Tales Of The Body Thief Quotes

Lestat: You're very anxious to be out of these rooms, aren't you? Why don't we simply get into bed together? I don't understand.
David: You're serious?
Lestat: Of course
David: You do realize, that this is an absolutely magnificent body, don't you? I mean you aren't insensible to the fact that you've been deposited in a ... a most impressive piece of young male flesh.
Lestat: I looked it over well before the switch, remember? Why is it you don't want to..
David: You've been with a woman, haven't you?
Lestat: I wish you hadn't read my mind. It's rude. Besides, what does that matter to you?
David: A woman you loved.
Lestat: I have always loved both men and women.
David: That's a slightly different use of the word 'love. ~ Anne Rice

The Crocodile The sun of the Macusi people was worried. Every day there were fewer fish in their ponds. He put the crocodile in charge of security. The ponds got emptier. The crocodile, security guard and thief, invented a good story about invisible assailants, but the sun didn't believe it, took a machete, and left the crocodile's body all crisscrossed with cuts. To calm him down, the crocodile offered his beautiful daughter in marriage. "I'll be expecting her," said the sun. As the crocodile had no daughter, he sculpted a woman in the trunk of a wild plum tree. "Here she is," he said, and plunged into the water, looking out of the corner of his eye, the way he always looks. It was the woodpecker who saved his life. Before the sun arrived, the woodpecker pecked at the wooden girl below the belly. Thus she, who was incomplete, was open for the sun to enter. (112) ~ Eduardo Galeano

After Death nothing is, and nothing, death,
The utmost limit of a gasp of breath.
Let the ambitious zealot lay aside
His hopes of heaven, whose faith is but his pride;
Let slavish souls lay by their fear
Nor be concerned which way nor where
After this life they shall be hurled.
Dead, we become the lumber of the world,
And to that mass of matter shall be swept
Where things destroyed with things unborn are kept.
Devouring time swallows us whole.
Impartial death confounds body and soul.
For Hell and the foul fiend that rules
God's everlasting fiery jails
(Devised by rogues, dreaded by fools),
With his grim, grisly dog that keeps the door,
Are senseless stories, idle tales,
Dreams, whimseys, and no more. ~ John Wilmot

He strips me to my last nakedness, that underskin of mauve, pearlized satin, like a skinned rabbit; then dresses me again in an embrace so lucid and encompassing it might be made of water. And shakes over me dead leaves as if into the stream I have become.
Sometimes the birds, at random, all singing, strike a chord.
His skin covers me entirely; we are like two halves of a seed, enclosed in the same integument. I should like to grow enormously small, so that you could swallow me, like those queens in fairy tales who conceive when they swallow a grain of corn or a sesame seed. Then I could lodge inside your body and you would bear me. ~ Angela Carter

As long as we're young, we manage to find excuses for the stoniest indifference, the most blatant caddishness, we put them down to emotional eccentricity or some sort of romantic inexperience. But later on, when life shows us how much cunning, cruelty, and malice are required just to keep the body at ninety-eight point six, we catch on, we know the scene, we begin to understand how much swinishness it takes to make up a past. Just take a close look at yourself and the degree of rottenness you've come to. There's no mystery about it, no more room for fairy tales; if you've lived this long, it's because you've squashed any poetry you had in you. ~ Louis Ferdinand Celine

Don't depend on death to liberate you from your imperfections. You are exactly the same after death as you were before. Nothing changes; you only give up the body. If you are a thief or a liar or a cheater before death, you don't become an angel merely by dying. If such were possible, then let us all go and jump in the ocean now and become angels at once! Whatever you have made of yourself thus far, so will you be hereafter. And when you reincarnate, you will bring that same nature with you. To change, you have to make the effort. This world is the place to do it. ~ Paramahansa Yogananda

I love the fact that Perrault's princess goes on living and struggling after she finds her prince, and that Perrault doesn't shrink from the weirdness of Sleeping Beauty being over a hundred years old but having the body of a lithe young thing. When the prince wakes her, he considers telling her she's wearing the kind of clothes his grandmother used to wear, but decides it's best not to mention it just yet. ~ Samantha Ellis

Writers possess magic. It's in their words.
They compose phrases as powerful as incantations, creating illusions in the minds of readers. These spells make eyes envision things that aren't real; they make hearts feel things that aren't actual. A writer's work is to pen enchantments meant to entrance and hypnotize the mind, causing neglect of all other duties and responsibilities in order for the reader to remain a puppet controlled by the writer's wand. And if some foul friend does manage to break the spell, he is despised for it. His heroics are too late in coming. The words―the fairy tales―have seeped beyond the body and into the soul, taking possession. Our poor reader is infected, compromised, never to be cured. The notion of magic found in simple words such as, 'Once upon a time...' has always fascinated me. It is no wonder I am compelled to write. ~ Richelle E. Goodrich

Blessedness is within us all
It lies upon the long scaffold
Patrols the vaporous hall
In our pursuits, though still, we venture forth
Hoping to grasp a handful of cloud and return
Unscathed, cloud in hand. We encounter
Space, fist, violin, or this - an immaculate face
Of a boy, somewhat wild, smiling in the sun.
He raises his hand, as if in carefree salute
Shading eyes that contain the thread of God.
Soon they will gather power, disenchantment
They will reflect enlightenment, agony
They will reveal the process of love
They will, in an hour alone, shed tears.
His mouth a circlet, a baptismal font
Opening wide as the lips of a damsel
Sounding the dizzying extremes.
The relativity of vein, the hip of unrest
For the sake of wing there is shoulder.
For symmetry there is blade.
He kneels, humiliates, he pierces her side.
Offering spleen to the wolves of the forest.
He races across the tiles, the human board.
Virility, coquetry all a game - well played.
Immersed in luminous disgrace, he lifts
As a slave, a nymph, a fabulous hood
As a rose, a thief of life, he will parade
Nude crowned with leaves, immortal.
He will sing of the body, his truth
He will increase the shining neck
Pluck airs toward our delight
Of the waning
The blossoming
The violent charade
But who will sing of him?
Who will sing of his blessedn ~ Patti Smith

When I write what publishers call 'fantasy' I am writing in what I think is the most important tradition of fiction: starting with Homer and up through Shakespeare and Milton, the most important themes to tackle are those of the mythopoeic domain, tales of the body and mind seen through a temperament and a cosmos divorced from current reality so what is said can be more clear. ~ Janet Morris

It is part," Rollo writes home to the elder Dr. Groast in Lancashire, in elaborate revenge for childhood tales of Jenny Greenteeth waiting out in the fens to drown him, "part of an old and clandestine drama for which the human body serves only as a set of very allusive, often cryptic programme-notes- it's as if the body we can measure is a scrap of this programme found outside in the street, near a magnificent stone theatre we cannot enter. The convolutions of language denied us! the great Stage, even darker than Mr Tyrone Guthrie's accustomed murk ... Gilt and mirroring, red velvet, tier on tier of box seats all in shadows too, as somewhere down in that deep proscenium, deeper than geometries we know of, the voices utter secrets we are never told ... ~ Thomas Pynchon

Phoebe Kitzke?"
The man had stopped in front of her. He had a deep, beautiful voice that made her thigh muscles quiver. This close she could see the multiple shades of deep blue that made up his eyes. He didn't smile. On the whole she would say he looked about as far from happy as it was possible to be while still breathing.
"I'm Phoebe," she said, afraid she sounded as tentative as she felt. Why hadn't Maya warned her? Saying Zane was good-looking was like saying summer in the desert was warm.
"Zane."
He held out his hand. She wasn't sure if he wanted to shake or take her luggage. She erred on the side of good manners and found her fingers engulfed in his.
The instant heat didn't surprise her, nor did the melting sensation. Everything else was going wrong in her life--it made sense for her body to betray her, too.
She mentally jerked her attention away from her traitorous thighs and noticed that he had a really big hand. Phoebe tried not to think about those old wives' tales. She tried not to think about anything except the fact that she was going to kill Maya the next time she saw her.
"Nice to meet you," she said when he'd released her. "Maya says the ranch is some distance from the airport, and I really appreciate you coming all this way to collect me."
His only response was to pick up her luggage. He didn't bother with the wheels, instead carrying the bags out as if they weighed as much as a milk carton. Uh-huh. She'd nearly thrown ~ Susan Mallery

THE UNICORN: The saintly hermit, midway through his prayers
stopped suddenly, and raised his eyes to witness
the unbelievable: for there before him stood
the legendary creature, startling white, that
had approached, soundlessly, pleading with his eyes.
The legs, so delicately shaped, balanced a
body wrought of finest ivory. And as
he moved, his coat shone like reflected moonlight.
High on his forehead rose the magic horn, the sign
of his uniqueness: a tower held upright
by his alert, yet gentle, timid gait.
The mouth of softest tints of rose and grey, when
opened slightly, revealed his gleaming teeth,
whiter than snow. The nostrils quivered faintly:
he sought to quench his thirst, to rest and find repose.
His eyes looked far beyond the saint's enclosure,
reflecting vistas and events long vanished,
and closed the circle of this ancient mystic legend. ~ Rainer Maria Rilke

There is onslaught is the accelerating momentum of technologies and instrumental mentalities that are exterminating spontaneity, undermining love and common decency. It's a thief of time and includes all the palpable and subtle violations of body, mind, and spirit done in the name of science, government, enterprise, progress, and profit. ~ Stephanie Mills

Fairy tales for adult readers remained popular throughout Europe well into the 19th century - particularly in Germany, where the Brothers Grimm published their massive collection of German fairy tales (revised and edited to reflect the Brothers' patriotic and patriarchal ideals), providing inpiration for novelists, poets, and playrights among the German Romantics. Recently, fairy tale scholars have re–discovered the enormous body of work produced by women writers associated with the German Romantics: Grisela von Arnim, Sophie Tieck Bernhardi, Karoline von Günderrode, Julie Berger, and Sophie Albrecht, to name just a few. ~ Terri Windling

The discovery of this strange society was a curiously refreshing thing; to realize that there were ten new trades in the world was like looking at the first ship or the first plough. It made a man feel what he should feel, that he was still in the childhood of the world. That I should have come at last upon so singular a body was, I may say without vanity, not altogether singular, for I have a mania for belonging to as many societies as possible: I may be said to collect clubs, and I have accumulated a vast and fantastic variety of specimens ever since, in my audacious youth, I collected the Athenaeum. At some future day, perhaps, I may tell tales of some of the other bodies to which I have belonged. I will recount the doing's of the Dead Man's Shoes Society (that superficially immoral, but darkly justifiable communion); I will explain the curious origin of the Cat and Christian, the name of which has been so shamefully misinterpreted; and the world shall know at last why the Institute of Typewriters coalesced with the Red Tulip League. Of the Ten Teacups, of course I dare not say a word. ~ G.K. Chesterton

I asked myself what I believed. I had never prayed a lot. I hoped hard, wished hard, but I didn't pray. I had developed a certain distrust of organised religion growing up, but I felt I had the capacity to be a spiritual person, and to hold some fervent beliefs. Quite simply, I believed I had a responsibility to be a good person, and that meant fair, honest, hardworking and honorable. If I did that, if I was good to my family, true to my friends, if I gave back to my community or to some cause, if I wasn't a liar, a cheat, or a thief, then I believed that should be enough. At the end of the day, if there was indeed some Body or presence standing there to judge me, I hoped I would be judged on whether I had lived a true life, not on whether I believed in a certain book, or whether I'd been baptised. ~ Lance Armstrong

I believe that I must do everything I can do to lessen misery. That's all I can do, and that is something enormous. It is a great power. ~ Anne Rice

If you find the dividing line between fairy tales and reality, let me know. In my mind, the two run together, even though the intersections aren't always obvious. The girl sitting quietly in class or waiting for the bus or roaming the mall doesn't want anyone to know, or doesn't know how to tell anyone, that she is locked in a tower. Maybe she's a prisoner of a story she's heard all her life- that fairest means best, or that bruises prove she is worthy of love. ~ Christine Heppermann

Do not laugh! But once upon a time (my crest has long since fallen) I had a mind to make a body of more or less connected legend, ranging from the large and cosmogonic, to the level of romantic fairy-story – the larger founded on the lesser in contact with the earth, the lesser drawing splendour from the vast backcloths – which I could dedicate simply to: to England; to my country. It should possess the tone and quality that I desired, somewhat cool and clear, be redolent of our 'air' (the clime and soil of the North West, meaning Britain and the hither parts of Europe: not Italy or the Aegean, still less the East), and, while possessing (if I could achieve it) the fair elusive beauty that some call Celtic (though it is rarely found in genuine ancient Celtic things), it should be 'high', purged of the gross, and fit for the more adult mind of a land long now steeped in poetry. I would draw some of the great tales in fullness, and leave many only placed in the scheme, and sketched. The cycles should be linked to a majestic whole, and yet leave scope for other minds and hands, wielding paint and music and drama. Absurd.

Of course, such an overweening purpose did not develop all at once. The mere stories were the thing. They arose in my mind as 'given' things, and as they came, separately, so too the links grew. An absorbing, though continually interrupted labour (especially since, even apart from the necessities of life, the mind would wing to the other pole and spen ~ J.R.R. Tolkien

Peri loved her father's tales. She had grown up with them. Yet the melancholy with which they were infused pierced her soul, like a splinter under her skin that had become an organic part of her. Sometimes she imagined she had splinters all over - both in her body and in the recesses of her mind. ~ Elif Shafak

God, San Francisco was such a thief. A lady of the night, a sorceress with her hands out. Every time, all my years as a child, that we crossed the bridge, we had to pay to get in, pay to get out, pay for every little thing. Oakland was free, San Francisco was not. Pay me, pay me. Pay for the Pacific Ocean and the beach. I am expensive, the city always said, so pay me for my wonderful dark treats like the Steinhart Aquarium, with its dark wide hall lit up by tank after tank of bright gold green blue sharks dolphins whales stinger fish, cold-eyed still-as-a-corpse fish that didn't blink or budge when we tapped the thick glass with our fingernails. Pay, the voice said, to whomever took us on Saturday to the Fleischacker Zoo ... the hand of San Francisco reaches out to grab your stupid little nickels and dimes. Pay. Even as I stood in front of the Fat Lady, whose cackling gap-toothed twelve-feet-high, three-feet-wide body made me laugh for a solid hour, even as I collapsed in tears driven out of my eyes by laughter, I understood that the other name for San Francisco wasn't Frisco; it was pay you dumb jerks from Oakland pay. ~ Judy Juanita

Doubting Thomas was the one who gave the strongest and most conclusive testimony to the absolute Deity of the Savior which ever came from the lips of a man! Just as the railing thief became the one to own Christ's Lordship from the cross, just as timid Joseph and Nicodemus were the ones who honored the dead body of the Savior, just as the women were the boldest at the sepulcher, just as unfaithful Peter was the one whom Christ bade "Feed my sheep," just as the prime persecutor of the early church became the apostle to the Gentiles, so the sceptical and materialistic Thomas was the one to say "My Lord and my God." Where sin abounded, grace did much more abound! ~ Arthur W. Pink

You think I'm defeated. You think you've passed your judgement and that's the end of it. Oh, you think it's as simple as that. Well you are wrong. I shall never have vengeance for this moment, but you will see me again. You will see me again. ~ Anne Rice

The original fairy tale was about the youngest sister going into a room in the castle and finding all the bodies of the wives that came before her - she is confronted with truth, thinking about how often we think we know people and we really don't. ~ Alice Hoffman

I love the night passionately. I love it as I love my country, or my mistress, with an instinctive, deep, and unshakeable love. I love it with all my senses: I love to see it, I love to breathe it in, I love to open my ears to its silence, I love my whole body to be caressed by its blackness. Skylarks sing in the sunshine, the blue sky, the warm air, in the fresh morning light. The owl flies by night, a dark shadow passing through the darkness; he hoots his sinister, quivering hoot, as though he delights in the intoxicating black immensity of space. ~ Guy De Maupassant

I had spent all the years I had been in Lo-Melkhiin's body giving power to men who I thought would use it in ways that might serve me. I had given them great art and great thoughts, and they never guessed that they fed a terrible hunger in me that would require feeding until they died trying to sate it. They had done great things and made great tales, but I had been blind. All of this time, I had had access to more power than I had imagined, and I had missed it because I saw with men's eyes. I had forgotten the girls who scrubbed the floors and spun the yarn. I had forgotten the women who dyed the cloth and worked with henna. I had married three hundred girls, and as much as eaten them all before they were done cooking. ~ E.K. Johnston

You said, 'I'm going to leave him because my love for you makes any other life a lie.' I've hidden those words in the lining of my coat. I take them out like a jewel thief when no-one's watching. They haven't faded. Nothing about you has faded. You are still the colour of my blood. You are my blood. When I look in the mirror it's not my own face I see. Your body is twice. Once you once me. Can I be sure which is which? ~ Jeanette Winterson

Although often with good intentions, our parents and teachers attribute negative definitions to us, which last for many years and prevent us from developing ourselves with pleasure. In psychomagic, we call these definitions "labels" because they stick to the self. So that the consultant can free herself from them, I advise:
▶ The consultant writes on adhesive labels as many definitions as they gave her, for example: "You have no ear for music," "You don't know how to use your hands," "You're a freeloader, liar, thief," "You're egotistical, weak, dumb, fat, skinny, vain, ungrateful," and so on. The consultant glues these labels to every part of the body - many of them to the face - and goes out in public that way for as many hours as possible. When the consultant returns home, she should remove the labels, roll them into a ball, take the ball to the city dump, and throw it on top of the garbage pile, having beforehand caressed her body with hands soaked in pleasant perfume. ~ Alejandro Jodorowsky

Then Chameroy spoke. 'You always put the blame on opium, but as I see it the case of Freneuse is much more complicated. Him, an invalid? No - a character from the tales of Hoffmann! Have you never taken the trouble to look at him carefully? That pallor of decay; the twitching of his bony hands, more Japanese than chrysanthemums; the arabesque profile; that vampiric emaciation - has all of that never given you cause to reflect? In spite of his supple body and his callow face Freneuse is a hundred thousand years old. That man has lived before, in ancient times under the reigns of Heliogabalus, Alexander IV and the last of the Valois. What am I saying? That man is Henri III himself. I have in my library an edition of Ronsard - a rare edition, bound in pigskin with metal trimmings - which contains a portrait of Henri engraved on vellum. One of these nights I will bring the volume here to show you, and you may judge for yourselves. Apart from the ruff, the doublet and the earrings, you would believe that you were looking at the Due de Freneuse. As far as I'm concerned, his presence here inevitably makes me ill - and so long as he is present, there is such an oppression, such a heaviness... ~ Jean Lorrain

When assaulted by sexual knowledge for the first time, a girl plunges into a period of blackness, which is required in order to let her emotions catch up with her body.
Sleeping Beauty sleeps. Cinderella waits, and while she waits she works her way through the darkness of depression. Snow White both works and sleeps before she is ready to open her eyes and find a Prince leaning over her. ~ Joan Gould

One is not a "believer" in fairy tales. There is no theology, no body of dogma, no ritual, no institution, no expectation for a form of behavior. They are about the unexpectedness and mutability of the world. ~ George Szirtes

The term "spirit projection" sprang to mind. Are you familiar with it? Japanese folk tales are full of this sort of thing, where the soul temporarily leaves the body and goes off a great distance to take care of some vital task and then returns to reunite with the body. ~ Haruki Murakami

My mother had comforted me with tales ever since I was small. Sometimes they helped me peel a problem like an onion, or gave me ideas about what to do; other times, they calmed me so much that I would fall into a soothing sleep. My father used to say that her tales were better than the best medicine. Sighing, I burrowed into my mother's body like a child, knowing that the sound of her voice would be a balm on my heart. ~ Anita Amirrezvani

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When the mind fails to keep pace with the body's maturity
Kamil Ali ~ Kamil Ali