Quotes about touch
page 6

“He could not feel her near him in the darkness nor hear her voice touch his ear. He waited for some minutes listening. He could hear nothing: the night was perfectly silent. He listened again: perfectly silent. He felt that he was alone.”

James Joyce book Dubliners

Source: Dubliners

Feeling, Waiting, Night

“And enough for me that when my hand touched your shoulder, you leaned on me; and when you felt me slip away, you called my name.”

Orson Scott Card book Children of the Mind

Source: Children of the Mind

“No real lady would let a dress that might have been worn by a stranger touch her skin.”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Angel

Source: Clockwork Angel

“I imagine the touch of someone who loves you so much, he cannot bear to watch you sleep; and so you wake up with his hand on your heart.”

Jodi Picoult Change of Heart

Source: Change of Heart

Love, Imagination, Sleep, Heart

“How can I shed tears for a man I should never have allowed to touch me in any way?”

Janet Fitch book White Oleander

Source: White Oleander

Way, Tear

“At the moment when her eyes closed, when all feeling vanished in her, she thought that she felt a touch of fire imprinted on her lips, a kiss more burning than the red-hot iron of the executioner.”

Victor Hugo book The Hunchback of Notre Dame

Source: The Hunchback of Notre-Dame

Feeling, Kiss

“Ah, but you're the insidious type--Jane Eyre with of touch of Becky Sharp. A thoroughly dangerous girl.”

Dodie Smith book I Capture the Castle

Source: I Capture the Castle

Girl

“You are ice and fire
The touch of you burns my hands like snow”

Amy Lowell (1874–1925) US writer

“It's easy to play any musical instrument: all you have to do is touch the right key at the right time and the instrument will play itself.”

Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750) German late baroque era composer

Variant: There's nothing remarkable about it. All one has to do is hit the right keys at the right time and the instrument plays itself.

Music, Time

“Mischief nodded. 'It's true,' he conceded. 'You're in the company of eight world-class thieves,' he said, not without a little touch of pride. 'Saints we are not.'
But then,' said Deaux-Deaux, 'who is?' he thought on this. 'Besides saints.”

Clive Barker book Abarat

Source: Abarat

World

“Photography is a way of feeling, of touching, of loving. What you have caught on film is captured forever…it remembers little things, long after you have forgotten everything.”

Aaron Siskind (1903–1991) American photographer

Aaron Sussman, cited in: The Amateur Photographer's Handbook, (1973), p. vi
Sussman, Aaron. The Amateur Photographer's Handbook. Thomas Y. Crowell Company, 1973.
Context: Photography is more than a means of recording the obvious. It is a way of feeling, of touching, of loving. What you have caught on film is captured forever, whether it be a face or a flower, a place or a thing, a day or a moment. The camera is a perfect companion. It makes no demands, imposes no obligations. It becomes your notebook and your reference library, your microscope and your telescope. It sees what you are too lazy or too careless to notice, and it remembers little things, long after you have forgotten everything.

Love, Way, Feeling

“Elena gasped back, "I can touch the ground!"
"I can see you touching it!", Bonnie exclaimed with tears of joy.”

L.J. Smith (1965) American author

Source: Dark Reunion

Tear, Joy

“Who could have foretold
the heart grows old
from touching others”

Leonard Cohen book The Energy of Slaves

Source: The Energy of Slaves

Heart

“I know that when he has sex he laughs like the world is a perfect place. And when he did that, my hands curled into fists because I thought about touching his face like maybe I could catch joy in my hands and hold it.”

Karen Marie Moning (1964) author

Source: Iced

World, Sex, Joy, Perfection

“I lay in bed at night crying to myself. The only one who loved me and watched over me was someone I couldn't see or hear or touch.”

Marilyn Monroe (1926–1962) American actress, model, and singer

Source: My Story

Love, Cry, Night

“It's going to be a lot of work, Gideon," Eva warned him.

"I'm not afraid of work." He was touching me restlessly as if it were as necessary to him as breathing. "I'm only afraid of losing you.”

Sylvia Day book Bared to You

Source: Bared to You

“We did not touch each other. We were both leaning over the abyss.”

Anaïs Nin (1903–1977) writer of novels, short stories, and erotica

Source: Henry and June: From "A Journal of Love"--The Unexpurgated Diary of Anaïs Nin

“But I'm not here just to make records and money. I'm here to say something and to touch other people, sometimes in a cry of desperation: "Do you know this feeling?”

Keith Richards book Life

Source: Life

Money, People, Feeling, Cry

“… there are some children who aren't really children at all, they're just pillars of flame that burn everything they touch. And there are some children who are just pillars of ash, that fall apart when you touch them…”

Sherman Alexie (1966) Native American author and filmmaker

Source: Smoke Signals: A Screenplay

Children

“An en is a karmic bond lasting a lifetime. Nowadays many people seem to believe their lives are entirely a matter of choice; but in my day we viewed ourselves as pieces of clay that forever show the fingerprints of everyone who has touched them.”

Arthur Golden book Memoirs of a Geisha

Source: Memoirs of a Geisha

People

“I love you, man. You rule! Thanks for the food. It touches me deep in my tender place. (Sway)
I don’t want to know nothing about your tender place, you freak. (Devyn)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon (1965) Novelist

Source: Born of Ice

Love, Food

“Being remembered, and remembered so kindly, touched him more than he would have thought possible.”

Cassandra Clare (1973) American author

Source: The Midnight Heir

“Don't touch me, I'm full of snakes.”

Jack Kerouac (1922–1969) American writer

“There was never a great genius without a touch of madness.”

Ben Jonson (1572–1637) English writer

Madness, Attitude

“I wanted to touch him, to tell him that even if everyone left everyone, I would never leave him, he talked and talked, his words fell through him, trying to find the floor to his sadness.”

Jonathan Safran Foer book Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Source: Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Sadness

“Courtney came over to me and touched my cheek. I winced. It hurt.
You look like hell," Courtney said.
I shrugged.
She looked at Saint Dane, then back at me. "He looks worse." She smiled. "Awesome.”

D.J. MacHale The Soldiers of Halla

Source: The Soldiers of Halla

Smile, Hell, Hurt

“Hearing him say it now, that is was my birthday present, touched me in the last place I wanted him to touch me. My heart.”

Jenny Han (1980) American writer

Source: We'll Always Have Summer

Birthday, Heart

“Evil is relative, Annalist. You can’t hang a sign on it. You can’t touch it or taste it or cut it with a sword. Evil depends on where you are standing, pointing your indicting finger.”

Glen Cook The Black Company

Source: The Black Company (1984), Chapter 6, “Lady” (pp. 192-193)

Evil, Dependency

“Akhlys lunged at Percy, and for a split second he thought: Well, hey, I’m just smoke. She can’t touch me, right?
He imagined the Fates up in Olympus, laughing at his wishful thinking: LOL, NOOB!”

Rick Riordan book The House of Hades

Source: The House of Hades

Fate, Imagination, Thinking

“I love you," he finally whispered. She leaned forward and touched his face. "I know. And I love you, too.”

Nicholas Sparks book Safe Haven

Source: Safe Haven

Love

“Don't touch her.”

Richelle Mead book Spirit Bound

Source: Spirit Bound

“… just a little touches her and there. He puts his hands on your arms or back, he stands close to you, getting you used to him… it's a mating ritual. Like March of the Penguins.”

Lisa Kleypas (1964) American writer

Source: Blue-Eyed Devil

“I do not have any other way of saying it. I think it happens but once and only to the very young when it feels like your skin could ignite at the mere touch of another person. You get to love like that but once.”

Pat Conroy book Beach Music

Source: Beach Music

Love, Way, Feeling, Thinking

“The denigration of those we love always detaches us from them in some degree. Never touch your idols: the gilding will stick to your fingers.”

Gustave Flaubert Madame Bovary

Source: Madame Bovary

Love

“Be well, do good work, and keep in touch.”

Garrison Keillor (1942) American radio host and writer

Trademarked closing lines in The Writer's Almanac http://writersalmanac.publicradio.org/ <br class="br">Source: Good Poems

Goodbye

“Touch me, touch the palm of your hand to my body as I pass,
Be not afraid of my body.”

Walt Whitman book Fulles d'herba

Source: Leaves of Grass

“God, he suddenly understood, was love in its purest form, and in these last months with his children, he had felt His touch as surely as he had heard the music spilling from Ronnie's hands.”

Nicholas Sparks book The Last Song

Source: The Last Song

Love, God, Children, Music

“I want to fly! I want to touch the sun!"
"Finish your eggs first.”

Lorraine Hansberry A Raisin in the Sun

Source: A Raisin in the Sun

Sun, Flying

“I need to get ready. Ash? Touch the food and I won't take you for a driving lesson tomorrow. Dad? Touch it and I'll maketake him for a driving lesson tomorrow."

Dad backed away from the counter. Ash scowled. I laughed and continued upstairs.”

Kelley Armstrong (1968) Canadian writer

Source: The Rising

Food

“He came like the wind, like the wind touched everything, and like the wind was gone.

-from The Dragon Reborn. By Loial, son of Arent son of Halan, the Fourth Age.”

Robert Jordan The Wheel of Time

Source: A Memory of Light

Age

“She grew more and more silent about what really mattered. She curled inside herself like one of those black chimney brushes, the little shellfish you see on the beach, and you touch them, and then go inside and don’t come out.”

Janet Frame (1924–2004) New Zealand author

Source: Owls Do Cry

“You see, to me, for just a moment, despite all of the colors that touch and grapple with what I see in this world, I will often catch an eclipse when a human dies.
I've seen millions of them.
I've seen more eclipses than I care to remember”

Markus Zusak book The Book Thief

Source: The Book Thief

World, Color

“I loved you like a man loves a woman he never touches, only writes to, keeps little photographs of.”

Charles Bukowski book Love Is a Dog from Hell

Source: Love Is a Dog from Hell

Love

“Just the perfect touch of rebellion," says Haymitch "Very nice."
Rebellion?”

Suzanne Collins The Hunger Games

Source: The Hunger Games

Perfection

“Basically what we have here is a dreamer. Somebody out of touch with reality. When she jumped, she probably thought she'd fly”

Jeffrey Eugenides book The Virgin Suicides

Source: The Virgin Suicides

Reality, Flying

“The Queen touched her lips thoughtfully with a single long white finger. 'The Fair Folk, unlike humans, do not concern themselves overmuch with. Love, perhaps, and hate. Both are useful emotions. But…" She shrugged elegantly.”

Cassandra Clare book City of Glass

Source: City of Glass

Love, Hate

“Music is like you touch the pulse of the world. Music is always happening, and sometimes you get to touch it for a while, and when you do you know that everything's connetcted to everything else.”

Kim Edwards book The Memory Keeper's Daughter

Source: The Memory Keeper's Daughter

World, Music

“The way her body existed only where he touched her. The rest of her was smoke.”

Arundhati Roy book The God of Small Things

Source: The God of Small Things

Way, Relationship

“It wasn't that long, and it certainly wasn't the kind of kiss you see in movies these days, but it was wonderful in its own way, and all I can remember about the moment is that when our lips touched, I knew the memory would last forever.”

Nicholas Sparks book A Walk to Remember

Source: A Walk to Remember

Way, Kiss, Memory

“He knew these last lines by heart and mouthed them now in the darkness. My reason for life. Not living, but life. That was the touch. And she was his reason for life, and why he must survive.”

Ian McEwan book Atonement

Source: Atonement

Life, Heart

“Memories were fine, but you couldn't touch them. They were never exactly as the moment had been, & they faded w/ time”

Cecelia Ahern (1981) Irish novelist

Variant: Memories were fine but you couldn't touch them, smell them or hold them. They were never exactly as the moment was, and they faded with time.

Memory, Time

“I can't pass a bookstore without slipping inside, looking for the next book that will burn my hand when I touch its jacket, or hand me over a promissory note of such immense power that it contains the formula that will change everything about me.”

Pat Conroy (1945–2016) American novelist

Source: My Reading Life

Books, Change

“Laughter is more than just a pleasurable activity… When people laugh together, they tend to talk and touch more and to make eye contact more frequently.”

Gretchen Rubin (1966) American writer

Source: The Happiness Project: Or Why I Spent a Year Trying to Sing in the Morning, Clean My Closets, Fight Right, Read Aristotle, and Generally Have More Fun

People, Pleasure, Laughter

“To touch him in ways he'd never been touched before, this person who, beyond all logic, was the other half of her. Who belonged to her. Who was her soulmate.”

L.J. Smith (1965) American author

Source: Night World, No. 3

Way, Personality

“As the pain that can be told is but half a pain, so the pity that questions has little healing in its touch. What Lily craved was the darkness made by enfolding arms, the silence which is not solitude, but compassion holding its breath.”

Edith Wharton book The House of Mirth

Source: The House of Mirth

Pain, Question, Solitude, Silence

“What’s so funny? (Astrid)
I’m just thinking, here I am a slave who touched a star who then made him a demigod. I have to be the luckiest bastard who ever lived. (Zarek)”

Sherrilyn Kenyon book Dance with the Devil

Source: Dance with the Devil

Star, Thinking

“There is nothing more touching to me then a family picture where everyone is trying to look his or her best, but you can see what a mess they all really are.”

Anne Lamott (1954) Novelist, essayist, memoirist, activist

Source: Traveling Mercies: Some Thoughts on Faith

Family

“And then he gives me a smile that just seems so genuinely sweet with just the right touch of shyness that unexpected warmth rushes through me.”

Suzanne Collins The Hunger Games

Source: The Hunger Games

Smile

“Don’t move. I like this ledge of loose diamonds
waiting to be spilled into the night.
Let’s shine awhile without touching.
Sensuality is, after all, a river that is always waiting.”

Tess Gallagher (1943) American writer

Source: Moon Crossing Bridge

Waiting, Night

“Is he nuts?"
"I think the expression used to be 'touched by God'."
"So that would be a yes.”

Jonathan Maberry book Rot & Ruin

Source: Rot & Ruin

God, Thinking

“What are you, Rose Hathaway? Are you real? You're a dream within a dream. I'm afraid touching you will make me wake up. You'll disappear.”

Richelle Mead book Spirit Bound

Source: Spirit Bound

Dreams

“When a woman grabs my braids and says "How cute!" I crab her breast and say "How cute!" She never touches me again!”

Russell Means (1939–2012) Oglala Lakota activist for the rights of Native American people

Source: Where White Men Fear to Tread: The Autobiography of Russell Means

“Though I play at the edges of knowing,
truly I know
our part is not knowing,
but looking, and touching, and loving”

Mary Oliver (1935–2019) American writer

Source: Why I Wake Early

Love, Parting

“Tessa touched his wrist lightly with her hand. "Be brave," she said. "It's not a duck, is it?”

Cassandra Clare book Clockwork Princess

Source: Clockwork Princess

“Life is short. Short, and not about anything except what you can touch and what touches you.”

Woody Allen (1935) American screenwriter, director, actor, comedian, author, playwright, and musician

Life

“I simply believe that a book has a journey to make, and should not be condemned to being stuck on a shelf… Let’s leave our books free to travel, then, to be touched by other hands, and enjoyed by other eyes.”

Paulo Coelho (1947) Brazilian lyricist and novelist

Books, Travel

“You may never get to touch the Master, but you can tickle his creatures.”

Thomas Pynchon book Gravity's Rainbow

Source: Gravity's Rainbow

“None of those other things makes a difference. Love is the strongest thing in the world, you know. Nothing can touch it. Nothing comes close. If we love each other we're safe from it all. Love is the biggest thing there is.”

David Guterson book Snow Falling on Cedars

Source: Snow Falling on Cedars

Love, World

“I think classical ballet dancers dance on pointe because they're simultaneously touching the earth and reaching up to the skies”

Paulo Coelho (1947) Brazilian lyricist and novelist

Source: The Witch Of Portobello

Thinking, Dance

“Dad,” I said quietly, “I’ve always made it a rule in my life not to pick fights with children, cute animals, or ignorant old men. I will, however, make an exception for you if you ever touch or insult my wife again.”

Richelle Mead book Silver Shadows

Source: Silver Shadows

Life, Men, Children, Animals

“She climbed out of the car, and instantly his entire body wakened to her proximity. he whispered, lifting a hand to touch her cheek.”

Kerrelyn Sparks (1955) American writer

Cars

“What are you doing here?”
All right, he was standing in front of an easel, holding a paint palette and brush. “Taxidermy?” he responded with just a touch of his own sarcasm.”

Robyn Carr American writer

Source: Wild Man Creek

Painting

“We never know how high we are till we are called to rise. Then if we are true to form our statures touch the skies.”

Emily Dickinson (1830–1886) American poet

Source: Collected Poems of Emily Dickinson

“How does fear become so powerful? We can’t see it. We can’t touch it, yet it gets its claws in us and begins to control us. Sigh. I hate feeling afraid, and I hate, hate, HATE feeling out of control.”

Gena Showalter (1975) American writer

Source: Oh My Goth

Hate, Fear, Feeling

“His heart was like a sensitive plant, that opens for a moment in the sunshine, but curls up and shrinks into itself at the slightest touch of the finger, or the lightest breath of wind.”

Anne Brontë book The Tenant of Wildfell Hall

Source: The Tenant of Wildfell Hall (1848), Ch. IV : The Party; Gilbert Markham about Frederick Lawrence

Heart

“You make me feel like I have wings when you touch me.”

Francesca Lia Block Cherokee Bat and the Goat Guys

Source: Cherokee Bat and the Goat Guys

Feeling

“An American monkey, after getting drunk on brandy, would never touch it again, and thus is much wiser than most men.”

Charles Darwin (1809–1882) British naturalist, author of "On the origin of species, by means of natural selection"

Men

“He touched her as he usually touched his beloved violin, with a soft and urgent grace that left her breathless.”

Cassandra Clare (1973) American author

“Sometimes I imagined stitching all of our little touches together. How many hundreds of thousands of fingers brushing against each other does it take to make love? Why does anyone ever make love?”

Jonathan Safran Foer book Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (2005)
Context: I put my hand on him. Touching him has always been important to me, it was something I lived for. I never could explain why. Little, nothing touches, my fingers against his shoulder, the outsides of our thighs touching as we squeeled together on the bus. I couldnt explain it, but I needed it. Sometimes I imagined stiching all of our little touches together. How many hundreds of thousands of fingers brushing against each other does it take to make love?

Love, Making love, Imagination