Oxygen Quotes

Sweaty palms. check. shaky bones. check. the feeling that all oxygen in the air has been replaced by helium. yup. ~ David Levithan

We no longer live in a mass-media world with a few centralized choke points with just a few editors in charge, operated by commercial entities and governments. There is a new, radically different mode of information and attention flow: the chaotic world of the digitally networked public sphere (or spheres) where ordinary citizens or activists can generate ideas, document and spread news of events, and respond to mass media. This new sphere, too, has choke points and centralization, but different ones than the past. The networked public sphere has emerged so forcefully and so rapidly that it is easy to forget how new it is. Facebook was started in 2004 and Twitter in 2006. The first iPhone, ushering in the era of the smart, networked phone, was introduced in 2007. The wide extent of digital connectivity might blind us to the power of this transformation. It should not. These dynamics are significant social mechanisms, especially for social movements, since they change the operation of a key resource: attention… Attention is oxygen for movements. Without it, they cannot catch fire. ~ Zeynep Tufekci

Encouragement is like oxygen to the human spirit. Don't forget you're carrying someone else's air. Encourage them; help them breathe. ~ Jeremy Riddle

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

Life and water are inseparable. Three quarters of the earth's surface is covered by water, just as three quarters of your body is made up of water. Even in the driest desert where rain may come just once every few years, the cycles of life are based on waiting for the arrival of water. Our bodies are not so patient.
Every cell in your body needs water to survive, and that means that drinking plenty of clean, fresh water can make you stronger healthier and smarter. Water carries oxygen and fuel to your cells, lubricates your joints, regulates your body temperature, and plays a key roll in just about every function of your body.
My number one roadie, POODIE, says, You can't make a turd without grease. ~ Willie Nelson

double-pumpin' it" when you have to inhale two desperate gasps of oxygen with every sob. ~ Elizabeth Gilbert

Faith is invulnerability, it feeds on stubbornness, self motivation and an endless stream of will. His body is mortal, but the spirit of faith cannot be killed. Faith is oxygen that feeds the brain, helping him to think sensibly. ~ Musin Almat Zhumabekovich

Isi is fast becoming my universe. We share the common denominator of completely understanding each other; and being able to feel the sincere perceptive acceptance of our individual composition. It is a connection I can't believe I was willing to live without. But with the experience now well within my reach, I'm salivating to secure it with both hands and hold onto it; like an oxygen mask delivering me life saving breaths, while I navigate the cavernous depths of an ocean of emotion.
~Silas Tayte, Fake.~ ~ Criss Copp

An ironic death for someone with a leaky space suit: too much oxygen. ~ Andy Weir

Justin is twenty-four years old: the world will never be more suited to him than it is now, he will never feel more embraced by life or have greater faith in his right to exist. The earth and the oxygen, the cities and lights, the nights and the beaches seem created for him and for those like him. ~ Sonya Hartnett

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

In cross-country skiing, athletes propel themselves over distances of ten and twenty miles - a physical challenge that places intense demands on the ability of their red blood cells to deliver oxygen to their muscles. ~ Malcolm Gladwell

Like the bud of a flower, change forces you to surrender to growth. It makes you vulnerable. It requires you to enlarge, expand and become bigger. Like the oxygen provided with each breath, we are denied its benefits until we relax and breathe in. ~ Stella Payton

Now I can see: even the trees
are tired: they are bones bent forward


in a skin of wind, leaning in
osteoporosis, reaching


for a little more than any
oxygen can give: when living


is in season, they can live;
but living is no reason


to continue: everything begins:
and everything is desperate


to extend: and everything is
insufficient in the end:


and everything is ending:
Now I can see: even the trees ~ Malachi Black

When you really listen to another person from their point of view, and reflect back to them that understanding, it's like giving them emotional oxygen. ~ Stephen Covey

I think my response to hearing that alarm would have been to grab an extinguisher and start fighting for my life, but over the past 21 years that instinct has been trained out of me and another set of responses has been trained in, represented by three words: warn, gather, work. "Working the problem" is NASA-speak for descending one decision tree after another, methodically looking for a solution until you run out of oxygen. We practice the "warn, gather, work" protocol for responding to fire alarms so frequently that it doesn't just become second nature; it actually supplants our natural instincts. ~ Chris Hadfield

They both fought to catch their breath, though Megan's oxygen deprivation had nothing to do with the game.
"You okay?" Finn asked.
"Yeah, you?" she replied. Every inch of her body was throbbing to touch him again.
"Yeah," he replied with a huge grin. He pushed himself around and got on all fours in front of her, pausing there with his face inches from hers. "I'm glad you stayed," he whispered, his breath warm on her face.
Megan somehow managed to reply. "Me too."
Then Finn pushed himself up and headed back toward the centre of the yard. For a moment, Megan couldn't move. Then Doug walked over and offered his arm. Megan grasped it thankfully and he yanked up to her shaky legs.
"Who's all in a twist now?" he asked with a smirk.
Megan laughed and shoved him from behind as they headed back to the line. ~ Kate Brian

Plants are our food, oxygen, and medicine. Some even say they are one of the most pleasurable experiences on earth! From the flowers to the trees and the seas filled with coral dreams; the earth's natural flora has inspired and enhanced humans for as long as time can tell. That's why the power of plants is the key to unlocking our enjoyment of life. ~ Natasha Potter

I quit my day job the day my daughter was born. I remember flying to Cleveland and hitting a thunderstorm, which caused the plane to lose pressure, and the oxygen masks fell from the ceiling. We felt the plane dropping; the pilot was taking it down to regain cabin pressure. My heart was in my stomach. I found out after landing that her mom was in labor. I did the show and came back to New York. By the time I walked into the hospital, my daughter was being born. She was waiting for me. She's a sweet daddy's girl. She's premed. She has her own pie company. She works for Habitat for Humanity. ~ J. B. Smoove

It's an appreciation for life generally, every bit of life, the smallest creature that lives in the intestines of termites that make termite life possible - to the leaves that turn out oxygen and grab carbon dioxide and with water make simple sugars that feed much of the world. I mean, these are everyday miracles. ~ Sylvia Earle

Much of the oxygen we breathe comes from plants that died long ago. We can give thanks to these ancestors of our present-pay foliage, but we can't give back to them. We can, however, give forward. When we are unable to return the favor, we can pay it forward to someone or something else. Using this approach, we can see ourselves as part of a larger flow of giving and receiving throughout time. Receiving from the past, we can give to the future. When tackling issues such as climate change, the stance of gratitude is a refreshing alternative to guilt or fear as a source of motivation. ~ Joanna Macy & Chris Johnstone

And to use something as elegant as a tree? Imagine this design assignment: Design something that makes oxygen, sequesters carbon, fixes nitrogen, distills water, makes complex sugars and foods, changes colors with the seasons, and self-replicates. and then why don't we knock that down and write on it? ~ William McDonough

Now that's a concept that's always fascinated me: the real world. Only a very specific subset of people use the term, have you noticed? To me, it seems self-evident that everyone lives in the real world - we all breathe real oxygen, eat real food, the earth under our feet feels equally solid to all of us. But clearly these people have a far more tightly circumscribed definition of reality, one that I find deeply mysterious, and an almost pathologically intense need to bring others into line with that definition. ~ Tana French

A bra was not for little kids who dreamed of being astronauts. What are you gonna do with boobs in space? Unless they are currency for some far-flung civilization, all they're going to do is interfere with proper oxygen flow inside your space suit. ~ Aisha Tyler

Music is service to people. Music and art - we need it like blood and oxygen. It heals us, and it reveals us to ourselves. ~ Rosanne Cash

forming the "hydrogen bond"... is dynamic, with the exchange occurring in a few billionths of a billionth of a second. Since water molecules can "lose" two hydrogen atoms and "win" two by way of their oxygen atom, they are on average regrouped in fours, and the network of water, whether in our glass or in our cells is tetrahedral. All the same, this arrangement is not perfect in liquid water (otherwise the water would be a solid crystal), and locally there are many defects in the network. Although the motif of four water molecules is the most common in "linear" hydrogen bonds, the water molecule sometimes has a "forked tongue" with bifurcated liaisons, which creates arrangements of three or five, or even two or six molecules. This variability prevents water from being structured over a great distance and enables it to remain in a liquid state at the ambient temperature. ~ Denis Le Bihan

While information is the oxygen of the modern age, disinformation is the carbon monoxide that can poison generations. ~ Newton Lee

This boy has negative charisma. He walks into a room and the oxygen starts to evaporate. I guess that's why girls sleep with him. They find his awfulness transfixing. He's like a lousy 1970's disaster movie that they can't bring themselves to turn off, even though it is making their life worse every minute they leave it on. ~ Emma Forrest

The Arab world has no peer when it comes to hatred - of the Western world generally, and especially of Israel. Israel-hatred and its twin, Jew-hatred, are the oxygen that the Arab world breathes. ~ Dennis Prager

We don't survive without plants and animals because we rely on them, we rely on plants to put oxygen into the atmosphere, we rely on ... fish and crops and cows to eat. ~ Naomi Oreskes

Ah!' said Michel, tempted, 'you have modern poems?'
'Of course. For instance, Martillac's 'Electric Harmonies,' which won a prize last year from the Academic of Sciences, and Monsieur de Pulfasse's 'Meditations on Oxygen;' and we have the 'Poetic Parallelogram,' and even the 'Decarbonated Odes ... '
Michel couldn't bear hearing another word and found himself outside again, stupefied and overcome. Not even this tiny amount of art had escaped the pernicious influence of the age! Science, Chemistry, Mechanics had invaded the realm of poetry! 'And such things are read,' he murmured as he hurried through the streets, ' perhaps even bought! And signed by the authors and placed on the shelves marked 'Literature.' But not one copy of Balzac, not one work by Victor Hugo! Where can I find such things-where, if not the Library ... ~ Jules Verne

I will garden on the double run,
my rhythm obvious in the ringing rakes,
and trust in fate to keep me poor and kind
and work until my heart is short,
then go out slowly with a feeble grin,
my fingers flexing but my eyes gone gray
from cramps and the lack of oxygen. ~ Richard Hugo

Cells require oxygen, so we breathe. If we stop breathing, we die. The heart also needs to breathe, and the breath of the heart is none other than the remembrance of God. Without it, the spiritual heart dies. The very purpose of revelation and of scripture is to remind us that our hearts need to be nourished. ~ Hamza Yusuf

My misery was too deep to speak any more. I scanned the page; I was having trouble breathing, as though the oxygen were leaving the room. Amid its devastation my mind flashed from thought to thought, despairingly in search of something left which it could rely on. Not rely on absolutely, that was obliterated as a possibility, just rely on a little,some solace, something surviving in the ruin. ~ John Knowles

The demands of the marketplace eventually outstripped the chicken's physical capacity to support them. The bird's breasts became too big for its legs and skeleton to support. The animals grew so fast they couldn't supply oxygen to all their tissue and muscle, causing fluid to build up in their body cavity. The chicken's immune system suffered, and some birds simply keeled over after a few weeks. ~ Christopher Leonard

It's just that most really good-looking people are stupid, so I exceed expectations.'
'Right, it's primarily his hotness,' I said.
'It can be sort of blinding,' he said.
'It actually did blind our friend Isaac,' I said.
'Terrible tragedy, that. But can I help my own deadly beauty?'
'You cannot.'
'It is my burden, this beautiful face.'
'Not to mention your body.'
'Seriously, don't even get me started on my hot bod. You don't want to see me naked, Dave. Seeing me naked actually took Hazel Grace's breath away,' he said, nodding toward the oxygen tank. ~ John Green

A small sample of the oxygen molecules from any breath that anybody took within the past few thousand years is near certain to be in the next breath you take. ~ David Bodanis

Ninety percent of metabolic oxygen comes from breathing. Ten percent comes from food. ~ Gabriel Cousens

But on average, I go to the gym about four or five times a week. Today, I'm so experienced in training - I'm actually listening to my body now. My body needs freedom. When I train I create serenity and I produce oxygen in my blood. It helps me to think better and relax. By training, you accentuate the problem. ~ Jean-Claude Van Damme

He walked right to her, his long strides eating the space between them and sucking the oxygen in front of her ~ Cristin Harber

My favourite writer is Beckett and I keep going back to wallow in his work like a deep pool of dark humour or like an oxygen tank when you can't breath in a world consumed by piety, hypocrisy and self-satisfaction. ~ Simon Critchley

Change is the nature of nature,'" she read. "'For example, stars expand as they grow older. They grow from a star, to a red super-giant, to a supernova. When a massive star explodes at the end of its life, the explosion dispenses different elements-helium, carbon, oxygen, iron, nickel-across the universe, scattering starduest. That stardust now makes up the planets, including ours. ~ Michelle Cuevas

The atmosphere of the theater is my oxygen. ~ Placido Domingo

A strength is a lot like oxygen. We don't really pay much attention to it - unless it's missing. ~ Julie Winkle Giulioni

Life
luscious wet life bereft of
death, loss of empty shell
minus absent of nothing
exploding star cell
amoeba sweet algae
oxygen,
hydrogen flowering
in the vacuum of
space and magnetic motion. ~ H. Raven Rose

The supposedly immaterial soul, we now know, can be bisected with a knife, altered by chemicals, started or stopped by electricity, and extinguished by a sharp blow or by insufficient oxygen. ~ Steven Pinker

The ocean makes up roughly 70% of the planet; living on land, we fail to recognize the importance of our ocean and the marine life that inhabit it. Ocean acidification is making phytoplankton toxic, which is bad news for the organisms that depend on them as a source of food and oxygen. Phytoplankton generates a large portion of the world's O2. If they're out of balance, the rest of life on Earth is going to be out of balance. ~ Joseph P. Kauffman

I, an old man, have written this fire report. Among other things, it was important to me, as an exercise for old age, to enlarge my knowledge and spirit so I could accompany young men whose lives I might have lived on their way to death. I have climbed where they climbed, and in my time I have fought fire and inquired into its nature. In addition, I have lived to get a better understanding of myself and those close to me, many of them now dead. Perhaps it is not odd, at the end of this tragedy, where nothing much was left of the elite who came from the sky, but courage struggling for oxygen, that I have often found myself thinking of my wife on her brave and lonely way to death. ~ Norman Maclean

Your spirit needs self-love like the body needs oxygen. ~ Pamela Cummins

She's oxygen, and without her, I'm dead. ~ J.M. Darhower

Oxygen, responsible for corroding certain things it connects with and despite the destructive nature; it's peculiar that humans run for it. ~ Cnishq

A more down-to-earth project run by the Soviets had determined that eight square meters of algae - an expanse of pond scum about the size of two ping-pong tables - was needed to keep a single human supplied with oxygen. ~ Neal Stephenson

I want truth. I'm crying out to hear it. I need it like oxygen. ~ Matt Roper

Scheele independently discovered eight elements - chlorine, fluorine, manganese, barium, molybdenum, tungsten, nitrogen, and oxygen - but received credit for none of them in his lifetime. He had an unfortunate habit of tasting every substance he worked with, as a way of familiarizing himself with its properties, and eventually the practice caught up with him. ~ Bill Bryson

Everything grows best in oxygen and sunlight except secrets and guilt and regrets. They ~ Catherine Ryan Hyde

all of whom radiated level-headed competence, physical fitness and pride in appearance, and lived on a different planet from the one defined by general weak tittering, the oxygen levels of which I was more used to. ~ Simon Winder

All the charming and beautiful things, from the Song of Songs, to bouillabaisse, and from the nine Beethoven symphonies to the Martini cocktail, have been given to humanity by men who, when the hour came, turned from tap water to something with color in it, and more in it than mere oxygen and hydrogen. ~ H.L. Mencken

We are bound to expire. Even metal which is sturdiest, rusts. Even oxygen, the breath of life, soon transpires. ~ Luis Medina

Funny thing about Gabby: you wouldn't know it from looking at him, with his golden halo and platonic beauty, but the guy was something of a pack rat. He'd been collecting little odds and ends since at least the double-digit redshifts. The interior reality of Gabriel's Magisterium burbled and shifted like convection currents in a star on the zaftig end of the main sequence. Because, I realized, that's what they were. Dull dim light, from IR to X-ray, oozed past me like the wax in a million-mile lava lamp while carbon, nitrogen, and oxygen nuclei did little do-si-dos about my toes. Every bubble, every sizzle, every new nucleus, every photodissociation tagged something of interest to Gabriel. The heart of this star smelled of roses and musty libraries. ~ Ian Tregillis

I do travel a lot, because I need oxygen, I need to go to places to meet people who aren't upset at me because I'm asking for peace. ~ Sandra Cisneros

He had used drugs and nanonic supplements to compensate at first, then supplements became replacements, with bones exchanged for carbon-fibre struts. Electrical consumption supplanted food intake. The final transition was his skin, replacing the eczema-ridden epidermis with a smooth ochre silicon membrane. Warlow didn't need a spacesuit to work in the vacuum, he could survive for over three weeks without a power and oxygen recharge. His facial features had become purely cosmetic, a crude mannequin-like caricature of human physiognomy, although there was an inlet valve at the back of his throat for fluid intake. There was no hair, and he certainly didn't bother with clothes. Sex was something he lost in his fifties. ~ Peter F. Hamilton

You need to stop thinking with your head, Mud Boy, and start thinking with your heart.
Artemis sighed. The heart was an organ for pumping oxygen-rich blood to the cells. It could no more think than an apple could tap-dance. ~ Eoin Colfer

The excellent book 'Going Higher. Oxygen, Man, And Mountains.' should be compulsory reading for all high altitude workers. ~ Steven Magee

I think back to the last thing Dave said to me and try to imagine what escaping oxygen would look like. It looks a lot like drowning. ~ A.S. King

In the event of an oxygen shortage on airplanes, mothers of young children are always reminded to put on their own oxygen mask first, to better assist the children with theirs. The same tactic is necessary on terra firma. There's no way of sustaining our children if we don't first rescue ourselves. I don't call that selfish behavior. I call it love. ~ Joyce Maynard

Calculations show that a change of as little as 0.5 percent in the strength of the strong nuclear force, or 4 percent in the electric force, would destroy either nearly all carbon or all oxygen in every star, and hence the possibility of life as we know it. Change those rules of our universe just a bit, and the conditions for our existence disappear! ~ Stephen Hawking

All the green in the planted world consists of these whole, rounded chloroplasts wending their ways in water. If you analyze a molecule of chlorophyll itself, what you get is one hundred thirty-six atoms of hydrogen, carbon, oxygen, and nitrogen arranged in an exact and complex relationship around a central ring. At the ring's center is a single atom of magnesium. Now: If you remove the atom of magnesium and in its exact place put an atom of iron, you get a molecule of hemoglobin. The iron atom combines with all the other atoms to make red blood, the streaming red dots in the goldfish's tail. ~ Annie Dillard

I let his voice be my comfort. It bore no trace of pain or self-pity, carrying only good humor and softness and just the tiniest hint of jazz. I lived on it as if it were oxygen. It was sustaining, and it was always enough. ~ Michelle Obama

One of the greatest lesson is humility. Humility is like oxygen to the soul. You won't get too far without it! ~ Dina Rolle

The life of the planet began the long, slow process of modulating and regulating the physical conditions of the planet. The oxygen in today's atmosphere is almost entirely the result of photosynthetic living, which had its start with the appearance of blue-green algae among the microorganisms. ~ Lewis Thomas

Eventually, two Swedish climbers and a Sherpa called Babu Chiri found Mick. By chance--by God's grace--Babu was carrying a spare canister of oxygen.
Neil and Pasang had also now descended, and met up with Mick and the others. Neil then located an emergency cache of oxygen half-buried in the snow nearby. He gave one to Alan and forced both him and Mick to their feet.
Slow and tired, his mind wandering in and out of consciousness, Mick remembers little about the next few hours. It was just a haze of delirium, fatigue, and cold.
Descending blue sheet ice can be lethal. Much more so than ascending it. Mick staggered on down, the debilitating effects of thin air threatening to overwhelm him.
Somewhere beneath the Balcony Mick suddenly felt the ground surge beneath him. There was a rush of acceleration as the loose topping of snow--covering the blue ice--slid away under him.
He began to hurtle down the sheer face on his back, and then made the all-too-easy error of trying to dig in his crampons to slow the fall. The force catapulted him into a somersault, hurtling him ever faster down the steep ice and snow face.
He resigned himself to the fact that he would die.
He bounced and twisted, over and over, and then slid to a halt on a small ledge. Then he heard voices. They were muffled and strange.
Mick tried to shout to them but nothing came out. The climbers who were now at the col then surrounded him, clipped him in, and held him. He was sha ~ Bear Grylls

Profit is like oxygen, food, water, and blood for the body; they are not the point of life, but without them, there is no life. ~ James C. Collins

I could write a thesis on the physiology of vision. But I had no way to look through the fabric of confabulation spun by a man with severe lung disease who was prescribed 'home oxygen', but gave a false address out of embarrassment because he had no 'home.' ~ Siddhartha Mukherjee

Man can no more survive psychologically in a psychological milieu that does not respond empathetically to him, than he can survive physically in an atmosphere that contains no oxygen. ~ Heinz Kohut

One particularly harmful idea carried by our cultural narrative is that you need to find someone who will love you. Imagine if we believed this about any other basic need: food, water, oxygen. If you needed another person to provide you with those, you'd be considered dependent - if not disabled. Yet we so willingly put ourselves in this state with love. ~ Vironika Tugaleva

When a film's heroine innocently coughs, you know that two scenes later, at most, she'll be in an oxygen tent; when a man bumps into a woman at the train station, you know that man will become the woman's lover and/or murderer. In everyday life, where we cough often and are always bumping into people, our daily actions rarely reverberate so lucidly. Once we love or hate someone, we can think back and remember that first casual encounter. But what of all the chance meetings that nothing ever comes of? While our bodies move ever forward on the time line, our minds continuously trace backward, seeking shape and meaning as deftly as any arrow seeking its mark. ~ Lucy Grealy

I have no ego investment in being on the air. I don't knock others for whom that kind of attention is like oxygen, but I don't miss anything about it. ~ Hugh Downs

Kimberly Mira blinked into the dark and sniffed the air. Clean cotton sheets? A soft mattress cushioned her back. Her skin grew goose bumps as the wind howled outside. This wasn't heaven. Her skin felt grimy and her head pounded like she'd drunk too much last night. Flashes of an out-of-control fire replayed in her mind. She sucked in her breath like she needed to hold as much oxygen in as possible. She told herself to be normal and that the intense fire was in her mind's eye. Eventually she relaxed her body. Another memory surfaced as she closed her eyes and remembered falling into depths ~ Victoria Pinder

Was going to drown. Woo had attached him to the drain at the bottom of the pool with his own handcuffs. He looked up. The moon was shining down on him through a filter of water. He stretched his free arm up and out of the water. Hell, the pool was only one meter deep here! Harry crouched and tried to stand up, stretched with all his might. The handcuff cut into his thumb, but still his mouth was twenty centimeters below the surface. He noticed the shadow at the edge of the pool moving away. Shit! Don't panic, he thought. Panic uses up oxygen. He sank to the bottom and examined the grille with his fingers. It was made of steel and was totally immovable, it didn't budge even when he grabbed it with both hands and pulled. How long could he hold his breath? One minute? Two? All his muscles ached, his temples throbbed and red stars were dancing in front of his eyes. He tried to jerk himself loose. His mouth was dry with fear, his brain had started producing ~ Jo Nesbo

I can't get enough of you," he said. "You're like oxygen. I crave you, I need you, I can't live without you." "Oxygen's explosive," I teased. "It most definitely is," he said ~ J. Kenner

what a shame we all became such fragile, broken things.
A memory remains just a tiny spark.
I give it all my oxygen,
To let the flames begin
To let the flames begin.

Oh, glory.
Oh, glory.
This is how we'll dance when,
When they try to take us down.
This is what will be oh glory.

Somewhere weakness is our strength,
And I'll die searching for it.
I can't let myself regret such selfishness.
My pain and all the trouble caused,
No matter how long
I believe that there's hope
Buried beneath it all and
Hiding beneath it all, and
Growing beneath it all, and...

This is how we'll dance when,
When they try to take us down
This is how we'll sing it.
This is how we'll stand when
When they burn our houses down.
This is what will be oh glory.

Reaching as I sink down into light.
Reaching as I sink down into light.

This is how we dance when,
When they try to take us down
This is how we'll sing it.
This is how we'll stand when,
When they burn our houses down.
This is what will be oh glory. ~ Hayley Williams

When you get to the summit and you push the watch, first you try to breath a little bit and get some oxygen in your lungs. When I saw this time I was like, 'Ah, that's not possible.' Yeah ... that was a good moment. ~ Ueli Steck

But our brains are different from mice. Their cortex is tiny, which means their ability to learn from experience is tiny. They are built to run on innate rather than learned circuits. Our cortex is huge because we are designed to fill it up with acquired knowledge. We are not meant to run on pre-loaded programs. Every creature in nature runs on as few neurons as possible because neurons are metabolically expensive. They consume more oxygen and glucose than an active muscle. It takes so much energy to keep a neuron alive that they actually make it harder to survive. Neurons only promote survival if you really get your money's worth out of them, by wiring them up with survival-relevant information. Natural selection gave humans a gargantuan number of neurons. That means we were meant to use the experience we've stored in our neurons, not to ignore ~ Anonymous

She died in a fire. I miss her like you ... If I was underwater, I wouldn't miss oxygen that much. ~ Dennis Lehane

Once we learn to stably regulate our attention, we can be fully present in our joy, compassion, and love; in turn, we can deny oxygen to our anger, anxiety, and self-cherishing. This is the first step towards lasting inner tranquility. ~ Kyle Parton

I watch the vein in his neck pulse. I watch him convert oxygen to carbon dioxide. I watch him existing and existing and existing. ~ Jandy Nelson

It occurs to me as I write that this "white light," usually presented dippily (evidence of afterlife, higher power), is in fact precisely consistent with the oxygen deficit that occurs as blood flow to the brain decreases. "Everything went white," those whose blood pressure has dropped say of the instant before they faint. ~ Joan Didion

The entered the building twenty-strong. Rider in front with his two meanest assholes flanking him. No one would mistake the men had come for anything but a brawl. Their promised retribution so powerful it swiped the oxygen out of the room. ~ V. Theia

Water is an individual, an animal, and is alive, remove the hydrogen and it is an animal and is alive; the remaining oxygen is also an individual, an animal, and is alive. Recapitulation: the two individuals combined, constitute a third individual-and yet each continues to be an individual ... here was mute Nature explaining the sublime mystery of the Trinity so luminously that even the commonest understanding could comprehend it, whereas many a trained master of words had labored to do it with speech and failed. ~ Mark Twain

Homo economicus was surreptitiously taken as the emblem and analogue for all living beings. A mechanistic anthropomorphism has gained currency. Bacteria are imagined to mimic "economic" behavior and to engage in internecine competition for the scarce oxygen available in their environment. A cosmic struggle among ever more complex forms of life has become the anthropic foundational myth of the scientific age. ~ Ivan Illich

Among the tiny atomic structures the plankton take to the grave with them are two very stable isotopes - oxygen-16 and oxygen-18. ~ Bill Bryson

I don't care about having a legacy, I don't care about being remembered. The most important thing to me is, while we're here, while we're having fun, while we're sleeping, breathng oxygen, living life, falling in love, having pain and having joy ... what can we do with our voice to make things easier, to help someone to make it better for our kids. ~ Kanye West

Love is like a flame, if you feed the flame oxygen it will stay lite. if you love your partner and feed him/ her your affection the love will not die. but if you place a jar over the flame, it would slowly get smaller and began to die. you you never show your partner no affection you will grow cold towards your partner. hurting him or her. ~ Chiyoko

Asa's smell (the fragrance of a beautiful man) is what I miss the most.
[…]
Like a virus his smell entered me and changed my cells,
slowly, over years, until they craved only that smell, which was their oxygen. ~ Susanna Kaysen

Because I don't need oxygen. I've already come to all my conclusions. I'm just slowly gliding down. Someday I'll be as light as a feather. ~ Mark Helprin

Taking the time to meditate is as important as taking the time to breathe. One pumps oxygen into the body, the other pumps peace into the mind. ~ Marianne Williamson

Having spent 10 years studying emerging markets, I know that you have patterns repeated over and over again. A bubble is like a fire which needs oxygen to continue ... when you see there is no oxygen, things change. ~ Nouriel Roubini

That was the big joke, wasn't it? The answer to the riddle: There was no one up there in Heaven, making sure the accounts came out right. I'd solved it, hadn't I? Cracked the code? It was all just a joke. The god inside my brother's head was just his disease. My mother had knelt every night and prayed to her own steepled hands. Your baby died because of ... because of no particular reason at all. Your wife left you because you sucked all the oxygen out of the room, so you pretended she was the one in bed with you while you screwed your girlfriend and her boyfriend hid in the closet, watching. ~ Wally Lamb

I can't face the idea of riding home on a busful of sweaty, smiling teeth sucking up my oxygen. ~ Laurie Halse Anderson

Rather surprisingly, to anyone who is most familiar with textbook mitochondria, many simple single-celled eukaryotes have mitochondria that operate in the absence of oxygen. Instead of using oxygen to burn up food, these 'anaerobic' mitochondria use other simple compounds like nitrate or nitrite. In most other respects, they operate in a very similar fashion to our own mitochondria, and are unquestionably related. So the spectrum stretches from aerobic mitochondria like our own, which are dependent on oxygen, through 'anaerobic' mitochondria, which prefer to use other molecules like nitrates, to the hydrogenosomes, which work rather differently but are still related. ~ Nick Lane