c2p-cmd/Good-Quotes-Authors huggingface dataset:
Right, you see that girl over there, the one in that group that keeps looking right at you?'...'Right, let's say I'm convinced she's wearing black knickers - she looks like a black knickers kind of gal to me - and I'm so sure that's what she's wearing, so positive of that sartorial fact, I want to bet a million dollars on it. The trouble is, if I'm wrong, I'm wiped out. So I also bet she's wearing knickers that aren't black, but are any one of a whole basket of colours - let's say I put nine hundred and fifty thousand dollars on that possibility: that's the rest of the market; that's the hedge. This is a crude example, okay, in every sense, but hear me out. Now if I'm right, I make fifty K, but even if I'm wrong I'm going to lose fifty K, because I'm hedged. And because ninety-five per cent of my million dollars is not in use - I'm never going to be called on to show it: the only risk is in the spread - I can make similar bets with other people. Or I can bet it on something else entirely. And the beauty of it is I don't have to be right all the time - if I can just get the colour of her underwear right fifty-five per cent of the time I'm going to wind up very rich...
— Robert   Harris, The Fear Index
The mutual fund industry has been built, in a sense, on witchcraft.
— John C. Bogle, Common Sense on Mutual Funds: New Imperatives for the Intelligent Investor
Many small businesses would rather face an angry barbarian horde than tackle their cash flow statement or price a new product.
— Nicole Fende, How to be a Finance Rock Star
If you don’t laugh reading this book I’ll eat my pocket protector. Wait, did I just admit I had a pocket protector?
— Nicole Fende, How to be a Finance Rock Star
I see dead Presidents. Lincoln, Jefferson, Franklin, and Washington.
— Nicole Fende, How to be a Finance Rock Star
Finance is the art of passing currency from hand to hand until it finally disappears
— Robert Sarnoff
They don't try to trade 'reality', they try to tradeother people's perceptions of reality. If a market is dominated by enough technical traders, it could lapse into a 'postmodern' state, with traders trading perceptions of perceptions of reality.
— Brett Scott, The Heretic's Guide to Global Finance: A Guide to Creative Financial Activism
The struggle for Financial Freedom is very unfair. Just look at the rewards.
— Manoj Arora, From the Rat Race to Financial Freedom
Saving is a great habit but without investing and tracking, it just sleeps
— Manoj Arora, From the Rat Race to Financial Freedom
When an international financier is confronted by a holdup man with a gun, he automatically hands over not only his money and jewelry but also his shirt and pants, because it doesn't occur to him that a robber might draw the line somewhere.
— Rex Stout, Over My Dead Body
You should RULE your money, Money shouldn't RULE your Life.
— Hyacil Han, Investing Made Easy: 50 Extremely Beneficial Business that are Undeniable Cash Cows
Invest in yourself. your career is the engine of your wealth.
— Hyacil Han, Investing Made Easy: 50 Extremely Beneficial Business that are Undeniable Cash Cows
The media's job is not to inform you
—  it is to get eyeballs. Eyeballs lead to advertising revenue. That means they need people to read stuff and view stuff. Telling everyone things are going to work out just fine doesn't get eyeballs the way feeding into fear does. That doesn't just explain financial news
...there should be no place in a portfolio for hedge funds. There are lots of reasons, but the main one is simple: Investing in hedge funds is a great way to increase the odds of underperformance.
— Peter Mallouk, The 5 Mistakes Every Investor Makes and How to Avoid Them: Getting Investing Right
I never use hedge funds because I am well aware of what drives future performance, and hedge funds start out with a great disadvantage in every major category: taxes, fees, risk management, transparency and liquidity.
— Peter Mallouk, The 5 Mistakes Every Investor Makes and How to Avoid Them: Getting Investing Right
The stock market cares about only one thing above all else: anticipated earnings. If companies make more money, their share prices eventually rise. The stock price is simply a reflection of a company's earning power. Everything else is noise.
— Peter Mallouk, The 5 Mistakes Every Investor Makes and How to Avoid Them: Getting Investing Right
Rather than be fearful and sell out at the worst time or get greedy when the market is way up, investors should control their emotions and not only avoid panic, but embrace the market volatility for what it is: an opportunity and a gift. Suffocate the instincts that want to make you a bad investor and rather embrace the chaos that normally causes them to rise to the surface.
— Peter Mallouk, The 5 Mistakes Every Investor Makes and How to Avoid Them: Getting Investing Right
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— Francis Mbasu
Gold belongs only in the portfolios of fearmongers and speculators. If you own gold in your portfolio, expect to not get paid an income, pay higher taxes on your returns, take a more volatile ride than the stock market, and get a long-term return lower than bonds.
— Peter Mallouk, The 5 Mistakes Every Investor Makes and How to Avoid Them: Getting Investing Right
Financial illiteracy is like being in a rain storm and trying to jump in between the raindrops... eventually it all catches you at the same time.
— Johnnie Dent Jr.
Cruelty links all three primitives [pleasure, pain, and desire]: Spinoza defines it as the desire to inflict pain on someone we love or pity. Financial speaking, cruelty is analogous to a convertible bond whose debt and equity depend on three economic underliers: the stock price, the level of interest rates, and the credit worthiness of the company's debt.
— Emanuel Derman, Models.Behaving.Badly.: Why Confusing Illusion with Reality Can Lead to Disaster, on Wall Street and in Life
There are no good or bad stocks. The company is either good or bad. Stocks are just stocks.
— Kenneth L. Fisher, Beat the Crowd: How You Can Out-Invest the Herd by Thinking Differently
Everyday i meet with clients including widows and divorcees who have the same fears about money and it's my role to empower them, and women in general, to take control of their finances and create a plan.
— Maili Wong, Smart Risk: Invest Like The Wealthy To Achieve A Work-Optional Life
Creating a complete picture of a company financial health, by looking at periodic financial statements, is like turning a hamburger into a cow
— Don Tapscott, Blockchain Revolution: How the Technology Behind Bitcoin Is Changing Money, Business, and the World
Smart Risk will shatter the emotional myths to investing and help Canadians see the opportunities in today's volatile market.
— Maili Wong, Smart Risk: Invest Like The Wealthy To Achieve A Work-Optional Life
There is ample evidence that confirmation bias permeates throughout investors' decisions. For example, once an investor likes a stock, he is likely to seek out information that validates that stock. In a 2010 study, researchers showed that investors used message boards to seek out information that validated rather than challenged, stocks they owned (Park et al. 2010). If we own a stock, we tend to look for anything that validates our decision to buy it, and to reinforce why we should keep holding it.
— Peter Mallouk, The 5 Mistakes Every Investor Makes and How to Avoid Them: Getting Investing Right
I make 2+2=5, and I get to keep the remaining 1 that’s not really there. I truly am a Master of the Universe. I don’t just do “God’s work,” as our CEO once put it, it’s more like I’ve actually become a god myself.
— A.D. Aliwat, Alpha
Being an investment banker is pretty much the perfect job for an all around triple-threat genius, and because I’m doing so well with it, I know I’m actually smarter than certifiable geniuses like Stephen Hawking and Einstein.
— A.D. Aliwat, Alpha
If skeptic can weakly force E, then he can force E.
— Glenn Shafer
Monetary policy does not work like a scalpel but more like a sledgehammer.
— Liaquat Ahamed
[T]he ABCP market was built on a fatal flaw: a significant mismatch between the duration of the underlying assets (long-term) and the duration of the paper itself (short-term). While this structure is not unusual -- banks use it all the time -- the crucial difference is that banks have a strong liquidity provider in the event of a problem: the Bank of Canada. The trusts, however, were left in limbo.
— Paul Halpern, Back from the Brink: Lessons from the Canadian Asset-Backed Commercial Paper Crisis
So why didn't ABCP investors -- at least the large institutional investors -- have a better grasp of the uncertain nature of market disruption triggers as defined under Canadian-style liquidity? Probably because the contracts were not available for review to investors wishing to purchase ABCP -- yet another example of the lack of transparency surrounding the distribution and sale of this product.
— Paul Halpern, Back from the Brink: Lessons from the Canadian Asset-Backed Commercial Paper Crisis
After the meeting, Guay met with Verville for a debriefing. Guay reports that Verville said that all investors would have to roll to avoid a market collapse. Guay told Verville that on Monday, at the first chance to roll its maturing paper, the Caisse should not be the only investor rolling in a particular trust. If that happened, it would end up in a worse position than not rolling at all.
— Paul Halpern, Back from the Brink: Lessons from the Canadian Asset-Backed Commercial Paper Crisis
You do pay a price for your Financial Freedom, but it is far lesser than what you pay for a Lifetime Slavery.
— Manoj Arora, From the Rat Race to Financial Freedom
In life's journey, having the ability to predict the future gives us an unfair advantage. If we can understand the laws of cause and effect, anyone can predict the future. What we do today leads us to tomorrow's destination.Why does this simple truth seem to be difficult for most people to understand?
— Celso Cukierkorn
All through time, people have basically acted and reacted the same way in the market as a result of greed, fear, ignorance, and hope. That is why the numerical formations and patternsrecur on a constant basis. Over and over, with slight variations. Because markets are driven by humans and human nature never changes.
— Jesse Lauriston Livermore
Get into Investment Banking
— ibhacker
The reason for what a certain stock does today may not be known for two or three days, or weeks, or months. But what the dickens does that matter? Your business with the tape is now - not tomorrow! The reason can wait. But you must act instantly or be left.
— Jesse Lauriston Livermore
Trader has to reverse what you might call his natural impulses. Instead of hoping he must fear; instead of fearing he must hope. He must fear that his loss may develop into a much bigger loss, and hope that his profit may become a big profit.
— Jesse Lauriston Livermore
God is looking for godly people to send to the world of finances to subdue it for him.
— Sunday Adelaja
Civil war tends to give a helping hand to the velocity of currency, Ukraine can attest to that. However, it is quite an unpleasant way to find the intrinsic value of worthlessness.
— Tom Wallace
We need to pay as much attention to the MEANS, as to the END! This is the biggest principle of SUCCESS..The END is so enticing, that we lose sight of the details altogether..Success lies in the DETAILS!
— Abha Maryada Banerjee, Nucleus: Power Women: Lead from the Core
I was convinced that I was totally incompetent in predicting market prices - but that others were generally incompetent also but did not know it, or did not know they were taking massive risks. Most traders were just "picking pennies in front of a steamroller," exposing themselves to the high-impact rare event yet sleeping like babies, unaware of it.
— Nassem Nicholas Taleb
...you can ruin your credit in one seemingly responsible afternoon, but rebuilding it takes years.
— Sophia Amoruso, #GIRLBOSS
Prosperity starts in ones heart not their pocket.
— Ricky Maye
Fashion models and financial models are similar. They bear a similar relationship to everyday world. Like supermodels, financial models are idealized representations of the real world, they are not real, they don't quite work the way that the real world works. There is celebrity in both worlds. In the end, there is the same inevitable disappointment" - Satyajit Das, Traders, Guns & Money
— Satyajit Das, Traders, Guns & Money: Knowns and Unknowns in the Dazzling World of Derivatives
A budget tells us what we can't afford, but it doesn't keep us from buying it.
— William Feather
I love supporting blue chip companies’ revival. Shows wise when you are on the top and you are still not ignorant & arrogant to realise your weaknesses.
— Csaba Gabor-B.
The picture of bankers slavering after bonuses soon after they had been rescued by government bailouts was not only outrageous but also pitiable - pitiable because they were clamoring for their primary measure of self-worth and status to be restored
— Raghuram G. Rajan, Fault Lines: How Hidden Fractures Still Threaten the World Economy
No man can always have adequate reasons for buying or selling stocks daily - or sufficient knowledge to make his play an intelligent play.
— Edwin Lefèvre, Reminiscences of a Stock Operator
The ‘do nothing everything will be all right’ default plan is determined by the IRS and government.
— Sean Novinson
Exploitation to finance a beach house in Hawaii was one thing. Doing it to feed your kids was another.
— Khaled Hosseini, The Kite Runner
After all it is not what you make, it is what you keep or pass on.
— Sean Novinson
The personal checks and balances that most of us bring to bear when we are employed in other activities - we ask ourselves if we are producing a socially useful product - operate less well in finance because, with few exceptions, making money is the Raison d'être (reason for existence) for the financier
— Raghuram G. Rajan, Fault Lines: How Hidden Fractures Still Threaten the World Economy
Our entire economy is based on productivity measures that have little to do with “human input”. Sooner or later the entire system will collapse revealing the fallacy of an economy based on finance.
— Said Elias Dawlabani, MEMEnomics: The Next-Generation Economic System
Dear all, Hello to everyone, now I am seated in ergonomic chair in my office, this blog is generally written for every single guy who has complaint against his divine, but has anyone ponder on it, why a person faces crisis in his life? some guys always blame on god for their pathetic condition, in reality they are behind their chaos, as far as I am concerned improper thinking and poor decision making downgrade a person to marsh, especially we can see its example in investment , number of guys spend their money but some of them succumb loss and pour their frustration on god or mentor, I would love to share it with everyone that lump some investment and unaware about ongoing market trends are two basic reasons that blocks the profit of a guy, so I have personal rede to every guy that before investment everyone should go through previous record of market and mull over their strategy of capital investment, if you have any problem for making your investment plan or totally perplexed to spend your hard earn, you should consult with investment consultant, before opting your mentor you should follow your brain not marketing gimmick, because marketing gimmick only tempts the crowd and after making fool to their target audience they skedaddle from market, so friends beware from show off, always use your brain. If you have any problem regarding to your investment strategy, feel free to log on forexnx.com It will your favor to give me chance to serve you in this dog eats dog market. Your satisfaction is our successWarm regardsPooja singh
— forexnx
NEVER accept "conventional wisdom" when it comes to finance. If others keep failing, why do you want to follow them?
— Ziad K. Abdelnour, Economic Warfare: Secrets of Wealth Creation in the Age of Welfare Politics
One peek inside his top drawer had been enough for Sophie. Swimming goggles, nail clippers, a Ferragamo tie wound into a tight coil, and packets of Gulden's Spicy Brown Mustard. None of that compared to Ira Blumenstein's gold tooth, Kenneth Yang's Darth Vader lollipop, or Rich Angstrom's Magic 8 Ball.
— Laura Hemphill, Buying In
But, in truth, it had not exactly been gold, or even the promise of gold, but more like the fantasy of gold, the fairy dream that the gold is there, at the end of the rainbow, and will continue to be there forever - provided, naturally, that you don't go and look. This is known as finance.
— Terry Pratchett, Going Postal
A huge mistake that many of us make is to work hard our entire life for money and not require money to work for us in return.
— Daniel Willey
Hedge funds have made massive leveraged credit bets, knowing that their upside is billions in fees and their downside is millions in fees.
— Janet M. Tavakoli, Structured Finance and Collateralized Debt Obligations: New Developments in Cash and Synthetic Securitization
Those who say don't know, those who know don't say
— Michael   Lewis
The first thing you need to know about Goldman Sachs is that it's everywhere. The world's most powerful investment bank is a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money.
— Matt Taibbi
Money is a tool. Used properly it makes something beautiful- used wrong, it makes a mess!
— Bradley Vinson
SHIT, OR GET OFF THE POT
— Rupert Murdoch
In order to create something new, to invent a new product or idea, you need to anticipate where things are headed. That requires a mixture of certain habits of mind. You need to foster imagination, thoroughly understand the origins of past ideas, learn from others’ mistakes, talk to lots of people about ideas and test your hypotheses against people both alive and dead.
— Joshua Rogers
The stock market is almost magical because it always leads the economy. It goes down long before the economy drops and then heads higher long before the economy rebounds. It always has.
— Kenneth L. Fisher, The Wall Street Waltz: 90 Visual Perspectives : Illustrated Lessons from Financial Cycles and Trends
The art of investing is not about figuring out what has already happened. It’s about anticipating the futureand creating the future that others will read about in The Wall Street Journal.
— Joshua Rogers
Our culture has at its core the idea that more is better. Many of us design our lives around this belief. And yet the underlying qualities that truly affect happiness are not advanced one whit by having more material things. More peace of mind is gained by allowing ourselves to be satisfied with what we already have. More joy is not bought
—  it is found in our hearts.
Corruption,' Jordan Belfort believes, 'is endemic to human being. I mean, even men in monasteries - where enticement is hard to come by – even men in those circumstances have sex with other men and abuse children. Look at the Catholic Church! Man is an imperfect animal and he is corruptible, okay? And in finance, the liquid nature of the market makes corruption very easy. On Wall Street, this liquidity is so in your face -' he suddenly grits his teeth - 'that if you have even the slightest predisposition to the dark side, you become corrupted. In addition to which, those attracted to Wall Street have a predisposition to greed.
— Antonella Gambotto-Burke, Mouth
We've been sold a dream of savings and investing that had no basis in any history or reality. We were participants in a vast experiment, a hope that personal finance and investments would do it all for us. We now know that for all too many people, it did not.
— Helaine Olen, Pound Foolish: Exposing the Dark Side of the Personal Finance Industry
Things change, not only in one’s life but also in the economyand on the political scene, and it pays to be aware. Is the foundationof your financial house secure, with an income that isguaranteed? Have you built solid walls, investing appropriately,and keeping inflation at bay? Are you living under a reliableroof, with assets positioned to grow? Is your house insulatedand sturdy, safe from any economic storm?
— Christopher K. Abts
The ascent of money has been essential to the ascent of man.
— Niall Ferguson, The Ascent of Money: A Financial History of the World
There is much more to wealth than simply a bank account with many zeros. A well-balanced, whole life is made up of wealth and success that comes from many facets; family, friends, work, faith, it is the complete person who works on each of these areas and creates the whole,
— Celso Cukierkorn, Secrets of Jewish Wealth Revealed!
I believe that the true definition of wealth is loving what you have rather than what you don’t have.
— Celso Cukierkorn, Secrets of Jewish Wealth Revealed!
Instead of stocks investors should invest in blankets, that way they’ll at least have something to keep them warm after they’ve lost all their money when the company goes under.
— Amy Sommers, A bit of rubbish about a Brick and a Blanket
Leverage is a term that makes us sound very sophisticated and wise when we use it. Let’s analyze what it really means.
— Celso Cukierkorn, Secrets of Jewish Wealth Revealed!
A company could use bricks to measure their growth rate. How many bricks have angry investors thrown at you lately? If the answer is none, then your growth rate is probably pretty good… for the moment.
— Amy Sommers, A bit of rubbish about a Brick and a Blanket
As a rabbi, I’ve spent long hours counseling people I’ve married, and in each case I like to talk with the couple about not only compatibility and love, but also their relationship with money. If you and your partner are not in the same financial mind-frame, then chances are your marriage won’t work. You can’t be an army of one when you are married. Financial problems are the number one cause of divorce.
— Celso Cukierkorn, Secrets of Jewish Wealth Revealed!
There is no romance without finance.
— John Fox
My people have more know-how in dealing with money than any other people on earth. It is not just a stereotype. I have traveled the world, and everywhere I go, Jews are always represented within the wealthiest sector of people in their countries. During the last 2,000 years, Jews have been expelled or turned away from almost every country in the world, but over and over again, they have been able to re-settle, start from nothing, and build significant wealth in new lands.
— Celso Cukierkorn, Secrets of Jewish Wealth Revealed!
My grandfather created a fortune that allowed him to live in luxury. He also went on to build the first industrial building in an area of San Paulo that eventually became one of the largest wholesale neighborhoods in the world. When my grandfather passed away, he left millions of dollars to my family as an inheritance. That inheritance, however, would have been worthless if he had not also given us his legacy of personal responsibility and work ethic. My grandfather refused to be defined by others, therefore setting not only the value of his product, but also of himself and his family.
— Celso Cukierkorn, Secrets of Jewish Wealth Revealed!
Ignorance is bliss, except when it hurts
— Paul Knott
I admire addicts. In a world where everybody is waiting for some blind, random disaster or some sudden disease, the addict has the comfort of knowing what will most likely wait for him down the road. He's taken some control over his ultimate fate, and his addiction keeps the cause of his death from being a total surprise.
— Chuck Palahniuk, Choke
Even as a junkie I stayed true [to vegetarianism] - 'I shall have heroin, but I shan't have a hamburger.' What a sexy little paradox.
— Russell Brand, My Booky Wook
Whether you sniff it smoke it eat it or shove it up your ass the result is the same: addiction.
— William S. Burroughs
The question is frequently asked: Why does a man become a drug addict?The answer is that he usually does not intend to become an addict. You don’t wake up one morning and decide to be a drug addict. It takes at least three months’ shooting twice a day to get any habit at all. And you don’t really know what junk sickness is until you have had several habits. It took me almost six months to get my first habit, and then the withdrawal symptoms were mild. I think it no exaggeration to say it takes about a year and several hundred injections to make an addict.The questions, of course, could be asked: Why did you ever try narcotics? Why did you continue using it long enough to become an addict? You become a narcotics addict because you do not have strong motivations in the other direction. Junk wins by default. I tried it as a matter of curiosity. I drifted along taking shots when I could score. I ended up hooked. Most addicts I have talked to report a similar experience. They did not start using drugs for any reason they can remember. They just drifted along until they got hooked. If you have never been addicted, you can have no clear idea what it means to need junk with the addict’s special need. You don’t decide to be an addict. One morning you wake up sick and you’re an addict. (Junky, Prologue, p. xxxviii)
— William S. Burroughs, Junky
But I'm not a saint yet. I'm an alcoholic. I'm a drug addict. I'm homosexual. I'm a genius.
— Truman Capote, Music for Chameleons
The three most harmful addictions are heroin, carbohydrates, and a monthly salary.
— Nassim Nicholas Taleb
If you are an approval addict, your behaviour is as easy to control as that of any other junkie. All a manipulator need do is a simple two-step process: Give you what you crave, and then threaten to take it away. Every drug dealer in the world plays this game.
— Harriet B. Braiker, Who's Pulling Your Strings? How to Break the Cycle of Manipulation and Regain Control of Your Life
There are two questions a man must ask himself: The first is 'Where am I going?' and the second is 'Who will go with me?' If you ever get these questions in the wrong order you are in trouble.
— Sam Keen, Fire in the Belly: On Being a Man
When you can stop you don't want to, and when you want to stop, you can't...
— Luke Davies, Candy
Imagine trying to live without air.Now imagine something worse.
— Amy Reed, Clean
Every habit he's ever had is still there in his body, lying dormant like flowers in the desert. Given the right conditions, all his old addictions would burst into full and luxuriant bloom.
— Margaret Atwood
I took my time, running my fingers along the spines of books, stopping to pull a title from the shelf and inspect it. A sense of well-being flowed through me as I circled the ground floor. It was better than meditation or a new pair of shoes- or even chocolate. My life was a disaster, but there were still books. Lots and lots of books. A refuge. A solace. Each one offering the possibility of a new beginning.
— Beth Pattillo, Jane Austen Ruined My Life
Even when I took the drugs I realized that this just wasn't fun anymore. The drugs had become a part of my routine. Something to wake me up. Something to help me sleep. Something to calm my nerves. There was a time when I was able to wake up, go to sleep, and have fun without a pill or a line to help me function. These days it felt like I might have a nervous breakdown if I didn't have them.
— Cherie Currie
Who shall I shoot? You choose. Now, listen very carefully: where's your coffee? You've got coffee, haven't you? C'mon, everyone's got coffee! Spill the beans!
— Terry Pratchett, Monstrous Regiment
Not feeling is no replacement for reality. Your problems today are still your problems tomorrow
— Larry Michael Dredla
You've recognised a fundamental feature of an addict's life. Maintaining your habit is so important you've no real interest in anything else.
— Marian Keyes, Rachel's Holiday
He had tried to explain the way he felt to Danny once, about compulsive behavior and time rushing too fast and the Internet and drugs. Danny had only lifted one of his slender, mobile eyebrows and stared at him in smirking confusion. Danny did not think coke and computers were anything alike. But Jude had seen the way people hunched over their screens, clicking the refresh button again and again, waiting for some crucial if meaningless hit of information, and he thought it was almost exactly the same.
— Joe Hill, Heart-Shaped Box
My throat tightened, but I held back the tears and reminded myself that withdrawing from a woman is no different than kicking a drug; you feel shaky and you want it, but eventually the need passes, and you feel restored.
— Keith Ablow, Denial
The priority of any addict is to anaesthetise the pain of living to ease the passage of day with some purchased relief.
— Russell Brand
Shame was an emotion he had abandoned years earlier. Addicts know no shame. You disgrace yourself so many times you become immune to it.
— John Grisham, The Testament
Drugs suck more than anything else I have ever liked so much.
— Ashly Lorenzana
This is what I think. Addiction is just a way of trying to get at something else. Something bigger. Call it transcendence if you want, but it's a fucked-up way, like a rat in a maze. We all want the same thing. We all have this hole. The thing you want offers relief, but it's a trap.
— Tess Callahan, April & Oliver
We love the things that destroy us, because in that destruction we truly feel alive.
— Robert Pobi, Bloodman
It was the hardest boyfriend I ever had to break up with [referring to crystal methamphetamines]
— Fergie
I feel very privileged to hear how somebody used to run around stickin' people up and stealing cars, and now they're gettin' their life back together... I just love the stories. The stories of the fallen world, they excite us. That's the interesting stuff.
— Denis Johnson
The last thing I ever wanted was to be alive when the three most powerful people on the whole planet would be named Bush, Dick and Colon.Our government's got a war on drugs....But get this: The two most widely abused and addictive and destructive of all substances are both perfectly legal.One, of course, is ethyl alcohol. And President George W. Bush, no less, and by his own admission, was smashed, or tiddley-poo, or four sheets to the wind a good deal of time from when he was sixteen until he was forty. When he was forty-one, he says, Jesus appeared to him and made him knock off the sauce, stop gargling nose paint.Other drunks have seen pink elephants.
— Kurt Vonnegut Jr., A Man Without a Country
I found Bombay and opium, the drug and the city, the city of opium and the drug Bombay
— Jeet Thayil, Narcopolis
Intensity-seeking is an enslavement of our own perpetuation. When we step out of the delirium of always seeking someone new, and meet the same old sad and lonely child within, our healing journey begins. Exhausting ourselves with novelty is a defense against our deepest pain, one that we cannot outrun. But once we stop and feel our losses, we can begin our healing journey and be the authentic, joyous person we were born to be.
— Alexandra Katehakis, Mirror of Intimacy: Daily Reflections on Emotional and Erotic Intelligence
The need to find out what will happen if I don't relent or moderate my actions has been a constant source of difficulty and discomfort in my life.
— Russell Brand, My Booky Wook
Drinking is such a necessity to human life that people cannot fathom an individual who, like a child confined to a church pew, gets little enjoyment out of it and would rather do other things.
— Criss Jami, Killosophy
Memories consumeLike opening the woundI'm picking me apart againYou all assumeI'm safe here in my roomUnless I try to start again.
— Linkin Park
My daughter, Carly, has been in and out of drug treatment facilities since she was thirteen. Every time she goes away, I have a routine: I go through her room and search for drugs she may have left behind. We have a laugh these days because Carly says, “So you were lookingfor drugs I might have left behind? I’m a drug addict, Mother. We don’t leave drugs behind, especially if we’re going into treatment. We do all the drugs. We don’t save drugs back for later. If I have drugs, I do them. All of them. If I had my way, we would stop for more drugs on the way to rehab, and I would do them in the parking lot of the treatment center.
— Dina Kucera, Everything I Never Wanted to Be
here was the secret of happiness, about which philosophers had disputed for so many ages, at once discovered; happiness might now be bought for a penny, and carried in the waistcoat-pocket; portable ecstasies might be had corked up in a pint-bottle; and peace of mind could be sent down by the mail.
— Thomas de Quincey, Confessions of an English Opium Eater
If the last to know he’s an addict is the addict, then maybe the last to know when a man means what he says is the man himself, he reflected.
— Philip K. Dick, A Scanner Darkly
Oh and P.S.? I am in dire need of more coffee. Industrial strength.""But we're going to sleep soon," I say."I know." Laila shudders. "Addiction is a bitch.
— Susane Colasanti, When It Happens
Hey, I stopped smoking cigarettes. Isn't that something? I'm on to cigars now. I'm on to a five-year plan. I eliminated cigarettes, then I go to cigars, then I go to pipes, then I go to chewing tobacco, then I'm on to that nicotine gum
— John Candy
I got addicted. News, particularly daily news, is more addictive than crack cocaine, more addictive than heroin, more addictive than cigarettes. 
— Dan Rather
Why do prostitutes when they get straight always try and get so prim? It's like long-repressed librarian-ambitions come flooding out.
— David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest
So are you an inmate or a rubbernecker?" she asks."Rubbernecker," I answer without hesitation. "You?""I'm a screw. Or on staff, anyway. Used to be an inmate. Repeat offender. Crimes against my body. Puking sickness followed by heroin, which led to more puking sickness." I'd be surprised at her forthrightness, but that's addicts for you. The twelve steps crack 'em open and then they can't shut up.
— Lauren Beukes, Zoo City
...introduced Doc to the miracle of morphine. From that very first shot it was as if he'd discovered the one vital ingredient that God had left out when He'd sent Doc kicking and screaming into the cold, cruel world.
— Steve Earle
Someone put opera on inside the house. Someone changed it to hip-hop, thank God. Someone started a shower. Someone vacuumed. Again.Life. In all its mundane majesty.And you couldn't take advantage of it if you were sitting on your ass in the shadows... whether it was in actuality, or metaphorically because you were trapped in an attic's darkness.
— J.R. Ward, Black Dagger Brotherhood, #1-9
This could be addictive.
— Kevin Pietersen
If, by the virtue of charity or the funded Ennet House, you will acquire many exotic new facts. You will find out that once MA’s Department of Social Services has taken a mother’s children away for any period of time, they can always take them away again, D.S.S ., like at will, empowered by nothing more than a certain signature-stamped form. I.e. once deemed Unfit— no matter why or when, or what’s transpired in the meantime— there’s nothing a mother can do.(...)That a little-mentioned paradox of Substance addiction is: that once you are sufficiently enslaved by a Substance to need to quit the Substance in order to save your life, the enslaving Substance has become so deeply important to you that you will all but lose your mind when it is taken away from you. Or that sometime after your Substance of choice has just been taken away from you in order to save your life, as you hunker down for required A.M. and P.M. prayers , you will find yourself beginning to pray to be allowed literally to lose your mind, to be able to wrap your mind in an old newspaper or something and leave it in an alley to shift for itself, without you.(...)That certain persons simply will not like you no matter what you do. Then that most nonaddicted adult civilians have already absorbed and accepted this fact, often rather early on.(...)That evil people never believe they are evil, but rather that everyone else is evil. That it is possible to learn valuable things from a stupid person. That it takes effort to pay attention to any one stimulus for more than a few seconds.(...)That it is statistically easier for low-IQ people to kick an addiction than it is for high-IQ people.(...)That you will become way less concerned with what other people think of you when you realize how seldom they do.(...)That most Substance -addicted people are also addicted to thinking, meaning they have a compulsive and unhealthy relationship with their own thinking. That the cute Boston AA term for addictive -type thinking is: Analysis-Paralysis. That 99% of compulsive thinkers’ thinking is about themselves; that 99% of this self-directed thinking consists of imagining and then gettingready for things that are going to happen to them; and then, weirdly, that if they stop to think about it, that 100% of the things they spend 99% of their time and energy imagining and trying to prepare for all the contingencies and consequences of are never good.(...)That other people can often see things about you that you yourself cannot see, even if those people are stupid.(...)That certain sincerely devout and spiritually advanced people believe that the God of their understanding helps them find parking places and gives them advice on Mass. Lottery numbers.
— David Foster Wallace, Infinite Jest
Anything that inspires addiction or obsession - substances, entertainment, beauty, secrecy - is dangerous in that it can lead to isolation, self-absorption, and disconnection, to paralyzed stasis: an immobility that gathers like a force.
— Greg Carlisle, Elegant Complexity: A Study of David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest
she said, “I swear, I put something in my mouth one time, and I’m addicted. I think I have oral fixation issues.
— Alannah Lynne, Last Call
I learned that it's okay to feel the way I do: that my life has no meaning unless I have a boyfriend. A real man is like the perfect vampire-boy and all the perfect guys in Twue Wuv.
— Jess C. Scott, Literary Heroin (Gluttony): A Twilight Parody
Under the influence, I am easily influenced. I try to keep my pants on, but some things are easier said than done.
— Kris Kidd, Down for Whatever
Why then do we wonder that heroin is everywhere? In our isolation, heroin thrives; that's its natural habitat. And our very search for painlessness led us to it. Heroin is, I believe, the final expression of values we have fostered for thirty-five years. It turns every addict into narcissistic, self-absorbed, solitary hyper-consumers. A life that finds opiates urns away from family and community and devotes itself entirely to self-gratification by buying and consuming one product - the drug that makes being alone not just all right, but preferable.
— Sam Quinones, Dreamland: The True Tale of America's Opiate Epidemic
In the soft light of morning, the sky outside turning light blue, my answer is always and still: “I’m fine.
— Kris Kidd, Down for Whatever
My slurred speech isn’t from one or nine drinks too many, it’s from my father.
— Kris Kidd, Down for Whatever
Jealousy in any form will cloud thinking and form bad habits. Jealousy is an addiction.
— Richie Norton
But Tilo had crept up on him, and become a kind of compulsion, an addiction almost. Addiction has its own mnemonics – skin, smell, the length of the loved one’s fingers. In Tilo’s case it was the slant of her eyes, the shape of her mouth, the almost ­invisible scar that slightly altered the symmetry of her lips and made her look defiant even when she did not mean to, the way her nostrils flared, announcing her displeasure even before her eyes did. The way she held her shoulders. The way she sat on the pot stark naked and smoked cigarettes. So many years of marriage, the fact that she was not young any more – and did nothing to pretend otherwise – didn’t change the way he felt. Because it had to do with more than all that. It was the haughtiness (despite the question mark over her ‘stock’, as his mother had not hesitated to put it). It had to do with the way she lived, in the country of her own skin. A country that issued no visas and seemed to have no consulates.
— Arundhati Roy, The Ministry of Utmost Happiness
Too much of a good thing is toxic
— Aysha Taryam
Desire is alcoholic, desire is the greatest drug possible. Marijuana is nothing, lsd is nothing. Desire is the greatest lsd possible – the ultimate in drugs.What is the nature of desire? When you desire, what happens? When you desire, you are creating an illusion in the mind; when you desire, you have already moved from here. Now you are not here, you are absent from here, because the mind is creating a dream. This absentness is your drunkenness. Be present!
— Osho, The Empty Boat: Talks on the Sayings of Chuang Tzu
An alcoholic is someone who can violate his standards faster than he can lower them.
— Robin Williams
The first few days felt quite surreal for gone was that filtered world of perfect angles made up of peoples’ best moments and selves. Gone was the wormhole that one jumped into at the sign of any awkward silence or pause in conversation.
— Aysha Taryam
My blood makes noise. And I’m saying this now, because I have a strange gut feeling that it will be silenced someday soon.
— Kris Kidd, Down for Whatever
Everywhere I go, I kind of half stumble, half stomp. If there’s a balcony within a hundred feet of me at any given time, I am on it— smoking a Marlboro light 100 and complaining about something.
— Kris Kidd, I Can't Feel My Face
Not much more than a broke disgrace who's hooked on tonics, so excuse him if his poker face has puke on it.
— Hannibal Lecture
My doctors, who are not cavalier with prescriptions, give me this medication because I have earned their trust. And yet, with mounting government and public pressure, my doctors’ hands are becoming increasingly tied. They apologetically explain to me why they are required to make the medication even harder for me to get, against their own medical judgment. If the day ever comes when they aren’t allowed to prescribe Percocet to me at all, it may well be the end of the minimal quality of life I fight so hard to achieve.
— Michael Bihovsky
Since my symptoms began 13 years ago, I’ve tried every form of pain management I could access — NSAIDS, nonopioid analgesics, neurologic medications, acupuncture, laser therapy, physical therapy, prolotherapy, massage, and trigger-point injections. Most of these have been unhelpful; others provide temporary relief, often at great expense. At the end of the day, when my body is fully depleted of its resources and in the most pain, a single dose of Percocet is the only tool that silences the pain enough for me to fall asleep.I honestly don’t know what I’d do if Percocet became unavailable to me, and the very thought scares me. I’ve been taking it for five years. To avoid any chance of addiction, I only take it at night and have stayed on a consistently low dose.
— Michael Bihovsky
We have a genuine and devastating epidemic of opiate abuse in this country, and it is of critical importance that this problem be addressed. But we must do so in a way that doesn’t cut off an effective (and often the only) treatment for the chronically ill, many of whom are able to function in this world at all only because of the small respite that responsible opiate use provides.
— Michael Bihovsky
Government agencies are trying to get doctors to cut back on prescribing opioids. I understand that they need to do something about the epidemic of overdoses. However, labeling everyone as addicts, including those who responsibly take opioids for chronic pain, is not the answer. If the proposed changes take effect, they would force physicians to neglect their patients. Moreover, legitimate pain patients, like myself, would be left in agony on a daily basis.
— Alison Moore,
I am made of a thousand ghosts, only you can shoot me down.
— Bella  James, Hunger Moon
I know it sounds a bit trite, but I really do get everything I want now. They say life is a game, and I guess I might agree if the stakes were a little higher, but it’s just so easy to fall into a cycle. I get bored.
— Kris Kidd, I Can't Feel My Face
Why the addict is counting on the days of taking off addiction ... simply because he is waiting to know how long he will resits until back in the loop
— Mohamed Saad
Two choices; one: tough it oot, back in the room, two: phone that cunt Forrester and go tae Muirhoose, get fucked aboot and ripped oaf wi some crap gear. Nae contest.In twenty minutes it wis: — Muirhoose pal? tae the driver oan the 32 bus and quiveringly stickin ma forty-five pence intae the the box. Any port in a storm, and it’s raging in here behind ma face.
— Irvine Welsh, Trainspotting
You have to take it off the table,' Jeremy said, finally. 'It's always going to be an option, otherwise. You're going to have to give it up and mean it, or it'll always be your solution when things go bad.
— Maggie Stiefvater, Sinner
Game: The end.Addiction: It begins.
— Bhavik Sarkhedi
Perhaps nothing so accurately characterizes dysfunctional families as denial. The denial forces members to keep believing the myths and vital lies in spite of the facts, or to keep expecting that the same behaviors will have different outcomes.Dad's not an alcoholic because he never drinks in the morning, in spite of the fact that he's drunk every night.
— John Bradshaw, Bradshaw on the Family: A New Way of Creating Solid Self-Esteem
In a way, we’re all addicts by nature.
— Shannon  Mullen, See What Flowers
I look away from her. “I have felt like an old man my whole life. And they get to have fun and snort their fucking drugs and get wasted and it doesn’t matter who they’re hurting because they’re young and having fun and I’m a judgmental prick if I say anything.” “Do you think they’re having fun?” I don’t have an answer for her. “I’ll never be able to compete against it.” “Maybe you don’t understand how powerful it is,” she says. “How powerful is it?” “Very.” “And that’s an excuse?” “No.” “When do they get to take responsibility?” “For themselves?” she asks. “Yes.” “Always,” she says.
— Kenny Porpora, The Autumn Balloon
Sometimes I think, Was she thinking about me when she was drinking? Did any of them ever think about me when they were putting straws in their noses and needles in their arms? Did they even think about me once?” And she asks me, “What would it mean if they didn’t?” I stare at her, trembling. She knows what I think it means, and she wants me to say it out loud.
— Kenny Porpora, The Autumn Balloon
addiction and expectation for the attraction = social media
— Vaishal sheth
Sometimes, I worry I'm winning.
— Kris Kidd
The addiction crisis is terrifying, and many people don’t comprehend appropriate opioid use. When I first started taking pain medication, I remember a family member saying, “Dianne, you’re going to become an addict!”We need to help people understand that taking pain medicine to maximize one’s ability to be productive and to sustain enriching relationships is very different than the disease of addiction, which limits one’s ability to contribute to society and maintain healthy habits.
— Dianne Bourque
Anyone who takes opioids on a regular basis will become dependent upon them, meaning they will have to taper off gradually to avoid withdrawal symptoms. But very few chronic pain patients exhibit the compulsive drug-seeking behaviors of someone who is addicted.
— Karen Lee Richards
the media, at least in the U.S., tends to focus on pain pill use, abuse, and addiction by people who do not have chronic pain.Even if these stories offhandedly mention that these pills are used to treat pain in people whose physical pain does not go away, however, the stories of those who use pain medicine responsibly -- or, worse, accused of drug-seeking behavior because they need certain types of pills for chronic pain -- are usually overshadowed by the “How can we prevent pain pill addiction?” concern, instead of asking, “How can we treat chronic pain more effectively?
— Anna Hamilton