Folded Like Quotes & Sayings

I wonder if all mothers feel like this the moment they realize their daughters are growing up- as if it is impossible to believe that the laundry I once folded for her was doll-sized; as if I can still see her dancing in lazy pirouettes along the lip of the sandbox. Wasn't it yesterday that her hand was only as big as the sand dollar she found on the beach? That same hand, the one that's holding a boy's; wasn't it just holding mine, tugging so that I might stop and see the spiderweb, the milkweed pod, any of a thousand moments she wanted me to freeze? Time is an optical illusion- never quite as solid or strong as we think it is. You would assume that, given everything, I saw this coming. But watching Kate watch this boy, I see I have a thousand things to learn. — Jodi Picoult

Focus on the heart center and feel love. There is a flower there, but it's like a rose folded up. As you meditate, feel that the flower is opening. Each time you open a set of petals you're going deeper into eternal awareness. — Frederick Lenz

Vaughn folded his arms. 'The reason why you've lasted longer than most of your erstwhile colleagues is because you don't do drama. I don't like drama. I get enough drama at home. My wife could teach the RSC a few things about drama.'

For someone who claimed that he didn't do drama, Vaughn was one of the biggest drama queens she knew. — Sarra Manning

What I want." I slid my hands over him until cloth folded between my fingers. "I don't even know what that is. It feels like too much, but I'll fall apart if I don't get it. — Jodi Meadows

I like the Bible folded between lids of cloth, or calfskin, or morocco, but I like it better when, in the shape of a man, it goes out into the world-a Bible illustrated. — Thomas De Witt Talmage

I'll love you till the ocean Is folded and hung up to dry And the seven stars go squawking Like geese about the sky. — W. H. Auden

The music folded over itself like batter being poured from a bowl, one note atop another ... — Sarah J. Maas

She found out that having something to do prevented you from feeling seasick, and that even a job like scrubbing a deck could be satisfying, if it was done in a seamanlike way. She was very taken with this notion, and later on she folded the blankets on her bunk in a seamanlike way, and put her possessions in the closet in a seamanlike way, and used 'stow' instead of 'tidy' for the process of doing so. After two days at sea, Lyra decided that this was the life for her. — Philip Pullman

I assigned myself the role of Lot's wife, because her behavior seemed the most human, the most sinful, and therefore closest to mine. Consumed by curiosity, I was drawn to the magnificent, horrible sight of fire and disaster as houses collapsed and towers folded like dominoes amidst human wailing that rose to the sky. My curiosity, brought to an explosive point by the divine warning, was suddenly transformed into my sole trait, overwhelming reason and the feeling of fear, turning me into a weakling of a woman, unable to resist my inquisitiveness, and I would turn around abruptly with my whole body as if rotated by the centrifugal force of my curiosity, which had passed through me like a sword. — Danilo Kis

Do you like blowjobs? "Did you just ask me if I like blowjobs?" he asked in a low voice. "I swear that's what it sounded like." "Yes." She folded her hands in front of her and met his gaze head-on. "I haven't given nearly enough of them but I'd like to practice. — Cari Quinn

They don't, in some people; those unlucky enough never to change in themselves, but there are few like that." She gave my folded hand a squeeze and patted it. "I doubt that you're one of those. Your hand shows quite a lot of change already, for one so young. That would likely be the War, of course," she said, as though to herself. I was curious again, and opened my palm voluntarily. "What am I, then, according to my hand?" Mrs. Graham frowned, but did not pick up my hand again. "I canna just say. It's odd, for most hands have a likeness to them. Mind, I'd no just say that it's 'see one, you've seen them all,' but it's often like that - there are patterns, you know." She smiled suddenly, an oddly engaging grin, displaying very white and patently false teeth. — Diana Gabaldon

The priest set the flask down on the step and folded his hands. "For the sin of lust you have confessed, mon fils," he said in an easy tone, "you are contrite, n'est-ce-pas?"
Vitor closed his eyes and saw hers before him, sparkling like stars. "Yes."
"For your penance I give you a novena to our Blessed Mother and the task of seeing your brother well matched to a woman who will bring him to heel."
"Only that?" Vitor lifted a brow. "Father, you are too lenient."
The priest drew a cross in the air above his brow. "Ego te absolve a peccatis tuis in nomine Patris, et Filii, et Spiritus Sancti."
"Amen."

-Denis & Vitor — Katharine Ashe

Mrs. Jones asked me to think up a few gadgets for our agents out here in the East," Smithers replied. He lifted the fan. "This is one of them. It's very simple, but I rather like it. You see, it looks like an ordinary fan, but actually there are very thin plates of galvanized steel hidden under the silk. And when you bring them together ... " He folded the fan, then brought it smashing down onto the desk. The wood shattered. " ... it becomes a useful weapon. I call it ... " " ... the fan club?" Alex suggested. — Anonymous

Nuclear power is a permanent disaster. Producing its uranium fuel is an environmental disaster - now tucked and folded over the horizon in mostly-poor countries where miners are paid $5 a day and unprotected against radiation. Building reactors is a financial disaster, always shifted to government subsidies. Waste disposal is both an environmental and economic disaster. When the fateful time comes to decommission the Doomsday Machines, after the easy 10-year life extensions run out, this is another economic disaster. But when a reactor becomes what it really is - the most massive Dirty Bomb you or Bin Laden (radhi Allah anhu) can imagine - the nuclear disaster will be hard to yank out of the media, quicktime, and carry on like nothing ever happened. — Andrew McKillop

Mom and Dad sleep soundly atop the white cushion, her in his lap and their legs tangled together. His handsome profile is scruffy, his nose buried in her long, pinkish blond hair. The strands twitch, alive with magic. Her gauzy wings are folded behind her like a butterfly's at rest.
They look so lovely together, the White knight and his fairy bride, in one another's arms at last. In spite of all they went through to reach this place, their love never faltered. They deserve this more than anyone I know. — A.G. Howard

He framed my face now, and I met his stare in the dark of the car. "I think you're beautiful." My heart folded like an origami swan. — Jenny B. Jones

Romola had had contact with no mind that could stir the larger possibilities of her nature; they lay folded and crushed like embryonic wings, making no element in her consciousness beyond an occasional vague uneasiness. — George Eliot

Messages To You My Dear, Sometimes I am here and sometimes I am not, I like that about myself for I am folded. But please guide me in the right direction, for sometimes I, too, tend to lose myself in my imagination. — Robert M. Drake

And when each of us looks back at all the turns and folds God has allowed in our lives, I don't think it looks like a series of folded-over mistakes and do-overs that have shaped our lives. Instead, I think we'll conclude in the end that maybe we're all a little like human origami and the more creases we have, the better. — Bob Goff

The feelings flattened and folded and turned into something else, like emotional origami. — Louise Penny

If there's any chance of salvaging things between us - and I must be crazy to even consider that - you need to start off with a huge apology," I stated without preamble.
His arms folded across his chest. With that stunning jewel-encrusted coat adding to his already commanding presence, I felt like I'd somehow shrunk several feet, but I refused to be cowed. I stood straighter and began to tap my foot.
He glanced down. "Is that supposed to intimidate me?" he asked, his voice edged with satin-covered steel. — Jeaniene Frost

I folded my hands back on my desk, and as I did, I saw Paul's slanted handwriting standing out against my blocky, square printing on my skin. He'd managed to find room to squeeze in the words females hurt my brain on my left hand. I raised an eyebrow at him and he gave me a look like, well it's true, isn't it? — Maggie Stiefvater

Christmas," said Robin, with a faint grin but without apology. "I was going to put it up yesterday, but after Leonora was charged I didn't feel very festive. Anyway, I've got you an appointment to see her at six. You'll need to take photo ID - " "Good work, thanks." " - and I got you sandwiches and I thought you might like to see this," she said. "Michael Fancourt's given an interview about Quine." She passed him a pack of cheese and pickle sandwiches and a copy of The Times, folded to the correct page. Strike lowered himself onto the farting leather sofa and ate while reading the article, which was adorned with a split photograph. On the left-hand side was a picture of Fancourt standing in front of an Elizabethan country house. Photographed from below, his head — Robert Galbraith

The Prince's sudden relapse was a surprise. He usually appeared to be so much in control that it was difficult for her to imagine him losing his composure. Evidently he was quite shaken by this recent reverse. "You lost control again?" she asked. "One cannot lose what one never has," he told her. His defeat seemed total. She could not think of what to say, so she reached out and took him into her arms. He folded into her like a bereft child. She whispered into his ear. "You wonder if you have lost your humanity," she said. "But your feelings now are evidence to the contrary. What you now feel, regret, guilt, sadness, defeat - all are human. At the core of us all. You are not so removed from us as you think. — Patrick Sheane Duncan

Success is like a lovely woman, wooed by many men, but folded in the arms of him alone who, free from over-zeal, firmly persists and calmly perseveres. — J. K. Bharavi

I'm so sorry we've kept this for such a long time," she said, pulling the watch from her skirt pocket. She unfolded Mother's handkerchief from around it, and offered it to Lord Bradford cradled in her hands. "We shouldn't have taken it in the first place."
Lord Bradford's eyebrows rose at the offering, and he opened his mouth, then closed it. He lowered his eyes to the books in his hands, then back to Azalea, and he managed a smile.
"When we first met," he said, "ages ago, you gave me a candy stick. Just like you did now, with your hands like that. Do you remember?"
Azalea raised an eyebrow.
"It happened when my father had just died," he said, quietly. "You came to the graveyard, licking a candy stick. You saw me. You put the stick in my hands, folded my fingers over it, and kissed my fingertips."
"That must have been sticky," said Azalea. — Heather Dixon

The rather blurred background to the face that formed over the vid plate seemed faintly familiar - ah yes, the Security Ops room at Ryoval Biologicals. Baron Ryoval had arrived personally on that scene as promised. It took only one glance at the dusky, contorted expression on Ryoval's youthful face to fill in the rest of the scenario. Miles folded his hands and smiled innocently. "Good morning, Baron. What can I do for you?" "Die, you little mutant!" Ryoval spat. "You! There isn't going to be a bunker deep enough for you to burrow in. I'll put a price on your head that will have every bounty hunter in the galaxy all over you like a second skin - you'll not eat or sleep - I'll have you - " Yes, — Lois McMaster Bujold

And people think she killed him?" said Miss Tick. She sighed. "They probably think she cooked him in the oven, or something."
"They never actually said," said Tiffany. "But I think it was something like that, yes."
"And did his horse turn up?" said Miss Tick.
"No," said Tiffany. "And that was strange, because if it'd turned up anywhere along the hills, people would have noticed it ... "
Miss Tick folded her hands, sniffed, and smiled a smile with no humor in it.
"Easily explained," she said. "Mrs. Snapperly must have had a really big oven, eh?"
"No, it was really quite small," said Tiffany. "Only ten inches deep. — Terry Pratchett

Rita folded her arms around herself and peered up at me. If you'd asked me
three months ago I'd have said you were hitting the bottle too hard. But then I
got stabbed and should have died, but instead a bunch of cops and ambulance
people showed up because somebody who wasn't even there sent them on ahead to save my life. If something like that happens to someone like me, you start to
have a little faith in something bigger. I don't know if I believe in magic or miracles all the time. But I believe in you, Detective Walker. I believe in you. — C.E. Murphy

No, I'm not shy." I folded my arms across my shell-covered chest. The press of the hard material against my sensitive nipples caused my core to tighten. "But I usually have to buy a girl a couple of drinks in order to be treated to a show like that."
She turned to look at me, the fringe on her dress swaying with her movement. A thin eyebrow arched, her cherry lips pulled into a dazzling smile. "Well." The intensity locked in her bright eyes as her green gaze moved from my head to my toes and back again made my entire body tingle. "I guess you owe me a drink, Meghan. — Elizabeth Morgan

When they were both five, Charlie and David asked their mother where babies come from. Charlie's mom folded herself into an armchair, sat Charlie on her lap, and pointed to pictures in what Charlie had always thought was a book of sea creatures. She helped him sounds out the scientific names. David's mother had a more whimsical answer. "When two people make love, a little blue fair leaps from the daddy to the mummy, connecting them like a ribbon of light. And sometimes, the fairy leaves a baby in the mummy's tummy." Would the fairies leave any more babies in his mummy's tummy? David wanted to know. "No, Davie." Why not? "Because Daddy's fairies are lazy. — John M. Cusick

Hey, and the rock star is here too! How you doing, son?"
"Hey, Mr. Rossi. Thanks for having me today. I'm doing great. How have you been?" I answered.
He lowered his gaze and stepped closer to me. "Good, good, son. I'm sure glad that everything was settled and you didn't have anything to do with hurting our Gracie. Lea told me that you were the one to help her when that son of a bitch got his hands on her. We're forever in your debt, Shane. I knew you couldn't have hurt her." He slid in front of the dining room chair at the head of the table, and sat down, leaning back with his arms folded across his chest. A serious expression crossed his features, "So did anybody get the son of a bitch, yet? Or am I going to have to make some calls ... " Holy shit, it's like the Godfather. — Christine Zolendz

Marcia was incredibly organized, obsessively neat ... I mean she folded her underwear like origami. — Linda Barnes

Good." He drank in her nakedness, fervent as a man downing ale after three days in the desert. His eyes, gleaming with unholy intention, came to rest on hers. "Now fuck me."
The command knocked her back like a handful of dust in the face. But only for a moment. He was the one tied up. She folded her arms again. "If you want my cooperation you had better address me more politely than that."
"Fuck me." Like the world's wickedest elocution pupil he articulated the words, lips and tongue and teeth put to such nefarious use. "Fuck me until I thrash and shout beneath you. — Cecilia Grant

It's not that I think you're weaker, I know you are." He eyed me over his glass of milk. " I'm not trying to be obnoxious by saying that. You are weaker than us."
"Maybe physically but not mentally or .. morally." I countered.
"Morally?" He sounded confused.
"Yeah, like, I'm not going to tell the world about you guys to get money. And if I was captured by an Arum, I wouldn't bring them back to you all."
"Wouldn't you?"
Offended, I leaned back and folded my arms. "No. I wouldn't"
"Even if your life was threatened?" Disbelief colored his tone.
"Shaking my head, I laughed. "Just because I'm human doesn't mean I'm a coward or unethical. I'd never do anything that would put Dee in danger. Why would my life be more valuable than hers? Now yours ... debatable. But not Dee. — Jennifer L. Armentrout

Was in lower school. And she figures it's your fault that things have changed." "That's just idiotic!" Ximena said. "I know!" I said. "It's like Savanna being mad at me for having been in a TV commercial once. It makes no sense." "How do you know all this?" asked Ximena. "Did she tell you?" "No!" I said. "Did you know about the note beforehand?" "No!" I said. Summer rescued me. "So what did Ellie say when she read Maya's note?" she asked Ximena. "Oh, she was so mad," answered Ximena. "She and Savanna want to go all out on Maya, post something super-mean about her on Facebook or whatever. Then Miles drew this cartoon. They want to post it on Instagram." She nodded for Summer to hand me a folded-up piece of loose-leaf paper, which I opened. On it was a crude drawing of a girl (who was obviously Maya) kissing a boy (who was obviously Auggie Pullman). Underneath it was — R.J. Palacio

Let us do something, while we have the chance! It is not every day that we are needed. Not indeed that we personally are needed. Others would meet the case equally well, if not better. To all mankind they were addressed, those cries for help still ringing in our ears! But at this place, at this moment of time, all mankind is us, whether we like it or not. Let us make the most of it, before it is too late! Let us represent worthily for one the foul brood to which a cruel fate consigned us! What do you say? It is true that when with folded arms we weigh the pros and cons we are no less a credit to our species. The tiger bounds to the help of his congeners without the least reflexion, or else he slinks away into the depths of the thickets. But that is not the question. What are we doing here, that is the question. And we are blessed in this, that we happen to know the answer. Yes, in the immense confusion one thing alone is clear. We are waiting for Godot to come
— Samuel Beckett

He stood with his arms folded across his chest, a pose that accentuated the hard, supple muscles of both. The angel was like catnip for any woman with a pulse. I made a concentrated effort not to ogle. As — Ella Summers

What I do when it distresses me that there's something I can't remember, is. Are you listening?
Yes, Elisabeth said through the crying.
I imagine that whatever it is I've forgotten is folded close to me, like a sleeping bird.
What kind of bird? Elisabeth said.
A wild bird, Daniel said. Any kind. You'll know what kind when it happens. Then, what I do is, I just hold it there, without holding it to tight, and I let it sleep. And that's that. — Ali Smith

Yes, between your shoulders, over your heads, to a landscape,' said Rhoda, 'to a hollow where the many-backed steep hills come down like birds' wings folded. There, on the short, firm turf are bushes, dark leaved, and against their darkness I see a shape, white, but not of stone, moving, perhaps alive. It makes no sign, it does not beckon, it does not see us. Behind it roars the sea. It is beyond our reach. Yet there I venture. There I go to replenish my emptiness, to stretch my nights and fill them fuller and fuller with dreams. — Virginia Woolf

Here," Grace said as she opened the book again and tore out the page with the poem on it. I flinched as though I were in actual pain. "You should have it, if you like it. Pretty poetry is wasted on me." I took the paper from her and folded it and slipped it into my pocket, half of me horrified that she'd injured a book, the other half of me elated that she'd so willingly given me something that clearly meant a lot to her. — Krystal Sutherland

And like any dog, like any savage, I lay there enjoying myself, harming no man, selling nothing, competing not at all, thinking no evil, smiled on by the sun, bent over by the trees, and softly folded in the arms of the earth. — John Stewart Collis

Gorge after gorge, turning, turning. Caverns of sunset, falling, falling away - just a single vast gold air breathed out by beings - they must have been marvelous beings, those gold-breathers. Down. Purple-and-green islands. Cleft and groined and gigantically pocked like something left behind after all the oceans vanished one huge night: the mountains. Their hills fold and fold again, fold away, down. Folded into the dens and rocks of the hills are ghost towns. Broken streets end in them, like a sound, nowhere. Shadow is inside. We walk (oh quietly) even so - breaking lines of force, someone's. Houses stand in their stones. Each house an empty socket. Some streaked with red inside. Words once went on in there - no. I don't believe that. Words never went on in there. — Anne Carson

I think of Sean folded low over the red stallion, riding bareback at the top of the cliffs. Of the easy way they had with each other when I met him to look at the uisce mare. I think, even, of the way Sean looked when he stood on the bloody festival rock and said his name, and then Corr's, like it was just one fact after the other. Of the way he said "the sky and the sand and the sea and Corr" to me. And I feel a bite of unfairness, because in everything but name, it seems to me that Sean Kendrick already owns Corr. — Maggie Stiefvater

Things outside seemed also fixed in mute expectation, so as not to disturb the moonlight which, duplicating each of them and throwing it back by the extension, forwards, of a shadow denser and more concrete than its substance, had made the whole landscape seem at once thinner and longer, like a map which, after being folded up, is spread out upon the ground. — Marcel Proust

In the Novel

He described her mouth as full of ashes.
So when he kissed her finally
he was thinking about ashes

and the blacker rim just below
the edge of the ashtray,
and the faint dark rim that outlined her lips,

and the lips themselves, at the limit
of another darkness, farther
and far more interior.

Then the way the red,
paling, just outside those lines
caught fire and the pages caught

soon after that. Slowly at first,
but then all at once
at the scalloped brown corners of each;

like the ruff of an offended and darkening bird,
extended, then folded
in on itself; multiple,

stiffening, gone. — Susan Stewart

As soon as he stood in front of her, she folded her arms and looked cross.
"You don't have any gardening skills. You turned down a prestigious job to weed the garden?
"I will be rewarded richly in treasures untold."
She raised a brow.
"I've heard dragon-shifters pay a lot of money to merchants and the like.
"Aaagh, but you are also a dragon-shifter of a sort.
Yes, but I am a gardener, which means I don't go on high-risk missions to earn my gold. — Terry Spear

Mrs. Ramsey, who had been sitting loosely, folded her son in her arm, braced herself, and, half turning, seemed to raise herself with an effort, and at once to pour erect into the air a rain of energy, a column of spray, looking at the same time animated and alive as if all her energies were being fused into force, burning and illuminating (quietly though she sat, taking up her stocking again), and into this delicious fecundity, this fountain and spray of life, the fatal sterility of the male plunged itself, like a beak of brass, barren and bare. — Virginia Woolf

Is it possible to refuse the medal?" she asked. "To forfeit it?"
"Not voluntarily. I'd have to do something illegal or hideous to invoke the expulsion clause."
"We could plan a crime for you to commit," Beatrix suggested. "I'm sure my family would have some excellent suggestions."
Christopher looked at her then, his eyes like silvered glass in the moonlight. For a moment Beatrix feared the attempt at levity might have annoyed him. But then there was a catch of laughter in his throat, and he folded her into his arms. "Beatrix," he whispered. "I'll never stop needing you. — Lisa Kleypas

That's how pixies know we're in love," he said as he folded his dragonfly-like wings and wiggled out of his red jacket, wincing as something pulled. "If the girl has glow, she won't say no. — Kim Harrison

The funny thing about my procrastination was that I was almost done with the screenplay. I was like a person who had fought dragons and lost limbs and crawled through swamps and now, finally, the castle was visible. I could see tiny children waving flags on the balcony; all I had to do was walk across a field to get to them. But all of a sudden I was very, very sleepy. And the children couldn't believe their eyes as I folded down to my knees and fell to the ground face-first, with my eyes open. Motionless, I watched ants hurry in and out of a hole and I knew that standing up again would be a thousand times harder than the dragon or the swamp and so I did not even try. I just clicked on one thing after another after another. — Miranda July

It's a bummer in some ways, since she never surprises me by making up my sheets anymore, or leaving folded laundry or a new sundress on my bed like she did when I was in middle school. But at least I know she's not rooting through my drawers while I'm at school, looking for drugs or sex toys or whatever. — Lauren Oliver

She folded her arms and said, "No. We're done with the truth game. Ask me what you want to ask me, and I'll answer or not if I like. I'll ask you anything I want, and you'll answer or not if you like. No forfeit, no control, no balance. No more favors or deals or measuring shit. We'll either have a real, messy conversation, or you can get the hell out."

He grew angry. She could feel it shifting through his energy, slow and sulfurous like slow-moving lava.

She liked it. His anger felt satisfying. It meant he wasn't indifferent to her. So she pushed him harder. "Go on, go. — Thea Harrison

It was my grandfather's island. Looming and bleak, folded in mist, guarded by a million screeching birds, it looked like some ancient fortress constructed by giants.
As I gazed up at its sheer cliffs, tops disappearing in a reef of ghostly clouds, the idea that this was a magical place didn't seem so ridiculous. — Ransom Riggs

In the early morning hours, Hannah read at the table by the dim light of dawn. She leaned in close to the pages, chin resting on her folded arms, eyes racing over the words, like chasing butterflies over the hills, to catch as many as she could before going to work. She wondered at how such tales of magic could be contained by mere paper and ink for her to read again and again. — Matthew J. Kirby

And if joy were not on the earth,
There were an end of change and birth,
And Earth and Heaven and Hell would die,
And in some gloomy barrow lie
Folded like a frozen fly ... — William Butler Yeats

People live from one play to the next. In between, before the curtain goes up, they don't quite know what the plot will be or what part will be right for them, they stand there at a loss, waiting to see what will happen, their instincts folded up like an umbrella, squirming, incoherent, reduced to themselves, that is, to nothing. Cows without a train. — Louis-Ferdinand Celine

The Girl of the Period, sauntering before one down Broadway, is one panorama of awful surprises from top to toe. Her clothes characterize her. She never characterizes her clothes. She is upholstered, not ornamented. She is bundled, not draped. She is puckered, not folded. She struts, she does not sweep. She has not one of the attributes of nature nor of proper art. She neither soothes the eye like a flower, nor pleases it like a picture. She wearies it like a kaleidoscope. She is a meaningless dazzle of broken effects. — Elizabeth Stuart Phelps Ward

Hey, heads up. The hottest doctor in town just came by and coerced me into telling him where you were. I folded like a cheap suitcase. Sorry, but he's hard to say no to. Don't be mad. I owe you a cupcake. — Jill Shalvis

Who knows, maybe those two rogue leaders, Gandhi and Jesus, were right - a loving response changes the people who would beat the shit out of you, including yourself, of course. Their way, of the heart, makes everything bigger. Decency and goodness are subversively folded into the craziness, like caramel ribbons into ice cream. Otherwise, it's about me, and my bile ducts, and how unique I am and how I've suffered. And that is what hell is like. — Anne Lamott

Uh, what are you doing?'
'What does it look like I'm doing?' Jake asks, settling into the seat beside me. The bus jerks forward. 'I'm sitting beside you.'
'No, you're not. Your seat is in the middle. Nice try, though.'
He has the audacity to ignore me, sets his book bag on his lap and rummages through it. After a minute, he pulls out a folded sheet of paper and hands it to me.
I unfold it. 'A love letter? How sweet.'
'No.' He turns pink. 'It's just something I found on the Internet-'
'Porn? You shouldn't have. — Courtney Summers

Father Travis leaned back. I glanced up at him. He was watching us from under his brow, his hands folded in his lap. His eyes had taken on that cyborg gleam. His cheekbones looked like they were going to break right through his skin. Not only did he own a copy of Alien, not only did he have an amazing and terrible wound, but he had called us humiliating names without actually resorting to the usual swear words. Besides that there was the deft speed with which he'd caught Angus, the free weights beside the television, the fancy Michelob. It was almost enough to make a boy want to be a Catholic. — Louise Erdrich

He turned back to Lara, his alert gaze raking over her tearful face. Somehow the solid reality of his presence eased her panic. He folded her in his arms, anchoring her against his chest, murmuring quietly into her hair.
Sniffling, Lara reached inside his waistcoat until her palm rested over the steady beat of his heart. The sensation of his warm breath sinking down to her scalp me her quiver. It was so terribly intimate, crying in his arms ... even more personal than making love. But he had never felt so much like a husband to her as he did in this moment. Quieting, she inhaled his familiar scent and let out a shaky sigh. — Lisa Kleypas

My mother folded each pair of trousers over her arm, pulling the legs out so that the creases lay perfectly. She handles clothes meticulously. S did Nai-nai. But there was a difference in attitude. To my grandmother, clothes held a kind of magic--they could change your destiny one way or the other. To my mother, they were servile, like farm animals in China. Treat them well and they'll perform their function. — Patricia Chao

Then it was she saw him again. On the upper reaches of the scaffolding, a sheerness of presence, no more. It was as if he took the space from the air about him and against the darkness was etched, like the brightness which seeps through a door ajar, hinting at nameless, fathomless brilliances beyond, the slightest margin of light. Impossible to look too closely, but some way below, beneath where the long feet might have rested, she made out the girl's huddled shape, her arms folded over her head like some small broken-winged, storm-tossed bird. — Salley Vickers

marked

Never write with pencil,
m'ija.
It is for those
who would
erase.
Make your mark proud
and open,
Brave,
beauty folded into
its imperfection,
Like a piece of turquoise
marked.

Never write
with pencil,
m'ija.
Write with ink
or mud,
or berries grown in
gardens never owned,
or, sometimes,
if necessary,
blood. — Carmen Tafolla

He nodded, like that made sense. Then he said, "So why does it bother you when someone calls you a dummy?"...."I'm not going to say that other kids can't be mean sometimes. Sometimes people say things that are just awful." I looked down into my Kleenex. "But you know what to are, Albie. You know what you're worth. At least I hope you do." I folded the tissue over on itself once, then twice, then three times. "And you get to decide what words are hurtful to you. If you ask me, 'dummy' shouldn't hurt you one bit. — Lisa Graff

My grandmother
had no time for old,
no matter how her face crinkled
or her days folded like an apron around
her middle. — April Michelle Bratten

His eyes shone playfully, turning his irises a deep cocoa. "That's why I like you, you're a challenge."
I folded my arms and leaned back on one leg. "Oh, so that's why ... "
"Well, that and your ass."
My cheeks flamed. "Thanks."
"And your breasts."
"Got it."
"And what's between your-"
"Dex," I warned, cutting him off. — Karina Halle

I told them he'd be able to get you to go out." Rianne folded her winnings and tucked the bills into her blazer pocket. "Look at him."
"He's right here, Ri," Carla murmured, shooting Keenan an apologetic look.
"We've tried to teach her manners, but ... " She shrugged. "It's like housebreaking a dog. If we'd had her when she was a puppy, maybe."
Rianne smacked her on the arm, but she was grinning. "Woof, woof. — Melissa Marr

Rivers course through my dreams, rivers cold and fast, rivers well-known and rivers nameless, rivers that seem like ribbons of blue water twisting through wide valleys, narrow rivers folded in layers of darkening shadow, rivers that have eroded down deep in a mountain's belly, sculpted the land, peeled back the planet's history exposing he texture of time itself. — Harry Middleton

Few minds are spacious; few even have an empty place in them or can offer some vacant point. Almost all have narrow capacities and are filled by some knowledge that blocks them up. What a torture to talk to filled heads, that allow nothing from the outside to enter them! A good mind, in order to enjoy itself and allow itself to enjoy others, always keeps itself larger than its own thoughts. And in order to do this, these thoughts must be given a pliant form, must be easily folded and unfolded, so that they are capable, finally, of maintaining a natural flexibility.
All those short-sighted minds see clearly within their little ideas and see nothing in those of others; they are like those bad eyes that see from close range what is obscure and cannot perceive what is clear from afar. Night minds, minds of darkness. — Joseph Joubert

Why would you believe in me at all?"
He moved to lean forward on the railing, forearms folded with the blade dangling down over the river, his face in profile. Finally, he said, "I trust you."
"You shouldn't."
"I know," he muttered.
She heard the strain in his voice. His eyes cut to her, and she saw that he knew she had heard it. His body shifted into a position of determined nonchalance. "Logically speaking," he said lightly, "the idea that you hired someone to attack me doesn't make much sense. I'm not sure what your motive would be."
"I could have wanted to put an end to the rumors."
"That would be a shame. I like the rumors."
"Don't joke. — Marie Rutkoski

It had been in a Paris house, with many people around, and my dear friend Jules Darboux, wishing to do me a refined aesthetic favor, had touched my sleeve and said, "I want you to meet-" and led me to Nina, who sat in the corner of a couch, her body folded Z-wise, with an ashtray at her heel, and she took a long turquoise cigarette holder from her lips and joyfully, slowly exclaimed, "Well, of all people-" and then all evening my heart felt like breaking, as I passed from group to group with a sticky glass in my fist, now and then looking at her from a distance (she did not look ... ), and listening to scraps of conversation, and overheard one man saying to another, "Funny, how they all smell alike, burnt leaf through whatever perfume they use, those angular dark-haired girls," and as it often happens, a trivial remark related to some unknown topic coiled and clung to one's own intimate recollection, a parasite of its sadness. — Vladimir Nabokov

Once you start spending time together, you'll learn things about her that no one else could have told you. Things that you never would have suspected. Like the fact that she snores and has cold feet." He folded his arms and I caught his smile in my peripheral vision. Why was he smiling at me? Hey, was he referring to our nap on the cot? "Maybe you'll learn that she'd make a great doctor or that she has the capacity to care about people she barely knows." He took a dramatic pause, leaning against the wall. "Maybe you'll learn that she's not the spoiled princess you thought she was."
Maybe you'll learn that she'd rather have someone speak directly to her than about her," I said, folding my arms and leaning against the wall. — Suzanne Selfors

Jobs described Mike Markkula's maxim that a good company must "impute"- it must convey its values and importance in everything it does, from packaging to marketing. Johnson loved it. It definitely applied to a company's stores. " The store will become the most powerful physical expression of the brand," he predicted. He said that when he was young he had gone to the wood-paneled, art-filled mansion-like store that Ralph Lauren had created at Seventy-second and Madison in Manhattan. " Whenever I buy a polo shirt, I think of that mansion, which was a physical expression of Ralph's ideals," Johnson said. " Mickey Drexler did that with the Gap. You couldn't think of a Gap product without thinking of the Great Gap store with the clean space and wood floors and white walls and folded merchandise. — Walter Isaacson

---
He knit his brows as she stared at him. "Do I have a pustule on my face?"
"No." She continued to stare. He may be a bit more time-weathered, but that only served to increase his allure. And his eyes. Lord, his eyes were the same crystal blues that could pierce through her soul.
Tilting his chin up, he folded his arms. "Then why are ye looking at me like that?"
"I want to remember."
His gaze softened. "I've never forgotten."
"Nor have I. — Amy Jarecki

It occurs to me if we kissed now, we'd be like a folded map of America. My Pennsylvania scab next to her New Jersey black eye. I wonder, then, how many other kids could join in. Where are the Montanas and the Colorados? Where is the Vermont? Florida? How many maps would we make? — A.S. King

He was really trying to be my friend, without all the emotional baggage we both carried - mine still with me, but carefully folded in vacuum bags so they'd occupy as little room as possible and his, hangin on his shoulders like lead armor, making him slouch sometimes. And yet, as pinned down as he was, he was the one comforting me, supporting not only his weight but mine, too. It wasn't fair. — Diana T. Scott

We folded up newspapers and made them into boats. We'd see whose would float the longest before it got bogged down, soggy, and sank. My father gave us a few pennies each day, which we'd toss and try to land on rocks.We'd wade in and get them again and again.Then we'd flip them in one final time to make a wish. Bliss and I could keep ourselves entertained for hours, but of course we became more and more aware that the whole forest was right there -- waiting for us to explore.
We didn't go far at first, not beyond where we could hear Mom call for us from the back door of the barn, but it gave us a whole new playground. We found a fallen log that we walked like a plank. There was a tree with a low straight branch that we could dangle and swing from. We gathered pine cones and tossed and batted them with twigs. — Riel Nason

Shadow had no idea what a pasty was, but he said that would be fine, and in a few moments Mabel returned with a plate with what looked like a folded-over pie on it. The lower half was wrapped in a paper napkin. Shadow picked it up with the napkin and bit into it: it was warm and filled with meat, potatoes, carrots, onions. "First pasty I've ever had," he said. "It's real good. — Neil Gaiman

After a few months she left off speculating about the villagers. She admitted that there was something about them which she could not fathom, but she was content to remain outside the secret, whatever it was. She had not come to Great Mop to concern herself with the hearts of men. Let her stray up the valleys, and rest in the leafless woods that looked so warm with their core of fallen red leaves, and find out her own secret, if she had one; with autumn it might come back to question her. She wondered. She thought not. She felt that nothing could ever again disturb her peace. Wherever she strayed the hills folded themselves round her like the fingers of a hand. — Sylvia Townsend Warner

With just about every script, in almost every corner of the set, I was faced with the truth: This was my parents' life. My mother had sat in handcuffs; my father had once worn an orange jumpsuit like the dozens that sat folded in our wardrobe department. For the other actors and me on our show, this was all fantasy, the re-creation of a world we knew little about; for Mami and Papi, it could not have been any more real or painful...I've had so many scenes in which Flaca & I are doing the dirty work, like cleaning the kitchen or mopping the floors, which is when I think of my parents most. Long before they ended up in prison, they'd spent years handling the nastiest jobs, the ones often avoided by others. Manual labor. Low pay. No respect. They must've felt so trapped. It must've been so hard for them to maintain their dignity when others looked down on them or, worse, didn't see them at all. — Diane Guerrero

Joliffe knew their audience was with them when Christ declared at the money-changers, "You knaves! You thieves and rascals! Defaming the Lord God's honor as you do! Making his house into a den of thieves and taking what is not yours to take, like shepherds never shearing but butchering every sheep!" and among the lookers-on heads turned and some people pointed at Father Hewgo standing at his church door, glaring, his arms tightly folded aross his chest, well apart from it all but making sure his disapproval lowered over everything. Joliffe had not written the lines at him but might as well have because his parishioners surely saw a match; there was even scattered laughter that would do nothing to soften him toward the players. — Margaret Frazer

I still love you," he says, "but I have to go my own way." "So you want to break up?" I ask, trembling. "I guess so," he says. I fall to the floor, like a woman in the twelfth century fainting at the sight of a hanging in her town square. Later, my mother comes home from a party and finds me catatonic, lying across the bed, surrounded by pictures of him and me, the mittens he bought me at Christmas folded beneath my cheek. I am crippled by what feels like sadness but what I will later diagnose as embarrassment. She tells me this is a great excuse: to take time for myself, to cry a bunch, to eat only carbohydrates slathered in cheese. "You will find," she says, "that there's a certain grace to having your heart broken." I will use this line many times in the years to come, giving it as a gift to anyone who needs it. — Lena Dunham

She would disappear folded like origami into her own dreams — Lauren Beukes

Michael wasn't on the pool deck, which was hard for me. None of my old Coral Springs teammates were around. Still, that old plane of cement felt like home. I folded my clothes and put them on the bench. I placed my water bottle under my starting block, and I dove in. Once again, I felt that ultimate state of transition, my feet no longer on the ground, my hands not yet in the water. — Dara Torres

Themistocles replied that a man's discourse was like to a rich Persian carpet, the beautiful figures and patterns of which can only be shown by spreading and extending it out; when it is contracted and folded up, they are obscured and lost. — Plutarch

How much do you love me, Bella?"
"Why?"
She stared at me with pleading eyes, her long black eyebrows slanting up in the middle and pulling together, her lips trembling at the corners. It was a heart-breaking expression.
"Please, please, please," she whispered. "Please, Bella, please - if you really love me ... Please let me do your wedding."
"Aw, Alice!" I groaned, pulling away and standing up. "No! Don't do this to me."
"If you really, truly love me, Bella."
I folded my arms across my chest. "That is so unfair. And Edward kind of already used that one on me."
"I'll bet Edward would like it better if you did this traditionally, though he'd never tell you that. And Esme - think what it would mean to her!"
I groaned. "I'd rather face the newborns alone."
"I'll owe you for a decade."
"You'd owe me for a century! — Stephenie Meyer

If we allow our one-and-a-half year old to "help" us fold laundry he will learn something about buttons, zippers, snaps, where things go, the physical properties of cloth, what happens when you drop it, how easy or hard it is to carry compared with everything else he has ever carried, what clean clothes smell like, how a big towel can turn into a small bundle, how the small bundle you just folded can turn into a big towel again, plus any songs we care to sing or stories or related or unrelated facts we care to pass on. — Polly Berrien Berends

Why couldn't she have slid it under the door? he wondered. Why couldn't she have folded it? It looked just like any other note she would leave him, like, Could you try to fix the broken knocker? or I'll be back soon, don't worry. It was so strange to him that such a different kind of note - I had to do it for myself - could look exactly the same: trivial, mundane, nothing. He could have hated her for leaving it there in plain sight, and he could have hated her for the plainness of it, a message without adornment, without any small clue to indicate that yes, this is important, yes, this is the most painful note I've ever written, yes, I would sooner die than have to write this again. Where were the dried teardrops? Where was the tremor in the script? — Jonathan Safran Foer

She was a tall woman with big bones and a noble face, dark eyebrows and a neatly folded jowl. She would have made a distinguished-looking man and, sometimes, wearing evening dress, looked like some famous general in drag. — Elizabeth Taylor

There is something in me maybe someday
to be written; now it is folded, and folded,
and folded, like a note in school. — Sharon Olds

I believe in that goodly mansion, his heart, he kept one little place under the skylights where Lucy might have entertainment, if she chose to call. It was not so handsome as the chambers where he lodged his male friends; it was not like the hall where he accommodated his philanthropy, or the library where he treasured his science, still less did it resemble the pavilion where his marriage feast was splendidly spread; yet, gradually, by long and equal kindness, he proved to me that he kept one little closet, over the door of which was written " Lucy's Room." I kept a place for him, too - a place of which I never took the measure, either by rule or compass: I think it was like the tent of Peri-Banou. All my life long I carried it folded in the hollow of my hand - yet, released from that hold and constriction, I know not but its innate capacity for expanse might have magnified it into a tabernacle for a host. — Charlotte Bronte

I feel compressed. I'm folding my emotions like a piece of paper - a tiny square, into a tiny square, into a tiny square. When they're folded up enough I can leave them in a corner of my mind somewhere, to be forgotten. That's how I deal, isn't it? And sometimes, on a day like today, I imagine that my brain is littered with hundreds of bastard feelings I won't claim. — Tarryn Fisher

I like bars just after they open for the evening. When the air inside is still cool and clean and everything is shiny and the barkeep is giving himself that last look in the mirror to see if his tie is straight and his hair is smooth. I like the neat bottles on the bar back and the lovely shining glasses and the anticipation. I like to watch the man mix the first one of the evening and put it down on a crisp mat and put the little folded napkin beside it. I like to taste it slowly. The first quiet drink of the evening in a quiet bar - that's wonderful. — Raymond Chandler

Time as hunger.
Time passing and gazing.
Time as perseverance.
Mountain time.
Time as paper folded to look like a mountain.
Time compared to the wild fantastic silence of stars. — Anne Carson

I expected Dad to do his usual brisk thing and say something like, "Excellent. I will anxiously await your pronouncement on this significant matter." Instead, he just looked relieved and said, "Good."
Thinking we were done, I moved toward the door, but Dad stepped in front of it. "We're not quite finised yet."
I blinked at him, surprised. "I could try to break some more mirrors if you really want me to, Dad, but I'm kind of wiped out. Between last night and today, there's been an awful lot of magin flyin' around for me,and-"
He shook his head. "No,not that. We have one more matter to discuss."
I didn't need my new psychic senses to tell me something bad was coming. "What?"
Dad took a deep breath and folded his arms. "I want you to tell me about Archer Cross. — Rachel Hawkins

You dont get your black ass away from this fire I'll kill you graveyard dead. He looked to where Glanton sat. Glanton watched him. He put the pipe in his mouth and rose and took up the apishamore and folded it over his arm. Is that your final say? Final as the judgement of God. The black looked once more across the flames at Glanton and then he moved away in the dark. The white man uncocked the revolver and placed it on the ground before him. Two of the others came back to the fire and stood uneasily. Jackson sat with his legs crossed. One hand lay in his lap and the other was outstretched on his knee holding a slender black cigarillo. The nearest man to him was Tobin and when the black stepped out of the darkness bearing the bowieknife in both hands like some instrument of ceremony Tobin started to rise. The white man looked up drunkenly and the black stepped forward and with a single stroke swapt off his head. — Cormac McCarthy

When Sarsine saw Kestrel, her eyes narrowed to mere cracks and Kestrel became very conscious that Sarsine was a tall woman. "For someone with a reputation for being so smart," Sarsine said, "you act like you haven't a thought in your head. Did it never occur to you that I'd worry when you disappeared from the city with no word?"
"I didn't exactly mean to leave."
"Oh, so it just happened."
"Yes."
"The gods made you do it."
Kestrel laughed. "Maybe they did." Then, earnestly, she said, "I'm sorry, Sarsine."
Sarsine folded her arms. "Then make it up to me."
"How?"
Sarsine's expression softened. Now there was an inquisitive gleam in her eye. "Start with the night you left. End with this very moment. And tell me everything."
So Kestrel did. — Marie Rutkoski