"...a reporter ran upstairs to my bedroom as I sat there in my pajamas trying to write down a dream — Teenagers jumping the six-foot fence I'd had built around my yard for privacy — Parties with bottles yelling at my study window 'Come on out and get drunk! All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy!'" Chapter 1, page 4

"'One fast move or I'm gone,' I realize, gone the way of the last three years of drunken hopelessness... that feeling when you wake up with the delirium tremens with the fear of early death dripping from your ears like those special heavy cobwebs spiders weave in the hot countries, the feeling of being a bentback mudmad monster groaning underground in hot steaming mud pulling a long hot burden nowhere, the feeling of standing ankle deep in hot boiled pork blood, ugh, of being up...