Clutching Hand Quotes & Sayings

Playboy: Are you afraid of the dark? King: Of course. Isn't everybody? Actually, I can't understand my own family sometimes. I won't sleep without a light on in the room and, needless to say, I'm very careful to see that the blankets are tucked tight under my legs so I won't wake up in the middle of the night with a clammy hand clutching my ankle. — Stephen King

was a female Palestinian suicide bomber clutching a rifle in one hand and her little son in the other. This, it seemed, was the state's only vision of gender equality. Ahmadinejad instituted separate elevators for men and women in government buildings, and he fired swaths of municipal workers who were not religious or devoted enough to his ideology. Tehran — Shirin Ebadi

Green had immediately ordered him another one. Fuck. Ruxs plopped down on the bed clutching the shirt in his hand. Ruxs groaned. "Why does he have to be straight?" "Who said I was?" Green's smooth voice wafted over him like a warm blanket. Is that supposed to be another joke? Ruxs closed his eyes, wishing things could be different. Ruxs — A.E. Via

And yet it may happen in these most desperate trials of our human existence that beyond any rational explanation, we may feel a nail-scarred Hand clutching ours. We are able, as Etty Hillesun, the Dutch Jewess who died in Auschwitz on November 30, 1943, wrote, "to safeguard that little piece of God in ourselves" and not give way to despair. We make it through the night and darkness gives way to the light of morning. The tragedy radically alters the direction of our lives, but in our vulnerability and defenselessness we experience the power of Jesus in His present risenness. - Abba's Child — Brennan Manning

I'll be hurting elsewhere in a moment if I don't get you into bed right now." He chuckled as he laid her on the mattress. One hand clutching his robe, she tugged him downward.
"Then touch me, Nicholas. Make me burn like you did a few moments ago. I want you touching me, sucking on me...I want you to fuck me until neither one of us can move."
"Christ Jesus," he rasped at the lust echoing through her words. — Monica Burns

Do you really want to be converted? Are you willing to be transformed? Or do you keep clutching your old ways of life with one hand while with the other you beg people to for help you change?
Conversion is certainly not something you can bring about yourself. It is not a question of willpower. You have to trust the inner voice that shows the way. You know that inner voice. You turn to it often. But after you have heard with clarity what you are asked to do, you start raising questions, fabricating objections,, and seeking everyone else's opinion. Thus you become entangles in countless often contradictory thoughts, feelings, and ideas and lose touch with the God in you. And you end up dependent on all the people you have gathered around you.
Excerpt from:The Inner Voice of Love From Anguish to Freedom by Henry Nouwen — Henri J.M. Nouwen

A person shows signs of clutching on too fast, of being needy, of not hearing the word "no," of jealousy, of guarding you and your freedom. But the signs can be so small they skitter right past you. Sometimes they dance past, looking satiny, something you should applaud. Someone's jealousy can make you feel good. Special. But it's not even about you. It's about a hand that is already gripping. It's about their need, circling around your throat — Deb Caletti

The second corpse sat up and then stood, clutching her belly. A man stepped into the frame, a gun in his hand, healing her by sucking the bullet from her guts. They argued, grew calm, parted peaceably. — James S.A. Corey

Few Come This Way

Few come this way; not that the darkness
Deters them, but they come
Reluctant here who fear to find,
Thickening the darkness, what they left behind
Sucking its cheeks before the fire at home,
The palsied Indecision from whose dancing head
Precipitately they fled, only to come again
Upon him here,
Clutching at the wrist of Venture with a cold
Hand, aiming to fall in with him, companion
Of the new as of the old. — Edna St. Vincent Millay

What's that?' he snarled, staring at the envelope Harry was still clutching in his hand. 'If it's another form for me to sign, you've got another-'
'It's not,' said Harry cheerfully. 'It's a letter from my godfather.'
'Godfather?' spluttered Uncle Vernon. 'You haven't got a godfather!'
'Yes, I have,' said Harry brightly. 'He was my mum and dad's best friend. He's a convicted murderer, but he's broken out of wizard prison and he's on the run. He likes to keep in touch with me, though ... keep up with my news ... check I'm happy ... — J.K. Rowling

Click.
The salamander flared, etching the room with searing white light and dark shadows.
Otto screamed. He fell to the floor, clutching at his throat. He sprang to his feet, goggle-eyed and gasping, and staggered, knock-kneed and wobbly-legged, the length of the room and back again. He sank down behind a desk , scattering paperwork with a wildly flailing hand.
"Aarghaarghaaaargh ... "
There was a shocked silence.
Otto stood up, adjusted his cravat, and dusted himself off. Only then did he look up at the row of shocked faces.
"Vel?" he said sternly. "Vat are you all looking at? It is just a normal reaction, zat is all. I am vorking on it. Light in all its forms is mine passion. Light is my canvas, shadows are my brush."
But strong light hurts you!" said Sacharissa. "It hurts vampires!"
"Yes. It iss a bit of a bugger, but zere you go. — Terry Pratchett

I guess I'm a hopeless case. No matter how much I try, his existence won't budge out of my mind. The only thing left for me to do is to focus on becoming a career woman, stay single for the rest of my life and go to my grave clutching a photo of his in my hand. — Kaoru Tada

Inej turned to go. Kaz seized her hand, keeping it on the railing. He didn't look at her. "Stay," he said, his voice rough stone. "Stay in Ketterdam. Stay with me."
She looked down at his gloved hand clutching hers. Everything in her wanted to say yes, but she would not settle for so little, not after all she'd been through. "What would be the point?"
He took a breath. "I want you to stay. I want you to ... I want you."
"You want me." She turned the words over. Gently, she squeezed his hand. "And how will you have me, Kaz?"
"How will you have me?" she repeated. "Fully clothed, gloves on, your head turned away so our lips can never touch? — Leigh Bardugo

The men's attention had shifted to a young man crouched on a stool in the corner. He had barely looked up through my appearance and interrogation, but kept his head bent, hand clutching the opposite shoulder, rocking slightly back and forth in pain. — Diana Gabaldon

Will nodded slowly, then looked up at tha black sky. "The stars", he said. "I have never seen them so bright. The wind has blown off the fog, I think."
Magnus thought of the joy on Will's face as he had stood bleeding in Camille's living room, clutching the demon tooth in his hand. Somehow I don't think it's the stars that have changed. — Cassandra Clare

Sometime later, halfway between midnight and dawn, I fell asleep with my head against the polished mahogany and my hand clutching a bottle full of nothing but blue dregs and the morning's regret. — Joe Ducie

Weetzie could not even cry and make Kleenex roses. She remembered the day her father, Charlie, had driven away in the smashed yellow T-bird, leaving her mother Brandy-Lynn clutching her flowered robe with one hand and an empty glass in the other, and leaving Weetzie holding her arms crossed over her chest that was taking its time to develope into anything — Francesca Lia Block

She pushed the bathroom door open to discover Magnus lurking on the other side, clutching a towel in one hand and his glittery hair in the other. He must have slept on it, she thought, because one side of the glittered spikes looked dented in. "Why does it take girls so long to shower?" he demanded. "Mortal girls, Shadowhunters, female warlocks, you're all the same. I'm not getting any younger waiting out here."
Clary stepped aside to let him pass. "How old are you, anyway?" she asked curiously.
Magnus winked at her. "I was alive when the Dead Sea was just a lake that was feeling a little poorly."
Clary rolled her eyes.
Magnus made a shooing moving. "Now move your petite behind. I need to get in there; my hair is a wreck. — Cassandra Clare

Whether it be Beyonce or Justin Bieber, we see singers who have absolutely nothing to offer anyone as they walk off stage clutching three Grammys in each hand. — Morrissey

What," came a deep male voice, "is this?"
Silence froze, her hand still outstretched, clutching a damp, dirty cloth. Oh, dear Lord. Slowly she raised her eyes and found herself face-to-thighs with Mickey O'Connor's extremely tight breeches. — Elizabeth Hoyt

He backed away from me, clutching the phone to his chest. "What?"
"Gimme the phone," I commanded, holding out my hand.
His head dropped solemnly. "I am on a very important call."
"Yes, about me," I said, reaching for it. "Now give it."
He shrank away and eyed the room anxiously. "Damn, I knew I should have kept a spare roll of duct tape somewhere. — Karina Halle

My hand is clutching Sebastian's, although I'm not sure he's even aware of it after all we've been through. — Theresa Braun

At first she saw only the mess of roots. There wasn't space in there, surely, for a small dog, let alone a man and boy. But as she watched, a huge hand slapped down on the edge. She started for the hole even as Caliban emerged, head and broad shoulders blackened, clutching Indio to his chest like Hephaestus rising from his underworld forge. She'd never seen such a wonderful sight. — Elizabeth Hoyt

The thumb does not have very a important role when shifting from one position to another. There is too much said, as it seems to me, about importance of the thumb ... The thumb must lightly touch the neck and follow the forefinger when moving in different positions, aiding the hand to shift up and down without clutching the instrument. — Leopold Auer

Letting go of a craving is not rejecting it but allowing it to be itself: a contingent state of mind that once arisen will pass away. Instead of forcibly freeing ourselves from it, notice how its very nature is to free itself. To let it go is like releasing a snake that you have been clutching in your hand. By identifying with a craving ('I want this," don't want' that"), you tighten the clutch and intensify its resistance. Instead of being a state of mind that you have, it becomes a compulsion that has you. As with understanding anguish, the challenge in letting go of craving is to act before habitual reactions incapacitate us. — Stephen Batchelor

At the bottom of every dilemma, he says, is fear, and the brain always prefers the bird in the hand to venturing into the bush, even if you are clutching a scrawny black crow. — Barbara Bradley Hagerty

Nine are killed instantly. One of them still clutching the hand of bridge he was playing when the shell struck. — Anthony Doerr

Christ! Garreth!" Lachlain shot to his feet, weak and stumbling. Dragging Emma to his side, half carrying her, he lurched out of the room and down the stairs. Regin and Annika followed, demanding to know what was happening.
Inside the half-basement, they found Wroth alongside Garreth, grappling to hold up the ceiling.
The vampire's voice was incongruously calm when he asked, "What kind of idiot would find this a worthy plan?"
In an astounded tone, Lachlain said to Emma, "Your family's adding in-laws like him?"
The vampire's gaze fell to Lachlain's hand clutching Emma's, and he raised an eyebrow. "Indeed. — Kresley Cole

I think it would be funny to have one of those family decals showing a really skinny teenage girl barfing into a little chalk-outline bag (the bulimic in the family) or the dad figure dressed in the woman's underwear that he truly enjoys slipping into when no one's looking. Or the wife figure smiling with her exaggerated curly hair and tennis skirt, clutching a racket in one hand and a bottle of Stoli' in the other. — Celia Rivenbark

How long have you been dating her?' I asked.
Nine months. We never got along. I mean, I didn't even briefly like her. Like, my mom and my dad- my dad would get pissed, and then he would beat the shit out of my mom. And then my dad would be all nice and they'd have a honeymoon period. But with Sara, there's never a honeymoon period. God, how could she think I was a rat? I know, I know: Why don't we break up?' He ran a hand through his hair, clutching a fistful of it atop his head, and said, ' I guess I saty with her because she stays with me. And that's not an easy thing to do. I'm a bad boyfriend. She's a bad girlfriend. We deserve each other. — John Green

And so you carried
life for the world, Mary,
as you fled,
to protect that very life
from threats of death.
Joining the world's mass of displaced people
you became
Refugee,
Alien,
Immigrant,
Homeless,
and settled in a foreign land--
the only place
to safely nurture
your fragile dream.
Like so many other women
who flee violence,
clutching their babies,
you crossed the border defining you
a stranger,
dependent on foreign aid, welfare
and hand-outs--
the charity of others--
to feed the Son of God. — Edwina Gateley

Taylor's dating Scott Casey?" He began to laugh. He held up one hand, clutching his side with the other. "Wait, wait." He gasped for breath. "This really is too good. I gotta write this down to use one day."

Jeremy turned to his computer, reading out loud as he typed. " 'And then the evil, arrogant movie star learned that lying does not pay. — Julie James

In the other train, looking at me through the window, is the most beautiful boy I've ever seen. He has golden hair and bright blue eyes. His skin seems to glow softly, like he carries the sun inside him. One of his paint-stained hands is clutching his chest, like he just got punched, and the other is pressed flat against the glass of the window. I raise my hand and press it against my window, mirroring him. He looks so confused. Stunned. Like he's just seen a ghost. — Josephine Angelini

S death one of those adventures from which I can't emerge as myself? The sister whose hand I am clutching in the picture is dead. I wonder every day whether she still exists ... A person whom one has loved seems altogether too significant a thing to simply vanish altogether from the world. A person whom one loves is a world, just as one knows oneself to be a world. How can worlds like these simply cease altogether? But if my sister does exist, then what is she, and what makes that thing that she now is identical with the beautiful girl laughing at her little sister on that forgotten day? Can she remember that summer's day while I cannot? — Rebecca Goldstein

You're glowering again," Abigail whispered, stepping to his side and giving him a sharp rap with the fan she was clutching.
"Can you blame me?"
Abigail shot a look to Harriet who was having her hand accosted by an earnest young gentleman by the name of Mr. Richmond Sprout. "Not int he least, dear, but you really should try to control that temper of yours. The last thing we need this evening is for you to punch someone."
"That thought never entered my head."
"Of course it did, but I find it rather sweet. — Jen Turano

As she wanders along the river like this, one hand on her hip and the other clutching a mark to defray her expenses, she is in well-known country. — Hermann Broch

Oh! But he was a tight-fisted hand at the grindstone, Scrooge! a squeezing, wrenching, grasping, scraping, clutching, covetous, old sinner! Hard and sharp as flint, from which no steel had ever struck out generous fire; secret, and self-contained, and solitary as an oyster. — Charles Dickens

And what part of me will begin
To forget you first; the sudden
Pains that shoot to my bruised palms
As I think of you in the cover of the dark,
Or the invisible hand
Clutching at my heart, as it knocks against its savage cage,
Or my still swollen lips
As they remember the touch of your gentle fingertips? — Sreesha Divakaran

This looks good."
"That's Metamucil," Bricker said with disgust, snatching it from her hand.
"So?" She turned to scowl at him. "What's wrong with Metamucil?"
"It's
" He glanced at the container and read, "A dietary supplement."
"That sounds healthy," she said, trying to grab it back.
"Eshe," he said, his disgust giving way to amusement. "It's what old mortals take to get regular."
"To get regular what?" she asked, and then poked him in the stomach, hard. The moment Bricker bent over with an "oomph," she snatched the container back and repeated, "Regular what?"
"Crap," he gasped, clutching his stomach.
"I didn't hit you that hard," she said with some disgust of her own.
"No." He sighed, straightening. "I meant that's what they get regulated. Crap."
Eshe dropped the can in dismay. "They buy crap? — Lynsay Sands

Out from the servient shoulders of some smooth-tongued Waiter it stares, into the scared dilating pupils of the White Satin Bride with her pledged hand clutching her Bridegroom's sleeve. Up from the gravelly, pick-and-shovel labor of the new-made grave it lifts its weirdly magnetic eyes to the Widow's tears. Down from some petted Princeling's silver-trimmed saddle horse it smiles its electrifying, wistful smile into the Peasant's sodden weariness. Across the slender white rail of an always out-going steamer it stings back into your gray, land-locked consciousness like the tang of a scarlet spray. And the secret of the face, of course, is "Lure"; but to save your soul you could not decide in any specific case whether the lure is the lure of personality, or the lure of physiognomy - a mere accidental, coincidental, haphazard harmony of forehead and cheek-bone and twittering facial muscles. — Eleanor Hallowell Abbott

Without thinking twice, he'd lifted his hand, still clutching the penknife, and drawn it swiftly along her milky skin, made his pain her own . . . — Kate Morton

She looked down at the hand and saw that it was clutching instead a handful of perfume card samplers, each one sprayed with a different scent. — Jill Mansell

And as we walk back down the street, me gingerly clutching what at this point constitutes my entire collection, my father says, 'One day, when you're all grown up and I'm not here any more, you'll remember the sunny day we went to the market together and bought a boat.' My throat feels tight because, as soon as he says it, I am already there. Standing on another street, without my father, trying to get back. And yet I'm here, with him. So I try to soak up every aspect of the moment, to help me get back when I need to. I feel the weight of the chunky parcel under my arm, and the warmth of the sun, and my father's hand in mine. I smell the flowers with their sharp undertang of cheap hot dog, and taste the slick of toffee on my teeth, and hear the chattering hagglers. I feel the joy of an adventurous Saturday with my father and no school, and I feel the sadness of looking back when it is all gone. When he is gone. — Victoria Coren

Dodie could often be seen at the club, clutching a white terry-cloth towel in one hand, her cigarette holder in the other, as she pedaled away on one of the club's stationary bikes. — Lily Koppel

It's a bad dream: my English teacher is standing naked at the foot of this slightly lumpy bed, clutching a pair of not-quite-white underpants in his hand, studying me with this creepy look on his face, the one he gets when he's reading aloud in class and wants us to think he's moved by the passage. — Tom Perrotta

The battered woman
for she wore a skirt
with her right hand exposed, her left clutching at her side, stood singing of love
love which has lasted a million years, she sang, love which prevails, and millions of years ago, her lover, who had been dead these centuries, had walked, she crooned, with her in May; but in the course of ages, long as summer days, and flaming, she remembered, with nothing but red asters, he had gone; death's enormous sickle had swept those tremendous hills, and when at last she laid her hoary and immensely aged head on the earth, now become a mere cinder of ice, she implored the Gods to lay by her side a bunch of purple heather, there on her high burial place which the last rays of the last sun caressed; for then the pageant of the universe would be over. — Virginia Woolf

Falco wagged her journal in front of her. "This is yours, I presume." A slow smile spread across his face. "Let's find out exactly what you've been doing, shall we?"
"Give it back!" Cass reached for the journal, but Falco easily dodged her. He opened the leather-bound book to a random page and cleared his throat. Clutching a hand to his chest, he pretended to read aloud in a high-pitched voice. "Oh, how I love the way his fingers explore my soft flesh. The way his eyes see into my very soul."
This time, Cass managed to snatch the book out of his hands. "That is not what it says."
"I guess that means you won't be keeping me warm tonight? — Fiona Paul

When he came down, he was slower, and clutching something his hand. He leapt down the last 5 feet or so and came over to me, uncurling his fingers. In his palm was something trembling and silky and the bright, delicious pale gold of apples; in the gloom of the jungle it looked like light itself. Uva nudged the thing with a finger and it turned over, and I could see it was a monkey of some sort, though no monkey I had ever seen before; it was only a few inches larger than one of the mice I had once been tasked with killing, and his face was a wrinkled black heart, its features pinched together but its eyes large and as blankly blue as a blind kitten's. It had tiny, perfectly formed hands, one of which was gripping its tail, which it had wrapped around itself and which was flamboyantly furred, its hair hanging like a fringe. — Hanya Yanagihara

She looks out at the woods through the screen of limbs. Watching in the same way he is, for the same terrible things he is, with the same expectation, with equally haunted, hollow eyes. She's still gripping the butcher's cleaver tightly and her knuckles show through the skin. He puts a hand gently on hers. I think we're good, he says to her. It's gone. We're good.

She doesn't say anything. She just stares awhile. Clutching that glinting meat hatchet in a tight, mudded fist. The whites of her teeth and eyes in the dark. There is no good, she tells him. Not for us. There's only being ready for the next bad thing coming. — Jonathan R. Miller

I was going to take it easy on you," he says, his voice low. "Lay you down on the bed and worship you, all day and all night. Kiss and caress every inch of you. Taste you with my tongue until you can't take anymore. And then I was going to give it to you, deep and slow ... make you come over and over again, until all you can do is whimper, cry my name." His free hand, the one not clutching the belt, slowly ghosts along the front of my body, his fingertips brushing against my flushed skin. He runs the hand along my breasts before settling on my chest, over my heart. "You like it that way, don't you? Like when I make you feel all of my love."
I nod, tingles erupting all over. "Uh-huh."
"And I was going to love you right, remind you what it feels like to be cherished, to be idolized, to be treated like the queen you are. I was going to make serious love to you, baby." "But now I think I'll just fuck you instead. — J.M. Darhower

She could hardly believe it, not after ten years, but they were finally making out on her couch. And Holy Mother of God, Bryce Ryder could kiss!
He was slow and lazy with his kisses, but masterful. His tongue and fingers were thrusting forward and back, in and out, mimicking sex, winding her up so tight until she was rubbing her p#ssy against his hand while clutching his hair. More . . . she had to have more. — Sophie Renwick

She cried out as he quickly shoved a hand into the front of her panties, the sharp sound becoming a breathless moan when he cupped her warm sex in his palm and gave a predatory growl. Her delicate hands were on the sides of his neck, clutching him to her, her tongue sliding against his in a way that made his blood boil. Heat poured off him in blistering, sweltering waves as he shoved two thick fingers inside the slick, narrow opening of her body, stretching tender tissues, surprised by how perfect and small she felt. By how tightly she gripped him.
"I knew," he groaned, nipping her mouth with his teeth as he pushed his fingers deeper into that hot, melting honey. "I fucking knew you were going to feel like this. — Rhyannon Byrd

All this last day Frodo had not spoken, but had walked half-bowed, often stumbling, as if his eyes no longer saw the way before his feet. Sam guessed that among all their pains he bore the worst, the growing weight of the Ring, a burden on the body and a torment to his mind. Anxiously Sam had noted how his master's left hand would often be raised as if to ward off a blow, or to screen his shrinking eyes from a dreadful Eye that sought to look in them. And sometimes his right hand would creep to his breast, clutching, and then slowly, as the will recovered mastery, it would be withdrawn. — J.R.R. Tolkien

Come on, I said, taking his hand. Clutching the afghan with the other hand, he trailed down the hall after me, a snow white giant in tiny red underwear. — Charlaine Harris

And then an endless instant later Arthur was kissing him back, like this was perfectly normal, like this was exactly what Arthur had been hoping for most in all the world, his large hands closing over Merlin's shoulders and sliding down over his back, strong and warm even through the fabric of his sweater, one hand pausing on his waist and the other sliding around to cup his arse and pull him in closer. Merlin made a surprised, enthusiastic sound and stopped holding back; let himself cling to Arthur and kiss him more fiercely; and then they were kissing like it was their last day on earth and they had to cram every possible moment of passion into this tiny slice of time, hands clutching at fabric, mouths pressing hungry bites onto bare skin as if they would somehow devour one another, trying to touch and taste everything at once, frantic and needy and bursting with urgent desire and the inescapable knowledge that this was finite, was stolen, was not supposed to be. — FayJay

In her dreams the Hawk would be waiting for her by the sea's edge; her kilt-clad, magnificent Scottish laird. He would smile and his eyes would crinkle, then turn dark with
smoldering passion.
She would take his hand and lay it gently on her swelling abdomen, and his face would blaze with happiness and
pride. Then he would take her gently, there on the cliff's edge, in tempo with the pounding of the ocean. He would
make fierce and possessive love to her and she would hold on to him as tightly as she could. But before dawn, he would melt right through her fingers. And she would wake up, her cheeks wet with tears and her hands clutching nothing but a bit of quilt or pillow. — Karen Marie Moning

His glasses, carefully folded, placed in my mum's outstretched hand. His coat. An envelope. His watch. His shoes. And when we left, clutching a plastic bag with his belongings, the clouds were still there, — Helen Macdonald