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1 " We tilt our heads back and open wide. The snow drifts into our zombie mouths crawling with grease and curses and tobacco flakes and cavities and boyfriend/girlfriend juice, the stain of lies. For one moment we are not failed tests and broken condoms and cheating on essays; we are crayons and lunch boxes and swinging so high our sneakers punch holes in the clouds. For one breath everything feels better.Then it melts.The bus drivers rev their engines and the ice cloud shatters. Everyone shuffles forward. They don't know what just happened. They can't remember. "
― Laurie Halse Anderson , Wintergirls
2 " There was so much filth to clean up; so many broken pieces to fix; so many errors to correct. Every morning she left her house she let out a quiet sigh, as if in one breath she could will away detritus of the previous day.--Three Daughters of Eve "
― Elif Shafak
3 " Inhale when I inhale. Exhale when I exhale. Breathe with me,for two beating hearts breathing one breath together become one. "
― , Poisoning Sylvie
4 " I used to worry about tomorrow, but that was before I survived yesterday. Now it's one breath at a time. "
― Alfa Holden , Abandoned Breaths
5 " The fire. The odor of burning juniper is the sweetest fragrance on the face of the earth, in my honest judgment; I doubt if all the smoking censers of Dante's paradise could equal it. One breath of juniper smoke, like the perfume of sagebrush after rain, evokes in magical catalysis, like certain music, the space and light and clarity and piercing strangeness of the American West. Long may it burn. "
― Edward Abbey , Desert Solitaire
6 " It is easy to make the mistake of thinking yoga is about touching your toes when in fact yoga is about learning to touch others. Likewise, many people think the purpose of meditation is a perfectly still mind, when in fact, it is a more compassionate heart. Spiritual practice is measured by one’s ability to ease the suffering of the world one breath at a time. "
7 " I can do what I dream of doing, one breath and one step at a time. "
― Liz Hester , IgnitingYOU: How 52 Weeks of Inspiration and Action Can Lead You to Your Dreams
8 " Intermission. Mare Internum.We will have a brief pause now. If this novel were a theater, you could go out into the lobby, wait in line for a drink, or for the bathroom. Give people a chance to admire your clothes, hair, or jewels. Step outside for some air or a smoke. Backstage the crew would be busy transforming the scenery, actors would change their costumes and redo their makeup, Some would be done until final curtain, others awaiting their first entrance.But we're not in the theater, and I am not letting you go outside this story, not really. Where we are is more like a pause between breaths. Whether you're inhaling or exhaling, there's a pause just before, like the pause you can feel more than hear before the tide reverses. Where we are is the point of intersection in the figure eight. Turned on its side the eight becomes the symbol of infinity. You can make this figure with your hips when you dance. Over and over you will return to that moment of balance before your weight shifts from one hip to the other. The balance of this story is about to shift. The scenery is changing, as we make our slow way across Mare Internum. A journey I am not going to describe. When the story begins again, some of the people you have come to know and love, or not, Dido, Bertha, Paulina, Reginus, and Joseph will appear less frequently...I don't like it when characters fade form the story, so I am apologizing in advance, but life is like that. We leave people and places and times behind. We encounter new ones. Sometimes we can't see the patterns or connections, but they are there, between one breath and the next. In the ebb and flow of tides. In the rhythm of the dance. "
― , The Passion of Mary Magdalen (Maeve Chronicles, #2)
9 " If you had one last breath - what would you say?If you had one hour to use your limbs before you would lose the use of them forever - would you sit there on the coach?If you knew that you wouldn't see tomorrow who would you make amends with?If you knew you had only an hour left on this earth - what would be so pressing that you just had to do it, say it, or see it?Well there is something that I can guarantee - that one day you will have one day, one hour and one breath left.Just make sure that before that day that you have said, done and experienced everything that you dream of doing now.Do it now - that is what today is for.So pick up the phone and call an old friend that you have fallen out of touch with.Get out and run a mile and use your body and sweat.Seek out someone in your life to say your sorry to. Seek someone In your life that you need to thank. Seek someone in your life that you need to express your feelings of love to.Then when that day comes you will be ok with it all. "
― John Passaro
10 " Come, Paul!" she reiterated, her eye grazing me with its hard ray like a steel stylet. She pushed against her kinsman. I thought he receded; I thought he would go. Pierced deeper than I could endure, made now to feel what defied suppression, I cried -" My heart will break!" What I felt seemed literal heart-break; but the seal of another fountain yielded under the strain: one breath from M. Paul, the whisper, " Trust me!" lifted a load, opened an outlet. With many a deep sob, with thrilling, with icy shiver, with strong trembling, and yet with relief - I wept." Leave her to me; it is a crisis: I will give her a cordial, and it will pass," said the calm Madame Beck.To be left to her and her cordial seemed to me something like being left to the poisoner and her bowl. When M. Paul answered deeply, harshly, and briefly - " Laissez-moi!" in the grim sound I felt a music strange, strong, but life-giving." Laissez-moi!" he repeated, his nostrils opening, and his facial muscles all quivering as he spoke." But this will never do," said Madame, with sternness. More sternly rejoined her kinsman -" Sortez d'ici!" " I will send for Père Silas: on the spot I will send for him," she threatened pertinaciously." Femme!" cried the Professor, not now in his deep tones, but in his highest and most excited key, " Femme! sortez à l'instant!" He was roused, and I loved him in his wrath with a passion beyond what I had yet felt." What you do is wrong," pursued Madame; " it is an act characteristic of men of your unreliable, imaginative temperament; a step impulsive, injudicious, inconsistent - a proceeding vexatious, and not estimable in the view of persons of steadier and more resolute character." " You know not what I have of steady and resolute in me," said he, " but you shall see; the event shall teach you. Modeste," he continued less fiercely, " be gentle, be pitying, be a woman; look at this poor face, and relent. You know I am your friend, and the friend of your friends; in spite of your taunts, you well and deeply know I may be trusted. Of sacrificing myself I made no difficulty but my heart is pained by what I see; it must have and give solace. Leave me!" This time, in the " leave me" there was an intonation so bitter and so imperative, I wondered that even Madame Beck herself could for one moment delay obedience; but she stood firm; she gazed upon him dauntless; she met his eye, forbidding and fixed as stone. She was opening her lips to retort; I saw over all M. Paul's face a quick rising light and fire; I can hardly tell how he managed the movement; it did not seem violent; it kept the form of courtesy; he gave his hand; it scarce touched her I thought; she ran, she whirled from the room; she was gone, and the door shut, in one second.The flash of passion was all over very soon. He smiled as he told me to wipe my eyes; he waited quietly till I was calm, dropping from time to time a stilling, solacing word. Ere long I sat beside him once more myself - re-assured, not desperate, nor yet desolate; not friendless, not hopeless, not sick of life, and seeking death." It made you very sad then to lose your friend?" said he." It kills me to be forgotten, Monsieur," I said. "
11 " When faced with the choice of living one breath longer or cashing in right now, most folks will take the extra moment. That single extra breath. Even when your world stops spinning and gravity dies and the blood glitters in the air like a galaxy of warm red suns all around you. A lot can happen between breaths, after all. "
― Amie Kaufman
12 " My life was changed in one breath from God. "
