Quotes about thigh

A collection of quotes on the topic of thigh, likeness, herring, down.

Quotes about thigh

“Your thighs are appletrees. Your knees are a southern breeze.”

William Carlos Williams (1883–1963) American poet

Source: The Farmers' Daughters

“This time the fluttery feeling in my stomach was more intense. It made the inside of my thighs tingle and my breathing deepen.”

P. C. Cast (1960) American writer

Feeling, Time

“I waited for my thighs and butt to uncramp. Of course, they didn't know the loosening rule. They were screaming things like *Are you crazy? Do you know we're thirty-five years old? Sit down and feed us a Twinkie!”

P. C. Cast book Divine By Mistake

Source: Divine By Mistake

Waiting

“It is said in the sastras that the head of the body represents the brahmanas, the arms represent the ksatriyas, the abdomen represents the vaisyas, and the legs, beginning with the thighs, represent the sudras. The sudras are sometimes called black, or krsna. The brahmanas are called sukla, or white, and the ksatriyas and the vaisyas are a mixture of black and white. However, those who are extraordinarily white are said to have skin produced out of white leprosy. It may be concluded that white or a golden hue is the color of the higher caste, and black is the complexion of the sudras.”

A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada (1896–1977) Indian guru

Srimad Bhagavatam, Bhaktivedanta Book Trust, 1999. Canto 4, chapter 14, verse 45, purport. Vedabase http://vedabase.net/sb/4/14/45/en1 Quotes from Books: Loving God, Quotes from Books: Racism and Homophobia

Color

“i will wade out
till my thighs are steeped in burning flowers
I will take the sun in my mouth
and leap into the ripe air
Alive
with closed eyes
to dash against darkness
in the sleeping curves of my body”

E.E. Cummings (1894–1962) American poet

Flowers, Sleep, Sun

“All sixteen mentioned her jutting ribs, the insubstantiality of her thighs, and one, who went up to the roof with Lux during a warm winter rain, told us how the basins of her collarbones collected water.”

Jeffrey Eugenides book The Virgin Suicides

Source: The Virgin Suicides

Water, Winter

“The only sea I saw Was the seesaw sea With you riding on it. Lie down, lie easy. Let me shipwreck in your thighs.”

Dylan Thomas book Under Milk Wood

Source: Under Milk Wood

Lie, Sea

“I touched her thigh
and death smiled”

Jim Morrison (1943–1971) lead singer of The Doors

An American Prayer (1978)

Death, Smile

“Dead girl walking” the boys say in the halls.
“Tell us your secrets” the girls whisper, one toilet to another.
"I am that girl. I am the spaces between my thighs, daylight shinning through. I am the bones they want, wired on a porcelain frame.”

Laurie Halse Anderson Wintergirls

Source: Wintergirls

Secret, Girl, Boy, Dead

“I want to hold you like a kitten in my shirt, and still I want to spread your thighs and plow ye like a rotting bull. I dinna understand myself.”

Diana Gabaldon book Dragonfly in Amber

Source: Dragonfly in Amber

Understanding

“It's not that the Democrats are playing checkers and the Republicans are playing chess. It's that the Republicans are playing chess and the Democrats are in the nurse's office because once again they glued their balls to their thighs.”

Jon Stewart (1962) American political satirist, writer, television host, actor, media critic and stand-up comedian

Source: America (The Book): A Citizen's Guide to Democracy Inaction

“Blay said roughly,"I'm still in love with him"
Saxton dropped his eyes and brushed at the top of his thigh, as if there might have been a tiny piece of lint there. " I know. You thought you weren't?”

Jessica Bird (1969) U.S. novelist

Source: Lover Reborn

Love

“I could give you a thiught sheath to put that in,"Isabelle offered. "I got tons."
"CERTAINLY NOT," said Simon.
Clary shot him an irritated look. "Thanks, but I'm not really a thigh sheath kind of girl,"
-pg. 214”

Cassandra Clare book City of Bones

Source: City of Bones

Girl

“Whenever you have a sorcerer betwixt your thighs, your powers tend to disappear”

Kresley Cole American writer

Source: Kiss of a Demon King

“A wing or a thigh? Ah, I'm afraid we don't have any thighs left.”

Karen Marie Moning (1964) author

Source: Bloodfever

“Does my sexiness upset you?
Does it come as a surprise
That I dance like I've got diamonds
At the meeting of my thighs?”

Maya Angelou And Still I Rise

"Still I Rise"
And Still I Rise (1978)

Dance

“The day of battle dawned pink as the fresh-bitten thigh of a maiden.”

Roger Zelazny Lord of Light

Source: Lord of Light

“When she comes
She pulls you close
She breathes in short bursts
Her eyes close
Her head tilts back
Her mouth opens slightly
Her thighs turn to steel, and then melt
She is perfect
And you feel like you are everything.”

Henry Rollins (1961) American singer-songwriter

Source: The Portable Henry Rollins

Feeling, Perfection

“I am the space between my thighs, daylight shining through.”

Laurie Halse Anderson Wintergirls

Source: Wintergirls

“Lots of men are like that, their artistic leanings never go beyond a weakness for shapely thighs.”

Louis-ferdinand Céline book Journey to the End of the Night

Source: Journey to the End of the Night

Men

“Who’ll come lie down in the dark with me
Belly to belly and knee to knee
Who’ll look into my hooded eye
Who’ll lie down under my darkened thigh?”

Allen Ginsberg (1926–1997) American poet

Source: Collected Poems 1947-1997

Lie

“he dared to explore her withered neck w/his fingertips…her hips w/their decaying bones, her thighs with their aging veins.”

Gabriel García Márquez book Love in the Time of Cholera

Source: Love in the Time of Cholera

Age

“(Hey man) oh leave me alone you know
(Hey man) oh Henry, get off the phone, I gotta
(Hey man) I gotta straighten my face
This mellow thighed chick just put my spine out of place.”

David Bowie (1947–2016) British musician, actor, record producer and arranger

Suffragette City
Song lyrics, The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and the Spiders from Mars (1972)

“An erring colleague is not an Amalkite to be smitten hip and thigh.”

R. H. Tawney (1880–1962) English philosopher

"The Rise of the Gentry: A Postscript," The Economic History Review, Vol. 7, No. 1 (1954)

“The internet is not necessarily a golden goose yet, but we must fight to keep it safe, keep it level, keep it democratic, keep it open, keep it diverse so that when it becomes the golden goose, we independent artists can share and maybe at least get a wing or a thigh, even if we don’t get the breast meat.”

Lloyd Kaufman (1945) American film director

CraveOnline http://www.craveonline.com/film/articles/507781-exclusive-cannes-interview-lloyd-kaufman-on-nuke-em-high May 28, 2013 2013

Fight

“Let the power of running be in my thighs, let me never grow tired! Let there be strength in my arms, let me stretch my arms wide, let my arms never become weak! Moving like the sunlight, like Inana, like the seven storms, those of Iškur, let me leap like a flame, blaze like lightning! Let me go wherever I look to, set foot wherever I cast my glance, reach wherever my heart desires and let me loosen my shoes in whatever place my heart has named to me! When Utu lets me reach Kulaba my city, let him who curses me have no joy thereof; let him who wishes to strive with me never say "Just let him come!" I shall have the woodcarvers fashion statues of you, and you will be breathtaking to look upon. Your name will be made famous thereby in Sumer and will redound to the credit of the temples of the great gods.”

Lugalbanda

To Anzud, in Lugalbanda and the Anzud Bird, Ur III Period (21st century BCE). http://etcsl.orinst.ox.ac.uk/cgi-bin/etcsl.cgi?text=t.1.8.2.2#

God, Shoe, Fashion, Heart

“At the base of the plane, Styles freelance photographer is down on one knee, going handheld, still in the same Hawaiian shirt. The famously reclusive R. Vaughn Corliss is nowhere in view. Doug Llewellyn’s wardrobe furnished by Hugo Boss. The Malina blanket for the artist’s lap and thighs, however, is the last minute fix of a production oversight, retrieved from the car of an apprentice gaffer whose child is still nursing, and is not what anyone would call an appropriate color or design, and appears unbilled. There’s also some eleventh hour complication involving the ground level camera and the problem of keeping the commode’s special monitor out of its upward shot, since video capture of a camera’s own monitor causes what is known in the industry as feedback glare — the artist in such a case would see, not his own emergent Victory, but a searing and amorphous light.”

David Foster Wallace (1962–2008) American fiction writer and essayist

"The Suffering Channel", Oblivion: Stories
Short stories

Cars, Color, Problem, Light

“Hoyt began moving his lips as if he were trying to suck the ice cream off the top of a cone without using his teeth. She tried to make her lips move in sync with his. The next thing she knew, Hoyt had put his hand sort of under her thigh and hoisted her leg up over his thigh. What was she to do? Was this the point she should say, “Stop!”? No, she shouldn’t put it that way. It would be much cooler to say, “No, Hoyt,” in an even voice, the way you would talk to a dog that insists on begging at the table.
Slither slither slither slither went the tongue, but the hand that was what she tried to concentrate on, the hand, since it has the entire terrain of her torso to explore and not just the otorhinolaryngological caverns – oh God, it was not just at the border where the flesh of the breast joins the pectoral sheath of the chest – no, the hand was cupping her entire right – Now! She must say “No, Hoyt” and talk to him like a dog[…]”

Tom Wolfe (1930–2018) American author and journalist

Source: I am Charlotte Simmons (2004), p. 368-9, winner of the 12th annual The Literary Review Bad Sex Award

God, Dogs, Way

“Everyone in Boston of a certain age knows the story of Rosie Ruiz, the marathoner who crossed the Boston finish line in 1980 at 2:31.56, flabby thighs and all, having barely broken a sweat. Despite mounting skepticism, she basked in the glory of having run the third-fastest female marathon in history – for a few days, that is, until a couple of students remembered seeing her jump out of the crowd half a mile from the finish.
Something of the sort has been going on recently with the shade of Friedrich von Hayek. The Austrian economist, who died in 1992 just short of what would have been his ninety-third birthday, never made false claims for himself – far from it: he knew all too well the loneliness of the long distance runner. And scrupulous work as editor by the late W. W. Bartley, interpreter Bruce Caldwell, and biographer Alan Ebenstein, have made it possible to see the man clear.
But the claims conservatives are making about the role he played as an economist are beginning to smack of Ruizismus. That is, they have jumped a caricature out of the bushes late in the day and claim that their guy ran a great race.”

David Warsh (1944) American journalist

"Ruizismus among the Austrians," 4 December 2011

Age, Guy, History, Birthday

“I had to go through with it, and I turned around and she was nude except for hose and shoes, and then I saw the wounds. It was at the loins; it was a birthmark or something, a burn, a seared place, a pitiful, dry, vacant place where flesh was gone, where the thighs suddenly became small and shriveled and the flesh seemed dead. I closed my jaws and then I said, "What--that? Is that all, just that? It's nothing, a mere trifle."”

John Fante book Ask the Dust

But I was losing the words, I had to say them quickly or they would never form.
Ask the Dust (1939)

Shoe, Dead

“Had he pushed my thighs apart right then and there, his sunned skin dark against the tallow pallor of my own nocturnal flesh, and plunged two of his thick fingers thick within me, I would have felt it apt, so natural.”

Antonella Gambotto-Burke book The Pure Weight of the Heart

Source: The Pure Weight of the Heart (1998), P. 131.

Nature, Sun

“I have ridden in your cart, driver,
waved my nude arms at villages going by,
learning the last bright routes, survivor
where your flames still bite my thigh
and my ribs crack where your wheels wind.
A woman like that is not ashamed to die.
I have been her kind.”

Anne Sexton (1928–1974) poet from the United States

"Her Kind"
To Bedlam and Part Way Back (1960)

Learning

“She was an appetising woman with a full-cheeked smile, about thirty, a Nordic blonde but not icy, though ice was suggested in its tamed winter-sport aspects : the flush after skating, log-fires and hot rum and butter, fine heavy thighs, that would warm your hand like a muff, under a skirt that had swirled in a rink waltz. Her beaver lamb coat was thrust back from a green suit : solid charms, thoroughly wholesome, were indicated.”

Anthony Burgess (1917–1993) English writer

Fiction, The Right to an Answer (1960)

Smile, Sport, Winter

“In the morning theres a buzz of flies
Between the pillows and the skies that beg into your eyes
Through the looking glass in between your thighs
It's really no small surprise
How it goes straight down the rabbit hole
There it goes”

Pete Doherty (1979) English musician, writer, actor, poet and artist

"Through the Looking Glass"
Lyrics and poetry

“I turned around and saw the crease on the bed where Camilla had been seated, the sensuous contour where her thighs and hips had sunk beneath the softness of the blue chenille bedspread. then I forgot Sammy, and wild with longing I threw myself upon my knees before the spot and kissed it reverently.”

John Fante book Ask the Dust

Ask the Dust (1939)

Kiss

“Here's the way I wrote in one of the things I wrote a while back: "But since he had been in the army, he had come to understand his ungraspable longing and his phantasmal and belly-shrinking dissatisfaction: there were such things he wanted to be, to do, to write: He wanted to be the voice that shrieked out the agony of frustration and lostness and despair and loneliness, that all men feel, yet cannot understand; the voice that rolled forth the booming, intoxicating laughter of men's joy; the voice that richly purred men's love of good hot food and spicy strong drink; men's love of thick, moist, pungent tobacco smoke on a full belly; men's love of woman: voluptuous, throaty voiced, silken-thighed, and sensual."”

James Jones (1921–1977) American author

I suppose that sounds an awful lot like Wolfe, but if it does, it's exactly the way I feel.
Letter to his brother Jeff, from Hawaii (7 April 1941); p. 13
To Reach Eternity (1989)

Love, Men, Food, Way

“After a mile she complained about her feet and asked me to hold the wheel. As I did it she reached down and took off her shoes. Then she took the wheel again and threw one foot over the side of the Ford. At once her dress ballooned out, spanking her face. She tucked it under herself, but even so her brown thighs were exposed even to a pinkish underthing.”

John Fante book Ask the Dust

Ask the Dust (1939)

Shoe

“Who is the loving person? The loving person is the person who loves him or herself. I say this so often, and people say, "Oh yes, you're so right," but they don't do it! You will never be able to love anyone else until you love yourself. Even With your Fat Thighs!”

Leo Buscaglia (1924–1998) Motivational speaker, writer

Speaking Of Love (1980)

Love, People, Personality

“I threw big cowardly Hall on his belly I straddled him and rooted both spurs onto his thighs he roared like a big calf attacked by dogs … I used to trip him and let him take a mouth ful of dust now and again as he was as helpless as a big guano after leaving a dead bullock or a horse.”

Ned Kelly (1855–1880) Australian bushranger

Jerilderie Letter (1879)

Dogs, Horse, Dead

“I never saw a man fight as Conan fought. He put his back to the courtyard wall, and before they overpowered him the dead men were strewn in heaps thigh-deep about him. But at last they dragged him down, a hundred against one.”

Robert E. Howard (1906–1936) American author

Valerius recounting the tale of how Conan was caught
"A Witch Shall Be Born" (1934)

Men, Fight, Dead

“It fetches crops from the rich earth,
It's a good beast biting the ground.
It must have its knife and its board
And its food right under its thigh.
It goes unwillingly through stones,
It skins the field with leg outstretched.”

Iolo Goch (1320–1398) Welsh bard

Cnwd a gyrch mewn cnodig âr,
Cnyw diwael yn cnoi daear.
E fynn ei gyllell a'i fwyd
A'i fwrdd dan fôn ei forddwd.
Gŵr a'i anfodd ar grynfaen,
Gwas a fling a'i goes o’i flaen.
Source: Y Llafurwr (The Labourer), Line 49.

Food

“I began to draw from plant life and found the flat leaf forms were easier to do than thighs and breasts. I wanted to flatten. The plant drawings from that time until now have always been linear. They are exact observations of the form of the leaf or flower of fruit seen. Nothing is changed or added, no surface marking. They are not an approximation of the thing seen nor are they a personal expression or an abstraction. They are an impersonal observation of the form. When I applied the procedure to other things such as the vaulting of Notre Dame [church in Paris] or a patch of tar on the road, the subject of the drawings and the subsequent paintings were not recognizable even though they were exact copies of the thing seen. I wanted to use things that had no pictorial use.”

Ellsworth Kelly (1923–2015) American painter, sculptor, and printmaker

Source: 1969 - 1980, In: "Ellsworth Kelly: Works on Paper," 1987, pp. 25-26 : 'Notes from 1969'

Life, Flowers, Change, Time

“Most striking, perhaps, in their general appearance was the disproportion between the legs of these creatures and the length of their bodies; and yet — so relative is our idea of grace — my eye became habituated to their forms, and at last I even fell in with their persuasion that my own long thighs were ungainly.”

H. G. Wells book The Island of Doctor Moreau

Source: The Island of Doctor Moreau (1896), Ch. 15: Concerning the Beast Folk

Idea, Appearance

“But O Sarina come with me to my bed of woes, let me love you gently in the night, long time, we got all night, till dawn, till Juliet's rising sun and Romeo's vial sink, till I have slaked my thirst of Samsara at your portal rosy petal lips and left saviour juice in your rosy flesh garden to melt and dry and ululate another baby for the void, come sweet Sarina in my naughty arms, be dirty in my clean milk, and I'll detest the defecate I leave in your milky empowered cyst-and-vulva chamber, your cloacan clara file-hool through which slowly drool the hall-gyzm, to castles in your hassel flesh and I'll protect you trembling thighs against my heart and kiss your lips and cheeks and Lair and love you everywhere and that'll be that…”

Jack Kerouac book Desolation Angels

Desolation Angels (1965)

Love, Kiss, Time, Sun

“Mahela is a class player so it would be great to have him back and in the form he was in before he got injured [injured his thigh during a cricket game]”

Mahela Jayawardene (1977) Former Sri Lankan cricketer

Wicketkeeper-batsman Tim Ludeman of the Adelaide Strikers, The Advertiser (January 19, 2016), "Adelaide Strikers may roll the dice on star import Mahela Jayawardene" http://www.adelaidenow.com.au/sport/cricket/adelaide-strikers-may-roll-the-dice-on-star-import-mahela-jayawardene/news-story/120958219581e550e2750ca5e45bc479 About

Game

“Mo: Clarice, you've gotta reconcile your feelings about leaving the neighborhood. It's not Ginger you're attracted to, it's what she represents. The co-op, the park, the block festival, the community!
Clarice: Oh, so it's really the community's inner thighs I want to drizzle with maple crème anglaise, which I then slowly lap up while straddling the tantalizing tongue of the co-op.”

Alison Bechdel book Dykes to Watch Out For

#297, "Stray Voltage" (1998), collected in Split-Level DTWOF (1998).
Dykes to Watch Out For

Feeling, Communication

“My thighs have been involved in many accidents,
And now I can't get insured,
And I don't need to be lured by you.
My cunt is built like a wound that won't heal,
And now you don't have to ask
Because you know how I feel.”

Ani DiFranco (1970) musician and activist

Out of Habit
Song lyrics

Feeling

“Everyone who makes films has to be an athlete to a certain degree because cinema does not come from abstract academic thinking; it comes from your knees and thighs.”

Werner Herzog (1942) German film director, producer, screenwriter, actor and opera director

Herzog on Herzog (2002)

Thinking

“Woman is […] — finally screwing and your groin and buttocks and thighs ache like hell and you're all wet and maybe bloody and it wasn't like a Hollywood movie at all but jesus at least you're not a virgin any more but is this what it's all about?—And meanwhile he's asking, "Did you come?"”

Robin Morgan (1941) American feminist writer

"Barbarous Rituals", in Going Too Far: The Personal Chronicle of a Feminist, p 110.

Hell

“The body is divided into three parts and nine sections. The three parts are the spine, the two arms and the two legs.1. Spine: the head, thorax and abdomen. These three sections make up the main trunk of the body.
2. Arms: the hands, elbows and shoulders. These three sections constitute the upper limbs.
3. Legs: the hips, knees and feet. These three sections constitute the body’s lower limbs.So the body is divided into upper, middle and lower vessels. The upper is from the chest and arms upwards, the middle constitutes waist and hips, and the lower vessel is from the thighs and knees downwards.”

Wu Kung-tsao (1902–1983) Chinese martial artist

Wu Family T'ai Chi Ch'uan (1980)

Parting

“Up to eight feet long and as heavy as a lioness, the adult Komodo dragon brandishes steak-knifelike teeth - sharp, recurved blades with serrated cutting edges. Showing the same sagacity found in veteran Nile crocodiles, fully adult dragons know their hunting territory from years of experience. They know where to lie along hilly game trails, awaiting the light footsteps of a deer. Attacks are instant successes or failures because the ora has no stamina, and if it misses on the first short rush, it has little sustained speed for a long pursuit. When an attack succeeds, the cruel rows of slashing teeth cut fearful wounds on the rump and thigh of ambushed animals and the stricken prey may die of massive infection days later even if it manages to break free from the dragon's mouth. Tethered livestock suffer truly terrible cuts across the legs when an ora slinks into the compound under cover of the warm Indonesian nights. Several humans, both native and European visitors, have died in savage daylight attacks. The victims simply had no warning sign that the ora was waiting patiently a few feet from the trail's edge.”

Robert T. Bakker book The Dinosaur Heresies

The Dinosaur Heresies: A Revolutionary View of Dinosaurs (1986), Longman Scientific & Technical, p. 62-63
The Dinosaur Heresies (1986)

Lie, Fear, Game, Failure

“The two men walked on and stopped eight feet in front of him and faced him head-on. Reacher flexed his fingers by his side, to test how cold they were. Eight feet was an interesting choice of distance. It meant they were going to talk before they tangled. He flexed his toes and ran some muscle tension up through his calves, his thighs, his back, his shoulders. Moved his head side to side and then back a little, to loosen his neck. He breathed in through his nose. The wind was on his back. The guy on the left took his hands out of his pockets. No gloves. And either he had bad arthritis or he was holding rolls of quarters in both palms.”

Lee Child book Without Fail

Without Fail, Ch. 1 (2002).

Men, Guy

““Squatting on old bones and excrement and rusty iron, in a white blaze of heat, a panorama of naked idiots stretches to the horizon. Complete silence - their speech centres are destroyed - except for the crackle of sparks and the popping of singed flesh as they apply electrodes up and down the spine. White smoke of burning flesh hangs in the motionless air. A group of children have tied an idiot to a post with barbed wire and built a fire between his legs and stand watching with bestial curiosity as the flames lick his thighs. His flesh jerks in the fire with insect agony.”

William S. Burroughs book Naked Lunch

Benway
Naked Lunch (1959)

Children, Jerk, Silence, Singing

“willow of crystal, a poplar of water,
a pillar of fountain by the wind drawn over,
tree that is firmly rooted and that dances,
turning course of a river that goes curving,
advances and retreats, goes roundabout,
arriving forever:
the calm course of a star
or the spring, appearing without urgency,
water behind a stillness of closed eyelids
flowing all night and pouring out prophecies,
a single presence in the procession of waves
wave over wave until all is overlapped,
in a green sovereignty without decline
a bright hallucination of many wings
when they all open at the height of the sky, course of a journey among the densities
of the days of the future and the fateful
brilliance of misery shining like a bird
that petrifies the forest with its singing
and the annunciations of happiness
among the branches which go disappearing,
hours of light even now pecked away by the birds,
omens which even now fly out of my hand, an actual presence like a burst of singing,
like the song of the wind in a burning building,
a long look holding the whole world suspended,
the world with all its seas and all its mountains,
body of light as it is filtered through agate,
the thighs of light, the belly of light, the bays,
the solar rock and the cloud-colored body,
color of day that goes racing and leaping,
the hour glitters and assumes its body,
now the world stands, visible through your body,
and is transparent through your transparency”

Octavio Paz (1914–1998) Mexican writer laureated with the 1990 Nobel Prize for Literature

Sun Stone (1957)

Fate, World, Color, Mountain

“Painting is the magic art, the fire set alight on the windows of the rich dwelling, as on those of the humble hovel, from the last rays of the setting sun, it is the long mark, the humid mark, the fluent and still mark that the dying wave etches on the hot sand, it is the darting of the immortal lizard on the rock burnt by the midday heat, it is the rainbow of conciliation, on sad May afternoons, after the storm has passed, down there, making a dark backdrop to the almond trees in flower, to the gardens with their washed colours, to the ploughmen's huts, smiling and tranquil, it is the livid cloud chased by the vehement blowing of Aeolus enraged, it is the nebulous disk of the fleeting moon behind the ripped-open funereal curtain of a disturbed sky in the deep of night, it is the blood of the bull stabbed in the arena, of the warrior fallen in the heat of battle, of Adonis' immaculate thigh wounded by the obstinate boar's curved tusk, it is the sail swollen with the winds of distant seas, it is the centuries-old tree browned in the autumn..”

Giorgio de Chirico (1888–1978) Italian artist

Quote from the first lines in De Cirico's essay 'Painting', 1938; from http://www.fondazionedechirico.org/wp-content/uploads/211_Painting_1938_Metaphysical_Art.pdf 'Painting', 1938 - G. de Chirico, presentation to the catalogue of his solo exhibition Mostra personale del pittore Giorgio de Chirico, Galleria Rotta, Genoa, May 1938], p. 211
1920s and later

Sadness, Smile, Art, Flowers

“A brackish reach of shoal off Madaket--
The sea was still breaking violently and night
Had steamed into our North Atlantic Fleet,
When the drowned sailor clutched the drag-net. Light
Flashed from his matted head and marble feet,
He grappled at the net
With the coiled, hurdling muscles of his thighs:
The corpse was bloodless, a botch of reds and whites,
Its open, staring eyes
Were lustreless dead-lights
Or cabin-windows on a stranded hulk
Heavy with sand.”

Robert Lowell (1917–1977) Poet

Poem: The Quaker Graveyard in Nantucket http://www.english.uiuc.edu/maps/poets/g_l/lowell/onlinepoems.htm

Light, Sea, Night, Dead

“Hide me from day's garish eye,
While the bee with honied thigh,
That at her flowery work doth sing,
And the waters murmuring
With such consort as they keep,
Entice the dewy-feathered sleep.”

John Milton (1608–1674) English epic poet

Source: Il Penseroso (1631), Line 141

Sleep, Water, Bee, Singing

“I like women a lot and I champion them. I tell people when they are beautiful, I tell other actresses when I think their work is amazing… So I think women feel relatively comfortable in my presence. Also, because I'm not perfect, you know? I've got flabby thighs, I'm aging and I'm 5ft 3in. I talk about my failing in contemporary society in terms of gyms or food or whatever. I think there's a polite appreciation that I'm honest.”

Gillian Anderson (1968) American-British film, television and theatre actress, activist and writer

On being appreciated by women — Net-a-Porter "Gillian Anderson on finding Scully again and her chemistry with David Duchovny" https://www.net-a-porter.com/magazine/333/11 (January 14, 2016) 2010s

Women, People, Age, Food

“When the sun shouts and people abound
One thinks there were the ages of stone and the age of bronze
And the iron age; iron the unstable metal;
Steel made of iron, unstable as his mother; the towered-up cities
Will be stains of rust on mounds of plaster.
Roots will not pierce the heaps for a time, kind rains will cure them,
Then nothing will remain of the iron age
And all these people but a thigh-bone or so, a poem
Stuck in the world's thought, splinters of glass
In the rubbish dumps, a concrete dam far off in the mountain…”

Robinson Jeffers (1887–1962) American poet

"Summer Holiday"

People, Age, World, Mountain

“God, give us Peace! not such as lulls to sleep,
But sword on thigh and brow with purpose knit!”

James Russell Lowell (1819–1891) American poet, critic, editor, and diplomat

The Washers of the Shroud, st. 20
Context: God, give us Peace! not such as lulls to sleep,
But sword on thigh and brow with purpose knit!
And let our Ship of State to harbor sweep,
Her ports all up, her battle lanterns lit,
And her leashed thunders gathering for their leap.

God, Peace, Sleep

“As spread thighs are to the libertine, flights of migratory birds to the ornithologist, the working part of his tool bit to the production machinist, so was the letter V to young Stencil.”

Thomas Pynchon book V.

Source: V. (1963), Chapter Three
Context: As spread thighs are to the libertine, flights of migratory birds to the ornithologist, the working part of his tool bit to the production machinist, so was the letter V to young Stencil. He would dream perhaps once a week that it had all been a dream, and that now he’d awakened to discover the pursuit of V. was merely a scholarly quest after all, an adventure of the mind, in the tradition of ‘’The Golden Bough’’ or ‘’The White Goddess’’
But Soon enough he’d wale up the second, real time, to make again the tiresome discovery that it hadn’t really stopped being the same simple-minded literal pursuit; V. ambiguously a beast of venery, chased like the hart, hind or hare, chased like an obsolete or bizarre, or forbidden form of sexual delight. And clownish Stencil capering along behind her, bells a jingle, waving a wood, toy oxgoad. For no one’s amusement but his own.

Bird, Parting

“Dear Gillian,

You are completely and utterly self obsessed. If you spent a quarter of your time thinking about others instead of how much you hate your thighs, your level of contentment and self worth would expand exponentially. One thing I learned way too late in the game for my own good was that you can effectively increase your self esteem by doing estimable things.”

Gillian Anderson (1968) American-British film, television and theatre actress, activist and writer

Therefore I have signed you up to build homes for the homeless during your entire summer vacation. Your Christmas will be spent serving food at a battered women’s shelter and Easter is designated to reading stories to children in the pediatric cancer ward. Four months out of 16years dedicated to human beings other than yourself, you have gotten off easy. Oh and honey expand your horizons; your world is a bigger oyster than your low self-esteem wants you to believe. Love yourself; think of others and be grateful. I love you, I believe in you, and I look forward to respecting you. Me. You. Us P.S. Follow your dreams, not your boyfriends. Anderson's letter to her teenage self — from Dear Me: More Letters To My Sixteen-Year-Old Self http://www.dearme.org/excerpt/GA/?iframe=true&width=750&height=100%/, edited by Joseph Galliano. (June 19, 2011) 2010s

Hate, Way, Game, Thinking

“A distinct throat. Which breathes. A head: small, smaller than a flower. With eyes and with lips. Lips more slender than light; a smile how carefully and slowly made, a smile made entirely of dream. Eyes deeper than Spring. Eyes darker than Spring, more new... These, these are the further miracles... the breasts. Thighs. The All which is beyond comprehension — the All which is perpetually discovered, yet undiscovered: sexual, sweet, Alive!”

E.E. Cummings Him

Him (1927)

Light, Smile, Dreams, Spring

“I put my hand on him. Touching him has always been important to me, it was something I lived for. I never could explain why. Little, nothing touches, my fingers against his shoulder, the outsides of our thighs touching as we squeeled together on the bus. I couldnt explain it, but I needed it. Sometimes I imagined stiching all of our little touches together. How many hundreds of thousands of fingers brushing against each other does it take to make love?”

Jonathan Safran Foer book Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close

Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close (2005)

Imagination, Love, Making love

“Men and women will never understand each other; my advice is to just stop trying. Just forget it. I know I will never understand women. I will never understand how you can take boiling hot wax, pour it onto your upper thigh, rip the hair out by the root…and still be afraid of a spider.”

Jerry Seinfeld (1954) American comedian and actor

I'm Telling You for the Last Time (1998)

Forgetting, Understanding, Women, Men