Quotes from Susan Cheever

John Berryman, put it, "Something has been said for sobriety, but very little.

Upon all the new settlements the Spaniards make, the first thing they do is build a church," wrote the British captain Thomas Walduck in 1708. "The first thing the Dutch do upon a new colony is to build them a fort, but the first thing the English do, be it in the most remote part of the world, or amongst the most barbarous Indians, is to set up a tavern or drinking house.

There was a feeling that voters should be repaid in booze for the effort of voting.

When they established a college—Harvard, in 1636—they equipped it with its own brewery.

At times, we don't seem to be able to moderate our drinking. At other times we blame it for everything. We love it or we hate it. It is our big solution and it is our big problem.

Not drunk is he who from the floor, / Can rise again and still drink more, / But drunk is he who prostrate lies, / Without the power to drink or rise.

early colonist columnist wrote, "If ever a nation was debauched by a man

Gazette described his competitor

as a "crafty and lecherous old hypocrite."45

got a return on his investment of almost two votes per gallon.

The people should never rise, without doing something to be remembered—something notable and striking.

Taylor Barnum. After he died, it was said that he was more alive than anyone still living.

Since Alexander Hamilton, an increasing percentage of the federal budget had been provided by taxing alcohol. In the early 1900s taxes on liquor made up almost 30 percent of the federal budget—a seemingly implacable obstacle to Prohibition. Now, with the passage of an amendment that allowed a broader tax, the government could give up the alcohol taxes for income taxes.

There is no such thing as expecting too much.

Women's currency is their looks. Like it or not, the most powerful woman is an 18-year-old woman.

A fierce literary woman with a penchant for married men, Margaret Fuller was ultimately torn between motherhood and her final career as a political reporter.

Pregnancy is difficult for women but it is even more difficult for men.

I don't really think of writing as a career. It's something that happened to me. By working harder than I knew it was possible to work, I have become passable at it.

Addiction isn't about substance - you aren't addicted to the substance, you are addicted to the alteration of mood that the substance brings.