Stairs Of Life Quotes & Sayings

I had a dream about you. You were an escalator, and I was a flight of stairs. You thought I was a Luddite, and I thought I was as ostrich, because I hadn't figured out how to put the fly in flight. One day you broke down, and then you saw that you and I weren't so different after all. — Dora J. Arod

And for the next long years of my life, I tried to remember only the reading, not the terrible things that happened to me as I came and went up and down the stairs. The library became my sanctuary. I loved the ways the precious stories took shape but always had room to be read again. I became fascinated with how writers did that. How did they make a story feel so complete and yet to open-ended? It was like painting a picture that changed each time you looked at it. — Rene Denfeld

So if you find nothing in the corridors open the doors, and if you find nothing behind these doors there are more floors, and if you find nothing up there, don't worry, just leap up another flight of stairs. As long as you don't stop climbing, the stairs won't end, under your climbing feet they will go on growing upwards — Franz Kafka

Pericles, he reflected, was a sad case. He'd been a postman all his life, a solid, reliable worker, until one Christmas when he had stolen all the gifts he was meant to deliver: wind-chimes, scented candles, Belgian chocolates, cowbells from the Bernese Oberland. Most of the haul had been lavished on his elderly mother; the rest he had stashed in his bedroom, which the old lady, being too frail to climb the stairs, no longer cleaned. — Alison Fell

There might well be deep evolutionary reasons for these fears; it made sense, millennia ago, to fear situations where we had no control and situations that involved malevolent attackers. In our modern world, however, the things we really ought to fear are almost entirely of our own doing. Failing to climb the stairs and get enough exercise kills far more people than any number of murderers climbing those stairs. You are at far greater risk of taking your own life than being killed by a terrorist. If you were to go strictly by the numbers, that cigarette in your hand ought to have you screaming louder than a chance encounter with Hannibal Lecter. — Shankar Vedantam

Where do we find ourselves? In a series of which we do not know the extremes, and believe that it has none. We wake and find ourselves on a stair; there are stairs below us, which we seem to have ascended; there are stairs above us, many a one, which go upward and out of sight. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

The girl with the greyhound was an assistant lighting director for a musical comedy about American history, and she kept her poor greyhound, who was named Lancer, in a one-room apartment fourteen feet wide and twenty-six feet long, and six flights of stairs above the street level. His entire life was devoted to unloading his excrement at the proper time and place. There were two proper places to put it: in the gutter outside the door seventy-two steps below, with the traffic whizzing by, or in a roasting pan, his mistress kept in front of the Westinghouse refrigerator.
Lancer had a very small brain, but he must have suspected from time to time, just as Wayne Hoobler did, that some kind of terrible mistake had been made. — Kurt Vonnegut

Now the work of art also represents a state of final equilibrium, of accomplished order and maximum relative entropy, and there are those who resent it. But art is not meant to stop the stream of life. Within a narrow span of duration and space the work of art concentrates a view of the human condition; and sometimes it marks the steps of progression, just as a man climbing the dark stairs of a medieval tower assures himself by the changing sights glimpsed through its narrow windows that he is getting somewhere after all. — Rudolf Arnheim

They were all growing so fast. In just a few short years they would be all young men and women ... youth tiptoe ... expectant ... a-star with its sweet wild dreams ... little ships sailing out of safe harbor to unknown ports. The boys would go away to their life work and the girls ... ah, the mist-veiled forms of beautiful brides might be seen coming down the old stairs at Ingleside. But they would still be hers for a few years yet ... hers to love and guide ... to sing the songs that so many mothers had sung ... Hers ... and Gilbert's. — L.M. Montgomery

He started down the staircase, but stopped a few steps down. He turned to me and said, "I must tell you again, I don't want you to come down here. I don't want to see you get hurt."
"A trapdoor has been discovered. It begs to be explored. Not going down those stairs will be the biggest regret of my life. — August Westman

... Mrs. Warren allowed her book to fall closed upon her lap, and her attractive face awakened to an expression of agreeable expectation, in itself denoting the existence of interesting and desirable qualities in the husband at the moment inserting his latch-key in the front door preparatory to mounting the stairs and joining her. The man who, after twenty-five years of marriage, can call, by his return to her side, this expression to the countenance of an intelligent woman is, without question or argument, an individual whose life and occupations are as interesting as his character and points of view. — Frances Hodgson Burnett

- So what do we do? - She asked.
I reached for the doorknob and looked at the Bi.
- Forward to a normal life.
- Do you think that happens? - She asked, and I became spuskatsya through the power of the stairs to the exit:
"Be happy, the boss"
- And we'll try — Rachel Hawkins

All my life I've plotted and planned, been obsessed with those things.
And now you've achieved them. You are not satisfied. He nodded.
Life is a series of stairs of which we climb, Claudia ... your horizons have moved. — Catherine Fisher

Otis, on the other hand, didn't miss home a bit. He had always hated the stairs in our house in Massachusetts. He was now five years old and very large for a golden retriever. I thought he was fat, but Bruce insisted he was just "big-boned". Either way, climbing the steep stairs at home was a challenge. Whenever Bruce and I went upstairs, Otis would sit near the bottom step, carefully calculating whether we would be on the second floor long enough to make it worthwhile to heave himself up the stairs. And on the way down the stairs, Otis was like a fully loaded eighteen-wheeler barreling down a steep hill. We just got out of his way.
But in the new Washington apartment building, Otis had an elevator. As far as he was concerned, life was sweet. — Elizabeth Warren

Everyone is a raconteur without realizing it. We speak to our friends, we speak to our doctors and therapists about the nothing-meaning nonsense that goes on in our lives, but the difference in telling a story and complaining about the ills of one's life is in the delivery. We can talk about how someone slighted you at work, or we can talk about how that person looked when they promptly fell down the stairs a moment after disdaining you. There, you see, is the difference: people will often notice the main but not the nuance; they will notice the face of the person yelling at them and the pitch of their shouts, but will not notice the comfort that the ululations of agony and twisted limbs lying on the bottom stile can promise. — Michelle Franklin

Life in itself Is nothing, An empty cup, a flight of uncarpeted stairs. — Edna St. Vincent Millay

This is a part of post-college life that nobody ever warns you about. Your social life is no longer dropped into your lap by virtue of shared classes and extracurricular activities. Relationships, whether with friends, family, or romantic partners - from here on out, they're going to take a lot more work. No more built-in friends at the sorority, or hollering down the stairs when I need my mom. It's certainly not going to be as easy to meet guys now that I'm done with school. It's not like I can just chat up the cute guy in econ class anymore. — Lauren Layne

At home, the puppy Rose played with balls, struggled with the stairs, and slept behind my knees while we watched in adoration. It's not that I was unhappy in what I now think of as "the dogless years," but I suspected things could be better. What I never could have imagined was how much better they would be. Whatever holes I had in my life, in my character, were suddenly filled. I had entered into my first adult relationship of mutual, unconditional love. — Ann Patchett

She cried, 'No choice! No choice!' She doesn't know. If she doesn't speak, she is making a choice. If she doesn't try, she can lose her chance forever.
I know this, because I was raised the Chinese way: I was taught to desire nothing, to swallow other people's misery, to eat my own bitterness.
and even though I taught my daughter the opposite, she still came out the same way! Maybe it is because she was born to me and she was born a girl. And I was born to my mother and I was born a girl. All of us are like stairs, one step after another, going up and down, but all going the same way.
I know how it is to be quiet, to listen and watch, as if your life were a dream. You can close your eyes when you no longer want to watch. But when you no longer want to listen, what can you do? I can still hear what happened more than sixty years ago. — Amy Tan

GETTING KILLED BY TARTARUS didn't seem like much of an honor.
As Annabeth stared up at his dark whirlpool face, she decided she'd rather die in some less memorable way - maybe falling down the stairs, or going peacefully in her sleep at age eighty, after a nice quiet life with Percy. Yes, that sounded good. — Rick Riordan

Spring
TO what purpose, April, do you return again?
Beauty is not enough.
You can no longer quiet me with the redness
Of little leaves opening stickily.
I know what I know.
The sun is hot on my neck as I observe
The spikes of the crocus.
The smell of the earth is good.
It is apparent that there is no death.
But what does that signify?
Not only under ground are the brains of men
Eaten by maggots.
Life in itself
Is nothing,
An empty cup, a flight of uncarpeted stairs.
It is not enough that yearly, down this hill,
April
Comes like an idiot, babbling and strewing flowers. — Edna St. Vincent Millay

What is all that men have done and thought over thousands of years, compared with one moment of love. But in all Nature, too, it is what is nearest to perfection, what is most divinely beautiful! There all stairs lead from the threshold of life. From there we come, to there we go. — Friedrich Holderlin

I have a nervous breakdown in the film and in one scene I get to stand at the top of the stairs waving an empty sherry bottle which is, of course, a typical scene from my daily life, so isn't much of a stretch. — Emma Thompson

The real scaffolding of racism is institutions that are so fully entwined with prejudice that to change them would require overhauling entire systems, entire ways of life. When keeping Black and brown people marginalized literally elevates white people, as they use our backs as stairs, why would they want us to stand up? — Luvvie Ajayi

I hadn't gotten old enough yet to realize that living sends a person not into the future but back into the past, to childhood and before birth, finally, to commune with the dead. You get older, you puff on the stairs, you enter the body of your father. From there it's only a quick jump to your grandparents, and then before you know it you're time traveling. In this life we grow backwards. — Jeffrey Eugenides

To ascend faster on the stairs of life, keep the thinking shorter! Think fast and act fast! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

The music surged down the stairs like a flashing stream - it gathered in the corridor and burst like a waterfall through the wide entry doors. It splashed over a small, lonely figure crouching on the lowest step, dark and colorless like an un-moving lump of black, a little hillock with mad, unresting eyes. It was the old man who had freed himself with such difficulty from the unrelenting window. He crouched in the corner, lost and done for, with bowed shoulders and knees drawn high, as though he would never rise again - and over him, and away in gay and flashing cascades, the music splashed and danced, strong, pitiless, unceasing as life itself. — Erich Maria Remarque

I was young at Myna, that first time. When had the change come? He had retreated to here, to Collegium, to spin his awkward webs of intrigue and to lecture at the College. Then, years on, the call had come for action. He had gone to that chest in which he stored his youth and found that, like some armour long unworn, it had rusted away.
He tried to tell himself that this was not like the grumbling of any other man who finds the prime of his life behind him. I need my youth and strength now, as never before. A shame that one could no husband time until one needed it. All his thoughts rang hollow. He was past his best and that was the thorn that would not be plucked from his side. He was no different from any tradesman or scholar who, during a life of indolence, pauses partway up the stairs to think, This was not so hard, yesterday. — Adrian Tchaikovsky

Life is not a dream. Careful! Careful! Careful!
We fall down the stairs in order to eat the moist earth
or we climb to the knife edge of the snow with the voices of
the dead dahlias.
But forgetfulness does not exist, dreams do not exist;
flesh exists. Kisses tie our mouths
in a thicket of new veins,
and whoever his pain pains will feel that pain forever
and whoever is afraid of death will carry it on his shoulders. — Federico Garcia Lorca

I could have taken you to the lab right now and been done with you.Now I have to babysit you until Sunday." He shakes his head and pushes past me, grumbling under his breath.
"Gee, thanks. But you're the worst babysitter in the history of the world, Dreyden. Babysitters are supposed to be fun," I say to his back, and then stick out my tongue. Very thirteen-year old. He turns and strides up to me, eyes full of fire, not stopping until our noses touch. I gulp and force myself not to step back. "Nothing about life is fum anymore, Fo," he says. And then he leaves, feet thumping sown the stairs. — Bethany Wiggins

Some lives are like steps and stairs, every period an achievement built on a previous success. Other lives hum with the arc of the swift spear. Only ever one thing, that dedicated life, from start to finish, but how magnificently concentrated its journey. The trajectory seems so true as to be proof of predestination. Still other lives are more like the progress of a child scrabbling over boulders at a lakeside - now up, now down, always the destination blocked from view. Now a wrenched ankle, now a spilled sandwich, now a fishhook in the face. — Gregory Maguire

There are those dreamers who make excuses for why they aren't passionate about or creating anything to match their desires and then there's those dreamers who stay up late just to finish a goal that will get them up the next set of stairs. We all have dreams but not everyone makes it a reality. — Nikki Rowe

Different types of dangerous lives-You have no idea what you are living through; you rush through life as if you were drunk and now and then fall down some staircase. But thanks to your drunkenness you never break a limb; your muscles are too relaxed and your brain too benighted for you to find the stones of these stairs as hard as we do. — Friedrich Nietzsche

Without a physical presence on the shelves, the Kindle books seemed slightly insubstantial. There was no equivalent of the satisfying cracked spine. There was nothing to bequeath to the next generation, nothing to sell on to live a new life in someone else's library. But at least the torrent of books that kept arriving had slowed down and there was space to walk up the stairs. I was being freed from the burden of all those bloody books. — Linda Grant

It's about having an active lifestyle, staying healthy, and making the right decisions. Life is about balance. Not everybody wants to run a marathon, but we could all start working out and being active, whether you walk to work or take an extra flight of stairs. — Apolo Ohno

Ben walked into the house and up the stairs with his two canes, but he propelled himself about much of the time after that in a wheeled chair, having decided that it was not an admission of defeat but rather a moving forward into a new, differently active phase of his life. — Mary Balogh

I saw Derzhavin only once in my life but shall never forget that occasion. It was in 1815 at a public examination in the Lyceum. When we boys learned Derzhavin was coming, all of us grew excited. Delvig went out on the stairs to wait for him and kiss his hand, the hand that had written 'The Waterfall.' Derzhavin arrived. Derzhavin entered the vestibule, and Delvig heard him ask the janitor: 'Where is the privy here, my good fellow?' This prosaic question disenchanted Delvig, who canceled his intent and returned to the reception hall. Delvig told me the story with wonderful bonhomie and good humor. — Alexander Pushkin

When you get inside, go to the stairs and one of them will escort you up. Go directly to the stairs," he said pointedly. "Try not to get in trouble or cause a riot on the way."
"I don't think that's a fair statement. Life isn't always chaotic around me."
"Like when isn't it?"
"Like when I'm ... " I thought a minute. "Alone," I finished pissily. "Or asleep. — Karen Marie Moning

Pack the one bag. Unpack it, pack it, unpack it, pack it: passeport, ticket, book, taxi, airport, check-in, beer, announcement, stairs, airplane, fasten seat-belt, air born, flight, rocking, sun, stars, space, hips of strolling stewardesses, read, sleep, clouds, falling engine speed, descent, circling, touch down, earth, unfasten seat-belt, stairs, airport, immunization book, visa, customs, questions, taxi, streets, houses, people, hotel, key, room, stuffiness, thirst, otherness, foreignness, loneliness, fatigue, life. — Ryszard Kapuscinski

I was that kid. I was entertaining everybody in the living room and throwing myself down flights of stairs and making the family look special and making my mother feel better and I really wanted to make people happy. That has been my ministry my whole life. I call it The Church of F.F.C. - The Church of Freedom From Concern. And I'm a high priest in that church. — Jim Carrey

Tying the laces. The bottom line was that Grandpa would have been willing to risk his life on the gamble that the shadows of Tanu and Coulter meant to offer meaningful assistance. He would have followed them if he could have done so alone. He simply was not willing to risk Seth's life. To Seth, this proved that the risk was worth taking. If Grandpa loved him too much to let him take a worthwhile risk, then he would bypass Grandpa. Shoes secure, Seth slid his emergency kit out from under the bed. Then he tiptoed down the attic stairs, flinching at every creak. At the bottom of the steps the house remained dark and quiet. Seth hurried along the hall and down the stairs to the entry hall. He stole into Grandpa's study, tugged a chain to turn on a desk lamp, and rummaged through Tanu's bag of potions. After examining several bottles, Seth found the one he wanted, grabbed it, and closed the bag. — Brandon Mull

When I was young - really young - I used to think that the kids who had money, who were popular at school and who did well at things must have had horrible home lives - abusive parents or nasty siblings or lived in cupboard under stairs.
It's kind of sick when you think about it, but what I figured was that life should be fair - everyone had to have good and bad things in their lives, and no one could have a wholly good life or a wholly bad life because that would upset the balance of things.
I know now that I was wrong. — Steph Bowe

Will only looked at her. There had been light in his eyes on the stairs, as he'd locked the door, when he'd kissed her
a brilliant, joyous light. And it was going now, fading like the last breath of someone dying. She thought of Nate, bleeding to death in her arms. She had been powerless then, to help him. As she was now. She felt as if she were watching the life bleed out of Will Herondale, and there was nothing she could do to stop it. — Cassandra Clare

... the worshipers here are not likely to kill one another, they all offer the same sacrifice, and how the fat spits and the carcasses sizzle as God in the sublime heavens inhales the odors of all this carnage with satisfaction. Jesus pressed his lamb to his breast, unable to fathom why God could not be appeased with a cup of milk poured over His altar, that sap of life which passes from one being to another, or with a handful of wheat, the basic substance of immortal bread. Soon he will have to part with the old man's generous gift, his for such a short time, the poor little lamb will not live to see the sun set this day, it is time to mount the stairs of the Temple, to deliver it to the knife and sacrificial fire, as if it were no longer worthy of existence or being punished ... — Jose Saramago

Jem raised his hand, and his witchlight flared into life, frightening a group of blackbeetles. They scurried across the floor, causing Will to grimace. "Nice place to live, isn't it? Let's hope they left something behind other than filth. Forwarding addresses, a few severed limbs, a prostitute or two ... "
"Indeed. Perhaps, if we're fortunate, we can still catch syphilis."
"Or demon pox," Will suggested cheerfully, trying the door under the stairs. It swung open, unlocked as the front door had been. "There's always demon pox."
"Demon pox does not exist."
"Oh ye of little faith," said Will, disappearing into the darkness under the stairs. — Cassandra Clare

The stairs were certainly steep; and in those days, when they could rarely see their own feet, women were always falling; it was a commonplace of domestic life. — John Fowles

Watch the Film You Paid to See"

In my bedroom my weight is three times more
than what I'd weigh on Jupiter.
If your kitchen was on Mercury I'd be heavier by half
of you while sitting at your table.
On Uranus, a quarter of my weight is meat,
or an awareness of myself as flesh.
On Venus the light would produce a real volume around me
that would make me look happy in photographs.
This is how it is with quantity in any life. It's a fact
that on certain planets I'd actually be able to mount
the stairs four at a time. Think of the most beautiful horse
in the world: a ridiculously beautiful golden horse,
with a shimmering coat; it would weigh no more
than an empty handbag on Mars. You need
to get real about these things. — Todd Colby

Who is righteous? Anyone who is repenting. No matter how bad he has been, if he is repenting he is a righteous man. There is hope for him. And no matter how good he has been all his life, if he is not repenting, he is a wicked man. The difference is which way you are facing. The man on the top of the stairs facing down if much worse off than the man on the bottom step who is facing up. The direction we are facing, that is repentance; and that is what determines whether we are good or bad. — Hugh Nibley

Out in the sky, no one sleeps. No one, no one.
No one sleeps.
In a graveyard far off there is a corpse
who has moaned for three years
because of an arid landscape in his knee;
and that boy they buried this morning cried so much
it was necessary to call out the dogs to keep him quiet.
Life is not a dream. Careful! Careful! Careful!
We fall down the stairs in order to eat the moist earth
or we climb to the snow's edge with the voices of dead dahlias.
But there is no oblivion; no dream:
only flesh exists. Kisses tie our mouths
in a tangle of new veins,
and those who hurt will hurt without rest
and those who are afraid of death will carry it on their shoulders. — Federico Garcia Lorca

Life for most of us is full of steep stairs to go up and later, shaky stairs to totter down; and very early in the history of stairs must have come the invention of bannisters. — Louis Kronenberger

Climb up the stairs cheerfully, climb down the stairs cheerfully! Let your mind is unaffected by the ups and downs of life! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

The sole really unpredictable factor in this life, from autumn to winter, spring to summer, from one school year to the next, was Dad. I was so frightened of him that even with the greatest effort of will I am unable to recreate the fear; the feelings I had for him I have never felt since, nor indeed anything close.
His footsteps on the stairs - was he coming to see me?
The wild glare in his eyes. The tightness around his mouth. The lips that parted involuntarily. And then his voice.
Sitting here now, hearing it in my inner ear, I almost start crying. — Karl Ove Knausgard

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

Good-bye
if you hear of my being stood up against a stone wall and shot to rags please know that I think that a pretty good way to depart this life. It beats old age, disease or falling down the cellar stairs. — Ambrose Bierce

I fully believe in ghosts. I have, my entire life. The first house I ever lived in was haunted. There was a grave of a man in the backyard. I was just a baby then, but my parents would tell me that every night, at the same time, they would hear someone walking up the stairs. — Meaghan Rath

She knows her life is on the line but, believe it
or not, she's never been so excited!
Her husband's a serial killer, and her bodice is wet
with tears, but there's a chance her brothers
will show up like winning lottery numbers.
Which does she want more - her hair wound
in the maniac's hands and her white white throat bared,
or the sound of boots on marble stairs? — Ron Koertge

Hail His Majesty, the scourge of my life," Conner said to Roden and Tobias as he stomped up the stairs. "I fear the devils no longer, because I have the worst of them right here in my home! — Jennifer A. Nielsen

Sorry Johnny."
"Sorry for what "
"For shouting at you. It's just that when I think about the future I keep panicking. It's like falling from the top of the stairs in the dark not knowing where I'll end up."
He put his arm around my shoulders. "I understand. Life is precarious for most of us but more so for you. What you forget is what most of your friends see in you."
"What's that "
"The ability to beat the odds ... "
"And fall on my feet "
He nodded.
"I just hope that lasts."
"It will Catkin it will. It wouldn't dare fail you. — Julia Golding

The power of habits is the stepping stone on the stairs of life. — Debasish Mridha

Agnes Shay had the true spirit of a maid. Moistened with dishwater and mild eau de cologne, reared in narrow and sunless bedrooms, in back passages, back stairs, laundries, linen closets, and in those servants' halls that remind one of a prison, her soul had grown docile and bleak...Agnes loved the ceremonies of a big house. She drew the curtains in the living room at dark, lighted the candles on the table, and struck the dinner chimes like an eager altar boy. On fine evenings, when she sat on the back porch between the garbage pails and the woodbins, she liked to recall the faces of all the cooks she had known. It made her life seem rich. — John Cheever

To the white people, among whom I helplessly number myself, life is a very long and high set of stairs, but to my mother life was a river, a slow and stately wind across the sky, an endless sea of grass. — Jim Harrison

I wanted the figures to be real and believable so that you would feel that with their very next breath would begin life itself. — Irving Stone

Even older and just as rich, the ritual of Kappa Alpha Order thrilled his soul and permeated his mind. By the end of the ceremony he was so awed, so filled with idealism, so saturated with nebulous aspirations, that he gazed with love on all his brothers ... He floated down the stairs of the old Administration Building that night new born and shining, warm and secure in the midst of a group that no outside force could penetrate nor unsuspected evil ever tarnish. Porter was a Knight of Kappa Alpha Order (193) — Ferrol Sams

This is what's happening: together we are descending the stairs of the heart, which lead to the sources. (It is a secret staircase. I knew it existed. Which is why I avoided it. Because it leads to the other-life, deep, underground, the fluvial, the painful.)
We are in the process of descending into the depths of the heart. To where bodies communicate with each other. — Helene Cixous

Could any of these things be happening because they're fallen women?' I asked, drawing on another of the cliches we were given like a quiverful of arrows with which to face a life cursed by sin.
Doc sat a moment with his hand on the door handle before getting out. 'Well now, it's interesting that you ask. I had a woman recently who feel, not just one flight of stairs, but two. She had a baby as perfect as a pool ball. — Peter De Vries

But it was a happy and beautiful bride who came down the old, homespun-
carpeted stairs that September noon - the first bride of Green Gables, slender and shining-eyed, in the mist of her maiden veil, with her arms full of roses. Gilbert, waiting for her in the hall below, looked up at her with adoring eyes. She was his at last, this evasive, long-sought Anne, won after years of patient waiting. It was to him she was coming in the sweet surrender of the bride. Was he worthy of her? Could he make her as happy as he hoped? If he failed her - if he could not measure up to her standard of manhood - then, as she held out her hand, their eyes met and all doubt was swept away in a glad certainty. They belonged to each other; and, no matter what life might hold for them, it could never alter that. Their happiness was in each other's keeping and both were unafraid. — L.M. Montgomery

That's why your lot in life isn't fate. I don't have any say in much of my life, but I make whatever choices I can make in my own rational best interest. It's my choice to fix those stairs and make the place I live a little better instead of whining and waiting and hoping for someone else to do something for me. I have pride that I know how to do that for myself. — Terry Goodkind

So," he said, shaking his head. "I'm too much for you. You should have said something. We might be married, Mercy, but no still means no."
I widened my eyes at him. "I just haven't wanted to hurt your feelings."
"When I give you that little nudge, hmm?" His voice took on a considering air. "Come to think of it, I'm feeling a little nudge coming on right now."
"Now?" I whispered in horrified tones. I looked up toward Jesse's room. "Think of the children."
He tilted his head as if to listen, then shook it. "They won't hear anything from there." He started slowly down the stairs.
"Think of Darryl, Zack, Lucia, and Joel," I said earnestly. "They'll be scarred for life."
"You know what they say about werewolves," he told me gravely, stepping down to the ground.
I broke and ran - and he was right on my tail. Figuratively speaking, of course. I don't have a tail unless I'm in my coyote shape. — Patricia Briggs

Eventually you ascend the stairs to the street. You think of Plato's pilgrims climbing out of the cave, from the shadow world of appearances toward things as they really are, and you wonder if it is possible to change in this life. Being with a philosopher makes you think. — Jay McInerney

And as the train whistled its imminent departure, a small girl wearing neat plaits and someone else's shoes climbed its iron stairs. Smoke filled the platform, people waved and hollered, a stray dog ran barking through the crowds. Nobody noticed as the little girl stepped over the shadowed threshold; not even Aunt Ada, who some might've expected to be sheperherding her orphaned niece towards her uncertain future. And so, when the essence of light and life that had been Vivien Longmeyer contracted itself for safekeeping and disappeared deep inside her, the world kept moving and nobody saw it happen. — Kate Morton

You gotta have style. It helps you get down the stairs. It helps you get up in the morning. It's a way of life. Without it, you're nobody. — Diana Vreeland