Cloth Quotes

They never reminisced about the time they had to drive halfway back to Indianapolis because I'd left Dexter Poindexter, my terry-cloth penguin (threadbare, ravaged by love - as who amongst us is not) ~ Karen Joy Fowler

Again and again, the cicada's untiring cry pierced the sultry summer air like a needle at work on thick cotton cloth. ~ Yukio Mishima

Dear Night! this world's defeat; The stop to busy fools; care's check and curb; The day of spirits; my soul's calm retreat Which none disturb! Christ's progress, and His prayer-time; The hours to which high Heaven cloth chime. ~ Henry Vaughan

I always say that I'm an artist who works with pictures and words, so I think that the different aspects of my activity, whether it's writing criticism, or doing visual work that incorporates writing, or teaching, or curating, is all of a single cloth, and I don't make any separation in terms of those practices. ~ Barbara Kruger

Her little hands, Crumb. Her little paws, like a child's. She has no guile in her. And she never speaks. And if she does I hate to bend my head to hear what she says. And in the pause I can hear my heart. Her little bits of embroidery, her scraps of silk, her halcyon sleeves, she cut out of the cloth some admirer gave her once, some poor boy struck with love for her...and yet she has never succumbed. Her little sleeves, her seed pearl necklace...she has nothing...she expects nothing...' A tear at last sneaks from Henry's eye, meanders down his cheek and vanishes into the mottled grey and ginger of his beard. ~ Hilary Mantel

I am like a table cloth..sit ,eat,drink spread the dirt and through it..when you need it then wash it and do this again. ~ Sher E Yazdan

Hallo! A great deal of steam! the pudding was out of the copper. A smell like a washing-day! That was the cloth. A smell like an eating-house and a pastrycook's next door to each other, with a laundress's next door to that. That was the pudding. ~ Charles Dickens

It's a bit undignified to get into, but it's verra easy to take off"
"How do you get into it?" I asked curiously.
"Well, ye lay it out on the ground, like this" -he knelt, spreading the cloth so that it lined the leaf-strewn hollow- "and then ye pleat it every few inches, lie down on it, and row."
I burst out laughing, and sank to my knees, helping to smooth the thick tartan wool. ~ Diana Gabaldon

I love my privacy too, but at the end of the day, when it comes down to it with my woman, I call her a "special cloth alert." She's a rare breed and I love her and I don't ever want her to change because I think that's the balance of my relationship. ~ DJ Khaled

Call it 'supper'. When you start calling it 'dinner' you raise people's expectations. They'll think there's going to be salad and cloth napkins. If you call it supper no one will bat an eye if you just put out a casserole. Remember the nice one I used to make you kids with the noodles and the tunafish?" -- Celeste Haxton, Thea Gallas's mother ~ Kristen Panzer

Harrogate saw them going along Blount Avenue Sunday morning. They wore outfits all cut from the same bolt of cloth and in the church pew standing six across they looked like a strip of gaudy wallpaper cut into those linked dolls madfolk pass their time in fashioning. ~ Cormac McCarthy

I learned how to change a cloth diaper on a raccoon. I was maybe 8 or 9. ~ Nikki Reed

Ideality is truly an inter-being, a cloth between 'thoughts' or production, a field in which the different, factual Einfühlungen are the partial realizations of one Speech. ~ Maurice Merleau-Ponty

A family unity which is only bound together with a table-cloth is of questionable value. ~ Charlotte Perkins Gilman

Little girl, who gave you permission to--Oh!" She bit off her words the moment that she noticed how well I was dressed, to say nothing of the two guards attending me. Her expression transformed from sour to sweet with stunning speed.
"Ah, noble lady, I see that you have a keen eye for quality," she cried. "You won't find better cloth anywhere in Delphi--warm in winter, light in summer, tightly woven, and proof against wind and rain. And just look at those colors!"
I did. They were all drab grays and browns. I held the first cloth up to the sunlight. If that was what she called a tight weave, so was a fishing net.
"I want a cloak," I told her, tossing the cloth aside. "Something long and heavy. It's for him." I nodded at Milo.
"Of course, just as you wish, I have exactly what you want, wait right here," she chattered. "I'll bring out the best I have, something worthy of the noble lord." She raised her hands to Milo in a gesture of reverence before ducking back into her house.
"'The noble lord'?" the tall guard repeated, incredulous. He and his companion snickered. Milo looked miserable.
"Ignore them," I told him, speaking low. "I promise you, before today is over, you'll be the one laughing at them. ~ Esther M. Friesner

What the hell is this stuff?" he muttered, frowning at the oily spot on the linen cloth. "Pearlman slathered it on me this morning."
"It's macassar oil. Gentlemen use it to keep their hair neat. Nicholas used it," she added pointedly.
"Well, tomorrow he's giving it up. I smell like a rotten apple."
"You do not. And I think it looks rather nice."
He sent her an incredulous look. "I look like an otter. And everything I put my head against gets greasy."
"That's why someone invented the antimacassar," she told him, almost smiling.
"The-aha!" He laughed as he made the connection. "Of course. First they invent something stupid, then something ugly to make up for it. We live in a wondrous age, Annie. ~ Patricia Gaffney

I built, of blocks, a town three hundred thousand strong, whose avenues were paved with a wine-colored rug and decorated by large leaves outlined inappropriately in orange, and on this leafage I'd often park my Tootsie Toy trucks, as if on pads of camouflage, waiting their deployment against catastrophes which included alien invasions, internal treachery, and world war. It was always my intention, and my conceit, to use up, in the town's construction, every toy I possessed: my electronic train, of course, the Lincoln Logs, old kindergarten blocks - their deeply incised letters always a problem - the Erector set, every lead soldier that would stand (broken ones were sent to the hospital), my impressive array of cars, motorcycles, tanks, and trucks - some with trailers, some transporting gas, some tows, some dumps - and my squadrons of planes, my fleet of ships, my big and little guns, an undersized group of parachute people (looking as if one should always imagine them high in the sky, hanging from threads), my silversided submarines, along with assorted RR signs, poles bearing flags, prefab houses with faces pasted in their windows, small boxes of a dozen variously useful kinds, strips of blue cloth for streams and rivers, and glass jars for town water towers, or, in a pinch, jails. In time, the armies, the citizens, even the streets would divide: loyalties, friendships, certainties, would be undermined, the city would be shaken by strife; and marbles would rain down from for ~ William H. Gass

Christmas in Barbados

I miss being in Barbados in December,
That is a time I always remember,
The smell of varnish on the wooden floors
and the smell of paint on the wooden floors.
The smell of cloves as the ham was baked
And the smell of the rum in mother's fruit cake
The smell of coconut as she bake de sweetbread,
And the smell of the cloth, as she made up de bed ~ Charmaine J Forde

Britain also banned exports from its colonies that competed with its own products, home and abroad. It banned cotton textile imports from India ('calicoes'), which were then superior to the British ones. In 1699 it banned the export of woolen cloth from its colonies to other countries (the Wool Act), destroying the Irish woolen industry and stifling the emergence of woollen manufacture in America. ~ Ha-Joon Chang

I came to the conclusion that if a woman of the cloth could be so sure she was going to heave despite being such a massive asshole, God must be more lenient than I'd been led to believe. ~ Jessica Knoll

As the years passed, new myths arose to explain the mysterious objects the strangers brought from the land of the dead. A nineteenth-century missionary recorded, for example, an African explanation of what happened when captains descended into the holds of their ships to fetch trading goods like cloth. The Africans believed that these goods came not from the ship itself but from a hole that led into the ocean. Sea sprites weave this cloth in an "oceanic factory, and, whenever we need cloth, the captain ... goes to this hole and rings a bell." The sea sprites hand him up their cloth, and the captain "then throws in, as payment, a few dead bodies of black people he has bought from those bad native traders who have bewitched their people and sold them to the white men." The myth was not so far from reality. For what was slavery in the American South, after all, but a system for transforming the labor of black bodies, via cotton plantations, into cloth? ~ Adam Hochschild

My Love wakes in a puddle of sunlight.
Her hands asleep beside her.
Her hair draped on the lawn
like a mantle of cloth.
I give her my troth, for our love is whole
I sing her beauty in my soul ~ Roman Payne

I am no worshiper of cloth of any color, but I love the red flag and what it symbolizes to me and other Socialists. I have a red flag hanging in my study, and if I could I should gladly march with it past the office of the Times and let all the reporters and photographers make the most of the spectacle. ~ Helen Keller

You're not supposed to be here," Lillian told Westcliff when the contraction was over. She clung to his hand as if it were a lifeline. "You're supposed to be downstairs pacing and drinking."
"Good God, woman," Westcliff muttered, blotting her sweaty face with a dry cloth, "I did this to you. I'm hardly going to let you face the consequences alone."
That produced a faint smile on Lillian's dry lips. ~ Lisa Kleypas

Her room was darkened with the curtains drawn, but he could sense her inside, moving around quietly. Her heartbeat had turned languid; she must be preparing for bed. He cocked his head, listening intently. The closet door opened and shut, and there was the sound of running water. He held the goblet with such tense care his fingers began to ache.
When she had turned the faucet off, he said telepathically, "Tess, come to your window."
Startled, frozen silence. Then the languid pace of her heart exploded into a furious rhythm.
For a moment, when she didn't move, he thought she might disobey and end their tenuous relationship. Then he heard the soft rustle of cloth, and the creak of floorboards. When she appeared in the darkened window, she looked shadowy, like the half-hidden, opaque moon, her skin pale like pearls and hair lustrous with darkness.
She looked down at him but said nothing.
He held the goblet up to show it to her. "Are you sure you want to give this to me?"
Because it mattered. It mattered what she said. While the struggle made the offering sweet, it was the act of the gift itself that was the vital part of the covenant.
She didn't respond for long moments. He stood motionless as he waited, until finally she moved to put her hand to the windowpane.
"Yes."
He inclined his head to her, brought the goblet to his lips and drank.
Pure, undiluted power slid down his throat. Like the delicate skin at her wrist, it was warm ~ Thea Harrison

These inventions became, incidentally, increasingly revolting to me, for I was ineradicably marked by a touch of the old cavalryman's primitive evaluation. I admit that in the earliest times the horseman had a considerable advantage over the foot soldier. (On the other hand considerably higher expenses were involved.) But the advantage was balanced by the invention of gunpowder, so rightly lamented by Ariosto. It was the end of glorious armies like those led by Charles the Bold. Cavalry charges still took place of course – and I cannot consider it unfair for the infantryman to load and fire two or three times before he received his comeuppance – but after that, death came to the cavalry.

The old Centaurs were overpowered by the new Titan. I had seen my own conqueror at close hand when I lay bleeding on the grass. He had unhorsed me – a sickly fellow, a pimply lad from the suburbs, some cutler from Sheffield or weaver from Manchester. He cowered behind his rubble heap, one eye shut, the other aiming at me across the machine gun, which did the damage. In a pattern of red and gray, he wove an evil cloth. This was the new Polyphemus or, rather, one of his lowest messenger boys with a wire mask before his one-eyed face. This was how the present masters looked. The beauty of the forests was past. ~ Ernst Junger

In the lassitude after love Odysseus asks Circe, "What is the way to the land of the dead?"

Circe answers, "You are muffled in folds of heavy fabric. You close your eyes against the rough cloth and though you struggle to free yourself you can barely move. With much thrashing and writhing, you manage to throw off another layer, but find that not only is there another one beyond it, but that the weight bearing you down has scarcely decreased. With dauntless spirit you continue to struggle. By infinitesimal degrees, the load becomes lighter and your confinement less. At last, you push away a piece of coarse, heavy cloth and, relieved, feel that it was the last one. As it falls away, you realize you have been fighting through years. You open your eyes. ~ Zachary Mason

It rarely snows because Antarctica is a desert. An iceberg means it's tens of millions of years old and has calved from a glacier. (This is why you must love life: one day you're offering up your social security number to the Russia Mafia; two weeks later you're using the word calve as a verb.) I saw hundreds of them, cathedrals of ice, rubbed like salt licks; shipwrecks, polished from wear like marble steps at the Vatican; Lincoln Centers capsized and pockmarked; airplane hangars carved by Louise Nevelson; thirty-story buildings, impossibly arched like out of a world's fair; white, yes, but blue, too, every blue on the color wheel, deep like a navy blazer, incandescent like a neon sign, royal like a Frenchman's shirt, powder like Peter Rabbit's cloth coat, these icy monsters roaming the forbidding black. ~ Maria Semple

Speech is like cloth of Arras opened and put abroad, whereby the imagery doth appear in figure; whereas in thoughts they lie but as packs. ~ Plutarch

Nothing is what one thinks it is. Cloth is stone and circus is an art. There are no certainties. ~ Walter Moers

The language of distinction ceases to be available; is no longer available. We must search CD Rom for meanings which once were clear, but now are obscure. The words are too big for the narrow column of the contemporary newspaper. We are all one-syllable people now, two at most. So we mumble and stumble into our futures. But it is still our task and our reward to scavenge through the universe , picking up the detritus of lost concepts, dusting them down, making them shine. Latin was the best polishing cloth of all, but we threw it away. ~ Fay Weldon

In a shuddering voice her father kept asking the pale-faced woman - who looked like her mother and wore her mother's apron but couldn't be her mother - for forgiveness. If she had been dying every minute of every day, they might have been a happy family. The blood consumed every centimeter of apron cloth and Havaa was afraid the wound would become hers if she came too close. Her mother stirred, looked to her father, and wrapped her five fingers over his none. She opened her mouth, but he shook his head, told her to save her breath, and Havaa would always remember how he had shushed what might have been her good-bye so that she could breathe. ~ Anthony Marra

Tell me about Dunyasha," he said.
"She was carrying quality blades." Inej took the shears from the table of the vanity and began cutting fresh strips of cloth from one of the towels. "I think she may be my shadow."
"Pretty solid shadow if she can throw knives."
"The Suli believe that when we do wrong, we give life to our shadows. Every sin makes the shadow stronger, until eventually the shadow is stronger than you."
"If that were true, my shadow would have put Ketterdam in permanent night."
"Maybe," Inej said, turning her dark gaze to his. "Or maybe you're someone else's shadow. ~ Leigh Bardugo

Then why did she mind what he said? Women can't write, women can't paint--what did that matter coming from him, since clearly it was not true to him but for some reason helpful to him, and that was why he aid it? Why did her whole being bow, like corn under a wind, and erect itself again from this abasement only with a great and rather painful effort? She must make it once more. There's the sprig on the table-cloth; there's my painting; I must move the tree to the middle; that matters--nothing else. ~ Virginia Woolf

I knew now what my earlier passion for Harry had hidden from me. That although I had bedded him as a free woman I was as bound as if I were the slave. For it was not a free choice. I had wanted him because he was the Squire, not for himself ... And it was no free choice, because I could not choose to say "No." My safety and security on the land meant I had to keep my special, costly hold on its owner. I paid him rent as surely as the tenants who came to my round rent table with their coins tied up in a scrap of cloth. When I lay on my back, or strode round the room threatening him with every imaginable, ridiculous torment, I was paying my dues. And the knowledge galled me. ~ Philippa Gregory

It is over. The long Occupation that created Israeli generations born in Israel and not knowing another 'homeland' created at the same time generations of Palestinians strange to Palestine; born in exile and knowing nothing of the homeland except stories and news. Generations who posses an intimate knowledge of the streets of faraway exiles, but not of their own country. Generations that never planted or built or made their small human mistakes in their own country. Generations that never saw our grandmothers quarter in front of the ovens to present us with a loaf of bread to dip in olive oil, never saw the village preacher in his headdress and Azhari piety hiding in a cave to spy on the girls and the women of the village when they took of their clothes and bathed, naked, in the pool of 'Ein al-Deir.

The Occupation has created generations without a place whose colours, smell, and sounds they can remember; a first place that belongs to them, that they can return to in their memories in their cobbled-together exiles. There is no childhood bed for them to remember, a bed on which they forgot a soft cloth doll, or whose white pillows - once the adults had gone out of an evening were their weapons in a battle that had them shirking with delight. This is it. The Occupation has created generations of us that have to adore an unknown beloved; distant, difficult, surrounded by guards, by walls, by nuclear missiles, by sheer terror.

The long Occupation has succe ~ Mourid Barghouti

Maharajji would quote Kabir: It is easy to dye your cloth, but it is hard to dye your heart. ~ Ram Dass

And he told himself, reader, that it was the cloth that he desired and not the light. ~ Kate DiCamillo

'Calcutta is a pot of honey' means that in the first half of the nineteenth century, before the society became truly Victorian in feeling and tone, Bengal was a place to make money. The governor-generals returned to England rich men. It was a bountiful, lush, prosperous, easy place to make a fortune - in coal, in jute, and particularly cloth. ~ Susanna Moore

He made her feel out of kilter, wholly off-balance. The other night in his arms, it had felt so good to lean on him, if only for a while. To forget the load she had borne for so long now.
And she could see it, God help her, she could, an erotic vision that ran through her mind, filled her world; her hands running over his shoulders- dark and burnished as his face. His form, long and muscular and naked, all fluid masculinity as he raised himself above her.
Heat seemed to gather at the place between her thighs. Her breasts were swelling, as if her nipples sought to stab through every layer of stiff, starched cloth. She knew that if she looked down- there would be no hiding the sight of her nipples standing pebbled and hard beneath her gown. She wanted to clamp her hands over them; better still, she wanted him to clamp those strong, masculine hands over them both and... ~ Samantha James

By now you know: I come from another planet. But I will never say to you, "Take me to your leaders." Even I
unused to your ways though I am
would never make that mistake. We ourselves have such beings among us, made of cogs, pieces of paper, small disks of shiny metal, scraps of coloured cloth. I do not need to encounter more of them.
Instead I will say, "Take me to your trees. Take me to your breakfasts, your sunsets, your bad dreams, your shoes, your nouns. Take me to your fingers; take me to your deaths."
These are worth it. These are what I have come for. ~ Margaret Atwood

Sylph and Jodi return to my side, each carrying a cloth sack full of chickweed. I wrap my arm around Sylph's waist and give her a quick squeeze. "Lesson's over for today. I have something to discuss with Logan."
"Sounds serious." Jodi wiggles her brows at me.
"I think that's just Rachel for 'I need to go kiss my boy.'" Sylph laughs when I glare at her. ~ C.J. Redwine

I think it is important to acknowledge the extent to which the black middle class tends to rely on a kind of imagined struggle that gets projected into commodities like kente cloth for example on the one hand and images like the Million Man March. ~ Angela Davis

But now, sitting on this airplane on my way back to the life I went on to fashion after she left, I think of her differently. I see her so many ways: sitting back on her heels at the side of the bathtub, singing softly as she washes Sharla and my backs; watching at the window for the six o'clock arrival of our father; wrapping Christmas presents on the wide expanse of her bed; biting her lip as she stood before the open cupboards, making out the grocery list; leaning out the kitchen window that last summer to call Sharla and me in for supper. Most clearly, though, I see her sitting at the kitchen table, in her old, usual spot. There is a cup of coffee before her, but she doesn't drink it. Instead, she stares out the window. I see the sharp angle of her cheekbone, the beautiful whitish down at the side of face, illuminated by the sun. Her hands are quiet, resting in the cloth bowl of her apron. She sits still as a statue - waiting, I can see now; she was always waiting. -What We Keep ~ Elizabeth Berg

One camera recorded only the flattened grass through a cracked lens. The other, moving closer to the girl, showed her dupatta fly toward it, a close-up of the tiny embroidered flowers on the white cloth, and then a battering darkness.
For a few moments there was only a howling noise, the wind raging, and then a hand plucked away the white cloth and the howl was the girl, a dust mask on her face, her dark hair a cascade of mud, her fingers interlaced over the face of her brother.
A howl deeper than a girl, a howl that came out of the earth and through her and into the office of the home secretary, who took a step back. As if that were the only thing the entire spectacle had been designed to achieve, the wind dropped as suddenly as buildings collapse in 3-D models, and the girl stopped her noise, unlaced her fingers. The cameras panned, then zoomed.
In the whole apocalyptic mess of the park the only thing that remained unburied was the face of the dead boy.
"Impressive," said the home secretary. ~ Kamila Shamsie

Man makes his own history, but he does not make it out of the whole cloth; he does not make it out of conditions chosen by himself, but out of such as he finds close at hand. ~ Karl Marx

It's a good thing you're not my Story Weaver. You're easily distracted by the pattern of the cloth and can't see the quality of the threads." "Well ~ Maria V. Snyder

Wisdom isn't an old guy on top of a mountain in a loin cloth. It isn't an answer. It's a question. ~ Billy Connolly

An old book was a time capsule. When you opened the front cover, you opened a door to another world - a world accessible through a kind of looking glass made of hard-board and cloth. The author's voice resonated in the reader's head with the same words that had resonated in his own as he wrote them. He spoke to the reader from the past. What he had witnessed, experienced, learned, and discovered would live forever. You only had to turn a page to travel in time. ~ Stephen Parrish

In historical terms women, black people in general, were very attracted to very bright-colored clothing. Most people are frightened by color anyway...They just are. In this culture quiet colors are considered elegant. Civilized Western people wouldn't buy bloodred sheets or dishes. There may be something more to it than what I am suggesting. But the slave population had no access even to what color there was, because they wore slave clothes, hand-me-downs, work clothes made out of burlap and sacking. For them a colored dress would be luxurious; it wouldn't matter whether it was rich or poor cloth . . . just to have a red or a yellow dress. I stripped Beloved of color so that there are only the small moments when Sethe runs amok buying ribbons and bows, enjoying herself the way children enjoy that kind of color. The whole business of color was why slavery was able to last such a long time. It wasn't as though you had a class of convicts who could dress themselves up and pass themselves off. No, these were people marked because of their skin color, as well as other features. So color is a signifying mark. Baby Suggs dreams of color and says, "Bring me a little lavender." It is a kind of luxury. We are so inundated with color and visuals. I just wanted to pull it back so that one could feel that hunger and that delight. ~ Toni Morrison

O Christian, thou hast need to pray this prayer. But I think I hear you saying, "Is thy servant a dog, that I should do this thing?" So said Hazael, when the prophet told him that he would slay his master; but he went home and took a wet cloth and spread it over his master's face and choked him, and did the next day the sin which he abhorred before. Think it not enough to abhor sin, you may yet fall into it. Say not, "I never can be drunken, for I have such an abhorrence of drunkenness;" thou mayest fall where thou art most secure. Say not, "I can never blaspheme God, for I have never done so in my life;" take care; you may yet swear most profanely. Job might have said, "I will never curse the day of my birth;" but he lived to do it. He was a patient man; he might have said, "I will never murmur; though he slay me, yet will I trust in him;" and yet he lived to wish that the day were darkness wherein he was brought forth. Boast not, then, O Christian; by faith thou standest. "Let him that thinketh he standeth take heed lest he fall."
But if this need to be the prayer of the best, how ought it to be the prayer of you and me? If the highest saint must pray it, O mere moralist, thou hast good need to utter it. And ye who have begun to sin, who make no pretensions to piety, how much need is there for you to pray that you may be kept from presumptuously rebelling against God. ~ Charles Haddon Spurgeon

The whisper of wind's finger tips through the steady calmness of your hair is a poetic beauty that plays with my heart and nobility of your words leaves other speeches colorless. Looking into nature, everywhere in my sight I see you. In spring, in river, in sea, in flower, in tree, in forest, in valley, in plain, in mountain. Still, I'm gaga over you that you are whole love in one body and entire desire in a cloth. ~ Khosro Shakibaee

Hollin was still sitting with Levitas's head in his lap, a bucket now beside him; he was squeezing water from a clean cloth into the dragon's open mouth. He looked at Rankin without bothering to hide his contempt, but then he bent over and said, "Levitas, come along now; look who's come."
Levitas's eyes opened, but they were milky and blind. "My captain?" he said uncertainly.

Laurence thrust Rankin forward and down onto his knees, none too gently; Rankin gasped and clutched at his thigh, but he said, "Yes, I am here." He looked up at Laurence and swallowed, then added awkwardly, "You have been very brave." There was nothing natural or sincere in the tone; it was as ungraceful as could be imagined.

But Levitas only said, very softly, "You came." He licked at a few drops of water at the corner of his mouth. The blood was still welling sluggishly from beneath the dressing, thick enough to slightly part the bandages one from the other, glistening and black. Rankin shifted uneasily; his breeches and stockings were being soaked through, but he looked up at Laurence and did not try to move away.

Levitas gave a low sigh, and then the shallow movement of his sides ceased. Hollin closed his eyes with one rough hand.

Laurence's hand was still heavy on the back of Rankin's neck; now he lifted it away, rage gone, and only tight-lipped disgust left. "Go," he said. "We who valued him will make the arrangements, not you." He did not even look ~ Naomi Novik

Along the sideline at midfield was a large stage, decorated with swaths of purple cloth. Purple banners with gold lettering - Latin words? - hung from posts.

The movie Gladiator called. Wants its props back. ~ Kresley Cole

My friend Gordon Wheeler, who is a psychologist, explains that grief is the reminder of the depth of our love. Without love, there is no grief. So when we feel our grief, uncomfortable and aching as it may be, it is actually a reminder of the beauty of that love, now lost. I'll never forget calling Gordon while I was traveling and hearing him say that he was out to dinner by himself after the loss of a dear friend 'so he could feel his grief.' He knew that in the blinking and buzzing world of our lives, it is so easy to delete the past and move on to the next moment. To linger in the longing, the loss, the yearning is a way of feeling the rich embroidered texture of life, the torn cloth of our world that is endlessly being ripped and rewoven. ~ Dalai Lama XIV

Not everything that happens during the day is an open portending a good or evil development in the future, but everything has meaning to one degree or another, for the world is an ever-weaving tapestry from which no thread can be pulled without destroying the integrity of the cloth. ~ Dean Koontz

I think of something quite different from a snapshot. I know of a lot of poems, some very fine ones, that are like snapshots, but I'm more interested in poetry that is like an endless film, long stories, things that weave together many different strands, like a big piece of cloth, not like a photograph. ~ Robert Bringhurst

We can move water easily with plastic pipes. We can move shade around with nursery cloth like a tinker toy for animals and plants. Yet we have developed this necessity to grow food with chemical fertiliser because we have forgotten the magic of manure. ~ Joel Salatin

I remember being shocked when I came out from under the focusing cloth after a minute or two being submerged within that, at the startling green color of those ferns. ~ John Sexton

To know the self as the only reality and all else as temporal and transient is freedom, peace and joy. It is all very simple. Instead of seeing things as imagined, learn to see them as they are. When you can see everything as it is, you will also see yourself as you are. It is like cleansing a mirror. The same mirror that shows you the world as it is, will also show you your own face. The thought 'I am' is the polishing cloth. Use it. ~ Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

The Drunken Fisherman"

Wallowing in this bloody sty,
I cast for fish that pleased my eye
(Truly Jehovah's bow suspends
No pots of gold to weight its ends);
Only the blood-mouthed rainbow trout
Rose to my bait. They flopped about
My canvas creel until the moth
Corrupted its unstable cloth.

A calendar to tell the day;
A handkerchief to wave away
The gnats; a couch unstuffed with storm
Pouching a bottle in one arm;
A whiskey bottle full of worms;
And bedroom slacks: are these fit terms
To mete the worm whose molten rage
Boils in the belly of old age?

Once fishing was a rabbit's foot--
O wind blow cold, O wind blow hot,
Let suns stay in or suns step out:
Life danced a jig on the sperm-whale's spout--
The fisher's fluent and obscene
Catches kept his conscience clean.
Children, the raging memory drools
Over the glory of past pools.

Now the hot river, ebbing, hauls
Its bloody waters into holes;
A grain of sand inside my shoe
Mimics the moon that might undo
Man and Creation too; remorse,
Stinking, has puddled up its source;
Here tantrums thrash to a whale's rage.
This is the pot-hole of old age.

Is there no way to cast my hook
Out of this dynamited brook?
The Fisher's sons must cast about
When shallow waters peter out.
I will catch Christ with a greased worm,
And when ~ Robert Lowell

You can also transcend the seeds of your karma by becoming independent of it. The way to do this is to keep experiencing the Self, your spirit, by going into silent meditation and coming out again. This is like washing a dirty piece of cloth in a stream of water. Each time you wash it, you take away a few stains, and it gets a little cleaner. ~ Deepak Chopra

I must shape my own coat according to my cloth, but it will not be after the fashion of this world, God willing, but fit for me. ~ Arbella Stuart

My son, there is no reason to be distraught. The leeches will cleanse your wound." The friar scratched one of his enormous ears with the tweezers. "My insurance doesn't cover freaky friars or leeches." Troy sat up and swung his legs over the cot. A strip of cloth was wrapped around his gray tights, just above his left knee. A dark red stain had spread across the strip. "When my agent finds out you've kept me here, instead of taking me to a hospital, he'll cram a lawsuit up your butt so fast you'll be the one who's...distraught. ~ Suzanne Selfors

but within the next ten years Rossum's Universal Robots will produce so much wheat, so much cloth, so much everything that things will no longer have any value. Everyone will be able to take as much as he needs. There'll be no more poverty. Yes, people will be out of work, but by then there'll be no work left to be done. Everything will be done by living machines. People will do only what they enjoy. They will live only to perfect themselves. ~ Karel Capek

Though a new cloth makes you look new, when you see the old cloths, you remember the old life ~ Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

After 'Sesame Street,' it's a hyper-familiar world to me and I have this childlike ability to ignore the fact that I'm talking to scraps of cloth. Every country I go to, I see posters promoting the film in different languages. 'Los Muppets' - I love that! ~ Feist

Once Lotari reached his mate's side and gently kissed her hand, the crowd began cheering and whooping for them.
Bastion the dwarf appeared beside Stitch, a handkerchief extended. "Ye blubbering hoofer. Best keep that with you tonight, I doubt this'll be the first tears you'll be a shedding."
Stitch took the cloth and dabbed at his cheeks. "Glad to see you here, Bast."
"Never miss a hoofer gathering. There's always meat and grog. Who in their right mind turns a nose up to such a fare, eh? ~ Jackie Castle

The future was becoming past, everything vanished into the void, and reaching back to grasp for something, one came out clutching - what? A bit of string, scraps of cloth, shadows of the golden time. If one could only reverse it, turn the past into future, and catch it on the wing, on its journey across the always shifting line of the present ... ~ Rohinton Mistry

And I think, OK. So a dog isn't the most important thing. But a dog like Honey loves one person completely, unwaveringly, with perfect faith. That has to be more important than most things.
And Gabriel, I say. He has Gabriel too.
Gil says nothing but I know the answer. The answer is that Gabriel can't save Matthew any more than Gil can, or Honey. Or Jake. But we are all woven together, like a piece of cloth, and we all support each other, for better or worse. Gabriel is just a baby but eventually he will see the world and his father as they are: imperfect, dangerous, peppered with betrayals and also with love. ~ Meg Rosoff

Autumn breathes in shades of white; cloth of mist dressed fields comfortable. ~ Kristian Goldmund Aumann

A black belt is nothing more than a belt, a piece of cloth. Your ultimate goal should not be to get your black belt. Your ultimate goal should be to be a black belt. Being a black belt is a state of mind, a way of life. ~ Bohdi Sanders

Now the Fox Moth 83 was by no means an aeroplane designed for passenger comfort. It only had enough room for two seats, a stretcher and the doctor. What's more, it was held together with little more than wood, cloth, string and wire. So they set off at top speed, which was about 80 miles an hour, in the old money; about a four-hour trip it was. ~ Bill Marsh

I started crying when the group [therapy] was over because the last thing we did upset me - we all held a piece of the same cloth, leaned back and supported each other's weight. I couldn't do it. I bent my legs and elbows and stood very firm, yet . . .
I needed to feel supported, as i do in life, but i can't let myself be, and i pretend not to need that support. ~ Carol Lee

Frog-faced Lord Slynt sat at the end of the council table wearing a black velvet doublet and a shiny cloth-of-gold cape, nodding with approval every time the king pronounced a sentence. Sansa stared hard at his ugly face, remembering how he had thrown down her father for Ser Ilyn to behead, wishing she could hurt him, wishing that some hero would throw him down and cut off his head. But ~ George R R Martin

As they stood there together, Ekwefi's mind went back to the days when they were young. She had married Anene because OKonkwo was too poor then to marry. Two years after her marriage to Anene she could bear it no longer and she ran away to Okonkwo. It had been early in the morning. The moon was shining. She was going to the stream to fetch water. Okonkwo's house was on the way to the stream. She went in and knocked at his door and he came out. Even in those days he was not a man of many words. He just carried her into his bed and in the darkness began to feel around her waist for the loose end of her cloth. ~ Chinua Achebe

He's not dead," I spoke up. "The last we heard, he still lived."

"He did?" Simus asked, then let his eyes slide over to Keir. "Losing your touch?"

A cry of outrage filled the tent. I grabbed at the blanket, as Keir stood, sword in hand. Simus had two daggers that appeared from nowhere. I looked at the privy entrance, to see Marcus standing there, waving my underthings in his fist and shaking them in the air. "Where did the likes of these come from?"

I jumped up and grabbed for them, but that scarred little man dodged me. "Those are mine!" I made another attempt, darting around the bed. Simus roared out his laughter and Keir got out of the way.

Marcus danced away again. "The Warprize accepts nothing, except at the hand of the Warlord!" His face was bright red, the scarring a dull white against it.

"Give me those!" I went after him again and this time managed to wrestle the cloth from his hand. Flushed and breathless, I shoved them behind my back and faced down Marcus, toe to toe. "You have no business - "

"Nothing, except at the hand of the Warlord!" Marcus roared out, spittle flying from his mouth.

"You bragnect! I bought them with his coin!"

Marcus blinked. Apparently it was an effective curse in their language, since it seemed to leave him speechless. His recovery was quick. "Could have asked Hisself or I."

I rolled my eyes, just imagining that conversation. ~ Elizabeth Vaughan

Mine. Kira had stood silently, embarrassed but proud, as the guardian examined the threading she had done. He made no comment, simply nodded and returned the small piece to her. But his eyes had been bright with interest, she could see. Each year following, he had asked to see her work. Kira always stood at her mother's side, never touching the fragile ancient cloth, marveling each time at the rich hues that told the history of the world. Golds and reds and browns. And here and there, faded pale, almost reduced to white, there had once been blue. Her mother showed her the faded places that remained of it. Her mother did not know how to make blue. Sometimes they talked of it, Kira and Katrina, looking at the huge upturned bowl of sky above their ~ Lois Lowry

Once you have a thick mixture, stop and use the cloth to strain the muddy water. It is this muddy water which contains the hair growing magic. This water should then be mixed with shampoo and applied to your head to help your hair grow. ~ Roc Marten

Tolkien disapproved of Lewis's Narnia books because they worked by analogy, taking an existing myth and retelling it with different names and circumstances, whereas he felt that you should make your own myth out of whole cloth. But it's not possible to read The Silmarillion without seeing how Sauron's fall mirrors Satan's. It's only a question of how you triangulate your relationship to your source material. ~ M.R. Carey

She looked like a hippie who'd been kicked to the side of the road maybe forty years ago, where she'd been collecting trash and rags ever since. She wore a dress made of tie-dyed cloth, ripped-up quilts, and plastic grocery bags. Her frizzy mop of hair was gray-brown, like root-beer foam, tied back with a peace-sign headband. Warts and moles covered her face. When she smiled, she showed exactly three teeth. ~ Rick Riordan

Shape your coat according to your cloth. ~ Thomas Nashe

I need to talk to one of the Zuulaman Blood," Andulvar said.
"They are gone," Draca replied.
"From Terreille, yes. But there must be some who are demon-dead. You could arrange this."
"They are gone," she repeated. "The Dark Realm wass purged of Zuulaman Blood."
Andulvar grabbed one of the chairs that surrounded the table to keep himself upright. "You purged Hell ?"
"No."
"Then... ?"
"The Prince of the Darknesss. The High Lord of Hell." Draca stared at him. "Grief wass the hammer they ussed to break hiss control. Rage wass the forge in which he sshaped hiss power into a weapon."
"So there's no one left."
"There's no one left," Geoffrey agreed. He looked at Draca. "If Saetan did what we think he did, there isn't a shard of pottery, a scrap of cloth, or a line from a poem, story, or song left that came from the Zuulaman people. There isn't any trace of them in any of the Realms."
Including the islands they came from, Andulvar thought, feeling sick.
"It's as if they never existed," Geoffrey said. ~ Anne Bishop

And what is it to work with love?
It is to weave the cloth with threads drawn from your heart,
even as if your beloved were to wear that cloth.
It is to build a house with affection,
even as if your beloved were to dwell in that house.
It is to sow seeds with tenderness and reap the harvest with joy,
even as if your beloved were to eat the fruit.
It is to charge all things you fashion with a breath of your own spirit,
And to know that all the blessed dead
are standing about you and watching. ~ Kahlil Gibran

Here I made this for you. 'Twas finished weeks ago. I should have known better than to expect your attentions when you had no further need of me." She thrust a scrap of cloth at him. "Here." He took it. It was a handkerchief, embroidered with the Montague crest. "Thanks." "You're welcome. Go choke on it. ~ Melinda Taub

They had a hard time miking me in my loin cloth, I mean, where were they gonna tape it? ~ Brendan Fraser

Stars poked through like holes in the cloth of the sky and shed no light on anything. ~ Elizabeth Wein

Is a one foot by one foot piece of cloth a blanket? What about if you rotate it all over your body throughout the night like it was Colorado and you were the continental US? ~ Jarod Kintz

Christ to Satan, we are cut from the same cloth, every one of us. And we have the choice to be in eternity anything we wish. Man or woman. Genius or idiot, and all between. Physical beauty means nothing. God sees the heart. Wealth is only a test of what we would do with it. It is a loan from God, as are our talents, a way to prove whether we will use them well or ill. The judgment is awaiting us. ~ Anne Perry

There is no beauty in the finest cloth if it makes hunger and unhappiness. ~ Mahatma Gandhi

The Khaddar of my conception is that handspun cloth entirely takes the place of mill cloth in India. ~ Mahatma Gandhi

The airplane is just a bunch of sticks and wires and cloth, a tool for learning about the sky and about what kind of person I am, when I fly. An airplane stands for freedom, for joy, for the power to understand, and to demonstrate that understanding. Those things aren't destructable. ~ Richard Bach

Gwen smiled and asked hopefully, "Is there coffee again this morning?"
Silvan put his book down and glanced absently at Gwen. His gaze dropped to her cleavage, and a single white brow shot up. He blinked several times.
"There certainly is," Nell said, circling the table.
She stopped behind Gwen and draped a linen cloth over her shoulders, so it tumbled from her neck like a bib.
"Peel yer eyes off the lass's breasts," Nell said sweetly to Silvan.

Gwen turned twenty shades of red, sneaked a hand beneath the bib, and tugged at her bodice, trying to jiggle them back down a little. Mortified, she devoted her attention to eyeing the medieval dining ware-plates and goblets made of heavy silver, a fat spoon and broad knife, and heavy blue bowls.

"She's the one who fluffed them up," Silvan protested indignantly. "I didn't mean to look, but they were ... so ... there. Like trying not to see the sun in the sky."
Nell arched a brow and circled round the table again.
"I hardly think 'twas ye she fluffed 'em for, was it lass?" Gwen glanced up and gave an embarrassed shake of her head. ~ Karen Marie Moning

ROSES UNDERFOOT

The sound of salaams rising as
waves diminish down in prayer,

hoping for some trace of the one
whose trace does not appear. If

anyone asks you to say who you
are, say without hesitation,

soul withing soul within soul.
There's a pearl diver who does

not know how to swim! No matter.
Pearls are handed him on the

beach. We lovers laugh to hear,
"This should be more that and

that more this,"coming from
people sitting in a wagon tilted

in a ditch. Going in search of
the heart, I found a huge rose

under my feet, and roses under
all our feet! How to say this

to someone who denies it? The
robe we wear is the sky's cloth.

Everything is soul and flowering.

---------------------------------

I open and fill with love and
other objects evaporate. All

the learning in books stays put
on the shelf. Poetry, the dear

words and images of song, comes
down over me like mountain water.


----------------------------------

Any cup I hold fills with wine
that lovers drink. Every word

I say opens into mystery. Any way I turn I see brilliance. ~ Rumi

These were gym towels. They were supposed to be thin and mean, the terry-cloth equivalent of coyotes. When you were sweating like a pig and couldn't feel the bottoms of your feet from exertion, you didn't want to pat yourself down with a Pomeranian. ~ J.R. Ward

Even Mahatma Gandhi - hardly a comfortable character - always wore a bowler hat with his loin cloth when practising as a barrister in London. ~ William Donaldson

Ambo opens his eyes and snaps to awareness - looking around wildly. He tries to move his hands, but he can't; his wrists have been bound to a wooden armchair. It takes him a moment to recognize it, to remember how he got there.

Arla is standing next to him, looking withered. Skin mottled and sweaty. Her eyes are swollen, and the cloth of the hijab has unraveled slightly. She whispers something to him, and it sounds like she's asking whether he's okay, but he can't make out the words.

He tells her to repeat herself. Louder this time, child.

'I said, what are we going to do? ~ Jonathan R. Miller

You think
of a woman, a favorite
dress, your old father's breasts
the last time you saw him, his breath,
brief, the leaf
you've torn from a vine and which you hold now
to your cheek like a train ticket
or a piece of cloth, a little hand or a blade
it all depends
on the course of your memory.
It's a place
for those who own no place
to correspond to ruins in the soul.
It's mine.
It's all yours. ~ Li-Young Lee

The Ulfric had waded into the pack with my blood in his hands. They surrounded him, touching him, caressing, begging for him to share. He dipped his lingers in the nearly empty cup and held them down for the wolves to lick.
Edward came to stand near me. He said nothing, just helped me put pressure on the wound, got more napkins from under the bar and a clean cloth to tie it tight. Our eyes met, and he just shook his head, the faintest of smiles playing on his face. Most people pay money for information. ~ Laurell K. Hamilton

The roar of the traffic, the passage of undifferentiated
faces, this way and that way, drugs me into dreams; rubs the
features from faces. People might walk through me. And what is
this moment of time, this particular day in which I have found
myself caught? The growl of traffic might be any uproar - forest trees or
the roar of wild beasts. Time has whizzed back an inch or two on its reel;
our short progress has been cancelled. I think also that our bodies are in truth
naked. We are only lightly covered with buttoned cloth; and beneath these
pavements are shells, bones and silence. ~ Virginia Woolf