House
Quotes - As a young child I had Santa and Jesus all mixed up
“Casy
said, "Ol' Tom's house can't be more'n a mile from here. Ain't she over
that third rise?"
Sure,"
said Joad. "Less somebody stole it, like Pa stole it."
Your
pa stole it?"
Sure,
got it a mile an' a half east of here an' drug it. Was a family livin' there,
an' they moved away. Grampa an' Pa an' my brother Noah like to took the whole
house, but she wouldn't come. They only got part of her. That's why she looks
so funny on one end. They cut her in two an' drug her over with twelve head of
horses and two mules. They was goin' back for the other half an' stick her
together again, but before they got there Wink Manley come with his boys and
stole the other half. Pa an' Grampa was pretty sore, but a little later them
an' Wink got drunk together an' laughed their heads off about it. Wink, he says
his house is a stud, an' if we'll bring our'n over an' breed 'em we'll maybe
get a litter of crap houses. Wink was a great ol' fella when he was drunk.
After that him an' Pa an' Grampa was friends. Got drunk together ever' chance
they got.”
―
John Steinbeck, The Grapes of Wrath
“This
is terrific. What a gorgeous kitchen. You’ve decorated it so beautifully. Now
you’re going to have to clear all the counters. Vases. Books. Knickknacks. Get
rid of all that stuff. I mean, it is just beautiful. Beautiful. I love what
you’ve done with this house. Make sure you put it all away.” ~Real estate agent
(p.76)”
―
Dominique Browning, Slow Love: How I Lost My Job, Put on My Pajamas, and Found
Happiness
“As
a young child I had Santa and Jesus all mixed up. I could identify Coke or
Pepsi with just one sip, but I could not tell you for sure why they strapped
Santa to a cross. Had he missed a house? Had a good little girl somewhere in
the world not received the doll he’d promised her, making the father angry?”
(p.3)”
―
Augusten Burroughs, You Better Not Cry: Stories for Christmas
“Our
own place is mall perhaps, but when your old man is eaten by his own shadow,
you realise that maybe in every house, something so savage and sad and
brilliant is standing up, without the world even seeing it.
Maybe
that's what these pages of words are about:
Bringing
the world to the window.”
―
Markus Zusak, Fighting Ruben Wolfe
“Aryami
Bose's home had been closed up for years, inhabited only by books and
paintings, but the spectre of thousands of memories imprisoned between its
walls still permeated the house.”
―
Carlos Ruiz Zafón, The Midnight Palace
“Most
folks don't have but a few days to a week's worth of food in their houses at
any given time. When they run out, they'll have to forage. Only the fools will
forage in town. The smart ones will look on the outskirts.”
―
Edward M. Wolfe, Hell on Ice
“Sometimes
our worst fears aren't realized - though in my experience it's only to make
room for the fears our imagination was insufficient to house.”
―
Mark Lawrence, Prince of Fools
“I
am opposed to Naperville. It's all cute, trendy and expensive, and filled with
cookie-cutter Borg houses that assimilate you into upper-middle-class America.”
―
Robyn Bachar, Bewitched, Blooded and Bewildered
“All
around him the chanting swelled, Harm no one, harm no one. What the hell did
that mean? He was going to have to shoot the poor son of a bitch, but maybe
that was a far better way to go than what the house of horrors had planned.
This was a hell of a way for men to die, even if they deserved it.”
―
Christine Feehan, Safe Harbor
“In
the right frame of mind, to walk from one room in a house to another can be
exploration of the highest order. To a child a back garden can be an unknown
country.”
―
Robert Macfarlane, Mountains of the Mind: A History of a Fascination
“The
first of these houses appeared to be occupied. The next two were vacant. Dingy
curtains, soot-grey against their snowy window-sills, hung over the next. A
litter of paper and refuse-abandoned by the last long gust of wind that must
have come whistling round the nearer angle of the house - lay under the broken
flight of steps up to a mid-Victorian porch. The small snow clinging to the
bricks and to the worn and weathered cement of the wall only added to its gaunt
lifelessness. ("Bad Company”
―
Walter de la Mare, Ghost Stories
“You
know?" She glanced at him, and a little flare of color rose in her cheeks.
"What?"
He said, rearranging himself discreetly and then rewrapping the towel more
tightly.
"You're
going to laugh, being a doctor and all, but my mother said something
once..."
"What?"
He had always had control over his body. Always. This was an aberration.
"She
told me once that men hung."
"Hung?"
he repeated. If he looked just at her face, then he woudnt see the way the thin
linen clung to her breasts, to her hips. He wouldnt think about the deep hunger
flaring in his groins. It was just a biological urge, nothing more.
"Hung,"
she said giggling again. "In front. You dont hang, do you" She waved
a hand in the general vicinity of his waist. "You dont mind me saying,
that, do you? I formed this disgusting vision of--of a hanging thing and--well,
you dont hang at all. You stand straight up.
He
burst out laughing.
"I
know," she said laughing too. "I'm a fool."
But
he had an uneasy feeling that he was the fool.”
―
Eloisa James, When Beauty Tamed the Beast
“Truth
to tell, the modern man is bored to tears in his home; so he goes to his club.
The modern woman is bored outside her boudoir; she goes to tea-parties. The
modern man and woman are bored at home; they go to night-clubs.
But
lesser folk who have no clubs gather together in the evening under the
chandelier and hardly dare to walk through the labyrinth of their furniture
which takes up the whole room and is all their fortune and their pride.”
― Le
Corbusier, Towards a New Architecture
“I'm
not saying that owning a house makes life into some kind of blissful paradise;
simply that it makes the difference between freedom and enslavement.”
―
Tana French, The Likeness
“I
don't like walking around this old and empty house,
So
hold my hand, I'll walk with you, my dear.”
― Of
Monsters and Men
