Door And Window Quotes & Sayings

If I could fly, I would soar all the way up to the window of a plane carrying a suitcase in my hand, then I'd motion toward the plane's door and make an annoyed face at the terrified passengers. I have a feeling I would do this a lot. — Colin Nissan

Forgetting myself for a moment, I stopped to study the menu that was elegantly exposed in a show window. I read, realizing that a few days earlier I could have gone in and ordered anything on the menu. But now, though I was the same person with the same appetite, the same appreciation and even the same wallet, no power on earth could get me inside this place for a meal. I recalled hearing some Negro say, "You can live here all your life, but you'll never get inside one of the great restaurants except as a kitchen boy." The Negro often dreams of things separated from him only by a door, knowing that he is forever cut off from experiencing them. — John Howard Griffin

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

It is a great feeling to know that from a window I can go to books to cans of beer to past loves. And from these gather enough dream to sneak out a back door. — Gregory Corso

When I'd originally loaded the car and held the door open for him, I'd had a passing impulse to pick him up bodily and insert him gently through the open window. — J.D. Salinger

When Satan cannot get a great sin in he will let a little one in, like the thief who goes and finds shutters all coated with iron and bolted inside. At last he sees a little window in a chamber. He cannot get in, so he puts a little boy in, that he may go round and open the back door. So the devil has always his little sins to carry about with him to go and open back doors for him, and we let one in and say, 'O, it is only a little one.' Yes, but how that little one becomes the ruin of the entire man! — Charles Spurgeon

He pushes his hair, soaked from the snow, out of his eyes. "So what are we going to do, break a window? Look for a back door?"
"I'm just going to walk in," I say. "I'm her son."
"You also betrayed her and left the city when she forbade anyone from doing that," he says, "and she sent people after you to stop you. People with guns."
"You can stay here if you want," I say.
"Where the serum goes, I go," he says. "But if you get shot at, I'm going to grab it and run."
"I don't expect anything more."
He is a strange sort of person. — Veronica Roth

The pub door swings open when a man enters. A window of moonlit sky and sea illuminates the darkened pub, and a surge of cold ocean air charges its way inside. It's as if Cuchulainn's raging soul had passed through the doorway. — Laura Treacy Bentley

Actually, who hasn't been through the ghastly experience of sitting in front of a blank page, with its toothless mouth grinning at you: Go ahead, let's see you lay a finger on me? A blank page is actually a whitewashed wall with no door and no window. Beginning to tell a story is like making a pass at a total stranger in a restaurant. — Amos Oz

A "portal" is an opening (door, window, or opening). A heavenly portal or a glory portal is a heavenly opening through which God's goodness manifests. I have seen a portal in a vision and it was a circular opening where a column of light poured down into the earth. There were angels ascending and descending. — Patricia King

I know this messenger, guard," said Mr. Lorry, getting down into the road - assisted from behind more swiftly than politely by the other two passengers, who immediately scrambled into the coach, shut the door, and pulled up the window. "He may come close; there's nothing wrong. — Charles Dickens

If one door closes and another does not open, try climbing thru a window, either way, make your way in. — Behdad Sami

I climb through the rubble toward the door. It takes a long time, time enough for a Giant to see me from the blood-red stained-glass eye window and reach out to crush me in his hand the size of a tractor. — Francesca Lia Block

He was sick of the noise and sight of so many people and determined to go quietly away, but it so happened that just at that moment the crowds about the door were particularly impenetrable; he was caught up in the current of people and carried away to quite another part of the room. Round and round he went like a dry leaf caught up in a drain; in one of these turns around the room he discovered a quiet corner near a window. A tall screen of carved ebony inlaid with mother-of-pearl half-hid - ah! what bliss was this! - a bookcase. Mr Norrell slipped behind the screen, took down John Npier's A Plaine Discouverie of the Whole Revelation of St John and began to read. — Susanna Clarke

The Prodigal

Dark morning rain
Meant to fall
On a prison and a schoolyard,
Falling meanwhile
On my mother and her old dog.

How slow she shuffles now
In my father's Sunday shoes.
The dog by her side
Trembling with each step
As he tries to keep up.

I am on another corner waiting
With my head shaved.
My mind hops like a sparrow
In the rain.
I'm always watching and worrying about her.

Everything is a magic ritual,
A secret cinema,
The way she appears in a window hours later
To set the empty bowl
And spoon on the table,
And then exits
So that the day may pass,
And the night may fall
Into the empty bowl,
Empty room, empty house,
While the rain keeps
Knocking at the front door. — Charles Simic

The pursuit of happiness is a matter of choice ... it is a positive attitude we choose to express. It is not a gift delivered to our door each morning, nor does it come through the window. And it is certain that our circumstances are not the things that make us joyful. If we wait for them to get just right, we will never laugh again. — Charles R. Swindoll

His hand sliced through the air in a silencing motion, and he stalked to the window. "Have you seen any rats?"
Her mind spun at the sudden shift of subject. "Rats?"
"Rodents that resemble large mice."
"I know what rats are," she gritted out. "Why?"
"They're spies." He peered through the curtain into the darkness. Thick fog diffused the yellow lamplight, creating an eerie glow on the street below. "Have you seen any?"
Rodent spies? The man might be hot as hell, but he was a loon. As inconspicuously as possible, Cara inched toward the door. "I didn't see any furry little James Bonds. — Larissa Ione

The dog continued to bark at night, sometimes far away, sometimes close to the house. Towards morning, he would howl. It could be quiet for hours, but there were those who lay in bed waiting for the next howl, and they would say, "Did you hear that? It's like having a wolf in the woods. An unhappy woman has an unhappy dog. It ought to be shot."
Katri did not talk about the dog, but she put out food and water in the yard. Sometimes at night Mats would wait by the kitchen window with the light off and the door open. He saw the dog only once, just as it was growing light, and he went very slowly out on the steps and tried to coax it in. But it ran off into the woods, so he gave up. — Tove Jansson

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

Through the window I can see Rooks above the cherry-tree, Sparrows in the violet bed, Bramble-bush and bumble-bee, And old red bracken smoulders still Among boulders on the hill, Far too bright to seem quite dead. But old Death, who can't forget, Waits his time and watches yet, Waits and watches by the door. — Robert Graves

On July 29, six days after I had arrived in Paris, Fin and I moved into the new lodgings on the top floor of the hotel next door, where, beyond the pigeons who occupied the window ledge, you could see the turrets of Notre Dame. The concierge told us not to feed the birds, but we gave them our stale bread just the same, and so our flock became a feathered multitude, pushing and shoving one another behind the cracked glass. In the afternoons the light seemed to have feathers in it. — Rebecca Stott

I like an ending that's both a door and a window. — Stanley Kunitz

He had taken the precaution of closing the inside shutters of the only window, and his staff, though it leaned lightly on the door, was capable of keeping out anyone who did not want to smash his way in with an ax. — John Bellairs

Are you standing behind the life like a man who is standing behind the window of his house? Open the window or break the window; use the door or break the door, break the walls, break anything between you and the life! Integrate with the life! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

I draw to shock myself out of a too-easy rhythm - I may begin with no conception whatever, an image emerges . I rub it out and begin again, searching for its counterpart. When it appears I invariably find that the thing I draw is at my elbow, it is out of the window, or has been standing at my front door for a long time. — Sean William Scott

Well, well, my boy, if good luck knocks at your door, don't you put your head out at window and tell it to be gone about its business, that's all. — George Eliot

She laughs and looks out the window and I think for a minute that she's going to start to cry. I'm standing by the door and I look over at the Elvis Costello poster, at his eyes, watching her, watching us, and I try to get her away from it, so I tell her to come over here, sit down, and she thinks I want to hug her or something and she comes over to me and puts her arms around my back and says something like 'I think we've all lost some sort of feeling. — Bret Easton Ellis

There is no one, says another, whom fortune does not visit once in his life; but when she does not find him ready to receive her, she walks in at the door, and flies out at the window. — Charles De Montesquieu

Looking out the window, I wondered how many of those kids had parents who were losing it, or parents who were gone, taken off without a forwarding address, or parents who had buried themselves alive, who could argue and chop wood and make asses of themselves without being fully conscious. How many of them believed what they were saying when they blathered on about what college they'd go to and what they'd major in and how much they'd earn and what car they'd buy. They repeated that stuff over and over like an incantation that, if pronounced exactly right, would open the door to the life of their dreams. If they looked at their parents, at their crankiness and their therapy and their prescriptions and their ragged collections of kids, step-kids, half-kids, quarter-kids, and the habits that had started in secret but now owned them, body and soul, then they might curse that spell. — Laurie Halse Anderson

I will also talk about my experience of growing up in the former Soviet Union, where mathematics became an outpost of freedom in the face of an oppressive regime. I was denied entrance to Moscow State University because of the discriminatory policies of the Soviet Union. The doors were slammed shut in front of me. I was an outcast. But I didn't give up. I would sneak into the University to attend lectures and seminars. I would read math books on my own, sometimes late at night. And in the end, I was able to hack the system. They didn't let me in through the front door; I flew in through a window. When you are in love, who can stop you? — Edward Frenkel

Bars over the door, but not the window, and the roof looked — Lisa Scottoline

A rap at the back door made her jump, and she peered through the window for a long time before she eased open the door a crack. She left the security chain on. 'What do you want, Richard?'
Richard Morrell's police cruiser was parked in the drive. He hadn't flashed any lights or howled any sirens, so she supposed it wasn't an emergency, exactly. But she knew him well enough to know he didn't pay social visits, at least not to the Glass House.
'Good question,' Richard said. 'I guess I want a nice girl who can cook, likes action movies, and looks good in short skirts. But I'll settle for you taking the chain off the door and letting me in. — Rachel Caine

Some time later, after Noah had discreetly disappeared, Declan's Volvo glided up, as quiet as the Pig was loud. Ronan said, "Move up, move up" to Blue until she scooted the passenger seat far enough for him to clamber behind it into the backseat. He hurriedly sprawled back in the seat, throwing one jean-covered leg over the top of Adam's and laying his head in a posture of thoughtless abandon. By the time Declan arrived at the driver's side window, Ronan looked as if he had been asleep for days.

"Lucky I was able to get away," Declan said. He peered into the car, eyes passing over Blue and snagging on Ronan in the backseat. His gaze followed his brother's leg to where it rested on top of Adam's, and his expression tightened.

"Thanks, D," Gansey said easily. With no effort, he pushed open the door, forcing Declan back without seeming to. He moved the conversation to the region of the front fender. It became a battle of genial smiles and deliberate hand gestures. — Maggie Stiefvater

And she leaves. She opens the door and, without a backward glance, goes out and shuts the door. I stand at the window and watch her go. She vanishes in the shadow of a building. Hands resting on the sill, I gaze for the longest time at where she disappeared. Maybe she forgot something she wanted to say and will come back. But she never does. All that's left is an absence that's like a hollow space. — Haruki Murakami

What is the scariest thing that can happen? A child can disappear without a trace. A man could follow you at night. Someone could hide behind your bedroom door. There is a small throw rug in the room. There is a wooden chair by the darkening window. There is someone hiding behind my bedroom door. Anything solid in my neck snaps, and I'm screaming, looking into this hideous face, like some dark mold, a toxic messy thing. There — Samantha Hunt

The sun is rising through a yellow, howling wind. Time for breakfast. Inside the trailer now, broiling bacon and frying eggs with good appetite, I hear the sand patter like rain against the metal walls and brush across the windowpanes. A fine silt accumulates beneath the door and on the window ledge. The trailer shakes in a sudden gust. All one to me
sandstorm or sunshine I am content, so long as I have something to eat, good health, the earth to take my stand on, and light behind the eyes to see by. — Edward Abbey

I had discovered that the plainest house can crown a fantasy or daydream. An open window can be tolerated. So can an open door. But I discovered the value of four walls and a roof. Something about containment that at the same time offers escape. — Lloyd Jones

But if your language is intended to be the medium of an art if you, its user, are an artist and not a reporter, a persuader, a raconteur; if you aren't writing principally to get praise or pay, but wish to avoid the busy avenues of entertainment, to traffic in the tragic maybe, dig down to the deeply serious; then (although there are a few exceptional and contrary cases) you will understand right away how blessed you are by the language you were born with, the language you began to amster in the moment you also started to learn about life, to read the lines on faces, the light in the window which meant milk, the door which deprived you of mother, the half-songs sung by that someone who lonaed you the breast you suckled - the breast you claimed as more than kin. — William H Gass

There was a knock on the bedroom door. "Matt?"
Fuck. "Nope.
Silence. "Would you be the owner of the leather pants?"
"Yep."
She paused briefly. "I'm going to pass these through the door. You have exactly thirty seconds to pull them on, make yourself presentable and get your ass out here."
"Do I have any other options?"
"Only if Matt's got a window."
He looked at the window longingly. The thirty-six-story drop with no fire escape might be less painful, but he decided there was no avoiding it. "Understood. — Christine Price

I mean ... who was it that said if the door is locked, find a window. If the windows locked, well ... break it. If it won't break then find a freaking sledgehammer and make a new one. — C.C. Hunter

Opening the door quietly, I slipped in without switching on the light. From the entrance hall, I
could see the dining room at the end of the corridor, the table still decked out for the party. The cake was there, untouched, and the crockery still waited for the meal. I could make out the motionless silhouette of my father in his armchair, as he observed the scene from the window. He was awake and still wearing his best suit. Wreaths of smoke rose lazily from a cigarette he held between his index and ring
fingers, as if it were a pen. I hadn't seen my father smoke for years. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

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

We are what our families have made us. But sometimes you can escape that. You can close a door on it and walk into another room. This room is furnished differently. It's all things you chose yourself. My room is furnished with Elizabeth and Tom. The light illuminates them through the window. They glow as brightly as the setting sun. — Kate Hamer

He stopped before opening the door and faced her. "You'll leave the window open for me and you'll be naked. When I come back, I'll take what I want from you, as many times as I want to." He grinned; it was pure and raw and astonishingly beautiful. "Understand me Lady Dagmar?" She shook her head. "No. You'll have to explain it to me."
"I will. Even if I have to tie you to bed and explain it to you again and again and again." He looked over one more time. "And don't play with yourself after I'm gone. Don't want you wearing my pussy out before I've had a chance to use it." With his hand on the door, Gwenvael rewarded her with the warmest smile she'd seen from anyone. "Besides, you look so beautiful when you come, I don't want to miss a second of it. — G.A. Aiken

It has been a long march to equality. We have cracked the door, and opened the window. — Donna Brazile

At night I locked my bedroom door, because [my father] could not sleep and would insist on talking to me, endlessly, without making sense. But there was a small window over the door which could not be locked. One night I woke up to see him slithering through the tiny aperture and jumping nimbly to the floor. But he paid no attention to me. He aimlessly picked up various pieces of heavy mahogany furniture and let them drop with seemingly little effort. In his insanity he had become superhumanly agile and powerful. Staying with him was a nightmare. — Jung Chang

And if it happened to be a Christmas-night when the great bell seemed to rattle in its throat as it called the faithful to the midnight mass, there was such an indescribable air of life spread over the sombre facade that the great door-way looked as if it were swallowing the entire crowd, and the rose-window staring at them. — Victor Hugo

When Alex leaves a little later, Carlos steps forward. "Need help?"
I shake my head.
"Are you ever gonna talk to me again? Dammit, Kiara, enough with the silent treatment. I'd rather have you say your little two-word sentences than stop talkin' altogether. Hell, just flip
me off again."
I toss my backpack in the backseat and start the engine.
"Where are you goin'?" Carlos asks, stepping in front of my car.
I beep.
"I'm not movin'," he says.
My response is another beep. It's not an intimidating, deep beep like most cars, but it's the best my car can give.
He places both hands on the hood.
"Move," I say.
He moves all right. With pantherlike quickness, Carlos jumps through the open passenger window, feet first.
"You should get the door fixed," he says. — Simone Elkeles

Drive nature out of the door and it will fly in at the window — Fyodor Dostoyevsky

I can no more than lift my weary eyes; Therefore I lift my weary eyes - no more. But my eyes pull my heart, and that, before 'Tis well awake, knocks where the conscience lies; Conscience runs quick to the spirit's hidden door: Straightway, from every sky-ward window, cries Up to the Father's listening ears arise. — George MacDonald

Two men, I think. A driver and a passenger." Reacher didn't want to turn around to look. Didn't want to show either guy the pale flash of a concerned face in the rear window. So he hunched down a little and moved sideways until he could see the image in Chang's door mirror. A pick-up truck, about a hundred yards back. A Ford, he thought. A serious machine, big and obvious, keeping pace. It was dull red, like the general store. There were two guys in it, side by side, but far from each other, because of the vehicle's extravagant width. — Lee Child

I worked at car washes - two or three different car washes. I worked at McDonald's and Wendy's, I worked as a dishwasher and as a telemarketer in two or three different places. I sold windows door-to-door and never once sold a window. — Joseph Bruce

Today, love came knocking at my window. To share with dad such a confusing, yet wonderful occasion would be great. Still, I keep this to myself. Who knows? In the future maybe dad and I can share more than silence but not until dad allows love to knock for me at the front door. — Anthony Paull

The train station - busy, swarming with people, luggage, porters, taxi drivers and limousine chauffeurs - a giant honeycomb, with worker bees flying in and out, carrying the trash, which covers the entire floor, in and out of the building. Only the honey has been consumed by the selected few, and nothing but the mucus remains. The line - a monstrous larva - the line stretches from the information window and extends almost out of the door. A human worm - hundreds of legs and hands, twisting and breathing disease. What was I thinking? This is just a city like any other, a city with its inhabitants, always busy, from the morning until the nighttime, always itching for a fight, always ready to chew me up and spit me out. A stripped and ragged bone, tossed aside when I can no longer feed its hungry belly. The belly of a beast - a human beast - merciless, yet placatory on the surface. I light a cigarette, spit on the floor, and walk towards the daylight. — Henry Martin

Lou felt as though she would rather jump from her bathroom window than open the door and smile at him then, she managed it. And she even pinched his bum as the passed in the doorway. Not because she wanted him to act on the flirtatious gesture. But he deserved it. Because he was a great bloke and she knew she should be grateful to have him and perhaps, one day, if she let herself believe that someone that fantastic might really be the one for her, she'd get over it and they'd live happily ever after. — Chris Manby

blood from the gash had seeped through her shirt and the blanket, pooling on the floor. Looking at it intensified the dizziness that its loss had caused. With the most pressing of her concerns attended to, Myranda set her mind to the task of escaping. She assessed the situation. Of course, her pack was gone. A pull on the door revealed it to be solidly secured from the outside. The windows were all small and near to the high ceiling. There would be no escape through any of those. The sole window large enough to allow her to escape was the shattered stained glass window behind the pulpit, but it was even further out of her reach. She had to try the door — Joseph R. Lallo

Where the Lord closes a door, somewhere He opens a window. — Julie Andrews

Traditional Chinese art looked at the Earth from a Confucian mountain top; Japanese art looked closely around screens; Italian Renaissance art surveyed conquered nature through the window or door-frame of a palace. For the Cro-Magnons, space is a metaphysical arena of continually intermittent appearances and disappearances. — John Berger

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

Before Charlotte could utter a syllable, Tristan picked up her gloved hand and kissed her lightly on the
knuckles.
"Good day, Charlotte," he said.
"Good day," she answered. She turned to bid farewell to Lady Rosalind, but she seemed to have
disappeared.
Numbly, she descended the front steps toward a waiting Rothbury, who only had eyes for the Devines'
front door, looking quite like he wanted to murder someone.
"Perfection, dear brother," Rosalind proclaimed, while peeking out the little window next to the door.
"Utter perfection."
Slipping a finger inside his cravat to loosen it a bit, Tristan craned his neck from side to side, easing the
building tension. "If he kills me, I'll see to it that you get hanged for murder as well. — Olivia Parker

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

So I knocked on the door at this bed & Breakfast and a lady stuck her head out of the window and said: 'What do you want', I said, 'I want to stay here'. She said, 'Well stay there' and shut the window. — Tommy Cooper

He went out of the door, and she watched him through the little window, walking slowly to the door of the church. Then she sat down at his table, and put her head on it, and was silent, with the patient suffering of black women, with the suffering of oxen, with the suffering of any that are mute. — Alan Paton

Kolya rose to a crouch and crept to the front door, keeping his head below the window line. I followed. We kneeled with our backs against the door. Kolya checked his pistol one last time. I pulled the German knife from my ankle sheath. I knew I looked silly holding it, the way a young boy looks holding his father's shaving razor. Kolya grinned at me as though he was about to start laughing. This is all very strange, I thought. I am in the middle of a battle and I am aware of my own thoughts, I am worried about how stupid I look with a knife in my hand while everyone else came to fight with rifles and machine guns. I am aware that I am aware. Even now, with bullets buzzing through the air like angry hornets, I cannot escape the chatter of my brain. — David Benioff

Golosh Street is an interesting locality. All the oddities of trade seemed to have found their way thither and made an eccentric mercantile settlement. There is a bird-shop at one corner. Immediately opposite is an establishment where they sell nothing but ornaments made out of the tinted leaves of autumn, varnished and gummed into various forms. Further down is a second-hand book-stall. There is a small chink between two ordinary-sized houses, in which a little Frenchman makes and sells artificial eyes, specimens of which, ranged on a black velvet cushion, stare at you unwinkingly through the window as you pass, until you shudder and hurry on, thinking how awful the world would be if everyone went about without eyelids. Madame Filomel, the fortune-teller, lives at No. 12 Golosh Street, second storey front, pull the bell on the left-hand side. Next door to Madame is the shop of Herr Hippe, commonly called the Wondersmith.
("The Wondersmith") — Fitz-James O'Brien

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

Forgive us, O Lord, we acknowledge ourselves as type of the common man,
Of the men and women who shut the door and sit by the fire;
Who fear the blessing of God, the loneliness of the night of God, the surrender required, the deprivation inflicted;
Who fear the injustice of men less than the justice of God;
Who fear the hand at the window, the fire in the thatch, the fist in the tavern, the push into the canal,
Less than we fear the love of God. — T. S. Eliot

EXPRESSIONS OF AFFECTION


If you should find a worm at your window sill,
Would you recognize it as a gift
From a bird that loves you?

And if you should find a dead bird
At your back door,
Would you recognize it as a gift
From a cat that loves you?

And if you should find a cat
Curled up in a basket by your bed,
Would you recognize it as a gift
From a mother who loves you?

And whenever you should open your front door
To find an infinite garden
Filled with people of many colors,
Would you recognize these flowers as a gift
From a father who loves you? — Suzy Kassem

when you conclude a paper, you should always close a door and open a window — Benjamin K. Bergen

The music of a popular song now came from the radio as Hawksmoor gazed out of the window; and he saw a door closing, a boy dropping a coin in the street, a woman turning her head, a man calling. For a moment he wondered why such things were occurring now: could it be that the world sprang up around him only as he invented it second by second and that, like a dream, it faded into the darkness from which it had come as soon as he moved forward? But then he understood that these things were real: they would never cease to occur and they would always be the same, as familiar and as ever-renewed as the tears which he had just seen on the woman's face. — Peter Ackroyd

Then he told me how Dean had met Camille. Roy Johnson, the poolhall boy, had found her in a bar and took her to a hotel; pride taking over his sense, he invited the whole gang to come up and see her. Everybody sat around talking with Camille. Dean did nothing but look out a window. Then when everybody left, Dean merely looked at Camille, pointed at his wrist, made the sign 'four' (meaning he'd be back at four), and went on. At three the door was locked to Roy Johnson. At four it was open to Dean. I wanted to go right out and see the madman. — Jack Kerouac

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

She threw the door open. The room seemed to be a sort of library, the walls lined with books. It was brightly lit, light streaming through a tall picture window. In the middle of the room stood Jace. He wasn't alone, though-not by a long shot. There was a dark-haired girl with him, a girl Clary had never seen before, and the two of them were locked together in a passionate embrace — Cassandra Clare

The little one-story house was as neat as a fresh pinafore. The front lawn was cut lovingly and very green. The smooth composition driveway was free of grease spots from standing cars, and the hedge that bordered it looked as though the barber came every day.
The white door had a knocker with a tiger's head, a go-to-hell window and a dingus that let someone inside talk to someone outside without even opening the little window.
I'd have given a mortgage on my left leg to live in a house like that. I didn't think I ever would.
(The Pencil) — Raymond Chandler

Grace is the celebration of life, relentlessly hounding all the non-celebrants in the world. It is a floating, cosmic bash shouting its way through the streets of the universe, flinging the sweetness of its cassations to every window, pounding at every door in a hilarity beyond all liking and happening, until the prodigals come out at last and dance, and the elder brothers finally take their fingers out of their ears. — Robert Farrar Capon

When he grew up, he drove muscle cars (loud and fast) and motorcycles (again, loud and fast) and sat in his Dad's garage with the door rolled up, lifting weights. I watched this out of my bedroom window and it was better than anything on television, believe you me. — Kristen Ashley

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

I'd like to have a life where people don't monitor my movements, even accidentally. I'd like to have my own pots and pans. I'd like a table to place a bowl of fruit on. I have an idea of myself walking around markets where butchers and grocers shout prices over the crowds, and where I'll carefully and slowly choose vegetables and meat, and come home to cook myself meals. I'd like to have breakfast without having to get dressed. I'd like to wander in and out of rooms and take a bath with the door open. And I don't want to look out the window of a little room and wonder where, in the city, I'll end up. The most essential quality of hotel life is the thing I want least: a presumption of departure. — Greg Baxter

When one door closes, a window opens and then zombies pile in and bite you in the ass. — Unknown

The library is an arena of possibility, opening both a window into the soul and a door onto the world. — Rita Dove

The Door Without a Key is the Door of Dreams; it is the door by which the sensitive escape into insanity when life is too hard for them, and artists use it as a window in a watch-tower. Psychologists call it a psychological mechanism; magicians call it magic, and the man in the street calls it illusion or charlatanry according to taste. It does not matter to me what it is called, for it is effectual. — Dion Fortune

I was a door-to-door window salesmen in what feels like a cheap, creepy pedophile situation. And I can say that because we were a bunch of kids driving around in the back of some old guy's van and it was creepy. Now that I look back on it I get chills of creepiness. — Joseph Bruce

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

Oh you five and ten cent women
With nothin' in your heads
I got a real gal I'm lovin'
And Lord I'll love her till I'm dead
Go away from my door and my window too
Right now — Bob Dylan

There is the image of the man who imagines himself to be a prisoner in a cell. He stands at one end of this small, dark, barren room, on his toes, with arms stretched upward, hands grasping for support onto a small, barred window, the room's only apparent source of light. If he holds on tight, straining toward the window, turning his head just so, he can see a bit of bright sunlight barely visible between the uppermost bars. This light is his only hope. He will not risk losing it. And so he continues to staring toward that bit of light, holding tightly to the bars. So committed is his effort not to lose sight of that glimmer of life-giving light, that it never occurs to him to let go and explore the darkness of the rest of the cell. So it is that he never discovers that the door at the other end of the cell is open, that he is free. He has always been free to walk out into the brightness of the day, if only he would let go. (192) — Sheldon B. Kopp

On the best nights, he'd appear outside the bookstore window and wait for me to unlock the door. He usually hadn't had time to shower between doing things with cattle and horses and coming to find me, and he looked older than us and stronger than us. — Laura Anderson Kurk

The van's driver hung halfway out of the cab window, head down, arms dangling. There was a fan of dried blood and puke sprayed out below him on the door. — Stephen King

The window rattles without you, you bastard. The trees are the cause, rattling in the wind, you jerk, the wind scraping those leaves and twigs against my window. They'll keep doing this, you terrible husband, and slowly wear away our entire apartment building. I know all these facts about you and there is no longer any use for them. What will I do with your license plate number, and where you hid the key outside so we'd never get locked out of this shaky building? What good does it do me, your pants size and the blue cheese preference for dressing? Who opens the door in the morning now, and takes the newspaper out of the plastic bag when it rains? I'll never get back all the hours I was nice to your parents. I nudge my cherry tomatoes to the side of the plate, bastard, but no one is waiting there with a fork to eat them. I miss you and I love you, bastard bastard bastard, come and clean the onion skins out of the crisper and trim back the tree so I can sleep at night. — Daniel Handler

Mathis turned off the radio and waved an affectionate farewell. The door slammed and silence settled on the room. Bond sat for a while by the window and enjoyed being alive. — Ian Fleming

He knocked absurdly on the skull like a man impatient for a door to open. His eyes glazed over. He appeared to be in the grasp of something beyond the reach of ordinary mortals.
'Time is slowing,' he said in a leaden voice. 'Each moment grows and fattens like a drop of rain on a window sash, waiting to fall. — Norman Lock

I was standing with my back to the door, and I saw Connie's eyes go wide. "Be still my heart," Lula said, looking past me, through the window to the sidewalk. I figured they were looking at either Johnny Depp or Ranger. My money was on Ranger. — Janet Evanovich

The great majority of Baghdad is a slum - a lot of it's new, but it's still slum. It's usually this concrete-block, one-room design with a door and a window, arranged one-up, one-down, often with a shop with nothing in it on the first floor, and then a one-room apartment above it. There's street after street after street of that stuff. — P. J. O'Rourke

As always, there are exceptions. Adults with training can still learn to distinguish speech sounds in other languages. But in general, the brain appears to have a limited window of opportunity in an astonishingly early time frame. The cognitive door begins swinging shut at 6 months old, and then, unless something pushes against it, the door closes. By 12 months, your baby's brain has made decisions that affect her the rest of her life. — John Medina

He moved, so quick, it was as if I blinked and he vanished from the window and reappeared in front of me. I jumped in surprise, hitting the door with a dull thud. I may have breathed his name, but I couldn't be sure of anything except his swelling scent and the heat wafting off his body. The dreamy sensation pulsed in my skull, filling me with an airy sensation that sucked the breath from my lungs. The current washed through me, carrying away all reasoning, all doubts. It was just me and him and the pounding electricity between us.
"I - I didn't come for this." yet, my hands reached for him, fisting in his hair and curling around his shoulder. "I should ... go ... " I pulled him to me. — Airicka Phoenix

What are you looking for?" he asked. A car alarm was going off in the distance, and he cringed as if the sound were deafening.

"A ride," she answered. Some of the cars were too new, others too old. She finally stopped in front of a black sedan, nice enough, but not one of the models with fancy security and keyless entry.

"Break that for me," she said, nodding at the driver's side door.

"The window?" asked August, and she gave him a look that said yes, obviously the window, and he gave her a look that said I don't commit petty crimes very often before he slammed his elbow into the glass to shatter it. — Victoria Schwab

It's Grandmother Dorothy," Elizabeth shrieked as she raced down the stairs, slid on the wooden floor, regained her balance and headed for the front door. "We saw from the window, and she's brought. . . . everybody." "She even brought the puppies!" Thaddeus yelled as he rushed past Millie. "I didn't see my peacocks." Rose charged after her siblings. "They're going to be mad at being left behind." Breaking — Jen Turano

The racism, the sexism, I never let it be my problem. It's their problem. If I see a door comin' my way, I'm knockin' it down. And if I can't knock down the door, I'm sliding through the window. I'll never let it stop me from what I wanna do. — Rosie Perez

I woke to find every window open I woke to find the heavy door ajar And I walked outside and stood upon the hilltop And gazed once more on a bright morning star I walked outside and every bird was singing As I found again my bright morning star — Mary Chapin Carpenter

Mrs. Boffin, insisting that Bella should make tomorrow's expedition in the chariot, she went home in great grandeur. Mrs. Wilfer and Miss Lavinia had speculated much on the probabilities and improbabilities of her coming in this gorgeous state, and, on beholding the chariot from the window at which they were secreted to look out for it, agreed that it must be detained at the door as long as possible, for the mortification and confusion of the neighbours. — Charles Dickens

Okay, here it goes--bread, so you'll never go hungry; a broom, so you can sweep away evil; a candle, so you'll always have light; honey, so life will always be sweet; a coin, to bring good fortune for the year; olive oil, for health, life, and believe it or not, to keep your husband, or in this case, your boyfriend faithful; a plant, so you'll always have life; rice, to ensure your fertility, but that's taken care of, eh? Salt represents life's tears. I recommend you place a pinch of salt on the threshold of every door and window for good luck and according to my grandmother Chetta it also mends old wounds. Oh and... ah, yes, wine, sparkling non-alcoholic wine, so you never go thirsty and always have joy and last, but not least wood, so your home will always have harmony, stability, and peace. — Aimee Pitta