Entirely Skin Quotes & Sayings

Characters take on life sometimes by luck, but I suspect it is when you can write more entirely out of yourself, inside the skin, heart, mind, and soul of a person who is not yourself, that a character becomes in his own right another human being on the page. — Eudora Welty

Something strange started to rage inside me, hearing you inhale sharply as I tried to kiss those scars away or etch them deeper into your skin, wanting to mark you in an entirely different way. — D.S. Wrights

We were taught in school, and I was taught at home and in church, that blacks and whites were equal and we should not discriminate based on skin color, even if my school was almost entirely white. — Kevin DeYoung

The collective unconscious, the same as other transpersonal phenomena, is evidence that our mind is not an isolated entity but is constantly in touch with other minds as well as with the world around us. We are never entirely detached from the outside world; never entirely enclosed within our skin. Our mind and our body resonate with our environment, including other people in our environment. Our mind is coherent with the world, and when we do not repress the intuitions that link us with other people and with nature, we can become aware of our oneness with the universe. — James Oroc

He closed the makeshift plywood door, sealing the space so Ethan would not have to hear any sounds from the outside world: not the voices of men, not the scream of steam engines as they arrived at the nearby station. The only sounds would be of their bodies breathing, of their clothes rustling, of skin moving against soft skin.

The shack was small and humble, but it was cozy and private, and lit with a light that did not seem to come entirely from the lantern.

Afterword, Ethan wept, and Love whispered things meant to make him feel safe. Were it possible, he would have traded his immortality to remain with this beautiful soul, to concentrate all that love on a human who needed it so. — Martha Brockenbrough

Mortal beauty often makes me ache, and mortal grandeur can fill me with that longing ... but Paris, Paris drew me close to her heart, so I forgot myself entirely. Forgot the damned and questing preternatural thing that doted on mortal skin and mortal clothing. Paris overwhelmed, and lightened and rewarded more richly than any promise. — Anne Rice

People with a condition called prosopagnosia cannot distinguish between familiar and unfamiliar faces. They rely entirely on cues such as hairlines, gait, and voices to recognize people they know. Pondering this condition led researchers Daniel Tranel and Antonio Damasio to try something clever: even though prosopagnosics cannot consciously recognize faces, would they have a measurable skin conductance response to faces that were familiar? Indeed, they did. Even though the prosopagnosic truly insists on being unable to recognize faces, some part of his brain can (and does) distinguish familiar faces from unfamiliar ones. — David Eagleman

Prevne was crawling with agents, he went, even if you went to buy a newspaper your identification was checked. "Easier to have it tattooed on, like you," said Kasimir, "Move your foot, Stefan." - "Move your fat rump, then." - " Oh, mine are German numbers, out of date. A few more wars and I'll run out of skin." --- "Shed it, then, like a snake."---No, they go right down to the bone." --- Shed your bones, then," Stefan said, *be a jellyfish. Be an amoeba. When they pin me down, I bud off. Two little spineless Stefans where they thought they had one MR 64100282A. Four of them, eight, sixteen thirty-two sixty-four a hundred and twenty-eight, I would entirely cover the surface of the globe were it not for my natural enemies. — Ursula K. Le Guin

Few would disagree that Herbert Mullin, who thought he was saving California from the great earthquake by killing people, and Ed Gein, who was making chairs out of human skin, were entirely insane when they committed their acts. The question becomes more difficult with somebody like law student Ted Bundy, who killed twenty women while at the same time working as a suicide prevention counselor, or John Wayne Gacy, who escorted the first lady and then went home to sleep of thirty-three trussed-up corpses under his house. On one hand their crimes seem "insane," yet on the other hand, Bundy and Gacy knew exactly what they were doing. How insane were they? — Peter Vronsky

What I learned about them, I liked. But it also seemed that the liberal line was not entirely correct, for it was obvious that racial differences went far beyond skin color. It would be difficult to categorize all the distinctions I noticed. In fact, I made no effort to catalogue them at the time, but their differences ranged all the way from physical characteristics to more subtle differences such as extreme aversion for work in cold weather. On cold days, when I felt invigorated, my black co-workers seemed lethargic. — David Duke

Tolerance is not a Sapiens trademark. In modern times, a small difference in skin colour, dialect or religion has been enough to prompt one group of Sapiens to set about exterminating another group. Would ancient Sapiens have been more tolerant towards an entirely different human species? It may well be that when Sapiens encountered Neanderthals, the result was the first and most significant ethnic-cleansing campaign in history. — Yuval Noah Harari

I needed my own territory, and I didn't know how I was going to get it. And so I took my frustrations and plugged them into someone entirely different from me. I wanted to see if I could slip into someone else's skin. — Jane Hamilton

Adam was in the dream, too; he traced the tangled pattern of ink with his finger. He said, "Scio quid hoc est." As he traced it further and further down on the bare skin of Ronan's back, Ronan himself disappeared entirely, and the tattoo got smaller and smaller. It was a Celtic knot the size of a wafer, and then Adam, who had become Kavinsky, said "Scio quid estis vos." He put the tattoo in his mouth and swallowed it.
Ronan woke with a start, ashamed and euphoric.
The euphoria wore off long before the shame did.
He was never sleeping again. — Maggie Stiefvater

I made it," you said, gruffly, "for you."
You shoved it onto my finger. It was roughly carved, shaped from a lump of something colourful and cold ... a ring made entirely from a gemstone. It was beautiful. It glinted emerald greens and blood reds over my skin, and had tiny flecks of gold catching the light. I couldn't stop staring at it.
"Why?" I asked.
You didn't answer that. Instead you touched the ring gently and looked piercingly at me, unsaid questions in your eyes. — Lucy Christopher

And the touch of her own mask, at first cool and clammy leather, but quickly like a second skin, and the play it gives her, herself a stage, her every breath a performance, and yet (herein lies the magic) also and entirely true. Every game, every lie flirting and cruel - and the house is full of them, games and lies - is real as knives, for the masquerade has come to define the night. The false face of everyday, that hides reality beneath flesh and skin, is itself hidden beneath the fantasy that, because it is a product and reflection of the mind, is an honest facade. Sadie has lived a wary, defensive life, always urged by that self-preserving instinct to stay small, hidden, safe. She did not know she had an imp inside her until she wore it on her face.

("One Of The Hungry Ones") — Holly Phillips

A latent warmth flickers behind those golden, burning rings. The Cold struggles to squelch it, shrouding it with the frigid Night. It almost smothers it entirely.
Almost.
But I know it is still there. It is like the heat of an unassuming coal beneath a blanket of graying ash. It is hidden, but not extinguished.
I can feel it. I can feel its gentle breath against my skin, like distant sunlight during newborn spring.
I can hear it. I can hear it reaching to divide the curtains of shadow on his face, like the whispers of blossoms unfolding.
I can see it. I can see it behind his fiery eyes, flickering like a starlight-dappled pool, dancing in and out of view.
It is buried. Buried, but burning nonetheless. Buried but burning, like one last hope in my heart. One last Ember in the dark.
-The Penitent God — S.G. Night

He strips me to my last nakedness, that underskin of mauve, pearlized satin, like a skinned rabbit; then dresses me again in an embrace so lucid and encompassing it might be made of water. And shakes over me dead leaves as if into the stream I have become.
Sometimes the birds, at random, all singing, strike a chord.
His skin covers me entirely; we are like two halves of a seed, enclosed in the same integument. I should like to grow enormously small, so that you could swallow me, like those queens in fairy tales who conceive when they swallow a grain of corn or a sesame seed. Then I could lodge inside your body and you would bear me. — Angela Carter

I see," I said, which was not entirely true. But it did seem to explain a bit of what I'd recently seen and heard. "Er ... at this moment, are you kissing me?"
"No, only almost," murmured Gideon, with his lips just above my skin. "I mean, no way do I want to exploit the fact that you're drunk and may be mistaking me for some kind of god right now. But it doesn't come easy ... "
I closed my eyes and leaned my head against his shoulder, and he held me closer.
"Like I said, you really don't make things easy for me. You always give me the wrong sort of ideas in churches ... — Kerstin Gier

Shocked and disconcerted, she pulled away. His hand fell from her arm. Breathing unevenly, she sat in a rigid, upright position and stared straight ahead. She could feel the blood rush to her cheeks.
His fiercely male presence filled the house, just as it had last night.
And he was no longer entirely indifferent to her.
"Now you have interested me," murmured Khalil.
"I have no idea what you are talking" - she could barely squeeze enough air out of her lungs to get the words out - "about."
He chuckled, and the husky sound was even more dangerous than that from the night before. It shivered along her exposed nerve endings with as much sensuality as if he had trailed his fingers along her bare skin. "I think I might like it when you lie," he said. "It makes my truthsense feel so superior. — Thea Harrison

To this day, I wake up at times, look in the mirror, and just stare, obsessed with the idea that the person I am in my head is something entirely different than what everyone else sees. That the way I look will prevent me from doing the things I want; that there really are sneetches with stars and I'm not one of them. I touch my face, I feel my skin, I check my color every day, and I swear it all feels right. But then someone says something and that sense of security and identity is gone before I know it. — Eddie Huang

Dove smiled in satisfaction. "Something I picked up in the south of France. It's the purest jasmine from Grasse, which makes it very special indeed."
"Why?" Evie sniffed again. The scent was rich and sensual, curling against her like a cat and warming itself on her skin.
"Child, jasmine is one of the most seductive scents imaginable, and the stuff from Grasse is the finest in the world. In the little village where I collected that, the farmers won't even let their nubile daughters walk through the fields when the flowers are ripe for fear they won't be able to control themselves."
"I can see why," Evie murmured. The heavy fragrance was intoxicating, and she felt like someone entirely new. — Deanna Raybourn

Kade was possibly the most beautiful boy she'd ever seen. She wanted to spend hours sitting with him and talking about pointless things. She wanted to feel his hand against her skin, to know that his presence was absolute and focused entirely on her. The trouble was, it never seemed to end there, and that was as far as she was willing to go. — Seanan McGuire

The reason why Matthew Arnold, to my feeling, fails entirely as a poet (though no doubt his ideas were good - at least, I am told they were) is that he had no sense of touch whatsoever. Nothing made any impression on his skin. He could feel neither the shape nor the texture of a poem with his hands. — Edith Sitwell

I am coming. I can't be coming. I'm fighting it, and that's making it worse. I am trying to fake not having an orgasm. I wonder if he can tell ...
I feel a little sick to my stomach when I realize exactly what sensation has brought me to this unfortunate climax: the friction of a very fat man's matted belly hair on my clit. This man I am on top of is the most repulsive person I've ever allowed to touch me. Sheer physics won't allow him to be on top of me. In fact, I am not entirely sure how it is that he will get back up from his supine position.
This man is my john. This orgasm and the wave of revulsion that follows quickly on its heels and makes my skin turn cold makes him my last client in my short career as an escort. — Audacia Ray

I am fortunately an entirely handsome devil and appear even younger than twenty-nine. I look like a clean cut youth, a boy next door, and a good egg, and my mother stated at one time that I have the face of a heaven's angel. I have the eyes of an attractive marsupial, and I have baby-soft and white skin, and a fair complexion. I do not even have to shave, and I have finely styled hair without any of dandruff's unsightly itching or flaking. I keep my hair perfectly groomed, neat, and short at all times. I have exceptionally attractive ears. — David Foster Wallace

She was dark-haired, fierce; she wore two drop earrings made of crystal; her face was a pure oval tickled with dimples; her skin was golden; and her laugh was like a fire in the night. But on her face you could also read the concentration of a soul whose life is entirely inward, and a mischievous gravity which acquires a silver patina with age. — Muriel Barbery

For these creatures(humans) are for the most part malevolent and murderous by nature, able to tolerate others only insofar as they resemble themselves, capable of slaughtering each other because of a slight difference in skin colour or appearance. Also, they cannot tolerate those who do not think as they do. Although they know perfectly well, theoretically, that the surface of the inhabited globe is divided into thousands of areas each with it system of religious or scientific belief, and although they know that it is entirely by chance that any individual among them was born into this area or that area, this or that area of belief, this theoretical knowledge does not prevent them from hating foreigners in their own particular small area, and if not harming them, isolating them in every way possible. — Doris Lessing

Something entirely unexpected happened to Bert. Yesterday he had seen her as a child grown up, today it was different. There was a pain in his chest and a hammering, the skin on his temples felt oddly tight, his hand trembled so that he almost dropped the bar he was holding. He leaned back against the wheel, staring at her but unable to speak. A long time seemed to pass before he could say anything, and the words sounded clumsy in his own ears. What — John Wyndham

The best I can say, it's like this. A man's in his skin, see, like a nut in its shell ... It's hard and strong, that shell, and it's all full of him. Full of grand man-meat, man-self. And that's all. That's all there is.
A woman's a different thing entirely. Who knows where a woman begins and ends? Listen mistress, I have roots, I have roots deeper than this island. Deeper than the sea, older than the raising of the lands. I go back into the dark ... I go back into the dark! Before the moon I am, what a woman is, a woman of power, a woman's power, deeper than the roots of trees, deeper than the roots of islands, older than the Making, older than the moon. Who dares ask questions of the dark? Who'll ask the dark its name? — Ursula K. Le Guin

Already very near to him, she moved a bit closer. He disengaged his hand and touched her face. Her skin was like silk, and he let his fingers glide along her jawline. Her lips parted, and he noticed the rise and fall of her chest as she breathed more rapidly. His own breath felt shallow and raspy. He leaned down. Before he could let his reason take over, he pressed his lips against hers. A tiny sound escaped her throat, and his mind seemed to leave him entirely. He cupped her cheek in his hand and pulled her mouth full against his. Even — Melanie Dickerson