Last Gasp Quotes & Sayings

He dumped me again!' She narrows her eyes on Tom accusingly. I drop my bag by my desk and watch as Victoria fires all sorts of accusations at a very guilty looking Tom. 'Don't ask me to come out with you ever again,' she spits, pointing her pen at him. 'Friday, you cleared off with the scientist, and last night you didn't even have the decency to go home with the same man!'

'Tom!' I gasp sarcastically. 'I thought the scientist was your soul mate?'

'He still might be,' Tom defends himself in a high pitched voice. 'I'm just sampling what's on offer before I decide on what to invest in. — Jodi Ellen Malpas

I bite my lip as I begin reading: She needs some sun! Her eyes are hard to see - they're too dark; her nose is thin; no cheek bones!; I think her lips are uneven; her chin is really square, and my favorite: is that a mole or a zit? Awesome. Twenty pages of these cryptic remarks sure do make a girl feel good about herself. The last page changes my sour mood completely. On it there is a sketch of my face - no, sketch is the wrong word. It's too common a word. This is more than a sketch. This is a portrait of my face. The image of the girl staring back at me is so stunning, that I actually gasp. The handwriting on the bottom of the page, which is small and elegant, holds only two words: You're perfect. — Danielle Bannister

The question is, How can you see the divine intersection of all that shapes and marks your existence, whether it be the heart-wrenching tragedies that wound you or the ecstasy of a great delight that brings laughter to your soul? How can you meet God in all your appointments and your disappointments? How can you recognize that he has a purpose, even when all around seems senseless, if not hopeless? Will there be a last gasp that whispers in one word a conclusion that redefines everything? If so, is it possible to borrow from that word to enrich the now? Can we really see, even a little, the patterned convergence of everything into some grand design? — Ravi Zacharias

It was a generation growing in its disillusionment about the deepening recession and the backroom handshakes and greedy deals for private little pots of gold that created the largest financial meltdown since the Great Depression. As heirs to the throne, we all knew, of course, how bad the economy was, and our dreams, the ones we were told were all right to dream, were teetering gradually toward disintegration. However, on that night, everyone seemed physically at ease and exempt from life's worries with final exams over and bar class a distant dream with a week before the first lecture, and as I looked around at the jubilant faces and loud voices, if you listened carefully enough you could almost hear the culmination of three years in the breath of the night gasp in an exultant sigh as if to say, Law school was over at last! — Daniel Amory

I feel like, as musicians, we need to fight the Spotify thing. I feel that in some ways what's happening in the mainstream is the last gasp of the old industry. Once that does finally die, which it will, something else will happen. — Thom Yorke

If you swim effortlessly in the deep oceans, ride the waves to and from the shore, if you can breathe under water and dine on the deep treasures of the seas; mark my words, those who dwell on the rocks carrying nets will try to reel you into their catch. The last thing they want is for you to thrive in your habitat because they stand in their atmosphere where they beg and gasp for some air. — C. JoyBell C.

Since there's no help, come, let us kiss and part,
Nay, I have done, you get no more of me,
And I am glad, yea, glad with all my heart,
That thus so cleanly I myself can free.
Shake hands for ever, cancel all our vows,
And when we meet at any time again
Be it not seen in either of our brows
That we one jot of former love retain.
Now at the last gasp of Love's latest breath,
When, his pulse failing, Passion speechless lies,
When Faith is kneeling by his bed of death,
And Innocence is closing up his eyes,
Now, if thou wouldst, when all have giv'n him over,
From death to life thou might'st him yet recover. — Michael Drayton

The end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth century were remarkable for the small amount of scientific movement going on in this country, especially in its more exact departments ... Mathematics were at the last gasp, and Astronomy nearly so-I mean in those members of its frame which depend upon precise measurement and systematic calculation. The chilling torpor of routine had begun to spread itself over all those branches of Science which wanted the excitement of experimental research. — John Herschel

My great adventure is really Proust. Well
what remains to be written after that? I'm only in the first volume, and there are, I suppose, faults to be found, but I am in a state of amazement; as if a miracle were being done before my eyes. How, at last, has someone solidified what has always escaped
and made it too into this beautiful and perfectly enduring substance? One has to put the book down and gasp. The pleasure becomes physical
like sun and wine and grapes and perfect serenity and intense vitality combined. Far otherwise is it with Ulysses; to which I bind myself like a martyr to a stake, and have thank God, now finished
My martyrdom is over. I hope to sell it for £4.10. — Virginia Woolf

The Republicans, with their crazed Reagan fixation, are a last-gasp party, living posthumously, fighting battles on sex, race, immigration and public education long ago won by the other side. They're trying to roll back the clock, but time is passing them by. — Maureen Dowd

There Albine lay, panting, exhausted by love, her hands clutched closer and closer to her heart, breathing her last. She parted her lips, seeking the kiss which should obliterate her, and then the hyacinths and tuberoses exhaled their incense, wrapping her in a final sigh, so profound that it drowned the chorus of roses, and in this culminating gasp of blossom, Albine was dead. — Emile Zola

We wither from our youth; we gasp with unslaked thirst for unattainable good; lured from the first to the last by phantoms - love, fame, ambition, avarice - all idle, and all ill - one meteor of many names, that vanishes in the smoke of death.[8] — Thomas Love Peacock

I know girlfriends of mine who, when they were approaching pregnancy and starting a family, consistently went through a period right beforehand that was a last gasp kind of thing where they just wreak havoc. They fall apart, in a profound way, because there's some awareness that that's the last time they can do that for awhile. — Mamie Gummer

Postmodernism is, almost by definition, a transitional cusp of social, cultural, economic and ideological history when modernism's high-minded principles and preoccupations have ceased to function, but before they have been replaced with a totally new system of values. It represents a moment of suspension before the batteries are recharged for the new millennium, an acknowledgment that preceding the future is a strange and hybrid interregnum that might be called the last gasp of the past. — Gilbert Adair

But it seems somehow paltry and wrong to call what happened at Midway a "battle." It had nothing to do with battles the way they were pictured in the popular imagination. There were no last-gasp gestures of transcendent heroism, no brilliant counterstrategies that saved the day. It was more like an industrial accident. It was a clash not between armies, but between TNT and ignited petroleum and drop-forged steel. The thousands who died there weren't warriors but bystanders -- the workers at the factory who happened to draw the shift when the boiler exploded. — Lee Sandlin

Makes you feel all warm and fuzzy inside, doesn't it?"
Michelle said dryly.
"That the boy most likely to become the next Unabomber has a crush on you? — Carla Cassidy

Fight to the last gasp. — William Shakespeare

You will not say how you are haunted by the faces of the men you killed, how in their last gasp of life they sought your pity and you had none. You will not speak of the boys who died screaming for their mothers while you twisted a blade in their guts and snarled your scorn into their ears. You will not confess that you wake in the night, covered in sweat, heart hammering, shrinking from the memories. You will not talk of that, because that is the horror, and the horror is held in the heart's hoard, a secret, and to admit it is to admit fear, and we are warriors.
We do not fear. We strut. We go to battle like heroes. We stink of shit. — Bernard Cornwell

The car emitted on last gasp and rolled to a stop, in the middle of the Altlantic Ocean. "We're here," Leven tried to joke. — Obert Skye

You know what it's like when a cart overturns in the street? Everybody you meet has witnessed it. They saw a man's leg sliced clean off. They saw a woman gasp her last. They saw the goods looted, thieves stealing from the back-end while the carter was crushed at the front. They heard a man roar out his last confession, while another whispered his last will and testament. And if all the people who say they were there had really been there, then the dregs of London would have drained to the one spot, the gaols emptied of thieves, the beds empty of whores, and all the lawyers standing on the shoulders of the butchers to get a better look. — Hilary Mantel

A distinguished man should be as particular about his last words as he is about his last breath. He should write them out on a slip of paper and take the judgment of his friends on them. He should never leave such a thing to the last hour of his life, and trust to an intellectual spurt at the last moment to enable him to say something smart with his latest gasp and launch into eternity with grandeur. — Mark Twain

In a democracy, hostage tactics are the last resort for those who can't otherwise win their fights through elections, can't win their fights in Congress, can't win their fights for the Presidency, and can't win their fights in Courts, For this right-wing minority, hostage-taking is all they have left - a last gasp of those who cannot cope with the realities of our democracy. — Elizabeth Warren

Arhys would have protected you from this choice, as a father would a beloved child. Arhys is wrong in this. I give you a woman's choice, here, at the last gasp. He looks to spare you pain this one night. I look to your nights for the next twenty years. There is neither right nor wrong in this, precisely. But the time to amend all choices runs out like Porifors's water. — Lois McMaster Bujold

Fight till the last gasp. — William Shakespeare

I will defend the importance of bedtime stories to my last gasp. — J.K. Rowling

When an emergency arose that necessiated Uncle Jay-Jay to shoe a horse himself, I always manipulated the bellows. He was always so exacting that I did it with great decorum, fearing his displeasure.

This case was different.

I worked the pole with such energy that it nearly blew the fire out of the pan, and sent ashes and sparks in a whirlwind around Harold.

"That the way to blow?" I asked demurely.
"Take things a little easier," He replied.

I took them so easily that the fire was on its last gasp and the shoe was almost cold when required.

"This won't do," Said Harry.

I recommenced with such force that he had to retreat.

"Steady! Steady!" He shouted.
"Sure, O'i can't plaze yez anyhows," I replied — Miles Franklin

If love lives through all life; and survives through all sorrow; and remains steadfast with us through all changes; and in all darkness of spirit burns brightly; and, if we die, deplores us for ever, and loves still equally; and exists with the very last gasp and throb of the faithful bosom
whence it passes with the pure soul, beyond death; surely it shall be immortal! — William Makepeace Thackeray

Never give up.
It's like breathing - once you quit, your flame dies letting total darkness extinguish every last gasp of hope. You can't do that. You must continue taking in even the shallowest of breaths, continue putting forth even the smallest of efforts to sustain your dreams. Don't ever, ever, ever give up. — Richelle E. Goodrich

He knew that all the hazards and perils were now drawing together to a point: the next day would be a day of doom, the day of final effort or disaster, the last gasp. — J.R.R. Tolkien

I gasp, and his mouth swoops down. He's kissing me, violently. Briefly our teeth clash, then his tongue is in my mouth.
Desire explodes like the Fourth of July throughout my body, and I'm kissing him back, matching his fervor, my hands knotting in his hair, pulling it, hard. He groans, a low sexy sound in the back of his throat that reverberates through me, and his hand moves down my body to the top of my thigh, his fingers digging into my flesh through the plum dress.
I pour all the angst and heartbreak of the last few days into our kiss, binding him to me, and it hits me - in this moment of blinding passion - he's doing the same, he feels the same. — E.L. James

What is it? For God's sake, what is it about me you find so intolerable? So wretchedly unbearable you can't even stand to be in the same room?"
He muttered an oath. "Stop provoking me. You won't like the answer."
"I want to hear it anyhow."
He plunged one hand into her hair, startling a gasp from her lips. Strong fingers curled to cup the back of her head. His eyes searched her face, and every nerve ending in her body crackled with tension. The sinking sun threw a last flare of red-orange light between them, setting the moment ablaze.
"It's this."
With a flex of his arm, he pulled her into a kiss.
And he kissed her the way he did everything. Intensely, and with quiet force. His lips pressed firm against hers, demanding a response. — Tessa Dare

Death lurks in the shadows, just out of view.

Now and then I see his reaching hand, uncertain of the blurry image that passes before my eyes, but conscious of the crippling influence of his touch.

Some say Death rears an ugly head, so hideous a view the beholder can scarcely gasp their last breath. Others call him beautiful, a sweet relief to look upon. But these are rumors babbled by the unknowing. For Death is like the gorgon, Medusa, who when perceived, turns the body to stone.

Those who know Death take the knowledge of his shadowed face with them to wherever it is he leads our dearly departed by the hand. All who are left behind must wait their turn to glance into the eyes of the one who will close our mouths forever. — Richelle E. Goodrich

A small warehouse. Dark inside, against the bright daylight. Reacher walked closer. There was a sound inside. Fast wheezing breaths, bubbling and gurgling, each one ending in a tiny gasp or yelp. The sound of a guy breathing hard with broken ribs and blood in his throat. Reacher took his Colt out of his pocket. He clicked the safety. He put his finger on the trigger. He kept close to the wall, and tried to see in through the crack of the hinge. A big dark mass. He followed the angle of the left-hand door, and flattened his back against the last part of it. Neagley waited a yard away. She would replace him when he moved. He listened to the breathing. Wheezing, bubbling, yelping. He moved off the door and peered around its edge. He — Lee Child

IT IS SENSIBLE of me to be aware that I will die one of these days. I will not pass away. Every day millions of people pass away - in obituaries, death notices, cards of consolation, e-mails to the corpse's friends - but people don't die. Sometimes they rest in peace, quit this world, go the way of all flesh, depart, give up the ghost, breathe a last breath, join their dear ones in heaven, meet their Maker, ascend to a better place, succumb surrounded by family, return to the Lord, go home, cross over, or leave this world. Whatever the fatuous phrase, death usually happens peacefully (asleep) or after a courageous struggle (cancer). Sometimes women lose their husbands. (Where the hell did I put him?) Some expressions are less common in print: push up the daisies, kick the bucket, croak, buy the farm, cash out. All euphemisms conceal how we gasp and choke turning blue. — Donald Hall

I love writing about the summer between high school and college. It's the last gasp of really being a teen. — Sarah Dessen

The difference between a hero and an also-ran is the guy who hangs on for one last gasp. — Paul Dietzel

Unrequited love sucks. It should be against the law."
She brightened.
"If it was, then I could have Rick arrest me. I'd love to be handcuffed to him. — Carla Cassidy

Medicine is a thankless profession. When you get paid by the rich, you feel like a flunky, by the poor like a thief. How can you take a fee from people who can't afford to eat or go to the movies? Especially when they're at their last gasp. It's not easy. You let it ride. You get soft-hearted. And your ship goes down. — Louis-Ferdinand Celine

KILL ME!" And then Newt's eyes cleared, as if he'd gained one last trembling gasp of sanity, and his voice softened. "Please, Tommy. Please."
With his heart falling into a black abyss, Thomas pulled the trigger. — James Dashner

Student-people are different from other people. They spend their entire life asking questions, and as soon as they have found out the answers, they start all over again with new, harder questions... when a student-person finds a good answer to a hard question, the other student-people will gasp, hug each other, and then throw a party. Those parties never last long, for student-people are in a hurry to go back to work and find new answers. — Roberto Trotta

You can find something funny in anything! I'm sick as a dog and falling to bits, but I'll give up joking only after I give up the ghost! my last gasp! The proof, here, with only an eighth of a glimmer of light, things oozing out of my asshole, my armpits, and the elbows, too, blood coming out of the eyes, from the soupy mess of my grave, me whistling a tune, that's what you'll hear! A regular blackbird! — Louis-Ferdinand Celine

Heidegger's parlamblings on 'Nothing' and 'Not' and 'the Nothing that Nothings' were the last supposedly respectable gasp of classical philosophy. — John Gardner

Master, go on, and I will follow thee
To the last gasp with truth and loyalty. — William Shakespeare

But not now. Now it was gentle, and the sun was kissing him, like Joe ... like Joe ... . Joe swallowed. His chest swelled in that faintly familiar breath-stopping, overwhelming way, and he made a faint sound, a gasp really, as he remembered the last time he'd felt that, and knew with total assurance what it was. It was when Jeannie had held his hand in church, when he was six and love was so simple, and so uncomplicated, and God was the reason you loved until you cried. For the first time in twenty-seven years, Joe felt the existence of God. He was in Casey's smile, his eyes, the way he looked at his lover, the way he greeted the dogs. God was there, in the sunshine brushing Casey's hair, and warming his skin, and Joe ... . Joe wanted to touch him. — Amy Lane

She melted into him with a shuddering gasp and he moved his hands to support her thighs, helping her to wring every last pleasure from his throbbing lance. "You're mine now," he said into her mouth as she moaned low and met his thrusts. "Mine. — Nikita Black

In that instant of eye contact, in the mesmerizing depths of that sweet emotion, she felt bound to him in a way she'd never felt connected to another man. It was as if in that moment their hearts and minds, their very souls, were one. — Carla Cassidy

You can grieve for me the week before I die, if I'm scared and hurting, but when I gasp that last fleeting breath and my immortal soul flees to heaven, I'm going to be jumping over fire hydrants down the golden streets, and my biggest concern, if I have any, will be my wife back here grieving. When I die, I will be identified with Christ's exaltation. But right now, I'm identified with His affliction. — R.C. Sproul

As a survival-happy species, our successes are calculated in the number of years we have extended our lives, with the reduction of suffering being only incidental to this aim. To stay alive under almost any circumstances is a sickness with us. Nothing could be more unhealthy than to "watch one's health" as a means of stalling death. The lengths we will go as procrastinators of that last gasp only demonstrate a morbid dread of that event. By contrast, our fear of suffering is deficient. — Thomas Ligotti

I didn't hear the exact moment Sarren ended Zeke's life. I was just aware of his breathing, tagged at first, then seizing up, as if he could no longer gasp for her. And then, a long, agonizingly slow exhale, the last gulp departing his lungs, as Ezekiel's tortured breaths finally, irreversibly, stopped altogether.
"Good night, sweet prince." Sarren crooned, a velvet whisper.
The recording clicked off. — Julie Kagawa

During our brief stay on planet Earth, we owe ourselves and our descendants the opportunity to explore - in part because it's fun to do. But there's a far nobler reason. The day our knowledge of the cosmos ceases to expand, we risk regressing to the childish view that the universe figuratively and literally revolves around us. In that bleak world, arms-bearing, resource-hungry people and nations would be prone to act on their 'low contracted prejudices.' And that would be the last gasp of human enlightenment - until the rise of a visionary new culture that could once again embrace, rather than fear, the cosmic perspective. — Neil DeGrasse Tyson

And the lamp having at last resigned itself to death.
There was nothing now but firelight in the room,
And every time a flame uttered a gasp for breath
It flushed her amber skin with the blood of its bloom. — Charles Baudelaire

Only the last gasp of evening served to illuminate the stone floor. — G.R. Matthews

Were my soul trembling on the wing of eternity, were this hand freezing to death, were my voice choking with the last struggle, I would still, with the last gasp of that voice, implore you to remember the truth: God has given America to be free. — Patrick Henry

I've had librarians say to me, "People in my school don't agree with homosexuality, so it's difficult to have your book on the shelves." Here's the thing: Being gay is not an issue, it is an identity. It is not something that you can agree or disagree with. It is a fact, and must be defended and represented as a fact.
To use another part of my identity as an example: if someone said to me, "I'm sorry, but we can't carry that book because it's so Jewish and some people in my school don't agree with Jewish culture," I would protest until I reached my last gasp. Prohibiting gay books is just as abhorrent ...
Discrimination is not a legitimate point of view. Silencing books silences the readers who need them most. And silencing these readers can have dire, tragic consequences. Never forget who these readers are. They are just as curious and anxious about life as any other teenager. — David Levithan

I gasp my last sigh and realise how right Tree is: all is as it is, as it is meant to be. — Judy Croome

I'm so sorry, I continue. And it's like the last word is a hurdle and I can't leap it, because something in the word snags my voice and suddenly I am giving everything up. I am letting my shoulders fall and I am feeling myself become the absence, feeling myself become that gasp and sob. — David Levithan

I can feel it in the rotten air tonight/ In the tips of my fingers, in the skin on my face/ In the weak last gasp of the evening's dying light/ In the way those eyes I've always loved illuminate this place/ Like a trashcan fire in a prison cell/ Like the searchlights in the parking lots of hell/ I will walk down to the end with you/ If you will come all the way down with me — John Darnielle

I glimpsed the man's face with the shine of death on it. They laid him down there in the open. They had brought him there to be close to his death, I understood this also at the same moment. For who would wish to see a companion gasp his last on a jolting cart? We desire to keep the dying and the newly dead close before our eyes so as to give them full meed of pity. Our Lord was brought down to be pitied, on the Cross He was too far away. — Barry Unsworth

It is the sound of the crowd that can be heard in the second, crescendoing rush of the orchestra that follows the final verse, rising from a hum to a gasp to a shout... fusing at last to a shriek (its similarity to the sound of the crowds at Beatle concerts is surely no accident). The onrushing sound of the orchestra at the end of "A Day in the Life" has transcended more than the conventions of Sgt. Pepper's Band. It is the nightmare resolution of the Beatles' show within a show. It is the sound in the eras of the high-wire artist as the ground rushes up from below. There is a blinding flash of silence, then the stunning impact of a tremendous E major piano chord that hangs in the air for a small eternity, slowly fading away, a forty-second meditation on finality that leaves each member if the audience listening with a new kind of attention and awareness to the sound of nothing at all. — Jonathan Gould

Women are rising. And I think that's all the violence and war - it could be the last gasp of the patriarchy, actually. — Jane Fonda

I had lunch at a buffet with Zoe without telling you. It wasn't the first time and it won't be the last time so get over it." -Marybeth
A loud gasp drew everyone's attention to the other end of the table where Trevor stood, looking absolutely furious.
"She told me that she was running errands!" -Trevor — R.L. Mathewson

You may scold your carpenter, when he has made a bad table, though you can't make a table yourself.' I say to you - 'Mr. Finch, you may point out a defect in a baby's petticoats, though you haven't got a baby yourself!' Doesn't that satisfy you? All right! Take another illustration. Look at your room here. I can see in the twinkling of an eye, that it's badly lit. You have only got one window - you ought to have two. Is it necessary to be a practical builder to discover that? Absurd! Are you satisfied now? No! Take another illustration. What's this printed paper, here, on the chimney-piece? Assessed Taxes. Ha! Assessed Taxes will do. You're not in the House of Commons; you're not a Chancellor of the Exchequer - but haven't you an opinion of your own about taxation, in spite of that? Must you and I be in Parliament before we can presume to see that the feeble old British Constitution is at its last gasp? — Wilkie Collins

Hysterical fundamentalism is not the way into the future; it is the last gasp of the past. — John Shelby Spong

The silences after his last gasp were sung together by a blackbird. I lay there, my eyes unable to close. His were unable to open. I listed the places where I hurt, and how much. My loins felt ripped. Something inside had torn. There were seven places on my body where he had sunk his fangs into my skin and bitten. He'd dug his nails into my neck, and twisted my head to one side, and clawed my face. I hadn't made a noise. He had made all the noise for both of us. Had it hurt him? — David Mitchell

The night creeps in by subtle degrees while a show of fierce colors attracts and distracts me. I look up, suddenly aware of remote lights scattered overhead. I gasp as the last streak of fire dies on the horizon, and I comprehend it all too late. That crafty, dark night has swallowed my world whole. — Richelle E. Goodrich