Shawl Quotes & Sayings

I live a mad, abandoned life, draped in a shawl and going from garret to garret. — Shirley Jackson

When his flock thronged into the midnight service, there was wonder on every face at the newly hung greens and the softly flickering candles on each windowsill. To the simple beauty of the historic church was added fresh, green hope, the lush scent of flowers in winter, and candle flame that cast its flickering shadows over the congregation like a shawl. — Jan Karon

I don't just use yarn from a store. I buy old sweaters from consignment shops. The older the better, and unravel them. There are countries of women in this scarf/shawl/blanket. Soon it will be big enough to keep me warm. — Laurie Halse Anderson

Beauty is frightening," they will tell you -

Lazily you will arrange

A Spanish shawl on your shoulders,

A red rose in your hair.


"Beauty is simple," they will tell you -

Clumsily with a motley shawl

You will cover a child up,

A red rose on the floor.


But, distractedly heeding

All the words sounding around you,

Sadly lost in thought

You will say about yourself:


'I am neither frightening nor simple;

I am not so frightening, that I would simply

Kill; I am not so simple

That I do not know how frightening life is.'

("For Anna Akhmatova") — Alexander Blok

The Harelip had taken off her heavy shawl and draped it over a headstone. The grave was tilted and covered with moss, the name worn away by the weather. The person underneath had been forgotten and was no longer mourned by the world. But for a moment, Ren thought, the small black slate looked warmed, and grateful for being chosen. — Hannah Tinti

A bran' new book is a beautiful thing, all promise and fresh pages, the neatly squared spine, the brisk sense of a journey beginning. But a well-worn book also has its pleasures, the soft caress and give of the paper's edges, the comfort, like an old shawl, of an oft-read story. — Lewis Buzbee

... in the relentless and meaningless manner one searches for something in a nightmare, coming on doors that won't open or drawers that won't shut, struggling over and over against the same meaningless thing, not knowing why the effort seems so desperate, why the sudden sight of a chair with a shawl thrown over it inspires the mind with horror.
— Anne Rice

I let you sleep, Sam," said Lady Sybil. "You didn't get in this morning until after three."
"Everyone's double-shifting, dear," said Sam, daring Carrot and Sally to even think about telling anyone they'd seen the boss wearing a blue shawl covered in ducks. "I've got to set a good example."
"I'm sure you intend to, Sam, but you look like a horrible warning," said Sybil. — Terry Pratchett

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

We collected all the bones we could find, and yesterday, Natividad wrapped them in a shawl that she had knitted years ago. It was the most beautiful thing she owned.
"A thing like that should serve the living," Bankole said when she offered it.
"You are living," Natividad said. "I like you. I wish I could have met your sister. — Octavia E. Butler

I watched the land for as long as I could, until it disappeared behind its shawl of mist, and until I had it fixed in my mind - unchanged, mysterious and beautiful — Aimee Friedman

Genya would have to keep her face hidden, but she didn't seem to mind. She'd wrapped her shawl around her head and declared, 'I shall be a woman of mystery.' I reminded her not to be too intriguing. — Leigh Bardugo

The brilliant sunshine lay like a golden shawl over the rich mountain city that morning my train set me down for the first time in my life in young Denver. The names of strange railroads incited me from the sides of locomotives at the depot. As I passed up 17th Street a babble of voices from the doors of clothing stores, auction houses and pawn broker shops coaxed and flattered me with 'Sir' and 'Young Gentleman'. There was something in the streets I walked that morning, in the costly dress of the ladies in passing carriages, in the very air that swept down from the mountains, something lavish, dashing and sparkling, like Lutie Brewton herself, and I thought I began to understand a little of her fever for this prodigal place that was growing by leaps and bounds. — Conrad Richter

I've got to get out of here. I choose a piece of shawl and my dirtiest suntans. I'll be back, I'll re-emerge, defeated, from the valley; you don't want me to go where you go, so I go where you don't want me to. — Frank O'Hara

Tea would arrive, the cakes squatting on cushions of cream, toast in a melting shawl of butter, cups agleam and a faint wisp of steam rising from the teapot shawl. — Gerald Durrell

Be nobody's darling;
Be an outcast.
Take the contradictions
Of your life
And wrap around
You like a shawl,
To parry stones
To keep you warm. — Alice Walker

I am your moon and your moonlight too
I am your flower garden and your water too
I have come all this way, eager for you
Without shoes or shawl
I want you to laugh
To kill all your worries
To love you
To nourish you. — Rumi

My favorite style, though, is the way you were wearing it earlier when you had it draped across both of your arms loosely. That way, I get the full effect of your exquisite hair tumbling down your back."
Wrapping the filmy fabric around my shoulders, he pulled the shawl and gently tugged me closer. He reached out, captured a curl, and wrapped the hair around his finger.
"This life is so different from what I know. So many things have changed." He let go of the shawl, but he kept hold of the curl. "But some things are much, much better." He let go of the curl, trailing a finger down my cheek, and gave me a little nudge back toward my room.
"Goodnight, Kelsey. We have a busy day tomorrow. — Colleen Houck

The baby closed its mouth, staring at him with hope and small hiccups.
"Jesus," he said. He lay down on the bed, pulling the pillow under his head, and drew the whole bundle of coat, shawl and infant up against his shirt. A tiny hand closed tight on the lace. One sob erupted, and then changed midbreath to a soft sigh.
Women, he thought sardonically, sinking in the bedclothes, with sleep revolving and closing in his head. He moved one finger, feeling a cheek as soft as down.
What's your name?
Ask the girl. Remember that ...
Maddy ...
It was wrong. I must leave thee now.
Don't cry. Don't cry, little girl ... I'm so tired. I never deserved you, did I? Maddy ... but I loved you.
I always loved you. — Laura Kinsale

I thought he was talking about my grandmother. I didn't want to see her. I knew she had died - of thirst, maybe - and I was afraid she wouldn't be as I remembered her. I was afraid she wouldn't have the black shawl on her head, nor those burning tears in her eyes, nor that clear, calm expression that could make you forget you were cold. — Elie Wiesel

I would play ball with Catherine, and hide and seek: Not a very challenging game in an open meadow, but she was still at the age where she believed that if she shut her eyes and buried her head under a shawl then she could not be seen. — Philippa Gregory

Galen stowed the goblets behind a curtain and walked up to twitch the hem of Rose's shawl. She gasped and looked around.
"Hello," Galen said in a low voice. "Would you like to dance?"
"So you're Pansy's good spirit?"
"I am."
"Your voice sounds familiar." Her eyes sparkled. "Could you pretend to snore, so that I could make sure? — Jessica Day George

Lincoln prevailed: wearing his green shawl in the White House and gripped with melancholy, his feet constantly cold, he preserved a nation that had begun to unravel, often holding it together with nothing more than the flat of his hand and his unfaltering sense of human worth. — Jerome Charyn

Hoffland, as it was called, was, next to Moda Polska (simply "Polish Fashion") one of the rare examples of the quasi-private, though officially nationalized fashion companies in Poland. Both have survived communism, and Hoff kept designing well into the 90s. You could be sure, that if Hoff wrote about a new style for wearing a shawl in her column, the same afternoon there would already be dozens of girls on the streets trying to copy this style. Her flagship idea was blackening the "coffin shoes" (i.e. light, paper shoes, used as footwear for the deceased) which when colored black could pass as elegant "ballerinas". — Agata Pyzik

Today at the Melchor market, a fantastical sight. A servant girl with a birdcage on her back, full of birds. She wore her blue shawl wrapped around the cage and tied in front to hold it. The willow cage must have been very light because she was not bent over, yet it towered over her head, with turrets like a Japanese pagoda. And full of birds: green and yellow, flapping about like dreams trying to escape from a skull. — Barbara Kingsolver

Amid the scattered property and the crowd on the open space, she in her rich satin cloak with a bright lilac shawl on her head suggested a delicate exotic plant thrown out onto the snow. She — Leo Tolstoy

It's damp outside, and I'm always cold. Most days I wear a cap and shawl indoors."
"I could suggest other methods to keep yourself warm. — Lisa Kleypas

Get it off," she said, jerking their bound wrists up and holding them up under his nose.
"I thought perhaps we might at least introduce ourselves," he said lightly.
"Get it off!"
"What shall I call you?" he asked as he pulled her to the table and removed the silver dome on the platter. Mutton stew, by the smell of it. Not a single knife to be had. "Lover?"
"Rest assured you'll never need to call me anything at all!" she said with admirable conviction.
"You may reduce your rancor and save it for when you might need it," he said calmly. "I am as enchanted by this arrangement as you are. May I remove your brooch?"
"Pardon?"
"Your brooch," he said, looking at the small gold ring-shaped brooch that held her shawl on her shoulder.
Her eyes narrowed.
Jack knew that look and gestured to their wrists. "Rein in your thoughts, lass. I need something to get it off. — Julia London

You, my delightful Irish friend, terrify me," Gabriel said, and pulled the blanket over his head like a shawl. "You look like you've just stepped off the catwalk, you've got the stare of a serial killer, and you're clearly one of the hardest bastards I've ever met. Basically, I'm terribly keen to ensure that I'm never on your wrong side for the remained of my existence-will that do for now, you fucking sociopath? — Tabitha McGowan

Recuerdo
We were very tired, we were very merry
We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry.
It was bare and bright, and smelled like a stable
But we looked into a fire, we leaned across a table,
We lay on a hill-top underneath the moon;
And the whistles kept blowing, and the dawn came soon.
We were very tired, we were very merry
We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry;
And you ate an apple, and I ate a pear,
From a dozen of each we had bought somewhere;
And the sky went wan, and the wind came cold,
And the sun rose dripping, a bucketful of gold.
We were very tired, we were very merry,
We had gone back and forth all night on the ferry.
We hailed "Good morrow, mother!" to a shawl-covered head,
And bought a morning paper, which neither of us read;
And she wept, "God bless you!" for the apples and pears,
And we gave her all our money but our subway fares. — Edna St. Vincent Millay

I whispered to Dad during Rosh Hashanah services, "Do you believe in God?"
"Not really," he said. "No."
"Then why do we come here?"
He sucked thoughfully on his Tums tablet and put his arm around me, draping me under his musty woolen prayer shawl, and then shrugged. "I've been wrong before," he said.
And that pretty much summed up what theology there was to find in the Foxman home. — Jonathan Tropper

Do you believe in God?" "Not really," he said. "No." "Then why do we come here?" He sucked thoughtfully on his Tums tablet and put his arm around me, draping me under his musty woolen prayer shawl, and then shrugged. "I've been wrong before," he said. — Jonathan Tropper

The lunatic fringe is more like a Spanish shawl, where the fringe makes up the entire garment. — Aldous Huxley

Alice laughed. 'There's no use trying,' she said. 'One can't believe impossible things.'
I daresay you haven't had much practice,' said the Queen. 'When I was your age, I always did it for half-an-hour a day. Why, sometimes I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast. There goes the shawl again! — Lewis Carroll

Everybody tells me that they would love to knit, but they don't have time. I look at people's lives and I can see opportunity and time for knitting all over the place. The time spent riding the bus each day? That's a pair of socks over a month. Waiting in line? Mittens. Watching TV? Buckets of wasted time that could be an exquisite lace shawl. — Stephanie Pearl-McPhee

Caroline closed her eyes and took a deep breath. Standing on the foredeck of the merchant vessel The Dreamer, the misty salt air bit at her skin and caused her to clutch her shawl more firmly around her. She'd left the warmth and comfort of her cabin to find a reprieve from thoughts of Jack, but it was impossible. Beneath the smell of the ocean she could still detect his evocative masculine scent, a scent that heated her blood and made forgetting him impossible. — Sylvia Day

I would revisit them all in the long course of my waking dream: rooms in winter, where on going to bed I would at once bury my head in a nest, built up out of the most diverse materials, the corner of my pillow, the top of my blankets, a piece of a shawl, the edge of my bed, and a copy of an evening paper, all of which things I would contrive, with the infinite patience of birds building their nests, to cement into one whole; rooms where, in a keen frost, I would feel the satisfaction of being shut in from the outer world (like the sea-swallow which builds at the end of a dark tunnel and is kept warm by the surrounding earth), and where, the fire keeping in all night, I would sleep wrapped up. — Marcel Proust

The Blessing
Heads are covered by the Tallit, or prayer shawl; hands are extended out with the fingers splayed to form the shape of the letter Shin, the first letter in the word Shaddai, a name for the Almighty. The chant, in Hebrew, is loud and ecstatic: "May the Lord bless and keep you."
The Shekhina is summoned; the feminine essence of God. She enters the sanctuary to bless the congregation. The very sight of her, the awesome light emanating from the Shekhina, is dangerous to behold. — Leonard Nimoy

If the mitred bishops seen you that time, they'd be the like of the holy prophets, I'm thinking, do be straining the bars of Paradise to lay eyes on the Lady Helen of Troy, and she abroad, pacing back and forward, with a nosegay in her golden shawl. — J.M. Synge

In those hours when the night is still dark and cold, we see Alokananda waking up to the faint sound of stifled sobs. The sheets besides her are creaseless, sleepless. She gets up silently, her body: blank, a patchwork of frugal impulses. She gathers the warmth of her Pashmina shawl around her, the shawl that she knows still hides threads from a shirt or two of his: remnants of embraces, once feisty and long forgotten.'
('Left from Dhakeshwari') — Kunal Sen

I crave a shawl."
He was tense with anger but his hands remained gentle at her waist. He said, "I can make you a shawl."
She cocked her head. "You knit? Well. That's an unusual accomplishment in a soldier. — Laini Taylor

Just bring in the wood before she asks for it, and bring her a flower every time you come back from the field. If it's cold put a shawl around her shoulders, and if it's hot, bring her a glass of water. It's simple. Women only nag when they feel unappreciated. Think of her as your mother who has fallen ill, and treat her accordingly.'(43) — Louis De Bernieres

Margaret stood all alone at her first witch-burning. She had on her new blue cap and her sister's shawl, and she stood by herself, waiting. She had long ago given up on finding her sister and brother-in-law in the crowd, and was now content to watch alone. She felt a very pleasant fear and a crying excitement over the burning; she had lived all her life in the country and now, staying with her sister in the city, she was being introduced to the customs of society. — Shirley Jackson

At the far end of the library, a number of men had gathered into a tight, jostling ring around a very pretty, very young woman who was talking at what must have been the top of her lungs. Joe could not really understand what she was telling them, but it appeared to be a story that reflected poorly on her own judgment - she was blushing and grinning at the same time - and it unquestionably ended with the word "fuck." She tugged on the word, drawing it out to several times its usual length. She wound it all the way around her in two or three big loops and reveled in it as if it were a luxuriant shawl. — Michael Chabon

Madame was in her room upstairs. She wore an open dressing gown that showed between the shawl facings of her bodice a pleated chamisette with three gold buttons. Her belt was a corded girdle with great tassels, and her small garnet coloured slippers had a large knot of ribbon that fell over her instep. She had bought herself a blotting book, writing case, pen-holder, and envelopes, although she had no one to write to; she dusted her what-not, looked at herself in the glass, picked up a book, and then, dreaming between the lines, let it drop on her knees. She longed to travel or to go back to her convent. She wished at the same time to die and to live in Paris. — Gustave Flaubert

Christmas Eve was a night of song that wrapped itself about you like a shawl. But it warmed more than your body. It warmed your heart ... filled it, too, with melody that would last forever. — Bess Streeter Aldrich

Love isn't a feeling; it's an attitude, it's actions. Like buying him the prayer shawl. Whether you feel anything or not, just do the loving thing. — Lynn Austin

My eldest daughter, Suldana, is in love with another woman. She is eighteen and she spends her days working at our kiosk selling milk and eggs, and at night she sneaks out and goes down to the beach to see her lover. She crawls back into bed at dawn, smelling of sea and salt and perfume. Suldana is beautiful and she wraps this beauty around herself like a shawl of stars. When she smiles her dimples deepen and you can't help but be charmed. When she walks down the street men stare and whistle and ache. But they cannot have her. Every day marriage proposals arrive with offers of high dowries but I wave them away. We never talk about these things like mothers and daughters should; but I respect her privacy and I allow her to live. — Diriye Osman

Given good yarn, good workmanship, and good care, a knitted shawl and outlive its knitter, providing warmth and pleasure to several generations of family and friends. — Martha Waterman

Miss Clover," said Minister Fairweller to the Viscount after a long moment, "is not here. She has gone to a speech with her father, in Werttemberg. I could set you up with a carriage, if you'd like."
The girls' mouths dropped open. Viscount Duquette did not see.
"Well!" he said,clicking his heels together. "It is nice to see that someone behaves like a gentleman around here!"
The girls found Clover about an hour later, hidinga mong the untrimmed unicorn and lion topiaries, weeping on a stone bench. They flocked to her, wrapped an extra shawl around her shoulders, and told her the story.
"Werttemberg, though," said Eve. That's two countries away!"
Clover wept and laughed at the same time. — Heather Dixon

I played competitive golf all my life. Then all of a sudden, when I quit playing the game, I've got all this spare time and this energy. And certainly I wasn't ready to pack up my bags and go sit in front of the television with a shawl on. — Jack Nicklaus

He thrust his hands into the pool, his fingers brushing the soft skin of her cheek. He grasped at her, clawing with his fingers and pulling like his life depended on it. Finally, he managed to grab her shawl. The girl flailed out with her arm and it touched his hand.
"No! I'm not letting you go!"
Now the girl's face was above the swirling darkness. She gasped for breath, half drowned. The fear on her face sent a fresh jolt of energy through Ico. 'I've got to save her! — Miyuki Miyabe

There was a little padded seat beside the rattling panes and mouldy sand-bags, it was the coldest place in the room; but she kept there for an hour and a half, with a shawl about her, shivering, squinting at her stitches, and sneaking sly little glances at the road to the house.
I thought, if that wasn't love, then I was a Dutchman; and if it was love, then lovers were pigeons and geese, and I was glad I was not one of them. — Sarah Waters

What is a man! What is a man but mended cloth, hastily worn and discarded? ... What makes a man? What makes a hero, Shomer? Is it simply to live when there is nothing left to live for, when all you knew and loved is gone? Is it, simply, to survive? For like the threads of an intricate shawl, we have been pulled at and torn, Shomer. We have been unravelled. — Lavie Tidhar

He turned and saw her. Ah! She was lovely, lovelier now than ever he thought. But he could not speak to her. He could not interrupt her. He wanted urgently to speak to her now that ames was gone and she was alone at last. But he resolved, no; he would not interrupt her. She was aloof from him now in her beauty, in her sadness. He would let her be, and he passed her without a word, though it hurt him that she should look so distant, and he could not reach her, he could do nothing to help her. And again he would have passed her without a word had she not, at that very moment given him of her own free will what she knew he would never ask, and called to him and taken the green shawl off the picture frame, and gone to him. For he wished, she knew, to protect her. — Virginia Woolf

Is that any way to talk to your betrothed?" His syrupy voice set her skin to itching. Eden gathered her shawl a bit more tightly about her. "I'm not your betrothed, Sheriff. I refused your proposal three weeks ago." "And nearly busted my heart in the process, but I forgive you. — Karen Witemeyer

A half finished shawl left on the coffee table isn't a mess; it's an object of art. — Stephanie Pearl-McPhee

A commission of haberdashers could alone have reported what
the rest of her poor dress was made of, but it had a strong general
resemblance to seaweed, with here and there a gigantic tea-leaf.
Her shawl looked particularly like a tea-leaf after long infusion. — Charles Dickens

She was beautiful, standing there in her petticoat and shawl. She fetched a cup for him and waited while he drank, her poise keeping time at her neck, her feet bare on the earth floor. He imagined her taking him inside the cottage, lying on the bed. Giving her pleasure in the darkness. Spilling things he had seen into her ear. How the beauty of life and the world struck him like a fever sometimes, but how it was all mixed up and mangled with the hate. But he said and did none of those things, only, when he had drunk down the milk, handed the cup back, thanked her, and walked on. — Anna Hope

Her hair was longer than it used to be, and it veiled her shoulders like a shawl. She used it for protection. If there was one thing Sydney knew, it was hair. She loved beauty school and loved working in the salon in Boise. Hair said more about people than they knew, and Sydney understood the language naturally. — Sarah Addison Allen

Past him was Trent, a tired look on his face. Holding my borrowed shawl close, I watched Jonathan as I slid out. "Why, thank you, Jon," I said brightly, "you freaking bastard."

Trent ducked his head, hiding a smile. — Kim Harrison

Seated opposite me in the railway carriage, the elderly lady in the fox-fur shawl was recalling some of the murders that she had committed over the years. — John Boyne

A common pickpocket trick is for the operator to carry a shawl or overcoat carelessly over the left arm, and to take a seat on the right side of the person they intend to rob in a streetcar or other vehicle. — Harry Houdini

I'm afraid to look in the mirror. I'm afraid I'm going to see an old lady with white hair, just like the old ladies in the park. Alittle bundle in a black shawl just waiting for the coffin. — Paddy Chayefsky

A century ago she might have been beautiful, her face reflected in the river instead of a mirror. But all the years have changed more than the shape of our blood and eyes. We wear fear now like a turquoise choker, like a familiar shawl. — Sherman Alexie

Beauty is startling. She wears a gold shawl in the summer and sells seven kinds of honey at the flea market. She is young and old at once, my daughter and my grandmother. In school she excelled in mathematics and poetry ... Beauty will dance with anyone who is brave enough to ask her. — J. Ruth Gendler

When I was a child, I was always nicking my mum's jewellery to wear, and I loved to drape a massive Chinese shawl around me from our fancy-dress box. I was obsessed with a feather and rabbit-fur collar from the age of three and attempted to make one with my friend, whose father was a gamekeeper. — Alice Temperley

I need to finish this scarf/shawl/blanket thing so I can start something for Emma- a hat, maybe, or a sweater for her stuffed elephant. — Laurie Halse Anderson

I got a fur shawl once. I was so disgusted! And I couldn't re-gift it. I don't know anyone who'd want fur. — Jennie Garth

But I couldn't think it more hateful of them to have taken my fur tippet. Burglars never seem to realize one might feel the cold. How would they like it if I took away their wife's shawl? — Nancy Mitford

His landlady came to the door, loosely wrapped in dressing gown and shawl; her husband followed ejaculating. — Mary Shelley

She searched his face. "Why did you do this
go to all this trouble, indulge in what I'm sure will prove a shockingly hideous expense?
He returned he gaze steadily "You like music."
It was that simple
he let her read the truth in his eyes. Then she shivered. He reached for the shawl she'd left over her chair and held it up. She hesitated, then turned so he could drape it over her shoulders. Releasing the fine silk, he closed his hands about her shoulders; leaning closer, he murmured, "As with other pleasures, my reward is your delight. — Stephanie Laurens

Rakhi likes the comfortable clutter of her life, the things she loves gathered around her like a shawl against the winterliness of the world. — Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

crowded about the four sides of the green to watch and cheer. Viola had set out from home early in the morning looking ladylike and elegant in a muslin dress and shawl and straw bonnet, her hair in a neatly braided coronet about her head beneath it. She had even been wearing gloves. But she had long ago discarded all the accessories. Even her hair, slipping stubbornly out of its pins during the busy morning of rushing hither and yon, had been allowed finally to hang loose in a long braid down — Mary Balogh

There was Isola in a mad hat and a purple shawl pinned with a glittering brooch. She was smiling fixedly in the wrong direction and I loved her instantly. — Mary Ann Shaffer

She watched the moon, whose radiance stained with primrose the purple of the surrounding sky. In England the moon had seemed dead and alien; here she was caught in the shawl of night together with earth and all the other stars. — E. M. Forster

I adore the sky wearing rainbow shawl of love for the birds so that they could fly free in warmth after the storm — Munia Khan

Salome dipped an end of the blue shawl into the creek water, wrung it out, and walked back to Margaret. "Lift up yo' skirt. We — Francine Thomas Howard

Some of my favorite places I have been in my life exist only in dreams. — Nisi Shawl

Last night I dreamed about her," he said. "She had this shawl wrapped around her shoulders with tassels hanging off it, and her hair was long like old times. She said, 'Red, I want to learn every step of you, and dance till the end of the night.' " He stopped speaking. He pulled a handkerchief from his pocket and blew his nose. Denny and Stem stood with a screen balanced between them and looked at each other helplessly.

"Then I woke up," Red said after a minute. He stuffed the handkerchief back in his pocket. "I thought, 'This must mean I miss having her close attention, the way I've always been used to.' Then I woke up again, for real. Have either of you ever done that? Dreamed that you woke up, and then found you'd still been asleep? I woke up for real and I thought, 'Oh, boy. I see I've still got a long way to go with this.' Seems I haven't quite gotten over it, you know? — Anne Tyler

It was always a mistake to choose a pillow-friend who did not wear the shawl. Especially if you were fool enough to let her take the lead. — Robert Jordan

Hortensia set the tray down and brought a shawl and wrapped it protectively around Mama's shoulders. Esperanza couldn't remember a time when Hortensia had not taken care of them. She was a Zapotec Indian from Oaxaca, with a short, solid figure and blue-black hair in a braid down her back. Esperanza watched the two women look out into the dark and couldn't help but think that Hortensia was almost the opposite of Mama. — Pam Munoz Ryan

Rose Marie, wrapped in a wool shawl, was sitting on a lounge chair, smoking a cigarette; nicotine gum, she said, was for pussies. She was a short woman, going to weight, with an ever-changing hair color. — John Sandford

Months later, when we went on our first date, I tried to seem put together, I wore a shawl she had given me. And her ring. I thought everything was behind me: death, and dying, and sickness. I didn't know I was changing my life - that I would have done anything, that what was left of me would become so ruthless to survive. — Ada Limon

May I have this damaged bunch for two cents? Speak strongly and it shall be yours for two cents. That is a saved penny that you put in the star bank ... Suffer the cold for an hour. Put a shawl around you. Sai, I am cold because I am saving to buy land. That hour will save you three cents' worth of coal ... When you are alone at night, do not light the lamp. Sit in the darkness and dream awhile. Reckon out how much oil you saved and put its value in pennies in the bank. The money will grow. Someday there will be fifty dollars and somewhere on this long island is a piece of land that you may buy for that money. — Betty Smith

Well," he said, "I think we've found our way in. We just wait until they're duking it out, but trust me, these Humans First types don't have a lot of staying power or they'd have been at the gym with me before. I doubt Grandma Kent there is going to do a lot of damage." He pointed at a gray-haired, hunched lady in a shawl, carrying what looked liked a gardening tool. "It's like Plants Versus Zombies, and I'm not rooting for the zombies, weirdly enough. — Rachel Caine

Teeth of winter, sinking into my flesh, my own clacking against each other like knitting needles, and I wish they'd knit a heavy shawl around my shoulders before widening into a yawn. Why do I always yawn when I'm cold? — Karen Elizabeth Gordon

My poor life This shawl Frayed on strongboxes full of gold I roll along with Dream And smoke And the only flame in the universe — Blaise Cendrars

Prayer Against the Darkness
Shekhina
Pray for us now
bound with scripture
and shielded with shawl
Armed with passion
and loving care
Pray for us now
against suffering, turmoil, and injustice
Pray for us now
against the chaos of the dark. — Leonard Nimoy

The love of God. The mercy of God. The judgment of God. You take the shoes off your feet and stand as you would before a mountain or at the edge of the sea. But the friendship of God? It is not something God does. It is something Abraham and God, or Moses and God, do together. Not even God can be a friend all by himself apparently. You see Abraham, say, not standing at all but sitting down, loosening his prayer shawl, trimming the end off his cigar. He is not being Creature for the moment, and God is not being Creator. There is no agenda. They are simply being together, the two of them, and being themselves. — Frederick Buechner

Sculpting them in a drizzle shawl,
I would have have weaved your dreams
in my distinct eyes;
I would have taken your cheeks,
and decorated them with full moon sights,
writing verses with starry eyes;
I would have invented diction suiting
your stammering tongue,
writing stories about your happy childhood;
I would have traveled beside western winds,
bringing roses from far lands, from Samarkand,
from the rose gardens touching Turkish valleys,
from mountains smelling of Azerbaijan.
I would have portrayed you a an honest mother,
buying your children a happy house, a giant sky;
I would have made orchards of your ripe smiles,
tending rains and sunlight into their broad borders;
Ah, I would have sown your braided hair
into almonds, saffron and homegrown walnuts,
into tufts of a lifelong breeze. — Ashfaq Saraf

With a squeak she flaps her bat shawl and runs. A burly rough pursues with booted strides. He stumbles on the steps, recovers, plunges into gloom. Weak squeaks of laughter are heard, weaker.)_ THE BAWD: _(Her wolfeyes shining)_ — James Joyce

She has big searching eyes that see the good in people despite the evil she has seen, and she has a comforting kind of eternal beauty, her skin like the folds of a velvet shawl. Her — Isabel Wilkerson

Lily was listening; Mrs. Ramsay was listening; they were all listening. But already bored, Lily felt that something was lacking; Mr. Bankes felt that something was lacking. Pulling her shawl round her Mrs. Ramsay felt that something was lacking. All of them bending themselves to listen thought, "Pray heaven that the inside of my mind may not be exposed," for each thought, "The others are feeling this. They are outraged and indignant with the government about the fishermen. Whereas, I feel nothing at all. — Virginia Woolf

They wondered at her bruised and mysterious court: the raven-haired Squaller with her sharp tongue, the Ruined One with her black prayer shawl and hideous scars, the pale scholar who huddled away with his books and strange instruments. These were the sorry remnants of the Second Army - unfit company for a Saint. — Leigh Bardugo

According to my file, I was abandoned on the steps of the children's home in Telbury with a birth certificate tucked inside the shawl. The certificate stated my name, date of birth, and place of birth - which was Aldabury Maternity Hospital - and my birth mother's name and address. All I have is my first name and date and place of birth. Everything else regarding my birth mother on the certificate seems to be false. — Lorna Peel

Leave me in Granada in the middle of paradise where my soul wells with poetry;
Leave me until my time comes and I may intone a fitting song.
Yes, I want my memorial stone in this land.
Granada! Holy place of the glory of Spain,
Your mountains are the white tents of pavilions,
Your walls are the circle of a vase of flowers,
Your plain a Moorish shawl embroidered with colour,
Your towers are palm trees that imprison you — Jose Zorrilla

Clara Morrow had painted Ruth as the elderly, forgotten Virgin Mary. Angry, demented, the Ruth in the portrait was full of despair, of bitterness. Of a life left behind, of opportunities squandered, of loss and betrayals real and imagined and created and caused. She clutched at a rough blue shawl with emaciated hands. The shawl had slipped off one bony shoulder and the skin was sagging, like something nailed up and empty.
And yet the portrait was radiant, filling the room from one tiny point of light. In her eyes. Embittered, mad Ruth stared into the distance, at something very far off, approaching. More imagined than real.
Hope.
Clara had captured the moment despair turned to hope. The moment life began. She'd somehow captured Grace. — Louise Penny

Accepted - and treasured." "Treasured?" "Our men - our fathers, our brothers, and our husbands protect and care for us." "And that is shown by hiding you under this shawl?" "It's not hiding us, Leah. The shawl, this head covering, is a declaration before man and God. His divine Law proclaims women to be of great worth and orders that they be protected. First through their father, then their husband. If the husband dies, then women are protected through next of kin. And if there are no next of kin, the community. If this is not fulfilled, Leah, it is not the fault of God's Law, it is the fault of those to whom his Law was given. — Janette Oke

As a kid I would be put to bed when my parents had guests and because I was such a show-off I would go to my mum's room, put on her nightdress and Jackie Onassis shawl, run downstairs, go outside, ring the doorbell and pretend to be one of the guests. I'd say, 'Hello, I'm Mrs. So-and-So.' — Rupert Everett