An Itch Quotes & Sayings

...but with each step I took I could feel it; like an itch under the skin, I was only ever aware of it enough to know that it could never be satisfied. — Brielle A. Marino

We are always in a certain amount of pain. There is chafing somewhere, and if it isn't in our body, then it's in our mind. There's an itch, all the time. — John Ajvide Lindqvist

The lawbreaking itch is not always an anarchic one. In the first place, the human personality has (or ought to have) a natural resistance to coercion. We don't like to be pushed and shoved, even if it's in a direction we might choose to go. In the second place, the human personality has (or ought to have) a natural sense of the preposterous. Thus, just behind my apartment building in Washington there is an official sign saying, Drug-Free Zone. I think this comic inscription may be done because it's close to a schoolyard. And a few years back, one of our suburbs announced by a municipal ordinance that it was a "nuclear-free zone." I don't wish to break the first law, though if I did wish to do so it would take me, or any other local resident, no more than one phone call and a ten-minute wait. I did, at least for a while, pine to break the "nuclear-free" regulation, on grounds of absurdity alone, but eventually decided that it would be too much trouble. — Christopher Hitchens

The anxiety was like poison ivy. It took nothing to set off that mental itch-a chance remark, remembering an event from the day before-but once it started I found it impossible to stop the cycle. My thoughts twisted in a circle, my pulse hammered, I couldn't concentrate. — Tracy Thompson

Yet, there is a Chennai that hasn't changed and never will. Women still wake up at the crack of dawn and draw the kolam - the rice-flour design - outside their doorstep. Men don't consider it old-fashioned to wear a dhoti, which is usually matched with a modest pair of Bata chappals. The day still begins with coffee and lunch ends with curd rice. Girls are sent to Carnatic music classes. The music festival continues to be held in the month of December. Tamarind rice is still a delicacy - and its preparation still an art form. It's the marriage between tradition and transformation that makes Chennai unique. In a place like Delhi, you'll have to hunt for tradition. In Kolkata, you'll itch for transformation. Mumbai is only about transformation. It is Chennai alone that firmly holds its customs close to the chest, as if it were a box of priceless jewels handed down by ancestors, even as the city embraces change. — Bishwanath Ghosh

Many have an irresistible itch for writing. — Juvenal

Here's what I want from a book, what I demand, what I pray for when I take up a novel and begin to read the first sentence: I want everything and nothing less, the full measure of a writer's heart. I want a novel so poetic that I do not have to turn to the standby anthologies of poetry to satisfy that itch for music, for perfection and economy of phrasing, for exactness of tone. Then, too, I want a book so filled with story and character that I read page after page without thinking of food or drink because a writer has possessed me, crazed with an unappeasable thirst to know what happens next. — Pat Conroy

He had always disliked the people who encored a favorite air in an opera - "That just spoils it" had been his comment. But this now appeared to him as a principle of far wider application and deeper moment. This itch to have things over again, as if life were a film that could be unrolled twice or even made to work backward . . . was it possibly the root of all evil? No: of course the love of money was called that. But money itself - perhaps one valued it chiefly as a defense against chance, a security for being able to have things over again, a means of arresting the unrolling of the film. He — C.S. Lewis

You, Sir, were created to be part of a union of two. Only in embracing your nature as a member of a duo will you discover your purpose in life. Utilizing your other half for selfish purposes is not what God intended. Your wife is not there just to scratch your itch. That is not the path to fulfillment. This is a spiritual, intellectual, and emotional journey of two souls becoming one. Neglect that fact of nature and you will die an old, loveless, lonely loser. Dedicate your life to elevating your woman to a place of maturity and fulfillment and you will save your own life and experience heaven's best. — Michael Pearl

Damn you, you made up lame excuses and practically patted me on the head. And tonight, you've got an itch and you're annoyed that I wasn't here to scratch it. — Nora Roberts

We can also monitor signals coming from within our body. This is, again, the foundation of Damasio's somatic marker hypothesis (see Chapter 5). The most specific of these are signals from the somatosensory system, which transmits information about touch, temperature, irritation, and pain from skin and muscles to cortical processing areas, much like the visual or auditory systems do. When you have a headache, backache, sore muscles, an itch, feel warmth or cool air on your skin, or are feverish, you become aware of somatosensory information being processed in cortical areas. — Joseph E. Ledoux

Me? All the crappiness of the day, of the last few weeks, zeroed in on this high and mighty B with an itch, and the scared-rabbit feeling faded. — C.C. Hunter

The aura of the theocratic death penalty for adultery still clings to America, even outside New England, and multiple divorce, which looks to the European like serial polygamy, is the moral solution to the problem of the itch. Love comes into it too, of course, but in Europe we tend to see marital love as an eternity which encompasses hate and also indifference: when we promise to love we really mean that we promise to honor a contract. Americans, seeming to take marriage with not enough seriousness, are really taking love and sex with too much. — Anthony Burgess

Itchy, itchy, itchy, yo.
Scratchy, scratchy, scratchy, yo.
Itchy, itchy, itchy, yo.
Poison summac daddy. Got an itch real baddy. — Kirk Scroggs

Ambition was an itch in Mary's show, a maggot in her guts. — Emma Donoghue

It's like an itch, isn't it? You can feel it in your throat. You want to scream for me. — Nenia Campbell

And so long as we have this itch for explanations, must we not always carry round with us this cumbersome but precious bag of clues called History? Another definition: Man, the animal which demands an explanation, the animal which asks Why. — Graham Swift

Giovanni had awakened an itch, had released a gnaw in me. I realized it one afternoon, when I was taking him to work via the Boulevard Montparnasse. We had bought a kilo of cherries and we were eating them as we walked along. We were both insufferably childish and high-spirited that afternoon and the spectacle we presented, two grown men jostling each other on the wide sidewalk and aiming the cherry pits, as though they were spitballs, into each other's faces, must have been outrageous. And I realized that such childishness was fantastic at my age and the happiness out of which it sprang yet more so; for that moment I really loved Giovanni, who had never seemed more beautiful than he was that afternoon. — James Baldwin

A story without an ending is an unbearable itch to the reader. — K.J. Charles

The craving to touch her is like an itch I can't scratch. — Siobhan Davis

As for me, I am tormented with an everlasting itch for things remote. I love to sail forbidden seas, and land on barbarous coasts. — Herman Melville

I felt a queasy mixture of relief and horror: when you finally stop an itch and realize it's because you've ripped a hole in your skin. — Gillian Flynn

I think I'm going to skip all of my classes today because I need a "me" day. The problem with "me" days is that I need them four times a week. The problem with me is that I'm very smart and very capable (or so I've been told) but my laziness hinders me. Laziness. They forgot to add procrastination, self-destruction, and the inability to leave my bed to the list. The problem with me is that I've dealt with this before but have no idea what to do next. I should email my past teachers and ask them what I did after I sent them messages excusing my week-long absences from class due to "personal reasons." I should stop scratching my hand in case my mom asks me if I'm okay again. I am okay. I am doing fine. But I have an itch that I cannot place, an itch that changes locations when my fingers find it. The problem with me is that I will focus on it completely until it goes away. The problem with this feeling is that it never goes away. It has always been one large itch that I cannot place. — Lora Mathis

A question like "do you love me?" was an itch our doctors told us not to scratch. — Shane Koyczan

You can, for just a moment, fuse grief like a bone, but the memory of the ability to bend lingers inside, like an itch running in the blood, just beneath the skin: relief is always only temporary. Grief, we understood, would now hijack a part of our day for the rest of our lives, sneaking in, making the world momentarily stop, every day, forever. — Emily Rapp

As simple an act as reading or writing a sentence must be surrounded by perceptory nap and weave ... an itch, a stray memory from childhood, the distant sound of a barking dog, or something left over from the lunch that is found caught between the teeth. — David Brin

Peace and harmony do not require perfection. Thank goodness for that - because life so often seems to be an itch here, a glitch there, a mess waiting to happen. Harmony is flexible. It bends with imperfection. So should you. — Jerry Spinelli

My first wife was like the rash you get from poison ivy. I couldn't stand her, but I couldn't keep my hands off her. She was an itch I scratched until I bled
and then I scratched it some more! — Joe Hill

The poorest of the sex have still an itch To know their fortunes, equal to the rich. The dairy-maid inquires, if she shall take The trusty tailor, and the cook forsake. — John Dryden

If there is an itch one does want to scratch; but it is much nicer to have neither the itch nor the scratch. — C.S. Lewis

A good book is like an unreachable itch. You just can't leave it alone. — Laura Bush

There is a deep-seated tendency, it's almost a compulsion, to distract ourselves, even when we're not consciously feeling uncomfortable. Everybody feels a little bit of an itch all the time. There's a background hum of edginess, boredom, restlessness. As I've said, during my time in retreat where there were almost no distractions, even there I experienced this deep uneasiness. The — Pema Chodron

The urge to write poetry is like having an itch. When the itch becomes annoying enough, you scratch it. — Robert Penn Warren

Lo- don't move," he says, seriously, his eyes like honey in the basement light- warm and amber and shining. "i'm still working."
"I had an itch."
"Let me know next time, and I'll scratch it for you. Before the terrible itching incident ruined everything, I was about to start on the dark shadow of your elbow crease. Now I'll have to re-create that perfect, dark, little cityscape from memory. — Kate Ellison

The universe has an itch, and I have been called upon to scratch it. — James Halat

Best startups generally come from somebody needing to scratch an itch. — Michael Arrington

It was still there, a low-grade fever in the blood, an itch somewhere down beneath the skin, where you couldn't scratch it. — Lawrence Block

I'm really into pandas right now. They're really scratching an itch for me. They're so goddamn cute. — Nick Kroll

It wasn't an itch. It was a sickness. It was poison blazing through him, thinking of her all the time, watching her, touching her, wanting and wanting and wanting until his mind went black. — Shana Abe

I was feeling more edgy and uncomfortable as my unquenched desires moved from a feeling of discontent to full blown pain. At first, the sensation was more like an irritation or itch, but the longer I sat there, the more intense it grew. Not only was I burning from the dissatisfaction of my unmet arousal, but my entire body felt like it was on fire. It was as if a billion poisoned needles were being injected into me simultaneously torturing my soul with flames that licked the flesh from my body. — J.M. Northup

There's good sex, and then there's sex where the memory takes up permanent residence in your brain, changes the fucking chemical balance or something so that you crave it like a damn fix. It makes you jones for it, gets under your skin like an itch. That's the kind of sex this is. — Sabrina Paige

Many of the younger generation know my name in a vague way and connect it with grotesque inventions, but don't believe that I ever existed as a person. They think I am a nonperson, just a name that signifies a tangled web of pipes or wires or strings that suggest machinery. My name to them is like a spiral staircase, veal cutlets, barber's itch - terms that give you an immediate picture of what they mean. — Rube Goldberg

15. WHENEVER I WENT OUT TO PLAY, MY MOTHER WANTED TO KNOW EXACTLY WHERE I WAS GOING TO BE
When I'd come in, she'd call me into her bedroom, take me in her arms, and cover me with kisses. She'd stroke my hair and say, 'I love you so much,' and when I sneezed she'd say, 'Bless you, you know how much I love you, don't you?' and when I got up for a tissue she'd say, 'Let me get that for you I love you so much,' and when I looked for a pen to do my homework she'd say, 'Use mine, anything for you,' and when I had an itch on my leg she'd say, 'Is this the spot, let me hug you,' and when I said I was going up to my room she'd call after me, 'What can I do for you I love you so much,' and I always wanted to say, but never said: Love me less. — Nicole Krauss

Made up of corallitic accretions and painful increments, lit on rare occasions by bolts of revelation, and then stuffed behind the wainscotting to grope in the mouse-turd dust, art is the equivalent of athlete's foot, at best an exquisite itch, at worst an excuse to stop walking. On the emotional side, it is either masturbation with a hockey glove or a night beneath the sliding moon that shames Eros. — Harold Town

Film is an itch I have yet to scratch. — Lea Michele

That, too, is an itch - the desire to see him, to kiss him again, to let him put his fingers in my hair - is a monstrous, constant, crawling feeling in my blood and bones.
It's worse than a disease. It's a poison.
And I like it. — Lauren Oliver

The hot water running over my swollen hands was an amazing sensation, unlike anything I had ever felt before, and truthfully, not something I was eager to experience ever again. It was somewhere between an immensely powerful itch and searing agony, and I almost yelled out loud. I got out of the shower and put more calamine on my hands, and the throbbing died down to a kind of background torment. My hands felt numb and clumsy, and I had some trouble using them to get dressed. But rather than ask for help with the zipper and my shirt's buttons, I fumbled my clean clothes on all by myself, and soon I was seated at the kitchen table with a very welcome cup of coffee of my very own. I — Jeff Lindsay

I don't need a mate," she muttered, staring up at the bright circle of the early autumn moon. "But can't you send me a nice, sexy, strongmale to dance with? Pretty please?" She hadn't had a lover for close to eight months now, and it was starting to hurt on every level. "He doesn't even have to be smart, just good between the sheets." Good enough to unsnap the tension in her body, allow her to function again. Because sex wasn't simply about pleasure for a cat like her - it was about affection, about trust, about everything good. "Though right this second, I'd take plain old hot sex."
That was when Riley walked out of the shadows. "Got an itch, kitty?"
Snapping to her feet, she narrowed her eyes, knowing he had to have deliberately stayed downwind in order to sneak up on her. "Spying?"
"When you're talking loud enough to wake the dead?"
She swore she could feel steam coming out her ears. — Nalini Singh

April. Spring was on the land like an itch. The whole countryside seemed to be scratching itself awake - lazily, luxuriously, though occasionally scratching so hard its nails hit bone, that old cold calcium that lies beneath our tingles. — Tom Robbins

Grandpa Martin Vanderhoff: Penny, why don't you write a play about Ism-Mania?
Penny Sycamore: Ism-Mania?
Grandpa Martin Vanderhoff: Yeah, sure, you know, Communism, Faschism, Voodoo-ism, everybody's got an -ism these days.
Penny Sycamore: Oh
[laughs]
Penny Sycamore: I thought it was some kind of itch or something.
Grandpa Martin Vanderhoff: Well, it's just as catching. When things go a little bad nowadays, you go out, get yourself an -ism and you're in business. — George S. Kaufman

I've been managing Internet businesses since 1999. That's 12 years of being in the tornado, and it's pretty exhausting. I'll be looking at the next challenge, but in terms of operating an Internet business, I've scratched that itch very well. — Jeff Jordan

The M16 has a scope with a small red arrow in the center of the sight. You align the arrow with what or (jeez) whom you wish to shoot and squeeze the trigger. Both "squeeze" and "pull" are exaggerations of the motion applied to this trigger. It's a trivial, tiny movement, the twitch of a dreaming child. So quick and so effortless is it that it's hard for me to associate it with any but the most inconsequential of acts. Flipping a page. Typing an M. Scratching an itch. Ending a life wants a little more muscle. — Mary Roach

They don't want to hear how Octavia is different from us. They want to know how we're the same. They know what it's like to have an itch. They can imagine what it's like to be a mother. This brief encounter has changed them. Now they can identify with an octopus. They — Sy Montgomery

Photography is an itch that wont go away. No matter how much you scratch it. — Dara McGrath

I think the collectors have made an enormous contribution, not only to the market but to painters themselves ... These people that buy, that set standards, make everyone else itch to emulate. — Philip Johnson

If bliss is to scratch an itch, what greater bliss, no itch at all? So too, the worldly, desirous, find some bliss, But greatest is the bliss with no desire — Nagarjun

An incurable itch for scribbling takes possession of many, and grows inveterate in their insane breasts. — Juvenal

I always not only want push the envelope in my career but I also have an itch for going against the grain. — Bernard Hopkins

Somewhere, far down, there was an itch in his heart, but he made it a point not to scratch it. He was afraid of what might come leaking out. — Markus Zusak

Sex is ... scratching an itch Everything else is something we project on a very simple act. It's the psychology, not the biology, that's complicated. — Joy Browne

I went to the doctor," said the woman next to Ethel. "I said to him, 'I've got an itchy twat.'"
[ ... ]
She went on: "The doctor says to me, he goes, 'You shouldn't say that, it's a rude word.'"
[ ... ]
"I says to him, 'What should I say, then, doctor?' He says to me, 'Say you've got an itchy finger.'"
[ ... ]
"He says to me, 'Do your finger itch you all the time, Mrs. Perkins, or just now and again?'"
Mildred paused, and the women were silent, waiting for the punch line.
"I says, 'No, doctor, only when I piss through it. — Ken Follett

Philosophy hasn't made any progress? - If somebody scratches the spot where he has an itch, do we have to see some progress? Isn't genuine scratching otherwise, or genuine itching itching? And can't this reaction to an irritation continue in the same way for a long time before a cure for the itching is discovered? — Ludwig Wittgenstein

This must be what an addict feels like, I think,
trying to fight the pull of one last, quick read. My fingers itch toward the binding, and finally, with a sigh of regret, I just grab the book and open it, hungrily reading the story. — Jodi Picoult

I'd been dreaming of such adventures since I was small. Back then I'd believed in destiny, and believed in it absolutely, with every strand and fiber of my little kid heart. I'd felt it like an itch in my chest while listening to my grandfather's extraordinary stories. "One day that will be me." What felt like obligation now had been a promise back then - that one day I would escape my little town and live an extraordinary life as he had done; and that one day, like Grandpa Portman, I would do something that mattered. — Ransom Riggs

I feel an itch, a creeping itch, for drink as we walk through Forest Gate. We can't find a pub. The Interpreter keeps pointing out the odd shop with a dirty England flag. 'This is Muslim land, man, there are no pubs here because there are no English. But if you wanna go into one of those gross last of the English pubs we can. — Ben Judah

In heaven I yearn for knowledge, account all else inanity; On earth I confess an itch for the praise of fools - that's vanity — Robert Browning

I write when something sticks in my craw. Writing is a compulsion - or an itch. — Hisaye Yamamoto

I said I heard them, it's like a, like a chittering I guess. You hear it, you don't hear it really but you just get the sound in the middle of your head, like an itch. It's not so much like a swarm of bees but more like a crowd, a crowd at a concert because you can pick out words and, I say it out loud and it sounds insane, but you can hear them talking to each other, coordinating. And more than that, you can hear their hate. — David Wong

Everything mattered and nothing did, and I was tired of trying to find out how both of those things were true. I was an itch that I'd scratched so hard I was bleeding. I had set out to do the impossible, whatever the impossible might be, only to find out that it was living with myself. Suicide became an expiration date, the day after which I no longer had to try. — Maggie Stiefvater

For a lot of people, their first love is what they'll always remember. For me it's always been the first hate, and I think that hatred, though it provides often rather junky energy, is a terrific way of getting you out of bed in the morning and keeping you going. If you don't let it get out of hand, it can be canalized into writing. In this country where people love to be nonjudgmental when they can be, which translates as, on the whole, lenient, there are an awful lot of bubble reputations floating around that one wouldn't be doing one's job if one didn't itch to prick. — Christopher Hitchens

Part of the reason for the evolutionary success of primates, human or otherwise, is that we are a pretty smart collection of animals. What's more, our thumbs work in particularly fancy and advantageous ways, and we're more flexible about food than most. But our primate essence is more than just abstract reasoning, dexterous thumbs, and omnivorous diets. Another key to our success must have something to do with this voluntary transfer process, this primate legacy of feeling an itch around adolescence. — Robert M. Sapolsky

I just want to do things that scratch an itch for me. That itch is often something that feels wrong. It's wrong because it breaks convention or is unexpected or at times uncomfortable. I like that feeling. — Stephen Colbert

When I don't understand, I have an unbearable itch to know why. — Robert A. Heinlein

I was still owed an explanation, I thought, but so what? What good was it going to do me? It wouldn't have made me any happier. It was like scratching when you have chicken pox. You think it's going to help, but the itch moves over, and then moves over again. My itch suddenly felt miles away, and I couldn't have reached it with the longest arms in the world. Realizing that made me scared that I was going to be itchy forever, and I didn't want that. — Nick Hornby

We'd itch the vermin feasting on our flesh and share the day's many rumors:
The King had declared peace.
No, the King was sending German and Russian mercenaries to destroy us.
A ball of fire as big as a man's head fell from heaven to Hatboro - a good omen. But there'd been an earthquake near York just as a cat gave birth to puppies, which meant the worst. — Laurie Halse Anderson

She's kind of a, well, you know, a B with an itch. — Alyson Noel

When I was very young and the urge to be someplace else was on me, I was assured by mature people that maturity would this itch. When years described me as mature, the remedy prescribed was middle age.In middle age I was assured greater age would calm my fever and now that I am fifty-eight perhaps senility will do the job. Nothing has worked. Four hoarse blasts of a ships's whistle still raise the hair on my neck and set my feet to tapping. The sound of a jet, an engine warming up, even the clopping of shod hooves on pavement brings on the ancient shudder, the dry mouth and vacant eye, the hot palms and the churn of stomach high up under the rib cage. In other words, once a bum always a bum. I fear this disease incurable. I set this matter down not to instruct others but to inform myself ... A journey is a person in itself; no two are alike. And all plans, safeguards, policing, and coercion are fruitless. We find after years of struggle that we not take a trip; a trip takes us. — John Steinbeck

When something is empty, fill it. When something is full, empty it. When you have an itch, scratch it. — Dieter Dengler

I am tormented with an everlasting itch for things remote. I love to sail forbidden seas ... To the ancient Greeks and Romans, the known world comprised — Carl Sagan

With a tension in his stomach, such as one suffers when watching an acrobat leaving the virtuosity of his safety in a mad unraveling whirl into probable death, Felix watched the hand descend, take up the note, and disappear into the limbo of the doctor's pocket. He knew that he would continue to like the doctor, though he was aware that it would be in spite of a long series of convulsions of the spirit, analogous to the displacement in the fluids of the oyster, that must cover its itch with a peal: so he would have to cover the doctor. He knew at the same time that this stricture of acceptance (by which what we must love is made into what we can love) would eventually be a part of himself, though originally brought on by no will of his own. — Djuna Barnes

If I had questioned Harris further - "What do you mean when you say sex doesn't have to mean anything? Do people engage in it for no reason at all? Does it just happen, like a gurgle in the stomach, a can rattling down the street, or a screen door blowing shut in the breeze?" - perhaps he would have conceded that sex does have trivial meanings: a little pleasure, a little fun, a little relief from boredom and desire. This wouldn't be much of a concession. Sex would mean something, but only in the way that eating a peanut means something, chewing on an ice cube means something, scratching an itch means something. There would be no more call to rhapsodize about the touch of a man and a woman than to compose sonnets about the communion of a picnicker with his mayonnaise. — J. Budziszewski

To say 'I want to have sex with this person' is to express a desire which is not intellectually directed in the way that 'I want to eradicate poverty in the world' is an intellectually directed desire. Furthernore, the gratification of sexual desire can only ever give temporary satisfaction. Thus as Nagarjuna, the great Indian scholar said: 'When you have an itch, you scratch. But not to itch at all is better than any amount of scratching. — Dalai Lama XIV

Arguing with people is like reading your e-mail at 4 in the morning. There is absolutely no good that can come of it. It's just scratching an itch. — James Altucher

I was most incorrigibly devoted to versifying, and all my spouse's wholesome admonitions had no manner of effect on me; in short, I believe this scribbling itch is an incurable disease ... — Laetitia Pilkington

While I'd been plagued by nightmares of Jonathan's unrest in the hereafter, it was only now that I'd seen Adair again - and seen him so changed - that I could admit, even to myself, that it was him I daydreamed of, who I longed for, who I ached for, physically. That was how I'd betrayed Luke - in my desire for Adair. It wasn't so uncommon, was it? Living with one man while your mind is on another? Being unable to stop thinking of this other man who, for one reason or another, was not the one sitting beside you. Thinking of the way his eyes lit up when he saw you, of his wicked smile and what it was like when he held you, how you responded to the touch of his hands. In solitary moments, you remembered the little intimacies, the feel of his skin against yours, the way he liked to be touched, the velvet nap of his member, the way he tasted. You thought of him even though you could never be with him. His absence nagged like an itch you could never scratch. — Alma Katsu

I stare at his chest. I can't seem to make my eyes move away. When I seen him without his shirt before, back at Hopetown, all I noticed was the scars. But now all I can see is how lean an strong he is. With wide shoulders an arms roped with muscle. He ain't got no hair on his chest, not like Pa an Lugh. My fingers itch to touch it. Find out if his skin feels as smooth as it looks. — Moira Young

Don't we all have an itch for kitsch? — Matei Calinescu

I never really had an itch for gambling. I work hard for my money, so I don't like going out and giving it away like that. — Amanda Righetti

This book scratches an old itch. Despite being the level of government that is closest to the people and has so much impact on our quality of life, most people don't know too much about how their local governments operate and even less about what it's like to manage a city or county. Occasionally, a city manager character appears in a novel, movie, or TV show but almost always in a mocking or denigrating fashion that belies the professionalism that is more the norm. — John Thompson

As I've gotten older and I've watched people in productions, I go to the theater when I go back to London and see friends in Broadway, I think maybe there might come a time here to get back up there and prove oneself. It's just an itch; it's a nagging itch to go back there. — Pierce Brosnan

Maybe that's the way of love. It doesn't wait to be invited in, and it won't be coerced. It gently creeps under your skin, a mild itch at first, not giving itself away in case you scratch it and cause an infection. But then it sinks in deeper, getting into your bloodstream. It travels. By the time it reaches your brain and you're aware of the infection, it's already taken over your heart. In Natalie's experience, love is anything but innocent. It's a captor, a guard, imprisoning you in the clutches of another, knitting the fabric of your own life to somebody else's, whether you like it or not. — Nigel Jay Cooper

Coffined thoughts around me, in mummycases, embalmed in spice of words. Thoth, god of libraries, a birdgod, moonycrowned. And I heard the voice of that Egyptian highpriest. In painted chambers loaded with tilebooks. They are still. Once quick in the brains of men. Still: but an itch of death is in them, to tell me in my ear a maudlin tale, urge me to wreak their will. — James Joyce

He wondered where his mind had wandered this time, what life it had lived as a trail of neurons sped through networks of possibilities particle-fast, too rapid to catch without a hadron collider, causing super quarks of weirdness and leaving him with only a vague after-image like a melting dream. He had to accept that he couldn't catch all his thoughts, all the things going on in his body, the processes which slipped by in the background just leaving a shadow, an itch, the grain of sand that probably wouldn't become a pearl, a blazing after-trace that lives a second then is gone forever. All those possibilities occurring in a second of frantic life: it never ceased to amaze him. The world was an incredible and beautifully constructed thing.
However, there wasn't really time for a wank. — Karl Drinkwater

Usually, you don't know where a book comes from ... it's just there, some kind of an itch that you can't quite scratch. — Cormac McCarthy

Have you ever had an itch so awful that you must scratch it or die? And yet you can't?"
His lips twitched. "Yes. Usually in one's army boot, while standing in knee-deep water in a trench. While people are shooting. That absolutely guarantees an unreachable itch. — Lisa Kleypas

Art is the one form of human energy in the whole world, which really works for union, and destroys the barriers between man and man. It is the continual, unconscious replacement, however fleeting, of oneself by another; the real cement of human life; the everlasting refreshment and renewal. For, what is grievous, dompting, grim, about our lives is that we are shut up within ourselves, with an itch to get outside ourselves. And to be stolen away from ourselves by Art is a momentary relaxation from that itching, a minute's profound, and as it were secret, enfranchisement. — John Galsworthy

I would not recommend poetry as a career. In the first place, it's impossible in this time and place - in this culture - to make poetry a career. The writing of poetry is one thing. It's an obsession, the scratching of a divine itch, and has nothing to do with money. You can, however, make a career out of being a poet by teaching, traveling around, and giving lectures. It's a thin living at best. — Maxine Kumin

For her, sex was nothing more than an itch. And this phsychological and physiological neutrality of hers at once relieved her of so many human emotions and sentiments and desires. Sexual neutrality was the essence of coldness in an individual. It was a great and wonderful thing to be born with. — Ian Fleming