Arm's Length Quotes & Sayings

In China, I realized that if you visit often enough and learn the language, you will be assimilated, but you'll still be kept at arm's length; you'll always be looked on as a foreigner. — Abigail Washburn

As a general rule, fans and idols should always be kept at arm's length, the length of the arm to be proportionate to the degree of sheer idolatry involved. Don't take a Beatle to lunch. Don't wait up to see if the Easter Bunny is real. Just enjoy the egg hunt. — Shana Alexander

When she leaned forward to mess with the AC vents, her hair brushed against my leg and it was really soft. It made remember all over again. It made it hard to stay pissed and keep her at arm's length the way I'd planned. It was pretty near damn impossible. When I was near her, I just wanted to grab her and hold her and kiss the shit out of her. Maybe then she'd forget about my asshole of a brother. — Jenny Han

He was close enough so that I could see his face clearly, even with his helmet's cheek flaps tied tightly under his bearded chin. I looked into the eyes of Hector, prince of Troy. Brown eyes they were, the colour of rich farm soil, calm and deep. No anger, no battle lust. He was a cool and calculating warrior, a thinker among these hordes of wild, screaming brutes. He wore a small round shield buckled to his left arm instead of the massive body-length type most of the other nobles carried. In it was painted a flying heron, a strangely peaceful emblem in the midst of all this mayhem and gore. — Ben Bova

For all the splendours of the world's greatest galleries, visitors are likely to be kept at arm's length, spectators of a world that can seem too rarefied to let them in. — Jim Crace

I've never asked you to give the least considerations to my feelings.
He could picture her holding the word with fingertips at arm's length, like a scullery maid disposing of a dead rat. — Cecilia Grant

I picked up my camera and held it at arm's length and took a picture of myself not caring. I called it: Glory Doesn't Care. — A.S. King

Getting two-inch silver chain chokers around the neck of a guy, especially Shane, proved to be more of a problem.
Shane held the jewelry at arm's length, dangling it like a dead rat. "No way in hell am I caught dead or alive wearing that."
"Oh, come on, just this once," Eve said. "Protects your neck. As in your arteries and veins? That's kind of crucial, right?"
"Thanks for the thought, but it doesn't go with my shoes. — Rachel Caine

I wonder if I should back off from our friendship sometimes, to make sure she's kept at arm's length. — Simone Elkeles

I knew I had to keep him to myself, as I'd slowly begun to keep everything. We had secrets now, truths and half-truths, that kept her always at arm's length, behind a closed door, miles away. — Sarah Dessen

The shots left a hard ringing sound within the closeness of the brick walls. Terry held the pistol at arm's length on a level with his eyes
the Russian Tokarev resembling an old-model Colt .45, big and heavy
and made the sign of the cross with it over the dead. He said, "Rest in peace, motherfuckers," turned, and walked out of the beer lady's house to wait at the side of the road. — Elmore Leonard

I grew up in Ireland, and the ocean was never more than an arm's length away. As lovely as the mountains are and as friendly as the people of Utah are, I feel a bit landlocked here. — Roma Downey

I'm very wary of fawning too much over heroes. There's an old adage that heroes are best kept at arm's length, and in a few instances in my life, that's been true. — W. Earl Brown

The scientists are virtually screaming from the rooftops now. The debate is over! There's no longer any debate in the scientific community about this. But the political systems around the world have held this at arm's length because it's an inconvenient truth, because they don't want to accept that it's a moral imperative. — Al Gore

To have done no man a wrong ... to walk and live, unseduced, within arm's length of what is not your own, with nothing between your desire and its gratification but the invisible law of rectitude - this is to be a man — Orison Swett Marden

Now there's something for you to think about. If you don't know that you can't do something, isn't there a remote possibility that you'll go ahead and do it anyway in absolute defiance of physical law? That might be one of the drawbacks of education. If you don't know that you can't pick yourself up by the scruff of the neck and hold yourself at arm's length, maybe you can. — David Eddings

We still have community, but we don't seem to have local community. Even in a small town where you know your neighbors and your mother's down the street, they're not in arm's length. — Helen Fisher

For so long, she'd taken her memories of Patty - the memories they'd created together - and held them outside of herself, protecting herself from the pain of carrying them deep within. It was as if she carried all the memories in her jars. But if doing so, it was as if she'd also kept everyone else - those still in her life - at arm's length too. — Tricia Goyer

Moby-Dick is a long, grueling, convoluted graft. And yet, as soon as I completed it, once I could hold it at arm's length and admire its intricacy and design, I knew Moby-Dick was obviously, uncannily, a masterwork. It wormed into my subconsious; I dreamed about it for nights afterwards. Whereas when I finished The Da Vinci Code, which had taken little less than twelve hours from cover to cover, I chicked it aside and thought: wow - I really ought to read something good. — Andy Miller

Supporters of the war are constantly asking those who oppose it: Why don't you deplore the wrongs and atrocities committed by the other side? The answer, so far as I am concerned, is that I do deplore the wrongs and atrocities committed by the other side. But I am responsible for the wrongs and atrocities committed by our side. And I am no longer able to participate in the assumption that atrocities committed by remote control are less objectionable than those committed at arm's length. I am most concerned with American obstacles to peace because I am an American. — Wendell Berry

And David and Goliath I have done before, but this time there is a difference. David holds the head at arm's length and looks disgusted. And onto Goliath's severed head, I put my own features. The head hangs in darkness so that the black hair and beard framing the face blend off into the shadows, and there are four thin ropes of dark blood trailing down into space from the neck. And in one eye of the freshly severed head, there is still the faint glimmer of life.
That's me and that's the last painting I ever did.
Spectator, viewer, audience, however you care to call yourself; I address you here, with this, my final picture.
Cast a cold eye on it all, and on my work. I am still alive. — Christopher Peachment

The church works best as a force of resistance, a conscience to society that keeps itself at arm's length from the state. The closer it gets, the less effectively it can challenge the surrounding culture and the more perilously it risks losing its central message. — Philip Yancey

His hands tightened on her shoulders as the truth washed over him. My God, she really had told him yes.
He opened his mouth to ask if she was certain then didn't. If he did, she might change her mind, and he had no intention of giving her that opportunity. Underneath his hands, her shoulders quivered. She raised her gaze to him again, and his heart plunged into the depths. She had her lower lip trapped between her teeth, and her eyes were tormented pools of blue green. His heart broke just looking at her.
She was not in love with him. He knew that. Her acceptance of him had nothing to do with the sort of desperate longing he had for her. Not that he hadn't known that the first time he proposed to her, but to have her say yes out of despair added an edge of pain to his euphoria. He knew she wasn't indifferent to him, after all, and for the moment, that sufficed to keep the hurt at arm's
length. — Carolyn Jewel

Poetry is an attenuation, a rehandling, an echo of crude experience; it is itself a theoretic vision of things at arm's length. — George Santayana

A well-read fool is the most pestilent of blockheads; his learning is a flail which he knows not how to handle, and with which he breaks his neighbor's shins as well as his own. Keep a fellow of this description at arm's length, as you value the integrity of your bones. — Stanislaw Leszczynski

Sometimes the European and North American public like some things to be exotic and kept at arm's length. They don't want sometimes to know that foreign artists are doing something that's at least as relevant as what's being done here. — David Byrne

Holding a menu at arm's length, peering at anything that required reading, made me feel so old. — Bonnie Tyler

People meet writers and are bowled over when the writer is friendly to them and invites them to his house for a glass of wine or to shoot up heroin or whatever they do, and they talk their heads off, and a year later it comes out in a book, and there follow years of bitter and fruitless litigation, and that is why you should always keep a writer at arm's length. — Garrison Keillor

He had fled the claustrophobic confines of his family. He'd successfully kept Jan Burres and Wayne Westerberg at arm's length, flitting out of their lives before anything was expected of him. And now he'd slipped painlessly out of Ron Franz's life as well. — Jon Krakauer

Last night I danced.
My body rose from its slump for the first time since the beginning of sorrows - my fingers beckoning to the stars at arm's length, back arching as tingles bubbled up my spine, hips caught in a silent tempo while on tiptoe I twirled in endless euphoric circles. It didn't matter that you loved me or that you didn't. For I was wanted by the gods last night, their seraphs and muses descending on moonbeams into my midst, caressing my face and gliding their spirited arms about my waist, lifting my toes from the soil that I might feel what it is to fly without heaviness of heart. I danced with them under the glow of a loyal moon. For one brief, visceral dance I joyed as Heaven joys - in endless bliss.
And the universe cherished me. — Richelle E. Goodrich

The people of the United States have been fortunate in many things. One of the things in which we have been most fortunate has been that so far, due perhaps to certain basic virtues in our traditional ways of doing things, we have managed to keep the crisis of western civilization, which has devastated the rest of the world and in which we are as much involved as anybody, more or less at arm's length. — John Dos Passos

Keep things at arm's length ... If you let anything come too near you want to hold on to it. And there is nothing a man can hold on to. — Erich Maria Remarque

You hold me at arm's length. — Kim Edwards

There was so much unpleasantness in the workaday world. The last thing you ever wanted to do at night was go home and do the dishes. And just the idea that part of the weekend had to be dedicated to getting the oil changed and doing the laundry was enough to make those of us still full from lunch want to lie down in the hallway and force anyone dumb enough to remain committed to walk around us. It might not be so bad. They could drop food down to us, or if that was not possible, crumbs from their PowerBars and bags of microwave popcorn surely would end up within an arm's length sooner or later. The cleaning crews, needing to vacuum, would inevitably turn us on our sides, preventing bedsores, and we would make little toys out of runs in the carpet, which, in moments of extreme regression, we might suck on for comfort. — Joshua Ferris

The psyche is highly flammable material. So we are always wrapping things in asbestos, keeping our images and fantasies at arm's length because they are so full of love — James Hillman

The pressure of his mouth eased. He drew away, holding her at arm's length. He filled her vision, broad shoulders and shaggy head framed by the crags and cliffs of Connemara. He had a look of astonished delight on his face, while dangerous banked fires smoldered in his eyes. Still gripping her shoulders, he stepped back and said, "Look me in the eye, Caitlin MacBride, and tell me you've been kissed before. — Susan Wiggs

But sometimes, like tonight, she feels plugged in to the raw emotion of it all, a closed circuit, and if she doesn't keep it at arm's length, it still has the power to break her. — Blake Crouch

Our current criminal justice system has no provision for restorative justice, in which an offender confronts the damage they have done and tries to make it right for the people they have harmed. Instead, our system of "corrections" is about arm's-length revenge and retribution, all day and all night. — Piper Kerman

Several sets of arms would embrace me. But in the end, the only person I truly want to comfort me is Haymitch, because he loves Peeta, too. I reach out for him and say something like his name and he's there, holding me and patting my back. "It's okay. It'll be okay, sweetheart." He sits me on a length of broken marble pillar and keeps an arm around me while I sob. — Suzanne Collins

Amber, you could never embarrass me."
"Never?" she asked.
"Never."
"One time, I yelled across the store to Mom and asked her if she wanted the regular or the super-absorbent tampons. I added that, according to the box, the super-absorbent were for those heavy days. Then I asked her to rate her heaviness on a scale of one to ten."
"Okay, you could."
"Then while we were standing in line, I asked her why she was buying three boxes of Summer's Eve in the middle of winter."
I set her at arm's length. "Wow."
"I know, right? I had no idea a person could turn so red. — Darynda Jones

Bill Clinton was friendly and charming with just about everyone besides Hillary. He always seemed to want to give his company extra time. He was very generous that way. Like him or not, share his political ideas or not, find yourself in the same room with him, and you are hooked. You can't help but like him. But that was not Hillary. She was clearly all business, 24/7. Her private leadership style was based on pure fear and loathing - and I never saw her that turn off. Even in the president's presence, Mrs. Clinton operated at far greater than arm's length - a cheerless grifter always on her scheming way to someone or something else more important than the person directly in front of her. — Gary J. Byrne

Please hold your hand up at arm's length and check which things around you can be blocked from view by your pinkie. Your little finger covers an angle of about one degree, which is about double what you need to cover the Moon - make sure to check this for yourself the next time you do some lunar observing. For an object to cover half a degree, its distance from you needs to be about 115 times its size, — Max Tegmark

If you tell yourself there is a path you need to travel, that it will take time to get where you want to go-that there is a distance between you and the fully realized state-then the path can become a way of holding liberation at arm's length. — Jan Frazier

A mentor long departed told me that the greatest gift in political life, in any life, is to view yourself objectively, at arm's length, to make an assessment of yourself. So whom do I rely on? I rely on myself. — Hugh Carey

I very specifically told you to stay away from Ned Blydon."
"I chose not to follow your advice. Ned is a very nice person. Handsome, personable - a perfect escort."
"That is precisely why I wanted you to keep him at arm's length. — Julia Quinn

The distance between yourself and others should not be greater than your arm's length. — Christophe Agou

I think Queen tribute bands are great. However, we have to keep them at arm's length, otherwise it could be too dangerous. — Brian May

And guys don't get attached, guys don't give themselves over completely, and guys lie. That's why they should be handled with great trepidation, not trusted, and held at arm's length whenever possible. — Sarah Dessen

Instead, our system of "corrections" is about arm's-length revenge and retribution, all day and all night. Then its overseers wonder why people leave prison more broken than when they went in. V — Piper Kerman

I couldn't wait for high school to be over. I didn't let my exasperation show, however. I'd long since discovered how to live inside the shark tank without getting eaten or becoming a shark: never let 'em see you sweat. Don't show any emotion, no matter how many you're feeling. It just reveals your weaknesses and, to them, weaknesses are like blood in the water. I try never to let them see me get angry, upset, defensive, flustered, uncertain, anything. I'm sure that, to them, I seem somewhat robotic, but it keeps me out of trouble and keeps them at arm's length. And that's how I survive — M. Leighton

Time snapped and Hagerty found himself speeding toward the woman in the straitjacket. Grabbing her by the shoulders, he pulled her off the corpse and held her at arm's length. He caught a glimpse of Kalish's face and the shredded mess where his throat should have been. — Nancy A. Collins

I feel liquefied, like a cucumber forgotten in the crisper drawer, and I want to hold myself at arm's length and carry me to the trash. Who is this sack of slush masquerading as me? It's intolerable. — Laini Taylor

The instant I saw Lori's dad and Frances across the hot asphalt road, I spun around, hoping Lori was still hidden by the trees.
She stood right behind me, in full view. And if my expression matched hers, we couldn't have looked more guilty.
I turned back around. Her dad's face was even worse. Glaring at me, he worked his jaw like he was going to say something, but he wanted to make sure he'd thought of
the worst possible insult first. He turned redder and seemed to swell, like all his holes were plugged up and the pressure had nowhere to escape.
He opened his mouth.
"It was my fault," I said quickly.
"I know!" he roared.
At the same time, Lori stepped in front of me and muttered, "Wrong thing to say, Adam."
"Right." I put my hand on Lori's shoulder and pushed her an arm's length away so it wouldn't look like I was hiding behind her. "It's nobody's fault, because we didn't
do anything wrong. — Jennifer Echols

Do you intend to get any closer or is arm's length the new black? — Jennifer DeLucy

We never want to be a band that keeps our fans at arm's length. This has always been about us and our fans together. We've been on an amazing journey with our fans already, but knowing that the best is still to come is a pretty
exciting feeling for all of us. — Jared Leto

But you might as well bid a man struggling in the water, rest within arm's length of the shore! I must reach it first, and then I'll rest. — Emily Bronte

Pursuing a family history beyond a simple catalogue of names is always evidence of separation, of severing ties at least to the extent of holding one's relations at arm's length. The family member who want to make a private gift of a family tree to a close circle of relatives soon becomes the historian who estranges her antecedents by locating them "in history". I found that family history, which humanizes those who might otherwise be mere faces in a crowd, also defamiliarized those closest to me, giving their lives a larger pattern than they had when they were lived. They became both more and less themselves. I consoled myself by thinking that this is what history does to us too. As we grow older we see not how unique our lives have been, but how representative we were and are; that we are part of the figure in the carpet woven by events, by chance and accident, and by the play of forces more powerful than us. — Alison Light

One particular aspect of Siddhartha's revelation of the outside world has always struck me. Quite possibly he lived his first thirty years without any knowledge of number. How must he have felt, then, to see crowds of people mingling in the streets? Before that day he would not have believed that so many people existed in all the world. And what wonder it must have been to discover flocks of birds, and piles of stones, leaves on trees and blades of grass! To suddenly realise that, his whole life long, he had been kept at arm's length from multiplicity. — Daniel Tammet

He seemed like the type that kept people at arm's length, maybe out of arrogance or maybe from personal choice- either way, I wanted to know him so that those eyes were narrowed and focused solely on me. — R.S. Grey

There were several pictures of Lula with Evan Duffield, a few of them clearly taken by one or other of the pair themselves, holding the camera at arm's length, both of them apparently stoned or drunk. — Robert Galbraith

A noble maiden must convey dignity and chastity without appearing to think about either one. Let common-born girls tussle in the hay with their loutish swains. The future of your family's bloodline and your future lord's bloodline should be your greatest concern. Let no man but one of your family embrace you. Let no man but your betrothed kiss any more than your fingertips; let your betrothed kiss you only on fingers, cheek, or forehead, lest he think you unchaste. And never allow yourself to be alone with a man, to safeguard the precious jewel of you reputation. No well-born maiden ever suffered from keeping her suitors at arm's length. Your chastity will make you a prize to you future husband's house and an honor to your own."
- form Advice to a Young Noblewoman, by Lady Fronia of Whitehall (in Maren) given to Ally on her twelfth birthday by her godmother, Queen Thayet — Tamora Pierce

If your rod weighs six ounces, your reel nine, and your line another ounce or two, it means that you are holding a pound of weight in your casting hand - much of the time at arm's length - all the time you fish. Try carrying a pound of butter around that way for four or five hours. — Ted Trueblood

I definitely tell things at arm's length but that is conscious. No part of me wants everybody to know what's going on. — Laura Marling

Thank God Ben had been there to wake her.
But then, when hadn't he been there? It was she that kept pushing him away. Even as a kid, before his adoration of her had turned into a full-blown crush, she'd kept him at arm's length. — Joe DeRouen

She pushed back to arm's length, returning them to the acceptable distance of strangers - or of a mechanic dancing with her emperor. For the first time, Kai missed a dance step, eyes blinking in surprise. She ignored the guilt scratching at her throat. — Marissa Meyer

A lot of modern comedies are difficult to watch too, because they're so ironic and so detached and so quote-unquote clever. They kind of keep you at arm's length. They can be really funny, but they're not really nourishing. — Ty Burrell

The appeal of magic is that it promises to render objects plastic to the will without one's getting too entangled with them. Treated from arm's length, the object can issue no challenge to the self. According to Freud, this is precisely the condition of the narcissist: he treats objects as props for his fragile ego and has an uncertain grasp of them as having a reality of their own. The clearest contrast to the narcissist that I can think of is the repairman, who must subordinate himself to the broken washing machine, listen to it with patience, notice its symptoms, and then act accordingly. He cannot treat it abstractly; the kind of agency he exhibits is not at all magical. — Matthew B. Crawford

How had he lost the upper hand so quickly? His dick jerked and wept like it had found the happiest place on earth. He was gonna come, but he'd be damned if he did it before Michaels. He dropped his arm from around Michaels' chest and gripped him on his hip, using it to slam that sexy ass back into him while he jerked him fast with the other. He felt Michaels' dick jump in his fist and knew it was time. Good because he was past time. "Fuckin' come," he hissed, snapping his hips forward at the same time he squeezed the head of Michaels' dick. He went down on that length one more time, squeezed hard, twisted his palm and shot his fist back up, wrenching the first spurt of hot come from it. Yesssss. Michaels grunted with the next spurt and worked his ass hard against Judge's aching dick. The sounds he made were delicious and wicked. Sounds he'd never heard a man make. Masculine but erotic as hell. Not ashamed to show Judge how much he'd pleased him. It — A.E. Via

While my lack of enthusiasm kept the bulk of humanity at arm's length, it almost seemed to attract people like Charles. Maybe it's the fact that we misanthropes don't discriminate - the people hater hates everybody equally. Maybe this sad sack egalitarianism makes the Charleses of the world, used as they are to being dismissed out of hand, feel raised to uncommon heights of social desirability when bathed in its jaundiced glow. — Adrian Barnes

She edged away from him, trying to put a greater distance between herself and Creepy McCreeperson. She bent down, careful not to let her eyes leave him, and plucked up a hairbrush from where it had fallen on her floor. She held it at arm's length in front of herself, a stupid weapon feeling better than no weapon at all. At the very least, she could give him style. — Kelly Creagh

Only for a minute. I'll be right back." He plopped the baby in her lap and hopped to his feet. Wren held her at arm's length and frowned. She did not appreciate that, because she immediately began wailing.
"Here," Wren said, thrusting her in my direction. "Take the mutant baby. — Amy Tintera

Proud folk separate themselves from others, judging them ... To criticize others we must hold them from us, at arm's length so to speak. And then before you know where you are you've pushed them away and you're the poorer. — Elizabeth Goudge

In a relationship with God, our most secret places once thickly cloaked and meticulously hidden away now stand before us utterly and entirely exposed. And it may be that this dreaded fear is the single thing that keeps us an arm's length from God, and forever a single step away from His blessings. — Craig D. Lounsbrough

A miser is sometimes a grand personification of fear. He has a fine horror of poverty; and he is not content to keep want from the door, or at arm's length, but he places it, by heaping wealth upon wealth, at a sublime distance! — Charles Lamb

No scientist knows the world merely by holding it at arm's length: if we ever managed to build the objectivist wall between the knower and the known, we could know nothing except the wall itself. Science requires an engagement with the world, a live encounter between the knower and the known. That encounter has moments of distance, but it would not be an encounter without moments of intimacy as well. Knowing of any sort is relational, animated by a desire to come into deeper community with what we know. — Parker J. Palmer

He held it at arm's length, through the bars, his forefinger along the spine. She reached across the barrier and took it. For an instant the tip of her forefinger touched Dr. Lecter's. The touch crackled in his eyes. "Thank you, Clarice." "Thank you, Dr. Lecter." And that is how he remained in Starling's mind. Caught in the instant when he did not mock. Standing in his white cell, arched like a dancer, his hands clasped in front of him and his head slightly to the side. — Thomas Harris

Shane held the jewelry at arm's length, dangling it like a dead rat. No way in hell am I caught dead or alive wearing that. — Rachel Caine

Keep people at arm's length and your feelings to yourself. — Morgan Matson

There are good people, who are in politics - in both parties - who hold this at arm's length, because if they acknowledge it and recognize it, then the moral imperative to make big changes is inescapable. — Al Gore

Had I been too selfish? I had never known my mother, but I knew my life as it had been without her: the ship, the sea, the myths, the maps . . . and, yes, Kashmir. The pain I felt at the thought of losing him - the same pain that kept me at arm's length - gave me a hint of my father's own struggle. — Heidi Heilig

We shouldn't be doing this. We shouldn't have done this. She's my sister."
"Don't say that," Silas murmurs into my hair, voice genuinely pleading. "Please don't ever say that."
"We're hunters," I choke.
"Yes. Of course we are. We're ... we're more ... but ... " He shakes his head and pushes me out to arm's length, lowering his head to look me in the eyes. "I didn't mean for us to hurt her, Rosie, but I wouldn't take any of it back. I couldn't take any of it back - I love you too much. — Jackson Pearce

Then don't give me a deadline. Let me do it in my own way."
"As you have been until now, keeping every man at arm's length, scaring them away with your target shooting?" Gran shook her head. "You cannot fall in love if you do not let a man close. And you will not let a man close unless you have a reason. I know you. If I rescind that ultimatum, you will bury yourself on this estate and never come out. — Sabrina Jeffries

I am, of course, aware that for over two hundred years scholars have laboured to keep history and theology, or history and faith, at arm's length from one another. There is a good intention behind this move: each of these disciplines has its own proper shape and logic, and cannot simply be turned into a branch of the other. — N. T. Wright

A minimum of two voting members must be at arm's length from the thesis (one of these two is usually the external examiner). A maximum of two members can participate remotely (via videoconference or teleconference). — Anonymous

I may hold ye at arm's length ... But I want ye t' be mine an' mine alone. - Nate to Bertie, as they danced. — Lisa Mantchev

She still smiles from time to time, definitely a charming smile, but it's always limited somehow, a smile that never goes beyond the moment. A high, invisible wall surrounds her, holding people at arm's length. — Haruki Murakami

Baby listen to me". He is holding me arm's length away, his eyes searching my face. I'll never leave you. I am yours forever. Losing you is not an option". — Monica James

To suppress the grief, the pain, is to condemn oneself to a living death. Living fully means feeling fully; it means becoming completely one with what you are experiencing and not holding it at arm's length. — Philip Kapleau

Sometimes we are tempted to be that kind of Christian who keeps the Lord's wounds at arm's length. Yet Jesus wants us to touch human misery, to touch the suffering flesh of others. He hopes that we will stop looking for those personal or communal niches which shelter us from the maelstrom of human misfortune and instead enter into the reality of other people's lives and know the power of tenderness. Whenever we do so, our lives become wonderfully complicated and we experience intensely what it is to be a people, to be part of a people. — Pope Francis

I think the [fan] access is complicated, because it brings wonderful things into my life, and it brings really negative things into my life. I just try to keep the negative stuff at arm's length. Laugh at it and walk away. — Kathleen Hanna

He came to the conclusion that you cannot depend on people, and that you can live in peace only if you keep them at arm's length. — Patrick Suskind

That's why I stay to myself, and why I can never have a normal relationship with anyone. I have to keep my friends at arm's length at all costs because if I get too close to anyone - no matter how close I want to be - their lives and mine are at risk."
His fingers skimmed over the length of my arm down to my wrist. "What happens when you find that one person worth breaking the rules for?"
"I have to walk away."
Max stepped closer, and his body was pressing against mine. When I tried to move back, I hit the pylon, thereby preventing any escape. His lips were inches from mine. "What if someone thinks you're worth the risk?"
"I'd say that person is very foolish. I'm not worth dying for."
"You are worth it and I'm as foolish as they come. — Loni Flowers

And just like that she was crying.
I felt a little like That Guy who holds a baby at arm's length because he's afraid it's going to pee on him. — Tessa Gratton

Country music was a part of my life. Now it isn't. We had a good relationship, really, but we wanted each other at arm's length. The people in Nashville didn't want to be responsible for my looks or my actions. But they sure did like the listeners I brought. — K.d. Lang

Justlikethat, the brother dematerialized out of the alley, and Rhage knew better than to think that the pair of them would ever speak of it again. And man, that was so V - the SOB was capable of great kindness and empathy, but always at arm's length, as if he were afraid of getting too entangled in emotion. He was always there for the people he loved, though. Always. "Thank you, my brother," Rhage said to the thin air where the male of worth had stood. "Thank you as ever. — J.R. Ward

His unique skill had always been to absorb the talents and knowledge of others, use what he needed and discard the rest. He never allowed anyone to get to close. He kept the world at arm's length in order to look down on it. — Christopher Fowler

It may be that the best we can hope for when it comes to utopias is that they be held at arm's length and regarded as aesthetic constructions, in which various proportions are neatly worked out, contradictions eliminated, and outside intrusions minimized. They are fictions, artifacts of culture. And we should be wary if they ever become much more. — Edward Rothstein

Marc's hand tightened visibly around Kevin's fingers, his digits going white. Again. Both men clenched their jaws, Kevin in pain, and Marc in an obvious effort to control his temper and keep from breaking Kevin's hand. Off. Why couldn't guys find a more original way to test each other's manly prowess? Arm wrestling might have been more subtle. Or maybe comparing the length of their ... canines. — Rachel Vincent

We started at once to dig our trenches, half of my platoon stepping forward abreast, the men being placed an arm's length apart. After laying their rifles down, barrels pointing to the enemy, a line was drawn behind the row of rifles and parallel to it. — Fritz Kreisler

Readers, like writers, are essentially amoral. Arm's length will never do. We want to get closer. — Stacey D'Erasmo