“I was filled with such a dangerous delicious intoxication that I could have walked straight off the steps into the air, climbing on the strength of my own drunkeness into the stars. And the intoxication, as I knew even then, was the recklessness of infinite possibility.”

“Bella, I've already expended a great deal of personal effort at this point to keep you alive. I'm not about to let you behind the wheel of a vehicle when you can't even walk straight. Besides, friends don't let friends drive drunk," he quoted with a chuckle. I could smell the unbearably sweet fragrance coming off his chest."Drunk?" I objected."You're intoxicated by my very presence." He was grinning that playful smirk again.”

“Yet, for my part, I was never usually squeamish; I could sometimes eat a fried rat with a good relish, if it were necessary. I am glad to have drunk water so long, for the same reason that I prefer the natural sky to an opium-eater’s heaven. I would fain keep sober always; and there are infinite degrees of drunkenness. I believe that water is the only drink for a wise man; wine is not so noble a liquor; and think of dashing the hopes of a morning with a cup of warm coffee, or of an evening with a dish of tea! Ah, how low I fail when I am tempted by them! Even music may be intoxicating. Such apparently slight causes destroyed Greece and Rome, and will destroy England and America. Of all ebriosity, who does not prefer to be intoxicated by the air he breathes?”

“Alannah took a step back. “Brennus, are you intoxicated?”“I am King Brennus. I do not become intoxicated. I am intoxicating.”Alannah let out another giggle. “This is not like you. How much have you had?”Brennus leaned his shoulder against the wall. “Two, maybe three.”“Glasses?”“Bottles.”

“I feel lost in it. Lost in him. Too him. Consumed and totally intoxicated. I feel reckless. Heedless. Like I could do anything...want to do anything, with him, right here and now.”

“But I have gone back to work; I try to intoxicate myself with ink, the way others intoxicate themselves with brandy, so as to forget the public disasters and my private sorrows.”