Shedding Skin Quotes

No one else. It was me who had to carry myself over the finish line, and all I needed to remember when I felt like not trying was that that feeling wouldn't last forever.
Forever.
I used to believe it didn't exist. One word has terrified me as a child and it haunted me. But now I knew, and many small ways, but it was real, But it didn't scare me anymore. Forever wasn't a little girl cowering in the closet. Forever wasn't the shadows sitting in the back of the class. Forever wasn't doing what I thought Carl and Rose wanted instead of what I needed to do with my life. Forever wasn't believing I was some kind of replacement daughter and that I was letting them down. Forever wasn't being the one who needed protection. Forever wasn't pain and grief forever wasn't a problem. Forever was my heartbeat and it was the hope tomorrow held. Forever was the glistening silver lining of the dark cloud, no matter how heavy and thick it was. Forever was knowing it moments of weakness didn't equate to an eternity of them. Forever was knowing that I was strong. Forever was Carl and Rosa, Ainsley and Kira, Hector and Rider. Jaden would always be a part of my forever. Forever was in the fire-breathing dragon inside me that had shed the fear like a snake shedding skin. Forever was simply a promise of more. Forever was a work in progress. And I couldn't wait for forever. ~ Jennifer L. Armentrout

The weird thing is I feel like I'm shedding skin so fast and I'm growing and I'm becoming a new person so quickly at a rate that I'm comfortable with, yet it seems faster and more steady than an other time in my life except 16, 17, 18. I just have to sit down and listen to the ideas I'm having. And I'm not worried. ~ Justin Vernon

Forever wasn't pain and grief.
Forever wasn't a problem.
Forever was my heartbeat and it was the hope tomorrow held. Forever was the glistening silver lining of every dark cloud, no matter how heavy and thick it was. Forever was knowing moments of weakness didn't equate to an eternityof them.Forever was knowing that I was strong.Forever was the fire breathing dragon inside me that had shed the fear like a snake shedding skin. Forever was simply a promise of more. Forever was a work in progress. ~ Jennifer L. Armentrout

The beast is dry and mottled, shedding skin
as minutes drop from life, a wristy piece
of dogged ugliness, its labors meant
to carve from language beauty, that beauty which
lifts free of flesh to find itself in print ~ John Updike

Always remember…

A blooming rose bush catches the eye of admirers, but it grew from a seed buried in dirt.

A butterfly may be free and delicately beautiful, but it spent days shedding skin and dramatically changing inside its chrysalis so it could grow wings to fly.

Accept your process. ~ Kristin Michelle Elizabeth

Emotional baggage is like the dead skin of a snake. If you don't shed it, how can you grow emotionally? ~ Khang Kijarro Nguyen

Try telling the boy who's just had his girlfriend's name
cut into his arm that there's slippage between the signifier
and the signified. Or better yet explain to the girl
who watched in the mirror as the tattoo artist stitched
the word for her father's name (on earth as in heaven)
across her back that words aren't made of flesh and blood,
that they don't bite the skin. Language is the animal
we've trained to pick up the scent of meaning. It's why
when the boy hears his father yelling at the door
he sends the dog that he's kept hungry, that he's kicked,
then loved, to attack the man, to show him that every word
has a consequence, that language, when used right, hurts. ~ Todd Davis

Poem from Rev. Jim Cotter, as listed on the opening pages of "Anatomy of the Spirit" by Caroline Myss:

~ God be in my head and in my understanding.

God be in my eyes and in my looking.

God be in my mouth and in my speaking.

God be in my tongue and in my tasting.

God be in my lips and in my greeting.

~ God be in my nose and in my smelling/inhaling.

God be in my ears and in my hearing.

God be in my neck and in my humbling.

God be in my shoulders and in my bearing.

God be in my back and in my standing.

~ God be in my arms and in my reaching/receiving.

God be in my hands and in my working.

God be in my legs and in my walking.

God be in my feet and in my grounding.

God be in my knees and in my relating.

~ God be in my gut and in my feeling.

God be in my bowels and in my forgiving.

God be in my loins and in my swiving.

God be in my lungs and in my breathing.

God be in my heart and in my loving.

~ God be in my skin and in my touching.

God be in my flesh and in my paining/pining.

God be in my blood and in my living.

God be in my bones and in my dying.

God be at my end and at my reviving. ~ Caroline Myss

It was curious how like a tree she looked, lying motionless in the hull. How slender and delicate and twig-like her long fingers were, how lissom her long arms and legs, like the branches of a young tree. How luxuriant and green her long hair as it curled around her face and shoulders. Her skin, if skin it was, appeared smooth and unwrinkled, unmarred by the cares and worries that beset them. Her gown melded to her lithe body like a second skin. It was odd he could not tell where her legs began and the gown ended; both melded seamlessly. What he couldn't help but notice was that she was very beautiful, a delicate, fragile creature who needed help. Wonder what your name is?
Sojourn. ~ Elizabeth Klein

If you put a frog into a pot of boiling water, the fucker will jump right back out. It knows it's wrong, it hurts, it will kill him. But if you put him in a pot and slowly raise it up to boiling, he'll stay. That's what abuse is like. You might not even notice it's happening at first. You'd brush it off as him having a bad day, you pissing him off. But then it starts getting worse in small ways until you're in so deep and you're so hot and your skin is peeling and you don't know if you even remember you can jump anymore. That doesn't make you weak. You got out of that shit, baby. That makes you stronger, a lot stronger, I think, than you even realize. ~ Jessica Gadziala

Quincenañera

My dolls have been put away like dead
children in a chest I will carry
with me when I marry.
I reach under my skirt to feel
a satin slip bought for this day. It is soft
as the inside of my thighs. My hair
has been nailed back with my mother's
black hairpins to my skull. Her hands
stretched my eyes open as she twisted
braids into a tight circle at the nape
of my neck. I am to wash my own clothes
and sheets from this day on, as if
the fluids of my body were poison, as if
the little trickle of blood I believe
travels from my heart to the world were
shameful. Is not the blood of saints and
men in battle beautiful? Do Christ's hands
not bleed into your eyes from His cross?
At night I hear myself growing and wake
to find my hands drifting of their own will
to soothe skin stretched tight
over my bones.
I am wound like the guts of a clock,
waiting for each hour to release me. ~ Judith Ortiz Cofer

She grinned. "This is the fun part."
She didn't even look, but a moment before the demon hit, massive wings snapped out of her back with lightning speed and a thundercrack, smacking the demon and flicking it over the rooftops like it was a ... gnat.
Okay, so the thesaurus in my head wasn't cranking out the synonyms because I was too busy gawking at the enormous white wings checkered with several feathers the same brilliant blue as her hair and shirt. They fluttered with a whispering grace, sending a soft breeze to cool my sweaty skin.
I blinked when she snapped her fingers in my face.
"Did you hear anything I just said?"
"You have wings?"
She sighed. Her shoulders and wings slumped. "I need you to focus, dear, so listen up. You must stick close to the Hex Boys. They'll protect you whilst - "
"Where did the wings come from? ~ A&E Kirk

I did not want to be like anyone else. I wanted to remain in my own skin, although it was often so constrictive... I had to find a bridge to reach people, I must learn to live with them without always feeling at a disadvantage. ~ Hermann Hesse

The boy swelled up, and his skin filled with pockets of blood. In some places, the skin almost separated from the underlying tissue. This happened during the last phase, while he was on the respirator. It is called third spacing. If you bleed into the first space, you bleed into your lungs. If you bleed into the second space, you bleed into your stomach and intestines. If you bleed into the third space, you bleed into the space between the skin and the flesh. The skin puffs up and separates from the flesh like a bag. Peter Cardinal had bled out under his skin. ~ Richard Preston

My skin feels too tight, like I might rupture. My mother must have read the end, the cards Enola keeps reading, the same thing Verona Bonn read, all the way back to Ryzhkova. They passed the cards to each other creating history, fingers touching paper, imbuing it with hope and fears, fear like a curse. Of course they wouldn't clear their cards, they were talking to their mothers, and isn't that part of why I've stayed here? The book noted a falling out between Ryzhkova and her apprentice, a falling out over the mermaid. Enola said that cards build history - what a perfect way to wound someone. The cards were hers, Ryzhkova's, then Amos and Evangeline's on down the line, each leaving themselves in the ink, each pulling from the deck, pulling in fears that work like poison. The wind blows a sheet of paper across a split board. The only paper of consequence was never in my possession - it was in Enola's. ~ Erika Swyler

Warmblood now a bloodborne death,
Will rob your body of it's breath
Mark your skin and seal your fate
The Underland becomes a plate ~ Suzanne Collins

Any movie you see, if Tom Cruise is in an action movie or whatever it is, The Avengers, there's going to be a kick-ass female character. Usually one. And there's a term for this, but I don't know what it is. But someone's coined a term where there's one female character who's incredibly tough and strong and just as good as the guys at whatever it is they're doing, and usually wearing black, skin-tight clothes, and [she] has no personality whatsoever, and is not funny. ~ Geena Davis

Somewhere," he told her, "somewhere else lived a boy and a girl beside the sea and as they grew older they grew more transparent. At first blue blood vessels and then bones bloomed beneath the skin but soon they could see the shapes of the world behind their bodies, the shudder of leaves like shadows in the brain, a butterfly's flutter in the mutter of the heart, beetles in the coils of the bowels. They watched wine whirl down each other's throats and the sun rise up each other's spines, stepping vertically vertebra to vertebra. Soon the only substance they obtained was when their bodies overlapped and so they clasped each other, peering for the vestiges of eyes, teeth, ears, smears against the landscape. And one day they kissed and disappeared. ~ Keith Miller

Red lips don't look good on blotchy, uneven skin. ~ Dita Von Teese

My skin tingles as I step into the music,
give in to the icy thrill of pleasure
that spreads through me whenever I dance,
the pleasure of leaping into a cool lake on a
sweltering day. ~ Padma Venkatraman

Kinship doesn't come from skin color. It's in your soul and your mind. ~ Dave Brubeck

The hollow of his throat dipped as he swallowed, that small bit of skin beckoning to her to touch. Kiss. Lick. ~ Megan Erickson

We learned three things together, that first day of Ethan's humanity: skin warms skin, silver eyes light darkness, and our heartbeats measured time together, so that we knew we were no longer alone. ~ Vicki Keire

The gods created this place for us," I whispered, smiling dreamily. Calder paused, brushing his lips once more across my throat before responding. "Yes." I felt him smile against my skin. "Why do you think they did that?" "So we'd have a place to fall in love. ~ Mia Sheridan

She was saying she was sorry that she couldn't always hang out when I wanted to, but that "when you get a boyfriend," he becomes the only person you want to spend all your time with. He becomes your best friend, and (this part was not said, but was definitively implied) the only friend that really matters. "You'll know what I mean, when you get one," she said. So that's when I gripped my upper jaw and pulled back the skin and muscle of my face to reveal an alien, like the one in the film Alien, and I jumped through the glass in Leigh's window and ate every boyfriend in the city, and the country, and the world. I swallowed them whole, and many of them cried, and those were the ones I liked best. ~ Katie Heaney

You're cute in the morning," he told me.
"I am?" I asked.
"Cute and sweet."
"Mm," I mumbled, glad he thought that but I'd always been a morning person. I was a night person too. I was an anytime person when I wasn't stressy and in a bad mood.
One of his hands left my back and I watched his eyes get heated and intense as they studied my face.
Then he did something beautiful, something amazing, something that, if I'd had any doubts as to my certainty, they would have disintegrated.
He tenderly slid the backs of his knuckles against the skin of my cheek while he muttered, "A year and a half. Totally fuckin' missed out. ~ Kristen Ashley

That's what I mean by being bilingual: comfortable in your skin, comfortable with all parts of who you are. ~ Henry Louis Gates

Although Arin wasn't touching her, he was touching no living part of her, it felt as if a fine net had been cast over Kestrel, one that hazed her vision and shimmered against her skin.
"There," he said.
Kestrel watched her reflection lift a hand to her head. She couldn't think of what to say. Arin had drawn back, hands in his pockets. But his eyes held hers in the mirror, and his face had softened, like when she had played the piano for him. She said, "How…?"
He smiled. "How did a blacksmith pick up such an unexpected skill?"
"Well, yes."
"My older sister used to make me do this when I was little."
Kestrel almost asked where Arin's sister was now, then imagined the worst. She saw Arin watch her imagine it, and saw from his expression that the worst was true. Yet his smile didn't fade. "I hated it, of course," he said. "The way she ordered me around. The way I let her. But now…it's a nice memory."
She rose and faced Arin. The chair stood between them, and she wasn't sure whether she was grateful for that barrier or not.
"Kestrel, if you must go to the ball, take me with you."
"I don't understand you," she said, frustrated. "I don't understand what you say, how you change, how you act one way and then come here and act another."
"I don't always understand myself either. But I know I want to go with you tonight."
Kestrel let the words echo in her mind. There had been a supple strength to his voice. An unconscious melody. Kes ~ Marie Rutkoski

What I am is a heretic who's recanted and, thereby, in everyone's eyes, saved his soul. Everyone's eyes but one, who knows deep down inside that all he has saved is his skin. ~ Robert M. Pirsig

After washing each other, tenderly, they made love again, him pressing her into the wall as water rained down on them, caressing their skin with warmth. ~ Josie Leigh

You never learned the secret," said Roberta. "How to be a crazy motherfucker and get away with it. Everybody else does it. What, you didn't think they were all sane, did you? Not a one of them. They're all crazier than you and me put together. They just know how to fake it. You could too, but you've chosen to torture all of us instead. That's the definition of evil right there: not faking it like everybody else. Because all of us crazy fuckers can't stand it when someone else lets their crazy show. It's like bugs under the skin. We have to destroy you. It's nothing personal. ~ Charlie Jane Anders

Another sob came, harder than the first, but she couldn't cover her face and her mastectomy scars at the same time when he raised his head. When she tried, Luke merely caught her wrists and lightly pinned them on either side of her head.
"It's all right, Em. Tears are part of this," he whispered, bending to kiss them away. He moved gently within her, another tender caress that soothed as much as it stimulated. It broke the seal on the dam of her tears. They came out in a quiet rush while he stayed above her, eyes on her face as he murmured soothing things she didn't quite catch. And when the tears slowed, she looked up into his handsome face with a sniffle and the smile he gave her filled her heart to overflowing. Dear God she loved him. Had always loved him and would never love another man but him.
Her heart had known it all along. And so had her body.
Still, she tensed when he released one of her wrists to touch the skin beneath her right collarbone. Luke shook his dark head, those liquid eyes looking right into her soul. "I won't let you hide from me. Or from yourself." Embedded deep inside her, he raised his upper body to gaze at her, and all she could do was close her eyes in resistance. "Look at me."
After a long hesitation, she did.
He stared down at her with a powerful mixture of tenderness and hunger. "You think a scar's going to change how I see you? Feel about you?"
She swallowed and struggled to find her voice. "It's ugly."
"You' ~ Kaylea Cross

Man sheds grief as his skin sheds rain. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

Adam took Ellie's hand and brought it to his lips, his eyes closing as he pressed his mouth to her skin. When he opened them I saw tears shimmering there, and felt my throat close up. I watched Ellie's breath catch as he tugged on her hand and pulled her into the kitchen with him to face Braden. All of sudden Adam looked a little sick. "I need to tell you something."

Braden crossed his arms over his chest, frowning as he took in the two of them standing close together. "Go on."

Adam closed his eyes briefly and then when he opened them I saw determination that I admired in the face of his bulldozer of a friend. "You're like a brother. I would never do anything to hurt you. And I know I haven't been what a brother would consider good material for his wee sister, but I love Ellie, Braden. I have for a long time now and I can't not be with her. I've wasted too much time as it is."

Ellie and I held our breaths as the two best friends faced off.

Braden's eyes went to Ellie, his expression not giving anything away. God, he could be an intimidating a-hole when he wanted to be. "Do you love him?"

Adam looked back at her and she squeezed his arm. With a small smile she turned to her brother. "Yes."

Braden shrugged and reached casually over to the kettle to turn it on. "About bloody time. You two were giving me a headache."

My mouth fell open along with Adam and Ellie's. Not once the entire time we'd been datin ~ Samantha Young

I did what most writers do at their beginnings: emulated my elders, imitated my peers, thus turning away from any possibility of discovering truths beneath my skin and behind my eye. ~ Ray Bradbury

Matthew, we need your help. What do we do?"
"Look at my new kicks." He raised one boot. "Finn said I'm ballin' like a pimp now." Then he frowned. "Good thing?"
"Yes, yes, but - "
"He took care of me when you abandoned me."
God, the guilt. In a rush, I said, "I thought you'd be safer at Finn's than going back out on the road with me! You know how dangerous it'll be to reach the coast." But then, I'd believed that before I'd understood how lethal I could be.
"Dangerous Empress!"
"This isn't working!" "Tapped out." My glyphs were dark, the fuel gauge blinking E. Selena's hand shot out and smacked my face.
"What the hell?" When I raised my palm to my cheek, she slapped the other one harder.
I felt my glyphs stirring.
"If you don't want these cards to die, then get to work, Evie! You need to look like the Empress of Old, slithery and creepy and sexy all at the same time."
"Touch me again, and you'll see slithery and creepy - "
With her enhanced speed, she shoved me back before I could even react. I tripped over my pack, landing on my ass. "You bitch!" I bounded up, thorn claws bared.
"That's it! Sell it, sister, or we are dead!"
I gazed down at my body, at my skin glowing through the fabric of my clothes. Sharp emotions like fury and utter terror always sparked my powers; Selena had pissed me off enough to give me a jump-start. I narrowed my eyes at Matthew. "This is why you want me angry, terrified, and sad for the ~ Kresley Cole

Why this girl? Why had this girl crawled right under his skin and made an uncomfortable home there? Why did he want to make things good for her, to see her smile, to make her face
and her voice make all those interesting shapes and noises? Why did he want to stay up late with her when he knew she should be sleeping, just to hear her talk about maths and politics and the
state of the world?
This was not Quentin. Quentin did not like skinny girls. He didn't like serious girls. And he really hated bossy girls.
Quentin loved curvy, fun, uncomplicated girls; girls who laughed at his jokes and took off their bras when they danced on tables. If they wore bras at all. Yet here he was, washing up and mopping and feeling like five kinds of an arsehole over hurting the feelings of some skinny, serious, bossy girl. ~ Ros Baxter

The color of your soul is more important than the color of your skin. ~ Matshona Dhliwayo

I want to be able to feel you," he whispers, his words at my ear. "I want your skin against mine." His gentle hands move down my body. "Gosh, you're so soft," he says, his voice husky with emotion. ~ Tahereh Mafi

Kate, the mother of thirteen, is forty-nine; delicately made; her skin creamlike where the weather has not got at it. She is smaller than several of her children. Her legs and feet, like those of most women in this country, are beautifully shaped by shoelessness on the earth. Her eyes, which are watchful not at all for herself but for her family, are those of a small animal which expects another kick as a matter of course and which is too numbed to dodge it or even much care. She calls her children "my babies." They call her mama, treat her protectively as they might a deformed child, and love her carelessly and gaily. An old photograph shows her fiber and bearing as a young woman, and perhaps it is the relinquishment of that unusual spirit, under the beating and breakage of the past two decades, that has made her now the most abandoned of these people: more than any of them, she is lost in some solitary region of her own. She is only half sane. ~ James Agee

I never felt beautiful unless I was fighting, and even then it was something that went beyond skin and bone into the kinetic joy of successive movements. Kick, thrust, slash. I never doubted Fade at my back. I never faltered. ~ Ann Aguirre