One Brick Quotes & Sayings

There is one other wall, of course. One we never speak of. One we never see, One which separates memory from madness. In a place no one offers flowers. THE WALL WITHIN. We permit no visitors. Mine looks like any of a million nameless, brick walls - it stands in the tear-down ghetto of my soul; that part of me which reason avoids for fear of dirtying its clothes and from atop which my sorrow and my rage hurl bottles and invectives at the rolled-up windows of my passing youth. Do you know the wall I mean? - Steve Mason, U.S. Army captain (Vietnam), poet Excerpted from the poem "The Wall Within" by Steve Mason, a decorated Vietnam combat veteran considered the unofficial poet laureate of the Vietnam War. "The Wall Within" was read at the 1984 dedication of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, DC, and was entered in its entirety into the Congressional Record. — Kevin Sites

For years and years, I convinced myself that I was unbreakable, an animal with an animal strength or something not human at all. Me, I told people, I take damage like a wall, a brick wall that never falls down, never feels anything, never flinches or remembers. I am one woman but I carry in my body all the stories I have ever been told, women I have known, women who have taken damage until they tell themselves they can feel no pain at all. — Dorothy Allison

There have been heroes here, and saints and martyrs and I want you to know that. Because that is the truth even if no one remembers it. To look at the lace, it's just a cluster of houses strung along a few roads, and a little row of brick buildings with stores in them, and a grain elevator and a water tower with Gilead written on its side, and the post office and the schools and the playing fields and the old train station, which is pretty well gone to weeds now. But what must Galilee have looks like? You can't tell so much from the appearance of a place. — Marilynne Robinson

I want to get one thing straight right from the start: I am not a natural-born jock. I am about as intrinsically athletic as an oyster, with the innate grace and sporty prowess of a brick - a very cute oyster and a very intelligent brick, if I do say so myself, but oysterly and bricklike nevertheless. — Hanne Blank

Doing a little work around the house. I put fake brick wallpaper over a real brick wall, just so I'd be the only one who knew. People come over and I'm gonna say, "Go ahead, touch it ... it feels real." — Steven Wright

You're right,' he told her. 'Kissing is the one thing that would undoubtedly make this moment worse.'
'Oh, Lord.' She leaned forward until her brow met his chest. Then she lifted her head slightly. Then let it fall forward again. After a few more repetitions, he understood the meaning behind this strange gesture.
His chest was the brick wall, and she was bashing her head against it. — Tessa Dare

A brick could be used to help defeat all incumbent politicians whose last name starts with Brj and anything after that alphabetically. Since people tend to vote for the first one on the ballot, Brick would not only benefit from the stupidity of the citizenry, but the people would benefit by electing the smarter of the two candidates. — Jarod Kintz

A half truth, like half a brick, is always more forcible as an argument than a whole one. It carries better. — Stephen Leacock

She had climbed into his turmoil and made herself at home, fixing him one brick at a time from the inside, powerless to stop her, she touched his pain and made it a little better each time. — V. Theia

If it was an emotion, it was a totally emotionless one. It was hatred, implacable hatred. It was cold, not like ice is cold, but like a wall is cold. It was impersonal, not like a randomly flung fist in a crowd is impersonal, but like a computer-issued parking summons is impersonal. And it was deadly, again, not like a bullet or a knife is deadly, but like a brick wall across an expressway is deadly. — Douglas Adams

During my time at Eton, I led regular nighttime adventures, and word spread. I even thought about charging to take people on trips.
I remember one where we tried to cross the whole town of Eton in the old sewers. I had found an old grill under a bridge that led into these four-foot-high old brick pipes, running under the streets.
It took a little nerve to probe into these in the pitch black with no idea where the hell they were leading you; and they stank.
I took a pack of playing cards and a flashlight, and I would jam cards into the brickwork every ten paces to mark my way. Eventually I found a manhole cover that lifted up, and it brought us out in the little lane right outside the headmaster's private house.
I loved that. "All crap flows from here," I remember us joking at that time. — Bear Grylls

I, like balloon animal hacks everywhere, can only make one animal so far. It is a LEGO version of the Island of Dr. Moreau, wherein I have brick-engineered a pig-camel, a dog-camel, and a camel with wheels. These monstrosities are quickly torn apart, and I wonder if I have some unresolved camel issues. — Jonathan Bender

Pizzerias in big cities benefit from Italian natives or descendants thereof, people who understand that real pizza comes from Naples where the crusts are thin and the toppings simple. Samantha's favorite was Lazio's, a hole-in-the-wall in Tribeca where the cooks yelled in Italian as they baked the crusts in brick ovens. Like most things in her life these days, Lazio's was far away. So was the pizza. The only place in Brady to get one to go was a sub shop in a cheap strip mall. Pizza Hut, along with most other national chains, had not penetrated deep into the small towns of Appalachia. — John Grisham

My mum always said there's a lot of presence in a doorway," he added, staring into one of the eyes.
A chill of air trickled down her spine, she could feel the eyes upon her, drawing her in, asking questions and tormenting her very being. "Really? How so?" asked Maggie, with interest.
Brick turned his head and presented a puzzled expression. "Well, cause that's where people come in — Paul Baxter

One of the greatest evils of the day among those outside of prison is their sense of futility. Young people say, What is the sense of our small effort? They cannot see that we must lay one brick at a time, take one step at a time; we can be responsible only for the one action of the present moment. — Dorothy Day

Showers"

The child tells me, put a brick in the tank,
don't wear leather, don't eat brisket,
snapper, or farmed salmon - not tells,
orders - doesn't she know the sluice gates
are wide open and a trillion gallons
wasted just for the dare of it?

Until the staring eye shares that thrill,
witnessing: I am just iris and cornea,
blind spot where brain meets mind,
the place where the image forms itself
from a spark - image of the coming storm.

Still the child waits outside the bathroom
with the watch she got for Best Essay,
muttering, two minutes too long.

Half measures, I say. She says, action.
I: I'm one man. She: Seven billion.

If you choose, the sea goes back. — Dennis Nurkse

We wound up with one hundred and thirty kilos of Vermont Cheddar in the evidence lockup," Miller said. "Street value that would have probably bought someone their own ship. It had disappeared by the end of the day. We wrote it up as lost to spoilage. No one said a word, as long as everyone went home with a brick. — James S.A. Corey

Resting on what's considered great has always been a recipe for decline. I remember touring Rome with a guide who pointed out one marvelous achievement after another of the first Roman emperor, Augustus. Augustus was said to have inherited a city of brick and left a city of marble, with twelve entrances on twelve hills. He built nearly a thousand glorious new structures - bridges, buildings, monuments, and aqueducts. As we marveled at the remnants of Augustus's grand designs, our guide exclaimed with pride that this era marked the pinnacle of Rome's greatness.
What came next?' I asked.
After an awkward silence, the guide said, 'Slow ruin. — Robert K. Cooper

The civilization of ancient Greece was nurtured within city walls. In fact, all the modern civilizations have their cradles of brick and mortar.
These walls leave their mark deep in the minds of men. They set up a principle of "divide and rule" in our mental outlook, which begets in us a habit of securing all our conquests by fortifying them and separating them from one another. We divide nation and nation, knowledge and knowledge, man and nature. It breeds in us a strong suspicion of whatever is beyond the barriers we have built, and everything has to fight hard for its entrance into our recognition. — Rabindranath Tagore

He had built his own future brick by brick around himself but there were no doors or windows, at least that was the way it seemed at the time he had thought to himself, I am locked in, it was like one of those ghost stories where you wake up and you are sealed in a coffin. — Dan Chaon

Crackers, toasted or hard bread may be added a short time before the soup is wanted; but do not put in those libels on civilized cookery, called DUMPLINGS! One might about as well eat, with the hope of digesting, a brick from the ruins of Babylon, as one of the hard, heavy masses of boiled dough which usually pass under this name. — Sarah Josepha Hale

He also despised the school system, although
he thrived in it. He became a teacher because he also dreamed of
changing the system, but instead the system crushed him. He took
his passion, tried to change the system, and ran into a brick wall. It
was a system that too many people were making money in, and no
one wanted it changed, although there was a lot of talk about the
need for change. — Robert T. Kiyosaki

To put one brick upon another,
Add a third, and then a fourth,
Leaves no time to wonder whether
What you do has any worth. — Philip Larkin

For God's sake, let's take the word 'possess' and put a brick round its neck and drown it ... We can't possess one another. We can only give and hazard all we have. — Dorothy L. Sayers

Over the summer we chatted one night while Angie stripped a bed, changed wet sheets, comforted and repajamaed a toddler, and chased down a car of speeding teenagers while shaking a brick at them, never once interrupting the conversation or setting down her margarita. The only reason this woman isn't president of General Motors is because she's chosen not to be. — Jen Lancaster

I was having a field day down the Westend; my deep pockets were jingling and full of money nearly every day of the week. My brother's bird, Irene, wanted a fur coat, so I got her one by throwing a brick through the shop window and grabbing the coat off the shop dummy. Once I got to the bed-sit, I put the jacket on and waltzed in to the flat looking like Liberace, the two of them burst out laughing. Irene was like a tramp eating chips.
'Let's try it on, Jimmy, please?'
As she swooned around like Joan Collins with the fur coat on, she had the air of a council estate beauty queen about her. — Stephen Richards

I'm a rich man, Brick, yep, I'm a mighty rich man. Y'know how much I'm worth? Guess, Brick! Guess how much I'm worth! Close to ten million in cash an' blue chip stocks, outside, mind you, of twenty-eight thousand acres of the richest land this side of the valley Nile! But a man can't buy his life with it, he can't buy back his life with it when his life has been spent, that's one thing not offered in the Europe fire-sale or in the American markets or any markets on earth, a man can't buy his life with it, he can't buy back his life when his life is finished ...
Big Daddy: (pp. 65) — Tennessee Williams

If you want to knock down the wall between you and the life of your dreams, it's best to do it one brick at a time! — Paul McKenna

Lexington wasn't a great city, like Philadelphia or New York, but around the Courthouse square, and along Main Street and Broadway, brick buildings reared two and three stories tall, and it was possible to buy almost anything: breeze-soft silks from France that came upriver from New Orleans, fine wines and cigars, pearl necklaces, and canes with ivory handles shaped like parrots or dogs'-heads or (in the case of Mary's older friend Cash Clay) scantily dressed ladies (but Cash was careful not to carry that one in company). — Barbara Hambly

You see her as this broken little thing that needs you to take care of her. She doesn't need that. She might have been broken at one time, but she's not fucking broken now. She's put it all back together. She's made a life for herself, and you're trying to change it. It's kind of like she's built this fortress around herself, brick by fucking brick, and you might think a fortress is too much, but it's not. Do you know why?"
I can only sit and stare at him.
"Do you want to know why?" he asks.
I nod. My heart is in my fucking throat.
"Because she fucking lives there, Paul. It's home for her. It's safe and it's secure and it's hers. And she built it with her own two hands. So for you to swoop in and not only try to move her out of her fortress but also to tear it down, you're fucking up everything she's worked for. — Tammy Falkner

The walls of the Franciscan Church of the Assumption of the Holy Virgin Mary were ruined stucco chipping away from the brick underneath, with ghostly frescoes, concrete-filled niches, and one complete, vivid crucifix painted over the altar. — Elizabeth McCracken

Brick stood silhouetted against the frozen lake through this front window. "Be careful. It sounds like you've got at least one killer out there. Someone who thought they'd gotten away with murder. It's easier to kill after the first time, they say. — B. J. Daniels

Two hermits lived together for many years without a quarrel. One said to the other, "Let's have a quarrel with each other, as other men do." The other answered, "I don't know how a quarrel happens." The first said, "Look here, I put a brick between us, and I say, 'That's mine.' Then you say, 'No, it's mine.' That is how you begin a quarrel." So they put a brick between them and one of them said, "That's mine." The other said, "No, it's mine." He answered, "Yes, it's yours. Take it away." They were unable to argue with each other. — Rowan Williams

In my fifth year in Beijing, I moved into a one-story brick house beside the Confucius Temple, a seven-hundred-year-old shrine to China's most important philosopher. — Evan Osnos

One of his private vanities was that all the garbage sorting had endowed his hands with killing strength - that he could chop a brick in half like Bruce Lee. "So let's get a brick," replied a girl with whom he had once, injudiciously, shared this conviction. Abdul had bumbled away. The brick belief was something he wanted to harbor, not to test. — Katherine Boo

I told them a thousand times if I told them once:
Stop fooling around, I said, with straw and sticks;
They won't hold up; you're taking an awful chance.
Brick is the stuff to build with, solid bricks.
You want to be impractical, go ahead.
But just remember, I told them; wait and see.
You're making a big mistake. Awright, I said,
But when the wolf comes, don't come running to me.
The funny thing is, they didn't. There they sat,
One in his crummy yellow shack, and one
Under his roof of twigs, and the wolf ate
Them, hair and hide. Well, what is done is done.
But I'd been willing to help them, all along,
If only they'd once admitted they were wrong. — Sarah Henderson Hay

The County Jail looked like a tall, forbidding elementary school. Seven stories of dirty brown brick, one hundred years old and now operating at 330 percent of capacity. — Richard Price

[London is] like the sight of a heavy sea from a rowing boat in the middle of the Atlantic ... One lives in it, afloat but half submerged in a heavy flood of brick, stone, asphalt, slate, steel, glass, concrete, and tarmac, seeing nothing fixable beyond a few score white spires that splash up like spits of foam above the next glum wave of dirty buildings. — V.S. Pritchett

Please we would much rather sail free we mean you no harm I promise " he floated upright in the water frowning then bowed his head in agreement. With a flick of their tails the blue men dived and were gone. "I promise " Hannah breathed. Of course. "That's a hard one to rhyme with. Scarlet Max and Donovan leapt up and down shouting with joy. "I knew you could do it" Scarlet shrieked. "It was just luck " Hannah said "I didn't have time to think. I just said the first thing that came into my mind. I could've said I swear and then he could have said pear or mare or square ... " "That was amazing " Donovan said. "You were so quick" I didn't feel quick " Hannah grinned " I felt as thick as a brick." "O goodness she cant stop " Donovan said laughing. — Kate Forsyth

There were the Newport hills, far up the bay, marked now by a rim of lights. There was the water, a blue shimmer under the sun, a black mirror after dark, somehow alive, a living thing that tied it all together, the houses hugging the rim and the people in them, drawn there to be beside the bay. The water had been there in the beginning, the beautiful bay all alone; and now the houses had crowded about it, hemming it in a row of stucco and brick and white clapboard. Someday the bay would be alone again. When The Thing went off. When all of the houses would be blown away. There would be floating rubble, a border of broken trash for a little while. — Dolores Hitchens

I take leave of Prome and her towering god, Shwa Lan-dau, at whose base I have been laboring with the kindest intentions for the last three months and a half. Too firmly founded art thou to be overthrown at present; but the children of those who now plaster thee with gold will yet pull thee down, nor leave one brick upon another. — Adoniram Judson

If you threw a brick at someone you would be responsible for them feeling pain, presumably,' Libby said. 'But if you do the right thing and it makes someone feel bad, isn't that their problem? Then again, how do you even know what the right thing is? Who decides?' 'It's so confusing. I am sure about Mark, but I was sure about Bob before that, and Richard before that. Maybe Mark isn't for ever, I just think he is now when I can't have him. I have to face up to this about myself. I fall in love like that.' She clicked her fingers. 'I always have. For other people, love is like some rare orchid that can only grow in one place under a certain set of conditions. For me it's like bindweed. It grows with no encouragement at all, under any conditions, and just strangles everything else. Good metaphor, huh? — Scarlett Thomas

Dancing Towards Bethlehem
If there is only enough time in the final
minutes of the 20th century for one last dance
I would like to be dancing it slowly with you,
say, in the ballroom of a seaside hotel.
My palm would press into the small of your back
as the past hundred years collapsed into a pile
of mirrors or buttons or frivolous shoes,
just as the floor of the 19th century gave way
and disappeared in a red cloud of brick dust.
There will be no time to order another drink
or worry about what was never said,
not with the orchestra sliding into the sea
and all our attention devoted to humming
whatever it was they were playing. — Billy Collins

A brick is a biographical film in which a young orphan brick from the wrong side of the track grows up to be one of the most important bricks in all brick kind, as it is now quite literally the cornerstone of one of America's greatest ballparks.(Fenway) — Nicole McKay

I used myself, let nothing use me.
Like being on a private dole,
sometimes more like cutting bricks in Egypt.
What life there was, was mine,
now and again to lay
one hand on a warm brick
and touch the sun's ghost
with economical joy. — Adrienne Rich

Because, what does it mean, to say that things aren't going well? Compared to what? You can say: compared to how things were going a couple of hours ago, or a couple of years ago. But that's not the point. If two cars are speeding towards a brick wall with no brakes, and one car hits the wall moments before the other, you can't spend those moments saying that the second car is much better off than the first.
Death and disaster are at our shoulders every second of our lives, trying to get at us. Missing, a lot of the time. A lot of miles on the motorway without a front wheel blow-out. A lot of viruses that slither through our bodies without snagging. A lot of pianos that fall a minute after we've passed. Or a month, it makes no difference.
So unless we're going to get down on our knees and give thanks every time disaster misses, it makes no sense to moan when it strikes. Us, or anyone else. Because we're not comparing it with anything. — Hugh Laurie

I guess what they say is true - sometimes you have to smack up against a brick wall before you can admit it's time to change or die. For me the death was an emotional one. It's taken me this long to figure out I was killing myself by shutting off my true feelings and desires. — Claire Thompson

I have a feeling that we've seen the dismantling of civilisation, brick by brick, and now we're looking into the void. We thought that we were liberating people from oppressive cultural circumstances, but we were, in fact, taking something away from them. We were killing off civility and concern. We were undermining all those little ties of loyalty and consideration and affection that are necessary for human flourishing. We thought that tradition was bad, that it created hidebound societies, that it held people down. But, in fact, what tradition was doing all along was affirming community and the sense that we are members of one another. Do we really love and respect one another more in the absence of tradition and manners and all the rest? Or have we merely converted one another into moral strangers - making our countries nothing more than hotels for the convenience of guests who are required only to avoid stepping on the toes of other guests? — Alexander McCall Smith

we must lay one brick at a time, take one step at a time; we can be responsible only for the one action of the present moment. But we can beg for an increase of love in our hearts that will vitalize and transform all our individual actions, and know that God will take them and multiply them, as Jesus multiplied the loaves and fishes. — Dorothy Day

She smiled as she poured tea into his cup. "I hope you find your rooms comfortable?"
"Quite." He took a too-hasty sip of tea and scalded his tongue.
"The view is to your liking?"
He had a view of a brick wall. "Indeed."
She fluttered her eyelashes at him over the rim of her teacup. "And the bed. Is it soft and ... yielding?"
He nearly choked on the bite of cake he'd just taken.
"Or do you prefer a firmer bed?" she asked sweetly. "One that refuses to yield too soon?"
"I think" - he narrowed his eyes at her - "whatever mattress I have on the bed you gave me is perfect. But tell me, my lady, what sort of mattress do you prefer? All soft goose down or one that's a bit ... harder?"
It was very fast, but he saw it: Her gaze flashed down to the juncture of his thighs and then up again. If there hadn't been anything to see there before, there certainly was now.
"Oh, I like a nice stiff mattress," she purred. "Well warmed and ready for a long ride. — Elizabeth Hoyt

I went home one night and told my dad that an older kid was picking on me. My Dad, a Korean War vet and a Chicago cop for 30 years, told me, 'You better pick up a brick and hit him in the head.' That's when I thought, 'Wow, I'm going to have to start dealing with things in a different way.' — Steve Wilkos

I am always really buzzed after each performance, and at around one in the morning, I'll hit a brick wall and need to sleep. — Hattie Morahan

The Wall is hundreds of years old too; or over a hundred, at least. Like the sidewalks, it's red brick, and must once have been plain but handsome. Now the gates have sentries and there are ugly new floodlights mounted on metal posts above it, and barbed wire along the bottom and broken glass set in concrete along the top. No one goes through those gates willingly. The precautions are for those trying to get out, though to make it even as far as the Wall, from the inside, past the electronic alarm system, would be next to impossible. Beside the main gateway there are six more bodies hanging, by the necks, their hands tied in front of them, their heads in white bags tipped sideways onto their shoulders. There must have been a Men's Salvaging early this morning. I didn't hear the bells. Perhaps I've become used to them. We — Margaret Atwood

Now, to tell my story
if not as it ought to be told, at least as I can tell it,
I must go back sixteen years, to the days when Whitbury boasted of forty coaches per diem, instead of one railway, and set forth how in its southern suburb, there stood two pleasant house side by side, with their gardens sloping down to the Whit, and parted from each other only by the high brick fruit-wall, through which there used to be a door of communication; for the two occupiers were fast friends. — Charles Kingsley

I would supplant the ox with the automobile and pave instead of plowing the fields. 1 have a theory that if a corn field were paved, leaving out a brick for each hill, it would increase the yield, do away entirely with the mud, and give the farmer plenty of time to meditate on lofty subjects. That is only one theory. I have many others. — Susan Glaspell

There were two views of how a polis was formed. The first was military: a scattered group of people came to live in one city behind a set of protective walls. The other was political: a group of people agreed to live under one authority, with or whithout the protection of a walled city. Synoikismos, or 'Living together', embraces both. Any political entity implies a population that recognizes a common authority, but the first 'city-states' were not always based on a city. Sparta makes the point. We think of Sparta as a city, but the Spartans were proud of the fact that they lived in villages without protective walls: their army was their wall and 'every man a brick. — Alan Ryan

It was true what Jim said, this wasn't the end but the beginning. But the wars would end one day and Jim would come then, to the island they would share. One day surely the wars would end, and Jim would come home, if only to lie broken in MacMurrough's arms, he would come to his island home. And MacMurrough would have it built for him, brick by brick, washed by the rain and the reckless sea. In the living stream they'd swim a season. For maybe it was true that no man is an island: but he believed that two very well might be. — Jamie O'Neill

This London City, with all of its houses, palaces, steam-engines, cathedrals, and huge immeasurable traffic an tumult, what is it but a Thought, but millions of Thoughts made into One-a huge immeasurable Spirit of a Thought, embodied in brick, in iron, smoke, dust, Palaces, Parliaments, Hackney Coaches, Katherine Docks, and the rest of it! Not a brick was made but some man had to think of the making of that brick. — Thomas Carlyle

We spent four days filming in a helicopter. I had never seen London from that viewpoint - you get a sense of how big it is and how easy it is to get lost. There was one day when we couldn't find Brick Lane: we spent 25 minutes looking and then realised it was directly below us. — Asif Kapadia

Each generation was a rehearsal of the one before, so that that family gradually formed the repetitive pattern of a Greek fret, interrupted only once in two centuries by a nine-year-old boy who had taken a look at his prospects, tied a string around his neck with a brick to the other end, and jumped from a footbridge into two feet of water. Courage aside, he had that family's tenacity of purpose, and drowned, a break in the pattern quickly obliterated by the calcimine of silence. — William Gaddis

She'd always assumed that falling in love would be like getting slammed into a brick wall. That you'd just be going along as usual and you'd get knocked on your ass and think, Gee, I guess I'm in love. But it hadn't happened that way. It had just kind of snuck up on her before she'd realized it. It had happened one smile and one touch at a time. One look. One kiss. One pink cat collar. One pinch to the heart and one breathless anticipation after another until she was in so deep there was no denying it. No turning back before it was too late. No more lying about what she felt. — Rachel Gibson

Racing up the wide staircase, I barreled through the double doors and smacked right into a brick wall.
Stumbling backward, my arms flailed like a cracked-out crossing guard. My over-packed messenger bag slipped, pulling me to one side. My hair
flew it front of my face, a sheet of auburn that obscured everything as I teetered dangerously.
Oh dear God, I was going down. There was no stopping it. Visions of broken necks danced in my head. This was going to suck so
Something strong and hard went around my waist, stopping my free fall. My bag hit the floor, spilling overpriced books and pens across the shiny
floor. My pens! My glorious pens rolled everywhere. A second later I was pressed against the wall.
The wall was strangely warm.
The wall chuckled.
"Whoa," a deep voice said. "You okay, sweetheart? — J. Lynn

I don't want balance. What I want is the brick! I want to find the one thing in my life that, if I get that right, it doesn't matter what the world throws onto the other side of the scale. — Emily Watts

You can't turn love on and off like a light switch, no matter how hard you try. All you can do is wall it off, one brick at a time, until you've created an impenetrable fortress around your emotions. And once that fortress is built, you camouflage it so well that even you can't see it anymore. — Katherine Allred

Individuality is but another act of segregation. We need instead learn the process of Individuation. One is to know thyself merely to be a single brick within the wall of mass creation and group consciousness. — Tyler J. Hebert

People ask what's up with this writing business? What do I hope to accomplish? I tell 'em I'm just a brick mason; words are my bricks and I'm building a skyscraper
one brick at a time. — Quentin R. Bufogle

Did no one, any more, no one in all this wide world, change their record now and then? Was everyone nowadays thirled to a formula? Authors wrote so much to a pattern that their public expected it. The public talked about "a new Silas Weekly" or "a new Lavinia Fitch" exactly as they talked about "a new brick" or "a new hairbrush." They never said "a new book by" whoever it might be. Their interest was not in the book but in its newness. They knew quite well what the book would be like. — Josephine Tey

The railway hit Harrow on the Hill in 1880 and it's been downhill ever since, culminating in one of those formless red brick shopping centres which artfully combines a complete lack of aesthetic quality with a total disregard for the utilitarian function for which it is built. As a result, your average shopper has only to spend ten minutes inside to be reduced to a state of quiet desperation. Primark has the right idea, being right by the entrance so that fleeing punters would grab the closest approximation to whatever it was they wanted before running screaming into the night. I'm — Ben Aaronovitch

We worked so hard, so hard, building our world one brick at a time. And when it fell apart, it happened just like that. Everything was gone before you knew it. — Haruki Murakami

One of the strengths of Labor Zionism had always been its strong pragmatic outlook, its philosophy that a new reality can be built only by careful planning and then constructing things brick by brick, acre after acre. It — Thomas L. Friedman

I rode the dinosaur into the stream of zombies following in the Wardens' wake and let her go to town. Sue chomped and stomped and smacked zombies fifty feet through the air with swinging blows of her snout. Her tail batted one particularly vile-looking zombie into the brick wall of the nearest building, and the zombie hit so hard and so squishily that it just stuck to the wall like a refrigerator magnet, arms and legs spread in a sprawl. — Jim Butcher

He snatched the book from me and replaced it hastily on its shelf, muttering that if one brick was removed the whole library was liable to collapse. — F Scott Fitzgerald

Trust is a foundation built one brick at a time. — Jeffrey Fry

We played one warm-up gig at this bar that was kinda like that bar in 'The Blues Brothers' with the chicken wire. This place called The Brick House, in Housatonic. I really can't believe we're going to play for people in New York City. I'm terrified, but it's a small enough room. But it's really just supposed to be for the fun of it. — Lauren Ambrose

The yellow commuter train ran through canal-crossed fields as dull as graph paper. Always one saw evidence of the tiny brick houses that the incontinent municipalities, Voorschoten and Leidschendam and Rijswijk and Zoetermeer, pooped over the rural spaces surrounding The Hague. — Joseph O'Neill

The brick is neither here nor there,' interrupted the stranger in an imposing fashion, 'it never merely falls on someone's head from out of nowhere. In your case, I can assure you that a brick poses no threat whatsoever. You will die another kind of death.
'And you know just what that will be?' queried Berlioz with perfectly understandable irony, letting himself be drawn into a truly absurd conversation. 'And can you tell me what that is?'
'Gladly,' replied the stranger. He took Berlioz's measure as if intending to make him a suit and muttered something through his teeth that sounded like 'One, two.. Mercury in the Second House ... the moon has set ... six-misfortune ... evening-seven ... ' Then he announced loudly and joyously, 'Your head will be cut off! — Mikhail Bulgakov

33/ Though now that I think about it, the workshop that day was probably focused on revision, as in Your First Draft Sucks and You Have a Thousand Do-Overs Before You Get It Right. Think of it this way: Build a city, then blow it up to save it. Invent a road to take you far out of town, then start over with one good brick. — Kim Addonizio

Big things are built one brick at a time. Victories are achieved one choice at a time. A life well lived is chosen one day at a time. — Lysa TerKeurst

O'Shaughnessy is hitting Denholt on the side of his head with his free arm, great, walloping, pile-driver blows. The two of them stagger together, like partners in a crazy dance. Glass is breaking all around them. Gray smoke from the six shots, pink-and-white dust from the chipped brick-and-plaster walls, swirl around them in a rainbow haze. Something vividly green flares up from one of the overturned retorts, goes right out again. O'Shaughnessy tears the emptied gun away, flings it off somewhere. More breaking glass, and this time a tart pungent smell that makes the nostrils sting. The crunch of pulverized tube glass underfoot makes it sound as if they were scuffling in sand or hard-packed snow. ("Jane Brown's Body") — Cornell Woolrich

I wish to say to you that the life of an enlightened people and a vibrant nation cannot be measured by the life of an individual. A successful person is one who manages to lay down a new stone, a brick that would help firm up his nation's existence. — King Hussein I

Once upon a time there were two parents, two children, and a brick house with lilies in the yard. The parents died, the lilies wilted. One child disappeared. Then the other. — Lauren DeStefano

My three older brothers and I lived with our parents in a big brick house located south of Main Street, four blocks west of where my father had grown up in the 1920s, eight blocks east of where my mother had grown up in the 1930s, one hundred miles south of Minneapolis, and five miles north of the Iowa border. Our — Hope Jahren

It's a dangerous thing, to divide yourself, to break off bits of yourself until there's no solid core. We are, after all, just the sum of our total experiences, each one lying beneath us like a brick in the foundation of a house. To be selective, to block out portions, is to destabilize the very ground on which you stand. — Mia Fontaine

Life hands out challenges that we all unwillingly accept. We have no choice in the acceptance really because that is essentially what life is; a series of unavoidable challenges thrown our way, and how we assess them, deal with them, and progress through them, shapes our life to be what it will be.
Some of us assess challenges in different ways, either seeing them as a hurdle that one can easily jump over, or as a brick wall that seems impossible to climb. — K.M. Golland

We have been happily borne - or perhaps have unhappily dragged our weary way - down the long and crooked streets of our lives, past all kinds of walls and fences made of rotting wood, rammed earth, brick, concrete, iron railings. We have never given a thought to what lies behind them. We have never tried to penetrate them with our vision or our understanding. But there is where the Gulag country begins, right next to us, two yards away from us. In addition, we have failed to notice an enormous number of closely fitted, well-disguised doors and gates in these fences. All those gates were prepared for us, every last one! And all of a sudden the fateful gate swings quickly open, and four white male hands, unaccustomed to physical labor but nonetheless strong and tenacious, grab us by the leg, arm, collar, cap, ear, and drag us in like a sack, and the gate behind us, the gate to our past life, is slammed shut once and for all.
That's all there is to it! You are arrested! — Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

People say, what is the sense of our small effort? They cannot see that we must lay one brick at a time, take one step at a time. A pebble cast into a pond causes ripples that spread in all directions. Each one of our thoughts, words and deeds is like that. No one has a right to sit down and feel hopeless. There is too much work to do. — Dorothy Day

Technologies of easy travel give us wings; they annihilate the toil and dust of pilgrimage; they spiritualize travel! Transition being so facile, what can be any man's inducement to tarry in one spot? Why, therefore, should he build a more cumbrous habitation than can readily be carried off with him? Why should he make himself a prisoner for life in brick, and stone, and old worm-eaten timber, when he may just as easily dwell, in one sense, nowhere, - in a better sense, wherever the fit and beautiful shall offer him a home? — Nathaniel Hawthorne

You say to a brick, 'What do you want, brick?' And brick says to you, 'I like an arch.' And you say to brick, 'Look, I want one, too, but arches are expensive and I can use a concrete lintel.' And then you say: 'What do you think of that, brick?' Brick says: 'I like an arch.' — Louis Kahn

If one kept the great yellow mounds of smashed brick in the corner of one's eye, then the mind understood them as the contours of nature and forgot its trick of making one unhappy. — Chris Cleave

Writing is very much like bricklaying. You learn to put one brick on top of another and spread the mortar so thick. — Red Smith

Here's something else to think about: calling when you say you're going to is the very first brick in the house you are building of love and trust. If he can't lay this one stupid brick down, you ain't never gonna have a house baby, and it's cold outside. — Greg Behrendt

Mendacity is a system that we live in," declares Brick. "Liquor is one way out an'death's the other. — Tennessee Williams

Being found out, that's not the worst part, Harry now realizes. The anger, the pain, all the things that will inevitably follow this moment, they're just the fallout. This is the worst moment, the flash point, the cataclysm. For as Harry holds the eyes of his wife, he sees confusion in them--genuine puzzlement--and this is the deepest blow: the realization that until this moment it could not possibly have occurred to her that he would lie to her. But, of course, she doesn't know about all the little lies that preceded this grand one, the painstaking edifice of deceit that's about to collapse. He has hurled a brick through her trust, and although he may spend the rest of his life collecting every last shard, massaging the creaky, fractured pane back into a whole, it will always be warped, irregular, distorting the view on both sides. — Mark Sarvas

My native gifts are not remarkable, but I have a certain force of character which has enabled me in a measure to supplement my deficiencies. I have common-sense. Most people cannot see anything, but I can see what is in the front of my nose with extreme clearness; the greatest writers can see through a brick wall. My vision is not so penetrating. For many years I have been described as a cynic; I told the truth. I wish no one to take me for other than I am, and on the other hand I see no need to accept others' pretences. — W. Somerset Maugham

But in the city
in which I love you,
no one comes, no one
meets me in the brick clefts;
in the wedged dark,
no finger touches me secretly, no mouth
tastes my flawless salt,
no one wakens the honey in the cells, finds the humming
in the ribs, the rich business in the recesses;
hulls clogged, I continue laden — Li-Young Lee

There is a certain shade of red brick
a dark, almost melodious red, sombre and riddled with blue
that is my childhood in St.Louis. Not the real childhood, but the false one that extends from the dawning of consciousness until the day that one leaves home for college. That one shade of red brick and green foliage is St. Louis in the summer (the winter is just a gray sky and a crowded school bus and the wet footprints on the brown linoleum floor at school), and that brick and a pale sky is spring. It's also loneliness and the queer, self-pitying wonder that children whose families are having catastrophes feel. — Harold Brodkey

A mansion begins with one brick.
A forest begins with one tree.
A harvest begins with one seed.
An ocean begins with one drop.
A friendship begins with one gesture.
A fire begins with one spark.
A revolution begins with one idea. — Matshona Dhliwayo

I expected Candy to pick a different rental house. The little yellow one always gets positive comments from broads. Instead, she chose the blocky, brick house. It's the kind of house I'd have picked. Like the fuckwit I've become, I take her choice as a sign that she and I are made for each other. "Why — Bijou Hunter

My father was a better bricklayer than I am a theologian. I am still in too much of a hurry. But if the work I have done in theology is of any use, it is because of what I learned on the job, that is, you can lay only one brick at a time. — Stanley Hauerwas

We fall into the great continuing circle of dancers. Some leave the floor, tired but giddy; others have only just arrived. They are eager to wear their new status as ladies, to be paraded about and lauded until they see themselves with new eyes. The fathers beam at their daughters, thinking them perfect flowers in need of their protection, while the mothers watch from the margins, certain this moment is their doing. We create illusions we need to go on. And one day, when they no longer dazzle or comfort, we tear them down, brick by glittering brick, until we are left with nothing but the bright light of honesty. The light is liberating. Necessary. Terrifying. We stand naked and emptied before it. Adn when it is too much for our eyes to take, we build a new illusion to shield us from its relentless truth.
But the girls! Their eyes glow with the fever dream of all they might become. They tell themselves this is the beginning of everything. And who am I to say it isn't? — Libba Bray