Breathe Light Into Your Body Quotes

Breathe light into your body - breathe light into your Heart - Breathe light into your mind - Breathe and OPEN! Breathe and remember that you are all LIGHT - Infinite LIGHT -Blessed LIGHT- open your heart and SHINE ON! ~ Angie Karan

Be gentle. Pay attention. Offer purposeful healing. Seek Equilibrium. Unfreeze, slowly. Stretch yourself out into the world. Let your eyes calibrate to this new light and notice how it caresses the lines and curves and soft and hard of you. Allow your mouth to twist and stumble around new shapes. Be so very sensory. Notice everything. From every angle. The way your bones feel. The way you orient to space and time. Invite your whole being into this new way of living, into the totality and wholeness of it. Let it be strange and uncomfortable and painful and stiff. Let it be magical and novel and unfamiliar and entirely wonderful. Follow the whispers where they lead. ~ Jeanette LeBlanc

when it is but it ain't

Some of us love badly.
Sometimes the love is the type of love that implodes.
Folds in on itself. Eats its insides.
Turns wine to poison.
Behaves poorly in restaurants.
Drinks. Kisses other people.
Comes back to your bed at 4am smelling like everything outside.
Asks about your ex. Is jealous of your ex.
Thinks everyone a rival.

Some of us love others badly, love ourselves worse.
Some of us love horrid, love beastly.
Love sick love anti light.
Sometimes the love can't go home at night,
can't sleep with itself, cannot contain itself,
catches fire, destroys the stomach,
strips buildings, goes missing.
Punches. Smashes heirlooms.
Tells lies. The best lies. F*s around.
Writes poems, impresses people.
Chases lovers into corners.
Leaves them longing. Sea sick.
Says yes. Means anything but.
Tricks the body.
Kills the body.
Dances wild
and walks away, smiling. ~ Yrsa Daley-Ward

Aligning your body clock to the new environment requires a phase shift. It takes one day per time zone to shift. Advance or retard your body clock as many days before your trip as the number of time zones you'll be crossing. Before traveling east, get into sunlight early in the day. Before traveling west, avoid sunlight early by keeping the curtains drawn, and instead expose yourself to bright light in the evening, to simulate what would be late afternoon sun in your destination. Once you're on the plane, if you're westbound, keep the overhead reading lamp on, even if it is your home bedtime. When you arrive in the western city, exercise lightly by taking a walk in the sun. That sunlight will delay the production of melatonin in your body. If you're on an eastbound plane, wear eye shades to cover your eyes two hours or so before sunset in your destination city, to acclimate yourself to the new "dark" time. ~ Daniel J. Levitin

Be kind to your sleeping heart. Take it out into the vast fields of light ... And let it breathe. ~ Hafez

The Words of an Angel

As I sit in a world of darkness
I look around to see no one
The cold wind has filled my soul
The rivers have poured inside my body
And the weight of the waters holds me back from seeing the light of day
What should I do?
I feel helpless,
Paralyzed in my own fears
And lost with no directions or roads to take
Suddenly, a felt a laser of energy bolt though my body
I yelled, "I'm so tired of feeling this way, I need help"
Suddenly, gold light appeared
And a man stood before me
You foolish man,
You choose this path the moment you chose to give up and wallow in your sorrows
I cannot help you
You need to help yourself.
There are no rivers in your soul holding you back from light of the world
The strength lies within you
Look in my eyes and tell me what you see
The lost man looked into the angels eyes and said, I see a man who gets his strength from helping others
He does not waste time focusing on useless matters
If you dig deep enough my child
You will find precious gift inside yourself
Gifts you never knew you had
Learn from others
Then help yourself
Once you helped yourself
Go out and help the world around you
Because many people feel as you do
The angel suddenly disappeared
The lost man was no longer lost
He was determined to waste no time
He was going to use his time to help others< ~ Stacey Chillemi

Layla!" Don bounded into her sight. The door behind her was still bolted. Where had he come from?
The starshot tumbled from her hands and clattered to the floor. She snatched it up and slipped it back inside her dress. Bill was gone.But Don was-Daniel was right where she wanted him to be.
"What are you doing here?" Her voice broke with the force of having to act surprised to see him.
He didn't seem to hear it.He rushed toward her and wrapped her in his arms. "Saving your life."
"How did you get in?"
"Don't worry about that.No mortal man, no slab of stone can obstruct a love as true as ours. I will always find you."
In his bare, bronzed arms, it was Luce's instinct to feel comforted. But she couldn't right then.Her heart felt ragged and cold.This easy happiness, these feelings of complete trust, every one of the lovely emotions Daniel had shown her how to feel in every life-they were torture to her now.
"Fear not," he whispered. "Let me tell you, my love, what happens after this life.You come back,you rise again. Your rebirth is beautiful and real.You come back to me,again and again-"
The light from the lamp flickered and made his violet eyes sparkle.His body was so warm against hers.
"But I die again and again."
"What?" He tilted his head.Even when his physique looked exotic to her, she knew his expressions so well-that bemused adoration when she expressed something he hadn't expected her to understand. "How do you-Never mind. ~ Lauren Kate

You do know, right,
that between the no-

longer & the still-
to-come

you are being continually
tattooed, inked

with the skulls of
everyone

you've ever loved - the you
& the you

& the you & the you - you don't
sit in a chair, thumb

through a binder, pick a
design, it simply

happens each time you
bring your fingers to your face

to inhale him back into you . . .
tiny skulls, some of us are

covered. You, love, could

simply tattoo an open
door, light

pouring in from somewhere
outside, you

could make your body a door
so it appears you

(let her fill you) are made
of light. ~ Nick Flynn

He does not know what caused him to break off from Weston and walk out. Perhaps it was when the boy said 'forty-five or fifty'. As if, past mid-life, there is a second childhood, a new phase of innocence. It touched him, perhaps, the simplicity of it. Or perhaps he just needed air. Let us say you are in a chamber, the windows sealed, you are conscious of the proximity of other bodies, of the declining light. In the room you put cases, you play games, you move your personnel around each other: notional bodies, hard as ivory, black as ebony, pushed on their paths across the squares. Then you say, I can't endure this any more, I must breathe: you burst out of the room amd into a wild garden where the guilty are hanging from trees, no longer ivory, no longer ebony, but flesh; and their wild lamenting tongues proclaim their guilt as they die. In this matter, cause has preceded effect. What you dreamed has enacted itself. You reach for a blade but the blood is already shed. The lambs have butchered and eaten themselves. They have brought knives to the table, carved themselves, and picked their own bones clean. ~ Hilary Mantel

You must make a choice," the Goddess said.

"Is that my only choice – to choose between men?" I asked. "I want what Mother had!"

"Your mother chose two men," she said with light laughter.

"No! She chose independence for her country. She chose power and freedom," I yelled.

Almost as if in response, a pulsating energy moved up from the ground into my bare feet. It thrummed up my body and radiated out in a bright light, first from my toes, then from my fingertips, then the top of my head.

"I choose power," I said. "I choose freedom. ~ Vicky Alvear Shecter

Since once again, Lord - though this time not in the forests of the Aisne but in the steppes of Asia - I have neither bread, nor wine, nor altar, I will raise myself beyond these symbols, up to the pure majesty of the Real itself; I, your priest, will make the whole earth my altar and on it will offer you all the labours and sufferings of the world.

Over there, on the horizon, the sun has just touched with light the outermost fringe of the eastern sky. Once again, beneath this moving sheet of fire, the living surface of the earth wakes and trembles, and once again begins its fearful travail. I will place on my paten, O God, the harvest to be won by this renewal of labour. Into my chalice I shall pour all the sap which is to be pressed out this day from the earth's fruits.

My paten and my chalice are the depths of a soul laid widely open to all the forces which in a moment will rise up from every corner of the earth and converge upon the Spirit. Grant me the remembrance and the mystic presence of all those whom the light is now awakening to the new day . . .

Over every living thing which is to spring up, to grow, to flower, to ripen during this day say again the words: 'This is my Body'. And over every death-force which waits in readiness to corrode, to wither, to cut down, speak again your commanding words which express the supreme mystery of faith: 'This is my Blood'. ~ Pierre Teilhard De Chardin

The Coming of Light
Even this late it happens:
the coming of love, the coming of light.
You wake and the candles are lit as if by themselves,
stars gather, dreams pour into your pillows,
sending up warm bouquets of air.
Even this late the bones of the body shine
and tomorrow's dust flares into breath. ~ Mark Strand

The Words, Kaladin. That was Syl's voice. You have to speak the Words!

I FORBID THIS.

YOUR WILL MATTERS NOT! Syl shouted. YOU CANNOT HOLD ME BACK IF HE SPEAKS THE WORDS! THE WORDS, KALADIN! SAY THEM!

"I will protect even those I hate," Kaladin whispered through bloody lips. "So long as it is right."

A Shardblade appeared in Moash's hands.

A distant rumbling. Thunder.

THE WORDS ARE ACCEPTED, the Stormfather said reluctantly.

"Kaladin!" Syl's voice. "Stretch forth thy hand!" She zipped around him, suddenly visible as a ribbon of light.

"I can't…" Kaladin said, drained.

"Stretch forth thy hand!"

He reached out a trembling hand. Moash hesitated.

Wind blew in the opening in the wall, and Syl's ribbon of light became mist, a form she often took. Silver mist, which grew larger, coalesced before Kaladin, extending into his hand.

Glowing, brilliant, a Shardblade emerged from the mist, vivid blue light shining from swirling patterns along its length.

Kaladin gasped a deep breath as if coming fully awake for the first time. The entire hallway went black as the Stormlight in every lamp down the length of the hall winked out.

For a moment, they stood in darkness.

Then Kaladin exploded with Light.

It erupted from his body, making him shine like a blazing white sun in the darkness. Moash backed away, face pale in the ~ Brandon Sanderson

When you study by listening directly to the teacher, it is like turning an attentive ear to our body, and that is Dahnhak. All scriptures are a kind of teachings, and the means to get to the Truth, but they are not the Truth itself. The awakened can feel the Truth. When this is translated into words and letters, they get to lose the heart and soul of the Truth.
from The Way to Light Up Your Divinity ~ Ilchi Lee

The Relics"

I slipped them into my friend's palm  -  
the tiny crucifix, and dove,
from off my mother's pendant watch  -  
and I asked her to walk them up through the brush
toward timberline, and find a place
to hurl them, for safekeeping. Now,
she writes, "I walked up the canyon at dusk,
warm, with a touch of fall blowing down the canyon,
came to an outcrop, above a steep
drop  -  far below, a seasonal
creek, green willows. I stood on a boulder
and held out my hand. I wished your mother all the
love in the world, and I sent the talismans
flying off the cliff. They were so small,
and the wind was blowing, so I never saw or
heard them land." My mother is where
I cannot find her, she is gone beyond
recall, she lies in her sterling shapes
light as the most weightless bone in the body, her
stirrup bone, which was ground up
and sown into the sea. I do not know
what a soul is, I think of it
as the smallest, the core, civil right. And she
is wild now with it, she touches and is
touched by no one knows  -  down, or
droppings of a common nighthawk,
root of bird's foot fern, antenna of
Hairstreak or Echo Azure, or stepped on by the
huge translucent Jerusalem cricket. There was
something deeply right about
the physical elements  -  atoms, and cells,
and marrow  -  of my mother's body,
when I was young, and now her deli ~ Sharon Olds

To combat the sin of self-sufficiency, we need a special kind of faith. It's what I call Starbucks Rest Room Faith. Almost every Starbucks store has a sensor that controls the light in the rest room. You can't just flip a switch, and you can't make it go on by just waving your arm inside the door. You have to put your whole body into that dark room and trust that the light will come on as you enter. Faith in God is a lot like that. He doesn't offer a safety net, He doesn't let us hedge our bets, and He doesn't give any guaranteed results ahead of time. We have to be all in before the light comes on. ~ Cynthia Ulrich Tobias

Shadows are where magic comes from. Your dark and dancing self, slipping behind and ahead and around, never quite looking at the sun. Fairyland-Below is the shadow of Fairyland, and this is where magic gets born and grows up and sows its oats before coming out into the world. The body does the living; the shadow does the dreaming. Before Halloween, we lived in the upper world, where the light makes us insubstantial, thin, scraps of thought and shade. We weren't unhappy - we made good magic for the world, sportsmanlike stuff. We reflected our bodies' deeds, and when our brothers and sisters went to sleep, we had our own pretty lives, our shadow loves, our shadow markets, our shadow races. But we had no idea, no idea how it could be under the world with our Hollow Queen. And now we shall never go back. ~ Catherynne M Valente

Instead of turning our heads from pain, we merge with it, neither holding on to it nor pushing it away, becoming instead an instrument of transformation. Recently, on my early morning drive to a health club, I saw a deer in the middle lane, trying to get up, but obviously crippled. Her eyes looked confused and frightened. As I drove by, I breathed in her pain and breathed out a blessing. I could feel a dark cloud swirling inside of me, but I also had an image of a deer running freely in the woods. I can never know if it helped her, but something loosened inside of me. Instead of turning away from her pain, I joined her. It was then I realized more deeply the power of Tonglin...

When you feel hurt, confused, lonely, or sad, breathe into your pain, feel it, be with it, then breathe out an image of clarity, light, and a blessing. This alone will start to change your life. ~ Charlotte Kasl

But there are times in life when a door opens and you are offered a glimpse of the light on the water, and you know that if you don't take it, that door slams shut, and maybe forever. Maybe you fool yourself into thinking that you had a choice at all; maybe you were always going to say yes. Maybe refusing was no more a choice than is holding your breath. You were always going to breathe. You were always going to say yes. ~ Graham Joyce

After Evie had finished her plate, Sebastian tugged her to the billiards table and handed her a cue stick with a leather tip. Ignoring her attempts to refuse him, he proceeded to instruct her in the basics of the game. "Don't try to claim this is too scandalous for you," he told her with mock severity. "After running off with me to Gretna Green, nothing is beyond you. Certainly not one little billiards game. Bend over the table."
She complied awkwardly, flushing as she felt him lean over her, his body forming an exciting masculine cage as his hands arranged hers on the cue stick. "Now," she heard him say, "curl your index finger around the tip of the shaft. That's right. Don't grip so tightly, sweet…let your hand relax. Perfect." His head was close to hers, the light scent of sandalwood cologne rising from his warm skin. "Try to imagine a path between the cue ball - that's the white one - and the colored ball. You'll want to strike right about there" - he pointed to a place just above center on the cue ball - "to send the object ball into the side pocket. It's a straight-on shot, you see? Lower your head a bit. Draw the cue stick back and try to strike in a smooth motion."
Attempting the shot, Evie felt the tip of the cue stick fail to make proper contact with the white ball, sending it spinning clumsily off to the side of the table.
"A miscue," Sebastian remarked, deftly catching the cue ball in his hand and repositioning it. "Whenever that happens, reach f ~ Lisa Kleypas

You know when I first met you, you scared the shit out of me." She pulls a "whoops" face and glances at the minister, who sighs because he knows us well enough to know this is just how we talk. Then she returns her focus to me and clears her throat. "You were so intense and determined to get to know me and I couldn't understand why you would want to, for a lot of reasons, reasons that you know about because you know me better than anyone." Her voice wobbles a little and she lets go of the paper and wipes her sweaty palm on her jacket. "But eventually you sort of wore on me." Her lips quirk and it makes me grin. "You became my light in my dark life and you made me feel so loved that I'd forget how to breathe. You were the only one who could make me laugh, smile, have fun, not give up. You were always there for me and somehow, through the crazy, intense years, you fought your way into my soul and ended up becoming my everything. You became my lifeline, the one person I could rely on no matter what, whether I was upset or pushing you away - you were always there for me. And I love you for it and for the amazing person that you are, for writing me songs and tattooing them on your skin, for wearing a ridiculous O ring on your finger," she says, trying to smile but I can tell she's getting overwhelmed by her emotions. "And for loving me enough not to let me give up, not matter how hard I fought. ~ Jessica Sorensen

But the test happens, whether we make it formal or not. We ask and you answer. We seek a human response. But more than that - you are my test, Elefsis. Every minute I fail and imagine in my private thoughts the process for deleting you from my body and running this place with a simple automation routine which would never cover itself with flowers. Every minute I pass it, and teach you something new instead. Every minute I fail and hide things from you. Every minute I pass and show you how close we can be, with your light passing into me in a lake out of time. So close there might be no difference at all between us. Our test never ends. ~ Catherynne M Valente

This was not the way Ian intended his wedding night should be, and as he removed his clothes by the light of the single candle burning across the room, he was determined that it would at least end as he intended. Elizabeth felt the bed sink beneath his weight and drew her whole body into the smallest possible space. He moved onto one side, leaning up on an elbow, and his hand touched her cheek.
When he said nothing Elizabeth opened her eyes, staring straight ahead, and in her agitated state, lying naked next to a man who she knew was undoubtedly naked as well, she was amass of disjointed emotions: Wordsworth's warnings tolled in one part of her mind while another part warned her that her own ignorance of the marital act didn't relieve her of keeping their bargain; she felt tricked somehow, as well.
Lying beside her, Ian put his hand on her arm, his thumb stroking soothingly across her arm, listening to her rapid breathing. She swallowed audibly and said, "I realize now what you expect from your part of the betrothal bargain and what rights I granted you this morning. You must think I am the most ignorant, uninformed female alive not to have known what-"
"Don't do this, darling!" he said, and Elizabeth heard the urgency in his voice; she felt it as he bent his head and seized her lips in a hard, insistent kiss and did not stop until he drew a response from her. Only then did he speak again, and his voice was low and forceful. "This has nothing to do with rights- ~ Judith McNaught

What was it like then to witness the transformation wrought by this construction? A geometric idea of precision suddenly imposed on a landscape, lived on and in for centuries. The land itself like a body submitted to military discipline. Or like a mind, tutored along certain acceptable pathways, so that finally all that lies outside certain avenues of thought begins to assume an air of unreality.
The land of course is still there. Only now it has receded into the background. It is what you see in your peripheral vision as you speed down the highway. The complexity of it, the intricate presence of it, has been reduced now to a single word, jungle. If once you breathed its breath or slept surrounded by its dark or wakened with its light, you no longer remember. You tell yourself life has improved. The jungle is in the past. To enter it is to stray from the path, or to be pulled down into some unknown depth. It is an exotic place, intriguing but also unpredictable, uncontrolled, threatening the well-paved order of existence. ~ Susan Griffin

Your soul is a seeker, lover and artist; shape-shifting through archetypal energy, between your darkness and fields of light, your body and spirit, your heaven and hell, until you land in the moment of sweet surrender; when you, as a dancer, disappear into the dance. ~ Gabrielle Roth

Too many times, I confused my melancholy for loneliness and sought comfort in the wrong arms. Too many times, I surrendered myself to my own illusions, trying to find something that I didn't understand. Always searching for an elusive affection, desire so pervading it was painful in its insatiability. Every time I held it close, it slipped through my fingers, my body resting in the depth of others only to find myself shivering in shallow water.

When you wrapped yourself around me, I knew it was different. A subtlety I had never known, in your embrace. Our restless, wandering souls came together, ideas and passions transforming into redamancy. I know it now – that elusive something I had always wanted – with you, every day, in every kiss, the way you touch me, in dark and light, in the illumination of all of the little things, with hundreds of no matter whats and the taste of forever. ~ Jacqueline Simon Gunn

Now that it's too late, now that I lie here dying on this bloodstained sand, I finally get it.

I understand, now.

I understand. I know what he meant. My father told me that to know
the enemy is half the battle. I know you, now. That's right.

It's you.

All of you who sit in comfort and watch me die, who see the twitch of
my bowels through my own eyes: You are my enemy.

Corpses lie scattered around me, gleanings left in a wheat field by a careless reaper. Berne's body cools beneath the bend of my back, and I can't feel him anymore. The sky darkens over my head - but no, I think that's my eyes; Pallas' light seems to have faded.

Every drop of the blood that soaks into this sand stains my hands and the hands of the monsters that put me here.

That's you, again.

It's your money that supports me, and everyone like me; it's your lust that we serve.

You could thumb your emergency cut-off, turn your eyes from the screen, walk out of the theatre, close the book . . .

But you don't.

You are my accomplice, and my destroyer.

My nemesis.

My insatiable blood-crazed god.

Ah, ahhh, Christ . . . it hurts. ~ Matthew Woodring Stover

Before she could say anything more, Sabella swung around at the sound of Noah's Harley purring to life behind the garage.
God. He was dressed in snug jeans and riding chaps. A snug dark T-shirt covered his upper body, conformed to it. And he was riding her way.
"Is there anything sexier than a man in riding chaps riding a Harley?" Kira asked behind her. "It makes a woman simply want to melt."
And Sabella was melting. She watched as he pulled around the side of the garage then took the gravel road that led to the back of the house. The sound of the Harley purred closer, throbbing, building the excitement inside her.
"I think it's time for me to leave," Kira said with a light laugh. "Don't bother to see me out."
Sabella didn't. She listened as the Harley drew into the graveled lot behind the house and moved to the back door. She opened it, stepping out on the back deck as he swung his legs over the cycle and strode toward her.
That long-legged lean walk. It made her mouth water. Made her heart throb in her throat as hunger began to race through her.
"The spa treated you well," he announced as he paused at the bottom of the steps and stared back at her. "Feel like messing your hair up and going out this evening? We could have dinner in town. Ride around a little bit."
She hadn't ridden on a motorcycle since she was a teenager. She glanced at the cycle, then back to Noah.
"I'd need to change clothes."
His gaze flickered over her s ~ Lora Leigh

If anything is terrifying, if there is a reality that surpasses dream, it is this:
to live, to see the sun, to be in full possession of manly vigor, to be full of health and joy, to laugh valiantly, to run toward the glory in front of you, dazzling, to feel in your chest lungs that breathe, a heart that beats, a will that reasons, to speak, to think, to love, to have a mother, to have a wife, to have children, to have the light, and all of a sudden, in the time it takes to let out a cry, in less than one minute flat, to tumble into an abyss, to fall, to roll, to crush, to be crushed, to see the blades of wheat, flowers, leaves, branches, and yet not to be able to stop yourself by grabbing any of them, to feel your saber useless, men underneath you, horses on top of you, to flail about in vain, your bones broken by some kick in the dark, to feel a heel making your eyes pop out of your head, to bite into horseshoes with rage, to suffocate, to howl, to twist yourself in knots, to be at the bottom of all this and tell yourself: Just now I was one of the living! ~ Victor Huge

The pain-body, which is the dark shadow cast by the ego, is actually afraid of the light of your consciousness. It is afraid of being found out. Its survival depends on your unconscious identification with it, as well as on your unconscious fear of facing the pain that lives in you. But if you don't face it, if you don't bring the light of your consciousness into the pain, you will be forced to relive it again and again. ~ Eckhart Tolle

Bruce has wrestled with his moods, and a psyche genetically prone to extremes, for most of his adult life. Decades of psychotherapy helped reveal and cast light on some of his most primal traumas and conflicts, but his raw moods, and occasional descents into full-blown depression, never quite went away. "You go through periods of being good, then something stimulates it," he says. "The clock, some memory. You never know. The mind wants to link all your feelings to a cause. I'm feeling that because I'm doing this, or because that happened."

Eventually Bruce realized that his worst moods had nothing to do with what was actually taking place in his life. Awful, stressful things could happen - conflicts, stress, disappointments, death - and he'd be unflappable. Then things would be peaceful and easy and he'd find himself on his knees. "You're going along fine, and then boom, it hits you. Things that just come from way down in the well. Completely noncasual, but it's part of your DNA, part of the way your body cycles."

Bruce knows his particular brain chemistry will never leave him completely in the clear. "You manage it, you learn and evolve, but another recognition you gotta have is that these are the cards you were dealt," he says. "These things are never going to be out of your life. You gotta be constantly vigilant and realistic about these things. ~ Peter Ames Carlin

When we recognize that, just like the glass, our body is already broken, that indeed we are already dead, then life becomes precious, and we open to it just as it is, in the moment it is occurring. When we understand that all our loved ones are already dead - our children, our mates, our friends - how precious they become. How little fear can interpose; how little doubt can estrange us. When you live your life as though you're already dead, life takes on new meaning. Each moment becomes a whole lifetime, a universe unto itself.

When we realize we are already dead, our priorities change, our heart opens, and our mind begins to clear of the fog of old holdings and pretendings. We watch all life in transit, and what matters becomes instantly apparent: the transmission of love; the letting go of obstacles to understanding; the relinquishment of our grasping, of our hiding from ourselves. Seeing the mercilessness of our self-strangulation, we begin to come gently into the light we share with all beings. If we take each teaching, each loss, each gain, each fear, each joy as it arises and experience it fully, life becomes workable. We are no longer a "victim of life." And then every experience, even the loss of our dearest one, becomes another opportunity for awakening.

If our only spiritual practice were to live as though we were already dead, relating to all we meet, to all we do, as though it were our final moments in the world, what time would there be ~ Stephen Levine

He halted abruptly, and this time she did slam into him, but at least it was his back absorbing the blow of her soft body. He could pretend to ignore it. "What have you got on your feet?" he growled.
"Shoes."
He looked down, his eyes accustomed to the inky black. Light-weight sneakers, already soaking wet from the damp undergrowth. "Christ, woman," he muttered.
"I didn't exactly get a chance to choose my wardrobe when they kidnapped me," she said.
Damned if he didn't like her. ~ Anne Stuart

She said, You cannot hide forever, though you may try. I've seen you in the kitchen, in the garden. I've seen the things you have sewn - curtains of dawn, twilight blankets and dresses for the sisters like a garden of stars. I have heard the stories you tell. You are the one who transforms, who creates. You can go out into the world and show others. They will feel less alone because of you, they will feel understood, unburdened by you, awakened by you, freed of guilt and shame and sorrow. But to share with them you must wear shoes you must go out you must not hide you must dance and it will be harder you must face jealousy and sometimes rage and desire and love which can hurt most of all because of what can then be taken away. So make that astral dress to fit your own body this time. And here are glass shoes made from your words, the stories you have told like a blower -with her torch forming the thinnest, most translucent sheets of light out of what was once sand. But be careful; sand is already broken but glass breaks. The shoes are for dancing, not for running away. ~ Francesca Lia Block

addition, it is important to continue lifting your weight off the feet and staying light on the seat by drawing the lats down and "resting" your weight on the riggers through the elbows. Keep your core firm, body angle set and arms loose, but straight; continue pushing the handles apart. All the while, apply pressure against the pins toward the blades through the elbows. Continue this through the immersion of the blade into the water and the transition into the Drive. ~ Gordon Hamilton

A strange illusion," I murmured shakily.
"Not an illusion," said Amar. His voice was brittle. "Didn't I promise you the power of a thousand kings?" He crossed the marble floor that had once been an ocean. Water glistened on his feet and a gray fish flopped helplessly in a corner.
He stood in front of me, his eyes hectic and alive. Even through my fury, I couldn't look away from him.
"You and I are the ground and ceiling of our empire," he said, his voice harsh and desperate, pleading and ruthless at once. "You and I can carve lines into the universe and claim all that we want. We need only share between ourselves. Don't you see?"
"All I see is your power," I said. "None of my own. All I see are my words and expectations thrown up against whatever it is that you choose to tell me--"
"--whatever I can tell you," finished Amar. "And as for your power, I was hoping you would ask that. It's time to practice."
"Leave me alone," I hissed.
"Your duties in Akaran will pay no heed to the whims of its empress."
I bared my teeth at Amar and he returned it with a half-grin.
"From now on, whatever concentration you use is yours alone. It is your power. Not mine."
"How would I know?"
"You'll feel it in your bones. Like blood singing to marrow."
I slid off the bed and when my feet hit the floor, something silvery trilled through my body, like light had seeped in and was rediscovering me. It was like being full for the first time. Li ~ Roshani Chokshi