“Be proud, Frenchmen! Lift high your heads, Frenchmen! You are no longer anything, and this man is everything! He holds in his hand your intelligence, as a child holds a bird. Any day he pleases, he can strangle the genius of France.”

“Don't leave yet," he said, his voice hoarse. "Let me do something. Let me feed you. Hold you. Rub your shoulders. Change your oil. Anything, please.”

“He leans over and takes her hand. With the other he touches her face. ‘You your best thing, Sethe. You are.’ His holding fingers are holding hers.

‘Me? Me?”

“Can I hold your hand?" he asked.
I put mine in his.
"The universe is seeming really huge right now," he told me. "I need something to hold on to."
"I'm here.”

“It is better, a thousand-fold, for a proud man to fall and be humbled, than to hold up his head in his pride and fancied innocence. I learned that he that will be a hero, will barely be a man; that he that will be nothing but a doer of his work, is sure of his manhood.”

“He looked like a man who'd invite you to rest your head on his shoulder while he made everything bad go away.”

“The louder a man tells you he’s honest, the harder you must hold onto your purse.”

“Don’t hold yourselves cheap, seeing that the creator of all things and of you estimates your value so high, so dear, that he pours out for you every day the most precious blood of his only-begotten Son.”

“Anything you may hold firmly in your imagination can be yours.”

“Heartbroken the dead bird’s mate cried – Your long feathers! Your tuneful songs. A bird hunter came from the forest holding a bow. Valmiki’s heart was pounding and he cursed the killer.”