Room At The Top Quotes & Sayings

You are pathetic, Rache," Jenks said, and my eyes darted to the top of the rack and I saw him standing there, hands on his hips and frowning at me, his wings a silver blur. "Rachel and Trent, sitting in a tree, K-I-S-S-I-N-G. No wait, it was a hospital room, and he had his hands on your ass and you had your tongue down his throat. I can see why you might be confused. — Kim Harrison

Looking at the room, I can tell that you are the most beautiful girl in the room.
(In the whole wide room)
And when you're on the street
(Depending on the street)
I bet you are definitely in the top three — Flight Of The Conchords

We get a lot of calls where the person is murdered at home, but is not found for a period of time. And so the animals have already started to take the body apart because they haven't been fed in that period. So your evidence is being chewed up by the family pet.
I tell you - Dogs are more loyal than cats. Cats will wait only a certain period of time and they'll start chewing on you. Dogs will wait a day or two before they just can't take the starving anymore. So, keep that in mind when choosing a pet.
You know how a cat just stares at you, maybe at the top of the TV, from across the room? That's because they're watching to see if you're gonna stop breathing. — Connie Fletcher

There's so many variables in comedy. Comedy is not this thing that's a performance like a play. It's really an interaction with every single person in the room. And if there's a weirdness in the room for any people, be it something the comedians did at the top of the set or be it the mixture of the people isn't right, something can go awry. So it's really great to see you proven wrong about someone. — B. J. Porter

He registered the empty room a split second before she dropped on him from the storage shelf above the bathroom door, nearly knocking him off his feet.
"Hey. Stop that." He tried to twist to get hold of her, but his temple caught her sharp elbow and he saw stars. He staggered toward the bed and flipped her down at last, but she managed to hook her leg behind his neck and he ended up on the boom somehow, with her sittinbg on his chest.
Her wild, shoulder-length waves framed cheeks pink from effort, her chest heaving as she leaned forward to pin his hands next to his head on each side. She ended up with her fine breasts inches from his lips.
He could have subdued her in two moves, but he liked her on top of him. — Dana Marton

I left an office at the top of the Pan Am Building, a nine-room apartment, and a farm in Vermont because I was aching inside. It took an analyst to tell me I could write a note of permission to become a musician and sign it. — Michael Masser

On the wall of his rehabilitation room was a picture of the space shuttle blasting off, autographed by every astronaut now at NASA. On top of the picture it says, "We found nothing is impossible." That should be our motto. — Christopher Reeve

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

Kate stops grinding the knife and begins to pass it over the length of the stone. Turning her wrist, she pulls the blade, swiping one side after the other, honing it to a fine edge. She wipes it dry with an old cloth and picks up a long piece of dark leather. One end of the strop she ties to the knob on the back of her chair, then holds it taught with her left hand. She counts in her head as she passes the blade over the length of the leather, flipping it at the bottom and the top of each pass. When she gets to twenty, she releases her hold on the strop and looks closely at the knife blade. Even in the dim light of the room, it shines. — Kari Aguila

I don't understand why people expect tips. In hotels you order food in your room, and it's already more expensive from the room service menu, so it's a cheek to expect a tip on top. I do sometimes reward good service, but it should be at my discretion, and I'm not going to be held to ransom. — Bernard Hill

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

People think that at the top there isn't much room. They tend to think of it as an Everest. My message is that there is tons of room at the top. — Margaret Thatcher

The visitor sat and listened to her retreating feet. He glanced inquiringly at the window before he removed his serviette, and resumed his meal. He took a mouthful, glanced suspiciously at the window, took another mouthful, then rose and, taking the serviette in his hand, walked across the room and pulled the blind down to the top of the white muslin that obscured the lower panes. This left the room in a twilight. This done, he returned with an easier air to the table and his meal. The poor soul's had an accident or an operation — H.G.Wells

Long after all the chocolates were eaten, and the cousins had gone, we kept the chocolate-box in the linen-drawer in the dining-room sideboard, waiting for some ceremonial use that never presented itself. It was still full of the empty chocolate cups of dark, fluted paper. In the wintertime I would sometimes go into the cold dining room and sniff at the cups, inhaling their smell of artifice and luxury; I would read again the descriptions on the map provided on the inside of the box-top: hazelnut, creamy nougat, Turkish delight, golden toffee, peppermint cream. — Alice Munro

In the stand-up comedy top, there's room for everyone - if you're good, there's room for everyone. You'll put on your own show - no one casts you. You cast your own show as a stand-up comedian. When you get good at stand-up comedy you book a theater and if people show up, people show up. If people don't show up, people don't show up. You don't have a director or a casting agent or anybody saying if you're good enough - the audience will decide. — Jim Jefferies

I have waited twenty years for this phone call . . . and all this time I thought it would go away. I knew I would always be sad for my sister. But I thought the other would go away."

"What is the other, Henrik?" Though he knew the answer.

"Anger . . . I am still angry, Detective Bosch."

Bosch nodded. He looked down at his desk, at the photos of all the victims under the glass top. Cases and faces. His eyes moved from the photo of Anneke Jespersen to some of the others. The ones he had not yet spoken for.

"So am I, Henrik," he said. "So am I."

- "The Burning Room" by Michael Connelly — Michael Connelly

One of my earliest memories was me singing 'Oh, What A Beautiful Mornin' at the top of my voice when I was seven. I got totally carried away. My grandmother, Sarah, was in the next room. I didn't even realise she was there. I was terribly embarrassed. — James Taylor

I was standing alone with him when she burst impetuously through the door, tall and wearing a rain-cape on top of a queen's costume, a forgotten crown on her head.

She directed some rapid words at him. He began to tremble all over and dropped my hand from under his arm. Vera seized me cruelly by the arm and led me off... She led me through murky, dusty expanses, between strange machinery and constructions, through valleys and mountains and past a precarious wood to her dressing-room. And she still held me cruelly by the arm. There she slammed the door shut, rudely chasing away some handsome women with the amorous eyes of worshipers.

I do not recall her words. It was as though she were all aflame. She kissed my hands and I realized then that she had seen only me that evening, that she had performed for only me, that she loved me and that this was all such madness.

("Thirty-Three Abominations") — Lydia Zinovieva-Annibal

Have you seen my daughter?"
"Daughter?" I'm the worst liar ever. I stare at Sarah's tall, imposing father and try to smile. "She's getting us a table?"
He narrows his gray eyes, and then tightens his mouth. "Is that a question or a statement?"
"Statement?" I'm so blowing this.
He exhales and nods. "Well, then. I guess I'll see you in the banquet room."
Harlin grins as Sarah's father walks away. "You are so subtle, Charlotte. Are you a ninja?"
"Shut up."
"I'm sure he didn't find that at all suspicious."
"Harlin!"
He laughs and kisses the top of my head. "I'll stop," he says. "But where is Sarah? You might want to find her before we sit down for chicken with that man. What will you say if he asks you to pass the mashed potatoes? Mashed potatoes?" Harlin finishes, imitating my voice. — Suzanne Young

She worked briskly and efficiently, taking her brush and pan from the drawing-room to the top of the stairs and making her way back down, a step at a time; after that she filled a bucket with water, fetched her kneeling-mat, and began to wash the hall floor. Vinegar was all she used. Soap left streaks on the black tiles. The first, wet rub was important for loosening the dirt, but it was the second bit that really counted, passing the wrung cloth over the floor in one supple, unbroken movement ... There! How pleasing each glossy tile was. The gloss would fade in about five minutes as the surface dried; but everything faded. The vital thing was to make the most of the moments of brightness. There was no point dwelling on the scuffs. — Sarah Waters

Green's mouth was too full to smile and too full to respond. He was ready to go lower but he wanted to make this good. He rose up and straddled Ruxs' legs, flipping him over. Green slapped that sexy ass hard, the sharp sound loud in the dark room. "Bastard," Ruxs murmured. Green started at the base of Ruxs' neck, his tongue being led by the long spine, as he licked his way down, around the valleys and curves of his back. Never had Green seen a man with a hotter body than Ruxs'. When he got to the top of his ass, Green gripped Ruxs' hip and dove in. Just wetting him, priming him. Ruxs face was pressed into the bedding, muffling his cries. Green wanted to hear how he was making Ruxs feel. Green — A.E. Via

At least that's what his note said, along with a scathing reminder that dishes didn't wash themselves and the fungus in the bathroom was one day away from evolving into sentient life. I folded the note into an airplane and sailed it across the room. It ended up perched jauntily on top of the ancient television. It looked good there and I left it as a tribute to freedom-loving fungi everywhere. — Rob Thurman

Danes had on their windows; the entire city had to be completely darkened at night. In a nearby tree, a bird was singing; otherwise it was quiet. It was the last night of September. "Go, now, and get into your nightgowns. It will be a long night." Annemarie and Ellen got to their feet. Papa suddenly crossed the room and put his arms around them both. He kissed the top of each head: Annemarie's blond one, which reached to his shoulder, and Ellen's dark hair, the thick — Lois Lowry

With a room of his own, a room at the top, he could proffer a temporary refuge to some lovely, fatigued, world-weary, sophisticated, black-turtlenecked, heavily-eyelinered girl he might lure up the stairs into his newspaper-strewn boudoir and onto his Indian-bedspreaded bed with the promise of artistic talk about the craft of writing, and the throes and torments of creation, and the need for integrity, and the temptations of selling out, and the nobility of resisting such temptations, and so forth. A promise offered with a hint of self-mockery in case such a girl might think he was pompous and cocksure and full of himself. Which he was, because at that age you have to be that way in order to crawl out of bed in the morning and sustain your faith in your own illusory potential for the next twelve hours of being awake. — Margaret Atwood

There's only so much room at the top of the heap. The rest of us are fill dirt. — Sue Grafton

I went back to the office and sat in my swivel chair and tried to catch up on my foot-dangling. There was a gusty wind blowing in at the windows and the soot from the oil burners of the hotel next door was drown-draughted into the room and rolling across the top of the desk like tumbleweed drifting across a vacant lot. I was thinking about going out to lunch and that life was pretty flat and that it would probably be just as flat if I took a drink and that taking a drink all alone at that time of day wouldn't be any fun anyway. — Raymond Chandler

General admission for groundlings - those who stood in the open around the stage - was a penny. Those who wished to sit paid a penny more, and those who desired a cushion paid another penny on top of that - all this at a time when a day's wage was 1 shilling (12 pence) or less a day. The money was dropped into a box, which was taken to a special room for safekeeping - the box office. — Bill Bryson

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

Almost all of them had mustaches, as though they had learned to blend in by watching movies from the early eighties. He wore a white shirt, and the top button was undone; and for some reason my eyes focused on the thick tuft of black hair poking out. I looked into his dark eyes, and he smiled at me in a way that told me he was looking forward to doing what he was about to do, and I started to cry. I slid down the wall until I dangled from the shackles around my wrists, watching through my tears as he pulled razor blades, knives, pliers, and a drill from the desk they had in the center of the room. When — Pittacus Lore

I've got a room at the top of the world tonight. I can see everything tonight. — Tom Petty

All I really want is a three-room house. The home I have designed at my new farm in Bedford, New York, is a three-room house: bedroom on top, living room in the middle, and kitchen on the ground. — Martha Stewart

At that moment, Ronin stepped back into the living room, clothed, thank God. Well, mostly. Kneeling on the floor before him, Devin watched him fascinated as he fastened the buttons of his plaid flannel shirt, thankfully covering that fucking beautiful chest. He left the top two buttons at his neck open. Frozen, she stared as his hands slipped down to tuck the shirt into his jeans before he fastened the fly and buckled his belt. Her fingers itched as she imagined the warmth and hardness of his hips, the deep contour of muscle low on his stomach.

Ooooohhhhh! — Sibylla Matilde

There is always room at the top, don't let them tell you there is not. — Adam Ant

"Heard you choking, are you all right?"
"You're beautiful, a good kisser, this is our first date, my bed is in the room, I'm nervous as all heck and I just thought I was going to die choking after spitting out gum so no, I'm not all right."
Yes, that's what I blurted, word for word.
Chace stared at me.
I stared back both wondering if I could will myself to melt like the Wicked Witch in The Wizard of Oz and if that was what Laurie meant by honesty or if it was a tad over the top.
( ... )
Then his tongue was in my mouth.
( ... )
"Still nervous?"
"No," I whispered.
"Good," he muttered. — Kristen Ashley

Come for your revenge at last, elf?"
Royce stepped forward. He looked down at Thranic and then around the room. "How could I top possibly top this? Sealed alive in a tomb of rock. My only regret is that I had nothing to do with it — Michael J. Sullivan

I do think there is room at the very top for marginal tax changes. — Richard Hanna

There's room at the top, they are telling you still. But first you must learn how to smile as you kill! — John Lennon

Decades ago, I'm told, my sister-in-law...was stepping out of the shower in the bathroom of her all-women's dorm, and she heard the call "Men on the floor!" At many schools, this would have been a non-event, but she was in a highly conservative religious college. She was naked. She had only a small towel to cover herself, and there were men prowling the hallways. She could hear them. She waited, but they didn't go away. So she began to think about which part of her body to cover with the towel. It barely fit across her bottom or her top. It certainly didn't cover both. She had to make a choice. Finally, she had an inspired idea. She threw the towel over her head and scampered naked to her room. Given the options, it was more important for her to cloak her identity than her body. — Stephen Baker

She pointed to a chair,then shifted the finger to her son. "You,go. I'll finish with you later."
"I'll be at the stables, doing penance." With a heavy sigh, Patrick rose, then he wrapped his arms around his mother's waist, laid his chin on top of her head. "Sorry."
"Get."
But Brian saw her lay a hand over Patrick's, and squeeze. With a quick grin tossed to the room in general, he bolted.
"That boy's responsible for every other line on my face," Adelia muttered.
"What lines?" Travis asked, and made her laugh.
"That's the right answer. — Nora Roberts

Keisha Blake, whose celebrated will and focus did not leave her much room for angst, watched her friend ascend to the top deck in her new panda-eyed makeup and had a mauvais quart d'heure, wondering whether she herself had any personality at all or was in truth only the accumulation and reflection of all the things she had read in books and seen on television. — Zadie Smith

I went to a box room at the top of the house and locked myself in, in order to be alone with my aching miseries. — H.G.Wells

I came back into the room and excitedly said, "They love their hair." "Precisely!" she shouted. "Look on the top bunk." Perilously positioned on the thin wooden headboard of the bed, a bottle of STA-WET gel. "Kevin doesn't just wake up with that spiky bedhead look, Pudge. He works for it. He loves that hair. They leave their hair products here, Pudge, because they have duplicates at home. All those boys do. And you know why?" "Because they're compensating for their tiny little penises?" I asked. "Ha ha. No. That's why they're macho assholes. They love their hair because they aren't smart enough to love something more interesting. So we hit them where it hurts: the scalp. — John Green

Success can be attained in any branch of labor. There's always room at the top in every pursuit. — Andrew Carnegie

He opened the door and led me through a corridor into a dark green lounge curiously paneled with pale green glass behind which, at cunningly measured distances, lay exquisitely painted panoramas of strange seas and beautiful landfalls. Standing in the center of the room, and slowly turning, a man might imagine that Satan had taken him to the top of a high mountain, and was showing him all the kingdoms of the earth... until he put out his hand to touch the middle distance, and felt a window, and saw through it to the heart of the illusion. — Gerald Kersh

Goodness, that stuff rips like paper," she exclaimed, reaching to pull her tank top off. She was halfway through the action when the door opened and Alec walked into the room.
"Izzy, are you - " he began. His eyes flew wide, and he backed up fast enough to smack his head into the wall behind him. "What is he doing here?"
Isabelle tugged her tank top back down and glared at her brother. "You don't knock now?"
"It - It's my bedroom!" Alec spluttered. He seemed to be deliberately trying not to look at Izzy and Simon, who were indeed in a very compromising position. — Cassandra Clare

Love is like this small room where a child brings you to show you all their treasures. First the child shows you all the new toys that are bright and shiny and top of the line. But then she shows you all the stuff that has ended up at the bottom of the trunk. There are dolls with eyes that wobble, hair that is falling out of their heads, and dirt behind their ears. Their fingertips have been chewed off by dogs and they have been drawn on with ballpoint pen. It has been so long since they have been held or anyone has told them that they are lovely. They lie at the bottom of the toy chest, hidden and ashamed. You are either going to be disgusted by them, or you are going to be so filled with love for them that your heart almost breaks.
I took his hand in mine. — Heather O'Neill

The two of them on top of the freezing slide, wordlessly holding hands. Once again they were a ten-year-old boy and girl. A lonely boy, and a lonely girl. A classroom, just after school let out, at the beginning of winter. They had neither the power nor the knowledge to know what they should offer to each other, what they should be seeking. They had never, ever, been truly loved, or truly loved someone else. They had never held anyone, never been held. They had not idea, either, where this action would take them. What they entered then was a doorless room. They couldn't get out, nor could anyone else come in. The two of them didn't know it at the time, but this was the only truly complete place in the entire world. Totally isolated, yet the one place not tainted with loneliness. — Haruki Murakami

For she had a great variety of selves to call upon, far more than we have been able to find room for, since a biography is considered complete if it merely accounts for six or seven selves, whereas a person may have many thousand ... and these selves of which we are built up, one on top of the other, as plates are piled on a waiter's hand, have attachments elsewhere, sympathies, little constitutions and rights of their own ... so that one will only come if it is raining, another in a room with green curtains, another when Mrs. Jones is not there ... and some are too wildly ridiculous to be mentioned in print at all. — Virginia Woolf

Above all, however, resist the temptation to cover the entire room in foam--I can't tell you how often college studios in particular succumb to this seductive error. It is quite simply a recipe for disaster, because it hoovers up the top half of the room's reverberation, making for an extremely unnatural working environment. Although it makes good sense to damp down strong early reflections that can potentially comb filter your frequency response, you also want your monitoring environment to bear at least a passing resemblance to real-world living rooms and offices. If you plaster your whole studio in foam, you'll basically be mixing for people in padded cells--perhaps not the most lucrative demographic to set your sights on! — Mike Senior

I don't get it," Clarence whispered to me. "We're the only ones in the place. When are your friends supposed to get here?"
"Why, bab?" asked the cream pitcher, its top opening and closing like a tiny silver mouth. "Are you thinking about asking one of the waitresses out instead?" The chuckle that followed was a little coarser than the silvery-bell variety one usually expects from invisible spirits. Clarence let out a yelp like a dog whose tail has just found its way under a foot and was halfway to the front door before I could convince him to come back. At the other end of the long room the waitresses looked up without interest, then went back to discussing particle physics or whatever else was keeping them from bringing me a glass of water — Tad Williams

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

Bay's room was the first one at the top of the staircase. It was painted a dove gray that turned peacock blue after dark, as if the room absorbed the warmth of daylight and radiated with it at night. — Sarah Addison Allen

There is always room at the top - after the investigation. — Oliver Herford

What in Hood's name are you doing down here?'
'Hiding, what's it look like? That's always been your problem, Kal, your lack of subtlety. Sooner or later it's going to get you into trouble. Is it dark yet?'
'No. Listen, what's with this damned gale up top? It's all wrong-'
'You just noticed?'
Kalam scowled in the gloom. Well, at least he'd found the wizard. The High Mage of the Fourteenth, hiding between crates and casks and bales. Oh, how bloody encouraging is that?
...
Quick Ben moved further into the narrow space between cargo. 'Here, there's room.'
After a moment, Kalam joined him. 'You got anything to eat? Drink?'
'Naturally.'
'Good. — Steven Erikson

By June 1949 people had begun to realize that it was not so easy to get a program right as had at one time appeared. I well remember when this realization first came on me with full force. The EDSAC was on the top floor of the building and the tape-punching and editing equipment one floor below on a gallery that ran round the room in which the differential analyzer was installed. I was trying to get working my first non-trivial program, which was one for the numerical integration of Airy's differential equation. It was on one of my journeys between the EDSAC room and the punching equipment that "hesitating at the angles of stairs" the realization came over me with full force that a good part of the remainder of my life was going to be spent in finding errors in my own programs. — Martin Campbell-Kelly

Hypocrisy is what being a parent is all about," Jon said. "Well done for cracking the books, Jared and Holly. You see how it pays off."
Holly smiled and the light of her smile seemed to spill all over the room, reflections of light refracted all over everywhere.
"It's true reading is a wonderful thing," Rusty observed. "I read a Cosmo a year ago, and I still remember how to keep my nails in perfect condition and also ten top tips on how to dress to accentuate my ass."
Now everybody was staring at Rusty. Unlike Jared, he did not blush.
"Those tips are working," he said. "Don't pretend you haven't all noticed. I know the truth. — Sarah Rees Brennan

Wait," I said while Sig was throwing my belt across the room. My shirt was on top of an end table and she was stepping out of her pants while my foot held them pressed against the floor. "What?" She gasped. "I'm withholding sex to get back at you for that shower," I explained. "The hell," she said. It wasn't a question so much as a warning. "Hold on," I said. She stared at me. "Okay, I'm finished." I grabbed her and pulled her over onto the bed. — Elliott James

Savannah," he started in a softer voice, "Wait. Please. I - I didn't mean ... I just didn't want you to ... " "I'm going home," she said, rushing from the room before he could say another word. "Savannah!" He shot out of bed, following her through his bedroom door and running down the gallery as fast as his bum leg would allow. While walking or jogging were good for him, he wasn't supposed to sprint on it, and it ached and burned as he got to the top of stairs only to hear the front door slam in her wake. "GOD DAMN IT!" he bellowed, lowering himself to sit on the landing as his leg throbbed with pain. Miss Potts appeared out of nowhere to stand at the base of the stairs with her hands on her hips. She pursed her lips and tsked. "Somehow I don't think peach cobbler is going to fix this one. — Katy Regnery

He takes her hand and they leave. There's a taxi outside and they go to her room without saying anything. Behind the door, she unties the dress, and then reaches for his belt. He pushes her hands away. He'll do it all himself, though his right hand is bleeding. He sits on a small wooden chair and pulls her down on top of him and feels how rough and silky she is straddling him. He is the one moving her, as if she's a doll, and he knows it has to be this way because it makes him feel that he won't die, at least for tonight. — Paula McLain

After dinner, Edwart took me upstairs to see his room. At the top of the stairs was a giant wooden cross.
"Ironic, huh?" Edwart said.
"Why?" I asked with trepidation, imagining that, at any second, Edwart would turn into dust, which I would then sweep up and disperse over my furniture so he would always be with me.
"Because we're Jewish, of course
nonpracticing. — The Harvard Lampoon

I crossed the room at a run, barreled through the door to take the stairs, and crashed into Ranger. We lost balance and rolled tangled together to the fourth-floor landing. We lay there for a moment, stunned and breathless. Ranger was flat on his back, and I was on top of him. — Janet Evanovich

Libertarianism is neither of the left nor of the right. It is unique. It is sui generis. It is apart from left and right. The left right political spectrum simply has no room for libertarianism. Think of an equilateral triangle, with libertarianism at one corner, the left at a second corner and the right at the third corner. We are equally distant from both of those misbegotten political economic philosophies. No, better yet, think in terms of an isosceles triangle, with us at the top and the two of them at the bottom, indicating they have more in common with each other than with us. — Walter Block

I imagined two leather chairs near a fire in a paneled room, where two old soldiers could drink and talk. But she took us into the kitchen. She had put two straight-backed chairs at a kitchen table with a white porcelain top. That table top was screaming with reflected light from a two-hundred-watt bulb overhead. Mary had prepared an operating room. — Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

A window looks outside, but a painting should do the opposite - it should look inside of us. When I put them in the middle of the room, I attach the paintings at the top to the ceiling and on the bottom to the floor. I prefer this to just hanging them from the ceiling because it creates a place in a space, like a wall. — Pierre Soulages

Oh my lord. It can't be. But it most certainly was. What in the heck is he doing here? Why in the hell was the star wide receiver of the Georgia Bulldogs at his mother's funeral? The man that made history by coming out and telling the world he was bisexual two years ago. He was a hero, and he looked the part. He stood tall, at least 6'2", or 6'3". His wavy, dirty blond hair was longer on top than the cropped hair on the sides. Dark shades covered what he knew were magnetic, emerald-green eyes. His broad shoulders made his suit hang beautifully on his large body. Curtis' mouth watered at the thought of all those muscles. He'd gotten glimpses of the man's chest and biceps when the reporters and cameramen of ESPN would go in the locker room to listen to the coach congratulate his team on a win. There he was right there, just twenty feet away from him. — A.E. Via

Well," Nick said as Alan gave him a stern look over the top of his glasses and Nick rolled his eyes and buckled his seat belt. "Let's examine the events of the past twenty-four hours in Exeter. Ravens in the kitchen, snakes in the living room, demon marks on you, magicians sending us stupid messages, and at the end of it all you got was the boy's telephone number. — Sarah Rees Brennan

Yet suppose further. Suppose that all worlds, all universes, met at a single nexus, a single pylon, a Tower. And within it, a stairway, perhaps rising to the Godhead itself. Would you dare climb to the top, gunslinger? Could it be that somewhere above all of endless reality, there exists a room? ... '
You dare not.'
And in the gunslinger's mind, those words echoed: You dare not. — Stephen King

The light blazed out across the patch of grass; fell on the child's green bucket with the gold line round it, and upon the aster which trembled violently beside it. For the wind was tearing across the coast, hurling itself at the hills, and leaping, in sudden gusts, on top of its own back. How it spread over the town in the hollow! How the lights seemed to wink and quiver in its fury, lights in the harbour, lights in bedroom windows high up! And rolling dark waves before it, it raced over the Atlantic, jerking the stars above the ships this way and that. — Virginia Woolf

The masculine ideal of perfection creates a hyper-sensitivity to any nuance of imperfection. Any man who commits his life to the perfectionistic ideal of masculinity is going to feel like a failure. The people around him will feel abused and oppressed by him. The only way to do things is his way, the right way, the ideal way. Every man who succeeds at this game will wind up in the same place: Alone in his victory. At the top of the pyramid there's no room for anyone else. — Mary Crocker Cook

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

It's a group of men - Conor included - everyone is so collaborative and cooperative, kind, considerate, very professional. And they know their craft. They know it very very well. There's no room for messing around. It's not messy at all. When I go in at this level, when I get the opportunity to play and work at this level, it's at the top of the game. I think, in life, we rise to whatever the bar is. I've been fortunate to rise with them. — Sean Mahon

Aim for the top. There is plenty of room there. There are so few at the top it is almost lonely there. — Samuel Insull

I lean back on the pillows and look at the corners of the room. When I was a kid, I always wanted to live on the ceiling - it looked so clean and uncluttered, like the top of a cake. — Jenny Downham

There's room at the top because so few are willing to pay the extra price to get there. — Richie Norton

I go to the window of my top floor hotel room and gaze out, not at the glittering city, but at the stars fully awake in the early morning sky. And I see her, Izabel, Sarai, in every single one of them. And this is how I know, that because of her, because I see her in everything, I am not only a monster, but a man. — J.A. Redmerski

I had opened the obvious drawer, the top drawer of the room's only dresser, and found myself gazing into a masculine cache of compressed, crumpled things. Wash-worn Brooks Brothers white cotton shorts now a pale shade of gray. Snake-tangled, unpaired argyle socks, all in bright Easter colors like clover ad mauve which still showed fairly crisp near the tops, but down toward the heels were marred by thread pills and snags, and at the toes by the outright abjection of holes. To see laid bare in their entirety those socks, of which I'd heretofore glimpsed only brief merry stripes, when a pant cuff rose up from the rim of a shoe, was like seeing the man himself fully exposed to me
naked. — Susan Choi

Now the Fox Moth 83 was by no means an aeroplane designed for passenger comfort. It only had enough room for two seats, a stretcher and the doctor. What's more, it was held together with little more than wood, cloth, string and wire. So they set off at top speed, which was about 80 miles an hour, in the old money; about a four-hour trip it was. — Bill Marsh

When you're in your 20s, there's maybe a little room for you to not be at the top of your artistic game, if you look good on a magazine cover. When you're not on the cover of the magazines anymore, then you realize that the work has to be great. — Tori Amos

Remember there is plenty of room at the top-but not enough to sit down. — Zig Ziglar

Marie came with the brandy and poured a glass for Rebekah - then one for Ian, at Rebekah's gesture, and when Jamie made a small polite noise in his throat, half-filled his cup, pouring in more tea on top of it. The taste was peculiar, but he didn't really mind. The pain had gone off to the far side of the room; he could see it sitting over there, a wee glowering sort of purple thing with a bad-tempered expression on its face. He laughed at it, and Ian frowned at him. "What are ye giggling at?" Jamie couldn't think how to describe the pain beastie, so he just shook his head, which proved a mistake - the pain looked suddenly gleeful and shot back into his head with a noise like tearing cloth. The room spun and he clutched the table with both hands. — Diana Gabaldon

It almost feels like at some point life whacks you on top of the head and hands you a list of all the things you can keep. The list is surprisingly long. You can keep letters. You can keep trying. You can keep secrets and you can try your hardest to keep promises. You can keep your eyes on the road. You can keep his sweatshirt, the one he left on the living room floor. You can keep photos and you can keep the memories. But you cannot keep people. People are not things - you can't keep them. — Hannah Brencher

Time and space are different in this realm," he explained. "Your body needs a chance to adjust." At the top of the staircase we entered a room with bronze helmets decoratively set on stone pedestals. — C. Gockel

There is always room at the top. — Daniel Webster

There is plenty of room at the top because very few people care to travel beyond the average route. And so most of us seem satisfied to remain within the confines of mediocrity — Nnamdi Azikiwe

I don't even know if I have bones in my body anymore. I don't know how I'm standing. I could melt under the sweet heat of his lips that are now tracing a line down my chest to the very top of my breasts, as he tugs gently at my shirt, giving himself room to leave one more brush of his lips, before he stops. — Lauren Blakely

He tries again, swallowing hard to ease away the painful lump in his throat. "It's just important. I love you. I'm yours. I need people to know."
"Alright," Lindsay says suddenly. He leans down to grab at Pip's bag, throwing stuff out onto the carpet, his iPod and phone and wallet and gloves and Attitude magazine until he finds what he's looking for, a green marker pen, and holds it between his teeth while he starts tugging at the hem of Pip's t-shirt. Pip's too surprised to do anything but submit, he lets Lindsay peel off his t-shirt and throw that on top of all the things from his bag then just watches as Lindsay pulls the pen out of the cap in his mouth and signs his name in big green letters on the side of Pip's stomach. He holds his breath, trying not to suck in the belly fat everybody else keeps telling him is imaginary. "There, you're mine, are you fucking happy now?" Lindsay snaps, and throws the recapped pen across the room to get lost in the bookcase somewhere. — Richard Rider

At the top of the Queen's Staircase at the Tuileries, there is a series of communicating chambers, crowded every day with clerks, secretaries, messengers, with army officers and purveyors, officials of the Commune and officers of the courts: with government couriers, booted and spurred, waiting for dispatches from the last room in the suite. Look down: outside there are cannon and files of soldiers. The room at the end was once the private office of Louis the Last. You cannot go in.
That room is now the office of the Committee of Public Safety. The Committee exists to supervise the Council of Ministers and to expedite its decisions. — Hilary Mantel

They arrived in a trickle, and then in clumps, and then in crowds. They marveled at the steady lights in the hallways and explored the offices. None of these people had ever seen the inside of IT. Few of them had spent much time in the Up Top, except on pilgrimages after a cleaning. Families wandered from room to room; kids clutched reams of paper; many came to Juliette or the others with the notes Raph had folded and dropped, asking about the food. In just a few days, they looked different. Coveralls were stained and torn, faces stubbled and gaunt, eyes ringed with dark circles. In just a few days. Juliette saw that they had only a few days more before things grew desperate. Everyone saw that. — Hugh Howey