We have created a manic world nauseous with the pursuit of material wealth. Many also bear their cross of imagined deprivation, while their fellow human beings remain paralyzed by real poverty. We drown in the thick sweetness of our sensual excess, and our shameless opulence, while our discontent souls suffocate in the arid wasteland of spiritual deprivation.

— Anthon St. Maarten

One sure way to kill a dream, is to suffocate it with worry.

— TemitOpe Ibrahim

You put your own joy in prison if you work hard to make other people’s happiness suffocate.

— Israelmore Ayivor

We recklessly attempt to disguise our ‘greed’ by dressing it in the garb of other nobler ideals such as ‘rights’ and ‘privileges.’ Yet, if we dare dress ‘greed’ in an authentic sense of thankfulness, greed will suffocate within the folds of that very clothing.

— Craig D. Lounsbrough

Words know how to suffocate lies to exhale the truth.

— Munia Khan

No one ever told me how sorrow traumatizes your heart, making you think it will never beat exactly the same way again. No one ever told me how grief feels like a wet sock in my mouth. One I’m forced to breathe through, thinking that with each breath I’ll come up short and suffocate.

— Sarah Noffke

Oxygen deprivation and supplemental oxygen are both bio-hazards for Mauna Kea workers.

— Steven Magee

Be absolutely assured that we will die long before our own deaths if we ever allow the fear of adulthood to kill the wonder of childhood.

— Craig D. Lounsbrough

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