Needle And Thread Quotes

I'd been writing stories since I was a child. I wrote little books for my mom and bound them myself with needle and thread. Mostly, they were about my pets. ~ Tess Gerritsen

From tattered flags and uniforms to friendships strained to the brink, the women of my country had always been the menders to all the things torn asunder. But now we'd do more than patch with needle and thread. We'd have to weave together a whole tapestry of American life with nothing but our own hands, our own crops, and our own ingenuity. And I would prove myself able to the task. There ~ Stephanie Dray

At Auschwitz, everything was either ass-backward or a corruption of itself. The Ten Commandments were turned on their head-- thou shalt kill, thou shalt steal, thou shalt covet-- the Golden Rule nonexistent. Here, the weak were at the mercy of the strong-- the lame, sick, and feeble treated not with kindness but contempt. Here, nothing was less valuable than the life of a human being; a crust of bread, a pack of cigarettes, a needle and thread were worth more. Women with children and the elderly were the first to die, not the last. Here, people went to the hospital to be killed, not cured. ~ J. Michael Dolan

So you carry needle and thread about in your pockets, do you?" Sophia asked.

"My tailor insists. ~ Sharon Cameron

only she could fix her problems with a needle and thread she'd be set. Nellie looked up from the socks she was darning toward the knocking on the front door. Who could ~ Cynthia Woolf

Her face was severe but smiling. "What the hell did you do with my hairbrush, you stupid Saumensch, you little thief? ... The tirade went on for perhaps another minute, with Liesel making a desperate suggestion or two about the possible location of the said brush. It ended abruptly, with Rosa pulling Liesel close, just for a few seconds. Her whisper was almost impossible to hear, even at such close proximity. "You told me to yell at you. You said they'd all believe it." She looked left and right, her voice like needle and thread. "He woke up, Liesel. He's awake." From her pocket, she pulled out the toy soldier with the scratched exterior. "He said to give you this. It was his favorite." ... Before Liesel had a chance to answer, she finished it off. "Well? Answer me! Do you have any other idea where you might have left it? ~ Markus Zusak

And just like that,the cloth was torn. was it the days, weeks of the same argument was it the months without affection, or was it simply the year and a half wasted on empty promises from both sides?I don't know what ripped it, but here I sit with my needle and thread trying to fix it knowing it will never look as beautiful as it did when we first started weaving it. ~ Brittany Swanson

Quick, where is the Red Cross God with the ointment and plaster the needle and thread and the clean linen bandages to mummify our festering dreams? ~ Janet Frame

To thousands of elder women in the late sixties and early seventies [the private women's club movement] came like a new gospel ofactivity and service. They had reared their children and seen them take flight; moreover, they had fought through the war, their hearts in the field, their fingers plying needle and thread. They had been active in committees and commissions, the country over; had learned to work with and beside men, finding joy and companionship and inspiration in such work. How could they go back to the chimney-corner life of the fifties? ~ Laura E. Richards

I've got kids that enjoy stealing. I've got kids that don't think about stealing one way or the other, and I've got kids that just tolerate stealing because they know they've got nothing else to do. But nobody
and I mean nobody
has ever been hungry for it like this boy. If he had a bloody gash across his throat and a physiker was trying to sew it up, Lamora would steal the needle and thread and die laughing. He ... steals too much. ~ Scott Lynch

With fingers weary and worn, With eyelids heavy and red, A woman sat in unwomanly rags, Plying her needle and thread. ~ Thomas Hood

When I came out of the wagon, he had her in a dramatic dip and was giving her a kiss. I set the needle and thread next to my shirt and waited. It seemed like a good kiss. I watched with a calculating eye, dimly aware that at some point in the future I might want to kiss a lady. If i did, I wanted to do a decent job of it.
After a moment my father noticed me and stood my mother back on her feet."That will be ha'penny for the show, Master Voyeur,"he laughed. "What are you still here for, boy? I'll bet you the same ha'penny that a question slowed you down. ~ Patrick Rothfuss

I have a fond daydream of a day when, like normal, unclutterd folks, I can bring people through my house without hesitation, without secrecy, and without closed doors. More than that, I envision a day when I can confidently stride into every room of my house and find my children's birth certificates or my high school year book or a needle and thread whenever the need presents itself without breaking into hives. ~ Eve O. Schaub

My tears must stop, for every drop Hinders needle and thread. ~ Thomas Hood

Color - that's another thing people don't expect. In her imagination, in her dreams, everything has color. The museum buildings are beige, chestnut, hazel. Its scientists are lilac and lemon yellow and fox brown. Piano chords loll in the speaker of the wireless in the guard station, projecting rich blacks and complicated blues down the hall toward the key pound. Church bells send arcs of bronze careening off the windows. Bees are silver; pigeons are ginger and auburn and occasionally golden. The huge cypress trees she and her father pass on their morning walk are shimmering kaleidoscopes, each needle a polygon of light.
She has no memories of her mother but imagines her as white, a soundless brilliance. Her father radiates a thousand colors, opal, strawberry red, deep russet, wild green; a smell like oil and metal, the feel of a lock tumbler sliding home, the sound of his key rings chiming as he walks. He is an olive green when he talks to a department head, an escalating series of oranges when he speaks to Mademoiselle Fleury from the greenhouses, a bright red when he tries to cook. He glows sapphire when he sits over his workbench in the evenings, humming almost inaudibly as he works, the tip of his cigarette gleaming a prismatic blue. ~ Anthony Doerr

He felt again irresistibly drawn to her. He felt there was a secret bond, a secret thread between him and her, something very exclusive, which shut out everybody else and made him and her possess each other in secret. ~ D.H. Lawrence

There are little wisps of jelly in a living brain. Deagle knows this well: neurons, transmitting signals - and the soul, so to speak, is somewhere in those flashes. He heard once on a science program that the spindle cell - present in humans, whales, some apes, elephants - may be at the heart of what we call our "selves."
What we recognize in the mirror - that thread we follow through time that we call "me"? It's just a diatom, a paramecium, a bit of ganglia that branches and shudders assertively. A brief brain orgasm, like lightning.
In short, it's all chemicals. You can regiment it easily enough: fluoxetine, sertraline, paroxetine, escitalopram, citalopram - the brain can be washed clean, and you can reset yourself, Ctrl+Alt+Del. You don't have to be a prisoner of your memories and emotions. ~ Dan Chaon

However often the thread may be torn out of your hands, you must develop enough patience to wind it up again and again. ~ Walter Gropius

After consciously enduring a twelve-inch knitting needle navigated into the unseen recesses of my pelvis and almost passing out at the sensation of my hip inflating with fluid and somehow clinging to my sanity through the hour-long, migraine-inducing blare of the imaging contraption, which resembled a compact wind tunnel, possessed the amplification capability of a Marshall stack, and pushed my patience beyond the limits of superhuman endurance, I was
informed by my orthopedist that the image of my still-smoldering hip had revealed, and I quote, "just a little inflammation." In the world of orthopedic medicine, "a little inflammation" apparently qualifies as sound diagnosis. ~ Daniel Stern

That these mandates exist is hardly news, but their cumulative effect on women's lives tends to be examined through a fragmented lens, one-pathology-at-a-time, the eating disorder lit on the self-help shelves separated from the books on women's troubled relationships with men, the books on compulsive shopping separated from the books on female sexuality, the books on culture and media separated from the books on female psychology. Take your pick, choose your demon: Women Who Love Too Much in one camp, Women Who Eat Too Much in another, Women Who Shop Too Much in a third. In fact, the camps are not so disparate, and the question of appetite - specifically the question of what happens to the female appetite when it's submerged and rerouted - is the thread that binds them together. One woman's tub of cottage cheese is another's maxed-out MasterCard; one woman's soul-murdering love affair is another's frenzied eating binge. ~ Caroline Knapp

I felt that I could swim for miles, out into the ocean: a desire for freedom, an impulse to move, tugged at me as though it were a thread fastened to my chest. It was an impulse I knew well, and I had learned that it was not the summons from a larger world I used to believe it to be. It was simply a desire to escape from what I had. ~ Rachel Cusk

Poetry is the thread that leads us out of the labyrinth of despair and into the light. ~ Gregory Orr

There's always a possibility, no matter how small it is. And as long as the possibility is still there, the hope is still there. Even if, just like people said, it's like trying to find a needle in the middle of a rick. But even if it's hard, we have to remember that sometimes we're lucky enough to find that needle. ~ Bening Anggani

Valentine
my friends stitched it up with golden thread
like a red
satin pillow they gave me other whole ones too
roses and charms and red candles
milagros to repair the real one
they told me i was no longer allowed to give it away
a pretty pin cushion
a piece of mexican folk art
a hundred beating poems left unanswered
like a thing to wear around the neck
they said you must heal we will protect you
but i sat weeping at the computer forging ahead anyway
with the small stitched thing struggling in my chest
it knew that it had needed to be torn
so that it could recognize and receive the hundred kindnesses
traveling across three thousand miles at the speed of light
a storm of petals and beautiful words and tiny hearts to keep it
company ~ Francesca Lia Block

The longer I live here, the better satisfied I am in having pitched my earthly camp-fire, gypsylike, on the edge of a town, keeping it on one side, and the green fields, lanes, and woods on the other. Each, in turn, is to me as a magnet to the needle. At times the needle of my nature points towards the country. On that side everything is poetry. I wander over field and forest, and through me runs a glad current of feeling that is like a clear brook across the meadows of May. At others the needle veers round, and I go to town
to the massed haunts of the highest animal and cannibal. ~ James Lane Allen

The cruciform does not like pain. Nor do I but, like the cruciform, I am willing to use it to serve my purposes. And I will do so consciously, not instinctively like the mindless mass of alien tissue embedded in me. This thing only seeks a mindless avoidance of death by any means. I do not wish to die, but I welcome pain and death rather than an eternity of mindless life. Life is sacred--I still hold to that as a core element of the Church's though and teachings these past twenty-eight hundred years when life has been so cheap--but even more sacred is the soul.
I realize now that what I was trying to do with the Armaghast data was offer the Church not a rebirth but only a transition to a false life such as these poor walking corpses inhabit. If the Church is meant to die, it must do so--but do so gloriously, in the full knowledge of its rebirth in Christ. It must go into the darkness not willingly but well--bravely and firm of faith--like the millions who have gone before us, keeping faith with all those generations facing death in the isolated silence of death camps and nuclear fireballs and cancer wards and pogroms, going into the darkness, if not hopefully, then prayerful that there is some reason for it all, something worth the price of all that pain, all those sacrifices., All those before us have gone into the darkness without assurance of logic or fact or persuasive theory, with only a slender thread of hope or the all too shakable conviction of faith. And if the ~ Dan Simmons

But part of love is a record playing, a needle that drops over and over, repeat and repeat, until the voices are scratched and the song is tired. But that's all right, all the scratches and skips, the knowing what line comes next. Sometimes a song just gets you You know? ~ Esm�aji Codell

Take your needle, my child, and work at your pattern; it will come out a
rose by and by. Life is like that - one stitch at a time taken patiently
and the pattern will come out all right like the embroidery. ~ Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr.

What is the matter with you?" asked Shcherbatsky.
"Nothing much, but there is little to be happy about in this world."
"Little? You'd better come with me to Paris instead of going to some Mulhausen or other. You'll see how jolly it will be!"
"No, I have done with that; it is time for me to die."
"That is a fine thing!" said Shcherbatsky, laughing. "I am only just beginning to live."
"Yes, I thought so too till lately; but now I know that I shall soon die."
Levin was saying what of late he had really been thinking. He saw death and the apprroach of death in everything; but the work he had begun interested him all the more. After all, he had to live his life somehow, til death came. Everything for him was wrapped in darkness; but just because of the darkness, feeling his work to be the only thread to guide him through the darkness, he seized upon it and clung to it with all his might. ~ Leo Tolstoy

We're a young species; We're only 175,000 years old. On the evolutionary scale, life on this planet is 4 billion years old. We're 175,000 years old. So we're trying something out. Who wouldn't think it would be better to have the most stuff to take as much as you could? As we do that, we see why the moral prophets come along and say, don't even store into barns, right? It's easier for a camel to pass through the eye of the needle than a rich man to enter the kingdom of heaven. We've seen we plunder nature. We plunder our neighbor. We create enemies because we're against each other. ~ Tom Shadyac

How? By squishing me to death? I wheezed, and then my eyes widened as Al's mouth covered mine, savage and demanding. The stink of demons assaulted me, hard and fast. A thread of ley line spilled into me from him, diving to my groin and flashing into heat. It could have been ecstasy, but I was too angry. His body was heavy on mine, and his leg forced its way between my knees. ~ Kim Harrison

There must be a clear distinction between wishing and believing. A wish is a hazy thread of desires that leaves room for the winds of doubt to toss it about, meaning it might happen by chance or not. A belief has no equivocation; it is clear, stubborn and deliberate in taking hold of what remains yet unseen by the physical eye. If there is no visible way, a belief will draft the way, create the way, walk the path and reach the desired destination. ~ Archibald Marwizi

I closed my eyelids, and imagination, taking up the thread of thought, shot its swift shuttle back across the ages, weaving a picture on their blackness so real and vivid in its details that I could almost for a moment think that I had triumphed o'er the Past, and that my spirit's eyes had pierced the mystery of Time. ~ H. Rider Haggard

As I listened and watched, I knew he was as perfectly aware of me as I was of him, though he kept his infallible rhythm. I knew he could sense every inch of my skin from across the floor, as I could his, feeling every thread of the powerful centuries-old bond we shared. In that moment my lips grew numb and something spun deliciously warm in my chest. In that precise moment I knew I was undeniably in love with him. ~ Courtney Allison Moulton

Planting nuts requires a vision for a future that goes beyond one's mortal reach. If we envision ourselves as participants in the same grand, complex web of interactions as the forest, then planting acorns is like planting part of ourselves. The morality that comes from such a vision of ecosystem-as-life is a common thread that, if taught and encouraged, could unite all of mankind. ~ Bernd Heinrich

The Way It Is

There's a thread you follow. It goes among
things that change. But it doesn't change.
People wonder about what you are pursuing.
You have to explain about the thread.
But it is hard for others to see.
While you hold it you can't get lost.
Tragedies happen; people get hurt
or die; and you suffer and get old.
Nothing you do can stop time's unfolding.
You don't ever let go of the thread.

~ William Stafford ~ ~ William Stafford

The common thread from all those stories was that talking helped, and listening, and time. One day I would find my own place. I couldn't run there, though, because it didn't exist yet; I had to build it myself, out of forgiveness, truth, and terrifying gestures of friendship. ~ I. W. Gregorio

If we were always conscious of the fact that people precious to us are frighteningly mortal, hanging not even by a thread, but by a wisp of gossamer, perhaps we would be kinder to them and more grateful for the love and friendship they give to us. ~ Dean Koontz

[The Utopians] marvel that any mortal can take pleasure in the weak sparkle of a little gem or bright pebble, when he has a star, or the sun itself, to look at. They are amazed at the foolishness of any man who considers himself a nobler fellow because he wears clothing of specially fine wool. No matter how delicate the thread, they say, a sheep wore it once, and still was nothing but a sheep ... They do not understand why a dunderhead with no more brains than a post, and who is as depraved as he is foolish, should command a great many wise and good people simply because he happens to have a great pile of gold. ~ Thomas More

What is a saint? A saint is someone who has achieved a remote human possibility. It is impossible to say what that possibility is. I think it has something to do with the energy of love. Contact with this energy results in the exercise of a kind of balance in the chaos of existence. A saint does not dissolve the chaos; if he did the world would have changed long ago. I do not think that a saint dissolves the chaos even for himself, for there is something arrogant and warlike in the notion of a man setting the universe in order. It is a kind of balance that is his glory. He rides the drifts like an escaped ski. His course is a caress of the hill. His track is a drawing of the snow in a moment of its particular arrangement with wind and rock. Something in him so loves the world that he gives himself to the laws of gravity and chance. Far from flying with the angels, he traces with the fidelity of a seismograph needle the state of the solid bloody landscape. ~ Leonard Cohen

The evolution of the universe depends on the participation of each and every person ... From your soul's perspective, you are as great an addition to the world as Mahatma Gandhi or Mother Teresa, and subtracting you from the cosmic equation would be just as great a loss. The most exquisite silk remains intact if you pull out a thread, but the snag will show. ~ Deepak Chopra

I may not have any power over it at the moment, but at some point that must change. I can be very patient. I am the end of all things, nephew mine. I shall be the last. When birth has ended, I wil cut Clotho's cord, and she will be no more. The time will come when every last thread has been measured, and I will snip Lachesis from the great weave. In the end only Death and I will remain. Then I will cut his thread, and it will be me alone. With my last strength I will close the shears on my own life. I am the end of everything, including you. ~ Kelly McCullough

Quoting Father Seraphim:
Our life hangs only by a breath. It is the thread that links you to the Father, the Source, which brought you into being. Be conscious of this thread, and go where you will. (27) ~ Jean-Yves Leloup

There is no body cavity that cannot be reached with a number fourteen needle and a good strong arm. ~ Samuel Shem