“Ah, good conversation - there's nothing like it, is there? The air of ideas is the only air worth breathing.”

Variant: When one has nothing left make ceremonies out of the air and breathe upon them.
Source: The Road

Of Gardens
Essays (1625)

"The Pessimist," http://books.google.com/books?id=nfUaAAAAYAAJ&q=%22Nothing+to+breathe+but+air+Quick+as+a+flash%22+%22gone+Nowhere+to+fall+but+off+Nowhere+to+stand+but+on%22&pg=PA225#v=onepage first published as "The Sum of Life" in the Chicago Mail, c. January 1893 http://books.google.com/books?id=RCgTAAAAYAAJ&q=%22Nothing+to+breathe+but+air+Quick+as+a+flash+tis+gone+Nowhere+to+fall+but+off+Nowhere+to+stand+but+on%22&pg=PA48#v=onepage.

Knowing Yourself: The True in the False (1996)
Context: Love is all around you like the air and is the very breath of your being. But you cannot know it, feel its unfeeling touch, until you pause in your busy-ness, are still and poised and empty of your wanting and desiring. When at rest the air is easily offended and will flee even from the fanning of a leaf, as love flees from the first thought. But when the air or love moves of its own accord it is a hurricane that drives all before it.

The Man With the Blue Guitar (1937)

DK 13B2

Telegram to government aviation production plant superintendents by Stalin in the autumn of 1941, warning them to produce more Il-2 Sturmovik ground attack aircraft for national defense.

Stalin's speeches, writings and authorised interviews
Context: You have let down our country and our Red Army. You have the nerve not to manufacture IL-2s until now. Our Red Army now needs IL-2 aircraft like the air it breathes, like the bread it eats. Shenkman produces one IL-2 a day and Tretyakov builds one or two MiG-3s daily. It is a mockery of our country and the Red Army. I ask you not to try the government's patience, and demand that you manufacture more ILs. This is my final warning.

"Susan Cain: Quiet revolutionary" speaker profile at TED.com, February 2012 (est.)