scratchy QUOTES

1 " You know what I love? The spaces between I love you. The tap of your fork against the plate and how my cup of wine clicks against our table. The scratchy voice coming from the radio in the other room. The quiet sound of your hand reaching across the table and whispering over mine. How your voice sounds like your mouth on the back of my neck. The soft murmur of our easy conversation.Between these quiet Tuesday night routines, following every comma and right after every pause for breath, is I, love, and you. In the middle of every I love you is a sink full of dishes, whisper of socked feet tangled in white sheets, and gentle kisses against curved cheeks. We lyric ourselves into the laundry that needs to be finished, into the ends of every smile that follows me repeating your name. We write ourselves into the grocery bags we need to carry, the cracks running up our rented walls, the sides of the bed we choose to drag up the sails of heavy eyed dreams.Like the spaces between our fingers, in the spaces between I, love, and you, we wait.The in-betweens have always been my favorite. "

2 " For the love of mercy, I cannot walk into mediation with a swollen vagina, Cash. Please.”
I smile against her thigh, rubbing my scratchy face against the softness of her skin.
“Is that what I’m doing?” Innocence—fuck no. I can’t even fake that shit. "

― Pella Grace , Knock Love Out (A Very Sexy Romance)

3 " Impending doom, it was a familiar sweater, we all wore it and as scratchy as it felt against our skin, we kept it on. "

― Holly Hood , Prison of Paradise (Wingless, #4)

4 " Just when it seemed my mother couldn’t bearone more needle, one more insane orange pill,my sister, in silence, stood at the endof the bed and slowly rubbed her feet,which were scratchy with hard, yellow skin,and dirt cramped beneath the broken nails,which changed nothing in time exceptthe way my mother was lost in it for a whileas if with a kind of relief that doesn’t relieve.And then, with her eyes closed, my mother saidthe one or two words the living have for gratefulness,which is a kind of forgetting, with a senseof what it means to be alive long enoughto love someone. Thank you, she said. As for me,I didn’t care how her voice suddenly seemed lowand kind, or what failures and triumphsof the body and spirit brought her to that point—just that it sounded like hope, stupid hope. "

5 " As you wish, of course." Lucius lowered the volume on an old record player, which spun a warped vinyl disk that wailed unfamiliar music, scratchy and whiny, like cats fighting. Or a coffin with rusty hinges opening and closing over and over again in a deserted mausoleum. " Do you like Croatian folk?" heasked, seeing my interest. " It reminds me of home." " I prefer normal music." " Ah, yes, your MTV with all the bumping and grinding. Like a shot of raging adolescent hormones administered via television. I'm not averse. "

6 " Often he had the impression that the person answering questions from the scratchy armchair was a dummy he was controlling, that this had been true throughout his life, and that his life had become so involved with operating the dummy that he, the ventriloquist, had ceased to have a personality, becoming just an arm stuffed up the puppet's back. "

― Jeffrey Eugenides

7 " Shhh,” Mr. Winston whispered into her hair. “It’s going to be okay. It’s going to be okay.” He said it over and over again, just as the boy had done when she was at her most helpless. He rocked her with each stanza of the hypnotic prayer, and she melted into his arms, letting him be her strength as she cried into his chest.
“I couldn’t keep her,” she finally mustered, wiping her nose against his scratchy flannel.
“Shhh…” he repeated. He kissed the top of her head and then stood. With surprising strength, the elderly man lifted her as if she weighed nothing, bringing her to the car. He opened the car door with one hand, sat her in the front seat, and then buckled her in like she was a child. Exhausted, Maddie didn’t fight him or try to do it on her own. She needed someone else to be in charge for a while. She needed to be taken care of. "

― Crissi Langwell , The Road to Hope (Hope Series Book 1)

8 " I don't cook anything fancy. Sheba's appetite isn't up to much and I've never been one for sauces. We eat nursery food mainly. Beans on toast, Welsh rarebit, fish fingers. Sheba leans against the oven and watches me while I work. At a certain point, she usually asks for wine. I have tried to get her to wait until she's eaten something, but she gets very scratchy when I do that, so these days I tend to give in straightaway and pour her a small glass from the carton in the fridge. You choose your battles. Sheba is a bit of a snob about drink and she keeps whining at me to get a grander sort. 'Something in a bottle, at least', she says. But I continue to buy the cartons. we are on a tight budget these days. And for all her carping, Sheba doesn't seem to have too much trouble knocking back the cheap stuff. "

― Zoë Heller , What Was She Thinking? [Notes on a Scandal]

9 " I love the smell of my mother’s hair after she washes it.
I love the feel of the scratchy stubble on my father’s face before he shaves.
But I’ve never been able to tell them. "

― Sharon M. Draper , Out of My Mind

10 " I'm the scratchy stuff on the side of the matchbox. But that's fine with me. I don't mind at all. Better to be a first-class matchbox than a second-class match. "

11 " GERTRUDEGertrude Appleman, 1901-1976God is all-knowing, all-present, and almighty. --A Catechism of Christian DoctrineI wish that all the peoplewho peddle Godcould watch my mother die:could see the skin andgristle weighing onlyseventy-nine, every stubbornpound of flesh a smalldeath.I wish the people who peddle Godcould see her young,lovely in gardens andbeautiful in kitchens, and could watchthe hand of God slowlytwisting her knees and fingerstill they gnarled and knotted, settling infor thirty years of pain.I wish the people who peddle Godcould see the lightningof His cancer stabbingher, that small frametensing at every shock,her sweet contralto scratchy withthe Lord’s infection: Philip,I want to die.I wish I had them gathered round,those preachers, popes, rabbis,imams, priests – everypious shill on God’s payroll – and Iwould pull the sheets from my mother’s brittle body,and they would fall on their knees at her bedsideto be forgiven all theirfaith. "

12 " After six long hours of driving and three rest stops, Tiger pulls up to a snow-topped, metal speaker box just outside the State Penitentiary's first gate in Walla Walla. As he rolls down his window and snow flies in his face, Joshua starts begging for a Happy Meal.I turn around, snapping at him. " This ISN'T MCDONALDS and YOU AREN'T HUNGRY. NOW SHUT UP BRAT." A loud scratchy masculine voice blasts out of the speaker. " CAN I HELP YOU?" Tiger leans out the window, as he answers- We're here to visit Raven Chandler." HAVE YOU BEEN HERE BEFORE?" " Yes sir. I've been here A LOT." " WHERE'S HIS MOTHER?" " I don't know.. I haven't seen her in months." " NOT THE PRISONER'S MOTHER. THE BRAT IN THE BACK SEAT OF YOUR JEEP." " Oh- HIM-" As he turns, smiling and sticking his tongue out at Joshua, I lean towards his window to answer the guard's question. " SHE'S IN VEGAS, SIR. I'M BABYSITTING. HE'S MY GODSON." When the speaker remains disturbingly silent for far too long, I continue. " HE'S A GOOD BOY SIR. HE WON'T BE ANY TROUBLE- I SWEAR." " THAT'S RIGHT," Tiger said. " HE SWEARS ON THE LITTLE BRAT'S MOTHER'S GRAVE. "

13 " I have a lot more patience for others than I have for myself, and I am much better at bringing out the best in others than in myself. That's just the kind of person I am. I'm the scratchy stuff on the side of the matchbox. "

― Haruki Murakami , Norwegian Wood

14 " I was only hit on once at the grocery store. I remember it was early one Saturday morning and I was buying my daily bacon, when I got tapped on the shoulder. I turned around and I saw a rather short and very feeble eighty-year-old lady looking up at me. She said in a weak, scratchy voice, " Excuse me, young man, could you reach up and grab some ketchup for me?" Well I'm no dummy. I know when I'm getting hit on. I smiled politely and reached up for the ketchup, knowing full well that she just wanted to get a gander at my derriere. As I handed her the ketchup, she said, " Thank you," like I was some piece of meat, a boy toy, or something. Finally I just blurted out, " Look, I'm married, lady!" She acted all surprised and confused. " Excuse me? I don't understand!" I shook my head with a smirk, raised my left hand, and showed her my wedding ring. " Married!" I loudly told her. " I'm taken!" A stock boy at the end of the aisle looked at us and inquired, " Is everything okay?" " I'm fine," I assured him. " I know how to deal with predators." Well, suddenly this sex-crazed lady got all angry at me. Like I was out of line. She huffed off. " Well, I never!" " And you ain't gonna with me either, " I yelled after her. I have to admit, it was nice to get the attention. "

15 " The heart did ache, actually. She felt a dull grind of lack somewhere near her diaphragm, a pain that occupied the space of something removed. A phantom limb. A scratchy hunger. The wasting muscle fatigue of want. "

16 " From school desks with inkwells and scratchy nibs on paper to sweaty finger prints on a tablet... technology progression yes... style? "

― David H. Millar