Burns Whisky Quotes

The whisky burns. How strange to try to drown pain with fire.

That night, Tom took a bottle of whisky, and went to watch the stars from near the cliff. The breeze played on his face as he traced the constellations, and tasted the burn of the liquid. He turned his attention to the rotation of the beam, and gave a bitter laugh at the thought that the dip of the light meant that the island itself was always left in darkness. A lighthouse is for others; powerless to illuminate the space closest to it.

Fortune, if thou’ll but gie me still Hale breeks, a scone, an whisky gill, An’ rowth o’ rhyme to rave at will, Take a’ the rest, An’ deal’t about as thy blind skill Directs thee best.

Girls like her, my grandfather once warned me, girls like her turn into women with eyes like bullet holes and mouths made of knives. They are always restless. They are always hungry. They are bad news. They will drink you down like a shot of whisky. Falling in love with them is like falling down a flight of stairs. What no one told me, with all those warnings, is that even after you’ve fallen, even after you know how painful it is, you’d still get in line to do it again. A girl like that, Grandad said, perfumes herself with ozone and metal filings. She wears trouble like a crown. If she ever falls in love, she’ll fall like a comet, burning the sky as she goes. She was the epic crush of my childhood. She was the tragedy that made me look inside myself and see my corrupt heart. She was my sin and my salvation, come back from the grave to change me forever. Again. Back then, when she sat on my bed and told me she loved me, I wanted her as much as I have ever wanted anything. There are no words for how much I will miss her, but I try to kiss her so that she’ll know. I try to kiss her to tell her the whole story of my love, the way I dreamed of her when she was dead, the way that every other girl seemed like a mirror that showed me her face. The way my skin ached for her. The way that kissing her made me feel like I was drowning and like I was being saved all at the same time. I hope she can taste all that, bittersweet, on my tongue.

He sat beside the window in the dark, with his eyes closed. Hearing to the sound of the rain. The whisky in his glass burnt his throat, while the smoke of his cigarette filled his lungs and the fire inside his heart consumed his soul slowly.

In the end the secrecy of your revolt poisons you like a secret disease. Your whole life is a life of lies. Year after year you sit in Kipling-haunted little Clubs, whisky to right of you, Pink’un to left of you, listening and eagerly agreeing while Colonel Bodger develops his theory that these bloody Nationalists should be boiled in oil. You hear your Oriental friends called ‘greasy Little babus’, and you admit, dutifully, that they are greasy little babus. You see louts fresh from school kicking grey-haired servants. The time comes when you burn with hatred of your own countrymen, when you long for a native rising to drown their Empire in blood. And in this there is nothing honourable, hardly even any sincerity. For, au fond, what do you care if the Indian Empire is a despotism, if Indians are bullied and exploited? You only care because the right of free speech is denied you. You are a creature of the despotism, a pukka sahib, tied tighter than a monk or a savage by an unbreakable system of taboos.

As humans, we demanded a beginning and end to make sense of the world around us. But for this, there would be an after, but no end. My love for her was as boundless as the mountain we lay upon. When she left me, my love would remain, burning just as fiercely as it did now.

Tell me, Mar,” she would say (and here it must be explained, that when she called him by the first syllable of his first name, she was in a dreamy, amorous, acquiescent mood, domestic, languid a little, as if spiced logs were burning, and it was evening, yet not time to dress, and a thought wet perhaps outside, enough to make the leaves glisten, but a nightingale might be singing even so among the azaleas, two or three dogs barking at distant farms, a cock crowing—all of which the reader should imagine in her voice)—“Tell me, Mar,” she would say, “about Cape Horn.” Then Shelmerdine would make a little model on the ground of the Cape with twigs and dead leaves and an empty snail shell or two. “Here’s the north,” he would say. “There’s the south. The wind’s coming from hereabouts. Now the Brig is sailing due west; we’ve just lowered the top-boom mizzen; and so you see—here, where this bit of grass is, she enters the current which you’ll find marked—where’s my map and compasses, Bo’sun?—Ah! thanks, that’ll do, where the snail shell is. The current catches her on the starboard side, so we must rig the jib boom or we shall be carried to the larboard, which is where that beech leaf is,—for you must understand my dear—” and so he would go on, and she would listen to every word; interpreting them rightly, so as to see, that is to say, without his having to tell her, the phosphorescence on the waves, the icicles clanking in the shrouds; how he went to the top of the mast in a gale; there reflected on the destiny of man; came down again; had a whisky and soda; went on shore; was trapped by a black woman; repented; reasoned it out; read Pascal; determined to write philosophy; bought a monkey; debated the true end of life; decided in favour of Cape Horn, and so on. All this and a thousand other things she understood him to say and so when she replied, Yes, negresses are seductive, aren’t they? he having told her that the supply of biscuits now gave out, he was surprised and delighted to find how well she had taken his meaning. “Are you positive you aren’t a man?” he would ask anxiously, and she would echo, “Can it be possible you’re not a woman?” and then they must put it to the proof without more ado.

— Aye, Charlene's fucked off. She's goat this boyfriend. He's just gittin back oot the jail. Renton taps up a vein in his wrist. — Well that ain't gonna help. — It isnae aboot helping, it's aboot being. If being Scottish is about one thing, it's aboot gittin fucked up, Renton explains, working the needle slowly into his flesh. — Tae us intoxication isnae just a huge laugh, or even a basic human right. It's a way ay life, a political philosophy. Rabbie burns said it: whisky and freedom gang thegither. Whatever happens in the future tae the economy, whatever fucking government's in power, rest assured we'll still be pissin it up and shootin shit intae ourselves, he announces, pulsing with glorious anticipation as he sucks his dark blood back into the barrel, then lets his ravenous veins drink the concoction.

He poured a splash of liquid into a second cup. “Come in and warm yerself by the fire.” Ariana walked deeper into the room, toward the glow of the hearth. It’s heat enveloped her skin and eased away the chill with such expediency, she almost sighed. Connor appeared beside her with a metal cup extended. “I canna sleep often myself.” She closed her fingers around the cool surface and glanced at the dark liquid within. A sharp scent hit her nostrils. “Whisky,” Connor said. He was perfection in the firelight. Shadows etched his jaw while the light softened his face, his lips. The powerful lines of his chest were visible at the neck of his leine, as well as a dark peppering of small curling black hairs. “Whisky,” Ariana said with a forced stare at the cup instead of him. “Of course. I drink this all the time.” “Aye, I knew that about ye. When I first saw ye, I thought, ‘Now there’s a lass who can handle her whisky.’” Connor winked at her with disarming playfulness. “It’ll do ye some good. Take off the chill and settle yer thoughts.” “Why do you assume my thoughts are unsettled?” she asked. He took a swallow from his cup. “Because sleep comes easily to those without weight on their minds.” Ariana took a careful sip from her own cup, the way she’d seen men at the card tables drink. The liquid burned like sin down her throat and caught in her chest. She gritted her teeth and swallowed hard several times to keep from sputtering. Though she’d hoped to keep her reaction discreet, the grin on Connor’s face told her he saw through her guise. “It’s good.” Her voice came out in a croak and Connor laughed. It was a warm, rich sound and she found it terribly pleasing. His eyes crinkled. “Now that we’ve discovered yer love of whisky, why dinna ye tell me what’s got yer thoughts heavy?

In December of each year the Tolowa people gathered together at the Axis Mundi to celebrate the creation of the earth. It’s a ten day celebration beginning at the winter solstice, the shortest day of the year ... It would take days for people to arrive and as the population grew, the new Anglo settlement in Crescent City became a little worried, they thought that the Indians were maybe gathering to ... wipe them out or something. Since they had only been in the area less than a year, the settlers didn’t realize that this was a normal annual thing. So the Tolowa people all across the area and the Yurok further south gathered together at the centre of the world, to dance and celebrate ... They danced all night until morning, and then they rested during the day and prepared food and so forth and then in the evening the dance started again ... And each night the dance became a little more elaborate than the night before ... On about the sixth night ... the local militiamen got together, and they drank some whisky and got a good buzz going, and then they got on their horses and went out and surrounded the village, which was one of the larger towns in the area. And of course we all lived in plankhouses made from redwood then. They lined up along a slough which lies in front of the village and then they began to set the buildings on fire, and as the people were trying to escape they were killed. Anybody who jumped into the slough to get away was gunned down into the water. And it happens that I have a great-great-uncle who survived, he was in the sweat house and he slid out and went into the slough and got away, and then he pushed himself southward in the slough. In the morning the entire village was set aflame, and hundreds of people were burned and killed outright. He said the slough was literally red with the blood of the people, and the babies that were found crying were just tossed into the flames to destroy them as well. So several hundred people perished there at ... Yan’daak’$$$$t, and later the place was called Burnt Ranch. And the local people still know where Burnt Ranch is ... The next year, because Axis Mundi was destroyed, the dance was moved to ‘Eechuulet, and they started to dance there and they were attacked again and my great-grandmother said that there were seven layers of bodies in the dance house when they burned it. They just stacked them in and torched the house down and ... burned them up there. The next year, 1855, there was ... a battle at the mouth of the Smith River, where about seventy of our people were killed. But by this time our numbers were drastically reduced...

En teoría el impuesto era pagado por los productores de los artículos afectados, pero en la práctica recaía sobre los consumidores, pues los productores se limitaban a agregar el impuesto a sus precios. Incluso el vaso de cerveza o whisky que consumía o cada pipa que fumaba estaban sujetos a impuestos. Como lo dijo Burns, su negocio era «oprimir al publicano y al pecador con las ruedas despiadadas de los impuestos interiores».

It is never possible to completely reconstruct a person’s life from what they leave behind—the absurdity of it all, the pain, the triumphs. What’s lost is lost forever, and the silences are telling. But why mourn what we’ll lose anyway? Laughter truly is the best medicine, and I find whisky tends to numb and burn what’s left behind.

He subscribed to the medieval policy of polypharmacy – chucking in sometimes dozens of ingredients on the principle that some of them were bound to do you good, ignoring the possibility that some of them might be toxic. As well as ‘fistfuls’ and ‘half-handfuls’ of miscellaneous greenery, ivory shavings cropped up quite often, sometimes having been burned first. The genitals of a cockerel might come in useful, if you could find them. Breast milk should be drunk ‘from the breast by sucking, and if this be loathsome to the patient [regardless of the feelings of the donor] let him take it as hot as possible’. Cat lovers would be horrified by Gaddesden’s recommendation of an ‘astringent bath: take young cats, cut their entrails out, and put their extremities [paws and tail?] with [various herbs], boil in water and bathe the sick man in it’. Another feline recipe: put ‘the lard’ of a black cat, and of a dog, into the belly of a previously eviscerated and flayed black cat, and roast it; collect the ‘juice’ and rub it on the sick limb. ‘The comfort derived therefrom is marvellous.’ A specific for nervous disease is the brain of a hare. If the hunting party kills a fox instead, they could boil it up and use the resulting broth for a massage. Treatment for a paralysed tongue sounds more cheerful: rub it with what the translator called ‘usquebaugh’, i.e. whisky; ‘it restores the speech, as has been proved on many people’. Animal and avian droppings found many uses, such as peacocks’ droppings for a boil. A cowpat made a good poultice, with added herbs. For those who could afford them, gold and silver and pearls, both bored and unbored, were bound to increase the efficacy of the medicine. Gaddesden recommended his own electuary, using eighteen ingredients including burnt ivory and unbored pearls, with a pound of (very expensive) sugar; ‘I have often proved its goodness myself.’ In a final flourish, he suggests putting the heart of a robin redbreast round the neck of a ‘lethargic’ patient, to keep him awake, or hanging the same heart, with an owl’s heart, above an amnesiac patient; it will ‘give [his memory] back to him’. Even better, the heart of a swallow cooked in honey ‘compels him who eats it to tell all things that happened’ in the past, and to predict the future.

Fine, I’ll stay holed up in this cabin like a prisoner.” I reached for the wineskin and took a healthy gulp. The smoky sweet Scottish whisky coated my tongue and burned as it went down. I cocked my head to the side. “But I’ll be taking that bed.” His laugh was loud and boisterous. “Ye dinna really think I’d give up my bed?” Folding my arms across my chest, I raised one shoulder in a half-shrug. “You're mad.” He hopped to his feet with surprising agility for an ogre his size and walked to the bed in two large strides before plopping down on it. “If ye insist though”—he patted the spot next to him—“ye may have that side. But I should warn ye, I do prefer to sleep in the nude.

As he stood there on the balcony, he thought about Nancy, and the burning question on his mind was, what happened in her life that brought her into this situation to a point where she drowns her sorrows in whisky.

Valdez said "hey, you hear the one about the Scottish guy? He's sitting at a bar, drowning his sorrows in whisky." "Everybody got a good grip on it?" I asked. "Lift with your legs, not your back." Cornpone snorted. "Damn, Bish, you sound like my mother. We got this." "So he says to the bartender," Valdez grunted with the effort, "he says, so, you build thirty houses, and when you walk down the street, do people say 'there goes MacDougal, the home builder? No, they don't'." We got the wall up on top of our knees, and I told the team to get under it, and lift it to our shoulders. The extra gravity was killing me. "Then he says 'you save five children from a burning building, and when you walk down the street, do people say there goes MacDougal, the rescuer’? No, they don't." "Valdez, will you shut up a minute? All right, people, lift!" I said in my best US Army voice of authority. We got that bitch of a wall unit up above our shoulders, and were winning the fight against gravity, when Valdez gasped "'Then MacDougal says, ‘but you fuck one sheep’-.

The gig was a disaster though as their singer Hendo drank a bottle of whisky before he went onstage. Halfway through the first song, he passed out, fell off the stage and didn’t get back up! Gig over!

For there’s nothing I will not force language To do to make us one — whether water Hurts like whisky or the sun burns like oil Or love declines to weathered names on stone. —George Elliott Clarke, from “Bees’ Wings,” Whylah Falls (1990)

Bee’s Wings This washed-out morning, April rain descants, Weeps over gravity, the broken bones Of gravel and graveyards, and Cora puts Away gold dandelions to sugar And skew into gold wine, then discloses That Pablo gutted his engine last night Speeding to Beulah Beach under a moon As pocked and yellowed as aged newsprint. Now, Othello, famed guitarist, heated By rain-clear rum, voices transparent notes Of sad, anonymous heroes who hooked Mackerel and slept in love-pried-open thighs And gave out booze in vain crusades to end Twenty centuries of Christianity. His voice is simple, sung air: without notes, There's nothing. His unknown, imminent death (The feel of iambs ending as trochees In a slow, decasyllabic death-waltz; His vertebrae trellised on his stripped spine Like a 'xylophone or keyboard of nerves) Will also be nothing: the sun pours gold Upon Shelley, his sis', light as bees' wings, Who roams a garden sprung from rotten wood And words, picking green nouns and fresh, bright verbs, For there's nothing I will not force language To do to make us one — whether water Hurts like whisky or the sun burns like oil Or love declines to weathered names on stone. George Elliott Clarke, Whylah Falls (1990)

That's the thing with Jameson. Some bottles are smooth. Some bottles burn like hell. You don't know which until it's open. I'd caught a bad one and told myself it'd get better with each sip.

Yes, you learn your lessons as they come your way... And when you have learned them all they can stick red-hot pokers in your wife and babies and you will only laugh to see it. Because you will know by then that people don't matter a damn. Men are like corn growing. The sun burns them up and the rain washes them out and the winter freezes them, and the cavalry tramps them down, but somehow they keep growing. And none of it matters a damn so long as the whisky holds out.

Kiril glanced around the darkened room. He walked to a leather chair and sat, stretching his legs out in front of him and crossing his ankles. “Did you know that during the Fae Wars the Dark took two Dragon Kings? At different times, of course.” “I suppose they escaped as well? Are you telling me we don’t know how to hold a Dragon King?” “The Dark did . . . things to my brethren. One completely lost his mind and attacked us, which is what the Dark wanted. He had to be killed. The other King knew what was happening to him, but he couldna stop it. He came to us and begged to be killed before he could harm one of us.” Shara sipped her whisky before she said, “You lost two Kings and I lost seven siblings.” “And the Light the Dark took?” “The Dark take the Light and the Light take the Dark.” Kiril let his gaze drift down her body. How he itched to have her long legs wrapped around him. Things would be so much easier if he didn’t desire her as he did, but there wasn’t a switch he could flip and turn off his body’s reaction. The more he tried to ignore the growing desire, the more it raged uncontrollably within him. He gave himself a mental shake and returned to their conversation. “What’s the plan, then? Will the Dark storm in here and try to capture me?” Shara walked around the room, her hand skimming along the backs of the chairs. “No.” “No?” Kiril set aside his glass on the table next to him and silently rose to his feet. He followed her as if a string tied them together. “What then?” “You don’t really want to know.” Kiril spun her around so hard that her glass flew from her hand and landed upon a rug, spilling the whisky but not breaking the crystal. “Tell me,” he demanded in a soft, deadly voice. “My job is to seduce you.” She held her stance for a heartbeat before she retreated, taking two steps back. He tracked her until she was once more in the entryway. The shadows darkened everything, and yet the smallest sliver of moonlight found her, illuminating her in a pale blue glow. No longer could he deny what he wanted. Perhaps it was her confession. Maybe it was because he hadn’t taken to the skies in weeks. Whatever it was, all he knew was that he had to have her or go up in flames. “Then seduce me.

You don't develop a taste for whisky until the burn of your life makes the burn of the whisky pale in comparison.

Wadelai had been occupied by white men perhaps for fifty years. For half a century that feeble rush-light of modernity, of cigarettes, of newspapers, of 177 whisky and pickles, had burned on the lonely banks of the White Nile to encourage and beckon the pioneer and settler. None had followed.

I went back to my car again and sat and sat. The top dripped on my knees and my stomach burned from the whiskey. No more cars came up the hill. No lights went on in the house before which I was parked. It seemed like a nice neighborhood to have bad habits in.

You shouldn't listen to me. I only know half as much as I pretend to." "Well, in that case, I suppose can listen to you half the time." A small smile played at the corner of her lips. "But not about arsenic." His grin stretched, beckoning hers, and— damn, there it was again, that spark, that small absorbing heat, as though their mirrored smiles were kindling. The whisky burn once again stirred him, and he knew by the answering flare in her hazel eyes, she saw it happen. He cleared his throat, absently running his hand along his newly smooth jaw. “You shaved, I see.” Her eyes followed his fingers. “Yes.” She lowered her eyes and found a fresh page in her journal. “I’m partial to it, you know.” “The poison? Or the beard?” “Ah.” She pressed her thumb to the nib of her pen. “What fun would it be if I told you?