Bedclothes Quotes

She pulled the bedclothes up as far as they would go and suppressed a perverse wish to have her old nurse come to chase away the darkness, perverse because she didn't know if she wanted the shadows to be empty or not. ~ Megan Whalen Turner

Awakened by artillery fire, the frightened Confederate recruits ran out of town, some still in their bedclothes. The Federals gave this embarrassing retreat the derisive nickname of "The Battle of the Philippi Races. ~ Clint Johnson

A man's got to take care of his family. You live in my house, you sleep your behind on my bedclothes, you put my food in your belly because you are my son; you are my flesh and blood, not because I like you. It is my duty to take care of you. I owe a responsibility to you. ~ James Earl Jones

I love the chill October days, when the brown leaves lie thick and sodden underneath your feet ... the evenings in late autumn time, when the white mist creeps across the fields, making it seem as though old Earth, feeling the night air cold to its poor bones, were drawing ghostly bedclothes round its withered limbs. ~ Jerome K. Jerome

The nights now are full of wind and destruction; the trees plunge and bend and their leaves fly helter skelter until the lawn is plastered with them and they lie packed in gutters and choke rain pipes and scatter damp paths. Also the sea tosses itself and breaks itself, and should any sleeper fancying that he might find on the beach an answer to his doubts, a sharer of his solitude, throw off his bedclothes and go down by himself to walk on the sand, no image with semblance of serving and divine promptitude comes readily to hand bringing the night to order and making the world reflect the compass of the soul. The hand dwindles in his hand; the voice bellows in his ear. Almost it would appear that it is useless in such confusion to ask the night those questions as to what, and why, and wherefore, which tempt the sleeper from his bed to seek an answer. ~ Virginia Woolf

I know you are reading this poem
in a room where too much has happened for you to bear
where the bedclothes lie in stagnant coils on the bed
and the open valise speaks of flight
but you cannot leave yet. ~ Adrienne Rich

The baby closed its mouth, staring at him with hope and small hiccups.
"Jesus," he said. He lay down on the bed, pulling the pillow under his head, and drew the whole bundle of coat, shawl and infant up against his shirt. A tiny hand closed tight on the lace. One sob erupted, and then changed midbreath to a soft sigh.
Women, he thought sardonically, sinking in the bedclothes, with sleep revolving and closing in his head. He moved one finger, feeling a cheek as soft as down.
What's your name?
Ask the girl. Remember that ...
Maddy ...
It was wrong. I must leave thee now.
Don't cry. Don't cry, little girl ... I'm so tired. I never deserved you, did I? Maddy ... but I loved you.
I always loved you. ~ Laura Kinsale

My doctor has given me as strong an antihistamine as she is allowed to prescribe, but even that does nothing for the itching and swelling. The moment a grain of pollen enters the keep, I begin to tomato, and after two minutes of being exposed to the Ejaculateum Arboratoeaea, I am lying on the ground with my tongue lolling out of the side of my mouth.
I am heartily glad that the trees and plants are still interested in copulatory activities; I only wish they would be so good as to keep their sperm away from my face. Do not pretend that pollen is anything else; it transfers haploid male genetic material and sullies the bedclothes unmercifully. ~ Michelle Franklin

And so to read is, in truth, to be in the constant act of creation. The old lady on the bus with her Orwell, the businessman on the Tube with Patricia Cornwell, the teenager roaring through Capote -- they are not engaged in idle pleasure. Their heads are on fire. Their hearts are flooding. With a book, you are the landscape, the sets, the snow, the hero, the kiss -- you are the mathematical calculation the plots the trajectory of the blazing, crashing zeppelin. You -- pale, punchable reader -- are terraforming whole worlds in your head, which will remain with you until the day you die. These books are as much a part of you as your guts and your bone. And when your guts fail and your bones break, Narnia, or Jamaica Inn, or Gormenghast will still be there; as pin-sharp and bright as the day you first imagined them -- hiding under the bedclothes, sitting on the bus. Exhausted, on a rainy day, weeping over the death of someone you never met, and who was nothing more than words until you transformed them with your time, and your love, and the imagination you constantly dismiss as "just being a bit of a bookworm. ~ Caitlin Moran

Also another time she had wakened in dead of night, thinking that something touched her, and when she looked she saw that a black scaly tail, tufted with flame at the end, like a fiend's, had switched across her and lay there burning the covers. And when she turned shrieking, to see what manner of thing lay beside her in the bed, she was at first reassured by sight of her husband's face, then saw, to her horror, that horns had risen, black and pointed, from his forehead. After that she screamed again and remembered nothing until Joseph was shaking her awake, and there were neither horns nor tail to be seen. Nor were the bedclothes scorched. ~ Evangeline Walton

Les, muttering wrathfully, hauled the bedclothes off the recumbent Larry and used them to smother the flames. Larry sat up indignantly.
'What the the hell is going on?' he demanded.
'The room is on fire, dear.'
'Well, I don't see why I should freeze to death ... why tear all the bedclothes off? Really, the fuss you all make. It's quite simple to put out a fire.'
'Oh, shut up!' snapped Leslie, jumping up and down on the bedclothes. ~ Gerald Durrell

She shifted until his cock was under her. She rubbed herself against him, using his hard flesh to pleasure herself.
He arched under her, this big strong man. The tendons of his neck stood out; he flung wide his arms and clutched at the bedclothes. "Eve, what you do to me."
She watched him and slowly reached down to pull her sodden chemise up, up over her belly, over her breasts, over her head, undulating on him all the while. ~ Elizabeth Hoyt

Filled with determination, she pounded on Leo's door. "Wake up, slugabed!"
A string of foul words filtered through the heavy oak panels.
Grinning, Amelia went into Poppy's room. She pulled the curtains open, releasing clouds of dust that caused her to sneeze. "Poppy, it's ... achoo! ... time to get out of bed."
The covers had been drawn completely over Poppy's head. "Not yet," came her muffled protest.
Sitting on the edge of the mattress, Amelia eased the covers away from her nineteen-year-old sister. Poppy was groggy and sleep-flushed, her cheek imprinted with a line left by a fold of the bedclothes. Her brown hair, a warmer, ruddier tint than Amelia's, was a wild mass of tangles.
"I hate morning," Poppy mumbled. "And I'm sure I don't like being awakened by someone who looks so bloody pleased about it."
"I'm sorry." Continuing to smile, Amelia stroked her sister's hair away from her face repeatedly. ~ Lisa Kleypas

The sun was high overhead in the world above. My husband slept soundly beside me, his breathing soft and even. We had fallen asleep resting against each other, but during the night we had drifted apart, founding our separate kingdoms on opposite sides of his bed. Our borders were delineated by a pile of bedclothes. We had touched each other in the most intimate ways possible, but neither of us could bear the other's closeness. Not yet. ~ S. Jae-Jones

I hope," she said, "that you didn't stay out of some foolish romantical notion."
He looked down, staring at the tumbled bedclothes. "Such as?"
"Saving my life."
He looked up again with a grimace. "Naturally not. I usually throw my houseguests off the cliff. ~ Laura Kinsale

Terror made me cruel; and finding it useless to attempt shaking the creature off, I pulled its wrist on to the broken pane, and rubbed it to and fro till the blood ran down and soaked the bedclothes ... ~ Emily Bronte

Waiting for the operation, there was a gentle tap on the door.In came a strapping nurse. 'Good morning', she shrilled, whipped back the bedclothes, upped with his nightshirt, grabbed his willy, lathered furiously around it till it looked like the Eddystone Lighthouse in a storm, then shaved the whole area till it looked like an oven-ready chicken.
'Excuse me, nurse', said Looney, 'why did you knock? ~ Spike Milligan

I've tried so hard to stay away from you," he whispered one night, cuddling her while the moonlight made stripes across the shadowed hills of the bedclothes.
"Why?" Daisy whispered back, crawling over him until she was draped over the muscled surface of his chest.
He played with the dark cascade of her hair. "Because I shouldn't come to you like this until we're married. There's a risk - "
Daisy silenced him with her mouth, not stopping until his breath had hastened and his bare skin was as hot as a stove-plate beneath her. She lifted her head to smile down into his gleaming eyes. "All or nothing," she murmured. "That's how I want you. ~ Lisa Kleypas

When You Have Forgotten Sunday: The Love Story


-- And when you have forgotten the bright bedclothes on a Wednesday and a Saturday,
And most especially when you have forgotten Sunday --
When you have forgotten Sunday halves in bed,
Or me sitting on the front-room radiator in the limping afternoon
Looking off down the long street
To nowhere,
Hugged by my plain old wrapper of no-expectation
And nothing-I-have-to-do and I'm-happy-why?
And if-Monday-never-had-to-come -
When you have forgotten that, I say,
And how you swore, if somebody beeped the bell,
And how my heart played hopscotch if the telephone rang;
And how we finally went in to Sunday dinner,
That is to say, went across the front room floor to the ink-spotted table in the southwest corner
To Sunday dinner, which was always chicken and noodles
Or chicken and rice
And salad and rye bread and tea
And chocolate chip cookies --
I say, when you have forgotten that,
When you have forgotten my little presentiment
That the war would be over before they got to you;
And how we finally undressed and whipped out the light and flowed into bed,
And lay loose-limbed for a moment in the week-end
Bright bedclothes,
Then gently folded into each other -
When you have, I say, forgotten all that,
Then you may tell,
Then I may believe
You have forgotten me well ~ Gwendolyn Brooks

After dinner, at five o'clock, the crew distributed folding canvas cots to the passengers, and each person opened his bed wherever he could find room, arranged it with the bedclothes from his petate, and set the mosquito netting over that. Those with hammocks hung them in the salon, and those who had nothing slept on the tablecloths that were not changed more than twice during the trip. ~ Gabriel Garcia Marquez