Staircases Quotes - Page 2

• Up close the city constitutes an oppressive series of staircases, but from a distance it inspires fantasies of wealth and power so profound that even our communists are temporarily rendered speechless.

  David Sedaris

  Distance, Cities, Profound

  David Sedaris (2000). “Me talk pretty one day”

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• I feel as though I stand at the foot of an infinitely high staircase, down which some exuberant spirit is flinging tennis ball after tennis ball, eternally, and the one thing I want in the world is a tennis ball.

  Annie Dillard

  Feet, Tennis, Balls

  Annie Dillard (2011). “Pilgrim at Tinker Creek”, p.102, Hymns Ancient and Modern Ltd

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• To be ashamed of one's immorality: that is a step on the staircase at whose end one is also ashamed of one's morality.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Steps, Morality, Ends

  Friedrich Nietzsche (2009). “Basic Writings of Nietzsche”, p.273, Modern Library

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• At the top of the iron staircase leading to the stage, the good, dry, dusty warmth wraps me round like a comfortable dirty cloak.

  Sidonie Gabrielle Colette

  Dirty, Iron, Dry

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• I'm certain, as we filled down the great staircase, that I appeared the same as ever, a moping twelve years-old, all arms and legs. But secretly I knew I had been transformed, moved by the revelation that human beings create art, that to be an artist was to see what others could not.

  Patti Smith

  Art, Years, Twelve

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• In matters of climbing long staircases, how many stairs there are is not as important as how strong a will you have!

  Mehmet Murat Ildan

  Strong, Climbing, Long

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• Driving most supercars is like trying to manhandle a cow up a back staircase, but this is like smearing honey onto Keira Knightley.

  Jeremy Clarkson

  Trying, Honey, Cows

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• Rationally speaking, blaming one's behavior on alcohol or drugs is like blaming the ladder by which you descended into a pit, or the staircase that took you down to a cellar, for what you found there.

  Graham Joyce

  Alcohol, Drug, Pits

  "Sometimes a Great Notion". Book by Graham Joyce, www.huffingtonpost.com. July 27, 1964.

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• Mr Lorry asks the witness questions: Ever been kicked? Might have been. Frequently? No. Ever kicked down stairs? Decidedly not; once received a kick at the top of a staircase, and fell down stairs of his own accord.

  Charles Dickens

  Might, Stairs, Lorry

  Charles Dickens (2010). “A Tale of Two Cities and Great Expectations (Oprah's Book Club): Two Novels”, p.62, Penguin

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• Then, of course, through the umbilical link we all tumble backwards down the spiralling DNA staircase to one common ancestor in Africa, and before that some bunch of curious monkeys. Down and down we go unto the sea, unto the dust, the single cellular dust. What impulse drove one cell to become two? What yearning pulled the fish on to the land? What caused apes to walk upright? Some invisible magnetic pull. Is there a difference between attraction and intention? Where is evolution taking us?

  Russell Brand

  Dna, Cells, Dust

  Russell Brand (2014). “Revolution”, p.66, Ballantine Books

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• I carry my own church about under my own hat," said I. "Bricks and mortar won't make a staircase to heaven. I believe with your Master that the human heart is the best temple.

  Arthur Conan Doyle

  Believe, Heart, Bricks And Mortar

  Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (2013). “Delphi Complete Works of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (Illustrated)”, p.4552, Delphi Classics

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• A tune's like a staircase - walk up on it.

  Ma Rainey

  Music, Tunes, Walks

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• If time is a staircase, reality is a Slinky. Decades can be parsed. Television, frequently accused of destabilizing life, is actually what stitches the segments together.

  Louis Menand

  Reality, Slinkies, Ifs

  "The Iron Law of Stardom" by Louis Menand, www.newyorker.com. March 24, 1997.

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• Different types of dangerous lives-You have no idea what you are living through; you rush through life as if you were drunk and now and then fall down some staircase. But thanks to your drunkenness you never break a limb; your muscles are too relaxed and your brain too benighted for you to find the stones of these stairs as hard as we do.

  Friedrich Nietzsche

  Fall, Ideas, Drunk

  Friedrich Nietzsche (2010). “The Gay Science: With a Prelude in Rhymes and an Appendix of Songs”, p.197, Vintage

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• Many a man may look respectable, and yet be able to hide at will behind a spiral staircase.

  P. G. Wodehouse

  Men, Looks, May

  P. G. Wodehouse (2008). “Nothing Serious”, Everyman Paperback Classics

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• In the photographs themselves there's a definite contrast between the figures and the location - I like that kind of California backyard look; clapboard houses, staircases outdoors.

  Helmut Newton

  California, House, Backyards

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• Many years have passed since that night. The wall of the staircase up which I had watched the light of his candle gradually climb was long ago demolished. And in myself, too, many things have perished which I imagined would last for ever, and new ones have arisen, giving birth to new sorrows and new joys which in those days I could not have foreseen, just as now the old are hard to understand.

  Marcel Proust

  Wall, Night, Light

  Marcel Proust (2008). “The Senses of Consciousness: Swann's Way in Half”, p.33, Lulu.com

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• OH NO YOU DON’T, LADDIE!” Harry spun around. Professor Moody was limping down the marble staircase. His wand was out and it was pointing right at a pure white ferret, which was shivering on the stone-flagged floor, exactly where Malfoy had been standing.

  J. K. Rowling

  White, Funny Harry Potter, Ferrets

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• Yet, even for us, there is left some loveliness of environment, and the dullness of tutors and professors matters very little when one can loiter in the grey cloisters at Magdalen, and listen to some flute-like voice singing in Waynfleete's chapel, or lie in the green meadow, among the strange snakespotted fritillaries, and watch the sunburnt noon smite to a finer gold the tower's gilded vanes, or wander up the Christ Church staircase beneath the vaulted ceiling's shadowy fans, or pass through the sculptured gateway of Laud's building in the College of St. John.

  Oscar Wilde

  Lying, College, Oxford

  Oscar Wilde (1999). “De Profundis: The Ballad of Reading Gaol and Other Writings”, p.231, Wordsworth Editions

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• A gunshot rang out, blasting a hole in the door. A crossbow quarrel zinged through the hole and stuck quivering into the opposite wall. Seth heard the rocking horse clattering down the staircase, the twang of bowstrings, and the overlapping beat of several other projectiles thudding against the door. "That was awesome," Seth told Kendra. "You're psychotic," Kendra replied.

  Brandon Mull

  Horse, Wall, Doors

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• I loved ghost stories, creaky staircases, stormy nights. If it guaranteed nightmares I read it by flashlight, after midnight.

  Lisa Gardner

  Night, Ghost Stories, Flashlights

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• In a crime story, the details become tremendously important - where the staircase was in relation to the bed, for example.

  Bill James

  Important, Details, Stories

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• I was afraid to board a streetcar because of the conductor; I was afraid to enter the Kabuki Theater for fear of the usherettes standing along the sides of the red-carpeted staircase at the main entrance; I was afraid to go into a restaurant because I was intimidated by the waiters furtively hovering behind me waiting for my plate to be emptied.

  Osamu Dazai

  Waiting, Awkward, Boards

  Osamu Dazai (1973). “No Longer Human”, p.61, New Directions Publishing

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• That was the idea behind glam clubs like Seven and The New Eve. You could eat and dance to live music. To enter you had to descend a grand staircase.

  Christian Lacroix

  Ideas, Clubs, Seven

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• Death comes to me again, a girl in a cotton slip, barefoot, giggling. It’s not so terrible she tells me, not like you think, all darkness and silence. There are windchimes and the smell of lemons, some days it rains, but more often the air is dry and sweet. I sit beneath the staircase built from hair and bone and listen to the voices of the living. I like it, she says, shaking the dust from her hair, especially when they fight, and when they sing.

  Dorianne Laux

  Girl, Sweet, Rain

  Dorianne Laux (2000). “Smoke: poems”, BOA Editions Ltd.

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