Quotes about air
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“Gravity was something you could beat; all it took was hydrogen, hot air, or even a bit of rope. But being a girl was a miserable, never-ending struggle.”

Scott Westerfeld (1963) American science fiction writer

Girl

“The Internet is a big distraction. It's distracting, it's meaningless; it's not real. It's in the air somewhere.”

Ray Bradbury (1920–2012) American writer

“There is but one Paris and however hard living may be here, and if it became worse and harder even—the French air clears up the brain and does good—a world of good.”

Vincent Van Gogh (1853–1890) Dutch post-Impressionist painter (1853-1890)

World

“Such a small, pure object a poem could be, made of nothing but air a tiny string of letters, maybe small enough to fit in the palm of your hand. But it could blow everybody's head off.”

Mary Karr (1955) American writer

Source: Lit

“Loving is a journey with water and with stars,
with smothered air and abrupt storms of flour:
loving is a clash of lightning-bolts
and two bodies defeated by a single drop of honey.”

Pablo Neruda (1904–1973) Chilean poet

Love, Star, Water

“Help me, I can’t breathe, your ego is pushing all the air out of the room.”

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo

Source: Magic Slays

Help

“When the times are a crucible, when the air is full of crisis, those who are the most themselves are the victims.”

Gregory Maguire book Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West

Source: Wicked: The Life and Times of the Wicked Witch of the West

Time

“Church was doing what he often did when dropped - lying on his back with all four legs in the air, pretending to be dead in order to induce guilt in his owners.”

Cassandra Clare The City of Lost Souls

Source: City of Lost Souls

Lying, Dead

“I suppose a cry does us all good at times-clears the air as other rain does.”

Bram Stoker book Dracula

Source: Dracula

Time, Cry

“Up in this air you breathed easily, drawing in a vital assurance and lightness of heart. In the highlands you woke up in the morning and thought: Here I am, where I ought to be.”

Karen Blixen book Out of Africa

Source: Out of Africa

Light, Heart, Drawing

“Sometimes grace is a ribbon of mountain air that gets in through the cracks.”

Anne Lamott (1954) Novelist, essayist, memoirist, activist

Source: Grace (Eventually): Thoughts on Faith

Mountain

“I would like to be the air that inhabits you for a moment only. I would like to be that unnoticed and that necessary.”

Margaret Atwood (1939) Canadian writer

“Life is wonderful. It's a gift to be alive, to see the sun and breathe the air. And there isn't really anything else.”

Michael Crichton book The Lost World

Seventh Configuration "Departure"
Source: The Lost World (1995)
Context: A hundred years from now, people will look back on us and laugh. They'll say, 'You know what people used to believe? They believed in photons and electrons. Can you imagine anything so silly?' They'll have a good laugh, because by then there will be newer and better fantasies. And meanwhile, you feel the way the boat moves? That's the sea. That's real. You smell the salt in the air? You feel the sunlight on your skin? That's all real. You see all of us together? That's real. Life is wonderful. It's a gift to be alive, to see the sun and breathe the air. And there isn't really anything else.

Life, Sun

“I am air and thought and can do nothing.”

Madeline Miller book The Song of Achilles

Source: The Song of Achilles

“How can I explain to anyone that stories are like air to me, I breathe them in and let them out over and over again.”

Jacqueline Woodson book Brown Girl Dreaming

Source: Brown Girl Dreaming

“Love was in the air so both of us walked through love on our way to the corner.”

Daniel Handler book Adverbs

Source: Adverbs (2006), Immediately

Love, Way

“To put to rest any doubts you might have… I’m jealous of every man who comes within ten feet of you. I’m jealous of the clothes on your skin and the air you breathe. I’m jealous of every moment you spend out of my sight”

Lisa Kleypas (1964) American writer

Source: Scandal in Spring

Clothes

“I will take the sun in my mouth
and leap into the ripe air
Alive
with closed eyes
to dash against darkness”

E.E. Cummings (1894–1962) American poet

Variant: I will take the sun in my mouth and leap into the ripe air.
Source: Poems, 1923-1954

Sun

“There's another problem," Percy said. "I'm not good with air travel. It's dangerous for a son of Neptune."
"You'll have to risk it… and so will I," Frank said. "By the way, we're related."
Percy almost stumbled off the roof. "What?”

Rick Riordan book The Son of Neptune

Source: The Son of Neptune

Way, Travel, Problem

“dissonance, n.

Nights when I need to sleep and you can't. Days when I want to talk to you and you won't. Hours when every noise you make interferes with my silence. Weeks when there is a buzzing in the air, and we both pretend we don't here it.”

David Levithan The Lover's Dictionary

Source: The Lover's Dictionary

Sleep, Silence, Night

“It has come to my attention, that air pollution is polluting the air!”

George W. Bush (1946) 43rd President of the United States

“In the high country of the mind one has to become adjusted to the thinner air of uncertainty…”

Robert M. Pirsig (1928–2017) American writer and philosopher

Country

“The air will always be to filled with something. Your body too sore or tired. Your father too drunk. Your wife too cold. You will always have some excuse not to live your life.”

Chuck Palahniuk book Haunted

Source: Haunted

Life

“I don't know much about kisses, but I can assure you that hers were no less fierce than a swarm of bullets tearing the air”

Xavier Velasco (1964) Mexican writer

Kiss, Tear

“The air was heavy with the smell of leather and dust, of old parchment and binding glue. It smelled of secrets.”

Patrick Rothfuss book The Wise Man's Fear

Source: The Wise Man's Fear

Secret

“Her best friend was gone and nobody understood that no amount of makeup, fresh air or shopping was going to fill the hole in her heart.”

Cecelia Ahern (1981) Irish novelist

Source: P.S. I Love You

Heart

“All great discoveries… are products as much of doubt as of certainty, and the two in opposition clear the air for marvelous accidents.”

Mark Helprin book Winter's Tale

Source: Winter's Tale

“If you surrendered to the air, you could ride it.”

Toni Morrison book Song of Solomon

Variant: If you surrender to the wind you can ride it.
Source: Song of Solomon (1977)

“… and when he thought about the way she laughed, as though she owned the air around her, his heart thundered inside his chest, a lonely rada.”

Junot Díaz book The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

Source: The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao

Way, Heart

“The flames surround me, and I feel myself slipping further from life, thinning to only the faintest shiver in the air. I yearn for the darkness and silence of the underworld, where I can rest.”

Madeline Miller book The Song of Achilles

Source: The Song of Achilles

Life, Feeling, Silence

“If you deliver an opinion at all, it is mere stupidity not to do it with an air of conviction and well-founded knowledge. You make it your own in uttering it, and naturally get fond of it.”

George Eliot book The Mill on the Floss

Source: The Mill on the Floss

Stupidity, Nature, Knowledge

“The sea is calm tonight.
The tide is full, the moon lies fair
Upon the straits;—on the French coast the light
Gleams and is gone; the cliffs of England stand,
Glimmering and vast, out in the tranquil bay. Come to the window, sweet is the night-air!”

Matthew Arnold Dover Beach

St. 1
Dover Beach (1867)
Source: Dover Beach and Other Poems

Light, Sea, Night

“There is no absurdity so palpable but that it may be firmly planted in the human head if you only begin to inculcate it before the age of five, by constantly repeating it with an air of great solemnity.”

Arthur Schopenhauer (1788–1860) German philosopher

Age

“Bees blew like cake-crumbs through the golden air, white butterflies like sugared wafers, and when it wasn't raining a diamond dust took over which veiled and yet magnified all things”

Laurie Lee (1914–1997) British writer

Source: Cider With Rosie

Bee

“And the great spirit of darkness spread a shroud over me… everything was silent-everything. But upon the heights soughed the everlasting song, the voice of the air, the distant, toneless humming which is never silent.”

Knut Hamsun book Hunger

Source: Hunger

Distant

“He was unheeded, happy, and near to the wild heart of life. He was alone and young and wilful and wildhearted, alone amid a waste of wild air and brackish waters and the seaharvest of shells and tangle and veiled grey sunlight.”

Jon Krakauer book Into the Wild

Source: Into the Wild

Life, Happiness, Water, Heart

“Knowledge, like air, is vital to life. Like air, no one should be denied it.”

Alan Moore V for Vendetta

Source: V for Vendetta

Life, Knowledge

“My life seemed like a glass tunnel, through which I was moving faster every year, and at the end of which there was darkness. When I changed my view, the walls of my glass tunnel disappeared. I now live in the open air.”

Derek Parfit book Reasons and Persons

Source: Reasons and Persons (1984), p. 281
Context: Is the truth depressing? Some may find it so. But I find it liberating, and consoling. When I believed that my existence was a further fact, I seemed imprisoned in myself. My life seemed like a glass tunnel, through which I was moving faster every year, and at the end of which there was darkness. When I changed my view, the walls of my glass tunnel disappeared. I now live in the open air. There is still a difference between my life and the lives of other people. But the difference is less. I am less concerned about the rest of my own life, and more concerned about the lives of others.

Life, Change

“Like many air travelers, I am aware that airplanes fly aided by capricious fairies and invisible strings.”

J. Maarten Troost (1969) American writer

Source: The Sex Lives of Cannibals: Adrift in the Equatorial Pacific

Travel, Flying

“The bell jar hung, suspended, a few feet above my head. I was open to the circulating air.”

Sylvia Plath book The Bell Jar

Source: The Bell Jar (1963), Ch. 18

“When moral superiority combines with billowing ignorance, they fill up a hot-air balloon that's awfully hard not to poke.”

Barbara Kingsolver (1955) American author, poet and essayist

“Louisiana is a fresh-air mental asylum.”

James Lee Burke book Pegasus Descending

Source: Pegasus Descending

“It was one of those days you sometimes get latish in the autumn when the sun beams, the birds toot, and there is a bracing tang in the air that sends the blood beetling briskly through the veins.”

P.G. Wodehouse (1881–1975) English author

Autumn, Bird, Sun

“The tenderness between two people can turn the air tender, the room tender, time itself tender. As I step out of bed and slip on an oversize shirt, everything around me feels like it's the temperature of happiness.”

David Levithan book Every Day

Source: Every Day

Happiness, People, Feeling, Time

“Books are meat and medicine
and flame and flight and flower
steel, stitch, cloud and clout,
and drumbeats on the air.”

Gwendolyn Brooks (1917–2000) American writer

Books, Flowers

“There are certain half-dreaming moods of mind in which we naturally steal away from noise and glare, and seek some quiet haunt where we may indulge our reveries and build our air castles undisturbed.”

Washington Irving (1783–1859) writer, historian and diplomat from the United States

Source: The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Other Stories

Dreams, Mood, Nature

“Wouldn't it be fun if all the castles in the air which we make could come true and we could live in them?”

Louisa May Alcott book Little Women

Source: Little Women

“Into the air, over the valleys, under the stars, above a river, a pond, a road, flew Cecy. Invisible as new spring winds, fresh as the breath of clover rising from twilight fields, she flew.”

Ray Bradbury (1920–2012) American writer

Star, Spring

“So when the blue smoke of brittle leaves was in the air and the wind blew the wet laundry stiff on the line I decided to come back home.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald The Great Gatsby

Source: The Great Gatsby

Home

“The air tasted just the same, smelled just the same. The wind making my hair feel sticky, the salty sea breeze, all of it felt just right. Like it had been waiting for me to get there.”

Jenny Han (1980) American writer

Source: The Summer I Turned Pretty

Feeling, Waiting, Sea

“That sinuous southern life, that oblique and slow and complicated old beauty, that warm thick air and blood warm sea, that place of mists and languor and fragrant richness…”

Anne Rivers Siddons (1936–2019) novelist from the United States

Source: Colony

Life, Beauty, Sea

“Knowing who you really are and dressing the part -- with an air of amused recklessness -- is life affirming for you and life enhancing for other people.”

Simon Doonan (1952) British businessman

Source: Eccentric Glamour: Creating an Insanely More Fabulous You

Life, People, Parting

“Some days in late August at home are like this, the air thin and eager like this, with something in it sad and nostalgic and familiar…”

William Faulkner book The Sound and the Fury

Source: The Sound and the Fury

Sadness, Home

“A moment later Jonathan’s body wavered in the air, shimmering, and began to go transparent. “Don’t let them spread silly rumors about me, or make me a god. O. K., Fletch? I’m a seagull. I like to fly, maybe…”

Richard Bach book Jonathan Livingston Seagull

Source: Jonathan Livingston Seagull

God, Flying

“Good and evil are merely opposite sides of a coin. Get tossed in the air enough, it's easy to come down on the wrong side.”

Karen Marie Moning (1964) author

Source: Dreamfever

Evil

“We have flown the air like birds and swum the sea like fishes, but have yet to learn the simple act of walking the earth like brothers.”

Martin Luther King, Jr. (1929–1968) American clergyman, activist, and leader in the American Civil Rights Movement

1960s, The Quest for Peace and Justice (1964)
Context: There is a sort of poverty of the spirit which stands in glaring contrast to our scientific and technological abundance. The richer we have become materially, the poorer we have become morally and spiritually. We have learned to fly the air like birds and swim the sea like fish, but we have not learned the simple art of living together as brothers.

Bird, Fish, Learning, Sea

“… the air a library and the record of every life lived, every sentence spoken, every word transmitted still reverberating within it.”

Anthony Doerr book All the Light We Cannot See

Source: All the Light We Cannot See

Life

“She gazed around with a bored air. "This feels just like. But shouldn't you lawyer up before I throw the book at you? No? So what's in the IV bag?”

Kresley Cole American writer

Source: Dreams of a Dark Warrior

Books, Feeling

“The best way to keep children at home is to make the home atmosphere pleasant, and let the air out of the tires.”

Dorothy Parker (1893–1967) American poet, short story writer, critic and satirist

Children, Way, Home, Funny

“[Jason] faltered when he looked at Leo, who was mimicking taking notes with an air pencil.
“Go on, Professor Grace!” he said, wide-eyed. “I wanna get an A on the test.”

Rick Riordan book The House of Hades

Source: The House of Hades

“Air grew heavy, damp, almost solid. I was breathing bricks.”

Khaled Hosseini book The Kite Runner

Source: The Kite Runner

“… for in that city [New York] there is neurosis in the air which the inhabitants mistake for energy.”

Evelyn Waugh (1903–1966) British writer

Source: Brideshead Revisited: The Sacred and Profane Memories of Captain Charles Ryder

“If you don't want anyone to know about your existence, you might as well kill yourself. You're taking up space, air.”

Dave Eggers book A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius

Source: A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius

“How she still thought of Max every day and it was like someone had emptied her lungs of air, and she would catch at her heart, afraid she was dying.”

Cassandra Clare The City of Lost Souls

Source: City of Lost Souls

Heart

“Watching a coast as it slips by the ship is like thinking about an enigma. There it is before you, smiling, frowning, inviting, grand, mean, insipid, or savage, and always mute with an air of whispering, "Come and find out".”

Joseph Conrad book Heart of Darkness

Source: Heart of Darkness

Smile, Thinking

“It's opener, out there, in the wide, open air.”

Dr. Seuss (1904–1991) American children's writer and illustrator, co-founder of Beginner Books

Source: Oh, The Places You'll Go!

“Rather than words comes the thought of high windows:
The sun-comprehending glass,
And beyond it, the deep blue air, that shows
Nothing, and is nowhere, and is endless.”

Philip Larkin book High Windows

Source: High Windows

Sun

“Who will tell whether one happy moment of love or the joy of breathing or walking on a bright morning and smelling the fresh air, is not worth all the suffering and effort which life implies”

Erich Fromm (1900–1980) German social psychologist and psychoanalyst

Love, Life, Happiness, Effort

“Live in each season as it passes; breathe the air, drink the drink, taste the fruit, and resign yourself to the influence of the earth.”

Henry David Thoreau book Walden ou la vie dans les bois

Source: Walden

Drink, Season, Beauty, Peaceful

“So I left my wonderfully intelligent family and soaked myself in the bath and considered drowning myself. Then I remembered I still had chocolate cake left over from yesterday so I came back up for air. Some things are worth living for.”

Cecelia Ahern book Love, Rosie

Source: Love, Rosie

Family, Intelligence

“This is love, I think. A place where people who have been alone may lock together like hawks and spin in the air, dizzy with surprise at the connection. A place you go willingly, and with wonder”

Jodi Picoult book Keeping Faith

Source: Keeping Faith

Love, People, Thinking

“Never shoot up in the air when you're standing under it.”

Woody Allen (1935) American screenwriter, director, actor, comedian, author, playwright, and musician

“Louisiana in September was like an obscene phone call from nature. The air — moist, sultry, secretive, and far from fresh — felt as if it were being exhaled into one's face. Sometimes it even sounded like heavy breathing.”

Tom Robbins book Jitterbug Perfume

Source: Jitterbug Perfume (1984)

Secret, Nature

“If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; that is where they should be. Now put the foundations under them.”

Henry David Thoreau book Walden ou la vie dans les bois

Source: Walden

Motivational, Leadership, Back To Work

“If there is one thing I dislike, it is the man who tries to air his grievances when I wish to air mine.”

P.G. Wodehouse book Love Among the Chickens

Source: Love Among the Chickens

“He carefully maintained the blasé air of one who had been here before and had been incredibly well dressed that time too”

Cassandra Clare The Bane Chronicles

Source: The Bane Chronicles

Time

“Why worry about minor little details like clean air, clean water, safe ports and the safety net when Jesus is going to give the world an "Extreme Makeover: Planet Edition" right after he finishes putting Satan in his place once and for all?”

Arianna Huffington (1950) Greek-American author and syndicated columnist

World, Water

“She read books as one would breathe air, to fill up and live.”

Annie Dillard book The Living

Source: The Living

Books, Reading

“Gavroche had fallen only to rise again; he sat up, a long stream of blood rolled down his face, he raised both arms in air, looked in the direction whence the shot came, and began to sing.”

Victor Hugo book Les Misérables

Source: Les Misérables

Singing

“The delicious breath of rain was in the air.”

Kate Chopin (1850–1904) American author

“Goodnight stars, goodnight air, goodnight noises everywhere.”

Margaret Wise Brown Goodnight Moon

Source: Goodnight Moon

Star, Good Night

“In the spring of 1988, I returned to New Orleans, and as soon as I smelled the air, I knew I was home.
It was rich, almost sweet, like the scent of jasmine and roses around our old courtyard.
I walked the streets, savoring that long lost perfume.”

Anne Rice book Interview with the Vampire

Source: Interview with the Vampire

Home, Spring

“Ralph wept for the end of innocence, the darkness of man's heart, and the fall through the air of the true, wise friend called Piggy.”

William Golding book Lord of the Flies

Source: Lord of the Flies (1954), Ch. 12: The Cry of the Hunters
Context: His voice rose under the black smoke before the burning wreckage of the island; and infected by that emotion, the other little boys began to shake and sob too. And in the middle of them, with filthy body, matted hair, and unwiped nose, Ralph wept for the end of innocence, the darkness of man's heart, and the fall through the air of the true, wise friend called Piggy.

Heart

“I was running from one problem or place to another, with no time left to study, or sleep, or just breathe. I felt pulled in all directions, fighting to keep all these obligations circling in the air above me. It was only a matter of time before something fell.”

Sarah Dessen book Dreamland

Source: Dreamland (2000)

Problem, Sleep, Study, Time

“There's a responsibility in being a person. It's more than just taking up space where air would be.”

John Steinbeck book East of Eden

Source: East of Eden

Personality

“Spring was moving in the air above and in the earth below and around him, penetrating even his dark and lowly little house with its spirit of divine discontent and longing.”

Kenneth Grahame book The Wind in the Willows

Opening lines, Ch. 1, "The River Bank"
Source: The Wind in the Willows (1908)
Context: The Mole had been working very hard all the morning, spring-cleaning his little home. First with brooms, then with dusters; then on ladders and steps and chairs, with a brush and a pail of whitewash; till he had dust in his throat and eyes, and splashes of whitewash all over his black fur, and an aching back and weary arms. Spring was moving in the air above and in the earth below and around him, penetrating even his dark and lowly little house with its spirit of divine discontent and longing.

Spring, Housing

“It comes, I suppose,” I said thoughtfully, speaking to the air, “of spending too much time alone indoors, and forgetting that living things don’t always stay where you put them.”

Naomi Novik book Uprooted

Source: Uprooted

Time, Forgetting

“His own opinion, which he does not air, is that the origin of speech lie in song, and the origins of song in the need to fill out with sound the overlarge and rather empty human soul.”

J.M. Coetzee book Disgrace

Source: Disgrace (1999), p. 3-4
Context: Although he devoted hours of each day to his new discipline, he finds its first premise, as enunciated in the Communications 101 handbook, preposterous: 'Human society has created language in order that we may communicate our thoughts, feelings, and intentions to each other.' His own opinion, which he does not air, is that the origins of speech lie in song, and the origins of song in the need to fill out with sound the overlarge and rather empty human soul.

Lie, Soul

“It is clear that the world is purely parodic, in other words, that each thing seen is the parody of another, or is the same thing in a deceptive form.
Ever since sentences started to circulate in brains devoted to reflection, an effort at total identification has been made, because with the aid of a copula each sentence ties one thing to another; all things would be visibly connected if one could discover at a single glance and in its totality the tracings of Ariadne’s thread leading thought into its own labyrinth.
But the copula of terms is no less irritating than the copulation of bodies. And when I scream I AM THE SUN an integral erection results, because the verb to be is the vehicle of amorous frenzy.
Everyone is aware that life is parodic and that it lacks an interpretation. Thus lead is the parody of gold. Air is the parody of water. The brain is the parody of the equator. Coitus is the parody of crime.”

Georges Bataille book The Solar Anus

The Solar Anus (1927)

Life, World, Effort, Water

“What good is knowledge if it just floats in the air? It goes from computer to computer. It changes and grows every second of every day. But nobody actually knows anything.”

Don DeLillo (1936) American novelist, playwright and essayist

Source: Don DeLillo's White Noise

Knowledge, Change

“We all fail to appreciate each day just how much we already possess. Light, air, freedom, the companionship of friends.”

Sophie Kinsella book The Secret Dreamworld of a Shopaholic

Source: Confessions of a Shopaholic

Freedom, Light

“I felt my lungs inflate with the onrush of scenery—air, mountains, trees, people. I thought, "This is what it is to be happy.”

Sylvia Plath book The Bell Jar

Source: The Bell Jar

Happiness, People, Mountain, Tree

“Because these wings are no longer wings to fly
But merely vans to beat the air
The air which is now thoroughly small and dry
Smaller and dryer than the will
Teach us to care and not to care
Teach us to sit still. Pray for us sinners now and at the hour of our death
Pray for us now and at the hour of our death.”

T.S. Eliot (1888–1965) 20th century English author

Ash-Wednesday (1930)

Death, Flying

“Oh, London is a man’s town, there’s power in the air;
And Paris is a woman’s town, with flowers in her hair;
And it’s sweet to dream in Venice, and it’s great to study Rome;
But when it comes to living, there is no place like home.”

Henry Van Dyke (1852–1933) American diplomat

Variant: Oh, London is a man's town, there's power in the air;
And Paris is a woman's town, with flowers in her hair;
And it's sweet to dream in Venice, and it's great to study Rome;
But when it comes to living there is no place like home.
Source: America for Me (1909), Lines 9-12.

Dreams, Home, Flowers, Study