Rag Doll Quotes

Running with a drowsy child of Hades was more like doing a 3 -legged race with a life size rag doll.

I know you’re just a rag doll now, sewn together with memories that we might have had. I know you’re just the dream inside of a dream And don’t worry, I know I don’t know you, anymore.

There is never a sudden revelation, a complete and tidy explanation for why it happened, or why it ends, or why or who you are. You want one and I want one, but there isn't one. It comes in bits and pieces, and you stitch them together wherever they fit, and when you are done you hold yourself up, and still there are holes and you are a rag doll, invented, imperfect. And yet you are all that you have, so you must be enough. There is no other way.

Only the children know what they are looking for. They waste their time over a rag doll and it becomes very important to them; and if anybody takes it away from them, they cry...

I'm not doing much at all. I mimght as well be a rag doll. Comes complete with matching shoes. Spine sold separately.

Well, friend, I don’t know about your tastes, but I tend to like it very bloody,” Myrnin said. He shifted position, dragging Claire along like a rag doll without any effort at all. “Have we been introduced?” “Probably not. Why, are you asking me out, sweetheart?” “You’re not my type, darling. Is this one yours?” “No,” Frank said, and looked at Shane, just in a quick flicker. “Let’s say she’s a friend of the family.

But somebody else had spoken Snape’s name, quite softly. “Severus . . .” The sound frightened Harry beyond anything he had experienced all evening. For the first time, Dumbledore was pleading. Snape gazed for a moment at Dumbledore, and there was revulsion and hatred etched in the harsh lines of his face. “Severus . . . please . . .” Snape raised his wand and pointed it directly at Dumbledore. “Avada Kedavra!” A jet of green light shot from the end of Snape’s wand and hit Dumbledore squarely in the chest. Harry’s scream of horror never left him; silent and unmoving, he was forced to watch as Dumbledore was blasted into the air. For a split second, he seemed to hang suspended beneath the shining skull, and then he fell slowly backward, like a great rag doll, over the battlements and out of sight.

And they heard the roaring thunder of a third brilliantly lighted express. "Are they pursuing the first travelers?" demanded the little prince. "They are pursuing nothing at all," said the switchman. "They are asleep in there, or if they are not asleep they are yawning. Only the children are flattening their noses against the windowpanes." "Only the children know what they are looking for," said the little prince. "They waste their time over a rag doll and it becomes very important to them; and if anybody takes it away from them, they cry..." "They are lucky," the switchman said.

Is she become a rag doll? Are the wolves become children? It seems quite possible, there on the twilight fringes of dying. With some faint spark of herself, the little girl holds on to the idea. Even a rag doll has more life than does a dying child.

There is such a love, a love that creates value in what is loved. There is a love that turns rag dolls into priceless treasures. There is a love that fastens itself onto ragged little creatures, for reasons that no one could ever quite figure out, and makes them precious and valued beyond calculation. This is love beyond reason. This is the love of God.

We are rag dolls made out of many ages and skins, changelings who have slept in wood nests or hissed in the uncouth guise of waddling amphibians. We have played such roles for infinitely longer ages than we have been men. Our identity is a dream. We are process, not reality, for reality is an illusion of the daylight — the light of our particular day.

she was still in love and didn’t know what to do with all this love of hers. There was so much of it, and it was so messy: leaking, spilling, tumbling out of her, like stuffing falling out of an old rag doll that was coming apart at the seams.

Love me, love my rag dolls," God says. It's a package deal.

The good news: he dropped Annabeth. The bad news: he dropped her headfirst onto the rocks, where she lay motionless as a rag doll.

I missed that he could toss me around like a rag doll, while at the same time worshipping me like I was the most precious object in the world to him. We

Dear Angry Older People, over 21-ish, anyone who considers themselves an adult, still bitter: Next time you're wondering what wrong with kids today, you might wanna check the examples you've been giving us to work with. Because if you ever want to make sense of us, you’ve got to make sense to us, without telling us you’re too old to walk that far. You’ve got to try to understand why we like looking like rag dolls, why we like looking like the way we feel, and why we keep our senses floored when it’s you behind the wheel. And if you ever really do want to understand why we seem so angry, well for one, you told us we could be anything we wanted to be, but right now, we’re a little busy dodging bombs.

Mary and Laura clung tight to their rag dolls and did not say anything. The cousins stood around and looked at them. Grandma and all the aunts hugged and kissed them and hugged and kissed them again, saying good-by.

I feel the stitches holding me together as though I am a rag doll with stuffing trying to leak out.

I didn't properly think about what was happening even as I kissed him back, my laughter spilling into his mouth and making stutters of my kisses. I was still bound up with him, our magic snarled up into great messy tangled knots. I didn't have anything to compare that intimacy to. I'd felt the hot embarrassment of it, but I'd thought of it vaguely like being naked in front of a stranger. I hadn't connected it to sex—sex was poetic references in songs, my mother's practical instructions, and those few awful hideous moments in the tower with Prince Marek, where I might as well have been a rag doll as far as he'd cared. But now I toppled the Dragon over, clutching at his shoulders. As we fell his thigh pressed between mine, through my skirts, and in one shuddering jolt I began to form a startled new understanding.

I can’t remember the words she spoke when they finally opened the garage door and yanked me inside, but I was petrified. It wasn’t sound Mom’s screams or the jolt of her grabbing me by the shoulders and shaking me like a rag doll that plagues my memory, but the look of her eyes- wide, wild, and unrecognizable.

Why hasn’t anyone thrown me over their shoulder?” she asked. “I’m down for that. Pick me up, toss me around, treat me like a rag doll. Yes, sir. Give me some of that.

She watches the people through the sooted panes. They walk slower than they do when she reports to work and when she leaves work, and differently still from weekend strolling. They are the tin men and rag dolls who wake after hours in the toy store.

It might even be said one pulls himself together to disintegrate. The scattered particles of self - love, wood thrush calling, homework sums, broken nerves, rag dolls, one Phi Betta Kappa key, gold stars, lamplight smiles, night cries, and the shambles of contemplation - are collected for a split moment like scraps of shrapnel before they explode.

Mary was bigger than Laura, and she had a rag doll named Nettie. Laura had only a corncob wrapped in a handkerchief, but it was a good doll. It was named Susan. It wasn't Susan's fault that she was only a corncob. Sometimes Mary let Laura hold Nettie, but she did it only when Susan couldn't see.

I wonder if someday Jack and I will have our own pram filled with tiny skeletons and rag dolls. The scuttle of little feet through the house. Skeleton boys tumbling down the spiral stairs; little rag doll girls with their threads coming loose, always needing their fingers and toes stitched back together. A perfectly grim little family.

At the crisp, inky hour of midnight, Jack and I are married atop Spiral Hill in the Death Door's Cemetery. Wind stirs the bone-dry leaves, and Jack takes my soft rag doll hands in his--the coolness of his fingers calming the flutter rippling across my stitched seams.

Then the whipping would be over, as abruptly as it had begun. I’d be tossed to the floor, landing in a crumpled heap. A rag doll discarded by an angry toddler.

Living with her taught me this: That silence is a thick and dark curtain, the kind that pulls down over a shop window; that love is the repercussion of a stone bouncing off that same window - and that pain is something you can embrace, like a rag doll nobody will ask you to share.

Then there was the church and the villagers on the sidewalks, the red geraniums on the graves in the cemetery, Perez fainting (he crumpled over like a rag doll), the blood-red earth spilling over Maman's casket, the white flesh of the roots mixed in with it, more people, voices, the village, waiting in front of a cafe, the incessant drone of the motor, and my joy when the bus entered the nest of lights that was Algiers and I knew I was going to go to bed and sleep for twelve hours.

She had appointed herself the home’s official greeter, welcoming new arrivals, helping to name the new babies, and offering up her rag doll, Feodora, to anyone who might need a friend on their first night in the dormitories.

I am Sally Skellington, the Pumpkin Queen." There is warmth in my chest now, heat and fury and anger. "But I was born in Dream Town." The words feel like their won conjuring, a spell, a ritual or bedtime riddle to cast things into the stars and make them true. I feel suddenly awake and alive, a woman who isn't simply a rag doll, but a ruler who has traveled to all the realms, even the human world, to set things right. Who feels a spark, a wrath growing inside her.

Self-pity is the worst disability a person can have, Callie. It's crippling.

arms stop me from crumpling like a rag doll. Sometimes you don’t need to talk things out. Sometimes, with the right person, things just need some time to percolate on their own, without the messy lunge and parry of discussion to hinder them.

Thunder bellowed, barely audible above the explosion of wind and wave. How did this tiny brig withstand such a beating? Surely the timbers would burst any moment, splintering and filling the room with the mad gush of the sea. Locking her arms with the ladies on either side, she closed her eyes as the galloping ship tossed them like rag dolls over the hard deck.

He thought, You bastard, you motherfucking bastard. Ain’t I your baby, too? He began to cry. Something in Rufus which could not break shook him like a rag doll and splashed salt water all over his face and filled his throat and his nostrils with anguish. He knew the pain would never stop. He could never go down into the city again. He dropped his head as though someone had struck him and looked down at the water. It was cold and the water would be cold. He was black and the water was black.

You are quarter ghost on your mother’s side. Your heart is a flayed peach in a bone box. Your hair comes away in clumps like cheap fabric wet. A reflecting pool gathers around your altar of plywood sub flooring and split wooden slats. You are rag doll prone. You are contort, angle and arc. Here you rot. Here you are a greening abdomen, slipping skin, flesh fly, carrion beetles. This is where bullets take shelter, where scythes find their function, breath loses its place on the page. This is where the page is torn out of every book before chapter’s close, this is slippage, this is a shroud of neglect pulled over the body, this is your chance to escape. Little wraith, bend light around your skin until it colors you clear, disappear like silica in a kiln, become glass and glass beads, become the staggered whir of an exhaust fan: something only noticed when gone. Become an origami swan. Fold yourself smaller than ever before. Become less. More in some ways but less in the way a famine is less. They will forgive you for not being satisfied with fitting in their hands. They will forgive you for dying to be a bird diminutive enough to fit in a mouth and not be crushed.

Archaic humans paid for their large brains in two ways. Firstly, they spent more time in search of food. Secondly, their muscles atrophied. Like a government diverting money from defence to education, humans diverted energy from biceps to neurons. It’s hardly a foregone conclusion that this is a good strategy for survival on the savannah. A chimpanzee can’t win an argument with a Homo sapiens, but the ape can rip the man apart like a rag doll.

The Reverend Daughter of the Ninth House smiled, tiny and triumphant. Then she kneeled into Gideon’s arms. Gideon stumbled, sick with terror, kneeling them both down to the ground as Harrow lay like a broken rag doll. She forgot her sword, forgot everything as she cradled her used-up adept. She forgot the wrecked ligaments in her sword arm, her messed-up knee, the cups of blood she’d lost, everything but that tiny, smoldering, victorious smile.

It feels like a fairy tale from one of those happily-ever-after books where the princess storms the castle, slays a goblin-dragon, and takes over the kingdom for herself. Except I am not golden-haired or fine-boned. I have no bones at all. I am a rag doll who married a skeleton king. A rag doll who woke from the impossible daydream and found herself in her own heroine story--a tale whose ending hasn't yet been written; but instead, is only just the beginning.

What farm girl dolled up in a farm dress captivates your wits not knowing how to pull her rags down to her ankles?

In the end, after/before two tragic deaths, that accursed rag doll had an ear-to-ear smile on its face.

Just as the rag doll wanted to be an eagle, the donkey a lion and the monkey a queen, the zero put on airs and pretended to be a digit.

When she was five years old, Mem had given her a pair of faceless rag dolls in typical Plain dress. The dolls were faceless to emphasize the notion that everyone is the same in the eyes of God.

You may move eloquently, so you think, to the rhythm of some fated dance for some projected eternity, but if that fate is neither yours nor the work of your own hands, a rag doll knows more grace.

Maybe, maybe, I can be both, too. A rag doll and a Pumpkin Queen. In control of her own life, her own royal title. A queen who doesn't allow the sovereignty to overshadow the rag doll she's always been.

Because right now I am simply a rag doll in a boat with a skeleton whom I love. Madly, Feverishly. Floating through a town where my title doesn't matter. Queen, queen, queen. Where no one knows who I am.

A life was no goddamn thing in the end, he thought. Bits and pieces of make-believe cobbled together to look halfways human, like some stick-and-rag doll meant to scare crows out of the garden. No goddamn thing at all.

On this Very Street in Belgrade" Your mother carried you Out of the smoking ruins of a building And set you down on this sidewalk Like a doll bundled in burnt rags, Where you now stood years later Talking to a homeless dog, Half-hidden behind a parked car, His eyes brimming with hope As he inched forward, ready for the worst.

At two o’clock, when Marina answered her office door to find the Count at the threshold in the company of a little girl with a rag doll gripped tightly by the neck, she was so surprised her eyes almost came into alignment.

In her fantasy, she imagined surrendering to a dominating Jericho. She’d liked it as a fantasy. There was something wild and hedonistic about the idea of allowing herself to be taken over by a big, strong, handsome man, as if she had no say in the matter and so no responsibility for making love with him: Why, it just happened! What could I do? I was helpless! But in reality, it hadn’t been that way. It had been confusing and utterly frightening to have no say and no control, like a rag doll wielded by a careless child. It was like not being a person at all.

it was as that strange, vivid night was drawing to a close, as the faint blue light of dawn had begun to seep into the sky's black ink, that i suddenly thought of you, dong-ho. yes, you'd been there with me, that day. until something like a cold cudgel had suddenly slammed into my side. until i collapsed like a rag doll. until my arms flung themselves up in mute alarm, amid the cacophony of footsteps drumming against the tarmac, ear-splitting gunfire. until i felt the warm spread of my own blood moving up over my shoulder, the back of my neck. until then, you were with me.

A simple kiss between a rag doll and a Pumpkin King. And perhaps the beginning of their most amazing adventure yet. Not in another world far away this time, but right here, right now, just the two of them, silhouetted in the moonlight on top of Spiral Hill. As if it was simply meant to be.

I have invited a cute boy inside! Whatever’s going on here, I am prolonging it! Already my mind is going blank, and I have no idea what else to say. WHATEVER YOU DO, DON’T SHOW HIM THE SCARY RAG DOLL! “That’s my mom’s terrifying rag doll,” I say the literal second the door is closed behind us,

It exuded blackness and destroyed surrounding light.

Morning’s nowhere in sight a night walks through dark streets of my thoughts with heavy legs dragging with it like a rag doll all my regrets could have should have would have blink in the dark like cheap neon lights irking weary night birds outside morning’s nowhere in sight to wash away with its light the carcasses a night left behind of regrets scattered all over dark alleys of my mind

Thandi looks at the rag dolls and the coasters and key chains and handcrafted jewelry that Delores delicately places inside the basket. How would visitors know the real stories behind the faces of the wooden masks they'd buy to have on walls; the rag dolls they'd use to decorate unused furniture in their houses; the figurines they'd place on mantels that they can marvel at and then quickly forget?

You cling to culture like an orphan drags her rag doll from foster home to foster home. It is your last soiled reminder of what you think you were. You'd rather die at the stake than adapt or evolve because change is scary. So you guard the same tired shit as if it's a precious, sacrosanct relic from the holy crusades of your ancestors when, in fact, it is a withered turn wrapped in butcher paper.

Being Soobie, always honest to himself, he was prepared to be no less than honest to God. – I do not know who made the part of me that thinks. I do not know who I really am or what I really am. I am never satisfied to pretend. I cannot pretend that you are listening to me. I can only give you the benefit of the doubt. And it is a massive doubt, I can tell you. I do not know whether I believe in you, and, what is worse, you might not believe in me. But I need help and there is nowhere else to turn. The flesh-and-blood people who come here have something they called faith. Please, if you are listening to a rag doll with a blue face, let the faith of those others be enough for you to help me. I must find my sister, or my mother will be the first of us to die. Dear God, I don’t even know what that means!

Every town has a psychopath or two. Not just the everyday crazy person, either. Not like Crazy Larry, the paint huffing weirdo peddling around town on a child-sized Huffy ranting about the end of the world, or the old lady dressed in rags who hands out filthy doll clothes to the kiddies. I'm talking about the cold, never remorseful lunatic, who may never have seemed insane up until the day he hacked apart his mother and shoved her stinking corpse into the attic. This town is overflowing with them; bloodcurdling murderers like Kenny Wayne Hilbert, Charlie Fender…Orland Winthro. And Al, the crazy had to come from somewhere.

You're the only rag dolls I've seen in Dream Town," I comment, seeing myself reflected back in the features of their faces--something I've never known until now. The seams of Albert's mouth lift into a half smile. "There are a few others. Rag dolls like us, and also several Teddy Bears and Floppy-Eared Rabbits. They are all sleep-weavers, but they spend most of their time in the human world, helping lull children to sleep.

When I was shipwrecked recently, for instance, I had the fortune to wash aboard a barge where I enjoyed a late supper of roast leg of lamb with creamed polenta and fricassee of baby artichokes, followed by some aged Gouda served with roasted figs, and finished up with some fresh strawberries dipped in milk chocolate and crushed honeycomb, and I found this to be a wonderful antidote to being tossed like a rag doll in the turbulent waters of a particularly stormy creek.

Then there was the church and the villagers on the sidewalks, the red geraniums on the graves in the cemetery, Pérez fainting (he crumpled like a rag doll), the blood-red earth spilling over Maman’s casket, the white flesh of the roots mixed in with it, more people, voices, the village, waiting in front of a café, the incessant drone of the motor, and my joy when the bus entered the nest of lights that was Algiers and I knew I was going to go to bed and sleep for twelve hours.

Good morning," said the little prince. "Good morning," said the railway switchman. "What do you do here?" the little prince asked. "I sort out travelers, in bundles of a thousand," said the switchman. "I send off the trains that carry them: now to the right, now to the left." And a brilliantly lighted express train shook the switchman's cabin as it rushed by with a roar like thunder. "They are in a great hurry," said the little prince. "What are they looking for?" "Not even the locomotive engineer knows that," said the switchman. And a second brilliantly lighted express thundered by, in the opposite direction. "Are they coming back already?" demanded the little prince. "These are not the same ones," said the switchman. "It is an exchange." "Were they not satisfied where they were?" asked the little prince. "No one is ever satisfied where he is," said the switchman. And they heard the roaring thunder of a third brilliantly lighted express. "Are they pursuing the first travelers?" demanded the little prince. "They are pursuing nothing at all," said the switchman. "They are asleep in there, or if they are not asleep they are yawning. Only the children are flattening their noses against the windowpanes." "Only the children know what they are looking for," said the little prince. "They waste their time over a rag doll and it becomes very important to them; and if anybody takes it away from them, they cry . . ." "They are lucky," the switchman said.

We left for the tour the next morning. I spent the entire coach journey (several hours) texting Toby about everything that I saw and heard. He probably replied about once every ten texts, but I didn't care; it was more for my own amusement than to entertain him.

That was when Junior snapped. He jumped up and grabbed Harris by the throat with one hand, lifting him off the ground like a rag doll. His other hand was pulled back in a fist, ready to unleash his fury onto Harris’s face. All of a sudden, my big-talking brother-in-law looked like he wanted to shit his pants. He glanced at me, but I had nothing for him. I’d already warned him. He should have known better than to call Sonya outside her name. “You call her a bitch again and I’ll make my sister a widow. You understand me?

I am, in large measure, the selfsame prose I write. I unroll myself in sentences and paragraphs, I punctuate myself. In my arranging and rearranging of images I’m like a child using newspaper to dress up as a king, and in the way I create rhythm with a series of words I’m like a lunatic adorning my hair with dried flowers that are still alive in his dreams. And above all I’m calm, like a rag doll that has become conscious of itself and occasionally shakes its head to make the tiny bell on top of its pointed cap (a component part of the same head) produce a sound, the jingling life of a dead man, a feeble notice to Fate.

Through all these times and formative young years, Lara, my sister, was a rock to me. My mother had suffered three miscarriages after having Lara, and eight years on she was convinced that she wasn’t going to be able to have more children. But Mum got pregnant, and she tells me she spent nine months in bed to make sure she didn’t miscarry. It worked. Mum saved me. The end result, though, was that she was probably pleased to get me out, and that Lara finally got herself a precious baby brother; or in effect, her own baby. So Lara ended up doing everything for me, and I adored her for it. While Mum was a busy working mother, helping my father in his constituency duties and beyond, Lara became my surrogate mum. She fed me almost every supper I ate--from when I was a baby up to about five years old. She changed my nappies, she taught me to speak, then to walk (which, with so much attention from her, of course happened ridiculously early). She taught me how to get dressed and to brush my teeth. In essence, she got me to do all the things that either she had been too scared to do herself or that just simply intrigued her, such as eating raw bacon or riding a tricycle down a steep hill with no brakes. I was the best rag doll of a baby brother that she could have ever dreamt of.

In Homo sapiens, the brain accounts for about 2–3 per cent of total body weight, but it consumes 25 per cent of the body’s energy when the body is at rest. By comparison, the brains of other apes require only 8 per cent of rest-time energy. Archaic humans paid for their large brains in two ways. Firstly, they spent more time in search of food. Secondly, their muscles atrophied. Like a government diverting money from defence to education, humans diverted energy from biceps to neurons. It’s hardly a foregone conclusion that this is a good strategy for survival on the savannah. A chimpanzee can’t win an argument with a Homo sapiens, but the ape can rip the man apart like a rag doll. Today our big brains pay off nicely, because we can produce cars and guns that enable us to move much faster than chimps, and shoot them from a safe distance instead of wrestling.

I saw Kate becoming a jointed doll on which certain rags are hung,” Mantel wrote, adding that the duchess appeared like a “shop-window mannequin, with no personality of her own, entirely defined by what she wore.” A harsh observation to be sure, but also a truth most find hard to swallow. Like Diana, Kate became a sparkling showpiece for the Firm, a symbol of refined beauty and those white, English Rose genetics the British newspapers love so much. Freya in an Emilia Wickstead coat dress.

I'm not stupid, Malek," he said softly. "I know I'm in trouble. Big trouble. Jackson…" He closed his eyes and took a heavy breath before continuing. "Mating Jackson has awakened everything I felt for Kat after she died. It's like I'm feeling it all over again." He slowly swirled his drink, making the ice clink the sides of the glass. "And he doesn't love me. He never did. I can hear his thoughts and know there's someone else. I see what they do with one another, but there's nothing I can do to stop him, and yet I can't walk away." He lifted his gaze to Malek's and saw complete and total understanding reflected back at him. Like any other male of their species, Malek knew Micah was between the proverbial rock and a hard place. Micah looked back down into his glass. "It's just a matter of time, Malek." A matter of time before his mental faculties short-circuited and tossed him like a rag doll into suffering so intense he'd be lucky to remember his own name when the end came. Malek's

What would it be like to fall all that way? Would you scream? Would you have time to shut your eyes before you hit the ground? And when you landed, you would look like a crumpled thing – not real, kind of like a rag doll in clothes – and one of your shoes would have fallen off and you wouldn’t move at all. There wouldn't be much blood, only a thin trickle from the corner of your mouth. People would rush over to you, bend over you, and someone would pull out a mobile phone and call an ambulance. By the time the ambulance arrived, a small gaggle of bystanders would have formed and one of the would be looking up, pointing at the third-floor balcony. When the ambulance arrived, the green paramedics would put a fat white collar around your neck, press your chest and blow in your mouth. But after a while they would stop, look at their watches, write something down, lift you onto a stretcher, replace your missing shoe, smooth down your skirt, then cover you with a white sheet and lift you into the ambulance. And you would never see her again.

The summer of 1999, we went on holiday to Spain to visit my cousin Penny, who runs a horse farm in Andalucia. It is a beautiful, wild part of the country. Shara would ride out early each day in the hilly pine forests and along the miles of huge, deserted Atlantic beaches. I was told I was too tall for the small Andalucian ponies. But I didn’t want to be deterred. Instead I ran alongside Shara and tried to keep up with the horse. (Good training, that one.) Eventually, on the Monday morning we were to leave, I took her down to the beach and persuaded her to come skinny-dipping with me. She agreed. (With some more eye-rolling.) As we started to get out after swimming for some time, I pulled her toward me, held her in my arms, and prepared to ask for her hand in marriage. I took a deep breath, steadied myself, and as I was about to open my mouth, a huge Atlantic roller pounded in, picked us both up, and rolled us like rag dolls along the beach. Laughing, I went for take two. She still had no idea what was coming. Finally, I got the words out. She didn’t believe me. She made me kneel on the sand (naked) and ask her again. She laughed--then burst into tears and said yes. (Ironically, on our return, Brian, Shara’s father, also burst into tears when I asked him for his blessing. For that one, though, I was dressed in a jacket, tie, and…board shorts.) I was unsure whether his were tears of joy or despair. What really mattered was that Shara and I were going to get married.

After you've been to bed together for the first time, without the advantage or disadvantage of any prior acquaintance, the other party very often says to you, Tell me about yourself, I want to know all about you, what's your story? And you think maybe they really and truly do sincerely want to know your life story, and so you light up a cigarette and begin to tell it to them, the two of you lying together in completely relaxed positions like a pair of rag dolls a bored child dropped on a bed. You tell them your story, or as much of your story as time or a fair degree of prudence allows, and they say, Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, each time a little more faintly, until the oh is just an audible breath, and then of course there's some interruption. Slow room service comes up with a bowl of melting ice cubes, or one of you rises to pee and gaze at himself with the mild astonishment in the bathroom mirror. And then, the first thing you know, before you've had time to pick up where you left off with your enthralling life story, they're telling you their life story, exactly as they'd intended to all along, and you're saying, Oh, oh, oh, oh, oh, each time a little more faintly, the vowel at last becoming no more than an audible sigh, as the elevator, halfway down the corridor and a turn to the left, draws one last, long, deep breath of exhaustion and stops breathing forever. Then? Well, one of you falls asleep and the other one does likewise with a lighted cigarette in his mouth, and that's how people burn to death in hotel rooms.

Half-way into the stuck substance of sky clay-white dome of the day-moon pokes... Unkempt and in rags as I am my girl's dressed all in dots: in skirts and flowery blouses I spin her round and tie bows in little doll shoes to match her tails asking even dogs how she looks— stupidly, doting on her…. By amber candlelit warmth, I played cards in your sisters’ ambience: it was like you said: the warmth of their smiles charmed me, their enfolding talk, and eyes that wink…. A field of grass lay half-way between boughs and the sky I contemplate the clouds… solid and amassed, clouds topple on top of clouds clouds up into peaks culminate and yet are only clouds dissolving to a shroud and shadow in the sky…. Shh!— past sapling fleets and swift trunks she sprints quickly on feet and calves and finds me where I lounge, painting clouds— in her glass head radiant eyes like blue-glass shine blushing color bleeds lustrous through her cheeks to hover and float, floating just beneath the skin…. On my second helping of leek- and-potato stew, ladled like melting goo in my bowl— I watched you, bobbing, in the solving resolve of their womb-like steadiness, cooing and aspiring…. Insulating sun lushens in the grass— already afternoon shadows long out…. Root-grip to root-grip ahead I mark twists in the trail by way of the young-girl bulbs of her legs the deep churning spread of her waist swimming in my head and in my head quietly drowning…. Harvest-time’s swelling our baskets— spring in the fruiting grove… with her mouth stained red in seeded-berries and those cheeks just-flushed in blood, I'll pounce high on that raised bounce of her waist….

longer; it cannot deceive them too much." Madame Defarge looked superciliously at the client, and nodded in confirmation. "As to you," said she, "you would shout and shed tears for anything, if it made a show and a noise. Say! Would you not?" "Truly, madame, I think so. For the moment." "If you were shown a great heap of dolls, and were set upon them to pluck them to pieces and despoil them for your own advantage, you would pick out the richest and gayest. Say! Would you not?" "Truly yes, madame." "Yes. And if you were shown a flock of birds, unable to fly, and were set upon them to strip them of their feathers for your own advantage, you would set upon the birds of the finest feathers; would you not?" "It is true, madame." "You have seen both dolls and birds to-day," said Madame Defarge, with a wave of her hand towards the place where they had last been apparent; "now, go home!" XVI. Still Knitting Madame Defarge and monsieur her husband returned amicably to the bosom of Saint Antoine, while a speck in a blue cap toiled through the darkness, and through the dust, and down the weary miles of avenue by the wayside, slowly tending towards that point of the compass where the chateau of Monsieur the Marquis, now in his grave, listened to the whispering trees. Such ample leisure had the stone faces, now, for listening to the trees and to the fountain, that the few village scarecrows who, in their quest for herbs to eat and fragments of dead stick to burn, strayed within sight of the great stone courtyard and terrace staircase, had it borne in upon their starved fancy that the expression of the faces was altered. A rumour just lived in the village—had a faint and bare existence there, as its people had—that when the knife struck home, the faces changed, from faces of pride to faces of anger and pain; also, that when that dangling figure was hauled up forty feet above the fountain, they changed again, and bore a cruel look of being avenged, which they would henceforth bear for ever. In the stone face over the great window of the bed-chamber where the murder was done, two fine dints were pointed out in the sculptured nose, which everybody recognised, and which nobody had seen of old; and on the scarce occasions when two or three ragged peasants emerged from the crowd to take a hurried peep at Monsieur the Marquis petrified, a skinny finger would not have pointed to it for a minute, before they all started away among the moss and leaves, like the more fortunate hares who could find a living there. Chateau and hut, stone face and dangling figure, the red stain on the stone floor, and the pure water in the village well—thousands of acres of land—a whole province of France—all France itself—lay under the night sky, concentrated into a faint hair-breadth line. So does a whole world, with all its greatnesses and littlenesses, lie in a twinkling star. And as mere human knowledge can split a ray of light and analyse the manner of its composition, so, sublimer intelligences may read in the feeble shining of this earth of ours, every thought and act, every vice and virtue, of every responsible

While Mum was a busy working mother, helping my father in his constituency duties and beyond, Lara became my surrogate mum. She fed me almost every supper I ate--from when I was a baby up to about five years old. She changed my nappies, she taught me to speak, then to walk (which, with so much attention from her, of course happened ridiculously early). She taught me how to get dressed and to brush my teeth. In essence, she got me to do all the things that either she had been too scared to do herself or that just simply intrigued her, such as eating raw bacon or riding a tricycle down a steep hill with no brakes. I was the best rag doll of a baby brother that she could have ever dreamt of. It is why we have always been so close. To her, I am still her little baby brother. And I love her for that. But--and this is the big but--growing up with Lara, there was never a moment’s peace. Even from day one, as a newborn babe in the hospital’s maternity ward, I was paraded around, shown off to anyone and everyone--I was my sister’s new “toy.” And it never stopped. It makes me smile now, but I am sure it is why in later life I craved the peace and solitude that mountains and the sea bring. I didn’t want to perform for anyone, I just wanted space to grow and find myself among all the madness. It took a while to understand where this love of the wild came from, but in truth it probably developed from the intimacy found with my father on the shores of Northern Ireland and the will to escape a loving but bossy elder sister. (God bless her!) I can joke about this nowadays with Lara, and through it all she still remains my closest ally and friend; but she is always the extrovert, wishing she could be on the stage or on the chat show couch, where I tend just to long for quiet times with my friends and family. In short, Lara would be much better at being famous than me. She sums it up well, I think: Until Bear was born I hated being the only child--I complained to Mum and Dad that I was lonely. It felt weird not having a brother or sister when all my friends had them. Bear’s arrival was so exciting (once I’d got over the disappointment of him being a boy, because I’d always wanted a sister!). But the moment I set eyes on him, crying his eyes out in his crib, I thought: That’s my baby. I’m going to look after him. I picked him up, he stopped crying, and from then until he got too big, I dragged him around everywhere.

He nodded against my neck and his hands came around to cup my breasts, grinding into me again from behind. I ground back. He moaned, slipping a hand down the front of my panties. “Tell me what you like,” he whispered against my ear, moving against me. Oh my fucking God… What didn’t I like? It had been so long and I was so deprived I was afraid he was going to finish me right there. My body began to tremble at the build. I couldn’t take it anymore. He seemed to sense it because he pulled his fingers back right before I disintegrated in his hand, and he laid me down on the bed, sliding over me. He hovered on his forearms and ran a thick, muscular thigh up between my legs until it hit my core and I sucked in air against his lips. Oh my God, he was so good at this… And he fucking knew it. He smiled and kissed me, his tongue darting in my mouth, his rough hands canvassing my skin like he wanted to feel every inch of me. I did the same. It felt so good to touch him. My eyes had spent so much time learning his body, and my hands wanted to map him. I ran fingers along his chest, over the curve of his broad freckled shoulders, down the muscles of his back, along the valley of his spine. I breathed in his scent as I grabbed his firm ass and pulled him into me and he groaned, rubbing hard against my leg. I couldn’t believe this was real, that I got to touch him, that he was kissing me, that there was nothing between us but my thin G-string. His bare skin pressing into mine was the most exquisite feeling of my life, a million nerve endings connecting with his, little electrical shocks that merged into one huge surge. He sat up and kneeled between my legs, picking up my foot and putting it on his shoulder. The view was fucking spectacular. The definition of his chest continued down with a line of hair into a V muscle that pointed at his divine penis like an arrow. I reached out and took him in my hand and his breathing went ragged. My gaze came back up to his hooded eyes. He kissed my ankle and I watched him do it, biting my lip, stroking him, my need unraveling into something so starved I wanted to beg him to have mercy on me and just fuck me already. I thought of the way he’d touched me in the car, his strong hands massaging my calf, and I couldn’t help but feel like he was continuing something he started earlier. He ran his palms from my ankle, behind my knee, up my thigh, and he hooked my panties in his thumbs and pulled them down and off. Then he balled them in his hand, shut his eyes, and put them to his nose, breathing in. When his eyes opened again, they’d gone primal. He came at me like a wild animal. He lowered onto me, his jaw clenched tight, every muscle of his body tense, and I lifted my hips. He held my gaze as he eased himself in, slow and deliberate, and I wrapped my legs around his waist, feral with need, frantically urging him deeper. One… Two… I wasn’t going to last a minute and it was all overload, his naked body pressed to mine, the feel of him inside me, rhythmically thrusting against my core, deeper and deeper, his quivering breath over my collarbone, his hips grinding between my legs, his scent, his sounds, the heat of his skin, the rocking of the bed, the moaning in my throat—my back arched and I fell apart at the same time he did, clutching at everything, pulling him into me, pulsing with his release. He collapsed on top of me and I was decimated. I lay there like a rag doll, twitching with aftershocks. He gasped for breath, his face by my ear. “Holy…fucking…shit,” he panted. I just nodded. I couldn’t even speak. I’d never had sex that good. Never in my life—and I’d had my share of good sex. It was like we’d been foreplaying for weeks and I’d been sexually malnourished, starving, waiting for him to feed me.

Like A Rolling Stone" Once upon a time you dressed so fine You threw the bums a dime in your prime, didn't you? People'd call, say, "Beware doll, you're bound to fall" You thought they were all kiddin' you You used to laugh about Everybody that was hangin' out Now you don't talk so loud Now you don't seem so proud About having to be scrounging for your next meal How does it feel? How does it feel To be without a home Like a complete unknown Like a rolling stone? You've gone to the finest school all right, Miss Lonely But you know you only used to get juiced in it And nobody's ever taught you how to live out on the street And now you're gonna have to get used to it You said you'd never compromise With the mystery tramp, but now you realize He's not selling any alibis As you stare into the vacuum of his eyes And say do you want to make a deal? How does it feel? How does it feel To be on your own With no direction home A complete unknown Like a rolling stone? You never turned around to see the frowns on the jugglers and the clowns When they all did tricks for you You never understood that it ain't no good You shouldn't let other people get your kicks for you You used to ride on the chrome horse with your diplomat Who carried on his shoulder a Siamese cat Ain't it hard when you discover that He really wasn't where it's at After he took from you everything he could steal How does it feel? How does it feel To be on your own With no direction home Like a complete unknown Like a rolling stone? Princess on the steeple and all the pretty people They're all drinkin', thinkin' that they got it made Exchanging all precious gifts But you'd better take your diamond ring, you'd better pawn it babe You used to be so amused At Napoleon in rags and the language that he used Go to him now, he calls you, you can't refuse When you ain't got nothing, you got nothing to lose You're invisible now, you got no secrets to conceal How does it feel How does it feel To be on your own With no direction home Like a complete unknown Like a rolling stone? Bob Dylan, Highway 61 Revisited (1965)

If it were any of the other Sharpes, he wouldn’t balk. But the idea of spending serveral hours in her company was both intoxicating and terrifying. “If you don’t let me go along,” she continued, “I’ll just follow you. He scowled at her. She probably would; the woman was as stubborn as she was beautiful. “And don’t think you can outride me, either,” she added. “Halstead Hall has a very good stable, and lady Bell is one of our swiftest mounts.” “Lady Bell?” he said sarcastically. “Not Crack Shot or Pistol?” She glared over at him. “Lady Bell was my favorite doll when I was a girl, the last one Mama gave me before she died. I used to play with it whenever I wanted to remember her. The doll got so ragged that I threw her away when I outgrew her.” Her voice lowered. “I regretted that later, but by then it was too late.” The idea of her playing with a doll to remember her late mother made his throat tighten and his heart falter. “Fine,” he bit out. “You can go with me to High Wycombe.” Surprise turned her cheeks rosy. “Oh, thank you, Jackson! You won’t regret it, I promise you!” “I already regret it,” he grumbled. “And you must do as I say. None of your going off half-cocked, do you hear?” “I never go off half-cocked!” “No, you just walk around with a pistol packed full of powder, thinking you can hold men at bay with it.” She tossed her head. “You’ll never let me forget that, will you?” “Not as long as we both shall live.” The minute the words left his lips, he could have kicked himself. They sounded too much like a vow, one he’d give anything for the right to make. Fortunately, she didn’t seem to have noticed. Instead, she was squirming and shimmying about on her saddle. “Are you all right?” he asked. “I’ve got a burr caught in my stocking that keeps rubbing against my leg. I’m just trying to work it out. Don’t mind me.” His mouth went dry at her mention of stockings. It brought yesterday’s encounter vividly into his mind, how he’d lifted her skirts to reach the smooth expanse of calf encased in silk. How he’d run his hands up her thighs as his mouth had tasted- God save him. He couldn’t be thinking about such things while riding. He shifted uncomfortably in the saddle as they reached the road and settled into a comfortable pace. The road was busy at this early hour. The local farmers were driving their carts to market or town, and laborers were headed for the fields. To Jackson’s relief, that made it easy not to talk. Conversaing with her was bound to be difficult, especially if she started consulting him about her suitors.

PANG LIVED in an obscure district off On Nuch and to reach his house required a long drive down some narrow dirt tracks. Dust rose up from the ground as Nigel was thrown around in the back like a rag doll. Eventually they arrived at a row of painted houses and parked outside one painted blue. Nigel stepped out, tidied his hair in the wing mirror then followed Pang to the house. “That’s a nice shade of blue.” “I like blue,” Pang drawled. Nigel followed Pang to the front door and watched as Pang fiddled with his keys and connected with the lock. Stepping in, Pang flicked off his shoes and waited for Nigel to do something similar. Pang then pointed upstairs. “We better be quiet; Tuk sleeping.” They crept into the house on tip-toes and just as they were reaching the staircase, a light came on. They froze in their steps. A tall Thai lady stood at the top of the stairs looking down. She had short, brown hair, long legs and high, curvy hips. “I can see you.

wind threw them down and rolled them across the ground like rag dolls [hiking Gran Sasso in Italy]

She lay curled up on the ground, one scrawny hand held out as if begging, the other clutching a doll as ragged as she. But her mouth was open, her eyes wide, unblinking. There was a bullet hole in her forehead that looked like a third eye. A dark bruise on her upturned cheek. Gittel had such a dress once, he thought. That blue. Even as he walked on, his eyes filled with tears. A line of a poem sledgehammered into his startled mind. Dance on the streets of Heaven, for you shall never dance here again.

A chimpanzee can’t win an argument with a Homo sapiens, but the ape can rip the man apart like a rag doll.

She’d had plenty of time to mould dream-Herren into the perfect man. But she’d never been able to finish the job of falling in love with him. It wasn’t just that Voracity periodically destroyed her favorite figment. It was that Herren, like the rag doll, had no choice in his actions. If she told him to capture the moon for her, he got a net and fished it out of the sky. If she wanted him to kiss her, he pressed his lips to hers as gently or urgently as she preferred. But it was a kiss without a spark, as self-referential as kissing a pillow. She could create her figments with any appearance, but she could not give them wills of their own. Without that, love was only the fondness the artist had for her favorite sketch.

Dressing somebody is easier than letting them dress themselves. It takes less time. It's less aggravation." So unless supporting people's capabilities is made a priority, the staff ends up dressing people like they're rag dolls. Gradually, that's how everything begins to go. The tasks come to matter more than the people.

He sprays the antiseptic on my skin. It burns and I grit my teeth. Grover lightly blows on my scrape, his breath making the pain go away. He dabs the Neosporin on my skin. I bite my lower lip, tears welling in my eyes. It's like everything inside of me hurts and feels euphoric at the same time. And I don't know how to feel like this. It was easy with Coop because he made me feel nothing. I'm a rag doll with him. But with Grover, it's as if every one of my senses lights up. Like I'm on fire and covered in water and floating in the air all at the same time.

You love your Fruit Loops, don't you?

After the last long, helpless shudders had faded, Kathleen fell back on the velvet cushions like a rag doll that someone had tossed aside. Devon kept his mouth on her, easing the pleasure into relaxation. She summoned just enough strength to reach out and caress his hair. That might have been worth going to hell for, she thought, and didn't realize she had mumbled it aloud until she felt him smile.

We’ve got a problem, Snape,” said the lumpy Amycus, whose eyes and wand were fixed alike upon Dumbledore, “the boy doesn’t seem able —” But somebody else had spoken Snape’s name, quite softly. “Severus . . .” The sound frightened Harry beyond anything he had experienced all evening. For the first time, Dumbledore was pleading. Snape said nothing, but walked forward and pushed Malfoy roughly out of the way. The three Death Eaters fell back without a word. Even the werewolf seemed cowed. Snape gazed for a moment at Dumbledore, and there was revulsion and hatred etched in the harsh lines of his face. “Severus . . . please . . .” Snape raised his wand and pointed it directly at Dumbledore. “Avada Kedavra!” A jet of green light shot from the end of Snape’s wand and hit Dumbledore squarely in the chest. Harry’s scream of horror never left him; silent and unmoving, he was forced to watch as Dumbledore was blasted into the air. For a split second, he seemed to hang suspended beneath the shining skull, and then he fell slowly backward, like a great rag doll, over the battlements and out of sight.

But Darling wouldn't even let him cling to those small brutalities. He touched Aumont gently and held him quietly, replaced those memories with something much kinder. Aumont reached up and caught his wrist. Guided Daeling's hand down so that he could kiss his palm. It was all he could think to offer, an echo of what Darling had given him earlier. He left his lips pressed to the warm, callused skin for several long seconds. And then he held onto Darling's hand, keeping it close to his chest as a babe might hold onto some necessary comfort -a blanket or a rag doll- and. eventually, fell asleep.

Jane Says" Jane says I'm done with Sergio He treat me like a rag-doll She hides The television Says I don't owe him nothing, But if he come back again Tell him, wait right here for me Or Try again tomorrow I'm gonna kick tomorrow I'm gonna kick tomorrow She get mad and she start to cry She take a swing man She can't hit She don't mean no harm She just don't know (Don't know, don't know) What else to do about it Jane says Have you seen my wig around? I feel naked without it She knows They all want her to go But that's O.K. man She don't like them anyway Jane says I'm going away to Spain When I get my money saved I'm gonna start tomorrow I'm gonna kick tomorrow I'm gonna kick tomorrow Jane goes To the store at 8:00 She walks up on St. Andrew's She waits And gets her dinner there She pulls her dinner From her pocket Jane says I ain't never been in love I don't know what it is She only knows if someone wants her I wonder if they want me I only know they want me She gets mad And she starts to cry She takes a swing man She can't hit! She don't mean no harm She just don't know (Don't know, don't know) What else to do about it Jane says Jane says Jane's Addiction, Jane's Addiction (1987)

Mere seconds before the dreaming phase begins, and for as long as that REM-sleep period lasts, you are completely paralyzed. There is no tone in the voluntary muscles of your body. None whatsoever. If I were to quietly come into the room and gently lift up your body without waking you, it would be completely limp, like a rag doll. Rest assured that your involuntary muscles—those that control automatic operations such as breathing—continue to operate and maintain life during sleep. But all other muscles become lax.

Bingley shook his sister until she wobbled like a rag doll. “Caroline! Get control of yourself, for God’s sake!

That must be rough, wanting to be the rag doll, wishing you were the ragged thing, when all you did wrong was be too perfect.

But the wavering and finding of the realm door didn’t give him much of his expectation, and his long waiting and wondering turned into some more horrific. He had experienced the perception of something’s presence but couldn’t identify what could be around, he knew something in the dark is watching over him, and once encountered a streak of red glow. He was snatched from behind, a big jaw that gripped his shoulder, he had the chance to catch a glimpse of the strong beast, but his fear of the encounter shut him to unawareness and unconsciousness. Zenie boy was dragged like a rag doll farther from the original spot where the realm door had emerged...but unaware to both the beast and the boy, the realm door emerges again.

Imogen came so hard, every muscle in her body locked up. And still he fucked her. On and on it went, through another orgasm, two, three, until her body gave out and she went lip like a rag doll.

Cade bursts through the back door, stalking straight into the kitchen, looking like some sort of avenging cowboy, angry and wearing black, the sun shining in from behind him. “Why are the boys in the bunkhouse talkin’ about you getting rag-dolled by a fuckin’ bull last night?

She didn't know where these visions came from or why they would come. Perhaps it was a side effect of whatever process Dr. Finkelstein had used to bring her to life. Or maybe the old brain he'd stuffed in her head had been psychic when it belonged to its person. Or maybe it was just a rag doll thing; she had no other doll friends to compare to, so she couldn't be sure. But while she didn't know why the visions came and she couldn't predict when they would come, she was sure of one thing. They were usually trying to tell her something. Something important. And she needed to pay attention.

After a while I began to see that the horror was more elusive, that it included more than just betrayals and denials and being yanked around in Shier's bed like a rag doll. The enduring horror was that I had learned to accommodate brutalization.

Ma and Pa stood over Jake as he sat on the ground, catching his breath and still holding Emmie’s rag doll.