I just did an interview where I was asked whether I drink beer or whisky, and I was sad to reveal that I'm pounding spring water.

I had a serious and rather drunken research session with the great Charles MacLean, who took me through the history of whisky and malts. I can't remember a thing about it now. In fact I don't think I remembered a thing about it the following morning. Very, very entertaining.

I'm on a whisky diet... last week, I lost three days!

The writer walks out of his workroom in a daze. He wants a drink. He needs it. It happens to be a fact that nearly every writer of fiction in the world drinks more whisky than is good for him. He does it to give himself faith hope and courage. A person is a fool to become a writer. His only compensation is absolute freedom. He has no master except his own soul and that I am sure is why he does it.

Sometimes the Bible in the hand of one man is worse than a whisky bottle in the hand of (another)... There are just some kind of men who - who're so busy worrying about the next world they've never learned to live in this one, and you can look down the street and see the results.

Maybe there is no Heaven. Or maybe this is all pure gibberish-a product of the demented imagination of a lazy drunken hillbilly with a heart full of hate who has found a way to live out where the real winds blow-to sleep late, have fun, get wild, drink whisky, and drive fast on empty streets with nothing in mind except falling in love and not getting arrested . . . Res ipsa loquitur. Let the good times roll.

Then she was kissing him as she had never kissed him before...and it was blissful oblivion, better than firewhisky; she was the only real thing in the world.

I just did an interview where I was asked whether I drink beer or whisky and I was sad to reveal that I'm pounding spring water.

You are welcome to your intellectual pastimes and books and art and newspapers welcome too to your bars and your whisky that only makes me ill. Here am I in the forest quite content.