Window Quotes - Page 32

• I wanted so much to forget the past, but it wouldn't go away, it hung around like an open wound that refused to scar over, an open window that no amount of muscle could shut.

  Elizabeth Wurtzel

  Past, Going Away, Scar

  Elizabeth Wurtzel (2014). “Prozac Nation: Young and Depressed in America”, p.131, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• November is the most disagreeable month in the whole year," said Margaret, standing at the window one dull afternoon, looking out at the frostbitten garden. "That's the reason I was born in it," observed Jo pensively, quite unconscious of the blot on her nose.

  Louisa May Alcott

  Garden, Years, Noses

  Louisa May Alcott (2012). “Little Women and Little Men”, p.248, Graphic Arts Books

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• She lost much of her appetite. At night, an invisible hand kept shaking her awake every few hours. Grief was physiological, a disturbance of the blood. Sometimes a whole minute would pass in nameless dread - the bedside clock ticking, the blue moonlight coating the window like glue - before she`d remember the brutal fact that had caused it.

  Jeffrey Eugenides

  Grief, Night, Blue

  Jeffrey Eugenides (2011). “The Marriage Plot: A Novel”, p.78, Macmillan

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• I have made calculations that would beggar your soul. What is it that villains always say at the end of stories? You and I are more alike than you think? Well,” the Marquess took September’s hand in hers and very gently kissed it. “We are. Oh, how alike we are! I feel very warmly towards you, and I only want to protect you, as I wish someone had protected me. Come, September, look out the window with me. It’s not a difficult thing. A show of faith, let’s call it.

  Catherynne M. Valente

  Thinking, Hands, Soul

  Catherynne M. Valente (2011). “The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making”, p.217, Macmillan

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• I looked at the stained-glass image of the lamb in the window above me, but that only reminded me that lambs are famous for being led to slaughter, or sometimes hanging out with lions in ill-advised relationships.

  Maureen Johnson

  Glasses, Lambs, Lions

  Maureen Johnson (2011). “The Name of the Star”, p.162, Penguin

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• There were days, rainy gray days, when the streets of Brooklyn were worthy of a photograph, every window the lens of a Leica, the view grainy and immobile. We gathered our colored pencils and sheets of paper and drew like wild, feral children into the night, until, exhausted, we fell into bed. We lay in each other's arms, still awkward but happy, exchanging breathless kisses into sleep.

  Patti Smith

  Children, Sleep, Kissing

  "Just Kids". Book by Patti Smith, January 19, 2010.

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• Perhaps the easiest people to fall in love with are those about whom we know nothing. Romances are never as pure as those we imagine during long train journeys, as we secretly contemplate a beautiful person who is gazing out of the window – a perfect love story interrupted only when the beloved looks back into the carriage and starts up a dull conversation about the excessive price of the on-board sandwiches with a neighbour or blows her nose aggressively into a handkerchief.

  Alain de Botton

  Beautiful, Falling In Love, Journey

  Alain de Botton (2015). “On Love: A Novel”, p.40, Grove/Atlantic, Inc.

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• a happy birthday this evening, I sat by an open window and read till the light was gone and the book was no more than a part of the darkness. I could easily have switched on a lamp, but I wanted to ride the day down into night, to sit alone, and smooth the unreadable page with the pale gray ghost of my hand

  Ted Kooser

  Book, Night, Light

  Ted Kooser, “A Happy Birthday”

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• The city, however, does not tell its past, but contains it like the lines of a hand, written in the corners of the streets, the gratings of the windows, the banisters of the steps, the antennae of the lightning rods, the poles of the flags, every segment marked in turn with scratches, indentations, scrolls.

  Italo Calvino

  Past, Hands, Cities

  Italo Calvino (2013). “Invisible Cities”, p.19, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• I can walk into someone's house, kiss their wife, sit down at their table, and eat their dinner. I can lift a passport at an airport, and in twenty minutes it will seem like it's mine. I can be a blackbird staring in the window. I can be a cat creeping along a ledge. I can go anywhere I want and do the worst things I can imagine, with nothing to ever connect me to those crimes. Today I look like me, but tomorrow I could look like you. I could be you.

  Holly Black

  Cat, Kissing, Airports

  Holly Black (2012). “Black Heart”, p.197, Simon and Schuster

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• ... But I'm annoying you to no purpose with my arguments. A person whose house is only open on the west can't see the sun rise at dawn; it's only seen when the sun sets at dusk. If one tries to compare the color and appearance of the two, one will go on arguing forever... ...The fault lies not with the vision but with the closed windows. If you look out of only one opening till the day you die, you'll ever see anything new.

  Sarat Chandra Chattopadhyay

  Lying, Color, Two

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• And leaning out the window, enjoying the day above the varying volume of the entire city, only one thought swells my soul – the intimate will to die, to finish, not to see more light over any city, not to think, not to feel, to leave behind like wrapping paper the course of the sun and the days, to rid myself, at the edge of the grand bed, as of a heavy suit, of the involuntary effort to be.

  Fernando Pessoa

  Thinking, Light, Cities

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• I saw my bulky person in the windows of the passing storefronts and wondered, when will that man there find himself to be loved?

  Patrick deWitt

  Men, Saws, Passing

  Patrick deWitt (2011). “The Sisters Brothers”, p.37, Granta Books

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• Mary awoke from her nightmare with a pounding heart, convinced that she had only imagined Elizabeth's cruel plot. A full moon was shining into her chamber, illuminating everything around her in silvery light. That was when she noticed for the first time that there were bars on her window.

  Margaret George

  Heart, Moon, Light

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• It felt like everything was rising up in me, like I was drowning in this weirdly painful joy, but I couldn't say it back. I just looked at him and let him look at me until he nodded, lips pursed and turned away, placing the side of his head against the window.

  John Green

  Rising Up, Joy, Looks

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• One of the heavy marble busts that lined the higher shelves had slid free and was falling toward her; she ducked out of its way, and it hit the floor inches from where she'd been standing, leaving a sizable dent in the floor. A second later Jace's arms were around her and he was lifting her off her feet. She was too surprized to struggle as he carried her over to the broken window and dumped her unceremoniously out of it.

  Cassandra Clare

  Struggle, Fall, Feet

  Cassandra Clare (2011). “Cassandra Clare: The Mortal Instrument Series (4 books): City of Bones; City of Ashes; City of Glass; City of Fallen Angels”, p.1004, Simon and Schuster

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• We open our eyes and we think we're seeing the whole world out there. But what has become clear—and really just in the last few centuries—is that when you look at the electro-magnetic spectrum we are seeing less than 1/10 Billionth of the information that's riding on there. So we call that visible light. But everything else passing through our bodies is completely invisible to us. Even though we accept the reality that's presented to us, we're really only seeing a little window of what's happening.

  David Eagleman

  Eye, Reality, Thinking

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• But I guess the nice thing about driving a car is that the physical act of driving itself occupies a good chunk of brain cells that otherwise would be giving you trouble overloading your thinking. New scenery continually erases what came before; memory is lost, shuffled, relabeled and forgotten. Gum is chewed; buttons are pushed; windows are lowered and opened. A fast moving car is the only place where you're legally allowed to not deal with your problems. It's enforced meditation and this is good.

  Douglas Coupland

  Memories, Nice, Moving

  Douglas Coupland (2012). “Life After God”, p.84, Simon and Schuster

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• This is where the story starts, in this threadbare room. The walls are exploding. The windows have turned into telescopes. Moon and stars are magnified in this room. The sun hangs over the mantelpiece. I stretch out my hand and reach the corners of the world. The world is bundled up in this room. Beyond the door, where the river is, where the roads are, we shall be. We can take the world with us when we go and sling the sun under your arm. Hurry now, it's getting late. I don't know if this is a happy ending but here we are let loose in open fields.

  Jeanette Winterson

  Stars, Wall, Moon

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• One must write poetry in such as way that if one threw the poem in a window, the pane would break.

  Daniil Kharms

  Writing, Way, Break

  Daniil Kharms, Aleksandr Ivanovich Vvedenskiĭ, George Gibian (1987). “The Man with the black coat: Russia's literature of the absurd : selected works of Daniil Kharms and Alexander Vvedensky”, Northwestern Univ Pr

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• Look at the way the walls curve,' Macey said, her gaze panning around the strangely shaped room. 'it's almost like...' 'The library,' Liz said, and immediately I knew that she was right. It was exactly like the library at the Gallagher Academy, from the position of the fireplace to the tall windows that overlooked the grounds. 'How do you know?' Zach asked. Liz looked totally insulted. 'Because...uh...library.' 'Okay.' Zach threw up his hands. 'Point taken.

  Ally Carter

  Wall, Taken, Hands

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• She’s really gone, then. The little girl with the back of her shirt sticking out like a duck tail, the one who needed help reaching the dishes, and who begged to see the frosted cakes in the bakery window. Time and tragedy have forced her to grow too quickly, at least for my taste, into a young woman who stitches bleeding wounds and knows our mother can hear only so much.

  Suzanne Collins

  Girl, Mother, Cake

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• I always loved twilight: it was the only time of day I had the feeling that something important could happen. All things were more beautiful bathed in twilight, all streets, all squares, and all the people walking through them; I even had the feeling that I was a handsome young man, and I liked looking at myself in the mirror, watching myself in the shop windows as I strode along, and even when I touched my face, I felt no wrinkles at my mouth or forehead.

  Bohumil Hrabal

  Beautiful, Twilight, Men

  Bohumil Hrabal (1992). “Too Loud a Solitude”, p.41, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• He had no one but himself to blame, for he’d opened himself up to it. Just a fraction at first, like a crack in a window. But the funny thing was, once you welcomed in a breeze, there was no stopping what came next. A wind, a storm, thunder and lightning, until you could no longer reach the window to close it—and didn’t really want to anyway. That’s what this new darkness was. Evil in its purest form... -Paris

  Gena Showalter

  Wind, Funny Things, Paris

  Gena Showalter (2016). “The Darkest Seduction”, p.31, HQN Books

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• Fantasy is escapism, but wait... Why is this wrong? What are you escaping from, and where are you escaping to? Is the story opening windows or slamming doors? The British author G.K. Chesterton summarized the role of fantasy very well. He said its purpose was to take the everyday, commonplace world and lift it up and turn it around and show it to us from a different perspective, so that once again we see it for the first time and realize how marvelous it is. Fantasy - the ability to envisage the world in many different ways - is one of the skills that make us human.

  Terry Pratchett

  Escaping, Doors, Skills

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