I can’t listen to you. I can’t listen to your voice. It’s as though I’d drunk a bottle of anise and fallen asleep wrapped in a quilt of roses. It pulls me along – and I know I’m drowning – but I go on down.

and you try to quiet your mind so you can hear...

A hungry stomach cannot hear.

The belly’s a shameless dog, there’s nothing worse. Always insisting, pressing, it never lets us forget — destroyed as I am, my heart racked with sadness, sick with anguish, still it keeps demanding, ‘Eat, drink!’ It blots out all the memory of my pain, commanding, ‘Fill me up!

Drink to me. Drink to my health. You know I can't drink any more.

Give me silence, water, hope
Give me struggle, iron, volcanoes.

Harris, I am not well; pray get me a glass of brandy.

Calm the stomach. Move the body. Rest the mind.

"Have you ever found anything that gives you relief?"... "Yes. A drink"

"What's so unpleasant about being drunk?"
"Ask a glass of water!"

The best way to get quiet, other than the combination of extensive therapy, Prozac, and a lobotomy, is first to notice that the station is on. KFKD [K-Fucked] is on every single morning when I sit down at my desk. So I sit for a moment and then say a small prayer — please help me get out of the way so I can write what wants to be written. Sometimes ritual quiets the racket. Try it. Any number of things may work for you — an altar, for instance, or votive candles, sage smudges, small-animal sacrifices, especially now that the Supreme Court has legalized them.

If you can’t tell what you desperately need, it’s probably sleep.

I've got to drink: my mind keeps on working hard and fast to the point of suffering. I have to slow it down and rest it at times.. when I don't drink, I can't sleep, and the distress stupefies me.

The borborygmy, or rumbling of the stomach, has not received the attention from either art or science which it deserves. It is as characteristic of each individual as the tone of the voice. It can be vehement, plaintive, ejaculatory, conversational, humorous — its variety is boundless. But there are few who are prepared to give it an understanding ear; it is dismissed too often with embarrassment or low wit.