Hair Raising Quotes & Sayings

Few Westerners understand the post-Soviet soul like Lawrence Sheets. Whether it is his hair-raising stories of the region's myriad armed conflicts or the black humor with which he captures the moral and physical impoverishment of a collapsing empire, Sheets brilliantly condenses twenty tumultuous years into an eminently readable tale. — Matthew Brzezinski

I simmer in the half-light of a stoop, raising beers under a pompadour on the first brisk night, pressure more potent than any barometer can read. To see your hand to the tramp of feet is a way to measure strangers. To feel your hair on my finger accidentally is common sense, a way of leading you to me as the watch moves. We return to our bed through the bakery smells of daybreak, sky palling, empty of jets. The schedule is suspended, then resumes like gray dead hands in the east, and I want you never to die. — John Godfrey

[Photography is a] hair-raising joy ride in a medium that, despite being a mechanical trick, can break down the division between mind and matter like a superhero, or an artist. — Philip-Lorca DiCorcia

Did you feel that?" he asked, concern crossing his face. "Yeah, I felt it. You too?" I answered, flirting back. "No, I mean, yes, obviously I felt that, but didn't you feel that hit your head?" he asked, beginning to grin broadly. "What are you talking about?" I asked, raising my hand up to my hair. "Oh, Jesus, Grace, a seagull just shit on your head," he stated, beginning to shake. "What? — Alice Clayton

Every single element, even the most hair-raising, can be improved. — Dmitry Bilozerchev

But it was something else, too, that I wanted to extend: the taut and pleasant silence in the car, the stale heat raising vapours of leather. The warped image of myself in the side mirrors, so I caught only the quantity of hair, the freckled skin of my shoulder. I took on the shape of a girl. — Emma Cline

OTHERBOUND is a web of spells and counterspells, but Corinne Duyvis never loses sight of the bodies, minds and all-too-human emotions that absorb the impact of the magical power-plays. It's an action-packed tale of passion, possession and hair-raising leaps from world to world. As you read it, remember to keep breathing. — Margo Lanagan

I stop crying for a moment when light from the street steals into my bedroom as Silas gently pushes the curtain aside. He leans against the wall, arms folded across his bare chest and hair falling in front of his eyes. Almost silently, he moves to the tiny space between my bed and the wall and lowers himself to the floor. Raising his knees to his chest, he drops his head and reaches for my hand, running his thumb across my knuckles silently.
I slide off the bed, sheets wrapped around my legs, and ease into his lap, tucking my face against his neck. He cradles me against him like he's afraid to let me go. I know I should shy away, that I should climb back into my bed out of loyalty to my sister. But there's something that locks me in place, something that won't let me stray from the gentle rise and fall of his chest or from his arms, supporting me like I'm something precious as his lips brush across my forehead.
Without speaking, we finally fall asleep. — Jackson Pearce

I always felt like my future was at stake every time I stepped on stage and that was kind of hair-raising. At some point I just went, don't be frightened, you can't do anything wrong, it's your show. — Rickie Lee Jones

As a girl, I sat awestruck at the feet of Harriet Ne, author of 'Tales of Molokai'. It was she who used to say, 'I myself have seen it,' after telling a particularly hair-raising ghost story - a phrase that I borrowed for one of my titles. — Susanna Moore

stinging with the onset of her tears. She could feel her anger rising, a tingle of electricity ran down her spine, raising the hair on her arms. Balthazar felt the sudden shift in the girl's aura. The tangy smell of raw power filled his nose. He could sense Alexandra's anger, but something else about her was different. Something deep within her had fundamentally changed. "Let me go home, now," Alex said, wiping the trail of tears from her cheek with the back of her hand. "You going home was never part of the plan," Balthazar said, "and now that I see how valuable you truly are, I can never let you go." "That's not fair," she screamed, — Raquel Dove

She looked at him, his soft brown eyes and tall form, and contemplated raising herself on her toes and kissing his ear, or his cheek ...
Instead, impulsively before leaving, she reached up and smoothed his mussed hair.
Mr. Bradford beamed. — Heather Dixon

You look pensive," he said quietly, holding his hand out from where he lay on the bed. He wore only his shirt and breeches. She went to him without protest. Why pretend when they really had so little time left together? He gathered her against him, her back to his front, and began plucking the pins from her coiffure. "Have I told you how much I admire your hair?" "It's just plain brown," she murmured. "Plain, lovely brown," he replied, raising a lock he'd freed to his face. "Are you smelling my hair?" she asked in amusement. "Yes." "Silly man," she said lightly. "Smitten man," he corrected, spreading her hair over her shoulders. "I've been watching you today." "In between escorting Miss Royle about the garden?" she asked, glancing over her shoulder at him. "Yes. I'd rather it'd been you, but that wouldn't've been prudent." He frowned down at the strands of her hair caught between his fingers. "Or, perhaps, safe. — Elizabeth Hoyt

Archer?" I asked, raising my eyebrows. Hey, you might be able to take away my magical powers, but the power of sarcasm was still at my disposal. "Is your last name Newport or Vanderbilt? Maybe followed by some numbers? Ooh!" I said, widening my eyes, "or maybe even Esquire!"
I'd hoped to hurt his feelings or, at the very least, make him angry, but he just kept smiling at me. "Actually, it's Archer Cross, and I'm the first one. Now what about you?" He squinted. "Let's see ... brown hair, freckles, whole girl-next-door vibe going on ... Allie? Lacie? Definitely something cutesy ending in ie."
You know those times when your mouth moves but no sound actually comes out? Yeah, that's pretty much what happened. And then, of course, my mom took that opportunity to end her conversation with Justin's parents and call out, "Sophie! Wait up."
"I knew it." Archer laughed. "See you, Sophie," he called over his shoulder as he disappeared into the house. — Rachel Hawkins

I stumbled upon Friedrich Nietzsche when I was 17, following the usual trail of existential candies - Camus, Sartre, Beckett - that unsuspecting teenagers find in the woods. The effect was more like a drug than a philosophy. I was whirled upward - or was it downward? - into a one-man universe, a secret cult demanding that you put a gun to the head of your dearest habits and beliefs. That intoxicating whiff of half-conscious madness; that casually hair-raising evisceration of everything moral, responsible and parentally approved - these waves overwhelmed my adolescent dinghy. And even more than by his ideas - many of which I didn't understand at all, but some of which I perhaps grasped better then than I do now - I was seduced by his prose. At the end of his sentences you could hear an electric crack, like the whip of a steel blade being tested in the air. He might have been the Devil, but he had better lines than God. — Gary Kamiya

Cora read the accounts of slaves who had been born in chains and learned their letters. Of Africans who had been stolen, torn from their homes and families, and described the miseries of their bondage and then their hair-raising escapes. She recognized their stories as her own. They were the stories as her own. They were the stories of all the colored people she had ever known, the stories of black people yet to be born, the foundations of their triumphs. — Colson Whitehead

Howl said, "I think we ought to live happily ever after," and she thought he meant it. Sophie knew that living happily ever after with Howl would make a good deal more eventful than any story made it sound, though she was determined to try. "It should be hair-raising," added Howl. "And you'll exploit me," Sophie said. "And then you'll cut up all my suits to teach me," added Howl. — Diana Wynne Jones

You know how you secretly worry that this is it, that it's all downhill from here? I know you do. You worry that the children will turn into hulking criminals; their scalps will turn odorless. You lie in bed now during a thunderstorm, two sleeping, moonlit faces pressed against you, fragrant scalps intoxicating you, the rain on the roof like hoofbeats, heartbeats - and the calamity of raising young children falls away because this is all you ever wanted. Now you boo-hoo noiselessly into the kids' hair because life is so beautiful and you don't want it to change. Enjoy it. But let me tell you - you won't believe it, but let me tell you anyway - you will watch them sleeping still and always: the illuminated down of their cheeks, their dark puffs of lips and dear, dark wedges of eyelashes, and you will feel exactly the way you feel now. Only better. — Catherine Newman

Absently, she brushed back some of the hair from her face, and she saw as Jaguar's eyes followed how the long strands slid across her throat. Though his dark skin did not show pallor as clearly as Lord Daryl's had, Turquoise could tell Jaguar had not fed yet, and she recognized the hungry look in his black eyes.
Testing, she stood, the movement appearing reluctant. "I"ll leave you to your work if you'd like."
He answered the way she had expected him to. Not raising his gaze from her throat, he said, "Come here." Though the words were an order, the tone left room for argument.
For a moment, Turquoise almost felt guilty. She was intentionally manipulating him. A feeding vampire is an easy target; most of them completely lost sense of their surroundings as they drew blood. Jaguar did not even try to catch her mind as his lips fell to her throat. If she had been armed, it would have been revoltingly easy to kill him. — Amelia Atwater-Rhodes

When a human being takes his life in depression, this is a natural death of spiritual causes. The modern barbarity of 'saving' the suicidal is based on a hair-raising misapprehension of the nature of existence. — Peter Wessel Zapffe

Darren played with the ice cream before raising a spoonful to his mouth. I watched him lick it before he wrapped his lips around the spoon, closing his eyelids and savoring the flavor on his tongue. He slowly withdrew the spoon from his mouth and opened his eyes. He smiled coyly at my rapt attention. I just wanted to reach across the table, grab a fistful of his hair and lick the ice cream right out of his mouth. — Alexis Woods

Images of him continued to plague me, unbidden and cruelly tantalising: the mesmerizing blue eyes that compelled me to share with him my most private fears; the feel of his thick, untidy hair as the sunlight split it into myriad shades of gold; the soft laugh that touched my soul; his aloof but unpretentious manner; his confident assurance that I could make my own choices. I shuddered at the thought of Steldor's attitude toward me, for he saw me as only a woman, relegated to supervising that household, planning and executing social events and raising the children. All he really wanted was my presence in his bed, which made me all the more unwilling to comply. Steldor's glance made me uncomfortable, his patronising laugh made me cringe, his condescension frequently led to my humiliation. In Narians arms, I had felt extraordinary happiness; in Steldor's I felt trapped. — Cayla Kluver

No one can give anyone else the gift of the idyll; only an animal can do so, because only animals were not expelled from Paradise. The love between dog and man is idyllic. It knows no conflicts, no hair-raising scenes; it knows no development. — Milan Kundera

For the political world, I have come to believe, is fundamentally beyond anyone's control, yet we all go on as though it were a kind of vehicle that only needs a change of drivers in order to steer it away from its frequent hair-raising visits to the edge of the cliff. — Arthur Miller

She threw herself on her knees, and raising up her hands, cried the same words in tones which wrung my heart. Then she tore her hair and beat her breast, and abandoned herself to all the violences of extravagant emotion. — Bram Stoker

More of that hair-raising energy rolled out of Vlad, until I was rubbing my arms to chase the tingling sensations away. Was this what Marty meant when he told me vampires could measure each others' strength by feeling their auras? If so, then Vlad's had Badass: Do Not Engage written all over it. — Jeaniene Frost

Brenna's eyes widened. Raising a hand, she brushed his hair gently off his forehead.
"Why do I keep telling you things I swore I'd take to my grave?"
The contact shot electricity through his nerves. "Because you know I'll always be your shield against the nightmares. — Nalini Singh

The talk show, as a genre, has been in decline for a while. It started with Jerry Springer, when the talk shows suffered a metamorphosis, going from the real and social issues to the hair-raising. — Cristina Saralegui

My mother was a woman. A black woman. A single mother. Raising two kids on her own. So she was dark skinned. Had short hair. Got no love from nobody except for a group called the Black Panthers. So that's why she was a Black Panther. — Tupac Shakur

As I understand it, to say that God is mightily present even in such private events as these does not mean that he makes events happen to us which move us in certain directions like chessmen. Instead, events happen under their own steam as random as rain, which means that God is present in them not as their cause but as the one who even in the hardest and most hair-raising of them offers us the possibility of that new life and healing which I believe is what salvation is. — Frederick Buechner

As the installments in the 'Immortals After Dark' series span simultaneous timelines, making sure the details remained accurate was a hair-raising/losing exercise. — Kresley Cole

It is the noble races that have left behind them the concept 'barbarian' wherever they have gone; even their highest culture betrays a consciousness of it and even a pride in it (for example, when Pericles says to the Athenians in his famous funeral oration 'our boldness has gained access to every land and sea, everywhere raising imperishable monuments to its goodness and wickedness). This 'boldness' of noble races, mad, absurd, and sudden in its expression, the incalculability, even incredibility of their undertakings - Pericles specially commends the rhathymia of the Athenians - their indifference to and contempt for security, body, life, comfort, their hair-raising cheerfulness and profound joy in all destruction, in all the voluptuousness of victory and cruelty - all this came together, in the minds of those who suffered from it, in the image of the 'barbarian,' the 'evil enemy,' perhaps as the 'Goths,' the 'Vandals. — Friedrich Nietzsche

There was the matter of the withered-looking and bradyauxetic arms, which just as in a hair-raising case of Volkmann's contracture 115 curled out in front of his thorax in magiscule S's and were usable for rudimentary knifeless eating and slapping at doorknobs until they sort of turned just enough and doors could be kicked open and — David Foster Wallace

To suggest that one's belly, body hair or tattoo is 'distasteful' and should therefore be covered in the name of etiquette is the very worst sort of body fascism. If your children are traumatised by the sight of a fat person in a bikini, a bit of cellulite or a caesarean scar, then may I tentatively suggest that you aren't raising them correctly. If seeing someone hairy wearing something skimpy renders you 'unable to eat your lunch' then I'm afraid my diagnosis is the problem is with your brain, not their body. — Natasha Devon

She cringed when she saw she needed a bikini wax - and cringed that she even got them in the first place. It wasn't the pain. It was the whole idea she was raising her daughter in a world where pubic hair was a problem. — Chris Bohjalian