Crumpled Quotes & Sayings

I never lose sight of the whole. An impeccable dress is made to be lived in, to be torn, wet, stained, crumpled. — Anais Nin

Finally, spurred by the appetite to which he was indifferent, he took any one, read the printing on the parti-colored label of paper. He held the soup can like a skull; and at once he did not want it. The soup was made from celery. Mr. Lecky put it back. He stood in mild misery, harassed again by the plague of a will impotent in its restored freedom.
If the mind cannot direct, it can be cunning to protect its ease. Mr. Lecky now proposed a fantastic pact to himself. He shut his eyes. He reached again and took a can. Eyes still shut, he ripped the label from it, crumpled and threw away the paper. Now he could not tell what he had until he opened it. — James Gould Cozzens

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

We are the memory keepers and the trappers of time; stealers of stolen glances and breathless lungs from all that have been taken away. We are the noticers of subtle signs hidden in plain sight by a benevolent universe bigger than we'd ever believe...We are the directionless wanderers and the destinationless travelers and we are the crumpled map that never got packed to join us. We are the cinematic lovers and the translucent curtains saturated in light. The soundtrack to the moments without sounds and the swiftness that two bodies can become one in the stillness of a second. We, says the last string pulled out, the final string that kept it all together, balled up tight, filling us after all this time, We, are the chasers of the light. — Tyler Knott Gregson

No little Gradgrind had ever seen a face in the moon; it was up in the moon before it could speak distinctly. No little Gradgrind had ever learnt the silly jingle, Twinkle, twinkle, little star; how I wonder what you are! No little Gradgrind had ever known wonder on the subject, each little Gradgrind having at five years old dissected the Great Bear like a Professor Owen, and driven Charles's Wain like a locomotive engine-driver. No little Gradgrind had ever associated a cow in a field with that famous cow with the crumpled horn who tossed the dog who worried the cat who killed the rat who ate the malt, or with that yet more famous cow who swallowed Tom Thumb: it had never heard of those celebrities, and had only been introduced to a cow as a graminivorous ruminating quadruped with several stomachs. To — Charles Dickens

He tells me he can't believe how bitter he has become, how sour, that all his life he had been one of the most fun, one of the happiest, one of the most joyous people anyone knew, and now he was like a crumpled piece of steel covered in rust. The way he describes himself, a 'crumpled piece of steel covered in rust,' I don't think I'll ever forget those precise words or his voice as he said them. — Jacob Wren

Don't lose your head, screamed the pheasant. And at the same time his voice broke in a whistling gasp and, spreading his wings, he flew up with a loud whir. Bambi watched how he flew straight up, directly between the trees, beating his wings. The dark metallic blue and greenish-brown marking son his body gleamed like gold. His long tail feathers swept proudly behind him. A short crash like thunder sounded sharply. The pheasant suddenly crumpled up in mid-flight. — Felix Salten

They celebrated the sins, while the kindness continued to weep in the corner. The swords of the demons shined brighter, while the wings of the angels were crumpled and bled. — Akshay Vasu

Can you believe the man rhymed 'Rumplestiltskin' with 'crumpled napkins'? — Christopher Healy

There is no fact, no detail of our life too sordid for God's intervention. God has seen murder. God has seen rape. God has seen drug addiction's and alcoholism's utter degradation. God is available to us no matter what our circumstances. God can find us in a crack house. God can find us crumpled in a doorway or cowering on a park bench. We need only reach out to discover that God reaches back. We are led a step at a time even when we feel we are alone. Sometimes God talks to us through people. Sometimes God reaches us through circumstances or coincidence. God has a million ways to reach out to us, and when we are open to it, we begin to sense the touch of God coming to us from all directions. — Julia Cameron

Three heavy blows boxed him low in the back. He saw a splash of red hit the door and had time to think, 'We should have remembered the body armor.' Then he crumpled, still holding onto the knob with one hand as the world rushed away from him. Everything he was and everything he'd ever known diminished to a single burning-bright point of light. Then it went out. His hand slipped off the knob. He died on his knees, leaning against the door. — Stephen King

Then there was the church and the villagers on the sidewalks, the red geraniums on the graves in the cemetery, Perez fainting (he crumpled over like a rag doll), the blood-red earth spilling over Maman's casket, the white flesh of the roots mixed in with it, more people, voices, the village, waiting in front of a cafe, the incessant drone of the motor, and my joy when the bus entered the nest of lights that was Algiers and I knew I was going to go to bed and sleep for twelve hours. — Albert Camus

Niko started sobbing. There is no other word for it.
He just crumpled down over the legs of the dead soldier and sobbed.
I didn't know what to do. I sat down.
Sahalia went over and kind of rubbed Niko's back.
Batiste kept screaming for Josie.
Max was whimpering. He was in pain.
Ulysses climbed down from the tree and went and got Max's boot from where it got stuck under the root, and for a long while, that's all the movement there was.
Just fat Ulysses, trying to help his friend get his boot on. — Emmy Laybourne

I make it a practice to avoid hating anyone. If someone's been guilty of despicable actions, especially toward me, I try to forget him. I used to follow a practice-somewhat contrived, I admit-to write the man's name on a piece of scrap paper, drop it into the lowest drawer of my desk, and say to myself: "That finishes the incident, and so far as I'm concerned, that fellow. The drawer became over the years a sort of private wastebasket for crumpled-up spite and discarded personalities. Besides, it seemed to be effective, and helped me avoid harboring useless black feelings." — Dwight D. Eisenhower

The crumpled butcherpaper mountains lay in sharp shadowfold under the long blue dusk and in the middle distance the glazed bed of a dry lake lay shimmering like the mare imbrium and herds of deer were moving north in the last of the twilight, harried over the plain by wolves who were themselves the color of the desert floor. Glanton sat his horse and looked long out upon this scene. Sparse on the mesa the dry weeds lashed in the wind like the earth's long echo of lance and spear in old encounters forever unrecorded. All the sky seemed troubled and night came quickly over the evening land and small gray birds flew crying softly after the fled sun. He chucked up the horse. He passed and so passed all into the problematical destruction of darkness. — Cormac McCarthy

He just looked like a pretty boy, tall and lanky. She thought again of the crumpled paper in her purse and of him, caged beneath a cemetery. How long had he been there? How long had he looked just as he did now? A hundred years? Two hundred? Could he even remember the press of time? Maybe having stepped outside of it would drive anybody crazy. — Holly Black

You're the light in all this madness. You're my light. I should have been with you ... " The thought hit him as his face crumpled in amazement. "Oh God, why am I not with you?"
"Because you're an idiot," I said. — Karina Halle

Valkyrie walked over to her. Since she had met her, all she'd wanted to do was punch her face in. But that was when Kitana has been big and powerful and brimming with murderous arrogance. The girl standing before her now, crying and blubbing like any teenage girl would do under these circumstances, was not the same girl Valkyrie had wanted to punch.
But she'd do.
Valkyrie's fist connected with such a satisfying jolt that it actually made her smile as Kitana fell sideways, eyes already rolling in her head. Valkyrie resisted the urge to kick her as she lay crumpled.
Such behaviour would be unbecoming of a Sanctuary detective. — Derek Landy

She covered her body with a feather, reached under her legs, and threw her panties into the audience. A flying herpes rag. A hipster with mutton-chop sideburns caught it. He crumpled it in his fist and thrust it into the air excitedly. His little venereal prize. A — Neil Strauss

'Fowl Space' was a lovechild of boredom. While in class, two of the developers started passing designs back and forth. Somewhere in the middle of all that ink and crumpled paper, a chicken in a space helmet was born and thus we have 'Fowl Space.' — Rob Manuel

Beckett, where's Eve?"
When he had her pressed to his chest, she tried again. "Are you going to tell me or what?"
Beckett sighed and looked into her face. "I left her, babycakes. She needs wings, not handcuffs."
He held Livia tighter, like she was a teddy bear.
She stopped moving her feet and hugged him around the neck. "You're not handcuffs. Don't you know that? She loves you. She does, I've seen it."
Beckett resumed dancing, dipping her again. "Look around, Whitebread. She's not here. She didn't try to stop me from coming. Her heart belongs to a dead man and a dream. I'm neither of those things." Beckett released her and clapped for the end of the song. He reached in his pocket and produced a crumpled envelope. "Here's my gift to you guys. I'm sure Blake won't want to accept it, but I'm hoping you'll convince him. For me. — Debra Anastasia

I couldn't help thinking about my dream, with Annabeth crumpled and lifeless in Luke's arms. Here I was rescuing baby monsters, but I couldn't save my friend. — Rick Riordan

Some people are your family no matter when you find them, and some people are not, even if you are laid, still wet and crumpled, in their arms. — Amy Bloom

Her face crumpled and he felt her pain as if it was his own. He wanted to take it back, but just like that memory, it was always going to be there.
She worked to get control over her features, then said, "I'm sorry I didn't defend you. I'm sorry I didn't tell them you were my guest."
Jem hadn't thought he cared anymore, not really, but her words were tugging loose the hard, painful knot in his chest. "It's okay."
She shook her head. "It's not. It wasn't."
He reached out and cupped her cheek in his hand. He didn't know what else to say and all he wanted was to touch her skin, let her know that he wasn't that boy anymore and that she wasn't that girl. — Mary Jane Hathaway

The flyscreen door slammed behind me. My feet dragged. I reached each arm into the jacket. Warm sleeves. Crumpled collar. Hands in pockets. Okay. I walked. — Markus Zusak

He frowned, thinking of when he'd found Jane in that crumpled Audi at the side of the road. — J.R. Ward

That's what death did, it treated you like a child, like everything you had ever thought and done and cared about was just a child's game, to be crumpled up and thrown away when it was over. It didn't matter. Death didn't respect you. Death thought you were bullshit, and it wanted to make sure you knew it. — Lev Grossman

He was tender with her. He wiped her eyelids with his handkerchief, not noticing how soiled it was. It was stained with ink, crumpled, stuck together. Her lids were large and tender and the handkerchief was stiff, not nearly soft enough. He moistened a corner in his mouth. He was painfully aware of the private softness of her skin, of how the eyes trembled beneath their coverings. He dried the tears with an affection, a particularity, that had never been exercised before. It was a demonstration of 'nature.' He was a birth-wet foal rising to his feet. — Peter Carey

I leaned on him for support when I got out of the cab, and he just crumpled to the ground. That's how we found out. — Mickey Mantle

He thought he kept the universe alone;
For all the voice in answer he could wake
Was but the mocking echo of his own
From some tree-hidden cliff across the lake.
Some morning from the boulder-broken beach
He would cry out on life, that what it wants
Is not its own love back in copy speech,
But counter-love, original response.
And nothing ever came of what he cried
Unless it was the embodiment that crashed
In the cliff's talus on the other side,
And then in the far-distant water splashed,
But after a time allowed for it to swim,
Instead of proving human when it neared
And someone else additional to him,
As a great buck it powerfully appeared,
Pushing the crumpled water up ahead,
And landed pouring like a waterfall,
And stumbled through the rocks with horny tread,
And forced the underbrush--and that was all. — Robert Frost

The house was immaculate, as always, not a stray hair anywhere, not a flake of dandruff or a crumpled towel. Even the roses on the dining-room table held their breath. A kind of airless cleanliness that always made me want to sneeze. — Sandra Cisneros

And then here I am back down, right beside the stone, my body rumpled, happy, crumpled as if it had just made love. Sun. Voices from above. I-330's smile. — Yevgeny Zamyatin

He merely sought a framework, like a coat hanger on which he could hang his life. At least then it might look like a life which was ready to be inhabited rather than a crumpled garment on the floor. — Danny Scheinmann

I had opened the obvious drawer, the top drawer of the room's only dresser, and found myself gazing into a masculine cache of compressed, crumpled things. Wash-worn Brooks Brothers white cotton shorts now a pale shade of gray. Snake-tangled, unpaired argyle socks, all in bright Easter colors like clover ad mauve which still showed fairly crisp near the tops, but down toward the heels were marred by thread pills and snags, and at the toes by the outright abjection of holes. To see laid bare in their entirety those socks, of which I'd heretofore glimpsed only brief merry stripes, when a pant cuff rose up from the rim of a shoe, was like seeing the man himself fully exposed to me
naked. — Susan Choi

Kolchak nodded, 'Right, because that would make sense." He took off his hat and crumpled it against his hip. 'When I lived in Seattle, I met a man who had been killing people for a hundred years easily. I nearly got arrested painting on his portrait in the bank he owned, just to match his face to the hundred-year-old shot I had of him with a beard. It's possible.'

'Why didn't you just take a picture of the painting and scribble on the picture?'

'It was a gesture,' Kolchak wrung his hands, 'and anyway that's not the point.' ("Wet Dog of Galveston") — Jason Henderson

I might have been a fuckup and a failure and a disappointment, but I wasn't a liar.
I did lie to Belly, though. Just that one time in that crappy motel. I did it to protect her. That's what I kept telling myself. Still, if there was one moment in my life I could redo, one moment out of all the shitty moments, that was the one I'd pick. When I thought back to the look on her face - the way it just crumpled, how she'd sucked in her lips and wrinkled her nose to keep the hurt from showing - it killed me. God, if I could, I'd go back to that moment and say all the right things, I'd tell her I loved her, I'd make it so that she never look that way again. — Jenny Han

Clary didn't ask what that was. She was busy trying not to fall over. The ground was heaving up and down under her feet. "Jace," she said, and crumpled into him. He caught her as if he were used to catching fainting girls, as if he did it every day. Maybe he did. — Cassandra Clare

I can't tell you exactly what I'm looking for, but I'll know it when it happens. I want to be breathless and weak, crumpled by the entrance of another person inside my soul. I want to be violated by insight. — Aimee Bender

I find I think of myself not as a writer so much as someone who provides a gateway, a tangential route for readers to reach the circus. To visit the circus again, if only in their minds, when they are unable to attend it physically. I relay it through printed words on crumpled newsprint, words that they can read again and again, returning to the circus whenever they wish, regardless of time of day or physical location. Transporting them at will.
When put that way, it sounds rather like magic, doesn't it? — Erin Morgenstern

They leave things behind sometimes, the guests. A bottle of scent. A crumpled handkerchief. A pearl button that fell off a dress and rolled under a bed. And sometimes they leave other sorts of things. Things you can't see. A sigh trapped in a corner. Memories tangled in the curtains. A sob fluttering against the windowpane like a bird that flew in and can't get back out. I can feel these things. They dart and crouch and whisper. — Jennifer Donnelly

Iron deficiency can lead to a wardrobe full of crumpled clothes — Benny Bellamacina

Walk with me, hand in hand through the neon and styrofoam. Walk the razor blades and the broken hearts. Walk the fortune and the fortune hunted. Walk the chop suey bars and the tract of stars.
I know I am a fool, hoping dirt and glory are both a kind of luminous paint; the humiliations and exaltations that light us up. I see like a bug, everything too large, the pressure of infinity hammering at my head. But how else to live, vertical that I am, pressed down and pressing up simultaneously? I cannot assume you will understand me. It is just as likely that as I invent what I want to say, you will invent what you want to hear. Some story we must have. Stray words on crumpled paper. A weak signal into the outer space of each other.
The probability of separate worlds meeting is very small. The lure of it is immense. We send starships. We fall in love. — Jeanette Winterson

Iph
Was a larvorium and a violet:
A grave in Reason's early spring. And yet
It missed the gist of the whole thing; it missed
What mostly interests the preterist;
For we die every day; oblivion thrives
Not on dry thighbones but on blood-ripe lives,
And our best yesterdays are now foul piles
Of crumpled names, phone numbers and foxed files.
I'm ready to become a floweret
Or a fat fly, but never, to forget. — Vladimir Nabokov

Jack was mid-jump when I burst into my room. I snatched his ankle,flipping him horizontal.He crashed down hard to my bed and rolled off onto the floor.
And laughed.
"Let's do that again! But this time I'll jump even higher."
"No! No,you won't! What are you going here?"
He sat up on the floor and shrugged. "I was bored."
"I don't care! I'm not your babysitter!"
His blue eyes twinkled.Honestly, whose eyes actually twinkle? Then his face crumpled,his lower lip jutting out.He blinked his ridiculously long eyelashes at me. "I thought we were friends."
"Oh,knock it off. — Kiersten White

I turned just in time to see Tyson punch Skull Eater in the face. The giant crumpled. But the last giant, Joe Bob, had wisely held on to his own ball, waiting for an opportunity. He threw just as Tyson was turning to face him. — Rick Riordan

Like the small flame of a match to a cigarette, Rudolf's fury lit the crumpled edge of his German soul. — Geraldine Birch

You've ruined it now," she said, looking sadly at the crumpled spotted wings in Bethan's outstretched hand. "It deserved to live, and to fly. — Lois Lowry

You can't rush art." I crumpled another lost attempt and tossed it behind me. "Besides, patience is a virtue."

"It's a virtue until it's a waste of time," he pointed out.

The cello unleashed a few notes that sounded strangely bright for such an instrument, and Hal nodded in its direction. "See; even a musical instrument agrees with me. — Mirriam Neal

A party is a political tool. If it's no longer useful, it should be crumpled up and thrown away. — Shintaro Ishihara

She reaches out for the crumpled sheet at the end of her bed and wraps it round beneath her arms. The white material swirls around her feet, making me smile. I pull on my underwear and join her by the window, kissing her cheek. 'I do.'

She looks at me questioningly and then down at the sheet before breaking into giggles.

'In sickness and in health?' she asks. 'Till death us do part?'

I shake my head. 'Way beyond that,' I say. 'For ever. — Tabitha Suzuma

The beautiful are found in the edge of a room
crumpled into spiders and needles and silence
and we can never understand why they
left,they were so
beautiful.
they dont make it,
the beautiful die young
and leave the ugly to their ugly lives. — Charles Bukowski

Sparks. Good metaphor. Walking on crumpled tinfoil. I'd have to remember that one. — Brandon Sanderson

I bet that guy was as obsessed with Sarah as I am with this other girl, and I bet he promised himself never to hurt her, just like I've been doin' - and look what he's done to her. He's left her a crumpled mess, lyin' on her bed all the time. — Markus Zusak

What they did not know was that she chafed at the never-endingness of it. No sooner had she cleaned one surface than it was dirty again. Clothes, even those barely worn, found themselves in crumpled heaps in linen baskets so that she yelled at Kitty and Thierry, hating her shrewish voice. Once, bored to within an inch of her sanity by the act of hanging out yet another lineful, she had simply turned, dropped the basket and walked straight into the lake, pausing only to remove her shoes. The water had been so shockingly cold that it had knocked the breath from her chest, and left her laughing for the sheer joy of feeling something. — Jojo Moyes

Nicole crumpled - just let her legs give way and fell to the floor, hunched and sobbing. Hayley looked at me. Even Rafe did. Uncertain looks from both of them. I had to admit, Nicole was a good actor. If I hadn't seen her switch from "sweet Nicole" to "raving lunatic Nicole" in a heartbeat at the campsite, I might have believed her myself. — Kelley Armstrong

The little girl who was watching me kneels beside a motionless woman, screeching and trying to rouse her. Another wave of bullets slices across the chest of her yellow coat, staining it with red, knocking the girl onto her back. For a moment, looking at her tiny crumpled form, I lose my ability to form words. Gale prods me with his elbow. "Katniss?" "They're — Suzanne Collins

On the way out to the car, Philip turns to me. "How could you be so stupid? I shrug, stung in spite of myself. "I thought I grew out of it." Philip pulls out his key fob and presses the remote to unlock his Mercedes. I slide into the passenger side, brushing coffee cups off the seat and onto the floor mat, where crumpled printouts from MapQuest soak up any spilled liquid. "I hope you mean sleepwalking," Philip says, "since you obviously didn't grow out of stupid. — Holly Black

The inspiration for the book came after a visitation from a spiritual being that materialized before me on two consecutive nights. Although I crumpled into unconsciousness at the outset of each encounter and consciously remembered hearing only an initial word or two from the entity, I awakened on the dawn after the second visit with the ideas for The Divine Fire bubbling in my brain. — Brad Steiger

Rosy lifted her arm, tried to say something, then pointed at the cafe, held her head, covered her mouth and - humiliation of humiliations - she began to cry. Right there in the street. "I'm so confused," she said but it came out as a great honking wail.
"Come here, you silly girl," Phyllis said.
The woman put her arms around Rosy, patted her back, and for the first time in forever, Rosy allowed herself to just cry.
A young mother with twins in a pram passed them. The children's eyes tracked Rosy for a second before their faces crumpled and they started to cry too.
"I'm sorry," Rosy said, and flapped her arms. "I'm sorry. — R.G. Manse

By the way," I said, "I wanted to tell you - about why I decided to hike the PCT? I got divorced. I was married and not long ago I got divorced, and also about four years ago my mom died - she was only forty-five and she got cancer suddenly and died. It's been a hard time in my life and I've sort of gotten offtrack. So I ... " He opened his eyes wider, looking at me. "I thought it would help me find my center, to come out here." I made a crumpled gesture with my hands, out of words, a bit surprised that I'd let so many tumble out. — Cheryl Strayed

After writing a page, Hemingway would let it float to the ground. He never crumpled pages - he believed that if you crumpled them, you'd be insane in a year. — Clive Owen

Templeton was down there now, rummaging around. When he returned to the barn, he carried in his mouth an advertisement he had torn from a crumpled magazine.
How's this?" he asked, showing the ad to Charlotte.
It says 'Crunchy.' 'Crunchy' would be a good word to write in your web."
Just the wrong idea," replied Charlotte. "Couldn't be worse. We don't want Zuckerman to think Wilbur is crunchy. He might start thinking about crisp, crunchy bacon and tasty ham. That would put ideas into his head. We must advertise Wilbur's noble qualities, not his tastiness. — E.B. White

The boy gestured with his chin at Dimity. "She was shot." He sounded remarkably unconcerned for a brother with any degree of affection for his sibling."Good lord!" Sophronia climbed in to see to her new friend's health. The bullet had grazed Dimity's shoulder. It had ripped her dress and left a partly burned gash behind, but didn't look all that bad. Sophronia checked to make certain Dimity had no other injuries. Then she sat back on her heels."Is that all? I've had worse scrapes from drinking tea. Why has she come over all crumpled?"Pillover rolled his eyes. "Faints at the sight of blood, our Dimity. Always has. Weak nerves,father says. It doesn't even have to be her blood. — Gail Carriger

Whatcha got there?" I asked, looking at the crumpled piece of paper in his hands. As we walked through the quiet halls, he folded it into a small square and tucked it into his back pocket. He turned to look at me, and then his grin grew wider. "It's an article." "About what?" "Nothing special. Just a Mandy Parker original." "It's — Tracie Puckett

One thing that pisses me off royally is hearing drug companies denounced as the devil. I don't like giant corporations (or, in the words of Spalding Gray, "the big indifferent machine") any more than anyone else, but I really don't like wanting to kill myself. A person who denounces psychopharmaceuticals based on a political agenda is a person who has never lain crumpled in a ball in the closet, sobbing uncontrollably, face covered in Sharpie, throat raw from induced vomiting. Accordingly, that person should be thankful and shut the hell up. — Stacy Pershall

After a minute or so, Lex pushed him away. "Stop."
"Why?" He looked horrified. "What's wrong?"
"Nothing-"
"Was it that thing I did with my tongue?"
"Um, no. Your tongue and its many talents are perfect. Keep up the good work." She reached into her pocket and pulled out a crumpled-up scrap of paper. — Gina Damico

Syn watched the Partini closely as the alien lunged for him. He caught the alien's wrist before the knife could make contact with his skin. The Partini tried to pull loose, but Syn held fast with one hand. "Tell me," he asked snidely, "what smells like shit and screams like a girl?" He shot the Partini in the knee. The Partini screamed like a woman meeting her long-lost best friend as he crumpled to the street, his poisoned knife falling on the concrete with a metallic clink. Syn kicked the knife into the darkness, out of the assassin's reach. "That's right. You." The — Sherrilyn Kenyon

Charlie slowly crumpled to the floor, Allison soon joining him. "Dinner is served!" Stanley trumpeted, as he reached into the steaming mass of offal and fished around for the teens' livers. "Aha!" he crowed, as he lifted one liver in each hand over his head.
Stanley brought his right hand down and took a large bite from the first liver, spreading blood and gore over his face. He chewed for a moment and swallowed, and then bit off a large hunk of the other one. "All I need are some fava beans and a nice Chianti!" he said as he slurped. — Abramelin Keldor

The shriek that erupted from Melinda was loud enough to wake the dead. "Get it off me, get it off me!" She bolted from the crumpled side of the tent in hysterics, ripping at her bodice. — Merry Farmer

Keesha looked at me for a long time. "I did leave you alone. We all did. But you didn't get better. You didn't stop. You're still doin' all your weird shit. And I think it's time to stop."
"You think it's time to stop!" I exploded, and lunged at her with my hands outstretched. I pushed her real hard. She almost fell down. "I don't care what time you think it is!" I screamed. "Do you think I want to do this! Do you think I like it?"
"You pushed me!"
"Yeah. So what?"
"You're so afraid of being interrupted that you pushed me!"
"I'm not scared of being interrupted, you jerk! I'm ... I'm scared ... I'm scared of being." I crumpled into a ball and sat down where I was standing. I sat on a crack. Unevenly.
"Who are you anymore, Tara?"
Tears spilled over my frozen lashes and disappeared across my cheekbones. I had never felt so defeated. "I don't know. — Terry Spencer Hesser

Only one thing mattered: this was not a Horcrux. Dumbledore had weakened himself by drinking that horrible potion for nothing. Harry crumpled the parchment in his hand and his eyes burned with tears as behind him Fang began to howl. — J.K. Rowling

Roughly speaking, the greater the value of the metric tensor, the greater the crumpling of the sheet. No mattet how crumpled the sheet of paper, the metric tensor gives us a simple means of measuring its curvature at any point. If we flattened the crumpled sheet completely, then we would retrieve the formula of Pythagoras. — Michio Kaku

There was a piece of paper crumpled in the tight fist of the man. Porter opened the
fingers carefully and extracted the paper. On it, in a shaky script, were the words: Tell
them I killed the kid. — Sarah Margolis Pearce

There was no sign of her daughter, no sign of a small body crumpled by the railway. — Sanjida Kay

Not that he regretted having killed the guy in Stockton. The one who'd been ready to shoot him over the five crumpled dollar bills in his jeans pocket. He was quite happy to have sent that particular home boy to hell. — L.J.Smith

Our best yesterdays are now foul piles of crumpled names. — Vladimir Nabokov

In our skulls, we carry around 3 pounds of slimy, wet, greyish tissue, corrugated like crumpled toilet paper. You wouldn't think, to look at the unappetizing lump, that it was some of the most powerful stuff in the known universe. — Eliezer Yudkowsky

And he spat in her face. Harry pulled the Cloak off himself, raised his wand and said, 'You shouldn't have done that.' As Amycus spun round, Harry shouted, 'Crucio!' The Death Eater was lifted off his feet. He writhed through the air like a drowning man, thrashing and howling in pain, and then, with a crunch and a shattering of glass, he smashed into the front of a bookcase and crumpled, insensible, to the floor. 'I see what Bellatrix meant,' said Harry, the blood thundering through his brain, 'you need to really mean it. — J.K. Rowling

the right, and a pile of crumpled morning papers, evidently newly studied, near at hand. Beside the couch was a wooden chair, and on the angle of the back hung a very seedy and disreputable hard-felt hat, much the worse for wear, — Arthur Conan Doyle

Many times in our lives, we are dropped, crumpled, and ground into dirt by the decisions we make and the circumstances that come our way. We feel as though we are worthless. But no matter what has happened or what will happen, we will never lose our value in God's eyes. — Joyce Meyer

I did love making lists. They calmed me, made me feel like I was in control, on top of things, sticking to a plan. But all over the floor were crumpled and wadded-up lists with titles like Pooping Your Pants in Public and Other Things That Are ALMOST As Humiliating as This But Not Quite and Not 10, Not 50, but 100 Reasons Why Tucker is a Fucker, — Melanie Harlow

From this height the sleeping city seems like a child's construction, a model which has refused to be constrained by imagination. The volcanic plug might be black Plasticine, the castle balanced solidly atop it a skewed rendition of crenellated building bricks. The orange street lamps are crumpled toffee-wrappers glued to lollipop sticks. — Ian Rankin

There's something pitiable and terrifying about the unconscious bully. His crumpled nose and hat.
... This is the first true thing that Brauser and I have ever shared, this fear, besides dog-eared songbooks and cafeteria noodles.
I wonder, briefly, if I could eat Brauser if it came to that.
At this point, we have been alone on the glacier for fourteen minutes. — Karen Russell

He came back to us with stories of bedrooms filled with crumpled panties, of stuffed animals hugged to death by the passion of the girls, of a crucifix draped with a brassiere, of gauzy chambers of canopied beds, and of the effluvia of so many young girls becoming women together in the same cramped space. — Jeffrey Eugenides

I still have your handkerchief, from the Yuletide."
"Raspberries, do you really?"
He produced a crumpled, clean handkerchief, and gave it to Azalea. She tried to hand him the watch, but he wouldn't take it.
"It's still for ransom, is it not?" he said. "I'll collect it when I set the tower again."
Azalea smiled, warmth rising to her cheeks. "Well, it has been awfully useful. Thank you, Lord Bradford."
He mounted with ease, even with the books, and smiled a crooked smile.
"Mr. Bradford," he said sheepishly.
"Mr. Bradford," said Azalea. And now, her cheeks burned. It wasn't unpleasant.
"Thank you," he said, tipping his hat. "For the pleasant evening. — Heather Dixon

That's some list you have there, little girl." He placed the crumpled half sheet of paper on the counter next to one of her knees and finally took off his sunglasses. His deep brown irises pegged her with more intensity than she'd seen in weeks.
Biting her lip, drew his attention and then he focused on her eyes again.
"Did you like it, Sir? — Jennifer Kacey

I stood among the heaps of dead. They lay crumpled, useless, defunct. The vital force was fled. A bullet or a mortar fragment had torn a hole in these frail vessels and the substance had leaked out. The mystery of the universe had once inhabited these lolling lumps, had given each an identity, a way of walking, perhaps a social habit of address or a way with words or a knack of putting color on canvas. They had been so different, then. Now they were nothing, heaps of nothing. Can a bullet or a mortar fragment do this? Does this force, this mystery, I mean this soul--does this spill out on the ground along with the blood? No. It is somewhere, I know it. — Robert Leckie

There was a moth in there, and it still had its wings crumpled up, and it was just starting to pump its wings up. Life continues in lots of places, and life is a magical thing. — Laurel Clark

There was something about the possession of a book that was important to me. Owning it gave me proprietary rights on the story. It meant that I could read as quickly or as slowly as I liked. No expectations, no deadlines, no proscriptions on bent spines or crumpled pages. I was not gentle on my books. I read while I ate, I read in the bathtub. At night, I rolled over on top of my books that had fallen between the covers as I dozed. For me, the worn pages and tattered covers were a sign of devotion. Like the Velveteen Rabbit, the books I read were only real when they were loved. And I understood that love was not always gentle. — Georgia Bell

- and the mocking realization that money was just colorful crumpled paper, hardly different from a candy wrapper, the market itself little more than a casino. — Paul Theroux

Rune never said anything about it. But to anyone who had known him a long time, it was as if he grew a few centimetres shorter in the years that followed. As if he sort of crumpled with a deep sigh and never really breathed properly again. — Fredrik Backman

TRUST is like a paper once it's crumpled it can't be PERFECT again. — Auliq Ice

There's this anomaly that happens sometimes with twins. It occurs in the womb when the fetuses are growing too closely to each other. The stronger twin develops normally, while the weaker twin crumples and is encased by the body of the stronger twin, where it becomes a parasite. The result is a single child, plagued by a twin-shaped fossil inside. Like a tumor.
In death Rose became Linden's parasitic twin. They were two separate organisms once, growing steadily beside each other. Two pulses. Two brains. But she has crumpled and died, and still he carries her inside himself. She goes where he goes, feeling nothing, seeing nothing, a shadow behind his ribs. — Lauren DeStefano

I thought at last that it was time to roll up the crumpled skin of the day, with its arguments and its impressions and its anger and its laughter, and cast it into the hedge. — Virginia Woolf

Dull late-afternoon light glittered on the hanging copper pots in the kitchen where the old painter sat with his wine, smoking cigarette, a letter angrily crumpled on the table in front of him. — Stephanie Cowell

Abby had a little trick that she used any time Red acted like a cranky old codger. She reminded herself of the day she had fallen in love with him. "It was a beautiful, breezy, yellow-and-green afternoon," she'd begin, and it would all come back to her - the newness of it, the whole new world magically opening before her at the moment when she first realized that this person that she'd barely noticed all these years was, in fact, a treasure. He was perfect, was how she'd put it to herself. And then that clear-eyed, calm-faced boy would shine forth from Red's sags and wrinkles, from his crumpled eyelids and hollowed cheeks and the two deep crevices bracketing his mouth and just his general obtuseness, his stubbornness, his infuriating belief that simple cold logic could solve all of life's problems, and she would feel unspeakably lucky to have ended up with him. — Anne Tyler

I turned away from him, the hot blood still coursing through my veins. I gripped the door handle, and it molded like dough into the form of my hand. Not even caring, I wrenched the handle free from the door without turning it. It cracked loose of the solid oak door, sending splinters showering to the floor. My hand tossed the now crumpled piece of metal behind me with unexpected force. It zoomed across the room and embedded itself into the wood paneling with the end my hand had crushed sticking out to see. — Michael Corso

The summer had turned, the summer had gone; the autumn had dropped upon Bly and had blown out half our lights. The place, with its gray sky and withered garlands, its bared spaces and scattered dead leaves, was like a theater after the performance
all strewn with crumpled playbills. — Henry James

I think about celestial junk. Like, maybe every planet in this solar system is discarded by giant hands. Each star a crumpled ball of paper, a love letter lit on fire, a smoldering bit of cigarette ash. — Maria Dahvana Headley

One day, while he was idly reciting his verses to a captive audience, a scrap of paper, borne by the wind, landed on his lap. On it were written two words: "Layla" and "Majnun." As the crowd watched, Majnun tore the paper in half. The half on which was written "Layla" he crumpled into a ball and threw over his shoulder; the half with his own name he kept for himself.
"What does this mean?" someone asked.
"Do you not realize that one name is better than two?" Majnun replied. "If only you knew the reality of love, you would see that when you scratch a lover, you find his beloved."
"But why throw away Layla's name and not your own?" asked another.
Majnun glowered at the man. "The name is a shell and nothing more. It is what the shell hides that counts. I am the shell and Layla is the pearl; I am the veil and she is the face beneath it."
The crowd, though they knew not the meaning of his words, were amazed by the sweetness of his tongue. — Reza Aslan