Cairney Air Quotes

Thanks to the growing strength of environmental organizations, there will always be some back country to provide us with a touch of wonder and a breath of fresh air. ~ Wallace Stegner

When he found out his wife was unfaithful, Hector Castillo told his son to get in the car because they were going fishing. It was after midnight but this was nothing unusual. The Rickenbacker Bridge suspended across Biscayne Bay was full of night fishermen leaning on the railings, avoiding going home to their wives. Except Hector didn't bring any fishing gear with him. He led his son, Carlito, who'd just turned three, by the hand to the concrete wall, picked him up by his waist, and held him so that the boy grinned and stretched his arms out like a bird, telling his papi he was flying, flying, and Hector said, "Si, Carlito, tienes alas, you have wings."

Then Hector pushed little Carlito up into the air, spun him around, and the boy giggled, kicking up his legs up and about, telling his father, "Higher, Papi! Higher!" before Hector took a step back and with all his might hoisted the boy as high in the sky as he'd go, told him he loved him, and threw his son over the railing into the sea. ~ Patricia Engel

But every person has their own encyclopedia written, which grows out from each soul, composed from birth onward, hundreds of thousands of pages pressing into each other and yet there's air between them! Like trembling leaves in a forest. A book of contradictions. What's in there is revised by the moment; the images touch themselves up, the words flicker. A wave washes through the entire text, followed by the next wave, and the next . . . ~ Tomas Transtromer

Let us drink deep brothers,' he cried, leaving off his strange anointment for a while, to lift a great glass, filled with sparkling liquor, to his lips. 'Let us drink to our approaching triumph. Let us drink to the great poison, Macousha. Subtle seed of Death, - swift hurricane that sweeps away Life, - vast hammer that crushes brain and heart and artery with its resistless weight, -I drink to it.'

'It is a noble concoction, Duke Balthazar,' said Madame Filomel, nodding in her chair as she swallowed her wine in great gulps. 'Where did you obtain it?'

'It is made,' said the Wondersmith, swallowing another great draught of wine ere he replied, 'in the wild woods of Guiana, in silence and in mystery. Only one tribe of Indians, the Macoushi Indians, know the secret. It is simmered over fires built of strange woods, and the maker of it dies in the making. The place, for a mile around the spot where it is fabricated, is shunned as accursed. Devils hover over the pot in which it stews; and the birds of the air, scenting the smallest breath of its vapour from far away, drop to earth with paralysed wings, cold and dead.'

'It kills, then, fast?' asked Kerplonne, the artificial-eye maker, - his own eyes gleaming, under the influence of the wine, with a sinister lustre, as if they had been fresh from the factory, and were yet untarnished by use.

'Kills?' echoed the Wondersmith, derisively; 'it is swifter than thunderbolts, stronger than lightni ~ Fitz-James O'Brien

He was aware, suddenly, of the chill condensing clammily on his skin, the smell of damp cobblestones, of the very air flowing in and out of his lings.
But most of all he was aware of the woman, this woman, his woman, standing so proudly, waiting patiently for him, only him.
He walked toward her and knew with every fiber of his being that he walked to life itself. ~ Elizabeth Hoyt

Ten minutes later everyone was gone, giving out hugs, air kisses and well wishes for a successful cherry popping as they went. ~ Kristen Ashley

This is why the Liberian waiter laughed at me. He thought that I thought a toilet was my right, when he knew it was a privilege.
"It must be, when 2.6 billion people don't have sanitation. I don't mean that they have no toilet in their house and must use a public one with queues and fees. Or that they have an outhouse, or a ricety shack that empties into a filthy drain or pigsty. All that counts as sanitation, though not a safe variety. The people who have those are the fortunate ones. Four in ten people have no access to any latrine, toilet, bucket, or box. Nothing. Instead, they defecate by train tracks and in forests. They do it in plastic bags and fling them through the air in narrow slum alleyways. If they are women, they get up at 4 A.M. to be able to do their business under cover of darkness for reasons of modesty, risking rape and snakebites. Four in ten people live in situations where they are surrounded by human excrement because it is in the bushes outside the village or in their city yards, left by children outside the backdoor. It is tramped back in on their feet, carried on fingers onto clothes, food and drinking water.
"The disease toll of this is stunning. A gram of feces can contain 10 million viruses, 1 million bacteria, 1,000 parasite cysts, and 100 worm eggs... ~ Rose George

Listen to it, and you are hearing the mighty currents of the air rushing down the latitudes of the earth, currents from the Mackenzie and the Athabasca and the Saskatchewan, and from the prairies and the white Tundra. It is a homeless wind, forever on the move. ~ Hal Borland

Laughter brightens the eye, increases the perspiration, expands the chest, forces the poisoned air from the least-used cells, and tends to restore that exquisite poise or balance which we call health. ~ Orison Swett Marden

From November 1st, said Hans Frank, it would be possible for the Germans of Cracow to breathe 'good German air', to walk abroad without seeing the streets and lanes 'crawling with Jews'. ~ Thomas Keneally

Struck dumb by love among the walruses
And whales, the off-white polar bear with stuffing
Missing, the mastodons like muddy buses,
I sniff the mothproof air and lack for nothing. ~ L.E. Sissman

Like a welcome summer rain, humor may suddenly cleanse and cool the earth, the air and you. ~ Langston Hughes

Little known fact: When you get really scared and too many scary things happen at once, you can leave your body. I don't know if it's your soul or your consciousness or what, but you can literally float up in the air over your body and watch what it's doing. ~ Dinah Katt

It's interesting because a lot of people that stop me on the street now, and they talk about 'The Wire,' and they all have the same question: 'How come they took that show off the air?' ~ Seth Gilliam

Still, you need him as much as you need the air you breathe, and he wants you as he's wanted nothing and no one since I made him. So it is done, and we will make the best of it. ~ Deborah Harkness

I feel like I'm holding my breath all the time, never knowing when my lungs will just give up. The air we're supposed to breathe is up above – I can feel it. ~ Frances Hardinge

The rhythm of the ride carried them on and on, and she knew that the horse was as eager as she, as much in love with the speed and air and freedom. ~ Georgess McHargue

The air was swollen with music, shouting, and something I could not quite place- a feeling of happiness, but happiness with an edge, a sense of joy that was all the more meaningful because it was so fleeting. ~ Chelsey Philpot

He muttered to himself. Why bother. Why does this matter so much. What difference does it make to anything if I solve this blue and just start again. I could just sit down and drink wine. I could go and be useful in a cholera-camp in Columbia or Ethiopia. Why bother to render the transparency in solid paint or air on a bit of board? I could just stop. He could not. ~ A.S. Byatt

Some men, as they age, grow kinder. I am not one of those, for I have seen how the cosmere can mistreat the innocent - and that leaves me disinclined toward kindness. Some men, as they age, grow wiser. I am not one of those, for wisdom and I have always been at cross-purposes, and I have yet to learn the tongue in which she speaks. Some men, as they age, grow more cynical. I, fortunately, am not one of those. If I were, the very air would warp around me, sucking in all emotion, leaving only scorn.
Other men...other men, as they age, merely grow stranger. I fear that I am one of those. I am the bones of a foreign species left drying on the plain that was once, long ago, a sea. A curiosity, perhaps a reminder, that all has not always been as it is now. ~ Brandon Sanderson

They [anarchists and radical environmentalists] point out that the state and its philosophers, having retrospectively sold us a social contract we never saw nor signed, seem anyway to have reneged on their side of the bargain which was to protect our lives and liberties. The new institutionally guaranteed 'freedoms', to democracy, free speech, individual liberty, so dearly brought, constantly fail to live up to expectation. What does it mean to have political freedom when the parties on offer are ideologically identical clones? What kind of intellectual freedom is it that brands all those who dare to think differently dangerous extremists? What kind of individuality expects us all to conform within such narrow limits? What freedoms are even possible when the very air we breathe is poisoned and the food we eat contaminated with the so-called 'by-products' of progress? In such circumstances, it is surely not surprising that some might choose the dream of pre-contractual state of natural innocence to the increasingly nightmarish 'reality' of Locke's post-contractual culture. ~ Mick Smith

I don't know, Adam! You're asking me to define an abstract concept that no one has managed to explain since time began. You sort of sprang it on me. Why do we breathe air? Because we love air? Because we don't want to suffocate. Why do we eat? Because we don't want to starve. How do I know I love her? Because I can sleep after I talk to her. ~ Maggie Stiefvater

Oh God, now she couldn't remember why she'd ever left him. She needed him. More than air or sunlight and beaches, definitely more than garlic. ~ Mimi Jean Pamfiloff

As you get older, it's harder to maintain your weight and to fly through the air for those routines. It's also the lifestyle; you train seven to eight hours a day, five to six days a week. ~ Kerri Strug

I saw the destruction of Dresden. I saw the city before and then came out of an air-raid shelter and saw it afterward, and certainly one response was laughter. God knows, that's the soul seeking some relief. ~ Kurt Vonnegut

The silence of a place where there were once horses
is a mountain
and I have seen by lightning that ever mountain
once fell from the air
ringing
like the chime of an iron shoe ... ~ W.S. Merwin

Art as an aesthetic principle was supported by thousands of years of discernment and psychic rewards, but art as a commodity was held up by air. The loss of confidence that affected banks and financial instruments was not affecting cherubs, cupids and flattened popes. The objects hadn't changed: what was there before was there after. But a vacancy was created with the clamoring crowds deserted and retrenched. ~ Steve Martin

It's Ky's move. In the quiet before the Ky takes his turn, Xander watches him carefully. Ky's hand hovers over the board. For a moment, as he holds the piece in the air, I see where he could put it to win and I know he sees it, too, that he planned the whole game for that last move. He looks at Xander and Xander looks back, both of them locked in some kind of challenge that seems to run deeper and older than what's happening here on this board.
Then Ky moves his hand and puts his piece down in a spot where Xander can eventually overtake him for the win. Ky doesn't hessitate once he places the piece; he sets it down with a solid sound and leans back in his chair, looking up at the ceiling. I think I see the slightest hint of a smile on his lips but I can't be sure. ~ Ally Condie

Al Gore is producing enough hot air to make his doomsday predictions about global warming a self-fulfilling prophecy. ~ Joseph Farah

Life a life of Spiritual Adventure. Much like a wild goose the Spirit of God cannot be tracked or tamed. An element of danger, an air of unpredictability surround Him. And while the name may sound a little sacrilegious, I cannot think of a better description of what it's like to pursue the Spirit's leading through life. ~ Mark Batterson

You know how they say that right before you die your life flashes before your eyes? It doesn't. That is just a notion they came up with for books and movies to make death seem romantic. Here's what really happens: Your intestines feel like a dishrag that's being wrung dry and your stomach acts like a balloon when you let the air out of it ~ Dinah Katt

Love is all around you like the air and is the very breath of your being. But you cannot know it, feel its unfeeling touch, until you pause in your busy-ness, are still and poised and empty of your wanting and desiring. When at rest the air is easily offended and will flee even from the fanning of a leaf, as love flees from the first thought. But when the air or love moves of its own accord it is a hurricane that drives all before it. ~ Barry Long

We human beings are only part of something much larger. When we walk along we may crush a battle or simply cause a change in the air so that a fly ends up where it might not have gone otherwise. And if we think of the same example but with ourselves in the role of the insect, and the larger universe in the role we've just played, it's perfectly clear that we're affected every day by races over which we have no control than the poor beetle has over our gigantic foot as it descends upon it. ~ Arthur Golden

Creativity gives new forms, new patterns, new ideas, new art forms. And we don't know where creativity comes from. Is it inspired from above? Welling up from below? Picked up from the air? What? Creativity is a mystery wherever you encounter it ... ~ Rupert Sheldrake

Once in a while a good opportunity would come along, like the first 'Playhouse 90 ever to air - working in television afforded me my best opportunities. The (film) industry was going through such turmoil at the time - studios didn't know where to go anymore, they were falling apart, television was there. They didn't know what kind of films people wanted. The European films were making a huge impact because those films wanted real people in real situations. ~ Tab Hunter

Rain in the winter smelled simply like ice, the cold air burning the tips of ears, cheeks, and eyelashes. Winter rain was for hiding in quilts and blankets, for tying woolen scarves around noses and mouths–the moisture of rasping breaths stinging chapped lips. ~ Leslye Walton

An air of infinite reluctance M. Poirot climbed aboard the train. The conductor climbed after him. ~ Agatha Christie

I won't meet his glare. "I guess I didn't care." Telling him I meant to murder his sister probably wouldn't go over very well. It would definitely cancel out the Hallmark vote.
"Unacceptable. Don't ever risk your life like that again, do you understand?"
I snort, sending little air bubbles dancing upward. "Hey, you know what else I don't care about? You giving me orders. I acted stupid, but-"
"Actually, this is a good time to point out that I'm a Royal," he says, pointing to the small tattoo of a fork on his stomach, just above the border where his abs turn into fish. "And since you're obviously Syrena, you do have to obey me."
"I'm what?" I say, trying to figure out how an eating utensil could possibly validate his claim of seniority.
"Syrena. That's what we-including you-are called."
"Syrena? Not mermaids?"
Galen clears his throat. "Uh, mermaid?"
"Really? You're gonna go there now? Fine, merman-wait, I wouldn't be a merman." Really though, what do I know about fish gender? Except that Galen is definitely male, no matter what species he is.
"Just for the record, we hate that word. And by we, I mean you also."
I roll my eyes. "Fine. But I'm not Syrena. Did I mention I don't have a big fin-"
"You're not trying hard enough."
"Trying hard enough? To grow a fin? ~ Anna Banks

Jewish Warsaw, which was roughly a third of Warsaw proper, was a city of rabbis and swindlers, capitalists and poets; but, most of all, it was a city of talkers. There were so many ideas in the air you could get an education simply by breathing deeply. (p. 206) ~ Rebecca Goldstein

Only a single bird

is singing.

The air is cloning it.

We hear through mirrors. ~ Federico Garcia Lorca

And then the man reminded Max, with a serious but suave and practiced air, that freedom was a debt that could be repaid only by purchasing the freedom of others. ~ Michael Chabon

DUMBLEDORE conjures NICOLAS FLAMEL'S card from thin air and offers it to NEWT, who eyes it with suspicion.
NEWT: What's that?
DUMBLEDORE: It's an address of a very old acquaintance of mine. A safe house in Paris, reinforced with enchantments.
NEWT: Safe house? Why would I need a safe house in Paris?
DUMBLEDORE: One hopes you won't, but should things at some point go terribly wrong, it's good to have a place to go. You know, for a cup of tea.
NEWT: No, no, no - absolutely not. ~ J.K. Rowling

His scent engulfed me - fresh night air and evergreen. I buried my face in the hollow beneath his jaw as he shoved his Light into me- a terrible force of the sort I'd never imagined, hungry for distraction, intoxicating to the point of addiction. ~ Jocelyn Adams

It flourished on the air softly in vapors of cobalt light, whispering and sighing. ~ Ray Bradbury