Play It Again is a section of the journal where we re-publish quotes, gaffes, and immortal lines from both friends and foes of tobacco control. Please send any contributions to this page to Simon Chapman, deputy editor, at the address on the inside front cover. Please enclose an original version or photocopy of the sourced item.

“I smoked cigarettes for many years, probably from the time I was about 12 years old. I remember up until the time I was doing Rocky, I had a cigarette when I was in the ring. That’s how bad the addiction was. Finally, I said, ‘This is only going to bring an early death.’ There also came a point when I thought that cigarettes looked somewhat silly on adults. Yet I have always been drawn to the idea of an oral fixation, and also feeling somewhat more relaxed with something smoking in my hand.

 “I was doing the movie F.I.S.T. and it seemed that the character should appropriately be smoking a cigar. So I started (smoking cigars), in 1977 . . .. After that point, I went back to cigarettes once or twice and then I quit totally. Cleaned out my lungs for three years and then went back to smoking cigars intelligently, for lack of a better term, from a connoisseur’s point of view. . . .

 “Quite often, early on, people were shocked if I was smoking a cigarette. I actually had people come up and blatantly chastise me on the street about smoking a cigarette. A cigar, however, was held in some kind of civil abeyance and people wouldn’t do that. Right away there was less of a stigma.”

 Actor Sylvester Stallone, quoted in a cover story in “Cigar …