Life Is Suffocating Quotes & Sayings

Time plays no role in the life of one man - the subtle consciousness of it floating past me is more than enough. Years, months, days, hours, minutes, seconds - what does it matter? Floating by, it rubs against my skin, face, and hair - wearing me down, yet polishing me all the while. Time is like fine grains of sand in a desert storm. At first, you don't pay any attention to it, but the more it hits you in the face, the more aware of it you become, the more annoying it gets until, one day, you find yourself suffocating. The weight of it eventually bends your spine, until you are crawling on your hands and knees, unable to stand straight. Then comes the time to crawl back into the womb, crawl inside and wait for rebirth. — Henry Martin

Natures of your kind, with strong, delicate senses, the soul-oriented, the dreamers, poets, lovers are always superior to us creatures of the mind. You take your being from your mothers. You live fully; you were endowed with the strength of love, the ability to feel. Whereas we creatures of reason, we don't live fully; we live in an arid land, even though we often seem to guide and rule you. Yours is the plentitude of life, the sap of the fruit, the garden of passion, the beautiful landscape of art. Your home is the earth; ours is the world of ideas. You are in danger of drowning in the world of the senses; ours is the danger of suffocating in an airless void. You are an artist; I am a thinker. You sleep at your mother's breast; I wake in the desert. For me the sun shines; for you the moon and the stars. — Hermann Hesse

Across the sea of space lies an infinite emptiness. I can feel it, suffocating me. It is without meaning. But each life creates its own reality. — Daniel H. Wilson

Life without utopia is suffocating, for the multitude at least: threatened otherwise with petrifaction, the world must have a new madness. — Emile M. Cioran

Do it, my fellow Americans! Do it for every adolescent
anomic skank genius cloistered in his room, getting cranked,
rabidly humping his sampler as he confects some heretical,
monstrous persona for himself and dreams of an orgiastic,
blood-soaked apocalypse. Yes, the /impudence!/ We have
/nothing/ in this life of suffocating obligation but our
own motherfucking impudence! For God's sake, give us this
day our motherfucking big-dick impudence!! — Mark Leyner

We've spent our time together talking about everything but what matters. We've never brought to each other the heavy things we were meant to help each other carry. We've only introduced each other to our representatives, while our real selves tried to live life alone. We thought that was safer. We thought that this way our real selves wouldn't get hurt. But as I read these messages, it becomes clear that we are all hurting anyway. And we think we are alone. At our cores, we are our tender selves peeking out at a world of shiny representatives, so shame has been layered on top of our pain. We're suffocating underneath all the layers. * — Glennon Doyle Melton

It is so demanding to be born into a house full of women, where everyone loves you so overwhelmingly that they end up suffocating with their love; a house where you, as the only child, have to be more mature than all the adults around ...
But the problem is that they want me to become everything they themselves couldn't accomplish in life ...
As a result, I had to work my butt off to fulfill all their dreams at the same time. — Elif Shafak

A mud-stained sunlight began to splatter the sodden fields, and the hateful, nasal world of birds began to come to life. It seemed to me that I was coming out of a suffocating nightmare and that the low clouds flying before the wind were the shreds of an evil dream. — Blaise Cendrars

In suffocating the voice of conscience, passion carries with itself a restlessness of the body and the senses: it is the restlessness of the "external man." When the internal man has been reduced to silence, then passion, once it has been given freedom of action, so to speak, exhibits itself as an insistent tendency to satisfy the senses and the body. — Pope John Paul II

Suicides - you read of it ... but you don't know the truth, if you were to see it you would go insane! Cut throats, cut wrists, hangings, suffocating, eyes bulging and tongues protruding, more shit. Suicides always shit themselves, did you know that! Life's final shit, the final act of madness; smell that you rats! Clean me up you pigs, zip me up in the bag you scum and get me out of here ... Get me the fuck out of here ... get me out! — Stephen Richards

He had no faintest conception till that very hour of how they would look, and even doubted their existence. But when he saw them he knew that he had always known them and realized what part each one of them had played at many an hour in his life when he had supposed himself alone, so that now he could say to them, one by one, not 'Who are you?' but 'So it was you all the time.' All that they were and said at this meeting woke memories. The dim consciousness of friends about him which had haunted his solitudes from infancy was now at last explained; that central music in every pure experience which had always just evaded memory was now at last recovered...He saw not only Them; he saw Him. This animal, this thing begotten in a bed, could look on Him. What is blinding, suffocating fire to you is now cool light to him, is clarity itself, and wears the form of a man. — C.S. Lewis

They let the silence stand then . . . not uneasily, just taking a moment to breathe in time, to listen to the noises around them. How pleasant, Jane thought, to be silent for a few moments. Normally noise overtook her life - normally she sought it, finding silence solitary and confining - suffocating. But how pleasant to be silent with someone. — Kate Noble

You ask, 'How to live my life?' But with the question you are suffocating life itself, for life is spontaneity. — Mooji

I make soup and I back bread and I know my supreme need is joy in God and I know I can't experience deep joy in God until I deep trust in God. I shine sinks and polish through to the realization that trusting God is my most urgent need. If I deep trusted God in all the facets of my life, wouldn't that deep heal my anxiety, my self-condemnation, my soul holes? The fear is suffocating, terrorizing, and I want the remedy, and it is trust. Trust is everything. If fear keeps our lives small, does a life that receives all of God in this moment grow large too? — Ann Voskamp

In those early visits it was as though we were building something sacred. We'd place words carefully together, piling them upon one another, leaving no spaces. We each created towers, two beacons, the like of which are built along roads to guide the way when the weather comes down. We saw one another through the fog, the suffocating repetition of life. — Hannah Kent

Insta-love isn't something that happens in real life. It
happens in the books I read, but not in the world I live. Though here
stands this beautiful, sexy, funny, sweet and amazing guy who has
done everything short of professing love at first sight to me and I'm
still standing here like a pair of lungs suffocating, needing him in
order to breathe. — Kathryn Perez

You must have faith in the duke, and in true love."
She groaned. "Easy for you to say! You are not in a wedding dress laced so tightly as to make it impossible to breathe, uncertain if your groom will arrive before suffocating to death. Though perhaps that would be preferable to life after being jilted at the altar. — Maya Rodale

Jesus is ready to set us free from the heavy yoke of an oppressive way of life. Plenty of wealthy Christians are suffocating from the weight of the American dream, heavily burdened by the lifeless toil and consumption we embrace. This is the yoke from which we are being set free. And as we are liberated from the yoke of global capitalism, our sisters and brothers in Guatemala, Liberia, Iraq, and Sri Lanka will also be liberated. Our family overseas, who are making our clothes, growing our food, pumping our oil, and assembling our electronics
they too need to be liberated from the empire's yoke of slavery. Their liberation is tangled up with our own. — Shane Claiborne

It's getting closer," Tristan said.
Ayden nodded.
"So let's track it."
"No," Ayden snapped. "She's our priority."
"I know, but it's following her, so," Tristan held one hand up, "find the demon," he held up the other, "find Aurora. It could work."
The itching intensified. Invisible claws grazed up the back of my neck, wrenching every nerve to painful attention. Another hungry screech sent spikes piercing my brain. Lights shattered my vision. I couldn't breathe. I burst out of the suffocating space just as the engine roared to life and gunned the car forward.
With a violent curse, Ayden slammed on the brakes but not before the Maserati rammed my hip. I hurtled into the air and rolled a fast spin onto the hood.
"Or you could just hit her with the car," Tristan said.
"Real smooth. — A&E Kirk

The ever-increasing weight of responsibilities that enmeshes our lives keeps us locked into the system. We become the pulse that keeps the beast alive, but the cost is our own lives. The natural world around us shrinks, crushed beneath the suffocating might of work. — Fennel Hudson

You too, you took an interest in the world. That was long ago. I want you to cast your mind back to then. The domain of the rules was no longer enough for you; you were unable to love any longer in the domain of the rules; so you had to enter into the domain of the struggle. I ask you to go back to that precise moment. It was long ago, no? Cast your mind back: the water was cold.
You are far from the edge, now. Oh yes! How far from the edge you are! You long believed in the existence of another shore; such is no longer the case. You go on swimming, though, and every movement you make brings you closer to drowning. You are suffocating, your lungs are on fire. The water seems colder and colder to you, more and more galling. You aren't that young anymore. Now you are going to die. Don't worry. I am here. I won't let you sink. Go on with your reading. — Michel Houellebecq

Suddenly, I'm struck by the magnitude of the moment. Hurtling through the air becomes freeing, not terrifying. This time last year, I was suffocating within the confines of my life. I would've done anything to escape. That my life has come full circle is as exhilarating as it is scary.
Life is for living.
For moments like this. — Siobhan Davis

Besides, there is perhaps nothing so effective as the monotony of provincial town life in the Andes for suffocating ideals and creativity. — Miguel Garnett Johnson

The Yogic sages say that all the pain of a human life is caused by words, as is all the joy. We create words to define our experience and those words bring attendant emotions that jerk us around like dogs on a leash. We get seduced by our own mantras (I'm a failure ... I'm lonely ... I'm a failure ... I'm lonely ... ) and we become monuments to them. To stop talking for a while, then, is to attempt to strip away the power of words, to stop choking ourselves with words, to liberate ourselves from our suffocating mantras. — Elizabeth Gilbert

Somewhere, things must be beautiful and vivid. Somewhere else, life has to be beautiful and vivid and rich. Not like this muted palette -a pale blue bedroom, washed out sunny sky, dull green yellow brown of the fields. Here, I know ever twist of every road, every blade of grass, every face in this town, and I am suffocating. — Lisa Ann Sandell

Dear Natasha,
It's the middle of the night. I can't sleep. Thoughts are creeping through my head like darkness slips around the bodies of sky scrapers in every city we've ever been to. From the bottom up, suffocating the life on the street first and then raising to the head and the brain, circling into smog and clouds until the black stretches up so high that nobody can even remember what the stars used to look like.
This is how I feel when I lie awake and think of you. I miss you. — Melodie Ramone

I was on this path to becoming a computer-science guy, but I didn't like it. I got no joy from it. It was very, very scary. It was suffocating to think that I was just going to do this thing for the rest of my life. — Kumail Nanjiani

Tell me, is there someone in your life who's been sharing your life too closely? A friend or a loved one? Is there someone who's been taking up your time and not giving any of it back? — Alexandra Kleeman

Losing was the story of life and depression was the one thing in my existence that was perfect. Flawless depression, it was, that covered the days of my life in a suffocating blanket. — Kirk Gollwitzer

With battle-weary arms, Sheridan slugged his way across the luminous waves sending light-filled droplets splashing into the air like Fourth of July sparklers.
Stumbling onto the lake's rocky banks, he clawed desperately at the animal skin suit, yanking at the fastenings and peeling back the suffocating shroud in a fitful temper tantrum. He collapsed onto the glitter washed shore, his chest heaving, his forehead pulsing with pumped up veins.
"That was a nightmare!" Sheridan rasped between gulps of air. "Like some sort of freaked-out acid trip!"
"All suffering comes bearing a gift. Every pain is a portal. You must look at the hand of your suffering to see the gift it offers and peer into your pain to see where it may lead." Kunchen said calmly. — Phillip White

In its severe forms, depression paralyzes all of the otherwise vital forces that make us human, leaving instead a bleak, despairing, desperate, and deadened state ... Life is bloodless, pulseless, and yet present enough to allow a suffocating horror and pain. All bearings are lost; all things are dark and drained of feeling. The slippage into futility is first gradual, then utter. Thought, which is as pervasively affected by depression as mood, is morbid, confused, and stuporous. It is also vacillating, ruminative, indecisive, and self-castigating. The body is bone-weary; there is no will; nothing is that is not an effort, and nothing at all seems worth it. Sleep is fragmented, elusive, or all-consuming. Like an unstable, gas, an irritable exhaustion seeps into every crevice of thought and action. — Kay Redfield Jamison

A child who has been breathing since birth without ever noticing it does not know how essential the unheeded air that gently swells his chest is to his life. Does he happen to be suffocating in a convulsion, a bout of fever? Desperately straining his entire being, he struggles almost for his life, for his lost tranquillity, which he will regain only with the air from which he did not realize his tranquillity was inseparable. — Marcel Proust

Giving advice to a child is like flinging sand at an obsidian wall. Nothing sticks. The brutal truth is that we each suffer our own lessons - they can't be danced round. They can't be slipped past. You cannot gift a child with your scars - they arrive like webs, constricting, suffocating, and that child will struggle and strain until they break. No matter how noble your intent, the only scars that teach them anything are the ones they earn themselves. — Steven Erikson

I know it is not fair to expect love from someone who hardly knows you at all. I know that we are too young to understand and too old to understand and that perhaps nobody understands at all. I know that things happen for reasons we cannot comprehend and yet sometimes I really wish we could comprehend. I wish the world was not so dark. Sometimes it felt like somebody had turned off the lights and we were all suffocating in the darkness. — Emma Abdullah

The monk in the grip of acedia would find it difficult or impossible to read. Looking away from his book, he might try to distract himself with gossip but would more likely glance in disgust at his surroundings and at his fellow monks. He would feel that things were better somewhere else, that he was wasting his life, that everything was stale and pointless, that he was suffocating. — Stephen Greenblatt

Because of this false idea, they devised an aesthetic belief in making the exterior of an object a reflection of the practical functions of the interior and of the constructive idea. Yet these analyses of utility and necessity that, according to their beliefs, should be the basis for the construction of any object created by humanity become immediately absurd once we analyze all the object being manufactured today. A fork or a bed cannot come to be considered necessary for humanity's life and health, and yet retain a relative value.
They are 'learned necessities.' Modern human beings are suffocating under necessities like televisions, refrigerators, etc. And in the process making it impossible to live their real lives. Obviously we are not against modern technology, but we are against any notion of the absolute necessity of objects, to the point even of doubting their real utility.'
Asger Jorn — Tom McDonough

The sea, you see, feels good for only a few days, but then it starts suffocating you. You first escape to the sea to escape yourself, but after a while that's all you find there. City is better that way. There are too many lanes and alleys. You never run into yourself there. — Bilal Tanweer

I don't believe in true love and I certainly don't believe in love at first sight. Insta-love isn't something that happens in real life. It happens in the books I read, but not in the world I live. Though here stands this beautiful, sexy, funny, sweet and amazing guy who has done everything short of professing love at first sight to me and I'm still standing here like a pair of lungs suffocating, needing him in order to breathe. I'm not running, I'm here, submerged in all of my vulnerability, taking the biggest chance I ever have with my heart and soul. I hope I'm choosing wisely. I stared at the ground and felt his eyes on the top of my head. — Kathryn Perez

All that has to do with life is repugnant to me; everything that draws me to it horrifies me. I should like never to have been born, or to die. I have within me, deep within me, a distaste which keeps me from enjoying anything and which fills my soul to the point of suffocating it. It reappears in relation to everything, like the bloated bodies of dogs which come back to the surface of the water despite the stones that have been tied to their necks to drown them. — Gustave Flaubert

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

Dr Urbino recognized their oppressive weight, their ominous silence, their suffocating gases, which on so many insomniac dawns had risen to his bedroom, blending with the fragrance of jasmine from the patio, and which he felt pass by him like a wind out of yesterday that had nothing to do with his life. — Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Once, the world was full of mysteries, some of them frightening, some of them wonderful, some of them merely fascinating. Now, it can be a banal and predictable place, the tracks of daily life so well-beaten and defined, our culture awash with the imbecile obvious, our existence suffocating in safety. But mysteries remain. — Nick Davies

We have nothing in this life of suffocating obligation but our motherfucking impudence! — Mark Leyner

Self-preservation is to hunker down in the suffocating confines of this infinitesimally tiny existence that I define as 'me,' instead of letting 'me' run through the infinitely massive expanse of everything that is not me. And if the beast of self-preservation does not permit such freedoms, I will preserve myself to my own death. — Craig D. Lounsbrough

For the first five years of Luca's life, I desperately wanted to be a good mother and not to pass on this trauma and darkness that his father and I had experienced, but there's a danger of suffocating your kids, too. — Janine Di Giovanni

So I fought the demon. I remember having it on the ground and kneeling on its neck, suffocating it. I realized I was killing it, and I just slightly let my knee up. The moment I did, it filled with life and I immediately sensed the venom and evil rise in it. I instantly dropped my knee, crushing its windpipe and killi...ng it. It gave me no choice. There was too much at stake. — Sophia Van Buren