Smoking Quotes

A pipe is greater than a bong. Because when you're smoking a pipe at least it makes you look like you're thinking about something. ~ Demetri Martin

Not if we kill them - " I began, only to cut off when a sudden rushing noise filled the air. And Ray grabbed my gun and went ballistic on something on the wall over our heads.
"Die! Die! Die!" he screamed, emptying the clip and causing spent shells to rain down all around us. And okay, maybe I'd been wrong about the calm thing. Because he was just standing there, trembling and panting and staring
At the air-conditioning vent that he'd just shot the crap out of.
" - first." I took my smoking gun out of his limp fingers and patted him on the back. "See? That's the spirit. ~ Karen Chance

I actually don't think there is machismo in America, unless it's the cowboy type - the silent, smoking brooder. ~ Rosecrans Baldwin

I was very surprised when last I bought a packet of cigarettes and had to request a refund as I read a warning that told me "smoking can cause fatal lung cancer". ~ Robert Clark

I want to get to a point in my career where I can be a role model. A good one. I want to say, 'I got here without drugs, and I got here without drinking or smoking. If I can do it, you can do it. I have no doubt.' I really want kids to have a chance in life. ~ Chad Michael Murray

They threaten me with lung cancer, and still I smoke and smoke. If they'd only threaten me with hard work, I might stop. ~ Mignon McLaughlin

E-13 No wonder it makes a man blush. No wonder a real true preacher look upon his congregation and try to lead them before the throne of God, and visit their homes and find them smoking cigarettes, telling dirty jokes to each other, entertaining in the back yard with beer parties, walking around on the streets, their young women, and middle age, and so forth, and even grandmother with little shorts on. Mother out on the street with a baby on one arm, dressed sexy enough to attract the attention of any bootlegger that walked the street, and calling themselves Christians? It would make any true man of God blush to bring such a person in the Presence of God. Right. ( "A Blushing Prophet" Preached on Sunday evening, 25th November 1956 at the Branham Tabernacle in Jeffersonville, Indiana, U.S.A. - See Paragraph E-13 ). ~ William Marrion Branham

As a child I was a good boy. Even if I wasn't playing tennis I don't think I'd have done things like smoking or getting drunk. I'm lucky I never liked the taste of alcohol - I know, I'm Scottish so what's wrong with me? - but I never even liked the smell of the stuff. It's the same with smoking, it never appealed to me. I guess I missed out on my Kevin-The-Teenager phase. ~ Andy Murray

She crooned on until her cigarette was gone. The ash in the wind blew around us like hesitant snow. ~ Hannah Lillith Assadi

I think the reason kids get into drugs and smoking is they don't have anything to do. ~ Richard Thompson

Roger Daltrey had been expelled for smoking, but was still impudently showing up on campus to visit his various cronies. I'd first met him after he won a playground fight with a Chinese boy. I thought his tactics were dirty and when I shouted as much, he came over & forced me to retract. ~ Pete Townshend

When you view marketing from the vantage point of the guerrilla, you realize that it's your opportunity to help your prospects and customers succeed. They want to succeed at earning more money, building their company, losing weight, attracting a mate, becoming more fit, or quitting smoking. You can help them. You can show them how to achieve their goal. Marketing is not about you. It's about them. I hope you never forget that. ~ Jay Conrad Levinson

He sang the brightness of mornings and green rivers,
He sang of smoking water in the rose-colored daybreaks,
Of colors: cinnabar, carmine, burnt sienna, blue,
Of the delight of swimming in the sea under marble cliffs,
Of feasting on a terrace above the tumult of a fishing port,
Of tastes of wine, olive oil, almonds, mustard, salt.
Of the flight of the swallow, the falcon,
Of a dignified flock of pelicans above the bay,
Of the scent of an armful of lilacs in summer rain,
Of his having composed his words always against death
And of having made no rhyme in praise of nothingness. ~ Czeslaw Milosz

LUNG CANCER is linked to cigarette smoking - but L&M still plug their cigarettes as "just what the doctor ordered. ~ Tony Bacon

There can be no doubt that smoking nowadays is largely a miserable automatic business. People use tobacco without ever taking an intelligent interest in it. They do not experiment, compare, fit the tobacco to the occasion. A man should always be pleasantly conscious of the fact that he is smoking. ~ J.B. Priestley

Were you just smoking and chewing tobacco at the same time?"
"What are you my mom?"
"Do I look like I blow truckers for food stamps? ~ Ransom Riggs

I'd much rather sit next to a smoker in a restaurant than a nose-blower. ~ Lewis Grizzard

Highland werewolves had a reputation for doing atrocious and highly unwarranted *things*, like wearing smoking jackets to the dinner table. ~ Gail Carriger

Children whose developing lungs are particularly vulnerable suffer the most from air pollution. For children, breathing the air in cities with the worst pollution, such as Beijing, Calcutta, Mexico City, Shanghai, and Tehran, is equivalent to smoking two packs of cigarettes a day. ~ Lester R. Brown

When I stopped smoking cigars it was the biggest mistake I made in my life. So my resolution for 98 is Im going to start smoking cigars again. I gave them up about a year and a half ago, and I now realize that it may have been my one last fun, interesting thing to do. ~ David Letterman

I said to my friend, "Why do you smoke (cigarettes)?"
He replied, "Because I like to put myself on the line for the welfare and safety of others."
I astonishingly said, "Sorry, I didn't get your point."
He replied, "I want a cigarette-free world. Therefore, I am trying my best to end all the cigarettes from the world. ~ Saad Salman

But when that smoking chowder came in, the mystery was delightfully explained. Oh! sweet friends, hearken to me. It was made of small juicy clams, scarcely bigger than hazel nuts, mixed with pounded ship biscuits and salted pork cut up into little flakes! the whole enriched with butter, and plentifully seasoned with pepper and salt ... we dispatched it with great expedition. ~ Herman Melville

America must not ignore the threat gathering against us. Facing clear evidence of peril, we cannot wait for the final proof, the smoking gun that could come in the form of a mushroom cloud. ~ George W. Bush

I went back every evening, after work, for nearly a year. I learned the meaning of the cud of a leaf and the glisten of wet pebbles, and the special significance of curves and angles. A great deal of the writing was unwritten. Plot three dots on a graph and join them; you now have a curve with certain characteristics. Extend that curve while maintaining the characteristics, and it has meaning, up where no dots were plotted.

In just this way I learned to extend the curve of a grass-blade and of a protruding root, of the bent edges of wetness on a drying headstone. I quit smoking so I could sharpen my sense of smell, because the scent of earth after a rain has a clarifying effect on graveyard reading, as if the page were made whiter and the ink darker. I began to listen to the wind, and to the voices of birds and small animals, insects and people; because to the educated ear, every sound is filtered through the story written on graves, and becomes a part of it.

("The Graveyard Reader") ~ Theodore Sturgeon

Ods me I marle what pleasure or felicity they have in taking their roguish tobacco. It is good for nothing but to choke a man, and fill him full of smoke and embers. ~ Ben Jonson

Radiation, unlike smoking, drinking, and overeating, gives no pleasure, so the possible victims object. ~ Isaac Asimov

Love and intimacy are at the root of what makes us sick and what makes us well, what causes sadness and what brings happiness, what makes us suffer and what leads to healing. ... I am not aware of any other factor in medicine - not diet, not smoking, not exercise, not stress, not genetics, not drugs, not surgery - that has a greater impact on our quality of life, incidence of illness, and premature death from all causes. ~ Brian L. Weiss

I like smoking pot, but I'm not the kind of guy who smokes every day. ~ Etgar Keret

Playing whist by the cabin lamps when it is storming outside is pleasant; walking the quarterdeck in the moonlight is pleasant; smoking in the breezy foretop is pleasant when one is not afraid to go up there; but these are all feeble and commonplace compared with the joy of seeing people suffering the miseries of seasickness. ~ Mark Twain

Those who say that climate change doesn't exist are being understood as the flat-earthers that they are, as the people who deny the link between smoking and cancer, as the people who denied the link between HIV and AIDS. ~ Nicholas Stern

I'm going to stop smoking. I'm not such a good smoker, anyway. It's not in my bones. I'm gonna drop it. ~ Kristen Stewart

I'm dead annoyed that I'm finding it so difficult to stop. But I am getting there [on kicking smoking habit] ~ Kerry Katona

I used to give up writing like some people would give up smoking. ~ Octavia E. Butler

I don't inhale because it gives you cancer, but I look so incredibly handsome with a cigarette that I can't not hold one. ~ Woody Allen

Smoking is similar to hitting yourself over the head with
a hammer because, when you stop, you feel better ~ Allan Pease

Unfortunately, once I did learn to smoke, I couldn't stop. I escalated to two packs a day very quickly, and stayed that way for about ten years. When I decided to stop, I adopted the method that my father had used when he quit. He would carry a cigarette in his shirt pocket, and every time he felt like smoking, he would pull out the cigarette and confront it: "Who stronger? You? Me?" Always the answer was the same: "I stronger." Back the cigarette would go, until the next craving. It worked for him, and it worked for me. ~ Kirk Douglas

'Warning: Smoking may cause fetal injury or premature birth.' ... Found MY brand! Just don't get the ones that say 'lung cancer.' ~ Bill Hicks

I drink a great deal. I sleep a little, and I smoke cigar after cigar. That is why I am in two-hundred-percent form. ~ Winston Churchill

And stop smoking," I yelled after him. "You smell like cheap ham! ~ Timur Vermes

I've lost seven friends to smoking-related lung cancer. Each death was a long, agonizing experience. ~ Tom Brokaw

See - this is the problem. You don't even get where this is going. You can't just ask me to come in, or kiss me, or tell me you want to know what smoking pot feels like. When I'm close to you I feel crazy, okay? When you say my name I feel crazy. It's not ... the right thing for you. I don't think I can just ... be your friend. ~ Charlotte Stein

It was then - at that moment - that it hit Aeduan square in the chest. Iseult was here. Not hunting after the Truthwitch but here, standing tall in a land of smoking embers. Before he could speak, before he could ask her how she knew of the Red Sails, an inhuman shriek filled the air. Louder than the receding rain, louder than the cannons' roar.

It was the mountain bat, returned and plunging right for them.

Aeduan barely yanked Iseult sideways before its talons crashed into the stones. ~ Susan Dennard

Most of the players in the league use marijuana, and I have and do partake in smoking weed in the offseason sometimes. ~ Josh Howard

What deity in the realms of dementia, what rabid god decocted out of the smoking lobes of hydrophobia could have devised a keeping place for souls so poor as is this flesh. This mawky worm-bent tabernacle. ~ Cormac McCarthy

If being a grown-up really meant knowing better, why did his father go on smoking three packs of unfiltered cigarettes a day and snorting cocaine until his nose bled? If being a grown-up gave you some sort of special knowledge of the right things to do, how come his mother was sleeping with her masseuse, who had huge biceps and no brains? ~ Stephen King

If you take good care of any disease by eating well, sleeping well, being aware of your health, consciously wanting to be well, not smoking, et cetera, you are doing all the things you should be doing anyway, but somehow having a disease makes them easier to do. A human without a disease is like a ship without a rudder. ~ Mark Vonnegut

It used to be controversial whether smoking caused lung cancer, it used to be controversial whether HIV caused AIDS. Now, there are a few mavericks who deny those things. In the case of climate change, I think the debate is going the same way in that there is a strong consensus that it is a serious matter. ~ Martin Rees

The senior wizards of Unseen University stood and looked at the door.
There was no doubt that whoever had shut it wanted it to stay shut. Dozens of nails secured it to the door frame. Planks had been nailed right across. And finally it had, up until this morning, been hidden by a bookcase that had been put in front of it.
'And there's the sign, Ridcully,' said the Dean. 'You have read it, I assume. You know? The sign which says "Do not, under any circumstances, open this door"?'
'Of course I've read it,' said Ridcully. 'Why d'yer think I want it opened?'
'Er ... why?' said the Lecturer in Recent Runes.
'To see why they wanted it shut, of course.'
This exchange contains almost all you need to know about human civilization. At least, those bits of it that are now under the sea, fenced off or still smoking. ~ Terry Pratchett

In Hollywood you can't even smoke in a bar anymore and yet in the movies they're always showing people smoking. I don't get it. ~ Gerald McRaney

It's not the cigarette that kills you, it's the thought behind the cigarette ~ Raghu Venkatesh

Maybe Himalayan climbing is just a bad habit, like smoking, of which one says with cavalier abandon, must give this up some day, before it kills me. ~ Greg Child

Was that my voice? Really? I sounded like a five-year-old girl with a smoking problem. ~ Kiera Cass

We gotta stop smokin', stop, stop. I mean cigarette smoking. ~ Jimi Hendrix

I embraced her and she did not object at all. She let herself be kissed and kissed back, but coolly, without conviction, absently, as if she were smoking a cigarette. ~ Mihail Sebastian

It is better to not even try it than to endure the ramifications of either quitting smoking or dying. ~ Christy Turlington

When coming in to land at Santiago, Chile, I saw the area between the city and the Andes mountains was smoking with rubbish dumps. While exploring the dumps, I made friends with people living and working there and saw how they survived through recycling the rubbish. ~ Michael Foreman

I'm walking out in the rain again
Pains the same as it's always been
Lungs full of smoke from my cigarette
And my heart breaks with every step,
But only a little bit
Walking away from myself, not getting far
Wondering if it's you I see in each passing car ~ Eric Overby

Low income is related to poorer housing, poorer diet, fewer social amenities, worse working conditions. ( ... ) After adjustment for age, sex, race, smoking, alcohol consumption, sleep habits, leisure-time physical activity, chest pain, diabetes, or cancer, there was still an increase risk of 1.6 for those with inadequate incomes. ~ Michael Marmot

Habit has two parts, Toni [Packer] says. There is the habit itself (finger biting, smoking, drinking, whatever), and there is the observer who wants to stop, who is also a habit. And there is the conflict, the battle between the desire to indulge, which is an escape from what is, and the desire to stop, which is also a movement away from what is. ~ Joan Tollifson

Never reward writing with not writing. Rewarding writing by abandoning your schedule is like rewarding yourself for quitting smoking by having a cigarette. ~ Paul J. Silvia

They sat smoking the dead mans dope until the chopper came ~ Tim O'Brien

The fatuous idea that a person can be holy by himself denies God the pleasure of saving sinners. God must therefore first take the sledge-hammer of the Law in His fists and smash the beast of self-righteousness and its brood of self-confidence, self wisdom, and self-help. When the conscience has been thoroughly frightened by the Law it welcomes the Gospel of grace with its message of a Savior Who came-not to break the bruised reed nor to quench the smoking flax-but to preach glad tidings to the poor, to heal the broken-hearted, and to grant forgiveness of sins to all the captives. ~ Martin Luther

If you want to win this world to Christ, you are going to have to sit in the smoking section. That is where lost people are found, and if you make them put their cigarette out to hear the message they will be thinking about only one thing: "When can I get another cigarette? ~ Neil Cole

One day, putting my finger on a spot in the very middle of the then white heart of Africa, I declared that some day I would go there ... It is a fact that, about eighteen years afterwards, a wretched little stern-wheel steamboat I commanded lay moored to the bank of an African river.

Everything was dark under the stars. Every other white man on board was asleep. I was glad to be alone on deck, smoking the pipe of peace after an anxious day. The subdued thundering mutter of the Stanley Falls hung in the heavy night air of the last navigable reach of the Upper Congo ... Away in the middle of the stream, on a little island nestling all black in the foam of the broken water, a solitary little light glimmered feebly, and I said to myself with awe, 'This is the very spot of my boyish boast.'

A great melancholy descended on me. Yes, this was the very spot. But there was no shadowy friend to stand by my side in the night of the enormous wilderness, no great haunting memory, but only the ... distasteful knowledge of the vilest scramble for loot that ever disfigured the history of human conscience and geographical exploration. What an end to the idealised realities of a boy's daydreams!... Still, the fact remains that I have smoked a pipe of peace at midnight in the very heart of the African continent, and felt very lonely there. ~ Joseph Conrad

If another memo could possibly be sent out, this one specific to smokers: You cannot be both an unwashed bohemian and Cary Grant. ~ Emily St. John Mandel

We have not found any smoking guns. ~ Hans Blix

He rarely smoked, but once in a while, like now, when his world had been shaken, his woman nearly killed in front of his eyes, and he'd watched a house consume a man and spit him out, he figured a drag or two were appropriate. ~ Christine Feehan

Mark, believer, how sure and unchanging must be our acceptance, since it is in him! Take care that you never doubt your acceptance in Jesus. You cannot be accepted without Christ; but, when you have received his merit, you cannot be unaccepted. Notwithstanding all your doubts, and fears, and sins, Jehovah's gracious eye never looks upon you in anger; though he sees sin in you, in yourself, yet when he looks at you through Christ, he sees no sin. You are always accepted in Christ, are always blessed and dear to the Father's heart. Therefore lift up a song, and as you see the smoking incense of the merit of the Saviour coming up, this evening, before the sapphire throne, let the incense of your praise go up also. ~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon

I use Meaningful Beauty for my daily skincare regime. The system helps to restore, protect, revitalize and renew my skin. Using it daily along with avoiding the sun, not smoking, drinking a lot of water, and getting enough sleep is key to looking and feeling good at any age! ~ Cindy Crawford

The main reason to be opposed to political control of smoking is to keep power -even the smallest and silliest kind of power - out of the hands of ... members of a dangerous class -the class that knows what's good for us better than we do. ~ P. J. O'Rourke

It's a digital e-cigarette." "What's digital about it?" "You hold it in your fingers, like this." "I'm serious. Is it part of the Internet of things? Do they know when you're smoking it?" "I don't think so. I think they just mean it works on electricity. ~ Nell Zink

Jealousy. It burns so hot, so bright. It devours you until you're just a smoking ruin with nothing left inside. Nothing but ashes. ~ Jennifer Donnelly

There's a long tradition of teen comedies where the kids are getting drunk on beer and whatever else, so smoking a joint to me is no worse than having a beer. So, if someone has a problem with it, I'll just tell them to relax. ~ James Franco

Somewhere in Hayden's town house, her panties were still smoking. ~ Tessa Bailey

I opened the fire door
to four lips
none of which were mine
kissing
tightened my belt around my hips
where your hands were missing
and stepped out into the cold
collar high
under the slate grey sky
the air was smoking and the streets were dry
and I wasn't joking when I said
Good Bye
magazine quality men talking on the corner
French, no less much less of them then us
so why do I feel like something's been rearranged?
you know, taken out of context I must seem so strange
killed a cockroach so big
it left a puddle of pus on the wall
when you and I are lying in bed
you don't seem so tall
I'm singing now because my tear ducts are too tired
and my brain is disconnected but my heart is wired
I make such a good statistic
someone should study me now
somebody's got to be interested in how I feel
just 'cause I'm here
and I'm real
oh, how I miss
substituting the conclusion to confrontation with a kiss
and oh, how I miss
walking up to the edge and jumping in
like I could feel the future on your skin
I opened the fire door
to four lips
none of which were mine
kissing
I opened the fire door ~ Ani DiFranco

One of my colleagues in Duke, Ralph Keeney, noted that America's top killer isn't cancer or heart disease, nor is it smoking or obesity. It's our inability to make smart choices and overcome our own self-destructive behaviours. Ralph estimates that about half of us will make a lifestyle decision that will ultimately lead us to an early grave. And as if this were not bad enough, it seems that the rate at which we make these deadly decisions is increasing at an alarming pace.

I suspect that over the next few decades, real improvements in life expectancy and quality are less likely to be driven by medical technology than by improved decision making. Since focusing on long-term benefits is not our natural tendency, we need to more carefully examine the cases in which we repeatedly fail, and try to come up with some remedies for these situations. For an overweight movie loved, the key might be to enjoy watching a film while walking on the treadmill. The trick is to find the right behavioural antidote for each problem. By pairing something that we love with something that we dislike but that is good for us, we might be able to harness desire with outcome - and thus overcome some of the problems with self-control we face every day. ~ Dan Ariely

motivation for not eating meat and dairy is to maintain optimal health, not to rid myself of the obsession and compulsion that are the hallmark of addiction. If obsession and compulsion are the issue - smoking cigarettes, not being able to stop texting your toxic ex, self-harm - and you want to get past it, you need a Bright Line. If health is your objective, there is no evidence that perfect is better than "really good." Seriously. You can comply with a health goal 95 percent of the time, and it will benefit you as much as 100 percent perfection. ~ Susan Peirce Thompson

As adults we try to relax from the never-ending quest for reason and order by drinking a little whiskey or smoking whatever works for us, but the wisdom isn't in the whiskey or the smoke. The wisdom is in the moments when the madness slips away and we remember the basics. ~ Willie Nelson

I'm a big online everything. But for me, shopping online started with music, obviously, then it went onto books, meditation CDs, and I just recently bought these electronic cigarettes. My husband is trying to quit smoking, so I went online and I bought those BluCigs cigarettes in every flavor for him. ~ Fergie

Over time I tried everything from "the good girl" with my "perform-perfect-please" routine, to clove-smoking poet, angry activist, corporate climber, and out-of-control party girl. At first glance these may seem like reasonable, if not predictable, developmental stages, but they were more than that for me. All of my stages were different suits of armor that kept me from becoming too engaged and too vulnerable. Each strategy was built on the same premise: Keep everyone at a safe distance and always have an exit strategy. ~ Brene Brown

I even smoke in bed. Imagine smoking a cigar in bed, reading a book. Next to your bed, there's a cigar table with a special cigar ashtray, and your wife is reading a book on how to save the environment. ~ Raul Julia

One night, encouraged by the male partners, I puffed away on a cigar - just one of the guys. Except that the smoking nauseated me and I reeked of cigar smoke for days. If that was fitting in, I stuck out. ~ Sheryl Sandberg

I'm happy I found an apartment where outside the window is the wide expanse of a roof. That feeling of the breeze, the alchemy of the cigarettes and the alcohol, those together are like a wormhole furrowed through my brain. ~ Rob Hart

This blessed gift of smoking! ~ H.G.Wells

Ronan did not smoke; he preferred his habits with hangovers. ~ Maggie Stiefvater

A modern hospital is like Grand Central Station - all noise and hubbub, and is filled with smoking physicians, nurses, orderlies, patients and visitors. Soft drinks are sold on each floor and everybody guzzles these popular poisons. The stench of chemicals offends the nose, while tranquillizers substitute for quietness. ~ Herbert M. Shelton

So I'm smoking in the house, Mother said. And Bobbie's got a dog in her room. And your son Will's got an Injun in his. So there it is, Mother said. Like it or lump it! ~ Tom Spanbauer

I got this big fear of doing smoking jokes in my act and showing up five years from now goin' [puts mic to his neck and speaks as if he had a mechanical larynx] 'good evening everybody,
remember me, smoking's bad. [puts cigarette to neck and mimics smoking it] Eeww. You ever seen somebody do that? I've seen someone do that. Let me tell you something - if you're smoking out
of a hole in your neck [mimics it again] I'd think about quitting. And that's just me, ya know. ~ Bill Hicks

Stick me in a confessional and ask the question: Sir, if you had the authority, would you forbid smoking in America? You'd get a solemn and contrite, Yes. ~ William F. Buckley, Jr.

What made drugs perpetually so sexy was the opportunity to be other. Years after he'd figured out that pot only made him paranoid and sleepless, he still got hard-ons at the thought of smoking it. Still lusted for that jailbreak. ~ Jonathan Franzen

If I paid ten dollars for a cigar, first I'd make love to it, then I'd smoke it. ~ George Burns

My mom and dad died, but in their place I got a house of fog that's easy to hide my feelings in. (No smoking, please.) ~ Jarod Kintz

When the tip of his tongue touches the little hard nub of my clitoris I feel the same jolt in my sex as I do in my throat when I light up. There must be a connection. ~ Chloe Thurlow

I don't want to show kids that I am smoking. ~ Luc Besson

Sometime over the past generation we became less likely to object to something because it is immoral and more likely to object to something because it is unhealthy or unsafe. So smoking is now a worse evil than six of the Ten Commandments, and the word sinful is most commonly associated with chocolate. ~ David Brooks

Helmut, if I had known that one can make it to 90 on 60 cigarettes a day, I would have started smoking 30 years ago. [at Former German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt's 90th birthday] ~ Henry Kissinger

Weightless (in air), alcohol units 8 (but in-flight so canceled out by altitude), cigarettes 0 (desperate: no-smoking seat), calories 1 million (entirely made up of things would never have dreamt of putting in self's mouth were they not on in-flight tray), farts from traveling companion 38 (so far), variations in fart aroma 0. ~ Helen Fielding

Oh, Starbuck! it is a mild, mild wind, and a mild looking sky. On such a day - very much such a sweetness as this - I struck my first whale - a boy-harpooneer of eighteen! Forty - forty - forty years ago! - ago! Forty years of continual whaling! forty years of privation, and peril, and storm-time! forty years on the pitiless sea! for forty years has Ahab forsaken the peaceful land, for forty years to make war on the horrors of the deep! Aye and yes, Starbuck, out of those forty years I have not spent three ashore. When I think of this life I have led; the desolation of solitude it has been; the masoned, walled-town of a Captain's exclusiveness, which admits but small entrance to any sympathy from the green country without - oh, weariness! heaviness! Guinea-coast slavery of solitary command! - when I think of all this; only half-suspected, not so keenly known to me before - and how for forty years I have fed upon dry salted fare - fit emblem of the dry nourishment of my soul - when the poorest landsman has had fresh fruit to his daily hand, and broken the world's fresh bread to my mouldy crusts - away, whole oceans away, from that young girl-wife I wedded past fifty, and sailed for Cape Horn the next day, leaving but one dent in my marriage pillow - wife? wife? - rather a widow with her husband alive! Aye, I widowed that poor girl when I married her, Starbuck; and then, the madness, the frenzy, the boiling blood and the smoking brow, with which, for a thousand lowerings old Ah ~ Herman Melville

This world is half the devil's and my own, / Daft with the drug that's smoking in a girl / And curling round the bud that forks her eye. ~ Dylan Thomas

I wish people would call poisons poison. I don't mind people smoking marijuana, but they should admit it's a poison, and coffee's a poison, but the Americans lie so. ~ James Purdy