Quiet House Quotes & Sayings

It's been years since I tried to count the stars. I spent a lot of long teenage nights staring up there trying to count them. I needed to know their number. I remember waiting until the whole house was quiet, until my parents' soft voices in the room next to mine had stopped. I remember sneaking out the window in my nightie, no slippers on my feel, and lying down in the middle of the lawn. It was cold but I didn't care. I would stare at the sky, but the fucking things move. I tried to imagine the sky as a grid, drawing lines from objects on the ground. I tried scanning it with an aluminum-foil tube. I tried everything. Nothing works. — Toni Jordan

For the most part, you don't hold the people you love in your heart because they rescued you from drowning or pulled you from a burning house. Mostly you hold them in your heart because they save you, in a million quiet and perfect ways, from being alone. — Jeff Zentner

I would love to make a 1830's period piece, a house in the country, a classic atmospheric haunted house movie, visually it would be so beautiful, the costumes, the candles, the darkness, and the quiet, no radio, to TV, the clock ticking away. — Conor McPherson

My first step from the old white man was trees. Then air. Then birds. Then other people. But one day when I was sitting quiet and feeling like a motherless child, which I was, it come to me: that feeling of being part of everything, not separate at all. I knew that if I cut a tree, my arm would bleed. And I laughed and I cried and I run all around the house. I knew just what it was. In fact, when it happen, you can't miss it. — Alice Walker

The Lord's my Shepherd, I'll not want;
He makes me down to lie
In pastures green; He leadeth me
The quiet waters by.
My soul He doth restore again,
And me to walk doth make
Within the paths of righteousness,
E'en for His own name's sake.
Yea, though I walk in death's dark vale,
Yet will I fear no ill;
For Thou art with me, and Thy rod
And staff my comfort still.
My table Thou hast furnished me
In presence of my foes;
My head Thou dost with oil anoint,
And my cup overflows.
Goodness and mercy all my life
Shall surely follow me;
And in God's house forevermore,
My dwelling place shall be. — Psalm 23

There it is."
And he watched with now-gentle sorrow and now-quick delight, and at last quiet acceptance as all the bits and pieces of his house mixed, stirred, settled, poised, and ran steadily again.
"The Happiness Machine," he said. "The Happiness Machine. — Ray Bradbury

the suit, if there is one, we still lose because of the publicity." I was scarcely hearing a word of it. Horrible images were playing crazily inside my mind. The 911 call, the fact it was aborted, made me see it. I knew what happened. Lori Petersen was exhausted after her ER shift, and her husband had told her he would be in later than usual that night. So she went to bed, perhaps planning to sleep just awhile, until he got home - as I used to do when I was a resident and waiting for Tony to come home from the law library at Georgetown. She woke up at the sound of someone inside the house, perhaps the quiet sound of this person's footsteps coming down the hallway toward the bedroom. Confused, she called out the name of her husband. No one answered. In that instant of dark silence that must have seemed an — Patricia Cornwell

Gains
There is no man in the house that I have to try to make happy. There are no more arguments, or nights when I turn away from N in quiet dispair as he snores with an entitled regularity. Everything also stays cleaner; the toilet seat is perpetually down. I have the remote control to the television; no one can take that away. I can watch the Lifetime channel without derision. — Suzanne Finnamore

We eventually come to a one-story house that looks as though it's on its way to becoming one with the forest surrounding it. "Seriously?"
Mom looks at me with a glance that says so much.
Be quiet, for one thing.
Get out, for another.
Mind your manners is surely in there.
And last but not least, This is freaking crazy. — Travis Thrasher

Standing in front of the girl's house, Mama yelled up at the windows, "Katie Adams, you whore, give me my husband back!" When Miss Adams' neighbours complained about all the noise Mama was making, my father came down to quiet her. He kissed her until she cried, but didn't come home. — Ami McKay

In the old house in Miami, I'd wake with the feeling of a hand on my chest, my eyes open to the murky blue half-light of my bedroom. Everything quiet, though still feeling noise all around me, though my ears, behind my eyes, under my skin.

In the cottage, I fall asleep slowly, counting the sounds of the night animals - crickets, frogs, squealing raccoons, a cat in heat somewhere beyond the coco plum trees.

But mine is still a loneliness that shakes me from my sleep.

I can forget my solitude all day, through my working hours, through errands, the evening housecleaning ritual I've made up for the cottage.

Yet night remains a tomb, when I'm most vulnerable, lying down for rest without distraction.

Only this body and that darkness, the whispers of the never-ending noche:

You belong to no one. No one belongs to you. — Patricia Engel

The house was an immense place, isolated in a great wooded area. The building and the trees seemed wet, glistening dimly in the grey morning light that was much like the light of midday of Anthea. It was refreshing to his over-sensitive eyes. He liked the woods, the quiet sense of life in them, and the glistening moisture - the sense of water and of fruitfulness that this earth overflowed with, even down to the continual trilling and chirping sounds of the insects. It would be an endless source of delight compared to his own world, with the dryness, the emptiness, the soundlessness of the broad, empty deserts between the almost deserted cities where the only sound was the whining of the cold and endless wind that voiced the agony of his own, dying people..... — Walter Tevis

Mature readers consider reading an integral part of life. It is not something they do only to relax or to escape or if there is nothing good on television. It is something they plan for in each day, and if the day develops so that they have no time for it, they may become restless, rather like joggers who miss their run. Some - busy parents, for example - stay up late at night to read their daily quota after the house is quiet, acknowledging that having balance in their lives is more dependent on reading time than on sleep. — Judith Wynn Halsted

Eisenhower, his science adviser James Killian, and others in the White House didn't want to be reminded that the rocket was the same damn Jupiter-C that could have placed a satellite in orbit more than a year before Sputnik. The Army was told to keep that information quiet - in fact, to change the name of the rocket, and Jupiter-C became Juno 1. — Alan Shepard

Better a dry crust of bread with peace and quiet than a house full of feasting with strife. — King David

I grew up as an only child. My parents weren't great conversationalists. We had a quiet house. I'm not very verbal. — Matthew Morrison

He settled in his beautiful Georgian house in Lymington surrounded by beautiful things. He knew how to live well, perhaps without regard for his health. He hated exercise, smoked, drank and wrote. Today he would have been bullied by wife and children and friends into giving up these habits and changing his lifestyle, but I'm not sure he would have given in. Maybe like me, he would simply find a quiet place. Dominic Wheatley, 2013 — Dennis Wheatley

I like it to be quiet, and it usually occurs in the morning. There are three or four places in my house where I can write and I like to keep moving around. The moment I find myself falling into a necessary routine, I change it. I'd rather not accumulate superstitions. — Stephen Dobyns

He fell quiet, but she understood this was his way. He was not a talkative man. Once, she'd imagined him sitting alone in his house, a monster ready to devour anyone who came near. What she imagined now was a man who had both his rank and his natural reticence working against him.
She smiled at him. If he continued in his gruff ways the rest of his life, she would defend him to anyone. Anyone. — Carolyn Jewel

Testing, she lifted her hips, let them fall. "Oh, for God's sake. We can't do this on a talking bed. Everybody in the house will know what's going on in here."
Enjoying himself, he nuzzled at her throat. "I believe they already suspect we have sex."
"Maybe, but that's different than having the bed yell out, 'Whoopee!"
Was it any wonder he adored her? he thought.
Watching her face, he trailed a finger over her breast. "We'll have quiet, dignified sex."
"If sex is dignified it's not being done right. — J.D. Robb

The simple life on the farm was everything to me. Nothing was more relaxing after a long plane flight than to reach the winding driveway that led up to my house. The quiet of the night was more soothing than a sleeping pill. — Elisabeth Kubler-Ross

When Jennifer was here in the summer, they were at the house most days. I would say generally that as they got older they became quieter, and though I enjoyed both, I sometimes missed the giggles and shouts. The quiet voices, just low enough for me not to hear from wherever I was, rising and failing in proportion to my distance from them, frightened me. Not that I believed they were planning or recounting anything really wicked, but there was a female seriousness about them, and it was secretive, and of course I thought: love, sex. But it was more than that: it was womanhood they were entering, the deep forest of it, and no matter how many women and men too are saying these days that there is little difference between us, the truth is that men find their way into that forest only on clearly marked trails, while women move about in it like birds. So hearing Jennifer and her friends talking so quietly, yet intensely, I wanted very much to have a wife. — Andre Dubus

Confessing I didn't, I scribbled the directions on the notepad I always kept by the phone. I hung up and my feet were already on the floor as adrenaline hit my nerves like espresso. The house was quiet. I grabbed my black medical bag, scuffed and worn from years of use. The — Patricia Cornwell

It's been forever.' The words are quiet, hidden against his shoulder.
'That's because,' Oliver says, 'you were waiting for me.' He slips aside the sweater again and kisses my collarbone. — Jodi Picoult

That's the funny thing about children. When they were around, you wanted peace and quiet. A mere moment to yourself. You felt absolutely desperate to go more than three minutes without hearing the word Moooooooom echoing throughout the house. To go to the bathroom or - if luck was really on your side - to take an uninterrupted shower. Yet, when they were absent, no matter how infrequently that happened, it felt as though someone had amputated your limb and left a stinging open wound in its place. And you craved them like a cold beer on a blistering summer day. — Emily Liebert

It's all still there: the pool with its blue and yellow tiles from Portugal, water laughing softly down a black stone wall. The house is the same, except quiet. The quiet makes no sense. Nerve gas? Overdoses? Mass arrests? I wonder as we follow a maid through a curve of carpeted rooms, the pool blinking at us past every window. What else could have stopped the unstoppable parties? But it's nothing like that. Twenty years have passed. — Jennifer Egan

I feel his kiss more intensely now, in the darkness of the room where his sister died. In the quiet of the house where his family died. In the stillness of the world where the life we knew before the Arrival died. He tastes my tears before I can feel them. Where there would be tears, his kiss. "I didn't save you, " he whispered, lips tickling my eyelashes. "You saved me." He repeats it over and over until we fall asleep pressed against each other, his voice in my ear, my tears in his mouth, "You saved me. — Rick Yancey

These were always the weirdest trips for me, when it was midnight or even later, and we pulled up to a dark house, trying to be quiet. Like a robbery in reverse, creeping around to leave something rather than take it. — Sarah Dessen

I have to take care of the house, and the dogs, and the Macondo Board meetings, all those e-mails, the letters that are going to fans. And you've got to pay bills. These things eat up your time. You have to prepare and pack to go on that trip. Then when you come back you have to file all that stuff, answer all that mail, and that's not even washing the clothes or any of that. So it takes as many days as I've been away to come back to normal and to get quiet. — Sandra Cisneros

Brady was staring at me from across the table. Unmoving. Unblinking. Not speaking. It was like an old Western. The house was too quiet as I stared back at him. He was winning this contest. And I'd had no idea we were even in one to begin with. Break, kid. Break — Amber L. Johnson

You do not feel like
dancing and there are no
daffodils,

only walls, your bedroom door, and the quiet
of the house, tucked asleep in the night's thick cover.
You wait for dawn. You wait for your

dreams. You wait in the night, and you hunger. — Anna West

Him. I sped home, calling her phone repeatedly only to hear her voicemail time after time. I barreled through the front door, half expecting to find Erica there. But the house was quiet and dark. I went to the kitchen, explored every room on — Meredith Wild

As Wilson mourned his wife, German forces in Belgium entered quiet towns and villages, took civilian hostages, and executed them to discourage resistances. In the town of Dinant, German soldiers shot 612 men, women, and children. The American press called such atrocities acts of "frightfulness," the word then used to describe what later generations would call terrorism. On August 25, German forces bean an assault on the Belgian city of Louvain, the "Oxford of Belgium," a university town that was home to an important library. Three days of shelling and murder left 209 civilians dead, 1,100 buildings incinerated, and the library destroyed, along with its 230,000 books, priceless manuscripts, and artifacts. The assault was deemed an affront to just to Belgium but to the world. Wilson, a past president of Princeton University, "felt deeply the destruction of Louvain," according to his friend, Colonel House; the president feared "the war would throw the world back three or four centuries. — Erik Larson

Crying. Milo was crying. It was a soft, muffled sound, but Jason's ears were quite powerful and the house was otherwise quiet. It sounded something like sobs and something like a dog's throat-whine. Aw. Hell. — Eli Easton

Look: the trees exist; the houses we dwell in stand there stalwartly. Only we pass by it all, like a rush of air. And everything conspires to keep quiet about us, half out of shame perhaps, half out of some secret hope. — Rainer Maria Rilke

It was late in Ruana and Ray's visit when Samuel
started talking about the gothic revival house that Lindsey
and he had found along an overgrown section of Route 30. As
he told Abigail about it in detail, describing how he had
realized he wanted to propose to Lindsey and live there with
her, Ray found himself asking, "Does it have a big hole in
the ceiling of the back room and cool windows above the
front door?"
"Yes," Samuel said, as my father grew alarmed. "But it
can be fixed, Mr. Salmon. I'm sure of it."
"Ruth's dad owns that," Ray said.
Everyone was quiet for a moment and then Ray continued.
"He took out a loan on his business to buy up old
places that aren't already slated for destruction. He wants
to restore them," Ray said.
"My God," Samuel said.
And I was gone.
(Susie finnally giving up on earth and moving on) — Alice Sebold

Finally, he reached his street. It was quiet, blessedly so, and the only sound was his own groan as he lifted his foot to the first stone step at the entrance to Winstead House. The only sound, that was, until someone whispered his name.
He froze. "Anne?"
A figure stepped out of the shadows, trembling in the night. "Daniel," she said again, and if she said anything more, he did not hear it. He was down the stairs in an instant, and she was in his arms, and for the first time in nearly a week, the world felt steady on its axis. — Julia Quinn

The house was quiet, my room dark and still. I lay awake and thought of all the good men on TV who'd been shot in the head. I saw again the dead soldiers lying on the ground , and until Pop had cried over us, I hadn't thought much about Jeb and me having to go and fight, too. But in only nine years I'd be as old as the dead, and it'd be my turn, wouldn't it? — Andre Dubus III

...books change lives, in big ways and small, from the simple desire to spend a few quiet hours in a comfy chair, swept away by a story, to the profound realization that the reader is not alone in the world, that there is someone else like him or her, someone who has faced the same fears, the same confusions, the same grief, the same joys. Reading is a way to live more lives, to experience more worlds, to meet people we care about and want to know more about, to understand others and develop a compassion for what they confront and endure. It is a way to learn how to knit or build a house or solve an equation, a way to be moved to laughter and wonder and to learn how to live...in all our fascination with technology we've forgotten that a simple book can make a difference. — Roxanne J. Coady

The house is eerily quiet. All this time I thought silence would be a welcome reprieve, but it's less comforting than I imagined. The house feels so much bigger and colder than it ever has. — Hannah Harrington

I'm manacled to the bed. When the house is quiet and even the cat is asleep, you could come down the stairs and make love to me."
"Don't be ridiculous. You would never let me - "
"But I would. I'd let you take the lead, explore me as you liked, show me what gives you pleasure. I would kiss you anywhere you instructed - on your lips, on your breasts, on your - "
"My lord, please!"
" - shoulders. Really, Amy, what did you think I was going to say? — Christina Dodd

The intruder took a step forward, and Moody's voice asked, "Severus Snape?" Then the dust figure rose from the end of the hall and rushed him, raising its dead hand.
"It was not I who killed you, Albus," said a quiet voice.
The jinx broke: The dust-figure exploded again, and it was impossible to make out the newcomer through the dense gray cloud it left behind.
Harry pointed his wand into the middle of it.
"Don't move!"
He had forgotten the portrait of Mrs. Black: At the sound of his yell, the curtains hiding her flew open and she began to scream, "Mudbloods and filth dishonoring my house--"
Ron and Hermione came crashing down the stairs behind Harry, wants pointing, like his, at the unknown man now standing with his arms raised in the hall below.
"Hold your fire, it's me, Remus!"
"Oh, thank goodness," said Hermione weakly, pointing her wand at Mrs. Black instead; with a bang, the curtains swished shut again and silence fell. — J.K. Rowling

There was evidently no time to be lost, so, hastily adopting the Fourth dimension of Space as a means of escape, he vanished through the wainscoting, and the house became quite quiet. — Oscar Wilde

Given that media has become fast-paced, readers now want books that show the action and don't just tell you what is happening. Modern readers don't want three pages of descriptions of a farmhouse. They want to hear the door's creak quiet the chirping of crickets out in the cornfield, they want to feel the cool air drift through the house, then they want to see the shadow of a man, gun drawn, standing over the bed of his disloyal lover. — Jennifer Arnett

I can write anywhere that's quiet. I have a study in my apartment, but I often work in the kitchen of a house that we rent in the country. — Jonathan Galassi

She was not only good at housekeeping, she enjoyed it. After her parents left for work and the other children were at school or in mines, the house was quiet. The stillness and isolation both calmed and energized her. She could arrange and clean without interruption until two o'clock, when Chicken and Pie came home. — Toni Morrison

When they were silent for a moment the quiet weight of the house pressed down from all around them. — Shirley Jackson

Sissy could walk home while you drive me and the groceries back."
"Or," Sissy countered, "I could gut you here and let your rotting corpse attract the hyenas while we go home and enjoy a nice, quiet meal at my parents' house."
Mitch thought about that a moment but finally shook his head. "That doesn't really work for me. — Shelly Laurenston

Solitude is the house of peace. — T.F. Hodge

Even after everyone had gone home, the house was filled with the good time they'd had, as if it could linger in the air like the voices and music lingered in memory. Mina wrapped the memory up and put it in her heart; there was a quiet gladness, deep like a tree and tall in her — Cynthia Voigt

There was so much filth to clean up; so many broken pieces to fix; so many errors to correct. Every morning she left her house she let out a quiet sigh, as if in one breath she could will away detritus of the previous day.

--Three Daughters of Eve — Elif Shafak

Neither spoke, but lat silently listening to the ticking of the clock. A stair creaked, and a squeaky mouse scurried noisily through the wall. The darkness was oppressive, and after lying for some time screwing up his courage, he took the box of matches, and striking one, went downstairs for a candle.
At the foot of the stairs the match went out, and he paused to strike another; and at the same moment a knock came so quiet and stealthy as to be scarcely audible, sounded on the front door.
The matches fell from his hand and spilled in the passage. He stood motionless, his breath suspended until the knock was repeated. Then he turned and fled swiftly back to his room, and closed the door behind him. A third knock sounded through the house. — W.W. Jacobs

In truth I suspect that merely slowing down is not a very satisfying answer. What I need has less to do with my pace of life than my peace of life. At any speed, I crave a deep and lasting inner peace. And if it's solace I'm after, I don't need to pace myself like a turtle, change jobs or set up house on a quiet island. It is usually frenetic living, not high energy, that robs my peace of mind. — Steve Goodier

Like a dog, I have pack needs; like a cat, he prefers a quieter house. As long as he is married to me, his house will never be quiet. — Elizabeth Gilbert

She's a woman. Like a chameleon does, a woman quietly blends into all the parts of her life. Sometimes you can hardly tell she's there, she's so quiet going on about her business. Feed the baby. Muck the stables. Make soup from stones. Make a sheet into a dress. She doesn't count on destiny for anything. She knows its her own hands, her own arms, her own thighs and breasts that have to do the work. Destiny is bigger in men's lives. Destiny is a welcome guest in a man's house. She barely knocks and he's there to open the door. "Yes, yes. You do it," he says to destiny and lumbers back to his chair. — Marlena De Blasi

PANG LIVED in an obscure district off On Nuch and to reach his house required a long drive down some narrow dirt tracks. Dust rose up from the ground as Nigel was thrown around in the back like a rag doll.
Eventually they arrived at a row of painted houses and parked outside one painted blue. Nigel stepped out, tidied his hair in the wing mirror then followed Pang to the house. "That's a nice shade of blue."
"I like blue," Pang drawled.
Nigel followed Pang to the front door and watched as Pang fiddled with his keys and connected with the lock. Stepping in, Pang flicked off his shoes and waited for Nigel to do something similar. Pang then pointed upstairs. "We better be quiet; Tuk sleeping."
They crept into the house on tip-toes and just as they were reaching the staircase, a light came on. They froze in their steps. A tall Thai lady stood at the top of the stairs looking down. She had short, brown hair, long legs and high, curvy hips. "I can see you. — Simon Palmer

It's suspiciously quiet in here, and there's a Tod shaped dent in the bean bag. For the sake of both my sanity and my temper, I'm going to pretend I can't tell that you're in his lap, so could you pretend that this is still my house and you are still my daughter, and I'm within my parental rights to kick your boyfriend out after 11:00 p.m.? — Rachel Vincent

Nearly every morning, a certain woman in our community comes running out of her house with her face white and her overcoat flapping wildly. She cries out, "Emergency, emergency," and one of us runs to her and holds her until her fears are calmed. We know she is making it up; nothing is has really happened to her. But we understand, because there is hardly one of us who has no been moved at some time to do just what she has done, and every time, it has taken all our strength, and even the strength of our friends and families, too, to keep us quiet. — Lydia Davis

And I go out of Father's house and I walk down the street, and it is very quiet even thought it is the middle of the day and I can't hear any noise except birds singing and wind and sometimes buildings falling down in the distance, and if I stand very close to traffic lights I can hear a little click as the colors change. — Mark Haddon

Except for the muffled strum of her fingers against metal, the house is still, quiet, but then she hears another sound, this one coming from deep within. a numbing furrow slides through her soul, sliding into her brain, a furrow that seperates one part of her heart from the other. and then it goes quiet agani. — Mary E. Pearson

I walked to the windows and pulled the shades up and opened the windows wide. The night air came drifting in with a kind of stale sweetness that still remembered automobile exhausts and the streets of the city. I reached for my drink and drank it slowly. The apartment house door closed itself down below me. Steps tinkled on the quiet sidewalk. A car started up not far away. It rushed off into the night with a rough clashing of gears. I went back to the bed and looked down at it. The imprint of her head was still in the pillow, of her small corrupt body still on the sheets. I put my empty glass down and tore the bed to pieces savagely. — Raymond Chandler

I live on a farm in Dorset. The nearest neighbour is a quarter of a mile away. It's really quiet, with an amazing view - can't see a pylon, can't see a road. Blockbuster's an event in our house, when the little blue envelope comes in. — Martin Clunes

On a frosty winter afternoon, I rode in sight of Thornfield Hall. On a stile in Hay Lane I saw a quiet little figure sitting by itself. I had no presentiment of what it would be to me; no inward warning that the arbitress of my life
my genius for good or evil
waited there in humble guise.
When once I had pressed the frail shoulder, something new
a fresh sap and sense
stole into my frame. It was well I had learnt that this elf must return to me
that it belonged to my house down below- -or I could not have felt it pass away from under my hand, and seen it vanish behind the dim hedge, without singular regret. I heard you come home that night, Jane, though probably you were not aware that I thought of you or watched for you. — Charlotte Bronte

You're a rule person," he said.
"My sister was a cheater. It sort of became necessary."
"She cheated at this game?"
"She cheated ateverything ," I said. "When we played Monopoly, she always
insisted on being banker,
then helped herself to multiple loans and 'service fees' for every real estate
transaction. I was, like, ten or
eleven before I played at someone else's house and they told me you couldn't do
that."
He laughed, the sound seeming loud in all the quiet. I felt myself smiling,
remembering.
"During staring contests," I said, "she always blinked.Always . But then she'd
swear up and down she
hadn't, and make you go again, and again. And when we played Truth, she lied.
Blatantly. — Sarah Dessen

And the snow that fell onto the roof in winter ... it fell softly ... softly ... and it covered the house, the armchair, the books, the children's voices. It covered Anna and Abel, covered their parallel world, and everything was finally, very, very quiet. — Antonia Michaelis

Money ... buys privacy, silence. The less money you have, the noisier it is; the thinner your walls, the closer your neighbors ... The first thing you notice when you step into the house or apartment of a rich person is how quiet it is. — Fran Lebowitz

So I heard on the news that the Tard died and your house burnt down. I bet secretly you're relieved you don't have to live with him anymore in that dump."
The whole commotion in the hallway immediately stopped, as if her words had been spoken over the intercom. It became so quiet that you could hear Mina's and Nan's sharp intakes of breath. Mina wasn't prone to violence and was about to think of something mean to say back to Savannah, but she didn't have the chance to, because Nan Taylor, perky, happy-go-lucky Nan Taylor, pulled back her fist and punched Savannah in the face.
Savannah wasn't prepared, and fell to the floor. Nan stood over her shocked face and yelled, "No way was he handicapped, or different. He was the most special, coolest and smartest kid ever. And the world is a much sadder place because he's not here. And don't you ever, EVER, insult him again!" Nan shook with anger.
The hall was full of students and teachers, and one by one they started to clap. — Chanda Hahn

There was never any peace. There were never any quiet, family moments. They were always working. All of them, all the time. For some reason Michael saw an image of the sitting room at the house in Yorkshire. The TV was on, but there was no one watching it. The terrier was polishing off a plate of dinner that had been abandoned on the arm of the couch. That was the way their lives were. They hadn't sat down to a meal once since they arrived in Scotland. They were a dealer's yard, not a family. — Kate Thompson

On nights like this, when he rode out from the dark, silent house to the dark, deserted park, he could
forget.
He could be nothing but a solitary rider on a fast horse, wind in his face and the world open around him.
No walls, no bars, no quiet weeping or screams or death. None of that could catch him. On a night like
this, none of it could find him. — Suzanne Enoch

Everyone had forgotten her. But that's the way Penny was
so quiet and unimportant that you could look right at her and never see her. Esther had no idea why Penny always showed up at Grandma's house on Sunday afternoons when they came to visit. She was just one of those nosy neighbors with no life of her own, who watched other people's lives as if watching a movie. — Lynn Austin

How will you become free? With a quiet mind Come into that empty house, your heart, And feel the joy of the way Beyond the world. Look within - The rising and the falling. — Gautama Buddha

It was still quiet in the house, and not a sound was heard from outside, either. Were it not for this silence, my reverie would probably have been disrupted by reminders of daily duties, of getting up and going to school. — Herman Hesse

The house was quiet. Silently, I walked down the stairs and passed the peacock room where I found Mr. Kadam sitting and waiting for me. He took my bag and walked with me out to the car, then he opened my door, and I slid in to the seat and buckled my seatbelt. Starting the car, he circled the stone driveway slowly. I turned to take one last look at the beautiful place that felt like home. As we started down the tree-lined road, I watched the house until the trees blocked my view.
Just then, a deafening, heartrending roar shook the trees. I turned in my seat and faced the desolate road ahead. — Colleen Houck

And he knew that he would never come again, and that lost magic would not come again. Lost now was all of it-the street, the heat, King's Highway, and Tom the Piper's son, all mixed in with the vast and drowsy murmur of the Fair, and with the sense of absence in the afternoon, and the house that waited, and the child that dreamed. And out of the enchanted wood, that thicket of man's memory, Eugene knew that the dark eye and the quiet face of his friend and brother-poor child, life's stranger, and life's exile, lost like all of us, a cipher in blind mazes, long ago-the lost boy was gone forever, and would not return. — Thomas Wolfe

I've got to be able to get my time off whether it's just enjoying my house or the peace and quiet of my family and being there and cooking for them. I love doing that. I also love doing leisure things. I ride horses. I love to shop. I love to drive! — LisaRaye McCoy-Misick

It's early on a beautiful winter morning. The house is quiet. The sun is shining. I'm thankful. I'm happy. My cup runneth over. Now there's coffee everywhere. — Mindy Levy

Her fingers travel back to the cathedral spire. South to the Gate of Dinan. All evening she has been marching her fingers around the model, waiting for her great-uncle Etienne, who owns this house, who went out the previous night while she slept, and who has not returned. And now it is night again, another revolution of the clock, and the whole block is quiet, and she cannot sleep. — Anthony Doerr

I'm sick and tired of having a forest and a torture chamber in my house... I want to have a nice quiet flat with ordinary doors and windows and a wife inside it, like anybody else! — Gaston Leroux

I'll miss the gecko that watched from the wall each morning as I ate breakfast. Though there are literally millions of geckos in south Florida, I swear this one follows me to school and seems to be everywhere I am. I'll miss the thunderstorms that seem to come from out of nowhere, the way everything is still and quiet in the early-morning hours before the terns arrive. I'll miss the dolphins that sometimes feed when the sun sets. I'll even miss the smell of sulfur from the rotting seaweed at the base of the shore, the way that it fills the house and penetrates our dreams while we sleep. — Pittacus Lore

Impossible as it seemed, many of these older ladies, who never stirred from the house past sunset, had either not heard the tales of his behavior two nights ago or had not believed them.
The ones who did obviously has enough manners, or at least enough sense, to keep quiet in the presence of his mother. Had anyone said anything outright, his mother would probably have no qualms about asking the offender to choose a weapon and name her second. — Kate Dolan

I laughed on the way home, and I laughed again for sheer satisfaction when we reached the garden and drove between the quiet trees to the pretty old house; for when I went into the library, with its four windows open to the moonlight and the scent, and looked round at the familiar bookshelves, and could hear no sounds but sounds of peace, and knew that here I might read or dream or idle exactly as I chose with never a creature to disturb me, how grateful I felt to the kindly Fate that has brought me here and given me a heart to understand my own blessedness, and rescued me from a life like that I had just seen -- a life spent with the odours of other people's dinners in one's nostrils, and the noise of their wrangling servants in one's years, and parties and tattle for all amusement. — Elizabeth Von Arnim

So he had them into the slaughter house, where was a butcher killing a sheep. And behold, the sheep was quiet and took her death patiently. Then said the Interpreter, You must learn of this sheep to suffer, and put up wrongs without murmurings and complaints. Behold how quietly she takes her death! And without objecting she suffereth her skin to be pulled over her ears. Your King doth call you his sheep. — John Bunyan

There were cycles in the life of a great house such as ours. When a lord is young, his family is boisterous and the house comes alive. But the wheel turns, as it must, and a quiet settles over the place as softly as a snowfall, muffling its gaiety as the lord ages and his family is flown. And then the wheel turns again and the house his handed over to the new lord and it stirs to life again, sheltering the family as it has so many before. — Deanna Raybourn

My house was very strange. I didn't do things other kids did because my parents were very strict - I stayed at home, quiet in my room. — Alessia Cara

It is unfortunate, of course, that this quiet happy moment was the last one the children would have for quite some time, but there is nothing anyone can do about it now. Just when the Baudelaires were beginning to think about lunch, they heard a car pull up in front of the house and toot its horn. To the children it signaled the arrival of Stephano. To us it should signal the beginning of more misery. — Lemony Snicket

Who Am I? I am not a disease, nor my weight, nor even my family. I am not my job, or my things, or the house I live in. I am not the words used to describe me (quiet or boring or something else I haven't thought of), the books I read, or the clothes I wear. I am not what you see, on the outside or what I say or even the things I do. It's all illusory. I am, instead, this essence inside. I am the strength that gives me breath each day. I am the love I feel within. I am a light in the dark. I am a little piece of this universe. I am human. I am silence. I am hope burning. I am kindness. I am laughter. I am all of these things. I am. — Erica Orloff

An almost eerie quiet hung over Washington; it had been that way ever since the British left. Pennsylvania Avenue stood broad and empty, with Joe Gales's type still scattered over the 7th Street intersection. General Ross's horse still lay, legs stiff in death, outside the ruins of Robert Sewall's house. The rubble of the Capitol still smoldered quietly in the sun. — Walter Lord

This present summer evening, as the sun goes down, the preparations are complete. Dreary and solemn the old house looks, with so many appliances of habitation and with no inhabitants except the pictured forms upon the walls. So did these come and go, a Dedlock in possession might have ruminated passing along; so did they see this gallery hushed and quiet, as I see it now; so think, as I think, of the gap that they would make in this domain when they were gone; so find it, as I find it, difficult to believe that it could be without them; so pass from my world, as I pass from theirs, now closing the reverberating door; so leave no blank to miss them, and so die. — Charles Dickens

You were firing questions at me today, trying to get inside my head.
You asked if I believed in God.
I told you of course I do- I've always had a strong sense of self.
Your house is quiet now, you're sleeping upstairs and I'm alone with this blasted, idiotic book that purports to tally the sum of my life, and fact is, maybe I do.
But maybe, ka-lyrra, your God doesn't believe in me.
From The (Greatly Revised) Black Edition Of The O'Callaghan Book of the Sin Siriche Du — Karen Marie Moning

I like a very dark house, just black. I sit there and just think. Once I'm still and quiet inside, I'll begin. It's very personal; it has to be. One song may be Bach, the next blues, a song from TV, or a nursery rhyme or jazz piece. — Bobby McFerrin

If he was right, here was our quiet English house suddenly invaded by a devilish Indian Diamond - bringing after it a conspiracy of living rogues, set loose on us by the vengeance of a dead man. — Wilkie Collins

This perfect quiet had settled into their house after the death of their father. That event had troubled the very medium of their lives. Time and air and sunlight bore wave and wave of shock, until all the shock was spent, and time and space and light grew still again and nothing seemed to tremble, and nothing seemed to lean. — Marilynne Robinson

Breakfast was ready. He could hear his father asking for coffee. Why did his father have to yell all the time? Couldn't he talk in a low voice? Everybody in the neighborhood knew everything that went on in their house on account of his father constantly shouting. The Moreys next door - you never heard a peep out of them, never; quiet American people. But his father wasn't satisfied with being an Italian, he had to be a noisy Italian.
'Arturo,' his mother called. 'Breakfast.'
As if he didn't know breakfast was ready! As if everybody in Colorado didn't know by this time that the Bandini family was having breakfast! — John Fante

He thought, that all men, trickled away, changing constantly, until they finally dissolved, while the artist-created images remained unchangeably the same. He thought that the fear of death was perhaps the root of all art, perhaps also of all things of the mind. We fear death, we shudder at life's instability, we grieve to see the flowers wilt again and again, and the leaves fall, and in our hearts we know that we, too, are transitory and will search for laws and formulate thoughts, it is in order to salvage something from the great dance of death, to make something that lasts longer than we do. Perhaps the woman after whom the master shaped his beautiful Madonna is already wilted or dead, and soon he, too, will be dead; others will live in his house and eat at his table- but his work will still be standing hundreds of years from now, and longer. It will go on shimmering in the quiet cloister church, unchangingly beautiful, forever smiling with the same sad, flowering mouth. — Hermann Hesse

And it was so still. The silence of the fields seemed to enter and move familiarly through the house. The wind used the open hall. He felt that he was in a mysterious, quiet, cool danger. It was necessary to do what? ... to talk.
("Death Of A Traveling Salesman") — Eudora Welty

The only things that moved in the neighbourhood were bits and bobs of bafflingly pointless machinery, whittling the hours busily doing nothing. Waiting to be freed from flesh. It was an oppressive reality come home to roost. This house here contained dead people. And that one, and that one there. The same all the way down the block, horrible, inexplicable, and so quiet. — B.P. Gregory

We get so involved with the latest craze or having the latest car or the most high-powered house that we lose touch with that which makes us happy - what makes us happy are quiet states of mind. — Frederick Lenz

Zec back toward the living room. The kettle's whistle died away, like an air raid siren winding down. The house went quiet again. "It's over," Reacher said. "You lost." "It's never over," the Zec replied. Hoarse voice, — Lee Child

The house is still, like the breath has been punched out of it. — Mary E. Pearson

You're pathetic. You screwed your best friend's boyfriend. Congratulations. You got into a guy's pants. Wonderful achievement for you. Revel in it. It'll last a week. He's going to drop you." I glanced at him, saw he was already uncertain, and rolled my eyes. "She's already dropped you and you're now known as the friend who sleeps with her friend's boyfriends. Congratulations on your new reputation. The only people who will want to be your friend will be people like you. You'll never get the good friends, the ones who are actual friends." I never looked away. I never faltered. The longer I talked, the more she withered beneath me. I was finished. "I've kept quiet, but I'm done. Mess with Mandy again and you will be messing with me." I stepped closer. "That's not a threat. It's a fact. Ball's in your court if you decide to take me on and with that said, get out of my house. — Tijan