“I think it's no coincidence that a shot is called a shot. You throw back that little jigger of liquor with the same urgency with which a gun fires ammunition into open space. You feel the same ringing in your ears, the same kickback in your arms and chest.   The first time you drink, you don't aim to get drunk.   The thrill of pulling the trigger is itself enough.   If you like the crack of the rifle, you'll be back for a second go, which is when you'll pay attention to the crosshairs and fire enough shots to hit the mark.” (page 27)

“Apple brandy rolls over my tongue and past my tonsils, and doesn't leave me time to process the taste.   After one sip, all I can think about is a movie I saw once, in which a man torched a house that was the sight of a murder.   I'm imagining the film frame by frame: the striking of the match, its slow-motion drop onto the gasoline-soaked floorboards, the line of fire that creeps up the stairs and down the hall until the house is one big fireball with blown-out windows.

That's what apple brandy does.   One gulp of the plum-colored stuff kindles my tonsils, starting a fire that knocks down my esophagus like a trail of dominoes.   The fumes fill my sinuses. I feel flammable. I'll combust if Phil lights another cigarette.” (page 45)

“One night, after power hour with Hannah, my dormant resentment bursts and impels a tsunami.   I am staggering down the hallway to my room, dragging my hands along the walls on either side of me, when Wendi cuts me off in the doorway, hands on her hips, carping about a phone message that I wrote on a Post-it and forgot to stick to her mirror.   Under any other circumstances, I would bow my head and make an apology.   But on this night, I feel as shimmering and fluid as a jellyfish drifting on a wave.   The words in my head are rhythmic and pulsating, and there is nothing to stop me from saying them.   I tell Wendi to leave me alone because I can't handle her bullshit.

It only gets easier from there.   From there, I will come home more nights, feeling as lucent as the vodka I drank, half-hoping Wendi will start a fight with me.   All week, I will save up all my rage for her.   I'll stockpile it like ammo, so it will be there on the weekend, when I am drunk enough—and therefore brave enough—to retaliate.   The night she makes a reference to my dirty-clothes pile, I'll throw the telephone against the wall, splitting it open to reveal a tangle of rainbow-colored wires.   The night she takes me on over a cable bill, I'll slam the door in her face so hard that the force of it blows her hair back.   One night, I'll come home and rip her Mariah Carey calendar off the bulletin board for no reason other than I've decided that somebody needs to do it.”   (pages 130-131)

“Of course, Coors isn't crank or coke or crack.   And Heineken isn't heroin.   And vodka isn't Valium.   And nothing that's mixed with cranberry juice will score you respect with the folks who cop drugs in the public bathroom in Tompkins Square Park.   But don't tell that to my brain because when I'm drunk, it purrs with the ecstasy of being thoroughly high …Amstel Light is my upper and my downer, it is my euphoric bump, my sweet nod into vagueness, the hallucinogenic that contorts my world into one that's worth living in.   After two beers, there is no question as to whether I should have two more.   After four, my world is the first forty minutes of a movie so moving I can't bear for it to end, or a cake so sweet I can't help but cut another, and then another, sliver.   My reality is a climax so close I can't bear to pull away.”   (page 158)

“The party girl has always existed, and it appears that she will simply never go away, particularly in the era of tabloid television shows in which cameramen stalk Los Angeles nightclubs in the hope of provoking a shit-faced starlet to flash the finger.   The party girl will never stop running up five-thousand-dollar bar tabs, puking in the bathroom at Lot 61, or getting kicked out of Vegas nightclubs while screaming “Don't you know who I am?”   She will never stop making headlines in the New York Post for gargling champagne and lifting up her skirt…The party gal is a sad and beautiful ingenue, who appears in photographs with tousled hair, smudged eyeliner, and a visible thong.   And as long as she exists in real life, we will never cease to be interested in her.” (page 185)

“The life of a young drunk is not a continuous fall into the pit of abject alcohol abuse.   It is a herky-jerky evolution.   You slip, you trip, and you tumble into the habit of drinking when you are afraid, or enraged, or heartsick, and every so often, you hit a ledge from which you can see how deep into dependence you are.   Every so often, you feel so lost in the hollow of your own need that you decide to try to hoist yourself out of it.