“However, you cannot force smokers to stop, and although all smokers secretly want to, until they are ready to do so a pact just creates additional pressure, which increases their desire to smoke. This turns them into secret smokers, which further increases the feeling of dependency.”

“Wouldn’t that be an incredibly stupid thing to do? To say ‘I never want to smoke again’, then spend the rest of your life saying ‘I’d love a cigarette.’ That’s what smokers who use the Willpower Method do. No wonder they feel so miserable. They spend the rest of their lives desperately moping for something that they desperately hope they will never have.”

“The moment you stop smoking, everything that goes wrong in your life is blamed on the fact that you’ve stopped smoking. Now when you have a mental block, instead of just getting on with it you start to say, ‘If only I could light up now, it would solve my problem.’ You then start to question your decision to quit smoking.”

“It turned out I had always been a smoker. I just hadn't had any cigarettes.”

“The concept of disease is fast replacing the concept of responsibility. With increasing zeal Americans use and interpret the assertion "I am sick" as equivalent to the assertion "I am not responsible": Smokers say they are not responsible for smoking, drinkers that they are not responsible for drinking, gamblers that they are not responsible for gambling, and mothers who murder their infants that they are not responsible for killing. To prove their point — and to capitalize on their self-destructive and destructive behavior — smokers, drinkers, gamblers, and insanity acquitees are suing tobacco companies, liquor companies, gambling casinos, and physicians.”

“There are people who can make love standing on a hammock, but it is not the easiest way.”

“We all know water promises weight to carry our grief, pulsing, further and still further away. The cave is something else entirely. Its promises are the sharp moments of sex we insist frighten us when anyone asks us about love, but which we secretly desire above all faint and feathered touch. The prince always knows this and turns again and again away from his beloved when she becomes too tender. He is looking for the opening where the egg rests unharmed. Yes, memory is velocity solidified and molded into something with hooves and breath. We must be careful where we let these creatures run—to granite or sea.”