“
There is no mystery in this association of woods and otherworlds, for as anyone who has walked the woods knows, they are places of correspondence, of call and answer. Visual affinities of color, relief and texture abound. A fallen branch echoes the deltoid form of a streambed into which it has come to rest. Chrome yellow autumn elm leaves find their color rhyme in the eye-ring of the blackbird. Different aspects of the forest link unexpectedly with each other, and so it is that within the stories, different times and worlds can be joined.
”
”
Robert Macfarlane (The Wild Places)
“
Haldir had gone on and was now climbing to the high flet. As Frodo prepared to follow him, he laid his hand upon the tree beside the ladder: never before had he been so suddenly and so keenly aware of the feel and texture of a tree's skin and of the life within it. He felt a delight in wood and the touch of it, neither as forester nor as carpenter; it was the delight of the living tree itself.
”
”
J.R.R. Tolkien (The Lord of the Rings)
“
I stalk certain words... I catch them in mid-flight, as they buzz past, I trap them, clean them, peel them, I set myself in front of the dish, they have a crystalline texture to me, vibrant, ivory, vegetable, oily, like fruit, like algae, like agates, like olives... I stir them, I shake them, I drink them, I gulp them down, I mash them, I garnish them... I leave them in my poem like stalactites, like slivers of polished wood, like coals, like pickings from a shipwreck, gifts from the waves... Everything exists in the word.
”
”
Pablo Neruda (Memoirs)
“
As he worked on the room, and as it began slowly to take a shape, he realized that for many years, unknown to himself, he had had an image locked somewhere within him like a shamed secret, an image that was ostensibly of a place but which was actually of himself. So it was himself that he was attempting to define as he worked on his study. As he sanded the old boards for his bookcases, and saw the surface roughnesses disappear, the gray weathering flake away to the essential wood and finally to a rich purity of grain and texture—as he repaired his furniture and arranged it in the room, it was himself that he was slowly shaping, it was himself that he was putting into a kind of order, it was himself that he was making possible.
”
”
John Williams (Stoner)
“
She was older, no longer the wicked limber girl with the stalled Vespa, but no less beautiful to me for that: whatever elliptical beauty Cassie possesses has always lain not in the vulnerable planes of color and texture but deeper, in the polished contours of her bones.
”
”
Tana French (In the Woods (Dublin Murder Squad, #1))
“
This usually occurs at the moment when my head hits the pillow at night; my eyes close and … I see imagery. I do not mean pictures; more usually they are patterns or textures, such as repeated shapes, or shadows of shapes, or an item from an image, such as grass from a landscape or wood grain, wavelets or raindrops … transformed in the most extraordinary ways at a great speed. Shapes are replicated, multiplied, reversed in negative, etc. Color is added, tinted, subtracted. Textures are the most fascinating; grass becomes fur becomes hair follicles becomes waving, dancing lines of light, and a hundred other variations and all the subtle gradients between them that my words are too coarse to describe.
”
”
Oliver Sacks (Hallucinations)
“
Despair. I’d been told I suffered from it too. The thing was, I never sensed myself in despair, but rather, in love with something I felt closest to only when walking or riding my bike in the city. I felt it when I kept my windows open all night, or sitting on the rickety wood of the porch my landlord called a fire escape, peeled paint flaking under my hands and feet, looking over the empty lot. It had to do with a texture, with the moon and a stray white cat I’d been feeding, a cat that saw me as home now.
”
”
Monica Drake (The Folly of Loving Life)
“
She was my mother. Never before this had I looked at her and thought of her as someone separate, as someone else. Now, so near to her that I could smell the subtle scent of her perfume and see the clear, faint texture of her skin, I realized for the first time that I was looking at another human being who was complete within herself. She was my mother, but she was more than just a loving and convenient extension of me and my needs.
”
”
Florence Engel Randall (The Watcher in the Woods)
“
She looked like she believed in something, or wanted to, and I hoped to hell it wasn’t God, not in the way The Dad believes, because all that does is make him forced and desperate. No, it was something else, not just that I saw a pretty girl and just got all excited. I mean, yeah, that part is true, and she really was gorgeous, and the freckles covering her, the freckles on top of freckles all spread out and folding into one another made her skin look like it had grain and texture, like polished wood, like it would feel smooth to the touch, and so soft. I knew that. But it wasn’t how she looked.
”
”
Brad Barkley (Scrambled Eggs at Midnight)
“
I was sitting there, as I said, and had been for several watches, when I came to me that I was reading no longer. For some time I was hard put to say what I had been doing. When I tried, I could only think of certain odors and textures and colors that seemed to have no connection with anything discussed in the volume I held. At last I realized that instead of reading it, I had been observing it as a physical object. The red I recalled came from the ribbon sewn to the headband so that I might mark my place. The texture that tickled my fingers still was that of the paper in which the book was printed. The smell in my nostrils was old leather, still wearing the traces of birch oil. It was only then, when I saw the books themselves, when I began to understand their care.”
His grip on my shoulder tightened. “We have books here bound in the hides of echidnes, krakens, and beasts so long extinct that those whose studies they are, are for the most part of the opinion that no trace of them survives unfossilized. We have books bound wholly in metals of unknown alloy, and books whose bindings are covered with the thickest gems. We have books cased in perfumed woods shipped across the inconceivable gulf between creations—books doubly precious because no one on Urth can read them.”
“We have books whose papers are matted of plants from which spring curious alkaloids, so that the reader, in turning their pages, is taken unaware by bizarre fantasies and chimeric dreams. Books whose pages are not paper at all, but delicate wafers of white jade, ivory, and shell; books too who leaves are the desiccated leaves of unknown plants. Books we have also that are not books at all to the eye: scrolls and tablets and recordings on a hundred different substances. There is a cube of crystal here—though I can no longer tell you where—no larger than the ball of your thumb that contains more books than the library itself does. Though a harlot might dangle it from one ear for an ornament, there are not volumes enough in the world to counterweight the other.
”
”
Gene Wolfe (The Shadow of the Torturer (The Book of the New Sun, #1))
“
The old man’s staff was shorter and thicker than mine, but the carved sigils and formulae on it were noticeably similar, and the texture and color of the wood was identical.
”
”
Jim Butcher (Blood Rites (The Dresden Files, #6))
“
When I started to draw, most of my influences were from other painters and illustrators, so I was drawing landscape at second hand, really. The trees were Rackham trees, or trees that I had seen in paintings rather than from my own observation...and I started to feel this was a real lack in my work. Everything was too generalised, and not based on real experience. Then in 1975, after having worked for some years in London as a book cover illustrator mainly, I came down to Devon and stayed with some friends up on the moor. In the course of this one weekend, wandering around the moor, finding rivers and ancient woods, I realised that everything that I would ever want to draw was actually here. There was so much richness in the texture and forms of these fantastic trees...and I decided in the course of that weekend to come and live here. I looked at a couple of houses, found one, and made an offer on it, all in that one weekend!
”
”
Alan Lee
“
'how then does soul differ from spirit?' you're probably asking yourself. although he must have been reasonably sure nobody was. "Well, soul is darker of color, denser of volume, saltier of flavor, rougher of texture, and tends to be more maternalistic than paternalistic: soul is connected to Mother Earth just as spirit is connected to Father Sky. Of course, mothers and fathers are prone to copulation, and in their commingled state, soul and spirit often can be difficult to distinguish the one from the other. Generally, if spirit is the fresh air cent and ambient lighting in the house of consciousness, if the spirit is the electrical system that illuminates that house, then soul is the smoky fireplace, the fragrant oven, the dusty wine cellar, the strange creeks we hear in the floorboards late at night.
"It's a bit of a cliche to say it, but when you think of soul, you should think of things that are authentic and things that are deep. Anything superficial is not soulful. Anything artificial, imitative, or overly refined is not soulful. Wood has a stronger connection to soul than does plastic, although, paradoxically, thanks to human interface, a funky wooden table or chair can sometimes exceed in soulfulness the soul that may be invoked by a living tree.
”
”
Tom Robbins (Villa Incognito)
“
Nothing in the world compared to the liquid thrill of piloting a craft through three axes of movement, feeling the vertical, the lateral, and the longitudinal as divergent possibilities curving away from him through air that was tactile and elastic and textured with a warp and woof.
”
”
Eleanor Catton (Birnam Wood)
“
It is not, of course, only the Japanese who find flat sterile surfaces attractive and kirei. Foreign observers, too, are seduced by the crisp borders, sharp corners, neat railings, and machine-polished textures that define the new Japanese landscape, because, consciously or unconsciously, most of us see such things as embodying the very essence of modernism. In short, foreigners very often fall in love with kirei even more than the Japanese do; for one thing, they can have no idea of the mysterious beauty of the old jungle, rice paddies, wood, and stone that was paved over. Smooth industrial finish everywhere, with detailed attention to each cement block and metal joint: it looks ‘modern’; ergo, Japan is supremely modern.
”
”
Alex Kerr (Dogs and Demons: Tales from the Dark Side of Japan)
“
There is a hidden materiality to texts—a word that originally meant “weaving,” a connection seen in “texture.” Forests haunt writing: The English word for “book” is related to “beech tree” by its Germanic root, and “library” comes from the Latin for “the inner bark of trees.” In most Indo-European languages, “writing” comes from carving and cutting. Language carries the memory of words etched into wood tablets, tree trunks, and bones.
”
”
Alexa Hagerty (Still Life with Bones: Genocide, Forensics, and What Remains)
“
Here is what the sea smells like. It is more texture than scent, because the sea is primarily made of two
substances that have no smell of their own: water and
salt. Salt has no smell, but makes the air sting, and so all of the other smells of the sea are layered upon the pang of salt. Water has no smell but instead a comfort. We feel moisture as life and so the smells of the ocean are layered upon the contentment of the water. Salt is treble and water is bass. I don't know how I know this is true, but I know it is true. The sea smells like old wood and wet leaves. Like cold mud and warm stone. Like every creature who has ever lived in it, a churning graveyard and nursery. Like winds from the inland carrying the hot circulation of life and winds from the ocean carrying the distant froth of waves against ships and islands. Like gray, only more so. Like blue, only less so.
”
”
Joseph Fink (The Faceless Old Woman Who Secretly Lives In Your Home (Welcome to Night Vale, #3))
“
The key to this risotto is Japanese peppers of all things?!"
"It's sharp, refreshing aroma highlights the mellow body of the cheese... while making the eel's umami flavor flash like an explosion!"
"And that one key ingredient that quietly ties it all together...
... is garlic!"
"Garlic?! In traditional Japanese cuisine?! That's almost unheard of!"
"Those are special smoked garlic chips a junior of mine made. They were smoked using wood from a walnut tree, which is known to emphasize seafood flavors well. By lightly crushing those chips and sprinkling them on as a topping, I added a pleasantly crunchy texture to the dish.
But the most critical feature of my dish... is that I broiled the eel using the Kansai region Kabayaki style. Unlike the Kanto region style, there's no steaming step. Leaving all that oil in gives the eel a more fragrant aroma with a heavier texture and stronger flavor...
... meaning it pairs much more naturally with a flavor as powerful as garlic. *Steaming the eel makes much of its natural oil seep out, leaving the flesh light and fluffy.*
But what makes these chips so extraordinary... is that they're infused with Ibusaki's earnest passion and the pure sweat of his helpers, Aoki and Sato. There's no way they could not be delicious!"
"Ew! Don't say they're infused with sweat! That's gross!"
"This much alone is already an impressively polished gourmet course. What's in store for us in that teapot?"
"That is eel-liver broth, my lady. I dressed the eel's liver and then sautéed it in olive oil with some smoked garlic chips. Then I poured the sake Sakaki and Marui made over the top and let the alcohol cook off before adding bonito stock to make a broth. It matches beautifully with the cheese that Yoshino and Nikumi made, creating a soft flavor with a splendid aftertaste.
”
”
Yūto Tsukuda (食戟のソーマ 25 [Shokugeki no Souma 25] (Food Wars: Shokugeki no Soma, #25))
“
Beneath the window, set between gravel walkways, a few woody lavenders, etiolated rosemary bushes, and ornamental thyme made up the aromatherapy garden that he had seen described in the brochure. Beyond this, however, running a long arc down the gentle slope of lawn, camellias in unrestrained bloom provided an alternative tonic. The lawn gave way to a flower garden, itself fringed by a wood, so that the incarcerated had at least the consolation of a pleasant enough outlook.
Gabe stood in front of the fireplace and examined the painting that hung above the mantelpiece. It was a still life. It showed two apples and a brown and white feather laid on a velvet cloth on a table placed by a window. Although the picture was not, Gabriel assumed, of the highest artistic value, and was cheap enough to reside at Greenglades, and though it could not be said to have a photographic reality, and though he suspected it of not being "good," he was drawn to look at it and could see the ripeness of the velvet, reckon the bursting crispness of the apples, and the feather had a certain quality that he had never before observed, just as the painted window offered something that he had failed to notice at all when looking through the real one: the texture, the tone, the way the light fell, the very glassness of the glass.
”
”
Monica Ali (In the Kitchen)
“
I sucked on a blade of grass and watched the millwheel turn. I was lying on my stomach on the stream's opposite bank, my head propped in my hands. There was a tiny rainbow in the mist above the froth and boil at the foot of the waterfall, and an occasional droplet found its way to me. The steady splashing and the sound of the wheel drowned out all other noises in the wood. The mill was deserted today, and I contemplated it because I had not seen its like in ages. Watching the wheel and listening to the water were more than just relaxing. It was somewhat hypnotic. …
My head nodding with each creak of the wheel, I forced everything else from my mind and set about remembering the necessary texture of the sand, its coloration, the temperature, the winds, the touch of salt in the air, the clouds...
I slept then and I dreamed, but not of the place that I sought.
I regarded a big roulette wheel, and we were all of us on it-my brothers, my sisters, myself, and others whom I knew or had known-rising and falling, each with his allotted section. We were all shouting for it to stop for us and wailing as we passed the top and headed down once more. The wheel had begun to slow and I was on the rise. A fair-haired youth hung upside down before me, shouting pleas and warnings that were drowned in the cacophony of voices. His face darkened, writhed, became a horrible thing to behold, and I slashed at the cord that bound his ankle and he fell from sight. The wheel slowed even more as I neared the top, and I saw Lorraine then. She was gesturing, beckoning frantically, and calling my name. I leaned toward her, seeing her clearly, wanting her, wanting to help her. But as the wheel continued its turning she passed from my sight. “Corwin!”
I tried to ignore her cry, for I was almost to the top. It came again, but I tensed myself and prepared to spring upward. If it did not stop for me, I was going to try gimmicking the damned thing, even though falling off would mean my total ruin. I readied myself for the leap. Another click... “Corwin!”
It receded, returned, faded, and I was looking toward the water wheel again with my name echoing in my ears and mingling, merging, fading into the sound of the stream.
…
It plunged for over a thousand feet: a mighty cataract that smote the gray river like an anvil. The currents were rapid and strong, bearing bubbles and flecks of foam a great distance before they finally dissolved. Across from us, perhaps half a mile distant, partly screened by rainbow and mist, like an island slapped by a Titan, a gigantic wheel slowly rotated, ponderous and gleaming. High overhead, enormous birds rode like drifting crucifixes the currents of the air.
We stood there for a fairly long while. Conversation was impossible, which was just as well. After a time, when she turned from it to look at me, narrow-eyed, speculative, I nodded and gestured with my eyes toward the wood. Turning then, we made our way back in the direction from which we had come.
Our return was the same process in reverse, and I managed it with greater ease. When conversation became possible once more, Dara still kept her silence, apparently realizing by then that I was a part of the process of change going on around us.
It was not until we stood beside our own stream once more, watching the small mill wheel in its turning, that she spoke.
”
”
Roger Zelazny (The Great Book of Amber (The Chronicles of Amber, #1-10))
“
There is no fault that can’t be corrected [in natural wine] with one powder or another; no feature that can’t be engineered from a bottle, box, or bag. Wine too tannic? Fine it with Ovo-Pure (powdered egg whites), isinglass (granulate from fish bladders), gelatin (often derived from cow bones and pigskins), or if it’s a white, strip out pesky proteins that cause haziness with Puri-Bent (bentonite clay, the ingredient in kitty litter). Not tannic enough? Replace $1,000 barrels with a bag of oak chips (small wood nuggets toasted for flavor), “tank planks” (long oak staves), oak dust (what it sounds like), or a few drops of liquid oak tannin (pick between “mocha” and “vanilla”). Or simulate the texture of barrel-aged wines with powdered tannin, then double what you charge. (““Typically, the $8 to $12 bottle can be brought up to $15 to $20 per bottle because it gives you more of a barrel quality. . . . You’re dressing it up,” a sales rep explained.)
Wine too thin? Build fullness in the mouth with gum arabic (an ingredient also found in frosting and watercolor paint). Too frothy? Add a few drops of antifoaming agent (food-grade silicone oil). Cut acidity with potassium carbonate (a white salt) or calcium carbonate (chalk). Crank it up again with a bag of tartaric acid (aka cream of tartar). Increase alcohol by mixing the pressed grape must with sugary grape concentrate, or just add sugar. Decrease alcohol with ConeTech’s spinning cone, or Vinovation’s reverse-osmosis machine, or water. Fake an aged Bordeaux with Lesaffre’s yeast and yeast derivative. Boost “fresh butter” and “honey” aromas by ordering the CY3079 designer yeast from a catalog, or go for “cherry-cola” with the Rhône 2226. Or just ask the “Yeast Whisperer,” a man with thick sideburns at the Lallemand stand, for the best yeast to meet your “stylistic goals.” (For a Sauvignon Blanc with citrus aromas, use the Uvaferm SVG. For pear and melon, do Lalvin Ba11. For passion fruit, add Vitilevure Elixir.) Kill off microbes with Velcorin (just be careful, because it’s toxic). And preserve the whole thing with sulfur dioxide.
When it’s all over, if you still don’t like the wine, just add a few drops of Mega Purple—thick grape-juice concentrate that’s been called a “magical potion.” It can plump up a wine, make it sweeter on the finish, add richer color, cover up greenness, mask the horsey stink of Brett, and make fruit flavors pop. No one will admit to using it, but it ends up in an estimated 25 million bottles of red each year. “Virtually everyone is using it,” the president of a Monterey County winery confided to Wines and Vines magazine. “In just about every wine up to $20 a bottle anyway, but maybe not as much over that.
”
”
Bianca Bosker (Cork Dork: A Wine-Fueled Adventure Among the Obsessive Sommeliers, Big Bottle Hunters, and Rogue Scientists Who Taught Me to Live for Taste)
“
From an essay on early reading by Robert Pinsky:
My favorite reading for many years was the "Alice" books. The sentences had the same somber, drugged conviction as Sir John Tenniel's illustrations, an inexplicable, shadowy dignity that reminded me of the portraits and symbols engraved on paper money. The books were not made of words and sentences but of that smoky assurance, the insistent solidity of folded, textured, Victorian interiors elaborately barricaded against the doubt and ennui of a dreadfully God-forsaken vision. The drama of resisting some corrosive, enervating loss, some menacing boredom, made itself clear in the matter-of-fact reality of the story. Behind the drawings I felt not merely a tissue of words and sentences but an unquestioned, definite reality.
I read the books over and over. Inevitably, at some point, I began trying to see how it was done, to unravel the making--to read the words as words, to peek behind the reality. The loss entailed by such knowledge is immense. Is the romance of "being a writer"--a romance perhaps even created to compensate for this catastrophic loss--worth the price? The process can be epitomized by the episode that goes with one of my favorite illustrations. Alice has entered a dark wood--"much darker than the last wood":
[S]he reached the wood: It looked very cool and shady. "Well, at any rate it's a great comfort," she said as she stepped under the trees, "after being so hot, to get into the--into the--into what?" she went on, rather surprised at not being able to think of the word. "I mean to get under the--under the--under this, you know!" putting her hand on the trunk of the tree. "What does it call itself, I wonder? I do believe it's got no name--why to be sure it hasn't!"
This is the wood where things have no names, which Alice has been warned about. As she tries to remember her own name ("I know it begins with L!"), a Fawn comes wandering by. In its soft, sweet voice, the Fawn asks Alice, "What do you call yourself?" Alice returns the question, the creature replies, "I'll tell you, if you'll come a little further on . . . . I can't remember here".
The Tenniel picture that I still find affecting illustrates the first part of the next sentence: So they walked on together through the wood, Alice with her arms clasped lovingly round the soft neck of the Fawn, till they came out into another open field, and here the Fawn gave a sudden bound into the air, and shook itself free from Alice's arm. "I'm a Fawn!" it cried out in a voice of delight. "And dear me! you're a human child!" A sudden look of alarm came into its beautiful brown eyes, and in another moment it had darted away at full speed.
In the illustration, the little girl and the animal walk together with a slightly awkward intimacy, Alice's right arm circled over the Fawn's neck and back so that the fingers of her two hands meet in front of her waist, barely close enough to mesh a little, a space between the thumbs. They both look forward, and the affecting clumsiness of the pose suggests that they are tripping one another. The great-eyed Fawn's legs are breathtakingly thin. Alice's expression is calm, a little melancholy or spaced-out.
What an allegory of the fall into language. To imagine a child crossing over from the jubilant, passive experience of such a passage in its physical reality, over into the phrase-by-phrase, conscious analysis of how it is done--all that movement and reversal and feeling and texture in a handful of sentences--is somewhat like imagining a parallel masking of life itself, as if I were to discover, on reflection, that this room where I am writing, the keyboard, the jar of pens, the lamp, the rain outside, were all made out of words.
From "Some Notes on Reading," in The Most Wonderful Books (Milkweed Editions)
”
”
Robert Pinsky
“
Run!” Helena cried and ran down the staircase. Maryse took the steps two at a time, passing Helena on the way, and almost fell as she hit the foyer floor. The scream of police sirens was far too close for comfort, and Maryse struggled to pick up the pace. Skidding on the polished wood, she dashed around the corner and onto the textured tile in the kitchen, where her shoes had a much better grip and she picked up some speed. She ran into the laundry room, shoving down the window where she’d entered the house. Then she rushed out the side door, locking it before she slammed it behind her. She made for the huge hedge of bushes that separated Helena
”
”
Jana Deleon (Ghost-in-Law Series 1-3 Boxset)
“
It is also one of its best anti-counterfeit measures because it is hard to fake with wood-based paper. The particular texture of cotton paper is something that bank machines monitor. Humans are very sensitive to it, too. If there is any doubt about a banknote, there is an easy chemical test that can confirm whether it’s cotton or not. This is done in many shops using an iodine pen. When used on cellulose-based paper, the iodine reacts with the starch in the cellulose to create a pigment and so appears black. When the same pen is used on cotton paper there is no starch for the iodine to react with, and no mark appears. This basic measure allows shops to protect themselves from counterfeits produced using color photocopiers.
”
”
Mark Miodownik (Stuff Matters: Exploring the Marvelous Materials That Shape Our Man-Made World)
“
Norton was very short-sighted her whole life and the Borrowers’ environment, whether under the floorboards, out and about in the house’s drawing room and nursery or in the fields and furrows across which they travel in the sequels, always has an absolute authenticity about it – the textural truth of someone who has spent her life with her nose squashed up close to things. ‘Where others saw the far hills, the distant woods, the soaring pheasant,’ she once wrote in an essay, ‘I, as a child would turn sideways to the close bank, the tree-roots, and the tangled grasses. Moss, fern-stalks, sorrel stems, created the mise en scène for a jungle drama … One invented the characters – small, fearful people picking their way through miniature undergrowth; one saw smooth places where they might sit and rest; branched stems which might invite them to climb; sandy holes in which they might creep for shelter.
”
”
Lucy Mangan (Bookworm: A Memoir of Childhood Reading)
“
We do not know. All that we know is that we lack a tongue that could reveal, a language that could perfectly express the wild joy swelling to a music in our heart, the wild pain welling to a strong ache in our throat, the wild cry mounting to a madness in our brain, the thing, the word, the joy we know so well, and cannot speak! All that we know is that the little stations whip by in the night, the straggling little towns whip by with all that is casual, rude, familiar, ugly, and unutterable. All that we know is that the earth is flowing by us in the darkness, and that this is the way the world goes with a field and a wood and a field! And of the huge and secret earth all we know is that we feel with all our life its texture with our foot upon it.
”
”
Thomas Wolfe
“
When I look at a piece of furniture from across a room, I see form, style, scale, context, and intended use. As I approach it, I distinguish material, joinery, and proportions. When I get close enough to touch it, I take in details such as hardware, textures, finish, edge treatments, wood grain, quality, and comfort.
”
”
Peter Korn (Why We Make Things and Why it Matters: The Education of a Craftsman)
“
Are you noticing similarities between the wood on the ceiling and the stick up your ass? I’m sure they have comparable textures.
”
”
H.D. Carlton (Does It Hurt?)
“
Our favorite mixing bourbons are those that spend enough time in oak barrels to develop rich flavor and texture, but not so much that the wood overtakes the spirit; we rarely mix with bourbons older than twelve or fifteen years.
”
”
Alex Day (Cocktail Codex: Fundamentals, Formulas, Evolutions [A Cocktail Recipe Book])
“
The wood is deliciously fragrant, fine in grain and texture and creamy yellow, as if formed of condensed sunbeams
”
”
John Muir (The Yosemite)
“
We know what wood is and what earth and stone are and that they have a color and texture, a smell and even a taste, but matter as a perceptible material substance independent of the nature of the wood, earth and stone composed of it seems incomprehensible. In order for us to regard a thing as real it must possess at least some distinctive physical qualities. We must be able to experience it as a physical thing before we can decide it is real. Matter as proposed by modern science, however, has no distinctive or definite physical qualities at all. Matter is simply some unimaginable stuff possessing no conceivable definition whatsoever. The concept of matter, then, proves to be just as elusive and abstract as the concepts of spirit, soul or the life-principle.
”
”
Ojo Blacke (Dr. Monroe A. Dunlop's Paranormal Studies Lecture Series, Mind and Reality: A Psychedelic Trip to the Doormat of the Unknown: Fictional Nonfiction, Fifth Edition)
“
He didn’t know what to do with his hands as he looked down at the sleeping general. Arin thrust them into his pockets before they went for the throat. He reminded himself why he had come.
He ripped open the man’s jacket. Arin reached for the inside breast pocket, located exactly where the man had tried to touch his chest as he had lain bleeding on the road.
Arin’s fingers met paper. He pulled it out, its texture suede-soft from having been handled so much. It had been unfolded and folded many times.
It was sheet music. At first, Arin didn’t understand what he looked at. Kestrel’s handwriting. Herrani script. Musical notation in crisp black. His own name leaped off the page.
Dear Arin.
Then he recognized the music as the sonata Kestrel had been studying when he’d entered her music room at the imperial palace in late spring. It had been the last time he’d seen her before the tundra. He had thought it would be the last time he would ever see her.
Arin hastened from the tent. He couldn’t read the letter here.
But he didn’t know if he could read it anywhere, if any place would be private enough, because being alone meant he’d still be with himself, and he hated to remember how he’d left Kestrel that day, and what had befallen her after.
He was desperate to read it.
He couldn’t bear to read it.
He resented that her father had kept it.
He wondered what it meant that her father had kept it.
Arin was only vaguely aware of having stumbled through the noisy camp and into the woods. The thought of reading the letter felt like a violation, like he’d be reading a letter meant for someone else.
Yet it had been addressed to him.
Dear Arin.
Arin read.
”
”
Marie Rutkoski (The Winner's Kiss (The Winner's Trilogy, #3))
“
This primitive skill displayed itself proudly in the art of weaving. Here, too, the animal showed man the way. The web of the spider, the nest of the bird, the crossing and texture of fibres and leaves in the natural embroidery of the woods, set an example so obvious that in all probability weaving was one of the earliest arts of the human race.
”
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Will Durant (Our Oriental Heritage (Story of Civilization 1))
“
Cherry reaches about 90 to 100 feet, with a possible 54-inch trunk diameter. Cherry heartwood is a medium red-brown with its own characteristic luster. Sapwood is narrow and nearly white. Grain is straight, finely textured and close, with a gentle waving figure. Ripple and quilt
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Charlie Self (Woodworker's Guide To Wood)
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He took a stool two away from Enid. She didn’t look up from her drink or glance his way. On the other side of him a guy wearing a porkpie hat was bouncing his head up and down as though to music but no music was playing and he wasn’t wearing earphones. A rainbow of rusted license plates took up most of the back wall—probably plates representing all fifty states, but Simon wasn’t really up for checking. There were neon signs for Miller High Life and Schlitz. An oddly ornate chandelier hung from the ceiling. This place, like the inn, was all dark wood, but that was the only similarity, like this was the poorest of poor cousins of the inn’s rich dark wood. “What’ll you have?” The barmaid’s hair was the color and texture of the hay on that hayride and done in a quasi mullet that reminded Simon of an ’80s hockey player. She was either a hard forty-five or a soft sixty-five, and there was little question she had seen it all at least twice. “What kind of beer do you have?” he asked. “We have Pabst. And Pabst.” “You choose for me.
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Harlan Coben (Run Away)
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The estate sprawled across a rolling green land. I'd never seen anything like it; even out former manor couldn't compare. It was veiled in roses and ivy, with patios and balconies and staircases sprouting from it's alabaster sides. The grounds were encased by woods, but stretched so far that I could barely see the distant line of the forest. So much colour, so much sunlight and movement and texture... I could hardly drink it in fast enough. To paint it would be useless, would never do it justice.
My awe might have subdued my fear had the place not been so wholly empty and silent. Even the garden through which we walked, following a gravel path to the main doors of the house, seemed hushed and sleepingg. Above the array of amethyst irises and pale snowdrops and butter-yellow daffodils swaying in the balmy breeze, the faint stench of metal tickled my nose.
Of course it would be magic, because it was spring here. What wretched power did they possess to make their lands so different from ours, to control the seasons and weather as if they owned them?
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Sarah J. Maas (A Court of Thorns and Roses (A Court of Thorns and Roses, #1))
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I was born to walk the Earth, experience the amazing beauty of this planet, and witness the splendor and magic of all things—to be overwhelmed by a ray of sunlight, touched by an encounter with a frog, and mystified by the texture of a rock wall. I was born to splash through the creeks, sing through the canyons, laugh with the squirrels, just as I did as a small child in the woods behind our family’s home. I was born to be a kid, and not take life too seriously, or get sidetracked by a career, a project, or anything that ties me down to the life of bills, shiny new toys, status, and pavement.
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Scott Stillman (Wilderness, The Gateway To The Soul: Spiritual Enlightenment Through Wilderness (Nature Book Series))
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No! Not the ice cream stand, with its little item frames featuring all eight flavors! Not that! Anything but that! Ransack my bedroom, fine! Blow up our fountain, okay! Just don’t touch that cute little hut made out of fence and blocks of wood! With it gone, I’d no longer be able to enjoy diamond ore chunk, with its perfect texture, its fantastic consistency, and a blend of flavors so utterly amazing it should count as enchanted food! How could they destroy that?! How could they?! They might be monsters, but even they have limits, right? Even they should know where to draw the line!
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Cube Kid (Diary of an 8-Bit Warrior: Path of the Diamond (8-Bit Warrior, #4))
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Cinta Senese does not taste like pork, exactly. It is gamey, almost ripe, like well-hung pheasant or bustard, but with an almost muttony texture and juiciness and an aftertaste of briny sweetness. I could taste the woods where this pig had rooted: the wild garlic it had found, the lily bulbs, last year's acorns. I sipped the gravy. The milk had been curdled by the wine and the curds had soaked up the juice from the meat, along with the herbs. It was rich, and almost caramel-sweet, shot through with the resinous bite of the rosemary and the woody, slightly overripe tang of the pork.
”
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Philip Kazan (Appetite)
“
MYTH-1: Handmade items are costly!
The items are modest yet the commitment of the craftsmen behind the items we offer is costly
The vast majority of the cycles engaged with making the item are finished by the creator – the plan, however, the choice of the materials, the working out of how to cause the materials to go together, gathering the item, capturing the item, advertising the item, planning the bundling, and posting, conveying, or action selling. In spite of this, the items that the fasten organization offers you are truly sensible.
Haven't viewed our list? here you go! (click here)
Have you ever discovered such wonderful hand-made items at such modest rates?? I GUESS NOT!
MYTH-2: HAND-MADE PRODUCTS ARE NOT STYLISH
On the off chance that you believe that way, I have an inquiry for you – did your grandmother convey such a shopping pack when went out to get for food supplies or did she have such telephone and individual embellishment sacks? Certainly not.
The crafted works are not, at this point unfashionable or old-fashioned. Actually, they are intended for pioneers. Simply being an aspect of the pattern and following it has neither rhyme nor reason. Be the person who sets it
MYTH-3: HANDMADE GOODS ARE OF POOR QUALITY
I can't envision how individuals have such misguided judgment. The machine-made merchandise is to some degree bargained with quality. In any case, with regards to hand made items, they are taken well consideration of by the craftsmen as referenced above, there is no trade-off with the quality. They are made of cotton and jute which are solid and strong. They are lightweight and simple to deal with.
MYTH-4: THEY ARE SAME OLD PATTERNS
You can't quit lecturing about the handcrafted items which are extremely extraordinary as it will never be equivalent to some other the explanation being that they are delivered by the hands of a craftsman and not a machine. The sack so made is a result of devotion, love, energy, and the enthusiasm to serve the client.
Individuals love block prints due to the strong and straightforward plans that can be made, yet that effortlessness finds a way to accomplish.
The strategy is brilliant for pictures with only a couple of tones and fewer subtleties however can be hard to use for pictures with bunches of little content, or extremely fine subtleties that will, in general, sever the square with such a large number of employments.
One of the benefits of square printing is that it very well may be done on a surface of practically any size and surface. I print on texture, paper, canvas, wood, and different materials, and you don't need to stress over fitting it through a printer or a press.
MYTH-5: HANDMADE PRODUCTS ARE NOT LONG LASTING
Recollect the last cowhide sack you had? Which lost its covering not long after getting wet in a downpour or subsequent to utilizing it for 3-4 times. That is not the situation with hand-made cotton packs. They are launderable which makes it look clean with each utilization. No problem with the upkeep.
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The Stitch Company
“
WHOA! Now that's some thick-cut bacon!"
"Oh my gosh! Look! The top of it is gleaming!
Just looking at it is making me hungry..."
"Wait a minute. If he's copying the transfer student, then the meat he's using should be oxtail, right? So why is he bringing out bacon?"
If he's adding bacon to beef stew, there's only one thing it could be.
A GARNISH!
THE BACON IS MEANT TO BE A SIDE DISH TO THE STEW.
Yukihira's recipe is the type that calls for straining the demi-glace sauce at the end to give it a smooth texture. That means its only official ingredients are the meat and the sauce, making for a very plain dish. Garnishes of some sort are a necessity!
Beef simmered in red wine- the French dish thought to be the predecessor to beef stew- always comes with at least a handful of garnishes.
The traditional garnishes are croutons, glazed pearl onions, sautéed mushrooms...
... and bacon!
Then that means...
he's going to take that thick, juicy bacon and add it to the stew?!"
"Now he's sautéing those extra-thick slices of bacon in butter!
He's being just as efficient and delicate as always."
"Man, the smell of that bacon is so good! It's smoky, yet still somehow mellow..."
"What kind of wood chips did he use to give it that kind of scent?"
"You wanna know what I used? Easy. It's mesquite."
"Mess-keet?"
"Have you heard of it?"
"It's a small tree used for smoking that's native to Mexico and the Southern U.S. You'll hardly find it used anywhere in Japan though."
"Ibusaki!"
Mesquite is one of the most popular kinds of wood chips in Texas, the heartland of barbecues and grilling. Because of its sharp scent, it's mostly used in small quantities for smoking particularly rough cuts of meat, giving them a golden sheen.
"But I didn't stop there! I added a secret weapon to my curing compound- Muscovado sugar!
I sweetened my curing compound with Muscovado, sage, nutmeg, basil and other spices, letting the bacon marinate for a week!
It will have boosted the umami of the bacon ten times over!
”
”
Yūto Tsukuda (食戟のソーマ 11 [Shokugeki no Souma 11] (Food Wars: Shokugeki no Soma, #11))
“
She wandered moodily about the clearing, kicking at the grass, then bent down and picked something up. It was an old steel helmet, thick with rust, a jagged hole in the side.
You still find these all over the woods, she said. I'm not even sure whether it's Russian or German.
She turned it slowly over and over in her hands, crumbling more of the rusty metal off. Then she hurled it away and brushed the rust off her hands. The helmet hit a tree, bounced off in a shower of rust and fell into a bramble bush where it perched on a a branch, bobbing up and down like some great brown bird alighting. Raya seemed to be abashed by the ridiculousness of it, and picked it out of the bush. They sat down side by side on a fallen tree trunk sodden, like everything else, with the stored wetness of winter. Raya turned the helmet over in her hands again, feeling its texture curiously.
Poor old helmet, she said, Manufactured and issued and worn and punctured and lost and rusted by the forces of historical necessity. Found and touched and lost again by Raissa P. metelius, lecturer.
”
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Michael Frayn (The Russian Interpreter)
“
never before had he been so suddenly and so keenly aware of the feel and texture of a tree’s skin and of the life within it. He felt a delight in wood and the touch of it, neither as forester nor as carpenter; it was the delight of the living tree itself.
”
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J.R.R. Tolkien (The Lord of the Rings)
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There was textured skin, some of it irritated, around her nose. Half-moon shadows beneath her eyes. Eyelashes were partially blond again, and the small gap between her two front teeth had returned. The hair along her brow didn’t fall with such unnatural elegance as before. There were tangles—rogue curls. Disarray and imperfection. She looked so… human, like the girl he’d seen riding through the woods.
”
”
Rachel Gillig (Two Twisted Crowns (The Shepherd King, #2))
“
There was textured skin, some of it irritated, around her nose. Half-moon shadows beneath her eyes. Eyelashes were partially blond again, and the small gap between her two front teeth had returned. The hair along her brow didn’t fall with such unnatural elegance as before. There were tangles—rogue curls. Disarray and imperfection. She looked so… human, like the girl he’d seen riding through the woods. There were not enough pages in all the books Elm had read, in all the libraries he’d wandered, in all the notebooks he’d scrawled, that could measure—denote or describe—just how beautiful she was. “There you are.
”
”
Rachel Gillig (Two Twisted Crowns (The Shepherd King, #2))