and yearnings of their kind." P.103

"...and indeed the foolish psychiatrist had said his only importance was his nuisance-value; failing to achieve prominence in any other way, he achieved it by becoming a worry; he'd probably stop drinking entirely if people stopped talking and worrying. The patient is trying to wheedle attention and comfort from his betters by flinging his infantile narcissism in their faces. Words, words, words. The patient is using a technique of hysteria to exploit his illness for epinosic gain. What a ridiculous notion, what did he know..." P.114-115

"Delirium is a disease of the night." P.133

"He was aware, as Bim was, of the downward path he was on; he knew himself well enough to know and admit that Bim had every reason to say what he said-but only insofar as Bim saw, in him, the potential confederate that was every alcoholic: the fellow bogged down in adolescence; the guy off his track, off his trolley; the man still unable to take, at thirty-three or -six or -nine, the forward step he had missed ih his 'teens; the poor devil demoralized and thrown off balance by the very stuff intended to restore his frightened or baffled ego; the gent jarred loose into unsavory bypaths that gave him the shudders to think of but were his natural habitat and inevitable home so long as drink remained the modus operandi of his life; the lush whose native characteristics, whatever they were at the outset, could blur and merge with the whims of every and any companion who offered him companionship or worse; the barred one whose own bars were down-the unpredictable renegade to whom anything might happen.

Bim saw all this with the bright eye of their kind. Okay; so far, so good. But Bim's was also the over bright eye which saw things and meanings where there were none." P.144

"Don knew him as only the interrogator is known to the interrogated, the confessor to the catechized, the questioner whose questions reveal far more than they seek". P.157

"...who despised the speaker as they despised the spoken of, because, in their home-bred hearts, they knew and knew rightly that the cold alien passion of the intellect, the passion of detachment which surveys everything and is moved by nothing, lies with the instincts of death." P.161

"He was thinking of those times when he felt the necessity of reading to her, when he read to her for her own good, read something she ought to know, something he himself was crazy about and damn it she had to know it and love it too! He would read on and on (the favorite short story or the passage out of the great novel) and the words wouldn't come right or at least not come out of his mouth right, he himself heard the unnatural elisions and the consonants slurred and blurred but went right on just the same, just as if he was articulating perfectly; and Helen, though she was a poor dissembler, ignored the stumbling thick speech the same as he and pretended to understand. And when he had finished and exclaimed "Isn't it wunderbar?" and accepted her nod, how he could curse himself then for having mutilated the beautiful passage, for not having been sober enough to take advantage of this opportunity to reveal the passage to Helen, for having ignored his own dreadful speech, for having pretended to accept Helen's pretense, and for having used the word wunderbar..." P.183

"They tried their hands in many talents; and though they didn't get anywhere, their friends cover this up for them now by speaking of them as "clever," they say they have "personality," they say "So-&-so would go far if only he'd apply himself," or "So-&-so is a queer duck, what he needs is a good wife," and often "Sure he's got brains but what good does it do to him?" P. 194

""I haven't got time to be neurotic," he had heard Helen say once; and the words had made him go weak with anger." P.222