Quotes & Sayings About Floors

ENTER THIS DESERTED HOUSE
But please walk softly as you do.
Frogs dwell here and crickets too.
Ain't no ceiling, only blue
Jays dwell here and sunbeams too.
Floors are flowers - take a few.
Ferns grow here and daisies too.
Whoosh, swoosh - too-whit, too-woo,
Bats dwell here and hoot owls too.
Ha-ha-ha,hee-hee,hoo-hoooo,
Gnomes dwell here and goblins too.
And my child, I thought you knew
I dwell here ... and so do you. — Shel Silverstein

SNEAK AROUND IN LIFE
NO MATTER HOW MUCH YOU TIP TOE
THE SPIRITUAL WOOD FLOORS CREAK
LOUDER AND LOUDER NO MATTER HOW HARD
YOU TRY SNEAK IN SILENCE.
THAT'S WHEN YOU REALIZE ...
"SNEAKING IS NOISY"
AND S.I.N IS LOUD!!!! — Qwana M. BabyGirl Reynolds-Frasier

Everything seemed to him a uniform shade of gray- even the people! He had been unable to believe it could rain so much in one place, and so unceasingly. The damp had seemed to come up from the floors and into his bones, so that he'd thought he would eventually sprout mold, in the manner of a tree. "You do get used to it," he said "Even if sometimes you feel as if you out to be able to be wrung out like a washrag." p 311 — Cassandra Clare

So if you find nothing in the corridors open the doors, and if you find nothing behind these doors there are more floors, and if you find nothing up there, don't worry, just leap up another flight of stairs. As long as you don't stop climbing, the stairs won't end, under your climbing feet they will go on growing upwards — Franz Kafka

And the PRCS [Palestinian Red Crescent Society] had not lost just one hospital: thirteen clinics and nine hospitals all over Lebanon had been destroyed in this way. Only Gaza Hospital, for a reason I was to discover three years later, was still standing. At the height of the air raids, when the Palestinians found out that every single PRCS hospital and clinic was a bomb target, they put three Israeli soldiers captured in south Lebanon on the upper floors of Gaza Hospital, and radioed a message to the Israeli Army saying that any further military action on Gaza Hospital would result in Israeli lives being lost. That saved Gaza Hospital from further destruction. — Ang Swee Chai

We just stood there, facing each other, but nine floors apart. — Jonathan Safran Foer

He trusts Malcolm, but Malcolm doesn't want trust: he wants someone to show the silvery, stripey marble he's found from a small quarry outside Izmir and argue about how much of it is too much; and to make smell the cypress from Gifu that he's sourced for the bathroom tub; and to examine the objects - hammers; wrenches; pliers - he's embedded like trilobites in the poured concrete floors. — Hanya Yanagihara

That we are the sum of all we've seen and all we've appreciated and understood. You were the sum of sunshine on marble floors filled with pictures of divine beings who laughed and loved and drank the fruit of the vine as surely as you were the sum of the poets and historians and philosophers you'd read. — Anne Rice

We followed him through the wealthy splendor of the house. Hardwood floors. Custom carved woodworking. Statues. Fountains. Suits of armor. Original painting, one of them a van Gogh. Stained-glass windows. Household staff in formal uniform. I kept expecting to come across a flock of peacocks roaming the halls, or maybe a pet cheetah in a diamond-studded collar. — Jim Butcher

And then, every time I didn't see her, there was a fall involved. I thought about dancing on the fifth-floor ledge outside out apartment. Every train she wasn't on felt something like hitting the pavement from five floors up. So maybe my father was right about that. Maybe happiness and excitement really are dangerous things. — Catherine Ryan Hyde

I can install toilets. I know all about the wax ring. I can tile floors. I'm learning how to do basic wiring. — Sandra Bullock

Living your life 40 floors up, looking out every day on ocean and skies, you see the world from a different point of view. It's like living in a very interesting fishbowl, but since no one can see up here, it's like a fishbowl with a limo tint. — Pharrell Williams

The floor consisted of the most colorful marble that is found in our mountains. The slabs overlapped so well that scarcely a joint could be seen; the marble was smoothed and polished very finely and the colors so arranged that the floor gave the impression of a lovely picture. Moreover it gleamed and shimmered in the light that was streaming in from the windows. — Adalbert Stifter

There was little sign of culture, and the luxury was senseless and haphazard, and was as ill fitting as that uniform. The floors irritated him with their brilliant polish, the lustres on the chandelier irritated him, and he was reminded for some reason of the story of the merchant who used to go to the baths with a medal on his neck ... — Anton Chekhov

A trip to the hospital is always a descent into the macabre. I have never trusted a place with shiny floors. — Terry Tempest Williams

Tell me,' the man leans forward ans says, 'have you heard of a lady called Madeleine? No? In 1996, this lady named Albright Madeleine, the US ambassador to the United Nations, was asked on television how she felt about the fact that five hundred thousand Iraqi children had died as a result of US economic sanctions? Do you know what she said? She said that it was "a very hard choice" but "we think the price is worth it". These are her exact words. How do you feel about that?
'How do you think I feel about that? And I would take your love for children more seriously if you didn't have children cleaning your floors. — Nadeem Aslam

I hear them, the fallen priest and the lady. Their footsteps sound like the soft hush of rain over the stone floors. — Rene Denfeld

But there was nothing. No village or town as far as her eyes could strain. Nowhere for her saviours to come from and take her to; just fields and trees and the weeping arc of the river Greave all the way to the horizon. Just like in the books, Greaveburn was all there was; building and building until streets were foundations, roofs were floors, constantly climbing away from itself. now that Abrasia saw it, her dream of escape crumbled completely like an ancient map in her fingers. The horizon was the world's edge and there was nothing beyond it but mist and falling.

Greaveburn stood alone on this little circle of earth, the river running around and into itself like a snake eating its tail. And Abrasia was doomed to watch the sun and stars trade places for all eternity. — Craig Hallam

I [Pigpen] grew up in their clubhouse. I understand you because I am you. I also learned to crawl on the sticky floors of where guys made their oaths. But here's the difference, I grew up watching people make stupid mistakes in the name of revenge. — Katie McGarry

But it is good to be several floors up in the dead of night wondering whether you are any good or not and the only decision you can make is that you did it ... — Frank O'Hara

The library door is already open when I dash in, but the room is empty. Books line shelves three floors high, and windows just as tall let in rays of dying sunlight. Three balconies wrap above me and a grand piano stands in the center of the bottom level, but there are no people, not even a servant dusting old books in a corner. — Sara Raasch

As he came up Second Avenue, Henry saw that Jerry Lauterbach was again having trouble with the neighborhood psycho. It was natural, Henry reflected, that New York, being so well supplied with all the necessities of life, should not be lacking in persons whose mental furniture was sliding on the polished floors of their intelligence. — Margaret Scherf

When the Vietnamese came to the United States they often faced prejudice from everyone - White, Black, and Hispanics. But they didn't beg for handouts and often took the lowest jobs offered. Even well-educated individuals didn't mind sweeping floors if it was a paying job. Today many of these same Vietnamese are property owners and entrepreneurs. That's the message I try to get across to the young people. The same opportunities are there, but we can't start out as vice president of the company. Even if we landed such a position, it wouldn't do us any good anyway because we wouldn't know how to do our work. It's better to start where we can fit in and then work our way up. — Ben Carson

I won't eat in a restaurant with filthy bathrooms. This isn't a hard call. They let you see the bathrooms. If the restaurant can't be bothered to replace the puck in the urinal or keep the toilets and floors clean, then just imagine what their refrigeration and work spaces look like. — Anthony Bourdain

Hyacinth, who wept before sleep, had wept that night; he had wept too - had wept in joy and pain, and in joy at his pain. When tears were done and their heads rested on one pillow, she had said that no man had ever wept with her before. Two floors below them, their reflected images knelt in the fishpond at Thelxiepeia's feet, subsistent but invisible. There she would weep for him longer than they lived. He lowered his naked body into a rising pool, warm and scarcely less romantic. Ermine — Gene Wolfe

My little brother Paul. He owns his own floor sanding business called Silly P Hardwood Floors and hes really good. — Amy Sedaris

I used to hit the kitchen lights, cockroaches everywhere/Hit the kitchen lights, now it's marble floors everywhere. — Young Jeezy

We were hockey gypsies, heading down another gravel road every weekend, plowing into the heart of that magnificent northern landscape. We never gave a thought to being deprived as we travelled, to being shut out of the regular league system. We never gave a thought to being Indian. Different. We only thought of the game and the brotherhood that bound us together off the ice, in the van, on the plank floors of reservation houses, in the truck stop diners where if we'd won we had a little to splurge on a burger and soup before we hit the road again. Small joys. All of them tied together, entwined to form an experience we would not have traded for any other. We were a league of nomads, mad for the game, mad for the road, mad for ice and snow, an Arctic wind on our faces and a frozen puck on the blade of our sticks. — Richard Wagamese

It had been me - it had always been me. And Ren - oh my God - Ren was here to find and kill me, because the prince of the mother freaking Otherworld was free in the mortal realm. The Prince was here to knock up a halfling, to make an apocalypse baby ... with me.
Me.
I was going to vomit.
Like all over the hardwood floors of my bedroom. — Jennifer L. Armentrout

I have been on shop floors. I have talked to a lot of the companies that create jobs in South Carolina and across the country. And what they want is less regulation. — Jim DeMint

I nodded to Sam. "I'll just clean up these boxes and meet you out on the floor." Macy's didn't mess around their shoe department in New York. It spanned two floors, and it was always busy.
"Okay," she relented. "If you're not out in ten minutes, I'm coming back to find you."
"Got it. I was relieved when she finally walked out of the stock room. I wanted to forget this craziness had ever occurred.
Tom bent over to help me as I gathered up the errant shoes. "Dude," he said, "can I touch your arm? I've never touched anyone who's died before. — Amanda Carlson

The heels of military boots, striking marble floors, made a sound like thrown stones. — Gregory Maguire

It was the first time since the accident that he heard Sonja laughing. As if it were pouring out of her, without the slightest possibility of stopping it, like she was being wrestled to the ground by her own giggling. She laughed and laughed and laughed until the vowels were rolling across the walls and floors, as if they meant to do away with the laws of time and space. It made Ove feel as if his chest were slowly rising out of the ruins of a collapsed house after an earthquake. It gave his heart space to beat again. — Fredrik Backman

Automobile in America,Chromium steel in America,Wire-spoke wheel in America,Very big deal in America!Immigrant goes to America,Many hellos in America,Nobody knows in America,Puerto Rico's in America!I like the shores of America!Comfort is yours in America!Knobs on the doors in America!Wall-to-wall floors in America! — Stephen Sondheim

To William's complete lack of surprise, the little cellar under the shed was much better built than the shed itself. But then, practically everywhere in Ankh-Morpork had cellars that were once the first or even second or third floors of ancient buildings, built at the time of one of the city's empires when men thought that the future was going to last forever. And — Terry Pratchett

In the information age, the barriers [to entry into programming] just aren't there. The barriers are self imposed. If you want to set off and go develop some grand new thing, you don't need millions of dollars of capitalization. You need enough pizza and Diet Coke to stick in your refrigerator, a cheap PC to work on, and the dedication to go through with it. We slept on floors. We waded across rivers. — John Carmack

Can we talk now?" she asked.
"Nay, we need to ... load the dishwasher." He padded into the kitchen and took his time rinsing everything in the sink before stacking it into the machine. He even scrubbed the pot he'd warmed the soup in.
When he closed the dishwasher, she was waiting there, holding a mop.
She offered it to him. "Do you want to clean the floors now? And sweep the porch? I think the antlers on the moose head need polishing. — Kerrelyn Sparks

You cannot imagine, to give you another example, that you may have, one day, a prime minister (it would go against my modesty to breathe his name) who, one day, after announcing in Parliament, in a cool, impassive voice, that, as the result of a number of carefully thought out diplomatic manoeuvres he has refrained from discussing before (for he is not a man of many words), he has succeeded in annexing Britain as an ordinary colony of Hungary, and that he is taking this opportunity to apprise the House of the fact; - Well, as I say, after explaining this in a cool and impassive tone, ignoring the shouting, jubilant Members who want to carry him round on their shoulders, suddenly he takes up a fencing posture and, right there, on the premier's rostrum, employing a formidable, hitherto unknown jujitsu hold, floors the Australian world wrestling champion whom the British opposition treacherously hid under the rostrum in order to assassinate the greatest European. — Frigyes Karinthy

For the three years I lived in New York leading up to moving out to Los Angeles for 'Mad Men,' I was an office temp at Ernst & Young in Times Square. That's about as desk-jobby as it can get. There was a lot of, 'Go two floors up and make a copy of this and then bring it to me.' — Rich Sommer

When white people envision their perfect home, it always has hardwood floors. In fact, most white people would prefer a dirt floor over wall-to-wall carpeting, because to them it would have the same level of cleanliness and probably fewer germs.
White people are petrified of germs, and when they look at a carpet all they can see is everything that has ever been spilled, tracked in, or shaken loose into the carpet fibers. But more disgusting to white people is that wall-to-wall carpeting reminds them of suburban homes, motel rooms, and the horrible apartments that they have visited or lived in over the years. It has no soul. Only germs.
Hardwood floors, on the other hand, are easily cleaned and give a sense of character to a place, since they are often the original flooring in older buildings. It is a well-known white fantasy to purchase a home or apartment that has disgusting carpet and then to pull it up to reveal a beautiful hardwood floor underneath. — Christian Lander

I am a Hindu because of sculptured cones of red kumkum powder and baskets of yellow turmeric nuggets, because of garlands of flowers and pieces of broken coconut, because of the clanging of bells to announce one's arrival to God, because of the whine of the reedy nadaswaram and the beating of drums, because of the patter of bare feet against stone floors down dark corridors pierced by shafts of sunlight, because of the fragrance of incense, because of flames of arati lamps circling in the darkness, because of bhajans being sweetly sung, because of elephants standing around to bless, because of colourful murals telling colourful stories, because of foreheads carrying, variously signified, the same word - faith. — Yann Martel

Elsewheres
South
The long green shutters are drawn.
Against what parades?
Closing our eyes against the sun,
We try to imagine
The darkness of an interior
Where something might still happen:
The razor lying open
On the cool marble washstand,
The drip of something
is it water?
Upon stone floors. — Donald Justice

I do know something about the news world. I was sitting on the floors of newsrooms since I was seven years old, and I've been around them my whole life. I understand that someone looks at a story with famous people in it, and you want to put it out. — George Clooney

On the floors above Delivery, in flowerless rooms, women lay recovering from hysterectomies and mastectomies. Teenage girls with burst ovarian cysts nodded out on morphine. It was all around me from the beginning, the weight of female suffering, with its biblical justification and vanishing acts. — Jeffrey Eugenides

Hester shook her head. 'Don't confuse what you do with who you are, dearie. Besides, there's no shame in humble work. Why, Aesop himself, the king of storytellers, was a slave his whole life. Never drew a free breath, yet he shaped the world with just three small words: there once was. And where are his great masters now, hmm? Rotting in tombs, if they're lucky. But Aesop - he still lives to this day, dancin' on the tip of every tongue what's ever told a tale.' She winked at Molly. 'Think on that, next time you're scrubbing floors. — Jonathan Auxier

Enter, stranger, but take heed
Of what awaits the sin of greed,
For those who take, but do not earn,
Must pay most dearly in their turn.
So if you seek beneath our floors
A treasure that was never yours,
Thief, you have been warned, beware
Of finding more than treasure there. — J.K. Rowling

Motion-picture studio floors used to be all wooden and not smooth at all. This was difficult when moving a camera around on a dolly. — Desi Arnaz

I was cutting and threading pipe in the tunnels to get water into the shower rooms for athletics. I was repairing old metal windows, fixing cement walls where rain was coming through, and drying out the maple gym floors in hopes of removing the warping. — Tom Baker

So after some instruction, Joseph put on the apron and started carefully polishing the clean dishes even though it made no sense to him.
Over the course of the day, he learned how to wash the floors and clean the windows and empty out the iron stove. Soon the kitchen smelled of lemons and spices, fresh bread and soap.
There was a short break for lunch before resuming work. The light shifted during the afternoon and cascaded through the clean windows, burnishing the room with gold.
Joseph was so focused on the work, on the patters of the silverware and the curve of the handles on the ancient pitchers and measuring cups, that he forgot for a little while about his parents, and St. Anthony's, and the fire, and losing Blink. He felt a kind of pride in being allowed to touch all the delicate glassware, plates, and bowls, and he hadn't broken a single thing. — Brian Selznick

education and money. I go to church with the kids for the same reason Genie and I play our grandchildren classical music and litter the floors and chairs all over our home with open art books. Jack, age three, eats his lunch with a big Goya book propped in front of him asking for the — Frank Schaeffer

CITIZENS, we bring good news! In your kitchens, in your offices, on your factory floors - wherever you hear this broadcast, turn up the volume! The first success we have to report is that our Grass into Meat Campaign is a complete — Adam Johnson

She sighed as she looked around. Tell you what I don't like about a place so goddamned orderly like this. As an artist . . . it's the lines that get me. All the straight lines in the walls, on the floors, in the corners that turn into boxes - like coffins. The only way I can get rid of the boxes is to take a few drinks. Then all the lines get wavy and wiggly, and I feel a lot better about the whole world. When things are all straight and lined up this way I get morbid. Ugh! If I lived here I would have to stay drunk all the time. — Daniel Keyes

I'm not going to be part of this," said Leo. He opened his hand and dropped the flowers. Fragrant, obedient, they beheaded themselves on Saina's salvaged-wood floors. — Jade Chang

Why don't they embed the dead in blocks of plate glass and bury them in crypts beneath transparent floors? In that way, the deceased would easily be able to see God for themselves, and He to see them, — Alan Bradley

When I was twenty-five and living in Chicago, the building supers were two very polite and meticulous meth heads. Matt and I lived above them and listened to them constantly washing their floors. They also loved to vacuum. They often spent the night rearranging furniture and wiping down surfaces. More than once I woke to the sound of them sweeping the porch steps, moving the same pile of dirt around and around. They were tough to talk to, almost impossible to understand and make eye contact with, but I had a strange affection for their ability to channel their meth-taking into real apartment improvements. — Amy Poehler

Thrice damned she howls like Cerberus to the night
Guarding virtues that lie like forgotten stains
On oaken floors that pave the willow lined paths of the past
That lead to a meadow filled with the detritus of wasted love
Rotting under a forgotten sun that no longer shines
In a heart gone cold therein lies the haste of anger. — Neil Leckman

Moreover, the sciences are monuments devoted to the public good; each citizen owes to them a tribute proportional to his talents. While the great men, carried to the summit of the edifice, draw and put up the higher floors, the ordinary artists scattered in the lower floors, or hidden in the obscurity of the foundations, must only seek to improve what cleverer hands have created. — Charles-Augustin De Coulomb

A great many film stars perched on unstable ravine edges in the canyon systems of Los Angeles will, like the cemeteries there, eventually slide down to join their unfortunate fellows in the canyon floors, with mud, cars, and embalmed or living film stars in one glorious muddy mass. We should not lend our talents to creating such spectacular catastrophes ... — Bill Mollison

ocean floors everywhere were so comparatively youthful. None had ever been found to be older than about 175 million years, which was a puzzle because continental rocks were often billions of years old. — Bill Bryson

On that day, in jungle hamlets and mountain villages, in cacophonous slums and sprawling refugee camps, on worn concrete floors and under roofs thatched of rice straw and banana leaves, in clay brick homes, on rutted, red dirt roads, and on scorching swaths of sand, children cried and screamed and sang and giggled and toddled and ran and fell and got back up and climbed on their mothers' laps and pulled their siblings' hair and gazed out in wonder at the big, bright world that swirled around them. Millions of boys and girls whose lives were reclaimed whose stories were allowed to continue, who were not mourned or grieved or buried, but instead were loved and held and fretted over and scolded and prepared for the challenges of living, of surviving, all because of a man they had never met and whose name they would likely never know. — Adam Fifield

All houses wherein men have lived and died / Are haunted houses. Through the open doors / The harmless phantoms on their errands glide, / With feet that make no sound upon the floors. — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

And Lord knows there are more than enough rooms to love someone properly, even if they don't all have floors or ceilings. — Damon Suede

I'll sweep the floors. I've picked up napkins in the men's room. I'm not above anything. — David Duffield

Yes, you're right. I want to be a proper submissive for you. I've been thinking a lot about this lately, as well. I want to learn from you, Dylan. I want to be the Master of my Universe, too." Her response floors me. — Ella Dominguez

I'm still totally going out and sleeping on people's floors so I can play a house show and give away music. Of course I would. That's how I started. All that sort of stuff reminds you to stay true to the essence of what art is about. — Geoff Rickly

All day within the dreamy house,
The doors upon their hinges creaked;
The blue fly sang in the pane; the mouse
Behind the mouldering wainscot shrieked,
Or from the crevice peered about.
Old faces glimmered through the doors,
Old footsteps trod the upper floors,
Old voices called her from without. . . . — Alfred Tennyson

A certain amount of housekeeping also goes on in my poems. I wash doorknobs, do dishes, mop floors, patch carpets, cook. — Jane Hirshfield

Plate tectonics is not all havoc and destruction. The slow movement of continents and ocean floors recycles carbon dioxide dissolved in the oceans back into the atmosphere. Without this slow speed carbon cycle, Earth's temperatures would cool dozens of degrees below your comfort zone. — Seth Shostak

As anyone who has received or dispensed psychotherapy knows, it's a profession whose mainspring is love. Nearly everyone who visits a therapist has a love disorder of one sort or another, and each has a story to tell - of love lost or denied, love twisted or betrayed, love perverted or shackled to violence. Broken attachments litter the office floors like pick-up sticks. People appear with frayed seams and spilling pockets. — Diane Ackerman

Believing the world is calm because we have never seen it otherwise is like taking the attitude of a man who jumps off the top of a tall building and figures that, since 29 of the 30 floors have passed without incident, he is going to be okay. — Stephen Webb

Strong men greet war, tempest, hard times. They wish, as Pindar said, to tread the floors of hell, with necessities as hard as iron. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

The campus spreads around him like the verdant pleasure garden of an ancient king. He is enraptured by the enormous trees that lift branches like cathedral roofs overhead, shoot roots like polished ballroom floors underfoot. In the hot afternoons he leaves the crowded rooms to study under the protection of these spreading giants. — Nayomi Munaweera

I was raised by my grandmother on a farm, where we were really poor - we had dirt floors - but so did everybody else. — Robert Herjavec

She was lost.
Stumbling around the uneven floors and precarious book towers falling against each other for support, Alice realised she would have to do the unthinkable and talk loudly in a bookshop.
Maybe even shout.
Where were the staff?
Where were all the people who had ever read or owned these volumes? Where were the writers who created them? She walked on carefully through this purgatory of print, assuming the stoic reserve of a war widow seeking a lost husband among the silent names blurring past. — Josh Redman

Joseph, you're out of clean towels." Lucia poked her head into the living room, the rest of her hidden behind the wall. Her red hair dripped water onto my wooden floors.
"She's in the buff." Jenna guffawed. Gabriella rolled her eyes, beaming.
I rose. "Go back to the bathroom. I'll bring you a towel," I ordered Lucia. She disappeared down the hall.
"You have naked angels running around your house," Jenna continued through her laughter. Gabby laughed louder. — Laura Kreitzer

And what I said was I'll miss you,
What I meant to say was that I love you,
What I wanted to say was that I meant what I said
I miss you like I miss my own bed
after too many nights of sleeping on couches
or hardwood floors
Or sitting silently behind the doors
Of hotel rooms became wounds
Breathing life in to this loneliness
I miss you
Like a burn victim must miss their own skin
I miss you like a sad ending
Must miss someplace new to begin
Because some say that the highway becomes a flat line
if you travel it for too long
I can't tell if that's true or false,
But I'm racing down it towards you trying to find my
Pulse. — Shane Koyczan

There are those who say that spiritual enlightenment is achieved through the denial of oneself; you must deny yourself many things, go and live in a mountaintop, never mingle with other people, talk to the birds..but I say to you, why should you dismantle your home? Where is the meaning in removing the bricks from your walls one by one? What is the purpose in uprooting your floors? Is there any significance in only allowing yourself a tin roof and a muddy bed? Why deny your house its structure? A truly enlightened soul is strong enough, is bright enough to live and shine through, even in a beautiful house! There is no need to ransack the house in order to see an inner beauty etched against a distraught surrounding. A bright and beautiful soul can shine forth even from inside an equally beautiful surrounding. — C. JoyBell C.

Their meal was illuminated by torches, which Gwen found were utterly without fire. What the children called torches were really just small platforms on tall, wooden poles. The reason they radiated light was because fairies had flown up to them to waltz and glow on the tiny dance floors. — Audrey Greathouse

We were to write a short essay on one of the works we read in the course and relate it to our lives. I chose the "Allegory of the Cave" in Plato's Republic. I compared my childhood of growing up in a family of migrant workers with the prisoners who were in a dark cave chained to the floor and facing a blank wall. I wrote that, like the captives, my family and other migrant workers were shackled to the fields day after day, seven days a week, week after week, being paid very little and living in tents or old garages that had dirt floors, no indoor plumbing, no electricity. I described how the daily struggle to simply put food on our tables kept us from breaking the shackles, from turning our lives around. I explained that faith and hope for a better life kept us going. I identified with the prisoner who managed to escape and with his sense of obligation to return to the cave and help others break free. — Francisco Jimenez

Reporting is all about legwork, getting out and finding the story. But all the stories are on the top floors, so you have to learn to climb stairs. That's what reporting is all about, climbing tenement stairs. — Jimmy Breslin

Being happy with less is what makes a great human being, not a big house with marble floors, or everyone knowing who you are. — Yanni

I slowed my pace. Years of hauling water, wringing out clothes, scrubbing floors, emptying chamber pots, with no chance of beauty or color or light in my life, stretched before me like a landscape of flat land where, a long way off, the sea is visible but can never be reached. — Tracy Chevalier

Of tobacco and its consequences, I will say nothing but that the practice is at too bad a pass to leave hope that anything that could be said in books would work a cure. If the floors of boarding-houses, and the decks of steam-boats, and the carpets of the Capitol, do not sicken the Americans into a reform; if the warnings of physicians are of no avail, what remains to be said? I dismiss the nauseous subject. — Harriet Martineau

Most folks got Id and Ego living on different floors in their head's house, in different rooms, and they've locked all the doors between them, and nailed sheets of plywood over that, because they think they're, like, sworn enemies that can't hang together.
Ro thought the whole subconscious/conscious issue had something to do with why I am the way I am. She said I have the neurological condition synesthesia out the ass, with all kinds of cross regions of my brain talking to each other. Old witch was always psychoanalyzing me (as in she was the psycho and I was being analyzed). She said my Id and Ego are best buds, they don't just live on the same floor, they share a bed.
I'm cool with that. Frees up space for other stuff.
I take off, tune out, and do what I do best.
Kill. — Karen Marie Moning

The Chorus Line:
A Rope-Jumping Rhyme

we are the maids
the ones you killed
the ones you failed

we danced in air
our bare feet twitched
it was not fair

with every goddess, queen, and bitch
from there to here
you scratched your itch

we did much less
than what you did
you judged us bad

you had the spear
you had the word
at your command

we scrubbed the blood
of our dead
paramours from floors, from chairs

from stairs, from doors,
we knelt in water
while you stared

at our bare feet
it was not fair
you licked our fear

it gave you pleasure
you raised your hand
you watched us fall

we danced on air
the ones you failed
the ones you killed — Margaret Atwood

Earth Is Enough. We men of Earth have here the stuff Of Paradise - we have enough! We need no other stones to build The Temple of the Unfulfilled - No other ivory for the doors - No other marble for the floors - No other cedar for the beam And dome of man's immortal dream. Here on the paths of every-day - Here on the common human way Is all the stuff the gods would take To build a Heaven, to mold and make New Edens. Ours is the stuff sublime To build Eternity in time! — Edwin Markham

Life Is Fine"

I went down to the river,
I set down on the bank.
I tried to think but couldn't,
So I jumped in and sank.

I came up once and hollered!
I came up twice and cried!
If that water hadn't a-been so cold
I might've sunk and died.

But it was Cold in that water! It was cold!

I took the elevator
Sixteen floors above the ground.
I thought about my baby
And thought I would jump down.

I stood there and I hollered!
I stood there and I cried!
If it hadn't a-been so high
I might've jumped and died.

But it was High up there! It was high!

So since I'm still here livin',
I guess I will live on.
I could've died for love--
But for livin' I was born

Though you may hear me holler,
And you may see me cry--
I'll be dogged, sweet baby,
If you gonna see me die.

Life is fine! Fine as wine! Life is fine! — Langston Hughes

way, and her old brownstone became very valuable property. Now she was the proud proprietor of six spacious, airy apartments with 12-foot ceilings, oak floors, huge windows and affluent tenants. The ground-level store became her own Isle of View Emporium. Misty had chosen one of the two first floor spaces, and — Rebecca Fox

I never mind scrubbing floors, vacuuming or bending and carrying stuff. Each time I do it I think, this is instead of going to the gym. — Joanna Lumley

If I had only known kittens can climb drapes, perch on top of a traverse rod, and then screech like some femme fatale in a low budget horror flick to be rescued. That a kitten sounds like a herd of buffalo running on hardwood floors in the middle of the night. If I had only known a kitten's claws can sink through a sheet into your balls while you're jerking off. An old adage says, "Live and learn," and I amassed an encyclopedic amount out cat wisdom in less than twenty-four hours. — K.C. Kendricks

A nice quick workout is the stairs; it takes me five minutes to do 24 floors. — Amy Jo Martin

As we approached each other, the noise and the students around us melted away and we were utterly alone, passing, smiling, holding each other's eyes, floors and walls gone, two people in a universe of space and stars.
— Jerry Spinelli

In the interest rate area, traders have for a long time used a version of what is known as Black's model for European bond options; another version of the same model for caps and floors; and yet another version of the same model for European swap options. — John Hull

Lights burn on the upper floors, traders and analysts letting commerce take precedence over family one more time in a desperate attempt to add to a Christmas bonus they won't have time to spend. — Nick Harkaway

B-b-but who will I have cleaning marathons with?"
"Casey. I'll be there in spirit."
"She's not neurotic and cranky like you."
"You'll miss that, ay?"
"Hell yes, I'll miss that! When you're obsessive and pissy, you tell those floors who's boss. They won't shine like that when Casey scrubs them. And don't get me started on our Covenant Series discussions. The girl thinks Alex should pick Seth. Seth, Em. How can I clean with someone who isn't Team Aiden? It's like ... madness. Madness on Earth. The fucking apocalypse - "
"Whitney," I chuckled, squeezing her tighter, "I assure you, you'll survive. The second she starts running her mouth about Aiden, just spray her with bleach. That'll teach her a lesson."
-Emma and Whitney — Rachael Wade

Water stains like liver spots dotted the floors, ceiling, and walls while the smell of warm wood rot hung in the air thick like an old whore's perfume. — Matt Abraham

It's Friday night the city is a heart that beats alone,despite the millions of blood cells that race through its dog-legged arteries, oblivious to each other yet performing a life sustaining dance. [...] You're tired of being part of this blood dance. The immune system has been trying to excise you as diseased for as long you can remember, but you've been tenacious,clinging to the walls and floors as the torrent pushes you around. — A.J. Fitzwater

Jobs described Mike Markkula's maxim that a good company must "impute"- it must convey its values and importance in everything it does, from packaging to marketing. Johnson loved it. It definitely applied to a company's stores. " The store will become the most powerful physical expression of the brand," he predicted. He said that when he was young he had gone to the wood-paneled, art-filled mansion-like store that Ralph Lauren had created at Seventy-second and Madison in Manhattan. " Whenever I buy a polo shirt, I think of that mansion, which was a physical expression of Ralph's ideals," Johnson said. " Mickey Drexler did that with the Gap. You couldn't think of a Gap product without thinking of the Great Gap store with the clean space and wood floors and white walls and folded merchandise. — Walter Isaacson

Ah, snug lie those that slumber Beneath Conviction's roof. Their floors are sturdy lumber, Their windows weatherproof. But I sleep cold forever And cold sleep all my kind, For I was born to shiver In the draft from an open mind. — Phyllis McGinley

Restrooms at gas stations were an unpleasant and shocking surprise; I had never considered the serious drawbacks of such lazily-cleaned rooms. I was completely unable to ignore the filth, and wasted a burst of power to turn the sink, floors and porcelain toilet into sparkling, clean examples of their kind before using the facility. I felt that was a much less judgmental response than simply blowing the place off the face of the Earth, which was also a distinct temptation, especially when the storekeeper overcharged me for a bottle of cold water. — Rachel Caine