Hard To Swallow Quotes & Sayings

Yes, I don't think I shall ever become Prime Minister. Hard as that is to swallow, I tell you one person who is very happy always to see me say that, and that's my wife. — Alexander Downer

Matt had to swallow hard to keep tears from forming. Fidelito had called him brother! — Nancy Farmer

The prospect of one day being hauled out of the canal by yet another old enemy was hard for France to swallow, even more so when British and French defence specialists discussed their exit strategy in case of an overwhelming Soviet attack, and the Brits proposed a massive evacuation via Dunkirk. — Stephen Clarke

I take in a huge breath and look at the sky as hard as I can. I feel like I'm trying to eat it with my eyes. I wish there would be certain things you come across and you could say, Okay, that's one. Put that away for me to pull out later just exactly as it is now. My dream is for me to be a poet who could make things like this sky come to life for someone else. If you see a sunset and try and describe it to someone in normal words, all you can say is, "Boy, I saw a great sunset last night." but if you are a poet, you give it to someone to feel for themselves. Like you make a little seed of what you say, they swallow it, and it blooms again inside their own heart. — Elizabeth Berg

The most conventional customs cling to the table. Farmers who wouldn't drive a horse too hard expect pie three times a day. — Ellen Swallow Richards

You saved my life," I mutter. "I ... I don't know what to say?" I swallow hard. "How can I thank you?"

"No thank-you necessary," he says.

I search his moist eyes, and wipe away tears from mine. "I will always be indebted to you."

"Better plan," he says. "How about you just save my life someday, then we'll be even?"

"I will," I say, smiling through tears. "I will. — Sarah Jio

In terms of being a kind of popular artist figure and knowing how isolating that is, and knowing what it feels like to be skeptical of people, and to be taken advantage of, especially by your friends. That's a hard to pill to swallow, and we've been through that together, or watched each other go through it. It helps to have somebody that close to you who can relate. I can say with some confidence that I feel like Sky saved my life. — Zachary Cole Smith

And when the time finally comes to say good-bye, she'll swallow hard against the tightness of her throat and the weight of her heart. She'll think I'll miss you and she'll think don't go and she'll think please. But what she'll finally say is simply thank you, and it will mean all of these things - everything promised and remembered, everything wordless and spoken and understood - and so much more. — Jennifer E. Smith

I swallow, my throat painfully dry. If it were just me, I wonder how hard I'd fight, what extremes I'd go to to survive. But it isn't just me, and extremes don't even come close to what I'd do to protect the people I love. I — Amanda Bouchet

Before Diagnosis"

The lake is dead for a second time
this January. And no matter
how many geese lay their warm breasts
against the ice or fly across
its hard chest, it doesn't break,
or sink, or open up and swallow them.
The ice is frozen water.
There is no metaphor for exile.
Even if these trees continue to shake
the crows from their branches,
my sister is still farther away from her mind
than we are from each other
sitting on opposite ends of a park bench
waiting for evening to swallow us whole.
In the last moments of a depressive, a sun.
In the last moments of a sun, my sister
says a man is chasing a goose through the snow. — Roger Reeves

The bed creaks as he eases closer. And then I feel it.
Oh, fucking hell. Just no. He can't do this to me.
It's big, it's hard, and it's nudging my ass.
We both freeze. Well, Gabriel freezes. His dick? It nudges me again, that blunt head pushing into the small of my back as if to say hello.
"Involuntary reaction," Gabriel says in a strangled voice. "Ignore it."
His hard-on says otherwise.
I swallow with difficulty. "Your hard dick is poking me in the ass. I can no more ignore it than if you slapped me in the face with it."
He stills, a sound gurgling in his throat. I'm about to apologize for being so crude, when he bursts out laughing. — Kristen Callihan

I wouldn't have left you like that. Not like she did to me." I swallow hard. "She always said I'd die without her and she left anyway."
"But you didn't die," He says.
"I did," I say. "I'm just waiting for the rest of me to catch up. — Courtney Summers

You think my first instinct is to protect you. Because you're small, or a girl, or a Stiff. But you're wrong."
He leans his face close to mine and wraps his fingers around my chin. His hand smells like metal. When was the last time he held a gun, or a knife? My skin tingles at the point of contact, like he's transmitting electricity through his skin.
"My first instinct is to push you until you break, just to see how hard I have to press." he says, his fingers squeezing at the word break. My body tenses at the edge in his voice, so I am coiled as tight as a spring, and I forget to breathe.
His dark eyes lifting to mine, he adds, "But I resist it."
"Why ... " I swallow hard. "Why is that your first instinct?"
"Fear doesn't shut you down; it wakes you up. I've seen it. It's fascinating." He releases me but doesn't pull away, his hand grazing my jaw, my neck. "Sometimes I just want to see it again. Want to see you awake. — Veronica Roth

I have often told you that I am that little fish who swims about under a shark and, I believe, lives indelicately on its offal. Anyway, that is the way I am. Life moves over me in a vast black shadow and I swallow whatever it drops with relish, having learned in a very hard school that one cannot be both a parasite and enjoy self-nourishment without moving in worlds too fantastic for even my disordered imagination to people with meaning. — Zelda Fitzgerald

But why is it so hard to forgive?' Mrs. Conners asked.
'Pride,' Dad said. 'This person has already wronged you in some way, and now you are the one who has to swallow your pride, give something up, in order to forgive him. — Bree Despain

The actuality of us being cognizant and accepting of the fact we are but a speck of sand in a universe sized desert, whose existence is irrelevant to any facet of universal function is a hard pill to swallow. Knowing the world will go on for another billion years after death and you will have no recollection of anything, just as you have no recollection of the billion years before your birth is a mind-boggling intuition, — Hewitt E. Moore

He was, and she had to swallow very hard to keep from choking, the most terribly beautiful man she had ever seen. He had a long, wicked scar that traveled from his temple down his cheek to the side of his chin and below his jaw. Somehow, though, it just didn't detract from his handsomeness, dark though that was. His face was all planes and angles, harsh even in the deepening gloom. His hair was dark and his eyes were full of cynicism. — Lynn Kurland

Even creating shit is hard to do. First, you need money to buy food. Then you have to chew it, eat it, and swallow. A complex process called digestion follows. Finally, you have to strain and excrete your foul smelling wonder into the world. Try doing that with a paint brush! — Jonathan Heatt

The real world out there isn't nearly as nice as some people prefer it to be, so don't swallow everything your high-born teachers tell you without takinga long hard look at it yourselves. — David Eddings

It's not fair!" Sunny wailed. "Why do you get to stay? Why can't I stay, if you can?"
I had to swallow hard. "That wouldn't be fair, would it? But I don't get to stay, Sunny. I have to go, too. And soon. Maybe we'll leave together." Perhaps she'd be happier if she thought I was going to the Dolphins with her. By the time she knew otherwise, Sunny would have a different host with different emotions and no tie to this human beside me. Maybe. Anyway, it would be too late. "I have to go, Sunny, just like you. I have to give my body back, too."
And then, flat and hard from right behind us, Ian's voice broke through the quiet like the crack of a whip.
"What? — Stephenie Meyer

I've hurt them . . . but pride is a hard thing to swallow when you feel like it's all you have left. — K. Bromberg

Ty's jeans were totally soaked and clung to him like a second skin, and Zane had to swallow hard. Jesus. "Good luck getting out of those gracefully," he rasped with a slight smile, still leaning against the wall.
"Good luck thinking for the next hour," Ty shot back with a smirk.
"Shit," Zane muttered, turning into the spray to wash before leaning and shutting the water off. — Abigail Roux

Am I too blunt? If the truth is too hard to swallow, should I feed you soft lies? — Edward W. Robertson

He looks almost as bad as I feel. Nat calls out, "So I'm guessing by your silence that I've won this round."

I shake my head and speak into the cell, "Sorry, I gotta go. Max is here."

She purrs into the phone. "Ah, I get ya." Then sings, "Let me lick you up and down 'til you say stop."

I fight my hysterical laugh and mumble, "Yeah, like I said, I gotta go."

But she ignores me, singing louder, "Let me play with your body, baby, make you real hot."

I hang up and swallow hard. "Hi."

Max opens his mouth to speak, but Nat is not to be ignored. She shouts through the wall, "Let me do all the things you want me to do." I cover my mouth with a hand, flushing as she finishes her solo. "'Cause tonight, baby, I wanna get freaky with you." A moment later, she yells a huffy, "You shut up, ASSer! — Belle Aurora

I could only nod as emotions rolled in like a destructive storm. This was it. It was over. My incredible time with this beautiful talented man was up. I had to clench my teeth and swallow hard to mask the loss that threatened to overcome my calm exterior. I was holding on for dear life then he said two words with pure tranquility. — Nicole Castro

"But love ? Is that what you feel for Morpheus?"
I swallow hard. "I'm not sure. It's all wrapped up in my loyalties to Wonderland. But there's something real between us. Something powerful." I sink further into my seat. "It's complicated." — A.G. Howard

Life is like a box of chocolates, loaded with surprises, some delightful and some downright disagreeable. The yummy ones, of course, are easy to swallow, but the yucky ones are sometimes hard to stomach. — Tammy Bennett

I am tolerably ignorant about Judaism, and much of what I do know about it seems hard to swallow, because it is so grounded in legalism, and adherence to rituals. — Fred Melamed

When I do a film, the days before or the night before, I throw up. Sometimes it's just in my mouth and I swallow it back, but sometimes it's real. Whatever it is, it's hard. I don't do the first five or ten minutes of my character's appearance in a movie until the middle of the shooting schedule because I don't want him to be defined by my nervousness. So, we do the middle of the picture first. — Donald Sutherland

Madame V begins the lesson by reading aloud the first stanza of a famous French poem: Il pleure dans mon coeur Comme il pleut sur la ville; Quelle est cette langueur Qui penetre mon coeur? Then she looks up and without any warning she calls on me to translate it. I swallow hard, and try: "It's raining in my heart like it's raining in the city. What is this sadness that pierces my heart?" Saying these words out loud, right in front of the whole class, makes me feel like I'm not wearing any clothes. — Sonya Sones

Chew off a little every day, because it's hard to swallow a whole pie at once. — Richelle E. Goodrich

A question wells up inside me, a question so big it blocks my throat and makes it hard to breathe. Somehow I swallow it back, finally choosing another.
"Are memories such an important thing?"
"It depends," she replies, and closes her eyes. "In some cases, they're the most important thing there is. — Haruki Murakami

As the mother of a small boy, she had developed a bad habit of carrying a little of everything in her purse, not to mention all the little treasures that Jeremy had given her - pretty rocks, a wilted violet, a ring he'd made from braided pine needles. The collection was a junky-looking mess. When the stranger picked up an unwrapped peppermint candy with more hair on it than stripes, Chloe wished the floor planks would separate and swallow her. His hard mouth twitched as he dropped the candy back in her purse along with an emergency tampon whose wrapper had nearly disintegrated. — Catherine Anderson

To a haughty belly, kindness is hard to swallow and harder to digest. — Zora Neale Hurston

I understand that for the people who really care about you the fact that you are facing cancer is very hard to swallow. They will need time managing and dealing with their emotions just as you do. — Yilda B. Rivera

Virgin, right? the voice asks again. It comes from the tall one with white-blond hair falling into his eyes. Frankie is still giggling, and my entire body goes hot and red, despite the chill in the water. If Frankie thinks she's just going to auction me off, well ... I don't know. It's kind of hard to be witty when you're trying to call forth a giant sea squid to swallow you up and drag you down to the depths of the ocean floor, never to be seen, heard from, or mocked again. — Sarah Ockler

Those were drinking days, and most men drank hard. So very great is the improvement Time has brought about in such habits, that a moderate statement of the quantity of wine and punch which one man would swallow in the course of a night, without any detriment to his reputation as a perfect gentleman, would seem, in these days, a ridiculous exaggeration. — Charles Dickens

I find it hard to swallow the notion that the world is improved by extra suffering. And that goes for a lot of Christian doctrine. Jones commits a crime, so you expiate the evil by nailing Smith to a cross and it's all better. - John Leslie — Jim Holt

The film director, in many instances, has to swallow somebody else's decision about the final form of something. It's so hard as to be intolerable. — Trevor Nunn

It's hard to swallow when people say, "Oh my God, you're a master of something." I say, "No, I'm actually a student of that. I could turn you on to websites for 25 masters, and you'll quickly see that I am their disciple." — Nick Offerman

I swing my arms to loosen myself up. Place my fists on my hips. then drop them to my sides. Saliva's filling my mouth at a ridiculous rate and i feel vomit at the back of my throat. I swallow hard and open my lips so I can get the stupid line out and go hide in the woods and-that's when i start crying. — Suzanne Collins

Can I tell you one thing?" Melonhead says.
I swallow. "Sure."
"One day isn't your whole life, Murph." He waits until I look at him. "A day is just a day."
I scoff and slouch in the chair. "So what are you saying? That people shouldn't judge me on one mistake? Tell that to Judge Ororos."
He leans in against the table. "No, kid. I'm saying you shouldn't judge yourself for it. — Brigid Kemmerer

Life is a marshmallow, easy to chew but hard to swallow. — Francis Bacon

I know you adore Father, but he isn't the white knight you imagine him to be. He never was. True, he's charming and loving in his way. But he's selfish. He's a limited man determined to bring about his own end-"
"But-"
Tom grabs both my hands in his and gives them a small squeeze. "Gemma, you can't save him. Why can't you accept that?"
I see my reflection on the surface of the Thames. My face is a watery outline, all blurred edges with nothing settled.
"Because if I let go of that" - I swallow hard, once, twice - "then I have to accept that I am alone."
The ship's horn howls again as it slips out toward sea. Tom's reflection appears beside mine, just as uncertain.
"We're every one of us alone in this world, Gemma." He doesn't say it bitterly. "But you have company, if you want. — Libba Bray

It's hard not to be impatient with the absurdity of the young; they tell us that two and two make four as though it had never occurred to us, and they're disappointed if we can't share their surprise when they have discovered that a hen lays an egg. There's a lot of nonsense in their ranting and raving, but it's not all nonsense. One ought to sympathize with them; one ought to do one's best to understand. One has to remember how much has to be forgotten and how much has to be learnt when for the first time one faces life. It's not very easy to give up one's ideals, and the brute facts of every day are bitter pills to swallow. The spiritual conflicts of adolescence can be very severe and one can do little to resolve them. — W. Somerset Maugham

I tried hard to imagine my poems or any poems as machines that could make things happen, changing the government, or the economy or even their language, the body or its sensorium, but I could not imagine this, could not even imagine imagining it. And yet when I imagined the total victory of those other things over poetry, when I imagined, with a sinking feeling, a world without even the terrible excuses for poems that kept faith with the virtual possibilities of the medium, without the sort of absurd ritual I'd participated in that evening then I intuited an inestimable loss, a loss not of artworks but of art, and therefore infinite, the total triumph of the actual, and I realized that, in such a world, I would swallow a bottle of white pills. — Ben Lerner

Oh, well, I know that Libby." He rolls his eyes. "I've never met anyone more committed to, well, life that you are."
"Really?" I swallow rather hard. "Even though I keep on screwing my life up?"
"Sweetheart, precisely because you keep screwing your life up! I mean look at you. You had the crappiest career eve in the world before you turned everything around and became this shit-hot jewellery designer. You set your head on fire with a cigarette and ended up being utterly adored by the guy who had to put you out... And I do adore you, by the way," he adds, in a nonchalant sort of way, "in case you ever had wondered. Oh, and then there's your love of life. Loads of girls would have just sunk... — Lucy Holliday

She never typed her real name into her netbook in case it got key-logged, had no physical hard drive, and would boot up from a tiny microSD card that she could quickly swallow if the police ever came to her door. — Parmy Olson

The average age (longevity) of a meat eater is 63. I am on the verge of 85 and still work as hard as ever. I have lived quite long enough and am trying to die; but I simply cannot do it. A single beef-steak would finish me; but I cannot bring myself to swallow it. I am oppressed with a dread of living forever. That is the only disadvantage of vegetarianism. — George Bernard Shaw

Drink this," she says.
"What is it?" my throat feels swollen.
I swallow hard. "What's going to happen?"
"Can't tell you that. Just trust me."
I press air from my lungs and tip the contents of the vial into my mouth. My eyes close. — Veronica Roth

This book (the Bible) is not hard to understand.
It's just hard to swallow. — Steve Lawson

It's hard to swallow your pride. That's why I slather mine in mayonnaise. — Stephen Colbert

There are people out there who genuinely love literature, who genuinely love to read and read widely, who will never like, or even necessarily get, my books. That was a hard one to swallow, to not feel slighted by. — Lynn Coady

We're what you call heterogenous. That means we're everywhere, everybody at once. We're both good and bad, right and wrong. We're the great resolvers of conflict. We're like octopuses
because we'll swallow anything. Even men. Even battling and forlorn men like you and your dad. You guys try so hard to be subjects, characters, things, you forget us women are the whole story. We embrace you all. What you really want to destroy is women, that story of yourself you can't control. — Scott Bradfield

We are only righteous in Christ and in him alone. But that's a hard pill to swallow, especially if you give yourself kudos for good choices. — Rosaria Champagne Butterfield

You recognize the truth because sometimes it's hard to swallow, but if you hold it in your mouth, refusing to eat it, you are going to choke. — Monica Johnson

Wiping his mouth and tossing the napkin on the table, Wake leaned on his elbow and studied Kabe, long and hard.

Long and hard enough that Kabe started to stare back.

Finally, Wake blurted out, "So have you found God?" I thought Kabe was going to swallow his straw.

Kabe licked his lips. "Joe's been talking to me about religion." I had no idea what was about to come out of his mouth. "Out alone, having some real deep, personal conversations. I think Joe has figured out how to get right inside me and know what I need."

"We all need to hear it."

"Touched me real far inside," My chest tightened up. I twisted my ankle and dropped my boot heel onto the arch of his foot. He yanked it back and leaned over the table a little.

"All burning with it."

My chair scraped the floor as I stood. "Know what, we need to be heading out. — James Buchanan

The world is older and bigger than we are. This is a hard truth for some folks to swallow. — Edward Abbey

And if she liked and trusted the person who asked, she would add that yes, it was kind of a lot to deal with: her outward affect was bright and capable, and that was no illusion, but equally real was the yawning pit of exhaustion inside her. She just felt so tired sometimes. And because of everything her parents asked of her, she was ashamed of being tired. She could not, would not let the pit swallow her up, as much as she sometimes wanted it to. — Lev Grossman

Winter Grace It is autumn again and our anxiety blows With the wind, breaking the heart of the rose, Petals and leaves fall down and everything goes. All but the seed, all but the hard bright berry And the bulbs we kneel on the earth to bury And lay away with our anguish and our worry. It is time we learned again the winter grace To put the nerves to sleep in a dark place And smooth the lines in the self-tortured face. For we are at the end of our endurance nearly And we shall have to die this winter surely, For this is the end of more than a season clearly. Now we shall have to be poor, to yield up all, With the leaves wither, with the petals fall, Now we shall have to die, once and for all. Before the seed of faith so deep and still Pushes up gently through the frozen will And the joyless wake and learn to be joyful. Before this buried love leaps up from sorrow And doubt and violence and pity follow To greet the radiant morning and the swallow. — May Sarton

Furi's palm was dry and the painful friction he jerked his cock with was tipping him over the edge fast. He opened his mouth wider, feeling Syn's length harden to granite right before the first hot splash of come hit his tongue. Syn bucked hard against him as usual, his orgasm kicking his ass. Syn bowed over Furi's head and grunted hard as the ruthless tremors racked his body. Furi barely had time to swallow the first couple of spurts before more creamy goodness flooded his mouth. Salty, warm and plentiful. Furi squeezed his eyes shut and kept the tight hold on Syn's cock in his mouth while he fucked his own a couple more times into his fist and shot his load over his other hand. Furi released a long throaty groan while he milked his cock head for the last drops. Furi — A.E. Via

So you wound up with Apollo. If he's sometimes hard to swallow. Use this. — Paul Newman

Being with Anna is easy. She's the one."
The one. It stops my heart. I thought Max was the one, but ... there's that other one.
The first one.
"Do you believe in that?" I ask quietly. "In one person for everyone?"
Something changes in St Clair's eyes. Maybe sadness. "I can't speak for anyone but myself," he says. "But, for me, yes. I have to be with Anna. But this is something you have to figure out on your own. I can't answer that for you, no one can."
"Oh."
"Lola." He rolls his chair over to my side. "I know things are shite right now. And in the name of friendship and full disclosure, I went through something similar last year. When I met Anna, I was with someone else. And it took a long time before I found the courage to do the hard thing. But you have to do the hard thing."
I swallow. "And what's the hard thing?"
"You have to be honest with yourself. — Stephanie Perkins

Who's the little girl?" Don't speak, Barrons had told me on the way there, no matter what anyone says. I don't care how pissed off you might get. Swallow it. His derisive "little girl" ringing in my ears, I bit down hard and didn't say a word. "Just the latest piece of ass, McCabe." I no longer had to bite down. I was speechless. — Karen Marie Moning

You won't let anything bad happen to me, will you, Garrett?"
A lump the size of Massachusetts lodges in my throat. I swallow hard and try to speak past it.
"Never. — Elle Kennedy

You need to understand that truth is stranger than fiction. Listen: people are willing to swallow any old tripe as long as you say it without flinching. They want to be told stuff. And they don't want to doubt you either. It's too hard. — Craig Silvey

They tried hard to take comfort from the fact that the boys hadn't died in vain: they had been part of a magnificent struggle for right. And there were moments where they could believe that and swallow down the angry, desperate screech that wanted to scrape its way out of their gullets like out of a mother bird. — M.L. Stedman

Even to this day, grace remains hard to swallow. Religiosity and moralism go down easier than free forgiveness. — Robert Farrar Capon

Furi gripped Syn's ass in a grip sure to leave finger-marks and slammed his hot mouth over his cock, taking him down to the base in one swallow. An animalistic lust coursed through him with an intensity he'd never felt. Syn was hit hard with hunger and he roughly grabbed two handfuls of Furi's hair and pumped his cock as far down his throat as it could go while he loudly groaned his release. Sweltering heat surrounded his cock as he shot jet after jet of hot, thick come inside that heavenly cavern. Syn had absolutely no poise or courtesy as he used the hell out of Furi's mouth, fucking his dick in between those pretty pink lips until he had no strength left. Furi — A.E. Via

Some truths are hard to swallow, so we share it within tales that most people will accept without being frightened by the truth hidden within. — Larry Itejere

Sometimes you need to swallow hard and recognise your enemy as a fellow human being like who has the same rights as you and accept that you need to live in same space. — Bangambiki Habyarimana

I feel him brush the grape over my lips again. Instinctively, sensually, I open my mouth and let him feed it to me, breathing hard. By the time I swallow, his smile is gone. — Katy Evans

Sometimes you have to fail in order to succeed. Whether we want it or not, there is an order in the universe. It's hard to understand and many, many times it's hard to swallow, but it's there and our choices are our own. Failure is part of life and no one can succeed every time they try something. — Sherrilyn Kenyon

His gaze caught and held hers, bored into her with an intensity that stole the air from her lungs.

"I want to break free of these bonds, bend you the fuck over and rail you so hard you scream."

He arched up as much as he could, forcing a breath of shock out of her in a rush.

"And when I'm done, I want to spank the hell out of you before I tie you down, make you suck my cock and swallow every last drop of my load. Now, will you please let me come?"

~Trance — Sydney Croft

Another page turns on the calendar, April now, not March.
...
I am spinning the silk threads of my story, weaving the fabric of my world ... I spun out of control. Eating was hard. Breathing was hard. Living was hardest.
I wanted to swallow the bitter seeds of forgetfulness ... Somehow, I dragged myself out of the dark and asked for help.
I spin and weave and knit my words and visions until a life starts to take shape.
There is no magic cure, no making it all go away forever. There are only small steps upward; an easier day, an unexpected laugh, a mirror that doesn't matter anymore.
I am thawing. — Laurie Halse Anderson

Officer Dan..." I start.

"Squirt..." He grins while trying to swallow.

"I'm trying to be nice," I say, eyes narrowed. "Do you know how hard that is right now? — Apryl Baker

Secrets of the heart are different. They are private and painful, and we want nothing more than to hide them from the world. They do not swell and press against the mouth. They live in the heart, and the longer they are kept, the heavier they become. Teccam claims it is better to have a mouthful of poison than a secret of the heart. Any fool will spit out poison, he says, but we hoard these painful treasures. We swallow hard against them every day, forcing them deep inside us. There they sit, growing heavier, festering. Given enough time, they cannot help but — Patrick Rothfuss

Hat came before has dissolved from me, lost like milk teeth. But I think, rather, that it has always been as it is, and there was never a beforethis nor will there be an afternow. I am accepting. This is not a thing to be solved, or conquered, or destroyed. It is. I am. We are. We conjugate together in darkness, plotting against each other, the Labyrinth to eat me and I to eat it, each to swallow the hard, black opium of the other. We hold orange petals beneath our tongues and seethe. It has always been so. It grinds against me and I bite into its skin.. — Catherynne M Valente

Why are you being so nice to me?' I asked her.
'You know,' she said, 'when you say stuff like that I just want to slap you.'
'What?'
'You heard me.' She picked up her beer and took a swallow, still watching me. Then she said, 'Colie, you should never be surprised when people treat you with respect. You should expect it.'
I shook my head. 'You don't know-' I began. But, as usual, she didn't let me finish.
'Yes,' she said simply. 'I do know. I've watched you, Colie. You walk around like a dog waiting to be kicked, and when someone does, you pout and cry like you didn't deserve it.'
'No one deserves to be kicked,' I said.
'I disagree,' she said flatly. 'You do if you don't think you're worth any better. — Sarah Dessen

You swallow hard when you discover that the old coffee shop is now a chain pharmacy, that the place where you first kissed so-and-so is now a discount electronics retailer, that where you bought this very jacket is now rubble behind a blue plywood fence and a future office building. Damage has been done to your city. You say, 'It happened overnight.' But of course it didn't. Your pizza parlor, his shoeshine stand, her hat store: when they were here, we neglected them. For all you know, the place closed down moments after the last time you walked out the door. (Ten months ago? Six years? Fifteen? You can't remember, can you?) And there have been five stores in that spot before the travel agency. Five different neighborhoods coming and going between then and now, other people's other cities. Or 15, 25, 100 neighborhoods. Thousands of people pass that storefront every day, each one haunting the streets of his or her own New York, not one of them seeing the same thing. — Colson Whitehead

The bleakness of what faces us is difficult to swallow. As long as we engage in happy platitudes and a false kind of vision of the possible, it may empower you over the short term, but it is eventually, because of the reality in front of us, going to lead to despair and cynicism and apathy. It's better to swallow hard the bitter pill of what we're up against. — Chris Hedges

They were pleased to eat more Nazis, although nervous about too many disappearances being noticed. More troubling, however, was the flavor. Nazis were nearly indigestible. The taste of hate was hard to swallow. — Sarah Jane Stratford

I swallow hard. She's right. But if something happens to her, I'll never forgive myself. "Then I'll let you go," I say, and lean forward to cut the bindings. "But... you owe me something first."
'And that is?" She's still staring up at the sky.
"A kiss" I say.
Her eyes never meet mine.
"Well?" I ask.
She nods and smiles, finally throwing me a stare that's as deadly as poison "You can kiss my ass, Zephyr James. — Lindsay Cummings

He looks at me, puzzled. "What's a romance?"
"A love story." I can feel my face going red again. What is it with this man and the way he affects me? "You know, boy meets girl and they're attracted to each other."
He fixes me with a long stare, then lowers his lashes and bites his lip. I swallow hard. "I'll go and fix lunch. — Michelle Abbott

the bear says. Thanks, God. It doesn't really matter, I'm thinking. I was all over Dad for getting so fangirly about the Others, and for spinning the facts to make things seem less bleak, but I wasn't actually much better than he was. It was just as hard for me to swallow the idea that I had gone to bed a human being and woken up a cockroach. — Rick Yancey

No spoon has yet destroyed a mouth, but the knife of war cuts portions that are hard to swallow. Perhaps the big mouths of the privileged are able to cope with them, but they dull the teeth of the little people and ruin their stomachs. — Franz Grillparzer

It is a hard message to swallow at first blush because it brings into question everything that we think we are, which for the most part seems to come from what we identify with, our bodies, our thoughts, our feelings, our relationships, our values, our work, our expectations of what is "supposed" to happen and how things are "supposed" to work out for me in order for me to be happy, our stories of where we came from and where we are going and of who we are. — Jon Kabat-Zinn

I don't believe in "laying to rest" the past. There are wounds we won't get over. There are things that happen to us that, no matter how hard we try to forget, no matter with what fortitude we face them, what mix of religion and therapy we swallow, what finished and durable forms of art we turn them into, are going to go on happening inside of us for as long as our brains are alive. — Christian Wiman

I've made love to her
finally and wholly, I've had her in every way I've wanted and needed. And I want more. I want to own her, and the idea she will someday share this with someone other than me is hard to swallow. — Elizabeth Finn

When you stand out there," John continues in a hoarse voice, "keep your chin up, all right? Don't let them get to you."
"I won't."
"Make them work for it. Punch someone if you have to." John gives me a sad, crooked smile. "You're a scary kid. So scare them. Okay? All the way until the end."
For the first time in a long time, I feel like a little brother. I have to swallow hard to keep my eyes dry. "Okay," I whisper. — Marie Lu

You must give up your right to decide what is good and evil on your own terms. That is a hard pill to swallow - choosing to live only in me. To do that, you must know me enough to trust me and learn to rest in my inherent goodness. — William Paul Young

Even Cronus, the Titan who literally had his kids for breakfast, would find these facts hard to swallow. — Tai

[T.J.] Without thinking, I held them out to her. She stopped laughing, and looked at me like she wasn't quite sure what I meant. I waited, and she leaned toward me and opened her mouth. I slid my fingers inside, wondering if my eyes were as big as hers. When she sucked the breadfruit off, my breathing got all messed up.
"More?"
She nodded, just barely, and her breathing didn't sound right either. I scooped up some breadfruit and this time, when I put my fingers in her mouth, she put her hand on my wrist.
I waited for her to swallow and then I lost my shit completely.
I grabbed her face with both hands, and I kissed her, hard. She opened her mouth and I slipped my tongue inside. I could have kissed her for days, and if she told me to stop I wasn't sure I'd be able to. — Tracey Garvis-Graves

The myth that people with epilepsy swallow their tongues is very injurious. When I had seizures without my roommates present, I would often wake up with my gums bleeding, my teeth hurting or my jaw aching. Often, well-intentioned people, believing I would choke on my tongue, tried to force open my clenched jaw to put in a hard object. — Kurt Eichenwald

I got what I wanted, I guess. I'm here, in this home that I worked so hard to insulate from the problems of the world, our happy little bubble. The girls have their father every night. Adam has a newfound respect for me, the New Rachel, for the glittering, sharp edge that's emerged like a razor in the grass. When I think about my old self, I feel pity and yearning at the same time. Poor Old Rachel, the sweet, naive idiot. And lucky Old Rachel, so completely happy. There's one niggling thought I can't shake, one that keeps me awake at night. What would I tell my daughters if they came to me with the news that their husband had a mistress? That he told her, my precious daughter, that sex with the other woman was amazing? Stay and work things out. Oh, and get that STD panel ASAP, darlings! But do stay. Take all that hurt and betrayal and just ball it up and swallow it. Want to bake cookies? — Kristan Higgins

You're killing me because I want to taste you, everywhere."
I stop chewing the now-cardboard chocolate in my mouth and swallow hard.
"Excuse me?" I whisper.
"I want to slowly undress you and taste every delectable inch of you. I want you squirming and wet."
"Mission accomplished," I mutter and then slap my hand over my mouth as he laughs. — Kristen Proby

Creativity's too big a pill; the truth's too hard to swallow. Sprinkle sugar in a straight line and we'll all inhale and follow. — Kelby Losack

Here's a woman, a real pioneer for other women looking for careers in stand-up comedy. And talk about guts - she would come out here and sit in this chair and say some things that were unbelievable - where you would have to swallow pretty hard ... but it was hilarious ... the force of her comedy was overpowering. — David Letterman

I pull my lower lip all the way in between my teeth. If I try hard enough, maybe I can gobble my whole self this way ... I didn't try hard enough to swallow myself. — Laurie Halse Anderson

I POINT OUT the embankment leading down to the water's edge. "All the way down to that walking trail," I say to Ringer. "And don't wait for me." She shakes her head, frowning. I lean in, keeping my expression as serious as I can. "I thought I had you with the zombie remark. One of these days, I'm going to get a smile out of you, Private." Very much not smiling. "I don't think so, sir." "You have something against smiling?" "It was the first thing to go." Then the snow and the dark swallow her. The rest of the squad follows. I can hear Teacup whimpering beneath her breath as Dumbo leads her off, going, "Run hard when it goes, Cup, okay? — Rick Yancey