Layered Quotes

like taking one bite into something I couldn't quite place. It was layered and complex, an unfamiliar taste I liked enough to crave more of instantly. Perhaps what lured me most was that it was never enough to feel sated. There was always a gentle nuance to him, something new I'd just begun to discover. ~ Andie Mitchell

And if, for some awful reason, you forget that money is a game, a make-believe concept that some people invented, you could be led back into the complex layered world of Should. And here, the loss isn't a financial one. You are the cost. Is it worth it? ~ Elle Luna

You need some help, Rosie?"
His footsteps quicken behind me, and before I can respond, I feel his calloused hands on my waist. I accidently slide back against his chest and inhale the scent that has always clung to his whole family - something like forests, damp leaves, and sunshine. I suppose when your father is a woodsman you're bound to carry the scent of oak in your veins. One breath is all I get the chance for, though; he kicks the door open and sets me down on the front stoop, then takes a step back. I turn to face him, hoping to thank him for the help and in the same sentence admonish him for carrying me like a little girl.
Instead, I smile. He's still Silas - Silas who left a year ago, the boy just a little older than my sister. His eyes are still sparkling and expressive, hair still the brown-black color of pine bark, body broad-shouldered and a little too willowy for his features. He's still there, but it's as if someone new has been layered on top of him. Someone older and stronger who isn't looking a me as if I'm Scarlett's kid sister . . . someone who makes me feel dizzy and quivery. How did this happen?
Calm down. It's just Silas. Sort of.
"You're staring," he says cautiously, looking worried.
"Oh. Um, sorry," I say, shaking my head. Silas shoves his hands into his pockets with a familiar sway. "It's just been a while, that's all."
"Yeah, no kidding. You're heavier than I remember."
I frown, mortified.
"Oh, no, wait. I di ~ Jackson Pearce

Why do you want to know?"
The shrug again. "Just wondering."
"Really. You've skipped your lawn tennis or duck hunting or whiskey drinking or whatever else people of your sort do all day, only to come all the way out to the island to ask me about the piano piece. Because you were just wondering." I pushed away from the door. "Coming here to kiss me would have been more believable."
"Well, it was second on my list."
"I'm not intimidated by you," I said, blunt. "If you're hoping I'll turn out to be some pathetic, blubbering little rag-girl who begs you not to ruin her, you're in for a surprise."
"That's good." Lord Armand met my eyes. "I like surprises."
We gazed at each other, he on the bed and me by the door, neither of us giving quarter. It seemed to me that the room was growing even more dim, that time was repeating the same ploy it had pulled in Jesse's cottage, drawing out long and slow. The storm outside railed against the castle walls, drowning the air within. It layered darkness through Armand's eyes, the once-vivid blue now deep as the ocean at night.
Beyond my window the rain fell and fell, fat clouds weeping as if they'd never stop.
"Nice bracelet," Armand said softly. "Did you steal it?"
I shook my head. "You gave it to me."
"Did I?"
"As far as everyone else if concerned, yes. You did."
"Hmm. And what do I get in return for agreeing to be your…benefactor?"
"The answer to your question."
"No kiss?" ~ Shana Abe

'Dog Days' was recorded with pens and the wall, and half a stolen drum kit that was out of tune, in what was basically a cupboard. The only instrument I could really play was my voice, so we just layered everything a hundred times. It was enthusiasm over skill. ~ Florence Welch

Granny Weatherwax looked out at the multi-layered, silvery world.

"Where am I?"

INSIDE THE MIRROR.

"Am I dead?"

THE ANSWER TO THAT, said Death, IS SOMEWHERE BETWEEN NO AND YES.

Esme turned, and a billion figures turned with her.

"When can I get out?"

WHEN YOU FIND THE ONE THAT'S REAL.

"Is this a trick question?"

NO.

Granny looked down at herself.

"This one," she said. ~ Terry Pratchett

Feathers layered like dragons' scales,
their symmetry perfectly fledged,
framing slender shoulders; sublime.
A tumble of red tresses shimmer.
Soft wings arch toward the sky.

Once a cherub, she has grown.
A young woman now, strong and lithe.
Powerful with stormy eyes alight,
windswept in her glory.
An angel in body and spirit.
- Winged Justice ~ Mara Amberly

There is no way that the Fourth Gospel was written by John Zebedee or by any of the disciples of Jesus. The author of this book is not a single individual, but is at least three different writers/editors, who did their layered work over a period of 25 to 30 years. ~ John Shelby Spong

I wrote lots of scripts that never got made and they were terrible. I thought they were good at the time. You can't write two scripts and expect your career to take off. Keep writing. Be you. Be original. A lot of people go for a genre, which is fine if you can do that really well, but we all have such layered histories. We all come from a unique background. Write about your past, write about you. Or make stuff up, but make it about something that really matters. ~ Nicole Holofcener

We've spent our time together talking about everything but what matters. We've never brought to each other the heavy things we were meant to help each other carry. We've only introduced each other to our representatives, while our real selves tried to live life alone. We thought that was safer. We thought that this way our real selves wouldn't get hurt. But as I read these messages, it becomes clear that we are all hurting anyway. And we think we are alone. At our cores, we are our tender selves peeking out at a world of shiny representatives, so shame has been layered on top of our pain. We're suffocating underneath all the layers. * ~ Glennon Doyle Melton

When Tim Allen made The Santa Clause, I thought that was a delightful film. It took a modern sensibility but layered onto it a kind of sentiment. ~ Leonard Maltin

The joy of reading is in discovery; a good writer creates, "gaps, spaces, and absences," in a richly layered text. He/she creates a desire in the reader to strive for meaning. Paradoxically, the writer guides the reader, but allows them some flexibility to recreate the text, thereby putting their own unique interpretation on what they have read. ~ Suzy Davies

I Can't Make You Love Me.' Bonnie Raitt."
"Oh,Fiorella."
I glared at him a little as I climbed down. "Was that delightful list for your benefit or mine?"
Frankie grabbed my hand and, when I didn't pull away fast enough, tugged me onto his lap,where he wrapped his arms so tightly around me that I couldn't escape. Sometimes his strength still surprises me.He tickled my cheek with his nose. "Don't hate me just because I'm hateful."
"I never do."
Here's the thing. Frankie's taken a lot of hits in his life. He never stays down for long.
"Excuse me!" The mannequin's evil twin was glaring down at us fro her sky-high bootie-heeled heights. Her NM badge told us her name was Victoria. "You cannot do that here!" she snapped.
"Do what?" Frankie returned, matching lockjaw snooty for lockjaw snooty.
She opened and closed her mouth, then hissed, "Canoodle!"
I felt Frankie's hiccup of amusement. "Were we canoodling, snookums?" he asked me. "I rather thought we were about to copulate like bunnies."
I couldn't help it; I laughed out loud. Victoria's mouth thinned into a pale line. The whole thing might have ended with our being escorted out the store's hallowed doors by security. Sadie, as she so often did, momentarily saved us from ourselves.
She stomped out of the dressing room and planted herself in front of us. Ignoring the angry salesgirl completely, she muttered, "I look like a carved pumpkin!"
Frankie took in the skirt, layered ~ Melissa Jensen

First, I'd stop by the butcher and select a special steak to accompany his favorite dish, gratin dauphinois, a simple yet inexplicably divine mixture of thinly sliced and layered potatoes, garlic, Gruyère cheese, and cream. ~ Sarah Jio

The mind is not a book, to be opened at will and examined at leisure. Thoughts are not etched on the inside of skulls, to be perused by an invader. The mind is a complex and many-layered thing. ~ J.K. Rowling

Real life issues are not mathematical equations. We're not calculators crunching numbers. We're humans sorting through complex, multi-layered issues, and we're doing so while enduring the (sometimes profound) personal effects of our conclusions. While we want to be reasonable, we are inexorably pulled in the direction of our oldest mental habits and by our deepest life-impacting needs. We're repelled by those ideas which can jeopardize our comfort, safety, and happiness. We can try to be fair, but all the while we are fighting against our needs and fears. There are things we don't want to be true (or false). Our lives are built on certain beliefs which, if disproved, could wreck us. These are the truths that we 'can't handle'. ~ Daniel Ionson

we are all afraid. We are all confident. We are all warriors on this road of life, and we're all a mess sometimes. Girls are multifaceted, complicated, layered, and emotional beings. So who better to understand us than other girls? ~ Alexis Jones

Miles away, factory smokestacks rimmed with flame sent up cast billowing clouds of smoke that gave watercolor look to the sky – orange yellow – a pink cast like dawn – beauty to the gray-layered winter sky like cotton batting laced with flame bleak and radiant simultaneously; and Felix in a rush of gratitude though his heartbeat was still erratic and his hands were sticky with blood could have weepy seeing such beauty in all he'd been a witness to most of his life, thinking Oh Jesus he was going to miss these opaque surfaces of a world he knew so well, it was like his skill turned inside out, all he loved out there, he was missing them even now when he was still here, still alive. ~ Joyce Carol Oates

In a world where people are divided by sex, race, religion, patriotism, nationality, bipartisanship, and so-called borders, we need more people who are genuine with others and perspicuous with the way the world actually works, despite all the labels and... rhetoric. We need people who are not bound by any specific creed, nation or state, but who subsume them all and are free to create and destroy the many symbols and ideas that float around them, while moving freely and open-mindedly through their social environment. If we would be authentic with our world we should be as resourceful and multi-layered as possible, cultivating a Renaissance spirit. The more abundant our intent, the more epic our presence will be. The more universal our love, the more authentic our journey will be. ~ Gary McGee

Readers develop unique histories with the books they read. It may not be immediately apparent at the time of reading, but the person you were when you read the book, the place you were where you
read the book, your state of mind while you read it, your personal situation (happy, frustrated,
depressed, bored) and so on – all these factors, and others, make the simple experience of reading a
book a far more complex and multi-layered affair than might be thought. ~ Alasdair Gray

I never fail to be moved by knowing that the ground on which I walk is layered with the past- with achievement and strife and the repeated passions and conflicts of the human creature, always changing, always the same. Generations passing like grass. ~ Eva Hoffman

Some days the rain just seemed to fit, and today felt like one of those days. The morning sky was dark, layered with the kind of thick black clouds that promised showers. ~ Kimberly Derting

I really like structured coats and layered scarves, and I especially love cashmere sweaters. ~ Tamara Feldman

The gorgeous breathlessness and thrilling pulse
those are sensations that the years have layered on top of the initial emptiness, like sheet after sheet of silk covering a bare table. More than fifty years later I can only see the cloth; the table has been obscured. ~ Tash

The entire Habsburg landscape was given a deep, even coating of musical interpretation, whether Smetana and Dvorak in Bohemia or Haydn and Schubert in Austria or Bartok and Kodaly in Hungary. As soon as you head south from Hungary or the Carpathians this music stops. And with food, the greedy, complex and extravagant Habsburg world of layered cakes, a mad use of chocolate, subtle soups and fine wines goes off a cliff. This is obviously an enormous subject, ludicrously compressed here, but the very idea of such complex foods trickled down in the west from royal courts, famously with the development of the idea of the 'French restaurant' in the aftermath of the Revolution. Indeed, we all eagerly guzzle a range of court foods - with many Indian and Chinese restaurants in the west also serving essentially court Mughal or Qing banquet foods, albeit in mutilated forms. ~ Simon Winder

Like Berlin, I was layered with guilt and destruction. I had caused grief as well as suffering it. I could never honestly point a finger without it turning around in mid-accusation. Olivia ~ Janet Fitch

He`d felt himself give others the exact same look she was giving him, a mental fuck you layered with a middle finger against authority. ~ Rhys Ford

In a while, one of us will go up to bed
and the other one will follow.
Then we will slip below the surface of the night
into miles of water, drifting down and down
to the dark, soundless bottom
until the weight of dreams pulls us lower still,
below the shale and layered rock,
beneath the strata of hunger and pleasure,
into the broken bones of the earth itself,
into the marrow of the only place we know. ~ Billy Collins

In my work, and in my psyche, there's some very sentimental, traditional, conventional side that's always in argument with a more radical, sarcastic side. Some of my stories are really sentimental, but they're layered over with weird, satirical stuff. ~ George Saunders

I do believe there's good in all of us, even if it's layered over so thickly. ~ Lili Taylor

I can't explain the birds to you even if I tried. In the early morning, when the sun's rays peek over the mountain and subtly light up the landscape in a glow that, if audible, would sound like a hum, the birds sing. They sing in a layered symphony, hundreds deep. You really can't believe how beautiful it is. You hear bass notes from across the farm and soprano notes from the tree in front of you all at once, at varying volumes, like a massive choir that stretches across fifty acres of land. I love birds. But not as much as my wife loves them. My wife thinks about them, whereas I only notice them once they call for attention. But she looks for them, builds fountains for them, and saves them after they crash into windows. I've seen her save many birds. She holds them gently in the palm of her hand, and she takes them to one of the fountains she's built especially for them and holds their beaks up to the gentle trickle of water to let them drink, to wake them up from their dazed stupor. No matter how much time it takes, she doesn't leave them until they recover. And they mostly always do. ~ Portia De Rossi

The hours here are flat and round, disks of gray layered one on top of the other ... they move slowly, at a grind, until it seems as though they are not moving at all. They are just pressing down ... ~ Lauren Oliver

Twenty thousand days and nights in one place, each layered and trapped and folded on top of the last, the creases in her hands, the aches between her vertebrae. Embryo, seed coat, endosperm: What is a seed if not the purest kind of memory, a link to every generation that has gone before it? ~ Anthony Doerr

Disgrace is a subtle, multi-layered story, as much concerned with politics as it is with the itch of male flesh. Coetzee's prose is chaste and lyrical without being self- conscious: it is a relief to encounter writing as quietly stylish as this. I was not totally convinced by Lurie's musical abilities, with regard to his proposed opera, but that is my sole complaint. ~ Paul Bailey

I want a guy who can clean my gutters and kill my spiders - who's simple yet layered. ~ Kelli Garner

People are people. Ever changing, complicated and wonderfully layered. ~ Carrie Hope Fletcher

World War One is an important part of Ireland's multi-layered history during which tens of thousands Irish people lost their lives. ~ Martin McGuinness

What popped up more than that was the realization that I made as an adult that the world is this incredibly complex, layered, and mysterious place and if you stop and think about it the human cell is literally more complex than a fleet of 747s. ~ Dean Koontz

We are thickly layered, page lying upon page, behind simple covers. And love - it is not the book itself, but the binding. ~ Deb Caletti

What a blush," he murmured. "Good Lord, I've forgotten what it's like to be so innocent. I doubt I ever was."
St. Vincent was mesmerizing in the torchlight. Shadows nestled lovingly beneath the fine planes of his cheekbones. The thick, layered locks of his hair were the bronzed gold of an ancient Byzantine icon. ~ Lisa Kleypas

The best lies are layered in between solid truths. ~ Ashley Herring Blake

But most of all, where did this deeply complex sweetness come from?! It's far too nuanced to be solely brown sugar!"
"Oh, the answer to that is in the flavoring I used."
"Soy sauce?!"
"Oh my gosh, she added soy sauce to a dessert?!"
"I used it at the very end of the recipe.
To make the whipped-cream filling, I used heavy cream, vanilla extract, light brown sugar and a dash of soy sauce.
Once the cakes were baked, I spread the whipped cream on top, rolled them up and chilled them in the fridge for a few minutes.
All of that made the brown sugar in the cake both taste and look even cuter than it did before."
"Aah, I see. The concept is similar to that of salted caramels. Add salt to something sweet..
... and by comparison the sweetness will stand out on the tongue even more strongly.
She's created a new and unique dessert topping- Soy Sauce Whipped Cream!"
"Soy sauce whipped cream, eh? I see! So that's how it works!"
Since it isn't as refined as white sugar, brown sugar retains trace amounts of minerals, like iron and sodium.
The unique layered flavor these minerals give to it matches beautifully with the salty body of soy sauce!
"Without brown sugar as the main component, this exquisite deliciousness would not be possible!"
"It tastes even yummier if you try some of the various fruits in between each bite of cake.
The candy sculptures are totally edible too.
If you break one up into crumbs an ~ Yuto Tsukuda

But he thought that if the world was layered with meaning, then she was the evidence, right here. ~ Lauren Myracle

my life seemed more fully layered because of the choices I had made, both consciously and in ignorance. I ~ Susan Meissner

In 2006, the Secure Fence Act was signed into law, requiring the Department of Homeland Security to build upward of 700 miles of double layered fencing along the U. S-Mexico border. While the Obama administration is quick to state that the targets have been met, only a small fraction - in fact, less than 40 miles - of the newly implemented infrastructure is double-layered. ~ Duncan Hunter

Then set out after repeated warning the grizzly
Afghan Duryodhan
in blazing sun
removed sandal-wood blooded stone-attired guards
spearing gloom brought out a substitute of dawn
crude hell's profuse experience
Huh
a night-waken drug addict beside head of feeble earth
from the cruciform The Clapper could not descend due to lockdown
wet-eyed babies were smiling
.
in a bouquet of darkness in forced dreams
The Clapper wept when learnt about red-linen boat's drowned passengers
in famished yellow winter
white lilies bloomed in hot coal tar
when in chiseled breeze
nickel glazed seed-kernel
moss layered skull which had moon on its shoulder scolded whole night
non-weeping male praying mantis in grass
bronze muscled he-men of Barbadoz
pressed their fevered forehead on her furry navel
.
in comb-flowing rain
floated on frowning waves
diesel sheet shadow whipped oceans
all wings had been removed from the sky
funeral procession of newspaperman's freshly printed dawn
lifelong jailed convict's eye in the keyhole
outside
in autumnal rice pounding pink ankle
Lalung ladies ~ Malay Roychoudhury

She leads me to a parlor room, where tailors are pinning up a white, lacy gown, with long sleeves and a layered skirt, made in the style of the year 1917. The same year the Romanov Empire fell. At their request, I slip it on and step on a stool in the middle of the room. My throat clenches when I gaze into the golden mirror. I'm a living impression of Empress Alexandra, wife of Nicholas II. I look like I've stepped out of the black-and-white pictures and transported myself to another time. ~ Megan Linski

Akhmed's eight-day-old eyes had held the reflection of ten thousand possible lives. Khassan wasn't an emotive or superstitious man, and nothing like it had ever happened again, but he had found, layered in the infant's half-lidded eyes, innumerable, wanting faces, none of which he had recognized. ~ Anthony Marra

I create my own backstory regardless of if I'm told something about the background or not. There's always more that you can develop in your head that makes a character more layered, more honest. ~ Regina King

Food won't go down when you know your mother didn't want you, never liked to feed you, always hated you in her rooms. You were wrong to clutch and swallow and move your mouth. You must not be flushed, layered in fat or ripe from meat or she will despise your sight. Your skeleton cries, "I make no demands, I am ashamed of my needs, I am unworthy. I'm aware of those more deserving, those with prior and urgent claims to food." Skeleton says, "My safety is in slightness, my pride is denial. My victory is no gluttony, no guilt. ~ Jenny Holzer

As I ascended, I realized I didn't understand what a mountain was, or even if I was hiking up one mountain or a series of them glommed together. I'd not grown up around mountains. I'd walked on a few, but only on well-trod paths on day hikes. They'd seemed to be nothing more than really big hills. But they were not that. They were, I now realized, layered and complex, inexplicable and analogous to nothing. Each time I reached the place that I thought was the top of the mountain or the series of mountains glommed together, I was wrong. There was still more up to go, even if first there was a tiny slope that went tantalizingly down. So up I went until I reached what really was the top. I knew it was the top because there was snow. Not on the ground, but falling from the sky, in thin flakes that swirled in mad patterns, pushed by the wind. ~ Cheryl Strayed

Your loveliness is not a mask, layered over a rotten core. It blossoms from the beauty inside. ~ Terry Goodkind

I love characters that are very layered and complex. It's more exciting and different than any simple role- plus, I love a good challenge. ~ Lorraine Toussaint

The strength of the American higher education system is that it is a multifaceted, multi-layered system, and that is what makes us very strong. ~ Gordon Gee

Whatever character you play, whatever film it is, whatever story it is, for me, in my training it's always something that gives you a layered character, it's understanding the secret of that character, and so whatever comes up as "Oh, I thought that person was that," you are always carrying that within you. So actually what you're playing all the way through is both and it's just what comes out in the scene or the circumstance. ~ Julia Ormond

Complexity that works is built up out of modules that work perfectly, layered one over the other. ~ Kevin Kelly

Russian Dolls: The more we stay layered up, the more we stay reactive. Instead of healing, our hardnesses bump into one another. We knock each other off balance, intentionally or not. That might sometimes peel away a little paint, making a crack in an outer façade. But those cracks allow light and insights in. And out. ~ Helen S. Rosenau

One strategy for getting ahead is being incredibly good at a particular skill; you need to be world-class to stand out for that skill. In my case, I layered fairly average skills together until the combination became special. ~ Scott Adams

Gregori stared with dismay at the small, two-story house enclosed in wrought-iron latticework and sandwiched between two smaller, rather rundown properties in the crowded French Quarter of New Orleans. He inserted the key in the lock and turned to look at Savannah's face. It was lit up with expectation, her blue eyes shining.
"I have definitely lost all good sense," he muttered as he pushed open the door.
The interior was dark, but he could see everything easily. The room was layered with dust, old sheets covered the furniture, and the wallpaper was peeling in small curls from the walls.
"Isn't it beautiful?" Savannah flung out her hands and turned in a circle. Jumping into Gregori's arms, she hugged him tightly. "It's so perfect!"
He couldn't help himself; he kissed her inviting mouth. "Perfect for torching. Savannah,did you even look at this place before you bought it?"
She laughed and ruffled his thick mane of hair. "Don't be such a pessimist. Can't you see its potential?"
"It is a firetrap," he groused. ~ Christine Feehan

The graphic style itself is influenced by a lot of very layered and detailed comics that I read as a kid, like 'Vagabond' by Takehiko Inoue. ~ Toyin Odutola

I advise you to look for a chance to break away, to find a subject you can make your own. That is where the quickest advances are likely to occur, as measured by discoveries per investigator per year. Therein you have the best chance to become a leader and, as time passes, to gain growing freedom to set your own course.
If a subject is already receiving a great deal of attention, if it has a glamorous aura, if its practitioners are prizewinners who receive large grants, stay away from that subject. Listen to the news coming from the hubbub, learn how and why the subject became prominent, but in making your own long-term plans be aware it is already crowded with talented people. You would be a newcomer, a private amid bemedaled first sergeants and generals. Take a subject instead that interests you and looks promising, and where established experts are not yet conspicuously competing with one another, where few if any prizes and academy memberships have been given, and where the annals of research are not yet layered with superfluous data and mathematical models. ~ Edward O. Wilson

He wore his hope like a winter coat, layered over the top of all of him. ~ Cora Carmack

Too many times you come across lyrics that sound like you've heard them before or you can't really relate to them. And I think that I write songs that sound fresh and sensual in kind of a layered, lush way. But I also think that they are real, and that's why I wanted to call the record 'Inside Out.' ~ Emmy Rossum

It is my desire and intent to trust the multi-layered good purposes of God than in what humans fabricate out of their need and experience. I specifically ask not to know these purposes so that I might remain a child in their unfolding. ~ William P. Young

I think truth is a layered phenomenon. There are many truths that accumulate and build up. I am trying to peel back and explore these rich layers of truth. All truths are difficult to reach. ~ Sally Mann

I used to know everything about you. What made you laugh, what made you upset. The way you bounced on your toes when you were excited about something." He smiled. "I knew the real you. Underneath everything you layered on yourself, I knew who you were inside." He reached out a hand, then let it drop to his side. "It's been twenty years, Jessie. I want...you. So much it hurts. That has never changed. Not since the very first day. ~ Lauren K. Denton

The Islamic world can be viewed as an onion-layered multiple dictatorship: the dictatorship of political dynasties like the Mubarak, Gaddafi, Hussein, Ben Ali, and Assad families forms its first layer; the dictatorship of the military, the next; after that, that the dictatorship of religion, which determines how children are raised and educated; and finally, the dictatorship of society, which impacts life within families through archaic gender roles. ~ Hamed Abdel-Samad

Through the stillness, snow fell not in skeins but in infinitely layered arabesques, filigree in motion, ornamenting the icy air, of an especially intense white in the dove-gray light of the morning, laying boas on the limbs of leafless trees, ermine collars on the tops of walls, a grace of softness in a hard world. You might have thought it would fall forever, endlessly beautifying all it touched, except for the reminder of the river. When the snowflakes met the undulant water, they ceased to exist. ~ Dean Koontz

Good novels are not written, they are rewritten. Great novels are diamonds mined from layered rewrites. ~ Piers Paul Read

Kuh-laire, Is cam a fattening Girl Scout Cookie layered with peanut butter and a chocolate coating?
No.
Then dont make him a tagalong! ~ Lisi Harrison

The Gauze of Flowers, A Love Poem"

Remember when we couldn't name it
because it was a meadow
wild with tulips, both bright
as snow and dull as fire?
Driving in circles to find
the right spot for our love, then
using a chair? My heart was still
an artichoke, layered and prickly
But you kept making me nest my face
in that one thick bouquet.

And just this morning my love
was briefly stuck in my throat
as I remember all the soil
and sadness, remembered seeing you
on certain streets and corners, remembered
all the rubble and clang. Remember

how it is and isn't fragile?
How it speaks in ears and fingers
takes days and hours still
it wants nothing and it wants more?

And just this morning
the flowers you brought home drank
in the sunrise, they fleshed themselves out
the way people do, shaking
the cold from their collars
as they move toward the fire,
rubbing together their hands, kindling
it back. Some days

we want our love to be fleshy.
But some days it's transparent.
It's like gauze.
It is and isn't fragile.

I dare you to name it.
I dare you to remember
the rubble and clang. ~ Olena Kalytiak Davis

Craig Varjabedian's photography captures, with arresting clarity, the ineffable whispers of time and spirit layered deep in New Mexico's cultural landscape. Through the artful combination of his compassionate eye and technical virtuosity, he evokes the past in the present and the holy in the everyday. ~ Catherine Whitney

In the middle of a wrist's suicide slash-line, below the layered skin and above the pulse, there's an acupuncture point that says, Get back to who you were meant to be. This is the heart spot, the center. Your whole life the skin on that place will stay closest to being a baby's skin, as close as you can get anymore to the way you started, the way you once thought you'd always be. ~ Monica Drake

In the morning, we sliced all the vegetables and layered everything up in a pot with a glass of Riesling. On the way to church, we dropped it off with the baker, who sealed the lid with a strip of dough and put it in his oven for a couple of hours. We picked it up at 12 o'clock and took it home to eat with mustard and salad. ~ Jean-Georges Vongerichten

Corporations are great and appalling things. They take you and shape you in nearly nothing flat, twist and swivel you. And they do it without overt persuasion, they do it with smiles and nods, a collective inflection of the voice. You stand at the head of a corridor and by the time you walk to the far end you have adopted the comprehensive philosophy of the firm, the Weltanschauung. I use this grave and layered word because somewhere in its depths there is a whisper of mystical contemplation that seems totally appropriate to the subject of waste. ~ Don DeLillo

He has definitely cornered the market on enigma. I hope Stella goes for the deeply layered type. ~ Tera Lynn Childs

We are all children in the dark, finding our way together to the light. Many define the light before the light is reached and fix on their defining. There in the dark they clamor for others to embrace their defining, demanding its elevation, and giving it names they claim as sacred. But all are still in the dark, distracted by so many claims to the one way out, all unseen, and fix their take with fear and penalty if not likewise elevated as the one and only way. Whereas I leave it open to what the opening will reveal. Layered writing is my tool to enable the opening to widen, and it is our consciousness, not our physical form that has trouble squeezing through the passageway to the way out of the dark, while so many call out in the dark they know the way, rather than allowing the way to reveal itself. Watch the silent ones, calm in demeanor, who are experienced at leaving ways open, in order to find it. They listen and feel their way, in different ways and on different levels. These have no following to create the clamor, nor seek the glamour the clamor brings. They are simply wise because they leave it open to what the opening may become, rather than what they have been fed from birth, they birth in solitude what might be, allowing layers of ways to formulate and in that way follow in their minds and hearts a revealed and reveled light yet unseen. ~ Tom Althouse

I imagine everyone wears layered masks, and parades around a variety or panoply of false selves depending on the occasion. ~ Wendy Hoffman

Young men go to war. Sometimes because they have to, sometimes because they want to. Always, they feel they are supposed to. This comes from the sad, layered stories of life, which over the centuries have seen courage confused with picking up arms, and cowardice confused with laying them down. ~ Mitch Albom

Let us call this quality the Original Mind. This mind looked at the world more directly - not through words and received ideas. It was flexible and receptive to new information. Retaining a memory of this Original Mind, we cannot help but feel nostalgia for the intensity with which we used to experience the world. As the years pass, this intensity inevitably diminishes. We come to see the world through a screen of words and opinions; our prior experiences, layered over the present, color what we see. We no longer look at things as they are, noticing their details, or wonder why they exist. Our minds gradually tighten up. We become defensive about the world we now take for granted, and we become upset if our beliefs or assumptions are attacked. ~ Robert Greene

And in time we may remember, collecting every little memory, all the bits and pieces, into a larger memory, rebuilding a great layered and labyrinthine, now imagined, international hotel of many rooms, the urban experiment of a homeless community built to house the needs of temporary lives. And for what? To resist death and dementia. To haunt a disappearing landscape. To forever embed this geography with our visions and voices. To kiss the past and you good-bye, leaving the indelible spit of our DNA on still moist lips. Sweet. Sour. Salty. Bitter. ~ Karen Tei Yamashita

What if by sheer repetition we become the person we most often pretend to be? Does that mean there is no authentic self? Are we made of habits, compressed by time, like layered rocks? ~ Ben Okri

Occasionally, the light seemed to arrive from a distinct direction, like the sun slanting through a gap in a curtain, but often it simply infused whatever aches or traumas afflicted people. At such times, it had the appearance of a strange luminescent paint layered directly over their skin. They might have been angels in an El Greco painting. ~ Kevin Brockmeier

Everyone was a rose but even more complex than a mere flower. Everyone was made up of infinitely layered petals. And everyone had something indescribably precious at the heart of their being.
No one was shallow. Not really. ~ Mary Balogh

Great design is a multi-layered relationship between human life and its environment. ~ Naoto Fukasawa

The lie [of compulsory female heterosexuality] is many-layered. In Western tradition, one layer - the romantic - asserts that women are inevitably, even if rashly and tragically, drawn to men; that even when that attraction is suicidal (e. g, Tristan and Isolde, Kate Chopin's 'The Awakening') it is still an organic imperative. In the tradition of the social sciences it asserts that primary love between the sexes is 'normal,' that women need men as social and economic protectors, for adult sexuality, and for psychological completion; that the heterosexually constituted family is the basic social unit; that women who do not attach their primary intensity to men must be, in functional terms, condemned to an even more devastating outsiderhood than their outsiderhood as women. ~ Adrienne Rich

'True Detective' is a densely layered work with resonant details and symbology and rich characterization under the guise of one of the forms of this mystery genre. That's what we shoot for. ~ Nic Pizzolatto

I write almost every single part of my songs, even the actual drum parts sometimes, whether they be simple or layered with many different instruments. ~ Kaki King

Issib wasn't thrilled to see him. I'm busy and don't need interruptions."

"This is the household library," said Nafai. "This is where we always come to do research."

"See? You're interrupting already."

"Look, I didn't say anything, I just came in here, and you started picking at me the second I walked in the door."

"I was hoping you'd walk back out."

"I can't. Mother sent me here." Nafai walked over behind Issib, who was floating comfortably in the air in front of his computer display. It was layered thirty pages deep, but each page had only a few words on it, so he could see almost everything at once. Like a game of solitaire, in which Issib was simply moving fragments from place to place.

The fragments were all words in weird languages. The ones Nafai recognized were very old.

"What language is that?" Nafai asked pointing, to one.

Issib signed. "I'm so glad you're not interrupting me."

"What is it, some ancient form of Vijati?"

"Very good. It's Slucajan, which came from Obilazati, the original form of Vijati. It's dead now."

"I read Vijati, you know."

"I don't."

"Oh, so you're specializing in ancient, obscure languages that nobody speaks anymore, including you?"

"I'm not learning these languages, I'm researching lost words."

"If the whole language is dead, then all the words are lost."

Orson Scott Card

To recognize that mystery, we must go down deep into ourselves, into that place where the walls of our being are layered with our own memories. Remember that, as in any pool, when we cast one pebble we will see many, many concentric circles. One memory begets another and then another, building into stories. ~ Meinrad Craighead

How should a system convince people that they do not possess their sex properly? Teach them that in their possession it is shapeless and unconditioned. Only once it has been modified, layered with experts, honeycombed with norms, overlaid with pictorial representations, and sold back to them can it fulfill itself as what its possessors "always wanted". ~ Mark Greif

When you're playing in front of people, everything is external. It's all going from you out to an audience. When you're in a studio, it's very internalised, it's going from the air through you into this meticulously crafted, layered piece of work. ~ Daryl Hall

Art has to be incredibly layered. Symbols, signifiers ... layers that relate. Combine signifiers with more abstract notions. Push! Vary lines. ~ Kay WalkingStick

There was something vampiric about. music. It must have sounded supernatural even to those who don't believe in the supernatural ... the way harmony could be layered upon harmony until you felt yourself dissolving in the sound. So eloquent of dread it was, this music. ~ Anne Rice

The problem with romance is the occlusion. The tunnel vision, drawing your every gaze downstream, into those other eyes, the flotsam of your better self, your clearer self, along for the ride. It doesn't matter what secrets swirl and bob in the waters beneath you, as you float toward that lady at Delphi, who, you imagined, reading Mythology, must have been beautiful. It doesn't matter that Charybdis, with no body, with no form, with only a mouth-as-being, couldn't have been evil, because she lacked the brain for it. It doesn't matter that following the logical course of events, the natural course, always disadvantages someone else, because love, after all, is simply a competition for resources, made infinitely complex and unknowable when squared and cubed and raised to every other emotional exponent - and then layered with sex and society and a bad memory for what those resources were in the first place. ~ Darin Bradley

Her head had been hurting for days, but under the falling water, the headache opened like a rose- bright red, layered, and complicated. ~ Marisa De Los Santos

A hamburger is an icon of layered circles, the circle being at once the most spiritual and the most sensual of shapes. ~ Tom Robbins

When we hygger, we frame the moment, give it our full attention, savour and hold it, in an awareness that the moment will pass.
We feel how one moment becomes layered on to the next; past and present mingled together - everything falling into place, into one accord. ~ Louisa Thomsen Brits

It is easy to see how quickly expectations become layered, competitive and conflicting. This is how the shame web works. We have very few realistic options that allow us to meet any of these expectations. Most of the options that we do have feel like a "double bind." When Marilyn Frye describes a double bind as "a situation in which options are very limited and all of them expose us to penalty, censure or deprivation. ~ Brene Brown

To what or whom does Lizzie Harris direct the imperative title of her startling first book, Stop Wanting? To the reader, the narrator, to desire itself, or to lack? This is a work of complexly, ambiguously layered narratives and identities. The opening poem asserts I want to say what happened / but am suspicious of stories. These lines become an ars poetica for the whole of this painful and exceptional collection in which the unspeakable is stubbornly confronted by a searing eloquence. This is a commanding debut. ~ Lynn Emanuel