Nicotine

It’s perfectly simple,’ he explained ‘almost every morning I wake up feeling shit and think about packing in my drinking, my eating and my smoking. But then I remember my grandfather, who was in the Wehrmacht and died at Stalingrad, and I contemplate the terrible suffering and deprivation he must have experienced for months before finally being killed. Surely, I admonish myself, it’s up to you to experience all the pleasures he was denied? And then I reach for my cigarettes.’

For the first time in my life I get a sense of how much smoking is connected to youth, with love and joie de vivre. Perhaps, I think, I’ve just grown out of it

Smoking eases the wait for the gratification of actual desires

It’s still a mystery to me why people stand on escalators, these machines weren’t installed with the intent of slowing your progress

The worst thing about being an adult is feeling overwhelmed with embarrassment time and time again when we recall these moments in which we were so unbelievably clueless

preferable or more important, the object lying there as it is, or the wish to take it from its place

He who conquers his urges gains his freedom