Tendrils Quotes

I'd fallen in love with Melanie Tucker.
Not some little-boy, bullshit needy "love" ... This was deep, almost painful in its unholy intensity. It was like she'd sent tendrils burrowing deep inside, binding us together so tightly I'd die if I ever tried to pull them out.
I was truly, deeply, and utterly fucked, because I fucking loved this girl ... and she wasn't for me. ~ Joanna Wylde

The Line welcomed rain and sun. Seeds germinated in mass graves, between skulls and femurs and broken pick handles, tendrils rose up alongside dog spikes and clavicles, thrust around teak sleepers and tibias, scapulas, vertebrae, fibulas and femurs. ~ Richard Flanagan

Cloying tendrils of mist searched the city like skeletal fingers reaching deep into crevices, hoping to capture the elusive prey needed to satisfy gnawing hunger... ~ Jillian Kent

Underneath the mass of fused tendrils he could make out the shape of a head, wide shoulders, a massive chest and arms, like the creature was stuck waist deep in the earth. No, not stuck - rising. ~ Rick Riordan

A summer rain had left the night clean and sparkling with drops of water. I leaned against the end pillar of the gallery, my head touching the soft tendrils of a jasmine which grew there in a constant battle with a wisteria, and I thought of what lay before me throughout the world and throughout time, and resolved to go about it delicately and reverently, learning that from each thing which would take me best to another. ~ Anne Rice

Strands of your hair and tendrils of the wind spin into nothingness the memories of that day ... ~ John Geddes

I vote you read and we fellows will listen in rapt silence." "And thus Kit is indoctrinated into the conspiracy to which all males belong," Sophie muttered. "And you ladies don't have conspiracies of your own?" He brought the child to his shoulder and started rubbing Kit's little back. The sight sent odd tendrils of warmth drifting through Sophie's insides. "We women are cooperative by nature; that's different from conspiratorial." She ~ Grace Burrowes

As high as the fire in me burns, Evie, I will stoke it in you."
"Sebastian..."She strained a little, and he pinned her more firmly against the table.
"It's my right to kiss you," he reminded her. "whenever I want, for as long as I want. That was our bargain."
She threw an agitated glance around the room, and he read her thoughts easily.
"I don't give a damn if anyone sees us. You're my wife." A smile chased across his lips. "My better half, to be certain." Leaning over her, he nuzzled into the fine tendrils that strayed over her forehead. His breath was hot and soft on her skin. "My prize... my pleasure and pain... my endless desire. I've never known anyone like you, Evie." His lips touched gently at the bridge of her nose and slid down to the tip. "You dare to make demands of me that no other woman would think of asking. And for now, I'll pay your price, love. But later you'll pay mine... over and over..." He caught her trembling lips with his, his hands cupping the back of her head. ~ Lisa Kleypas

Then Carol slipped her arm under her neck, and all the length of their bodies touched fitting as if something had prearranged it. Happiness was like a green vine spreading through her, stretching fine tendrils, bearing flowers through her flesh. She had a vision of a pale white flower, shimmering as if seen in darkness, or through water. Why did people talk of heaven, she wondered ~ Patricia Highsmith

A big cigar was jammed in the corner of his wide mouth. Blue-gray smoke wafted to the ceiling rafters, curling around the big wagon-wheel chandelier like ghostly tendrils. ~ Kymber C. Hawke

She could feel tendrils spreading through her chest, like fingers of fire coiling around her heart, and on her tongue was a taste like honey and anise and cream, like mother's milk and Drogo's seed, like red meat and hot blood and molten gold. It was all the tastes she had ever known, and none of them ... and then the glass was empty. ~ George R R Martin

In the beginning, when Twaslitri (the Divine Artificer) came to the creation of woman he found that he had exhausted his materials in the making of man and that no solid elements were left. In this dilemma, after pro-found meditation, he did as follows: he took the rotundity of the moon, and the curves of the creepers, and the clinging of tendrils, and the trembling of grass, and the slenderness of the reed, and the bloom of flowers, and the lightness of leaves, and the tapering of the elephant's trunk, and the glances of deer, and the clustering of rows of bees, and the joyous gaiety of sun-beams, and the weeping of clouds, and the fickleness of the winds, and the timidity of the hare, and the vanity of the peacock, and the softness of the parrot's bosom, and the hardness of adamant, and the sweetness of honey, and the cruelty of the tiger, and the warm glow of fire, and the coldnesss of snow, and the chattering of jays, and the cooing of the kokila, and the hypocrisy of the crane, and the fidelity of the chakravaka; and compounding all these together, he made woman and gave her to man.
(Written by scholars of the Vedic Age) ~ F.W. Bain

I'm a riddle in nine syllables,
An elephant, a ponderous house,
A melon strolling on two tendrils.
O red fruit, ivory, fine timbers!
This loaf's big with its yeasty rising.
Money's new-minted in this fat purse.
I'm a means, a stage, a cow in calf.
I've eaten a bag of green apples,
Boarded the train there's no getting off. ~ Sylvia Plath

Nila lay there with the moonlight cascading through her open window casting ominous shadows about the room. The tendrils of those shadows reached out from the dark and tugged at her aching heart. ~ Ronda L. Caudill

the way coupling is envisioned in contemporary American society is not universal, it is not timeless, and it is not human nature. Instead, the reigning American worldview may well represent one of the narrowest construals of intimacy ever imagined. Where once the tendrils of love and affection reached out to family, friends, and community, reached back to ancestors, and reached up to the heavens, now they surround and squeeze just one other person - sometimes to the point of asphyxiation. ~ Bella DePaulo

Her keyboard. "There," she said eventually. "Bringing up real-time scan." The display changed to a zoomed-in view of the Animus penetration around the object, as several of the tendrils of the black fluid crept toward it. Creed's eyes widened as just a moment later he saw the Animus shrink away from the object. It was impossible to say whether it had been driven back or had recoiled voluntarily, but the reason was at least clear why this tiny part of Malpense's brain had remained free of Animus. Unfortunately, it left them no closer to understanding what the object was. That would require an invasive, ~ Mark Walden

The collar had restrained his winds but not killed them. They uncoiled from behind the shadows, ready to surround her, to lift her up, to carry her away with only Ariel's silk-clad arms wrapped about her to keep her from falling.
Spirare, they whispered to her like an incantation. Breathe us in.
Bertie didn't mean to, but she inhaled, and everything inside her was a spring morning, a rose opening its petals to the sun, the light coming through the wavering glass of an old, diamond-paned window.
Tendrils of wind reached for Bertie with a coaxing hand. Release him, and he will love you. ~ Lisa Mantchev

The quality of Venice that accomplishes what religion so often cannot is that Venice has made peace with the waters. It is not merely pleasant that the sea flows through, grasping the city like tendrils of vine, and, depending upon the light, making alleys and avenues of emerald and sapphire, Citi s a brave acceptance of dissolution and an unflinching settlement with death. Though in Venice you may sit in courtyards of stone, and your heels may click up marble stairs, you cannot move without riding upon or crossing the waters that someday will carry you in dissolution to the sea. ~ Mark Helprin

Nella swallowed. "Who are you?"
"Rio," he said. "Who are you?"
His voice, soft and seductive, held a hint of hidden wickedness.
With difficulty, Nella clamped her lips shut. She could not reveal her true name - not yet, until she was certain who he worked for.
"I'm . . ." She stopped, her mouth trying to form the right name anyway. Her brain felt thick, as though perfumed tendrils wove through it. "Yours," she finished.
Rio's eyes flickered. "That's dangerous, beautiful. Very dangerous."
Nella didn't care. Right now, she wanted every inch of danger he could give her. ~ Allyson James

Women are like parasitical plants, casting their wild tendrils from one tree to another, till, swollen into tough cordage, they strangle those they embrace, and luxuriate in their decay. ~ Edward John Trelawny

The boy knelt, shoulders bowed, on the sand in the grey of morning, moaning softly, fearfully. Glowing tendrils of energy streamed across the agitated sky, converging high above him in a vortex of brightness. He flung his hands heavenward and a sheet of blinding brilliance descended from the vortex. It enveloped him and from its core a pulsing sphere of light fell, entering his body and almost tearing him apart. He went rigid, screaming to shatter the heavens, his dark eyes bulging from their sockets, his mouth wide in a rictus of agony. Sirius exploded in a burst of silver-blue radiance, as his howl rose to a shriek beyond hearing and endurance. Out of the light and the sound and the anguish, two names imprinted themselves on his mind. One of them, he knew, was his own.
The other floated for an instant above his consciousness like a fugitive white dove in the morning. ~ J. Valor

Roots, he wrote, symbolize more than underground strong-arms. Roots are also origins, the tendrils of a sprouting seed that give rise to life. ~ Rivera Sun

The religion and it's many barbed indoctrinating tendrils just start to become what makes you who you are, so you have to kind of destroy yourself to be able to rebuild yourself and make yourself whole again. ~ Mat McNerney

When you're no one from nowhere it's best to know your limits. Rich kids can play at bohemia, but wealth has long tendrils; it twines into a safety net which can also be a trap for the unprepared. Rich kids have families and backgrounds and connections, and they ask questions, because their world functions on being able to place people. I couldn't expose myself to that. ~ L.S. Hilton

Some rooftop, water-tank looming, street-racket strangely quelled
and other known and unknown there, long sweet summer evening
on the tarred roof:
leaned back your head to the nightvault swarming with stars
the Pleiades broken loose, not seven but thousands
every known constellation flinging out fiery threads
and you could distinguish all
-cobwebs, tendrils, anatomies of stars
coherently hammocked, blueblack avenues between…

It was New York, the dream-site
the lost city the city of dreadful light…we
went striding the avenues in our fiery hair
in our bodies young and ordinary riding the subways reading
or pressed against other bodies
feeling in them the maps of Brooklyn Queens Manhattan… ~ Adrienne Rich

He watched the sun rise beyond the grape arbor. In the thin golden light the young leaves and tendrils of the Scuppernong were like Twink Weatherby's hair. He decided that sunrise and sunset both gave him a pleasantly sad feeling. The sunrise brought a wild, free sadness; the sunset, a lonely yet a comforting one. He indulged his agreeable melancholy until the earth under him turned from gray to lavender and then to the color dried corn husks. ~ Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

The thinnest tendrils of dawn are creeping in from the east. People in New York are softly starting to tweet. ~ Robin Sloan

Some of us have a ragged faith. You cry for a long time, and then after that are defeated and flattened for a long time. Then somehow life starts up again ... Some aching beauty comes with huge loss, although maybe not right away when it would be helpful. Life is a very powerful force, despite the constant discouragement. So if you are a person with connections to life, a few tendrils eventually break through the sidewalk of loss, and you notice them, maybe space out studying them for a few moments, or maybe they tickle you into movement and response, if only because you have to scratch your nose. ~ Anne Lamott

As I went to stand up, I felt a tiny point of pressure on my back.
"Don't move," Kasey whispered.
I stayed bent over.
"Drop the knife," she said.
"Excuse me, I'm using it," I said.
She swallowed hard. "For what?"
"Mom and Dad. You."
The pressure on my back increased. "Drop it, Alexis."
Drop it? Like I was a bad dog running around with a sock in my mouth.
"How long will this take?" I asked, setting the knife on the floor. "I'm in the middle of something."
Get in the bathroom," she said.
The faster I indulged her, the faster it would be over with. So I walked into the bathroom. She followed, kicking the knife toward the end of the hallway and flipping on the bathroom light.
"What's this all about, Kasey?" I asked, turning around. At the sight of my face, she gasped, and the point of the fireplace poker she was holding wavered in her hands. I realized a second too late that I'd missed my chance to grab it and smash it into the side of her head.
"What's happening to you?" she whispered.
I glanced in the mirror. The darkness had begun to spread from my mouth and eyes. It leached out in inky puddles with thin tendrils of black snaking out in delicate feathery patterns.
What's happening to me? What was she talking about?
"So you have a pointy stick," I said. "Big deal. get out of my way."

"What are you going to do?" I sneered.

"Poke me?"
'I'll hit you, Lexi." Her face was s ~ Katie Alender

I felt the strangling tendrils of a cancerous horror whose roots reached into illimitable pasts and fathomless abysms of the night that broods beyond time. ~ H.P. Lovecraft

Had she been born 500 years sooner, Raphael would have chosen her as a model for his cherubs. Tendrils of bright red hair framed her face, a spray of freckles powdered her nose, and she was as plump as a perfectly ripened peach. Raphael probably would have painted out the freckles, and that would have been a mistake. Like brushing cinnamon off cinnamon toast. ~ E.L. Konigsburg

Madness," he said quietly, "is as a drop of ink in water. It sends sly tendrils from the afflicted person into everyone around until all are shaded in black. Soon one does not know who is mad and who is not. ~ Lynn Cullen

Saturday morning. Hung-over as fuck. The beer fear squirms through my belly with alien tendrils and I know with absolute certainty that I have done something unforgivable.

Something apocalyptic.

Again. ~ Michael Taljaard

For some reason, the despair that's welling up in me is transforming into white-hot rage. I feel it working its way up from my toes, winding around my legs, and burrowing into the pit of my stomach. It spears its razor-sharp tendrils through the pieces of my broken heart. It's crippling, and devastating, and unrelenting. I have only one choice to survive this; I turn that rage outward. ~ Michelle Figley

Stay with me. As the tendrils of sleep syrup pull me down, I hear him whisper a word back, but I don't quite catch it. ~ Suzanne Collins

Old sundial, you stand here for Time:
For Love, the vine that round your base
Its tendrils twines, and dares to climb
And lay one flower-capped spray in grace
Without the asking on your cold
Unsmiling and unfrowning face. ~ Eleanor Farjeon

In front of me stands a willow tree by a river, its long green tendrils trailing into the chuckling water. A man sits beneath the tree, back propped against the trunk, gently strumming a lute as he looks out over the water. He feels familiar to me, as if I must know him. As if it would be impossible not to know him.
I do not approach. I simply listen to the water and the lute, the sound settling deeply into my bones and heart. ~ Suzanna J. Linton

Why allow the tendrils of the heart to twine around objects which may at any moment be wrenched away ~ Harriet Jacobs

Darkness has been and shall ever be. Long after the substances that fuel heat and light have burned away - giving out at the end of a brief, fragile course - an everlasting night shall reign. Imlod Nir considered this as he watched the last tendrils of smoke from the evening's fire stream lazily into the night air. They mingled with black leaves under a low, moonlit canopy before melding into the consuming void. ~ John William

I'd been here before. Not to this Freedman Town, but to plenty of others. I've been all over the North, and every northern city has a Freedman Town. New York City's got a few, and Chicago's got more than a few. Baltimore, Washington. The manumitted have got to go somewhere, and the world doesn't give them a lot of options. The details are different - some of 'em are built on a high-rise model, bent towers clustered around courtyards, crammed to the gills with the poorest of the poor, living hard, the forgotten children of forgotten children. Some are like this one, blocks and blocks of small ramshackle homes, no sidewalks along narrow roads with the concrete worn and blasted through, the yards between the houses as weed-choked as vacant lots. Ivy growing in wild overlapping networks, engulfing the lower stories and sending menacing tendrils into upstairs windows. Gutters dangling or cracked, porches falling. ~ Ben H. Winters

Life in turn organises itself along deep, observable tendrils that do not speak of discrete, careful, artistic intervention, rather scream of haphazard chance and the emergency of survival. ~ John Zande

Godlike erect, with native Honour clad In naked Majestie seemd Lords of all, And worthie seemd, for in thir looks Divine The image of thir glorious Maker shon, Truth, Wisdome, Sanctitude severe and pure, Severe, but in true filial freedom plac't; Whence true autoritie in men; though both Not equal, as thir sex not equal seemd; For contemplation hee and valour formd, For softness shee and sweet attractive Grace, Hee for God only, shee for God in him: His fair large Front and Eye sublime declar'd Absolute rule; and Hyacinthin Locks Round from his parted forelock manly hung Clustring, but not beneath his shoulders broad: Shee as a vail down to the slender waste Her unadorned golden tresses wore Dissheveld, but in wanton ringlets wav'd As the Vine curles her tendrils, which impli'd Subjection, but requir'd with gentle sway, And ~ John Milton

She wears the braid every day and always, by lunchtime, the curls and ringlets of her thick mane have managed to escape in rebellious little tendrils. But she refuses to surrender to that hair of hers, and every morning, it goes back into the braid. ~ Gayle Forman

Her hair was a glory of tendrils for the snaring of husbands. ~ Michael Chabon

Ahead, a house sits close to the road: a small, single-story place painted mint green. Ivy grows up one corner and onto the roof, the green tendrils swaying like a girl's hair let loose from a braid. In front there's a full and busy vegetable garden, with plants jostling for real estate and bees making a steady, low, collective hum. It reminds me of the aunties' gardens, and my nonna's when I was a kid. Tomato plants twist gently skywards, their lazy stems tied to stakes. Leafy heads of herbs- dark parsley, fine-fuzzed purple sage, bright basil that the caterpillars love to punch holes in. Rows and rows of asparagus. Whoever lives here must work in the garden a lot. It's wild but abundant, and I know it takes a special vigilance to maintain a garden of this size.
The light wind lifts the hair from my neck and brings the smell of tomato stalks. The scent, green and full of promise, brings to mind a childhood memory- playing in Aunty Rosa's yard as Papa speaks with a cousin, someone from Italy. I am imagining families of fairies living in the berry bushes: making their clothes from spiderweb silk, flitting with wings that glimmer pink and green like dragonflies'. ~ Hannah Tunnicliffe

Clouds lazed in the folded arms of the hills, then billowed up and drifted away. Some tendrils twisted into tight spirals and traced the warmer ravines, behaving like mist tracking the dank fens of the marsh. The same game of physics playing on a different field of biology. ~ Delia Owens

She plucked a raspberry. Sweet juice, sweet pleasure. Within the tangle of tendrils, inside a blossom, a tiny bead was kisses and blessed by the sun, from which it took in light and warmth and heaven's rain imbued with the richness of the soil of France. All of the elements of the river world helped that bead to expand and multiply into sheer casings for sweet pulp, wedge together in a knobby globe until it released its juice in her mouth ~ Susan Vreeland

Your journey through life and self-discovery is much like the start of a new day. As you grow, develop, and reinvent yourself, the tendrils of light tear through the darkness of your untapped potential and uncharted territory. As you learn more, discover your life's purpose, and establish a vision for your future, the light shines through on your true self. ~ Thomas Narofsky

I fling unconscious tendrils of belief, like slender green threads, across statements such as these, statements made so unequivocally, which have no tone or shadow of tentativeness. I build them into the mosaic of my world. I allow my universe to change in minute, significant ways, on the basis of things you have said to me, of my trust in you. ~ Adrienne Rich

His rapier was at his belt, glittering as he swung. He reached down, ripped the sword clear.
I jumped over a slashing frond of plasm, spun round with the water bottle in my hand. I hurled it across to Lockwood.
George threw his rapier to me.
Watch this now. Sword and bottle, sailing through the air, twin trajectories, arching beautifully through the mass of swirling tendrils towards Lockwood and me. Lockwood held out his hand. I held out mine.
Remember I said there was that moment of sweet precision when we gelled perfectly as a team?
Yeah, well. This wasn't it.
The rapier shot past, missing me by miles. It skidded halfway across the floor. The bottle struck Lockwood plumb in the centre of his forehead, knocking him through the window.
There was a moment's pause.
'Is he dead?' the skulls voice said 'Yay! Oh. No, he's hanging onto the shutters. Shame. Still, this is defiantly the funniest thing I've ever seen. You three really are incompetence on a stick ~ Jonathan Stroud

Nico clenched his sword. Sharing his secret crush hadn't been the worst of it. Eventually he might have done that, in his own time, in his own way. But being forced to talk about Percy, being bullied and harassed and strong-armed simply for Cupid's amusement ... Tendrils of darkness were now spreading out from his feet, killing all the weeds between the cobblestones. Nico tried to rein in his anger. ~ Rick Riordan

But it's not safe and I can feel him slipping away, so I just get out one more sentence. "Stay with me."
As the tendrils of sleep syrup pull me down, I hear him whisper a word back but I don't catch it. ~ Suzanne Collins

Happiness was like a green vine spreading through her, stretching fine tendrils, bearing flowers through her flesh. ~ Patricia Highsmith

What does the symbol of Light stand for? At the core, the symbol is meant to represent a balance of a sort, a union between both good and evil. You see… good cannot exist without evil and vice versa. The white chain represents the Light, the forces of good, while the black chain represents evil, the forces of the Dark. The white chain is solid and pure because we of the Light acknowledge the presence of the Dark and strive to maintain the proper balance. However, the black chain, warped with escaping tendrils of dark flame, symbolizes the Dark's desire to overthrow that balance. Evil does not know boundaries, Danny. The forces of the Dark will work tirelessly to unravel everything, even at the risk of their own destruction. ~ Daniel M. Fife

She nuzzled his chest as his fingertips combed through the wavy tendrils of her hair. The gentle motion lulled her eyes closed and drew a deep yawn from her tired body. "This," she murmured sleepily, "being here with you like this, it's a lovely escape, too."

Ronin kissed her forehead in agreement, momentarily tightening his hold on her. "That it is, honey," he breathed as she drifted off to sleep. "That it is… ~ Sibylla Matilde

She was this girl living in a bottomless hole of her thoughts.
One day she saw a light. She felt the warmth and walked in its direction.
It was there that she found him.
He spoke to her and wove tendrils of love on her heart.
His compassion was over whelming for her.
His words, his love, his eyes- everything about him was so pure, so true.
Her heart was getting intertwined with the love he was bestowing upon her.
The mesh of affection he weaved around her heart made it breathe. And live.
Vine by vine the mesh thickened.
Today, he is her beloved. They are inseparable.
He smiles, she smiles. They weave dreams.
She loves him beyond infinity.
He has her heart strings. And as he walks, she walks with him. ~ Geetansha Sood

Memories of bright and colorful worlds swirl together. The one thing in common is the brown mud on my boots. Slogging through battlefields. Noticing details like how the insides of sentient things have much in common: the same blood that colors red in the air, the sacs for breathing, the sacs for pumping blood through tubes, the tendrils for turning thoughts into things. ~ Hugh Howey

She didn't understand love, not the golden, shimmering, romance-novel stuff that existed between mates. She was skeptical of it, and had never been one to pretend that it existed just for the sake of excitement. She didn't know what it looked like, what it felt like…at least, she hadn't. But she realized, amid the dancing tendrils of ivy that climbed the gazebo, that love – that good, golden kind she'd always discounted – didn't arrive with a blast of trumpets and an earth-shattering epiphany. It was earned, formed, created, day by day, a little at a time. And it looked like Mike eating toast over her kitchen sink, felt like his hand smoothing her hair back off her face, sounded like his sudden shout of laughter when she spilled a whole sack of flour out of the top cabinet down onto her head in his kitchen, tasted like the kiss he used to make up for it. ~ Lauren Gilley

Geez, you guys. I know I'm popular and all, but seriously, you're a bit too co-dependent for me. I'm going to need you to step away from my personal bubble." A wispy vine-woman curled ivy tendrils around his arm, and he sliced through them with his dagger. "No! Bad Wraith! No touchie! ~ Julie Kagawa

I needed to pay attention, to be ready to step through and descend into it, whatever it was. It felt archetypal. Something in me was being slain in the fires of pain so that some new thing could be born. I knew it and went with it, and in the alchemy of my pain, like flowers whose seeds open only in the presence of fire, tendrils of something new began to sprout. Pain for me was a Trojan horse, penetrating the protective walls I'd erected around my heart, bearing within it hints of a future I might never have awakened to had I tried to numb myself with busyness. ~ Jane Fonda

There is a love that equals in its power the love of man for woman and reaches inwards as deeply. It is the love of a man or a woman for their world. For the world of their center where their lives burn genuinely and with a free flame.

The love of the diver for his world of wavering light. His world of pearls and tendrils and his breath at his breast. Born as a plunger into the deeps he is at one with every swarm of lime-green fish, with every colored sponge. As he holds himself to the ocean's faery floor, one hand clasped to a bedded whale's rib, he is complete and infinite. Pulse, power and universe sway in his body. He is in love.

The love of the painter standing alone and staring, staring at the great colored surface he is making. Standing with him in the room the rearing canvas stares back with tentative shapes halted in their growth, moving in a new rhythm from floor to ceiling. The twisted tubes, the fresh paint squeezed and smeared across the dry on his palette. The dust beneath the easel. The paint has edged along the brushes' handles. The white light in a northern sky is silent. The window gapes as he inhales his world. His world: a rented room, and turpentine. He moves towards his half-born. He is in Love.

The rich soil crumbles through the yeoman's fingers. As the pearl diver murmurs, 'I am home' as he moves dimly in strange water-lights, and as the painter mutters, 'I am me' on his lone raft of floorboards, so the slow landsman on ~ Mervyn Peake

In the beginning his flesh was simply soft, so soft that he was cut to the bone by dust particles, air currents and brushing overcoats while direct contact with doors and chairs seemed to occasion no discomfort. No wound healed in his soft, tentative flesh... Long white tendrils of fungus curled round the naked bones. ~ William S. Burroughs

The sky doesn't set so much as break apart. The horizon is brick-coloured. The rest of the sky is streaked with shock-red tendrils. ~ Lauren Oliver

Rage is a powerful emotion, strong enough not just to burn away pain but also to sear back the whispering tendrils of fear. ~ Carrie Ryan

All to the north the rain had dragged black tendrils down from the thunderclouds like tracings of lampblack fallen in a beaker and in the night they could hear the drum of rain miles away on the prairie. They ascended through a rocky pass and lightning shaped out the distant
shivering mountains and lightning rang the stones about and tufts of blue fire clung to the horses like incandescent elementals that would not be driven off. Soft smelterlights advanced upon the metal of the harness, lights ran blue and liquid on the barrels of the guns. Mad jack-hares started and checked in the blue glare and high among those clanging crags jokin roehawks crouched in their feathers or cracked a yellow eye at the thunder underfoot. ~ Cormac McCarthy

When I was an activist in the 1980s, ninety-eight percent of my time was spent stuffing envelopes and writing addresses on them. The remaining two percent was the time we spent figuring out what to put in the envelopes. Today, we get those envelopes and stamps and address books for free. This is so fantastically, hugely different and weird that we haven't even begun to feel the first tendrils of it. ~ Cory Doctorow

Miriam gave her hair a preliminary drying, gathered her dressing-gown together and went upstairs. From the schoolroom came unmistakable sounds. They were evidently at dinner. She hurried to her attic. What was she to do with her hair? She rubbed it desperately - fancy being landed with hair like that, in the middle of the day! She could not possibly go down.... She must. Fraulein Pfaff would expect her to - and would be disgusted if she were not quick - she towelled frantically at the short strands round her forehead, despairingly screwed them into Hinde's and towelled at the rest. What had the other girls done? If only she could look into the schoolroom before going down - it was awful - what should she do?... She caught sight of a sodden-looking brush on Mademoiselle's bed. Mademoiselle had put hers up - she had seen her... of course... easy enough for her little fluffy clouds - she could do nothing with her straight, wet lumps - she began to brush it out - it separated into thin tails which flipped tiny drops of moisture against her hands as she brushed. Her arms ached; her face flared with her exertions. She was ravenous - she must manage somehow and go down. She braided the long strands and fastened their cold mass with extra hairpins. Then she unfastened the Hinde's - two tendrils flopped limply against her forehead. She combed them out. They fell in a curtain of streaks to her nose. Feverishly she divided them, draped them somehow back into the rest of her hair and fas ~ Dorothy M. Richardson

As much as I approve of your change in tactics, Morley, dangling this tasty piece in front of me still won't have the desired effect." Blackwell's voice reached out to her like the first unwelcome tendrils of frost in winter. Deep, smooth, caustic, and bitter cold. ~ Kerrigan Byrne

It was a very new love growing inside of her heart - so new and so young that she felt fiercely protective of it. As though the seed of love had been planted in the warm earth of her heart several weeks ago, just now it was starting to sprout roots she knew would climb deep into her soul, with tiny green tendrils that would one day burst through her to entangle with his. Too little warmth or water or sun could make the seed wither, and with all of her heart and all of her soul, she wanted this love to grow deep and tall and strong, because somewhere deep and certain inside of her, she knew what was happening between her and Stratton could be the love of a lifetime. ~ Katy Regnery

Reading is how we learn to attach ourselves to ourselves, and to others, and to the world: reading inhabits us with the tendrils of love. ~ Rick Gekoski

This emotion called love. It is wrapped up in time, measured by years. The more I see of humans the more complicated love becomes. It is not an exchange of goods. It has no price. it is not a simple connection to other beings. Love is much deeper, its tendrils reach into the bad and the good in humans. I don't believe we should give up on this project. I cannot return until I learn how to love. ~ Sally Gardner

The Great Sadness
You can't look at yourself
in the ocean.
Your looks fall apart
like tendrils of light.
Night on earth. ~ Federico Garcia Lorca

Tethered to the universe by tendrils of history, with threads of continuity descending to God knows where, I see that I'm more than the dust I'll become."
This quote is from my novel, "Whispers from St. Mary's Well." Many readers have said that, like the fictional narrator of the story, Carrie Rose Stillwell, they felt a deep connection to the universe through past, present, and future experiences, after reading the story of a child who communicates with future generations. ~ Carol Kenny

That is faith, cleaving to Christ, twining round Him with all the tendrils of our heart, as the vine does round its support. ~ Alexander MacLaren

Enzo looks up at me. Suddenly, the blackness in his eyes seems to fade, replaced by the familiar warm brown of his irises, the red slashes, the glow of life. I see a hint of his old self there, fighting through the darkness of the Underworld to gaze at me one last time. It is the look he'd given me when we used to dance.
This is the real Enzo.
"Let me go," he whispers. It is his voice. It is the voice that once comforted me, gave me strength. And as I try to take in his words, the final tendrils of the tether linking us unravel from around my heart, freeing me. ~ Marie Lu

There was a hint of something lingering in her mind. A memory, perhaps, although Jo could only catch the flavor of a few remaining tendrils. ~ Lisa Graff

He had electric blue hair that had stuck around his head like tendrils of a startled octopus. ~ Cassandra Clare

Been united by superficial tendrils of the small and the mundane, but the enormous fact of your death was ripping each fragile connection. I said ~ Rosamund Lupton

A good wife is like the ivy which beautifies the building to which it clings, twining its tendrils more lovingly as time converts the ancient edifice into a ruin. ~ Samuel Johnson

And I think of Emily Dickinson, and my favorite poem about death, and the line that reads "I could not see to see." This is the line Ms. Sylvia copied onto the board in her beautiful cursive, which spirals away like blindweed tendrils, and then she asked the class what it might mean. I didn't even have to think about it. I just knew. To see to see, which is not exactly what Dickinson wrote, means knowing how to look. How to look to understand. How to look without your eyes. And to die, is not to see at all. Of course, I didn't actually say this out loud. ~ Sarah Elizabeth Schantz

I heard a few men in a restaurant talking about a bayou legend," Savannah said suddenly.She leaned ont he side of the boat,presenting him with an intriguing view of her tight jeans. They clung lovingly to every curve.
Gregori moved, a flowing of his body, gliding silently, and his large frame was blanketing Savannah's, blocking out the captain's enticing view.Gregori leaned into her,his arms coming down on either side of the railing to imprison her against him. You are doing it again. His words brushed softly in her mind even as his warm breath teased the tendrils of hair at her neck.
Savannah leaned back into him, fitting her bottom into the cradle of his hips. She was happy, free of the oppressive weight of the hunt,of death and violence. THere were only the two of them.
Three, he reminded her,his teeth scraping her sensitive pulse.He could feel the answering surge of her blood, the molten lava spreading in his.
My mother thinks my father is a cave man.I'm beginning to think you could give him a run for his money.
Disrespectful little thing.
"Which legend?There are so many," Beau said.
"About an old alligator that lies in wait to eat hunting dogs and little children," Savannah said.
Gregori tugged at her long braid so that she tilted her head back.His mouth brushed the line of her throat. I could be a hungry alligator, he offered softly. ~ Christine Feehan

Karma is like the vine that gathers strength through uninterrupted years, and which fastens its tendrils so closely that it is as strong as the structure to which it adheres. There is no way to destroy its power except by the separation of the parts, these parts renew themselves in other forms of life, but the structure is freed when its root is destroyed. ~ William Quan Judge

When her gaze met his, her irises were luminous, pooling bright silvery purple, a definitely inhuman glow.
He'd awoken the beast in her.
Good.
"What are you?" she whispered.
Jesse took a step back to clear his head, to free himself from the tendrils of her sorcery. It'd be easier for both of them if he could think straight.
Right. He needed to focus. He'd waited his lifetime for this moment, but, even so, the words came with difficulty.
It was never painless to bare a soul.
"I am both less than you and more," he said. "An alchemist, an amalgamation of two opposite realms. I'm the fabric of the stars. ~ Shana Abe

What could she do who would not cast away magic and leave the home that an ageless day had endeared to her while centuries were withering like leaves upon earthly shores, whose heart was yet held by those little tendrils of Earth, which are strong enough, strong enough? ~ Lord Dunsany

Past dreams of bliss our lives contain, And slight the chords that still retain A heart estranged to joys again, To scenes by memory's silver chain Close-linked, and ever yet apart, That like the vine, whose tendrils young Around some fostering branch have clung, Grown with its growth, as tho' it sprung From one united heart. ~ Alan Cooper

If your mind and spirit are seduced by images of windswept ridge tops, flutters of aspen leaves caressed by a canyon breeze and the crimson tendrils of dying sun…if your fingers feel the silken pulse of a lover and your lips taste the deep kisses of building passion…if nostrils flare with the conjured scents of gunpowder and perfume, sage brush and pine, and your ears delight in the murmur of river current…if your heart pounds at the clash of good and evil and with each twist and turn of interwoven lives you feel a primal throb, then I have accomplished my mission. ~ Reid Lance Rosenthal

The summer came to life. It burst from gray to fierce blue and gold in the blink of an eye; the air pealed with grasshoppers and lawnmowers, swirled with branches and bees and dandelion seeds, it was soft and sweet as whipped cream, and over the wall the wood was calling us in the loudest of silent voices, it was shaking out all its best treasures to welcome us home. Summer tossed out a fountain of ivy tendrils, caught us straight under the breastbones and tugged; summer, redeemed and unfurling in front of us, a million years long. ~ Tana French

She was the kind of elegance
That would never tarnish.
A mixture of lace and mesh,
Like a classic heirloom that begged to be worn.
She was sharp intellect and quick wit.
The type of woman that spoke her mind,
Even if it shook.
(Or even if no one was listening.)
She was beautiful.
But not someone you'd see in magazines,
Her hips were too wide, her hair a mess of wispy tendrils,
(Rather, she was actually very ordinary.)
My, was she stubborn! She'd drive you mad!
(Sometimes, you'd probably call her crazy.)
But mostly, her laughter was a joyful moments.
Like a warm towel fresh from the dryer,
Or finding a twenty-dollar bill in your winter coat.
And that was the true revelation.
That magic does exist,
It ran through her like a wild, fiery current. ~ M.J. Abraham

I saw that the garden had obeyed the jungle law, even as the woods had done. The rhododendrons stood fifty feet high, twisted and entwined with bracken, and they had entered into alien marriage with a host of nameless shrubs, poor, bastard thing that clung about their roots as though conscious of their spurious origin. A lilac had mated with a copper beech, and to bind them yet more closely to one another the malevolent ivy, always an enemy to grace, had thrown her tendrils about the pair and made them prisoners. ~ Daphne Du Maurier

To love a swamp, however, is to love what is muted and marginal, what exists in the shadows, what shoulders its way out of mud and scurries along the damp edges of what is most commonly praised. And sometimes its invisibility is a blessing. Swamps and bogs are places of transition and wild growth, breeding grounds, experimental labs where organisms and ideas have the luxury of being out of the spotlight, where the imagination can mutate and mate, send tendrils into and out of the water. ~ Barbara Hurd

His hand trailed down the side of her face, brushing back spiraling tendrils of hair. Come, shei'tani, dance the skiles with your mate. ~ C.L. Wilson

Dread skittered down my spine and brushed away the last tendrils of sleep. Pushing back the bed linens, I disentangled myself from Polly. Then I put my bare feet on the wooden floorboards and felt the early autumn chill on my legs. I glided soundlessly down the stairs, drawn inexorably to Papa's chamber, the only room where the candles still burned bright. I ~ Stephanie Dray

As the vine which has long twined its graceful foliage about the oak and been lifted by it into sunshine, will, when the hardy plant is rifted by the thunderbolt, cling round it with its caressing tendrils and bind up its shattered boughs, so is it beautifully ordered by Providence that woman, who is the mere dependent and ornament of man in his happier hours, should be his stay and solace when smitten with sudden calamity, winding herself into the rugged recesses of his nature, tenderly supporting the drooping head, and binding up the broken heart. ~ Washington Irving

Pulling at her uncomfortable hairstyle, she let several loose tendrils frame her face. Next, she took out the tight bun, and her braided hair hung down her back. Elsa didn't stop there. This gown had weighed her down for too long. It was time for it to go as well. With a wave of her hands, she imagined a new dress that suited her personality and style. Something light and freeing. Ice crystallized over the bottom of her teal dress, forming a new one that was a shimmering pale blue. Gone were the itchy high collar and the annoying long sleeves that restricted her movements. Her new gown was strapless, her neck was open, and her arms were loosely wrapped in silk. A light sheer cape was made up of a pattern of snowflakes as unique as she was. ~ Jen Calonita

Witches are good at dealing with it, and to suddenly find a blank where these tendrils of the future should be has much the same effect on a witch as emerging from a cloud bank and seeing a team of sherpas looking down on him does on an airline pilot. ~ Terry Pratchett

The warm dampness of her breath made me shiver at the mix of the familiar and the unknown, with a soft exhalation she shifted her head and her lips found my collarbone, teasingly shy of my old scar. Tendrils pulsed in time with my heart, building on the ones before to an unseen height. ~ Kim Harrison

I leaned against my door, struggling to catch my breath, and thought that maybe hell wasn't a place at all, but a thing. A contagious thing. A thing that could creep up the steps, seep through the crack under my door, grow horns and sprout fire - smelling faintly like sulfur. A thing that could sink its tendrils inside and take root, coloring everything gray and distorting a smile into a sneer. And while i got dressed for the play, swatted at my back and kept running my hands over my stomach because I could feel it, I swear, I could feel it reaching for me, trying to grab hold. ~ Megan Miranda

The demon bowed his head. "There are many kinds of Hunts. It is what defines us, renews us. It is the same for you, Hunter. We are born in blood, and we will die in blood, but in the interim, we must put fire to our veins and find new paths to tread upon." Tendrils of hair tapped his head. "Paths, up here. ~ Marjorie M. Liu

Almost immediately, I found the red door into the library. I opened it idly- and the breath stopped in my throat. It was the same room I remembered: the shelves, the lion-footed table, the white bass-relief of Clio. But now, tendrils of dark green ivy grew between the shelves, reaching toward the books as if they were hungry to read. White mist flowed along the floor, rippling and tumbling as if blown by wind. Across the ceiling wove a network of icy ropes like tree roots. They dripped- not little droplets like the ice melting off a tree but grape-sized drops of water, like giant tears, that splashed on the table, plopped to the floor. ~ Rosamund Hodge

You are aware of only one unrest;
Oh, never learn to know the other!
Two souls, alas, are dwelling in my breast,
And one is striving to forsake its brother.
Unto the world in grossly loving zest,
With clinging tendrils, one adheres;
The other rises forcibly in quest
Of rarefied ancestral spheres.
If there be spirits in the air
That hold their sway between the earth and sky,
Descend out of the golden vapors there
And sweep me into iridescent life.
Oh, came a magic cloak into my hands
To carry me to distant lands,
I should not trade it for the choicest gown,
Nor for the cloak and garments of the crown. ~ Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe