Clutch Quotes

One boy took a peppermint from a woman's satin evening clutch but first held it up discreetly for consent. She moved her head down and back, just a quarter of an inch, and he smiled and slipped off the cellophane. ~ Ann Patchett

Before the birth of the New Woman the country was not an intellectual desert, as she is apt to suppose. There were teachers of thehighest grade, and libraries, and countless circles in our towns and villages of scholarly, leisurely folk, who loved books, and music, and Nature, and lived much apart with them. The mad craze for money, which clutches at our souls to-day as la grippe does at our bodies, was hardly known then. ~ Rebecca Harding Davis

To try to keep Bimala as a garland round my neck, would have meant keeping a weight hanging over my heart. Have I not been praying with all my strength, that if happiness may not be mine, let it go; if grief needs must be my lot, let it come; but let me knot be kept in bondage. To clutch hold of that which is untrue as though it were true, is only to throttle oneself. May I be saved from such self-destruction. ~ Rabindranath Tagore

So I decided a little waltzing would be very good, and it was. I plan to do all my waltzing here in the study. I have thought I might have a book ready at hand to clutch if I began to experience unusual pain, so that would have been a special recommendation from being found in my hands. That seems theatrical, on consideration, and it might have the perverse effective of burdening the book with unpleasant associations. The ones I considered, by the way, were Donne and Herbert and Barth's Epistle to the Romans and Volume II of Calvin's institutes. Which is by no means to slight volume I. ~ Marilynne Robinson

Opportunity (from Machiavelli)

"But who art thou, with curious beauty graced,
O woman, stamped with some bright heavenly seal
Why go thy feet on wings, and in such haste?"

"I am that maid whose secret few may steal,
Called Opportunity. I hasten by
Because my feet are treading on a wheel,

Being more swift to run than birds to fly.
And rightly on my feet my wings I wear,
To blind the sight of those who track and spy;

Rightly in front I hold my scattered hair
To veil my face, and down my breast to fall,
Lest men should know my name when I am there;

And leave behind my back no wisp at all
For eager folk to clutch, what time I glide
So near, and turn, and pass beyond recall."

"Tell me; who is that Figure at thy side?"
"Penitence. Mark this well that by decree
Who lets me go must keep her for his bride.

And thou hast spent much time in talk with me
Busied with thoughts and fancies vainly grand,
Nor hast remarked, O fool, neither dost see
How lightly I have fled beneath thy hand. ~ James Elroy Flecker

So when the world knocks at your front door,
clutch the knob and open on up,
running forward into its widespread greeting arms
with your hands before you,
fingertips trembling though they may be. ~ Anis Mojgani

The principle of avoiding conflict and never opposing an aggressor's strength head-on is the essence of aikido. We apply the same principle to problems that arise in life. The skilled aikidoist is as elusive as the truth of Zen; he makes himself into a koan - a puzzle which slips away the more one tries to solve it. He is like water in that he falls through the fingers of those who try to clutch him. Water does not hesitate before it yields, for the moment the fingers begin to close it moves away, not of its own strength, but by using the pressure applied to it. It is for this reason, perhaps, that one of the symbols for aikido is water. ~ Joe Hyams

Homosexuality is an ugly sin, repugnant to those who find no temptation in it, as well as to many past offenders who are seeking a way out of its clutches. It is embarrassing and unpleasant as a subject for discussion but because of its prevalence, the need to warn the uninitiated, and the desire to help those who may already be involved in it, it is discussed in this chapter. ~ Spencer W. Kimball

In a clutch or a corner, I tend to make a weapon out of what is near at hand. That can be anything from a crowbar to a cat, though if I had a choice, I would prefer an angry cat, which I have found to be more effective than a crowbar.

Although weaponless, I left the house by the back door, with two chocolate-pumpkin cookies. It's a tough world out there, and a man has to armor himself against it however he can. ~Odd Thomas ~ Dean Koontz

Good. Now the first thing you do is press in the clutch and slide the gear into reverse." She placed his hand on the gear shift in the center of her car, and showed him how to move it up and down. "You know, you really shouldn't fondle that in front of me, Grace. It's cruel." "Julian! Do you mind? I'm only trying to show you how to shift my gears." He snorted. "I wish you'd shift my gears like that. ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon

Thousands of solar panels lift and tilt at the same time, in the same way. I clutch at Dad's arm: "Why are they doing that?" "They're collecting moonlight," Dad says, and I remember: it's weaker, but we use it. ~ Jennifer Egan

I know many souls that toss and whirl and pass, but none there are that intrigue me more than the Souls of White Folk. Of them I am singularly clairvoyant. I see in and through them. I view them from unusual points of vantage. Not as a foreigner do I come, for I am native, not foreign, bone of their thought and flesh of their language. Mine is not the knowledge of the traveler or the colonial composite of dear memories, words and wonder. Nor yet is my knowledge that which servants have of masters, or mass of class, or capitalist of artisan. Rather I see these souls undressed and from the back and side. I see the working of their entrails. I know their thoughts and they know that I know. This knowledge makes them now embarrassed, now furious. They deny my right to live and be and call me misbirth! My word is to them mere bitterness and my soul, pessimism. And yet as they preach and strut and shout and threaten, crouching as they clutch at rags of facts and fancies to hide their nakedness, they go twisting, flying by my tired eyes and I see them ever stripped, - ugly, human. ~ W.E.B. Du Bois

I do not see how it is possible for a man to die worth fifty million of dollars, or ten million of dollars, in a city full of want, when he meets almost every day the withered hand of beggary and the white lips of famine. How a man can withstand all that, and hold in the clutch of his greed twenty or thirty million of dollars, is past my comprehension. I do not see how he can do it. I should not think he could do it any more than he could keep a pile of lumber on the beach, where hundreds and thousands of men were drowning in the sea. ~ Robert G. Ingersoll

Your scorn for mediocrity blinds you to its vast primitive power. You stand in the glare of your own brilliance, unable to see into the dim corners of the room, to dilate your eyes and see the potential dangers of the mass, the wad of humanity. Even as I tell you this, dear student, you cannot quite believe that lesser men, in whatever numbers, can really defeat you. But we are in the age of the mediocre man. He is dull, colorless, boring - but inevitably victorious. The amoeba outlives the tiger because it divides and continues in its immortal monotony. The masses are the final tyrants. See how, in the arts, Kabuki wanes and withers while popular novels of violence and mindless action swamp the mind of the mass reader. And even in that timid genre, no author dares to produce a genuinely superior man as his hero, for in his rage of shame the mass man will send his yojimbo, the critic, to defend him. The roar of the plodders is inarticulate, but deafening. They have no brain, but they have a thousand arms to grasp and clutch at you, drag you down. ~ Trevanian

I want students to engage the way a clutch on a car gets engaged: an engine can be running, making appropriate noises, burning fuel and creating exhaust fumes, but unless the clutch is engaged, nothing moves. It's all sound and smoke, and nobody gets anywhere. ~ Robert L. Fried

The silver-haired elf woman Yaela had knelt by the side of the grave, taken an acorn from the pouch on her belt, and planted it directly above Wyrden's chest. And then the twelve elves, Arya included, sang to the acorn, which took root and sprouted and grew twining upward, reaching and grasping toward the sky like a clutch of hands. When the elves had finished, the leafy oak stood twenty feet high, with long strings of green flowers at the end of every branch. Eragon had thought it was the nicest burial he had ever attended. ~ Christopher Paolini

To say I woke up one day and reached a point where I no longer cared about the pains to befall me would be a lie. Nor can I say that I have ever fully forgiven those who willfully did me harm. On a deep, internal battlefield, I wrestle with the thought that I have been robbed of any chance of normalcy by the losses suffered. Therapists and gurus alike tell us to, "Let go or be dragged," as Zen proverb urges - to forgive for our own sake. But, in my experience, there is no letting go and forgiveness is transient. My inability to be free of it all isn't for lack of an evolved consciousness on my part. I've "done the work" to process it all; rather, it is my irreconcilable, inescapable humanity that causes to clutch the pain close to me. ~ L.M. Browning

This might baffle you, but despite not being a physician, I do have some pride. Although most certainly not enough to withstand the kind of beating you're capable of dealing it. The kind of beating you've repeatedly dealt it from the first time we've met. You're right, I value honesty, so I'll tell you that I make it a practice not to find women who insult me at every opportunity attractive."
Color flooded her cheeks and traveled down her neck. Finally, she stepped away from him, too, and found the back of a chair to clutch. She looked entirely devastated. Had no one ever denied her anything? He hated the hurt in her eyes. But it was done now.
"How is telling you I'm attracted to you an insult?"
He pressed the back of his hand into his forehead. It made him feel like a drama queen in some sort of musical farce. Which this had to be. "Telling me how unworthy I am of your attraction, that's the insulting part. And, no, that's not all it is. Even if you hadn't told me at every opportunity how inferior to you I am... all I do is cook... every assumption you've made about me is insulting. Culinary school is definitely college. And Le Cordon Bleu is one of the most competitive institutions in the world. The fact that that's so wholly incomprehensible to you... that's the insulting part. And it wasn't thrown in my overly privileged lap either. I had to work my bottom off to make it in."
Ammaji had sold her dowry jewels to pay for his application, something her fa ~ Sonali Dev

If man is not ready to abdicate or to reconsider his case, it is because he has not yet drawn the final consequences of knowledge and of power. Convinced that his moment will come, that he will catch up with God and pass Him by, he clings - envious as he is - to the notion of evolution, as if the fact of advancing must necessarily bring him to the highest degree of perfection. Having sought to be other, he will end by being nothing; he is already nothing. Doubtless he is evolving, but against himself, to his cost, and toward a complexity which is ruining him. Becoming, progress: notions apparently tangential, actually divergent. True, everything changes, but rarely, if ever, for the better. Euphoric inflection of the original disease, of that false innocence which awakened in Adam a desire for the new, our faith in evolution, in the identity of becoming and progress, will collapse only when man, having reached the extremity of his distraction, having turned at last to the knowledge which leads to deliverance and not to power, will be in a position to offer an irrevocable no to his exploits and to his work. If he continues to clutch at them, he will doubtless enter upon the career of a ludicrous god or an obsolete animal, a solution as convenient as it is degrading, the ultimate stage of his infidelity to himself. Whatever choice he makes, and though he has not exhausted all the virtues of his failure, he has nonetheless fallen so low that it is hard to understand why he does ~ Emil M. Cioran

Aubade Ending with the Death of a Mosquito"

- at Apollo Hospital, Dhaka

Let me break
free of these lace-frail
lilac fingers disrobing
the black sky
from the windows of this
room, I sit helpless, waiting,
silent - sister,
because you drew from me
the coil of red twine: loneliness -
spooled inside -
once, I wanted to say one
true thing, as in, I want more
in this life,
or, the sky is hurt, a blue vessel -
we pass through each other,
like weary
sweepers haunting through glass
doors, arcing across gray floors
faint trails
of dust we leave behind - he
touches my hand, waits for me
to clutch back
while mosquitoes rise like smoke
from this cold marble floor,
from altars,
seeking the blood still humming
in our unsaved bodies - he sighs,
I make a fist,
I kill this one leaving raw
kisses raised on our bare necks -
because I woke
alone in the myth of one life, I will
myself into another - how strange,
to witness
nameless, the tangled shape
our blood makes across us,
my open palm. ~ Tarfia Faizullah

Our possessions are a trust from God. What we clutch tightly, we lose. What we place in His hands, we will possess. ~ Phil Callaway

When I wake I ask myself, how much longer before they will just let me die? - Tier, Clutch ~ J.A. Huss

I am not an angel,
Do not worship me,
And filch my tiny little wings,
I want to fly, up high,
To clutch the colourful sky,
My life has mission,
To triumph over the world with my passion... ~ Twinkle (Sugandha) Varshney

It was love, she thought, love that never clutch its object; but, like the love which mathematicians bear their symbols, or poets their phrases, was meant to be spread over the world and become part of human gain. The world by all means should have shared it, could Mr Bankes have said why that woman pleased him so; why the sight of her reading a fairy tale to her boy had upon him precisely the same effect as the solution of a scientific problem. ~ Virginia Woolf

I'll never let it happen. I'll do everything in my power to keep my sister at home.
"I don't want to have a civilized discussion. My parents want to send my sister to a facility behind my back and my head feels like it's about to split open. Leave me alone, okay?"
Something is sticking out of my pocket. It's Alex's bandanna. Isabel isn't a friend, yet she helped me. And Alex, a boy who cared about me last night more than my own boyfriend did, acted as my hero and is urging me to be real. Do I even know how to be real?
I clutch the bandanna to my chest.
And I allow myself to cry. ~ Simone Elkeles

When yet another woman old enough to be his grandmother headed Reyes off and demanded his attention before he could get to me, I giggled at the forced smile on his face. She flirted, batted her lashes, and patted his biceps about twelve times too many for his comfort. He took out his phone and typed as the woman spoke to him, her movements exaggerated. I couldn't be certain but I had a feeling she was talking to him about how she used to be a pole dancer until her hip gave out.

My phone chimed. I took it out of the delicate clutch that matched my dress and read Reyes's text.

Aren't you going to save me?

I don't know. I'm having a lot of fun right now. Wanna sext?

He crossed an arm over his chest while holding his phone. One corner of his mouth twitched as he leaned back against the tree and typed.

Absolutely.

Sweet. What are you wearing?

His eyes sparkled with mirth.

Animal print boxers and striped socks

I burst out laughing, gaining the attention of everyone around me. ~ Darynda Jones

But I think I know so well the pain we children clutch to our chests, how it lasts our whole lifetime, with longings so large you can't even weep. We hold it tight, we do, with each seizure of the beating heart: This is mine, this is mine, this is mine. ~ Elizabeth Strout

The insidious reasons for a brown girl's self-loathing won't be surprising to any woman of color. I cannot rightly compare my own struggles to those of another minority, as each ethnicity comes with its own baggage and the South Asian experience is just one variation on the experience of dark-skinned people everywhere. As parents and grandparents often do in Asian countries, my extended family urged me to avoid the sun, not out of fear that heatstroke would sicken me or that UV rays would lead to cancer, but more, I think, out of fear that my skin would darken to the shade of an Untouchable, a person from the lowest caste in Indian society, someone who toils in the fields. The judgments implicit in these exhortations - and what they mean about your worth - might not dawn on you while you're playing cricket in the sand. What's at stake might not dawn on you while, as a girl, you clutch fast to yourself your blonde-haired, blue-eyed doll named Helen. But all along, the message that lighter skin is equivalent to a more attractive, worthier self is getting beamed deep into your subconscious. Western ideals of beauty do not stop at ocean shores. They pervade the world and mingle with those of your own country to create mutant, unachievable standards. ~ Padma Lakshmi

It is easy not to believe in monsters, considerably more difficult to escape their dread and loathsome clutches. ~ Stanislaw Lem

She grabbed her clutch bag and circled her arms around his neck. "Caulder McCutchen, I'm really not sure what you are."
He lifted his head and looked down at her, squinted. "I'm a man. Enough said?"
Velia smiled and looped her arm through his. "Yes, sir. Shall we go? ~ Mary J. McCoy-Dressel

Michael had to clutch the end of the table to keep from rising. He could have had Shakespeare at his side to translate, and still not have been able to explain why Colin‟s remark infuriated him so. ~ Julia Quinn

To ransom one lost moment with a rhyme!
Or if fate and grudging gods demure,
To clutch Life's hair, and thrust one naked phrase
Like a lean knife between the ribs of time. ~ Alfred Bruce Douglas

You really do love him, don't you?" she said quietly.
Vadim blinked, then looked to the side, without seeing colours and patterns, but it helped him find words. Speaking about love without cliché, without borrowing somebody else's well-worn words that were too comfortable. "Dan changed me in ways that stripped away the man I wanted to be, and the man I was made to be, and the man I was expected to be. He skinned me alive, and left only…..somebody who…." He breathed but barely. "…can live and die now, like a human being, not an automation, not somebody else's creation. Dan took my fear of death. I can't die now. I know I'm immortal."

"Immortal?" she said quietly, sitting still. "Your soul? Your being?"

"I don't believe there's anything like a soul. But I believe most people are asleep. They aren't even aware what they are, or that they are alive. And we are all scared to die, so when it happens we scream for our mothers and clutch our guts because we're scared. I'm not. I'm not afraid of death. The only thing I'm afraid of is losing Dan." But if that happens, he thought, Dan might just keep the promise and kill him on the way out. ~ Aleksandr Voinov

If you never knew
the worlds in my mind
your sense of loss
would be small pity
and we'll forget this on the trail.
Take what you're given
and turn away the screwed face.
I do not deserve it,
no matter how narrow the strand
of your private shore.
If you will do your best
I'll meet your eye.
It's the clutch of arrows in hand
that I do not trust
bent to the smile hitching my way.
We aren't meeting in sorrow
or some other suture
bridging scars.
We haven't danced the same
thin ice
and my sympathy for your troubles
I give freely without thought
of reciprocity or scales on balance.
It's the decent thing, that's all.
Even if that thing
is a stranger to so many.
But there will be secrets
you never knew
and I would not choose any other way.
All my arrows are buried and
the sandy reach is broad
and all that's private
cools pinned on the altar.
Even the drips are gone,
that child of wants
with a mind full of worlds
and his reddened tears.
The days I feel mortal I so hate.
The days in my worlds,
are where I live for ever,
and should dawn ever arrive
I will to its light awaken
as one reborn.

Poet's Night iii.iv
The Malazan Book of the Fallen
Fisher kel Tath ~ Steven Erikson

In a way, the very success which the Boss laid on Tiny was his revenge on Tiny, for every time the Boss put his meditative, sleepy, distant gaze on Tiny, Tiny would know, with a cold clutch at his fat heart, that if the Boss should crook a finger there wouldn't be anything but the whiff of smoke. ~ Robert Penn Warren

Does anyone else have a phone?" said Jason.
Nim shook her head. "It was in my clutch at the party."
"I never got a new one," said Alia. "And Diana doesn't have a phone."
Theo clutched his chest. "No - no phone? How do you function?"
Diana cast Theo a haughty glance that looked like it had been pulled straight from Nim's playbook. "I wear practical shoes and avoid the branches of olive trees."
"So cold," said Nim with a grin. "So accurate."
"Shhhh," Theo said to his pointy-toed shoes. "She didn't mean it. ~ Leigh Bardugo

Passers-by

Passers-by,
Out of your many faces
Flash memories to me
Now at the day end
Away from the sidewalks
Where your shoe soles traveled
And your voices rose and blent
To form the city's afternoon roar
Hindering an old silence.

Passers-by,
I remember lean ones among you,
Throats in the clutch of a hope,
Lips written over with strivings,
Mouths that kiss only for love,
Records of great wishes slept with,
Held long
And prayed and toiled for:

Yes,
Written on
Your mouths
And your throats
I read them
When you passed by. ~ Carl Sandburg

I kissed him, let him kiss me, let him clutch my hips, curl his fingers into
the fabric of my shirt, slide his hands around my waist and splay them
against my back, pull me infinitesimally closer. He made a sound, a growl or
purr, some predatory noise that rumbled in his throat, then said my name. And
this time, it wasn't a question but a sound of victory, a claim on his prize. ~ Chloe Neill

Crabtree's father was a Pentecostalist preacher somewhere out in Hogscrotum County, MO, and his mother was the editor-in-chief of a magazine for knitting-machine enthusiasts. 'She can make you anything,' went a favorite line of his. 'She made me a queer.' He had been lost to the clutch of Satan since early adolescence and hadn't seen them in years. ~ Michael Chabon

At present the universities are as uncongenial to teaching as the Mojave Desert to a clutch of Druid priests. If you want to restore a Druid priesthood, you cannot do it by offering prizes for Druid-of-the Year. If you want Druids, you must grow forests. ~ William Arrowsmith

The girl worked the clutch and the gas and the brake expertly with her right foot, just as her father had taught her. ~ Joe Hill

A clutch of women's the most tender, most tough place on Earth. ~ Delia Owens

In the greater part of humankind there resides an instinct for survival. It is this which can clutch at straws and effect a rescue from them. It is this which can, now and then, outwit fate. ~ Tanith Lee

you have to come to terms with the fact that you've really only got yourself in life, and if you don't make yourself happy someone else isn't going to make you happy. Too many people clutch onto someone else, looking for security and acceptance. ~ Will Fellows

That was' one time when my technique absolutely deserted me, I must admit. There was a wax face that he had created himself to cover his own ugliness. I was in his clutches and I had to hit him in the face. ~ Fay Wray

It was love, she thought, pretending to move her canvas, distilled and filtered; love that never attempted to clutch its object; but, like the love which mathematicians bear their symbols, or poets their phrases, was meant to be spread over the world and become part of the human gain. ~ Virginia Woolf

The world has become a photographable present, and the photographed present has been entirely eternalized. Seemingly ripped from the clutch of death, in reality it has succumbed to it. ~ Siegfried Kracauer

Just as our ancient ancestors drew animals on cave walls and carved animals from wood and bone, we decorate our homes with animal prints and motifs, give our children stuffed animals to clutch, cartoon animals to watch, animal stories to read. ~ Diane Ackerman

Some people you just had to embrace, in some way or another, had to bite into the muscle, to remain sane in their company. You needed to grab their hair and clutch it like a drowner so they would pull you into their midst. ~ Michael Ondaatje

The first effect of realizing that one is made of nothing is a kind of panic-stricken insecurity. One looks round for some more stable thing to clutch, and in this matter none of the beings of our experience are any more stable than we, for at the origin of them all is the same truth: all are made of nothing. ~ Frank Sheed

In the trunk of her car, my mother used to keep a collapsible easel, a clutch of brushes, a little wooden case stocked with tubes of paint, and, tucked into the spare-tire well, one of my father's old, tobacco-stained shirts, for a smock. ~ Jill Lepore

Control cannot be called conscience until we are able to take it inside us and make it our own, until
in spite of the fact that the wrongs we have done or imagined will never be punished or known
we nonetheless feel that the clutch in the stomach, that chill upon the soul, that self-inflicted misery called guilt. ~ Judith Viorst

Trying to remember, I have learned, is like trying to clutch a handful of fog. Trying to forget, like trying to hold back the monsoon. ~ Patricia McCormick

Oh, strawberries don't taste as they used to and the thighs of women have lost their clutch! And some men eased themselves like setting hens into the nest of death. History ~ John Steinbeck

You steal the now of my life away, when you constantly fear that tomorrow will bring my death. Your fears clutch cold at me and snatch all my pleasure in the day's warmth from me. As ~ Robin Hobb

Ram, taken by surprise at what was happening, rushed to stop his wife, hold her hand and pull her out, but the earth had closed before he could reach her. All that he could clutch were the ends of her hair that turned into blades of grass. Would the pain have been less had she chastised him before she left? Would the pain have been less had they at least spoken before she left? Would the pain have been less had she at least looked at him before she left? But then she was under no obligation. He had liberated her long ago from the burden of being Ram's wife. But he would always be Sita's husband. ~ Devdutt Pattanaik

The United States tried, by depressing the clutch of diplomacy and downshifting the gearshift lever of rhetoric, to remain neutral, but it became increasingly obvious that the nation was going to get into a war, especially since it was almost 1812. ~ Dave Barry

Ripe vegetables were magic to me. Unharvested, the garden bristled with possibility. I would quicken at the sight of a ripe tomato, sounding its redness from deep amidst the undifferentiated green. To lift a bean plant's hood of heartshaped leaves and discover a clutch of long slender pods handing underneath could make me catch my breath. ~ Michael Pollan

Holden found one helpless little hand that closed feebly on his finger. And the clutch ran through his body till it settled about his heart. Till then his sole thought had been for Ameera. He began to realise that there was some one else in the world, ... ~ Rudyard Kipling

As we reach the next corner, the entire block ahead of us lights up with a rich purple glow. We backpedal, hunker down in a stairwell, and squint into the light. Something's happening to those illuminated by it. They're assaulted by . . . what? A sound? A wave? A laser? Weapons fall from their hands, fingers clutch their faces, as blood sprays from all visible orifices - eyes, noses, mouths, ears. In less than a minute, everyone's dead and the glow vanishes. ~ Suzanne Collins

People attach too much importance to intangibles like heart, desire and clutch hitting. ~ Nate Silver

Shit," Clutch said after a few minutes. "The high-def has totally ruined porn. Are those ingrown hairs? ~ Joanna Wylde

When people pass on we must choose how to remember them. While our loved ones sleep for eternity we must carry on with our daily toil. We can elect to harbor adoration and love in our precious memories or cling to animosity and detestation. We can kindly remember our ancestors or continue to feel embedded enmity towards people who no longer walk this earth. Regardless the human frailties of the recently departed, it seems that we should aspire to clutch the best part of our ancestors being fast to our hearts. A book encapsulating a departed person's life has many pages; we must choose which chapters to treasure and what chapters to disregard or downplay. ~ Kilroy J. Oldster

I'd make a mark on this world and in return, this world would mark me too. I'd clutch on with both hands and enjoy the ride and see what happened in time. Daddy always said it wasn't the destination, but the journey, that's what mattered. My journey was about to begin. Or had it begun already? ~ Abbi Glines

Is advertising a profession, like law or medicine? How many new parents clutch their baby to their breast and declare, 'I want this child to grow up to be a media planner'? ~ Jef I. Richards

When a woman wants to look festive, she should add some shine, sheen or sparkle to her outfit, like a metallic clutch, an embellished shoe, or a blingy statement necklace. ~ Clinton Kelly

Of all records, Chase, Some Girls! It was in a clutch of the most horrendous crap, J. Geils Band, Sniff 'n' the Tears, the kind of albums you'd use for landfill. ~ Jonathan Lethem

The world is a cruel mother, a matron of darkness, selfishness, greed, and misery. For most, their time suckling at her breast is naught but a scramble through stinging, tearing briars before a naked, shameful collapse as the flesh gives out. And yet in the bright eyes of every newborn, there lies a spark, a potential for goodness, the possibility of a life worth living. That spark deserves its chance. And though most of them will turn out to be as worthless as the parents who sired them, while the cruelty of the earth will tell them to release their innocence and join in the drawing of daggers, every now and then one manages to clutch to its beauty and refuses to release it into the dark. ~ Ed McDonald

Daughter, daughter, shining bright
Precious jewel within mine sight
Oh, if I could soar with thee
As you seek your destiny.

To see with you the caves and skies
Vistas grand beneath your eyes
Taking wing to horizons new
Let us wonder who waits for you.

A dragon bright?
A dragon dark?
Victor of duels with battle mark?
A dragon strong?
A dragon keen?
Singer of honors and triumphs seen?

Red, Gold, Bronze, and Blue
To your lord you shall be true,
Copper, Silver, Black, and White,
Who will win your mating flight?

For in your hearts our future rests
To see our line with hatchlings blessed
And for those who threaten clutch of flame,
To feel the wrath of dragon-dame. ~ E.E. Knight

The night below. We two. Crystal of pain.
You wept over great distances.
My ache was a clutch of agonies
over your sickly heart of sand. ~ Federico Garcia Lorca

I felt like a glutton for pain, like I wanted to clutch the misery close to my heart and let it sit there. ~ Robert J. Crane

There are boys lying awake, hating themselves. There are boys screwing for the right reasons and boys screwing for the wrong ones. There are boys sleeping on benches and under bridges, and luckier unlucky boys sleeping in shelters, which feel like safety but not like home. There are boys so enraptured by love that they can't get their hearts to slow down enough to get some rest, and other boys so damaged by love that they can't stop picking at their pain. There are boys who clutch secrets at night in the same way they clutch denial in the day. There are boys who do not think of themselves at all when they dream. There are boys who will be woken in the night. There are boys who fall asleep with phones to their ears. ~ David Levithan

Stupidity exceeds and undercuts materiality, runs loose, wins a few rounds, recedes, gets carried home in a clutch of denial-and returns. Essentially linked to the inexhaustible, stupidity is also that which fatigues knowledge and wears down history. ~ Avital Ronell

Ed said to Madeline, "Why don't you have snacks in your bag? What sort of woman are you?" "This is a clutch!" Madeline ~ Liane Moriarty

Dave ignored him and kept right on jogging. When he reached me, he jumped into the passenger seat Dukes of Hazzard style. "Can you drive?"

Well, that was debatable, given my close encounter with the wall but I wasn't going to get into that now. I eyed him warily. "What are you doing here?"

"No time for that. Can you put your foot on the clutch?"

I narrowed my eyes at him. I didn't like what he was implying. I may have just almost hit the wall but I wasn't a complete idiot. "I could put my foot in your crotch if you like?" I suggested.

A slow smile spread across his face and I looked away. God, that was supposed to insult him, not amuse him. Or turn me on. ~ Belinda Williams

Cometh the hour, cometh the man. ~ Cliff Gladwin

Levering himself over Evie's prone body, Sebastian risked a glance upward at the second-floor balcony. Bullard was gone. With a grunt of pain, Sebastian rolled to his side and searched his wife for injuries, terrified that the bullet might have struck her as well. "Evie…sweetheart…are you hurt?"
"Why did you push me like that?" she asked in a muffled voice. "No, I'm not hurt. What was that noise?"
His shaking hand brushed over her face, pushing back a tumble of hair that had fallen across her eyes.
Bemused, Evie wriggled out from beneath him and sat up.
Sebastian remained on his side, panting for breath, while he felt a hot slide of blood over his chest and waist.
People were crowding to flee the building, threatening to trample the couple on the floor. Suddenly a man came to crouch over them, having fought his way through the rushing horde.
He used his body as a bulwark to keep them from being overrun. Blinking, Sebastian realized that it was Westcliff. Dizzily Sebastian reached up to clutch at his coat. "He aimed for Evie," Sebastian said hoarsely. His lips had gone numb, and he licked at them before continuing. "Keep her safe…keep her… ~ Lisa Kleypas

Food won't go down when you know your mother didn't want you, never liked to feed you, always hated you in her rooms. You were wrong to clutch and swallow and move your mouth. You must not be flushed, layered in fat or ripe from meat or she will despise your sight. Your skeleton cries, "I make no demands, I am ashamed of my needs, I am unworthy. I'm aware of those more deserving, those with prior and urgent claims to food." Skeleton says, "My safety is in slightness, my pride is denial. My victory is no gluttony, no guilt. ~ Jenny Holzer

Don't fall.
It seems we've
struggled
for so long.
We've trampled
on the backs
of apes to
clutch the
muddied
hems of
angels. ~ Alan Moore

He said very little, but his eyes were eloquent; the clutch of his arms was eloquent. He was the playground of unspeakable emotions. These, you know, were real Magics. ~ H.G.Wells

I don't think highly of the theoretical or explanatory power of of the theory of evolution. But I think that an evolutionary approach to biological problems is inescapable, and also that in so desperate a problem situation we must clutch gratefully even at a straw. So, I propose, to start, that we regard the human mind quite naively as if it were a highly developed bodily organ, and that we ask ourselves, as we might with respect to a sense organ, what it contributes to the household of the organism. ~ Karl R. Popper

If some glorious angel descended into my living room and offered to exchange my children for other, better children-brighter, kinder, funnier, more loving, more disciplined, more accomplished-I would clutch the ones I have and, like most parents, pray away the atrocious specter. ~ Andrew Solomon

Old gods die hard. They hold on, they creep in, they quietly clutch at us. ~ Kyle Idleman

The gluing together of a clutch of human beings into some semblance of a city has never been more than remotely possible. We are all sinners, and it's the people closest to us that see us at our worst. The family gets the lion's share of life's provocations, aggravations, and enervations. Nowhere is there so much fur quite so ready to be rubbed the wrong way. ~ Robert Farrar Capon

Time and the bell have buried the day,
The black cloud carries the sun away.
Will the sunflower turn to us, will the clematis
Stray down, bend to us; tendril and spray
Clutch and cling?
Chill
Fingers of yew be curled
Down on us? After the kingfisher's wing
Has answered light to light, and is silent, the light is still
At the still point of the turning world. ~ T. S. Eliot

The moment eternal - just that and no more - When ecstasy's utmost we clutch at the core While cheeks burn, arms open, eyes shut, and lips meet! ~ Robert Browning

the miracle happened; one of those quiet moments that clutch the heart, and take more courage than the noisy, excited passages in life. ~ Willa Cather

She had been taught in her girlhood to fondle and cherish those long-necked, sinuous creatures, the phrases of Chopin, so free, so flexible, so tactile, which begin by seeking their ultimate resting-place somewhere beyond and far wide of the direction in which they started, the point which one might have expected them to reach, phrases which divert themselves in those fantastic bypaths only to return more deliberately - with a more premediated reaction, with more precision, as on a crystal bowl which, if you strike it, will ring and throb until you cry aloud in anguish - to clutch at one's heart. ~ Marcel Proust

You come out of your MFA program with a cogent clutch of stories, trying to get an agent interested, and she or he admits these are quality, sure, but this agent actually needs something the publisher can make money on. So you get kind of bullied by the market into writing a novel. ~ Stephen Graham Jones

People like definite decisions, / Tidy answers, all the little ravelings / Snipped off, the lint removed, they / Hop happily among their roughs / Calling what they can't clutch insanity / Or saintliness. ~ Gwendolyn Brooks

Mrs. Georgette Roxby, known by her husband as Georgie, dressed to best show off her ample assets. Being plump everywhere, especially where it mattered, she had acquired the habit of hiding things in her bosom for later use; thus only requiring her to carry around a small clutch to all affairs where she could apply her other nasty habit of smacking her husband in the arm with her purse. ~ Staffan Bertel

I'm not afraid of the real truth. There is nothing you can tell me about yourself that is going to make me clutch my pearls. ~ Gabrielle Hamilton

It's no surprise that optimistic athletes, managers and teams do better. What's interesting is where they do better. It's in coming back from defeat and acting in the clutch. ~ Martin Seligman

Say you're bored. Or you can't sleep. Maybe your mom is yelling at you, or the boy/ girl you like doesn't like you back in the same way, or you're too fat to even consider going to prom. Or the closet person to you since you were babies in the cradle together has killed herself. The usual stuff. Dread not. Don't be depressed. Be a junkie!
You can't count on people to nurture you through the trauma that is existence. But you already knew that.
Start by drawing the shades in your bedroom. Welcome the darkness. Lift the pill from your nightstand, clutch the water glass in your hand. Offer your divine thanks in advance. Be greedy-swallow the pill whole rather than spit it in half to spread the wealth for a later date. Dilution is wasteful. Savor the wholesome wholeness.
Now lay down in bed. Close your eyes.
Wait.
Just a little longer. ~ Rachel Cohn

What does it mean to love somebody? It is always to seize that person in a mass, extract him or her from a group, however small, in which he or she participates, whether it be through the family only or through something else; then to find that person's own packs, the multiplicities he or she encloses within himself or herself which may be of an entirely different nature. To join them to mine, to make them penetrate mine, and for me to penetrate the other person's. Heavenly nuptials, multiplicities of multiplicities. Every love is an exercise in depersonalization on a body without organs yet to be formed, and it is at the highest point of this depersonalization that some- one can be named, receives his or her family name or first name, acquires the most intense discernibility in the instantaneous apprehension of the multiplicities belonging to him or her, and to which he or she belongs. A pack of freckles on a face, a pack of boys speaking through the voice of a woman, a clutch of girls in Charlus's voice, a horde of wolves in somebody's throat, a multiplicity of anuses in the anus, mouth, or eye one is intent upon. We each go through so many bodies in each other. ~ Gilles Deleuze

Imagine teaching a fifteen-year-old how to drive a car with manual transmission. First, you have to press down the clutch. Then you have to whisper a secret into one of the cup holders. ~ Joseph Fink

An audible gasp went up from a nearby clutch of women whose fashion sense bound their thinking tighter than a whalebone corset. ~ Bob Larranaga

You can clutch the past so tightly to your chest that it leaves your arms too full to embrace the present. ~ Jan Glidewell

Now you listen to me," says Ove calmly while he carefully closes the door. "You've given birth to two children and quite soon will be squeezing out a third. You've come here from a land far away and most likely you fled war and persecution and all sorts of other nonsense. You've learned a new language and got yourself an education and you're holding together a family of obvious incompetents. And I'll be damned if I've seen you afraid of a single bloody thing in this world before now ... I'm not asking for brain surgery. I'm asking you to drive a car. It's got an accelerator, a brake and a clutch. Some of the greatest twits in world history have sorted out how it works. And you will as well." And then he utters seven words, which Parvaneh will always remember as the loveliest compliment he'll ever give her. "Because you are not a complete twit. ~ Fredrik Backman

Sit down and have a cup of coffee
With your firm conviction that they're out to get you
Sit down and have a cigarette with your awful fear of death
I saw Milarepa at the all-night diner sharing a table with his personal demons
He said You've got to invite them in with compassion on your breath

Stop running away, 'cause nobody runs as fast as pain and sorrow
Stop pushing away, you're just making it hard
Stop putting it off, 'cause it'll be back to kick your ass tomorrow
Breathe in, breathe out, let down your guard

Sit down and start shooting the shit
With the fear that you'll never measure up to your ideals
Sit down and have a bottle of beer with the ache of all you've lost
I saw Milarepa at the coffee house having a Danish with his hurts and hatreds
He said You've got to invite them in, or you pay ten times the cost.

Stop running away, 'cause nobody runs as fast as fear and loathing
Stop pushing away, you're just making it worse
Stop putting it off, cause it'll be back again in different clothing
Just pop the clutch and go into reverse

Invite them in and let them be there while you learn to stand it
Invite them in and give them room to stomp and shout
When they can come and go
They won't be always pounding on your door
If you let them in you can let them out.

Sit down and have a conversation
With the loneliness that's eating yo ~ Allison Lonsdale