Lungful Quotes & Sayings

For those who listened attentively to his strong voice, filled with anxiety and, at times, breaking with despair, Shostakovich had become a crucial symbol of intellectual integrity. For many years his music remained a safety valve that, for a few short hours, allowed listeners to expand their chests and breathe freely. At the time, his music was that truly indispensable lungful of freedom and dissidence, not only in its content, but also - which is no less important - in its musical form — Anonymous

Even the cleanest air, at the centre of the South Pacific or somewhere over Antarctica, has two hundred thousand assorted bits and pieces in every lungful. And this count rises to two million or more in the thick of the Serengeti migration, or over a six-lane highway during rush hour in downtown Los Angeles. — Lyall Watson

Two seeds destined to grow in concert, planted together in the field of love.'" She took in a lungful of air and continued. "'The sky cast wet buckets of dreams and desires, the roots took shape, and the leaves tangled as one. — Christina Lee

Hopes were high. But just like a balloon pushed past its breaking point, hope is fragile. One lungful of air too many and the balloon bursts leaving ugly, shriveled fragments behind, impossible to piece back together. — Adriane Leigh

I'm saying your name in the grocery store, I'm saying your name on the bridge at dawn. Your name like an animal covered with frost, your name like a music that's been transposed, a suit of fur, a coat of mud, a kick in the pants, a lungful of glass, the sails in wind and the slap of waves on the hull ... — Richard Siken

If you read a book about school - someone else's book - you always translate it into your own school experiences. It's describing the student: he's bewildered and lost in a large crowd in a university classroom. You'll visualize that from your own experiences. So, everything you know is what you're really writing. — James Salter

lungful of rim block. Her senses sharpened and the urge to vomit left her at last. Hawkins heaved herself up onto her knees and sat back on — Alastair Gunn

Whenever he remembered this moment, it lasted forever: a flash of complete separateness as Lydia disappeared beneath the surface. Crouched on the dock, he had a glimpse of the future: without her, he would be completely alone. In the instant after, he knew it would change nothing. He could feel the ground still tipping beneath him. Even without Lydia, the world would not level. He and his parents and their lives would spin into the space where she had been. They would be sucked into the vacuum she left behind.

More than this: the second he touched her, he knew that he had misunderstood everything. When his palms hit her shoulders, when the water closed over her head, Lydia had felt relief so great she had sighed in a deep choking lungful. She had staggered so readily, fell so eagerly, that she and Nath both knew: that she felt it, too, this pull she now exerted, and didn't want it. That the weight of everything tilting toward her was too much. — Celeste Ng

I inhaled a lungful and found my insides moon-walking. She smelt oceanic, Like a mermaid. — Pawan Jangid

With each deep inhalation, he was aware of a sweet, pure fragrance that entered his nostrils and spread through his brain like a drug.
"What is that smell?" he muttered.
Vivian answered in a hushed voice. "Mrs. Buttons distilled some vanilla water for me. Do you like it?"
"We brought your perfume from the town house. Why didn't you use that?"
Her gaze flickered to his mouth and back to his eyes. "It didn't suit me," she whispered. "Too heady."
Grant drew in another lungful of delicate vanilla-scented air. "You smell like a sugar biscuit," he answered gruffly. One he badly wanted to bite into. Her scent was innocent and homey and appetizing, making his blood surge and his muscles harden in acute yearning. — Lisa Kleypas

Every third step I ran, my breath exploded out of me all in a rush. One step to suck in another cold lungful. One step to let it excape. One step of not breathing. — Maggie Stiefvater

Commodore Koudelka had just taken a mouthful of wine to chase his last bite of salmon. The atomized spray arced nearly to Delia, seated across from her father. A lungful of wine in a man that age was an alarming event in any case; Olivia patted his back in hesitant worry, as he buried his reddening face in his napkin and gasped. Drou half-pushed her chair back, as she hesitated between going up around the table to assist her husband or, possibly, down the table to strangle Mark. — Lois McMaster Bujold

He seems untouchable. Maybe his fists are as brutal as his beauty. Just looking at him feels like I'm inhaling a lungful of fire. Because — Pam Godwin

I don't know about relationships. Maybe I'm supposed to travel and make films and meet people and have adventures instead. — Alexandra Cassavetes

Each of us knows that we have an obligation to care for the old, the young and the sick. We stand strongest when we stand with the weakest among us. — Sarah Palin

Oh, er, well the hatchway in front of us will open in a few moments and we will shoot out into deep space I expect and asphyxiate. If you take a lungful of air with you you can last for up to thirty seconds, of course. — Douglas Adams

Apparently, the image of our president is as offensive to MTV as it is to me. — Trent Reznor

As Wessner struggled to his feet, he resembled a battlefield, for his clothing was in ribbons and his face and hands streaming blood. "I--I guess I got enough," he mumbled. "Oh, you do?" roared Freckles. "Well this ain't your say. You come on to me ground, lying about me Boss and intimatin' I'd stale from his very pockets. Now will you be standing up and taking your medicine like a man, or getting it poured down the throat of you like a baby? I ain't got enough! This is only just the beginning with me. Be looking out there!" He sprang against Wessner and sent him rolling. He attacked the unresisting figure and fought him until he lay limp and quiet and Freckles had no strength left to lift an arm. Then he arose and stepped back, gasping for breath. With his first lungful of air he shouted: "Time!" But the figure of Wessner lay motionless. — Gene Stratton-Porter

...talent is evenly distributed. You never know how many talented people are out there until you invite and inspire them to be creative. — John Wood

He gulped in a lungful of air and dove straight down in an effort to forget Isla and how she had complicated his life. He dove lower than he'd ever gone before. The water crackled in his ears and the pressure pushed against him, but still he continued. — Donna Grant

Nobody ever took time out in a boat race," he noted. "There's no place to stop and get a satisfying drink of water or a lungful of cool, invigorating air. You just keep your eyes glued on the red, perspiring neck of the fellow ahead of you and row until they tell you it's all over . . . Neighbor, it's no game for a softy." When you row, the major muscles in your arms, legs, and back - particularly the quadriceps, triceps, biceps, deltoids, latissimus dorsi, abdominals, hamstrings, and gluteal muscles - do most of the grunt work, propelling the boat forward against the unrelenting resistance of water and wind. At the same time, scores of smaller muscles in the neck, wrists, — Daniel James Brown

All the answers you may wish for lie within faith, but it demands a complete and incontinent surrender, an immersion as total as any baptism. Indeed baptism is a kind of enactment of the surrender: you bathe in faith, you swim in it, you live by it, surrounded by it, buoyed up by it, engulfed by it. You drown in it, for at times it takes your breath away as entirely as any lungful of water ... All the answers lie in faith; and when you lose your faith you have no choice but to substitute for if a philosophy that deliberately and coldly offers no answers at all. — Simon Mawer

I really just want to be warm yellow light that pours over everyone I love. — Conor Oberst