Small One Wall Quotes & Sayings

I work in a small study on the top floor of a brownstone in Brooklyn - it's about 75 square feet, 11 taken up by book shelves along one wall. — Kathryn Harrison

Raffin and Bann stood together, propped against the wall and against each other, half dozing. At one point, Raffin, not knowing he had one small, curious witness, gave Bann a sleepy kiss on the ear.
Bitterblue had wondered that about them. I t was nice when something in the world became clear. Especially when it was a nice thing. — Kristin Cashore

I have a small room to write in. One wall is completely covered in books. And I face the window with the curtain closed to stop the light hitting the computer. — Anne Enright

They paused at a table bearing a collection of magic lanterns, small embossed tin lamps with condensing lenses at the front. There was a slot for a hand-painted glass slide just behind the lens. When the lamp was lit, an image would be projected on a wall. Rohan insisted on buying one for Amelia, along with a packet of slides.
"But it's a child's toy," she protested, holding the lantern by its wire handle. "What am I to do with it?"
"Indulge in pointless entertainment. Play. You should try it sometime."
"Playing is for children, not adults."
"Oh, Miss Hathaway," he murmured, leading her away from the table. "The best kind of playing is for adults. — Lisa Kleypas

In the warmer months of the year one or other of those nocturnal insects quite often strays indoors from the small garden behind my house. When I get up early in the morning, I find them clinging to the wall, motionless. I believe, said Austerlitz, they know they have lost their way, since if you do not put them out again carefully they will stay where they are, never moving, until the last breath is out of their bodies, and indeed they will remain in the place where they came to grief even after death, held fast by the tiny claws that stiffened in their last agony, until a draft of air detaches them and blows them into a dusty corner. Sometimes, seeing one of these moths that have met their end in my house, I wonder what kind of fear and pain they feel while they are lost. — W.G. Sebald

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

Sitting on the divan, she touched a finger to the bullet wound in his chest. It seemed so small, so incapable of creating the exodus of blood which had drenched his clothes and skin as he lay in the hospital, waiting for her to claim him. Death has been instantaneous, they said, as if there were a relief in that. She did not want death to have been instantaneous; she wanted to have at least held his hand as he lay dying and said goodbye to him in terms other than the, 'Why are you doing again? You'll find nothing. Stay. Oh all right, go,' that had been her farewell to him that morning.

Stay. Stay. Stay. She should have repeated it like a madwoman, banged her head against the wall in a frenzy, hit him and wept. She should have said it just one more time, just a little more forcefully. She should have taken his dear, sweet head in her hands and kissed his eyes and forehead. Stay. — Kamila Shamsie

I know as soon as we hit the sweet spot, an intangible instant when the music gains control of fluttering wings to take real flight - soaring, swooping, diving and rising in the small studio. No single one of us is in control. The wall of sound is its own thing - lifted, weight shared, by five pairs of hands. I shake hair from closed eyes just because I need to move. If I let the pressure build and build and keep it in my hands, in the guitar, I'll explode. We carve out places for the verses, the chorus repetitions, and the coda. We line the edges of sonic space with rhythm and melody and stand Scope's sharp samples at each corner. — Emma Trevayne

People in coats and ties were milling around the Talley gallery, and on the wall were the minimally rendered still lifes by Giorgio Morandi, most of them no bigger than a tea tray. Their thin browns, ashy grays, and muted blues made people speak softly to one another, as if a shouted word might curdle one of the paintings and ruin it. Bottles, carafes, and ceramic whatnots sat in his paintings like small animals huddling for warmth, and these shy pictures could easily hang next to a Picasso or Matisse without feeling inferior. — Steve Martin

With no small amount of swagger, Gavin Greyling said, "I remember Gavin fucking Guile, who won the False Prism's War, who outwitted the Thorn Conspirators and ended the Red Cliff Uprising. Gavin Guile, who brought low pirate kings and bandit lords, who ended the Blood Wars with wits and one deadly wave of his hand, who brought justice to the Seven Satrapies. Gavin Guile, who hunted wights and criminals, who built Brightwater Wall in less than a week, who aborted the birth of gods, destroyed at least two bane, and killed a god full fledged at Ruic Head. Gavin Guile, who faced a sea demon and lived, saving all the people of Garriston and the Blackguard, too. Gavin Guile, who sank Pash vecchio's great ship Gargantua with a rat. Gavin Guile, who armed us for war and gave the Blackguard the seas entire with ou sea chariots and hull wreckers. Gavin Guile, heart of our heart, our Promachos, the one who goes before us in war, who came and conquered and will come again. — Brent Weeks

I took a bus and then a train, and as soon as I saw that place, saw the girls in their uniforms and the huge library and the computer rooms, I knew I belonged there. The desks weren't graffitied with "Fuck you." The only drawings of anatomy were hanging on the wall. I sat at the station that afternoon feeding small birds, dreaming that I lived in the city. I let three trains leave before I took one home. — Cath Crowley

Let others probe the mystery if they can.
Time-harried prisoners of Shall and Will-
The right thing happens to the happy man.
The bird flies out, the bird flies back again;
The hill becomes the valley, and is still;
Let others delve that mystery if they can.
God bless the roots! -Body and soul are one
The small become the great, the great the small;
The right thing happens to the happy man.
Child of the dark, he can out leap the sun,
His being single, and that being all:
The right thing happens to the happy man.
Or he sits still, a solid figure when
The self-destructive shake the common wall;
Takes to himself what mystery he can,
And, praising change as the slow night comes on,
Wills what he would, surrendering his will
Till mystery is no more: No more he can.
The right thing happens to the happy man. — Theodore Roethke

Ray, we don't have much time," I said. "We need to access the EDA intranet node hidden here in the store. It's an emergency." Ray only hesitated for a split second. "Behind the UFO poster on the back wall." I turned and located the one he was talking about - a framed reprint of Mulder's "I Want to Believe" poster from The X-Files. I took it down, revealing what appeared to be a small titanium safe embedded in the brick wall behind it, with a keypad at its center. — Ernest Cline

There was a small glass vase between us, three gladioli in a few ounces of water. One of the gladioli had dropped a petal- brushstroke of purple on fine white cloth. Rinpoche drank the last sip of his tea, then set the cup aside, took the petal with his thumb and second finger, placed it on the middle of the saucer in front of him, and turned the cup upside down to cover it.
"I feel a lesson coming on," I said ...
"The flower is the good inside every person," he said. "The cup is like a wall, to protect. Many people have that wall."
"Armor" I said. He nodded.
"Why?"
"Because to live without the cup means you must feel the world as the world really is. — Roland Merullo

Congenital disease can warp the heart with great variety. Valves can be sealed tight, missing parts - or absent altogether. Major vessels can be misplaced, narrowed, or blocked completely. A chamber can be too small or missing, a wall too thick or thin. The heart's electrical system - its nerves - may go haywire. The muscle can be weak. Holes may occur almost anywhere, in almost any size. Studying heart pathology, one is reminded that the genetic symphony that produces a normal baby is indeed a wondrous and delicate one. — G. Wayne Miller

But the silent majority and I do have one memorial, at least. The Disaster. We have small lives, easily lost in foreign droughts, or famines; the occasional incendiary incident, or a wall of pale faces, crushed against grillwork, one Saturday afternoon in Spring. This is not enough. — A. L. Kennedy

The April sun, weak but determined, shone through a castle window and from there squeezed itself through a small hole in the wall and placed one golden finger on the little mouse. — Kate DiCamillo

Lola's was not exactly a bar. It was a small beer-and-soda joint. There was a Coca-Cola box full of beer and soda and ice at the left of the door as you came in. A counter with tube-metal stools covered in yellow glazed leather ran down one side of the room as far as the jukebox. Tables were lined along the wall opposite the counter. The stools had long since lost the rubber caps for the legs and made horrible screeching noises when the maid pushed them around to sweep. There was a kitchen in back, where a slovenly cook fried everything in rancid fat. There was neither past nor future in Lola's. The place was a waiting room, where certain people checked in at certain times. — William S. Burroughs

I looked for it but I found no way out of this wild logical thicket. This was a tangle every bit as unknown and terrifying as that behind the Green Wall These were creatures just as extraordinary and incomprehensible, and they said as much with no words. I imagined that I saw through some kind of thick class the square root of minus one-infinitely huge and at the same time infinitely small, scorpion-shaped, with that hidden but always sensed sting of the minus sign... But maybe that is nothing except my "soul," like the legendary scorpion of the ancients, which would deliberately sting itself with everything that... — Yevgeny Zamyatin

Toward seven o'clock every morning, I leave my study and step Out on the bright terrace; the sun already burns resplendent Between the shadows of the fig tree, makes the low wall of coarse Granite warm to the touch. Here my tools lie ready and waiting, Each one an intimate, an ally: the round basket for weeds: The zappetta, the small hoe with a short haft ... There's a rake here as well, at at times a mattock and spade, Or two watering cans filled with water warmed by the sun. With my basket and small hoe in hand, facing the sun, I Go out for my morning walk. — Hermann Hesse

Arin had taken position on the mountainside wall. He didn't see a ship enter the harbor.
But he saw a hawk--a small one, a kestrel--swoop over the city and dive toward the general.
The man pulled a tube from its leg and opened it. He went still.
He disappeared into the ranks of soldiers.
The Valorian army stopped its assault.
Then Arin's feet were moving along the wall, racing to face the sea, and although he couldn't have said that he knew what had happened, he knew that something had changed, and in his mind there was only one person who could change his world.
Another hawk was perched on the seaside battlements. It eyed him--head cocked, beak sharp, talons tight on stone. Snow laced its feathers.
The message it bore was short.

Arin,

Let me in.

Kestrel — Marie Rutkoski

The great nonprosecutions of Wall Street in the years since 2008, I would learn, were just symbols of this dystopian sorting process to which we'd already begun committing ourselves. The cleaving of the country into two completely different states - one a small archipelago of hyperacquisitive untouchables, the other a vast ghetto of expendables with only theoretical rights - has been in the works a long time. The Divide is a terrible story, and a crazy one. And it goes back a long, long way. — Matt Taibbi

At that moment we caught sight of a drunken man, reeling along at the far end of the street. With head thrust forward, arms dangling, and nerveless legs, he advanced towards us by short rushes of three, six, or ten rapid steps, followed by a pause. After a brief spasm of energy, he found himself in the middle of the street, where he stopped dead, swaying on his feet, hesitating between a fall and a fresh burst of activity. Suddenly he made off in a new direction. He ran up against a house, and clung to the wall as if to force his way through it. Then, with a start, he turned round, and gazed in front of him, open-mouthed, his eyes blinking in the sun. With a movement of the hips, he jerked his back away from the wall and continued on his way. A small yellow dog, a half-starved mongrel, followed him barking, halting when he halted, and moving when he moved.

'Look,' said Marambot, 'there's one of Madame Husson's Rose-kings'. — Guy De Maupassant

Everyone in the room knew about leveraged buyouts, often called LBOs. In an LBO, a small group of senior executives, usually working with a Wall Street partner, proposes to buy its company from public shareholders, using massive amounts of borrowed money. Critics of this procedure called it stealing the company from its owners and fretted that the growing mountain of corporate debt was hindering America's ability to compete abroad. Everyone knew LBOs meant deep cuts in research and every other imaginable budget, all sacrificed to pay off debt. Proponents insisted that companies forced to meet steep debt payments grew lean and mean. On one thing they all agreed: The executives who launched LBOs got filthy rich. — Bryan Burrough

Whatever that spark is that makes each one of us alive and unique ... mine had gone. Stolen like paintings on the wall. The flickering flame responsible for lighting me up from the inside, making me glow; keeping me warm... my candle had been blown out. I was shut down. I was tired. I was afraid. Small. Quiet. — Shonda Rhimes

Aelin took a step forward.
One step, as if in a daze.
She loosed a shuddering breath, and a small, whimpering noise came out of her - a sob.
And then she was sprinting down the alley, flying as though the winds themselves pushed at her heels.
She flung herself on the male, crashing into him hard enough that anyone else might have gone rocking back into the stone wall.
But the male grabbed her to him, his massive arms wrapping around her tightly and lifting her up. Nesryn made to approach, but Aedion stopped her with a hand on her arm.
Aelin was laughing as she cried, and the male was just holding her, his hooded head buried in her neck. As if he were breathing her in.
"Who is that?" Nesryn asked.
Aedion smiled. "Rowan. — Sarah J. Maas

She blushed and we went into a small lab that looked not unlike a doctor's office and smelled of naphtha. A black Formica counter ran along one wall with a shelf of little bottles above it and three light trays. A single steel sink was sunk into the counter, with a binocular microscope on one side of it and a large magnifying glass on a gooseneck stand on the other. Modern crime fighting at its cutting-edge finest. — Robert Crais

A small warehouse. Dark inside, against the bright daylight. Reacher walked closer. There was a sound inside. Fast wheezing breaths, bubbling and gurgling, each one ending in a tiny gasp or yelp. The sound of a guy breathing hard with broken ribs and blood in his throat. Reacher took his Colt out of his pocket. He clicked the safety. He put his finger on the trigger. He kept close to the wall, and tried to see in through the crack of the hinge. A big dark mass. He followed the angle of the left-hand door, and flattened his back against the last part of it. Neagley waited a yard away. She would replace him when he moved. He listened to the breathing. Wheezing, bubbling, yelping. He moved off the door and peered around its edge. He — Lee Child

Food in a castle was served in the great hall, a large room usually on an upper floor. The lord's table was set up along one wall on a small dais, the rest of the tables were positioned in a perpendicular fashion to the lord's dais. Lower tables were called trestle tables, and when the meals were not being eaten, these tables were taken down and stacked in designated areas. The lord, his guests and family who all sat at the lord's table were the only ones to have chairs; everyone else sat on a bench. Breakfast was a small snack usually served after morning mass. It consisted of a hunk of bread and ale or cider for the retainers and servants. The lord, his family and guests might be served white bread with a — Sherrilyn Kenyon

A huge fireplace and Dutch oven of fieldstone filled one wall. Over them hung a long muzzle-loading rifle, powder horn, and bullet pouch. On the mantel were candle molds, a coffee mill, an iron and trivet, and a rusty kettle. An iron cauldron, big enough to boil a missionary in, swung at the end of a long arm in the fireplace, and below it, like so many black offspring, were a cluster of small pots. A wooden butter churn held the door open, and clusters of Indian corn hung from the molding at aesthetic intervals. A colonial scythe stood in one corner, and two Boston rockers on a hooked rug faced the cold fireplace, where the unwatched pot never boiled. Paul — Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Even in such a time of madness as the late twenties, a great many man in Wall Street remained quite sane. But they also remained very quiet. The sense of responsibility in the financial community for the community as a whole is not small. It is nearly nil. Perhaps this is inherent. In a community where the primary concern is making money, one of the necessary rules is to live and let live. To speak out against madness may be to ruin those who have succumbed to it. So the wise in Wall Street are nearly always silent. The foolish thus have the field to themselves. None rebukes them. — John Kenneth Galbraith

His fingers gouged into my leg harder. "My sister was in that cafeteria," he said. "She saw her friends die, thanks to you and that puke boyfriend of yours. She still has nightmares about it. He got what he deserved, but you got a free pass. That ain't right. You should've died that day, Sister Death. Everyone wishes you would have. Look around. Where is Jessica, if she wants you here so bad? Even the friends you came here with don't want to be with you."
"Let go of me," I said again, pulling on his fingers. But he only pinched tighter.
"Your boyfriend isn't the only one who can get his hands on a gun," he said. Slowly he eased himself up to standing again. He reached into the waistband of his jeans and pulled out something small and dark. He pointed it at me, and when the moonlight hit it, I gasped and pressed myself against the barn wall. — Jennifer Brown

He always had some experiment or another on the go, usually involving boiling liquids and unpleasant smells. Always something bubbling in the cauldron or cooking in the small stone oven. One wall was hidden behind rows of metal cages, set one upon the other; containing animals and birds and reptiles and a few other things not so easily identified. Because you never knew when you'd need a subject to try something out on. And of course there were shelves and shelves of glass jars, holding herbs and insect parts, mandrake root and other disturbing things. Some of the things in the jars were still moving. Because alchemy's like that. — Simon R. Green

Be persistent. Establishing yourself in this field could easily take years. Rarely will any composer get that one "big break." More often, success is built on hundreds - or thousands - of very small breaks. When I decided that I was definitely going to pursue a career as a film composer, I decided I was going to beat my head against that particular wall until something broke. — John Keltonic

You think my feelings toward you apathetic? You think you bore me?"
"Don't I?"
He shook his head slowly, continuing toward her, stalking her in the small space.
"No.God knows you are infuriating . And impulsive ... " Her back came up against the wall, and she gave a little squeak, even as he advanced. "And altogether maddening ... " He placed one hand to her jaw, carefully lifting her face to his, feeling the leap of her pulse under his fingertips. "And thoroughly intoxicating ... " The last came out on a low growl, and her lips parted, soft and pink and perfect.
He leaned close, his lips a fraction from hers.
"No ... you are not boring. — Sarah MacLean

That's my little piece of heaven. Go ahead."
Ciro followed Remo through the open door to a small enclosed garden. Terra-cotta pots positioned along the top of the stone wall spilled over with red geraniums and orange impatiens. An elm tree with a wide trunk and deep roots filled the center of the garden. Its green leaves and thick branches reached past the roof of Remo's building, creating a canopy over the garden. There was a small white marble birdbath, gray with soot, flanked by two deep wicker armchairs.
Remo fished a cigarette out of his pocket, offering another to Ciro as both men took a seat. "This is where I come to think."
"Va bene," Ciro said as he looked up into the tree. He remembered the thousands of trees that blanketed the Alps; here on Mulberry Street, one tree with peeling gray bark and holes in its leaves was cause for celebration. — Adriana Trigiani

To the right of the speakwrite, a small pneumatic tube for written messages; to the left, a larger one for newspapers; and in the side wall, within easy reach of Winston's arm, a large oblong slit protected by a wire grating. — George Orwell

Just for a minute," she said. He's not half bad, she thought, as far as princes go. "Just to watch the sunset," he agreed. He's not half bad, she thought, as far as enemies go. "Just to see the stars," she conceded. This isn't half bad, she thought, as far as wars go. "Just one day," he said. "You promised." And just to take another look at one small photograph hanging on the wall, she thought. Lennox Gates, what is your Siren story? — Kami Garcia

We visit the Launch Control building, where on one wall of the seventies-style lobby are hung the mission patches of every human spaceflight that has ever been launched from here, 149 to date. Beneath each mission patch is a small plaque showing the launch and landing dates. Two of them - Challenger's STS-51L and Columbia's STS-107 - are missing landing dates, because both of these missions ended in disasters that destroyed the orbiters and killed their crews. The blank spaces on the wall where those landing dates should have been are discolored from the touch of people's hands. This would be unremarkable if this place were a tourist attraction, or regularly open to the public. But with the rare exception of Family Days, this building is open only to people who work here. In other words, it's launch controllers, managers, and engineers who have been touching these empty spaces with their hands, on their way to and from doing their jobs. After — Margaret Lazarus Dean

Scientists at first were skeptical that a kitten-type being could exist in the rare Martian atmosphere. As a test, two Earth kittens were put in a chamber that simulated the Martian air. The diary of this experiment is fascinating:
6:00 A.M.: Kittens appear to sleep.
7:02 A.M.: Kitten wakes, darts from one end of cage to another for no apparent reason.
7:14 A.M.: Kitten runs up wall of cage, leaps onto other kitten for no apparent reason.
7:22 A.M.: Kitten lies on back and punches other kitten for no apparent reason.
7:30 A.M.: Kitten leaps, stops, darts left, abruptly stops, climbs wall, clings for two seconds, falls on head, darts right for no apparent reason.
7:51 A.M.: Kitten parses first sentence of daily newspaper that is at bottom of chamber.
With the exception of the parsing, all behavior is typical of Earth kitten behavior. The parsing activity, which was done with a small ball-point pen, was an anomaly. — Steve Martin

They always left the thermos full, ready for their return home. The five minutes devoted to that small late-night feast made them feel rather special, as if they had suddenly left the mediocrity of their lives behind them and risen a few rungs on the economic ladder. The kitchen disappeared and gave way to an intimate little drawing room with expensive furniture and paintings on the wall and a piano in one corner. — Jose Saramago

A woman once of some height, she is bent small, and the lingering strands of black look dirty in her white hair. She carries a cane, but in forgetfulness, perhaps, hangs it over her forearm and totters along with it dangling loose like an outlandish bracelet. Her method of gripping her gardener is this: he crooks his right arm, pointing his elbow toward her shoulder, and she shakily brings her left forearm up within his and bears down heavily on his wrist with her lumpish freckled fingers. Her hold is like that of a vine to a wall; one good pull will destroy it, but otherwise it will survive all weathers. — John Updike

He liked how it felt too, pulling himself up a wall stone by stone, fingers and toes digging hard into the small crevices between. He always took off his boots and went barefoot when he climbed; it made him feel as if he had four hands instead of two. He liked the deep, sweet ache it left in the muscles afterward. He liked the way the air tasted way up high, sweet and cold as a winter peach. He liked the birds: the crows in the broken tower, the tiny little sparrows that nested in cracks between the stones, the ancient owl that slept in the dusty loft above the old armory. Bran knew them all. Most of all, he liked going places that no one else could go, and seeing the grey sprawl of Winterfell in a way that no one else ever saw it. — George R R Martin

I believe that it may happen that one will succeed, and one must not begin to despair, even though defeated here and there; and even though one sometimes feels a kind of decay, though things go differently from the expected, it is necessary to take heart again and new courage. For the great things are not done by impulse, but by a series of small things brought together. And great things are not something accidental, but must certainly be willed. What is drawing? How does one learn it? It is working through an invisible iron wall that seems to stand between what one feels and what one can do. — Vincent Van Gogh

Emerson lifts his head. His eyes are two dark pools of desire, a clouded night's sky. He catches his breath a moment, unsteady, and then drops a kiss on my lips. Sweet. Almost tender. I barely have time to take it in before he grabs my shoulder and spins me around, pushing me so my bare chest is slammed up into the wall, my cheek pressed against the cold concrete.
I gasp, my heart skipping with the thrill. I can feel him up against me, a solid wall of muscle trapping me in place, the hard ridge of him pressed against the small of my back. I can't move, or see the expression on his face, only hear the hoarse groan Emerson sounds as he twists a handful of my hair and yanks it to one side, kissing a searing trail along the curve of my neck.
I whimper, bound and powerless against him, and oh God, loving every minute of it. — Melody Grace

Toward the small pond that he had seen before. The walls of fire ended there. An instant later the remains of the cottage exploded. He ducked and rolled again from the concussive force, almost pitching into the right side of the wall of fire. He rose and redoubled his efforts, thinking that he would reach the water. Water was a great antidote to fire. But as he neared the edge of the pond, something struck him. No scum. No algae on the surface although the ground around was full of it. What could kill green scum? And why was he being forced to run right toward the one thing that could possibly save him? Robie tossed his gun over the top of the wall of flames, pulled off his jacket, covered his head and hands with it, and threw himself through the wall of flames on the left side. — David Baldacci

This is no help," Debs said. "If it's not her blood in there, then ... who the hell flings somebody else's blood on the wall?" "A kidnapper," Special Agent Recht said. "Trying to cover his tracks." Deborah turned and looked at her, and the expression on her face was truly wonderful to see. With just a few rearranged facial muscles and one small raised eyebrow, Debs managed to say, How is it possible that someone this stupid can tie her own shoes and walk among us? — Jeff Lindsay

When I was in power, I found that experts can't be trusted. For this simple reason: unlike tyrants, they are under no delusion that a country, a people is their body. Under this delusion a tyrant takes everything personally. An expert takes nothing personally. Nothing is ever precisely his fault. If a bridge collapses, or a war miscarries, he has already walked away. He still has his expertise. Also,
people imagine that because a thing is big, it has had a great deal of intelligent thought given to it. This is not true. A big idea is even more apt to be wrong than a small one, because the scale is inorganic. The Great Wall, for instance, is extremely stupid. The two biggest phenomena in the world right now are Maoism and American television, and both are extremely stupid. — John Updike

No one noticed Witch Baby as she went back inside the cottage, into the room she and Cherokee shared.
Cherokee's side of the room was filled with feathers, crystals, butterfly wings, rocks, shells and dried flowers. there was a small tepee that Coyote had helped Cherokee make. The walls on Witch Baby's side of the room were covered with newspaper clippings - nuclear accidents, violence, poverty and disease. Every night, before she went to bed, Witch Baby cut out three articles or pictures with a pair of toenail scissors and taped them to the wall. they make Cherokee cry.
"Why do you want to have those up there?" Weetzie asked. "You'll both have nightmares. — Francesca Lia Block

Here and there, in some older houses, old faded daguerreotypes still hang on the walls ... They seem to us to be very simple ... compared with the artistic and skillful portraits made in later days ... Here was a photograph that at one time had been the last word, a very modern portrait ... Today it is just a part of cultural history. The small yellowed surface has acquired depth, an admonishing perspective. We hold in our hand a symbol of the structure and ideology of an epoch. — Isak Dinesen

the disguise. Back in the main hall, Mr. Dart helped Stanley climb up into the empty picture frame. Stanley was able to stay in place because Mr. Dart had cleverly put four small spikes in the wall, one for each hand and foot. The frame was a perfect fit. Against the wall, Stanley looked just like a picture. "Except for one thing," Mr. Dart said. "Shepherdesses are supposed to look happy. They smile at their sheep and at the sky. You look fierce, not happy, Stanley. — Jeff Brown

And just as he had tried, on the southern beach, to find again that unique rounded black pebble with the regular little white belt, which she had happened to show him on the eve of their last ramble, so now he did his best to look up all the roadside items that retained her exclamation mark: the special profile of a cliff, a hut roofed with a layer of silvery-gray scales, a black fir tree and a footbridge over a white torrent, and something which one might be inclined to regard as a kind of fatidic prefiguration: the radial span of a spider's web between two telegraph wires that were beaded with droplets of mist. She accompanied him: her little boots stepped rapidly, and her hands never stopped moving, moving - to pluck a leaf from a bush or stroke a rock wall in passing - light, laughing hands that knew no repose. He saw her small face with its dense dark freckles, and her wide eyes, whose pale greenish hue was that of the shards of glass licked smooth by the sea waves. — Vladimir Nabokov