“Absinthe is the only decent drink that suits an artist.”

“His father cultivated art and self-realisation; his mother went in for simplicity and hygiene. Hence the child, during his tenderer years, was wholly unacquainted with any drink between the extremes of absinth and cocoa, of both of which he had a healthy dislike.”

“Got tight on absinthe last night. Did knife tricks.”

“He was very much a man of moods, possibly owing to what is styled the artistic temperament. I have never seen, myself, why the possession of artistic ability should be supposed to excuse a man from a decent exercise of self-control.”

“You couldn't get a decent drink in either of them, for a start. And the boredom you got in Heaven was almost as bad as the excitement you got in Hell.”

“As for an authentic villain, the real thing, the absolute, the artist, one rarely meets him even once in a lifetime. The ordinary bad hat is always in part a decent fellow.”