Tightly Quotes

Flora reached out and grabbed hold of William Spiver's hand, and he held on to her. It was as if he were drowning and she were standing on solid ground. According to TERRIBLE THINGS! drowning people were desperate, out of their minds with fear. In their panic they could pull you, the rescuer, under, if you weren't careful. So Flora held on tightly to William Spiver. And he held on tightly back. ~ Kate DiCamillo

I went to the window, opening the pierced shutters to look out over the sleeping city. The moon was waxing and hung half-full like some exotic silver jewel just over the horizon. From the courtyard below rose the scent of jasmine on the cool night air. A slender vine had wound its way up to the balcony, and I reached out, pinching off a single creamy white blossom. I lifted it to my nose, drinking in the thick sweetness of it as it filled my head, sending my senses reeling. There was something narcotic about that jasmine, something carnal and ethereal at the same time. I crushed the petals between my fingers, taking the scent onto my skin. It was not a fragrance to wear alone. It was too rich, too heady, too full of sensuality and promise. It was a fragrance for silken cushions and damp naked flesh and moonlit beds. I rubbed at my fingers, but the scent clung tightly, keeping me company as I sat in the window, listening to a song I had almost forgot and thinking of Gabriel Starke and the five years that stretched barrenly between us. ~ Deanna Raybourn

Sadly, our culture raises man to be strong and silent. Straight or gay, the pressure is on from the time we're very young to become our culture's John Wayne-style of man.
* The more pain I can take, the more of a man I am.
* Showing feelings is for women.
* The more I can drink, the manlier I am.
* Intimacy is sex; sex is intimacy.
* Only women depend on others.
* A man takes care of himself without help from others.
* No one can hurt you if you're strong.
* I am what I earn.
* It is best to keep your problems to yourself.
* Winning is all that really matters.
Where did this stuff come from? It's everywhere in our society from the movies heroes we love to the politicians we vote for. Our culture demands that man fit in a tightly defined role. ~ Alan Downs

Kaluza also gave an answer as to where the fifth dimension was. Since we see no evidence of a fifth dimension, it must have "curled up" so small that it cannot be observed. (Imagine taking a two-dimensional sheet of paper and rolling it up tightly into a cylinder. From a distance, the cylinder looks like a one-dimensional line. In this way, a two-dimensional object has been turned into a one-dimensional object by curling it up.)

Kaluza's paper initially created a sensation. But in the coming years, objections were found to his theory. What was the size of this new fifth dimension? How did it curl up? No answers could be found.

For decades Einstein would work on this theory in fits and starts. After he passed away in 1955, the theory was soon forgotten, becoming just a strange footnote to the evolution of physics. ~ Michio Kaku

They [my stories] evolve. If they're tightly constructed, it's because they're revised constantly as I move forward each day. That's where the structure inheres. It's all organic. ~ T.C. Boyle

My chest clenched as I looked down at the oil-stained asphalt. Here but not. Existing but not living. I knew that feeling. Lived it for several years. Some days it felt like I was still wearing that feeling like a heavy jacket buttoned up too tightly. ~ Jennifer L. Armentrout

People at the top are closing ranks so tightly that all possibility of subjective deviation has gone, and difference can be sought only in the more distinguished cut of an evening dress. ~ Theodor Adorno

Here we are, all these years later, standing back and watching our grown children have their lives - through ordinary times, through heartbreak and anguish. But even after horrible events, we are sometimes blessed with a moment of unexpected joy. We learn to grasp, to hold tightly to these moments for the short time they exist. ~ Frances Itani

When you doubt God's goodness, you hug sins tightly to your bosom, afraid that God will rob you of your crutch, your pastime, your pleasure. ~ Erwin W. Lutzer

I'd fallen in love with Melanie Tucker.
Not some little-boy, bullshit needy "love" ... This was deep, almost painful in its unholy intensity. It was like she'd sent tendrils burrowing deep inside, binding us together so tightly I'd die if I ever tried to pull them out.
I was truly, deeply, and utterly fucked, because I fucking loved this girl ... and she wasn't for me. ~ Joanna Wylde

Little girl, who gave you permission to--Oh!" She bit off her words the moment that she noticed how well I was dressed, to say nothing of the two guards attending me. Her expression transformed from sour to sweet with stunning speed.
"Ah, noble lady, I see that you have a keen eye for quality," she cried. "You won't find better cloth anywhere in Delphi--warm in winter, light in summer, tightly woven, and proof against wind and rain. And just look at those colors!"
I did. They were all drab grays and browns. I held the first cloth up to the sunlight. If that was what she called a tight weave, so was a fishing net.
"I want a cloak," I told her, tossing the cloth aside. "Something long and heavy. It's for him." I nodded at Milo.
"Of course, just as you wish, I have exactly what you want, wait right here," she chattered. "I'll bring out the best I have, something worthy of the noble lord." She raised her hands to Milo in a gesture of reverence before ducking back into her house.
"'The noble lord'?" the tall guard repeated, incredulous. He and his companion snickered. Milo looked miserable.
"Ignore them," I told him, speaking low. "I promise you, before today is over, you'll be the one laughing at them. ~ Esther M. Friesner

McCoy, drained and hollow-eyed, couldn't take his eyes off the life vest belonging to the boy who'd slipped away from the group during the night. The empty vest spooked McCoy. All its straps were still tightly tied-it looked like some trick that Houdini might've played. Then McCoy peered into the water and got another shock: the boy was floating below him, spread-eagled, about fifteen feet below the surface. He lay motionless until a current caught him; then it was as if he were flying in the depths. Jesus, McCoy thought, Mother of God. He started saying the rosary over and over. McCoy had never been overly religious; his mom was the spiritual one in the family. But now he began the process of what he'd later call his purification; he'd started asking God to forgive him of his sins. He was resolved to live but he was getting ready to die. ~ Doug Stanton

She couldn't take her eyes off him.
He had sandy-blond hair and piercingly green eyes. Today he wore a deep-red T-shirt with the word BOUNCER printed across the back. The material pulled tightly over his muscular chest. He was a specimen.
But the most striking feature about him was his smile.
The man was bewitching, and Sofia knew a thing or two about bewitching. ~ Amanda Carlson

Anguish heart attack is tightly packed on to people with actions full of emotions and personal tragedies yet they can overcome it with personal self esteem and nice thinking. ~ Auliq Ice

And, at last, I could hold him. I wrapped my arms around him and held him tightly, willing the darkness away, trying to heal him with my body, with my touch.
"I love you, Sebastian, please don't push me away. I love you."
"Oh God, Caro. I just don't know what I'm doing anymore; I'm so fucked up - I feel like I can't fucking breathe. Don't give up on me, Caro. Please don't give up on me. I need you, baby. I love you so much. I'm so sorry."
I could forgive anything now that he'd let me touch him. ~ Jane Harvey-Berrick

After Evie had finished her plate, Sebastian tugged her to the billiards table and handed her a cue stick with a leather tip. Ignoring her attempts to refuse him, he proceeded to instruct her in the basics of the game. "Don't try to claim this is too scandalous for you," he told her with mock severity. "After running off with me to Gretna Green, nothing is beyond you. Certainly not one little billiards game. Bend over the table."
She complied awkwardly, flushing as she felt him lean over her, his body forming an exciting masculine cage as his hands arranged hers on the cue stick. "Now," she heard him say, "curl your index finger around the tip of the shaft. That's right. Don't grip so tightly, sweet…let your hand relax. Perfect." His head was close to hers, the light scent of sandalwood cologne rising from his warm skin. "Try to imagine a path between the cue ball - that's the white one - and the colored ball. You'll want to strike right about there" - he pointed to a place just above center on the cue ball - "to send the object ball into the side pocket. It's a straight-on shot, you see? Lower your head a bit. Draw the cue stick back and try to strike in a smooth motion."
Attempting the shot, Evie felt the tip of the cue stick fail to make proper contact with the white ball, sending it spinning clumsily off to the side of the table.
"A miscue," Sebastian remarked, deftly catching the cue ball in his hand and repositioning it. "Whenever that happens, reach f ~ Lisa Kleypas

A mystery novel localizes the awesome force of the real death outside the book, winds it tightly in a plot ... ~ Don DeLillo

And then, just like that, my heart broke. My face crumpled, my composure went and I held him tightly and I stopped caring that he could feel the shudder of my sobbing body because grief swamped me. It overwhelmed me and tore at my heart and my stomach and my head and it pulled me under, and I couldn't bear it. I honestly thought I couldn't bear it. ~ Jojo Moyes

I was with her when she died," Ned reminded the king. "She wanted to come home, to rest beside Brandon and Father." He could hear her still at times. Promise me, she had cried, in a room that smelled of blood and roses. Promise me, Ned. The fever had taken her strength and her voice had been faint as a whisper, but when he gave her his word, the fear had gone out of his sister's eyes. Ned remembered the way she smiled then, how tightly her fingers had clutched his as she gave up her hold on life, the rose petals spilling from her palm, dead and black. After that he remembered nothing. They had found him still holding her body, silent with grief. The little crannogman, Howland Reed, had taken her hand from his. ~ George R R Martin

Mary had become anxious in her old age, and she hated being away from the house for long. She'd hold the girls' hands tightly and calm herself by telling them what she would make for first frost that year- pork tenderloins with nasturtiums, dill potatoes, pumpkin bread, chicory coffee. And the cupcakes, of course, with all different frostings, because what was first frost without frosting? Claire had loved it all, but Sydney had only listened when their grandmother talked of frosting. Caramel, rosewater-pistachio, chocolate almond. ~ Sarah Addison Allen

Observing any human being from infancy, seeing someone come into existence, like a new flower in bud, each petal first tightly furled around another, and then the natural loosening and unfurling, the opening into a bloom, the life of that bloom, must be something wonderful to behold; to see experience collect in the eyes, around the corners of the mouth, the weighing down of the brow, the heaviness in heart and soul, the thick gathering around the waist, the breasts, the slowing down of footsteps not from old age but only with the caution of life-all this is something so wonderful to observe, so wonderful to behold; the pleasure for the observer, the beholder, is an invisible current between the two, observed and observer, beheld and beholder, and I believe that no life is complete, no life is really whole, without this invisible current, which is in many ways a definition of love. ~ Jamaica Kincaid

Now that's a concept that's always fascinated me: the real world. Only a very specific subset of people use the term, have you noticed? To me, it seems self-evident that everyone lives in the real world - we all breathe real oxygen, eat real food, the earth under our feet feels equally solid to all of us. But clearly these people have a far more tightly circumscribed definition of reality, one that I find deeply mysterious, and an almost pathologically intense need to bring others into line with that definition. ~ Tana French

You are a beautiful danger. Do not force me to open up. Some books are bound tightly for years for reasons. ~ Yrsa Daley-Ward

Noah was a funeral pyre. He was burning. The flames rose to staggering heights and blazed in white, hot tongues. Jeremie had once told him a story of the burial rites of the Norse. They'd burn their dead, believing the high smoke carried their loved ones' souls to Valhalla.

Noah was beyond Valhalla. Beyond the creamy spaciousness above the clouds, beyond the limits of the very earth. He floated among the stars, joined them in holy communion, knew each one by name. Then they were within him, scores of them, bright and hot, turning his ribs into a furnace as they shifted and created constellations in his soul. And all the while, the summer sang in his lungs.

There was no space between him and Jeremie. Where one ended, the other began, and still Jeremie pulled him closer like the moon pulls the tide, gripping him tightly in the same way he'd gripped Noah's heart, had gripped his entire being. ~ Lily Velez

The first of a thousand lies. Truth flowed to Micah Quill, was sucked in and disappeared, and emerged again looking ever so much like it used to, but changed subtly, at the edges, where none would notice, so that simple truth became a complicated fabric indeed, one that could wrap you up so tightly and close you off from the air until you suffocated in it. ~ Orson Scott Card

I wanted to shove her
away, thinking of my job, of headlines,
of how this kind of comfort was outside
the behavioral guidelines of my contract.
She began to sob more softly while holding me
tightly, and I let her. I let her have control
of me for that moment. I let her break
behavioral guidelines as more important ones
had been broken on her. And then we stopped
being student and teacher - just a couple people
at a loss when the powerful and unexpected
had been suddenly thrust upon us.
The principal and three students turned the corner
and stopped short. I knew it might be years
before I cleared my name, but far longer
for her to reclaim her life. ~ B.J. Ward

[Shakespeare realized that] Women are able to understand themselves better on a personal level and survive in the world if they dress in men's clothing, thus living underground, safe (...). The presence of women disguising themselves as men dictates that the play be a comedy; women remaining in their frocks, a tragedy. In four great tragedies -Julius Caesar, Hamlet, Othello, and King Lear- almost all the women die (...).
How much the women have to adhere to the rules and regulations of their enviroment makes a large difference. Once Rosalind [disguised as a man in As You Like It] has run away from the court, she has no institutional structures to deal with. Ophelia [in her frocks] is surrounded tightly by institutional structures of family, court, and politics; only by going mad can be get out of it all. ~ Tina Packer

Darkis pointed toward the dwarf sitting btween them on the ground. "Uh, don't you think that's a bit much?"
Turi and Ethis each held separate ropes around the bound hands and feet of the dwarf. A gag was tied tightly over hi mouth.
Ethis considered the prisoner for a moment before replying. "No, it seems a resonable precaution." "Why? What did he do?" Darkis said. The chimera looked at each other, thier blank faces considering for a moment. "He kept promising not to escape," Thuri answerd at last. "He promised not to escape," Darkis asked, his brow furrowed with the puzzle, "and so you tied him up?"
"He wouldn't shut up about it," Ethis replied, his large eyes blinking indignantly. "He kept going on and on about how we could trust him and how he had nowhere to run and how he was glad it was us who took him as a slave captive of war."
"It was unnerving," Thuri finished. ~ Tracy Hickman

Eagleton has spent his life inside two mental boxes, Catholicism and Marxism, of both of which he is a severe internal critic - that is, he frequently kicks and scratches at the inside of the boxes, but does not leave them. Neither are ideologies that loosen their grip easily, and people who need the security of adherence to a big dominating ideology, however much they kick and scratch but without daring to leave go, hold on to it every bit as tightly as it holds onto them. The result is of course strangulation, but alas not mutual strangulation: the ideology always wins. ~ A.C. Grayling

Tim bid us good-bye after helping us carry in my three-hundred-pound suitcase, and Marlboro Man and I looked around our quiet house, which was spick-and-span and smelled of fresh paint and leather cowboy boots, which lined the wall near the front door. The entry glowed with the light of the setting sun coming in the window, and I reached down to grab one of my bags so I could carry it to the bedroom. But before my hand made it to the handle, Marlboro Man grabbed me tightly around the waist and carried me over to the leather sofa, where we fell together in a tired heap of jet lag, emotional exhaustion, and--ironically, given the week we'd just endured--a sudden burst of lust.
"Welcome home," he said, nuzzling his face into my neck. Mmmm. This was a familiar feeling.
"Thank you," I said, closing my eyes and savoring every second. As his lips made their way across my neck, I could hear the sweet and reassuring sound of cows in the pasture east of our house. We were home.
"You feel so good," he said, moving his hands to the zipper of my casual black jacket.
"You do, too," I said, stroking the back of his closely cut hair as his arms wrapped more and more tightly around my waist. "But…uh…" I paused.
My black jacket was by now on the floor.
"I…uh…," I continued. "I think I need to take a shower." And I did. I couldn't do the precise calculation of what it had meant for my hygiene to cross back over the international date line, but as far as I was conce ~ Ree Drummond

Pak Karman hugged his wife's gravestone tightly. "You left without saying farewell!" The whole of the graveyard was ablaze with light. ~ Mohamed Latiff Mohamed

Ronald Burt, looked at the origin of good ideas inside the organizational network of the Raytheon Corporation. Burt found that innovative thinking was much more likely to emerge from individuals who bridged "structural holes" between tightly knit clusters. Employees who primarily shared information with people in their own division had a harder time coming up with useful suggestions ~ Steven Johnson

I shall sit down,' replied the cat, sitting down, 'but I shall enter an objection with regard to your last. My speeches in no way resemble verbal muck, as you have been pleased to put it in the presence of a lady, but rather a sequence of tightly packed syllogisms, the merit of which would be appreciated by such connoisseurs as Sextus Empiricus, Martianus Capella, and, for all I know, Aristotle himself.'
Your king is in check,' said Woland.
Very well, very well,' responded the cat, and he began studying the chessboard through his opera glasses.
And so, donna,' Woland addressed Margarita, 'I present to you my retinue. This one who is playing the fool is the cat Behemoth ... ~ Mikhail Bulgakov

We had it drilled into us time and time again: 'If someone above you falls, grip tightly to the vertical rope and cradle that person in your arms until help can get to you.' ... If someone fell down on me I swear I would have bitten him on the ass and would keep on biting until he got off onhis own. ~ C.S. Crawford

He's probably never ridden a horse in his life. He's likely never experienced that moment of euphoria when you and an animal move completely as one, the indescribable sensation of grace and power running through your bones and settling forever in your heart. He probably won't have felt a pony's warm breath on his neck on a cold winter's morning, or run his hand proudly across the soft sheen of a well-groomed coat. And he's surely never rested his head against a pony's warm neck, wrapped his arms around it and closed his eyes, and held on tightly to the one thing in his life that would stay solid and constant and true. So he couldn't understand, not really, but I did. ~ Kate Lattey

Callie scrambled from under the covers, dashed around the bed, and flung herself into Luce's arms. "They kept telling me you were going to be okay, but in that lying, we're-also-completely-terrified-we're-just-not-going-to-explain-a-word-to-you kind of way. Do you even realize how thoroughly spooky that was? It was like you physically dropped off the face of the Earth-"
Luce hugged her back tightly. As far as Callie knew, Luce had been gone only since the night before.
"Okay, you two," Molly growled, pulling Luce away from Callie, "you can OMG your faces off later. I didn't lie in your bed in that cheap polyester wig all night enacting Luce-with-stomach-flue so you guys could blow our cover now." She rolled her eyes. "Amateurs."
"Hold on. You did what?" Luce asked.
"After you...disappeared," Callie said breathlessly, "we knew we could never explain it to your parents. I mean, I could barely fathom it after seeing it with my own eyes. When Gabbe fixed up the backyard, I told your parents you felt sick and had gone to bed, and Molly pretended to be you and-"
"Lucky I found this in your closet." Molly twirled a short wavy black wig around one finger. "Halloween remnant?"
"Wonder Woman." Luce winced, regretting her middle school Halloween costume, and not for the first time.
"Well, it worked."
It was strange to see Molly-who'd once sided with Lucifer-helping her. But even Molly, like Cam and Roland, didn't want to fall again. So here they w ~ Lauren Kate

If you hold a bird too tightly, you'll crush its wings ~ V.C. Andrews

I've been dying to know," he said again, "how you taste."
Oh, hell. Her right hand grabbed the back of his head, and she yanked him down toward her.
Their mouths met. Open. Ready. Lips kissed. Tongues licked. And - damn!
Yes, she wanted.
The control she'd held so tightly began to crack. She jerked in her seat, struggling to press against him. He took her mouth. Tasted her. Tormented her. And she met him. No, she fought him, fought him for more. ~ Cynthia Eden

It was an imprudent idea to begin with."
"I shan't argue with you on that point."
Rose scoffed at him. "You don't get to play morally superior with me, Grey. I may have been stupid enough to conspire against you, but you didn't even recognize someone you've known for years! If one of us must be the bigger idiot, I think it must be you!" Oh dear God. She covered her mouth with her hand. What had she just said?
Dark arched brows pulled together tightly over stormy blue eyes. "You're right," he agreed. "I am an idiot, but only because I allowed this ridiculous ruse past the point when I realized your identity."
Rose froze-like a damp leaf on an icy pond. "You knew?" And yet he continued to pretend…oh, he was worse than she by far.
"Of course I knew." He glowered at her. "Blindfold me and I would know the scent of your skin, the exact color and texture of your skin. Do you not realize that I know the color of your eyes right down to the flecks of gold that light their depths?"
Heart pounding, stomach churning in shock, Rose could only stare at him. How could he say such things to her and sound so disgusted? "When?" Her voice was a ragged whisper. "When did you know?"
"I suspected before but tried to deny it. The morning after we last met I took one look at your sweet mouth and knew there couldn't be two women in the world, let alone London with the same delectable bottom lip."
It hurt. Oh, she hadn't thought hearing him say such wonderful t ~ Kathryn Smith

The link between intimate violence in the home and the international violence of terrorism and war is as tightly bound together as the fingers of a clenched fist. ~ Riane Eisler

Then like a bird, he gingerly landed on a protruding rock inside the monstrous cavern. I looked up at the wet walls teaming with sea life and reeled back feeling like I was going to lose my balance when I felt him reach around and carefully lift me off. He placed me so I could stand on the rock in front of him. His strong arms wrapped tightly around me so I wouldn't fall. We stood in astonishment deafened by the noise of the waves hitting the reef all around us. The warmth of his chest radiated against me. I molded my body up against his, my heart erupting in a flutter that caused my legs to weaken.
"What do you think?" he whispered into my ear. I felt his hot breath against the side of my neck, which caused me to be light-headed as my heart raced even harder.
"Awesome," I whispered, which was all I could get out as I slinked into his chest a little bit more. ~ Brenda Pandos

A war changes people in a number of ways. It either shortcuts you to your very self; or it triggers such variations that you might as well have been a larva, pupating in dampness, darkness and tightly wrapped puttees. Then, providing you don't take flight from a burst shell, you emerge from your khaki cocoon so changed from what you were that you fear you've gone mad, because people at home treat you as though you were someone else. Someone who, through a bizarre coincidence, had the same name, address and blood ties as you, but who must have died in the war. And you have no choice but to live as an impostor because you can't remember who you were before the war. There's a simple but horrible explanation for this: you were born in the war. You slid, slick, bloody and fully formed, out of a trench.
The Great War was the greatest changer of them all. ~ Ann-Marie MacDonald

Holding her tightly in his arms and feeling her body tremble, he thought he could not endure his love. ~ Milan Kundera

As I spoke, I realized I'd held these words in for so long and so tightly that I felt the space they left empty once released. It was vast enough that I could think of nothing to follow them. ~ Sarah Dessen

Weave the circle, tightly sewn,
Let nothing evil or unknown
Enter within. Stay without
On pain of death, we cast you out. ~ Yasmine Galenorn

He nodded slowly. "We'll do it your way for now, but my time will come."
Why that statement sent a jagged pulse of heat racing through her; she wasn't certain.
"You've changed," she finally said. "You're harder, Cam. Colder."
"I'm still the man who would kill for you," he stated matter-of-factly.
Jaci swallowed tightly. He was completely serious.
"Fine. I'll make a list for you." She finally shrugged, opting not to believe that declaration. "Give me a few days. It may take awhile to remember every son of a bitch who ever pissed me off. But what will you do when you find your name on the list? ~ Lora Leigh

He held his hands tightly together and cursed his daughter for bringing the terrible world, with its humiliation and longing, back to his door. ~ Maile Meloy

Her heart unfolded in her chest, took in all of him, and closed tightly, unwilling to let him go ~ Justine Dell

I had awoken back to Hell on Earth with the prince of darkness himself holding me so tightly against him. Almost as if he wanted to make sure that I would never go back to that dark place where he couldn't follow. ~ Yolanda Olson

I want someone to hold me in the dark beneath the blankets as I wail, saying nothing, only holding me tightly to their chest. ~ A.M. Caine

She shouldn't have been beautiful - she was too forward, too freckled, too thin. Still ... Oh, to hell with it all. He wasn't hungry, anyway. He reached out and took her hand, drawing her to him. She drifted near, until she was close enough to kiss. Close enough for him to see the green of her eyes, widening as he turned her hand over, palm up.
"There's something I've wanted to do since the first moment I saw you," he said. It came out close to a whisper.
"Oh?" He could feel the puff of breath from that word against his nose.
"Don't even think of arguing."
She shook her head. Her lips opened, an impossible, inviting fraction.
He set the fork in the palm of her hand and closed his fingers tightly around hers. "I want you to eat," he said. ~ Courtney Milan

A leaf does not resist the breeze. A goose does not resist the urge to fly down south. Is this not happiness? Is this not freedom? To access this incredible state, we need only one thing: Trust. Trust that, when you are not holding yourself together so tightly, you will not fall apart. Trust that it is more important to fulfill your authentic desires than listen to your fears. Trust that your intuition is leading you somewhere. Trust that the flow of life contains you, is bigger than you, and will take care of you - if you let it. ~ Vironika Tugaleva

This time when we kiss, I'm ready. I want it, and I sink into him immediately. His arms wrap tightly around my waist, his hands on my back, pulling me close. He bends his head to meet my lips and I kiss him with all the urgency of a week of running around London looking for something that's been in front of me all along. It's not MTB.
It's better. ~ Lauren Morrill

On the way out through the steel door, as I held Makenzie in my arms, I wondered if she could use her "Dorothy shoes" to take us safely home, if I just held on to her tightly. Then I asked myself: Where is home, really? I hoped that now I would know. ~ Sana Szewczyk

I went to the railing and looked out over the sea. It had been fussing earlier in the day, but now it lay greasy and hushed. 'You got a tremendous prospect from up here, Brother Assembly.'

'Aye. Two evenings hence, for instance, I noted thy schooner passing westward. I also saw a cutter at the same time, a low and black-hulled cutter, British from the look of her, beating eastward beyond Vandyke's. She kept the island betwixt herself and thee, and sailed on into yon flat ugly yellow clouds.' He nodded to the east.

I got a crawly feeling between my shoulders, like I'd been hunting a panther and discovered it had been hunting me. 'Well, then,' I said, 'I guess I'd best be shoving off.'

'Tomorrow is the first of October. There have been no hurricanes yet this season worth mentioning, but a noteworthy one approaches now, thou mustn't doubt. Do not cling too tightly to ephemeral notions and worldly things, Brother, lest thou lose what thou most values.' He whistled an old Shaker hymn that was popular among the Brethren:
'Tis a gift to be simple,
'Tis a gift to be free,
'Tis a gift to come down
Where we ought to be...

I knocked on the railing, annoyed with myself for my superstitiousness but angrier with Assembly for baiting me. 'Of all the infernal meanness,' I said. 'Don't whistle for a wind in hurricane season!'

'Oh, as for that,' he said, the corners of his naked lip turning up just a little bit, ' ~ Broos Campbell

I had no one. No one to talk to, at least that is how I felt. No one to hold on to, or who would hold tightly back. No one to tell me everything was going to be alright. No one to say, yes, me too, I know how you feel - No one. ~ Jeannie Davide-Rivera

If we hold tightly to anything given to us unwilling to allow it to be used as the Giver means it to be used we stunt the growth of the soul. What God gives us is not necessarily "ours" but only ours to offer back to him, ours to relinguish, ours to lose, ours to let go of, if we want to be our true selves. Many deaths must go into reaching our maturity in Christ, many letting goes. ~ Elisabeth Elliot

I awoke from this nightmare into a freezing cold motel room: the heater had broken at some point during the night, and the fan was now blowing icy air into the room.

At first I tried to keep warm under the crappy motel bedspread by thinking about the man I loved. At the time he was traveling in Europe, and was thus unreachable. I didn't know it yet, but as I lay there, he was traveling with another woman. Does it matter now? I tried hard to feel his body wrapped tightly around mine.

Next I tried to imagine everyone I had ever loved, and everyone who had ever loved me, wrapped around me. I tried to feel that I was the composite of all these people, instead of alone in a shitty motel room with a broken heater somewhere outside of Detroit, a few miles from where Jane's body was dumped thirty-six years ago on a March night just like this one.

'Need each other as much as you can bear,' writes Eileen Myles. 'Everywhere you go in the world.'

I felt the wild need for any or all of these people that night. Lying there alone, I began to feel - perhaps even to know - that I did not exist apart from their love and need of me.

Of this latter I felt less sure, but it seemed possible, if the equation worked both ways.

Falling asleep I thought, 'Maybe this, for me, is the hand of God. ~ Maggie Nelson

For many years Minos has been lucky to have in his court the most gifted inventor, the most skilled artificer outside of the Olympian forges of Hephaestus. His name is Daedalus and he is capable of fashioning moving objects out of metal, bronze, wood, ivory and gemstones. He has mastered the art of tightly coiling leaves of steel into powerful springs, which control wheels and chains to form intricate and marvellous mechanisms that mark the passage of the hours with great precision and accuracy, or control the levels of watercourses. There is nothing this cunning man cannot contrive in his workshop. There are moving statues there, men and women animated by his skill, boxes that play music and devices that can awaken him in the morning. Even if only half the stories of what Daedalus can achieve are true then you can be certain that no more cunning and clever an inventor, architect and craftsman has ever walked this earth. ~ Stephen Fry

She looks out at the woods through the screen of limbs. Watching in the same way he is, for the same terrible things he is, with the same expectation, with equally haunted, hollow eyes. She's still gripping the butcher's cleaver tightly and her knuckles show through the skin. He puts a hand gently on hers. I think we're good, he says to her. It's gone. We're good.

She doesn't say anything. She just stares awhile. Clutching that glinting meat hatchet in a tight, mudded fist. The whites of her teeth and eyes in the dark. There is no good, she tells him. Not for us. There's only being ready for the next bad thing coming. ~ Jonathan R. Miller

You must have faith in the duke, and in true love."
She groaned. "Easy for you to say! You are not in a wedding dress laced so tightly as to make it impossible to breathe, uncertain if your groom will arrive before suffocating to death. Though perhaps that would be preferable to life after being jilted at the altar. ~ Maya Rodale

I turned to leave and was exiting the gates when I heard the sound of feet running quickly along the gravel behind me. I turned and saw Alexei, who showed no sign of slowing down, so I opened my arms and he ran into them, embracing me tightly, his arms wrapped around my neck as I lifted him off the ground.
"I wanted you to know," he said, his voice choked up as if he was trying to stop himself from crying, "I wanted you to know that you can be my brother if you like. As long as you let me be yours. ~ John Boyne

I'd found heaven and grabbed it as tightly as I could, but it was unraveling, an insubstantial thread sliding between my fingers, too fine to hold. ~ Maggie Stiefvater

It is a long way to Ireland, Janet, and I am sorry to send my little friend on such weary travels: but if I can't do better, how is it to be helped? Are you anything akin to me, do you think, Jane?"
I could risk no sort of answer by this time: my heart was still.
"Because, he said, "I sometimes have a queer feeling with regard to you - especially when you are near me, as now: it is as if I had a string somewhere under my left ribs, tightly and inextricably knotted to a similar string situated in the corresponding quarter of your little frame. And if that boisterous channel, and two hundred miles or so of land some broad between us, I am afraid that cord of communion will be snapt; and then I've a nervous notion I should take to bleeding inwardly. As for you, - you'd forget me. ~ Charlotte Bronte

With a shudder of excitement, and without giving herself a moment to second-guess what she was about to do, she reached up to take his face in her hands and pressed her lips to his. For a frozen moment he didn't react, and she could feel her heart thudding in her throat, but then he groaned into her mouth and pulled her tightly against him. And God, he was a good kisser. She'd certainly never been kissed with such expertise. Somehow he was making her feel the kiss in places he wasn't even touching.
And then she stopped thinking. ~ Claire Baxter

If there are those you love, whoever or wherever you are, hold them. Find them and hold them as tightly as you can. Resist their squirming and impatience and uncomfortable laughter, and just feel their heart throbbing against yours. Give thanks that for this moment, for this one precious moment, they are here, they are with you, and they know they are utterly, completely, entirely loved. ~ Vanessa Woods

It was never easy, but I always tried my best and kept complaints out of my heart by holding tightly onto the hope that one day, I would read and write. ~ Ger Duany

If you hold on to what you want so tightly, it almost becomes an idol. ~ Joel Osteen

But then the girl moved, and smiled, and pulled her hand from the grate- a gorgeous green stone clutched tightly in her grasp. It was covered with dust and cobwebs, but it was uncracked and unharmed.
And, of course, completely fake. ~ Ally Carter

There was a sound of movement, of clinking glass: Amycus was coming round. Before Harry or Luna could act, Professor McGonagall rose to her feet, pointed her wand at the groggy Death Eater, and said, "Imperio."
Amycus got up, walked over to his sister, picked up her wand, then shuffled obediently to Professor McGonagall and handed it over along with his own. Then he lay down on the floor beside Alecto. Professor McGonagall waved her wand again, and a length of shimmering silver rope appeared out of thin air and snaked around the Carrows, binding them tightly together.
"Potter," said Professor McGonagall, turning to face him again with superb indifference to the Carrows' predicament. ~ J.K. Rowling

The air grew colder and thinner as they rode through the mountain passes. The sun was high and bright, but Martise wrapped her shawl tightly around her and pressed against Silhara's back. Gnat kept a steady pace, breathing harder in the thin air. Unlike him, the mountain ponies suffered no effects from the rising elevation and clipped ahead at a swift pace. Patches of snow spilled from embankments onto the rutted paths. A brisk wind moaned a soft dirge as it whipped through the towering evergreens cloaking the mountainside.
Silhara called a sudden halt. Martise peered around his arm, expecting to see some obstacle in their path. The way was clear, with only the Kurmans watching them curiously.
"What's wrong?"
"You're quaking hard enough to make my teeth rattle." He moved his leg back and untied one of the packs strapped to the saddle. "Get down."
She slid off Gnat's back. Silhara followed and pulled one of their blankets from the packet. "Here. Wrap this around you." She had only pulled the blanket over her shoulders when he picked her up and tossed her onto Gnat's back once more, this time in the front of the flat saddle. She clutched the horse's mane with one hand and held on to her blanket with the other. Silhara vaulted up behind her, scooted her back against him and took up the reins.
"Better," he said and whistled to the waiting Kurmans he was ready. Martise couldn't agree more. The blanket's warmth and Silhara's body heat so ~ Grace Draven

Ben wrapped his fingers tightly around mine, brown eyes fierce, his thoughts a maelstrom of anger and worry. He was only thinking of me. Of getting me away. Keep me safe.
Ben was ready to die for me.
Chance halted before a battered case halfway down the wall. He began pulling on books, muttering to himself as he shoved each one aside.
They won't get you, Ben promised abruptly. I felt his determination flowing through the bond, mixed with love and desperation. He really would give his life to protect mine. ~ Kathy Reichs

Like is an emotion. Emotions" - he raised a hand, made a fist, clenched it tightly - "are like holding water. You open your hand, there's nothing there. Better to be a weapon than a woman. ~ Karen Marie Moning

Tightly held by rocks
Through winter, the ice today
Begins to come undone:
A way-seeker also is the water,
Melting, murmuring from the moss. ~ Saigyo

if you have the right people on the bus, the problem of how to motivate and manage people largely goes away. The right people don't need to be tightly managed or fired up; they will be self-motivated by the inner drive to produce the best results and to be part of creating something great. ~ James C. Collins

The glue of mutual need that bonded us so tightly together for all those years is melting away. Dark patches, not light, show in the spaces between us. ~ Suzanne Collins

He let her get almost all the way there, just staring, before he stumbled towards her. They ended in a rush and then fell to the ground together,arms locked around each other, each holding on as tightly as possible. Niether of them said a word. ~ L.J.Smith

The Earl and Countess of Langford!"

That announcement caused an immediate reaction among the inhabitants of the ballroom, who began looking at one another in surprise and then turned to the balcony, but it was nothing compared to the reaction among the small group of seven people who'd been keeping a vigil of hope. A jolt went through the entire group; hands reached out blindly and were clasped tightly by other hands; faces lifted to the balcony, while joyous smiles dawned brightly and eyes misted with tears.

Attired in formal black evening clothes with white waistcoat and frilled white shirt, Stephen Westmoreland, Earl of Langford, was walking across the balcony. On his arm was a medieval princess clad in a pearl-encrusted ivory satin gown with a low, square bodice that tapered to a deep V at the waist. A gold chain with clusters of diamonds and pearls in each link rode low on her hips, sawying with each step, and her hair tumbled in flaming waves and heavy curls over her shoulders and back. ~ Judith McNaught

The societies which have achieved the most spectacular broad-based economic progress in the shortest period of time are not the most tightly controlled, not necessarily the biggest in size, or the wealthiest in natural resources. No, what unites them all is their willingness to believe in the magic of the marketplace. ~ Ronald Reagan

When you enter a lake and when the nature wraps you up tightly never letting you go out, you will be the happiest prisoner on earth! ~ Mehmet Murat Ildan

I Can't Make You Love Me.' Bonnie Raitt."
"Oh,Fiorella."
I glared at him a little as I climbed down. "Was that delightful list for your benefit or mine?"
Frankie grabbed my hand and, when I didn't pull away fast enough, tugged me onto his lap,where he wrapped his arms so tightly around me that I couldn't escape. Sometimes his strength still surprises me.He tickled my cheek with his nose. "Don't hate me just because I'm hateful."
"I never do."
Here's the thing. Frankie's taken a lot of hits in his life. He never stays down for long.
"Excuse me!" The mannequin's evil twin was glaring down at us fro her sky-high bootie-heeled heights. Her NM badge told us her name was Victoria. "You cannot do that here!" she snapped.
"Do what?" Frankie returned, matching lockjaw snooty for lockjaw snooty.
She opened and closed her mouth, then hissed, "Canoodle!"
I felt Frankie's hiccup of amusement. "Were we canoodling, snookums?" he asked me. "I rather thought we were about to copulate like bunnies."
I couldn't help it; I laughed out loud. Victoria's mouth thinned into a pale line. The whole thing might have ended with our being escorted out the store's hallowed doors by security. Sadie, as she so often did, momentarily saved us from ourselves.
She stomped out of the dressing room and planted herself in front of us. Ignoring the angry salesgirl completely, she muttered, "I look like a carved pumpkin!"
Frankie took in the skirt, layered ~ Melissa Jensen

You cannot hold on to two things. If you use two hands to hold two things, the strength would be half. So it is best to let go of one and hold on tightly to the other. ~ Keith J. Devlin

He's kissing me and though this is the first time, it feels like recovering a long-forgotten memory. My body seems to say, "Yes, this," and then I'm kissing him back as if I were born to be in his arms. I never realized how tightly guilt and fear had been wound about me until this moment, when they unwind into the air and fly away, leaving me with nothing but this guileless delight. ~ Rosamund Hodge

What I'm advocating here is something that requires courage - the courage to have a change of heart. The reason this requires courage is because when we don't do the habitual thing, hardening our heart and holding tightly to certain views, then we're left with the underlying uneasiness that we were trying to get away from. Whenever there's a sense of threat, we harden. And so if we don't harden, what happens? We're left with that uneasiness, that feeling of threat. That's when the real journey of courage begins. This is the real work of the peacemaker, to find the soft spot and the tenderness in that very uneasy place and stay with it. If we can stay with the soft spot and stay with the tender heart, then we are cultivating the seeds of peace ~ Pema Chodron

Under his dripping hair, he was as white as parchment, his hands clenched at his sides so tightly that they were shaking. It seemed clear that some terrible turmoil was ripping him apart from the inside out. ~ Cassandra Clare

My hands hold safely to my dreams
Clutching tightly not one has fallen
So many years I've shaped each one
Reflecting my heart showing who I am
Now you're asking me to show
What I'm holding oh so tightly
Can't open my hands can't let go
Does it matter?
Should I show you?
Can't you let me go?

Surrender, surrender you whisper gently
You say I will be free
I know but can't you see?
My dreams are me. My dreams are me

You say you have a plan for me
And that you want the best for my life
Told me the world had yet to see
What you can do with one
That's committed to Your calling
I know of course what I should do
That I can't hold these dreams forever
If I give them now to You
Will You take them away forever?
Or can I dream again? ~ BarlowGirl

I love you, Jeremy."

He still felt it, that wince of doubt. The urge to push her away. She said it so simply. As though there was nothing easier, more natural in the world. The words themselves hung in the air, so tiny, so bare.

Jeremy felt as though she'd thrust a frail, delicate, birdlike thing into his big, clumsy hands, charging him to keep it safe. And God forgive him, his first impulse was to shove it away. He would destroy it, surely. In his desperation, he would grasp it so tightly it would break into a thousand pieces - and his own heart would break along with it. ~ Tessa Dare

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

scrub oak trees. Kieran was leaning against him, pinning him to the tree, and they were kissing.

Cristina hesitated a moment, blood rising into her face, but it was clear Mark wasn't being touched against his will. Mark's hands were tangled in Kieran's hair, and he was kissing him as fiercely as if he were starving. Their bodies were pressed together tightly; nevertheless, Kieran clutched at Mark's waist, his hands moving restlessly, desperately, as if he could pull Mark closer still. They slid up, pushing Mark's jacket off his shoulders, stroking the skin at the edge of his collar. He made a low keening sound, like a cry of grief, deep in his throat, and broke away.

He was staring at Mark, his gaze as hungry as it was hopeless. Never had a faerie looked so human to Cristina as Kieran did then. Mark looked back at him, eyes wide, shining in the moonlight. A shared look of love and longing and terrible sadness. It was too much. It had already been too much: Cristina knew she shouldn't have been watching them but she hadn't been able to stop, mingled shock and fascination rooting her to the spot.

And desire. There was desire, too. Whether for Mark, or for both of them, or just for the idea of wanting someone so much, she wasn't sure. She moved back, her heart pounding, about to pull the ~ Cassandra Clare

Further, in the modern story, reality is that which is observable, measurable, and repeatable - the kinds of phenomena available, accessible, and verifiable to the five senses. Thus, reality comes to equal the scientific method. It should come as no surprise that in such a world the life of the spirit is ignored or marginalized (as well as a great many other nonmaterial things.) This view of life subsequently birthed in human beings a ravenous materialism as matters of the soul were ignored or reinterpreted within this tightly controlled version of reality. When the life of the spirit is ignored, people will seek to feed the hunger of a neglected soul with the only nourishment available: in our context, the consumptive acquisition of material goods. ~ Tim Keel

Tattered. Water or something more foul soaked both knees of the pants. But Thomas took all that in quickly. Most of his attention was drawn to the man's head. Thomas couldn't help but stare, mesmerized. It looked like hair had been ripped from his scalp, leaving bloody scabs in its place. His face was pallid and wet, with scars and sores everywhere. One eye was gone, a gummy red mass where it should have been. He also had no nose, and Thomas could actually see traces of the nasal passages in his skull underneath the terribly mangled skin. And his mouth. Lips drawn back in a snarl, gleaming white teeth exposed, clenched tightly together. His good eye glared, somehow vicious in the way it darted between Brenda and Thomas. Then the man said something in a wet and gurgly voice that made Thomas shiver. He spoke only a few words, but they were so absurd and out of place that it just made the whole thing that much more horrifying. Rose ~ James Dashner

In the water-thickets, the path wound tortuously between umber iron-bogs, albescent quicksands of aluminum and magnesium oxides, and sumps of cuprous blue or permanganate mauve fed by slow, gelid streams and fringed by silver reeds and tall black grasses. The twisted, smooth-barked boles of the trees were yellow-ochre and burnt orange; through their tightly woven foliage filtered a gloomy, tinted light. At their roots grew great clumps of multifaceted translucent crystal like alien fungi.

Charcoal grey frogs with viridescent eyes croaked as the column floundered between the pools. Beneath the greasy surface of the water unidentifiable reptiles moved slowly and sinuously. Dragonflies whose webby wings spanned a foot or more hummed and hovered between the sedges: their long, wicked bodies glittered bold green and ultramarine; they took their prey on the wing, pouncing with an audible snap of jaws on whining, ephemeral mosquitoes and fluttering moths of april blue and chevrolet cerise.

Over everything hung the heavy, oppressive stench of rotting metal. After an hour, Cromis' mouth was coated with a bitter deposit, and he tasted acids. He found it difficult to speak. While his horse stumbled and slithered beneath him, he gazed about in wonder, and poetry moved in his skull, swift as the jewelled mosquito-hawks over a dark slow current of ancient decay. ~ M. John Harrison

I wanted to pull away, remind him that I was a big girl, a highly trained operative, a spy - that I'd been training for this mission my entire life, and I wasn't going to be left on the sidelines. But in the dim space with Zach pressed tightly against me, only one thought came to mind. I kissed him - longer and deeper than I ever had before. The school was not watching us this time. There was nothing playful in the tone. We were just two people kissing as if for the first time, as if it might be the last.
And then I broke away. "So," I asked, as if I got kissed like that all the time (which, believe me, I don't), "where is it you're taking me again?"
"The tombs. ~ Ally Carter

I'm all right,' Jace protested, but his hand gripped Alec's sleeve tightly. 'I can stand.'
It looks to me like you're using a wall to prop you up. That's not my definition of "standing."'
It's leaning,' Jace told him. 'Leaning comes right before standing. ~ Cassandra Clare

There's something tightly woven throughout the fabric of our humanity that runs entirely opposite to the baser instinct of looking out for our own good. ~ Craig D. Lounsbrough

Dolly held the letter tightly and, with a final nod of resolution, started towards her new life, no idea what the future might bring, but determined, suddenly, to meet it. ~ Kate Morton

Let me pose you a question. Can farm-raised salmon be organic when its feed has nothing to do with its natural diet, even if the feed itself is supposedly organic, and the fish themselves are packed tightly in pens, swimming in their own filth? ~ Mark Bittman

He closed his eyes and pressed a kiss to Tessa's hair. Behind his lids he did not see darkness, but the light of a London morning and Will there, smiling at him. A new soul made of you and Tessa, Will said. I can hardly wait to meet such a paragon. "Do you see him, too?" Tessa whispered. "I see him," Jem said, and he held her even more tightly against him, the new life they had created together between them. ~ Cassandra Clare

He loves me like a monster,
all teeth and talk and
hiding in the dark.
That's my specialty -
men with strong bodies
and fragile hearts,
and if you hold them too tightly
they will crumble beneath you
like an avalanche that's waiting.
Still, he looks at me like all things
beautiful and burning
and we love each other recklessly
with hearts so empty
our names echo against
vandalized walls that say,
"There was someone here before me,
listen closely and you'll hear their name."

He has matches for hands,
and I, a paper heart.
Gasoline will drip
from our mouths
and we will call that holy.
We will burn at the stake
and pollute the sky with
smoke and selfishness,
and we will say it was
in the name of a crooked love.
We will burn our own bodies
to the ground and we will
call that sacrifice.
We will tear ourselves open
like there's something left inside.

Nobody ever taught us how to love. ―Lindsey Hobart ~ Lindsey Hobart

Elaina Miles doesn't have cancer. She doesn't have kids. She doesn't have a past. She doesn't have a future. Elaina Miles has the present and she holds on to him as tightly as he holds on to her ~ Katherine Owen