Stitching Quotes

It was a warm night for the end of March. Walt had left the front door to the ice-cream parlor open when he went out after supper to gossip with the old men down at Darly Stidger's Store. And yet it was not spring, although winter was dead and the moon was sickly with the neitherness of the time between those seasons: those last few weeks before the cries of the green frogs would rise in stitching clamor from the river shores and meadow bogs. ~ Davis Grubb

It Rained for Two Days Straight

Yesterday, Ryan told me his grandfather was admitted to the hospital. It was raining the way it rains in the movies, like whoever does the dishes left the faucet running, heavy drops polishing everything in the city dark. We ran from one drooling awning to the next, quicker, then slower, quicker, slower. If one had watched from the sky, our bodies would have looked like two small needles being pulsed forward by some invisible machine, stitching the streets together. Today, Patric was left by a girl he did not love but did not not love. He told me it was impossible to imagine himself both alone and whole. It was still raining--the sky's silly metaphor for sadness, untimely, startling, the way it makes the whole world more honest. Death is like this, too. Heartache, also. The sudden absence of what was there but now not. I touched Patrick's shoulder, attempting to pass my human to his. I sent Ryan a poem. I cannot do more than this art of bearing witness, to be both the bucket and the mirror, to say, yes, you are here but I am here also, to say you won't be here forever, or to say nothing and just walk beside each other in the rain. ~ Sierra DeMulder

My woman has a wandering eye;
Yarrow, thyme and thorn.
She eyes the ocean and the sky
While stitching sails, forlorn.
I got a kiss, and then a tear
As she bade me go;
But on the waves, my heart's in fear:
My woman's in the know. ~ F.T. McKinstry

Clamboring over building detritus was not the lifestyle Karl Lagerfeld had in mind for this sweet little powder-blue suit. As he oversaw the hand stitching in his atelier he had probably imagined the suit living a life of tea parties and lunches with the girls at the Ivy ~ Tyne O'Connell

This is the fiction that I'm referring to as rhapsody, this stitching of mimetic representation, oneiric imagery, ludic rules, allegoric morals, satiric critique and diegetic story into complex quiltings of narrative. ~ Hal Duncan

Jeremy Popkin's collection of first-person narratives of the Haitian Revolution is an extremely valuable work, accessible, sound and intelligent. I only wish such a book had been available fifteen years ago when I was in the early stages of researching my series of novels. Popkin has been deft and tactful in stitching together these excerpts, and as a result, he manages to tell a complete version of the Revolution almost entirely in the words of the people who experienced it-this book engaged me deeply. ~ Madison Smartt Bell

Harper: In your experience of the world. How do people change?
Mormon Mother: Well it has something to do with God so it's not very nice.
God splits the skin with a jagged thumbnail from throat to belly and then plunges a huge filthy hand in, he grabs hold of your bloody tubes and they slip to evade his grasp but he squeezes hard, he insists, he pulls and pulls till all your innards are yanked out and the pain! We can't even talk about that. And then he stuffs them back, dirty, tangled and torn. It's up to you to do the stitching.
Harper: And then up you get. And walk around.
Mormon Mother: Just mangled guts pretending.
Harper: That's how people change. ~ Tony Kushner

I don't know how a woman can have such a poor view of herself as to show off poor stitching. ~ Sandra Dallas

There was once a poor shoemaker who had three fine strong sons and two pretty daughters and a third who could do nothing well, who shivered plates and tangled her spinning, who curdled milk, could not get butter to come, nor set a fire so that smoke did not pour into the room, a useless, hopeless, dreaming daughter, to whom her mother would often say that she should try to fend for herself in the wild wood, and then she would know the value of listening to advice, and of doing things properly. And this filled the perverse daughter with a great desire to go even a little way into the wild wood, where there were no plates and no stitching, but might well be a need of such things as she knew she had it in herself to perform ... ~ A.S. Byatt

He couldn't read any more of Velvette's stories. This was too intimate. She spills her soul by stitching words so splendidly, even ragged threads are imperceptible. ~ Anonymous

in bright pink hand-done stitching were the words 'property of Alex'. ~ Katie Reus

It's amazing what sometimes gets accomplished via an initially jarring but ultimately harmless shift in thinking. Is cutting the organs out of a dead man and stitching them into someone else barbaric and disrespectful, or is it a straightforward operation to save multiple lives? Does crapping into a Baggie while sitting 6 inches away from your crewmate represent a collapse of human dignity or a unique and comic form of intimacy? ~ Mary Roach

....The important thing is not where we die but how we live. Being native to a place is a labor of love and a life's work. It means stitching your life to that of a place with a thread spun from mindfulness, attentiveness, husbandry, pilgrimage, and witness. Stories knit these components of practice together. Flung outward, they clothe our relationships; flung inward, they map the soul. Stories enable us to enter and dwell attentively in a place; they enable us to travel and return, then eventually to leave for good. We need stories to stay alive spiritually: without them we would all turn into hungry ghosts. Stories are the only things we can take with us out of this world. They are the wings that bear us up or the chains that drag us down. In the end, it is stories that enable us to die. ~ John Tallmadge

I realized early on, maybe better than some of my competitors did, that a textile business can run only if you have scale. I decided to horizontally and vertically integrate, adding everything from spinning, dyeing, weaving, and stitching to processing and packing. ~ Mian Muhammad Mansha

Dawn comes after the darkness, and with it the promise that what has been torn by the sea is not lost. All of life is breaking and mending, clipping and stitching, gathering tatters and sewing seams. All of life is quilted from the scraps of what once was and is no more- the places we have been, the memories we have made, the people we have known, that which has been long loved but has grown threadbare over time and can be worn no longer. We keep only pieces. All colors, all shapes, all sizes.
"All waiting to be stitched into the pattern only you can see.
"In the quiet after the storm, I hear you whisper, 'Daughter, do not linger where you are. Take up your needle and your thread, and go see to the mending ... ~ Lisa Wingate

Acknowledgements!
My thanks to Hollywood
When you showed me John Rambo
Stitching up his arm with no anaesthetic
And giving them "a war they won't believe"
I knew then my calling, the job for me

Thanks also to the recruitment adverts
For showing me soldiers whizzing around on skis
And for sending sergeants to our school
To tell us of the laughs, the great food, the pay
The camaraderie

I am, dear taxpayer, forever in your debt
You paid for my all-inclusive pilgrimage
One year basking in the Garden of Eden
(I haven't quite left yet)

Thanks to Mum and thanks to Dad
Fuck it,
Thanks to every parent
Flushing with pride for their brave young lads
Buying young siblings toy guns and toy tanks
Waiting at the airport
Waving their flags ~ Danny Martin

I didn't finish my dress until about three days before my wedding - I had the flu and was stitching it from my bed. And the tulle came back from India all brown. We had to wash it for hours, but that didn't dissuade me from wearing it. ~ Georgina Chapman

It's not that easy. Loss needs to be experienced. It should be felt in all it's beautiful and horrible ways. When your heart is shredded like fraying fabric and dangling in pieces, the scotch tape method isn't going to work long term. Careful stitching and honest grieving is necessary to put things back into place. Maybe not perfectly, but at least in a way so you can breathe again. ~ Chelsea Tolman

When you knit, if you get something wrong and keep knitting, then when you discover it, you have to rip out all those rows of stitching to go back and fix it, Life is like that. Sometimes, it has to rip out all the stitches to go back and fix what's wrong. ~ Lani Diane Rich

As Liljana sat stitching a sampler or darning a sock, she dreamed her way into life as a grown woman with her own household to run, her own home to tidy, her own children to mind, and her own husband to cheer after a long day's work as they sat together by the fire. The life that future generations would dismiss as dull and degrading offered Liljana the liberating prospect of being mistress in her own home rather than living to serve others. ~ Fiorella De Maria

Our love isn't the sick and sticky splendor of teenage ardor, I've realized. It's sharp, slicing - a knife to the heart, followed by the quick stitching of its two halves back together again. ~ Logan Keys

He set off right away, glad of his boots, an old army pair. The leather had outlasted three complete sets of stitching. They were the most comfortable footwear he had ever known. There's no happiness like a good pair of boots, he thought as he walked. Boots, if they were just exactly right for you, changed the way you felt. In fact, there was no happiness like marching alone up a track towards evening in the desert. His limbs tingled. For a while he didn't care if he ever found what he was looking for, if he had to give it all up tomorrow. Nothing mattered but this march through the wide open air of the desert hillside. ~ Henry Shukman

The next day, I started getting dressed at three for the rehearsal. The beautiful cherry red suit had black stitching, and I had taken the skirt to a seamstress to have it shortened to a sexy upper-midthigh length--an unfortunate habit I'd picked up while watching too much Knots Landing in the late 1980s. I was relatively slender and not the least bit stacked on top, and my bottom was somewhat fit but wildly unremarkable. If I was going to highlight any feature of my anatomy, it would have to be my legs.
When I arrived at the rehearsal at the church, my grandmother kissed me, then looked down and said, "Did you forget the other half of your suit?"
The seamstress had gotten a little overzealous. ~ Ree Drummond

I love him so much it's like a thread piercing me. Punching holes. Dragging through. Stitching love into me. I'll neve robe able to untangle myself from this feeling. The color of love is surely this robin's-egg blue. ~ Sally Thorne

Movies either work or they don't work and they're either funny or they're not and we work very hard. To achieve that kind of work is really kind of delicate stitching. ~ Ivan Reitman

A big iron needle stitching the country together. ~ Jessamyn West

You brought the needle & I brought the thread. We meant to mend our two broken hearts, but we ended up stitching them together. ~ Amanda Lovelace

Zafar always put huge emphasis on his role as a protector of the Hindus and the moderator of Muslim demands. He never forgot the central importance of preserving the bond between his Hindu and Muslim subjects, which he always recognised was the central stitching that held his capital city together. ~ William Dalrymple

Life is less a quest than a quilt. We find meaning, love, and prosperity through the process of stitching together our bold attempts to help others find their own way in their lives. The relationships we weave become an exquisite and endless pattern. ~ Keith Ferrazzi

I'm sorry for breaking down when I should've been stitching myself back up ~ Real Friends

Dear Lord...patch this work. Quilt us together, feather-stitching piece by piece our tag-ends of living, our individual scraps of love ~ Jane Wilson Joyce

We don't do things we aren't good at by nature. I wouldn't play basketball because I'm only 5' 1. Find what you enjoy - whether it's racing, flying a helicopter, being a doctor, or stitching clothes together. Once you've done that, you have the passion you need. ~ Danica Patrick

Be still. Remember my name. It is the label that is attached to me. It is the one thread that is sewn through this entire story. Your story or my story – it is only the stitching that changes. The want is the thing that drives us. Trust me: I have a story to tell. ~ Richard Payment

I am broken
beyond repair.

There is no going back
to the person I was before.

There is rebirth,
rebuilding,
reinventing,
and soul stitching
with gold
that needs to happen. ~ Najwa Zebian

For a long time we dreamed of a real leather ball, and at last my brother had one for his birthday. The feel of the leather, the stitching round it, the faint gold letters stamped upon it, the touch of the seam, the smell of it, all affected me so deeply that I still have that ache of beauty when I hold a cricket ball. ~ Alison Uttley

They filled her with the most astonishing sensation of synthesis-as though all the most disparate elements of her biography were at last knitting together. All the things that she had ever known or loved in the world were stitching themselves up and becoming one thing. Realizing this made her feel both unburdened and triumphant. She had that feeling again
of being most spectacularly alive. Not merely alive but outfitted with a mind that was functioning at the uppermost limits of its capacity
a mind that was seeing everything, and understanding everything, as though watching it all from the highest imaginable ridge. ~ Elizabeth Gilbert

It's up to you. Everyone should get to choose their own way, and that's all I mean by yelling. But I shall choose to remember you, and it would be nice if it went both ways. That's how it generally goes in my country. But does it? September thought. If a body is hurt, they try to forget the person who hurt them and never think about the pain again. Remembering aches, like when I remember my father. It'd be so much easier to never wonder about him. I'm sure he remembers my face, but it's hard to remember his, when he's been gone so long! Perhaps memory is a thing that everyone involved has to work at, like stitching up a big quilt out of everything that ever happened to you. ~ Catherynne M Valente

The fine stitching and well-carded wool of his supposedly unobtrusive cloak making him stand out like blood on a wedding dress. ~ George R R Martin

So you don't mind," I managed, "if I'm a monster?" "No." He rocked closer, and his closeness sent a thread of desire stitching up my spine. "Because I'm a monster too. ~ Lyra Selene

Realization: We render time by stitching together moments--flipping pages in the book of consciousness presents a continuous stream. Our senses too slow to realize the separation of moments, like a strand of pearls through eternity.

Time is terrifying, time is unspeakable. Clock-time lies down between moments ... but distance warps with velocity, time bends with velocity. Frames of reference. Are not absolute. Are selfish. A private reality. Clocks have a life of their own. Framed by references. ~ David David Katzman

With an animated show you can make a banana purple. You can put three hats on a cowboy. That would require several days of stitching, in live-action, that you wouldn't be able to afford. I mean, you can just do tons and tons and tons. ~ Dan Harmon

Then took the quilt out of its linen wrapper for the pleasure of the brilliant colors and the feel of the velvet. The needlework was very fine and regular. Adair hated needlework and she could not imagine sitting and stitching the fine crow's-foot seams.
Writing was the same, the pinching of thoughts into marks on paper and trying to keep your cursive legible, trying to think of the next thing to say and then behind you on several sheets of paper you find you have left permanent tracks, a trail, upon which anybody could follow you. Stalking you through your deep woods of private thought.
~ Paulette Jiles

He laughs and turns up the music so that I can hear it in the back. The speakers blast out: 'Streets like a jungle, so call the police.'

'Call the police,' I smile, 'fuck the police' nodding my head to the beat. The guard turns it up even more.

'Yeah, fuck the police for stitching me up and presenting their dodgy evidence,' I think to myself. Fuck them for getting me put away for seven instead of the four or five I should have got.

A new song comes on and I'm merrily tapping my feet while the guard sings along up front to The Clash.

'Fighting the nation. Police and thieves in the street, oh yeah…Oh yeah! Scaring the nation with their guns and ammunition. Police and thieves in the street. Oh yeah. Fighting the nation with their guns and ammunition'.

Ha ha. The DJ on the radio is on my side. The Securicor men are on my side. And I'm heading back to civilisation and as many drugs as I can get my hands on. Everything's going my way. There must be a song about that, too. ~ Harry Shaw

Are you in pain?"
"Nothing a whiskey and some tender female soothing will not alleviate."
She snorted. "I should spank you rather than succor you!"
He grinned roguishly, "As you deem just, my love. However, we should wait until the physician completes stitching me up."
She laughed, "Impossible! ~ Sharon Lathan

Sometimes I imagined stitching all of our little touches together. How many hundreds of thousands of fingers brushing against each other does it take to make love? Why does anyone ever make love? ~ Jonathan Safran Foer

He had seen it often, from the verandah of his uncle's farmhouse, or at the end of a long street, but till now he had never heard it. The hollowing hum of telephone wires along the road, the ring of hidden crickets, the stitching sound of grasshoppers, the sudden relief of a meadow lark's song, were deliciously strange to him. ~ W. O. Mitchell

A barge of mist floated along the water, and dragonflies, iridescent blue ones, darted back and forth like they were stitching up the air. ~ Sue Monk Kidd

He felt he was about to experience again some ancient, delicious childhood moment that the steam calliope's sour hollowness, the stitching hurdy-gurdy accompaniment, and the drum-and-cymbal crash brought almost to the margin of his grasp. ~ Patricia Highsmith

A line will take us hours maybe; / Yet if it does not seem a moment's thought, / Our stitching and unstitching has been naught ... Better go down upon your marrow-bones / And scrub a kitchen pavement, or break stones ... For to articulate sweet sounds together / Is to work harder than all these, and yet / Be thought an idler by the noisy set ... ~ William Butler Yeats

Every few years, in the world of sport, someone ascends to the most rarefied of all levels - the one at which it becomes news not when they win, but when they lose. It must have been like that in the early Fifties, when a tubby Italian called Alberto Ascari was stitching together nine Grand Prix wins in a row, a record not even Fangio, Clark or Senna could match. Or when the great Real Madrid side of Alfredo Di Stefano and Ferenc Puskas won the first five European Cup finals, between 1956 and 1960. Or when Martina Navratilova dominated Wimbledon's Centre Court, winning nine ladies' singles titles in thirteen years. The current Australian cricket team is in just such a run at present, having just completed nine consecutive victories, putting them four wins away from establishing an all-time record. And then there is Tiger Woods. ~ Richard Williams

Hazel studied Reyna's outfit with concern. "Your sword's in the truck. Don't you want to take a shield or something?"
"Nah. I've got my cloak. It'll turn aside most weapons." Reyna brushed the collar of her sweater wrap. Instantly it unfurled into her usual purple cape.
Frank's smile faded. "Does my cloak do that?"
"See you, guys!" Reyna climbed behind the wheel.
"Wait, does my cloak deflect weapons?" Frank called after us. "Does mine turn into a sweater wrap?"
As we pulled away, I could see Frank Zhang in the rearview mirror, intently studying the stitching of his cape. ~ Rick Riordan

Her dress was made of watered silk and was of the most gorgeous lavender I'd ever seen. The stitching was superb. A flash of the last cadaver I'd sewn back together crossed my mind. Not to boast, but my stitches had been as good. Perhaps a pinch better. ~ Kerri Maniscalco

You'd never look at a Rembrandt and say, 'That's just wood and canvas and paint - how much?!' It's all about how many people want it. It works on a pair of jeans as well - they're just material and stitching, and as soon as you walk out of the shop, they're worth nothing. ~ Damien Hirst

Poppy was busy with needlework, stitching a pair of men's slippers with bright wool threads, while Beatrix played solitaire on the floor near the hearth. Noticing the way her youngest sister was riffling through the cards, Amelia laughed. "Beatrix," she said after Win had finished a chapter, "why in heaven's name would you cheat at solitaire? You're playing against yourself."
"Then there's no one to object when I cheat."
"It's not whether you win but how you win that's important," Amelia said.
"I've heard that before, and I don't agree at all. It's much nicer to win."
Poppy shook her head over her embroidery. "Beatrix, you are positively shameless."
"And a winner," Beatrix said with satisfaction, laying down the exact card she wanted. ~ Lisa Kleypas

I'm having surgery today to have my face cleaned up. But it will take some fancy stitching to make me all beautiful again! ~ Patsy Cline

Sea-foam white lace bloomed from the sweeping neckline, washing upon her breast from the powder-green ocean of silk that made up the dress. A red sash covered the waist, forming an inverted peak that separated the bodice from the explosion of skirts beneath. Patterns of clear green beads were embroidered in whorls and vines across the whole of it, and bone-colored stitching stretched along the ribs. ~ Sarah J. Maas

Night quilts the sky with stars sewn like the uneven stitching of my jacket. ~ Alexandra Christo

Excessive analysis perpetuates emotional paralysis. Knowing our issues is not the same as healing our issues. In fact, knowing is often a willful act, entirely incongruent with the experience of surrender required to heal. I have known many people who could name their patterns and issues with great insight, but their actions didn't change a bit. The key to the transformation of challenging patterns and wounds is to heal them from the inside out. Not to analyze them, not to dissociate and dishonor them by calling them the 'pain body', not to watch them like an astronomer staring at a faraway planet through a telescope, but to jump right into the heart of them, encouraging their expression and release, stitching them into new possibilities with the thread of love. You want to transform your issues and patterns? Heal your heart. ~ Jeff Brown

I was no more than the garment worker who made sure the stitching was correct in an outfit designed, produced, and consumed by the wealthy white people of the world. They owned the means of production, and therefore the means of representation, and the best that we could ever hope for was to get a word in edgewise before our anonymous deaths. ~ Viet Thanh Nguyen