Closed Window Quotes & Sayings

The following year, on June 20, 1947, not suspecting what was about to happen, Bugsy Siegel was sitting on a couch in the living room of Virginia Hill's home at 810 Linden Drive in Beverly Hills. As he was reading a newspaper, an assassin fired a number of shots, from a rifle, through the front window. Siegel was shot twice in the head, with one bullet exiting his skull near the bridge of his nose, causing his left eye to be blown out of its socket. He was also hit twice in the torso. His death was instantaneous and the graphic photos of his bullet-riddled body made headline news. Although there were enough suspects to go around, Eddie Cannizzaro, the "Cat Man," a connected west coast mobster, made a deathbed confession that he was the one who carried out the contract. Although the case isn't closed, it is cold and will most likely remain so, as it rests on the desk of Detective Les Zoeller of the Los Angeles Police Department. — Hank Bracker

Ceony made her way down the hall, peeking briefly into her room. The bed had been remade, and she smiled. Emery's odd knack for tidiness had him folding and tucking blanket corners as though crafting a spell, and while he had demonstrated to Ceony how to properly make a bed, she'd never taken the time to mimic the art. She often kept the door to her room closed just so Emery wouldn't be tempted to rearrange her things, but with her out of the house, there was nothing to stop him.
He must be bored.
She passed her room and stuck her head into the library, but the paper magician wasn't there. The table and telegraph had both been moved to the right of the window, however. Terribly bored, then. — Charlie N. Holmberg

I have a small room to write in. One wall is completely covered in books. And I face the window with the curtain closed to stop the light hitting the computer. — Anne Enright

The window of opportunity to plan and prepare for the end of his life had closed gradually. Any cracks left open to talk candidly were tenuous and fleeting. — Lisa J. Shultz

Looking from outside into an open window one never sees as much as when one looks through a closed window. There is nothing more profound, more mysterious, more pregnant, more insidious, more dazzling than a window lighted by a single candle. What one can see out in the sunlight is always less interesting than what goes on behind a windowpane. In that black or luminous square life lives, life dreams, life suffers. — Charles Baudelaire

I grew up where, when a door closed, a window didn't open. The only thing I had was cracks. I'd do everything to get through those cracks - scratch, claw, bite, push, bleed. Now the opportunity is here. The door is wide open, and it's as big as a garage. — Dwayne Johnson

We dreamt of a crappy apartment somewhere
Making love while we let the midnight air
Flow through the open window, into our closed hearts
Left bitter from heartbreak and too much time apart — Jessica-Lynn Barbour

The ragged curtains were reaching out across the room and the foot of the bed was soaked with rain. She got up and closed the window to protect her from the storm outside. However, there was no protection from the storm that was always brewing in her mind. — Nancy B. Brewer

I woke to find the sun streaming through the bedroom window. Looking up with one eye opened and the other still closed, I saw that Luca was awake, lying on one side and looking down on me.
"Good morning. Do you want to talk Adriana?"
"No, I just want to fuck. Oh, good morning by the way."
"For a prospective sub you are becoming a little demanding."
"Sorry, am I not supposed to want sex?"
"There's absolutely nothing wrong with you wanting sex, in fact it is a condition of you being here in bed with me. It's just that a good little sub waits to be asked."
"Sorry. Then of course I will withdraw that demand and lie here to await your pleasure."
"Good, a fast learner, that's what I like. — Rachel De Vine

To go through life without love is to travel through the world in a carriage with closed windows. — Ivan Panin

It's a huge disservice to classify all minds as either closed or open. I find the best minds are closed by openable windows. — Criss Jami

I know who you are," the Chicano said to Thomas. "You're that Indian guy did all the talking." "Yeah," one of the African men said. "You're that storyteller. Tell us some stories, chief, give us the scoop." Thomas looked at these five men who shared his skin color, at the white man who shared this bus which was going to deliver them into a new kind of reservation, barrio, ghetto, logging-town tin shack. He then looked out the window, through the steel grates on the windows, at the freedom just outside the glass. He saw wheat fields, bodies of water, and bodies of dark-skinned workers pulling fruit from trees and sweat from thin air. Thomas closed his eyes and told this story. — Sherman Alexie

This is getting tedious," Dee muttered. "Drive on. Turn right into the yacht club. I have an idea." He looked at Virginia. "Can you stop them?" He jerked his thumb at the cyclists.
Virginia Dare gave him a withering look. "I have stopped armies. Or have you forgotten?"
"I doubt you'll ever let me," he sighed. Then he stuck his fingers in his ears.
Rolling her window down, Virginia placed her flute on the edge of the glass, took a deep breath, closed her eyes and blew gently.
The sound was appalling. — Michael Scott

Titter," Radcliffe muttered as he pushed the window open on the first empty room he found on the main floor. "What the devil is a titter? And how the hell am I supposed to try not to look so large?" Shaking his head with disgust, he held the window open with one hand as he sat on the ledge, then swung one leg after the other over the sill and into the room. Standing, he let the window slide closed, then took a moment to brush the wrinkles out of his skirt and yank at the bottom of his bodice to straighten it before hurrying across the room.
Pausing at the door, he pressed an ear to it to listen briefly, then eased it open and peered out. It was early afternoon and yet it seemed the women were all still abed. Slipping into the hallway, he pulled the door gently closed and hurried as quickly as a man could in a dress that kept catching at his boot spurs, toward the stairs. — Lynsay Sands

The young man's mind was carried away by his growing passion for dreams. One looking at him would not have thought him particularly sharp. With the recollection of little things occupying his mind he closed his eyes and leaned back in the car seat. He stayed that way for a long time and when he aroused himself and again looked out of the car window the town of Winesburg had disappeared and his life there had become but a background on which to paint the dreams of his manhood. — Sherwood Anderson

Then he crossed his arms over his chest and began to listen to the radiant voices of the slaves singing the six o'clock Salve in the mills, and through the window he saw the diamond of Venus in the sky that was dying forever, the eternal snows, the new vine whose yellow bellflowers he would not see bloom on the following Saturday in the house closed in mourning, the final brilliance of life that would never, through all eternity, be repeated again. — Gabriel Garcia Marquez

A boy from Brooklyn used to cruise on summer nights.
As soon as he'd hit sixty he'd hold his hand out the window,
cupping it around the wind. He'd been assured
this is exactly how a woman's breast feels when you put
your hand around it and apply a little pressure. Now he knew,
and he loved it. Night after night, again and again, until
the weather grew cold and he had to roll the window up.
For many years afterwards he was perpetually attempting
to soar. One winter's night, holding his wife's breast
in his hand, he closed his eyes and wanted to weep.
He loved her, but it was the wind he imagined now.
As he grew older, he loved the word etcetera and refused
to abbreviate it. He loved sweet white butter. He often
pretended to be playing the organ. On one of his last mornings,
he noticed the shape of his face molded in the pillow.
He shook it out, but the next morning it reappeared. — Mary Ruefle

I love that feeling when you first open your eyes in the morning and you don't even know why everything seems different than usual. Then it hits you: Everything is quiet. No cars honking. No buses going down the street. Then you run over to the window, and outside everything is covered in white: the sidewalks, the trees, the cars on the street, your windowpanes. And when that happens on a school day and you find out your school is closed, well, I don't care how old I get: I'm always going to think that that's the best feeling in the world. And I'm never going to be one of those grown-ups that use an umbrella when it's snowing - ever. — R.J. Palacio

For many minutes before she showed herself, he felt her moving around the place. He detected her presence as unmistakably as he would have sensed the shape of someone blocking the light through a window, even with his eyes closed. — Denis Johnson

I love New York. I first came here with my Mom when I was in 9th grade. I took the subway for the first time and the doors closed between me and my Mom, and I was so scared. I could see her through the window and I didn't know what to do. I got off at the next stop and she caught up to me, but I couldn't stop crying. — Skylar Grey

I keep the shutters closed because I like to work in a hermetic environment. I like mirrors. When you look out of the window, all you see is ugliness, but when you look in the mirror all you see is beauty. — Sebastian Horsley

I was on a 747 flight out of Denver with four flight attendants on the plane. One of the flight attendants got off the plane to go check someone's carry-on bag in the cargo hold, and while she was gone, the door closed and we began to taxi out. While we were giving the demo, we looked out the window of the airplane to see the flight attendant running alongside the plane in the snow, waving and yelling and trying to catch up to us. 'Did you notice that we're missing someone?' I said to the other flight attendant. 'Yes, but try to keep it low-key - there's a supervisor on board!' Well, it's hard to keep it low-key when someone is running alongside your plane, waving and screaming. The plane stopped and the air stairs went down so she could get on board, and my co-worker said, 'Tell her to try to be inconspicuous when she gets back on.' Well, she had to walk the entire length of the plane to get back to her station, and everybody on board broke into applause. — Betty N. Thesky

The window of opportunity to avert famine is rapidly closing and could already have closed. The real issue facing us is not whether there will be famine but how many people will actually die. — Catherine Bertini

The study's small ventilation window bumped open, and Vin squeezed through, pulling in a puff of mist behind her. She closed the window, then surveyed the room.

"More?" she asked incredulously. "You found more books?"

"Of course," Elend said.

"How many of those things have people written?" she asked with exasperation. — Brandon Sanderson

As Sharon types the letters, I stand hands in pockets looking through the gold lettering of our window. I think of Sharon and American Motors. It closed yesterday at 30 ¼. — Walker Percy

the bouquet

Between me and the world
you are a bay, a sail
the faithful ends of a rope
you are a fountain, a wind,
a shrill childhood cry.

Between me and the world
you are a picture frame, a window
a field covered in wildflowers
you are a breath, a bed,
a night that keeps the stars company.

Between me and the world,
you are a calendar, a compass
a ray of light that slips through the gloom
you are a biographical sketch, a book mark
a preface that comes at the end.

between me and the world
you are a gauze curtain, a mist
a lamp shining in my dreams
you are a bamboo flute, a song without words
a closed eyelid carved in stone.

Between me and the world
you are a chasm, a pool
an abyss plunging down
you are a balustrade, a wall
a shield's eternal pattern. — Bei Dao

I couldn't believe his arrogance. I turned away hoping to ignore him enough so he'd just leave.
"Just give me five minutes," came Flynn's muffled voice through the closed window.
I ignored him. He'd caused me way too much trouble.
"Mercy, just crack the window so we can talk."
I did and immediately said, "You are a solipsistic obdurate asshole." Then I rolled the window back up to continue to ignore him.
"What the hell? You and these words," he muttered loud enough they came clearly through the closed window. — Shannon Dermott

And you and me, we're . . . ?" He doesn't finish the question. He doesn't have to.
"Yeah," Hallelujah repeats. "You and me."
Jonah tilts his head so it meets hers on the pillow. They lie there, side by side, with him under the sheets and her on top of them, holding hands and touching foreheads. Jonah's eyes are closed. Just when she thinks he must have fallen asleep, he murmurs, "Stay."
"Okay."
Outside the window, clouds are rolling in over the mountains. A storm. But beyond the band of rain clouds, the sky is blue again. Bright, shining blue. The storm won't last long. And, Hallelujah realizes, sometimes you need the storm to really appreciate the sun and the blue sky.
Jonah is breathing evenly. She can feel each exhale on the side of her neck.
She smiles, and she stays. — Kathryn Holmes

Listen. Look. Desire is a house. Desire needs closed space. Desire runs out of doors or windows, or slats or pinpricks, it can't fit under the sky, too large. Close the doors. Close the windows. As soon as you laugh from nerves or make a joke or say something just to say something or get all involved with the bushes, then you blow open a window in your house of desire and it can't heat up as well. Cold draft comes in. — Aimee Bender

Ronin Flynn, you are like a door." He laughs. "It was that touching, huh?" "Not a window where you can see through to the other side and be sure of what's coming. But a door, still closed and leading to every opportunity imaginable and requiring a leap of faith that the risk is worth it. You are my doorway to endless possibilities and I'm ready to take that risk. — J.A. Huss

I sat at my bedroom window after I changed; the cashew tree was so close I could reach out and pluck a leaf if it were not for the silver-colour crisscross of mosquito netting. The bell-shaped yellow fruits hung lazily, drawing buzzing bees that bumped against my window's netting. I heard Papa walk upstairs to his room for his afternoon siesta. I closed my eyes, sat still, waiting to hear him call Jaja, to hear Jaja go into his room. But after long, silent minutes, I opened my eyes and pressed my forehead against the window louvers to look outside.9 — Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

See you around," I said.
"See you around," said one.
"See you around," said the other.
The phrase echoed in my heart for a long while.
The bus door closed with a bang, and then they were waving to me from the window. Everything repeats itself... — Haruki Murakami

In my life are many windows
and many graves.
Sometimes they exchange
roles:
then a window is closed forever,
then by way of a gravestone
I can see
very far.
(Hebrew-to-English translation by Rabbi Steven Sager) — Yehuda Amichai

I closed my eyes. "Crap. I'm not ready to start Clocking again. The trip back to get Ringo was fine because I kind of know the Victorian rules. And Victorians believe in bathing." I grimaced and Archer laughed, a deep rumble in his chest. "And don't even get me started on street-dumping chamber pots. Seriously? Why even bother. Just dangle your business out the window and let fly. It's the same thing." Archer's — April White

Gary Shteyngart has written a memoir for the ages. I spat laughter on the first page and closed the last with wet eyes. Un-put-down-able in the day and a half I spent reading it, Little Failure is a window into immigrant agony and ambition, Jewish angst, and anybody's desperate need for a tribe. Readers who've fallen for Shteyngart's antics on the page will relish the trademark humor. But here it's laden and leavened with a deep, consequential, psychological journey. Brave and unflinching, Little Failure is his best book to date — Mary Karr

I was deep in a dream about photography-walking through a strange city with buildings that stretched so high they disappeared into the clouds. And every time I took a picture of one, it shivered and changed into something else. A sound came from a building behind me-a soft song. I started to walk toward it's open doors, but they closed. I would have to climb in a window-
and then I woke up. — Katie Alender

The window of X Factor opportunity opens up in the closing seconds of a race-you might be sprinting at the time or just hanging one, trying to get across the finish line. With a supreme act of will, you can prolong your effort, essentially fighting off the inevitable lactic acid shutdown. You'll have little time for contemplating the options: either wholeheartedly go for it, or back off. You must train your X Factor to unequivocally respond the way you want-go for it. Once the window is closed, it's closed forever. — Brad Alan Lewis

I took a moment to recover, and then, just to be safe, I looked inside the Dumpster. There didn't seem to be anything else inside except garbage, which I thought was a very positive development. I hoisted myself up onto the closed side and, looking once more toward the mouth of the alley to make sure nobody was watching, I reached up and touched the window. I pushed at it and it rattled ever so slightly. Good news: That meant it was not nailed shut, or sealed by too many years of sloppy paint jobs. I — Jeff Lindsay

I turned towards the garden when the door had closed on her. Miss Halcombe was standing with her hat in her hand, and her shawl over her arm, by the large window that led out to the lawn, and was looking at me attentively. — Wilkie Collins

Sometimes I see a bird fly by and I feel jealous. But then other times I see a bird fly into a closed window and I feel laughing. — Demetri Martin

Clenched Soul
We have lost even this twilight.
No one saw us this evening hand in hand.
While the blue night dropped on the world.
I have seen from my window
the fiesta of sunset in the distant mountain tops.
Sometimes a piece of sun
burned like a coin in my hand.
I remembered you with my soul clenched
in the sadness of mine that you know.
Where we you then?
Who else was there?
Saying what?
Why will the whole of love come on me suddenly
when I am sad and feel you are far away?
The book fell that always closed at twilight
and my blue sweater rolled like a hurt dog at my feet.
Always, always you recede through the evenings
towards the twilight erasing statues. — Pablo Neruda

Beckendorf closed eyes tight and brought his hand up to his watch.
from that distance, the explosion shook the world. Heat seared the back of my head. The Princess Andromeda blew up from both sides, a massive fireball of
green flame roiling into the dark sky, consuming everything ... I stared out the window into deep blue water. Beckendorf was supposed to go to college in the fall. He had a girlfriend, lots of friends, his whole life ahead of him. He couldn't be gone. — Rick Riordan

And with that, Kat closed her eyes. She didn't see the first flakes of snow fall outside her window. She didn't feel Hale cover her with a blanket. She was already fast asleep. — Ally Carter

I closed my eyes and saw the future, a red, fleshy blob pupating in dark fluid like something in a mad scientist's incubator. I saw strange organs throbbing beneath its translucent shell. Saw the future bust from its chrysalis in scattering blazes of diamond light, winged and glistening, already flitting out the window, darting off toward the horizon before I could get a good look at it. — Julia Elliott

I turn around from the window and for the first time I see him ... It is Richard, smiling at my surprise.
I run to him, without thinking what I am doing. I run to the first friendly face that I have seen since Christmas, and in a moment I am in his arms and he is holding me tightly and kissing my face, my closed eyes, my smiling mouth, kissing me till I am breathless and have to pull away from him. — Philippa Gregory

We would have known nothing of the nature and reach of her sorrow if she had come back. But she left us and broke the family and the sorrow was released and we saw its wings and saw it fly a thousand ways into the hills, and sometimes I think sorrow is a predatory thing because birds scream at dawn with a marvelous terror, and there is, as I have said before, a deathly bitterness in the smell of ponds and ditches. When we were children and frightened of the dark, my grandmother used to say if we kept our eyes closed we would not see it. That was when I noticed the correspondence between the space within the circle of my skull and the space around me. I saw just the same figure against the lid of my eye or the wall of my room, or in the trees beyond my window. Even the illusion of perimeters fails when families are separated. — Marilynne Robinson

See them little scales there, how they're closed up tight like window shutters? Underneath 'em are the seeds - flat little things, flimsy as a baby's figernails - with a point at one end. If a fire comes along, the heat is gonna cause those scales to peel back and drop their seeds, while the ground is still scorching hot. Then that tiny seed is gonna burrow in and take root. I was nine years old the summer Freeda and Winnalee Malone rushed across our lives like red-hot flames, peeling back the shutters that sat over our hearts and our minds, setting free our sweetest dreams and our worst nightmares. — Sandra Kring

You sit at the edge of the world,
I am in a crater that's no more.
Words without letters
Standing in the shadow of the door.
The moon shines down on a sleeping lizard,
Little fish rain from the sky.
Outside the window there are soldiers,
steeling themselves to die.
(Refrain)
Kafka sits in a chair by the shore,
Thinking for the pendulum that moves the world, it seems.
When your heart is closed,
The shadow of the unmoving Sphinx,
Becomes a knife that pierces your dreams.
The drowning girl's fingers
Search for the entrance stone, and more.
Lifting the hem of her azure dress,
She gazes
at Kafka on the shore — Haruki Murakami

Cities have become places where we are controlled, by CCTV and other means, in the same way as machines are controlled. My works provide an imaginative space in which this can be challenged. It's like opening a window in a closed room. — Antony Gormley

I rang the bell of this small bed-and breakfast place, whereupon a lady appeared at an outside window. "What do you want?", she asked. "I want to stay here", I replied. "Well, stay there then", she said and closed the window. — Chic Murray

It was against the rules, but Gansey crouched down beside her, one of his knees against her back, one against her knees, and hugged her. She curled against him, hands balled up against his chest. He felt a hot tear slip into the dip of his collarbone. He closed his eyes against the sun through the window, burning hot in his sweater, foot falling asleep, elbow grinding into the metal bed frame, Blue Sargent pressed up against him, and he didn't move. — Maggie Stiefvater

Arabella dangled her legs out of the bedroom window and closed her eyes. She felt a butterfly brush against her knee, rubbed her skin against the mortar and bricks, drank in the warmth of the morning sunshine on her face, her arms, her feet. — Pauline Fisk

Everything seemed bright and different after so long in the darkness. Even though most of the businesses were closed, there was one neon sign lit in the window of a narrow storefront. COFFEE AND PIE, it read. Two bikes were parked just outside.

On the boardwalk, in the thrown light of the neon sign, his head dipped down as I pulled my fingers through his hair. The night still in progress, with daylight hours away. — Sarah Dessen

Oh, Myr," he chokes out. "I hate having to ask this of you ... "
He glances towards the car again, and I crouch down in the shadows, hoping it's too dark for him to see whether the window is open or closed. The woman pats his arm, cradling her hand against his elbow.
"You know I'd do anything for you and Hil," she says. I like her voice. It's throaty and rich.
"You'd do anything?" my father repeats numbly. "Even now? After -?"
"Even now," the woman says firmly. — Margaret Peterson Haddix

Ronan's bedroom door burst open. Hanging on the door frame, Ronan leaned out to peer past Gansey. He was doing that thing where he looked like both the dangerous Ronan he was now and the cheerier Ronan he had been when Gansey first met him.
"Hold on," Gansey told Adam. Then, to Ronan: "Why would he be?"
"No reason. Just no reason." Ronan slammed his door.
Gansey asked Adam, "Sorry. You still have that suit for the party?"
Adam's response was buried in the sound of the second-story door falling open. Noah slouched in. In a wounded tone, he said, "He threw me out the window!"
Ronan's voice sang out from behind his closed door: "You're already dead! — Maggie Stiefvater

But the last one: the baby who trails her scent like a flag of surrender through your life when there will be no more coming after - oh, that's love by a different name. She is the babe you hold in your arms for an hour after she's gone to sleep. If you put her down in the crib, she might wake up changed and fly away. So instead you rock my the window, drinking the light from her skin, breathing her exhaled dreams. Your heart bays to the double crescent moons of closed lashes on her cheeks. She's the one you can't put down. — Barbara Kingsolver

Slowly, his eyes came up and he looked through the kitchen window and out through the Cahuenga Pass. The lights of Hollywood glimmered in the cut, a mirror reflection of the stars of all galaxies everywhere. He thought about all that was bad out there. A city with more things wrong than right. A place where the earth could open up beneath you and suck you into the blackness. A city of lost light. His city. It was all of that and, still, always still, a place to begin again. His city. The city of the second chance.
Bosch nodded and bent down. He closed his eyes, put his hands under the water and brought them up to his face. The water was cold and bracing, as he thought any baptism, the start of any second chance, should be. — Michael Connelly

Inside, there was a bed, and upon the bed there was a woman. More beautiful was she even than the damask rose while her scent, drifting through the open window, was that of the night dew. Her hair was silken as the raven's wing. Quite naked, she lay, so still upon the bed, her eyes closed in reverie.

The young man looked first upon her breasts, where her hand rested. And upon each breast, there was a rosebud nipple. Upon each nipple there was a tip most tender. Upon each tip there was a milky drop.

Chin lifted, lips parted, she milked her maiden breast.

'What I would give to suckle at that teat,' thought he.

from 'Against Faithlessness' in Cautionary Tales — Emmanuelle De Maupassant

Different kinds of tired:

1. All day at the beach sleepy. Warm skin. Wet hair. Salt and sand and green-apple scented shampoo. Bed sheet tides pulling up and down stomach flips into mermaid dreams.

2. Milky tired. Early nights. Wondering if you are getting sick. Medicine light bones. Eyelids melting closed. Dizzy, dizzy, spinning into sleep.

3. Drowsy car rides. Soft radio buzz. Pillow on the window. Pulling on your seatbelt. Waking up and not knowing where you are. — Unknown

As I closed the door I caught a last glimpse of her through the round window, still sitting straight-backed and motionless with her hands folded in her lap: a queen in a fairy tale, left alone in her tower to mourn her lost, witch-stolen princess. — Tana French

Tell about the quality of light coming in through your window. Jump in and write. Don't worry if it is night and your curtains are closed or you would rather write about the light up north - just write. Go for ten minutes, fifteen, a half hour. — Natalie Goldberg

Someone pounded on the office door. Barabas moved to the door, slid aside the metal shutter covering the narrow spy window, and looked through it."It's your lover man."
"Barabas, open the damn door," Raphael snarled.
Barabas slid the shutter closed. "Do you want me to let him in?"
"I'm thinking about it."
Barabas slid the shutter open. "She's thinking about it. — Ilona Andrews

Even though Chinese society was really closed, there were two windows for me to explore the world. One was from my mother and grandmother, the unseen and invisible world. Another window was brought from my father's side, those classic and Western books. — Cai Guo-Qiang

I wish I could understand the window in your soul. Mine has none such, but I believe in others'. It is as though mine says to me, You alone are damned. To you the daylight, to you the reality of what appears; for you the dead of Carthage will be dead forever, the pain everywhere the overmastering reality, the skull beneath the fairest skin always visible beneath the blue-veined temples, in the laughing teeth. To you, the lone and level sands covering human endeavor, the ephemerality of laughter. ... Only for others, the reality of human life, the game worthwhile as it is being played. Only for others, any kind of hope. Only for others, the window in the closed room.--or closed galaxy, it makes no difference. — James Tiptree Jr.

As he mused on the possibilities he became aware of the odor of cigarette smoke. And the sound of muted sobs ... As she tried to stifle her anguish, what came out of her was utterly mournful, the saddest thing Luke had ever heard. He wanted to scramble out of the tree house, climb back into his room, and shut the window. But he was afraid to move. She would hear him.
So he just sat there, hearing the agony of thousands of failed days bleed out of Nell. He put his hands over his ears and closed his eyes. he didn't want to hear her sobbing, didn't want to acknowledge she felt pain - nor that he knew she'd lived through more pain than anyone else he'd ever known. That maybe she had sent Norah and Kieran away because she knew Eleanor's home had to be happier than hers. He didn't want to acknowledge that. He wouldn't be able to hate her then. — Susan Meissner

There were no other cars on the road. Just the sound of the wind, and the motor idling, and through his open window, the faint clicking sounds of Roger making another mix. I closed my eyes and let the wind whip my hair around my face, letting out a breath I hadn't known I'd been holding. — Morgan Matson

The van doors were closed and - as I learned to my dismay when I tried to wrench them open - locked. I slapped my pocket and swore. "Sloane, I don't have my keys!" I shouted. "Do you?" "Like you people let me drive? Fuck, no, I don't have keys to the van." She bent, picking up a large rock from the curb. "On the other hand, I don't really need them, do I?" "Sloane - " My protest died when I heard Jeff scream inside the van. It was a shrill, agonized sound, and it hurt my heart in ways I hadn't known were possible. "Throw the fucking rock, Sloane!" The words had barely left my lips before Sloane's rock was smashing through the driver's side window — Seanan McGuire

Do you remember that piece of footage on the local news, just as the first tower comes down, woman runs in off the street into a store, just gets the door closed behind her, and here comes this terrible black billowing, ash, debris, sweeping through the streets, gale force past the window ... that was the moment, Maxi. Not when 'everything changed.' When everything was revealed. No grand Zen illumination, but a rush of blackness and death. Showing us exactly what we've become, what we've been all the time."
"And what we've always been is ... ?"
"Is living on borrowed time. Getting away cheap. Never caring about who's paying for it, who's starving somewhere else all jammed together so we can have cheap food, a house, a yard in the burbs ... planetwide, more every day, the payback keeps gathering. And meantime the only help we get from the media is boo hoo the innocent dead. Boo fuckin hoo. You know what? All the dead are innocent. There's no uninnocent dead. — Thomas Pynchon

God Ain't no stained glass window, cause he never keeps his window closed. — Johnny Cash

What's wrong?" His voice was loud, so sharp that he sounded angry.
I knew I should be careful, keep the secret, but I was too far gone to talk around it. My chest was working in huge spasms and I could barely breathe. "I kissed her."
"And then you went into anaphylactic shock?"
I closed my eyes and let the rain patter against my face through the open window "She has her tongue pierced. — Brenna Yovanoff

Like a window had been thrown open inside my head and my heart, where there had been closed shutters before. — Malorie Blackman

Like a fly bouncing uselessly off a closed window, I'm caught at a moment when the effort of finding new ways to perceive the world feels just out of reach for me. — David Toop

His room was still and very quiet, insulated by sound building and oak boards from the jabber of the dissenting voices below. He unlatched the window in the seaward wall and forced it open with both hands against the blast of the gale. the wind rushed into the room swirling the bed cover into folds, sweeping the papers from his desk and rustling the pages of his bedside Jane Austen like a giant hand. It took his breath away so that he leaned gasping against the window ledge, welcoming the sting of spray on his face and tasting the salt drying on his lips. When he closed the window the silence seemed absolute. The thundering surf receded and faded like the far-away moaning on another shore. — P.D. James

My efforts to prevent closing of the gold window-working through Connally, Volcker, and Shultz-do not seem to have succeeded. The gold window may have to be closed tomorrow because we now have a government that is incapable, not only of constructive leadership, but of any action at all. What a tragedy for mankind! — Arthur F. Burns

He liked however the open shutters; he opened everywhere those Mrs. Muldoon had closed, closing them as carefully afterwards, so that she shouldn't notice: he liked
oh this he did like, and above all in the upper rooms!
the sense of the hard silver of the autumn stars through the window-panes, and scarcely less the flare of the street-lamps below, the white electric lustre which it would have taken curtains to keep out. This was human actual social; this was of the world he had lived in, and he was more at his ease certainly for the countenance, coldly general and impersonal, that all the while and in spite of his detachment it seemed to give him. — Henry James

Because forgiveness is like this: a room can be dank because you have closed the windows, you've closed the curtains. But the sun is shining outside, and the air is fresh outside. In order to get that fresh air, you have to get up and open the window and draw the curtains apart. — Desmond Tutu

I kept an interested eye on the transfer window in England, which opened and closed last month, and the lack of frantic activity just goes to show the current financial state of the game right now. — David Ginola

I saw William Blackett's escaping sail already far from land, and Captain Littlepage was sitting behind his closed window as I passed by, watching for some one who never came. I tried to speak to him, but he did not see me. There was a patient look on the old man's face, as if the world were a great mistake and he had nobody with whom to speak his own language or find companionship. — Sarah Orne Jewett

She leans over our table and turns the sign in the window so that it says CLOSED on the outside. But on our side, perfectly positioned between Mabel's place and mine, it says OPEN. If this were a short story, it would mean something. — Nina LaCour

your window.' There was a click and a buzz and he pushed the door open. Dave walked through the doorway into a huge entrance hall. The light in the hall dimmed as the door closed behind him. A deep emerald green carpet engulfed the floor where he stood, and a distinctive — Victoria Browne

He closed the window, and the scents of the past again flooded the room, like a bunch of wilted flowers. — Cornelia Funke

You really are a lot like my brother. You know that?" "Gah, I hope he's not as attracted to you as I am. 'Cause that's just sick." She rolled her eyes at him. "You're awful." He didn't argue as he pushed open the window so that Vik could join them. Vik landed on the sill, turned into his bot form and slammed the window closed. "I hate this planet. How long we got to stay?" "Hopefully not long." "Good, 'cause I'm missing my toaster and need to get out of here." Syn held his hands up. "I'm not even going to go there."
-Shahara, Syn, & Vik — Sherrilyn Kenyon

There's pathos in this familiar routine, in the sounds of homely objects touching surfaces. And in the little sigh she makes when she turns or slightly bends our unwieldy form. It's already clear to me how much of life is forgotten even as it happens. Most of it. The unregarded present spooling away from us, the soft tumble of unremarkable thoughts, the long-neglected miracle of existence. When she's no longer twenty-eight and pregnant and beautiful, or even free, she won't remember the way she set down the spoon and the sound it made on slate, the frock she wore today, the touch of her sandal's thong between her toes, the summer's warmth, the white noise of the city beyond the house walls, a short burst of birdsong by a closed window. All gone, already. — Ian McEwan

I was smart enough to know that I shouldn't tell anyone the reason I needed that icy air. No need to spill the secret that I was the genius of all geniuses, the Leonardo da Vinci of the 1980s. That would just inspire envy and skepticism. So I'd just stare at the closed window and stew. If ten minutes went by without my lungs getting fresh air, I panicked. I needed to make sure the monoxide hadn't eaten my cranium. — A. J. Jacobs

When I was a child and came with my elders to Galway for their salmon fishing in the river that rushes past the gaol, I used to look with awe at the window where men were hung, and the dark, closed gate. — Lady Gregory

Is that the constables?" Aunt Gin asked, sounding horrified.
"Afraid so," Wax said, pulling the door closed. The carriage lurched into motion, and Steris leaned out the window, waving farewell to the poor innkeeper.
"Framed for murder!" Steris called to her. "It's on page seventeen of the list I gave you! Try not to let them harass our servants too much when they arrive! — Brandon Sanderson

TINA: Oh, Rick, Rick, I'm scared. What's happened to us? I can't seem to find us any more. I reach out and reach out and we're just not there. I'm frightened. I'm a frightened child (Looks out the window) I hate this rain. Sometimes I see me dead in it.
RICK (quietly): My darling, isn't that a line from 'A Farewell To Arms'?
TINA (turns, furious): Get out of here. Get out! Get out of here before I jump out of this window.

Zooey took a parting look at the page he had been reading, then closed the manuscript and dropped it over the side of the tub. 'Jesus Christ almighty,' he said. 'Sometimes I see me dead in the rain. — J.D. Salinger

The weakest are those who stay put and call it sacrifice, call it not having a choice. Because, really, there was always a choice and she - one of the cowards, she realized - was making hers now. She turned back to the window, to the identical roofs. She closed her hands over the chunni and twisted it tight. "Please. Go away. — Sunjeev Sahota

There is no window to look outside.
There is no window to look within.
Open the doors. — Sanhita Baruah

It snowed all week. Wheels and footsteps moved soundlessly on the street, as if the business of living continued secretly behind a pale but impenetrable curtain. In the falling quiet there was no sky or earth, only snow lifting in the wind, frosting the window glass, chilling the rooms, deadening and hushing the city. At all hours it was necessary to keep a lamp lighted, and Mrs. Miller lost track of the days: Friday was no different from Saturday and on Sunday she went to the grocery: closed, of course. — Truman Capote

He sat beside the window in the dark, with his eyes closed. Hearing to the sound of the rain. The whisky in his glass burnt his throat, while the smoke of his cigarette filled his lungs and the fire inside his heart consumed his soul slowly. — Akshay Vasu

He jumped in the bed and I closed the tailgate twice because, of course, the first time it didn't line up. Vic rolled down the driver's-side window of my truck. You're going to be all right up here playing cowboy with the Indians? — Craig Johnson

The front door slammed and Dad said, "Aurora, sure you aren't expecting a package?"
I leaned back to find him army-crawling under the window in the living room. Like all dads do. "Already told you no, Rambo."
"The new mailman is back." Dad reached up and pulled the curtains closed before standing up and peeking out. "Won't come to the door."
"M shot a tranquillizer dart at the last guy." Mom gave a tired look at M who shrugged unapologetically. "The fact that there's a new one willing to be on our sidewalk is a miracle. Don't scare him off, Clyde."
Dad tried to block me when I went for the curtains. "He won't let me sign for your package. Demanded you come out in person."
"I'll get my tranq gun!" M made for her room.
"Don't you dare!" Mom chased her.
I swished back the curtains to get a look at the petrifying postman.
"I find his interest in my teenage daughter creepy," Dad grumbled.
Oh, he had no idea. — A&E Kirk

Mark felt the Berg descending. He leaned his head against the wall and closed his eyes, for a moment wanting nothing but to fall asleep and never wake up again, or to do the opposite and kneel, bashing his head against the floor until it was over. But there was still that small sliver of clarity in his mind. He held on to it like a man clinging to a root on the side of a sheer cliff. Eyes open again. With a grunt, he forced himself to his feet, leaning against the window. The small city of Asheville lay spread out before them. Walls had been constructed out of wood, — James Dashner

Out of three or four in a room
One is always standing at the window
Hair dark above his thoughts
Behind him the words
And in front of him the words, wandering without luggage
Hearts without provision, prophecies without water,
And big stones put there
And stayed, closed, like letters,
With no adresses; and no one to receive them. — Yehuda Amichai

I could not give up either of these worlds, neither the book I am holding nor the gleaming forest, though I have told you almost nothing of what is said here on these grim pages, from the sentences of which I've conjured images of a bleak site years ago. Here in this room, I suppose, is to be found the interior world of the book; but it opens upon a world beyond the windows, where no event has been collapsed into syntax, where the vocabulary, it seems, is infinite. The indispensable connection for me lies with the open space (of the open window ajar year round, never closed) that lets the breath of every winter storm, the ripping wind and its pelting rain, enter the room. — Barry Lopez

If you look around and see nothing but closed doors, then look again. It might be that you have to climb through a window. — Kent Allan Rees

It reminds me to say that staying local should never be about looking at the world through a closed window, but about making a home then throwing the doors open and inviting the world in. — Simon Armitage

He who looks through an open window sees fewer things than he who looks through a closed window. — Charles Baudelaire

The whale house has not changed much. It still stands under the silk cotton tree, its windows shuttered and closed. When she pushes open the door, they don't see her. They are up under the window where the light is green and dim. Aidan is between Ivy's spread, honey legs. Ivy sees her first and makes a strangled cry, trying to push Aidan off and cover her breasts. Aidan climbs to his knees and turns to the door. Behind him, she catches a glimpse of Ivy, the pubic hair waxed to a tiny strip above the neat pink slit, the centre moist and slick. Aidan's face is shocked, moon-like in the dim light, his pants around his knees. Chuck — Sharon Millar