House Top Quotes & Sayings

Yes, yes, I'm coming. Right up the top of the house. One moment I'll linger. How the mud goes round in the mind - what a swirl these monsters leave, the waters rocking, the weeds waving and green here, black there, striking to the sand, till by degrees the atoms reassemble, the deposit sifts itself, and a gain through the eyes one sees clear and still, and there comes to the lips some prayer for the departed, some obsequy for the souls of those one nods to, the one never meets again. — Virginia Woolf

It was traumatic for my children to see the British army en masse coming into our home and searching the house. I recall on one occasion, when our home was raided, my youngest son was standing at the top of the stairs - he would probably have been only three years of age - in his pyjamas. The soldiers came up the stairs, and he peed himself. — Martin McGuinness

Eric Peters' music is at the top of what gets played around my house, in my car and while I am running. I am a big fan. He writes incredibly honest and poetic lyrics coupled with memorable pop melodies and I can think of no better combination. — Jill Phillips

My modesty has prevented me from declaring from the house top that the message of non-co-operation, nonviolence and swadeshi is a message to the world. — Mahatma Gandhi

Whenever you're taking advantage of all those rules you make in your favor, you're turning me inside out and when that happens, you're not white and I'm not black, or poor, or one bad mood on the part of some racist asshole away from being unemployed. In your garden, I'm Eve, and when you take me shoe shopping, I'm Cinderella. On top of your mountain, I feel like Mother Earth. In your house, I'm a lady. You dress me like one and you insist others treat me like one. — Eden Connor

This house is just a thing ... On your love list, always put the beating hearts at the top. — Meg Donohue

All right, the alien testosterone right now is a little too much, and I really don't want to have an alien brawl in my house on top of the broken window and the dead body that came through it." I took a breath. "But if you two don't knock it off, I'll kick both of your asses. — Jennifer L. Armentrout

Zooey was in dreamy top form. The announcer had them off on the subject of housing developments, and the little Burke girl said she hated houses that all look alike-meaning a long row of identical 'development' houses. Zooey said they were 'nice.' He said it would be very nice to come home and be in the wrong house. To eat dinner with the wrong people by mistake, sleep in the wrong bed by mistake, and kiss everybody goodbye in the morning thinking they were your own family. He said he even wished everybody in the world looked exactly alike. He said you'd keep thinking everybody you met was your wife or your mother or father, and people would always be throwing their arms around each other wherever they went, and it would look 'very nice. — J.D. Salinger

Lily?"

She couldn't see his face, but she knew his eyes were on her. She could feel them.

A beat passed. Then another. He flicked the flashlight on, his eyes zooming in on her mouth. "Don't suppose you're scared enough of the dark to leave."

She shook her head. "I don't suppose you're planning on leaving me on my own."

A smile, then, "You might cheat." He tugged their linked hands and leaned the slightest bit closer.

"True," she breathed, mirroring his movement. "I wouldn't trust you if our roles were reversed." Inches from his face, she admired the curve of his top lip. "What are you doing, Black?"

"I think," he whispered back, his warm breath fanning over her lips, "I'm going to have to kiss you, McIntire. — Jessica Lemmon

White men get a choice. They get to choose they job, they house. They get to choose to make black babies, then disappear into thin air, like they wasn't never there to begin with, like these black women they slept with or raped done laid on top of themselves and got pregnant. White men get to choose for black men too. Used to sell 'em; now they just send 'em to prison like my daddy, so that they can't be with they kids. — Yaa Gyasi

And if I sit in that room at the top of the house and I think about my life and if I shut my eyes from time to time and imagine being warm in the summer and I hear the bees buzzing and for a moment I truly am Alice in Wonderland, do you have the heart to tell me I am not? — John Logan

Piper decided to jump off the roof. It wasn't a rash decision on her part. This was her plan: Climb to the top of the roof, pick up speed by running from one end all the way to the other. Jump off. Finally, and most importantly, don't fall. She didn't make plans in the event she did fall, because if you jump off the roof of your house and land on your head, you really don't need any plans from that point on. Even Piper knew that. So that's what she did. She jumped clean off her roof. But before we get to what happens next, you'll probably need to know a thing or two about a thing or two ... — Victoria Forester

In the big house opposite someone was playing the piano at Dolzhikov's. It was beginning to get dark, and stars were twinkling in the sky. Here my father, in an old top-hat with wide upturned brim, walked slowly by with my sister on his arm, bowing in response to greetings.
"Look up," he said to my sister, pointing to the sky with the same umbrella with which he had beaten me that afternoon. "Look up at the sky! Even the tiniest stars are all worlds! How insignificant is man in comparison with the universe!"
And he said this in a tone that suggested that it was particularly agreeable and flattering to him that he was so insignificant. How absolutely devoid of talent and imagination he was! — Anton Chekhov

I will be thirty years old again in thirty seconds. I will take the best room in the Grand Central or the Orndorff Hotel. I will dine on oysters and palomitas and wash them down with white wine. Then I will go to the Acme or Keating's or the Big Gold Bar and sit down and draw my cards and fill an inside straight and win myself a thousand dollars. Then I will go to the Red Light or the Monte Carlo and dance the floor afire. Then I will go to a parlor house and have them top up a bathtub with French champagne and I will strip and dive into it with a bare-assed blonde and a redhead and an octoroon and the four of us will get completely presoginated and laugh and let long bubbly farts at hell and baptize each other in the name of the Trick, the Prick, and the Piper-Heidsick. — Glendon Swarthout

I like to call a spade a spade in politics and in everything else.
That's why the zionists and the americans ...
The top officials hate Saddam Hussein.
The White House is lying once again. He's a liar.
He's the world's number one liar.
He said there were chemical weapons in Iraq, and that Iraq is connected with terrorism.
Later he declared: 'We didn't find any of this in Iraq.'
What I want to say is that he also declared that what Saddam Hussein says is not true ...
This is defamation of your president of thirty five years. — Saddam Hussein

The street in the center of town was Butts road. I stole the sign and told the audience, this must be where the assholes live. I also had a Neighborhood Crime Watch - it takes about 20 seconds to break into a house but it took me an hour to unbolt this sign. — Carrot Top

One thing that in my reporting that I found and was amazed to find was that, as far as I could determine, neither high-level White House officials in the Bush administration nor even the top brass at the CIA even knew the history of water boarding when they approved it. — Scott Shane

Rabbi Heskel Shpilman is a deformed mountain, a giant ruined desert, a cartoon house with the windows shut and the sink left running. A little kid lumped him together, a mob of kids, blind orphans who never laid eyes on a man. They clumped the dough of his arms and legs to the dough of his body, then jammed his head down on top. A millionaire could cover a Rolls-Royce with the fine black silk-and-velvet expanse of the rebbe's frock coat and trousers. It would require the brain strength of the eighteen greatest sages in history to reason through the arguments against and in favor of classifying the rebbe's massive bottom as either a creature of the deep, a man-made structure, or an unavoidable act of God. — Michael Chabon

Rose pictured him standing at the boundary of the Ogletree house in that enormous fur cape, with a giant sword sticking over his shoulder, roaring at the top of his lungs and then being upset that nobody came out, and laughed. — Ilona Andrews

I snapped the crossbow into the top of the mount, took a canvas bundle from the cart, and unrolled it. Crossbow bolts, tipped with the Galahad warheads.
"This is my baby." I petted the stock.
"You have a strange relationship with your weapons," Roman said.
"You have no idea," Raphael told him.
"This from a man with a living staff and a man who once drove four hours both ways for a sword he then put on his wall," I murmured.
"It was an Angus Trim," Raphael said.
"It's a sharpened strip of metal."
"You have an Angus Trim sword?" Kate's eyes lit up.
"Bought it at an estate auction," Raphael said. "If we get out of this alive, you are invited to come to my house and play with it."
It was good that Curran wasn't here and I was secure in our relationship, because that totally could be taken the wrong way. — Ilona Andrews

The address label wouldn't come off so I put the ripped electric bill back in its stack by the phone. On top of all the other bills, all the papers that ran the house invisibly — Aimee Bender

I walked through the house to the back porch and found the screen door covered top to bottom, side to side, with cats meowing for food ... They were so thick on the door I could barely see the light between them. — Earl B. Russell

For 82 minutes, 'The Little Mermaid' reclaims the movie house as a dream palace and the big screen as a window into enchantment. Live-action filmmakers, see this and try to top it. Go on and try. — Richard Corliss

My grandparents back in Kentucky owned a tobacco farm. So, to make money in the summer, we could cut and chop and top and house and strip the tobacco. — George Clooney

Bay remembered the Waverley house full of pumpkin pie scents in the fall. There had been mountains of maple cakes with violets hidden inside, lakes of butternut soups with chrysanthemum petals floating on top. — Sarah Addison Allen

VII
From my village I see as much of the universe as can be seen
from the earth,
And so my village is as large as any town,
For I am the size of what I see
And not the size of my height ...
In the cities life is smaller
Than here in my house on top of this hill.
The big buildings of cities lock up the view,
They hide the horizon, pulling our gaze far away from the
open sky.
They make us small, for they take away all the vastness our
eyes can see,
And they make us poor, for our only wealth is seeing. — Fernando Pessoa

I would always fall down the big main staircase in our house. My favorite thing in the world was to pretend to be horribly killed at the top of it, and to fall dramatically down to the bottom of it. — David Hyde Pierce

Yes I marked the spot in the garage..when I was back at the house on December 22. They had asked me with all of the rebuilding of the garage, which was the last area of concrete..in the last area where the concrete was poured. And they handed me an orange spray can and I put an 'X'..that's it! An 'X' over the spot in the corner of the garage where I thought the last area was poured. Now all of a sudden Kunkle claims that I not only drew an 'X', but I put an 'O' on top of it where the head was and made the 'X' look like it was a stick figure..and that's not true. — John Wayne Gacy

I glanced back down at my bathing suit, thought about my house, the dirty dishes in the sink, my tampon box on top of the toilet, the remnants of Ben's and my mani-pedi party still on the coffee table, mail scattered on the table ... this was bad. I took off running, the white-linen-panted gay close on my water-pruned heels. — Alessandra Torre

Burn, baby, burn," she muttered in a hard, satisfied voice.
I cleared my throat. "As much as I hate to interrupt the supreme satisfaction you're taking in watching the mansion blaze to the ground, I'd really
like to get out of here before the whole house collapses on top of us. — Jennifer Estep

The Iron Man came to the top of the cliff. How far had he walked? Nobody knows. Where did he come from? Nobody knows. How was he made? Nobody knows. Taller than a house the Iron Man stood at the top of the cliff, at the very brink, in the darkness. — Ted Hughes

When you're and only child in a family with an only parent, you look at other, bigger families with envy. Mary Alice had a family with a station wagon, a split-level house, and a pool.
But then I looked up and saw Mary Alice's toes, as she stood at the edged of the diving board. Her second toe lay on top of her big toe on each foot. I had never seen such a thing. I wondered if Mary Alice's toes would ever prevent her from doing the things she wanted to do in life.
"Look, y'all!" she said, forming her perfect body into a perfect swan's dive. I decided then that any time I got frustrated with my overall situation in life, mad or jealous of knee socks or a pink canopy bed in a pink room, I'd take a deep breath and think about Mary Alice's toes. At least I didn't have Mary Alice's toes. — Margaret McMullan

He unsnapped the top button on his jeans.
My eyes widened."Sneaky bastard."
I gnawed my lip in pleasure,watching the past,present,and future Master of Cadogan House in the state of utter abandon:shirt on the floor,jeans unbuttoned,his arousal obvious. — Chloe Neill

The creature had nut-brown skin mixed with patches of ash. It was human-sized and formed, but its skin looked like the bark of an old, old tree. About the same height as Donna, it was spindly with arms and legs that were all joints and angles. Its face was narrow and pointed, with hair on top of its head like thick moss and narrow black eyes that glinted even in the dim light of the room. The thing's body was clothed in lichen and moss, with vines twining around its sharp limbs. The creature opened its lipless mouth, a dark slash across its twisted face.

Donna's mind flashed back to the party and the shadow she'd seen sliding through the darkness outside Xan's house. She hadn't been imagining things, after all.

The wood elves had returned to the city. — Karen Mahoney

I thought it would be funny to take a photo in the White House bathroom, I take pictures everywhere I go, but I don't think I can top that one. — John Legend

Beyond the field my eyes studied a long wall of pine trees, a windbreak of sorts that stretched from the road back toward an old farmhouse and an older barn surrounded by low brush. Through the binoculars, I could just make out the top of Carney's Impala parked in the side yard by the house. From a long way off you could see that the white house paint was blistered or gone to bare clapboard. The roof of the barn looked like it had been hit by lightning at some point. There was a charred, gaping hole on one corner. The whole structure sagged left. — James Patterson

For the last century, almost all top political appointments [on the planet Earth] had been made by random computer selection from the pool of individuals who had the necessary qualifications. It had taken the human race several thousand years to realize that there were some jobs that should never be given to the people who volunteered for them, especially if they showed too much enthusiasm. As one shrewed political commentator had remarked: We want a President who has to be carried screaming and kicking into the White House - but will then do the best job he possibly can, so that he'll get time off for good behavior. — Arthur C. Clarke

Early as it was, every one had breakfasted, and my basin of bread and milk was put on the oven-top to await my coming down. Every one was gone about their work. The first to come into the house-place was Phillis with a basket of eggs. Faithful to my resolution, I asked -
"What are those?"
She looked at me for a moment, and then said gravely -
"Potatoes!"
"No! they are not," said I. "They are eggs. What do you mean by saying they are potatoes?"
"What do you mean by asking me what they were, when they are plain to be seen?" retorted she.
We were both getting a little angry with each other. — Elizabeth Gaskell

It was like the top of the roof came off the house, .. He had that effect on everyone. — James Taylor

The top 1 percent have the best houses, the best educations, the best doctors, and the best lifestyles, but there is one thing that money doesn't seem to have bought: an understanding that their fate is bound up with how the other 99 percent live. Throughout history, this is something that the top 1 percent eventually do learn. Too late. — Joseph Stiglitz

Oh, come on, what's the matter with Romeo and Juliet?"
Megan took the movie from my grasp to put it in the DVD player.
"Do you want a list?" I didn't wait for an answer. "Romeo's whining about a girl one day, in love with Juliet the next. He has the decency to marry her but then they go back to her parent's house? I mean, what kind of asinine plan is that? Come on, their families hate each other! If you're going to sneak away and get married, just sneak away! It's like watching the girl in a horror movie walk up the dark attic stairs. She totally deserves whatever
she gets at the top."
"Are you saying they deserved to die? — Jolene Perry

From the pavement, I could see the window of Albertine's room, that window, formerly quite black, at night, when she was not staying in the house, which the electric light inside, dissected by the slats of the shutters, striped from top to bottom with parallel bars of gold. — Marcel Proust

You ask me how I became a madman. It happened thus: One day, long before many gods were born, I woke from a deep sleep and found all my masks were stolen, the seven masks I have fashioned an worn in seven lives, I ran maskless through the crowded streets shouting, "Thieves, thieves, the cursed thieves."
Men and women laughed at me and some ran to their houses in fear of me.
And when I reached the market place, a youth standing on a house-top cried, "He is a madman." I looked up to behold him; the sun kissed my own naked face for the first time. For the first time the sun kissed my own naked face and my soul was inflamed with love for the sun, and I wanted my masks no more. And as if in a trance I cried, "Blessed, blessed are the thieves who stole my masks."
Thus I became a madman. — Kahlil Gibran

You know, back in the 1950s and '60s, when J. Edgar Hoover was making the FBI the respected organization it used to be, oftentimes they would find a fugitive and basically have his house surrounded, and then put out a press release saying he was on the top 10 most wanted list. And 10 minutes later, he'd be arrested. — Howie Carr

It was about three o'clock at night when the final result of the calculation [which gave birth to quantum mechanics] lay before me ... At first I was deeply shaken ... I was so excited that I could not think of sleep. So I left the house ... and awaited the sunrise on top of a rock. — Werner Heisenberg

I call this my church house trilogy. Souls' Chapel really was music from the Mississippi Delta, which to me is a church within itself. The Delta is the church of American Roots music. The Badlands is a cathedral without a top on it. And the Ryman has been called the Mother Church of Country Music, but to me it's the Mother Church of American Music. If you can think it up, it's been done there. In my mind, this is kind of a spiritual odyssey as much as anything else, and I had the settings of three churches to make it in. — Marty Stuart

The Raven's house is built with reeds, - Sing woe, and alas is me! And the Raven's couch is spread with weeds, High on the hollow tree; And the Raven himself, telling his beads In penance for his past misdeeds, Upon the top I see. — Thomas D

In December 1935, Louie graduated from high school; a few weeks later, he rang in 1936 with his thoughts full of Berlin. The Olympic trials track finals would be held in New York in July, and the Olympic committee would base its selection of competitors on a series of qualifying races. Louie had seven months to run himself onto the team. In the meantime, he also had to figure out what to do about the numerous college scholarships being offered to him. Pete had won a scholarship to the University of Southern California, where he had become one of the nation's top ten college milers. He urged Louie to accept USC's offer but delay entry until the fall, so he could train full-time. So Louie moved into Pete's frat house and, with Pete coaching him, trained obsessively. All day, every day, he lived and breathed the 1,500 meters and Berlin. — Laura Hillenbrand

I was a witch and like a witch, deserved to have a house fall on top of me while wearing my favorite shoes — Meredith Schorr

As a student of Tony Robbins, Matt had been using affirmations and incantations for years to create extraordinary levels of success. Owning five homes and one of the top network engineers in the country (all by age 25), I should have figured Matt knew what he was doing. After all, I was the one renting a room in his house. — Hal Elrod

Where are you staying?
Our house. He shifted closer and I stopped breathing.
Not good. I really needed to breathe and leaned back further in my chair to put space between me and his stubble darkened chin, his oh-so-kissable mouth, his windblown hair, his...his...everything.
For the zillionth time, I wondered what the statute of limitations was on stupid decisions. Marrying him had to top the list. — Sue Barr

Noriega wound up like a baseball pitcher on top of the bed and hurled the small gun, but was low and outside for a ball. His tight-fitting house dress was bunched up high on his chubby thighs, exposing olive drab underwear.
I see London, I see France, I see a crazy dictator's underpants!
Chase's thoughts raced. — Cole Alpaugh

Early on, before rock 'n' roll, I listened to big band music - anything that came over the radio - and music played by bands in hotels that our parents could dance to. We had a big radio that looked like a jukebox, with a record player on the top. The radio/record player played 78rpm records. When we moved to that house, there was a record on there, with a red label. It was Bill Monroe, or maybe it was the Stanley Brothers. I'd never heard anything like that before. Ever. And it moved me away from all the conventional music that I was hearing. — Bob Dylan

The gnome did indeed have a flag, but not an American one. Not even the Maine flag with the moose on it. The one the gnome was holding had a vertical blue stripe and two fat horizontal stripes, the top one white and the bottom one red. It also had a single star. I gave the gnome a pat on his pointy hat as I went past and mounted the front steps of Al's little house on Vining Street, thinking about an amusing song by Ray Wylie Hubbard: "Screw You, We're from Texas. — Stephen King

22 of 52 top (FDA) officials have worked for regulated industries, or organizations that cater to those industries ... During a hearing held in 1969 by the House Inter-governmental Relations Subcommittee, it was disclosed that of 49 high ranking FDA officials who had recently resigned or retired, 37 joined or served as consultants to regulated industries. — Michael F. Jacobson

I'm one of the top 2 or 3 or 4 most conservative members in the House of Representatives when it comes to economics. — Jeb Hensarling

In the abundance of water a fool is thirsty.
Rat Race, from the album Rastaman Vibration
When one door is closed, many more is open.
Coming in from the Cold, from the album Confrontation
It is better to live on the house top
than to live in a house full of confusion. — Bob Marley

The more modest and impractical the kitchen, the more likely one will be invited to stay for a meal. Show me a fancy house with a top-of-the-line gourmet kitchen, and I'll show you a family that eats out a lot. — Firoozeh Dumas

I wanna hang a map of the world in my house. Then I'm gonna put pins into all the locations that I've traveled to. But first, I'm gonna have to travel to the top two corners of the map so it won't fall down. — Mitch Hedberg

Leo went to work with his pliers, reprogramming the signs until the top one flashed: THE DOCTOR IS: IN DA HOUSE. The bottom sign changed to read: NOW SERVING: ALL DA LADIES LUV LEO! — Rick Riordan

Jacob remembered it distinctly because it was his twenty-second birthday, and he was annoyed at being awakened by his uncle at 1:17 in the morning. But Avi had no time to be sentimental. He ordered Jacob to hightail it with him through a bone-chilling winter night to get to some safe house they'd never been to before and make it there by the top of the hour. Jacob had been hoping to sleep in a little and maybe eat a half-decent meal before sitting down to plan the sabotage of a radio tower near Antwerp, an operation scheduled for the coming weekend. But none of that was to be. — Joel C. Rosenberg

A man once jumped from the top floor of a burning house in which many members of his family had already perished. He managed to save his life; but as he was falling he hit a person standing down below and broke that person's legs and arms. The jumping man had no choice; yet to the man with the broken limbs he was the cause of his misfortune. If both behaved rationally, they would not become enemies. — Isaac Deutscher

I was deeply disturbed by the meeting. If I couldn't do what I thought was necessary to take care of the troops, I didn't see how I could remain as secretary. I was in a quandary. I shared Obama's concerns about an open-ended conflict, and while I wanted to fulfill the troop requests of the commanders, I knew they always would want more - just like all their predecessors throughout history. How did you scale the size of the commitment to the goal? How did you measure risk? But I was deeply uneasy with the Obama White House's lack of appreciation - from the top down - of the uncertainties and inherent unpredictability of war. "They all seem to think it's a science," I wrote in a note to myself. I came closer to resigning that day than at any other time in my tenure, though no one knew it. During — Robert M. Gates

For years, President Obama and his top officials vehemently denounced China for using its surveillance capabilities for economic advantage while insisting that the United States and its allies never do any such thing. The Washington Post quoted an NSA spokesperson saying that the Department of Defense, of which the agency is a part, " 'does engage' in computer network exploitation," but "does ***not*** engage in economic espionage in any domain, including 'cyber' " [emphatic asterisks in the original]. That the NSA spies for precisely the economic motive it has denied is proven by its own documents. The agency acts for the benefit of what it calls its "customers," a list that includes not only the White House, the State Department, and the CIA, but also primarily economic agencies, such as the US Trade Representative and the Departments of Agriculture, Treasury, and Commerce: — Glenn Greenwald

I have a problem with the way the House is run. I believe that a few people at the top of a pyramid of power have controlled this place for a long time. — Dan Webster

He places the skull in the palm of my hand. There are four canines; the top two are so long and curved I can feel them pricking my skin. There's a green tinge round the eye socket and in a fine line across the cranium. I'm not sure what animal it's from.
'Stoat,' Harris says, as if I've spoken out loud. 'They hunt grouse and partridge. I found it behind my house. I buried the body in the furze until it was just bone.'
His hand is still beneath mine, supporting it. I think of him seeing the small dead creature and digging a tiny grave for it. Planning ahead for all those months just so he'd see the skeleton. Or maybe he severed the animal's head and that was the only part he buried.
'It's been waiting for you all this time. Like I have. — Sanjida Kay

I tend to avoid the shows that focus on politics, just to get a break from it all, i tried watching the first couple episodes of 'House of Cards,' but I thought it was way over the top. Members of Congress aren't anything like Frank Underwood. Most of us are far less interesting. — Paul Ryan

Built at a time when servants had servants who had servants, there'd been a whole thriving community in the great house to wait upon the tiny family perched on top like a hut on a mountain. — Josa Young

Eventually Theo would pick up their daughter, kiss the top of her head, and carry her to an old spruce stump. He'd crouch down, gather up the beach glass that was still scattered there, and whisper in her ear. "Let's build a fairy house. — Susan Elizabeth Phillips

I think we've met our quota for tearful reunions," she chuckled against the top of my head.
"When this is done, I promise I'm never going to leave the house ever again. We'll just stay in and order pizza and watch bad television."
Mom pulled away and looked over my shoulder. "Oh, I think you might want to get out every now and then," she said.
I felt the warm weight of Archer's hand on my waist. "Hey, I like pizza and bad TV."
I turned to him, surprised. "Your chest-"
"Cal," he said by way of explanation. "I owe that guy, like, a mountain of burgers. It's getting embarrassing."
Mom flashed me a little smile before saying, "You know, this isn't how I imagined meeting Sophie's first real boyfriend."
"Mom."
Archer gave me a little squeeze. "You mean I'm the first guy your parents have rescued from an enchanted island via use of a magic mirror? I feel so special. — Rachel Hawkins

They met a policeman and brought him back. The man rang the bell several times, but there was no answer. Except for a light in one of the top windows, the house was all dark. After — Oscar Wilde

Soon he was toiling up a steep slope, the first of three long, sweeping switchbacks that in three miles as the crow flies, and six to follow the road, would finally flatten out onto the top of Eastham Rise, where a hundred and fifty years ago Abraham Vanderzee had donated the land that would one day house the most prestigious research institution in the area. But — Gordon Bonnet

It's not hard to see why. Although it adds to our overall understanding of Benghazi, even a cursory read reveals sloppy errors of fact and numerous internal contradictions. For instance, on one page, the report has a top intelligence officer sending an email from Benghazi on September 15, before a crucial White House meeting on the Benghazi talking points. — Stephen F. Hayes

The truth on top of me right like a marshmallowy sackful of soft sweet simple things, the feeling was colourful and clear and gentle and full of certainly and it pummelled me gently inside and out, and I understood. I understood these battles I'd been having with my parents and why an adventure away from Oscar felt like such a terrible thing.
I didn't want to leave him. I didn't want to sit by a new window in a strange house in a foreign country and not be able to talk to him. Oscar was the reason. He was the reason I wanted to stay. — Sarah Moore Fitzgerald

If I were Osama , and the United States government were actually looking for me, I'd be clean-shaven by now, crewcutted, wearing jeans and a ZZ Top T-shirt, and living in a nice little house in Lincoln, Nebraska. — L. Neil Smith

As adults, if our top priorities are constantly directed toward the acquisition of more and better worldly goods, it will not take long to increase our love in those directions. The purchase of a larger house or a nicer car or a more expensive boat may cause us to sacrifice our resources and develop an unwise love for these symbols of success and pleasure. We learn to love that which we serve, and we serve that which we love. — Marvin J. Ashton

When I bought my first house in London with my husband-to-be, our surveyor said: "Nicki, you're paying top dollar, but it's not an investment," and I said: "But we're buying a home, not an investment." — Nicki Chapman

When she was older, after ten or so, she could tell she was being useful, but as a small child she was tolerated (only just, she knew) by this whirlwind of efficiency that was her mother organizing a party. Still she insisted on arranging fruit on a dish, or disposing ashtrays around the house, while her mother reduced her pace to Alice's. At least while "helping," Alice did not feel quite so much as if she were a tiny creature on top of a great wave, frantically and hopelessly signalling to her mother, who stood indifferently on the shore, not noticing her. — Doris Lessing

Me: "I refuse to attend Support Group."
Mom: "One of the symptoms of depression is disinterest in activities."
Me: "Please just let me watch America's Next Top Model. It's an activity."
Mom: "Television is a passivity."
Me: "Ugh, Mom, please."
Mom: "Hazel, you're a teenager. You're not a little kid anymore. You need to make friends, get out of the house, and live your life."
Me: "If you want me to be a teenager, don't send me to Support Group. Buy me a fake ID so I can go to clubs, drink vodka, and take pot."
Mom: "You don't take pot, for starters."
Me: "See, that's the kind of thing I'd know if you got me a fake ID."
Mom: "You're going to Support Group."
Me: "UGGGGGGGGGGGGG."
Mom: "Hazel, you deserve a life. — John Green

My favourite room in my house is easily the top room, which is a bedroom but also a bathroom, with a big, wooden carved bath, two huge fireplaces and a raised bit in the corner for performances. I've had some really lovely parties and poetry readings up there. — Deborah Moggach

chewing gum, particularly peppermint chewing gum, which they were allergic to, but they ran to the pots. Violet picked one up and Sunny picked up the other, while Klaus hurriedly made the beds. "Give them to me," Foreman Flacutono snapped, and grabbed the pots out of the girls' hands. "Now, workers, we've wasted enough time already. To the mills! Logs are waiting for us!" "I hate log days," one of the employees grumbled, but everyone followed Foreman Flacutono out of the dormitory and across the dirt-floored courtyard to the lumbermill, which was a dull gray building with many smokestacks sticking out of the top like a porcupine's quills. The three children looked at one another worriedly. Except for one summer day, back when their parents were still alive, when the Baudelaires had opened a lemonade stand in front of their house, the orphans had never had jobs, and they were nervous. The Baudelaires followed Foreman Flacutono into the — Lemony Snicket

I live with my family on the top of a hill in the country, and during the days, my house is quiet, save for the occasional excitement of the FedEx truck heading up the driveway. I write. — Dani Shapiro

As dry leaves that before the wild hurricane fly, when they meet with an obstacle, mount to the sky. So up to the house-top the coursers they flew, with the sleigh full of toys, and St. Nicholas too. — Clement Clarke Moore

Well!' thought Alice to herself, 'after such a fall as this, I shall think nothing of tumbling down stairs! How brave they'll all think me at home! Why, I wouldn't say anything about it, even if I fell off the top of the house!' (Which was very likely true.) — Lewis Carroll

Mr. Pilates was a bully and a narcissist and a dirty old man; he and Christopher got along very well. When Christopher was doing his workout, Pilates would bring one of his assistants over to watch, rather as the house surgeon brings an intern to study a patient with a rare deformity. 'Look at him!' Pilates would exclaim to the assistant, 'That could have been a beautiful body, and look what he's done to it! Like a birdcage that somebody trod on!' Pilates had grown tubby with age, but he would never admit it; he still thought himself a magnificent figure of a man. 'That's not fat,' he declared, punching himself in the stomach, 'that's good healthy meat!' He frankly lusted after some of his girl students. He used to make them lie back on an inclined board and climb on top of them, on the pretext that he was showing them an exercise. What he really was doing was rubbing off against them through his clothes; as was obvious from the violent jerking of his buttocks. — Christopher Isherwood

Listening (had there been any one to listen) from the upper rooms of the empty house only gigantic chaos streaked with lightning could have been heard tumbling and tossing, as the winds and waves disported themselves like the amorphous bulks of leviathans whose brows are pierced by no light of reason, and mounted one on top of another, and lunged and plunged in the darkness or the daylight (for night and day, month and year ran shapelessly together) in idiot games, until it seemed as if the universe were battling and tumbling, in brute confusion and wanton lust aimlessly by itself. — Virginia Woolf

When one has looked upon Jesus, though he be of little stature like Zacchaeus of old (cf. Lk. 19:3), and climb up on the top of the sycamore tree by mortifying his members which are upon the earth (cf. Col. 3:5), and having risen above the body of humiliation, then he shall receive the Word, and it shall be said to him, This day has salvation come to this house (cf. Lk. 19:9). Then let him lay hold on the salvation, and bring forth fruit more perfectly, scattering and pouring forth rightly that which as a publican he wrongly gathered. — Gregory Of Nazianzus

Guilt isn't in cat vocabulary. They never suffer remorse for eating too much, sleeping too long or hogging the warmest cushion in the house. They welcome every pleasurable moment as it unravels and savour it to the full until a butterfly or falling leaf diverts their attention. They don't waste energy counting the number of calories they've consumed or the hours they've frittered away sunbathing.
Cats don't beat themselves up about not working hard enough. They don't get up and go, they sit down and stay. For them, lethargy is an art form. From their vantage points on top of fences and window ledges, they see the treadmills of human obligations for what they are - a meaningless waste of nap time. — Helen Brown

At the end of the evening, Paxton and Willa walked Agatha out to the nurse's car, after Agatha had given them a blind tour of the Madam, pointing out by feel and memory everything she remembered about the house. She and Georgie sliding down the banister and their skirts flying up. Playing dolls in Georgie's room. Having pineapple upside-down cake the Jacksons' cook would make in a cast-iron frying pan, so that the brown sugar on top turned crispy. A slide-away secret compartment in the bookcase where they used to leave notes for each other. — Sarah Addison Allen

The light was grainy, dusty; it looked like the Milky Way had spread from the top of the sky all down the west, and the tented shapes of the mountains were huge and satin black against it, and the ridgeline trees made a filigree of onyx. The wind had increased but not cooled; the promise of full summer was in it. And when Dr. Barcroft turned from the west to look again at the house, he was hardly surprised to see that it had begun to turn like a wheel upon a vertical axle as the silhouettes of the dancers raced past window after window. It was as if their dancing, the female slide and shuffle, the masculine drum and thunder, propelled the house behind them; it had become a merry-go-round, turning steadily and stately as the music went just a little bit faster, just a little more, and he could tell there were furies in it, whirlwinds and cyclones and hurricanes that Quigley's fiddle barely held in check, that his calling could barely control. — Fred Chappell

Do you want to know why I don't like the so-called connoisseurs of arts? I hate hypocrisy. I'll give you an example: if the movie is colored and tells us about two friends who sit in the pool, fart into the water, get out of the pool and fart into each other's face it will be thrash, a lack of a culture and a third-rate comedy. But if the movie is black-and-white and tells us about two friends who cross the desert and peeing on each other, shit on the sand, and then they eat each other's shit, and on top of that they fucking each other's ass it will be a brilliant art house movie. — Ilze Falb

House of Krahr!" the vampire with the banner barked quietly.
"Krahr," the other four vampires exhaled and glared at me.
Usually they roared their house name at the top of their lungs, trying to intimidate ... Oh. They were trying to be inconspicuous. I bit my lip to keep from laughing. I'd never had an attempt at intimidation whispered at me before.
"My lord, why are you wearing trench coats?"
"We must blend in," he said. "This is a covert operation."
Don't laugh, don't laugh, don't laugh ... "It's very hot," I said. "Trench coats are a cold-weather garment. — Ilona Andrews

I would rather be a doorkeeper in the House of the Lord than mingle with the top brass in the tents of the wicked. — Hugh Nibley

We didn't domesticate cats. They domesticated themselves. But not totally, you know? You take a good look at any house cat, and you can tell there's eventually going to be a day when it goes back wild, you know? When it reverts to its true nature. You fall over and die in a house with your dog, and your dog will lie down beside your dead body, maybe right on top of it, and starve to death. But a house cat will feast on your eyes as soon as its stomach starts growling. — Sherman Alexie

There I was on the front page of the 'London Times' as speaker of the House with an animal on top of my head. I liked it, but it was not what my staff thought was appropriately dignified. — Newt Gingrich

You know, house-elves get a very raw deal!" said Hermione indignantly. "It's slavery, that's what it is! That Mr. Crouch made her go up to the top of the stadium, and she was terrified, and he's got her bewitched so she can't even run when they start trampling tents! Why doesn't anyone do something about it?" "Well, the elves are happy, aren't they?" Ron said. "You heard old Winky back at the match . . . 'House-elves is not supposed to have fun' . . . that's what she likes, being bossed around. . . ." "It's people like you, Ron," Hermione began hotly, "who prop up rotten and unjust systems, just because they're too lazy to - — J.K. Rowling

Until they stood at last by a crumbling wall, looking up and up and still farther up at the great tombyard top of the old house. For that's what it seemed. The high mountain peak of the mansion was littered with what looked like black bones or iron rods, and enough chimneys to choke out smoke signals from three dozen fires on sooty hearths hidden far below in dim bowels of this monster place. With so many chimneys, the roof seemed a vast cemetery, each chimney signifying the burial place of some old god of fire or enchantress of steam, smoke, and firefly spark. even as they watched, a kind of bleak exhalation of soot breathed up out of some four dozen flues, darkening the sky still more, and putting out some few stars. — Ray Bradbury

Dad's on a fishing boat in front of Carter's estate. If we get into trouble, all I have to do is press the button on the tiny transmitter in my pocket and he'll destroy the dome on top of Carter's house. Is that enough of a distraction for you?"
"Maybe we can work out something a little more subtle. — Janet Evanovich

In 2008, I was in a London park when I came across a fledgling crow that had fallen from the top of an oak tree. A woman happened to be passing, and she said that she rescued animals, so she invited me back to her house. It turned out she was the wife of Jeff Beck. Jeff was there, and we ended up jamming together. — Imelda May

There will never be peace until God's house and God's people are given their rightful place of leadership at the top of the world. How can there be peace when drunkards, drug dealers, communists, atheists, New Age worshipers of Satan, secular humanists, oppressive dictators, greedy money changers, revolutionary assassins, adulterers, and homosexuals are on top ... There is absolutely no way that government can operate successfully unless led by godly men and women operating under the laws of the God of Jacob — Pat Robertson