Quotes & Sayings About Gasping

Some poets write pages upon pages because their hearts have a song to sing and their melodies cannot be contained in a single stanza... and I find myself typing out a quote because my soul is still gasping for breath, and all the words form a single sentence: I miss us. — Alfa H

When she was eighteen years old she had almost drowned in the Kennebec River, not because of the pummeling current, but because she couldn't come up with a casual phrase with which to call for rescue. "Help!" was such a cliche. By the time she was willing to scream, she had no breath left, and it was just blind luck that somebody saw her gasping and floundering and pulled her to shore. "Why didn't you say something?" they wanted to know, and she said, "I'm not a screamer." "Jesus," said one of them, "couldn't you have made an exception this one time?" "Apparently not," she said. — Jincy Willett

I open my eyes and sit straight up , gasping, filling my lungs. I'm happy no one's here to see me, because I'm sputtering and splashing and coughing up water. There's no rush of having survived, only emptiness, and lungs that need air, and wet sticking hair to my face — Jennifer Niven

We tore each other's clothes off like they were on fire. She was gorgeous. Firm and strong and a shape like a dream. Skin like silk. She pulled me to the floor through bars of hot sunlight from the window. It was frantic. We were rolling and nothing could have stopped us. It was like the end of the world. We shuddered to a stop and lay gasping. We were bathed in sweat. Totally spent. — Lee Child

It seems to me absolutely true, that our world, which appears to us the surface of all things, is really the bottom of a deep ocean: all our trees are submarine growths, and we are weird, scaly-clad submarine fauna, feeding ourselves on offal like shrimps. Only occasionally the soul rises gasping through the fathomless fathoms under which we live, far up to the surface of the ether, where there is true air. — D.H. Lawrence

When the Warrior pulled her half onto his lap and she felt the hard bulge of his erection thrusting up from his groin pressing into her hip, Katya grew nervous. She pulled away, gasping, and pressed him back with her hand on his chest. "Wait! Wait." She licked her tingling lips and touched them with her fingertips, wondering what she'd been thinking to awaken this sleeping giant. What had happened to her vow to fight him off with all her strength?
Turan's dark eyes glowed like two banked coals ready to ignite into flame. "Please. More," he begged hoarsely. "Please."
She suddenly realized that, despite the fact he could snap her in two if he wished, she was the one with the power. He didn't intend to hurt or force her. — Bonnie Dee

But sometimes I really felt as though the starry sky rose and fell with the gasping of his chest. — Franz Kafka

I'm over a thousand years old. I've seen it all. You, sweetcheeks, are nothing new." At what must have been an outraged expression on her face, he laughed again. "Come on. Surely you can't think you are the only female out there who's had a rough life, had her heart walked on, been kept in a dungeon for three centuries, blah, blah, pick your trauma, and are now stomping around with all this pent-up anger you spill like acid on everyone who gets to know you." He narrowed his gaze at her. "How close am I?"
Sin's mouth worked, but nothing came out. She finally snapped it shut to avoid looking like a fish gasping on the bank of a river.
"That's what I thought." He made a shooing gesture with his hand. "No, run along and go be caustic with someone who cares. Oh, wait, no one cares, do they? Because you won't let them
— Larissa Ione

His blue-and-white striped robe ballooning out in the wind, he rode directly to me and fell off the donkey. Gasping theatrically, he handed me a note and then collapsed face down in the sand. Since the donkey had been doing all the work, I ignored this demonstration. While John bent over the fallen man with expressions of concern I opened the note. — Elizabeth Peters

Zane lifted his knee higher, gasping when it pulled Ty deeper. Ty groaned, unable to continue merely rocking his hips any longer. His hand left Zane's hair to slide up the back of his leg instead, fingers digging in as he pulled back and thrust in. Zane — Abigail Roux

A year earlier, no company had been accorded more faith than Enron; by late November, none was trusted less. And so, a gasping gurgle, a desperate SOS: Enron, the emblem of free markets, the champion of deregulation, reached into its depleted treasury and forked over $100,000 to each of the major political parties' campaign war chests. Then, it shuttered its online trading unit - its erstwhile gem. On November 28, Standard & Poor's downgraded Enron to junk-bond level - which triggered provisions in Enron's debt requiring it to immediately repay billions of its obligations. This it could not do. Its stock was seventy cents and falling, and, now, no gatekeepers and no credit remained. Accordingly, in the first week of December, Enron, the archetype of shareholder value, availed itself of the time-honored protection for those who have lost their credit: bankruptcy. — Roger Lowenstein

Silence.
What's this what's this oh my god can a men ever get lower can a man ever be less?
Weariness and gasping convulsive exhaustion. All life dead all life wasted and becoming nothing less than nothing only the germ of nothing. A kind of sickness that comes from shame. A weakness like dying weakness and faintness and a prayer. God give me rest take me away hide me let me die oh god how weary how much already dead how much gone and going oh god hide me and give me peace. — Dalton Trumbo

The Vampires have a plan to take over the world? I asked. I felt a bit dumb, gasping in surprise at every twist to the story and incredulously repeating all the important of bits. But somehow Carter's version of things made sense. I felt like Dorothy at the end of The Wizard of Oz when the green curtain is pulled back to reveal the truth. — Emily McKay

Nothing in all nature is so lovely and so vigorous, so perfectly at home in its environment, as a fish in the sea. Its surroundings give to it a beauty, quality, and power which are not its own. We take it out, and at once a poor, limp dull thing, fit for nothing, is gasping away its life. So the soul, sunk in God, living the life of prayer, is supported, filled, transformed in beauty, by a vitality and a power which are not its own. — Evelyn Underhill

was going to pay the price. He was going to die. Then his fingers finally found the valve. At first it wouldn't turn, and he realized he was trying to spin it the wrong way. He reversed his fingers and a rush of cool, blessed air gusted into the mask. Ollie lay under the potatoes, gasping. He jumped a little when the fire blew in the door at the top of the stairs; for a moment he could — Stephen King

He paused, gasping for breath, but continued in a soft, steady voice. Allie, I ... I love you. — Julie Kagawa

Sam," she said.
"I'm trying!"
"Sam," she repeated.
"No," he spat, hearing her tone. "No!"
He began screaming for help then. Celaena pressed her face to one of the holes in the grate. Help wasn't going to come-not fast enough.
"Please," Sam begged as he beat and yanked on the grate, he tried to wedge another dagger under the lid. "Please don't."
She knew he wasn't speaking to her.
The water hit her neck.
"Please," Sam moaned, his fingers now touching hers. She'd have one last breath. Her last words.
"Take my body home to Terrasen, Sam," she whispered. And with a gasping breath, she went under. — Sarah J. Maas

Eventually, she looked up, her eyes completely void of emotions. "You are merely a diversion. You mean nothing to me."
She walked past him and out of the room. She left him, a fish gasping amongst the clouds, falling back to earth. — Michelle Frost

Okay. Now my skin is really prickling. I've read all the Harry Potter books, all five of them. I don't remember any half-blood prince.
"What's this?" Trying to sound casual, I point at the ad, "What's Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince?"
"That's the latest book," Garth the other trainee, says. "It came out ages ago."
I can't help gasping. "There's a sixth Harry Potter?"
"There's a seventh out soon!" Diana steps forward eagerly. "And guess what happens at the end of book six-"
"Shh!" exclaims Nicole, the other nurse. "Don't tell her! — Sophie Kinsella

In my state of spiritual abstraction, I no longer belong to myself and to my eyesight. I am nothing more than a single narrow gasping lung, floating over the mists and summits. — Reinhold Messner

We fall into each other. All the other voices in my head
the fear, the doubt, the worry
are drowned out. I die at the end of each kiss and am brought gasping back to life at the beginning of the next. I close my eyes and the entire world fades away. — Beth Revis

Panting and gasping, Harry slowed down, skirting the Willow's swiping branches, peering through the darkness toward its thick trunk, trying to see the single knot in the bark of the old tree that would paralyze it. Ron and Hermione caught up, Hermione so out of breath she could not speak. "How - how're we going to get in?" panted Ron. "I can - see the place - if we just had - Crookshanks again - " "Crookshanks?" wheezed Hermione, bent double, clutching her chest. "Are you a wizard, or what?" "Oh - right - yeah - — J.K. Rowling

I bolted upright in my bed, gasping for air and still feeling his touch on my hand. I could feel him watching me. I could feel him waiting for me. — Dana Michelle Burnett

The only time I flip out is when I'm not prepared. If I'm caught off guard, I can't help it; I start gasping for air. — Emma Stone

Sara fled upstairs as if the devil himself had been after her, leaning, gasping for breath against the thick wooden door that had no lock on the inside
symbolic of her position here and a reminder of another age when women had been OWNED like property, and used according to the dictates of the men who possessed them. — Rosemary Rogers

Desperately she reached for his dark head, pulled him harder against her, and his tongue slipped over the aching bud of her sex. The silence of the room was punctuated by her gasping breaths, the suckling sounds he made, and the creak of the chair as she rocked forward, upward, straining to capture his tantalizing mouth. Just as she thought she could no longer bear the intimate torture, the tension exploded in a rapturous burst of fire. She cried out and shuddered, her legs jerking up against the upholstered chair arms, and the spasms went on and on until she finally begged him to stop. — Lisa Kleypas

We're only passers-by, and all you can do is love what you have in your life. A person has to fight the meanness that sometimes comes with you when you're born, sometimes grows if you aren't in lucky surroundings. It's our challenge to fend it off, leave it behind us choking and gasping for breath in the mud. It's our task to seek out something with truth for us, no matter if there is a hundred-mile obstacle course in the way, or a ramshackle old farmhouse that binds and binds. — Jane Hamilton

I walked to Scott, each step heavy, tears hot on my face, my hands hovering uselessly over his rapidly decaying body. I shut my eyes, forcing myself to recall his lopsided grin. Not his vacant eyes. In my mind, I played back his teasing laugh. Not the gurgling, gasping sounds he'd made right before dying. I remembered his warmth in accidental touches and playful jabs, knowing his body was rotting even as I clung to the memory.
"Thank you," I choked out, telling myself that somewhere nearby, he could still hear my voice. "You saved my life. Good-bye, Scott. I'll never forget you, that's my oath to you. Never." I vowed. — Becca Fitzpatrick

cry huge, gasping tears. — Sherman Alexie

And confessions of love have always seemed out of place when you're gasping for air, when you're begging for pain,
when you're missing something, unable to change the channel. — Kris Kidd

We always look for Christ amid magnificence. But ... Christ has a history of showing up amide the unlovely. Born in a dirty stall. Crowned with thorns. Died gasping on a shameful cross atop a jagged rise.
We don't need to be beautiful for Christ to take us in. He is equally at home when we're broken-down and dirty. It's like George Herbert wrote:
'And here in dust and dirt, O here,
The lilies of God's love appear.'
We think magnificence is in short supply, that dust and dirt choke out the lilies. But that's not true and never was. Lilies may root in dirt, but they reach for heaven - and in the reaching, reveal their magnificence.
- chapter 24 — Philip Gulley

The brown earth, the torn, blasted earth, with a greasy shine under the sun's rays; the earth is the background of this restless, gloomy world of automatons, our gasping is the scratching of a quill, our lips are dry, our heads are debauched with stupor - thus we stagger forward, and into our pierced and shattered souls bores the torturing image of the brown earth with the greasy sun and the convulsed and dead soldiers, who lie there - it can't be helped - who cry and clutch at our legs as we spring away over them. We have lost all feeling for one another. We can hardly control ourselves when our glance lights on the form of some other man. We are insensible, dead men, who through some trick, some dreadful magic, are still able to run and to kill. — Erich Maria Remarque

His eyes go wide while a gasp of wonder passes his lips. He turns his body fully toward us. His lips moving like a fish out of water, gasping for breath. He gives his head a shake and stutters out, Mer - mermaids. There are fish with women's bodies or - women with fish bodies sitting upon the rocks. I - I never knew ... — A.R. Von

Why grace? Because some days, it's the only thing we have in common. Because it's the one thing I'm certain is real. Because it's the reason I'm here. Because it's the oxygen of religious life, or so says a musician friend of mine, who tells me, "Without it, religion will surely suffocate you." Because so many of us are gasping for air and grasping for God, but fleeing from a kind of religious experience that has little to do with anything sacred or gracious. — Cathleen Falsani

Since the music industry cracked and fell apart, gasping for the cash flow it had come to expect, much re-thinking has been the order of the day. It is a fine time to be a musician. Like walking through Sodom and Gomorrah while it is still smoking, on your way to the next gig. — Jane Siberry

Since he'd killed Newt, he hadn't thought once about what he had set out to do. Free of WICKED, finally, and here he was voluntarily going back.
He didn't care anymore. Whatever happened, happened. He knew that for the rest of his life he'd be haunted by what he'd seen. Chuck gasping for air while he bled to death, and now Newt screaming at him with raw, terrifying madness. And that last moment of sanity, eyes begging for mercy.
Thomas closed his own, and the images were still there. It took a long time for him to fall asleep. — James Dashner

Kneel down, kneel down- kneel round her every one of you, and mark my words. I say she starved to death. I never knew how bad she was, till the fever came upon her, and then her bones were starting through the skin. There was neither fire nor candle; she died in the dark- in the dark. She couldn't even see her children's faces, though we heard her gasping out their names. I begged for her in the streets, and they sent me to prison. When I came back, she was dying; and all the blood in my heart has dried up, for they starved her to death. I swear it before the God that saw it,- they starved her! — Charles Dickens

We run, straining, gasping, and groaning, in our own separate directions, and the more we struggle the closer we're pulled together. — Antti Tuomainen

And we held each other in the dark hall and laughed, with the tears running down our cheeks and echoes of our laughter going up the ruined stairway to the sky.
'I am so happy,' Constance said at last, gasping. 'Merricat, I am so happy.'
'I told you that you would like it on the moon. — Shirley Jackson

Cast up
the heart flops over
gasping 'Love'
a foolish fish which tries to draw
its breath from flesh of air
And no one there to hear its death
among the sad bushes
where the world rushes by
in a blather of asphalt and delay — Lawrence Ferlinghetti

I will love you as a drawer loves a secret compartment, and as a secret compartment loves a secret, and as a secret loves to make a person gasp, and as a gasping person loves a glass of brandy to calm their nerves, and as a glass of brandy loves to shatter on the floor, and as the noise of glass shattering loves to make someone else gasp, and as someone else gasping loves a nearby desk to lean against, even if leaning against it presses a lever that loves to open a drawer and reveal a secret compartment. I will love you until all such compartments are discovered and opened, and until all the secrets have gone gasping into the world. — Lemony Snicket

She threw back her head, riding him hard, the sweat sliding down between her breasts. He lurched up, half sitting, his arm propping him up, and licked the sweat from her body.
She cried out, gasping, holding his head to her even as he sucked one nipple into his mouth. She felt the pull, felt the answering gush, and knew she was falling apart, spreading outward, a star exploding.
He gasped and let go of her breast, bowing his head to her chest, his hair wild and tangled against her as he groaned and shook.
She felt heat inside her and rose one last time, spreading wide her thighs, shoving him as deep inside her as she could.
Trying to keep him forever. — Elizabeth Hoyt

I reach out and grab her wrist. It feels impossibly tiny in my hand, like this one time I found a baby bird near goose Point, and I picked it up and it died there, taking its final gasping fluttering breaths in my palm. — Lauren Oliver

Daniel exposed his machete-like fangs much to the delight of Hartwell, who was gasping for air like a fish out of water. He furiously bit into Hartwell's neck and drank his blood until he could sense the injured party slipping away. The beauty of a life on the edge did not escape Daniel at this moment. He wiped his mouth clean of Hartwell's blood and then bit into his own wrist, while also using his powerful mind to pry open Hartwell's mouth.
Daniel's blood flowed through the body at rest and shot around Hartwell's veins like he had ingested a case of energy drinks. — Phil Wohl

Lucky discovered that laughing was like crying in the sense that sometimes you cannot stop. And it's a catching disease, because when another person is spurting and gasping it makes you start again even after you have taken deep gulps of air and stopped looking at the other laughing person. — Susan Patron

What are you waiting for?" he screamed, launching himself at Liraz. With a neat step and parry she sent him face-first into the ground, and with one well-placed kick turned him over, gasping, onto his back. "Kill me!" he coughed out, lying there. "I know you want to!"
But she just shook her head and smiled, and Jael wanted to howl, because her smile had ... plans in it, and in those plans, he saw, there would be no easy death. — Laini Taylor

You want this?'
I raised my gaze, gasping at the dark hunger in his expression. My mind blanked. Want his body? How could I not? He was pure temptation.
'I meant this,' he held up my bag, 'but I could easily be persuaded to share anything else my wife might desire. — Kresley Cole

They were panting dwarfs, imps gasping for breath, and their beards dragged along the ground. Each carried a strange implement of torture. Some held bloody leather belts studded with iron, some clasp knives and ox goads, some thick, wide-headed nails. Three midgets whose behinds nearly scraped the ground carried a massive, unwieldy cross; and last of all came the vilest of the lot, a cross-eyed pygmy holding a crown of thorns. — Nikos Kazantzakis

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

Other people's happiness is always a fascinating bore. It sucks the oxygen out of the room; you're left gasping, greedy, amazed by a deficit in yourself you hadn't ever noticed. — Elizabeth McCracken

Sophisticated-looking than the girl he used to know. People in hospitals never looked good. And yet, somehow, she did. Dianna was in the middle of saying something to a thin woman with a severe black haircut who was sitting on a chair beside the bed when she looked up and saw him. Breaking off in the middle of her sentence, she sucked in a deep breath, her face flushing beneath his scrutiny. And yet, even as he mentally dissected all the ways she'd changed, all the reasons they were more different than ever, his body was telling him to get over there, to pull her tight against him and kiss her until they were both gasping for air. What — Bella Andre

This is another thing I think of, turning it over, try to put together two pictures of it, but this time it's about me, it's myself I'm trying to figure. Because one sounds so disgusting, not even able to tell Al about it, win the big game, take the virgin to her first bonfire, feed her a beer or two, and then the two of us in someone's car with your hand between my legs, unbuttoned and hiked down and the noises I made, before I finally, gasping, stopped you. It sounds terrible and it's probably the truth, the real picture, gross when I write it down and shamed about it. But it's the real, whole truth I'm trying to get down, how it happened, and honestly it felt different then, different from that bad picture. I can see it, so gentle the way you moved, the thrill that was there with us as no one knew where we were or what we were doing. — Daniel Handler

Usually, when he came in these dreams he woke up still thrusting into ruined sheets, his face pressed into a pillow.
This time, he was most assuredly still balls deep inside Delilah McGavin, his face pressed into the mass of silken black hair now that they'd fallen to their sides on a bed far too nice to be his. Like him, she was gasping, trying to catch her breath. She was also bonelessly limp, her sweat slick body slathered over his, their legs tangled, their sexes still throbbing against each other, fitted together like a lock and a key. — Dee Tenorio

Then, I was floating ten feet up in the air and couldn't breathe. I was gasping for air and clawing at my throat, trying to pull in oxygen from somewhere. There was nothing. — Stormy Smith

we steady thud of wind with lungs that empty moon, fill it back up with shine, feed my feet to pig iron anklets biting flesh where i am link. i will break. bleed, crack. shatter. crush.
i'ma smash outta this choir, come up gasping new breath, my name burned clean, made mine — Tyehimba Jess

Backup?" Tori said. "You mean he didn't need that?"
"Apparently not," I murmured.
Simon looked from her to me, confused, then understanding. "You guys thought ... "
"That if you didn't get your medicine in the next twenty-four hours, you'd be dead?" I said. "Not exactly, but close. You know, the old 'upping the ante with a fatal disease that needs medication' twist. Apparently, it still works."
"Kind of a letdown, then, huh?"
"No kidding. Here we were, expecting to find you minutes from death. Look at you, not even gasping."
"All right, then. Emergency medical situation, take two."
He leaped to his feet, staggered, keeled over, then lifted his head weakly.
"Chloe? Is that you?" He coughed. "Do you have my insulin?"
I placed it in his outstretched hand.
"You saved my life," he said. "How can I ever repay you?"
"Undying servitude sounds good. I like my eggs scrambled."
He held up a piece of fruit. "Would you settle for a bruised apple? — Kelley Armstrong

I'll put my hand in no man's hand,' said Mr. Micawber, gasping, puffing, and sobbing, to that degree that he was like a man fighting with cold water, 'until I have - blown to fragments - the - a - detestable - serpent - HEEP! I'll partake of no one's hospitality, until I have - a - moved Mount Vesuvius - to eruption - on - a - the abandoned rascal - HEEP! Refreshment - a - underneath this roof - particularly punch - would - a - choke me - unless - I had - previously - choked the eyes - out of the head - a - of - interminable cheat, and liar - HEEP! I - a - I'll know nobody - and - a - say nothing - and - a - live nowhere - until I have crushed - to - a - undiscoverable atoms - the - transcendent and immortal hypocrite and perjurer - HEEP! — Charles Dickens

I aimed my flashlight at the ground - and leapt back, gasping. Incredibly, a human face seemed to be rising out of the earth. — Jeff VanderMeer

Bilbo lay with his eyes shut, gasping an taking pleasure in the feel of the fresh air again, and hardly noticing the excitement of the dwarves, or how they praised him and patted him on the back and put themseves and all their families for generations to come at his service. — J.R.R. Tolkien

Gasping, St. Vincent lifted his head to stare at her as if she were a variety of creature he had never seen before. "Good Lord," he whispered, his expression not one of gratification, but of something close to alarm. — Lisa Kleypas

There's warm skin. A strong body that embraces you. Breaths that escape his gasping mouth. But... we're calling out another's name in our hearts. With our eyes closed, that person's image surfaces in our minds. It was a sweet, gentle, yet cruel night. — Yuuri Eda

When you're begging. When you're drunk on my cock, wet and gasping. I'm going to ride you, darling, ride you till you break. — Roxy Sloane

All my life, I [Pari] have lived like an aquarium fish in the safety of a glass tank, behind a barrier as impenetrable as it has been transparent. I have been free to observe the glimmering world on the other side, to picture myself in it, if I like. But I have always been contained, hemmed in, by the hard, unyielding confines of the existence that Baba has constructed for me, at first knowingly, when I was young, and now guilelessly, now that he is fading day by day. I think I have grown accustomed to the glass and am terrified that when it breaks, when I am alone, I will spill out into the wide open unknown and flop around, helpless, lost, gasping for breath. — Khaled Hosseini

I think my prose reads as if English were my second language. By the time I get to the end of a paragraph, I'm dodging bullets and gasping for breath. — Lynn Abbey

Like Sylvia Plath, Natalie Jeanne Champagne invites you so close to the pain and agony of her life of mental illness and addiction, which leaves you gasping from shock and laughing moments later: this is both the beauty and unique nature of her storytelling. With brilliance and courage, the author's brave and candid chronicle travels where no other memoir about mental illness and addiction has gone before. The Third Sunrise is an incredible triumph and Natalie Jeanne Champagne is without a doubt the most important new voice in this genre. — Andy Behrman

His room was still and very quiet, insulated by sound building and oak boards from the jabber of the dissenting voices below. He unlatched the window in the seaward wall and forced it open with both hands against the blast of the gale. the wind rushed into the room swirling the bed cover into folds, sweeping the papers from his desk and rustling the pages of his bedside Jane Austen like a giant hand. It took his breath away so that he leaned gasping against the window ledge, welcoming the sting of spray on his face and tasting the salt drying on his lips. When he closed the window the silence seemed absolute. The thundering surf receded and faded like the far-away moaning on another shore. — P.D. James

Hey, slow breaths," Cassia said.
Solara hadn't realized she was gasping. "Right. Sorry."
"If you faint among pirates, don't bother waking up."
Oh god. That was not helpful. — Melissa Landers

Love was a bitch because it shackled you as hard as steel cuffs, leaving you gasping and hollow for any connection. — V. Theia

You should not have too many people waiting on you, you should have to do most things for yourself. Hotel service is embarrassing. Maids, waiters, bellhops, porters and so forth are the most embarrassing people in the world for they continually remind you of inequities which we accept as the proper thing. The sight of an ancient woman, gasping and wheezing as she drags a heavy pail of water down a hotel corridor to mop up the mess of some drunken overprivileged guest, is one that sickens and weighs upon the heart and withers it with shame for this world in which it is not only tolerated but regarded as proof positive that the wheels of Democracy are functioning as they should without interference from above or below. Nobody should have to clean up anybody else's mess in this world. It is terribly bad for both parties, but probably worse for the one receiving the service. — Tennessee Williams

I want you in the sky, and against the earth. I want to kiss you again, I want to touch you, I want to feel you in my arms and I want to hear you gasping my name when I'm inside you. I want all that, and I want it badly. Every time I look at you, I want it.
-Kit to Rue — Shana Abe

And so an awful confusion begins to collect, forming a cloud that sits around an absence of hope. Desperate sensations. Can't breath. Panic. Just trying to catch my breath, but I can't breath. I hurt so much, and I'm so tired that I don't even want to breath the breath I'm gasping for. There is no more. This is the most. It's just pain, channeled in one direction, using you as its host. — Ashly Lorenzana

She gazed back at him, her mouth open, gasping for air. Her white blouse rose and fell with each panting breath. She shook her head. "No. We can't. I'm sorry."
His gut twisted. He wanted to shout, "Why? Why can I never have what I want - just once? — Bonnie Dee

Please believe me when I tell you that I picked up each soul that day as if it were newly born. I even kissed a few weary, poisoned cheeks. I listened to their last, gasping cries. Their vanishing words. I watched their love visions and freed them from their fear. — Markus Zusak

Shut up about Leibniz for a moment, Rudy, because look here: You - Rudy - and I are on a train, as it were, sitting in the dining car, having a nice conversation, and that train is being pulled along at a terrific clip by certain locomotives named The Bertrand Russell and Riemann and Euler and others. And our friend Lawrence is running alongside the train, trying to keep up with us - it's not that we're smarter than he is, necessarily, but that he's a farmer who didn't get a ticket. And I, Rudy, am simply reaching out through the open window here, trying to pull him onto the fucking train with us so that the three of us can have a nice little chat about mathematics without having to listen to him panting and gasping for breath the whole way. — Neal Stephenson

For a long moment there was only the sound of her soft, half-gasping little breaths, and the thud of his heart, loud in his ears. He had never felt this ... this liberation, this unfettered contentment. Not with another woman, not after a hard day of accomplishment, not after a brilliant business maneuver, not even after beating his brothers at anything. His body was wrung out with physical satisfaction, his mind fely fogged and sluggish, but his head ...
'If this be madness,' came Francesca's weak voice from behind the shining veil of her hair, 'lead me to Bedlam.'
'Perhpas tomorrow. I don't think I can make it further than the bed. — Caroline Linden

I listened to their last, gasping cries. Their vanishing words. I watched their love visions and freed them from their fear. I took them all away, and if ever there was a time I needed distraction, this was it. — Markus Zusak

I want to be a fun mom. Not a gasping for air mom. — Mariska Hargitay

After breakfast they went whooping and prancing out on the bar, and chased each other round and round, shedding clothes as they went, until they were naked, and then continued the frolic far away up the shoal water of the bar, against the stiff current, which latter tripped their legs from under them from time to time and greatly increased the fun. And now and then they stooped in a group and splashed water in each other's faces with their palms, gradually approaching each other, with averted faces to avoid the strangling sprays, and finally gripping and struggling till the best man ducked his neighbor, and then they all went under in a tangle of white legs and arms and came up blowing, sputtering, laughing, and gasping for breath at one and the same time. — Mark Twain

Hiresha felt something she struggled to describe. Power and possibility swirled within her, along with a a sense of gasping potential in each moment. When she could a find a name for it, tears beaded her eyes. I am awake. — A.E. Marling

I love your loins, that's all,' Rachel says quietly. 'And now I love the word itself, and how words change, I love that too. And all the parts of you, I love them. That's all. And I'm not sad,' she whispers, gasping a little at the shock of her own tears, hot and extravagant, tears that catch the light in her lashes before they drop and roll across Zach's thighs, sparkling capsules, kaleidoscopic, the flow dynamic. — Emma Richler

Paneloux is a man of learning, a scholar. He hasn't come in contact with death; that's why he can speak with such assurance of the truth-with a capital T. But every country priest who visits his parishioners and has heard a man gasping for breath on his deathbed thinks as I do. He'd try to relieve human suffering before trying to point out its goodness. — Albert Camus

We were decadent in our intimacy. Leaving no inch of skin untouched lest a moment of rapture slip through our grasp. Thrusting and plunging, in dazed euphoria, the exquisite cravings for those carnal delights ravaged our souls until shamelessly, gasping lust tainted air, we discovered insatiability... — Virginia Alison

All the history of the stage is a struggle, the gasping of a beautiful child born at the point of death. The moralists, censorship and oppression, technology, and now poverty have all tried to destroy her. Only we, the actors and audiences, have kept her alive. — Gene Wolfe

When your eyes are fixed in the stare of unconsciousness, and your throat coughs the last gasping breath - as one dragged in the dark to a great precipice - what assistance are a wife and child? — George Bernard Shaw

His chest, heaving harder this time. His words, almost gasping this time. "You destroy me."
I am falling to pieces in his arms.
My fists are full of unlucky pennies and my heart is a jukebox demanding a few nickels and my head is flipping quarters heads or tails heads or tails heads or tails heads or tails
"Juliette," he says, and he mouths the name, barely speaking at all, and he's pouring molten lava into my limbs and I never even knew I could melt straight to death.
"I want you," he says. He says "I want all of you. I want you inside and out and catching your breath and aching for me like I ache for you." He says it like it's a lit cigarette lodged in his throat, like he wants to dip me in warm honey and he says "It's never been a secret. I've never tried to hide that from you. I've never pretended I wanted anything less. — Tahereh Mafi

He was trying not to grin, but it was exceedingly difficult with Lady Penwood gasping like a fish on land. — Julia Quinn

Silly stuff could tickle him no end. Chris loved practical jokes, even when they weren't planned.
One day he brought home a large kudu head to keep for a friend. (Kudus are large African antelopes; this one had been shot and mounted as a trophy.) I was in the kitchen getting something out of the refrigerator. I heard a noise and looked up-there was a beast in my house!
I screamed.
Chris appeared behind the head. For a brief moment his face was tight with concern and worry.
It was a very brief moment. When he realized he'd scared me with the silly head, he began laughing so hard the house shook.
"I'm sorry," he said, gasping for air. "I didn't mean to scare you."
He laughed some more.
"Oh, I'm sorry," he said when he managed to stop momentarily. "I'm sorry."
Another five minutes of hysterical laughter. By now it was contagious, and I started laughing, too.
"I didn't mean to do it," he said finally. "But it couldn't have worked out better. — Taya Kyle

Her nails dug into his shoulders as she kissed her way up his neck, tasting the salt of his skin. "You make me weak."


He turned and caught her lips, his tongue invading her mouth. She writhed against him, working into his thrusts. He growled against her, gasping. "You're the strongest woman I've ever known. — Lisa Kessler

I can't believe it," she said. "I just can't believe it." "Neither can I," Jessica said, eyeballing the door. "And if you'll just let me by, I'll go get some help - " "Oh," Abigail said, with another laugh, "you're perfectly safe. I'm not crazy." She held out her hand. "Abigail Moira Garrett de Piaget. Local girl from Freezing Bluff, Michigan. Nice to meet you." Jessica felt her jaw slip down to land with a figurative thud on her chest. "You're kidding." Abigail pulled her hand back and hugged herself, still laughing in a gasping kind of way. "Oh, honey, you just don't know the half of it." Jessica could hardly think straight. "You're from - " "1996. Fell into a pond and resurfaced in Miles's moat in 1248. It's a wonder he took me in with the way I smelled." "Then you're from - " "Michigan. And what I wouldn't give for a York peppermint patty about now. — Lynn Kurland

When I'm with you, it's like I've been seeing black-and-white and you're the only spot of color; like I'm drowning and falling and gasping for breath all at once, and I feel so unbelievably happy. — Jacqueline Pawl

Most babies come into the world crying or gasping or snotting.
Not Tiny Cooper.
He comes into the world singing. — David Levithan

I am interested in you, Gretchen." When I still won't look at him, he presses his fingers against my jaw and gently turns my face. He is looking straight in my eyes when he says, "I'm interested in you."
His midnight blues burn with an intensity that almost makes me believe him. Makes me want to believe him. He knows just the right thing to say to mess with my mind. He always has. He leans closer, watching me. His lips are a breath away from mine.
This time I'm not buying it.
My knee connects with his soft spot and he doubles over, gasping for air.
"Find your own way home," I snap before turning and marching back to my car. — Tera Lynn Childs

This final sprint of Breaking Bad is like nothing I've ever seen. It's TV as a crescendo, as a magnet, as a wave. These episodes aren't ending so much as they're gasping for breath. — Andy Greenwald

Late-Flowering Lust

My head is bald, my breath is bad,
Unshaven is my chin,
I have not now the joys I had
When I was young in sin.
I run my fingers down your dress
With brandy-certain aim
And you respond to my caress
And maybe feel the same.
But I've a picture of my own
On this reunion night,
Wherein two skeletons are shewn
To hold each other tight;
Dark sockets look on emptiness
Which once was loving-eyed,
The mouth that opens for a kiss
Has got no tongue inside.
I cling to you inflamed with fear
As now you cling to me,
I feel how frail you are my dear
And wonder what will be--
A week? or twenty years remain?
And then--what kind of death?
A losing fight with frightful pain
Or a gasping fight for breath?
Too long we let our bodies cling,
We cannot hide disgust
At all the thoughts that in us spring
From this late-flowering lust. — John Betjeman

She is the only one who knows
of the Coldness: a feeling that comes sometimes when I'm
lying in bed, a black, empty feeling that knocks my breath
away and leaves me gasping as though I've just been
thrown in icy water. On nights like that - although it is wrong
and illegal - I think of those strange and terrible words, I
love you, and wonder what they would taste like in my
mouth, try to recall their lilting rhythm on my mother's
tongue. — Lauren Oliver

At first, my mother's insanity was like a spark; an undesirable light that sprang out of thin air and sucked the oxygen from the room. And just as quickly as the inferno began, it vanished into the shadowed corners of reality leaving me gasping for breath and cloaked in darkness, unable to discern which side of her was real. — Lya Lively

Brush strokes write poetry harmonized through the cords of an artist's imagination.
Color, contrast, simple compassion splattered across paper leaves tainted with the melody of the silent wind.
Gasping, grasping, simply glancing at the souls of those who were not blessed with the visionary sight of inspirational artistry. — Laura S. Al Bast

She had been swimming in a big pink aquarium, and she never thought that somebody would come along with a hammer and break it until she was gasping for her life and everything she had taken for granted, for permanent, was gone. — Marge Piercy

Please also remember the pitiful gasping/thirsty little mouths/ beaks in summer. They'll appreciate abundant/fresh/cool/clean/ water! Food they can get easily in parks/sidewalks! — Adela Popescu

He inhaled sharply. "I'm glad to have you back."

I nodded, swallowing thickly. "I'm glad to be back."

"Hell, we all can agree on that." Luke picked up a donut. "There's nothing creepier than having a psychotic Apollyon caged in the basement."

"Ha," I said.

Luke winked and then tossed the donut to me. I caught it. Sugar flew everywhere.

"Or waiting for her to break loose and run amuck," Deacon added as I took a bite. He glanced across the table. "Or waiting for someone, no names mentioned, to not listen to us and go say hi."

Olivia's cheeks reddened as she stood. She approached slowly, waited for me to finish chewing. I started to apologize. "I'm really sorry - "

She socked me in the stomach. Hard. I doubled over, gasping for air. "Gods. — Jennifer L. Armentrout