Big Houses Quotes & Sayings

You know, in the old days, you might be able to slowly sort of build an audience for your work by publishing two, three novels before you hit it big. You know, now, there's much more of an emphasis in the publishing houses on making sure that every book makes money. — Chad Harbach

I'm not the type to pat myself on the back and all that, but somebody has to be lucky, right? When I got to Dallas, I was struggling - sleeping on the floor with six guys in a three-bedroom apartment. I used to drive around, look at the big houses, and imagine what it would be like to live there and use that as motivation. — Mark Cuban

There are a lot of big spec houses now all across Connecticut, a lot of ostentatious showing of wealth. — Glenn Close

My nan was a nursery maid. Most people weren't in big houses. They were maids of all work. — Sarah Waters

I introduced Nora as my wife, though that was a lie. Old people, that's what they wanted to hear. If you were married, you were mature, reliable, exactly like them, because in their day men and women didn't just live together
they made a commitment, they had children and went on cruises and built big houses on lakes and filled them with all the precious trinkets and manufactured artifacts they'd collected along the way. — T.C. Boyle

If you go to old houses on Long Island you will see painted Chinese wallpaper, which was big in the 18th century. Throughout history, notable, established families have always tried to link to the 18th century. — Catherine Martin

But you didn't mention Orrigar I, the first king of the House of Chaldarina. He put an end to years of unrest and civil strife. Neither did you mention Ronnick II, the one who reformed the monetary system and forbade the Great Houses to mint their own coins, thus stabilizing our currency. At the time it saved Ximerion from going bankrupt."
"I'm sorry. I told you we weren't big - "
"It's not that, Hemarchidas. You remembered the fighting kings, those who brought war, destruction and ephemeral glory. Or those who ended tragically. You forgot the wise administrators, those who kept the peace, those who brought prosperity. You needn't feel embarrassed, though. So did history."
Hemarchidas looked at his friend as if he saw him for the first time.
"So, all in all, Hemarchidas, I'd rather history forgot me. — Andrew Ashling

I drove through the suburbs, where all the houses looked identical, one variation of another of the same thing. I said to myself, I'd rather fire myself from a cannon, pick up the shit of elephants and eat it, suffocate inside Houdini's water tank, lie beneath the running horses, or sodomise a big cat in a cage and pay the consequences than get trapped in these suburbs of cardboard, gossip, and conformity. — Rawi Hage

And when an architect has designed a house with large windows, which is a necessity today in order to pull the daylight into these very deep houses, then curtains come to play a big role in architecture. — Arne Jacobsen

The big house ... reminded me of the types of structures you can still see in places like Center City: gingerbread houses, two-story affairs built back in the nineteenth century when people didn't have televisions and were forced to build interesting things out of wood. I have a theory that the outrageous fashions you see in pre-twentieth century culture came about as a result of the lack of television. I'm talking wild hats on women with lots of feathers, pelts, sequined dresses with long trains, as well as top hats on the men, with long-tailed coats. I figure that life in those days was s dull that people themselves became televisions. I'm still working on the theory. I include European royalty in this construct, but let's move on. — Gary Reilly

Neighborhood grocery stores, coal yards, gas stations, cheap taverns, big old rundown houses, a few churches with blank embarrassed faces. — Ross Macdonald

King has big offices, houses, and he pays his fighters a lot of money. An, because he's black, the FBI figures he must be doing something crooked. — Mike Tyson

I admire but don't envy people who have children and also have big, wonderful perfect houses. Maybe Martha Stewart could do it; to me those two things aren't compatible, but I know our children will grow up with a feeling that home is a place of comfort. — Audra McDonald

It's always the big question in our lives if you have a lot of success. What do you do with it? Buy more houses, buy more cars, buy more stuff, be wealthy and distant and unengaged? Or do you take all that good fortune that has come towards you and spread the love, do something with it? — Kevin Spacey

He hated the men floating in sleep in the big stone houses. Because their lives were ordered and their rooms tidy. Because they got up every morning and did their public work. Because they weren't going to dynamite their factories and have naked parties in the fire. — Leonard Cohen

When I go to another country, I try to be a big sponge and look at what the houses may look like and what colors predominate. I do not do research as much as just get ideas and ask people about things. — Jan Brett

With the computer and stuff, the difference between a rich guy and a poor guy, to me, is nothing. Because I don't like big houses, I don't drive a car, so you know, I just live in a small apartment and I have my computer, which is really cool. — Norm MacDonald

The first plague-spot is the accumulation of wealth in few hands, and the selfish withdrawal of its possessors from the life of the community. In an agricultural society like that of Judah, that clotting of wealth took the shape of 'land-grabbing,' and of evicting the small proprietors. We see it in more virulent forms in our great commercial centres, where the big men often become big by crushing out the little ones, and denude themselves of responsibility to the community in proportion as they clothe themselves with wealth. Wherever wealth is thus congested, and its obligations ignored by selfish indulgence, the seeds are sown which will spring up one day in 'anarchism.' A man need not be a prophet to have it whispered in his ear, as Isaiah had, that the end of selfish capitalism is a convulsion in which 'many houses shall be desolate,' and many fields barren. — Alexander MacLaren

I drove out of Dartmouth and after a while Start Bay emerged out of the brightening gloom like the end of a set of parentheses in a book about the natural world. Inside the parentheses was a story about the sea. Outside them, the land: green, red and brown fields, and hills curling over the landscape. I saw small, delicate clumps of snowdrops, big rough patches of gorse, and along the thin road, houses with yellow roses and mimosa growing in their gardens. — Scarlett Thomas

All major publishing houses have these big fat biographies sitting there, waiting for people to die. All you have to do is slap on the end and put in on the market. It's that kind of commoditization and completion of your life before you die - and this kind of imposition of a public idea of self that replaces the actual living self - that I find so frightening. — Chuck Palahniuk

More than a building that houses books and data, the library has always been a window to a larger world
a place where we've always come to discover big ideas and profound concepts that help move the American story forward ...
Libraries remind us that truth isn't about who yells the loudest, but who has the right information. Because even as we're the most religious of people, America's innovative genius has always been preserved because we also have a deep faith in facts.
And so the moment we persuade a child, any child, to cross that threshold into a library, we've changed their lives forever, and for the better. This is an enormous force for good. — Barack Obama

I have grown into a Bestsellasaurus Rex - a big, stumbling book-beast that is loved when it shits money and hated when it tramples houses ... I started out as a storyteller; along the way I became an economic force. — Stephen King

The worst side effect of wealth is the social associations it forces on its victims, as people with big houses end up socializing with other people with big houses. — Nassim Nicholas Taleb

Strong nations are built on SOLID HOMES not big houses — Fela Durotoye

In the United States we think we have at our disposal virtually everything - and I emphasize the word "think." We have big houses and cars, good medical treatment, jets, trains and monorails; we have computers, good communications, many comforts and conveniences. But where have they gotten us? We have an abundance of material things, but a successful society produces happy people, and I think we produce more miserable people than almost anyplace on earth. I've traveled all over the world, and I've never seen people who are quite as unhappy as they are in the United States. We have plenty, but we have nothing, and we always want more. In the pursuit of material success as our culture measures it, we have given up everything. We have lost the capacity to produce people who are joyful. The pursuit of the material has become our reason for living, not enjoyment of living itself. — Marlon Brando

Kansas is not easily impressed. It has seen houses fly and cattle soar. When funnel clouds walk through the wheat, big hail falls behind. As the biggest stones melt, turtles and mice and fish and even men can be seen frozen inside. And Kansas is not surprised.
Henry York had seen things in Kansas, things he didn't think belonged in this world. Things that didn't. Kansas hadn't flinched. — N.D. Wilson

There's just got to be more to life than dresses, shoes, hair-dos, make-ups, selfies, big houses and the latest cars. Every individual must go on a hunt for something deeper, larger, eternal and fulfilling than these transcient things which will either degenerate or rot. There must be a desperate need in her to doggedly pursue her Creator to find that higher calling and divine purpose for which she was born. Otherwise even if she has ten children, she'll leave this earth more barren than she entered it, never really having birthed what all along she never knew she was pregnant with: Desitny. — Theresa Pecku-Laryea

Comfort is very important to me. I think people live better in big houses and in big clothes. — Gianni Versace

Pliny the Elder once said that the Romans, when they couldn't make a building beautiful, made it big. The practice continues to be popular: If we can't do it well, we make it larger. We add dollars to our income, rooms to our houses, activities to our schedules, appointments to our calendars. And the quality of life diminishes with each addition. On the other hand, every time that we retrieve a part of our life from the crowd and respond to God's call to us, we are that much more ourselves, more human. Every time we reject the habits of the crowd and practice the disciplines of faith, we become a little more alive. — Eugene H. Peterson

A lot of parts of L.A. are interchangeable with suburbs in Joburg. Very big, ostentatious houses with palm trees and lawns. Lawns are very important. Never underestimate lawns. — Neill Blomkamp

In London - and forget those extra public pressures on politicians - the lovely old Sloane world of manor houses simply hasn't cut it since Big Bang in 1986, the point at which Mrs. Thatcher really started to achieve her ambition to make this country more like America - its ambition, economy, it's very tangible measures of success. — Peter York

You can work and scratch out a living in the theatre, but, if you want to make money, you've got to hit the road. You've got to play big houses of 2, 3 thousand seaters with your name above the bill, do popular fare and reach out to the audience such as it is. — Maxwell Caulfield

If the sea level rises 6 inches, that's a big deal ... we can't mitigate that; we can't stop it. We've just got to stop building vast houses on seashores and go back a little bit. — Rupert Murdoch

I wanted to design the house around my body and my needs, instead of following the pattern that I'd fallen into in my big house: picking paint colors and finishing the woodwork with some future owner and salability in mind. This was going to be my house. — Dee Williams

in the Bree-land, at any rate, the hobbits were decent and prosperous, and no more rustic than most of their distant relatives Inside. It was not yet forgotten that there had been a time when there was much coming and going between the Shire and Bree. There was Bree-blood in the Brandybucks by all accounts. The village of Bree had some hundred stone houses of the Big Folk, mostly above the Road, nestling on the hillside with windows looking west. On that side, running in more than half a circle from the hill and back to it, there was a deep dike — J.R.R. Tolkien

In big houses in which things are done properly, there is always the religious element. The diurnal cycle is observed with more feeling when there are servants to do the work. — Elizabeth Bowen

Stop being so greedy, and so selfish. Realize that there is more to the world than your big houses and fancy stores. People are starving and you worry about oil for your cars. Babies are dying of thirst and you search the fashion pages for the latest styles. Nations like ours are drowing in poverty, but your people don't even hear our cries for help. You shut your ears to the voices of those who try to tell you these things. You label them radicals or Communists. You must open your hearts to the poor and downtrodden, instead of driving them further into poverty and servitude. There's not much time left. If you don't change, you're doomed. — John Perkins

Most of the big shore places were closed now. And there were hardly any lights except the shadowy, moving glow of the ferryboat across the sound. And as the moon rose higher, the inessential houses began to melt away till gradually I became aware of the old island here that flowered once for Dutch sailors' eyes, A fresh green breast of the new world. Its vanished trees had once pandered in whispers to the last and greatest of all human dreams. For a transitory, enchanted moment man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent. Face to face, for the last time in history, with something commensurate to its capacity for wonder. — F Scott Fitzgerald

If more people understood how nice it is to have a sense of home that extends past our locked doors, past our neighbors' padlocks, to the local food co-op and library, the sidewalks busted up by old trees - if we all held home with longer arms - we'd live in a very different place...
We wouldn't feel so alone, no matter the size of our houses or our bank accounts, no matter whether we had good health or congestive heart failure. We would begin to see that each moment presents an opportunity to relax, to notice that the wind has shifted and a storm is coming, or that our friend's toddler has decided to wear dinner instead of eating it. We would see that each minute counts for something timeless and, if we want, we all can find our way inside these big, tiny, moments. — Dee Williams

There were the Newport hills, far up the bay, marked now by a rim of lights. There was the water, a blue shimmer under the sun, a black mirror after dark, somehow alive, a living thing that tied it all together, the houses hugging the rim and the people in them, drawn there to be beside the bay. The water had been there in the beginning, the beautiful bay all alone; and now the houses had crowded about it, hemming it in a row of stucco and brick and white clapboard. Someday the bay would be alone again. When The Thing went off. When all of the houses would be blown away. There would be floating rubble, a border of broken trash for a little while. — Dolores Hitchens

I'd never realized how bad that house needed music until I heard it, I knew right then that big houses need music more than little ones. — Charles Davis

The happiest I ever been was when I was a struggling actor. I've had big houses and small houses. I always had work available for most of my career. When I actually had to find jobs to make money, that's when I was happy. — Richard Dreyfuss

People imagined the Cockaigne ("Land of Plenty") menu as full of delectable meats such as hare, deer and wild boar . all which let themselves be caught. Grilled fish leaped out of rivers of wine onto your plate. Roast geese waddled down streets paved in pastry, just begging to be eaten. Flying pigs and buttered birds fell from the sky like rain, directly into people's mouths. People lived in edible houses made of pancake roofs and walls made of sausage. — Bob Eckstein

When I look out [the window] at the big houses on either side of the road, it's obvious we've entered the rich side of town. Poor people don't post signs like NO TRESPASSING, PRIVATE DRIVE, PRIVATE PROPERTY, MONITORED BY CAMERA SURVEILLANCE. I should know because I've been poor my entire life, and the only person I know who ever posted a sign like these is my friend ... and he actually stole the sign off a rich guy's yard. — Simone Elkeles

Calvin Klein and Donna Karan were the big American names at that point in time, Helmut [Lung] was the cool kid on the block and you had Marc Jacobs and John Galliano who starting the revival of the old fashion houses. — Roopal Patel

this is real, and it is happening now, just as it happened before: We are under the big tree in my backyard, on that patch of dirt where we used to build fairy houses from moss and sticks and scraps of birch. It is late afternoon. All around us is golden light. We have been together all day, in our cutoff shorts and bare feet. It is the start of fifth grade, the start of being the oldest in the school. Next year, we will be the youngest all over again. But not yet. We are playing that hand-slapping game, the one we like to play at recess. You hold your hands out, palms up, and I place mine lightly on top. You pull yours out and try to slap mine. You hit air three times. On the fourth try, your — Ali Benjamin

There were about 30 children at one stage, running around like savages at a place called Callow Hill, near Monmouth, which was owned by my grandparents. They lived in the big house, but my dad had five brothers and a sister, and they all lived in various houses scattered on the hill. — Saul David

If I were your mother, I would also warn you to beware of buildings that claim to be the houses of God. If heard it said once, jokingly, that on their days off, when they are not actively intervening in human affairs or shoring up the sweetness of the earth, the orishas get together in a little apartment in a poor section of Havana around a very big screen television and laugh themselves silly a the unceasing soap opera that is our lives, all the while puffing on good Cuban cigars and swigging cheap rum. And, darling, whether you imagine one big white distant god or many more particular brown ones who like their little pleasures, I would tell you to get off your butt and out of the house if you want to make contact. If you go to a mausoleum, you'll find dead bodies. Living gods inhabit a living world. — Joyce Thompson

There is a big park in the middle of the locality. Surrounded by at least 50 houses. That those residents got to live in such a locale is their karma. Do they ever come to the park? To walk, jog, run, play ? That is free will. — Andy Paula

Glossie looked around at the houses. The snow was quite deep in that village, and just before them was a roof only a few feet above the sledge. A broad chimney, which seemed to Glossie big enough to admit Claus, was at the peak of the roof. "Why don't you climb down that chimney?" asked Glossie. Claus looked at it. "That would be easy enough if I were on top of the roof," he answered. "Then hold fast and we will take you there," said the deer, and they gave one bound to the roof and landed beside the big chimney. "Good!" cried Claus, well pleased, and he slung the pack of toys over his shoulder and got into the chimney. — L. Frank Baum

All reformers, however strict their social conscience, live in houses just as big as they can pay for. — Logan Pearsall Smith

Is it true,' she said, 'that England is like a dream? Because one of my friends who married an Englishman wrote and told me so. She said this place London is like a cold dark dream sometimes. I want to wake up.'
'Well', I answered annoyed, 'that is precisely how your beautiful island seems to me, quite unreal and like a dream.'
'But how can rivers and mountains and the sea be unreal?'
'And how can millions of people, their houses and their streets be unreal?'
'More easily,' she said, 'much more easily. Yes a big city must be like a dream. — Jean Rhys

In our friendship I had spent a lot of time telling Lucy to pull herself up, to get over the past and move on. That was my role, the best of my Catholic education in action, and I didn't worry about it because I knew that she had other friends, friends who were as close to her as I was, who were more tender. She had practical friends and emotional friends, friends with big houses to crash in and friends who were good for wild fun, and she knit us together to find the perfect balance of what she needed from all of us. — Ann Patchett

I survived because I never took on big responsibilities in my private life. In the early days, I lived on two or three pounds a week and learned to cook - and I'm a good cook - because I had to. Even when I went on holiday, I stayed in other people's houses. — Cameron Mackintosh

Ii do not walk with alienation everywhere I go in the world. I have been to small taverns in rural Ohio, big city bars, San Francisco bath houses, and in all these have felt welcome and happy. But walking through that sunglassed throng, I felt like a Martian. I didn't hate the feeling - indeed, being a black woman in the academy, it wasn't new to me - but it was interesting. I kept wondering: where is the performance? When will the performance start? Is this the performance - me walking through this space without sunglasses with all these Nordic quasi-hipster white people in multi-colored, motorcycle cop sunglasses? — Gabrielle Civil

Imagine a poem written with such enormous three-dimensional words that we had to invent a smaller word to reference each of the big ones; that we had to rewrite the whole thing in shorthand, smashing it into two dimensions, just to talk about it. Or don't imagine it. Look outside. Human language is our attempt at navigating God's language; it is us running between the lines of His epic, climbing on the vowels and building houses out of the consonants. — N.D. Wilson

People concerned about inflation today tend to buy big houses and nice cars. — Robert Kiyosaki

The time of dangling insects arrived. White houses with caterpillars dangling from the eaves. White stones in driveways. You can walk at night down the middle of the street and hear women talking on the telephone. Warmer weather produces voices in the dark. They are talking about their adolescent sons. How big, how fast. The sons are almost frightening. The quantities they eat. The way they loom in doorways. These are the days that are full of wormy bugs. They are in the grass, stuck to the siding, hanging in the hair, hanging from the trees and eaves, stuck to the window screens. The women talk long-distance to grandparents of growing boys. They share the Trimline phone, beamish old folks in hand-knit sweaters on fixed incomes.
What happens to them when the commercial ends? — Don DeLillo

People ask for this life, but they don't really understand what comes with it. People just see the outside and that looks good - big houses, cars, girls, but you never see how the person is feeling deep down inside. Me personally, being a man, I'm going to feel better displaying all of this and pouring my heart out on each record. — Bow Wow

What we considered to be so much part of our everyday fashion vocabulary today, where we see all these designers restarting with these big houses, was just beginning then [in the 90th]. — Roopal Patel

The Royal Family are not like you and me. They live in houses so big that you can walk round all day and never need to meet your spouse. The Queen and Prince Philip have never shared a bedroom in their lives. They don't even have breakfast together. — A. N. Wilson

When you're on TV and in people's houses - it's great that anybody watches anything you've done, but you feel as though you're being watched by Big Brother sometimes. Even if people have no idea who you are, you get the feeling you're being watched. — Nicholas Hoult

Stone houses, terrace walls, city walls, streets. Plant any rose and you hit four or five big ones. All the Etruscan sarcophagi with likenesses of the dead carved on top in realistic, living poses must have come out of the most natural transference into death they could imagine. After lifetimes of dealing with stone, why not, in death, turn into it? — Frances Mayes

If you live in a good neighborhood, you drive home and there's a bank. There's grocery stores and big houses - but no motels. What that tells you psychologically is you protect your money and buy good things for your family to eat in your nice big house. — Will.i.am

Don't start," he warned.
"What?" she said, grinning. "I'm sure all the big, bad trappers have a bun-bun in their houses. — Jana Oliver

I grew up with a very big extended family, with a lot of aunts. We had about five or six houses on one street. — Bruce Springsteen

Ma Joad: How am I gonna know about ya, Tommy? Why they could kill ya and I'd never know. They could hurt ya. How am I gonna know?
Tom Joad: Well, maybe it's like Casy says. A fellow ain't got a soul of his own, just a little piece of a big soul, the one big soul that belongs to everybody, then ...
Ma Joad: Then what, Tom?
Tom Joad: Then it don't matter. I'll be around in the dark - I'll be everywhere. Wherever you can look - wherever there's a fight, so hungry people cant eat, I'll be there. Wherever there's a cop beatin' up a guy, I'll be there. I'll be in the way guys yell when they're mad. I'll be in the way kids laugh when they're hungry and they know supper's ready, and when the people are eatin' the stuff they raise and livin' in the houses they buid - I'll be there, too. — John Steinbeck

When I was 7, I went to school in Switzerland because everyone on my mom's side of the family lives there. Then we were back in Australia, in Queensland. That's where we had the chance to have lots of different animals. I spent a lot of time living in nature and building cubby houses in big old trees by the ocean. — Isabel Lucas

It's a very cheery thing to come into London by any of these lines which run high and allow you to look down upon the houses like this."
I thought he was joking, for the view was sordid enough, but he soon explained himself.
"Look at those big, isolated clumps of buildings rising up above the slates, like brick islands in a lead-coloured sea."
"The board-schools."
"Light-houses, my boy! Beacons of the future! Capsules with hundreds of bright little seeds in each, out of which will spring the wiser, better England of the future. — Arthur Conan Doyle

You look great," he said.
It made her smile, even if it was a lie. "I'm as big as a house."
He laughed. "I like houses. In fact, I'm thinking about architecture as a career. — Kristin Hannah

A lot of the stories were highly suspicious, in her opinion. There was the one that ended when the two good children pushed the wicked witch into her own oven ... Stories like this stopped people thinking properly, she was sure. She'd read that one and thought, Excuse me? No one has an oven big enough to get a whole person in, and what made the children think they could just walk around eating people's houses in any case? And why does some boy too stupid to know a cow is worth a lot more than five beans have the right to murder a giant and steal all his gold? Not to mention commit an act of ecological vandalism? And some girl who can't tell the difference between a wolf and her grandmother must either have been as dense as teak or come from an extremely ugly family. — Terry Pratchett

One thing you'll learn when you're in the business of selling utter shite to the Great British Public is that there's really no bottom to where they'll go. Shit food, shit TV, shit bands, shit films, shit houses. There is absolutely no fucking bottom with this stuff. The shittier you can make it - a bad photocopy of a bad photocopy of what was a shit idea in the first place - the more they'll eat it up with a big fucking spoon, from dawn till dusk, from now until the end of time. It's too good. — John Niven

I know sneakers aren't very French-I should be wearing pointy boots or scary heels-but at least they aren't white. It's true what they say about white sneakers. Only American tourists wear them,big ugly things made for mowing grass or painting houses. — Stephanie Perkins

Apartments are getting smaller on a whole. Houses are getting smaller. People don't need great big vacuums anymore. — James Dyson

To me heaven would be a big bull ring with me holding two barrera seats and a trout stream outside that no one else was allowed to fish in and two lovely houses in the town; one where I would have my wife and children and be monogamous and love them truly and well and the other where I would have my nine beautiful mistresses on nine different floors. — Ernest Hemingway,

When I was younger, I lived in this really nice neighborhood. It had these big beautiful houses that I thought were simply the best. But now that I've seen the world, seen more beautiful things, I drive back through that neighborhood and realize, my childhood silver looks more like stainless steel now that I've seen gold. — Unknown

My parents were born in Norfolk and spent their early years working in the big houses of that rural English county, my mother as a cook and my father as a handyman and chauffeur. — Paul Nurse

Rich men's houses are seldom beautiful, rarely comfortable, and never original. It is a constant source of surprise to people of moderate means to observe how little a big fortune contributes to Beauty. — Margot Asquith

The good news is that we can sometimes control the "circles" around us, moving toward smaller circles that boost our relative happiness. If we are at our class reunion, and there's a "big circle" in the middle of the room with a drink in his hand, boasting of his big salary, we can consciously take several steps away and talk with someone else. If we are thinking of buying a new house, we can be selective about the open houses we go to, skipping the houses that are above our means. If we are thinking about buying a new car, we can focus on the models that we can afford, and so on. We — Dan Ariely

Downloading's the same as what I used to do. I used to tape the charts of the songs I liked [off the radio]. I don't mind it. I hate all these big, silly rock stars who moan. At least they're fuckin' downloading your music, you cunt, and paying attention, know what I mean? You should fuckin' appreciate that, what are you moaning about? You've got fuckin' five big houses, so shut up. — Liam Gallagher

Well, here's one thing I think: MOST PEOPLE don't live like you and me and the kids we know in New York. And what's more, they DON'T WANT TO. I feel like a big doofus, but all of a sudden I'm realizing: there are lots of people who don't HAVE New York apartments or houses in Southampton and, get this, WOULDN'T WANT TO LIVE THERE ANYWAY. They'd probably think, "Wow, big, crowded place. Lotta snobs. How lame." On the other hand, they probably have their own Southamptons. Only it's someplace you and I would probably think is really lame. AMAZING that people can see the world from such totally different points of view. — Anna Murray

More than ever, we have big houses and broken homes, high incomes and low morale, secured rights and diminished civility. We excel at making a living but often fail at making a life. We celebrate our prosperity but yearn for a purpose. We cherish our freedoms but long for connection. In an age of plenty, we feel spiritual hunger. — Craig Gross

Most people are quite dense. They like little white houses with big stained-glass churches and prefer to do their killing with looks and words behind one another's backs."
He paused.
"Welcome to my house. No secrets allowed. Here we all do our killing with guns and axes and knives. It's more bloody than what most people are accustomed to, yes, but it's far less brutal. — Ted Dekker

Why do these big old country houses always have family portraits in the dining room? Do you really want to eat with someone's gloomy great-grandfather looking down on you? — Elizabeth Jane Howard

She wondered how people would remember her. She had not made enough to spread her wealth around like Carnegie, to erase any sins that had attached to her name, she had failed, she had not reached the golden bough. The liberals would cheer her death. They would light marijuana cigarettes and drive to their sushi restaurants and eat fresh food that had traveled eight thousand miles. They would spend all of supper complaining about people like her, and when they got home their houses would be cold and they'd press a button on a wall to get warm. The whole time complaining about big oil. — Philipp Meyer

There were doors that looked like large keyholes, others that resembled the entrances to caves, there were golden doors, some were padded and some were studded with nails, some were paper-thin and others as thick as the doors of treasure houses; there was one that looked like a giant's mouth and another that had to be opened like a drawbridge, one that suggested a big ear and one that was made of gingerbread, one that was shaped like an oven door, and one that had to be unbuttoned. — Michael Ende

The Rio de Contas, a wide, almost delta-like river, was startling, a sudden big sky and a feeling of openness, and very bright. It was noisy with birds. The rain forest houses most of the earth's plant and animal population. I hadn't anticipated it would be so loud. — Bill Buford

Big lots,' I said, seeing the eighty-year-old oaks and shady lawns. The houses were set way back and had iron fences and stone drives.
The harder to hear your neighbors scream, my dear,' was David's answer, and I sent my head up and down in agreement. — Kim Harrison

I grew up poor and used to look at people in big houses and thought they had everything. Then later on I looked at models in magazines and thought they had it all. — Alana Stewart

After a burglary of all her most valued and treasured possessions, Winston Churchill's aging mother wrote: "That burglar relieved me of an obsession. For years, I've had to take houses big enough to hold all these bibelots. I am almost grateful to him." — Anne Sebba

The suffragettes were women of action. Their motto was 'Deeds not Words,' and the film reflects that with a number of big set pieces, from the smashing of windows in central London to a riot at the Houses of Parliament. — Sarah Gavron

Until now, I've never been able to see while I fly, and I feel a dizzying lightness as I look out at the land below us.
Is this what I've missed?
The stars have come to the earth, and the ocean has turned over the ground; dark waves meet the sky. They are unmoving, barely visible but for the light of the sun rising behind them.
Mountains, I realize. That's what the ocean is. Those waves are peaks. The stars are lights in houses and on streets. The earth reflects the sky and the sky meets the earth and, every now and then, if we're lucky, we have a moment to see how small we are. — Ally Condie

I perform in opera houses in the centres of big cities. We live in 20 acres of forest. You need that space to recover and renew. — Sondra Radvanovsky

I couldn't get away with Halloween pranks 'cause my parents owned the health food store. So, it was so easy to bust me. I was the only kid on the block egging houses with those big 'ole brown eggs. Like, you didn't have to be a detective to figure it out. 'Oh, I wonder who Tofuttied my mailbox. Is it the same evil genius who filled my bird bath with Rice Dream? — Arj Barker

I think we have to act like stars because it is expected of us. So we drive our big cars and live in our smart houses. — Maurice Gibb

He took a trip ... up to ... Elliott's house, his mansion rather. Awful place, twelve bedrooms and swimming pool and media hall and five car garage, but cheap and shoddy all the same, like the one next door and next door to that. A row of Ikea houses, such wealthy mediocrity. His very own son. His big, bald son. Who could believe it. The bigness, the baldness, the stupidity. In a house designed to bore the daylight out of visitors, no character at all, all blonde wood and fluorescent lighting and clean white machinery.
Not to mention his brand new wife, number three, a clean white machine herself. Up from the cookie cutter and into Elliott's life, she might as well have jumped out of the microwave, her skin orange, her teeth pearly white. A trophy wife. But why the word "trophy"? Something to shoot on a safari. — Colum McCann

In my mind, I built stairways. At the end of the stairways, I imagined rooms. These were high, airy places with big windows and a cool breeze moving through. I imagined one room opening brightly onto another room until I'd built a house, a place with hallways and more staircases. I built many houses, one after another, and those gave rise to a city -- a calm, sparkling city near the ocean, a place like Vancouver. I put myself there, and that's where I lived, in the wide-open sky of my mind. I made friends and read books and went running on a footpath in a jewel-green park along the harbour. I ate pancakes drizzled in syrup and took baths and watched sunlight pour through trees. This wasn't longing, and it wasn't insanity. It was relief. It got me through. — Amanda Lindhout

Most people spend their lives building financial houses of straws, which are susceptible to wind, fire, rain and big bad wolves. — Robert Kiyosaki

How big a war?"
"A worse one than the one fifty years ago, I expect," said Cheery.
"I don't recall people talking about that one," said Vimes.
"Most humans didn't know about it," said Cheery. "It mostly took place underground. Undermining passages and digging invasion tunnels and so on. Perhaps a few houses fell into mysterious holes and people didn't get their coal, but that was about it."
"You mean dwarfs just try to collapse mines on other dwarfs?"
"Oh, yes."
"I thought you were all law-abiding?"
"Oh, yes, sir. Very law-abiding. Just not very merciful. — Terry Pratchett

I mean, I was born the day war broke out, but I don't remember all the bombs though they did actually break up Liverpool, you know. I remember when I was a little older, there was big gaps in all the streets where houses used to be. We used to play over them. — Ringo Starr