Mud Mask Quotes

It’s certainly nice to have my options open.” He looked back out at the city. “Can this possibly work, Mister Brekker? Or am I risking the fate of Ravka and the world’s Grisha on the honor and abilities of a fast-talking urchin?” “More than a bit of both,” said Kaz. “You’re risking a country. We’re risking our lives. Seems a fair trade.” The king of Ravka offered his hand. “The deal is the deal?” “The deal is the deal.” They shook. “If only treaties could be signed so quickly,” he said, his easy privateer’s mien sliding back in place like a mask purchased on West Stave. “I’m going to have a drink and a bath. One can take only so much mud and squalor. As the rebel said to the prince, it’s bad for the constitution.” He flicked an invisible speck of dust from his lapel and sauntered out of the solarium.

Dear Logan, Someday I'm going to write a book: How Not to Die in Alaska - A Girl's Guide to Fashionable Survival. I bet you don't know that a Kirby grip can make an excellent fishing hook. You may think you can use just any kind of mud for mud masks, but trust me, you CAN'T! In a pinch, nothing starts a fire like nail polish remover. And don't even get me started on the lifesaving properties of a good pair of tights. So I know a lot, in other words. I just don't know why I'm still writing you these letters.

The seeds of evil, the mud that never dries, will squirm and grow at every corner of the globe, through humans’ unconscious mind and karmic echoes.

I still had the breather mask and portable oxygen supply. But now I added a pair of goggles from the duffel. They’d be important for what came next. I duct taped both the mask and goggles to my face—I needed an airtight seal this time. So now I was a mud-covered freak with random shit taped to my face. I probably looked like something out of a horror movie. Oh well. I was about to be horrible.

Sir Arthur stopped at the bottom of the hill and awaited the charging rider. The horseman halted in front of Sir Arthur and mud flew in all directions. “Who are you?” demanded Sir Arthur. He stared into the masked face and turbaned head of an assassin. Rufus's heart stopped. A gasp escaped his frozen lips and his legs wobbled. Sir Arthur asked again, “Who are you?” The man dismounted and drew from his golden sash a long scimitar. He approached Sir Arthur. The knight lifted his sword and the duel began.

They say that February is the shortest month, but you know they could be wrong. Compared, calendar page against calendar page, it looks to be the shortest, all right. Spread between January and March like lard on bread, it fails to reach the crust on either slice. In its galoshes it's a full head shorter than December, although in leap years, when it has growth spurts, it comes up to April's nose. However more abbreviated than it's cousins it may look, February feels longer than any of them. It is the meanest moon of winter, all the more cruel because it will masquerade as spring, occasionally for hours at a time, only to rip off its mask with a sadistic laugh and spit icicles into every gullible face, behavior that grows quickly old. February is pitiless, and it's boring. That parade of red numerals on its page adds up to zero: birthdays of politicians, a holiday reserved for rodents, what kind of celebrations are those? The only bubble in the flat champagne of February is Valentine's Day. It was no accident that our ancestors pinned Valentine's day on February's shirt: he or she lucky enough to have a lover in frigid, antsy February has cause for celebration, indeed. Except to the extent that it "tints the buds and swells the leaves within" February is as useless as the extra r in its name. It behaves like an obstacle, a wedge of slush and mud and ennui holding both progress and contentment at bay. If February is the color of lard on rye, its aroma is that of wet wool trousers. As for sound, it is an abstract melody played on a squeaky violin, the petty whine of a shrew with cabin fever. O February, you may be little but you're small! Where you twice your tiresome length, few of us would survive to greet the merry month of May.

Miss Wyndham, I know you’re not pleased with the shocking things you’ve discovered lately, and I know you’ll think even worse of me when I tell you of the things I did before we met. But everything I—” “Sir, you are a liar and a cheat!” a customer bellowed at the shiner behind us. Mr. Kent glanced over his shoulder and attempted to ignore the yells. “Everything I do is to—” “These shoes are still soiled! The mud is right there! Return my money, sir!” the customer yelled again. Mr. Kent bristled and spun around to the shoe shiner. “Sir, are you wrong in this matter?” “N-no,” the shoe shiner stammered. “I’m trying to be fair.” Mr. Kent turned to the customer. “Are you wrong?” “Yes, of course I am,” he said, his face flushing. “Then avoid stepping in the mud, shut up, and be on your way! I am trying to convince a girl to love me!

Rice Greyness masks the giving sun, Cool air snakes between my thighs, Dragonflies alight in heeded flight, As monsoon floods the paddy's eyes. I step barefoot on the spongy mud Which tugs back upon my sole My journey etched in reddish clay Mapped out from source to goal. Winds murmur of a change of plan And unveil the playful sun. I put new footprints in my footprints And begin again where I've begun.

For these galas, the Mohaves came together wearing bark masks and face paint or mud-slathered hair, marched upriver to the feasting area, built a fire, and danced until midnight. The next day they ate. The women arrived carrying soup, cakes, or boiled vegetables in dishes and baskets on their heads. Their cakes were made of ground wheat and boiled pumpkin rolled into a dough that was placed in the sand, covered with a leaf, and baked.

One camera recorded only the flattened grass through a cracked lens. The other, moving closer to the girl, showed her dupatta fly toward it, a close-up of the tiny embroidered flowers on the white cloth, and then a battering darkness. For a few moments there was only a howling noise, the wind raging, and then a hand plucked away the white cloth and the howl was the girl, a dust mask on her face, her dark hair a cascade of mud, her fingers interlaced over the face of her brother. A howl deeper than a girl, a howl that came out of the earth and through her and into the office of the home secretary, who took a step back. As if that were the only thing the entire spectacle had been designed to achieve, the wind dropped as suddenly as buildings collapse in 3-D models, and the girl stopped her noise, unlaced her fingers. The cameras panned, then zoomed. In the whole apocalyptic mess of the park the only thing that remained unburied was the face of the dead boy. “Impressive,” said the home secretary.

You know why I always looked like a slob around you? Because I liked you.” He pulled his face back a little and his eyes went wide. “Yeah. I felt guilty that I liked you so much when I had a boyfriend. So I always tried to look bad in front of you so you wouldn’t know.” He beamed down on me. “So the mud mask and the curlers and that nose strip thing—” “All proof of my enormous lady boner for you.” My buzz made me careless. And I couldn’t care less. “Wow,” he said, looking reflective. “You must have really liked me. You didn’t brush your hair for two days in a row once.” I launched into giggles and he laughed with me, putting his forehead to mine. “And I still thought you were the most beautiful woman I’d ever met.” I squeezed my eyes shut, breathing him in, feeling his breath on my face. I wanted to hold this moment in suspended animation. These tender stolen seconds. My forehead pressed to his, his warm hand over mine, his heart beating against my palm. Him slowly turning me on a dance floor, telling me I’m beautiful.

A well-known skin specialist patronized by many famous beauties charges seventy-five dollars for a twenty-minute consultation and eight dollars for a cake of sea-mud soap. I get more satisfaction and just as much benefit out of applying a purée of apples and sour cream! [...] Of course, all masques should COVER THE NECK too. [...] Masques should only be used ones or twice a week. [...] While the masque is working, place pads soaked in witch hazel or boric acid over your eyelids and put on your favorite music. [...] A masque really works only when you're lying down. Twenty minutes is the right length of time. Then wash the masque off gently with warm water and follow with a brisk splash of cold water to close the pores. [...] For a luxurious once-a-week treatment give your face a herbal steaming first by putting parsley, dill, or any other favorite herb into a pan of boiling water. (Mint is refreshing too.) Hold a towel over your head to keep the steam rising onto your face. The pores will open so that the masque can do a better job. [...] Here are a few "kitchen masques" that work: MAYONNAISE. [...] Since I'm never sure what they put into those jars at the supermarket, I make my own with whole eggs, olive or peanut oil, and lemon juice (Omit the salt and pepper!). Stir this until it's well blended, or whip up a batch in an electric blender. PUREED VEGETABLES - cucumbers, lemons, or lettuce thickened with a little baby powder. PUREED FRUITS - cantaloupe, bananas, or strawberries mixed to a paste with milk or sour cream or honey. A FAMOUS OLD-FASHIONED MIXTURE of oatmeal, warm water, and a little honey blended to a paste.

had taught him to sharpen his senses—to trust the instincts that had been guiding him south. His homing radar was tingling like crazy now. The end of his journey was close—almost right under his feet. But how could that be? There was nothing on the hilltop. The wind changed. Percy caught the sour scent of reptile. A hundred yards down the slope, something rustled through the woods—snapping branches, crunching leaves, hissing. Gorgons. For the millionth time, Percy wished their noses weren’t so good. They had always said they could smell him because he was a demigod—the half-blood son of some old Roman god. Percy had tried rolling in mud, splashing through creeks, even keeping air-freshener sticks in his pockets so he’d have that new car smell; but apparently demigod stink was hard to mask. He scrambled to the west

Women also wore extremely tight corsets that covered much of the body, and shoes with very high heels, usually made of wood. When they were outdoors, they balanced their shoes on pattens—leather or iron or wooden clogs mounted on rings of iron. The pattens kept the thin-soled shoes out of the mud, but they made a stroll down the street as challenging as stilt-walking. When women went outside in daylight, they also wore masks to protect their complexion, as well as gloves to keep their hands smooth. (It’s hard to imagine how someone encumbered with a body-length corset and huge hoop skirt would be able to get involved in any activity conducive to nail breakage, let alone chapping.) Well-born little girls wore the same clothes as their mothers. Their stiffness in colonial portraits may reflect the fact that they had already been bound up in corsets. The

Omens" Her eyelids were painted blue. When she closed her eyes the sea rolled in like ten thousand fiery chariots, leaving behind silence above & below a thousand years old. He stood beneath a high arched window, gazing out at fishing boats beyond the dikes, their nets unfurled, their offshore gestures a dance of living in bluish entourage. He was only the court’s chief jester. What he said & did made them laugh, but lately what he sometimes thought he knew could cost him his polished tongue & royal wig. He was the masked fool unmasking the emperor. Forget the revelation. Forget the briny sea. He had seen the ravishing empress naked in a forbidden pose. Her blue eye shadow. Aquamarine shells crusted with wormy mud. Anyway, if he said half of what was foretold, the great one would become a weeping boy slumped beneath the Pillars of Hercules. Poetry Apr 2012, Vol. 200 Issue 1, p15

Outside, the floorboards creaked from the weight of a person walking, as if complete silence were a cloak the enemy could wear and discard at will. The treading of heavy boots came closer and closer. The doorway filled, blacking out the faint light from the hall, and a tall, incredibly tall, figure stepped inside. A thin line of blood trickled from its throat, as if it had been beheaded and glued back together. A dress of green silk billowed underneath the wound. Its face was a white mask, and its eyes were monstrous streaks of red. Trembling, Kuji raised his blade. He moved so slowly it felt like he was swimming through mud. The creature watched him swing his sword, its eyes on the metal, and somehow, he knew it was fully capable of putting a stop to the action. If it cared to. The edge of the dao bit into his opponent’s shoulder. There was a snapping noise, and a sudden pain lashed his cheek. The sword had broken, the top half bouncing back in Kuji’s face. It was a spirit. It had to be. It was a spirit that could pass through walls, a ghost that could float over floors, a beast impervious to blades. Kuji dropped the handle of the useless sword. His mother had told him once that invoking the Avatar could safeguard him from evil. He’d known as a child she was making up stories. But that didn’t mean he couldn’t decide to believe them right now. Right now, he believed harder than he believed anything in his life. “The Avatar protect me,” he whispered while he could still speak. He fell on his behind and scrambled to the corner of the room, blanketed completely by the spirit’s long shadow. “Yangchen protect me!” The spirit woman followed him and lowered her red-and-white face to his. A human would have passed some kind of judgment on Kuji as he cowered like this. The cold disregard in her eyes was worse than any pity or sadistic amusement. “Yangchen isn’t here right now,” she said in a rich, commanding voice that would have been beautiful had she not held such clear indifference for his life. “I am.

Breathe. Pause. Move. Pause. Breathe. Pause. Move. Pause. It is unending. I heave myself over the final lip and strain to pull myself clear of the edge. I clear the deep powder snow from in front of my face. I lie there hyperventilating. Then I clear my mask of the ice that my breath has formed in the freezing air. I unclip off the rope while still crouching. The line is now clear for Neil to follow up. I get to my feet and start staggering onward. I can see this distant cluster of prayer flags semisubmerged in the snow. Gently flapping in the wind, I know that these flags mark the true summit--the place of dreams. I feel this sudden surge of energy beginning to rise within me. It is adrenaline coursing around my veins and muscles. I have never felt so strong--and yet so weak--all at the same time. Intermittent waves of adrenaline and fatigue come and go as my body struggles to sustain the intensity of these final moments. I find it strangely ironic that the very last part of this immense climb is so gentle a slope. A sweeping curve--curling along the crest of the ridge toward the summit. Thank God. It feels like the mountain is beckoning me up. For the first time, willing me to climb up onto the roof of the world. I try to count the steps as I move, but my counting becomes confused. I am now breathing and gasping like a wild animal in an attempt to devour the oxygen that seeps into my mask. However many of these pathetically slow shuffles I take, this place never seems to get any closer. But it is. Slowly the summit is looming a little nearer. I can feel my eyes welling up with tears. I start to cry and cry inside my mask. Emotions held in for so long. I can’t hold them back any longer. I stagger on.

Grace leaned forward, studying him up close, able to make out some of his facial features in the clay mask: strong brow, broad cheekbones, prominent jawline and chin. As a flavorist, she was familiar with kaolin clay, a virtually tasteless edible mineral often used as an anti-caking agent in processed foods, various toothpastes, and originally kaopectate. But she'd never encountered the raw product out of the lab, and certainly not like this. She leaned closer to him. He smelled of sediment and mostly sweat, a decidedly masculine note, the precise replication of which one could base an entire career, and then some. Even the most skilled perfumers in the world, experts in the animal secrets of civet and ambergris, couldn't get it just right. It was a human thing. And she'd studied it, androstadienone and most of the known male pheromones, and she knew the effects certain concentrates could have on certain women. She'd written the reports and seen the CT scans of activity in women's brains. Still, knowing about it intellectually and rationally did not in any way lessen what it was doing to her right now, the effect it was having on her senses and her body. 'Can he tell?' she wondered. Lean and broad-shouldered, he had the build of a man who spent his days using his body in labor. She could see it in the way the mud set into the ridged musculature of his forearms, like the russeting across a firm apple. Still, the inner details of him escaped her. His hair was caked with dry clay, and she thought of the figures she'd seen artists craft in their hillside studios in Montmartre, with the Sacre-Coeur church on the summit above and the bawdy Moulin Rouge crowds teeming below. He looked like that, an unglazed unfinished sculpture of a man, but for his eyes, vast and deep, and very much alive, as if he were trapped inside his statued body.

boots right off his feet. There were stories of men sucked down into the muck never to be seen again. Victor didn’t know if the stories were true, but he did think it possible. The mud was everywhere. In their hair under their helmets, flavoring their food, between their toes in their boots, layering their canteens, permeating their very souls. They couldn’t get away from the mud. They slept in it, fought in it, lived in it. Died in it. Sometimes after a hard downpour a new body part appeared out of the mud. Victor told himself it didn’t matter. Whoever he was, the man was dead, gone from his body to meet his Maker. What was left was just bone, sinew, and skin. And if Victor was ordered over the top and got hit by enemy fire to end up one of those bodies sunk down in the mud, what difference would it make if the soldiers lucky enough to still be breathing used his hand sticking out of the side of the trench to hold something up out of the mud. That’s how they were using Oscar’s. Nobody really knew the dead man’s name or even his nationality, but it only seemed right to name him, to make him part of their company when his hand emerged from the side of the trench. That’s how war was. A man had to survive as best he could. He couldn’t worry about what he’d left back home. He couldn’t worry about how long he was going to live. A man just had to follow orders and give all he had to win the war and save democracy. War wasn’t a thing like Victor had expected or maybe anything like anybody back in the States had expected. Back there, they’d taught them to march. Wasn’t much use for marching in the trenches. It was just hunkering down and hoping a sharpshooter didn’t spot your helmet if you forgot and lifted your head a few inches too high. Or that your gas mask would work when the Germans launched their mustard gas barrages. Or that you wouldn’t get the order to go over the top. Up

Eventually, at 7:22 A.M. on the morning of May 26, 1998, with tears still pouring down my frozen cheeks, the summit of Mount Everest opened her arms and welcomed me in. As if she now considered me somehow worthy of this place. My pulse raced, and in a haze I found myself suddenly standing on top of the world. Alan embraced me, mumbling excitedly into his mask. Neil was still staggering toward us. As he approached, the wind began to die away. The sun was now rising over the hidden land of Tibet, and the mountains beneath us were bathed in a crimson red. Neil knelt and crossed himself on the summit. Then, together, with our masks of, we hugged as brothers. I got to my feet and began to look around. I swore that I could see halfway around the world. The horizon seemed to bend at the edges. It was the curvature of our earth. Technology can put a man on the moon but not up here. There truly was some magic to this place.

Eventually, at 7:22 A.M. on the morning of May 26, 1998, with tears still pouring down my frozen cheeks, the summit of Mount Everest opened her arms and welcomed me in. As if she now considered me somehow worthy of this place. My pulse raced, and in a haze I found myself suddenly standing on top of the world. Alan embraced me, mumbling excitedly into his mask. Neil was still staggering toward us. As he approached, the wind began to die away. The sun was now rising over the hidden land of Tibet, and the mountains beneath us were bathed in a crimson red. Neil knelt and crossed himself on the summit. Then, together, with our masks of, we hugged as brothers. I got to my feet and began to look around. I swore that I could see halfway around the world. The horizon seemed to bend at the edges. It was the curvature of our earth. Technology can put a man on the moon but not up here. There truly was some magic to this place. The radio suddenly crackled to my left. Neil spoke into it excitedly. “Base camp. We’ve run out of earth.” The voice on the other end exploded with jubilation. Neil passed the radio to me. For weeks I had planned what I would say if I reached the top, but all that just fell apart. I strained into the radio and spoke without thinking. “I just want to get home.” The memory of what went on then begins to fade. We took several photos with both the SAS and the DLE flags flying on the summit, as promised, and I scooped some snow into an empty Juice Plus vitamin bottle I had with me.* It was all I would take with me from the summit. I remember having some vague conversation on the radio--patched through from base camp via a satellite phone--with my family some three thousand miles away: the people who had given me the inspiration to climb. But up there, the time flew by, and like all moments of magic, nothing can last forever. We had to get down. It was already 7:48 A.M. Neil checked my oxygen. “Bear, you’re right down. You better get going, buddy, and fast.” I had just under a fifth of a tank to get me back to the Balcony. I heaved the pack and tank onto my shoulders, fitted my mask, and turned around. The summit was gone. I knew that I would never see it again. *Years later, Shara and I christened our three boys with this snow water from Everest’s summit. Life moments.

People in Haiti eat dirt because it gives their starving bodies a false sense of satisfaction. But mud pies don't fill. They merely mask real hunger. [...] I saw the mud pies as a metaphor for the life of any Christian who has ever looked to something or someone other than God for fulfillment.

A tall figure moved from behind a container and approached him. He was wearing a yellow jumpsuit. The bottoms of the legs were smeared with mud that had a strange bluish cast to it. A miner's hard hat sat on his head, and his face was covered by what Pitt took for a mask with a breathing filter. He clutched a bundle under one arm. "I understand you're interested in our mining operation," he said quietly. "Yes. My name is--" "Names are unimportant. We don't have much time if you are to leave the island with the fishing fleet." He unfolded a jumpsuit, a respirator mask and a hard had and handed them to Pitt. "Put these on and follow me.

Then social mores had intervened. A distinct scene from junior high flushes vividly back. Girls sitting out of rotation volleyball in gym class stared at me all gap-mouthed when—of a rainy spring day—I spouted e. e. cummings. Through open green gym doors, sheets of rain erased the parking lot we normally stood staring at as if it were a refrigerator about to manifest food. The poem started: in Just-: spring when the world is mud- luscious… As I went on, Kitty Stanley sat cross-legged in black gym shorts and white blouse, peeling fuchsia polish off her thumbnail with a watchmaker’s precision. She was a mouth breather, Kitty, whose blond bouffant hairdo featured above her bangs a yarn bow the color of a kumquat. That it? Beverly said. Her black-lined gaze looked like an old-timey bandit mask. Indeed, I said. (This was my assholish T. S. Eliot stage circa ninth grade, when I peppered my speech with words I thought sounded British like indeed.) Is that a word, muddy delicious? Kitty said. Mud-luscious, I said. Not no real word, Beverly said, leaning back on both hands, legs crossed. I studied a volleyball arcing white across the gym ceiling and willed it to smash into Beverly’s freakishly round head. It’s squashing together luscious and lush and delicious, and all of it applied to spring mud. It’s poetic license, I said. I think it’s real smart how you learn every word so they come out any time you please, Kitty said. Beverly snorted. I get mud all over Bobby’s truck flaps, and believe you me, delicious don’t figure in. As insults go, it was weak, but Beverly’s facial expression—like she was smelling something—told me to put poetry right back where I’d drug it out from.

in-the-mud. He rarely wanted to talk about anything other than politics or legislative business. He liked to drink, but even when drunk he was usually all business.”5 Burton was that rare force in American democracy: a ruthless ideologue. He came up through the competitive ranks of political infighting in San Francisco, where cultural forgiveness masked bitter, hand-to-hand political struggle. As a member of

The strongest supernatural creature in the world sat in front of me with a sea-foam green mud mask covering his face.