Can Be Touched Quotes & Sayings

My Heart Is a Holy Place

My heart is a holy place
Wiser and holier than I know it to be
Wiser than my lips can speak
A spring of mystery and grace.
You have created my heart
And have filled it with things of wonder.
You have sculpted it, shaped it with your hands
Touched it with your breath.
In its own season it reveals itself to me.
It shows me rivers of gold
Flowing in elegance
And hidden paths of infinite beauty.
You touch me with your stillness as I await its time.
You have made it a dwelling place of richness and intricacies
Of wisdom beyond my understanding
Of grace and mysteries, from your hands. — Patricia Van Ness

You can't love me without growing old," she finally said. "And I can't know that about you without wanting to cry. And my tears are the end of the world."
Ander touched the corners of her eyes with his lips to reassure her they were dry. "Please don't be afraid of my love. — Lauren Kate

As he clutched her in his shaking hands and wept against her, he whispered into her ear, the words that made him believe. "Love bears all things. Endures all things," he said. "Ours has, hasn't it?" She nodded and held him tighter. "But can it endure this, Anais? This demon who holds me so mercilessly in its claws?"
She touched his face and kissed him. "My love can and will, Lindsay. I will be here when you open your eyes. I will give you whatever you need to make it more bearable. — Charlotte Featherstone

Here then is a sure resting-place for the heart. Our lives are neither the product of blind fate nor the result of capricious chance, but every detail of them was ordained from all eternity, and is now ordered by the living and reigning God. Not a hair of our heads can be touched without His permission. — Arthur W. Pink

When the world around you is falling to pieces. Invite yourself into a new world that you have invented and can't be touched. — Jan Hellriegel

So I spoke to my old friend Bruce and told him I was feeling it, his loss of Clarence. We talked for quite a while, and there is no need to go into what two old friends had to say to each other at this point, except to say that two old friends spoke to each other about their music, their muses, their partners in crime, their proof, their friendship, their souls and their lives. Ben Keith was my Clarence Clemons. Clarence Clemons was Bruce's Ben Keith. When he died last year it touched me to the core. I don't want to ever think of any one else playing his parts or occupying his space. No one could. I can't do those songs again unless it's solo. So I told Bruce, "Waylon once looked at me and said, 'There's very few of us left.'" He liked that. I told him when he looked to his right I would be there. That's enough. I'm not talking about that anymore. — Neil Young

Yeah, that's what I saw. But I learned a long time ago that some stuff I see when I touch these things, some of it can be influence by other people who touched them before me, by what those people believed. If those beliefs are strong enough, Chance, it's like they can leave impressions behind, the same way that actual events can. — Caitlin R. Kiernan

Loneliness

It's Hell for us to draw the fetters
Of life in alienation, stiff.
All people prefer to share gladness,
And nobody - to share grief.

As a king of air, I'm lone here,
The pain lives in my heart, so grim,
And I can see that, to the fear
Of fate, years pass me by like dreams;

And comes again with, touched by gold,
The same dream, gloomy one and old.
I see a coffin, black and sole,
It waits: why to detain the world?

There will be not a sad reflection,
There will be (I am betting on)
Much more gaily celebration
When I am dead, than - born. — Mikhail Lermontov

Politicizing of kids starts with pregnancy, of course. You shouldn't be drinking wine. You can't be smoking, either. The poor woman is poked and prodded and touched and obsessed over. — Sam Mendes

ROSE: You can't be nobody but who you are, Cory. That shadow wasn't nothing but you growing into yourself. You either got to grow into it or cut it down to fit you. But that's all you got to make life with. That's all you got to measure yourself against that world out there. Your daddy wanted you to everything he wasn't...and at the same time he tried to make you into everything he was. I don't know if he was right or wrong...but I do know he meant to do more good than he meant to do harm. He wasn't always right. Sometimes when he touched he bruised. And sometimes when he took me in his arms he cut. — August Wilson

I believe the greatest gift I can conceive of having from anyone is to be seen by them, heard by them, to be understood and touched by them. — Virginia Satir

No 'Middlemarch' for me," said Miss Barbara, with a wave of her hand. "I am too old for that. That means I've read it, my dear - the way an experienced reader like me can read a thing - in the air, in the newspapers, in the way everybody talks. No, that's not like going into a new neighborhood - that is getting to the secrets of the machinery, and seeing how everything, come the time, will run down, some to ill and harm, but all to downfall, commonplace, and prosiness. I have but little pleasure in that. And it's pleasure I want at my time of life. I'm too old to be instructed. If I have not learned my lesson by this time, the more shame to me, my dear." "But, Miss Barbara, you don't want only to be amused. Oh no: to have your heart touched, sometimes wrung even - to be so sorry, so anxious that you would like to interfere - to follow on and on to the last moment through all their troubles, still hoping that things will take a good turn." — Mrs. Oliphant

A brittle smile worked across my face, and I drew back from her. "See you later, Mom."
She picked up her handbag, and sauntered out into the hallway. Jack looked around the doorjamb, his gaze sliding over me. "I'll be back in a minute."
By the time Jack had returned, I had downed a shot of tequila from the pantry, hoping the liquor would burn through my head-to-toe numbness. It hadn't. I felt like a freezer that needed to be defrosted. Luke fretted in my arms, making impatient noises, wriggling.
Jack came to me and touched my chin, forcing me to meet his searching gaze.
"Now aren't you sorry you didn't take my advice and leave?" I asked morosely.
"No. I wanted to see what you grew up with."
"I guess you can tell why Tara and I both needed therapy."
"Hell, I need therapy, and I only spent an hour with her. — Lisa Kleypas

Kimaria smirked and placed her hands behind her back. "Come now. It doesn't have to come to that. Violence is so beneath us."
"No, it isn't," said Helianthus at once.
"Well . . . it is beneath me," the high queen said and touched a hand to her chest. "Unlike you, I am civilized. I wear shoes and I have a last name." They watched as she eased into a chair. She crossed one leg over the other, folded her arms, and regarded them calmly. "Aren't you the least bit curious as to how I snatched the famed Nineveh Atvaris from our dark past? You can't be that boring. — Ash Gray

I know you don't like the traffic here. I'm sorry that you're burdened with this."
I muttered, "Not liking the traffic is an understatement. People don't know how to drive here. They're crazy."
"We can take back roads with the least traffic on the way, and we'll be driving only to the outskirts of Mumbai, not through the city as before. It shouldn't be too bad. You're a good driver."
"Ha, easy for you to say. You'll just sleep in the back the whole way."
Ren touched my cheek with his fingers and gently turned my face to his. "Rajkumari, I want to say thank you. Thank you for staying and helping me. You don't know what this means to me."
I mumbled, "You're welcome. And rajkumari means?"
He flashed me a brilliant white smile and deftly changed the subject. — Colleen Houck

A carnal Christian makes his or her decisions based entirely on what can be seen, touched, tasted, smelled, or heard. — Tony Evans

When Jim left the planet so suddenly, all of us who loved him, worked with him, were inspired by him, gathered in New York City. We were like dandelion seeds clinging to the stem and to each other. And on May 16th, [the day Jim died] the wind began to blow. There's no stem any more. We're all floating on the breeze. And it's scary and exhilarating, and there's nothing we can do about it. But gradually, we'll all drift to the ground and plant ourselves. And no matter what we grow into, it'll be influenced by Jim. We're Jim's seeds. And it's not only those of us who knew him. Everyone who was touched by his work is a Jim-seed. — Brian Jay Jones

You want to hear it? Fine. It's a simple story really, about a pretty girl who was pretty stupid. She let a man touch her because she was scared to say no, and then she told her parents because she was scared to say nothing. Then they were scared to do anything that might ruin their pretty little lives, so they told the girl that it was nothing. That just being touched wasn't enough to fight for. Too scared to prove them wrong, she kept going like it was nothing, and she let more people touch her, never knowing that she was handing out pieces of herself. Or, hell, maybe she knew deep down, and she just hated herself so much that she was glad to be rid of them. And life wasn't pretty, but it also wasn't scary until she met a man with two names who touched her without taking and made her miss the pieces she had lost. And now things aren't just scary, they're fucking terrifying, and I can't do it. I can't live like this, knowing all that I've ruined and that it can't be fixed. — Cora Carmack

Dresden's not gone," I said. I touched a hand lightly to my brow. "He's here." I touched Will's bare chest, on the left side. "Here. Without him, without what he's done over the years, you and I would never have been able to pull this off."
"No," he agreed. "Probably not. Definitely not."
"There are a lot of people he's taught. Trained. Defended. And he's been an example. No single one of us can ever be what he was. But together, maybe we can. — Jim Butcher

Neither day nor night is our master. And do you know what happens when a woman walks without fear?"
Teia shook her head, but there was a sudden longing deep in her that swelled so strong it paralyzed her tongue. Tell me. Tell me.
"She becomes."
Becomes what? Teia didn't say the words aloud, but he knew what she was thinking, for he answered:
"She becomes whatever she wills. Minus only one thing." In the dark, he held up a finger, almost like he was scolding her.
Teia was silent now. The question was obvious, and now she didn't want to ask it.
Sharp said, "She has one thing she can never be, never again. You know what it is, don't you?"
The words came unbidden to her lips, from a place so dark no light had ever touched it: "A slave. — Brent Weeks

Darn! what a beautiful night!
Heading towards Pandara Road-Gulati Restaurant, with open windows of my baby sedan and this broad chest guy with big brown eyes.
He hums the oldies well and his Issey Miyake is making me lose the grip over my senses.
One more thing is distracting me, he ain't wearing anything inside but a transparent white, V necked, cotton short Kurta.
I can see the hair winking out and his collar bones!!
Not only men get excited by transparent dresses but women as well.
His broad shoulders and chest is my weakness and he knows it.
This man is not doing good to me!
It's a crime to seduce in this way, when you are not touched, when you are distracted by the aroma of his skin, when you know, he is well aware of the intentions..
when you can't do anything except getting seduced by the corner stretching smile of a man with animal instinct..
I certainly am missing myself to be tied up to the bedpost,choked and groaning his name! — Himmilicious

Can't be touched, Can't be stopped, Can't be moved, Can't be rocked, Can't be shook. — Roy Jones Jr.

Absolute Truth is not a belief, not a religion, not a philosophy, not a momentary experience, and not a transient spiritual experience either. It is neither static nor in motion, neither good nor bad. It is other than all of that, more other than you can ever imagine. Truth cannot be touched by thought or imagined by the mind. It can only be found in the heart of universal being. To know thy self is the key. To bring forth your being is The Way. — Adyashanti

...god contradicts his own perfection if he can be reached, touched, disturbed, or in any way changed from it by anything in this material world below. — Ramsay MacMullen

What's amazing to me now is that I actually recall fixating on the fact that my thighs a-l-m-o-s-t touched at the top ... If I could go back in time and slap my eighteen-year-old self, I would. I would tell her to snap out of it, because that's the best you thighs will ever be. You should take pictures of your thighs right now so you can remember how amazing they were! — Anita Renfroe

At that, Ascher stood up. "Hi," she said, smiling brightly. "You don't know me. I'm Hannah. Back off my partner before you get hurt." "I know who you are, hot stuff," I drawled, not standing. I set my staff down across the table. "And I already backed off your partner. You can tell from how there aren't any splatter marks. Play nice, Ascher." Her smile vanished at my response, and her dark eyes narrowed. She drummed her nails on the tabletop exactly once, slowly, as if contemplating a decision. A smirk touched her mouth. "So you're the infamous Dresden." Her eyes went past me, to Karrin. Ascher was a foot taller than she was. "And this is your bodyguard? Seriously? Aren't they supposed to be a little bigger?" "She represents the Lollipop Guild," I replied. "She'll represent them right through the front and out the back of your skull if you don't show a little respect. — Jim Butcher

In the man whose childhood has known caresses and kindness, there is always a fiber of memory that can be touched to gentle issues. — George Eliot

Carol would not be a bad one to [settle down] with. She's pretty and bright, and maybe this is what love is. She's good company: her interests broaden almost every day. She reads three books to my one, and I read a lot. We talk far into the night. She still doesn't understand the first edition game: Hemingway, she says, reads just as well in a two-bit paperback as he does in a $500 first printing. I can still hear myself lecturing her the first time she said that. Only a fool would read a first edition. Simply having such a book makes life in general and Hemingway in particular go better when you do break out the reading copies. I listened to myself and thought, This woman must think I'm a government-inspected horse's ass. Then I showed her my Faulkners, one with a signature, and I saw her shiver with an almost sexual pleasure as she touched the paper where he signed. Faulkner was her most recent god[.] — John Dunning

There is in youth a purity of character which, when once touched and defiled, can never be restored; a fringe more delicate than frost-work, and which, when torn and broken, can never be re-embroidered. — Henry Ward Beecher

When I started to be published I thought about Margaret Bourke-White and the whole journalistic approach to things. I believed I was supposed to catch life going by me - that I wasn't to alter it or tamper with it - that I was just to watch what was going on and report it as best I could. This shoot with John was different. I got involved, and I realized that you can't help but be touched by what goes on in front of you. I no longer believe that there is such a thing as objectivity. — Annie Leibovitz

...[I]f at the time of its release the soul is tainted and impure, because it has always associated with the body and cared for it and loved it, and has been so beguiled by the body and its passions and pleasures that nothing seems real to it but those physical things which can be touched and seen and eaten and drunk and used for sexual enjoyment; and if it is accustomed to hate and fear and avoid what is invisible and hidden from our eyes, but intelligible and comprehensible by philosophy - if the soul is in this state, do you think that it will escape independent and uncontaminated? — Socrates

We're a lukewarm people for all our feast days and hard work. Not much touches us, but we long to be touched. We lie awake at night willing the darkness to part and show us a vision. Our children frighten us in their intimacy, but we make sure they grow up like us. Lukewarm like us. On a night like this, hands and faces hot, we can believe that tomorrow will show us angels in jars and that the well-known woods will suddenly reveal another path. — Jeanette Winterson

There is such a thing as a national conscience, and it can be touched. — Charles Kuralt

Life is an endless attempt to word the unwordable, to make what cannot be touched walk on the ground, to embody what can never be fit inside a single lifetime.
We see reflections of ourselves in sunrises, hear our perfection in thunderstorms and babies' laughter--touch, taste and feel--and then try to somehow remember all of that while taking out the trash, paying bills and a million other ways we have invented to forget.
We weave together within ourselves mud and spirit, shadow and light, animal and angel.
No wonder humans feel crazy most of the time.

But you aren't crazy. You are doing a heroic thing by being here as yourself. — Jacob Nordby

You are ... beyond my imagination. It's a wonder you can be touched at all. — Meredith Duran

Still the king would have turned away, but Schmendrick touched his arm and leaned near. "It's true, you know," he whispered. "But for him
but for them all
the tale would have worked out quite another way, and who can say that the ending would have been even as happy as this? You must be their king, and you must rule them as kindly as you would a braver and more faithful folk. For they are your fate. — Peter S. Beagle

I saw you the second I walked into the bar that night. I saw you and felt you were different."
His lips had moved so close to hers that if she edged forward a bit, his mouth would be on hers. "I'm actually not different," she said, hating that her voice sounded all breathy and nervous. "I'm similar to lots of people. I can even list off a bunch of people who look like me. And these boots aren't really kick-ass boots. I bought them because they were on the clearance rack."
A smile tugged at the corner of his mouth before his lips touched hers, and all her carefully constructed reasons as to why she'd never get involved with a man like Matt burned to ashes. — Victoria James

I never realized how powerful desire could be. It consumes every part of you, enhancing your senses by a million. When you're in the moment, it enhances your sense of sight, and all you can do is focus on the person in front of you. It enhances your sense of smell, and suddenly, you're aware of the fact that his hair has just been washed and his shirt is fresh out of the dryer. It enhances your sense of touch and makes your skin prickle and your fingertips tingle, and it leaves you craving to be touched. It enhances your sense of taste, and your mouth becomes hungry and wanting, and the only thing that can satisfy it is the relief of another mouth in search of the same. — Colleen Hoover

My short-term factual memory can be like water; events are a brief disturbance on the surface and then it closes back up again, as if nothing ever touched it. But it's a strange fact that my long-term memory remains strong, perhaps because it recorded events when my mind was unaffected. My emotional memory is intact too, perhaps because feelings are recorded and stored in a different place than facts. The things that happened deeper in the past, and deeper in the breast, are still there for me, under the water.
I won 1,098 games, and eight national championships, and coached in four different decades. But what I see are not the numbers. I see their faces.
'Pat should get a tattoo!' The kids laughed. 'What kind should she get?'
'A heart. She should get a heart.'
Little did they know. They are the tattoos. — Pat Summitt

I AM LOVE

I have rubbed shoulders with presidents, stars and queens

Though they know not my name as I have never been seen

I have touched their hearts, lips and minds

Always gentle, caring, giving and kind

I have shaped their world and changed their lives

I can turn war to peace so they put down their guns

I have fed every life with my innocent arms

I touch their lives though they don't know my name

I touch their hearts they are never the same

I come with truth, wisdom and joy

Though some people hurt me treat me like a toy

I am ever present but never seen

I visit at night just like a dream

Like an illusion, ever present but oh so rare

I am a joy to be seen with every stare

Who am I?

Love! — Jill Thrussell

There is also the professional mentor, a person whose success in his or her career can be a source of practical wisdom and inspiration. This success might be mea sured in material gain or far-reaching influence, or in lives touched and relationships fostered. These mentors can offer a model for good business, ethical practices, and effective work habits, and they often provide the motivation we need to seize whatever opportunities come our way. — John Wooden

What I can't do," Aadon said after a minute, as he traced his fingers down those pale, marked arms, "is ever let you go." He lifted Jesse's chin and looked into his soul-stealing brown eyes. "I am too far into you to ever get out. I'll have to move in with you, because I already need to breathe you like air."

Jesse touched just the tips of his fingers to Aadon's cheek, awed by the continued acceptance. "I cannot believe I ever thought you were too tongue-tied to be a lawyer. — Jaime Samms

If everything must be burned I will do the burning and so I will not be burnt but be the fire. Everything I ever loved burned and so I will be the burning. There is nothing but that must which be burnt. Women will burn and children burn and houses burn so I will be nothing that can burn. I will be the fire. The fire has no home. The fire goes where it wants. The fire arrives and departs and none can account the meaning of its travels. Everything I ever touched burned. — Brian Doyle

Our life is a short time in expectation, a time in which sadness and joy kiss each other at every moment. There is a quality of sadness that pervades all the moments of our lives. It seems that there is no such thing as a clear-cut pure joy, but that even in the most happy moments of our existence we sense a tinge of sadness. In every satisfaction, there is an awareness of limitations. In every success, there is the fear of jealousy. Behind every smile, there is a tear. In every embrace, there is loneliness. In every friendship, distance. And in all forms of light, there is the knowledge of surrounding darkness ... But this intimate experience in which every bit of life is touched by a bit of death can point us beyond the limits of our existence. It can do so by making us look forward in expectation to the day when our hearts will be filled with perfect joy, a joy that no one shall take away from us. — Henri J.M. Nouwen

Fiction operates through the senses, and I think one reason that people find it so difficult to write stories is that they forget how much time and patience is required to convince through the senses. No reader who doesn't actually experience, who isn't made to feel, the story is going to believe anything the fiction writer merely tells him. The first and most obvious characteristic of fiction is that it deals with reality through what can be seen, heard, smelt, tasted, and touched. — Flannery O'Connor

Christ's vision has one law. It does not look upon a body, and mistake it for the Son whom God created. It beholds a light beyond the body; an idea beyond what can be touched, a purity undimmed by errors, pitiful mistakes, and fearful thoughts of guilt from dreams of sin. It sees no separation. And it looks on everyone, on every circumstance, all happenings and all events, without the slightest fading of the light it sees. — Foundation For Inner Peace

The music room's in the next wing. We can have coffee and brandy there."
"I doubt we'd share the same taste in music, Roarke."
"You might be surprised," he murmured, "at what we share." He touched her cheek again, this time sliding his hand around until it cupped the back of her neck. "At what we will share. — J.D. Robb

In all my life," Ernestino said, "I have never heard a voice like that. God has touched you, Signore. But sing while you can, because it won't be long before those high notes leave you forever. — Anne Rice

For this reason, the question whether miracles occur can never be answered simply by experience. Every event which might claim to be a miracle is, in the last resort, something presented to our senses, something seen, heard, touched, smelled or tasted. And our senses are not infallible. If anything extraordinary seems to have happened, we can always say that we have been the victims of an illusion. If we hold a philosophy which excludes the supernatural, this is what we always shall say. What we learn from experience depends on the kind of philosophy we bring to experience. It is therefore useless to appeal to experience before we have settled, as well as we can, the philosophical question. — C.S. Lewis

I feel the curve of his smile against my skin. But as he lifts his head and looks into my eyes, his grin fades. "Haven ... I don't know if I'm going to be a good father. What if I don't do it right?"
I am touched by Hardy's concern, his constant desire to be the man he thinks I deserve. Even when we disagree, I have no doubt that I am cherished. And respected. And I know that neither of us takes the other one for granted.
I have come to realize you can never be truly happy unless you've known some sorrow. All the terrible things Hardy and I have gone through in our lives have created the spaces inside where happiness can live. Not to mention love. So much love that there doesn't seem to be room for bitterness in either of us.
"I think the fact that you're worrying about it at all," I say, "means you'll probably be great at it. — Lisa Kleypas

Although there have been warnings that it was coming for years, the Alzheimer's epidemic is here now and millions more families will be touched by this progressive - and ultimately fatal - disease unless its course can be altered. — Jeanne Phillips

I can relate to Marguerite Duras even though I'm not French, nor have I been consumed by love for an East Asian man. I can life inside Alice Munro's skin. But I can't relate to my own mother. My body is full of sentences and moments, my heart resplendent with lovely turns of phrases, but neither is able to be touched by another. — Rabih Alameddine

And when neither their property nor honour is touched, the majority of men live content, and he has only to contend with the ambition of a few, whom he can curb with ease in many ways. It makes him contemptible to be considered fickle, frivolous, effeminate, mean-spirited, irresolute, from all of which a prince should guard himself as from a rock; and he should endeavour to show in his actions greatness, courage, gravity, and fortitude; and in his private dealings with his subjects let him show that his judgments are irrevocable, and maintain himself in such reputation that no one can hope either to deceive him or to get round him. That prince is highly esteemed who conveys this impression of himself, and he who is highly esteemed is not easily conspired against; for, provided it is well known that he is an excellent man and revered by his people, he can only be attacked with difficulty. — Niccolo Machiavelli

He whose heart is divinely touched with the magnet of God's Spirit, will endeavor to attract those who are near him to Christ. The heathen could say, "We are not born for ourselves only." The more excellent anything is, the more diffusive it is. In the body every member is diffusive: the eye conveys light; the head, spirits; the heart, blood. A Christian must not move altogether within his own circle - but seek the welfare of others. To be diffusively good makes us resemble God, whose sacred influence is universal. And surely it will be no grief of heart, when conscience can witness for us that we have brought glory to God in this matter by working to fill heaven. Not that this is in any way meritorious, or has any causal influence on our salvation. Christ's blood is the sole cause - but our promoting God's glory in the conversion of others is a signal evidence of our salvation. — Thomas Watson

He will long be remembered as one of the great Christian thinkers of our century, with a childlike faith and a profound compassion toward others. It can rarely be said of an individual that his life touched many others and affected them for the better; it will be said of Francis Schaeffer that his life touched millions of souls and brought them to the truth of their creator. — Ronald Reagan

The Poet With His Face In His Hands
You want to cry aloud for your
mistakes. But to tell the truth the world
doesn't need anymore of that sound.
So if you're going to do it and can't
stop yourself, if your pretty mouth can't
hold it in, at least go by yourself across
the forty fields and the forty dark inclines
of rocks and water to the place where
the falls are flinging out their white sheets
like crazy, and there is a cave behind all that
jubilation and water fun and you can
stand there, under it, and roar all you
want and nothing will be disturbed; you can
drip with despair all afternoon and still,
on a green branch, its wings just lightly touched
by the passing foil of the water, the thrush,
puffing out its spotted breast, will sing
of the perfect, stone-hard beauty of everything. — Mary Oliver

Often we are preoccupied with the question "How can we be witnesses in the Name of Jesus? What are we supposed to say or do to make people accept the love that God offers them?" These questions are expressions more of our fear than of our love. Jesus shows us the way of being witnesses. He was so full of God's love, so connected with God's will, so burning with zeal for God's Kingdom, that he couldn't do other than witness. Wherever he went and whomever he met, a power went out from him that healed everyone who touched him (see Luke 6:19). If we want to be witnesses like Jesus, our only concern should be to be as alive with the love of God as Jesus was. — Henri J.M. Nouwen

It could be that the wildest, strangest things in the Bible were the places where it touched earth. Doane said once that he saw a cyclone cross a river. It took the water in its path up into itself and crossed on dry ground, and it was just as white as a cloud, white as snow. Something like that would only last for a minute, but it showed you what kind of thing can happen. It would shed that water and take up leaves and branches, cats and dogs, cows if it wanted to, grown men, and it would change everything they thought they knew. — Marilynne Robinson

He'd tried to explain it to her, how accidents happen but we really are safe. But there was, already, the sense that nothing he said touched what was really bothering her, which was the realization that you can't stop bad things from happening to other people, other things. And that would be hard forever. He'd never quite gotten used to it himself. — Megan Abbott

Memories are peculiar...You think the past is there, all fixed and stable, but it is really chock full of surprises and endlessly susceptible to change...So maybe it is true that we are constantly rewriting our past; they are not something fixed and unchangeable for all time. There is a basic structure, of course, a canvas stretched across boards, which cannot be remodeled at will, but the surface of that canvas can be shaded, rearranged, touched up, continually worked on to correspond to the needs of the present. In fact, the present moment is largely the focal point from which you shape the direction of your future and juggle the implications of your past. — Elizabeth Arthur

Where did it all begin? These are simple questions, but just as the humid summer air that can be felt but not touched, the answers are elusive. — Elmer Seward

I am quite empty of feeling. I don't care the slightest bit in the world for anybody or anything except myself. But I do care for myself, and I'm going to survive in spite of them all, and I'm going to have my own success without caring the least in the world how I get it. Because I'm cleverer than they are, I'm cunninger than they are, even if I'm weak. I must build myself up proper protections, and entrench myself, and then I'm safe. I can sit inside my glass tower and feel nothing and be touched by nothing, and yet exert my power, my will, through the glass walls of my ego. — D.H. Lawrence

When I haven't been kissed
in a long time, I create civil disturbances,
then insult the cops who show up,
till one of them grabs me by the collar
and hurls me up against the squad car,
so I can remember, at least for a moment,
what it's like to be touched. — Jeffrey McDaniel

With this and this - and he touched one of the canine teeth and that below it - the little children can be bitten." Unaesthetic as it may seem, vampires bite out of one side of the mouth, and one side only, which is only common sense. The upper canines in themselves are little more than daggers, useless in tearing flesh without employing the lower canines to help pin the skin together. Preoccupied with the erotic, the cinema necessarily rides roughshod over such technicalities. — Clive Leatherdale

I've never in my life had a problem giving another person what they
want. But no one's ever been able to do that for me. No one touches me,
no one gets near me. But now you've touched me somewhere so fucking
deep I can't believe and I can't be that for you. Because I can't find you. — Sarah Kane

I don't call people for help. It's not because of the way I was raised, at least I don't think so; it's the
way I was made. Johanna once said that if I was drowning at Dark Score Lake, where we have a summer home, I would die silently fifty feet out from the public beach rather than yell for help. It's
not a question of love or affection. I can give those and I can take them. I feel pain like anyone else.
I need to touch and be touched. But if someone asks me, 'Are you all right?' I can't answer no. I
can't say help me. — Stephen King

I maybe many things to many people; but for me I am a writer; always have been and always will be.
I may not contribute to great literatures, but my contribution to writing would be always there; etched in the minds of the people whose lives I have touched with words.
Only a writer can understand what it means to a writer to not be able to be one.
To have the nib of pen broken ... like a death sentence ..
Or a life imprisonment in one's own mind without an outlet to thoughts.
I would give up things I love the most if that's the choice I am given to be able to be what I really want to be - A writer.
(C) Arti Honrao — Arti Honrao

It's curious and ridiculous how much the gaze of a prudish and painfully chaste man touched by love can sometimes express and that precisely at a moment when the man would of course sooner be glad to fall through the earth than to express anything with a word or a look. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

There is nothing like understanding that your work has touched somebody. That is the sole purpose of acting. To be able to move and inspire. If I can do that for one person it is already changing the world and that makes me feel accomplished. — Scott Cohen

How did Ixtel become real for me? The world is full of Ixtels who I can help without hurting my father. Why this one? How was it her suffering that touched me? Father. I feel connected to her through my father's actions. I feel an obligation to right my father's wrong. But why? Shouldn't my father's welfare come first? His welfare is my welfare. How does one weigh love for a parent against the urge to help someone in need? I feel like what is right should be done no matter what. This lack of doubt makes me feel inhuman. But it is not a question of my head for once. I hear the right note. I recognize the wrong note. Maybe the right action is a lake like this one, green and quiet and deep. — Francisco X Stork

I'm not invisible. I have desires. I want to be touched and held and told that I'm worth something. I am not pitiful. I am better than you can imagine. I have talents. I have successes and failures. I love my life. I sometimes feel dissatisfied with the world. I come from a place of love, not death. I am special. I matter. I can be the most interesting person in the room. I can blend in and that's okay. I'm somebody. I'm a nobody. I feel deeply and I want to be allowed to show it. I don't want to be judged. I can be judgmental. When you give me platitudes and you belittle my feelings. I'm brave. I'm scared. I'm wandering. I have plans. I will be the best me I can be. I am not who I think I am. I am not who you think I am; I am who I think you think I am, so think well of me, please. — Abria Mattina

The very act of writing assumes, to begin with, that someone cares to hear what you have to say. It assumes that people share, that people can be reached, that people can be touched and even in some cases changed. So many of the things in our world lead us to despair. It seems to me that the final symptom of despair is silence, and that storytelling is one of the sustaining arts; it's one of the affirming arts. A writer may have a certain pessimism in his outlook, but the very act of being a writer seems to me to be an optimistic act. — Tobias Wolff

touched her shoulder, she flinched. "I need to do this, Vicky. It's the right thing to do. I need to do everything I can to make sure my boy has his mum." Still no reply. "Please?" "What if you're not back?" "I'll be back." "I'm not so sure about that." "Trust me, Vicky, I'll be back. I promise." The same darkness sat on her features, but something had changed. — Michael Robertson

The sacred rowan is a woman born long, long ago, a woman whose refusal to see love cost first her lover's life, then the lives of her family, her clan, her people.
But not her own life. Not quite.
In pity and punishment she was turned into an undying tree, a rowan that weeps only in the presence of transcendent love; and the tears of the rowan are blossoms that confer extraordinary grace upon those who can see them.
When enough tears are wept, the rowan will be free. She waits inside a sacred ring that can be neither weighed or measured nor touched. She waits for love that is worth her tears.
The rowan is waiting still. — Elizabeth Lowell

(If God wills it) ... the number of angels ... may be infinite ... Blessed are they that have not seen and yet have believed. Once upon a time, atoms did not exist. There was no Dalton, no Rutherford. Albert Einstein was nothing more than a theorist, but you only have to look at Hiroshima and Nagasaki to know that things invisible exist and bear great power. The power to destroy. Or the power to create ... Atoms and angels, reason and faith ... One without the other is less than half as strong and can be a danger to our vitality. Reason is subject to the tests of logic and observable, demonstrable phenomena. Faith is tested by our desire and will. One cannot see faith, just as one cannot pour out hope or love from a beaker. Self-sacrifice and devotion escape the strongest microscope, but such qualities of spirit can be shown and known by us all ... And so with God's messengers, more believed than seen, more felt than touched, our angel's exist in open hearts, if we have but faith. — Keith Donohue

What I've learned is that makeup well applied can really last all day. I've had makeup on for 17 hours with minimal retouching. Once it's on me, and I start, I don't want to be touched again. — Stephanie March

Don't make me out to be something worth saving. We both know I'm a waste." His voice was so quiet. "I wish I was better at telling you why you have to stay here. I wish I could put into words the part of my heart that has your name written on it. That part hurts right now. You have to be here. You love life too much. You're so important. I wish I could make you understand this." He tried to smile at her valiant efforts. "I would keep you if I could. You can sleep here, right on this couch. Beckett, I will let you hold this baby when it comes." She touched her stomach. "Does that tell you how much you mean to me? It's the only thing I can come up with." He shrugged. "Mouse would be disappointed. He'd feel like he didn't do his job if you died ... Eve loves you. Wherever she is - in this strip club - is that what you've been wishing for?" Beckett shook his head. "No, right? She loves you. You can't kill someone she loves. You just can't. — Debra Anastasia

Love is an emotion. It can't be seen or touched, and it is experienced differently by everyone, therefore it is difficult to measure. — Marian Keyes

The world cannot be translated;
It can only be dreamed of and touched. — Dejan Stojanovic

I meant what I said before. You need to walk away, Pidge. God knows I can't walk away from you."
I touched his arm. "You don't want me to leave."
Travis' jaws tensed again, and then he took me under his arm. He paused for a moment, and then kissed my forehead, pressing his cheek against my temple. "It doesn't matter how hard I try. You're going to hate me when it's all said and done."
I wrapped my arms around him. "We have to be friends. I won't take no for an answer," I quoted. — Jamie McGuire

There are those ... who enter the world in such poverty that they are deprived of both the means and the motivation to improve their lot. Unless these unfortunates can be touched with the spark which ignites the spirit of individual enterprise and determination, they will only sink back into renewed apathy, degradation and despair. It is for us, who are more fortunate, to provide that spark. — Aga Khan IV

The new humanity that is created around Jesus is not a humanity that is always going to be successful and in control of things, but a humanity that can reach out its hand from the depths of chaos, to be touched by the hand of God. — Rowan Williams

The best way to measure how much you've grown isn't by inches or the number of laps you can now run around the track, or even your grade point average
though those things are important, to be sure. It's what you've done with your time, how you've chosen to spend your days, and whom you've touched this year. That, to me, is the greatest measure of success. — R.J. Palacio

Sometimes you can be touched by God, but not healed. Often when this happens, he is using your pain for a greater purpose. — Shannon L. Alder

I've seen ye so many times," he said, his voice whispering warm in my ear. "You've come to me so often. When I dreamed sometimes.When I lay in fever. When I was so afraid and so lonely I knew I must die. When I needed you, I would always see ye, smiling, with your hair curling up about your face. But ye never spoke. And ye never touched me."
"I can touch you now." I reached up and drew my hand gently down his temple, his ear, the cheek and jaw that I could see. My hand went to the nape of his neck, under the clubbed bronze hair, and he raised his head at last, and cupped his face between my hands, love glowing strong in the dark blue eyes.
"Dinna be afraid," he said softly, "There's the two of us now. — Diana Gabaldon

I won but I wasn't like Pat. Because - and why this should be I'll never know - I never did a thing that wasn't somehow touched with selfish, furtive hunger, with a private, annihilating need for recognition. Because I'm like a child in a fairy tale cursed from birth, and there has never been anything I can put my hand to without tainting it, no triumph so great or solemn that it doesn't turn spoiled and ridiculous. Because, sooner or later, the darkness always gets in. — Austin Grossman

We shouldn't take for granted the security and comfort of our neighborhoods, we shouldn't think that always leaving our windows open and our doors unlocked means that we're beyond an encroachment. We may believe our gates are insurmountable and that we're armored by routines, but can't we be touched by chance or fate, plucked up like a mouse foraging along his well-worn trail? Before you know it, you're looking down at the last faint print of your claws in the dirt. — Chang-rae Lee

I can't begin to describe how you've touched my heart. You've brought so much joy and happiness to my life. I never thought I would ever be able to love anyone as much as I do you. You've consumed my very being, completing my soul. — Trin Denise

Excerpt from "The Long Road from Perdition" for the day:
" ... I've always been drawn to the ocean. It is here that I now feel peaceful and can lose my thoughts while immersed in the deafening sounds of waves crashing around me. The spray and mist of the ocean's past seem to be a living, breathing yet wounded animal. The fury of the waves never settled and the spew of the foam touched all that dared to sit near it.
There is no reason to flinch as the waves spray and crash against the shore. It is a natural progression I have learned to endure. However, it is the rescinding of the waves and fluid release of fury that I struggle to understand and coexist with peacefully. I hope one day to master it. — J.R. Stone

You once told me you wanted the world to stand still, you wanted a safe spot to stand still. I want to be that place for you." His hands are almost swallowing my face, but it's his stare that swallows me most - swallows me whole.
"Even if I'm spinning through life, the spot beside me will be the eye of the hurricane, and nothing there can be touched or harmed. I want you here with me, beside me." - Malcolm — Katy Evans

It can safely be said that no one has touched more lives, more deeply, than Death. Through this devastating memoir, it is hoped he will touch many, many more. — George Pendle

I do not believe we can truly enter into our own inner pain and wounds and open our hearts to others unless we have had an experience of God, unless we have been touched by God. We must be touched by the Father in order to experience, as the prodigal son did, that no matter how wounded we may be, we are loved. And not only are we loved, but we too are called to heal and to liberate. This healing power in us will not come from our capacities and our riches, but in and through our poverty. We are called to discover that God can bring peace, compassion and love through our wounds. — Jean Vanier

How fantastic that the American ingenuity of NASA scientists got us to Mars. It makes me proud to be an American. I can't get enough of these images from when the probe touched down. These scientists are American heroes. — Jennifer Granholm

I don't understand referees. It appears like some players can't even be touched, but in my case, everyone can hit me as hard as they can. — Cristiano Ronaldo

Compassion can be described as letting ourselves be touched by the vulnerability and suffering that is within ourselves and all beings. The full flowering of compassion also includes action: Not only do we attune to the presence of suffering, we respond to it. — Tara Brach

I didn't know a living person could hurt you so badly.
When the pain originates with someone who is gone, it's your own memory that hurts you. Walking through the house, touching things they've touched, hearing sounds they heard, wondering what they would've thought of one thing or another. This is pain that I know, pain that I can handle, pain that is so much a part of me that if it were removed I would not be whole.
But when it's someone who's alive who hurts you, the pain can't be escaped. The things they've touched are still warm because they were just there, the sounds they hear reach your ears too - sometimes their own voice, and it's excruciating to bear. I know what he thinks about this, that, or the other because I can hear him saying so. But not to me. He doesn't talk to me anymore. — Mindy McGinnis

I think that the inability to love is the central problem, because that inability masks a certain terror, and that terror is the terror of being touched. And if you can't be touched, you can't be changed. And if you can't be changed, you can't be alive. — James A. Baldwin

When I can relax, and be close to the transcendental core of me, then I may behave in strange and impulsive ways in the relationship, ways I cannot justify rationally, which have nothing to do with my thought processes. But these strange behaviors turn out to be right in some odd way. At these moments it seems that my inner spirit has reached out and touched the inner spirit of the other. Our relationship transcends itself and has become something larger. — Carl R. Rogers

20 She said: How can I have a son and no mortal has yet touched me, nor have I been unchaste? 21 He said: So (it will be). Thy Lord says: It is easy to Me; and that We may make him a sign to men and a mercy from Us.a And it is a matter decreed.b 21a. Jesus was a sign to men, in the sense that he was made a prophet, and every prophet is a sign, because the Divine revelation which is granted to him affords a clear proof of the existence of the Divine Being. Or, he was a sign to the Israelites in particular, because with him prophethood came to an end among the Israelites. 21b. She conceived him in the ordinary way in which women conceive children; see 3:44a. 22 Then she conceived him; and withdrew with him to a remote place. 23 And the throes of childbirth drove her to the trunk of a palm-tree.a She said: Oh, would that I had died before this, and had been a thing quite forgotten!b 23a. This shows that Mary gave birth to Jesus while on a journey; — Anonymous

I suppose sex is the secret that to one degree or another we all of us keep from each other, more then than now needless to say - the great open secret that, whatever else we are, we are bodies and that as bodies we need to touch and be touched by each other as much as we need to laugh and cry and play and talk and work with each other. Once they had sinned, Adam and Eve tried to hide their nakedness from each other and from God, and to one degree or another we have all been hiding it ever since for the reason, I suppose, that we know that our sexuality is yet another good gift from God which as sinners we can nonetheless use to dehumanize both each other and ourselves. — Frederick Buechner