“
All assassins had a full-length mirror in their rooms, because it would be a terrible insult to anyone to kill them when you were badly dressed.
”
”
Terry Pratchett (Pyramids (Discworld, #7))
“
Hot damn, Wip. We’ve got a stone-cold fox on our hands.”
Willa flipped Ginger the bird without looking away from the full-length mirror. “This touching family sitcom moment brought to you by the letters F and U.
”
”
Tessa Bailey (Protecting What's His (Line of Duty, #1))
“
Baz is standing in front of a full-length mirror, wearing—I swear to Merlin—a flowered suit.
”
”
Wayward Son, Rainbow Rowell
“
Some Me of Beauty
I took a good long look at myself in a full length mirror
Sometimes it’s good to look in a full length mirror
And what I saw was not some soul sister poetess of the moment
But I saw just a woman
Just a woman feeling
Just a woman human
And what I felt was
What I felt was a spiritual revelation
And what I felt was a root revival of some love coming on
Coming on strong
And I knew then, looking in a full length mirror,
That many things were over
And some me of beauty was about to begin
”
”
Carolyn Rodgers
“
Dan was doing his best Ian Kabra impersonation, looking around the store as though inspecting it for cockroaches. Amy tried to turn her snort of laughter into a cough.
"Espresso?" The saleswoman materialized seemingly out of nowhere. Amy realized that the full-length mirror on the wall was actually a door.
If she were Amy Cahill, she would blush and shake her head no, just because she didn't want to cause any bother. She imagined what Natalie Kabra would do.
"Tea. Darjeeling," she said in a curt tone.
"Oh, not Darjeeling, sis," Dan said. "That's just so middle class."
"Lapsang souchong?" the saleswoman asked.
"I just adored his last collection," Dan said.
The woman's tight smile dimmed. "That's a tea.
”
”
Jude Watson (A King's Ransom (The 39 Clues: Cahills vs. Vespers, #2))
“
The articles were extremely eye-opening. Not just in Teen Vogue but in Seventeen and CosmoGirl as well. They were all about being yourself, staying natural, loving your body as is, and going green! The messages were the exact opposite of Vik and Viv's.
Hmmmmm.
Frankie turned to face the full-length mirror that was up against the yellow wardrobe. She opened her robe and examined her body. Fit, muscular, and exquisitely proportioned, she agreed with the magazines. So what if her skin was mint? Or her limbs were attached with seams? According to the magazines, which were - no offense! - way more in touch with the times than her parents were, she was suppose to love her body just the way it was. And she did! Therefor if the normies read magazines (which obviously they did, because they were in them), then they would love her, too. Natural was in.
Besides she was Daddy's perfect little girl. And who didn't love perfect?
”
”
Lisi Harrison (Monster High (Monster High, #1))
“
Why couldn't Lady Justice just wear jeans and a T-shirt?' I complain. 'I mean, if she had a choice.'
'Good question,' says Winona.
'Because,' says Serena, swiping on the lipstick in two expert strokes. She grabs my arm and shepherds me over to the full-length mirror. 'Maybe she liked the way she looked in a dress.
”
”
Michelle Quach (Not Here to Be Liked)
“
One of the best wedding gfts God gave you was a full-length mirror called your spouse. Had there been a card attached, it would have said, “Here’s to helping you discover what you’re really like!” —Gary and Betsy Ricucci
”
”
Gary L. Thomas (Sacred Marriage Bible Study Participant's Guide)
“
It’s like looking into a full-length mirror and seeing nothing but pure beauty in the reflection…and then watching helplessly as it shatters into a thousand pieces before your eyes, knowing that you can do nothing to keep it from breaking…
”
”
J. Sterling (Chance Encounters)
“
There’s a full-length mirror, and I see myself, at long last sitting on the bed in his robin’s-egg bedroom. His walls are the blue of my eyes.
”
”
Sally Thorne (The Hating Game)
“
I ran toward the solitude of the dressing room. Of course, the full length mirror would have it's own disappointments, but I would take dealing with a fat ass over dealing with my mother any day. At least you could do something about a fat ass, in theory.
”
”
Lisa Burstein (Pretty Amy (Pretty Amy, #1))
“
Reasons Why I Loved Being With Jen
I love what a good friend you are. You’re really engaged with the lives of the people you love. You organize lovely experiences for them. You make an effort with them, you’re patient with them, even when they’re sidetracked by their children and can’t prioritize you in the way you prioritize them.
You’ve got a generous heart and it extends to people you’ve never even met, whereas I think that everyone is out to get me. I used to say you were naive, but really I was jealous that you always thought the best of people.
You are a bit too anxious about being seen to be a good person and you definitely go a bit overboard with your left-wing politics to prove a point to everyone. But I know you really do care. I know you’d sign petitions and help people in need and volunteer at the homeless shelter at Christmas even if no one knew about it. And that’s more than can be said for a lot of us.
I love how quickly you read books and how absorbed you get in a good story. I love watching you lie on the sofa reading one from cover-to-cover. It’s like I’m in the room with you but you’re in a whole other galaxy.
I love that you’re always trying to improve yourself. Whether it’s running marathons or setting yourself challenges on an app to learn French or the fact you go to therapy every week. You work hard to become a better version of yourself. I think I probably didn’t make my admiration for this known and instead it came off as irritation, which I don’t really feel at all.
I love how dedicated you are to your family, even when they’re annoying you. Your loyalty to them wound me up sometimes, but it’s only because I wish I came from a big family.
I love that you always know what to say in conversation. You ask the right questions and you know exactly when to talk and when to listen. Everyone loves talking to you because you make everyone feel important.
I love your style. I know you think I probably never noticed what you were wearing or how you did your hair, but I loved seeing how you get ready, sitting in front of the full-length mirror in our bedroom while you did your make-up, even though there was a mirror on the dressing table.
I love that you’re mad enough to swim in the English sea in November and that you’d pick up spiders in the bath with your bare hands. You’re brave in a way that I’m not.
I love how free you are. You’re a very free person, and I never gave you the satisfaction of saying it, which I should have done. No one knows it about you because of your boring, high-pressure job and your stuffy upbringing, but I know what an adventurer you are underneath all that.
I love that you got drunk at Jackson’s christening and you always wanted to have one more drink at the pub and you never complained about getting up early to go to work with a hangover. Other than Avi, you are the person I’ve had the most fun with in my life.
And even though I gave you a hard time for always trying to for always trying to impress your dad, I actually found it very adorable because it made me see the child in you and the teenager in you, and if I could time-travel to anywhere in history, I swear, Jen, the only place I’d want to go is to the house where you grew up and hug you and tell you how beautiful and clever and funny you are. That you are spectacular even without all your sports trophies and music certificates and incredible grades and Oxford acceptance.
I’m sorry that I loved you so much more than I liked myself, that must have been a lot to carry. I’m sorry I didn’t take care of you the way you took care of me. And I’m sorry I didn’t take care of myself, either. I need to work on it. I’m pleased that our break-up taught me that. I’m sorry I went so mental.
I love you. I always will. I'm glad we met.
”
”
Dolly Alderton (Good Material)
“
I’m comfortable with who I am,” I say, which is a funny thing to say while shaming my own body in a full-length mirror. “Shut
”
”
Matthew Norman (We're All Damaged)
“
Then she pulls on her favorite dress; it’s made of denim and buttons up the front to a shirt collar and ties up at the waist with a matching belt. She wears it with her denim Vans and appraises herself in the full-length mirror.
”
”
Lisa Jewell (None of This Is True)
“
You inhaled to the rhythm of her thick sighs as she scrutinized her form in the full-length bedroom mirror, her newly sewn skirt showing, she said, too much hip, too much leg. She yanked it off, snipping open the seams, laying it out across the dining table like a freshly gutted fish, where it eventually disappeared from view beneath sheaths of brown paper patterns, paisley skirts whose hems needed letting out, floral dresses whose cleavages needed closing in, and an assortment of garments whose long and short zippers would go neither up nor down, jammed from the humidity and the salt of August days.
”
”
Martin Munro (The Haunted Tropics: Caribbean Ghost Stories)
“
Life, where we apply our intelligence, is an open system. Messy, full of tricks and feints and ambiguities and false friends. So is language – not a problem to be solved or a device for solving problems. It’s more like a mirror, no, a billion mirrors in a cluster like a fly’s eye, reflecting, distorting and constructing our world at different focal lengths.
”
”
Ian McEwan
“
I catch a glimpse of myself in the full-length mirror across the room, and I see the same self-deprecating, fearful, shy woman I just saw downstairs and for all of my life. But that’s not who I am. That’s just a role I play, a form I’ve fit myself into. I am the woman in the masquerade mask that night at the club, about to meet a total stranger. I’m the woman Beau wants. I own a goddamn sex club, for fuck’s sake. I am his Domme.
”
”
Sara Cate (Mercy (Salacious Players Club, #4))
“
Starting is the hardest part, both in the moment and in the early days of habit-building. Initially, you will see limited results. After a hard workout you will feel sore, but look in the mirror and see no change. After eating broccoli, you will feel about the same. After writing on day one, you will not have a full book. But when you do these things over the long haul, you can end up with a fit and healthy body and several full-length novels.
”
”
Stephen Guise (Mini Habits: Smaller Habits, Bigger Results (Mini Habits, #1))
“
Jess began to wish she had worn a modest top that covered her up as far as- well, as far as her eyebrows. She wished she had at least rehearsed dancing in front of her full-length mirror before leaving home. She feared that her newly buoyant boobs might be getting rather out of hand. Bonnie especially - the left one - was beginning to feel a bit free-range, and it did seem a little drafty across her chest. Jess also began to worry that, in shaking up the soup so violently, she might somehow make it boil over.
”
”
Sue Limb (Girl, 15, Charming but Insane (Jess Jordan, #1))
“
Kilgore Trout was shadowing him, keen to know what Billy had suspected or seen. Most of Trout’s novels, after all, dealt with time warps and extrasensory perception and other unexpected things. Trout believed in things like that, was greedy to have their existence proved. “You ever put a full-length mirror on the floor, and then have a dog stand on it?” Trout asked Billy. “No.” “The dog will look down, and all of a sudden he’ll realize there’s nothing under him. He thinks he’s standing on thin air. He’ll jump a mile.
”
”
Kurt Vonnegut Jr. (Slaughterhouse-Five)
“
13:11 You must understand the urgency and context of time; it is most certainly now the hour to wake up at once out of the hypnotic state of slumber and unbelief. Salvation has come. 13:12 It was 1night for long enough; the day has arrived. Cease immediately with any action associated with the darkness of ignorance. Clothe yourself in the radiance of light as a soldier would wear his full weaponry. (The night is far spent, 1prokopto, as a smith forges a piece of metal until he has hammered it into its maximum length.)
”
”
François Du Toit (The Mirror Bible)
“
She was confusing me. This was my tragedy. Why were we talking about her? “I’d get there and people would stare at me,” I said. “Look at me!” “Look at me!” she shot back. She pointed accusingly at herself in the full-length mirror. Her hair looked wilty. Her bottom lip sagged. “I’m thirty-eight years old and still living with my mother. I’ve wanted to get away from that woman all my life. And here it is, ten-thirty at night. I’m tired, Dolores. I just want to go to bed. But instead, I’m on my way to work, dressed up like . . . one of the goddamned Andrews sisters.” In the mirror, we shared a smile. I wanted to reach over and rub her back, tell her I loved her. I opened my mouth to say it, but something else came out. “What if I get so depressed down there that I slit my wrists? They could call here and say they found me in a pool of blood.” “Oh for Christ’s sweet sake!” Her hairbrush flew past me and hit the wall. She slammed into the bathroom, banging the medicine-cabinet door once, twice, three times. Tap water ran for several minutes. When she came back, her eyes were red. She bent over and picked up the brush, picked strands of hair from the bristles. “You don’t want to go to college? Don’t go. I can’t keep this up. I thought I could, but I can’t.” “I’ll get a job,” I said. “Maybe I’ll go on a diet. I’m sorry.” “You’re sorry, I’m sorry, everybody’s sorry,” she sighed. “Write that girl a letter. Don’t let her get stuck with those bedspreads.” I stopped her as she headed for the stairs. “Ma?” I said. She turned and faced me and I saw, in her eyes, the dazed woman she’d been those first days when she’d returned from the mental hospital years before. “Goddamnit, Dolores,” she said. “You’ve made me so goddamned tired.” Then she was down the stairs and out the door.
”
”
Wally Lamb (She's Come Undone)
“
As she looked in the full-length mirror in her dressing room, she added a few ropes of pearls, pinned a white silk camellia, and draped the Chantilly lace shawl. In that moment, Dana thought of fashion's most enduring icon who created this elegant and alluring style, and the happy personal life that eluded her. Mademoiselle Chanel died in 1971 at the age of eighty-eight while working on her spring collection, but her passion for work did not fill the void of marriage and children. Her success was costly, but clearly the choice of an uncompromising woman determined to achieve greatness on her own. She once said, "I never wanted to weigh more heavily on a man than a bird.
”
”
Lynn Steward
“
We started when I was in the fourth grade, which would have made me ten, I guess. It’s different for everyone, but at that age, though I couldn’t have said that I was gay, I knew that I was not like the other boys in my class or my Scout troop. While they welcomed male company, I shrank from it, dreaded it, feeling like someone forever trying to pass, someone who would eventually be found out, and expelled from polite society. Is this how a normal boy would swing his arms? I’d ask myself, standing before the full-length mirror in my parents’ bedroom. Is this how he’d laugh? Is this what he would find funny? It was like doing an English accent. The more concentrated the attempt, the more self-conscious and unconvincing I became.
”
”
David Sedaris (Let's Explore Diabetes with Owls)
“
When the subjects arrived at the psychology lab, they were sent into individual dressing rooms with full-length mirrors. Half of the dressing rooms contained bathing suits (one-piece for the women, trunks for the men) and half contained sweaters, all of which were available in a wide range of sizes. Once the subjects put on the assigned clothing, they were told to hang out in the dressing room for fifteen minutes before they filled out a questionnaire about whether or not they would want to purchase the item. While they waited, they were asked, in order to help the researchers use the time efficiently, to complete a math test “for an experimenter in the Department of Education.” As you’ve already guessed, the psychologists weren’t helping their colleagues in the Department of Education. They were measuring whether taking a math test while wearing a bathing suit would affect the women’s scores.
”
”
Lisa Damour (Untangled: Guiding Teenage Girls Through the Seven Transitions into Adulthood)
“
Oh, he thinks, if I were a better person. If I were a more generous person. If I were a less self-involved person. If I were a braver person. Then he stands, gripping the towel bar as he does; he has cut himself too much tonight, and he is faint. He goes over to the full-length mirror that is hung on the back of the bedroom’s closet door. In his apartment on Greene Street, there are no full-length mirrors. “No mirrors,” he told Malcolm. “I don’t like them.” But really, he doesn’t want to be confronted with his image; he doesn’t want to see his body, his face staring back at him. But here at Harold and Julia’s, there is a mirror, and he stands in front of it for a few seconds, contemplating himself, before adopting the hunched pose JB had that night. JB was right, he thinks. He was right. And that is why I can’t forgive him. Now he drops his mouth open. Now he hops in a little circle. Now he drags his leg behind him. His moans fill the air in the quiet, still house.
”
”
Hanya Yanagihara (A Little Life)
“
A splash of light snuck beneath the a dressing room door. He heard a groan. A shuffle. A bump. A heavy sigh.
"Uh, too tight."
He walked toward the back, stopping outside the dressing room. The door was cracked a fraction. He rested a shoulder against the wall, and glanced inside. Grace as Catwoman blew his mind. A feline fantasy.
The three-way mirror tripled his pleasure. He viewed her from every angle. Hot, sleek, fierce. The lady could fight Batman in her skintight black leather catsuit and come out the winner.
After a moment she scrunched her nose, slapped her palms against her thighs. Stuck out her tongue at her reflection in the mirrors. He saw what had her so frustrated. Sympathized with her disappointment. Her costume didn't fit. The front zipper hadn't fully cleared her cleavage, which was deep and visible. She wore no bra. She gave a little hop, and her breasts bounced. Full and plump. He felt a tug at his groin. Superhero lust.
He cleared his throat and made his presence known. She caught his image in the corner of the glass, and reached for the fitting room chair, positioning it between them.
Like that would keep him from her. He should've looked away, but couldn't. He sensed her embarrassment. Her panic. Flight? She had nowhere to go. He blocked the door. He wasn't leaving until they'd talked.
"Archibald's going to love your costume," he initiated.
She didn't find him funny. Her gaze narrowed behind the molded cat-eye mask with attached ears. Her fingers clenched in her elbow-length gloves. Inspired by the movie The Dark Knight, she'd added a whip and a gun holster. Her thigh-high stiletto boots were killer, adding five inches to her height. Her image would stick with him forever.
She backed against the center mirror, and nervously fingered the open flaps over her breasts. A yank on the zipper broke the tab. The metal teeth parted, and the gap widened, revealing the round inner curves of her breasts. A hint of her nipples. Dusky pink. All the way down to the dent of her navel.
”
”
Kate Angell (The Cottage on Pumpkin and Vine)
“
He found Rhy standing in the middle of his room, his back to Kell as he considered himself in a full-length mirror. From this angle, Kell couldn’t see Rhy’s face, and for a moment, a memory surged into his mind, of Rhy waiting for him to wake—only it hadn’t been Rhy, of course, but Astrid wearing his skin, and they were in Rhy’s chambers then, not his. But for an instant the details blurred and he found himself searching Rhy for any pendants or charms, searching his floor for blood, before the past crumbled back into memory.
“About time,” said Rhy, and Kell was secretly relieved when the voice that came from Rhy’s lips was undoubtedly his brother’s.
“What brings you to my room?” he asked, relief bleeding into annoyance.
“Adventure. Intrigue. Brotherly concern. Or,” continued the prince lazily, “perhaps I’m just giving your mirror something to look at besides your constant pout.”
Kell frowned, and Rhy smiled. “Ah, there it is! That famous scowl.”
“I don’t scowl,” grumbled Kell.
Rhy shot a conspiratorial look at his own reflection. Kell sighed and tossed his coat onto the nearest couch before heading for the alcove off his chamber.
”
”
Victoria Schwab (A Gathering of Shadows (Shades of Magic, #2))
“
Last night I undressed for bed. But instead of crawling between the sheets I decided to stand, naked, in front of the large full-length mirror that is propped against the wall next to my bed. ⠀
⠀
I turned off the bright lights, and found a song that spoke to the energy I could feel under my skin. For a while I just stood there. And I looked at myself. Bare skin. Open Heart. Clear truth. ⠀
⠀
It's a wonder, after 42 years on earth, to allow it to fully land, this knowing that I can stop, and look at myself and think things other than unkind words. ⠀
⠀
Don't get me wrong. I don't want to paint you a pretty social media picture that doesn't play out in real life. I'm not suddenly completely fine with all that is. I'm human and I'm a woman in the midst of this particular culture, and so of course I'd love to be tighter and firmer and lifted. I'd love to have the skin and metabolism I did in my twenties. I wish, often, that my stomach were flatter. I wear makeup and I dye away my gray hair. I worry about these things too, of course I do. ⠀
⠀
But finally, and fully - I can stand and look at myself and be filled, completely, with love. I can look at myself entirely bare and think, yes, I like myself now. Just as I am. Even if nothing changes. This me. She is good. And she is beautiful. ⠀
⠀
And even in the space of allowing myself to be human, and annoyed with those things I view as imperfections, I honor and celebrate this shift. ⠀
⠀
And so last night I was able to stand there. Naked and unashamed and run my own hands gently along my own skin. To offer the tenderness of the deepest seduction. To practice being my own best lover, to romance my own soul. To light the candles and buy the flowers. To hold space for my own knowing. ⠀
⠀
And to touch my own skin while the music played. Gently. Lightly. With reverence. My thighs, my arms, my breasts, my belly, the points where my pulse makes visible that faint movement that proves me alive. To trace the translucent blue veins, the scars, the ink that tells stories. To whisper to the home of my own desire. ⠀
⠀
I love you. ⠀
I respect your knowing. ⠀
Thank you for waiting for me to get here. ⠀
I finally see that you are holy.
”
”
Jeanette LeBlanc
“
Hannah Winter was sixty all of a sudden, as women of sixty are. Just yesterday - or the day before, at most - she had been a bride of twenty in a wine-coloured silk wedding gown, very stiff and rich. And now here she was, all of a sudden, sixty. (...) This is the way it happened!
She was rushing along Peacock Alley to meet her daughter Marcia. Anyone who knows Chicago knows that smoke-blackened pile, the Congress Hotel; and anyone who knows the Congress Hotel has walked down that glittering white marble crypt called Peacock Alley. It is neither so glittering nor so white nor, for that matter, so prone to preen itself as it was in the hotel's palmy '90s. But it still serves as a convenient short cut on a day when Chicago's lake wind makes Michigan Boulevard a hazard, and thus Hannah Winter was using it. She was to have met Marcia at the Michigan Boulevard entrance at two, sharp. And here it was 2.07. When Marcia said two, there she was at two, waiting, lips slightly compressed. (...)
So then here it was 2.07, and Hannah Winter, rather panicky, was rushing along Peacock Alley, dodging loungers, and bell-boys, and traveling salesmen and visiting provincials and the inevitable red-faced delegates with satin badges. In her hurry and nervous apprehension she looked, as she scuttled down the narrow passage, very much like the Rabbit who was late for the Duchess's dinner. Her rubber-heeled oxfords were pounding down hard on the white marble pavement. Suddenly she saw coming swiftly toward her a woman who seemed strangely familiar - a well-dressed woman, harassed-looking, a tense frown between her eyes, and her eyes staring so that they protruded a little, as one who runs ahead of herself in her haste. Hannah had just time to note, in a flash, that the woman's smart hat was slightly askew and that, though she walked very fast, her trim ankles showed the inflexibility of age, when she saw that the woman was not going to get out of her way. Hannah Winter swerved quickly to avoid a collision. So did the other woman. Next instant Hannah Winter brought up with a crash against her own image in that long and tricky mirror which forms a broad full-length panel set in the marble wall at the north end of Peacock Alley. Passerby and the loungers on near-by red plush seats came running, but she was unhurt except for a forehead bump that remained black-and-blue for two weeks or more. The bump did not bother her, nor did the slightly amused concern of those who had come to her assistance. She stood there, her hat still askew, staring at this woman - this woman with her stiff ankles, her slightly protruding eyes, her nervous frown, her hat a little sideways - this stranger - this murderess who had just slain, ruthlessly and forever, a sallow, high-spirited girl of twenty in a wine-coloured silk wedding gown.
”
”
Edna Ferber (Gigolo)
“
lifeless and ready for the scrap heap. The Bedroom Mirror is also a highly important item. It needn’t be especially ornate but should be full-length to allow you and your partner to see what they look like from top to toe. Of course, couples of a certain age such as Stephen and, to an extent, myself may prefer a more forgiving and less revealing length. For those couples, I would recommend a mirror no greater than 60 centimetres in length, which also has the advantages of being quicker to clean
”
”
Mrs. Stephen Fry (How To Have An Almost Perfect Marriage)
“
This, then, is the beast that has never actually been:
not having seen one, they prized in any case
its perfect poise, its throat, the straightforward gaze it gave them back—so straightforward, so serene.
Since it had never been, it was all the more
unsullied. And they allowed it such latitude
that, in a clearing in the wood,
it raised its head as if its essence shrugged off mere
existence. They brought it on, not with oats or corn,
but with the chance, however slight,
that it would come on its own. This gave it such strength
that from its brow there sprang a horn. A single horn.
Only when it met a maiden’s white with white
Would it be bodied out in her, in her mirror’s full length.
”
”
Paul Muldoon (Hay)
“
1989 I’ve been awake all night in an attempt to maintain some kind of hold on what has happened, on what I have done. My eyes are red and prickling with tiredness, but I daren’t go to sleep. If I sleep, when I wake up I’ll have one blissful, terrible second when I’m unaware –and then it will all come crashing in on me, its power multiplied indefinitely by that one un-knowing second. I think of the last time I saw the dawn in, lying in Sophie’s bed. This time it’s a more tempestuous and bleaker affair. A ceaseless summer rain has been falling all night, and the branch of a nearby tree is thwacking intermittently against my windowpane. It’s not just the chemicals keeping me awake, although I can still feel them coursing, unwanted, around my veins. I’ve been sitting here on the floor for four hours, as my bedroom turns gradually from darkness to a dull grey half-light. I’m surrounded by the debris of my elaborate preparations for the evening that, twelve hours ago, stretched out invitingly, bright with the promise of acceptance and approval. There are three dresses strewn on the bed, with the accompanying pair of shoes for each lying discarded in front of the full-length mirror. My eyes rest dully on the stain on the carpet where Sophie dropped my new bronzing powder and I made a clumsy attempt to wipe it up with a bit of tissue dipped in a glass of stale water. The dress I wore lies in a crumpled heap next to me –I’ve pulled on an old sweatshirt and leggings. There are dark smudges under my eyes and my lips are dry, the remains of my lipstick clinging to the cracks and bleeding into the skin around my mouth. I’ve been sitting here on the floor for so long only because I can’t move. I would have expected my heart to be racing, but in fact an iron fist grips it so tightly that I am surprised it is beating at all. Everything has slowed to a funereal
”
”
Laura Marshall (Friend Request)
“
Eventually I was ready to learn how to perform routine life tasks again. 'Enabling occupation'—that’s what the learning process was called when it was presented to me.
Enabling occupation involved the mastery of skills that I didn’t even know could properly be called 'skills.' How to pick up and carry and manipulate a set of common objects: a handbag, a stoneware saucer, a mobile phone, a paperback book. I was told that my new limbs were capable of hefting an automobile, of bending an iron bar, but I couldn’t make them do any of these magical things—not anything remotely close. Instead, I spent my days trying to pick up a thumbtack from a hard surface using my feeble pincer grasp, to activate a light switch with a single articulated finger, and to fasten a long line of shirt buttons, each of which was around the size of a half-dollar coin.
During this period, I worked to improve my gross motor skills in parallel. I relearned how to reach for distant objects without collapsing under my own weight, how to twist a standard brass doorknob, and how to pour liquid from a plastic pitcher into a paper cup without spilling everything everywhere or crushing the handle itself in my grip. Eventually I used these newfound skills to practice clothing myself in simple blouses with velcro fasteners and pants with elastic waistbands, struggling to take it all off again when it was time. At some point during this phase, a team of nameless staff members helped me stand upright in front of a full-length mirror so I could stare at my newly-made body, fully exposed, and with my sharpened vision I was able to see the true extent of my transformation, the exquisite atrocity I’d chosen to perpetrate.
”
”
Jonathan R. Miller (Frend)
“
The Lanterns Studio Theatre is the best East London production with a wide production with 9m Full Length Mirrors, Wardrobe/Costume Room, Studio Sized, Wi-Fi.
”
”
Lanterns Studio Theatre
“
Do you want to production space in London? The Lanterns Studio Theatre is UK based business provides the 9m Full Length Mirrors, Wardrobe/Costume Room, Studio Sized, Wi-Fi.
”
”
Lanterns Studio Theatre
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Lanterns Studio Theatre is the best East London Venue that provides the 9m Full-Length Mirrors, Wardrobe/Costume Room, Studio Sized, Wi-Fi at an affordable price.
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Lanterns Studio Theatre
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Shoes that tied were the first thing to go. Lucy needed shoes she could put on without using her hands, with a writhing, screaming, occasionally biting child in her arms, shoes she could tip up with her toes and slide her feet into without so much as bending a knee. Flip-flops when at all possible, clogs or Merrells the rest of the time. Then it was earrings. Earrings were so long gone, the holes in her ears had closed up. Next it was eyeliner, then mascara, then returning phone calls, then going to the dentist, then looking in a full-length mirror before she left the house, then lip gloss, unless she found some in the bottom of her purse while she was stopped at a red light. There was more, of course. Pedicures, thank-you notes, RSVPs, Christmas cards, flossing, stretching, remembering birthdays, exfoliation. Basically, Lucy was down to nothing but deodorant, toothpaste, and a ponytail five days out of seven. She
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Sarah Dunn (The Arrangement)
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It’s easy, Joey thought. Makeup finished, she shimmied into her gold dress and strapped on her stilettos. She stared at herself in the full-length mirror. Ruby stared back. I just pretend I’m my mother.
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Jennifer Hillier (Things We Do in the Dark)
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stop to check my reflection in the full-length mirror. Sometimes I am scared by how beautiful I am. Every inch of me is buffed and primed. My face hangs exactly right. My muscles are taut and organized. I am scared because I don’t want to lose it: the shaped nails, the tip of my nose, the sapphire glow of my eyes.
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Eliza Jane Brazier (Good Rich People)
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Mulan found it easier to face the morning by pretending that her clothes were armor. The stiff coronation robe Ting was smoothing down over her shoulders? She imagined it woven with threads of spun gold, the embroidered phoenixes stitched with blazing-red iron. Her sash, hanging loose down her back, was a shoulder guard of blue iron, and the phoenixes on her shoes were spikes and spurs.
“Please keep your head forward, Empress.”
A handmaiden gripped a handful of hair, pulling it taut enough to make Mulan’s eyes water. The hair, at least, was easy to imagine as a helmet. By the time the maid finished wrapping it around multiple combs and adorning the layered buns with everything from flowers to jade to tiny golden bells, Mulan’s coiffure would stop arrows far better than anything the imperial blacksmiths could craft.
The maid inserted one last pin and stepped back. “All done.”
She pulled the train of Mulan’s robe out as Mulan stepped in front of a full-length mirror. Mulan’s reflection was warped and metallic on the coppery finish, but she could see that she was made up as intricately as the finest ladies of court, her face powdered white, her eyes lined with charcoal, and her lips painted red as her sash. Her eyebrows had been shaved and drawn back in with blue-black pigment. Tiny silver beads adorned her yellow-tinted forehead, and three flowers had been painted on her right cheek.
“Armor,” Mulan said under her breath.
“Your Majesty?”
“Nothing, just talking to myself.
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Livia Blackburne (Feather and Flame (The Queen's Council, #2))
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Mulan found it easier to face the morning by pretending that her clothes were armor. The stiff coronation robe Ting was smoothing down over her shoulders. She imagined it woven with threads of spun gold, the embroidered phoenixes stitched with blazing-red iron. Her sash, hanging loose down her back, was a shoulder guard of blue iron, and the phoenixes on her shoes were spikes and spurs.
“Please keep your head forward, Empress.”
A handmaiden gripped a handful of hair, pulling it taut enough to make Mulan’s eyes water. The hair, at least, was easy to imagine as a helmet. By the time the maid finished wrapping it around multiple combs and adorning the layered buns with everything from flowers to jade to tiny golden bells, Mulan’s coiffure would stop arrows far better than anything the imperial blacksmiths could craft.
The maid inserted one last pin and stepped back. “All done.”
She pulled the train of Mulan’s robe out as Mulan stepped in front of a full-length mirror. Mulan’s reflection was warped and metallic on the coppery finish, but she could see that she was made up as intricately as the finest ladies of court, her face powdered white, her eyes lined with charcoal, and her lips painted red as her sash. Her eyebrows had been shaved and drawn back in with blue-black pigment. Tiny silver beads adorned her yellow-tinted forehead, and three flowers had been painted on her right cheek.
“Armor,” Mulan said under her breath.
“Your Majesty?”
“Nothing, just talking to myself.
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Livia Blackburne
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Passing the full-length antique gold mirror that had been unscrewed from the wall and was propped up at her feet, she realised that the elderly lady with the stooped shoulders, frail frame and wispy light grey hair was her.
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Emily Gunnis (The Midwife's Secret)
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Tricks with Mirrors
i
It's no coincidence
this is a used
furniture warehouse.
I enter with you
and become a mirror.
Mirrors
are the perfect lovers,
that's it, carry me up the stairs
by the edges, don't drop me,
that would be back luck,
throw me on the bed
reflecting side up,
fall into me,
it will be your own
mouth you hit, firm and glassy,
your own eyes you find you
are up against closed closed
ii
There is more to a mirror
than you looking at
your full-length body
flawless but reversed,
there is more than this dead blue
oblong eye turned outwards to you.
Think about the frame.
The frame is carved, it is important,
it exists, it does not reflect you,
it does not recede and recede, it has limits
and reflections of its own.
There's a nail in the back
to hang it with; there are several nails,
think about the nails,
pay attention to the nail
marks in the wood,
they are important too.
iii
Don't assume it is passive
or easy, this clarity
with which I give you yourself.
Consider what restraint it
takes: breath withheld, no anger
or joy disturbing the surface
of the ice.
You are suspended in me
beautiful and frozen, I
preserve you, in me you are safe.
It is not a trick either,
it is a craft:
mirrors are crafty.
iv
I wanted to stop this,
this life flattened against the wall,
mute and devoid of colour,
built of pure light,
this life of vision only, split
and remote, a lucid impasse.
I confess: this is not a mirror,
it is a door
I am trapped behind.
I wanted you to see me here,
say the releasing word, whatever
that may be, open the wall.
Instead you stand in front of me
combing your hair.
v
You don't like these metaphors.
All right:
Perhaps I am not a mirror.
Perhaps I am a pool.
Think about pools.
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Margaret Atwood
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Most of us inherit one shame or another. [...] I met a guy named Mike during my travels in Alaska. We've stayed in touch. He's blond and blue-eyed, and does not fit comfortably in most chairs and beds because he's six foot nine. He's often embarrassed by his height and sometimes tells people he's six foot eight. He stoops on purpose. Once, while waiting to be seated at a restaurant, he and I stood in front of a full-length mirror. His reflection wasn't all there. His head was cut off. There were so many ways to be invisible.
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Alex Tizon (Big Little Man: In Search of My Asian Self)
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Your ideal weight is the weight you happen to be when you can look at yourself naked in a full-length mirror and be happy with your shape.
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Allen Carr (Allen Carr's Lose Weight Now)
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Not bad for a practice kiss,” he said in a casual voice that pissed her off. No way could he have felt nothing while her senses sizzled like a drop of water on a hot, oiled skillet.
“And the Oscar goes to,” she muttered when he winked and walked out of the room.
She was about to swear and take a kick at the coffee-table leg when she spotted him in the full-length mirror on the closet door standing ajar. He’d stopped just outside in the hall, and she watched his reverse image as he pulled at the fly of his jeans, no doubt adjusting for the evidence he wasn’t as unaffected as he wanted her to think he was.
Despite the fact both of them being affected would be an even greater complication, Emma was smiling when she met up with him again in the front hall.
“We can take my truck,” he told her in a terse voice that made her have to smother a bigger and much more smug smile.
“No, we can’t. I have the extended cab and it might rain. We can’t throw Gram’s luggage in the bed to get wet.”
“I’m driving.”
She paused halfway out the front door. “Excuse me?”
“You drive like a girl.” He held out his hand, presumably for her keys.
“You’re an ass.”
“We can stand here and argue about it. I’m sure your grandmother will understand.”
“A sexist ass, no less.”
He grinned and snatched her keys out of her hand before she could react. “Next time, you might want to actually meet the man you’re going to marry before you tell your family about him. Get in the truck. Honey.
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Shannon Stacey (Yours to Keep (Kowalski Family, #3))
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Carl discreetly turned his head to the left and then the right to make sure Mom wasn’t within hearing range.
“I tried to stick it in er ass once and she didn’t speak to me for a week,” he nearly whispered before belting out a slur of loose chuckles. “And gettin’ ‘er to do ya on top? Forget about it!”
In ways, I morphed into Carl’s description of the ideal woman. Like Mom, physical beauty was my ultimate priority. I spent hours on end stripped naked, posing in front of my full length bedroom mirror at every angle so that each wrinkle, roll, and pinch of fat could receive sharp scrutiny before I strived for complete self annihilation. I made it a habit of studying every Teen magazine model and the skinniest cheerleaders in my middle school yearbook. I observed their arms, legs, and hips. I held their images against mine with a goal for my bones to protrude further and calves spread further apart when standing straight. However, I saw the way Carl bent his head down and lowered his voice when he spoke about Mom, as if it was our job to keep a feisty, barking puppy believing that it was our guard dog.
“Ure mom can’t help she got half ure I-Q,” Carl would chuckle.
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Maggie Georgiana Young (Just Another Number)
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She started at the sound of a knock on the door. Opening it a crack, the clerk peeked her head in. "Come out here and look at yourself in the full-length mirrors.
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Kathy Carmichael (Chasing Charlie (The Texas Two-Step #2))
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Looking in the full-length mirror, she thought, I’ve got everything I had twenty years ago—it’s all just three inches lower.
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Ken Follett (Ken Follett Three Bestsellers: Whiteout / On Wings of Eagles / Lie Down with Lions)
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In a country with few private rooms, where people live on top of each other, lies and half-truths become the only forms of privacy. People lie because they assume everyone else is a liar. Those who don’t lie must be either saints or idiots, or just plain rude. In this shimmering world of big and small deceits, people often have to snoop and spy to hunt down the illusive truth. There is an instructive story of a poor man who won a lottery. He moves his family into a mansion where each of his thirteen children could have his or her own room at last. For the first time, they could think in silence and examine their firm or flabby flesh in a full-length mirror. They could hear the creak and hum if their own brains, feel the drafts from strange doors being opened. Frightful memories ambushed them sporadically. The oldest boy realized he had a flat chest, a beer belly and no muscles. The oldest girl discovered a condor-shaped birthmark spanning her behind. After a month of daydreaming, reading, masturbating and unbearable loneliness bordering on madness, they all decided to sleep in the same room again.
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Linh Dinh (Love Like Hate)
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I stood in front of the full-length mirror, admiring myself. I had to admit, I looked damn good in my wedding dress. It was a strapless, nude, lace-covered, mermaid-style gown that hugged my every curve. The sweetheart neckline accentuated my breasts and shoulders. Elegant white gold pieces adorned my neck, ears, and wrists. My makeup was light and natural, and my hair hung in long, soft curls framing my face.
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Kimberly Brown (Surrender (Arranged Hearts))
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I turn to the full-length mirror ornamented with intricate golden appliqué. The bodice contours my body wonderfully, its sheer fabric extenuating my every arch and dip, with pearls perfectly concealing the parts of me otherwise indecent to expose. Jasmine blossoms ascend the skirt and billowing sleeves, which are as thin as water. I feel like a princess of the sea, held in the most delicate curl of sea-foam.
I slowly run my hands down the pearl detailing, imagining a version of myself worth loving--- me as a bride before I say I do, the moment heaven is promised forever.
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Kiana Krystle (Dance of the Starlit Sea)
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but the full-length mirror where she’d spent so many hours modeling, where she witnessed her bald head for the first time, was gone.
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Michelle Zauner (Crying in H Mart)
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I start to laugh and point, but he grabs my ankles and drags me to the end of the bed. There's a full-length mirror, and I see myself, at long last sitting on the bed in his robin's-egg bedroom. His walls are the blue of my eyes. I've been a bit slow.
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Sally Thorne
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That night, I regarded myself in the full-length mirror in my London hotel room and marvelled at how my scars have faded and thought about the pots Eddie would sometimes make, then deliberately and carefully break, before resetting them with molten gold (so that he could sell them for much more money). At the time I thought this practice inauthentic and pretentious, but I am starting to look at some things in life in a different way. Kintsukuroi is the name for this ancient Japanese art, which teaches that broken objects are not something to hide away but should be displayed with pride, for they are stronger and more beautiful for surviving the breakage. I think I, too, am stronger and more beautiful for surviving my travails. The
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Jane Johnson (The Sea Gate)
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We have had quite a time of it, quite a time. I move, when I move, in a daze of bafflement. It’s as if I had been standing for all my life in front of a full-length mirror, watching the people passing by, behind and in front of me, and now someone had taken me roughly by the shoulders and spun me about, and behold! There it was, the unreflected world, of people and things, and I nowhere to be seen in it. I might as well have been the one who died.
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John Banville (The Blue Guitar)
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While at the school in Malawi, the children had kept asking us to take photos of them on our phones so that they could see what they looked like. Suffice it to say, we were all surprised that many people there did not own mirrors and so the children literally didn’t know what they looked like. As soon as we returned to the United States, she wanted us to send full-length mirrors to the school. “We need to send the school mirrors. Children need to know what they look like and see that they are very strong or very beautiful.” She was insistent that the children should be able to look at themselves and know their self-worth.
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Stephanie Grisham (I'll Take Your Questions Now: What I Saw at the Trump White House)
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My muscles tensed at an unexpected shiver, an unsuitably cold reaction to the warm late-afternoon. Nonetheless, I felt chilled to the core, as if my heart were receiving a transfusion of ice water for blood. My mind had come to a dead-end contemplating past, present, and future decisions. It seemed that every choice I made hoping to protect my family was tied to a consequence that inevitably injured them. Harm was the result of everything I did—everything I had done—regardless of selfless or heroic intentions. The truth hit hard, suddenly horribly clear, as if stepping up to a full-length mirror. The Tarishe curse had taken on my own likeness. I had become the curse, a scourge to my family. This had always been the witch’s plan.
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Richelle E. Goodrich (The Tarishe Curse)
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I smile as I slip into my dress for the dinner. It’s snug, but the zipper doesn’t pinch, so I count the small victories. The fabric hugs my bust without being trashy, and the skirt stops right above my knee. It’s perfect for my engagement dinner. I slip on my black wedge heels and stand back to examine myself in the full-length mirror hanging on the back of my closet door. Hair, tame. Dress, pretty. Cora? Happy.
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S.E. Law (My Fiance's Dad (Forbidden Fantasies))
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Everyone knows this fairy tale:
"Mirror, mirror on the wall, who is the fairest of them all?"
"Why, you are, of course."
In the corner of their hearts, everyone is looking for a magic mirror. If there was a mirror that would reflect the image of them as they fervently wished to be, surely everyone would treasure such a mirror for as long as they lived.
On the other hand, there are mirrors that don't do that, such as concave mirrors and convex mirrors. For a long time there have been two full-length fun-house mirrors on the observation deck of the Tsūtenkaku tower in Osaka. For people from other parts of Japan who are not familiar with Osaka's fun-loving and idiosyncratic culture, why such things are in that particular place is a complete mystery; but in any case, it is amusing to play with them.
When you stand in front of the concave mirror, you appear stretched out as though you are being pulled up and down by your head and your toes—as though you have been transformed into a toothpick. In front of the convex mirror it is the reverse: you look short and fat as though you have been squashed in a mechanical press. Unsightly and with short legs, you look like a comic book character. Tourists look at their distorted appearances and laugh. But how can they laugh at such warped reflections? Is it because they can relax knowing that they could not possibly look like the twisted images in the mirror? People do not believe they really look like the grossly distorted images in fun-house mirrors, so they laugh them off. However, when a magic mirror reflects an image distorted in a beautiful way, people want to think: yes indeed, this is how I really look.
All of you astute readers should understand by now. The image reflected in the mirror that I am talking about in this book is the image of Japan drawn by foreigners. However, this brings up a question. What kind of a distorted image would a Japanese accept as being him or herself? What sort of a distorted image would he or she laugh off? Where exactly is the boundary between the two?
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Shoji Yamada (Shots in the Dark: Japan, Zen, and the West (Buddhism and Modernity))
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medical playroom she was now intimately acquainted with, there was a room with floor-to-ceiling mirrors covering every wall, a suspension rack hanging from the ceiling, a cache of impact toys nearby. Another room contained a tall, narrow slave cage and a hanging leather sex sling, along with a bin of sex toys, each in its own presumably sterile plastic bag. Yet another room had a polished wooden St. Andrew’s cross, a full rack of more beautiful impact toys waiting at the ready. There was a tiled room, a converted bathroom, with a suspension rig hung over the tub. There was a stack of plump towels on the nearby counter, along with a basket of ear and nose plugs. Next to that was a room filled with doorless wardrobes stuffed with gowns, lingerie and high heeled shoes in various sizes, including some clearly meant for a man’s larger foot. Along a counter beneath a large mirror there were wig stands with wigs of varying lengths and colors, as well as a tray filled with makeup, creams and powders. There were several more playrooms with numerous and varied restraint devices, plenty of impact toys and lots of delicious rope and chain.
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Claire Thompson (Masters Club Box Set (Masters Club Series))
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As she put her PJs on, she caught a glimpse of herself in the full-length mirror in the corner, her eye drawn to her tattoo. It had been there so long now that she barely noticed it, like a picture that’s been hanging in a hallway too long. Actually, that wasn’t quite true. The truth was that she didn’t want to look at it, because of the memories it brought back. She had considered laser treatment but decided against it, and not because of the pain and cost. The tattoo would remain, a permanent reminder of what she’d lost.
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Mark Edwards (The Devil's Work)
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For a good hour, the hairdresser poked, prodded, and preened me. She twisted my hair into a loose updo, sticking white roses and baby's breath into my locks, the photographer capturing each step with her camera. Finally, Jane helped me into the dress.
"Wow," said Phillipa with a gasp, staring at me. "You look absolutely gorgeous. Like you've fallen from the stars."
"She does," said Marie, and everybody nodded in agreement.
I hooked the necklace Rémi had given me around my neck. And then I took a good look at myself in the full-length mirror. What I saw shocked me. In this glorious dress, the way the silver threads sparkled, I felt like I was sparkling, too, like I had metamorphosed from a caterpillar into a wild butterfly. It was then that I found my own spirit insect---probably Grand-mère's plan all along. Le Papillon Sauvage. Me.
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Samantha Verant (Sophie Valroux's Paris Stars (Sophie Valroux #2))
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Jimena stopped in front of a locker near a floor-length mirror.
"This one was Catty's," she said softly.
A watercolor painting of the full moon rising over an ocean was taped to the front. A beautiful woman hovered behind the moon, her purple robe billowing into the starry sky behind her. The image was haunting.
"Did she do the painting?" Tianna asked. "It's really pretty."
Jimena nodded. "She was a good artist.
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Lynne Ewing (The Lost One (Daughters of the Moon, #6))
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the bathroom down the hall, but she couldn’t bring herself to do it, not knowing whom she’d run into and when. Indoor plumbing seemed unnecessary anyway. Getting water from the well and using the outdoor toilet was easy enough. But that shower, now that was a thing of beauty! She took the brush from the cabinet and let loose her single braid, as thick and long as the grasses that stood by the river back home. She shook her head so that her black hair fell loose, then brushed it, slowly and carefully, treating it as if every inch held a story. One stroke and then another, until it was smooth and silky, like the pajamas she slept in. They were different from the ones she wore at home, which she had made for herself. The stitching was too regular, too perfect to have been made by a young woman’s hand. Obviously, they were made by machine, like everything in Kabul. When Sunny had presented the room to her, she had been particularly proud of the full-length mirror that was framed in a shiny dark wood and sat on its own four legs. But Yazmina thought of it as vanity and had turned it away once Sunny had departed. Today, though, she turned it to face her. She put her hands on her stomach, where the life inside was growing with each new day, and looked at herself. She pulled the sleeping gown over her head, removed her undergarments, and there was her body, which she was seeing naked, in full, for the first time in her life. She was slim, her legs long and lean, her right leg still red and scraped from knee to thigh where she had fallen on the pebbled road when she was pushed out of the car. Her arms were slender but muscled from daily chores, still bruised by the rough grip of strong hands. She looked at her breasts, which were larger than usual because of her condition, but nothing like the long, low ones of Halajan, the old busybody who lived next door to the café and had an opinion about everything. Yazmina thought that woman had been sent by God himself to test her patience. No, Yazmina’s breasts were still “as glowing and round as the midnight moon,” as Najam used to tell her. She saddened at the memory of her husband’s face, his kisses and his touch. She would never feel such sweetness again. But she was with his baby. She turned to the side to look at her belly and stroked it with her two hands. She took a deep breath as if the air would give her all she and her baby needed to thrive. This will be my baby, she thought, my Najam, or if a girl, Inshallah, God willing, Najama (for Yazmina was convinced it was a girl, perhaps because it was Najam’s wish to have many children—a son or two, of course, but also a daughter who had the same light in her eyes as Yazmina). Not only would the baby be named after her father, but she would be a star lighting up the night sky, as the name meant. Najam’s seed was part of her, and she would cherish it and die trying to protect it.
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Deborah Rodriguez (The Little Coffee Shop of Kabul)
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She zipped the dress up at the back and stood in front of the oval cheval mirror, looking at herself as if she were a stranger. This was the first time since she had arrived back in France that she had seen herself in full-length mirror; her old apartment did not possess such a luxury. She studied herself for a while. Who was she, she asked herself? How had it come to this?
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Kathryn Gauci (Conspiracy of Lies)
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She took down the framed manuscript from the kitchen wall. It was Kendra's prized possession, and part of her felt guilty for what she planned, but it had to be done. She carefully removed the parchment from its frame, then searched through the piles of translations and notes on the kitchen table. Finally she found the Secret Scroll on the chair where Kendra had been the night before. She carried both manuscripts upstairs and set them on her desk.
Next she gathered paints and brushes and sat down. She studied the artwork on the Secret Scroll, then slowly began copying its rich patterns of gold, red, and blue onto Kendra's old manuscript.
It was late afternoon when she finished. She studied her work. She had managed to copy the exotic birds and animals hidden in the foliage on the borders, and even the detailed picture of the goddess locking the jaws of hell. Her work was rough, but at a distance it would fool Toby or any of the Regulators, especially since they were afraid to touch it.
Satisfied, she went to her closet. She searched through her clothes until she found the strapless top with the slit in the front. She slipped it over her head, then grabbed a silky black skirt and stepped into it. She carried her stiletto boots to the bed and tugged them on.
At last she drew black liquid eyeliner over her top lid, added green glitter shadow, rolled thick mascara on her lashes, and brushed her hair. She added gloss to her lips and rubbed sparkle lotion over her arms and chest. Then she remembered the dragon stencils. Soon, she had a sinuous dragon adorning her thigh between the bottom of her skirt and the top of her boots. She liked the look. She turned in front of the full-length mirror behind the bathroom door.
"Dynamite," she whispered. Her reflection thrilled her. She looked vamped-out and mystical. At once, she sensed the fierce power of the dragon rising in her. She felt like an invincible goddess-warrior.
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Lynne Ewing (The Secret Scroll (Daughters of the Moon, #4))
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At this moment, he happens to glance at a mirror affixed to a bureau across the room. In this mirror, he sees something that disturbs him. “Looking in that glass,” he’d later describe it, “I saw myself reflected nearly at full length; but my face, I noticed, had two separate and distinct images, the tip of the nose of one being about three inches from the tip of the other.” It’s a double image of his face, and “one of the faces was a little paler—say five shades—than the other.” When he stands up to look closer, “the illusion vanished,” but when he lies on the lounge again, the double image reappears: the “ghostly face in the mirror, mocking its healthy and hopeful fellow.
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Brad Meltzer (The Lincoln Conspiracy: The Secret Plot to Kill America's 16th President--and Why It Failed)
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Sure," Steven said good-naturedly. He walked up to his sister, who was now standing before the full-length mirror on the back of his closet door. He bent his six-foot-one body over her zipper. It took a little maneuvering, but he finally managed to zip up the dress without damaging the delicate fabric. "You had a thread caught in it," he told her. "Thank you, Steve," she said, admiring herself in the mirror. "What do you think?" Steven inspected his sister carefully. Jessica had a knack for picking out clothes that made her look her best—although even a burlap sack couldn't conceal her perfectly proportioned figure. This dress was no exception. The iridescent material matched her brilliant, blue-green eyes, and the neckline of the sleeveless dress was about as low as a sixteen-year-old could get away with. "Nice," was what Steven told her. "Nice?" she echoed bitingly. "Is that all you can say?" Steven laughed. "Oh, come on, Jess. You know you look great. Really, you do." "That's more like it." Jessica grinned.
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Francine Pascal (Kidnapped! (Sweet Valley High Book 13))
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sophisticated, I must say.” I stood up and looked into a full-length mirror that had been placed in my room for the day.
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Christine Kersey (He Loves Me Not (Lily's Story, Book 1))
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BANG!
My head was in my left hand, disintegrated from my
body.
I stood up and walked to the full length
mirror. My head still in my head, dripping blood.
Haruspex!?
”
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Raj Doctor (Melancholy Of Innocence)
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As she looked in the full-length mirror in her dressing room, she added a few ropes of pearls, pinned a white silk camellia, and draped the Chantilly lace shawl. In that moment, Dana thought of fashion's most enduring icon who created this elegant and alluring style, and the happy personal life that eluded her. Mademoiselle Chanel died in 1971 at the age of eighty-eight while working on her spring collection, but her passion for work did not fill the void of marriage and children. Her success was costly, but clearly the choice of an uncompromising woman determined to achieve greatness on her own. Chanel once said, "I never wanted to weigh more heavily on a man than a bird." Quote from "A very Good Life.
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Lynn Steward (A Very Good Life (Dana McGarry Novel, #1))
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How's it go--- Whoa."
Jae stood in front of the full-length multisided mirror in the back as Quinn fussed with his outfit. He was dressed in a slim-fitting maroon suit that somehow highlighted all of his best assets and drew attention to ones I didn't even know he had.
He met my eyes in the mirror. "You approve?"
It took everything in me to not shout, YES, ABSOLUTELY, BUY IT NOW AND WEAR IT OUT OF THE STORE, so I just nodded like a bobblehead on the dashboard of a car hitting every single pothole on a Chicago street.
”
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Mia P. Manansala (Guilt and Ginataan (Tita Rosie's Kitchen Mystery, #5))
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Which brings me to one more thing about the Sheridan FCI [prison]. After you make it through the metal detector, you re stamped on the flesh above your right thumb with ink visible only in the black light of the prison checkpoints. Then you wait in a holding area like a farm animal before the next set of computer-locked double doors, and in this space, there are two things: a plaque celebrating the FCI Employee of the Month, and a full-length mirror with the message This is the image you will present today. Redressing, I always wondered whether this prop with its quasi motivational message was intended for us, the visitors of felons, or for would-be employees of the month. Perhaps both.
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Jill Christman (Darkroom: A Family Exposure)
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I’d woken up in a tentatively happy mood, but that had changed the instant I’d caught sight of my naked body in the full-length mirror by the copper tub. Now Fisher had some explaining to do.
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Callie Hart (Quicksilver (Fae & Alchemy, #1))
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she twisted in front of the full-length mirror propped against the wall to admire the slope of her ass in the skintight gray dress,
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Sarah J. Maas (Crescent City ebook Bundle: A 3 Book Bundle (Crescent City, #1-3))
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Growing bolder—and sexier: When you have no more effs to give, you stop using other people as a measure of what matters. As journalist Monica Corcoran Harel wrote in The Cut in an essay titled “Going for Botox with My 82-Year-Old Mom,” “That’s the beauty of middle age: You decide how you look and feel instead of letting other people be your full-length mirror.”22 You can now reclaim yourself. That makes you sexier.
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Tamsen Fadal (How to Menopause: Take Charge of Your Health, Reclaim Your Life, and Feel Even Better than Before)