On Smoking

I gave up smoking more than a decade ago, and have no real desire to take up that habit again, but when I see shots like this it brings back memories of being young and smoking. Smoking, like most things in life, is for the young and the stupid, and to be misunderstood by both camps till years later.

I read the book Atlas Shrugged and thought it was a very profound book when I was nineteen and the following is a quote from the book about smoking. I know smoking is bad for me as I know I feel better when   since I've quite smoking. I've also come to realize that the philosophies of Ayn Rand are a bit over the top, and would only work in a world without gray areas, and I like the gray areas of life.

"I like Cigarettes; I like to think of fire held in a man’s hand. FIRE, a dangerous force, tamed at his finger tips. I often wonder about the hours when a man sits alone watching the smoke of a cigarette, thinking. I wonder what great things have come out from such hours. When a man thinks there is a spot of fire alive in his mind – and it is proper that he should have the burning point of a cigarette as his one expression."

- Ayn Rand (Atlas Shrugged, 1957)