Stretched Quotes

1. "The Procrustean bed. . .suggests itself with dispiriting aptness as a metaphor for the Culture Wars, right down to the blandishments with which Procrustes must have lured his guests over the threshold. (I picture him as a handsome fellow with a large vocabulary and an oleaginous tongue, not unlike the chairmen of many English departments.) There's just one crucial difference. Sometimes Procrustes lopped off his victims, and sometimes he stretched them, but the Culture Wars always lop. I have never seen cultural politics enlarge a work of literature, only diminish it."
Author: Anne Fadiman

2. "The division seems rather unfair," I remarked. "You have doneall the work in this business. I get a wife out of it, Jones getsthe credit, pray what remains for you?""For me," said Sherlock Holmes, "there still remains thecocaine-bottle." And he stretched his long white hand up forit."
Author: Arthur Conan Doyle

3. "Ammu watched over them fiercely. Her watchfulness stretched her, made her taut and tense. She was quick to reprimand her children, but even quicker to take offense on their behalf."
Author: Arundhati Roy

4. "And now I believe I shall put my head on you," he announced. "The room has started to spin, and it's been a very long time since I've laid my head in a woman's lap."Leah ceased laughing as he twisted and began to lie back. "No, my lord." His shoulders landed on her outstretched arms. "Sebastian! Let me up."He groaned as she struggled against him. "I was beginning to wonder if you remembered my name. Please, be quiet. Just a moment." Reaching behind his head, he caught her hand and moved it to his mouth, where he pressed a kiss against her bare skin. "Only a moment, until the world turns itself aright again."
Author: Ashley March

5. "He was seeing a long line of men stretched through the centuries from Plato onward, whose heir and final product was an incompetent little professor with the appearance of a gigolo and the soul of a thug."
Author: Ayn Rand

6. "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."
Author: Charles Dickens

7. "In Chapter 5 we consider swindles and defalcations. It happens that crashes and panics often are precipitated by the revelation of some misfeasance, malfeasance, or malversation (the corruption of officials) engendered during the mania. It seems clear from the historical record that swindles are a response to the greedy appetite for wealth stimulated by the boom. And as the monetary system gets stretched, institutions lose liquidity, and unsuccessful swindles are about to be revealed, the temptation to take the money and run becomes virtually irresistible. It is difficult to write on this subject without permitting the typewriter to drip with irony. An attempt will be made."
Author: Charles P. Kindleberger

8. "Crow walked toward her, arms outstretched like a man in a dream, which he was, in a way. Sometimes a dream is enough."
Author: Cinda Williams Chima

9. "And time itself? Time was a never-ending medium that stretched into the future and the past - except there was no future and no past, but an infinite number of brackets, extending either way, each bracket enclosing its single phase of the Universe."
Author: Clifford D. Simak

10. "Kishan stretched out his hand and touched and earring lightly. His rakish pirate about-to-make-off-with-your-woman-and-what-do-you-think-you're-gonna-do-about-it look melted away to a soft smile that turned up the corner of his mouth."
Author: Colleen Houck

11. "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."
Author: Don A. Martinez

12. "There was a discordant hum of human voices! There was a loud blast as of many trumpets! There was a harsh grating as of a thousand thunders! The fiery walls rushed back! An outstretched arm caught my own as I fell, fainting, into the abyss. It was that of General Lasalle. The French army had entered Toledo. The Inquisition was in the hands of its enemies."
Author: Edgar Allan Poe

13. "The stillness was so profound that he heard a little animal twittering somewhere near by under the snow. It made a small frightened cheep like a field mouse, and he wondered languidly if it were hurt. Then he understood that it must be in pain: pain so excruciating that he seemed, mysteriously, to feel it shooting through his own body. He tried in vain to roll over in the direction of the sound, and stretched his left arm out across the snow. And now it was as though he felt rather than heard the twittering; it seemed to be under his palm, which rested on something soft and springy. The thought of the animal's suffering was intolerable to him and he struggled to raise himself, and could not because a rock, or some huge mass, seemed to be lying on him. But he continued to finger about cautiously with his left hand, thinking he might get hold of the little creature and help it; and all at once he knew that the soft thing he had touched was Mattie's hair and that his hand was on her face."
Author: Edith Wharton

14. "If a summer were a girl, she'd always be lying stretched out in the grass in a long white dress, her arms over her head, her eyes half closed."
Author: Elizabeth Berg

15. "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!"
Author: Elizabeth Chandler

16. "Muscle is constantly being used - constantly being damaged. If every time we tore a muscle or every time we stretched a muscle or moved in a wrong way, cancer occurred - I mean, everybody would have cancer almost."
Author: Eva Vertes

17. "It stretched off into dim infinity, dotted with floating globes of silvery light. Mr. Grey had been told that the globes were swampfire, encased in a timeloop charm so they were inextinguishable. He'd never even heard of swampfire, much"
Author: G. Norman Lippert

18. "Summer is a Latvian chicken. We make foolish choices. We think we're young again. We run with outstretched arms toward an object of love and it pecks us and pecks us until we're standing there snot-nosed and teary in the middle of Astor Place and the sun sets fire to our Penguin shirts and all that is left to do is go to our air-conditioned homes and ponder the cruelty of our finest season."
Author: Gary Shteyngart

19. "Obligation may be stretched till it is no better than a brand of slavery stamped on us when we were too young to know its meaning."
Author: George Eliot

20. "Keeper!" He inhaled slowly, took Azalea's outstretched hand-shudders went through her throat, he felt so solid-and pressed the brooch into her marked palm."I was only picking it up," he said, quietly. His thumb rubbed the red nail mark on her hand. A smile crossed his lips. "Temper, temper."
Author: Heather Dixon

21. "As far as informing the headmaster, Harry had no idea where Dumbledore went during the summer holidays. He amused himself for a moment, picturing Dumbledore, with his long silver beard, full-length wizard's robes, and pointed hat, stretched out on a beach somewhere, rubbing suntan lotion onto his long crooked nose."
Author: J.K. Rowling

22. "He did not know or care whether they were wizards or Muggles, friends or foes; all he cared about was that a dark stain was spreading across Dobby's front, and that he had stretched out his thin arms to Harry with a look of supplication. Harry caught him and laid him sideways on the cool grass."Dobby, no, don't die, don't die -"The elf's eyes found him, and his lips trembled with the effort to form words."Harry...Potter..."And then with a little shudder the elf became quite still, and his eyes were nothing more than great glassy orbs, sprinkled with light from the stars they could not see."
Author: J.K. Rowling

23. "I feel thin, sort of stretched, like butter scraped over too much bread."
Author: J.R.R. Tolkien

24. "Life was dense, dark, ancient. They watched Dean, serious and insane at his raving wheel, with eyes of hawks. All had their hands outstretched. They had come down from the back mountains and higher places to hold forth their hands for something they thought civilization could offer, and they never dreamed the sadness and the poor broken delusion of it. They didn't know that a bomb had come that could crack all our bridges and roads and reduce them to jumbles, and we would be as poor as they someday, and stretching out our hands in the same, same way"
Author: Jack Kerouac

25. "After a few years of not talking, I tried reaching out to my father, but by that time he was already a few inches beyond my outstretched fingers."
Author: Jarod Kintz

26. "The newcomer stood well over six feet, as tall as any Warden. His hair was dark, the color of obsidian, and it reflected blue in the dim light. Lazy locks slipped over his forehead and curled just below his ears. Brows arched over golden eyes and his cheekbones were broad and high. He was attractive. Very attractive. Mind-bendingly beautiful, actually, but the sardonic twist to his full lips chilled his beauty. The black T-shirt stretched across his chest and flat stomach. A huge tattoo of a snake curled around his forearm, the tail disappearing under his sleeve and the diamond-shaped head rested on the top of his hand. He looked my age. Total crush material—if it wasn't for the fact that he had no soul."
Author: Jennifer L. Armentrout

27. "I yawned and I stretched. I sure was needing some sleep, but I guess I'm always in need of sleep like I'm always in need of food. Because my labors were mighty ones--ol' Hercules didn't know what hard work was--and what is there to do but eat and sleep? And when you're eatin' and sleepin' you don't have to fret about things you can't do nothing about. And what else is there to do but laugh an' joke...how else can you bear up under the unbearable?"
Author: Jim Thompson

28. "I have only known her for two years. But if you took every memory, every moment, if you stretched them end to end-they'd reach forever."
Author: Jodi Picoult

29. "It was an excellent coat. It was long, grey, suspiciously blotched, smelt faintly of dust and old curries, went all the way down to my knees and overhung my wrists even when I stretched out my arms. It had big, smelly pockets, crunchy with crumbs, it boasted the remnants of a waterproof sheen, was missing a few buttons, and had once been beige. It was the coat that detectives down the ages had worn while trailing a beautiful, dangerous, presumably blond suspect in the rain, the coat that no one noticed, shapeless, bland and grey - it suited my purpose perfectly."
Author: Kate Griffin

30. "She knows we can see her, right?""The light's behind her," Teagan pointed out. "All she sees is her own reflection.""Face check," Abby said, as Ms Skinner stretched her lips again, then puckered. She dug a lipstick out of her purse and applied it. "Uh-huh. Now the hair," Abby said. As if on cue, Ms. Skinner rearranged her ginger bangs, fluffed them, then twisted a strand around her finger to make it curl. "That woman's man-hunting. Hide your dad, Tea.""Don't ler her get Dad!" Aiden shouted from his fort."Nobody is getting Dad," Teagan assured him."
Author: Kersten Hamilton

31. "The room was two-tiered,its marble balconies filled with rams and water nymphs in fancydress; a kaleidoscope of colours swayed in time to the beat ofhypnotic music. A concerto of absent musicians, it played only inher mind. The numerous chandeliers with sculptured metal frameshung down from chains, with endless fireflies attached. At the farend stretched a grand staircase, dressed with a plush velvet carpetin deep cerise, and ceiling paintings edged with gold embosseddado rails clung to the walls.Then Eve honed in on herself and saw that she wore a crushedwhite taffeta A-line gown that fit her trim figure like a glove. Herbutterfly mask with floral patterns embroidered in red and goldsilk sat against her pale skin, her reflection like that of a porcelaindoll. A matching shawl rested softly on her shoulders. Everythingwas so beautiful that she almost totally lost herself in the mirror'sreflection."(little snippet from our book)"
Author: L. Wells

32. "Lizzy, Will thought. Lizzy P. 'You n me gonna be buddies, darlin'. He stretched one hand to Elly's hair, and circled Donald Wade's rump with his free arm and touched Thomas's leg, on the far side of Elly. And he smiled at Lizzy P. and thought, Heaven's got nothin' on being the husband of Eleanor Dinsmore."
Author: LaVyrle Spencer

33. "My glass was empty. I poured more scotch into it, took a small sip, and all at once the silly thing was empty again. Strange. Then it was full again. And then it was empty again. Strange, I thought. Fool glass must have a hole in it. Scotch disappears the instant it's poured. Strange. Then I was stretched out on the bed, too tired and too drunk to bother removing my shoes. My eyes closed themselves and the world crept away on little cat feet, leaving me floating in the middle of the air."
Author: Lawrence Block

34. "If one morning in the Spring, a stranger came and said to me, Your mother, father, brother, sister, uncle, lover, friend, is dead. From a b-52, napalm bombing, search and destroy mission, air attack, Tet offensive, My Lai massacre, failed escape, I would not scream but make of my body a net, a tarp, stretched taut across the sky, the sea, over every village and hamlet. Prepared to catch everything from the sky, shade everything on the ground, rain water and receive you, war, with arms outstretched."
Author: Lê Thi Diem Thúy

35. "The prospect of his future life stretched before him like a sentence; not a prison sentence but a long-winded sentence with a lot of unnecessary subordinate clauses, as he was soon in the habit of quipping during Happy Hour pickup time at the local campus bars and pubs. He couldn't say he was looking forward to it, this rest-of-his-life."
Author: Margaret Atwood

36. "I've wandered through the real world, and written myself through the darkness of the streets inside me. I see people walking through the city and wonder where they've been, and what the moments of their lives have done to them. If they're anything like me, their moments have held them up and shot them down.Sometimes I just survive.But sometimes I stand on the rooftop of my existence, arms stretched out, begging for more.That's when the stories show up in me.They find me all the time.They're made of underdogs and fighters. They're made of hunger and desire and trying to live decent.The only trouble is, I don't know which of those stories comes first.Maybe they all just merge into one.We'll see, I guess.I'll let you know when I decide."
Author: Markus Zusak

37. "In order to slip from beneath the crushing weight of future thoughts, I adopted a technique of focusing solely on the moment I was living. In itself, removed from the time line that stretched forward and backward from the present, no single moment was that bad."
Author: Michael Benanav

38. "Still adore me?" he said into that kiss, his tone husky. A tone between lovers, between mates, between a man and the only woman he had ever wanted."Too much," was her response. "I only feel whole when I'm with you. Does that make me weak?" The cat stretched out inside him as she pressed kisses along his jawline, down his neck. "If you're weak, then so am I." He could function without her but in the way a machine functions. His heart, his soul, he had given to her a long time ago."
Author: Nalini Singh

39. "There were pools of light among the stacks, directly beneath the bulbs which Philip had switched on, but it was now with an unexpected fearfulness that he saw how the books stretched away into the darkness. They seemed to expand as soon as they reached the shadows, creating some dark world where there was no beginning and no end, no story, no meaning. And if you crossed the threshold into that world, you would be surrounded by words; you would crush them beneath your feet, you would knock against them with your head and arms, but if you tried to grasp them they would melt away. Philip did not dare turn his back upon these books. Not yet. It was almost, he thought, as if they had been speaking to each other while he slept."
Author: Peter Ackroyd

40. "I try to use my telekinesis to pull Nine towards me, but he doesn't budge. Five's telekinetic grip is too powerful.It all happens so fast.Five plummets down with blade extended. Nine, teeth gritted, unable to move, watches the fatal blow descend.Suddenly Eight appears in front of Nine—he's teleported. "NO!" Nine screams.Five's blade drives right into Eight's heart.Five lurches backwards, shocked, as he realizes what he's done. Eight's eyes are wide, a spot of blood forming on his chest. He staggers away from Five, towards me, his hands outstretched. He tries to say something, but no words come out. He collapses.I scream as the fresh scar burns across my ankle."
Author: Pittacus Lore

41. "The next nine days stretched out like taffy. Mrs. Casnoff went back to Hecate, which was kind of a relief. Having her at Thorne had been a little too "worlds colliding" for me.I spent most of my time in my room, recovering from my injury. But staring at the wall gave me lots of time to think, mostly about Archer. I'd seen the look on his face right after the explosion had gone off. He'd been scared. Shocked, even, and not in the "Whoops, my assassination didn't go off as planned" way. He hadn't known it was coming, which meant he couldn't have been the one who planted the gift. Which meant there was someone else who wanted to kill me, a thought that made me want to never leave the safe cocoon of my bed."
Author: Rachel Hawkins

42. "Tell me when it's over " Thalia said. Her eyes were shut tight. The statue was holding on to us so we couldn't fall but still Thalia clutched his arm like it was the most important thing in the world. "Everything's fine " I promised. "Are... are we very high " I looked down. Below us a range of snowy mountains zipped by. I stretched out my foot and kicked snow off one of the peaks. "Nah " I said. "Not that high."
Author: Rick Riordan

43. "Your hand opens and closes, opens and closes. If it were always a fist or always stretched open, you would be paralysed. Your deepest presence is in every small contracting and expanding, the two as beautifully balanced and coordinated as birds' wings."
Author: Rumi

44. "... He'd been about to turn away when she lifted her face to the moon and sang.It was not in any language that he knew. Not in the common tongue, or in Eyllwe, or in the languages of Fenharrow or Melisande, or anywhere else on the continentThis language was ancient, each word full of power and rage and agony.She did not have a beautiful voice. And many of the words sounded like half sobs, the vowels stretched by the pangs of sorrow, the consonants hardened by anger. She beat her breast in time, so full of savage grace, so at odds with the black gown and veil she wore. The hair on the back of his neck stood as the lament poured from her mouth, unearthly and foreign, a song of grief so old that it predated the stone castle itself.And the the song finished, its end as butal and sudden as Nehemia's death had been.She stood there a few moments, silent and unmoving."
Author: Sarah J. Maas

45. "At the end of her life she was aware of heat but not pain. She had time to consider his eyes, eyes of that blue which is the color of the sky at first light of the morning. She had time to think of him on the Drop, riding Rusher flat out with his black hair flying back from his temples and his neckerchief rippling; to see him laughing with an ease and freedom he would never find again in the long life which stretched out for him beyond hers, and it was his laughter she took with her as she went out, fleeing the light and heat in to the silkly, consoling dark, calling to him over and over as she went, calling bird and bear and hare and fish."
Author: Stephen King

46. "Under the trees several pheasants lay about, their rich plumage dabbled with blood; some were dead, some feebly twitching a wing, some staring up at the sky, some pulsating quickly, some contorted, some stretched out—all of them writhing in agony except the fortunate ones whose tortures had ended during the night by the inability of nature to bear more. With the impulse of a soul who could feel for kindred sufferers as much as for herself, Tess's first thought was to put the still living birds out of their torture, and to this end with her own hands she broke the necks of as many as she could find, leaving them to lie where she had found them till the gamekeepers should come, as they probably would come, to look for them a second time. "Poor darlings—to suppose myself the most miserable being on earth in the sight o' such misery as yours!" she exclaimed, her tears running down as she killed the birds tenderly."
Author: Thomas Hardy

47. "He spun on his heels and jogged backward across the goal line, the ball raised triumphantly overhead, a gesture that looked arrogant when the pros did it on TV but felt right just then, allowing him to watch his teammates as they came charging joyfully down the field to join him. Todd spiked the ball and waited for them, his arms stretched wide, his chest heaving as if he were trying to suck the whole night into his lungs. All he wished was that Sarah had been there to see it, to know him as he'd known himself streaking down the wide-open field, not some jock hero scoring the winning touchdown, but a grown man experiencing an improbable moment of grace."
Author: Tom Perrotta

48. "Why, from the very windows, even in the dusk, you see a swelling run through the street, an aspiration, as with arms outstretched, eyes desiring, mouths agape. And then we peaceably subside. For if the exaltation lasted we should be blown like foam into the air. The stars would shine through us. We should go down the gale in salt drops- as sometimes happens. For the impetuous spirits will have none of this cradling. Never any swaying or aimlessly lolling for them. Never any making believe, or lying cosily, or genially supposing that one is much like another, fire warm, wine pleasant, extravagance a sin."
Author: Virginia Woolf

49. "Theologians have by this time stretched their minds so as to embrace the darwinian facts, and yet to interpret them as still showing divine purpose. It used to be a question of purpose AGAINST mechanism, of one OR the other. It was as if one should say "My shoes are evidently designed to fit my feet, hence it is impossible that they should have been produced by machinery."
Author: William James

50. "Sometimes she goes out to work as a practical nurse, and comes home and sits by the kitchen table soaking her feet in a pan of hot water and Epsom salts. When she gets into bed and the springs creak under her weight, she groans with the pleasure of lying stretched out on an object that understands her so well."
Author: William Maxwell

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