First you take a drink, then the drink takes a drink, then the drink takes you.
Interpretation
The quote humorously highlights the progression of drinking alcohol from initial enjoyment to loss of control.
F. Scott Fitzgerald's quote illustrates the seductive nature of alcohol consumption, suggesting that it can start innocently and lead to a dangerous loss of autonomy. It captures the cycle of drinking where one initially takes pleasure in the act, only to find themselves ultimately controlled by the substance, personifying the drink as a dominant force over the individual.
In practice
In a humorous toast at a wedding.
Don't be so anxious about it,' she laughed. 'I'm not used to being loved. I wouldn't know what to do; I never got the trick of it.' She looked down at him, shy and fatigued. 'So here we are. I told you years ago that I had the makings of Cinderella.' He took her hand; she drew it back instinctively and then replaced it in his. 'Beg your pardon. Not even used to being touched. But I'm not afraid of you, if you stay quiet and don't move suddenly.
The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in mind at the same time and still retain the ability to function.
It was about then [1920] that I wrote a line which certain people will not let me forget: "She was a faded but still lovely woman of twenty-seven."
The words seemed to bite physically into Gatsby.
But you can love more than just one person, can't you?
A sudden gust of rain blew over them and then another - as if small liquid clouds were bouncing along the land. Lightning entered the sea far off and the air blew full of crackling thunder. The table cloths blew around the pillars. They blew and blew and blew. The flags twisted around the red chairs like live things, the banners were ragged, the corners of the table tore off through the burbling billowing ends of the cloths.
Only in comedy, by the way, does an obedient white girl from the suburbs count as diversity.
Calvin: Isn't it strange that evolution would give us a sense of humor? When you think about it, it's weird that we have a physiological response to absurdity. We laugh at nonsense. We like it. We think it's funny. Don't you think it's odd that we appreciate absurdity? Why would we develop that way? How does it benefit us? Hobbes: I suppose if we couldn't laugh at things that don't make sense, we couldn't react to a lot of life.
New York, like the Soviet Union, has this universal usefulness: It makes you glad you live elsewhere.
One should take good care not to grow too wise for so great a pleasure of life as laughter.
Humor can be dissected as a frog can, but the thing dies in the process and the innards are discouraging to any but the pure scientific mind.
He has personality problems beyond the dreams of analysts.
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