“Edna arose, cramped from lying so long and still in the hammock. She tottered up the steps, clutching feebly at the post before passing into the house.
‘Are you coming in, Leonce?’ she asked, turning her face toward her husband.
‘Yes, dear,’ he answered, with a glance following a misty puff of smoke. ‘Just as soon as I have finished my cigar.‘”
″Ask yourself: Are you spending your time on the right things?
You may have causes, goals, interests. Are they even worth pursuing?I’ve long held on to a clipping from a newspaper in Roanoke, Virginia.It featured a photo of a pregnant woman who had lodged a protest against a local construction site. She worried that the sound of jackhammers was injuring her unborn child. But get this: In the photo, the woman is holding a cigarette. If she cared about her unborn child,the time she spent railing against jackhammers would have been better spent putting out that cigarette.″
“A twisted dagger of smoke drifted up from the gun barrel. Fallen on one knee he groped for the bullet, sickened as it moved, and fell over as the forest flew upward, and she, making muted noises of triumph and despair, danced on her toes around the stricken hero.”
“We cross our bridges when we come to them and burn them behind us, with nothing to show for our progress except a memory of the smell of smoke, and a presumption that once our eyes watered.”
“I went closer. Flames still crept and licked at the blackened beams. There was no sign of my mother or my sisters. I tried to call out, but my tongue had suddenly become too big for my mouth, and the smoke was choking me and making my eyes stream. The whole village was on fire, but where was everyone?”
“Then suddenly it was quiet. Slowly the dirt settled down. The smoke and steam cleared away, and there was the cellar, all finished. The sun was just going down behind the hill. ”
“Little Toot was so excited he puffed more and more smoke balls. They gave him a wonderful idea. Those smoke balls could probably be seen all the way up the river, where his father and grandfather were. So he puffed a signal…S.O.S.”
“Mum said it was a lot of creepy nonsense, and who in their right mind would want to leave their bodies and float around like wisps of smoke? There wasn’t anything smoky about mom. She really enjoyed being alive, and getting dressed up to go out.”
“Char blows a fat ring of stinking gray smoke in my face. I laugh, like everybody else. You got to go along with Char if you want to get along with her. You can’t be all sensitive. That’s what Char says.”
“The smoke rose in a lazy spiral, tracing delicate lines of black across the clear air. Jace, alone on the hill overlooking the cemetery, sat with his elbows on his knees and watched the smoke drift heavenward. The irony wasn’t lost on him: These were his father’s remains, after all.”
″‘Just at the minute I’m watching the toast.’
‘It makes an interesting smell, doesn’t it?’ said the puppy, sniffing the air.
‘Yes,’ said Teddy Robinson, ‘It makes a lot of smoke too. That’s what makes it so difficult to watch. You can’t see the toast for the smoke.‘”
“Autumn Fires
In the other gardens
And all up the vale,
From the autumn bonfires
See the smoke trail!
Pleasant summer over
And all the summer flowers,
The red fire blazes,
The gay smoke towers.
Sing a song of seasons!
Something bright in all!
Flowers in the summer,
Fires in the fall!”
“Her trips always ended near a city somewhere
Way out in a freight yard with smoke clouding the air,
Where a turmoil of trains made a great noisy rumble
On crisscrossing tracks, an impossible jumble.”
″ ‘From now on,’ Katy promised, ‘I shall never complain, I’ll be a happy caboose at the end of a train
And put up with the jolts, the train noise, and the rest,
All the smoke that rolls by- or at least try my best.’ ”
“And we ran down the garden, with the snowballs in our arms, toward the house, and smoke, indeed, was pouring out of the dining-room, and the gong was bombilating, and Mrs. Prothero was announcing ruing like a town crier in Pompeii.”
“She said the right thing, always. She looked at the three tall firemen in their shining helmets, standing among the smoke and cinders and dissolving snowballs, and she said: “Would you like anything to read?”