Quotes & Sayings About Drinking Whiskey

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

The group's laughter echoed off the stained, plaster ceiling. I raised my beer, but before I clinked the bottles together, I challenged him. "You think you're a man I won't forget?"
"Ah'm nae any man ye've met before."
"Praise be," I smirked, "the others haven't been worth spit."
Then the whiskey came, and I was taken by the tawny light, forgetting to worry about my 'crazy'. Until Angus' efforts at gilding my heart, called my 'alter' to the fore. — Cheryl R Cowtan

Empty whiskey bottles strewn about like forgotten failures — Michael Coorlim

God invented whiskey to keep the Irish from ruling the world. — Ed McMahon

The hallway beyond was filled with males of the house, the Brothers and other fighters and Manny sitting on the floor with their backs to the bare walls, their legs stretched out, propped up, crossed at the knees or crossed at the ankles.
Apparently there had been quite a bit of drinking going on, bottles of vodka and whiskey littered around them, glasses in hands or on thighs.
"This is NOT as pathetic as it looks," her Butch pointed out.
"Liar," V muttered, "It so fucking is. I think I'm going to start knitting for reals. — J.R. Ward

Well I ain't seen my baby since I don't know when,
I've been drinking bourbon whiskey, scotch and gin
Gonna get high man I'm gonna get loose,
Need me a triple shot of that juice
Gonna get drunk don't you have no fear
I want one bourbon, one scotch and one beer
One bourbon, one scotch, one beer. — John Lee Hooker

Bye, Bye Miss American Pie, drove my chevy to the levy but the levy was dry. Good old boys drinking whiskey and rye, singing, this'll be the day that I die. — Don McLean

It's a great paradox and a great injustice that writers write because we fear death and want to leave something indestructable in our wake, and at the same time, are drawn to things that kill: whiskey and cigarette, unprotected sex and deep fried burritos.
It's true that you can get away with drinking and smoking and sunbathing when you're in your teens and twenties, and it's true that rock stars are free to die at twenty-nine, but a lit star needs a long life. — Ariel Gore

There is no bad whiskey. There are only some whiskeys that aren't as good as others. — Raymond Chandler

Whiskey is by far the most popular of all remedies that won't cure a cold. — Jerry Vale

No girl has ever had this effect on me! She's taking up so much of my attention, I'm having a hard time smoking cigarettes and drinking whiskey! — James Marshall

I like whiskey. I always did, and that is why I never drink it. — Robert E.Lee

The whiskey was a good start. I got the idea from Dylan Thomas. He's this poet who drank twenty-one straight whiskeys at the White Horse Tavern in New York and then died on the spot from alcohol poisoning. I've always wanted to hear the bartender's side of the story. What was it like watching this guy drink himself out of here? How did it feel handing him number twenty-one and watching his face crumple up before the fall of the stool? And did he already have number twenty-two poured, waiting for this big fat tip, and then have to drink it himself after whoever came took the body away? — Michael Thomas Ford

He was a parade all by himself, a burst of dazzle and jingle, Santa Claus drinking his whiskey straight and groaning with a bellyache ... Babe Ruth made the music that his joyous years danced to in a continuous party ... What Babe Ruth is comes down, one generation handing it down to the next, as a nation heirloom. — Jimmy Cannon

When you drink whiskey, learn to drink it with mindfulness. "Drinking whiskey, I know that it is whiskey I am drinking." This is the approach that I would recommend. I am not telling you to absolutely stop drinking. I propose that you drink your whiskey mindfully, and I am sure that if you drink this way for a few weeks, you will stop drinking alcohol. Drinking your whiskey mindfully, you will recognize what is taking place in you - in your body, in your liver, in your relationships, in the world, and so on. When your mindfulness becomes strong, you will just stop. You — Thich Nhat Hanh

A Christian might drink only ginger ale at the tavern bar, but there he is already on the way to drinking beer and whiskey. The girl who attends a ball but never dances a step, will soon surrender her body to the lustful embrace of every casual male acquaintance as other dancers do. — John R. Rice

The whiskey warmed his tongue and the back of his throat, but it did not change his ideas any, and suddenly, looking at himself in the mirror behind the bar, he knew that drinking was never going to do any good to him now. Whatever he had now he had, and it was from now on, and if he drank himself unconscious when he woke up it would be there. — Ernest Hemingway,

The thing I like about Irish whiskey is that the more you drink the smoother it goes down. Of course that's probably true of antifreeze as well, but illusion is nearly all we have. — Robert B. Parker

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

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

I remembered my New Orleans days, living on two five-cent candy bars a day for weeks at a time in order to have leisure to write. But starvation, unfortunately, didn't improve art. It only hindered it. A man's soul was rooted in his stomach. A man could write much better after eating a porterhouse steak and drinking a pint of whiskey than he could ever write after eating a nickel candy bar. The myth of the starving artist was a hoax. — Charles Bukowski

The Irish sometimes make and keep a vow against whiskey; these vows are usually limited to a short time. — Maria Edgeworth

My father? A hard drinking man from the 70's. We actually have no pictures of my dad where he is not holding a beer. Weddings, Funerals, Water Skiing, Parent-Teacher Conference. When I got sick around him as a kid growing up, he'd always warm me up a shot of 100 proof whiskey. Never got sick ... that I can remember. — Christopher Titus

Really? You've started drinking whiskey before lunch?" Rush wasn't giving in ...
"He's fucking your sister. Hell, anyone that stupid has to drink to stay sane," Dean said in a bored tone. — Abbi Glines

Jeff and Amy were part of this, though never in the sense that the natives were. They were not indigenous: they were outlanders, 'foreigners,' distinguished by a sort of upcountry cosmopolitan glaze which permitted them to mingle but not merge. Even their drinking habits set them apart. Deltans drank only corn and Coca-Cola; gin was perfume, scotch had a burnt-stick taste. They would watch with wry expressions while Amy blended her weird concoctions, pink ladies and Collinses and whiskey sours, and those who tried one, finally persuaded, would sip and shudder and set the glass aside: "Thanks" - mildly outraged, smirking - "I'll stick to burrbon. — Shelby Foote

You sit back in the darkness, nursing your beer, breathing in that ineffable aroma of the old-time saloon: dark wood, spilled beer, good cigars, and ancient whiskey - the sacred incense of the drinking man. — Bruce Aidells

Vodka is a wonderful drink. You can drink so much of it without being as hung over as you would if you were drinking one of the brown liquors - the whiskeys and such. It's a great drink to go with appetizers. — Gary Shteyngart

As adults we try to relax from the never-ending quest for reason and order by drinking a little whiskey or smoking whatever works for us, but the wisdom isn't in the whiskey or the smoke. The wisdom is in the moments when the madness slips away and we remember the basics. — Willie Nelson

Lucy preferred gin and tonics during the summer and switched over to whiskey sours in the winter. At dinner, a sit-down affair with the family, Lucy drank whatever the Temerlins drank, including expensive French wines. "She never gets obnoxious, even when smashed to the brink of unconsciousness," wrote Maurice, revealing more about the chimp's alcoholism than perhaps he intended. At one point, he tried to wean Lucy off the good stuff and onto Boone's Farm apple wine. Assuming she would delight in the fruity swill, he purchased a case and filled her glass one night at dinner. Lucy took a sip of the apple wine, noticed her parents were drinking something else, and put her glass down. She then graabbed Maurice's glass of Chablis and polished it off. She finished Jane's next. Not another sip of Boone's farm ever touched her lips. — Elizabeth Hess

The Father wears natural-fiber clothing that he scrubs and starches before re-ruffling in an approximation of ancient Jerusalem chic. Every morning the Father braids his long hair, smoothing the split ends with beeswax. He coats his skin with a homebrewed sunscreen. He takes a spoonful of ground flaxseed and a spoonful of turmeric powder in his nightly goat's milk. He self-administers a coffee colonic on the fifteenth of each month. On the sixteenth, he reports any visions experienced during the purge. And every now and then, he loses control, drinking nothing but Canadian whiskey for three days. The — Samantha Hunt

It's the same whether we eat margarine or don't. Dull translation jobs or fraudulent copy, it's basically the same. Sure we're tossing out fluff, but tell me, where does anyone deal in words with substance? C'mon now, there's no honest work anywhere. Just like there's no honest breathing or honest pissing."
"You were more innocent in the old days."
"Maybe so," I said, crushing out a cigarette in the ashtray. "And no doubt there's an innocent town somewhere where an innocent butcher slices innocent ham. So if you think that drinking whiskey from the middle of the morning is innocent, go ahead and drink as much as you want."
The room was treated to an extended pen-on-desktop staccato solo. — Haruki Murakami

Unless he had whiskey running through his veins, Willard came to the clearing every morning and evening to talk to God. Arvin didn't know which was worse, the drinking or the praying. As far back as he could remember, it seemed that his father had fought the Devil all the time. — Donald Ray Pollock

Common wisdom affirms against the drinking of whiskey during daylight hours, and while I can see the merits of the argument, it is not one to which I hold. True, a few fingers of liquor, or even a wide-stretched palm, degrades your ability to cope with the world's troubles, miseries and horrors; but it also makes you less concerned about them, and since the world is certain to throw more at you than you can handle regardless, I think it a more than equitable transaction. People call me the Warden.
People call me a lot of things, but the Warden is the only one you could say inside a church. — Daniel Polansky

Revival time was a time of war: war on sin, Coca-Cola, picture shows, hunting on Sunday; war on the increasing tendency of young women to paint themselves and smoke in public; war on drinking whiskey - in this connection at least fifty children per summer went to the altar and swore they would not drink, smoke, or curse until they were twenty-one; war on something so nebulous Jean Louise never could figure out what it was, except there was nothing to swear concerning it; and war among the town's ladies over who could set the best table for the evangelist. — Harper Lee

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

~Posters with torn edges hanging from rotten walls~

The doctor told me something once
she said
STOP DRINKING
I slapped her across the face with this
NO
I walked right out of that office
went right down to the hole
I told the bartender
WHISKEY, MOTHERFUCKER
he poured and he poured
and I slapped my money down on that bar
the man I had been driving around with
he just sort of sat there next to this hooker
she probably had something rotten
way down there between her legs
her eyes told of no soul
I emptied the bottle down my throat
and ordered some chips
the bartender told me
THEY'RE STALE
and I give him a
I DON'T FUCKIN' CARE,
GIVE ME SOMETHIN'
He slid me a ham sandwich dripping with cheap low-fat mayo and said
ENJOY
I went back to my room
and talked all night
so much conversation
it turned the toilet bowl pale — Dave Matthes

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

Whiskey is for drinking; water is for fighting over. — Mark Twain

Need 'nether whiskey. Whiskey chaser. Gotta get two men drunk.'
Mr. Cohan placed both hands on the bar. 'Mr. Walsh,' he said severely, 'in Gavagan's we will serve a man a drink to wet his whistle, or even because his old woman has pasted him with a dornick, but a drink to get drunk with I do not sell. Now I'm telling you you've had enough for tonight, and in the morning you'll be thanking me ... ' ("My Brother's Keeper") — Fletcher Pratt

Y'all drinking whiskey is probably a gregarious act. When you're not an alcoholic it's pretty fun to drink whiskey. But when you are it's a very solo ritual. It's not gregarious at all. But vice has always informed country music and all music. — Ketch Secor

When Alex left for Alaska," Franz remembers, "I prayed. I asked God to keep his finger on the shoulder of that one; I told him that boy was special. But he let Alex die. So on December 26, when I learned what happened, I renounced the Lord. I withdrew my church membership and became an atheist. I decided I couldn't believe in a God who would let something that terrible happen to a boy like Alex. After I dropped off the hitchhikers," Franz continues," I turned my van around, drove back to the store, and bought a bottle of whiskey. And then I went out into the desert and drank it. I wasn't used to drinking, so it made me real sick. Hoped it'd kill me, but it didn't. Just made me real, real sick. — Jon Krakauer

Call him drunken Ira Hayes, he won't answer any more. Not the whiskey drinking Indian, nor the Marine that went to war. — Johnny Cash

Beer bottles, whiskey bottles, brown glass, green. They fell to the lawn and I'd feel serene. Adam was king to my stilted queen. — Kate Bernheimer

Will you stop drinking whiskey? Let me plead with you to do so. And if the sisters would not think it oppressive, I would ask them to not drink quite so much strong tea. — Brigham Young

There's Ireland for you now, McGlynn, all of it. Unending rain rattling the windows, and inside a kindly woman boasting about her clerical relations, and two men drinking whiskey, and outside the rest of the world. If Michelangelo painted the Resurrection on her smoky ceiling she wouldn't give it a look or him a thank-you if her portly cousin His Reverence were within miles of the place. Once upon a time we exported scholars and culture to the Continent. Now we export nothing but beasts and priests, God help us. — Val Mulkerns

To be or not to be, fucked up on whiskey, that is the question. — Robert Black

Have some whiskey,there's nothing like it for clearing the head. You must expect to be thick-witted if you insist upon drinking beer. — W. Somerset Maugham

This was the purest instant he had ever experienced; the way he felt inside right then. If he had to be trapped in a forever he would choose this very moment. The black night, the few yellow leaves still clinging to the bare trees, the beautiful dark-eyed woman drinking whiskey, the way she gazed at him, the way she made him feel. — Alice Hoffman

I will never, ever drink whiskey again. From now on, it's strictly sherry. — Libba Bray

On the bright side," he went on, gesturing to the massive quantities of alcohol they had laid out on the table for their lackeys, "You get to drink loads of expensive whiskey, instead." "I don't like whiskey," Tyson told him. "I like steak knives." "Poddite," Slade sighed. Tyson squinted at him. "What?" "Poddite," Slade said, carefully arranging his plastic cutlery. "It means that your uninspired tastes mark you as one of the mindless ranks of pod-people that mechanically wander this earth, doing whatever their television or personal devices tell them to, like drinking piss because it's been marketed as 'refreshing.'" — Sara King

Despite Lowell's determination to be 'surrounded by Catholics,' the couple instantly got swept up into the fast, loud current of atheist-Jewish-Marxist-hard-drinking-fast-talking literary New York. Philip Rahv and Nathalie Swan took a shine to Lowell and Stafford, and soon they were getting invited to the Rahv's combative, whiskey-soaked parties. — David Laskin

In fact, Lincoln and Stanton had already heard similar complaints. After dispatching investigators to look into General Grant's behavior, however, they had concluded that his drinking did not affect his unmatched ability to plan, execute, and win battles. A memorable story circulated that when a delegation brought further rumors of Grant's drinking to the president, Lincoln declared that if he could find the brand of whiskey Grant used, he would promptly distribute it to the rest of his generals! — Doris Kearns Goodwin

When true love broke my heart in half,
I took the whiskey from the shelf,
And told my neighbors when to laugh.
I keep a dog, and bark myself. — Theodore Roethke

I gave up drinking lots of whiskey and began to practice yoga and meditation. As a result I am not dead. — Billy Childish

Rodney Crowell says. "I went over, and we sat at the table, and Guy had a bottle of Johnny Walker Red, a quart, and he was hurting. He was drinking whiskey. When the pain is so deep, it's that moan, it's that timeless moan, and pain. Susanna was - that conversation was, 'You know, it's over.' She was just saying, 'It's over.' Guy was just trying to deal with the pain. Susanna surrendered something that night, as far as I could tell." Her — Tamara Saviano

To be certain you're consuming the real deal, look carefully at the label. W-h-i-s-k-e-y indicates the heavenly liquid from the Emerald Isle. Without the "e," it's from Scotland or some other godforsaken place. — Rashers Tierney

The stains could be seen only in the sunlight, so Ruth was never really aware of them until later, when she would stop at an outdoor cafe for a cup of coffee, and look down at her skirt and see the dark traces of spilled vodka or whiskey. The alcohol had the effect of making the black cloth blacker. This amused her; she had noted in her journal: 'booze affects material as it does people'. — Alice Sebold

You put three girls in a house, and all of a sudden before you know it, you're talking about boys and drinking whiskey, and things go down and you get deep real quick. — Katie Aselton

Give an Irishman lager for a month and he's a dead man. An Irishman's stomach is lined with copper, and the beer corrodes it. But whiskey polishes the copper and is the saving of him. — Mark Twain

Life, alas, is very drear. Up with the glass! Down with the beer! — Louis Untermeyer

There is no such thing as a bad whisky. Some whiskies just happen to be better than others. — William Faulkner

Here's how I'll tell you what I think - if you see white smoke then you know I picked a new pope. And if I'm drinking a Snapple then you know I don't give a shit. — Jason Jack Miller

The whiskey kicked like a mugger. — Ken Bruen

Rahul had been underwhelmed by the New Year's rituals of the rich. "Moronic," he had concluded. "Just people drinking and dancing and standing around acting stupid, like people here do every night."

"The hotel people get strange when they drink," he told his friends. "Last night at the end of the party, there was one hero-good-looking, stripes on his suit, expensive cloth. He was drunk, full tight, and he started stuffing bread into his pants pockets, jacket pockets. Then he put more rolls straight into his pants! Rolls fell on the floor and he was crawling under the table to get them. This one waiter was saying the guy must have been hungry, earlier- that whiskey brought back the memory. But when I get rich enough to be a guest at a big hotel, I'm not going to act like such a loser. — Katherine Boo