Quotes about air
page 5

“And I felt a sudden whirl in my head, knowing this leap was inevitable, that I wasn't just standing on the cliff, toes poking over, but already in mid-air.”

Sarah Dessen book This Lullaby

Source: This Lullaby

“The trees like lungs filling with air
My sister, the mean one, pulling my hair”

Jeffrey Eugenides book The Virgin Suicides

Source: The Virgin Suicides

Sister, Tree

“Vitally, the human race is dying. It is like a great uprooted tree, with its roots in the air. We must plant ourselves again in the universe.”

D.H. Lawrence book Lady Chatterley's Lover

Source: Lady Chatterley's Lover

Tree, Universe

“Every time we start thinking we're the center of the universe, the universe turns around and says with a slightly distracted air, 'I'm sorry. What'd you say your name was again?”

Margaret Maron book Bootlegger's Daughter

Source: Bootlegger's Daughter

Thinking, Universe, Time

“Oh, he's on top of it. It was volunteer only, but he pretended not to notice me waving my hand in the air," says Haymitch. "See? He's already demonstrated good judgment.”

Suzanne Collins book Mockingjay

Source: Mockingjay

“Love. It was the beginning and end of everything, the foundation and the ceiling and the air in between.”

Kristin Hannah book The Nightingale

Source: The Nightingale

Love

“As a girl, I used to believe that I could see and taste the air. I was TOLD that was impossible and forgot how to do so.”

Silver RavenWolf (1956) American New Age, Magic and Witchcraft author and lecturer

Source: A Witch's Notebook: Lessons in Witchcraft

Girl

“I thought they were helping me. I was so full of trust in them that I felt grateful as they carried me in the air. Only when they threw me overboard did I begin to have doubts.”

Yann Martel book Life of Pi

Source: Life of Pi

Help

“Into my heart an air that kills
From yon far country blows:
What are those blue remembered hills,
What spires, what farms are those?

That is the land of lost content,
I see it shining plain,
The happy highways where I went
And cannot come again.”

A.E. Housman book A Shropshire Lad

No. 40.
Source: A Shropshire Lad (1896)

Happiness, Heart, Country

“Nykyrian gave him a feral grimace. But when he spoke, his soft, lilting tone belied his fierce expression. “Syn… what can I say? I love you, man. I can’t live without you. are the air I breathe.”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Born of Silence

Love

“The destructive character knows only one watchword: make room. And only one activity: clearing away. His need for fresh air and open space is stronger than any hatred.”

Walter Benjamin (1892–1940) German literary critic, philosopher and social critic (1892-1940)

"The Destructive Character" Frankfurter Zeitung (20 November 1931)
Source: Reflections: Essays, Aphorisms, Autobiographical Writings

“Battle with unconditioned breath the unconditioned air. Shun electric wire. Communicate slowly. Live a three-dimensional life; stay away from screens.”

Wendell Berry (1934) author

Life, Communication

“It wasn't good, he wasn't good, he did not have good intentions. I stood there, and he stood there. He breathed out the bitter air that makes women doubt everything, and I breathed it in, as I had always done.”

Miranda July (1974) American performance artist, musician and writer

Source: No One Belongs Here More Than You

Women

“Love is not an equation… It is not a contract, and it's not a happy ending. It is the slate under the chalk and the ground buildings rise from and the oxygen in the air.”

Jodi Picoult (1966) Author

Source: Vanishing Acts

Love, Happiness

“I feel like cotton candy: sugar and air. Squeeze me and I’d turn into a small sickly damp wad of weeping pinky-red.”

Margaret Atwood book The Handmaid's Tale

Source: The Handmaid's Tale

Feeling

“Now I see the secret of making the best person: it is to grow in the open air and to eat and sleep with the earth.”

Walt Whitman (1819–1892) American poet, essayist and journalist

Secret, Sleep, Personality

“But most days,
I wander around feeling invisible.
Like I'm a speck of dust
floating in the air
that can only be seen
when a shaft of light hits it.”

Sonya Sones book One of Those Hideous Books Where the Mother Dies

Source: One of Those Hideous Books Where the Mother Dies

Feeling, Light

“I believe in the hands that work, in the brains that think, and in the hearts that love… I believe in sunshine, fresh air, friendship, calm sleep, beautiful thoughts.”

Elbert Hubbard (1856–1915) American writer, publisher, artist, and philosopher fue el escritor del jarron azul

Love, Friendship, Beauty, Thinking

“Relief is a wonderful emotion, highly underrated. In fact, I prefer it to elation or joy. Relief lets the air out of the Tire of Pain.”

Adriana Trigiani (1970) American film director

Source: Rococo

Pain, Joy

“Knowledge was not meant to be locked behind doors. It breathes best in the open air where all men can inhale its essence.”

Louis L'Amour The Haunted Mesa

Source: The Haunted Mesa

Men, Knowledge

“I can remember when the air was clean and sex was dirty.”

George Burns (1896–1996) American comedian, actor, and writer

Sex

“Music is everywhere. It’s in the air between us, waiting to be sung.”

David Levithan (1972) American author and editor

Source: How They Met, and Other Stories

Music, Waiting

“How much change can a person absorb before everything loses meaning Living for its own sake isn't life. People need meaning as much as they need air.”

Daniel H. Wilson book Robopocalypse

Source: Robopocalypse

Life, People, Change, Personality

“When people make a contract with the devil and give him an air-conditioned office to work in, he doesn't go back home easily.”

James Lee Burke (1936) Novelist, short story writer

Source: In the Electric Mist With Confederate Dead

People, Home, Back To Work

“These young men and women, longing to socialize their democracy, are animated by certain hopes which may be thus loosely formulated; that if in a democratic country nothing can be permanently achieved save through the masses of the people, it will be impossible to establish a higher political life than the people themselves crave; that it is difficult to see how the notion of a higher civic life can be fostered save through common intercourse; that the blessings which we associate with a life of refinement and cultivation can be made universal and must be made universal if they are to be permanent; that the good we secure for ourselves is precarious and uncertain, is floating in mid-air, until it is secured for all of us and incorporated into our common life.”

Jane Addams (1860–1935) pioneer settlement social worker

"The Subjective Necessity for Social Settlements" http://www.infed.org/archives/e-texts/addams6.htm; this piece by Jane Addams was first published in 1892 and later appeared as chapter six of Twenty Years at Hull House (1910) <br class="br">Context: These young people accomplish little toward the solution of this social problem, and bear the brunt of being cultivated into unnourished, oversensitive lives. They have been shut off from the common labor by which they live which is a great source of moral and physical health. They feel a fatal want of harmony between their theory and their lives, a lack of coördination between thought and action. I think it is hard for us to realize how seriously many of them are taking to the notion of human brotherhood, how eagerly they long to give tangible expression to the democratic ideal. These young men and women, longing to socialize their democracy, are animated by certain hopes which may be thus loosely formulated; that if in a democratic country nothing can be permanently achieved save through the masses of the people, it will be impossible to establish a higher political life than the people themselves crave; that it is difficult to see how the notion of a higher civic life can be fostered save through common intercourse; that the blessings which we associate with a life of refinement and cultivation can be made universal and must be made universal if they are to be permanent; that the good we secure for ourselves is precarious and uncertain, is floating in mid-air, until it is secured for all of us and incorporated into our common life.

Life, Women, Men, People

“When air is charged with emotions, an attempt to teach is often perceived as a form of judgment and rejection.”

Stephen R. Covey book The Seven Habits of Highly Effective People

Source: The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People: Powerful Lessons in Personal Change

“If you're ever in doubt, throw a pepper in the air. If it fails to come down, you have gone mad, so don't trust in anything.”

Gregory Maguire (1954) Novelist

Source: Mirror Mirror

Madness

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

Edith Wharton The Age of Innocence

Source: The Age of Innocence

Idea

“AZRAEL:

No pleasure, no rapture, no exquisite sin greater… than central air.”

Kevin Smith (1970) American screenwriter, actor, film producer, public speaker and director

Pleasure

“Outside the open window
The morning air is all awash with angels.”

Richard Wilbur (1921–2017) American poet

Love Calls Us To The Things Of This World
Source: Collected Poems, 1943-2004
Context: The eyes open to a cry of pulleys,
And spirited from sleep, the astounded soul
Hangs for a moment bodiless and simple
As false dawn.
Outside the open window
The morning air is all awash with angels.

Angels

“As birds' wings beat the solid air without which none could fly so words freed by the imagination affirm reality by their flight.”

William Carlos Williams book Spring and All

Source: Spring and All

Imagination, Bird, Reality, Flying

“He knew he had no right to touch her, crave her like air, but he did both. And when he put his mouth on hers, he recognized the taste of her, like she'd been made just for him.”

Jill Shalvis (1963) American writer

Source: Lucky in Love

“Me, I was still in the pygmy hippo in a skirt, singing lusty songs about Solomon's private life and a giant stone back and forth through the air as I climbed out of the quarry at the edge of the site.”

Jonathan Stroud book The Ring of Solomon

Source: The Ring of Solomon

Life, Singing

“His air of failure had nothing desperate about it; rather, it seemed to stem from an unresented realisation that he was not cut out for success, and his duty was therefore to ensure only that he failed in the correct and acceptable fashion.”

Julian Barnes book Flaubert's Parrot

Source: Flaubert's Parrot

Fashion, Failure, Success

“Do you have spies in Clan Heavy?”
“I have spies everywhere.”
I looked at Andrea, who was hoarding bacon on her plate.
“She had tea with Mahon’s wife.” Andrea said.
Aunt B looked at her. “You and I need to work on your air of mystery.”

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo

Source: Magic Rises

Tea

“He touched the rough crucifix that lay against his chest and whispered to the moving air, "Lord, that she might be safe, she and my children." Then turned his cheek to her reaching hand and touched her throught the veils of time.”

Diana Gabaldon book The Scottish Prisoner

Source: The Scottish Prisoner

Children, Time

“I'm a candle flame that sways in currents of air you can't see. You need to be the one who steadies me to burn.”

Nadine Gordimer book The House Gun

Source: The House Gun

“How much does one imagine, how much observe? One can no more separate those functions than divide light from air, or wetness from water.”

Elspeth Huxley (1907–1997) Kenyan writer

Source: The Flame Trees of Thika: Memories of an African Childhood

Imagination, Light, Water

“Oh, he's not like that," said Favonius.

Jason flinched. "You can read my mind?"

"I don't need to." Favonius tossed his bronze hoop in the air. "has the wrong impression of Cupid… until they meet him.”

Rick Riordan book The House of Hades

Source: The House of Hades

Reading

“He felt it too, the air between us, the invisible lines that something or someone had drawn to connect us. That's the way I remember it.”

Sara Zarr (1970) American children's writer

Source: How to Save a Life

Way

“Here's what I was thinking about:1. Who the new threat was 2. The air show in Mexico City 3. How to get Total to quit milking his injury, because enough was enough 4. My mom and Half sister Ella 5. Fang 6. Fang 7. Fang”

James Patterson (1947) American author

Moms, Thinking, Sister

“When you've nothing else construct ceremonies out of the air and breathe upon them.”

Cormac McCarthy book The Road

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

“I’d rather be happy and odd than miserable and ordinary,' she said, sticking her chin in the air.”

Michelle Magorian (1947) English children's writer

Source: Good Night, Mr. Tom

Happiness

“I had only to open my bedroom window, and blue air, love, and flowers entered with her”.”

Marc Chagall (1887–1985) French artist and painter

Love, Flowers

“There is a special charm to journeys undertaken before daybreak in hot lands: the air is soft and cool and the coming of dawn reveals a landscape fresh from the night dew.”

Aung San Suu Kyi book Letters from Burma

Source: Letters from Burma

Night

“You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I'll rise.”

Maya Angelou And Still I Rise

"Still I Rise"
Source: And Still I Rise (1978)

Hate

“She couldn't survey the wreck of the world with an air of casual unconcern.”

Margaret Mitchell book Vom Winde verweht (1937 German edition)

Source: Gone with the Wind

World

“The air is all softness.”

John Keats (1795–1821) English Romantic poet

Source: The Complete Poems

“She loves the serene brutality of the ocean, loves the electric power she felt with each breath of wet, briny air.”

Holly Black (1971) American children's fiction writer

Source: Tithe

Love

“The smog was heavy, my eyes were weeping from it, the sun was hot, the air stank, a regular hell is L. A.”

Jack Kerouac book The Dharma Bums

Source: The Dharma Bums

Hell, Sun

“He had the effect on her of a window being thrown open and fresh air and sunlight being let in”

Elizabeth von Arnim book Vera

Source: Vera

“This great handsomeness I took into myself later when he desired me, but I took it as one breathes air, or swallows a snowflake, or yields to the sun.”

Anaïs Nin (1903–1977) writer of novels, short stories, and erotica

Source: Henry & June

Sun

“The truth hung heavy in the air between us, a near tangible thing. I; d kill for you, give up everything I own for you… but I won't give you up.”

Sylvia Day (1973) American writer

Source: Reflected in You

Truth

“Something will have gone out of us as a people if we ever let the remaining wilderness be destroyed; if we permit the last virgin forests to be turned into comic books and plastic cigarette cases; if we drive the few remaining members of the wild species into zoos or to extinction; if we pollute the last clear air and dirty the last clean streams and push our paved roads through the last of the silence, so that never again will Americans be free in their own country from the noise, the exhausts, the stinks of human and automotive waste. And so that never again can we have the chance to see ourselves single, separate, vertical and individual in the world, part of the environment of trees and rocks and soil, brother to the other animals, part of the natural world and competent to belong in it. … We need wilderness preserved — as much of it as is still left, and as many kinds — because it was the challenge against which our character as a people was formed. The reminder and the reassurance that it is still there is good for our spiritual health even if we never once in ten years set foot in it.”

Wallace Stegner (1909–1993) American historian, writer, and environmentalist

Wilderness Letter http://wilderness.org/bios/former-council-members/wallace-stegner (1960) <br class="br">Source: The Sound of Mountain Water

People, Health, Books, World

“His eyes were green chips of flame, and the growl was so thick it blurred the air around him, the sound of a very pissed off skinchanger.”

Lilith Saintcrow (1976) American writer

Source: Betrayals

“I was in the air around him. I was in the cold mornings he had now. I was in the quiet time he spent alone. I was the girl he had chosen to kiss. He wanted, somehow to set me free. -Susie Salmon”

Alice Sebold book The Lovely Bones

Source: The Lovely Bones

Girl, Kiss, Time

“Remember: The best deceivers do everything they can to cloak their roguish qualities. They cultivate an air of honesty in one area to disguise their dishonesty in others. Honesty is merely another decoy in their arsenal of weapons.”

Robert Greene book The 48 Laws of Power

Source: The 48 Laws of Power

“I feel such a tenderness for these vulnerable nighttime conversations, the way words take a different shape in the air when there's no light in the room.”

David Levithan book Every Day

Source: Every Day

Way, Feeling, Light

“I am longing to be with you, and by the sea, where we can talk together freely and build our castles in the air.”

Bram Stoker book Dracula

Source: Dracula

Sea

“I do not often laugh, sir, as you may perceive by the air of my countenance; but nevertheless, I retain the privilege of laughing when I please.”

Alexandre Dumas book The Three Musketeers

Source: The Three Musketeers

“They weren't happy, and neither of them had touched the chicken or the ale---and yet they weren't unhappy either. There was an unmistakable air of natural intimacy about the picture and anybody would have said that they were conspiring together.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald The Great Gatsby

Source: The Great Gatsby

Happiness, Nature

“And for just a fleeting moment, a tiny wisp of time that hung in the air like fireflies
in summer skies, she wondered if she was in love with him again.”

Nicholas Sparks (1965) American writer and novelist

Love, Time, Summer

“When you begin to realize that your past does not necessarily dictate the outcome of your future, then you can release the hurt. It is impossible to inhale new air until you exhale the old.”

T.D. Jakes (1957) American bishop

Source: Healing the Wounds of the Past

Past, Future, Hurt, Hurtful

“Out of this same light, out of the central mind,
We make a dwelling in the evening air,
In which being there together is enough.”

Wallace Stevens (1879–1955) American poet

"Final Soliloquy of the Interior Paramour"
Collected Poems (1954)
Variant: We make a dwelling in the evening air,
In which being there together is enough.
Context: We say God and the imagination are one...
How high that highest candle lights the dark.
Out of this same light, out of the central mind,
We make a dwelling in the evening air,
In which being there together is enough.

Light

“Great teams do not hold back with one another. They are unafraid to air their dirty laundry. They admit their mistakes, their weaknesses, and their concerns without fear of reprisal.”

Patrick Lencioni (1965) American writer

Source: The Five Dysfunctions of a Team: A Leadership Fable

Fear, For Team

“Mo could paint pictures in the empty air with his voice alone.”

Cornelia Funke Inkheart trilogy

Source: Inkheart

Painting

“Without his mate to share his life, he was but a screen for events and circumstances to pass through. He was npt even empty, for he was no vessel to hold even the thinnest of air.
He lived, though was not truly alive”

Jessica Bird book Lover Revealed

Source: Lover Revealed

Life

“When the green woods laugh with the voice of joy, And the dimpling stream runs laughing by; When the air does laugh with our merry wit, And the green hill laughs with the noise of it.”

George Gordon Byron (1788–1824) English poet and a leading figure in the Romantic movement

Joy

“I found the candles—atrocious air freshening ones that smelled like fake pine.”

Richelle Mead book The Golden Lily

Source: The Golden Lily

“Just as a good rain clears the air, a good writing day clears the psyche.”

Julia Cameron (1948) American writer

Source: The Right to Write: An Invitation and Initiation into the Writing Life

“The wet air was as cold as the ashes of love.”

Raymond Chandler book Farewell, My Lovely

Source: Farewell, My Lovely

Love

“I saw him open his mouth wide… as though he had wanted to swallow all the air, all the earth, all the men before him.”

Joseph Conrad book Heart of Darkness

Source: Heart of Darkness

Men

“He breathed out the bitter air that makes women doubt everything, and I breathed it in, as I had always done. I expelled my dust, the powder of everything I had destroyed with doubt, and he pulled it into his lungs.”

Miranda July (1974) American performance artist, musician and writer

Source: No One Belongs Here More Than You

Women

“Not responding is a response--we are equally responsible for what we don't do. In the case of animal slaughter, to throw your hands in the air is to wrap your fingers around a knife handle.”

Jonathan Safran Foer book Eating Animals

Source: Eating Animals

Animals

“The water caught the Falselight glimmer like layers of shifting, translucent mirrors and formed split-second works of art in the air, but men cursed it anyway, because it made their heads wet.”

Scott Lynch The Lies of Locke Lamora

Source: The Lies of Locke Lamora

Men, Art, Water

“I want to fill every part of you, breathe the air from your lungs and leave my handprints on your soul. I want to give you more pleasure than you can bear.”

Lisa Kleypas (1964) American writer

Source: Devil in Winter

Pleasure, Soul, Parting

“And of course I'm in the press all the time. So many books have been written about me; Into thin air, up in the air, Gone with the wind”

Rick Riordan book The Lost Hero

Source: The Lost Hero

Books, Time

“Darkling I listen; and, for many a time
I have been half in love with easeful Death,
Call'd him soft names in many a musèd rhyme,
To take into the air my quiet breath;
Now more than ever seems it rich to die,
To cease upon the midnight with no pain,
While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad
In such an ecstasy!
Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain —
To thy high requiem become a sod.”

John Keats Ode to a Nightingale

Stanza 6
Poems (1820), Ode to a Nightingale
Source: Complete Poems and Selected Letters

Love, Death, Pain, Art

“Her laughter was a shiny thing, like pewter flung high in the air.”

Pat Conroy book Beach Music

Source: Beach Music

Laughter

“The truth is humbling, terrifying, and often exhilarating. It blows the doors off the hinges and fills the world with fresh air.”

Augusten Burroughs (1965) American writer

Source: This Is How: Proven Aid in Overcoming Shyness, Molestation, Fatness, Spinsterhood, Grief, Disease, Lushery, Decrepitude & More. For Young and Old Alike.

Truth, World

“Love is not an equation, it is not a contract, and it is not a happy ending. Love is the slate under the chalk, the ground that buildings rise, and the oxygen in the air. It is the place you come back to, no matter where your headed”

Jodi Picoult (1966) Author

Love, Happiness

“ONE THING I AM NEVER GOING TO DO WHEN I GROW UP
Is fall in love, drop out of college, learn to subsist on water and air, have a species named after me, and ruin my life.”

Nicole Krauss The History of Love

Source: The History of Love

Love, Life, Learning, Water

“She can feel his blood, just beneath his skin; when he breathes, the air fills with smoke. He's like a dragon, ancient and fearless.”

Alice Hoffman book Here on Earth

Source: Here on Earth

Feeling

“Fenugreek, Tuesday's spice, when the air is green like mosses after rain.”

Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni book The Mistress of Spices

Source: The Mistress of Spices

“The only way to not think about money is to have a great deal of it."

You might as well say that the only way not to think about air is to have enough to breathe.”

Edith Wharton book The House of Mirth

Source: The House of Mirth

Money, Way, Thinking

“I spent uncounted hours sitting at the bow looking at the water and the sky, studying each wave, different from the last, seeing how it caught the light, the air, the wind; watching patterns, the sweep of it all, and letting it take me.
The sea.”

Gary Paulsen (1939) American writer and musher

Source: Caught by the Sea

Study, Light, Water, Sea

“You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I'll rise.”

Maya Angelou And Still I Rise

"Still I Rise"
And Still I Rise (1978)
Context: You may shoot me with your words,
You may cut me with your eyes,
You may kill me with your hatefulness,
But still, like air, I'll rise.

Hate

“Here stands a girl clutching a knife. There is grease on the stove, blood in the air, and angry words piled in the corners. We are trained not to see it, not to see any of it…. Someone just ripped off my eyelids.”

Laurie Halse Anderson Wintergirls

Source: Wintergirls

Girl, Training

“Inebriate of Air — am I —
And Debauchee of Dew —
Reeling — thro endless summer days —
From Inns of Molten Blue”

Emily Dickinson (1830–1886) American poet

Source: Selected Poems

Summer

“The true miracle is not walking on water or walking in air, but simply walking on this earth.”

Thich Nhat Hanh (1926) Religious leader and peace activist

Water

“Tomorrow. The word hangs in the air for a moment, both a promise and a threat. Then it floats away like a paper boat, taken from her by the water licking at her ankles.”

Thrity Umrigar book The Space Between Us

Source: The Space Between Us

Water

“When I walk
I part the air
and always
the air moves in
to fill the spaces
where my body's been.”

Mark Strand (1934–2014) Canadian-American poet, essayist, translator

"Keeping Things Whole" (1969)
Source: Selected Poems
Context: p>In a field
I am the absence
of field.
This is
always the case.
Wherever I am
I am what is missing.When I walk
I part the air
and always
the air moves in
to fill the spaces
where my body's been.We all have reasons
for moving.
I move
to keep things whole.</p