Under The Thumb Quotes & Sayings

Do you realize the illicit sensuous delight I get from picking my nose? I always have, ever since I was a child. There are so many subtle variations of sensation. A delicate, pointed-nailed fifth finger can catch under dry scabs and flakes of mucous in the nostril and draw them out to be looked at, crumbled between fingers, and flicked to the floor in minute crusts. Or a heavier, determined forefinger can reach up and smear down-and-out the soft, resilient, elastic greenish-yellow smallish blobs of mucous, roll them round and jellylike between thumb and forefinger, and spread them on the undersurface of a desk or chair where they will harden into organic crusts. How many desks and chairs have I thus secretively befouled since childhood? Or sometimes there will be blood mingled with the mucous: in dry brown scabs, or bright sudden wet red on the finger that scraped too rudely the nasal membranes. God, what sexual satisfaction! — Sylvia Plath

It was as if what I wanted to kill wasn't in that skin or the thin blue pulse that jumped under my thumb, but somewhere else, deeper, more secret, and a whole lot harder to get at. — Sylvia Plath

Too much under the thumb of the Iranians. — Adam Schiff

There are two competing philosophies in 'Wool': one is that people have to live under an iron thumb in order to survive, and the other one is that everyone should live completely freely and happily and everything will sort itself out. — Hugh Howey

I am still frozen when he reaches out and brushes a finger over the three lines etched into the surface of my ring, then twists one of his own rings to reveal a cleaner but identical set of lines. The Archive's insignia. When I don't react - because no fluid lie came to me and now it's too late - he closes the gap between us, close enough that I can almost hear the bass again, radiating off his skin. His thumb hooks under the cord around my throat and guides my key out from under my shirt. It glints in the twilight. Then he fetches the key from around his own neck.
"There," he says cheerfully. "Now we're on the same page. — Victoria Schwab

The conventional word that is employed to describe tyranny is "systematic." The true essence of a dictatorship is in fact not its regularity but its unpredictability and caprice; those who live under it must never be able to relax, must never be quite sure if they have followed the rules correctly or not. (The only rule of thumb was: whatever is not compulsory is forbidden.) Thus, the ruled can always be found to be in the wrong. — Christopher Hitchens

Look," Anil says, after Billy has explained enough of this. "Just cut to the chase."

"The chase," Billy says. He knocks back the new shot that the bartender has set up for him. He wipes his chin with the back of his hand. "The chase is that at the end of it she said she just wanted me to say one thing. She just wanted me to tell her that everything was going to be okay and that things were going to get easier from here on out."

"Okay, yeah," says Anil. "And you responded by saying - ?"

"I responded by saying that it would be ethically unsound for me to make a claim, for the purposes of comfort, that I couldn't be certain was true under the present circumstances."

Anil opens his mouth and then shuts it again. Finally he offers this: "No offense, man, but you're a fucking idiot."

"I'm aware."

"Fucking," Anil says, ticking it off on his thumb. "Idiot," he concludes, ticking this one off on his pointer finger. — Jeremy Bushnell

Dwarfs were not a naturally religious species, but in a world where pit props could crack without warning and pockets of fire damp could suddenly explode they'd seen the need for gods as the sort of supernatural equivalent of a hard hat. Besides, when you hit your thumb with an eight-pound hammer it's nice to be able to blaspheme. It takes a very special and strong-minded kind of atheist to jump up and down with their hand clasped under their other armpit and shout, "Oh, random-fluctuations-in-the-space-time-continuum!" or "Aaargh, primitive-and-outmoded-concept on a crutch! — Terry Pratchett

Even if they were willing to let you remove your Pride from the council's collective influence - and they won't be - there's a reason the council exists. We band together because there's strength in numbers. Because in its unperverted state, the council ensures representative government and a pooling of resources and ideas that benefits everyone."
"Yes, but the operative word there is unperverted, and right now, you guys are operating under the thumb of the biggest power-pervert ever to swish his tail in the U.S. He's like Hitler with fur. — Rachel Vincent

I've not had to ask permission from Geraldine to take the job. I'm one of the few men in this life who are not under the thumb. I'm stronger than that. Did she want me out of the house? Listen, she's wanted me out of the house for the past 27 years and has often asked me not to come back again. But I always show up, and really, she can't do without me, because I'm brilliant. — Martin O'Neill

I went to a very militantly Republican grammar school and, under its influence, began to revolt against the Establishment, on thesimple rule of thumb, highly satisfying to a ten-year-old, that Irish equals good, English equals bad. — Bernadette Devlin

That's not the whole of it. As with many other faiths - including our own Christian one - a small group of zealots have distorted Islam to further their own agenda. When many women took to imitating the fashions of the Prophet's wives, some Moslem men saw an opportunity to put all women under their thumb. They espoused foul laws like those allowing a man to beat his wife or force her into his bed. — Matthew Reilly

The minority, the ruling class at present, has the schools and press, usually the Church as well, under its thumb. This enables it to organize and sway the emotions of the masses, and make its tool of them. — Albert Einstein

We have these earthly bodies. We don't know what they want. Half the time, we pretend they are under our mental thumb, but that is the illusion of the healthy and the protected. Of sedate lovers. For the body has emotions it conceives and carries through without concern for anyone or anything else. Love is one of those, I guess. Going back to something very old knit into the brain as we were growing. Hopeless. Scorching. Ordinary. — Louise Erdrich

Libertarians see these changes as gains for freedom. No longer under the thumb of traditional marriage and religion, people can make up their own minds about how to live their personal lives, believing what they wish about religion and morality. Maybe so, but that's no basis for a free society. Codified rights offer limited protection. If the Supreme Court can find a right to same-sex marriage in the Constitution, then it can find anything, including dramatically different (and reduced) rights of speech, association, and religion. The most powerful limits to government power are found below and above political life: a strong culture of marriage and family, and robust, assertive religious institutions. A free society depends on strong family loyalties and faith's indomitable resolve. — R. R. Reno

Kestrel felt a slow, slight throb, a shimmer in the blood. She knew it well.
Her worst trait. Her best trait.
The desire to come out on top, to set her opponent under her thumb.
A streak of pride. Her mind ringed with hungry rows of foxlike teeth. — Marie Rutkoski

Evelyn tried to control people by controlling weapons, but Jeanine was more ambitious - she knew that when you control information, or manipulate it, you don't need force to keep people under your thumb. They stay there willingly. That is what the Bureau - and the entire government, probably - is doing: conditioning people to be happy under its thumb. — Anonymous

Sometimes the devil you knew was easier to face than the devil who'd pressed you to a bedpost and rolled your nipple under his thumb. — Tessa Dare

No-one will ever have golf under his thumb. No round ever will be so good it could not have been better. Perhaps this is why golf is the greatest of games. You are not playing a human adversary; you a playing a game. You are playing old man par. — Bobby Jones

I lick my lips as his teeth nibble on my earlobe. Between my muscles melting under his touch, my blood tingling with the teasing of my ear and the way my foot rubs against his calf, my thoughts become hazy.
My shirt rides up and Isaiah rubs his thumb in small circles on the bare skin of my stomach. The sensation causes me to arch my back and Isaiah groans as I kiss his neck. I like these feelings. Actually, I more than like them. They're addicting, and I love how every little thing I do causes Isaiah to kiss and touch me more.
He rolls and I move with him. Our tangled legs become unraveled as my thighs fall open, accepting his weight. Isaiah's body over mine is heavier than I would have imagined, but it's a weight I craved without knowing it.
Isaiah kisses up my neck and when his lips meet mine again, he rocks his hips. Suddenly very aware parts of him are touching very aware parts of me, and my head falls to the side as a new sensation spikes through my body. — Katie McGarry

The ethic of ecstasy is the opposite of the trial's ethic; under its protection everybody does whatever he wants: now anyone can suck his thumb as he likes, from infancy to graduation, and it is a freedom no one will be willing to give up; look around you on the Metro; seated or standing, every single person has a finger in some orifice of his face-in the ear, in the mouth, in the nose; no one feels he's being observed, and everyone dreams of writing a book to tell about his unique and inimitable self, which is picking its nose; no one listens to anyone else, everyone writes, and each of them writes the way rock is danced to: alone, for himself, focused on himself yet making the same motions as all the others. In this situation of uniform egocentricity, the sense of guilt does not play the role it once did; the tribunals still operate, but they are fascinated exclusively by the past; they see only the core of the century; they see only the generations that are old or dead. — Milan Kundera

Leif's frown eased and he slid his finger under my chin and gently caressed my jaw line with the pad of his thumb.
"Pagan,will you do me the honor of being my date for Homecoming Dance?The prospect of not being able to hold you in my arms all night is heartbreaking."
Mirand sighed from across the table.
"Okay,that was beautiful.Why didn't you ask me like that?"she asked Wyatt.
Wyatt shot Leif an annoyed frown.
"Thanks,buddy.Next time you decide to break out your romantic side,could you do it alone? — Abbi Glines

The ruling class has the schools and press under its thumb. This enables it to sway the emotions of the masses. — Albert Einstein

The silence. End of all poetry, all romances. Earlier, frightened, you began to have some intimation of it: so many pages had been turned, the book was so heavy in one hand, so light in the other, thinning toward the end. Still, you consoled yourself. You were not quite at the end of the story, at that terrible flyleaf, blank like a shuttered window: there were still a few pages under your thumb, still to be sought and treasured. — Sofia Samatar

Willow's eyes flew to his, startled. They stared at each other. Her foot felt small under his hand; he rubbed it lightly with his thumb, feeling the silky heat of her skin, his pulse hammering through his veins. He felt like he was falling. All he could see was her.
She looked closed to tears. "Alex
"
Leaning across the corner of the table, he cradled her face in his hands and kissed her.
Her lips were soft and warm. With a sob, Willow returned the kiss, throwing her arms around his neck. He opened his mouth, tasting her; felt her hair tumble down around his hands. Happiness burst through him, exploding through his chest. Willow. Oh, God. Willow. — L.A. Weatherly

If only she had lived back then... experienced a real ball... not this play-acting. "Wouldn't that be amazing to truly be at this ball in 1834?" she whispered. The silver under her thumb flared with heat. The room spun. The air, colors and sounds muted as if she was inside an abstract color painting. — Angela Quarles

I suddenly saw the little hobo standing under a sad street lamp with his thumb stuck out
poor forlorn man, poor lost sometime boy, now broken ghost of the penniless wilds. — Jack Kerouac

He sat on the edge of my bed. He didn't say anything at first, just stared at my toenails. I curled them under instinctively and immediately was worried that I'd messed up my painting job. I let them uncurl. Only one was marred. I used my thumb to rub most of the polish off of it and then I stared at my foot, which suddenly looked so vulnerable and imperfect with the one toe ringed in hot pink polish but bare on the inside of the nail. Like I'd started but had forgotten to finish being beautiful. — Jennifer Brown

But when it came right down to it, the skin of my wrist looked so white and defensless that I couldn't do it. It was as if what I wanted to kill wasn't in that skin or the thin blue pulse that jumped under my thumb, but somewhere else, deeper, more secret, and a whole lot harder to get. — Sylvia Plath

Here's an important piece of information about me. If I'm looking for just a lay, I'm not going to bring that woman crepes in the morning or fix her window. And I'm sure as hell not going to risk my career to just screw around with a witness. If I'm going to take that risk, it's going to be worth it." His thumb dragged under my lip, causing me to suck in a shallow breath.
"And honey, I have a good feeling, you're worth it. — J. Lynn

Closing her eyes, she let her body answer for her. Her lips parted slightly. Her tongue slipped out to caress his thumb. Sliding first to one side then to the other. Brandt bent his head, his eyes absorbed with her every tiny movement.
From under heavy lids, Sam watched his eyes deepen, darken. Sliding her tongue further out, she slowly seductively curled it around the top of his thumb. Instinctively, she'd invited him inside. He couldn't resist. His thumb stroked the inside of her lips, gently caressing her teeth and the inside of her lips. Sam gently clamped her teeth down on his thumb and tugged it inside. She sucked it very lightly, her eyes wider, watching him watch her. — Dale Mayer

Echo's breathing hitches when I slide my thumb along a smaller scar. She likes that spot. I've memorized it. A centimeter below the crook of her elbow. Her skin is sensitive there, and when I kiss it, Echo normally falls apart and nearly shatters.
I gently press my lips behind her ear, and Echo nudges closer to me. "Why, Echo?"
"Because."
I nip at her earlobe, and she shivers. "Because why?"
Her shoulder moves under my body. A half shrug maybe. "It makes me feel better."
Fuck that. "Why?"
A kiss on her neck. A long one. A lingering one. God damn, Echo tastes so good. Her skin is soft and tempting. But I want answers.
"Because sometimes I want to blend in."
I raise my head and stare straight into her eyes, spotting the plain honesty. What she doesn't understand is that she could never blend in. Blazing red hair. Bright emerald eyes. The most beautiful girl in the world. She'd turn heads regardless of a sweater. — Katie McGarry

We get to the front door and I lean back against it. "Thank you," I repeat.
"You'd have done the same for me." Jase puts his thumb under my chin and tips it up. "It's nothing."
"Well, except that I can't drive, and you never would have gotten yourself into that situation and
"
"Shhh." He pulls on my lower lip gently with his teeth, then fits his mouth to mine. First so careful, and then so deep and deliberate, that I can't think of anything at all but his smooth back under my hands. My fingers travel to the springy-soft texture of his hair, and I lose myself in the movement of his lips and his tongue. I'm so glad I'm still alive to feel all those things. — Huntley Fitzpatrick

Will you tell me what you have on under your dress tonight?" She licked the tip of his thumb. "I could, but that would ruin the surprise. — Skye Jordan

The blue butterfly fluttered across her range of vision to land on the head of a butter yellow dandelion in Emma's bouquet. The surprise and pleasure struck the three faces in that triangle under the white roses almost as one. Mac pressed the shutter. She knew, knew, the photograph wouldn't be blurry and dark or fuzzy and washed out. Her thumb wouldn't be blocking the lens. She knew exactly what the picture would look like, knew her grandmother had been wrong after all. Maybe happy ever after was bull, but she knew she wanted to take more pictures of moments that were happy. Because then they were ever after. — Nora Roberts

At that moment he understood, far better than he had before when he studied their histories and their political structures before he arrived, what it was to be human. Their whole existence was centered upon suffering. That was the first time he considered humanity's massive potential. They made frequent mistakes, yes, but if those mistakes were adequately painful they made every effort to avoid repeating them, to improve upon their errors. To be more careful so they didn't catch their thumb under the hammerhead. — Sean DeLauder

An alcoholic. Amy stopped pushing her thumb against the dashboard. His mother had not been baking cookies. Probably she had been upstairs drinking gin from a bottle stored under the bed. Amy didn't have a clear idea of what a woman alcoholic (a mother alcoholic) would be like, but her own mother had told her once that such women got very sneaky, hiding bottles under their bed. — Elizabeth Strout

I find, on my own travels, that the most depressing form of culture shock is experienced when you go into a country that is under the thumb of a dictator. — Arthur Frommer

But it turned out life was more like the kind of song the Stones wrote: you didn't get any satisfaction, you took one hit to the body after another, if you were a woman you were a bitch who belonged under someone's thumb, and if you wanted mother's little helper from your dear doctor you better have the silver, take it or leave it, and don't come crying for sympathy, that was just for the devil. — Joe Hill

I don't deny that impulse drew us together, but while physical gratification began and ended it for you, in making love, dumbo here - - ' she jerked a thumb at her chest ' - was also demonstrating that she cared.'
His tongue moistened his lips. 'You're very up-front, aren't you?'
'You mean none of your other rejects have ever looked you in the eye and complained?' Sian queried. She might have made things easy last night, but she refused to make anything easy for him now. 'I suppose you'd prefer it if I shrugged my shoulders, muttered something about it being nice while it lasted, and filed the experience away under lessons learned? Well, sorry, but for me, and for most women if they're honest, going to bed with someone is a darn sight more complicated than that! — Elizabeth Oldfield

I wanted to curl up into a fetal position and start sucking my thumb, let my tears and dripping saliva pool under me.
Sorry. I tried living, tried being sentient. Can't do it. Can't live in the same universe with that. — David Wong

Black folks in America are telling one party, 'We don't give a damn about you.' They're telling the other party, 'You've got our vote.' Therefore, you have labeled yourself 'disenfranchised' because one party knows they've got you under their thumb. The other party knows they'll never get you and nobody comes to address your interest, — Stephen A. Smith

One spring morning timing the lean near-liquid progress of a horse on a track, the dust exploding, the rapid hasping of his hocks, coming up the straight foreshortened and awobble and passing elongate and birdlike wish harsh breaths and slatted brisket heaving and the muscles sliding and brunching in clocklike flexion under the wet black hide and a gout of foam hung from the long jaw and then gone in a muted hoofclatter, the aging magistrate snapped his thumb from the keep of the stopwatch he held and palmed it into his waistcoat pocket and looking at nothing, nor child nor horse, said anent that simple comparison of rotary motions and in the oratory to which he was prone that they had witnessed a thing against which time would not prevail. — Cormac McCarthy

Many churches are measuring the wrong things. We measure things like attendance and giving, but we should be looking at more fundamental things like anger, contempt, honesty, and the degree to which people are under the thumb of their lusts. Those things can be counted, but not as easily as offerings. — Dallas Willard

She watched Delta try to pull herself into a pitiful looking crouch. Delta was far from coordinated, though, so her feet slipped out from under her. For a second, she almost looked like she was trying to run in place with her feet slipping and sliding all over the place. Finally, Delta stopped her pathetic running man imitation so that she ended up in a squat. Her hands held out in front of her, clasped together with her pointer finger and thumb in the shape of a gun. Good Lord, her sister looked like a Charlie's Angel reject. - Elena — Jessie Lane

Where has he gone, my meadow mouse,
My thumb of a child that nuzzled in my palm?
To run under the hawk's wing,
Under the eye of the great owl watching from the elm-tree,
To live by courtesy of the shrike, the snake, the tom-cat.
(from "The Meadow Mouse") — Theodore Roethke

Under," he said in a shaky voice, "normal circumstances, I'd certainly be in love with you." "Nobody falls in love under normal circumstances," she said softly, rubbing his finger with her warm thumb. He restrained an impulse to look to see if there was still ink on it. "Love isn't in the category of normal things. Not any worthwhile kind of love, anyway. — Tim Powers

After more of his sweet torture, I called, "Tate, honey?"
"Yeah, baby," he answered.
"Am I under your skin?" I whispered as my hips moved with his hand.
He replied instantly, "Oh yeah." His thumb tweaked my clit harder, my hips jerked and a low mew slid out of my throat as the fingers of one of my hands slid into his hair and the other arm held on tighter. "Fuck yeah," he growled and his lips left my ear, his mouth found mine and he kissed me, wet and deep. — Kristen Ashley

As a rule of thumb, investors should spend the bulk of their time on the disclosures of the security under study, and they should spend significant time on the reports of competitors. — Benjamin Graham^David L.Dodd

Everything had been going so well, he'd had it really under his thumb
these few centuries. That's how it goes, you think you're on top of the world, and suddenly they spring
Armageddon on you. — Neil Gaiman

Bill de Blasio was swept to the New York mayoralty on the promise of getting Gracie Mansion out from under the thumb of corporate elites. — Rick Perlstein

Mara, I have never felt about anyone the way I feel about you. And when you're ready for me to show you," he said, brushing my hair to the side, "I'm going to kiss you." His thumb grazed my ear and his hand curved around my neck. He leaned me backward and my eyes fluttered closed. I breathed in the scent of him as he leaned in and kissed the hollow under my ear. My pulse raced under his lips.
"And I won't settle for anything less. — Michelle Hodkin

From in the shadow she calls. And in the shadow she finds a way, finds a way. And in the shadow she crawls, clutching her faded photograph. My image under her thumb. Yes with a message for my heart. She's been everybody else's girl maybe one day she'll be her own. — Tori Amos

It is a magic book. Words mean things. When you put them together they speak. Yes, sometimes they flatten out and nothing they say is real, and that is one kind of magic. But sometimes a vision will rip up from them and shriek and clank wings clear as the sweat smudge on the paper under your thumb. And that is another kind. — Samuel R. Delany

It felt good to stand out from the world, just mysterious and pious. You weren't a lantern under any basquet. You stood out righteous as a sore thumb. You were the one holy man to keep God from crushing all of the Sodom and Gomorrah seething around you in the Valley Plaza Shoping Center. — Chuck Palahniuk

You carry forever the fingerprint that comes from being under someone's thumb. — Nancy Banks-Smith

I think I'm just trying to show a more mature side of the band and I think we've really come into the sound of our band. With every album we've grown, but I think this is just a really good picture of where we are right now and how we feel our music represents us. Under the thumb of other record companies we haven't had as much creative control and I think with this record we really did our own thing. — Jason C. Miller

Epitaph.
Not next year, not the next one,
Not the year after that. But ages
From here,
Clad in love stained sleeping bags,
Dying with feet wrapped in endless
Shirts and pillow cases,
Crumbling with 99 flakes clutched
Between thumb and palm, dripping
Yellow cream from twig fingers,
Basking our white haired chests on
Green grassed parks under purple
Skies. Laughing over coffee after
Bath tubs of coffee have passed
Through our guts. Huddled, lonely,
Under heaped clothes, here lay us ... — Alan C. Martin

It's too soon, too fast. We don't even know each other."
"Says who?" Ethan demanded. "Who decides how long it should take? Who makes the rules?"
Erica shrugged because she really didn't know it just seemed like common sense.
He put his index finger under her chin and swept his thumb just under her lower lip. "I do know you." He whispered. "I know you love chocolate and hate roses. I know you are kind and compassionate and generous. I know you feed the homeless and the stray cat that lives behind your apartment. I know you are a hopeless romantic. You are fiercely loyal." His eyes took on a mischievous glint. "I know you are ticklish; I know what makes you moan; I know what makes you squirm." He kissed her softly. "I know when I am with you I don't want to be anywhere else." He kissed her again and this time she wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him back. Their tongues tangled in a duel that left her breathless. — Melissa Hale

You can never capture a person in picture, never. You might get an interesting expression or gesture. I almost never research a picture subject ahead of time. I think Karsh is full of baloney. Can you imagine spending a whole week out in La Jolla with Jonas Salk soaking up his ambiance, then wind up making him look as if he's in the studio in Ottawa with his thumb under his chin? — Duane Michals

have under his thumb powerful congressmen, senators, even the vice president himself, — David Baldacci

What I hate is the thought of being under a man's thumb," I had told Doctor Nolan. "A man doesn't have a worry in the world, while I've got a baby hanging over my head like a big stick, to keep me in line. — Sylvia Plath