Quotes about breath
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“How could you not want to draw breath one more day? How could your own life be such a cheap commodity? But then I started to understand: when your existence is hell, death must be heaven.”

Jodi Picoult book The Storyteller

Source: The Storyteller

Life, Death, Hell, Understanding

“Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free.”

Emma Lazarus (1849–1887) American poet

“The whole house seemed to exhale a melancholy breath of emptiness”

Michael Chabon (1963) Novelist, short story writer, essayist

Housing

“Tell me you love me," I pleaded"
"Gideon's eyes met mine. "You know I do"
"Imagine if I i ever said the words to you. If you never heard them from me"
"His chest expanded on a deep breath. "Crossfire”

Sylvia Day (1973) American writer

Source: Entwined with You

Love, Imagination

“Things to do today:
1) Breathe in.
2) Breathe out.”

Ned Vizzini book It's Kind of a Funny Story

Source: It's Kind of a Funny Story

“Some people are little Chernobyls, shimmering with silent, spreading poison: get anywhere near them and every breath you take will wreck you from the inside out.”

Tana French book The Likeness

Source: The Likeness

People

“Happiness had never been like this before. Now it came like sun showers, the sun and the rain together. Happiness was happier than it had been - sharp, piercing, and snatched, like a breath while swimming in surf.”

Elizabeth Knox (1959) New Zealand writer

Source: Dreamhunter

Happiness, Sun

“Poetry and art are the breath of life to her.”

Edith Wharton The Age of Innocence

Source: The Age of Innocence

Life, Art

“There it was. Suddenly the strangeness of Quintana of Charyn's face made sense. Because it was a face meant for laughing, but it had never been given a chance. It robbed Phaedra of her breath.”

Melina Marchetta (1965) Australian teen writer

Source: Quintana of Charyn

Sense, Chance

“When the past is recaptured by the imagination, breath is put back into life.”

Marguerite Duras (1914–1996) French writer and film director

Life, Imagination, Past

“I held my breath as we do sometimes to stop time when something wonderful has touched us…”

Mary Oliver (1935–2019) American writer

Source: New and Selected Poems, Vol. 2

Time

“Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door!”

Emma Lazarus The New Colossus

The New Colossus (1883)

“He also didn't mind Piper's using him for a pillow. She had a cute way of breathing when she slept - inhaling through the nose, exhaling with a little puff through the mouth. He was also disappointed when she woke up.”

Rick Riordan book The Lost Hero

Source: The Lost Hero

Disappointment, Way

“—leave me," Japhrimel snarled. "You will not leave me to wander the earth alone—breathe, damn you, breathe!”

Lilith Saintcrow (1976) American writer

Source: Working for the Devil

“I said breathe. Not do a fish-out of-water imitation.”

Karen Marie Moning book Darkfever

Source: Darkfever

Fish, Water

“Henry's breath hissed out through his teeth. That ba-bad man, he finished, with a quick glance at Cecily, who rolled her eyes.”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Princess

Source: Clockwork Princess

“And yet I cannot continue in this condition! I have to remind myself to breathe — almost to remind my heart to beat!”

Emily Brontë book Wuthering Heights

Heathcliff (Ch. XXXIII).
Source: Wuthering Heights (1847)
Context: I have neither a fear, nor a presentiment, nor a hope of death. Why should I? With my hard constitution, and temperate mode of living, and unperilous occupations, I ought to, and probably shall remain above ground, till there is scarcely a black hair on my head. And yet I cannot continue in this condition! I have to remind myself to breathe — almost to remind my heart to beat! And it is like bending back a stiff spring — it is by compulsion that I do the slightest act, not prompted by one thought; and by compulsion that I notice anything alive or dead, which is not associated with one universal idea. I have a single wish, and my whole being and faculties are yearning to attain it. They have yearned towards it so long and so unwaveringly, that I’m convinced it will be reached — and soon — because it has devoured my existence. I am swallowed up in the anticipation of its fulfilment. My confessions have not relieved me — but they may account for some otherwise unaccountable phases of humour which I show. Oh, God! It's a long fight, I wish it were over!

Heart

“He knew that when he kissed this girl, and forever wed his unutterable visions to her perishable breath, his mind would never romp again like the mind of God.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald The Great Gatsby

Source: The Great Gatsby

God, Girl, Kiss, Wedding

“I knew that I couldn't lie beside her, without wanting to touch her. I couldn't have felt her breath come upon my mouth, without wanting to kiss her. And I couldn't have kissed her, without wanting to save her.”

Sarah Waters (1966) novelist

Lie, Kiss

“If you do not breathe through writing, if you do not cry out in writing, or sing in writing, then don't write, because our culture has no use for it.”

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

Singing, Cry

“I would pick them when they bloomed. And when she called me home for supper, I'd place them in her hair and the contrast would take my breath away.”

Melina Marchetta Finnikin of the Rock

Source: Finnikin of the Rock

Home

“I think you ought to let me take poor Tessa into town to get some new clothes. Otherwise, the first time she takes a deep breath, that dress will fall right off her."
Will looked interested. "I think she should try that out now and see what happens.”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Angel

Source: Clockwork Angel

Thinking, Time, Clothes

“You have to learn how to help a wounded child while still practicing mindful breathing. You should not allow yourself to get lost in action. Action should be meditation at the same time.”

Thich Nhat Hanh (1926) Religious leader and peace activist

Learning, Time, Help

“Then the singing enveloped me. It was furry and resonant, coming from everyone's very heart. There was no sense of performance or judgment, only that the music was breath and food.”

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

Source: Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith

Food, Music, Sense, Singing

“Sometime I’ll lay down my wrath,
As I lay my body down
Between the ache of breath and breath,
Golden slumber in the bone.”

Allen Ginsberg (1926–1997) American poet

Source: Collected Poems 1947-1997

“Take off your coat."
"Excuse me?"
"Take it off."
"No."
"I want it off."
"Then I suggest you hold your breath. Won't affect me in the slightest, but at least the suffocation will help pass the time for you. [Vishous to Jane]”

Jessica Bird book Lover Unbound

Source: Lover Unbound

Time, Help

“Hey, you freakin' bastard," I breathed. "You hit me again and I'll take care of your family planning.”

Kim Harrison (1966) Pseudonym

Source: Every Which Way But Dead

Family

“Perhaps he was afraid as I was that we'd be caught. Or perhaps he was breathing me in just as I was letting him come into my lungs, my eyes, my heart.”

Lisa See book Peony in Love

Source: Peony in Love

Heart

“A simple child,
That lightly draws its breath,
And feels its life in every limb,
What should it know of death?”

William Wordsworth book Lyrical Ballads

We Are Seven, st. 1 (1798).
Lyrical Ballads (1798–1800)

Life, Death, Feeling, Drawing

“He was twenty. I remembered twenty. I'd known everything at twenty. It took me another year to realize I knew nothing. I was still hoping to learn something before I hit thirty, but I wasn't holding my breath.”

Laurell K. Hamilton book Circus of the Damned

Source: Circus of the Damned

Hope, Learning

“If Black Stache laughed, you laughed. If he snarled, you snarled. If he breathed in your direction, you ran for cover.”

Dave Barry book Peter and the Starcatchers

Source: Peter and the Starcatchers

“I think I've been rather reasonable about this whole situation."
"How do you figure?"
"They are still breathing, aren't they?”

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo

Source: Magic Burns

Thinking

“I forced myself to picture the last moments. The penultimate breath. A final sigh. And yet. It was always followed by another.”

Nicole Krauss The History of Love

Source: The History of Love

“I think i'm just breathing, that's all. And there's a difference between breathing and being alive.”

John Boyne book The Absolutist

Source: The Absolutist

Thinking

“Many a housewife staring at the back of her husband's newspaper, or listening to his breathing in bed is lonelier than any spinster in a rented room.”

Germaine Greer (1939) Australian feminist author

Loneliness

“She breathed deeply of the scent of decaying fiction, disintegrating history, and forgotten verse, and she observed for the first time that a room full of books smelled like dessert: a sweet snack made of figs, vanilla, glue, and cleverness.”

Joe Hill (1879–1915) Swedish-American labor activist, songwriter, and member of the Industrial Workers of the World

Source: NOS4A2

Books, History, Time

“The ambitions are wake up, breathe, keep breathing.”

Nicole Blackman (1971) American musician

Source: Blood Sugar

“Drifting off to sleep, I thought about her. How nobody is perfect. How you just have to close your eyes and breathe out and let the puzzle of the human heart be what it is.”

Sue Monk Kidd book The Secret Life of Bees

Source: The Secret Life of Bees

Sleep, Heart, Perfection

“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

“He bent to put his cheek against hers. His breath against her ear made her shudder with each deliberately spoken word. "I have wanted to do this," he said, "every moment of every hour of every day that I have been with you since the day I met you.”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Prince

Source: Clockwork Prince

“Lying in the bed that had once held two, Lisey thought alone never felt more lonely than when you woke up and discovered you still had the house to yourself. That you and the mice in the walls were the only ones still breathing.”

Stephen King book Lisey's Story

Source: Lisey's Story

Lying, Housing

“That’s Carlos?” Phineas lowered his sword and whistled under his breath. “Hello, kitty.”

Kerrelyn Sparks (1955) American writer

Source: All I Want for Christmas is a Vampire

“Towards thee I roll, thou all-destroying but unconquering whale; to the last I grapple with thee; from hell's heart I stab at thee; for hate's sake I spit my last breath at thee.”

Herman Melville book Moby-Dick

Source: Moby Dick

Hate, Hell, Heart

“The Wonder of it All:
Sitting there in your pajamas & all the time in the world & if I could keep any moment it would be this: watching you & holding my breath with the wonder of it all.”

Brian Andreas (1956) American artist

World, Time

“If you try to breathe water, you will not turn into a fish, you will drown; but water is still good to drink.”

Robin McKinley book The Hero and the Crown

Source: The Hero and the Crown

Drink, Fish, Water

“I need you to breathe for me.”

Patrick Rothfuss book The Wise Man's Fear

Source: The Wise Man's Fear

“The Death Mist is not for helping!" Akhlys shrieked. "It shrouds mortals in misery as their souls pass into the Underworld. It is the very breath of Tartarus, of death, of despair!"
"Awesome," Percy said. "Could we get two orders of that to go?”

Rick Riordan book The House of Hades

Source: The House of Hades

Death, Soul, Help, Despair

“When composing a verse let there not be a hair's breath separating your mind from what you write; composition of a poem must be done in an instant, like a woodcutter felling a huge tree or a swordsman leaping at a dangerous enemy.”

Bashō Matsuo (1644–1694) Japanese poet

Tree

“Oh, try not to sound so much like Mom—you don’t have the ovaries" (Monica Morrell - Last Breath)”

Rachel Caine (1962) American writer

Source: Last Breath

Moms

“Camille brushed by Jem, hardly looking at him, and Will followed, pausing only long enough to mutter "She doesn't smell like anything" to Jem under his breath.
Jem looked alarmed. "You've beenher?”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Angel

Source: Clockwork Angel

“Beckendorf, whose legs were now working fine (nothing like being chased by a huge monster to get your body back in order) shook his head and gasped for breath. “You shouldn’t have turned it on! It’s unstable! After a few years, automatons go wild!”

Rick Riordan book The Demigod Files

Source: The Demigod Files

“Upon this crown my pledge I give,
To my last breath, I hold this choice,
I will your unjust deaths avenge,
All here who died without a voice.”

Suzanne Collins Gregor and the Marks of Secret

Source: Gregor and the Marks of Secret

Death

“Time is a keyhole, he thought as he looked up at the stars. Yes, I think so. We sometimes bend and peer through it. And the wind we feel on our cheeks when we do - the wind that blows through the keyhole- is the breath of all the living universe.”

Stephen King (1947) American author

Source: The Wind Through the Keyhole

Feeling, Star, Thinking, Universe

“Will you get off me!"
"But I'm giving you CPR-"
"I will die before kissing you, Hollywood." Z tried to sit up, his breathing heavy.
"Don't even think about it.”

Jessica Bird (1969) U.S. novelist

Source: Lover at Last

Kiss, Thinking

“We need our Arts to teach us how to breathe”

Ray Bradbury book Zen in the Art of Writing

Source: Zen in the Art of Writing

Art

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

Khaled Hosseini book The Kite Runner

Source: The Kite Runner

“I just listened to the music, and breathed in the day, and remembered things. Things like walking around the neighborhood and looking at the houses and the lawns and the colorful trees and having that be enough.”

Stephen Chbosky book The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Source: The Perks of Being a Wallflower

Music, Color, Tree, Housing

“What I feel for her is a wholly different emotion. It stands and walks on its own, living and breathing and throbbing and shaking me to the roots of my being.”

Haruki Murakami book Norwegian Wood

Source: Norwegian Wood

Feeling

“Life is not measured by the breathes you take, but by the moments that take your breathe away.”

George Carlin (1937–2008) American stand-up comedian

Life

“The Dragon hissed under his breath with annoyance: how dare a chimaera inconvenience him, coming out of season.”

Naomi Novik book Uprooted

Source: Uprooted

Season

“All that existed was Jace; all she felt, hoped, breathed, wanted, and saw was Jace. Nothing else mattered.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Glass

Source: City of Glass

Hope

“And then, despite everything, I smiled and looked at the note and knew that spring would come —it always does. so I stared out that cold window, watching my breath collect on the glass, trying not to think about my life after the thaw.”

Ally Carter book Don't Judge a Girl by Her Cover

Source: Don't Judge a Girl by Her Cover

Life, Smile, Spring, Thinking

“Breathing involves a continual oscillation between exhaling and inhaling, offering ourselves to the world at one moment and drawing the world into ourselves at the next…”

David Abram (1957) American philosopher, ecologist

Source: Becoming Animal: An Earthly Cosmology

World, Drawing

“I’ve got a magic charm
That I keep up my sleeve,
I can walk the ocean floor
And never have to breathe.”

Maya Angelou (1928–2014) American author and poet

Source: Life Doesn't Frighten Me

“Words are easy; lies as simple as parting your lips and breathing.”

Karen Marie Moning (1964) author

Parting

“Another world is not only possible, she's on the way and, on a quiet day, if you listen very carefully you can hear her breathe.”

Arundhati Roy (1961) Indian novelist, essayist

From a speech entitled Confronting Empire http://www.zmag.org/content/showarticle.cfm?SectionID=51&ItemID=2919 given at the World Social Forum in Porto Allegre, 28 January 2003 Speeches Variant: Another world is not only possible, she is on her way. On a quiet day, I can hear her breathing. Source: War Talk

World, Way

“When it comes, you’ll be dreaming
that you don’t need to breathe;
that breathless silence is
the music of the dark
and it’s part of the rhythm
to vanish like a spark.”

Wisława Szymborska (1923–2012) Polish writer

Dreams, Music, Silence, Parting

“Good and bad; shade and sunlight, there's but a hair's breath between them. It's all one in the end.”

Juliet Marillier book Child of the Prophecy

Source: Child of the Prophecy

“I stepped into the bookshop and breathed in that perfume of paper and magic that strangely no one had ever thought of bottling.”

Carlos Ruiz Zafón book The Angel's Game

Source: The Angel's Game

“One breath taken completely; one poem, fully written, fully read - in such a moment, anything can happen.”

Jane Hirshfield (1953) Poet

Source: Nine Gates: Entering the Mind of Poetry

Reading

“The past is no further away than the last breath you took.”

Robin Hobb book Fool's Errand

Source: Fool's Errand

Past

“Right there, in front of everyone, I threw my arms arond his neck and mashed my mouth against his. He was startled for a second, then his strong arms wraped around me so tightly I could hardly breathe.
"ZOMG," I heard Nudge whisper.”

James Patterson book Maximum Ride

Source: Max

Strong

“She asks why I like her.
Might as well ask
Why I breathe.
Maybe tomorrow I won't
Breathe or like her
Anymore.
Maybe tomorrow the tides
Will stop.
Maybe tomorrow will bring
No more rainbows.
Maybe tomorrow
She will stop
Asking useless questions.”

Gail Carson Levine book The Wish

Source: The Wish

Question

“Everybody who tells you how to act has whiskey on their breath.”

John Updike book Rabbit, Run

Source: Rabbit, Run

“I inhale hope with every breath I take.”

Sharon Kay Penman book When Christ and His Saints Slept

Source: When Christ and His Saints Slept

Hope, Hope

“Stronger than iron
crueler than death
sweeter than springtime
it lives beyond breath”

Juliet Marillier (1948) New Zealand fiction writer

Death

“It's funny, but you never really think much about breathing. Until it's all you ever think about.”

Tim Winton book Breath

Source: Breath

Thinking

“She was the living, breathing proof that the hard things in life didn't have to defeat you - or even define you.”

Susan Wiggs (1958) American writer

Source: Summer by the Sea

Life

“Because when the world quiets to the sound of your own breathing, we all want the same things: comfort, love, and a peaceful heart.”

Mitch Albom (1958) American author

Source: Have a Little Faith: a True Story

Love, World, Peace, Heart

“We breathe, sleep, drink, eat, work and then die! The end of life is death. What do you long for? Love? A few kisses and you will be powerless. Money? What for? To gratify your desires. Glory? What coems after it all? Death! Death alone is certain.”

Guy De Maupassant Bel-Ami

Source: Bel-Ami

Love, Life, Death, Money

“To know even one life has breathed easier because you have lived. This is to have succeeded.”

Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882) American philosopher, essayist, and poet

Life, Deep, Success, Positive

“You don’t draw, and I don’t breathe. Not so much like last year”

Cassandra Clare book City of Heavenly Fire

Source: City of Heavenly Fire

Drawing

“Destroy it?' Leo was appalled. 'You've got a life-size bronze dragon, and you want to destroy it?'
'It breathes fire,' Nyssa explained. 'It's deadly and out of control.'
'But it's a dragon!”

Rick Riordan book The Lost Hero

Source: The Lost Hero

Life

“Our problems started in Dallas, when the fire-breathing sheep destroyed the King Tut exhibit.”

Rick Riordan book The Serpent's Shadow

Source: The Serpent's Shadow

Problem

“The light of love, the purity of grace,
The mind, the music breathing from her face, 19
The heart whose softness harmonized the whole,—
And oh, that eye was in itself a soul!”

George Gordon Byron book The Bride of Abydos

Canto I, Stanza 6; this can be compared to: "The bloom of young Desire and purple light of Love", Thomas Gray, The Progress of Poesy I. 3, line 16; also: "Oh, could you view the melody / Of every grace / And music of her face", Richard Lovelace, Orpheus to Beasts; "There is music in the beauty, and the silent note which Cupid strikes, far sweeter than the sound of an instrument", Thomas Browne, Religio Medici, Part ii, Section ix.
The Bride of Abydos (1813)

Love, Music, Soul, Light

“Then Alec had smiled at one of Magnus’s jokes, and the smile had lit a lamp in his solemn face, making his blue eyes brilliant, and briefly taking Magnus’s breath away”

Cassandra Clare (1973) American author

Source: What to Buy the Shadowhunter Who Has Everything

Smile

“What is the real breath of a man — the breathing out or the breathing in?”

Margaret Atwood book The Blind Assassin

Source: The Blind Assassin

“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

“We breathe the light, we breathe the music, we breathe the moment as it passes through us.”

Anne Rice book The Vampire Lestat

Source: The Vampire Lestat

Music, Light

“i could see the veins through your skin like a map to inside you. how could skin be that thin? i was so afraid you might drop and break. i stopped breathing so you wouldn't.”

Francesca Lia Block book Wasteland

Source: Wasteland

“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

“breathing, sleeping, drinking, eating, working, dreaming, everything we do is dying. to live, in fact, is to die.”

Guy De Maupassant (1850–1893) French writer

Dreams, Drink, Sleep

“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

“Love frees a soul and in the same breath can sometimes suffocate it.”

Cecelia Ahern book A Place Called Here

Variant: There's a fine line between love and hate. Love frees a soul and in the same breath can sometimes suffocate it.
Source: A Place Called Here

Love, Soul

“To feel forever its soft fall and swell, Awake for ever in a sweet unrest, Still, still to hear her tender-taken breath, And so live ever-or else swoon in death.”

John Keats (1795–1821) English Romantic poet

Death, Feeling

“To those waiting with bated breath for that favourite media catchphrase, the U-turn, I have only one thing to say: You turn if you want to. [laughter] The lady's not for turning.”

Margaret Thatcher (1925–2013) British stateswoman and politician

Reacting to doubt over her economic policies http://news.bbc.co.uk/onthisday/hi/dates/stories/october/10/newsid_2541000/2541071.stm at a Conservative Party Conference (10 October 1980) A play on The Lady's Not for Burning, a 1948 play by Christopher Fry about a witchcraft trial. First term as Prime Minister

Laughter, Waiting