Quotes & Sayings About Close And Far

The issue of climate change, it really does bring home the fact that we are on one planet, and that some of the impact of what human beings do in one corner of the world is going to affect people in a distant corner of the world. So we may still feel very far from each other, but we are really very close to each other because of the changes we have made with travel and technology and especially the information technology. — Wangari Maathai

Men at the close of the dark Ages may have been rude and unlettered and unlearned in everything but wars with heathen tribes, more barbarous than themselves, but they were clean. They were like children; the first beginnings of their rude arts have all the clean pleasure of children. We have to conceive them in Europe as a whole living under little local governments, feudal in so far as they were a survival of fierce wars with the barbarians, often monastic and carrying a far more friendly and fatherly character, still faintly imperial as far as Rome still ruled as a great legend. But in Italy something had survived more typical of the finer spirit of antiquity; the republic, Italy, was dotted with little states, largely democratic in their ideals, and often filled with real citizens. But the city no longer lay open as under the Roman peace, but was pent in high walls for defence against feudal war and all the citizens had to be soldiers. — G.K. Chesterton

Seven and a half million hearts were beating in close proximity in this heaving old city, and many, after all, would be aching far worse than his. — Robert Galbraith

The reason for backing tracks is to not veer off too far from the record and have what the fans actually want to hear. Artists use backing tracks just so they can stay close to the record and what the consumer heard for the first time. It's not to be confused with lip synching or anything like that cos that's not happening at all. — Chris Johnson

Ever since the Evil Empire turned out to be a collection of third-world countries, Americans aligned on the far right have tried to cast gay men and lesbians as the new enemy, calculating deviants seducing the nation's young, anti-Avon ladies selling sodomy door-to-door. This simply won't wash. Just as seeing the Russians up close and personal on television humanized them, so seeing the lesbian grandmother of two little girls wearing her gold medal with pride makes the notion of otherness, much less deviance, silly and ignorant. — Anna Quindlen

Moreover that which is called, far too harshly in certain cases, the ingratitude of children, is not always a thing so deserving of reproach as it is supposed. It is the ingratitude of nature. Nature, as we have elsewhere said, "looks before her." Nature divides living beings into those who are arriving and those who are departing. Those who are departing are turned towards the shadows, those who are arriving towards the light. Hence a gulf which is fatal on the part of the old, and involuntary on the part of the young. This breach, at first insensible, increases slowly, like all separations of branches. The boughs, without becoming detached from the trunk, grow away from it. It is no fault of theirs. Youth goes where there is joy, festivals, vivid lights, love. Old age goes towards the end. They do not lose sight of each other, but there is no longer a close connection. Young people feel the cooling off of life; old people, that of the tomb. Let us not blame these poor children. — Victor Hugo

I grew up in the small town of Greenfield Center, New York, which is in the foothills of the Adirondacks not far from the city of Saratoga Springs. It is a place I love, close to the forests and the mountains. — Joseph Bruchac

A black void was sucking her down into a nothingness far deeper than sleep.
Her throat was parched, closing. She grabbed for one of his arms to hold her, to stop her fall, and he brought her close, her head on his chest. His heart boomed under her ear.
"Save me." Her vision was dimming.
"I am," he answered. — Erin Kellison

stay too close
and she will leave.
stay too far
and she will leave.

distance is too delicate a thing. — AVA.

You would think a person could only die once. You would think you would only find you sister's lifeless body once. You would think you would only have to watch your mother's reaction once after finding out her only daughter is dead.
Once is so far from accurate.
It happens repeatedly.
Every single time I close my eyes I see Les's eyes. Every time my mother looks at me, she's watching me tell her that her daughter is dead for the second time. For the third time. For the thousandth time. Every time I take a breath or blink or speak, I experience her death all over again. I don't sit here and wonder if the fact that she's dead will ever sink in. I sit here and wonder when I'll stop having to watch her die. — Colleen Hoover

Judge's back was hunched over while he dug in as deep as he could. Sweat poured off him, the night air doing nothing to cool the inferno burning inside him. Michaels clenched tight around him and Judge thought he was coming, but he was caught off guard; his spirited bottom was yanking his orgasm from him. Set him a few degrees past burning. Judge buried as deep as he could, his cock throbbed angrily, and his balls drew up close to him. He threw his head back and roared as he came so far up inside Michaels' body, making him his forever. "Fuuuck. — A.E. Via

There are a thousand small honest breweries in this country that because they have been too poor and localized to compete with the big boys have been forced to close, or else operate under famous names while they turn out yeast, or hops, or some other important but unnamed ingredient of the main company's beer. Now, with the trains full of soldiers and supplies rather than pale ale, perhaps people far from the great breweries will turn again to their local beer factories and discover, as their fathers did thirty years ago, that a beer carried quietly three miles is better than one shot across three thousand on a fast freight. — Mary Francis Kennedy Fisher

I wouldn't say the anthropologists were making art, but they were definitely justifying their practices with very personal reasoning, passion, and they were also experimenting with form. There was a sense of trying to be as sincere as possible, whether you were investigating something far away from you or very close. — Aleksandra Mir

It is easy to make friends, but not so easy to keep them in the long term. You cancel a couple of arrangements because you are tired, or it seems too far to travel in traffic, and then next thing you know you have not seen somebody you considered a close friend in over a year. In the small town where I grew up, you saw the same people day in and day out for years. My mother was friends with the girls she went to school with until the day she died. I enjoyed the anonymous freedoms of the city, but now I wondered if I had enjoyed them enough to justify being lonely in my latter years. I missed seeing people every day, meeting old friends and making new ones. — Kate Kerrigan

There was this time when I looked at a picture and thought it was a man with horns, but when I stepped up to study it I could see it was actually a butterfly with wings standing up straight. That's what happens when you stop looking at things from far away. My advice ... look at whatever you're scared of from a different angle. Look at it up really close. — Melina Marchetta

And now, as I close my task, subduing my desire to linger yet, these faces fade away. But one face, shining on me like a Heavenly light by which I see all other objects, is above them and beyond them all. And that remains.
I turn my head, and see it, in its beautiful serenity, beside me.
My lamp burns low, and I have written far into the night; but the dear presence, without which I were nothing, bears me company.
O Agnes, O my soul, so may thy face be by me when I close my life indeed; so may I, when realities are melting from me, like the shadows which I now dismiss, still find thee near me, pointing upward! — Charles Dickens

If you could only speak the devil fair enough, he might save you the cost of the doctor. Such strange lingering echoes of the old demon-worship might perhaps even now be caught by the diligent listener among the grey-haired peasantry; for the rude mind with difficulty associates the ideas of power and benignity. A shadowy conception of power that by much persuasion can be induced to refrain from inflicting harm, is the shape most easily taken by the sense of the Invisible in the minds of men who have always been pressed close by primitive wants, and to whom a life of hard toil has never been illuminated by any enthusiastic religious faith. To them pain and mishap present a far wider range of possibilities than gladness and enjoyment: their imagination is almost barren of the images that feed desire and hope, but is all overgrown by recollections that are a perpetual pasture to fear. — George Eliot

The traditional gender ideals of the strong-silent man who plays his cards close to his chest and the mysterious woman who disguises her feelings with coyness go so far as to make a virtue of being unavailable and secretive. But wholehearted intimacy can develop only where two people are equally forthcoming and self-revelatory. To take the risk of loving, we must become vulnerable enough to test the radical proposition that knowledge of another and self-revelation will ultimately increase rather than decrease love. It is an awe-ful risk. — Sam Keen

It was a typical summer evening in June, the atmosphere being in such delicate equilibrium and so transmissive that inanimate objects seemed endowed with two or three senses, if not five. There was no distinction between the near and the far, and an auditor felt close to everything within the horizon. The soundlessness impressed her as a positive entity rather than as the mere negation of noise. — Thomas Hardy

As she wrote her pulse quickened to the pleasure of forming the phrases,--her blood warmed to the joy of the working. She was experiencing a return of the familiar sensation of happiness in constructing. Quite suddenly, in fancy she caught in the far distance a glimpse of silver wings. It gave her a warm thrill of gratification too deep for words. Immediately she knew through some inner consciousness, that no matter what the future would hold--joy or sorrow, happiness or grief--that no matter where life's paths would lead her--through sharp and stony ways or beside still waters--buried deep within her was an indestructible capacity to visualize a white bird flying. She might never get close to the way of its winging, but always there would be joy in lifting her eyes to the glory of its distant flight. — Bess Streeter Aldrich

I have forgotten much that I thought I knew, and learned again much that I had forgotten. I can see many things far off, but many things that are close at hand I cannot see. Tell — J.R.R. Tolkien

The dog continued to bark at night, sometimes far away, sometimes close to the house. Towards morning, he would howl. It could be quiet for hours, but there were those who lay in bed waiting for the next howl, and they would say, "Did you hear that? It's like having a wolf in the woods. An unhappy woman has an unhappy dog. It ought to be shot."
Katri did not talk about the dog, but she put out food and water in the yard. Sometimes at night Mats would wait by the kitchen window with the light off and the door open. He saw the dog only once, just as it was growing light, and he went very slowly out on the steps and tried to coax it in. But it ran off into the woods, so he gave up. — Tove Jansson

Cuban eyes often look close to tears. Tears never seem far away because both their pain and their joy are always so close to the surface. — Brin-Jonathan Butler

My attention was quickly riveted by a large red star close to the distant horizon. As I gazed upon it I felt a spell of overpowering fascination - it was Mars, the god of war, and for me, the fighting man, it had always held the power of irresistible enchantment. As I gazed at it on that far-gone night it seemed to call across the unthinkable void, to lure me to it, to draw me as the lodestone attracts a particle of iron. — Edgar Rice Burroughs

In a survey of historical memory, I asked a hundred Internet users to write down as many wars as they could remember in five minutes. The responses were heavily weighted toward the world wars, wars fought by the United States, and wars close to the present. Though the earlier centuries, as we shall see, had far more wars, people remembered more wars from the recent centuries. — Steven Pinker

The point is not that books, magazines, and DVDs are dead - far from it. At places such as the redesigned Boston Public Library, popular publications and media materials in physical form circulate rapidly from prominent spaces close to the building's entrance. The point is that people's information habits have undergone a sea change - a major shift toward the digital. Libraries are trying to serve a wide range of patrons at many different points along an "adoption curve," with all-print at one end and all-digital at the other. — John Palfrey

What if I can't do this, Gregori?" She sounded close to tears. "What if I can never do this?"
"No one is making you do anything, ma petite," he replied gently, kissing her stomach. "We are just exploring possibilites."
"But,Gregori," she tried to protest, attempting to bring his head back up so that he could see her very real fear for him, for their life together.
"If I cannot persaude you otherwise, mon amour, I am not much of a lifemate, now am I?" The words were muffled in the tight silky curls, the intriguing little triangle at the apex of her thighs.
"You don't understand,Gregori." Savannah closed her eyes against the waves of fire racing through her. "It's me who is no real lifemate.I don't know how to please you, and I'm so afraid of this."
"Relax,bebe." He breathed warm air against her, inhaled her scent. "You please me far more than you will ever know. — Christine Feehan

In the face of God's obvious inadequacies, the pious have generally held that one cannot apply earthly norms to the Creator of the universe. This argument loses its force the moment we notice that the Creator who purports to be beyond human judgment is consistently ruled by human passions - jealousy, wrath, suspicion, and the lust to dominate. A close study of our holy books reveals that the God of Abraham is a ridiculous fellow - capricious, petulant, and cruel - and one with whom a covenant is little guarantee of health or happiness. If these are the characteristics of God, then the worst among us have been created far more in his image than we ever could have hoped. — Sam Harris

He walked close enough to hold hands and far enough away that words could never repair the damage we'd done to each other. — Elana Johnson

From the window, I watch the city and the freeway. In the distance, the sky-rises look like mystic spires, unbearably close and far. I want to pick them up and eat them. I want to scream out loud sometimes, but I never do. — Brenna Yovanoff

As far as I have been able to understand, the Japanese seem to keep things close to the vest. Friendly but remote and polite to the point of being invisible. It is in the music, literature, film and art that the Japanese really seem to express themselves. — Henry Rollins

Her close friends have gathered.
Lord, ain't it a shame
Grieving together
Sharing the blame.
But when she was dying
Lord, we let her down.
There's no use cryin'
It can't help her now.

The party's all over
Drink up and go home.
It's too late to love her
And leave her alone.

Just say she was someone
Lord, so far from home
Whose life was so lonesome
She died all alone
Who dreamed pretty dreams
That never came true
Lord, why was she born
So black and blue?
Oh, why was she born
So black and blue?

Epitaph (Black And Blue)
Written by: Kris Kristofferson
Note: "Epitaph" is about Janis Joplin. — Kris Kristofferson

Graff had deliberately set him up to be separate from the other boys, made it impossible for him to be close to them. And he began now to suspect the reasons behind it. It wasn't to unify the rest of the group - in fact, it was divisive. Graff had isolated Ender to make him struggle. To make him prove, not that he was competent, but that he was far better than everyone else. — Orson Scott Card

How far could you trace back such a chain, he wondered, past the Harmon girl being chosen that night to bring his food, past the tree shattering a man's backbone due to a badly notched trunk, past that to an axe unsharpened because a man drank too much the night before, past that to why the man had gotten drunk in the first place? Was it something you never found the end to? Or was there no chain at all, just a moment when you did or didn't step close to a young woman and let you fingers brush a fall of blonde hair behind her ears, did or did not lean to that uncovered ear and tell her that you found her quite fetching." ~G. Pemberton (58) — Ron Rash

And then again, maybe people and things are the same as emotions: Even when you can't see them or feel them or be with them, and even when they have died and even before they are born, they still exist somewhere. Far away or close, they're always somewhere. Maybe nothing in the world is truly lost, I think. — Cristina Henriquez

My love for her was close to piety. You may think it strange that I should use this word, with its religious connotation, to describe my feeling towards a woman. But even now I believe - and I believe it very strongly - that true love is not so far removed from religious faith. — Soseki Natsume

I keep my friends around, try to stay close to them, try to treat them right. I try to stay in touch with my friends who are far away, and I do a bad job of that, but I carry them with me. — Rob Sheffield

Is this necessary?" I said, gesturing to the paint and clothing.
"Of course," he said coolly. "How else would I know if anyone touches you?"
He approached, and I braced myself as he ran a finger along my shoulder, smearing the paint. As soon as his finger left my skin, the paint fixed itself, returning the design to its original form. "The dress itself won't mar it, and neither will your movements," he said, his face close to mine. His teeth were far too near to my throat. "And I'll remember precisely where my hands have been. But if anyone else touches you - let's say a certain High Lord who enjoys springtime - I'll know." He flicked my nose. "And, Feyre," he added, his voice a caressing murmur, "I don't like my belongings tampered with. — Sarah J. Maas

Close and far is like already happened and not happened yet. — Maggie Stiefvater

I've had the other kinds of love. Sunday love, all comfortable and familiar. Tuesday love with its caring and closeness. Saturday love where you know it's too good to be true and you'll wake up the next day and it'll all be over. Monday love, where you wonder what the hell you were thinking and the next weekend seems to be incredibly far away. Thursday love where it all seems so close and yet there's so much standing in the way. Wednesday love where you've got all this history but feel like you're in a rut and every day is the same thing. Forget all of those. Right now, I want a Friday kind of love. I want that possibility and recklessness and passion that only comes knowing there's so much that could happen, and never mind that sometimes it doesn't live up to your expectations. — Cameron Chapman

If you're outmatched, out-numbered, out-skilled, you'll run and live to fight another day." Lucky stopped jogging and pulled her close to him. He gently forced her eyes to lock with his. "You need to understand there are plenty of predators in our world who are far more dangerous than you'll ever be. Those are the ones you need to fear and, in a way, respect." ~ Lucky from Lone Wolf Rising — Jami Brumfield

I now know the key is to do what we call ABC: Acknowledge, Boundary, Close. Whenever you sense someone is about to start manipulating you, you need to go into ABC mode. First the Acknowledge. I could've repeated what she said. Yes, a lot of work has gone into the situation (in this case, the dinner party), and it is wonderful. Then the Boundary: "I have to leave in five minutes." The other person may or may not approve but that is no longer your problem. The benefits from doing this in your life will far outweigh the discomfort of that moment. Just keep repeating ABC. Finally, the Close: After a few minutes, leave. ABC is a very effective way of dealing with manipulative behavior. You first need to understand what is happening (recognize the onset of manipulation) because if you act immediately, without recognizing what you are feeling, without taking — James Altucher

Close your eyes," Marcus said, his hand moving to her bottom in a circling caress. He brushed his mouth over her forehead and her fragile eyelids. "Rest. You'll need to regain your strength ... because once we're married, I won't be able to leave you alone. I'll want to love you every hour, every minute of the day." He nestled her more closely against him. "There is nothing on earth more beautiful to me than your smile ... no sound sweeter than your laughter ... no pleasure greater than holding you in my arms. I realized today that I could never live without you, stubborn little hellion that you are. In this life and the next, you're my only hope of happiness. Tell me, Lillian, dearest love ... how can you have reached so far inside my heart?" He paused to kiss her damp silken skin ... and smiled as the wisp of a feminine snore broke the peaceful silence. — Lisa Kleypas

I know I can't plan in this business, but I'm going to keep going as long as I keep getting close ... So far, I feel lucky and infinitely grateful for the successes that I've had. I'm just going to keep working hard, and whatever happens, happens. — Aaron Lazar

Will!"
He turned at the familiar voice and saw Tessa. There was a small path cut along the side of the hill, lined with unfamiliar white flowers, and she was walking up it, toward him. Her long brown hair blew in the wind - she had taken off her straw bonnet, and held it in one hand, waving it at him and smiling as if she were glad to see him.
His own heart leaped up at the sight of her. "Tess," he called. But she was still such a distance away - she seemed both very near and very far suddenly and at the same time. He could see every detail of her pretty, upturned face, but could not touch her, and so he stood, waiting and desiring, and his heart beat like the wings of seagulls in his chest.
At last she was there, close enough that he could see where the grass and flowers bent beneath the tread of her shoes. He reached out for her - — Cassandra Clare

It is easy to love the people far away. It is not always easy to love those close to us. It is easier to give a cup of rice to relieve hunger than to relieve the loneliness and pain of someone unloved in our own home. Bring love into your home for this is where our love for each other must start. — Mother Teresa

With dancing, you have to know spatial movement with somebody. It is steps. It's literally steps and knowing how close to be or how far away. You have to have the beat in the right place with the camera. — Channing Tatum

Much they saw, and far they went, and many homes they visited, but always with a happy end. The Spirit stood beside sick beds, and they were cheerful; on foreign lands, and they were close at home; by struggling men, and they were patient in their greater hope; by poverty, and it was rich. In alms-house, hospital, and jail, in misery's every refuge, where vain man in his little brief authority had not made fast the door, and barred the Spirit out, he left his blessing, and taught Scrooge his prospects. — Charles Dickens

Our souls sit close and silently within, And their own web from their own entrails spin; And when eyes meet far off, our sense is such, That, spider-like, we feel the tenderest touch. — John Dryden

But even more important," he said, "is the way complex systems seem to strike a balance between the need for order and the imperative to change. Complex systems tend to locate themselves at a place we call 'the edge of chaos.' We imagine the edge of chaos as a place where there is enough innovation to keep a living system vibrant, and enough stability to keep it from collapsing into anarchy. It is a zone of conflict and upheaval, where the old and the new are constantly at war. Finding the balance point must be a delicate matter - if a living system drifts too close, it risks falling over into incoherence and dissolution; but if the system moves too far away from the edge, it becomes rigid, frozen, totalitarian. Both conditions lead to extinction. Too much change is as destructive as too little. Only at the edge of chaos can complex systems flourish." He paused. "And, by implication, extinction is the inevitable result of one or the other strategy - too much change, or too little. — Michael Crichton

Your friends and your family, if you're close to them, they won't let you get too far from who you were or from who you are. And so I love staying close to people who've always known me. That's probably the best leavening that you could possibly have. — Condoleezza Rice

But when it comes to integrating career and family, planning too far in advance can close doors rather than open them. I have seen this happen over and over. Women rarely make one big decision to leave the workforce. Instead, they make a lot of small decisions along the way, making accommodations and sacrifices that they believe will be required to have a family. Of all the ways women hold themselves back, perhaps the most pervasive is that they leave before they leave. The — Sheryl Sandberg

I don't tell her that my grasp on truth, on words, on people, has slipped. I was getting close, so close to normal again, and that's been snatched away. I'm not even back where I started. I'm somewhere else entirely, so far off the map I don't know where to turn next. — Daisy Whitney

Isn't it important for your friends close by and far away to know the high cost of these insights? Wouldn't they find it a source of consolation to see that light and darkness, hope and despair, love and fear are never very far from each other, and that spiritual freedom often requires a fierce spiritual battle? — Henri J.M. Nouwen

So far away and yet you feel so close. — Pearl Jam

So what do you think?' He asked, holding up the book.
'I think Salinger is a closet paedophile,' I replied placidly and was surprised and comforted by this minuscule, acidic, bitter Sylvia Plath like mocking, sniping tone that had crept into my voice. 'The main character Seymour is a fully grown man and a pervert who befriends young girls with his storytelling and swimming, just to get close enough to groom them in preparation for the inevitable sexual assault he lusts after. You might have noticed for example in A Perfect Day For Bananafish he grabs the young girls-'
'Sybil.'
'He grabs Sybil's ankles while lying on the beach and again when he pushes her in the water,' I continued. 'He goes too far when he kisses the bottom of her foot which makes even a four-year-old yell out in fear, knowing a line had been crossed. Frustrated Seymour walks away and goes back to his hotel where he kills himself in shame. — J.D. Gallagher

The Japanese have two words: "uchi" meaning inside and "soto" meaning outside. Uchi refers to their close friends, the people in their inner circle. Soto refers to anyone who is outside that circle. And how they relate and communicate to the two are drastically different. To the soto, they are still polite and they might be outgoing, on the surface, but they will keep them far away, until they are considered considerate and trustworthy enough to slip their way into the uchi category. Once you are uchi, the Japanese version of friendship is entire universes beyond the average American friendship! Uchi friends are for life. Uchi friends represent a sacred duty. A Japanese friend, who has become an uchi friend, is the one who will come to your aid, in your time of need, when all your western "friends" have turned their back and walked away. — Alexei Maxim Russell

I realised I really didn't know what I was doing and I felt her trace drowning in the middle of the cars and the people, in the middle of the streets and far away, in the secrets she so jealously kept.
I felt it. We were ever so close, ever so far. — Emiliano Campuzano

Defining and celebrating the New Father are by far the most popular ideas in our contemporary discourse on fatherhood. Father as close and nurturing, not distant and authoritarian. Fatherhood as more than bread winning. Fatherhood as new-and-improved masculinity. Fathers unafraid of feelings. Fathers without sexism. Fatherhood as fifty-fifty parenthood, undistorted by arbitrary gender divisions or stifling social roles. — David Blankenhorn

When a child speaks of a past life memory, the effects ripple far. At the center is the child, who is directly healed and changed. The parents standing close by are rocked by the truth of the experience - a truth powerful enough to dislodge deeply entrenched beliefs. For observers removed from the actual event - even those just reading about it - reports of a child's past life memory can jostle the soul toward new understanding. Children's past life memories have the power to change lives. — Carol Bowman

In my prayers, I want to say: Lord, don't be far from me, and also don't come too close. Let me contemplate the stars on the texture of your cloth, but don't unveil your face to me. Allow me to hear the rivers that you send running, but Lord! Lord! Don't allow me hearing your voice — Amin Maalouf

There are places in the world where real life is still happening, far away from here, in a pre-Hitler Europe, where hundreds of lights are lit every evening, ladies and gentlemen gather to drink coffee with cream in oak-panelled rooms, or sit comfortably in splendid coffee-houses under gilt chandeliers, stroll arm in arm to the opera or the ballet, observe from close-up the lives of great artists, passionate love affairs, broken hearts, the painter's girlfriend falling in love with his best friend the composer, and going out at midnight bareheaded in the rain to stand alone on the ancient bridge whose reflection trembles in the river. * — Amos Oz

She, with her affection and her gaiety, had been largely responsible for him having rediscovered the meaning of life, her love had driven him to the far corners of the Earth, because he needed to be rich enough to buy some land and live in peace with her for the rest of their days. It was his utter confidence in this fragile creature, that had made him fight with honor, because he knew that after a battle he could forget all the horrors of war in her arms, and that, despite all the women he had known, only there in her arms could he close his eyes and sleep like a child. — Paulo Coelho

I think present-day reason is an analogue of the flat earth of the medieval period. If you go too far beyond it youre presumed to fall off, into insanity. And people are very much afraid of that. I think this fear of insanity is comparable to the fear people once had of falling off the edge of the world. Or the fear of heretics. Theres a very close analogue there. — Robert M. Pirsig

He reached out for her hand and she grabbed onto his.
"Eena, when you're ready to talk about it, I'll be here. That's what best friends are for."
She let the tears fall. He'd never know they were for him. He'd think they were because of Derian. They held hands silently throughout the night, Ian unaware that this was by far her most tortured nightmare ever. Paradise so close, and yet completely unattainable. — Richelle E. Goodrich

My father became a mythical figure, more force than man ... he was a force my mother would use as a threat of wrath and punishment." In "Father Close, Father Far" New California Writing — Dagoberto Gilb

She took a sip from her water glass and marveled at how you could sit so close to someone and still have him be totally far away from you. — J.R. Ward

A near View of Death would soon reconcile Men of good Priciples one to another, and that it is chiefly owing to our easy Scituation in Life, and our putting these Things far from us, that our Breaches are formented, ill Blood continued, Prejudices, Breach of Charity and of Christian Union so much kept and so far carry'd on among us, as it is: Another Plague Year would reconcile all these Differences, a close conversing with Death, or the Diseases that threaten Death, would scum off the Gall from our Tempers, remove the Animosities among us, and bring us to see with differing Eyes, than those which we look'd on Things with before — Daniel Defoe

When you're using a long brush, you have your arm at full length. Basically, it exaggerates the movement of your body. But I always start far away and end up really close. — Brice Marden

Talk - half-talk, phrases that had no need to be finished, abstractions, Chinese bells played on with cotton-tipped sticks, mock orange blossoms painted on porcelain. The muffled, close, half-talk of soft-fleshed women. The men she had embraced, and the women, all washing against the resonance of my memory. Sound within sound, scene within scene, woman within woman - like acid revealing an invisible script. One woman within another eternally, in a far-reaching procession, shattering my mind into fragments, into quarter tones which no orchestral baton can ever make whole again. — Anais Nin

It's amazing how close you are to your essential self as a kid, he thought, and how far from it you drift the more you strive to be loved. — Nina George

She'd fucked him over hardcore. She'd betrayed him and she'd lied to him, and she knew that as far as he was concerned she'd led him on and used him as well, had consorted with people who wanted to see him dead and given them information to help them make him so. Most of all, she'd hurt him. And if the pain in her chest was anything close to what he'd felt, she was more than willing to admit he deserved to get his own back. Was willing to do more than admit it; was willing to take it, in the hopes he'd eventually decide she'd been punished enough and they could maybe move on. — Stacia Kane

At the corner she looked suddenly far away and saw the street go straight out to the sky. She looked up to the sky and saw it go everywhere, and my, she thought, how large it is, what a large place it is. What a large world. So many different people, so many different places, close by and far away, people everywhere, places everywhere. What a fine place to be in. — William, Saroyan

Infidelity and faith look both through the perspective glass, but at contrary ends. Infidelity looks through the wrong end of the glass; and, therefore, sees those objects near which are afar off, and makes great things little,-diminishing the greatest spiritual blessings, and removing far from us threatened evils. Faith looks at the right end, and brings the blessings that are far off in time close to our eye, and multiplies God's mercies, which, in a distance, lost their greatness. — Joseph Hall

As he rose to his feet he noticed that he was neither dripping nor panting for breath as anyone would expect after being under water. His clothes were perfectly dry. He was standing by the edge of a small pool - not more than ten feet from side to side in a wood. The trees grew close together and were so leafy that he could get no glimpse of the sky. All the light was green light that came through the leaves: but there must have been a very strong sun overhead, for this green daylight was bright and warm. It was the quietest wood you could possibly imagine. There were no birds, no insects, no animals, and no wind. You could almost feel the trees growing. The pool he had just got out of was not the only pool. There were dozens of others - a pool every few yards as far as his eyes could reach. You could almost feel the trees drinking the water up with their roots. This wood was very much alive. — C.S. Lewis

Knowing that a great bit of the technology is active and actually happening, and that the technology that we're talking about, in terms of uploading a human consciousness, is probably not all that far away, to be honest. Indeed, it will happen. It's pretty close. — Johnny Depp

What the intellectual craves above all else is to be taken seriously, to be treated as a decisive force in shaping history. He is far more at home in a society that weighs his every word and keeps close watch on his attitudes then in a society that cares not what he says or does. He would rather be persecuted than ignored. — Eric Hoffer

Dreams may seem far, but the steps we take are close. Focus on these steps and watch your dreams magically appear. — Charles F. Glassman

I noticed Xander had subtly adjusted his posture. He slouched slightly to the side, let his head hang, and then looked up through his bangs to gaze at something in the middle distance. Uber James Dean. Xander managed to pull it off as if he was looking at nothing, just having deep thoughts about the far away adventures he would be having if he wasn't stuck waiting for a flowered suitcase at Hopkins International. I casually let my eyes slide across the room. There had to be cute girls somewhere close at hand. Otherwise Xander wouldn't have broken out his middle distance gazing Tyrone Power eyes. — Adrianne Ambrose

The forty days of the soul begin on the morning after death. That first night, before its forty days begin, the soul lies still against sweated-on pillows and watches the living fold the hands and close the eyes, choke the room with smoke and silence to keep the new soul from the doors and the windows and the cracks in the floor so that it does not run out of the house like a river. The living know that, at daybreak, the soul will leave them and make its way to the places of its past ... and sometimes this journey will carry it so far for so long that it will forget to come back. — Tea Obreht

Nicolas walked toward him. Ignoring the presence of the others nearby, he took Julien's chin in his hand and kissed him tenderly on the lips. Julien seemed chagrined at first, and then accepted the gesture. It was sweet, and had the air of a couple that had been together for a great long time.
Maric glanced away, embarrased by the intimacy, not to mention the fact that he hadn't quite realized the nature of the two warriors' relationship ealier. Not just comrades, then, and far more than close friend. The older Grey Wardens seemed unsurprised. — David Gaider

Here is the infallible test. Imagine yourself in a situation where you are alone, wholly alone on earth, and you are offered one of the two, books or men. I often hear men prizing their solitude but that is only because there are still men somewhere on earth even though in the far distance. I knew nothing of books when I came forth from the womb of my mother, and I shall die without books, with another human hand in my own. I do, indeed, close my door at times and surrender myself to a book, but only because I can open the door again and see a human being looking at me. — Martin Buber

To listen fully means to pay close attention to what is being said beneath the words. You listen not only to the 'music,' but to the essence of the person speaking. You listen not only for what someone knows, but for what he or she is. Ears operate at the speed of sound, which is far slower than the speed of light the eyes take in. Generative listening is the art of developing deeper silences in yourself, so you can slow our mind's hearing to your ears' natural speed, and hear beneath the words to their meaning. — Peter Senge

How is it possible, that I'm this close to you and it's killing me that you're still so far away? — Tahereh Mafi

The natural scientists of the previous age knew less than we do and believed they were very close to the goal: we have taken very great steps in its direction and now discover we are still very far away from it. With the most rational philosophers an increase in their knowledge is always attended by an increased conviction of their ignorance. — Georg C. Lichtenberg

When you spend weeks on end close to another person, so close that you know every hiccough, every smell and every scratch on the skin, you either come out of it hating each other or so deep in each other's gut that you can't find a way out. Klara and I were both. Our little love affair had turned into a Siamese-twin relationship. There wasn't any romance in it. There wasn't room enough between us for romance to occur. And yet I knew every inch of Klara, every pore, and every thought, far better than I'd known my own mother. And in the same way: from the womb out. I was surrounded by Klara — Frederik Pohl

Something has gone crooked here; night is coming. Am I drawing close to the end? It almost feels like it - that there can't be much farther to go, having come so far already - and yet nothing feels finished. — Ally Condie

For a good part of my life, I had a share in this idea that I have not yet quite abandoned. But there came a time when I could not protect myself, and indeed did not wish to protect myself, from the onslaught of reality. Marxism, I conceded, had its intellectual and philosophical and ethical glories, but they were in the past. Something of the heroic period might perhaps be retained, but the fact had to be faced: there was no longer any guide to the future. In addition, the very concept of a total solution had led to the most appalling human sacrifices, and to the invention of excuses for them. Those of us who had sought a rational alternative to religion had reached a terminus that was comparably dogmatic. What else was to be expected of something that was produced by the close cousins of chimpanzees? Infallibility? Thus, dear reader, if you have come this far and found your own faith undermined - as I hope - I am willing to say that to some extent I know what you are going through. — Christopher Hitchens

Even if index numbers cannot fulfill the demands that theory has to make, they can still, in spite of their fundamental shortcomings and the inexactness of the methods by which they are actually determined, perform useful workaday services for the politician. If we have no other aim in view than the comparison of points of time that lie close to one another, then the errors that are involved in every method of calculating numbers may be so far ignored as to allow us to draw certain rough conclusions from them. Thus, for example, it becomes possible to a certain extent to span the temporal gap that lies, in a period of variation in the value of money, between movements of Stock Exchange rates and movements of the purchasing power that is expressed in the prices of commodities. — Ludwig Von Mises

So, how close are love and genius, really? We know that they are both mentioned far more than lived. — Criss Jami

If she were here I wouldn't be able to keep my hands off her. I would hold her so close she'd beg me to let her breathe. I'd kiss her so hard she'd plead for mercy. I'd unfasten her clothing and lie with her on that hard bed, and what was between us would be as far above the ordinary congress between man and woman as the stars are above their pale reflections in the lake below. — Juliet Marillier

One thing America truly does stand for is a million different ways of living. But while we enjoy the lives we have, we're so privileged. We live in a world that's so far from what the Palestinian children are going through, it's unbelievable. Yet if we dare to get close to that atrocity and name it, it would shock us so badly we couldn't live in our privileged comfort zone. — Jimmy Santiago Baca

Man goes far away or near but God never goes far-off; he is always standing close at hand, and even if he cannot stay within he goes no further than the door. — Meister Eckhart

He is totally dreamy Grace. You see that don't you?" Sarah gave me more Caylie learned lingo.
"Oh, don't I know. I just don't want anyone else dreaming about him."
"He's far from ugly Grace. He's gorgeous." I gave her a glare. She kept on, "I will tell you this because you are my friend. He is so gorgeous every girl in this court has fantasized about him, including me. But you don't see the way we see him look at you. The way he stops everything when you come in the room. They way his eyes pop when you speak the first time to him when you approach. It's how he breathes too Grace. He seems to hold his breath until you are close enough for him to touch. He is completely and utterly in love with you girl. — Cyndi Goodgame

Duiri Tal, a small lake, lies cradled on the hill above Okhimath, at a height of 8,000 feet. It was a favourite spot of one of Garhwal's earliest British Commissioners, J.H. Batten, whose administration continued for twenty years (1836-56). He wrote: The day I reached there, it was snowing and young trees were laid prostrate under the weight of snow; the lake was frozen over to a depth of about two inches. There was no human habitation, and the place looked a veritable wilderness. The next morning when the sun appeared, the Chaukhamba and many other peaks extending as far as Kedarnath seemed covered with a new quilt of snow, as if close at hand. The whole scene was so exquisite that one could not tire of gazing at it for hours. I think a person who has a subdued settled despair in his mind would all of a sudden feel a kind of bounding and exalting cheerfulness which will be imparted to his frame by the atmosphere of Duiri Tal. This — Ruskin Bond

Awash in sensation, it took several moments for Charlotte to come to her senses. She slowly pulled away from him and pressed her fingers to her lips. She desperately wanted to stay with him.

Forever.

But since that wasn't possible, she needed to leave before they went too far. There were so many things she wanted to say to him, but he was so close. Her pulse raced, and she couldn't seem to catch her breath. Words were beyond her capabilities.

Until voices sounded outside the door and a very inelegant word escaped her mouth.

Charlotte — Ally Broadfield

This green place in which I stood with James turned slowly around us like a music box. All my memories returning, and all his. I could see and feel each of his days and he mine. Childhood songs, books read, hearts broken, arguments forgiven.The sweetness of these imperfections far outshining the regrets. Our lives overlapped as naturally as two blades of grass brushing together.
My pain forgotten, my clothes dry and clean, I pulled James close to me. As he lifted my chin, I felt no sensation of falling as when I had been Light touching one who is Quick. It wasn't the mere heat of a stolen moment in borrowed flesh. We touched now soul to soul, both of us Light. And when we kissed, the garden rocked, floating upstream. — Laura Whitcomb

Wrap yourself in the sheets tightly. Feel that? Those are my arms around your waist, my head against yours and my heart beating in time with the thunder of your heart. I'm there baby. Maybe not in body but I am there with you constantly. You carry my heart on your sleeve Layla and it keeps me close to you. No matter where I am, however far apart we are, I carry you with me. You are never too far for my heart. We're bound together. — Marie Coulson

One of his hands balanced on his cane. The other rested at his side next to her. She'd need only move the smallest amount and they would be touching. He was that close. He was that far from reach. — Leigh Bardugo

Whatcha got there?" Drake asked, nodding to the floor. "Snacks for me." I winked. "Well, now I'm offended." He fake pouted, scooting away from me in his seat, which made it even more funny because there was nowhere for him to go in the tiny car. "Why is that?" Nothing wrong with playing along, besides, he was cute when he was fake-mad. What was I saying? He was cute ALL the time. He turned to me and slid his arms around my waist, pulling me close. Far off, I caught a whiff of his scent. Mmm. Delicious. "It's just that I thought I was your snack on the go." His breath danced on my cheek, dangerously close to my lips. I giggled before I could stop myself. "Do you really want me to suck you dry?" "Mmm, that sounds like an offer I can't refuse." He raised his eyebrows and flashed a naughty grin. "Don't be dirty, I didn't mean that." I slapped his arm for good measure. "Is that all you think of me as - some kind of slutty vampire? — Karly Kirkpatrick