Quotes & Sayings About Velvet

Mariotta listened to it all, sitting judicially in a whirl of velvet with all
the Culter jewels and the emerald necklace for moral support. — Dorothy Dunnett

The butterfly wallpaper was now gone. It had been replaced by a moody, breathless wallpaper of silver, sprinkled with tiny white dots that looked like stars. It made her feel an odd sense of anticipation, like last night. Grandpa Vance couldn't have come in last night and done this.
Did it really change on its own?
It was beautiful, this wallpaper. It made the room look like living in a cloud. She put her hand against the wall by her dresser. It was soft, like velvet. How could her mother not have told her a room like this existed? She'd never mentioned it. Not even in a bedtime story. — Sarah Addison Allen

( ... ) a Universe composed of one-trillionth part matter to one decillion parts black velvet futility. — Kurt Vonnegut

One of the ladies handed her a red velvet hooded cloak. Little Red Riding Hood. This big bad wolf in a leather kilt wanted to eat her all up. — Terry Spear

There's nothing I like more than meeting velvet clad peers while wrapped in a towel. — Eloisa James

Life, in her experience, had a kind of velvet luster. You looked at yourself from one perspective and all you saw was weirdness. Move your head a little bit, though, and everything looked reasonably normal. — Jonathan Franzen

Vanity may be likened to the smooth-skinned and velvet-footed mouse, nibbling about forever in expectation of a crumb; while self-esteem is too apt to take the likeness of the huge butcher's dog, who carries off your steaks, and growls at you as be goes. — William Gilmore Simms

Other tokens of maturity included a velvet choker of tiny pearls, the ginger tresses gathered at the nape and secured with an emerald clasp, three loose silver bracelets around a freckled wrist, and the fact that whenever she moved, the air about her tasted of rose water. — Ian McEwan

I guess, for me, what started me getting real excited about music was the New York punk and new-wave scene. All those bands looked back to the Velvet Underground and the Stooges and the Modern Lovers as well. But that was back when Television were punk, and the Talking Heads were punk. — Dean Wareham

The setting sun had turned the blue sky a brilliant orange, then soft pink merging to pearl; the plum velvet of night had come out of the east, spangled with stars. — Paul Gallico

I remember seeing Extreme play with [Debra] Winger and Cinderella. Gary Cherone was wearing purple velvet overalls with no shirt and saddle oxfords.Afterward, I went home and told my mom, "I need to find saddle oxfords." And she said, "Like little girls wear?" Naturally, I couldn't find them in my size, so I went to a shoemaker and had him make me a pair. I wore them for a while, but they didn't seem as cool on me, because when your foot is size 12, they sort of look like clown shoes. — Patrick Wilson

My beauty tricks revolve around eyes. For the early morning shoots, I pop eye pads in the freezer the night before, and when I take them out in the morning they are already cold and active and are great under my eyes. I keep my eye pads right next to my red velvet Ben & Jerry's in the freezer. — Christine Teigen

Someone was coming through the velvet.
He was pulling it wide, he was stepping onto Kestrel's balcony - close, closer still as she turned and the curtain swayed, then stopped. He pinned the velvet against frame. He held the sweep of it high, at the level of his gray eyes, which were silver in the shadows.
He was here. He had come.
Arin. — Marie Rutkoski

Colorful garments - ball gowns, kimonos, evening pajamas - made from yards upon yards of iridescent silk or velvet. I own an unjustifiable number of such outfits and jump at the chance to wear them. Against the etiquette about which I am otherwise all too conscious, I frequently, and unrepentantly, overdress for the occasion. — Julia Glass

From scarlet to powdered gold, to blazing yellow, to the rare ashen emerald, to the orange and black velvet of your shimmering corselet, out to the tip that like an amber thorn begins you, small, superlative being, you are a miracle, and you blaze — Pablo Neruda

You have pissed your last in this house ... and I don't make velvet roses anymore. — Toni Morrison

I smiled half a smile at her puppy antics, wondering what it would be like to be able to join her, to shed my human skin and the confines that went with it and just live in the moment as a wolf. What would I look like with four legs and fur - would I be light-colored like Katie, or a darker timber, like Dev? I wondered if I would be velvet black with ice-blue eyes, like Chase. — Jennifer Lynn Barnes

Soft you day, be velvet soft,
My true love approaches,
Look you bright, you dusty sun,
Array your golden coaches.
Soft you wind, be soft as silk
My true love is speaking.
Hold you birds, your silver throats,
His golden voice I'm seeking.
Come you death, in haste, do come
My shroud of black be weaving,
Quiet my heart, be deathly quiet,
My true love is leaving. — Maya Angelou

I was a schooled musician. When I made 'Blue Velvet', I told everyone what to do. I was an arranger. I learned music in school I told the band to play this. I told the guitar to do that. — Bobby Vinton

Redd's lact of knowledge astounded the tutor. Did she really understand so little about how a Wonderland princess became queen?
She doesn't know what she doesn't know," he mumbled, and then: "Your Imperial Viciousness, perhpas we should speak face-to-face, without this velvet barrier between us. Are you decent?"
I'm never decent! — Frank Beddor

He earned his love through discipline, a thundering velvet hand, his gentle means of sculpting souls took me years to understand. — Dan Fogelberg

THE OFFICE FELT SUMPTUOUS EVEN IN NEAR DARKNESS. It reminded me of certain photographs by Edward Steichen: velvet shadows deepening into moody gloom, here and there a form suggested by a reflection of light on a radius of polished wood, the mysterious gleam of Tiffany glass in the pendant shade of a lamp not lit, the room implied rather than revealed, yet known as well as if it had been enraptured by sunshine instead of barely kissed by the ghost light of the haunted city beyond the windows. — Dean Koontz

She danced the dance so well, so well indeed, so perfectly, that Anisya Fyodorovna, who handed her at once the kerchief she needed in the dance, had tears in her eyes, though she laughed as she watched that slender and graceful little countess, reared in silk and velvet, belonging to another world than hers, who was yet able to understand all that was in Anisya and her father and her mother and her aunt and every Russian soul. — Leo Tolstoy

And then he did rise from his wheelchair. But there was something odd about the way he did it. His blanket fell away from his legs, but the legs didn't move. His waist kept getting longer, rising above his belt. At first, I thought he was wearing very long, white velvet underwear, but as he kept rising out of the chair, taller than any man, I realized that the velvet underwear wasn't underwear; it was the front of an animal, muscle and sinew under coarse white fur. And the wheelchair wasn't a chair. It was some kind of container, an enormous box on wheels, and it must've been magic, because there's no way it could've held all of him. A leg came out, long and knobby-kneed, with a huge polished hoof. Then another front leg, then hindquarters, and then the box was empty, nothing but a metal shell with a couple of fake human legs attached. — Rick Riordan

So many people had tried for Blake, but so many had failed. All it takes is one to be the glue. It's going to be me. Livia moved quietly to straddle him. She put her hands on his scruffy cheeks. "I know all that you are. You almost don't belong here, your soul's so pure." Livia put a hand on his chest. "You're perfect to me. You're chivalrous to me. I adore your manners. You can't disappoint me. It's not possible." Livia leaned in and kissed him sweetly. See? See how much I can fix?
Blake became absorbed by her hair, grabbing handfuls of it. He pulled her to his chest, combing it out with his fingers as he hummed a soothing song in her ear. The liquid velvet of his voice lifted her into dreams. — Debra Anastasia

He wrenched the hangings shut around his four-poster, leaving Harry standing there by the door, staring at the dark red velvet curtains, now hiding one of the few people he had been sure would believe him. — J.K. Rowling

They strolled toward town, stopping now and then to let him catch his breath and to gaze upward, for the west Kansas sky is black velvet on clear, cool December nights, and the Milky Way is strung across it like the diamond necklace of a crooked banker's mistress. — Mary Doria Russell

Ugh. A club for Prodigium? That conjured up images of way more velvet and dry ice and angst than I was up for. — Rachel Hawkins

For pilots sometimes see behind the curtain, behind the veil of gossamer velvet, and find the truth behind man, the force behind a universe. — Richard Bach

He was ... wearing a tasselled velvet nightcap that I [Amy] noticed the Doctor eyeing up. If Boris didn't watch out, that'd go missing and we'd never hear the end of 'Nightcaps are cool. — James Goss

We scoffed at the kids who weren't like us, the ones who already talked about careers, or bliddy mortgages and pensions. Kids wanting to be old before they were young. Kids wanting to be dead before they'd lived. They were digging their own graves, building the walls of their own damn jails. Us, we hung to our youth. We were footloose, fancy free. We said we'd never grow boring and old. We plundered charity shops for vintage clothes. We bought battered Levis and gorgeous faded velvet stuff from Attica in High Bridge. We wore coloured boots, hemp scarves from Gaia. We read Baudelaire and Byron. We read our poems to each other. We wrote songs and posted them on YouTube. We formed bands. We talked of the amazing journeys we'd take together once school was done. Sometimes we paired off, made couples that lasted for a little while, but the group was us. We hung together. We could say anything to each other. We loved each other. — David Almond

There was a Sears, Roebuck catalogue painfully twisted and shellacked and tied with a red cord. The white card beneath it said, An inexpensive doorstop." ... There were catsup bottles made into bud vases, closthespins decorated with crepe paper butterflies for use as curtin hold-backers, crocheted bags for silverware, bouquets of crepe paper and velvet flowers, an enormous funeral set piece of white organdy gardenias and dark green oilcloth leaves with REST IN PEACE spelled out in white pipe cleaners, embroidered pictures, burned wood match boxes, and fancy pillows by the hundreds. The pillows embraced every sentiment from FRANKY AND JOHNNY WERE LOVERS in black beads on a cerise satin background to the Twenty-Third Psalm in white on black velvet. It was an impressive exhibit of what loneliness can do to people. — Betty McDonald

When you with velvets mantled o'er, Defy December's tempests frore, Oh! spare one garment from your store, To clothe the poor at Christmas. — Gilbert K. Chesterton

He domesticated and developed the native wild flowers. He had one hill-side solidly clad with that low-growing purple verbena which mats over the hills of New Mexico. It was like a great violet velvet mantle thrown down in the sun; all the shades that the dyers and weavers of Italy and France strove for through centuries, the violet that is full of rose colour and is yet not lavender; the blue that becomes almost pink and then retreats again into sea-dark purple - the true Episcopal colour and countless variations of it. — Willa Cather

You should see what she's wearing, Callie. It's velvet. Canary yellow velvet. Turban to match. She looks like a furry banana. — Sarah MacLean

The wind outside nested in each tree, prowled the sidewalks in invisible treads like unseen cats.
Tom Skelton shivered. Anyone could see that the wind was a special wind this night, and the darkness took on a special feel because it was All Hallows' Eve. Everything seemed cut from soft black velvet or gold or orange velvet. Smoke panted up out of a thousand chimneys like the plumes of funeral parades. From kitchen windows drifted two pumpkin smells: gourds being cut, pies being baked. — Ray Bradbury

Tessa, Will, and Jem had raised James in love, and had surrounded him with love and the goodness it could produce. But they had given him no armor against the evil. They had wrapped his heart in silks and velvet, and then he had given it to Grace Blackthorn, and she had spun for it a cage of razor wire and broken glass, burned it to bits, and blown away the remains, another layer of ashes in this place of beautiful horrors. — Cassandra Clare

I think that expression is so great. So I'll look at someone like Prince, and one reason to lose weight is so I can rock that purple velvet outfit with the white frilly shirt. — Graham Elliot

A landscape glittered behind her voice. There were icicles in it and savage fields of ice, great storms boiling over a flat countryside striped with white rails - a chessboard beneath a storm. Horses were stretched forever at the gallop. Tiny men in silk were brave beyond bearing and sat on the horses like embryos with their knees in their mouths. The gorgeous names of horses were cried from mouth to mouth and circulated in a steam of fame. Lottery, The Hermit, the great mare Sceptre; the glorious ancestress Pocahontas, whose blood ran down like time into her flying children; Easter Hero, the Lamb, that pony stallion. — Enid Bagnold

Inside you is a thing worth putting on a pedestal
worth putting out there for all the world to see. That piece of rock might been knocked around, roughed up a bit, considered scrap, and thrown on the trash pile ... but that's only because they don't know what's on the inside. They can't see like Michaelangelo. 'Cause if they could, they'd know that there's something in there that's just waiting to jump out. Like there is inside you. I'm sorry for the hammer and chisel. I wish life didn't work that way. Just remember ... the velvet cloth ain't far behind. — Charles Martin

Golosh Street is an interesting locality. All the oddities of trade seemed to have found their way thither and made an eccentric mercantile settlement. There is a bird-shop at one corner. Immediately opposite is an establishment where they sell nothing but ornaments made out of the tinted leaves of autumn, varnished and gummed into various forms. Further down is a second-hand book-stall. There is a small chink between two ordinary-sized houses, in which a little Frenchman makes and sells artificial eyes, specimens of which, ranged on a black velvet cushion, stare at you unwinkingly through the window as you pass, until you shudder and hurry on, thinking how awful the world would be if everyone went about without eyelids. Madame Filomel, the fortune-teller, lives at No. 12 Golosh Street, second storey front, pull the bell on the left-hand side. Next door to Madame is the shop of Herr Hippe, commonly called the Wondersmith.
("The Wondersmith") — Fitz-James O'Brien

There are two sides of the Velvet Rope. Those who want to be on the other side and those who are on the other side. — Janet Jackson

Hey. Do you want a cracker?" a velvet voice asked me.
I didn't look up, I wasn't sure if he was even talking to me. Why would an attractive senior be talking to me?
"Hey, I'm talking to you," he said, a chuckle in his voice.
I slowly lifted my head peering at him from under my long lashes. His dark brown hair swept across his forehead, and his deep blue eyes made me gasp. He wore the ultimate laid back style, a white t-shirt and jeans. All he needed was a black leather jacket, and he would be the bad boy from my book. The smile on his face was breathtaking and I found myself unable to speak. — Felicia Tatum

Not often in the story of mankind does a man arrive on earth who is both steel and velvet, who is as hard as rock and soft as drifting fog, who holds in his heart and mind the paradox of terrible storm and peace unspeakable and perfect. — Carl Sandburg

I spent the next two weeks flopped on my grandmother's super-bourgeois rose-colored velvet sofa, consuming massive quantites of grapes, reading obsessively. — Elif Batuman

Everybody gets a tag. If you listen to a Velvet Underground record, you don't think, 'Godfathers of Punk.' You just think, 'This sounds great.' The tags are there in order to help try to sell something by giving it a name that's going to stick in somebody's memory. But it doesn't describe it. So 'depressing' isn't a word I would use to describe my music. But there is some sadness in it
there has to be, so that the happiness in it will matter. — Elliott Smith

But tonight, after the carriages left, there would be Millie, her scent like a breeze from their lavender field at the height of summer, her skin as smooth as the finest velvet.
Their eyes met. She flushed. Desire tumbled through him. — Sherry Thomas

It was around this time that I'd begun trying to perfect the art of fucking with people's minds. I'd figured out that when someone else was hogging the limelight, you could cut him down to size by bringing up a subject he didn't know anything about. If the other person knew a lot about literature, I'd talk about the Velvet Underground; if he knew a lot about rock, I'd talk about Messiaen; if he knew a lot about classical music, I'd talk about Roy Lichtenstein; if he knew a lot about pop art, I'd talk about Jean Genet; and so on. Do that in a small provincial city and you never lose an argument. — Ryu Murakami

A dream-like state enveloped us, days filled with sunlight, the creamy churn of waves as the ship plunged and reared like a mettlesome horse, the flash of silver spray against our faces and, at night, a canopy of white-hot stars in blackness so deep it seemed as if I could stretch out my hand and plunge it wrist-deep into the velvet of it. — Suzanne M. Wolfe

the skin like velvet over steel, — Roan Parrish

The Thwaites lived on Central Park West in the upper Eighties, in a building that, while manifestly grand, particularly to someone from Ohio, was by no means the most elegant among its neighbors. Its lobby, for one thing, was little more than a wide corridor, with two drably upholstered wing chairs propped against a wall and, between them, a glass table upon which rested an elaborate but unaesthetic arrangement of silk flowers. The light in the corridor was greenish, dim and lavatorial, barely illuminating the shallowly carved figures that marched, in pseudo-Egyptian fashion, along the pink stone tiles as far as the elevator. The floor, incongruously, was of a black and white parquet, upon which all but the softest slippers echoed ominously. And the elevator itself - paneled, with brass fixtures and a single tiny red velvet stool, presumably for its operator's comfort - seemed again of a different, though no less ancient, era. — Claire Messud

The walls of his last lodging were distempered in drab and ornamented with abstract designs in chocolate, grey, and bottle-green, such as Western plumbers and decorators loved to create in the latter half of the last century, and its windows were curtained with the intensely vulgar dark green printed velvet used in wagons-lits. — Rebecca West

You're like Marilyn Monroe,' Ken tells me, which I take as a compliment and say a nervous "Thank You". Interrupting, he adds, 'You're all velvet and Velcro. Men want you because you're sexy and broken and when it gets too rough they can say "Hey! This toy is broken!" and toss you aside without feeling bad. — Emma Forrest

Music has fed me a lot of ideas ... The film BLUE VELVET came out of Bobby Vinton's version of the song BLUE VELVET. — David Lynch

The sky was a sparkling succession of black diamonds on black velvet made crystal clear by the blackout. — Sara Sheridan

Falling in love creates beauty in every facet of life. A hovering bee, a gentle flowing creek, pale blue sky, the crinkle at the corner of an old woman's eye, bare feet on velvet moss, a songbird in a bush, even the howl of a far away wolf become so beautiful to those finding a new love. It was like that for Sassy and Hanlon, everything seemed sharper and clearer. It was like a new view of the world that they had never known existed had opened up to them. Doug Hiser Montana Mist — Doug Hiser

Not many people bought Velvet Underground LPs, but those who did, started a band. — Brian Eno

We're all driven to premieres or nightclubs and seen the rope separating those who can enter and those who can't. Well, there's also a velvet rope we have inside of us, keeping others from knowing our feelings. — Janet Jackson

Walking into the library, I took in my breath sharply and stopped: glass fronted bookcases and Gothic panels, stretching fifteen feet to a frescoed and plaster-medallioned ceiling. In the back of the room was a marble fireplace, big as a sepulchre, and a globed gasolier
dripping with prisms and strings of crystal beading
sparkled in the dim.
There was a piano, too, and Charles was playing, a glass of whiskey on the seat beside him. He was a little drunk; the Chopin was slurred and fluid, the notes melting sleepily into one another. A breeze stirred the heavy, moth-eaten velvet curtains, ruffling his hair. — Donna Tartt

From the front row of the balcony, I look out over the Uptown Cinema. The red velvet seats are emptying, the credits scrolling up the screen. Ginger Rogers married a Nazi, but Cary Grant got her out of it. Their ship is sailing to America; sun burns away the fog and the wind blows free. Now they are gone and I am coming back to reality, breathing a harsher air. It is how I always feel when a movie ends. — Kermit Roosevelt III

A wise old man taught me that diplomacy is the velvet glove that cloaks the fist of power. Persuasion, not force, works best and lasts longest. — Robin Hobb

When night falls over Washington, D.C., memorials, public buildings, and broad avenues become ethereal shapes in soft light and shadow. Floodlights, piercing the darkness, etch familiar landmarks in silver against a velvet sky. Unsuspected definition of form and contour is revealed. — Volkmar Wentzel

That's all right! That's all right!' But for a minute or two it wasn't really. All feminine claws, he said to himself, are sheathed in velvet; but they can hurt a good deal if they touch you on the sore places of the defects of your qualities - even merely with the velvet. He added: 'Your mother works you very hard. — Ford Madox Ford

Blindly, Grace pushed away from the velvet-lined wall...

Right into the path of a giant as tall and as hard as an oak.

A firm hand caught her about the waist as strong fingers captured her wrists. She blinked the sting of unshed tears from her eyes to find herself entangled not with an oak, but with a man possessed of dark brown hair and dangerous golden eyes. A wry smile curved his lips as the orchestra began the opening strains of a waltz. — Erica Ridley

It felt like religious kitsch, as tacky as a black velvet painting, the kind of fantasy that appealed to people who ate too much fried food, spanked their kids, and had no problem with the theory that their loving God invented AIDS to punish the gays. — Tom Perrotta

I tend to avoid televisions, politics, and places with velvet ropes. — Demetri Martin

She could hear wisps of fog brushing against the buildings like wet velvet. — Christopher Moore

I've never been much for tears, anyway. — Ed Brubaker

The night was so balmy that breathing ceased to be a habitual sensation, becoming much closer to something like the gaseous ingestion of a mango, the velvet caress of a hand or the soft skin of a fresh peach. Sleeping, lying down or sitting up, was, on that night, a divine human penitence, a miracle unexpected and unrealized, intuitive and peaceful in a unique opportunity. — Ondjaki

She's well acquainted with the touch of the velvet hand like a lizard on the window-pane. — John Lennon

My grandfather was a very strong personality. He certainly ruled his household with an iron fist, even though it was often gloved in velvet! — Chitra Banerjee Divakaruni

And let me touch those curving claws of yellow ivory; and grasp the tail that like a monstrous asp coils round your heavy velvet paws. — Oscar Wilde

Suspense is like a woman. The more left to the imagination, the more the excitement. ... The conventional big-bosomed blonde is not mysterious. And what could be more obvious than the old black velvet and pearls type? The perfect 'woman of mystery' is one who is blonde, subtle and Nordic. ... Although I do not profess to be an authority on women, I fear that the perfect title [for a movie], like the perfect woman is difficult to find. — Alfred Hitchcock

One evening he was in his room, his brow pressing hard against the pane, looking, without seeing them, at the chestnut trees in the park, which had lost much of their russet-coloured foliage. A heavy mist obscured the distance, and the night was falling grey rather than black, stepping cautiously with its velvet feet upon the tops of the trees. A great swan plunged and replunged amorously its neck and shoulders into the smoking water of the river, and its whiteness made it show in the darkness like a great star of snow. It was the single living being that somewhat enlivened the lonely landscape. — Theophile Gautier

He created waterfalls for her out of the morning dew, and from the colored pebbles of a meadow stream he made a necklace more beautiful than emeralds, sadder than pearls. She caught him in her net of silken hair, she carried him down, down, into deep and silent waters, past obliteration. He showed her frozen stars and molten sun; she gave him long, entwined shadows and the sound of black velvet. He reached out to her and touched moss, grass, ancient trees, iridescent rocks; her fingertips, striving upwards, brushed old planets and silver moonlight, the flash of comets and the cry of dissolving suns. — Robert Sheckley

Wine's terrible for babies." Dorian swept into the sitting room to join me, elegantly arranging himself on a love seat that displayed his purple velvet robes to best effect.
"Well of course it is. I'd never dream of giving wine to an infant! What do you take me for, a barbarian? But for you ... well, it might go a long way to make you a little less jumpy. You've been positively unbearable to live around.
"I can't have it either. It affects the babies in utero. — Richelle Mead

A weathered cork sat inside the box lined with green velvet. It had turned a darker brown and was a little shriveled, but the name Moet & Chandon was still clearly visible.
Vivien reached inside and pulled out her mother's cork. The one she'd searched for in the bed of red impatiens. To anyone else, it was nothing. Just a weathered piece of nothing. To Vivien, it was everything. — Rachel Gibson

Clara wore a dress of brown and cream velvet, and her feathered mask, in comparison, made her look like a sparrow — Malinda Lo

The winters were getting colder, starting earlier, lasting longer, with more snows than he could remember from childhood. As soon as man stopped adding his megatons of filth to the atmosphere each day, he thought, the atmosphere had reverted to what it must have been long ago, moister weather summer and winter, more stars than he had ever seen before, and more, it seemed, each night than the night before: the sky a clear, endless blue by day, velvet blue-black at night with blazing stars that modern man had never seen. — Kate Wilhelm

I wish I could write 'Taxi Driver,' or 'Blue Velvet,' something brave, audacious, dramatic and dark. I don't know if I have the darkness in my own soul to be able to tap into it, unfortunately. — Stephen Merchant

When a band becomes as truly iconic as the Velvet Underground, there will often be a box set released, overburdened with mediocre material that dilutes what was fine left on its own. — Henry Rollins

Why, I've seen Kentuckians who hated whiskey, Virginians who weren't descended from Pocahontas, Indianians who hadn't written a novel, Mexicans who didn't wear velvet trousers with silver dollars sewed along the seams, funny Englishmen, spendthrift Yankees, cold-blooded Southerners, narrow- minded Westerners, and New Yorkers who were too busy to stop for an hour on the street to watch a one-armed grocer's clerk do up cranberries in paper bags. Let a man be a man and don't handicap him with the label of any section. — O. Henry

However, even this would not have helped me had I not remembered that I was loved by a girl with a black velvet ribbon around her neck, if not passionately, at least faithfully. — Franz Kafka

Let us educate the younger generation to be shy in and out of season: to edge behind the furniture: to say spasmodic and ill-digested things: to twist their feet round the protective feet of sofas and armchairs: to feel that their hands belong to someone else
that they are objects, which they long to put down on some table away from themselves.
For shyness is the protective fluid within which our personalities are able to develop into natural shapes. Without this fluid the character becomes merely standardized or imitative: it is within the tender velvet sheath of shyness that the full flower of idiosyncrasy is nurtured: it is from this sheath alone that it can eventually unfold itself, coloured and undamaged. Let the shy understand, therefore, that their disability is not only an inconvenience, but also a privilege. Let them regard their shyness as a gift rather than as an affliction. Let them consider how intolerable are those of their contemporaries who are not also shy. — Harold Nicolson

You're only human. You live once and life is wonderful so eat the damn red velvet cupcake! — Emma Stone

I do a cover of a Velvet Underground song, and they were one of the most important bands, for me. — Martin Gore

She tore through the wrapping and took out a blue velvet box. She glanced back at me as though unable to believe her eyes. After pulling her bottom lip between her teeth, she lifted the lid. Two rolls of cushioned velvet sat inside. The slit that those cushions made should have held a ring, but it didn't.
Sucked to be her.
She gaped at me. "What is this?" she asked, appalled.
"It's a simple yes/no question," I said, trying to keep a straight face. I lay back, crossing my arms behind my head. "When I get an answer, you get the rest of your gift. — Darynda Jones

Imagine a vast and glittering ocean seen from a great height. It stretches to the clear curved limit of every angle of horizon, the sun burning on a billion tiny wavelets. Now imagine a smooth blanket of cloud above the ocean, a shell of black velvet suspended high above the water and also extending to the horizon, but keep the sparkle of the sea despite the lack of sun. Add to the cloud many sharp and tiny lights, scattered on the base of the inky overcast like glinting eyes: singly, in pairs or in larger groups, each positioned far, far away from any other set. — Iain M. Banks

Society is like a lawn, where every roughness is smoothed, every bramble eradicated, and where the eye is delighted by the smiling verdure of a velvet surface — Washington Irving

There were about thirty of them, I think - all women; all seated at tables, bearing drinks and books and papers. You might have passed any one of them upon the street, and thought nothing; but the effect of their appearance all combined was rather queer. They were dressed, not strangely, but somehow distinctly. They wore skirts - but the kind of skirts a tailor might design if he were set, for a dare, to sew a bustle for a gent. Many seemed clad in walking-suits or riding-habits. Many wore pince-nez, or carried monocles on ribbons. There were one or two rather startling coiffures; and there were more neckties than I had ever seen brought together at any exclusively female ensemble. — Sarah Waters

Satin skin, silk hair, velvet eyes, sawdust heart - all complete. — Jean Rhys

Sleep, with her tender balm, her touch so kind, Has passed me by; Afar I see her vesture, velvet-lined, Float silently; O! Sleep, my tired eyes had need of thee! Is thy sweet kiss not meant to-night for me? Peace, with the blessings that I longed for so, Has passed me by; Where'er she folds her holy wings I know All tempests die; O! Peace, my tired soul had need of thee! — E. Pauline Johnson

I'll never turn down a red velvet cupcake. — Shay Mitchell

If I had lady-spider legs, I would weave a sky where the stars lined up. Matresses would be tied down tight to their trucks, bodies would never crash through windshields. The moon would rise above the wine-dark sea and give babies only to maidens and musicians who had prayed long and hard. Lost girls wouldn't need compasses or maps. They would find gingerbread paths to lead them out of the forest and home again. They would never sleep in silver boxes with white velvet sheets, not until they were wrinkled-paper grandmas and ready for the trip. — Laurie Halse Anderson

Off come her skirts and petticoats, her lace cuffs and collar, her shoes and whalebone stay, until she lies on her side in nothing but a cotton shift and endless strands of pearls. Dust hangs in a crack of light between red velvet drapes, like stars.

Her dreams are glimpses, bewildered--celestial charts, oceanic swells, massive, moving bodies of water, the heavens as heavenly liquid, familiar whirlpools, the universe as a ship lost at sea--but the ship she imagines arrived safely, years ago, loaded with their possessions. — Danielle Dutton

Do me a favor," he whispers, curling my fingers over the back of his and bringing them to his mouth. "What?" His eyes never leave mine as he brushes his lips over my knuckles. "Dream of me tonight," he says softly. He watches me, waiting for a response. I have no words, so I simply nod. He doesn't need to know that no one else occupies my dreams. No one. "Dream of my lips, teasing you." Straightening one of my fingers, he kisses the tip. His voice is like velvet and his words are like an aphrodisiac. "Dream of my tongue, tasting you." His tongue sneaks out to flick the end of my finger. A surge of desire rocks my core. "And I'll dream of you. Of what it feels like to be inside your warm, wet body. — M. Leighton

I knew a sudden shyness. There was a look on his face, a stillness to his body that had never been there before. Though I couldn't give the emotion a name, I felt it, too. We had something special. Something hard to define. Something past friendship.

"I must go now," I said and rose up on tiptoe to kiss his cheek, marveling at its velvet skin. "Thank you for the book."

He drew me into his embrace and sighed. "Thank you for the stars. — Elizabeth Langston

Charlotte met eyes with the sofa. That is, if the sofa had eyes, she would have met eyes with it. As it was, she just had the creepy sensation that it *knew* she was looking at it. Which of course it didn't. It was just a sofa after all. A sofa that seemed to have eyes, and if it did have eyes, it would be glaring - kind of smugly. A smug kind of glare
She was still rambling, even in her thoughts.
Shut up, Charlotte, she told herself.
She pointed at the sofa. "It was there."
Eddie didn't speak. Perhaps if he had, he would have rambled too. Instead, he approached the sofa cautiously (almost as if the sofa had eyes and Eddie didn't like the way it was smugly glaring) and lifted the velvet coverlet. — Shannon Hale

know," Maris sighed. "I'm disgusting." "No. You're very beautiful like this." Stunned, Maris looked up, unsure of what to expect. But he saw truth in Ture's eyes, not horror. Ture cupped Maris's cheek as he stared in awe of the man's current appearance. He'd never seen anything like this. Mari's skin reminded him of a sleek, silvery fish's. Only it wasn't scaled and it was as soft was warm velvet. Even his eyes were now an eerie glowing silver color. Not their normal dark chocolate. The neatest part was the beautiful design that was now visible around his eyes. Like someone had used dark gray and black eye shadow and liner to draw an intricate flowing scroll pattern. He — Sherrilyn Kenyon

This is not exactly what I had in mind when I agreed to miss lunch," Alex said grumpily forty minutes later. He shifted uncomfortably and tried to see what I was doing.
I stared him back into submission. "Wait."
The art room is usually empty Thursday afternoons except for me. Ms. Evers leaves early to teach her UArts class and looks up.Of course, I am one of the few entrusted with the Secret Location of the Key.
A few feet away from where I sat perched on a stool,Alex was posed on the anchient chaise we use for figure drawing. It's a relic, probably from the Palladinetti years: chipped mahogany and dusty velvet, what little remaining stuffing pokes out from a century of holes. I was probably luxurious once. Now it's like sitting on a slightly smelly board. But I'd wanted to sketch Alex as I so often saw him, reclining with his head propped on one hand,listening or talking or coaxing me to put down the glass, already,Ella,and come here. — Melissa Jensen