Being Tangled Up Quotes & Sayings

Like many faeries she knew, he was sculpture-perfect, but instead of being wrought of shadows like those in her court, this faery had a tangled feel to him. Shadow and radiance. He didn't look much older than her, until she saw the arrogance in his posture. Then, he reminded her of Irial, of Bananach, of Keenan, of the faeries who walked through courts and crowds confident that they could slaughter everyone in the room. Like chaos in a glass cage. — Melissa Marr

Here in Argentina, it is easy to practice and play because we have the horses, the land, the players - everything. — Adolfo Cambiaso

Jenna checked every plug socket, turning off ones that didn't need to be on. Then she'd go back round again to make sure. The only ones left untouched were the fridge and freezer. Getting as far as the door was becoming a major achievement, but it didn't end there. She locked the door and tried it, then unlocked it again, so that she could lock it a final time to be sure. — Pippa Franks

A short story can be packed with meaning and impact, with the concentrated density of a collapsed star, but should preferably also have a kind of elegant simplicity. — Jeffrey Thomas

Celebrity is the religion of our time. — Maureen Dowd

The more separated we become from the Earth, the more hostile we become to the feminine. We disown our passion, our creativity, and our sexuality. Eventually the Earth itself becomes a baneful place. I remember being told by a medicine woman in the Amazon, Do you know why they are really cutting down the rain forest? Because it is wet and dark and tangled and feminine. — Alberto Villoldo

Dogs possess a quality that's rare among humans
the ability to make you feel valued just by being you
and it was something of a miracle to me to be on the receiving end of all that acceptance. The dog didn't care what I looked like, or what I did for a living, or what a train wreck of a life I'd led before I got her, or what we did from day to day. She just wanted to be with me, and that awareness gave me a singular sensation of delight. I kept her in a crate at night until she was housebroken, and in the mornings I'd let her up onto the bed with me. She'd writhe with joy at that. She'd wag her tail and squirm all over me, lick my neck and face and eyes and ears, get her paws all tangled in my braid, and I'd just lie there, and I'd feel those oceans of loss from my past ebbing back, ebbing away, and I'd hear myself laugh out loud. — Caroline Knapp

From inside the tavern came the sounds of a fiddle being tuned, various plucks and tentative bowings, then a slow and groping attempt at Aura Lee, interrupted every few notes by unplanned squeaks and howls. Nevertheless the beautiful and familiar tune was impervious to poor performance, and Inman thought how painfully young it sounded, as if the pattern of its notes allowed no room to imagine a future clouded and tangled and diminished. — Charles Frazier

The unbearable silliness of English newspapers from about 1900 onward has had two main causes. One is that nearly the whole of the Press is in the hands of a few very big capitalists who are interested in the continuance of capitalism and therefore in preventing the public from learning to think; the other is that peacetime newspapers live off advertisements for consumption goods, building societies, cosmetics and the like, and are therfore interested in maintaining a "sunshine mentality" which will induce people to spend money. Optimism is good for trade, and more trade means more advertisements. Therefore, don't let people know the facts about the political and economic situation; divert their attention to giant pandas, channel swimmers, royal weddings and other soothing topics. — George Orwell

No comets crashing, nothing you could really call a nuclear war. Just everything else, tangled in the changing climate: droughts, water shortages, crop failures, honeybees gone like they almost were now, collapse of other keystone species, every last alpha predator gone, antibiotics doing even less than they already did, diseases that were never quite the one big pandemic but big enough to be historic events in themselves. And all of it around people: how people were, how many of them there were, how they'd changed things just by being there. — William Gibson

There's a great scene in The Texas Chain Saw Massacre [1974] that I'm obsessed with: Sally is being chased by Leatherface with a chainsaw. And she runs into thorn bushes. And she's getting tangled up in it because she's running fast. But Sally needs to move slowly in order to get through the bushes - she will get farther faster by going slowly because her hair and clothes won't get tangled and caught. There's something really beautiful about understanding that, while someone's chasing you with a chainsaw, you have to move more slowly in order to get away. — Christopher Bollen

The barricade was taking some while to dismantle. Chair legs and planks and bedsteads and doors and baulks of timber had settled into a tangled mass. Since every piece belonged to someone, and Ankh-Morpork people care about that sort of thing, it was being dismantled by collective argument. — Terry Pratchett

I tried to utter, but could not. The tongue had got all tangled up with the uvula, and the brain seemed paralyzed. I was feeling the same stunned feeling which, I imagine, Chichester Clam must have felt as the door of the potting shed slammed and he heard Boko starting to yodel without
a nightmare sensation of being but a helpless pawn in the hands of Fate. — P.G. Wodehouse

I was one in a million. I wasn't bright enough to realize the circus fat lady is, too — Stephen King

Once very smart people are paid huge sums of money to exploit the flaws in the financial system, they have the spectacularly destructive incentive to screw the system up further, or to remain silent as they watch it being screwed up by others. The cost, in the end, is a tangled-up financial system. Untangling it requires acts of commercial heroism - and even then the fix might not work. There was simply too much more easy money to be made by elites if the system worked badly than if it worked well. The whole culture had to want to change. "We know how to cure this," as Brad had put it. "It's just a matter of whether the patient wants to be treated. — Michael Lewis

Everything a person is and everything he knows resides in the tangled thicket of his intertwined neurons. These fateful, tiny bridges number in the quadrillions, but they spring from just two sources: DNA and daily life. The genetic code calls some synapses into being, while experience engenders and modifies others.(148) — Thomas Lewis

I can take a joke," she tells me, sounding insulted.
"Yeah? When?"
"When it's not being delivered by a childish jackass who thinks he's God's gift to women."
"I am not childish." God's gift on the other hand? My record speaks for itself.
"Oh, bite me."
I wish. — Emma Chase

Every time Roscoe tried to think back along the line of events that had led to his being in a place where there was no trees to lean against, he strayed off the line and soon got all tangled up in his thinking. It was probably better not to try and think back down the line of life. — Larry McMurtry

In the tangled hierarchy sinner and saint, divine and diabolical, sacred and profane are different faces of our collective Being. Therefore angry activism driven by rage, however justified it seems, is really not going to work. I believe that the tangled hierarchy wants us to move to the next state of evolution and very strongly desires us to take that quantum leap of creativity. — Deepak Chopra

Only you know your circumstances, your energy level, the needs of your children, and the emotional demands of your other obligations. Be wise during intensive seasons of your life. Cherish your agency, and don't give it away casually. Don't compare yourself to others - nearly always this will make you despondent. Don't accept somebody else's interpretation of how you should be spending your time. Make the best decision you can and then evaluate it to see how it works. — Chieko N. Okazaki

It is not a belly button. (The umbilicus serves, then withdraws, leaving but a single footprint where it stood: the navel, wrinkled and cupped, whorled and domed, blind and winking, bald and tufted, sweaty and powdered, kissed and bitten, waxed and fuzzy, bejeweled and ignored; reflecting as graphically as breasts, seeds or fetishes the omnipotent fertility in which Nature dangles her muddy feet, the navel looks in like a plugged keyhole to the center of our being, it is true, but O navel, though we salute your motionless maternity and the dreams that have gotten tangled in your lint, you are only a scar, after all; you are not it.) — Tom Robbins

For at this stage in our youth we can hold two kinds of anticipation of love, which seem contradictory and yet coexist and reinforce each other. We can dream delicately because even to imagine it is to touch one of the most sacred of our hopes, of searching for the other part of ourselves, of the other being who will make us whole, of the ultimate and transfiguring union. At the same time we can gloat over any woman, become insatiably curious about the brute facts of the pleasures which we are then learning or which are just to come. In that phase we are coarse and naked, and anyone who has forgotten his youth will judge that we are too tangled with the flesh ever to forget ourselves in the ecstasy of romantic love. But in fact, at this stage in one's youth, the coarseness and nakedness, the sexual preoccupations, the gloating over delights to come, are - in the secret heart where they take place - themselves romantic. They are a promise of joy. — C.P. Snow

So may you find in each other what you came here for. And trust that this is love because it is (love is trust). And tangled lives you may lead but into each other, never apart, till you cannot distinguish between being and being together. — Pleasefindthis

I'm not really very comfortable being hit on at all. — Jennifer Sky

There were no witnesses to what was about to happen. 'Happen' didn't yet exist. Reality was timeless. Space also didn't exist. The distance between two points was immeasurable. The points themselves could be anywhere, hovering and bouncing. Infinity tangled into itself. There was no here and now. Only Being. — Marcelo Gleiser

I remember a huge tiredness coming over me, a kind of lethargy in the face of the tangled mess before me. It was like being given a maths problem when your brain's exhausted, and you know there's some far-off solution, but you can't work up the energy even to give it a go. — Kazuo Ishiguro

He saw virus particles shaped like snakes, in negative images. They were white cobras tangled among themselves, like the hair of Medusa. They were the face of nature herself, the obscene goddess revealed naked. This life form thing was breathtakingly beautiful. As he stared at it, he found himself being pulled out of the human world into a world where moral boundaries blur and finally dissolve completely. He was lost in wonder and admiration, even though he knew that he was the prey. (149) — Richard Preston

I didn't properly think about what was happening even as I kissed him back, my laughter spilling into his mouth and making stutters of my kisses. I was still bound up with him, our magic snarled up into great messy tangled knots. I didn't have anything to compare that intimacy to. I'd felt the hot embarrassment of it, but I'd thought of it vaguely like being naked in front of a stranger. I hadn't connected it to sex - sex was poetic references in songs, my mother's practical instructions, and those few awful hideous moments in the tower with Prince Marek, where I might as well have been a rag doll as far as he'd cared. But now I toppled the Dragon over, clutching at his shoulders. As we fell his thigh pressed between mine, through my skirts, and in one shuddering jolt I began to form a startled new understanding. — Naomi Novik

That's why you look so tired, isn't it?" I murmured. "You used up all your magic to find me last night."
Owen shrugged as though it was nothing. But it wasn't nothing to me. Besides Finn and the Deveraux sisters, I couldn't even remember the last time someone had cared enough to come looking for me when I was in trouble. I was so used to being on my own for so long, always being the tough, strong, capable one, that I'd forgotten how nice it felt to have someone else look out for me.
To have someone else care about me.
And just like that, the fragile strings of my feelings for Owen joined together, all the tangled threads wrapping around and weaving their way through my heart. Scary and painful in some ways, but necessary in others too. — Jennifer Estep

Jesus is ready to set us free from the heavy yoke of an oppressive way of life. Plenty of wealthy Christians are suffocating from the weight of the American dream, heavily burdened by the lifeless toil and consumption we embrace. This is the yoke from which we are being set free. And as we are liberated from the yoke of global capitalism, our sisters and brothers in Guatemala, Liberia, Iraq, and Sri Lanka will also be liberated. Our family overseas, who are making our clothes, growing our food, pumping our oil, and assembling our electronics
they too need to be liberated from the empire's yoke of slavery. Their liberation is tangled up with our own. — Shane Claiborne

My dreams are tangled in images of stars and clouds and firelight - we go camping at night - it's my lucid dream of being with you ... — John Geddes

I've got to get the ultimate in composition today. or I've got to get the ultimate in light, I'll stay here until it appears. I was not making any demands. I went purely to see what would come, what might be there. I didn't have to be archaeologist or historian or tourist, I just needed to be available. — Paul Caponigro

My abortion was a normal medical procedure that got tangled up in my bad relationship, my internalized fatphobia, my fear of adulthood, my discomfort with talking about sex; and one that, because of our culture's obsession with punishing female sexuality and shackling women to the nursery and the kitchen, I was socialized to approach with shame and describe only in whispers. But the procedure itself was the easiest part. Not being able to have one would have been the real trauma. — Lindy West

Envy makes people lonely, and brings them great suffering. It is horrible stuff to have in our flesh, and it is a sin we need to take deadly seriously. — Esther Smith

Later that night I wake up screaming. A rat is at me, biting and biting me, and I cannot move. — Beverly Lowry

That 'writers write' is meant to be self-evident. People like to say it. I find it is hardly ever true. Writers drink. Writers rant. Writers phone. Writers sleep. I have met very few writers who write at all. — Renata Adler

Finnick!" Something between a shriek and a cry of joy. A lovely if somewhat bedraggled young woman
dark tangled hair, sea green eyes
runs toward us in nothing but a sheet. "Finnick!" And suddenly, it's as if there's no one in the world but these two, crashing through space to reach each other. They collide, enfold, lose their balance, and slam against a wall, where they stay. Clinging into one being. Indivisible.
A pang of jealousy hits me. Not for either Finnick or Annie but for their certainty. No one seeing them could doubt their love. — Suzanne Collins

Savannah's fear was being pushed aside by the heated tenderness of Gregori's mouth, by the gentleness in his caressing hands. He carelessly shoved the sheet down, exposing her bare breasts to his hungry gaze. Hot. He was so hot. Savannah could not stand the feel of the thin sheet of her heated hips, twisting around her legs. Her hands were tangled in Gregori's thick hair, crushing it in her fingers like so much silk.His shirt was open to his tapered waist, his hard muscles pressing against her soft breasts. The rough,dark hair on his chest rasped erotically over nipples.
A wave of heat heralded a storm of fire, through him, through her. Savannah's hands, of their own accord, pushed his shirt from his wide shoulders. She watched with enormous eyes as he slowly shrugged out of it, his silver gaze holding her blue one captive. She was drowning in those pale, mesmerizing eyes. Eyes filled with such intensity, with so much hunger for one woman. Her. Only her. — Christine Feehan

And this, she saw, her dream had done. She had built against that fear a vision of power not wholly selfish - power to protect not only herself, but others. And that vision - however partial it had been in those days - was worth following. For it led not away from the fear, as a dream of rule might do, but back into it. The pattern of her life - as she saw it then, clear and far away and painted in bright colors - the pattern of her life was like an intricate song, or the way the Kuakgan talked of the grove's interlacing trees. There below were the dream's roots, tangled in fear and despair, nourished in the death of friends, the bones of the strong, the blood of the living, and there high above were the dream's images, bright in the sun like banners or the flowering trees of spring. And to be that banner, or that flowering branch, meant being nourished by the same fears: meant encompassing them, not rejecting them. — Elizabeth Moon

You know, when I was in Paris, seeing Linter for the first time, I was standing at the top of some steps in the courtyard where Linter's place was, and I looked across it and there was a little notice on the wall saying it was forbidden to take photographs of the courtyard without the man's permission. [..] They want to own the light! — Iain Banks

Clothes, when abstracted from the flow of present time and their transmogrifying function on the human body, and seen as forms in themselves, are strange tubes and excrescences worthy of being classed with such facial decorations as the ring through the nose or the lip-stretching disk. But how enchanting they become when seen together
with the qualities they bestow on their wearer! What happens then is no less than the infusion, into some tangled lines on a piece of paper, of the meaning of a great word. — Robert Musil

They both swam in the Pacific a great deal. It was warmer than the Atlantic, and friendlier. It held no memories. The boy began to get very brown. — Stephen King