Ribcage Quotes & Sayings

I synonymously felt my heart beat rapaciously, the heart which was once void of anything alive and well. Now the heart was rasping and knocking on my ribcage as if it was demanding to come out, take its root and grow. — Diyar Harraz

There was such emotion in his eyes now, she felt as though her insides were pressing on her ribcage and twisting in her middle. For years she had thought him a stranger. Now, here, on this road by uncertain light she saw again such acute feeling in the beautiful eyes of the boy she had once adored. She let herself look at his arm so firmly about the little girl, a child he barely knew yet felt the responsibility to protect, and something hard and encrusted inside her shattered. — Katharine Ashe

Sometimes, I get this familiar ache in my heart and a sense of stabbing emptiness around my ribcage. I don't even know what brings it on; it's just familiar like a horrible visitor. What brings me to my knees though, is the even bigger heart-hurt when I recognize this ghastly guest is back again. — Ruby Wax

I write in praise of the solitary act: of not feeling a trespassing tongue forced into one's mouth, one's breath smothered, nipples crushed against the ribcage, and that metallic tingling in the chin set off by a certain odd nerve: unpleasure. — Fleur Adcock

I wanted draw the cartoon characters, and then it all started to make sense as I was watching these classics come back to the theater like Lady and the Tramp and so forth. If you want to animated the dog, you have to know where the ribcage is and the hip bone and all that. — Andreas Deja

You only had to see a unicorn lay open the side of a centaur once, the ribcage flashing white when the ripped skin flopped down, to swear a mighty oath never to fuck with or even look at another unicorn again. I'm putting down the hearts and fluffy clouds and backing away slowly. Don't want any trouble here. You can have all the rainbows. — Lev Grossman

At night, in the garden, it occurs to you that it might have been your heart that left you as you reached the capital. Your heart might not have travelled well, closed up in its cavity, quivering and gnawing at the bars of your ribcage during the commute. It might be tracking north now, along edgelands, past spoil-heaps and stands of pylons, under motorway passes, back to the higher ground. Back to him. — Sarah Hall

We are weighted with the outmoded dreams of dead men and dead systems, walking-corpse institutions and undead, blood-sucking ideologies long past their expiration date which yet haunt the planet, entrapping the joy of the living within the dead ribcage walls of their rotting, false order, and which direly need a stake through the heart simply because they are no longer relevant. — Jason Louv

He felt as though the bones of his ribcage were snapping beneath the weight of the stone that God had laid over his heart. — Daniel Silva

I can see he thinks he's the ultimate creation, and he seems to believe every woman here is his Eve, created from his ribcage for him to enjoy. I'm both aroused and infuriated, and this is the most confusing feeling I've ever felt in my life. Brooke Dumas, REAL — Katy Evans

Jesus. Janet had to turn away. You only had to see a unicorn lay open the side of a centaur once, the ribcage flashing white when the ripped skin flopped down, to swear a mighty oath never to fuck with or even look at another unicorn again. I'm putting down the hearts and fluffy clouds and backing away slowly. Don't want any trouble here. You can have all the rainbows. It — Lev Grossman

Ase waved it off, even though his heart hammered in his chest, trying to fly out of his ribcage and jump down Jase's throat to go stay with his heart forever and ever, amen. — Kade Boehme

My head, something happened to its insides. It was as if a storm at sea happened, but only for a moment, and only on the inside of my head. My ribcage, something definitely happened there. It was as if it unknotted itself from itself, like the hull of a ship hitting rock, giving way, and the ship that I was opened up inside me and in came the ocean.
He was the most beautiful boy I had ever seen in my life.
But he looked really like a girl.
She was the most beautiful boy I had ever seen in my life. — Ali Smith

Remembering this, he feels the old, hot prickle in his eyes. He thinks, Yes. But it vanishes. His angry heart calls for his attention, a fist on the door of his ribcage, beating. — Lauren Groff

Oliver's heart tried to pound its way out of his ribcage, but he ignored it. "I'm in love with Petunia," he announced. "And I want to help her. — Jessica Day George

He once thought it himself, that he might die with grief: for his wife, his daughters, his sisters, his father and master the cardinal. But pulse, obdurate, keeps its rhythm. You think you cannot keep breathing, but your ribcage has other ideas, rising and falling, emitting sighs. You must thrive in spite of yourself; and so that you may do it, God takes out your heart of flesh, and gives you a heart of stone. — Hilary Mantel

Reacher glanced back. The guy on the right was about to transition from unconscious to concussed. The guy on the left was squirming halfheartedly and pawing at everything between his ribcage and his knees. — Lee Child

So. Yes. We're all dying. We're all crumbling into the void, one cell at a time. We are disintegrating like sugar cubes in champagne. But only women have to pretend it isn't happening. Fifty-something men wander around with their guts flopped over their waistbands and their faces looking like a busted tramp's mattress in an underpass. They sprout nasal hair and chasm-like wrinkles, and go 'Ooof!' whenever they stand up or sit down. men visibly age, every day
but women are supposed to stop the decline at around 37, 38, and live out the next 30 or 40 years in some magical bubble where their hair is still shiny and chestnut, their face unlined, their lips puffy, and their tits up on the top third of the ribcage. — Caitlin Moran

Your soul can fly outward, stringed to your ribcage like a shimmering kite in the shape of an open hand. Be still and listen to the evidence of your own holiness. — Jeff Buckley

Your ribcage never meant to hurt you.
Your windpipe doesn't know how to be pretty,
but she knows how to howl -
and here, I'd like to take a moment
to submit a formal apology to my soft parts
because they kept me warm
when I was trying to freeze to death,
and I hated them for it. An apology
for a starvation that went deeper than my skin.
One for the strongest skeleton I will ever own
and how I kept using the word girl against it.
Or how I turned words like beautiful into shapes
I could contort myself into. I didn't mean
to compare myself to faces I can't have.
Or spend years trying to carve myself,
like Michelangelo's angels, from the marble -
forgetting what it is to be skin instead of stone.
I let myself be afraid. I was taught to be.
When you learn you are only as good
as your beauty routine, you forget
how to define yourself by anything else. — Ashe Vernon

But this became the first plan of his life to fail. God told him - apparently with the help of human hands - to depart from his ribcage. — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

But I do go in for books. I love to own books. Though I read few books twice, I have filled every shelf in my house with books, have had more shelves made and filled those too. My books surround me like a cocoon. When I run my finger along the backs of my books they feel like the ribcage of an old familiar lover. Visit my shelves and you will learn much about me. — Joe Bennett

She had gotten it all wrong. She was head over heels in
love with him. She loved him so much her stubborn mind struggled to give in to her heart.
She was constantly struggling inside, lying to herself that she didn't love him. But love isn't
that convenient. Love is wild, our hearts are wild; that's why they spend an entire life time
imprisoned in a ribcage. — Thisuri Wanniarachchi

But I run, laughing, my speed increasing, the steady thump of my heart against my ribcage like the beat of a ceremonial drum. I'm back. And life is good. — Lisa Amowitz

Sometimes," Brubeck bites into an apple, "sometimes I want to be everywhere, all at once, so badly I could just ... " Brubeck mimes a bomb going off in his ribcage. "Do you never get that feeling? — David Mitchell

Jane reminds us that God is in his heaven, the monarch on his throne and the pelvis firmly beneath the ribcage. Apparently rock and roll liberated the pelvis and it hasn't been the same since. — Emma Thompson

Emotional intensity" doesn't convey the half of it, of course. It is the kind of coarse and disappointing translation that makes the dismembered bodies of samurai warriors spin in their graves. The word "zanshin" is larded down with a lot of other folderol that you have to be Nipponese to understand. And Hiro thinks, frankly, that most of it is pseudomystical crap, on the same level as his old high school football coach exhorting his men to play at 110 percent. The businessman makes another attack. This one is pretty straightforward: a quick shuffling approach and then a snapping cut in the direction of Hiro's ribcage. Hiro parries it. — Neal Stephenson

I can see, for just a moment, his beating heart in his ribcage, and then that, too, withers and dies, the useless, blackened lump tapping against his ribs before plopping out of his body. — Beth Revis

When I was seventeen you said you wanted to perform an autopsy on me, to crack open my ribcage and squeeze my heart until it burst between your fingers." What is that - if not flirting? She lifts her head off a pillow to near me, propping her elbows on the mattress. "That was me hating you, Richard. I dreamed of your death." "You dreamed of clutching my heart," I rebut. "Of killing you," she emphasizes. I lean closer to her, our eyes locking. "Vous m'aimiez." You loved me. — Becca Ritchie

Drowned out by the sound of his heart throwing itself against his ribcage. — Amy Zhang

I'm going to arrange you, if that's okay?"
I swallowed. "Uh ... sure." My hands were clutched to my ribcage, my shoulders hunched almost to my ears. What, this isn't how you want me positioned? — Tammara Webber

Old Sobriety's son? How is the old devil?"
"Dunno, sir, what with him being dead."
"Oh dear. How long ago?"
"These past thirty years," said Shawn.
"But you don't look any older than twen-" Ponder began. Ridcully elbowed him sharply in the ribcage.
"This is the countryside," he hissed. "People do things differently here. And more often. — Terry Pratchett

If love were human I would've set them on fire by now - a screaming blaze of smoke and flesh. I'd breathe in the blackness once more just to feel love's destruction, its mortality filling in the hollow of my ribcage without a heart. — Piper Payne

On the Eighth Day Adam Slept Alone

It must have been
the eighth day.

A day the scribes and Pharisees conveniently
left out.

Adam was either inspecting goats
or naming the birds

when something pinched
my side.

I had to stop pruning the tree of knowledge
to catch my breath.

God had taken a long weekend.

At first I thought the solitude of gardening
was going to my head.

Was it loneliness?
An omen? A vision?

For a moment I thought I would
ascend.

Then I realized it was just a rib
missing.

How you found your way in
along the banks of the third river

I will never know
but I still shiver to recall

how perfectly your fingers
fell into place

along the ridges
of my ribcage.

Go ahead, Love,
take every last bone.

Make of me
what you will. — Nancy Boutilier

I'm not here to solve your problems. I'm here to support you in your own decisions. I'm not going to walk away, Amy. Not now, not when the going gets tough, not ever. I'm right here at your back."
"For how long?"
"For as long as you'll have me. I love you, Amy."
Staggered, she stared at him. "But you don't do love."
"I never said that. I said love hasn't worked out for me. But all it takes is the right one. You're the right one."
No one had ever said such a thing to her before, and it made her heart swell hard against her ribcage. "I love you, Matt. So much."
He smiled like she'd just given him the best gift he'd ever had. She settled against his good side, and they stared up at the star-laden sky. "I knew I'd find something on this journey," she said. "I wasn't sure what, but I knew it'd be something special. — Jill Shalvis

It seems we've left skin
in each other's lungs. I should have

looked under your bed skirt
for my wallet, but how

could credit cards compare
to the sneeze after we've parted?

Gone and still you make me
reach for a tissue - still my palms

turn circles in the red
breakwater of your heartbeat.

I want to tell you, I have nothing
but respect for your ribcage

now that we both know
it's not big enough to hold us. — Michael Meyerhofer

Men grow up expecting to be the hero of their own story. Women grow up expecting to be the supporting actress in somebody else's. As a kid growing up with books and films and stories instead of friends, that was always the narrative injustice that upset me more than anything else. I felt it sometimes like a sharp pain under the ribcage, the kind of chest pain that lasts for minutes and hours and might be nothing at all or might mean you're slowly dying of something mundane and awful. It's a feeling that hit when I understood how few girls got to go on adventures. I started reading science fiction and fantasy long before Harry Potter and The Hunger Games, before mainstream female leads very occasionally got more at the end of the story than together with the protagonist. Sure, there were tomboys and bad girls, but they were freaks and were usually killed off or married off quickly. Lady hobbits didn't bring the ring to Mordor. They stayed at home in the shire. — Laurie Penny

The way to a man's heart is through his stomach ... just make sure you thrust upward through his ribcage. — Stephen Colbert

1. Are her lips like the hot chocolate your mother made
During the winter months when you were seven? Or have you not tasted her well enough to find the fine granules of cocoa that lightly come with each kiss?

2. Do you know her favorite songs? Not when she is happy, but when she is sad. What music reaches inside her ribcage and softly consoles her heart?

3. When she is sad, are you on the phone or are you at her door? Words do not wipe away tears, fingers do.

4. Do you know all the things that keep her up at night? Do you know why she has gone three days without sleep? Do you know of the insurmountable waves of sadness that wash over her like a tsunami?

5. Do you know the things to say that will calm her heartbeat? The places to touch? The places to love?

6. Everytime you see her do you kiss her like it's the last time but love her like it's the first?

7. Do you love her?

8. Do you love her? — Nishat Ahmed

An English teacher at school once said to her, 'Alice, one thing I hope you never find out is that a broken heart hurts physically.' Nothing she has ever experienced has prepared her for the pain of this. Most of the time her heart feels as though it's waterlogged and her ribcage, her arms, her back, her temples, her legs all ache in a dull, persistent way: but at times like this the incredulity and the appalling irreversibility of what has happened cripple her with a pain so bad she often doesn't speak for days. — Maggie O'Farrell

Children can be disgusting, and often they can develop extraordinary talents, but I'm yet to meet any child who can stimulate his carotid arteries inside his ribcage. — Ben Goldacre

Without wonder, you are dead and I am older. The girl in the mirror looks devastated. Like someone really has pushed a brick through her ribcage. — Kirsty Eagar

Love's a dictator. I know this, yet the blast furnace in my ribcage roars You You You You You You just the same, and there's bugger-all I can do about it. — David Mitchell

I'll never let you go is scrawled three inches long down the side of my ribcage. The skin is still an angry red color, puffy and irritated looking. My gaze drifts up to Colin's in the mirror. I suck in a sharp breath as I'm caught up in a tornado of emotion. He has the same thing on his arm. They are simple, black ink only, but the meaning of the words are anything but. — K. Lars

Some days my heart beats so fast
my ribcage sounds like a fucking railroad track
and my breath is a train I just can't catch. — Andrea Gibson

There was a horrible, erratic thumping in my chest, as if a large bird was trapped inside my ribcage and beating itself to death. — Donna Tartt

The imprint left on her mind by the long famished body that had seemed in the darkness to consist of nothing by sharp crags and angles, the memory of its painfully-defined almost skeletal ribcage, a pattern of ridges like a washboard, was fading as rapidly as any other transient impression on a soft surface. — Margaret Atwood

Why did you come back here, then? Why risk it? Couldn't you find a place where you wouldn't have any other Packs to deal with?"
He cupped my face in his hands, his thumb gently brushing a snowflake from my eyelashes.
"You know why I came back."
My heart started beating against my ribcage as if it was trying to break free. "The fried chicken they serve at The Farmhouse?"
"I came back for you, Scout."
I had to say something. Something clever. Something dazzling. Something to make this moment perfect.
"I hope the snow sticks. — Tammy Blackwell

He lives down in a ribcage in the dry leaves of a heart. — Thomas Harris