“
I guess Satan was the first superhero [...] In his first adventure, he took the form of a snake to free two prisoners being held naked in a Third World jungle prison by an all-powerful megalomaniac. At the same time, he broadened their diet and introduced them to their own sexuality.
”
”
Joe Hill (Horns)
“
If the snake sheds his skin before a new skin is ready, naked he will be in the world, prey to the forces of chaos. Without his skin he will be dismantled, lose coherence and die. Have you, my little serpents, a new skin?
”
”
Tony Kushner (Perestroika (Angels in America, #2))
“
I will tie the glass and stone with string, hang the shards above my bed, so that they will flash in the dark and tell the story of Katrina, the mother that swept into the Gulf and slaughtered. Her chariot was a storm so great and black the Greeks would say it was harnessed to dragons. She was the murderous mother who cut us to the bone but left us alive, left us naked and bewildered as wrinkled newborn babies, as blind puppies, as sun-starved newly hatched baby snakes. She left us a dark Gulf and salt burned land. She left us to learn to crawl. She left us to salvage. Katrina is the mother we will remember until the next mother with large, merciless hands, committed to blood, comes.
”
”
Jesmyn Ward (Salvage the Bones)
“
Everyone on earth would never starve and forever find love and happiness, since we won, but if we’d lost, they would have gouged out our eyes and thrown us naked onto hot coals and poisonous snakes for all the cheering and hugging at the end, strangers hugging like the end of The Omega Virus when Steve Sturmine finds the antidote.
”
”
Daniel Handler (Why We Broke Up)
“
Nah. Hero, for sure. Think about it. In his first adventure, he took the form of a snake to free two prisoners being held naked in a Third World jungle prison by an all-powerful megalomaniac. At the same time, he broadened their diet and introduced them to their own sexuality. Sounds kind of like a cross between Animal Man and Dr. Phil to me.
”
”
Joe Hill (Horns)
“
Perhaps swimming was dancing under the water, he thought. To swim under lily pads seeing their green slender stalks wavering as you passed, to swim under upraised logs past schools of sunfish and bluegills, to swim through reed beds past wriggling water snakes and miniature turtles, to swim in small lakes, big lakes, Lake Michigan, to swim in small farm ponds, creeks, rivers, giant rivers where one was swept along easefully by the current, to swim naked alone at night when you were nineteen and so alone you felt like you were choking every waking moment, having left home for reasons more hormonal than rational; reasons having to do with the abstraction of the future and one's questionable place in the world of the future, an absurdity not the less harsh for being so widespread.
”
”
Jim Harrison (The Man Who Gave Up His Name)
“
He saw virus particles shaped like snakes, in negative images. They were white cobras tangled among themselves, like the hair of Medusa. They were the face of nature herself, the obscene goddess revealed naked. This life form thing was breathtakingly beautiful. As he stared at it, he found himself being pulled out of the human world into a world where moral boundaries blur and finally dissolve completely. He was lost in wonder and admiration, even though he knew that he was the prey. (149)
”
”
Richard Preston (The Hot Zone: The Terrifying True Story of the Origins of the Ebola Virus)
“
[...] In a lot of ways, I guess Satan was the first superhero.”
“Don’t you mean supervillain?”
“Nah. Hero, for sure. Think about it. In his first adventure, he took the form of a snake to free two prisoners being held naked in a Third World jungle prison by an all-powerful megalomaniac. At the same time, he broadened their diet and introduced them to their own sexuality. Sounds kind of like a cross between Animal Man and Dr. Phil to me.
”
”
Joe Hill (Horns)
“
Stop staring at me this instant!" the sorceress shouted at Geralt. She writhed like a snake in her bonds in a vain attempt to conceal her naked charms. Geralt obediently diverted his eyes. Dandelion didn't.
”
”
Andrzej Sapkowski (Miecz przeznaczenia (Saga o Wiedźminie, #0.7))
“
Lord Loss sows all the sorrows of the world
Lord Loss seeds the grief-starched trees
In the center of the web, lowly Lord Loss bows his head
Mangled hands, naked eyes
Fanged snakes his soul line
Curled inside like textured sin
Bloody, curdled sheets for skin
In the center of the web, vile Lord Loss torments the dead
Over strands of red, Lord Loss crawls
Dispensing pain, despising all
Shuns friends, nurtures foes
Ravages hope, breeds woe
Drinks moons, devours suns
Twirls his thumbs till the reaper comes
In the center of the web, lush Lord Loss is all that’s left
”
”
Darren Shan (Hell's Heroes (Demonata, #10))
“
Everything was damp and rife and hot as though the jungle were an immense collection of oily rags growing hotter and hotter under the dark stifling vaults of a huge warehouse. Heat licked at everything, and the foliage, responding, grew to prodigious sizes. In the depths, in the heat and the moisture, it was never silent. The birds cawed, the small animals and occasional snakes rustled and squealed, and beneath it all was a hush, almost palpable, in which could be heard the rapt absorbed sounds of vegetation growing.
”
”
Norman Mailer (The Naked and the Dead)
“
To Juan at the Winter Solstice
There is one story and one story only
That will prove worth your telling,
Whether as learned bard or gifted child;
To it all lines or lesser gauds belong
That startle with their shining
Such common stories as they stray into.
Is it of trees you tell, their months and virtues,
Or strange beasts that beset you,
Of birds that croak at you the Triple will?
Or of the Zodiac and how slow it turns
Below the Boreal Crown,
Prison to all true kings that ever reigned?
Water to water, ark again to ark,
From woman back to woman:
So each new victim treads unfalteringly
The never altered circuit of his fate,
Bringing twelve peers as witness
Both to his starry rise and starry fall.
Or is it of the Virgin's silver beauty,
All fish below the thighs?
She in her left hand bears a leafy quince;
When, with her right hand she crooks a finger, smiling,
How many the King hold back?
Royally then he barters life for love.
Or of the undying snake from chaos hatched,
Whose coils contain the ocean,
Into whose chops with naked sword he springs,
Then in black water, tangled by the reeds,
Battles three days and nights,
To be spewed up beside her scalloped shore?
Much snow if falling, winds roar hollowly,
The owl hoots from the elder,
Fear in your heart cries to the loving-cup:
Sorrow to sorrow as the sparks fly upward.
The log groans and confesses:
There is one story and one story only.
Dwell on her graciousness, dwell on her smiling,
Do not forget what flowers
The great boar trampled down in ivy time.
Her brow was creamy as the crested wave,
Her sea-blue eyes were wild
But nothing promised that is not performed.
”
”
Robert Graves
“
It seems to me possible, even probable, that many of the nonhuman undomesticated animals experience emotions unknown to us. What do the coyotes mean when they yodel at the moon? What are the dolphins trying so patiently to tell us? Precisely what did those two enraptured gopher snakes have in mind when they came gliding toward my eyes over the naked sandstone? If I had been as capable of trust as I am susceptible to fear I might have learned something new or some truth so very old we have all forgotten it. They
”
”
Edward Abbey (Desert Solitaire)
“
Because a new love affair always gives hope, the irrational mortal loneliness is always crowned, that thing I saw (that horror of a snake emptiness) when I took the deep iodine deathbreath on the Big Sur beach is now justified and hosannah'd and raised up like a sacred urn to Heaven in the mere fact of the taking off of clothes and clashing wits and bodies in the inexpressibly nervously sad delight of love- don't let no old fogies tell you otherwise, and on top of that nobody in the world even ever dares to write the true story of lovem it's awful, we're stuck with a 50% incomplete literature and drama- lying mouth to mouth, kiss to kiss in the pillow dark, loin to loin in unbelievable surrendering sweetness so distant from all our mental fearful abstractions it makes you wonder why men have termed God antisexual somehow- the secret underground truth of mad desire hiding under fenders under buried junkyards throughout the world, never mentioned in newspapers, written about haltingly and like corn by authors and painted tongue in cheek by artists, agh, just listen to Tristan und Isolde by Wagner and think of him in a Bavarian field with his beloved naked beauty under fall leaves.
”
”
Jack Kerouac (Big Sur)
“
Our primordial parents hearkened to the snake. They ate the fruit. Their eyes opened. They both awoke. You might think, as Eve did initially, that this would be a good thing. Sometimes, however, half a gift is worse than none. Adam and Eve wake up, all right, but only enough to discover some terrible things. First, they notice that they’re naked.
”
”
Jordan B. Peterson (12 Rules for Life: An Antidote to Chaos)
“
First I need to do something.’ He pulled me closer towards him until our lips were almost touching.
‘What might that be?’ I managed to stutter, closing my eyes, anticipating the warmth of his lips against mine. But the kiss didn’t come. I opened my eyes. Alex had jumped to his feet.
‘Swim,’ he said, grinning at me. ‘Come on.’
‘Swim?’ I pouted, unable to hide my disappointment that he wanted to swim rather than make out with me.
Alex pulled his T-shirt off in one swift move. My eyes fell straightaway to his chest – which was tanned, smooth and ripped with muscle, and which, when you studied it as I had done, in detail, you discovered wasn’t a six-pack but actually a twelve-pack.
My eyes flitted to the shadowed hollows where his hips disappeared into his shorts, causing a flutter in parts of my body that up until three weeks ago had been flutter-dormant. Alex’s hands dropped to his shorts and he started undoing his belt.
I reassessed the swimming option. I could definitely do swimming.
He shrugged off his shorts, but before I could catch an eyeful of anything, he was off, jogging towards the water. I paused for a nanosecond, weighing up my embarrassment at stripping naked over my desire to follow him. With a deep breath, I tore off my dress then kicked off my underwear and started running towards the sea, praying Nate wasn’t doing a fly-by.
The water was warm and flat as a bath. I could see Alex in the distance, his skin gleaming in the now inky moonlight. When I got close to him, his hand snaked under the water, wrapped round my waist and pulled me towards him. I didn’t resist because I’d forgotten in that instant how to swim. And then he kissed me and I prayed silently and fervently that he took my shudder to be the effect of the water.
I tried sticking myself onto him like a barnacle, but eventually Alex managed to pull himself free, holding my wrists in his hand so I couldn’t reattach. His resolve was as solid as a nuclear bunker’s walls. Alex had said there were always chinks. But I couldn’t seem to find the one in his armour. He swam two long strokes away from me. I trod water and stayed where I was, feeling confused, glad that the night was dark enough to hide my expression.
‘I’m just trying to protect your honour,’ he said, guessing it anyway.
I groaned and rolled my eyes. When was he going to understand that I was happy for him to protect every other part of me, just not my honour?
”
”
Sarah Alderson (Losing Lila (Lila, #2))
“
I stare at his forearms. I can make out a naked woman with a snake going up her vagina. She’s holding a knife, slitting her own throat. There are three playing cards on the back of his right hand: the Queen of Spades, the Jack of Hearts and the Joker. Red flames lick his elbow.
There’s a watch tattooed on his left wrist with ‘Fuck Time’ inscribed on its face. Fuck o’clock.
He’s not that tall, but his body is carefully cut. The lines of his face, his cheekbones and jaw, are sharp and precise. I can see the tufts of his blond underarm hairs and under them the ladder of his ribs. He’s beautiful, in the way that a knife is beautiful.
”
”
Kirsty Eagar (Raw Blue)
“
The Whites always mean well when they take human fish out of the ocean and try to make them dry and warm and happy and comfortable in a chicken coop; but the kindest-hearted white man can always be depended on to prove himself inadequate when he deals with savages. He cannot turn the situation around and imagine how he would like it to have a well-meaning savage transfer him from his house and his church and his clothes and his books and his choice food to a hideous wilderness of sand and rocks and snow, and ice and sleet and storm and blistering sun, with no shelter, no bed, no covering for his and his family's naked bodies, and nothing to eat but snakes and grubs and offal. This would be a hell to him; and if he had any wisdom he would know that his own civilization is a hell to the savage - but he hasn't any, and has never had any; and for lack of it he shut up those poor natives in the unimaginable perdition of his civilization, committing his crime with the very best intentions, and saw those poor creatures waste away under his tortures; and gazed at it, vaguely troubled and sorrowful, and wondered what could be the matter with them.
”
”
Mark Twain (Following the Equator: A Journey Around the World)
“
Perhaps swimming was dancing in the water, he thought. To swim under lily pads seeing their green slender stalks wavering as you passed, to swim under upraised logs past schools of sunfish and bluegills, to swim through reed beds past wriggling water snakes and miniature turtles, to swim in small lakes, big lakes, Lake Michigan, to swim in small farm ponds, creeks, rivers, giant rivers where one was swept along easefully by the current, to swim naked alone at night when you were nineteen and so alone you felt like you were choking every waking moment, having left home for reasons more hormonal than rational; reasons having to do with the abstraction of the future and one's questionable place in the world of the future, an absurdity not the less harsh for being so widespread.
”
”
Jim Harrison (Legends of the Fall)
“
It’s me, you fool. Who do you think it is? I’m coming in.”
He was already naked. She turned away from him as he slipped in by her side but he caught her in his arms and felt her body thaw his belly and thighs. That was all, just to lie there listening to the breathing and the silence and feel the warmth colour his belly and thighs and head. She never wore clothes in bed. They were naked and the warmth run out of her. He wanted to laugh, because it was such a marvelous discovery to make, this warmth. She was hissing like a snake.
“No, it’s wrong.” She went on hissing.
She brought an elbow back smartly and struck him in the paunch. She seemed all elbows, shoulder blades and heels. It was like trying to make love to a dough-mixing machine. She wanted it, didn’t she, otherwise why all this hissing and moaning?
”
”
P.H. Newby (Something to Answer For)
“
I dreamed I stood upon a little hill,
And at my feet there lay a ground, that seemed
Like a waste garden, flowering at its will
With buds and blossoms. There were pools that dreamed
Black and unruffled; there were white lilies
A few, and crocuses, and violets
Purple or pale, snake-like fritillaries
Scarce seen for the rank grass, and through green nets
Blue eyes of shy peryenche winked in the sun.
And there were curious flowers, before unknown,
Flowers that were stained with moonlight, or with shades
Of Nature's willful moods; and here a one
That had drunk in the transitory tone
Of one brief moment in a sunset; blades
Of grass that in an hundred springs had been
Slowly but exquisitely nurtured by the stars,
And watered with the scented dew long cupped
In lilies, that for rays of sun had seen
Only God's glory, for never a sunrise mars
The luminous air of Heaven. Beyond, abrupt,
A grey stone wall. o'ergrown with velvet moss
Uprose; and gazing I stood long, all mazed
To see a place so strange, so sweet, so fair.
And as I stood and marvelled, lo! across
The garden came a youth; one hand he raised
To shield him from the sun, his wind-tossed hair
Was twined with flowers, and in his hand he bore
A purple bunch of bursting grapes, his eyes
Were clear as crystal, naked all was he,
White as the snow on pathless mountains frore,
Red were his lips as red wine-spilith that dyes
A marble floor, his brow chalcedony.
And he came near me, with his lips uncurled
And kind, and caught my hand and kissed my mouth,
And gave me grapes to eat, and said, 'Sweet friend,
Come I will show thee shadows of the world
And images of life. See from the South
Comes the pale pageant that hath never an end.'
And lo! within the garden of my dream
I saw two walking on a shining plain
Of golden light. The one did joyous seem
And fair and blooming, and a sweet refrain
Came from his lips; he sang of pretty maids
And joyous love of comely girl and boy,
His eyes were bright, and 'mid the dancing blades
Of golden grass his feet did trip for joy;
And in his hand he held an ivory lute
With strings of gold that were as maidens' hair,
And sang with voice as tuneful as a flute,
And round his neck three chains of roses were.
But he that was his comrade walked aside;
He was full sad and sweet, and his large eyes
Were strange with wondrous brightness, staring wide
With gazing; and he sighed with many sighs
That moved me, and his cheeks were wan and white
Like pallid lilies, and his lips were red
Like poppies, and his hands he clenched tight,
And yet again unclenched, and his head
Was wreathed with moon-flowers pale as lips of death.
A purple robe he wore, o'erwrought in gold
With the device of a great snake, whose breath
Was fiery flame: which when I did behold
I fell a-weeping, and I cried, 'Sweet youth,
Tell me why, sad and sighing, thou dost rove
These pleasent realms? I pray thee speak me sooth
What is thy name?' He said, 'My name is Love.'
Then straight the first did turn himself to me
And cried, 'He lieth, for his name is Shame,
But I am Love, and I was wont to be
Alone in this fair garden, till he came
Unasked by night; I am true Love, I fill
The hearts of boy and girl with mutual flame.'
Then sighing, said the other, 'Have thy will,
I am the love that dare not speak its name.
”
”
Alfred Bruce Douglas
“
I will tie the glass and stone with string, hang the shards above my bed, so that they will flash in the dark and tell the story of Katrina, the mother that swept into the Gulf and slaughtered. Her chariot was a storm so great and black the Greeks would say it was harnessed to dragons. She was the murderous mother who cut us to the bone but left us alive, left us naked and bewildered as wrinkled newborn babies, as blind puppies, as sun-starved newly hatched baby snakes. She left us a dark Gulf and salt-burned land. She left us to learn to crawl. She left us to salvage. Katrina is the mother we will remember until the next mother with large, merciless hands, committed to blood, comes.
”
”
Jesmyn Ward (Salvage the Bones)
“
Did God really say you can't eat from any tree in the garden?" "Oh, no! We can eat from any tree but the Tree of the Knowledge of Good and Evil." Woman explained. "But if we eat from that tree or even touch it, God will kill us!" That bastard! thought the snake and he spat, "Bullshit! This fruit will not kill you! God knows that if you eat from that tree you will open your eyes and become like gods and know the difference between good and evil!" Become like gods! Well, isn't that interesting... "Fuck God, eat all you want, learn all you can, write a goddamn encyclopedia, for Chrissake!" "Well," Woman thought, "It's a beautiful tree and the fruit looks delicious and who better to trust than a talking snake?" Abandoning all caution, she picked some forbidden fruit and shared it with Man. They each took a bite... Flash! Man, suddenly felt the cool breeze on his balls and looked frantically at Woman... She looked frantically at him... Holy Shit! We're buck fucking naked!
”
”
Steve Ebling (Holy Bible - Best God Damned Version - Genesis: For atheists, agnostics, and fans of religious stupidity)
“
Nah. Hero, for sure. Think about it. In his first adventure, he took the form of a snake to free two prisoners being held naked in a Third World jungle prison by an all-powerful megalomaniac. At the same time, he broadened their diet and introduced them to their own sexuality.
”
”
Joe Hill (Horns)
“
In a lot of ways, I guess Satan was the first superhero.” “Don’t you mean supervillain?” “Nah. Hero, for sure. Think about it. In his first adventure, he took the form of a snake to free two prisoners being held naked in a Third World jungle prison by an all-powerful megalomaniac. At the same time, he broadened their diet and introduced them to their own sexuality. Sounds kind of like a cross between Animal Man and Dr. Phil to me.” She
”
”
Joe Hill (Horns)
“
All at once we were swimming in cobalt fire, every kick and stroke igniting the tempests of plankton swirling around us. I laughed, the sound rupturing the quiet, windless night, and then Willie joined me as well. We dunked our heads under the blazing sea and came up again, spluttering fire from our lips. Rivulets of blue flames streamed down Willie’s hair, his face. I touched my own cheek, felt it glowing; I scooped up handfuls of the sea, marvelling at the fire-snakes writhing down my arms. We grinned at each other with stupid, childlike glee. Our naked bodies were visible in the water, but what was there to be embarrassed about? We were nothing more than two insects preserved in amber, after all. Whenever the fire dimmed, we would scissor our legs and swing our arms, stoking the watery furnace. ‘If we flapped our limbs hard and fast and long enough,’ I said to Willie, ‘do you think we could light up the entire ocean?
”
”
Tan Twan Eng (The House of Doors)
“
They came into being simultaneously in a garden, Eve and Adam, fully grown and naked and enjoying you could say the first Big Bang, and they had no idea how they got there until a snake led them to the tree of the knowledge of good and evil and when they ate its fruit they both simultaneously came up with the idea of a creator-god, a good- and-evil decider, a gardener-god who made the garden, otherwise where did the garden come from, and then planted them in it like rootless plants. And
”
”
Salman Rushdie (Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights)
“
As I looked at the matted bedsheets twisting around this boy and me, snaking across his naked waist, curling around my exposed chest, a draft rushes through the room, bringing a fresh chill with it.
That must be it. It’s chilly. It’s cold. It’s January.
Maybe it was snowing. We went sledding, I took a spill, changed out of my ice-cold clothes and then crashed here in Carver’s room.
No, it’s Carter.
Definitely Carter.
I’m naked in bed with a boy and I can’t even get his name right.
”
”
Daisy Whitney (The Mockingbirds (The Mockingbirds, #1))
“
The path of a high tier sorceress was risky. On certain nights, Amonette found herself courting a stress that would break any normal human. Even with the spellwork she wove to bolster her frame, she was barely able to keep herself together, always teetering on the edge of sanity. Vain as it sounded, she would do well to establish some type of human bond. The light from the candles cast long shadows on the wooden walls as the compounds from them activated: jasmine, myrrh, cinnamon, and scents from trees indigenous to the Mersi forest— Hamallallia branches and flowers from the Asmodean Drachla. As Amonette waited for the composite fragrance to fill the room, she heaved her dress over her head, feeling the numbness setting into her muscles. It's about time to begin, she thought. Amonette shivered slightly against the cold breeze nipping at her naked, ever desensitizing flesh. The light was just bright enough to reveal the sigils snaking the length of her stomach and torso-- lines carved into her flesh in moments when the spirit of Satharchon occupied her entirely. She was his most loyal, and hence she was blessed to hear his voice in her head on occasion, counseling her. She hoped he would find her entire body fit to occupy tonight.
”
”
Asher Sharol (Bonds Of Chrome Magic (Blood Quintet #1))
“
The fields, the lakes, the forests, and the streams, ocean, and all the living things that dwell within the daedal earth; lightning, and rain, earthquake, and fiery flood, and hurricane, the torpor of the year when feeble dreams visit the hidden buds, or dreamless sleep holds every future leaf and flower; the bound with which from that detested trance they leap; the works and ways of man, their death and birth, and that of him and all that his may be; all things that move and breathe with toil and sound are born and die; revolve, subside, and swell. Power dwells apart in its tranquillity, remote, serene, and inaccessible: and this, the naked countenance of earth, on which I gaze, even these primeval mountains teach the adverting mind. The glaciers creep like snakes that watch their prey, from their far fountains, slow rolling on; there, many a precipice frost and the sun in scorn of mortal power have pil'd: dome, pyramid, and pinnacle, a city of death, distinct with many a tower and wall impregnable of beaming ice. Yet not a city, but a flood of ruin is there, that from the boundaries of the sky rolls its perpetual stream; vast pines are strewing its destin'd path, or in the mangled soil branchless and shatter'd stand; the rocks, drawn down from yon remotest waste, have overthrown the limits of the dead and living world, never to be reclaim'd. The dwelling-place of insects, beasts, and birds, becomes its spoil; their food and their retreat for ever gone, so much of life and joy is lost. The race of man flies far in dread; his work and dwelling vanish, like smoke before the tempest's stream, and their place is not known. Below, vast caves shine in the rushing torrents' restless gleam, which from those secret chasms in tumult welling meet in the vale, and one majestic river, the breath and blood of distant lands, for ever rolls its loud waters to the ocean-waves, breathes its swift vapours to the circling air.
”
”
Percy Bysshe Shelley
“
I had opened the obvious drawer, the top drawer of the room's only dresser, and found myself gazing into a masculine cache of compressed, crumpled things. Wash-worn Brooks Brothers white cotton shorts now a pale shade of gray. Snake-tangled, unpaired argyle socks, all in bright Easter colors like clover ad mauve which still showed fairly crisp near the tops, but down toward the heels were marred by thread pills and snags, and at the toes by the outright abjection of holes. To see laid bare in their entirety those socks, of which I'd heretofore glimpsed only brief merry stripes, when a pant cuff rose up from the rim of a shoe, was like seeing the man himself fully exposed to me--naked.
”
”
Susan Choi (My Education)
“
Nikhilananda’s birthday. Maybe we’d Morris dance, naked, around the base of an old-growth California redwood, its branches lavishly festooned with the soiled hammocks and poop buckets of crunchy-granola tree sitters mentoring spotted owls in passive-resistance protest techniques. You get the picture. In place of Santa Claus, my mom and dad said Maya Angelou kept tabs on whether little children were naughty or nice. Dr. Angelou, they warned me, did her accounting on a long hemp scroll of names, and if I failed to turn my compost I’d be sent to bed with no algae. Me, I just wanted to know that someone wise and carbon neutral—Dr. Maya or Shirley Chisholm or Sean Penn—was paying attention. But none of that was really Christmas. And none of that Earth First! baloney helps out once you’re dead and you discover that the snake-handling,
”
”
Chuck Palahniuk (Doomed (Damned #2))
“
She felt the snake between her breasts, felt him there, and loved him there, coiled, the deep tumescent S held rigid, ready to strike. She loved the way the snake looked sewn onto her V-neck letter sweater, his hard diamondback pattern shining in the sun. It was unseasonably hot, almost sixty degrees, for early November in Mystic, Georgia, and she could smell the light musk of her own sweat. She liked the sweat, liked the way it felt, slick as oil, in all the joints of her body, her bones, in the firm sliding muscles, tensed and locked now, ready to spring--to strike--when the band behind her fired up the school song: "Fight On Deadly Rattlers of Old Mystic High." "
He said in an interview on video this...
""She felt the snake between her breasts, felt him there, and loved him there, coiled, the deep tumescent S held rigid, ready to strike. She loved the way the snake looked sewn onto her V-neck letter sweater, his hard diamondback pattern shining in the sun. It was unseasonably hot, almost sixty degrees, for early November in Mystic, Georgia, and she could smell the light musk of her own sweat. She liked the sweat, liked the way it felt, slick as oil, in all the joints of her body, her bones, in the firm sliding muscles, tensed and locked now, ready to spring--to strike--when the band behind her fired up the school song: "Fight On Deadly Rattlers of Old Mystic High." "
The writers job is to get naked!
To hide nothing.
To look away from nothing.
To look at it.
To not blink.
To be not embarrassed or shamed of it.
Strip it down and lets get down to where the blood is, the bone is.
Instead of hiding it with clothes and all kinds of other stuff, luxury!
On-Writing
”
”
Harry Crews
“
A battle between two worlds. She realised that St. Mawr drew his hot breaths in another world from Rico's, from our world. Perhaps the old Greek horses had lived in St. Mawr's world. And the old Greek heroes, even Hippolytus, had known it.
With their strangely naked equine heads, and something of a snake in their way of looking round, and lifting their sensitive, dangerous muzzles, they moved in a prehistoric twilight where all things loomed phantasmagoric, all on one plane, sudden presences suddenly jutting out of the matrix. It was another world, an older, heavily potent world. And in this world the horse was swift and fierce and supreme, undominated and unsurpassed.--"Meet him half-way," Lewis said. But half-way across from our human world to that terrific equine twilight was not a small step. It was a step, she knew, that Rico could never take. She knew it. But she was prepared to sacrifice Rico.
”
”
D.H. Lawrence
“
He is gone away,” acknowledged Dupesu. “He is afraid here, we are wait so long, and he will not stay. He is say he is safer away.” He took his elbows off the table and leaned back. “We are try pray to the Raven and offer gifts direct but the Raven is not answer. And this is a question for Prince Mawat as well. Why does the Raven nothing? Why is the heir must sit naked before the fortress gates to complain of this wrong, to tell the people, to make Lease Hibal to deal with his complain? Why is he not complain to the Raven himself? Where is the god of Iraden?” “Wherever he wishes to be, I suppose,” you said. “Is it not strange,” observed Dupesu, “that he is not here now and I am think he might be needed?” From under his collar, the snake’s tongue flickered out and then back, no other sign of the snake itself but a bulge under the fabric of his tunic. “Excuse me,” you said, rising. “I have business to attend to.” And without waiting for an answer you left.
”
”
Ann Leckie (The Raven Tower)
“
She then pulled him to the ground and clasped him in her arms.
Immediately, the cry went up: "Tam Lin is away!" The Elf Queen's black horse reared and she pulled him to a halt. Turning, she cast her mesmerizing emerald eyes toward Janet and Tam Lin. As Janet held Tam Lin fast, the Elf Queen put a spell upon them. Tam Lin shrank and became a small, scaly lizard which Janet clutched to her breast. Janet then felt a slithering sensation through her fingers. The lizard had become a cold, slippery snake which she gripped tightly, even as it coiled around her neck. Suddenly, a searing pain ran through her hands. The snake had been turned into a red-hot cinder. Tears of agony ran down her cheeks, but still, Janet held on to Tam Lin and would not let him go.
At last, the Elf Queen knew that she had lost Tam Lin because of the steadfast love of a mortal woman. She then shaped him in Janet's arms in his own form - as naked as the day he was born. In triumph, Janet covered Tam Lin with her cloak.
”
”
Bridget Haggerty
“
The Second Medusa meme appeared two years later, and its origins are somewhat more complicated. Ostensibly, it is a photograph of a statue made in 2008 by the Argentine-Italian artist Luciano Garbati. But it is extremely difficult to find any trace of the statue prior to the existence of the meme, which appeared at around the same time as Professor Christine Blasey Ford’s testimony of sexual assault to the US Senate Judiciary Committee. The image is striking and extremely shareable: a statue of Medusa stands alone in front of a completely black background. She is naked, just like Perseus in the Canova and Cellini images, and is lithe, young, strong. Her hair is a mass of snakes, but they are beautiful, not grotesque: they look more like curling dreadlocks. Her expression is calm, her eyes gaze out at us unapologetically. Her arms are by her side and she holds a sword in her left hand. In her right hand is the decapitated head of Perseus, which she holds by the hair. It is an exact reversal of the Canova image. Some versions of the meme came with an accompanying text. ‘Be thankful we only want equality’, it reads, next to Medusa’s head. Below Perseus’ decapitated neck, it continues, ‘and not payback.
”
”
Natalie Haynes (Pandora's Jar: Women in the Greek Myths)
“
They tried to explain to the missionaries that it was they who put Adam and Eve out of the village because they was naked. Their word for naked is white. But since they are covered by color they are not naked. They said anybody looking at a white person can tell they naked, but black people can not be naked because they can not be white. . . . They was so mad to git throwed out and told they was naked they made up they minds to crush us wherever they find us, same as they would a snake.
That's what these Olinka peoples say. But they say just like they know history before the white children start to come, they know the future after the biggest of 'em leave. They say they know these particular children and they gon kill each other off, they still so mad bout being unwanted. Gon kill off a lot of other folk too who got some color. In fact, they gon kill off so much of the earth and the colored that everybody gon hate them just like they hate us today. Then they will become the new serpent. And wherever a white person is found he'll be crush by somebody not white, just like they do us today. And some of the Olinka peoples believe life will just go on and on like this forever. And every million years or so something will happen to the earth and folks will change the way they look. Folks might start growing two heads one of these days, for all we know, and then the folks with one head will send 'em all someplace else. But some of 'em don't think like this. They think, after the biggest of the white folks no longer on the earth, the only way to stop making somebody the serpent is for everybody to accept everybody else as a child of God, or one mother's children, no matter what they look like or how they act.
”
”
Alice Walker (The Color Purple)
“
She knew the effort it took to keep one’s exterior self together, upright, when everything inside was in pieces, broken beyond repair. One touch, one warm, compassionate hand, could shatter that hard-won perfect exterior. And then it would take years and years to restore it.
This tiny, effeminate creature dressed in velvet suits, red socks, an absurdly long scarf usually wrapped around his throat, trailing after him like a coronation robe.
He who pronounced, after dinner, “I’m going to go sit over here with the rest of the girls and gossip!” This pixie who might suddenly leap into the air, kicking one foot out behind him, exclaiming, “Oh, what fun, fun, fun it is to be me! I’m beside myself!”
“Truman, you could charm the rattle off a snake,” Diana Vreeland pronounced.
Hemingway - He was so muskily, powerfully masculine. More than any other man she’d met, and that was saying something when Clark Gable was a notch in your belt. So it was that, and his brain, his heart—poetic, sad, boyish, angry—that drew her. And he wanted her. Slim could see it in his hungry eyes, voraciously taking her in, no matter how many times a day he saw her; each time was like the first time after a wrenching separation.
How to soothe and flatter and caress and purr and then ignore, just when the flattering and caressing got to be a bit too much.
Modesty bores me. I hate people who act coy. Just come right out and say it, if you believe it—I’m the greatest. I’m the cat’s pajamas. I’m it!
He couldn’t humiliate her vulnerability, her despair.
Old habits die hard. Particularly among the wealthy. And the storytellers, gossips, and snakes.
Is it truly a scandal? A divine, delicious literary scandal, just like in the good old days of Hemingway and Fitzgerald?
The loss of trust, the loss of joy; the loss of herself. The loss of her true heart.
An amusing, brief little time. A time before it was fashionable to tell the truth, and the world grew sordid from too much honesty.
In the end as in the beginning, all they had were the stories. The stories they told about one another, and the stories they told to themselves.
Beauty. Beauty in all its glory, in all its iterations; the exquisite moment of perfect understanding between two lonely, damaged souls, sitting silently by a pool, or in the twilight, or lying in bed, vulnerable and naked in every way that mattered. The haunting glance of a woman who knew she was beautiful because of how she saw herself reflected in her friend’s eyes. The splendor of belonging, being included, prized, coveted.
What happened to Truman Capote. What happened to his swans. What happened to elegance. What truly was the price they paid, for the lives they lived. For there is always a price. Especially in fairy tales.
”
”
Melanie Benjamin (The Swans of Fifth Avenue)
“
[the virgin birth account] occurs everywhere. When the Herod figure ( the extreme figure of misgovernment) has brought man to the nadir of spirit, the occult forces of the cycle begin to move. In an inconspicuous village, Mary is born who will maintain herself undefiled by fashionable errors of her generation. Her womb, remaining fallw as the primordial abyss, summons itself by its very readiness the original power that fertilzed the void.
Mary's virgin birth story is recounted everywhere. and with such striking unity of the main contours, that early christian missionaries had to think the devil must be creating mockeries of Mary's birth wherever they testified. One missionary reports that after work was begun among Tunja and Sogamozzo South American Indians, "the demon began giving contrary doctrines. The demon sought to discredit Mary's account, declaring it had not yet come to pass; but presently, the sun would bring it to pass by taking flesh in the womb of a virgin in a small village, causing her to conceive by rays of the sun while she yet remained virgin."
Hindu mythology tells of the maiden parvati who retreated to the high hills to practice austerities. Taraka had usurped mastery of the world, a tyrant. Prophecy said only a son of the high god Shiva could overthrow him. Shive however was the pattern god of yoga-alone, aloof, meditating. It was impossible Shiva could be moved to beget.
Parvati tried changing the world situation by metching Shiva in meditation. Aloof, indrawn in her soul meditating, she fasted naked beneath the blazing sun, even adding to the heat by building four great fires. One day a Brahmin youth arrived and asked why anyone so beautiful should be destroying herself with such torture. "My desire," she said "is Shiva, the Highest. He is the god of solitude and concentration. I therefore imitate his meditation to move him from his balance and bring him to me in love."
Shiva, the youth announced, is a god of destruction, shiva is World Annhilator. Snakes are his garlands.
The virgin said: He is beyond the mind of such as you. He is terrifying but the source of grace. snake garlands or jewel garlands he can assume or put off at will. Shiva is my love.
The youth thereupon put away his disguise-he was Shiva.
The Buddha descended from heaven to his mother's womb in the shape of a milk white elephant. The Aztec Coatlicue was approached by a god in the form of a ball of feathers. The chapters of Ovid's Metamorphoses swarm with nymphs beset by gods in sundry masquerades: jove as a bull, a swan, a shower of gold. Any leaf, any nut, or even the breath of a breeze, may be enough to fertilize the ready virgin womb. The procreating power is everywhere. And according to whim or destiny of the hour, either a hero savior or a world--annihilating demon may be conceived-one can never know.
”
”
Joseph Campbell
“
(Battle with Maleger)
As pale and wan as ashes was his looke,
His bodie leane and meagre as a rake,
And skin all withered like a dryed rooke,
Thereto as cold and drery as a Snake,
That seem’d to tremble euermore, and quake:
All in a canuas thin he was bedight,
And girded with a belt of twisted brake,
Vpon his head he wore an Helmet light,
Made of a dead mans skull, that seem’d a ghastly sight.
Maleger was his name, and after him,
There follow’d fast at hand two wicked Hags,
With hoarie lockes all loose, and visage grim;
Their feet vnshod, their bodies wrapt in rags,
And both as swift on foot, as chased Stags;
And yet the one her other legge had lame,
Which with a staffe, all full of litle snags
She did support, and Impotence her name:
But th’other was Impatience, arm’d with raging flame.
So braue returning, with his brandisht blade,
He to the Carle himselfe againe addrest,
And strooke at him so sternely, that he made
An open passage through his riuen brest,
That halfe the Steele behind his back did rest;
Which drawing backe, he looked euermore
When the hart bloud should gush out of his chest,
Or his dead corse should fall vpon the flore;
But his dead corse vpon the flore fell nathemore.
Ne drop of bloud appeared shed to bee,
All were the wounde so wide and wonderous,
That through his carkasse one might plainely see:
Halfe in a maze with horror hideous,
And halfe in rage, to be deluded thus,
Againe through both the sides he strooke him quight,
That made his spright to grone full piteous:
Yet nathemore forth fled his groning spright,
But freshly as at first, prepard himselfe to fight.
His wonder farre exceeded reasons reach,
That he began to doubt his dazeled sight,
And oft of error did himselfe appeach:
Flesh without bloud, a person without spright,
Wounds without hurt, a bodie without might,
That could doe harme, yet could not harmed bee,
That could not die, yet seem’d a mortall wight,
That was most strong in most infirmitee;
Like did he neuer heare, like did he neuer see.
His owne good sword Mordure, that neuer fayld
At need, till now, he lightly threw away,
And his bright shield, that nought him now auayld,
And with his naked hands him forcibly assayld.
He then remembred well, that had bene sayd,
How th’Earth his mother was, and first him bore;
She eke so often, as his life decayd,
Did life with vsury to him restore,
And raysd him vp much stronger then before,
So soone as he vnto her wombe did fall;
Therefore to ground he would him cast no more,
Ne him commit to graue terrestriall,
But beare him farre from hope of succour vsuall.
Vpon his shoulders carried him perforse
Aboue three furlongs, taking his full course,
Vntill he came vnto a standing lake;
Him thereinto he threw without remorse,
Ne stird, till hope of life did him forsake;
So end of that Carles dayes, and his owne paines did make.
”
”
Edmund Spenser (The Faerie Queene)
“
Nevertheless, it would be prudent to remain concerned. For, like death, IT would come: Armageddon. There would be-without exaggeration-a series of catastrophes. As a consequence of the evil in man...-no mere virus, however virulent, was even a burnt match for our madness, our unconcern, our cruelty-...there would arise a race of champions, predators of humans: namely earthquakes, eruptions, tidal waves, tornados, typhoons, hurricanes, droughts-the magnificent seven. Floods, winds, fires, slides. The classical elements, only angry. Oceans would warm, the sky boil and burn, the ice cap melt, the seas rise. Rogue nations, like kids killing kids at their grammar school, would fire atomic-hydrogen-neutron bombs at one another. Smallpox would revive, or out of the African jungle would slide a virus no one understood. Though reptilian only in spirit, the disease would make us shed our skins like snakes and, naked to the nerves, we'd expire in a froth of red spit. Markets worldwide would crash as reckless cars on a speedway do, striking the wall and rebounding into one another, hurling pieces of themselves at the spectators in the stands. With money worthless-that last faith lost-the multitude would riot, race against race at first, God against God, the gots against the gimmes. Insects hardened by generations of chemicals would consume our food, weeds smother our fields, fire ants, killer bees sting us while we're fleeing into refuge water, where, thrashing we would drown, our pride a sodden wafer. Pestilence. War. Famine. A cataclysm of one kind or another-coming-making millions of migrants. Wearing out the roads. Foraging in the fields. Looting the villages. Raping boys and women. There'd be no tent cities, no Red Cross lunches, hay drops. Deserts would appear as suddenly as patches of crusty skin. Only the sun would feel their itch. Floods would sweep suddenly over all those newly arid lands as if invited by the beach. Forest fires would burn, like those in coal mines, for years, uttering smoke, making soot for speech, blackening every tree leaf ahead of their actual charring. Volcanoes would erupt in series, and mountains melt as though made of rock candy till the cities beneath them were caught inside the lava flow where they would appear to later eyes, if there were any eyes after, like peanuts in brittle. May earthquakes jelly the earth, Professor Skizzen hotly whispered. Let glaciers advance like motorboats, he bellowed, threatening a book with his fist. These convulsions would be a sign the parasites had killed their host, evils having eaten all they could; we'd hear a groan that was the going of the Holy Ghost; we'd see the last of life pissed away like beer from a carouse; we'd feel a shudder move deeply through this universe of dirt, rock, water, ice, and air, because after its long illness the earth would have finally died, its engine out of oil, its sky of light, winds unable to catch a breath, oceans only acid; we'd be witnessing a world that's come to pieces bleeding searing steam from its many wounds; we'd hear it rattling its atoms around like dice in a cup before spilling randomly out through a split in the stratosphere, night and silence its place-well-not of rest-of disappearance. My wish be willed, he thought. Then this will be done, he whispered so no God could hear him. That justice may be served, he said to the four winds that raged in the corners of his attic.
”
”
William H. Gass (Middle C)
“
Suddenly he recalled long-forgotten words, lines from a poem—Donne, wasn’t it? Who is as safe as we where none can do / Treason to us, except one of we two. Even when he was warmed by her naked flesh, treason slithered like a snake into his mind and lay there heavily coiled, somnolent but unshiftable.
”
”
P.D. James (The Lighthouse (Adam Dalgliesh, #13))
“
How can the lord of goblins, the delighter in graveyards, the naked devotee covered with ashes, haggard in appearance, wearing twisted locks ornamented with snakes, be the supreme being?
”
”
Graham Hancock (Underworld: The Mysterious Origins of Civilization)
“
Let us be honest. Did all the priests of Rome increase the mental wealth of man as much as Bruno? Did all the priests of France do as great a work for the civilization of the world as Voltaire or Diderot? Did all the ministers of Scotland add as much to the sum of human knowledge as David Hume? Have all the clergymen, monks, friars, ministers, priests, bishops, cardinals and popes, from the day of Pentecost to the last election, done as much for human liberty as Thomas Paine?
What would the world be if infidels had never been?
The infidels have been the brave and thoughtful men; the flower of all the world; the pioneers and heralds of the blessed day of liberty and love; the generous spirits of the unworthy past; the seers and prophets of our race; the great chivalric souls, proud victors on the battlefields of thought, the creditors of all the years to be.
Why should it be taken for granted that the men who devoted their lives to the liberation of their fellow-men should have been hissed at in the hour of death by the snakes of conscience, while men who defended slavery—practiced polygamy—-justified the stealing of babes from the breasts of mothers, and lashed the naked back of unpaid labor, are supposed to have passed smilingly from earth to the embraces of the angels?
Why should we think that the brave thinkers, the investigators, the honest men, must have left the crumbling shore of time in dread and fear, while the instigators of the massacre of St. Bartholomew; the inventors and users of thumb-screws, of iron boots and racks; the burners and tearers of human flesh; the stealers, the whippers and the enslavers of men; the buyers and beaters of maidens, mothers and babes; the founders of the Inquisition; the makers of chains; the builders of dungeons; the calumniators of the living; the slanderers of the dead, and even the murderers of Jesus Christ, all died in the odor of sanctity, with white, forgiven hands folded upon the breasts of peace, while the destroyers of prejudice, the apostles of humanity, the soldiers of liberty, the breakers of fetters, the creators of light, died surrounded by the fierce fiends of God?
”
”
Robert G. Ingersoll (The Works of Robert G. Ingersoll, Vol. 3 (of 12) Dresden Edition—Lectures)
“
Eden
by Maisie Aletha Smikle
In the garden Eden
Streams of tranquility glide
Flowers magnificently bloom
Adam, Eve and animals freely roam
Springs sprout
Waterfalls emerge
Angels smile
Earth and Heaven were once in sync
Absent was the sting of sin
There were no frost
To bite the grass
Causing trees to freeze
There were no fierce heat
To kindle a blaze
There were no winds
That were unkind
There were no raindrops
That weren't welcome
All were in perfect peace
All were in harmony so sweet
The garden Eden
Was the home of the people
Handmade by the Father
Precious were they Adam and Eve
God's first human masterpieces
They were loved
God gave them a home
And grew for them a lovely garden
God gave them pets of all species
He gave them glorious healing spas and herbs
God gave them fruits and food of every kind
Everything Adam and Eve had to their hearts desire
An envious snake
Probably a BOA
Saw joy peace love and happiness
And hated joy peace love and happiness
BOA vowed to destroy love peace joy and happiness
BOA wanted to create distrust and enmity instead
BOA conspired against love peace joy and happiness
And conspired to have Adam and Eve thrown out of their home
BOA snatched love joy peace and happiness
BOA caused the first family Adam and Eve
To be thrown out of their home naked
A home that was God's unencumbered gift
BOA was happy when happiness left
When joy love and peace took flight and went
And distrust and enmity remain
Where BOA can hiss and strike it's venom of loathe
Until people are down
Naked and have no home
BOA is truly a disgrace
Indeed BOA is a scrooge
”
”
Maisie Aletha Smikle
“
Who told them they were naked? My money is on the snake. For some reason God allows us to live in a world where alternatives to God's voice exist, and those alternatives are where shame originates. Maybe you, too, are hiding, having listened to a voice other than God's. But can you hear God saying, "Wait. Who told you you were naked? Who told you that you have to lie to be accepted? Who told you your body is not beautiful and worthy to be loved? Who told you that your sexual expression is something to be ashamed of? Who told you that?" My money is on the snake. And he's a damned liar.
”
”
Nadia Bolz-Weber (Shameless: A Case for Not Feeling Bad About Feeling Good (About Sex))
“
If the garden story comes after the seventh day when "everything is good," how does one account for an evil talking snake, the need for a wall around the garden, two ignorant naked people that don't know Good from evil, and this statement from God, "it's not good that the man [the adam] is alone"? How can "it" be "not good," if God has already declared everything good and finished?
”
”
Peter Hiett (The History of Time and the Genesis of You)
“
At the top of the ridge, he let go of my hand and we both paused, panting to catch our breath. I cast my gaze from my beloved home valley to the one with the fields beyond, staring against the sun. Naked forest and grassy moorlands stretched as far as the eye could see, chariot-ways and rivers snaking their meandering way across the landscape to the dim, hazy shadow where hills rose far in the distance and where, some said, was the sea. But Rome had not left even this untamed wilderness untouched; one of their straight roads was partly visible in the rolling sweep of the land, and I fancied that I could see people and horses walking on it.
”
”
Cheyenne van Langevelde (Between Two Worlds)
“
Fear can be a very valuable tool that helps push your career forward. I have learned one lesson that I share with all of my workshop students and writer friends: If something scares you, you should do it. You’re scared for a reason. Fear is the slithering snake whispering vile things in your ear, making you think this new venture will be a total disaster. Usually, it won’t be. If it is, it’s still worth the risk, because you’ll learn something.
”
”
Jennifer Probst (Write Naked: A Bestseller's Secrets to Writing Romance & Navigating the Path to Success)
“
You can’t be seriously religious
If you’re not stripped naked
Like the goat or the insect
Like the tree and the snake
Like an erupting volcano
Give birth to a mountain
Justice flows down the wall
You slip and fall on the law
Naked wars and naked mutilations
Naked muslims naked christians
Naked laughs and naked cries
Bare naked to the day you die.
”
”
Valo Salo
“
The image was of a boy dangling by his neck. A broken snake. He was naked, and the dusk or dawn light cast his alabaster body blue and pink. Like the world snapping in half and spilling raw milk into space. Familiar scars and cuts on his skin. His face distended but not unrecognizable. A holocaust.
”
”
B.R. Yeager (Negative Space)
“
He walked me backwards through my bedroom, steering me with one hand on my hip and the other at my waist, until the backs of my knees hit my mattress.
"Lie down," he murmured. It was dark in my room, but there was enough light from the hallway, enough moonlight streaming in from my bedroom window, that I could see him clearly, broad shoulders silhouetted against the darkness. "I want to touch you."
I complied, eager for the same thing, then closed my eyes, expecting to feel the mattress dip when he got in bed with me.
Instead, I heard him kneel beside the bed. Felt his hands wrap around each of my ankles.
"What---?" I began. Then yelped as he tugged me towards the edge of the mattress.
"I want to see you let go," he explained, hands snaking beneath my skirt to tug at the edge of my underwear. "And I want it to be because of me. I want you to fall apart on my tongue, feel your legs quivering beside my ears as you shout my name." He drew my underwear down my legs and threw them over his shoulder. Then he shoved my skirt up to my waist. "I want to taste you. Everywhere. So badly."
"Reggie," I whimpered. I shivered as he pulled my legs over his shoulders, tilted my hips up with his hands. I was splayed open for him, naked and vulnerable, heart thundering so loudly that surely he must be able to hear it.
His mouth was just a hairsbreadth away from where I ached for him. I could feel each shaky exhalation of breath against my core. His beautiful, expressive eyes met mine. "You want this. Don't you." He closed his eyes, rubbing his cheek against the inside of my thigh. The delicious scratch of his stubble pulled a groan from me before I realized it had happened. "I can smell how much you want me."
I whined, wriggling in his grip. "Reggie, please." I could tell he needed verbal confirmation from me that I wanted to be with him like this. But if I didn't have his mouth on me immediately, I was going to lose my mind. "I want this. I want you. Please."
His mouth quirked up into a half smile. His eyes darkened. "As my lady commands."
Then his mouth was right there, electric, flooding me with sensations I could scarcely remember feeling before and couldn't name. He was relentless as he devoured me, sucking my clit into his mouth a moment before laving it with the achingly soft flat of his tongue. I tried to cry out but couldn't, made mindless by pleasure and pure desperate need as I lay helpless on the bed before him, held together only by the determined way he worked me and the vise grip he had on my hips. My breathing was way too fast and growing shallow, my chest heaving, my blood pounding in my veins as he teased and drew out my pleasure.
”
”
Jenna Levine (My Vampire Plus-One (My Vampires, #2))
“
I scuttled without a shell, between houses and wives, a snake between skins, a monster of selfishness, my grotesque needs naked and pink.
”
”
Adam Begley (Updike)
“
Shiva is a strange god, the epitome of the sort of person a man would not want his daughter to marry: He is a yogi who has vowed never to marry, he has a third eye in the middle of his forehead, he wanders around naked or wearing nothing but a loincloth woven of living snakes, he has no family, and he lives not in a house but in a cremation ground, smearing his body with the ashes of corpses. It is therefore not surprising that both his potential fathers-in-law object strenuously to him.
”
”
Anonymous
“
He opened his eyes and saw that Baltsaros was staring intently at them, unmoving. What was the captain feeling about all of this? Tom’s hands had snaked down to the front of Jon’s pants, and all thought left his head as he felt the buttons come loose. After a moment, Tom dropped to his knees in front of Jon; he then gently, almost reverently, peeled Jon’s pants down, looking up at him with naked hunger as he did so. “Good boy,” said Baltsaros. The captain’s eyes were dark and unreadable, but the hand curled over the front of his pants betrayed the desire he was feeling. Jon’s breath heaved in his chest, and he stepped out of his boots as Tom tugged at them. He was now stark naked in front of Tom who remained on his knees, gazing up at him. Jon could see the bigger man’s pulse jumping in the veins at his neck, but he frowned in confusion when Tom made no other move. He realized with a start that Tom was waiting for Baltsaros’s next command. Jon reached out and touched the top of Tom’s head, running his fingers softly through the short, sandy-blond strands. “Do you want him to suck your cock?” asked Baltsaros, almost conversationally. The question made Jon feel like he had just stepped off a cliff. He gulped and closed his eyes, nodding quickly. “Tom, please use that talented mouth on Jon. However, let’s not let him peak too soon, shall we?” said Baltsaros.
”
”
Bey Deckard (Caged: Love and Treachery on the High Seas (Baal's Heart, #1))
“
mother was under virtual sentence of death, and Vicky flew to the bedside and knelt beside her. ‘Oh, Mama,’ she whispered, stricken with guilt. ‘I should have been here.’ Juba heated rounded river stones in the open fire and wrapped them in blankets. They packed them around Robyn’s body, and then covered her with four karosses of wild fur. She fought weakly to throw off the covers, but Mungo held her down. Despite the internal heat of the fever and the external temperature of the hot stones trapped under the furs, her skin was burning dry and her eyes had the flat blind glitter of water-worn rock crystal. Then as the sun touched the tree-tops and the light in the room turned to sombre orange, the fever broke and oozed from the pores of her marble pale skin like the juice of crushed sugar cane from the press. The sweat came up in fat shining beads across her forehead and chin, each drop joining with the others until they ran in thick oily snakes back into her hair, soaking it as though she had been held under water. It ran into her eyes, faster than Mungo could wipe it away. It poured down her neck and wetted and matted the fur of the kaross. It soaked through the thin mattress and pattered like rain on the hard dry floor below. The temperature of her body plunged dramatically, and when the sweat had passed, Juba and the twins sponged her naked body. She had dehydrated and wasted, so that the rack of her ribs stood out starkly, and her pelvis formed a bony hollowed basin. They handled her with exaggerated care, for any rough movement might rupture the delicate damaged walls of the renal blood vessels and bring on the torrential haemorrhage which so often ended this disease. When
”
”
Wilbur Smith (The Angels Weep (The Ballantyne Novels, #3))
“
You’d better keep her tied.”
“Why?” A yawn stretched Hunter’s dark face.
“Because she’s looking skittish.”
“She’s naked.” Sheathing his knife, Hunter flopped on his back and shaded his eyes with one arm. “She won’t run. Not without clothes. I’ve never seen such a bashful female.”
“The tosi tivo truss up their females in so many clothes, it would take a whole sleep just to undress one. Then they have them wear breeches under the lot. How do they manage to have so many children? I’d be so tired by the time I found skin, I’d never get anything else done.”
“You’d think of something,” Hunter said with a chuckle.
“You know, once you fall asleep, she could go for your knife. You want to wake up with your throat slit?”
“She’s more likely to kill herself than me. You know how they are.” Hunter’s mouth lifted at the corners. “Her honor is gone. A man has seen her naked. As boisa as it sounds, that’s how they think.”
“Want some help watching her?”
Hunter threw back his head and laughed. “Just wake me when the shade leaves, you horny old man. Come anyplace close and I’ll tell Maiden of the Tall Grass. She’ll burn your dinner for a month.”
Loretta watched the other Indian leave, her heart slamming wildly with relief. It was short-lived. Hunter turned onto his side and snaked an arm under the buffalo robe, catching her around the waist. He was fully awake now, and she had no idea what to expect from him when he pulled her close. She scarcely dared breathe, she was so frightened. He snugged his hand beneath her breast and nuzzled his face against the back of her neck.
“You will sleep now, Yellow Hair,” he whispered. “I must rest. It will be a very long journey home.
”
”
Catherine Anderson (Comanche Moon (Comanche, #1))
“
it was cruel of her to spend her only time in contact with the outside world telling lies to a little boy, but then, the first story that Mother Basil had told me was about a talking snake who gave tainted fruit to naked people, and the bishop had made her an abbess.
”
”
Christopher Moore (Fool)
“
Prophet stared at him for a beat longer, unmoving, before Tom’s hand snaked around his wrist, a firm grip but not a painful one. He looked at Tom and swallowed hard at the unabashed, naked heat in his eyes. And then he let Tom guide him to face the back of the couch. Tom’s palm pressed down between his shoulder blades. He conceded slightly by leaning forward to hold fast to the couch’s back, but he didn’t bend over the couch, the way he knew Tom wanted him to. Because Tom was not the boss of him. Not all the time. And not now. This was his game, dammit. Behind him, Tom snorted softly. “Still fighting compliance?” “I am complying.” He somehow managed to sound halfway agreeable, albeit through clenched teeth. He felt Tom’s hands slide down his sides and land on his hips before his legs were kicked apart. And then Tom must’ve gotten on his knees behind him because he was holding Prophet’s ass cheeks apart, sliding his tongue inside . . . “Fuck.” Tom
”
”
S.E. Jakes (Not Fade Away (Hell or High Water, #3.5))
“
Then with a single movement he slipped off the 'moocha' or girdle round his middle, and stood naked before us.
'Look,' he said, 'what is this?' and he pointedto the mark of a great snake tattooed in blue round his middle, its tail disappearing in its open mouth just above where the thighs are set into the body.
Infadoos looked, his eyes starting nearly out of his head, and then fell upon his knees.
”
”
H. Rider Haggard
“
The following images for the remaining terms should then be bound in some way to our Mnemonic Unit Nexus (MUN). The next terms to be remembered, and their associated MUs, are:
Nucleus – N,C,L – A naked woman, holding cash and covering her privates with leaves
Mitochondria –M,I,C – A monkey, frozen in ice, being choked.
Golgi Apparatus – G,O, A,P – A little girl with an owl on her right arm, and apple in her left hand, and being patted on the head.
Endoplasmic Reticulum – E,D,P,L, R,T,C,U – An Executive, holding a dog, and, wearing no pants, with lash marks on his legs. He is riding a Rhino made of titanium that is standing on a pile of cash and is holding an umbrella for the executives.
Smooth Endoplasmic Reticulum, S,M,E,D,P,R,T,C,U – A muddy shovel in the hand of an identical EDPL as shown in the previous image, also riding on the rhino. Thus, on the Rhino, there are seated two EDPLs.
Lysosomes – L,I,S,O – A lion, playing a silver guitar, opening a door.
Plasma Membrane – P,L,M,B – A priest holding a light bulb in his right hand and a mirror in his left while standing on a pile of bricks.
DNA –D,N,A – A dinosaur Cytosol – S,I,T,O – A snake, wearing a tie, with its back end wrapped around a flute and with an orange in its mouth.
”
”
M.A Kohain
“
Maybe you, too, are hiding, having listened to a voice other than God's. But can you hear God saying, "Wait. Who told you you were naked? Who told you that you have to lie to be accepted? Who told you your body is not beautiful and worthy to be loved? Who told you that your sexual expression is something to be ashamed of? Who told you that?" My money is on the snake. And he's a damned liar.
”
”
Nadia Bolz-Weber (Shameless: A Case for Not Feeling Bad About Feeling Good (About Sex))
“
Those who return are labeled retreads. Asked to explain why they’re back, they’d say it was because they missed the medicine: the IVs and the drugs, the competence, and the unquestioned confidence they earned through years of experience that did them no good anywhere else. Turns out in the real world, you don’t get to snake a breathing tube down a dying woman’s throat. When you have a regular job, no one gets shot dead in the clay or has back-to-back seizures in the county jail. No one hands you their limp child and places not only their trust but their entire world in your hands. Which is too bad. There’s a strange exhilaration not just in having done those things and done them well but in knowing that eventually you’ll be called on to do them again.
”
”
Kevin Hazzard (A Thousand Naked Strangers: A Paramedic's Wild Ride to the Edge and Back)
“
In science we study the limitations of perception about sounds and colors and rest of the observable forces. There are non observable forces too available in physical sciences. Dark matter, black holes are few of those kinds. While we observe sun by naked eye it seems yellow, prism says it is mixture of all colors and non colors, telescopes and observatory says it is white, so what's the real color of sun? It is frequency that deviates and deceives us and so for sounds with limitations in decimals and so for atomic thoery and music theory and even fine arts. what do they really mean? what non observable and unidentified forces available in physics and un discovered elements in chemistry, undiscovered species in biology, undiscovered deciphers of akashic records or undiscovered mathematics. Machine perception will never fully showcase what is it indeed! AI fails, human perception fails. Now another example snakes don't see like how we see. they have infrared perception not like humans. same with other animals, plants and all non living things on universe and beyond. Nobody can understand universe and beyond by narrower perception by available data from earth and machines. So what do i propose i keep on observing on every aspects of observable and non observable forces, entities, living and non living things on universe and beyond with naked eyes and perceptions that doesn't have any colors or any observable or non observable limitations. I am not .............................. and nothing. Thank you
”
”
Ganapathy K
“
Yet I saw it all, it is my memory of the last days leading up to the end, and I feel too their scheme. She all wrote to me and saw through, she was glissading in her floating gaze, blue eyes peering into mine, she hands something to say, yet I walked away back away from the light that light my way, I tripped into the darkness in the creeped-out hallways. Everything I touch- I drop, like my cell phone, I left behind: I have- well- Dropasea! I walk now, as I descend back to my feet, I feel my body and the weight on my feet now.
I saw it all, it is my memory of the last days leading up to the end, and I feel their scheme. She was floating all in white in front of me, note haunting- but almost angelic, and see-through, she was glissading I was looking too hard in a gaze, her blue peering into mine, she hands something to say, yet I walked away, backing away from the light, all the way back even if it lights my way, I tripped into the darkness in the creeped-out hallways, falling to them all the next day. Into the darkness I shall creep, now on my feet, I feel as if I am slithering like a snake, looking for the pathway out of the underworld. The pool went from little kids having fun giggling and swimming to little kids burning naked in what seems to be a lake of fire, black wing spread.
As they ruined up and into my face and swirled around sucking life, or so it seemed, to me, as I felt I was blacking out, by their pulling on my body and lips. I never believed in Devilish entities until then with that thing sucked my face off, with the kiss of death to get it live to demonize onward. Loin-like up till now with horns that slowly started to feel like they were ripping through my soul if there is a such-of-a thing. With a long hollow, I feel myself feeling it, go in hard than it did the first time I got freak in the p*ssy. I was hugged in a well-founded way, and they were all welcoming home, staying it fun here- (Yet- is- it?) I felt her hand all over my goodies, seeing if I cut the teen group, or that what she fed me. I was getting bit up with the lies.
(I did get it- do you?) Then she held my face, like the boy I am in love with and she dropped away fast, then everything was back as it was before, just some old school, I was walking through. She said- ‘I love you-you can be mine, like my girlfriend down here.’ I was looking at the tat- it was Bacca or (B- 1441- 669 5033) I feel the of thorns, I see the flames in the eyes it makes me feel warm inside, when I am cold all the time, I feel the rubbing on me and I don’t mind it know she has a spell on me that is tempting and lusting, and oh so sexy. Why would I go looking for someone I know wants to slay me, I thought so I never- ever want to go back for that phone, I was being a wimp and wasn’t planning on going back anyway.
”
”
Marcel Ray Duriez (Nevaeh They Call Out)
“
and black the Greeks would say it was harnessed to dragons. She was the murderous mother who cut us to the bone but left us alive, left us naked and bewildered as wrinkled newborn babies, as blind puppies, as sun-starved newly hatched baby snakes. She left us a dark Gulf and salt-burned land. She left us to learn to crawl. She left us to salvage. Katrina is the mother we will remember until the next mother with large, merciless hands, committed to blood, comes.
”
”
Jesmyn Ward (Salvage the Bones)
“
Tyresia (Τειρεσίας)
Tyresias is blind, it is said, but we are not really sure. We read that Tyresias was blinded by the gods because they did not want him to prophesy about 'private' matters.
However, other ancient historical documents say that Tyresias was the son of a nymph who was made so by Athena as a punishment for seeing her bathing naked, but was then made a soothsayer by the goddess herself at his mother's request.
Perhaps the best-known fact about Tyiresias is the one I am about to tell. One day, while walking on Mount Cillene, Tyresias came upon two snakes mating, and, annoyed by the scene, killed the female (according to one version, he merely separated them by striking first the female and then the male).
At the same time, Tyresias was transformed from a man into a woman. He lived in this state for seven years, experiencing all the pleasures a woman can experience. After this period he was confronted with the same scene as the serpents.
This time he killed the male serpent and instantly became a man again. One day, Zeus and Hera were divided by an argument: whether in love the man or the woman felt more pleasure.
Unable to reach an agreement, with Zeus claiming it was the woman and Hera claiming it was the man, they decided to summon Tyresias, who was considered the only one who could settle the dispute as he was both man and woman.
When questioned by the gods, he replied that pleasure is made up of ten parts: a man feels only one and a woman nine, so a woman feels nine times as much pleasure as a man.
The goddess Hera, furious that Tyresias had revealed such a secret, made him blind, but Zeus, to compensate for the damage done, gave him the power to foresee the future and the gift of life for seven generations: the Greek gods cannot undo what other gods have done or decided.
So Tyresias' blindness is actually the condition for him to fulfil his role as soothsayer. Sight comes into play directly, as a violation of a code of conduct enunciated by Callimachus (the laws of Cronus state that whoever sees an immortal against his will will pay a high price for that sight).
”
”
Kalos Bonasia
“
The rain-filled potholes, set in naked rock are usually devoid of visible plant life but not of animal life. In addition to the inevitable microscopic creatures there may be certain amphibians like the spadefoot toad. This little animal lives through dry spells in a state of estivation under the dried-up sediment in the bottom of a hole. When the rain comes, if it comes, he emerges from the mud singing madly in his fashion, mates with the handiest female and fills the pool with a swarm of tadpoles, most of them doomed to a most ephemeral existence. But a few survive, mature, become real toads, and when the pool dries up they dig into the sediment as their parents did before, making burrows which they seal with mucus in order to preserve that moisture necessary to life. There they wait, day after day, week after week, in patient spadefoot torpor, perhaps listening - we can imagine - for the sounds of raindrops pattering at last on the earthen crust above their heads. If it comes in time the glorious cycle is repeated; if not, this particular colony of Bufonidae is reduced eventually to dust, a burden on the wind.
Rain and puddles bring out other amphibia, even in the desert. It's a strange, stirring, but not uncommon thing to come on a pool at night, after an evening of thunder and lightning and a bit of rainfall, and see the frogs clinging to the edge of their impermanent pond, bodies immersed in water but heads out, all croaking away in tricky counterpoint. They are windbags: with each croak the pouch under the frog's chin swells like a bubble, then collapses.
Why do they sing? What do they have to sing about? Somewhat apart from one another, separated by roughly equal distances, facing outward from the water, they clank and croak all through the night with tireless perseverance. To human ears their music has a bleak, dismal, tragic quality, dirgelike rather than jubilant. It may nevertheless be the case that these small beings are singing not only to claim their stake in the pond, not only to attract a mate, but also out of spontaneous love and joy, a contrapuntal choral celebration of the coolness and wetness after weeks of desert fire, for love of their own existence, however brief it may be, and for the joy in the common life.
Has joy any survival value in the operations of evolution? I suspect that it does; I suspect that the morose and fearful are doomed to quick extinction. Where there is no joy there can be no courage; and without courage all other virtues are useless. Therefore the frogs, the toads, keep on singing even though we know, if they don't that the sound of their uproar must surely be luring all the snakes and ringtail cats and kitfoxes and coyotes and great horned owls toward the scene of their happiness.
What then? A few of the little amphibians will continue their metamorphosis by way of the nerves and tissues of one of the higher animals, in which process the joy of one becomes the contentment of the second. Nothing is lost except an individual consciousness here and there, a trivial perhaps even illusory phenomenon. The rest survive, mate, multiply, burrow, estivate, dream, and rise again. The rains will come, the potholes shall be filled. Again. And again. And again.
”
”
Edward Abbey (Desert Solitaire)
“
Salty water
Water hits the water. Water is entangled like a snake. Naked water. Water beats the water to death. Water's fingers slapslap. Water crawls. Water rolls about. Water hardens like metal. Water pours down unable to hold back any longer. Water gets written on the cheeks then flows down behind the ears. Water sits in front of water, they reflect each other, then leave. In the water, the shadows of everyday pile up neatneatly. When the damp mirror dies I will also die—that kind of water.
(Water boiled all day in my mouth)
”
”
Kim Hyesoon (All the Garbage of the World, Unite!)
“
Falco’s eyes flickered when he saw Cristian. “This one is actually with me,” he said, slipping an arm around Cass’s waist.
“Then you might want to keep a closer eye on her.” Cristian nodded curtly at Falco and turned back toward the salon.
Looking back over his shoulder, Falco added, “They tell me she’s got special skills.” He let his hand slide even lower, onto one of Cass’s slender hips, as he directed her back out into the night.
Cass pulled away from Falco the second the door shut and they were out of the man’s line of vision. “Special skills?” Her voice burned with acid.
Falco grinned. “You mean you don’t?” He leaned in close and snaked both his arms around her waist. “I’m going to require a refund then.” His breath was hot against her neck.
Cass couldn’t help it. She saw the room with the candles again, her naked body intertwined with Falco’s, the two of them so close together they were practically wearing the same skin. Her whole body went rigid at the thought.
“Oh come on,” Falco whispered in her ear. “I was joking. Acting the part.”
Cass softened a little bit but still pulled back from his embrace. She couldn’t think of him that way when she was angry. She shouldn’t think of him that way at all. She took a deep breath and tried to regain control of her thoughts. “And acting the part requires you to put your hands all over me? Or is that just an extra benefit?” She didn’t know if she was more angry at Falco for treating her like a common prostitute or for leaving her alone in that house full of brutes.
Falco rolled his eyes. “Don’t flatter yourself, Cassandra. I prefer my women a little less…repressed.”
Without thinking, Cass reached out and slapped him. Her palm connected with the side of Falco’s face with a satisfying smack. She withdrew her hand immediately, horrified at what she’d done. To her surprise, Falco started laughing.
“That’s more like it,” he said, his blue eyes lighting up the night. He rubbed the side of his face. “I think that’s going to leave a mark.”
“I--I’m sorry,” Cass said. A red blotch began to form across Falco’s cheekbone.
“Don’t be. I’m sure I deserved it. If not now, then at sometime in the past.” He winked. “Or the future.
”
”
Fiona Paul (Venom (Secrets of the Eternal Rose, #1))
“
Night had fallen. Two or three crows were hurrying back to their nests; owls were coming out of the hollow trees to hunt. Snails, caterpillars, worms, field-mice were coming out of the earth to be eaten by the owls.
The mysterious snake that devours its own tail enclosed me in its circle: the earth brings to life and devours her own children, then bears more and devours them in their turn.
I looked about me. It was quite dark. The last of the villagers had gone, no one could see me, I was absolutely alone. I bared my feet and dipped them in the sea. I rolled on the sand. I felt an urge to touch the stones, the water, and the air with my bare body. The Mother Superior had exasperated me with her "eternity", and I felt the word fall about me, like a lasso catching a wild horse. I made a leap to try to escape. I felt a desire to press my naked body against the earth and the sea, to feel with certainty that these beloved ephemeral things really existed.
”
”
Nikos Kazantzakis (Zorba the Greek)
“
lay my naked skin upon his bare chest, I whimper with need. Burying my nose into the crook of his neck, I inhale him into my lungs and savour the feeling of his arms snaking around me, holding me with equal desperation. He whispers my name again, his hands tracing down, then up my back as if remembering the curve of my spine, the shape of my hip, the span of my shoulders. His breath is heavy as I cry into him and he sweeps my long length of hair away, laying kisses on my shoulder. Only when he whispers my name for a third time, pained and insistent, do I raise my head and look at him, and find Scythe looking at me too.
”
”
E.P. Bali (Her Tortured Beasts (Her Vicious Beasts, #4))
“
All the comforts that the audience enjoys and expects disappear the moment you step through the stage door. Backstage, everything is relentlessly old-fashioned and utilitarian, as if the architects have deliberately set out to remind the actors and the crew that they are only the servants and matter less than the paying guests. The Vaudeville was built in the Romanesque style back in the late nineteenth century. Henry Irving had his first noticeable success there. I’ve described the luxuriousness of the lobby and the auditorium. But the corridors and dressing rooms on the other side of the mirror were quite another matter. Here, the flooring was covered by linoleum. Pipes and cables snaked willy-nilly along the walls, twisting between fire extinguishers, alarm boxes and overbright, naked light bulbs. I was fascinated by the pieces of defunct machinery that had been screwed into place a century ago and then forgotten. Even the noticeboard with its tatty cards and clippings could have come from a police station or a failing secondary school. I found it all rather alluring. The backstage area of any London theatre would make a great set. One glance and you’d know exactly where you were.
”
”
Anthony Horowitz (The Twist of a Knife (Hawthorne & Horowitz #4))