Quotes about breath
page 6

“He fought as he wished he had all those years ago, for the chance he had missed. In that moment between storms--when the rain stilled and the winds drew in their breaths to blow--he danced with the slayer of kings, and somehow held his own.”

Brandon Sanderson book Words of Radiance

Source: Words of Radiance

Chance, Dance

“Now, on this road trip, my mind seemed to uncrinkle, to breathe, to present to itself a cure for a disease it had not, until now, known it had.”

Elizabeth Berg (1948) American novelist

Source: The Year of Pleasures

Disease

“Anne Lamott’s priest friend Tom, how to get through:
"Left foot, right foot, left foot, breathe," he said. "Right foot, left foot, right foot, breathe."
Salon April 25, 2003”

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

“I will never give up… I will never give up! As long I'm still breathing in this world… As long I'm still standing, I will never give up!!!”

Hiro Mashima (1977) Japanese manga artist

World

“When Rydstrom shut the door, Cade stared at it for long moments.
At length, he turned for the steps. "Fuckall," he said on a stunned breath. "Does this mean I'm no longer the bad brother…?”

Kresley Cole American writer

“Can the plural possessive express the feelings in your heart? If you don't learn art now, you will never learn to breathe!”

Laurie Halse Anderson Speak

Source: Speak

Art, Feeling, Learning, Heart

“Breathe properly. Stay curious. And eat your beets.”

Tom Robbins book Jitterbug Perfume

Source: Jitterbug Perfume

“And then we ease him out of that worn-out body with a kiss, and he's gone like a whisper, the easiest breath.”

Mark Doty (1953) Novelist, memoirist

Kiss

“Your war drum ain't / louder than this breath.”

Suheir Hammad (1973) American poet, author, performer, and political activist

Source: Zaatardiva

War

“It was the heaviest thing I'd ever felt, as if I were being crushed under a thousand trucks. I wanted to black out from the pain, but I breathed deeply.”

Rick Riordan book The Titan's Curse

Source: The Titan's Curse

Pain

“Sometimes the most important thing in a whole day is the rest we take between two deep breaths, or the turning inwards in prayer for five short minutes.”

Etty Hillesum (1914–1943) Jewish diarist

“There is something about her eyes. Eyes don't breathe. I know that much. But hers look breathless.”

Mary E. Pearson book The Adoration of Jenna Fox

Source: The Adoration of Jenna Fox

“I am yours," he whispered. "I live to hold you, Risa. I breathe to touch you.”

Lora Leigh (1965) American writer

“Her whole being dilated in an atmosphere of luxury. It was the background she required, the only climate she could breathe in.”

Edith Wharton book The House of Mirth

Source: The House of Mirth

“He took her face in his bloody hands. "I’ll come and find you wherever you are. I’ll not stop breathing until I do. So you’re going to have to promise me that you won’t lose hope. That you will keep yourself alive.”

Melina Marchetta (1965) Australian teen writer

Source: Froi of the Exiles

Hope

“Writing is like breathing, it's possible to learn to do it well, but the point is to do it no matter what.”

Julia Cameron (1948) American writer

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

Learning

“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

“How do you tell if something's alive? You check for breathing.”

Markus Zusak book The Book Thief

Source: The Book Thief

“There are six reasons anyone does anything: Love. Faith. Greed. Boredom. Fear…" he said, ticking them off on his fingers; but he lingered on the last, drawing a deep breath before he said, "Revenge.”

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

Source: Don't Judge a Girl by Her Cover

Love, Fear, Faith, Revenge

“I sometimes wake in the early morning & listen to the soft breathing of my child & I think to myself, this is one thing I will never regret & I carry that quiet with me all day long.”

Brian Andreas (1956) American artist

Thinking

“When my faith is getting weak
And I feel like giving in
You breathe into me again…”

Karen Marie Moning (1964) author

Source: Shadowfever

Faith, Feeling

“The crowd quieted as a whole, but more than one creature cursed under his breath, "Not Regin."
A drunk hunched over the bar muttered, "That glowing one made me eat a transistor radio once.”

Kresley Cole American writer

Source: Dark Needs at Night's Edge

“The question then is, how much are you willing to give?"
And I answered, "Anything."
A breath later, Zane echoed my response with, "Everything.”

Amelia Atwater-Rhodes Hawksong

Source: Hawksong

Question

“When I'm with you, I don't breathe quite right.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940) American novelist and screenwriter

“I still cry on waking. I'm not sure why. I feel nothing. Nothing I can name, anyway. It's like breathing - something that happens over which I have no control. (6)”

Mary E. Pearson book The Adoration of Jenna Fox

Source: The Adoration of Jenna Fox

Feeling, Cry

“Nothing of value is free. Even the breath of life is purchased at birth only through gasping effort and pain.”

Robert A. Heinlein (1907–1988) American science fiction author

Life, Pain, Birth, Effort

“Conrad calling me again—that was enough to make me forget how to breathe.”

Jenny Han (1980) American writer

Source: It's Not Summer Without You

Forgetting

“I am obsessed with you, angel. Addicted to you. You're everything i've ever wanted or needed, everything i've dreamed of. You're everything. I live and breathe you. For you.”

Sylvia Day (1973) American writer

Variant: I'm obsessed with you, angel. Addicted to you. You're everything I've ever wanted or needed, everything I've ever dreamed of. You're everything. I live and breathe you. For you.
Source: Reflected in You

Dreams, Angels

“Inching one's way along a steep cliff in the dark: on reaching the highway, one breathes a sigh of relief. Just when one can't take any more, one sees the moonlight. Beauty that seems to infuse itself into the heart: I know about that”

Banana Yoshimoto book Kitchen

Source: Kitchen

Beauty, Way, Heart

“We are bound together, Emma, bound together—I breathe when you breathe, I bleed when you bleed, I’m yours and you’re mine, you’ve always been mine, and I have always, always belonged to you!”

Cassandra Clare book Lady Midnight

Source: Lady Midnight

“If I run or breathe too deep, the cheap stitches holding me together will snap, and all the stickiness inside will pour out and burn through the concrete.”

Laurie Halse Anderson Wintergirls

Source: Wintergirls

“So I stared out at 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, Thinking

“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

“I need to feel strongly, to love and admire, just as desperately as I need to breathe.”

Jean-Dominique Bauby book The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

Source: The Diving Bell and the Butterfly

Love, Feeling

“O little one,
My little one,
Come with me,
Your life is done.

Forget the future,
Forget the past.
Life is over:
Breathe your last.”

Clive Barker book Abarat

Source: Abarat

Life, Past, Future, Forgetting

“By the way, don’t breathe on the upholstery or I may have to gut you. (Nick)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Infinity

Way

“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

“Stress is basically a disconnection from the earth, a forgetting of the breath. Stress is an ignorant state. It believes that everything is an emergency. Nothing is that important. Just lie down.”

Natalie Goldberg (1948) American writer

Lie, Forgetting

“He stepped forward, took a deep breath, and doubled over in a sneezing fit. My werewolf was allergic to tortoises. Why me?”

Ilona Andrews American husband-and-wife novelist duo

Source: Magic Burns

“A breath of Paris preserves the soul.”

Victor Hugo (1802–1885) French poet, novelist, and dramatist

Soul

“You throw a stone into a deep pond. Splash. The sound is big, and it reverberates throughout the surrounding area. What comes out of the pond after that? All we can do is stare at the pond, holding our breath.”

Haruki Murakami book 1Q84

Source: 1Q84

“Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart.”

William Wordsworth (1770–1850) English Romantic poet

Letter to his Wife (April 29 1812).

Heart, Heart Touching

“I've got to keep breathing. It'll be my worst business mistake if I don't.”

Steve Martin (1945) American actor, comedian, musician, author, playwright, and producer

Business

“Breathe. Let go. And remind yourself that this very moment is the only one you know you have for sure.”

Oprah Winfrey (1954) American businesswoman, talk show host, actress, producer, and philanthropist

Deep, Peaceful, Moving On

“He broke the kiss and leaned against her, breathing hard. "Good morning to you, too. Man, I just can't stay mad when you do that.”

Rachel Caine (1962) American writer

Source: Midnight Alley

Kiss, Madness

“I want to know you moved and breathed in the same world with me.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940) American novelist and screenwriter

Source: The Short Stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald

World

“But Paris was a very old city and we were young and nothing was simple there, not even poverty, nor sudden money, nor the moonlight, nor right and wrong nor the breathing of someone who lay beside you in the moonlight.”

Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961) American author and journalist

Source: A Moveable Feast: The Restored Edition

Money

“Okay, take a deep breath, I told myself. Don't go all hormonal. Get the facts straight. Have a mental doughnut.”

Janet Evanovich Twelve Sharp

Source: Twelve Sharp

“Fly me up to where you are beyond the distant star. I wish upon tonight to see you smile, if only for a while to know you're there. A breath away's not far to where you are.”

Josh Groban (1981) American musician and actor

Smile, Star, Distant, Flying

“You think I'm gonna feel better eatin' a carrot? Get a grip. There's two idiots out there trying to kill me, and you think I'm gonna waste my last breath on a vegetable? (Lula)”

Janet Evanovich book Finger Lickin' Fifteen

Source: Finger Lickin' Fifteen

Feeling, Thinking

“Mariam always held her breath as she watched him go. She held her breath and, in her head, counted seconds. She pretended that for each second that she didn't breathe God would grant her another day with Jalil.”

Khaled Hosseini book A Thousand Splendid Suns

Source: A Thousand Splendid Suns

God

“I thought the morning would bring change. But I should have known that it doesn't take that long for change to happen - it takes a second. A moment. In a single breath, reality as you know it can simply fall away.”

Ally Carter (1974) American writer

Source: United We Spy

Reality, Change

“Someday, I'm going to meet some supernatural creature who tells me everything I should know up front and in a forthright manner - but I'm not going to hold my breath.”

Patricia Briggs book River Marked

Source: River Marked

“I was dead until you found me, though I breathed. I was sightless, though I could see. And then you came… and I was awakened.”

Jessica Bird (1969) U.S. novelist

Source: Lover Awakened

Dead

“For like a poisonous breath over the fields, like a mass of locusts over Egypt, so the swarm of excuses is a general plaque, a ruinous infection among men, that eats off the sprouts of the Eternal.”

Sören Kierkegaard (1813–1855) Danish philosopher and theologian, founder of Existentialism

Men

“A tall, straight-bodied, and by no means ill-favored young Highlander at close range is breath-taking.”

Diana Gabaldon book Outlander

Source: Outlander

“Meditate. Breathe consciously. Listen. Pay attention. Treasure every moment. Make the connection.”

Oprah Winfrey (1954) American businesswoman, talk show host, actress, producer, and philanthropist

“… this beginning motion, this first time when a sail truly filled and the boat took life and knifed across the lake under perfect control, this was so beautiful it stopped my breath…”

Gary Paulsen (1939) American writer and musher

Source: Caught by the Sea

Life, Beauty, Time, Perfection

“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

“I am breathing. In dreams, we never bother to breathe.”

David Levithan book Every Day

Source: Every Day

Dreams

“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

“Miss Mary Mack, Mack, Mack, all dressed in black, black, black. She has a knife, knife, knife, stuck in her back, back, back. She cannot breathe, breathe, breathe. She cannot cry, cry, cry. Thats why she begs, begs, begs. She begs to die, die, die..”

Laurie Faria Stolarz (1972) American writer

Source: White Is for Magic

Cry

“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

“The leaf fall of his words, the stained glass hues of his moods, the rust in his voice, the smoke in his mouth, his breath on my vision like human breath blinding a mirror.”

Anaïs Nin book House of Incest

Source: House of Incest

Mood

“History is no more fixed and dead than the future. The past is no further away than the last breath you took.”

Robin Hobb (1952) American fiction writer (pseudonym)

History, Past, Future, Dead

“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

“Start walking. When you hit a spot where you’re gasping for breath, that should tell us our limitations. (Xypher)
Oh, joy. I can’t wait to be the guppy. (Simone)
Glub, glub, little fishy. Start walking. (Xypher)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Dream Chaser

Waiting, Joy

“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

“Just for fun I flew in huge banking arcs, taking deep breaths, enjoying the feel of my newly weightless hair. The stylist had called it “wind tossed.”
If only she knew.”

James Patterson (1947) American author

Source: The Angel Experiment

Feeling

“She [Melanie] is the only dream I ever had that lived and breathed and did not die in the face of reality.”

Margaret Mitchell book Vom Winde verweht (1937 German edition)

Source: Gone with the Wind

Dreams, Reality

“Smells, like music, hold memories. She breathed deep, and bottled it up for posterity.”

Arundhati Roy book The God of Small Things

Source: The God of Small Things

Music, Memory

“you grab at any sign of hope. You grab it with both hands and breathe life into it, day after day. You do anything to keep it alive.”

Melina Marchetta Finnikin of the Rock

Source: Finnikin of the Rock

Life, Hope

“Then you think that one can keep a hopeless love in one's heart for so long as that?… And that life can breathe upon it every day, without extinguishing it?”

André Gide (1869–1951) French novelist and essayist

Love, Life, Thinking, Heart

“A fight is like a fire. You think you have it under control, you think you can stop it whenever you want, but before you know it, it’s living, breathing thing and there’s no controlling it and you were a fool to think you could.”

Jenny Han (1980) American writer

Source: We'll Always Have Summer

Fools, Thinking, Fight

“What Lily craved was the darkness made by enfolding arms, the silence which is not solitude, but compassion holding its breath.”

Edith Wharton (1862–1937) American novelist, short story writer, designer

Solitude, Silence

“When she comes
She pulls you close
She breathes in short bursts
Her eyes close
Her head tilts back
Her mouth opens slightly
Her thighs turn to steel, and then melt
She is perfect
And you feel like you are everything.”

Henry Rollins (1961) American singer-songwriter

Source: The Portable Henry Rollins

Feeling, Perfection

“Breathe and let be.”

Jon Kabat-Zinn (1944) American academic

Source: Wherever You Go, There You Are: Mindfulness Meditation in Everyday Life

“We are none of us promised anything but the last breath we take.”

Tad Williams (1957) novelist

“The way Magnus’ breath had sounded, rattling in his chest, before he’d said his father’s name.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Heavenly Fire

Source: City of Heavenly Fire

Way

“Censor the body and you censor breath and speech at the same time. Write yourself. Your body must be heard.”

Hélène Cixous (1937) French philosopher and writer

Source: The Laugh of the Medusa

Time

“When a person should be spoken with, and you don't speak with them, you lose them. When a person shouldn't be spoken with and you speak to them, you waste your breath. The wise do not lose people, nor do they waste their breath.”

Confucius (-551–-479 BC) Chinese teacher, editor, politician, and philosopher

People, Personality

“Be compassionate," Morrie whispered. And take responsibility for each other. If we only learned those lessons, this world would be so much better a place."

He took a breath, then added his mantra: "Love each other or die.”

Mitch Albom Tuesdays with Morrie

Source: Tuesdays with Morrie

Love, World, Learning

“I was wrong. I admit it. I believed that there were things which still mattered just because they had mattered once. But I was wrong. Nothing matters but breath, breathing, to know and to be alive.”

William Faulkner book Absalom, Absalom!

Source: Absalom, Absalom!

“You know, I've walked this earth for over eleven thousand years, my lady. I have seen things in my life that are unimaginable to you, and you ask me if I doubt you? Lady, I doubt the very air you breathe. (Acheron)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon book Night Pleasures

Source: Night Pleasures

Life

“Truth is as free as the air and we all have the right to breathe as deeply of it as we wish. It cannot be held back in the palm of any one man.”

Mary E. Pearson (1955) young-adult fiction writer

Source: The Beauty of Darkness

Truth

“You’re falling now. You’re swimming. This is not
          harmless. You are not
                    breathing.”

Richard Siken (1967) American poet

Source: Crush

“So once you're dead there's just nothing?
Mari: Basically…
Korogi: I get so scared when I start thinking about this stuff. I can hardly breathe, and my whole body wants to shrink into a corner. It's so much easier to just believe in reincarnation.”

Haruki Murakami book After Dark

Source: After Dark

Thinking, Dead

“When swimming into a dark tunnel, there arrives a point of no return when you no longer have enough breath to double back. your choice is to swim forward into the unknown…. and pray for an exit”

Dan Brown book Inferno

Source: Inferno

“It is really a matter of ending this silence and solitude, of breathing and stretching one's arms again.”

Mark Rothko (1903–1970) American painter

Solitude, Silence

“A thing of beauty is a joy forever:
Its loveliness increases; it will never
Pass into nothingness; but still will keep
A bower quiet for us, and a sleep
Full of sweet dreams, and health, and quiet breathing.”

John Keats Endymion

Bk. I, l. 1
Endymion (1818)

Health, Beauty, Dreams, Sleep

“Oh God, Frankie, I breathe in rhythm with that man. You think that's not my flesh and blood after all these years?”

Melina Marchetta (1965) Australian teen writer

Source: Saving Francesca

God, Thinking

“And yet she can tell he is visited by fears so immense, so multiple, that she can almost feel the terror pulsing inside him. As though some beast breathes all the time at the windowpanes of his mind.”

Anthony Doerr book All the Light We Cannot See

Source: All the Light We Cannot See

Fear, Feeling, Time

“Sometimes you build up these walls, you build and you build and you build up these walls and you think they’re so strong, but then someone can come along and tip them over with only his fingers, or the weight of his breath.”

Deb Caletti (1963) American writer

Source: Wild Roses

Thinking, Strong

“Just breathing can be such a luxury sometimes.”

Walter Kirn Up in the Air

Source: Up in the Air

“She took a deep breath, "Last chance. Are you in need of rescuing?"
His expression turned very strange, almost as if she'd struck him, "Yes," he said finally.”

Holly Black book The Coldest Girl in Coldtown

Source: The Coldest Girl in Coldtown

Chance

“Jericho lay back down on his side, watching her breathe just an arm's length from him. She was not beautiful while she slept; her mouth hung open and she snored very lightly, and this, despite everything that had happened, made him smile.”

Libba Bray book The Diviners

Source: The Diviners

Smile, Beauty

“That everything is on fire, slow fire, and we're all less than a million breaths away from an oblivion more total than we can even bring ourselves to even try to imagine…”

David Foster Wallace book The Pale King

Source: The Pale King (2011)
Context: "Maybe it's not metaphysics. Maybe it's existential. I'm talking about the individual US citizen's deep fear, the same basic fear that you and I have and that everybody has except nobody ever talks about it except existentialists in convoluted French prose. Or Pascal. Our smallness, our insignificance and mortality, yours and mine, the thing that we all spend all our time not thinking about directly, that we are tiny and at the mercy of large forces and that time is always passing and that every day we've lost one more day that will never come back and our childhoods are over and our adolescence and the vigor of youth and soon our adulthood, that everything we see around us all the time is decaying and passing, it's all passing away, and so are we, so am I, and given how fast the first forty-two years have shot by it's not going to be long before I too pass away, whoever imagined that there was a more truthful way to put it than "die," "pass away," the very sound of it makes me feel the way I feel at dusk on a wintry Sunday--... And not only that, but everybody who knows me or even knows I exist will die, and then everybody who knows those people and might even conceivably have even heard of me will die, and so on, and the gravestones and monuments we spend money to have pour in to make sure we're remembered, these'll last what-- a hundred years? two hundred?-- and they'll crumble, and the grass and insects my decomposition will go to feed will die, and their offspring, or if I'm cremated the trees that are nourished by my windblown ash will die or get cut down and decay, and my urn will decay, and that before maybe three of four generations it will be like I never existed, not only will I have passed away but it will be like I was never here, and people in 2104 or whatever will no more think of Stuart A. Nichols Jr. than you or I think of John T. Smith, 1790 to 1864, of Livingston, Virginia, or some such. That everything is on fire, slow fire, and we're all less than a million breaths away from an oblivion more total than we can even bring ourselves to even try to imagine, in fact, probably that's why the manic US obsession with production, produce, produce, impact the world, contribute, shape things, to help distract us from how little and totally insignificant and temporary we are... The post-production capitalist has something to do with the death of civics. But so does fear of smallness and death and everything being on fire."

Imagination