“We try so hard to hide everything we're really feeling from those who probably need to know our true feelings the most. People try to bottle up their emotions, as if it's somehow wrong to have natural reactions to life.”
― Colleen Hoover, Maybe Someday

“I thought about the days i had handed over to a bottle..the nights i can't remember..the mornings i slept thru..all the time spent running from myself.”
― Mitch Albom, For One More Day

“...you're either gonna spend your life fucking pussy, or taking it to church.”
― Dave Matthes, Bar Nights

“Think champagne, drink champagne!”
― Ellen Dean

“Life is an empty bottle filled with love.”
― Santosh Kalwar

“You will honor my mother or I will break this bottle over your head”
― Rosamund Hodge, Cruel Beauty

“Liquor is the kiss of the angels as well as the curse of the devil. It can conceal but also can reveal”
― Thrity Umrigar, The Space Between Us

“Hold still," my father would say, while I held the ship in the bottle and he burned away the strings he'd raised the mast with and set the clipper ship free on its blue putty sea. And I would wait for him, recognizing the tension of that moment when the world in the bottle depended, solely, on me.”
― Alice Sebold, The Lovely Bones

“To all the boys, for when you become men: you'll leave women all throughout your life because they're holding you back, and even after she's gone she'll still weigh you down. To all the women: stay away from us men. We don't know anything about you, despite what we try to convince you of.”
― Dave Matthes, Paradise City

“You know one day, you're going to look back on these days. And everyone you went to high school with will either be getting married to each other, shitting out kids, or dropping dead like flies," when she spoke, Miss Jenson sighed at the end of every few words; she must have been narrating her own thoughts she might have otherwise kept to herself, "and everything you never did, you'll never be able to even try.”
― Dave Matthes, Paradise City

“...people who don't live at least a little bit in fear, have nothing left to live for.”
― Dave Matthes, Return to the Madlands

“When it happens and it hits hard, we decide certain things, and realize there's truth in all those dark, lonely days"

He had an instantaneous look about him,
a glimmer and a glint over those eyes,
he knew how the world worked,
and took pleasure in its wickedness.

He would give a dime or two to those sitting on the street,
he would tell them things like:
"It won't get any better,"
and
"Might as well use this to buy your next fix,"
and finally
"It's better to die high than to live sober,"

His suit was pressed nicely, with care and respect,
like the kind a corpse wears,
he'd say that was his way of honoring the dead,
of always being ready for the oncoming train,
I liked him,
he never wore a fake smile
and he was always ready to tell a story about
how and
when

"We all wake up alone," he said once,
"Oftentimes even when sleeping next to someone, we wake up before them and they are still asleep and suddenly we are awake, and alone."
I didn't see him for a few days,
a few days later it felt like it'd been weeks,
those weeks drifted apart from one another,
like leaves on a pond's surface,
and became like months.

And then I saw him and I asked him where he'd been,
he said,
"I woke up alone one day, just like any other, and I decided I didn't like it anymore.”
― Dave Matthes, Ejaculation: New Poems and Stories

“You don't have to go back to the way things were. Just go back to the point where you left off. Don't start over... just keep going, but there's a right way of keeping going. And no one here is going to be angry at you for leaving. We all have to leave sometimes. And some of us never come back. But there's always a choice, even if you've already decided never to return. You can still come back from this. That is the only kind of faith that matters. Not in the world, not in...God..., not in our friendship... just in yourself.”
― Dave Matthes, Return to the Madlands

“A dead body reminds me a bit of a bottle of whisky. If you drop the bottle and it cracks, what’s inside pours out. It’s only natural.”
― Yukio Mishima, Life for Sale

“I pretend to reach for them, but before he can guess my intentions, I catch one of his wings instead. He flutters, trying to break loose, his one free wing batting my hand.
I draw out the decanter and stuff him into it, careful to fold his wings. I don’t want to hurt him. I just want to better him.
Once he’s settled inside, I shove a paper towel into the bottle’s neck. No need to worry that he’ll smother. After all, he spent that night in a bug trap last year and survived.
“Looks like you’re going to have some turbulence on your flight,” I tell him through the glass.
His voice fills my head, an angry, scolding growl. When I don’t respond, he yells Chessie’s name. Chessie flits over to the car and sits on the side mirror, licking his paw, amused and uninterested in taking sides.
I hold the decanter up to get a closer look at Morpheus. “Game, set, match, luv. You do realize that my human side defeated you, right? No magic required.”
Unlike a real moth that would beat itself against the glass walls until exhausted, he hangs under the curved neck, dignified, glaring with his bulbous eyes. If he had a mouth instead of a proboscis, I’d be able to tell if he’s snarling or beaming with pride. Knowing him, it could be either. Most likely, it’s both.”
― A.G. Howard, Unhinged

“I didn't recognize it as such then, because I was only thirteen years old, but later I found it a bit ironic that my first time seeing a woman in all her form and glory and saggy drug-tainted tits, arrived at the same exact time as my first introduction to death.”
― Dave Matthes, Paradise City

“She came towards me with a juicy gash between her legs that smelled like my best friend's sister"

Just when I thought I'd escaped them all
She comes reeling herself in
pulling at my strings
her hand quick to find my zipper
She moaned the way a drunk old lady does
And I wasn't even inside her yet

"You don't have anywhere else to be," she managed to say...
"My wounds have been reopened tonight already," I muttered

I caught wind of the gully
...the part of her she once kept sacred as a Christian
I smelled the information
I lifted my hand into the air and hailed a cab
He rolled down his window and saw her
"Find another cab," he said,
and sped off into the night

I took her home
because she said she was lonely
really she was drunk off something
some memory or some choice
she walked funny...
-one of her heels had broken

On the couch I left her,
Before I could go, she grabbed my cock
I slapped her across the face and she pulled harder
Her eyes stayed closed
Her lips dripped
Her grip clenched
I wasn't getting out of this one unscathed

"If I take my pants off, will you let me go?" I asked
"If you take your pants off, I'll be suckin' that cock till you pass out from all the screamin'..."

I slapped her again, because she needed it
She laughed
Saying her cousin beat her harder
Saying her father knew how to really...
...make things happen
I asked her what her father's number was
Let's get his motherfucking self up here to take you away, that's what I said
She said he died, or killed himself
"What's the difference really," she said, chewing on her hair

She let go of my cock on her own accord
And she opened her eyes for a moment
She closed them again
And I could tell she was sleeping

Her eyes opened once more
Her face red where I'd hit her
She tasted the blood on her lip
"Do you think if we remind ourselves enough, we can make up for all the pain we've caused others?"

I said to her, "We can't. All we can do is keep ourselves from all those who don't deserve it.”
― Dave Matthes, Strange Rainfall on the Rooftops of People Watchers: Poems and Stories

“All you need, you think, is a breather, a few minutes standing up at the bar like in the old days, having a harmless bottle of beer. Only the bottle of beer isn't harmless; it's a trigger. It sets off that crazy thing in your mind that made you a dipso in the first place...”
― Jonathan Craig, Alley Girl

“...ya can't get to Nevada on five bucks and a bad heart...”
― Dave Matthes, Return to the Madlands

“~Posters with torn edges hanging from rotten walls~

The doctor told me something once
she said
STOP DRINKING
I slapped her across the face with this
NO
I walked right out of that office
went right down to the hole
I told the bartender
WHISKEY, MOTHERFUCKER
he poured and he poured
and I slapped my money down on that bar
the man I had been driving around with
he just sort of sat there next to this hooker
she probably had something rotten
way down there between her legs
her eyes told of no soul
I emptied the bottle down my throat
and ordered some chips
the bartender told me
THEY'RE STALE
and I give him a
I DON'T FUCKIN' CARE,
GIVE ME SOMETHIN'
He slid me a ham sandwich dripping with cheap low-fat mayo and said
ENJOY
I went back to my room
and talked all night
so much conversation
it turned the toilet bowl pale”
― Dave Matthes, Strange Rainfall on the Rooftops of People Watchers: Poems and Stories

“He saw the kind of beauty yellow flowers have growing over a carpet of dead leaves. The beauty of cracks forming a mosaic in a dry riverbed, of emerald-green algae at the base of a seawall, of a broken shard from a blue bottle. The beauty of a window smudged with tiny prints. The beauty of wild weeds.”
― Michelle Cuevas, Beyond the Laughing Sky

“The point about the whole subject is this: Once you open the top on this thing, the genie won’t get back in the bottle.”
― Mark Frost, The Secret History of Twin Peaks

“It's my birth right to dance madly on my bestie marriage, after a bottle or so..!!”
― Akansh Malik

“And yet . . .looking here at this bottle which by its number signalized the day when Colonel Freeleigh had stumbled and fallen six feet into the earth, Douglas could not find so much as a gram of dark sediment, not a speck of the great flouring buffalo dust, not a flake of sulphur from the guns at Shiloh . . .”
― Ray Bradbury, Dandelion Wine

“I got a heart like a half bottle of no-label whiskey.
Nothing to brag on,
but enough for you, and all your friends, too.”
― Catherynne M. Valente, The Bread We Eat in Dreams

“In people, as well as in a good perfume,
what counts is not the bottle, but the essence.”
― Augusto Branco

“I’d watched that girl hold onto a lot of things, but not quite like she held onto a bottle of wine.”
― Hanna Abi Akl, It's a Big Big World

“She held the bottle to her lips and tilted, slightly. It tasted the like how she'd imagine dirt would taste if someone burned it on the grill. Nope she said, and handed the bottle back.”
― J. Ryan Stradal, The Lager Queen of Minnesota

“Only middle-aged women drink wine from glasses. Men either use cups or drink it straight from the bottle.”
― Eib Shocky, Lost Seeking Dreams

“An alcoholic is dependent on alcohol. Alcohol is dependent on the bottle.”
― Tamerlan Kuzgov