Coughing Quotes

Blaming fatness for heart disease is a lot like blaming yellow teeth for lung cancer, rather than considering the possibility that smoking might play a role in both. And telling people they need to lose weight is a lot like telling someone with pneumonia to stop coughing so much - it may not be possible and won't make the disease go away. ~ Linda Bacon

Underwater, bubbles erupted before my eyes as a swift hand snatched my arm and pulled me to the surface. I gasped for air, coughing and gagging at the amount of water I sucked into my lungs by pure shock. What was up with me and breathing in water? I needed to grow some gills or something. ~ Laura Kreitzer

Then there were her childhood book: Anne of Green Gables, Heidi, What Katy did next, Pollyanna - stories about girls who were good. All Pollyanna had ever done wrong was ruin her parasol. Beth in Little Women was so perfect she was only fit for heaven. Why were girls in novels exemplary, almost saintly? Grace preferred adventure stories, histories and romances about what to do if you were damned and female, tales about women who were kind, likeable and believable, who escaped unpunished. No thin Quakers with lace caps. No beatific consumptives coughing delicately. No unloved, eternally jolly orphans. Grace craved books about girls like herself: good women, normal women in a world bigger and more powerful than themselves. ~ Wendy Jones

Oh, stick a cork in it, B," Jen snarled at Decebel.
Vasile cocked his head to the side as he looked at Jen. "B?"
"Yeah. Ya know, for Beta. Although, I like it because I could also be calling him the technical term for a female dog and he wouldn't know it. So really, calling him B totally works to my advantage," Jen explained in all seriousness.
Everyone turned when a quick burst of laughter came from the right side of the room. When Sorin saw everyone turn their eyes on him, he quickly began coughing.
Holding up his hands, he finally composed himself. "Pardon me, Alpha. I seemed to have swallowed wrong."
"You have to be careful while swallowing smart ass comments, Sorin," Jen teased.
"They tend to have a choking effect. ~ Quinn Loftis

Often, half in a bay of the mountains and half on a headland, a small and nearly amphibian Schloss mouldered in the failing light among the geese and the elder-bushes and the apple trees. Dank walls rose between towers that were topped with cones of moulting shingle. Weeds throve in every cranny. Moss mottled the walls. Fissures branched like forked lightning across damp masonry which the rusting iron clamps tried to hold together, and buttresses of brick shored up the perilously leaning walls. The mountains, delaying sunrise and hastening dusk, must have halved again the short winter days. Those buildings looked too forlorn for habitation. But, in tiny, creeper-smothered windows, a faint light would show at dusk. Who lived in those stone-flagged rooms where the sun never came? Immured in those six-foot-thick walls, overgrown outside with the conquering ivy and within by genealogical trees all moulting with mildew? My thoughts flew at once to solitary figures…a windowed descendant of a lady-in-waiting at the court of Charlemagne, alone with the Sacred Heart and her beads, or a family of wax-pale barons, recklessly inbred; bachelors with walrus moustaches, bent double with rheumatism, shuddering from room to room and coughing among their lurchers, while their cleft palates called to each other down corridors that were all but pitch dark. ~ Patrick Leigh Fermor

Much. so there is free dessert involved here." I put my hand to my forehead. "oh, that i had discovered the job first!"
Ryan laughs. "tragic."
want to hear something tragic? my dad is going to a Christian singles' retreat."
Ryan nearly spits out his coffee. "your dad?" he is shacking.
Brandon wallops him on the back a few times. Ryan holds his hands up at him, coughing. "Stop," he croaks, standing. he inhales a few times and gets his voice back. "You would have to tell me this when my mouth was full, wouldn't you?" he sits again.
I smile broadly.
a Christian singles' retreat?" he repeats
Yep," Brandon says. "Get the name: Marley's Michigan Marriage Makers."
I cover my face
Ryan's expression twists. " thats.... interesting," he says slowly
Hallie frowns. "If its a Christian retreat, why is it called Marley's?"
Its a denomination in Michigan," Brandon says. "Marlotist. I just call them Marley for fun."
I double over until my head hits the table.
There is not a denomination called Marlotist," Hallie says.
Is too. I visited one of their churches when I went to Michigan to ski one time," Brandon says.
My eyes blur with tears from laughing so hard and holding it all in. My shoulders start shaking.
Brandon levels a good kick to my shin.
Ow!" I reach for my leg.
What is the name of it, Laurie?" Ryan asks.
Meet Your Match in Michigan"
Brandon scowls at me. " Spoilsport. ~ Erynn Mangum

JESUS & THE WEATHER

I don't think Jesus Who is Our Lord would have liked the weather in Limerick because it's always raining and the Shannon keeps the whole city damp. My father says the Shannon is a killer river because it killed my two brothers. When you look at pictures of Jesus He's always wandering around ancient Israel in a sheet. It never rains there and you never hear of anyone coughing or getting consumption or anything like that and no one has a job there because all they do is stand around and eat manna and shake their fists and go to crucifixions.

Anytime Jesus got hungry all He had to do was go up the road to a fig tree or an orange tree and have His fill. If He wanted a pint He could wave His hand over a big glass and there was the pint. Or He could visit Mary Magdalene and her sister, Martha, and they'd give Him His dinner no questions asked and He'd get his feet washed and dried with Mary Magdalene's hair while Martha washed the dishes, which I don't think is fair. Why should she have to wash the dishes while her sister sits out there chatting away with Our Lord? It's a good thing Jesus decided to be born Jewish in that warm place because if he was born in Limerick he'd catch the consumption and be dead in a month and there wouldn't be any Catholic Church and there wouldn't be any Communion or Confirmation and we wouldn't have to learn the catechism and write compositions about Him.

The End. ~ Frank McCourt

After they buy their tickets, Emma pulls him to the concession line. "Galen, do you mind?" she says, drawing a distracting circle on his arm with her finger, sending fire pretty much everywhere inside him. He recognizes the mischief in her eyes but not the particular game she's playing.
"Get whatever you want, Emma," he tells her. With a coy smile, she orders seventy-five dollars worth of candy, soda, and popcorn. By the cashier's expression, seventy-five dollars must be a lot. If the game is to spend all his money, she'll be disappointed. He brought enough cash for five more armfuls of this junk. He helps Emma carry two large fountain drinks, two buckets of popcorn and four boxes of candy to the top row of the half-full theater.
When she's situated in her seat, she tears into a box and dumps the contents in her hand. "Look, sweet lips, I got your favorite, Lemonheads!" Sweet lips? What the- Before he can turn away, she forces three of them into his mouth.
His instant pucker elicits an evil snicker from her. She pops a straw into one of the cups and hands it to him. "Better drink this," she whispers. "To take the bite out of the candy."
He should have known better. The drink is so full of bubbles it turns clear up to his nostrils. Pride keeps him from coughing. Pride, and the Lemonhead lodged in his throat. Several more heaping gulps and he gets it down.
After a few minutes, a sample of greasy popcorn, and the rest of the soda, the lights finally dim ~ Anna Banks

Acting is merely the art of keeping a large group of people from coughing. ~ Ralph Richardson

What should we call him?" Klaus asked.
"You should call him Dr. Montgomery," Mr. Poe replied, "unless he tells you to call him Montgomery. Both his first and last names are Montgomery, so it doesn't make much difference."
"His name is Montgomery Montgomery?" Klaus said, smiling.
"Yes, and I'm sure he's very sensitive about that, so don't ridicule him," Mr. Poe said, coughing again into his handkerchief. ~ Lemony Snicket

Trina, I never expected to fall in love again. I thought I got my shot, and I was okay with that, because I had my girls. I didn't realize anything was missing. Then came you."
Ms. Rothschild's hands are covering her mouth. She has tears in her eyes.
"I want to spend the rest of my life with you, Trina." Ms. Rothschild starts choking on her candy, and Daddy leaps up off his knee and starts pounding her on the back. She's coughing like crazy.
From his tree Peter whispers, "Should I go do the Heimlich on her? I know how to do it."
"Peter, my dad's a doctor!" I whisper back. "He's got it."
As her coughing subsides, she stands up straight and wipes her eyes. "Wait. Were you asking me to marry you?"
"I was trying to," Daddy says. "Are you all right?"
"Yes!" She claps her hands to her cheeks.
"Yes, you're all right, or yes, you'll marry me?" Daddy asks her, and he's only half kidding.
"Yes, I'll marry you!" she screams, and Daddy reaches for her, and they kiss.
"This feels private," I whisper to Kitty.
"It's all part of the show," she whispers back.
Daddy hands Ms. Rothschild the ring box. I can't quite make out what he says next, but whatever it was, it makes her double over laughing.
"What's he saying?" Kitty asks me, just as Peter says, "What did he say?"
"I can't hear! Both of you be quiet! You're ruining the video!"
Which is when Ms. Rothschild looks over in our direction.
Shoot.
We all pop ba ~ Jenny Han

I became Cinderella, Stella and Marcella were my evil stepsisters. If the house had mice and roaches and a damp garret, I would be living there. If we were using coals, I would be coughing over a smoking fire.
Was I not lucky to be a modern day Cinderella? At least I did not have to sleep among the cinders. ~ Gita V. Reddy

The lobby of the Nelson Hotel always smells of the river
it's in the pores of the place
but this evening the smell is heavier than usual. It's a smell that makes us think of bad ideas, blown investments, forged checks, deteriorating health, stolen office supplies, unpaid alimony, empty promises, skin tumors, lost ambition, abandoned sample cases filled with cheap novelties, dead hope, dead skin, and fallen arches.
This is the kind of place you don't come to unless you've been here before and all your other options are pretty much foreclosed. It's a place where men who left their families two decades before now lie on narrow beds with pee-stained mattresses, coughing and smoking cigarettes. ~ Stephen King

So, I am a refugee, and I get very lonely. Is it my fault if I do not look like an English girl and I do not talk like a Nigerian? Well who says an English girl must have skin as pale as the clouds that float across her summers? Who says a Nigerian girl must speak in fallen English, as if English had collided with Ibo, high in the upper atmosphere, and rained down into her mouth in a shower that half-drowns her and leaves her choking up sweet tales about the bright African colours and the taste of fried plantain? Not like a storyteller, but like a victim rescued from the flood, coughing up the colonial water from her lungs?

Excuse me for learning your language properly. I am here to tell you a real story. I did not come to talk to you about the bright African colours. I am a born-again citizen of the developing world, and I will prove to you that the colour of my life is grey. ~ Chris Cleave

Rosethorn had gone to her room the moment Niko started to cough. Now she returned with her syrup and a firm look in her eye. "I thought you were having trouble last night. Drink this." She poured some into a cup and held it out to him.
Niko looked at it as if she offered him rotten fish. "I am fine. I am per-" He couldn't even finish the sentence for coughing.
"It's not bad," said Tris, crossing her fingers behind her back. "Really, tastes like-like mangoes."
Niko looked at her, then took the cup and downed its contents. The four watched with interest as his cheeks turned pale, then scarlet. "That's terrible (exclamation point)" he cried, his voice a thin squeak.
"Maybe I was thinking of some other syrup," Tris remarked with a straight face. ~ Tamora Pierce

Ranulf stared blankly into the campfire, trying to ignore Lily.
"White horses always look dirty," Lily told the young smitten soldier sitting beside her. "That's why I refuse to ride them.Brown ones may be just as filthy,but at least I cannot see the dirt. Black ones less so,but I have found that in general dark horses suit me better."
"You just think you look better on them," Edythe protested before succumbing to several seconds of coughing.
Bronwyn studied her redheaded sister for a moment.Tyr put another blanket around Edythe's shoulders and eventually the coughs quieted. Turning her attention to Ranulf,Bronwyn promised him softly, "You'll have to ignore them."
Ranulf grimaced and sent a reproving look to his youngest sister-in-law. It,just like the others he had sent Lily throughout the day,changed nothing. "I just find it hard to reconcile the child I hear now with the woman who appeared after your death. With you gone,she had to grow up.Now that you are back..."
Bronwyn snuggled up against his side with a sigh. "I admit I encourage it.Life will force Lily to grow up soon enough and I am glad it was not my death that thrust it upon her. In the meantime,you ignore her prattle and I'll just be amused it," she advised before planting a gentle kiss on his arm.
Ranulf,with his free hand, raked his fingers through his short hair. How had he gotten into this predicament? But it took only one look at the huddled form next to him to remember exactly ~ Michele Sinclair

And me all the while having to pee - coughing into the mike when my throat was tired and raw - eyes stinging and lips and chin crumpling in grief at his anger. The sweet tinkle of Electra on the bass and Iphy on the treble with Mama's voice counting, "One and two and ... " as the twins had their piano lesson inside the trailer. The gurgle and hum of the pumps that filtered my brother Arty's "Aqua Boy" tank. And the dim round moon of baby Fortunato's face peering at me from the dark of the risers above Papa. ~ Katherine Dunn

I slept quietly so that I would breathe without coughing, and felt a curious indifference. I even felt like I had been waiting for that night for a long time. The words "heart's desire" came to mind. ~ Osamu Dazai

A lot of women want children."
"Right," he said, coughing on the word. "Of course. But… don‟t you think you might want a husband first?"
"Of course. ~ Julia Quinn

The Evil Enchanter appeared in a cloud of smoke. He waved his arms to fan away the fumes, and when he quit coughing, he said, "You've come to rescue no one. Now that you're here, you shall marry me." He waved his arms once, and a priest appeared in a cloud of smoke. After everyone quit coughing, he turned to the priest and said, "Marry me!"
The priest said, "But I don't know you."
"No, no, no!" said the Evil Enchanter. "Marry me to the princess!"
"Oh," said the priest. "That's different. ~ Michael Stearns

Permission Granted"

You do not have to choose the bruised peach
or misshapen pepper others pass over.
You don't have to bury
your grandmother's keys underneath
her camellia bush as the will states.

You don't need to write a poem about
your grandfather coughing up his lung
into that plastic tube - the machine's wheezing
almost masking the kvetching sisters
in their Brooklyn kitchen.

You can let the crows amaze your son
without your translation of their cries.
You can lie so long under this
summer shower your imprint
will be left when you rise.

You can be stupid and simple as a heifer.
Cook plum and apple turnovers in the nude.
Revel in the flight of birds without
dreaming of flight. Remember the taste of
raw dough in your mouth as you edged a pie.

Feel the skin on things vibrate. Attune
yourself. Close your eyes. Hum.
Each beat of the world's pulse demands
only that you feel it. No thoughts.
Just the single syllable: Yes ...

See the homeless woman following
the tunings of a dead composer?
She closes her eyes and sways
with the subways. Follow her down,
inside, where the singing resides. ~ David Allen Sullivan

He found that he had this sudden desperate longing for the fuming, smoky streets of Ankh-Morpork, which was always at its best in the spring, when the gummy sheen on the turbid waters of the Ankh River had a special iridescence and the eaves were full of birdsong, or at least birds coughing rhythmically ~ Terry Pratchett

Kurt Vonnegut speaking to John Irving while Irving was administering the Heimlich maneuver in response to Vonnegut's uncontrollable coughing ... John,stop- I am not choking. I have emphysema. ~ Kurt Vonnegut

The worst moment was when I was performing and I was about to sing, but I choked. I had a tickle in my throat and I started coughing, and I couldn't get the words out. It lasted for like thirty seconds, but I got over it, and luckily the crowd didn't seem to care. ~ Chris Brown

One of my sisters wanted to be an opera singer. So, we spent a few dollars to try to train her, because Italian people would like to have an opera singer in the family. But she's got trouble coughing, let alone singing. One day, she was in the shower singing 'Madame Butterfly,' three days later the Japs attacked Pearl Harbor. ~ Pat Cooper

At some point in this course, perhaps even tonight, you will read something difficult, something you only partially understand, and your verdict will be this is stupid. Will I argue when you advance that opinion in class the next day? Why would I do such a useless ting? My time with you in short, only thirty-four weeks of classes, and I will not waste it arguing about the merits of this short story or that poem. Why would I, when all such opinions are subjective, and no final resolution can ever be reached?'

Some of the kids - Gloria was one of them - now looked lost, but Pete understood exactly what Mr. Ricker, aka Ricky the Hippie, was talking about...

'Time is the answer," Mr Ricker said on the first day of Pete's sophomore year. He strode back and forth, antique bellbottoms swishing, occasionally waving his arms. "Yes! Time mercilessly culls away the is-stupid from the not-stupid."
...
"It will occur for you, young ladies and gentlemen, although I will be in your rear-view mirror by the time it happens. Shall I tell you how it happens? You will read something - perhaps 'Dulce et Decorum Est,' by Wilfred Owen. Shall we use that as an example? Why not?'

Then, in a deeper voice that sent chills up Pete's back and tightened his throat, Mr. Ricker cried, " 'Bent double, like old beggars under sacks, Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge...' And son on. Cetra-cetra. Some of you will say, This is stupid."

~ Stephen King

It is the middle of the night. I am woken up by an enormous explosion. When I look out of the window I see my dad. He is coughing and choking and he is coming out of the garden shed. My ~ Abigail Hornsea

This moment, this being, is the thing. My life is all life in little. The moon, the planets, pass around my heart. The sun, now hidden by the round bulk of this earth, shines into me, and in me as well. The gods and the angels both good and bad are like the hairs of my own head, seemingly numberless, and growing from within. I people the cosmos from myself, it seems, yet what am I? A puff of dust, or a brief coughing spell, with emptiness and silence to follow. ~ Alexander Eliot

You are the strangest girl I've ever met," he said, like he thought I was joking. He picked up his water bottle and gave me a sideways glance. "Have you ever kissed anybody?" he asked, and took a sip.
I smirked. "There aren't a whole lot of opportunities in the digital world. I did practice on my hand once. It didn't do anything for me."
Justin coughed on the water he was swallowing and I slapped my hand over my mouth.
"Did I just say that out loud?" I mumbled.
He was half coughing, half laughing. "Yes, you did," he managed to say.
"Delete, delete, delete," I said, and pushed an imaginary button in the air. "I really miss that feature."
"No, that's the good stuff. People always want to delete the good stuff." His eyes lit up. "That's a cool idea, though. What would you say, right now, if you could immediately delete it, so no one read it? ~ Katie Kacvinsky

Winter's here, and you feel lousy: You're coughing and sneezing; your muscles ache; your nose is an active mucus volcano. These symptoms
so familiar at this time of year
can mean only one thing: Tiny fanged snails are eating your brain. ~ Dave Barry

I howl at the roof like a hotted-up bomb doing donuts, full of screeches. I howl like an air-raid siren, my arms stretched out wide. Howls are like songs. They can't be summoned; they just happen. They come from a place that I barely understand. And then something else climbs to the surface, something black and jagged, something from the deep. Imagine all your worse feelings surfacing. Imagine coughing up razor blades. Imagine not being able to stop the pain from coming out, and not knowing when it's going to end. ~ Leanne Hall

That was Big Fucking Mistake Number Two.
Ten minutes later, he heard Zoe coughing on the monitor and realized that he'd forgotten to keep her upright after he'd fed her. He ran into her room and scooped her up just in time for her to throw up all over both of them, a full-out, volcanic-style heaving that spewed out of her mouth and nose. Which was doubly disconcerting because, (A) holy shit, no one had ever warned him that something so tiny and cute could puke like a drunken frat boy who'd just gorged on a double-stuffed burrito, and (B) now Zoe was hollering like a banshee-Who left the dumbass in charge of me? Help!- ~ Julie James

My head cleared the water, and a strong arm wrapped around my middle as my lungs automatically sucked in air. I started coughing immediately, water sputtering out of my mouth.
I blinked against my blurred vision as commotion erupted around me.
"Help me, man," a voice said. It was desperate and raw.
Romeo.
"I got her," said another familiar voice, Braeden.
He slid his arms beneath my arms and towed me up out of the water. My legs buckled, and instead of letting me fall, he scooped me up and held me against him.
I dropped my head against his shoulder and wrinkled my nose. He didn't feel right.
The sound of splashing water drifted over, and I flinched against the sound.
"I got her," Romeo said, and I was shifted against a chest I knew very well.
I was home.
I whimpered because he felt so good, and his arms tightened around me.
"Don't let anyone in the house," Romeo said, and I heard Braeden agree. ~ Cambria Hebert

He woke before dawn and watched the gray day break. Slow and half opaque. He rose while the boy slept and pulled on his shoes and wrapped in his blanket he walked out through the trees. He descended into a gryke in the stone and there he crouched coughing and he coughed for a long time. Then he just knelt in the ashes. He raised his face to the paling day. Are you there? he whispered. Will I see you at the last? Have you a neck by which to throttle you? Have you a heart? Damn you eternally have you a soul? Oh God, he whispered. Oh God. ~ Cormac McCarthy

My dear doctor, I am surprised to hear you say that I am coughing very badly, as I have been practising all night. ~ John Philpot Curran

Kids don't have a little brother working in the coal mine, they don't have a little sister coughing her lungs out in the looms of the big mill towns of the Northeast. Why? Because we organized; we broke the back of the sweatshops in this country; we have child labor laws. Those were not benevolent gifts from enlightened management. They were fought for, they were bled for, they were died for by working people, by people like us. Kids ought to know that. That's why I sing these songs. That's why I tell these stories, dammit. No root, no fruit! ~ Utah Phillips

Five sicks people in the hospital (56). I made each one a "Get well soon" card saying I was sorry for coughing in their general direction on the 4th of November, and I hope that wasn't a contributing factor for their illnesses. ~ Jarod Kintz

Now i did think, The smoke will drive the bugs away. And, to some degree,it did. I'd be lying, though, if I claimed I became a smoker to ward off insects.I became a smoker because 1. I was on an Adirondack swing by myself, and 2. I had cigarettes, and 3.I figured that if everyone else could smoke a cigarette without coughing, I could damn well, too.In short, I didn't have a very good reason. So yeah, let's just say that 4.it was the bugs. I made it through three drags before I felt nauseuos and dizzy and only semipleasantly buzzed. I got up to leave As I stood, a voice behind me. ~ John Green

Acting: An art which consists of keeping the audience from coughing. ~ Ralph Richardson

MERCUTIO: Thou art like one of those fellows that when
he enters the confines of a tavern claps me his sword
upon the table and says "God send me no need of
thee!" and by the operation of the second cup draws it
on the drawer, when indeed there is no need.
BENVOLIO: Am I like such a fellow?
MERCUTIO: Come, come, thou art as hot a Jack in thy
mood as any in Italy, and as soon moved to be moody,
and as soon moody to be moved.
BENVOLIO: And what to?
MERCUTIO: Nay, an there were two such, we should
have none shortly, for one would kill the other. Thou!
why, thou wilt quarrel with a man that hath a hair
more, or a hair less, in his beard, than thou hast: thou
wilt quarrel with a man for cracking nuts, having no
other reason but because thou hast hazel eyes: what eye
but such an eye would spy out such a quarrel? Thy head
is as fun of quarrels as an egg is full of meat, and yet thy
head hath been beaten as addle as an egg for
quarrelling: thou hast quarrelled with a man for
coughing in the street, because he hath wakened thy
dog that hath lain asleep in the sun: didst thou not fall
out with a tailor for wearing his new doublet before
Easter? with another, for tying his new shoes with old
riband? and yet thou wilt tutor me from quarrelling!
BENVOLIO: An I were so apt to quarrel as thou art, any
man should buy the fee-simple of my life for an hour
and ~ William Shakespeare

Here's a tip for you." He was close to me now, close as he had been when he kissed me, or when I kissed him. "Don't try to hit a man in the face when he's looking straight into your eyes. You've got traitor eyes, Bandit."

I drove my other fist into his gut hard enough that my knuckles popped. Jin doubled over, coughing. "Thanks for the tip. ~ Alwyn Hamilton

Kingsley could 'do' the sound of a brass band approaching on a foggy day. He could become the Metropolitan line train entering Edgware Road station. He could be four wrecked tramps coughing in a bus shelter (this was very demanding and once led to heart palpitations). To create the hiss and crackle of a wartime radio broadcast delivered by Franklin Delano Roosevelt was for him scant problem (a tape of it, indeed, was played at his memorial meeting, where I was hugely honored to be among the speakers). The pièce de résistance, an attempt by British soldiers to start up a frozen two-ton truck on a windy morning 'somewhere in Germany,' was for special occasions only. One held one's breath as Kingsley emitted the first screech of the busted starting-key. His only slightly lesser vocal achievement - of a motor-bike yelling in mechanical agony - once caused a man who had just parked his own machine in the street to turn back anxiously and take a look. The old boy's imitation of an angry dog barking the words 'fuck off' was note-perfect. ~ Christopher Hitchens

The grime was no man's grime but death and human locomotives,
all that dress of dust, that veil of darkened railroad skin, that smog of cheek, that eyelid of black mis'ry, that sooty hand or phallus or protuberance of artificial worse-than-dirt - industrial - modern - all that civilization spotting your crazy golden crown
and those blear thoughts of death and dusty loveless eyes and ends and withered roots below, in the home-pile of sand and sawdust, rubber dollar bills, skin of machinery, the guts and innards of the weeping coughing car, the empty lonely tincans with their rusty tongues alack, what more could I name, the smoked ashes of some cock cigar, the cunts of wheelbarrows and the milky breasts of cars, wornout asses out of chairs & sphincters of dynamos - all these
entangled in your mummied roots - and you there standing before me in the sunset, all your glory in your form! ~ Allen Ginsberg

I'm not going to be able to sleep a wink tonight.
I hate shelters.
People coughing and snoring and hacking up who-knows-what.
It's a nightmare.
But I do have clean teeth. ~ Wendelin Van Draanen

He was in love with his wife.
The knowledge came like a tidal wave that swept him up and knocked him over to then rise, coughing and bruised, shaking his head as he wondered what the hel had happened. He stood there in the middle of the room as she ignored him, and watched his life veer off the main highway to a road fil ed with rocks and brush and potholes.
Staggered with emotion, he took a step back as if to retreat from the whole mess.
Son of a bitch.
He was in love with his wife. ~ Jennifer Probst

These stories at times to be stories of a long-lost world when the city of New York was still filled with a river light, when you heard Benny Goodman quartets from a radio in the corner stationary store, when almost everybody wore a hat. Here is the last of that generation of chain smokers who woke to the world in the morning with their coughing, who used to get stoned at cocktail parties and perform obsolete dance steps like 'the Cleveland Chicken,' sail for Europe on ships, who were nostalgic for love and happiness, and whose gods were as ancient as yours and mine, whoever you are. ~ John Cheever

See the man they are fitting into the bottom slot. He is coughing badly. No, not pneumonia. Not tuberculosis. Nothing so picturesque. Gently, gently, stretcher-bearers… he is about done. He is coughing up clots of pinky-green filth. Only his lungs, Mother and Mrs. Evans-Mawington. He is coughing well to-night. That is gas. You've heard of gas. Haven't you? It burns and shrivels the lungs to… to the mess you see on the ambulance floor there. He's about the age of Bertie, Mother. Not unlike Bertie, either, with his gentle brown eyes and fair curly hair. Bertie would look up pleading like that in between coughing up his lungs… The son you have so generously given to the War. Cough, cough, little fair-haired boy. Perhaps somewhere your mother is thinking of you… boasting of the life she has so nobly given… the life you thought was your own, but which is hers to squander as she thinks fit. 'My boy is not a slacker, thank God.' Cough away, little boy, cough away. What does it matter, providing your mother doesn't have to face the shame of her son's cowardice? ~ Helen Zenna Smith

One judge is coughing his life out into bloody handkerchiefs and the other is burying his wife, and you think this is how God answers your prayers? ~ Orson Scott Card

Did you know that the United States is ranked fiftieth in the world in life expectancy? And the forty-nine loser countries where they live longer than us...they live shackled to the tyranny of nonprofit health care. Here in America, you're not coughing up blood, little Bobby, you're coughing up freedom! ~ Bill Maher

Forty feet long sixty feet high hotel
Covered with old gray for buzzing flies
Eye like mango flowing orange pus
Ears Durga people vomiting in their sleep
Got huge legs a dozen buses move inside Calcutta
Swallowing mouthfuls of dead rats
Mangy dogs bark out of a thousand breasts
Garbage pouring from its ass behind alleys
Always pissing yellow Hooghly water
Bellybutton melted Chinatown brown puddles
Coughing lungs Sound going down the sewer
Nose smell a big gray Bidi
Heart bumping and crashing over tramcar tracks
Covered with a hat of cloudy iron
Suffering water buffalo head lowered
To pull the huge cart of year uphill ~ Allen Ginsberg

Meanwhile a certain amount of moaning and groaning was coming from upstairs. Sophie kept muttering to the dog and ignored it. A loud, hollow coughing followed, dying away into more moaning. Crashing sneezes followed the coughing, each one rattling the window and all the doors. Sophie found those harder to ignore, but she managed. Poot-pooooot! went a blown nose, like a bassoon in a tunnel. The coughing started again, mingled with moans. Sneezes mixed with the moans and the coughs, and the sounds rose to a crescendo in which Howl seemed to be managing to cough, groan, blow his nose, sneeze, and wail gently all at the same time. The doors rattled, the beams in the ceiling shook, and one of Calcifer's logs rolled off onto the hearth.
"All right, all right, I get the message!" Sophie said, dumping the log back into the grate. "It'll be green slime next". ~ Diana Wynne Jones

Don't be an asshole"
Rhage summed up the regurgitation with two words: "Kettle.Black."
Fucking hell. "Did you guys plan that out?"
"Yeah and if you don't fight us"- Hollywood bit down on the grape Tootsie Pop-"we'll do it again- only with the dance moves this time"
"Spare me."
"Fine.Unless you agree to home it,we WILL rock the dance moves." To prove the point ,the moron linked his palms behind his head and started doing something obscene with his hips. Which was backed up by a series of,"Uh-huh,uh-huh,ohhhh, yeeeeeeah,who's your daddy..."
The others looked at Rhage like he'd grown a horn in the middle of his forehead. Nothing unusual there. And Tohr knew that, in spite of this ridiculous diversion,if he didn't cave,the lot of them would crawl so far up his ass,he'd be coughing up shitkickers.
Rhage wheeled around,shoved out his butt,and started slapping his moneymaker like it was bread dough.
"For the love of the Virgin Scribe,"Z muttered "put us out of this misery, and go the fuck home"
Someone else chimed in, "You know, I never thought there were advantages to being blind..."
"Or deaf"
"Or mute," somebody added ~ J.R. Ward

Violet heard the coughing and came running back. She sank down on the bench beside Rose, putting her arm around the older girl and holding a handkerchief to Rose's lips. "What happened?" she asked Galen, her tone just shy of being accusatory.

"I am so sorry, Your Highness," Galen said, backing away. "I made her laugh, and–"

"You made her laugh?" Violet's eyes widened. "She hasn't laughed in weeks!" She smiled at Galen and gave Rose's shoulders a little squeeze. ~ Jessica Day George

Cole exhales coughing. "You best back it up buckaroo- before I turn you black and blue. ~ Giorge Leedy

I asked a coughing friend of mine why he doesn't stop smoking. 'In this town it wouldn't do any good,' he explained. 'I happen to be a chain breather.' ~ Robert Sylvester

A central principle underlying Mrs Quinty's Rules for Writing is that you have to have a Beginning Middle and End. If you don't have these your Reader is lost. But what if Lost is exactly where the writer is? I asked her. Ruth, the writer can't be lost, she said, and then knew she'd said it too quickly and bit her lip knowing I was going to say something about Dad. She pressed her knees together and diverted into a fit of dry coughing. This, Dear Reader, is a river narrative. My chosen style is The Meander. I know that in The Brothers Karamazov (Book 1,777, Penguin Classics, London) Ippolit Kirillovich chose the historical form of narration because Dostoevsky says it checked his own exuberant rhetoric. Beginnings middles and ends force you into that place where you have to Stick to the Story as Maeve Mulvey said the night the Junior Certs were supposed to be going to the cinema in Ennis but were buying cans in Dunnes and drinking ~ Niall Williams

It's not bad to cough. But cover your mouth when coughing. It's not bad to complain. But cover your mouth when complaining, else you'll spread infections of complains on us! ~ Israelmore Ayivor

Every night was a somber, adults-only slumber party - no giggles or whispers, just lots of coughing and farting and snoring and groaning, the sounds and smells of too many stressed-out of people packed into too small a place. ~ Tom Perrotta

One should not chug an entire glass of wine at an elegant dinner party. I start hacking and coughing, having practically water-boarded myself out of sheer humiliation. ~ Lisa Daily

Well ... I'm on birth control"
I was drinking the water again and choked on it. It took several moments of coughing before I could gasp out. "What?"
"It takes a while for it to start working, so I figured I should be prepared, just in case."
"Just in case," I repeated, still dumbfounded. ~ Richelle Mead

Sometimes, drunk, I ruminate on the state of my liver, and think of all the cirrhotics I have watched turn yellow and die. They either bleed out, raving, coughing up and drowning in blood from ruptured esophageal veins, or, in coma, they slip away, slip blissfully away down the yellow-brick ammonia-scented road to oblivion. ~ Samuel Shem

A wave rocked her and he grabbed for her, pulling her against him. His warm, wet skin brushed against hers, and then his arms were around her, his mouth on hers as he tangled his legs with hers.
Kat lost herself in his kiss, in his mouth, in his touch, as the ocean waves gently rocked them and the sky paled into twilight. A rogue wave dropped over them, driving them underwater - and apart. Kat kicked her way to the surface, coughing on the salt water.
Max came up looking as surprised by the kiss as the wave that had almost drowned them. "I didn't mean for that to happen. But you looked so damned... kissable. ~ B. J. Daniels

Are you all right?'
'It's okay,' he says, 'I think I just swallowed some dark.'
He has the notion that darkness is a substance. It will make you choke if you swallow too much in one go. I could have put him straight with some prosaic account of the coughing reflex being triggered by the shock of the cold air rather than a mouthful of darkness, but I didn't I stashed away the treasured image and left him with the version of reality fashioned by his infant brain. ~ Paul Broks

I am writing a treatise just now" said the badger, coughing diffidently to show that he was absolutely set on explaining it, "which is to point out why Man has become the master of the animals. Perhaps you would like to hear it? It's for my doctor's degree you know," he added hastily, before Wart could protest. He got few chances of reading his treatise to anybody, so he could not bear to let the opportunity slip by. ~ T.H. White

Alessandro! Will!!" He could hear Brianna's voice a few seconds before his head came up through to the next floor.
Stubborn, bloody woman! he cursed.
"Oh God, Will!" Bree screamed. "What happened?" She rushed towards them, coughing as she grabbed for her son. He shifted his weight to hand him over to her, but the movement sent another bolt of screaming pain from his ankle up to his leg and Alessandro lost his footing, falling back into the basement.
Alessandro!" Bree screamed, and then he heard no more. ~ E. Jamie

Listen," said the Master, coughing. "Don't search the ends of the Earth looking for your happiness. Perfection is being happy with what you are right now."

"What if you're an asshole?" someone called.

The Master offered a weak smile. "I doubt very much," he said, "that many happy people are assholes. ~ Michael Poore

P.P.P.P.S. Also, if you try to make a shrimp boil, but the bag of spices bursts, and so you just toss it in along with whatever spices you can find in the pantry
you can make homemade pepper spray. Unintentionally.
And everyone at your dinner party will run outside for the next hour, coughing and tearing up as if they've been maced, because technically they kind of have been, because mace was one of the spices I found in the panty. I blame whoever makes spice out of mace, and I remind my gasping dinner guests that even if I did mace them, I did it in an old fashioned, homemade, Martha Stewart sort of way. With love. ~ Jenny Lawson

Some days i'm bursting at the seams
With all my half remembered dreams
And then it shoots me down again
I feel the dampness as it creeps
I hear you coughing in your sleep
Beneath a broken window pane
Tomorrow girl i'll buy you chips
A lollipop to stain your lips
And it'll all be right as rain
This ain't no love that's guiding me
~ David Gray

... All will be
forgotten, everything you perceived, thought,
dreamed, hoped, remembered ... all the past
all the crawling fucking coughing chestpounding
nose-picking and deathward attempts
to make real some desperate desire, like
standing upright for a minute in the sun. The
sun that will die. ~ Franz Wright

Avery started coughing. ~ Jack Conner

Finally, three smashing chords to finish, obviously intended to set off a roar of applause. I start to clap, but the man with the score glares again. One does not applaud in the midst of greatly great great music, even if the composer wants one to! Coughing, squirming, whispering, the crowd suppresses its urge to express pleasure. It's like mass anal retention. ~ Alex Ross

I know two kinds of audiences only - one coughing, and one not coughing. ~ Artur Schnabel

At least part of the reason I am a SNOOT is that for years my mom brainwashed us in all sort of subtle ways. Here's an example. Family suppers often involved a game: if one of us children made a usage error, Mom would pretend to have a coughing fit that would go on and on until the relevant child had identified the relevant error and corrected it. It was all very self-ironic and lighthearted; but still, looking back, it seems a bit excessive to pretend that your small child is actually denying you oxygen by speaking incorrectly. ~ David Foster Wallace

She could hear a distant coughing of a sheep. ~ D.H. Lawrence

A puma is not a bird," said Tobias, after a hundred paces. "It is a kind of cat - felis concolor. You may see it soon: it is moving along with us, on the right."
The word cat brought nothing into Jack's mind but a fleeting image of a shabby, brownish-black little creature called Tib that disgraced the drawing-room at home, and he plodded on in silence. Every hundred yards or so they changed shoulders, and during the third change there was a coughing noise to their right, a series of coughs, huge, deep, throaty coughs, that culminated in a shattering roar, unimaginably loud.
"Not a bird, Jack, you see," said Tobias.
"How big?" cried Jack, vividly alive now, with terror coursing up and down his spine.
"The size of an indifferent lion," said Tobias. "You can see him if you bend and look under the yellow bush. He is tearing up the earth, and biting it."
"Can he climb?"
"Oh, admirably."
"Toby, what shall we do?"
"Why, unless you wish to go and look at him, we had better go on. It is getting late. But do not hurry so, Jack, nor make jerking movements. If he should come out, take no notice of him, or look at him kindly - do not provoke him. He is not a froward puma, I believe. ~ Patrick O'Brian

She's a great cook."
"Yeah," Carmine said. "Probably the Italian in her."
[ ... ]
Dominic laughed. "Must be. You know damn well she has Carmine's full-blooded Italian in her all the time."
Carmine's muscles went rigid, and Vincent started coughing as he choked on his drink. Celia snorted, trying to hold back her amusement, but Dominic didn't bother containing himself. ~ J.M. Darhower

Sunset and evening star hunching and bending sleeping and slipping virus pneumonia coughing and crying hope in the small things heaven looks brighter aching and falling earth is still darkness slip into sleeping sleepings of death dead now and buried cold now and crumbling dust now and hope-filled heaven is hope (and loneliness lingers in those left behind) ~ Chila Woychik

You don't need treatment. The fever, inflammation, coughing, etc., constitute the healing process. Just get out of their way and permit them to complete their work. Don't try to 'aid' nature. She doesn't need your puny aid - she only asks that you cease interfering. ~ Herbert M. Shelton

We have the same symptoms as tuberculosis, especially in the eyes of the Romantic Poets. Pale, tired, coughing up blood."
"That's romantic?"
I had to smile. "Romantic with a capital 'R.' You know, like Byron and Coleridge."
He gave a mock shudder. "Please, stop. I barely passed English Lit."
I snorted. "I didn't have that option. One of my aunts took Byron as a lover."
"Get out."
"Seriously. It makes Lucy insanely jealous."
"That girl is . . ."
"My best friend," I filled in sternly.
"I was only going to say she's unique. ~ Alyxandra Harvey

The Russian commands sound like the name of the camp commandant. Shishtvanyanov: a gnashing and spluttering collection of ch, sh, tch, shch. We can't understand the actual words, but we sense the contempt. You get used to contempt. After a while the commands just sound like a constant clearing of the throat - coughing, sneezing, nose blowing, hacking up mucus. Trudi Pelikan said: Russian is a language that's caught a cold. ~ Herta Muller

Let me drive," she said, reaching for the reins.
He turned to her in disbelief. "This is a phaeton, not a single-horse wagon."
Sophie fought the urge to throttle him. His nose was running, his eyes were red, he couldn't stop coughing, and still he found the energy to act like an arrogant peacock. "I assure you," she said slowly, "that I know how to drive a team of horses. ~ Julia Quinn

I know. You're a male escort, and you were on your way to your latest…what are female clients called? Not Johns…Jean's?"
He choked on his cracker, and Bree reached over and patted his back until his coughing fit passed. "Afraid not, darling." He wheezed.
"Male stripper?"
He snorted. "I don't know if I should be flattered or insulted by that."
"Some kind of business tycoon, right?" Bree asked. "A pretty Donald Trump?"
"Pretty? Oh dear."
Bree raised her hands. "Handsome. Handsome. Better? ~ E. Jamie

Tobias," I say anyway. My hands shake, but not from fear this time– from anger. "Where is he? What are you doing to him?"
"I see no reason to provide that information," says Jeanine...

I make my voice flat and factual, like hers. "I see no reason to provide that information."
I hear a faint snort. Peter is covering his mouth. Jeanine glares at him, and his laughter effortlessly transforms into a coughing fit.
"Mockery is childish, Beatrice," she says. "It does not become you."
"Mockery is childish, Beatrice," I repeat in my best imitation of her voice. "It does not become you." ~ Veronica Roth

What he confessed was this. He had not been serving God, after all, when he followed Allen Dulles. He had been on a satanic quest.
These were some of James Jesus Angleton's dying words. He delivered them between fits of calamitous coughing - lung-scraping seizures that still failed to break him of his cigarette habit - and soothing sips of tea. "Fundamentally, the founding fathers of U.S. intelligence were liars," Angleton told Trento in an emotionless voice. "The better you lied and the more you betrayed, the more likely you would be promoted. . . . Outside of their duplicity, the only thing they had in common was a desire for absolute power. I did things that, in looking back on my life, I regret. But I was part of it and loved being in it."
He invoked the names of the high eminences who had run the CIA in his day - Dulles, Helms, Wisner. These men were "the grand masters," he said. "If you were in a room with them, you were in a room full of people that you had to believe would deservedly end up in hell."
Angleton took another slow sip from his steaming cup. "I guess I will see them there soon. ~ David Talbot

That night, Zalmai wakes up coughing. Before Laila can move, Tariq swings his legs over the side of the bed. He straps on his prosthesis and walks over to Zalmai, lifts him up into his arms. From the bed, Laila watches Tariq's shape moving back and forth in the darkness. She sees the outline of Zalmai's head on his shoulder, the knot of his hands at Tariq's neck, his small feet bouncing by Tariq's hip.
When Tariq comes back to bed, neither of them says anything. Laila reaches over and touches his face. Tariq's cheeks are wet. ~ Khaled Hosseini

The law presides over things of this world, finally. The world where shadow is shadow and light is light, yin is yin and yang is yang, I'm me and he's him. 'I am me and / He is him/ Autumn eve.' But you don't belong to that world, sonny. The world you belong to is above that or below that."

Which is better?" I asked, out of simple curiosity. "Above or below?"

It's not that either one is better," he said. After a brief coughing fit, he spat a glob of phlegm onto a tissue and studied it closely before crumpling the tissue and throwing it into a wastebasket. "It's not a question of better or worse. The point is, not to resist the flow. You go up when you're supposed to go up and down when you're supposed to go down. When you're supposed to go up, find the highest tower and climb to the top. When you're supposed to go down, find the deepest well and go down to the bottom. When there is no flow, stay still. If you resist the flow, everything dries up. If everything dries up, the world is darkness. 'I am he and/ He is me:/ Spring nightfall.' Abandon the self, and there you are. ~ Haruki Murakami

You are surprised that the world is losing its grip, that the world is grown old? Think of a man: he is born, he grows up, he becomes old. Old age has its many complaints: coughing, shaking, failing eyesight, anxious, terribly tired. A man grows old; he is full of complaints. The world is old; it is full of pressing tribulations. . . . Do not hold onto the old man, the world; do not refuse to regain your youth in Christ, who says to you, 'The world is passing away, the world is losing its grip, the world is short of breath. Do not fear. Thy youth shall be renewed as an eagle ~ Augustine Of Hippo

There is a peculiar strength that comes to one who is facing the final battle. That battle is not limited to war, nor the strength to warriors. I've seen this strength in old women with the coughing sickness and heard of it in families that are starving together. It drives one to go on, past hope or despair, past blood loss and gut wounds, past death itself in a final surge to save something that is cherished. It is courage without hope. During the Red-Ship Wars, I saw a man with blood gouting in spurts from where his left arm had once been yet swinging a sword with his right as he stood protecting a fallen comrade. During one encounter with Forged Ones, I saw a mother stumbling over her own entrails as she shrieked and clutched at a Forged man, trying to hold him away from her daughter.

The OutIslanders have a word for that courage. "Finblead", they call it, the last blood, and they believe that a special fortitude resides in the final blood that remains in a man or a woman before they fall. According to their tales, only then can one find and use that sort of courage.

It is a terrible bravery and at its strongest and worst, it goes on for months when one battles a final illness. Or, I believe, when one moves toward a duty that will result in death but is completely unavoidable. That "finblead" lights everything in one's life with a terrible radiance. All relationships are illuminated for what they are and for what they truly were in the past. All illus ~ Robin Hobb

I always start my morning the same way. Maybe it's something about living alone - you're able to get set in your ways, there's no outside disruptions, no flatmates to hoover up the last of the milk, no cat coughing up a hairball on the rug. You know that what you left in the cupboard the night before will be in the cupboard when you wake up. You're in control. Or ~ Ruth Ware

It ain't really Czechoslovakian,' I said, coughing. 'We used to call it the Cheque. Like, you drink it up now, you pay for it later. ~ Esi Edugyan

The high temperatures and the coughing had left them with a wise look, a sometimes sly look of the old, the tired, the ones who just lay and didn't care if the sun came up, or if it went down, and stayed down. They scared me; their haunted faces took me into dreams of death. ~ V.C. Andrews

Be less generous with your advice: live it instead. It is a bad situation when someone with a coughing fit attempts to sell a cough mixture. After all, action speaks far louder than words; living the example is the best advice you can ever give. Only examples have children. ~ Nana Awere Damoah