Camel Cigarettes Quotes

I tucked the Camel coupon from his cigarette pack into my pocket. A souvenir of the moment where he said maybe. I would hold on to his maybe for as long as it would take, even forever.

I wasn’t very far away from figuring out the secret to love, no more than two miles or so, when my camel broke down and I got shot at by a pack of cigarettes.

So, in short: My pal got leprosy from an armadillo, one of God’s great creatures, a natural beast that roams this adorable planet. He did not get leprosy from a Twinkie, a Camel cigarette, or a gallon of gas. He got it from an armadillo’s ass.

here I am way below in the Vulcan’s Forge itself looking up with sad eyes—Blanking my little Camel cigarette on a billion year old rock that rises behind my head to a height unbelievable—The little kitchen light on the cliff is only on the end of it, behind it the shoulders of the great sea hound cliff go rising up and back and sweeping inland higher and higher till I gasp to think “Looks like a reclining dog, big friggin shoulders on that sonofabitch

I just got another kitten, you know. Found another trademark. It's quite embarrassing I missed it." "Nine cats? They can send you to prison for that." He pushed his glasses back on his nose. "I'm calling him Murad, after the cigarettes." "Never heard of them." "They're an obsolete Turkish brand, popular in the 1910s and '20s. Murad means 'desire' in Arabic. The only brand that ever appears in a Cordova film is Murad. There's not one Marlboro, Camel, or Virginia Slim. It goes further. If the Murad cigarette is focused upon by the camera in any Cordova film. The very next person who appears on-screen has been devastatingly targeted. In other words, the gods will have drawn a great big X across his shoulder blades and taped an invisible sign there that reads FUCKED. His life will henceforth never be the same.

here I am way below in the Vulcan’s Forge itself looking up with sad eyes—Blanking my little Camel cigarette on a billion year old rock that rises behind my head to a height unbelievable—The little kitchen light on the cliff is only on the end of it, behind it the shoulders of the great sea hound cliff go rising up and back and sweeping inland higher and higher till I gasp to think “Looks like a reclining dog, big friggin shoulders on that sonofabitch”—Riseth and sweepeth and scareth men to death but what is death anyway in all this water and rock.

In 1946, a new advertising campaign appeared in magazines with a picture of a doctor in a lab coat holding a cigarette and the slogan, “More doctors smoke Camels than any other cigarette.” No, this wasn’t a spoof. Back then, doctors were not aware that smoking could cause cancer, heart disease and lung disease.

Others dangled cigarettes from their lips, and as they paged through the day’s Seattle Post-Intelligencer they could take satisfaction in a half-page ad that trumpeted the latest proof of the health benefits of smoking: “21 of 23 Giants World’s Champions Smoke Camels. It Takes Healthy Nerves to Win the World Series.

The waiting room, like most waiting rooms, was deserted and unremarkable. The benches were miserably uncomfortable, the ashtrays swollen with waterlogged cigarette butts, the air stale. On the walls were travel posters and most-wanted lists. The only other people there were an old man wearing a camel-color sweater and a mother with her four-year-old son. The old man sat glued in position, poring through a literary magazine. He turned the pages as slowly as if he were peeling away adhesive tape. Fifteen minutes from one page to the next. The mother and child looked like a couple whose marriage was on the rocks.

Amsterdam, I dreamed about my mother for the first time in years. I’d been shut up in my hotel for more than a week, afraid to telephone anybody or go out; and my heart scrambled and floundered at even the most innocent noises: elevator bell, rattle of the minibar cart, even church clocks tolling the hour, de Westertoren, Krijtberg, a dark edge to the clangor, an inwrought fairy-tale sense of doom. By day I sat on the foot of the bed straining to puzzle out the Dutch-language news on television (which was hopeless, since I knew not a word of Dutch) and when I gave up, I sat by the window staring out at the canal with my camel’s-hair coat thrown over my clothes—for I’d left New York in a hurry and the things I’d brought weren’t warm enough, even indoors. Outside, all was activity and cheer. It was Christmas, lights twinkling on the canal bridges at night; red-cheeked dames en heren, scarves flying in the icy wind, clattered down the cobblestones with Christmas trees lashed to the backs of their bicycles. In the afternoons, an amateur band played Christmas carols that hung tinny and fragile in the winter air. Chaotic room-service trays; too many cigarettes; lukewarm vodka from duty free. During those restless, shut-up days, I got to know every inch of the room as a prisoner comes to know his cell. It was my first time in Amsterdam; I’d seen almost nothing

I don’t know how many years had passed that I hadn’t thought about her. It was a few months after the death of my mother that her name came to me again. I was cleaning out her closet and dresser to donate some of her clothes to the Church. They always had clothes drives to give to some of the poorer people in the area. Better for someone else to have them than just hanging in a closet or in a drawer. At the bottom of one of her drawers, my eyes saw an envelope with my name on. Immediately, I recognized the handwriting on the envelope and for the first time in a long time, I could feel the tears flowing out of my eyes. This wasn’t no single tear drop cry. This was the big, fat, messy tears that come from memories flashing through your mind. Tiffany did write something to me and it was kept from me. I almost unintentionally crumpled the letter in my hand as the combination of hurt and rage took over me for a few moments. I went back to my bedroom and sat down on the edge of my bed. The letter had her North Carolina address on it. That letter would have been a way for us to stay in touch. For almost eight years, I had believed that she didn’t want to stay in contact with me. In that moment, I realized that the hurt I felt for being disregarded was unfounded and she was the one who had the right to feel forgotten. She must have believed that she meant little to me, like I thought she did of me. It’s weird how quickly your perspective can change when given new information. I held that letter in my shaking hands for a few minutes. I didn’t know what to do. Opening it seemed pointless to me. All it would do was rekindle feelings that I once had and couldn’t do anything about. After all those years, I couldn’t try and reconnect to her life. We both moved past each other and it wouldn’t be fair to her to come back. It wouldn’t make her feel good about herself to know that my parents hid that letter from me, like she was some horrible person that I needed to avoid. She may not even live at that address anymore. She undoubtedly moved away for college. I wasn’t in love with her anymore and I don’t know if she ever loved me, but if she did, I’m sure she didn’t anymore. I did the only thing that I felt was right. I went outside and lit a cigarette in the backyard. I took a deep inhale from my Camel full flavored filtered cigarette. I hadn’t converted to menthols, yet. I re-lit my lighter and put a corner of the letter into the flame until I was certain that it had caught fire. I held it in my hand watching the white of the envelope turn black under the blue and yellow flame. Once the envelope was about three quarters burned, I let it fall out of my hand and watched it float for a few moments before it hit the bottom concrete step where it continued to burn. It had all turned black and the carbonized paper started to break away from each other as I stamped out the embers with my sneaker. The wind carried away the pieces of carbon and the memory of her floated away from me. Watching those small burned pieces of paper scatter across my backyard made me realize that my childhood was over. I had nothing to show for it. All I had was myself. I didn’t even know why I was still living in my parent’s house after my mother died. There was nothing there for me. Life would only begin for me once I found something that mattered to me. Unfortunately for me, the only thing that mattered to me was words.

The company claimed to have interviewed some 2,210 “experts,” of whom it said 1,184 were exclusive Luckies smokers. Of these, federal investigators tracked down 440 and discovered that more than 100 denied smoking Luckies exclusively, 50 did not smoke at all, and some smoked other brands exclusively, some did not recall having ever been interviewed on the subject by American Tobacco, and some had no connection with the tobacco industry. Such details aside, the campaign and the company’s new media-buying strategy were hugely successful, and by 1941 Lucky Strike would narrowly reclaim the market share lead from Camel and widen it dramatically in ensuing years. “He was a dictator, of course,” Pat Weaver recalled of the newly triumphant George Hill of this period, but now he invited the input of others. “His strength,” said Weaver, “was his tremendous conviction about the importance of the business he was in. His weakness was tunnel vision—he was really obsessed with Lucky Strike, I’m afraid.” But not to such a degree that he failed to recognize the danger of his company’s dependence on a single brand amid the vicissitudes of a fickle marketplace. “One day, I came into his office,” Weaver remembered, “and I said, ‘Mr. Hill, I have a good idea.’ He said, ‘Great, what is it?’—he loved ideas.” Weaver’s was a not entirely harebrained scheme to get around the federal excise tax of six cents per pack of twenty cigarettes by putting out a brand in which each smoke was twice the normal length and the package would include a razor blade for slicing each one in two, thereby saving the customer the equivalent of three cents a pack. Hill listened and nodded,

Let me give you an example: Dr. Royal Lee, the founder of Standard Process, the whole food supplement company we use in our clinic, tried to sell the product Zypan™ in 1937 - as a digestive aid. The FDA forbade it, even though Zypan is composed of the best digestive enzymes available. Camel Cigarettes, in 1937 (the same year) was allowed to sell their cigarettes - as a digestive aid. Can you believe that? That is because our health care system is just a business. The pharmaceutical companies knew that if you started smoking cigarettes they would have a patient in 20 years or so - it was a long term investment. But if you healed your digestion, they knew they would have less patients for all the reasons we go to a doctor.

You could walk from North Tai Ping Zhuang over to the North Entrance of He Ping Street, and you may as well have smoked your way through two packs of Camels. You smoked the taxi driver’s smoke as he spun sharply around a corner, you smoked the local party leader’s smoke as he tried to establish order at a meeting, you smoked your boyfriend’s smoke whether he loved you or not. Chinese-made cigarettes, foreign imports, dodgy rip-offs. The city was in a permanent fog.

Two old ladies are standing at a bus station and they are both smoking. Suddenly, it starts to pour. One of the women takes a condom out of her purse, cuts the end off, and slips it over her cigarette. “What are you doing?” the other woman inquires. “I don’t like it when my cigarette gets wet so I cover it with a condom.” “That’s quite a handy device. Where did you get it?” “At the pharmacy, of course.” The next day, her friend goes to the pharmacy and asks the clerk for a condom. “What size?” asks the clerk. “I don’t know. . . one that will fit a Camel.

Sometimes we’d go into the local saloons and challenge the house. When that didn’t work, we’d challenge each other. Those saloons were friendly places, as long as we stayed away from guys who were on a bender and those involved in poker games. The men, while drinking, sang, and Johnny and I joined in whenever we could. I still remember the words from a song we were all fond of singing—in our flat, off-key voices. Judging from the words, I’d say it was composed before its time. “If I was a millionaire and had a lot of coin, I would plant a row of coke plantations, and grow Heroyn, I would have Camel cigarettes growin’ on my trees, I’d build a castle of morphine and live there at my ease. I would have forty thousand hop layouts, each one inlaid with pearls. I’d invite each old time fighter to bring along his girl. And everyone who had a habit, I’d have them leaping like a rabbit, Down at the fighters’ jubilee! Down at the fighters’ jubilee! Down on the Isle of H. M. and C. H. stands for heroyn, M. stands for morph, C. for cokoloro—to blow your head off. Autos and airships and big sirloin steaks, Each old time fighter would own his own lake. We’ll build castles in the air, And all feel like millionaires, Down at the fighters’ jubilee!” We had laughs singing that song in unison. In later years, however, just thinking about it filled me with a tremendous sadness, since the tragedy of hard drugs eventually destroyed my younger brother Johnny.

His unfiltered Camel crackled like a miniature campfire. He didn’t puff the cigarette so much as exorcise a demon from it. Five inhales and the thing was spent. Then he cracked open the window and in the rearview I saw it fly like a comet.

I'm a bartender. How can I stop when surrounded by smoke and smokers at every turn?" I recall attempts where I hoped smoking friends would be supportive in not smoking around me, and not leave their packs lying around to tempt me. While most tried, it usually wasn't long before they forgot. I recall thinking them insensitive and uncaring. I recall grinding disappointment and intense brain chatter, that more than once seized upon frustrated support expectations as this addict's excuse for relapse. Instead of expecting them to change their world for me, the smart move would have been for me to want to extinguish my brain's subconscious feeding cues related to being around them and their addiction. The smart move would have been to take back my world, or as much of it as I wanted. As I sit here typing in this room, around me are a number of packs of cigarettes: Camel, Salem, Marlboro Lights and Virginia Slims. I use them during presentations and have had cigarettes within arms reach for years. Don't misconstrue this. It is not a smart move for someone struggling in early recovery to keep cigarettes on hand. But if a family member or best friend smokes or uses tobacco, or our place of employment sells tobacco or allows smoking around us, we have no choice but to work toward extinguishing tobacco product, smoke and smoker cues almost immediately. And we can do it! Millions of comfortable ex-users handle and sell tobacco products as part of their job. You may find this difficult to believe, but I've never craved or wanted to smoke any of the cigarettes that surround me, even when holding packs or handling individual cigarettes during presentations. Worldwide, millions of ex-smokers successfully navigated recovery while working in smoke filled nightclubs, restaurants, bowling alleys, casinos, convenience stores and other businesses historically linked to smoking. And millions broke free while their spouse, partner or best friend smoked like a chimney. Instead of fighting or hiding from the world, take it back. Why allow our circumstances to wear us down? Small steps, just one moment at a time, embrace challenge. Extinguish use cues and claim your prize once you do, another slice of a nicotine-free life. Recovery is about taking back life. Why fear it? Instead, savor and relish reclaiming it. Maybe I'll have a crave tomorrow. But it's been so many years (since 2001) that I'm not sure I'd recognize it. Why fear our circumstances when we can embrace them? They cannot

Others dangled cigarettes from their lips, and as they paged through the day’s Seattle Post-Intelligencer they could take satisfaction in a half-page ad that trumpeted the latest proof of the health benefits of smoking: “21 of 23 Giants World Champions Smoke Camels. It Takes Healthy Nerves to Win the World Series.

Cutangle lit his third rollup from the stub of the second. This last cigarette owed a lot to the creative powers of nervous energy, and looked like a camel with the legs cut off.

And here might be the moment to squirt one perfect tear, all bittersweet and shimmering with dreamy resignation. Except that as the serpent once sunned its coils in Eden, patiently awaiting the opportunity to let the biggest cat in eternity out of the sturdiest bag, so a pack of Camel cigarettes stands in these wings, waiting to come on and do its most unexpected stuff.

My dad loved to drive, but more than that he hated to stop. This made him at best a questionable tour guide. The hours would drone on as we crisscrossed the country in the dank and ever more malodorous car. The four of us would grow restless and cramped in the backseat, perennially arguing with each other and inventing games to fight off the monotony. My dad would press forward relentlessly, trying to make six hundred miles a day, every now and then invoking the three shut-ups rule and lashing out into the noise and cramped restlessness of the backseat. In the front seat my mom would patiently act as his navigator, reading the map, periodically making Wonder Bread and lunchmeat sandwiches, and now and then twisting the dial on the radio to try to find some music and local news. I finally figured it out. My dad’s mind had been shaped by flying a B-29 bomber on long-range missions. As he drove, my mother became the navigator, and we were the crew, although it wasn’t clear whom he wanted to bomb. You could see the business in his eyes. He smoked constantly, the strong odors of his Camel or self-rolled cigarettes or of his weird metal-stemmed pipe piercing our nostrils and often bringing the rear windows down, even in the most brutal heat of the day. His eyes were intent, never leaving the road in front of us. But every now and then an alert for a coming historical marker would pop up along the side of the road, causing my dad to suddenly snap out of his trance and remember that this was not actually his air crew sitting in the backseat. A teachable moment had arrived, giving him a quick opportunity to exercise his parenting skills and a chance to shower us with some much-needed cultural immersion. “Okay, guys, historical marker coming up on the right. I’m going to slow down to forty-five miles an hour. There it is, here it comes! Jim, read the SIGN!” I

Have you ever walked into a church and poured a whole can of Diet Coke into the wine cup? How about whipping out a cigarette and smoking a Camel Non-Filtered right in the middle of the sermon? Perhaps you were the one who stuffed your face with McDonald’s every Sunday for a year during the service. This is insane behavior, isn’t it? Then why do you treat your body any differently than you treat your faith? Everything you are is encapsulated in your body.

The next afternoon we got a studio car to take us up to the pool at the inn. We were like kids—Duke was 41, Pete 36, and I was 27. We splashed one another, pushed one another under water, and shoved one another off the diving board. We had a hell of a time, laughing and talking about all the crises during the shooting. In those days, everybody smoked. You were either odd or in training, if you didn’t. But Duke! He lit one Camel off another all day long. We used to raise hell with him about it. “You’re not patting me down already? It’s only ten-thirty in the morning, and you’re already out?” He’d start toward, you patting the pockets on his vest or pants with a big grin on his face, trying to make you think he’d forgotten his. “Hell-ooo, Ol’ Dobe,” he’d say. Then he’d start searching you like a detective looking for dope in one of today’s TV shows. When I’d give him one, he’d say, “Jesus, how can you smoke these (meaning the brand) goddamn things? I’ll give you a pack tomorrow.” He never did so, but I found a remedy for that problem. One day I was passing his dressing room—the kind that is on coasters and is on the sound stage. The door was open, and I looked in. He wasn’t there, but his cigarettes were! Right there on his dressing room table were five cartons of Camels. He’d posed for an ad for them. I just took a carton to my own dressing room, and then, when he wanted a cigarette, I gave him one of his own! He finally said, “Ya’ finally learned to smoke the best cigarette!” The reason I bring all this up is because I thought I was some sort of champ at staying underwater a long time. I figured that because of the way Duke smoked and the fact that his only exercise was playing cards, I could easily beat him swimming underwater. So, as we were splashing around, I said to Duke, “I’ll bet I can swim underwater in this pool longer than you can.” “What? Hah—hah—hah. You have ta’ be kiddin,’ friend! You are on!" I really did think I could beat him; after all, I was younger, and I exercised a lot more than he did. I played golf and tennis, and rode horseback. It was a very big pool. My turn first. I swam up and back twice and then another half. I ran out of air and surfaced. “Not too bad, for a skinny guy,” he commented and jumped in. He then went almost twice as far! I couldn’t believe it! He didn’t razz me or brag—he just knew what he could do. It never occurred to me that his lung capacity was over twice mine and that he’d been diving for abalone off Catalina Island for years.