hang on like grim death BrE , także: hold on like grim death

Flupper would pretend to skid and go out of control: it was terrific - we'd hang on like grim death to the rope.

"Play you're a fish, stranger, and when you bite, hang on like grim death to a--steady, now!"

Mrs Skiller had been quite insistent about taking it downstairs, but Esk had hung on like grim death.

He was swinging his fists at her head and screaming curses as he tried to wrench free, but she ducked her face into the dirty gray fabric covering his legs and hung on like grim death.

If these dithering, whimpering neurotics would stop thinking of work as a path to ultimate personal reward, if they would pick something they believed in and then "hang on like grim death," they might actually amount to something.

I threw the bow hard up, dragged the speed lever to its last notch, and clutching a stanchion with one hand and the steering-wheel with the other hung on like grim death and consigned my soul to its author.

Logic and faith imbued me with the certainty that I would not, could not, fall: The old man had told me I had another four decades to go, so there was no need to hang on like grim death to the mountain wall and pray.

The coachman seemed in a monstrous hurry, for some reason; perhaps he sensed yet another wretched March storm coming, for he kept the horses moving at such a brisk pace that Marina was jounced all over her seat, and even Reggie had to hang on like grim death.

Sam was five foot one, weighed maybe 100 pounds with his boots on and had at least forty years on Cheryl, but he had a grip like the big claw on a king crab and he hung on like grim death as Cheryl tried to throw him off.