But in college, we can wear our alcohol abuse as proudly as our university sweatshirts; the two concepts are virtually synonymous.

— Koren Zailckas

Even years from now, once I've stopped drinking, I will never stop trusting extremes. I will always believe that anything worth having is worth having in excess. The good things are worth hoarding until you have a cookie-fat ass, sex-aching loins, joy that fires through you like popping popcorn, or love, the weakness at the sight of some boy who makes your chest ache like indigestion. If it's good for you, it ought to be good for you in any amount, and you should track down every available bit of it. And if it's toxic, if it turns your liver into a hard little rock of scar tissue, or curls your memory at the edges like something burned in a fire, or makes your stomach flop, or your mind ache, or your personality contorted, you shouldn't buy into the bullshit about temperance.

— Koren Zailckas

I do think anger is so difficult for women. Girls think it undermines their femininity it's not very ladylike.

— Koren Zailckas

I'd written Smashed not because I was ambitious and not because writing down my feelings was cathartic (it felt more like playing one's own neurosurgeon sans anesthesia). No. I'd made a habit--and eventually a profession--of memoir because I hail from one of those families where shows of emotions are discouraged.

— Koren Zailckas

I'm sick of the ignorance that lack of funding has generated, of the fathers who approach me at dinner parties with their four-year-old girls clasped to their pant legs and say, "Yeah, but studies say kids can buy drugs more easily than they can buy alcohol." To which I always respond, "I guess that means you keep heroin in your liquor cabinet?

— Koren Zailckas

I'm trying to figure out precisely which character flaw might be responsible for my latest life failure.

— Koren Zailckas

I once heard someone say that the concept of moderation seems a little extreme, and tonight... I agree.

— Koren Zailckas

I think, for one, we have to really accept that anger is a normal human emotion that can be a positive force for change.

— Koren Zailckas

I think what I learned in research is that as Americans, we're very distrustful of anger. We're not sure if we should repress it. The idea that anger is supposed to be controlled is American, and we try to keep it out of our homes.

— Koren Zailckas

It's meant I will act like less of an asshole, but feel much more like one.

— Koren Zailckas