Quotes & Sayings About Being Held Together

I think she'll like me," I said, concerned that my own mother wouldn't like me. My fear exposed the unspoken shame of all families: if you didn't know the people you were related to, would you befriend them? In the days when families hunted and gathered, this wouldn't be a question worth pondering, but once butchering a mammoth stopped being a household chore, we began to suspect families are chain gangs held together by manacles of DNA. — Bob Smith

Are ordinary people really populations of interests rather than something more solid? It's disturbing to think of yourself as so fluid, so potentially unstable, held together only by the shifting influence of available rewards. It's like being told that atoms are mostly empty and wondering how they can bear weight. Yet the bargaining of interests in a society can produce highly stable institutions; perhaps that's also true of the internal interests created by a person's rewards. — George Ainslie

Look,Nik.I can't lose you. We can be partners.With you by my side,and with the band backing us,we could take over. I want you by my side in the High Court?"
"What does that even mean? We'd be ... together? Like, together, together?"
Cole gave a sly smile. "We'd rule hand in hand. And as far as being together, we'd be as together as you'd allow."
Annoyingly,my cheeks got all warm, and I turned away, frustrated at my reaction. I stood and went over to my desk chair to sit down.
Cole chuckled. He pushed himself off the floor and walked closer to me,and the Shade at my shoulder pulled toward him. I wanted to hit it.
"Stay over there," I said.
"Why?" He held his hands up, all innocent-like. "Does my nearness affect you? That's what happens when you spend a century with someone. — Brodi Ashton

In spite of my wisecracking, pain-in-the-ass ways, I was the clip that held things together. Unnoticed. Taken for granted. Okay, maybe I'm giving myself too much credit here, but I'd be damned if I was gonna keep on being the family paper clip. — Neal Shusterman

In order to explain historically how all the early Christians came to the belief they held, that Jesus had been raised, we have to say at least this: that the tomb was empty, except for some graveclothes, and that they really did see and talk with someone who gave every appearance of being a solidly physical Jesus, though a Jesus who was strangely changed, more strangely than they were able fully to describe. Both the meetings and the empty tomb are therefore necessary if we are to explain the rise of the belief and the writing of the stories as we have them. Neither by itself was sufficient; put them together, though, and they provide a complete and coherent explanation for the rise of the early Christian belief. Is — N. T. Wright

Dearest - my body is simply crazy with wanting you - If you don't come tomorrow - I don't see how I can wait for you - I wonder if your body wants mine the way mine wants yours - the kisses - the hotness - the wetness - all melting together - the being held so tight that it hurts - the strangle and the struggle. — Georgia O'Keeffe

How she has held her shit together and clawed her way back to becoming a functioning human being again, I will never know. I couldn't have done it, but she did, and with the help of Cam, she's in a good place. — Lesley Jones

They sat with it in silence for a while. Bosch ran it all through once more and couldn't knock it down. It was only case theory but it held together. It worked, but it didn't mean that it was the way it had happened. Every case had unanswered questions and loose ends when it came to motives and actions. Bosch always though that if you started with the assumption that murder is an unreasonable action, then how could there ever be a fully reasonable explanation for it? It was that understanding that kept him from watching and being able to enjoy films and television shows about detectives. He found them unrealistic in their delivery of what the general audience wanted: all of the answers. — Michael Connelly

A few minutes later, he said suddenly: 'Kath, can we stop? I'm sorry, I need to get out a minute.'
... I could make out in the mid-distance, near where the field began to fall away, Tommy's figure, raging, shouting, flinging his fists and kicking out. I caught a glimpse of his face in the moonlight, caked in mud and distorted with fury, then I reached for his failing arms and held on tight. He tried to shake me off, but I kept holding on, until he stopped shouting and I felt the fight go out of him. Then I realised he too had his arms around me. And so we stood together like that, at the top of the field, for what seemed like ages, not saying anything, just holding each other, while the wind kept blowing and blowing at us, tugging our clothes, and for a moment, it seemed like we were holding onto each other because that was the only way to stop us being swept away into the night. — Kazuo Ishiguro

The great wilds of our country, once held to be boundless and inexhaustible, are being rapidly invaded and overrun in every direction, and everything destructible in them is being destroyed. How far destruction may go it is not easy to guess. Every landscape, low and high, seems doomed to be trampled and harried. Even the sky is not safe from scath-blurred and blackened whole summers together with the smoke of fires that devour the woods. — John Muir

Drift. Down through deltas of former girlfriends, degrees of confirmation of girlfriendhood, personal sightings of Rez or Lo together with whichever woman in whatever public place, each account illuminated with the importance the event had held for whoever had posted it. This being for Laney the most peculiar aspect of this data, the perspective in which these two loomed. Human in every detail but then not so. Everything scrupulously, fanatically accurate, probably, but always assembled around the hollow armature of celebrity. He could see celebrity here, not like Kathy's idea of a primal substance, but as a paradoxical quality inherent in the substance of the world. He saw that the quantity of data accumulated here by the band's fans was much greater than everything the band themselves had ever generated. And their actual art, the music and the videos, was the merest fragment of that. — William Gibson

We are piercing through the rumbling tumbling crowd and our arms are like the most precarious bridge, held together by that single, pulling clasp. I think, If she lets go, it's all over. If I let go, it's all over. And because she is holding on so tight, I hold on so tight. I am being jostled from all sides - I know there will be bruises tomorrow - but somehow this hand-hold is immune. Somehow we stay together. We are graced, and we are together, and the twoliness is trumping the loneliness and the doubt and the fear. We are making it through. Thank you, music. Damn you, memories. Thank you, present. — David Levithan

Liberation does not concern the person, for liberation is freedom from the person. Basically the disciple and teacher are identical. Both are the timeless axis of all action and preception. The only difference is that one 'knows' himself for what he is while the other does not. The idea of being a person, an ego, is nothing other than an image held together by memory. — Jean Klein

He settled his big hands on her hips. He let them slide slowly down to cup her ass which she had jammed into a Spanx hide and seek high rise panty. Before slipping on the slinky purple faux wrap dress that her daughter had given her after surviving being held at gunpoint together gift the prior fall. Stella was fairly sure she would enjoy the sensation of Goat's strong fingers kneading her flesh if it hadn't gotten numb in its fierce polyester lycra prison hours ago. — Sophie Littlefield

Uh, yeah," Percy said. "The Romans aren't big on navies. They had, like, one rowboat. Which I sank. Speaking of violent storms, you're doing a first-rate job upstairs." "Thank you," said Kym. "Thing is, our ship is caught in it, and it's kind of being ripped apart. I'm sure you didn't mean to - " "Oh, yes, I did." "You did." Percy grimaced. "Well...that sucks. I don't suppose you'd cut it out, then, if we asked nicely?" "No," the goddess agreed. "Even now, the ship is close to sinking. I'm rather amazed it's held together this long. Excellent workmanship." Sparks — Rick Riordan

Early, I indentured myself to the five horizontal lines where black notes were written on a sheet of music. It is a place of world of signs and notations that speaks to me with perfect clarity. It is a place of time signatures, fermatas, ledger lines, grace notes, and demisemiquavers that are the common tongue and heritage of musicians all over the world ... It is something I cannot imagine being without. For without music, life is a journey through a desert that has not ever heard the rumor of God. In music's sweet harmony, I had all the proof I needed of a God who held the earth together between the staffs, where the heavens lay. Here, he marked all the lines and spaces with notes so perfect that they praised all of his creation with their beauty. — Pat Conroy

For fuck's sake, I'd killed my best friend, first with carelessness and then with ambition. I started texting back: - you have the wrong ... But then i felt his lips on my shoulder and his warm breath on my skin, and my sorrow dropped out of me. I couldn't finish. My chest hitched and heaved, and the tears came so hard I couldn't breathe. His arms held me tight from behind, and his voice twisted itself into little nothings of comfort. I went into a timeless blackness where I let everything spill out, because he'd catch it. I knew in every couch and sob, ever hitched breath and chest spasm, that he'd hold me together. Whatever fell apart, he'd put right. I couldn't curse him for not being everything I needed or failing to commit to me completely. I didn't have space to reject his idea that I was submissive or the will to deny him control over me. He was there, and he was exactly what I needed. — C.D. Reiss

We stand there for a moment, looking at each other, and in that instant I feel our connection so strongly it's as though it achieves physical existence, becomes a hand all around us, cupping us together, protecting us. This is what people are always talking about when they talk about god: this feeling, of being held and understood and protected. feeling this way seems about as close to saying a prayer as you could get ... — Lauren Oliver

For Bonhoeffer, the relationship with God ordered everything else around it. A number of times he referred to the relationship with Jesus Christ as being like the cantus firmus of a piece of music. All the other parts of the music referred to it, and it held them together. To be true to God in the deepest way meant having such a relationship with him that one did not live legalistically by "rules" or "principles." One could never separate one's actions from one's relationship to God. It was a more demanding and more mature level of obedience, and Bonhoeffer had come to see that the evil of Hitler was forcing Christians to go deeper in their obedience, to think harder about what God was asking. Legalistic religion was being shown to be utterly inadequate. — Eric Metaxas

A fight like this was stunning, revealing not just how much he was on the lookout for enemies, but how she too was unable to abandon argument which escalated into rage. Neither of them would back off, they held bitterly to principles.
Can't you tolerate people being different, why is this so important?
If this isn't important, nothing is.
The air seemed to grow thick with loathing. All over a matter that could never be resolved. They went to bed speechless, parted speechless the next morning, and during the day were overtaken by fear - hers that he would never come home, his that when he did she would not be there. Their luck held, however. They came together in the late afternoon pale with contrition, shaking with love, like people who had narrowly escaped an earthquake and had been walking around in naked desolation. — Alice Munro

I actually washed my window once, and it fell through - it was being held together by the dirt. — Edie Falco

I was desperate. I had to keep Annabeth alive. I imagined all the bubbles in the sea - always churning, rising. I imagined them coming together, being pulled toward me. The sea obeyed. There was a flurry of white, a tickling sensation all around me, and when my vision cleared, Annabeth and I had a huge bubble of air around us. Only our legs stuck into the water. She gasped and coughed. Her whole body shuddered, but when she looked at me, I knew the spell had been broken. She started to sob - I mean horrible, heartbroken sobbing. She put her head on my shoulder and I held her. — Rick Riordan

Retreat is a response to the call of the heart-that call which beckons us toward reality, to the truth of our being, to that which is truly sane, really real and liberating ... When a group of people come together as a response to that kind of inward call, it creates a very powerful environment, where truth is held in the highest esteem and the reality of our being responds to that deepest intention. — Adyashanti

And what is love, Angel? What is love! he yelled. Is it a pressure inside that makes me want to scream when you do this? he palmed his chest roughly, Is it my body in constant chaos when you're around me? Is it murder in cold blood when I even think of you being with anybody but me! he roared. Or maybe it's not being able to think or speak when your life is in danger, or wanting to spend every second - of every - fucking day with you, wanting to never leave your side. Is that love? Is it, Isadore? He drew closer and hit his fist repeatedly against his chest. Is it pain so hard and heavy that I can't fucking breathe unless I smell you, touch you, taste you? His body heaved as his bright green gaze seared her heart. Because if it is, Angel...he held his lips together and shook his head slowly, then I am....slain with an eternal and violent love for you. — Lucian Bane

Everything we've been through in our lives we've done together. I held her hand at your parent's funeral, remember your mom's lemon pie every time I go through the produce section. I know she hates storms and love being there for her when she reaches out. — Adriana Locke

The global empire being forged before our eyes is not governed by any particular state or ethnic group. Much like the Late Roman Empire, it is ruled by a multi-ethnic elite, and is held together by a common culture and common interests. — Yuval Noah Harari

He listened to a fire fighter tell of a woman he had found strapped into her seat, screaming. When he cut the seat belt, she fell apart. She was being held together by the seat belt. She died at his feet. — Laurence Gonzales

Spaces devoted to Hannibal Lecter's earliest years differ from the other archives in being incomplete. Some are static scenes, fragmentary, like painted attic shards held together by blank plaster. Other rooms hold sound and motion, great snakes wrestling and heaving in the dark and lit in flashes. Pleas and screaming fill some places on the grounds where Hannibal himself cannot go. But the corridors do not echo screaming, and there is music if you like. — Thomas Harris

Wesley's theology was, then, largely a theology of reaction. Most of his theological output had polemical overtones, and some works were devoted exclusively to that end. The direction and the intensity of the challenge determined the character and strength of his reply. When this is taken into account, there is no contradiction between his teaching on Baptism and on the Lord's Supper. The Protestant and Catholic strands in Wesley's thought are held together in both cases, but the expression of their relative importance depends on the situation which is being addressed. — John R. Parris

She had shown him by her independence how it was only fear that held people together. The fear of being alone and the fear of being different. — Mervyn Peake

He stilled for a moment, savoring the sensation of being buried deep inside her, of filling her, of being joined together in God's heavenly embrace. He held her gaze and pushed deeper, shuddering with a wave of pure tenderness. The look in her eyes stripped him to the core. He couldn't move, wanting to preserve the moment, wanting never to forget how it felt to experience perfection. — Monica McCarty

There is a defect in us
as human beings
because we think ourselves
a fortress, a mountain, unbreakable
but at the center
in that stillness of being
there is a chasm
of love
which echoes hope, compassion, empathy
try again, it says
and though the fault lines are full of darkness
we are held together by
the optimism and foolishness
of a single spark — Nadia Hasan

The prisoners were handcuffed together, and it was these hands that caught Martha's attention: the working hands, clasped together by broad and gleaming steel, held carefully at waist level, steady against the natural movement of swinging arms - the tender dark flesh cautious against the bite of the metal. These people were being taken to the magistrate for being caught at night after curfew, or forgetting to carry one of the passes which were obligatory, or - but there were a dozen reasons, each as flimsy. — Doris Lessing

The whole cosmos is a materialized thought of the Creator. This heavy, earthly clod, floating in space, is a dream of God. He made all things out of His consciousness, even as man in his dream consciousness reproduces and vivifies a creation with its creatures. "'God first created the earth as an idea. Then He quickened it; energy atoms came into being. He coordinated the atoms into this solid sphere. All its molecules are held together by the will of God. When He withdraws His will, the earth again will disintegrate into energy. Energy will dissolve into consciousness; the earth-idea will disappear from objectivity. "'The substance of a dream is held in materialization by the — Paramahansa Yogananda

Rimbaud held the keys to a mystical language that I devoured even as I could not fully decipher it. My unrequited love for him was as real to me as anything I had experienced. At the factory where I had labored with a hard-edged, illiterate group of women, I was harassed in his name. Suspecting me of being a Communist for reading a book in a foreign language, they threatened me in the john, prodding me to denounce him. It was within this atmosphere that I seethed. It was for him that I wrote and dreamed. He became my archangel, delivering me from the mundane horrors of factory life. His hands had chiseled a manual of heaven and I held them fast. The knowledge of him added swagger to my step and this could not be stripped away. I tossed my copy of Illuminations in a plaid suitcase. We would escape together. — Patti Smith

42They all gave full attention to the teaching of the apostles and to the common life, to the breaking of bread and the prayers. 43Great awe fell on everyone, and many remarkable deeds and signs were performed by the apostles. 44All of those who believed came together, and held everything in common. 45They sold their possessions and belongings and divided them up to everyone in proportion to their various needs. 46Day by day they were all together attending the Temple. They broke bread in their various houses, and ate their food with glad and sincere hearts, 47praising God and standing in favor with all the people. And every day the Lord added to their number those who were being rescued. — N. T. Wright

Scilurus on his death-bed, being about to leave four-score sons surviving, offered a bundle of darts to each of them, and bade them break them. When all refused, drawing out one by one, he easily broke them, thus teaching them that if they held together, they would continue strong; but if they fell out and were divided, they would become weak. — Plutarch

Am I just a mosaic of myself, held in the shape of a whole person? — Emma Newman

In his person, life, death and resurrection, Jesus Christ is the 'form of God'. As presented in the New Testament writings, the words, actions and sufferings of Jesus form an aesthetic unity, held together by the 'style' of unconditional love. Love is always beautiful, because it expresses the self-diffusiveness of being, and so is touched by being's radiance, the pulchrum. But the unconditional, gracious, sacrificial love of Jesus Christ expresses not just the mystery of being - finite being - but the mystery of the Source of being, the transcendent communion of love which we call the Trinity.25 Thus through the Gestalt Christi, the love which God is shines through to the world. This is Balthasar's basic intuition. — Hans Urs Von Balthasar

Even as our world is being daily transformed by breathtaking innovations in science and technology, many people continue to imagine that math and science are mostly a matter of memorizing formulas to get "the right answer." Even engineering, which is in fact the process of creating something from scratch or putting things together in novel and non-self-evident ways, is perplexingly viewed as a mechanical or rote subject. This viewpoint, frankly, could only be held by people who never truly learned math or science, who are stubbornly installed on one side of the so-called Two Culture divide. The truth is that anything significant that happens in math, science, or engineering is the result of heightened intuition and creativity. This is art by another name, and it's something that tests are not very good at identifying or measuring. The skills and knowledge that tests can measure are merely warm-up exercises. — Salman Khan

I ought to have guessed that a person like her
a person who you could tell had a deep inner certitude of self which comes from being all of one piece, of not being shreds and patches and old cogwheels held together with pieces of rusty barbed wire and spit and bits of string, like most of us
I ought to have guessed that that kind of person would not be surprised into answering a question she didn't want to answer. — Robert Penn Warren

The need of one human being for the approval of his fellow humans, the need for a certain cult of fellowship - a psychological, almost physiological need for approval of one's thought and action. A force that kept men from going off at unsocial tangents, a force that made for social security and human solidarity, for the working together of the human family.
Men died for that approval, sacrificed for that approval, lived lives they loathed for that approval. For without it man was on his own, an outcast, an animal that had been driven from the pack.
It had led to terrible things, of course - to mob psychology, to racial persecution, to mass atrocities in the name of patriotism or religion. But likewise it had been the sizing that held the race together, the thing that from the very start had made human society possible.
And Joe didn't have it. Joe didn't give a damn. He didn't care what anyone thought of him. He didn't care whether anyone approved or not. — Clifford D. Simak