My mom started smoking when she was 11. She went to the hill next door to try her first cigarette. She set the entire hill on fire, but it didn't deter her.

My sister and I are both diagnosed with second-hand smoke syndromes. We have never smoked, but we grew up with second-hand smoke our entire lives.

Young people think that nothing bad will ever happen to them.

I've been working with the National Lung Health Education Program to raise awareness about Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease.

... I learned the hard way that just as I no longer have to save anyone, neither do I have to be saved.

If you want to be alive and live in a real world, if you want to have any emotions at all in your life, you must willingly, knowingly, repeatedly set yourself up for things possibly not ending up 'happily ever after.

Your lungs are changed forever from your first cigarette.