Smoking Funny Quotes

What is your advice to young writers?” “Drink, fuck and smoke plenty of cigarettes.

Be a Samurai. Because you just never know what's behind the freaking sky.

If I should have a daughter…“Instead of “Mom”, she’s gonna call me “Point B.” Because that way, she knows that no matter what happens, at least she can always find her way to me. And I’m going to paint the solar system on the back of her hands so that she has to learn the entire universe before she can say “Oh, I know that like the back of my hand.” She’s gonna learn that this life will hit you, hard, in the face, wait for you to get back up so it can kick you in the stomach. But getting the wind knocked out of you is the only way to remind your lungs how much they like the taste of air. There is hurt, here, that cannot be fixed by band-aids or poetry, so the first time she realizes that Wonder-woman isn’t coming, I’ll make sure she knows she doesn’t have to wear the cape all by herself. Because no matter how wide you stretch your fingers, your hands will always be too small to catch all the pain you want to heal. Believe me, I’ve tried. And “Baby,” I’ll tell her “don’t keep your nose up in the air like that, I know that trick, you’re just smelling for smoke so you can follow the trail back to a burning house so you can find the boy who lost everything in the fire to see if you can save him. Or else, find the boy who lit the fire in the first place to see if you can change him.” But I know that she will anyway, so instead I’ll always keep an extra supply of chocolate and rain boats nearby, ‘cause there is no heartbreak that chocolate can’t fix. Okay, there’s a few heartbreaks chocolate can’t fix. But that’s what the rain boots are for, because rain will wash away everything if you let it. I want her to see the world through the underside of a glass bottom boat, to look through a magnifying glass at the galaxies that exist on the pin point of a human mind. Because that’s how my mom taught me. That there’ll be days like this, “There’ll be days like this my momma said” when you open your hands to catch and wind up with only blisters and bruises. When you step out of the phone booth and try to fly and the very people you wanna save are the ones standing on your cape. When your boots will fill with rain and you’ll be up to your knees in disappointment and those are the very days you have all the more reason to say “thank you,” ‘cause there is nothing more beautiful than the way the ocean refuses to stop kissing the shoreline no matter how many times it’s sent away. You will put the “wind” in win some lose some, you will put the “star” in starting over and over, and no matter how many land mines erupt in a minute be sure your mind lands on the beauty of this funny place called life. And yes, on a scale from one to over-trusting I am pretty damn naive but I want her to know that this world is made out of sugar. It can crumble so easily but don’t be afraid to stick your tongue out and taste it. “Baby,” I’ll tell her “remember your mama is a worrier but your papa is a warrior and you are the girl with small hands and big eyes who never stops asking for more.” Remember that good things come in threes and so do bad things and always apologize when you’ve done something wrong but don’t you ever apologize for the way your eyes refuse to stop shining. Your voice is small but don’t ever stop singing and when they finally hand you heartbreak, slip hatred and war under your doorstep and hand you hand-outs on street corners of cynicism and defeat, you tell them that they really ought to meet your mother.

It was funny, she thought, but her smile turned wistful because she had nobody to tell.

I stared at the phone in disbelief, then ripped a clean sheet of paper from my notebook. I scribbled ' Jerk ' on the first line. On the line beneath it I added, ' Smokes cigars. Will die of lung cancer. Hopefully soon.

My tiny scary friend is coming

The trouble is the kind of guy I want to go out with doesn't even exist... Like a rugged, chain-smoking, intellectual, adventurer guy who's really serious, but also really funny and mean...

Maybe they're not surrendering," said the smirking soldier in false consolation. "Maybe they all just really had to piss.

The trouble with aggressive nonsmokers is that they feel they are doing you a favor by not allowing you to smoke. They seem to think that one day you'll look back and thank them for those precious fifteen seconds they just added to your life. What they don't understand is that those are just fifteen more seconds you can spend hating their guts and plotting revenge.

Luckily the smoke raised the alarm and everyone fled we don’t think any innocent people died. Although when the cavern collapsed two guards were crushed.” “Yeah I would have been disappointed too.” Jason grinned, his grin was soon wiped off his face when he noticed Dexter’s face change and disapproval of his joke.

Put that in your mustache and smoke it.

The signs of excessive indulgence in this destructive pastime are easily detectable. They are these: A disposition to eat, to drink, to smoke, to meet together convivially, to laugh, to joke, and tell indelicate stories— and mainly, a yearning to paint pictures.

A cold blast hit him and he laughed at the sting as he stepped outside, surveyed the night sky, and drank deeply. Such a good liar he was. Such a good one. Everyone thought he was fine because he'd camo'd his little problems. He wore a Sox hat to hide the eye twitch. Set his wristwatch to go off every half hour to beat back the dream. Ate though he wasn't angry. Laughed though he found nothing funny. And he'd always smoked like a chimney.

...she's leaving now. ... Janis attacks the back door of the school gym and finds herself in a heavy cloud of smoke. She realizes she's found the Goths' hangout. Who knew? "Oof," someone says. She keeps walking, muttering, "sorry" to whomever it was she hit with the flying door. *** Cabel: ... That was the Goth stage where I decided I'd never get the girl of my dreams because of my scars. Not to mention the hairstyle. (pause) But then she slammed a door handle into my gut. And, when a girl does that to a boy, it means she likes him.

I jump up: it would be much better if I could only stop thinking. Thoughts are the dullest things. Duller than flesh. They stretch out and there's no end to them and they leave a funny taste in the mouth. Then there are words, inside the thoughts, unfinished words, a sketchy sentence which constantly returns: "I have to fi. . . I ex. . . Dead . . . M. de Roll is dead . . . I am not ... I ex. . ." It goes, it goes . . . and there's no end to it. It's worse than the rest because I feel responsible and have complicity in it. For example, this sort of painful rumination: I exist, I am the one who keeps it up. I. The body lives by itself once it has begun. But though I am the one who continues it, unrolls it. I exist. How serpentine is this feeling of existing, I unwind it, slowly. ... If I could keep myself from thinking! I try, and succeed: my head seems to fill with smoke . . . and then it starts again: "Smoke . . . not to think . . . don't want to think ... I think I don't want to think. I mustn't think that I don't want to think. Because that's still a thought." Will there never be an end to it? My thought is me: that's why I can't stop. I exist because I think . . . and I can't stop myself from thinking. At this very moment, it's frightful, if I exist, it is because I am horrified at existing. I am the one who pulls myself from the nothingness to which I aspire: the hatred, the disgust of existing, there are as many ways to make myself exist, to thrust myself into existence. Thoughts are born at the back of me, like sudden giddiness, I feel them being born behind my head ... if I yield, they're going to come round in front of me, between my eyes, and I always yield, the thought grows and grows and there it is, immense, filling me completely and renewing my existence.

It's funny how people think that they have "a right to life". Now isn't that the biggest load you ever heard? You don't have a right to shit your pants on Sunday. Let's take it back to the jungle. Where the fuck are your rights there? No layers in the jungle. Civilization has allowed the weak to survive. You can sit back and be an overweight, apathetic piece of shit, smoke your dope and still survive because you have a right to life.

Sicarius, are you ready for a hike?” She faced him only to find he had armed himself—more so than usual. In addition to his daggers and throwing knives, he held two rifles, two pistols, two cargo belts laden with ammo pouches, and a bag of his smoke grenades. “Or a single-handed all-out assault on the forest?

Personally, if I were trying to discourage people from smoking, my sign would be a little different. In fact, I might even go too far in the opposite direction. My sign would say something like, "Smoke if you wish. But if you do, be prepared for the following series of events: First, we will confiscate your cigarette and extinguish it somewhere on the surface of your skin. We will then run you nicotine-stained fingers through a paper shredder and throw them into the street, where wild dogs will swallow them and then regurgitate them into the sewers, so that infected rats can further soil them before they're flushed out to sea with the rest of the city's filth. After such time, we will sysematically seek out your friends and loved one and destroy their lives." Wouldn't you like to see a sign like that?

From Jess: FANG. I've commented your blog with my questions for THREE YEARS. You answer other people's STUPID questions but not MINE. YOU REALLY ASKED FOR IT, BUDDY. I'm just gonna comment with this until you answer at least one of my questions. DO YOU HAVE A JAMAICAN ACCENT? No, Mon DO YOU MOLT? Gross. WHAT'S YOUR STAR SIGN? Dont know. "Angel what's my star sign?" She says Scorpio. HAVE YOU TOLD JEB I LOVE HIM YET? No. DOES NOT HAVING A POWER MAKE YOU ANGRY? Well, that's not really true... DO YOU KNOW HOW TO DO THE SOULJA BOY? Can you see me doing the Soulja Boy? DOES IGGY KNOW HOW TO DO THE SOULJA BOY? Gazzy does. DO YOU USE HAIR PRODUCTS? No. Again,no. DO YOU USE PRODUCTS ON YOUR FEATHERS? I don't know that they make bird kid feather products yet. WHAT'S YOU FAVORITE MOVIE? There are a bunch WHAT'S YOUR FAVORITE SONG? I don't have favorites. They're too polarizing. WHAT'S YOUR FAVORITE SMELL? Max, when she showers. DO THESE QUESTIONS MAKE YOU ANGRY? Not really. IF I CAME UP TO YOU IN A STREET AND HUGGED YOU, WOULD YOU KILL ME? You might get kicked. But I'm used to people wanting me dead, so. DO YOU SECRETLY WANT TO BE HUGGED? Doesn't everybody? ARE YOU GOING EMO 'CAUSE ANGEL IS STEALING EVERYONE'S POWERS (INCLUDING YOURS)? Not the emo thing again. WHAT'S YOUR FAVORITE FOOD? Anything hot and delicious and brought to me by Iggy. WHAT DID YOU HAVE FOR BREAKFAST THIS MORNING? Three eggs, over easy. Bacon. More Bacon. Toast. DID YOU EVEN HAVE BREAKFAST THIS MORNING? See above. DID YOU DIE INSIDE WHEN MAX CHOSE ARI OVER YOU? Dudes don't die inside. DO YOU LIKE MAX? Duh. DO YOU LIKE ME? I think you're funny. DOES IGGY LIKE ME? Sure DO YOU WRITE DEPRESSING POETRY? No. IS IT ABOUT MAX? Ahh. No. IS IT ABOUT ARI? Why do you assume I write depressing poetry? IS IT ABOUT JEB? Ahh. ARE YOU GOING TO BLOCK THIS COMMENT? Clearly, no. WHAT ARE YOU WEARING? A Dirty Projectors T-shirt. Jeans. DO YOU WEAR BOXERS OR BRIEFS? No freaking comment. DO YOU FIND THIS COMMENT PERSONAL? Could I not find that comment personal? DO YOU WEAR SUNGLASSES? Yes, cheap ones. DO YOU WEAR YOUR SUNGLASSES AT NIGHT? That would make it hard to see. DO YOU SMOKE APPLES, LIKE US? Huh? DO YOU PREFER BLONDES OR BRUNETTES? Whatever. DO YOU LIKE VAMPIRES OR WEREWOLVES? Fanged creatures rock. ARE YOU GAY AND JUST PRETENDING TO BE STRAIGHT BY KISSING LISSA? Uhh... WERE YOU EXPERIMENING WITH YOUR SEXUALITY? Uhh... WOULD YOU TELL US IF YOU WERE GAY? Yes. DO YOU SECRETLY LIKE IT WHEN PEOPLE CALL YOU EMO? No. ARE YOU EMO? Whatever. DO YOU LIKE EGGS? Yes. I had them for breakfast. DO YOU LIKE EATING THINGS? I love eating. I list it as a hobby. DO YOU SECRETLY THINK YOU'RE THE SEXIEST PERSON IN THE WHOLE WORLD? Do you secretly think I'm the sexiest person in the whole world? DO YOU EVER HAVE DIRTY THOUGHTS ABOUT MAX? Eeek! HAS ENGEL EVER READ YOUR MIND WHEN YOU WERE HAVING DIRTY THOUGHT ABOUT MAX AND GONE "OMG" AND YOU WERE LIKE "D:"? hahahahahahahahahahah DO YOU LIKE SPONGEBOB? He's okay, I guess. DO YOU EVER HAVE DIRTY THOUGHT ABOUT SPONGEBOB? Definitely CAN YOU COOK? Iggy cooks. DO YOU LIKE TO COOK? I like to eat. ARE YOU, LIKE, A HOUSEWIFE? How on earth could I be like a housewife? DO YOU SECRETLY HAVE INNER TURMOIL? Isn't it obvious? DO YOU WANT TO BE UNDA DA SEA? I'm unda da stars. DO YOU THINK IT'S NOT TOO LATE, IT'S NEVER TOO LATE? Sure. WHERE DID YOU LEARN TO PLAY POKER? TV. DO YOU HAVE A GOOD POKER FACE? Totally. OF COURSE YOU HAVE A GOOD POKER FACE. DOES IGGY HAVE A GOOD POKER FACE? Yes. CAN HE EVEN PLAY POKER? Iggy beats me sometimes. DO YOU LIKE POKING PEOPLE HARD? Not really. ARE YOU FANGALICIOUS? I could never be as fangalicious as you'd want me to be. Fly on, Fang

But you can always justify killing animals on the grounds that you want to eat them, or wear them, or that they smell bad, look funny, bother you, threaten you, and have the bad luck of being in your way. What about killing humans? Well aside from a few die-hard individualists on the fringe, the general consensus among people these days seems to be that eating and wearing other people is just not on. Wearing a suit which costs as much as a farmer will make in his lifetime is acceptable, but actually putting his eyeballs on a string and letting them dangle above tastefully exposed cleavage is bad form.

...Your body is nothing but an envelope, Karou. Your soul is another matter, and is not, as far as I know, in any immediate danger." "An envelope?" She didn't like to think of her body as an envelope--something others might be able to open up and rifle through, remove things from like so many clipped coupons. "I assumed you felt the same way," he'd said. "The way you scribble on it." Brimstone didn't approve of her tattoos, which was funny, since he was responsible for her first, the eyes on her palms.

How funny you are today New York like Ginger Rogers in Swingtime and St. Bridget’s steeple leaning a little to the left here I have just jumped out of a bed full of V-days (I got tired of D-days) and blue you there still accepts me foolish and free all I want is a room up there and you in it and even the traffic halt so thick is a way for people to rub up against each other and when their surgical appliances lock they stay together for the rest of the day (what a day) I go by to check a slide and I say that painting’s not so blue where’s Lana Turner she’s out eating and Garbo’s backstage at the Met everyone’s taking their coat off so they can show a rib-cage to the rib-watchers and the park’s full of dancers with their tights and shoes in little bags who are often mistaken for worker-outers at the West Side Y why not the Pittsburgh Pirates shout because they won and in a sense we’re all winning we’re alive the apartment was vacated by a gay couple who moved to the country for fun they moved a day too soon even the stabbings are helping the population explosion though in the wrong country and all those liars have left the UN the Seagram Building’s no longer rivalled in interest not that we need liquor (we just like it) and the little box is out on the sidewalk next to the delicatessen so the old man can sit on it and drink beer and get knocked off it by his wife later in the day while the sun is still shining oh god it’s wonderful to get out of bed and drink too much coffee and smoke too many cigarettes and love you so much

[...] and I switched to English literature, where so many frustrated poets end as pipe-smoking teachers in tweeds.

All the electronic devices are powered by white smoke. When smoke goes out, device is dead.

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.

Like any good teacher, she tolerated little dissension. She smoked and talked and ate for an hour without stopping, and I scribbled in my notebook as the muddy waters of tangents and cosines began to clarify. But not everyone was so fortunate. As Alaska zipped through something obvious about linear equations, stoner/baller Hank Walsten said, "Wait, wait. I don't get it." "That's because you have eight functioning brain cells." "Studies show that marijuana is better for your health than those cigarettes," Hank said. Alaska swallowed a mouthful of french fries, took a drag on her cigarette, and blew smoke across the table at Hank. "I may die young," she said. "But at least I'll die smart. Now, back to tangents.

I don't smoke pot, and I'm glad because then I can champion it without special pleading. The reason I don't smoke it is because it facilitates ideas and heightens sensations-and I've got enough shit flying through my head without smoking pot.

The funny thing is, I’m actually quite interested in the Bible, and I’ve tried to read it several times. But I’ve only ever got as far as the bit about Moses being 720 years old, and I’m like, `What were these people smoking back then?’ The bottom line is I don’t believe in a bloke called God in a white suit who sits on a fluffy cloud any more than I believe in a bloke called the Devil with a three-pronged fork and a couple of horns. But I believe that there’s day, there’s night, there’s good, there’s bad, there’s black, there’s white. If there is a God, it’s nature. If there’s a Devil, it’s nature.

Well," Loraz said, her voice as dry as the rest of her was not. "At least you still have clothes on.

Nona I don't think your allowed to smoke in here. Nona exhaled a large cloud of smoke. Nona keeps their lights on. A little smoke won't hurt them.

Who wants to blow up a bridge with me?

The problem with quitting smoking is it's really hard if you never fully quit.

Sheldon: I wouldn't tell you the secret. Sssh! Leonard: What secret? Tell me the secret. Sheldon: Mom smokes in the car. Jesus is okay with it, but we can't tell dad. Leonard: Not that secret, the other secret. Sheldon: I'm Batman! Ssssh! #11

We need you to go out there and cover for us while we search for whoever's bugging us," Amy said. "Whoever it is, he or she is probably nearby." "All you have to do is keep talking. We've thought a lot about this, and we think you have the necessary skills," Dan said. "Very funny, Dan-o. But true. When it comes to nonstop chat, I'm the champ," Nellie agreed. Nellie turned off the shower and they all returned to the main room. "That pool is so fine," she said, as if she'd never been interrupted. "I met this couple from Scotland, and I was all, whoa, you have some delish smoked salmon in your excellent country...." Amy raised the window carefully, not making a sound. She and Dan quietly climbed out. "--and they were all, 'Aye, lassie, we dew, ye ken our bonny fish, ye dew!'" Nellie said in a terrible Scottish accent. "So I said, 'You know what ye lads and lassies need in Scotland? Bagels! To go with!' 'Whoa,' they said, 'lassie, ye canna be serious, that is one orrrig-in-al guid idea....'" "Okay, you can stop now." "Man, that's guid news," Nellie said. "This lassie is about to pass out.

Why were the other kids doing better than me? Because they were better, that's why That's what I knew every time I sat down online or got on the subway to Aaron's house. Other people weren't smoking or jerking off, and those that were were gifted-able to live and compete at the same time. I wasn't gifted. Mom was wrong. I was just smart and I worked hard. I had fooled myself into thinking that was something important to the rest of the world. Other people were complicit in this ruse. Nobody had told me I was common.

You know, it's a funny thing. You can smoke yourself to death, drink yourself to death, work yourself to death, and even eat yourself to death. But that's all acceptable. The only thing you can't do medically is screw yourself to death, and yet that's where they put all the obstacles.

  2387. Isn't making a smoking section in a restaurant like making a peeing section in a swimming pool? (My sentiments exactly!) 

When he smoked marijuana he tended to masterbate a great deal.

... Scotty was sad, so I baked him cookies and we smoked a joint and then I gave him head. Best girlfriend ever.

Horace sniffed the pleasant smell of wood smoke from the chimney. “Hope they’re cooking something,” he said. “I’m starved.” “Who said that?” Will asked, feigning surprise and looking around in all directions. Then he pretended to relax. “Oh, it’s only you, Horace. I didn’t see you there in that cloak.” Horace favored him with a long-suffering look. “Will, if it wasn’t funny the first half-dozen times you said it, why do you think it would be funny now?” And

Vivian’s first impression of Solidago was that she had travelled back in time, but not to a time where architecture had been invented. All houses were twisted out of shape, to say the least. Windows either too large to open or too small to make a difference peppered the city in places one would never dream of having one. The walls were mostly cast in brickwork by the kind of stonemason whose day job was financial advising. Skewed walls with more bricks than mortar, knotted chimneys keeping the smoke inside and cupping rooftops whose main purpose was to gather rainwater – Solidago had it all and more. As the oldest civilization of the cosmos, Alarians might have been excellent at healing, philosophizing and weaving into the fabric of reality, but they were very poor city builders.

And then we heard a branch break. It might have been a deer, but the Colonel busted out anyway. A voice directly behind us said, "Don't run, Chipper," and the Colonel stopped, turned around, and returned to us sheepishly. The Eagle walked toward us slowly, his lips pursed in disgust. He wore a white shirt and a black tie, like always. He gave each of us in turn the Look of Doom. "Y'all smell like a North Carolina tobacco field in a wildfire," he said. We stood silent. I felt disproportionately terrible, like I had just been caught fleeing the scene of a murder. Would he call my parents? "I'll see you in Jury tomorrow at five," he announced, and then walked away. Alaska crouched down, picked up the cigarette she had thrown away, and started smoking again. The Eagle wheeled around, his sixth sense detecting Insubordination To Authority Figures. Alaska dropped the cigarette and stepped on it. The Eagle shook his head, and even though he must have been crazy mad, I swear to God he smiled. "He loves me," Alaska told me as we walked back to the dorm circle. "He loves all y'all, too. He just loves the school more. That's the thing. He thinks busting us is good for the school and good for us. It's the eternal struggle, Pudge. The Good versus the Naughty." "You're awfully philosophical for a girl that just got busted," I told her. "Sometimes you lose a battle. But mischief always wins the war.

It is a funny thing. A man can make a promise to his God, break it five minutes later and never think about it. With an idle shrug of his shoulders, a man can break solemn promises to his mother, wife or sweetheart, and, except for a slight momentary twinge of conscience, he still won't be bothered very much. But if a man ever breaks a promise to himself he disintegrates. His entire personality and character crumble into tiny pieces, and he is never the same man again. I remember very well a sergeant I knew in the army. Before a group of five men he swore off smoking forever. An hour later he sheepishly lit a cigarette and broke his vow to the five of us and to himself. He was never quite the same man again, not to me, and not to himself.

If she moved her head all the way up against the wall and tilted it to the left she could just see the edge of the moon through the bars. Just a silver sliver, almost close enough to eat. A sliver of cheese, a sliver of cake, a cup of tea to be polite. Someone had given her a cup of tea once, someone with blue-green eyes and long ears. Funny how she couldn't remember his face, though. All that part was hazy, her memory of him wrapped in smoke but for the eyes and ears. And the ears were long and furry.

What does a future with you look like, Joshua Carter?” Thwack. “A lot of prayers.” His ass flexed. Thwack. “Bible study three times a day.” Thwack. He lifted up on his toes, his voice hoarse. “No smoking and cussing.” Very funny. Thwack. “Missionary position only.” A laugh burst from her throat, and she stumbled, her swing missing him completely. “But no sex until we’re married.” Oh my God. Did he really just mimic her practiced deadpanned tone? She moved to stand in front of him, so she could watch his mouth. “You’re going to hell.” His lips twitched then erupted into a full-faced smile. “Oh, good. I was worried you’d be there without me.

It’s funny, how fast life changes. One minute you are present, and the next, you might find yourself futilely trying to get back to the world you were once part of. You might find yourself looking for people who can no longer hear you. You are in the world, but not of it.

Why do you smoke so damn fast?" I asked. She looked at me and smiled widely, and such a wide smile on her narrow face might have looked goofy were it not for the unimpeachably elegant green in her eyes. She smiled with all the delight of a kid on Christmas morning and said, "Y'all smoke to enjoy it. I smoke to die.

Here’s the thing - in this damned century, you’ll meet a lot of people who do a lot of things. What’s funny is the fact that the most desirable attributes of these people are nothing but developed and cultured thoughts. And these things come naturally to people who shine bright. The other guys just try to ape these thoughts, in an embarrassing attempt to recreate some of that magic. Sadly,- what looks beautiful as a natural quotient can be extremely funny and disgusting when replicated manually. Stop replicating feelings; else you’ll turn into one of those duplicate personalities. They’re wannabes. You don’t have to become one!

There are no specific memories of the first time I used ketamine, which was around age 17 or 18. The strongest recollection of ketamine use regarded an instance when I was concurrently smoking marijuana and inhaling nitrous oxide. I was in an easy chair and the popular high school band Sublime was playing on the CD player. I was with a friend. We were snorting lines of ketamine and then smoking marijuana from a pipe and blowing the marijuana smoke into a nitrous-filled balloon and inhaling and exhaling the nitrous-filled balloon until there was no more nitrous oxide in the balloon to achieve acute sensations of pleasure, [adjective describing state in which one is unable to comprehend anything], disorientation, etc. The first time I attempted this process my vision behaved as a compact disc sound when it skips - a single frame of vision replacing itself repeatedly for over 60 seconds, I think. Everything was vibrating. Obviously I couldn't move. My friend was later vomiting in the bathroom a lot and I remember being particularly fascinated by the sound of it; it was like he was screaming at the same time as vomiting, which I found funny, and he was making, to a certain degree, demon-like noises. My time 'with' ketamine lasted three months at the most, but despite my attempts I never achieved a 'k-hole.' At a party, once, I saw a girl sitting in bushes and asked her what she was doing and she said "I'm in a 'k-hole.'" While I have since stopped doing ketamine because of availability and lack of interest, I would do ketamine again because I would like to be in a 'k-hole.

Mary leaned back, exhaled, and watched her smoke rise. 'What sort of man do you want anyway?' "Tall. Funny. Never came top of his class or pulled the wings off bees." "Yes, but I mean really? When all of this is over, and assuming we win -" ... Hilda snorted. "(I) just want a tall man and a stiff drink. You could even swap the adjectives.

Are asparaguses just artichokes that haven’t grown properly? Like they started smoking and got really skinny, like supermodels?

A girl or woman that drinks or smokes is very unlikely to still be a virgin.

Person a: Go to hell. Person b: Save me the seat beside you.

Wishes, for example, for things like itches.

Freezer bride, your sweet divine You devour like smoked bovine hide How funny, I never considered myself tough

I’m annoyed by the lack of smoking on TV as well. It’s terrible. It’s funny seeing old interviewers lighting up, the likes of Russell Harty pulling on a Three Castles or a State Express or a Churchman Full Strength or a Passing Cloud. I think it’s a shame that we don’t get to see this any more. We should have more ashtrays on morning TV and presenters wheezing.

In a moving—and often funny—memoir about working in a crematorium and other parts of the ‘death industry,’ Caitlin Doughty argues for radical change in how we face the details of death.

New Rule: America must stop bragging it's the greatest country on earth, and start acting like it. I know this is uncomfortable for the "faith over facts" crowd, but the greatness of a country can, to a large degree, be measured. Here are some numbers. Infant mortality rate: America ranks forty-eighth in the world. Overall health: seventy-second. Freedom of the press: forty-fourth. Literacy: fifty-fifth. Do you realize there are twelve-year old kids in this country who can't spell the name of the teacher they're having sex with? America has done many great things. Making the New World democratic. The Marshall Plan. Curing polio. Beating Hitler. The deep-fried Twinkie. But what have we done for us lately? We're not the freest country. That would be Holland, where you can smoke hash in church and Janet Jackson's nipple is on their flag. And sadly, we're no longer a country that can get things done. Not big things. Like building a tunnel under Boston, or running a war with competence. We had six years to fix the voting machines; couldn't get that done. The FBI is just now getting e-mail. Prop 87 out here in California is about lessening our dependence on oil by using alternative fuels, and Bill Clinton comes on at the end of the ad and says, "If Brazil can do it, America can, too!" Since when did America have to buck itself up by saying we could catch up to Brazil? We invented the airplane and the lightbulb, they invented the bikini wax, and now they're ahead? In most of the industrialized world, nearly everyone has health care and hardly anyone doubts evolution--and yes, having to live amid so many superstitious dimwits is also something that affects quality of life. It's why America isn't gonna be the country that gets the inevitable patents in stem cell cures, because Jesus thinks it's too close to cloning. Oh, and did I mention we owe China a trillion dollars? We owe everybody money. America is a debtor nation to Mexico. We're not a bridge to the twenty-first century, we're on a bus to Atlantic City with a roll of quarters. And this is why it bugs me that so many people talk like it's 1955 and we're still number one in everything. We're not, and I take no glee in saying that, because I love my country, and I wish we were, but when you're number fifty-five in this category, and ninety-two in that one, you look a little silly waving the big foam "number one" finger. As long as we believe being "the greatest country in the world" is a birthright, we'll keep coasting on the achievements of earlier generations, and we'll keep losing the moral high ground. Because we may not be the biggest, or the healthiest, or the best educated, but we always did have one thing no other place did: We knew soccer was bullshit. And also we had the Bill of Rights. A great nation doesn't torture people or make them disappear without a trial. Bush keeps saying the terrorist "hate us for our freedom,"" and he's working damn hard to see that pretty soon that won't be a problem.

Consider with thyself; as the rain is more than the drops, and as the fire is greater than the smoke; but the drops and the smoke remain behind: so the quantity which is past did more exceed.

The "four angels" were the Beatles, whom Manson considered ""leaders, spokesmen, prophets," according to Gregg. The line "And he opened the bottomless pit...And there came out of the smoke locusts upon the earth; and unto them was given power..." was still another reference to the English group, Gregg said. Locusts - Beatles - one and the same. "Their faces were as the faces of men," yet "they had hair as the hair of women." An obvious reference to the long-haired musicians. Out of the mouths of the four angles "issued fire and brimstone." Gregg: "This referred to the spoken words, the lyrics of the Beatles' songs, the power that came out of their mouths.

He remembered that his brothers had been puzzled and angry that Ian had let Isabella lay a hand on his arm or give him a quick kiss on the cheek, when he refused to let the rest of his family touch him. Ian had thought his brothers fools about that. If they couldn't understand the difference between three overbearing Scotsmen who smelled of smoke and whiskey, and a lovely young woman scented with of attar of roses, he couldn't help them.

Something deep in my guts, below my heart, has made a shift to the left and settled in a more comfortable place. It’s not the Shift, but it’s a shift. I picture Nia with her gorgeous face and little body and black hair and pouty lips and Aaron’s hands all over her but also with her pot smoking and the pimples on her forehead and making fun of people all the time and the way she’s always so proud of how she’s dressed. And I picture her fading.

I plucked one plump black olive from the plate and put it in my mouth immediately before saying, “Well, I feel bad for you, then.” “Why’s that?” “Because I love antipasto.” “I guess I don’t understand why that’s a problem.” “Because,” I emphasized, cutting into a piece of salmon. “I don’t like to share.” I quickly slipped the smoked meat in my mouth before winking at him. His smile finally met his eyes again. “Good to know, because I’m not the sharing kind of guy either.” He winked back at me, but it was so blatantly comical that I couldn’t help the laugh that flew out of my mouth. “Something tells me you’re not talking about cured meats,” I said before slapping his hand away from my olives. “I knew you were smart.” I swallowed the olive I’d snatched from his hand and glared at him, while mouthing, “Mine.” “Funny, that’s what I was thinking, too,” he said, looking directly at me.

What I really wanted was to go to Disneyland. There were multiple kids in my grade with annual passes, I remember thinking they were the richest kids in the world, practically royalty. Now I’m with actual royalty. Funny how life works. Standing outside the gates to the Magic Kingdom, with an actual god damn prince by my side, a prince who outshines any of the ones in the park, a prince who would have his own kingdom, his own country, one day. A prince who… Is smoking a joint?

Marijuana will be legal some day, because the many law students who now smoke pot will some day become Congressmen and legalize it in order to protect themselves. You wouldn't believe how many people smoke pot. If anyone reading this would like to become mayor, believe me, there is a vast, untapped vote. Of course, you wouldn't want to be the Marijuana Mayor, so you'd have to make it a trick statute, like: 'The Crippled Catholic Jewish War Children in Memory of Ward Bond Who Died for Your Bill to Make Marijuana Legal.

What’s so funny?” “You freak out when I disappear and reappear, but you expect me to stop time.” She laughed, too. “But why can’t you? You’re a god.” “Like I said, we have more responsibilities than freedoms. I doubt even Zeus could pull that one off.” From high above, a streak of light flew from the sky and struck a boulder not twenty feet from where they lay, sending sparks and smoke and a loud crack in all directions in the echoing valley. The boulder was split in half and was as black as coal. “Holy crap!” Therese cried, falling against Than. “What was that?” “Oops. My apologies,” he muttered, but it didn’t sound like he was talking to her. “I made someone angry.” “That scared me to death. Does that happen often?” “No. Never to me. But this is an exceptional time in my life.

It’s funny, how fast life changes. One minute you are present, and the next, you might find yourself futilely trying to get back to the world you were once part of. You might find yourself looking for people who can no longer hear you. You are in the world, but not of

No one looks at you funny if you excuse yourself to grab a smoke. Imagine the reactions if you say, “Hey, I’m going to go grab a five-minute prayer. I’ll be back.” Or worse, “Hold that thought. I just want to go cry a minute.” Excuses are easy. Quitting is much harder.

Tristan was many things. He was smoking hot, but also beautiful. He was also funny, smart, a jackass, and compassionate, among many other things. Two traits he was not: organized and neat. I'd been watching him fold his laundry for nearly twenty minutes, and I didn't know how I managed not scream

The night at the Casino—I wouldn’t have made love to you. Even if you had consented to go upstairs. I couldn’t have made love to you. Yes, yes! Isn’t that funny? I’m more afraid of your soul than you’re afraid of my body. You’d have been as safe as the angel of the fountain—because I wouldn’t feel decent enough—to touch you.…

Dazzlement and enchantment are Bester’s methods. His stories never stand still a moment; they’re forever tilting into motion, veering, doubling back, firing off rockets to distract you. The repetition of the key phrase in “Fondly Fahrenheit,” the endless reappearances of Mr. Aquila in “The Star-comber” are offered mockingly: try to grab at them for stability, and you find they mean something new each time. Bester’s science is all wrong, his characters are not characters but funny hats; but you never notice: he fires off a smoke-bomb, climbs a ladder, leaps from a trapeze, plays three bars of “God Save the King,” swallows a sword and dives into three inches of water. Good heavens, what more do you want?

You heard me. Let someone else send you to your blaze of glory. You're a speck, man. You're nothing. You're not worth the bullet or the mark on my soul for taking you out." You trying to piss me off again, Patrick?" He removed Campbell Rawson from his shoulder and held him aloft. I tilted my wrist so the cylinder fell into my palm, shrugged. "You're a joke, Gerry. I'm just calling it like I see it." That so?" Absolutely." I met his hard eyes with my own. "And you'll be replaced, just like everything else, in maybe a week, tops. Some other dumb, sick shit will come along and kill some people and he'll be all over the papers, and all over Hard Copy and you'll be yesterday's news. Your fifteen minutes are up, Gerry. And they've passed without impact." They'll remember this," Gerry said. "Believe me." Gerry clamped back on the trigger. When he met my finger, he looked at me and then clamped down so hard that my finger broke. I depressed the trigger on the one-shot and nothing happened. Gerry shrieked louder, and the razor came out of my flesh, then swung back immediately, and I clenched my eyes shut and depressed the trigger frantically three times. And Gerry's hand exploded. And so did mine. The razor hit the ice by my knee as I dropped the one shot and fire roared up the electrical tape and gasoline on Gerry's arm and caught the wisps of Danielle's hair. Gerry threw his head back and opened his mouth wide and bellowed in ecstasy. I grabbed the razor, could barely feel it because the nerves in my hand seemed to have stopped working. I slashed into the electric tape at the end of the shotgun barrel, and Danielle dropped away toward the ice and rolled her head into the frozen sand. My broken finger came back out of the shotgun and Gerry swung the barrels toward my head. The twin shotgun bores arced through the darkness like eyes without mercy or soul, and I raised my head to meet them, and Gerry's wail filled my ears as the fire licked at his neck. Good-bye, I thought. Everyone. It's been nice. Oscar's first two shots entered the back of Gerry's head and exited through the center of his forehead and a third punched into his back. The shotgun jerked upward in Gerry's flaming arm and then the shots came from the front, several at once, and Gerry spun like a marionette and pitched toward the ground. The shotgun boomed twice and punched holes through the ice in front of him as he fell. He landed on his knees and, for a moment, I wasn't sure if he was dead or not. His rusty hair was afire and his head lolled to the left as one eye disappeared in flames but the other shimmered at me through waves of heat, and an amused derision shone in the pupil. Patrick, the eye said through the gathering smoke, you still know nothing. Oscar rose up on the other side of Gerry's corpse, Campbell Rawson clutched tight to his massive chest as it rose and fell with great heaving breaths. The sight of it-something so soft and gentle in the arms of something so thick and mountaineous-made me laugh. Oscar came out of the darkness toward me, stepped around Gerry's burning body, and I felt the waves of heat rise toward me as the circle of gasoline around Gerry caught fire. Burn, I thought. Burn. God help me, but burn. Just after Oscar stepped over the outer edge of the circle, it erupted in yellow flame, and I found myself laughing harder as he looked at it, not remotely impressed. I felt cool lips smack against my ear, and by the time I looked her way, Danielle was already past me, rushing to take her child from Oscar. His huge shadow loomed over me as he approached, and I looked up at him and he held the look for a long moment. How you doing, Patrick?" he said and smiled broadly. And, behind him, Gerry burned on the ice. And everything was so goddamned funny for some reason, even though I knew it wasn't. I knew it wasn't. I did. But I was still laughing when they put me in the ambulance.

Those times are the hardest. When you can see yourself confined to your bed because you have no strength or will to leave, and then you find yourself yelling at someone you love because they want to help but they can't. When you wake up in a gutter after trying to drink or smoke or dance away the ache, or the lack thereof. Those times when you are more demon than you are you.

The Evil Enchanter appeared in a cloud of smoke. He waved his arms to fan away the fumes, and when he quit coughing, he said, "You've come to rescue no one. Now that you're here, you shall marry me." He waved his arms once, and a priest appeared in a cloud of smoke. After everyone quit coughing, he turned to the priest and said, "Marry me!" The priest said, "But I don't know you." "No, no, no!" said the Evil Enchanter. "Marry me to the princess!" "Oh," said the priest. "That's different.

We had to go to stew school for five weeks. We’d go through a whole week of make-up and poise. I didn’t like this. They make you feel like you’ve never been out in public. They showed you how to smoke a cigarette, when to smoke a cigarette, how to look at a man’s eyes. Our teacher, she had this idea we had to be sexy. One day in class she was showing us how to accept a light for a cigarette from a man and never blow it out. When he lights it, just look in his eyes. It was really funny, all the girls laughed.

Once upon a time, a prince asked a beautiful princess, “Will you marry me?” The princess said, “No.” And so the prince lived happily ever after and rode motorcycles and hunted and raced cars and drank whiskey and beer and Patron tequila and smoked Marlboro reds and never paid child support or alimony and ate what he wanted and kept his house and guns and never got cheated on while he was at work and all his friends and family thought he was friggin’ cool as hell and had tons of money in the bank and left the toilet seat up. The end. Very funny and very true… if you’re a boy.

The parlour is as I remember it from Council meetings. It carries the scent of smoke and verbena and clover. Cardan himself lounges, his booted feet resting on a stone table carved in the shape of a griffin, claws raised to strike. He gives me a quicksilver conspiratorial grin that seems completely at odds with the way he spoke to me from the throne. 'Well,' he says, patting the couch beside him. 'Didn't you get my letters?' 'What?' I am confused enough that the word comes out like a croak. 'You never replied to a one,' he goes on. 'I began to wonder if you'd misplaced your ambition in the mortal world.' This must be a test. This must be a trap. 'Your Majesty,' I say stiffly. 'I thought you brought me here to assure yourself I had neither charm nor amulet.' A single eyebrow rises, and his smile deepens. 'I will if you like. Shall I command you to remove your clothes? I don't mind.' 'What are you doing?' I say finally, desperately. 'What are you playing at?' He's looking at me as though somehow I am the one who's behaving strangely. 'Jude, you can't really think I don't know it's you. I knew you from the moment you walked into the brugh.' I shake my head, reeling. 'That's not possible.

Do you ever get tired of being so funny? It's a nice little smoke screen, but I know you. Confident people do stuff. They get stuff done. They make things, even if it's just making money. You know what you're making?" "It doesn't matter." "You're making our couch sag. That's about it. You're making your mom sad because you're not trying. You're making your siblings miserable because you're acting like you're miserable." "I am. I'm depressed and on a bunch of drugs. I want to take more of them every day just to feel different." "This isn't depression and that's not their fault. But I don't want to fight. I think what we're about to do is going to give you a way to make some progress." "There's nothing important about lifting weights." "There's nothing insignificant about progress. Let's just give it a try.

When I got off the phone, my earbuds were still in from the call and my phone started playing a song, which it sometimes does, without my explicit instruction. The song it played was a U2 song from an album that was released when I was finishing high school, an album I played on a CD boom box, lying on my bed, staring up at the ceiling, thinking about how I was at the end of some beginning, which made what came next the beginning of the end. I walked over to the bodega on a corner at Sixth and bought a pack of cigarettes. The man who sold them to me didn’t look at me funny; he didn’t tell me I was too old to be playing games like this. I went back to the bench and lit a cigarette and inhaled, the smoke entering my body and filling it with poison, with something. — THE HOUSE IN East Hampton was no longer Toby’s, as if it ever was,

One of the most asked questions about the stories told in my family is “How much of that is true?” Of course, the answer depends on who is telling the story. There is no doubt that Uncle Si is the most entertaining storyteller among the Robertson clan. One of his most famous stories is about the time his secondhand smoke made a deer cough. The story came about after many members of my family jokingly refused to let Si hunt our deer stands because of the odor he left behind. Deer hunters know the best survival defense for a deer is his sense of smell. Si seems to think that is just a superstition and has a coughing deer story to prove it. Even though Si has quit smoking, we encourage him to hunt his own stand with the wind blowing in his face for best results. What makes Si’s stories so funny is his passion and mannerisms in telling them.

Marcus took a deep breath. “Alex, what happened exactly?” “I’ve already told you everything. I ran into her in the garden. She was talking one second and the next, she just sort of poofed—” “She poofed?” Seth laughed. He lounged in the corner, arms folded across his chest, and that damn smile plastered across his face. “Seriously?” “Yes, she poofed. Like she was there one second and the next she was a pile of dust.” “We just don’t poof, Alex. That doesn’t happen.” “Well, it did. She poked me in my chest with her bony fingers and said some crazy stuff. Then she poofed!” Seth’s brows flew up and he laughed again. “What have you been doing today? Smoking something?” Addressing Marcus, I threw up my hands. I had no idea why Seth was being such a jerk to me. He’d started in the moment he’d stepped into this room, and now I wanted to kill him. “Does he have to be here?” “He is where I need him to be,” Lucian answered instead. “And I need him here.” “Can he shut up, at least?” I missed the more charming version of Seth. This version sucked. “There’s no valuable need for him to comment on everything that comes out of my mouth!

I cooked with so many of the greats: Tom Colicchio, Eric Ripert, Wylie Dufresne, Grant Achatz. Rick Bayless taught me not one but two amazing mole sauces, the whole time bemoaning that he never seemed to know what to cook for his teenage daughter. Jose Andres made me a classic Spanish tortilla, shocking me with the sheer volume of viridian olive oil he put into that simple dish of potatoes, onions, and eggs. Graham Elliot Bowles and I made gourmet Jell-O shots together, and ate leftover cheddar risotto with Cheez-Its crumbled on top right out of the pan. Lucky for me, Maria still includes me in special evenings like this, usually giving me the option of joining the guests at table, or helping in the kitchen. I always choose the kitchen, because passing up the opportunity to see these chefs in action is something only an idiot would do. Susan Spicer flew up from New Orleans shortly after the BP oil spill to do an extraordinary menu of all Gulf seafood for a ten-thousand-dollar-a-plate fund-raising dinner Maria hosted to help the families of Gulf fishermen. Local geniuses Gil Langlois and Top Chef winner Stephanie Izard joined forces with Gale Gand for a seven-course dinner none of us will ever forget, due in no small part to Gil's hoisin oxtail with smoked Gouda mac 'n' cheese, Stephanie's roasted cauliflower with pine nuts and light-as-air chickpea fritters, and Gale's honey panna cotta with rhubarb compote and insane little chocolate cookies. Stephanie and I bonded over hair products, since we have the same thick brown curls with a tendency to frizz, and the general dumbness of boys, and ended up giggling over glasses of bourbon till nearly two in the morning. She is even more awesome, funny, sweet, and genuine in person than she was on her rock-star winning season on Bravo. Plus, her food is spectacular all day. I sort of wish she would go into food television and steal me from Patrick. Allen Sternweiler did a game menu with all local proteins he had hunted himself, including a pheasant breast over caramelized brussels sprouts and mushrooms that melted in your mouth (despite the occasional bit of buckshot). Michelle Bernstein came up from Miami and taught me her white gazpacho, which I have since made a gajillion times, as it is probably one of the world's perfect foods.

You said to step on the brake to put us into drive, then to step on the right one to-" "Not at the same time!" "Well, you should have told me that. How was I supposed to know?" I snort. "You acted like the freaking Dalai Lama when I tried to tell you how to shift gears. I told you, one was for go and one was for stop. You can't stop and go at the same time! You have to make up your mind." From the expression on her face, she's either about to punch me or call me something really bad. She opens her mouth, but the really bad something doesn't come out; she shuts it again. Then she giggles. Now I've seen everything. "Galen tells me that all the time," she chortles. "That I can never make up my mind." Then she bursts out laughing so hard she spits all over the steering wheel. She keeps laughing until I'm convinced an unknown force is tickling her senseless. What? As far as I can tell, her indecisiveness almost got us killed. Killed isn't funny. "You should have seen your face," she says, between gulps of breaths. "You were all, like-" And she makes the face of a drunk clown. "I bet you wet yourself, didn't you?" She cracks herself up so much she clutches her side as if she's holding in her own guts. I feel my lips fracture into a smile before I can stop them. "You were more scared than me. You swallowed like ten flies while you were screaming." She spits all over the steering wheel again. And I spew laughter onto the dash. It takes a good five minutes for us to sober up enough for another driving lesson. My throat is dry, and my eyes are wet when I say, "Okay, now. Let's concentrate. The sun is going down. These woods probably get pretty creepy at night." She clears her throat, still giggling a little. "Okay. Concentrate. Right." "So, this time, when you take your foot off the brake, the car will go on its own. There, see?" We slink along the road at an idle two miles per hour. She huffs up at her bangs. "This is boring. I want to go faster." I start to say, "Not too fast," but she squashes the gas under her foot, and my words are snatched away by the wind. She gives a startled shout, which I find hypocritical because after all, I'm the one helpless in the passenger seat, and she's the one screaming like a teapot, turning the wheel back and forth like the road isn't straight as a pencil. "Brake, brake, brake!" I shout, hoping repetition will somehow penetrate the small part of her brain that actually thinks. Everything happens fast. We stop. There's a crunching sound. My face slams into the dash. No wait, the dash becomes an airbag. Rayna's scream is cut off by her airbag. I open my eyes. A tree. A freaking tree. The metal frame groans, and something under the hood lets out a mechanical hiss. Smoke billows up from the front, the universal symbol for "you're screwed." I turn to the rustling sound beside me. Rayna is wrestling with the airbag like it has attacked her instead of saved her life. "What is this thing?" she wails, pushing it out of her way and opening the door. One Mississippi...two Mississippi... "Well, are you just going to sit there? We have a long walk home. You're not hurt are you? Because I can't carry you." Three Mississippi...four Mississippi... "What are those flashing blue lights down there?

It was at night,” I say. “What was?” “What happened. The car wreck. We were driving along the Storm King Highway.” “Where’s that?” “Oh, it’s one of the most scenic drives in the whole state,” I say, somewhat sarcastically. “Route 218. The road that connects West Point and Cornwall up in the Highlands on the west side of the Hudson River. It’s narrow and curvy and hangs off the cliffs on the side of Storm King Mountain. An extremely twisty two-lane road. With a lookout point and a picturesque stone wall to stop you from tumbling off into the river. Motorcycle guys love Route 218.” We stop moving forward and pause under a streetlamp. “But if you ask me, they shouldn’t let trucks use that road.” Cool Girl looks at me. “Go on, Jamie,” she says gently. And so I do. “Like I said, it was night. And it was raining. We’d gone to West Point to take the tour, have a picnic. It was a beautiful day. Not a cloud in the sky until the tour was over, and then it started pouring. Guess we stayed too late. Me, my mom, my dad.” Now I bite back the tears. “My little sister. Jenny. You would’ve liked Jenny. She was always happy. Always laughing. “We were on a curve. All of a sudden, this truck comes around the side of the cliff. It’s halfway in our lane and fishtailing on account of the slick road. My dad slams on the brakes. Swerves right. We smash into a stone fence and bounce off it like we’re playing wall ball. The hood of our car slides under the truck, right in front of its rear tires—tires that are smoking and screaming and trying to stop spinning.” I see it all again. In slow motion. The detail never goes away. “They all died,” I finally say. “My mother, my father, my little sister. I was the lucky one. I was the only one who survived.

I jump up: it would be much better if I could only stop thinking. Thoughts are the dullest things. Duller than flesh. They stretch out and there's no end to them and they leave a funny taste in the mouth. Then there are words, inside the thoughts, unfinished words, a sketchy sentence which constantly returns: "I have to fi...I ex...Dead...M. de Roll is dead...I am not...I ex..." It goes, it goes ... and there's no end to it. It's worse than the rest because I feel responsible and complicity in it. For example, this sort of painful rumination: I exist, I am the one who keeps it up. I. The body lives by itself once it has begun. But thought-I am the one who continues it, unrolls it. I exist. How serpentine is this feelling of existing-I unwind it, slowly... If I could keep myself from thinking! I try, and succed: my head seems to fill with smoke...and it starts again: "Smoke ... not to think ... don't want to think ... I think I don't want to think. I musn'tthink that I don't want to think. Because that's still a thought". Will there never be an end to this? My thought is me: that's why I can't stop. I exist because I think ... and I can't stop myself from thinking. At this very moment-it's frightful-if I exist, it is because I am horrified at existing. I am the one who pulls myself from the nothingness to which I aspire: the hatred, the disgust of existing, there are as may ways to make myself exist, to thrust myself into existence. Thoughts are born at the back of me, like sudden giddiness, I feel them being born behind my back ... If I yield, there're going to come round in front of me, between my eyes - and I always yield, the thought grows and grows and there it is, immense, filling me completely and renewing my existence.

I jump up: it would be much better if I could only stop thinking. Thoughts are the dullest things. Duller than flesh. They stretch out and there’s no end to them and they leave a funny taste in the mouth. Then there are words, inside the thoughts, unfinished words, a sketchy sentence which constantly returns: “I have to fi. . . I ex. . . Dead . . . M. de Roll is dead . . . I am not . . . I ex. . .” It goes, it goes . . . and there’s no end to it. It’s worse than the rest because I feel responsible and have complicity in it. For example, this sort of painful rumination: I exist, I am the one who keeps it up. I. The body lives by itself once it has begun. But thought—I am the one who continues it, unrolls it. I exist. How serpentine is this feeling of existing—I unwind it, slowly. . . . If I could keep myself from thinking! I try, and succeed: my head seems to fill with smoke . . . and then it starts again: “Smoke . . . not to think . . . don’t want to think . . . I think I don’t want to think. I mustn’t think that I don’t want to think. Because that’s still a thought.” Will there never be an end to it? My thought is me: that’s why I can’t stop. I exist because I think . . . and I can’t stop myself from thinking. At this very moment—it’s frightful—if I exist, it is because I am horrified at existing. I am the one who pulls myself from the nothingness to which I aspire: the hatred, the disgust of existing, there are as many ways to make myself exist, to thrust myself into existence. Thoughts are born at the back of me, like sudden giddiness, I feel them being born behind my head . . . if I yield, they’re going to come round in front of me, between my eyes—and I always yield, the thought grows and grows and there it is, immense, filling me completely and renewing my existence.

Tomo did not join them. Kami saw that he had taken one of his violent fancies to Ash, the way he had taken to lemonade, Mr. Stearn’s bulldog, and his favorite toy race car that had burned with everything else in their house. He walked happily alongside Ash, holding on to his hand, and clearly wished for nothing more. Ash seemed alarmed to have been so firmly taken possession of by an eight-year-old. He and Tomo fell back a little, until they were walking with Jared and Kami. “I am so sad about my underwear,” Kami announced, and Ash looked as if he regretted all of his life decisions. “Not in front of the little boy!” he said reproachfully. “Anyway, you were saying that you would borrow clothes from Holly and Angela.” “I’m the third tallest in my class,” Tomo informed him, with the air of one out to impress. “And I know all about underwear.” “You heard the man,” said Kami. “Besides which, no. I cannot possibly borrow underclothes from Holly and Angela. Bras especially.” “I know,” said Jared. “Oh, you do, do you?” Kami inquired. “And how do you know, may I ask?” There was a slight flush along the lines of Jared’s cheekbones. “Observation.” It was probably sad that this cheered Kami up, but Jared usually seemed so wary about her body, the physical fact of it, that the simple knowledge that he had been looking did please her. She leaned back infinitesimally closer into the warm line of his arm around her shoulders, the warm line of his body against her side. “Kami, would you maybe stop mentioning your unmentionables,” Ash said, spoiling the moment. “I shall not,” Kami told him. “It’s a serious problem. I am, and I mean this absolutely literally, in need of support.” I’d suspect you of going funny in the head from smoke inhalation, said Ash, but you always talk like this.

... And I said: 'What kind of trouble with your drama teacher?' She said: 'Well I'm having difficulty with the feelings.' I said: 'The... the f-feelings?' She said: 'You know...' ...she said: 'You know the, the feelings.' Like I would know. I said 'You saw me in a play?' She said. 'Yeah' 'And you thought it was good?' And she said 'Yeah, thought it was absolutely marv- ... ' I said 'Well, I can absolutely guarantee you that I'm not feeling anything. I'm at work. D'you know what I mean? I'm a bit busy. I'm a bit pushed. I have to do - I have to achieve about... 1500 things over a period of two and half hours or whatever the play length might be. I have to make love to a woman, smoke cigarettes, reach the door handle, hit the door handle when that verbal cue comes coz otherwise the lights will go funny, I have to, you know, get semi-naked and eat chilli con carne. You know. I'm occupied. I can't be feeling stuff. You know, that I do on my own time.' And you can't phone up on a wet Wednesday and say: 'D'you know what? [shakes head sadly]... I'm not feeling it. So I don't think I'll come in today.' People who teach acting they have to talk for a very long time. Sometimes two years of talk. Or sometimes three. And there isn't that much to say. And they start making it up, sometimes. Or they'll concentrate on things that are undeniable. Like you can't say: 'I am feeling it.' 'No you're not. No, I can't... you know, you're not feel-... I can't... you know, I'm sorry but I just - you're not feeling it, you gotta feel it.' 'Yeah I am. I think I'm feeling it...' You know, it's all completely unnecessary. The audience have no interest in what you might be feeling. You're supposed to give the appearance of feeling something. Like you did when you were a kid. It is an extension of what you did in the back yard when you played the bank robber and the other guy played... the policeman.

I found out Si was taking naps every day on Kay’s couch! I went to Phil and told him it was a problem. “Look, I know he’s your brother and he’s my uncle, but he’s not the kind of worker we need to have,” I told Phil, while trying to make a good first impression. I was trying to instill a new work ethic and culture in Duck Commander, and I couldn’t have Si sleeping on the job! “Don’t touch Si,” Phil told me. “You leave him alone. He’s making reeds and that’s the hardest thing we do. Si is the only guy who wants to do it, and he’s good at it. Si is fine.” Amazingly enough, in the ten years I’ve been running Duck Commander, we’ve never once run out of reeds. Six years ago, Si suffered a heart attack. He smoked cigarettes for almost forty years and then quit after his heart attack, so we were all so proud of him. Even before his heart attack, I wasn’t sure about putting Si on our DVDs because I thought he would just come across too crazy. He cracked us up in the duck blind and we all loved him, but I told Jep and the other camera guys to film around him. Honestly, I didn’t think anyone would understand what he was saying. When we finally tried to put him on the DVDs, he clammed up in front of the camera and looked like a frog in a cartoon just sitting there. He wouldn’t perform. Finally, we put a hidden camera under a shirt on Si’s desk. We were near the end of editing a DVD and showed a shooting scene to Si. He always takes credit for shooting more ducks than he really did. He’s said before that he killed three ducks with one shot! We were watching patterns hitting the water, and Si started claiming the ducks like he always does and going off on one of his long tangents. After we recorded him, we ran the DVD back and showed it to him. I think Si saw that he was actually pretty funny and entertaining if he acted like himself. We started putting Si on the DVDs and he got more and more popular. Now he’s the star of Duck Dynasty!

the people who are best at telling jokes tend to have more health problems than the people laughing at them. A study of Finnish police officers found that those who were seen as funniest smoked more, weighed more, and were at greater risk of cardiovascular disease than their peers [10]. Entertainers typically die earlier than other famous people [11], and comedians exhibit more “psychotic traits” than others [12]. So just as there’s research to back up the conventional wisdom on laughter’s curative powers, there also seems to be truth to the stereotype that funny people aren’t always having much fun. It might feel good to crack others up now and then, but apparently the audience gets the last laugh.

At twenty years old, Michael had vague plans to make changes in his life, but turning blue whilst stood in a walk-in bath in an old people's home wasn't one of them. Usually boys of his age might consider changes along the lines of smoking less grass at home, at college or at work, to be a good idea. Or maybe spending less time on that solitary pursuit common to men of his age across the globe. Enjoyable though he found it, he was going to cut back on the procrastination, but that was going to have to wait.

Hey Man Feelin' funny in my mind, Lord Feelin' funny in my mind, Lord Feelin' funny in my mind, Lord I need it, Lord Amen, Amen, Amen, Amen, Amen There's a black smoke risin', Lord There's a black smoke risin', Lord There's a black smoke risin', Lord Right above my head Amen, Amen, Amen, Amen, Amen Well I don't mind dyin', Lord I don't mind dyin', Lord I don't mind dyin' But I hate to leave my mother cryin' Amen, Amen, Amen, Amen, Amen

By the light of the hominy fire Sixo straightens. He is through with his song. He laughs. A rippling sound like Sethe's sons make when they tumble in hay or splash in rainwater. His feet are cooking; the cloth of his trousers smokes. He laughs. Something is funny. Paul D guesses what it is when Sixo interrupts his laughter to call out, "Seven-O! Seven-O!

Jean sat at the end of the bar, watching Jerry Springer as she drew deeply on a long cigarette. The woman smoked like a freight train, especially while watching talk shows.

Cigarette smoke when i didn't ask for it. Never when I did.

The crescent kick is one of the most difficult kicks to master in Tae Kwon Do, but when executed properly, it is one of the most dangerous.  Detective Sergeant Jamie Johansson had been practising it for nearly six years, and despite being only five-foot-six, she could comfortably slam her heel into the ear of someone that was over six feet. And now she had it down to a science. She knew she couldn’t do enough damage with a punch to put someone down if she had to, but a well-executed crescent kick would do the job. Especially from her lightweight trail boots. Her partner made fun of her for wearing them — said that detectives shouldn’t be wearing hiking boots, especially not in the city, but they were tough and she was as fast in them as she was in her trainers. Which she thought made them a lot more suited to tracking down scumbags than Roper’s black leather Chelsea boots.  He disagreed. She didn’t really care.  Smoking thirty a day meant that he wasn’t going to be doing much running anyway. ‘Come on,’ Cake said, jerking the pad. ‘Again. Like you mean it.’ She flicked her head, throwing sweat onto the matt, wound up, lifted her leg, snapped her knee back, and then lashed out. Her shin smashed into the training pad with a dull thwap and she sank into her knees, panting.  Cake clapped them together and grinned with wide, crooked teeth. ‘Good job,’ he said. ‘You’re really getting some power into those, now. But make sure to ice that foot, yeah?’ She caught her breath quickly and stood up, nodding, strands of ash-blonde hair sticking to her forehead, the thick plait running between her lithe shoulders coming loose. ‘Sure,’ she said, measuring her trainer. Cake was six-two and twice her weight. He was Windrush, in his fifties, and ran a mixed martial arts gym just near Duckett’s Green. He was a retired boxer turned trainer that scored his nickname after winning a fight in the late nineties on his birthday. When the commentator asked what he was going to do to celebrate, he said that he was going to eat a birthday cake. Everyone thought that was funny, and it stuck. He had a pretty bad concussion at the time, which probably contributed to the answer. But there was no getting away from it now.  He pulled the pads off his forearms and rubbed his eyes. ‘Coffee?’ he asked, looking over at the clock on the wall. It was just before seven.  He yawned and stretched, cracking his spine. The gym wouldn’t open until midday to the public, but he lived upstairs in a tiny studio, and he and Jamie had an arrangement. It kept him fit and active, and she could train one-on-one. Just how she liked it. She paid her dues of course, slid him extra on top of the monthly for his time. But he said that

The truth can have a funny way of revealing itself. One would like to think, in all its undeniable power, it would always be obvious. Either golden, a glorious beam that parts the clouds and lights the way, or totally hideous, a nasty pit that opens up in the earth, completely dark save the theroid eyes and teeth of those terrible monsters that reside there. But it can be sneakier than these. It can be pernicious. It can creep in like smoke, slowly but unwavering, until all that’s left is that blackness that one would expect in the pit, but instead of the monsters, it’s the thing itself that begins to kill you, only from the inside out.

I saw her as she showed herself to the world: fun, smart, sexy. Funny how those things are often a smoke screen from one’s true self. It’s easy to act all those things. Up for adventure. Head nods at complex scenarios when she’s not really listening. Ready for bedroom play even when there is no bedroom. In the beginning, Sophie was all those things. I didn’t know they were a construct. I thought they were key parts of who she was.

Mom wasn’t a weak person, or a wisp of a domineered housewife who hid in the background. Far from it. She was a vivacious, funny, and smart woman who loudly voiced her opinions, and would’ve been a suffragette had she lived in the twenties. She was gorgeous, with shoulder-length brown hair and beautiful brown eyes. She was strong and was an athlete as a teenager. She smoked, drank, and laughed out loud. A vital presence. She just never did understand or relate to children. She left school as a teenager and worked full-time in an office, then married young and became a mother and housewife. Now she found herself in New York in the swinging sixties, and despite my dad’s best efforts to make her the perfect square wife, she was energized, curious, and had time on her hands. She took music lessons, looked longingly at the bohemian lifestyle, and went off alone to the Newport Jazz Festival to see Miles Davis. Not about to be the happy homemaker, she wanted to party. Dad never became rich, and I’ve been told some blame fell upon my mom for failing to help him climb the career ladder. Instead of standing by her man, she acquired hippie habits, wore dashikis, and was a lousy teammate at cocktail parties.

Mom wasn’t a weak person, or a wisp of a domineered housewife who hid in the background. Far from it. She was a vivacious, funny, and smart woman who loudly voiced her opinions, and would’ve been a suffragette had she lived in the twenties. She was gorgeous, with shoulder-length brown hair and beautiful brown eyes. She was strong and was an athlete as a teenager. She smoked, drank, and laughed out loud. A vital presence. She just never did understand or relate to children. She left school as a teenager and worked full-time in an office, then married young and became a mother and housewife. Now she found herself in New York in the swinging sixties, and despite my dad’s best efforts to make her the perfect square wife, she was energized, curious, and had time on her hands. She took music lessons, looked longingly at the bohemian lifestyle, and went off alone to the Newport Jazz Festival to see Miles Davis. Not about to be the happy homemaker, she wanted to party.