A Knot Quotes & Sayings

More lady-lessons. It is impossible to do all and be all a lady must be and not tie oneself in a knot. A lady must walk erect with dignity, looking straight before her with eyelids low, gazing at the ground ahead, neither trotting nor running nor looking about nor laughing nor stopping to chatter. Her hands must be folded below her cloak while at the same time lifting her dress from the floor while at the same time hiding her mouth if her smile is unattractive or her teeth yellow. A lady must have six hands! — Karen Cushman

When you're at the end of your rope, tie a knot and hold on — Theodore Roosevelt

We did photograph albums, best dresses, favourite novels, and once someone's own novel. It was about a week in a telephone box with a pair of pyjamas called Adolf Hitler. The heroine was a piece of string with a knot in it. — Jeanette Winterson

This was something she would keep hidden within herself, maybe in place of the knot of pain and anger she had been carrying under her breastbone ... a security blanket, an ace up her sleeve. She might never use it, but she would always feel its presence like a swelling secret stone, and that way when she let go of the rage, she would not feel nearly as empty. — Jodi Picoult

That beast inside you, the one you think is tethered tightly to the post, the one you've tamed with art, love, prayer, meditation: it's barely muzzled. The knot is weak. The post is brittle. All it takes is two words and a siren to cut it loose. — Adrian J. Walker

When a knot gets to tight, you can always cut the rope — Dean Koontz

I got a huge knot in my stomach because if Antarctica could talk, it would be saying only one thing: you don't belong here. (277) — Maria Semple

Love is a word, another kind of open.
As the diamond comes
into a knot of flame
I am Black
because I come from the earth's inside
take my word for jewel
in the open light. — Audre Lorde

I want to take you home." My toes start curling, and he continues in that low, husky voice until my whole stomach feels like a knot. "And I want your phone number, and when I come back to town, I want to see you again. — Katy Evans

Bond mistrusted anyone who tied his tie with a Windsor knot. It showed too much vanity. It was often the mark of a cad. Bond — Ian Fleming

Or a ghost is a knot in the otherwise smooth flow of time, an electrical storm in a jewelry box, grief perfectly aligned. And sometimes a ghost is a shared thing; sometimes the entire population of a city or country will just happen to look in the mirror at the same time, and from then on there was a city in the sky, as all cities are if we consider that the sky reaches to the ground, and this city, too, thought it was alive, and the candles walked off by themselves. — Cole Swensen

Reading good literature is not so different then taking good drugs, do it enough and it will certainly alter your mind. The drugs can have positive yet often negative affects as well, however literature will always have positive affects. Certainly no one has ever over dosed from reading too much, as far as I know. The best literature should bend your reality until you can tie it in a knot.
-Andrew Pritchard — Andrew James Pritchard

My soul is an entangled knot,
Upon a liquid vortex wrought
By Intellect in the Unseen residing,
And thine doth like a convict sit,
With marline-spike untwisting it,
Only to find its knottiness abiding;
Since all the tools for its untying
In four-dimensional space are lying,
Wherein they fancy intersperses
Long avenues of universes,
While Klein and Clifford fill the void
With one finite, unbounded homoloid,
And think the Infinite is now at last destroyed. — James Clerk Maxwell

It is easy to tie someone with love, but it takes a lifetime to untie the knot of love. — Debasish Mridha

Her stomach twisted into a vicious knot every time she remembered the phone call from the police last month, after her sweet-natured employee, Molly, had been attacked by homeless guys in downtown Denver. Poor Molly had defined introverted even before the incident; the attack had pushed her further into her shell. So when Molly asked Amery to accompany her to a women's self-defense class, Amery had agreed. — Lorelei James

The thought of Kate having that sort of experience, of another man touching her, created a vague knot in his chest. He'd far rather imagine her as virginal and untouched, waiting for him to be her Prince Charming. Damn, he had it bad. — Aden Lowe

A knot you are of damned bloodsuckers. — William Shakespeare

He threads a hook, re-sews his mouth, cuts off the thread-tails with the razor blade. It's a simple task, no more difficult than shaving. He can do it in the dark. He can do it in a thirty-knot wind and seven-foot seas. He can do it in his sleep, and he probably has.
(Margin note in reference to excerpt above "Per Dr. B: it's easy to get used to doing things that are harmful to ourselves- do it often enough + it becomes ordinary/habitual- just how you live. — Doug Dorst

I keep my eyes down, looking now at my fingers as they twist the fabric into a knot."I'm sorry. About the way I acted yesterday." When I straighten up, Ky has already moved on.
"Don't be," Ky says, pulling a tangle of climbing green vines away from a shrub so that we can pass through. He throws the vines at me and I catch them in surprise. "It's good to see you jealous once in a while." He smiles, — Ally Condie

We set off towards the square, where a knot of old folks hovered around the local pigeon community, their lives reduced to a ritual of spreading crumbs and waiting. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

In the history of a soul's evolution there is a critical point of the human incarnation that decides for us whether we stay there, go down or progress upwards. There is a knot of worldly desires impeding us; cut the knot by mastering desires and go forward. This done, progress is assured. — Virchand Gandhi

When I need it, I can call bitterness around me like mail armor, every thought a knot of steel, shielding the tenderness I have learned to hide as a daughter, mother, wife, and queen among warriors. — Susan Fraser King

America is a living body, the highways are its arteries, and the True Knot slips along them like a silent virus. — Stephen King

Up from Earth's Centre through the Seventh Gate rose, and on the Throne of Saturn sate; And many a Knot unravel'd by the Road; But not the Master-knot of Human Fate. — Omar Khayyam

His light blue eyes hit me just like they always have. They go through me, strip me bare, and form a knot in my stomach that's impossible to ignore. How can just being in the room with someone do this to me ? He's just a guy. But as I take in his face, a year older, strained with sadness, he's so much more. — Jolene Perry

The nobility of Teresa Leo's poems is that they are not disposed to hide from the dark-rather, they display a mind that tends toward obsession and brooding, that works against fatality like fingers at a knot. The firm, attentive mind on display and the lucid unfolding of the poems are the life instinct seeking and finding its way through again and again. Love and beauty are the argument, but they don't win easily. Bloom in Reverse works through elegy toward survival with moving persistence, both driven and compelling. — Tony Hoagland

When I was a little girl,' I said, sitting down, 'the wallpaper in my room had pictures of Noah's story.' [ ... ]
You know what's weird though? It's weird that the ark would be such a kids' story, you know? I mean, it's ... really a story about death. Every person who isn't in Noah's family? They die. Every animal, apart from two of each on the boat? They die. They all die in the flood. Billions of creatures. It's the worst tragedy ever,' I finished, my voice tied off by a knot in my chest.[ ... ] 'What the hell,'I said, 'pardon my language, was that doing on my wallpaper? — Adam Rex

The knot of her hands and the pulses in her throat rejected any possibility that their meeting might be a casual one. But, of course, she could not explain, nor was her face of any more assistance than her tongue; in fact, as she herself knew, in moments of stress she could resemble a congested turkey. — Patrick White

Music and literature, the two temporal arts, contrive their pattern of sounds in time; or, in other words, of sounds and pauses. Communication may be made in broken words, the business of life be carried on with substantives alone; but that is not what we call literature; and the true business of the literary artist is to plait or weave his meaning, involving it around itself; so that each sentence, by successive phrases, shall first come into a kind of knot, and then, after a moment of suspended meaning, solve and clear itself.
-ON SOME TECHNICAL ELEMENTS OF STYLE IN LITERATURE — Robert Louis Stevenson

I'd missed him. The way he talked. The way he attacked a problem. The way he brought hope with him wherever he went. For the first time in months, I felt the knot in my chest ease. — Leigh Bardugo

If you can describe clearly without a diagram the proper way of making this or that knot, then you are a master of the English language. — Hilaire Belloc

The animal wrests the whip from its master and whips itself in order to become master, not knowing that this is only a fantasy produced by a new knot in the master's whiplash. — Franz Kafka

Georgiana."
"What?" I snap, turning around. "What can you possibly say that you haven't said a million times already with every scowl, with every eye roll, with every you're ridiculous? You think I'm stupid and worthless. I get it."
The guy's expression is one tangled knot of emotional constipation. "That's not what I think. — Lauren Layne

With each step and each turn, we threaded deeper inside a knot, one I feared we'd never work apart. The — Ransom Riggs

Little kids I don't mind. Every kid wants a pony. It's grown-ups that get my robe in a knot. Stop with the begging, okay? Adore me for a change. Or give thanks. I like gratitude. Or ask for guidance. But oh, no. It's always the pony. — Ron Koertge

But how did you do that? How did two people move backward through time and untie a knot that had tangled through every moment of their lives? — Kristin Hannah

Unfortunately for Mariners, the total amount of wave energy and storm does not rise linearly with wind speed, but to its fourth power. The seas generated by a 40 knot wind aren't twice as violence as those from a 20 knot wind, they are seventeen times as violent. The ship's crew watching the anemometer climb even 10 knots could well be watching their death sentence. — Sebastian Junger

Great, Kelly thought, a knot of fear tightening her stomach. A mugger with a taste for Shakespeare. This could only happen in Cental Park. — Lesley Livingston

God, it would never go away, this anger, this rage that was like the ceaseless movement of the spring winds through the desert, this knot in his guts, this splinter in his heart that shot a pain through him that eventually found its way into his lungs, then out of his mouth and into the open air, the sound making the whole world turn away from him. It would never go away, never, never, and there would never be any peace. [ ... ] Maybe he had it all wrong, maybe he wasn't a victim at all, not at all, because he had decided that this was the only thing that would ever be truly his, and so he clung to it, would cling to it forever. — Benjamin Alire Saenz

A good mooring needs no knot, still no one can untie it. — Laozi

Americans had to tie every radical aspiration into a puritanical knot. — Susie Bright

I felt that little knot in my belly that meant a mystery was taking its irrevocable hold. Usually this was a good thing, because usually I got paid for it. But here and now I was on vacation, and the last thing I wanted to do was spend it unraveling the truth of the strange prince, his rotund protector, and the girl I'd once saved from a bear. But damn it, I knew that's exactly what I was going to do. — Alex Bledsoe

I slowly came to recognize individual monks within the crowds of interchangeable orange robes and shaved heads. There were flirtatious and daring monks who stood on each other's shoulders to peek over the temple at you and call out "Hello, Mrs. Lady!" as you walked by. There were novices who snuck cigarettes at night outside the temple walls, the embers of their smokes glowing as orange as their robes. I saw a buff teenage monk doing push-ups, and I spotted another one with an unexpectdely gangsterish tattoo of a knife emblazoned on one golden shoulder. One night I'd eavesdropped while a handful of monks sang Bob Marley songs to each other underneath a tree in a temple garden, long after they should have been asleep. I'd even seen a knot of barely adolescent novices kickboxing each other - a display of good-natured competition, that like boys' games all over the world, carried the threat of turning truly violent at a moment's notice. — Elizabeth Gilbert

Fear of the Locksmiths and Skellow's thumb-cutting knife flooded Mosca but did not fill her. Somehow there was room in her core for an angry little knot of excitement, tight and fierce as a pike's grin. — Frances Hardinge

I wondered if all of us churchgoers were just exhausted by grief. For the dying priest and us, I thought, "God" always refused to become glorious, instead stubbornly remaining plain, a headache, a sorrowful knot of language. — Virginia Heffernan

I walked back to the front of the bakery to see a knot of people stalking our display for June. Apricot and lavender might seem like an unusual pairing, but it made perfect sense to me. Luscious, sweet apricots taste best when they're baked and the flavor is concentrated. On the other hand, lavender likes it cool; the buds have a floral, almost astringent flavor. Lavender was a line drawing that I filled in with brushstrokes of lush apricot. — Judith Fertig

Eventually, a governess realized I needed spectacles. When I first put them on my face, I can't even tell you ... it was like a miracle." "Finally seeing properly?""Knowing I wasn't hopeless." A knot formed in her throat. "I'd believed there was something incurably wrong with me, you see. But suddenly, I could see the world clear. And not only the parts in the distance, but the bits within my own reach. I could focus on a page. I could explore the things around me, discover whole worlds beneath my fingertips. I could be good at something, for once. — Tessa Dare

When we fail, we cut the string. Then God ties it up again, making a knot and thereby bringing us a little closer to Him. Again and again our failures cut the string, and with each additional knot God keeps drawing us closer and closer. — Sharon A. Hersh

Unbidden, a growl escaped him just as his lips brushed that heavenly skin and with one bite he pierced right through it. When her blood hit his tongue, he shook.
It was nectar, hot and wild and sweet, like the fiery kiss of a demon. His fingers twisted up into the glossy knot of hair at her nape, pulling it free, wrapping his fist in that silky skein. Forcing her up as his mouth came down harder, his fangs sliding deeper.
Rissa made a soft sound; whether of pleasure, encouragement or pain, it didn't matter.
Nothing fucking mattered. — Heather R. Blair

There was some kind of scuffle two hundred yards down the street, again strangely noiseless, and a huddled knot of men opened up to reveal two brawlers being separated and pulled away from their fight. What I saw next gave me a fright: in the farther distance, beyond the listless crowd, the body of a lynched man dangling from a tree. The body was slender, dressed from head to toe in black, reflecting no light. It soon resolved itself, however, into a less ominous thing: dark canvas sheeting on a construction scaffold, twirling in the wind. — Teju Cole

Each obsession is a knot in your being. Once it is opened, great energy is released — Rajneesh

When I was little, my friends would gush over wedding gowns and honeymoons. But I saw too many people flush decades together down the toilet over money or kids or meaningless flings. My own parents chose to stay married, which I think is rather funny, since they show about as much affection for each other as pit bulls in a ring. Tying the knot means slipping a noose around love and choking it to death. — Ellen Hopkins

Look at yourselves. Some of you teenagers, students. How do you think I feel and I belong to a generation ahead of you - how do you think I feel to have to tell you, 'We, my generation, sat around like a knot on a wall while the whole world was fighting for its human rights - and you've got to be born into a society where you still have that same fight.' What did we do, who preceded you? I'll tell you what we did. Nothing. And don't you make the same mistake we made ... — Malcolm X

Why me?' he said. 'That's how all men answer. And all men have a knot on their shoes, something they don't know how to do; an inability that binds them to others. Society depends on this asymmetry between people these days: a dovetailing of skills and competence. But the Flood? If the Flood came and one needed a Noah? Not so much a just man as a man able to bring along the few things it would take to start again. You see, you don't know how to tie your shoes, somebody else doesn't know how to plane wood, someone else again has never read Tolstoy, someone else doesn't know how to sow grain and so on. I've been looking for him for years, and, believe me, it's hard, really hard; it seems people have to hold each other by the hand like the blind man and the lame who can't go anywhere without each other, but argue just the same. It means if the Flood comes we'll all die together. — Italo Calvino

With women, the great business of life is love; and they generally make a mistake in it. They consult neither the heart nor the head, but are led away by mere humour and fancy. If instead of a companion for life, they had to choose a partner in a country-dance or to trifle away an hour with, their mode of calculation would be right. They tie their true-lover's knot with idle, thoughtless haste, while the institutions of society render it indissoluble. — William Hazlitt

Sometimes I feel like we're a knot, too tangled to be taken apart. — Kiera Cass

And that someone would pay. Revenge is a cold bedfellow, Diana had said, but Emma didn't believe that. Revenge would let her think about her parents without a cold knot forming in her stomach. She would be able to dream without seeing their drowned faces and hearing their voices cry out for her help. — Cassandra Clare

I swear to God," she muttered, fighting a laugh, "if you've dusted me with blue, I'll tie your balls in a knot and hang you up by them on the nearest sharp object I see. — Nalini Singh

Are those the Edible Undies cupcakes?" one of the women in the kitchen asked.
"They're the Nipple Lickers," Kimmie answered. "Without the nipples."
"I heard you perfected the Sex on a Peach cupcakes," another feminine voice said.
"Can you squeeze me in for a double order of Spank Me Strawberries the weekend before Knot Fest? — Jamie Farrell

I will bear Cloud through the portal," Fury says as Soar ties the last knot on his armour. "Flay will carry you."
"Who?" Soar turns as the female nods.
She's carrying me?
"Where are we going?"
"Skyfall, Master Soar," Fury stands. Cloud is small in his arms. "You shall be a guest of the Dragonkin."
"I hope our guest is delicious," Flay comments as she looks Soar over. Is she flirting or does she plan on eating him?
Maybe both. — Elizabeth Munro

Some death is as silent as the flight of a bird, some prey as unprotesting as a knot of rags. The — Sue Grafton

The threads of these thoughts trailed after her throughout the rest of the day, like loose ends on a fabric, needing to either be tied into a knot or snipped away. — Marilyn Brant

All the rest of it has been so nice and even. And look at this! It's all over the place! Why, it looks as if she didn't know what she was about! (After she has said this they look at each other, then start to glance back at the door. After an instant MRS HALE has pulled at a knot and ripped the sewing.) — Susan Glaspell

Magnus reached for Alec, but instead of rising to his feet, he pulled Alec against him, his hand sliding up Alec's back to knot in his hair. Magnus pulled Alec down and against him, and kissed him,hard and awkward and determined, and Alec froze for a moment and then abandoned himself to it, to kissing Magnus, something he'd thought he'd never get to do again. Alec ran his hands up Magnus's
shoulders to the sides of his neck and cupped his hands there, holding Magnus in place while he kissed him thoroughly breathless. — Cassandra Clare

Oh Mother, Mother make my bed
Make it soft and narrow
My William died for love of me,
And I shall die of sorrow
They buried her in the old churchyard.
Sweet William's grave was nigh hers
And from his grave grew a red, red rose
And from her grave a brier.
They grew and grew up the old church spire
Until they could grow no higher
And there they twined, in a true love knot,
The red, red rose and the brier. — Cassandra Clare

Our lives are so important to us that we tend to think the story of them begins with our birth. First there was nothing, then I was born ... Yet that is not so. Human lives are not pieces of string that can be separated out from a knot of others and laid out straight. Families are webs. Impossible to touch one part of it without setting the rest vibrating. Impossible to understand one part without having a sense of the whole. - Vida Winter — Diane Setterfield

A knot grew in his chest. All signs of weakness, nerves, stress. He looked around him at the true examples of men - at least it seemed that way. Six years ago he had graduated from New York University, around the middle of his class in film school. He quickly learned that the middle meant "unemployable. — Derek Blass

If you attend a meeting of evolutionary biologists somewhere in America, you might be lucky and spot a tall, gray-whiskered, smiling man bearing a striking resemblance to Abraham Lincoln, standing rather diffidently at the back of the crowd. He will probably be surrounded by a knot of admirers, hanging on his every word - for he is a man of few words. A whisper will go around the room: "George is here." You will sense from people's reactions the presence of greatness. — Matt Ridley

everyone down to street level is easy enough, with the ropes. Sergeant Parks decides the order: Gallagher first, so there's someone on the ground who knows how to use a gun, then Helen Justineau, then Dr Caldwell, with himself bringing up the rear. Dr Caldwell is the only one who presents any kind of a problem, since her bandaged hands won't allow her to grip the rope. Parks makes a running knot, which he ties around her waist, and lowers her down. They — M.R. Carey

I felt as though a large knot of flames had been lit in my stomach, making me feel nauseous and excited all at once — Heather James

She kissed her like she'd been stranded on an island, notching each stranded day onto a fallen coconut, slowly losing her mind. She filled Michelle like weather, worked her mouth like a cherry stem being tongued into a knot. — Michelle Tea

For the burglar, every building is infinite, endlessly weaving back into itself through meshed gears made of fire escapes and secondary stairways, window frames and screened-in porches, pet doors and ventilation shafts, everything interpenetrating, everything mixed together in a fantastic knot. Rooms and halls coil together like dragons inside of dragons or snakes eating their own tails, rooms opening onto every other room in the city. For the burglar, doors are everywhere. Where we see locks and alarms, they see M. C. Escher. — Geoff Manaugh

Any little knot, that was already a wound on him. I clipped my nails down till they bled so I wouldn't accidentally cut him. None of the nurses could approach him; if they needed anything they'd call me. And — Svetlana Alexievich

Today, I go east. It's one of my favorite times of day: that perfect in-between moment when the light has a liquid feel, like a slow pour of syrup. Still, I can't shake loose the knot of unhappiness in my chest. I can't shake loose the idea that the rest of our lives might simply look like this: this running, and hiding, and losing the things we love, and burrowing underground, and scavenging for food and water.
There will be no turn in the tide. We will never march back into the cities, triumphant, crying out our victory in the streets. We will simply eke out a living here until there is no living to be eked. — Lauren Oliver

Arin would trade his heart for a snarled knot of thread if it meant he would never have to see Kestrel again. — Marie Rutkoski

Wow." Sin said, her high-heeled boots clacking on the floor as she approached. " I didn't expect a party or anything, but I figured you might be able to handle a hi."
"I'm serious" , he gritted. "Get out."
"Well, you know what ?" She tied her hair up in a knot. "I would, except that you fucking bonded me to you or something, and I need to borrow your dick for a minute. — Larissa Ione

You forget the life you had before, after awhile. Things you cherish and hold dear are like pearls on a string. Cut the knot and they scatter across the floor, rolling into dark corners never to be found again. So you move on, and eventually you forget what the pearls even looked like. At least, you try. — Diana Gabaldon

It was then that I began to look into the seams of your doctrine. I wanted only to pick at a single knot; but when I had got that undone, the whole thing raveled out. And then I understood that it was all machine-sewn. — Henrik Ibsen

I double-knot my shoe laces. It's a pain untying your shoes afterward-particularly if you get them wet-but so is stopping in the middle of a race to tie them. — Hal Higdon

I held that last gown of plain undyed wool in my hands, feeling like it was a rope I was clinging to, and then in a burst of defiance I left it on my bead, and pulled myself in the green-and-russet gown.
I couldn't fasten the buttons in the back, so I took the long veil from the headdress, wound it twice around my waist and made a knot, just barely good enough to keep the whole thing from falling off me, and marched downstairs to the kitchens. I didn't even try to keep myself clean this time. — Naomi Novik

Don't be that way, Ric." She grabbed hold of Ric's T-shirt and pulled him over until his weight rested against her. She placed her hand against the back of his neck and lowered his head, placing it against her chest. Using her fingers, she eased around and found the swelling knot at the base of his skull and carefully placed the bag of ice there. "Doesn't that feel better?"
He grunted a little, his arms now wrapping around her waist, his face burrowing deep against her breast. After a moment, he settled and said, "Now it does."
Dee rolled her eyes in disgust. Honestly, wolves took any advantage they could get. At their core - they were all the same.
Horny, pathetic, and cute. — Shelly Laurenston

When I give a speech at a corporate event, I often ask those in attendance, 'Do you know how to tell if you're doing the job?' As heads start whispering back and forth, I provide these clue: 'If you're up at 3 A.M. every night talking into a tape recorder and writing notes on scraps of paper, have a knot in your stomach and a rash on your skin, are losing sleep and losing touch with your wife and kids, have no appetite or sense of humor, and feel that everything might turn out wrong, then you're probably doing the job.' — Bill Walsh

'The grief didn't fade, but it changed into something I could carry around with me, a noose I wore around my neck. It wasn't until I saw you that the knot loosened.' — Sara Bell

Nicholas broke the seal and scanned the contents. He looked up at Marcus with a chuckle. "Why, it appears you may get your wish for perpetual bachelorhood after all. She wants to end your engagement."
Marcus started from his chair. "The hell she does! What's possessed her?"
"Perhaps she realizes your extreme reluctance to tie the knot after waiting ... what is it? Five years since your betrothal announcement?"
"Six," Marcus snapped. "But who's counting."
"Perhaps Miss Trent?" Nick needled with a quirk of his lips.
- A BREACH OF PROMISE — Victoria Vane

Life is not a straight line. It's a spiderweb that twists and tangles. We crawl along our strands until we touch the people who are meant to be in our lives. The strands can knot, as mine did with Lily's, but they don't break, and the unexpected paths are often the best ones. — Stephanie Knipper

Oh my dear now did you hear of clumsy Captain Cotton? He sailed a knot in Haley's Loch before hit the bottom! — Christina Daley

Now she and the widow had something in common, though loss did not pass from one person to another like a baton. It just formed a bigger and bigger pool of carriers. And she thought, scratching the coarseness of the horses's mane, it did not leave, once lodged, did it? It simply changed form, and asked repeatedly for attention and care as each year revealed a new knot to cry out and consider, smaller, sure, but never gone ... Out of my body, these beautiful monsters. — Aimee Bender

When you come to the end of your rope, tie a knot and hang on. — Franklin D. Roosevelt

Man is a knot into which relationships are tied, and my ties serve me hardly at all. What is this me that has broken down? What is the secret of substitutions? Whence comes is that gesture, a word, can give rise to endless ripples in a human destiny? Whence comes it that in other circumstances I should be overwhelmed by what seems to me now remote and abstract? — Antoine De Saint-Exupery

Daniel had one more question. He hated asking it, but her answer would be exceedingly important to him. The knot in his throat had returned, but he tried to speak around it. "Do you pity me, Story?" For the second time that night, she surprised him. "No. I pity the sixteen-year-old boy. Of course I do. How could I not?" Story rose from the windowsill and placed her hands on his chest. She waited until he met her eyes to continue. "But I don't pity the man. The man took a tragedy and used it to give himself purpose. The man is magnificent. — Tessa Bailey

The other Miller was different. Quieter. Sad, maybe, but at peace. He'd read a poem many years before called "The Death-Self," and he hadn't understood the term until now. A knot at the middle of his psyche was untying. All the energy he'd put into holding things together - Ceres, his marriage, his career, himself - was coming free. He'd shot and killed more men in the past day than in his whole career as a cop. He'd started - only started - to realize that he'd actually fallen in love with the object of his search after he knew for certain that he'd lost her. He'd seen unequivocally that the chaos he'd dedicated his life to holding at bay was stronger and wider and more powerful than he would ever be. No compromise he could make would be enough. His death-self was unfolding in him, and the dark blooming took no effort. It was a relief, a relaxation, a long, slow exhale after decades of holding it in. — James S.A. Corey

His wax-white skin was cool to the touch when she brushed his neck to find the knot of cloth. She'd never been this close to a vampire,never realized what it would be like to be so near to someone who didn't breathe, who could be as still as any statue. His chest neither rose not fell. Her hands shook. — Holly Black

You know who should watch out?" Imogene lowered her voice to a conspiratorial whisper.
"Gavin's brothers. Mmm-hmm. Now that Gavin is tying the knot, Carolyn has a bee in her bonnet about getting all her other boys married off. — Sara Humphreys

That subtle knot which makes us man So must pure lovers souls descend T affections, and to faculties, Which sense may reach and apprehend, Else a great Prince in prison lies. — John Donne

To knot a sentence up properly, it has to be thought out carefully, and revised. New phrases have to be put in; sudden changes of subject must be introducted; verbs must be shifted to unsuspected localities; short words must be excised with ruthless hand; archaisms must be sprinkled like sugar-plums upon the concoction; the fatal human tendency to say things straightforwardly must be detected and defeated by adroit reversals; and, if a glimmer of meaning yet remain under close scrutiny, it must be removed by replacing all the principal verbs by paraphrases in some dead language. — Aleister Crowley

Writing, for me, is a little like wood carving. You find the lump of tree (the big central theme that gets you started), and you start cutting the shape that you think you want it to be. But you find, if you do it right, that the wood has a grain of its own (characters develop and present new insights, concentrated thinking about the story opens new avenues). If you're sensible, you work with the grain and, if you come across a knot hole, you incorporate that into the design. This is not the same as 'making it up as you go along'; it's a very careful process of control. — Terry Pratchett

Take a look at the scaly witches round your local shopping center, many of them with children. Grim enough with their clothes on. Imagine them naked! Snatches that yo-yo between their knees, breasts so flaccid you could tie them in a knot. One would have to be literally galvanized on Spanish Fly even to consider it. Yet it gets done somehow. Look at the kids. - The teenager may be more spontaneous, doglike, etc., but it's generally only another name on the list, only another notch on the cock. — Martin Amis

I have overspread the world like a syrup and the emptiness of it it's terrifying, but there is no dislodging the seed; the seed has become a little knot of cold fire which roars like a sun in the vast hollow of the dead carcass. — Henry Miller

A double-edged sword
One side destroys
One releases
I am your Gordian knot
Will you release or destroy me?
Follow truth and you shall:
Find me on water
Purify me through fire
Trapped by earth nevermore
Air will whisper to you
What spirit already knows:
That even shattered
anything is possible
If you believe
Then we shall both be free. — Kristin Cast

Just the sound of his voice twists my stomach into a knot of unpleasant emotions like guilt, sadness and fear. And longing. I might as well admit there's some of that too. — Suzanne Collins