“
You come to this place, mid-life. You don’t know how you got here, but suddenly you’re staring fifty in the face. When you turn and look back down the years, you glimpse the ghosts of other lives you might have led; all houses are haunted. The wraiths and phantoms creep under your carpets and between the warp and weft of fabric, they lurk in wardrobes and lie flat under drawer-liners. You think of the children you might have had but didn’t. When the midwife says, ‘It’s a boy,’ where does the girl go? When you think you’re pregnant, and you’re not, what happens to the child that has already formed in your mind? You keep it filed in a drawer of your consciousness, like a short story that never worked after the opening lines.
”
”
Hilary Mantel (Giving Up the Ghost)
“
Diana: You are everything we dreamed you would one day become. Life is the strong warp of time. Death is only the weft. It will be because of your children, and your children’s children, that I will live forever. Dad P.S. Every time you read “something is rotten in the state of Denmark” in Hamlet, think of me.
”
”
Deborah Harkness (Shadow of Night (All Souls Trilogy, #2))
“
From a thread of sky
to the warp and weft of your being
You're beautiful, graceful,
like no other;
You're pretty damn good as you are.
”
”
Imogen Heap
“
The girl sang with the voice of a child, but it was not hers. It was a rough voice, harsh with grief, and the words she sang were in Baba’s deep, guttural tongue, and the song she sang was long and terrible in its warp and weft, as if torn out of the peat-smelling earth itself.
”
”
Andy Davidson (The Boatman's Daughter)
“
Although I am capable, through long dabbling in blue magic, of imitating any prose in the world (but singularly enough not verse—I am a miserable rhymester), I do not consider myself a true artist, save in one matter: I can do what only a true artist can do—pounce upon the forgotten butterfly of revelation, wean myself abruptly from the habit of things, see the web of the world, and the warp and the weft of that web.
”
”
Vladimir Nabokov (Pale Fire)
“
Warp threads are thicker than the weft, and made of a coarser wool as well. I think of them as like wives. Their work is not obvious - all you can see are the ridges they make under the colorful weft threads. But if they weren't there, there would be no tapestry. Georges would unravel without me.
”
”
Tracy Chevalier (The Lady and the Unicorn)
“
Darwin’s theory about how species originated doubled as a theory of how they vanished. Extinction and evolution were to each other the warp and weft of life’s fabric, or, if you prefer, two sides of the same coin. “The appearance of new forms and the disappearance of old forms” were, Darwin wrote, “bound together.” Driving both was the “struggle for existence,” which rewarded the fit and eliminated the less so.
”
”
Elizabeth Kolbert (The Sixth Extinction: An Unnatural History)
“
Word-magic comes at a cost, you see, as power always does. Words draw their vitality from their writers, and thus the strength of a word is limited by the strength of its human vessel. Acts of word-magic leave their workers ill and drained, and the more ambitious the working—the more it defies the warp and weft of the world as it is—the higher the toll.
”
”
Alix E. Harrow (The Ten Thousand Doors of January)
“
Whitman's poems present no trace of rhyme, save in a couple or so of chance instances. Parts of them, indeed, may be regarded as a warp of prose amid the weft of poetry,
”
”
Walt Whitman (Poems by Walt Whitman)
“
He unpacks his bag of tales
with fingers quick
as a weaver's
picking the weft threads
threading the warp.
Watch his fingers.
Watch his lips
speaking the old familiar words:
"Once there was
and there was not,
oh, best beloved,
when the world was filled with wishes
the way the sea is filled with fishes..."
All those threads
pulling us back
to another world, another time,
when goosegirls married well
and frogs could rhyme,
when maids spoke syllables of pearl
and stepmothers came to grief.
.... (from The Storyteller poem)
”
”
Jane Yolen (The Last Selchie Child)
“
And so we have come full circle, from the discovery that consciousness contains the whole of objective reality—the entire history of biological life on the planet, the world's religions and mythologies, and the dynamics of both blood cells and stars—to the discovery that the material universe can also contain within its warp and weft the innermost processes of consciousness. Such is the nature of the deep connectivity that exists between all things in a holographic universe. In the next chapter we will explore how this connectivity, as well as other aspects of the holographic idea, affect our current understanding of health.
”
”
Michael Talbot (The Holographic Universe)
“
Most of culture lies hidden and is outside
voluntary control, making up the warp and weft of human existence. Even when small fragments of culture are elevated to awareness, they are difficult to change, not only because they are so personally experienced but because people cannot
act or interact at all in any meaningful way except through the medium of culture.
”
”
Edward T. Hall (The Hidden Dimension)
“
The first thing is time, and the fact that we live in it. Our existence and experience are dependent on the passing of time, and on change. No, not dependent — dependent is too weak a word. Time and change are integral to who we are, the foundation of our consciousness, and its warp and weft as well. I can’t imagine what it would mean to be conscious without passing through time and being aware of it.
”
”
Greta Christina (Comforting Thoughts About Death That Have Nothing to Do with God)
“
The Energy of a Trillion Atomic Bombs in Every Cubic Centimeter of Space
If our universe is only a pale shadow of a deeper order, what else lies hidden, enfolded in the warp and weft of our reality? Bohm has a suggestion. According to our current understanding of physics, every region of space is awash with different kinds of fields composed of waves of varying lengths. Each wave always has at least some energy. When physicists calculate the minimum amount of energy a wave can possess, they find that every cubic centimeter of empty space contains more energy than the total energy of all the matter in the known universe! Some physicists refuse to take this calculation seriously and believe it must somehow be in error. Bohm thinks this infinite ocean of energy does exist and tells us at least a little about the vast and hidden nature of the implicate order. He feels most physicists ignore the existence of this enormous ocean of energy because, like fish who are unaware of the water in which they swim, they have been taught to focus primarily on objects embedded in the ocean, on matter.
”
”
Michael Talbot (The Holographic Universe)
“
It was strange to see that no matter what color the clothing first appeared—and they were all hues, from earthy copper and garnet to the blue of sky and shadow—in different light all turned to some shade of green, as if there were a third plane to the cloth’s weaving beyond the warp and weft.
”
”
Ellen Kushner (Thomas the Rhymer)
“
It is not to diffuse you that you were born of your mother and father, it is to identify you,
It is not that you should be undecided, but that you should be decided,
Something long preparing and formless is arrived and form'd in you,
You are henceforth secure, whatever comes or goes.
The threads that were spun are gather'd, the weft crosses the warp, the pattern is systematic.
The preparations have every one been justified,
The orchestra have sufficiently tuned their instruments, the baton has given the signal.
The guest that was coming, he waited long, he is now housed,
He is one of those who are beautiful and happy, he is one of those that to look upon and be with is enough.
”
”
Walt Whitman (Leaves of Grass)
“
Life is the strong warp of time. Death is only the weft. It will be because of your children, and your children’s children, that I will live forever.
”
”
Deborah Harkness (Shadow of Night (All Souls Trilogy, #2))
“
My “secret weapon,” as Dr. Fielding calls it, is my umbrella—Ed’s umbrella, really, a rickety London Fog contraption. Dr. Fielding, a rickety contraption himself, will stand like a scarecrow in the garden as I push the door open, the umbrella brandished before me. A flick of the spring and it blooms; I stare intently at the bowl of its body, at its ribs and skin. Dark tartan, four squares of black arranged across each fold of canopy, four lines of white in every warp and weft. Four squares, four lines. Four blacks, four whites. Breathe in, count to four. Breathe out, count to four. Four. The magic number. The umbrella projects straight ahead of me, like a saber, like a shield. And then I step outside. Out, two, three, four. In, two, three, four.
”
”
A.J. Finn (The Woman in the Window)
“
She felt how young her world still was, how pure, how fresh, how empty, despite the civilisations that had risen and fallen while she was away, despite the stories that the people of this land had already woven into the warp and weft of this world, the stories that came to her as dreams. She felt how precious it all was to her, how terrible it would be to lose this world, this universe, to the dark force encroaching upon it.
”
”
Judith Huang (Sofia and the Utopia Machine)
“
I tried to imagine a young Patrick at his grandfather’s quarry, his glowing tan a stark contrast to the damp and darkly terraced hillsides. Sometimes a child’s resistance to the legacy of their family was almost molecular, as if their body became allergic to the landscapes and environs of home; other times they settled in, sinking back into the fabric, the familiar warp and weft of tradition. I had always been the former, and perhaps Patrick was too.
”
”
Katy Hays (The Cloisters)
“
a person’s life can’t be defined by one incident. We are the whole of our experiences. We are the warp, and life is the weft, going up and down around us, transforming us in its wake. Each new line adds to the whole . . . adds to our strength.
”
”
Holly Jacobs (Just One Thing)
“
Something long preparing and formless is arrived and formed in you,
You are henceforth secure, whatever comes or goes.
The threads that were spun are gathered, the weft crosses the warp, the
pattern is systematic.
The preparations have every one been justified, The orchestra have sufficiently tuned their instruments—the baton has given the signal. The guest that was coming—he waited long, for reasons—he is now housed; He is one of those who are beautiful and happy—he is one of those that to look upon and be with is enough.
”
”
Walt Whitman (Poems by Walt Whitman)
“
Ashes
The tide comes in; the tide goes out again
washing the beach clear of what the storm
dumped. Where there were rocks, today there is sand;
where sand yesterday, now uncovered rocks.
So I think on where her mortal remains
might reach landfall in their transmuted forms,
a year now since I cast them from my hand
—wanting to stop the inexorable clock.
She who died by her own hand cannot know
the simple love I have for what she left
behind. I could not save her. I could not
even try. I watch the way the wind blows
life into slack sail: the stress of warp against weft
lifts the stalling craft, pushes it on out.
”
”
Paula Meehan
“
Tom Pritscher, a Meta-Hermeneutical Master, inventively explains that when you have suffered trauma, you suffer tears in the fabric of your existence. I see these as holes in your subtle bodies, for example in your Etheric or Astral bodies. Music can create a mesh on which can be woven the warp and weft of etheric filaments in order that the holes in the fabric of your subtle bodies can be repaired. Recall too, that as a multi-dimensional being, you must repair tears that exist in all the dimensions of your existence. The Humanity Healing Network advises that you clear and/or remove any extra, hidden, hiding or multiple souls present within the etheric bodies of each parallel life in order to ensure that your One Original Soul Essence resides in each physical body. You must release all merging soul extensions to their proper time and space continuum.
”
”
Laurence Galian (Beyond Duality: The Art of Transcendence)
“
The earth is not unclaimed property, as the modern justification of human acts of subjugation and violence maintains; `the earth is the Lord's, and all that dwells in it' (Ps. 24. z). Men and women can only treat what belongs to God with reverence and solicitude. If they respect God's right of ownership to the earth, then their own rights consist simply of the right to use it. But use must preserve the integrity of property which isn't one's own. Otherwise it becomes usurpation. Because as creator God is present in all the beings he has created, a radiance falls on them from God's glory, and they reflect God's eternal light. We have to keep the life so transfigured by God holy if we human beings want to live. So we shall integrate ourselves again into the warp and weft of life's entire fabric, from which we broke away so that we might dominate it. We shall acknowledge gratefully that we are dependent on nature, but that nature is not dependent on us; for nature was there before us and will still be- there when we have gone.
”
”
Jürgen Moltmann (The Source of Life: The Holy Spirit and the Theology of Life)
“
Stories work on multiple evolved systems in the brain and a skilled storyteller activates these networks like the conductor of an orchestra, a little trill of moral outrage here, a fanfare of status play over there, a tintinnabulation of tribal identification, a rumble of threatening antagonism, a tantara of wit, a parp of sexual allure, a crescendo of unfair trouble, a warping and wefting hum as the dramatic question is posed and reposed in new and interesting ways – all instruments by which masses of brains can be captivated and manipulated.
”
”
Will Storr (The Science of Storytelling)
“
Winter war was the ruin of the pattern.
Near the beginning of a new weave, if she felt a flaw through her hands—the hitch in the flow, a tension on the loom as she threaded the shuttle through the warp—she could stop and unpick one row: a moment, a blink, and it was mended. But if she ignored it, if she pretended it was nothing, she would begin to feel each pass of the shuttle, each beat of the weft turn more wrong, until she slowed, closed her eyes, and stopped. Then she must tally the time it would take to undo the weave, and weigh that against the rest of the work to be done.
”
”
Nicola Griffith (Menewood (The Hild Sequence, #2))
“
Were the earth as smooth as a ball bearing, it might be beautiful seen from another planet, as the rings of Saturn are. But here we live and move; we wander up and down the banks of the creek, we ride a railway through the Alps, and the landscape shifts and changes. Were the earth smooth, our brains would be smooth as well; we would wake, blink, walk two steps to get the whole picture and lapse into dreamless sleep. Because we are living people, and because we are on the receiving end of beauty, another element necessarily enters the question. The texture of space is a condition of time. Time is the warp and matter the weft of woven texture of beauty in space, and death is the hurtling shuttle…
What I want to do, then, is add time to the texture, paint the landscape on an unrolling scroll, and set the giant relief globe spinning on it stand.
”
”
Annie Dillard (Pilgrim at Tinker Creek)
“
May the warp be the white light of morning,
May the weft be the red light of evening,
May the fringes be the falling rain,
May the border be the standing rainbow.
Thus weave for us a garment of brightness.
”
”
Tewa Indian Song
“
regardless of social status, we derive comfort from our stuff; the familiar warp and weft of our lives
”
”
Sue Grafton
“
Even knowing the danger, and remembering Ella's warnings, that single conjured spark had been enough to draw her back. The fire held her, trancelike, and was drawing her in. She was a single thread; the fabric of her being was a many-textured, spectrum-colored tapestry, unravelling a fiber at a time, unwinding on to a vast spool held by hands within the fire, one fine strand carefully wound in after another. As if that is where it starts, at the eyes, where the threads of the soul hang in their slackest stitch; stitches which can be hooked free of weft and warp, and pulled through, drawn out, spooled in. She was lost to it. She was coming apart.
She knew the danger. The idea of resistance fashioned itself into a sword in her mind, a bright-edged sword, a way out. But the sword itself became smoke; and the thing she would slash free of became smoke. The effort to resist required too much, too mighty a cut, too great a mental stroke. Her mind was coming apart.
Honora belonged to the fire. She was enslaved by the ritual dance of the aromatic flame. Fire, first and most martial of all elements, the hierarchical prince. She saw in the fire the tapered banners of his glorious armies, the swallowtail, pennants a-flutter, flags of crimson, ochre, sapphire, armies spilling into valleys and camped along the plains. They pinioned her and they held her. The flame engaged with her. She was fire. She was smoke. She was coming apart, like smoke.
”
”
Graham Joyce (Dreamside)
“
There’s nothing like suffering to remind us how not in control we actually are, how little power we ultimately have, and how much we ultimately need God. In other words, suffering reveals to us the things that ultimately matter, which also happen to be the warp and weft of Christianity—who we are and who God is.
”
”
Tullian Tchividjian (It Is Finished: 365 Days of Good News)
“
Shuttle Craft
On the tense warp of your celestial loom
the traverse weft is yet unwoven;
it waits for that auspicious
seventh day of the seventh moon,
for Orhime’s sidereal blessing,
to spin crude cotton
into the glorious threads of life.
In the pit of your shuttle craft, you pick
your chosen herdsman from across the comb
of heaven, and in one fell moment,
in the awesome crossing of stars,
wishes come true and the fabric of time
stands still.
”
”
Beryl Dov
“
Out in the shadows of the city, in the houses and cellars, in the secret rooms and locked attics, a stirring cold be sensed. The ghosts and spirits-of-place whispered and muttered on the edge of hearing, glided and flowed on the edge of sight. They were pleased with the turn of events; it was they who had driven the small garrison of Polypontian troops out to die in the snow. It was they who’d haunted their movements through the cities. And it was they who had joined them on watch in the dark of the night, filling their minds with a slow-growing fear, which had evolved into a terror that had driven them mad… The Queen had returned, and some of the people, and the rest of the folk would one day come back and they could slip back into their minds, becoming the warp and the weft of the legend and stories. Becoming the fireside companions of long winter nights, living their lives for a while in the minds of the breathing, in the blood that still flowed, in the feelings that still thrilled to nerves that still sensed.
”
”
Stuart Hill (The Cry of the Icemark)
“
Without the telling, well-reported detail, the narrative form is an empty seduction. It’s us listening to ourselves talk, falling in love with the sound of our own voices. How do you find those telling details, the earned facts, and then convey them? It involves two opposite sets of skills. While reporting, you must lose control so you can accumulate the facts. While writing, you must exert maniacal control over those facts. You begin by being laid-back and hanging out. Take the great inhale so that when you exhale, you will have among your notebooks that detail that conveys so much, so economically. Weave that detail into the warp and weft of your hard facts. A
”
”
Mark Kramer (Telling True Stories: A Nonfiction Writers' Guide from the Nieman Foundation at Harvard University)
“
• Whether it is Godse or Savarkar, what they broadly wanted was unity of the Hindus of India. A unity that ignores the inherent diversity, and silences those who do not consider India their punyabhoomi. Without this unity it is impossible to build a strong nation. Some Muslims in Pakistan also think along these lines. But Bangladesh separated primarily because of language. Blood was shed. • The unity that Gandhi desired was one in which everyone retained their faith, preserved their own unique cultures and accepted ahimsa. Unity comes naturally to those who live in harmony despite their differences. This becomes possible when ahimsa is the basis of their lives. The life force of every community lies in its uniqueness. Whether it is food, games, worship, dress, concept of God, differing methods of prayer, the many climates that nurture mountains, forests, valleys, flora and fauna – they are all part of a chain. This multiplicity is the warp and weft of the ecological system of the living world.
”
”
U.R. Ananthamurthy (Hindutva or Hind Swaraj)
“
It’s a geode. You can sess that, the way the rock around you abruptly changes to something else. The pebble in the stream, the warp in the weft; countless aeons ago a bubble formed in a flow of molten mineral within Father Earth. Within that pocket, nurtured by incomprehensible pressures and bathed in water and fire, crystals grew. This one’s the size of a city. Which is probably why someone built a city in this one. You stand before a vast, vaulted cavern that is full of glowing crystal shafts the size of tree trunks. Big tree trunks. Or buildings. Big buildings. They jut forth from the walls in an utterly haphazard jumble: different lengths, different circumferences, some white and translucent and a few smoky or tinged with purple. Some are stubby, their pointed tips ending only a few feet away from the walls that grew them—but many stretch from one side of the vast cavern into the indistinct distance. They form struts and roads too steep to climb, going in directions that make no sense. It is as if someone found an architect, made her build a city out of the most beautiful materials available, then threw all those buildings into a box and jumbled them up for laughs. And they’re definitely living in it. As you stare, you notice narrow rope bridges and wooden platforms everywhere. There are dangling lines strung with electric lanterns, ropes and pulleys carrying small lifts from one platform to another. In the distance a man walks down a wooden stairway built around a titanic slanted column of white; two children play on the ground far below, in between stubby crystals the size of houses. Actually, some of the crystals are houses. They have holes cut in them—doors and windows. You can see people moving around inside some of them. Smoke curls from chimney holes cut in pointed crystal tips.
”
”
N.K. Jemisin (The Fifth Season)
“
What is lost, that can’t be found? The words Mags taught them alongside a hundred other songs and rhymes. Senseless, silly, utterly insignificant to the grand warp and weft of time. Unless they aren’t. Unless there are words and ways waiting among the children’s verses; power passed in secret from mother to daughter, like swords disguised as sewing needles.
”
”
Alix E. Harrow (The Once and Future Witches)
“
reawakened in me an awareness of the mystery that is woven into the warp and weft of everything we perceive with our five senses but can know only with our hearts.
”
”
Dean Koontz (A Big Little Life: A Memoir of a Joyful Dog)
“
Tom Pritscher, a Meta-Hermeneutical Master, inventively explains that when you have suffered trauma, you suffer tears in the fabric of your existence. The author sees these as holes in your subtle bodies, for example in your Etheric or Astral bodies. Music can create a mesh on which can be woven the warp and weft of etheric filaments in order that the holes in the fabric of your subtle bodies can be repaired. Recall too, that as a multidimensional being, you must repair tears that exist in all the dimensions of your existence.
”
”
Laurence Galian (Beyond Duality: The Art of Transcendence)
“
Hild liked listening to her mother planning to build, rather than destroy or take. It felt as comforting as a larder full of food with only a month til spring. It made her feel safe, that their web, their weft and warp, was wide and strong.
”
”
Nicola Griffith (Hild (The Hild Sequence, #1))
“
It's the stars that are imprisoned in their own power, and they cannot really help us. They merely design the nets, and on cosmic looms they weave the warp thread that we must complete with our own weft.
”
”
Olga Tokarczuk (Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead)
“
Nothing, perhaps. But there is no saying how events in one place may affect what happens elsewhere, for the tapestry of history is woven of many threads. We needs must study the whole warp and weft of it to predict the pattern on the loom.
”
”
Jacqueline Carey (Kushiel's Dart (Phèdre's Trilogy #1))
“
A little drab from the outside, maybe: slow, or plain. But who, outside, will ever see it, or learn the subtleties of its textures, the specific tensions of its warp and weft? You have to get inside to see anything worth seeing, you have to listen long enough to hear the music. Or possibly that's a thing you just tell yourself when it becomes clear you won't be leaving. Sometimes that seems more likely. It's hard to say for sure.
”
”
John Darnielle (Universal Harvester)
“
One interesting change that has taken place is that in a probabilistic world we no longer deal with quantities and statements which concern a specific, real universe as a whole but ask instead questions which may find their answers in a large number of similar universes. Thus chance has been admitted, not merely as a mathematical tool for physics, but as part of its warp and weft. This recognition of an element of incomplete determinism, almost an irrationality in the world, is in a certain way parallel to Freud’s admission of a deep irrational component in human conduct and thought.
”
”
Norbert Wiener (The Human Use Of Human Beings: Cybernetics And Society (The Da Capo series in science))
“
At its simplest, weaving involves two sets of threads: weft threads and warp threads. The warp threads are held tightly by a device called a loom. The process of weaving involves passing a weft thread over and under successive warp threads. This is the basic procedure to weave most kinds of cloth. In tapestry weaving, the warps are spaced widely enough that the weft slides down over them and completely hides the warp. Because the warp is hidden and the image we see is created by the weft alone, the weaving is called weft-faced.
”
”
Rebecca Mezoff (The Art of Tapestry Weaving: A Complete Guide to Mastering the Techniques for Making Images with Yarn)
“
If geography and time are the warp and weft structuring (art) history, perceptual culture is like the pile of a velvet cloth that, without altering the warp or weft of the fabric, reenchants its texture and depth. It treats Islam as the Simurgh, and objects as its feathers. Like the galleries in China full of representations futilely and obsessively trying to reconstruct the bird from its feathers, the museum is a monument to our inability to feel what we are trying to represent. And yet like the three princes seeking the hand of the Chinese princess in the gallery of creation, we can also discover through objects the spirit we can never expect to pin down in our hands. With these hopes tucked in between the warp of evidence and the weft of interpretation, this book would like to quote a certain textile from a very long time ago: I exist for pleasure; Welcome! For pleasure am I; he who beholds me sees joy and well-being. This book offers complex more than simple pleasures: its many questions diverge and converge, offering iridescence to our certainties. It puts forth the pleasure of using thought as steel wool polishing our mental acumen, enabling perception beyond predetermined realities. It may be that a barzakh exists somewhere between the secular and the sacred, a peninsula of understanding in which we enter the cave of our ghurba and become in the world but not of it. If we tread lightly with a pure heart cleansed in the mirror of curiosity and wonder, it may just open its doors a bit and let us explore the glory it holds inside.
”
”
Wendy M.K. Shaw (What is 'Islamic' Art?: Between Religion and Perception)
“
The fabric of me
is mother.
The weft and warp,
woman.
Loosely woven,
I am free.
”
”
Sez Kristiansen (Healing HER: Poetry that nourishes the soul through feminine energy (Soul-Skin Series Book 1))