Quotenik
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smoking

“Smoking is rubbish, most of the time. But if I’d never smoked, I’d never have met Kurt Vonnegut. We were both at a huge party in New York, and I sneaked out onto the balcony for a cigarette, and there he was, smoking. So we talked—about C. S. Forester, I seem to remember. (That’s just a crappy and phony figure of speech. Of course I remember.) So tell your kids not to smoke, but it’s only fair to warn them of the downside, too: that they will therefore never get the chance to offer the greatest living writer in America a light.”

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source: “December 2003 & January 2004,” in The Polysyllabic Spree (San Francisco, CA: Believer Books, 2004), 44.

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medium: Essay

“After a day of giving up cigarettes I have decided what the hell, and am back on the old routine. I found that my smokeless yesterday didn’t bother me at all. It just seemed, merely, silly to deny myself that pleasure. I think it is really the adult substitute for thumbsucking.”

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source: July 1954 letter to Avis DeVoto in As Always, Julia: The Letters of Julia Child and Avis DeVoto (New York: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2010), 183.

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medium: letter

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