The Woven Worlds Quotes

I know my place. I always did. I just never knew how to get there. ~ Luke Taylor

It is far easier to take a blow to the cheek than a blow to one's pride. Broken bones can heal, but a broken mirror must be replaced. ~ Luke Taylor

Life's just an adventure. Can't live it standing still. ~ Luke Taylor

My mother's gifts of courage to me were both large and small. The latter are woven so subtly into the fabric of my psyche that I can hardly distinguish where she stops and I begin. ~ Maya Angelou

A mortal had woven it, a man who, having caught sight of the Seelie queen, had spent the remainder of his short life weaving depictions of her. He had died of starvation, raw, red fingers staining the final tapestry. ~ Holly Black

Memories are the precious moments wrapped in delicate ribbon. The ones kept dear are beautifully woven around our heart, the ones that don't hold the beauty of the ribbon, unties itself naturally. ~ Kittie Blessed

It is a remarkable fact that the people who do things by hand still find time to add to their work some elaboration of mere beauty which makes it a joy to look on, while our machine-made tools, which could do so at much less cost, are too utilitarian to afford any ornament. It used to give me daily pleasure in Teheran to see the sacks in which refuse is carried off the streets woven with a blue and red decorative pattern: but can one imagine a borough council in Leeds or Birmingham expressing a delicate fancy of this kind? Beauty, according to these, is what one buys for the museum: pots and pans, taps and door-handles, though one has to look at them twenty times a day, have no call to be beautiful. So we impoverish our souls and keep our lovely things for rare occasions, even as our lovely thoughts - wasting the most of life in pondering domestic molehills or the Stock Exchange, among objects as ugly as the less attractive forms of sin. ~ Freya Stark

The Word is symbol of delight which sucks up men and scenes, trees, plants, factories, and Pekinese. Then the Thing becomes the Word and the back to Thing again, but warped and woven into a fantastic pattern. ~ John Steinbeck

The Doper's Dream

Last night I dreamed I was plugged right in
To a bubblin' hookah so high,
When all of a sudden some Arab jinni
Jump up just a-winkin' his eye.
'I'm here to obey all your wishes,' he told me.
As for words I was trying to grope.
'Good buddy,' I cried, 'you could surely oblige me
By turning me on to some dope!'
With a bigfat smile he took ahold of my hand,
And we flew down the sky in a flash,
And the first thing I saw in the land where he took me
Was a whole solid mountain of hash!
All the trees was a-bloomin' with pink 'n' purple pills,
Whur the Romilar River flowed by,
To the magic mushrooms as wild as a rainbow,
So pretty that I wanted to cry.
All the girls come to greet us, so sweet in slow motion,
Mourning glories woven into their hair,
Bringin' great big handfuls of snowy cocaine,
All their dope they were eager to share.
We we dallied for days, just a-ballin' and smokin',
In the flowering Panama Red,
Just piggin' on peyote and nutmeg tea,
And those brownies so kind to your head.
Now I could've passed that good time forever,
And I really was fixing to stay,
But you know that jinni turned out, t'be a narco man,
And he busted me right whur I lay.
And he took me back to a cold, cold world
'N' now m'prison's whurever I be...
And I dream of the days back in Doperland
And I wonder, will I ever go fr ~ Thomas Pynchon

The extrovert assumption is so woven into the fabric of our culture that an employee may suffer reprimands for keeping his door closed (that is, if he is one of the lucky ones who has a door), for not lunching with other staff members, or for missing the weekend golf game or any number of supposedly morale-boosting celebrations. Half. More than half of us don't want to play. We don't see the point. For us, an office potluck will not provide satisfying human contact - we'd much rather meet a friend for an intimate conversation (even if that friend is a coworker). For us, the gathering will not boost morale - and will probably leave us resentful that we stayed an extra hour to eat stale cookies and make small talk. For us, talking with coworkers does not benefit our work - it sidetracks us. ~ Laurie A. Helgoe

The decisions we make, individually and personally, become the fabric of our lives. That fabric will be beautiful or ugly according to the threads of which it is woven. I wish to say particularly to the young men who are here that you cannot indulge in any unbecoming behavior without injury to the beauty of the fabric of your lives. Immoral acts of any kind will introduce an ugly thread. Dishonesty of any kind will create a blemish. Foul and profane language will rob the pattern of its beauty. ~ Gordon B. Hinckley

The short story narrates the moment when a dark door, long closed, is opened, when a forgotten error is unwittingly repeated, when the fabric of a life is revealed to have been woven from frail and dubious fiber over top of something unknowable and possibly very bad. ~ Michael Chabon

I feel the urge, familiar now, to wrench myself from my body and speak directly into her mind. It is the same urge, I realize, that makes me want to kiss her every time I see her, because even a sliver of distance between us is infuriating. Our fingers, loosely woven a moment ago, now clutch together, her palm tacky with moisture, mine rough in places where I have grabbed too many handles on too many moving trains. Now she looks pale and small, but her eyes make me think of wide-open skies that I have never actually seen, only dreamed of. ~ Veronica Roth

Herschel Grynszpan's life was enigmatic, elusive and tragic. The traces he left on the historical record are just sufficient to tantalize and baffle historians. Harlan Greene has woven from these threads a riveting novel, erotic, haunting, and profoundly moving. ~ Janette Turner Hospital

One of the metaphors of the book is the carpet. Not just the flying carpet, but the carpet as a woven surface in which many repetitions and motifs recur and mirror one another. This is very much reflected within the stories: they have borders within borders, repeated motifs which change. They have their feet in oral conventions, and for the mnemonics, the storyteller needs to have a structure in order to remember the stories. ~ Marina Warner

Life is not a straight forward plain ... no linear pattern, simply A to B, and on to C and inevitably ending us up at Z, where we are the inevitably tossed by angels into heaven or hell. Progression is immaterial, time relative. For Jacob, life ebbed and flowed into complex woven conundrums of interrelatedness, of stops and starts and intervening presents transforming over and into elaborate and repeating futures. He believed that at all times man existed with one foot in heaven, another in hell, and everywhere in between and within lay his soul. ~ Nancy Young

Only somebody with a mind like a rock could go on with the idea that we on our little island are separate from those other places - that great world is rainbow threads woven into our greys and greens. Where did this leather belt come from? he asked me, of a belt I couldn't see. Not English goats, but Norwegian ones. And the flour for baking bread that feeds our great cities? From Baltic grain, high up in the north. And the ironwork on our new weathervane? Spanish iron. Our little land is flecked with foreignness, the Lord wants our colourful commingling. ~ Samantha Harvey

Mattia was startled to find that he still had instincts, buried beneath the dense network of thoughts and abstractions that had woven itself around him. ~ Paolo Giordano

The winter is made and you have to bear it,
The winter web, the winter woven, wind and wind,
For all the thoughts of summer that go with it
In the mind, pupa of straw, moppet of rags ... ~ Wallace Stevens

Socially we are woven into the fabric of society, where every man is like one thread in a piece of cloth. No single thread has a right to say, "I will stay here no longer," and draw out. No man has a right to make a hole in the well-woven fabric of society. ~ Henry Ward Beecher

My app is the same juicy paint used by Vincent Van Gogh; my screen is the woven canvas of Titian. Painting by hand, I've come to figure, is a certain kind of love. ~ Robert Genn

Some days I'm sure I'll be unravelled,
That I'm just a piece of thread,
Woven from everything I've heard
And every book I've ever read.
That someone will find my ending
Or a spot where I've worn thin,
And they'll pull me right apart
Back to the place where I begin,
Until they've found that every fibre
Isn't one to call my own,
Its from the thoughts and works of others
Thats I've been so crudely sewn.
And there's nothing I can make
Or think or do or be or say,
That isn't someone else
Woven in just a different way.
Then once I come undone,
Once who I thought I was grows small,
What if I look at all that's left
And there is nothing there at all? ~ Emily Hanson

The world we live in is a co-creation, a manifestation of individual consciousness woven into a collective dream. How we are with each other as individuals, as groups, as nations and tribes, is what shapes that dream. ~ Oriah Dreamer

Innocence is our natural state, before it becomes covered over. What covers it over is self-image. When we look at ourselves, even when we're trying to be completely honest, we see an image built up over many years, in layers that are complexly woven together. The lines and wrinkles that develop in a person's face tell the story of past happiness and sadness, triumph and defeat, ideals and experiences. It is almost impossible to see anything else. ~ Deepak Chopra

Oh, it's mysterious lamplit evenings, here in the galaxy, one after the other. It's one of those nights when I wander from window to window, looking for a sign. But I can't see. Terror and a beauty insoluble are a ribband of blue woven into the fringes of garments of things both great and small. No culture explains, no bivouac offers real haven or rest. But it could be that we are not seeing something. Galileo thought that comets were an optical illusion. This is fertile ground: since we are certain that they're not, we can look at what scientists are saying with fresh hope. What if there are really gleaming castellated cities hung upside-down over the desert sand? What limpid lakes and cool date palms have our caravans passed untried? Until, one by one, by the blindest of leaps, we light on the road to these places, we must stumble in darkness and hunger. ~ Annie Dillard

So for thy spirit did devise Its Maker seemly garniture, Of its own essence parcel pure.
From grave simplicities a dress, And reticent demureness, And love encinctured with reserve; Which the woven vesture would subserve. For outward robes in their ostents Should show the soul's habiliments. Therefore I say,
Thou'rt fair even so, But better Fair I use to know. ~ Francis Thompson

The actions that accompany the four truths describe the trajectory of dharma practice: understanding anguish leads to letting go of craving, which leads to realizing its cessation, which leads to cultivating the path. These are not four separate activities but four phases within the process of awakening itself. Understanding matures into letting go; letting go culminates in realization; realization impels cultivation. This trajectory is no linear sequence of "stages" through which we "progress." We do not leave behind an earlier stage in order to advance to the next rung of some hierarchy. All four activities are part of a single continuum of action. Dharma practice cannot be reduced to any one of them; it is configured from them all. As soon as understanding is isolated from letting go, it degrades into mere intellectuality. As soon as letting go is isolated from understanding, it declines into spiritual posturing. The fabric of dharma practice is woven from the threads of these interrelated activities, each of which is defined through its relation to the others. ~ Stephen Batchelor

I traveled to Ireland to research 'Sandcastles,' to visit the coastline where my ancestors looked toward America, the tiny town they once loved so much, and the docks from which they sailed toward their dreams of building a better life for their family. The answers I found on that journey are woven through the novel. ~ Luanne Rice

We should be sensitive to the thread of silence from which the tissue of speech is woven. ~ Maurice Merleau Ponty

The World Wide Web is woven together out of threads of glass. ~ Steven Johnson

Just as it is certain that one leaf is never totally the same as another, so it is certain that the concept "leaf" is formed by arbitrarily discarding these individual differences and by forgetting the distinguishing aspects. This awakens the idea that, in addition to the leaves, there exists in nature the "leaf": the original model according to which all the leaves were perhaps woven, sketched, measured, colored, curled, and painted
but by incompetent hands, so that no specimen has turned out to be a correct, trustworthy, and faithful likeness of the original model. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

Compare King William with the philosopher Haeckel. The king is one of the anointed by the most high, as they claim - one upon whose head has been poured the divine petroleum of authority. Compare this king with Haeckel, who towers an intellectual colossus above the crowned mediocrity. Compare George Eliot with Queen Victoria. The Queen is clothed in garments given her by blind fortune and unreasoning chance, while George Eliot wears robes of glory woven in the loom of her own genius.
The world is beginning to pay homage to intellect, to genius, to heart.
We have advanced. We have reaped the benefit of every sublime and heroic self-sacrifice, of every divine and brave act; and we should endeavor to hand the torch to the next generation, having added a little to the intensity and glory of the flame. ~ Robert G. Ingersoll

SEEN ACROSS TEN MILES OF sunlit water, Lorbanery was green, green as the bright moss by a fountain's rim. Nearby, it broke up into leaves, and tree-trunks, and shadows, and roads, and houses, and the faces and clothing of people, and dust, and all that goes to make up an island inhabited by men. Yet still, over all, it was green: for every acre of it that was not built or walked upon was given up to the low, round-topped hurbah trees, on the leaves of which feed the little worms that spin the silk that is made into thread and woven by the men and women and children of Lorbanery. At dusk the air there is full of small grey bats who feed on the little worms. They eat many, but are suffered to do so and are not killed by the silk-weavers, who indeed account it a deed of very evil omen to kill the grey-winged bats. For if human beings live off the worms, they say, surely small bats have the right to do so. ~ Ursula K. Le Guin

He seemed every bit as riled and menacing as the bull had a few minutes ago. But Phoebe wasn't about to let him make his injury worse out of pure male stubbornness.
"Forgive me if I'm being tyrannical," she said in her most soothing tone. "I tend to do that when I'm concerned about someone. It's your decision, naturally. But I wish you would indulge me in this, if only to spare me from worrying over you every step of the way home."
The mulish set of his jaw eased. "I manage other people," he informed her. "People don't manage me."
"I'm not managing you."
"You're trying," he said darkly.
An irrepressible grin spread across her face. "Is it working?"
Slowly Mr. Ravenel's head lifted. He didn't reply, only gave her a strange, long look that spurred her heartbeat until she was light-headed from the force of its pounding. No man had ever stared at her like this. Not even her husband, for whom she'd always been close and attainable, her presence woven securely into the fabric of his days. Since childhood, she'd always been Henry's safe harbor.
But whatever it was this man wanted from her, it wasn't safety.
"You should humor my daughter's wishes, Ravenel," Sebastian advised from behind her. "The last time I tried to refuse her something, she launched into a screaming fit that lasted at least an hour."
The comment broke the trance. "Father," Phoebe protested with a laugh, twisting to glance at him over her shoulder. "I was two years old!"< ~ Lisa Kleypas

Brightly woven, Diar,' Aileron said. And then dazzled them all with the warmth of his smile. ~ Guy Gavriel Kay