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Morphine Quotes

Browse 38 quotes about Morphine.

Morphine Quotes

“In the course of my life I have had pre-pubescent ballerinas; emaciated duchesses, dolorous and forever tired, melomaniac and morphine-sodden; bankers' wives with eyes hollower than those of suburban streetwalkers; music-hall chorus girls who tip creosote into their Roederer when getting drunk... I have even had the awkward androgynes, the unsexed dishes of the day of the *tables d'hote* of Montmartre. Like any vulgar follower of fashion, like any member of the herd, I have made love to bony and improbably slender little girls, frightened and macabre, spiced with carbolic and peppered with chlorotic make-up. Like an imbecile, I have believed in the mouths of prey and sacrificial victims. Like a simpleton, I have believed in the large lewd eyes of a ragged heap of sickly little creatures: alcoholic and cynical shop girls and whores. The profundity of their eyes and the mystery of their mouths... the jewellers of some and the manicurists of others furnish them with *eaux de toilette*, with soaps and rouges. And Fanny the etheromaniac, rising every morning for a measured dose of cola and coca, does not put ether only on her handkerchief. It is all fakery and self-advertisement - *truquage and battage*, as their vile argot has it. Their phosphorescent rottenness, their emaciated fervour, their Lesbian blight, their shop-sign vices set up to arouse their clients, to excite the perversity of young and old men alike in the sickness of perverse tastes! All of it can sparkle and catch fire only at the hour when the gas is lit in the corridors of the music-halls and the crude nickel-plated decor of the bars. Beneath the cerise three-ply collars of the night-prowlers, as beneath the bulging silks of the cyclist, the whole seductive display of passionate pallor, of knowing depravity, of exhausted and sensual anaemia - all the charm of spicy flowers celebrated in the writings of Paul Bourget and Maurice Barres - is nothing but a role carefully learned and rehearsed a hundred times over. It is a chapter of the MANCHON DE FRANCINE read over and over again, swotted up and acted out by ingenious barnstormers, fully conscious of the squalid salacity of the male of the species, and knowledgeable in the means of starting up the broken-down engines of their customers. To think that I also have loved these maleficent and sick little beasts, these fake Primaveras, these discounted Jocondes, the whole hundred-franc stock-in-trade of Leonardos and Botticellis from the workshops of painters and the drinking-dens of aesthetes, these flowers mounted on a brass thread in Montparnasse and Levallois-Perret! And the odious and tiresome travesty - the corsetted torso slapped on top of heron's legs, painful to behold, the ugly features primed by boulevard boxes, the fake Dresden of Nina Grandiere retouched from a medicine bottle, complaining and spectral at the same time - of Mademoiselle Guilbert and her long black gloves!... Have I now had enough of the horror of this nightmare! How have I been able to tolerate it for so long? The fact is that I was then ignorant even of the nature of my sickness. It was latent in me, like a fire smouldering beneath the ashes. I have cherished it since... perhaps since early childhood, for it must always have been in me, although I did not know it!”

SexHorrorWomanNightmareRottenCocaineLesbianDecadenceDepravityVicePerversityAlcoholicMacabreMorphineDecadentDecadentsEtherMontmartreFervourPallorStreet WalkersAndrogyneAndrogynesChorus GirlsLevallois PerretMaurice BarresPaul Bourget
Book:Monsieur de Phocas
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“perhaps he thought the subject of too delicate a nature to be made common: and as many people might then indiscriminately use it, it would take from that necessary fear and caution, which should prevent their experiencing the extensive power of this drug: for there are many properties in itm if universally known, that would habituate the use, and make it more in request with us than the Turks themselves: the result of which my knowledge,' he adds, 'must prove a general misfortune.' In the necessity of this conclusion I do not altogether concur”

OpiatesMorphineValiumThomas De QuinceyHistory Of AlkaloidsOpium Effect
Book:Confessions of an English Opium Eater
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“A book is open in front of me and this is what it has to say about the symptoms of morphine withdrawal: '... morbid anxiety, a nervous depressed condition, irritability, weakening of the memory, occasional hallucinations and a mild impairment of consciousness ...' I have not experienced any hallucinations, but I can only say that the rest of this description is dull, pedestrian and totally inadequate. 'Depressed condition' indeed! Having suffered from this appalling malady, I hereby enjoin all doctors to be more compassionate toward their patients. What overtakes the addict deprived of morphine for a mere hour or two is not a 'depressed condition': it is slow death. Air is insubstantial, gulping it down is useless ... there is not a cell in one's body that does not crave ... but crave what? This is something which defies analysis and explanation. In short, the individual ceases to exist: he is eliminated. The body which moves, agonises and suffers is a corpse. It wants nothing, can think of nothing but morphine. To die of thirst is a heavenly, blissful death compared with the craving for morphine. The feeling must be something like that of a man buried alive, clawing at the skin on his chest in the effort to catch the last tiny bubbles of air in his coffin, or of a heretic at the stake, groaning and writhing as the first tongues of flame lick at his feet. Death. A dry, slow death. That is what lurks behind that clinical, academic phrase 'a depressed condition'.”

AddictionMorphine
Book:Morphine
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“See, what had happened was that the Versed had caused retrograde amnesia, the side-effects of the Morphine disappearing caused my bowels to start moving again, and the alcohol I guess had just prevented my mind from appreciating these facts until the last possible second ...or not. Good times.”

CancerCancer JourneyMorphine
Book:Cancer Is for Older People: How Young Minds Beat an Old Disease
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“The hallucinogens produce visionary states, sort of, but morphine and its derivatives decrease awareness of inner processes, thoughts and feelings. They are pain killers; pure and simple. They are absolutely contraindicated for creative work, and I include in the lot alcohol, morphine, barbiturates, tranquilizers the whole spectrum of sedative drugs.”

StatesWholeFeelingsPainProcessSimpleCreativeAwarenessProduceDrugPureAlcoholKillersSpectrumVisionariesDecreaseCreative WorkThoughts And FeelingsDerivativesMorphineHallucinogens
Book:Burroughs Live: The Collected Interviews of William S. Burroughs, 1960-1997
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“I was becoming more cunning than an animal in hiding my supply of morphine. A squirrel saving nuts is limited by its undeveloped imagination ... but I was not so handicapped. A squirrel, for example, is debarred from sending money to some greedy doctor or druggist and making arrangements to have a bit of powder sent each day by mail.”

BitsImaginationAnimalExampleBecomingDoctorsAddictionSavingEach DayHidingNutsMailArrangementsGreedyCunningBecoming MorePowderSquirrelsHandicappedMorphine
Book:Queen of Diamonds: The Fabled Legacy of Evalyn Walsh McLean
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“Every form of addiction is bad, no matter whether the narcotic be alcohol or morphine or idealism.”

MatterFormDrinkingAddictionVicesAlcoholRecoveryIdealismAddictAlcoholismPsychologistRehabDrinking AlcoholMemories Dreams ReflectionsFunny AlcoholDrinking FunnyNarcoticsAddiction RecoveryAlcohol AddictionAlcohol And LifeFunny SarcasticAddicts In RecoveryMorphineInspirational Addiction RecoveryOvercoming AddictionIdealism And RealismAlcoholism FunnyAlcohol Recovery
Author:Carl Jung
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“She was bedridden falling a fall which broke her hip. X-rays showed that she had cancer of the colon which had already spreed. To my surprise I found her cheerful and free of pain, perhaps because of the small doses of morphine she was being given. She was surrounded by neighbours and friends who congregated at her bedside day and night. In this cosy, noisy, gregarious world of the "all-chinese" sickbed, so different from the stark, sterile solitude of the American hospital room, her life had assumed the astounding quality of a continuous farewell party.”

WorldDifferentPainNightFallFoundGivenRoomsPartyQualitySolitudeSurpriseCancerHipsBrokeChineseHospitalsRaysFarewellCheerfulNeighbourDay And NightDoseStarksNoisyGregariousCosyMorphine
Author:Adeline Yen Mah
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“She's no lady. Her songs are all unbelievably unhappy or lewd. It's called Blues. She sings about sore feet, sexual relations, baked goods, killing your lover, being broke, men called Daddy, women who dress like men, working, praying for rain. Jail and trains. Whiskey and morphine. She tells stories between verses and everyone in the place shouts out how true it all is.”

MenStoriesSongFeetPrayingLoversRainRelationDressesTrainKillingUnhappyBrokeGoodsJailVersesDaddyWhiskeyShout OutMorphineBeing BrokeBaked GoodsSore Feet
Book:Fall On Your Knees
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“Given the final futility of our struggle, is the fleeting jolt of meaning that art gives us valuable? Or is the only value in passing the time as comfortable as possible? What should a story seek to emulate, Augustus? A ringing alarm? A call to arms? A morphine drip? Of course, like all interrogation of the universe, this line of inquiry inevitably reduces us to asking what it means to be human and whether—to borrow a phrase from the angst-encumbered sixteeen-year-olds you no doubt revile—there is a point to it all.”

GivingShouldYearsHumansMeanArtStoriesValuesUniverseCoursesGivenLinesStruggleDoubtArmsComfortableAskingFinalsValuablePassingPassingsPhrasesNo DoubtInquiryFleetingAlarmsAngstFutilityEmulateInterrogationAugustusWhat It Means To Be HumanMorphine
Author:John Green
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“They will say I smoked cigarettes and marijuana, cursed hoarse as a crow in all my languages, and loved morphine and Demerol and tequila and pulque, women and men. I will shrug my illusion of shoulders and answer that I am a water woman, not a vessel, not something you can sail or charter. I am instead the tributary, the river, the fluid source, and the sea itself. I am all her rainy implications. And what do you, with your rusted compass, know of love?”

KnowsMenLoveAgeLanguageWaterAnswersSeaSourceIllusionMen And WomenRiversShouldersMarijuanaCigaretteSailCompassVesselImplicationsFluidCrowCursedRainyCharterTequilaMorphine
Author:Kate Braverman
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“When you’re in love, your brain secretes endorphins into your blood. Organic morphine leaks out of a gland in your skull, feels like a low-grade opium rush. Some people confuse the two, the head rush and the love. You think you’re in love with a person, but you’re in love with a syringe.”

PeopleThinkingFeelsPersonsTwoBrainBloodLove YouLowsGradesSkullsLeaksOpiumGlandsEndorphinsMorphine
Book:The Contortionist's Handbook
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“Suicide is a particularly awful way to die: the mental suffering leading up to it is usually prolonged, intense and unpalliated. There is no morphine equivalent to ease the acute pain, and death, not uncommonly, is violent and grisly. The suffering of a suicidal is private and inexpressible, leaving family members, friends and colleagues to deal with an almost unfathomable kind of loss, as well as guilt. Suicide carries in its aftermath a level of confusion and devastation that is, for the most part, beyond description.”

WayWellsKindPainSufferingDiesLossLevelsDealsMembersSuicideGuiltLeavingViolentIntenseConfusionAwfulEaseDescriptionCarrieColleaguesSuicidalFamily MembersAftermathDevastationUnfathomableMorphine
Book:Night Falls Fast: Understanding Suicide
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“To read 'Happy Talk' is to crash a party as vivid and surreal as Felini's 8. It's the business of show business, the American dream, told by a chorus of Americans locked just outside of that dream, outside of the United States, relegated to expatriate status on the shores of Haiti. Melo paints a version of Haiti that's an interior landscape perhaps even more than an externalized place. This Haiti is a plan, a memory, a morphine-drip fueled dream out to bond its inhabitants forever.”

StatesShowsDreamMemoriesUnitedPartyUnited StatesForeverPlansPaintVersionsLandscapeShoreAmerican DreamLockedCrashInteriorsShow BusinessVividSurrealChorusHaitiMorphineExpatriates
Author:Monica Drake
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