The Lost Weekend - Benefits Of Booze

[Don Birnum]
I can't be cut off completely. That's the devil. That's what drives you crazy...Come on, Nat. Join me - one little jigger of dreams, huh?... It shrinks my liver, doesn't it, Nat? It pickles my kidneys. Yes. But what does it do to my mind? It tosses the sandbags overboard so the balloon can soar. Suddenly, I'm above the ordinary. I'm confident, supremely confident. I'm walking a tightrope over Niagara Falls. I'm one of the great ones. I'm Michelangelo molding the beard of Moses. I'm Van Gogh painting pure sunlight. I'm Horowitz playing the Emperor Concerto. I'm John Barrymore before the movies got him by the throat. I'm Jesse James and his two brothers. All three of 'em. I'm W. Shakespeare. And out there, it's not Third Avenue any longer. It's the Nile, Nat - the Nile, and down it floats the barge of Cleopatra. Come here.

Purple the sails, and so perfumed that the winds were lovesick with them: the oars were silver, which to the tune of flutes kept stroke.