Gnawed Quotes & Sayings

Eventually Spade and Marrow would devolve into caricature. There is no peril that can make the handsome and fantastic James Bond sweat, no pain that can break him. But as the critic Judith Crist pointed out, when Spade or Marlowe "got hit they hurt and they needed time to recover; when they killed they flinched and were gnawed by regret. Above all, they did what they had to because they were men, in the head and the heart and not exclusively in the groin. — Ann M. Sperber

All night, the black serpant of wounded vanity gnawed his heart. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

There's blood, a taste I remember. It tastes of orange popsicles, penny gumballs, red licorice, gnawed hair, dirty ice. — Margaret Atwood

It wallowed in its water-bed; it burrowed, heaved and swung;
It gnawed its way ahead with grunts and sighs;
Its bill of fare was rock and sand; the tailings were its dung;
It glared around with fierce electric eyes.
Full fifty buckets crammed its maw;
it bellowed out for more;
It looked like some great monster in the gloom. — Robert W. Service

The tiny waiter, who looks to be about ninety-seven years old, comes over and wheezes through what I assume are the specials. Szabolcs, his nametag says. I can't understand a word he says. He may be telling me that his great-great-grandchildren are in the kitchen being gnawed on by a pack of wolves. I nod and smile. "I'll have the chicken," I say. Szabolcs asks something that has a lot of sht and tsz and ejht sounds in it. "Sounds good," I tell him. This is how people end up eating cats, I believe. — Kristan Higgins

A lot of really big trees had died to make that desk. His mother had probably gnawed them down, used her nails to saw the boards, and finished the decorative cutwork with her tongue. — Jennifer Crusie

needing to be somewhere (now). In fact, he still felt this compulsion. It gnawed stubbornly at — Brian Harmon

Many different kinds of sprouts lay torn. Green, purple and orange leaves lay scattered across the dark soil, and the thorn fence surrounding the bed had a fist-sized hole in it. Teacher eased himself into a squat, poked at the inside of the hole. Whatever made the hole had left blood on the thorns. The sprouts looked like wispy ghosts, pale and broken. Their delicate leaves and stems were riddled with bites. Life drained out of them like water dripping from a hanging cloth, and a breeze made them dance sadly. It felt like a funeral.
Teacher picked up a gnawed berry and gently squeezed it until purple juice dripped down his thumb. He placed the berry by the plant's roots.
Chandi's small face bunched up. "Are they dead?"
"They're dying, yes." Yuvali took her hand. "But their bodies will help other plants grow. — B.T. Lowry

the rats inevitably dragged away the whole cadaver through the hole they gnawed in the coffin. — H.P. Lovecraft

The black serpant of wounded vanity gnawed at his heart? — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Without another word, we began to eat. I was hungry, but no appetite would excuse the way we set upon those dishes. We shoveled food into our mouths in a manner ill befitting our fine attire. Bears would have blushed to see us bent over our plates. The pheasant, still steaming from the oven, its dark flesh redolent with the mushroom musk of the forest floor, was gnawed quickly to the bone. It was a touch gamy - no milk-fed goose, this - but it was tender, and the piquant hominy balanced that wild taste as I had hoped it would. The eggs, laced pink at the edges and floating delicately in a carnal sauce, were gulped down in two bites. The yolks were cooked to that rare liminal degree, no longer liquid but not yet solid, like the formative moment of a sun-colored gem. — Eli Brown

There was a hunger inside me, and there always had been. That hunger was stronger than pain, stronger than horror. It gnawed even after everything else inside me had given up. It was not hope; it did not soar; it slithered, clawed, and dragged, and it would not let me stop.

And when I finally named it, I found it was something very simple: the desire to live. — Veronica Roth

Over nine whole acres while a huge, horrendous Vulture puddles forever with hooked beak In his liver and entrails teeming with raw pain. It burrows deep below the breastbone, feeding And foraging without respite, for the gnawed-at Gut and gutstrings keep renewing. — Virgil

Lip-chewed debtors rich in excuses; heard-it-all creditors tightening nooses; prisoners haunted by happier lives and ageing rakes by other men's wives; skeletal tutors goaded to fits; firemen-turned-looters when occasion permits; tongue-tied witnesses; purchased judges; mothers-in-law nurturing briars and grudges; apothecaries grinding powders with mortars; palanquins carrying not-yet-wed daughters; silent nuns; nine-year-old whores; the once-were-beautiful gnawed by sores; — David Mitchell

Envy has the ugliness of a trapped rat that has gnawed its own foot in its effort to escape. — Angus Wilson

There are a whole lot of things
whose names I do not know
and I'd like to tell you about them
in the sky your hair solemnly draws away
kinds of rain one no longer sees
nuts Saint Elmo's fire
sun lames whispered nights
cathedrals too
which are the carcasses
of large gnawed horses
spat by the sea from far away
but still worshiped by people
a whole lot of forgotten things
a whole lot of dreamed things — Aime Cesaire

And in my night confusion it is as if I can hear the leaves being gnawed, the forest being eaten alive, shred by shred. I cannot bear it. They are not mild, these moths. Their appetites are blindingly voracious, obsessive. An acquaintance has told me that the Navahos refer to someone with an emotional illness as "moth crazy. — Charles Baxter

There was a merciless gnawing in my chest, a queer silent labor was going on in there. I pictured a score of nice teeny-weeny animals that cocked their heads to one side and gnawed a bit, then cocked their heads to the other side and gnawed a bit, lay perfectly still for a moment, then began anew and bored their way in without a sound and without haste, leaving empty stretches behind them wherever they went. — Knut Hamsun

Think of how dark that Friday was when Christ was lifted up on the cross ... It was a Friday filled with devastating, consuming sorrow that gnawed at the souls of those who loved and honored the Son of God. — Joseph B. Wirthlin

And there will be no waste, I promise you," he went on, waving his finger in the air as he got into his stride.
"You see, the trouble with the professor is that, once he stops for lunch, he tends to lose interest. He drinks a good deal, you know," he confided. "What's left over gets thrown away or gnawed by rats in the basement. Whereas I will pickle you ... "
"I beg your pardon?" Prestcott said weakly.
"Pickle you," Lower replied enthusiastically. "It is the very latest technique. If we joint you and pop you into a vat of spirits, you will keep for very much longer. — Iain Pears

I used to think that other people defined the boundaries of life. Rushing in to impress others, and get them to like me gnawed at me in the back of my mind. Criticism came as a horrifying blade straight into my heart. Now I see that they were self-imposed limitations. While obstacles were always present the fundamental truth behind this epiphany is one words cannot even describe. I was my own propellant, and the moment I realized it my entire world changed. — Sai Marie Johnson

It was as if the boy had already divined what his senses and intellect had not encompassed yet: that doomed wilderness whose edges were being constantly and punily gnawed at by men with plows and axes who feared it because it was wilderness, men myriad and nameless even to one another in the land where the old bear had earned a name, and through which ran not even a mortal beast but an anachronism indomitable and invincible out of an old dead time, a phantom, epitome and apotheosis of the old wild life which the little puny humans swarmed and hacked at in fury of abhorrence and fear like pygmies about the ankles of a drowsing elephant;
the old bear, solitary, indomitable, and alone; widowered childless and absolved of mortality
old Priam reft of his old wife and outlived all his sons. — William Faulkner

MY MOST CONSTANT and vivid memory is not so much of the people but of the actual house in Aracataca where I lived with my grandparents. It's a recurring dream which persists even now. What's more, every single day of my life I wake up with the feeling, real or imaginary, that I've dreamed I'm in that huge old house. Not that I've gone back there but that I am there, at no particular age, for no particular reason - as if I'd never left it. Even now in my dreams that sense of night-time foreboding which dominated my whole childhood still persists. It was an uncontrollable sensation which began early every evening and gnawed away at me in my sleep until I saw dawn breaking through the cracks in the door. — Gerald Martin

I've found that I snack less and concentrate better when I chew on a plastic stirrer - the kind that you get to stir your to-go coffee. I picked up this habit from my husband, who loves to chew on things. His favorite chew-toy is a plastic pen top, and gnawed pen tops and little bits of plastic litter our apartment. — Gretchen Rubin

While her emotions were very real and they gnawed at her with a raw sincerity, she was listening to something deeper. She was listening to her will, not letting what she felt dictate what she would do. Didn't let it dictate her life. — Charles Martin

As if the whimsy of chugging through a gargantuan slice of watermelon wasn't enough, you can actually smell the mouthwatering scent of watermelon as you breeze through it. The box of animal crackers that you travel through smells of vanilla cookies-- always a soothing scent--and a giant gnawed apple exudes an apple fragrance as you pass. — Leslie Le Mon

Their bony branches grew barer with each tearing wind. Their tall, leaning forms looked like a gateway to a long-abandoned world.
They lived. Their roots were much deeper than mine would ever be. One day my tree would fall and die, gnawed by serpents. — Heather Crews

It was a fossilized path: the will which had cut this gash out of these solitary places so that the blood and sap would flow there was long since dead - and dead too were the circumstances which had guided this will. A whitish and indurated scar remained, gradually gnawed away by the earth like a flesh that heals itself, yet its direction was still vaguely cut into the horizon; a language and crepuscular sign rather than a way forward - a worn-out lifeline which still vegetated through the fallow land as it does on the palm of a hand. It was so old that, since it had been constructed, the very configuration of the land must have changed imperceptibly. — Julien Gracq

Far, far below the deepest delvings of the dwarves, the world is gnawed by nameless things. — J.R.R. Tolkien

The unification of the planet's history, that humanist dream which God has spitefully allowed to come true, has been accompanied by a process of dizzying reduction. True, the termites of reduction have always gnawed away at life: even the greatest love ends up as a skeleton of feeble memories. But the character of modern society hideously exacerbates this curse: it reduces man's life to its social function; the history of a people to a small set of events that are themselves reduced to a tendentious interpretation; social life is reduced to political struggle, and that in turn to the confrontation of just two great global powers. — Milan Kundera

Sometimes we talked the whole night long, as one does only in adolescence or very early in love. I was happy, but also I felt an anxiety that gnawed at me and for which I could find no cause, that gnawed at me more deeply precisely because I could find no cause. — Garth Greenwell

As they passed through the waiting room, the statue of Hygeia was sitting on a bench, pouring acid on her face and singing "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star," while her golden snake gnawed at her foot. — Rick Riordan

I ate them like salad, books were my sandwich for lunch, my tiffin and dinner and midnight munch. I tore out the pages, ate them with salt, doused them with relish, gnawed on the bindings, turned the chapters with my tongue! Books by the dozen, the score and the billion. I carried so many home I was hunchbacked for years. Philosophy, art history, politics, social science, the poem, the essay, the grandiose play, you name 'em, I ate 'em. — Ray Bradbury

These shirts are perfectly serviceable."
I rolled my eyes. "Serviceable? Anyan, I get it that you're utilitarian. If we were in the old country you'd write odes to factories. You'd sing the praises of the communal farm while you gnawed on a perfectly 'serviceable' radish. But this is the new millennium. In America. Buy a button-up. — Nicole Peeler

2 Nicole gnawed on her lip as she pressed her back — Karen Witemeyer

And there are vampires, too? Werewolves, warlocks, all that stuff?"
Clary gnawed her lower lip. "So I hear."
"And you kill them, too?" Simon asked, directing the question to Jace, who had put the stele back in his pocket and was examining his flawless nails for defects.
"Only when they've been naughty. — Cassandra Clare

Moon couldn't think of anything reassuring to say. They were trapped inside a leviathan, standing in a tunnel gnawed out by giant parasites. Going blank with terror was a perfectly rational way to react, especially for a groundling. — Martha Wells

Boris [ Johnson]and Dave [Cameron] gnawed each other's testicles [during the Tory civil war which blighted the EU referendum]. — Ken Livingstone

Hey," he said.
"Hi." Oh, damn. It was awkward.
"What're you doing?"
"Shearing a sheep. It's cold outside, and I need a new hat."
He paused. "You're joking, right?"
"Yes, Marshall." I gnawed on my fingers some more and sunk back in my chair. — Chanelle Gray

Stannis Baratheon with a grievance was like a mastiff with a bone; he gnawed it down to splinters. — George R R Martin

I was used to surrounding myself with drug addicts. They were usually slightly older than me. Most of them looked like they'd been gnawed at by a household pet and tossed in the corner of the garage for a few years. But Number 3 introduced me to a whole new level of bad crowds. As a house painter, he associated with men in construction. Many of them were middle-aged, poverty-stricken rednecks with snuff leaking out of their toothless traps. Marijuana and painkillers were their crackers and juice boxes. — Maggie Young

The worthy administrators of justice are like a cat set to take care of a cheese, lest it should be gnawed by the mice. One bite of the cat does more damage to the cheese than twenty mice can do. — Voltaire

Maybe the nails are a little stubby and gnawed on, but I definitely do not have man hands. — Aisha Tyler

He looked down the slope and, at the base, in the shadow of the wall of the Park, he saw some human figures lying. Those venal and furtive loves filled him with despair. He gnawed the rectitude of his life; he felt that he had been outcast from life's feast. — James Joyce

Lowell's best friend was the heroically moustached art director of a tobacco magazine that published in the same building where Lowell worked at plumbing. His name was Harry Balmer, and despite the evidence of his moustache he was nervous, compulsive, and wracked with small fears. He looked his best from across a wide room; the closer you got to him, the more he seemed to fall apart into a mass of twitches and gnawed finernails and the clearer it became that this big, smart-looking moustache was a kind of bush he was trying to hide behind. — L.J. Davis

Troll sat alone on his seat of stone, And munched and mumbled a bare old bone; For many a year he had gnawed it near, For meat was hard to come by. Done by! Gum by! In a cave in the hills he dwelt alone, And meat was hard to come by. — J.R.R. Tolkien

The mice have gnawed at it, and sharper teeth than teeth of mice have gnawed at me. — Charles Dickens

For eight years I was an inmate in a state asylum for the insane. During those years I passed through such unbearable terror that I deteriorated into a wild, frightened creature intent only on survival. And I survived. I was raped by orderlies, gnawed on by rats and poisoned by tainted food. I was chained in padded cells, strapped into strait-jackets and half-drowned in ice baths. And I survived. The asylum itself was a steel trap, and I was not released from its jaws alive and victorious. I crawled out mutilated, whimpering and terribly alone. But I did survive. — Frances Farmer

I missed you." A humorless laugh closed his eyes. When he opened them, the redness had turned them deep mossy green.
"Sorry." Trip's own eyes welled up.
"Not like, gosh-I-wonder-what-Trip-is-doing missed you. I meant I actually started to feel like I'd survived some horrible amputation and part of me had been hacked off and lost in a haunted warzone being gnawed by the walking dead. I missed you because you were missing. I actually spent weeks trying to imagine what you were doing at any given Moment ... obsessing, really." He didn't wipe his wet cheeks. "Trip must be seeing the new Superman this weekend. I wonder if Trip's asleep. I wish I could swallow Trip's load right this second. Trip needs to stop and eat now, something not dyed or in plastic. I even went to watch the Big Dog office doors a couple of times, like the Little Match Queer, when I knew you had pages due, just to make sure, you were okay, but then you ... I dunno: vanished. — Damon Suede

When I was younger and ran free in the forest, a hunter caught my mate and stunned him with a blow and locked him in a cage. I went to the place in the broad white of the spring moon; near to the hunter's fire I went, near enough to hear his man's breathing and see the flamelight catch on the knife in his hand. I gnawed through the bars of the cage and dragged at my mate, and half carried him as I would carry a cub, away into the trees. My paws were sore, I lost a tooth, my back pained me and I was afraid, but I never thought I could do otherwise. That is what love is. — Tanith Lee

The rats had gnawed a hole through the bottom panel. At least he assumed it was rats. Of course it was. What else could it be? For a moment, he conjured up an assortment of Lovecraftian creatures crouching on their haunches, waiting patiently in the dark just beyond the door, waiting to devour him like a side of fresh beef. He quickly held his imagination in check. — Gary Val Tenuta

Hunger gnawed at my stomach, but I was afraid someone would be in the kitchen again. So I found myself staring at the front door. Freedom seemed just a doorknob-turn away.
When I did open the door, freedom didn't wait - a half-naked Hayden did. — Jennifer L. Armentrout

Emptiness gnawed at Emma. Could she> face death without fear? If she were to show up at heaven's door tomorrow, would God even recognize her, when it had been so long since she'd bothered to call on Him? — Julie Klassen

He did not know what he sought or what his journeys would bring him; but he had a feeling that he would learn something new about life and gain some clue about the mystery that he had solved only to find more mysterious. And even if he found nothing he would allay the unrest which gnawed his heart. — W. Somerset Maugham

Better to be caught in sudden, complete catastrophe than to be gnawed by the cancer of imagination. — Yukio Mishima

I am a frayed and nibbled survivor in a fallen world, and I am getting along. I am aging and eaten and have done my share of eating too. I am not washed and beautiful, in control of a shining world in which everything fits, but instead am wondering awed about on a splintered wreck I've come to care for, whose gnawed trees breathe a delicate air, whose bloodied and scarred creatures are my dearest companions, and whose beauty bats and shines not in its imperfections but overwhelmingly in spite of them ... — Annie Dillard

She was glad she'd missed the river of corpses that must have filled the city streets during the initial phase of clean-up - wagon after wagon groaning beneath the weight of crushed bodies, white flesh seared by fire and slashed by sword, rat-gnawed and raven-pecked - men, women, and children. — Steven Erikson

Every time I go to sleep, I know I may never wake up. How could anyone expect to? You drop your tiny, helpless mind into a bottomless well, crossing your fingers and hoping when you pull it out on its flimsy fishing wire it hasn't been gnawed to bones by nameless beasts below. — Isaac Marion

And the jobs we worked, Jesus - Jesus - Jesus, the jobs we worked. Low-paying jobs. Backbreaking jobs. Jobs that gnawed at the bones of our dignity, devoured the meat, tongued the marrow. — NoViolet Bulawayo

Phaedra of Alonso's death was a never-ending pain that gnawed at his insides. It made him a prisoner in his own cottage. — Melina Marchetta

Dreams were the stepping stones to glory.
By pursuing them, he had attained a level of success that exceeded most men's reach and acquired all that he had set out to gain: Land, cattle, and wealth beyond his highest expectations.
Yet, desperation gnawed at him like a starving dog that had just discovered a buried bone, and as he gazed at the stars that blanketed the velvety sky, he felt as though he had achieved nothing. — Lorraine Heath

And yet I am afraid, afraid of what my words will do to me, to my refuge, yet again ... If I could speak and yet say nothing, really nothing? Then I might escape being gnawed to death. — Samuel Beckett

The teeth of self-pity had gnawed away her essential self. — Willa Gibbs

Because there's no reason to think Paige had to eat anything. Paige is not a low demon. She's a little girl. A vegetarian. A born humanitarian. A budding Dalai Lama, for chrissake. She only attacked the angel to defend me. That's all.
Besides, she didn't eat him, she just ... gnawed on him a little. — Susan Ee

I finally drift back to sleep. I'm in the darkness. The molecules of my mind are still scattered, and I float through oily black space, trying to swipe them up like fireflies. Every time I go to sleep, I know I may never wake up. How could anyone expect to? You drop your tiny, helpless mind into a bottomless well, crossing your fingers and hoping that when you pull it out on its flimsy fishing wire it hasn't been gnawed to bones by nameless beasts below. Hoping you pull up anything at all. — Isaac Marion

Her vice takes hold of her again, but she still refrains until some moment when, gnawed by some hideous caprice, she comes aground like a mournful wreck ruined by lust, in the midst of her own banal, perfidious pollution. — Jean Lorrain

Jean following close behind. The plan was for them to cover us as we entered. Getting in was easy. The door was unlocked. I went in low, clearing the first visible area. After Bear entered, I moved past the door. I had to trust that Pierre and Jean would act accordingly. A feat more difficult due to the necessary silence. We'd never worked together, but tactics were tactics, and training was training. They'd done this before. Room by room, floor by floor, we investigated the house. And we found it empty. The thought of Bashir al-Sharaa slipping out of my grasp once again gnawed at my gut. — L.T. Ryan

He found a scene very much as Yale described, although, in his more accomplished hand, the macabre details would be far more graphically rendered: rats had gnawed "wet red galleries" into the bodies of the dead, many of which "were already swollen twice or thrice life-width, their fat heads laughing with black mouth. ... Of others the softer parts were fallen in. A few had burst open, and were liquescent with decay." Venturing deep into — Scott Anderson

Used well beyond her thirty years, a powerful weariness gnawed at her face this day. The taste of the land hung in her mouth, and worry lines etched deep ravines near the corners of her lips and eyes. Tall and thin, she wore her markings with a quiet dignity in much the way a soldier displays his bars. She closed her eyes and inhaled deeply.
Texas."
The Taken, November 2010 — Mike Kearby

The termites of reduction have always gnawed away at life: even the greatest love ends up as a skeleton of feeble memories. — Milan Kundera

They passed through the waiting room, the statue of Hygeia was sitting on a bench, pouring acid on her face and singing "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star," while her golden snake gnawed at her foot. The peaceful scene was almost enough to lift Leo's spirits. — Rick Riordan

Death, he had come to believe, was a corrosive thing, and the more he was around it , the more it gnawed away at who he was. — Christopher Paolini

If they'd been dogs, they would have all been in the yard eating grass and trying to yak up whatever was making them feel so lousy. Not a bone gnawed, not a ball chased-all tails went unwagged. Oh, life is a fast cat, a short leash, a flea in that place where you just can't scratch. — Christopher Moore

And they spoke of their Antigonie, who they called Go, as if she were a friend.
Leo hadn't yet written any music, but he had made drawings on butcher paper stolen from the kitchen. They curled around his walls, intricate doodles, extensions of the boy's own lean, slight body. The shape of Leo's jaw in profile, devestating. The way he gnawed his fingernails to the crescents, the fine shining hairs down the center of his nape, the smell of him, up close, pure and clean, bleaching.
The ones made for music are the most beloved of all. Their bodies a container for the spirit within; the best of them is music, the rest only instrument of flesh and bone.
The weather conspired. Snow fell softly in the windows. It was too cold to be out for long. The world colorless, a dreamscape, a blank page, the linger of woodsmoke on the back of the tongue. — Lauren Groff

Thought is an acid, eating us away. At first we imagine it will only eat into that which is rotten and sick and must be removed. But thought thinks otherwise. It eats blindly. It begins with the prey you most gladly throw to it - but don't imagine it will be content with that! It doesn't stop until it has gnawed away the last thing you hold dear. — Hjalmar Soderberg

His obvious nervousness at seeing me made
me feel less nervous about seeing him, and I was glad for it.
"Sorry for just droppin' in unannounced,""I said, and gnawed on my lower lip.
Ryder shook his head. "No, no, it's more than fine. It's great actually. Really, really great."
"Ry," Alec said, and when I looked at him I saw him trying not to laugh. "You need to calm down."
"Calm? I am calm."
He so wasn't — L.A. Casey

The thirst for blood gnawed at my guts. I had another drag of my cigarette instead. And even with the Marlboro smoke tickling my nose hairs and prickling my eyes, I knew it when Michael, my heart of hearts, entered my long-range sensors. Sure, I could smell him. But I could smell about four hundred other people nearby, too. Michael? I felt him. I was a giant tuning fork, and he was the note that had just bent up to meet my quivering harmonic. — Anonymous

He unsnapped the top button on his jeans.
My eyes widened."Sneaky bastard."
I gnawed my lip in pleasure,watching the past,present,and future Master of Cadogan House in the state of utter abandon:shirt on the floor,jeans unbuttoned,his arousal obvious. — Chloe Neill

Evil has ways of surprising one. Suddenly it turns round and says: "You have misunderstood me," and perhaps it really is so. Evil transforms itself into your own lips, lets itself be gnawed at by your teeth, and with these new lips
no former ones fitted smoothly to your gums
to your own amazement you utter the words of goodness. — Franz Kafka

Much of American wealth is an illusion which is being secretly gnawed away and much of it will be completely wiped out in the near future ... So what is the rest of your future? A grisly list of unpleasant events
exploding inflation, price controls, erosion of your savings (eventually to nothing), a collapse of private as well as government pension programs, and eventually an international monetary holocaust which will sweep all paper currencies down the drain and turn the world upside down. — Howard Ruff

The trouble with making an important decision was that you never had enough information to do it without hesitating. And it's the hesitation that gnawed at you and never helped you to make the decision. — Kenneth Eade

I'm lyin' on my side, any fat that I have just hangs down when l'm on my side, and you aren't touchin' it," I stated through my tired voice. Dominic groaned from behind me. "Havin' some meat doesn't make you fat, it makes you human." I gnawed on my inner cheek. "You have like zero fat, so you don't get a say. — L.A. Casey

This so gnawed at him on some nights that he lay awake wondering just how many unknown and similarly inconsequential accidents and bits of happenstance were at this moment occurring or failing to occur in order to ensure he took his next breath, and the next. — Louise Erdrich

Cane toads are all over the place.'
'Are they edible?'
'Heck, no. They're poisonous.'
'That is disappointing.' Hunger gnawed at her insides.
'Do you like frog's legs?'
Just the legs? She was hungry. She would eat the whole thing at the moment! 'Are the legs your specialty?'
'Mine? I can't cook to save myself. — Cheryse Durrant

The teacher should make a concerted effort never to lose his temper in the presence of the class. If a man, he may take refuge in profane soliloquies. If a woman, she may follow the example of one sweet-faced tranquil girl who went out in the yard and gnawed a post. — William Lyon Phelps

He has probably gnawed his nails down to the quick, or murdered poor Mr. Orde. — Georgette Heyer

Sometimes, what i see is a library in a rural community.
all the tall shelves in the big open room. and the pencils
in a cup at circulation, gnawed on by the entire population.
the books have lived here all along, belonging
for weeks at a time to one or another in the brief sequence
of family names, speaking (at night mostly) to a face,
a pair of eyes. the most remarkable lies. — Tracy K. Smith

For as Prometheus, (which interpreted, is, The Prudent Man,) was bound to the hill Caucasus, a place of large prospect, where, an Eagle feeding on his liver, devoured in the day, as much as was repaired in the night: So that man, which looks too far before him, in the care of future time, hath his heart all the day long, gnawed on by Fear of death, poverty, or other calamity; and has no repose, nor pause of his anxiety, but in sleep. — Thomas Hobbes

What can be more absurd than choosing to carry a burden that one really wants to throw to the ground? To detest, and yet to strive to preserve our existence? To caress the serpent that devours us and hug him close to our bosoms tillhe has gnawed into our hearts? — Voltaire

This one sits shivering in Fortune's smile, taking his joy with bated, doubtful breath. This other, gnawed by hunger, all the while laughs in the teeth of Death. — Thomas Bailey Aldrich

No, my son. Not she. I. I lay on the rocks and the sun gnawed at my flesh. I pleaded for my life with a useless stump of a tongue. I watched your precious Cveti close up my severed breasts in a silver box. And I listened to the soldiers praise her false name - Ghyfran! Ghyfran! The whore who betrayed her god for power. This body is new, but I am Ragnhild, first of my name, and I am the plague which will burn through the marrow of the Anointed City. — Catherynne M Valente

There's a monster in our wood. She'll get you if you're not good. Drag you under leaves and sticks. Punish you for all your tricks. Anest of hair and gnawed bone. You are never, ever coming ... home. — Holly Black

They snatched the girl off her tire swing in the backyard and dragged her into the woods; her body made a shallow track in the snow, from her world to mine. I saw it happen. I didn't stop it.
It had been the longest, coldest winter of my life. Day after day under a pale, worthless sun. And the hunger- hunger that burned and gnawed, an insatiable master. — Maggie Stiefvater

It's one of those unpleasant opioid feverish half-sleep states, more a fugue-state than a sleep-state, less a floating than like being cast adrift on rough seas, tossed mightily in and out of this half-sleep where your mind's
still working and you can ask yourself whether you're asleep even as you dream. And any dreams you do have seem ragged at the edges, gnawed on, incomplete. — David Foster Wallace

Hunger gnawed at her empty stomach again and she said aloud: 'As God is my witness, and God is my witness, the Yankees aren't going to lick me. I'm going to live through this, and when it's over, I'm never going to be hungry again. No, nor any of my folks. If I have to steal or kill - as God is my witness, I'm never going to be hungry again. — Margaret Mitchell

What is it? I remembered thinking in panic. What is it? Why did I want to follow this man? What was it about the monstrumologist that consumed me? What demon of the pit chewed and gnawed upon my soul like Judas' in the innermost circle of hell? What did it look like? What was its face? If I could name the nameless thing, if I could put a face upon the faceless thing, perhaps I could free myself from its ravenous embrace. — Rick Yancey

So don't tell me how love will rescue me, I was carnivorous about love, I ate love to the ankles, my thighs are gnawed with love still and yet I cannot have loved, since living was all I could do and for that, I was caged in bone spur endlessly — Dionne Brand

As a precaution, Ruth had also gnawed over the worst possibilities - brain tumor, Alzheimer's, stroke - believing this would ensure that it was not these things. History had always proven that she worried for nothing. — Amy Tan