Cotton Candy Quotes

Rabid's pink eyes lose their shimmer, hazy like cotton candy. Before the door closes he mutters, "Zombies in Toyland?"
Dad pauses shutting him out and exchanges a worried glance with Mom.
I giggle. "It's a game on my phone. Rabid beat my high score a few weeks ago." I smirk at my little advisor. "We'll play it again soon. I have to get my title back."
His eyes brighten. "Generous are you! Cookies, too? Rabid White hungry be. Always."
I laugh. "Yeah, always. I'll have Mom make you some cookies."
He grins, then hops away down the hall, looking more like a rabbit than a demented otherworldly being. ~ A.G. Howard

There was something special about a carnival at night. Bright lights pierced the darkness; the tinkling music of the merry-go-round provided the perfect background for the shrill calls of the carnival workers; the giggles of the people aiming fake rifles at fake ducks were full of contagious fun; the distant shrieks coming from the roller coaster and the top of the Ferris wheel filled the air; and a warm breeze carried the tantalizing aromas of cotton candy and hot buttered popcorn. ~ Marilyn Kaye

Now this greatest tent staled out hot raw breaths of earth, confetti that was ancient when the canals of Venice were not yet staked, and wafts of pink cotton candy like tired feather boas. In rushing downfalls, the tent shed skin; grieved, soughed as flesh fell away until at last the tall museum timbers at the spine of the discarded monster dropped with three canon roars. ~ Ray Bradbury

Today i solved a problem my mother knew nothing about," Estrella said. Her words twisted, each one sounding harder, like a knot tightening. "She still doesn't. I fixed it, and she had no idea. My mother, all our mothers, they think they're holding everything up, but we have it too. It's ours too. So forget what my nother thinks i should or shouldn't be doing because we're going and getting some damn cotton candy, okay? ~ Anna-Marie McLemore

I wondered how we looked to the rest of the world. Young and silly, probably. I often had the distinct feeling that strangers watched us with annoyance, teenage girls with cotton candy lives. They could think that - that we were frothy and carefree. Would they ever guess how strong we were from carrying each other? ~ Emery Lord

Teammates ... were fine things. Piling onto the bus before the game, edgy with shared nerves, egging one another on with the genial, meaningless phrase C'mon, you guys!, collapsing back into the same seats for the ride home - the sense of striving in accord had been a sweet part of high school. Possibly the sweetest. But the camaraderie had not survived graduation, or even the off-seasons. Her teammates, passing in the school corridors in winter or spring, were downshifted to nodding acquaintances who had once been close, that past connection floating off like cotton candy on the tongue. ~ Jean Hanff Korelitz

Seth was a wonderful kisser. He gave the kind of kisses that melted into your mouth and filled you with sweetness. They were like cotton candy. ~ Richelle Mead

I squeezed through a horde of gum-snapping girls I recognized as seniors from my school.
"He did not say that!"
"Yes, he did! And you wouldn't believe what she said!"
Please, someone tell me I wouldn't be that annoying if I had girlfriends.
"Sure, you will be."
I whipped around and nearly got a faceful of cotton candy. I moved the purple sugar cloud to the side and glared at my mother. She wore a white, short-sleeved blouse and a patchwork skirt.
"You have to stop listening in on my thoughts without my permission, Mom. It's not cool."
She shoved a piece of cotton candy in my mouth to shut me up. "I didn't do it on purpose, Clarity. I was strolling along listening in to the crowd."
"Pick up anything interesting?"
"Actually, I did. That detective's son can't stop checking out your legs. He loves this little pink dress you've got on. So much so that he's actually mad at himself for it." She shook her head.
I blushed. "Did you happen to pick up anything important?"
"Like a man walking along thinking, 'I killed Victoria Happel'?"
"Exactly."
"No such luck. But dear, people don't wander around thinking about their biggest secrets all the time. The killer could be standing right next to me and all I might pick up from him is how he wants to buy some barbequed chicken."
"Have you seen Billy Rawlinson or Frankie Creedon?" I asked.
Distaste turned her mouth down. "No. Why are you looking for those scoundrels?"
Kim Harrington

I am a cynical optimist. Big opening weekends are like cotton candy. The films you will remember over time are the films that stick in the consciousness of the audience in a good way. ~ Robert Redford

The storm front had finally broken, tatters of cloud pulling apart like cotton candy and sprinkling the sky with the bright sugar grains of stars. ~ Leah Raeder

A precious performance, Blaine had called it, in that gently forbearing tone he used when they talked about novels, as though he was sure that she, with a little more time and a little more wisdom, would come to accept that the novels he liked were superior, novels written by young and youngish men and packed with things, a fascinating, confounding accumulation of brands and music and comic books and icons, with emotions skimmed over, and each sentence stylishly aware of its own stylishness. She had read many of them, because he recommended them, but they were like cotton candy that so easily evaporated from her tongue's memory. ~ Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

To seek approval is to have no resting place, no sanctuary. Like all judgement, approval encourages a constant striving. It makes us uncertain of who we are and of our true value. Approval cannot be trusted. It can be withdrawn at any time no matter what our track record has been. It is as nourishing of real growth as cotton candy. Yet many of us spend our lives pursuing it. ~ Rachel Naomi Remen

We stare down at the festival below us. I can hear the low pulse of a local band playing cover songs, the rustle of in the lake nearby, and the carrying laughter of kids our age eating cotton candy and flirting with summer loves. The sun has melted down to the horizon line, leaving trails of orange and pink in it's wake. In the distance, our hotel's roof peeks over the tree line. ~ Emery Lord

And he leans in, so carefully. Breathing
and not breathing and hearts beating
between us and he's so close, he's so close and I can't feel my legs anymore. I can't feel my fingers or the cold or the emptiness of this room because all I feel is him, everywhere,filling everything and he whispers
"Please."
He says "Please don't shoot me for this."
And he kisses me.
His lips are softer than anything I've ever known, soft like a first snowfall, like biting into cotton candy, like melting and floating and being weightless in water. It's sweet, it's
so effortlessly sweet.
And then it changes.
"Oh God - "
He kisses me again, this time stronger,
desperate, like he has to have me, like he's dying to memorize the feel of my lips against his own. The taste of him is making me crazy; he's all heat and desire and peppermint and I want more. I've just begun reeling him in, pulling him into me when he breaks away.
He's breathing like he's lost his mind andhe's looking at me like something has brokeninside of him, like he's woken up to find that
his nightmares were just that, that they never existed, that it was all just a bad dream that felt far too real but now he's awake and he's safe and everything is going to be okay and
I'm falling.
I'm falling apart and into his heart and I'm a disaster. ~ Tahereh Mafi

When the weatherman spoke he did so in smooth, rolling clauses, full of long words such as schoolmasters use when they are teasing a favored pupil, but he told them very little about himself. His talk was like cotton candy, that huge sweet bauble that fills the eye but leaves little in your belly when you've eaten it. ~ Peter Dickinson

Oh, I don't know. The human world has its charms. Cotton candy for instance."
"Yeah, and it's got plenty of problems."
"It's got you. ~ L.L. McKinney

But happiness is a difficult thing-it is, as Aristotle posited in The Nicomachean Ethics, an activity, is is about good social behavior, about being a solid citizen. Happiness is about community, intimacy, relationships, rootedness, closeness, family, stability, a sense of place, a feeling of love. And in this country, where people move from state to state and city to city so much, where rootlessness is almost a virtue ("anywhere I hang my hat ... is someone else's home"), where family units regularly implode and leave behind fragments of divorce, where the long loneliness of life finds its antidote not in a hardy, ancient culture (as it would in Europe), not in some blood-deep tribal rites (as it would in the few still-hale Third World nations), but in our vast repository of pop culture, of consumer goods, of cotton candy for all-in this America, happiness is hard. ~ Elizabeth Wurtzel

I looked over at Jason. "Want some?"
He grinned. "Sure."
I pulled some off, held it out to him. He opened his mouth slightly, a challenge in his eyes. I don't know why I'd thought he'd take it from me.
Finally, he said, "I don't want to get my fingers sticky."
Oh, right. I got really warm, but I pushed the cotton candy into his mouth--and couldn't help thinking about a bride shoving the cake into the groom's mouth.
Jason's lips barely touched my fingers as his mouth closed, and I pulled back, but I got that much hotter, had felt his breath skim across my knuckles. It was so intimate, so personal, like something you'd do with someone you had a serious crush on. Much more intimate than spooning him ice cream. With ice cream, there was the distance of the spoon, not to mention that it was cold.
"I haven't had cotton candy in forever," he said. "I'd forgotten how…sugary it is."
"It's pure sugar."
"I wonder who invented it."
"I think it was a dentist."
He laughed, a laugh that revealed his perfect smile, his perfect teeth. "I'll bet you're right. ~ Rachel Hawthorne

If everything were anything," Chance said softly, "the barriers would break down, and we'd all lose ourselves to chaos. And then there would be no cotton candy. ~ Jordan Castillo Price

It's easier to sell cotton candy than it is to sell broccoli to somebody, but the broccoli is better for you, and the same thing with a limited government. ~ Marco Rubio

Cotton candy is the perfect snack for when I'm in the mood to eat dry, scratchy fabric. ~ Demetri Martin

This is the moment I have dreaded, the very reason why we kept running, even when it seemed hopeless. We all seemed to believe if we kept running, we would never die. But what exactly had we been hoping to find in the end? A magical place where the infection hadn't spread? A castle surrounded by gumdrops and cotton candy? ~ Jen Naumann

I don't like how you smell like honey and cotton candy. I dislike your blue eyes that I don't get lost in. I really dislike the seventeen freckles on your face [ ... ] I haven't thought about you every day since we met that one night[ ... ] In your eyes I don't see the missing pieces I've been searching for. And I know this isn't crazy ... but I thing I hate you, Andie. ~ Brittainy C. Cherry

Adults are always telling young people, 'These are the best years of your life.' Are they? I don't know. Sometimes when adults say this to children I look into their faces. They look like someone on the top seat of the Ferris wheel who has had too much cotton candy and barbecue. They'd like to get off and be sick but everyone keeps telling them what a good time they're having. ~ Erma Bombeck

I have to have the cotton candy shipped in. ~ Meg White

Does he ever eat cotton candy for breakfast?"
He stepped around the counter to face us, lowered his gaze, and took a sip from the black mug in his hands.
"No," I said. "He's very much like the Big Bad Wolf. He eats little girls for breakfast."
He spoke from behind the cup, his voice deep and as smooth as butterscotch. "She's wrong. I eat big girls for breakfast. ~ Darynda Jones

Want your boat, Georgie?' Pennywise asked. 'I only repeat myself because you really do not seem that eager.' He held it up, smiling. He was wearing a baggy silk suit with great big orange buttons. A bright tie, electric-blue, flopped down his front, and on his hands were big white gloves, like the kind Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck always wore.

Yes, sure,' George said, looking into the stormdrain.

And a balloon? I've got red and green and yellow and blue...'

Do they float?'

Float?' The clown's grin widened. 'Oh yes, indeed they do. They float! And there's cotton candy...'

George reached.

The clown seized his arm.

And George saw the clown's face change.
What he saw then was terrible enough to make his worst imaginings of the thing in the cellar look like sweet dreams; what he saw destroyed his sanity in one clawing stroke.

They float,' the thing in the drain crooned in a clotted, chuckling voice. It held George's arm in its thick and wormy grip, it pulled George toward that terrible darkness where the water rushed and roared and bellowed as it bore its cargo of storm debris toward the sea. George craned his neck away from that final blackness and began to scream into the rain, to scream mindlessly into the white autumn sky which curved above Derry on that day in the fall of 1957. His screams were shrill and piercing, and all up and down Witcham Street people came to their windows or bol ~ Stephen King

Shoot the pasties off the nipples of a ten-foot bull-dyke and win a cotton-candy goat. ~ Hunter S. Thompson

If you wait until you got time to write a novel, or time to write a story, or time to read the hundred thousands of books you should have already read - if you wait for the time, you will never do it. 'Cause there ain't no time; world don't want you to do that. World wants you to go to the zoo and eat cotton candy, preferably seven days a week. ~ Harry Crews

All along the avenue, cotton candy stands, fun houses, and games of chance were tightly shuttered, like clowns without makeup. ~ William Hjortsberg

When I was 5, he said, my family forgot & left me at the fair. I wandered around in the bright sounds & smells of hot sawdust & cotton candy for hours. It was already too late by the time my parents found me.
I haven't been fit for decent society since. ~ Brian Andreas

"I don't know if I could deal with a two-armed kid, and now I have to have a kid with only one arm because he wanted to try and feed the gorilla cotton candy? I didn't even want this, but then we're sitting at a restaurant minding our own business when this little boy walks by wearing little checkered Vans, and he was walking and singing a song and dancing. He was dancing and all of a sudden I turned to Otter and DEMANDED he put a baby in me. But I'm a guy, and he's a guy and that's biologically impossible ... " ~ T.J. Klune

Apple, candy apple, funnel cake, cotton candy, and a root beer float. ~ Wendy Mass

You will learn about the twinned natures of fate and faith, at times spun together in threads fine as cotton candy, that taste just as sweet and evaporate just as quick. It is not right to say that you will have her, because you cannot truly possess another person. Nor should you even want such a thing. ~ Trevor Dodge

Your humor is your compass and your shield. You can hone it into a weapon or you can pull its strands out to make your very own cotton-candy blanket. You can't exist on a diet of humor alone, but you can't exist on a diet without it, either. ~ David Levithan

So we all ran around in mad, mindless, meaningless circles, as if we were in a cotton-candy eating contest where the grand prize was getting kicked in the face. We were oblivious to everything around us that no truly sane person would ever tolerate.
And we needed someone else to tell us to stop it. ~ Edward M. Wolfe

I placed some of the DNA on the ends of my fingers and rubbed them together. The stuff was sticky. It began to dissolve on my skin. 'It's melting
like cotton candy.'
'Sure. That's the sugar in the DNA,' Smith said.
'Would it taste sweet?'
'No. DNA is an acid, and it's got salts in it. Actually, I've never tasted it.'
Later, I got some dried calf DNA. I placed a bit of the fluff on my tongue. It melted into a gluey ooze that stuck to the roof of my mouth in a blob. The blob felt slippery on my tongue, and the taste of pure DNA appeared. It had a soft taste, unsweet, rather bland, with a touch of acid and a hint of salt. Perhaps like the earth's primordial sea. It faded away.
Page 67, in Richard Preston's biographical essay on Craig Venter, "The Genome Warrior" (originally published in The New Yorker in 2000). ~ Timothy Ferris

All writers start with a layer of truth, don't they? If not, their stories would be nothing but spools of cotton candy, a fleeting taste wrapped around nothing but air. ~ Jodi Picoult

I feel like cotton candy: sugar and air. Squeeze me and I'd turn into a small sickly damp wad of weeping pinky-red. ~ Margaret Atwood

I ate fiberglass insulation. It wasn't cotton candy like the guy said ... my tummy itches. ~ Steve Carell

You can eat a lot more vegetables than you can cotton candy. Bring on the veggies. Stay away from the fluffy carbs. ~ Stephen Furst

But that was life: Nobody got a guided tour to their own theme park. You had to hop on the rides as they presented themselves, never knowing whether you would like the one you were in line for ... or if the bastard was going to make you throw up your corn dog and your cotton candy all over the place. ~ J.R. Ward

Cotton candy is the most amazing form of caramelization ever invented by man. ~ Jose Andres

There will be a cauldron of spiced hot cider, and pumpkin shortbread fingers with caramel and fudge dipping sauces as our freebies, and I've done plenty of special spooky treats. Ladies' fingers, butter cookies the shape of gnarled fingers with almond fingernails and red food coloring on the stump end. I've got meringue ghosts and cups of "graveyard pudding," a dark chocolate pudding layered with dark Oreo cookie crumbs, strewn with gummy worms, and topped with a cookie tombstone. There are chocolate tarantulas, with mini cupcake bodies and legs made out of licorice whips, sitting on spun cotton candy nests. The Pop-Tart flavors of the day are chocolate peanut butter, and pumpkin spice. The chocolate ones are in the shape of bats, and the pumpkin ones in the shape of giant candy corn with orange, yellow, and white icing. And yesterday, after finding a stash of tiny walnut-sized lady apples at the market, I made a huge batch of mini caramel apples. ~ Stacey Ballis

Oh, aren't you the cutest? Yes, you are! You're the sweetest thing since cotton candy, Nan was saying. The pups yipped and crawled over each other in an attempt to lick the glass window where her hand rested. Before long, a cute red-haired employee named Greg, spotted Nan's interest and offered to bring the puppies to the viewing pen. ~ Chanda Hahn

A Rakshasi did not live here.
A princess did.
I was staring into the most dazzling garden I had ever seen. Cobblestone pathways meandered between rows of salmon-hued hibiscus, regal hollyhock, delicate impatiens, wild orchids, thorny rosebushes, and manicured shrubs starred with jasmine. Bunches of bougainvillea cascaded down the sides of the wall, draped across the stone like extravagant shawls. Magnolia trees, cotton-candy pink, were interspersed with coconut trees, which let in streaks of purplish light through their fanlike leaves. A rock-rimmed pond glistened in a corner of the garden, and lotus blossoms sprouting from green discs skimmed its surface. A snow white bird that looked like a peacock wove in and out through a grove of pomegranate trees, which were set aflame by clusters of deep orange blossoms. I had seen blue peacocks before, but never a white one.
An Ashoka tree stood at one edge of the garden, as if on guard, near the door. A brief wind sent a cluster of red petals drifting down from its branches and settling on the ground at my feet. A flock of pale blue butterflies emerged from a bed of golden trumpet flowers and sailed up into the sky. In the center of this scene was a peach stucco cottage with green shutters and a thatched roof, quaint and idyllic as a dollhouse. A heavenly perfume drifted over the wall, intoxicating me- I wanted nothing more than to enter. ~ Kamala Nair

Hunter was fidgety the entire class. Whether it was pen tapping or knee jiggling or stretching or twitching. He was like a five-year-old high on cotton candy. ~ Chelsea M. Cameron

Huge, dizzying, clumps and clusters of snow falling through the air, patches of white against an iron-gray sky, snow that touches your tongue with cold and winter, that kisses your face with its hesitant touch before freezing you to death. Twelve cotton-candy inches of snow, creating a fairytale world, making everything unrecognizably beautiful ... ~ Neil Gaiman

We should have known.
maybe we wanted cotton candy luck. maybe we
believed. what trash.
we believed like dogs
believe. ~ Charles Bukowski

If loneliness were a grape
the wine would be vintage
If it were a wood
the furniture would be mahogany
But since it is life it is
Cotton Candy
on a rainy day
The sweet soft essence
of possibility
Never quite maturing
from Cotton Candy on a Rainy Day ~ Nikki Giovanni

Advising the average person to not concern herself with calories but instead to pay attention to hunger triggers and eating foods rick in nutrients
well, it's a wonderful concept. I also love the thought of unicorns jumping over cotton candy rainbows. I'm even considering taking up basketball to see if it makes me taller. Come on already! Suggesting that someone who struggles with his weight does not need to think about calories is as risky as suggesting you not look at price tags the next time you're in the market for a car. ~ Chalene Johnson

Never in a million years would I want to live at Versailles with Marie Antoinette or anybody else. I hate to tell you this but I did not even like visiting Versailles. I found it just too ornate. It was like a complete diet of cotton candy, marzipan, and whipped cream. ~ Kathryn Lasky

The only feel-good situation I could hypothetically equate it to would be lying in a kiddie pool full of cotton candy while spinning around and around with my tongue hanging out! ~ Piper Faust

Phases of the Love Cloud
Week 1: A cloud of feelings form around you.

Week 2: It has the texture of cotton candy with an implied sweetness and suggestion of sensuality.

Week 3: It lightens to a blinding brightness, as if barely covering the sun.

Week 4: The texture become less permeable and hardens like sugar caramelized when making leche flan on too high a fire.

Week 5: The cloud darkens gradually and lightning blinks
intermittently like a firefly convention in Georgia.

Week 6: There's an eerie silence gathering around the cloud
which is growing way out of proportion.

Week 8: 200 MPH winds hit, torrential rains
and the roof comes off the house.

Week 10: There's not a cloud in the sky. The sun appears.

Weeks11-25: Inside you there's a storm of tears
that makes Noah's flood look a kiddie-pool.

Week 26: A new cloud of feelings form around you... ~ Beryl Dov

To value the tradition of, and the discipline required for, the craft of fiction seems today pointless. The real Arcadia is a lonely, mountainous plateau, overbouldered and strewn with the skulls of sheep slain for vellum and old bitten pinions that tried to be quills. It's forty rough miles by mule from Athens, a city where there's a fair, a movie house, cotton candy. ~ Alexander Theroux

A cotton-candy knockout, a strawberry sundae sweetheart, and a vanilla soft-serve misfit. We are the youth. And we live in a world where innocence is so short. ~ YellowBella

Not everyone can or will love you. You could run a cotton candy and unicorn farm and someone's gonna think you're an asshole. Everyone's fighting their own battle and it often has nothing to do with you. ~ Kathryn Budig

If I could pick my own death, it would be on a roller coaster that jumps the tracks and careens into a packed crowd at a cotton candy stand at a state fair. ~ John Waters

But if they ever saw a sunrise on a mountain morning/Watched those cotton candy clouds roll by/They'd know why I live beneath these Western Skies. ~ Chris LeDoux

It's the typical hungry-vagina fodder, written in the same cotton-candy verbiage: "To really wow your guy pal, wait until he's almost there" - this is written in italics, an editorial nudge-wink - "and then put him in your mouth for a mind-blowing climax." Tasha is always annoyed by the use of "him" in place of "penis." What if she didn't know any better? What if she thought "him" meant him? All of him? She imagines herself an anaconda of a woman, her jaw unhinged, swallowing her lover like a reptilian black widow. ~ Olivia A. Cole

Soda pop and cotton candy and every face you've never noticed. ~ Ainslie Hogarth

Lollypop
... the passion contained merely kisses
placed upon lips, neck and cheek
these young lovers of the castle
of which our fairytale speaks ... ~ Muse

If I dream that I'm directing, it's not a film, it's like a commercial for cotton candy, and I've got four feet of cotton candy all around me that I've got to break through, like a brick wall or a fortress. ~ Mike Birbiglia

By the way, could we all agree on the cash value of a tooth? I remember finding a shiny quarter under my pillow for my first tooth and being excited that I could buy a candy bar. ~ Jim Gaffigan

Don't hate me."

"Does anybody?"

"Kevin's old high school girlfriend."

"Because she's a slut."

Jenny beamed. "I didn't realize you knew Candy. ~ Nora Roberts

The sun, through the filter of the trees, glints green off the cells of her suit, outlines her soft curves. I'm overcome with visions of my father poring over his books, and the wet, verdant forest floor, and newts pausing over toxic yellow candy, and leaves flying up from the impact of Bryan's body hitting the ground. Another, confused part of me hears my father's voice calling the refs scum, trash, slime. With flashes of fury at Marisa, mixed with a sad, all-consuming longing that feels dangerously like love, I pluck her hands from my face and push her away. -from Fireseed One ~ Catherine Stine

Western Civilization was responsible for a paradigm shift in history. It created the industrial and scientific revolutions that enabled the birth of a transportation, communications and knowledge revolution unprecedented in the 5 billion year history of this planet. Unfortunately this revolution took place amidst a moral vacuum at the very top of the power structure. It is as if a three year old child had been given control over both a candy story and a shotgun. He was able to use the shotgun to get all the candy he wanted but he had no idea what to do next. Whenever somebody tried to tell him too much candy was bad for him, he shot the person who said that. ~ Benjamin Fulford

If I wasn't doing candy, I'd want to create the best rescue animal-shelter organization. Otherwise, the Jackson 5 and Michael Jackson were so much a part of my childhood, and Janet and I have become friends. So my second dream job would be backup singer for Janet Jackson! ~ Dylan Lauren

she came out - dancing around in a white shirt with nothing underneath, the rosy coins of her nipples visible under the thin fabric - asking for a wood saw and spackle, he'd been jumpy as a jackrabbit sniffing Easter candy. He could have looked in the bedroom when she left to sleep, to go to Brass and Bones, to go wherever sex-witch art-fairies go. She came back every day with packages from the Indian import store, bags from the pagan crystal shop, boxes that smelled like incense and old wood. But he didn't look because deep down he liked the mystery, that a woman had claimed a space in the house he'd designed, made it hers to reveal on her terms. ~ Kira A. Gold

Too often we rely on our eyes to see. ~ Tommy Cotton

As Arkwright and Whitney were the demi-gods of cotton, so prolific Time will yet bring an inventor to every plant. There is not a property in nature but a mind is born to seek and find it. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

A small crowd had gathered to gaze at the astonishing display of color: vivid blues; regal purples; soft, candy-floss pinks; strawberry reds; vibrant lime greens; sun-bright, buttercup yellows; rich oranges; and creamy, vanilla whites. Tilly's eyes were unable to take it all in, her mouth unable to suppress a smile of sheer delight. It was as if someone had poured a box of paints onto this one street, leaving nothing with which to brighten up the drab gray of the rest of the city she had just passed. ~ Hazel Gaynor

Bombast, an old Swabian name, has inevitably given rise to the idea that Paracelsus's bluster and arrogance lie at the root of the word "bombastic." One feels that it ought to be so, but it is not. Baum means "tree" in German (in the Swabian dialect it is rendered Bom), and Baumbast is the fibrous layer of a tree's bark. But in the sixteenth century "bombast" had also come to mean cotton padding, inappropriately derived from bombax, the medieval Latin name for the silkworm, and it is from this origin that the connotation of puffed up derives. ~ Philip Ball

My kids know there's no candy, no soda, until the weekend. Those are the days they get to indulge in their sweets. We're big on organic food. I'm not a diet guy; I don't believe in diets. I just believe in a great meal plan. ~ Donald Driver

For every nineteenth-century middle-class family that protected its wife and child within the family circle, there was an Irish ora German girl scrubbing floors in that home, a Welsh boy mining coal to keep the home-baked goodies warm, a black girl doing the family laundry, a black mother and child picking cotton to be made into clothes for the family, and a Jewish or an Italian daughter in a sweatshop making "ladies" dresses or artificial flowers for the family to purchase. ~ Stephanie Coontz

Our government, National and State, must be freed from the sinister influence or control of special interests. Exactly as the special interests of cotton and slavery threatened our political integrity before the Civil War, so now the great special business interests too often control and corrupt the men and methods of government for their own profit. We must drive the special interests out of politics. ~ Theodore Roosevelt

He was not her sole companion. She had her demons, too.

You can't run from them, as Lexi discovered. Changing cities doesn't help either; you carry them along inside you. You just wake up one day, fed up, and decide to snuggle with them instead. You invite them along as you go about your day, balancing them on your shoulder as you would a toddler, but with very strict conditions: You will not set fire to my hair. You will not take candy from strangers. You will not tie me up in chains while I sleep. You will behave.

And Lexi's demons, allowed to come close, sat on her shoulder. They waved to the angels perched on her other shoulder and struck up a conversation with Lexi.

'What's that noise?' her demons asked, sidling close to her ear.

'Oh, that?' Lexi massaged her temples. 'It's the air whistling through the hole in my heart.'

'You're afraid,' they taunted.

'I am,' she admitted. 'Afraid of the sky falling. Afraid of the tight-rope snapping. Afraid I can't dance well enough on the edge. Afraid there are no hands to steady my body. Afraid of hands that wish to cage my heart.'

'Coward,' the demons goaded. ~ Angela Panayotopulos

The work being done by Linklaters to help organizations understand keys to success in the development sector serves as an important international affairs issue and crucial element in how all of us work to support service provision in impoverished communities in a lasting and effective way. ~ Ann Cotton

For whatever reason, it seems like we're against love. Everyone. People think love equates to weakness, or gullibility, or an unwillingness to deal with reality, so they try to
ruin it, the social scientists and the admen, with studies and lingerie shows and boxes of candy. They try to invalidate it, dirty it up, but they can't, because people in love know
the truth. They know love is good and pure and really the most beautiful thing in the world. They know love is greater than anything, greater even than God. At first, I didn't
believe it, but I do now. You have made me realize it. Being away from you has been the hardest thing I have ever done. I am shaking and sweating. I am going into withdrawal. I need you. You are my withdrawal. You are my blood.
I want to protect you from all of this. When it's all over, I want to run away with you and never come back. I want to be buried in the ground with you. It's the only way we can keep this pure and beautiful, I'm afraid. We have to stay away from this whole life. We have to be normal. We have to get married and move to Berkeley. Our love can't
survive like this, no matter how hard we try. I'm quitting the band. I'm coming home. I need you. ~ Pete Wentz

Wherever we go we carry this burden of our personal consciousness and wherever we step we open it out over our heads like a great baleful cotton umbrella to obstruct the prospect and obscure the light of heaven. ~ Henry James

If you focus the rays of the sun through a lens, they can burn cotton or a piece of paper; but, the scattered rays cannot do this act. If you collect the dissipated rays of the mind and focus them at a point, you will have wonderful concentration. ~ Sivananda

How in the world can a poor man eat? Pray for the sunshine, 'cause it will rain. Things gettin' worse, drivin' all insane; Built a nice bar, painted it brown; Lightnin' came along and burnt it down: No use talkin', any man's beat, With 'leven cent cotton and forty cent meat. 'Leven cent cotton, a car-load of tax, The load's too heavy for our poor backs ~ Kurt Vonnegut

Yeah," he grount out. "I nailed her."
"Where?" Luc always wanted the dirty details.
"Stockroom. Pay up."
Luc snorted and reached for his wallet. "I really got taken on this one , didn't I?" He handed over four hundreds and five twenties.
"Yeah, well, you can have the last laugh once the Sem brothers catch up with me. Seems she's their sister."
"Dude." Luc streched out the word and then whistled, low and long. "Nice knowing you. So, will it at least have been worth it? Being gutted by Shade, I mean. Was she good ?"
His body heated as though remembering. And wanting again.
"Of course I was."
Fuck. Con spun around to find Sin standing there, hands on hips and fury in her expression. Like a kid caught stealing candy, he whipped the money behind his back. She looked at him as if he was an idiot and grabbed his arm, briging it around.
"It's not what you think," he said lamely, because it was exactly what she thought.
"Really? So that big asshole behind you didn't bet you five hundred bucks that you couldn't fuck me ?"
"Ah..."
"That's what I thought. You dick. How stupid do you think I am ? Your name really fits you , Con." She snatched the money from him, took two hundreds and three twenties, and thrust the remaining two hundred and forty dollars back into his hand. Then, smiling broadly, she punched him in the shoulder. "Next time you make a bet like that, don't cheat me out of my half. I owe you a ten."
She winked ~ Larissa Ione

Jimmy's eyes would turn as red and sticky as candy, and his head would fall back against the seat in a dream. If he were lucky tonight, maybe he would see something that he hadn't seen before. And then it would be my turn. ~ Donald Ray Pollock

Who wants an orange whip? Orange whip? Orange whip? Three orange whips. ~ John Candy

What a strange thing it is to wake up to a milk-white overcast June morning! The sun is hidden by a thick cotton blanket of clouds, and the air is vapor-filled and hazy with a concentration of blooming scent.
The world is somnolent and cool, in a temporary reprieve from the normal heat and radiance.
But the sensation of illusion is strong. Because the sun can break through the clouds at any moment ...
What a soft thoughtful time.
In this illusory gloom, like a night-blooming flower, let your imagination bloom in a riot of color. ~ Vera Nazarian

On Halloween, kids get to assume, for one night the outward forms of their innermost dread, and they're also allowed to take candy from strangers - the scariest thing of all. ~ Kate Christensen

A Given
The drum we hear inside us now
we may not hear tomorrow.
We have such fear of what comes next. Death.
These loves are like pieces of cotton.
Throw them in the fire.
Death will be a meeting like that flaring up,
a presence you have always wanted to be with.
This body and this universe
keep us from being free.
Those of you decorating your cells
so beautifully, do you think
they won't be torn down?
The eventual demolishing of prisons
is a given. Fire-change, disaster-change,
you can trust that those will come around to you. ~ Rumi

I had started on the marriage and motherhood beat by accident with a post on my personal, read only by friends, blog called 'Fifty Shades of Men'. I had written it after buying Fifty Shades of Grey to spice up what Dave and I half-jokingly called our grown up time, and had written a meditation on how the sex wasn't the sexiest part of the book. "Dear publishers, I will tell you why every woman with a ring on her finger and a car seat in her SUV is devouring this book like the candy she won't let herself eat." I had written. "It's not the fantasy of an impossibly handsome guy who can give you an orgasm just by stroking your nipples. It is instead the fantasy of a guy who can give you everything. Hapless, clueless, barely able to remain upright without assistance, Ana Steele is that unlikeliest of creatures, a college student who doesn't have an email address, a computer, or a clue. Turns out she doesn't need any of those things. Here is the dominant Christian Grey and he'll give her that computer plus an iPad, a beamer, a job, and an identity, sexual and otherwise. No more worrying about what to wear. Christian buys her clothes. No more stress about how to be in the bedroom. Christian makes those decisions. For women who do too much - which includes, dear publishers, pretty much all the women who have enough disposable income to buy your books - this is the ultimate fantasy: not a man who will make you come, but a man who will make agency unnecessary, a man who will choose you ~ Jennifer Weiner

You're taking a nap? Come on, Kate, I need you for this fight. Stop lying around."
"You must think you're funny."
"Just saying, you have to pull your own weight. A hot body and flirting will only get you so far."
"Everything I do, I learned from you, boy toy."
"Boy toy?" Curran asked.
"Would you prefer man candy? ~ Ilona Andrews

How can you guys do this?" Cotton paces back and forth. "How can you act like everything is okay when these people are doing everything they can to break us? Haven't you noticed things have gotten worse since the ocean race started? Every single day, worse! Sometimes I don't even know if they want us to survive at all."

Braun stands up, walks over to Cotton, and puts a hand on his shoulder. "It's okay," he says. "I understand. You're from Minnesota. I'd be angry, too, if my team hadn't gone to the Super Bowl since the seventies."

Cotton jerks back but smiles despite himself. "I'm from Pittsburgh, dick."

"Jesus H. Christ," Guy pipes in. "The Steelers are the worst."

"You want to say that to my face?" Cotton says.

Guy cracks his knuckles absently. "Think I just did. ~ Victoria Scott

The depth of John Candy's talent did surprise me. He was one of my all-time favorite leading men. ~ Maureen O'Hara

Negroes
Sweet and docile,
Meek, humble, and kind:
Beware the day
They change their minds!
Wind
In the cotton fields,
Gentle breeze:
Beware the hour
It uproots trees! ~ Langston Hughes

This isn't a mob, won't need to change the names. Everyone around you has murdered someone, something sacred. There isn't one nail without dirt under it. There isn't any white cotton panties that aren't soaked and stained red. It's better to push something when it's slipping, than to risk being dragged down. ~ Marilyn Manson

For this is your home, my friend, do not be driven from it; great men have done great things here, and will again, and we can make America what America must become. It will be hard, James, but you come from sturdy, peasant stock, men who picked cotton and dammed rivers and built railroads, and, in the teeth of the most terrifying odds, achieved an unassailable and monumental dignity. ~ James Baldwin

Shut up, candy-ass, ~ Stephen King

I attributed their behavior to the fact that they didn't have a TV, but television didn't teach you everything. Asking for candy on Halloween was called trick-or-treating, but asking for candy on November first was called begging, and it made people uncomfortable. This was one of the things you were supposed to learn simply by being alive, and it angered me that the Tomkeys did not understand it. ~ David Sedaris