Quotes about touch
page 5

“Look at him now, poor fellow. That's what a dose of reality does for you… Never touch the stuff myself, you understand. Find it gets in the way of the hallucinations.”

Alan Moore (1953) English writer primarily known for his work in comic books

Way, Understanding, Reality

“Nothing living should ever be treated with contempt. Whatever it is that lives, a man, a tree, or a bird, should be touched gently, because the time is short. Civilization is another word for respect for life…”

Elizabeth Goudge book Green Dolphin Street

Source: Green Dolphin Street

Life, Bird, Tree, Time

“I like my human experience served up with a little silence and restraint. Silence makes experience go further and, when it does die, gives it that dignity common to a thing one had touched and not ravished.”

Djuna Barnes (1892–1982) American Modernist writer, poet and artist

Silence

“There's something special about her. When she helped me with her touch-"
"Exactly what was she touching that was so memorable for you?"
"Watch your mouth.”

Michelle Rowen (1971) Canadian writer

Source: Dark Kiss

Help

“somewhere i have never travelled, gladly beyond
any experience, your eyes have their silence.
in your most frail gesture are things which enclose me,
or which i cannot touch because they are too near your slightest look easily will unclose me
though i have closed myself as fingers,
you always open petal by petal myself as Spring opens
(touching skilfully, mysteriously)her first rose or if it be your wish to close me, i and
my life will shut very beautifully, suddenly
as the heart of this flower imagines
the snow carefully everywhere descending; nothing we are to perceive in this world equals
the power of your intense fragility: whose texture
compels me with the colour of its countries
rendering death and forever with each breathing”

E.E. Cummings (1894–1962) American poet

W [ViVa] (1931) LVII

Life, Death, World, Travel

“We never know how high we are
Till we are called to rise;
And then, if we are true to plan,
Our statures touch the skies.

The heroism we recite
Would be a daily thing,
Did not ourselves the cubits warp
For fear to be a king.”

Emily Dickinson (1830–1886) American poet

Fear

“We the mortals touch the metals,
the wind, the ocean shores, the stones,
knowing they will go on, inert or burning,
and I was discovering, naming all the these things:
it was my destiny to love and say goodbye.”

Pablo Neruda (1904–1973) Chilean poet

Source: Still Another Day

Love

“You’re selfish and you’re cold, and I’m tired of getting frostbite when I touch you. (Acheron)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Acheron

Selfishness

“I reach out to touch his cheek and he catches my hand and presses it against his lips.”

Suzanne Collins The Hunger Games

Source: The Hunger Games

“She never stumbles,
she's got no place to fall.
She's nobody's child,
the law can't touch her at all.”

Bob Dylan (1941) American singer-songwriter, musician, author, and artist

Law

“To eat figs off the tree in the very early morning, when they have been barely touched by the sun, is one of the exquisite pleasures of the Mediterranean.”

Elizabeth David (1913–1992) British cookery writer

Source: An Omelette and a Glass of Wine

Pleasure, Tree, Sun

“Sleeping. Turning in turn like planets rotating in their midnight meadow: a touch is enough to let us know we're not alone in the universe, even in sleep.”

Adrienne Rich (1929–2012) American poet, essayist and feminist

Source: The Fact of a Doorframe: Poems Selected and New, 1950-1984

Sleep, Universe

“The minute our correspondence becomes obligatory, there's no point in keeping touch at all.”

Megan McCafferty (1973) American novelist

Source: Sloppy Firsts

“But I suppose you must touch life in order to spring from it.”

F. Scott Fitzgerald book Tender Is the Night

Source: Tender Is the Night

Life, Spring

“Touch has a memory. O say, love, say,
What can I do to kill it and be free?”

John Keats (1795–1821) English Romantic poet

Love, Memory

“One writes because one has been touched by the yearning for and the despair of ever touching the Other.”

Charles Simic (1938) American poet

Source: The Unemployed Fortune-Teller: Essays and Memoirs

Despair

“I think she just asked if she could touch my mango.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Fallen Angels

Source: City of Fallen Angels

Thinking

“To really touch something, she is learning—the bark of a sycamore tree in the gardens; a pinned stag beetle in the Department of Etymology; the exquisitely polished interior of a scallop shell in Dr. Geffard’s workshop—is to love it.”

Anthony Doerr book All the Light We Cannot See

Source: All the Light We Cannot See

Love, Tree, Learning

“Indifference is the strongest force in the universe. It makes everything it touches meaningless. Love and hate don't stand a chance against it.”

Joan D. Vinge The Snow Queen

Source: The Snow Queen

Love, Hate, Universe, Chance

“Friendship is love as much as any romance. And like any love, it’s difficult and treacherous and confusing. But in the moment when your knees touch, there’s nothing else you could ever want.”

Rachel Cohn (1968) American writer

Source: Naomi and Ely's No Kiss List

Love, Friendship

“I held my breath as we do sometimes to stop time when something wonderful has touched us…”

Mary Oliver (1935–2019) American writer

Source: New and Selected Poems, Vol. 2

Time

“The snow doesn't give a soft white damn whom it touches.”

E.E. Cummings (1894–1962) American poet

“Love can touch us one time
And last for a life time
And never let go till
We're gone.”

Céline Dion (1968) Canadian singer

Love, Life, Time

“To love--to fall--is not a question.
To touch--to kiss--to speak--those are questions.”

David Levithan (1972) American author and editor

Love, Question, Kiss

“No rescue boat can save the touches I left bobbing in the wild ocean of your flesh, but if they cut open your heart, like the belly of a shark, dumped its contents on a table—would there be any trace of me?”

Jeffrey McDaniel (1967) American writer

Source: The Splinter Factory

Heart

“It sounds silly I know. But for me, the power of music rests in its ability to reach inside and touch the places where the deepest cuts lie. Like a benevolent god, a good song will never let you down.”

Tiffanie DeBartolo (1970) American writer

Source: How to Kill a Rock Star

God, Lie, Music

“Desire makes life happen. Makes it matter. Makes everything worth it. Desire is life. Hunger to see the next sunrise or sunset, to touch the one you love, to try again.

'Hell would be waking up and wanting nothing,' he agrees.”

Karen Marie Moning (1964) author

Source: Shadowfever

Love, Life, Hunger, Hell

“Because your eyes are slant and slow,
Because your hair is sweet to touch,
My heart is high again; but oh,
I doubt if this will get me much.”

Dorothy Parker (1893–1967) American poet, short story writer, critic and satirist

Source: The Complete Poems of Dorothy Parker

Heart

“I knew that I couldn't lie beside her, without wanting to touch her. I couldn't have felt her breath come upon my mouth, without wanting to kiss her. And I couldn't have kissed her, without wanting to save her.”

Sarah Waters (1966) novelist

Lie, Kiss

“Eternity is said not to be an extension of time but an absence of time, and sometimes it seemed to me that her abandonment touched that strange mathematical point of endlessness, a point with no width, occupying no space.”

Graham Greene (1904–1991) English writer, playwright and literary critic

Mathematics, Time

“I want to know if you've touched the center of your own sorrow, if you've been opened by life's betrayals, or have become shriveled and closed from fear of further pain.”

Oriah Mountain Dreamer (1954) Canadian author

Life, Pain, Fear, Betrayal

“And then there's the sickness I feel from looking at legs I can't touch, or at lips that don't smile at me. Or hips that don't reach for me. And hearts that don't beat for me.”

Markus Zusak book Fighting Ruben Wolfe

Source: Fighting Ruben Wolfe

Smile, Feeling, Heart

“I am here, alone, at the end of the world. I reach out and touch nothing.”.”

Haruki Murakami book Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World

Source: Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World

World

“The past is gone, the future is not yet here, and if we do not go back to ourselves in the present moment, we cannot be in touch with life.”

Thich Nhat Hanh (1926) Religious leader and peace activist

Variant: Life can be found only in the present moment. The past is gone, the future is not yet here, and if we do not go back to ourselves in the present moment, we cannot be in touch with life.

Life, Past, Future

“What any true painting touches is an absence - an absence of which without the painting, we might be unaware. And that would be our loss.”

John Berger (1926–2017) British painter, writer and art critic

Source: The Shape of a Pocket

Loss, Painting

“A moment later, he plopped down on the sand beside her, and when they accidentally touched, Gabby had the briefest flash of them sitting together just like this on a hundred different weekends in the future.”

Nicholas Sparks book The Choice

Source: The Choice

Future

“I touch you knowing we weren't born tomorrow,
and somehow, each of us will help the other live,
and somewhere, each of us must help the other die.”

Adrienne Rich (1929–2012) American poet, essayist and feminist

Source: Twenty One Love Poems

Help

“It was a strange feeling, like touching a void.”

Haruki Murakami book Kafka on the Shore

Source: Kafka on the Shore

Feeling

“The wind makes you ache is some place that is deeper than your bones. It may be that it touches something old in the human soul, a chord of race memory that says Migrate or die - migrate or die.”

Stephen King (1947) American author

Soul, Memory

“I kissed him until everything that hurt inside me melted into a pool of black water so deep I couldn’t touch the bottom. As long as I was touching him, I wouldn’t drown.”

Laurie Halse Anderson (1961) American children's writer

Source: The Impossible Knife of Memory

Kiss, Water, Hurt

“Are you okay? (Simone)
No, I’m in ecstasy. I blew straight past okay the minute you touched me. (Xypher)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Dream Chaser

Past

“I am a sassenach, after all,” I said, seeing it. He touched my face briefly with a rueful smile. “Aye, mo duinne. But you’re my sassenach.”

Diana Gabaldon book Dragonfly in Amber

Source: Dragonfly in Amber

Smile

“If I try to summon back his face, the sound of his voice, and the sensation in my stomach like a key turning in a lock when he touched me, I lose everything.”

Joyce Carol Oates book First Love: A Gothic Tale

Source: First Love: A Gothic Tale

“Misery won't touch you gentle. It always leaves its thumbprints on you; sometimes it leaves them for others to see, sometimes for nobody but you to know of.”

Edwidge Danticat The Farming of Bones

Source: The Farming of Bones

“A postcard. Neat handwriting fills the rectangle.

Half my days I cannot bear to touch you.
The rest of my time I feel like it doesn’t matter if I will ever see you again. It isn’t the morality, it’s how much you can bear.

No date. No name attached.”

Michael Ondaatje book The English Patient

Source: The English Patient

Feeling, Time

“You young things are too easily persuaded by the touch of lips.”

Scott Westerfeld book Goliath

Source: Goliath

“… as we rise from the organic and sink back ignominiously into the organic, it is a glory and a privilege to love what Death doesn't touch.”

Donna Tartt book The Goldfinch

Source: The Goldfinch

Love, Death

“Simply touching a difficult memory with some slight willingness to heal begins to soften the holding and tension around it. (74)”

Stephen Levine (1937–2016) American poet and author

Source: A Year to Live: How to Live This Year as If It Were Your Last

Memory

“It was the touch of the imperfect upon the would-be perfect that gave the sweetness, because it was that which gave the humanity”

Thomas Hardy (1840–1928) English novelist and poet

Source: Tess of the D'Urbervilles

Perfection

“Eliza has the sky in her eyes and I’ve always wanted to touch the goddamn sky.”

Tiffanie DeBartolo (1970) American writer

Source: How to Kill a Rock Star

“Happiness lies for those who cry, those who hurt, those who have searched, and those who have tried for only they can appreciate the importance of people who have touched their lives.”

Victor Hugo (1802–1885) French poet, novelist, and dramatist

Happiness, People, Search, Hurt

“I touched her thigh
and death smiled”

Jim Morrison (1943–1971) lead singer of The Doors

An American Prayer (1978)

Death, Smile

“Beyond the reach of human rage
A drop of hell, a touch of strange…”

Stephen King book The Gunslinger

Source: The Gunslinger

Hell, Rage

“Everything is beautiful. We have all this beauty in the world and all we have to do is reach out and touch it, it is all there and all ours for the taking." -- Cecilia to Henry Chinaski, liberty taken changing past tense to present tense (173)”

Charles Bukowski book Women

Source: Women

World, Beauty, Change, Past

“It doesn't matter what you do… so long as you change something from the way it was before you touched it into something that's like you after you take your hands away.”

Ray Bradbury book Fahrenheit 451

Source: Fahrenheit 451

Way, Change

“Alan Blunt got in touch with me and asked me to put you up here for the rest of the week, to pretend that you're my son. I have to say, you don't look anything like me."

"I don't look anything like myself either," Alex said.”

Anthony Horowitz book Point Blanc

Source: Point Blank

“I hadn't the heart to touch my breakfast. I told Jeeves to drink it himself.”

P.G. Wodehouse (1881–1975) English author

Drink, Heart

“Lately, the world felt fragile, like a blown egg, as if it might shatter beneath a careless touch.”

Kim Edwards book The Memory Keeper's Daughter

Source: The Memory Keeper's Daughter

World

“I dreamed you were standing in this dark place and you touched these dead flowers and they lit up like they were electric or something. Electric lilies. Lighting up the Valley.”

Francesca Lia Block (1962) American children's writer

Source: Girl Goddess #9: Nine Stories

Dreams, Flowers, Light, Dead

“Very touching. Do you want me to imitate a violin?”

L.J. Smith (1965) American author

Variant: Very touching," said a voice from the stairway. "Do you want me to imitate a violin?" - Damon
Source: The Fury

“Know the quiet place within your heart and touch the rainbow of possibility; be alive to the gentle breeze of communication, and please stop being such a jerk.”

Garrison Keillor (1942) American radio host and writer

Source: The Book of Guys

Jerk, Communication, Heart

“Come touch,… but you'll a price”

Kresley Cole American writer

Source: Poison Princess

“The sun just touched the morning;
The morning, happy thing,
Supposed that he had come to dwell,
And life would be all spring.”

Emily Dickinson (1830–1886) American poet

Life, Happiness, Spring, Sun

“For the first time in my life the weather was not something that touched me, that caressed me, froze or sweated me, but became me.”

Jack Kerouac book On the Road

Source: On the Road

Life, Time, Weather

“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?”

Toni Morrison book Beloved

Source: Beloved

“I want to touch you in real time
not find you on YouTube,
I want to walk next to you in the mountains
not friend you on Facebook.”

Eve Ensler (1953) American playwright, performer, feminist, activist and artist

Source: I am an Emotional Creature

Mountain, Time

“This is a touch game. There are times when you've got to play hurt when you've got to block out the pain.”

Sherry Argov (1977) American writer

Source: Why Men Marry Bitches: A Woman's Guide to Winning Her Man's Heart

Pain, Game, Time, Hurt

“All that you touch
You Change.

All that you Change
Changes you.

The only lasting truth
Is Change.

God
Is Change.”

Octavia E. Butler book Parable of the Sower

Source: Parable of the Sower (1993), Chapter 1 (p. 3)

God, Truth, Change

“And I don’t want his body touching something I wear. He’ll contaminate it. (Sasha)
Oh, good grief, Sasha. Grow up. You’re four hundred years old and you’re acting like a whelp. It’s not like he has cooties or anything. (Astrid)
Yes he does! (Sasha)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon book Dance with the Devil

Source: Dance with the Devil

“Charm is the great English blight. It does not exist outside these damp islands. It spots and kills anything it touches. It kills love; it kills art; I greatly fear, my dear Charles, it has killed you.”

Evelyn Waugh (1903–1966) British writer

Love, Fear, Art

“Look. If I touch you with this hand, I can remember touching you, but I can't prove I ever did. If reality is nothing more than what is in our mind… then what is the difference between this world and a dream?”

Kaori Ozaki (1976) Japanese mangaka

Source: Immortal Rain, Vol. 1

World, Dreams, Reality

“Moral wounds have this peculiarity - they may be hidden, but they never close; always painful, always ready to bleed when touched, they remain fresh and open in the heart.”

Alexandre Dumas book The Count of Monte Cristo

Source: The Count of Monte Cristo

Pain, Heart

“Drinking would shut down my seeing and my hearing and my feeling,' she used to say. 'Why would I want to be in the world if I couldn't touch the world with all of my senses intact?”

Sherman Alexie book The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

Source: The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian

World, Feeling, Drink, Sense

“The good writers touch life often. The mediocre ones run a quick hand over her. The bad ones rape her and leave her for the flies.”

Ray Bradbury book Fahrenheit 451

Source: Fahrenheit 451

Life

“If you let people break your spirit and detour you from your path, then you have not been true to yourself or those you're here to touch, those who believe in you.”

Allison DuBois (1972) American psychic

People

“Too often we underestimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word, a listening ear, an honest compliment, or the smallest act of caring, all of which have the potential to turn a life around.”

Leo Buscaglia (1924–1998) Motivational speaker, writer

LOVE (1972)
Variant: Too often we underestimate the power of a touch, a smile, a kind word, a listening ear, an honest accomplishment, or the smallest act of caring, all of which have the potential to turn a life around.

Life, Smile, Wise, Relationship

“I didn't like anyone except me having their hands all over him. There had been possession in Wolf's touch, and Adam belonged to me.”

Patricia Briggs book River Marked

Source: River Marked

Wolf