Life's Pleasures Quote by Mario Lemieux

Lemieux isn’t moralizing here so much as casually sketching the ecosystem that shaped him: a Montreal where smoking is ambient, almost infrastructural, and a junior hockey culture where habits spread the way slang does. The line “I think people in Montreal smoke a lot” reads like a shrug, but it quietly shifts responsibility from individual vice to social weather. He’s describing a norm you absorb before you ever decide you’re participating.

The specificity of “17-18” and “playing juniors” does the real work. It’s not confession-for-confession’s-sake; it’s a reminder that elite athletes aren’t born in a vacuum of clean living. They’re teenagers in locker rooms, trying to belong, trying to manage nerves, trying to look older than they are. When he says he “just picked it up,” the phrasing is tellingly passive: the habit happens to you, as if it comes with the gear bag.

Then he pivots to “I stopped when I was 22,” and suddenly the tone tightens. In sports, “a big decision” usually means contracts, trades, surgeries. Lemieux elevates quitting smoking into that category, signaling how intertwined identity and routine can become, even for someone with world-class talent. Subtext: discipline isn’t a constant trait; it’s a series of edits. He’s also doing reputation management without sounding managed, locating maturity not in perfection but in course-correction.