“Too much of anything is bad, but too much Champagne is just right.”

Intelligence is measured by a person’s ability to see validity within both sides of contradicting arguments.

That is part of the beauty of all literature. You discover that your longings are universal longings, that you’re not lonely and isolated from anyone. You belong.

A woman should be able to kiss a man beautifully and romantically without any desire to be either his wife or his mistress.

No matter how low you go, there’s always an unexplored basement.

Before you criticize others, remember, they may not have had the same opportunities in life as you have had.

Experience is the name so many people give to their mistakes.

For what it’s worth, it’s never too late to be whoever you want to be.

I was within and without. Simultaneously enchanted and repelled by the inexhaustible variety of life.

Life is so damned hard, so damned hard… It just hurts people and hurts people, until finally it hurts them so that they can’t be hurt ever any more. That’s the last and worst thing it does.

They slipped briskly into an intimacy from which they never recovered.

You are the loveliest thing that I have ever known.

The ability to hold two competing thoughts in one’s mind and still be able to function is the mark of a superior mind

Long ago, there was something in me, but now that thing is gone. Now that thing is gone, that thing is gone. I cannot cry. I cannot care. That thing will come back no more.

At eighteen our convictions are hills from which we look; at forty-five they are caves in which we hide.

That is part of the beauty of all literature. You discover that your longings are universal longings, that you’re not lonely and isolated from anyone. You belong.

Actually that’s my secret — I can’t even talk about you to anybody because I don’t want any more people to know how wonderful you are.

When I talk about drugs and alcohol, I’m talking about sex addiction, gambling addiction, eating addiction, throwing-up addiction. I’m not talking about mental illness.

I seem to you cruel and too much addicted to gluttony, when I beat my cook for sending up a bad dinner. If that appears to you too trifling a cause, say for what cause you would have a cook flogged.

I was not addicted to stealing in my youth, nor have ever been; yet such was the confidence of the Negroes in the neighborhood, even at this early period of my life, in my superior judgment, that they would often carry me with them when they were going on any roguery, to plan for them.

Pain and loneliness can be addictive, but there can also be strength in embracing it.

Until I went to rehab, I didn’t understand what it did.

I’m addicted to self-improvement. The thing is, there’s so damn much about myself to improve.

Discoveries are made by gluttons and addicts. The man who forgets to eat and sleep has an appetite for fact, for interrelations among causes.

The First Amendment was specifically designed for citizens to insult politicians. Libel laws were written to protect law students speaking out on political issues from getting called whores by Oxycontin addicts.