Silken Quotes

Thoughts of moonlight and silken hair evaporated in a black bolt of fury. Kaz saw Inej tug on the sleeve of her left forearm, where the Menagerie tattoo had once been. He had the barest inkling of what she'd endured there, but he knew what it was to feel helpless, and Van Eck had managed to make her feel that way again. Kaz was going to have to find a new language of suffering to teach that smug merch son of a bitch. ~ Leigh Bardugo

A porpoise sounded twenty yards away from us in an explosion of breath, startling us. . . . Then another porpoise broke the water and rolled toward us. A third and a fourth porpoise neared the board and we could feel great secret shapes eyeing us from below. I reached out to touch the back of one, its skin the color of jade, but as I reached the porpoise dove and my hand touched moonlight where the dorsal fin had been cutting through the silken waters. The dolphins had obviously smelled the flood tide of boyhood in the sea and heard the hormones singing in the boy0scented water. None of us spoke as the porpoises circled us. The visitation was something so rare and perfect that we knew by instinct not to speak – and then, as quickly as they had come, the porpoises moved away from us, moved south where there were fish to be hunted.
"Each of us would remember that night floating on the waves all during our lives. It was the year before we went to high school when we were poised on the slippery brink between childhood and adulthood, admiring our own daring as we floated free from the vigilance and approval of adult eyes, ruled only by the indifference of stars and fate. It was the purest moment of freedom and headlong exhilaration that I had ever felt. A wordless covenant was set among us the night of the porpoises. ~ Pat Conroy

I went to the window, opening the pierced shutters to look out over the sleeping city. The moon was waxing and hung half-full like some exotic silver jewel just over the horizon. From the courtyard below rose the scent of jasmine on the cool night air. A slender vine had wound its way up to the balcony, and I reached out, pinching off a single creamy white blossom. I lifted it to my nose, drinking in the thick sweetness of it as it filled my head, sending my senses reeling. There was something narcotic about that jasmine, something carnal and ethereal at the same time. I crushed the petals between my fingers, taking the scent onto my skin. It was not a fragrance to wear alone. It was too rich, too heady, too full of sensuality and promise. It was a fragrance for silken cushions and damp naked flesh and moonlit beds. I rubbed at my fingers, but the scent clung tightly, keeping me company as I sat in the window, listening to a song I had almost forgot and thinking of Gabriel Starke and the five years that stretched barrenly between us. ~ Deanna Raybourn

Moderation is the silken string running through the pearl chain of all virtues. ~ Joseph Hall

When the windows like the jackal's eye and desire pierce the dawn, silken windlasses lift me up to suburban footbridges. I summon a girl who is dreaming in the little gilded house; she meets me on the piles of black moss and offers me her lips which are stones in the rapid river depths. Veiled forebodings descend the buildings' steps. The best thing is to flee from the great feather cylinders when the hunters limp into the sodden lands. If you take a bath in the watery patterns of the streets, childhood returns to the country like a greyhound. Man seeks his prey in the breezes and the fruits are drying on the screens of pink paper, in the shadow of the names overgrown by forgetfulness. Joys and sorrows spread in the town. Gold and eucalyptus, similarly scented, attack dreams. Among the bridles and the dark edelweiss subterranean forms are resting like perfumers' corks. ~ Andre Breton

The foolish think the Eagle weak, and easy to bring to heel. The Eagle's wings are silken, but its claws are made of steel. ~ Sidney Sheldon

Mostly, what I have learned so far about aging, despite the creakiness of one's bones and cragginess of one's once-silken skin, is this: Do it. By all means, do it. ~ Maya Angelou

I scroll past images every bit as violent and beautiful as Jeb's paintings: luminious, rainbow-skinned creatures with bulbous eyes and sparkly, silken wings who carry knives and swords; hideous, naked hobgoblins in chains who crawl on all fours and have corkscrew tails and cloven feet like pigs; silvery pixielike beings trapped in cages and crying oily black tears. ~ A.G. Howard

The horse was a pure-bred Arab. She came, bright and dancing, flaunting into the ring, her tail held high over her quarters, her silken mane flowing over the crest of her neck. Her head was fine-boned and delicate, with the concave line of the true Arab horse. Her dark, lustrous eyes were fringed with long lashes and the nostrils wrinkling her velvet muzzle were huge black pits. She moved around the ring like a bright flame, her pricked ears delicate as flower petals. Her legs were clean and unblemished and her small hooves were polished ivory. After the dull ache of the rosinbacks, she was all light and fire.
Jinny sat entranced, hardly breathing, and then her breath burst out of her in a throbbing gasp. She loved the chestnut mare. As if all their long day's travelling had only been for this. As if she had come all the way from Stopton only for this, to see this sudden gift of perfection. ~ Patricia Leitch

Carmen stood at the altar wearing a hand-beaded, curve hugging, ivory silk and chiffon gown that fit so perfectly, it looked as if it had been sewn on her. The fact that one of the breasts beneath the silken fabric was not her flesh but a form made of gel didn't detract from the gorgeousness of Carmen the slightest bit. ~ Kathleen Cross

But there is no such man; for, brother, men
Can counsel and speak comfort to that grief
Which they themselves not feel; but, tasting it,
Their counsel turns to passion, which before
Would give preceptial medicine to rage,
Fetter strong madness in a silken thread,
Charm ache with air and agony with words. ~ William Shakespeare

Lucy happily settled down to work. First she sent for papyrus and handmade a book leaf by leaf, binding the leaves together between board covers. Then she filled each page from memory, drew English roses budding and Chinese roses in full bloom, peppercorn-pink Bourbon roses climbing walls and silvery musk roses drowsing in flowerbeds. She took every rose she'd ever seen, made them as lifelike as she could (where she shaded each petal the rough paper turned silken), and in these lasting forms she offered them to Safiye. ~ Helen Oyeyemi

The horror was, Cleopatra meant something to these modern people of the twentieth century which was altogether wrong. She had become a symbol of licentiousness, when in fact she had possessed a multitude of amazing talents. They had punished her for her one flaw by forgetting everything else…Remembered, but not for what she was. A painted whore lying on a silken couch. - Ramses ~ Anne Rice

Even when you're keeping score, golf is all about focusing on the shot at hand, the total score being a sum of those shots. On magic mushrooms, each shot was an act of self-expression - a karate kick, a pirouette, a paintbrush stroke. The course was an aren, a stage, and a canvas.

That's the way it felt playing in the backcountry, too. Going beyond the simple visual appreciation of a landscape and interacting with it beyond the reach of the physical body. Launching shots across canyons and rivers and down mountainsides and beaches. The motion of the body determining the motion of the ball - its flight an extension of the body like a spider riding the wind on a silken thread or a perfectly cast fly arcing down onto the surface of the water.

This is the part of the game that is hard for nongolfers to see. You have to play to feel it. It isn't visible through the TV screen or from outside the picket fences and privet hedges. The forest gets lost in tress of tartan and argyle, visors and V-necks. Golf seems to be one thing but is very much another, and backcountry golf and mushroom night golf are as true to the nature of the game as any stuffy country club championship or Saturday Nassau or fourball. ~ John Dunn

I consider the positions of kings and rulers as that of dust motes. I observe treasure of gold and gems as so many bricks
and pebbles. I look upon the finest silken robes as tattered rags. I see myriad worlds of the universe as small seeds of
fruit, and the greatest lake in India as a drop of oil on my foot. I perceive the teachings of the world to be the illusion of,
magicians. I discern the highest conception of emancipation as golden brocade in a dream, and view the holy path of the
illuminated one as flowers appearing in one's eyes. I see meditation as a pillar of a mountain, Nirvana as a nightmare of
daytime. I look upon the judgment of right and wrong as the serpentine dance of a dragon, and the rise and fall of beliefs
as but traces left by the four seasons. ~ Gautama Buddha

He wanted to tie her to him in ways she'd never escape. But they'd be the most loving, silken ties in the world. ~ Maya Banks

She had always enjoyed the warm, calming feeling of the sand. It slipped as a silken scarf of liquid sunshine across the surface of her skin. Kayn took one hand and ran it over the surface of the sand, and it shifted as though it had been moved by a light breeze without her hand making contact. Her life now had no room for feet being firmly planted on the ground. She had to allow her mind to take off in flight and accept the impossible. She had to embrace life as a toddler. In a child's world, every breath of life is a mystery; everything had the possibility of being magic. ~ Kim Cormack

Success in life comes to those who simply refuse to give up; individuals with vision so strong that obstacles, failure and loss only act as teachings ~ Silken Laumann

Even if you don't believe in god or fate, at least you can believe in narrative. ~ Richard Silken

The passion for revenge should never blind you to the pragmatics of the situation. There are some people who are so blighted by their past, so warped by experience and the pull of that silken cord, that they never free themselves of the shadows that live in the time machine ...
And if there is a kind thought due them, it may be found contained in the words of the late Gerald Kersh, who wrote: ... there are men whom one hates until a certain moment when one sees, through a chink in their armour, the writhing of something nailed down and in torment. ~ Harlan Ellison

Thus I, gone forth, as spiders do,
In spider's web a truth discerning,
Attach one silken strand to you
For my returning. ~ E.B. White

You think that I am impoverishing myself withdrawing from men, but in my solitude I have woven for myself a silken web or chrysalis, and, nymph-like, shall ere long burst forth a more perfect creature, fitted for a higher society. ~ Henry David Thoreau

Annabelle…" His mouth drifted along her throat. "I've wanted you since the first moment I saw you standing outside that panorama, digging for coins in your purse. I couldn't take my eyes from you. I could hardly believe you were real."
"You stared at me for the entire show," she said, gasping a little as he nibbled at the silken lobe of her ear. "I doubt you learned a single thing about the fall of the Roman Empire."
"I learned that you have the softest lips I've ever kissed."
"You have a novel way of introducing yourself."
"I couldn't help it." His hand skimmed gently up and down her side. "Standing next to you in the darkness was the most unholy temptation I'd ever experienced. All I could think about was how adorable you were and how much I wanted you. When the lights went out completely, I couldn't stand it any longer." A note of masculine smugness entered his voice as he added, "And you didn't push me away."
"I was too surprised!"
"That was the reason you didn't object?"
"No," Annabelle admitted, tilting her face so that her cheek brushed against his. "I liked your kiss. You know that I did."
He smiled at that.

-Annabelle & Simon ~ Lisa Kleypas

He said, "Were he only like his sister - what a difference that would make! For there never was such a sweet and gentle lady! I hear her footsteps, as she goes about the world. I hear the swish-swish-swish of her silken gown and the jingle-jangle of the silver chain about her neck. Her smile is full of comfort and her eyes are kind and happy! How I long to see her!"
"Who, sir?" asked Paramore, puzzled.
"Why, his sister, John. His sister. ~ Susanna Clarke

One of his hands caught her knee from beneath, urging her leg higher against his, and he pushed strongly within her.
She shuddered, her body locked to him, and then a languorous warmth suffused her as she relaxed to his rhythm. Their clothes rustled together, crushed masses of silk and broadcloth and velvet, separating them everywhere except in the wet, naked heat of their loins. She leaned against the door, her body rising from each upward drive. She was utterly possessed by him, no longer caring about the risk they were taking, conscious only of the ecstasy of his flesh joined to hers. Muttering fiercely into the curve of her neck, he thrust faster, creating silken friction that finally drove her into a scalding orgasm. ~ Lisa Kleypas

The logic: Reading is a private pursuit, one that often takes place behind closed doors. A young lady might retreat with a book, might even take it into her boudoir, and there, reclining on here silken sheets, imbibing the thrills and chills manufactured by writerly quills, one of her hands, one not absolutely needed to grip the little volume, might wander. The fear, in short, as one-handed reading. [p. 146] ~ Siri Hustvedt

Someone was playing piano nearby and the music drifted slowly in and out of my mind like the ebb and flow of ocean surf. i almost recognized the melody, but i could not be sure, it slipped like a cool and silken wind from my grasp. ~ Chaim Potok

Was it for pleasure that you followed them
Putting off your slippers at the door
To dance barefoot and blood-foot in the snow?
No.

What then? What glamoured you? No glamour at all;
Only that I remembered I was young
And had to put myself into a song.
How could time bear witness that I was tall,
Silken, and made for love, if I did not so?
I do not know.

- Earl Cassilis's Lady ~ Sylvia Townsend Warner

He burned,his body drawn bow-taut. If he did not sheathe himself soon within his wife's silken depths...
She looked at him directly, her eyes wide and candid. "All day I have wanted to...touch you."
His dark brows rose. All day? Well that was certainly pleasing but it didn't make his condition any easier to bear. Harshly, he said, "You don't have to ask permission to touch me."
She shrugged her lovely, almost bare shoulders. "I know,but under the circumstances..." Her gaze drifted down his body, rather pointedly, he thought.
Which definitely did not help matters at all.
"You can touch me later," he said and reached for her again.
She pressed her palms against his chest, tossed back her gleaming hair, and laughed. Really,he was going to die from this.
"Just a little now...please?"
Dragon squeezed his eyes shut and reached deep down inside for the control that was so instrinsic a part of his warrior's nature.It had to be in there somewhere.Any moment now he'd stumble across it. ~ Josie Litton

I do not believe that any man can preach the gospel who does not preach the Law. The Law is the needle, and you cannot draw the silken thread of the gospel through a man's heart unless you first send the needle of the Law to make way for it. ~ Charles Spurgeon

It's quite ironic that by being a romantic asexual, you are eternally screwed. See, it's extremely difficult to meet somebody who wants a romantic relationship without any sex. Wanting a romantic relationship without sex is like offering non-alcoholic beer at a house party. They'll laugh at you, call you a socially-awkward dork, they'll ask you why you don't just go with soft drinks... people generally don't drink booze for the colour or flavour (although I suppose you could count those hipsters who hang out at craft breweries debating over the nutty undertaste of it or whatever hipsters debate about). I've come to the conclusion that I am probably better off alone. Lonely at times maybe, but that's what friends are for. Solitude can be wonderfully liberating, anyway. Not having to share belongings or property, having your own time and privacy... and in any case, if you ever feel the need to be anchored by something or someone, material items and hobbies and states of being, those all last indefinitely. They won't go away until you do. It's a kind of freedom that most people don't have access to unless they become divorced or widowed, or if they choose to remain single on purpose. The gilded wings of solitude that probably look ugly and tarnished to everyone standing below them as they gaze up to the sky. The sun shining down on them, wind through silken feathers, that's always brilliant. There are bouts of rain and darkness, but you get that on the ground just as much as you ~ Rebecca McNutt

Two Points of View

If I forget, -
May joy pledge this weak heart to sorrow!
If I forget, -
May my soul's coloured summer borrow
The hueless tones of storm and rain,
Of ruth and terror, shame and pain, -
If I forget!

Though you forget, -
There is no binding code for beauty;
Though you forget, -
Love was your charm, but not your duty;
And life's worst breeze must never bring
A ruffle to your silken wing, -
Though you forget.

If I forget, -
The salt creek may forget the ocean;
If I forget, -
The heart whence flows my heart's bright motion,
May I sink meanlier than the worst,
Abandoned, outcast, crushed, accurst, -
If I forget!

Though you forget, -
No word of mine shall mar your pleasure;
Though you forget, -
You filled my barren life with treasure,
You may withdraw the gift you gave,
You still are lord, I still am slave, -
Though you forget. ~ Edmund Gosse

Usually, when he came in these dreams he woke up still thrusting into ruined sheets, his face pressed into a pillow.
This time, he was most assuredly still balls deep inside Delilah McGavin, his face pressed into the mass of silken black hair now that they'd fallen to their sides on a bed far too nice to be his. Like him, she was gasping, trying to catch her breath. She was also bonelessly limp, her sweat slick body slathered over his, their legs tangled, their sexes still throbbing against each other, fitted together like a lock and a key. ~ Dee Tenorio

Time, as he passes us, has a dove's wing,
Unsoil'd, and swift, and of a silken sound. ~ William Cowper

And the silken sad uncertain rustling of each purple curtain
Thrilled me - filled me with fantastic terrors never felt before;
So that now, to still the beating of my heart, I stood repeating,
Tis some visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door
Some late visitor entreating entrance at my chamber door;
This it is, and nothing more. ~ Edgar Allan Poe

I never met your likeness. Jane: you please me, and you master me - you seem to submit, and I like the sense of pliancy you impart; and while I am twining the soft, silken skein round my finger, it sends a thrill up my arm to my heart. I am influenced - conquered; and the influence is sweeter than I can express; and the conquest I undergo has a witchery beyond any triumph _I_ can win. ~ Charlotte Bronte

His answering smile evoked silken sheets and jasmine-scented breezes at midnight. ~ Sarah J. Maas

With six small diamonds for his eyes
He walks upon the summer skies,
Drawing from his silken blouse
The lacework of his dwelling house. ~ Robert P. T. Coffin

The faint of lemon verbena surrounded her, floating gently from Eleanor Butler's silk gown and silken hair. It was the fragrance that had always been part of Ellen O'Hara, the scent for Scarlett of comfort, of safety, of love, of life before the War ~ Alexandra Ripley

Imagine if you will - and you will - a mushroom cloud bigger than anything that you currently see out that window. Imagine jet planes and bombers the size of apartment complexes dropping technological marvels of deconstruction upon this city, this world, all around the epicenter of a blooming death cloud. Imagine that mushroom coming to a head, knowing that it is filled with unimaginable heat and concrete, dust, papers - human faces, eyes, and brains. Gray matter filling the radioactive cloud with electricity as all that is inside us leaves us and becomes one with the mushroom. Glass will melt and connect with steel, and we will melt and connect with each other as everything that made us whole is criminally dissected and rearranged. Everything below us, from the sewer tunnels to the subway line, will be consumed into the cloud and jettisoned into the stratosphere, where it will become nothing but silken ash, hardened to a black substance, and turned back to a black dust, transfixed into a black nothing. A stinking, glowing crater all that remains of where you had your first kiss and told someone that you loved them. A mess of a world where everything you've ever done quickly becomes all that you'll ever do. ~ Michael A. Ferro

Tomas led a young woman by the hand and walked up into the foothills. Millian, the miner from Rosario, had introduced her to the patron, already buying points for himself. He was no fool. And the girl, no fool either, lifted her skirts for Tomas as he knelt before her, licking his way up her thighs -brown and sweet as candy, at the same time, tart and salty, musky, silken and cold in the warm air, refreshing as the sorbet he licked in Culiacan back when he was a student. She was amazed that this bit of her body could the great master to his knees before her. She was perhaps the most beautiful girl on that whole plain, but he did not her name and felt no need to ask. He pressed his face to her underwear, redolent with the burning scent of her, and he pulled the cotton down, over the bright points of her hips , the shadowy curve of her belly, until the fog of dark hair came into his sight, soft in the moonlight, tickling his face as he bent down to her again. He pressed his lips on the mound of her, breathing her in, tasting her like a dog, as her skirts fell over his head and her fingers pulled his head tighter to her, her legs moving apart in the dark, her beauty falling around him, his greatest gift to him, this flavor, this smell, her scent. ~ Luis Alberto Urrea

Silken strings composing the harpsichord of life accommodate a score of emotional tidings. An orchestra of linked heartbeats strumming the melodious prose of our collective intones gives rise to sonnets of melancholy, producing an illimitable libretto stretching from the milky dawn of newborn's amaranth life to the speckled sunsets of gentle souls whom we cherish. ~ Kilroy J. Oldster

It is not fantasy's hot fire,
Whose wishes, son as granted, fly;
It liveth not in fierce desire,
With dead desire it doth not die;
It is the secret sympathy,
The silver link, the silken tie,
Which heart to heart, and mind to mind,
In body and in soul can bind. ~ Walter Scott

Luxury and dissipation, soft and gentle as their approaches are, and silently as they throw their silken chains about the heart, enslave it more than the most active and turbulent vices ~ Hannah More

Between two of the joists, backlit by a bare dust-coated bulb in a white ceramic socket, a fat spider danced from string to string, plucking from its silken harp a music beyond human hearing. Bibi ~ Dean Koontz

Aye, milord." She snuggled close to him, but his low, wheezing laughter made her draw back again to try to see the eyes that were only a dark shadow behind the silken cloth.
"Something amuses you?"
"Sleep! 'Twill be impossible with you in my arms."
"Shall I go?" she questioned, resting a hand on his chest.
"Never!" He caught her to him in a fierce embrace, burying his face against her throat.
-Erienne & Lord Saxton ~ Kathleen E. Woodiwiss

Surely choosing the perfect silken shoes isn't more important than finding a blood-crazed murderer. Yet… look at those things on your feet, getting all stained and gory. Is your interest in science simply an attempt at finding a husband? Shall I grab my coat, then? ~ Kerri Maniscalco

In two of your poems you called that central
Passage of womanhood a wound,
Instead of a curtain guarding a silken
Trail of sighs. How many men,
Upon regarding such beauty, helplessly
Touching it, recklessly needing
To enter its warmth again and again,
Have assumed it embodies their own ache
Of absence, the personal
Gash that has punished their lives.
So endowed of anatomy, any woman
Who has been loved
Knows that her tenderest blush
Of tissue is a luxe burden of have.
Although it bleeds, this is only to cleanse,
To prepare yet another nesting for love.
It is not a wound, friend.
It is a home for you.
It is a way into the world. ~ Michele Wolf

He may not have yet seduced her into his bed, but he'd succeeded in seducing her into his life in countless other ways, each an invisible, silken knot, binding her to him as he lured her deeper into his world. ~ Karen Marie Moning

She fell asleep rapidly, swimming through a haze of pleasant images... walking through the forest in Hampshire... dangling her feet in a cool pond on a hot day... pausing in the kissing gate, while the smell of sun-warmed meadowsweet rose thickly to her nostrils. She closed her eyes and tilted her chin upward, relishing the sultry rays, while a butterfly's wings brushed lightly against her cheek. Entranced by the delicate tickle, she held very still. The silken strokes moved over the tip of her nose, the sensitive periphery of her upper lip, the tender corners of her mouth.
Searching blindly, she lifted her face to the brushes of warmth and was rewarded by a gentle pressure that opened her lips and drew a moan from the upper part of her lungs. Lord Sydney was standing with her in the kissing gate, his arms trapping her against the painted ribs of latticework. His mouth searched hers so gently, his body firm against hers, and she writhed in a mute plea for him to hold her more tightly. Seeming to know exactly what she wanted, he pushed his knee into her skirts, right against the place that felt swollen and yearning. Gasping, she curled her fingers in his glossy hair, and he whispered for her to relax, that he would take care of her, satisfy her-
"Oh." Blinking hard, she stirred from the sensuous dream as she realized that she was not alone. The bed curtains had been drawn aside, and Nick Gentry's long body was entangled with hers. One large hand was cupped beneath he ~ Lisa Kleypas

Close your eyes," Marcus said, his hand moving to her bottom in a circling caress. He brushed his mouth over her forehead and her fragile eyelids. "Rest. You'll need to regain your strength ... because once we're married, I won't be able to leave you alone. I'll want to love you every hour, every minute of the day." He nestled her more closely against him. "There is nothing on earth more beautiful to me than your smile ... no sound sweeter than your laughter ... no pleasure greater than holding you in my arms. I realized today that I could never live without you, stubborn little hellion that you are. In this life and the next, you're my only hope of happiness. Tell me, Lillian, dearest love ... how can you have reached so far inside my heart?" He paused to kiss her damp silken skin ... and smiled as the wisp of a feminine snore broke the peaceful silence. ~ Lisa Kleypas

2 cups unbleached flour 1 cup rolled oats 1 Tbsp baking powder ½ tsp sea salt 1 cup sliced almonds ½ cup shredded coconut ½ cup chocolate chips 2 cups maple syrup 6 oz firm silken tofu (aseptic package) 1 ripe banana ½ cup saffower or sunflower oil ½ cup vegetable shortening 1 Tbsp vanilla ~ Tanya Petrovna

The wind was off shore, and only broke the sea's surface in to long, silvery ripples, and sent sheeny shadows flying out across it, from every point and headland, like transparent wings. The dusk was hanging a curtain of violet gloom over the sand-dunes and the headlands where gulls were huddling. The sky was faintly filmed over with scarfs of silken vapor. Cloud fleets rode at anchor along the horizons. An evening star was watching over the bar. ~ L.M. Montgomery

Her lips were like the soft beauty of a delicately designed silken scarf. ~ Howard Gordon

Joy and woe are woven fine, a clothing for the soul divine. Under every grief and pine, runs a joy with silken twine. ~ William Blake

but the whispered tone had latterly become more drowsy; and Margaret, after a pause of a few minutes, found, as she fancied, that in spite of the buzz in the next room, Edith had rolled herself up into a soft ball of muslin and ribbon, and silken curls, and gone off into a peaceful little after-dinner nap. ~ Elizabeth Gaskell

Why Roses Crave Thorns"

Petals detach from a wilting bud - a single stem plucked before fully blossomed. They descend in hesitant swirls, too soft and limp to shatter like teardrops. One by one they light to blanket a single shadow below.

She is a rose, young and innocent, with beauty incomparable to shame all others. She has flowered enough to stop the observer in his tracks, awestruck. He is compelled to reach out and touch. The petals delight at a silken caress, her bud everything desirable but defenseless - without a sharp edge to make an admirer pause, to warn the intrusive hand. 'Stay back! Stay back!'

His fingers curl around the stem to tug, and suddenly the rose craves a thorn.

It is madness not to want her and yet madness to cut her down. Let the flower thrive and blush to someday flaunt layers of silken favors! But the world will not have it. A single stem is severed in a selfish moment of desire - a yearning to hold and possess.

Alone and forgotten her petals cry, raining in hesitant swirls where they accumulate to blanket her shadow below. Dry, withered, craving the thorns. Beautiful no more. ~ Richelle E. Goodrich

Love is a hawk with velvet claws
love is a rock with heart and veins
love is a lion with satin jaws
love is a storm with silken reins ~ Kurt Vonnegut

A spider lives inside my head
Who weaves a strange and wondrous web
Of silken threads and silver strings
To catch all sorts of flying things,
Like crumbs of thoughts and bits of smiles
And specks of dried-up tears,
And dust of dreams that catch and cling
For years and years and years ... ~ Shel Silverstein

It was a place of brilliant sunlight, never undappled. Shafts of lemon-gold brilliance lanced down to the forest floor between bars and pools of brown-green shade; and the light was never still, never constant, because drifting mist would often float among the treetops, filtering all the sunlight to a pearly sheen and brushing every pine cone with moisture that glistened when the mist lifted. Sometimes the wetness in the clouds condensed into tiny drops half mist and half rain, which floated downward rather than fell, making a soft rustling patter among the millions of needles.

There was a narrow path beside the stream, which led from a village-little more than a cluster of herdsmen's dwellings - at the foot of the valley to a half-ruined shrine near the glacier at its head, a place where faded silken flags streamed out in the Perpetual winds from the high mountains, and offerings of barley cakes and dried tea were placed by pious villagers. An odd effect of the light, the ice, and the vapor enveloped the head of the valley in perpetual rainbows. ~ Philip Pullman

Meantime, let me ask myself one question--Which is better?--To have surrendered to temptation; listened to passion; made no painful effort--no struggle;--but to have sunk down in the silken snare; fallen asleep on the flowers covering it; wakened in a southern clime, amongst the luxuries of a pleasure villa: to have been now living in France, Mr. Rochester's mistress; delirious with his love half my time--for he would--oh, yes, he would have loved me well for a while. He DID love me--no one will ever love me so again. I shall never more know the sweet homage given to beauty, youth, and grace--for never to any one else shall I seem to possess these charms. He was fond and proud of me--it is what no man besides will ever be.--But where am I wandering, and what am I saying, and above all, feeling? Whether is it better, I ask, to be a slave in a fool's paradise at Marseilles--fevered with delusive bliss one hour- -suffocating with the bitterest tears of remorse and shame the next- -or to be a village-schoolmistress, free and honest, in a breezy mountain nook in the healthy heart of England? ~ Charlotte Bronte

History is only the pattern of silken slippers descending the stairs to the thunder of hobnailed boots climbing upward from below. ~ Voltaire

Archbishop Mannix was possessed of the clearest intellect I have ever encountered. He prayed regularly for five hours and more each day, this in the midst of a life of intense activity. When he was well over ninety, I once asked him about the precise quality of the Faith which had sustained him. His answer? 'My Faith has always been like a thin silken thread, fraying perpetually at the brink of a precipice over which I hang. Yet the thread has never snapped. ~ Bartholomew Augustine Santamaria

Silence. First it's a cloud of apricot trees in flower, yellow or ivory, like a thousand little butterflies sown in the fresh grass, moving in the glow of lamplight when night ascends. Fragments of dreams. You can see the red sun setting on the foliage, like an enormous mass of incandescent steel.

Then there were the trees a little farther off, straightening their fragile frames, the woolen blue pincushion flower like an eye and that tumult of milk in the deep stone, and finally the moan of the air beaten by a flock of blue woodpigeons– a silken challenge perhaps, or one of crackled leather. ~ Deborah Heissler

Amar loosed a breath. "I understand, you know."
I looked up.
"The forced silence…the voices of this palace."
We stood there, not saying anything. I felt too aware of the space between us. Even with Akaran's secrets spiraling in the shadows of my head, I couldn't ignore the weightless feeling that had gripped me. Standing beside Amar did something to me. Like my center had shifted to make room for him.
"You do not trust me, do you?"
"No," I said. I had no reason to lie. "I told you in the Night Bazaar that trust is won in actions and time. Not words."
"I wish you trusted me."
"I don't place my faith in wishes," I said. "How can I? I can't even--"
I bit back the rest of my words. I can't even see your face. Perhaps Gupta was lying and he really did have a disfiguring scar. Amar moved closer until we were only a hand space apart.
"What?" he coaxed, his voice hovering between a growl and a question.
"I can't even see your face."
A strange chill still curled off of him like smoke and even though the glass garden was teeming with little lights, shades veiled him.
"Is that what you want?" he said. "Would it make you trust me?"
"It would be a start."
"You are impossible to please."
I said nothing. Amar leaned forward, and I felt the silken trails of his hood brush across my neck. My breath constricted. "Is that what you want? An unguarded gaze can spill a thousand secrets."
"I would know them anyway," I s ~ Roshani Chokshi

How many threadbare souls are to be found under silken cloaks and gowns! ~ Thomas Brooks

Back From Vacation"
"Back from vacation", the barber announces,
or the postman, or the girl at the drugstore, now tan.
They are amazed to find the workaday world
still in place, their absence having slipped no cogs,
their customers having hardly missed them, and
there being so sparse an audience to tell of the wonders,
the pyramids they have seen, the silken warm seas,
the nighttimes of marimbas, the purchases achieved
in foreign languages, the beggars, the flies,
the hotel luxury, the grandeur of marble cities.
But at Customs the humdrum pressed its claims.
Gray days clicked shut around them; the yoke still fit,
warm as if never shucked. The world is still so small,
the evidence says, though their hearts cry, "Not so! ~ John Updike

He tried not to notice that her hair was loose. He tried not to see that she was wearing her nightclothes. They were demure, yes, but still meant to be removed, and his gaze kept dipping to the silken hem, which brushed the top of her foot, allowing him a tantalizing peek at her toes.
Good God, he was staring at her toes. Her /toes/. What had his life come to? ~ Julia Quinn

They'd eaten every meal outdoors, hard-boiled eggs and cheese from a picnic basket, and drunk wine under the lilac tree in the walled garden. They'd disappeared inside the woods, and stolen apples from the farm next door, and floated down the stream in her little boat as one silken hour spun itself into the next. On a clear, still night, they'd dug the old bicycles out of the shed and cycled together along the dusty lane, racing, laughing, breathing in salt from the warm air as moonlight made the stones, still hot from the day, shine lustrous white. ~ Kate Morton

Cross," she whispered. "Please-"
And in that plea, he lost himself. "Yes, love," he said, inhaling her heady, glorious scent. "I'll give you everything you want. Everything you need."
He stroked into her softness again, and he wondered at the way she wept for him, not knowing what he would give her... what he could do to her... and wanting it nonetheless. "Do you feel it? The truth of it? How much you want me?"
"I want..." she started, then stopped.
He turned his head, nipping at the soft skin of her inner thigh, reveling in the softness there- that untouched, uncharted, silken spread. "Say it." He would give it to her. Anything in his power. Anything beyond it.
She looked down at him, blue eyes fairly glowing with desire. "I want you to want me."
He closed his eyes at that; trust Pippa to be forthright even here, even now, even as she bared herself to his eyes and mouth and hands. Trust her to strip this moment of all remaining shrouds, leaving it raw and bare and honest.
God help him, he told her the truth. He wasn't certain he could do anything but. "I do, love. I want you more than you could ever know. More than I could have ever dreamed. I want you enough for two men. For ten."
She laughed at that, the sound coming on a wicked movement of strong hips and soft stomach. "I don't require ten. Just you."
Even as he knew he would never be worthy enough for her, the words went straight to the hard, straining length of him, and he k ~ Sarah MacLean

Steak and chicken have too much baggage these days. Was it free-range? Antibiotic-free? Cruelty-free? Organic? Kosher? Did the farmer wear silken gloves to caress it to sleep every night while singing gentle lullabies? You can't order a fucking hamburger anymore without embracing some kind of political platform. ~ Nathan Hill

Regarding her thoughtfully, St. Vincent leaned down to remove her shoes. "You'll be more comfortable without these," he said. "For God's sake, don't shy away. I'm not going to molest you in the carriage." Untying the laces, he continued in a silken tone, "And if I were so inclined it's of little consequence, since we're going to be married soon." He grinned as she jerked her stocking-clad foot away from him, and he reached for the other. ~ Lisa Kleypas

Young women with ambitions should be very crafty and cautious, lest mayhap they be caught in the soft, silken mesh of a happy marriage, and go down to oblivion, dead to the world. ~ Elbert Hubbard

She was indeed beautiful, as if someone had taken the scientific measurements of perfection and used them to mold a single ideal specimen. Her face was slightly heart-shaped, with high cheekbones barely flushed. Auburn hair fell in silken ringlets to her waist and her unblemished ivory skin shimmered like mother-of-pearl in the sunshine. Her lips were red red red, looking like she'd just drunk a pint of blood. ~ Marissa Meyer

Need a hand?"

I peeked at the figure on the horse's back through cracks in my fingers. My eyes slowly adjusted to the light emanating from the horse, and the figure came into focus. It was Barack Obama, clad in a white toga.

He pulled me to my feet.

"Thanks," I said. "You wouldn't believe the dream I've had."

"Try me."

"You came to me one night, and said my friend had been hit by a train…and…is that a unicorn? I asked, squinting at the curled horn sprouting up between the horse's ears.

"I call her Little Beast."

I ran my fingers through the unicorn's silken hair, which left rainbow glitter on my hand. The headache that had plagued me off and on all weekend was gone. There was no pain in my knee, or anywhere else in my body. "Is this heaven?"

"No," Barack said. "It's Iowa."

And then suddenly we weren't in the cemetery anymore. We were on a baseball diamond at the edge of a cornfield. ~ Andrew Shaffer

The thought came creeping, just as the numbness came creeping, stealing over his senses, softly, smoothly, there in the silken silence. ~ Robert Bloch

The thirteen-year-old boy's cheeks were flushed with the wine that his father, half as a joke, had forced upon him. He burrowed into the silken quilts and let his head fall back on the pillow, his breath warm and heavy. The tracery of blue veins under his close-cropped hair throbbed around his earlobes, and the skin was so extraordinarily transparent that one could almost see the fragile mechanism inside. Even in the half-light of the room, his lips were red. And the sounds of breathing that came from this boy, who looked as though he had never experienced anguish, seemed to be the mocking echo of a sad folksong. ~ Yukio Mishima

What does it mean to be the master of your own soul, the captain of your own mind? It means that you keep the final say on what you think, feel and do. No one fearful thought can overtake you, no one doubtful feeling can overthrow you from your path, no one memory of pain can turn you away from what is meant for you now; because when the waves of doubt come and the winds of fear blow and the rains of pain fall and feel like they're stinging you again - you say no. You say no. You say that you will be the master of your vessel and you will tell your mind to stay the course, you will tell your heart to stay fixed, you will tell your skin that it knows the touch of silken balms. You are the captain of your own ship. ~ C. JoyBell C.

It's important to know that at the end of the day it's not the medals you remember. What you remember is the process
what you learn about yourself by challenging yourself, the experiences you share with other people, the honesty the training demands
those are things nobody can take away from you whether you finish twelfth or you're an Olympic Champion. ~ Silken Laumann

There is nothing holier in this life of ours than the first consciousness of love, the first fluttering of its silken wings. ~ Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

We are tomorrow's past. Even now we slip away like those pictures painted on the moving dials of antique clocks - a ship, a cottage, sun and moon, a nosegay. The dial turns, the ship rides up and sinks again, the yellow painted sun has set, and we, that were the new thing, gather magic as we go. The whirr of the spinning wheels has ceased in our parlours, and we hear no more the treadles of the loom, the swift, silken noise of the flung shuttle, the intermittent thud of the batten. But the imagination hears them, and theirs is the melody of romance." ~ from Mary Webb's introduction to her novel Precious Bane. ~ Mary Webb

In the loudest voice I could muster, I shouted, "As of this moment, you are no longer the armies of China, Macedonia, Myanmar, Tibet or India. You are now warriors of Durga! We have already fought and overcome many fierce creatures. Now we give you the symbol of their power."
I borrowed the Scarf and touched it to my Pearl Necklace. The silken material sped down each and every soldier to cloak them in the most brilliant red, blue, green, gold and white. Even the flag bearers were not left out and now held banners depicting Durga riding her tiger into battle.
"Red for the heart of a Phoenix that sees through falsehood!" I cheered and raided the trident. "Blue for the Monsters of the Deep that rip apart those who dare to cross their domain! Gold for Metal Birds that cut their enemies with razor beaks! Green for the Horde of Hanuman that comes alive to protect that which is most precious! And white for the Dragons of the Five Oceans, whose cunning and power has no equal! ~ Colleen Houck

When I come out on the road of a morning, when I have had a night's sleep and perhaps a breakfast, and the sun lights a hill on the distance, a hill I know I shall walk across an hour or two thence, and it is green and silken to my eye, and the clouds have begun their slow, fat rolling journey across the sky, no land in the world can inspire such love in a common man. ~ Frank Delaney

Oh, Marigold!" Lymond spoke plaintively. "A silken tongue, a heart of cruelty. Don't berate us. We're only poor scoundrels - vagabonds - scraps of society; unlettered and untaught. ~ Dorothy Dunnett

Is that … chocolate cake?"

"I thought you might need some."

"Need, not want?"

A ghost of a smile was on her lips, and he almost sagged in relief as he said, "For you, I'd say that chocolate cake is most definitely a need."

She crossed from the fireplace to where he stood, stopping a hand's breadth away and staring up at him. Some of the color had returned to her face.

He should step back, put more distance between them. But instead, he found himself reaching for her, a hand slipping around her waist and the other twining itself through her hair as he held her tightly to him. His heart thundered through him so hard he knew she could feel it. After a second, her arms came up around him, her fingers digging into his back in a way that made him realize how close they stood.

He shoved that feeling down, even as the silken texture of her hair against his fingers made him want to bury his face in it, and the smell of her, laced with mist and night, had him grazing his nose against her neck. There were other kinds of comfort that he could give her than mere words, and if she needed that kind of distraction … He shoved down that thought, too, swallowing it until he nearly choked on it.

Her fingers were moving down his back, still digging into his muscles with a fierce kind of possession. If she kept touching him like that, his control was going to slip completely.

And then she pulled back, just far ~ Sarah J. Maas

Spiders evidently as surprised by the weather as the rest of us: their webs were still everywhere - little silken laundry lines with perfect snowflakes hung out in rows to dry. ~ Leslie Land

From somewhere in the blue vault of heaven overhead came the joyous trilling of a lark, from below the silken rustling of the tideless sea. ~ Rafael Sabatini

Remember what you are made of the next time you think you are bulletproof. You are white bone and silken flesh; your heart is made of gold and glass. Stop trying to make yourself indestructible – like any soft creature it is in your nature to break, like any soft creature it is in your nature to heal. ~ Bianca Sparacino

Happy the Man, who void of Cares and Strife,
In Silken, or in Leathern Purse retains
A Splendid Shilling: He nor hears with Pain
New Oysters cry'd, nor sighs for chearful Ale ~ John Phillips

How monotonous our speaking becomes when we speak only to ourselves! And how insulting to the other beings – to foraging black bears and twisted old cypresses – that no longer sense us talking to them, but only about them, as though they were not present in our world…Small wonder that rivers and forests no longer compel our focus or our fierce devotion. For we walk about such entities only behind their backs, as though they were not participant in our lives. Yet if we no longer call out to the moon slipping between the clouds, or whisper to the spider setting the silken struts of her web, well, then the numerous powers of this world will no longer address us – and if they still try, we will not likely hear them. ~ David Abram

For the special thrilling quality of their friendship was in their complete surrender. Like two open cities in the midst of some vast plain their two minds lay open to each other. And it wasn't as if he rode into hers like a conqueror, armed to the eyebrows and seeing nothing but a gay silken flutter
nor did she enter his like a queen walking on soft petals. No, they were eager, serious travellers, absorbed in understanding what was to be seen and discovering what was hidden
making the most of this extraordinary absolute chance which made it possible for him to be utterly truthful to her and for her to be utterly sincere with him. ~ Katherine Mansfield

The problem was that such simple, ordinary bliss seldom formed memories. It was too smooth and silken to adhere. It was the bad stuff, ragged and uneven, that caught, like all those plastic grocery bags stuck in the trees of Baltimore. ~ Laura Lippman

Decadent, rich chocolate; thick, silken, sweet cream; and the coolest breath of satin stroked over quivering skin... He was near... ~ Denyse Bridger

Larkin Schoendienst had told Betsy that in DC there were two ways to murder policy without appearing to have committed a crime. One was cobwebbing, in which a person with an idea--usually a young and bright person with a good, new idea--would fall victim to the surrounding bureaucrats, who would exclaim, 'Why, that's a good idea!' and throw out a web of reporting requirements, consulting requirements, or new budgeting procedures. Soon the person and his idea would be totally immobilized by a shimmering silken cocoon, to be put away and devoured another day.

The second method was the interagency task force. ~ Neal Stephenson

Sensory perception is the silken web that binds our separate nervous systems into the encompassing ecosystem. ~ David Abram

We barely made it inside her room before I pressed her up against the closed door and kissed her until she couldn't breathe, until I couldn't breathe-but who needed air when you had a silken tongue and warm lips and a body that begged to be licked, pinched, stroked. ~ Karina Halle

I pray thee, cease thy counsel,
Which falls into mine ears as profitless
As water in a sieve: give not me counsel;
Nor let no comforter delight mine ear
But such a one whose wrongs do suit with mine:
... for, brother, men
Can counsel and speak comfort to that grief Which they themselves not feel; but, tasting it,
Their counsel turns to passion, which before
Would give preceptial medicine to rage,
Fetter strong madness in a silken thread,
Charm ache with air and agony with words.
No, no; 'tis all men's office to speak patience
To those that wring under the load of sorrow,
But no man's virtue nor sufficiency
To be so moral when he shall endure
The like himself. Therefore give me no counsel:
My griefs cry louder than advertisement. ~ William Shakespeare

The iron chain and the silken cord are both equally bonds. ~ Friedrich Schiller

The crickets kept crepitating; from time to time there came a sweet whiff of burning juniper; and above the black alpestrine steppe, above the silken sea, the enormous, all-engulfing sky, dove-gray with stars, made one's head spin, and suddenly Martin again experienced a feeling he had known on more than one occasion as a child: an unbearable intensification of all his senses, a magical and demanding impulse, the presence of something for which alone it was worth living. ~ Vladimir Nabokov

Coffee and chocolate are certainly wonderful, but they must forever carry tea's silken train, ever the bridesmaids and never the bride. ~ Paul F. Kortepeter