Heartbeats Quotes

You have to slow your heart rate, stay calm. You have to shoot in between your heartbeats. ~ Chris Kyle

These were the new girls of New York- complete with rapid heartbeats from too much nicotine and coffee. They were nervous and fluttery but completely alluring- the new face of urban femininity. ~ Elizabeth Winder

Regret, to no end, in every hour
Of a long life. What beautiful work
Will redeem the heartbeats of a living creature
And what use to confess deeds that last forever? ~ Czesław Miłosz

Music without passion is merely noise. A life without passion? You may as well be dead. ~ Rachel Van Dyken

We are nervous laughter and fast breath and faster heartbeats, alive alive alive. ~ Amy Zhang

I like looking at your body," she said.
"Thank you. I like looking at you, period," I responded. She removed her shirt. She asked for help with her bra. We embraced. Our skins touched. I felt her heart beat against my chest. I felt my heart beating. Our heartbeats became one. One heartbeat. We became one. Time passed. I looked at my watch. 10:10. I stood. She remained on the bed, defining beauty.
"It's getting close to eleven, baby. You should probably get up," I said, looking for my shirt. I ran my hands through my hair.
"Stand right there," she said. "Don't move." I stood. She reached to the side of the bed, and got her phone from her purse. She held it at arm's length. "Don't move," she said.
"I heard you," I responded. I stood. She took three photos. "I wish I could paint a picture of you," I said.
"Do you paint?" she asked.
"No," I responded, "But I wish I could. I would paint a picture of you right now, lying there without your shirt. I could stand here, Britney, and admire you for all of what is forever. You make me want to cry. But. That part of me is broken. ~ Scott Hildreth

Walking through a crowd, the village is aglow. Kaleidoscope of loud heartbeats, under coats. Everybody here wanted something more. Searching for a sound we hadn't heard before. And it said, 'Welcome to New York,' It's been waiting for you. It's a new soundtrack, I could dance to this beat forevermore. The lights are so bright, but they never blind me. ~ Taylor Swift

I hear his heartbeats as my own, I feel his urgency as my own, our covalent union making of us both a new, charged, unknown substance; so too my skin, my liquidy skin, is both our separation and our merger, it is our shared, evanescent frontier; yet when he kisses the valley of my belly so long and so shiver-warm I realize that I am also beyond his skin's extremity, I am past the barrier of his skin, I am also living within him, for the juncture is no longer clear: utterly, entirely, I feel his response to me, I feel his churning when I surge; and it is sublime circuitry, this overlap, this confusion, giving me new contours, new periphery, expand­ing me into added dimensions,... ~ Evan Dara

We are aberrations - beings born undead, neither one thing nor another, or two things at once ... uncanny things that have nothing to do with the rest of creation, horrors that poison the world by sowing our madness everywhere we go, glutting daylight and darkness with incorporeal obscenities. From across an immeasurable divide, we brought the supernatural into all that is manifest. Like a faint haze it floats around us. We keep company with ghosts. Their graves are marked in our minds, and they will never be disinterred from the cemeteries of our remembrance. Our heartbeats are numbered, our steps counted. Even as we survive and reproduce, we know ourselves to be dying in a dark corner of infinity. Wherever we go, we know not what expects our arrival but only that it is there. ~ Thomas Ligotti

I love the rain. It calms me down, somehow, soothes my reckless heartbeats. It's like chamomile tea for my soul. ~ Jodi Perkins

I loved driving with Marlboro Man. I saw things I'd never seen before, things I'd never even considered in my two and a half decades of city life. For the first time ever, I began to grasp the concept of north, south, east, and west, though I imagine it would take another twenty-five years before I got them straight. I saw fence lines and gates made of welded iron pipe, and miles upon miles of barbed wire. I saw creeks--rocky, woodsy creeks that made the silly water hazard in my backyard seem like a little mud puddle. And I saw wide open land as far as the eye could see. I'd never known such beauty.
Marlboro Man loved showing me everything, pointing at pastures and signs and draws and lakes and giving me the story behind everything we saw. The land, both on his family's ranch and on the ranches surrounding it, made sense to him: he saw it not as one wide open, never-ending space, but as neatly organized parcels, each with its own purpose and history. "Betty Smith used to own this part of our ranch with her husband," he'd say. "They never had kids and were best friends with my grandparents." Then he'd tell some legend of Betty Smith's husband's grandfather, remembering such vivid details, you'd think he'd been there himself. I absorbed it all, every word of it. The land around him pulsated with the heartbeats of all who'd lived there before…and as if it were his duty to pay honor to each and every one of them, he told me their names, their stories, their relationship, the ~ Ree Drummond

As graduation loomed, I had a nagging sense that there was still far too much unresolved for me, that I wasn't done studying. I applied for a master's in English literature at Stanford and was accepted into the program. I had come to see language as an almost supernatural force, existing between people, bringing our brains, shielded in centimeter-thick skulls, into communion. A word meant something only between people, and life's meaning, its virtue, had something to do with the depth of the relationships we form. It was the relational aspect of humans - i.e., "human relationality" - that undergirded meaning. Yet somehow, this process existed in brains and bodies, subject to their own physiologic imperatives, prone to breaking and failing. There must be a way, I thought, that the language of life as experienced - of passion, of hunger, of love - bore some relationship, however convoluted, to the language of neurons, digestive tracts, and heartbeats. At Stanford, I had the good ~ Paul Kalanithi

Love is the name of an irrepressible moment formed inside one complete pulsation of a heart ~ Munia Khan

We spent the dark nights together
But now
Even in the light
My heart and heartbeats are disconnected
How can I express my sorrow
That is invisible to her eyes ~ Jyoti Patel

*One clue that there's something not quite real about sequential time the way you experience it is the various paradoxes of time supposedly passing and of a so-called 'present' that's always unrolling into the future and creating more and more past behind it. As if the present were this car - nice car by the way - and the past is the road we've just gone over, and the future is the headlit road up ahead we haven't yet gotten to, and time is the car's forward movement, and the precise present is the car's front bumper as it cuts through the fog of the future, so that it's now and then a tiny bit later a whole different now, etc. Except if time is really passing, how fast does it go? At what rate does the present change? See? Meaning if we use time to measure motion or rate - which we do, it's the only way you can - 95 miles per hour, 70 heartbeats a minute, etc. - how are you supposed to measure the rate at which time moves? One second per second? It makes no sense. You can't even talk about time flowing or moving without hitting up against paradox right away. So think for a second: What if there's really no movement at all? What if this is all unfolding in the one flash you call
the present, this first, infinitely tiny split-second of impact when the speeding car's front bumper's just starting to touch the abutment, just before the bumper crumples and displaces the front end and you go violently forward and the steering column comes back at your chest as if shot out of s ~ David Foster Wallace

This , I think , is the way to die.
I could drown in this moment and I'd never regret it. I could catch fire from this kiss and happily turn to ash. I could live here, die here, right here, against his hips, his lips. In the emotion in his eyes as he sinks into me, his heartbeats indistinguishable from mine.
This. Forever. This. ~ Tahereh Mafi

My heart is fluid and soaring. There's no longer any space between heartbeats. ~ Lauren Oliver

You're my world, Gracelyn Mae," he told me, moving in closer. [...] Jackson took my hands into his. "You're my faith. You're my hope. You're my true religion. I'm a better man because you exist. I'm me because of you. And if you'd allow it, I'd love to spend the rest of my life worshipping your heartbeats."
I held his hands in mine and moved in close. My head tilted up, and I released a small breath as my eyes locked with his. A small, tiny, breath. My mouth grazed across his, and I whisperedagainst his lips.
"Worship me, and I'll worship you. ~ Brittainy C. Cherry

Moments left, Teddy thought. A handful of heartbeats. That was what life was. A heartbeat followed by a heartbeat. A breath followed by a breath. One moment followed by another moment and then there was a last moment. ~ Kate Atkinson

He got right down in the dark between heartbeats, and rested there. And then he saw that another one wasn't going to come. That's it. That's the last. He looked at the dark. I would like to take this opportunity, he said, to pray for another human being. ~ Denis Johnson

I took the steps down Angel's Flight to Hill Street: a hundred and forty steps, with tight fists, frightened of no man, but scared of the Third Street Tunnel, scared to walk through it – claustrophobia. Scared of high places too, and of blood, and of earthquakes; otherwise, quite fearless, excepting death, except the fear I'll scream in a crowd, except the fear of appendicitis, except the fear of heart trouble, even that, sitting in his room holding the clock and pressing his jugular vein, counting out his heartbeats, listening to the weird purr and whirr of his stomach. Otherwise, quite fearless. ~ John Fante

Solitude

Solitude is internal peace in silence
Peace that exists in the lightness of air
It is the flagrant devotion to the oneness of self

Breathing out and breathing in
Interrupts the quiet murmur of heartbeats
Silence is imposed upon
By the faint alternating rhythms
Of breath and heartbeats

Closed eyes
Absorb the darkness of one's chrysalis
The self in solitude allows the soul
To slip into spirit ~ Isabella George

In this world, there are two times. There is mechanical time and there is body time."
"They do not keep clocks in their houses. Instead, they listen to their heartbeats. They feel the rhythms of their moods and desires."
"Then there are those who think their bodies don't exist. They live by mechanical time. They rise at seven o'clock in the morning. They eat their lunch at noon and their supper at six. They arrive at their appointments on time, precisely by the clock. ~ Alan Lightman

The ships tried to block their exit for several heartbeats before they realized just how suicidal Caillen really was. He'd slam into them before he'd yield. In a game of header, he refused to blink or swerve. Fuck them. If he was going to die, so were they. Just as he would have hit them, they veered off sharply, out of the way. Laughing ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon

I want him and me in this stolen moment. Collecting heartbeats. Falling in love for the millionth time. ~ Pam Godwin

I want you alongside
So near to each other
For I could listen to your heartbeats
I want to stare at you
I know this makes me super shy
But baby
I will try ~ Jyoti Patel

I wondered if he knew how he controlled my heartbeats. ~ Brittainy C. Cherry

Five is for five heartbeats, the length of time it takes to breathe in or out. For that is how quickly a life may change, for better or for ill. The time it takes to make up, or change, your mind. ~ Cameron Dokey

Here's to the security guards who maybe had a degree in another land. Here's to the manicurist who had to leave her family to come here, painting the nails, scrubbing the feet of strangers. Here's to the janitors who don't understand English yet work hard despite it all. Here's to the fast food workers who work hard to see their family smile. Here's to the laundry man at the Marriott who told me with the sparkle in his eyes how he was an engineer in Peru. Here's to the bus driver, the Turkish Sufi who almost danced when I quoted Rumi. Here's to the harvesters who live in fear of being deported for coming here to open the road for their future generation. Here's to the taxi drivers from Nigeria, Ghana, Egypt and India who gossip amongst themselves. Here is to them waking up at 4am, calling home to hear the voices of their loved ones. Here is to their children, to the children who despite it all become artists, writers, teachers, doctors, lawyers, activists and rebels. Here's to international money transfer. For never forgetting home. Here's to their children who carry the heartbeats of their motherland and even in sleep, speak with pride about their fathers. Keep on. ~ Ijeoma Umebinyuo

I hug him. I forget about my fears, about who I am and who he is, and I hug him. He keeps a tight grip on me like I'm his last hope, like I'm the only thing holding him together. We are a mingle of limbs, a frantic mess of intertwined heartbeats racing one another. ~ Tammy Faith

That is the way a summer rain can take hold in you- like a new heart, beating in time with another's. ~ Muriel Barbery

Let us look at the things we don't see, let us listen to the echo of the sound behind the clamor and discern the crackling in the brushwood of our emotions, so we may recognize the tokens of the heartbeats we might miss and value the quality and the bite of our life story. ("This is no chicken feed") ~ Erik Pevernagie

Heat is lost at the surface, so the more surface area you have relative to volume, the harder you must work to stay warm. That means that little creatures have to produce heat more rapidly than large creatures. They must therefore lead completely different lifestyles. An elephant's heart beats just thirty times a minute, a human's sixty, a cow's between fifty and eighty, but a mouse's beats six hundred times a minute - ten times a second. Every day, just to survive, the mouse must eat about 50 percent of its own body weight. We humans, by contrast, need to consume only about 2 percent of our body weight to supply our energy requirements. One area where animals are curiously - almost eerily - uniform is with the number of heartbeats they have in a lifetime. Despite the vast differences in heart rates, nearly all animals have about 800 million heartbeats in them if they live an average life. The exception is humans. We pass 800 million heartbeats after twenty-five years, and just keep on going for another fifty years and 1.6 billion heartbeats or so. It is tempting to attribute this exceptional vigor to some innate superiority on our part, but in fact it is only over the last ten or twelve generations that we have deviated from the standard mammalian pattern thanks to improvements in our life expectancy. For most of our history, 800 million beats per lifetime was about the human average, too. ~ Bill Bryson

For a moment, she let herself forget about the business at hand and smiled at him. "You know, Roarke, you're kind of cute." She realized it was the first time she'd really surprised him.
His head came up, and his eyes were startled - for perhaps two heartbeats. Then that sly smile came into them. The one that made her own pulse jitter.
"You're going to have to do better than that, lieutenant. I've got you in."
"No shit?" Excitement flooded through her as she whirled back to the screens.
"Put it up."
"Screens four, five, six. ~ J.D. Robb

A Summer's Singing"

"Where does that singing start, you know,
that thin sound - almost pure light?
Not the birds at false dawn or their song
when morning comes, feathered throats
warm with meaning. A different kind of music.

Listen, it is somewhere near you.
In the heart, emptied of fear,
stubbornly in love
with itself at last, the old
desires a ruined chorus,
a radiant bloody choir.

Where does the singing start?
Here, where you are, there's room
between your heartbeats,
as if everything you have ever been
begins, inside, to sing. ~ Lorna Crozier

As long as I can hear the sweet melody of your words,
I need not;
The angel's secret, to be whispered in my ears

As long as I can lace your silky fingers round my own,
I need not;
Pretty diamonds, nor big cash nor gold

As long as I can watch the handsome sunshine of your face,
I need not;
Open skies, nor snowfall, nor the rain

As long as I can gaze into the emeralds of your eyes,
I need not;
New colors, new wings or paradise

As long as I can feel the tender tickle of your breath,
I need not;
The drifting wind, nor its call, nor caress

As long as I can feel your soft lips upon mine,
I need not;
Melted sugar, nor the most expensive of wines

As long as I can feel your warm body close to me
I need not;
A blanket, nor a bonfire's luxury

As long as I can see you every morning I wake,
I need not;
A mirror, nor a cloud, nor shade

As long as I can keep you in every petal of memories
I need not:
Dreams, nor desires, nor fantasies

And as long as I can hold you in every moment that I breathe,
I need not;
Oxygen, nor blood, nor heartbeats. ~ Sanober Khan

Listen to yourself, hear your own footsteps, your breaths, your heartbeats, oh, how many rhythms you make as you come and go! you are an orchestra. ~ Charlie Jane Anders

One's life story cannot be told with complete veracity. A true autobiography would have to be written in states of mind, emotions, heartbeats, smiles and tears; not in months and years, or physical events. Life is marked off on the soul by feelings, not by dates ... ~ Helen Keller

There were no laptops or handheld devices in class. Ilgauskas didn't exclude them; we did, sort of, unspokenly. Some of us could barely complete a thought without touch pads or scroll buttons, but we understood that high-speed data systems did not belong here. They were an assault on the environment, which was defined by length, width, and depth, with time drawn out, computed in heartbeats. ~ Don DeLillo

These things were in the past now, many long years ago, though the memory remained as solid and present as his heartbeats. Time's passage had made the events seem almost crazed, hyper-real, stretched across a surreal dreamscape that felt more like a skjald's embellished saga than the intact past. Perhaps it had not happened like that. Perhaps the Lion had taken his Stormbirds to the Tyrant's fortress, and he himself had teleported in. Perhaps it had not been Ogvai there, but Gunn, or someone else. Had Bjorn been there too? It was a long time ago, so doubtful, but Bjorn seemed to always have been there, right from the start, just waiting for his time to come to maturity. ~ Chris Wraight

The river is now. This moment. This breath between us. The space between your heartbeats. The moment before you blink. The instant a thought flashes through your mind. It is everything that is around us. Life. Energy. Flowing, endlessly flowing, carrying you from then ... to now ... to tomorrow. Listen: you can hear the music of it. Of the passage of time. ~ Lisa Mangum

I'd killed my self-defense instructor. Shit.
I ran to where he lay and stumbled to a crouch at his side, touching his shoulder. "Craig?"
His eyelids fluttered. A few panicked heartbeats later, he opened them. Then he grinned.
"Yeah, that's what I'm talking about! You gotta learn to hit people." He was breathing hard. He had to gasp the words out. I'd probably knocked the wind out of him. "Now, never do that to me again."
-Kitty and her self defense teacher ~ Carrie Vaughn

He came back to her lips and tasted them briefly before settling his forehead against hers. "I don't care what Grayson or his legal document says," he muttered between catches of wind. "God's given you to me, and as soon as He allows, I'll claim you as my own."
He spoke with such confidence that if she allowed herself, she could almost believe him. But with belief came hope, and with hope, the inevitability of pain.
The knocking at the door resumed, more urgently this time.
Along her throat, splotches of cool marked where he'd sampled her. Milly lamented that it was already warming. In heartbeats, all she would have was memories. And anguish. Could God truly fill the hollow Phillip would leave? Last night, His promise had filled her to the depths of her soul. It was enough. It would have to be.
With his eyes locked on hers, Phillip's hand trailed her cheek and throat. It brushed over her shoulder and down her arm. Then, in one blink, he wiped every emotion from his face, stunning her with the callous glaze of his eyes.
He gripped her by the elbow, whisked her through the kitchen, and opened the door to her wretched future. ~ April W. Gardner

Your heart beats against the palm of my hand.
Its need to be
One with me
Drips
Between my fingertips
As I squeeze perfect drops of love into small receptacles to be preserved...

For later.

☕️ ~ N'Zuri Za Austin

effect the exchange of labor and services by means of an exchange of heartbeats. estimate every task in terms of heartbeats-the monetary unit of the future, in which all individuals are equally wealthy. take 365 times 317 as the median number of heartbeats in any twenty-four-hour period. ~ Velimir Khlebnikov

I used to skip school to go there when I was growing up in Newark, ... I saw the Flamingos, the Heartbeats, Jackie Wilson, Chuck Jackson. ~ George Clinton

By the standards of the European industrial world we are poor peasants, but when I embrace my grandfather I experience a sense of richness as though I am a note in the heartbeats of the very universe. ~ Tayeb Salih

And this is how we danced: with our mothers'
white dresses spilling from our feet, late August

turning our hands dark red. And this is how we loved:
a fifth of vodka and an afternoon in the attic, your fingers

sweeping though my hair - my hair a wildfire.
We covered our ears and your father's tantrum turned

into heartbeats. When our lips touched the day closed
into a coffin. In the museum of the heart

there are two headless people building a burning house.
There was always the shotgun above the fireplace.

Always another hour to kill - only to beg some god
to give it back. If not the attic, the car. If not the car,

the dream. If not the boy, his clothes. If not alive,
put down the phone. Because the year is a distance

we've traveled in circles. Which is to say: this is how
we danced: alone in sleeping bodies. Which is to say:

This is how we loved: a knife on the tongue turning
into a tongue. ~ Ocean Vuong

Time is not just the hands of a clock. It isn't just a change of seasons either. It is a treasure trove of precious moments, infinite little joys and blessings, precious smiles, tears and heartbeats. ~ Mona Soorma

This was supposed to be a question. Not a poem confession or whatever it's become. I just want to know if you would listen with me to the sound of our heartbeats. ~ Elizabeth Acevedo

Michael held out his hand, and Kaden squeezed tighter than a typical handshake. The other man wiggled his hand free and then shot him an irritated glare.
So, this was the human trying to steal his Annabelle? He didn't look like much - a bit too skinny. She needed a man who could put his arms around her and make her feel safe.
Annabelle's my friend. I have no right to think of her as mine.
His heart pulsed a second time, and he startled. This wasn't happening. Annabelle couldn't be his? A human mate? He didn't understand. Two heartbeats. It had to mean something. ~ Stacey O'Neale

'Heartbeats' is a film on people magnifying and subliming reality when they're in love. Hence the overstylized look, the aesthetics, the robes, the dresses, the vintage, hipster-ish look: All of this is voluntary. I'm not a hipster. I'm not! ~ Xavier Dolan

Moments left, thought Teddy. A handful of heartbeats. That was what life was. A heartbeat followed by a heartbeat. A breath followed by a breath. One moment followed by another moment and then there was a last moment. Life was as fragile as a bird;s heartbeat, fleeting as the bluebells in the wood. It didn't matter, he realized, he didn't mind, he was going where millions had gone before and where millions would follow after. He shared his fate with the many. And now. This moment. This moment was infinite. He was part of the infinite. The tree and the rock and the water. The rising of the sun and the running of the deer. Now. ~ Kate Atkinson

Once the kiss finally broke he dropped his head to Ty's shoulder, turning his face into Ty's neck, and he clutched him tightly, unwilling to let go. Not just yet. Not until the lonely ache that had been building the past four months faded.
Ty gave a little whuff of surprise when Zane clung to him, but he slowly slid his arms around him and hugged him, resting his chin against Zane's cheek. "You okay?" he asked in a whisper.
Zane slowly nodded, waiting a few heartbeats before admitting, "I am now. ~ Abigail Roux

Both precious and absurd, this tightrope of existence we walk in both directions; strung only on a rhythm of heartbeats across a void ~ Dean Cavanagh

Silken strings composing the harpsichord of life accommodate a score of emotional tidings. An orchestra of linked heartbeats strumming the melodious prose of our collective intones gives rise to sonnets of melancholy, producing an illimitable libretto stretching from the milky dawn of newborn's amaranth life to the speckled sunsets of gentle souls whom we cherish. ~ Kilroy J. Oldster

I listened to the wind bury winter; and when I tasted his grace, his grace had no name; only, night became something else in his presence, as though darkness had a soul, here, swaying to heartbeats roaring. ~ Marjorie M. Liu

My days were but heartbeats to you. I hated you for that. ~ Dan Simmons

Captain Christopher Phelan
1st Battalion Rifle Brigade
Cape Mapan
Crimea

June 1855

Dearest Christopher,

I can't write to you again.

I'm not who you think I am.

I didn't mean to send love letters, but that is what they became. On their way to you, my words turned into heartbeats on the page.

Come back, please come home and find me.

--[unsigned] ~ Lisa Kleypas

The week passed by swiftly, like a dream ... a dream where minutes flew as rapidly as heartbeats. Such a breathless week when something within her drove Scarlett with mingled pain and pleasure to pack and cram every minute with incidents to remember after he was gone, happenings which she could examine at leisure in the long months ahead, extracting every morsel of comfort from them - dance, sing, laugh, fetch and carry for Ashley, anticipate his wants, smile when he smiles, be silent when he talks, follow him with your eyes so that each line of his erect body, each lift of his eyebrows, each quirk of his mouth, will be indelibly printed on your mind - for a week goes by so fast and the war goes on forever. ~ Margaret Mitchell

Perhaps the wilderness we fear is the pause between our own heartbeats, the silent space that says we live only by grace. Wilderness lives by this same grace. Wild mercy is in our hands. ~ Terry Tempest Williams

We all have our own rhythms to walk to. ~ Lauren Lola

There's no such thing as a number of heartbeats. As long as your heart knows what forever means, it's possible that even in afterlife, it may still be beating. ~ Jessamine Verzosa

His warmth fills the space between my heartbeats. I don't know what it is about him, but he lures me in so effortlessly and tangles my heart in a net. ~ Sarah Noffke

I listened; I wrote; I learned. I do not know why so many women trusted me enough to speak to me, but underneath anything I write one can hear the percussive sound of their heartbeats. If one has to pick one kind of pedagogy over all others, I pick listening. It breaks down prejudices and stereotypes; it widens self-imposed limits; it takes one into another's life, her hard times and, if there is any, her joy too. ~ Andrea Dworkin

A hundred hundred heartbeats ... whispered Sabriel, tears falling down her face. ~ Garth Nix

I measure the moment
in the heartbeats I skip ~ David Levithan

But if the two hundred slaves that I freed are telling the story, then no, I suppose I didn't deserve it."
None of them were smiling anymore. "Holy gods," Ansel whispered. True silence fell over their table for a few heartbeats.
Celaena resumed eating. She didn't feel like talking to them after that. ~ Sarah J. Maas

They say you see stars, when you hit the back of your head like that, but Billy was facing upwards, and he could not tell whether the stars in his eyes were from the pulsing whites of country stars. There is nothing like the night sky in the country, the spongy purple of it, the stars with their own heartbeats, the things out there that you cannot see. ~ Julia Lawrinson

If you will practice being fictional for a while, you will understand that fictional characters are sometimes more real than people with bodies and heartbeats. ~ Richard Bach

Feeling your heartbeats" - I placed my hand against his chest - "reminds me of his heartbeats."
"Running my fingers through your hair" - he tangled his hands through my blonde locks, making me gasp lightly - "helps me remember her. ~ Brittainy C. Cherry

Evolution has no foresight. Complex machinery develops its own agendas. Brains - cheat. Feedback loops evolve to promote stable heartbeats and then stumble upon the temptation of rhythm and music. The rush evoked by fractal imagery, the algorithms used for habitat selection, metastasize into art. Thrills that once had to be earned in increments of fitness can now be had from pointless introspection. Aesthetics rise unbidden from a trillion dopamine receptors, and the system moves beyond modeling the organism. It begins to model the very process of modeling. It consumes evermore computational resources, bogs itself down with endless recursion and irrelevant simulations. Like the parasitic DNA that accretes in every natural genome, it persists and proliferates and produces nothing but itself. Metaprocesses bloom like cancer, and awaken, and call themselves I. ~ Peter Watts

You let yourself fall too fast
For a boy
Who doesn't even have the common courtesy
To manhandle your heart with the proper care.

Didn't someone tell you
That you're worth more than
Dispassionate good morning text messge
And tasteless afternoon dates?

Your heart beats more heartbeats than the average human being.
Doesn't that mean anything to you? ~ Zienab Hamdan

Jodiya's shoulders shook in a silent laugh. Slowly, she lowered her pistol.
And flung the grenade she held in her other hand.
The fuse kindled in midair, burning unnaturally fast. No chance to outrun the explosion.
Instead, Isyllt caught it. She hissed at the pain in her left hand, at the precious fraction of fuse being consumed. As soon as iron touched her skin, he magic began to work. Rust bloomed across damp metal, corroding at preternatural speed. Within heartbeats the iron shell crumbled in her hands, black powder hissing to the ground. She turned her head just in time as the fuse caught the last of the gunpowder and sprayed her with sparks.
Her hand twisted with the pain of it, but she bared her teeth at Jodiya. "Again?"
~ Amanda Downum

Most of all, she'd missed
feeling connected to someone else. Being a vital part of them - aching when they
were on a trip, knowing that someone was out there missing her and counting the
heartbeats until they were back together again. There was nothing else like
living and breathing for the smile of someone she loved. -leta ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon

Those words.
Samuel's thirteen words became heartbeats-
became my reasons to breathe in-
and out of that moment.
More than blood, I wanted him.
I whispered, "Why did you want to know my name?"
"Because my heart needed a name to beat to."
I grinned. "Is your heart always so delirious?"
"Would it be a heart if it was anything else? ~ David James

I'm sure it's not all hot buttered crumpets out there in the breathing world of asphalt and heartbeats. ~ Jasper Fforde

I wanted to give you something that would last forever. Something that would surpass the world, that would still be alive and bright even after you passed away. Something beautiful. For your eyes and smile only. But I never found it. All I could give you is words. Words which were as fleeting as the heartbeats that shook my soul whenever you looked my way. ~ F.K. Preston

You know how you secretly worry that this is it, that it's all downhill from here? I know you do. You worry that the children will turn into hulking criminals; their scalps will turn odorless. You lie in bed now during a thunderstorm, two sleeping, moonlit faces pressed against you, fragrant scalps intoxicating you, the rain on the roof like hoofbeats, heartbeats - and the calamity of raising young children falls away because this is all you ever wanted. Now you boo-hoo noiselessly into the kids' hair because life is so beautiful and you don't want it to change. Enjoy it. But let me tell you - you won't believe it, but let me tell you anyway - you will watch them sleeping still and always: the illuminated down of their cheeks, their dark puffs of lips and dear, dark wedges of eyelashes, and you will feel exactly the way you feel now. Only better. ~ Catherine Newman

There is no other closeness in human life like the closeness between a mother and her baby - chronologically, physically, and spiritually they are just a few heartbeats away from being the same person. ~ Susan Cheever

There is an invisible thread that binds lovers' hearts; it synchronizes their heart beats. ~ Avijeet Das

My wife and I tend to overgift to our kids at Christmas. We laugh and feel foolish when a kid is so distracted with one toy that we must force them into opening the next, or when something grand goes completely unnoticed in a corner. How consumerist, right? How crassly American. How like God. We are all that overwhelmed kid, not even noticing our heartbeats, not even noticing our breathing, not even noticing that our fingertips can feel and pick things up, that pie smells like pie and that our hangnails heal and that honey-crisp apples are real and that dogs wag their tails and that awe perpetually awaits us in the sky. The real yearning, the solomonic state of mind, is caused by too much gift, by too many things to love in too short a time. Because the more we are given, the more we feel the loss as we are all made poor and sent back to our dust. ~ N.D. Wilson

Like a spectre of a seemingly imagined conversation, you continue hosting; exploring me, opening me, holding my very deepest recesses within your grasp. It is such an unguarded feeling, to know that you are there; whether years, or weeks away. It could even be lifetimes of distance between our heartbeats. I think I've lost track of time, waiting patiently for you. Please linger, tarry, peruse, and dwell just a little more. I want to look upon your face - perceive every subtle line around your eyes, and make note of the dips and curves of your countenance. ~ Cheri Bauer

And the time sundials tell
May be minutes and hours. But it may just as well
Be seconds and sparkles, or seasons and flowers.
No, I don't think of time as just minutes and hours.
Time can be heartbeats, or bird songs, or miles,
Or waves on a beach, or ants in their files
(They do move like seconds - just watch their feet go:
Tick-tick-tick, like a clock). You'll learn as you grow
That whatever there is in a garden, the sun
Counts up on its dial. By the time it is done
Our sundial - or someone's - will certainly add
All the good things there are. Yes, and all of the bad.
And if anyone's here for the finish, the sun
Will have told him - by sundial - how well we have done.
How well we have done, or how badly. Alas,
That is a long thought. Let me hope we all pass. ~ John Ciardi

Like God,

you hover above the page staring down
on a small town. Outside a window
some scenery loafs in a sleepy hammock
of pastoral prose and here is a mongrel
loping and here is a train approaching
the station in three long sentences and
here are the people in galoshes waiting.
But you know this story about the galoshes
is really About Your Life, so, like a diver
climbing over the side of a boat and down
into the ocean, you climb, sentence
by sentence, into this story on this page.

You have been expecting yourself
as a woman who purrs by in a dress
by Patou, and a porter manacled to
the luggage, and a man stalking across
the page like a black cloud in a bad mood.
These are your fellow travelers and
you are a face behind or inside these
faces, a heartbeat in the volley of these
heartbeats, as you choose, out of all
the journeys, the journey of a man
with a mustache scented faintly with
Prince Albert. "He must be a secret
sensualist," you think and your awareness
drifts to his trench coat, worn, softened,
and flabby, a coat with a lobotomy, just
as the train pulls into the station.

No, you would prefer another stop
in a later chapter where the climate is
affable and sleek. But the passengers
are disembarking, and you did not
choose to be in the story of the woman
in the white dress which is ~ Lynn Emanuel

They say sound never dies, but travels on in space
what happens to a man's heartbeats?
so many of them in fifty-six years
could they be gathered again, in some sort of condenser, and put to use once more? ~ Ayn Rand

Although the two are identical twins, man, as a rule, views the prenatal abyss with more calm than the one he is heading for (at some forty-five hundred heartbeats an hour). ~ Vladimir Nabokov

We each have a finite number of heartbeats, a finite amount of time. But we have enough heartbeats and enough time to do what is important. ~ Susan L. Taylor

Their bodies glided together in trembling harmony. Heated skin, rhythmic panting, slamming heartbeats. They made love as if their lives depended on it.
"Oh, God-Rohan!"
"Yes, Kate," he whispered raggedly in smitten agreement.
"Oh... my..."
"Surrender to me," he breathed against her lips. ~ Gaelen Foley

Theatres, along with the likes of the Ulster Orchestra, for example, are the cultural heartbeats of our towns and cities, and without them, we are much poorer for it. ~ James Nesbitt

that's the thing with love - time doesn't exist with it. The only thing love counts is the heartbeats. ~ Brittainy C. Cherry

We all remember the ones who touched our heart so deeply,
That our heartbeats began to dance and reminded us to live once again. ~ Mimi Novic

Life isn't measured in minutes, but in heartbeats. ~ Joan Lowery Nixon

What about little microphones? What if everyone swallowed them, and they played the sounds of our hearts through little speakers, which could be in the pouches of our overalls? When you skateboarded down the street at night you could hear everyone's heartbeat, and they could hear yours, sort of like sonar. One weird thing is, I wonder if everyone's hearts would start to beat at the same time, like how women who live together have their menstrual periods at the same time, which I know about, but don't really want to know about. That would be so weird, except that the place in the hospital where babies are born would sound like a crystal chandelier in a houseboat, because the babies wouldn't have had time to match up their heartbeats yet. And at the finish line at the end of the New York City Marathon it would sound like war. ~ Jonathan Safran Foer

Watching Limelight with my mother really brought home to me the brevity of life. I realized in a little while that I would die and leave everything behind. Unlike vain people, I had the ability to think this right through. I had no difficulty in picturing full theatres and cinemas long after myself was gone. Not everybody can do that. Many are so intoxicated with sensual impressions that they're not able to grasp that there is a world out there. And therefore they're not able to comprehend the opposite either - they don't understand that one day the world will end. We, however, are only a few missing heartbeats away from being divorced from humanity forever. ~ Jostein Gaarder

I believe every human has a finite number of heartbeats. I don't intend to waste any of mine. ~ Neil Armstrong

Because it was starting to get dark, and because the streets were crowded, I bumped into a googolplex people. Who were they? Where were they going? What were they looking for? I wanted to hear their heartbeats, and I wanted them to hear mine. ~ Jonathan Safran Foer

Why, I ... I still like you." Nerves fluttered in her chest, but she kept her tone light. "Do you like me?"
A few moments passed in silence. She would have counted them in heartbeats, but her foolish heart had become a most unreliable timepiece. It gave three pounding beats in a flurry, then none at all.
Just when she'd begun to despair, he turned his head, catching her in a passionate, openmouthed kiss. He put both arms around her, fisting his hands in the fabric of her dress, lifting her up and against his chest. So that her body recalled every inch of his, every second of their blissful lovemaking. The now-familiar ache returned - that sweet, hollow pang of desire that only deepened as his tongue flickered over hers. In a matter of seconds, he had her gasping. Needing. Damp.
Then he set her back on her toes. Pressed his brow to hers and released a deep, resonant sigh. And just before turning to leave, he spoke a single word.
He said, "No. ~ Tessa Dare

Genetics, accidents of birth or events in early childhood have left criminals' brains and bodies with measurable flaws predisposing them to committing assault, murder and other antisocial acts ...
Many offenders also have impairments in their autonomic nervous system, the system responsible for the edgy, nervous feeling that can come with emotional arousal. This leads to a fearless, risk-taking personality, perhaps to compensate for chronic under-arousal.
Many convicted criminals, like the Unabomber, have slow heartbeats.
It also gives them lower heart rates, which explains why heart rate is such a good predictor of criminal tendencies. The Unabomber, Ted Kaczynski, for example, had a resting heart rate of just 54 beats per minute, which put him in the bottom 3 per cent of the population. ~ Adrian Raine

I was aware that he couldn't be trusted; that the classroom behind him was empty and would be empty for some time; that he was only a matter of heartbeats, a tug of my elbow, and a few whispered words away from pulling me into that room with him. ~ Laura Elizabeth Woollett