Bourbon Quotes

Southerners...People partial to front porches, peaches, cool breezes, fast horses, sweet tea, bourbon, beautiful women and handsome men! ~ Unknown

Hindsight is pointless, Arnuff," said the other man in the room, who was equally as old as the first. "Bring me one of those," he said, referring to the drink Arnuff held. Arnuff poured another bourbon and brought it to the coffee table. ~ J.T. Bishop

Fame confers a rank above that of gentleman and of kings. As soon as she issues her patent of nobility, it matters not a straw whether the recipient be the son of a Bourbon or of a tallow-chandler. ~ Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton

It's like a mini Bourbon Street with less culture and more disgusting hookers. ~ Tucker Max

A bit reluctantly, trying to leave my bruised ego behind, I was warming to the Appalachian idea.
Bourbon and branch water. Dulcimer music. Wildflowers in jelly jars. Biscuits and country ham. That did have a certain charm. ~ Judith Fertig

From Bourbon Street to Baton Rouge, the freaks come out at night in Louisiana. And nowhere are they more raucous and unnerving than at Tiger Stadium. ~ Pat Forde

When people asked about his schizophrenia, Eric, who didn't exactly flaunt his illness but wasn't ashamed of it, either, offered up the comparison of alcoholism. Not every drunk is a single bourbon away from skid row, just like every schizophrenic is not a tatty-haired, crazy-eyed gunman who delights in murdering alien-people from clock towers. There are functioning alcoholics just as there are functioning schizophrenics, individuals who work, maintain homes, and have hobbies, goals, and relationships like every other slob on the planet. ~ Vivian Barz

The only way that I could figure they could improve upon Coca-Cola, one of life's most delightful elixirs, which studies prove will heal the sick and occasionally raise the dead, is to put bourbon in it. ~ Lewis Grizzard

Let us candidly admit that there are shameful blemishes on the American past, of which the worst by far is rum. Nevertheless, we have improved man's lot and enriched his civilization with rye, bourbon and the Martini cocktail. In all history has any other nation done so much? ~ Bernard DeVoto

The wilderness once offered men a plausible way of life," the doctor said. "Now it functions as a psychiatric refuge. Soon there will be no wilderness." He sipped at his bourbon and ice. "Soon there will be no place to go. Then the madness becomes universal." Another thought. "And the universe goes mad. ~ Edward Abbey

Bourbon does for me what the piece of cake did for Proust. ~ Walker Percy

Renée and I met at a bar called the Eastern Standard in Charlottesville, Virginia. I had just moved there to study English in grad school. Renée was a fiction writer in the MFA program. I was sitting with my poet friend Chris in a table in the back, when I fell under the spell of Renée's bourbon-baked voice. The bartender put on Big Star's Radio City. Renée was the only other person in the room who perked up. We started talking about how much we loved Big Star. It turned out we had the same favorite Big Star song – the acoustic ballad Thirteen. She'd never heard their third album, Sister Lovers. So naturally, I told her the same thing I'd told every other woman I'd ever fallen for: "I'll make you a tape! ~ Rob Sheffield

Sure I eat what I advertise. Sure I eat Wheaties for breakfast. A good bowl of Wheaties with bourbon can't be beat. ~ Dizzy Dean

If you can heat some bourbon, I can drink it," said the kzin. "If you cannot heat it, I can still drink it." "Nessus? ~ Larry Niven

Humans are an absolute miracle of design. We come in all these fun shapes and sizes and we can survive all sorts of hardship and mistreatment and be practically as good as new the next day - try pouring a bottle of bourbon down your toaster and see just how well it works the next day - but the design's not perfect. Nothing is. And just because you love somebody won't make them love you back. ~ Paul Schmidtberger

Physically, Echo Spring is nothing more than a nickname for a liquor cabinet, drawn from the brand of bourbon it contains. ~ Olivia Laing

It's one thing to ask your bank manager for an overdraft to buy 500 begonias for the borders in Haslemere, but quite another to seek financial succour to avail oneself of the 5-2 they're offering on lie de Bourbon for the St Leger. ~ Jeffrey Bernard

A friend comes over with a Ouija board.
It spells out: Bourbon. Where's the band?
Just because you're dead doesn't mean you can't
have fun. ~ Kelli Russell Agodon

You'd better. If you make my daughter fall in love with you and then you leave her behind, I will find you and smother you in your sleep." I chuckled. Not many people challenged me. I liked that Thea didn't back down. She met me with full force when we were fighting and when we'd had sex. I loved that she was especially scrappy when it came to our daughter. "I think you'd better hand over that vodka. You're getting violent." She answered by grabbing the bottle and gulping down another shot. "You should see me when I drink bourbon. The last time I had Jim Beam, I decided to trim the shrubs along the sidewalk out front." "What shrubs?" "Exactly. ~ Devney Perry

You. Aren't you one of those Morgan boys? You must be the bad one. ~ Teri Anne Stanley

Lucy happily settled down to work. First she sent for papyrus and handmade a book leaf by leaf, binding the leaves together between board covers. Then she filled each page from memory, drew English roses budding and Chinese roses in full bloom, peppercorn-pink Bourbon roses climbing walls and silvery musk roses drowsing in flowerbeds. She took every rose she'd ever seen, made them as lifelike as she could (where she shaded each petal the rough paper turned silken), and in these lasting forms she offered them to Safiye. ~ Helen Oyeyemi

And you remember how warm bourbon tasted, in a paper cup with water dipped out of the lake at your feet. How the nights were so unbearably, hauntingly beautiful that you wanted to cry. How every patch of light and shadow from the moon seemed deep and lovely. Calm or storm, it didn't matter. It was exquisite and mysterious, just because it was night. I wonder now how I lost it, the mysteriousness, the wonder. It faded steadily until one day it was entirely gone, and night became just dark, and the moon was only something that waxed and waned and heralded a changing in the weather. And rain just washed out graveled roads. The glitter was gone. And the worst part was that you didn't know exactly at what point it disappeared. There was nothing you could point to and say: now, there. One day you saw that it was missing and had been missing for a long time. It wasn't even anything to grieve over, it had been such a long time passing. The glitter and hush-breath quality just slipped away...there isn't even a scene--not for me, nothing so definite--just the seepage, the worms of time...I look at my children now and I think: how long before they slip away, before I am disappointed in them. ~ Shirley Ann Grau

Codeine . . . bourbon. ~ Tallulah Bankhead

I am Bourbon as a matter of honour , royalist according to reason and conviction, and republican by taste and character . ~ Francois-Rene De Chateaubriand

Bourbon is a type of corn whiskey, requiring that it be made with more than 51% corn. ~ Benjamin Vicks

Demento's laugh is wildflowers and bourbon on an autumns day just before winter comes to take it all away. ~ Ilse V. Rensburg

But first, I needed to go to the liquor store and buy a bottle of Jack. I didn't drink Jack but I thought now was a very good time to take up bourbon. ~ Kristen Ashley

Cruel World"

Share my body and my mind with you,
That's all over now.
Did what I had to do,
'Cause it's so far past me now.

Share my body and my life with you,
That's way over now.
There's not more I can do,
You're so famous now.

Got your bible, got your gun,
And you like to party and have fun.
And I like my candy and your women,
I'm finally happy now that you're gone.

Put my little red party dress on,
Everybody knows that I'm the best, I'm crazy.
Get a little bit of bourbon in ya,
Get a little bit suburban and go crazy.

Because you're young, you're wild, you're free,
You're dancin' circles around me,
You're fuckin' crazy.
Oh, oh, you're crazy for me.

I shared my body and my mind with you,
That's all over now.
I did what I had to do,
I found another anyhow.

Share my body and my mind with you,
That's all over now.
I did what I had to do,
I could see you leaving now.

I got your bible and your gun,
And you love to party and have fun.
And I love your women and all of your heroin,
And I'm so happy now that you're gone.

Put my little red party dress on,
Everybody knows that I'm a mess, I'm crazy, yeah-yeah.
Get a little bit of bourbon in ya,
Go a little bit suburban and go crazy, yeah-yeah.

Because you're young, you're wild, you're free,
Lana Del Rey

I lived in the Quarter for two years, but in the end I got tired of Birmingham businessmen smirking around Bourbon Street and the homosexuals and patio connoisseurs on Royal Street. ~ Walker Percy

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

Come on. Let's go up to the kitchen, make some tea. We can try another one of Zia's cupcakes. She made some with chocolate frosting."
Lily froze in her tracks. "I hate it," she burst out. "I'm here, sipping tea and nibbling cupcakes while Bruno's out there? What, should I maybe crochet a white lace doily while I'm at it?"
Tam and Edie exchanged glances.
Tam, spoke, her voice dry. "Shot of bourbon, then? ~ Shannon McKenna

I do not like the killers, and the killing bravely and well crap. I do not like the bully boys, the Teddy Roosevelt's, the Hemingways, the Ruarks. They are merely slightly more sophisticated versions of the New Jersey file clerks who swarm into the Adirondacks in the fall, in red cap, beard stubble and taut hero's grin, talking out of the side of their mouths, exuding fumes of bourbon, come to slay the ferocious white-tailed deer. It is the search for balls. A man should have one chance to bring something down. He should have his shot at something, a shining running something, and see it come a-tumbling down, all mucus and steaming blood stench and gouted excrement, the eyes going dull during the final muscle spasms. And if he is, in all parts and purposes, a man, he will file that away as a part of his process of growth and life and eventual death. And if he is perpetually, hopelessly a boy, he will lust to go do it again, with a bigger beast. ~ John D. MacDonald

The millions of vacationers who came here every year before Katrina were mostly unaware of this poverty. French Quarter tourists were rarely exposed to the reality beneath the Disneyland Gomorrah that is projected as 'N'Awlins,' a phrasing I have never heard a local use and a place, as far as I can tell, that I have never encountered despite my years in the city. The seemingly average, white, middle-class Americans whooped it up on Bourbon Street without any thought of the third-world lives of so many of the city's citizens that existed under their noses. The husband and wife, clad in khaki shorts, feather boa, and Mardi Gras beads well out of season, beheld a child tap-dancing on the street for money and clapped along to his beat without considering the obvious fact that this was an early school-day afternoon and that the child should be learning to read, not dancing for money. Somehow they did not see their own child beneath the dancer's black visage. Nor, perhaps, did they see the crumbling buildings where the city's poor live as they traveled by cab from the French Quarter to Commander's Palace. They were on vacation and this was not their problem. ~ Billy Sothern

Martha: Fix the kids a drink, George. What would you like to drink, kid– kid.
Nick: Honey? what would you like?
Honey: Ohhhh, I don't know, dear, a little brandy maybe. "Never mix, never worry!"
George: Brandy? Just brandy? Simple, simple…
[George turns to Nick.]
George: What about you, em… em… em…
Nick: Bourbon on the rocks, if you don't mind.
George: Mind? I don't mind. I don't think I mind. Martha? Rubbing alcohol for you?
Martha: Sure! "Never mix, never worry! ~ Edward Albee

The Bourbon King was first ambassador of reason and human happiness. ~ Heinrich Mann

Well, I wish some of you would tell me the brand of whiskey that Grant drinks. I would like to send a barrel of it to my other generals. ~ Abraham Lincoln

I'm old school. I was taught that ice was for bourbon, not for your arm. ~ Rod Beck

Bourbon." "You're putting bourbon in iced tea?" "Putting bourbon in sweet tea, man. That's my Truth Serum. You gonna love it." "Sweet tea and bourbon? Damn, I think I love it already," Levi said. Bowen ~ Tiffany Reisz

I can remember when I was a bit of an ETA fan myself. It was in 1973, when a group of Basque militants assassinated Adm. Carrero Blanco. The admiral was a stone-faced secret police chief, personally groomed to be the successor to the decrepit Francisco Franco. His car blew up, killing only him and his chauffeur with a carefully planted charge, and not only was the world well rid of another fascist, but, more important, the whole scheme of extending Franco's rule was vaporized in the same instant. The dictator had to turn instead to Crown Prince Juan Carlos, who turned out to be the best Bourbon in history and who swiftly dismantled Franco's entire system. If this action was 'terrorism,' it had something to be said for it. Everyone I knew in Spain made a little holiday in their hearts when the gruesome admiral went sky-high. ~ Christopher Hitchens

Another time, he was playing [chess] with his equal, the Duchess of Bourbon, who made a move that inadvertently exposed her king. Ignoring the rules of the game, he promptly captured it. "Ah," said the duchess, "we do not take Kings so." Replied Franklin in a famous quip: "We do in America. ~ Walter Isaacson

Have you totally lost your mind? I'm not going to tell your daughter you're dying!" "It's the only way she'll come." Sam Paris held Luke's gaze and refused to back down. He ran a hand over his red and silver whiskers, took a long drink of bourbon, then set the empty glass down on the kitchen table. ~ Debby Conrad

You say tomato, I say bourbon and coke. ~ Drew Carey

I was drinking a lot of bourbon. I was miserable. I was starting to get work, but it wasn't remotely satisfying. It was garbage compared to the theater I was doing. ~ Nick Offerman

Those boys at the counter are too dreamy and young to do anything but drool as they watch Gillian. And, to her credit, Gillian is especially kind to them, even when Ephraim, the cook, suggests she kick them out. She understands that theirs might just be the last hearts she will break. When you're thirty-six and tired, when you've been living in places where the temperature rising to a hundred and ten and the air is so dry you have to use gallons of moisturizer, when you've been smacked around, late at night, by a man who loves bourbon, you start to realize that everything is limited, including your own appeal. You begin to look at young boys with tenderness, since they know so little and think they know so much. You watch teenage girls and feel shivers up and down your arms - those poor creatures don't know the first thing about time or agony or the price they're going to have to pay for just about anything. ~ Alice Hoffman

[S]he was my Muse, my alcoholic's bourbon on the rocks: irresistible. ~ Claire Messud

Take a lover who looks at you like maybe you are a bourbon biscuit. ~ Frida Kahlo

My mama always told me there are few things a good hug can't cure, and those things are what bourbon's for. ~ J.T. Geissinger

Had a doctor tell me I ought to quit this stuff [bourbon] because it was affecting my eardrums and I told him I liked what I was drinking better'n what I was hearing. ~ Tony Hillerman

The Way the Cards Fall "

Why did you stay away
so long? I've buried another
husband, since I last saw you
holding to the horizon.
I hear where you now live
it snows year-round.
The pear & apple trees
have even missed you–
dead branches scattered
about like war. Come closer,
my eyes have grown night-dim.
Across the field white boxes
of honeybees silent as dirt,
silent as your missent
postcards. Evening
sunlight's faded my hair,
the old stable's slouched
to the ground. I dug a hole
for that calico, Cyclops,
two years ago. Now
milkweed & blackberries
are keepers of the cornfield.
That's how the cards fall;
& Anna, that beautiful girl
you once loved enough
to die over & over again for,
now lives in New Orleans
on both sides
of Bourbon Street. ~ Yusef Komunyakaa

I followed him through the halls of the enormous church until we got to the staff's kitchen. He went to the fridge, opened it, and came out with a bottle of bourbon. He poured some into a coffee cup, drank it down, and poured some more. He offered me the bottle.
No, thanks. Aren't you supposed to drink vodka?
Aren't you supposed to wear a pointy hat and ride on a flying broomstick?
Touche, I said. ~ Jim Butcher

The old man had been tanned by the light of too many beer signs, and it just goes to show that you can't live on three packs of Chesterfields and a fifth of bourbon a day without starting to drift far too fuckin' wide in the turns. ~ Daniel Woodrell

I spent the rest of my day picturing how I'd kill Amy. It was all I could think of: finding a way to end her. Me smashing in Amy's busy, busy brain. I had to give Amy her due: I may have been dozing the past few years, but I was fucking wide awake now. I was electric again, like I had been in the early days of our marriage...
Andie had screwed me over, Marybeth had turned against me, Go had lost a crucial measure of faith. Boney had trapped me. Amy had destroyed me. I poured a drink. I took a slug, tightened my fingers around the curves of the tumbler, then hurled it at the wall, watched the glass burst into fireworks, heard the tremendous shatter, smelled the cloud of bourbon. Rage in all five senses. Those fucking bitches. ~ Gillian Flynn

Darlin', there are no mistakes in sewing. Only opportunities for design." Those ~ Melissa Bourbon Ramirez

Ever had Fighting Cock?"
"You talking about the bourbon or some sex position I haven't tried yet?" Paris asked. ~ Tiffany Reisz

How well I remember my first encounter with The Devil'ss Brew. I happened to stumble across a case of bourbon - and went right on stumbling for several days thereafter. ~ W.C. Fields

When I come home from school, I take my Doc Martens off and put on fake satin mules with the marabou trim, slip into my dressing gown and my movie, and I feel serene. I hold a glass of Coke to my cheek and pretend it is a glass of bourbon and I am in New Orleans. My bedroom door is the doorway onto the street and at night I can't sleep because of the heat and the commotion in this town. So I go down to the river and dance as a man with scars on his face plays an accordion. People clap along and wolf-whistle and I whip my skirt around my thighs, which are long and lean because I barely get a chance to eat, what with all my bourbon and afternoon baths. I dance until my mules get muddy, then I tiptoe home, followed by sailors and men who have hundreds and thousands of dollars playing stud poker. Steve McQueen might be there. I can't remember. I get confused at this point. Too much drink. I'm sure Karl Malden is lurking in the background, gazing at me longingly. I am kind to him because his mother is dying. ~ Emma Forrest

There's no app for a bourbon buzz on a warm day in a cool, dark bar. The world will always want a drink. ~ Gillian Flynn

Footnote 164: "I finally hooked up with Ashley. I went over to her place yesterday morning. Early. She lives in Venice. Her eyebrows look like flakes of sunlight. Her smile, I'm sure, burnt Rome to the ground. And for the life of me I didn't know who she was or where we met... We sat down and I wanted to talk. I wanted to ask her who she was, where we'd met, been before, but she just smiled and held my hand as we lay down on the hammock and started to swing above all those dead leaves... Before I left she told me our story: where we met - Texas - kissed, but never made love and this had confused and haunted her and she had needed it before she got married which was in four months to a man she loved who made a living manufacturing TNT exclusively for a highway construction firm up in Colorado where he frequently went on business trips and where one night, drunk, angry and disappointed he had invited a hooker back to his motel room and so on and who cared and what was I doing here anyway?... I was still hurting, abandoned, drank three glasses of bourbon and fumed on some weed, then came here, thinking of voices, real and imagined, of ghosts, my ghost, of her, at long last, in this idiotic footnote, when she gently pushed me out her door and I said quietly 'Ashley' causing her to stop pushing me and ask 'yes?' her eyes bright with something she saw that I could never see though what she saw was me, and me not caring now at least knowing the truth and telling her the truth: 'I've ~ Mark Z. Danielewski

Leaving the feasibility of testicular transplants alone for the moment, she said, "It was mostly my mistake. ~ Teri Anne Stanley

I often took the bus to her apartment, where we drank bourbon and ginger ale, listened to the music we wanted to impress each other with, which eventually turned into listening to the music we actually liked. ~ Rob Sheffield

Anti-narrative sequences of a man (Watt) sitting in a dark bedroom drinking bourbon while his wife (Heath) and an Amway representative (Johnson) have acrobatic coitus in the background's lit hallway. ~ David Foster Wallace

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

I was assigned to the office of a recently deceased faculty member; the office hadn't been cleaned out yet, and a few days before the fall term began, I unlocked the door to find a dirty room whose bookshelves were crammed with empty bourbon bottles and crucifixes, mute testimony to the limits of literature as a sustaining comfort in life. ~ Maureen Corrigan

Here's to new beginnings, Stuart says and raises his bourbon. I nod, sort of wanting to tell him that all beginnings are new. ~ Kathryn Stockett

Men and women thought and did noble and mean things that would have been impossible to them before or after. A man cannot drink old Bourbon long and remain in his normal condition. We did not drink Bourbon, but blood. ~ Rebecca Harding Davis

Wake & Bake. More like Wash & Bake. Half a bowl of cereal and a shot of bourbon later, I'm there, my friendly haze having finally arrived. I'm ready for work. ~ Mark Z. Danielewski

I made a considerable dent in the bourbon reserves of three bars. Maybe I couldn't quite walk a straight line after that, but I was still thinking up a storm and getting nowhere. I switched to Calvert's the way the ads tell you, with no better results. I thought maybe if I got in touch with Doc Kincaid and asked him for a list of people who had answered his questions I'd be able to find out if the killer had broken his code. It seemed like a fine idea, but I wasn't buying any of that, either. It was the professional way to go about things and it might bring results in a month or two or twenty, but I didn't have the time. I'd drink myself into an alcoholic ward long before that.

But Tad Barrett might like the idea and might be able to do more about it with a whole staff of trained operatives.

Jason Chase, you are a genius. You must drink to this brilliant idea. You must. You will. But the barman shook his head.

"What do you mean, I've had enough?"

"I mean, I don't think you ought to take another. Not here."

"That's ridiculous, my good sir. ~ Stephen Marlowe

I was furious," she said. She was. She had known it was coming, knew what it would be, had thought she was prepared for it, but when she bought a newspaper on the street corner and read it, she stopped at the first bar she came to and drank down a straight bourbon. "Why? ~ Harper Lee

I was brought up to believe that Scotch whisky would need a tax preference to survive in competition with Kentucky bourbon. ~ Hugo Black

What was the battle? What were the aims of the romantics? Why was the subject
the focus of such violent interest?
Hugo and his generation were all 'enfants du siècle', all, give or take a year or
two, born with the century. Brought up amidst the dramas of Napoleon's wars,
they had reached manhood to the anticlimax of peace and Bourbon rule. Restless
and dissatisfied, their dreams of military glory frustrated, they had turned them-
selves instead towards the liberation of the arts, their foes no longer the armies of
Europe but the tyrannies of classical tradition.

For thirty years, while the nation's energies had been absorbed in politics and
war, the arts had virtually stood still in France, frozen, through lack of challenge, in
the classical attitudes of the old régime. The violent emotions and experiences of
the Napoleonic era had done much to render them meaningless. 'Since the cam-
paign in Russia,' said a former officer to Stendhal, 'Iphigénie en Aulide no longer
seems such a good play.'

By the 1820s while the academic establishment, hiding its own sterility behind
the great names of the past, continued to denounce all change, the ice of clas-
sicism was beginning to crack. New influences were crowding in from abroad:
Chateaubriand, the 'enchanter', had cast his spell on the rising generation; the po-
etry of Lamartine, Hugo and Vigny heralded the spring ~ Linda Kelly

I wouldn't want them [kids] to raid my liquor cabinet and glug down my bourbon either. ~ Cheech Marin

If it's not bourbon or sweatpants, it's going in the garbage ... No, don't get creative. Now is not a creative time. Now is a bourbon and sweatpants time. ~ Justin Halpern

That's country music for you - bourbon and the Bible. ~ Dave Haywood

There was a basket at her feet. She reached into it and lifted out the head of a young woman, a marquise. She wore Bourbon white to her death, but wears the tricolor now - white cheeks, blue lips, red dripping from her neck. Long live the revolution. ~ Jennifer Donnelly

Kentucky has always said you can't really make bourbon outside of Kentucky because it's a combination of the barrels and the limestone-fed springs that give us the water. That's our story, and we're sticking to it. ~ John Yarmuth

He poured this to the brim with good bourbon (Miss Elling knew it was good bourbon because she had helped herself to a snifter from the flask during his luncheon absence on her third day in his employ) and spent ten minutes sipping the drink. ~ Matthew Blood

They are all beer wasted. Which is different from bourbon wasted. Bourbon makes you mean and switches on your regret. ~ Lisa D'Amour

During his tenure as solicitor general Marshall solidified his relationship with LBJ over bourbon and Dr Pepper. ~ Evan Mandery

Louis XIV was very frank and sincere when he said: I am the State. The modern statist is modest. He says: I am the servant of the State; but, he implies, the State is God. You could revolt against a Bourbon king, and the French did it. This was, of course, a struggle of man against man. But you cannot revolt against the god State and against his humble handy man, the bureaucrat. ~ Ludwig Von Mises

Oh I know what they say about us in town, and I say, the hell with them! I tell you, I don't give a damn. I have got to be an old woman in the twinkling of an eye, and it is sort of a relief, I can tell you. I do what I want to now. Last week I traded all our eggs for ice cream at Holden's Grocery. Now that I have shrunk down little as a child, I figure I might as well act like one. I don't care. I like ice cream. Juney does too. We like to put bourbon in it, and make ourselves a milkshake. ~ Lee Smith

This is Bourbon Street, isn't it? Where's the freakin' bourbon? ~ Eliza Freed

I used to go to Bourbon Street when I was a kid and there would be club after club after club of people who were around when the music started. I mean these are legendary, maybe not so well known, but legendary musicians. ~ Harry Connick, Jr.

I wondered if I was more addicted to being sad than I was to bourbon or cocaine. ~ Christopher Rice

He didn't get it. That's exactly why I needed my Maker's Mark. You can't throw my life into turmoil, and then screw me out of my bourbon too. ~ Donna Augustine

I can't remember everything we talked about, but the beginning of that conversation is a lot clearer to me than the end. By the time we came to the last half hour or forty-five minutes, there was so much bourbon in my system that I was actually seeing double. This had never happened to me before, and I had no idea how to bring the world back into focus. ~ Paul Auster

I go to Las Vegas
or at least I went to Las Vegas
because even though I knew everything that was sinister, calculating, and evil about it, I loved Las Vegas. Only in Vegas could I dare to fantasize that I was a Friend of Frank. Or that I was throwing the dice at Dino's favorite table. Or that I might luck out and sip bourbon with Rickles after his last lounge show. The D.I. oozed that kind of heady fantasy. ~ Marc Cooper

Bond went back to room 325 and poured himself two fingers of bourbon from his bottle and switched on the television while he waited for Delmont. He watched a game of baseball uncomprehendingly - the Senators versus the Royals - thinking that it made cricket seem exciting. ~ William Boyd

I close my eyes an lean into Ernest, smelling bourbon and soap, tobacco and damp cotton - and everything about this moment is so sharp and lovely, I do something completely out of character and just let myself have it. ~ Paula McLain

Porter Rockwell was that most terrible instrument that can be handled by fanaticism; a powerful physical nature welded to a mind of very narrow perceptions, intense convictions, and changeless tenacity. In his build he was a gladiator; in his humor a Yankee lumberman; in his memory a Bourbon; in his vengeance an Indian. A strange mixture, only to be found on the American continent ~ Fitz Hugh Ludlow

Nothing can fill you up," she stated.
"Nope," he agreed again.
"You won't let it."
"Barrel's got a hole in the bottom, buddy, everything leaks out no matter how much you pour in."
She was silent a moment then she whispered, "Right."
She turned to the door and his hand gripped his bourbon so hard he had to focus everything on loosening his grip or the glass would shatter.
Before she opened it, she turned back. "You don't know, Cal, you have no idea.
You've shut yourself up for so long in this fucking house with your tragic memories, you have no idea what's about to walk out your door. Kate, Keira and me, we could have plugged that hole. We could have filled you so full, you'd be bursting. We would have loved that chance. We'd have given it everything we had, no matter the time that slid by, graduations, weddings, grandbabies, you'd have been a part of us and we'd have given everything we had to keep you
so full, you'd be bursting."
Cal didn't reply.
"Joe," she whispered, "you let me walk out this door, you'll lose your chance."
Cal didn't move.
Vi waited.
Cal stayed seated. ~ Kristen Ashley

America posed a deeply interesting question to any Frenchmen with a political curiosity to ask it. How had Americans launched a revolution that aimed at establishing a free, stable, and constitutional government and made a success of it, while the French had in forty-one years lurched from absolute monarchy to constitutional monarchy, to the declaration of the republic, to mob rule, the Terror, the mass murder, and thence to a conservative republic, Napoleonic autocracy, the Bourbon restoration, further revolution, and the installation of an Orleanist constitutional monarchy? ~ Alan Ryan

I can't believe Bourbon & Branch would work with them". Them being Phluttr - makers of the sketchy app that just hijacked their conversation. Ostensibly a social network, Phluttr peppers its users with coupons, recommendations, breaking news, handy info, and jaw-dropping bits of hyperlocal gossip, all of it surgically targeted to the user's interests, location, and/or state of mind. ~ Rob Reid

Between 9 and 10 AM the American radio is concerned almost exclusively with love. It seems a little like ending breakfast with a stiff bourbon. ~ Dean Acheson

Foster poured some more bourbon for his guest. I don't know what it's ~ Tom Clancy

Bert . . . had grown up with frozen concentrate mixed into pitchers of water which, although he hadn't known it at the time, had nothing to do with orange juice. Now his children drank fresh-squeezed juice as thoughtlessly as he had drunk milk as a boy. They squeezed it from the fruit they had picked off the trees in their own backyard. He could see a new set of muscles in the right forearm of his wife, Teresa, from the constant twisting of oranges on the juicer while their children held up their cups and waited for more. Orange juice was all they wanted, Bert told him. They had it every morning with their cereal, and Teresa froze it into popsicles to the children for their afternoon snacks, and in the evening he and Teresa drank it over ice with vodka or bourbon or gin. This was what no one seemed to understand - it didn't matter what you put into it, what mattered was the juice itself. "People from California forget that, because they've been spoiled," Bert said. ~ Ann Patchett

...The underlying motive for the French wars [of 1562-1598] was not religious, but dynastic. By the mid-16th century, the Valois family of kings, who had ruled France since 1328, was losing its grasp on political power. Valois King Henry II died in 1559, leaving four sons, all too young or too feeble to rule alone, and three rival noble families, all eager to seize power. One, the Guise (who had married into the royal family), were Catholic; their enemies, the Bourbon and the (more moderate) Montmerency, were Protestant. The Bourbon, in particular, were supported by the many small local Protestant churches that had been set up in France by supporters of Calvin's teachings. Unlike Protestants in England or Germany, they were not controlled by powerful rulers or city councils; some were prepared to use violence and other forms of lawlessness to further Protestant reform. Concerned by this threat to public order, and continuing the Valois' kings generally hostile policy toward reform, in 1562 the Guise ordered the massacre of 74 Protestants at a church service. ~ Fiona MacDonald

It's always on everyone's list, like, 'What's New Orleans like?' I think people have a pre-conceived idea, like it's just Mardi Gras and Bourbon Street. But really, there's so much culture, the music's great, the food's great. It's not good for the waistline! But I'm actually from the South, I'm from Georgia, so the weather doesn't bother me. ~ Sung Kang

I fell in love with the place! You know, the people, the bourbon, the music ... it's in the air. It's something you can't describe on camera. ~ Brad Pitt

It is impossible that had Buonaparte descended from a race of vegetable feeders that he could have had either the inclination or the power to ascend the throne of the Bourbons. ~ Percy Bysshe Shelley

I wanna get drunk 'til I'm off my mind. One bourbon, one scotch, and one beer. ~ John Lee Hooker