Skeleton Woman Quotes

Despite wanting me to end her life, after a short while, Mrs Sloan fought back with surprising strength for such a small woman. Being close to death changed people, I guess, like drinking alcohol or someone saying your handwriting is beautiful changes you.

Everybody's got skeletons in the closets. Every once in a while, you've got to open up the closet and the let the skeletons breathe. Half the time, the very thing you think is gonna destroy you or ruin you is the very thing that nobody cares about. My advice to people with skeletons is to dust them off every now and then-- as long as your closet's aint full of them. It's not good to have more than two or three.

You know when true equality will be achieved? When a woman with...skeletons in her closet has the nerve to run for office.

in better company, they found among all those hideous carcasses two skeletons, one of which held the other in its embrace. One of these skeletons, which was that of a woman, still had a few strips of a garment which had once been white, and around her neck was to be seen a string of adrezarach beads with a little silk bag ornamented with green glass, which was open and empty. These objects were of so little value that the executioner had probably not cared for them. The other, which held this one in a close embrace, was the skeleton of a man. It was noticed that his spinal column was crooked, his head seated on his shoulder blades, and that one leg was shorter than the other. Moreover, there was no fracture of the vertebrae at the nape of the neck, and it was evident that he had not been hanged. Hence, the man to whom it had belonged had come thither and had died there. When they tried to detach the skeleton which he held in his embrace, he fell to dust.

From her very flesh and blood and from the constant cycles of filling and emptying the red vase in her belly, a woman understands physically, emotionally, and spiritually that zeniths fade and expire, and what is left is reborn in unexpected ways and by inspired means, only to fall back to nothing, and yet be reconceived again in full glory.

Growing up feels like your skin no longer fits. Like you just want to crawl out of that thinly stretched space and lay down in the grass and sob for hours. Instead, I am in a cafe eating lunch and trying not to scream. Looking around wondering if anyone else in this building is doing the same thing, wondering if they ever have and, if so, how they got through it. Maybe I would calm down if I just had the assurance that other people have looked in the mirror and no longer recognized themselves. Maybe if I could sit across the table from an elderly woman and have her tell me that she lived through days where the covers over her head felt even better than an embrace and weeks where she drank her tears to keep from wetting her shirt sleeves, but that those years shaped her into an iron skeleton with a tender heart. That “worth it” was an understatement. Maybe then I would feel okay.

If you think you’re immune to my charms, you’re fooling yourself.” I pull my hand away and ignore how fiercely it tingles as I place it in my lap. “So, you don’t think any woman can resist you?” “I’m sure plenty of women could. But you? No. You’re so starved of romance in your life, you’re like an emotional skeleton. I intend to put some meat back on your bones. Make you believe in something other than a bleak apocalypse.

I always sense the future, the antithesis of everything is always before my eyes. I have never seen a child without thinking that it would grow old, nor a cradle without thinking of a grave. The sight of a naked woman makes me imagine her skeleton.

We all begin as a bundle of bones lost somewhere in a desert, a dismantled skeleton that lies under the sand. It is our work to recover the parts. It is a painstaking process best done when the shadows are just right, for it takes much looking. La Loba indicates what we are to look for—the indestructible life force, the bones.

That’s a very long story that doesn’t need telling to a woman I’m trying to impress.”               She felt her face grow warm. “There’s not a lot that impresses me.”               “Give it a bit. I expect that’ll change.”   ~*~

Since my daughter died I am perfectly aware of death's proximity; and now, in my seventies, death is my friend. It's not true that she looks like a skeleton armed with a scythe and trailed by a rotten odor; she is a mature and elegant lady who smells of gardenias. At first she was lurking in the neighborhood, then in the house next door, and now she is waiting patiently in my garden. Sometimes, when I pass in fornt of her, we greet each and she reminds me that I should enjoy this day as if it were my last.

Was this the secret to everything? This bodily freedom? It felt intuitive and healthy, as if promiscuity was my birthright as a woman. Maybe it was. Was this the skeleton in civilization’s closet? The reason why men had come down so hard on us since the start of time?

In the opening scene of the film, Bond glides through the mêlée in a skeleton mask and tux and slips into a hotel with a masked woman. Except, here’s the trick. The Días de los Muertos parade did not inspire the James Bond film. The James Bond film inspired the parade. The Mexican government, afraid that people around the world would see the film and expect that the parade exists when it did not, recruited 1,200 volunteers and spent a year re-creating the four-hour pageant.

have you heard the sex party rumor?” She winced and said, “It actually does sound familiar.” I had the impulse to shake my head, but I didn’t want to mess up Veronica’s handiwork. I said, “You know when true equality will be achieved? When a woman with these kinds of skeletons in her closet has the nerve to run for office.” 2004

She gazed around at all of us. “Prepare to meet your God!” “Prepare to meet shit,” Myron LaFleur said in a drunken snarl from the beer cooler. “Old woman, I believe your tongue must be hung in the middle so it can run on both ends.

You. Man at the machine and man in the workshop. If tomorrow they tell you you are to make no more water-pipes and saucepans but are to make steel helmets and machine-guns, then there's only one thing to do: Say NO! You. Woman at the counter and woman in the office. If tomorrow they tell you you are to fill shells and assemble telescopic sights for snipers' rifles, then there's only one thing to do: Say NO! You. Research worker in the laboratory. If tomorrow they tell you you are to invent a new death for the old life, then there's only one thing to do: Say NO! You. Priest in the pulpit. If tomorrow they tell you you are to bless murder and declare war holy, then there's only one thing to do: Say NO! You. Pilot in your aeroplane. If tomorrow they tell you you are to carry bombs over the cities, then there's only one thing to do: Say NO! You. Man of the village and man of the town. If tomorrow they come and give you your call-up papers, then there's only one thing to do: Say NO! You. Mother in Normandy and mother in the Ukraine, mother in Vancouver and in London, you on the Hwangho and on the Mississippi, you in Naples and Hamburg and Cairo and Oslo - mothers in all parts of the earth, mothers of the world, if tomorrow they tell you you are to bear new soldiers for new battles, then there's only one thing to do: Say NO! For if you do not say NO - if YOU do not say no - mothers, then: then! In the bustling hazy harbour towns the big ships will fall silent as corpses against the dead deserted quay walls, their once shimmering bodies overgrown with seaweed and barnacles, smelling of graveyards and rotten fish. The trams will lie like senseless glass-eyed cages beside the twisted steel skeleton of wires and track. The sunny juicy vine will rot on decaying hillsides, rice will dry in the withered earth, potatoes will freeze in the unploughed land and cows will stick their death-still legs into the air like overturned chairs. In the fields beside rusted ploughs the corn will be flattened like a beaten army. Then the last human creature, with mangled entrails and infected lungs, will wander around, unanswered and lonely, under the poisonous glowing sun, among the immense mass graves and devastated cities. The last human creature, withered, mad, cursing, accusing - and the terrible accusation: WHY? will die unheard on the plains, drift through the ruins, seep into the rubble of churches, fall into pools of blood, unheard, unanswered, the last animal scream of the last human animal - All this will happen tomorrow, tomorrow, perhaps, perhaps even tonight, perhaps tonight, if - if - You do not say NO.

Because of course everyone was so soft and hard. Skeleton and skin. But women claimed for themselves the province of softness, which men cast off. maybe it was easier to say you liked it in a woman. But really, maybe you wished you had it yourself.

This young woman,” said Diana, “was responsible for the destruction of the Triumvirate’s fleet.” “Well, I had a lot of help,” Lavinia said. “I don’t understand,” I said, turning to Lavinia. “You made all those mortars malfunction?” Lavinia looked offended. “Well, yeah. Somebody had to stop the fleet. I did pay attention during siege-weapon class and ship-boarding class. It wasn’t that hard. All it took was a little fancy footwork.” Hazel finally managed to pick her jaw off the pavement. “Wasn’t that hard?” “We were motivated! The fauns and dryads did great.” She paused, her expression momentarily clouding, as if she remembered something unpleasant. “Um…besides, the Nereids helped a lot. There was only a skeleton crew aboard each yacht. Not, like, actual skeletons, but—you know what I mean. Also, look!” She pointed proudly at her feet, which were now adorned with the shoes of Terpsichore from Caligula’s private collection. “You mounted an amphibious assault on an enemy fleet,” I said, “for a pair of shoes.” Lavinia huffed. “Not just for the shoes, obviously.” She tap-danced a routine that would’ve made Savion Glover proud. “Also to save the camp, and the nature spirits, and Michael Kahale’s commandos.” Hazel held up her hands to stop the overflow of information. “Wait. Not to be a killjoy—I mean, you did an amazing thing!—but you still deserted your post, Lavinia. I certainly didn’t give you permission —” “I was acting on praetor’s orders,” Lavinia said haughtily. “In fact, Reyna helped. She was knocked out for a while, healing, but she woke up in time to instill us with the power of Bellona, right before we boarded those ships. Made us all strong and stealthy and stuff.” Hazel asked, “Is it true about Lavinia acting on your orders?” Reyna glanced at our pink-haired friend. The praetor’s pained expression said something like, I respect you a lot, but I also hate you for being right. “Yes,” Reyna managed to say. “Plan L was my idea. Lavinia and her friends acted on my orders. They performed heroically.” Lavinia beamed. “See? I told you.” The assembled crowd murmured in amazement, as if, after a day full of wonders, they had finally witnessed something that could not be explained.

Then she laughed, kind of soft, and she gave me a kiss. That was the best kiss I ever had in my whole life. It was just on the cheek, and it was the chaste kiss of a married woman, but it was as ripe as a peach, or like those flowers that open in the dark, and when her lips touched my skin I felt like...I don't know exactly what I felt like, because a man can't easily hold on to those things that happened to him with a girl who was ripe when the world was young or how those things felt...Those things all get a red cast to them in your memory and you cannot see through it at all.

Good. Slowly, nerves as tight as bowstrings, she swept the weakening beam across the floor. Heart racing, ready to bolt, she tried to convince herself there was no one in the vault, no one but her and her own pounding pulse. She was wrong. A skeleton lay stretched upon a slab—a woman, she guessed, from its small size and the rotting nightgown and dark clumps of hair. “Oh, dear God.” The corpse had been here a while—teeth

But it had seemed, when Cory broke up with Greer, that she became like a piece of knotted wire. Where were the qualities he had loved in her? He had taken on some of them himself. Because of course everyone was soft and hard. Skeleton and skin. But women claimed for themselves the province of softness, which men cast off. Maybe it was easier to say you liked it in a woman. But really, maybe you wished you had it yourself.

I watched 60 Minutes...and they showed this woman, she's in every kind of..thing like that. 'This woman', they say, 'she lost her first four children--died from malnutrition--and, now, she's afraid that her new six-month-old newborn twins will suffer the same fate'. ... Who's going to step in and say...'kick her in the cunt 'til it doesn't work', 'that woman is a sociopath! that is a sick human being!'. ... How much of a sociopath do you need to be? That is the slow ritual torture-murder of children, one after another! At what point does cause-and-effect not kick in? How many bulb-headed skeletons have to go stiff in your arms?! ... 'what? this one's not working... oh, well let's try again', one after another. At what point do you not go 'I think this is bad'? ... How many kids are you going to fuckin' kill, lady? ... If you impregnate someone under those conditions, they should abort the parents! that's sick!

Dinah, who was extremely slim, showed it off to excess, and never knew a dull moment when it became ridiculous; when, reduced by the dull weariness of her life, she looked like a skeleton in clothes; and her friends, seeing her every day, did not observe the gradual change in her appearance. This is one of the natural results of a provincial life. In spite of marriage, a young woman preserves her beauty for some time, and the town is proud of her; but everybody sees her every day, and when people meet every day their perception is dulled.

The glove comes off, flops loosely over, and there's suddenly horror beating into his brain, smashing, pounding, battering. He reels a little in his chair, has to hold onto the edge of the table with both hands, at the impact of it. A clawlike thing - two of the finger extremities already bare of flesh as far as the second joint; two more with only shriveled, bloodless, rotting remnants of it adhering, only the thumb intact, and that already unhealthy-looking, flabby. A dead hand - the hand of a skeleton - on a still-living body. A body he was dancing with only a few minutes ago. A rank odor, a smell of decay, of the grave and of the tomb, hovers about the two of them now. A woman points from the next table, screams. She's seen it, too. She hides her face, cowers against her companion's shoulder, shudders. Then he sees it too. His collar's suddenly too tight for him. Others see it, one by one. A wave of impalpable horror spreads centrifugally from that thing lying there in the blazing electric light on O'Shaughnessy's table. The skeleton at the feast! ("Jane Brown's Body")

Perhaps I am here because of last night’s dream, when I stood on the frozen lake before a kayak made of sealskin. I walked on the ice toward the boat and picked up a handful of shredded hide and guts. An old Eskimo man said, “You have much to work with.” Suddenly, the kayak was stripped of its skin. It was a rib cage of willow. It was the skeleton of a fish. I want to see it for myself, wild exposure, in January, when this desert is most severe. The lake is like steel. I wrap my alpaca shawl tight around my face until only my eyes are exposed. I must keep walking to stay warm. Even the land is frozen. There is no give beneath my feet. I want to see the lake as Woman, as myself, in her refusal to be tamed. The State of Utah may try to dike her, divert her waters, build roads across her shores, but ultimately, it won’t matter. She will survive us. I recognize her as a wilderness, raw and self-defined. Great Salt Lake strips me of contrivances and conditioning, saying, “I am not what you see. Question me. Stand by your own impressions.” We are taught not to trust our own experiences. Great Salt Lake teaches me experience is all we have.

All in the wicked darkest eve In blood and shadows alike; We strive to live through mighty pain, By mighty arms unite, Oft mighty hands make plain romance, A traveling heart's plight. Ah, cruel Nine! In such an hour, Beneath such dreadful weather, To beg a tale of life so bleak To stir bound wings of feathers! Yet what can one lone voice avail Against ten tongues together? Imperious Alice tumbles forth Her edict “we will end it”— In wistful tones her people hope “There will be justice in it”— While her men carry on the tale And also help begin it. Shit, this sudden war's begun, In ire giving chase The young woman moving through a land Of wonders dark and base, In friendly tryst with man and beast— The darkness she would face. And ever, as the story changed The wells of knowledge lie, And hearty strove that weary one To put her subjects by, “I am not brave—” “True fear is fine!” The frightened voices cry. Thus grew the tale of Underland: Thus slowly, one by one, Its queer events are fucking wrote— The tale is far from done, And home is where, the girl may ask, As she debates to run. Alice! A terrifying story, And with a skeleton hand Lay it where graveyard's nightmares bury The rebels no longer stand, Like magic's withered throne of corpses Plucked from a far-off land.

He staggers through the forest. The burning forest. Bits of brush smoldering. A stormtrooper helmet nearby, charred and half melted. A small fire burns nearby. In the distance, the skeleton of an AT-AT walker. Its top blown open in the blast, peeled open like a metal flower. That burns, too. Bodies all around. Some of them are faceless, nameless. To him, at least. But others, he knows. Or knew. There—the fresh-faced officer, Cerk Lormin. Good kid. Eager to please. Joined the Empire because it’s what you did. Not a true believer, not by a long stretch. Not far from him: Captain Blevins. Definitely a true believer. A froth-mouthed braggart and bully, too. His face is a mask of blood. Sinjir is glad that one is dead. Nearby, a young woman: He knows her face from the mess, but not her name, and the insignia rank on her chest has been covered in blood. Whoever she was, she’s nobody now. Mulch for the forest. Food for the native Ewoks. Just stardust and nothing. We’re all stardust and nothing, he thinks. An absurd thought. But no less absurd than the one that follows: We did this to ourselves. He should blame them. The rebels. Even now he can hear them applauding. Firing blasters into the air. Hicks and yokels. Farm boy warriors and pipe-fitter pilots. Good for them. They deserve their celebration. Just as we deserve our graves.

One of these skeletons, which was that of a woman, still had a few strips of a garment which had once been white, and around her neck was to be seen a string of adrézarach beads with a little silk bag ornamented with green glass, which was open and empty. These objects were of so little value that the executioner had probably not cared for them. The other, which held this one in a close embrace, was the skeleton of a man. It was noticed that his spinal column was crooked, his head seated on his shoulder blades, and that one leg was shorter than the other. Moreover, there was no fracture of the vertebrae at the nape of the neck, and it was evident that he had not been hanged. Hence, the man to whom it had belonged had come thither and had died there. When they tried to detach the skeleton which he held in his embrace, he fell to dust.

But, I saw that everything within my view which ought to be white, had been white long ago, and had lost it luster, and was faded and yellow. I saw that the bride within the bridal dress had withered like the dress and like the flowers, and had no brightness left but the brightness of her sunken eyes. I saw that the dress had been put upon the rounded figure of a young woman, and that the figure upon which it now hung loose, had shrunk to skin and bone. Once, I had been taken to see some ghastly waxwork at the Fair, representing I know not what impossible personage lying in the state. Once, I had been taken to one of our old marsh churches to see a skeleton in the ashes of a rich dress, that had been dug out of a vault under the church pavement. Now, waxwork and skeleton seemed to have dark eyes that moved and looked at me. I should have cried out, if I could.

On May 21, 1941, Camp de Schirmeck, Natzweiler-Struthof, located 31 miles southwest of Strasbourg in the Vosges Mountains, was opened as the only Nazi Concentration Camp established on present day French territory. Intended to be a transit labor camp it held about 52,000 detainees during the three and a half years of its existence. It is estimated that about 22,000 people died of malnutrition and exertion while at the concentration camp during those years. Natzweiler-Struthof was the location of the infamous Jewish skeleton collection used in the documentary movie “Le nom des 86” made from data provided by the notorious Hauptsturmführer August Hirt. On November 23, 1944, the camp was liberated by the French First Army under the command of the U.S. Sixth Army Group. It is presently preserved as a museum. Boris Pahor, the noted author was interned in Natzweiler-Struthof for having been a Slovene Partisan, and wrote his novel “Necropolis,” named for a large, ancient Greek cemetery. His story is based on his Holocaust experiences while incarcerated at Camp de Schirmeck.

The deeply flushed midsummer sunlight, the strong, clear alcohol filling a dirty glass, a goat tethered with a rope, the enormous sides of a glitteringly white modern building, the solemn melody of the national orchestra, the slender-necked actress who was performing on the stage, the arc of a rainbow which, after a sudden shower, fell to the earth like an arrow from between the clouds, a sheepdog pressed flat under the wheel of a car, a herd of stubborn goats bobbing their heads with profound indifference, blue cloth fluttering in the wind, designating something sacred, a swarthy woman looking down on the street below from a first-floor window, her exposed chest leaning out over the wooden frame, cat-sized rats threading their way around the legs of market stalls, unlit signs and display windows, a sombrely lit butcher’s fridge, each dark red carcass still buttressed with the animal’s skeleton, Banchi’s printing shop, on the ground floor of a temple on the main street in the city centre, there Banchi makes picture postcards featuring his own translations of Indian sutras.

Even human bones are not exempt from male-unless-otherwise-indicated thinking. We might think of human skeletons as being objectively either male or female and therefore exempt from male-default thinking. We would be wrong. For over a hundred years, a tenth-century Viking skeleton known as the ‘Birka warrior’ had – despite possessing an apparently female pelvis – been assumed to be male because it was buried alongside a full set of weapons and two sacrificed horses.11 These grave contents indicated that the occupant had been a warrior12 – and warrior meant male (archaeologists put the numerous references to female fighters in Viking lore down to ‘mythical embellishments’13). But although weapons apparently trump the pelvis when it comes to sex, they don’t trump DNA and in 2017 testing confirmed that these bones did indeed belong to a woman. The argument didn’t, however, end there. It just shifted.14 The bones might have been mixed up; there might be other reasons a female body was buried with these items. Naysaying scholars might have a point on both counts (although based on the layout of the grave contents the original authors dismiss these criticisms). But the resistance is nevertheless revealing, particularly since male skeletons in similar circumstances ‘are not questioned in the same way’.

But the 1880s are also embedded in our lives in many smaller ways. Over a decade ago, in Creating the Twentieth Century, I traced several daily American experiences through mundane artifacts and actions that stem from that miraculous decade. A woman wakes up today in an American city and makes a cup of Maxwell House coffee (launched in 1886). She considers eating her favorite Aunt Jemima pancakes (sold since 1889) but goes for packaged Quaker Oats (available since 1884). She touches up her blouse with an electric iron (patented in 1882), applies antiperspirant (available since 1888), but cannot pack her lunch because she has run out of brown paper bags (the process to make strong kraft paper was commercialized in the 1880s). She commutes on the light rail system (descended directly from the electric streetcars that began serving US cities in the 1880s), is nearly run over by a bicycle (the modern version of which—with equal-sized wheels and a chain drive—was another creation of the 1880s: see engines are older than bicycles!, this page), then goes through a revolving door (introduced in a Philadelphia building in 1888) into a multistory steel-skeleton skyscraper (the first one was finished in Chicago in 1885). She stops at a newsstand on the first floor, buys a copy of the Wall Street Journal (published since 1889) from a man who rings it up on his cash register (patented in 1883). Then she goes up to the 10th floor in an elevator

Against Still Life Orange in the middle of a table: It isn’t enough to walk around it at a distance, saying it’s an orange: nothing to do with us, nothing else: leave it alone I want to pick it up in my hand I want to peel the skin off; I want more to be said to me than just Orange: want to be told everything it has to say And you, sitting across the table, at a distance, with your smile contained, and like the orange in the sun: silent: Your silence isn’t enough for me now, no matter with what contentment you fold your hands together; I want anything you can say in the sunlight: stories of your various childhoods, aimless journeyings, your loves; your articulate skeleton; your posturings; your lies. These orange silences (sunlight and hidden smile) make me want to wrench you into saying; now I’d crack your skull like a walnut, split it like a pumpkin to make you talk, or get a look inside But quietly: if I take the orange with care enough and hold it gently I may find an egg a sun an orange moon perhaps a skull; centre of all energy resting in my hand can change it to whatever I desire it to be and you, man, orange afternoon lover, wherever you sit across from me (tables, trains, buses) if I watch quietly enough and long enough at last, you will say (maybe without speaking) (there are mountains inside your skull garden and chaos, ocean and hurricane; certain corners of rooms, portraits of great-grandmothers, curtains of a particular shade; your deserts; your private dinosaurs; the first woman) all I need to know: tell me everything just as it was from the beginning.

I picked her up and carried her down the hall to the bathroom, just a pitiful skeleton with skin stretched over the top and a great red scar across her chest. She sank onto the plastic seat we had got from the hospital and closed her eyes as I washed her, leaning her poor bald head back exhaustedly against the back of the shower cubicle. "I'll just change the sheets," I said, "I won't be a minute - would you rather sit under the water, or shall I turn it off and wrap you up in a towel ?" "Under the water," she whispered. I had to strip the bed entirely, and two of the pillows were saturated. I replaced them with pillows from my bed, and while I was at it my duvet as well. Then I propped the poor woman up against the bathroom sink to dry and dress her, picked her up and carried her back to bed. Never have I been so grateful to be, after all, a strapping wench rather than a delicate wisp of a girl. As I pulled the covers up under her chin she opened her eyes, looked at me sternly and said with nearly her old decision, "This is not the way I wish to be remembered, Josephine." "I know," I whispered, the tears spilling unchecked down my cheeks. Nurses are supposed to be bright and matter-of-fact about these things: my bracing professional manner left a lot to be desired. "I'll get you some dinner." "No," she said. "Just my pills, love." Back in the kitchen I stood for a moment in a trance of indecision, wondering where the hell to start. It didn't really matter - when you're overcome with lethargy you just have to do something. And then the next thing, and then the next, and eventually, although you'd have sworn you were far too tired and depressed to accomplish anything, you're finished. I turned on the tap about the big concrete sink by the back door and began to scrub sheets and blankets.

The other evening, in that cafe-cabaret in the Rue de la Fontaine, where I had run aground with Tramsel and Jocard, who had taken me there to see that supposedly-fashionable singer... how could they fail to see that she was nothing but a corpse? Yes, beneath the sumptuous and heavy ballgown, which swaddled her and held her upright like a sentry-box of pink velvet trimmed and embroidered with gold - a coffin befitting the queen of Spain - there was a corpse! But the others, amused by her wan voice and her emaciated frame, found her quaint - more than that, quite 'droll'... Droll! that drab, soft and inconsistent epithet that everyone uses nowadays! The woman had, to be sure, a tiny carven head, and a kind of macabre prettiness within the furry heap of her opera-cloak. They studied her minutely, interested by the romance of her story: a petite bourgeoise thrown into the high life following the fad which had caught her up - and neither of them, nor anyone else besides in the whole of that room, had perceived what was immediately evident to my eyes. Placed flat on the white satin of her dress, the two hands of that singer were the two hands of a skeleton: two sets of knuckle-bones gloved in white suede. They might have been drawn by Albrecht Durer: the ten fingers of an evil dead woman, fitted at the ends of the two overlong and excessively thin arms of a mannequin... And while that room convulsed with laughter and thrilled with pleasure, greeting her buffoonery and her animal cries with a dolorous ovation, I became convinced that her hands no more belonged to her body than her body, with its excessively high shoulders, belonged to her head... The conviction filled me with such fear and sickness that I did not hear the singing of a living woman, but of some automaton pieced together from disparate odds and ends - or perhaps even worse, some dead woman hastily reconstructed from hospital remains: the macabre fantasy of some medical student, dreamed up on the benches of the lecture-hall... and that evening began, like some tale of Hoffmann, to turn into a vision of the lunatic asylum. Oh, how that Olympia of the concert-hall has hastened the progress of my malady!

With great care, Amy opened the cellar door. With ladylike demeanor, she descended the stairs. And as her reward, she had the satisfaction of catching His Mighty Lordship sitting on the cot, his knee crooked sideways and his ankle pulled toward him, cursing at the manacle. “I got it out of your own castle,” she said. Northcliff jumped like a lad caught at a mischief. “My . . . castle?” At once he realized what she meant. “Here on the island, you mean. The old ancestral pile.” “Yes.” She strolled farther into the room. “I went down into the dungeons, crawled around in among the spider webs and the skeleton of your family’s enemies—” “Oh, come on.” He straightened his leg. “There aren’t any skeletons.” “No,” she admitted. “We had them removed years ago.” For one instant, she was shocked. So his family had been ruthless murderers! Then she realized he was smirking. The big, pompous jackass was making a jest of her labors. “If I could have found manacles that were in good shape I’d have locked both your legs to the wall.” “Why stop there? Why not my hands, too?” He moved his leg to make the chain clink loudly. “Think of your satisfaction at the image of my starving, naked body chained to the cold stone—” “Starving?” She cast a knowledgeable eye at the empty breakfast tray, then allowed her lips to curve into a sarcastic smile. “You’d love a look at my naked body, though, wouldn’t you?” He fixed his gaze on her, and for one second she thought she saw a lick of golden flame in his light brown eyes. “Isn’t that what this is all about?” “I beg your pardon.” She took a few steps closer to him—although she remained well out of range of his long arms. What are you talking about?” “I spurned you, didn’t I?” What? What What was he going on about? “You’re a girl from my past, an insignificant debutante I ignored at some cotillion or another. I didn’t dance with you.” He stretched out on the cot, the epitome of idle relaxation. “Or I did, but I didn’t talk to you. Or I forgot to offer you a lemonade, or—” “I don’t believe you.” She tottered to the rocking chair and sank down. “Are you saying you think this whole kidnapping was done because you, the almighty marquees of Northcliff, treated me like a wallflower?” “It seems unlikely I treated you as a wallflower. I have better taste than that.” He cast a critical glance up and down her workaday gown, then focused on her face. “You’re not in the common way, you must know that. With the proper gown and your hair swirled up in that style you women favor—” He twirled his fingers about his head—“you would be handsome. Perhaps even lovely.” She gripped the arms of the chair. Even his compliments sounded like insults! “We’ve never before met, my lord.” As if she had not spoken, he continued, “but I don’t remember you, so I must have ignored you and hurt your feelings—” “Damn!” Exploding out of the chair, she paced behind it, gripping the back hard enough to break the wood. His arrogance was amazing. Invulnerable! “Haven’t you heard a single word I’ve said to you? Are you so conceited you can’t conceive of a woman who isn’t interested in you as a suitor?” “It’s not conceit when it’s the truth.” He sounded quite convinced.

KGB might have replaced the songoma in this Russian empire, where no citizen was allowed to believe in holy spirits except in great secrecy. It seemed to him that a society that attempted to put the gods to flight would be doomed. The nkosis know that in my homeland, and hence our gods have not been threatened by apartheid. They can live freely and have never been subjected to the pass laws; they have always been able to move around without being humiliated. If our holy spirits had been banished to remote prison islands, and our singing hounds chased out into the Kalahari Desert, not a single white man, woman or child would have survived in South Africa. All of them, Afrikaners as well as Englishmen, would have been annihilated long ago and their miserable skeletons buried in the red soil. In the old days, when his ancestors were still fighting openly against the white intruders, the Zulu warriors used to cut off their fallen victims’ lower jaw. An impi returning from a victorious battle would bring with him these jawbones as trophies to adorn the temple entrances of their tribal chiefs. Now it was the gods who were on the front line against the whites, and they would never submit to defeat. The first night in the strange

NEW BEGINNINGS Do not remember the former things, nor consider the things of old. Behold, I will do a new thing. Isaiah 43:18-19 NKJV Each new day offers countless opportunities to serve God, to seek His will, and to obey His teachings. But each day also offers countless opportunities to stray from God’s commandments and to wander far from His path. Sometimes, we wander aimlessly in a wilderness of our own making, but God has better plans of us. And, whenever we ask Him to renew our strength and guide our steps, He does so. Consider this day a new beginning. Consider it a fresh start, a renewed opportunity to serve your Creator with willing hands and a loving heart. Ask God to renew your sense of purpose as He guides your steps. Today is a glorious opportunity to serve your Father in heaven. Seize that opportunity while you can; tomorrow may indeed be too late. If the leaves had not been let go to fall and wither, if the tree had not consented to be a skeleton for many months, there would be no new life rising, no bud, no flower, no fruit, no seed, no new generation. Elisabeth Elliot No matter how badly we have failed, we can always get up and begin again. Our God is the God of new beginnings. Warren Wiersbe A TIMELY TIP If you’re going into a new phase of life, be sure to make God your partner. If you do, He’ll guide your steps, He’ll help carry your burdens, and He’ll help you focus on the things that really matter.

I glared as I stood over him. "We all have skeletons, Henry Davenport." I flipped my wrist to reveal the symbol of the Wited Rose. "Some more than others.

They said goodbye to Carita, who lay peacefully in a coffin full of rose petals, and watched her disappear behind the steel doors of the furnace. None of them was prepared for what came next. After a pause, they were led into a room on the other side of the building, and each given a pair of white gloves and chopsticks. In the room, on a steel sheet, were Carita's remains as they had emerged from the heat of the furnace. The incineration was incomplete. Wood, cloth, hair, and flesh had burned away, but the biggest bones, of the legs ans arms, as well as the skull, were cracked but recognizable. Rather than a neat box of ashes, the Ridgways were confronted with Carita's calcined skeleton. As the family, their task, a traditional part of every Japanese cremation, was to pick up her bones with the chopsticks and place them in the urn. "Rob couldn't handle it at all," Nigel said. "He thought we were monsters even to think of it. But perhaps it's because we were the parents, and she was our daughter... It sounds macabre, as I tell you about it now, but it didn't feel that way at the time. It was something emotional. It almost made me feel calmer. I felt as if we were looking after Carita." Nigel, Annette and Sam picked up the bigger bones and placed them in the urn with the ashes. The bigger pieces of the skull went on the top.

Medieval paintings often showed a beautiful woman standing next to a skeleton representing death. Perhaps the experts were wrong. Maybe it wasn’t the skeleton but the woman who symbolised death. Beauté du Diable – even before I met her, was I thinking of Zara? If anyone had the devil’s beauty, she did.

Loneliness was also the young woman in black who came almost every day to the Polytechnic. She knew exactly which of all the tangled skeletons lying on the cold concrete were those of her little girl and her husband. She would go straight to one of the sixty-four doors of Murambi and stand in the middle of the room before two intertwined corpses: a man clutching a decapitated child against him. The young woman in black prayed in silence, and then left.

Hey ése, word of advice on Brujita there. Her bite is just as bad as her bark. Worse, actually. That's a woman who doesn't need a man to stand in front of her. She needs one who knows when to stand beside her, behind her, or kneel in front of her. ¿Entiendes? You do those things for her, and she'll gift you her submission and loyalty. And that woman is loyal...to a fault.

Hey ése, word of advice on Brujita there. Her bite is just as bad as her bark. Worse, actually. That's a woman who doesn't need a man to stand in front of her. She needs one who knows when to stand beside her, behind her, or kneel in front of her. ¿Entiendes? You do those things for her, and she'll gift you her submission and loyalty. And that woman is loyal...to a fault.

But Amor can see her through the window, so she's not invisible after all. Thinking about a memory, not understood till now, of an afternoon just two weeks ago, in that same room, with Ma and Pa. They forgot I was there, in the corner. They didn't see me, I was like a black woman to them. (Do you promise me, Manie? Holding on to him, skeleton hands grabbing, like in a horror film. Ja, I'll do it. Because I really want her to have something. After everything she's done. I understand, he says. Promise me you'll do it. Say the words. I promise, Pa says, choked-sounding.)

Then Annabeth was running along beside him, reaching out her hand. ‘Thank the gods!’ she called. ‘For months and months we couldn’t see you! Are you all right?’ Percy remembered what Juno had said – for months he has been slumbering, but now he is awake. The goddess had intentionally kept him hidden, but why? ‘Are you real?’ he asked Annabeth. He wanted so much to believe it that he felt like Hannibal the elephant was standing on his chest. But her face began to dissolve. She cried, ‘Stay put! It’ll be easier for Tyson to find you! Stay where you are!’ Then she was gone. The images accelerated. He saw a huge ship in a dry dock, workers scrambling to finish the hull, a guy with a blowtorch welding a bronze dragon figurehead to the prow. He saw the war god stalking towards him in the surf, a sword in his hands. The scene shifted. Percy stood on the Field of Mars, looking up at the Berkeley Hills. Golden grass rippled, and a face appeared in the landscape – a sleeping woman, her features formed from shadows and folds in the terrain. Her eyes remained closed, but her voice spoke in Percy’s mind: So this is the demigod who destroyed my son Kronos. You don’t look like much, Percy Jackson, but you’re valuable to me. Come north. Meet Alcyoneus. Juno can play her little games with Greeks and Romans, but in the end, you will be my pawn. You will be the key to the gods’ defeat. Percy’s vision turned dark. He stood in a theatre-sized version of the camp’s headquarters – a principia with walls of ice and freezing mist hanging in the air. The floor was littered with skeletons in Roman armour and Imperial gold weapons encrusted with frost. In the back of the room sat an enormous shadowy figure. His skin glinted with gold and silver, as

The skeletons in the chamber represent, in the most positive light, the indestructible force of the feminine. Archetypally, bones represent that which can never be destroyed. Stories of bones are essentially about something in the psyche that is difficult to destroy. The only thing that we possess that is difficult to destroy is our soul.

The sole work of La Loba is the collecting of bones. She collects and preserves especially that which is in danger of being lost to the world. . . . When she has assembled an entire skeleton, . . . she . . . raises her arms over it, and sings out . . . so deeply that the floor of the desert shakes, and as she sings, the wolf opens its eyes, leaps up, and runs away. . . . The wolf is suddenly transformed into a laughing woman who runs free toward the horizon.

Because he put my niece and Justin in danger that night,” Ivy said. “It’s one thing to kill a grown woman, but quite something else to hurt a child.

The tinny groans of a glow-in-the-dark skeleton were nearly drowned out by the laughter of about two dozen people mingling in the large living room. The only light came from flickering jack-o’-lanterns and gothic candlesticks. Bats fluttered around in a lone lampshade in the corner. A thin woman with a cowboy hat rushed over. “Do you have any napkins? Someone spilled beer all over the buffet table.” Lynn sighed. “Excuse me for a minute.” After two steps, she turned and pointed at Drew. “Don’t go anywhere. You owe me a dance.” Drew raised her brows. “I do?” “I’m the hostess, so I get to dance with whoever I want.

Have you lived here a very long time?” the young woman asked the man, who was wearing a fishing vest today. “I’m trying to get information about those statues out at Skeleton Point. Nobody seems to know how old they are or where they came from.” “Or where some parts of the statues are going,” the man told the young woman. “Lots of fool stories are going around about somebody--or something--damaging the statues. Stay away from them, I say. Those old statues have been out there forever--before I was born, anyway. Leave ‘em be. Why do you want to know?” The young woman hesitated, then stopped to read the label on a jar of honey. “Um…just curious.” With that, the young woman left the store without buying anything. “Newcomers!” the man told Benny and Violet when he saw them standing there. “Always asking questions. You’d think from that young lady that Shady Lake was nothing but old statues covered with moss. What about our fishing? Why, our trout are practically jumping out of the lake.” “They are?” Benny asked, hoping to find out where he could see some of these jumping trout. The man left without answering Benny. The Mystery at Skeleton Point

When the children returned to the studio, the STUDIO CLOSED sign was still on the door. This didn’t stop the Aldens. “Hi, Hilda! It’s the Aldens,” Jessie yelled as she rapped on the window. Hilda whirled around, startled to see four pairs of eyes staring at her. She opened the door slightly. “What are you doing here? My studio is closed right now.” Violet looked past Hilda. “Oh, so you have the Clover Dodge statue,” she said before the young woman could block her view. “Are you fixing it? I’d love to see how.” Hilda stared at Violet. “I’m not here to teach art classes, Violet. I’m here to…well, I haven’t time to explain.” Henry, who was taller than Hilda, peered right over her shoulder. “Are you fixing the arm from the angel statue, too? Charlotte will be glad you got started on that.” Hilda studied the Aldens’ faces. “What do you mean? William was the one who got me working on the angel statue, not Charlotte. He told me she left most of the decisions up to him.” Hilda pushed the door to keep the children back. “I really must get back to my work. I’ll see you at Skeleton Point later this afternoon.” The Aldens had a lot more to say, but they never got the chance. After she slammed the door, Hilda walked over to the windows and pulled the shade down one by one. The Mystery at Skeleton Point

Perhaps you should head home until you hear from her again.” The children looked at one another. Why was this woman always trying to make them go away? Jessie surprised her brothers and sister by agreeing. “Sure. I guess we will go. See you tomorrow.” When the children got outside, Benny was confused. “Why are we going home? Can’t we ask her about my photos?” Jessie put her arm on Benny’s shoulder. “We’re only going to pretend to leave. We’ll sneak to the other side of the house and see what the two of them are up to.” When the children came outside, they waved at William. “See you tomorrow,” Henry called out loudly. Then in a whisper he said, “And probably a whole lot sooner.” The Mystery at Skeleton Point

Well, young fellow, I hope you’re not trying to see what cards I’m holding,” one of the cardplayers said with a twinkle in his eye. “Your eyes are bigger than my ice-cream bowl.” Benny felt his ears get red. “Are you playing Go Fish?” he asked. “That’s what we played in the car when we drove from Greenfield. Only now it’s time for Go Eat Ice Cream, not Go Fish.” Everyone at the table chuckled. “I’m getting chocolate ice cream,” Benny continued. “And know what? We’re going to Skeleton Point. Grandfather’s cousin Charlotte bought it--even the skeletons. She asked us to help her fix up the house. We might even get to stay there overnight.” The players looked up from their cards when they heard this. “Well,” one silver-haired lady said, “you must be very brave. A lot of strange things have been going on at Skeleton Point ever since Charlotte bought Dr. Tibbs’s old place.” Another man at the table put his finger to his lips. “Now, don’t go scaring the boy with all that foolish talk about the Walking Skeleton.” The woman ignored the man. “Well, don’t say we didn’t warn you. I heard from William Mason, who’s working out there, that there’s a skeleton in the house trying to turn into a real person again. If you ask me, that’s why some of those statues have missing parts.” Now Benny’s eyes were bigger than dinner plates. “Everything’s been falling down at Skeleton Point for years, especially those statues. I was glad to hear Charlotte’s going to fix up the place. That’ll stop all this Walking Skeleton nonsense.” “Maybe the Walking Skeleton is a real person already,” Benny said. “I’m a walking skeleton, too. Only I have muscles on top of my skeleton.” The cardplayers laughed again and returned to their game. When the Aldens got their cones, they sat on the front porch of the general store to enjoy their ice cream. “Where to next?” Grandfather asked when everyone had finished. “As if I didn’t know.” “Skeleton Point!” the children cried at the same time. “Skeleton Point it is,” Grandfather said. The Mystery at Skeleton Point

I like a woman who will laugh when you don't have to point her right at the joke, you know

When I started sixth grade, the other kids made fun of Brian and me because we were so skinny. They called me spider legs, skeleton girl, pipe cleaner, two-by-four, bony butt, stick woman, bean pole, and giraffe, and they said I could stay dry in the rain by standing under a telephone wire. At lunchtime, when other kids unwrapped their sandwiches or bought their hot meals, Brian and I would get out books and read. Brian told everyone he had to keep his weight down because he wanted to join the wrestling team when he got to high school. I told people that I had forgotten to bring my lunch. No one believed me, so I started hiding in the bathroom during lunch hour. I’d stay in one of the stalls with the door locked and my feet propped up so that no one would recognize my shoes. When other girls came in and threw away their lunch bags in the garbage pails, I’d go retrieve them. I couldn’t get over the way kids tossed out all this perfectly good food: apples, hard-boiled eggs, packages of peanut-butter crackers, sliced pickles, half-pint cartons of milk, cheese sandwiches with just one bite taken out because the kid didn’t like the pimentos in the cheese. I’d return to the stall and polish off my tasty finds. There was, at times, more food in the wastebasket than I could eat. The first time I found extra food—a bologna-and-cheese sandwich—I stuffed it into my purse to take home for Brian. Back in the classroom, I started worrying about how I’d explain to Brian where it came from. I was pretty sure he was rooting through the trash, too, but we never talked about it. As I sat there trying to come up with ways to justify it to Brian, I began smelling the bologna. It seemed to fill the whole room. I became terrified that the other kids could smell it, too, and that they’d turn and see my overstuffed purse, and since they all knew I never ate lunch, they’d figure out that I had pinched it from the trash. As soon as class was over, I ran to the bathroom and shoved the sandwich back in the garbage can.

Hugh’s old drawing teacher used to have one, and though it had been ten years since he’d taken the woman’s class, I could suddenly recall him talking about it. “If I had a skeleton like Minerva’s . . . ,” he used to say. I don’t remember the rest of the sentence, as I’d always been sidetracked by the teacher’s name, Minerva. Sounds like a witch.

Half the time, the very thing you think that’s going to destroy you or ruin you is the very thing that nobody cares about. My advice to anybody with skeletons is dust them off every now and then—as long as your closet ain’t full of them. It’s not good to have more than two or three.

In 2006, Michigan woman Lynn Sterling tried to sell a mummified human skeleton on eBay. eBay removed the posting because it violated their policy against selling human remains.

I asked myself when I saw the shriveled skeleton of one old woman, “What is there that keeps that woman alive?” She was nothing but bones.

They rose when she entered— a small, fat woman in black, with a thin gold chain descending to her waist and vanishing into her belt, leaning on an ebony cane with a tarnished gold head. Her skeleton was small and spare; perhaps that was why what would have been merely plumpness in another was obesity in her. She looked bloated, like a body long submerged in motionless water, and of that pallid hue. Her eyes, lost in the fatty ridges of her face, looked like two small pieces of coal pressed into a lump of dough as they moved from one face to another while the visitors stated their errand.

What will our descendants think when they come upon Chalillo? When they scrape away the deep layer of dirt covering in stepping-stone facade, what will they make of the dogleg desig, the Chinese gauges, the long-stopped turbines? What will they make of the skeletons and fossils long gone? Will they connect the two?

He tired to reconstruct in his imagination the annihilated splendor of the banana company town, whose dry swimming pool was filled to the brim with rotting men's and woman's shoes, and in the houses of which, destroyed by rye grass, he found the skeleton of a German shepherd dog still tied to a ring by a steel chain and a telephone that was ringing, ringing, ringing until he picked it up and an anguished and distant woman spoke in English, and he said yes, that the strike was over, that three thousand dead people had been thrown into the sea, that the banana company had left, and that Macondo finally had peace after many years.

TOP 10 ONLINE DATING TIPS FOR MIDDLE-AGED MEN (ACCORDING TO DAN MARQUEZ) 1. Only use dating sites and apps that are free. The others are for suckers. 2. Don’t waste your time trying to come up with a catchy, original screen name. They’re all taken. 3. Keep your BIO brief. Less is more and you’re not that interesting. 4. Don’t mention past wives or girlfriends. Women will dig up your skeletons sure enough. 5. Mention your favorite food and if you have pets. Women will always love guacamole and animals more than they love men. 6. Take five seconds to spellcheck your personal BIO before posting it. Unless you’re trying to attract dyslexic women or non-English majors. 7. Absolutely no shirtless, selfie pics. Unless you’re gay or under the age of 25. 8. Don’t get discouraged if you LIKE a woman’s BIO and she never responds. It’s an ancient one the geniuses who run the dating sites never remove to keep lonely bastards like you swiping RIGHT. 9. Never be open and honest about your dating intentions. Women already know. 10.Do everything you can to disguise the fact you're a self-centered asshole with a fear of commitment like me.

Hraith Doomguard wasn’t his real name. He’d chosen it because players always laughed when he told them it was Tom Butler. “That’s too boring,” they’d say. “It can be anything you want here.” Tom had grown up with two brothers and a sister. He’d been teased mercilessly by other kids who called his parents “breeders”—couples who had more than one child. Overpopulation, everyone knew, was the biggest threat to the world, and never mind that the global population was smaller than at any point in the last hundred years. Having grown up in a large family, Tom wanted a family of his own. But every woman he met at the law firm or singles bars had taken the sterilization package to shave ten years off retirement age. Theirs was a purgatory-like existence. None of them wanted marriage. They lived overly safe lives for fear of dying too young, all in the hope of paradise worlds, game worlds, theme worlds, or hedonistic worlds characterized by muscly bodies and supersaturated sensuality. As Tom’s life plodded along, he was plagued with bouts of deep depression which he managed with a medical prescription. In time, he did meet a few women who wanted a family. But he was either too picky or they were, and nothing ever came of it. Lonely and mostly celibate, Tom kept to himself in his later years after watching his friends, parents, brothers, and his sister retire to the Everlife worlds, never to be seen again. At the ripe old age of eighty-five, he finally succumbed to the near-constant government nagging that he was a drain on the system. After a little research, he retired to Mythian. It was fun at first, but eventually the ogres, goblins, and skeleton armies couldn’t replace his longing for a life of purpose. One day, after waking up for the thousandth time—perfectly rested yet unfulfilled—Tom realized the only thing he enjoyed about living was being asleep. That’s why, having reached level 164 for no good reason, he gave up adventuring, went to sleep, and never woke up again.

A fanfare of plastic flags with cutout patterns of skeletons flapped noisily in the air and overhead a piñata swayed, waiting for the hard blows of the breaking ceremony. He searched through the crowd lined up for the puppet show, then glanced down Olvera Street. The street had been closed to traffic for a long time now and looked like a Mexican marketplace, with stands selling boldly colored ceramics and paper flowers. He didn't see Serena, but her brother, Collin, had said she had gone to the Día de los Muertos celebration with Jimena. He turned to see candy skulls with green sequin eyes and frosting lips staring back at him from a stall. When the vendor looked away, he grabbed three and tossed one into his mouth. The sugar dissolved with tangy sweetness. He spun around, sensing other eyes. An old woman shook her head at him as she placed a bowl of spicy-smelling sauce on her ofrenda. Orange flowers, white candles, and faded snapshots of her dead relatives covered the altar. Stanton liked the way some people waited for the spirits of their loved ones to come back and visit, while others were terrified at the thought. The old woman placed a sign on the table: SINCE DEATH IS INEVITABLE, IT SHOULD NOT BE FEARED, BUT HONORED. "Not for everyone," he said softly. She looked at him. "What's not for everyone?" "Death." He smiled.

That’s a woman who doesn’t need a man to stand in front of her. She needs one who knows when to stand beside her, behind her, or kneel in front of her. ¿Entiendes? You do those things for her, and she’ll gift you her submission and loyalty. And that woman is loyal…to a fault.