Breathing Quotes - page 8
Go to Old Delhi, behind the Jama Masjid, and look at the way they keep chickens there in the market. Hundreds of pale hens and brightly colored roosters, stuffed tightly into wire mesh cages, packed as tightly as worms in a belly, pecking each other and shitting on each other, jostling just for breathing space; the whole cage giving off a horrible stench-the stench of terrified, feathered flesh. On the wooden desk above this coop sits a grinning young butcher, showing off the flesh and organs of recently chopped-up chicken, still oleaginous with a coating of dark blood. The roosters in the coop smell the blood from above. They see the organs of their brothers lying around them. They know they're next. Yet they do not rebel. They do not try to get out of the coop.The very same thing is done with human beings in this country.
Aravind Adiga
somewhere i have never travelled,gladly beyond
any experience, your eyes have their silence.
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you always open petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully,mysteriously)her first rose or if it be your wish to close me, i and
my life will shut very beautifully, suddenly
as the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending; nothing we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility: whose texture
compels me with the colour of its countries
rendering death and forever with each breathing.
E. E. Cummings
The swell was gently lifting and lowering the boat. My breathing grew slower, falling into step with the creaking of the hull, until I could no longer tell the difference between the faint rhythmic motion of the cabin and the sensation of filling and emptying my lungs. It was like floating in darkness: every inhalation buoyed me up, slightly; every exhalation made me sink back down again.
Greg Egan
She kissed me, her mouth tasting of liverwurst on rye. She sat back, breathing with relief. I took out my handkerchief and wiped the sweat from my forehead...She pulled me down and her arms went around me and we fought until I thought it was absurd. I sat back and tried to think of another escape.
John Fante
Did you read [Holly Near's book]? Let me save you the trouble. This is the most exciting sentence in the book:..."I feel like a lesbian when I'm making love to a woman." Gooooooooood, Holly! Well, the major difference between me and Holly Near is that I feel like a lesbian when I am BREATHING!
Lea DeLaria
The revolutionary atmosphere remained as I had first known it. General and private, peasant and militiaman, still met as equals; everyone drew the same pay, wore the same clothes, ate the same food, and called everyone else 'thou' and 'comrade'; there was no boss-class, no menial-class, no beggars, no prostitutes, no lawyers, no priests, no boot-licking, no cap-touching. I was breathing the air of equality, and I was simple enough to imagine that it existed all over Spain. I did not realize that more or less by chance I was isolated among the most revolutionary section of the Spanish working class.
George Orwell
As serious as a heart attack. Maybe those were Ken Kramer's last words, like a final explosion of panic in his mind as he stopped breathing and dropped into the abyss. He was out of line, in every way there was, and he knew it. He was where he shouldn't have been, with someone he shouldn't have been with, carrying something he should have kept in a safer place. But he was getting away with it. He was playing and winning. He was on top of his game. He was probably smiling. Until the sudden thump deep inside his chest betrayed him. Then everything turned around. Success became instant catastrophe. He had no time to put anything right.
Lee Child
She turned again, and this time she was closer. Her head nestled against my shoulder and she moved my hand up her body until I knew there was no marvel of engineering connected to the bra because there was no bra. And the studded belt she wore was the keystone to the whole ensemble, and when it was unsnapped the whole affair came apart in a whisper of black satin that folded back against the sand until all of her reflected the moonlight from above until I eclipsed the pale brilliance, and there was no sound except that of the waves and our breathing. Then soon even the waves were gone, and there was only the warmth of white skin and little muscles that played under my hand and the fragrance that was her mouth. The redhead had been right.
Mickey Spillane
It's a myth that men don't have their own version of PMT, of course they do - every woman knows this. It's a very simple experiment to conduct, all you've got to do is be with a man, wait until he starts doing something and then go up and talk to him. "WHAT?! What is it now?! I'm opening fish fingers can't you see?! You come in here, walking on the floor - breathing the air like it's yours - talking and talking and I'm doing something! Look they've fallen on the floor, are you happy?! Are you happy now?! Every time I try anjd do something for myself, you carbonize and then shit on my dreams... You're just like your your whole family! Why do I even dare to think I could dream I could imagine I could hope?!"
Dylan Moran
The other morning, I woke up. I was frightened – I'm always frightened in the morning, I don't know where I am. But I heard this beautiful reassuring sound, it sounded like my childhood. I thought, what's that? Is it? Church bells behind the hill? Or, no – it's an ice cream van, in the rain. It was me, BREATHING!
Dylan Moran
