“
That's what's so stupid about the whole magic thing, you know. You spend twenty years learning the spell that makes nude virgins appear in your bedroom, and then you're so poisoned by quicksilver fumes and half-blind from reading old grimoires that you can't remember what happens next.
”
”
Terry Pratchett (The Color of Magic (Discworld, #1; Rincewind, #1))
“
After Bill got his shot, a little color crept into his face and he would become almost coy. It was a gruesome sight. I remember once he told me how he'd been propositioned by a queer who offered him twenty dollars. Bill declined, saying "I don't think you would be very well satisfied." Bill twitched his fleshless hips. "You should see me in the nude," he said. "I'm really cute.
”
”
William S. Burroughs (Junky)
“
They'd been married for years, and he wanted her to give up the last thread of cover so she would stand before him nude and he could make love to her entire skin. Well, of course that made her head fall off. Of course.
”
”
Aimee Bender (The Color Master: Stories)
“
My eyes change color depending on my mood and what I’m wearing. If I’m wearing an acorn brown shirt, my eyes look like squirrel fur. And if I’m wearing no shirt at all, my eyes look more nude and flesh-colored. I guess my ex girlfriend, Zelda, said it best when her friend asked her what I look like and she said: “He looks like you’d imagine him to look like, if you had no imagination.
”
”
Jarod Kintz (Gosh, I probably shouldn't publish this.)
“
Every young sculptor seems to think that he must give the world some specimen of indecorous womanhood, and call it Eve, Venus, a Nymph, or any name that may apologize for a lack of decent clothing. I am weary, even more than I am ashamed, of seeing such things. Nowadays people are as good as born in their clothes, and there is practically not a nude human being in existence. An artist, therefore, as you must candidly confess, cannot sculpture nudity with a pure heart, if only because he is compelled to steal guilty glimpses at hired models. The marble inevitably loses its chastity under such circumstances. An old Greek sculptor, no doubt, found his models in the open sunshine, and among pure and princely maidens, and thus the nude statues of antiquity are as modest as violets, and sufficiently draped in their own beauty. But as for Mr. Gibson's colored Venuses (stained, I believe, with tobacco juice), and all other nudities of to-day, I really do not understand what they have to say to this generation, and would be glad to see as many heaps of quicklime in their stead.
”
”
Nathaniel Hawthorne (The Marble Faun)
“
I’m mesmerized by lipstick prints on coffee cups.
By the lines of lips against white pottery. By the color chosen by the woman who sat and sipped and lived life. By the mark she leaves behind. Some people read tea leaves and others can tell your future through the lines on your palm. I think I’d like to read lipstick marks on coffee mugs.
To learn how to differentiate yearning from satiation. To know the curve of a deep-rooted joy or the line of bottomless grief. To be able to say, this deep blue red you chose and how firmly you planted your lips, this speaks of love on the horizon. But, darling, you must be sure to stand in your own truth. That barely-there nude that circles the entire rim? You are exploding into lightness and possibilities beyond what you currently know. The way the gloss only shows when the light hits it and the coffee has sloshed all over the saucer? people need to take the time to see you whole but my god, you’re glorious and messy and wonderful and free. The deep purple bruise almost etched in a single spot and most of the cup left unconsumed? Oh love. Let me hold the depth of your ache. It is true. He’s not coming back. I know you already know this, but do you also know this is not the end? Love. This is not the end.
I imagine that I can know entire stories by these marks on discarded mugs. Imagine that I know something intimate and true of the woman who left them. That I could take those mugs home one day and an entire novel worth of characters would pour out, just like that.
”
”
Jeanette LeBlanc
“
Being comfortable with someone is sexy. It means you trust that they don’t need a phony, Instagram version of you to want to be with you.” He grabs the t-shirt and pulls it off over my head, leaving me in my nude colored nursing bra. “Comfort is sexy because comfort is trust, and there is nothing hotter than a beautiful woman who trusts you.
”
”
Daisy Jane (The Wild One (Wrench Kings, #1))
“
Now I’m going to change in front of you, okay? I’m not about to hop around putting on a linen suit near a toilet in a small stall. That just screams disaster waiting to happen. But I have to warn you, I’m wearing nude colored boxer briefs. Jaleesa picked them out for me. Said I couldn’t wear black with cream linen pants. But fucking nude? They make me look like a goddamn Ken doll, no dick, just a flat crotch. Not a fan. Just warning you so you’re not startled.
”
”
Meghan Quinn (Bridesmaid for Hire)
“
He returned in a moment with a phone, a high-end model that probably cost way more than hers. His cell phone wallpaper was an abstract artwork with lots of colorful circles and blots—Kandinsky, maybe, or Miro? She always got those
two confused. She gave him points for not having a picture of some scantily-clad woman thrusting her boobs at the camera, like Steve had on his phone. Tacky. Nude-woman wallpapers were the cell phone equivalent of silver naked-lady mud flaps, in her opinion.
”
”
Linda Morris (Melting the Millionaire's Heart)
“
That’s what’s so stupid about the whole magic thing, you know. You spend twenty years learning the spell that makes nude virgins appear in your bedroom, and then you’re so poisoned by quicksilver fumes and half blind from reading old grimoires that you can’t remember what happens next.
”
”
Terry Pratchett (The Color of Magic (Discworld, #1))
“
I say is someone in there?’ The voice is the young post-New formalist from
Pittsburgh who affects Continental and wears an ascot that won’t stay tight, with that
hesitant knocking of when you know perfectly well someone’s in there, the
bathroom door composed of thirty-six that’s three times a lengthwise twelve
recessed two-bevelled squares in a warped rectangle of steam-softened wood, not
quite white, the bottom outside corner right here raw wood and mangled from
hitting the cabinets’ bottom drawer’s wicked metal knob, through the door and
offset ‘Red’ and glowering actors and calendar and very crowded scene and pubic
spirals of pale blue smoke from the elephant-colored rubble of ash and little
blackened chunks in the foil funnel’s cone, the smoke’s baby-blanket blue that’s sent
her sliding down along the wall past knotted washcloth, towel rack, blood-flower
wallpaper and intricately grimed electrical outlet, the light sharp bitter tint of a heated
sky’s blue that’s left her uprightly fetal with chin on knees in yet another North
American bathroom, deveiled, too pretty for words, maybe the Prettiest Girl Of All
Time (Prettiest G.O.A.T.), knees to chest, slew-footed by the radiant chill of the
claw-footed tub’s porcelain, Molly’s had somebody lacquer the tub in blue, lacquer,
she’s holding the bottle, recalling vividly its slogan for the past generation was The
Choice of a Nude Generation, when she was of back-pocket height and prettier by
far than any of the peach-colored titans they’d gazed up at, his hand in her lap her
hand in the box and rooting down past candy for the Prize, more fun way too much
fun inside her veil on the counter above her, the stuff in the funnel exhausted though
it’s still smoking thinly, its graph reaching its highest spiked prick, peak, the arrow’s
best descent, so good she can’t stand it and reaches out for the cold tub’s rim’s cold
edge to pull herself up as the white- party-noise reaches, for her, the sort of
stereophonic precipice of volume to teeter on just before the speaker’s blow, people
barely twitching and conversations strettoing against a ghastly old pre-Carter thing
saying ‘We’ve Only Just Begun,’ Joelle’s limbs have been removed to a distance
where their acknowledgement of her commands seems like magic, both clogs simply
gone, nowhere in sight, and socks oddly wet, pulls her face up to face the unclean
medicine-cabinet mirror, twin roses of flame still hanging in the glass’s corner, hair
of the flame she’s eaten now trailing like the legs of wasps through the air of the
glass she uses to locate the de-faced veil and what’s inside it, loading up the cone
again, the ashes from the last load make the world's best filter: this is a fact. Breathes
in and out like a savvy diver…
–and is knelt vomiting over the lip of the cool blue tub, gouges on the tub’s
lip revealing sandy white gritty stuff below the lacquer and porcelain, vomiting
muddy juice and blue smoke and dots of mercuric red into the claw-footed trough,
and can hear again and seems to see, against the fire of her closed lids’ blood, bladed
vessels aloft in the night to monitor flow, searchlit helicopters, fat fingers of blue
light from one sky, searching.
”
”
David Foster Wallace (Infinite Jest)
“
Appearing nude on film was not easy when I was twenty-six in Body Heat; it was even harder when I was forty-six in The Graduate, on the stage, which is more up close and personal than film. After my middle-age nude scene, though, I unexpectedly got letters from women saying, "I have not undressed in front of my husband in ten years and I'm going to tonight." Or, "I have not looked in the mirror at my body and you gave me permission."
These affirmations from other women were especially touching to me because when I began The Graduate I'd just come through a period when I felt a great loss of confidence, when my rheumatoid arthritis hit me hard and I literally couldn't walk or do any of the things that I was so used to doing. It used to be that if I said to my body, "Leap across the room now," it would leap instantly. I don't know how I did it, but I did it. I hadn't realized how much my confidence was based on my physicality. On my ability to make my body do whatever I wanted it to do.
I was so consumed, not just by thinking about what I could and couldn't do, but also by handling the pain, the continual, chronic pain. I didn't realize how pain colored my whole world and how depressive it was. Before I was finally able to control my RA with proper medications, I truly had thought that my attractiveness and my ability to be attractive to men was gone, was lost. So for me to come back and do The Graduate was an affirmation to myself. I had my body back. I was back.
”
”
Kathleen Turner (Send Yourself Roses: Thoughts on My Life, Love, and Leading Roles)
“
no spells are much good. It takes three months to commit even a simple one to memory, and then once you’ve used it, poof! it’s gone. That’s what’s so stupid about the whole magic thing, you know. You spend twenty years learning the spell that makes nude virgins appear in your bedroom, and then you’re so poisoned by quicksilver fumes and half blind from reading old grimoires that you can’t remember what happens next.
”
”
Terry Pratchett (The Color of Magic (Discworld, #1))
“
Every square inch of the wood-paneled walls is covered with photographs of cops, some black-and-white, some in color. Red-and-white Ws and America's Dairyland, old flaking signs for Lake Monona, Lake Mendota, and the U.P. Posters, with all kinds of beer, half-nude women holding giant mugs of it. All the color, words, images, the vibrant clutter of them, such a stark contrast to the spare tans, beiges, and wood of our home, our church, the school. My life.
”
”
C.J. Leede (American Rapture)
“
Ed ecco verso noi venir per nave
un vecchio, bianco per antico pelo,
gridando: "Guai a voi, anime prave!
Non isperate mai veder lo cielo:
i’ vegno per menarvi a l’altra riva
ne le tenebre etterne, in caldo e ’n gelo.
E tu che se’ costì, anima viva,
pàrtiti da cotesti che son morti".
Ma poi che vide ch’io non mi partiva,
disse: "Per altra via, per altri porti
verrai a piaggia, non qui, per passare:
più lieve legno convien che ti porti".
E ’l duca lui: "Caron, non ti crucciare:
vuolsi così colà dove si puote
ciò che si vuole, e più non dimandare".
Quinci fuor quete le lanose gote
al nocchier de la livida palude,
che ’ntorno a li occhi avea di fiamme rote.
Ma quell’anime, ch’eran lasse e nude,
cangiar colore e dibattero i denti,
ratto che ’nteser le parole crude.
Bestemmiavano Dio e lor parenti,
l’umana spezie e ’l loco e ’l tempo e ’l seme
di lor semenza e di lor nascimenti.
Poi si ritrasser tutte quante insieme,
forte piangendo, a la riva malvagia
ch’attende ciascun uom che Dio non teme.
Caron dimonio, con occhi di bragia
loro accennando, tutte le raccoglie;
batte col remo qualunque s'adagia.
Come d’autunno si levan le foglie
l’una appresso de l’altra, fin che ’l ramo
vede a la terra tutte le sue spoglie,
similemente il mal seme d’Adamo
gittansi di quel lito ad una ad una,
per cenni come augel per suo richiamo.
Così sen vanno su per l’onda bruna,
e avanti che sien di là discese,
anche di qua nuova schiera s’auna.
”
”
Dante Alighieri
“
Above all, he encourages her to paint, nodding with approval at even her most unusual experiments with color, light, rough brushwork [...]. She explains to him that she believes painting should reflect nature and life [...]. He nods, although he adds cautiously that he wouldn't want her to know too much about life - nature is a fine subject, but life is grimmer than she can understand. He thinks it is good for her to have something satisfying to do at home; he loves art himself; he sees her gift and wants her to be happy. He knows the charming Morisots. He has met the Manets, and always remarks that they are a good family, despite Édouard's reputation and his immoral experiments (he paints loose women), which make him perhaps too modern - a shame, given his obvious talent.
In fact, Yves takes her to many galleries. They attend the Salon every year, with nearly a million other people, and listen to the gossip about favorite canvases and those critics disdain. Occasionally they stroll in the museums in the Louvre, where she sees art students copying paintings and sculpture, even an unchaperoned woman here and there (surely Americans). She can't quite bring herself to admire nudes in his presence, certainly not the heroic males; she knows she will never paint from a nude model herself. Her own formal training was in the private studios of an academican, copying from plaster casts with her mother present, before she married.
”
”
Elizabeth Kostova (The Swan Thieves)
“
Misero un segugio esplosivo sulle tracce di Turner a Nuova Delhi, sintonizzato sui suoi feromoni e sul colore dei capelli. Lo raggiunse in una strada chiamata Chandni Chauk, e si lanciò verso la sua BMW noleggiata, fra una selva di gambe nude e brune e ruote di tassì a pedale. Il nucleo era costituito da un chilogrammo di esogene ricristallizzato e TNT in scaglie.
Turner non lo vide arrivare. L'ultima cosa che vide dell'India fu la facciata rosa di un posto che si chiamava Khush-Oil Hotel.
”
”
William Gibson (Count Zero (Sprawl, #2))
“
Nijinsky in 'Le Spectre de la rose' was like nothing I'd seen before. He danced a fifteen-minute solo and it passed like a dream. He was wearing a silk tricot, palest nude, onto which were pinned dozens of silk Bakst petals, pink and red and purple. The most exotic creature, so beautiful, like a shiny, graceful insect on the verge of flight. He leapt as if it cost him no effort, lingering in the air far longer than was possible, and seemed not to touch the stage between times. I believed that night that a man might fly, that anything was possible.
”
”
Kate Morton (The Lake House)
“
Caleb shifted uncomfortably as he closed the door behind him. For a moment, he’d thought she’d been naked under the sheet. But, it had been a nude-colored type of top. Didn’t seem to matter, the sight had kicked his fantasies into overdrive. She tried to hide herself, but the nightlight next to her bed cast a soft amber glow around her shining right through the thin sheet, illuminating her small pert breasts perfectly even through the top…. He couldn’t live under the same roof as her and not go insane. He would make an announcement tomorrow. She was off-limits.
”
”
Katie Reus (Running from the Past)
“
Vanity is by far my favorite of all sins, and the camera lens is the ultimate vanity mirror. The camera captures all moods and nuances; immortalizes the soft and silky continuum that is humanity. Those still life moments seem so fluid, so representative of continuity. They are a single moment captured, yet an eternity expressed. All your youth; all your ages, captured and expressed in a single click.
Of all the indulgences, vanity is certainly my favorite which we should otherwise resist, but are inexplicably captivated by and addicted. What other animal would spend so much time pouting and preening for its reflection? Only humanity would participate in such self-adoration.
You would think we have the most colorful feathers or softest of manes. Rather, we are a naked biped that feels incomplete without some decorative element, accessory, or embellishment of the self. We are intoxicated by the image of the body, no different than we are seduced by fine wines, foods, or mind altering elements. We devour the skin, and peel away clothes as if they were the skin of some tropical fruit, covering a colorful and juicy interior. We hunt for bodily pleasures, and collect them as prizes; show them off in social situations as if our companions were some sort of extended adornment to ourselves.
We are revealed in our sensuality. To touch beneath the surface; to connect beyond facades, that unattainable discourse between individuals is put tentatively within reach in intimacy. To capture those moments is to capture the essence of what makes us human, and what ultimately sets us above and aside from the rest of nature.
Capturing humanity in its most extravagant expressions is intoxicating. Vanity is by far my favorite sin, and it is an endless tale as infinite as humanity. Every person is but a stitch in a giant tapestry.
”
”
A.E. Samaan
“
The room was dark, though weak autumnal light filtered in through arched windows high on the walls, illuminating the room's rich aubergine brocade wallpaper. Its color cast a soft violet haze that floated through the bedroom, twinkling the huge diamond-shaped crystals that dropped from two immense, many-tiered silver chandeliers. They were larger than any I had ever seen, things out of a palace or a fairy tale. An imposing, heavily carved wardrobe, which looked as if it had been in place since the early fifteenth century, faced the bed where I lay. Beside it on the wall hung a large bronze shield with an iron French cross at its center, crowned by a gilded fleur-de-lis with a dazzling gemstone in the middle of the petal. Large portraits of nude ladies, odalisques that looked as if an Italian master- Titian, perhaps?- had painted them graced the adjacent wall. A heavy crystal vase of white long-stemmed roses sat on a table at the bedside, their petals tight, but their sweet perfume filling the air, mingling with the aroma of fresh baked bread.
I ran my hands down my body. I was not in my own nightdress but in a pale green gown of fine quality damask silk with a triangular neckline and long, full sleeves that cupped my wrists, draping white lace over my hands to the fingers. I had never seen such a rich garment. I imagined it was something that the queen's daughters would have worn.
”
”
Karen Essex (Dracula in Love)
“
- Molly Noptkins tells the U.S.O.U.S. operatives that her understanding of the apres-garde Auteur J. O. Incandenza's lethally entertaining Infinite Jest (V or VI) is that it features Madame Psychosis as some kind of maternal instantiation of the archetypal figure Death, sitting naked, corporeally gorgeous, ravishing, hugely pregnant, her hideously deformed face either veiled or blanked out by undulating computer-generated squares of color or anamorphosized into unrecognizability as any kind of face by the camera's apparently very strange and novel lens, sitting there nude, explaining in very simple childlike language to whomever the film's camera represents that Death is always female, and that the female is always maternal. I.e. that the woman who kills you is always your next life's mother.
”
”
David Foster Wallace (Infinite Jest)
“
I want to see what I will be getting later tonight.” I look at the nude-colored lace that sits under her belly button and shows off the cheeks of her ass.
“You’re getting your hand, buddy.” She pats my chest. “I’m staying at my mom’s tonight, remember?” Fuck, I forgot about that.
“Who made that stupid rule up?”
“I don’t know,” she shrugs, shimmying her dress back over her hips.
“You’re not leaving me tonight until I taste you; so you need to figure out how to make that happen, or your mom’s going to be pissed when I show up at her house, telling her that I need to eat her daughter’s p**sy before I go to bed or else I can’t sleep.” I watch her cheeks turn bright pink as she glares at me.
“You wouldn’t dare.”
“Oh, but wouldn’t I?” I smirk. I wouldn’t do that, exactly, but I would show up at her mom’s to get my nightly snack.
“Trevor.”
“Figure it out, babe.
”
”
Aurora Rose Reynolds (Until Trevor (Until, #2))
“
My Lover Who Lives Far.....
My lover, who lives far away, opens the door to my room
and offers supper in a bowl made of his breath.
The stew has boiled and I wonder at the cat born from its steam.
The cat is in the bedroom now, mewling. The cat is indecent
and I, who am trying to be tidy, I, who am trying to do things
the proper way, I, who am sick from the shedding, I am undone.
My lover, who lives far away, opens the door to my room
and offers pastries in a basket spun from his vision.
It is closely woven, the kind of container some women collect.
I have seen these in many colors, but the basket he brings is simple:
only black, only nude. The basket he brings is full of sweet scones
and I eat even the crumbs. As if I've not dined for days.
My lover, who lives far away, opens the door to my room
and offers tea made from the liquid he's crying.
I do not want my lover crying and I am sorry I ever asked for tea.
My lover, who lives far away, opens the door to my room pretending
he never cried. He offers tea and cold cakes. The tea is delicious:
spiced like the start of our courtship, honeyed and warm.
I drink every bit of the tea and put aside the rest.
My lover, who lives far away, opens the door to my room
like a man loving his strength. The lock I replaced
this morning will not keep him away.
My lover, who lives far away, opens the door to my room
and brings me nothing.
Perhaps he has noticed how fat I've grown, indulged.
Perhaps he is poor and sick of emptying his store.
It is no matter to me any longer, he has filled me, already, so full.
My lover who is far away opens the door to my room
and tells me he is tired.
I do not ask what he's tired from for my lover, far away,
has already disappeared.
The blankets are big with his body. The cat, under the covers,
because it is cold out and she is not stupid, mews.
”
”
Camille T. Dungy
“
From the WIP, Behind The Fan...
The two women flipped through the pictures as morbid curiosity took hold.
The photos all signed by the women; ‘To Nicky with love, Nicky you make me smile, Nicky…Nicky…Nicky.’
They glanced at each other in disgust. The last photo was face down; Kim slowly turned it upright. She questioned why she even cared, what would one more picture of her grandfather’s paramour prove to her.
The woman in the photo was stunning, a black and white image someone had hand colored. Her dark brown hair brushed into soft waves; glittering earrings caught the low light of the flash. It was a full body shot; the viewer was to believe she was nude behind two immense Ostridge feather fans. She looked confidently into the camera; standing proudly with her shoulders squared and back erect. Her long legs encased in silky hose attached by the satin straps of the garters. However, it was her eyes, clear crystal bright blue. They stood out in the aged photo engaging the viewer. They were mesmerizing.
“Oh dear lord, it’s Grandma!
”
”
Caroline Walken
“
This is what I dreamed of,” Win told him. “Being able to do this … just like everyone else.” His hand tightened on her waist. “And so you are. But you’re not like everyone else. You’re the most beautiful woman here.” “No,” she said, laughing. “Yes. Like an angel in an Old Masters work. Or perhaps the Sleeping Venus. Are you familiar with that painting?” “I’m afraid not.” “I’ll take you to see it someday. Though you might find it a bit shocking.” “I suppose Venus is unclothed in that work?” Win tried to sound worldly, but she felt herself blushing. “I’ve never understood why such depictions of beauty are always in the nude, when a bit of tactful drapery would yield the same effect.” “Because there is nothing more beautiful than the unveiled female form.” Julian laughed quietly as he saw her heightened color. “Have I embarrassed you with my frankness? I’m sorry.” “I don’t think you are. I think you meant to disconcert me.” It was a new sensation, flirting with Julian. “You’re right. I want to set you a bit off-balance.” “Why?” “Because I would like for you to see me as someone other than predictable, tedious old Dr. Harrow.” “You’re none of those things,” she said, laughing. “Good,” he murmured, smiling at her.
”
”
Lisa Kleypas (Seduce Me at Sunrise (The Hathaways, #2))
“
Achievement ceremonies are revealing about the need of the powerful
to punish women through beauty, since the tension of having to repress
alarm at female achievement is unusually formalized in them. Beauty
myth insults tend to be blurted out at them like death jokes at a funeral.
Memories of these achievement ceremonies are supposed to last like
Polaroid snapshots that gel into permanent colors, souvenirs to keep
of a hard race run; but for girls and young women, the myth keeps
those colors always liquid so that, with a word, they can be smeared
into the uniform shades of mud.
At my college graduation, the commencement speaker, Dick
Cavett—who had been a “brother” of the university president in an allmale
secret society—was confronted by two thousand young female
Yale graduates in mortarboards and academic gowns, and offered them
this story: When he was at Yale there were no women. The women went
to Vassar. There, they had nude photographs taken in gym class to
check their posture. Some of the photos ended up in the pornography
black market in New Haven. The punch line: The photos found no
buyers.
Whether or not the slur was deliberate, it was still effective: We may
have been Elis but we would still not make pornography worth his
buying. Today, three thousand men of the class of 1984 are sure they
are graduates of that university, remembering commencement as they
are meant to: proudly. But many of the two thousand women, when
they can think of that day at all, recall the feelings of the powerless:
exclusion and shame and impotent, complicit silence. We could not
make a scene, as it was our parents’ great day for which they had traveled long distances; neither could they, out of the same concern for us.
Beauty pornography makes an eating disease seem inevitable,
even desirable, if a young woman is to consider herself sexual and
valuable: Robin Lakoff and Raquel Scherr in Face Value found in 1984
that “among college women, ‘modern’ definitions of beauty—health,
energy, self-confidence”—prevailed. “The bad news” is that they all
had “only one overriding concern: the shape and weight of their bodies.
They all wanted to lose 5–25 pounds, even though most [were] not remotely
overweight. They went into great detail about every flaw in
their anatomies, and told of the great disgust they felt every time they
looked in the mirror.” The “great disgust” they feel comes from learning
the rigid conventions of beauty pornography before they learn their
own sexual value; in such an atmosphere, eating diseases make perfect
sense.
”
”
Naomi Wolf (The Beauty Myth)
“
Sophia counted six clangs of the bell before Mr. Grayson jolted fully awake. He looked up at her, startled and flushed. As though he’d been caught doing something he shouldn’t.
She smiled.
Rubbing his eyes, he rose to his feet. “Will I shock you, Miss Turner, if I remove my coat?”
Sophia felt a twinge of disappointment. When would he stop treating her with this forced politesse, maintaining this distance between them? How many tales of passionate encounters must she spin before he finally understood that she was no less wicked than he, only less experienced? Perhaps it was time to take more aggressive measures.
“By all means, remove your coat.” She tilted her eyes to cast him a saucy look. “Mr. Grayson, I’m not an innocent schoolgirl. You will have to try harder than that to shock me.”
His lips curved in a subtle smile. “I’ll take that under advisement.” She watched as he shook the heavy topcoat from his shoulders and peeled it down his arms. He draped the coat over the back of a chair before sitting back down. The damp lawn of his shirt clung to his shoulders and arms. A pleasant shiver rippled down to Sophia’s toes.
“It doesn’t suit you anyway,” she said, loading her brush with paint.
He gave her a bemused look as he unknotted his cravat and pulled it loose. She inwardly rejoiced. Now, if only she could convince him to do away with his waistcoat…”
“The coat,” she explained, when his eyebrows remained raised. “It doesn’t suit you.”
“Why not? Is the color wrong?” The sudden seriousness in his tone surprised her.
“No, the color is perfectly fine. It’s the cut that’s unflattering. That style is tailored to gentlemen of leisure, lean and slender. But as you are so fond of telling me, Mr. Grayson, you are no gentleman. Your shoulders are too broad for fashion.”
“Is that so?” He chuckled as he undid his cuffs. Sophia stared as he turned up his sleeves, baring one tanned muscled forearm, then the other. “What style of garments would best suit me, then?”
“Other than a toga?” He rewarded her jest with an easy smile. Sophia dabbed at her canvas, pleased to be making progress at last. “I think you need something less restrictive. Something like a sailor’s garb. Or perhaps a captain’s.”
“Truly?” His gaze became thoughtful, then searching. “And even dressed in plain seaman’s clothes, would you still find me handsome enough? In my own way?”
“No.” She allowed his brow to crease a moment before continuing. “I should find you surpassingly handsome. In every way.” She mixed paint slowly on her palette and gave him a coy look. “And what of my attire? If you had your way, how would you dress me?”
“If I had my way…I wouldn’t.”
A thrill raced through Sophia’s body. Her cheeks burned, and her eyes dropped to her lap. She forced her gave back up to meet his. Now was not the moment to lose courage. Nothing held sway over a man’s intentions like jealousy. “Gervais once kept me naked for an entire day so he could paint me.”
He blinked. “He painted a nude study of you?”
“No. He painted me. I took off my clothes and stretched out on the bed while he dressed me in pigment. Gervais called me his perfect, blank canvas. He painted lavender orchids here”-she traced a small circle just above her breast-“and little vines twining down…” She slid her hand down and noted with delight how his eyes followed its path. “I feigned the grippe and refused to bathe for a week.”
Desire and jealous rage warred in his countenance, yet he remained as immobile as one of Lord Elgin’s marble sculptures. What would it take to spur the man into action?
”
”
Tessa Dare (Surrender of a Siren (The Wanton Dairymaid Trilogy, #2))
“
Daniel was convinced, perhaps justly, that his brother needed the protection of a stronger mind. If not, why did the boy persist in painting red apples sky-blue and in giving to his nudes the unpalatable hue of a very old and dead fish? “Because I see ‘em that way,” the exasperated Barney had once explained under the fire of rude criticism. “Well, it’s a terrible way to see anything,” observed Daniel, and added color blindness to his brother’s other deficiencies.
”
”
Thorne Smith (Did She Fall?)
“
for as long as I’ve known the man, being offensive, inappropriate, and off-color is normal for him. The longer you live in Trumpworld, the more normal things like a work party at the Playboy Mansion seem to you. The Apprentice events were always populated with celebrities and models and his family. It wasn’t so far a leap to include nude models and porn stars. I made the rounds, skirting the grotto because God knows what went on in there, and talked to anyone who wasn’t in a thong.
”
”
Omarosa Manigault Newman (Unhinged: An Insider's Account of the Trump White House)
“
C'era un mobile superstite e una donna seduta sulla poltrona. Era giovane e indossava un abito stampato da pochi soldi. I capelli di uno spento color topo erano raccolti sulla nuca. Le mani erano nude e rosse. Gli occhi spalancati e fissi. ‘‘Accidenti’’ mormorò Will, troppo sorpreso per dire altro. ‘’È…?'' ‘‘È morta’’ affermò Jem. ‘‘Ne sei certo?’’ Will non riusciva a staccare gli occhi dal viso della donna. Era pallida, ma non di un pallore cadaverico, e aveva le mani unite in grembo con le dita piegate morbidamente, non irrigidite dal rigor mortis. Le si avvicinò e le mise una mano sul braccio. Lo sentì duro e freddo sotto le dita. ‘‘Be', non reagisce alla mie avance perciò deve essere davvero morta’’ osservò, mostrandosi più allegro di quanto non fosse. ‘‘Oppure ha buon gusto e buon senso.
”
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Cassandra Clare (Clockwork Angel (The Infernal Devices, #1))
“
May 23: Cukor shoots Marilyn’s nude swimming scene from 9:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m., with a twenty-minute break for lunch. She takes off her flesh-colored bathing suit and swims in the nude. Photographers take shots of her naked for about an hour.
”
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Carl Rollyson (Marilyn Monroe Day by Day: A Timeline of People, Places, and Events)
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The idea that Aphrodite was simply a representation of carnal lust is the product of much later representations of her. In fact, the representation of Aphrodite as nude and sensual in art lost favor amongst Greek artists in the 7th century BCE and only gained popularity again during the Roman period.[42] In the meantime, she was always represented with the finest clothing, and she was most commonly associated with necklaces and long, brightly colored robes such as the one in which she appeared to Anchises.
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Charles River Editors (Aphrodite: The Origins and History of the Greek Goddess of Love)
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Nude is my favorite color on you.
”
”
L.B. Dunbar (Scrooge-ish)
“
I’m mesmerized by lipstick prints on coffee cups.
By the lines of lips against white pottery. By the color chosen by the woman who sat and sipped and lived life. By the mark she leaves behind. Some people read tea leaves, and others can tell your future through the lines on your palm. I think I’d like to read lipstick marks on coffee mugs.
To learn how to differentiate yearning from satiation. To know the curve of deep-rooted joy or the line of bottomless grief. To be able to say this deep blue-red you chose and how firmly you planted your lips, speaks of love on the horizon. But, darling, you must be sure to stand in your own truth. That barely-there nude that circles the entire rim? You are exploding into lightness and possibilities beyond what you currently know. The way the gloss only shows when the light hits it, and the coffee has sloshed all over the saucer? People need to take the time to see you whole but my god, you’re glorious and messy and wonderful and free. The deep purple bruise was almost etched in a single spot, and most of the cup left unconsumed. Oh, love. Let me hold the depth of your ache. It is true. He’s not coming back. I know you already know this, but do you also know this is not the end? Love. This is not the end.
I imagine that I can know entire stories by these marks on discarded mugs. I imagine that I know something intimate and true about the woman who left them. I imagine that I could take those mugs home one day, and an entire novel worth of characters would pour out, just like that.
”
”
Jeanette LeBlanc
“
There's a self-portrait, her sister's face rendered in aqueous greens and blues. The shimmering surface of a pool, bright turrets of coral visible beneath. So she's familiar with the lush application of paint, the galaxies of color.
But this? This is different.
The painting is enormous, almost as big as the wall behind it. Her sister has painted two female figures, their backs turned on the viewer as they wade into a raging sea. The brushstrokes are frenzied, lavish, and Jess has done something to make their skin gleam, as if it's lifting from the canvas. Lucy feels sure that if she were to reach out and touch the girls' hair--- pale, like her own--- she would feel each whorl, each strand under her fingertips.
Both girls are nude, their legs swallowed by furious splatters of paint. Blue green, purple, black, foamy white.
”
”
Emilia Hart (The Sirens)
“
Unbeknownst to her, the same month I was born, her perfect, “blue-blooded” Jeffrey, the father of her baby, was the centerfold of Playgirl magazine, appearing on the inside in a several-page, full-color, completely nude spread as “Mr. November 1984.
”
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Chrysta Bilton (Normal Family: On Truth, Love, and How I Met My 35 Siblings)
“
People don’t see things and hear things as objectively as they might think. The visual and auditory information that enters the mind is distorted by experiences, thoughts, circumstances, wild fancies, prejudices, preferences, knowledge, awareness, and countless other workings of the mind. Pablo Picasso’s sketch of a nude man that he did at age eight is remarkable. The painting he did at age fourteen of a Catholic communion ceremony is very realistic. But later, after the shock of his best friend’s suicide, he created paintings in shades of blue that became known as the Blue Period. Then he met a new lover and created the bright and colorful works of the Rose Period. Influenced by African sculptures,
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Toshikazu Kawaguchi (Before the Coffee Gets Cold #1)
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At first she felt overwhelmed by the house, its airy symmetry its silence. Now she was accustomed to the place, but she caught herself wondering, Is this still Berkeley? George's neighborhood felt as far from Telegraph as the hanging gardens of Babylon. You could get a good kebab in Jess's neighborhood, and a Cal T-shirt, and a reproduction NO HIPPIES ALLOWED sign. Where George lived, you could not get anything unless you drove down from the hills. Then you could buy art glass, and temple bells, and burled-wood jewelry boxes, and dresses of hand-painted silk, and you could eat at Chez Panisse, or sip coffee at the authentically grubby French Hotel where your barista took a bent paper clip and drew cats or four-leaf clovers or nudes in your espresso foam. You returned home with organic, free-range groceries, and bouquets of ivory roses and pale green hydrangeas, and you held dinner parties where some guests got lost and arrived late, and others gave up searching for you in the fog. That was George's Berkeley, and even in these environs, his home stood apart, hidden, grand, and rambling; windows set like jewels in their carved frames, gables twined with wisteria of periwinkle and ghostly white.
”
”
Allegra Goodman (The Cookbook Collector)
“
When you use the “nude” color of underwear and Band-Aids, do you already know that it will not match your skin?
”
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Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (Americanah)
“
An artist’s use of live models, the preparation of preliminary sketches, the representation of the nude, and the selling and buying of art—all are revealed by the Met as ploys used by the white European power structure to oppress people of color.
”
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Heather Mac Donald (When Race Trumps Merit: How the Pursuit of Equity Sacrifices Excellence, Destroys Beauty, and Threatens Lives)
“
Where Michelangelo’s colorful palette shone out brightly, Leonardo became the master of darkness and warm light. Both artists eroticized religion, but Michelangelo mostly kept to nudes in the antique style, whereas, now more than ever, Leonardo understood sexuality as a primeval force of nature.
”
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Kia Vahland (The Da Vinci Women: The Untold Feminist Power of Leonardo's Art)
“
He thought for a while before beginning. “I think it was October of 1990. I was walking on Wisconsin Avenue when I met him. I struck up a conversation and asked if he wanted to come home to my apartment for some cocktails. I also mentioned that I would pay him a hundred dollars if he let me take some nude pictures of him. He agreed, and we walked to my apartment, where we engaged in some light sex and I gave him the drink. Soon he was out, and I made love to him for about an hour or so. I decided that I would kill him, and used my hands to strangle him until he stopped breathing.” Murphy interrupted by placing the Polaroid picture found on the table in the apartment. It depicted the victim straddled on his back over the side of a bathtub. There was an incision made from the bottom of his chin to the top of his genitals. The viscera was pulled out of the body and lying, as if on display, on top of the torso. The colored Polaroid was shocking. The moist, red entrails glistened, revealing the intestines and internal organs. “What’s this all about?” Murphy said, pointing to the ghastly sight. Dahmer picked it up and shrugged. “I wanted a picture of his insides, so I placed him in the bathroom and cut him open. I pulled the viscera from his body with my hands. The look and feel of it gave me unbelievable pleasure, and I masturbated and made love to him by placing my penis in it, like having intercourse.” He took a long, slow drag from his cigarette without looking up as the rest of us sat in silence. We had identified our sixth victim: David Thomas. Murphy, serious as ever, finally broke the silence. “How did you dispose of this one? Did you keep any of his parts?” Dahmer answered that he became leery of placing the bones and flesh in the trash for fear of discovery. This is when he began to use the muriatic acid. He tried to save the skull by boiling it; however, he wanted to speed up the drying process and used a higher oven temperature. The increased heat popped the skull into smaller sections. Because it was ruined, he threw it into the acid. There were no remaining parts of this victim.
”
”
Patrick Kennedy (GRILLING DAHMER: The Interrogation Of "The Milwaukee Cannibal")