Lace Like Quotes & Sayings

Like delicate lace, So the threads intertwine, Oh, gossamer web Of wond'rous design! Such beauty and grace Wild nature produces ... Ughh, look at the spider Suck out that bug's juices! — Bill Watterson

Love is a rock against the wind. Not soft like silk and lace. — Etheridge Knight

I'll tell you something," said Francis,urgent with shoe lace, "if we keep on saying things weren't when we know perfectly well they were, we shall soon dish up any sort of chance of magic we may ever have had. When do you find people in books going on like that? They just say 'This is magic!' and behave as if it was. They don't go pretending they're not sure. Why, no magic would stand it."
Book: Wet Magic, Chapter 2 — E. Nesbit

Butch : Two words for you. CYNDI.LAUPER
Vishous : Clearly, the paste you ate has gone to your head. Did Marissa like all that lace you glued on ? Oh ... and I'm talking to your body, not that ridiculous card you made her.
Butch : How does that song go ?
*sings song about true colors*
Vishous : I have no idea what you are talking about.
Butch : Oh.Really. So you deny that shit was playing in the weight room yesterday ?
Vishous : Please. Like I listen to crap like that ?
Butch : So you deny that song was also playing in the Escalade last night ?
Vishous : Don't act the fool.
Butch : So you deny that song was ALSO coming out of your shower early this morning. — J.R. Ward

Until I came and saw the water falling,
its lace legs and its womanly arms sheeting down,
while something howled like thunder,
over the rocks,
all day and all night -
unspooling. — Mary Oliver

The image of May shoving the gun down her lace panty butt crack and drawing it like an old west cowboy is too much. Who are we? Who the fuck are we? Supergirls for real, that's who. — Mav Skye

There have been heroes here, and saints and martyrs and I want you to know that. Because that is the truth even if no one remembers it. To look at the lace, it's just a cluster of houses strung along a few roads, and a little row of brick buildings with stores in them, and a grain elevator and a water tower with Gilead written on its side, and the post office and the schools and the playing fields and the old train station, which is pretty well gone to weeds now. But what must Galilee have looks like? You can't tell so much from the appearance of a place. — Marilynne Robinson

What do I say to a whale, Galen?" I hiss.
"Tell him to come closer."
"No way."
"Fine. Tell him to back up."
I nod. "Right. Okay." I lace my fingers together to keep from wringing my hands raw. Even more than terror, I feel the insanity of the situation. I'm about to ask a fish the size of my house to make a U-turn. Because Galen, the man-fish behind me, doesn't speak humpback. "Uh, can you please back away from me?" I say. I sound polite, like I'm asking him to buy some Girl Scout cookies.
I feel better in the few moments afterward because Goliath doesn't move. It proves Galen doesn't know what he's talking about. It proves this whale can't understand me, that I'm not some Snow White of the ocean. Except that, Goliath does start to turn away.
I look back at Galen. "That's just a coincidence."
Galen sighs. "You're right. He probably mistook us for a relative or something. Tell him to do something else, Emma. — Anna Banks

Kami glanced over at Angela. Angela lay serenely with her hands folded across her chest and her lashes like black lace against her white cheeks. "You look so sweet when you sleep," Kami said. "Like an emo ten-year-old's first Vampire Bride Barbie. Pull the string on the back and she says cruel things to her hardworking friends. — Sarah Rees Brennan

I decided to work on things that obsess women because women can't resist things like lace, sequins, animal prints and python. — Phoebe Philo

She lay there like a beautiful lace covered present for the troll with her sweet hands wrapped up in the red bow of Lilith's red silk thong. — Bella Swann

I sat at her desk and turned one page after another, staring at what looked like bits and pieces of black lace laid cross the paper. — Sue Monk Kidd

Paul Blumberg writes: "A Massachusetts Act of 1651, for example, prohibited status disguises in such matters as dress, and declared 'our utter detestation and dislike that men and women of meane Condition should take upon themselves the garb of gentlemen, by wearing gold and silver, lace or buttons, or points at their knees or to walk in bootes or women of the same rancke to wear silke or tiffany horlles or scarfes, which though allowable to persons of greater estates, or more liberal education, yet we cannot but judge it intollerable in persons of such like condition. — Diego Gambetta

I used to think that music was like lace upon a garment, nice to have but not necessary. I have come to believe that music is absolutely essential to our community life. — George Eastman

...lace is formed from the absence of substance; it is imagined in the spaces between the threads. Lace is a thing like hope. It lived, it survived, and it was desired for what it was not. If faith, as the nuns said, was the substance of things hoped for, then lace was the outline - the suggestion - of things not seen. — Iris Anthony

We sit together in silence for a while. This is what I have always liked about James. We can make a good silence together. There's something between us that doesn't need words or actions. It settles around us and I can feel it now, hovering gently, ready to wrap me in its nebulous folds, like a delicate lace shawl. I want it to be like this always, something inside us meeting and holding hands, something calm and soothing and healing. — Clare Morrall

Thad asked, "Why does she keep calling you Kid, Mr.Morgan? Something about that sounds mite familiar."

"Son of a gun!" Bill suddenly exclaimed. "He's Kid Morgan, the gunfighter! I've read about him!

Lace glanced at The Kid and smiled. "Looks like your secret's out."

"It was never that much of a secret." The Kid shrugged.

"Well, I'm glad I don't have to keep it anymore," Nick said.

The Gustaffson brothers looked at him. Bill said, "You knew about this?"

"Yeah," Nick replied, looking a little ashamed. "I'm sorry, fellas. Mr.Morgan asked me to keep quiet about it, and I promised him I would. — J.A. Johnstone

You do know we're officially the talk of the town," I say to Tucker. He might as well have taken a marker to my forehead and written PROPERTY OF TUCKER in big black letters.
His eyebrows lift. "Do you mind?"
I reach for his hand and lace his fingers with mine. "Nope."
I'm with Tucker. In spite of my failed purpose and everything, it looks like I'm actually going to get to keep him. I'm the luckiest girl in the world. — Cynthia Hand

But now that so much is changing, is it not up to us to change? Could we not try to evolve just a little, and gradually take upon ourselves our share in the labour of love? We have been spared all of its toil, and so it has slipped in among our amusements, as a scrap of genuine lace will occasionally fall into a child's toy-box, and give pleasure, and cease to give pleasure, and at lengthe lie there among broken and dismembered things, worse than all the rest. We have been spoiled by easy gratification, like all dilettantes, and are held to be masters. But what if we despised out successes? What if we began to learn, from the very start, the labour of love that has always been done for us? What if we were to go and become beginners, now that so much is changing? — Rainer Maria Rilke

Outside were the eucalyptus trees, like lace against the sky. If it were only possible to lie against them, light and bodiless, sink into their softness, deeper and deeper, lost in them, buried, never come back again ... — Shirley Jackson

In the convent, y'all,
I tend the gardens,
watch things grow,
pray for the immortal soul
of rock 'n' roll.

They call me
Sister Presley here,
The Reverend Mother
digs the way I move my hips
just like my brother.

Gregorian chant
drifts out across the herbs
Pascha nostrum immolatus est...
I wear a simple habit,
darkish hues,

a wimple with a novice-sewn
lace band, a rosary,
a chain of keys,
a pair of good and sturdy
blue suede shoes.

I think of it
as Graceland here,
a land of grace.
It puts my trademark slow lopsided smile
back on my face.

Lawdy.
I'm alive and well.
Long time since I walked
down Lonely Street
towards Heartbreak Hotel.

- Elvis's Twin Sister — Carol Ann Duffy

It is often the easiest move that completes the game. Fortune is like the lady whom a lover carried off from all his rivals by putting an additional lace upon his liveries. — Edward Bulwer-Lytton, 1st Baron Lytton

Let other complain that the age is wicked; my complaint is that it is paltry; for it lacks passion. Men's thoughts are thin and flimsy like lace, they are themselves pitiable like the lacemakers. The thoughts of their hearts are too paltry to be sinful. For a worm it might be regarded as a sin to harbor such thoughts, but not for a being made in the image of God. Their lusts are dull and sluggish, their passions sleepy ... This is the reason my soul always turns back to the Old Testament and to Shakespeare. I feel that those who speak there are at least human beings: they hate, they love, they murder their enemies, and curse their descendants throughout all generations, they sin. — Soren Kierkegaard

After that, a strange thing happened: Amy couldn't stop her expectations from rising. She imagined herself transformed and beautiful, like Molly Ringwald in Pretty in Pink, with her homemade dress and mysterious lace boots. She pictured her hair in an upsweep of loose curls. In the fantasy, her prom face looked like the one she only wore asleep, loose and relaxed. She imagined a photographer asking her to smile and, for the first time in her life, being able to do it. — Cammie McGovern

Running is a simple activity. Just lace up your shoes and go, one step at a time, like each breath. — Adharanand Finn

We are very luck to be women, so even if we're wearing trousers, I always wear them with some lace underwear or a very feminine bra - I like that. — Carine Roitfeld

The forest had many edges, like a lace altarpiece. — Annie Proulx

Then there were her childhood book: Anne of Green Gables, Heidi, What Katy did next, Pollyanna - stories about girls who were good. All Pollyanna had ever done wrong was ruin her parasol. Beth in Little Women was so perfect she was only fit for heaven. Why were girls in novels exemplary, almost saintly? Grace preferred adventure stories, histories and romances about what to do if you were damned and female, tales about women who were kind, likeable and believable, who escaped unpunished. No thin Quakers with lace caps. No beatific consumptives coughing delicately. No unloved, eternally jolly orphans. Grace craved books about girls like herself: good women, normal women in a world bigger and more powerful than themselves. — Wendy Jones

When I lace my shoes I can't stand when they are twisted and dirty. It just looks sloppy. Even if it's a new pair of Chuck Taylors and the laces are all twisted it looks like you don't care. — Mark McNairy

I was walking home alone late one night, when out of nowhere, this rabid homosexual jumped me and bit me right on the ass. I tried to fight him off, but you know those homos have superhuman strength. Anyway, he bit me on my left cheek, then took off. The whole thing shook me up, but I thought I was gonna be okay. It took me a few weeks to notice the changes. At first the signs were subtle: the sudden urge to redecorate my room, the uncontrollable desire to do Megan's hair. Then, as the phases of the moon progressed, I noticed other things: the need to wear lace panties, the insane hope of one day owning my own flower shop. Before I knew it, I was jacking off six times a day to pictures of Brad Pitt and Russell Crowe. Of course, I won't be a full fledged gay boy until I bite someone else and pass on the 'dark gift. Hey, Rooster, you wanna be my first convert? If I turn just four people, I win like a toaster oven or something.. — Sara Bell

Miss Chauvenet. Morgan willed himself to speak his tongue near to tied.
He was unable to take his gaze from her. She looked as fresh as springtime, her dark hair hanging in a braid beyond her hips, her eyes wide with surprise. Then her gaze moved over him, and he knew a moment of utter mortification.
She's thinkin' you look like a peacock, laddie.
With lace cuffs, silk stockings and drawers, and shoes with shiny brass buckles, he did look like a bloody peacock or, worse, like somoene that whoreson Wentworth would invite to his supper table.
-Morgan — Pamela Clare

Parisians gasped when Theo paired brown with black- and then found themselves even more shocked when she wore a black corded silk evening gown sewn with amethysts, and later, a purple riding habit with sour-green gloves.
They gasped... and rushed to imitate.
What the French loved most were Theo's epigrammatic rules. They were collected like precious jewels, and even the poorest shopgirls ripped the lace from their Sunday frocks when she was reported to have remarked, "Wear lace to be baptized. Period. — Eloisa James

I collect underwear from my travels. Lace, lingerie, bodysuits ... they're like souvenirs. — Miranda Kerr

And the testicles of the fathers hang down like old lace — Robert Penn Warren

St Mary Magdalene church was on the left-hand side of the road, set back behind a low brick wall, well-trimmed topiary and a narrow fringe of grass studded with lichen-covered gravestones from a hundred years ago. A sign had been tied to the railings: two capital As set inside a blue triangle that was itself set within a blue circle. An arrow pointed towards the church. Milton felt a disconcerting moment of doubt and paused by the gate to adjust the lace of his shoe. He looked up and down the street, satisfying himself that he was not observed. He knew the consequences for being seen in a place like this would be draconian and swift; suspension would be immediate, the termination of his employment would follow soon after, and there was the likelihood of prosecution. He was ready to leave the service, but on his own terms and not like that. — Mark Dawson

The table was prettily decorated with camellias from the orangery, and upon the snow-white tablecloth, amongst the clear crystal glasses, the old green wineglasses threw delicate little shadows, like the spirit of a pine forest in summer. The Prioress had on a grey taffeta frock with a very rare lace, a white lace cap with streamers, and her old diamond eardrops and brooches. The heroic strength of soul of old women, Boris thought, who with great taste and trouble make themselves beautiful - more beautiful, perhaps, than they have ever been as young women - and who still can hold no hope of awakening any desire in the hearts of men, is like a righteous man working at his good deeds even after he has abandoned his faith in a heavenly reward. — Karen Blixen

In the days when the spinning wheels hummed busily in the farmhouses
and even great ladies, clothed in silk and thread lace, had their toy spinning wheels of polished oak
there might be seen, in districts far away among the lanes, or deep in the bosom of the hills, certain palled undersized men who, by the side of the brawny country-folk, looked like the remnants of a disinherited race. — George Eliot

My senses flood with feeling, so intense, and then I'm cradled in warmth. The heat stems from my hand and spreads through my body. I look down and lace my fingers through his.
He strokes my jawline, lifting my face to meet his emerald eyes-clear and vibrant-like time never passed between us. "You're home," he says, his voice stirring all my love.
"You're my home. — Trisha Wolfe

I realized it might be possible to do such a thing, run for money, trot for wages on piece work at a bob a puff rising bit by bit to a guinea a gasp and retiring through old age at thirty-two because of lace-curtain lungs, a football heart, and legs like varicose beanstalks. — Alan Sillitoe

She wore white heirloom lace about her throat
And in her hair a bright golden feather
A pearl like a plum hung ripe from her neck
But her smile fetched ten gold together — Shannon Hale

I decide to go out and spend all my money on underwear, then throw them about the room to
decide my fate like a satiny, lace-gusseted I Ching. Let the gods of Beau Bra decide. — Belle De Jour

I'm feeling better now," Darrak said. She stifled a scream and clamped her hands over her bare breasts. "Don't sneak up on me like that!"
"Did I interrupt something?" There was a short pause. "Oh, I see. Don't let me stop you from getting naked. Please, continue."
Eden scanned her reflection with wide eyes. Could she see the demon inside of her? Did she look possessed?" Nope. There was nothing noticeable. Other than the deep voice in her head only she could hear.
"This should be interesting." Darrak sounded amused. "As I said before, I've never shared living space with a woman before. I honestly never would have guessed black lace panties for you. But I do approve. — Michelle Rowen

She despised the sadness that hung inside her like old lace. — Sonya Hartnett

Ultimately, eventually, we let go. We do this not because we're ready. We do this not because we've mended. We do this not because we've mourned and come to terms and gotten over it and moved on. We never move on. We don't let go so much as lose our grip and fall because remembering is not enough..memory is imperfect. It is full of holes. It is more space than matter, like lace. It is at once sodden with sorrow and desiccated from lack of blood flow, the obvious result of a broken heart. It makes things up in hopeless attempts to comfort itself. It fills fissure with fantasy. It screws shut its eyes and balls up its fists and flings itself to the ground in a kicking, screaming, blind-rage temper tantrum against reality. But mostly,..memory keeps taking on more. — Laurie Frankel

It is often said that the invention of terrible weapons of destruction will put an end to war. That is an error. As the means of extermination are improved, the means of reducing men who hold the state conception of life to submission can be improved to correspond. They may slaughter them by thousands, by millions, they may tear them to pieces, still they will march to war like senseless cattle. Some will want beating to make them move, others will be proud to go if they are allowed to wear a scrap of ribbon or gold lace. — Leo Tolstoy

What can I do with my happiness? How can I keep it, conceal it, bury it where I may never lose it? I want to kneel as it falls over me like rain, gather it up with lace and silk, and press it over myself again. — Anais Nin

Doc bought a package of yellow pads and two dozen pencils. He laid them out on his desk, the pencils sharpened to needle points and lined up like yellow soldiers. At the top of a page he printed: OBSERVATIONS AND SPECULATIONS. His pencil point broke. He took up another and drew lace around the O and the B, made a block letter of the S and put fish hooks on each end. His ankle itched. He rolled down his sock and scratched, and that made his ear itch. "Someone's talking about me," he said and looked at the yellow pad. He wondered whether he had fed the cotton rats. It is easy to forget when you're thinking. — John Steinbeck

Darling Daddy,
This is Rose.
Very good news. Caddy is going to marry Micheal. In case you have forgotten because you have not been home for so long he is the one with the ponytail and the earring that you do not like. And Caddy says she will have a white lace dress and three bridesmaids, Saffron and Sarah and me, and a big party for everyone, all her old boyfriends too. Fireworks. A band. A big tent called a marquee. But where will we put it? Carriages with white horses for us all to go to the church. Afterward Caddy and Micheal will go for a holiday to Australia to visit the Great Barrier Reef. Caddy has it all worked out and Mummy says Yes She Can Of Course You Can Darling Of Course You Must Do That. Saffron said That Will Cost a Few Weeks Housekeeping and Mummy said Yes But We Do Not Need to Worry About That. DADDY WILL PAY.
Love, Rose. — Hilary McKay

Because he was closer to her here than in the office, and less shy than in the car, he could see clearly now what he'd only been able to guess at before: the texture of her skin was what had made him want to pull off her clothes the moment he'd seen her. It was like the surface of a flawless apricot or nectarine; it glowed; it needed to be taken and eaten. A small edge of white lace could be glimpsed just inside the V-neck of her dress, moving with each breath and quivering when she laughed, and that frivolous, unconscious touch of flirtation made him heavy with lust. — Richard Yates

She'd never seen a boy with hands like that, with long, delicate fingers, beautiful but still masculine. His fingernails were long too, almost crystalline, tapered to points. They were the kind of hands you'd expect to see under lace cuffs, like Mozart or something. — Kelly Creagh

Says the girl dressed up in formal Goth mourning," Shane said. "Seriously, who buys a black lace veil? You keep that on hand for special occasions, like prom and kid's birthdays? — Rachel Caine

Charlotte came in herself, like a big bridal edifice in her veil and other lace, carrying long-stemmed flowers. With her there wasn't much hiding of the behind-the-scenes of life to keep a man in the bonds of love, as Lucretius advises when he tells you to make allowances for mortality. You only had to see her practical mouth to know everything about mortality was admitted in advance, though she did for form's sake all that other women do. Her frankness gave her a kind of nobility. — Saul Bellow

Someone stole my shoelaces once from my shoes. I still wear them and never put laces in them - they're like my trademark shoes now! — Robert Pattinson

highway wildflowers swaying like the ocean. queen anne's lace like doilies for a tea party never attended. this is a conversation between two parts of yourself. the fever will break soon, but until then i'll be untangling you from the knots in my windblown hair. i smell like a wet forest, like long grass covered in sequins. i called your name but was drowned out by the thunder. i remember you murmuring, "please," while you took my shirt off. i remember you and the airy "please" when you pulled me toward you by my legs. i remember "pleeease" while i learned how to let go. i remember your divine "please." chanting it as if it'd draw a demon out of hiding. "please, please, please." and i screamed, "yes. — Taylor Rhodes

One clear night while the others slept, I climbed
the stairs to the roof of the house and under a sky
strewn with stars I gazed at the sea, at the spread of it,
the rolling crests of it raked by the wind, becoming
like bits of lace tossed in the air. I stood in the long
whispering night, waiting for something, a sign, the approach
of a distant light, and I imagined you coming closer,
the dark waves of your hair mingling with the sea,
and the dark became desire, and desire the arriving light.
The nearness, the momentary warmth of you as I stood
on that lonely height watching the slow swells of the sea
break on the shore and turn briefly into glass and disappear ...
Why did I believe you would come out of nowhere? Why with all
that the world offers would you come only because I was here? — Mark Strand

In Galapagos, as elsewhere, things of the mind, including intellectual ramifications from evolutionary theory, and things of the spirit, like the feeling one gets from a Queen Anne's lace of stars in the moonless Galapagean sky, struggle toward accommodation with an elementary desire for material comfort ... because so many regard this archipelago as preeminently a terrain of the mind and spirit, a locus of biological thought and psychological rejuvenation. The sheer strength of Darwin's insight into the development of biological life gently urges a visitor to be more than usually observant here- to notice, say, that while the thirteen Galapagean finches are all roughly the same hue, it is possible to separate them according to marked differences in the shapes of their bills and feeding habits. — Barry Lopez

Love, I've never been anyone's mother; I don't know how to talk to young or old. But don't stop smiling just because I flap my mouth and say something that's not dressed around the edges like a lace tablecloth. Thicken up and we'll get along fine. — Catherynne M Valente

She was standing with her thin arms lifted in a pose of crucifixion as the white satin gown with its myriad pearl buttons, tucks and pleats and ingenious lace trim, was fitted onto her like an exquisite straitjacket. Mrs. Littrell had insisted upon the corset, Ariah could scarcely breathe. I take thee Gilbert. My lawfully wedded husband. A sneeze would have shattered the corset, and the wedding. At police headquarters, the bride of the "fallen" man was clearly to blame. Ariah — Joyce Carol Oates

...I'd like to know what you want out of life."
"I don't know what I want anymore." I toyed with the delicate lace on my pillowcase, wishing that lovely things didn't have to be so fragile. — Anita Higman

I alight at Esplanade in a smell of roasting coffee and creosote and walk up Royal Street. The lower Quarter is the best part. The ironwork on the balconies sags like rotten lace. Little French cottages hide behind high walls. Through deep sweating carriageways one catches glimpses of courtyards gone to jungle. — Walker Percy

From the elevator, Mabel watched the old woman's bare feet hobbling away, a trail of salt and the lace hem of her nightgown left in her wake like sea foam. — Libba Bray

But now that so much is changing, isn't it time for us to change? Couldn't we try to gradually develop and slowly take upon ourselves, little by little, our part in the great task of love? We have been spared all its trouble, and that is why it has slipped in among our distractions, as a piece of real lace will sometimes fall into a child's toy-box and please him and no longer please him, and finally it lies there among the broken and dismembered toys, more wretched than any of them. We have been spoiled by superficial pleasures like dilettantes, and are looked upon as masters. But what if we despised our successes? What if we started from the very outset to learn the task of love, which has always been done for us? What if we went ahead and became beginners, now that much is changing? — Rainer Maria Rilke

Western Red Cedar bark and cones are distinct. The foliage is not coniferous ... the tree has flat intricate fronds that branch out like lace. It droops down, hanging fingers from each branch. In certain lights, it looks like a tree made of ferns. — Ned Hayes

Are you particularly attached to these? He fingered the lace around the crease where her thigh curved against the most intimate part of her.
"Wh-what?" Her hands dripped form his head to dig into the sheets.
He filed away her responsiveness when touched in that particular area. I'll take that as a no." Gipping hold of the front, he tore the fragile fabric off her body. The scraps fell away like mist. — Nalini Singh

What have you been doing to yourself? Your back is like concrete." That's not the only thing that's like concrete. — Katherine Lace

You don't have to signal a social conscience by looking like a frump. Lace knickers won't hasten the holocaust, you can ban the bomb in a feather boa just as well as without, and a mild interest in the length of hemlines doesn't necessarily disqualify you from reading Das Kapital and agreeing with every word. — Elizabeth Bibesco

I want to climb on top and lace my fingers right down into the marrow of your bones and cast off and fly. I want to sail you like a kite in the sky. I want you holding on to me for dear life. — Joanna Bourne

I love attention, I'm very honest about it ... [but] if I wanna wear a pink dress or a lace dress or a kilt of whatever, it's like I'm not solely doing it for attention, I'm doing it first for myself because it gives me pleasure. — Marc Jacobs

Always, just beyond all these things, was the silver sea, the lace border around all land like the silence around sounds or the unknowns beyond all knowledge. — Rebecca Solnit

The problem began with his telomeres. What is a telomere? Picture the little plastic bits on the end of your shoelaces. Imagine each time you tie your shoes, you have to clip off a little bit of that plastic part to get it to go through the lace holes. After you've done this enough times, the plastic tip is gone and the shoelace starts to unravel. Once the laces unravel enough, it's impossible to tie your shoes, and you walk around looking like a goober. — Scott Sigler

From inside his room Reacher heard the lawn chair scrape across the blacktop, but he paid no attention. Just a random nighttime sound, nothing dangerous, not a shotgun jacking a round, not the hiss of a blade on a sheath, nothing for his lizard brain to worry about. And the only non-lizard possibilities were a lace-up footstep on the sidewalk outside, and a knock on the door, because the woman from the railroad seemed like a person with a lot of questions, and also some kind of expectation they should be answered. Who are you and why have you come here? — Lee Child

A ghost curled like a blue snail inside her chest, and it was so tiny! It burned through the lace of her old-fashioned dress like a second heart. A musical staff wound in a thorny crown around the Spiritist's forehead, so that notes ran down her cheeks in a loose mask of song. Her eyelids were blacked out
and I saw this again and again in nightmares about my sister. Her eyelids had the polish of acorns. But her ears: that was the truly scary part. Great fantails of indigo and violet lights spiraled into her earlobes in an ethereal funnel
what the book called the Inverted Borealis. The caption read: 'A ghost sings its way deeply inside the Spiritist. — Karen Russell

Most Like an Arch This Marriage
Most like an arch - an entrance which upholds
and shores the stone-crush up the air like lace.
Mass made idea, and idea held in place.
A lock in time. Inside half-heaven unfolds.
Most like an arch - two weaknesses that lean
into a strength. Two fallings become firm.
Two joined abeyances become a term
naming the fact that teaches fact to mean.
Not quite that? Not much less. World as it is, what's strong and separate falters. All I do
at piling stone on stone apart from you
is roofless around nothing. Till we kiss
I am no more than upright and unset.
It is by falling in and in we make
the all-bearing point, for one another's sake,
in faultless failing, raised by our own weight. — John Ciardi

My fingers draw up her back and tangle into her hair. "They'll never separate us."
"Never," she repeats.
Our lips crush together, our bodies pressed tight. An inferno of lips and hands and movements that continues to grow in heat. The blanket falls away as Rachel slides her legs so that she straddles me. On the verge of burning up completely, I groan and cling to her small frame. Her hands drift under my shirt, leaving a singeing trail.
We've become a wildfire. Almost unstoppable. I kiss her neck and the beautiful sounds escaping her mouth encourage me further. My hands skim under her shirt, up her back, linger for seconds near her bra, and I gently nip her ear when I feel lace.
Images pour into my mind of what she'd look like with her shirt off, then her jeans. My fist traps strands of her hair. "I want you, Rachel."
And because I do, I kiss her fully on the mouth - nothing left to the imagination. Every fantasy becomes a reality with that one embrace. — Katie McGarry

Off come her skirts and petticoats, her lace cuffs and collar, her shoes and whalebone stay, until she lies on her side in nothing but a cotton shift and endless strands of pearls. Dust hangs in a crack of light between red velvet drapes, like stars.

Her dreams are glimpses, bewildered--celestial charts, oceanic swells, massive, moving bodies of water, the heavens as heavenly liquid, familiar whirlpools, the universe as a ship lost at sea--but the ship she imagines arrived safely, years ago, loaded with their possessions. — Danielle Dutton

I loved lingerie. I loved the feel of satin and silk on my skin. I loved the juxtaposition of wearing a pair of two-hundred-dollar lace panties under blue jeans, like the pair I was wearing at the moment. Lingerie was a personal statement that you didn't have to declare to the world. You could be as demure or as naughty as you wanted to be, and no one ever had to know unless you showed them ... or were injured in a serious car accident. — Molly Harper

Yes, when I get big and have my own home, no plush chairs and lace curtains for me. And no rubber plants. I'll have a desk like this in my parlor and white walls and a clean green blotter every Sunday night and a row of shining yellow pencils always sharpened for writing and a golden-brown bowl with a flower or some leaves or berries always in it and books ... books..books. — Betty Smith

Building a mechanical device for its appearance is like putting lace on a bowling ball. — Andrew Vachss

The mullein had finished blooming, and stood up out of the pastures like dusty candelabra. The flowers of Queen Anne's lace had curled up into birds' nests, and the bee balm was covered with little crown-shaped pods. In another month
no, two, maybe
would come the season of the skeletons, when all that was left of the weeds was their brittle architecture. But the time was not yet. The air was warm and bright, the grass was green, and the leaves, and the lazy monarch butterflies were everywhere. — Elizabeth Enright

High up on the branches, like so many of those tiny rose-trees, their pots concealed in jackets of paper lace, whose slender stems rise in a forest from the altar on the greater festivals, a thousand buds were swelling and opening, paler in colour, but each disclosing as it burst, as at the bottom of a cup of pink marble, its blood-red stain, and suggesting even more strongly than the full-blown flowers the special, irresistible quality of the hawthorn-tree, which, wherever it budded, wherever it was about to blossom, could bud and blossom in pink flowers alone. Taking — Marcel Proust

Want to wear scarlet velvet and slippers and lace gloves and ride in a stage instead of wearing calluses on my hands driving a team like a man. It is not her fault. She is right. The Lord looks on the inside, although people look on the outside. That man is measuring cloth — Nancy E. Turner

Liz?"
"Hmmm?"
"Why do you care about me?"
The question seems to startle me. It's uncharacteristic for Richie, who is usually so cool and self-assured. I open my eyes. "Why would you ask me that?"
"Because I don't understand. We're so different."
I reach around the side of his face. Once again, I wipe fresh beads of sweat from his forehead. This time, I don't even bother wiping my hands on my pants. I lace my fingers into his again, and the two of us lie together, his damp clamminess seeping onto my made up face and my pretty clothes. Obviously, I couldn't care less.
"But we fit," I whisper. "Like this." And I tighten my grip around him.
"Mmm." He smiles, his eyes still closed.
"You're right. We do."
"Richie ... I'm lying. I don't like you."
"You don't?" His voice cracks.
"No." I bring my lips close to his ear. "I love you Richie Wilson. — Jessica Warman

Clive, at moments like this, had a smile like the lace in an old-style football. Anyone could be forgiven for wanting to boot it. — Graham Joyce

Ser Jaime?" Even in soiled pink satin and torn lace, Brienne looked more like a man in a gown than a proper woman."I am grateful, but ... you were well away. Why come back?"
A dozen quips came to mind, each crueler than the one before, but Jaime only shrugged. "I dreamed of you," he said. — George R R Martin

Even the Inquisitor's eyebrows shot up when Magnus strode through the gate. The High Warlock was wearing black leather pants, a belt with a buckle in the shape of a jeweled M, and a cobalt-blue Prussian military jacket open over a white lace shirt. He shimmered with layers of glitter. His gaze rested for a moment on Alec's face with amusement and a hint of something else before moving on to Jace, prone on the ground.
"Is he dead?" he inquired. "He looks dead."
"No," snapped Maryse. "He's not dead."
"Have you checked? I could kick him if you want." Magnus moved toward Jace.
"Stop that!" the Inquisitor snapped, sounding like Clary's third-grade teacher demanding that she stop doodling on her desk with a marker. — Cassandra Clare

Just hold my fucking hand," Turner whispers against my ear, giving me goose bumps. "Just lace your fingers with mine and hold on like your life depends on it, like our pulse is dependent on this one, single connection. — C.M. Stunich

It was there that I wanted, out there somewhere, when I sat elbow-to-elbow with my giggling friends and let my thoughts swirl up and away from the three-mile radius of our small town lives. In my head, I careened out of town and across state lines, until the landscape became strange and unfamiliar. I wanted to see all of it. Everything. The vast expanses of the flat Midwest, miles of horizontal earth with the curving horizon at its end. Strange, stunted trees and driftwood skeletons on the lonely windswept beaches of the farthest coasts. Towering oaks hung thick with the gray lace of Spanish moss, looming like hovering parents over shaded southern dirt. The California sun, dipping and disappearing into the ocean, tipping the waves with orange light. — Kat Rosenfield

Morpheus's gaze flashes to mine, then back to the chess piece wrapped in his magic. "Stop crying," his quirky voice scolds. "Queens don't cry. I taught you better than that."
I bite my quivering lip, and tiny Alice strokes the caterpillar's face. "But you're crying ... "
Morpheus lowers a wing and shades his cheek along with the transparent glimmer of his jeweled markings. "Well" - his shrill voice cracks slightly - "contrary to my preferences for lace and velvet, I'm not the queen. So I can cry all I like. — A.G. Howard

I know some of you must be thinking, This is a preposterous and thinly veiled attempt to obscure the use of relaxers, weaves, and lace fronts. Trust me on this one: Unless she tells you otherwise herself, every black woman's hair, though it may change dramatically from day to day in ways that defy nature, is absolutely her God-given, though possibly magically altered, hair. White people: Do not broach this topic. It doesn't matter that you've seen the Chris Rock documentary Good Hair. Like your favorite movie Frozen suggests, "Let It Go. — Justin Simien

I've knitted myself a hat, it's plum red with an appealing lace pattern, I figured that a few air holes would be nice now that it's spring. I put it on and feel like a cranberry in the snow, and I wonder if they can see me from the moon. Me and the Great Wall. — Kjersti Annesdatter Skomsvold

She used to imagine her parents and happy endings she would never have. Now she envisioned torments that were all too real.
She pictured one of Cinderella's stepsisters planting her foot on a cutting board - and biting down hard as the cleaver chopped through the bone of her big toe.
She imagined a princess used to safety, luxury, throwing the rank hide of a donkey over her shoulders, its boneless face drooping past her forehead like a hideous veil.
And she imagined her future self, flat on her back in bed, limbs as heavy as if they'd been chained down. Mice scurried across her body, leaving footprints on her dress. Spiders spun an entire trousseau's worth of silk and draped her in it, so it appeared she wore a gown of the finest lace, adorned with rose petals and ensnared butterflies. Beetles nestled between her fingers like jeweled rings - lovely from a distance, horrific up close. — Sarah Cross

He walked to the exit, skirting the pools of vapor light purely out of habit, but he saw that the last lamp was unavoidable, because it was set directly above the exit gate. So he saved himself a further perimeter diversion by walking through the next-to-last pool of light, too. At which point a woman stepped out of the shadows. She came toward him with a distinctive burst of energy, two fast paces, eager, like she was pleased to see him. Her body language was all about relief. Then it wasn't. Then it was all about disappointment. She stopped dead, and she said, "Oh." She was Asian. But not petite. Five-nine, maybe, or even five-ten. And built to match. Not a bone in sight. No kind of a willowy waif. She was about forty, Reacher guessed, with black hair worn long, jeans and a T-shirt under a short cotton coat. She had lace-up shoes on her feet. He said, "Good evening, ma'am." She was looking past his shoulder. He said, "I'm the only passenger. — Lee Child

There were vases of silk roses carefully centered on crocheted doilies, figurines of puppies carrying roses in their mouths on lace doilies, and delicate rose-covered tea sets placed on paper doilies. And that was just the start of it. It all had a really old feel to it as well, like I'd been transported back to the 1890s.
Adrian stood behind us, just outside the door, and I was pretty sure I heard him mutter, Needs more rabbits. — Richelle Mead

Cheyenne. Created from the finest Belgian lace over ivory sateen, it fit Anna like — Maggie Brendan

He had given Cosette a dress of Binche lace that had come down to him from his own grandmother. "These fashions have come round again," he said, "old things are all the rage, and the young women of my old age dress like the old women of my childhood, — Victor Hugo

NIGHT 1: LEXI

Lexi arrives at eleven o'clock wearing a black lace dress that is both sexy and modest at the same time. It comes to just above her knees and the v-neckline reveals a hint of her small, round breasts. She's wearing black stockings and short heels, and I'm curious to see if she's wearing a garter belt under there. Her thick brown hair falls to her shoulders and her large brown eyes make her look innocent and doe-like.

"Come in," I say opening the door wide and stepping aside. Lexi hesitates for a second then comes in, looking around at our small studio apartment. The room is dimly lit by shaded lamps, letting most of the light come in through the uncurtained windows. I can see the full moon framed against one pane. In the center of the room is our four-poster king sized bed. Eric is lying on the red silk sheets. — Marketa Giavonni

There is a fable in the forest
Whispered by the branches, as they blow.
A tale about the truth of leaving
Things that no longer help you grow.
For on the surface it looks simple,
Like you only need lace your boots,
But there is nothing quite as painful
As untangling your roots.
And proof is found in tree stumps
Of the price some pay to flee,
That they would cut their lives in half
To cut the time before they're free.
Yet from the little left behind
Life has been known to grow again,
For unless you take your roots
A part of you will still remain. — Erin Hanson

Shannon looked at the dumpy ruins around her. It was expansive and disgusting, but like a dog dump with a lace doily draped over it, there was beauty to be found — Debra Anastasia

I like The Eiffel Tower because it looks like steel and lace. — Natalie Lloyd

To grapple effectually with even purely material problems requires more serenity of mind and more lofty courage than people generally imagine. No two beings could have been more unfitted for such a struggle. Society, not from any tenderness, but because of its strange needs, had taken care of those two men, forbidding them all independent thought, all initiative, all departure from routine; and forbidding it under pain of death. They could only live on condition of being machines. And now, released from the fostering care of men with pens behind the ears, or of men with gold lace on the sleeves, they were like those lifelong prisoners who, liberated after many years, do not know what use to make of their freedom. They did not know what use to make of their faculties, being both, through want of practice, incapable of independent thought. — Joseph Conrad