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1 " Landscape is my religion....God in a green legend, I lean over the poolIn a testament of leaves. I dangle my twinkling mood Before me in a cool cave roofed with branchesAnd floored with a skin of water. "
2 " As readers, we have gone from learning a precious craft whose secret was held by a jealous few, to taking for granted a skin that has become subordinate to principles of mindless financial profit or mechanical efficiency, a skill for which governments care almost nothing. "
― Alberto Manguel , The Library at Night
3 " It is not a garment I cast off this day, but a skin that I tear with my own hands.Nor is it a thought I leave behind me, but a heart made sweet with hunger and with thirst. "
― Kahlil Gibran , The Prophet
4 " One’s story isn’t a skin to be shed— it’s inescapable, one’s body and blood. You go on pumping it out till you die, the story veined with the themes of your life, the ever-recurring story that’s at once your invention and the invention of you. "
― Philip Roth
5 " Don't look shy if you wear rag and people gag, many are in the grave wearing skeleton, and you should even be happier for wearing a skin without clothes. "
― Michael Bassey Johnson
6 " A black shadow dropped down into the circle. It was Bagheera the Black Panther, inky black all over, but with the panther markings showing up in certain lights like the pattern of watered silk. Everybody knew Bagheera, and nobody cared to cross his path, for he was as cunning as Tabaqui, as bold as the wild buffalo, and as reckless as the wounded elephant. But he had a voice as soft as wild honey dripping from a tree, and a skin softer than down. "
― Rudyard Kipling , The Jungle Books
7 " For the Wife Beater's WifeWith blue irises her face is blossomed. BlueCircling to yellow, circling to brown on her cheeks.The long bone of her jaw untrackedShe hides in our kitchen.He sleeps it off next door.Her chicken legs tucked under herShe's frantic with lies, animatedBefore the swirling smoke.On her cigarette she leaves red prints, redLike a cut on the white cup.Like a skin she pulls her sweater around her.She's cold,She brings the cold in with her.In our kitchen she hides.He sleeps it off next door, his greatBelly heaving with booze.Again and again she tells the storyAs if the details ever changed,As if blows to the face were somehowDifferent beating to beating.We reach for her but can't help.She retreats into her cold love of himAnd looks across the table at usAs if across a sea.Next door he claws out of sleep.She says she thinks she'll do somethingAfter all, with her hair tonight. "
8 " Big secrets were catastrophic. However hard you try to hide them, they bob to the surface and you must go over them again and again. They are taken out so often they become worn smooth as a river stone. You have to carry them around you like a baby. The secret grows until you feel like you are a skin that covers it, a thin skin, easily split, ripe "
― Karen Foxlee , The Anatomy of Wings
9 " Maybe innocence is a skin you must shed to build layers more resistant to the caustic truths of the world. "
10 " Buildings in modern cities have lost their metaphoric aspect. Much contemporary architecture is very fragmented and busy on the outside. It's like a skin or a skull, but you don't know what's inside. "