If alcohol is queen, then tobacco is her consort. It's a fond companion for all occasions, a loyal friend through fair weather and... foul. People smoke to celebrate a happy moment, or to hide a bitter regret. Whether you're alone or with friends, it's a joy for all the senses. What lovelier sight is there than that double row of white cigarettes, lined up like soldiers on parade and wrapped in silver paper?... I love to touch the pack in my pocket, open it, savor the feel of the cigarette between my fingers, the paper on my lips, the taste of tobacco on my tongue. I love to watch the flame spurt up, love to watch it come closer and closer, filling me with its warmth.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Country people do not behave as if they think life is short; they live on the principle that it is long, and savor variations of t...he kind best appreciated if most days are the same.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Gold light in blind love does not distinguish one surface from another, the savor... is the same to its tongue, the fluted cylinder of a new ashcan a dazzling silver, the smooth flesh of screaming children a quietness, it is all a jubilance....LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
A good aphorism is too hard for the teeth of time and is not eaten up by all the centuries, even though it serves as food for ever...y age: hence it is the greatest paradox in literature, the imperishable in the midst of change, the nourishment which--like salt--is always prized, but which never loses its savor as salt does.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Great writers are either husbands or lovers. Some writers supply the solid virtues of a husband: reliability, intelligibility, gen...erosity, decency. There are other writers in whom one prizes the gifts of a lover, gifts of temperament rather than of moral goodness. Notoriously, women tolerate qualities in a lover--moodiness, selfishness, unreliability, brutality--that they would never countenance in a husband, in return for excitement, an infusion of intense feeling. In the same way, readers put up with unintelligibility, obsessiveness, painful truths, lies, bad grammar--if, in compensation, the writer allows them to savor rare emotions and dangerous sensations. It's a great pity when one is forced to choose between them.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »