10 Iconic Writers On Hangovers

The hangover is nature's response to the belief that a person can lead a wild life without consequence. It's a form of comeuppance that reminds us that having a fun night means you're simply borrowing hours from the following day to fill with pain and nausea. And no one takes the art of impractical intoxication closer to the limit than the tortured writer. Hemingway told people to "write drunk; edit sober," and for those who live by his words, they know the drinking doesn't end after the completion of a well-crafted sentence—and that's something you'll feel the next morning.

For those who celebrate killer prose with a few killer bottles of Prosecco, here are 10 quotes by beloved writers on hangovers. 

1. "First you take a drink, then the drink takes a drink, then the drink takes you.”—F. Scott Fitzgerald

2. "...A man gets paranoid when he has 300 hangovers a year.”—Charles Bukowski, Women

3. "My 'hangover cure'—it's 12 amyl nitrites (one box), in conjunction with as many beers as necessary."—Hunter S. Thompson

4. “He shimmered out, and I sat up in bed with that rather unpleasant feeling you get sometimes that you're going to die in about five minutes.”—P.G. Wodehouse, The Code of the Woosters

5. “There is no night life in Spain. They stay up late but they get up late. That is not night life. That is delaying the day. Night life is when you get up with a hangover in the morning..."—Ernest Hemingway 

6. “You can have a hangover from other things than alcohol. I had one from women.”―Raymond Chandler, The Big Sleep

7. “A dusty thudding in his head made the scene before him beat like a pulse. His mouth had been used as a latrine by some small creature of the night, and then as its mausoleum. During the night, too, he'd somehow been on a cross-country run and then been expertly beaten up by secret police. He felt bad.”―Kingsley Amis, Lucky Jim

8. "A hangover is the wrath of grapes."—Dorothy Parker

9. “I have always lived violently, drunk hugely, eaten too much or not at all, slept around the clock or missed two nights of sleeping, worked too hard and too long in glory, or slobbed for a time in utter laziness. I've lifted, pulled, chopped, climbed, made love with joy and taken my hangovers as a consequence, not as a punishment.”—John Steinbeck, Travels with Charley 

10. "The only cure for a real hangover is death."—Robert Benchley

Jeremy Glass is the Vice editor for Supercompressor and thinks hangovers pair best with Taco Bell.