Got Houses Quotes & Sayings

Men and boys are learning all kinds of trades but how to make men of themselves. They learn to make houses; but they are not so well housed, they are not so contented in their houses, as the woodchucks in their holes. What is the use of a house if you haven't got a tolerable planet to put it on? - If you cannot tolerate the planet that it is on? Grade the ground first. If a man believes and expects great things of himself, it makes no odds where you put him, or what you show him ... he will be surrounded by grandeur. He is in the condition of a healthy and hungry man, who says to himself, - How sweet this crust is! — Henry David Thoreau

I'm not the type to pat myself on the back and all that, but somebody has to be lucky, right? When I got to Dallas, I was struggling - sleeping on the floor with six guys in a three-bedroom apartment. I used to drive around, look at the big houses, and imagine what it would be like to live there and use that as motivation. — Mark Cuban

I got a bit enamoured with bigger houses and things like that. — John Hewson

What have we got here in America that we believe we cannot live without? We have the most varied and imaginative bathrooms in the world, we have kitchens with the most gimmicks, we have houses with every possible electrical gadget to save ourselves all kinds of trouble - all so that we can have leisure. Leisure, leisure, leisure! So that we don't go mad in the leisure, we have color TV. So that there will never, never, be a moment of silence, we have radio and Muzak. We can't stand silence, because silence includes thinking. And if we thought, we would have to face ourselves. — Agnes De Mille

I'm a Russian and all I know of Russia is what I've read. I yearn for the broad fields of golden corn and the forests of silver beech that I've read of in books and though I try and try, I can't see them with my mind's eye. I know Moscow from what I've seen of it at the cinema. I sometimes rack my brain to picture to myself a Russian village, the straggling village of log houses with their thatched roofs that you read about in Chekov, and it's no good, I know that what I see isn't that at all. I'm a Russian and I speak my native language worse than I speak English and French. When I read Tolstoi and Dostoievsky it is easier for me to read them in a translation. I'm just as much a foreigner to my own people as I am to the English and French. You who've got a home and a country, people who love you, people whose ways are your ways, whom you understand without knowing them - how can you tell what it is to belong nowhere? — W. Somerset Maugham

Everything in L.A. is - it's just an easy place to live in. The houses are nice, the backyards are nice, you got the ocean right there and the mountains behind you; there's an idealised easiness to the way you live and the whole environment. — Spike Jonze

As she left her parents' neighborhood, the houses got newer and bigger and boxier. Through windows with no mullions or fake plastic mullions she could see luminous screens, some giant, some miniature. Evidently every hour of the year, including this one, was a good hour for staring at a screen. — Jonathan Franzen

I've met the folk that have the perfect garlands and sprays and wreaths, the folk that live in Williamsburg-style houses. And I've met the folk that live at the edge of town in two-bedroom ranch houses that have Frosty the Snowman, lights playing tag around the roof, and a Rudolph stuck askew somewhere on the lawn. I'd rather sit in the home of the atter with and errant couch spring poking my derriere because, truthfully, they're glad to have me, and they never look at my shoes and wonder where I'd been before I got there. — Lisa Samson

I think the judging process is full of integrity, compared to some other prizes around the world. The fact that they change the panel of judges every year keeps it from becoming corrupt. I think it's very difficult if you've got judges for life; obviously relationships are cultivated between judges and authors, and publishing houses. — Kazuo Ishiguro

When I came back I joined a black church in Oakland and that made me feel more at home, a bit like being connected to India. It felt funny to be around so many white people when I came back to the United States. It still bothers me. One of the things I liked living in Hawaii years later was the racial complexity of it. I remember that at the time when Sucheng and I got married--we met as graduate students at Berkeley and have been married almost forty years--one of the first houses we bought was in a Black neighborhood in west Berkeley and we didn't quite notice how uniformly Black it was until some weeks later. I said to Sucheng, "You know, we're the only white people in this neighborhood." And she looked at me and said: "Speak for yourself, honkie! — Mark Juergensmeyer

I loathe him. He stands for everything I hate in Washington. The right schools, houses in Georgetown, farms in Virginia, quiet meetings at their clubs. They've got their tight little world and you don't break in
they run it all. The bastards. The superior, self-inflated gentry of Washington. They use other men's intellects, other men's work, wrapping it all into decisions bearing their imprimaturs. And if you're on the outside, you become part of that amorphous entity, a 'damn fine staff.' (Alfred Gillette) — Robert Ludlum

He hated the men floating in sleep in the big stone houses. Because their lives were ordered and their rooms tidy. Because they got up every morning and did their public work. Because they weren't going to dynamite their factories and have naked parties in the fire. — Leonard Cohen

If telling men "don't rape" instead of telling women "don't get raped", is like telling thieves "don't steal" instead of home owners to "lock your houses", why don't we hear more victims of home invasion being told "you got what you deserved for having such a beautiful house on display for everyone to see" ??? — Miya Yamanouchi

There may be dead ground in between; and I may not have got The knack of judging a distance; I will only venture A guess that perhaps between me and the apparent lovers, (Who, incidentally, appear by now to have finished,) At seven o'clock from the houses, is roughly a distance Of about one year and a half. — Henry Reed

Here's the pitch. Mantle swings. There's a tremendous drive going into deep left field! It's going, going! It's over the bleachers ... over the sign atop the bleachers ... into the yards of houses across the street! It's got to be one of the longest runs I've ever seen! How about that! — Mel Allen

I got the idea that to write books would be the best way to spend a life. I never thought of anything else that seemed like half as much fun, although in my next life I would like to be an architect, too, so I can have an easier time restoring houses. — Frances Mayes

When we got more houses than we can live in, more cars than we can ride in, more food than we can eat ourselves, the only way of getting richer by cutting off those who don't have enough. If everybody has more than enough, what good is my more-than-enough? What good is a wide meadow open to everyone? It isn't until others are fenced out that the open pasture begins to have real value. What good is being a major if you can't have more than a second lieutenant? What good is a second lieutenant for that matter? — Nelson Algren

I usually try not to stay the night at any of the Greek houses because I hate waking up in them. The next morning, the magic of the party has worn off and all you're left with is beer cans, vomit and a guy asleep in the bathtub. For some reason, there is always a guy asleep in the bathtub; I can never understand how they got themselves there. — Kimberly Lauren

I never got a chocolate birthday cake; I got a carob one. And when I went to other kids' houses, I was very covetous of things like Cheez Whiz that I'd find in their refrigerators. — Amanda Marshall

There's just got to be more to life than dresses, shoes, hair-dos, make-ups, selfies, big houses and the latest cars. Every individual must go on a hunt for something deeper, larger, eternal and fulfilling than these transcient things which will either degenerate or rot. There must be a desperate need in her to doggedly pursue her Creator to find that higher calling and divine purpose for which she was born. Otherwise even if she has ten children, she'll leave this earth more barren than she entered it, never really having birthed what all along she never knew she was pregnant with: Desitny. — Theresa Pecku-Laryea

Hey. I just wanted to make sure you got home," I say. "Katniss, I live three houses away from you," he says. — Suzanne Collins

Governments don't want a population capable of critical thinking, they want obedient workers, people just smart enough to run the machines and just dumb enough to passively accept their situation.You have no choice. You have owners. They own you. They own everything. They own all the important land. They own, and control the corporations. They've long since bought, and paid for the Senate, the Congress, the state houses, the city halls, they got the judges in their back pockets and they own all the big media companies, so they control just about all of the news and information you get to hear. — George Carlin

You can work and scratch out a living in the theatre, but, if you want to make money, you've got to hit the road. You've got to play big houses of 2, 3 thousand seaters with your name above the bill, do popular fare and reach out to the audience such as it is. — Maxwell Caulfield

When I saw houses in Palmdale going for $500K, I knew something was wrong. If you got foreclosed, I don't feel sorry for you! — Tom Leykis

If the sea level rises 6 inches, that's a big deal ... we can't mitigate that; we can't stop it. We've just got to stop building vast houses on seashores and go back a little bit. — Rupert Murdoch

What in the seven levels of hell did my son see in this place?" Horace asks.
We're standing on the street on Thursday morning, staring up at the house, after taking inventory of the place. From here, I can see five different spots where the brick needs to be repaired and pick out where shingles are missing on the sloped roof. The porch sags, and the windows are dingy. But if I let my eyes go out of focus and ignore all that, I can kinda picture what the place might look like after a little - never mind - a lot of TLC.
"It has good bones?" I suggest.
"It's got old bones," he mutters.
I smirk. "Yeah? So do you. Doesn't mean they're all bad."
He smacks my arm, but he's grinning. "Just wait till you get to be my age, and then tell me how good old bones are. — Erica Cameron

An anonymous pamphleteer in Massachusetts, writing angrily after King George's War, described the situation: "Poverty and Discontent appear in every Face (except the Countenances of the Rich) and dwell upon every Tongue." He spoke of a few men, fed by "Lust of Power, Lust of Fame, Lust of Money," who got rich during the war. "No Wonder such Men can build Ships, Houses, buy Farms, set up their Coaches, Chariots, live very splendidly, purchase Fame, Posts of Honour." He called them "Birds of prey ... Enemies to all Communities - wherever they live. — Howard Zinn

Modern Romans insisted that there was only one god, a notion that struck Alobar as comically simplistic. Worse, this Semitic deity was reputed to be jealous (what was there to be jealous of if there were no other gods?), vindictive, and altogether foul-tempered. If you didn't serve the nasty fellow, the Romans would burn your house down. If you did serve him, you were called a Christian and got to burn other people's houses down. — Tom Robbins

As a matter of fact, that's the reason why I've learned to speak this language, and to write it too: so I can speak in the place of a dead man, so I can finish his sentences for him. The murderer got famous, and his story's too well written for me to get any ideas about imitating him. He wrote in his own language. Therefore I'm going to do what was done in this country after Independence: I'm going to take the stones from the old houses the colonists left behind, remove them one by one, and build my own house, my own language. The murderer's words and expressions are my unclaimed goods. Besides, the country's littered with words that don't belong to anyone anymore. — Kamel Daoud

This is no dream, Novi. Everything you are experiencing is real and until you accept that, you will not be able to go home."
"Yeah, okay. Sure. Twin queens, talking otters, Autumn Fae, houses suspended in midair. Yep, totally real. Got it. — Brynn Myers

They [investment bankers] don't even want the stuff that they've got, you know the fancy cars and houses. Their consumption is basically just a keeping up with the Joneses or let's buy the markers of success because this is what I'm supposed to have and this is what I'm supposed to do. And they are working so hard that they don't even have the time to think about what they might actually desire. — Larkin Grimm

These relatives of hers, the Boles and the Jetters and the Pooles, used to be around the house a lot, or else Lea wanted to be at one of their houses. It was a clan that didn't always enjoy one another's company but who made sure they got plenty of it. — Alice Munro

And the people in the houses All went to the University And they got put in boxes Little boxes all the same, Little boxes all the same, Little boxes all the same, Little boxes all the same And they all come out all the same. — Pete Seeger

When I was 7, an old lady was driving too fast in my neighborhood and hit me with her car. I was running out of the house, and when I got halfway into the street, my mom saw the car and yelled for me to run back. As I turned around the car hit me, dragged me five houses down the road, and I fractured my collarbone. — Rutina Wesley

Hardcore wrestling like CZW is just nonsense. There's no story there. You've got guys jumping off of houses onto barb wired tables, and that's it. They don't know how to work. CZW is trash. — Triple H

Forget the politicians. The politicians are put there to give you the idea you have freedom of choice. You don't. You have no choice. You have owners. They own you. They own everything. They own all the important land, they own and control the corporations that've long since bought and paid for, the senate, the congress, the state houses, the city halls, they got the judges in their back pocket, and they own all the big media companies so they control just about all of the news and the information you get to hear. They got you by the balls. They spend billions of dollars every year lobbying to get what they want. Well, we know what they want. They want more for themselves and less for everybody else. But I'll tell you what they don't want. They don't want a population of citizens capable of critical thinking. They don't want well informed, well educated people capable of critical thinking. They're not interested in that. That doesn't help them. — George Carlin

You want to buy cars and houses and castles, all of that's on you and how America has systematized your mind to be into materialism. Hip-hop ain't got nothing to do with that. I'm glad that anybody making money has picked themselves up - I just want them to give some of it back to the community. — Afrika Bambaataa

Like so many aspiring writers who still have boxes of things they've written in their parents' houses, I filled notebooks with half-finished poems and stories and first paragraphs of novels that never got written. — Ally Carter

The row of villas which lines Western Avenue is like a row of pink graves in a field of grey; an architectural image of middle age. Their uniformity is the discipline of growing old, of dying without violence and living without success. They are houses which have got the better of their occupants, whom they change at will, and do not change themselves. Furniture vans glide respectfully among them like hearses, discreetly removing the dead and introducing the living. Now and then some tenant will raise his hand, expending pots of paint on the woodwork or labour on the garden, but his efforts no more alter the house than flowers a hospital ward, and the grass will grow its own way, like grass on a grave. — John Le Carre

I had to stop sneaking around girls' houses like some kind of dumb-ass cat burglar. Clearly it got me nowhere good. — Kieran Scott

Lind. Indeed, I do remember that I have read of one Alexander a coppersmith, who did much oppose, and disturb the apostles; - (aiming it is like at me, because I was a tinker). Bun. To which I answered, that I also had read of very many priests and pharisees, that had their hands in the blood of our Lord Jesus Christ. Lind. Aye, saith he, and you are one of those scribes and pharisees: for you, with a pretence, make long prayers to devour widows' houses. Bun. I answered, that if he had got no more by preaching and praying than I had done, he would not be so rich as now he was. But that scripture coming into my mind, Answer not a fool according to his folly, I was as sparing of my speech as I could, without prejudice to truth. — John Bunyan

There's no way that Michael Jackson or whoever Jackson should have a million thousand droople billion dollars and then there's people starving. There's no way! There's no way that these people should own planes and there people don't have houses. Apartments. Shacks. Drawers. Pants! I know you're rich. I know you got 40 billion dollars, but can you just keep it to one house? You only need ONE house. And if you only got two kids, can you just keep it to two rooms? I mean why have 52 rooms and you know there's somebody with no room?! It just don't make sense to me. It don't. — Tupac Shakur

Where are we going, Walt Whitman? The doors close in an hour. Which way does your beard point tonight?
(I touch your book and dream of our odyssey in the supermarket and feel absurd.)
Will we walk all night through solitary streets? The trees add shade to shade, lights out in the houses, we'll both be lonely.
Will we stroll dreaming of the lost America of love past blue automobiles in driveways, home to our silent cottage?
Ah, dear father, graybeard, lonely old courage-teacher, what America did you have when Charon quit poling his ferry and you got out on a smoking bank and stood watching the boat disappear on the black waters of Lethe? — Allen Ginsberg

I was raised by the Indian community, and those families are still very close to us. We used to go to each others' houses one Sunday a month, so we got to know everyone well. Also, we love Indian food and can't get enough of it. — Nikki Haley

Glossie looked around at the houses. The snow was quite deep in that village, and just before them was a roof only a few feet above the sledge. A broad chimney, which seemed to Glossie big enough to admit Claus, was at the peak of the roof. "Why don't you climb down that chimney?" asked Glossie. Claus looked at it. "That would be easy enough if I were on top of the roof," he answered. "Then hold fast and we will take you there," said the deer, and they gave one bound to the roof and landed beside the big chimney. "Good!" cried Claus, well pleased, and he slung the pack of toys over his shoulder and got into the chimney. — L. Frank Baum

There is a big park in the middle of the locality. Surrounded by at least 50 houses. That those residents got to live in such a locale is their karma. Do they ever come to the park? To walk, jog, run, play ? That is free will. — Andy Paula

Other people's houses were always fascinating. As soon as you went through the door for the first time, you got the feel of the atmosphere, and so discovered something about the personalities of the people who lived there. — Rosamunde Pilcher

The thing that really struck me when I went to junior high was class. I grew up on a pretty poor street, but the school district I was in included some fine neighborhoods - so I got to know a couple of the kids from those places and went to their houses and experienced such culture shock. — Lynda Barry

It seems like as we stand there I'm watching my whole life with Hana, our entire friendship, fall away: sleepover parties with forbidden midnight bowls of popcorn; all the times we rehearsed for Evaluation Day, when Hana would steal a pair of her father's old glasses, and bang on her desk with a ruler whenever I got an answer wrong, and we always started choking with laughter halfway through; the time she put a fist, hard, in Jillian Dawson's face because Jillian said my blood was diseased; eating ice cream on the pier and dreaming of being paired and living in identical houses, side by side. All of it is being sucked into nothing, like sand getting swept up by a current. — Lauren Oliver

We've got to get past this idea that God is most glorified when we're rich, healthy and wealthy and we go, "Isn't God grand? Look at all He gave me." Because if anybody joins us in that and says, "Oh, if you love Jesus, you get a house and health and cars? Then I love Jesus too." Because then all of a sudden you've got a different religion. You have the religion of cars and houses, not God. — Matt Chandler

Most of the houses were of logs - all of them, indeed, except three or four; these latter were frame ones. There were none of brick, and none of stone. There was a log church, with a puncheon floor and slab benches. A puncheon floor is made of logs whose upper surfaces have been chipped flat with the adze. The cracks between the logs were not filled; there was no carpet; consequently, if you dropped anything smaller than a peach, it was likely to go through. The church was perched upon short sections of logs, which elevated it two or three feet from the ground. Hogs slept under there, and whenever the dogs got after them during services, the minister had to wait till the disturbance was over. In winter there was always a refreshing breeze up through the puncheon floor; in summer there were fleas enough for all. — Mark Twain

I don't believe in aliens. I don't think aliens or ghosts like black people. We never get abducted; our houses never get haunted. It always happens in rural areas, where no ethnic people live. The day I see somebody from South Central Los Angeles say, 'Man, I got abducted yesterday,' then I'll believe it. — Xzibit

I got very cross with the term, kitchen sink. It just meant that you invaded different kinds of houses, where it was very difficult to avoid kitchen sink. — Timothy West

Downloading's the same as what I used to do. I used to tape the charts of the songs I liked [off the radio]. I don't mind it. I hate all these big, silly rock stars who moan. At least they're fuckin' downloading your music, you cunt, and paying attention, know what I mean? You should fuckin' appreciate that, what are you moaning about? You've got fuckin' five big houses, so shut up. — Liam Gallagher

The hardest bits of my book to read were the easiest bits to write because they were the most immediate. Probably because I had never stopped thinking about them on some level. Those bits I was just channelling and those were the most exciting writing days. The bits I found harder were the bits that happen in between, you know, the rest of living. There were whole years, whole houses, that I just got rid of. — Damian Barr

Nobody should be hitting lotto for 36 million dollars when we got people starving in the streets. That is not idealistic, that's just real. That is just stupid. There's no way Michael Jackson, or whoever should have thousands, millions, billions of dollars and we got people broke with two-three jobs and still can't pay bills on time. There's no way! No way these people should have planes when people don't have houses, apartments, shacks, drawers, pants!!! — Tupac Shakur

The wrap party for the 'Lorna Doone' TV series was pretty special. We went to about four clubs, then four people's houses, and I got home at midday the next day. I'd been wearing ridiculous green shoes all night, and the dye had smudged all over my legs. — Amelia Warner

Looking through my bedroom window, out into the moonlight and the unending smoke-colored snow, I could see the lights in the windows of all the other houses on our hill and hear the music rising from them up the long, steadily falling night. I turned the gas down, I got into bed. I said some words to the close and holy darkness, and then I slept. — Dylan Thomas

This war ends, then so do the taxpayer-funded contracts, the drumbeats in the media, the nice Combatant faces, and the patriotic cause to lull the civilians and shame the dissenters. The other thing that comes to an end is all the justification for why this country's run the way it is. People will wonder why their paychecks are still getting halved to pay off the men who own their utility companies, their roads, their national parks. They'll wonder why they've got to work eighty-hour weeks to support the folks who took their houses and destroyed the middle-class jobs. There's not going to be an enemy to point a finger at anymore. People will see the real problem. — S.J. Kincaid

That's the depressing part of places like this. Guest houses run by broken-down gentlepeople. They're full of failures - of people who have never got anywhere and never will get anywhere, of people who - who have been defeated and broken by life, of people who are old and tired and finished. — Agatha Christie

We need tits and arse because they have got to be available to us; to be pawed, fucked, wanked over. Because we're men? No. Because we're consumers. Because those are things we like, things we intrinsically feel or have been conned into believing will give us value, release satisfaction. We value them so we need to at least have the illusion of their availability. For tits and arse read coke, crisps, speedboats, cars, houses, computers, designer labels, replica shirts. That's why advertising and pornography are similar; they sell the illusion of availability and the non-consequence of consumption. — Irvine Welsh

Excessively precise economic analysis can lead to assessing everything in terms of its easily measurable melt value - the value that thieves get from stealing copper wiring from isolated houses, that vandals got from tearing down Greek temples for the lead joints holding the marble blocks together, that shortsighted timber companies get from liquidating their forests. The standard to insist on is live value. What is something worth when it's working? — Stewart Brand

Then one day along come a Friday and that a unlucky star day and I playin' round de house and marster Williams come up and say, "Delis, will you 'low Jim walk down the street with me?" My mammy say, "All right, Jim, you be a good boy," and dat de las' time I ever heard her speak, or ever see her. We walks down whar de houses grows close together and pretty soon comes to de slave market. I ain't seed it 'fore, but when marster Williams says, "Git up on de block," I got a funny feelin', and I knows what has happened. — James Green

You come to this place, mid-life. You don't know how you got here, but suddenly you're staring fifty in the face. When you turn and look back down the years, you glimpse the ghosts of other lives you might have led; all houses are haunted. The wraiths and phantoms creep under your carpets and between the warp and weft of fabric, they lurk in wardrobes and lie flat under drawer-liners. You think of the children you might have had but didn't. When the midwife says, 'It's a boy,' where does the girl go? When you think you're pregnant, and you're not, what happens to the child that has already formed in your mind? You keep it filed in a drawer of your consciousness, like a short story that never worked after the opening lines. — Hilary Mantel

In my mind, I built stairways. At the end of the stairways, I imagined rooms. These were high, airy places with big windows and a cool breeze moving through. I imagined one room opening brightly onto another room until I'd built a house, a place with hallways and more staircases. I built many houses, one after another, and those gave rise to a city -- a calm, sparkling city near the ocean, a place like Vancouver. I put myself there, and that's where I lived, in the wide-open sky of my mind. I made friends and read books and went running on a footpath in a jewel-green park along the harbour. I ate pancakes drizzled in syrup and took baths and watched sunlight pour through trees. This wasn't longing, and it wasn't insanity. It was relief. It got me through. — Amanda Lindhout

All that five thousand kids lived in those five thousand houses, owned by guys that got off the train. The houses looked so much alike that, time and time again, the kids went home by mistake to different houses and different families. Nobody ever noticed. — Ken Kesey

When I'm not working, I'm on the road with my band. Or I'm performing in poetry houses doing spoken work. So I've got another passion and another outlet that allows me to be creatively fulfilled and not sitting at home pulling my hair out waiting for the right role to come along. — Malcolm-Jamal Warner

I see young men, my townsmen, whose misfortune it is to have inherited farms, houses, barns, cattle, and farming tools; for these are more easily acquired than got rid of. Better if they had been born in the open pasture and suckled by a wolf, that they might have seen with clearer eyes what field they were called to labor in. Who made them serfs of the soil? Why should they eat their sixty acres, when man is condemned to eat only his peck of dirt? Why should they begin digging their graves as soon as they are born? — Henry David Thoreau

Uncle Burley said hills always looked blue when you were far away from them. That was a pretty color for hills; the little houses and barns and fields looked so neat and quiet tucked against them. It made you want to be close to them. But he said that when you got close they were like the hills you'd left, and when you looked back your own hills were blue and you wanted to go back again. He said he reckoned a man could wear himself out going back and forth. — Wendell Berry

She wondered how people would remember her. She had not made enough to spread her wealth around like Carnegie, to erase any sins that had attached to her name, she had failed, she had not reached the golden bough. The liberals would cheer her death. They would light marijuana cigarettes and drive to their sushi restaurants and eat fresh food that had traveled eight thousand miles. They would spend all of supper complaining about people like her, and when they got home their houses would be cold and they'd press a button on a wall to get warm. The whole time complaining about big oil. — Philipp Meyer

A solid 70 percent of houses guessed that I was dressed as a fancy pimp. Whatever - I still got candy. Molly went as a calculator. So, anyway, that was the Halloween I dressed as A Source of Concern to My Family. — Dave Holmes

I am now going to state three facts, which will startle a large class of readers on this side of the Atlantic, very much. Firstly, there is a joint-stock piano in a great many of the boarding-houses. Secondly, nearly all these young ladies subscribe to circulating libraries. Thirdly, they have got up among themselves a periodical called The Lowell Offering, 'A repository of original articles, written exclusively by females actively employed in the mills,' - which is duly printed, published, and sold; and whereof I brought away from Lowell four hundred good solid pages, which I have read from beginning to end. The large class of readers, startled by these facts, will exclaim, with one voice, 'How very preposterous!' On my deferentially inquiring why, they will answer, 'These things are above their station.' In reply to that objection, I would beg to ask what their station is. — Charles Dickens

When I was in fourth grade, I had a lot of upheaval in my life. Both of my parents remarried, and we all got new houses. That was also the year my older brother got very sick. — Lisa Graff

before I got to the shore, which I conjectured was about eight o'clock in the evening. I then advanced forward near half a mile, but could not discover any sign of houses or inhabitants; at least I was in so weak a condition, that I did not observe them. I was extremely tired, and with that, and the heat of the weather, and about half a pint of brandy that I drank as I left the ship, I found myself much inclined to sleep. I lay down on the grass, which was very short and soft, where I slept sounder than ever I remembered to have done in my life, and, as I reckoned, about nine hours; for when I awaked, it was just day-light. I attempted to rise, but was not able to stir: for, as I happened to lie on my back, I found my arms and legs were strongly fastened on each side to the ground; and my hair, which was long — Jonathan Swift

I had not seen "Pride and Prejudice," till I read that sentence of yours, and then I got the book. And what did I find? An accurate daguerreotyped portrait of a common-place face; a carefully fenced, highly cultivated garden, with neat borders and delicate flowers; but no glance of a bright, vivid physiognomy, no open country, no fresh air, no blue hill, no bonny beck. I should hardly like to live with her ladies and gentlemen, in their elegant but confined houses. — Charlotte Bronte

You're supposed to be a spirit of intellect. I don't understand why you're obsessed with sex."
Bob's voice got defensive. "It's an academic interest, Harry."
"Oh yeah? Well maybe I don't think it's fair to let your academia go peeping in other people's houses."
"Wait a minute. My academia doesn't just peep -"
I held up a hand. "Save it. I don't want to hear it."
He grunted. "You're trivializing what getting out for a bit means to me, Harry. You're insulting my masculinity."
"Bob," I said, "you're a skull . You don't have any masculinity to insult."
"Oh yeah?" Bob challenged me. "Pot kettle black, Harry! Have you gotten a date yet? Huh? Most men have something better to do in the middle of the night than play with their chemistry sets. — Jim Butcher

Houses, like people, are apt to become rather eccentric if left too much on their own; this house was the architectural equivalent of an old gentleman in a worn dressing-gown and torn slippers, who got up and went to bed at odd times of day, and who kept up a continual conversation with friends no one else could see. — Susanna Clarke

If there's one thing I'd like most for you, it's that you'll find your calling in life. That's where true happiness and purpose lies. Whether it's taking care of abandoned animals, saving old houses from the wreckin' ball, or reading to the blind, you've got to find your fire, sugar. You'll never be fulfilled if you don't. — Beth Hoffman

I think London is made up of tiny little pockets and villages, and lots of little sub-cultures. So, especially for an actor, it's a brilliant place to live because you've got inspiration all the time, wherever you are. You can turn a corner and you'll be in mansion houses with beautiful gardens and Ferraris, and you'll turn back on yourself and it'll be ghetto land. But I think that's brilliant. — Scarlett Alice Johnson

Ma Joad: How am I gonna know about ya, Tommy? Why they could kill ya and I'd never know. They could hurt ya. How am I gonna know?
Tom Joad: Well, maybe it's like Casy says. A fellow ain't got a soul of his own, just a little piece of a big soul, the one big soul that belongs to everybody, then ...
Ma Joad: Then what, Tom?
Tom Joad: Then it don't matter. I'll be around in the dark - I'll be everywhere. Wherever you can look - wherever there's a fight, so hungry people cant eat, I'll be there. Wherever there's a cop beatin' up a guy, I'll be there. I'll be in the way guys yell when they're mad. I'll be in the way kids laugh when they're hungry and they know supper's ready, and when the people are eatin' the stuff they raise and livin' in the houses they buid - I'll be there, too. — John Steinbeck

I never worried about money. I grew up in a middle-class family, so I never thought I would starve. And I learned at Atari that I could be an okay engineer, so I always knew I could get by. I was voluntarily poor when I was in college and India, and I lived a pretty simple life even when I was working. So I went from fairly poor, which was wonderful, because I didn't have to worry about money, to being incredibly rich, when I also didn't "have to worry about money.
I watched people at Apple who made a lot of money and felt they had to live differently. Some of them bought a Rolls-Royce and various houses, each with a house manager and then someone to manage the house managers. Their wives got plastic surgery and turned into these bizarre people. This was not how I wanted to live. It's crazy. I made a promise to myself that I'm not going to let this money ruin my life."
Excerpt From: Walter, Isaacson. "Steve Jobs." Simon & Schuster, 2011-10-23T21:00:00+00:00. iBooks. — Walter Isaacson

There is no normality in life. Having two houses means that we can get out of each other's hair - which, let's face it, we've both got a lot of — Helena Bonham Carter