MARY: Well, I worry terribly about lung cancer. I also worry about shortness of breath and heart disease. But what really worries me right this minute is that I’m not going to find a cigarette.
Jean Kerr (1922–2003) American author and playwright [b. Bridget Jean Collins]
Play (1961), Mary, Mary, Act 3
(Source)
Quotations about:
smoking
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We sat in the plane while it slowly sank. Small boats assembled round it and presently we were told to jump into the sea and swim to a boat — which all the people in my part of the plane did. We later learned that all the nineteen passengers in the non-smoking compartment had been killed. When the plane had hit the water a hole had been made in the plane and the water had rushed in. I had told a friend at Oslo who was finding me a place that he must find me a place where I could smoke, remarking jocularly, ‘If I cannot smoke, I shall die’. Unexpectedly, this turned out to be true.
Bertrand Russell (1872–1970) English mathematician and philosopher
Autobiography, Vol. 3: 1944-1969, ch. 1 “Return to England” (1969)
(Source)
On a 1948 seaplane flight he took from Germany to Norway.
Of all the men embezzling from their employers with whom I have had contact, I can’t remember a dozen who smoked, drank or had any of the vices in which bonding companies are so interested.
Dashiell Hammett (1894–1961) American author, screenwriter, political activist
Interview with Helen Herbert Foster, “House Burglary Poor Trade,” Brooklyn Eagle Magazine (Oct 1929)
(Source)
I was walking through Central Park, and I saw an old man smoking. Nothing makes a smoker happier than to see an old person smoking. This guy was ancient, bent over a walker, puffing away. I’m like, “Dude, you’re my hero! Guy your age smoking, man, it’s great.” He goes, “What? I’m 28.”
Bill Hicks (1961–1994) American stand-up comedian, social critic, satirist, musician [William Melvin "Bill" Hicks]
Performance, Oxford Playhouse (11 Nov 1992)
See, I know you entertain some kind of eternal life fantasy because you’ve chosen not to smoke; let me be the first to pop that fucking bubble and send you hurtling back to reality — because you’re dead too. And you know what doctors say: “Shit, if only you’d smoked, we’d have the technology to help you. It’s you people dying from nothing who are screwed.” I got lots of stuff waiting for me: oxygen tent, iron lung, electronic voice box; it’s like going to Sharper Image when I die.
Bill Hicks (1961–1994) American stand-up comedian, social critic, satirist, musician [William Melvin "Bill" Hicks]
Relentless (1992)
But however low and poor the taking of Snuff argues a Man to be in his own Stock of Thought, or Means to employ his Brains and his Fingers, yet there is a poorer Creature in the World than He, and this is a Borrower of Snuff; a Fellow that keeps no Box of his own, but is always asking others for a Pinch.
Richard Steele (1672–1729) Anglo-Irish writer, journalist, playwright, politician
Essay (1709-06-28), The Tatler, No. 35
(Source)
I hadn’t smoked in ten or twelve years, but I wished then I’d had a cigarette that I could have taken a final drag on and flipped still burning into the river as I turned and walked away. Not smoking gains in the area of lung cancer, but it loses badly in the realm of dramatic gestures.
Robert B. Parker (1932–2010) American writer
The Judas Goat (1978)
