Grasping Quotes

To one degree or another, everybody is connected to the Mystery, and everybody secretly yearns to expand the connection. That requires expanding the soul. These things can enlarge the soul: laughter, danger, imagination, meditation, wild nature, passion, compassion, psychedelics, beauty, iconoclasm, and driving around in the rain with the top down. These things can diminish it: fear, bitterness, blandness, trendiness, egotism, violence, corruption, ignorance, grasping, shining, and eating ketchup on cottage cheese. ~ Tom Robbins

The winter is cold, is cold.
All's spent in keeping warm.
Has joy been frozen, too?
I blow upon my hands
Stiff from the biting wind.
My heart beats slow, beats slow.
What has become of joy?

If joy's gone from my heart
Then it is closed to You
Who made it, gave it life...

Elusive, evasive, peace comes
Only when it's not sought.

Help me forget the cold
That grips the grasping world... ~ Madeleine L'Engle

Longing was a feeling that was hard to live with. It didn't ask permission. It didn't pay attention to time or place. It was overwhelming and demanding, grasping and selfish. It clouded thoughts or made them too bright, too sharp. Longing demanded unconditional surrender. Lumikki tried to fight it and failed. She didn't want to long and yet she longed. She didn't want to remember, and yet her dreams and her body remembered, reminding her constantly.
The longing was physical. It was dizziness. It was a seizing in her belly. It was the need to wrap her arms around herself alone in bed when there was no one else to do it for her. She felt the longing in her fingertips that yearned to stroke, to touch, to caress. The longing made her fingers restless, fiddling with the zipper of her jacket, the strings in her hoodie, fidgeting with whatever little thing happened to her hand. The longing made her teeth bite into her lower lip, leaving it chipped and almost bleeding. She knew she was being stupid. She knew her longing was pointless. ~ Salla Simukka

Ego is the movement of the mind toward objects of perception in the form of grasping, and away from objects in the form of aversion. This fundamentally is all the ego is. This movement of grasping and aversion gives rise to a sense of a separate 'me,' and in turn the sense of 'me' strengthens itself this way. ~ Adyashanti

Peace is, indeed, our policy. A kind Providence has cast our lot on a portion of the globe sufficiently vast to satisfy the most grasping ambition, and abounding in resources beyond all others, which only require to be fully developed to make us the greatest and most prosperous people on earth. ~ John C. Calhoun

Crooked, grasping, evil-hearted people were easy to find. Honest, concerned, self-sacrificing people were harder to come by. ~ Darren Shan

We do not realize how deeply our starting assumptions affect the way we go about looking for and interpreting the data we collect. We should recognize that nonhuman organisms need not meet every new definition of human language, tool use, mind, or consciousness in order to have versions of their own that are worthy of serious study. We have set ourselves too much apart, grasping for definitions that will distinguish man from all other life on the planet. We must rejoin the great stream of life from whence we arose and strive to see within it the seeds of all we are and all we may become. ~ Sue Savage-Rumbaugh

Grasping at things can only yield one of two results: Either the thing you are grasping at disappears, or you yourself disappear. It is only a matter of which occurs first. ~ S. N. Goenka

This child, who is grasping the stone, facing the tank, is it not the greatest message to the world when that hero becomes a martyr? We are proud of them. ~ Yasser Arafat

Radical simply means grasping things at the root. ~ Angela Y. Davis

The length of the fall is dictated by how far we had climbed. The outcome of the fall is dictated by whether we're holding on to that which we're climbing, or we're letting God hold onto us. ~ Craig D. Lounsbrough

I have come to believe 'tis more important in this life to make one person feel loved than to go around killing and grasping for power. ~ Michelle Griep

How can you not love reading? It's wonderful. An excursion, an adventure ... an escape from reality.' She adored reading and had a hard time grasping anyone not loving it. ~ Robin Caroll

Understanding how fragile the human experience is, and grasping your inevitable demise, if you allow it, will guide your life decisions and inspire you to a greater existence. ~ Alpha Four

Ugh. Intense, yeah. Whew." She smiled, a little lopsidedly. "At least at baseball games you get to drink beer and eat hot dogs in the boring parts." Jamie, grasping at the only part of this conversation that made sense, leaned forward. "There's a crock of small beer, cool in the pantry," he said, peering anxiously at Brianna. "Will I fetch it in?" "No," I said. "Not unless you want some; alcohol wouldn't be good for the baby." "Ah. What about the hot dog?" He stood up and flexed his hands, obviously preparing to dash out and shoot one. ~ Diana Gabaldon

One more time. I'm - not - yours. And hitting Cade like that was so . . . so wrong! You could have killed him!"
"Do you want me tae?"
She started away. "I'm going to check on him - "
"Then you do want me tae!" He raised her elbow and spun her around, a wild look in his eyes. His shirt was ripped almost free, displaying his sheening chest, still heaving from the battle. "This is a vulnerable time. I have no' claimed you, and the full moon nears. Yet you receive the attentions of another male? Witch, you play with fire!" He swiped the back of his hand over his bleeding temple. "Forget the demon. He knows you're no' his. If he'd truly believed you were, he would have put up more of a fight. He dinna even hit a rage state."
"You didn't change to your werewolf form for me!"
"I dinna want you to see it!" he roared, grasping her upper arms. "Doona ever doubt my desire for you - if I truly was in a contest for the right to have you, I'd have bitten his goddamned throat free, then laid it at your feet in offer!"
Her lips parted. She thought she'd just caught a glimpse of the inner workings of how a Lykae male thought.
And she . . . liked it. ~ Kresley Cole

Walk down any sidewalk in any city and eventually you'll find a flower growing out of a crack in the concrete, tenaciously grasping for life, barely enough earth for it to clench hold of. This little flower has seeded, sprouted, and blossomed, despite thousands of feet walking over and around it every day. This flower is a survivor, thriving better than if it were in my Aunt Tilda's fucking backyard garden with her fussing over it day and night and giving it all the goddamned care she thought it needed. Yeah, eventually, some careless asshole's gonna trample and kill that flower, but another one's gonna replace it. [...] I'll always believe in you, Raeburn. You just have to find another crack in the sidewalk and blossom. Don't be another Kurt Cobain. Don't give up. People need you. ~ Pete Conrad

My worst mistake has been not grasping that time goes by. It was going by and there I was, set in the attitude of the ideal wife of an ideal husband. Instead of bringing our sexual relationship to life again I brooded happily over memories of our former nights together. ~ Simone De Beauvoir

You can free yourself from aging by reinterpreting your body and by grasping the link between belief and biology. ~ Deepak Chopra

My reading has been lamentably desultory and immedthodical. Odd, out of the way, old English plays, and treatises, have supplied me with most of my notions, and ways of feeling. In everything that relates to science, I am a whole Encyclopaedia behind the rest of the world. I should have scarcely cut a figure among the franklins, or country gentlemen, in King John's days. I know less geography than a schoolboy of six weeks standing. To me a map of old Ortelius is as authentic as Arrowsmith. I do not know whereabout Africa merges into Asia, whether Ethiopia lie in one or other of those great divisions, nor can form the remotest, conjecture of the position of New South Wales, or Van Diemen's Land. Yet do I hold a correspondence with a very dear friend in the first named of these two Terrae Incognitae. I have no astronomy. I do not know where to look for the Bear or Charles' Wain, the place of any star, or the name of any of them at sight. I guess at Venus only by her brightness - and if the sun on some portentous morn were to make his first appearance in the west, I verily believe, that, while all the world were grasping in apprehension about me, I alone should stand unterrified, from sheer incuriosity and want of observation. Of history and chronology I possess some vague points, such as one cannot help picking up in the course of miscellaneous study, but I never deliberately sat down to a chronicle, even of my own country. I have most dim apprehensions of the four great monarc ~ Charles Lamb

The Tantric view is that there is already a complete Buddha dormant within each of us, but we've individually and collectively become addicted to horror movies that we mistake for documentaries. From this perspective, our whole society is caught up in a kind of shared horror story, imagining ourselves as zombie consumers rather than empowered citizens: afraid, insecure, incapable beings who have no choice but to wander through life grasping after fleeting pleasures, needlessly competing with each other instead of collaborating, isolating ourselves from the plight of those whose stories we don't understand. Because our whole society is both constructing and watching this shared screenplay simultaneously, the physical world begins to take on the qualities of this horror movie, and it becomes more and more difficult to distinguish the theater of our experience from the screen of our own projections. ~ Ethan Nichtern

What's wrong?" I asked in a tiny voice, grasping for a piece of bookself to hold me up.
His breath was still heavy.
"This is a bad idea."
Overwhelmed, I let my body slide towards the floor, until I sat crumpled on the dusty carpet.
"Brody, treat me better than this-" I said.
He didn't turn around; his shoulders rippled as he gripped the shelf.
"It's dangerous," he said
"We'll make it safe"
He half-looked over his shoulder.
"That's not what I'm talking about," he said. ~ Van Badham

Without hope, Chöd practitioners are freed from the limits of hope and fear; having cut the ropes of grasping, definitely enlightened, where does one go? ~ Machik Labdrön

It is truth that liberates, not your effort to be free. ~ Jiddu Krishnamurti

One recalls the literary writer who, after grasping a story of a Mars voyage as a metaphor for isolation and the precariousness of relationships, realized that at a deeper, more subtle level it might even be a story about an actual trip to Mars! ~ Michael Flynn

He finally moved, walking those few feet between them. Without hesitation, his hands slid around her waist, pulling her flush against him. Her hand slid up his arm all by itself, grasping the hard muscles there. The warmth that seemed a natural part of him spread into her. Smoothly, his mouth found hers, gently grazing her lips before settling more firmly. She moaned as he tasted her, coaxing her to open for him. When she did, her eyelids fluttered shut and the whole world utterly disappeared. ~ Dee Tenorio

Here?"
She gasped, grasping his forearm with her hand.
He growled low in his throat as he watched her attempt to understand the feelings coursing through her. When he spoke, his voice was rough with his own response. "I think you want more than that. ~ Sarah MacLean

It wasn't just pretending everything was fine or grasping at normalcy, but grabbing it by the ears and making it my bitch. ~ Jennifer L. Armentrout

Memory depends very much on the perspicuity, regularity, and order of our thoughts. Many complain of the want of memory, when the defect is in the judgment; and others, by grasping at all, retain nothing. ~ Thomas Fuller

I used to think that when I got older, the world would make so much more sense. But you know what? The older I get, the more confusing it is to me. The more complicated it is. Harder. You'd think we'd be getting better at it. But there's just more and more chaos. The pieces - they're everywhere. And nobody knows what to do about it. I find myself grasping, Nick. You know that feeling? That feeling when you just want the right thing to fall into the right place, not only because it's right, but because it will mean that such a thing is still possible? I want to believe in that. ~ David Levithan

Perched upon the stones of a bridge
The soldiers had the eyes of ravens
Their weapons hung black as talons
Their eyes gloried in the smoke of murder

To the shock of iron-heeled sticks
I drew closer in the cripple's bitter patience
And before them I finally tottered
Grasping to capture my elusive breath

With the cockerel and swift of their knowing
They watched and waited for me
'I have come,' said I, 'from this road's birth,
I have come,' said I, 'seeking the best in us.'

The sergeant among them had red in his beard
Glistening wet as he showed his teeth
'There are few roads on this earth,' said he,
'that will lead you to the best in us, old one.'

'But you have seen all the tracks of men,' said I
'And where the mothers and children have fled
Before your advance. Is there naught among them
That you might set an old man upon?'

The surgeon among this rook had bones
Under her vellum skin like a maker of limbs
'Old one,' said she, 'I have dwelt
In the heat of chests, among heart and lungs,

And slid like a serpent between muscles,
Swum the currents of slowing blood,
And all these roads lead into the darkness
Where the broken will at last rest.

'Dare say I,' she went on,'there is no
Place waiting inside where you might find
In slithering exploration of mysteries
All that you so boldly call t ~ Steven Erikson

Doubt and faith are parts of human experience, whether one views them as right or wrong. Also doubt and faith are instrumental to grasping truth in some very obvious senses. ~ Leviak B. Kelly

Stillness was most natural. To go on scrabbling and running and grasping after some kind of life was aberration; stillness was lasting. ~ Jane Rogers

The secure attachment of Western psychology is actually akin to Buddhist non-attachment; avoid-ant attachment is the inverse of being mindful and present; and anxious attachment aligns with Buddhist notions of clinging and grasping. ~ Sharon Salzberg

In many ways marine biology is at a pivotal moment, when we are discovering the richness of the ocean at the very time we are grasping how we've managed to deplete it over the last few centuries. Preserving what's left, as well as rebuilding parts of it to a semblance of what it used to be, requires us to relinquish some of the power we have exercised in the past. It requires living with sharks. ~ Juliet Eilperin

My hope is that a religious consciousness will begin to rise, one based on enhancing humanity, grasping life in all of its complex wonder, having the courage to live fully, to love wastefully and to be all that each of us can be and that it will express itself in our national life in more earth centered, justice enhancing and humane ways. ~ John Shelby Spong

Every calling is marked by a season of insignificance, a period when nothing seems to make sense. This is a time of wandering in the wilderness, when you feel alone and misunderstood. To the outsider, such a time looks like failure, as if you are grasping at air or simply wasting time. But the reality is this is the most important experience a person can have if they make the most of it. ~ Jeff Goins

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

Endings are the toughest, harder than beginnings. They must satisfy the expectations you have hopefully generated in your reader - not frustrate them, leave the reader grasping at elusive strings. ~ Jeffrey Thomas

By renouncing samsara, we renounce our habitual grasping, unhappy minds. And by renouncing samsara, we embrace our potential for enlightenment. ~ Thubten Zopa Rinpoche

In rallies like those in Johnson's Ohio tour, friends, neighbors, colleagues and family members who do not conform to the ideology are gradually dehumanized. They are tainted with the despised characteristics inherent in the godless. This attack is waged in highly abstract terms, to negate the reality of concrete, specific and unique human characteristics, to deny the possibility of goodness in those who do not conform. Some human beings, the message goes, are no longer human beings. They are types. This new, exclusive community fosters rigidity, conformity and intolerance. In this new binary world segments of the human race are disqualified from moral and ethical consideration. And because fundamentalist followers live in a binary universe, they are incapable of seeing others as anything more than inverted reflections of themselves. If they seek to destroy nonbelievers to create a Christian America, then nonbelievers must be seeking to destroy them. This belief system negates the possibility of the ethical life. It fails to grasp that goodness must be sought outside the self and that the best defense against evil is to seek it within. When people come to believe that they are immune from evil, that there is no resemblance between themselves and those they define as the enemy, they will inevitably grow to embody the evil they claim to fight. It is only by grasping our own capacity for evil, our own darkness, that we hold our own capacity for evil at bay. When evil is purely e ~ Chris Hedges

Nostos algos. I want to go home. A phrase that's stuck on a loop, that I hear before falling asleep, waiting in line for my coffee, tapping the elevator button and rising through the sky to my apartment...and yet my desire is not attached to a particular place...I want to go home but what I mean, what I'm grasping for, is not a place. It's a feeling. I want to go back. But back where? Maybe to the first time I heard Stevie Nicks, to watching the snow fall outside the window with a paperback folded open in my lap, to the moment before I tasted alcohol, to virginity and not really knowing that things die, back to believing that something great is still up ahead, back to before I made the choices that would hem me in to the life I live now. A life that I regret sometimes, I think, only because it's mine, because it's turned out this way and not some other way, because I can't go back and change what will happen. ~ Julie Buntin

When he sleeps,
the snoring does not bother me:
the rhythmic growl, gravel shoved
across the sidewalk of his throat.
It is the grasping, desperate way
in which he takes in air - his gulping lungs
as if every dream is filled with water
and he is trying to inflate
the life jacket under his skin.
I babble in my sleep. He believes
I am trying to tell him how my heart works,
says he will translate the manual one day.
I want to ask him: am I the ocean?
Are you drowning in everything
I don't say when I'm awake?
- Heart Apnea ~ Sierra DeMulder

Kasen lifted one of the bottles and read the label. "This stuff can kill you." "Yeah, but obviously not quick enough." He went to take another swig. Nykyrian jerked it out of his hand. "Hey!" He pulled it away from his grasping hand. "Don't even make that noise at me." Syn curled his lip. "You and Vik. You're both traitors. You might as well move in with Shahara, too." Vik had gone to live with her and refused to come back until Syn "got over himself". Little wormy betraying mecha bastard. Kasen shook her head. "I think this is the first time I've ever seen you drink from a bottle." Nykyrian snorted. "Lucky you. I've seen him tap a keg and funnel it."
- Kasen, Syn, & Nykyrian ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon

The world is divine because the world is inconsequential. That is why art alone, by being equally inconsequential, is capable of grasping it. ~ Albert Camus

You're a freak. But I really can't accept these-'
Were you raised in a barn? Don't be ruuuuuude, my boy. They're a gift.'
Blay shook his head. 'Take them, John. You're just going to lose this argument, and it will save us from the theatrics.'
Theatrics?' Qhuinn leaped up and assumed a Roman oratory pose. 'Whither thou knowest thy ass from thy elbow, young scribe?'
Blay blushed. 'Come on-'
Qhuinn threw himself at Blay, grasping onto the guy's shoulders and hanging his full weight off him. 'Hold me. Your insult has left me breathless. I'm agasp.'
Blay grunted and scrambled to keep Qhuinn up off the floor. 'That's agape.'
Agasp sounds better.'
Blay was trying not to smile, trying not to be delighted, but his eyes were sparkling like sapphires and his cheeks were getting red. With a silent laugh, John sat on one of the locker room benches, shook out his pair of white socks, and pulled them on under his new old jeans. 'You sure, Qhuinn? 'Cause I have a feeling they're going to fit and you might change your mind.
Qhuinn abruptly lifted himself off Blay and straightened his clothes with a sharp tug. 'And now you offend my honor.' Facing off at John, he flipped into a fencing stance.
Touché.'
Blay laughed. 'That's en garde, you damn fool.'
Qhuinn shot a look over his shoulder. 'ça va, Brutus?'
Et tu?'
That would be tutu, I believe, and you can keep the cross-dressing to yourself, ya perv.'
Qhuinn flashed a b ~ J.R. Ward

I can't stop thinking about you," he whispers.
He moves in, closer, lips pausing inches from mine. Wraps his arms around me, pulling me into him. I let out a quick gasp of air.
"I dream about you," he murmurs, eyes grasping mine.
"You don't sleep," I choke, feeling a delirious passion coursing through my veins.
"I dream about your smile. About touching you. I dream about being with you. Like this. ~ Katie Klein

Dan gave chase with his big, blue-collar hands grasping at my shirttail. ~ Bobby Adair

The people in a position to resolve the financial crisis were, of course, the very same people who had failed to foresee it: Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, future Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke, Goldman Sachs CEO Lloyd Blankfein, Morgan Stanley CEO John Mack, Citigroup CEO Vikram Pandit, and so on. A few Wall Street CEOs had been fired for their roles in the subprime mortgage catastrophe, but most remained in their jobs, and they, of all people, became important characters operating behind the closed doors, trying to figure out what to do next. With them were a handful of government officials - the same government officials who should have known a lot more about what Wall Street firms were doing, back when they were doing it. All shared a distinction: They had proven far less capable of grasping basic truths in the heart of the U.S. financial system than a one-eyed money manager with Asperger's syndrome. ~ Michael Lewis

Mysterious money had stood to him as the symbol of earthly good, and the immediate object of toil. He had seemed to love it little in the years when every penny had its purpose for him; for he loved the purpose then. But now, when all purpose was gone, that habit of looking towards the money and grasping it with a sense of fulfilled effort made a loam that was deep enough for the seeds of desire. ~ George Eliot

The average mind is slow in grasping a truth, but when the most thoroughly organized, centralized institution, maintained at an excessive national expense, has proven a complete social failure, the dullest must begin to question its right to exist. The time is past when we can be content with our social fabric merely because it is "ordained by divine right," or by the majesty of the law. ~ Emma Goldman

We still find the greedy hand of government thrusting itself into every corner and crevice of industry and grasping at the spoil of the multitude. Invention is continually exercised to furnish new pretenses for revenue and taxation. It watches prosperity as its prey and permits none to escape without a tribute. ~ Thomas Paine

Its emptiness is more than the lack of living, breathing beings. It is the unread pages of the many books that reside on the shelves throughout the room I should hot have thought one could tell when books have gone unread, but after the company of Birchwood's well-loved library it is as if I can hear these books whispering, their pages grasping and reaching for an audience. ~ Michelle Zink

The brain's strong point is its flexibility. It is unsurpassed at making shrewd guesses and at grasping the total meaning of information presented to it. ~ Jeremy Campbell

I can't love him. I don't. This feeling is not the selfish, grasping need that I've seen tear apart my family, writhing through heir hearts like worms through rotten apples. ~ Rosamund Hodge

Government is actually the worst failure of civilized man. There has never been a really good one, and even those that are most tolerable are arbitrary, cruel, grasping and unintelligent. ~ H.L. Mencken

But I hung on, like a tiny four-year-old grasping the curved bars of a playground merry-go-round when someone's older cousin spins it too fast. YAY, THIS IS FUN, KINDA! ~ Felicia Day

Terms swarm up to tempt me in the course of this description: Greek Orthodox, Romanesque, flying buttress, etc. These guessing words I find junked in my brain in deranged juxtaposition, like files randomly stuffed into cabinets by a dispirited secretary with no notion of what, if anything, might ever be usefully retrieved. Often all language seems this way: a monstrous compendium of embedded histories I'm helpless to understand. I employ it the way a dog drives a car, without grasping how the car came to exist or what makes a combustion engine possible. That is, of course, if dogs drove cars. They don't. Yet I go around forming sentences. ~ Jonathan Lethem

209. He who gives himself to vanity, and does not give himself to meditation, forgetting the real aim (of life) and grasping at pleasure, will in time envy him who has exerted himself in meditation. ~ Anonymous

Feeling her strength return right along with her annoyance, Dagmar stepped back and raised her foot, slamming it down on the tip.
"Ow! Evil barbarian viper!" He rose on his hind legs, his front claws grasping his tail. "You are aware this is attached to me?"
"Yes. That's how I knew it was taking liberties! ~ G.A. Aiken

The quality of Venice that accomplishes what religion so often cannot is that Venice has made peace with the waters. It is not merely pleasant that the sea flows through, grasping the city like tendrils of vine, and, depending upon the light, making alleys and avenues of emerald and sapphire, Citi s a brave acceptance of dissolution and an unflinching settlement with death. Though in Venice you may sit in courtyards of stone, and your heels may click up marble stairs, you cannot move without riding upon or crossing the waters that someday will carry you in dissolution to the sea. ~ Mark Helprin

He smirked and that was it. I propelled myself forward and into his arms, our mouths instantly locking in a frenzied kiss, my hands grasping his collar, his shirt, his hair, his anything. ~ Jennifer DeLucy

This kiss, this first kiss, was not subtle, soft or gentle. It was as if they were ravenous for each other. She opened so easily for him. He didn't expect this reaction from her. Truly, he hadn't expected to kiss her today. But as their mouths joined, their lips caressing, moving hungrily, steadily becoming more demanding, he wondered why he hadn't done this sooner.
"I could kiss you for hours," he drawled hotly against her mouth. "Possibly for days." It felt as if he was savoring heaven. Something Rothbury never thought he would ever even glimpse let alone taste.
She responded to his words by grasping at the sodden material of his linen shirt, her arms trapped in between their chests.
The feel of her lush mouth under him was intoxicating. She tasted sweet, wet, the rivulets of rain upon their faces making the kiss wilder, hotter somehow.
His lips moved hotly over hers. He had thought about this moment for so long, and now that it was actually happening... it was better than he ever imagined it could be. ~ Olivia Parker

Everyone lets the present moment slip by, then looks for it as though he thought it was somewhere else. No one seems to have noticed this fact. But grasping this firmly, one must pile experience upon experience. And once one has come to this understanding he will be a different person from that point on, though he may not always bare it in mind. When one understands this settling into single-mindedness well, his affairs will thin out. ~ Yamamoto Tsunetomo

April 18

Dear Ryan,

I'm considering writing to one of those advice columnists about us. That's how confused I still am.

When we started this, I thought that I just needed some time away from you. I just needed time to breathe. I needed a chance to live on my own and appreciate you again by missing you.

Those first few months were torture. I felt so lonely. I felt exactly what I wanted myself to feel, which was that I couldn't live without you. I felt it all day. I felt it when I slept in an empty bed. I felt it when I came home to an empty house. But somehow, one day, it sort of became OK. I don't know when that happened.

I thought at one point that maybe if I learned who you truly are, then I could love you again. Then I thought maybe if I learn who I really am, what I really want, then I could love you again. I have been grasping at things for months, trying to learn a lesson big enough, important enough, all-encompassing enough that it would bring us back together. But mostly, I'm just learning lessons about how to live my life. I'm learning how to be a better sister. I'm learning just how strong my mother has always been. That I should take my grandmother's advice more often. That sex can be healing. That Charlie isn't such a little kid anymore.

I guess what I'm saying is that I've started focusing on other things. I don't feel all that desperate to figure us out and fix this. I feel sort of OK that it's n ~ Taylor Jenkins Reid

The real glory of meditation lies not in any method but in its continual living experience of presence, in its bliss, clarity, peace, and most important of all, complete absence of grasping. The diminishing of grasping in yourself is a sign that you are becoming freer of yourself. And the more you experience this freedom, the clearer the sign that the ego and the hopes and fears that keep it alive are dissolving, and the closer you will come to the infinitely generous "wisdom of egolessness." ~ Sogyal Rinpoche

For most people, the major hurdle in grasping modern insights into the nature of the universe is that these developments are usually phrased using mathematics. ~ Brian Greene

Many troubled Midwestern towns are grasping for ways to fend off decline and, in some cases, extinction. ~ Stephen Kinzer

Shadow inserted his coin. The drunk in the graveyard raised his bottle to his lips. One of the gravestones flipped over, revealing a grasping corpse; a headstone turned around, flowers replaced by a grinning skull. A wraith appeared on the right of the church, while on the left of the church something with a half-glimpsed, pointed, unsettlingly birdlike face, a pale, Boschian nightmare, glided smoothly from a headstone into the shadows and was gone. Then the church door opened, a priest came out, and the ghosts, haunts, and corpses vanished, and only the priest and the drunk were left alone in the graveyard. The priest looked down at the drunk disdainfully, and backed through the open door, which closed behind him, leaving the drunk on his own.

The clockwork story was deeply unsettling. Much more unsettling, thought Shadow, than clockwork has any right to be.

"You know why I show that to you?" asked Czernobog.

"No."

"That is the world as it is. That is the real world. It is there, in that box. ~ Neil Gaiman

The ground recoiled, shocked. The worktable swooped beneath him as though it were a swing whose rope had broken. He turned over, grinding his belly against the table, holding the sides with his outstretched hands to kill the fear. The figure was standing now, and his feet held the ground flatly, directly on the damp, breathing earth. As trees do, he sought strength with grasping, rock-splitting notes. The first step shook the earth almost as the standing had. After ~ Gene Wolfe

Anarchists are mouthpieces of a declining stratum of society; when they work themselves into a state of righteous indignation demanding 'rights', 'justice', 'equal rights', they are just acting under the pressure of their own lack of culture, which has no way of grasping why they really suffer, or what they lack in life. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

When you see the dawn breaking, you think back to the darkness in a new way. "Sin" is not simply the breaking of a law. It is the missing of an opportunity. Having heard the echoes of a voice, we are called to come and meet the speaker. We are invited to be transformed by the voice itself, the word of the gospel- the word which declares that evil has been judged, that the world has been put to rights, that heaven and earth are joined forever, and that new creation has begun. We are called to become people who can speak and live and paint and sing that word so that those who have heard it's echoes can come and lend a hand in the larger project. That is the opportunity that stands before us, as a gift and a possibility. Christian holiness is not (as people often imagine) a matter of denying something good. It is about growing up and grasping something even better. ~ N. T. Wright

Höderer: You don't love men, Hugo. You love only principles.
Hugo: Men? Why should I love them? Do they love me?
Höderer: Then why did you come to us? If you don't love men, you can't fight for them.
Hugo: I joined the party because its cause is just, and I shall leave it when that cause ceases to be just. As for men, it's not what they are that interests me, but what they can become.
Höderer: And I, I love them for what they are. With all their filth and and all their vices. I love their voices and their warm grasping hands, and their skin, the nudest skin of all, and their uneasy glances, and the desperate struggle each has to pursue against anguish and against death. For me, one man more or less in the world is something that counts. It's something precious. You, I know you now, you are a destroyer. You detest men because you detest yourself. Your purity resembles death. The revolution you dream of is not ours. You don't want to change the world, you want to blow it up. ~ Jean-Paul Sartre

Grasping the staff, Donia pressed her mouth to Beira's still body and inhaled. The rest of the Winter Queen's cold flowed into her, rolling through her like an icy wave, churning until it suddenly stopped and lay quiet - a fathomless frozen pool surrounded by ice-laden trees and unmarred white fields.
The words came to her from the white world, sliding through her lips like a winter wind, "I am the Winter Queen. As those before me, I will carry the wind and ice."
And she was healed, stronger than she'd ever been. ~ Melissa Marr

Photographs provided a tangible reality to men who were far from home, fearful and tired; they were posed proofs of success, souvenirs to send to sweethearts and loved ones, or simply ways of remembering, of grasping a moment in a swift changing and uncertain world. ~ Michael Crichton

Many of our attempts to understand Christian faith have only cheapened it. I can no more understand the totality of God than the pancake I made for breakfast understands the complexity of me. The little we do understand, that grain of sand our minds are capable of grasping, those ideas such as God is good, God feels, God loves, God knows all, are enough to keep our hearts dwelling on His majesty and otherness forever. ~ Donald Miller

You've been off fighting the war in the Outer Rim. You don't know what it's been like, dealing with all the petty squabbles and special interests and greedy, grasping fools in the Senate, and Palpatine's constant, cynical, ruthless maneuvering for power - he carves away chunks of our freedom and bandages the wounds with tiny scraps of security. And for what? Look at this planet, Obi-Wan! We have given up so much freedom - how secure do we look? ~ Matthew Woodring Stover

Happiness of heart can never be measured out and bundled up, it's intangible. We keep running after it, grasping for it, and the heat of our running so seldom brings it closer. But now and then there may be a moment. We look at something and know it is good and beautiful. Those moments are happiness. ~ Gladys Taber

Even though I'd been terrified and in pain, I'd thought he was handsome. Except that wasn't even a strong enough word: he was beautiful in a way that was almost painful. Flawless in a way that seemed surreal, like a figment of imagination. So perfect, it was off-putting, because while it was something that could be worshipped, it wasn't something that could be touched or loved. He'd been snide, nasty, and wicked, and I'd loathed him. Except even then I'd sensed something wasn't right, that there was a mismatch between what I was seeing and hearing and what I felt. It was this mismatch that made him captivating, and even as I was grasping for ways to escape, the need to know more about him had lurked in my heart. ~ Danielle L. Jensen

What did the child-woman have to say except that she was happy to be living with Hubert--a big, pompous, grasping, scheming, conniving stud who used her at his will and shaped her affections and her tastes and in general raped her spirit. ~ M.F.K. Fisher

When you grasp excessively for anything in this world - and for you that happens to be food - you deny what is trying to emerge from deep within you. Failing to experience what is supposed to happen - your own internal communion with self - you are thrown into an awful, primordial void, bereft by what feels like the absence of your Creator. You don't really mean to be grasping for food. You mean to be grasping for God. And there is only one way to do that. You cannot find Him except where He lives. And He lives in you. ~ Marianne Williamson

Pain is what I feed from when nothing else will nourish the noxious fury in my heart. It's what I cling to when everything else - everyone else - slips right between my grasping fingers. ~ Rachel Vincent

Pushing through her own feeling of panic to find what Kane was trying to communicate to her. It was a bit of a jumble and she strained to make sense of it, finally grasping a repeated thread: I love you. Be ready. ~ Nicky Charles

My recommendation is to keep up the good work. I'm changing your title to senior executive assistant, and giving you a three percent raise effective next payday. Congratulations."
Wow, three percent. I could move up that early retirement plan to age seventy-five now, instead of eighty. Lucky me.
Thank you," I said. "That's very generous."
You're quite welcome." Ms. Saunders nodded and grabbed a gold-plated letter opener to begin attacking her stack of mail.
I turned to leave. Didn't want to outstay my welcome.
Damn it!" she exclaimed, and I turned back around. She winced and nodded at the letter opener that she'd dropped to her desktop. "Damn thing slipped. I'm probably going to need stitches now. Can you be a dear and fetch the first-aid kit for me?"
She held her left index finger and frowned at the steady flow of blood oozing out. A few small drops of red splashed onto the other letters spread out on the desk.
I felt woozy. And suddenly dizzy.
I blinked.
When I opened my eyes, I was no longer standing by the door about to leave. I was crouched down next to Ms. Saunders's imported black leather chair, grasping her wrist tightly…… and sucking noisily on her fingertip.
I shrieked and let go of her, staggering backward. I grabbed at her desk to keep from falling, but I dropped on my butt, anyhow, taking most of the contents of the top of her desk with me.
She held her injured finger far away from her and stared at me, wide- ~ Michelle Rowen

One uses power by grasping it lightly. To grasp too strongly is to be taken over by power, and thus to become its victim. ~ Frank Herbert

She'd thought she'd left this behind. This crushing awful feeling of something unfulfilled, something she kept reaching for only to be dragged away and mired in others' needs and expectations and the cloying sick grasping of their love. ~ Cole McCade

Grabbing Jeremy's lapels, Nick pulled him closer, grasping him not with fingers but with claws. His face inches away from Jeremy's, his eyes burning red, his fangs sharp and gleaming, he screamed, "BECAUSE YOU'RE MINE! NO ONE THREATENS WHAT'S MINE AND WALKS AWAY!" His growl rumbled through the room, ratcheting down into the subsonic. "I WILL BURN DOWN WHOLE ARMIES BEFORE I LET THEM TAKE YOU FROM ME!"...

"Jesus, big brother," said Toby. "I know vampires are territorial when it comes to their mates, but you're way out in front for the possessive macho bullshit award."

Nick sighed. "I know. I've got to work on that. ~ Arshad Ahsanuddin

It is impossible to grasp the fullness of God without grasping the fullness of the love of Christ. ~ Lysa TerKeurst

Why grace? Because some days, it's the only thing we have in common. Because it's the one thing I'm certain is real. Because it's the reason I'm here. Because it's the oxygen of religious life, or so says a musician friend of mine, who tells me, "Without it, religion will surely suffocate you." Because so many of us are gasping for air and grasping for God, but fleeing from a kind of religious experience that has little to do with anything sacred or gracious. ~ Cathleen Falsani

Neurosis is the rule, not the exception', and grasping this can help us to see that we are not alone. It is also the starting point for understanding what went wrong and learning that we have a choice: we can simply re-enact the past, or we can rewrite the script. ~ Oliver James

My mother named me Autumn. People say to me "Oh how pretty," and then the name seems to glide away from them, not grasping all the things that the word should mean to them, shades of red, change, and death ~ Laura Nowlin

The only sovereign I can allow to rule me is reason. The first law of reason is this: what exists exists; what is is. From this irreducible, bedrock principle, all knowledge is built. This is the foundation from which life is embraced. Reason is a choice. Wishes and whims are not facts, nor are they a means to discovering them. Reason is our only way of grasping reality–it is our basic tool of survival. We are free to evade the effort of thinking, to reject reason, but we are not free to avoid the penalty of the abyss we refuse to see." -Richard ~ Terry Goodkind

Wherefore the mere practical architect is not able to assign sufficient reasons for the forms he adopts; and the theoretic architect also fails, grasping the shadow instead of the substance. ~ Vitruvius

To lay hold of the mean without taking into account the occasion is like grasping one thing only. ~ Mencius

But unlike the person with exquisite taste in painting or perfume, the movie nerd is classless as well. Grasping the genius of Russ Meyer or George Romero or Herschell Gordon Lewis carries no cultural cachet and gets no one laid, believe me. ~ David Gordon

Thus the feeling I sometimes have - which all of us who work closely with aphasiacs have - that one cannot lie to an aphasiac. He cannot grasp your words, and cannot be deceived by them; but what he grasps he grasps with infallible precision, namely the expression that goes with the words, the total, spontaneous, involuntary expressiveness which can never be simulated or faked, as words alone can, too easily. ~ Oliver Sacks

Sometimes you fall, spinning through space, grasping for the things that keep you on this earth. Sometimes you catch them. They can be the hands of the people you love. They can be your pets- pups with funny names, cats with ferocious old souls. The thing that keeps you here can be your art. It can be things you have collected and invested with a certain sense of meaning. A flowered, buckled treasure chest of secrets. Shoes that make you taller and, therefore, closer to the heavens. A suit that belonged to your fairy godmother. A dress that makes you feel a little like the Goddess herself.
Sometimes you keep falling; you don't catch anything.
Sometimes you fall, spinning through space, grasping for the things that keep you here. Sometimes you catch them. Sometimes you don't.
Sometimes they catch you. ~ Francesca Lia Block

The usual disease of princes, grasping covetousness, had made them suspicious and quarrelsome neighbors. ~ Plutarch

Don't live life as a spectator. Always examine life: Espouse new ideas, long for
new things, constantly discovering new interests, escaping from boring
routines. Engage life with enthusiasm; grasping life aggressively and squeezing
from it every drop of excitement, satisfaction, and joy. The key to unleashing life's potential is attitude. The person who approaches
life with a child-like wonder is best prepared to defy the limitations of time, is
more "alive," more of a participant in life than the person who remains a
spectator. ~ Felix Baumgartner

Was it a convent you escaped from, Miss Turner?" He turned the boat with a deft pull on one oar.
"Escaped?" Her heart knocked against her hidden purse. "I'm a governess, I told you. I'm not running away, from a convent or anywhere else. Why would you ask that?"
He chuckled. "Because you're staring at me as though you've never seen a man before."
Sophia's cheeks burned. She was staring. Worse, now she found herself powerless to turn away. What with the murky shadows of the tavern and the confusion of the quay, not to mention her own discomposure, she hadn't taken a good, clear look at his eyes until this moment.
They defied her mental palette utterly.
The pupils were ringed with a thin line of blue. Darker than Prussian, yet lighter than indigo. Perhaps matching that dearest of pigments-the one even her father's generous allowance did not permit-ultramarine. Yet within that blue circumference shifted a changing sea of color-green one moment, gray the next…in the shadow of a half-blink, hinting at blue.
He laughed again, and flinty sparks of amusement lit them.
Yes, she was still staring.
Forcing her gaze to the side, she saw their rowboat nearing the scraped hull of a ship. She cleared her throat and tasted brine. "Forgive me, Mr. Grayson. I'm only trying to make you out. I understood you to be the ship's captain."
"Well," he said, grasping a rope thrown down to him and securing it to the boat, "now you know I'm not."
"Might I ~ Tessa Dare