#breathing

The savage rushing of the river seemed to be inside her head, inside her body. Even when the oarswomen, their guides, were speaking to her, she had the impression she couldn't quite hear them because of the roar. Not of the river that did indeed roar, just behind them, close to the simple shelter they'd made for her, but because of an internal roar as of the sound of a massive accumulation of words, spoken all at once, but collected over a lifetime, now trying to leave her body. As they rose to her lips, and in response to the question: Do you want to go home? she leaned over a patch of yellow grass near her elbow and threw up. All the words from decades of her life filled her throat. Words she had said or had imagined saying or had swallowed before saying to her father, dead these many years. All the words to her mother. To her husbands. Children. Lovers. The words shouted back at the television set, spreading its virus of mental confusion. Once begun, the retching went on and on. She would stop, gasping for breath, rest a minute, and be off again. Draining her body of precious fluid... Soon, exhausted, she was done. No, she had said weakly, I don't want to go home. I'll be all right now. ↗

— Alice Walker

#river #words #home

I've got to keep breathing. It'll be my worst business mistake if I don't. ↗

— Steve Martin

#business #got #i #keep #mistake

If you ask someone if they like music, they look at you strangely. It seems to be a universal given. Like asking someone if they like breathing. It is like breathing. Or air, rather. Flowing without and within. A matrix within which our lives are set. The setting for the tableware of our beings. ↗

— Jane Siberry

#ask #asking #beings #breathing #flowing

To be a Christian without prayer is no more possible than to be alive without breathing. ↗

— Martin Luther King, Jr.

#breathing #christian #more #possible #prayer

Well, I'm still breathing. ↗

— Leon Spinks

#i #still #well

In playing the part of Mammy, I tried to make her a living, breathing character, the way she appeared to me in the book. ↗

— Hattie McDaniel

#book #breathing #character #her #i

The mind and the breath are the king and queen of human consciousness". ↗

— Leonard D. Orr

#conscious-breathing #immortality #meditation #new-age #new-age-movement

But in order to really see it, the truth, I have to admit how much I'm hated. And who wants to think they're worthy of that much anger? To be despised so much... to have someone wish you never existed. ~ Emma ↗

— Rebecca Donovan

#rebecca-donovan #the-breathing-series #anger

These past two days, I’ve seen a fire in your eyes that I never have before. Granted, it’s mostly anger and frustration, but it’s still emotion. ↗

— Rebecca Donovan

#emma-thomas #emotion #reason-to-breathe #rebecca-donovan #sara-mckinley

I do my job like I breathe — so if I can’t breathe I’m in trouble. ↗

— Karl Lagerfeld

#art #artsist #breath #breathing #designer