Bare Quotes & Sayings

It's like we're strands of wire intertwined in a great cable that runs through a slot ... Most people lead two-dimensional lives. All they can see is the face of the slot, a cross section, so that the wires look like a mass of separate little circles looking bigger or smaller according to how close you are. They don't
they can't see that these 'circles' are just cross sections of wires that run backward and forward infinitely and that there is a great surge through the whole cable and that anybody who is truly into the full bare essence of the thing ... — Tom Wolfe

I'll give her anything.
I'll tear my fucking chest open with my bare hands, rip out my heart and hand it to her, if that's what she needs.
All she has to do is tell me.
All she has to do is ask. — J.M. Darhower

I'd rather wear bare skin than raw silk any day. — Vicki Hendricks

I think that the FDA has not been able to catch some of these things as quickly as I expect them to catch. And so we're gonna be doing a complete review of FDA operations ... at bare minimum, we should be able to count on our government keeping our kids safe when they eat peanut butter ... that's what Sasha eats for - for lunch - probably three times a week. — Barack Obama

I take the rawest, realest moments in anyone's life and I open them up and lay them bare. The innocence of a five year old child, the awkwardness of a teenager's first sexual encounter, the heartbreak of longing for a relationship you can't have, confronting the possibility of the death of your newborn child, whatever it is, you open your soul and put it out there and dare the world to read it, ready to have them stomp on you and laugh, but ready to do it again the next day. You have to put yourself out there as a writer, you can't play it safe. Great writing isn't safe. — Dan Alatorre

Being, by life itself, that man is created for happiness, that happiness is within him, in the satisfaction of simple human needs, and that all unhappiness arises not from privation but from superfluity. And now during these last three weeks of the march he had learned still another new, consolatory truth - that nothing in this world is terrible. He had learned that as there is no condition in which man can be happy and entirely free, so there is no condition in which he need be unhappy and lack freedom. He learned that suffering and freedom have their limits and that those limits are very near together; that the person in a bed of roses with one crumpled petal suffered as keenly as he now, sleeping on the bare damp earth with one side growing chilled while the — Leo Tolstoy

I'm told my father cemented a number of profitable deals in this room." Alan eased down beside her.
Shelby opened her eyes to slits. "I imagine he did.By the time he was through, he could've reduced most normally built men to puddbles." Idly the trailed a fingertip down Alan's thigh. "Do you ever use saunas for vital government intrigue, Senator?"
"I'm inclined to think of other things in small hot rooms." Bending,he brushed his lips over her bare shoudler-the touch of a tongue,the quick pressure of teeth. "Vital,certainly, but more personal."
"Mmm." Shelby tilted her head as he trailed his lips closer to her throat. "How personal?"
"Highly confidential. — Nora Roberts

Tears are words the mouth can't say nor can the heart bare. — Joshua Wisenbaker

I use to drink every day without a care until I released the Demons that now I must bare — Stanley Victor Paskavich

He buried her beside her husband. After the services were over and the few mourners had gone, he stood alone in a cold November wind and looked at the two graves, one open to its burden and the other mounded and covered by a thin fuzz of grass. He turned on the bare, treeless little plot that held others like his mother and father and looked across the flat land in the direction of the farm where he had been born, where his mother and father had spent their years. He thought of the cost exacted, year after year, by the soil; and it remained as it had been - a little more barren, perhaps, a little more frugal of increase. Nothing had changed. — John Edward Williams

His fingers never ceased to amaze me. They could break a man's neck, bandage a wound, and slide sensually across bare skin. — Richelle Mead

Nick did not want to go in there now. He felt a reaction against deep wading with the water deepening up under his armpits, to hook big trout in places impossible to land them. In the swamp the banks were bare, the big cedars came together overhead, the sun did not come through, except in patches; in the fast deep water, in the half light, the fishing would be tragic. In the swamp fishing was a tragic adventure. Nick did not want it. He did not want to go down the stream any farther today. He — Ernest Hemingway,

If I kept on looking at his bare chest any longer, I'd officially earn my Hussy Merit Badge. — Mariana Zapata

How long your closet held a whiff of you,
Long after hangers hung austere and bare.
I would walk in and suddenly the true
Sharp sweet sweat scent controlled the air
And life was in that small still living breath.
Where are you? since so much of you is here,
Your unique odour quite ignoring death.
My hands reach out to touch, to hold what's dear
And vital in my longing empty arms.
But other clothes fill up the space, your space,
And scent on scent send out strange false alarms.
Not of your odour there is not a trace.
But something unexpected still breaks through
The goneness to the presentness of you. — Madeleine L'Engle

One view of photography is that it is a zen-like act which captures reality with its pants down - so that the vital click shows the anatomy bare. In this, the photographer is invisible but essential. A computer releasing the shutter would always miss the special moment that the human sensibility can register. For this work, the photographer's instinct is his aid, his personality a hindrance. — Peter Brook

I will live to see tomorrow's sunset. Make no mistake. I swear. I will live to see as many sunsets as it takes. And I will kill you. With my bare hands. — Renee Ahdieh

In The Great Stagnation, Cowen bemoaned the lack of big technological advances and argued that the American economy has slowed and wages have been depressed as a result. "In a figurative sense, the American economy has enjoyed lots of low-hanging fruit since at least the seventeenth century, whether it be free land, lots of immigrant labor, or powerful new technologies," he wrote. "Yet during the last forty years, that low-hanging fruit started disappearing, and we started pretending it was still there. We have failed to recognize that we are at a technological plateau and the trees are more bare than we would like to think. That's it. That is what has gone wrong." In — Ashlee Vance

Be it in the rough-and-tumble world of inner-city politics or the bare-knuckle boxing ring, the Irish rightly earned their fightin' moniker. — Rashers Tierney

She kisses him, lips parted, slow and sexy, lightly touching his lips with her tongue, offering wonders that would rock his world, while delivering nothing. Open mouthed, seductive, warm, inviting and ... dangerous. Even I can feel the explosive sexual energy held in check behind her bare feather of a touch. She's making sure he feels it, slapping him in the face with all she could offer - but isn't. — Karen Marie Moning

And the downtrodden found refuge in dilapidation; and were happy there because it was theirs and no one else's; bare of pretences and expectations, this place became a haven of solace and a sanctum for peace. — C.M. Stunich

Well, people are like that too. THey create a false door - to deceive. If they are conscious of weakness, of inefficiency, they make an imposing door of self-assertion, of bluster, of overwhelming authority - and, after a time, they get to believe in it themselves. They think, and everybody thinks, that they are like that. But behind that door, Renisenb, is bare rock... And so when reality comes and touches them with the feather of truth - their true self reasserts itself. — Agatha Christie

the farmer's almanac, pieces of stick candy, and Grandma's snuff box. I saw him reach into the fireplace once with his bare hand, remove a live coal, and light his pipe. He must have had leather for skin. One day, I looked out to the field to the east of the house and saw a cloud of dust rising from a thrashing machine. Men were gathered around with wagons, pitch — Lanier Davis

Were you raised in a barn? You don't just walk into someone's house." Ash laughed. "I have an open invitation to enter whenever I'm here." "Yeah, but what if he's naked or something?" Ash led him into the foyer. "I've known Kyrian for over two thousand years, and I can honesty say that I have never once caught him naked in his living room." The door closed behind them without Ash or Nick touching it- something that always unnerved Nick when Ash did it. "Besides, Rosa's still here. I know he's not walking around bare-assed with her on duty. — Sherrilyn Kenyon

One great remedy against all manner of temptation, great or small, is to open the heart and lay bare its suggestion, likings, and dislikings before some spiritual adviser; for, ... the first condition which the Evil One makes with a soul, when he wants to entrap it, is silence. — Saint Francis De Sales

What I wear is everything - from how I carry my hair to what I'm wearing on my feet. I have to feel comfortable on stage, so I like to wear things that have room. My mood changes a lot, so sometimes I wear 6-inch heels, and other times I'll perform in bare feet. — Laura Mvula

and the goodman beheld this apparition, which had bare feet and a tattered petticoat, running about among the flower-beds distributing life around her. The sound of the watering-pot on the leaves filled Father Mabeuf's soul with ecstasy. It seemed to him that the rhododendron was happy now. — Victor Hugo

There was no fear of sandpaper earth, no sense of danger from a bare-skinned spill, for the boy was a child - a six-foot, one-inch growing child who knew nothing of accident, injury, dismemberment, death - who would study those lessons tomorrow, thank you, but not today. Today, it would be sufficient to be wild and free. — Tony Taylor

From the elevator, Mabel watched the old woman's bare feet hobbling away, a trail of salt and the lace hem of her nightgown left in her wake like sea foam. — Libba Bray

If the gas pedal on your car is shaped like a bare foot, you might be a redneck. — Jeff Foxworthy

My love, you are closer to me than myself ...
You shine through my eyes,
Your light is brighter than the Moon ...
Step into the garden so all the flowers ...
Even the tall poplar can kneel before your beauty ...
Let your voice silence the lily famous for its hundred tongues,
When you want to be kind ...
You are softer than the soul ...
But when you withdraw ...
You can be so cold and harsh.
Dear one, you can be wild and rebellious ...
But when you meet him face to face ...
His charm will make you docile like the earth,
Throw away your shield and bare your chest ...
There is no stronger protection than him.
That's why when the Lover withdraws from the world ...
He covers all the cracks in the wall ...
So the outside light cannot come though,
He knows that only the inner light illuminates his world! — Rumi

Liall realized that this was the first time he had really been alone with Scarlet.
He stood up and held out his hand. The blanket dropped from his shoulders. "Come here."
Scarlet reached out to him tentatively and Liall quickly dragged him into his arms. He fits there perfectly, Liall thought, snug if not a little small. Scarlet did not respond at first, as if he would pull away, and for a moment Liall believed he had made a huge mistake. Then, surprisingly, Scarlet sighed and his arms went around Liall's back. Scarlet turned his head to rest his cheek against Liall's bare chest as hey listened to the rain batten on the roof.
"Thank you for saving my life." Liall murmured. — Kirby Crow

My beard grows down to my toes, I never wears no clothes, I wraps my hair Around my bare, And down the road I goes. — Shel Silverstein

Hand me a shovel, he thought. I'm getting tired of digging this hole for myself with my bare hands. -Ben — Nora Roberts

Snegiryov, fussing and bewildered, ran after the coffin in his old, short, almost summer coat, bare-headed, with his old wide-brimmed felt hat in his hand. He was in some sort of insoluble anxiety, now reaching out suddenly to support the head of the coffin, which only interfered with the bearers, then running alongside to see if he could find a place for himself. A flower fell on the snow, and he simply rushed to pick it up, as if God knows what might come from the loss of this flower. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

Birds sing on a bare bough; O, believer, canst not thou? — Charles Spurgeon

The trees' bare bony fingers
point crookedly
towards Heaven or Hell
or worse than that, towards nowhere. — Stephanie Hemphill

The flirty old moon eased his way across the warped and sooty floorboards and kissed my bare toes, turning my feet as luminous as the skin of cinema stars. — Cat Winters

...we hope with the assistance of Almighty God to be able to live to see the bare surface of the earth once more. — Patrick Breen

I've always been amazed by the ease with which a stranger's life can be reconstructed by simply snooping through their belongings. Art and imagination combine to tell a tale that's more complete than even a fat printed biography could ever hope to equal. And Mr. Denning was no exception: His secrets were laid so bare that I felt I ought to be apologizing. — Alan Bradley

My poems covered the bare places in my childhood like the fine, new skin under a scab that hasn't yet fallen off completely. — Tove Ditlevsen

It remains an astonishing, disturbing fact that in America - a nation where nearly every new drug is subjected to rigorous scrutiny as a potential carcinogen, and even the bare hint of a substance's link to cancer ignites a firestorm of public hysteria and media anxiety - one of the most potent and common carcinogens known to humans can be freely bought and sold at every corner store for a few dollars. — Siddhartha Mukherjee

Awe is the moment when ego surrenders to wonder. This is our inheritance - the beauty before us. We cry. We cry out. There is nothing sentimental about facing the desert bare. It is a terrifying beauty. — Terry Tempest Williams

Still, as messed-up as it was, I really liked the feel of her bare arms and the smell of her hair. I got mad at myself right away and told myself I wasn't one of those guys, told myself it was just the hit to the head that was making me think that way. — Amanda Lance

Layer by layer art strips life bare. — Robert Musil

In a strange way we were free. We'd reached the end of the line. We had nothing more to lose. Our privacy, our liberty, our dignity: all of this was gone and we were stripped down to the bare bones of our selves — Susanna Kaysen

Built into bad news is that sense of profound disbelief. The mind struggles to absorb the bare facts, defending itself against the larger implications. — Sue Grafton

Gray Wing narrowed his eyes, unnerved by the empty slopes. Surely the thaw should have brought the prey from their burrows by now? Had the early snowfall killed this year's young? He shifted his paws anxiously. If it had, leaf-bare would be long and hungry. He saw Gorse Fur freeze, and stiffened. Had the gray tom spotted prey? He followed Gorse Fur's gaze, disappointed as he saw it fall on Moth Flight. — Erin Hunter

I wanted everything for him. I wanted to see him achieve every dream, embrace every desire. I wanted to protect him from anyone who would cause him harm or a moments pain, tear them apart with my bare hands. Never let him out of my sight, even as I wanted him to stretch out his wings as far as they could go and soar. And at the bottom, top and middle of it all, I just wanted to stand there, just that way forever. Not disturb him. Just look at him and love him. Do nothing but simply love him for everything he is, a creation too perfect to be anything but God's gift to the rest of us. — Joey W. Hill

The rich were getting richer, the poor were getting poorer, small farmers were being squeezed out, workingmen were working twelve hours a day for a bare living; profits were for the rich, the law was for the rich, the cops were for the rich; — John Dos Passos

He was a Marine, for heaven's sake! He knew how to kill a man with his bare hands. He'd been shot and stabbed and nearly died. He'd faced down evil in its purest form; met the Grim Reaper and spit in his eye. None of that had prepared him for this - facing the wrath of the woman he loved and knowing that wrath was justified. — Jane Rainwater

On the lawn one late summer day, her pale hair tangled because she'd cry if anyone tried to brush it, spinning around and around until she got so dizzy she fell in a pile of bare feet and dandelions and sundress. — Holly Black

I am not delicate.
I am skinny dipping at 2am;
I am dancing naked under the full moon and playing in the mud.
I am the reverberating echoes of a curse word ricocheting off the steeply sloping mountain you thought I couldn't climb;
I am bare skin in the deepest depths of winter; I am the song of courage, and the melody of freedom you long to sing.
I am a fearless mother.
I am a passionate lover; a devoted friend.
I am the healer, the witch, the nurturing of your wounds.
I am the heat of a wildfire, the rage of a storm.
I am strong.
Delicate things are pretty-cute, even.
But I am not delicate.
I am wild, fierce and unpredictable.
I am breathtaking.
I am beautiful.
I am sacred. — Brooke Hampton

I'm not your destiny, or the Devil either!' I said. 'Look at you! Came to kill evil with your bare hands, and now away you go with no more glory than a man sideswiped by a Greyhound bus! And that's all the glory you deserve!' I said. 'That's all that any man at war with pure evil deserves. — Kurt Vonnegut

The feeling of absurdity does not spring from the mere scrutiny of a fact or an impression, but that it bursts from the comparison between a bare fact and a certain reality, between an action and the world that transcends it. The absurd is essentially a divorce. It lies in neither of the elements compared; it is born of their confrontation. — Albert Camus

I know what it is to become something you hate, I know how it hurts. But life is full of hurt. And your capacity for baring it is much greater than you believe."

pg 287 — Veronica Roth

Bald as the bare mountain tops are bald, with a baldness full of grandeur. — Matthew Arnold

Somewhere there is mystery. It impels one to theosophy: to the worship of a space-god, or a god of light." "Theory dissolves the mystery, though it lays bare a cryptic new stratum. Quite likely there is an endless set of these layers, mystery below mystery. — Jack Vance

Miranda!"
"What?" She batted him with her pillow.
"Hoyden! Are you drunk?"
"I don't think so. I'm not sure. They never gave us wine at Yardley. I feel happy."
"Happy?" He grabbed a corner of the pillow as she whacked him again with it. "Stop it!"
"You're too serious, Winterley!" She reached for another pillow. "I will beat you until you smile!"
He ducked out of his chair with a rakish grin as she swung at him, then tackled her flat on the soft bed, both of them laughing.
"You are ... impossible," he chided with a gentle sigh as he braced his elbows on either side of her head. He traced her cheekbones with the pads of his thumbs.
"Difficult, but not impossible." She wrapped her arms around him, relishing the weight of him atop her, the smoothness of his bare chest against her bodice. "It all depends on who's trying."
"That sounded distinctly like an invitation," he murmured. — Gaelen Foley

The strange thing about Roman soldiers in the comics was the amount of trouble they took over their armor and their helmets, and then, after all that, they left their legs bare. It didn't make any sense at all. Weatherwise or otherwise. — Arundhati Roy

My God, he whispered. What have I done to her? He thought, humbled. The spell was broken, but it wasn't sealed, and her soul was bare to him, the scars of her tragic past and her triumphs over pain and her aching need to find her place. He just wanted to hold her to him and tell her it would be okay, that she had survived and was beautiful. — Kim Harrison

The purely abstract theorist runs the risk that, as with modern decor, the furniture of the mind will be sparse, bare, and uncomfortable. — Robert K. Merton

I noticed how Brent twitched when I lifted the hem of my tank top to bare my stomach and ribs. The reflex was not an effort to shy away from seeing my body, but from something more carnal in nature. I deduced this from the subtle flicker of red in his blue eyes. Even this Reaper, the most powerful Stygian I had met, next to Head Reaper Marin, couldn't mask his desire. — Abigail Baker

The grin got bigger. Shadow found himself remembering a PBS show he had seen as a teenager, about chimpanzees. The show claimed that when apes and chimps smile it's only to bare their teeth in a grimace of hate or aggression or terror. When a chimp grins, it's a threat. This grin was one of those. — Neil Gaiman

Anyway ... she's asleep, turned away from me on her side. The usual stratagems and repositionings have failed to induce narcosis in me, so I decide to settle myself against the soft zigzag of her body. As I move and start to nestle my shin against a calf whose muscles are loosened by sleep, she sense what I'm doing, and without waking reaches up with her left hand and pulls the hair off her shoulders on the top of her head, leaving me her bare nape to nestle in. Each time she does this I feel a shudder of love at the exactness of this sleeping courtesy. My eyes prickle with tears, and I have to stop myself from waking her up to remind her of my love. At that moment, unconsciously, she's touched some secret fulcrum of my feelings for her. — Julian Barnes

The wonderful purity of nature at this season is a most pleasing fact ... In the bare fields and tinkling woods, see what virtue survives. In the coldest and bleakest places, the warmest charities still maintain a foothold. — Henry David Thoreau

The thorny point
Of bare distress hath ta'en from me the show
Of smooth civility; yet am I inland bred
And know some nurture. — William Shakespeare

While they drove past the garden the shadows of the bare trees often fell across the road and hid the brilliant moonlight, but as soon as they were past the fence, the snowy plain bathed in moonlight and motionless spread out before them glittering like diamonds and dappled with bluish shadows. — Leo Tolstoy

Do you think you wear a mask?'

'I'm wearing one right now.' Valentino smiled softly. 'We both are.'

'It's a sad thought.'

'Yes,' he said. 'But sometimes I wonder about the alternative. Imagine if we had no secrets, no respite from the truth. What if everything was laid bare the moment we introduced ourselves? — Catherine Doyle

I could see myself in a relationship with a girl; Olivia Wilde is so sexy she makes me want to strangle a mountain ox with my bare hands. She's mesmerizing. — Megan Fox

Not real bright - she thought the figure he'd trace without thinking on her bare flank after sex was the numeral 8, to give you an idea. — David Foster Wallace

Sleep," he says. "I'll fight the bad dreams off if they come to get you." "With what?" "My bare hands, obviously. — Veronica Roth

In order to understand why one chooses to be a Tantric practitioner, there has to be an understanding of cause and effect, cyclic existence, the awareness that the reality that we think we are seeing is not reality as it really truly is. So enlightenment is seeing reality with bare awareness, non-conceptual reality. — Zeena Schreck

As an Old Navy style attendant, I'm all about upgrading your bare basics and presenting them to your customer as basics you need to have in your wardrobe. — Brad Goreski

Which traditionally aspires to advance virtue by laying vice bare. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

(The sight of her bare feet. What this is doing to Willem's blood pressure. She might as well have taken off all her clothes.) — Gayle Forman

Bare is back," says the Norse proverb, "without brother behind it;" and this is, by analogy, true of an elective magistracy. The hereditary ruler in any critical emergency may reckon on the inexhaustible resources of prestige, of sentiment, of superstition, of dependent interest, while the new man must slowly and painfully create all these out of the unwilling material around him, by superiority of character, by patient singleness of purpose, by sagacious presentiment of popular tendencies and instinctive sympathy with the national character. Mr. Lincoln's task was one of peculiar and exceptional difficulty. — James Russell Lowell

Why are you all buttoned up like that?" Cameron ran his gaze down the blackberry-shaped buttons of her bodice.[ ... ] "You were happy to bare all last night," Cameron said. He let his mallet handler hover an inch from her chest. "Your bodice was down here."
Ainsley cleared her throat. "Low neckline for evening, high for morning."[ ... ]
"This doesn't suit you," Cameron said.
"I can't help the fashion, Lord Cameron."
Cameron poked the top button with his gloved finder. "Undo this."
Ainsley jumped. "What?"
"Unbutton your damned frock."
She nearly choked. "Why?"
"Because I want you to." Cameron's smile spread across his face, slow and sinful, and his voice went low. Dangerous. "Tell me, Mrs. Douglas. How many buttons will you undo for me? — Jennifer Ashley

In every life, there comes a day of reckoning - a time when unsettled scores demand retribution, and our own lies and transgressions are finally laid bare. — Emily Thorne

He had done nothing on Christmas day, just wandered around outside in the frozen woods. Hard ground, chill winds and bare branches that looked like they'd been dipped in sugar. None of it seemed real, like walking around in a desolate dream, but one he didn't want to wake up from. — R.D. Ronald

She kissed him with just as much exuberance, enjoying the feel of his warm, sexy mouth against hers, the caress of his hands on her cheeks, as she stroked his bare back with as much tenderness. — Terry Spear

With his bare hands Mulder dug at the loose earth. After a minute, he said, 'I've go it. I just have to pull it out and-'
He got no further.
He and Scully were blinded by a high power flashlight.
When their vision cleared, they saw the sheriff looming over them, brandishing an ugly-looking .45.
'May I ask what you're doing?' he growled.
Mulder held up what he had found in the earth: a piece of raw potato.
'Exhuming your potato,' was all he could say. — Les Martin

In one long glorious acknowledgment of failure, he laid himself bare before God. — John Grisham

Maybe there are moments between any two adults in love when the age of one of them dissolves before the other's eyes, when the first refuge of the soul at its creation is laid bare and skinless as a sunbeam through a window. Innocence and vulnerability, two unmeasurable quantities ... Perhaps that is the essence of the protection's intimacy, that it dwells in camouflage and justifies itself in stillness. — Marianne Wiggins

Don't play with scorpions unless you intend to get stung." He yanked the neckline apart. Round, glass buttons popped onto the floor and rolled around like eyeballs, astounded by the sight of my bare flesh. "We're harsh and predatory and full of venom." He gnashed his teeth at me and ripped my blouse in two. — Leylah Attar

But those who are incapable of
pitying animals are, as a matter of fact, incapable of pitying men.
A physician who would cut a living rabbit in pieces
laying bare
the nerves, denuding them with knives, pulling them out with
forceps
would not hesitate to try experiments with men and women
for the gratification of his curiosity. — Robert G. Ingersoll

And she could be depressed if she wanted to be, she could sit and watch Dogs with Jobs on the National Geographic Channel and eat her way through a packet of chocolate bourbon biscuits if she felt like it because nobody cared about her. In fact, she could sit there all day, from Barney and Friends to Porn Babes Laid Bare, with hours of the Landscape Channel in between, and eat the contents of an entire biscuit factory until she was an obese, earthbound balloon whose dead and bloated body would have to be hydraulically lifted from the house by a fire crew because nobody cared. — Kate Atkinson

I came upon a telegram from Eleanor Roosevelt herself to Gypsy Rose Lee that read, 'May your bare ass always be shining'. That was the clincher; I had to write about this woman. — Karen Abbott

Rhys gave no warning as he gripped my arm, snarling softly, and tore off my glove. His touch was like a brand, and I flinched, yielding a step, but he held firm until he'd gotten both gloves off. " I heard you begging someone, anyone, to rescue you, to get you out. I heard you say no."
"I didn't say anything."
He turned my bare hand over, his hold tightening as he examined the eye he'd tattooed. He tapped the pupil. Once. Twice. " I heard it loud and clear. — Sarah J. Maas

What matters most has an ultimate metallic quality of death. The chasuble and the wagon wheel, the razor and the prickly beards of shepherds, the bare moon, a fly, humid cupboards, rubble piles, the images of saints covered in lace, quicklime, and the wounding edges of the rooflines and watchtowers. — Federico Garcia Lorca

In all things there is beauty. In the glint of dew clinging to the strands of a spider's web; in the way the setting sun winks off shards of broken glass; in the rainbow forming in the soap suds in a sink full of dirty dishes; in a blade of grass which manages to force its way, with patience and time, through the all too willing grasp of sidewalk cement. It is in the faded brown of leaves, turning, twisting against their fate, as they fall to the ground, light and dry as brittle bones, and in the bare, thin-tipped branches, denuded by a change in season. It is in the way a stranger's laughter cradles you if you let it. It is in the intricate scars of a lover's back and in our upturned eyes when we ask for forgiveness. — Marta Curti

Masks beneath masks until suddenly the bare bloodless skull. — Salman Rushdie

They built it so quickly. It's only been a few days since the Bowl of Bones," I murmur back. Anything louder than a whisper might shatter this fragile peace.
Cal's hand stills, his palm flat against my bare skin. "Maven turned against you long before the Bowl of Bones."
I know that now. I know it with every bleeding breath. — Victoria Aveyard

this is real, and it is happening now, just as it happened before: We are under the big tree in my backyard, on that patch of dirt where we used to build fairy houses from moss and sticks and scraps of birch. It is late afternoon. All around us is golden light. We have been together all day, in our cutoff shorts and bare feet. It is the start of fifth grade, the start of being the oldest in the school. Next year, we will be the youngest all over again. But not yet. We are playing that hand-slapping game, the one we like to play at recess. You hold your hands out, palms up, and I place mine lightly on top. You pull yours out and try to slap mine. You hit air three times. On the fourth try, your — Ali Benjamin

When Mrs. Keane whispered, between contractions, that the baby was coming at least six weeks too soon, he shook his head and clucked his tongue, lifting the wet dish towel from her forehead and refolding it and then touching it gently to her cheeks. The dampness, and the perspiration, had darkened her hair and the pain had brought some color to her face. There was all about her a not unpleasant odor of oatmeal or wheat. He knelt beside the couch. When he leaned away, his T-shirt was wet with the amniotic fluid that had soaked her dress and the cushion beneath her. Her knees were already raised, her pale legs bare, and he asked, gently, if she would like him to check what was going on. She nodded and when the contraction had passed, added, "Modesty is always the first thing to go. — Alice McDermott

Listen, do you think we could, you know, have sex ? I could pay you extra of course. I know it's not part of your job , but I'd love to strip you bare to just those pearls and bury myself in your - — Angela Claire

It was more than childish perversity, of course, or the unexpected confidence she had recently acquired, that made her insist; she had indeed noticed that Gregor needed a lot of room to crawl about in, whereas the furniture, as far as anyone could see, was of no use to him at all. Girls of that age, though, do become enthusiastic about things and feel they must get their way whenever they can. Perhaps this was what tempted Grete to make Gregor's situation seem even more shocking than it was so that she could do even more for him. Grete would probably be the only one who would dare enter a room dominated by Gregor crawling about the bare walls by himself. So — Franz Kafka

Life as observed only from the scientific point of view is bare abstraction; it is not concrete life; nor is life as observed only in the interrelated-will-attitude point of view the whole of life. Both are abstractions. Concrete life includes both phases. — Kaiten Nukariya

She smoked because she craved something to do with her hands, that delicate interplay of light and cup and first inhale. Craved the repetition of it. It was so difficult sometimes to be still in a room, alone with oneself. To bare oneself to the lonely. — Kate Zambreno

If I ask my actors to bare themselves, to reveal themselves as almost naked, I have to bare myself, expose myself as well. That's what creates excitement. — Jacques Audiard

The way of the unconscious is different. Symbols gather round the thing to be explained, understood, interpreted. The act of becoming conscious consists in the concentric grouping of symbols around the object, all circumscribing and describing the unknown from many sides. Each symbol lays bare another essential side of the object to be grasped, points to another facet of meaning. Only the canon of these symbols congregating about the center in question, the coherent symbol group, can lead to an understanding of what the symbols point to and of what they are trying to express. — Erich Neumann