Braided Quotes & Sayings

He had given work to a nightwalker named Dorothy Evans and gradually became beguiled by her. She was a plump, pretty, cattleman's daughter, pale as a cameo, with the sort of overripe body that always seems four months pregnant. Her long brown hair was braided into figure eights and pinned up over her ears in the English country-girl style. Grim experience was in her eyes, many years of pouting shaped her lips, but everything else about her expression seemed to evince an appealing cupidity, as if she could accept anything as long as it was pleasing. — Ron Hansen

Her voice was so melancholy that Gansey was struck all at once by what he and Blue really lost by keeping their relationship a secret. Blue radiated psychic energy for others, but touch was where she gained hers back. She was always hugging her mother or holding Noah's hand or linking her elbow in Adam's or resting her boots on Ronan's legs as they sat on the sofa. Touching Gansey's neck just between his hair and his collar. This worry in her tone demanded fingers braided together, arms on shoulders, cheeks rested against chests.
But because Gansey was too cowardly to tell Adam about falling in love with her, she had to stand there with her sadness by herself.
Aurora took Blue's hand. — Maggie Stiefvater

When May, with cowslip-braided locks,
Walks through the land in green attire.
And burns in meadow-grass the phlox
His torch of purple fire:
And when the punctual May arrives,
With cowslip-garland on her brow,
We know what once she gave our lives,
And cannot give us now! — Bayard Taylor

I wanted to make him understand that we shared the details of our lives, because they were the threads that braided us so closely together. And you would have been certain to tell me about a Sabatier knife, because it would have had the rare value of being a detail in your life which tied directly into mine - Bee in Sister — Rosamund Lupton

Girl lithe and tawny, the sun that forms
the fruits, that plumps the grains, that curls seaweeds
filled your body with joy, and your luminous eyes
and your mouth that has the smile of the water.
A black yearning sun is braided into the strands
of your black mane, when you stretch your arms.
You play with the sun as with a little brook
and it leaves two dark pools in your eyes. — Pablo Neruda

Sacredness and profanity and prayers and wishes: they're all held together by the broken limbs of this dead tree, raking the night sky with its blackened branches. We are so small, the two of us. The tree and sky are so large and grand. We could fail so easily, fall before we've begun to rise. — Elora Bishop

Then she told me that the Americans with Disabilities Act was recently interpreted as allowing "people with anxiety disorders to travel with an emotional-support pony on airlines." So basically I could bring a goddamn pony on board with me. I'm pretty sure a pony wouldn't fit under my seat or in my lap, but I rather liked the idea of a small medicinal horse standing in the aisle beside me while I braided his mane. — Jenny Lawson

I can tell you that, you know, when I went to my first movie premiere, it was my own movie, and I wore the best jeans I had and my favorite top. You know, I made sure my hair had some wave in it because I braided it the night before myself. — Diane Lane

I turn away and stare through the window at the field where the scotch broom creeps yellow as hell toward my doorstep. Six years and it has advanced from the hinterlands to the picket fence in the back yard. Six more years and it will have chewed this house to the foundation, braided my bones in its hair. — Laird Barron

When you take advice from a cat, there are always consequences. — Elora Bishop

She rose and washed and dressed herself and braided her hair freshly, and having made her room neat for the day she went into the peach-tree garden. It lay in the silence of the spring morning. Under the early sun the dew still hung in a bright mist on the grass, and the pool in the center of the garden was brimming its stone walls. The water was clear and the fish were flashing their golden sides near the surface. The great low-built house that surrounded the garden was still in sleep. Birds twittered in the eaves undisturbed and a small Pekingese dog slept on the threshold like a small lioness. — Pearl S. Buck

My first words were 'Seconds, please.' Most kids in kindergarten napped on a little rug. I had a braided 9 x 12. — Louie Anderson

The river was behind him. The wind was full of acid. In the slow float of light I looked away, down at the river. On the brink of freezing, it gleamed in large, bulging blisters. The water, where it still moved, was black and braided. And it occurred to me then how it took hours, sometimes days, for the surface of a river to freeze over - to hold in its skin the perfect and crystalline world - and how that world could be shattered by a small stone dropped like a single syllable. — Nam Le

There was something spiritual in this, as if my soul had clenched and expanded and coruscated outward to find Shane's own essence, and together they braided, tangled, and twined into something other. — Jasinda Wilder

It was an image Melody would never forget. Or was it the emotions the image conjured - hope, excitement, and fear of the unknown, all three tightly braided together, creating a fourth emotion that was impossible to define. She was getting a second chance at happiness and it tickled like swallowing fifty fuzzy caterpillars. — Lisi Harrison

I am what the water gave me, / a smoke-ring in a jar, / the braided rope / my ladder-to-the-light, / my shivering bird heart / caught — Pascale Petit

that what matters is not the mind but the boot brush, not intelligence but the system, not freedom but drill. We became soldiers with eagerness and enthusiasm, but they have done everything to knock that out of us. After three weeks it was no longer incomprehensible to us that a braided postman should have more authority over us than had formerly our parents, our teachers, and the whole — Erich Maria Remarque

See now, for a good blade, one that will not betray the man in battle, rods of hard and soft iron must be heated and braided together. Then is the blade folded over and hammered flat again, and maybe yet again, many times for the finest blades ... So the hard and soft iron are mingled without blending, before the blade is hammered up to its finished form and tempered, and ground to an edge that shall draw blood from the wind. So comes the pattern, like oil and water that mingle but do not mix. Yet it is the strength of the blade, for without the hard iron the blade would bend in battle, and without the soft iron it would break. — Rosemary Sutcliff

Hysterical laughter. Why did he keep hearing hysterical laughter? Fearghus opened one eye to stare at his two siblings. The were practically falling over each other they were laughing so hard. They woke him up from a sound sleep for this? "What?"
His current mood wouldn't allow for this. And definitely wouldn't allow for him. Gwenvael choked out an answer. "She braided your hair, brother."
"Like a horse's mane," his sister added. — G.A. Aiken

Never have I seen such a motley assemblage of characters. Except that we are at sea, I would believe that I had been abducted by a traveling circus. There are men here of every hue and size, also men whose race cannot be determined due to the indigo tattoos that cover their faces and arms. There are men with bullrings through their noses, with turbans large enough to hide a samovar, with gold thread braided into their hair, with scimitars lashed to their hips; some with teeth sharpened to points, some with no teeth at all. Many of the men have lost fingers, one has no ears, and not a few of them sport blistered patches upon their faces, necks, and forearms. — Eli Brown

The little bee returns with evening's gloom, To join her comrades in the braided hive, Where, housed beside their might honey-comb, They dream their polity shall long survive. — Charles Tennyson Turner

She was luminous. Her red hair had been braided a dozen ways, all swirled together in a high shaggy twist. Her eyelids were shimmering green, her lips crimson and matte. She wore black vintage ankle-high motorcycle boots. She was lethal. — Lauren Kate

I saw this moment as attached by threads to eternity and woven between all the other braided moments of my past and my future. — Roman Payne

As the mother of a small boy, she had developed a bad habit of carrying a little of everything in her purse, not to mention all the little treasures that Jeremy had given her - pretty rocks, a wilted violet, a ring he'd made from braided pine needles. The collection was a junky-looking mess. When the stranger picked up an unwrapped peppermint candy with more hair on it than stripes, Chloe wished the floor planks would separate and swallow her. His hard mouth twitched as he dropped the candy back in her purse along with an emergency tampon whose wrapper had nearly disintegrated. — Catherine Anderson

When I first caught sight of (Mount Shasta) over the braided folds of the Sacramento Valley I was fifty miles away and afoot, alone and weary. Yet all my blood turned to wine, and I have not been weary since. — John Muir

Here's the "explorer" paragraph: Lydia swayed into him, her back arching, but his hands caught her. His warm hand splayed wide against her upper back. The other ventured lower, massaging circles, lower, lower. Edwards's hands, like his kisses, belonged to an explorer, not a ruthless conqueror. Testing and checking, his firm but gentle caresses enticed her into his web of curiosity and question. His kisses, his touch were not the rehearsed moves of a long-practiced rake, but genuine affection and sensuality braided into an explosive mix that promised to incinerate them on the spot if they didn't stop. — Gina Conkle

Some tragedies bind us, as lies do; they are ropes braided of hurt and bitterness, and you cannot ever fully understand how pinioned you are until the ties are loosened. — Lyndsay Faye

They dream of men with gentle hands, eloquent with tenderness, fingers that brushed along a cheek, that outlined open lips in the lovers' braille. Hands that sculpted sweetness from sullen flesh, that traced breast and ignited hips, opening, kneading. Flesh becomes bread in the heat of those hands, braided and rising. — Janet Fitch

Four hundred years is but a moment in 10,000 years. Time is curved, time is braided. Throw out your clocks. — Howard Mansfield

I stare at the polished metal, examining my reflection. The girl I see is both familiar and foreign, Mare, Mareena, the lightning girl, the Red Queen, and no one at all. She does not look afraid. She looks carved of stone, with severe features, hair braided tight to her head, and a tangle of scars on her neck. She is not seventeen, but ageless, Silver but not, Red but not, human - but not. A banner of the Scarlet Guard, a face on a wanted poster, a prince's downfall, a thief... a killer. A doll who can take any form but her own. — Victoria Aveyard

We were trained in the army for ten weeks and in this time more profoundly influenced than by ten years at school. We learned that a bright button is weightier than four volumes of Schopenhauer. At first astonished, then embittered, and finally indifferent, we recognised that what matters is not the mind but the boot brush, not intelligence but the system, not freedom but drill. We became soldiers with eagerness and enthusiasm, but they have done everything to knock that out of us. After three weeks it was no longer incomprehensible to us that a braided postman should have more authority over us than had formerly our parents, our teachers, and the whole gamut of culture from Plato to Goethe. — Erich Maria Remarque

Stories are always braided together - one affecting the other. — Patti Callahan Henry

You are arrogant," says the cat, "and you are in love. Either one of these things alone might be overcome, but together, they make for a stubborn combination. — Elora Bishop

Bliss braided it's way through her, explosive and terrifying. Every pain she'd endured over the years disappeared from memory. Their mouths made seamless, perfect fit. Every tilt, every breath, every tangle of their tongues was as if she'd found where she belonged. — Robin Bielman

First of all, then, I urge that supplications, prayers, intercessions, and thanksgivings be made for all people, 2for kings and all who are in high positions, that we may lead a peaceful and quiet life, godly and dignified in every way. 3This is good, and it is pleasing in the sight of God our Savior, 4who desires all people to be saved and to come to the knowledge of the truth. 5For there is one God, and there is one mediator between God and men, the man [1] Christ Jesus, 6who gave himself as a ransom for all, which is the testimony given at the proper time. 7For this I was appointed a preacher and an apostle (I am telling the truth, I am not lying), a teacher of the Gentiles in faith and truth. 8I desire then that in every place the men should pray, lifting holy hands without anger or quarreling; 9likewise also that women should adorn themselves in respectable apparel, with modesty and self-control, not with braided hair and gold or pearls or costly attire, 10but with what is — Anonymous

If only I were a magician who could make things possible. I'd give objects the gift of defiance: banisters, gramaphones, guns, the napes of necks, braided hair. — Sasa Stanisic

Getting through the intersection involves tracing paths through the parking system, many braided filaments of direction like the Ho Chi Minh trail. — Neal Stephenson

He picked up three long fresh stalks of timothy and braided them together. He upended the scythe and thrust the handle deep enough into the soft earth so it would stand upright. He tied the braided grass to one of the grips and slipped the whetstone into the loops so it would stay. Then he walked off into the woods. — Theodore Sturgeon

Nancy
According to astronomers, every atom in my body was forged in a star. I am made, they insist, of stardust. I am stardust braided into strands and streamers of information, proteins and DNA, double helixes of stardust. In every cell of my body there is a thread of stardust as long as my arm. — Chet Raymo

When a miner looks at the rope that is to lower him into the deep mine, he may coolly say, "I have faith in that rope as well made and strong." But when he lays hold of it, and swings down by it into the tremendous chasm, then he is believing on the rope. Then he is trusting himself to the rope. It is not a mere opinion
it is an act. The miner lets go of every thing else, and bears his whole weight on those well braided strands of hemp. Now that is faith. — Theodore L. Cuyler

Yeah, that would be awesome. Me loaded and trying very hard not to make a scene, while the
guy who had one gay slip with me and his wife are not five feet away, also trying not to be awkward.
That'll be so much fun. I just might hang myself with a rope made of braided napkins."
"Aww. Nice touch with the braid. Very gay," Dylan told him, patting him on the back.
Roan looked at him with a frown. "No one likes a sarcastic bastard, Dyl."
"Well, I do." He paused briefly. "Obviously."
Ouch. — Andrea Speed

Let's go to town," Jo said. "Take me to eat dinner at the hotel."
I sucked in a breath and stared at her for a minute. Here she sat, her hair still wet although neatly braided, wearing an old Kiss sweatshirt, the one with the red mouth and tongue, red sweatpants, and ridiculous red pumps with black scuffs on the toes and heels.
And she wanted me to take her to the Hotel Wyoming, where the rich tourists hung out. I smiled. Because it was possibly the greatest thing I'd ever heard.
"Yeah, let's go to the hotel. Grab your purse and I'll find your coat. — Laura Anderson Kurk

usually perfectly curled and braided, has been slicked back into a simple bun. When I see gray at her temples, — Victoria Aveyard

I'm sorry it's had to be this hard. But if I hadn't walked this path, who would I be? At the moment I felt at the center of my life, the dream still braided like sweetgrass in my memory. I remembered Duffy's challenge. Imagine a world worth living in, a world worth fighting for. I closed my eyes and allowed my hopes to soar. I heard the beatings of wings nearby. I opened my eyes. A young man on a nearby rooftop released his pigeons, like dreams, into the dawn. — Leslie Feinberg

and French-braided hair, — Danielle Steel

The morning drizzle tightened the District's notorious braided-knot commute into a noose of traffic. - Scott Drayco — B.V. Lawson

I tend to employ braided narrative threads in the lyric, so often echoes (of phrases or images) will occur and will hit my ear so I can shape different resonances and shifts in tone. — Anna Journey

With her braided hair and white dress, she seemed to glow in the moonlight. — Rick Riordan

still wakes in the morning and looks around for his audience, dresses up in his red braided vest, straps on his cymbals, and tips his tasseled cap for no one if no one is looking. He begins to wonder whether perhaps he's fooling himself, whether he's convinced himself he's living when in fact he's merely performing, going through the motions of life, a wire monkey raised by a wire mother. — Louisa Hall

Seamstresses had been working all night making uniforms for me. As I waited to be fitted, I looked over at a rack of uniforms tagged with the word "Custer" and the name of another actor. I watched a wardrobe man come in and gather up the uniforms, toss them like rags in a corner, and replace them on the rack with blue and gold-braided uniforms marked "Custer" with my name on them. I looked at those uniforms piled up on the floor and said to myself: "That can happen to me some day. — Ronald Reagan

With my naked eye, on nights the moon climbs slowly, sometimes so dusted with rust and rose, brown, and gold tones that it nearly drips earth colors and seems intimately braided with Earth, it feels close, part of this world, a friend. But through the telescope, the moon seems- ironically- farther away ... the gray-white moon in a sea of black, its surface in crisp relief, brighter than ever before. I am struck too, by the scene's absolute silence. — Paul Bogard

Orlando curtseyed; she complied; she flattered the good man's humours as she would not have done had his neat breeches been a woman's skirts, and his braided coat a woman's satin bodice. Thus, there is much to support the view that it is clothes that wear us and not we them' we may make them take the mould of arm or breast, but they mould our hearts, our brains, our tongues to their liking. — Virginia Woolf

There were tiny loaves for dolls, and warm dinner rolls, and long French bread, and braided rings of bread, and thick loaves as big and round as wagon wheels, and even entire wheat-colored cottages of crusty bread which when you lived in them were more like yeasty caves in a gigantic mountain of bread, and all you had to do in order to feed your self in heaven was pull a hank of soft, moist bread right out of the wall. — Jack Gantos

The throne was empty, and above it hung only the ancient flag of Remalna, tattered in places from age. Galdran's banners were, of course, gone. No one was on the dais. Just below it, side by side in fine chairs, sat the Prince and Princess.
At their feet Shevraeth knelt formally on white cushions before a long carved table. He now wore white and silver with blue gemstones on his tunic and in his braided hair. He looks like a king, I thought, though he was nowhere near the throne. — Sherwood Smith

Aaron was wearing a T-shirt that was practically transparent with washing and sweatpants with a hole in the knee. His blond hair stuck up like duck fluff and he looked barely awake. Tamara looked tense. Her hair was carefully braided and she wore pink pajamas that said I FIGHT LIKE A GIRL across the front. Under the words was a screen print of cartoon girls executing deadly ninja moves. — Cassandra Clare

I will that women adorn themselves in modest apparel," he says, "with shamefacedness and sobriety; not with braided hair, or gold, or pearls, or costly array; "But (which becometh women professing godliness) with good works. "Let the woman learn in silence with all subjection." Here he looks us over. "All," he repeats. "But I suffer not a woman to teach, nor to usurp authority over the man, but to be in silence. "For Adam was first formed, then Eve. "And Adam was not deceived, but the woman being deceived was in the transgression. "Notwithstanding she shall be saved by childbearing, if they continue in faith and charity and holiness with sobriety." Saved — Margaret Atwood

Mostly, though, he looked at the girl, with her red hair and bare white arms. There was something about the whiteness of those arms that made them seem more naked than the bare arms of other women in church. A lot of red heads had freckles, but she looked as if she had been carved from a block of soap ... She was very pretty, about his age, her hair braided into a silky rope the colour of black cherries. She was fingering a delicate gold cross around her throat, and she turned it just so, into the sunlight, and it shone, became a cruciform flame. She lingered on the gesture, making it a kind of confession, then turned the cross away. — Joe Hill

I look into his eyes and see myself reflected there, smiling up at him. I'm ready to hear all about it. in bass and soprano. In songs of longing and love. In our voices, braided like the strongest cord.

I take off running up the trail, Will on my heels, the whole world waiting for us at the top of the ridge.

I'm ready to fly through the door and back again.
I'm ready to sing to the wind." -Amber — Jaye Robin Brown

Impotence therefore faces both those who believe in what amounts to a pure, stateless, market capitalism, a sort of international bourgeois anarchism, and those who believe in a planned socialism uncontaminated by private profit-seeking. Both are bankrupt. The future, like the present and the past, belongs to mixed economies in which public and private are braided together in one way or another. But how? That is the problem for everybody today, but especially for people on the left. — Eric Hobsbawm

It's in my blood, as magic is in yours." His mouth is still smiling, but his tone is somber. "I couldn't stop writing even if I wanted to. — Elora Bishop

Self-Portrait at Twenty"

I stood inside myself
like a dead tree or a tower.
I pulled the rope
of braided hair
and high above me
a bell of leaves tolled.

Because my hand
stabbed its brother,
I said: Make it stone.

Because my tongue
spoke harshly, I said:
Make it dust.
And yet
it was not death, but
her body in its green dress
I longed for. That's why
I stood for days in the field
until the grass turned black
and the rain came. — Gregory Orr

I have not had one word from her
Frankly I wish I were dead
When she left, she wept
a great deal; she said to me, "This parting must be
endured, Sappho. I go unwillingly."
I said, "Go, and be happy
but remember (you know
well) whom you leave shackled by love
"If you forget me, think
of our gifts to Aphrodite
and all the loveliness that we shared
"all the violet tiaras,
braided rosebuds, dill and
crocus twined around your young neck
"myrrh poured on your head
and on soft mats girls with
all that they most wished for beside them
"while no voices chanted
choruses without ours,
no woodlot bloomed in spring without song ... — Sappho

Sometimes the beard was loose, sometimes it was braided and sometimes, like that afternoon, it was in its own ponytail so that Al's head looked like something about to be tie-dyed. — Louise Penny

The elements of voice and style are braided together like twine, consisting of these attempts to copy other artists, or an instrument, or even the sound of a bird or passing train. Added to these characteristics are emotions and thoughts that register as various vocal quirks, like hiccups, sighs, growls, warbles - a practically limitless assortment of choices. Most of these choices are made at the speed of sound on a subconscious level, or one would be completely overwhelmed by the task. — Linda Ronstadt

For Rose of Sharon was pregnant and careful. Her hair, braided and wrapped around her head, made an ash-blond crown. Her round soft face, which had been voluptuous and inviting a few months ago, had already put on the barrier of pregnancy, the self-sufficient smile, the knowing perfection-look; and her plump body - full soft breasts and stomach, hard hips and buttocks that had swung so freely and provocatively as to invite slapping and stroking - her whole body had become demure and serious. Her whole thought and action were directed inward on the baby. She balanced on her toes now, for the baby's sake. And the world was pregnant to her; she thought only in terms of reproduction and of motherhood. — John Steinbeck

She braided my sister's hair with hands that smelled deep
roots buried in the earth
she told me the old stories
how time never mattered
when she died
they gave me her clock — Sherman Alexie

That thing we call a place is the intersection of many changing forces passing through, whirling around, mixing, dissolving, and exploding in a fixed location. To write about a place is to acknowledge that phenomena often treated separately - ecology, democracy, culture, storytelling, urban design, individual life histories and collective endeavors - coexist. They coexist geographically, spatially, in place, and to understand a place is to engage with braided narratives and sue generous explorations. — Rebecca Solnit

crowded about the four sides of the green to watch and cheer. Viola had set out from home early in the morning looking ladylike and elegant in a muslin dress and shawl and straw bonnet, her hair in a neatly braided coronet about her head beneath it. She had even been wearing gloves. But she had long ago discarded all the accessories. Even her hair, slipping stubbornly out of its pins during the busy morning of rushing hither and yon, had been allowed finally to hang loose in a long braid down — Mary Balogh

AND HE was just so amazing," I said as I braided Gary's hair. "Like so selfless and awesome and he smelled like leaves and I think his eyebrows should be declared a treasure of the Kingdom. — T.J. Klune

Now, half an hour later, adrenaline thrust him into overdrive. Storms of shale and spall burst from the ground. Ropes of sweat braided his skin. He swung again and again. The heavy pick shattered earth. Digby was in a rhythm, a digging trance, that rare state of archaeological — Shaun Morey

I went hunting wild
After the wildest beauty in the world
Which lies not calm in eyes, or braided hair
But mocks the steady running of the hour
And if it grieves, grieves richlier than here — Wilfred Owen

The circus tent was flowing pale in the rain like a fleshy flower lit from within. It seemed to bloom in the downpour. Drops of rain caught on Rafe's eyelashes, blinding him as the circus light struck them. He groped for the flap, that slit in the fabric that would reveal her to him.
She was on the rope again, her skirt flashing with tiny mirrors, hair braided with petals. He looked up at her, dizzy with it, seeing her face framed in the parasol. There were bluish shadows around her eyes. — Francesca Lia Block

So the nymphs they spoke,
we kissed and laid.
By noontime's hour
our love was made.
Like braided chains of crocus stems,
we lay entwined, I laid with them.
Our breath, one glassy, tideless sea,
our bodies draping wearily,
we slept, I slept so lucidly,
with hopes to stay this memory. — Roman Payne

only white, his hair braided. He eschewed — Alice Hoffman

I do miss the days of living in our boardinghouse when I could practice my lines while experiencing the freedom of trousers without anyone thinking a thing about it." "The only time I saw you wearing trousers was when you were impersonating a coachman," Bram said slowly. "Have you seen her when her hair looks like a rat's nest because she's braided it at least a thousand times while she's distracted with her lines or . . . investments?" Millie asked. To Lucetta's surprise, instead of seeming taken aback by the idea she wasn't always very concerned about her appearance, Bram was watching her now with what looked like clear delight in his eyes. "I'll see what I can do to find you and Millie some trousers, if you really think that will help you mend fences with Geoffrey. — Jen Turano

Their horses were of great stature, strong and clean-limbed; their gray coats glistened, their long tails flowed in the wind, their manes were braided on their proud necks. — J.R.R. Tolkien

Alysandir is a fine horseman," Isobella said. He was about to dismount, and she stepped upon a stool to get a better view. Just as she did so, he glanced toward the window in her direction. Sybilla gasped and brought her hand to her chest with an open-mouthed amazement. "Did ye see that?" Isobella did not want to be singled out, so she replied, "He was just being courteous." "Nae. He recognized ye in front of all and sundry," she said, with a shy smile that made her lovely grey-blue eyes shine as brilliantly as the golden locks of her hair braided on top of her hair. " I don't know why. I've been nothing but a thorn in his side." "That isn't what Alysandri said," Sybilla replied. "He was most full praise about ye." Isobella glanced at Sybilla, who smiled innocently, which was her way of letting her visitor know that that was all she was going to say on the subject. — Elaine Coffman

But the burning man falling from the sky pulled me from my faraway world. My gaze wandered to the window an instant before he appeared. And then, slowly, like a feather caught on a light breeze, he willowed past my window, turning his grotesque head towards me, his mouth open in a silent scream. He was more than on fire. He was fire.
Orange and red flames braided together in the shape of a man, but it was his eyes that caused me to suck in my breath and hold it as I ran to the window. His eyes, scared and imploring, told of a darkness and agony I couldn't begin to understand. — Gwen Hayes

Later, she said, "I have to take my braids out for my interviews and relax my hair. Kemi told me that I shouldn't wear braids to the interview. If you have braids, they will think you are unprofessional." "So there are no doctors with braided hair in America?" Ifemelu asked. "I have told you what they told me. You are in a country that is not your own. You do what you have to do if you want to succeed. — Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

We crave a world of either/or, but the Dream says, Both/and. We build a wall between our social persona and our inner selves; the Dream bids us, Demolish it. We wish to believe we're separate from one another, but the Dream insists, We are in this together. We are pleased to believe Time is a one-way river from past to present to future, yet the Dream reveals, All three times flow into one. We wish to seek pure virtue and avoid all stain, but the Dream avers, The dark and the light are braided and bound. — Marc Ian Barasch

Glittering news chips in men's sideburns and women with braided microfilament glo-strands stepping around me, laughing with silver lipsticks. Kaleidoscope streets: lights and traffic and dust and coal diesel exhaust. Muddy and wet. — Jason Heller

I'm thinking about Carol and Grace, my two best friends. At the same time I can't remember exactly what they look like. Did I really sit on the floor of Grace's bedroom, on her braided bedside rug, cutting out pictures of frying pans and washing machines from the Eaton's Catalogue and pasting them into a scrapbook? Already it seems implausible, and yet I know I did it. — Margaret Atwood

Across the distance, the Acropolis museum cradled within its protective walls its legendary treasures, lulling them to a peaceful sleep under the eerie light from the heavens. Yet, through the large window, the five Caryatids stood alert on their strong platform. The ageless maidens with the long braided hair down their backs remained awake even at this hour gazing across to the Acropolis, full of nostalgia for their sacred home. Inside their marble chests, they nurtured as always, precious hope for the return of their long lost sister. — Effrosyni Moschoudi

But hearing and seeing only the bright hurry-gurdy carousel os his twirling thoughts, and the same hard little horses bobbing by on their braided rods. Here they came again. The outrage! The police! Poor Molly! Sanctimonious bastard! Call that a moral position? Up to his neck in shit! The outrage! And what about Molly ... ? — Ian McEwan

I had the girlish, round face that would have passed for a German World War II poster of an Aryan Hitler youth had I worn braided pigtails. — Maggie Young

And so, by circuitous and unpredictable routes, we converge toward midcontinent and meet in Madison, and are at once drawn together, braided and plaited into a friendship. It is a relationship that has no formal shape, there are no rules or obligations or bonds as in marriage or the family, it is held together by neither law nor property nor blood, there is no glue in it, but mutual liking. It is therefore rare. To Sally and me, focused on each other and on the problems of getting on in a rough world, it happened unexpectedly; and in all our lives it has happened so thoroughly only once. — Wallace Stegner

When I was 16 ... I worked in a pet store. And they fired me because ... they had three snakes in there, and one day I braided them. — Steven Wright

UTOPIA When the train stops, the woman said, you must get on it. But how will I know, the child asked, it is the right train? It will be the right train, said the woman, because it is the right time. A train approached the station; clouds of grayish smoke streamed from the chimney. How terrified I am, the child thinks, clutching the yellow tulips she will give to her grandmother. Her hair has been tightly braided to withstand the journey. Then, without a word, she gets on the train, from which a strange sound comes, not in a language like the one she speaks, something more like a moan or a cry. — Louise Gluck

Arthur's fingers tighten on the silver-braided hilt: see how naturally it fits his hand! He pulls.
The Sword of Britain slides from its stone sheath. The ease with which this is accomplished shines in the wonder in Arthur's eyes. He truly cannot believe what he has done. Nor can he comprehend what it means. — Stephen R. Lawhead

Sculpting them in a drizzle shawl,
I would have have weaved your dreams
in my distinct eyes;
I would have taken your cheeks,
and decorated them with full moon sights,
writing verses with starry eyes;
I would have invented diction suiting
your stammering tongue,
writing stories about your happy childhood;
I would have traveled beside western winds,
bringing roses from far lands, from Samarkand,
from the rose gardens touching Turkish valleys,
from mountains smelling of Azerbaijan.
I would have portrayed you a an honest mother,
buying your children a happy house, a giant sky;
I would have made orchards of your ripe smiles,
tending rains and sunlight into their broad borders;
Ah, I would have sown your braided hair
into almonds, saffron and homegrown walnuts,
into tufts of a lifelong breeze. — Ashfaq Saraf

The horses wore no gear at all but a halter without bit. Their manes were braided with streamers of silver, gold, and green. They flared their nostrils and pranced and boasted to one another; they were vastly excited, the horse being the only animal who has adopted our ceremonies as his own. — Ursula K. Le Guin

Bina and Landsman were twisted together, a braided pair of chromosomes with a mystery flaw. And now? Now each of them pretends not to see the other and looks away.
Landsman looks away. — Michael Chabon

You say that if we hadn't just gotten married, you would want to marry Miss Arkansas. Even if she can't spell. She can sit on her hair. A lover could climb that hair like a gym rope. It's fairy-tale hair, Rapunzel hair. We saw her practicing for the pageant in the hotel ballroom with two wild pigs, her hair braided into two lassoes. — Kelly Link

If I could, I would live forever in this moment. But no one can live in a moment, and time moves on. — Elora Bishop

Handles. That's all he could think when he saw them. The woman had braided handles into her hair, just begging a man to grab them and guide her head where he wanted it to go. Surely she had to realize that. — Shannon K. Butcher

My father saw him one time. We live in mexico, on the farm, and Father went to feed the horses. At night. Little man was standing there giving hay to the horses. And Father watch and he came and he told Mother, 'Jedushka Di Muvedushka feeding the horses'. He don't get scared, nothing. In the morning we go look, the horses' hair all braided. So Beautiful! All their hair braided. — Bentley Little

Only In Sleep
Only in sleep I see their faces,
Children I played with when I was a child,
Louise comes back with her brown hair braided,
Annie with ringlets warm and wild.
Only in sleep Time is forgotten
What may have come to them, who can know?
Yet we played last night as long ago,
And the doll-house stood at the turn of the stair.
The years had not sharpened their smooth round faces,
I met their eyes and found them mild
Do they, too, dream of me, I wonder,
And for them am I too a child? — Sara Teasdale