Sternum Quotes & Sayings

She trailed her fingers down his sternum, then splayed her hand flat against his stomach. How interesting, to feel so comfortable in another person's skin. To want to rip him open and crawl inside him and never see the light of day again. — Stylo Fantome

I need to be whole again. Even if it doesn't last."
"It can't last," she said, staring at him, because how could it, when they could never keep what they had? "It'll break our hearts."
He caught her by the wrist, brought her hand to his bare chest. Splayed her fingers over his heart. It beat against her palm, like a fist punching its way through his sternum. "Break my heart," he said. "Break it in pieces. I give you permission. — Cassandra Clare

Its a memorial, I said. What have you got in there that you could possible need at a memorial?

That sort of thinking is why you, young lady, have a scar on your sternum, and why my priceless copy of of the Apotropaicon has a broken spine. I prefer preparedness to a last minute scramble, thank you. — William Ritter

I stood there, staring at the closed doors. I reached out and touched the bone handle.
You can fix this, I told myself. You can make this right. But I just stood there, frozen, Mal's words ringing in my ears. I bit down hard on my lip to silence the sob that shook my chest. That's good, I thought as the tears spilled over. That way the servants won't hear. An ache had started between my ribs, a hard, bright shard of pain that lodged beneath my sternum, pressing tight against my heart.
I didn't hear the Darkling move; I only knew when he was beside me. His long fingers brushed the hair back from my neck and rested on the collar. When he kissed my check, his lips were cold. — Leigh Bardugo

Unicorns are man-eating monsters. They don't have wings, they aren't lavender or sparkly, and you could never catch one to ride without its goring you through the sternum. And even if it somehow managed to miss your major arteries-and it never misses-you'd still die from the deadly poison in its horn. — Diana Peterfreund

I am a very good imitation, but I am not really a good person. I have done many very bad things, and I hope to live long enough to do many more. And to be completely objective, I almost certainly deserve all the things Hood and Doakes wanted to do to me. But while I wait for the long arm of the law to grab me by the neck, I also deserve to breathe air that is not fouled with the stench of unwashed and rotting dental apocalypse. I put a stiff index finger into Hood's sternum and pushed him away. For a moment he thought he was going to tough it out - but I had chosen my spot well, and he had to back off. "You can arrest me," I told Hood, "or you can follow me. Otherwise, get out of my way." I pushed a little harder and he had to take another step back. "And for God's sake, brush your teeth." Hood — Jeff Lindsay

One ravishing dark-haired beauty wearing leather pants and strategically applied electrical tape, stared hard at me and, when she saw me looking, licked her lips very, very slowly. She trailed a fingertip over her chin, down across her throat, and down over her sternum and gave me a smile so wicked that it's parents should have sent it to military school. — Jim Butcher

I felt like there should have been rainbows and rose petals in their wake or something.
Ugh.That was catty.
Jenna deserved rainbows and rose petals, I reminded myself as I flopped back on my bed, Dad's book bumping painfully against my sternum. After everything she'd been through, Jenna had earned an eternity of nothing but good stuff. So why did seeing her with Vix make me want to brain myself with Demonologies: A History? I looked at the nightstand again and sighed. Then I opened the heavy book and tried to make myself read.
For the next few hours I made a valiant attempt to get through Chapter One.
For a book that was supposedly about fallen angels running around and creating havoc with their super-awesome dark "magycks," it was awfully boring, and all the weird spellings definitely didn't help. — Rachel Hawkins

I was in a mountain biking accident and broke my sternum about three months before my unit was supposed to deploy to Iraq, and it's such a close-knit community that the idea of not getting to go is hugely jarring, so I tried to get put back in training and wound up injuring it worse. — Adam Driver

I noticed several things about the drummer all at once. He was focused on the task at hand, keeping perfect rhythm. Instead of a swirl of transparent colors around his torso, there was a small, concentrated starburst of bright red at his sternum. But otherwise his aura was blank. Huh. That was strange. But before I could contemplate it too much, my eyes landed on his face.
Wowza.
He was smokin' hot. As in H-O-T-T hot. I'd never understood until that moment why girls insisted on adding an extra T. This guy was extra-T worthy.
I examined the drummer, determined to find a flaw.
Brown hair. An interesting haircut: short around the sides and back, but longer on top, hanging loose and angling across his forehead. His eyes were narrow and his eyebrows were a bit thick and ... Oh, who was I kidding? I could pick him apart, but even the shifty slant of his eyes made him more alluring to me. — Wendy Higgins

Then viselike fingers clenched my throat, the stake was wrenched from my hand, and a sharp stabbing pain shot up my right thigh as I landed on the ground with a thump that knocked the breath out of me.
And as if that wasn't bad enough, once I landed, something hard and heavy - his knee, I thought - hit me right in the sternum. You know, just in case there was one last breath left in my lungs. The point of the stake scraped the sensitive skin just under my chin. I looked up, wheezing, into Archer's face. — Rachel Hawkins

At the Annexe, at this early hour, I delete you, my darling, my beloved, with your wide soft mouth against my neck. I would rather scrub your bones and place them in the open air, scrub your sternum, labour at your spine, scrub and scrub, with love, each vertebra, as particular as a nose, and lay you in the grass amongst the bluebells. There on your secret triangle of land I would be your most submissive tenant, would lie beside you until rain, wind storms raced, threaded like shoelaces through our missing eyes. — Peter Carey

Some people say the way to a man's heart is through his stomach. In actuality, you have to make an incision through his skin, both dermis and epidermis, then carefully sever and separate the sternum. Only upon viewing the exposed thoracic cavity can you reach the heart--if indeed the male of the species actually possesses such an organ. — Lois Greiman

Ceony looked back up to see Lira grab Mg. Thane's collar and rip it down clear to his sternum, exposing his chest. "I'm finally leaving, dearie," she whispered, "and I'm taking you with me."
She plunged her right hand into his chest. Ceony stifled a cry. A golden ring of dust sparkled about Lira's wrist as Mg. Thane screamed between clenched teeth. Lira pulled her red-stained hand back out, clasping a still-beating heart between her bloodied fingers. — Charlie N. Holmberg

The pretty lady come to play with knives, is it?" the man taunted. "Watch out you don't break a nail. I only date presentable girls." Shanti stepped forward and punched him in the sternum with her right hand. She elbowed him in the face with her left before ripping his knife from his hand. With economical movements, she knocked him in the head with the hilt, punched him in the gut, ripped his big body to the side, and stepped around him with a smooth movement. The knife made a loud thunk as it found the center of the target painted on the wooden post twenty paces away. — K.F. Breene

Don't pour the oil directly into my navel, pour it on my sternum and let it run down into my navel, you ignorant peasant. — Garrison Keillor

One thing I do know about intimacy is that there are certain natural laws which govern the sexual experience of two people, and that these laws cannot be budged any more than gravity can be negotiated with. To feel physically comfortable with someone else's body is not a decision you can make. It has very little to do with how two people think or act or talk or even look. The mysterious magnet is either there, buried somewhere deep behind the sternum, or it is not. When it isn't there (as I have learned in the past, with heartbreaking clarity) you can no more force it to exist than a surgeon can force a patient's body to accept a kidney from the wrong donor. My friend Annie says it all comes down to one simple question: Do you want your belly pressed against this person's belly forever
or not? — Elizabeth Gilbert

Oh, well. Love is pain. Or is it beauty is pain? I wouldn't know about the latter, but the former makes my sternum ache. — Laura Buzo

In my dreams a small wolf slept inside of me and it wasn't comfortable. It moved it's heels and elbows and paws, struggled to make space between my lungs, stomach, bladder. Occasionally a scrabbling claw punctured something and I woke. What were you dreaming? Arabella wanted to know. I knew what it was dreaming. It was dreaming of being born. The form and scale of its occupancy shifted. Sometimes its legs were in my legs, its head in my head, its paws in my hands. Other times it was barely the size of a kitten, heartburn hot and fidgety under my sternum. I'd wake and for a moment feel my face changed, reach up and touch the muzzle that wasn't there. — Glen Duncan

So I walked down to the operation nearest my office, a brothel, and found the manager. Before he could say anything, I pinned the right side of his cloak to the wall with a throwing knife, about knee level. I did the same with his left side. I put a shuriken into the wall next to each ear, close enough to cut. Then Loiosh went after him and raked his claws down the guy's face. I went up and hit him just below his sternum, then kneed him in the face when he doubled over. He began to understand that I wasn't happy. — Steven Brust

Victor waited until Ozols had passed out of the light before squeezing the trigger with smooth, even pressure. Suppressed gunshots interrupted the early morning stillness. Ozols was hit in the sternum, twice in rapid succession. The bullets were low powered, subsonic 5.7 mm, but larger rounds could have been no more fatal. Copper-encased lead tore through skin, bone, and heart before lodging side by side between vertebrae. Ozols collapsed backward, hitting the ground with a dull thud, arms outstretched, head rolling to one side. Victor melted out of the darkness and took a measured step forward. He angled the FN Five-seveN and put a bullet through Ozols's temple. He was already dead, but in Victor's opinion there was no such thing as overkill. — Tom Wood

Would dream-me threaten to split you from stomach to sternum only a day after healing you from a similar injury?"
He gave a soft snort. "Yes. Absolutely. — Jodi Meadows

I thought you wanted to leave me." Jurgen sounded dazed.
Nik patted his chest. "My poor, big, dumb asshole." He sighed, kissing Jurgen's neck. "Why didn't you just ask me?"
Nik could feel the dumbfounded rising up from Jurgen's skin. "I don't know," he said slowly. "I didn't need to ask you if I knew how to fix it."
"Oh, Jurgen." Nik patted him some more, petting his sternum. "We could probably spend a few years and thousands of dollars in psychologist's fees figuring you out, couldn't we? — Anne Tenino

Your heart, Mary Karr, he'd say. His pen touched my sternum, and it felt for all the world like the point of a dull spear as he said, Your heart knows what your head don't. Or won't. — Mary Karr

If you break your sternum or your ribs, you can still move. It's going to hurt, but if you can cope with it, you'll do it. — Tony McCoy

The women kept their smiles, although both their thumping hearts dropped from their throats to land hard back in their rib cages. For Miriam at least, this was less a metaphor, as siren hearts wandered a bit through their bodies depending on their mood. But to be accurate, hers hadn't risen all the way to her throat, stopping as high as her sternum before sliding its way down and resting on her bladder, thus adding a need to urinate to her disappointment. — A. Lee Martinez

The mysterious magnet is either there, buried somewhere deep behind the sternum, or it is not. — Elizabeth Gilbert

How many times in life can we make decisions that are important but will not hurt anyone? Are we obligated- maybe we are- to say yes to any choice when no one will be hurt? We use the word hurt when talking about things like this because when these things go wrong it can feel as if you were hit in the sternum by a huge animal that's run for miles just to strike you. — Dave Eggers

I rub my sternum to alleviate the sensation, then drag my arms out of Jeb's shirt and slip the lingerie on underneath.
My blush burns hotter to find each item fits perfectly ... that Morpheus knows my body without ever having run his fingers over it; even more, he knows how I've been craving pretty things since I left the asylum. He knows me. — A.G. Howard

I'm going back in," I said as I turned toward the door. Clay sprang to his feet before I reached it and crowded behind me. I looked down at him then back at Rachel, who watched us with an enormous grin. "Looks like another guy who can't take his eyes off you. Living with you is going to be a riot." She laughed and picked up the towels. "Let's all go in. The neighbor's tree is going to shade the deck soon anyway." Having little choice, I opened the door for Clay. His fur brushed my bare thighs as he moved past me into the house. His head came to about my sternum. He really was huge...a huge problem. Sam had warned me Clay had taken my speech as an invitation to live together. At least, Clay had shown up in his fur. However, any relief I might have felt went unnoticed as I contemplated how he'd found me in a completely different state. If Sam told him, I'd have to kill Sam. Since I didn't have the stomach for outright murder, I'd break his coffee maker. I — Melissa Haag

I briefly considered giving the Myerson kids the same lecture I'd given the other first graders on the playground:
Unicorns are man-eating monsters. They don't have wings, they aren't lavender or sparkly, and you could never catch one to ride without its goring you through the sternum. And even if it somehow managed to miss your major arteries - and it never missed - you'd still die from the deadly poison in its horn. But don't worry. My great-great-great-great-great-great-aunt Clothilde killed the last one a hundred and fifty years ago.
Except now I guessed it would be more like a hundred and sixty. How time doth fly in a unicorn-free world. — Diana Peterfreund

When you're kissing on camera, it becomes an issue visually. It looks like a skinny dinosaur creature is trying to kiss someone. It doesn't look good. It does not look like the classic romance kisses. If an actress is 5'3 and I don't bend down to kiss her, she would probably be kissing my lower sternum. — David Walton

Want to know when I first fell a little in love with you?"

"When I didn't faint from fright after meeting Secmis?" She'd come close, practically falling into Brishen's arms when they escaped the throne room.

"That was impressive. No cowering subject before her, but no." He tugged the blanket over her shoulder where it had fallen away. "It was when you ate the scarpatine and declared it tasted nothing like chicken."

She sniffed. "Then you're easily impressed. I don't think I fell in love with you just because you choked down a potato. Granted, you didn't have to engage it in battle before you ate it."

'You're hard to please."

She thumped his chest above his sternum. "I am not."

"Ouch." He rubbed the injured spot. — Grace Draven

I never told anyone about waking in the night to him standing over me with a knife. It was small, one of my switchblades, chosen for carving.
His seeping dick twitched as he bent toward me, his slick left hand went down on my sternum, the other holding the knife like a scapel.
"What're you gonna do?" I asked, reaching for him, my fingers closing around his hard, wet length.
"Carve my name on your skin so everyone knows you're mine. — Mary Calmes

People don't like to talk about alcohol. They don't like to think about it, except in the most superficial of ways. They don't like to examine the damage it does and I don't blame them. I don't like it either. I know that desire for denial with every bone in my body: clavicle, sternum, femur and phalanx. — Olivia Laing

Holding each other, the rain cooling their bodies, they laughed like children. "I expected steam this time," Jacques said, crushing her to him.
"Can you do that?" Shea fit the back of her head into the niche of his sternum. One hand idly slid over the heavy muscles of his chest.
"Make us so hot we turn the rain to steam?" He grinned boyishly down at her, for the first time so carefree that he forgot for a moment the torment he had suffered. — Christine Feehan