Air That I Breathe Quotes & Sayings

I believe no satirist could breathe this air. If another Juvenal or Swift could rise up among us tomorrow, he would be hunted down. If you have any knowledge of our literature, and can give me the name of any man, American born and bred, who has anatomised our follies as a people, and not as this or that party; and who has escaped the foulest and most brutal slander, the most inveterate hatred and intolerant pursuit; it will be a strange name in my ears, believe me. — Charles Dickens

I thought I could not breathe in that fine air That pure severity of perfect light I yearned for warmth and colour which I found In Lancelot. — Alfred Lord Tennyson

I can't even consider the prospect of grandchildren because I don't know if there will be anything left for them on Earth. That's how serious the problem is. We can't drink the water or breathe the air, and we're all dying from some sort of cancer. How many generations can sustain that? It frightens me terribly. — Patti Davis

It seems like with you everything leads back to the subject of death."
"Sure and show me the person's road that does not lead to death. we try to divert our attention, to pretend 'tisn't so, but the very air we breathe is vulture's breath. Please don't be insinuatin' your man is morbid. I dwell on death in order to defeat it. — Tom Robbins

Americans easily forget that the air they breathe is the same as those in Europe or Africa or Asia; it's the same air as Jesus breathed. I would like them to remember that connection. — Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu

She falls back like a dead weight. The red hair loosens from the hair band and spreads in the colorful surface of the pillows, her white body is in sharp contrast, the gleam in her bloodshot eyes becomes intense and shines. My aunt, lying like this, looks like a goddess in an orgasm, only that, inside, she is suffering. I close my eyes and breathe deeply. The same is happening to us, we're really disappearing. I think of the matter of our bodies, changeable, disappearing in the particles of the air while we breathe. In this room, everywhere, we are printed on the walls, in the air that settles on things. I breathe and look at her. I'm stuck in her. — Pat R

The wife of a junior officer cooped up in a horrible canvas partition in steerage for five months wrote:
"I had enjoyed much peace there in the absence of every comfort, even of such as are now enjoyed in jail. I used to say that there were four privations in my situation - fire, water, earth and air. No fire to warm oneself on the coldest day, no water to drink but what was tainted, no earth to set the foot on, and scarcely any air to breathe. Yet, with all these miserable circumstances, we spent many a happy hour by candlelight in that wretched cabin whilst I sewed and he read the Bible to me. — Stephen Taylor

It is so hot that even with the windows open, I am suffocating. I kept a frog in a box once. The box had a lid so he wouldn't jump out. It was during a summer like this. When everyone moves slowly because the air is too thick to breathe. I forgot about the frog for a few days. It was dead by the time I remembered.

Tonight, as I lie in bed, I start to cry because I once killed a frog. It's just a little cry, and I stop myself quickly. — Sarah Willis

Depression is a death within, a knowledge - terrifying - that you cannot resurrect yourself. Depression is loss of the vision that lets leaves breathe and fall, that lets the air smell of seed and soil. And there must be rage, yes I think there is rage toward such a severing, such a ragged-deep rupture with the world. — Lauren Slater

I, Maggie, personally cannot tell you that you're going to save the planet. But what I do know is that we can draw a line to an issue that can conserve what we already have and what's left in a way that we can actually breathe the air, drink the water, actually grow things in soil - that matters in a real, practical way. — Maggie Q

You are my life, my very essence,
You are the air that I breathe,
You are the key to my repentance
Which I confess is not a breeze! — Tatyana K. Varenko

How can I say what it was like to breathe again? I felt newborn. I staggered in the light of the world and took deep gulps of fresh sea air. It was late in the day: the wet mouth of the afternoon was full on my face. My soul blossomed in that brief moment as they led me out of doors. I fell, my skirts in the mud, and I turned my face upwards as if in prayer. I could have wept from the relief of light. — Hannah Kent

Cool wind soothed her. She could breathe sweet air. The only heat she felt was the warm, familiar heat from the mage's body. Opening her eyes, she saw that she stood close to him. Raising her head, she gazed up into his face ... and felt a swift, sharp ache in her heart.
Raistlin's thin face glistened with sweat, his eyes reflected the pure, white flame of the burning bodies, his breath came fast and shallow. He seemed lost, unaware of his surroundings. And there was a look of ecstasy on his face, a look of exultation, of triumph.
"I understand," Crysania said to herself, holding onto his hands. "I understand. This is why he cannot love me. He has only one love in this life and that is his magic. To this love he will give everything, for this love he will risk everything! — Margaret Weis

Because you offer something ever rarer than power of aphidy. You offer something that few other Queens offer-love. You bestow love on all you take under your care. And intimate love to only a few. I saw it once in your eyes for me, and I want to see it again. I need to, as much as I need to breathe air. Mona Lisa, this one thing-love-you have still to give. Don not deny me. Not when my soul needs you, cries out for you. — Sunny

Deep down, I don't believe it takes any special talent for a person to lift himself off the ground and hover in the air. We all have it in us - every man, woman, and child - and with enough hard work and concentration, every human being is capable of ... the feat ... .You must learn to stop being yourself. That's where it begins, and everything else follows from that. You must let yourself evaporate. Let your muscles go limp, breathe until you feel your soul pouring out of you, and then shut your eyes. That's how it's done. The emptiness inside your body grows lighter than the air around you. Little by little, you begin to weigh less than nothing. You shut your eyes; you spread your arms; you let yourself evaporate. And then, little by little, you lift yourself off the ground.
Like so. — Paul Auster

We are very encouraged that the results from our monitoring of air quality and drinking water conditions in both New York and near the Pentagon show that the public in these areas is not being exposed to excessive levels of asbestos or other harmful substances. I am glad to reassure the people of New York and Washington, D.C. that their air is safe to breathe and their water is safe to drink. — Christine Todd Whitman

I love that everyone's into sports, that no one even talks about loving it 'cause it's too obvious. It's the air we breathe. — Justine Larbalestier

I am not quite sure what the advantage is in having a few more dollars to spend if the air is too dirty to breathe, the water too polluted to drink, the commuters are losing out in the struggle to get in and out of the city, the streets are filthy, and the schools so bad that the young perhaps wisely stay away, and the hoodlums roll citizens for some of the dollars they saved in the tax cut. — John Kenneth Galbraith

I still use the pronoun she for my publicity materials, and for mainstream media stuff, for two reasons: the first is that I do a lot of work in public schools, and I want those young women and girls to see every kind of she there can be. I want them to see my biceps and my shorn hair and shirt and tie and for some of them to see me as a possibilityI want them to see me living outside of the boxes, because they might be asphyxiating in their own box and need to see there is air out here for them to breathe, that all they have to do is lift the lid a little. — Rae Spoon

Each time my mother sank to the bottom of cold despair, she would always find a break in the ice above, to breathe new air, to find new purpose. She never indulged in self-pity, nor did she point the finger of blame for her misfortunes. Her heart was clear of bitterness. I believe that if a person's strength of character is measured at the end of his or her life, it is by these qualities - qualities that allow a life to be lived, free of those restraints we place upon ourselves. But that doesn't mean we should forget. — Gemma Liviero

I breathe in the soft, saturated exhalations of cedar trees and salmonberry bushes, fireweed and wood fern, marsh hawks and meadow voles, marten and harbor seal and blacktail deer. I breathe in the same particles of air that made songs in the throats of hermit thrushes and gave voices to humpback whales, the same particles of air that lifted the wings of bald eagles and buzzed in the flight of hummingbirds, the same particles of air that rushed over the sea in storms, whirled in high mountain snows, whistled across the poles, and whispered through lush equatorial gardens ... air that has passed continually through life on earth. I breathe it in, pass it on, share it in equal measure with billions of other living things, endlessly, infinitely. — Richard Nelson

There's something covering my face, I can't breathe, I'm suffocating. When I surface into wakefulness, I'm gasping for air and my chest hurts. I sit up, eyes wide, and see something moving in the corner of the room, a dense centre of blackness that keeps growing, and I almost cry out - and then I'm properly awake and there's nothing there, but I am sitting up in bed and my cheeks are wet with tears. — Paula Hawkins

Then I know that in my dreams I can never capture the same sun-glow, and that the air that I breathe can never, there, flow as freshly in my cells, and I can never see so sharply or so far; and I believe once more that what is true can be seen by everyone, everyone. — Leena Krohn

Tomorrow I'll suggest the liar lies against himself
So our condition makes escape impossible?
we breathe
and it's moving air that causes stars to twinkle — Rodney Hall

V: You asked for Knowledge, Eve, and that is what I shall pass on to you. Knowledge, like air, is vital to life. Like air, no one should be denied it.
Eve: Oh, V, come on. You've always kept thinks mysterious: yourself, this place, your plans ... If knowledge is like air, you've been suffocating me.
V: Not at all. I've been teaching you to breathe. — Alan Moore

I sucked a huge breath of air into my collapsed lungs. Once I could breathe again, I examined Ren's back. His white shirt was dirty and torn, and his skin was scratched and bleeding in several places. I took a wet shirt from the bag to clean his scratches, while removing little pieces of gravel embedded in his skin.
When I was finished, I grabbed Ren around the waist in a fierce hug. He wrapped his arms around me and pulled me close. I whispered against his chest quietly but firmly, "Thank you. But don't ever ... ever ... ever do that again!"
He laughed. "If I get results like this, I surely will do it again."
"You will not!"
Ren reluctantly let me go, and I began mumbling, complaining about tigers, men, and bugs. He seemed very pleased with himself for surviving a near-death experience. I could practically hear him chanting to himself: I overcame. I conquered. I'm a man, etc, etc. I smirked. men! No matter what century they're from, they're all the same. — Colleen Houck

You're asking me to define an abstract concept that no one has managed to explain since time began. You sort of sprang it on me," Gansey said. "Why do we breathe air? Because we love air? Because we don't want to suffocate. Why do we eat? Because we don't want to starve. How do I know I love her? Because I can sleep after I talk to her. Why? — Maggie Stiefvater

Do I like you?No. I don't like you. I don't think about you every moment of every day. I never relive the way it felt to have your hand holding mine, to be so close to you I could smell you, feel the warmth of you, breathe the air that you breathe. I don't remember your arm around me, making me feel safe, special...WANTED. — Julie Peters

I'm standing by the cereal, reaching for a box of Honey Nut Cheerios, when I feel my chest clenching but not unclenching. It clenches tighter and tighter, like someone has wrapped a corset around it. My palms are wet. My head is compressing, growing and shrinking at the same time. I can hear my breathing, and it's so amplified that, to my own ears, I sound like Darth Vader. A woman at the end of the aisle is frozen as she watches me. She looks scared...My breathing is getting louder, and I cover my ears to block it out. And that's when the ceiling starts to spin and the air disappears and my lungs won't stop working and I can't breathe at all. I drop everything and run away from the cart and all that food until I'm out the door. I stand in the parking lot, bent over at the waist, breathing in the fresh night air, and then I lie flat on the ground, as if this will open my lungs wider and make them work again, only the breath won't come. — Jennifer Niven

I think I'm beginning to understand
how hearts fit together.
Not like diseased carnations that lean against their crutches.
Not like vines that twine tight, throttling their hosts.
But like two trees:
two systems of deep, untangled roots,
two patterns of flowering branches,
whose leaves drink their own sunlight
and breathe their own air.
Two trees with something slung between them,
a hammock or a tapestry or a swing,
some third, beautiful thing
that neither would die without.
Hearts fit together like hands.
Not by necessity.
By choice. — Riley Redgate

Rather I'd choose laboriously to bear A weight of woes, and breathe the vital air, A slave to some poor hind that toils for bread, Than reign the sceptred monarch of the dead. — Homer

I must love big novels, because that's what I've written. It takes a while before you begin to breathe the air the characters breathe. — Norman Rush

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

The fact that someone had decided I'd be safer on Mars, where you could still only SORT OF breathe the air and SORT OF not get sunburned to death, was a sign that the war with the aliens was not going fantastically well. — Sophia McDougall

My heart yearned for Aiden like he was the very air I needed to breathe, but at the same time I understood - really understood - that, even if Aiden had loved me in return, we could never be together. — Jennifer L. Armentrout

Everywhere you are, I will be. Everywhere you go, I will
go. I will follow you into your dreams, stay while you sleep,
watch while you eat."
That sinful bottom lip touched hers, then played with it,
brushing it, tugging on it, parting her mouth as if he had all
the time in the world to play and coax. "I will be the very air
you breathe. — Charlotte Featherstone

When I hug trees, the bark marks my cheek and reminds me I'm alive. Or that my nervous system is still intact. The trees breathe all the time and no one really notices. They take in all the air we choke on. They live and die in silence. So I hug them. Someone should. — Evan Roskos

Doubt we were very foolish, but danger seemed to be all round, and there was nobody we knew to trust in, and all was strange and uncertain. The fresh air that had come in through the open door made it easier to breathe, but the rushing sound overhead grew louder, and as I looked — Anna Sewell

Love is the air that I breathe, like oxygen. When I lack it, I feel atrophied, asphyxiated. When I have it, I feel I am growing. And so this growth is linked to others, or to a collective other. If I realize that I do not love you, my faith diminishes, and I breathe less and less of the oxygen of life. When I feel linked to you, in communion with you, there is a current of love that passes between us, and the intensity can multiply. And the more this love grows, the more the faith becomes luminous, the more I feel linked to the collective other. I am speaking of God. — Jean-Bertrand Aristide

I once told you to leave and not to love me," he cried out, muffled. "I'm taking all of that back. Not because I deserve it or because I'm worthy of your love. But because I need it like the air I breathe. I need you. I need you to believe in me. I need your love to make me feel like I can be redeemed. — Karina Halle

What makes this city different is that nobody expects to be in one place for ten minutes. Everybody moves all the time. Seven nameless men own everything and move us around on a board. People are swept out into the streets because the owners need the space. Then they are swept off the streets because someone owns the air they breathe. Men buy and sell air in the sky and there are bodies heaped together in boxes on the sidewalk. Then they sweep away the boxes."
"You like to overstate."
"I overstate things to stay alive. This is the point of New York. I completely love and trust this city but I know the moment I stop being angry I'm finished forever. — Don DeLillo

We barely made it inside her room before I pressed her up against the closed door and kissed her until she couldn't breathe, until I couldn't breathe-but who needed air when you had a silken tongue and warm lips and a body that begged to be licked, pinched, stroked. — Karina Halle

....One dark night,
my Tudor Ford climbed the hill's skull;
I watched for love-cars. Lights turned down,
they lay together, hull to hull,
where the graveyard shelves on the town. . . .
My mind's not right.

A car radio bleats,
"Love, O careless Love. . . ." I hear
my ill-spirit sob in each blood cell,
as if my hand were at its throat. . . .
I myself am hell;
nobody's here--

only skunks, that search
in the moonlight for a bite to eat.
They march on their soles up Main Street:
white stripes, moonstruck eyes' red fire
under the chalk-dry and spar spire
of the Trinitarian Church.

I stand on top
of our back steps and breathe the rich air--
a mother skunk with her column of kittens swills the garbage pail.
She jabs her wedge-head in a cup
of sour cream, drops her ostrich tail,
and will not scare. — Robert Lowell

If you've been exiled, why don't you send me word of yourself? People do send word. Have you stopped loving me? No, for some reason I don't believe that. It means you were exiled and died ... Release me, then, I beg you, give me freedom to live, finally, to breathe the air! ... ' Margarita Nikolaevna answered for him herself: 'You are free ... am I holding you?' Then she objected to him: 'No, what kind of answer is that? No, go from my memory, then I'll be free ... — Mikhail Bulgakov

I am well aware that one can't get along without domineering or being served. Every man needs slaves as he needs fresh air. Commanding is breathing - you agree with me? And even the most destitute manage to breathe. — Albert Camus

Faith receiveth the promise, embraceth it, and comforteth the soul unspeakably with it. Faith is so great an artist in arguing and reasoning with the soul, that it will bring over the hardest heart that it hath to deal with. It will bring to my remembrance at once, both my vileness against God, and his goodness towards me; it will show me, that though I deserve not to breathe in the air, yet that God will have me an heir of glory. — John Bunyan

I would give anything to taste. To taste just dust. Because now that I'm nearly gone, I'm more here than I ever was. Now that I'm nothing but air, all I want is to breathe it. Now that I'm silent forever, haha, it's all words words words with me. Now that I can't just reach out and touch, it's all I want, is to. — Ali Smith

She breathes in as I breathe out and her lungs fill with the air that was inside of me. I love her completely and I love giving her life as she gives me life. I breathe in her quintessence and it's cathartic. — Ella Dominguez

I am Edema Ruh to my bones. That means my blood is red. It means I breathe the free air and walk where my feet take me. I do not cringe and fawn like a dog at a man's title. That looks like pride to people who have spent their lives cultivating supple spines. — Patrick Rothfuss

I am convinced that the air we normally breathe is a kind of water, and men and women are a species of fish. — D.H. Lawrence

I lay on my floor crying again ... shaking. Searching for inner strength and coming up empty. My eyes burned and my mouth was dry as I sucked on air that seemed to keep getting thicker and harder to breathe. I tried to leave again, but ended up leaning my forehead against the door, feeling defeated and wishing the Grim Reaper would come for me in all his silky, black glory. — Nathan Daniels

I wonder whether I will ever breathe air that is clear of his ghost. — Danielle Younge-Ullman

I'm not sure which came first, the phone call or the sense of being strangled in my sleep. The choking sensation, as if all breathing on my part must cease, is still vivid in my mind. The feeling engulfs me and I am lying in bed all over again. I feel my throat constricting, intense pressure bearing down on me that I cannot escape. I push away at nothing. I flail and scream, but no sound escapes as my throat is squeezed shut, not by some actual physical hands clasped around my neck but from some nameless danger lurking just as real around me. I gasp for air, seeking somehow to gulp in one long breath that might see me through until I can breathe again. But that breath won't come, and I feel certain that I will perish in an instant, without even a cry on my part. — Mary Ellen Bramwell

Why don't you try?"

I pull away, startled. "Me?"

"No, the other redhead wearing a dress big enough to hide a herd of cattle." He reaches for my hand and grasps a finger to pull it back, but I resist. "Come on. This is not the time to be a coward. Don't you want to see what you're capable of?"

"Well, of course I do - "

"Then try." Derrick offers me an encouraging smile. "You just breathe it out like air. It's not difficult." He waves a hand at me. "Now close your eyes."

I arch a brow and sigh. "Really?"

He glares. "If you don't close your eyes I'll change that dress so quickly you'll look like a furry citrus fruit before you can even call me a bastard. — Elizabeth May

Even then, I could still appreciate the moment of simply making sounds with a group of people. There is another place you go to in those instances, and it feels vast, refreshing, like you're creating your own air to breathe. And even though it's never going to happen again and there's a palpable sense of mediocrity, there's still a connection that you wouldn't have otherwise, to the sound, to the people. — Carrie Brownstein

That moment when this heart.. stops.. almost as if it never existed.
When every.. breathe.. slows down.. almost as if you never ... needed as single breathe of air
When time stops.. almost as if every second never mattered.
In that moment ... I'm infinite.
In that moment ... I am immortal.
In that moment ... I am Finally alive. — Hafsa Shah

Then, in a whisper, Sam said, "I met someone else."

Just like that, Darcy's world melted and distorted into something she no longer recognized. His words hung like poison in the air, and she held her breath, afraid to breathe it in. — D.A. Rhine

To fly! to live as airmen live! Like them to ride the skyways from horizon to horizon, across rivers and forests! To free oneself from the petty disputes of everyday life, to be active, to feel the blood renewed in one's vein - ah! that is life ... Life in finer and simpler. My will is freer. I appreciate everything more, sunlight and shade, work and my friends. The sky is vast. I breathe deep gulps of the fine clear air of the heights. I feel myself to have achieved a higher state of physical strength and a clearer brain. I am living in the third dimension! — Henri Mignet

I remember that through all chaos or problems, there is a solution. So I separate myself for just a moment, whether that means zoning everyone out or taking a little walk to get some fresh air. I take this time to clear my head, breathe and reassess the problem and how I'm feeling. — Allison Holker

No. I didn't say you could talk yet.You made me feel like crap. I didn't fit into your little definition of perfect and you never let me forget it. I can assure you there is nothing. Nothing that would ever make you worth the air you breathe. — Nyrae Dawn

Some fearful sights there be that creep
By night - I mean that harass sleep;
But tenfold more alarming seem these when
They brave the day, to breathe the air like men. — William Batchelder Greene

I'm convinced that the main reason we've become so obsessed with restaurants is due to our basic need to get out of virtual space and into a real one. We're not going out to eat merely to share food; we're there to sit at the same table together, slow down, breathe the same air. — Ruth Reichl

One day you're going to let me love you, and I'm going to hold you so tight I'll never let you go. I'm going to love you as if it were the one thing I was meant to do. As if it were my purpose in life. Don't you see it, Blaire? Don't you get it? You're in me. In everything I see. In everything I touch. You're in the air I breathe, in the water I drink, and in every dream I dream. I want to tell you so much more, but I know that you're not ready to hear it. — Mia Asher

The night is about to lull everything and everyone to sleep. I stretch myself at the window and open it so that the books can breathe fresh damp air. I suspect that books need to breathe like people, and I think they tolerate damp better than people say. There is no doubt that they stare rather sadly at the trees out in the garden, as if they have a vague recollection of relationship with them, and sighs are borne from the pages to the damp trunks and branches.
I begin to sigh too, for I feel that people are like trees that move, trees that have lost their roots and are always in search of the soil. I have a hazy idea that humans have come from trees that broke off from their roots in a wild whirlwind eons ago - that is my thory of evolution. — Gyrdir Eliasson

Syn may be too much of a gentleman to hit you, but I'm not. I'm not only ashamed to call you human, I'm completely disgusted that we share the same gender. You want to know the truth? The only filth in this room is you, and you're the one who doesn't deserve to breathe our air. Decent's got nothing to do with birthright. It's all about actions, and trust me, you're the lowest form I've ever met and I've taken in the worst scum imaginable. But I'd rather sit at the table with them than you any day. (Shahara to Mara) — Sherrilyn Kenyon

I'm going to guess Republicans and Democrats, liberals and conservatives, all want clean air to breathe and clean water to drink. I'm sure most people think women should be paid the same as men if they're doing the same job. I think we all want good schools for our kids. If we made that list, we actually are in agreement on more things. — Michael Moore

I love you, Dominique. As selfishly as the fact that I exist. As selfishly as my lungs breathe air. I breathe for my own necessity, for the fuel of my body, for my survival. I've given you, not my sacrifice or my pity, but my ego and my naked need. This is the only way I can want you to love me. — Ayn Rand

Your generation is suffering from what for lack of a better word I shall call over-debunk. There was a lot of debunking that had to be done, of course. Bigotry, militarism, nationalism, religious intolerance, hypocrisy, phonyness, all sorts of dangerous, ready-made, artificially preserved false values. But your generation and the generation before yours went too far with their debunking job. You went overboard. Over-debunk, that's what you did. It's moral overkill. It's like those insecticides Rachel Carson speaks of in her book, that poison everything, and kill all the nice, useful bugs as well as the bad ones, and in the end poison human beings as well. In the end, it poisons life itself, the very air we breathe. That's what you did, morally and intellectually speaking. Yours is a silent spring. You have overprotected yourselves. You are all no more than twenty, twenty-two years old, but yours is a silent spring, I'm telling you. Nothing sings for you any more. — Romain Gary

It is I who will beat her if she tries anything. I am a traditionally built lady, you know, and if there are any bad people who try to push me around - or to beat me - then I can sit on them very quickly. And if I do that, then they cannot breathe - all the air goes out of their lungs and they cry out, 'I am not — Alexander McCall Smith

Before she could rethink her actions, she slugged Mara as hard as she could in her perfect face. And even that was a light punishment for everything she'd done to Syn. Mara fell to the ground, sobbing. But she took no pity on her. "Syn may be too much of a gentleman to hit you, but I'm not. I'm not only ashamed to call you human, I'm completely disgusted that we share the same gender. You want to know the truth? The only filth in this room is you, and you're the one who doesn't deserve to breathe our air. Decent's got nothing to do with birthright. It's all about actions, and trust me, you're the lowest form I've ever met and I've taken in the worst scum imaginable. But I'd rather sit at the table with them than you any day." She — Sherrilyn Kenyon

We may be lost stars in an ocean of constellations on a dark night but do remember we both belong to the same sky. I breathe the same air that you breathe, we both look at the same luminosity above us. You are the music and I am the lyrics. — Elizabeth E. Castillo

You'd rather not hear it now? But I want you to hear it. We never need to say anything to each other when we're together. This is - for the time when we won't be together. I love you, Dominique. As selfishly as the fact that I exist. As selfishly as my lungs breathe air. I breathe for my own necessity, for the fuel of my body, for my survival. I've given you, not — Ayn Rand

I look at the sky and the dust that separates us from the stars that will be my home. I breathe in the night air, the rotten night air, and I miss,
I miss,
I miss. — Corinne Duyvis

I stand still for a long time, holding the note, and let it all sink in. Her leaving is almost palpable like a gale-force wind that's rolled into my life in the span of a single evening and left behind all this incalculable destruction, both inside and out. Yes, the tempest has passed, but the air around me feels different. I can hardly breathe. Nothing is the same without her. As the lone survivor of her particular storm, I begin to wonder just exactly what I'm supposed to do now. — Katherine Owen

And that brings me to one last point. I've got a simple message for all the dedicated and patriotic federal workers who have either worked without pay, or who have been forced off the job without pay for these last few weeks. Including most of my own staff. Thank you. Thanks for your service. Welcome back. What you do is important. It matters. You defend our country overseas, you deliver benefits to our troops who earned them when they come home, you guard our borders, you protect our civil rights, you help businesses grow and gain footholds in overseas markets. You protect the air we breathe, and the water our children drink, and you push the boundaries of science and space, and you guide hundreds of thousands of people each day through the glories of this country. Thank you. What you do is important, and don't let anybody else tell you different. — Barack Obama

When I'm by myself, magic is something personal. My burden, my secret.
But at Watford, magic is just the air that we breathe. It's what makes me part of something bigger, not the thing that sets me apart. — Rainbow Rowell

Spirit in its human manifestation is man's response to his You. Man speaks in many tongues - tongues of language, of art, of action - but the spirit is one; it is response to the You that appears from the mystery and addresses us from the mystery. Spirit is word. And even as verbal speech may first become word in the brain of man and then become sound in his throat, although both are merely refractions of the true event because in truth language does not reside in man but man stands in language and speaks out of it - so it is with all words, all spirit. Spirit is not in the I but between I and You. It is not like the blood that circulates in you but like the air in which you breathe. Man lives in the spirit when he is able to respond to his You. He is able to do that when he enters into this relation with his whole being. It is solely by virtue of his power to relate that man is able to live in the spirit. — Martin Buber

(...)my love for you is deeper than anything that happened between us. My love for you is the sun, the sky, and the moon. It's the air I breathe. It lives in everything I do. It's better than good. It's everlasting. — Gabby Rivera

The first time that I entered through the double-locked doors of the psych ward I was terrified, believing for no real reason that such places harbored evil souls ready to assault me at any moment. But once inside I found it to be the slowest-moving place on Earth, and I saw that these patients were unique only in that time had stopped inside their wounds, which were seemingly never to heal. The pain was so thick and palpable in the psych ward that a visitor could breathe it like the heavy humidity of summer air, and I soon realized that the challenge would not be to defend myself from patients, but to defend myself against my own increasing indifference toward them. What originally struck me as cryptic in chapter fifty-nine was now mundane: they are turned inward, to feed upon their own hearts, and their own hearts are very bad feeding. — Hope Jahren

That space. It begins in the middle of my forehead and ends in the middle of my groin. It is, variously, as wide as my body, as narrow as a slit in a fortress wall. On days when thought flows freely or better yet clarifies with effort, it expands gloriously. On days when anxiety and self-pity crowd in, it shrinks, how fast it shrinks! When the space is wide and I occupy it fully, I taste the air, feel the light. I breathe evenly and slowly. I am peaceful and excited, beyond influence or threat. Nothing can touch me. I'm safe. I'm free. I'm thinking. When I lose the battle to think, the boundaries narrow, the air is polluted, the light clouds over. All is vapor and fog, and I have trouble breathing. — Vivian Gornick

Words are alive
when I've found a story that I love, I read it again and again, like playing a favorite song over and over.
Reading isn't passive
I enter the story with the characters, breathe their air, feel their frustrations,
scream at them to stop when they're about to do something stupid, cry with them, laugh with them.
Reading for me, is spending time with a friend. A book is a friend. You can never have too many. — Gary Paulsen

Falling in love with you was the easiest thing I've ever done. Falling is easy. Staying that way is hard. But I've been choosing hard all my life, so why the hell would the life I make with the woman who completes me be any different? I love you like a madman. You're the air I breathe, my next heartbeat, and I'm never letting go. — Kate Meader

As iAm cracked the door to his brother's room, the poor bastard's suffering stained the very air, making it hard to breathe - and even see properly.
Then again, everything was dark by design.
"Trez?"
The moaned answer was nothing good, a combination of wounded animal and sore throat from throwing up.
iAm lifted his wrist into the light streaming in from behind and cursed at his Piaget.
By this time, the SOB should have been solidly in recovery, his body digging itself out of the headache hole that had swallowed him. Not the case.
"You want something for your stomach?"
Mumble, mumble, groan, mumble?
"Okay, I'm sure they've got some."
Mumble, moan, moan. Mutter, mutter.
"Yeah, that, too. You want some Milanos?"
Mmmmmmmmmoan.
"Roger that. — J.R. Ward

To many people I have no doubt that it appears merely silly. I once found it expressed in a rather amusing way in a Russian Book called Dal Zoviet, which means the lure of far horizons. The author is Galinischev Kutuzoff [Golenischev-Kutuzov], and he tells of a man in Northern Mongolia who goes out of his yurt every morning to breathe the free air of the steppes and enjoy the immensity and the solitude. But one day he feels an uncomfortable sense of oppression, almost as if he could not breathe. He looks about to find the reason. And there, across the undulating grasslands, is a line of telegraph poles. And after the place never the same to him again. — Daniele Vare

It's for us to take care of the air we breathe and the water we drink. And I do believe we have an impact on that, and we do have the ability to change it if we make the decision to. — Scott Kelly

I mean, when you think about it, jet travel is pretty freaking remarkable. You get in a plane, it defies the gravity of an entire planet by exploiting a loophole with air pressure, and it flies across distances that would take months or years to cross by any means of travel that has been significant for more than a century or three. You hurtle above the earth at enough speed to kill you instantly should you bump into something, and you can only breathe because someone built you a really good tin can that has seams tight enough to hold in a decent amount of air. Hundreds of millions of man-hours of work and struggle and research, blood, sweat, tears, and lives have gone into the history of air travel, and it has totally revolutionized the face of our planet and societies. But get on any flight in the country, and I absolutely promise you that you will find someone who, in the face of all that incredible achievement, will be willing to complain about the drinks. The drinks, people. — Jim Butcher

Be as I am - a reluctant enthusiast ... a part-time crusader, a half-hearted fanatic ... So get out there and hunt and fish and mess around with your friends, ramble out yonder and explore the forests, climb the mountains, bag the peaks, run the rivers, breathe deep of that yet sweet and lucid air, sit quietly for a while and contemplate the precious stillness, the lovely, mysterious, and awesome space ... — Edward Abbey

I have no patience for any "fairness"-driven complaints. Life isn't fair, love isn't fair, and as long as we breathe the free air of a capitalistic society, business will never be fair. Thirty years into my career, I have yet to hear a valid "that's not fair" career-related complaint that wasn't related to gender or racial bias. Ninety-nine percent of the time, the people complaining were underachievers that relied on their own lazy standards instead of common sense. They tried to do a good job instead of running a successful business. — Ari Gold

You are my heart," he says, his gaze never leaving mine. "You are my blood. You are the air that I breathe and the strength inside me. You are not just my wife, Nikki, you are my soul. You are my world. You are my life. — J. Kenner

Anybody who wants to go into any business, I always say that you have to make a commitment to yourself to make it a part of your nature like the air you breathe. I don't mean that lightly. It's hard. You have to do the work, and a lot of it is going to be during your own personal downtime. And you have to be interested in it. You can never study enough, and you can never learn enough. — Lawrence Hilton-Jacobs

As the years pass, I am coming more and more to understand that it is the common, everyday blessings of our common everyday lives for which we should be particularly grateful. They are the things that fill our lives with comfort and our hearts with gladness
just the pure air to breathe and the strength to breath it; just warmth and shelter and home folks; just plain food that gives us strength; the bright sunshine on a cold day; and a cool breeze when the day is warm. — Laura Ingalls Wilder

Some days I miss flying so much it makes my entire chest hurt, feels like I can't breathe sometimes. I try not to think about the fact that I'll never have thousands of feet of air between me and the ground again. But it's those times that I have to remind myself that at least I got the chance to do it sometime in my life. A couple dozen solo flights are better than having never done it at all. — Keary Taylor

Your blood is mine, Mae. It is your life force, the very thing that feeds you. But now I substitute your blood. I am your life force, the very thing that will feed you, whether it be pain, misery or fucking pleasure. I am what will breathe life into you, not the air; me. I will be the one that controls each and every move you make, not your brain; me. I am now the very thing that will decide if you live or die, not your blood; me. — D.H. Sidebottom

I tilted her head back as far as it would go without dunking her back in the icy water and started to breathe into her mouth. I breathed in all the love I had for her. I gave her air flavored with my confidence that we were meant to be, and laced with the knowledge that she made me a better kind of man. I breathed out and filled her lungs with the future I wanted to share with her and all the memories I wanted to make with her. — Jay Crownover

I've often used the extremes in my work to comment on the mainstream. I think that sometimes a subject that I'm working on, like popular culture, is so present all around us that they're hard to see. It's like: How do you see the air you breathe? How do you see how it affects you? — Lauren Greenfield

The New Colossus
Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lightning, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon-hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
Keep ancient lands, your storied pomp!" cries she
with silent lips. "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

Environmentalism is not an upper-income issue, it's not a white issue, it's not a black issue, it's not a South or a North or an East or a West issue. It's an issue that all of us have a stake in. And if I can do anything to make sure that not just my daughter but every child in America has green pastures to run in and clean air to breathe and clean water to swim in, then that is something I'm going to work my hardest to make happen. — Barack Obama

You are to me an object so intensely desirable that the air I breathe in a room empty of you is unhealthy — John Keats

I think it would have to be the way that my sister looks at you when you can't see it."

"Yeah? And how's that?" he asked, very interested in the answer.

"Oh, you know," she said coolly, "like you're the air she needs to breathe. — L.A. Kuehlke

Though I myself am an atheist, I openly profess religion in the sense just mentioned, that is, a nature religion. I hate the idealism that wrenches man out of nature; I am not ashamed of my dependency on nature; I openly confess that the workings of nature affect not only my surface, my skin, my body, but also my core, my innermost being, that the air I breathe in bright weather has a salutary effect not only on my lungs but also on my mind, that the light of the sun illumines not only my eyes but also my spirit and my heart. And I do not, like a Christian, believe that such dependency is contrary to my true being or hope to be delivered from it. I know further that I am a finite moral being, that I shall one day cease to be. But I find this very natural and am therefore perfectly reconciled to the thought. — Ludwig Feuerbach