Gave Up Drinking Quotes & Sayings

action!" "Roger, I've got visual on the target," whispered Mirza. "At least two of the Iranians are in the building." One of the old men drinking coffee gave him a strange look. — Jack Silkstone

I gave up drinking once
it was the worst afternoon of my entire life. — Humphrey Bogart

It began to falter not when the book publishers who loved books gave way to those who preferred profits to reading. It happened when publishers and editors cut back on their drinking. If there is one national flower in book publishing, it is the martini. — Al Silverman

I began drinking alcohol at the age of thirteen and gave it up in my fifty sixth year; it was like going straight from puberty to a mid-life crisis. — George Montgomery

So I punished myself instead. I gave myself the worst punishment I could think of: I decided to live and I decided to stop drinking." "And afterward?" "I got to my feet again and started working. Worked longer days than all the others. Trained. Went on long walks. Read books. Some on law. Stopped meeting bad friends. Good ones too, by the way. The ones I had left after all the boozing. I don't know why in fact, it was like a big cleanup. Everything in my old life had to go, good as well as bad. One day I sat down and rang round all those I thought I had known in my former life and said: 'Hi, we can't meet anymore. It was nice knowing — Jo Nesbo

When I read about the dangers of drinking, I gave up reading — Henny Youngman

It was like that class at school where the teacher talks about Realization, about how you could realize something big in a commonplace thing. The example he gave
and the liar said it really happened
was that once while drinking orange juice, he'd realized he would be dead someday. He wondered if we, his students, had had similar 'realizations.'
Is he kidding? I thought.
Once I cashed a paycheck and I realized it wasn't enough.
Once I had food poisoning, and realized I was trapped inside my body. — Amy Hempel

There's no point in writing my kind of stuff, when they're printing that kind of stuff. So I gave up and started drinking. — Charles Bukowski

You drink whisky, hon?" he asked Mollie.
"Uh, not really."
"Well, you do now." He poured a splash of amber liquid into two crystal glasses and brought one to her before holding up his own glass.
"What are we toasting to?" he asked.
"To men being shits," Riley said.
He gave his wife a look. "I'm not drinking my own whisky to that. — Lauren Layne

An enormous bartender came over. He looked like the pullout centerfold for Leather Biker Monthly. Extra big and extra scary. He had long hair, a long scar, and tattoos of snakes slithering up both arms. He shot the two men a glare and - poof - they were gone. Like the glare had evaporated them. Then he turned his eyes toward Esperanza. She met the glare and gave him one back. Neither backed down. "Lady, what the fuck are you?" he asked. "Is that a new way of asking what I'm drinking?" "No." The mutual glaring continued. He leaned two massive snake-arms on the bar. "You're too good-looking to be a cop," he said. "And you're too good-looking to be hanging out in this toilet. — Harlan Coben

I loved the way drink made me feel, and I loved it's special power of deflection, it's ability to shift my focus away from my own awareness of self and onto something else, something less painful than my own feelings. I loved the sounds of drink: the slide of a cork as it eased out of a wine bottle, the distinct glug-glug of booze pouring into a glass, the clatter of ice cubes in a tumbler. I loved the rituals, the camaraderie of drinking with others, the warming, melting feeling of ease and courage it gave me. — Caroline Knapp

I had a breakthrough, I think my life just became calmer, I gave up drinking. My priorities changed as I had a young daughter. The group didn't want me to record for the Think Tank album ... so I took it as a sign to leave. — Graham Coxon

They were made of small hard things - aunts and uncles, smoke breaks after sex, girls on stoops drinking from mason jars. These truths carried the black body beyond slogans and gave it color and texture and thus reflected the spectrum I saw out on the Yard more than all of my alliterative talk of guns or revolutions or paeans to the lost dynasties of African antiquity. — Ta-Nehisi Coates

So you're telling me that intoxicated cowboy is my best hope of getting to Paint River Ranch tonight?"

The bartender gave a sympathetic shrug. "Yep. And you'd better catch him before he starts drinking again. — Elizabeth Otto

What are you doing, Avery?"
I held up my bottle. "Drinking. What are you doing?"
His icy blue eyes narrowed. "That's not what I'm getting at and you know that. What are you doing?"
Damn. Hello attitude. I tried to give Cam the bitch look Steph had mastered, screwing my face up until I'm sure I looked like I was having a seizure. I sighed and gave up. — J. Lynn

Their faces were as a rule good-natured rather than beautiful, broad, bright-eyed, red-cheeked, with mouths apt to laughter, and to eating and drinking. And laugh they did, and eat, and drink, often and heartily, being fond of simple jests at all times, and of six meals a day (when they could get them). They were hospitable and delighted in parties, and in presents, which they gave away freely and eagerly accepted. — J.R.R. Tolkien

She gave me her love. On top of that, she showed me how to love her, too. She wasn't holding my past against me though I know it certainly wasn't something she arppoved of or anything. She was accepting what I was and who I was even when I was being a Moody little bastard, and she loved me anyway. Not only did she bring me back from almost certain death from infection, she was teaching me to care about life again when a month ago I had been pretty convinced my future consisted of nothing but drinking myself to death. — Shay Savage

I began drinking because the thought that I was drinking gave me a kind of identity: each time I poured myself a brandy in the deserted afternoon I could say to myself 'I am a woman who drinks. — Penelope Mortimer

Isolde took a swig. "It doesn't matter if you believe it or not. Your government just gave you two months to get knocked up." She held up the bottle, her face dull and red. "Cheers."
"You better get your fill of the booze now, then," said Xochi. "You'll be drinking for two pretty soon. — Dan Wells

When I read about the evils of drinking, I gave up reading. — Henny Youngman

I yell and scream like they do. I'm the worst of them. Totally. I'm a nightmare. Once they gave me the passport that was it - started throwing my hands in the air, drinking red wine and flying off the handle. — John Kirwan

He needs to tell me what he knows before he gets anything else from the Grahams."

She folded her arms across her chest and gave him her best "you will do what I say" look. He only shrugged and kept drinking his coffee.

Eva frowned at her. "Hija, you must be nice to Ranger Armstrong. His is a good man."

Oliviva snorted. "I'll believe that when he treats me like a person instead of a pain in the ass."

"You are a pain in the ass."

At first she could hardly believe he'd said it, but then when it sank in, a chuckle burst out of her mouth. She didn't want to be amused by his smart mouth, but she was. "So are you. Now tell me what you know. — Emma Lang

I know a man who gave up smoking, drinking, sex, and rich food. He was healthy right up to the time he killed himself. — Johnny Carson

I gave up smoking, I never gave up the drinking. But it's hard to smoke and swim at the same time. You'd get to the edge of the pool and all you'd be wanting is a cigarette when all you actually really want is oxygen. So I traded the smoke for the oxygen. — Ashton Kutcher

The past twelve weeks had been a blur, and now she was about to meet her baby via ultrasound, go home with a picture of an alien baby that people would pretend was beautiful, and here she sat after drinking a liter of fluid, her panties moist from a bladder that gave up control right around the time her shoes stopped fitting. A light breeze could make her pee at this point. A sneeze would unleash a tsunami. — Julia Kent

I gave up drinking before my twentieth birthday. I haven't touched the stuff since. And I've discovered that not everyone who does horrible things is a horrible person. — Brent Jones

One morning while drinking coffee with Amos, Daniel Haws looked up suddenly, as if feeling the boy's eyes on him, and said:
"Tryin' to burn holes starin' like that?"
"Guess I was just resting my eyes on you so as not to look at your wallpaper," Amos gave a sour apology.
Daniel closed the book he was reading, a volume of Rhodes's history of the United States, and took a careful look at the kitchen wallpaper.
"Yes," he admitted, "that wallpaper is goddam ancient. — James Purdy

There is something about Christmas that requires a rug rat. Little kids make Christmas fun. I wonder if could rent one for the holidays. When I was tiny we would by a real tree and stay up late drinking hot chocolate and finding just the right place for the special decorations. It seems like my parents gave up the magic when I figured out the Santa lie. Maybe I shouldn't have told them I knew where the presents really came from. It broke their hearts.
I bet they'd be divorced by now if I hadn't been born. I'm sure I was a huge disappointment. I'm not pretty or smart or athletic. I'm just like them- an ordinary drone dressed in secrets and lies. I can't believe we have to keep playacting till I graduate. It's a shame we just can't admit that we have failed at family living, sell the house, split up the money, and get on with our lives. Merry Christmas. — Laurie Halse Anderson

Declared that he had been directed to make a pilgrimage. His father scoffed - "Gregory has turned pilgrim out of laziness," said Efim - but Gregory set out and walked two thousand miles to the monastery at Mount Athos in Greece. At the end of two years, when Gregory returned, he carried an aura of mystery and holiness. He began to pray at length, to bless other peasants, to kneel at their beds in supplication when they were sick. He gave up his drinking and curbed his public lunges at women. It began to be said that Gregory Rasputin, the profligate, was a man who was close to God. The village priest, alarmed at this sudden blossoming of a vigorous young Holy Man within his sphere, suggested heresy and threatened an investigation. Unwilling to argue and bored by life in Pokrovskoe, Rasputin left the village and began once again to wander. — Robert K. Massie

I gave up drinking, and the next time I saw Bonny at a party, she was mad at me about that too, and went off and made out all night with Chip Neminech, the tackle who demonstrated that not only is there no I in team, there's no Q, either. I suppose, given that my mother was a girl, I shouldn't have been surprised that some of them could get pretty weird. — John Barnes

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

Drinking gave me a rush of confidence, and for a boy hounded by feelings of inadequacy, the buzz was a welcome relief. What was impossible to realize at the time was that I was shooting myself in the head in some strange time warp where the bullet takes many years to finally reach its target. — Brennan Manning