Personal Space Quotes

“Here's a tip. If you touch a girl, even as joke, and she pushes you off, leave... her... alone. Don't touch her. Anywhere! Just stop. Your touch does nothing but sicken her.”
― Jay Asher, Thirteen Reasons Why

“Most women are all too familiar with men like Calvin Smith. Men whose sense of prerogative renders them deaf when women say, "No thanks," "Not interested," or even "Fuck off, creep.”
― Jon Krakauer, Missoula: Rape and the Justice System in a College Town

“I'm an elephant today. I will need to have lots of room and also a bowl of water on the floor.”
― Jesse Ball, The Curfew

“Never go out of bounds. There are certain boundaries para sa bawat tao at doon lang ang lugar mo. Kapag lumagpas ka, maaari ka nang makapanakit ng iba.”
― Ricky Lee, Para Kay B

“Every kid needs one place they can escape to when life gets to be too much.”
― Lisa Fipps, Starfish

“Being single is like being an artist, not because creating a functional single life is an art form, but because it requires the same close attention to one's singular needs, as well as the will and focus to fulfill them. Just as the artist arranges her life around her creativity, sacrificing conventional comforts and even social acceptance, sleeping and eating according to her own rhythms, so that her talent thrives above all else, nurtured the way a child might be, so a single person has to think hard to decipher what makes her happiest and most fulfilled.”
― Kate Bolick, Spinster: Making a Life of One's Own

“This was Betsy and Tacy's private corner. Betsy's mother was a great believer in people having private corners, and the piano box was plainly meant to belong to Betsy and Tacy, for it fitted them so snugly.”
― Maud Hart Lovelace, Betsy-Tacy

“Why do we view the boundaries people create for themselves as challenges? Why do we see someone setting a limit and then try to push? Once, I was at a restaurant with a large group of people and the waitress kept touching me. It was really fucking annoying because I don't want to be touched like that unless we are in a sexual relationship. Every time she passed by, she would rub my shoulders or run her hand down my arm and I kept getting more and more irritated but I said nothing. I never do. Do my boundaries exist if I don't voice them? Can people not see my body, the mass of it, as one very big boundary? Do they not know how much effort went into this?

Because I am not a touchy-feely person, I always feel this light shock, this surprise, really, when my skin comes into contact with another person's skin. Sometimes that shock is pleasant, like Oh, here is my body in the world. Sometimes, it is not. I never know which it will be.”
― Roxane Gay, Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body

“In a society where people are obsessed with personal space, dogs have come to serve as welcome, neo-human mediators of loneliness and solitude.”
― Okey Ndibe, Never Look an American in the Eye: A Memoir of Flying Turtles, Colonial Ghosts, and the Making of a Nigerian American

“You're infringing on my personal space."

~Nora”
― Becca Fitzpatrick

“The missing link between humans and apes? It's certainly those brutes who haven't yet learned to respect privacy.”
― Raheel Farooq

“I simply can't have roommates. I like my own space.”
― Ottessa Moshfegh, Eileen

“I didn’t really like people to touch me.”
― Maggie Stiefvater, Sinner

“You can read in the space of a coffin, and you can write in the space of a toolshed meant for mowers and spades.”
― Annie Dillard

“The body is not a fortress, no matter what we may do to make it such. This may be one of life's greatest frustrations, or is it humiliations? I spend a lot of time thinking about bodies and boundaries and how people seem hell-bent on ignoring those boundaries at all costs. I am not a hugger. I never have been and I never will be. I hug my friends, and do so happily, but I am sparing with such affections. A hug means something to me; it is an act of profound intimacy, so I try not to get too promiscuous with it.

Also, I find it awkward, opening myself up, allowing people to touch, to breach my fortress.

When I tell strangers I am not a hugger, some take this as a challenge, like they can hug me into submission, like they can will my aversion to hugs away by the strength of their arms. Oftentimes, they will draw me into their body, saying something condescending like, "See, it isn't that bad." I think, I never thought it was, and I stand there, my arms limply by my sides, probably grimacing, but still, they don't get the message that I am not a willing participant in this embrace. The fortress hath been breached.”
― Roxane Gay, Hunger: A Memoir of (My) Body

“I am sorry," he would say, addressing himself unexpectedly to the astonished onlooker. "I am sorry, I am concerned with that section of space which you are filling. Couldn't you move a little to one side for a minute?”
― Bruno Schulz, The Street of Crocodiles

“The earth is a seed planted in space; the darkest and yet the richest soil in the universe.”
― Curtis Tyrone Jones, Giants At Play: Finding Wisdom, Courage, And Acceptance To Encounter Your Destiny

“Never - NEVER touch me again, you filthy fucking animal, replied Gora standing over the writhing Hitbear.”
― Brad McKinniss, Beast Machine

“Mostly, she wanted to be loved and left alone. Not sequentially, but simultaneously. In equal measure. Love me. And leave me the fuck alone.”
― Missy Marston, Bad Ideas: A Novel

“It looks social, but it’s your personal space. Take care of it.”
― D. Dhyani (Author of "The Unstuck" series)")