Breathing Quotes

This is a lesson everyone who studies language eventually learns. You cannot stop language change. You may not like it ; you may regret the arrival of new forms and the passing of old ones but there is not the slightest thing you can do about it. Language change is as natural as breathing. It is one of the linguistic facts of life. ~ David Crystal

Deceiving people was natural ... It had been my job for so long that lying to protect myself, or those I loved, was as easy as breathing. I'd promise Rachel that there would be no more lies, forgiving or not. When it came to her, there hadn't been, and there wouldn't be when she came back. But all bets were off until I found her. I would deceive anyone, lie about everything, and do anything to get her back. ~ Molly McAdams

As the brother put the carving knife aside, he said, "Stuffing?"

"Am I breathing?"

Phury shoved a spoon into the bird and piled high. "Mashed?"

"Do you have gravy?"

"Am I breathing?"

V cracked a smile. "Roger that. And affirmative on the gravy."

When a plate was put in front of him, he glanced up. "No veggies? Not that I'm looking a gift horse in the mouth."

"Vegetable matter is a waste of porcelain space." Phury pushed a knife and fork across the butcher block. "Ask yourself, would I sacrifice the surface area of mashed or stuffing for peas?"

"I love you. ~ J.R. Ward

How do you identify someone who needs encouragement? That person is breathing. TRUETT CATHEY ~ John C. Maxwell

Augusta counted herself among those fortunate souls on the planet whose passion had become their profession. Music was as necessary to her as breathing, and it filled all of her days, and helping young singers understand how to make their voices soar fulfilled her as nothing else could. ~ Susan Moore Jordan

Marry me." A statement. Not a question. It came again. "Marry. Me." His eyes burned into
mine. I breathed in, my ears ringing. My pulse sped up, my heart raced, I was trying to remember exactly what breathing meant. I was wet, and I was gasping.
"I want you. I want that, what they had today. I want it all, and I want it with you. I want you, want you to be my wife. I've got a ring, I'll give it to you right now if you'll say yes." With every
word, his hands tightened on my hips, desperate, crazy, longing. "I had this all planned out, so much smoother and romantic and everything you deserve. But my head's been spinning since
yesterday, when I saw my best friend steal a van to go meet his new family. And all I want, all I've ever wanted, is exactly that. Exactly you. And when I walked up those stairs, and heard the
shower go on, and knew you were in here all naked and wet and waiting for me, I knew I couldn't wait another day, another hour, another minute, without asking you to be my wife. So. Marry. Me."
He knelt. Christ on a crutch, he knelt on the shower floor, where he had knelt countless times before . . . ahem . . . took my hand, and repeated those words
again. Finally, with a question mark at the end. "Marry me?"
And in that moment, I realized all the worrying, all the hand wringing and wonder ponder, all the thoughts about who says what's right for a couple, and when is it too soon, and when is it the right time, and if it ain't b ~ Alice Clayton

Our breathing has been a friend that has accompanied us through every moment of life; it has never deserted us no matter how terrible we have felt. Friendship in itself connotes a quality of feelings that has elements of warmth, trust, and welcome. Our hearts always relax when we greet a friend.
Mandala of Being, Richard Moss MD ~ Richard Moss

Truth is the only brand worth breathing and believing. Stand for Truth in everything you do, and only then does your life have meaning. ~ Suzy Kassem

The only sound I'll hear after that will be my own breathing, and the sound of the smell, of my footsteps ~ Markus Zusak

As you breathe, say to yourself: Breathing in, I am aware of breathing in. Breathing out, I am aware of breathing out. ~ M.J. Ryan

When we become truly ourselves, we just become a swinging door, and we are purely independent of, and at the same time, dependent upon everything. ~ Shunryu Suzuki

The air changes. Then that invisible spider crawls up my spine, tickling the hairs behind my neck.

I have come to know this spider these last couple of years. It whispers there's something else in the room, breathing with you, watching you, grinning at you.

I hate that damn spider. ~ Rin Chupeco

I went over to the bed and knelt down beside it. I saw that she was still breathing, not in the hoarse, distressing way she had been breathing over the last few days, but almost serenely, as if the sacrament really had brought her relief. Then I took her pulse and felt it beating, rather irregularly, but beating nonetheless, and that was enough to assure me that she was still there. Finally, I carefully tried to prize open her eyelids, so that she could, if possible, see me, or so that I could at least see her, even if she could not see me. If my image could no longer penetrate the place where she now found herself, and I was, for her, merely a dull, meaningless thing, I wanted at least to be able to see my own image in those opaque pupils and feel myself floating on the surface of that world that had once been mine and which, now that it was lost, would bear me up as indifferently as a wave washing over a dead body. And I was thinking this even as I was trying to open her eyelids, which insisted on closing, while, meanwhile, everything inside me rebelled against being made an outcast, an exile, and I wanted her to see me, for my presence once more to illumine her inner world, which was, at that moment, heading into endless night, the desert where she would know nothing about me. ~ Lúcio Cardoso

She sat, rediscovering the fullness of her first tongue in one long submersion. Again and again she would pause on a word Melio uttered. She would roll it around in her mind, feeling the contours of it. At times her mouth gaped open, her lips moving as if she were drinking in his words instead of breathing. ~ David Anthony Durham

They took his soul over there, fuckers, and left me with the breathing carcass. ~ Andrea Randall

...the only thing that could justify your continuing existence on the planet would be if you started breathing carbon dioxide and exhaling oxygen. ~ Yrsa Sigurdardottir

In playing the part of Mammy, I tried to make her a living, breathing character, the way she appeared to me in the book. ~ Hattie McDaniel

I reach forward for him, expecting to feel the hardness of his chest or at the very least one of his arms coming to halt my progress, but there is nothing. I expand my reach a little and then, feeling slightly spooked, I listen ... Nothing. No breathing, no footsteps; nothing. ~ Felicity Brandon

The attic smelled like dust and mice. Piper was sure she could hear faint scuttling sounds off in the shadows, feel beady eyes upon her. She hoped it was only mice and not something larger, something more dangerous.
Was it more than rustling?
Was that faint breathing she heard coming from the darkest corner, the place where no light touched? ~ Jennifer McMahon

I'm going to miss him like hell when he's gone," she eventually continued. "It's going to rip half my soul out. If you weren't here for me, I would fucking give up and die the minute he quit breathing. ~ Tymber Dalton

Reading for me, was like breathing. It was probably akin to masturbation for my brain. Getting off on the fantasy within the pages of a good novel felt necessary to my survival. If I wasn't asleep, knitting, or working, I was reading. This was for several reasons, all of them focused around the infititely superior and enviable lives of fictional heroines to real-life people.
Take romans for instance. Fictional women in romance novels never get their period. They never have morning breath. They orgasm seventeen times a day. And they never seem to have jobs with bosses.
These clean, well-satisfied, perm-minty-breathed women have fulfilling careers as florists, bakery owners, hair stylists or some other kind of adorable small business where they decorate all day. If they do have a boss, he's a cool guy (or gal) who's invested in the woman's love life. Or, he's a super hot billionaire trying to get in her pants.
My boss cares about two things: Am I on time ? Are all my patients alive and well at the end of my shift?
And the mend in the romance novels are too good to be true; but I love it, and I love them. Enter stage right the independently wealthy venture capitalist suffering from the ennui of perfection until a plucky interior decorator enters stage left and shakes up his life and his heart with perky catch phrases and a cute nose that wrinkles when she sneezes.
I suck at decorating. The walls of my apartment are bare. I am allergic to most sto ~ Penny Reid

You don't learn how to be in love. It's not like learning how to walk or talk. It's innate, like breathing. I think love is something we do to survive. To live your life to the fullest, you gotta love every bit of the journey. Remember that. ~ Steph Nuss

Everything in Louisiana is about layers. There are layers of race, layers of class, layers of survival, layers of death, and layers of rebirth. To live with these layers is to be a true Louisianian. This state has a depth that is simultaneously beyond words and yet as natural as breathing. How can a place be both other-worldly and completely pedestrian is beyond me; however, Louisiana manages to do it. Louisiana is spooky that way. ~ Don Lemon

Without intention, all these postures, these breathing practices, meditations, and the like can become little more than ineffectual gestures. When animated by intention, however, the simplest movement, the briefest meditation, and the contents of one breath cycle are made potent. ~ Donna Farhi

I listen closely to her breathing getting slower, deeper until her hand settles over my heart, only beating for her. - Duke ~ Stephanie Witter

They sleep like children, mouths open, cheeks flushed. Breathing as rhythmic as swells on a sea. No longer allowed in the rooms, their mothers and fathers watch them through double-paned glass. Isolation - that's what the doctors call it: the separation of the sick from the well. But isn't every sleep a kind of isolation? When else are we so alone? ~ Karen Thompson Walker

You can't keep living without breathing; don't keep living without reading! ~ Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

WE two boys together clinging,
One the other never leaving,
Up and down the roads going, North and South excursions making,
Power enjoying, elbows stretching, fingers clutching,
Arm'd and fearless, eating, drinking, sleeping, loving.
No law less than ourselves owning, sailing, soldiering, thieving,
threatening,
Misers, menials, priests alarming, air breathing, water drinking, on
the turf or the sea-beach dancing,
Cities wrenching, ease scorning, statutes mocking, feebleness
chasing,
Fulfilling our foray. ~ Walt Whitman

Writing is like breathing for my soul. ~ A.D. Posey

Mort remembered the woodcut in his grandmother's almanack, between the page on planting times and the phases of the moon section, showing Dethe thee Great Levyller Comes To Alle Menne. He'd stared at it hundreds of times when learning his letters. It wouldn't have been half so impressive if it had been generally known that the flame-breathing horse the specter rode was called Binky. ~ Terry Pratchett

If she answered, he could not hear it, and he certainly couldn't see her, so he went. First he crawled the rocks one by one, one by one, till his hands touched shore and the nursing sound of the sea was behind him. He felt around, crawled off and then stood up. Breathing heavily with his mouth open he took a few tentative steps. The pebbles made him stumble and so did the roots of trees. He threw out his hands to guide and steady his going. By and by he walked steadier, now steadier. The mist lifted and the trees stepped back a bit as if to make the way easier for a certain kind of man. Then he ran. Lickety-split. Lickety-split. Looking neither to the left nor to the right. Lickety-split. Lickety-split. Lickety-lickety-lickety-split. ~ Toni Morrison

Now that the day is almost done, the world of glass recedes, the butterfly threat diminishes. I imagine that we're both here in this bed, that my invisible body is nestled against hers. We are breathing at the same pace, our chests rising and falling in unison. We have no need to whisper, because at this distance, all we need is thought. Our eyes close at the same time. We feel the same sheets against us, the same night. Our breath slows together. We split into different versions of the same dreams. Sleep takes us at the exact same time. ~ David Levithan

For a moment the feeling crept over me that my work, my vision, is going to destroy me, and for a fleeting moment I let myself take a long, hard look at myself, something I would not otherwise do
out of instinct, on principle, out of self-preservation
look at myself with objective curiosity to see whether my vision has not destroyed me already. I found it comforting to note that I was still breathing. ~ Werner Herzog

I love you, Papa," I said.
"And I love you," my father replied. "I have loved you every day of your life. I will love you for
every day of mine and more. My love will never diminish, no matter how many steps you take
throughout the world, no matter how many years you wander until your task is done."
"I will love you as long as I draw breath," I replied. "And the moment I stop breathing, I will find
you. Wherever you are. ~ Cameron Dokey

Not Christian or Jew or Muslim, not Hindu, Buddhist, sufi, or zen. Not any religion or cultural system. I am not from the East or the West, not out of the ocean or up from the ground, not natural or ethereal, not composed of elements at all. I do not exist, am not an entity in this world or the next, did not descend from Adam or Eve or any origin story. My place is placeless, a trace of the traceless. Neither body or soul. I belong to the beloved, have seen the two worlds as one and that one call to and know, first, last, outer, inner, only that breath breathing human being. ~ Rumi

Breathing is my best ally. By doing simple breathing exercises, I can quickly come back to center and feel more grounded. ~ Gisele Bundchen

And then we jerked to a stop. Jared was blocking the exit. "Have you lost your mind, Ian?" he asked, shocked and outraged. "What are you doing to her?"
"Did you know about this?" Ian shouted back, shoving me toward Jared and shaking me at him.
"You're going to hurt her!"
"Do you know what she's planning?" Ian roared.
Jared stared at Ian, his face suddenly closed off. He didn't answer. That was answer enough for Ian.
Ian's fist struck Jared so fast that I missed the blow - I just felt the lurch in his body and saw Jared reel back into the dark hall.
"Ian, stop," I begged.
"You stop," he growled back at me.
He yanked me through the arch into the tunnel, then pulled me north. I had to almost run to keep up with his longer stride.
"O´Shea!" Jared shouted after us.
"I'm going to hurt her?" Ian roared back over his shoulder, not breaking pace. "I am? You hypocritical swine!"
There was nothing but silence and blackness behind us now. I stumbled in the dark, trying to keep up.
He jerked me along faster, and my breath caught in a moan, almost like a cry of pain.
The sound made Ian stumble to a stop. His breathing was hoarse in the darkness.
"Ian, Ian, I..." I chocked, unable to finish. I didn't know what to say, picturing his furious face.
His arms caught me abruptly, yanking my feet out from under me and then catching my shoulders before I could fall. He started running forward again, carrying me now. His hand ~ Stephenie Meyer

He was staring at my lips, and before I could think better of it, I'd wetted them.

"That's it, bébé," he said in a coaxing rasp. "Ma bonne fille." My good girl. He wrapped one of his arms behind my back, cupping my chin with his free hand. "Evangeline, I'm goan to kiss you until your toes curl, until we're breathing for each other."

That was the promise. . . . ~ Kresley Cole

Our songs were not written to be listened to in headphones or on the radio. They were written to be played. All of the little infinite detail that went into the arrangements and giving ourselves lots of breathing room in terms of playing what we wanted to play and using up any ideas that we had - all of those were conceived to be performed. ~ Neil Peart

From the first note I knew it was different from anything I had ever heard.... It began simply, but with an arresting phrase, so simple, but eloquent as a human voice. It spoke, beckoning gently as it unwound, rising and tensing. It spiraled upward, the tension growing with each repeat of the phrasing, and yet somehow it grew more abandoned, wilder with each note. His eyes remained closed as his fingers flew over the strings, spilling forth surely more notes than were possible from a single violin. For one mad moment I actually thought there were more of them, an entire orchestra of violins spilling out of this one instrument. I had never heard anything like it--it was poetry and seduction and light and shadow and every other contradiction I could think of. It seemed impossible to breathe while listening to that music, and yet all I was doing was breathing, quite heavily. The music itself had become as palpable a presence in that room as another person would have been--and its presence was something out of myth. ~ Deanna Raybourn

What destiny is there, but to sense, observe, merge, re-emerge,
Empty, yet filled, spreading everywhere, inside, outside, in,
Pulsing, fluctuating, breathing as part of one being,
Whispering, feeling, reflecting, flowing between hot and cold,
Mineral and plant, dark and light, love and fear, new and old. ~ Jay Woodman

She was staring intently at her screen as her email streamed in. I noticed she wasn't breathing, which was something I'd read about: email apnea. People unconsciously hold their breath when they're looking at their inboxes. ~ Anonymous

From the same twelfth-century bestiary, we learn that the hedgehog is covered with spikes and curls itself into a ball for protection; that the fox is a 'fraudulent and ingenious animal' that plays dead in order to catch its prey; that cranes move about in military formation; that the serpent called 'basilisk' can with the power of its glance; that the lynx's urine turns into a precious stone; that lions are compassionate and courageous, and that the eyebrows and manes offer a clue to their disposition. Finally, many (but not all) entries go on to draw a moral or make a theological point on the basis of the animal description. The hedgehog is an example of prudence, the crane of courtesy and responsibility. The fox is employed as a type of the devil, who entices carnal man through fraudulent behavior. And the male lion, breathing life into its stillborn offspring after three days, represents God the Father raising Christ from the dead. ~ David C. Lindberg

Children whose developing lungs are particularly vulnerable suffer the most from air pollution. For children, breathing the air in cities with the worst pollution, such as Beijing, Calcutta, Mexico City, Shanghai, and Tehran, is equivalent to smoking two packs of cigarettes a day. ~ Lester R. Brown

Collins, echoing Ed Catmull, "What separates people is the return on luck, what you do with it when you get it. What matters is how you play the hand you're dealt." He continues, "You don't leave the game, until it's not your choice. Steve Jobs had great luck at arriving at the birth of an industry. Then he had bad luck in getting booted out. But Steve played whatever hand he was dealt to the best of his ability. Sometimes you create the hand, by giving yourself challenges that will make you stronger, where you don't even know what's next. That's the beauty of the story. Steve's almost like the Tom Hanks character in Castaway - just keep breathing because you don't know what the tide will bring in tomorrow. ~ Brent Schlender

Well, forgive the fuck out of me for being shocked senseless when I realized he wasn't dead. Why didn't you tell me he was the beast, Ryodan? Why did we have to kill him? I know it's not because he can't control himself when he's the beast. He controlled himself last night when he rescued me from the Book. He can change at will, can't he? What happened in the Silvers? Does the place have some kind of effect on you, make you uncontrollable?"
I almost slapped myself in the forehead. Barrons had told me that the reason he tattooed himself with black and red protection runes was because using dark magic called a price due, unless you took measures to protect yourself against the backlash. Did using IYD require the blackest kind of magic to make it work? Would it grant his demand to magically transport him to me no matter where I was but devolve him into the darkest, most savage version of himself as the price?
"It was because of how he got there, wasn't it?" I said. "The spell you two worked sent him to me like was it was supposed to, but the cost was that it turned him into the lowest common denominator of himself. An insane killing machine. Which he figured was all right, because if I was dying, I'd probably need a killing machine around. A champion to show up and decimate all my enemies. That was it, wasn't it?"
Ryodan had gone completely still. Not a muscle twitched. I wasn't sure he was breathing.
"He knew what would happen if I pressed IYD, and he made ~ Karen Marie Moning

What an idiot he was! Had he really thought he could get away with kissing a marquess's daughter?
And not just any marquess's daughter, either. Celia looking oh so tempting in her sumptuous purple gown. Lovely, angry Celia.
Lady Celia, he reminded himself. But he'd never be able to think of her like that again, not when the taste and smell of her still filled his senses.
Hearing voices behind him, he slipped into an empty room to wrangle his emotions into some semblance of control. But it was no use. He could still feel her body yielding to his, still hear her rapid breathing as he'd taken every advantage.
Damn her and her soft mouth and her delicate sighs and her fingers curling into the nape of his neck so that all he wanted to do was press her down onto a bench...
"Hell and blazes!" He thrust his hands through his hair. What in thunder was he supposed to do about her?
And why had she let him kiss her, anyway? Why had she waited until he'd made a complete fool of himself before she'd drawn that damned pistol?
Oh. Right. That was why. To make a fool of him herself. To lull him into a false sense of security so she could prove she could control any situation.
Well, he'd stymied that, but it was little consolation. He'd behaved like a damned mooncalf, devouring her mouth as if he were a wolf and she were supper. If he'd allowed her to speak of their kiss, she probably would have pointed out exactly how insolent he'd been. Would have warn ~ Sabrina Jeffries

Use your senses fully. Be where you are. Look around. Just look, don't interpret. See the light, shapes, colors, textures. Be aware of the silent presence of each thing. Be aware of the space that allows everything to be. Listen to the sounds; don't judge them. Listen to the silence underneath the sounds. Touch something - anything - and feel and acknowledge its Being. Observe the rhythm of your breathing; feel the air flowing in and out, feel the life energy inside your body. Allow everything to be, within and without. Allow the "isness" of all things. Move deeply into the Now. ~ Eckhart Tolle

I know I get you to myself all the time, but ... but ... ." There was an uneven touch in Quentin's hair, and Quentin almost stopped breathing. "You're the only thing I've wanted. I wanted my degree, but, you know, that came sort of easy. I wanted a business, and we've done that. And the whole time ... hell, even before we had our first class together ... before
our first study group, before we got dorm assignments ... all I wanted
was you. ~ Amy Lane

I knew how much Evan loved me. And I knew I didn't deserve it. But I also knew he was the only one I loved. The only one I would ever love. ~ Rebecca Donovan

While seeing or hearing, touching or smelling; eating, moving about, or sleeping; breathing 9 or speaking, letting go or holding on, even opening or closing the eyes, they understand that these are only the movements of the senses among sense objects. 10 ~ Krishna-Dwaipayana Vyasa

The impulse to share anything is a new one, the impulse to hide as natural as breathing ~ Veronica Roth

When I hear about people murdering, I wonder, What has to go through your brain to say, I don't want him breathing anymore? What makes you get that angry? How can you take someone's breath away? That just blows my mind. ~ Gilbert Arenas

Without thinking it through, I reached out and took her hand in mine, wrapping our fingers around each other's. Kisa gasped and said, "Luka, what are you doing?"
I shrugged. "Holding your hand."
"Why?" Kisa whispered, staring at my thumb stroking her skin. She was so soft.
"Because I have to," I answered honestly, and she seemed to stop breathing for several minutes before exhaling, her long eyelashes fluttering when she looked at me.
"Okay," she whispered, and something warm spread in my chest and down to my stomach. "I…I like it."
I smiled and Kisa blushed again. "Me too. I'm going to hold your hand all the time now. I'm never going to let go. ~ Tillie Cole

Air grew heavy, damp, almost solid. I was breathing bricks. ~ Khaled Hosseini

No level raised without reading, is like a body trying to live without breathing. ~ Ilias Oumarri

Fuming, I reach for the stick at my feet; however, this is the precise moment that a small black garter snake slithers out in front of me. I do what any normal fourteen-year-old girl would do: scream my head off, dance in spastic horror, and throw my tobacco knife into the dirt-completely missing the snake. I look to Luke for help, but he's laughing hysterically, which really gets my already hot blood boiling. Wrists on sweaty forehead, breathing totally out of control, I walk around in a circle until the disgusting little reptile slithers away.
I am-offically-over it. ~ Alecia Whitaker

Nearly all runners do their slow runs too fast, and their fast runs too slow." Ken Mierke says. "So they're just training their bodies to burn sugar, which is the last thing a distance runner wants. You've got enough fat stored to run to California, so the more you train your body to burn fat instead of sugar, the longer your limited sugar tank is going to last."
-The way to activate your fat-burning furnace is by staying below your aerobic threshold
your hard-breathing point
during your endurance runs. ~ Christopher McDougall

(Actually, I have been surrounded by fire-breathing death snakes before, but not ones with wings. Everything is worse when it has wings.) ~ Rick Riordan

My music is homegrown from the garden of New Orleans. Music is everything to me short of breathing. Music also has a role to lift you up - not to be escapist but to take you out of misery. ~ Allen Toussaint

Once I lived in time as a fish in water, breathing it, drinking it, sustained by it. Now I kill time and time kills me. ~ J.M. Coetzee

The ghosts race towards the light, you can almost hear the heavy breathing spirits, all determined to get somewhere. New Orleans, unlike a lot of places you go back to and that don't have the magic anymore, still has got it. Night can swallow you up, yet none of it touches you. You can't see it, but you know it's here. Somebody's always sinking. ~ Bob Dylan

I don't have many friends, not the living, breathing sort at any rate. And I don't mean that in a sad and lonely way; I'm just not the type of person who accumulates friends or enjoys crowds. I'm good with words, but not spoken kind; I've often thought what a marvelous thing it would be if I could only conduct relationships on paper. And I suppose, in a sense, that's what I do, for I've hundreds of the other sort, the friends contained within bindings, pages after glorious pages of ink, stories that unfold the same way every time but never lose their joy, that take me by the hand and lead me through doorways into worlds of great terror and rapturous delight. Exciting, worthy, reliable companions - full of wise counsel, some of them - but sadly ill-equipped to offer the use of a spare bedroom for a month or two. ~ Kate Morton

But when it came to Jackson, breathing was overrated. He wasn't the kind of guy any girl could breathe around, really. Even I wasn't immune. ~ Erin Fletcher

The invisible life energy of the universe is ceaselessly being supplied to you through your breathing and your meridian points. When you truly realize that your life force is not maintained by your own independent power, but by the greater energy at large, your small, finite self gains the power to draw in that energy. ~ Ilchi Lee

People change. I mean you barely know who you are when you enter, and you spend that time figuring out what you want from life, and who you want in it. The next thing you know, the people you always thought would be there, aren't. A nd the person you thought you could trust with everything, isn't the person you ever knew at all. ~ Rebecca Donovan

But all that was as automatic as her beating heart, as subconscious as breathing - what she felt above all was the fierce tingling certainty of being alive. ~ Lisa Verge Higgins

Her whole being dilated in an atmosphere of luxury. It was the background she required, the only climate she could breathe in. ~ Edith Wharton

As much as I admire and value intellectualism and experimentation, I've discovered that unless a book has a throbbing heart as well as a sexy brain, I feel like the story is a specimen in a sealed glass jar and not a living, breathing creature I want to take by the hand and talk to for hours on end. ~ Myla Goldberg

Listen
are you breathing just a little, and calling it a life? ~ Mary Oliver

Jake shuts the van's back doors and lies down next to me. He's really close, so close I can feel him breathing on the nape of my neck. I could put more space between us, but instead I scoot backward, leaning into him, my back pressed into the pleasant warmth of his front. Jake holds his breath for a moment, but he doesn't say anything. And he doesn't move away ... He moves so his mouth is right under my ear, brushing the skin there, and one of his hands slides up, resting on my rib cage. My whole body tingles as he starts to sing softly into my ear. ~ Hannah Harrington

She was exhausted, and had spent some time breathing smoke and poison. ~ Christina Henry

the intolerance of reproductive rights for women puts the rights of potential humans above the rights of actual living, breathing humans. ~ Cooper S. Beckett

It's so hard to listen to these trains outside my window, here it comes again. And it's calling me, begging me, follow me down the track. And it moans so dark and low, baby ain't comin' back ... It sounds like crying, it sounds like letting go. Breathing and lying, sinking and dying slow. And I watch from my window, touching the cold glass sky. As the train rolls down the track, I say goodbye. ~ Melissa Etheridge

Each day is a miracle. Just being able to live through the rest of the day is a miracle. Breathing the air of tomorrow is another miracle. ~ Kcat Yarza

There's a reason why stars can only exist in the sky
they're just rockets of light traveling through space, so it feels right to admire their form from a distance. People, solid and living and breathing together in the same world, are not meant to be surround by that much darkness. ~ Katie Kacvinsky

I will never get to tell him I love him, even if my love was never enough. The empty ache grows and throbs in my chest. It's a living and breathing thing inside me. Sucking the air from my lungs, and the warmth from my body. The ache and pain leaves me hollow and cold. ~ Ashley Jeffery

There should be a little gap between you and your friends, though you'll miss their companionship and you'll also miss their disrespect. ~ Michael Bassey Johnson

Letter 90


When I used to sit up late at night writing in our bed, I was calmed by the sound of your breathing. I would hold my breath and watch your chest rise and fall. I felt like a blind man soothed by the scents and sounds of a garden.

As I lie here in bed writing this letter, there is only the sound of my own breathing.

When I hold my breath, there is only silence.

Tonight I feel like a miner being lowered farther and farther into a dark mine shaft, longing for the scents and the sounds of a garden. ~ Gregory Colbert

There, there, sweetin'," he murmured into her hair.

"He loved me, he truly did," she gasped.

"I know he did," Michael said.

"And I loved him."

"Mm-hmm."

She raised her head, glaring angrily. "You don't even believe in love. Why are you agreeing with me?"

He laughed.

"Because" - he leaned down and licked at the tears on her cheeks, his lips brushing softly against her sensitive skin as he spoke, "ye've bewitched and bespelled me, my sweet Silence, didn't ye know? I'll agree that the sky is pink, that the moon is made o' marzipan and sugared raisins, and that mermaids swim the muddy waters o' the Thames, if ye'll only stop weepin'. Me chest breaks apart and gapes wide open when I see tears in yer pretty eyes. Me lungs, me liver, and me heart cannot stand to be thus exposed."

She stopped breathing. She simply inhaled and stopped, looking at him in wonder. His lips were quirked in a mocking smile, but his eyes - his fathomless black eyes - seemed to hold a great pain as if his strong chest really had been split open. ~ Elizabeth Hoyt

Slave labor," said Hermione, breathing hard through her nose. "That's what made this dinner. Slave labor." And she refused to eat another bite. ~ J.K. Rowling

Doug, you have to prepare yourself. You have to prepare Sarah. It won't be long before they have some answers. You have to get ready, Doug.'Jesus, Pete,' yelled Doug. 'Don't you think I've fucking been ready every day for the last four months? Every hour of every day for the last four months? I can't breathe in without being ready. I know all those statistics. They quoted them at me when they wanted me to go home. If a kid isn't found within the first twenty-four hours there's a chance he will never be found alive. I know that, Pete. Don't you think I fucking know that? Every time that fucking phone rings I can see Sarah's heart hit her feet. We're ready, Pete. We've been ready since the day we lost him. We're ready but we will never be ready. There is no way to be ready for this. No way . . .'Doug had sunk into silence and all Pete had heard was his ragged desperate breathing on the other end of the phone. Finally he said, 'I can't tell her, Pete. I can't tell her until they know for sure. She's hanging on by a thread, Pete, and I can't lose her as well. Tell me when they know for sure and then I'll tell her.' His voice trailed off, all the anger leaving him exhausted and trembling. ~ Nicole Trope

What happens when I touch you, Kiera?" His tone, almost a growl, was getting as suggestive as his words [...] He ran a hand down his shirt, as he answered his own question. "Your pulse races, your breath quickens." He bit his lip and started simulating heavy breathing [...] "Your body trembles, your lips part, your eyes burn." He closed his eyes and exhaled with a soft groan, then reopened his eyes and suggestively inhaled through his teeth. [...] "Your body aches...everywhere."
He closed his eyes again and exactly mimicked a low moan that I had made with him on several occasions. He tangled a hand back through his own hair, in a way that I had done time and again, and ran his other hand back up his chest, in a way that was only too familiar with me. [...] He swallowed and made a horribly enticing noise as he let his mouth fall open in a pant. "Oh...God...please..." He mimicked in a low groan, as his hands started running down his body, towards his jeans... ~ S.C. Stephens

You can spend your life chitchatting with someone - even a good friend - but spend even an hour moving over a rocky path, breathing in pine-scented air, and I guarantee you the chitchat will turn to something else. ~ Scott Jurek

Breathing in, I know I have an unpleasant feeling. Breathing out, I am here for this unpleasant feeling. Breathing in, I calm the feeling in me. Breathing out, I calm the feeling in me. ~ Thich Nhat Hanh

But Holms had proven stalwart and valiant. When Miss Jones had shown up to discover them in the castle hallway, because she'd heard a suspicious noise and had feared for her schoolchums' safety, they' d had to bring her along. She'd wanted to run straight to the headmistress, of course, but Armand had persuaded her not to. How he regretted that decision now!
The duke had fired his guns at them all. They'd retreated, thought to go to the automobile to fetch a doctor and the sheriff, but they'd stumbled the wrong way and fallen down the slope to the beach instead. All three of them. And there, noble Jesse had died.
Fact. Fiction. Likely because so much of it had happened, and because Armand's red-eyed, stoic distress seemed so genuine, the adults around us had accepted it as truth.
Mostly.
I think if I hadn't been discovered wearing only Armand's coat as I knelt next to Jesse's body, Mrs. Westcliffe might have found the whole thing easier to swallow.
Yet the official version ruled the day. And here we all were basking in it, breathing fresh sea air, warmed by the generous spring sun. Burying a hero. A far, far greater hero than anyone standing around me at his funeral would ever suspect.
Somewhere in deep-blue briny waters, a U-boat rested, filled with live torpedoes and solid-gold men.
I thought I better understood Rue's letters now. I understood her warning about the pain that would come with my Gifts.
I understood my sacrifice. ~ Shana Abe

A quote from A BORN VICTIM:
"Women are beautiful. That's it," Mike blurted out. "Of course men like to look at them. Why wouldn't we? But to go from that and hurt a woman, to harm her just for pleasure, that's sick, totally sick." He was breathing hard, fighting down an almost incoherent rage inside. "Women are so beautiful, so delicate, so fragile. How could any normal man get pleasure from causing pain or harm to something as completely wonderful as a woman?"
http://viewBook.at/ABornVictim ~ R.P.Rochford A BORN VICTIM

Why?" His question was almost buried by my heavy breathing.
I think I understood the question now. I could only hope I had the right answer. If there was one.
"Because I want to trust, be trusted. I want someone I can count on, someone who can count on me. I want somewhere safe. I want a home. But that can only happen if I'm with you."
"I'm never going to be like other men, Grant."
I wasn't sure what he meant until I turned enough to see his expression. The knowledge in his eyes spoke of those places he looked into. The windows or portals he disappeared into when he followed the light.
"I can give you what I have, but I can never give you everything." It wasn't Morgan didn't want to, he couldn't. I could see that too. He could never give me all of himself because he didn't control everything he had.
Could I live with that? ~ Adrienne Wilder

How to Perform Paced Breathing

Paced breathing is a slow, regular rate of deep breathing. There are three main points to keep in mind when practicing:

1.Breathe slowly. Concentrate on slowing the rate of your breathing to eight or ten breaths per minute.

2.Inhale and exhale through your nose. It is more difficult to take shallow breaths from the upper chest when you breathe through your nose. This keeps you from hyperventilating.

3.Choose a neutral word to focus on while practicing paced breathing. The words "one," "calm," and "relax" work well. Each time you exhale, say the word in your mind. This will assist in keeping your breathing evenly paced, and will help to reduce the chances of interfering thoughts.

During the day, when you are not practicing paced breathing, alternate paced and normal breathing. Every single breath you take does not have to come from the diaphragm. There should be a natural rhythm between chest breathing and diaphragm breathing. Find a comfortable balance but do more diaphragmatic breathing than you usually do.

Tony is at a local law office to interview for an internship. He wants to become a trial lawyer. He is very excited by the thought of working professionally, but is so anxious about the interview that he feels lightheaded and numb. He is afraid he won't be able to say what he wants to, and that his answers will be incorrect.
As he waits for the interviewer, Tony starts to ~ Heather Moehn

Love is not a verb. Love is a noun. Love's activity is people breathing, cells dividing, a dove taking a flight.
This grammar of life not all can see. ~ Mohit Parikh

Master Elodin" I said breathing a little hard, "Might I ask you a quick question?"
"Statistically speaking it's pretty likely"..
"May I ask you a question then?"
"I doubt any power known to man could stop you. ~ Patrick Rothfuss

Breath is our unbroken, coherent connection with the whole. It expresses itself as matter, energy, life and consciousnesses. Meditation is understanding that connection. ~ Amit Ray

Am I just a game to you?"
Hunter laughed again. "Maybe. But, I'll tell you one thing for certain."
"What?" I asked breathlessly.
He edged closer to me, sweeping a lock of hair behind my ear before breathing his hot breath on my neck. As he trailed his nose along the base, I shuddered. He stopped a moment and then carried on up towards my ear. "I always win," he whispered. ~ Jaimie Roberts

I'm much better at interpreting books and stories than I am at understanding the decisions made by living, breathing people. ~ Val Emmich

I twirl away, then back to him, staying on my toes, my hips always lightly rotating. He reacts clumsily at first, but soon the awkwardness fades away and he begins matching my movements, reflecting them in reverse. We dance like this, wrist to wrist, twirl and turn, step for step, for several more minutes. He holds my gaze, our eyes connecting at every turn, anticipating one another's movements.
His pulse is so strong against my wrist that it echoes through me, almost like a heartbeat of my own. My skin warms; my breath catches in my throat. I know how closely I dance along the line of destruction, but I cannot pull myself away. He is intoxicating, his force of life an addiction I cannot refuse. I have not felt this alive in centuries, not since you, Habiba, when you taught me the dance of Fahradan. Ours was a dance of giddy laughter, a dance of friends, sisters, a dance of life and youth and hope.
But this dance is different.
It is not I but he who entices, reversing the ancient roles of the dance. And I resist because I must, because if I don't, because if I give in to the all-too-human desires racing through me - then it is Aladdin who will pay the terrible price.
"Stop." I drop my wrists and step away, and he does the same, still caught up in mirroring me. Except that he is breathing heavily, his chest rising and falling with exertion, his eyes filled with a strange, wondrous, curious look as he stares at me. He moves closer, his eyes fixed on mine, an ~ Jessica Khoury

Well, I don't know no woman of breeding. (Bart)
And I am sure the ladies of the world over are now breathing a collective sigh of relief. (Henri) ~ Kinley MacGregor

They're smiling as they talk to each other and they make it look so easy, so natural, like it's as simple as breathing. But even breathing is difficult for me sometimes. ~ Jessica Sorensen

I looked at him on the bed. He coughed once and a trail of brownish dead blood came out of his mouth and ran down the side of his chin. Then he stopped breathing. And I thought, I'll make sure I never end up here, either. ~ Sebastian Faulks

Magic had always been a part of the empire - for some people it was like breathing. How was it okay to make existing illegal? ~ Nicki Pau Preto

She was coming. She was moving close to the hall. He felt himself slip away from his body into pure listening; yes, it was she. All the sounds of the night rose to confuse him, yet he caught it; a low irreducible sound which she could not veil, the sound of her breathing, of the beat of her heart, of a force moving through space at tremendous and unnatural speed, causing the inevitable tumult amid the visible and the invisible. ~ Anne Rice