Some very considerable part of the gestural language of public places that had once belonged to cigarettes now belonged to phones.

Three of the four elements are shared by all creatures, but fire was a gift to humans alone. Smoking cigarettes is as intimate as we can become with fire without immediate excruciation. Every smoker is an embodiment of Prometheus, stealing fire from the gods and bringing it on back home. We smoke to capture the power of the sun, to pacify Hell, to identify with the primordial spark, to feed on them arrow of the volcano. It's not the tobacco we're after but the fire. When we smoke, we are performing a version of the fire dance, a ritual as ancient as lightning.

We've done it with cigarettes.

Mrs. Whiteley never smoked a pack of cigarettes that didn't have a health warning on it that was written by the surgeon general.

My book is closed, I read no more Watching the fire dance, on the floor I've left my book, I've left my room

Interesting" people were her favorite hobby. She collected them: the type who did gay things late at night and smoked cigarettes in mixed company, those would have most scandalized her own mother.