Everyone's smoking, clouds of smoke from pipes and cigarettes and cigars fog the whole huge hall. When it gets too smoky for the smoke, it looks for a way out which, thanks to its lightness, it can, through chinks and holes and ventilator shafts, all of which are under instruction to see it out. Once outside, though, there's only black night and freezing cold. Then the smoke regrets its impulsiveness, and opposes its nature, but the ventilators turn only one way, and there's nothing to be done about it. Too late. It's subject to physical laws. The smoke's not sure what it thinks about that, it tries to touch its brow and there's nothing there, it wants to think and it can't. The wind, the cold, the night, have it in their grip, and it is never seen again.
- Alfred Döblin, Berlin Alexanderplatz (trans. Michael Hofmann)
