Staircase Quotes & Sayings

What is a staircase, but a corridor improved by elevation? — Catherine Gilbert Murdock

In 1971, the Bureau of Reclamation released a plan to divert six million acre-feet from the lower Mississippi River and create a river in reverse, pumping the water up a staircase of reservoirs to the high plains in order to save the irrigation economy of West Texas and eastern New Mexico, utterly dependent on groundwater, from collapse. — Marc Reisner

To pass its threshold was to return to stagnation; to cross the silent hall, to ascend the darksome staircase, to seek my own lonely little room, and then to meet tranquil Mrs. Fairfax, and spend the long winter evening with her, and her only, was to quell wholly the faint excitement wakened by my walk, - to slip again over my faculties the viewless fetters of an uniform and too still existence; of an existence whose very privileges of security and ease I was becoming incapable of appreciating. What good it would have done me at that time to have been tossed in the storms of an uncertain struggling life, and to have been taught by rough and bitter experience to long for the calm amidst which I now repined! Yes, just as much good as it would do a man tired of sitting still in a "too easy chair" to take a long walk: and just as natural was the wish to stir, under my circumstances, as it would be under his. — Charlotte Bronte

I hate it when I go out and I see parents going, 'don't do that', or 'stop doing that' when some kid's just hanging off a staircase or something. There's too much of this, 'don't do that'. The whole thing baffles me. — Joe Strummer

The slugs are ascending this steep city staircase that leads up to a huge Catholic church, essentially signifying their slow crawl towards death. The work reminds us of religion, mortality, natural decay, and the slow suffocation of commercialized societies. — Florentijn Hofman

I can see her. Come close to me, Floy, and tell them," whispered the dying boy, "that the face of the picture of Christ on the staircase at school is not divine enough; the light from it is shining on me now, and the water is shining too, and rippling so fast, so fast." The evening light shone — Charles Dickens

To-day, to-morrow, every day, to thousands the end of the world is close at hand. And why should we fear it? We walk here, as it were, in the crypts of life; at times, from the great cathedral above us, we can hear the organ and the chanting choir; we see the light stream through the open door, when some friend goes up before us; and shall we fear to mount the narrow staircase of the grave that leads us out of this uncertain twilight into life eternal? — Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

A tune's like a staircase - walk up on it. — Ma Rainey

Solemnly he came forward and mounted the round gunrest. He faced about and blessed gravely thrice the tower, the surrounding land and the awaking mountains. Then, catching sight of Stephen Dedalus, he bent towards him and made rapid crosses in the air, gurgling in his throat and shaking his head. Stephen Dedalus, displeased and sleepy, leaned his arms on the top of the staircase and looked coldly at the shaking gurgling face that blessed him, equine in its length, and at the light untonsured hair, grained and hued like pale oak. — James Joyce

Set flush in the wall behind the desk was a steel door. It was knobless, and along one edge were three brass keyholes spaced a few inches apart. Rube brought out a key ring, selected a key, then walked around the desk, inserted the key in the topmost lock, and turned it. From his watch pocket he took a single key, pushed it into the middle keyhole, and turned. The guard stood waiting beside him, and now the guard inserted a key in the bottom keyhole, turned it and pulled the door open with the key. Rube removed his two keys and gestured me in through the open door before him. He followed, and the door swung solidly shut behind us. I heard the multiple click of the locks engaging, and we were standing in a space hardly larger than a big closet, dimly lighted by an overhead bulb in a wire cage. Then I saw that we were at the top of a circular metal staircase. — Jack Finney

A chrome spiral staircase connects the main floor to the upper one. It reminds Prospect of a big strand of DNA. Once he's out of the shower, he feels new. He opens a window. The gentle hush of traffic is surprisingly soothing. It is like putting a seashell to his ear, but instead of hearing an ocean, he hears a city and all its voices. — Dwight Okita

He also says I tried to throw him down a flight of stairs that year. Really, we were fighting at the top of the staircase, and I got in a lucky punch that sent him flying. Then, when my aunt Fiona asked me if I'd pushed Simon Snow down a flight of stairs, I said, "Fuck yes I did. — Rainbow Rowell

He was little more than halfway down the staircase when he heard an all-piercing, sustained scream
clearly coming from a small, female child. It was highly acoustical, as though it were reverberating within four tiled walls. — J.D. Salinger

You just have to take the first step , you don't have to see the whole staircase. — Martin Luther King Jr.

All I know is that the fear I have been battling all night is breaking down the door of my ignorance. As my feet slam down I feel not the hard, wet asphalt but the soft Persian rug that led to the staircase in my father's home. In the glow of lightning the dancing trees are illuminated but I see my mother in the glow of candlelight, spinning, twirling, her hair fanned out
behind her. It is falling over me, saturating my thoughts, and I cannot. I cannot let it in. — Gwenn Wright

She had softened at his concern for her, but his tone was back to being scathing. She deduced that his concern was not for her safety. Dealing with the dead bodies of guests who broke their necks tumbling down his staircase in too long skirts would have disturbed his schedule. — Anya Wylde

I never thought of myself in comedy at all ... I loved going to the theatre and seeing people wearing beautiful clothes come down the staircase and start to dance. — Imogene Coca

Waiting by this staircase was Mr. Kent, who managed to both grimace at his stepmother and smile brightly at Laura. — Tarun Shanker

Storytelling isn't an Escher staircase. — Dave Morris

There is no way to overpower, outrun, or outsmart the mad dog of hopelessness because it's simply more vicious than I. The only thing to do is let it attack, go limp in its jaws, and be shaken. But I notice one promising pattern. If I play dead, it will eventually let me go. I start thinking of the dog of hopelessness as an obstacle that will reappear on every curve of the spiral staircase. He'll always be there waiting and snarling, but with every go-round, I'll be more confident and less fearful. Eventually, I'll learn the tricks that will allow me to breeze right past him. But the mad dog of hopelessness will always be there. My spiral staircase of progress means that my pain will be both behind me and in front of me, every damn day. I'll never be "over it," but I vow to be stronger each time I face it. Maybe the pain won't change, but I will. I keep climbing. — Glennon Doyle Melton

Wrath was in a bad mood, and he knew this because the sound of the doggen waxing the wooden balustrade at the top of the main staircase was making him want to light the whole fucking mansion on fire. — J.R. Ward

She seemed perfect to you, and even during her first attack of vertigo, which you happened to witness when you were six (the two of you climbing up the inner staircase of the Statue of Liberty), you were not alarmed, because she was a good and conscientious mother, and she managed to hide her fear from you by turning the descent into a game: sitting on the stairs together and going down one step at a time, asses on the rungs, laughing all the way to the bottom. — Paul Auster

My soul can find no staircase to Heaven unless it be through Earth's loveliness. — Michelangelo

And I could test myself - my own courage - with it, too, because when the doors at either end of the secret staircase were closed, it was impenetrably dark. I hid in the staircase, shivering with terror, telling the narrative: The little girl was in a dark, dark place but she was very brave ... Sometimes the door at the bottom opened, and a wedge of light sliced up the stairs; a maid, her arms filled with folded laundry, would find me and ask in amazement what I was doing there.
And though I answered lightheartedly that I was playing, the truth is that I was not entirely certain what I was doing there, crouched and frightened in the darkness. Only now, sixty years later, do I see that I was arming myself, rehearsing panic, loss, and helplessness; assessing my own cowardice and courage, and and the same time reassuring myself that the door would always open, that the light would always find its way in. — Lois Lowry

I don't know what actually goes down in heaven, if heaven has a grand staircase or a theater where you get to see your impact in a "Crash" kind of cinematic adventure, but I do know our stories work that way--the imprints of ourselves we press into the palms of others have the power to be passed and passed through the hands of many. That the smallest things we do, never thinking twice about them, might be the very things that keep a person alive, and breathing, and standing on that day. I've stopped doubting that kind of impact because believing in it - believing in miracles in the mud of the mundane - gives you so much more purpose than not believing in it at all. — Hannah Brencher

From the top of the staircase she sees the London train, modern and elegant, and she tells herself again: Whether it's good luck or bad to be born onto this earth, the best way to spend a life here is to let yourself be carried along, as I am moving at this moment, by a cheerful, noisy crowd moving forward. — Milan Kundera

I carry my own church about under my own hat," said I. "Bricks and mortar won't make a staircase to heaven. I believe with your Master that the human heart is the best temple. — Arthur Conan Doyle

What are you doing, Alys?" He'd turned to watch her, and his expression was disbelieving.
She'd emerged from the winding staircase to stand in the open, but she hadn't yet been able to make her feet move further. "Facing my fears," she said in a wobbly voice.
"Courting death?"
"Are you going to kill me?"
"The lightning might."
"Are you you going to kill me?" she persisted, flinching when the thunder rumbled again.
"Would you ride a horse for me?" he countered.
"Yes."
"Would you walk across this parapet to come to me?"
"Yes." And shes started forward, shivering as the rain lashed down around them.
She halted just out of reach, lifting her head and throwing back her shoulders with quiet determination.
"Would you come to me?" she asked him.
"Yes," he said. And he crossed the last few feet of the parapet and pulled her into his arms, kissing her mouth. — Anne Stuart

I joined a writing class at a nearby community center, where I was the youngest participant by about 40 years. Once a week, I'd funnel down a staircase and join the dozen retirees crowded in folding chairs around a table to discuss one another's stories. — Anthony Marra

You need not treat me like a child, sir. I am perfectly capable of navigating this staircase on my own."
He snorted.
Her nostrils flared. "I promise not to ask you to catch me again, all right? Now stop scowling."
Of course he did no such thing. — Karen Witemeyer

Take care, these Italians, full of failings, are neither you, nor me; they are your neighbors, the ones you meet on the staircase and whom you do not like to greet. — Alberto Sordi

For her, their romantic interlude atop the staircase had been a glorious, magical, enlightening introduction to pleasure. For him,it had merely been Friday evening. — Anna Bennett

Now he understood. He had dreamed about her countless times, on that same staircase, with that same blue dress and that same movement of her ash-grey eyes, without knowing who she was or why she smiled at him. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

Come to my bedchamber now,' he whispered against her mouth ...
'I don't take -'
'Orders. I know.' He kissed her, over and over now, a delectable repetition that despite its simplicity made her cling to him tighter. 'Then your bedchamber.'
... 'It shares a wall with Madame Roche. I cannot -'
He grabbed her hand and dragged her along the corridor. He opened the first door they came to.
'A linen cabinet?' But they had managed perfectly well on a staircase once. *Perfectly.*
... 'You are yanking me about a lot.' She was breathless.
'I am. Feel free to reciprocate. — Katharine Ashe

This holy staircase is composed of eight-and-twenty steps, said to have belonged to Pontius Pilate's house and to be the identical stair on which Our Saviour trod, in coming down from the judgment-seat. Pilgrims ascend it, only on their knees. It is steep; and, at the summit, is a chapel, reported to be full of relics; into which they peep through some iron bars, and then come down again, by one of two side staircases, which are not sacred, and may be walked on. — Charles Dickens

I remember in '37 when trolley cars were so big in New York. It was five cents for a ride ... There used to be open-air buses, and you could go up a spiral staircase and sit up on top. Those were great, great days. — Tiny Tim

We're here to see Connor," Dad said.
The woman nodded and hit a button on the control panel. "You're set to go down."
"Thank you, Marshie," Dad said. He motioned us over to a door beneath the staircase.
Nick leaned in. " 'You're set to go down'?" he echoed. "That's comforting. — Jennifer Rush

To change from inauspicious [bad] to auspicious [good] can be done, through egoism. But egoism is not required to come to pure-state from auspicious-state. From there, one will not be able to know where to find the staircase to climb up the steps! That's why, all this has stopped from going further. — Dada Bhagwan

It is a mark of wisdom not to kick away the very step from which we have risen higher. The removal of one step from a staircase brings down the whole of it. — Mahatma Gandhi

Now the moon is high; and the great house, needing habitation more than ever, is like a body without life. Now it is even awful, stealing through it, to think of the live people who have slept in the solitary bedrooms, to say nothing of the dead. Now is the time for shadow, when every corner is a cavern and every downward step a pit, when the stained glass is reflected in pale and faded hues upon the floors, when anything and everything can be made of the heavy staircase beams excepting their own proper shapes, when the armour has dull lights upon it not easily to be distinguished from stealthy movement, and when barred helmets are frightfully suggestive of heads inside. But of all the shadows in Chesney Wold, the shadow in the long drawing-room upon my Lady's picture is the first to come, the last to be disturbed. At this hour and by this light it changes into threatening hands raised up and menacing the handsome face with every breath that stirs. — Charles Dickens

The treads, like his father's boots, showed signs of wear. Paint clung to them in feeble chips, mostly in the corners and undersides, where they were safe. Traffic elsewhere on the staircase sent dust shivering off in small clouds. Holston could feel the vibrations in the railing, which was worn down to the gleaming metal. That always amazed him: how centuries of bare palms and shuffling feet could wear down solid steel. One molecule at a time, he supposed. Each life might wear away — Hugh Howey

You, Mackenzie Bishop," he says as we hit the landing, "have been a very bad girl."
"How so?"
He rounds the banister at the base of the staircase. "You involved me in a lie! Don't think I didn't catch it. — Victoria Schwab

The five hundred feet up the square-spiral staircase — Tom Clancy

The racket reverberates down the second staircase and spills out into the kitchen, and the two screeching, running kids who are making it do laps around the island like a fucked-up Hunger Games version of ring-around-the-rosy. — Emma Chase

Voldemort's sitting in the Shrieking Shack?" said Hermione, outraged. "He's not--he's not even fighting?"
"He doesn't think he needs to fight," said Harry. "He thinks I'm going to go to him."
"But why?"
"He knows I'm after Horcuxes--he's keeping Nagini close beside him--obviously I'm going to have to go to him to get near the thing--"
"Right," said Ron, squaring his shoulders. "So you can't go, that's what he wants, what he's expecting. You stay here and look after Hermione, and I'll go and get it--"
Harry cut across Ron.
"You two stay here, I'll go under the Cloak and I'll be back as soon as I--"
"No," said Hermione, "it makes much more sense if I take the Cloak and--"
"Don't even think about it," Ron snarled at her.
Before Hermione could get farther than "Ron, I'm just as capable--" the tapestry at the top of the staircase on which they stood was ripped open. — J.K. Rowling

It was a dog. Or several dogs rolled, as it were, into one. There were four legs, and they were nearly all the same length although not, Agnes noted, all the same color. There was one head, although the left ear was black and pointed while the right ear was brown and white and flopped. It was a very enthusiastic animal in the department of slobber. "Thith ith Thcrapth," said Igor, fighting to get to his feet in a hail of excited paws. "He'th a thilly old thing." "Scraps ... yes," said Nanny. "Good name. Good name." "He'th theventy-eight yearth old," said Igor, leading the way down a winding staircase. "Thome of him. — Terry Pratchett

A teenage girl creaming while she listens to some boy-band, a monk digging on the God he hears in Gregorian chants, or John fucking Coltrane himself climbing up into the sky on a staircase made of sixteenth notes, it's all the same. If it takes you there, it's good. — Tad Williams

History, as you may know, is much like a spiral staircase that gives the illusion of going up, but never quite goes anywhere. — Robert Jackson Bennett

Gray mattresses with red and blue stripes in something that looks like a hallway or an overly long waiting room. In any case, his memory is frozen in immediate past like a faceless man in a dentist's chair. There are houses and streets that run down to the sea, dirty windows and shadows on staircase landings. We hear someone say "a long time ago it was noon," the light bounces off the center of immediate past, something that's neither a screen nor attempts to offer images. Memory slowly dictates soundless sentences. We imagine that all of this has been done to avoid confusion, a layer of white paint covers the film on the floor. Fleeing together long ago became living together and thus the integrity of the gesture was lost; the shine of immediate past. — Roberto Bolano

Holston lifted an old boot to an old step, pressed down, and did it again. He lost himself in what the untold years had done, the ablation of molecules and lives, layers and layers ground to fine dust. And he thought, not for the first time, that neither life nor staircase had been meant for such an existence. The tight confines of that long spiral, threading — Hugh Howey

In these considerations there may be an entire philosophy for someone with the strength to draw conclusions. It won't be me. Lucid vague thoughts and logical possibilities occur to me, but they all dim in the vision of a ray of sunlight that gilds a pile of dung like wetly squished dark straw, on the almost black soil next to a stone wall.

That's how I am. When I want to think, I look. When I want to descend into my soul, I suddenly freeze, oblivious, at the top of the long spiral staircase, looking through the upper-storey window at the sun that bathes the sprawling mass of rooftops in a tawny farewell. — Fernando Pessoa

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

In the 'Nude Descending a Staircase,' I wanted to create a static image of movement: movement is an abstraction, a deduction articulated within the painting, without our knowing if a real person is or isn't descending an equally real staircase. — Marcel Duchamp

If there was a controlling power outside the universe, it could not show itself to us as one of the facts inside the universe -no more than the architect of a house could actually be a wall or staircase or fireplace in that house. The only way in which we could expect it to show itself would be inside us as an influence or a command trying to get us to behave in a certain way. And that's just what we do find inside us. — C.S. Lewis

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

We should get a move on you know ... ask someone. He's right. We don't want to end up with a pair of trolls."
Hermione let out a sputter of indignation. "A pair of ... what excuse me?"
"Well - you know," said Ron shrugging. "I'd rather go alone than with - with Eloise Midgen, say."
"Her acne's loads better lately - and she's really nice."
"Her nose's off-centre," said Ron.
"Oh I see," Hermione said bristling. "So basically you're going to take the best-looking girl who'll have you even if she's completely horrible?"
"Er - yeah that sounds about right." said Ron.
"I'm going to bed," Hermione snapped and she swept off toward the girls' staircase without another word. — J.K. Rowling

There was an incident, in 1912, which 'gave me a turn,' so to speak: when I brought the 'Nude Descending a Staircase' to the Independants, and they asked me to withdraw it before the opening. — Marcel Duchamp

If hard work is the staircase to success then smartness is the elevator to it. — Saru Singhal

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

We all had our secrets, and maybe the most terrible of them was that we weren't exactly who we thought we were, who we said we were, who we dreamed of being, that we were divided and at war and half made of self-mythologies, too. Sometimes on that staircase spiraling up from the darkness, we met ourselves coming up into the light, not recognizing ourselves or what we might do next. — Michael Paterniti

One evening we were exploring the Baths of Caracalla together, while debating the question of merit or demerit in human behaviour and its rewards in life. As I was propounding some outrageous thesis or another in answer to the strictly orthodox and pious views put forward by him, his foot slipped and the next moment he was lying in a bruised condition at the bottom of a steep ruined staircase.
'Look at that for divine justice,' I said, helping him onto his feet. 'I blaspheme, you fall.'
This irreverence, accompanied by roars of laughter, apparently went to far, and thenceforth all religious arguments were banned. — Hector Berlioz

Esprit de l'escalier: spirit of the staircase, wishing you'd said, wishing you'd done. Yet how much more indelible it was when the staircase was the staircase that led to the bedroom. — Martin Amis

But certainly the two best-known tales in the neighborhood - the key hauntings, if you will - concern the Red Room and the Screaming Staircase.'
There was a profound silence, abruptly broken by an enormously loud rumble from George's stomach. Plaster didn't actually fall from the ceiling, but it was close.
'Sorry,' he said cheerfully. 'Famished. I think Ill have another doughnut, if you don't mind. Any takers? — Jonathan Stroud

My grandsire,' Jamie observed evenly, 'has by all reports got a character that would enable him to hide conveniently behind a spiral staircase. — Diana Gabaldon

Let's go down to the basement."
I didn't move. "How do I know you're not some kind of serial killer with a perverted sex dungeon down there?"
He grinned at me. "Well...I'm not a serial killer."
"So says you." I trudged down the carpeted staircase after him. "But Ted Bundy was apparently very popular in his day, and just so you know, I've got my keys in between my fingers right now, which means that if you try anything, I can totally punch you and stab you at the same time. — Cherry Cheva

Death comes to me again, a girl
in a cotton slip, barefoot, giggling.
It's not so terrible she tells me,
not like you think, all darkness
and silence. There are windchimes
and the smell of lemons, some days
it rains, but more often the air is dry
and sweet. I sit beneath the staircase
built from hair and bone and listen
to the voices of the living. I like it,
she says, shaking the dust from her hair,
especially when they fight, and when they sing. — Dorianne Laux

Adversity is a call to action, and your freedom lies in taking the first step. Don't worry about the entire staircase, just take one step, and then tomorrow take another. — Kris Carr

OH NO YOU DON'T, LADDIE!
Harry spun around. Professor Moody was limping down the marble staircase. His wand was out and it was pointing right at a pure white ferret, which was shivering on the stone-flagged floor, exactly where Malfoy had been standing. — J.K. Rowling

Our actions in the present build the staircase to the future. The question is whether that staircase is going up or down. — Craig D. Lounsbrough

Faith is taking the first step when you don't see the whole staircase. — Martin Luther King Jr.

Rationally speaking, blaming one's behavior on alcohol or drugs is like blaming the ladder by which you descended into a pit, or the staircase that took you down to a cellar, for what you found there. — Graham Joyce

Once in a lifetime every man encounters a very special staircase which can take him to very high grounds; but only some of them grasp this and use the stairs! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

He crosses the front room, which he calls his study, and comes down the staircase. The stairs turn a corner; they are narrow and steep. You can touch both handrails with your elbows, and you have to bend your head, even if, like George, you are only five eight. This is a tightly planned little house. He often feels protected by its smallness; there is hardly room enough here to feel lonely. Nevertheless. — Christopher Isherwood

Hello?" No reply. My shoulders sag. "What's the point of a staircase if no one is here to watch my entrance? — Stephanie Perkins

James was sixteen, Cam seventeen, perhaps. She had looked round for someone who was not there, for Mrs. Ramsay, presumably. But there was only kind Mrs. Beckwith turning over her sketches under the lamp. Then, being tired, her mind still rising and falling with the sea, the taste and smell that places have after long absence possessing her, the candles wavering in her eyes, she had lost herself and gone under. It was a wonderful night, starlit; the waves sounded as they went upstairs; the moon surprised them, enormous, pale, as they passed the staircase window. She had slept at once. — Virginia Woolf

I feel as though I stand at the foot of an infinitely high staircase, down which some exuberant spirit is flinging tennis ball after tennis ball, eternally, and the one thing I want in the world is a tennis ball. — Annie Dillard

Stephen Dedalus, displeased and sleepy, leaned his arms on the top of the staircase and looked coldly at the shaking gurgling face that blessed him, — James Joyce

Clarke grabbed his hand, and together, they started down the staircase into the darkness. — Kass Morgan

Just as Emme neared the main staircase, as she could see the intricate carving of the banisters, a noise from behind her made her thundering heart skip. She froze mid stride and peered over her shoulder at the growing triangle of light emerging from the doorway of the billiard room. Tension coiled in her stomach, and her breath seized in her lungs. Someone was coming, and her wits fled her entirely. — Chasity Bowlin

Juliette felt a wash of fear and relief, those two opposites twisting together like staircase and rail. — Hugh Howey

Virtue is the path to God,
faith is the highway,
and love is the staircase. — Matshona Dhliwayo

[ ... ] I was afraid to board a streetcar because of the conductor; I was afraid to enter the Kabuki Theater for fear of the usherettes standing along the sides of the red-carpeted staircase at the main entrance; I was afraid to go into a restaurant because I was intimidated by the waiters furtively hovering behind me waiting for my plate to be emptied. — Osamu Dazai

She marched toward the door, and as she did so she raised her wand. From the tip burst three silver cats with spectacle markings around their eyes. The Patronuses ran sleekly ahead, filling the spiral staircase with silvery light, as Professor McGonagall, Harry, and Luna hurried back down. — J.K. Rowling

Night climbs its long underground staircase.
It recalls what it has to tell us. — Karen Solie

Words cannot express quite a lot of feelings, whereas a noise or tone or drone or sound, an accordion falling down a staircase, can somehow capture an emotion much better. — John Lydon

At the top of the iron staircase leading to the stage, the good, dry, dusty warmth wraps me round like a comfortable dirty cloak. — Colette

Take the first step in faith. You don't have to see the whole staircase. Just take the first step. — Rhonda Byrne

My life is very exciting now. Nostalgia for what? It's like climbing a staircase. I'm on the top of the staircase, I look behind and see the steps. That's where I was. We're here right now. Tomorrow, we'll be someplace else. So why nostalgia? — Jeanne Moreau

I went down by a different staircase, and i saw another "fuck you" on the wall. I tried to rub it off with my hand again, but this one was scratched on, with a knife or something. It wouldn't come off. It's hopeless, anyway. If you had a million years to do it in, you couldn't rub out even half the "fuck you" signs in the world. — J.D. Salinger

I read a page of Plato's great work. I can no longer understand anything, because behind the words on the page, which have their own heavenly brightness, to be sure, there shines an even brighter, an enormous, dazzling -why- that blots out everything, cancels out, destroys all meaning. All individual intelligence. When one has understood, one stops, satisfied with what one has understood. I do not understand. Understanding is far too little. To have understood is to be fixed, immobilized. It is as though one wanted to stop on one step in the middle of a staircase, or with one foot in the void and the other on the endless stair. But a mere why, a new why can set one off again, can unpetrify what was petrified and everything starts flowing afresh. How can one understand? One cannot. — Eugene Ionesco

From the outset my main concern was with the shape and the self-contained nature of discrete things, the curve of banisters on a staircase, the molding of a stone arch over a gateway, the tangled precision of the blades in a tussock of dried grass. — W.G. Sebald

There is no 'slippery slope' toward loss of liberties, only a long staircase where each step downward must first be tolerated by the American people and their leaders. — Alan K. Simpson

Lisa was thinking, as she climbed the apparently unending staircase, the she had taken pretty long odds. She had not hesitated to buck the Tiger, Life. Simon Iff had warned her that she was acting on impulse. But
on the top of that
he had merely urged her to be true to it. She swore once more that she would stick to her guns. The black mood fell from her. She turned and looked upon the sea, now far below. The sun, a hollow orb of molten glory, hung quivering in the mist of the Mediterranean; and Lisa entered for a moment into a perfect peace of spirit. She became once with Nature, instead of a being eternally at war with it. — Aleister Crowley

Life is a journey up a spiral staircase; as we grow older we cover the ground covered we have covered before, only higher up; as we look down the winding stair below us we measure our progress by the number of places where we were but no longer are. The journey is both repetitious and progressive; we go both round and upward. — William Butler Yeats

The woman dashed up the staircase toward the library's main doors. Arriving at the top of the stairs, she grabbed the handle and tried desperately to open each of the three giant doors.
The library's closed, lady.
But the woman didn't seem to care. She seized one of the heavy ring-shaped handles, heaved it backward, and let it fall with a loud crash against the door. Then she did it again. And again. And again.
Wow, the homeless man thought, she must really need a book. — Dan Brown

Books are a staircase to unknown worlds. — Jason Ellis

Explain to me again how matricide is illegal in some states," Sissy growled from behind him as he pulled her toward the enormous staircase.
"In all states. Plus, I think there are some moral restrictions around it, too."
"That's not fair. Clearly, these lawmakers haven't met my mother."
"I wouldn't know. Besides, this is all so foreign to me," he explained once they hit the top step.
"My mother loves me and would do anything for me, so I've never had a desire to kill her." Light brown eyes abruptly narrowed.
"Throw that in my face again, and your sweet momma will be
nursing your mauled body back to health."
"Sweet talker. — Shelly Laurenston

And suddenly it seemed to Olive that every house she had ever gone into depressed her, except for her own, and the one they had built for Christopher. It was as though she had never outgrown that feeling she must have had as a child - that hypersensitivity to the foreign smell of someone else's home, the fear that coated the unfamiliar way a bathroom door closed, the creak in a staircase worn by footsteps not one's own. — Elizabeth Strout

He sang 'Stairway to Heaven' in four different languages but never knew where that staircase stood. — Sherman Alexie

On its rocky tip, dominating the scenery for miles around, stood he Villa dell'Ossevatore. Breathtakingly beautiful, it comprised three individual buildings and a single watchtower, roofed in terracotta tile and connected by stone bridges and loggias. Its lush gardens and lawns encircled the peninsula in steadily descending terraces, and a wide stone-built staircase hugged the rock all the way down to the waterline, terminating at a landing stage edged with balustrades. Higher up the hillside she saw the pergolas straining under the branches of ancient wisteria, and huge displays of azaleas and camellias. Ivy clung to the west-facing sides of the buildings and curled among its statues. — Stephen Lloyd Jones