Sinewy Quotes & Sayings

Nordenson describes wrestling with work as with a large force that wants to have its way with you, even as you want to have your way with it. This wrestling, sinewy and particular as its wrestler, enlarges us as we read our way into her life with its incisive insights and explorations. Can one wrestle meditatively? This author has learned the art and we are the benefactors. — Luci Shaw

Accidentals

Something out of place,
seen where it doesn't belong.

A surprise on the water
like Tundra Swans unexpected
and flung far from the Arctic
onto a Vermont pond.

Me, driving home, seeing all that white
with sinewy S-shaped necks
out of the corner of my eye.

Blessed is an ordinary Wednesday,
now etched forever in memory
as that Wednesday I went home

another way and found myself
far flung from work, from home,
from whoever I was before

black beaks beckoned me
while four pairs of wings unfolded. — Lynn Martin

Hello, Miya."
His smooth tone speaking my name made a warm sensation tingle across the surface of my body.
A hundred questions ran through my head, wanting to be spoken. How do they know who I am? Who are they? What do they want with me? I was a single, working-class associate professor with department store clothes. Surely they didn't think they would get much of a ransom for me. The expression on the man's face held me, and my demanding thoughts.
"We aren't going to harm you."
I smirked at him and glanced at my right arm, feeling its ache. My elbow might be badly bruised, but it wasn't broken. His eyes followed mine and he sighed.
"That was an accident." His tan, sinewy hand touched my wrist then delicately ran down my bones to my elbow. I flinched, but didn't feel any pain. — Derendrea

In the stories after the war, all the resistance heroes were dashing, sinewy types who could construct machine guns from paperclips. And the Germans either raised their godlike blond heads through open tank hatches to watch broken cities scroll past, or else were psychopathic, sex-crazed torturers of beautiful Jewesses. Where did the boy fit in? He made such a faint presence. It was like being in the room with a feather. But his soul glowed with some fundamental kindness, didn't it? — Anthony Doerr

Long legs and longer arms, each tipped with a row of black talons. Sinewy. Wiry. And above all, humanoid, its skin in the sunlight as translucent as a baby mouse's - mapped with a network of blue veins and purple arteries and even its heart faintly visible as a pinkish throb just right of center mass. snarling as strings of bloody saliva dangled from the corners of its lipless mouth, creamy eyes hard-focused on its target. — Blake Crouch

Under a spreading chestnut-tree The village smithy stands; The smith, a mighty man is he, With large and sinewy hands; And the muscles of his brawny arms Are strong as iron bands. — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Sri Lanka is an island that everyone loves at some level inside themselves. A very special island that travellers, from Sinbad to Marco Polo, dreamed about. A place where the contours of the land itself forms a kind of sinewy poetry. — Romesh Gunesekera

I take command of the new Golds. Again, I thought someone would object. They just stand watching me, waiting for my orders. All these Praetors, all these politicians and sinewy men and women of war. I hold back a chuckle. Amazing the power you have when you're bloody up to the sleeves and none of it is your own. We — Pierce Brown

Sherlock Holmes took his bottle from the corner of the mantelpiece, and his hypodermic syringe from its neat morocco case. With his long, white, nervous fingers he adjusted the delicate needle and rolled back his left shirtcuff. For some little time his eyes rested thoughtfully upon the sinewy forearm and wrist, all dotted and scarred with innumerable puncture-marks. Finally, he thrust the sharp point home, pressed down the tiny piston, and sank back into the velvet-lined armchair with a long sigh of satisfaction. — Arthur Conan Doyle

From around the blind curve of the trail, the main appeared. He was tall, built, and armed and dangerous, though not to her physical well-being. Nope, nothing about the tough, sinewy, gorgeous forest ranger was a threat to her body.
But Matt Bowers was lethal to her peace of mind. — Jill Shalvis

Her body feels different, no longer taut and sinewy but sponge-like fluid. Saturated. It has a different energy, a deep orangy-like pink, like the inside of a hibiscus. — Margaret Atwood

The rock has split, the egg has hatched, the prismatically plumed bird of life has escaped from its cage. It spreads its wings and is perched now on the peak of the huge African mountain Kilimanjaro.
Strange recompense, in the depths of our despair at the unfathomable mist into which all mankind is plunging, a curious force awakens. It is Hope long asleep, aroused once more. Wilson has taken an army of advisers and sailed for England. The ship has sunk. But the men are all good swimmers. They take the women on their shoulders and buoyed on by the inspiration of the moment they churn the free seas with their sinewy arms, like Ulysses, landing all along the European seaboard.
Yes, hope has awakened once more in men's hearts. It is NEW! Let us go forward!
The imagination, freed from the handcuffs of "Art", takes the lead! Her Feet are bare and not too delicate. In fact those who come behind her have much to think of. Hm. Let it pass. — William Carlos Williams

The Chinese food arrives. Delicious saliva fills his mouth. He really hasn't had any since Texas. He loves this food that contains no disgusting proofs of slain animals, a bloody slab of cow haunch, a hen's sinewy skeleton; these ghosts have been minced and destroyed and painlessly merged with the shapes of insensate vegetables, plump green bodies that invite his appetite's innocent gusto. Candy. — John Updike

Only recently have we come up with the technology to turn lazing around into a way of life. We've taken our sinewy, durable, hunter-gatherer bodies and plunked them into an artificial world of leisure. — Christopher McDougall

HORKLUMP M.O.M. Classification: X The Horklump comes from Scandinavia but is now widespread throughout northern Europe. It resembles a fleshy, pinkish mushroom covered in sparse, wiry black bristles. A prodigious breeder, the Horklump will cover an average garden in a matter of days. It spreads sinewy tentacles rather than roots into the ground to search for its preferred food of earthworms. The Horklump is a favourite delicacy of gnomes but otherwise has no discernible use. H — J.K. Rowling

In explosive gasps Chook introduced us and we went inside. I could see that she was elderly by Chook's standards. Perhaps twenty-six or -seven. A brown-eyed blonde, with the helpless mournful eyes of a basset hound. She was a little weathered around the eyes. In the lounge lights I saw that the basic black had given her a lot of good use. Her hands looked a little rough. Under the slightly bouffant skirt of the black dress were those unmistakable dancer's legs, curved and trim and sinewy. — John D. MacDonald

But just then the moon, sailing through the black clouds, appeared behind the jagged crest of a beetling, pine-clad rock, and by its light I saw around us a ring of wolves, with white teeth and lolling red tongues, with long, sinewy limbs and shaggy hair. They were — Bram Stoker

If you are a student, be also a student of the body ... realizing that a broad chest, a muscular pair of arms, and two sinewy legs, will be just as much credit to you, and stand you in hand through your future life, equally with your geometry, your history, your classics, your law, medicine, or divinity. Let nothing divert you from your duty to your body — Walt Whitman

For we cannot tarry here,
We must march my darlings, we must bear the brunt of danger,
We, the youthful sinewy races, all the rest on us depend, Pioneers! O pioneers! — Walt Whitman

There are different forms of seduction, and the kind I have witnessed in Persian dancers is so unique, such a mixture of subtlety and brazenness, I cannot find a Western equivalent to compare it to. I have seen women of vastly different backgrounds take on that same expression: a hazy, lazy, flirtatious look in their eyes ... This sort of seduction is elusive; it is sinewy and tactile. It twists, twirls, winds and unwinds. Hands curl and uncurl while the waist seems to coil and recoil ... It is openly seductive but not surrendering. — Azar Nafisi

Thoren Smallwood, a sinewy ranger with a weak chin and a weaker mouth hidden under a thin scraggle of beard, gave Jon and Sam a cool look. He had been one of Alliser Thorne's henchmen, and had no love for either of them. "The Lord Commander's place is at Castle Black, lording and commanding," he told Mormont, ignoring the newcomers, "it seems to me."
"If you are ever Lord Commander, you may do as you please," Mormont told the ranger, "but it seems to me that I have not died yet, nor have the brothers put you in my place. — George R R Martin

Living as a couple never means that each gets half. You must take turns at giving more than getting. It's not the same as a bow to the other whether to dine out rather than in, or which one gets massaged that evening with oil of calendula; there are seasons in the life of a couple that function, I think, a little like a night watch. One stands guard, often for a long time, providing the serenity in which the other can work at something. Usually that something is sinewy and full of spines. One goes inside the dark place while the other one stays outside, holding up the moon. — Marlena De Blasi

Without her glasses Vivian did look a little frightening. She had tight sinewy strappy muscles and a face that was hardened and almost brutal - a face that might have been chiseled by a sculptor who had fallen out of love with the idea of beauty. — Brian Morton

about to knock again when the inside door is pulled open to reveal a sinewy woman dressed in what appears to be layers of old sweaters and an ankle-length denim skirt. Her long hair held back in an elastic that leaves the ends bunched and brittle as the head of a broom. Brown eyes wide and alive, — Andrew Pyper

There is a "yoga body" aesthetic, which is long and sinewy. I am curvy. I get praised on a regular basis, with people telling me, "Wow, you're so brave," simply for showing my curvy body. Being brave is going to war; being curvy is not brave. We need to be careful with how we use our words. — Kathryn Budig

She stands on the cliffs, near the old crumbling stone house. There's nothing left in the house but an upturned table, a ladle, and a clay bowl. She stands for more than an hour, goose-bumped and shivering. At these times, she won't confide in me. She runs her hands over her body, as if checking that it's still there, her heart pulsing and beating. The limbs are smooth and strong, thin and sinewy, her hair long and black and messy and gleaming despite her age. You wouldn't know it to look at her, that she's lived long enough to look for what's across the water. Eighty years later, and she is still fifteen. — Jodi Lynn Anderson

May she play the Drums to the fiery rhythm of her Own Heart with the sinewy strength of her Own Arms, so she need Not Lie With Drummers. — Tina Fey

Why, universal plodding poisons up The nimble spirits in the arteries, As motion and long-during action tires The sinewy vigor of the traveller. — William Shakespeare

If Montaigne is a man in the prime of life sitting in his study on a warm morning and putting down the sum of his experience in his rich, sinewy prose, then Pascal is that same man lying awake in the small hours of the night when death seems very close and every thought is heightened by the apprehension that it may be his last. — Cyril Connolly

He'd been young when he'd been turned, maybe late twenties. He looked tough, sinewy and strong, with close cropped sable hair and a sinfully full mouth. Yes, beautiful. Stunning, in fact.
He stared at Luna with hunger in the depths of his ice blue eyes. Even looking worn and underfed, the vampire radiated a wild danger that sent a thrill through her entire body.

What the hell! Shocked and angry with her irritatingly female reaction, she glared at the offending vampire, not bothering to disguise her loathing. Who was this freaking leech, and what was he doing to her?

- Lunacy and the Vampire by Evie Jayne — Evie Jayne

Wherefore the current of my soul hath broken

The bounds of sensual life,

And I am grown a god, a sinewy token

Of Pan's most ardent strife;

I am his own; I seem

The shadow of his dream,

As he is spinning thoughts of form and sense

Out of the formless void, stark, cold and dense. — Victor B. Neuburg

If she'd had any doubts he was a real deal country boy, they disappeared when he unabashedly stripped down to nothing - the sun had kissed his arms to mid-bicep, although his torso wasn't without a faint tan. She'd thought lazily that maybe he had a pond. She'd like to go skinny dipping with him. Leap onto his back and wrap her legs around his lean hips. Hold on to his broad shoulders and press her naked breasts into his back and drift into the cool water together.
As he opened his button-fly jeans, revealing snug briefs underneath, she'd whispered for him to stop. He was hard and sinewy in all the right places, with shadows and valleys she wanted to explore with her mouth and hands and eyes, but her touch first went to the line where dark faded to light on his arm, neatly following the curve of his muscles. Nice farmer's tan. — Zoe York

I think I get used to, even addicted to, the feelings associated with the end of a long training run. I love feeling empty, clean, worn out, starving, and sweat-purged. I love the good ache of muscles that have done me proud. I love the way a cold beer tastes later that afternoon. I love the way my body feels light and sinewy. — Kristin Armstrong

He peeled out the banknotes from inside a billfold held on a chain and paid her. Andy Jackson's eyes were X'd out. For an edgy instant she wondered if his money was counterfeit. She also noted his missing middle finger, and a skull tattoo decorated his sinewy wrist.
She put down the card key. "You're in Seven, straight down the courtyard."
He slid the card key off, but it fell to the floor. "Oops. I
haven't gotten used to this high gravity."
"I beg your pardon?"
"Nothing. I'm just punchy from all the driving. — Ed Lynskey

Arrogance is in everything I do. It is in my gestures, the harshness of my voice, in the glow of my gaze, in my sinewy, tormented face. — Coco Chanel

Larry sat with his arm stretched out along the top of the front seat. His shirt cuff was pulled back by his position and displayed his slim, strong wrist and the lower part of his brown arm lightly covered with fine hairs. The sun shone goldly upon them. Something in Isabel's immobility attracted my attention, and I glanced at her. She was so still that you might have thought her hypnotized. Her breath was hurried. Her eyes were fixed on the sinewy wrist with its little golden hairs and on that long, delicate, but powerful hand, and I have never seen on a human countenance such a hungry concupiscence as I saw then on hers. It was a mask of lust. I would never have believed that her beautiful features could assume an expression of such unbridled sensuality. It was animal rather than human. The beauty was stripped from her face; the look upon it made her hideous and frightening. It horribly suggested the bitch in heat and I felt rather sick. — W. Somerset Maugham

For a moment this day, for many moments this May, let us gape in awe at the strength of women, and look upon their sinewy courage with respect and humility, as the Lord looked on His Mother, and still does. Like Him we are of women born, and to women must pay our first respect, and owe our first love, for they are as strong as the very ribs of the earth. — Brian Doyle

There's not a season set aside for pondering and reveries. It will not les us hesitate or rest; it does not wish us to stand back and comment on its comeliness or devise a song for it. It has no time to listen to our song. It only asks us not to tire in our hard work. It wants to see us leathery, our necks and fore-arms burnt as black as chimney oak; it wants to leave us thinned and sinewy from work. It taxes us from dawn to dusk, and torments us at night; that is the taxing that the thrush complains about. Our great task each and every year is to defend ourselves against hunger and defeat with implements and tools. — Jim Crace

The anxious wait lasted four years, and the alert ears never despaired of hearing, at any moment, the voice of the great conch shell which would bellow through the hills to announce to all that Macandal had completed the cycle of his metamorphoses, and stood poised once more, sinewy and hard, with testicles like rocks, on his own human legs (36-37). — Alejo Carpentier