Frayed Quotes

A few blossoms float into the room. They drop like frayed yellow ribbons on the gray carpet. ~ Eileen Granfors

They were old, their covers cracked and their bindings frayed, but as far as Gwendolyn was concerned that only made the words cocooned between their musty pages more precious. ~ Teresa Medeiros

Reunions are the first day of school all over again. Time casts away familiarity and replaces it with warm confusion. Seeing how the years have frayed the friends of our youth reminds us that we too have irrevocably changed and can never return to a state of innocence again. ~ Stewart Stafford

I want to say that yes, it was worth it; that I could suffer through pain and torture for her and go through a lot more than what Puck and his friends are capable of, and I can do it for all of eternity; suffer, until she realizes how much I love her.
But she's gone before I can say any of it.
I wait till she's left.
And then I reach for my wallet.
Hidden inside one of the flaps is a piece of paper that barely conceals a razorblade. Its frayed edges still have my blood on them. The blood is from the previous cuts I've made and I carry it around like a trophy, like Dexter carries around his victims' blood on slides. I use that blade to give myself a cut and it starts bleeding. Right away, it feels as though the pressure that has been building inside me ever since that confrontation with Puck is lifted.
I feel free again. ~ Kady Hunt

Forever"

by Logan Keeley

October 18, 20xx




Lying beside me in the failure of flesh,

You wait for the words that will let your mind rest,

But I've already left you - I'm inside this song,

I'm chasing the rhythms that split right from wrong,

Forming chords on your shoulder, tracing notes on your hips,

I can't hear your thoughts as they fall from your lips, and


Every day I give away

A piece of me all torn and frayed -

What I can't keep, I sell for cheap,

Til nothing's left for you and me -



Chorus:

How can so much love feel like nothing at all?

How can so much nothing leave me dying to crawl

To the foot of your bed,

I should be with you - instead,

I walk away, stumbling, waiting, always waiting to fall.


When you look in my eyes, can you see I'm not there,

Just skin over bones and this flesh that I bear,

And there's no room for you, and you know I can never

Get out of myself, get over myself,

For even one moment, much less for forever.



They all take their shares and they all think they see

This stranger inside who pretends to be me.

They're a roomful of mirrors in this funhouse of fame,

I shrink and I grow, I am wild, I am tame,
< ~ Jeri Smith-Ready

He had never admitted he had a problem, and maybe if he had she would have stayed longer or tried harder. As it was, she simply felt free now. Being with him had been a long, slow suffocation. Caring for someone who didn't care one bit about changing was like being frayed thin. He hadn't wanted what she had to give. She wasn't really sure what it would be like to ~ Lauren Blakely

I am God's girl. That's right, I am. I am going to humbly and quietly let God have His way in me. And when I do, God will lift up me and my frayed nerves from this situation and fill me with a much better reaction than what I can give you at the moment. Give me just a few minutes and then we'll talk calmly about this. ~ Lysa TerKeurst

Christmas is a holiday that persecutes the lonely, the frayed, and the rejected. ~ Jimmy Cannon

You didn't have to tie us up!" Shay shrugged the frayed ropes off.
"Yes, we did!" Adne's hands were on her hips. "You would have torn right through that portal to get to her. You were both acting like morons."
"She's right," Ren said. "They probably did have to tie us up."
Shay grinned. ~ Andrea Cremer

So, if you don't fit in, if you feel at odds with the world, if your identity is troubled and frayed, if you feel lost and ashamed - it could be because you have retained the human values you were supposed to have discarded. You are a deviant. Be proud. ~ George Monbiot

The child, who is decked with prince's robes and who has jewelled chains round his neck loses all pleasure in his play; his dress hampers him at every step. In fear that it may be frayed, or stained with dust he keeps himself from the world, and is afraid even to move. Mother, it is no gain, thy bondage of finery, if it keep one shut off from the healthful dust of the earth, if it rob one of the right of entrance to the great fair of common human life. ~ Rabindranath Tagore

You know, life is not so original after all. It has uncanny ways of reminding us that, even without a god, there is a flash of retrospective brilliance in the way fate plays its cards. It doesn't deal us fifty-two cards; it deals, say, four or five, and they happen to be the same ones our parents and grandparents and great-grandparents played. The cards look pretty frayed and bent. The choice of sequences is limited: at some point the cards will repeat themselves, seldom in the same order, but always in a pattern that seems uncannily familiar. Sometimes the last card is not even played by the one whose life ended. Fate doesn't always respect what we believe is the end of life. It will deal your last card to those who come after. Which is why I think all lives are condemned to remain unfinished. ~ Andre Aciman

It seems that by the time the singular beauty of a flower in bloom can no longer pierce the veil of black or obsessive thoughts in a person's mind, that mind's connection to the sensual world has grown dangerously frayed. ~ Michael Pollan

He uncovered the boat, his hands working the knots like he'd been doing it his whole life. Under the tarp was an old steel rowboat with no oars. The boat had been painted dark blue at one point, but the hull was so crusted with tar and salt it looked like one massive nautical bruise.
On the bow, the name Pax was still readable, lettered in gold. Painted eyes drooped sadly at the water level, as if the boat were about to fall asleep. On board were two benches, some steel wool, an old cooler, and a mound of frayed rope with one end tied to the mooring. At the bottom of the boat, a plastic bag and two empty Coke cans floated in several inches of scummy water.
"Behold," Frank said. "The mighty Roman navy. ~ Rick Riordan

But I was still anxious. Trevor Trevor Trevor. I might have felt better if he were dead, I thought, since behind every memory of him was the possibility of reconciling, and thus more heartbreak and indignity. I felt weak. My nerves were frayed and fragile, like tattered silk. Sleep had not yet solved my crankiness, my impatience, my memory. It seemed like everything was now somehow linked to getting back what I'd lost. I could picture my selfhood, my past, my psyche like a dump truck filled with trash. Sleep was the hydraulic piston that lifted the bed of the truck up, ready to dump everything out somewhere, but Trevor was stuck in the tailgate, blocking the flow of garbage. I was afraid things would be like that forever. ~ Ottessa Moshfegh

PREPARE FOR LANDING PREPARE FOR LANDING, TRACK 1 The seat belt sign is illuminated The flight attendants beyond frustrated The passengers are drunk and frayed A baby's screaming in seat 16A Another flight from here to where? Crammed in a sardine can with not enough air We're on the map, I know that much But the directions I really need are in your touch Prepare for landing, says the captain As the plane arcs down to the looming horizon Ushering us onto some foreign soil I touch the ground, and see your smile Up and down, and down and up Cokespritebeerpretzelspeanuts As we careen through empty sky It feels like nothing but you and I Prepare for landing, says the captain Out the window, the sun is setting Hand in mine, you give a squeeze You're all the home I'll ever need ~ Gayle Forman

So Anna did not blame the women of her time for what they had created; it was different only in kind from what she had made herself. And if the old soldiers wanted only to forgive, Anna understood that, too, though in her own memory she could no longer find anything that needed forgiving. In the sunlight by her cousin's grave, she would touch the black ostrich plume in her hat - the plume that, like herself, grew a little older and little more frayed every year - and think about what all of it meant to her. Down the hill slept the soldiers, and she would visit certain of them in a little while, and the thought of them - their faces, their voices, their particular ways - always made her smile. General Nathan Bedford Forrest himself told her once that she had seen the last of a great army, but he was wrong in that, for they still moved out there in the sunlight, all of them. He was right about one thing though: there was no shame in it, not ever. ~ Howard Bahr

knotted up; frayed; faked own death; kept showing
up in new clothes, new names; then leaving ~ Franny Choi

It was the feet they'd do, for a first offense. They used steel cables, frayed at the ends. After ~ Margaret Atwood

My vision of the gathered church that had come to me... had been replaced by a vision of the gathered community. What I saw now was the community imperfect and irresolute but held together by the frayed and always fraying, incomplete and yet ever-holding bonds of the various sorts of affection. There had maybe never been anybody who had not been loved by somebody, who had been loved by somebody else, and so on and on... It was a community always disappointed in itself, disappointing its members, always trying to contain its divisions and gentle its meanness, always failing and yet always preserving a sort of will toward goodwill. I knew that, in the midst of all the ignorance and error, this was a membership; it was the membership of Port William and of no other place on earth. My vision gathered the community as it never has been and never will be gathered in this world of time, for the community must always be marred by members who are indifferent to it or against it, who are nonetheless its members and maybe nonetheless essential to it. And yet I saw them all as somehow perfected, beyond time, by one another's love, compassion, and forgiveness, as it is said we may be perfected by grace. ~ Wendell Berry

America used to have a strong 'moral safety net' for its people. Today that net is badly frayed, not only because families are disintegrating but also because the church doesn't play the same role that it once did in many Americans' lives. ~ Gary Bauer

Maria Edgeworth grumbled against vandals who ruined immortal works by quoting the life out of them. "How far our literature may in future suffer from these blighting swarms, will best be conceived by a glance at what they have already withered and blasted of the favourite productions of our most popular poets." Shakespeare, Milton, and Dryden, scissored, patched, and frayed. ~ Willis Regier

The name Mary Jo Quinn was written neatly in faded blue marker on the front of the scrapbook, its gray edges frayed with age and wear, as though it had been handled often. Such a memento was a strange thing to find in a used bookstore, especially when one considered its contents. I'd discovered the handmade tome buried on the bottom shelf on the back wall of a little musty-smelling shop in the tiny resort town of Copper Harbor. This picturesque community is the gateway to Isle Royale National Park, an island in the western quarter of Lake Superior that beckoned to hikers, kayakers and canoers. Copper Harbor is the northern-most bastion of civilization in Michigan on a crooked finger of land called the Keweenaw Peninsula. Its remote, pristine shoreline provided an excellent respite from a hellacious year for my best friend from high school and me on a late September weekend. ~ Nancy Barr

It's stained and frayed in such distinctive ways, but it's very definitely made out of wool. And now...now it's polyester, which means that I'm not lying on my carpet in my apartment. You have lived up to your reputation Mr Cobb. I'm still dreaming! ~ Saito

Why did you come back? 'Tis not safe." "I came back to finish what we last started." Did he mean their near embrace in the barn? Before Pa came in? His mouth was warm against her ear, his fingers stroking her hair, which frayed at the touch of his callused hand. "I came back to ask you to be my wife." The words, so long wished for, were every bit as sweet as she'd hoped they'd be. But here in this shadowed corner, with Pa so ill ... "Do you love me? Or do you feel pity for me, alone, almost fatherless?" "Not pity, Morrow. Love. The love between a man and a woman." Her lips parted in a sort of wonder. "Have you ever been in love?" "Not till now ... not till you." "Then how can you be ... sure?" "I know my mind, my heart. ~ Laura Frantz

What do they sing, the last birds
coasting down the twilight,
banking
across woods filled with darkness, their
frayed wings
curved on the world like a lover's arms
which form, night after night, in sleep,
an irremediable absence? ~ Galway Kinnell

The boat has become supreme isolation, chosen isolation, holding myself apart from the world, which I only dimly understand anyway. I can sit on the aft deck and never be surprised by anything again- no phone will ever ring, no one will knock that I haven't seen coming for a quarter mile. that I can go to sleep any night and wake up having broken loose- a failed knot, a line frayed, the anchor dragged- that I can drift out of sight of land makes a twisted sense, in line with my internal weather. When everything has proven tenuous one can either move toward permanence or toward impermanence. The boat's sublimely impermanent. Some mornings the fog's so thick that I exist only in a tight globe of clearing, beyond which is all foghorn and unknown. ~ Nick Flynn

For those who live in Kashmir, the expectations of justice, rarely fulfilled in the Indian subcontinent, are more than optimistic; they belong to fantasy. It makes it all the more difficult for the victims to bear their human losses. At Dalal's house, the once carefully tended plants and hedges were already running wild just a few weeks after his murder, the fish in the pond were mostly dead, and few men sat slumped on the floor in a bare hall under the Islamic calendar of mourning. His mother, persuaded by her male relatives to emerge from the dark room where she had taken to since her son's death, broke down as soon as she noticed the photos of Dalal I had been studying. The pictures showed a young man in dark glasses and trendy clothes, a happy, contented man, someone who had managed to find, amid the relentless violence of the insurgency, a new style and identity for himself, and when Dalal's mother, still crying, while her mother, Dalal's grandmother, sat beside her, quietly wiping her tears with the frayed end of her headscarf, asked what was the point of talking to the press, of speaking about her son to me- he was gone and wouldn't come back; the people who had killed him were too powerful- it was hard not to feel pierced by the truth of what she was saying, hard not to be moved by her grief, and the pain, amid the great human waste of Kashmir, of her helplessness. ~ Pankaj Mishra

I hear you're going to the ball tonight."
Kestrel glanced in the mirror to see Arin standing behind her. Then she focused on her own shadowed eyes. "You're not allowed in here," Kestrel said. She didn't look again at him, but sensed him waiting. She realized that she was waiting, too--waiting for the will to send him away.
She sighed and continued to braid.
He said, "It's not a good idea for you to attend the ball."
"I hardly think you're in a position to advise me on what I should or shouldn't do." She glanced back at his reflection. His face frayed her already sheer nerves. The braid slipped from her fingers and unraveled. "What?" she snapped. "Does this amuse you?"
The corner of his mouth lifted, and Arin looked like himself, like the person she had grown to know since summer's end. "'Amuse' isn't the right word. ~ Marie Rutkoski

She looked at him suddenly and closely, to see how he had come so close so quickly. She looked for motive on his face, and found nothing but friendliness. Then she looked at the frayed seams on his white coat, and she was reassured. ~ John Steinbeck

I became a reporter because I never found out the ending to my own story. Thirty years after Ben's abduction, the only answers I could find were for others, the victims, or those they left behind. The crime beat was a natural for me. The people I wrote about were the most fragile, the most broken, and they needed the most answers. I pieced together the frayed strands that had once been their lives, not always happy, but better off than where they ended up. I had to tell their stories. I felt like I owed the victims at least that...Julia Gooden, THE LAST TIME SHE SAW HIM ~ Jane Haseldine

Letter 4

As I lay dreaming, Montezuma introduced himself and put his hand on my shoulder. The palm of the Aztec king felt like ancient papyrus.
When I looked up at him, I saw that his nose was chipped like that of a sphinx. His arms were like long ivory ropes that frayed into hands.
He led me down to the river, where we sat together and shared the river's silence. Then he spoke:
„Allow me to tell you my story. It may help you understand your own.
At dusk, in the year of one thousand rivers, the Spanish explorer Cortés arrived at the gates of my city. I welcomed him with open arms.
I showed Cortés hundreds of aviaries that had built in the city, and finally I took him to the most aviary of sighs. These birds carried only love letters.
Cortes laughed and said that all the bird songs made him feel like a virgin bride who is drunk with faith as she walks down the aisle of the church. On her wedding night, she undresses for her husband and he takes her in his arms. She believes everything is possible.
When Cortés stared straight into my eyes and said 'It is a night that is always colored in blood'." He paused for a long time before he spoke. Then he said, „Cortés returned with a small army of soldiers on horseback. When they ransacked the city, I was Cortes's own hand that lit the torch that set fire to the aviary of sighs.
The fires raged. The birds painted the blue sky black with the ashes of their wings. The gardens were redde ~ Gregory Colbert

I somehow got the idea that oak floors were located exclusively in New York City. This came chiefly from watching Woody Allen movies. I wanted to live someplace that looked like Mia Farrow's apartment in 'Hannah and Her Sisters' (little did I know that it was Mia Farrow's apartment). To me, this kind of space did not connote wealth. These were places where paint was peeling and the rugs were frayed, places where smart people sat around drinking gin and tonics, having interesting conversations, and living, according to my logic, in an authentic way. ~ Meghan Daum

and the frayed earth, crisscrossed like old bagasse, spring to a cushiony quilt of emerald grass, and who does sew and sow and patch the land? ~ Derek Walcott

Hank Peters woke up in the early hours of the next morning from a dream of huge rats crawling out of an open grave, a grave which held the green and rotting body of Hubie Marsten, with a frayed length of manila hemp around his neck. Peters lay propped on his elbows, breathing heavily, naked torso slicked with sweat, and when his wife touched his arm he screamed aloud. EIGHT ~ Stephen King

What good is a quilt if it's unused? The same as a life unused. They're meant to be wrung out and frayed around the edges. That's the way of things. Always has been. Always will be. ~ Amber Kizer

My hands trembled, so I took a deep drag to calm my frayed nerves. I just wanted to forget that terrible sight, but questions multiplied in my mind as the smoke furled. ~ Katherine McIntyre

To his lasting credit, President Reagan never wavered. He recognized the strategic importance of staying the course, both in terms of denying Moscow the military hegemony it sought in Western Europe and of restoring the will, cohesiveness, and security of the NATO alliance, so badly frayed during the turbulent 1970s. ~ Frank Gaffney

I am a frayed and nibbled survivor in a fallen world, and I am getting along. I am aging and eaten and have done my share of eating too. I am not washed and beautiful, in control of a shining world in which everything fits, but instead am wondering awed about on a splintered wreck I've come to care for, whose gnawed trees breathe a delicate air, whose bloodied and scarred creatures are my dearest companions, and whose beauty bats and shines not in its imperfections but overwhelmingly in spite of them ... ~ Annie Dillard

The world, nature, human beings, do not move like machines. The edges are never clear-cut, but always frayed. Nature never draws a line without smudging it. ~ Winston Churchill

There are times when every act, no matter how private or unconscious, becomes political. Whom you live with, how you wear your hair, whether you marry, whether you insist that your child take piano lessons, what are the brand names on your shelf; all these become political decisions. At other times, no act
no campaign or tract, statement or rampage
has any political charge at all. People with the least sense of which times are, and which are not, political are usually most avid about politics. At six one morning, Will went out in jeans and a frayed sweater to buy a quart of milk. A tourist bus went by. The megaphone was directed at him. "There's one," it said. That was in the 1960's. Ever since, he's wondered. There's one what? ~ Renata Adler

We match. Black hair. Blacker hearts, dark and frayed by circumstance. But maybe we can heal our bruises together. Two broken souls finding solace and salvation in the depths of each other's darkness. ~ Veronica Eden

What I did realize was that once you've loved and lost, your heart is left tattered and frayed as the insides of a worn old sneaker. And no amount of laundry in the world can ever make the sneaker look brand new again. All you can do is lay it out under the sun or store it in a cool, dry place. ~ Min-gyu Park

Love was a sacred garment, woven of a fabric so thin that it could not be seen, yet so strong that even mighty death could not tear it, a garment that could not be frayed by use, that brought warmth into what would otherwise be an intolerable, cold world- but at times love could also be as heavy as chain mail. Bearing the burden of love, on those occasions when it was a solemn weight, made it more precious when, in better times, it caught the wind in sleeves like wings, and lifted you. ~ Dean Koontz

And I know there's a hungry dog
Tugging at your frayed ends
But he's just playing with you, he just wants to be your friend ~ Sia Furler

I didn't know what it meant to have a nervous breakdown. I'd heard people jokingly exaggerate that they'd had one. Until that moment on my bathroom floor, I had no concept.

Then the frayed strands of my sanity that I'd fought so hard to keep together snapped in two, and I started to free fall into chaos.

First, I screamed.

I screamed and I screamed until I was hoarse. Then my screams turned over to cries of agony. Pain, both physical and emotional, consumed me. Will tried to console me, but it was useless. He panicked and called my parents.

When they heard my sobs in the background, they told him to call the paramedics. So he did. By the time they arrived, I was spent of emotions.

Instead, I lay motionless on the floor. They were a hazy blur of blue uniforms and soft voices. I could hear them calling my name from far off - like I was under the surface of water. But I couldn't muster the strength to reply. I heard crying behind me. It must've been Will because one of the paramedics said,

"Don't worry, son, we're gonna take good care of her."

Then I felt myself floating upwards as they put me on a gurney. I rattled and shook as they pulled me out of the house. The flashing lights hurt my eyes. But then a needle pierced my vein, bringing liquid peace to my soul."--Melanie ~ Katie Ashley

Now these ashes have grown cold, we open the old book.
These oil-stained pages recount the tales of the Fallen,
a frayed empire, words without warmth. The hearth
has ebbed, its gleam and life's sparks are but memories
against dimming eyes - what cast my mind, what hue my
thoughts as I open the Book of the Fallen
and breathe deep the scent of history?
Listen, then, to these words carried on that breath.
These tales are the tales of us all, again yet again.
We are history relived and that is all, without end that is all. ~ Steven Erikson

She knew what he'd be like. Being near him would start out as a rollercoaster ride - her nerves would be frayed and she'd be completely terrified. With every inch toward the sky, Severine would want to be back on the ground. Then the ride would take off. She'd have no time to think. The ride would direct her body which way to go, and her stomach would drop at the rush of speed. Her eyes would be clenched tightly because she'd be too afraid to look around. At the end, everything would slow, and it would all be over. With her pulse racing, and a high running through her system, she'd walk away, ~ Calia Read

Sometimes you have to chase what you really want because everything in life worth having won't fall into your lap. ~ Kim Karr

The center had frayed like a rag rug that had been washed and walked on and shaken and hung and dried. The lines and nets of mesh which held the last jewel at the breast of the world were unraveling. Things were not holding together. The earth drew in its breath in the summer of the coming eclipse.
The boy idled along the upper corridor of this stone place which was home, sensing these things, not understanding. ~ Stephen King

Whether he talked or not made little difference to my mood. My only enemy was the clock on the dashboard, whose hands would move relentlessly to one o'clock. We drove east, we drove west, amidst the myriad villages that cling like limpets to the Mediterranean shore, and today I remember none of them. All I remember is the feel of the leather seats, the texture of the map upon my knee, its frayed edges, its worn seams, and how one day, looking at the clock, I thought to myself, 'This moment now, at twenty past eleven, this must never be lost, ' and I shut my eyes to make the experience more lasting. When I opened my eyes we were by a bend in the road, and a peasant girl in a black shawl waved to us; I can see her now, her dusty skirt, her gleaming, friendly smile, and in a second we had passed the bend and could see her no more. Already she belonged to the past, she was only a memory. I wanted to go back again, to recapture the moment that had gone, and then it came to me that if we did it would not be the same, even the sun would be changed in the sky, casting another shadow, and the peasant girl would trudge past us along the road in a different way, not waving this time, perhaps not even seeing us. There was something chilling in the thought, something a little melancholy, and looking at the clock I saw that five more minutes had gone by. Soon we would have reached our time limit, and must return to the hotel. 'If only there could be an invention', I said impulsively, 'that ~ Daphne Du Maurier

SLEEPAWAY"

When teenage boys go to sleepaway camps every summer

they arrive with big hearts and nervous apprehension -


do they throw their duffels to the ground

and go straight to the basketball court


or


do they pause

and have earnest conversations:


How was your year?

How is your mother?

What are you passionate about lately?


Each,


broken down later in life in cars with their wives on superhighway shoulders,

glorious desert vistas in their ice-caked windshields,

frozen stiff by the whiskey winds,


they are rocked,

frayed forever. ~ David Mait

A new oath holds pretty well; but ... when it is become old, and frayed out, and damaged by a dozen annual retryings of its remains, it ceases to be serviceable; any little strain will snap it. ~ Mark Twain

History's got no bows on it, only frayed ends of ribbons and knots that can't be untied. ~ Orson Scott Card

Imagine that the universe is a great spinning engine. You want to stay near the core of the thing - right in the hub of the wheel - not out at the edges where all the wild whirling takes place, where you can get frayed and crazy. The hub of calmness - that's your heart. That's where God lives within you. So stop looking for answers in the world. Just keep coming back to that center and you'll always find peace. ~ Elizabeth Gilbert

Americans were attached to a vague cultural conservatism mostly because of the seemingly broad consensus around it, rather than by deep personal commitment. As that consensus, like most forms of consensus in our national life, has frayed, their attachment has weakened. T ~ Yuval Levin

Gavin had thought tragedy suited her: a young Miss Havisham, wearing the moth-eaten tatters of her frayed hopes like a ravaged bride. She had thought at first that it was the chase he craved, or the thrill of conquest, but while both of those might have been true, it was her humiliation that got him off. Physical, psychological, sexual - his favorite games were the ones he played with her head. ~ Nenia Campbell

Is this what it's like, I thought then, and think now: a little blood here, a chomp there, and still we live, trampling the grass? Must everything whole be nibbled? Here was a new light on the intricate texture of things in the world, the actual plot of the present moment in time after the fall: the ways we living are nibbled and nibbling- not held aloft on a cloud in the air but bumbling pitted and scarred and broken through a frayed and beautiful land. ~ Annie Dillard

I remain a religious agnostic, but, unlike most atheists, I not only am not hostile to traditional religion but consider it a highly valuable, not to say essential, social institution ... I am convinced that the moral regeneration and repair of a frayed social fabric that this country so badly needs will not take place unless more people take their religion seriously. ~ Guenter Lewy

Slowly, he lifts the flashlight. Her shorts are torn and frayed, her shirt ripped from chest to naval, exposing her black bra and dirty stomach. And then he raises the light so it reflects off her face, off the crimson tears streaming from the girl's eyes. Her boney hands fly up to protect her face, and her head tilts sharply as she hisses. ~ Laura Kreitzer

First there was nothing. Nothing but a frayed strip of cement over the white earth. Then she made out two mountains colliding in the back of beyond: like they'd come from who knows where and were headed to anyone's guess but had come together at that intense point in the nothingness and insisted on crashing noisily against each other, though the oblivious might think they simply stood there in silence. ~ Yuri Herrera

Drugged to sleep by repetition of the diurnal
round, the monotonous sorrow of the finite,
within I am awake
repairing in dirt the frayed immaculate thread
forced by being to watch the birth of suns ~ Frank Bidart

Fear is a hammer, and when the people are beaten finally to the conviction that their existence hangs by a frayed thread, they will be led where they need to go. ~ Dean Koontz

YOU
You are that song that plays rarely on the radio,
But when it does I have to sing it out loud…
You are the water that formed a puddle on a rainy day,that I played in,
When I was only eight years old.
You are the first snowfall of the season,
And the reason I like the morning...
You're a single seashell that washed up onto the shore.
You are my set of old medals
Hidden deep in a drawer…
You are the sun, the moon, the stars, and all the planets.
You are the first breath of a baby just born.

Eres una dandelion que encuentro,
I pull, make a wish, then blow.
You are the sunrise that I tried to paint
after I woke up in Eilat.
You give the nights its meaning…
to dream, while others just sleep.
You are my 3rd grade valentine,
Read, frayed and loved a thousand times.
Eres perfección envuelto en humildad…

Eres oro, plata, y diamantes…
Eres mi querido viejito Pooh, que nunca lo abandonare.
You are my first time driving my brother's Impala,
When I was just fourteen.
You are the name hidden deep inside my name…
And I'm the fingers interlaced with yours.
Eres el PS: I love you at the end la carta,
Y yo soy el PS: I love you too.
Somos el principio, el medio y la ultima palabra
De mi libro final.

Eternamente nosotros, nosotros, nosotros…
Porque nosotros siempre es mejor
Que solamente… yo…
YOU ~ Jose N Harris

Shaggy existentialists in frayed sandals, dilettantes by the score, spies by the portfolio. ~ Jan Morris

Our ignorance allowed us to live, as you are in the mountains, and your rope is frayed and about to break, but you don't know it and feel safe. ~ Primo Levi

This was the sort of situation that she read about in the novels she favored, by authors such as Miss Jane Austen, whom Margaret was sure she'd met long ago at the Assembly Rooms the first time we visited Lyme. One of Miss Austen's books had even featured Lyme Regis, but I did not read fiction and could not be persuaded to try it. Life itself was far messier and didn't end so tidily with the heroine making the right match. We Philpot sisters were the very embodiment of that frayed life. I did not need novels to remind me of what I had missed. ~ Tracy Chevalier

His soul's fabric was weaving itself with mine. I loved the frayed ends where it came unraveled, and I loved the strength at its firm, solid center.
I loved every thread. ~ Jeri Smith-Ready

The tiny conversation they'd had would reveal no evidence of her frayed edges. ~ Scot Gardner

I often feel an aversion, even disgust at the same words written and spoken over and over – at the same expressions, phrases, and metaphors repeated. And the worst is, when I listen to myself I have to admit that I too endlessly repeat the same things. They're so horribly frayed and threadbare, these words, worn out by constant overuse. Do they still have any meaning? ~ Pascal Mercier

And the men come on again: the flashy and the penitent, the beaten ones and the wise guys, the hangdog heel thieves and the disdainful coneroos, walking, half crouched, through a downpour of light like men walking through rain. The frayed and the hesitant, the sleek and the bold, the odd fish and the callow youths, the good-humored bindle stiffs and the bitter veterans. ~ Nelson Algren

The most fantastic parking-lot attendant in the world, he can back a car forty miles an hour into a tight squeeze and stop at the wall, jump out, race among fenders, leap into another car, circle it fifty miles an hour in a narrow space, back swiftly into tight spot, hump, snap the car with the emergency so that you see it bounce as he flies out; then clear to the ticket shack, sprinting like a track star, hand a ticket, leap into a newly arrived car before the owner's half out, leap literally under him as he steps out, start the car with the door flapping, and roar off to the next available spot, arc, pop in, brake, out, run; working like that without pause eight hours a night, evening rush hours and after-theater rush hours, in greasy wino pants with a frayed fur-lined jacket and beat shoes that flap. ~ Jack Kerouac

Crockery broke and fabric frayed. The delicate things I cared about perished, while the hard things like swords survived. ~ Sujata Massey

In my criminal work anything that wears skirts is a lady, until the law proves her otherwise. From the frayed and slovenly petticoats of the woman who owns a poultry stand in the market and who has grown wealthy by selling chickens at twelve ounces to the pound, or the silk sweep of Mamie Tracy, whose diamonds have been stolen down on the avenue... ~ Mary Roberts Rinehart

I carry my adornments on my soul.
I do not dress up like a popinjay;
But inwardly, I keep my daintiness.
I do not bear with me, by any chance,
An insult not yet washed away- a conscience
Yellow with unpurged bile- an honor frayed
To rags, a set of scruples badly worn.
I go caparisoned in gems unseen,
Trailing white plumes of freedom, garlanded
With my good name- no figure of a man,
But a soul clothed in shining armor, hung
With deeds for decorations, twirling- thus-
A bristling wit, and swinging at my side
Courage, and on the stones of this old town
Making the sharp truth ring, like golden spurs! ~ Edmond Rostand

I love you. Why it worked right then, why the webbing of my godmother's spell frayed as though the words had been an open flame, I don't know. I haven't found any explanation for it. There aren't any magical words, really. The words just hold the magic. They give it a shape and a form, they make it useful, describe the images within. I'll say this, though: Some words have a power that has nothing to do with supernatural forces. They resound in the heart and mind, they live long after the sounds of them have died away, they echo in the heart and the soul. They have power, and that power is very real. Those three words are good ones. ~ Jim Butcher

Disney's House of the Future had the clean simplicity prized in the 1950s as relief from decades of frayed patchwork, jury-rigging, and make-do clutter caused by Depression and war. ~ P. J. O'Rourke

Maybe it's stress or anger or adrenaline or disillusionment or a bullying nature or simple fear of getting killed themselves, but there is a problem if a cop cannot tell the difference between a menacing gangster and the far more common person they encounter whose life is a little frayed and messy. ~ David Horsey

That tight little accent grated on Clay's frayed nerves. He thought that if it had been a fart, it would have been the kind that comes out sounding like a party-horn blown by a kid with asthma. ~ Stephen King

Discs of umbrellas poured over suburban terraces with the smooth round ebullience of a Chopin waltz. They sat in the distance under the lugubrious dripping elms, elms like maps of Europe, elms frayed at the end like bits of chartreuse wool, elms heavy and bunchy as sour grapes. ~ Zelda Fitzgerald

Once a restless or frayed mood has turned to anger, or violence, or psychosis, Richard, like most, finds it very difficult to see it as illness, rather than being willful, angry, irrational or simply tiresome. ~ Kay Redfield Jamison

Our tribe unraveled like a coarse rope, frayed at either end as the old and new among us were taken. ~ Louise Erdrich

O America, I am your Liberty, and you are that huddled mass yearning to breathe free. I am your Lighthouse, the One beaconing [yea, beckoning], and you are that wayfarer - strayed, grayed, and frayed … Now, return, you tempest-tost; lift up your gaze to the lighted torch aloft the golden door and come home. ~ Maurice Suwa

Through the hollow globe, a ring
of frayed rusty scrapiron,
is it the sea that shines?
Is it a road at the world's edge? ~ Denise Levertov

As anyone who has received or dispensed psychotherapy knows, it's a profession whose mainspring is love. Nearly everyone who visits a therapist has a love disorder of one sort or another, and each has a story to tell - of love lost or denied, love twisted or betrayed, love perverted or shackled to violence. Broken attachments litter the office floors like pick-up sticks. People appear with frayed seams and spilling pockets. ~ Diane Ackerman

All I know next are his arms, the desperate edge to his voice when he says my name, and I'm unraveling in his embrace, I'm frayed and falling apart and I'm making no effort to control the tremors in my bones and he's so hot his skin is so hot and I don't even know where I am anymore. ~ Tahereh Mafi

Salander was dressed for the day in a black T-shirt with a picture on it of E.T. with fangs, and the words I AM ALSO AN ALIEN. She had on a black skirt that was frayed at the hem, a worn-out black, mid-length leather jacket, rivet belt, heavy Doc Marten boots, and horizontally striped, green-and-red knee socks. She had put on make-up in a colour scheme that indicated she might be colourblind. In other words, she was exceptionally decked out. ~ Stieg Larsson

It was baffling. These creatures. The were fraught and frayed win their desire. A snake would never poison itself, but these folk made an art of it. They wrapped themselves in fears and wept at being blind. It was infuriating. It was enough to break a heart. ~ Patrick Rothfuss

FINISTERRE
The road in the end taking the path the sun had taken,
into the western sea, and the moon rising behind you
as you stood where ground turned to ocean: no way
to your future now but the way your shadow could take,
walking before you across water, going where shadows go,
no way to make sense of a world that wouldn't let you pass
except to call an end to the way you had come,
to take out each frayed letter you brought
and light their illumined corners, and to read
them as they drifted through the western light;
to empty your bags; to sort this and to leave that;
to promise what you needed to promise all along,
and to abandon the shoes that had brought you here
right at the water's edge, not because you had given up
but because now, you would find a different way to tread,
and because, through it all, part of you could still walk on,
no matter how, over the waves. ~ David Whyte

I grow old though pleased with my memories The tasks I can no longer complete Are balanced by the love of the tasks gone past I offer no apology only this plea: When I am frayed and strained and drizzle at the end Please someone cut a square and put me in a quilt That I might keep some child warm And some old person with no one else to talk to Will hear my whispers And cuddle near ~ Nikki Giovanni

Many people would have to hang by their teeth from a frayed cord suspended by a paper clip from a leaking hot air balloon over the Grand Canyon in order to feel what I feel standing on the third step of a stepladder trying to put millet in the bird feeder. ~ Ursula K. Le Guin

She sat at her dressing table, eyeing her reflection warily. Her hair was loose, spilling over her shoulders, a few shades darker than the dress. She gathered a handful and began to braid.
"I hear you're going to the ball tonight."
Kestrel glanced in the mirror to see Arin standing behind her. Then she focused on her own shadowed eyes. "You're not allowed in here," Kestrel said. She didn't look again at him, but sensed him waiting. She realized that she was waiting, too--waiting for the will to send him away.
She sighed and continued to braid.
He said, "It's not a good idea for you to attend the ball."
"I hardly think you're in a position to advise me on what I should or shouldn't do." She glanced back at his reflection. His face frayed her already sheer nerves. The braid slipped from her fingers and unraveled. "What?" she snapped. "Does this amuse you?"
The corner of his mouth lifted, and Arin looked like himself, like the person she had grown to know since summer's end. "'Amuse' isn't the right word."
Heavy locks fell forward to curtain her face. "Lirah usually does my hair," she muttered. She heard Arin inhale as if to speak, but he didn't.
Then, quietly, he said, "I could do it."
"What?"
"I could braid your hair."
"You?"
"Yes."
Kestrel's pulse bit at her throat. She opened her mouth, but before she could say anything he had crossed the room and swept her hair into his hands. His fingers began to move. ~ Marie Rutkoski

The same sensitivity that opens artists to Being also makes them vulnerable to the dark powers of non-Being. It is no accident that many creative people
including Dante, Pascal, Goethe, Nietzsche, Kierkegaard, Beethoven, Rilke, Blake, and Van Gogh
struggled with depression, anxiety, and despair. They paid a heavy price to wrest their gifts from the clutches of non-Being. But this is what true artists do: they make their own frayed lives the cable for the surges of power generated in the creative force fields of Being and non-Being. (Beyond Religion, p. 124) ~ David N. Elkins

No matter how well prepared you are in life, you're gonna fall down a hole, and if you can fix the frayed ends of things, then you're better off. ~ Fiona Apple

History isn't like that. History unravels gently, like an old sweater. It has been patched and darned many times, reknitted to suit different people, shoved in a box under the sink of censorship to be cut up for the dusters of propaganda, yet it always - eventually - manages to spring back into its old familar shape. History has a habit of changing the people who think they are changing it. History always has a few tricks up its frayed sleeve. It's been around a long time. ~ Terry Pratchett

I straighten and stretch my neck side to side. 'I really need to hit something.'
Rafa's mouth quirks. 'I know what you need.'
'In your dreams.' I know where this is going: it's been the same banter for about five decades now. Usually he saves it for an audience.
'In my dreams, Gabe, you end up slick with sweat and moaning.'
'I have food poisoning?'
He laughs, a beer halfway to his lips. Condensation drips from the bottle. He's completely at ease here: three-quarter cargoes, frayed t-shirt, bare feet. 'I'm just saying that if you need distracting, I'm your man.'
'If I wanted to go places everyone else has been, Rafa, I'd take a trip to Disneyland.'
He leans in closer. 'Yeah, but don't you want to know why everyone loves Space Mountain? ~ Paula Weston

Besides, tomorrow everything would look different. The day always came with more than mere light. However frayed your emotions, it was impossible to be wholly unaffected by the day's new beginnings. ~ Karl Ove Knausgaard

How did it die?" he asked.
"Short circuit," I said. "Old and frayed wires."
He looked at me like I was senile.
"Could have been disease. Violence. Or, sometimes, things die because we don't love them enough. ~ Jonathan Messinger

In all the mad incongruity, the turgid stultiloquy of life, I felt, at least, securely anchored to myself. Whatever the vacillations of other people, I thought myself terrifically constant. But now, here I am, dragging a frayed line, and my anchor gone. ~ John Steinbeck

I was held together by one thread that was black and frayed, and the end of it was tied to Maggie. She had unwittingly pulled on it, loosening the already loose knitting until I was nothing more than a pile of tangled string, completely unraveled. ~ Ashlan Thomas