Shrank Back Quotes & Sayings

I'm trying to keep your safe!" Puck exploded, whirling on me. His eyes feverish, and I shrank back. "This isn't a game, Meghan! The shit is about to hit the fan, and you're right in the middle of it without knowing enough to duck! — Julie Kagawa

I shrank back, my face flaming as if I'd been struck. And in that moment something changed. I didn't trust her anymore. When she cried, I felt numb. After that, she called me heartless, unfeeling. And maybe I was. A — Christina Baker Kline

And she shrank away again, back into her darkness, and for a long while remained blotted safely away from living. — D.H. Lawrence

When he looked again, Ty had Zane by the hand and was dragging him toward the old Mustang. Zane only managed to stop Ty's excited ramblings by grabbing his face and kissing him. Harrison — Abigail Roux

Could she stick her hand in that sink? Did she dare put in the drain plug? Every time she moved toward it, she shrank back, terrified and guilty, — Vanessa Wolf

She told us about the goddess called Persephone, who was forced to spend half a year in the darkness deep underground. Winter happened when she was trapped inside the earth. The days shrank, they became cold and short and dark. Living things hid themselves away. Spring came when she was released and made her slow way up to the world again. The world became brighter and bolder in order to welcome her back. It began to be filled with warmth and light. The animals dared to wake, they dared to have their young. Plants dared to send out buds and shoots. Life dared to come back. — David Almond

He saw Kathleen sitting in the middle of a long white table alone.Immediately things changed. As he walked toward her the people shrank back against the walls till they were only murals; the white table lengthened and became an altar where the priestess sat alone. Vitality welled up in him and he could have stood a long time across the table from her, looking and smiling. — F Scott Fitzgerald

Emma must have looked ferocious at that point, for Callie shrank back in surprise, then scurried toward the front stairway like a field mouse with a cat on its tail. After — Linda Lael Miller

Something in the fog!" he screamed, and Billy shrank against me-whether because of the man's bloody nose or what he was saying, I don't know. "Something in the fog took John Lee! Something-" He staggered back against a display of lawn food stacked by the window and sat down there."Something in the fog took John Lee and I heard him screaming! — Stephen King

But even as they laid him low a great cry rang through the glade - "In the King's Name" and the stalwart knights of the Splendid Way burst upon them with clashing shields and flashing swords. In a breath the attackers were sent reeling back, and the prostrate knight was covered by the strong weapons of his comrades. Then it seemed that at the glory of the face of Sir Felix the evil spirits of the wood shrank back to their lair in deadly fear: and the Knight of the Clean Heart raised Sir Constant to his feet, and gave him back his fallen sword.
"Hearken, comrade," he cried mightily. "This is thy battle and the glorious end shall be thine. Strike hard and conquer! — W.E. Cule

In the wealthy industrialized nations, effective drug therapies against AIDS became available - AZT as early as 1987, then combinations of antiretroviral agents in 1996. The new drugs offered hope that fatal complications might be staved off and AIDS rendered a chronic condition. — Barton Gellman

Yeah, ignore me." Aaro pawed through the bags until he found one with stenciled hearts on it. "By the way, you never did tell me your size. Hope nothing binds or pinches your tender pink places, babe."
He let the bag fly. It landed on Lily's lap. She shrank back as if it were a venomous snake. Fuck-me-please panties spilled out. A tangle of satin, lace and silk. Red, black, peach, flesh-tone.
Bruno growled expletives in a Calabrese dialect as he shoved underwear into the bag. It was his standard tension reliever. None of the people he insulted knew he was commenting on their grandmother's predilection for sex with sheep.
"I am not wearing that slutty, disgusting stuff." Lily's voice was haughty. "Certainly not after you're pawed it. Dog."
"Arf, arf." Aaro's tone was more cheerful than it had been so far any time this morning. "I love it when she spits bile. — Shannon McKenna

Cam used to hook up with her."
"Ew." I wrinkled up my nose. "And so did you?"
"Not at the same time."
"God, I hope not." When he chuckled again , I nudged him with my knee. "You do realize that means you've slept with Cam, right?"
"What? Fuck no." In the dim light, he shrank back. "I told you it wasn't - "
"He's been in there. So have you. So by association, you two have had sex."
"That is disgusting."
I grinned. "What's disgusting is that you've both been up in there and - "
"Can we not talk about this? — J. Lynn

People were not getting back what they wanted for their sold labor. Taxes grew and services shrank. Prices rose and quality decayed. Everywhere people felt used and betrayed and coerced and cheated. — Marge Piercy

Before Lord Anomander Rake the crowd in the street shrank back, all thoughts of festivity swept away. — Steven Erikson

A just man is not one who does no ill, But he, who with the power, has not the will. — Philemon

Every day I am part of my local town community, part of Rio Mesa High School Alumni, part of the racing world, part of the diabetes community worldwide. — Charlie Kimball

I thought of that old gentleman, who is dead now, but was a bishop, I think, who declared that it was impossible for any woman, past, present, or to come, to have the genius of Shakespeare. He also told a lady who applied to him for information that cats do not as a matter of fact go to heaven, though they have, he added, souls of a sort. How much thinking those old gentlemen used to save one! How the borders of ignorance shrank back at their approach! Cats do not go to heaven. Women cannot write the plays of Shakespeare. — Virginia Woolf

Mr. Rush slapped Drew on the back of the head. "You pay attention, Morrow. There'll be hell to pay if you hurt my drum major. I'll have Clayton Porridge out in the middle of the football field, doing the cancan."
"The cancan is surprisingly difficult," Barry said. "It takes a lot more coordination than Clayton Porridge has."
Mr. Rush gave Barry the brain-melting stare.
Barry shrank. "I know this because I played Little League baseball with Clayton Porridge."
Mr. Rush kept staring.
"Sir," Barry added. — Jennifer Echols

I was never afraid of my monsters. I controlled them. I slept with them in the dark, and they never stepped beyond their boundaries. My monsters had never asked to be bora with bolts in their necks, scaly wings, blood hunger in their veins, or deformed faces from which beautiful girls shrank back in horror. My monsters were not evil; they were simply trying to survive in a tough old world. They reminded me of myself and my friends: ungainly, unlovely, beaten but not conquered. They were the outsiders searching for a place to belong in a cataclysm of villagers' torches, amulets, crucifixes, silver bullets, radiation bombs, air force jets, and flamethrowers. They were imperfect, and heroic in their suffering. — Robert McCammon

Jericho stopped him before he left. He slid the ring off his finger and handed it to him. "Take this."
Asmodeus curled his lip as he shrank back from it. "I'm not about to marry your ugly ass, boy. No offense, but you ain't my type. I like my dates with less body hair ... and with female parts attached by nature."
Jericho let out an aggravated growl. "It's not a wedding ring, asshole. It's Berith's ring. You get into trouble you can summon him to help you get out of there."
That completely changed his attitude. "Oh, hey, that could be worth an engagement to you." Asmodeus grinned as he palmed it. "If I'm back in a few hours ... well, I don't want to think about that. I might change my mind about doing this. I'm thinking happy thoughts. Creamed dog innards and rotten steak. Yeah. Yum." He vanished. — Sherrilyn Kenyon

The difference was not that one was a pessimist and the other an optimist, it was that one's pessimism had led to an ethos of fear, and the other's pessimism had led to a noisy, fractious disdain for Everything-That-Was. One shrank, the other flailed. One toed the line, the other crossed it out. Much of the time they were at loggerheads, and because Willy found it so easy to shock his mother, he rarely wasted an opportunity to provoke an argument. If only she'd the wit to back off a little, he probably wouldn't have been so insistent about making his points. Her antagonism inspired him, pushed him into ever more extreme positions, and by the time he was ready to leave the house and go off to college, he had indelibly cast himself in his chosen role: as malcontent, as rebel, as outlaw poet prowling the gutters of a ruined world. — Paul Auster

If I'd been hit with the same thing as Glenn, I probably had his doctor. The
thought seemed about right when Glenn shrank back in his chair with a guilty expression. The tomato, too, was in hiding somewhere. I didn't want to know where. I truly didn't. — Kim Harrison

They jogged along in silence, Jem playing with the thong of the whip, and Mary aware of his hands beside her. She glanced down at them out of the tail of her eye, and she saw they were long and slim; they had the same strength, the same grace, as his brother's. These attracted her; the others repelled her. She realised for the first time that aversion and attraction ran side by side; that the boundary line was thin between them. The thought was an unpleasant one, and she shrank from it. Supposing this had been Joss beside her ten, twenty years ago? She shuttered the comparison at the back of her mind, fearing the picture it conjured. She knew now why she hated her uncle. — Daphne Du Maurier

Percy Jackson," Hermes said, "because you have taken on the curse of Achilles, I must spare you. You are in the hands of the Fates now. But you will never speak to me like that again. You have no idea how much I have sacrificed, how much - "
His voice broke, and he shrank back to human size. "My son, my greatest pride ... my poor May ... "
He sounded so devastated I didn't know what to say. One minute he was ready to vaporize us. Now he looked like he needed a hug. — Rick Riordan

Vashti was seized with the terrors of direct experience. She shrank back into the room, and the wall closed up again. — E. M. Forster

While we watched without comprehension, she moved away to where none of us wanted to follow. Ruth May shrank back through the narrow passage between this brief fabric of light and all the rest of what there is for us: the long waiting. Now she will wait the rest of the time. It will be exactly as long as the time that passed before she was born. — Barbara Kingsolver

Everybody in Spain is sick of me. But in America, there's curiosity about the new kid on the block who doesn't speak English very well. The attention makes me feel vulnerable, which is something I hadn't felt in a while. But I like it. — Javier Bardem

The world is the house of the strong. I shall not know until the end what I have lost or won in this place, in this vast gambling den where I have spent more than sixty years, dice box in hand, shaking the dice. — Denis Diderot

Complete possession is proved only by giving. All you are unable to give possesses you. — Andre Gide

The two of them carefully stepped around the crime scene, picking up Nick's arms, legs and organs, and brought them back to his head. They placed his extremities into position, and then pieced in the gorier bits, assembling a gruesome jigsaw puzzle. In a few moments, most of Nick's body was in place.
The healing process took about twenty minutes. Elphaba and John stood spellbound as they watched a bloody collection of body parts reintegrate into a human form.
As Nick's sinews, nerves, and muscle knit back into place, the gaping wound in Esperto's body also closed, completing a few minutes before Nick's healing. The panther form quickly shrank back to housecat just as Nick sat up. Esperto jumped in his lap and licked the remnants of blood off his face.
"Thank you Esperto," Nick said. He looked at Elphaba and John. "Well, that could have gone better. — Abramelin Keldor

I gradually shrank in size until I was a teenager, then a child, and then, at last, a baby, crawling, until inevitably I was sucked naked and screaming through that portal every man's mother possesses, into a black hole where all light vanished. As that last glimmer faded, it occurred to me that the light at the end of the tunnel seen by people who have died and come back to life was not Heaven. Wasn't it much more plausible that what they saw was not what lay ahead of them but what lay behind? This was the universal memory of the first tunnel we all pass through, the light at its end penetrating our fetal darkness... — Viet Thanh Nguyen

He saw the statue - she shrank back as he hurried forward. And then he realized it wasn't her. Rose was taken aback. She hadn't known - how could she know - what her disappearence had done to him. This Doctor had a look of such despair in his eyes that her heart almost stopped in pity. She wanted more than anything else to go to him, tell him that everything was going to be alright. But ... what with possibly ripping time and space apart, that was probably a bad idea. — Jacqueline Rayner

And I think belief is one of those things that comes to people in their own way. And just because I believe in something doesn't mean I think that you should. — Alan Alda