Window Quotes - Page 17

• hanging out the window, Amber blew her a kiss. a lump the size of a fist clogged Heather's throat, while a breeze from th sea pushed her thick hair away from her face. tears trickled unchecked down her cheeks.

  Lurlene McDaniel

  Kissing, Hair, Sea

  Lurlene McDaniel (2007). “Angel of Mercy”, p.10, Laurel Leaf

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• And when your sorrow is comforted (time soothes all sorrows) you will be content that you have known me. You will always be my friend. You will want to laugh with me. And you will sometimes open your window, so, for that pleasure . . . And your friends will be properly astonished to see you laughing as you look up at the sky! Then you will say to them, 'Yes, the stars always make me laugh!' And they will think you are crazy. It will be a very shabby trick that I shall have played on you.

  Antoine de Saint-Exupery

  Stars, Crazy, Grief

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• My gripe is not with lovers of the truth but with truth herself. What succor, what consolation is there in truth, compared to a story? What good is truth, at midnight, in the dark, when the wind is roaring like a bear in the chimney? When the lightning strikes shadows on the bedroom wall and the rain taps at the window with its long fingernails? No. When fear and cold make a statue of you in your bed, don't expect hard-boned and fleshless truth to come running to your aid. What you need are the plump comforts of a story. The soothing, rocking safety of a lie.

  Diane Setterfield

  Running, Wall, Lying

  Diane Setterfield (2007). “The Thirteenth Tale: A Novel”, p.5, Simon and Schuster

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• It was pleasant to wake up in Florence, to open the eyes upon a bright bare room, with a floor of red tiles which look clean though they are not; with a painted ceiling whereon pink griffins and blue amorini sport in a forest of yellow violins and bassoons. It was pleasant, too, to fling wide the windows, pinching the fingers in unfamiliar fastenings, to lean out into sunshine with beautiful hills and trees and marble churches opposite, and, close below, Arno, gurgling against the embankment of the road.

  E. M. Forster

  Beautiful, Sports, Eye

  E. M. Forster (2013). “Delphi Collected Works of E. M. Forster (Illustrated)”, p.361, Delphi Classics

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• Shut the door, they're coming through the window, shut the window, they're coming through the door," are the words to an old song. They fit my lifestyle with newly arriving butcher/censors every month. Only six weeks ago, I discovered that, over the years, some cubby-hole editors at Ballantine Books, fearful of contaminating the young, had, bit by bit, censored some 75 separate sections from the novel. Students, reading the novel which, after all, deals with censorship and book-burning in the future, write to tell me of this exquisite irony.

  Ray Bradbury

  Song, Book, Reading

  Ray Bradbury (2012). “Fahrenheit 451: A Novel”, p.210, Simon and Schuster

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• Whenever serious and competent people need to get things done in the real world, all considerations of tradition and protocol fly out the window.

  Neal Stephenson

  Real, People, Needs

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• We get a little further from perfection, each year on the road, I guess that's what they call character, I guess that's just the way it goes, better to be dusty than polished, like some store window mannequin, why don't you touch me where i'm rusty, let me stain your hands

  Ani DiFranco

  Character, Hands, Years

  Song: Imperfectly Complete Album

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• Why do you do up your hair in those tortured plaits, now, Melanie? Why? Because, she said. You know that's no answer. You're spoiling your pretty looks, pet. Come here. She did not move. He ground out his cigarette on the window-ledge and laughed. Come here, he said again, softly. So she went.

  Angela Carter

  Moving, Hair, Pet

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• But the grind has begun. The windows don’t open, and even the availability of near-constant jokes about Jews and Mormons fails to stem the tide of frustration, decay. We’ve reached the end of pure inspiration, and are now somewhere else, something implying routine, or doing something because people expect us to do it, going somewhere each day because we went there the day before, saying things because we have said them before, and this seems like the work of a different sort of animal, contrary to our plan, and this is very very bad.

  Dave Eggers

  Inspiration, Animal, Frustration

  Dave Eggers (2014). “A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius: Picador Classic”, p.287, Pan Macmillan

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• O timid one, awaken, exert yourself, draw back the curtains your training and background have hung over the windows of your soul.

  Spencer W. Kimball

  Soul, Training, Curtains

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• A big leather-bound volume makes an ideal razorstrap. A thing book is useful to stick under a table with a broken caster to steady it. A large, flat atlas can be used to cover a window with a broken pane. And a thick, old-fashioned heavy book with a clasp is the finest thing in the world to throw at a noisy cat.

  Mark Twain

  Book, Cat, Broken

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• Ah, Father! That’s words and only words! Forgive! If he’d not been run over, he’d have come home today drunk and his only shirt dirty and in rags and he’d have fallen asleep like a log, and I should have been sousing and rinsing till daybreak, washing his rags and the children’s and then drying them by the window and as soon as it was daylight I should have been darning them. What’s the use of talking forgiveness! I have forgiven as it is!

  Fyodor Dostoevsky

  Running, Children, Father

  Fyodor Dostoevsky (1999). “Crime and Punishment”, p.303, Modern Library

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• But he stays by the window, remembering that life. They had laughed. They had leaned on each other and laughed until the tears had come, while everything else—the cold and where he'd go in it—was outside, for a while anyway.

  Raymond Carver

  Tears, Cold, Remember

  Raymond Carver (2015). “Where I'm Calling From: Selected Stories”, p.179, Vintage

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• Man was matter, that was Snowden's secret. Drop him out a window, and he'll fall. Set fire to him and he'll burn. Bury him and he'll rot, like other kinds of garbage. The spirit gone, man is garbage. That was Snowden's secret. Ripeness was all.

  Joseph Heller

  Fall, Men, Fire

  Joseph Heller (1999). “Catch-22: A Novel”, p.404, Simon and Schuster

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• Without opium, plans, marriages and journeys appear to me just as foolish as if someone falling out of a window were to hope to make friends with the occupants of the room before which he passes.

  Jean Cocteau

  Fall, Journey, Rooms

  Jean Cocteau (1990). “Opium: The Illustrated Diary of His Cure”, Peter Owen Publishers

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• So the Midwest nourishes us [...] and presents us with the spectacle of a land and a people completed and certain. And so we run to our bedrooms and read in a fever, and love the big hardwood trees outside the windows, and the terrible Midwest summers, and the terrible Midwest winters [...]. And so we leave it sorrowfully, having grown strong and restless by opposing with all our will and mind and muscle its simple, loving, single will for us: that we stay, that we stay and find a place among its familiar possibilities. Mother knew we would go; she encouraged us.

  Annie Dillard

  Summer, Mother, Running

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• Truth is naturally universal...and shines into many different windows, though many are clouded.

  Anya Seton

  Shining, Different, Truth Is

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• Tommy had felt alone in a crowd before, even inferior to everyone in a crowd, but now he felt, well, different. It wasn't just the clothes and the make up, it was the humanity. He wasn't part of it. Heightened senses or not, he felt like he had his nose pressed against the window, looking in. The problem was, it was the window of a donut shop.

  Christopher Moore

  Clothes, Humanity, Noses

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• God knows there certainly ought to be a window around here somewhere, for all of us.

  Richard Yates

  God Knows, Ought, Knows

  Richard Yates (2014). “The Collected Stories of Richard Yates”, p.173, Henry Holt and Company

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• She laughs and looks out the window and I think for a minute that she's going to start to cry. I'm standing by the door and I look over at the Elvis Costello poster, at his eyes, watching her, watching us, and I try to get her away from it, so I tell her to come over here, sit down, and she thinks I want to hug her or something and she comes over to me and puts her arms around my back and says something like 'I think we've all lost some sort of feeling.

  Bret Easton Ellis

  Eye, Thinking, Doors

  Bret Easton Ellis (2010). “Less Than Zero”, p.118, Pan Macmillan

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• So imagine a fire going -- wood snapping the way it does when it’s a little green — the wind rattling the windows behind the curtains -- and one of those Chopin melodies that feel like sorrow and ecstasy all mixed together pouring from the keys -- and you have my idea of happiness. Or just reading, reading and lamplight, the sound of pages turning. And so you dare to be happy. You do that thing. You dare.

  Steven Millhauser

  Reading, Fire, Keys

  Steven Millhauser (2007). “The King in the Tree”, p.5, Vintage

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• You're better than seven years of food. You're better than windows. You're even better than the sky.

  Shannon Hale

  Years, Sky, Seven

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• Non...I am DANCING IN MY NUDDY-PANTS!!!' And we both laughed like loons on loon tablets. I danced for ages round the house in my nuddy-pants. Also, I did this brilliant thing-I danced in the front window just for a second whilst Mr. Across the Road was drawing his curtains. He will never be sure if he saw a mirage or not. That is the kind of person I am. Not really the kind of person who goes and raises elks in Whakatane.

  Louise Rennison

  Drawing, Dancing, House

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• Actually, it was only part of myself I wanted to kill: the part that wanted to kill herself, that dragged me into the suicide debate and made every window, kitchen implement, and subway station a rehearsal for tragedy.

  Susanna Kaysen

  Suicide, Girl Interrupted, Kitchen

  Susanna Kaysen (2013). “Girl, Interrupted”, p.37, Vintage

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• Leap out the window, my inner Tigress cried. You aren't ready to face such a powerful Tiger. I frowned. I thought a true Tigress never backed down from a fight. Don't you know anything? When she's in heat, she avoids everything male. Now run!

  Gena Showalter

  Running, Powerful, Fighting

  Gena Showalter (2012). “Animal Instincts”, p.124, Harlequin

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