Flinch Quotes & Sayings

Jesus honey, your husband ain't dead, he's in hiding. He growled, watching her visibly flinch. - Jase Devlin — Nina D'Angelo

She wouldn't understand, and he couldn't explain. How bad it felt to be a shock. To be an idea people had to get used to. To be a moment of hesitation. A flinch when someone touched you. A wariness in their eyes. — Alexis Hall

You can't tell me what to do anymore, Travis! I don't belong to you!"
Her words ignited a deep anger inside me. I stomped to the bed, planted my hands on the mattress on each side of her thighs, and leaned into her face.
"Well, I belong to you!" I screamed. I put so much force behind my words, I could feel all the blood rush to my face. Abby met my glare, refusing to even flinch. I looked at her lips, panting. "I belong you," I whispered, my anger fading as desire took over. — Jamie McGuire

Doc went automotively groping in this weirdness east on Olympic, trying not to flinch at what came popping up out of the gloom in the way of city buses and pedestrians in altered states of consciousness. — Thomas Pynchon

My words like eyes that flinch from light, refuse And shut upon obscurity; my acts Cast to their opposites by impatient violence Break up the sequent path; they fly On a circumference to avoid the centre. — Stephen Spender

A lion does not flinch at laughter coming from a hyena. A gorilla does not budge from a banana thrown at it by a monkey. A nightingale does not stop singing its beautiful song at the intrusion of an annoying woodpecker. — Suzy Kassem

Men are made uneasy; they flinch; they cannot bear the sudden light; a general restlessness supervenes; the face of society is disturbed, or perhaps convulsed; old interests and old beliefs have been destroyed before new ones have been created. These symptoms are the precursors of revolution; they have preceded all the great changes through which the world has passed. — Henry Thomas Buckle

When a thundering horde of drunken Vikings rush a person, it's only natural to flinch. — Krista D. Ball

Dirck closed his eyes and tried not to laugh. Win, the dauntless rebel who'd dodged lasoclear blasts without a flinch and thought nothing of invading highly classified government records with treasonous intent, was afraid of the dark. — Marcha A. Fox

Between the ink mage and the wizard, his mouth falling open at the sight. The hulk had nearly let her go after Talbun's shock attack, but he recovered quickly and took her head in his meaty hands. Don't. With appalling ease, the ink mage twisted. The snap was so loud, it made Brasley flinch even from across the chamber. His mouth fell open to scream. "No!" The brute's mouth twisted into a contemptuous grin as he let the limp body fall from his hands. Brasley watched it happen in slow motion, almost like she was floating, eyes closed, face peaceful, hair floating up around her. It was as if life had been some tremendous weight, and now that it was gone, her shell drifted down to the floor like a dry leaf. Talbun's body hit with a dull thud that brought Brasley back to reality. — Victor Gischler

It is immoral to brand children with religion. 'This is a Catholic child.' 'That is a Muslim child.' I want everyone to flinch when they hear such a phrase, just as they would if they heard, 'That is a Marxist child.' — Richard Dawkins

You are a disaster. You flinch at the slightest noise, and you nearly ripped that poor boy's head off for dropping his sword."

"The boy was stumbling about, wielding an unsheathed blade. I find it fortunate he didn't trip and impale himself on the cold steel of his own stupidity."

"Your sarcasm gets more brutal with age. And with arrogance. It's not nearly as entertaining now. — Renee Ahdieh

Loving someone isn't about wanting them to evolve into someone better. My mom taught me that.
Real love is saying: here, take my still-beating heart and hold it in your hands and please, please, please, promise not to squeeze too tight or drop it on the pavement. Love is being naked and afraid, but refusing to flinch. — Julie Johnson

Though you thrust a knife at my eyes, I will not flinch. — Lynn Flewelling

How are you going to react when we 're this close and you take off my shirt? Are you still going to want me when you see red and white lines? Are you going to flinch each time you accidentally touch my arms and feel the raised skin? How about when i touch you?"
"Or will you forbid that? Will you tell me how to dress or what i'm allowed to take off? — Katie McGarry

Do not yield. Do not flinch. Stand up. Stand up with our President and fight. We're Americans. We're Americans, and we'll never surrender. They will. — John McCain

But the fact was, Sherrie Marla trusted him already. When he took the ice off, and showed to her his new symmetry, she didn't flinch. His face was him to her now. It was not a map or an indicator of some abstract idea. Turned out it was only the first impression he needed to alter. — Aimee Bender

I steal things."
"You do what?"
She wanted to smile at the incredulous tone. "Is stealing worse than killing? I thought it was all bad."
"You just surprised me." He didn't flinch at her candid assessment of what he did, but it bothered him - and people's opinions didn't bother him. He had his own moral code, a code of strict honor. It shouldn't matter what she said . . . but it did. She wasn't accusing or even judgmental, just matter-of-fact and perhaps that was what got under his skin. That she just accepted what he was. One-dimensional, as if that was all he was. And all he would ever be. — Christine Feehan

My reflexes were now quicker than my emotion, and it was only after I had pinned her that I felt some dark, primordial excitement pulse through me. I made eye contact with her, and whatever she saw in them made her flinch. I could feel my anger growing, feeding on itself. "You're right Doris." I spoke low so only she could hear me. "I am a freak. But I'm also a predator, and you, Doris, are most definitely prey. Just remember that next time you want to pick a fight. — Laura Thalassa

To lay aside what you have in your head (selfish desires and ambitions); to freely bestow what you have in your hand; and never to flinch from the blows of adversity! — Paramahansa Yogananda

Please, don't do this," he whispered. His familiar words hit me and I wiggled out of his hold. "I seem to remember saying, actually yelling, begging, pleading, those exact words to you a month ago. Let me respond the same way you did ... " I saw him flinch right before I turned and walked out the door. — Kimberly Lauren

We have got to be watchful, for I tell you God has sent us here to test us and to prove us. We were true in keeping our first estate. The people that are here today stood loyally by God and by Jesus and they did not flinch. If you had flinched, then you would not be here with the Priesthood upon you. The evidence that you were loyal, that you were true, and that you did not waver is to be found in the fact that you have received the Gospel-and the everlasting Priesthood. — George Q. Cannon

I don't flinch from darkness, but I've always been bothered by what I call gore-nography. — Benjamin Percy

Individuals differ in how empathic they are. Some people would really flinch if they watched me hitting my hand with a hammer, and other people would just not care. — Paul Bloom

You wait. You wait until you forget that you're waiting, until you forget that there's anything to you beyond stillness and quiet; an ant crawls over your knee, and you don't flinch. — Rainbow Rowell

We have what we can hold, dear boy, and never let them see you flinch or falter. — Lois McMaster Bujold

She gives me the finger and turns back around. "Did you see that?" I flinch at the gesture. "That is completely illegal in here. — Addison Moore

WELL I BELONG TO YOU!" The veins in his neck bulged as he shouted, and I met his glare, refusing to even flinch. He looked at my lips, panting. "I belong to you," he whispered, his anger melting as he realized how close we were. — Jamie McGuire

i have to
believe
the day
will come
where i don't
flinch
whenever
i hear
his name.

- some names will always be cursed. — Amanda Lovelace

But you can't die!" Ceony cried, and Mg. Thane didn't so much as flinch at the volume, or at the tear that struck him on the bridge of his nose. He didn't seem aware of her at all. "You have too much to teach me! And you're too nice to die! — Charlie N. Holmberg

Antiheroes
Aren't just black and white; they exploit the mystery and allure of shadow, of shades of grey. For the writer, they offer more story possibilities than heroes. They could tip either way, either supporting or fighting him. Reformed antiheroes could revert to bad ways, and even on the side of good, but they cab still use methods that would make a true hero blush or flinch. The only problem is that the characteristics that make them antiheroes can, if use for good, transform them into heroes; and then life tends to be much less entertaining. — Helen McCarthy

Stand like a beaten anvil, when thy dream
Is laid upon thee, golden from the fire.
Flinch not, though heavily through that furnace-gleam
The black forge-hammers fall on thy desire.

Demoniac giants round thee seem to loom.
'Tis but the world-smiths heaving to and fro.
Stand like a beaten anvil. Take the doom
Their ponderous weapons deal thee, blow on blow.

Needful to truth as dew-fall to the flower
Is this wild wrath and this implacable scorn.
For every pang, new beauty, and new power,
Burning blood-red shall on thy heart be born.

Stand like a beaten anvil. Let earth's wrong
Beat on that iron and ring back in song. — Alfred Noyes

Thou you thrust your dagger at my eye, I will not flinch. — Lynn Flewelling

Ryker smiled at me. "You learn quick - "

I cut him off. "If you call me grasshopper, I'm going to slug you."

"Padawan."

I shoved him. It was more like shoving a tree. He didn't even flinch. "You're such a nerd."

"Geek, Millie. I'm a geek." His lips twitched and it made me want to raise myself up on my tiptoes and kiss him.

I shot him a grin instead. "Only a nerd would know the difference. — E.M. Denning

Get back, you defaulting maggots!" Racso's bellow always made me flinch, each utterance of it scoring the hate I had for him a little deeper. The debtors moved back from the bars as Racso's baton rattled across them, the actual maggots stayed where they were, chewing on the ruins of Artos Mantona's eyeballs with tiny mouths. "Back! — Mark Lawrence

Her skin smelled of autumn and the wind.
Don't Jacob ...
But it was too late. Clara didn't flinch as he pulled her close. He grabbed her hair, kissed her mouth, and he felt her heart beating as fast as his own.
... Let her go, Jacob. But he kissed her again, and it was his name she whispered, not Will's. — Cornelia Funke

Do not flinch from experiences that might destroy your beliefs. The thought you cannot think controls you more than thoughts you speak aloud. Submit yourself to ordeals and test yourself in fire. Relinquish the emotion which rests upon a mistaken belief, and seek to feel fully that emotion which fits the facts. — Eliezer Yudkowsky

I have never in my life encountered a religion as oppressive, cold, and stiff as Progressivism. I've never known a faith more eager to burn heretics at the stake. Even a fundamentalist Iranian Muslim would flinch if he came face to face with a western liberal's rigid dogmatism. I imagine that even a Saudi Arabian Islamic cleric would take one look at how American left wingers react when anyone deviates ever so slightly from their established orthodoxy, and say to himself, 'man, these people REALLY need to chill. — Matt Walsh

Those are pretty. Did he leave you your dignity after he cut you up?"
"Asshole." Shelby didn't flinch. There was no pity in his voice, just the familiar shit talk. "You got a lot of room to talk. Looks like someone tried to cut your dick off but missed."
"Good thing too or I wouldn't be able to make your mother scream every night. — Mercy Celeste

One thing the humanitarian world doesn't do well is marketing. As a journalist, I get pitched every day by companies that have new products. Meanwhile, you have issues like clean water, literacy for girls, female empowerment. People flinch at the idea of marketing these because marketing sounds like something only companies do. — Nicholas D. Kristof

We did not flinch but gave our lives to save Greece when her fate hung on a razor's edge. — Simonides Of Ceos

As we reached the wooded hill that led to the pipe, Cheater said, "Uh-oh."
"What's wrong?" I asked.
"Is anyone here thinking about kicking the crap out of me?" he asked.
"Not me," I said.
"Me either," Lucky said.
"Maybe tomorrow," Flinch told him. "But not at the moment." hidden talents — David Lubar

Deep in the secret chambers of my heart I muse my life-long hate, and without flinch I bear it nobly as I live my part. — Claude McKay

The fact that your lifespan is an infinitesimally tiny fragment in the life of the universe, and that there is, at the very least, a strong possibility that when you die, you disappear completely and forever, and that in five hundred years nobody will remember you and in five billion years the Earth will be boiled into the sun: this can be a profound and defining truth about your existence that you reflexively repulse, that you flinch away from and refuse to accept or even think about, consistently pushing to the back of your mind whenever it sneaks up, for fear that if you allow it to sit in your mind even for a minute, it will swallow everything else. It can make everything you do, and everything anyone else does, seem meaningless, trivial to the point of absurdity. — Greta Christina

I flinch. The rag she gives me is clean, but it still smells like blood. — Victoria Aveyard

Don't set out to make a scary movie and then flinch every time you're supposed to scare somebody because you're afraid of being MPAA or you're afraid of your own demons or whatever. — Andrew Bryniarski

Does this ... does this mean you want to be my boyfriend?" My question sounds both immature and momentous. But Josh doesn't flinch.
"Yes," he says. "I want. — Stephanie Perkins

Alec drew his hand back with a low whistle. "The Inquisitor meant business."
"Of course she did. I'm a dangerous criminal. Or hadn't you heard?" Jace heard the acid in his own tone, saw Alec flinch, and was meanly, momentarily, glad.
"She didn't call you a criminal, exactly ... "
"No, I'm just a very naughty boy. I do all sorts of bad things. I kick kittens. I make rude gestures at nun — Cassandra Clare

It took me a long time and most of the world to learn what I know about love and fate and the choices we make, but the heart of it came to me in an instant, while I was chained to a wall and being tortured. I realised, somehow, through the screaming of my mind, that even in that shackled, bloody helplessness, I was still free: free to hate the men who were torturing me, or to forgive them. It doesn't sound like much, I know. But in the flinch and bite of the chain, when it's all you've got, that freedom is an universe of possibility. And the choice you make between hating and forgiving, can become the story of your life. — Gregory David Roberts

Now, it is very necessary that we should not flinch from seeing what is vile and debasing. There is filth on the floor, and it must be scraped up with the muck rake; and there are times and places where this service is the most needed of all the services that can be performed. But the man who never does anything else, who never thinks or speaks or writes, save of his feats with the muck rake, speedily becomes, not a help but one of the most potent forces for evil ... — Theodore Roosevelt

Duty is heavier than a mountain, Dai Shan.'
That time, Lan did flinch. How long had it been since someone had been able to do that to him with mere words? He remembered teaching that same concept to a youth out of the Two Rivers. A sheepherder, innocent of the world, fearful of the fate laid out before him by the Pattern. — Robert Jordan

I flinch. Maybe you have to be male to understanding that castration can't be reduced to finger-scissors and some onomatopoeia. — Mark Mills

The tests of life are to make, not break us. Trouble may demolish a man's business but build up his character. The blow at the outward man may be the greatest blessing to the inner man. If God, then, puts or permits anything hard in our lives, be sure that the real peril, the real trouble, is that we shall lose if we flinch or rebel. — Maltbie Davenport Babcock

Now, pull the knife toward you - never push it. You want to hold your blade the way an artist holds and controls a paintbrush. You have to anticipate a sudden flinch, jerk or quiver so that any cut is intentional, never accidental. Your sub is your precious canvas, and you want to be creative while always maintaining full control." Mark — Claire Thompson

Introduction to bits. Things are going up on the curb, every few months. Maybe. Bottle of the inside of the lines of the landing, not as we can set of brightness. But the houses get repayed, man. Anywhere. There's nowhere else to be late at a number of me? But it's visible from the house. It's early evening, but it crackles and perhaps they own. It means that perhaps the result of bubbly waiting for a few moments. I have to flinch at the forthcoming disaster strikes. Nathan: He travels. While most of the hoarded seconds of the moon given flesh. Inanna is that they own. That which does the theme afterwards. They become bitter. Not a level on a few moments I see. Thank you. Yeah. Arty stuff. — Neil Gaiman

...he possessed for attractive form of courage: bravery of a nervous man. After all, any rash fool can be a hero if he sets no value on his life or hasn't the wit to appreciate the danger. But to understand the risks, perhaps even to flinch at first, but then summon the strength to face them down--that is my opinion is the most commendable for of value... — Robert Harris

You think it's okay to deliver dead flowers?" She turns and laughs. "I've had stranger requests." I flinch. Like what? I find the card and remove it from the tiny envelope. HE SAYS HE NEEDS YOU. HE DOESN'T. YOU THINK YOU KNOW HIM. YOU DON'T. I DO. LEAVE HIM. — Jodi Ellen Malpas

I was hoping to feel something when I saw her. She was my incubating uterus and birthday party thrower for the last seventeen years. I half expected a rush of warmth or memories, some familiarity. I flinch away from the stranger in front of me. — Colleen Hoover

Behind every flinch is a fear or an anxiety - sometimes rational, sometimes not. Without the fear, there is no flinch. But wiping out the fear isn't what's important - facing it is. — Julien Smith

Chaos claims the unwary or the incomplete. A true man may flinch away its embrace, if he is stalwart, and he girds his soul with the armour of contempt. — Dan Abnett

They want to make me feel better about dying. To make me feel better about dying gives them a purpose." You pause. "But I'm fine about dying. And they just can't accept that. It takes away their purpose." You sip your tea and flinch. "And I'm buggered if I'm going to waste what's left of my time pretending to be terrified just to fit into someone else's picture of how things should be. I'd rather watch reruns of Dalziel and Pascoe on UK Gold. — Sarah Pinborough

Miya? What are you doing?"
I drop to my knees and hold my hands out to stop her.
"Murderer..." she whispers.
I shake my head, suddenly scared. "No..."
"Monster," she says, louder this time.
She swings the sword in a large arc, aiming for my head. I flinch away just as its sharp edge reaches my skin... — Dannielle Wicks

P.C. Hodgell said - That which can be destroyed by the truth should be. Do not flinch from experiences that might destroy your beliefs. The thought you cannot think controls you more than thoughts you speak aloud. Submit yourself to ordeals and test yourself in fire. Relinquish the emotion which rests upon a mistaken belief, and seek to feel fully that emotion which fits the facts. If the iron approaches your face, and you believe it is hot, and it is cool, the Way opposes your fear. If the iron approaches your face, and you believe it is cool, and it is hot, the Way opposes your calm. Evaluate your beliefs first and then arrive at your emotions. Let yourself say - If the iron is hot, I desire to believe it is hot, and if it is cool, I desire to believe it is cool. — Eliezer Yudkowsky

Those who will not learn
in plenty to keep their place
must learn it by their need
when they have had their way
and the fields spurn their seed.
We have failed Thy grace.
Lord, I flinch and pray,
send Thy necessity.
"We Who Prayed and Wept", p. 211. — Wendell Berry

Don't foul, don't flinch-hit the line hard. — Theodore Roosevelt

She'd stutter all the reasons why she shouldn't, shaking her head adamantly. But her body..her body would grow hot with excitement. She'd get wet at the thrill of it. So fucking wet that i'd smell her, telling me she's not even wearing panties to smother her spicy scent.
When my hand touched hers, still clutched to her chest, she'd flinch but she wouldn't pull away. She'd let me guide it between her swollen breasts and down to her flat belly, brushing the bit of exposed skin where the hem of her shirt rides up. Then I'd let her fingers play with the jewel in her navel, manipulating each digit as if that diamond-studded barbell was her clit. Demonstrating how I would stroke it for her. — S.L. Jennings

Ash," I murmured, which made him flinch, bracing himself. My heart pounded, but I ignored my doubts and hurried on. "I ... will ... " Closing my eyes, I took a deep breath and whispered, "Will you be my knight? — Julie Kagawa

Can I pretend to be as cold as Augustus? I now know why he did not flinch in hanging my wife. And I am beginning to understand why Golds rule. They can do what I cannot.
Though I am alone, I know I will soon find others. They want me to soak in the guilt for now. They want me lonely, mournful, so that when I meet the others, the winners, I will be relieved. The murders will bind us, and I'll find the company of the winners a salve to my guilt. I do not love my fellow students, but I will think I do. I will want their comfort, their reassurances that I am not evil. And they will want the same. This is meant to make us a family - one with cruel secrets.
I am right. — Pierce Brown

I'm not laughing, and I'm not running. I wont lie either. You're a chilling sight to behold. I've had nightmares of monsters prettier than you." She stepped closer and raised her other hand to thread her fingers through his hair. This time he didn't flinch away. "But you're still you under all this flux nonsense. Only a fool of a woman would run from such an extraordinary man, and I am no fool, Ballard de Sauveterre. — Grace Draven

But aliens? There are TV shows about them. There are books and movies and more. The media indoctrinates you to them until people are so desensitized they don't flinch at seeing aliens on TV or having their children buy plastic versions for a quarter. — Thomm Quackenbush

(K)ids are savages who haven't learned to lie to themselves yet, and they don't flinch from the truth. — Brendan McGinley

Any rash fool can be a hero if he sets no value on his life, or hasn't the wit to appreciate danger. But to understand the risk, perhaps even to flinch at first, but then to summon the strength to face them down - that in my opinion is the most commendable form of valour — Robert Harris

When violence is real and you flinch away from it, violence does not push people to try and imitate that. Often, we shun the violence that makes us flinch, because it disturbs us. And what makes us uncomfortable and disturbs us is not often bad. What disturbs us will not make us imitate that. — Anurag Kashyap

I'm not entirely certain who arranged to have the lighting in the Rooks' offices and quarters hooked up to the Panic Lines, but it has taught me to flinch violently when a lightbulb ceases to work. — Daniel O'Malley

Much of Hamlet is about the precise kind of slippage the mourner experiences: the difference between being and seeming, the uncertainty about how the inner translates into the outer, the sense that one is expected to perform grief palatably. (If you don't seem sad, people worry; but if you are grief-stricken, people flinch away from your pain.) — Meghan O'Rourke

She said this watching my eyes as if she were testing the edge of a blade on me. And so I made sure not to flinch. — Alexander Chee

I don't know what I would have done if they had hugged me. I probably would have frozen in place, become stiff. It took most of my life to overcome my distaste for physical contact and not to stiffen when I was touched, or flinch, twitch, fidget, and eventually figure out how to move away. I learned to accept being hugged by my children when they were infants. Their joy at seeing me enter a room was real and filled with true love and affection and it showed in their embraces. Like a convert, when I learned the joy and comfort of being hugged by and hugging those I loved, I became a regular practitioner. — John William Tuohy

We are the owls of the weather chaw. We take it blistering, We take it all. Roiling boiling gusts, We're the owls with the guts. For blizzards our gizzards Dr tremble with joy. An ice storm, a gale, how we love blinding hail. We fly forward and backward, Upside down and flat. Do we flinch? Do we wail? Do we skitter or scutter? No, we yarp one more pellet And fly straight for the gutter! Do we screech? Do we scream? Do we gurgle? Take pause? Not on your life! For we are the best Of the best of the chaws! — Kathryn Lasky

Be the alligator girl. Be whatever your dreams and your luck will let you be. Wear your green cornflakes with pride. Snarl at the crowds, and do your best to make them flinch. Give them a quarter's worth of wonder. — Dolly Parton

Dani, Dani, Dani."
I flinch. I've never heard anyone say my name so gently. It creeps me all kinds of out.
He's towering over me, arms crossed over his chest, scarred forearms dark against the rolled-up sleeves of a crisp white shirt.
Heavy silver cuffs glint at both wrists. The light is smack behind his head, as usual.
"You didn't really think I'd let you get away with it," Ryodan says. — Karen Marie Moning

Just understand that the end began long ago We got here just in time Look All the squares in the sidewalks were already there All these strangers have more money than you do All the good riffs have been taken And everyone is so scared Murder is commonplace I don't even flinch at the gunshots outside my window I feel lonely without them — Henry Rollins

But Edward doesn't even flinch; it's as if he's reading the text of me with some magic internal Rosetta stone that makes him understand what I say is not what I mean at all. — Jodi Picoult

Her boldness, which I'd always thought I'd been borrowing from her, had become mine in ways I didn't realize until she was gone. I didn't flinch around people who didn't like me; I didn't feel anymore like being myself was something for which I owed the world an apology. — Danielle Evans

But facts are facts and flinch not. — Robert Browning

I tend to get over-excited and very, very loud. I rein myself in when people flinch and dogs start howling. — Sarah Rees Brennan

He didn't flinch, but in his soul he did. — Jessie J.

Doesn't he have any daughters?' Emma muttered.
'He has no use for them,' said Mark. 'They say he has girl children killed at birth.'
Emma couldn't prevent a flinch of anger. 'Just let me get close to him,' she whispered. 'I'll show him what use girls are. — Cassandra Clare

The great Japanese film director Akira Kurosawa said that to be an artist means never to avert your eyes. And that's the hardest thing, because we want to flinch. The artist must go into the white hot center of himself, and our impulse when we get there is to look away and avert our eyes. — Robert Olen Butler

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

It is my look they will flinch from now, my frown that they must fear. — George R R Martin

A feeling of contentment flooded through me as I felt magic surging up from my feet. I flung another hand out, and the fog seemed to flinch in its rush to pull back. "Okay," Jenna said, tugging at my arm. "You're back to being a badass. Now, run. — Rachel Hawkins

I am the magician's girl who does not flinch. — Sylvia Plath

If you fuck her over, I'll cut off your balls and use them as cat toys, she hisses, and I see Wes flinch behind her as I fight my own, but I don't respond. — Aurora Rose Reynolds

Every time we make an assumption - for example, that we understand our spouse - we are exposing ourselves like an open wound. Assumptions and expectations that rely on someone or something else leave us vulnerable. At any moment, one of the uncountable possible contradictions can pop up and sprinkle salt on our assumptions, causing us to flinch and howl. — Dzongsar Jamyang Khyentse

Keep your whole being on the thing you are turning into words. The minute you flinch, and take your mind off this thing, and begin to look at the words and worry about them... Then your worry goes into them and they set about killing each other. So you keep going as long as you can, then look back and see what you have written. After a bit of practice and after telling yourself you are going to use any old word that comes into your head so long as it seems right, you will surprise yourself. You will read back through what you have written and you will get a shock. You will have captured a spirit, a creature. — Ted Hughes

I may discuss love, and I don't mind if two men fall in love, fine. Two women, fine. But I flinch when I think of two Jewish women getting together and having a child because the idea of having two Jewish mothers makes my head explode. I have one; I couldn't handle two. — Garry Shandling

I was persisting in reading my present environment in the light of my old one. — Richard Wright

I'm sorry I flinch when you say
you care.
Sorry I turn myself bullet
when you try to touch my hand,
sorry I go wolf when
you give me broken teeth. — Darshana Suresh

The flinch is your real opponent, and information won't help you fight it. It's behind every unhappy marriage, every hidden vice, and every unfulfilled life. Behind the flinch is pain avoidance, and dealing with pain demands strength you may not think you have. — Julien Smith

Never Flinch.' A cold whisper in her ear. 'Never fear. And never, ever forget.'
The girl nodded slowly.
Exhaled the hope inside.
And she'd watched her father die. — Jay Kristoff