Quotes & Sayings About Cleaners

She was flighty and poor, a French studies major who quoted Simone de Beauvoir. She wiped her runny nose on her coat sleeve when it was snowing, stuck her head out of car windows the way dogs do, the wind fireworking her hair. That woman was gone now. Not that it was her fault. Vast fortunes did that to people. It took them to the cleaners, cruelly starched and steam-pressed them so all their raw edges, all the dirt and hunger and guileless laughter, were ironed out. Few survived real money. — Marisha Pessl

William pondered over his argument with Annie. How did a simple statement turn into a full-scale fight? He didn't understand why it was wrong of him to assume Annie would run a simple errand for him. Sara had done all of it without complaint. All he'd asked Annie to do was pick up a suit from the dry cleaners. — Deanna Lynn Sletten

No powdery residue. But definitely suspicious. Smell." He slides a makeup catalog from beneath a microscope made out of a plate, a toilet paper roll, and an intricate arrangement of pipe cleaners. "Any ideas?"
I take a scientific whiff. "Gardenia. Looks like those Mary Kay terrorists are at it again. — Sarah Ockler

[Americans] can't understand that the water in our toilet is cleaner than 880 million have access to. — Matt Damon

(You think you know suffering? What about life before dishwashers? Washing machines? Tampons? Vacuum cleaners? You have no idea. No idea!) — Magnus Flyte

Once you wrong a woman, beware. They'll skin you alive. Might cry over your pain, nurse you back to health after, but they'll take you to the cleaners as sure as I'm standing here. You should have begged for forgiveness for being born before you showed up unannounced. — K.F. Breene

She decided working security at the SkyMall ranked high on her list of worst ten jobs, right up there with shark tank cleaners - somebody had to do it - and proctologists. — J.D. Robb

So, could there be a cure?' Nora looked at me out of the corner of her eye. I found myself looking at the floor. I knew the answer to that one.
'No,' Beryl said. 'Prions essentially cannot be destroyed. We've tried antibiotics, antiretrovirals, acid ... '
'Freezing flesh, burning it ... ' Samedi ticked off.
'Autoclaving works some of the time, but not enough to be thoroughly trusted. Um ... industrial cleaners of all kinds ... '
'Your mother's cooking ... — Lia Habel

If the manifest of ingredients on the bottle had been legible, it would have read something like this: Water, blackstrap molasses, imported habanero peppers, salt, garlic, ginger, tomato puree, axle grease, real hickory smoke, snuff, butts of clove cigarettes, Guinness Stout fermentation dregs, uranium mill tailings, muffler cores, monosodium glutamate, nitrates, nitrites, nitrotes and nitrutes, nutrites, natrotes, powdered pork nose hairs, dynamite, activated charcoal, match-heads, used pipe cleaners, tar, nicotine, single-malt whiskey, smoked beef lymph nodes, autumn leaves, red fuming nitric acid, bituminous coal, fallout, printer's ink, laundry starch, drain cleaner, blue chrysotile asbestos, carrageenan, BHA, BHT, and natural flavorings. — Neal Stephenson

I am Woman, here me roar ... of is that my vacuum cleaner? — Liz Carpenter

Well, you know, writers just suck up new experiences - we're just like the vacuum cleaners of newness. — Charlaine Harris

Starched shirts and suits fresh from the cleaners' went a long, long way toward hiding a multitude of sins. — Donna Tartt

In 1966, while working on a feature about a Picasso exhibition at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, I recorded the pre-opening preparations and observed a moment: One of the cleaners stopped, puzzled, in front of the Picassos. I think that this is an image that can be universally understood, but with a grain of salt. I never chose this image in edits before because it seemed to me that it felt posed-the composition was a little too perfect. But, believe me, it was a lucky moment. — Micha Bar-Am

I had a linguistics professor who said that it's man's ability to use language that makes him the dominant species on the planet.That may be. But I think there's one other thing that separates us from animals. We aren't afraid of vaccuum cleaners. — Jeff Stilson

No scarf tonight?" the captain asked, pointing at Solara's neck.
"I guess you finally beat that cold virus."
"I don't believe she had a cold," Renny said thoughtfully.
"I'll bet it was the Hoover flu. You know, named after the old vacuum cleaners on Earth?"
"Oh, I've heard of that disease," Cassia chimed in. "Doesn't it cause a rash that looks like suction marks? Highly contagious when mixed with cute guys and Crystalline? — Melissa Landers

Don't talk." Alec gestured at him with an expression of vague disgust.
"Every time I look at you, I keep remembering coming in here and seeing you draped all over my sister."
Jace sat up.
"I didn't hear about this."
"Oh, come on -" said Simon.
"Simon, you're blushing," observed Jace.
"And you're a vampire and almost never blush, so this better be really juicy. And weird. Were bicycles involved in some kinky way? Vaccum cleaners? Umbrellas?"
"Big umbrellas, or the little kind you get with drinks?" Alec asked.
"Does it matter - — Cassandra Clare

I once compiled a list of events that frightened her, and it was quite comprehensive: very loud snoring; low-flying aircraft; church bells; fire engines; trains; buses and lorries; thunder; shouting; large cars; most medium-sized cars; noisy small cars; burglar alarms; fireworks, especially crackers; loud radios; barking dogs; whinnying horses; nearby silent horses; cows in general; megaphones; sheep; corks coming out of sparkling wine bottles; motorcycles, even very small ones; balloons being popped; vacuum cleaners (not being used by her); things being dropped; dinner gongs; parrot houses; whoopee cushions; chiming doorbells; hammering; bombs; hooters; old-fashioned alarm clocks; pneumatic drills; and hairdryers (even those used by her). — John Cleese

I regularly tell our seminary students that if I happen to visit the church in which one of them serves, I will not ask first, "Is this man a good preacher?" Rather, first of all I will ask the secretaries, office staff, janitors, and cleaners what it is like to work for this pastor. I will ask, "What kind of man is he? Is he a servant? Is he demanding and harsh, or his he patient, kind, and forbearing as a man in authority?" One of our graduates may preach great sermons, but if he is a pain to work for, then you know he will cause major problems in any congregation. Leaders in the church are required by Scripture to set an example in the areas of love, kindness, gentleness, patience, and forbearance before they are appointed to preach, teach, and rule. If we obediently require these attitudes and character traits of our leaders, what will our "new community" look like — Jerram Barrs

I worked a telemarketing job. I always worked those because I always knew how to talk to people and I always knew how to sell because my father was a salesman. He used to sell vacuum cleaners, payroll services to companies, so that was natural for me to go into sales. — Kanye West

Dad was a man who, due to his underprivileged background perhaps, never hesitated when it came to the verbs to get or to take. He was always getting something off the ground, his act together, his hands dirty, the show on the road, someone's goat, the message, out more, on with things, lost, laid, away with murder. He was also always taking charge, the bull by the horns, back the night, something in stride, someone to the cleaners, a rain check, an axe to something, Manhattan. — Marisha Pessl

If I read the newspaper I come out dirtier than I went in. If I read my Bible, I come out cleaner than I went in, and I like being clean! — Smith Wigglesworth

So my grandmother was not without humanity. and if she wore cocktail dresses when she labored in the garden, they were cocktail dresses she no longer intended to wear to cocktail parties. even in her rose garden she did not want to appear underdressed. if the dresses got too dirty from gardening, she threw them out. when my mother suggested to her that she might have them cleaned, my grandmother said, "what? and have those people at the cleaners what i was doing in a dress to make it that dirty?"
from my grandmother i learned that logic is relative. — John Irving

I balance my hormones with bioidentical hormones, I eat organic, I take supplements as determined by lab work, I sleep eight hours nightly, I use organic cosmetics and green household cleaners, and I avoid toxins as best I can. — Suzanne Somers

Necessary policemen, firemen, street cleaners, health officers, judges, legislators and executives perform productive services as important as those of anyone in private industry. They make it possible for private industry to function in an atmosphere of law, order, freedom and peace. But their justification consists in the utility of their services. It does not consist in the "purchasing power" they possess by virtue of being on the public payroll. — Henry Hazlitt

We have seen segments of our Government, in their attitudes and action, adopt tactics unworthy of a democracy, and occasionally reminiscent of totalitarian regimes. We have seen a consistent pattern in which programs initiated with limited goals, such as preventing criminal violence or identifying foreign spies, were expanded to what witnesses characterized as "vacuum cleaners", sweeping in information about lawful activities of American citizens. The tendency of intelligence activities to expand beyond their initial scope is a theme which runs through every aspect of our investigative findings. Intelligence collection programs naturally generate ever-increasing demands for new data. And once intelligence has been collected, there are strong pressures to use it against the target. — Church Committee

All of Koons's best art - the encased vacuum cleaners, the stainless-steel Rabbit (the late-twentieth century's signature work of Simulationist sculpture), the amazing gleaming Balloon Dog, and the cast-iron re-creation of a Civil War mortar exhibited last month at the Armory - has simultaneously flaunted extreme realism, idealism, and fantasy. — Jerry Saltz

The loneliness she felt before Frank walked her home from Wang's cleaners began to dissolve and in its place a shiver of freedom, of earned solitude, of choosing the walls she wanted to break through, minus the burden of shouldering a tilted man. Unobstructed and undistracted, she could get serious and develop a plan to match her ambition and succeed. — Toni Morrison

Screw up my life?" He stared at me for a second and then said, deadpan, "I'm a five-foot-three, thirty-seven-year-old, single, Jewish medical examiner who needs to pick up his lederhosen from the dry cleaners so that he can play in a one-man polka band at Oktoberfest tomorrow." He pushed up his glasses with his forefinger, folded his arms, and said, "Do your worst. — Jim Butcher

(Butch Thinking) Those claws wre like daggers. they made Freddie Krueger's set of fun and games look like pipe cleaners. — J.R. Ward

Most robotic vacuum cleaners don't see their environment, have little suction, and don't clean properly. They are gimmicks. We've been developing a unique 360 vision system that lets our robot see where it is, where it has been, and where it is yet to clean. Vision, combined with our high speed digital motor and cyclone technology, is the key to achieving a high performing robot vacuum - a genuine labor saving device. — James Dyson

Commercial cleaning operations that use carpet and upholstery cleaners include apartment buildings and condos, offices, schools, banks, restaurants, hotels, churches, bowling alleys, transportation terminals, and more. Cleaning services melbourne also a perfect cleaning company in melbourne. — Cleaning Services

Simon, you're blushing," observed Jace. "And you're a vampire and almost never blush, so this better be really juicy. And weird. Were bicycles involved in some kinky way? Vacuum cleaners? Umbrellas? — Cassandra Clare

I can make going to the dry-cleaners last an entire day, and the dry cleaners might be 150 yards from my front door. You might find it hard to believe, but I am bone-idle lazy. — Noel Gallagher

The lampshade on my head is for my bright ideas. I won't be able to convey them until Monday, when my curtain gets out of the dry cleaners. — Bauvard

You have to believe him, because he's going to have your entire palace up in arms and your court in chaos and every member of it from the barons to the boot cleaners coming to you for his blood, and you are going to have to deal with it."
Attolia smiled. "You make him sound like more trouble than he is worth.
"No," said Eddis thoughtfully. "Never more than he is worth. — Megan Whalen Turner

Some crafts have been practiced for centuries. These crafts were created using skills passed from generation to generation, and were motivated by necessity such as baskets and pottery, or artistic expression, such as more baskets and more pottery. Today, there is a much more leisurely attitude toward crafting, and virtually anyone without a job and access to pipe cleaners can join the elite society of crafters. — Amy Sedaris

Back in the fifties, women were told to master the differences between oven cleaners and floor wax and special sprays for wood; today they're told to master the differences between toys that hone problem-solving skills and those that encourage imaginative play. This subtle shift in language suggests that playing with one's child is not really play but a job, just as keeping house once was. Buy Buy Baby is today's equivalent of the 1950s supermarket product aisle, and those shelves of child-rearing guides at the bookstore are today's equivalent of Good Housekeeping, offering women the possibility of earning a doctorate in mothering. — Jennifer Senior

Steve, you want to be thanking all that's fucking holy I've got my girl in my arms, because if I didn't, the cleaners would be scooping up your remains for a fucking year. — Jodi Ellen Malpas

I tried all the outside ways first - I imagined the changes I needed to make were about time management, or perhaps having the cleaners come more often. I quickly found it was not about managing time or housekeeping. It was not about to-do lists or scheduling or minutes and hours. This journey has been about love, about worth, about God, about what it means to know him and be loved by him in a way that grounds and reorders everything. I — Shauna Niequist

But of course there's no logic to San Francisco generally, a city built with putty and pipe cleaners, rubber cement and colored construction paper. It's the work of fairies, elves, happy children with new crayons — Dave Eggers

You are always looking for already-felt emotions, just as you like to get an old pair of trousers back from the cleaners, which seem new when you don't look too closely. Artists are cleaners, don't let yourself be taken in by them. True modern works of art are made not by artists but quite simply by men. — Francis Picabia

Some people think I'm saying, 'Women of the world unite
you have nothing to lose but your men. It's not true. You have nothing to lose but your vacuum cleaners. — Betty Friedan

Get rid of all the cleaners, rubbish collectors, bus drivers, supermarket checkout staff and secretaries, for example, and society will very quickly grind to a halt. On the other hand, if we woke up one morning to find that all the highly paid advertising executives, management consultants and private equity directors had disappeared, society would go on much as it did before: in a lot of cases, probably quite a bit better. So, — Owen Jones

I can't even go to the dry cleaner by myself anymore. You're seen in public with anybody that you might not even know, and you're speculated about. — Jessica Biel

When the War ended in 1945, I started selling vacuum cleaners door to door. Then I sold insurance door to door. I even tried selling cars. — Clint Walker

The mothers in my neighborhood were screamers and yellers, silent fuming carpet-raking speed cleaners or detached unkempt anticleaners, all-day-luncheon martini drinkers, chain smokers prostrate on the couch with bookcases filled with accounts of JFK and Camelot. — Laurie Lindeen

The magic in that country was so thick and tenacious that it settled over the land like chalk-dust and over floors and shelves like sticky plaster-dust. (House-cleaners in that country earned unusually good wages.) If you lived in that country, you had to de-scale your kettle of its encrustation of magic at least once a week, because if you didn't, you might find yourself pouring hissing snakes or pond slime into your teapot instead of water. (It didn't have to be anything scary or unpleasant, especially in a cheerful household - magic tended to reflect the atmosphere of the place in which it found itself
but if you want a cup of tea, a cup of lavender-and-gold pansies or ivory thimbles is unsatisfactory.) — Robin McKinley

I think about death. I don't want to die with clothes in the cleaners. — Elayne Boosler

I started life washing cars in Canada before moving on to selling life insurance and vacuum cleaners. Later, I went through a programme by Dr. Norman Vincent Peale, which literally changed my life. It was the turning point. — Shiv Khera

Nothing will convince and convict those around us like the peaceful and positive way you and I respond to our twentieth century hurts and distress. The unbelieving world-your neighbors, the guy at the gas station, the postman, the lady at the cleaners, your boss at work-is observing the way we undergo our trials. — Joni Eareckson Tada

Great," Shane said. "Look i'd rather not be on janitorial duty. I have allergies to cleaners."
"And to cleaning," Michael said.
"Look who's talking, Didn't the do one of those Animal Planet documentaries about the roaches in your room? — Rachel Caine

The number of hours women devote to housework has not changed since 1930, despite all the advances. All the vacuum cleaners, washer-dryers, trash compactors, garbage disposals, wash-and-wear fabrics ... Why does it still take as long to clean the house as it did in 1930? — Michael Crichton

I try to explain the difference to a client between cleaning and restoration.Cleaning is simply removing some light to moderate soils. Restoration is removing those hardened deposits and stains that require heavier cleaners and much more time. Or on a building that has just been built or renovated it's removing all the construction debris. Setting expectations can go a long way to having and keeping satisfied customers. — Tony Evans

God is at the tip of our scalpels, our screwdrivers, our computer terminals, our dust rags, our vacuum cleaners, our pencils and pens. He is with us in our wheelchairs, or on our hospital beds, when all we can do is sit or lie flat. When we envision Him and His purpose in what we do, then we begin to grow aware of His presence in the middle of it. We are able to engage in our inward conversation with Him as we work, naturally, without strain. He becomes our partner, our collaborator. — Sue Monk Kidd

The other man's arse is always cleaner! — Stephen Fry

All Americans knew was 'The Joy Luck Club' and children of dry cleaners trying to assimilate. The Asia that I was seeing was a world of people who are incredibly sophisticated, and I wanted to represent that side. — Kevin Kwan

Her gaze shifted from him to Keir and back again, a smile curling one end of her tantalizing lips. "So you're the brotherhood of the fighting toilet cleaners? — Avery Flynn

One of my pet peeves about biblical epics was that the characters' costumes always looked like they're just out of the dry cleaners. — Roma Downey

One of history's fews iron laws is that luxuries tend to become necessities and to spawn new obligations. Once people get used to a certain luxury, they take it for granted. Then they begin to count on it. Finally they reach a point where they can't live without it. Over the few decades, we have invented countless time saving machines that are supposed to make like more relaxed - washing machines, vacuum cleaners, dishwashers, telephones, mobile phones, computers, email. We thought we were saving time; instead we revved up the treadmill of life to ten times its former speed and made our days more anxious and agitated. — Yuval Noah Harari

These rare gray afternoons evoke a sweet, childhood melancholy in my soul, like when it rained in kindergarten and we had to stay inside and do crafts with library paste and pipe cleaners and buttons, and I made the best project in the whole class, an ultra-powerful rubber-band zip gun, but the teacher gave me a zero because I got her in the eye with a button. — Tim Dorsey

You get a stain on your pants. Your favorite pair of pants. You wash them ten times in a row at 160 degrees. You scrub and scour and rub. You bring in the heavy artillery. Bleaches. Abrasive cleaners. But the spot doesn't go away. If you scrub and scour too long, it will only be replaced by something else. By a stretch of fabric that is thinner and paler. The paler cloth is the memory. The memory of the spot. Now there are two things you can do. You can throw the pants away, or you can walk around for the rest of your life with the memory of the stain. But the paler cloth reminds you of more than just the stain. It also reminds you of when the pants were still clean. — Herman Koch

Furi found Patrick in the kitchen loosening his tie. Damn the man could wear a suit. The black designer suit had fine lavender pinstripes that Patrick accented perfectly with a light purple tie. Furi would no doubt be responsible for getting the suits his husband traveled with to the cleaners and returned to his closet. He didn't know how he'd become his husband's personal assistant, but it had happened, and to avoid argument, Furi didn't refuse Patrick's requests. — A.E. Via

We don't need women. There are plenty other things in the world to have sex with, just go to a sexaholics meeting and take notes. There's microwaved watermelons. There's the vibrating handles of lawn mowers right at crotch level. There's vacuum cleaners and beanbag chairs. Internet sites. All those old chat room sex hounds pretending to be sixteen-year-old girls. For serious, old FBI guys makes the sexiest cyberbabes. — Chuck Palahniuk

A distinguished producer called Kenith Trodd actually lived in his office for over a year - the cleaners refused to go in because it was such a tip. — Andrew Davies

The thing about real life is, when you do something stupid, it normally costs you. In books the heroes can make as many mistakes as they like. It doesn't matter what they do, because everything works out in the end. They'll beat the bad guys and put things right and everything ends up cool.
In real life, vacuum cleaners kill spiders. If you cross a busy road without looking, you get whacked by a car. If you fall from a tree, you break some bones.
Real life's nasty. It's cruel. It doesn't care about heroes and happy endings and the way things should be. In real life, bad things happen. People die. Fights are lost. Evil often wins.
I just wanted to make that clear before I begun. — Darren Shan

Density, matter, radiation ... it's all just construction paper and pipe cleaners and glue, with the proper perspective. — Robert Jackson Bennett

It's probably listening to country music that got me to start playing a lot cleaner, not as distorted. — Joe Perry

It's a topsy-turvy world in which a country can import the same amount of ice-cream, toilet paper and other goods to trading partners as it exports, and where top bankers are paid millions for destroying economic value, while hospital cleaners create value many times their pay — Andrew Simms

She's a nice girl. Not my type." "You don't like them nice?" He had another cigarette going. The smoke was being fanned away from his face by his hand. "I like smooth shiny girls, hardboiled and loaded with sin." "They take you to the cleaners," Randall said indifferently. — Raymond Chandler

Well, I'm rather attracted to rather prosaic things like vacuum cleaners and hand dryers. Where people haven't apparently made them with a great love for what they're doing. — James Dyson

A lady getting a missing belt back from the cleaner couldn't have been more surprised and pleased ... — Margaret Halsey

Housework hassles go on, are never resolved, and will probably extend into the afterlife ('Why am I the one who takes the clouds to the dry cleaners?'). — Marni Jackson

I like the dry-cleaners. I like the sense of refreshment and renewal. I like the way dirty old torn clothes are dumped, to be returned clean and wholesome in their slippery transparent cases. Better than confesssion any day. Here there is a true sense of rebirth, redemption, salvation. — Fay Weldon

I was a cleaner while at university. The job wasn't bad, but I was amazed by how badly cleaners are treated - how disrespected they are by the people they work for. — Tamsin Greig

The data are not easy to come by, but a mid 1940s study by the US Rural Electrification Authority reports that, with the introduction of the electric washing machine and electric iron, the time required for washing a 38 lb load of laundry was reduced by a factor of nearly 6 (from 4 hours to 41 minutes) and the time taken to iron it by a factor of more than 2.5 (from 4.5 hours to 1.75 hours).2 Piped water has meant that women do not have to spend hours fetching water (for which, according to the United Nations Development Program, up to two hours per day are spent in some developing countries). Vacuum cleaners have enabled us to clean our houses more thoroughly in a fraction of the time that was needed in the old days, when we had to do it with broom and rags. — Ha-Joon Chang

I didn't fight to get women out from behind vacuum cleaners to get them onto the board of Hoover.
— Germaine Greer

People can talk all they want about the Big Ten. About Michigan and Ohio State and Indiana and Kentucky or whatever, but there's no way that compares. They're in different states. Here, we share the same dry cleaners." - Mike Kryzewski — Joe Menzer

Many years ago I sent an old, beloved jacket to a cleaner, the Sycamore Cleaners. It was a leather jacket covered in Guinness and blood and marmalade, one of those jobs ... and it came back with a little note pinned to it, and on the note it said, 'It distresses us to return work which is not perfect.' So that will do for me. That can go on my tombstone. — Peter O'Toole

The doctors snap at the nurses, who snap at the patient care assistants, who snap at the cleaners, who snap at the patients who are too sick to respond. Those at the bottom of the heap have no choice but to be good. No one can doubt the virtue of the helpless. — Jinat Rehana Begum

Taking in money, banks were like industrial vacuum cleaners. Giving it out, they were clogged faucets — Dean Koontz

Behind every small business, there's a story worth knowing. All the corner shops in our towns and cities, the restaurants, cleaners, gyms, hair salons, hardware stores - these didn't come out of nowhere. — Paul Ryan

The will of little girls is stifled by Islam. By the time they menstruate they are rendered voiceless. They are reared to become submissive robots who serve in the house as cleaners and cooks. They are required to comply with their father's choice of a mate, and after the wedding their lives are devoted to the sexual pleasures of their husband and to a life of childbearing. — Ayaan Hirsi Ali

I believe that humanity now is desperately calling for new ideas. These new ideas must come from spiritual teachers and artists, from poets and philosophers, from educators and ecologists, from postal clerks and miners and traffic cops and nurses and waiters and musicians and cooks and cleaners and from ... Regular People Everywhere. That is to say, from YOU. — Neale Donald Walsch

What our economists call a depressed area almost always turns out to be a cleaner, freer, more livable place than most. — Edward Abbey

The Clean Oven Domestic Ltd is Family rum company and uses the non-caustic and environment friendly material for cleaning services. — Clean Eating

My husband went through a phase of giving me vacuum cleaners, sewing machines and Mixmasters. It's ironic. He is encouraging me to develop a hobby, I think. — Cate Blanchett

The only thing that scares me in the tech area is that it moves so fast that you have to be ready to invest in 20 things. Because if you just invest in one, next week, somebody has a better mousetrap, and you get taken to the cleaners. — Daymond John

Citizen's Band radio renders one accessible to a wide variety of people from all walks of life. It should not be forgotten that all walks of life include conceptual artists, dry cleaners, and living poets. — Fran Lebowitz

Back then, people were throwing their underwear onstage. I remember taking eight pairs of my own underwear to the cleaners and getting only four back. — Dennis Quaid

There was a Sears, Roebuck catalogue painfully twisted and shellacked and tied with a red cord. The white card beneath it said, An inexpensive doorstop." ... There were catsup bottles made into bud vases, closthespins decorated with crepe paper butterflies for use as curtin hold-backers, crocheted bags for silverware, bouquets of crepe paper and velvet flowers, an enormous funeral set piece of white organdy gardenias and dark green oilcloth leaves with REST IN PEACE spelled out in white pipe cleaners, embroidered pictures, burned wood match boxes, and fancy pillows by the hundreds. The pillows embraced every sentiment from FRANKY AND JOHNNY WERE LOVERS in black beads on a cerise satin background to the Twenty-Third Psalm in white on black velvet. It was an impressive exhibit of what loneliness can do to people. — Betty McDonald

An oncology ward is a battlefield, and there are definite hierarchies of command. The patients, they're the ones doing the tour of duty. The doctors breeze in and out like conquering heroes, but they need to read your child's chart to remember where they've left off from the previous visit. It is the nurses who are the seasoned sergeants
the ones who are there when your baby is shaking with such a high fever she needs to be bathed in ice, the ones who can teach you how to flush a central venous catheter, or suggest which patient floor might still have Popsicles left to be stolen, or tell you which dry cleaners know how to remove the stains of blood and chemotherapies from clothing. The nurses know the name of your daughter's stuffed walrus and show her how to make tissue paper flowers to twine around her IV stand. The doctors may be mapping out the war games, but it is the nurses who make the conflict bearable. — Jodi Picoult

Encino is a small community in the San Fernando Valley smashed up against and completely indistinguishable from all other Valley communities. You can drive from one to the other, passing the same dry cleaners, dubious sushi restaurants, and gas stations, without so much as a sign to mark your transition. It does, frankly, matter much where are you. If anything at all marks Encino from its clone neighbors, it's that it isn't aging quite as well. Sherman Oaks and Woodland Hills have kept their figures and shown up on time for regular collagen injections while Encino is really starting to let itself go. — Ashley Ream

I had no intention of becoming a comedian. I just wanted to make people happy. I tried everything-I shucked oysters, I painted houses, I sold vacuum cleaners. But there was always a voice saying, You should be doing something different. And it was usually my boss and I was being fired. — Ellen DeGeneres

There's only one thing that separates us from animals: We aren't afraid of vacuum cleaners. — Jeff Stilson

The way we use technology is completely wasteful. We duplicate many vacuum cleaners, tools; In the future we will make the best of equipment and make it available to everyone. — Jacque Fresco

In that day, we didn't have no remote controls and vacuum cleaners. If you wanted all that stuff you had children! — Tyler Perry

It's a floor cleaner and a dessert topping. — Jane Curtin