Toed Quotes & Sayings

He wore pointy-toed leather shoes, designer pants that were way too tight, and a god-awful silk shirt with the top three buttons open. Maybe he thought he looked like a groovy love god, but the guy couldn't have weighed more than ninety pounds, and he had a bad case of acne. — Rick Riordan

Near the Mexican border, rocky canyons cleave the mountains, laying them aside like broken wedges of gray cheese furred with a dark mold of pinon and juniper that sheds hard shadows on moon glazed stone, etched lithographs in gray and black, taupe and silver. Beneath feathery chamisa a rattlesnake flicks his tongue, following a scent. Along a precarious rock ledge a ring-tailed cat strolls, nose snuffling the cracks. At the base of the stone a peccary trots along familiar foot trails, toward the toes of a higher cliff where a seeping spring gathers in a rocky goblet. In the desert, sounds are dry and rattling: pebbles toed into cracks, hoofs tac-tacking on stone, the serpent rattle warning the wild pig to veer away, which she does with a grunt to the tribe behind her. From the rocky scarp the ring-tailed cat hears the whole population of the desert pass about its business in the canyon below. — Sheri S. Tepper

Today was a rainy, dreary, wear-your-steel-toed-mud-shoes Wednesday. — Greg Pincus

Wanted: Steel toed Bible thumpers to reach a monster truck mad world. — M.J. McGuire

Sometimes when life kicks you in the ass, you have to kick it back. In the nuts. With steel-toed boots. Essentially, if someone, anyone, kicks you, it is very mature to take the high-road and not kick them back. But it's not fun. And I'm all about fun. One hundred percent fun. One fundred percent. — Sara Wolf

Sati was a custom religiously followed by a few, toed halfheartedly by rather more, sidestepped by many and ignored by most — Tim Mackintosh-Smith

Weetzie could see him
it was a man, a little man in a turban, with a jewel in his nose, harem pants, and curly-toed slippers.
"Lanky Lizards!" Weetzie exclaimed.
"Greetings," said the man in an odd voice, a rich, dark purr.
"Oh, shit!" Weetzie said.
"I beg your pardon? Is that your wish? — Francesca Lia Block

We loved them. We hated them. We wanted to be them. How tall they were, how lovely, how fair. Their long, graceful limbs. Their bright white teeth. Their pale, luminous skin, which disguised all seven blemishes of the face. Their odd but endearing ways, which ceased to amuse - their love for A.I. sauce and high, pointy-toed shoes, their funny, turned-out walk, their tendency to gather in each other's parlors in large, noisy groups and stand around talking, all at once, for hours. Why, we wondered, did it never occur to them to sit down? They seemed so at home in the world. So at ease. They had a confidence that we lacked. And much better hair. So many colors. And we regretted that we could not be more like them. — Julie Otsuka

Kaitlyn never wore open-toed shoes on account of how she hated her feet because she felt her second toes were too long, as if the second toe was a window into the soul or something. — John Green

... the kids, they took us places we never would have gone to on our own. Some times were great... some times were wretched... And there was still no guarantee, no bulletproof glass, safety net, steel-toed boots, anything at all that would promise more good moments... so was it enough? It was. — Mary J. Koral

I never quite toed the line. — Dan Stevens

Whether a woman's running for office or she's supporting her husband who's running for office and she gets criticised for wearing open-toed shoes or for the colour of her coat, there's just a lot of history that you bear if you are a woman who puts herself out in the political arena. — Hillary Clinton

Bing was sitting in front of the TV with the de Zoets an hour later when Mr. Manx came out, fully dressed, in his silk shirt and tails and narrow-toed boots. His starved, cadaverous face had an unhealthy sheen to it in the flickering blue shadows. — Joe Hill

God help him if any of them ever came true. Why, he'd be a two-headed, three-toed, monkey-nosed, blind son of a cesspit-licking lackey is she had her way. — Kinley MacGregor

You're a tall drink of half drunk whiskey, my pigeon toed gypsy. — Atticus

Everything I tell her reminds her of some cute anecdote about one of her previous jobs, or previous boyfriends, or previous lives, or her cat, Sparkles, who is mitten-toed and sleeps on her head and can't be trusted on catnip. — Kirt J. Boyd

At home, she toed the party line: "The greatest calling for a woman is to be a Catholic wife and mother." But I sensed that she hated the 1960s convention of stay-at-home motherhood. In my thirties, when my father shipped me my old Barbie-doll cases that had been sealed in storage since my mother's death, I found evidence of her unhappiness. My Barbie stuff was a mirror of her values. She never told me that marriage could be a trap, but she refused to buy my Barbie doll a wedding dress. She didn't say, "I loathe housework," but she refused to buy Barbie pots and pans. What she often said, however, was "Education is power." And in case I was too thick to grasp this, she bought graduation robes for Barbie, Ken, and Midge. — M.G. Lord

BUYING A PAIR OF shoes is one of the most optimistic acts I know, next to falling in love. I like nothing better than to see an old man wearing a brand new pair of brogues or cap-toed oxfords, preferably jaunty orange-brown, unscuffed, heels unworn. We want to be here tomorrow, but buying new shoes, like falling in love, says I plan on being here tomorrow. — Jonathan Carroll

And then came the three-toed sloth. Stupid sloth. It was a crazy-looking beastie, all arms and bristling grey fur; its body was a blob, the kind of shape a six-year-old would draw for a pig, and its face was flattened like a racoon that had run full tilt into a brick wall. A triangular stub of a nose jutted out at an angle beneath a fringe that must have been difficult to see through. In fact, from side-on it looked disturbingly like John Lennon. — Tony James Slater

The federal government needs to be scaled back to a size where he can personally stomp it to death with steel-toed boots. — Neal Stephenson

I've got more in common with a three-toed sloth than I have with Winston Churchill. There is no easy comparison with any modern politician. The more you read about him, the more completely amazed you are about what he did - his energy, his literary fecundity, his ability to work - just unbelievable energy. — Boris Johnson

Ninth Floor

she ran across the parquet slipped the flokati mat
crashed the window

no

she stood at the window prism looked up at sky bruise night
spread her

no

she tilted dived swanning spinning
tip-toed ink air broke fingers first

no

she climbed the small gap the window gave
hung her finger joints clotted the view with frightened breath
fell ligament torn and sorry

no

she wandered to the glass hatch to watch tranquilised lights sputtering
leaned too hard fell faster than a bottle of Jack

no

this is how it was:

drunk screaming she crashed the parquet with grief
roared the ungiving window frames which gave

she spangled spaghetti-like ribbon-voiced
street lights crashed on her

no.

She did nothing. — Karin Schimke

I really like the look of the 1950s, lots of suburban Americana influences. I'm 5'4', so I like kitten heels occasionally because I can move around a bit easier, but pointy-toed pumps are very elongating. — Marina And The Diamonds

This is my 25th year of being on stage. A lot of people who I kind of toed up to the starting line with are no longer in this position. I feel very, very lucky. — Henry Rollins

He squinted up at the straining muscular backs of the stone men supporing the dome. "You'll have to take me to some museums," he said. He was being the young man on the road, following the sun because gray weather made him suicidal, writing his poetry in his mind in diners and gas station men's rooms across the country. "But I did see a show of Hopper once. And I like his light. It was kind of lonely or something.
Or, "The world's a mess, it's in my kiss,' like John and Exene say," he mumbled. We were in a leather store on Market Street being punks on acid with skunk-striped hair and steel-toed boots. — Francesca Lia Block

So, like the knights of old, I suited up in my trusty intern armor - brownish-green suit, sensible cap-toed oxfords, white button-down, and omnipresent LensCrafters glasses. If I wasn't able to shoot her, I could probably bore her to death. — Shane Kuhn

The three-toed sloth lives a peaceful, vegetarian life in perfect harmony with its environment. A good-natured smile is forever on its lips ... I have seen that smile with my own eyes. I am not one given to projecting human traits and emotions onto animals, but many a time during that month in Brazil, looking up at a sloth in repose, I felt I was in the presence of upside-down yogis deep in meditation or hermits deep in prayer, wise beings whose intense imaginative lives were beyond the reach of scientific probing. — Yann Martel

But she beat that voice down and stomped on it with imaginary work boots. Those steel-toed monsters were good for something. — Victoria Dahl

We didn't have time to get you an actual haircut," she said. "Seriously, did you do it yourself? Maybe without a mirror?"
I put a hand up to my head self-consciously and said, "I had some help from the General. And, hey, I didn't say anything about your man-shoes."
"They're steel-toed," she said calmly. "In case I need to plant them in anyone's ass as a result of him calling them man-shoes. And seriously, you let Toot help you with your hair? — Jim Butcher

She imagined Jack standing among the bins of nails and tool belts and the ranks of crowbars, unspoken to beyond the ordinary courtesies, seeming unaware of their awareness of him, watching flickering television in that cave full of the smells of leather and wood and oily metal, idle among all those implements of force and purpose, citified among the steel-toed boots and the work shirts. An odd place for a man to loiter who was so alive to embarrassment, so predisposed to sensing even the thought of rebuke. — Marilynne Robinson

Karsen rounded my car staring at me in disbelief. "Since when do you dress like that?" She pointed at my red tank top and shorts. "Somebody is close to exposing some toe."
I looked down at my closed toed heels.
"Of the camel variety," Karsen explained pointing at my girl parts. I tried to slap her but she took off. And I wasn't in the mood for running. I knew I'd break an ankle in the heels I wore. — Holly Hood

I never ran with my dad. He was old-school. He had a whole different idea of training. He ran in steel-toed boots! But, of course, he's proud of me and proud of the boxer that I became. — Laila Ali

My zoology thesis was a functional analysis of the thyroid gland of the three-toed sloth. I chose the sloth because its demeanour - calm, quiet and introspective - did something to soothe my shattered self. — Yann Martel

The icy sword of the square-toed one had cut off his breath and left his hands in a pose of agonizing protest. — Zora Neale Hurston

That may be so, but his faerie had suffered too much and he had had more than enough. If anybody so much as looked at her funny, he was going to come down hard on them with both size fourteen steel-toed boots. Then he would consider seriously the merits of evisceration. — Thea Harrison

Stargirl began to improvise. She flung her arms to a make-believe crowd like a celebrity on parade. She waggled her fingers at the stars. She churned her fists like an egg-beater. Every action echoed down the line behind her. The three hops of the bunny became three struts of a vaudeville vamp. Then a penguin waddle. Then tippy-toed priss. Every new move brought new laughter from the line. — Jerry Spinelli

I never quite toed the line. I was a bit disruptive. All my early school reports from the age of 5 were 'Daniel must learn not to distract others.' And now, that's what I do for a living. — Dan Stevens

He tip-toed past the double bed that had been placed in a corner - wrought-iron headboard, embroidered pillows, amulets against the evil-eye and a satiny, cobalt-blue bedspread. Blue was Iskender's favourite colour. It was the colour for boys, which meant the sky was a boy. So were the rivers and lakes. And the oceans, though he had yet to see one. — Elif Shafak

The sand squeaked underfoot as she toed it. She looked more closely: dark grains of basalt, mixed with minute seashell fragments, and a variety of colorful pebbles, some of them no doubt brecciated fragments of the Hellas impact itself. She lifted her eyes to the hills west of the sea, black under the sun. The bones of things stuck out everywhere. Waves broke in swift lines on the beach, and she walked over the sand toward her friends, in the wind, on Mars, on Mars, on Mars, on Mars, on Mars. — Kim Stanley Robinson

A number of my fellow religious studies majors- muddled agnostics who didn't know which way was up, who were in the thrall of reason, that fools good for the bright- reminded me of the three toed sloth; and the three toed sloth, such a beautiful example of the miracle of life, reminded me of God. — Yann Martel

Eager, perhaps, to repay the favor of listening, Sylvia nodded with encouragement. But suddenly she reminded Enid of Katharine Hepburn. In Hepburn's eyes there had been a blank unconsciousness of privilege that made a once-poor woman like Enid want to kick her patrician shins with the hardest-toed pumps at her disposal. It would be a mistake, she felt, to confess anything to this woman. — Jonathan Franzen

I was looking at my sneakers and making my feet alternately pigeon-toed and then penguin-toed on the bedroom's blue carpet. — David Foster Wallace

Jilly looked at it with a sinking heart. It was difficult enough when the exotic, undeniably gorgeous creature of her fantasies had turned out to be an obnoxious bully. Of course he had to have a Harley, as well, completing the perfect bad-boy image. With the tattooed teardrops on his high cheekbones and spiky, waist-length, flame-colored hair and his long, leather-clad legs and pointy-toed cowboy boots, he was almost irresistible, despite his manners.
A Harley sealed the deal. He was all her adolescent fantasies come true.
And it was time to grow up. — Anne Stuart

I'm steel-toed boots in a ballet-slipper world. — Richard Kadrey

The world I'd known had shattered around me in an instant, and now everything seemed so surreal. People went on doing exactly what they'd done before while I tip-toed through this new reality. — Katie Ashley

Tanaquil gently toed the peeve. "I'll unfasten the window. Jump out to the lower roof and run."
"Stay and bite," said the peeve. — Tanith Lee

The moment he'd wrapped his fingers around her wrist, she'd toed the edge of a cliff. The second his fangs had pierced her flesh she'd toppled over. Flying. Lost to sensation. Spellbound by the male who devoured her. — Jessica Lee

Pretend mic in hand, she danced into the bedroom, singing Rod Stewart's "Do Ya Think I'm Sexy." She executed a few dance steps she'd read about in books on modern dance. Losing herself to the groove of the music, she swayed and gyrated as she belted out the lyrics. She toed off her shoes and shimmied out of her jeans, bending to slip them over her feet...
"I'm thinking this is a sight and a sound I could get used to. — Vonnie Davis

The honeymoon phase was over. He still called me his girl, still held me like I meant everything and I really wanted to believe he was still completely here with me. I looked over his body and at his sleeping face. I slowly moved out of his bed, and tip toed to the bathroom where I fell to the tiled floor and sobbed. — Mercy Cortez

You can't judge a book by its steel-toed combat boots. — Lauren Oliver

I would have been a disaster as a career politician. I would never have toed a party line. — Hilary Mantel

Great snakes!" Penny says, snatching her hand away from me and jumping off the bed. "Fuck a nine-toed troll, Simon." She's shaking her hand, and there are tears in her eyes. "Stevie Nicks and Gracie Slick! Fuck! — Rainbow Rowell

I'm still about as pigeon-toed as you can get. But I learned to manage pretty well on a bike. Should have had a bicycle then, when I was a kid, but our family didn't have the money for such luxuries. I saved up to buy one myself a few years later. — Norman Rockwell

Especially given the severity of some of her curses. God help him if any of them ever came true. Why, he'd be a two-headed, three-toed, monkey-nosed, blind son of a cesspit-licking lackey if she had her way. (Braden) — Kinley MacGregor

Cost to clean deeply soiled rugs: $200.
Cost to replace shiny, black, stack-heeled, pilgrim-toed boots: $185.
Cost to fix every single delicious table and chair leg in the house: $490.
Life with two shelter dogs: fucking priceless. — Jen Lancaster

The difference was not that one was a pessimist and the other an optimist, it was that one's pessimism had led to an ethos of fear, and the other's pessimism had led to a noisy, fractious disdain for Everything-That-Was. One shrank, the other flailed. One toed the line, the other crossed it out. Much of the time they were at loggerheads, and because Willy found it so easy to shock his mother, he rarely wasted an opportunity to provoke an argument. If only she'd the wit to back off a little, he probably wouldn't have been so insistent about making his points. Her antagonism inspired him, pushed him into ever more extreme positions, and by the time he was ready to leave the house and go off to college, he had indelibly cast himself in his chosen role: as malcontent, as rebel, as outlaw poet prowling the gutters of a ruined world. — Paul Auster

My Lolita had a way of raising her bent left knee at the ample and springy start of the service cycle when there would develop and hang in the sun for a second a vital web of balance between toed foot, pristine armpit, burnished arm and far back-flung racket, as she smiled up with gleaming teeth at the small globe suspended so high in the zenith of the powerful and graceful cosmos she had created for the express purpose of falling upon it with a clean resounding crack of her golden whip. — Vladimir Nabokov

Every girl dreams of waking up one day, a princess. Until that day kicks you in the face, wearing steel toed boots. — L.A. Kennedy

Ole Anderson! Layin' down could not take me out with a steel toed boot! Could not put me away with a steel toed boot! And I'm gonna say it right now and get it through your head ... BOTH OF
YA (Ole Anderson and Ivan Koloff) THIS THANG WILL NEVER BE OVAAAAAAAAAAAAAA — Dusty Rhodes

I'd urge you to try German Riesling because it's delicious, but I fear you'll be more impressed if I tell you it's cutting-edge. That, after all, is what we want to know
what's now and happening. (Do you really think clunky square-toed shoes make your feet look better than those with slimming, tapered toes? You just wear them because that's what fashion dictates, you slut.) — Jay McInerney

Atlanta, Georgia - a city where little girls in $50 smocked dresses romp around on filthy playgrounds. Where every freshly birthed Southern baby gets two names and women wear pastel pantsuits to lunch. These ladies instinctively understand closed-toed shoes and slips and no-white-after-Labor-Day-unless-it-is-winter-white. — Jen Hatmaker