Untangle Quotes & Sayings

I love him so much it's like a thread piercing me. Punching holes. Dragging through. Stitching love into me. I'll neve robe able to untangle myself from this feeling. The color of love is surely this robin's-egg blue. — Sally Thorne

Heroes didn't leap tall buildings or stop bullets with an outstretched hand; they didn't wear boots and capes. They bled, and they bruised, and their superpowers were as simple as listening, or loving. Heroes were ordinary people who knew that even if their own lives were impossibly knotted, they could untangle someone else's. And maybe that one act could lead someone to rescue you right back. — Jodi Picoult

Look into words for the tomb of space
where beauties & stones & eternities untangle.
( ... )
In them is the flood which bothers the sea
and the songs which need no music.
Say these words that evolve into silence,
whose language survives not being understood.
Pronounce those which are unpalatable &
untangle from all the world wants to hear. — M.T.C. Cronin

The effort to untangle the human words from the divine seems not only futile to me but also unnecessary, since God works with what is. God uses whatever is usable in a life, both to speak and to act, and those who insist on fireworks in the sky may miss the electricity that sparks the human heart. — Barbara Brown Taylor

So much of every art is an expression of the subconscious that it seems to me most of all the important qualities are put there unconsciously, and little of importance by the conscious intellect. But these are things for the psychologist to untangle. — Edward Hopper

Oh, it's Applekit!" Cinderpelt yelped in mock astonishment. "I thought for a heartbeat there was a giant burr chasing me. Never mind. When we stop, I'll help you untangle them. — Erin Hunter

God often has to untangle some things in you to help you see Him. Even if this process takes months, it's not because he is waiting to see how sincere you are; it's because he is working deep inside you to sort out those things that crowd him out of your heart and set your focus on your own efforts or your own failures. — Wayne Jacobsen

hate being alone, but when I wake up in some guy's bed with dry come on the sheets underneath me and he's snoring like a garbage truck, I go, let me out of here. I slip out and crawl around the floor groping for my clothes, trying to untangle his blue jeans from mine, my bra from his Jockeys - Skip wears boxers, of course - and trying to be quiet at the same time, then slide out the door laughing like a seal escaping from the zoo and race home to where Jeannie has been warming the bed all night. Jumping in between the sheets and she wakes up and — Jay McInerney

Spending some time getting quiet can really be the best remedy for tangled situations. Taking a step back from all the emotion, frustration, and exhaustion to sit quietly with Jesus will do more to untangle a mess than anything else I've ever found. — Lysa TerKeurst

Perhaps everything was connected to everything, in a discernible if nebulous way, and if one might only trace the fibers and filaments of those connections, one might ... One might what? Observe the Grand Design? Untangle all the puppet strings and discover whose hands (or claws) are pulling them? End the ancient search for order and meaning in the universe? — Tom Robbins

It took a couple of months before we were both convinced there were no rules about sexual activities in Hell and our spouses were not going to show up out of the blue. It was hard to start a sexual relationship in circumstances of such bizarre uncertainty, especially for an active Mormon and a good Christian, both lost in a Zoroastrian Hell. We were like virgin newlyweds. All my life I'd been raised to believe this kind of thing was wrong. All my life I had lived with a strong sense of morality. How do you give it up? How do you do things you thought you'd never do? Where do all the things you believed go, when all the supporting structure is found to be a myth? How do you know how or on what to take a moral stand, how do you behave when it turns out there are no cosmic rules, no categorical imperatives? It was difficult. So tricky to untangle. — Steven L. Peck

I'm going to untangle her deadly scheme, even if it leaves my love affair hanging by a thread. — Jennifer Estep

Part of my mandate is to curb corruption and streamline a cumbersome, graft-ridden bureaucracy, to put resources where they will provide the clearest results, and to untangle a complicated regulatory environment. — Benigno Aquino III

I used to love to untangle chains when I was a child. I had thin, busy fingers, and I never gave up. Perhaps there was a psychiatric component to my concentration but like much of my psychic damage, this worked to everyone's advantage. — Anne Lamott

One who knows does not say it; one who says does not know it. Block the openings, Shut the doors, Soften the glare, Follow along old wheel tracks; Blunt the point, Untangle the knots. This is known as dark identity. Thus you cannot get close to it, nor can you keep it at arms length; you cannot bestow benefit on it, nor can you do it harm; you cannot ennoble it, nor can you debase it. Hence it is the most valued. — Lao-Tzu

My mother might find a thin gold chain at the back of a drawer, wadded into an impossibly tight knot, and give it to me to untangle. It would have a shiny, sweaty smell, and excite me: Gold chains linked you to the great fairy tales and myths, to Arabia, and India; to the great weight of the world, but lighter than a feather. — Anne Lamott

...never act on the impulse of that feeling. If you do, you will cause difficult situations to arise which will take years to untangle. Wait for God's timing and He will do it without any heartache or disappointment. — Oswald Chambers

O time, thou must untangle this, not I.
It is too hard a knot for me t'untie. — William Shakespeare

We can never untangle all the woes in other people's lives. We can't produce miracles overnight. But we can bring a cup of cool water to a thirsty soul, or a scoop of laughter to a lonely heart. — Barbara Johnson

You had to know when it made sense to try to untangle something and when to just cut the motherfucker loose. — Joe Hill

But one had to go back to the beginning of things, always. Trace the thread of life - find the knot - untangle it. — Martha Ostenso

There are stories that don't need a plot. Sooner or later they rise above the confusion and untangle their mysteries in a series of sentences. — Patrice Nganang

Someone once told me that children are like kites. You struggle just to get them in the air; they crash; you add a longer tail. Then they get caught in a tree; you climb up and bring them down, and untangle the string; you run to get them aloft again. Finally, the kite is airborne, and it flies higher and higher, as you let out more string, until it's so high in the sky, it looks like a bird. And if the string snaps, and you've done your job right, the kite will continue to soar in the wind, all by itself. — Charmian Carr

There needed to be a distance. The one thing the past few weeks had driven into me over and over was the more you got to know someome, the more you inevitably came to care about him or her. The lines between you became blurred, and when the separation came, it was excruciating to untangle yourself from that life. Even if I had wanted to tell them, there was no way to put that kind of pain into words. No way to make them understand. — Alexandra Bracken

The roots of the discontent are internal, and each person must untangle them personally, with his or her own power. The shields that have worked in the past - the order that religion, patriotism, ethnic traditions, and habits instilled by social classes used to provide - are no longer effective for increasing numbers of people who feel exposed to the harsh winds of chaos. — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

The soul of us is never confused about why it is here.
It only asks us to wake up and see the breadcrumb clues it has been leaving all along.
It asks us to have courage to face the wounds we have been hiding, allow it to heal them and untangle the heavy, snarled patterns.
Because the soul of us has no doubt whatever that it can and, if we allow it to express fully, can live a life of such power and joy through us that our human selves will be astonished. — Jacob Nordby

Hallsy is only thirty-nine, and already her face is pulled tight as a pair of Lululemon yoga pants across a plus-size girl's rear. She's never been married, which she'll tell you she never wants to be even though she hangs all over every remotely fuckable guy after a single drink, while they gently untangle her Marshmallow Man arms from around their stiff necks. It's no wonder the only ring on her finger is the Cartier Trinity, what with the way she's ruined her face and the fact that she spends more time sunning on the beach than she should running on a treadmill. But it's not just her sunspot-speckled chest and stocky, lazy frame. Hallsy is the type of person others describe as "whacky" and "kooky," which is just the civilized way of saying she's a nasty cunt. Hallsy she loves me. — Jessica Knoll

A change in thought can change a lot. A change thought can untie and untangle the knot — Ernest Agyemang Yeboah

The universe is bound by unseen threads. We have only to untangle them a little to see a pattern unfold. — Kathleen Tessaro

His love for her was so deeply woven with resentment that he could not untangle the two. — Kim Edwards

In short, pornography is not about sex. It's about an imbalance of male-female power that allows and even requires sex to be used as a form of aggression ... But until we finally untangle sexuality and aggression, there will be more pornography and less erotica. There will be little murders in our beds - and very little love. — Gloria Steinem

We say to the confused, Know thyself, as if knowing yourself was not the fifth and most difficult of human arithmetical operations, we say to the apathetic, Where there's a will, there's a way, as if the brute realities of the world did not amuse themselves each day by turning that phrase on its head, we say to the indecisive, Begin at the beginning, as if beginning were the clearly visible point of a loosely wound thread and all we had to do was to keep pulling until we reached the other end, and as if, between the former and the latter, we had held in our hands a smooth, continuous thread with no knots to untie, no snarls to untangle, a complete impossibility in the life of a skein, or indeed, if we may be permitted one more stock phrase, in the skein of life. — Jose Saramago

I'm trying to untangle the truth from the false from assumptions from the postulations but run-on sentences are twisting around my throat. — Tahereh Mafi

Who you get, and how it works out- there's so much luck involved, as well as the million branching consequences of your conscious choice of a mate, that no one and no amount of talking can untangle it if it turns out unhappily. — Ian McEwan

When he went back to untangle himself, she planted a kiss on his lips that he promptly
and in as polite a manner as possible
wiped away after his back was turned. — Kiera Cass

The distance between your head and your heart is only twelve inches, but it's the difference between information and transformation. It's not enough to invite Jesus into your mind. You have to open the door to your heart of hearts. No door can remain locked. Even the door to your hidden room.

Nothing entangles the emotions like sin. And if you sin long enough, it feels like a Gordian knot that seems impossible to untangle. But Jesus Christ went to the cross to undo what you have done. He broke the curse of sin so you can break the cycle of sin. — Mark Batterson

'Charlotte's Web,' which I read sitting on my mother's lap, was the most emotional experience: that was when I made the leap from seeing how to untangle words to realizing how books both contain and convey strong feelings. — Meg Wolitzer

Because it was enough for one of those favorites of His Distinguished Highness to issue a thoughtless decree. These young smart alecks see it, and they immediately imagine some fatal result and come running to the rescue. They start trying to mend things, straighten things out, patch things up and untangle them. And so instead of using their energy to build their own vision of the future, instead of trying to put their irresponsible, destructive fantasies into action, our malcontents had to roll up their sleeves and start untangling what the minsters had knotted up. And there's always a lot of work to untangling! So they untangle and untangle, drenched in sweat, wearing their nerves to shreds, running around, patching things up here and there, and in all this rush and overwork, in this whirlwind, their fantasies slowly evaporate from their hot heads. — Ryszard Kapuscinski

When I try to brush the road dust off of me and untangle all the wires in my head, I'm usually surrounded by music on a boat. But that's not how I wake up every day. — Kenny Chesney

I try desperately to conquer the transitory nature of my existence, to trap moments before they evenesce, to untangle the confusion of my past. Every instant disappears in a breath and immediately becomes the past; reality is ephemeral and changing, pure longing. — Isabel Allende

Lanith? Don't bewitch the Church boys. Their disappointment is a mess to untangle when they follow you home. — Lita Burke

Fish seem to be rather conservative around this bay, one seldom catches enough to form the fundamental basis for a lie. Dante left out one of the torments of Hades - I could imagine a doomed mortal made to untangle wet fish lines forever. Everybody lost patience at the stupidity of the fish in not coming forward promptly to be murdered. — Thomas A. Edison

At Marcy I spot what I am looking for and shimmy up a lampost and untangle the pair of sneakers that some kid has tossed up there that dangle in testement to some shit that I have never figured out as long as I have lived in this city. I sit on the curb and stuff my feet inside leaving the laces undone. There too small but the right one fits a little better than the left. Not having a big toe is already paying off. — Charlie Huston

As the smoke clears,
I awaken,
And untangle you from me.
Would it make you feel better
To watch me, while I bleed?
All my windows still are broken,
But I'm standing on my feet. — Demi Lovato

But there was something else, too, a strange excitement at the idea of playing normal, and every time he tried to untangle how he felt, he just ended up in knots. — Victoria Schwab

mum always ought to be, getting tea. Women and food: how they locked on to your heart, taking it so young that if you had ever been properly loved and nurtured, you could never quite untangle them again. And did you ever, ever get over losing your mum? It seemed absurd after so long, and at his age, to be seized with such a yearning to go home; but she was gone, beyond reach, and a grown man wasn't allowed to feel like this. The — Cynthia Harrod-Eagles

Sometimes when you try too hard," Aqamdax explained, "things get tangled, and the only way to untangle them is to let go. — Sue Harrison

And leaving you (there aren't words to untangle it)
Your life, fearful and immense and blossoming,
so that, sometimes frustrated, and sometimes understanding,
Your life is sometimes a stone in you, and then, a star. — Maggie Stiefvater

The complexities of life can never be untangled by man; like a sheep without a shepherd we have been self-programmed for destruction. Jesus Christ is the only way. Genesis 3:6 and John 14:6. — Felix Wantang

I don't think people understand the model-minority stereotype is negative. You are boxed in. You have to untangle that to find your own path. — Eddie Huang

I try to shape a tight laugh, and it dies in my throat. "This is new to me, Wes. Sharing. Having someone I can share with. And I really appreciate your help
That sounds lame. I've never had someone like ... This is a mess. There's finally something good in my life and I'm already making a mess of it." My cheeks go hot, and I have to clench my teeth to stop the rambling.
"Hey," he says, knocking his shoe playfully against mine. "It's the same for me, you know?" This is all new to me. And I'm not going anywhere. It takes at least three assassination attempts to scare me off. And even then, if there are baked goods involved, I might come back." He hoists himself up from the bench. "But on that note, I retreat to tend my wounded pride." He says it with a smile, and somehow I'm smiling, too. How does he do that, untangle things so easily? — Victoria Schwab

When dailiness enters memory, repetition fixes places in the mind, but it also burdens them with a wealth of experience that is often difficult to untangle. — Siri Hustvedt

When your children are very young it is impossible to imagine a life where they will not live with you, where you will not see them every day or know what they are doing. As they grow up, you gradually untangle your 'self' from their 'selves' until the day arrives when you look at your child and realize the role you play in their life is no longer a central one. It's hard to recognize that your child is independent, but it's also incredibly liberating."
-- from Unlikely Destinations: The Lonely Planet Story — Maureen Wheeler

No, when it came to the ultimate and highest questions, there was no help from outside - no mediation, no absolution, no soothing consolation. Every man had to untangle the riddle on his own, had to work diligently at it, at hot speed, all by himself; before it was too late, he must either achieve some clear readiness for death, or die in despair. — Thomas Mann

You untangle a knot with slow teasing, not sharp pulling, and believe me we have here a knot such as I have never seen. But I will unpick it. I will. — C.J. Sansom

To begin to use cultural forces for the good of our daughters we must first shake ourselves awake from the cultural trance we all live in. This is no small matter, to untangle our true beliefs from what we have been taught to believe about who and what girls and women are. — Jeanne Elium

Writers always put themselves into their work. But you can't just untangle it and take it back to its source. — Jeanette Winterson

On some other world, possibly it is different. Better. There are clear good and evil alternatives. Not these obscure admixtures, these blends, with no proper tool by which to untangle the components. — Philip K. Dick

I've always done things the hard way. I was born like a piece of tangled yarn. The job is trying to untangle it, and I'll probably go on doing it for the rest of my life. — Karen Allen

We must all allow ourselves the fantasy of projection from time to time, a chance to clothe ourselves in the imaginary gowns and tails of what has never been and never will be. This gives some polish to our tarnished lives, and sometimes we may choose one dream over another, and in the choosing find some respite from ordinary sadness. After all, we, none of us, can ever untangle the knot of fictions that make up that wobbly thing we call a self. — Siri Hustvedt

But cocks aren't supposed to lay eggs ... " Sahil said, trying to untangle himself. " ... they're supposed to fertilise them. — Faraaz Kazi

I felt a hard knot untangle in my chest. It was a relief, a worry that I had not known I had, dissolving like a soap bubble on pavement. We — D.C. Lozar

I can't untangle, I can't untangle what I feel and what would matter most. — Sara Quin

To me, chance isn't random. The universe is bound by unseen threads. We have only to untangle them a little to see the pattern unfold. — Kathleen Tessaro

Your life is always under construction. It is your job to learn how
to untangle the threads and weave a tapestry that matches your desires. — Dannye Williamsen

Complete and accurate surveillance as a means of control is probably a practical impossibility. What is much more likely is a loss of privacy and constant inconvenience as the wrong people gain access to information, as one wastes time convincing the inquisitors that one is in fact innocent, or as one struggles to untangle the errors of the errant machine. — Victor C. Ferkiss

I know why writers write- they write to untangle the knots in their hearts. — Virginia Frances Schwartz

He wanted Ty with him, wanted him badly. Needed him as a partner, and not just at work. Craved him as a lover more than he'd ever jonesed over heroin. Connected with him in so many ways that Zane couldn't see a way to untangle himself and didn't even want to try — Abigail Roux

There was a rightness to things that surpassed understanding, but she knew beyond all doubt that in each and every circumstance her feet had been guided along this path and to this place. A favourite saying in China - which she had heard on occasion from her own grandmother - was that the threads of life are easy to weave, but difficult to untangle. — Stephen R. Lawhead

Afterward, Isabel drove me home and I shut myself in the study with Rilke, and I read and I wanted.
And leaving you (there arent words to untangle it)
Your life, fearful and immense and blossoming,
So that, sometimes frustrated, and sometimes
understanding
Your life is sometimes a stone in you, and then, a star
I was beginning to undertand poetry. — Maggie Stiefvater

Simplify the complicated, untangle the tangled, follow the threads, to the heart of the matter. — Jane Teresa Anderson

You fool, You have been dangling For such a long time! When will you seize the opportunity Or feel the necessity To untangle the taut knot Of your bondage-life? — Sri Chinmoy

No wonder Mr. Tagomi could not go on, he thought. The terrible dilemma of our lives. Whatever happens, it is evil beyond compare. Why struggle, then? Why choose? If all alternatives are the same . . . Evidently we go on, as we always have. From day to day. At this moment we work against Operation Dandelion. Later on, at another moment, we work to defeat the police. But we cannot do it all at once; it is a sequence. An unfolding process. We can only control the end by making a choice at each step. He thought, We can only hope. And try. On some other world, possibly it is different. Better. There are clear good and evil alternatives. Not these obscure admixtures, these blends, with no proper tool by which to untangle the components. We do not have the ideal world, such as we would like, where morality is easy because cognition is easy. Where one can do right with no effort because he can detect the obvious. The — Philip K. Dick

In a civil war ... every side is wrong. It's hopeless to try to untangle it. Everyone is a victim. — Philip K. Dick

He's MINE", I howled. "Mine! And I'm his! You knew this when you slunk into our bed. I told you at the beginning, and I thought you understood, well, you understand now, don't you?"
He had the nerve to extend a placating hand to me, and I wished so violently for a weapon, I were not surprised to hear the clatter of a knife falling out of the cupboard.
I turned my head to the side and spat instead. "I told you 'no', dammit. I told you I'd follow him to the ends of the fucking earth, and I will, and you thought that if you took him, you'd take the way I felt. Well, you can't! Hammer and me - we're twined together, like rose bushes or wrought iron, and you can't untangle us, and if you did, you'd have to break us! Don't you see what you've done? You tried to break Hammer! He's mine! My whole life, the only thing I ever wanted were him, and you tried to break him! And why? So you could have me? You don't care for me! — Amy Lane

All of us have our wires crossed and crisscrossed so many times it's impossible to untangle the mess. It really does seem like the entire human race might as well be conversing with hand gestures and grunts, for all the success we're having. — Jody Gehrman

I feel I should point out that I do not mix cocktails or provide helpful advice to those who find themselves in a bit of a pickle; and neither do I untangle emotional difficulties. I just buttle. (The Butler in The Dark Side of the Road) — Simon R. Green

Where will you go? What will you do?" he demanded.
"That need be no concern of yours
"
"The hell it isn't!" he shouted. "Everything about you is my concern."
She opened her mouth to deny this but the look of him stopped her. For a long tense moment he studied her and when he spoke his voice was low and furious and yearning.
"I don't give a bloody damn if I never share your bed, your name, or your house
you are still my concern. You can leave, take yourself from my ken, disappear for the rest of my life but you cannot untangle yourself from my
my concern. That I have of you, Miss Bede, for that, at least, I do not need your permission."
His words shocked her. She looked decades hence and she saw a specter of what might have been haunting her every moment, her every act, for the rest of her life.
"Your concern is misplaced."
"It's mine to misplace," he said steadily. — Connie Brockway

Editing fiction is like using your fingers to untangle the hair of someone you love. — Stephanie Roberts

I just got my signals crossed. First thing, I have to untangle the connections. Otherwise, I come away empty-handed. Or with someone else's hands. Or even with a missing hand. — Haruki Murakami

Here. Let me untangle your hair, at least. If we need to run, we can't have you stuck."
"I don't think Bob's up for running," I said.
"Then you'll take my horse."
"What about you?"
"I'll stay here and whittle a sword and kill the bear or, if that doesn't work, I'll just be eaten alive, happily sacrificing my life for yours." He gave me a look. "Or I'll just stay on the horse and you can sit behind me. Satan can hold two, I'm sure."
"Oh, so you're a cowboy now? I wasn't aware that architects were also masters of horseflesh. You and Satan BFFs now? Practiced your stunt-riding this morning?"
"My dad gave me a few lessons."
"When? When you were six?"
"Well, you know, Harper, maybe we should just stay here and bicker until the bear can't stand it anymore and kills us both. Would that make you happy? — Kristan Higgins