Barest Quotes & Sayings

He was good at that. Good at robbing the world of light, even in its barest measure. — Renee Ahdieh

A good relationship has a pattern like a dance and is built on some of the same rules. The partners
do not need to hold on tightly, because they move confidently in the same pattern, intricate but gay
and swift and free, like a country dance of Mozart's. To touch heavily would be to arrest the pattern
and freeze the movement, to check the endlessly changing beauty of its unfolding. There is no place
here for the possessive clutch, the clinging arm, the heavy hand; only the barest touch in passing. Now
arm in arm, now face to face, now back to back - it does not matter which. Because they know they
are partners moving to the same rhythm, creating a pattern together, and being invisibly nourished by
it. — Anne Morrow Lindbergh

I can ruthlessly press my imagination out beyond its very edges, and even in such a remote place I have not begun to touch the barest periphery of God's imagination. — Craig D. Lounsbrough

For, as when the red-cheeked, dancing girls, April and May, trip home to the wintry, misanthropic woods; even the barest, ruggedest, most thunder-cloven old oak will at least send forth some few green sprouts to welcome such glad-hearted visitants. — Herman Melville

Nothing is more humbling than to look with a strong magnifying glass at an insect so tiny that the naked eye sees only the barest speck and to discover that nevertheless it is sculpted and articulated and striped with the same care and imagination as a zebra. Apparently it does not occur to nature whether or not a creature is within our range of vision, and the suspicion arises that even the zebra was not designed for our benefit. — Rudolf Arnheim

A clock with no hands. "Freedom!" is the fatuous jingle of our civilization, but only those deprived of it have the barest inkling re: what the stuff actually is. A — David Mitchell

Any other impossible feats you'd like us to accomplish?"
The barest smile flickered over Kaz's lips, "I'll make you a list. — Leigh Bardugo

This is a story, told the way you say stories should be told: Somebody grew up, fell in love, and spent a winter with her lover in the country. This, of course, is the barest outline, and futile to discuss. It's as pointless as throwing birdseed on the ground while snow still falls fast. Who expects small things to survive when even the largest get lost? People forget years and remember moments. Seconds and symbols are left to sum things up: the black shroud over the pool. Love, in its shortest form becomes a word. — Ann Beattie

Outside the station of Santa Maria Novella Isabella has to stand aside while a line of prisoners are marched into the terminus by armed Fascist guards. They pass within touching distance of her, carrying bags and bundles. There are old people and some children too. They all seem swamped by their clothes, disembodied by them somehow. Then she catches the eye of Ezra, a young Jewish man who once worked in the arts material shop where she buys most of her pigments and brushes. He is almost at the back of the line. The veins are high and urgent on his hand. His trousers are held up with a dirty piece of string. His cobalt blue eyes hold hers for the barest beat of a moment but some essence of his being conveys itself to her and her blood quickens in sympathy for him. She has the feeling of looking into the eyes of a ghost. — Glenn Haybittle

Leaves like rusty tin
for the desolate mind that has seen the end-
the barest glimmerings.
Leaves aswirl with gulls
made wild by winter. — Giorgos Seferis

She'd already memorized the short Psalm and was hungry for more. Indeed, each word seemed woven into her soul the way the weaver wove his wares, taking the barest threads of her faith and making something beautiful and enduring as fine cloth deep inside her. — Laura Frantz

They are more real than the books on the shelves, books that are sketched with the barest hint of a line here and there, fading in places to a ghostly nothingness. Why recall the picture now, you must be wondering. The reason I remember it so well is that it seems to be an image of the way I have lived my own life. I have closed my study door on the world and shut myself away with people of my imagination. — Diane Setterfield

Given the fact that he'd had only the barest of plans upon arriving in Arendelle, the end result was something of a miracle. True, he'd had to lie, manipulate, and con his way to this point, but that was just part of the game. And it turned out he played the game very, very well. — Walt Disney Company

Let me get this straight," Nina said. "You haven't kissed me because the setting isn't suitably romantic?"
"This isn't about romance . A proper kiss, a proper courtship. There's a way these things should be done."
"For proper thieves?" The corners of her beautiful mouth curled and for a moment he was afraid she would laugh at him, but she simply shook her head and drew even nearer. Her body was the barest breath from his now. The need to close that scrap of distance was maddening.
"The first day you showed up at my house for this proper courtship, I would have cornered you in the pantry," she said. — Leigh Bardugo

Bones glanced behind me, with just the barest inclination of his head. I walked away from him, muttering, "Don't worry, you don't need to have Mencheres break out the invisible straitjacket again. I haven't gone crazy. I just didn't understand until now."
He still looked like he was debating having Mencheres lay the power whammy on me, so I sat down by Kira in a very deliberate manner, folding my hands in my lap. There. Didn't I look calm and sane? — Jeaniene Frost

Freedom!- is the fatuous jingle of our civilization, but only those deprived of it have the barest inkling re: what the stuff actually is. — David Mitchell

What got you through?" I whispered. "Do you remember?"
He nodded but wouldn't look at me. When he didn't elaborate, I turned to face him. "What? Is it a secret? Don't I know all the Drake secrets by now?"
He shifted uncomfortably. "I guess"
"What then?"
"You"
I swallowed, stunned. "Me?"
"Yeah" He stood up and went to the door, where he paused for the barest second. "You got me through". — Alyxandra Harvey

Simplicity of life, even the barest, is not a misery, but the very foundation of refinement; a sanded floor and whitewashed walls and the green trees, and flowery meads, and living waters outside; or a grimy palace amid the same with a regiment of housemaids always working to smear the dirt together so that it may be unnoticed; which, think you, is the most refined, the most fit for a gentleman of those two dwellings? — William Morris

If you imagine the difference between an abacus and the world's fastest supercomputer, you would still not have the barest inkling of how much more powerful a quantum computer could be compared with the computers we have today. — Marcus Chown

It's difficult to turn from the promise of retribution. Even if it's the barest promise. — Sarah MacLean

My sin murdered Him. And out of this self-loathing shame borne of the understanding that I could perpetrate such a heinous act, I am barely able to raise my head sufficiently to ask what crazed insanity would prompt Jesus to walk out of an empty tomb for the single purpose of pursuing a decaying soul that murdered Him? And I would be wise to consider that the question itself is asked only because I have yet to touch the barest periphery of God's love despite the fact that because of an empty tomb it stands right in front of me. — Craig D. Lounsbrough

Though I continue to tell stories about Iraq, I sometimes fear this makes me a fraud. I feel guilty about the sorrow I feel because I know it is manufactured, and I feel guilty about the sorrow I do not feel because it is owed, it is the barest beginnings of what is owed to the fallen. — Phil Klay

We have a chance to wind down and expedite the removal of 96 percent of the world's nuclear weapons. What an achievement it would be, if at the end of the next administration, we could say that the nuclear arsenals of both Russia and the United States had been reduced to the barest minimums. — Dianne Feinstein

A micro-second before our mouths fully touched,when I could feel the heat of his skin,the barest brush of a lip,he glided his nose along my cheek.I gasped at the almost-contact.he exhaled heavily down my throat,an enticing noise escaping his lips,making me shudder.He stayed there,taking two ragged breaths,while I unconsciously melted even more against his body.My Knees turned even more into him,the hand on my lap dropped onto his thigh.I started to turn my head towards his mouth.He smelled so good ... — S.C. Stephens

I am a college-educated American. In all my years of formal schooling, I never read Plato or Aristotle, Homer or Virgil. I knew nothing of Greek and Roman history and barely grasped the meaning of the Middle Ages. Dante was a stranger to me, and so was Shakespeare. The fifteen hundred years of Christianity from the end of the New Testament to the Reformation were a blank page, and I knew only the barest facts about Luther's revolution. I was ignorant of Descartes and Newton. My understanding of Western history began with the Enlightenment. Everything that came before it was lost behind a misty curtain of forgetting. Nobody did this on purpose. Nobody tried to deprive me of my civilizational patrimony. But nobody felt any obligation to present it to me and my generation in an orderly, coherent fashion. Ideas have consequences - and so does their lack. — Rod Dreher

What could I dream of that had the barest possibility of coming true? I could think of nothing. And, slowly, it was upon exactly that nothingness that my mind began to dwell, that constant sense of wanting without having, of being hated without reason. — Richard Wright

Thoughts of moonlight and silken hair evaporated in a black bolt of fury. Kaz saw Inej tug on the sleeve of her left forearm, where the Menagerie tattoo had once been. He had the barest inkling of what she'd endured there, but he knew what it was to feel helpless, and Van Eck had managed to make her feel that way again. Kaz was going to have to find a new language of suffering to teach that smug merch son of a bitch. — Leigh Bardugo

If someone were to propose that the planets go around the sun because all planet matter has a kind of tendency for movement, a kind of motility, let us call it an 'oomph,' this theory could explain a number of other phenomena as well. So this is a good theory, is it not? No. It is nowhere near as good as the proposition that the planets move around the sun under the influence of a central force which varies exactly inversely as the square of the distance from the center. The second theory is better because it is so specific; it is so obviously unlikely to be the result of chance. It is so definite that the barest error in the movement can show that it is wrong; but the planets could wobble all over the place, and, according to the first theory, you could say, 'Well, that is the funny behavior of the 'oomph. — Richard Feynman

I have this vision: That I would finally come and find you. Scattered pieces of distance would not stand in my way. Not needing words; the barest of glimpses would suffice for you and me. — Franz Kafka

I was never going to know what Keats knew before he was twenty-five, that "any set of people is as good as any other." Now there was a Shakespearean life. Keats occupied his own experience to such a remarkable degree, he needed only the barest of human exchanges to connect with an inner clarity he himself had achieved. For that, almost anyone would do. He lived inside the heaven of a mind nourished by its own conversation. I would wander for the rest of my life in the purgatory of self-exile, always looking for the right person to talk to. This — Vivian Gornick

What's on your mind, doc?" he asked as he flashed his ID at the staff duty sergeant.
"Just wondering why the driver didn't make conversation," she said after a moment, following him down the hallway and trying not to feel like she was rushing to keep up.
"We don't take warm showers together, if that's what you're asking."
Emily laughed quietly. "Was that a line from Heartbreak Ridge?"
"You didn't strike me as a war movie kind of girl." Reza stopped short, studying her. "Are you honestly telling me you've watched that movie?"
Heat crept up her neck. "Before I signed up for the army, I needed to know what I was getting myself in for. I watched every war movie I could find."
Reza simply stared at her, his dark eyes glittering. She was sure he was laughing at her. "You know those were Marines in Heartbreak Ridge, right?"
"Of course."
He cracked the barest grin. She supposed it was better than yelling at her, so there was that. — Jessica Scott

He kissed her on her ear, a kiss with the barest hint of moisture to it. She could not breath for the electricity of it, a violent spark of pleasure that shook and scarred. His fingers caressed her shoulders. His lips pressed into her exposed nape. Dark, hot sensations spiked into her. — Sherry Thomas

It's interesting that people bring different things to oppressive and difficult situations, when they're reduced to the barest terms of survival. That's what provides tension in a lot of films. — Sharon Salzberg

Just because you didn't torture him doesn't mean you weren't rough, but I know why you did it." I threaded my fingers through his hair. "Thank you for trying to protect me." The barest smile touched his mouth. "I prefer simply killing people who hurt you. Much less complicated that way. — Jeaniene Frost

He could transform the barest incident into a thing of curve and contour. — F Scott Fitzgerald

There are two Americas - separate, unequal, and no longer even acknowledging each other except on the barest cultural terms. In the one nation, new millionaires are minted every day. In the other, human beings no longer necessary to our economy, to our society, are being devalued and destroyed. — David Simon

The Reagan Administration has fostered a climate in which a barest majority of the Supreme Court caters to the passions and hatreds of the American mob, stripping away the constitutional shield outside our bedrooms ... How tragically ironic that an Administration that promised to get Government "off our backs" is now so active in draping Government gumshoes over every part of our anatomies. — Carl T. Rowan

Any action, like any act of magic, is in some sense an act of faith ... I've seen the desert bloom, the flower that emerges from the barest hint of water, and I know the power of life will rise, stubborn and persistent to be renewed. May our actions be the wind that brings the rain. — Starhawk

Nevertheless, ere long, the warm, warbling persuasiveness of the pleasant, holiday weather we came to, seemed gradually to charm him from his mood. For, as when the red-cheeked, dancing girls, April and May, trip home to the wintry, misanthropic woods; even the barest, ruggedest, most thunder-cloven old oak will at least send forth some few green sprouts, to welcome such gladhearted visitants; so Ahab did, in the end, a little respond to the playful allurings of that girlish air. More than once did he put forth the faint blossom of a look, which, in any other man, would have soon flowered out in a smile. — Herman Melville

The earl looked down at him. "Will he die, Gavin?" "You..." The barest whisper. "...wish."

-Cam & Luc — Katharine Ashe

I think you should kiss me now."
He hummed quietly, more of a deep rumble, and his hips lifted the barest bit into my touch as my hands journeyed higher, almost to his crotch. "I don't take orders well, Queen Ruckler." His voice was becoming deeper, sounding just as breathless as mine had. — Scarlett Dawn

Before long, the smokey spectre appeared, as I knew it would, the barest whisper of a shadow, inky and incandescent. It darted forwards, then back, closer, then ppfft, it was gone in an instant, only to return, darker and more substantial. As ever, it grew bolder, and bolder, until finally it dared to drift through the window and into my home.
Every night I had lain here, the geist had come. — Hazel Butler

I'm trying to strip myself down to my barest essentials so I can figure out where I begin and where the woman the world told me to be begins. I'm going back to the starting line. — Glennon Doyle Melton

Jenny: Ned, I am having difficulties forming the image of the woman you should marry in my mind. Tell me, how do you imagine your ideal woman?
Ned: Oh, She's exactly like you. Except younger.
Jenny: Whatever do you mean? She's clever? Witty?
Ned: No. I mean she's dependable and honest.
The mysterious smile slipped from Jenny's lips for the barest instant, and she looked at him in appalled and flattered horror. If this was how Ned assessed character, he would end up married to a street thief in no time at all.
— Courtney Milan

Egnaro is a secret known to everyone but yourself.
It is a country or a city to which you have never been; it is an unknown language. At the same time it is like being cuckolded, or plotted against. It is part of the universe of events which will never wholly reveal itself to you: a conspiracy the barest outline of which, once visible, will gall you forever. — M. John Harrison

In a sense, New World conquest was about men seeking a way around one of life's basic rules - that human beings have to work for a living, just like the rest of the animal world. In Peru, as elsewhere in the Americas, Spaniards were not looking for fertile land that they could farm, they were looking for the cessation of their own need to perform manual labor. To do so, they needed to find large enough groups of people they could force to carry out all the laborious tasks necessary to provide them with the essentials of life: food, shelter, clothing, and, ideally, liquid wealth. Conquest, then, had little to do with adventure, but rather had everything to do with groups of men willing to do just about anything in order to avoid working for a living. Stripped down to its barest bones, the conquest of Peru was all about finding a comfortable retirement. — Kim MacQuarrie

Very quietly, James slipped out of bed and shrugged into his bathrobe. The stone floor was cool under his feet as he stood and listened, tilting his head. He turned slowly, and as he looked toward the door, the figure there moved. He hadn't seen it appear, it was simply there, floating, where a moment before there had been darkness. James startled and backed into his bed, almost falling backwards onto it. Then he recognized the ghostly shape. It was the same wispy, white figure he'd seen chase the interloper off the school grounds, the ghostly shape that had come to look like a young man as it came back to the castle. In the darkness of the doorway, the figure seemed much brighter than it had appeared in the morning sunlight. It was wispy and shifting, with only the barest suggestion of its human shape. It spoke again without moving. — G. Norman Lippert

I'm tired of having to remind myself that the women who are after me wish only an experience or a reputation and not a lifetime. I'm tired of holding myself back. I'm tired of having to flatten all but the barest hint of affection."
Her breath caught.
"I'm tired," he said, "Of not letting myself fall in love. — Courtney Milan

He was going to die soon, you knew when you saw those eyes. There was no sign of life in his flesh, just the barest traces of what had once been a life. His body was like a dilapidated old house from which all furniture and fixtures have been removed and which awaited now only its final demolition. — Haruki Murakami

All your life you're yellow. Then one day you brush up against something blue, the barest touch, and voila, the rest of your life you're green. — Tess Callahan

She couldn't believe what she did then. Before she could stop herself, she leaned up on tiptoes, put her arms around his neck, and kissed him on the mouth. Her lips brushed over his for the barest of seconds, but it was still a kiss, and when she came to her senses and dared to pull away and look at him, he had the most curious expression on his face.
Brodick knew she regretted her sponatenity, but as he stared into her brilliant green eyes, he also knew, with a certainty that shook him to the core, that his life had just been irrevocably changed by this mere slip of a woman. — Julie Garwood

Love? Love is about an unquenchable hunger, a passion so powerful it cannot be ignored. In the face of love," he spoke softly, "all resistance is futile. Sex is momentary, ephemeral ecstasy at best without love. No one with a good opinion of themselves would trade sex by itself if they could have the true geld .. love with a worthy lover. It alters lives, and even the barest slice of true love ... a moment, an evening, a day's worth, can become a treasure to be pulled from the memory and ignite those feelings again many years after it has passed. It is the most powerful of all compulsions." Das — William C. Samples

The past: It drifts, it gathers. If you are not careful, it will bury you. This is half the reason for the cure: It clean-sweeps; it makes the past, and all its pain, distant, like the barest impression on sparkling glass. — Lauren Oliver

Nothing irrevocable had yet been spoken, but there was only the barest margin of safety left them, each of them moving delicately along the outskirts of an open question, and, once spoken, such a question-as "Do you love me?" -could never be answered or forgotten. They walked slowly, meditating, wondering, and the path sloped down from their feet and they followed, walking side by side in the most extreme intimacy of expectation; their feinting and hesitation done with, they could only await passively for resolution. Each knew, almost within a breath, what the other was thinking and wanting to say; each of them almost wept for the other. They perceived at the same moment the change in the path and each knew then the other's knowledge of it; Theodora took Eleanor's arm and, afraid to stop, they moved on slowly, close together, and ahead of them the path widened and blackened and curved. — Shirley Jackson

The only distinguishing characteristic of a literature professor at the millennium was that he or she wrote about other people's writing. Apart from that, the writing he wrote about didn't even need to be literature, or writing about literature, or even writing about writing about literature. He needed theory...In the unflickering glare, at the center of a severe perspective, Nelson suddenly felt the visceral truth of the world as text; he apperceived the fundamentally linguistic nature of reality. Everything was text, at every level of existence, all the way up from quarks to queer theory. Words arranged in lines; lines arrayed on pages; pages pressed together, bound, and trimmed in books; books arranged cover to cover along a shelf like the words in a line of text; shelves stacked one atop the other like lines of text on a page; rows of shelves pressed together, with just the barest passage for the reader, like the pages of a book. — James Hynes

It was the first time I could actually understand the seduction and the allure of baring your throat to a predator. It had always seemed like madness to me, or the result of reading too many novels. It still did. But there was the barest sway of my body toward him.
His hair swung out to briefly curtain our faces. There was something in his expression that I couldn't entirely decipher.
And then he stepped back abruptly, his familiar smirk erasing that mysterious warmth I'd glimpsed.
Chloe was the first break the silence. She let out a shaky breath.
"Is it suddenly hot out here, or what?"
"Chapter 10 — Alyxandra Harvey

Whatever else it may be, the Qur'an is no work of history. Startlingly, were it not for all the commentaries elucidating its mysteries, all the biographies of the Prophet, and all the sprawling collections of hadiths - none of which, in the form we have them, pre-dates the beginning of the third century after the hijra - we would have only the barest reason to associate it with a man named — Tom Holland

The law is an expression of God 's holy will and as such must be honored and loved," said the preacher piously. "Rubbish," said the Master. "The law is a necessary evil and as such must be cut down to the barest minimum. Show me a lover of the law and I will show you a muttonheaded tyrant . — Anthony De Mello

For sixty years tens of thousands of clandestine service officers have gathered only the barest threads of truly important intelligence - and that is the CIA's deepest secret. — Tim Weiner

I want you," he said starkly, the barest quiver in his hoarse voice. "Me and you. Together." He drew in a deep breath, his broad chest lifting. "But I can't chase you forever. — Sophie Jordan

The pianist smiled at him, a smile of amusement with only the barest hint of apology. And not the least bit of shame. Fuck.
No ... not that. Anything but that . Whatever hope had been in Kingsley's heart a second earlier shattered and died like the last stray note of a symphony. The old love, the old desire coursed through his veins and into his heart, and there was no stopping it. He met the blond pianist's eyes - the priest's eyes - and released the breath he'd forgotten he'd been holding.
"Mon Dieu ... "
My God. — Tiffany Reisz

Writing about sex is a challenge for the same reason sex is a challenge. Because it's complicated. Because it doesn't always make sense and it isn't always perfect and it's sometimes awful and it's sometimes hilarious. But underneath all the clever wordplay, it's about hope. Hope that someone will see us, and accept us, and perhaps - after all that - choose us. It's the barest we will ever be. The barest a character will ever be. That's why it's difficult.
As for what makes a good sex scene, a romance novelist would have told you that when done well and with a skilled hand, the best sex scenes can at once arouse and empower. Sex on the page gives readers the freedom to explore their own sexuality, their own pleasures, their own identities. With hope. And without judgment. — Sarah MacLean

I am always impressed by the fact that even the tiniest amount of being listened to, the barest suggestion of the possibility of kind treatment, can bring such an immediate rush of emotion. I think this is because we are almost never really listened to. In my work as a psychologist, I am reminded every day of how infrequently we are heard, any of us, or our actions even marginally understood. And one of the ironies of my "listening profession" is its lesson that, in many ways, each of us ultimately remains a mystery to everyone else. — Martha Stout

Diogenes the Cynic was an ascetic by choice. He rejected his family's bourgeois status, got himself exiled from his native city, and went about in a threadbare cloak with only the barest possessions, a bag for his crust of bread and a cup for scooping water from fountains. When one day he saw a boy drinking from his hands, he smashed the cup, disgusted by his own love of luxury. — James Romm

Of course. I died today, and now I'm going to fight aliens with a light saber. Maybe after that we can look for mermaids. Or unicorns."
"No," he says. "Just aliens."
Was that the barest hint of humour in his tone? — Eve Silver

If one draws things in a manner which provides only the barest clue to their meaning, the viewer is forced to fill in the gaps by using his own imagination. He is compelled to participate in the creative act, which I consider very important. — Antoni Tapies

You are the least sane person I've had the
misfortune to meet."
The corners of her eyes pinched a little, just for the
barest second, then cleared. "Well, there are plenty
more people for you to meet, Mr. Merrick, so do not
give up hope yet." But the tone of her voice was far
too cheerful.
He watched her for a moment. Watched as her
face cleared of anything remotely hurt or upset. "Do
you object to being called insane or my saying that I
had the misfortune of meeting you?"
"Neither, of course."
He drummed his finger on the desk, irritated and,
God, how did people live feeling guilty about things?
"You are just fine as you are," he said gruffly.
Her expression froze for a moment, then bloomed
into a smile that would slay demons. — Anne Mallory

Writing ... is an addiction, an illusory release, a presumptuous taming of reality, a way of expressing lightly the unbearable. That we age and leave behind this litter of dead, unrecoverable selves is both unbearable and the commonest thing in the world - it happens to everybody. In the morning light one can write breezily, without the slight acceleration of one's pulse, about what one cannot contemplate in the dark without turning in panic to God. In the dark one truly feels that immense sliding, that turning of the vast earth into darkness and eternal cold, taking with it all the furniture and scenery, and the bright distractions and warm touches, of our lives. Even the barest earthly facts are unbearably heavy, weighted as they are with our personal death. Writing, in making the world light - in codifying, distorting, prettifying, verbalizing it - approaches blasphemy. — John Updike

In spite of the string of magazine covers announcing the contrary, we all know that ten simple things will not save the earth. There are, rather, three thousand impossible things that all of us must do, and changing our light bulbs, while necessary, is the barest beginning. We are being called upon to act against a prevailing culture, to undermine our own entrenched tendency to accumulate and to consume, and to refuse to define our individuality by our presumed ability to do whatever we want. — Lyanda Lynn Haupt

My fingers caught on something else as I withdrew them. It was his T-shirt, the white one with the holes in it. I filled my hands with the fabric and brought it up to my face.
I caught the barest, faintest scent of him, soap and sandalwood and smoke, and in that moment, I felt not loss but need. Noah was there for me when I had no one else. He believed me when no one else did. He could not be gone, I thought, but my throat began to hurt and my chest began to tighten and I curled up in bed, knees to chest, head to knees, waiting for tears that never came and sleep that did. — Michelle Hodkin

I'd seen it happen, how hard it was to get out. Every year, one or two kids would visit from college for a long October weekend and simply never leave. They came home, cocooned themselves in the familiar radius of the town limits, and never broke free again. Years later, you'd see them working in the kitchen at the pizza place, or sitting at the bar in the East Bank Tavern. Shoulders hunched, jaw set, skin slack. And in the waning light of their eyes, the barest sensation that once upon a time, they been somewhere else ... or maybe it was only a dream. — Kat Rosenfield

Well. I suppose . . . there are two shrews in this household, then." Had she just made a . . . joke? At her own expense? "Termagant," Lilah said tentatively, "is the term I prefer." The barest smile touched Miss Everleigh's mouth. "Why not harpy? Or vixen? There's a very long list to choose from, when one speaks of sharp-tongued women. All of them invented by men, I — Meredith Duran

I am a tourist of the emotions, visiting only the most well-worn spots. It is romantic, that is, a distortion, to imagine whole lives from the barest observation. — Jean Thompson

In Isleta the rainbow was a crack in the universe. We saw the barest of all life that is possible. Bright horses rolled over and over the dusking sky. — Joy Harjo

Miss you, he said. It was the barest murmur, scarcely a sound. — Loretta Chase

He won't stop staring.
"What?" I ask.
"How much do you weigh?"
"Wow. Is that how you talk to every girl you meet? That explains so much."
"I'm about one hundred seventy-five pounds," he says. "Of muscle."
I stare at him. "Would you like an award?"
"Well, well, well," he says, cocking his head, the barest hint of a smile flickering across his face. "Look who's the smart-ass now."
"I think you're rubbing off on me," I say. — Tahereh Mafi

Rachel had a feeling there might have been a story about the procurement of the macarons, but she didn't really listen when Lauren was speaking about anything that didn't involve Jacob. She selected a red one and took a tentative bite. "Oh, God," she moaned a moment later, and thought, for the first time in she didn't know how long, of sex. She took a bigger bite. "Mother Mary." She laughed out loud. No wonder people lined up for them. It was exquisite; the raspberry flavor of the creamy center was like the barest touch of fingertips on her skin, the meringue light and tender, like eating a cloud. — Liane Moriarty

Love is a strange creature one thinks one has a grasp on and understanding of, only to discover later that it was only the barest taste of the real thing. — Jennifer L. Armentrout