Banister Quotes & Sayings

The trouble with shooting people, Edie Banister now remembers, is that it's so hard to do just one. — Nick Harkaway

Don't talk to me about her, John: I told you not to go near her; she is
not worthy of notice; I do not choose that either you or your sisters
should associate with her."
Here, leaning over the banister, I cried out suddenly, and without at all
deliberating on my words
"They are not fit to associate with me! — Charlotte Bronte

Along with every other male of his acquaintance he loathed the Naked Chef with messianic passion and prayed for the day he suffered a fatal accident on his scooter or burst into flames with the friction of sliding down that nauseating banister. Mark hated to think how rich he must be. And the fact that a mere bloody cook was taking up space in The Times that could be filled by a train journalist. Like himself, for example. Bastard. — Wendy Holden

You've picked up a rummy habit," James Banister said cordially as they approached one another. "Sort of a crouch. You look a bit ... well, I'm sorry, but you look a bit Victor Hugo, if you catch my drift. Would you like to adjourn to a cathedral or something? — Nick Harkaway

He took two steps at a time, but slowly, holding onto the banister, putting his whole body into it, as if the act of climbing a flight of stairs was for him, as it is for many children, a moderately pleasurable end in itself. — J.D. Salinger

Inej cast a meaningful glance at his cane. "Have a long trip down," she said, then leapt onto the banister, sliding from one flight to the next, slick as butter in a pan. — Leigh Bardugo

Empty - it was utterly empty here. Like a tomb. "Tam?" I called. I bounded up the front steps and into the house. I rushed inside, swearing as I slid on a piece of broken porcelain - the remnants of a vase. Slowly, I turned in the front hall. It looked as if an army had marched through. Tapestries hung in shreds, the marble banister was fractured, and the chandeliers lay broken on the ground, reduced to mounds of shattered crystal. "Tamlin?" I shouted. Nothing. The windows had all been blown out. "Lucien?" No one answered. "Tam?" My voice echoed through the house, mocking me. Alone in the wreckage of the manor, I sank to my knees. He was gone. — Sarah J. Maas

Tears Are For The Living — Margaret Banister

In his original design the solicitor's clerk seemed to have forgotten the need for a staircase to link both the floors, and what he had provided had the appearance of an afterthought. Doorways had been punched in the eastern wall and a rough wooden staircase - heavy planks on an uneven frame with one warped unpainted banister, the whole covered with a sloping roof of corrugated iron - hung precariously at the back of the house, in striking contrast with the white-pointed brickwork of the front, the white woodwork and the frosted glass of doors and windows.
For this house Mr.Biswas had paid five thousand five hundred dollars. — V.S. Naipaul

By 1690, the English naturalist the Reverend John Banister was reporting that the Indians of the Hudson Bay area had been successfully tempted by traders to want 'many things which they had not wanted before, because they never had them, but which by means of trade are now highly necessary to them'. Two decades later, the traveller Robert Beverley observed, 'The Europeans have introduced luxury among the Indians which has multiplied their wants and made them desire a thousand things they never even dreamt of before. — Alain De Botton

What is [credit]?" asked Zotul skeptically.

"It is how the poor are enabled to enjoy all the luxuries of the rich," said Broderick, and went on to give a thumbnail sketch of the involutions and devolutions of credit, leaving out some angles that might have had a discouraging effect.

(from "A Gift from Earth") — Manly Banister

Laura had warned him not to expect much. It was a good thing. "Have you and Kate been smoking grass in here?"
"That's all she ever does on her lunch hour.We really have to get her into a program." Thrilled with herself, Margo spread her arms. "So,what do you think?"
"Uh-huh.It's a building, all right."
"Josh."
"Give me a minute." He walked past her into the adjoining room, came back, looked into the bath, gazed up the pretty, and potentially lethal, staircase. He wiggled the banister, winced. "Want a lawyer? — Nora Roberts

Stepping lithe and incredulous from the study; of Karras, emerging bewildered from the kitchen while the nightmarish poundings and croakings continued. Merrin went calmly up the staircase, a slender hand like alabaster sliding upward on the banister. Karras came up beside Chris, and together they watched from below as Merrin entered Regan's bedroom and closed the door behind him. For a time there was silence. Then abruptly the demon laughed hideously and Merrin swiftly exited the room, closed the door, then moved quickly down the hall while behind him the bedroom door opened again and Sharon poked her head out, staring after him with an odd expression on her face. Merrin descended the staircase rapidly and put out his hand to the waiting Karras. — William Peter Blatty

Edie Banister, wearing a false moustache which tastes of tiger flank and erotic dancer, sitting six storeys up on the windowsill of the aged mother of a renownedly murderous prince, takes a few seconds to contemplate the unusual direction of her life. — Nick Harkaway

She shrieked. "Nora! What happened to the banister!"
Good thing she hadn't seen her bedroom yet. — Becca Fitzpatrick

The staircase was a mass of rotting wood, carved with such cruel-looking mermaids that Mr. Jelliby was afraid to put his hand on the banister. — Stefan Bachmann

At the first turning of the second stair
I turned and saw below
The same shape twisted on the banister
Under the vapour in the fetid air
Struggling with the devil of the stairs who wears
The deceitful face of hope and of despair — T. S. Eliot

Mercer opens hi mouth to argue, and Bastion Banister chooses this moment to open his mouth and snap at the circling bee. To his own evident surprise, he captures it, and there's a curious little glonking noise as he swallows it whole. Mercer cringes slightly, as if expecting the dog to explode.
Nothing happens.
"All right," Polly Cradle says, and then, pro forma, "Bastion, you're a very naughty boy."
"Yes," Mercer says acidly. "The dog has consumed a possibly lethal technological device of immense sophistication, deprived us of our only piece of tangible evidence and possibly doomed us all to some sort of arcane scientific retaliative strike. By all means, chide him severely with your voice. That will solve everyone's problems. — Nick Harkaway

I remember when I was 5 living on Pulaski Street in Brooklyn, the hallway of our building had a brass banister and a great sound, a great echo system. I used to sing in the hallway. — Barbra Streisand

As we know, Clay Shaw was acquitted, and the establishment celebrated
another victory over the truth. In my view, Ferrie, Banister, Shaw, and Jack
Ruby would have been the conspirators Oswald worked with personally, on
the ground level, while far more powerful forces manipulated everything
behind the scenes. I share Jim Garrison's theory that Oswald was some kind
of intelligence operative who was assigned to infiltrate what he was told was
a plot to kill the president, shortly before the actual assassination. At least
that's where I think the evidence logically leads. — Donald Jeffries

I've seen this idea put forward a hundred times - that a proper feminist would do her own hoovering, Germaine Greer cleans her own lavvy, and Emily Wilding Davison threw herself under that horse, hands still pine-y fresh from Mr Muscle Oven Cleaner. On this basis alone, how many women have had to conclude, sighingly, as they hire a cleaner, that they can't, then, be a feminist?
But, of course, the hiring of domestic help isn't a case of women oppressing other women, because WOMEN DID NOT INVENT DUST. THE STICKY RESIDUE THAT COLLECTS ON THE KETTLE DOES NOT COME OUT OF WOMEN'S VAGINAS. IT IS NOT OESTROGEN THAT COVERS THE DINNER PLATES IN TOMATO SAUCE, FISHFINGER CRUMBS AND BITS OF MASH. MY UTERUS DID NOT RUN UPSTAIRS AND THROW ALL OF THE KIDS' CLOTHES ON THE FLOOR AND PUT JAM ON THE BANISTER. AND IT IS NOT MY TITS THAT HAVE SKEWED THE GLOBAL ECONOMY TOWARDS DOMESTIC WORK FOR WOMEN. — Caitlin Moran

I think one travels more usefully when they travel alone, because they reflect more.
(Letter to John Banister, Jr., June 19, 1787) — Thomas Jefferson

In order for an act to be a crime, libertarians say, someone must be harmed - there must be a victim. Anything that's peaceful, voluntary, and honest should be tolerated regardless of whether we agree with it. Part of the price of our own freedom is allowing others to be free. — Scott Banister

At the end of the evening, Paxton and Willa walked Agatha out to the nurse's car, after Agatha had given them a blind tour of the Madam, pointing out by feel and memory everything she remembered about the house. She and Georgie sliding down the banister and their skirts flying up. Playing dolls in Georgie's room. Having pineapple upside-down cake the Jacksons' cook would make in a cast-iron frying pan, so that the brown sugar on top turned crispy. A slide-away secret compartment in the bookcase where they used to leave notes for each other. — Sarah Addison Allen

He seems an unlikely companion for a woman like Edie Banister, but the world, Daniel once observed, is a great honeycombed thing composed of separated mysteries. — Nick Harkaway

You, Mackenzie Bishop," he says as we hit the landing, "have been a very bad girl."
"How so?"
He rounds the banister at the base of the staircase. "You involved me in a lie! Don't think I didn't catch it. — Victoria Schwab

But walking down the stairs feeling each stair carefully and holding to the banister he thought, I must get her away and get her away as soon as I can without hurting her. Because I am not doing too well at this. That I can promise you. But what else can you do? Nothing, he thought. There's nothing you can do. But maybe, as you go along, you will get good at it. — Ernest Hemingway,

Jamie chose that moment to almost fall down the stairs. Mae took his whole weight and grabbed the banister. Seb reached out but Jamie shied away, and Nick gave Jamie a push in the chest that was clearly intended to right him, but that nearly had him toppling over backward. Balance eventually restored to them all, Jamie gave Nick an approving look. "You are my friend," he told him. "Yeah, I am," said Nick. "But these stairs," Jamie said sadly. "They are not my friends. — Sarah Rees Brennan

You would like a large family, Louisa? You want lots of babies of me? They'll grow up, you know, and turn into shrieking, banister-sliding, pony-grubbing little people, all of whom must have shoes and books and puppies. They'll eat like a regiment and have no thought for their clothes - which they'll grow out of before the maids can turn the first hem. They'll skin their knees, break their collarbones, and lose their dolls. Do you know what a trauma ensues when a six-year-old female loses her doll? I have a spare version of Missus Whatever-Hampton Her Damned Name Is, but Amanda found her and said a spare would never do, because the perishing thing didn't smell right - you find this amusing?" "I find you endearing." His brows came down. "I will never understand the female mind." "I — Grace Burrowes

I took the liberty of designing your pennant," said Rhy, resting his elbows on the gallery's marble banister. "I hope you don't mind."
Kell cringed. "Do I even want to know what's on it?"
Rhy tugged the folded piece of fabric from his pocket, and handed it over. The cloth was red, and when he unfolded it, he saw the image of a rose in black and white. The rose had been mirrored, folded along the center axis and reflected, so the design was actually two flowers, surrounded by a coil of thorns.
"How subtle," said Kell tonelessly.
"You could at least pretend to be grateful."
"And you couldn't have picked something a little more ... I don't know ... imposing? A serpent? A great beast? A bird of prey?"
"A bloody handprint?" retorted Rhy. "Oh, what about a glowing black eye?"
Kell glowered.
"You're right," continued Rhy, "I should have just drawn a frowning face. But then everyone would know it's you. I thought this was rather fitting. — Victoria Schwab

If entrepreneurs were running schools, instead of bureaucrats, schools would be teaching a lot more of the skills and mindsets found in this book. Since they're not, this book is a necessary antidote to a traditional college education. — Scott Banister