12 Authors We Want To Booze It Up With On International Beer Day

Happy International Beer Day! To commemorate the world’s love of pilsner, lager, stout, and more, we picked these quotes about beer from some of our favorite authors, and our preferred pint to share with them. Read on for examples of how beer serves as inspiration and plays into these great works of literature.

1. A Peacemaker with Terry Southern

Lushtastic / Via lushtastic.com

“'Three beers,' said Big Lawrence and he slapped two quarters onto the bar.

'You boys ain’t old enough to drink beer,' said the bartender.

'Okay,' said Lawrence, 'give us two Cokes, and give him a beer — he’s old enough.'”

2. A Can of Genesee with Francine Prose

Shane Bertou / Via shanebertou.wordpress.com

"When Eugene’s paintings are selling, he drinks Mexican beer. When they aren’t, it’s Genesee. Everyone knows this, and, insofar as you can kid Eugene, we kid him about it. Now Beth and I get our choice of Tecate or Sol."

3. An Abita (Purple Haze, of course) with Walker Percy

The Full Pint / Via thefullpint.com

“I like to eat crawfish and drink beer. That's despair?”

4. A Pint of Beamish with Edna O'Brien

Campus Talk / Via mycampustalk.com

“I’ll tell you a joke,’ said Long John Salmon, erupting out of his silence.

‘Good,’ said Brogan, as he sipped from his whiskey glass and his stout glass alternately. It was the only way to drink enjoyably.”

5. A Carta Blanca with Malcolm Lowry

ONE / Via onedigital.mx

“Far above him a few white clouds were racing windily after a pale gibbous moon. Drink all morning, they said to him, drink all day. This is life!”

6. A Brooklyn Lager with Amanda Filipacchi

Brewbound / Via brewbound.com

“Okay, I’m flattered, I appreciate your attempt at making me feel better after the fiasco with the pita rolls, but please ring up this beer … I need it more than flattery.”

7. A Pabst Blue Ribbon with Stanley Elkin

NY Daily News / Via nydailynews.com

“Feldman, who had not often drunk beer even before his illness, suddenly felt a desire to have some. “I’ll have some ‘Pabst Blue Ribbon.’”

8. Homebrewing with Lawrence Durrell

Food52 / Via food52.com

“'From now on I’m going to brew all my own drinks, thanks to Toby. Here. Look at this,’ He indicated a grubby bottle full of some fiery-looking liquid. It’s home-made beer’ he said, ‘and jolly good too. I made three, but the other two exploded. I’m going to call it Plaza beer.'”

9. An Ode to Mercy with Pat Conroy

The Atlanta Beer Snob / Via atlantabeersnob.wordpress.com

“I lit a cigarette and began puffing on it as I drank one quick beer after another. I was neither a drinker nor a smoker nor a fighter, but I had planned to be all three on this day.”

10. A Yuengling with Michael Chabon

Boston.com / Via boston.com

“'Let’s drink something cool and refreshing,'” Phlox said, bobbing her head, widening then narrowing her eyes like some lustful and wily biblical queen.

'Beer,' said Arthur and I.”

11. A Delirium with Billy Lee Brammer

Pompe-a-biere / Via pompe-a-biere.com

"Seldom in modern fiction have so many people remained drunk for so long as in 'The Gay Place.'" —The New York Times Book Review, 1961

12. A Boddington's with Irwin Shaw

Food for Pleasure / Via kenal543.blogspot.com

“Michael was thinking of beer. He walked deliberately behind Ackerman, in the dusty heat, thinking of beer in glasses, beer in schooners, beer in bottles, kegs, pewter mugs, tin cans, crystal goblets. He thought of ale, porter, stout, then returned to thinking of beer. He thought of the places he had drunk beer in his time. The round bar on Sixth Avenue where the Regular Army Colonels in mufti used to stop off on the way uptown from Governor’s Island, where they served beer in glasses that tapered down to narrow points at the bottom and where the bartender always iced the glass before drawing the foaming stuff out of the polished spigots. The fancy restaurant in Hollywood with prints of the French Impressionists behind the bar, where they served it in frosted mugs and charged seventy-five cents a bottle. His own living room, late at night, reading the next morning’s paper in the quiet pool of light from the lamp, as he stretched, in slippers, in the soft corduroy chair before going to bed. At baseball games at the Polo Grounds in the warm, hazy summer afternoons, where they poured the beer into paper cups so that “you couldn’t throw the bottles at the umpires.”

We hope these authors inspired you to find the time today to share in the festivities. Whether you are among friends in your favorite bar, or at home with a good brew and book, there really is no wrong way to celebrate International Beer Day—as long as you do it responsibly. Happy drinking!