Quotes & Sayings About Holding Back Tears

We reach the corner, and I begin to head back in the direction of the apartment complex, but I notice he's stopped walking. I turn around, and he's pulling something out of the bag he's holding. He tears away a tag, and a blanket unfolds. No, he didn't. He holds the blanket out to the old man still there bundled up on the sidewalk. The man looks up at him and takes the blanket. Neither of them says a word. Miles walks to a nearby trash can and tosses the empty bag into it, then heads back toward me while staring down at the ground. He doesn't even make eye contact with me when we both begin walking in the direction of the apartment complex. I want to tell him thank you, but I don't. If I tell him thank you, it would seem like I assume he did that for me. I know he didn't do it for me. He did it for the man who was cold. — Colleen Hoover

Hana?" Lena says softly. "Are you okay?"
That single stupid question breaks me. All the metal fingers relax me at once, and the tears they've been holding back come surging up at once. Suddenly I am sobbing and telling her everything: about the raid, and the dogs, and the sounds of skulls cracking underneath regulator's nightsticks. Thinking about it again makes me feel like I might puke. At a certain point, Lena puts her arms around me and starts murmuring things into my hair. I don't even know what she's saying, and I don't care. JUst having her here - solid, real, on my side - makes me feel better than I have in weeks. Slowly I manage to stop crying, swallowing back the hiccups and sobs that are still running through me. I try to tell her that I've missed her, and that I've been stupid and wrong, but my voice is muffled and thick — Lauren Oliver

Our baby gives herself to me completely. There is no hesitation, no reservation, no holding back, no coldness, no craft, no tremor or fear in her love. Although our relationship may encompass tears, frustration, even fury, it is an utterly reliable bond. As it grows, her love is literally unadulterated. Her love is wholly of the child, pure in its essence as children are in their direct passions. Children do not love wisely, but perhaps they love the best of all. — Louise Erdrich

My mother is no longer shouting or shaking me, but she is still holding me very tightly. Even though I didn't speak out loud, she heard me and understood. "Don't you know?" she asks me back. "Don't you know who you are?" Tears are sliding down her cheeks and falling off onto my face. I never knew how hot someone else's tears feel. "You're part of me," she says, as if it is the deepest truth she knows. "You're all the family I have. The only person I can count on. You're flesh of my flesh and blood of my blood, my only baby, and nothing else comes close to that. Nothing."
And then she runs out of words, so she just clings to me, and not all the doctors in the world can pull her away. — David Klass

Cricket could tell Enkai was holding back tears, and wishing to comfort him, she took his hand. They sat in silence for a long time, just holding hands, and when Cricket heard Enkai sniff, she knew he was crying.
"You should go. You shouldn't see me . . ."
"What?" said Cricket at once. "Be a person? Have feelings? Here . . ." She took a washcloth from the nightstand and dabbed his tears away. "I cried when I lost my friends. One of them died to get me here too."
"I'm sorry," Enkai said, blinking sympathetically as Cricket wiped his face.
Cricket smiled. "No, it's alright. I still see her sometimes." She dropped her eyes to the washcloth as she contently folded it and set it aside.
Enkai frowned. "You're weird, Cricket," he said with a laugh, and Cricket laughed as well. "But . . ." he added, "I guess that's why I like you. — Ash Gray

I love you, Caitlin.
I leaned in and kissed him, holding back the tears in the realization that he was able to put into words what I was willing to lose my life over. — Anna Lazaridis

He pulled the knitting away from her, throwing it in the grass, then sank down on his knees in front of her, wrapping his arms around her waist and burying his head in her lap. He was shaking, she realized, and the tears were pouring down her face, onto him, as she stroked his long, silken hair and cried.
She didn't care what it sounded like - the hiccupping noises, the choking sobs.
Her own body was shaking, racked by the final release, and he sat back on his heels and pulled her out of the chair, into his arms, holding her so tightly that a weaker woman might break, whispering to her in Japanese, sweet, loving words, letting her cry.
She was a strong woman, and her tears, so long denied, only made her stronger.
His heart was pounding against hers, his hands firm and tender, pushing the hair away from her tear-drenched face. When he kissed her she couldn't breathe, and she didn't care. — Anne Stuart

One Kashmiri morning in the early spring of 1915, my grandfather Aadam Aziz hit his nose against a frost-hardened tussock of earth while attempting to pray. Three drops of blood plopped out of his left nostril, hardened instantly in the brittle air and lay before his eyes on the prayer-mat, transformed into rubies. Lurching back until he knelt with his head once more upright, he found that the tears which had sprung to his eyes had solidified, too; and at that moment, as he brushed diamonds contemptuously from his lashes, he resolved never again to kiss earth for any god or man. This decision, however, made a hole in him, a vacancy in a vital inner chamber, leaving him vulnerable to women and history. Unaware of this at first, despite his recently completed medical training, he stood up, rolled the prayer-mat into a thick cheroot, and holding it under his right arm surveyed the valley through clear, diamond-free eyes. — Salman Rushdie

When Annunziata said she loved me or any of her thousands of other friends and beloveds, she was really saying, at least in my mind, "God loves you." To quote the singer/songwriter James Taylor, she showered the people she loved with love, always showing the way that she felt without holding back. Even as her body could barely contain her soul any longer, she'd open wide the gates of herself with a smile, that giggle, her twinkling eyes, and she'd let the supernatural love flow through her. Walking out of the chapel after her funeral, a woman I'd never seen before stopped me and said, "You're Cathleen, aren't you?" "Yes," I croaked, tears rolling off my nose as I fingered the prayer card with Annunziata's picture on it. Slipping an arm around my shoulders, the woman explained that she was one of Annunziata's former students and said, "She loved you so much." I know. — Cathleen Falsani

He remained where he was, looking unsure of what to do. His eyes were dark pools of emotion, giving me the impression he was holding back tears. It made my heart ache for him. — Marita A. Hansen

I am begging you." My arm lowered and tugged as he fell to his knees. "I'm begging you, Abby. Don't do this."
"Let me go, Travis."
Travis was on his knees, palms flat on the pavement.
The sight of him on the ground made the tears I'd been holding back rush down my face. — Jamie McGuire

Burnett let out a low growl and motioned for the agent to leave. Then he glanced back at Miranda. "How were you able to pull this off?"
Miranda shrugged. "I don't know." The girl's green eyes grew a sheen of tears. "They were going to hurt Della and Kylie. I panicked and just did it."
Della found her chest filling up with warmth. Kylie reached over and held Miranda's hand.
"And you did a great job," Kylie said. "I'm so proud of you."
"Me, too," Della added.
"Group hug," Miranda said, holding out her arms.
"No damn hugs!" Burnett snapped. "You can undo it, right?" he asked.
"I'm pretty sure I can."
"Oh, hell!" He raked a hand over his face. "Try to do it. Try really hard. I don't think our jail is set up to house kangaroos. — C.C. Hunter

Like a girl, a baby running after her mother, begging to be picked up, and she tugs on her skirts, holding her back as she tries to hurry off - all tears, fawning up at her, till she takes her in her arms ... That's how you look, Patroclus, streaming live tears. — Homer

He hesitated, but then stepped beneath the tree and knelt, depositing me gently on the ground between two giant roots. And he stayed there, kneeling beside me, holding my hand in his. Something splashed the back of my hand, cold as spring water, crystalling to my skin. A faery's tears. — Julie Kagawa

Tears are good for you," Raphael said. When she opened her eyes back up, he knelt down. His large frame seemed to make the room shrink. His face was almost level with hers as his eyes met Emma's. "They are a gift from the Creator to his creation. Tears release endorphins in the mind that help sooth and comfort. They cleanse the eyes and relieve stress, thereby lowering blood pressure and taking strain off of the heart. He created you with tears and nothing he created is bad. Those tears you are holding in are necessary, Emma. Let them fall, let them heal, and let them remind you with each one that you are not alone. — Quinn Loftis

It had been many months since I'd shed tears for Tomaso, but grief is like that. It's not a continuous process; it comes in waves. You can keep it at bay for a time, like a dam holding back a lake, but them something triggers an explosion inside of you, shattering the wall and letting loose a flood. — Paul Adam

Xcor held onto the male's shoulders and pushed himself back a little. Meeting Tohrment in the eye, he whispered, "My brother." "Yes," the male said hoarsely, a sheen of tears making that blue stare glow like a pair of sapphires. "I am your brother." It was hard to say who embraced who, but suddenly they were both holding on, one upon another, warrior to warrior. There — J.R. Ward

My eyes burn with tears, and I'm so tired. So tired of holding back everything I feel and want to say. So tired of being someone I'm not and making mistakes that I didn't have any fun making. — Penelope Douglas

And when I looked outside the window, something inside of me churned, swallowing hard I looked up and saw blue. I squeezed my eyes shut, holding back the tears and emotions that were swelling inside of me. And then I realized, the only time that I could feel anything at all, was when I could feel him. — Everance Caiser

He didn't know how to say good-bye. His throat ached from the strain of holding back his emotions. "I don't want to leave you," he said humbly, reaching for her cold, stiff hands.
Emma lowered her head, her tears falling freely. "I'll never see you again, will I?"
He shook his head. "Not in this lifetime," he said hoarsely.
She pulled her hands away and wrapped her arms around his neck. He felt her wet lashes brush his cheek. "Then I'll wait a hundred years," she whispered. "Or a thousand, if I must. Remember that, Nikki. I'll be waiting for you to come to me. — Lisa Kleypas

She's holding it together, too, and I want to tell her she doesn't have to do that for me, because I might not be able to do it or her. I can tell she's also trying not to look back, but she does it - she looks over her shoulder - and the tears won't leave her eyes. — David Levithan

All right, all right," he said, with that gesture I'd come to hate: two open palms facing me and patting the air, as if pushing me away, pushing me down, pushing any tears I might be preparing to cry back into their ducts. — Kathleen Rooney