Stretched Quotes & Sayings

When incomes and bonuses decrease, revenues falter, and businesses stumble, it's more important than ever to give - not necessarily more, but in a way that matters more. When incomes are down and wallets are stretched, the effectiveness of our giving is what really counts. — Laura Arrillaga-Andreessen

Ico made to charge her again. The queen raised a clawlike nail, but Yorda stepped between them. Without a word, Yorda stretched out her arms in front of Ico, holding him back. Ico looked into her eyes and she shook her head, pleading with him. — Miyuki Miyabe

His happiness stretched out its wings and gave a few flaps. He — Lauren Groff

The old woman remembered a swan she had bought many years ago in Shanghai for a foolish sum. This bird, boasted the market vendor, was once a duck that stretched its neck in hopes of becoming a goose, and now look!
it is too beautiful to eat. — Amy Tan

I quietly quaffed my cognac, discreetly admiring Lana's legs. Longer than the Bible and a hell of a lot more fun, they stretched forever, like an Indian yogi or an American highway shimmering through the Great Plains or the southwestern desert. Her legs demanded to be looked at and would not take no, non, nein, nyet, or even maybe for an answer. — Viet Thanh Nguyen

Claire stretched out against the wall and kissed it. "Glad to see you, too," she whispered, and pressed her cheek against the smooth surface. It almost felt like it hugged her back.
"Dude, it's a house," Shane said from behind her. "Hug somebody who cares. — Rachel Caine

Guard for me my eyes, Jesus, Son of Mary, lest seeing others' wealth make me covetous. Guard for me my ears, lest they harken to slander, lest they listen to folly in the sinful world. Guard for me my heart, O Christ, in Thy love, lest I ponder wretchedly the desire of any iniquity. Guard for me my hands, that they be not stretched out for quarreling, or practice shameful idleness. Guard for me my feet upon the gentle earth. . . . lest they be bent on profitless errands. Amen. - ANCIENT IRISH PRAYER — David P. Gushee

Learn to be friendly and learn to welcome all people, but note however in doing so that it is not every hand that is stretched towards you that deserves your handshake! — Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

I don't understand why you are so unhappy about it," Jesse said. He had stretched out across the tiles, contented as I'd ever seen him. "I like it much better this way."
"What way?" I groused. I couldn't get quite as comfortable. I kept finding prickly pine needles beneath my butt.
"Just the two of us," he said with a shrug. "Like it's always been. — Meg Cabot

In my dreams and visions, I seemed to see a line, and on the other side of that line were green fields, and lovely flowers, and beautiful white ladies, who stretched out their arms to me over the line, but I couldn't reach them no-how. I always fell before I got to the line. — Harriet Tubman

If you could buckle your Bugs Bunny wristwatch to a ray of light, your watch would continue ticking but the hands wouldn't move. That's because at the speed of light there is no time. Time is relative to velocity. At high speeds, time is literally stretched. Since light is the ultimate in velocity, at light-speed time is stretched to its absolute and becomes static. Albert Einstein figured that one out. — Tom Robbins

The real issue is not whether baking biscuits is meaningful, but the extent to which the activity can seem to be so after it has been continuously stretched and subdivided across five thousand lives. — Alain De Botton

Still, he could feel a fine cord stretched between them, a thin luminous fiber that ran from his chest all the way across the continent and forked into theirs. Never before had he lived through a fever without his mother; when he'd been sick in Debrecen she'd taken the train to be with him. Never had he finished a year at school without knowing that soon he'd be home with his father, working beside him in the lumberyard and walking through the fields with him in the evening. Now there was another filament, one that linked him to Klara. And Paris was her home, this place thousands of kilometers from his own. He felt the stirring of a new ache, something like homesickness but located deeper in his mind; it was an ache for the tie when his heart had been a simple and satisfied thing, small as the green apples that grew in his father's orchard. — Julie Orringer

Hugh stretched out one hand and stroked the fur. It felt cold and rich, it crackled with silky static electricity. Stroking it was like stroking a clear autumn night. — Stephen King

The silence between us stretched out, but it wasn't awkward. Sometimes there are people you can be quiet with, and you never feel the need to fill the gap with meaningless chit-chat. I'd only become that close to a couple people in my hometown, and I'd always thought it took years. Lucas and I were already there. — Claudia Gray

Sunlight stretched across the Nebraska miles, burning fiery pink-gold through a bank of clouds on the horizon. It was almost sunset, and the land spread out, an expanse of never-ending cornfields broken only by the rising silhouette of a windmill or grain silo. — Becca Fitzpatrick

Roebling rejoined the Army of the Potomac in February 1863 back at Fredericksburg, where he was quartered late one night in an old stone jail, from which he would emerge the following morning with a story that would be told in the family for years and years to come. The place had little or no light, it seems, and Roebling, all alone, groping his way about, discovered an old chest that aroused his curiosity. He lifted the lid and reaching inside, his hand touched a stone-cold face. The lid came back down with a bang. Deciding to investigate no further, he cleared a place on the floor, stretched out, and went to sleep. At daybreak he opened the chest to see what sort of corpse had been keeping him company through the night and found instead a stone statue of George Washington's mother that had been stored away for safekeeping. — David McCullough

We were new then, our lives stretched out before us. Our families had let us go. Abbott had yet to find us. For this very short time, it would be just the two of us - just two kids. — Bridget Asher

I stood with my arms stretched wide and trembling, and I felt as if the black sky was my body and I felt as if the white moon, far above me, unwrinkled and shining, was my mind. — Karen Russell

The Creator sat upon the throne, thinking. Behind him stretched the illimitable continent of heaven, steeped in a glory of light and color; before him rose the black night of Space, like a wall. His mighty bulk towered rugged and mountain-like into the zenith, and His divine head blazed there like a distant sun. At His feet stood three colossal figures, diminished to extinction, almost, by contrast
archangels
their heads level with His ankle-bone. When the Creator had finished thinking, He said, "I have thought. Behold!" He lifted His hand, and from it burst a fountain-spray of fire, a million stupendous suns, which clove the blackness and soared, away and away and away, diminishing in magnitude and intensity as they pierced the far frontiers of Space, until at last they were but as diamond nail heads sparkling under the domed vast roof of the universe. — Mark Twain

He stretched out his arms towards the dark water in a curious way, and,far as I was from him I could have sworn he was trembling involuntarily I glanced seaward - and distinguishing nothing except a single green light, minute and faraway, that might have been the end of a dock. — F Scott Fitzgerald

When I opened my eyes I saw nothing but the pool of nocturnal sky, for I was lying on my back with out-stretched arms, face to face with that hatchery of stars. Only half awake, still unaware that those depths were sky, having no roof between those depths and me, no branches to screen them, no root to cling to, I was seized with vertigo and felt myself as if flung forth and plunging downward like a diver. — Antoine De Saint-Exupery

How many times can our emotions be tied to someone else's - be pulled and stretched and twisted - before they snap? Before they can never be mended again? — Stephanie Perkins

Over the past month, Muslims have fasted, taking no food or water during daylight hours, in order to refocus their minds on faith and redirect their hearts to charity. Muslims worldwide have stretched out a hand of mercy to those in need. Charity tables at which the poor can break their fast line the streets of cities and towns. And gifts of food and clothing and money are distributed to ensure that all share in God's abundance. Muslims often invite members of other families to their evening iftar meals, demonstrating a spirit of tolerance. — George W. Bush

Destiny has many faces. Mine is beautiful on the outside and hideous on the inside. She has stretched her bloody talons toward me - — Andrzej Sapkowski

She sat at the window of the train, her head thrown back, one leg stretched across to the empty seat before her. The window frame trembled with the speed of the motion, the pane hung over empty darkness, and dots of light slashed across the glass as luminous streaks, once in a while. — Ayn Rand

You can play. You can play. You can play! Livia leaned against the wall, her aches and pains and shivering chill melting away now that Blake's playing had become something beautiful. She tilted her head back and opened her mouth, as if to drink the music. She couldn't imagine how he created it - it sounded as if three people must be playing. She heard bells, then the notes sounded like voices. So clearly the music sang to her: Blake loves Livia. Blake loves Livia. She stretched her arms out and dug her fingers into the rough, scratchy brick, trying to hug him from the outside of the church. She wiped tears from her cheeks. She wanted to run inside and see him creating. She wanted to see his strong arms and intuitive fingers crafting the notes. Blake's sounds enchanted her. — Debra Anastasia

The silence stretched out between us as I stared at him, the tears blurring my vision as I waited for him to save me from this torment. Surely he could find a way. — Kathryn Michaels

There is the image of the man who imagines himself to be a prisoner in a cell. He stands at one end of this small, dark, barren room, on his toes, with arms stretched upward, hands grasping for support onto a small, barred window, the room's only apparent source of light. If he holds on tight, straining toward the window, turning his head just so, he can see a bit of bright sunlight barely visible between the uppermost bars. This light is his only hope. He will not risk losing it. And so he continues to staring toward that bit of light, holding tightly to the bars. So committed is his effort not to lose sight of that glimmer of life-giving light, that it never occurs to him to let go and explore the darkness of the rest of the cell. So it is that he never discovers that the door at the other end of the cell is open, that he is free. He has always been free to walk out into the brightness of the day, if only he would let go. (192) — Sheldon B. Kopp

Whose foot is to be the measure to which ours are all to be cut or stretched? — Thomas Jefferson

The Chinese did not admire a bent back; goddesses and warriors stood straight. Still there must have been a marvelous freeing of beauty when a worker laid down her burden and stretched and arched. — Maxine Hong Kingston

The silence stretched. Finally Al added one more sentence that I have been thinking about ever since. 'And if you did it again,' he said, 'we would have to kill you again.' We stared at each other for some time after that; each convinced, I am sure, that the other was a total idiot. — Dan Simmons

Vik got up and moved to sit more in her lap. "What are you doing, Vik?" He flicked into his bot form and draped over her leg. "I'm getting bored." "You can't get bored." "Yes, I can." He stretched out. "How much farther?" She laughed at his tone that sounded like a five-year-old. "My God, he's like having a child." Syn snorted. "Yeah. You even have to change his diaper at times." "Nah. Just my batteries." Syn arched a brow. "And your attitude." "Bitch, bitch, bitch. Now leave me alone while I nap."
- Shahara, Vik, & Syn — Sherrilyn Kenyon

Make no mistake, our military readiness is already suffering, ... According to a recent RAND study, the Army has been stretched so thin that active-duty soldiers are now spending one of every two years abroad, leaving little of the Army left in any appropriate condition to respond to crises that may emerge elsewhere in the world. In an era in which we confront a globally networked enemy, and at a time when nuclear weapons proliferation is an urgent threat, continuing on our present course is irresponsible at best. — Russ Feingold

And Satan smiled, stretched out his hand, and said, O War, of all the scourges of humanity, I crown you chief. — James Weldon Johnson

The daylight schooled the senses and the night-time developed the wits, stretched the imagination, sharpened fantasy, hammered home the memory and altered the whole scale of values. — Fynn

Elijah blinked in dazzling sunlight and took a deep breath. The sweet-pepper scent of meadow grass told him immediately where he was. Winded, he skidded to a halt as the portal spat him out. Above him stretched skies of cornflower blue, dotted with threadbare white clouds sailing over like cotton galleons on the summer breeze. — Sharon Sant

As Ariel recounted the events of her dream, two magnificent, batlike wings grew from the backs of her shoulders, stretched as if preparing to fly, then retreated back into their host. The sound heard when the wings disappear is the giggling of Alanna, who watched the event much the same way I did, in rapt wonder. — Don A. Martinez

She ran her hand over his cock and said, "This is the only thing I ever want to come between us."
His grin couldn't have stretched any further. — Terry Spear

If the cells and fibres in one human brain were all stretched out end to end, they would certainly reach to the moon and back. Yet the fact that they are not arranged end to end enabled man to go there himself. The astonishing tangle within our heads makes us what we are. — Colin Blakemore

Don't make a sound!" she whispered, giving me a little shake. "I need your help."
Damn! She had given the female password - spoken those magic words that stretched back through the mists of time to a bond made in some primordial swamp. — Alan Bradley

Then he stretched himself alongside her to smoke a cigarette with all the ceremony of an opium dreamer. — Anais Nin

Somewhere int he flesh of the earth the dreadful earthquake shuddered, the tide walked to and fro on the leash of the moon, rainbows formed, winds swept the sky like giant brooms piling up clouds before them, clouds which writhed into different shapes, melted into rain or darkened, bruised themselves against an unseen antagonist and went on their way, laced with forking rivers of lightning, complete with white electric tributaries. Out of this infinite vision an infinity of details could be drawn, but Sonny had settled on one, and from the endless series a particular beach was chosen and began to form around Laura - a beach of iron-dark sand and shells like frail stars, and a wonderful wide sea that stretched, neither green nor blue, but inked by the approach of night into violet and black, wrinkling with its own salty puzzles, right out to a distant, pure horizon. — Margaret Mahy

Once upon a time Apache land would have stretched farther than the horizon, through New Mexico almost to Texas, but as white men found gold, silver, turquoise, and copper beneath its surface they carved up the territory like children sneaking to the fridge and slicing off a chocolate cake bit by bit: hoping at first that the loss wouldn't be noticed but ultimately not really caring. — Victoria Finlay

Where are they now? she thought. Her iPod, her iPhone, her iPad, the I-ness of her life? Her mind stretched around in its memories, searching for her things: She saw her phone on the hotel bedside table in Paris; her iPad in her Louis Vuitton urban satchel; her iPod slipping from her pocket in the restaurant, the night before she ran away. — Jaclyn Moriarty

Well, well, well. The mighty Uthman-ul-Dosht comes with mercy, and offers peace. These are strange times we live in, eh, Tulkis? Have the Gurkish learned to love their enemies? Or simply fear them?'
'One need not love one's enemy, or even fear him, to desire peace. One need only love oneself.'
'Is that so?'
'It is. I lost two sons in the wars between our peoples. One at Ulrioch in the last war. He was a priest, and burned in the temple there. The other died not long ago, at the siege of Dagoska. He led the charge when the first breach was made.'
Glokta frowned and stretched out his neck. A hail of flatbow bolts. Tiny figures, falling in the rubble. 'That was a brave charge.'
'War is harshest on the brave. — Joe Abercrombie

Silence. How long it lasted, I couldn't tell. It might have been five seconds, it might have been a minute. Time wasn't fixed. It wavered, stretched, shrank. Or was it me that wavered, stretched, and shrank in the silence? I was warped in the folds of time, like a reflection in a fun house mirror. — Haruki Murakami

Filled with rapture, his soul yearned for freedom, space, vastness. Over him the heavenly dome, full of quiet, shining stars, hung boundlessly. From the zenith to the horizon the still-dim Milky Way stretched its double strand. Night, fresh and quiet, almost unstirring, enveloped the earth. The white towers and golden domes of the church gleamed in the sapphire sky. The luxuriant autumn asleep till morning. The silence of the earth seemed to merge with the silence of the heavens and the mystery of the earth touched the mystery of the stars. — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

The intruder hesitated, turned, and anchored itself in the corner, where the ceiling met the wall. It sat there, fastened to the paneling by enormous yellow talons, still and silent like a gargoyle in full sunlight. I took a swig from the bottle and set it so I could still see the creatures reflection. Nude and hairless, it didn't carry a single ounce of fat on its lean frame. Its skin stretched so tight over the cords of muscle, it threatened to snap. Like a thin layer of wax melted over an anatomy model.
Your friendly neighbourhood Spiderman. — Ilona Andrews

Daniel stretched his arm around her and guided her head toward his shoulder. Little - known fact about angels: We make excellent pillows. — Lauren Kate

The hills of Galilee were divided into two distinct segments. The southern range split the Samaritan Plain from the Megiddo Plains, or Armageddon, as it was sometimes known. The northeastern hills wove around Tiberias and stretched up to meet the Golan highlands. Between the two, some twenty Roman miles west of the Jordan River, stretched a broad flat region. All the main arteries connecting the northern and southern realms, except for the one Roman road that skirted the western shore of Galilee, met at this point. — Davis Bunn

The universe, she sees, exists as it does to not simply humble, but abuse, denigrate, and humiliate the minds it was so expertly commissioned to birth. This is malevolence on an unfathomable scale, expressed through immeasurable waste stretched out between distances and times that cannot be understood. It is cruel, but not hateful, depraved, but not vengeful. This is considered pain, carefully presented in careless proportions to blister and disgrace anyone - or anything - that might momentarily dare to ever privately contemplate it is in control. — John Zande

Adne walked over to Connor, stretched up on her tiptoes, and placed a chaste kiss on his lips. "You're a good man after all."
She smiled sadly, beginning to turn away, but Connor slid his arms around her waist, lifting her off her feet. The kiss he crushed onto her mouth was anything but chaste and lasted so long that soon we all turned away, blushing.
When he finally set her down, his voice was thick. "I give up. I love you, Adne. I am crazy in love with you. — Andrea Cremer

There are no soft or slothful ways to become sanctified to the point that we are prepared to live in the presence of the Savior. And there can be blessings in the burdens we bear. As a result of these struggles, our souls are stretched and our spirits are strengthened. Our character becomes more Christlike as we are tried and tested. — L. Lionel Kendrick

And the dog by the fender stretched himself out in the luxuriant vacancy of mind only known to dogs surrounded by a happy group of their friends. — Christopher Morley

When she spun around to face Luce and the angels, Dee looked as if she were going to say something. Instead, she sank to her knees and lay down on her back at the foot of the Qayom Malak. Daniel lurched toward her, ready to help, but she waved him away. The toes of her shoes rested on the base of the Qayom Malak; her slender arms stretched over her head so that her fingertips grazed the Silver Pennon. Her body spanned the distance precisely.
She closed her eyes and lay still for several minutes.
Just when Luce was beginning to wonder whether Dee had fallen asleep, Dee said, It's a good thing I stopped growing two thousand years ago. — Lauren Kate

I knew why love was always described with eternity. A single minute stretched out for lifetimes. — Shannon A. Thompson

Kammy jerked upright. It was as though the trees had parted beneath the pressure of the storm and a bolt of lightning had struck her. She had never entered the mouth for it had always been much too small. Yet, she had never seen anything else enter it either. The thought alone made her feel sick with excitement and fear. A small voice told Kammy that such a reaction was ridiculous, it was just a squirrel. But warmth spread to the tips of Kammy's fingers as they stretched forward. She could see now that it was not a burrow at all, but a tunnel large enough for her to fit through. She was quite sure that she would not even have to bend her head. The same small voice tried to speak again but Kammy could not hear it through the rush of blood in her ears.
Kammy stepped inside the mouth of the forest and felt herself flipped upside down. — Natalie Crown

The boughs of trees stretched high overhead, leaves of dappled green and black mottling the sky. It was called the black forest for more reasons than the inky-black foliage. The wise and cautious seldom travelled by night along its poorly-tended roads, and banditry wasn't the main reason. In the minds of many, shadows of a threat lurked in wait, seeking an opportunity to strike during a moment of weakness. It was known among the old folk that not all who dwelled within the black forest were of human or animal-kind. Some beings were much older and believed far more dangerous. — Mara Amberly

That's funny. You would think after being followed and shoved into a dark alley by a stranger, you would be at least a little shaken. Don't tell me, you are a black belt just waiting for the perfect moment to strike." He laughed soundlessly. "I mean your words do sound brave but your eyes and the fact that you're trembling like a scared little kitten say something else entirely." Even though the alley was submerged in darkness and shadows, it was obvious there was a devilish grin stretched across his face ... — Nicole Rae

Rome is one enormous mausoleum. There, the Past lies visibly stretched upon his bier. There is no today or tomorrow in Rome; it is perpetual yesterday. — Thomas Bailey Aldrich

The woman, who belonged to the courtesan class, was celebrated for an embonpoint unusual for her age, which had earned for her the sobriquet of "Boule de Suif" (Tallow Ball). Short and round, fat as a pig, with puffy fingers constricted at the joints, looking like rows of short sausages; with a shiny, tightly-stretched skin and an enormous bust filling out the bodice of her dress, she was yet attractive and much sought after, owing to her fresh and pleasing appearance. Her face was like a crimson apple, a peony-bud just bursting into bloom; she had two magnificent dark eyes, fringed with thick, heavy lashes, which cast a shadow into their depths; her mouth was small, ripe, kissable, and was furnished with the tiniest of white teeth. — Guy De Maupassant

Kugel awoke early the next morning, turning his face from the harsh rays of intruding sunlight that stretched across the room like some goddamned thing that stretches across some other goddamned thing.
Why did children always draw the sun smiling? he wondered. It's a giant ball of fire, kids. It's rage and fury. Whatever it's doing, it isn't fucking smiling. — Shalom Auslander

You look especially beautiful this morning, Monza.' She sighed, as if that was an accident. As if she hadn't spent an hour preening herself before the mirror. 'Facts are facts. Stating them isn't a gift. You only prove you're not blind.' She yawned, stretched in her saddle, made him wait a moment longer. 'But I'll hear more. — Joe Abercrombie

We believed in another world, but we admitted the feebleness of our senses. Then came 'enlightenment,' and made everything so very clear and enlightened, that we can see nothing for excess of light, and go banging our noses against the first tree we come to in the wood. We insist, now-a-days, on grasping the other world with stretched-out arms of flesh and bone. — E.T.A. Hoffmann

Will you let me hug you now?" she said roughly.
Her mate stretched out his massive arms. "How about I hold you instead?"
As Jane leaped forward and dived into him, she countered, "It doesn't have to be one or the other. — J.R. Ward

The next night I sat at the table at dinnertime, too, and ate soup and bread with preserves. Before she blew out the candles, Drenka spread a sheet across the sofa and called me over. I felt my spine lengthen like it hadn't during the weeks of sleeping contracted on the kitchen floor, and I stretched my arms over my head and pushed myself deep into the cushions of the couch. — Sara Novic

In every big-budget science fiction movie there's the moment when a spaceship as large as New York suddenly goes to light speed. A twanging noise like a wooden ruler being plucked over the edge of a desk, a dazzling refraction of light, and suddenly the stars have all been stretched out thin and it's gone. This was exactly like that, except that instead of a gleaming twelve-mile-long spaceship, it was an off-white twenty-year-old motor scooter. And you didn't have the special rainbow effects. And it probably wasn't going at more than two hundred miles an hour. And instead of a pulsing whine sliding up the octaves, it just went putputputputput ...
VROOOOSH.
But it was exactly like that anyway. — Neil Gaiman

Seeing me shivering, he stretched a front leg toward the sweatshirt, pawing the edge and snarling when he realized he couldn't grab it.
"The lack of opposable thumbs is going to take some getting used to, huh?" — Kelley Armstrong

He slouched back in his seat, looking tired, and leaned his face on his shoulder to look at me while he played with my hair. He started to hum a song, and then, after a few bars, he sang it. Quietly, sort of half-sung, half-spoken, incredibly gentle. I didn't catch all the words, but it was about his summer girl. Me. Maybe his forever girl. His yellow eyes were half-lidded as he sang, and in that golden moment, hanging taut in the middle of an icecovered landscape like a single bubble of summer nectar, I could see how my life could be stretched out in front of me. — Maggie Stiefvater

I have nothing but admiration for myself as a youngster; I was a force to be reckoned with then, a much finer specimen than I am now. As kids, we had little meat on our bones; we were sticklike figures with big rounded bellies, the skin stretched so taut it was nearly transparent - you could just about see our intestines twist and coil on the other side. Our necks were so long and thin it was a miracle they could support our heavy heads. — Mo Yan

I groaned, feeling stretched and possessed, as though every part of me was under his control and protection. — C.D. Reiss

In good company your thoughts run, in solitude your thought is still; it goes deeper and makes for itself a deeper groove, delves. Delve meansa 'dig with a spade'; it means hard work. In talk your mind can be stretched, widened, exhilarated to heights but it cannot be deepened; you have to deepen it yourself.
It needs sturdiness. You will be lonely, you will be depressed; you must expect it; if you were training your body it would ache and be tired. It is worth it. There is a Hindu proverb which says: 'You only grow when you are alone'. — Rumer Godden

There was no sign of life round the domed emplacement of the Moonraker, and the concrete, already beginning to shimmer in the early morning sun, stretched emptily away towards Deal. It looked like a newly laid aerodome or rather, he thought, with its three disparate concrete 'things', the beehive dome,the flat-iron blast-wall, and the distant cube of the firing point, each casting black pools of shadow towards him in the early sun, like a Dali desert landscape in which three objets trouves reposed at carefully calculated random. — Ian Fleming

Thousands of mosquitoes had already bitten all of us on chest and arms and ankles. Then a bright idea came to me: I jumped up on the steel roof of the car and stretched out flat on my back. Still there was no breeze, but the steel had an element of coolness in it and dried my back of sweat, clotting up thousands of dead bugs into cakes on my skin, and I realized the jungle takes you over and you become it. — Jack Kerouac

A long moment of silence stretched out between them. Her conversation to this point had mostly been an attempt to distract him while she gathered her feelings: gathered them and ejected them, so that she could face him with a mind that was blank and smooth, with no thoughts for him to read. She was fairly good at this. Even bleary-headed and shaky with fatigue, she was good at emptying her mind. — Kristin Cashore

Last page of the book from Hell. Putting her hands on the small of her back, she stretched for the one hundredth time and looked over at — J.R. Ward

I stretched out my hand towards the little bookshelf where I kept cookery and devotional books, the most comfortable bedside reading. — Barbara Pym

A silence, the brief Sabbath of an hour,
Reigns o'er the fields; the laborer sits within
His dwelling; he has left his steers awhile,
Unyoked, to bite the herbage, and his dog
Sleeps stretched beside the door-stone in the shade.
Now the gray marmot, with uplifted paws,
No more sits listening by his den, but steals
Abroad, in safety, to the clover-field,
And crops its juicy-blossoms. — William C. Bryant

Furi let Syn's chest rest on the carpet but he grabbed his hips with both hands and yanked him up to his knees. Syn grunted hard, but it quickly turned to a sexy whimper when Furi's warm tongue began lapping at his stretched hole. Laving and swirling his tongue around the pliant skin before delving in for a more thorough taste. "Ahhh. Fuck. Fuck, yeah," Syn moaned. "Mmmm. Furi what you do to me." Goddamnit this man would be Furi's ruin. Everything about him was so fucking sexy. The way he moaned. The way he cried out to him. The way he responded to him. And most of all the way he tasted to him. — A.E. Via

I was born in the summer of 1970, the last of five boys stretched over eight years. My parents were a struggling young couple who had been married one afternoon under a shade tree by a preacher without a church. No guests or fancy dress, just the two of them, lost in love, and the preacher taking a break from working on a house. — Charles M. Blow

They smiled too much, were quick to compliment and support, but behind the stretched lips and soft words was a judgment. No one was ever good enough - at least not until they were dead. The dead were exemplary. — Michael J. Sullivan

what he wanted to capture with his project was the feeling of time, of having been a part of something that stretched so far back, was so impossibly large, that it was easy to forget that she, and he, and everyone else, existed in it - not apart from it, but inside of it. — Yaa Gyasi

The world was like a huge red carpet out ahead of me to be walked on. And it stretched on and on, no end. — Elia Kazan

when what she needed was something concrete, some small final memory to slip its hand in hers and accompany her - sightless now, stumbling - through this sudden desert of existence which stretched before her from the present moment until the end of life. — Donna Tartt

All the way back she talked haltingly about herself, and Amory's love waned slowly with the moon. At her door they started from habit to kiss good night, but she could not run into his arms, nor were they stretched to meet her as in the week before. For a minute they stood there, hating each other with a bitter sadness. But as Amory had loved himself in Eleanor, so now what he hated was only a mirror. Their poses were strewn about the pale dawn like broken glass. The stars were long gone and there were left only the little sighing gusts of wind and the silences between ... but naked souls are poor things ever, and soon he turned homewards and let new lights come in with the sun. — F Scott Fitzgerald

Dance improves your ability to concentrate because your brain has to work in so many ways. You're being stretched physically and mentally. You've got to focus on the steps and you have to communicate and interact with people. — Andrew Stone

Now there was no wonder in the Statue of Liberty illusion because he, Copperfield, attempted to do something so large that it stretched the credibility of the audience to the point where most people didn't believe any of it anymore. — Doug Henning

I never realized how much you meant to me until someone spoke your name and an irrepressible, goofy grin stretched my lips. — Richelle E. Goodrich

With Lady Gaga I really stretched myself as a creative director, and because I was with this artist from before she got signed I was able to really take control of the opportunity and execute as a creative director. — Laurieann Gibson

Are you lost?"
I turned around. "Excuse me?"
Two guys were sprawled on a bench close to the sidewalk. The one who had spoken wore tattered shorts and a colonial three-cornered hat-nothing else. He had wide shoulders and long, muscular legs. He stretched dramatically, then lay his tanned arm along the back of the bench. "You look lost," he said. "Can I help you find something?"
"Uh, no, thanks. I was just looking."
He grinned. "Me too."
"Oh?" I glanced around, thinking I'd missed something. "At what?"
He and his friend burst out laughing.
Way to go, Lauren, I thought. He had been looking at me! — Elizabeth Chandler

The colorful sky stretched before us - magnificent - as if it was trying to make up for the ugliness of our lives, our constant struggles. And for just the briefest, most fleeting of moments, maybe it did. — Mia Sheridan

Practice this first." He laid his hands on her shoulders. "Have a good trip. Enjoy your vacation."
"You didn't say I had to speak to him." She blew out a breath at Roarke's calm stare. "All right, all right, it's worth it. Have a good trip." She stretched her lips into a smile. "Enjoy your vacation. Asshole. I'll leave off the asshole, I just wanted to say it now."
"Understood. — J.D. Robb

I dare say you are planning on a late repentance. You do not know what you are doing. You are planning without God. Repentance and faith are the gifts of God, and they are gifts that He often withholds, when they have been long offered in vain. I grant you true repentance is never too late, but I warn you at the same time, late repentance is seldom true. I grant you, one penitent thief was converted in his last hours, that no man might despair; But I warn you, only one was converted, that no man might presume. I grant you it is written, Jesus is 'Able to save completely those who come to God through him' (Hebrews 7:25). But I warn you, it is also written by the same Spirit, 'Since you rejected me when I called and no one gave heed when I stretched out my hand, I in turn will laugh at your disaster; I will mock when calamity overtakes you' (Proverbs 1:24-26).

Believe me, you will find it no easy matter to turn to God whenever you please. — J.C. Ryle

Having stretched the boundaries some, I'm perfectly content now to work within them. 'Doonesbury' doesn't need to become 'South Park.' You won't ever see any singing turds. — Garry Trudeau

There have been occasions in my later life (I suppose as in most lives) when I have felt for a time as if a thick curtain had fallen on all its interest and romance, to shut me out from anything save dull endurance any more. Never has that curtain dropped so heavy and blank, as when my way in life lay stretched out straight before me through the newly-entered road of apprenticeship to Joe. — Charles Dickens

I feel stretched out, like too little butter scraped over too much waffle. And then it all falls down into one of the waffle holes and there's none left for the rest of the waffle and you sort of have to tilt it to make it run out. — David Wong

The day stretched out in front of him like an empty road in the desert. — Joanne Harris

I inspect everything more closely, and there is about every surface - the river, the forest, the bark of the trees, the underbrush between them, even my own skin - there is about it all the unmistakable texture of linen stretched and framed. And this is when I feel the camel's hair brush and the oil paint dabbing tenderly, meticulously, at the space below my navel. — Caitlin R. Kiernan

He was sound asleep, his long legs stretched out in front of him, the blessed fire blazing, an empty bottle of wine by his side. He hadn't been shaved recently, and he looked rumpled, dissolute and beautiful. Like
a fallen angel. She moved to stand in front of him and pointed the pistol directly at his heart.
"I wouldn't do that if I were you," he murmured, and then he opened his extraordinary eyes. "It's always
unwise to shoot the man you're in love with. — Anne Stuart