Lungs Quotes

She put Randy Travis on the CD player and sang at the top of her lungs. She found that the wine bottle made an excellent fake microphone and she wondered if anyone would love her forever and ever, amen. ~ Melissa Ecker

Diagnosed incidentally with stage IV, grade 4 metastatic renal cell carcinoma, I had bone metastases in my femur (which eventually fractured), ulna, and cranium; five metastases in my lungs; and muscle metastases in my thigh and tongue. Yet six months after diagnosis, my treatment ended: I've not had a drop of anything since. ~ Dave DeBronkart

Beauty's all around me right here. It's not in a textbook. It's not in an equation. I mean, take the sunlight ... The colors flow into your lungs, into your bloodstream. You are the colors. ~ Tim Tharp

The breeze is cold and refreshing, I draw the night into my lungs and try to calm myself down. ~ Kjersti Annesdatter Skomsvold

His own personal siren nightmare. What else could it be when his body only sparked alive when it was her.

She made his lungs work, his heart beat.

It was a goddamn disease is what it was. ~ V. Theia

An old chinaman - he must have been sixty - shuffled by me hastily with a hop layout and spread it out in a nearby bunk. He was shaking with the yen-yen, the hop habit. His withered, claw-like hands trembled as he feverishly rolled the first pill, a large one. His burning eyes devoured it. Half-cooked, he stuck the pill in its place, and turning his pipe to the lamp, greedily sucked the smoke into his lungs. Now, with a long grateful exhalation, the smoke is discharged. The cramped limbs relax and straighten out. The smoker heaves a sigh of satisfaction, and the hands, no longer shaking, turn with surer touch to another pill. This is smaller, rolled and shaped with more care, better cooked and inhaled with a long, slaw draw. Each succeeding pill is smaller, more carefully browned over the lamp and smoked with increasing pleasure. ~ Jack Black

She has the kind of beauty that takes your breath from your lungs, tears from your eyes and speeds your heart each time you look at her.

She has the kind of beauty reserved for works of art, where men spend years of their life mastering their craft to replicate.

She is beauty, stunning, transcendent, right down through to the bone, the unfathomable depth of her heart.

She is Muse. She is wonder. She is sublime. ~ Kirk Diedrich

following limitations: 1. These are AP films therefore; the cardiac size cannot be accurately assessed. 2. Pleural fluid lies posteriorly creating a denser hemithorax. 3. A pneumothorax lies anteriorly and so can be missed. 4. Upper lobe vessels will be prominent even in the absence of cardiac failure. 5. Good inflation of the lungs is difficult, even if the volumes are normal. ~ David Wilson

I was very surprised when last I bought a packet of cigarettes and had to request a refund as I read a warning that told me "smoking can cause fatal lung cancer". ~ Robert Clark

I want my goddamn Luna back," he breathed, stealing the air from my lungs. "I don't want you to leave me alone. I want you bugging my ass for random shit again. I wanna see your fucking face first thing in the morning, even if you don't bring me my coffee anymore. I wanna make you something to eat so you don't end up with Salmonella from that shit you try to cook, ~ Mariana Zapata

What if I can't find it? What if I can't find that particular pumping-station? The breath tore in and out of his lungs, hot and bloody-tasting in the back of his throat. A stitch was sinking into his side. His buttocks sang where the rock had hit him. Beverly had said Henry and his friends meant to kill them, and Ben believed it now, yes he did. He came to ~ Stephen King

HAGGIS The U.S. Department of Agriculture prohibits Americans from eating the authentic Scottish dish because it contains sheep lungs, which legally "shall not be saved for use as human food. ~ Anonymous

When the river takes me I don't try to swim or stay afloat. I open my eyes and my mouth and let the water fill me up. I feel my lungs spasm but there's no pain, and I stop being afraid. The current carries me along. I'm flotsam, and I understand that flotsam is all I've ever been. ~ Hillary Jordan

They threaten me with lung cancer, and still I smoke and smoke. If they'd only threaten me with hard work, I might stop. ~ Mignon McLaughlin

Clearly, there is some invisible force that is moving every aspect of reality to its next best expression. And the universe is not only self-organizing, it is also self-correcting. The embryo becomes a baby; the baby is born; its lungs continue to breathe - not only were they created but then they continue to breathe. The heart is not only created but it continues to breathe. If there is injury and disease that becomes present within the body, the body is also equipped with an immune system to correct that. ~ Marianne Williamson

Now That I Am in Madrid I Can Think "

I think of you
and the continents brilliant and arid
and the slender heart you are sharing my share of with the American air
as the lungs I have felt sonorously subside slowly greet each morning
and your brown lashes flutter revealing two perfect dawns colored by New York

see a vast bridge stetching to the humbled outskirts with only you
Standing on the edge of the purple like an only tree
and in Toledo the olive groves' soft blue look at the hills with silver
like glasses like an old ladies hair
It's well known that God and I don't get along together
It's just a view of the brass works for me, I don't care about the Moors
seen through you the great works of death, you are greater

you are smiling, you are emptying the world so we can be alone together. ~ Frank O'Hara

Something's happening to me, through me, something dangerous and new. It's taken root, a poison tree; it's grown, fanning out, vines winding round my gut, my lungs, my heart. ~ A.J. Finn

He taught me to stand up for what I believe in, to shout it out at the top of my lungs. He taught me to feel - the deep, gut-wrenching, heartbreaking, soul-singing kind of emotion I had avoided for so long. He taught me about the importance of life. He taught me about the beauty of death. He also taught me about love. ~ Michelle Leighton

She'd never broken a bone, had surgery. But the worst damage didn't leave a mark. When Hellie died, it was as if someone had cut into Alex's chest, cracked her open like balsa wood. What if it really had been like that and she'd had to walk down the street bleeding, trying to hold her ribs together, her heart and her lungs and every part of her open to the world? Instead, the thing that had broken her had left no mark, no scar for her to point to and say, This is where I ended. ~ Leigh Bardugo

I've lined my throat
with the river bottom's best
silt,

allowed my fingers to shrivel
and be taken for crawfish.

I've laced my eyelashes with algae.

I blink emerald.
I blink sea glass green.

I am whatever gleams
just under the surface.

Scoop at my sparkle. I'll give you nothing
but disturbed reflection.

Bring your ear to the water
and I'll sing you

down into my arms.

Let me show you how

to make your lungs
a home for minnows, how

to let them flicker

like silver

in and out of your mouth
like last words,

like air. ~ Saeed Jones

Where's your boyfriend, District 12? Still hanging on?" She asks.
Well, as long as we're talking I'm alive. "He's out there now. Hunting Cato," I snarl at her. Then I scream at the top of my lungs. "Peeta!"
Clove jams her fist into my windpipe, very effectively cutting off my voice. But her head's whipping from side to side, and I know for a moment she's at least considering I'm telling the truth. Since no Peeta appears to save me, she turns back to me.
"Liar," she says with a grin. "He's nearly dead. Cato knows where he cut him. You've probably got him strapped up in some tree while you try to keep his heart going. What's in the pretty little backpack? That medicine for Lover Boy? Too bad he'll never get it. ~ Suzanne Collins

Then his fingers trembled on her ankle - tightened around her foot. His head shifted, turning toward her. With a growl, she crashed the poker down onto his head. His hand jerked. A gurgling noise arose, not from his throat but from his chest, from deep down, as if he were fighting for something. Struggling. His eyes shifted toward her. Joan raised the poker again. The gurgling stopped - not abruptly but in a final, lingering, prolonged, exhalation of breath. His lungs gradually expelled every last atom of oxygen. ~ Cate Campbell Beatty

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

Good health! Whenever you go out of doors, draw the chin in, carry the crown of your head high, and fill the lungs to the utmost; drink in sunshine; greet your friends with a smile, and put soul into every handclasp. Do not fear being misunderstood and never waste a minute thinking about your enemies. ~ Elbert Hubbard

It is a well-worn saying but one nonetheless true and nonetheless worthy of repetition, inasmuch as it expresses peculiarly the situation now widely prevalent, that "where there is no vision the people perish. " Mankind as a whole, or more particularly the Western element, has lost in some incomprehensible way its spiritual vision. An heretical barrier has been erected separating itself from that current of life and vitality which even now, despite willful impediment and obstacle, pulses and vibrates passionately in the blood, pervading the whole of universal form and structure. The anomalies presented today are due to this rank absurdity. Mankind is slowly accomplishing its own suicide. A self-strangulation is being effected through a suppression of all individuality, in the spiritual sense, and all that made it human. It continues to withhold the spiritual atmosphere from its lungs, so to speak. And having severed itself from the eternal and never-ceasing sources of light and life and inspiration, it has deliberately blinded itself to the fact - than which no other could compare in importance - that there is a dynamic principle both within and without from which it has accomplished a divorce. The result is inner lethargy, chaos, and the disintegration of all that formerly was held to be ideal and sacred. ~ Israel Regardie

Yeah, let's get John here. That way we can stall for a while longer. We can keep on doing nothing for just a little while longer."
Albert said, "Take it easy, Howard."
"Take it easy?" Howard jumped to his feet. "Yeah? Where were you last night, Albert? Huh? Because I didn't see you out there on the street listening to kids screaming, seeing kids running around hurt and scared and choking, and Edilio and Orc struggling, and Dekka hacking up her lungs and Jack crying and…
"You know who couldn't even take it?" Howard raged. "You know who couldn't even take what was happening? Orc. Orc, who's not scared of anything. Orc, who everyone thinks is some kind of monster. He couldn't take it. He couldn't…but he did. And where were you, Albert? Counting your money? How about you, Astrid? Praying to Jesus?"
Astrid's throat tightened. She couldn't breathe. For a moment panic threatened to overwhelm her. She wanted to run from the room, run away and never look back.
Edilio got to his feet and put an arm around Howard. Howard allowed it, and then he did something Astrid never thought she would see. Howard buried his face in Edilio's shoulder and cried, racking sobs.
"We're falling apart," Astrid whispered for herself alone.
But there was no easy escape. Everything Howard had said was true. She could see the truth reflected in Albert's stunned expression. The two of them, the smart ones, the clever ones, the great defenders of truth and fairness and justice, ~ Michael Grant

Language is a poor thing. You fill your lungs with wind and shake a little slit in your throat, and make mouths, and that shakes the air; and the air shakes a pair of little drums in my head - a very complicated arrangement, with lots of bones behind - and my brain seizes your meaning in the rough. What a roundabout way, and what a waste of time. ~ George Du Maurier

If you ask all the cells
in my body,
they only answer your name.
Follicles push the hair upwards
so they may brush
against your skin.
Nails grow faster as well.
Lungs breathe rapidly
in hopes of inhaling your scent.
Toes curl to smile and
knees form dimples when you are near.
Brain fireworks.
Stomach fills with flies of butter
and swallows, and
swans swoon.
Cattle, rhinos, and walruses too -
there's a stampede when you are near.
I love you from the bottom of my liver
to the tip of my lashes.
One wink from you and heart stops,
like a sneeze. Bless you.
I cannot even begin to tell you
what happens to soul,
for soul is off
flying with its mate. ~ Kamand Kojouri

She takes another long haul, lets the smoke settle in her lungs
she has heard somewhere that cigarettes are good for grief. One long drag and you forget how to cry. The body too busy dealing with the poison. ~ Colum McCann

You were the missing piece of my soul, the breath in my lungs, and the blood in my veins. ~ J.A. Redmerski

Anxiety rushed in without warning. It came like thunder as my heart raced louder in my ears. It came like the sea over my head as my lungs struggled to expand. It came like a swarm of gnats crawling over my skin, itching, burning, complete in their distraction. ~ Jodi Meadows

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

You are linked to the ground mechanic's careless fingers in Nassau just as you are linked to the weak head of the little man in the family saloon who mistakes the red light for the green and meets you head-on, for the first and last time, as you are motoring quietly home from some private sin. There's nothing to do about it. You start to die the moment you are born. The whole of life is cutting through the pack with death. So take it easy. Light a cigarette and be grateful you are still alive as you suck the smoke deep into your lungs. Your stars have already let you come quite a long way since you left your mother's womb and whimpered at the cold air of the world. ~ Ian Fleming

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

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

"I know he did," Michael said.

"And I loved him."

"Mm-hmm."

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

He laughed.

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

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

I'll teach you not to look at me like that," Charles snarled through his hair before pushing it off his face. "Do you think I didn't notice? The way you look at me when you think I'm not watching?"
Oh, God!
He had to get out of there. Slip out of his grip as soon as possible, before he lost control of his body. He was already feeling it in his groin - the fire Rochester had lit was already making his balls throb.
His reply was desperate, a whisper, a tiny, brazen lie: "You're mistaken."
"Oh, that's how it is, then? You have the nerve to tell me it's not true?" The next moment he felt something firm pressing against his buttocks. Something hot and shameless. Charles's rock-hard erection.
Dorian's lips parted in a surprised moan. The air escaped his lungs and treacherous arousal rose all the way to his throat, breaking his voice and his willpower.
"No…" I don't know. "I didn't mean to. I wasn't spying on you on purpose."
"But you did. You always do. ~ Valentina C. Brin

But civilized human beings are alarmingly ignorant of the fact that they are continuous with their natural surroundings. It is as necessary to have air, water, plants, insects, birds, fish, and mammals as it is to have brains, hearts, lungs, and stomachs. The former are our external organs in the same way that the latter are our internal organs. If then, we can no more live without the things outside than without those inside, the plain inference is that the words "I" and "myself " must include both sides. The sun, the earth, and the forests are just as much features of your own body as your brain. Erosion of the soil is as much a personal disease as leprosy, and many "growing communities" are as disastrous as cancer. ~ Alan W. Watts

We talked into the night, the room blurring around us as it had done at the dance in West Side Story when Tony and Maria first saw each other across a crowd of people. Tonight, tonight, it all began tonight. My friends giggled and sipped wine at the table where I'd abandoned them earlier in the night, oblivious to the fact that their redheaded amiga had just been struck by a lightning bolt.
Before I could internally break into the second chorus of song, my version of Tony--this mysterious cowboy--announced abruptly that he had to go. Go? I thought. Go where? There's no place on earth but this smoky bar…But there was for him: he and his brother had plans to cook Christmas turkeys for some needy folks in his small town. Mmmm. He's nice, too, I thought as a pang stabbed my insides.
"Bye," he said with a gentle smile. And with that, his delicious boots walked right out of the J-Bar, his dark blue Wranglers cloaking a body that I was sure had to have been chiseled out of granite. My lungs felt tight, and I still smelled his scent through the bar smoke in the air. I didn't even know his name. I prayed it wasn't Billy Bob. ~ Ree Drummond

Noah was a funeral pyre. He was burning. The flames rose to staggering heights and blazed in white, hot tongues. Jeremie had once told him a story of the burial rites of the Norse. They'd burn their dead, believing the high smoke carried their loved ones' souls to Valhalla.

Noah was beyond Valhalla. Beyond the creamy spaciousness above the clouds, beyond the limits of the very earth. He floated among the stars, joined them in holy communion, knew each one by name. Then they were within him, scores of them, bright and hot, turning his ribs into a furnace as they shifted and created constellations in his soul. And all the while, the summer sang in his lungs.

There was no space between him and Jeremie. Where one ended, the other began, and still Jeremie pulled him closer like the moon pulls the tide, gripping him tightly in the same way he'd gripped Noah's heart, had gripped his entire being. ~ Lily Velez

It will be as if I'd never existed. The words ran through my head, lacking the perfect clarity of my hallucination last night. They were just words, soundless, like print on a page. Just words, but they ripped the hole wide open, and I stomped on the brake, knowing I should not drive while this incapacitated.
I curled over, pressing my face against the steering wheel and trying to breathe without lungs. ~ Stephenie Meyer

It was hard to sing like how I wanted to because playing live I had to just be at the top of my lungs all the time, and it made me sound like I had a really bad cold or something. ~ Elliott Smith

I stayed there sipping in that wrong air, until it filled my lungs with knowing that something bad was about to happen. ~ Jennifer Gooch Hummer

God, Eva. Your cunt loves my cock." Reaching for the headboard, Gideon stretched over me, my legs trapped between us. Fully exposed and tilted back for his pleasure, I was helpless to do more than watch as he straightened his hips and sank the last few inches of his penis into me. The sound that left me was a harsh wail, the pleasure so intense it hurt. Distantly, I heard Gideon curse, felt his powerful body shudder. "You good?" he bit out, his teeth grinding. I tried to catch my breath, my lungs expanding as much as they were able. "Eva." He growled my name. "Are. You. Good?" Unable to speak, I reached for his hips, my fingers catching in his boxer briefs. I had a moment to think how hot that was, that he hadn't bothered to undress either one of ~ Sylvia Day

I felt like I was trapped in one of those terrifying nightmares, the one where you have to run, run till your lungs burst, but you can't make your body move fast enough ... But this was no dream, and, unlike the nightmare, I wasn't running for my life: I was racing to save something infinitely more precious. My own life meant little to me today. ~ Stephenie Meyer

At that moment i felt lonelier than i'd ever felt before, and that loneliness seemed to squat in my lungs and crush all but my most minimal breathing. There was nothing left to say. Not about this. Not about anything. ~ Mitch Albom

It's the sound of my breathing that gets me, pouring down into my lungs and then tripping back up my throat. ~ Markus Zusak

Stop looking at me like that," I say, frowning and rubbing at my chest. He has this habit of making my heart sore, making my lungs feel like there's not enough air.
He tilts his head attractively, which only makes matters worse. "Like what?"
"Like you're molesting me with your eyes," I blurt out.
His answering laugh is long and deep. I can barely handle the affection in his gaze. "Okay, I'll try to stop. But if it all gets to be too much for you, this apartment happens to have a very nice bathroom. You can go rub one out again to take the edge off. I'll come listen, too, if that will help."
There he goes again, pushing me.
I do a slow blink at him before coming out with a rather masterful comeback. And when I say "masterful," I mean shit. "Why don't you go and rub one out?"
He cocks an eyebrow. "I don't rub out, darlin'. I jack off. ~ L. H. Cosway

chest - I could hear him denigrating Obama at the top of his lungs, which seemed to make Mary only slightly less uncomfortable than it made me. A few weeks before the trip, she said, when she was in the shower, seething about something he'd done, the words I chose him for you came up on the holy computer screen in her mind. What ~ Ariel Levy

She would remember that voice as long as she lived, Bernadette thought. It was low and slightly harsh, as if he was hoarse from yelling at the top of his lungs all day. Yet there was a deep resonance to it, as well. It seemed to come from the soles of his feet, rumbling up through that long, tough-looking body and somehow being muted by the time it reached his throat. No, she revised the whimsical reflection; not muted, but tamed a little, civilised for the benefit of those who might hear it. ~ Lynn Turner

Dear Camryn,

I never wanted it to be this way. I wanted to tell you these things myself, but I was afraid. I was afraid that if I told you out loud that I loved you, that what we had together would die with me. The truth is that I knew in Kansas that you were the one. I've loved you since that day when I first looked up into your eyes as you glared down at me from over the top of that bus seat. Maybe I didn't know it then, but I knew something had happened to me in that moment and I could never let you go.

I have never lived the way I lived during my short time with you. For the first time in my life, I've felt whole, alive, free. You were the missing piece of my soul, the breath in my lungs, the blood in my veins. I think that if past lives are real then we have been lovers in every single one of them. I've known you for a short time, but I feel like I've known you forever.

I want you to know that even in death I'll always remember you. I'll always love you. I wish that things could've turned out differently. I thought of you many nights on the road. I stared up at the ceiling in the motels and pictured what our life might be like together if I had lived. I even got all mushy and thought of you in a wedding dress and even with a mini me in your belly. You know, I always heard that sex is great when you're pregnant. ;-)

But I'm sorry that I had to leave you, Camryn. I'm so sorry…I wish the story of Orpheus and Eurydice was real ~ J.A. Redmerski

I'm walking out in the rain again
Pains the same as it's always been
Lungs full of smoke from my cigarette
And my heart breaks with every step,
But only a little bit
Walking away from myself, not getting far
Wondering if it's you I see in each passing car ~ Eric Overby

Through the doorway to choice and hope were the saddest girls I have ever met. Not because someone beat them or because someone molested them or because they were poor or pregnant or even because they put needles in their arms or pills in their mouths or weed in their lungs or alcohol down their ever-constricting throats. They were the saddest girls I have ever met because every one of them had it in her to lose a shot at a self and become her mother. ~ Lidia Yuknavitch

BACK IN SCHOOL, I loved ending stories that way. It's the perfect conclusion, isn't it? Billy went to school. He had a good day. Then he died. The end. It doesn't leave you hanging. It wraps everything up nice and neat. Except in my case, it didn't. Maybe you're thinking, Oh, Magnus, you didn't really die. Otherwise you couldn't be narrating this story. You just came close. Then you were miraculously rescued, blah, blah, blah. Nope. I actually died. One hundred percent: guts impaled, vital organs burned, head smacked into a frozen river from forty feet up, every bone in my body broken, lungs filled with ice water. The medical term for that is dead. Gee, Magnus, what did it feel like? It hurt. A lot. Thanks for asking. I ~ Rick Riordan

Good night's sleep?' she enquired, still smiling.

'For Wing, certainly,' Otto replied, 'though possibly not anyone within a hundred yards of him. If whales snore, that's what it sounds like.'

Wing smiled guiltily. 'I did warn you.'

'It's a sign of a good healthy set of lungs, at least that's what my dad always used to tell me,' Laura said, chuckling, 'though I think there were a few nights where my mum was not far from taking a kitchen knife and checking to see if his were as healthy as he claimed, if you know what I mean.'

Otto nodded in agreement. 'I wonder if you snore after you get hit with a sleeper?'

'Don't even think about it,' Wing replied. ~ Mark Walden

Then, four years later I received news from Aridea. She'd tracked down the little one, who was living in Mahakam with seven gnomes whom she'd managed to convince it was more profitable to rob merchants on the roads than to pollute their lungs with dust from the mines. ~ Andrzej Sapkowski

Wow, Caitlin's dating. Caitlin's going to the movies with a boy, where it's dark." Max shook his head and patted me on the shoulder. "You know what they say, man. With boys, parents only worry about one penis, but with girls, they worry about them all."

My lungs backed up and for a minute, my vision got hazy. Giving in, I bent at the waist and breathed air in nice and slow. Jesus Christ. "Thanks, Max, that's really helpful. ~ Kristen Kehoe

Isn't it strange, Dez, that we never see certain parts of ourselves? Our backs, our lungs, our hearts. We never know what it really is to sit across from ourselves. ~ Maryanne O'Hara

I'm sorry." Her voice cracked. "McKenna-"
"Not sorry enough." He pressed his wet face to hers, his mouth rubbing over her cheeks and chin in feverish, rough half kisses, as if he wanted to devour her. "Not nearly enough. You say you've had to live without your heart...how would you like to lose your soul as well? I've cursed every day I've had to live without you, and every night that I spent with another woman, wishing that it was you in my arms-"
"NO-" she moaned.
"Wishing," he continued fiercely, "for some way to stop the memories of you from eating away at me until there was nothing left inside. I've found no peace anywhere, not even in sleep. Not even in dreams..." He broke off and assaulted her with hungry, shuddering kisses. The taste of his tears, his mouth, made Aline disoriented and hot, her head reeling from shocks of pleasure. McKenna seemed possessed by a passion that bordered on violence, his lungs wracked with hard breaths, his hands tightening with a force that threatened to leave bruises on her tender flesh. "By God," he said with the vehemence of a man to whom entirely too much had happened, "In the past few days I've suffered the torments of the damned, and I've had enough! ~ Lisa Kleypas

When we breathe it in, soot can interfere with our lungs and increase the risk of asthma attacks, lung cancer and even premature death. The smallest particles can pass into the blood stream and cause heart disease, stroke and reproductive complications. ~ Sheldon Whitehouse

The green of these mountains in my lungs smelled like an old friend, one who wouldn't tell lies to you. One who understood. One who knew pain didn't go away just because you wanted it to. And when I exhaled, only the sweet scent of smoke and s dry mouth remained. But the scent was enough to rekindle the memory. ~ Jason Jack Miller

I walked a block on rubbery knees, feeling the way I did the time a van clipped my bike and sent me reeling into a line of parked cars. Ella had dropped her cigarette and jumped on the fallen bike, screaming at the top of her lungs as she sped after the car. Bleeding in three places, I watched her go, glad she knew I'd rather have retribution than comfort. ~ Melissa Albert

TB is like living with a bomb in your lungs. You just lie around very quietly hoping it won't go off ~ Sylvia Plath

She raises her hands and places them on either side of my face. My skin burns beneath her touch. 'I think you're beautiful.'
I smile, thinking she's done. But she releases my face and places her palms on my chest, directly over my heart.
'You're beautiful right here,' she says.
I close my eyes, and the breath rushes from my lungs.
'I see the good in you, Dante,' Charlie continues, her words rolling together off her tongue. 'Even if you don't, I do. You have a good heart. You know how I know?'
I open my eyes. She's looking at me like nothing else in the world exists. Like the entire planet and all of mankind just vanished. She slowly wraps my hands inside her own as best she can and places them on her chest. 'Because I feel it here.' She taps our hands against her chest. 'I know you're good, Dante. Because I feel it inside of me. ~ Victoria Scott

Or you might shout at the top of your lungs or whisper into your sleeve, "I hate you, God." That is a prayer too, because it is real, it is truth, and maybe it is the first sincere thought you've had in months. ~ Anne Lamott

She breathes in as I breathe out and her lungs fill with the air that was inside of me. I love her completely and I love giving her life as she gives me life. I breathe in her quintessence and it's cathartic. ~ Ella Dominguez

Ready?" Quinn asked when Sky wandered off and we couldn't avoid the family tent anymore.
"Hell, no."
"Me neither."
Mom and Dad waited just inside the tent flap. The light from the oil lamps glinted off fangs, narrowed eyes, and Mom's weapon collection.
"Congratulations." Dad spoke first, his voice soft as smoke before it fills your lungs. "I honestly don't know which of my children I'm angriest with right now. ~ Alyxandra Harvey

For the first stretch of road Olivia's eyes were sealed shut, her breath held hostage in her lungs.
"You might want to open your eyes," Wesley called back knowingly, his muffled voice breaking through both of their helmets. "And don't forget to breathe. ~ Shawn Kirsten Maravel

He spun on his heels and jogged backward across the goal line, the ball raised triumphantly overhead, a gesture that looked arrogant when the pros did it on TV but felt right just then, allowing him to watch his teammates as they came charging joyfully down the field to join him. Todd spiked the ball and waited for them, his arms stretched wide, his chest heaving as if he were trying to suck the whole night into his lungs. All he wished was that Sarah had been there to see it, to know him as he'd known himself streaking down the wide-open field, not some jock hero scoring the winning touchdown, but a grown man experiencing an improbable moment of grace. ~ Tom Perrotta

The release of 'Lungs' was so hard. It was terrifying, because it was the first time doing everything. The first experiences of media exposure were almost paralysing. I spent a lot of time crying on the floor of the studio - it sent me a bit mad. ~ Florence Welch

You can play the part for so long, wear the mask, say what people expect you to say. Fight for as long as there is air in your lungs. Fly if you have wings. But you can never be free from someone who won't let you go. ~ Debbie Howells

Helena silently put down the phone and tiptoed to the bathroom door. What should she do? Run? Knock? Walk in? Get naked? And ... how should she feel? Excited? Freaked out? Angry because he hadn't called for three weeks? Relieved, because the wait was over and she could finally start asking all those questions swimming in her head? The door swung open, and Niccolo boldly stood before her in his birthday-suit-glory, his unforgettable diamond-cut abs glistening with drops of water. A whoosh of air left her lungs. I'm going with ... naked and excited! ~ Mimi Jean Pamfiloff

Every single time you looked at me, through the corner of your eye and smiled. My heart pushed the ribs with all the force towards my lungs, until it got crushed and I could not breathe anymore. ~ Akshay Vasu

Fortune favors the brave."
Another moment of silence. And then, Iolanthe found herself shouting at the top of her lungs, her voice nearly drowned by the bellow of all the rebels present, "And the brave make their own fortune! ~ Sherry Thomas

I may bring other women here, to this place, and I may tell them I love them, and make love to them. But they will be impostors. And I will be a ghost. Because it means I will have lost you. My body, my brain, my lungs, my stomach, my guts, legs, arms will be here but I won't be. I will be out there, looking for you. And if we meet somewhere, at a restaurant, or a party and I'm with someone, I want you to know that they are by my side only because you are not. And she will be beautiful. And I will be laughing and smiling and she will be laughing and smiling, but she will be laughing at a lie. Because all I will have done to that person is lie to them. All I will do to anyone else, forever, from this moment forward, anyone who isn't you, is lie. I have no choice. ~ Jez Butterworth

I am going to sing for you, a little off key perhaps but I will sing. I will sing while you croak, I will dance over your dirty corpse ...
To sing you must first open your mouth. You must have a pair of lungs, and a little knowledge of music. It is not necessary to have an accordion, or a guitar. The essential thing is to want to sing. This then is a song. I am singing.
It is to you, Tania, that I am singing. I wish that I could sing better, more melodiously, but then perhaps you would never have consented to listen to me. You have heard the others sing and they have left you cold. They sang too beautifully, or not beautifully enough. ~ Henry Miller

On fire for the Lord," the Yoes began to talk to their friends about Jesus and even went so far as to name their dog "Repent" so they could stand in the city's parks and shout the canine's name and their message at the top of their lungs. ~ Larry Eskridge

Bryn took off running. Her thigh muscles bunched as she scrambled down the rise, breath coming in jerky gasps. The ill-fitting helmet jiggled up and down, obscuring her vision, so she yanked at the chinstrap and shoved the thing off her head. And kept running. She had to get there before the air strike. Had to save the kids. "Bryn!" Ignoring Dec's shout, she sprinted hard, fueled by adrenaline. Bouncing off rocks and boulders, she reached the road and scrambled to her feet, breath sawing in and out of her lungs in sobs. She could not let innocent children be caught up in this. "Bryn, no!" She ignored him. The children weren't stopping. She opened her mouth and screamed the Arabic word for stop. It came out in a high-pitched wail, and both children jerked around to face her in fear. "Stop! Go back!" she yelled, waving her arms in a frantic effort to get them to move. "Run! ~ Kaylea Cross

Love's lungs are blowing teargas at me ~ Wesley Eisold

Giving Birth by Marcus Amaker

do you remember
when the earth was just a baby,
settling in its skin,
safe in the arms of mother nature
with fire breathing from within.
you were not shackled by time
and life roamed around your heart
with the weight of dinosaurs,
leaving footprints in your lungs.
and the first time you saw the sun
you could barely breathe
because the possibility of endless light
planted a seed
so you admire the strength of trees,
who naturally grew into
unwavering beauty,
staring down the mouth of
time.

do you remember being 11 years old
when your mother told you
"birth is more painful than dying"
and you burst with dreams
without even trying,
seeking light in your heart,
where shadows now rest
comfortably next to fear.
but you come out of the woods clear,
with nature's breath
under your tongue,
and a weightless bliss,
no longer scared of
death. ~ Marcus Amaker

The black people in these films seemed to love the worst things in life - love the dogs that rent their children apart, the tear gas that clawed at their lungs, the fire-hoses that tore off their clothes and tumbled them into the streets. They seemed to love the men who raped them, the women who cursed them, love the children who spat on them, the terrorists that bombed them. Why are they showing this to us? Why were only our heroes nonviolent? I speak not of the morality of nonviolence, but of the sense that blacks are in especial need of this morality. ~ Ta-Nehisi Coates

Perched upon the stones of a bridge
The soldiers had the eyes of ravens
Their weapons hung black as talons
Their eyes gloried in the smoke of murder

To the shock of iron-heeled sticks
I drew closer in the cripple's bitter patience
And before them I finally tottered
Grasping to capture my elusive breath

With the cockerel and swift of their knowing
They watched and waited for me
'I have come,' said I, 'from this road's birth,
I have come,' said I, 'seeking the best in us.'

The sergeant among them had red in his beard
Glistening wet as he showed his teeth
'There are few roads on this earth,' said he,
'that will lead you to the best in us, old one.'

'But you have seen all the tracks of men,' said I
'And where the mothers and children have fled
Before your advance. Is there naught among them
That you might set an old man upon?'

The surgeon among this rook had bones
Under her vellum skin like a maker of limbs
'Old one,' said she, 'I have dwelt
In the heat of chests, among heart and lungs,

And slid like a serpent between muscles,
Swum the currents of slowing blood,
And all these roads lead into the darkness
Where the broken will at last rest.

'Dare say I,' she went on,'there is no
Place waiting inside where you might find
In slithering exploration of mysteries
All that you so boldly call t ~ Steven Erikson

It is not only by the pores of the skin that this aqueous emaciation takes place. A considerable quantity of humidity is also exhaled by the lungs at each expiration. ~ Antoine Lavoisier

I've never liked urban myths. I've never liked pretending to believe in them; never understood why everyone else doesn't see straight through them. Why is it they've always happened to a friend of a friend - someone you've never met? Why does everyone smile and nod and pull the right faces, when they must know they're not true? Pointless. A waste of breath.
So I sneered at the myths about Scaderstone Pit. It was just an old quarry – nothing more. I never believed in the rumours of discarded dynamite. It had decayed, they said. It exploded at the slightest touch, had even blown someone's hand off. I shrugged off the talk of the toxic waste. It was dumped in the dead of night, they said. The canisters rusting away, leaking deadly poisons that could blind you, burn your lungs. I laughed at the ghost stories. You could hear the moans, they said, of quarrymen buried alive and never found. You could see their nightwalking souls, searching for their poor crushed bodies.
I didn't believe any of it – not one word. Now, after everything that's happened, I wonder whether I should've listened to those stories. Maybe then, these things would've happened to someone else, and I could've smiled and said they were impossible.
But this is not an urban myth. And it did not happen to someone else, but to me. I've set it down as best I can remember. Whether you believe it or not, is up to you. ~ Mikey Campling

i witnessed her heart shatter into
a million pieces as she found herself becoming immune to her emotions
with her lungs incapable of letting the air out and the pain buried within her
unable to burst into tears, she bled in silence. ~ Noah Sammak

She walked down the basement steps. She saw an imaginary framed photo seep into the wall - a quiet-smiled secret. No more than a few meters, it was a long walk to the drop sheets and the assortment of paint cans that shielded Max Vandenburg. She removed the sheets closest to the wall until there was a small corridor to look through. The first part of him she saw was his shoulder, and through the slender gap, she slowly, painfully, inched her hand in until it rested there. His clothing was cool. He did not wake.
She could feel his breathing and his shoulder moving up and down ever so slightly. For a while, she watched him. Then she sat and leaned back.
Sleepy air seemed to have followed her.
The scrawled words of practice stood magnificently on the wall by the stairs, jagged and childlike and sweet. They looked on as both the hidden Jew and the girl slept, hand to shoulder.
They breathed.
German and Jewish lungs. ~ Markus Zusak

Love has nothing to do with the heart, only the mind. You will tell me that a woman who takes your breath away has something to do with your lungs next"
-Graves Lindrop ~ John Decarteret

But, as you watch the sun rise again tomorrow morning, think to yourself: past performance is not a predictor of future results. And then force a smile, drink another cup of coffee, and try not to look down as you walk across the soil that will eventually fill your lifeless lungs and repurpose your corpse. ~ Joseph Fink

One might go to the bakery, perhaps," he said. "But did you know the baker has tuberculosis? All the people here run around in a highly infectious state. The baker's daughter has tuberculosis too, it seems to have something to do with the runoff from the cellulose factory, with the steam that the locomotives have spewed out for decades, with the bad diet that people eat. Almost all of them have cankered lung lobes, pneumothorax and pneumoperitoneum are endemic. They have tuberculosis of the lungs, the head, the arms and legs. All of them have tubercular abscesses somewhere on their bodies. The valley is notorious for tuberculosis. You will find every form of it here: skin tuberculosis, brain tuberculosis, intestinal tuberculosis. Many cases of meningitis, which is deadly within hours. The workmen have tuberculosis from the dirt they dig around in, the farmers have it from their dogs and the infected milk. The majority of the people have galloping consumption. Moreover," he said, "the effect of the new drugs, of streptomycin for example, is nil. Did you know the knacker has tuberculosis? That the landlady has tuberculosis? That the landlady has tuberculosis? That her daughters have been to sanatoria on three occasions? Tuberculosis is by no means on the way out. People claim it is curable. but that's what the pharmaceutical industry says. In fact, tuberculosis is as incurable as it always was. Even people who have been inoculated against it come down with it. Often those who h ~ Thomas Bernhard

Her lungs felt scorched, her face singed as she struggled to her hands and knees, fighting hysteria, the concussion of the blast driving the breath from her. The house was nothing more than a pile of burning rubble. She couldn't see the children. Where were they? Maybe they'd been far enough away from the explosion. Maybe they were still alive. She had to find them. Her legs wobbled under her as she staggered to ~ Kaylea Cross

The brittle bones beneath my chest cracked, piercing my heart. It was you who breathed new life into my lungs and it was you who would later syphon the life you had given so as to feed your selfish desires ~ Sonya Watson

Oh, my God. It hit me like a tsunami then: how perfect he was for me, how he was everything I could possibly hope for, as a friend, boyfriend - maybe even more. He was it for me. There would be no more looking. I really, really loved him, with a whole new kind of love I'd never felt before, something that made every other kind of love I'd ever felt just seem washed out and wimpy in comparison. I loved him with every cell in my body, every thought in my head, every feather in my wings, every breath in my lungs. And air sacs. ~ James Patterson

When he took my hand he taught me something about the value of touch, the communicative power of the human hand. I didn't know, as I lay there, that I would think of him many times in the years ahead. When my son lay on a hospital bed, age four, with the raging fever of meningitis, I reached through the bodies of the attending doctors and held his slack, heated hand in both of mine. When my youngest child disappeared beneath the waves of the Mediterranean Sea and I had to leap in, haul her out, turn her upside-down so that the water drained from her lungs. Then all she and I could do was sit on the sand, wrapped in towels, contemplating what had almost happened, her small fingers wrapped in mine. ~ Maggie O'Farrell

An aching vacuum inside her sucking the air from her lungs. She hung her head and wept fiercely, the emptiness inside her growing larger not smaller; she felt as though it would grow so large it would suffocate her just as surely as the sea would have ~ Alan Brennert

Laugh often. Starting your day with a good laugh, or at least a big smile, is as beneficial to your health as it is to your mood. Scientific studies at Northwestern University and Fordham University concluded that laughter benefits the heart, lungs, stomach and other organs. It relaxes tensions, changes attitude, and increases the body's natural painkillers. And it has no harmful side effects. ~ Harvey MacKay

Forests ... are in fact the world's air-conditioning system-the very lungs of the planet-and help to store the largest body of freshwater on the planet ... essential to produce food for our planet's growing population. The rainforests of the world also provide the livelihoods of more than a billion of the poorest people on this Earth ... In simple terms, the rainforests, which encircle the world, are our very life-support system-and we are on the verge of switching it off. ~ Prince Charles

The air in a man's lungs 10,000,000,000, 000,000,000,000 atoms, so that sooner or later every one of us breathes an atom that has been breathed before by anyone you can think of who has ever lived - Michelangelo or George Washington or Moses. ~ Jacob Bronowski

At the end of the sky I am a swimmer. In the water I can become a child again, splashing, sighing, holding my breath until enough is enough, I come up choking, my lungs needful of a fresh supply of air. ~ Abigail George

And his hair was free, no ponytail, no braid, the long thickness of it waved and curled down his back, over his shoulders and next to his face. I felt my lungs start burning. Holy freaking moly ... my husband was hot! ~ Kristen Ashley

When he sleeps,
the snoring does not bother me:
the rhythmic growl, gravel shoved
across the sidewalk of his throat.
It is the grasping, desperate way
in which he takes in air - his gulping lungs
as if every dream is filled with water
and he is trying to inflate
the life jacket under his skin.
I babble in my sleep. He believes
I am trying to tell him how my heart works,
says he will translate the manual one day.
I want to ask him: am I the ocean?
Are you drowning in everything
I don't say when I'm awake?
- Heart Apnea ~ Sierra DeMulder

Which was why he reflexively turned when a flash of iridescence caught his eye. His first thought was: Morpho rhetenor Helena. The extraordinary tropical butterfly with wings of shifting colors: blues, lavenders, greens.
It proved to be a woman's skirt.
The color was blue, but by the light of the legion of overhead candles, he saw purples and even greens shivering in its weave. A bracelet of pale stones winked around one wrist, a circlet banded her dark head. The chandelier struck little beams from that, too.
She's altogether too shiny for a woman, he decided, and began to turn away.
Which was when she tipped her face up into the light.
Everything stopped. The beat of his heart, the pump of his lungs, the march of time.
Seconds later, thankfully, it all resumed. Much more violently than previously.
And then absurd notions roman-candled in his mind.
His palms ached to cradle her face - it was a kitten's face, broad and fair at the brow, stubborn at the chin. She had kitten's eyes, too: large and a bit tilted and surely they weren't actually the azure of calm southern seas? Surely he, Miles Redmond, hadn't entertained such a florid thought? Her eyebrows were wicked: fine, slanted, very dark. Her hair was probably brown, but it was as though he'd never learned the word "brown."
Burnished. Silk. Copper. Azure. Delicate. Angel. Hallelujah. Suddenly these were the only words he knew. ~ Julie Anne Long

He forced air into his lungs, willed his heart to slow down. ~ Kaylea Cross