Bruised Quotes

The best minds have their soft spots and sometimes feel somewhat bruised by the scant respect of logic. ~ Victor Hugo

He was a beautiful man with a beautiful soul. Something about the way he talked, the way he wrote, made me believe that he never quite felt like he'd belonged. Sure, he was rich and famous - he lived on a 60-acre horse ranch just outside of Lexington, for Christ's sake - but just knowing he existed, knowing that even someone as talented as him understood what it felt like to have a hungry heart, made me feel less lonely sometimes. And here he lay. Vulnerable. Bruised. Likely in more pain, even unconscious, than I could imagine. There are so many assholes in the world, I thought, not for the first time. Why do terrible things have to happen to people who try to shine a little light in the darkness? ~ Peter Styles

They are not brave, the days when we are twenty-one. They are full of little cowardices, little fears without foundation, and one is so easily bruised, so swiftly wounded, one falls to the first barbed word. To-day, wrapped in the complacent armour of approaching middle age, the infinitesimal pricks of day by day brush one but lightly and are soon forgotten, but then - how a careless word would linger, becoming a fiery stigma, and how a look, a glance over a shoulder, branded themselves as things eternal. ~ Daphne Du Maurier

I think a lover, when broken, is given a gift
not a scar, not a poem, not a rhyme
(unless it fits.)
I think as humans, we see a set of hues
but when wounded, we see something more:
deeper shades of hurt and worry,
colors never seen before.
Because I can't imagine a child
could see the same black as a widower,
and I don't think healthy hearts
know the true meaning of blue.
When children close their eyes,
they see a color they call empty.
But in the eyelids of the bruised,
the empty black's a crowded room. ~ Katya Polo

Her blouse, and he saw the bruised imprints of two fingers. Just then a gang of blacks came out from among the trees carrying the wounded man on a rough stretcher. "Romantic, isn't it?" Sheldon sneered, following Joan's startled gaze. "And now I'll have to play surgeon and doctor him up. Funny, this twentieth-century ~ Jack London

That's life. We all go through the tractor blades now and then. We all get bruised, and we all get cut. Sometimes the blade cuts deep. The lucky ones come through with a few scratches, a little blood, but even that isn't the most important thing. The most important thing is having someone there to scoop you up, to hold you tight, and to tell you everything is all right. ~ Vicki Myron

Why did people think they could be alone? Everyone you loved or hated or touched or who made you tremble or bruised you - they were always there, ready to enter and take over the room. It didn't matter at all if you opened the door or not. They came rushing in. They knew the way, knew how to make themselves at home. ~ Benjamin Alire Saenz

The Viscount stepped into the room. "Came to see if you was dead," he said. "Laid Pom odds you weren't."
Lethbridge passed his hand across his eyes. "I'm not," he replied in a faint voice.
"No. I'm sorry," said the Viscount simply. He wandered over to the table and sat down. "Horry said she killed you, Pom said So she might, I said No. Nonsense."
Lethbridge still holding a hand to his aching head tried to pull himself together. "Did you?" he said. His eyes ran over his self invited guest. "I see. Let me assure you once more that I am very much alive."
"Well I wish you'd put your wig on," complained the Viscount. "What I want to know is why did Horry hit you on the head with a poker?"
Lethbridge gingerly felt his bruised scalp. "With a poker was it? Pray ask her, though I doubt if she will tell you."
"You shouldn't keep the front door open," said the Viscount. "What's to stop people coming in and hitting you over the head? It's preposterous."
"I wish you'd go home," said Lethbridge wearily.
The Viscount surveyed the supper-table with a knowing eye.
"Card-party?" he inquired. ~ Georgette Heyer

And so this young one, this young one whom I had so loved, I had to forsake, no matter how broken my heart, no matter how lonely my soul, no matter how bruised my intellect and spirit. ~ Anne Rice

The mind of the scholar, if you would have it large and liberal, should come in contact with other minds. It is better that his armor should be somewhat bruised by rude encounters even, than hang forever rusting on the wall. ~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Give me the strongest cheese, the one that stinks best;
and I want the good wine, the swirl in crystal
surrendering the bruised scent of blackberries,
or cherries, the rich spurt in the back
of the throat, the holding it there before swallowing.
Give me the lover who yanks open the door
of his house and presses me to the wall
in the dim hallway, and keeps me there until I'm drenched
and shaking, whose kisses arrive by the boatload
and begin their delicious diaspora
through the cities and small towns of my body.
To hell with the saints, with martyrs
of my childhood meant to instruct me
in the power of endurance and faith,
to hell with the next world and its pallid angels
swooning and sighing like Victorian girls.
I want this world. I want to walk into
the ocean and feel it trying to drag me along
like I'm nothing but a broken bit of scratched glass,
and I want to resist it. I want to go
staggering and flailing my way
through the bars and back rooms,
through the gleaming hotels and weedy
lots of abandoned sunflowers and the parks
where dogs are let off their leashes
in spite of the signs, where they sniff each
other and roll together in the grass, I want to
lie down somewhere and suffer for love until
it nearly kills me, and then I want to get up again
and put on that little black dress and wait
for you, yes you, to come over here ~ Kim Addonizio

Arms and legs thrashing. The hammer of blood.
I'm coming, says Jude.
And holds her breath. Orgasm is brief, nonviolent.
What color? I say
Devastating blue, she says. The pale blue eyes of a murdered boy.
Very nice.
You remembered, she says.
Jude comes in colors. How could I forget. Trembling blond orgasms that seem to piss her off and rare pink orgasms that never end. Chemical red orgasms that fill her with guilt and perfect orgasms black as fresh earth. Orgasms shadowy and gray that may or may not cause her to weep and orgasms the color of bruised skin, orgasms that fade from purple to yellow and remain visible for days. ~ Will Christopher Baer

I have found that the platonic affection
in friendships and familial
love for children can be relied upon
with certainty to lift the bruised soul
and repair the wounded spirit ~ Maya Angelou

His great carved wooden head was marked with a black eye that was more yellow than black and from this spectacular bed of bruised flesh the eye itself, sand irritated, bloodshot, as wild as a currawong's, stared out at a landscape in which the tops of fences protruded from windswept sand. ~ Peter Carey

Disappointment came to me, and booted me, and bruised and hurt me, but that's how people grow up. ~ Steven Morrissey

Do you call yourselves Christians? Does then the religion of Him whom you call your Savior inspire your spirit, and guide your practices? Surely not. It is recorded of him that a bruised reed he never broke. Cease, then, to call yourselves Christians, lest you declare to the world your hypocrisy. Cease, too, to call other nations savage, when you are tenfold more the children of cruelty than they. ~ Joseph Brant

Laughing, I took her hand back in mine. "I don't like seeing someone as hot as you bruised up, but I don't judge you fighting for money. We all do what we can. Look at me and my work. Not exactly a dream job, but I'm big, strong, and don't mind hurting people. Not a lot of jobs for a guy with my skill set. I was never good at school. I hate computers and have no patience with fixing things. I had the choice of being an enforcer or a gigolo."
Raven smacked my hand away. "Stop being charming, you dipshit."
"I'll try, but it just comes so naturally for me."
"Why not a gigolo?"
"I'm too shy."
Raven laughed. "That's too bad. I'd pay to fuck you."
"Of course, you would. I'd totally pay to have you give me a lap dance."
"You couldn't afford me."
"I don't know. I've been saving up for something special. This could be it. ~ Bijou Hunter

A bit reluctantly, trying to leave my bruised ego behind, I was warming to the Appalachian idea.
Bourbon and branch water. Dulcimer music. Wildflowers in jelly jars. Biscuits and country ham. That did have a certain charm. ~ Judith Fertig

That's life. It's a series of knock-down, drag-out fights with yourself and others that will leave you lying on the ground bruised and bloody and drooling all over your shag carpeting. But all that doesn't define you, your reaction to it does. Your environment doesn't make you who you are, your choices - your beliefs, do. ~ J.S.B. Morse

I am, of course, a rogue. A rapscallion. A musician. I would bring her nothing but poverty, shame, and bruised shins from my flailing limbs. She is the better for our parting. ~ Sarah Dessen

One of the things that sparked my interest in this is the case of Emmanuel Constant, who started a militia called FRAPH that was backed by the CIA. FRAPH killed thousands of Haitians in the early 1990s. Now while Constant is living comfortably in Queens, other Haitians are being deported. I wanted to see how those who have been bruised by people like that deal with coming face to face with their torturers. ~ Edwidge Danticat

Grace studied her hands as they moved across the meat. They looked much like any others the same age - veined, lined, the backs stained with tea-coloured spots. But they'd felt their way through the past seventy years in unique ways. Much of their work had been to the benefit of others, some not. She'd known them as still, listening hands, but also as hands that moved with urgency and madness. For a while they'd been careful nurse's hands. Then hands that cradled three babies and clapped, tickled and taught in turn. She'd bruised, burnt and cut them; some scars suggested badly. They'd dismissed, beckoned, pleaded over the years, and not always successfully. Their goodbyes were too many to recall. ~ Sally Piper

He had perhaps been bruised too often. The peace of the vast aloof scrub had drawn him with the beneficence of its silence. Something in him was raw and tender. The touch of men was hurtful upon it, but the touch of pines was healing. ~ Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

Jane knew from Dom's flinch that he'd been hoping for a different response, but she couldn't help it--she spoke the truth.
When he acted like a gentleman, as he had at dinner, she remembered exactly why she'd fallen in love with him. But when he reminded her of how he'd made assumptions and, worse yet, used those assumptions to decide her future for her, she couldn't bear it. Because he was still doing it, still demanding his way and dictating terms and ignoring her concerns.
She understood the courtly gentleman. It was the autocratic devil she had trouble understanding.
And she might as well admit it. She twisted her head to look up at him. "I don't know how I feel about you anymore."
The pain that slashed over his features only confused her further. Was he genuinely hurt by the thought that he'd killed her love? Or was his pride merely bruised because he hadn't been able to step right back into her life as if the past meant nothing?
"At least tell me the truth about Blakeborough," he said hoarsely. "Do you love him?"
"Why does it matter?"
His eyes ate her up. "If you do, I'll keep my distance. I'll stay out of your life from now on."
"You've been doing that easily enough for the past twelve years," she snapped. "I don't see why my feelings for Edwin should change anything."
"Easily? It was never easy, I assure you." His expression was stony. "And you're avoiding the question. Are you in love with Blakeborough?"
How she wishe ~ Sabrina Jeffries

The fatuous idea that a person can be holy by himself denies God the pleasure of saving sinners. God must therefore first take the sledge-hammer of the Law in His fists and smash the beast of self-righteousness and its brood of self-confidence, self wisdom, and self-help. When the conscience has been thoroughly frightened by the Law it welcomes the Gospel of grace with its message of a Savior Who came-not to break the bruised reed nor to quench the smoking flax-but to preach glad tidings to the poor, to heal the broken-hearted, and to grant forgiveness of sins to all the captives. ~ Martin Luther

Your eyes are hallow,
Your heart is bruised,
Your temple has been raided,
Your soul has been shattered,
Was he worth it? ~ Tanzy Sayadi

Snow is bruised lilac in half-lite: such pure solace. You speak like an aesthete sometimes, Sonmi. Perhaps those deprived of beauty perceive it most instinctively. So ~ David Mitchell

He has a heart so huge, it's kept pumping, kept going long past endurance - even though life has bruised it to a pulp. ~ Nalini Singh

They were bullyin' him, Hermione, 'cause he's so small!" said Hagrid.
"Small?" said Hermione. "Small?"
"Hermione, I couldn't leave him," said Hagrid, tears now trickling down his bruised face into his beard. "See
he's my brother! ~ J.K. Rowling

I suspect each of us uses the past to prop up the bruised present. It's a clumsy try for the comfort of normality. ~ Adib Khan

Sometimes I feel ... that my cross is heavy beyond endurance ... My heart seems worn out and bruised beyond repair, and in my deep loneliness I often wish to be gone, but God knows best, and I want to do every ounce of work He wants me to do. ~ Charles Studd

By the time she'd run to the edge of the crater, Bazine's mentor and once-friend was climbing over the edge, bruised and scratched up but mostly unharmed. ~ Delilah S. Dawson

I've broken my wrist, dislocated toes and shoulders, gotten stitches, you name it. However, the worst was a severely bruised femur. I got body checked into an open gate while playing hockey. The doctor couldn't believe I didn't shatter my femur. ~ Robbie Amell

New ideas, fragile as spring flowers, easily bruised by the tread of the multitude, may yet be cherished by the solitary wanderer. ~ Fred Hoyle

But ah, but O thou terrible, why wouldst thou rude on me
Thy wring-earth right foot rock? lay a lionlimb against me? scan
With darksome devouring eyes my bruised bones? and fan,
O in turns of tempest, me heaped there; me frantic to avoid thee and flee?
Why? That my chaff might fly; my grain lie, sheer and clear. ~ Gerard Manley Hopkins

How can that not leave you bruised somewhere? How can that
not turn you into the sort of person liable to break into little bits when your first love goes all wrong?
What came first, the music or the misery? Did I listen to music because I was miserable? Or was I
miserable because I listened to music? Do all those records turn you into a melancholy person? ~ Nick Hornby

The whole glittering nebula of shapes was framed by midnight colors - black, bruised blue, indigo, all textured into intricacy by clouds and the reachless vaults between them. Here, darkness was not simple; it hinted at structures and meanings, hidden activity and watchful eyes. Beacons flickered, miles away, then disappeared behind fog banks. Half-glimpsed ropes twisted and contorted their way up, down, and to every side, synapses reaching to contact the outlier towns and factories of Sere's hinterland. One or two of those ropes, if you followed them far enough, would emerge into sunlight at other nations' borders. ~ Karl Schroeder

The detonation was deafening, the blast a bruised gout of flame that drove back the airborne sand and the wind carrying it, and flung the attackers and their mounts like a god's hand, backward onto the road and off the sides. ~ Steven Erikson

-


Try to keep everything and keep
standing. In the tall grass,
ten thousand shadows. What's past,
all you've been,
will continue its half-life,
a carbon burn searing its way to heaven
through the twisted core of a pine.
At night, memory will roam your skin.
Your dreams will reveal the squirming world
under the lifted stone.
While you sleep, the sea
floods your house, you wake
to silt, long brown weeds
tangled in the sheets. You wake
in the bog, caked with the froth of peat,
stunted as shore pine,
growing a metre a century.

The bog bruised with colour,
muskeg, hardpan, much.
Matted green sphagnum
thick as buffalo fur.
Sinking into, bouyed
by spongy ground;
walking on water.

In time, night after night,
we'll begin to dream of a langsam sea,
waves in slow motion, thickening to sand.
Drenched with satiety we'll be slow
to rise, a metre a century.

Our brown bed is peat,
born of water, flooded,
burning with the smell of earth. ~ Anne Michaels

My heart has been bruised, and the scars will never heal because they will always be visible. Maybe they need to be visible as a reminder that I cannot go back."
~Love is respect ♥~ ~ Charlena E. Jackson

Great. A vampire with bruised feelings is a disaster waiting to happen. He's either terrorizing Will or moping around like Hamlet. ~ Jennifer Harlow

A wretched soul, bruised with adversity,
We bid be quiet when we hear it cry;
But were we burdened with light weight of pain,
As much or more we should ourselves complain. ~ William Shakespeare

The rock came loose, but Jake's satisfied grunt turned into a howl of outraged pain as a set of huge teeth in the next stall clamped into Jake's ample rear end. "You vicious bag of bones," he shouted, jumping to his feet and throwing himself half over the rail in an attempt to land a punch on Attila's body. As if the horse anticipated retribution, he sidled to the edge of his stall and regarded Jake from the corner of his eye with an expression that looked to Jake like complacent satisfaction. "I'll get you for that," Jake promised, and he started to shake his fist when he realized how absurd it was to threaten a dumb beast.
Rubbing his offended backside, he turned to Mayhem and carefully put his own rump against the outside wall of the barn. He checked the hoof to make certain it was clean, but the moment his fingers touched the place where the rock had been lodged the chestnut jerked in pain. "Bruised you, did it?" Jake said sympathetically. "It's not surprisin', considering the size and shape of the rock. But you never gave a sign yesterday that you were hurtin'," he continued. Raising his voice and infusing it with a wealth of exaggerated admiration, the patted the chestnut's flank and glanced disdainfully at Attila while he spoke to Mayhem. "That's because you're a true aristocrat and a fine, brave animal-not a miserable, sneaky mule who's not fit to be your stallmate!"
If Attila cared one way or another for Jake's opinion, he was disappointingly careful not to ~ Judith McNaught

MANIFESTO OF THE BRAVE AND BROKENHEARTED There is no greater threat to the critics and cynics and fearmongers Than those of us who are willing to fall Because we have learned how to rise With skinned knees and bruised hearts; We choose owning our stories of struggle, Over hiding, over hustling, over pretending. When we deny our stories, they define us. When we run from struggle, we are never free. So we turn toward truth and look it in the eye. We will not be characters in our stories. Not villains, not victims, not even heroes. We are the authors of our lives. We write our own daring endings. We craft love from heartbreak, Compassion from shame, Grace from disappointment, Courage from failure. Showing up is our power. Story is our way home. Truth is our song. We are the brave and brokenhearted. We are rising strong. ~ Brene Brown

This is what it felt like to have a broken heart. It felt less like a cracking down the middle and more like she had swallowed it whole and it sat bruised and bleeding in the pit of her stomach. ~ Wendy Wunder

As the soul leaves the body torn and bruised
As the mind deserts the body it has used.
I should find
Some way incomparably light and deft,
Some way we both should understand,
Simple and faithless as a smile and shake of the hand. ~ T. S. Eliot

When he stood trembling with fear before the captor, bruised from falls by the restrictive rope, made submissive by choking, clogs, cuts and starvation, he had lost what made him so beautiful and free ... One out of every three mustangs captured in south west Texas was expected to die before they were tamed. The process often broke the spirits of the other two. ~ J. Frank Dobie

It was while bent over, trying to breathe through the pain of bruised ribs, with the sensation of spit running down his cheek that Jason decided he was going to die. ~ Paul W.S. Bowler

pastors need themselves to have been mastered by the unconditional grace of God. From them the vestiges of a self-defensive pharisaism and conditionalism need to be torn. Like the Savior they need to handle bruised reeds without breaking them and dimly burning wicks without quenching them. ~ Sinclair B. Ferguson

I can't claim that I came out of it the winner. But I felt a lot like a kid who has finally found the guts to stand up to the schoolyard bully and tell him to take his best shot: bruised and bloody and thinking maybe that it hadn't been such a hot idea, but - what do you know? - still standing. ~ Aaron Elkins

An unaccustomed weed of jealousy sprang up in Jamie's heart, stinging like nettles. He stamped firmly on it; he was fortunate indeed to know that his son enjoyed a loving relationship with his stepfather. There, that was the weed stamped out. The stamping, though, seemed to have left a small bruised spot on his heart; he could feel it when he breathed. ~ Diana Gabaldon

Once when I felt a little bruised by censorship I sent through Herodotus's account of the battle of Salamis fought between the Greeks and Persians in 480 B.C., and since there were place names involved, albeit classical ones, the Navy censors killed the whole story. ~ John Steinbeck

The priest rubbed his bruised shoulder, the eyes within the feline mask glaring at Stonny. At Gruntle's words he faced the Daru again. 'These are not matters open to debate, Mortal Sword. You are what you are-'
'I'm a caravan guard captain, and damned good at it. When I'm sober, that is.'
'You are the master of war in the name of the Lord of Summer-'
We'll call that a hobby. ~ Steven Erikson

Mala faced her wall of faded cereus blooms. She was content. Oblivious to the dew that drizzled from the mudra, she rocked and dozed lightly. Scent, as though too shy for light, no longer trickled from the blossoms but Mala was not yet ready to leave the yard. Her eyes would flicker open and catch a glimpse of the day that was beginning to split the black sky apart. In that first orange light the flowers hung limp, battered and bruised, each one worn out from the frenzied carnival of moths. (140) ~ Shani Mootoo

When you die of sorrow it's as if you've broken all the bones in your body, bruised yourself all over, cracked your skull. That's sorrow. ~ Roberto Bolano

My lip healed. So did my head. My pride stayed bruised, though, and my confidence was fractured. Those injuries, the ones that didn't show, I would have to live with. ~ Robert McCammon

And wasn't this what she'd been after--this lightness that came galloping through, grabbing you by the waist and hauling you along with it? How could you not surrender yourself to it, even if you knew you'd end up sitting bruised in the dirt? She supposed there must be another way to experience that breathless rush of being alive--something inward, perhaps?--but she didn't know what it was or how to get there on her own. ~ Sharon Guskin

it was the kind of moon
that I would want to
send back to my ancestors
and gift to my descendants

so they know that I too,
have been bruised...by beauty. ~ Sanober Khan

Snow is bruised lilac in half light: such pure solace. ~ David Mitchell

You are the strongest man I've ever known. And you are kind. And you are good. You are bruised by this tournament, but you are not broken. ~ Jenna Moreci

I'm not even ready to be fairly bruised," he complained out loud, "I don't want to be killed dead. ~ Jaime Buckley

If peace comes from seeing the whole,
then misery stems from a loss of perspective.

We begin so aware and grateful. The sun somehow hangs there in the sky. The little bird sings. The miracle of life just happens. Then we stub our toe, and in that moment of pain, the whole world is reduced to our poor little toe. Now, for a day or two, it is difficult to walk. With every step, we are reminded of our poor little toe.

Our vigilance becomes: Which defines our day - the pinch we feel in walking on a bruised toe, or the miracle still happening?

It is the giving over to smallness that opens us to misery. In truth, we begin taking nothing for granted, grateful that we have enough to eat, that we are well enough to eat. But somehow, through the living of our days, our focus narrows like a camera that shutters down, cropping out the horizon, and one day we're miffed at a diner because the eggs are runny or the hash isn't seasoned just the way we like.

When we narrow our focus, the problem seems everything. We forget when we were lonely, dreaming of a partner. We forget first beholding the beauty of another. We forget the comfort of first being seen and held and heard. When our view shuts down, we're up in the night annoyed by the way our lover pulls the covers or leaves the dishes in the sink without soaking them first.

In actuality, misery is a moment of suffering allowed to become everything. So, when feeling miserable, we m ~ Mark Nepo

A bruised reed he will not break, and a smoldering wick he will not snuff out, till he leads justice to victory. Matthew 12:20 ~ Thomas Watson

Trustan's eldest son, Crispin, had been the one who'd chased him across the schoolyard that fateful day. While Maris hadn't really understood the insults they'd yelled, he knew the misery of being punched and slapped while being unable to strike back. Tired of it all, he'd been praying for death when out of nowhere a boy half his size had slammed into Crispin and knocked him away from Maris. Like some mythical hero, Darling had beat the bastard down and told him that he better never touch Maris again. Then he'd turned around, bleeding and bruised, and extended his hand to Maris. "Hi, I'm Darling Cruel. We should be friends." In that heartbeat, Maris had fallen head over heels in love with him. And he'd been that way ever since. He'd never met anyone who came close to Darling's loyalty, kindness, or generous spirit. Until Ture. For ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon

A bruised silence descended on the van. ~ Hillary Jordan

Your enemies call it comeuppance
and relish the details
of a drug too fine, how long
you must have dangled there beside yourself.
In the middle distance of your
twenty-ninth year, night split open
like a fighter's bruised palm,
a purple ripeness.

Friends shook their heads.
With you it was always
the next attractive trouble,
as if an arranged marriage had been made
in a country of wing walkers, lion tamers,
choirboys leaping from bellpulls
into the high numb glitter, and you,
born with the breath of wild on your tongue
brash as gin.

True, it was charming for a while.
Your devil's balance, your debts.
Then no one was laughing.
Hypodermic needles and cash registers
emptied themselves in your presence.
Cars went head-on.
Sympathy, old motor, ran out
or we grew old, our tongues
wearing little grooves in our mouths
clucking disappointment.

Michael, what pulled you up
by upstart roots
and set you packing,
left the rest of us here, body-heavy
on the edge of our pews.
Over the reverend's lament
we could still hear laughter, your mustache
the angled black wings
of a perfect crow. Later
we taught ourselves the proper method for mourning
haphazard life: salt, tequila, lemon.
Drinking and drifting
in your honor we barely felt a thing. ~ Dorothy Barresi

I would not willingly peel back the scar tissue protecting the deepest chambers of my heart and reveal the bruised hollows pooled with the blood of old wounds – the terror comes just thinking about it – but now, facing darkness I am left with no choice.
I love you, and because of that am going to try and raise the dead. – Louise Bell Closson, How It Ends ~ Laura Wiess

Roger lay in the dust of the road, bruised, filthy, and starving, with a woman trembling and weeping against his chest, now and then giving him a small thump with her fist. He had never felt happier in his life. ~ Diana Gabaldon

Stick around, though. I'm going to need all the help I can get to figure all this out."
"That's me! Mister Helpful. Captain Dependable."
"That sounds like a brand of adult diapers."
"This nickname needs some work. Lord Wonderful? The Incredible Hunk?"
"Please, for the love, go inside."
He laughed, then clomped up the steps and into the house.
"Reth," I shouted. "Reeeeeeeeth! Reth! Reth, Reth, Reth! If you don't come in the next thirty seconds, I'm going to do find David's golf clubs!"
"That tone and level of voice does nothing attractive you for, my love."
I jumped, startled, but of course Reth would be behind me, leaning heavily on the porch railing.
"You," I said, glaring. "Fix it. Now."
A look of disdain on his face, he leaned over and trailed his fingers across Lend's forehead. A single whispered word, and then . . .
Nothing.
"You liar!" I shouted, standing so abruptly that Lend rolled off my lap and down a step. As he hit the first one, color bloomed through him into his usual glamour and his eyes flew open in panic.
"He was asleep, Evelyn." Reth's lips were pursed, but I knew he was smiling gleefully on the inside.
"Lend!" I lunged forward, knocking into him, and we both rolled down the next two steps, landing in a heap on the gravel at the bottom. "You're awake!"
"Evie! I'm . . . wow, why am I so bruised?"
"Shut up," I said, grabbing his head and pulling him in for a kiss. It was freezing a ~ Kiersten White

Bastien rolled his eyes, "Calm down, Hauk. All you're going to do is hurt yourself."
He glared at Bastien. "If you want to see exactly how angry someone can get, tell them to calm down when they're already pissed off!" Bellowing, he tried his best to break free.
"Is that helping? I just gotta know."
"When I get loose, Cabarro, your ass is the first one I'm kicking."
"Oh good. Hope you get out soon. Been awhile since I had a good ass-kicking." Bastien made a kissy face at him.
"Says the man who's so bruised, he looks like a two-year old banana."
"Now that's just mean and hurtful."
"Telise! He's awake again."
She moved forward and kicked Hauk in the face. "I wouldn't do that," Bastien warned. "Don't motivate the Andarion for murder. It ain't going to work out well for any of us. 'Specially me, since mine's the first ass he's planning to come after. ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon

...he could feel hot tears coming to his eyes as the image of that night, outside the house as the November wind blew black leaves up off the ground and the sky turned colors like bruised flesh. ~ David Nickle

My impulse to pull away vanished. As I stood there, my shoulders became damp. I searched his expression, too jaded to believe in white knights. Happy endings were never handed out. You had to fight for them, earn them with bruised hearts and sacrifices. And I just couldn't do it right now. It hurt too much when it fell apart. "Don't make me promises", I whispered, and the earnest glow in his eyes tarnished. ~ Kim Harrison

Bloody noses had made them friends, but giving sound to the bruised places in their hearts made them brothers. ~ Gloria Naylor

My work is just beginning. The easy part is over - the initial capture. It will be far more challenging from this point on. I need to set the stage for her to bond with her captor -- me. I know it will take time for her to accept her fate. In the coming weeks she'll move through predictable stages, much like the stages of grief: shock, anger, fear, even bargaining. Eventually, she'll realize that she depends on me – requires me -- for her day-to-day, most basic needs. Then will come the final stage, a coup de grace that is to be savored and celebrated: acceptance. Her will to survive will break down her resistance and bring her walls crashing down. That's my favorite part - the giving over of her will.
I straighten the cuffs on my tailored shirt as I peer through the door's window pane. It's interesting to watch her as she shuffles across the floor on her knees, blindfolded - the chains on her feet and wrists impede her attempts to move about freely. Her wrists are bruised and bloodied from her attempts to free herself, her vision hampered by a blindfold. And yet she fights. My brave girl. ~ Suzanne Steele

There was a scream from inside.
Drawing his sword, Haung crept up to the door and slid inside, merging with the shadows. The source of the scream was illuminated by the conjured light-ball in the centre of the room. Haung took in the scene and felt all strength flee from muscles. His arms fell limp by his side and the tip of his sword struck the tiled floor with a bright clink. From the rafters, two small bodies hung, rope tight round their necks, blackened tongues swelling from their mouths and sightless eyes staring into the void. Below the bodies of the two children, a naked woman, bruised body and bloody face sat staring at him. Blood pooled from between her knees and it was clear to Haung what had happened to her, and to her young children. She screamed again and again. Her eyes were desperate and disbelieving. Her claw fingered hands tore at her cheeks again and again. Ragged lines of blood dripped down her face, tears of madness and grief. Haung stared at her, unable to move. ~ G.R. Matthews

She wanted to be where she could not see herself. She wanted to be where everything did not happen twice. She walked, following the deep caverns of diminishing light. She touched ice and was bruised. To watch she must pause, and so what she caught was never the truth - the woman panting, dancing, weeping - it was only the woman who paused. The mirror was always one breath too late to catch the breathing. ~ Anais Nin

'What about stress? Are you using your stress-management techniques when things seem to be getting on top of you?' 'Nothing is getting on top of me.' As I said it, a totally inappropriate picture popped into my mind. 'What are you feeling?' Jake's breath warm against my face, my bruised lips tingling from his kisses. 'Tell me what it feels like with me inside you.' ~ Josh Lanyon

When we lay together, she showed me her soul, and I showed her mine, and they were the same. As you can imagine, mine was battered and bruised, tarnished like ancient metal. She scrubbed it clean. I cannot deny my own soul any more than I can deny she held it in her hands for a time. ~ Carol Oates

He had been bruised, so to speak, so badly that the eyes of strangers lacerated him like salt. ~ James Baldwin

Now Doon seemed to care for his new friends more than he did for her. Every time she thought about him she felt a thud of pain, like a bruised place inside her. ~ Jeanne DuPrau

My soul was a burden, bruised and bleeding. It was tired of the man who carried it, but I found no place to set it down to rest. Neither the charm of the countryside nor the sweet scents of a garden could soothe it. It found no peace in song or laugher, none in the company of friends at table or in the pleasures of love, none even in books or poetry ... Where could my heart find refuge from itself? Where could I go, yet leave myself behind? ~ Wally Lamb

She'd lost so much in the process of becoming Zyne, but somewhere in the middle of it all, she'd found herself. Her heritage had shattered her illusions of a tranquil life. Destiny swept behind in a blaze, decimating everything she tried to hold on to. She was left alone, like the solitary tree standing after a forest fire. She'd thought she would crumble to ash, just another memory on the wind. But as blackened pieces of her cracked and fell away, she saw the truth. Under all that charred wreckage was the heartwood. Bruised. Scarred. But still good. Still capable of growth. When she looked in the mirror, she no longer saw a victim, but a survivor. ~ Gwen Mitchell

The Robot With Human Hair Pt2"

Said it's the coming of man
And I forget when you went away
Like a kick to the face
Not winning the race
(Lion, I've seen you from afar)
I've seen her in the car
Knowing that you deserve such more
Deserved to know you're free

Leave, I'm the director
Agree to the role of the pilot inspector
Breathe, pilot inspector
Feed off the role of the radar detector
Leave, I'm the director
Agree to the role of the pilot inspector
Breathe, pilot inspector
Feed off the role of the radar detector

Well, then, you said you could do this on your own
I'm sorry baby, I can't aid you
(And then you say, hands down, right now, I'll let this go)
You...
Well, now it's up to god to save you

Save you from all of those bruised,
bruised and battered wounds
(Wave right with a gun in his hand wave right)
Can you taste this blood
Dripping sweeter than...?
And over your eyes
And I, and I fall to both knees
Not to beg for your forgiveness
But to hate the word
And you speak

Take a right off these cliffs
The ground is staring at your wounded weapons
Wounded weapons
(And I can't believe that you're right)
You can bank the night on this its round
And glaring at your well
I get hyphy
Tell 'em I get hyphy

And this is where it ends

Well, then, ~ Dance Gavin Dance

Of all things upon earth that bleed and grow, a herb most bruised is woman. ~ Euripides

Jax swung his leg over the seat and stood over her. Sarah looked at him now, really saw the whole man. Was it her imagination, or did he look even bigger in the moonlight? More muscled, more domineering? Stronger, sexier, hotter? She shivered.

"You cold?" he asked her.

"No."

"Come over here for a sec, doll."

She stood stock-still, suddenly afraid.

"It's OK." He gave her that grin that made her stomach flip. "Before we talk, there's one thing we need to get out of the way."

"What's that?"

"Come over here and I'll tell you."

Slowly, she covered the distance between them and stood in front of him. "Tell me what?"

"This." Jax gently took her face in both of his hands, avoiding her bruised cheek, and leaned down. She gasped, then his mouth was on hers, and all thought stopped.

The kiss was unlike anything Sarah had ever experienced in her life. His lips were surprisingly soft, and when she balanced herself on his chest, she felt his incredible muscle under her fingertips.

The contradiction of hard and soft, of pure animal strength tempered by a tender touch, shocked her, moved her. Sarah felt her legs weaken with lust, and she swayed forward. He moved his hands off her face then, and Jax wrapped his arms around her shaking body. He held her close, held her up. Jax cradled her, and Sarah felt protected and secure for the first time in a long time. Maybe the first ~ Marysol James

One evening we were exploring the Baths of Caracalla together, while debating the question of merit or demerit in human behaviour and its rewards in life. As I was propounding some outrageous thesis or another in answer to the strictly orthodox and pious views put forward by him, his foot slipped and the next moment he was lying in a bruised condition at the bottom of a steep ruined staircase.
'Look at that for divine justice,' I said, helping him onto his feet. 'I blaspheme, you fall.'
This irreverence, accompanied by roars of laughter, apparently went to far, and thenceforth all religious arguments were banned. ~ Hector Berlioz

What shall I say, what word, what cry recall,
What god invoke, what charm, what amulet,
To make a sonnet pay a hopeless debt,
Or heal a bruised soul with a madrigal?
O vanity of words! my cup of gall
O'erflows with this, I have no phrase to set,
And all my agony and bloody sweat
Comes to this issue of no words at all.

This is my book, and in my book my soul
With its two woven threads of joy and pain,
And both were yours before they were begun.
Oh! that this dream would like a mist unroll,
That I might look upon your face again,
And hear your kind voice say: 'This was well done. ~ Alfred Bruce Douglas

Nor did I reflect that some herbs, though scentless when entire, yield fragrance when they're bruised. ~ Charlotte Bronte

I took you, hellion. You're all mine. Only I get to say whether you live or die."
"You're a monster," she whispers on a shaky exhale.
You have no fucking idea.
I withdraw the blade and tuck it away. I brush a lock of dark hair from her eyes, tucking it behind her ear, my fingers lingering on the delicate curve of her bruised and sliced neck.
"You're right," I whisper. "I am a monster." Roughly, I grab her chin, forcing her to look me in the eye.
"I'm your monster. ~ T.M. Frazier

A man-trained boy would have been badly bruised, for the fall was a good fifteen feet, but Mowgli fell as Baloo had taught him to fall, and landed on his feet. ~ Rudyard Kipling

The human heart is a wild and bruised beast and often acts accordingly. ~ N.M. Kelby

There was a hollow in her chest, but at the bottom of this emptiness a heavy weight pressed down and bruised her stomach, so that she felt sick. ~ Carson McCullers

So much held in a heart in a lifetime. So much held in a heart in a day, an hour, a moment. We are utterly open with no one, in the end -- not mother and father, not wife or husband, not lover, not child, not friend. We open windows to each but we live alone in the house of the heart. Perhaps we must. Perhaps we could not bear to be so naked, for fear of a constantly harrowed heart. When young we think there will come one person who will savor and sustain us always; when we are older we know this is the dream of a child, that all hearts finally are bruised and scarred, scored and torn, repaired by time and will, patched by force of character, yet fragile and rickety forevermore, no matter how ferocious the defense and how many bricks you bring to the wall. You can brick up your heart as stout and tight and hard and cold and impregnable as you possibly can and down it comes in an instant, felled by a woman's second glance, a child's apple breath, the shatter of glass in the road, the words 'I have something to tell you,' a cat with a broken spine dragging itself into the forest to die, the brush of your mother's papery ancient hand in a thicket of your hair, the memory of your father's voice early in the morning echoing from the kitchen where he is making pancakes for his children. ~ Brian Doyle

Wanting to Die

Since you ask, most days I cannot remember.
I walk in my clothing, unmarked by that voyage.
Then the almost unnameable lust returns.

Even then I have nothing against life.
I know well the grass blades you mention,
the furniture you have placed under the sun.

But suicides have a special language.
Like carpenters they want to know which tools.
They never ask why build.

Twice I have so simply declared myself,
have possessed the enemy, eaten the enemy,
have taken on his craft, his magic.

In this way, heavy and thoughtful,
warmer than oil or water,
I have rested, drooling at the mouth-hole.

I did not think of my body at needle point.
Even the cornea and the leftover urine were gone.
Suicides have already betrayed the body.

Still-born, they don't always die,
but dazzled, they can't forget a drug so sweet
that even children would look on and smile.

To thrust all that life under your tongue! -
that, all by itself, becomes a passion.
Death's a sad Bone; bruised, you'd say,

and yet she waits for me, year after year,
to so delicately undo an old wound,
to empty my breath from its bad prison.

Balanced there, suicides sometimes meet,
raging at the fruit, a pumped-up moon,
leaving the bread they mistook for a kiss,

leaving the page of the book carelessly ~ Anne Sexton

DYING IS NOT HOT
By Celia the Dark

Cool is no longer cool because cool is now hot,
and school isn't school if you are skipping.
Then the neighborhood is school and John,
the creepy dropout guy is teaching.

And it isn't cool because the cool kids stay in school,
where the other cool kids tell them them how hot they are
and they wouldn't want to miss a dance for cutting.

Kids who skip school were never cool or hot but
already dumped into the trashcan with leftover lunch pizza,
bruised into a locker, asking their parents for extra lunch money
so they can smoke and act like they never cared anyway.

And skipping school's not cool but it is school
because that's where they learn what the uncool learn
about life and dying. ~ Karen Finneyfrock

I followed my wanderlust. It bruised me sometimes, and took me to all kinds of highs. Now that my thirst is slaked, I get to start anew. ~ Elisabeth Eaves

Go ahead. Ask me who the father is."
He only smiled. "Do I look that stupid to you?"
She pushed back her short hair with a sigh. "He doesn't know, and you're not to tell him. In English, Apache or Lakota," she emphasized, covering all her bases.
He nodded. "What are you going to do?"
"I haven't the slightest idea," she confessed. "I only used the home-pregnancy test this morning, but I was pretty sure before then. I've got to find a place to live where Leta won't see me for a while. I can't risk having her tell Tate." She glanced at him. "Where were you all this time?" she wanted to know.
"Sitting calmly in a wing chair sipping coffee and trying to look invisible." He lifted his eyebrows at her disbelieving expression. "Somebody had to keep his head."
"There's an old saying that, if you can keep your head when everyone around you is losing theirs, you don't have a clue what's going on," she misquoted.
"Could be. But I'm not sporting a bruised face, like some I could name." He leaned forward. "Want to marry me?"
"Thanks, Colby," she said softly. "I really mean it. But it wouldn't be fair to any of us. Especially you."
He folded his arms and leaned back. "The offer doesn't have a time limit. I really do love children. ~ Diana Palmer

She ran because she had no other choice. She feared what would happen if she dared to stop. There was no time to think. There was barely any time for her to breathe. On her broken ankle, she ran. With her bruised arms, she ran. With her bleeding sides, she ran because she knew today was the day she was meant to die. ~ Judyann McCole

Racism is not about hurtful words, bruised feelings, political correctness, or refusing to call short people 'vertically challenged.' Racism is about the power to treat entire groups of people as something less than human - for the benefit of that power. That's why a Native American sports mascot is far from harmless. ~ Dave Zirin

You have seen what Eblis the accursed has seen, when he said "I am of fire, while Adam is of clay."
Cover up the Eblis-like eye for just a moment; how long will you see just the form? How long, indeed, how long?
Alas for that eye that's blind and bruised! Within it the sun seemed like an atom
Of an Adam who had no like. He saw nothing but a lump of clay.
- Mathnawi-ye ma'nawi III 2758–9 ~ Rumi