Things Furniture Quotes & Sayings

Television as we have it isn't an art form - it's a piece of furniture that is good for a few things. — Pauline Kael

She was still hugging the cat. "Poor slob," she said, tickling his head, "poor slob without a name. It's a little inconvenient, his not having a name. But I haven't any right to give him one: he'll have to wait until he belongs to somebody. We just sort of took up by the river one day, we don't belong to each other: he's an independent, and so am I. I don't want to own anything until I know I've found the place where me and things belong together. I'm not quite sure where that is just yet. But I know what it's like." She smiled, and let the cat drop to the floor. "It's like Tiffany's," she said.
[ ... ]
It calms me down right away, the quietness and the proud look of it; nothing very bad could happen to you there, not with those kind men in their nice suits, and that lovely smell of silver and alligator wallets. If I could find a real-life place that made me feel like Tiffany's, then I'd buy some furniture and give the cat a name. — Truman Capote

In our need for more and more rapid replacement of the worldly things around us, we can no longer afford to use them, to respect and preserve their inherent durability; we must consume, devour, as it were, our houses and furniture and cars as though they were the "good things" of nature which spoil uselessly if they are not drawn swiftly into the never-ending cycle of man's metabolism with nature. It is as though we had forced open the distinguishing boundaries which protected the world, the human artifice, from nature, the biological process which goes on in its very midst as well as the natural cyclical processes which surround it, delivering and abandoning to them the always threatened stability of a human world. — Hannah Arendt

The truth is, new furniture or a better house will never really satisfy - they will just set new, higher standards for what is acceptable to us for our comfort and contentment. When you take care of what you have and find joy right where you are, you set the right tone and expectations for contentment in all circumstances moving forward. Whether things get better or worse, our standard will be to love what we have and be grateful for it (even when we might not like it). — Melissa Michaels

For half an hour they poked about in a happy dusty dream, through the junk and broken furniture and ornaments. It was like reading the story of somebody's life, Jane thought, as she gazed at the tiny matchstick masts of the ship sailing motionless forever in the green glass bottle. All these things had been used once, had been part of every day in the house below. Someone has slept on the bed, anxiously watched the minutes on the clock, pounced joyfully on each magazine as it arrived. But those people were long dead, or gone away, and now the oddments of their lives were piled up here, forgotten. She found herself feeling rather sad. — Susan Cooper

This was a time in my life when I was so filled with longing for so many things that were so far out of reach that at least once a day I thought my heart would implode from the sheer force of unrequited desire.

By desire I am not referring to apartments I wanted to occupy or furniture I wanted to buy or even people I was attracted to (well, I'm referring to those things a little) but, rather, a sensation I can only describe as the ache of not being there yet. — Meghan Daum

If you actually keep things very organized and clutter-free, you can have more furniture than you think you can in a small space. — Nate Berkus

Things got said, the kinds of embarrassing things that don't go away. Tempers ran high. My paternal grandfather's teak desk required a new panel, which never quite matched the others. Intellectual debate can be very hard on furniture. — Nancy Kress

Fashion is everything. Art, music, furniture design, graphic design, hair, makeup, architecture, the way cars look - all those things go together to make a moment in time, and that's what excites me. — Tom Ford

By acquiring all of your furniture from different eras and places and things that are expensive and inexpensive, it will make your end product have a great spirit. — Kelly Wearstler

I haven't got time in my life to do all the things I should be doing, like running and dieting and decorating my house, buying some furniture. — Jennifer Saunders

I'm always changing things around. I have to change it all the time. I'm rearranging furniture and taking down paintings and putting up new ones, and buying new pieces of art. — Evangeline Lilly

Habitualization devours objects, clothes, furniture, one's wife, and the fear of war. If all the complex lives of many people go on unconsciously, then such lives are as if they had never been.

Art exists to help us recover the sensation of life; it exists to make us feel things, to make the stone stony. The end of art is to give a sensation of the object seen, not as recognized. The technique of art is to make things 'unfamiliar,' to make forms obscure, so as to increase the difficulty and the duration of perception. The act of perception in art is an end in itself and must be prolonged. In art, it is our experience of the process of construction that counts, not the finished product. — Victor Shklovsky

When it comes to life, all you can change is the equivalent of furniture, paint and windows. Doors, maybe. Change the things that are in too bad a state and hope the core holds. — John Ajvide Lindqvist

To what extent the machine abases us. - The machine is impersonal, it deprives the piece of work of its pride, of the individual goodness and faultiness that adheres to all work done by a machine - that is to say, of its little bit of humanity. In earlier times all purchasing from artisans was a bestowing of a distinction on individuals, and the things with which we surrounded ourselves were the insignia of these distinctions: household furniture and clothing thus became symbols of mutual esteem and personal solidarity, whereas we now seem to live in the midst of nothing but anonymous and impersonal slavery. - We must not purchase the alleviation of work at too high price. — Friedrich Nietzsche

I've always thought that design can have equal importance to the idea of internal architecture. Professionally, things can be very dogmatic - you do the architecture, someone else does the interiors, someone else does the furniture, the fabric, etc. But I think design is all-encompassing. — Zaha Hadid

Aristocracy is relative: there are all sorts of inexpensive little resorts where the son of a furniture salesman may be the arbiter of all things elegant, holding court like a young Prince of Wales. — Marcel Proust

The idea of living there, of not having to go back ever again to asphalt and shopping malls and modular furniture; of living there with Charles and Camilla and Henry and Francis and maybe even Bunny; of no one marrying or going home or getting a job in a town a thousand miles away or doing any of the traitorous things friends do after college; of everything remaining exactly as it was, that instant - the idea was so truly heavenly that I'm not sure I thought, even then, it could ever really happen, but I like to believe I did. — Donna Tartt

Doris was getting No. 4 ready for a new guest. The floor did not trouble her much, but she spent quite a long time on the taps and the veneered top of the dressing-table. Dusting and polishing she liked - things that showed - but those bits of fluff and dried mud at the bottom of the wardrobe she just pushed back into a corner. There was no means of getting them out, anyway, with that ridge at the front. Furniture was always made as inconvenient as possible. Doris was used to that. — Monica Dickens

You know," Kavita begins, "I think I can pick out my own furniture. I am an artist after all. I do have some taste."
"No you don't." Nick plainly states. "No man has taste. Besides, I didn't pick it out, she did. Wives are good for things like that. — Carroll Bryant

I was tired and crazy and rushed, and every time I boarded a plane, I wanted the plane to crash. I envied people dying of cancer. I hated my life. I was tired and bored with my job and my furniture, and I couldn't see any way to change things.
Only end them. — Chuck Palahniuk

annoyed her, she also knew her psychiatrist's sentiment was right. She sighed. It was beyond frustrating when things you didn't like were also your reality. "Where do you want the living room furniture?" one of the movers asked. She directed him inside and showed him the dining area off the kitchen that would serve as living and dining. If it weren't for Corrine's forcing her to a table most evenings, Shaye would have eaten every meal curled up on the couch in front of a television, and now — Jana Deleon

When I am doing things around the house - when I'm decorating, setting up furniture, putting out a vase of flowers, lighting my candles, my mind is always thinking, "What do I need to do to make this space peaceful and restful and comfortable so that when people walk into it, aesthetically they're heightened and enlightened?" — Evangeline Lilly

Consider these people, then, their way of life, their habits, their manners, the very tones of their voice; look at them attentively; observe the literature they read, the things which give them pleasure, the words which come forth out of their mouths, the thoughts which make the furniture of their minds; would any amount of wealth be worth having with the condition that one was to become just like these people by having it? — Matthew Arnold

Houses without personality are a series of walled enclosures with furniture standing around in them. Other houses are filled with things of little intrinsic value, even with much that is shabby and yet they have that inviting atmosphere ... — Emily Post

I started out making furniture because I couldn't find certain things, and then I really got into it. — Lenny Kravitz

I love old architecture. I love collecting furniture, mixing really earthy things with the very polished. I don't come from an interiors background, so I'm not an expert. I just enjoy going to antiques shows and finding interesting things. — Jason Wu

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Tonight I came back to the hotel alone; the other has decided to return later on. The anxieties are already here, like the poison already prepared (jealousy, abandonment, restlessness); they merely wait for a little time to pass in order to be able to declare themselves with some propriety. I pick up a book and take a sleeping pill, "calmly." The silence of this huge hotel is echoing, indifferent, idiotic (faint murmur of draining bathtubs); the furniture and the lamps are stupid; nothing friendly that might warm ("I'm cold, let's go back to Paris). Anxiety mounts; I observe its progress, like Socrates chatting (as I am reading) and feeling the cold of the hemlock rising in his body; I hear it identify itself moving up, like an inexorable figure, against the background of the things that are here. — Roland Barthes

The front of my head feels like a house, and the thoughts reside within different set places that I can rearrange like furniture, but mostly I don't. I come from a furniture-dodging tribe. We tiptoe around the pieces as they remain in place. I'm thinking that way again. Strange, the small things that make us proud. — Alice Randall

At last, we arrived home. Indian Vale. The house my father had built that had become mine and that one day would be my daughter's, if she chose to stay in the area. She wouldn't, though. Why should she? The young people here moved somewhere else as fast as they could, and the old folks withered away and died. The factories vanished and the mines and mills sank into the ground, and in their places were erected fast food joints and furniture rental places and pawnshops. Sometimes I hear places like where I live called "Real America," and I know it rankles some folks - city folks, mostly - something awful, and I wish I could tell them it's only done out of politeness. That it's only people saying nice things about the dying. — Jason Miller

Locking up the house - their home - and driving away. The only slightly good news was that they weren't selling it. Someday, Dad promised, they'd return. The big things - furniture, art, — Kristin Hannah

I have to go home and get a few things done. If I don't get out the Pledge soon, the dust bunnies are going to be leaving tracks on my furniture ... — Carla Foft

I think by drawing, so I'll draw or diagram everything from a piece of furniture to a stage gesture. I understand things best when they're in graphics, not words. — Robert Wilson

out of our insane duty to fear, fashion, and monthly payments on things we don't really need - we quarantine our travels to short, frenzied bursts. In this way, as we throw our wealth at an abstract notion called "lifestyle," travel becomes just another accessory - a smooth-edged, encapsulated experience that we purchase in the same way we buy clothing and furniture. Not — Timothy Ferriss

As soon as we freed ourselves from the mirage of hurrying time - which was nothing more than the projection of our own impatience - we were alive again, as in childhood, to the miracles and ecstasies of ordinary life. You would be astounded at the beauty of our homes, our furniture, our clothes, and even our pots and pans, for we have the time to make most of these things ourselves, and the sense of reality to see that they - rather than money - constitute genuine wealth. — Alan W. Watts

It was ironic, really - you want to die because you can't be bothered to go on living - but then you're expected to get all energetic and move furniture and stand on chairs and hoist ropes and do complicated knots and attach things to other things and kick stools from under you and mess around with hot baths and razor blades and extension cords and electrical appliances and weedkiller. Suicide was a complicated, demanding business, often involving visits to hardware shops.
And if you've managed to drag yourself from the bed and go down the road to the garden center or the drug store, by then the worst is over. At that point you might as well just go to work. — Marian Keyes

I looked anxiously around me: the present, nothing but the present. Furniture light and solid, rooted in its present, a table, a bed, a closet with a mirror-and me. the true nature of the present revealed itself: it was what exists, and all that was not present did not exist. The past did not exist. Not at all. Not in things, not even in my thoughts. It is true that I had realized a long time ago that mine had escaped me. But until then I had believed that it had simply gone out of my range. For me the past was only a pensioning off: it was another way of existing, a state of vacation and inaction; each event, when it had played its part, put itself politely into a box and became an honorary event: we have so much difficulty imagining nothingness. Now I knew: things are entirely what they appear to be-and behind them ... there is nothing. — Jean-Paul Sartre

When I was 9, my parents let me take a cab to the mall all by myself. I had hardly any money to spend, but I did have a very specific list of things I wanted to do: buy cookies and sit on the furniture at Sears. — Leslie Mann

The hearts of women are like little pieces of furniture wherein things are secreted, full of drawers fitted into each other; one hurts himself, breaks his nails in opening them, and then finds within only some withered flower, a few grains of dust - or emptiness! And then perhaps he felt afraid of learning too much about the matter. — Gustave Flaubert

originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose. A fool takes in all the lumber of every sort that he comes across, so that the knowledge which might be useful to him gets crowded out, or at best is jumbled up with a lot of other things, so that he has a difficulty in laying his hands upon it. Now the skilful workman is very careful indeed as to what he takes into his brain-attic. He will have nothing but the tools which may help him in doing his work, but of these he has a large assortment, and all in the most perfect order. It is a mistake to think that that little room has elastic walls and can distend to any extent. Depend upon it there comes a time when for every addition of knowledge you forget something that you knew before. It is of the highest importance, therefore, not to have useless facts elbowing out the useful ones." "But the Solar System!" I protested. "What the deuce is it to me?" he interrupted impatiently: "you — Arthur Conan Doyle

Jimi, Orla's mother, was as tall as Orla, but several times wider. She had all of Orla's grace, too, which was to say that she knocked her hips into every piece of furniture in Blue's room. Every time she did, she said things like "mother lover!" and "fasten it all." They sounded worse than real swear words. — Maggie Stiefvater

It is sometimes easier to have furniture made than to find things. — Stephen Bayley

If she were their mother she'd teach them these things are nothing, the clothes and toys and furniture. These things fool people into thinking they must stay where the things are. Leave it all, she'd teach them, even your hopes, and all the dreams of safe, calm places. Go with what is most terrifying, the dizzying empty night and the lonely stars until night slows and you see the whole design. Always choose love over safety if you can tell the difference ... — Josephine Humphreys

It's a little weird that they keep walking around sniffing things. Think I'll do that eventually?"
"I have no idea. At least they aren't chewing on the furniture. — Nichole Chase

There are three things to leave behind; your photographs, your library, and your personal journals. These things are certainly going to be more valuable to future generations than your furniture! — Jim Rohn

My grandest boyhood ambition was to be a professor of history at Notre Dame. Although what I do now is just a different way of working with history, I suppose.") He told me about his blind-in-one-eye canary rescued from a Woolworth's who woke him singing every morning of his boyhood; the bout of rheumatic fever that kept him in bed for six months; and the queer little antique neighborhood library with frescoed ceilings ("torn down now, alas") where he'd gone to get away from his house. About Mrs. De Peyster, the lonely old heiress he'd visited after school, a former Belle of Albany and local historian who clucked over Hobie and fed him Dundee cake ordered from England in tins, who was happy to stand for hours explaining to Hobie every single item in her china cabinet and who had owned, among other things, the mahogany sofa - rumored to have belonged to General Herkimer - that got him interested in furniture in the first place. — Donna Tartt

Perhaps it's true that things can change in a day. That a few dozen hours can affect the outcome of whole lifetimes. And that when they do, those few dozen hours, like the salvaged remains of a burned house
the charred clock, the singed photograph, the scorched furniture
must be resurrected from the ruins and examined. Preserved. Accounted for. Little events, ordinary things, smashed and reconstitutred. Imbued with new meaning. Suddenly they become the bleached bones of a story. — Arundhati Roy

There are only two things to be done when a general is angry: One is to get behind the furniture and pretend one is not there; the other is to distract his mind. — Mary Roberts Rinehart

History is moving the furniture around in the house of mankind just about everywhere but the U.S.A. Things have changed, except here, where people come and go through the rooms of state, and everything looks shabbier by the day, and lethargy eats away at the upholstery like an acid fog, and the walls reverberate with meaningless oratory. — James Howard Kunstler

My name is Eva, which means 'life,' according to a book of names my mother consulted. I was born in the back room of a shadowy house, and grew up amidst ancient furniture, books in Latin, and human mummies, but none of those things made me melancholy, because I came into the world with a breath of the jungle in my memory. — Isabel Allende

I was shown into a room. A red room. Red wallpaper, red curtains, red carpet. They said it was a sitting-room, but I don't know why they'd decided to confine its purpose just to sitting. Obviously, sitting was one of the things you could do in a room this size; but you could also stage operas, hold cycling races, and have an absolutely cracking game of frisbee, all at the same time, without having to move any of the furniture.
It could rain in a room this big. — Hugh Laurie

Get married, my friend, you don't know what it means to live alone, at my age. Nowadays feeling alone fills me with appalling anguish; being alone at home, by the fire, in the evening. It seems to me then that I'm alone on the earth, dreadfully alone, but surrounded by indeterminate dangers, by unknown, terrible things; and the wall, which divides me from my neighbour, whom I do not know, separates me from him by as great a distance as that which separates me from the stars I see through my window. A kind of fever comes over me, a fever of pain and fear, and the silence of the walls terrifies me. It is so profound, so sad, the silence of the room in which you live alone. It isn't just a silence of the body, but a silence of the soul, and, when a piece of furniture creaks, a shiver runs through your whole body, for in that dismal place you expect to hear no sound. — Guy De Maupassant

I'm quite enthusiastic about any kind of gadget and app and feature and things that enable me to have a very convenient lifestyle. We buy our groceries on the Internet; I buy furniture, clothes for myself and my kids. — Margrethe Vestager

Look at all those cul-de-sacs, the streets that turn in on themselves all the houses that were built to fall apart. All those paper people in their paper houses burning the furniture to stay warm. All the paper kids drinking the beer some bum bought for them at the paper convenience store. Everyone demented with the mania of owning things. All the things paper-thin and paper-frail. — John Green

As far as I can see, Janet, life is just an endless banquet of loss, and each time a new loss is doled out, you have to move your mental furniture around, throw things out, and by then there's more loss, and the cycle goes on and on. (All Families are Psychotic.) — Douglas Coupland

My mind is like a little house,
My peers break into.
They rearrange my furniture,
And the cabinets rifle through.
They throw things out;
They put things in,
And erase the writing on the wall,
And by the time that they walk out,
It's not my mind at all. — Margo T. Rose

For some reason, we see long-term travel to faraway lands as a recurring dream or an exotic temptation, but not something that applies to the here and now. Instead - out of our insane duty to fear, fashion, and monthly payments on things we don't really need - we quarantine our travels to short, frenzied bursts. In this way, as we throw our wealth at an abstract notion called "lifestyle," travel becomes just another accessory - a smooth-edged, encapsulated experience that we purchase the same way we buy clothing and furniture. — Rolf Potts

People rich enough to redecorate every 10 months are certainly careless with antique furniture. I found four 1760 French side chairs, tapestry seats intact. Claiming them proved easier than persuading any cabdriver to transport the things. — Allan Gurganus

Consider that a man's brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose. A fool takes in all the lumber of every sort that he comes across, so that the knowledge which might be useful to him gets crowded out, or at best is jumbled up with a lot of other things so that he has a difficulty in laying his hands upon it. Now the skillful workman is very careful indeed as to what he takes into his brain-attic. He will have nothing but the tools which may help him in doing his work, but of these he has a large assortment, and all in the most perfect order. — Arthur Conan Doyle

Anoia, Goddess of Things That Get Stuck in Drawers," said the woman. "Pleased to meet you." She took another puff at the flaming cigarette, and there were more sparks. Some of them dropped on the floor but didn't seem to do any damage. "There's a goddess just for that?" said Tiffany. "Well, I find lost corkscrews and things that roll under furniture," said Anoia offhandedly. "Sometimes things that get lost under sofa cushions, too. They want me to do stuck zippers, and I'm thinking about that. But mostly I manifest whensoever people rattle stuck drawers and call upon the gods." She puffed on her cigarette. "Got any tea? — Terry Pratchett

Firing people, damaging morale, and changing the entire way you do business. Ramping up doesn't have to be your goal. And we're not talking just about the number of employees you have either. It's also true for expenses, rent, IT infrastructure, furniture, etc. These things don't just happen to you. You decide whether or not to take them on. And if you do take them on, you'll be taking on new headaches, too. Lock in lots of expenses and you force yourself into building a complex business - one that's a lot more difficult and stressful to run. Don't be insecure about aiming to be a small business. — Jason Fried

He said I might be able to fix things that are broken." I glanced around the room. "Did he mean this furniture? — Michelle Rowen

An eminent philosopher among my friends, who can dignify even your ugly furniture by lifting it into the serene light of science, has shown me this pregnant little fact. Your pierglass or extensive surface of polished steel made to be rubbed by a housemaid, will be minutely and multitudinously scratched in all directions; but place now against it a lighted candle as a centre of illumination, and lo! the scratches will seem to arrange themselves in a fine series of concentric circles round that little sun. It is demonstrable that the scratches are going everywhere impartially, and it is only your candle which produces the flattering illusion of concentric arrangement, its light falling with an exclusive optical selection. These things are a parable. The scratches are events, the candle is the egoism of any party now absent. — George Eliot

It withheld the refreshment in a sleep slept on it. It imposed a furtiveness on the loving done on it. Like a sore tooth that is not content to throb in isolation, but must diffuse its own pain to other parts of the body - making breathing difficult, vision limited, nerves unsettled, so a hated piece of furniture produces a fretful malaise that asserts itself throughout the house and limits the delight of things not related to it. The — Toni Morrison

Earth is not heaven. It was never meant to be. No new car, new house, new living room furniture, new kitchen appliances, new clothes, new hair, new baby, new vacation, new job, new income, new husband, or new anything will ever satisfy us, because we were not made for the things of this world. — Craig Groeschel

Then will the poor worldling exclaim: "Alas! my house, my gardens, that elegant furniture, those garments, will soon be no longer mine: the grave alone remaineth for me. — Alfonso Maria De Liguori

What does one save for, anyhow? For a few tired hours at the end of life when one sits and counts dollars? Or do we save so that those last years will not be mentally barren or esthetically shabby? I try to save a few things to furnish my mind decently, on the theory that no auctioneer can get in there to sell off all the furniture. — Margaret Culkin Banning

So if you're a robot and you're living on this planet, you can do things that you can't do in real life - things that you wished you could do: like fly; like have a car that flies; like have furniture that is alive. — William Joyce

It wasn't that I had any great dream of being an architect. I just wanted to make things. Whether it was furniture, painting, interior design, or architecture. I just wanted to create something. — Tadao Ando

She herself had told him that you can never hold onto anything. The harder you try, the more precious things slip through your fingers. The secret to life, she had said, was to find the little things, the unimportant ones that would nonetheless always remind you of the precious things they accompanied - and hold onto them. Like the fine furniture her husband had carved for her, seemingly centuries ago. — Karl Schroeder

Nitric acid. Lampblack. Furniture, like all living things, acquired marks and scars over the course of time. The effects of time, visible and invisible. — Donna Tartt

Let us educate the younger generation to be shy in and out of season: to edge behind the furniture: to say spasmodic and ill-digested things: to twist their feet round the protective feet of sofas and armchairs: to feel that their hands belong to someone else
that they are objects, which they long to put down on some table away from themselves.
For shyness is the protective fluid within which our personalities are able to develop into natural shapes. Without this fluid the character becomes merely standardized or imitative: it is within the tender velvet sheath of shyness that the full flower of idiosyncrasy is nurtured: it is from this sheath alone that it can eventually unfold itself, coloured and undamaged. Let the shy understand, therefore, that their disability is not only an inconvenience, but also a privilege. Let them regard their shyness as a gift rather than as an affliction. Let them consider how intolerable are those of their contemporaries who are not also shy. — Harold Nicolson

Living in New York after 14 years, I'm such an outdoors kind of person. I love gardening and building things. I like restoring old furniture. — Paige Butcher

Fewer and fewer Americans possess objects that have a patina, old furniture, grandparents pots and pans - the used things, warm with generations of human touch, essential to a human landscape. Instead, we have our paper phantoms, transistorized landscapes. A featherweight portable museum. — Susan Sontag

Failure to use tax money to finance things not liked by the taxpaying public is routinely called 'censorship.' If such terminology were used consistently, virtually all of life would be just one long, unending censorship, as individuals choose whether to buy apples instead of oranges, vacations rather than violins, furniture rather than mutual funds. But of course no such consistency is intended. This strained use of the word 'censorship' appears only selectively, to describe public choices and values at variance with the choices and values of the anointed. — Thomas Sowell

It was more than childish perversity, of course, or the unexpected confidence she had recently acquired, that made her insist; she had indeed noticed that Gregor needed a lot of room to crawl about in, whereas the furniture, as far as anyone could see, was of no use to him at all. Girls of that age, though, do become enthusiastic about things and feel they must get their way whenever they can. Perhaps this was what tempted Grete to make Gregor's situation seem even more shocking than it was so that she could do even more for him. Grete would probably be the only one who would dare enter a room dominated by Gregor crawling about the bare walls by himself. So — Franz Kafka

I live with the things that I love: art, furniture, and objects that I have collected throughout my travels. — Lisa Marie Presley

We don't have to remain in this radically destructive mind-set and institutional-set. We can change, and the natural order of things could emerge in all of our societal organizations-government, commerce, religion-it's right there, waiting to happen. I often tell people that every mind is like a room in an old house, stuffed with very old furniture. Take any space in your mind and empty it of your old conceptions and new ones will rush in, good or bad. So change is more a getting rid of rather than an adding to or an acquiring. — Dee Hock

I love having beautiful furniture and things, but I don't want my space to look like a showroom. — Brad Goreski

If our houses, or clothes, our household furniture and utensils are not works of art, they are either wretched makeshifts, or, what is worse, degrading shams of better things. — William Morris

I would rather die and to go hell than wake up one day and find myself an inmate in that guesthouse of gone minds, gone things, bad carpets, furniture that needs permission. — Ali Smith

[T]hough the darkness sometimes lifted just enough so I could construe my surroundings, familiar shapes solidifying like bedroom furniture at dawn, my relief was never more than temporary because somehow the full morning never came, things always went black before I could orient myself and there I was again with ink poured in my eyes, guttering around in the dark. — Donna Tartt

For the rest of the afternoon, Rebecca wandered around the house tidying up halfheartedly, feeling bereft and disoriented, trying to balance impassive mass of all the ordinary things of her life with her sense that everything had changed. Inevitably, the weightless moments with Mike began to seem unreal. All her furniture said that love was a bubble and a fluke. — Tim Farrington

I consider that a man's brain originally is like a little empty attic, and you have to stock it with such furniture as you choose. A fool takes in all the lumber of every sort that he comes across, so that the knowledge which might be useful to him gets crowded out, or at best is jumbled up with a lot of other things, so that he has a difficulty in laying his hands upon it. Now the skillful workman is very careful indeed as to what he takes into his brain-attic. He will have nothing but the tools which may help him in doing his work, but of these he has a large assortment, and all in the most perfect order. It is a mistake to think that that little room has elastic walls and can distend to any extent. Depend upon it there comes a time when for every addition of knowledge you forget something that you knew before. It is of the highest importance, therefore, not to have useless facts elbowing out the useful ones. — Arthur Conan Doyle

I don't make things with my hands, although I studied woodworking and made furniture. — Frank Gehry

Stories are a kind of thing, too. Stories and objects share something, a patina. I thought I had this clear, two years ago before I started, but I am no longer sure how this works. Perhaps a patina is a process of rubbing back so that the essential is revealed, the way that a striated stone tumbled in a river feels irreducible, the way that this netsuke of a fox has become little more than a memory of a nose and a tail. But it also seems additive, in the way that a piece of oak furniture gains over years and years of polishing, and the way the leaves of my medlar shine. — Edmund De Waal

I remember going into Steve [Jobs]'s house, and he had almost no furniture in it. He just had a picture of Einstein, whom he admired greatly, and he had a Tiffany lamp and a chair and a bed. He just didn't believe in having lots of things around, but he was incredibly careful in what he selected. — John Sculley

As your consciousness becomes more settled, all your life patterns change. What religions have called sin will disappear from your life, and what they have called virtue will automatically flow from your being, from your actions. But they have been doing just vice versa: first change the acts ... It is as if you are in a dark house, and you are stumbling over furniture and over things, and you are told that unless you stop stumbling, light is not possible. — Rajneesh

If you do something really cognitively demanding, like buying furniture, it turns out buying furniture is one of the most difficult things we do. Go into a furniture store and look at a sofa. — David Brooks

In the next room, perhaps twenty people were sitting around, drinking what looked like wine out of wine-glasses. They were the sort of people William and Louisa used to be in the habit of knowing, a crowd of elegant furniture, like the legs of a herd of gazelle taken together, and equally useless, when all things are considered. — Jesse Ball

Almost Home
by Sugar Mae Cole
Home isn't always a place you picture in your mind
With furniture and cookies and music playing and people laughing.
Home is something you can carry around like a dream
And let it grow in your heart until you're ready for it.
Losing things helps you appreciate when you find them again
And finding things gives you hope that when you lose things
It might not be forever.
Once, long ago, a girl lost her home, but she didn't lose her dream.
She hung on to it as the wind kept trying to blow it away,
But that just made it stronger.
So now she has keys and walls of many colors
And people around her who think she's something. — Joan Bauer

I've never really seen too much difference between writing or making visual art or designing furniture or clothing. It's still my brain - I'm just using different parts of it for different things. — Douglas Coupland

I am helpless.
I am stupid, and all I do is want and need things.
My tiny life. My little shit job. My Swedish furniture. I never, no, never told anyone this, but before I met Tyler, I was planning to buy a dog and name it "Entourage."
This is how bad your life can get. — Chuck Palahniuk

Things don't like me. Furniture purposely sticks out its leg for me. A polished corner once literally bit me. My blanket and I have always had a complicated relationship. — Yury Olesha

The furniture would have missed you?
Furniture's knowing all right. Not much gets past the things in a room, I daresay, and chairs and tables don't go to the grave so soon. Every time I take the soft cloth to that stuff in the drawingroom, I could say, 'Well, you know a bit more'. — Elizabeth Bowen

Palming each side of her face, I dropped my forehead to hers. "I'm going to make things awkward. It's kinda what I do. Just bear with me."
She licked her lips, and I was forced to kiss her again. When I finally came back up for air, I continued.
"My name is Samuel Nathan Rivers. I'm twenty-seven. Aquarius. No criminal history. I have a clean bill of health. I'm a democrat, but for God's sake, do not tell my mom. I own a furniture shop and clear six figures a year. I'm not interested in your money. I'll show you my tax return if need be. I'm also not a super-fan interested in your fame. But, for the love of all that's holy, I need you to come home with me. — Aly Martinez