Back Ache Quotes & Sayings

But then, out of nowhere, Cletus said, "I guess we're going to have to practice."

"Pardon me?"

"Practice kissing. Like what you did with Billy."

I reeled back as my head whipped to the side, our eyes colliding. I couldn't believe my ears. "You think . . . you want me to practice kissing with Billy?"

"No. No. Absolutely not." Again, Cletus's gaze flickered over me. "I mean you and me. I'll help you practice."

The heart flip returned, but this time it was more forceful than before. And it brought some friends - the tummy cartwheel, the throat cinch, and the chest ache.

What. The. Hell . . .? — Penny Reid

[Parker] "We know why I kissed you last night, Maris."
"To frighten me off."
He frowned. "That doesn't even merit an argument. I kissed you because you braved Terry's and showed up everybody in the place, including me. I kissed you because just looking at you made me ache. I kissed you because I'm a rotten son of a bitch and your mouth looked so goddamn kissable. Simply put, I kissed you because I wanted to. It's something I admit and you damn well know. But there is one question that's driving me fucking crazy."
His eyes focused harder on hers and, by doing so, penetrated. "Why did you kiss me back? — Sandra Brown

I took my time walking down to the lake, hoping that somehow the ache in my heart would ease. My joy at the success on the roof had drained away, leaving me hollow, like a well someone could shout down and hear nothing back but echoes. — Leigh Bardugo

Brody felt a shimmy of fear skitter up his back. He was a very poor swimmer, and the prospect of being on top of - let alone in - water above his head give him what his mother used to call the wimwams: sweaty palms, a persistent need to swallow, and a ache in his stomach - essentially the sensation some people feel about flying. In Brody's dreams, deep water was populated by slimy, savage things that rose from below and shredded his flesh, by demons that cackled and moaned. — Peter Benchley

That word. I would have given anything to hear her say it over the summer, to have had the chance to say it back, but now, more than ever, I understand its true power. How it can make you ache as much as it can make you soar. How it shouldn't be said in return unless you mean it as deeply as the speaker. And that's not something you can ever know. Not truly. There's too much blind faith involved and that word is always, always a risk. You'll get hurt. Or the other person will. You'll stomp on someone's heart without meaning to. Loving is foolish and risky, like trying to raise a building in a bog. Emotions don't make strong foundations. — Erin Bowman

Gideon walked briskly and I hurried to keep up. When he stopped abruptly, turned, and dipped me back in a lavish heated kiss on the crowded sidewalk, I was too stunned to do more than hold on. It was a soul-wrenching melding of our mouths, full of passion and sweet spontaneity that made my heart ache. Applause broke out around us. When he straightened me again, I was breathless and dizzy. "What was that?" I gasped. "A prelude. — Sylvia Day

Want to play hangman? asks Theophile, and I ache to tell him that I have enough on my plate playing quadriplegic. But my communication system disqualifies repartee: the keenest rapier grows dull and falls flat when it takes several minutes to thrust it home. By the time you strike, even you no longer understand what had seemed so witty before you started to dictate it, letter by letter. So the rule is to avoid impulsive sallies. It deprives conversation of its sparkle, all those gems you bat back and forth like a ball-and I count this forced lack of humor one of the great drawbacks of my condition. — Jean-Dominique Bauby

Marriage is full of such cut-and-dry arrangements, Rhonda thought,then felt that small ache she sometimes got at the back of her skull-the one that told her she might be alone forever, not a fate that she chose but rather a fate that seemed to have been chosen for her. — Jennifer McMahon

Sometimes, I get this familiar ache in my heart and a sense of stabbing emptiness around my ribcage. I don't even know what brings it on; it's just familiar like a horrible visitor. What brings me to my knees though, is the even bigger heart-hurt when I recognize this ghastly guest is back again. — Ruby Wax

The ache of those words: Let's hear you. It put a plum in my throat to be the person who wanted to play but could not bear to play. To want the microphone but to stand in the back. To know there is a book in you but to never find the nerve to wrestle it out. I was so screwed up on the issue of performance. It's like I didn't want anyone to hear me, but I couldn't shut up. Or rather, I wanted everyone to hear me, but only in the way I wanted to be heard, which was an impossible wish, because nobody ever followed instructions. — Sarah Hepola

There were several recently dug graves in the churchyard, but I found only one that was freshly dug and covered with fresh flowers. I had known Anna only from a few laughing words, from the light in her eyes, a touch of hands and a fleeting kiss, but I felt an ache inside me such as I had not felt since I was a child, since my father's death. I looked up at the church steeple, a dark arrow pointing at the moon and beyond, and tried with all my heart and mind to believe she was up there somewhere in that vast expanse of infinity, up there in Sunday-school Heaven, in Big Joe's happy Heaven. I couldn't bring myself to think it. I knew she was lying in the cold earth at my feet. I knelt down and kissed the earth, then left her there. The moon sailed above me, following behind me, through the trees, lighting my way back to camp. By the time I got there I had no more tears left to cry. The — Michael Morpurgo

Every so often we long to steal to the land of what-might-have-been. But that doesn't soften the ache we feel when reality sets back in. — Stephen Schwartz

I stood there, staring at the closed doors. I reached out and touched the bone handle.
You can fix this, I told myself. You can make this right. But I just stood there, frozen, Mal's words ringing in my ears. I bit down hard on my lip to silence the sob that shook my chest. That's good, I thought as the tears spilled over. That way the servants won't hear. An ache had started between my ribs, a hard, bright shard of pain that lodged beneath my sternum, pressing tight against my heart.
I didn't hear the Darkling move; I only knew when he was beside me. His long fingers brushed the hair back from my neck and rested on the collar. When he kissed my check, his lips were cold. — Leigh Bardugo

When he didn't see an immediate threat, he scowled down at her. "Everything okay?"
Yes ... He was so incredibly sexy in that pose. His hips were pressed intimately against hers, and his arms bulged with his raw strength. It made her ache for the very thing she would die before she gave him.
"No, you're on top of me." She pushed at his chest.
He rolled off her and onto his back with a taunting grin as he wiggled his hips to settle into his new position. "Now, that's not normally the way a woman reacts when I'm on top of her. I usually get a little more enthusiasm and welcome than that. — Sherrilyn Kenyon

Eventually, he found the bed too comfortable for his state of mind, so he lay down on his back, his legs sprawled across the carpet. He anagrammed "yrs forever" until he found one he liked: sorry fever. And then he lay there in his fever of sorry and repeated the now memorized note in his head and wanted do cry, but instead he only felt this aching behind his solar plexus. Crying adds something: crying is you, plus tears. But the feeling Colin had was some horrible opposite of crying. It was you, minus something. He kept thinking about one word - forever - and felt the burning ache just beneath his rib cage.
It hurt like the worst ass-kicking he'd ever gotten. And he'd gotten plenty. — John Green

Fei, you know you can trust me. I'm here for you. I always have been and
always will be. Tell me what's wrong.
You can't keep rescuing me, I say.
Of course not, he agrees. You can rescue yourself - but perhaps I can give
you a hand now and then.
I smile faintly, but there is an ache in my chest as I think back to that longago
day, trapped in the rubble when a beautiful, glittering boy held out his hand
to pull me out. — Richelle Mead

Col,
Here's to all the places we went. And all the places we'll go And here's me, whispering again and again and again and again: iloveyou. yrs forever, K-a-t-h-e-r-i-n-e
Eventually, he found the bed too comfortable for his state of mind, so he lay down on his back, his legs sprawled across the carpet. He anagrammed "yrs forever" until he found one he liked: sorry fever. And then he lay there in his fever of sorry and repeated the now memorized note in his head and wanted to cry, but instead he only felt this aching behind his solar plexus. Crying adds something: crying is you, plus tears. But the feeling Colin had was some horrible opposite of crying. It was you, minus somthing. He kept thinking about one word -forever-and felt the burning ache just beneath his rib cage.
It hurt like the worst ass-kicking- he'd ever gotten. And he'd gotten plenty."
1.Greek: "I have found it."
2.More on that later. — John Green

Because there are times when the anger bleeds away until it's nothing but a raw ache in the pit of my stomach and I see the world and wonder about its people and what it's become and I think about hope and maybe and possibly and possibility and potential. I think about glasses half full and glasses to see the world clearly. I think about sacrifice. And compromise. I think about what will happen if no one fights back. I think about a world where no one stands up to injustice. And I wonder if maybe everyone here is right. If maybe it's time to fight. — Tahereh Mafi

She pushed him back onto the leafy ground, sprawling on his chest without breaking their kiss. His hands were in her hair, holding her mouth against his. Breathing wasn't necessary. All she needed was him. If only she could freeze time so they never had to be apart again. Piper's hands tightened on the ropes attached to the spines on Tenryu's shoulders. She was crouched tight to his back, tension making her whole body ache as she tried to ignore the dizzying vertigo of the drop behind her. — Annette Marie

Age is a terrible thief. Just when you're getting the hang of life, it knocks your legs out from under you and stoops your back. It makes you ache and muddies your head and silently spreads cancer throughout your spouse. — Sara Gruen

And the flavor of Pippa's kiss
bittersweet and strange
stayed with me all the way back uptown, swaying and sleepy as I sailed home on the bus, melting with sorrow and loveliness, a starry ache that lifted me up above the windswept city like a kite: my head in the rainclouds, my heart in the sky. — Donna Tartt

And of course anyone who could see him here now, with his fever and his sleeping bags, his eyephones and his cellular data port and his bottle of cooling piss, would think he was crazy too. But he isn't. He knows he isn't, in spite of everything. He has the syndrome now, the thing that came after every test subject from that Gainesville orphanage, but he isn't crazy. Just obsessed. And the obsession has its own shape in his head, its own texture, its own weight. He knows it from himself, can differentiate, so he goes back to it whenever he needs to and checks on it. Monitors it. Makes sure it still isn't him. It reminds him of having a sore tooth, or the way he felt once when he was in love and didn't want to be. How his tongue always found the tooth, or how he'd always find that ache, that absence in the shape of the beloved. But — William Gibson

The hand on my hair moved to my back, and I realized someone was singing softly. The voice was familiar, and something about it made my chest ache. Well, that was to be expected. Angels' songs would be awfully poignant.
"'I was working as a waitress in a cocktail bar, when I met you ... '" the voice crooned.
I frowned. Was that really an appropriate song for the Heavenly Host to be
— Rachel Hawkins

None of them were easy or soft or simple. They were like me, nursing hurts and hidden wounds, all broken in different ways. We didn't quite fit together. We had edges so jagged we cut each other sometimes, but as I curled up on my side, the warmth of the fire at my back, I felt a rush of gratitude so sweet it made my throat ache. Fear came with it. Keeping them close was a luxury I would pay for. Now I had more to lose. — Leigh Bardugo

Elijah hiccupped and gave her a smile back. It was probably wind but that didn't matter. 'You are absolutely beautiful.' She kissed his head and breathed in the distinctive baby-scent. It was the smell of life and love and it made her ache. — Emma Jackson

The kiss happened because they couldn't help it, and it was so sweet and so right that Damen felt a kind of ache. He pulled back. The realities of the outside world seemed to press at him. "I"-he couldn't say it.
"No. Listen to me." He felt Laurent's hand firm on the back of his neck. "I'm not going to let my uncle hurt you." Laurent's blue gaze was calm and steady, as if he had mad a decision and wanted Damen to know it. "It's what I came here last night to say. I'm going to take care of it."
"Promise me," Damen heard himself say. "Promise me we won't let him-"
"I promise. — C.S. Pacat

I was dead. That was really the only explanation I had for the sensation that I was lying in a comfy bed, cool, clean-smelling sheets pulled up to my chin, and a soft hand stroking my hair.
That was nice. Being dead seemed pretty sweet, all things considered. Especially if ti meant I got to nap for all eternity. I snuggled deeper into the covers. The hand on my hair moved to my back, and I realized someone was singing softly. The voice was familiar, and something about it made my chest ache. Well, that was to be expected. Angels' songs would be awfully poignant.
"'I was working as a waitress in a cocktail bar, when I met you ... '" the voice crooned.
I frowned. Was that really an appropriate song for the Heavenly Host to be-
Realization crashed into me. "Mom! — Rachel Hawkins

Look up for the stars. Where light meets earth, the land rolls back to ache of verges but do not with it turn. — Erin Moure

My back crawls with icy fear; it takes all my will not to duck behind statues and into doorways every time somebody passes me. The only thing that holds me to my steady, purposeful stride is the knowledge that if I run, I will look guilty, and if I look guilty, I will be caught, and if I am caught, I will be punished, and if I am punished, Mother will know and she can't know, she can't, she can't.

My cheeks ache. I realize I'm smiling. — Rosamund Hodge

And how is your head? Better?" he asked.
"Very much. Sometimes it hurts." Right now it was throbbing. "But every day I am much improved."
"Where did you hit it? Are you bruised?"
I put a hand to the back of my head, a little to the left, where I had landed with such jarring force. "Here," I said. "It's still a little tender."
And leaning forward, he touched my hair right where I had just laid my hand. Such was he glamour that attended him that I expected the ache to instantly melt away, healed by his royal caress. But in fact, I felt a sudden leap in my heart that made the pain briefly more intense. — Sharon Shinn

For really it was the refinement of civilized cruelty, this spick, span, and ingenious affair of shining leather and gleaming steel, which hoisted you and tilted you and fitted reassuringly into the small of your back and cupped your head tenderly between padded cushions. It ensured for you a more complete muscular relaxation than any armchair that you could buy for your own home: but it left your tormented nerves without even the solace of a counter-irritant. In the old days the victim's attention had at least been distracted by an ache in the back, a crick in the neck, pins and needles in the legs, and the uneasy tickling of plush under the palm. But now, too efficiently suspended between heaven and earth, you were at liberty to concentrate on hell. — Jan Struther

I'm a fool. I expect too much, then I'm angry because nothing ever works out the way I want. When I was young and full of hopes and aspirations, I didn't know I would get hurt so often. I think I'll get tough and won't ache again, then my fragile shell shatters, and again, symbolically, my blood is spilled with the tears I shed. I pull myself back together again, go on, convince myself there is a reason for everything, and at some point in my life it will be disclosed. And when I have what I want, I hope to god it stays long enough to let me know I have it, and it wont hurt when it goes, for I don't expect it to stay, not now. I'm like a doughnut, always being punch out in the middle, and constantly I go around searching for the missing piece, and on and on it goes, never ending, only beginning ... — V.C. Andrews

Home was merely a dull ache in the back of his memory. A tiredness in his eyes. — Orson Scott Card

I can still smell you on my pillow. I can still see you standing in my room, the light caressing your smooth legs, your dark hair cascading over your shoulders, and your gorgeous mouth smiling so effortlessly. I miss you. I ache for you, and I'm bordering on crazy without you. Come back to me. — Renee Carlino

Why, I ... I still like you." Nerves fluttered in her chest, but she kept her tone light. "Do you like me?"
A few moments passed in silence. She would have counted them in heartbeats, but her foolish heart had become a most unreliable timepiece. It gave three pounding beats in a flurry, then none at all.
Just when she'd begun to despair, he turned his head, catching her in a passionate, openmouthed kiss. He put both arms around her, fisting his hands in the fabric of her dress, lifting her up and against his chest. So that her body recalled every inch of his, every second of their blissful lovemaking. The now-familiar ache returned - that sweet, hollow pang of desire that only deepened as his tongue flickered over hers. In a matter of seconds, he had her gasping. Needing. Damp.
Then he set her back on her toes. Pressed his brow to hers and released a deep, resonant sigh. And just before turning to leave, he spoke a single word.
He said, "No. — Tessa Dare

He hadn't been this nervous since the last disastrous night at the improv, and he firmly told himself to calm down as he blotted at the tablecloth, glancing upwards to see Emma wriggling out of her summer jacket, pushing her shoulders back and her chest forward in that way that women do without realising the ache they cause. — David Nicholls

When he died, I went about like a ragged crow telling strangers, "My father died, my father died." My indiscretion embarrassed me, but I could not help it. Without my father on his Delhi rooftop, why was I here? Without him there, why should I go back? Without that ache between us, what was I made of? — Kiran Desai

Come on Beautiful," he called softly. "Come back to me. Don't leave me like this." The ache in his beautiful voice tugged hard in her chest. But the fear said if she moved, if she came out, she would find it was all just a dream. — Lucian Bane

Anyone? On Snow's visit before the Victory Tour, he challenged me to erase any doubts of my love for Peeta. "Convince me," Snow said. It seems, under that hot pink sky with Peeta's life in limbo, I finally did. And In doing so, I gave him the weapon he needed to break me. — Suzanne Collins

The man drew his foot back and kicked Mark in the ribs. Pain exploded in his side and he cried out, unable to help himself. The man kicked him again, this time in the back, right in the kidney. A deep ache washed through Mark, and tears stung his eyes as he cried out even louder. Alec protested. "Stop it, you sorry son of a - " His words were cut off when one of his captors reached down and punched him in the face. "Why are you doing this?" Mark yelled. "We're not demons! You people have lost your minds!" Another kick pierced him in the ribs, the pain unbearable. He balled up, wrapped his arms around himself. Prepared for the continued onslaught, knowing he had no chance of escape. "Stop." The word rumbled through the air from the other side of the fire, the deep, bellowing voice of a man. The men beating Mark and Alec immediately jumped back from them and knelt down, their faces lowered. — James Dashner

Have you ever noticed that people sometimes quit a job soon after returning from a vacation? We all have a higher tolerance for frustrating or unhealthy situations in our lives when they are constant, but when we get a little time away and then come back, that taste of freedom changes our perspective. What had been a dull ache turns into a sharp pain and becomes unbearable. — Lundy Bancroft

My eldest daughter, Suldana, is in love with another woman. She is eighteen and she spends her days working at our kiosk selling milk and eggs, and at night she sneaks out and goes down to the beach to see her lover. She crawls back into bed at dawn, smelling of sea and salt and perfume. Suldana is beautiful and she wraps this beauty around herself like a shawl of stars. When she smiles her dimples deepen and you can't help but be charmed. When she walks down the street men stare and whistle and ache. But they cannot have her. Every day marriage proposals arrive with offers of high dowries but I wave them away. We never talk about these things like mothers and daughters should; but I respect her privacy and I allow her to live. — Diriye Osman

I never told you
How I longed to kiss away your every bruise
until there was no evidence
No ghosts of your own suffering
To put your pieces back together
Seal the cracks
Vanish them like they never were
And never, ever
Leave a scar"

"I never told you
I would take your pain if I could
I would drink it down
And take my comfort
In making you ache a little less
For a little while
Did I?
I'll never know because I never told you that I loved you — Emma Scott

If you take this life to be simply what old religious folks pretend (I mean the effete, gone to seed in a drought, mere human galls stung by the devil once), then all your joy and serenity is reduced to grinning and bearing it. The fact is, you have got to take the world on your shoulders like Atlas, and "put along" with it. You will do this for an idea's sake, and your success will be in proportion to your devotion to ideas. It may make your back ache occasionally, but you will have the satisfaction of hanging it or twirling it to suit yourself. — Henry David Thoreau

I miss him with every breathe I take. My muscles ache for him. My body craves him. My heart beats for him. I want him back. — Beckie Stevenson

I bunch his hair between my fingers and tug his head up. "Get on your back." "Not done with you," he mumbles. "Trust me." His eyes gleam as he shifts onto his side. Then he grins and rolls over, propping his hands behind his head and awaiting my next move. The ache between my legs is unbearable, making it difficult to move. I order my shaky limbs to cooperate, and climb onto his muscular body, twisting around so that my butt is wiggling in his face and his massive erection is at eye level with me. "Fuck," he gasps. "Yeah, babe, that's what I like to see. — Sarina Bowen

The kiss, dear maid ! thy lip has left

Shall never part from mine,

Till happier hours restore the gift

Untainted back to thine.


Thy parting glance, which fondly beams,

An equal love may see:

The tear that from thine eyelid streams

Can weep no change in me.


I ask no pledge to make me blest

In gazing when alone;

Nor one memorial for a breast,

Whose thoughts are all thine own.


Nor need I write --- to tell the tale

My pen were doubly weak:

Oh ! what can idle words avail,

Unless the heart could speak ?


By day or night, in weal or woe,

That heart, no longer free,

Must bear the love it cannot show,

And silent ache for thee. — George Gordon Byron

In my own single bed, I know. I know its width and length in hand spans and kicks and there is no spot so far from my body that it cannot feel the heat of my blood. A double bed is a dare, a question. A single bed is complete with just me in it. A double bed is a vacant promise. A threatening Miss Havisham. The thought of having one in my house makes my lower back ache. I wouldn't know how to lie in it. — Toni Jordan

I made a conscious effort to name my needs and desires. To carefully listen to and accurately identify what I felt. Hunger, exhaustion, cold, lower-back ache, thirst. The ephemeral pangs: wistfulness and loneliness. Rest fixed most things. Sleep was my sweet reward. I treated bedtime as both incentive and sacrament. — Aspen Matis

He's kissing me, quick desperate kisses, like I'm something he needs to live; and I'm kissing him back, crazy with the ache I feel for him, trying to kiss him better, trying to fix him. I'm touching his face, feeling the roughness of his beard, the wet of his tears, feeling the tremors passing through his body, hearing his ragged breathing. And each kiss is a failure. A failed attempt to escape from all that's happening. And I only know this when he slows, drawing it out, letting me taste regret, letting things linger. He pulls away, and I'm saying "Don't, don't, don't", trying to bring him back, kissing his face. But I've lost him. — Kirsty Eagar

[Roger] "Do you know how amazingly beautiful you are to me?"
"As beautiful as you are to me." She slid her gaze down then back up with one of those secret smiles that played havoc with a man's mind.
He shook his head. "Nah, I couldn't be, because you'd be insane with your need to just watch me. You'd ache every moment to just touch me. Your nights would be consumed with dreams of me and you'd live every moment just to love me. — Jennifer St. Giles

Mason knew what it was like to say things you didn't mean, to just have them vomit out, and then feel that crushing ache when you realized you could never pull them back. — Dan Krokos

He remained where he was, looking unsure of what to do. His eyes were dark pools of emotion, giving me the impression he was holding back tears. It made my heart ache for him. — Marita A. Hansen

I looked at him, and I felt so sad, because this thought occurred to me: 'I will never look at you the same way again. I'll never be that girl again. The girl who comes running back every time you push her away, the girl who loves you anyway.'
I couldn't even be mad at him, because this was who he was. This was who he'd
always been. He'd never lied about that. He gave and then he took away. I felt it in the pit of my stomach, the familiar ache, that lost, regretful feeling only he could give me. I never wanted to feel it again. Never, ever. — Jenny Han

There's a truth you learn early on in the activism scene . . . most protests are lost before they even start. We hope for change. Beg for it. But even when we know it won't come, still we stand with our signs and say our chants. Still we show up. Because to lie down and say nothing means the cause dies with us, and a little piece of us with it. So we chant. And we chant. And we say the same words again and again and again. Louder and louder. We do it to put words to the ache we feel in our hearts. And there's this small, innocent hope somewhere in the back of our minds that even if there's no point, even if it's a done deal . . . we hope that if we say something enough times, people will listen. Or that if we say it enough, it will finally make sense. — Cora Carmack

Gradually, without my noticing, my grief has changed shape; from a raw, jagged pain that won't be silenced to a dull, rounded ache I'm able to lock away at the back of my mind. — Clare Mackintosh

That's the only real life, the only thing that makes you know you're alive - the backward ache. That's what music is. The trouble - for me - is that at some stage I realized those miracles, those aches, they have a history. They're not private. The music's always about what someone's lost. That's what you hear, when it's good: the worlds people lost, the ones they want back. And once you hear it that way, you can't avoid it - that it's somehow about justice. — Adam Haslett

He shifted over without comment, lifting the blankets, and I scrambled into the warm sheets beside him. He smelled like soap and sleep and bare skin. He smelled familiar. Not the deja vu familiar of Guy or Mel. Familiar like ... the ache in your chest of homesickness, of longing for harbor after weeks of rough seas or craving a fire's warmth after snow
or wanting back something you should never have given away. — Josh Lanyon

You don't feel your wounds then, or the ache in your back from the weight of the armor, or the sweat running down into your eyes. You stop feeling, you stop thinking, you stop being you, there is only the fight, the foe, this man and then the next and the next and the next, and you know they are afraid and tired but you're not, you're alive, and death is all around you but their swords move so slowly, you can dance through them laughing. Battle fever. — George R R Martin

I'll always have something that not even time can take away. Pain ... because when I've forgotten everything else, I'll feel that ache ... that tightness in my throat ... that heaviness in my chest ... and know that I loved a woman once and she loved me back. It's proof that I existed and so did she. — Samantha Sotto

I don't know what's going to happen," she said. "No one ever does. And, look, you don't have to do this alone," he said. "I can feel something in the back of my mind. It wants something I don't understand. It's so big." Reflexively, he kissed the back of her hand. There was an ache starting deep in his belly. A sense of illness. A moment's nausea. The first pangs of his transformation into Eros. "Don't worry," he said. "We're gonna be fine. — James S.A. Corey

It was traumatic but exhilarating to feel what my father felt. I remember the ache of the separation from the people I loved. I would never go back to that time. Yet the things I learned benefited my life. — Nate Saint

Oz suddenly looked very guilty. "About that. Um, that's because I marked you last night."
My smile froze on my cheeks, making my face ache. "What?"
He suddenly found the half-eaten pancakes on his plate fascinating. "While you were sleeping on the couch, I rolled you over and ... "
The blood left my face. "What exactly does marking someone entail?"
"Nothing so bad. I just bit your back."
"You bit me?"
"Yeah. I injected some venom into your bloodstream that would make you feel better around me. I like holding your hand but I didn't think it was very practical."
I lifted my shirt, pulled down my pants, and almost fell over. My lower back looked ... it looked ... "You gave me a festering tramp stamp?" I shrieked.
"You don't think it's cute? — Katherine Pine

The battle fever. He had never thought to experience it himself, though Jamie had told him of it often enough. How time seemed to blur and slow and evenstop, how the past and the future vanished until there was nothing but the instant, how fear fled, and thought fled, and even you body. "You don't feel your wounds then, or the ache in your back from the weight of the armor, or the sweat running down into your eyes. You stop feeling you stop thinking, you stop being you, there is only the fight , the foe, this man and then the next and the next and the next, and you know they are afraid and tired but you're not, you're alive, and death is all around you but their swords move so slowly, you can dance through them laughing." Battle fever. I am half a man and drunk with slaughter, let them kill me if they can! — George R R Martin

The night was shadows and wind and the smell of a storm on the way, a night for crying until the tears were gone but the ache was left. A night for imagining that you could step out onto the windowsill and say hello to the dark, say I am sad and have the wind say I know. You could say I am alive and the trees would sigh back We are too. You could whisper I am alone and everything ends and the stars in the sky would answer We understand. Or maybe it's ghosts telling you all these things, saying We know, we're alone too, we understand how everything and nothing ends. — Ally Condie

That's when I notice Cheryl and Mickey cuddled up on the couch. She's leaning on his shoulder, his arm around her, her leg across his lap. Cheryl throws glances at Kerry that say, "Look at me!" while Kerry shoots a "You go, girl!" smirk right back. I think of CK, how he and I often sat like that. Not because we were seconds from making out or wanted to look like a couple, but just out of a deep, platonic connection. My heart hits a higher notch on the ache-o-meter, my teeth sear into my bottom lip, and then something inside me snaps as cleanly as a crayon. — Kea Alwang

An English teacher at school once said to her, 'Alice, one thing I hope you never find out is that a broken heart hurts physically.' Nothing she has ever experienced has prepared her for the pain of this. Most of the time her heart feels as though it's waterlogged and her ribcage, her arms, her back, her temples, her legs all ache in a dull, persistent way: but at times like this the incredulity and the appalling irreversibility of what has happened cripple her with a pain so bad she often doesn't speak for days. — Maggie O'Farrell

I ache for silence - to step back into that stillness which birthed us all. To dissolve into No-thingness and discover what remains. — Martin Cosgrove

If you paint a man leaning over your own back must ache — N. C. Wyeth

Mom?" he whispered. "Dad?"
They just looked at him, smiling. And slowly, Harry looked into the faces of the other people in the mirror, and saw other pairs of green eyes like his, other noses like his, even a little old man who looked as though he had Harry's knobbly knees - Harry was looking at his family, for the first time in his life.
The Potters smiled and waved at Harry and he stared hungrily back at them, his hands pressed flat against the glass as though he was hoping to fall right through it and reach them. He had a powerful kind of ache inside him, half joy, half terrible sadness. — J.K. Rowling

She is the elephant's eyebrows," Evie whispered appreciatively. "Those jewels! How her neck must ache."
"That's why Bayer makes aspirin," Mabel whispered back, and Evie smiled, knowing that even a socialist wasn't immune to the dazzle of a movie star. — Libba Bray

There was an ache in his heart like the farewell to a dear woman; there was a vague sorrow in him like the despair of autumn. He walked past the restaurants he used to smell with interest, and no appetite was aroused in him. He walked by Madam Zuca's great establishment, and exchanged no obscene jests with the girls in the windows. Back to the wharf he went. He leaned over the rail and looked into the deep, deep water. Do you know, Danny, how the wine of your life is pouring into the fruit jars of the gods? Do you see the procession of your days in the oily water among the piles? He remained motionless, staring down. — John Steinbeck

I hold the door to the post office open for a weathered man in a wheelchair. He is gracious, thanking me. One leg is missing, and just as I notice this, I see the sticker on the back of his chair: VIETNAM VETS.

My thoughts jumble as an ache brews in my heart. I think of war and how it destroys, divides, and damages. I see the faces of those in the refugee camp and those who found their names on The List and are now in America. I want to tell this wounded soldier that I am sorry for his loss and for the abandonment he may have felt upon his return. I want to say other things, but right now I'm just honored to hold the door for him. — Alice J. Wisler

I ache for the body of Christ in our generation to learn how to tarry before God and expectantly wait for Him to speak. I'm desperate to learn it for myself. If we do, what revelation we would receive! We cannot have a drive-thru relationship with God and expect to behold His glory. Like the children of Israel, much of the body of Christ still stands back and watches those they consider truly anointed draw near to God's glory. Dear One, you are anointed! Never settle for a secondhand relationship. Never be satisfied with distant glory. — Beth Moore

I missed my one true friend, my mother. She and I were close in a way I don't think many other mothers and daughters were. I slept beside her every night of my childhood: so near to her back, I could probably sketch the constellation of moles and freckles on her skin there. When I was a very little girl, every morning I would wake before her and arrange myself so that when she woke, we were eye-to-eye. I miss her, with a never-ending ache that I did not think was possible, that crowds out any other feeling and certainly all reason, and any good sense. — Kaitlyn Greenidge

At about this point I began to feel peculiar. I looked round me at all the rows of rapt little heads with the same silver glow on them at the front and the same black shadow on them at the back, and they looked like nothing more or less than a lot of stupid moon-brains. I felt in terrible danger of puking. I didn't know whether it was the awful movie giving me a stomach-ache or all that caviar I had eaten. — Sylvia Plath

Just when you're getting the hang of life, it knocks your legs out from under you and stoops your back. It makes you ache and muddies your head ... — Sara Gruen

The grief changes over time. You keep busy. Sometimes your mind even forgets the pain for a little while. But when someone you love dies, there will always be a hurt inside you, like a splinter, and when you give yourself over to thinking on it, the ache comes back. — Colleen Houck

I love you, O'Reilly. When are you going to get that through your thick Aussie skull?"
He laughed softly, and she tilted back her head to look up at him wonderingly, "What's so funny?"
He put his hands on her shoulders and rubbed the tight muscles of her neck. "Do you realize you've never used my first name?" he said. "It's Patrick, you know."
He watched her lips curl into a smile that made his chest ache. "You've always been O'Reilly to me."
"Huh," he grunted. "Except when you're mad. Then I become Mister O'Reilly. — Candice Proctor

You are alone,
So alone,
You speak back to silence.
People call it loneliness,
You call it solitude,
Different words,
Meaning the same pain. — Jenim Dibie

Sidi, I ache inside. I yearn to fly away, to feel free in the light, in the dark. I don't ever want to come back. — Raja Alem

My back hurts. My legs ache. I'm only four! — Bill Murray

If man merely sat back and thought about his impending termination, and his terrifying insignificance and aloneness in the cosmos, he would surely go mad, or succumb to a numbing sense of futility. Why, he might ask himself, should he bother to write a great symphony, or strive to make a living, or even to love another, when he is no more than a momentary microbe on a dust mote whirling through the unimaginable immensity of space? Those of us who are forced by their own sensibilities to view their lives in this perspective - who recognize that there is no purpose they can comprehend and that amidst a countless myriad of stars their existence goes unknown and unchronicled - can fall prey all too easily to the ultimate anomie. The world's religions, for all their parochialism, did supply a kind of consolation for this great ache. — Stanley Kubrick

Good God, she really did walk in circles. A pang of tenderness centered in Gabriel's chest like an ache.

He wanted all her circles to lead back to him. — Lisa Kleypas

Watching this little scene makes my throat ache. It seems an apt metaphor for the role most men play--even in egalitarian modern marriages--as quasi-outsiders in their own families. Of course, men have always contributed importantly to the family, and our wives and children would miss us if we were gone. But there's also a tacit understanding that we are the expendable ones: if something evil comes through the front door, everyone knows whose job it is to die guarding the family's retreat out the back. Men are a little on the periphery of family life, cut off from the biologically precious mother and children as though by an invisible pane of glass. — Jonathan Gottschall

sat, gliding slowly back and forth in the comfort of my favorite rocking chair. I had lulled babies to sleep and dreamed of their bright futures in this chair, and now I had to contemplate what it would be like to lose one. All the memories of years filled by the spirit of that beautiful boy swam in my mind and left my heart to ache like arms that clutched a weighty treasure for a long time. How could I let go of this son who brought so much joy into our lives and into our home? What would our family be like without the child who made everything run smoothly just by his peaceful presence — Laura Sobiech

Sometimes the hardest goodbyes are the ones never said, the ones that always just hang there in the back of the mind like a dark cloud. There's so much to say but no one to say it to because the person you want most to hear it is already gone. That's how he felt. Sorrow, regret, a wound so deep it didn't even bleed. Like a puncture wound, an ache that didn't heal but just hurt. He didn't know if he wanted it to heal. That'd be too much like a final goodbye. — Virginia Brown

Do ye really love him, Trulie? Does yer love for him make yer throat ache with tears if ye canna be near him? Do ye pine to hear the rumble of his deep voice whisper yer name in the darkness?"
Granny stomped forward another step. Her voice grew shriller with every word. "Say it, Trulie. Tell me the truth. If ye thought ye'd ne'er see Dan again, would ye rather die than live a day without him? Tell me. Tell me Dan is the other half of yer soul and I will ne'er talk about jumping back again. — Maeve Greyson

It gets lighter." I awnsered with the truth and regretted the glib taste on my tounge. "I mean, it never goes away. The feelings. They never stop, but it gets...I don't know...livable, I guess. Like when you break your leg, at first it's excruciating and you think your going to die. But eventually after you've had time to heal, it kind of fades into this constant, dull ache." A faint breeze whistled through the leaves of the trees and plants surrounding us and tickled the back of my neck like cold fingers. "You never walk the same again, but eventually you do walk. — Lisa Roecker

The stones lay lumpish and cold under my bare feet. I thought longingly of the black shoes on the beach. A wave drew back, like a hand, then advanced and touched my foot.
The drench seemed to come off the sea floor itself,where blind white fish ferried themselves by their own light through the great polar cold. I saw sharks' teeth and whales' earbones littered about down like gravestone.
I waited, as if the sea could make my decision for me.
A second wave collapsed over my feet, lipped with white froth, and the chill gripped my ankles with a mortal ache.
My flesh winched, in cowardice, from such a death. — Sylvia Plath

I know you think I've behaved like a cad, so I'm coming clean. I love you, Tess. I have for a long time. I ache for you. Every morning I wake up, wishing you were in my arms. Back when Cassie was at her mom's, I was relieved to be thinking about you and not her so much anymore, until I realized it meant that I was in love with you. I fell for you that first morning, when I saw you coming out of the garage with Dave. I couldn't tell you the other day, but I wanted you to know." He leaned in and kissed her cheek. "Maybe I have been protecting myself, but mostly, I wanted to protect you. — Lilly Christine

A question: when is a bed not a bed? When it is angled lie-flat. My back hurts, my legs ache and my clothes are all rumpled - and all because the airline, which claimed to have a bed, actually offered up a torture machine which I prefer to call a slide. — Richard Quest

You can't define the ache that's in George's voice. It's just something inherently him. It doesn't need definition. It doesn't need clarification. It doesn't need a lot of things. You just sit back and appreciate it. It's just greatness. — Vince Gill

I kiss her again just to keep my mouth from admitting that it was. The beginning of the end. The very start of the saddest goodbye in history. Because after tonight, she'll walk away from me and go back to him, holding a piece of me in the palm of her hand. And whenever I look up at the sky at night, wondering where she is, if she's happy, if Evan laughs at her corny jokes or smiles whenever she does, that empty space left behind within me will ache with remembrance. Because her light once filled it. She filled me in a way that nobody on this Earth could. And I'll never feel whole again. — S.L. Jennings

This morning, on the avenue, my death was walking next to me, under the plane-trees. I came back home, lied on the bed. My death looked tired as much as I was. A few minuts later, I woke up, made a coffee and opened a poems book. Some light came out from the book. I think it was at this moment that my death left the appartment, crossing the door, without noise. It was not her time, and perhaps she was depressed by the beauty of a few words, yes, perhaps the death doesn't support books and prefers the head ache maker television. — Christian Bobin

The storm was borne on greenish winds. It began as a coppery taste in the back of one's mouth, a metallic ache that amplified as the clouds darkened and advanced, and when it struck, it was with the flat hand of a senseless fury. — Eleanor Catton

Your young, sitting back thinking about your future, you feel heavily in your heart your desire to create your dream; no matter the tasks set before you. You hold that feeling; close to you, and you age. Your told to grow up, get a job and become successful in ways that will make someone else proud, whilst ignoring the ache inside yourself. Truth is, we're all raised to conform; damn it our parents were raised to conform, but does that mean you have to, too? No, than unravel that long lost dream inside yourself and start to create a life from it, you'll walk alone for a while, you will break down every comfort zone you've ever known; slowly transforming into a being without one, and you know what..? even if it's going to be hard, possibly some of the greatest hurdles of your time; one thing will feel certain- you'll never have felt so empowered in all your life. — Nikki Rowe

Pulling my hand away, he rose, slanting his head to kiss me deeply as he pushed me onto my back, with his weight draped over me. "I've never had anything that was my own," he said against my mouth. "Nothing that was ever for just me and no one else. I've never been anyone's first." He kissed me and then lifted his head. I stared into his eyes. "I've never been anyone's only."
That made my heart ache for him as I raised my hand, pressing my palm against his cheek. "You're my first," I whispered. "You're ... you're my only."
His lips parted. "You can't say that and not mean it."
I held his gaze as my chest swelled. "I mean it."
He smoothed his thumb over my lip. "I really am a lucky son of a bitch. — Jennifer L. Armentrout

The hurt means you're alive. It means your body is reacting and willing to fight - both to fight back and fight through it. So rather than running from grief's harsh reality, you may find that in letting it groan and pierce and ache and cry, you begin to exhaust some of its staying power. You expose its secret hiding places. You force it into the open air where it can be more easily outlined and dealt with. — Frank Page