Bottles Up Quotes & Sayings

Beware of curiously shaped or oddly-got-up bottles: you are likely to be paying for the parcel rather than what is wrapped up in it. — Kingsley Amis

There is one other wall, of course. One we never speak of. One we never see, One which separates memory from madness. In a place no one offers flowers. THE WALL WITHIN. We permit no visitors. Mine looks like any of a million nameless, brick walls - it stands in the tear-down ghetto of my soul; that part of me which reason avoids for fear of dirtying its clothes and from atop which my sorrow and my rage hurl bottles and invectives at the rolled-up windows of my passing youth. Do you know the wall I mean? - Steve Mason, U.S. Army captain (Vietnam), poet Excerpted from the poem "The Wall Within" by Steve Mason, a decorated Vietnam combat veteran considered the unofficial poet laureate of the Vietnam War. "The Wall Within" was read at the 1984 dedication of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, DC, and was entered in its entirety into the Congressional Record. — Kevin Sites

Driving down deserted early morning roads. Round and round. Round downtown. Through naked streets. Lips pursed on two litre bottles of beer, but pursuing the lips of freedom's night. Swapping cars. Winding up at karaoke bars or Bolsi- the best place in town. For the food. For the folk. For the service. For the crema de papaya. And for that late night dawn's whiskey coffee. — Harry Whitewolf

The science of fermentation is wonderfully simple. Yeast eat sugar. They leave behind two waste products, ethyl alcohol and carbon dioxide. If we were being honest, we would admit that what a liquor store sells is, chemically speaking, little more than the litter boxes of millions of domesticated yeast organisms, wrapped up in pretty bottles with fancy price tags. — Amy Stewart

He read his own obituary and an editorial lamenting his demise and praising his fortitude and immediately began to think up witty ways of writing to the paper to announce his continued and uninterrupted existence. The other two joined in the game with enthusiasm, and soon all three of them were howling with laughter and emptying bottles at a rate which would have alarmed even a depressed Scandinavian. — Louis De Bernieres

So, what were you doing that was such a secret?"
"Making moonshine."
I stared. "You're kidding me."
"Nope."
"Moonshine? As in rednecks and brown jugs and prohibition?"
Ida Belle drew herself up straight.
"It hasn't been illegal in quite some time. We're hardly rednecks, and we put all of our moonshine into pretty pink cough syrup bottles. — Jana Deleon

Ah, well! then the young woman was only in advance of the age," said Miss Archer; "and what with that and the telephone, and that dreadful phonograph that bottles up all one says and disgorges at inconvenient times, we will soon be able to do everything by electricity; who knows but some genius will invent something for the especial use of lovers? something, for instance, to carry in their pockets, so when they are far away from each other, and pine for a sound of 'that beloved voice,' they will have only to take up this electrical apparatus, put it to their ears, and be happy. Ah! blissful lovers of the future! — Ella Cheever Thayer

What do you think we're hunting tonight?"
I twisted and pulled at my backpack until it was in front of me, then opened it. More silver stakes. Little glass bottles of holy water. And, oh my God, was that a gun?
My knees were wobbling as I zipped up the Bag O'Death and gingerly dropped it in the grass.
"What's wrong?" Izzy asked.
"Um, a lot? There is seriously so much wrongness going on right now. Namely, the fact that you people are teenagers with bags of guns."
Izzy stiffened a little at that. "We're not kids," she spit out. "We're Brannicks."
Sighing, I shoved my hands in my pockets. "I get that, but look, Izzy, I can't kill a werewolf. I know werewolves. I lived with some, and they're ... well, they're gross and slobbery and super scary, but I can't kill one. — Rachel Hawkins

His constant, despairing prayer was to be let alone. By the blue waters and rustling palms of his own mind he was happy and harmless as a Polynesian; only when the big ship dropped anchor beyond the coral reef, and the cutter beached in the lagoon, and, up the slope that had never known the print of a boot, there trod the grim invasion of trader, administrator, missionary, and tourist - only then was it time to disinter the archaic weapons of the tribe and sound the drums in the hills; or, more easily, to turn from the sunlit door and lie alone in the darkness, where the impotent, painted deities paraded the walls in vain, and cough his heart out among the rum bottles. And — Evelyn Waugh

That moment - to this ... may be years in the way they measure, but it's only one sentence back in my mind - there are so many days when living stops and pulls up and sits and waits like a train on the rails. I pass the hotel at 8 and at 5; there are cats in the alleys and bottles and bums, and I look up at the window and think, I no longer know where you are, and I walk on and wonder where the living goes when it stops. — Charles Bukowski

The hallway beyond was filled with males of the house, the Brothers and other fighters and Manny sitting on the floor with their backs to the bare walls, their legs stretched out, propped up, crossed at the knees or crossed at the ankles.
Apparently there had been quite a bit of drinking going on, bottles of vodka and whiskey littered around them, glasses in hands or on thighs.
"This is NOT as pathetic as it looks," her Butch pointed out.
"Liar," V muttered, "It so fucking is. I think I'm going to start knitting for reals. — J.R. Ward

For Wendy and Sam, the best rule was "everything has a home." We made a list of their main household items and where they went - for example, pill bottles in the bathroom medicine cabinet, laundry in the hamper, and food in the kitchen cabinets. This may seem like a fundamental rule that everyone learns as a child, but many hoarders didn't pick that up either because they grew up in hoarding houses themselves, or they grew up in traumatic households where finding a meal and avoiding a beating was a daily reality. Cleaning was the least of their worries. — Matt Paxton

A car produces about one pound of CO2 per mile. There is no problem with collecting the CO2 in the tailpipe, but one might easily end up with a trailer hitched to the car for carrying all this CO2 back to the filling station. The gas burned from a 15-gallon tank would fill up five 60-inch-tall gas bottles. — Klaus Lackner

What do Jake 'The Snake' Roberts and a beer bottle have in common? They're both empty from the neck up! — Jerry Lawler

I can't believe the news today
Oh, I can't close my eyes
And make it go away
How long ...
How long must we sing this song
How long, how long ...
'cause tonight ... we can be as one
Tonight ...
Broken bottles under children's feet
Bodies strewn across the dead end street
But I won't heed the battle call
It puts my back up
Puts my back up against the wall
Sunday, Bloody Sunday — U2

In the early evening time Dr. Kemp was sitting in his study in the belvedere on the hill overlooking Burdock. It was a pleasant little room, with three windows - north, west, and south - and bookshelves covered with books and scientific publications, and a broad writing-table, and, under the north window, a microscope, glass slips, minute instruments, some cultures, and scattered bottles of reagents. Dr. Kemp's solar lamp was lit, albeit the sky was still bright with the sunset light, and his blinds were up because there was no offence of peering outsiders to require them pulled down. Dr. Kemp was a tall and slender young man, with flaxen hair and a moustache almost white, and the work he was upon would earn him, he hoped, the fellowship of the Royal Society, so highly did he think of it. — H.G.Wells

If someone rescues you, they own you. Not because you owe them - you can sort that, with enough good favors or bottles of booze dressed up in ribbons. They own you because you're not the lead in your story any more. You're the poor struggling loser/helpless damsel/plucky sidekick who was saved from danger/dishonor/humiliation by the brilliant brave compassionate hero/heroine, and they get to decide which, because you're not the one running this story, not any more. I — Tana French

Most criminals are stupid. They creep $500,000 homes in the Garden District, load up two dozen bottles of gin, whiskey, vermouth, and Collins mix in a $2,000 Irish linen tablecloth and later drink the booze and throw the tablecloth away. — James Lee Burke

That's just like the manual says,' said Witherwax. "If we want to have international brotherhood, we gotta get a language that everybody understands all the time.'
'You mean with no homonyms?' said Doc Brenner.
Mr. Gross belched again, and held up two fingers to indicate another Boilermaker. 'Are you saying that the language a fella speaks can make a fairy of him?' ("Gin Comes In Bottles") — Fletcher Pratt

Everyone should wake up and have a fresh-squeezed orange every day. By having a fresh glass of orange juice with American oranges, you are supporting the local economy, you have all the vitamin C you need in a day, and you support the environment because you don't use any plastic from bottles or bags. — Jose Andres

They migrated to the usual room on the second floor. Heywood Broun was there by the door, setting up bottles of gin, scotch and beer. Alexander Woollcott sat ensconced behind the round table (not THE Round Table). He shuffled the cards and stacked up poker chips.

Dorothy stopped in the doorway and watched what they were doing. 'You boys sure know how to treat a woman,' she said. 'Liquor in the front and poker in the rear. — J.J. Murphy

I've seen a Marine outfit storm a fortified hill in Korea with fewer men and less fire power than the mayor sent out to prevent this anticipated riot. Some 300 policemen blocked off roads leading to the campus and took up stations along the campus fence ... the crowd was orderly enough as the students started toward their dormitories. But the sight of the cops, with shotguns, carbines, tear gas and searchlights at the ready, seemed to enrage them. They started yelling "hey, boy," and other insulting things at the cops and a few rocks began to fly, and the cops, who were tense and jumpy, started shooting into the air. And this set off another barrage of bricks, rocks and bottles and the cops started shooting in earnest, at running figures on the campus, into the shadows and toward the rooftops of the buildings. — Robert Penn Warren

No problem, dear," Phil said with a smile. It was a nice smile. A few years ago, it might have been returned, but nope, not today. Phil kept his eyes on her for maybe a second too long, though Wendy didn't think the girl noticed. Once the waitress was out of sight, Phil lifted his bottle toward Wendy. She picked up hers and clinked bottles and decided to stop this dance. "Phil, — Harlan Coben

A certain red cardinal sounded like a little bottle being filled up, up, up with some clear liquid. — Elizabeth Enright

As nervous as I am to pick up a water bottle, that's how nervous I am to perform. My confidence is very high. I really enjoy going up, I feel like it's my birthday everyday that I have to go up there. — Gucci Mane

When I started making enough money to afford high-end, fancy skincare products with sexy bottles and impressive claims, I decided to give them a try. As a result my skin acted up and got irritated. I think sometimes women may be overcleansing their skin. Some products and masks can be too aggressive and irritating for certain skin types. I believe the more simple, natural, and easy the skin care regime, the better off your skin will be. — Jennifer Aniston

Growing up, road trips with Dad were something I hated. Sitting still for hours, singing that stupid song, 100 bottles of beer on the wall. 100 bottles of beer ... Dad, you know, keeping up with the song. — Christopher Titus

I ask myself how I could give in to this perpetual vertigo that I in fact provoked and feared. I floated among erratic clouds and talked to myself in front of the mirror in the vain hope of confirming who I was. My delirium was so great that during a student demonstration complete with rocks and bottles, I had to make an enormous effort not to lead it as I held up a sign that would sanctify my truth: I am mad with love. — Gabriel Garcia Marquez

I'm scared by the enormous amount of bottled water being consumed today, instead of people drinking filtered tap water. Did you know that nearly 90 percent of those plastic bottles are not recycled and wind up in landfills where it takes thousands of years for the plastic to decompose? — Robert Englund

We should not be confident in our ability to keep a super-intelligent genie locked up in its bottle forever. — Nick Bostrom

Grandma Harper has two green bottles shaped like women with black hair painted on their heads and a yellow glass colored captain's hat that she keeps her face powder in that I want too, and a picture of a naked girl in a swing, swinging way up in the air over castles in a blue sky.
I don't know why I want those things, I just do. — Fannie Flagg

There's a certain visual grammar you've got to stick in. For example, if a character has just woken up, draw him in his pajamas with the bed a bit rumpled. Or if he's ill, draw little bottles with red crosses on that immediately communicate medicine, and a box of tissues. — Korky Paul

People often ask me, "What's the difference between couplehood and babyhood?" In a word? Moisture. Everything in my life is now more moist. Between your spittle, your diapers, your spit-up and drool, you got your baby food, your wipes, your formula, your leaky bottles, sweaty baby backs, and numerous other untraceable sources-all creating an ever-present moistness in my life, which heretofore was mainly dry. — Paul Reiser

I was afraid of other people's houses. After school sometimes a friend might talk me into going to his house or apartment to do our homework together. It was a shock, the way people lived, other people, those who weren't me. I didn't know how to respond, the clinging intimacy of it, kitchen slop, pan handles jutting from the sink. Did I want to be curious, amused, indifferent, superior? Just walking past a bathroom, a woman's stocking draped over the towel rack, pill bottles on the windowsill, some open, some capsized, a child's slipper in the bathtub. It made me want to run and hide, partly from my own fastidiousness. The bedrooms with unmade beds, somebody's socks on the floor, the old woman in nightclothes, barefoot, an entire life gathered up in a chair by the bed, hunched frame and muttering face. Who are these people, minute to minute and year after year? It made me want to go home and stay there. — Don DeLillo

GEOLOGY, n. The science of the earth's crust
to which, doubtless, will be added that of its interior whenever a man shall come up garrulous out of a well. The geological formations of the globe already noted are catalogued thus: The Primary, or lower one, consists of rocks, bones or mired mules, gas-pipes, miners' tools, antique statues minus the nose, Spanish doubloons and ancestors. The Secondary is largely made up of red worms and moles. The Tertiary comprises railway tracks, patent pavements, grass, snakes, mouldy boots, beer bottles, tomato cans, intoxicated citizens, garbage, anarchists, snap-dogs and fools. — Ambrose Bierce

Ah, books." Ziegler, smiling, came up behind me. "They bob like corks on an ocean. Float between worlds, messages in bottles. — Robert Charles Wilson

Stacking shelves in a supermarket. The reason I didn't like it is because I'm very clumsy. We had a floor polisher you'd push up and down the aisles, and klutz me would always knock the bottles over in the drinks aisle. Unsurprisingly I got fired. — Peter Andre

Overhead, an enemy plane had been dragging, drumming slowly round in the pool of night, drawing up bursts of gunfire
nosing, pausing, turning, fascinated to the point for its intent. The barrage banged, coughed, retched; in here the lights in the mirrors rocked. Now down a shaft of anticipating silence the bomb swung whistling. With the shock of detonation, still to be heard, four walls of in here yawped in then bellied out; bottles danced on glass; a distortion ran through the view. The detonation dulled off into the cataracting roar of a split building:
direct hit,
somewhere else. — Elizabeth Bowen

The only reason I have lived so long is that I let go of my past. Shut the door on grief on regret on remorse. If I let them in, just one self-indulgent crack, whap, the door will fling open gales of pain ripping through my heart blinding my eyes with shame breaking cups and bottles knocking down jars shattering windows stumbling bloody on spilled sugar and broken glass terrified gagging until with a final shudder and sob I shut the heavy door. Pick up the pieces one more time. — Lucia Berlin

You heard me, Laila. He broke up with Meri, and now, wants me back. I told him to go fuck himself."
She smiles at me with pride. "That's my bitch." We click our bottles and swig a large mouthful. — Dora Sky

She rises up out of a sea of faces and embraces me, embraces me passionately
a thousand eyes, noses, fingers, legs, bottles, windows, purses, saucers all glaring at us an we in each other's arm oblivious. I sit down beside her and she talks
a flood of talk. Wild consumptive notes of hysteria, perversion, leprosy. I hear not a word because she is beautiful and I love her and now I am happy and willing to die. — Henry Miller

See with what entire freedom the whaleman takes his handful of lamps-often but old bottles and vials, though ... He burns, too, the purest of oil ... It is sweet as early grass butter in April. He goes and hunts for his oil, so as to be sure of its freshness and genuineness, even as the traveler on the prairie hunts up his own supper of game. — Herman Melville

The treasury could fill old bottles with banknotes and bury them..and leave it to private enterprises on well-tried principles of laissez-faire to dig the notes up again. — John Maynard Keynes

We were playing a festival in Dublin the other week. There was this other group, like, warming up in the next sort of chalet, and they were terrible. I said, 'Shut them cunts up!' And they were still warming up, so I threw a bottle at them. The bands said, 'That's the Sons of Mumford' or something. 'They're number five in charts!' I just thought they were a load of retarded Irish folk singers. — Mark E. Smith

To the average eye, my bedroom was a complete disaster. The floor was hardly visible with all of the empty soda bottles, chip bags, and piles of clothes covering it. The rustic nightstand by my bed was so cluttered with papers, more soda bottles, notebooks, and hoodies that it looked like a pile of contemporary art. And my bed? It was just a pile of dark blue blankets and pillows scattered on an old mattress. What's the point in making your bed, anyway? You're just gonna mess it up and unmake it at the end of the day. Why even bother? My bedroom might look like a mess to anyone else, but to me, it was my own personal oasis. I liked it just the way it was. I never bought the whole saying, "A cluttered room is a cluttered mind." Me? Cluttered? Nah. More like creative. The more cluttered your room is, the more creative you are. And judging by my room, I must be pretty creative. I — Savannah Ostler

To grow up steeped in these tellings was to learn two unforgettable lessons: first, that stories were not true (there were no "real" genies in bottles or flying carpets or wonderful lamps), but by being untrue they could make him feel and know truths that the truth could not tell him, and second, that they all belonged to him, just as they belonged to his father, Anis, and to everyone else, they were all his, as they were hsi father's, bright stories and dark stories, sacred stories and profane, his to alter and renew and discard and pick up again as and when he pleased, his to laugh at and rejoice in and live in and with and by, to give the stories life by loving them and to be given life in return. Man was the storytelling animal, the only creature on earth that told itself stories to understand what kind of creature it was. The story was his birthright, and nobody could take it away. — Salman Rushdie

Everybody has heard of the great Heidelberg Tun, and most people have seen it, no doubt. It is a wine-cask as big as a cottage, and some traditions say it holds eighteen hundred thousand bottles, and other traditions say it holds eighteen hundred million barrels. I think it likely that one of these statements is a mistake, and the other is a lie. However, the mere matter of capacity is a thing of no sort of consequence, since the cask is empty, and indeed has always been empty, history says. An empty cask the size of a cathedral could excite but little emotion in me. I do not see any wisdom in building a monster cask to hoard up emptiness in, when you can get a better quality, outside, any day, free of expense. — Mark Twain

Releasing videos on YouTube is kind of like throwing messages in bottles out into a churning sea made up entirely of messages in bottles. The chance of your message getting noticed and someone being sent out to rescue you is punishingly slim. But every once in a blue moon someone who owns a big boat made of money finds your message and agrees to let you ride on his big boat made of money if you keep making messages for him. — Yahtzee Croshaw

Even she couldn't believe she'd spent so much money on household appliance. Money that she could just as easily have spend on handbags or bottles of wine. The only conclusion she could draw was that she was finally grown-up. Which was funny because in her head she was still sixteen and trying to decide what to do when she left school. — Marian Keyes

And I realize I've been betrayed by the two vices that fiction promised me I'd adore. Sal Paradise held up bottles of booze like a housewife in a detergent commercial. Holden Caulfield reached for his cigarettes like an act of faith. Even Huckleberry Finn tapped on his pipe with relief and satisfaction. If sex turns out to be this bad, I'm never reading again. — Craig Silvey

When a child is born, I once explained to the kids, some dads lay down bottles of wine for them that will mature when they grow up into ungrateful adults. Instead, what you're going to get from me, as each of you turns sixteen, is a library of the one hundred books that gave me the most pleasure when I was a know-nothing adolescent. — Mordecai Richler

It was about half-past one - 'only half-past one,' Lucy complained - when she and Walter and Spandrell left the restaurant. 'Still young,' was Spandrell's comment on the night. 'Young and rather insipid. Nights are like human beings - never interesting till they're grown up. Round about midnight they reach puberty. At a little after one they come of age. Their prime is from two to half-past. An hour later they're growing rather desperate, like those man-eating women and waning middle-aged men who hop around twice as violently as they ever did in the hope of persuading themselves that they're not old. After four they're in full decay. And their death is horrible. Really horrible at sunrise, when the bottles are empty and people look like corpses and desire's exhausted itself into disgust. I have rather a weakness for the deathbed scenes, I must confess,' Spandrell added. 'I'm — Aldous Huxley

You should think about nobody and go your own way, not on a course marked out for you by people holding mugs of water and bottles of iodine in case you fall and cut yourself so that they can pick you up - even if you want to stay where you are - and get you moving again. — Alan Sillitoe

He realised at once that a mistake had been made: he had been sent the wrong hangover. Somewhere in northern Rhodesia there was a bull elephant who had got drunk on fermented marula fruit, rampaged through a nearby village, and fallen asleep in a ditch, and was now pleasantly surprised to find itself greeting the day with only the mild headache that follows a couple of bottles of good red wine ... Perhaps if he got in touch with the relevant authorities he could get this unfortunate little mix-up corrected, but he would have to do so without moving his head or opening his eyes. Otherwise he would die from the pain. — Ned Beauman

There were times when I got frightened. Things weren't going right, so I just went out and got smashed. That's me. Something goes wrong, I find a bottle. I don't like it about myself but I've done it before and I'll do it again. But I never vanished for days or held up shooting or quit the picture. — George C. Scott

Emma followed his gaze to the brightly painted stand where people competed to see who could toss a plastic ring and land it around the neck of one of a dozen lined-up bottles. She tried not to feel superior that this was apparently something mundanes found difficult. — Cassandra Clare

Next day, as the Ferris wheel was being taken apart and the race horses were being loaded into vans and the entertainers were packing up their belongings and driving away in their trailers, Charlotte died. The Fair Grounds were soon deserted. The sheds and buildings were empty and forlorn. The infield was littered with bottles and trash. Nobody, of the hundreds of people that had visited the Fair, knew that a grey spider had played the most important part of all. No one was with her when she died. — E.B. White

Our perception could either be our path to nirvana or an invisible cage that bottles us up. — Pawan Mishra

I had no money, no food, no prospects, no contacts. Eating was my first priority, and for that, one usually needs money, and so lo and behold I had a goal in sight. I collected cans and bottles, scrounged parking lots and sidewalks, my head held low and eyes intent on the ground instead of where I was going. Vending machines and pay phones sometimes gave up their treasures in the form of change people had forgotten to collect. They're not what I'd call jackpots, but finding a dollar here and a dollar there is a lot when you have nothing. — R. Canepa

But he holds me so tightly that for a moment, the emotions are at bay. The sadness and fear, the regret and the loathing. He bottles them up inside his arms so that for a split second I don't have to be the one carrying the weight of them. For this moment, the burden is his. — Mary Kubica

Got any water?" she asked in that whining, complaining voice. Gra-ted. "Yeah." He grabbed one of the bottles of water he'd brought, twisted off the cap and drained most of the contents while she watched. A whimper escaped her, and he squeezed the bottle a little too hard, crackling the plastic. "Well? Are you going to share or not?" With a forced shrug, he tossed her what was left. "That has my cooties," he informed her. "Good news is, I'm up-to-date on all my shots." She drained the contents in seconds, then peered over at him, clearly irritated with what little he'd given her. "Be grateful I gave you any at all," he said with feeling. "Evil bastard." "Murderous bitch. — Gena Showalter

Try as you might, you'll never be able to please an environmentalist. You can stop using coal to heat your house, you can stop throwing out bottles and cans, you can have every factory in Canada shut down and you can buy only organic gluten-free non-GMO food, you can give up your favorite station wagon for a weird electric hybrid, you can stop developing film and buy a never-ending cycle of digital cameras, you can give up your job at a refinery or mill, and they'll still get after you for not enjoying yourself while doing so. — Rebecca McNutt

Even at that time the hope of leaving behind messages in bottles on the flood of barbarism bursting on Europe was an amiable illusion: the desperate letters stuck in the mud of the spirit of rejuvenesence and were worked up by a band of Noble Human-Beings and other riff-raff into highly artistic but inexpensive wall-adornments. Only since then has progress in communications really got into its stride. Who, in the end, is to take it amiss if even the freest of free spirits no longer write for an imaginary posterity, more trusting, if possible, than even their contemporaries, but only for the dead God? — Theodor W. Adorno

Yet no one seemed to have thought through the implications of a world in which everyone cheated. The other morning Keith had bought five hundred vanity sachets of Outrage, his staple perfume. At lunchtime he discovered that they all contained water, a substance not much less expensive than Outrage, but harder to sell. Keith was relieved that he had already unloaded half the consignment on Damian Noble in the Portobello Road. Then he held Damian's tenners up to the light: they were crude forgeries. He passed on the notes without much trouble, in return for twenty-four bottles of vodka which, it turned out, contained a misty, faintly scented liquid. Outrage! — Martin Amis

He would think of Heaven and London and Our Lady of Acoma and the rows and rows of babies in clean bottles and Jesus flying up and Linda flying up and the great Director of World hatcheries and Awonawilona. — Aldous Huxley

In his delicate state he rushed to the cupboard searching something to settle his nerves only to find his larder empty. Feeling a fit of panic, he grabbed at the empty bottles littered about the room, tipping them up seeking some last dregs, drops to quench his nervous thirst. It was at this vulnerable moment that he saw her, standing in the darkness watching him, the red ember of her cigarette rhythmically swallowed by the shadows. He froze. — Parker T. Geissel

The men selected bottles of Moosehead beer and ranged themselves on plush leather chairs while Grosevoir busied himself in the bedroom. An overhead projector was set up on a cut-glass coffee table. — Patrick Lestewka

When we get out of the glass bottles of our ego,
and when we escape like squirrels turning in the
cages of our personality
and get into the forests again,
we shall shiver with cold and fright
but things will happen to us
so that we don't know ourselves.
Cool, unlying life will rush in,
and passion will make our bodies taut with power,
we shall stamp our feet with new power
and old things will fall down,
we shall laugh, and institutions will curl up like
burnt paper. — D.H. Lawrence

Two flights of steps bordered either side of the Hill from Hell. I didn't know who constructed them or when, but it was sometime before I was born. Maybe even before Daddy was born. In one stretch, the steps were made of large semiflat stones. In another, wood. In a third, slate. All of them were in terrible disrepair, but it was still easier to climb them than to try to walk up the dirt road itself, especially since Stacy and I were weighed down with our backpacks, slices of pie in Tupperware containers, bottles of Pepsi, and a bunch of cassette tapes. We stopped halfway up to catch our breath. I really didn't need to, but I could tell Stacy was not used to trudging up hills. — Diane Chamberlain

What's happened? screamed Mrs. Twit. They stood in the middle of the room, looking up. All the furniture, the big table, the chairs, the sofa, the lamps, the little side tables, the cabinet with bottles of beer in it, the ornaments, the electric heater, the carpet, everything was stuck upside down to the ceiling. The pictures were upside down on the walls. And the floor they were standing on was absolutely bare. What's more, it had been painted white to look like the ceiling. — Roald Dahl

Do we really want to condemn as excessive the use of safety helmets, car seats, playgrounds designed so kids will be less likely to crack their skulls, childproof medicine bottles, and baby gates at the top of stairs? One writer criticizes "the inappropriateness of excessive concern in low-risk environments," but of course reasonable people disagree about what constitutes both "excessive" and "low risk." Even if, as this writer asserts, "a young person growing up in a Western middle-class family is safer today than at any time in modern history," the relevance of that relative definition of safety isn't clear. Just because fewer people die of disease today than in medieval times doesn't mean it's silly to be immunized. And perhaps young people are safer today because of the precautions that some critics ridicule. — Alfie Kohn

Why do I get the feeling our relationship is backwards?" Ryn asks as he wanders into my room, shrugs his jacket off, and hangs it over the back of my desk chair. "Isn't it usually the girl who always wants to talk about feelings and the guy who bottles everything up inside?" "I don't bottle things up," I shoot back. Well, there is an imaginary box I like to hide things in, but that's different. "Right. — Rachel Morgan

I think when you put sex and spirituality in the same bottle and shake it up, bad things happen. — Katy Perry

The saving of empty beer and liquor bottles is a strange college phenomenon. I bet most of you college students reading this right now have some empties on a shelf in your room. Everyone knows how much college kids like to drink, do we really need to display it? It's a good thing, though, that this trend stops after college. Wouldn't it be weird if your parents had empty wine bottles up on their bedroom wall? — Aaron Karo

For dinner Jade microwaves some Stars-n-Flags. They're addictive. They put sugar in the sauce and sugar in the meat nuggets. I think also caffeine. Someone told me the brown streaks in the Flags are caffeine. We have like five bowls each.
After dinner the babies get fussy and Min puts a mush of ice cream and Hershey's syrup in their bottles and we watch The Worst That Could Happen, a half hour computer simulation of tragedies that have never actually occurred but theoretically could. A kid gets hit by a train and flies into a zoo, where he's eaten by wolves. A man cuts his hand off chopping wood and while he's wandering around screaming for help is picked up by a tornado and dropped on a preschool during recess and lands on a pregnant teacher. — George Saunders

If the Treasury were to fill old bottles with banknotes, bury them at suitable depths in disused coalmines which are then filled up to the surface with town rubbish, and leave it to private enterprise on well-tried principles of laissez-faire to dig the notes up again (the right to do so being obtained, of course, by tendering for leases of the note-bearing territory), there need be no more unemployment and, with the help of the repercussions, the real income of the community, and its capital wealth also, would probably become a good deal greater than it actually is. It would, indeed, be more sensible to build houses and the like; but if there are political and practical difficulties in the way of this, the above would be better than nothing. — John Maynard Keynes

She lives in a town of sorry history,
indifferent to ethical perspectives,
apathetic to female attributes,
cargo and trunk liners,
spilled oil in the garage,
telephone poles shaped like liquor bottles,
sustaining burly weather,
cardiac distressing cold,
tobacco and mortality,
lying face-up on the bar's concrete floor,
no one can waste a life
faster than a Montana redneck. — Brian D'Ambrosio

I found that a couple of bottles of beer would give me a lift, but the third bottle would sober me up. — Ethel Waters

Do I have to get diapers?" he asked.
"Why, did Kade shit himself?" she laughed.
Dylan huffed loudly. Eyebrows knitted together, "DO I NEED TO GET BOTTLES?"
Jen rolled her eyes and shook her head as if he were crazy, "Don't you think it's too early to start drinking? You just got up ... "
"IS THERE ANYTHING IN YOUR OVEN?"
"I'M NOT BAKING ANYTHING, YOU MORON! WHY ARE YOU YELLING AT ME?"
My God, you have surrounded me with idiots. — Christine Zolendz

Hey,508! Your room is right above mine. You never said."
St. Clair smiles. "Maybe I didn't want you blaming me for keeping you up at night with my noisy stomping boots."
"Dude.You do stomp."
"I know.I'm sorry." He laughs and holds the door open for me.His room is neater than I expected. I always picture the guys with disgusting bedrooms-mountains of soiled boxer shorts and sweat-stained undershirts,unmade beds with sheets that haven't been changed in weeks, posters of beer bottles and women in neon bikinis,empty soda cans and chip bags,and random bits of model airplanes and discarded video games.s — Stephanie Perkins

The objectification of females is not a good thing! Not every rapper does this, but when the lyrics focus solely on the strip club, 'poppin' bottles' and how many girls they can 'tap,' it distorts what kids are learning. I think if there was more of a female presence in hip hop we could break up the monotony. It's all about balance. — Queen Latifah

My mom, who was only six or seven herself, used to round up the abandoned kids and form a troop and take them around to the shebeens. They'd collect empties from the men who were passed out and take the bottles to where you could turn them in for a deposit. Then my mom would take that money, buy food in the spaza shops, and feed the kids. She was a child taking care of children. When — Trevor Noah

I wondered about Mrs. Winterbottom and what she meant about living a tiny life. If she didn't like all that baking and cleaning and jumping up to get bottles of nail polish remover and sewing hems, why did she do it? Why didn't she tell them to do some of the things themselves? Maybe she was afraid there would be nothing left for her to do. There would be no need for her and she would become invisible and no one would notice. — Sharon Creech

I took his aftershave and cologne out of the medicine cabinet. It occurred to me that he'd been wearing these for Karen. I peed in the bathroom glass, drained the Aramis and poured urine into two of his cologne bottles. "Up yours," I said quietly. I dropped the bottles in his bag and zipped it closed. — Dorothea Benton Frank

He got up from the floor and reached for the whisky bottle. Nick held out his glass. His eyes fixed on it while Bill poured. Bill poured the glass half full of whisky. "Put in your own water," he said. "There's just one more shot." "Got any more?" Nick asked. "There's plenty more but dad only likes me to drink what's open." "Sure," said Nick. "He says opening bottles is what makes drunkards," Bill explained. "That's right," said Nick. He was impressed. He had never thought of that before. He had always thought it was solitary drinking that made drunkards. — Ernest Hemingway,

For example, John Law's Mississippi Company venture printed shares, and the money had gone up in smoke when it had been inscribed objects. The inscription made it magic and changed its meaning. That's how objects become charmed in The Arabian Nights, and they are often originally ordinary objects. The carpet is an ordinary, paltry object. The lamp is a rusty old lamp, and the bottles jinns are imprisoned within are old bottles. They are changed by the magic and the jinn's presence, and the jinn's presence is often embodied in the seal or inscription. — Marina Warner

We would just go out and line up a bunch of cans and shoot with rifles, handguns and at times, submachine guns ... When I was a kid it was a controlled atmosphere, we weren't shooting at humans ... we were shooting at cans and bottles mostly. I will most certainly take my kids out for target practice. — Johnny Depp

After dinner the babies get fussy and Min puts a mush of ice cream and Hershey's syrup in their bottles and we watch The Worst That Could Happen, a half-hour of computer simulations of tragedies that have never actually occurred but theoretically could. A kid gets hit by a train and flies into a zoo, where he's eaten by wolves. A man cuts his hand off chopping wood and while wandering around screaming for help is picked up by a tornado and dropped on a preschool during recess and lands on a pregnant teacher. ("Sea Oak") — George Saunders

I ran into an old friend on the street and we started up a conversation. Four hours and six bottles of wine later, we decided the weather was just too unpredictable, and we parted ways. — Bauvard

A breeze ruffled the neat hedges of Privet Drive, which lay silent and tidy under the inky sky, the very last place you would expect astonishing things to happen. Harry Potter rolled over inside his blankets without waking up. One small hand closed on the letter beside him and he slept on, not knowing he was special, not knowing he was famous, not knowing he would be woken in a few hours' time by Mrs. Dursley's scream as she opened the front door to put out the milk bottles, nor that he would spend the next few weeks being prodded and pinched by his cousin Dudley ... He couldn't know that at this very moment, people meeting in secret all over the country were holding up their glasses and saying in hushed voices: To Harry Potter - the boy who lived! — J.K. Rowling

The Germans are exceedingly fond of Rhine wines; they are put up in tall, slender bottles, and are considered a pleasant beverage. One tells them from vinegar by the label. — Mark Twain

Sam groaned. A warmth on her face alerted her to the new morning. She opened one eye and peered at the fuzzy daylight streaming in through the window. Her head throbbed like a bitch. Her mouth felt like a carpet. She pushed herself off the couch and stood up shakily, kicking bottles as she stumbled to her small kitchen. Every movement was painful and slow. She was a sloth tight-roping through time. She held onto the basin for a moment to steady herself. She grabbed a plastic cup and opened the tap, letting it flow as she filled and refilled it, gulping down as much water as she could. She splashed her face, neck and chest with water, then refilled the cup and dumped the contents over her head. She stood there, unaware of the moments passing by, as the water dripped down her body. Willing herself to wake up and feel better. Willing the nausea into oblivion. — Adelheid Manefeldt

Bottles of wine aren't like paintings. At some point you have to consume them. The object in life is to die with no bottles of wine in your cellar. To drink your last bottle of wine and go to sleep that night and not wake up. — Jay McInerney

The refugee card was and continues to be an insult to remind us of the little that refugees get in comparison with what they have really lost. Would a bag of flour compensate for the farmland they once had? Would a bag of sugar make up for the bitter misery those people have always felt after losing their sweet homes to dwell in refugee camps? Would the two bottles of oil make them forget their olive trees, which had been mercilessly uprooted as they themselves were? Or maybe it is simply a declaration that they are temporary refugees who once had the land which, as long as this card is still in their hands, would still be waiting for them to return. Only a shot of sharp pain brought me back to the present. — Refaat Alareer

In 1916, when Johnny Heartfield and I invented photomontage in my studio at the south end of the town at five o'clock one May morning, we had no idea of the immense possibilities, or of the thorny but successful career, that awaited the new invention. On a piece of cardboard we pasted a mishmash of advertisements for hernia belts, student song books and dog food, labels from schnaps and wine bottles, and photographs from picture papers, cut up at will in such a way as to say, in pictures, what would have been banned by the censors if we had said it in words. — George Grosz

By the beginning of March, K Company, 333rd Regiment, had reached the Rhine. The men settled down in the village of Krefeld to await Montgomery's Operation Plunder, the crossing of the river; Monty was planning the operation with as much care as he had put into Operation Overlord, so the pause was a long one. By some miracle, the men found an undamaged high-rise apartment building in which everything worked - electricity, hot water, flush toilets, and telephones with dial tones. The had their first hot baths in four months. They found cigars and bottles go cognac. Pvt. Ray Bocarski, fluent in German, lit up, sat down in an easy chair, got a befuddled German operator on the phone, and talked his way through to a military headquarters in Berlin. He told the German officer he could expect K Company within the week. — Stephen E. Ambrose

If you ever have to give a speech, start with a joke, if you know one. For years I've been looking for the best joke in the world. I think I know what it is. I will tell it to you, but you have to help me. You have to say, "No," when I hold up my hand like this. All right? Don't let me down.
Do you know why cream is so much more expensive than milk?
AUDIENCE: No.
It is because the cows hate to squat on those bottles. — Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

We danced in the handkerchief-big space between the speak-easy tables, in which stood the plates of half-eaten spaghetti or chicken bones and the bottles of Dago red. For about five minutes the dancing had some value in itself, then it became very much like acting out some complicated and portentous business in a dream which seems to have a meaning but whose meaning you can't figure out. Then the music was over, and stopping dancing was like waking up from the dream, being glad to wake up and escape and yet distressed because now you won't ever know what it had been all about. — Robert Penn Warren

Day made quick work of drying his body, brushed his teeth, and walked back into the bedroom. God was already in bed, his large form taking up the entire right side of the California king-size mattress. The starch white sheet was draped loosely over his lower half. Day walked over and grabbed the two bottles of water and set them on his nightstand just in case he needed it. He climbed onto the tall bed and was grabbed by strong hands and settled on top of his naked lover.

"Cash," Day moaned.

"Shhh. Just need to hold you," God said quietly as he rested his chin on top of Day's wet hair and squeezed him hard against him, protecting him as if someone might come in the middle of the night and try to snatch him away.

Day rose and fell slightly with God's steady breaths. It was only nine thirty but it wasn't long before Day's exhaustion had him drifting off to sleep. — A.E. Via

How paltry are the traces left behind by a life, even one concentrated around those supposed things of permanence called words. We spend our time upon the earth and then disappear, and only one one-thousandth of what we were lasts. We send all those bottles out into the ocean and so few wash up on shore. — John Darnton