When I was growing up, particularly during puberty in my teen years, I was so miserable because I elicited so much teasing and meanness from my teenage cohorts.

I only wish I had drunk more champagne.

"It's so dreadful to be poor!" sighed Meg, looking down at her old dress.

Mme. de Gallardon, who could never stop herself from sacrificing her greatest social ambitions and highest hopes of someday dazzling the world to the immediate, obscure, and private pleasure of saying something disagreeable.

Inevitably, I drank too much, talked too much, smiled too hard, swallowed back too much bile.

She had not character enough to take to drinking, and moaned about, slip-shod and in curl-papers, all day.

She looks so haughty that I should have thought her a princess at the very least, with a pedigree reaching as far back as the Deluge. But this lady was no better born than many other ladies who give themselves airs; and all sensible people laughed at her absurd pretensions.

... the whole thing is disgraceful from beginning to end. Disgraceful and vulgar.

Her contempt for me was so strong, that it became infectious, and I caught it.

My manners, abominable at times, can be sweet. As I grew older I became a drunk. Why? Because I like ecstasy of the mind. I'm a wretch. But I love, love.

I'm as drunk as a fiddler's bitch.

She ordered a cup of tea, which proved excessively bad, and this gave her a sense that she was suffering in a romantic cause.

I was profoundly embarrassed by it and did all I could to change it.

I was also drunk, crazy and heavily armed at all times. People trembled and cursed when I came into a public room and started screaming in German.