Tidy Up Quotes & Sayings

I quickly tried to tidy-up, but she stilled my busy hands. "Honey, I don't mind a bit of mess. It's what makes you real. Please, don't feel like you need to clean for me," she said gently. "Besides, I came to visit you, not the cabin." I — Lora Ann

I promise to tidy up before company arrives, wouldn't want my socks and daydreams all over the carpet — Sarah Kay

The right thing to do is so easy to see when you're seventeen years old and don't have to make any big decisions. When you know that no matter what you do, someone will take care of you and fix everything. But when you're grown up, the world is not that black and white, and the right thing doesn't a tidy little arrow pointing to it. — Huntley Fitzpatrick

One of the best-known studies of availability suggests that awareness of your own biases can contribute to peace in marriages, and probably in other joint projects. In a famous study, spouses were asked, "How large was your personal contribution to keeping the place tidy, in percentages?" They also answered similar questions about "taking out the garbage," "initiating social engagements," etc. Would the self-estimated contributions add up to 100%, or more, or less? As expected, the self-assessed contributions added up to more than 100%. The explanation is a simple availability bias: both spouses remember their own individual efforts and contributions much more clearly than those of the other, and the difference in availability leads to a difference in judged frequency. — Daniel Kahneman

I was on the set when I was five years old with Spencer Tracy. A lot of what I learned growing up in terms of artistry is very clean, very tidy, very organized. — Robert Blake

My character in 'Fresh Meat' is quite prim and tidy, and then I basically had no make-up for the whole shoot of 'Kidnap and Ransom' - apart from a bit of Vaseline to make me look even sweatier! — Kimberley Nixon

I really have to force myself to tidy up around the house. — Marcia Cross

One other thing this skinny Arab knew: the power of hating the Jew. He could quote from the Holy Book chapter and verse the perfidy of Jews. He could show the dagger of Israel stuck in the soul of Jerusalem where Prophet Muhammad ascended to Heaven. And this son of Islam's most holy places could wrap it all up in a tidy little conspiracy, the Jews in New York controlling America, the Great Satan, launching their crusades against Muslims everywhere. See, we Muslims are nursed on the mother's milk of conspiracies. And unless you have a conspiracy to explain everything in one neat package, we simply won't believe you. — Ken Ballen

We all have a friend or family member who can't bear the sight of a mess. Use her obsessive compulsion to your advantage! Whisper in her ear: "I'm always impressed by how neat your house is. Can you do me a favor and help tidy this place up as the night goes on?" — Clinton Kelly

How arrogant - how very far from humility - would be the self-satisfied, smug assurance that God, a tidy-up-after-us God will come and clean up our mess? Hope for a nanny God, who will with a miracle grant us amnesty from our folly - that's not aligned with either history or the text of the Bible. — Sheldon Whitehouse

In the futile attempts we all make to tidy up our lives and our surroundings, nothing is more difficult than throwing out a book. — Andy Rooney

Algebra messed up one of those divisions between things that help you make sense of the world and keep it tidy. Letters make words; figures make numbers. They had no business getting tangled up together. — Mal Peet

He hated the men floating in sleep in the big stone houses. Because their lives were ordered and their rooms tidy. Because they got up every morning and did their public work. Because they weren't going to dynamite their factories and have naked parties in the fire. — Leonard Cohen

The rest-the vast majority, tens of thousands of days-are unremarkable, repetitive, even monotonous. We glide through them then instantly forget them. We tend not to think about this arithmetic when we look back on our lives. We remember the handful of Big Days and throw away the rest.
We organize our long, shapeless lives into tidy little stories ... But our lives are mostly made up of junk, of ordinary, forgettable days, and 'The End' is never the end. — William Landay

The past is not a place I like to visit. This project is forcing me to go there, to tidy up my thoughts. I'm not normally a navel-gazer. I've always thought you find yourself in other people. I'm visiting here. I don't want to set up house. — Bono

I love tulips better than any other spring flower; they are the embodiment of alert cheerfulness and tidy grace, and next to a hyacinth look like a wholesome, freshly tubbed young girl beside a stout lady whose every movement weighs down the air with patchouli. Their faint, delicate scent is refinement itself; and is there anything in the world more charming than the sprightly way they hold up their little faces to the sun. I have heard them called bold and flaunting, but to me they seem modest grace itself, only always on the alert to enjoy life as much as they can and not be afraid of looking the sun or anything else above them in the face. — Elizabeth Von Arnim

Writers make everybody nervous but we terrify Silly Service workers. Our apartments always look like a front for something, and no matter how carefully we tidy up for guests we always seem to miss the note card that says, "Margaret has to die soon." We own the kind of books that spies use to construct codes, like The Letters of Mme. de Sevigne, and we are the only people in the world who write oxymoron in the margin of the Bible. Manuscripts in the fridge in case of fire, Strunk's Elements in the bathroom, the Laramie City Directory explained away with "It might come in handy," all strike fear in the GS-7 heart. Nobody really wants to sleep with a writer, but Silly Service workers won't even talk to us. — Florence King

I have a room, which is in my brain, and it's very, very, very ... untidy! There is stuff fallen everywhere. There are some very important ideas next to dome very silly ones. There is a bottle of wine that was opened five years ago, and there is a lunch I haven't eaten from last summer. There are faces of children who are going to die but don't have to. There's my fathers face telling me to tidy up my room. So that's what I'm doing - tidying my room. — Bono

We say we want revival . . . but on our terms. We don't pray this way, but this is what our hearts are saying to God: "Come Holy Spirit . . . but only if you promise in advance to do things the way we have always done them in our church." "Come Holy Spirit . . . but only if I have some sort of prior guarantee that when you show up you won't embarrass me." "Come Holy Spirit . . . but only if your work of revival is one that I can still control, one that preserves intact the traditions with which I am comfortable." "Come Holy Spirit . . . but only if your work of revival is neat and tidy and dignified and understandable and above all else socially acceptable." "Come Holy Spirit . . . but only if you plan to change others; only if you make them to be like me; only if you convict their hearts so they will live and dress and talk like I do." "Come Holy Spirit . . . but only if you let us preserve our distinctives and retain our differences from others whom we find offensive. — Sam Storms

Our life may look glamorous, but we scream at the kids, and I have to tell Jamie to tidy up if we have guests coming over. — Louise Nurding

Yet I've come to learn that all our stories add up to the same imprisonment. The self-delusion of uniqueness. The festering pretense that we are the same as they are. The gutting of all our passions till we are a bunch of eunuchs, our zones of pleasure in enemy hands. Most of all, the ventriloquism, the learning how to pass for straight. Such obedient slaves we make, with such very tidy rooms. — Paul Monette

To be honest, it's probably better if I don't talk. Cute guys make me nervous. Like tongued-tied total-brain-malfunction nervous. All my filters shut off and suddenly I'm telling them about the time I peed my pants in the third grade during a field trip to the maple syrup factory, or how I'm scared of puppets and have mild OCD that could possibly drive me to tidy up your room the moment you turn your head. — Elle Kennedy

You are a terror, aren't you? Leave this yard alone. I know just where everything is in it, and I won't be able to find the things I need for my transport spells if you tidy them up.'
So there was probably a bundle of souls or a box of chewed hearts somewhere out here, Sophie thought. She felt really thwarted. 'Tidying up is what I'm here for!' she shouted at Howl.
'Then you must think of a new meaning for your life,' Howl said. — Diana Wynne Jones

I don't tend to redraft, I will try to tidy it up, but basically I feel what I write down first has got the impetus, it may be clumsy, it may be repetitive, but a good editor can take that out. That first writing bit is the best thing you will do. — Gerald Seymour

Again, do you call those men leisured who spend many hours at the barber's simply to cut whatever grew overnight, to have a serious debate about every separate hair, to tidy up disarranged locks or to train thinning ones from the sides to lie over the forehead? — Seneca.

We amass material things for the same reason that we eat - to satisfy a craving. Buying on impulse and eating and drinking to excess are attempts to alleviate stress. From observing my clients, I have noticed that when they discard excess clothing, their tummies tend to slim down, when they discard books and documents, their minds become clearer, when they reduce the number of cosmetics and tidy up the area around the sink and bath, their complexion tends to become clear and their skin smooth. -p226 — Marie Kondo

Does he think the job of a librarian is so simple, so empty of content, that anyone can step up and do it for a thank-you and a cup of tea? Does he think that all a librarian does is to tidy the shelves? — Philip Pullman

Tidying in the end is just a physical act. The work involved can be broadly divided into two kinds: deciding whether or not to dispose of something and deciding where to put it. If you can do these two things, you can achieve perfection. Objects can be counted. All you need to do is look at each item, one at a time, and decide whether or not to keep it and where to put it. That's all you need to do to complete this job. It is not hard to tidy up perfectly and completely in one fell swoop. In fact, anyone can do it. And if you want to avoid rebound, this is the only way to do it. — Marie Kondo

The very word "change" has changed. When I was young
and not just because I was young
we looked forward with confident impatience to change. Planned, controlled, beneficent change would continue to clear slums, sweep up the remains of empire, raise living and educational standards, tidy away
firmly but kindly
the last aboriginals who still raved about martial glory or the pride of wealth. Now, as it seems to me, change is set almost exclusively in the minor key, change seen overwhelmingly as loss. — Neal Ascherson

She made a firm resolution, one of the resolutions she was making almost daily these days. No more sleepovers, no more writing poetry, no more wasting time. Time to tidy up your life. Time to start again. — David Nicholls

To tidy up takes time, and she wants all her time for wolfing books... — Stella Gibbons

clients you'd swear up and down were total, unmitigated slobs, but they're actually the opposite - so hell-bent on 'clean and tidy,' they can't even start. Rather than fail, they give up. Their standards are so high, they're overwhelmed before they start. To them, it's better not even tackling the job. — Sue Grafton

Mitt Romney's losing at this point in a big way. If something's going to come out, get it out in a hurry. I do not know why - given that Mr. Romney knew the day that [Sen. John] McCain lost in 2008 that he was going to run for president again - that he didn't get all of this out and tidy up some of his offshore accounts and all the rest. — George Will

You told me to stay," July said. "I know I did, son," Augustus said. "I'm sure you wish you had. But yesterday's gone on down the river and you can't get it back. Go on with your digging and I'll tidy up. — Larry McMurtry

There's no seduction any more, diary. No subtlety. No tidy-yourself-up in this world. No need for personal pride. There's just the things you're prepared to do - for survival, for fulfillment, for whatever-the-hell-it-is you really need - and the things you're not. — Simon Spurrier

Van Uoc felt the stab of a sad truth: she and her mother would never be as close as her mother and grandmother had been.
Her mother got up, stretched her tidy, graceful frame and headed for the kitchen. Van Uoc wanted to be able to offer her some comfort, but what could she say? Her mother was right. The two of them represented an irreconcilable cultural split. Distance between them was inevitable. — Fiona Wood

You can choose, you can go one of two ways. You can be the person I probably admire more and say 'well I don't care and I'll continue not to bother to brush my hair.' Or you can be a weak-willed person like me and think 'oh I'd better get my act together. And maybe my mother was right and I do need to put my hair back and tidy myself up a bit.' So I did tidy myself up a bit. But I do often resent the amount of time that it takes to pull yourself together to go on TV, I really do. If I sound bitter, then that accurately reflects how I feel about the subject. — J.K. Rowling

It'll be an unholy muddle, that's for sure," he was saying. "Me and Hardin and Baker all with our claws out for the same seat. The thing will have to be done carefully or we'll end up with out tidy little Whig house divided."
"Why don't you take turns?"
"It's worth thinking about, but no matter how much you'd like politics to be a cotillion it just naturally wants to be a dirt fight. — Stephen Harrigan

A good way to do econometrics is to look for good natural experiments and use statistical methods that can tidy up the confounding factors that Nature has not controlled for us. — Daniel McFadden

There was an easier solution to the security breach. He could kill us all. An explosion at a bomb factory would tidy up the problems of a trial drawn out by national security motions. There would be no pleas, no losing, no settlement. If this place blew, no one would ever know about Wahi Pandi, Gadwhal or the Gissar heliport. None of it. The secret would be safe. — Jeff Shear

That's the way to tell a true story from a made-up one. A made-up story always has a neat and tidy end. But true stories don't end, at least until their heroes and heroines die, and not then really because the things they did and didn't do, sometimes live on. — Elspeth Huxley

While other founding fathers were reared in tidy New England villages or cosseted on baronial Virginia estates, Hamilton grew up in a tropical hellhole of dissipated whites and fractious slaves, all framed by a backdrop of luxuriant natural beauty. On — Ron Chernow

Every fundamentalism focuses on end times, and Armageddon is, in a sense, a rhetorical trope, an emphatic and overwhelming conclusion, meant to wrap up and make tidy the mistaken wanderings of history. For a fundamentalist the end is one of the forms desire takes, a passion no different from lust or avarice, intense with longing and the need for fulfillment and relief. It's like they're horny for apocalypse. They get off on denouements, which partly explains why Hell House never amounted to much more than a series of murderous conclusions. It focused only on that part of a story where life finds itself fated. Inside every act a judgement was coiled. Real people with their ragged and uncertain lives, their stumbling desires, their bleak or blessed futures, would only break into the narrative, complicating the story, dragging it on endlessly. — Charles D'Ambrosio

But you have to realize, there is no such thing as this tidy little box you think you have to fold up and fit into; it simply does not exist. That's what I'm learning, learning as we speak. — Tanuja Desai Hidier

So, Angel?" I said, looking over at her. She was gliding through the night, her eight-foot wings looking like a dove's. "Have you picked up anything from Anne, about anything? Anything off?"
Not really." Angel thought. "From what I can tell, she does work for the FBI. She does care about us and wants us to be happy. She thinks the boys are slobs.
I'm blind," Iggy said irritably. "How am I supposed to make everything all tidy?"
Yeah, because you're so handicapped," I said sarcastically. "Like- you can't build bombs or cook or win at Monopoly. You can't tell us apart by the feel of our skin or feathers. — James Patterson

Forgetting your Self is the greatest injury; all the calamities flow from it. Take care of the most important, the lesser will take care of itself. You do not tidy up a dark room. You open the windows first. Letting in the light makes everything easy. So, let us wait with improving others until we see ourselves as we are/ and have changed. There is no need to turn round and round in endless questioning; find yourself and everything will fall into its proper place. — Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj

When I was young, I believed God was a woman because I couldn't come up with any other explanation as to why the universe was so tidy. — Matshona Dhliwayo

The dumbest mistake is viewing design as something you do at the end of the process to 'tidy up' the mess, as opposed to understanding it's a 'day one' issue and part of everything. — Tom Peterson

She described how Camus's aphorism "One must imagine Sisyphus happy" helps her fight back against unproductive feelings of meaninglessness.
If we consider, like Camus, Sisyphus at the foot of his mountain, we can see that he is smiling. He is content in his task of defying the Gods, the journey more important than the goal. To achieve a beginning, a middle, an end, a meaning to the chaos of creation - that's more than any deity seems to manage: But it's what writers do. So I tidy the desk, even polish it up a bit, stick some flowers in a vase and start.
As I begin a novel I remind myself as ever of Camus's admonition that the purpose of a writer is to keep civilization from destroying itself. And even while thinking, well, fat chance! I find courage, reach for the heights, and if the rock keeps rolling down again so it does. What the hell, start again. Rewrite. Be of good cheer. Smile on, Sisyphus! — Fay Weldon

It's true that while instructors and schools offer courses in everything from cooking and how to wear a kimono to yoga and Zen meditation, you'll be hard-pressed to find classes on how to tidy. The general assumption, in Japan at least, is that tidying doesn't need to be taught but rather is picked up naturally. Cooking skills and recipes are passed down as family traditions from grandmother to mother to daughter, yet one never hears of anyone passing on the family secrets of tidying, even within the same household. — Marie Kondo

There is no real dignity in any of these costumes. If I'm a maid, I do what the owner of the house tells me to do. If I'm a nurse, I do whatever the doctor tells me to do. What are we as women, other than barnacles that attach themselves to higher life forms in some pathetic attempt to clean up messes? Tidy up what men have left behind- make the world a lovelier, better place for men. I would like to play a part in which I don't have a superior. — Heather O'Neill

I'd like to tidy up the entire planet. I would go anywhere if there were something that needs tidying. — Marie Kondo

By the time we met up again, she'd be able to hand her reaction to me as a tidy package: a single square of lasagna in a sealed Tupperware container as opposed to a squalid kitchen with tomato sauce splattered on the counters. And I wouldn't have to be there while she got it in order. — Curtis Sittenfeld

There is never a sudden revelation, a complete and tidy explanation for why it happened, or why it ends, or why or who you are. You want one and I want one, but there isn't one. It comes in bits and pieces, and you stitch them together wherever they fit, and when you are done you hold yourself up, and still there are holes and you are a rag doll, invented, imperfect. And yet you are all that you have, so you must be enough. There is no other way. — Marya Hornbacher

If we're going to actually come up with robots that will do our laundry or tidy up the kitchen, we're going to have to make sure that whatever replaces capitalism is based on a far more egalitarian distribution of wealth and power - one that no longer contains either the super-rich or desperately poor people willing to do their housework. Only then will technology begin to be marshaled toward human needs. And this is the best reason to break free of the dead hand of the hedge fund managers and the CEOs - to free our fantasies from the screens in which such men have imprisoned them, to let our imaginations once again become a material force in human history. — David Graeber

America hadn't really been suited for its long and tiresome role as the Last Superpower, the World's Policeman. As a patriotic American, Oscar was quite content to watch other people's military coming home in boxes for a while. The American national character wasn't suited for global police duties. It never had been. Tidy and meticulous people such as the Swiss and the Swedes were the types who made good cops. America was far better suited to be the World's Movie Star. The world's tequila-addled pro-league bowler. The world's acerbic, bipolar stand-up comedian. Anything but a somber and tedious nation of socially responsible centurions. — Bruce Sterling

One way to organize your thoughts is to tidy up, even if it's in places where it makes no sense at all. — Ursus Wehrli

A person who has 'tidied up' has both the words and a tidy area to show for it. It is much harder to find a word that describes the giving-up-things mode of attention a mother is giving to her baby. — Naomi Stadlen

They're on a cusp; a highly heterogeneous but highly connected
and stressedly connected
civilization. I'm not sure that one approach could encompass the needs of their different systems. The particular stage of communication they're at, combining rapidity and selectivity, usually with something added to the signal and almost always with something missed out, means that what passes for truth often has to travel at the speed of failing memories, changing attitudes, and new generations. Even when this form of handicap is recognized all they ever try to do, as a rule, is codify it, tidy it up. Their attempts of filter become part of the noise, and they seem unable to bring any more thought to bear on the matter than that which leads them to try and simplify what can only be understood by coming to terms with its complexity. — Iain M. Banks

I don't like cleaning or dusting or cooking or doing dishes, or any of those things," I explained to her. "And I don't usually do it. I find it boring, you see."
"Everyone has to do those things," she said.
"Rich people don't," I pointed out.
Juniper laughed, as she often did at things I said in those early days, but at once became quite serious.
"They miss a lot of fun," she said. "But quite apart from that
keeping yourself clean, preparing the food you are going to eat, clearing it away afterward
that's what life's about, Wise Child. When people forget that, or lose touch with it, then they lose touch with other important things as well."
"Men don't do those things."
"Exactly. Also, as you clean the house up, it gives you time to tidy yourself up inside
you'll see. — Monica Furlong

Now, this pair," he waved the shoes he held, "are new. They haven't been walked a mile, and for new shoes like these I charge a talent, maybe a talent and two." He pointed at my feet. "Those shoes, on the other hand, are used, and I don't sell used shoes."
He turned his back on me and started to tidy his workbench rather aimlessly, humming to himself ...
I knew that he was trying to do me a favor, and a week ago I would have jumped at the opportunity for free shoes. But for some reason I didn't feel right about it. I quietly gathered up my things and left a pair of copper jots on his stool before I left.
Why? Because pride is a strange thing, and because generosity deserves generosity in return. But mostly because it felt like the right thing to do, and that is reason enough. — Patrick Rothfuss

What in the world do our clothes say about us when we put them on?" Rose said. "There's no real dignity in any of these costumes. If I'm a maid, I do what the owner of the house tells me to do. If I'm a nurse, I do whatever the doctor tells me to do. What are we as women, other than barnacles that attach themselves to higher life forms in some pathetic attempt to clean up messes? Tidy up what men have left behind - make the world a lovelier, better place for men. I would like to play a part in which I don't have a superior."
The director told Rose that she should save her philosophical speculations until after work because they were causing the male actors to lose their erections. — Heather O'Neill

Are you waiting for the end of my story? It's ended. The day came when I was able to fly up here. I knew by then that I had much more to learn, and that I had to be stronger before I tried Crossing. But I felt I'd come more than halfway, too, and I was right. There was a corroded metal hatch over that window then. I tore it off and let it fall. When I'd explored all the rooms on all the levels, I decided to clean this one out and make it a private place just for myself, my own room in my own tower in the sky. There were bones in here and some other things, but I threw them out that window and swept this floor with my hands. When everything was tidy, I told myself I'd come back and spend hours up here after I'd made the Return Crossing, just thinking about who I was and what I had done for my children. But I never did, till now." "I'll — Gene Wolfe

I can't focus when there's too many things around. Whenever I used to go to the office, I used to always say, 'Tidy up.' — Zaha Hadid

Normal life is presentable. In normal life, you clean up the kitchen and keep your balcony tidy and take care of your children. It's hard work
harder than one might think. — Fredrik Backman

Suddenly everything finally made sense because, paradoxically, I finally accepted that it never would make sense. That's life. It's not all wrapped up with a tidy bow - it's crazy and disorganized and unpredictable, and so are the people who live it. — Diane Schwemm

In hindsight, though, I might have overdone it by adding that flour, which means before I depart for Abigail's cottage I need to tidy up this room." "If you're moving out, I'm moving with you," Thaddeus said, slipping up beside Millie and taking hold of her hand. Elizabeth was the next to move. She reached out and put her arm around Millie's middle, leaning in to rest her head against Millie's side. "I'm coming too," she said as she snuggled closer right as Millie smiled and placed a quick kiss on top of Elizabeth's paste-covered head. Everett's heart immediately took to the unusual act of lurching, no doubt due to the sight of Millie's understated affection. Ladies of society always made a big production out of kissing their children when company was present, but Millie . . . Her kiss had been the real thing, a show of regard for a child who'd caused her no small amount of trouble. Expecting — Jen Turano

Now listen," said Daniel gravely. "Just you listen to me and I'll tell you something worth remembering. When we're young we make our beds and when we're older we have to lie on them. I'd make myself a comfortable bed if I were you - straight and tidy with the blankets well tucked in at the foot - then it'll not come adrift when you lie in it. If a bed's not properly made at the start the blankets'll maybe fall off in the night and you'll wake up shivering." He nodded to Duggie in a friendly manner and away he went with his dog bounding gracefully beside him. Duggie watched him until he disappeared. Daniel — D.E. Stevenson

They were empowered and fulfilled. They dated occasionally but were just as happy living the feminist dream of a professional woman not answerable to any man. Do what they wanted to, go where they wanted to and spend indecent amount of money on clothes and shoes, it was all good. There were not slaves to diets, shaving hairy legs, waxing eyebrows, dying their roots, endless showers, applying tons of make-up and trying to be domestic goddesses. They could slum around in leisure suits and runners reading Cosmo with a fag in their mouth and a cup of coffee in their hands. There could be slummy mummies or tidy queens or takeaway junkies it all depended on their daily rota and social live. Good, freedom was definitely good. One husband in a lifetime was enough for them — Annette J. Dunlea

The Lake Isle
O God, O Venus, O Mercury, patron of thieves,
Give me in due time, I beseech you, a little tobacco-shop,
With the little bright boxes
piled up neatly upon the shelves
And the loose fragrant cavendish
and the shag,
And the bright Virginia
loose under the bright glass cases,
And a pair of scales not too greasy,
And the whores dropping in for a word or two in passing,
For a flip word, and to tidy their hair a bit.
O God, O Venus, O Mercury, patron of thieves,
Lend me a little tobacco-shop,
or install me in any profession
Save this damn'd profession of writing,
where one needs one's brains all the time. — Ezra Pound

A breeze ruffled the neat hedges of Privet Drive, which lay silent and tidy under the inky sky, the very last place you would expect astonishing things to happen. Harry Potter rolled over inside his blankets without waking up. One small hand closed on the letter beside him and he slept on, not knowing he was special, not knowing he was famous, not knowing he would be woken in a few hours' time by Mrs. Dursley's scream as she opened the front door to put out the milk bottles, nor that he would spend the next few weeks being prodded and pinched by his cousin Dudley ... He couldn't know that at this very moment, people meeting in secret all over the country were holding up their glasses and saying in hushed voices: To Harry Potter - the boy who lived! — J.K. Rowling

My daughter has a problem picking things up in her room. So if you leave your clothes on the floor, we put them in a trash bag. She has to earn them back by being tidy. I'm a disciplinarian. Guy's the spoiler. — Madonna Ciccone

Typical!" he said to Sophie. " I break my neck to get here, and I find you peacefully tidying up!"
Sophie looked up at him. As she had feared, the hard black-and white light coming through the broken wall showed her that Howl had not bothered to shave or tidy his hair. His eyes were still red-rimmed and his black sleeves were torn in several place. There was not much to choose between Howl and the scarecrow. Oh, dear! Sophie thought. He must love Miss Angorian very much. "I came for Miss Angorian," she explained.
"And I thought if I arranged for your family to visit you, it would keep you quiet for once!" Howl said disgustedly. "But no
". — Diana Wynne Jones

Salim,' She said, as if he were in the room. 'I'll have your guts for garters.' I has never heard this before and wondered what garters were. Kat told me later that they are what women used to wear around their thighs to keep their stockings up and they were elasticated. I do not think guts would be a tidy way of doing this. — Siobhan Dowd

You only get married the first time once. There was the philosophy of a generation wrapped up in a tidy little sentence — Carrie Vaughn

All thinking is done with the glands. Logic is added later to tidy things up. — John D. MacDonald

I brought a coconut cream pie, Mom's favorite. Coconut's hard, dirty, shaggy exterior didn't promise much. But when you cracked it open and then cleaned it up, it surprised you with the smooth white riches inside. In a coconut shell, this was my mother's mission in life- to tackle the litter, the dust, the stains, the residue of life and tidy them all up. Her sweet reward was that exotic state of everything-in-its-clean-place, always a mirage in the distance while she was living with Helen. Coconut cream pie fed her soul. — Judith Fertig

But in the service when we recite 'They shall not grow old, as we that are left grow old', we both cry. For different reasons. I have become swept up in this. These wiry old lions. Their properness. Their improperness. Their tidy jackets. Their name tags. Their risky humour. Their imagination. Their no shit. I am ashamed of what we haven't done with our freedom and their victories. Living off the fat of the land. With our central heating and our power steering and our fast food and our leaf-blowers and our shopping malls. My tears are self-indulgent: about loss, the world; and about me probably. While Dad is just having a cry. — Keggie Carew

While he waited, he made up the bed,more to discourage Meg from falling back into it than because he wanted to tidy the room. Besides, running his hands over the sheets and breathing in her scent made him happy, — Anne Bishop

After every war someone has to tidy up. — Wislawa Szymborska

If you tidy up in one shot, rather than little by little, you can dramatically change your mind-set. A change so profound that it touches your emotions will irresistibly affect your way of thinking and your lifestyle habits. — Marie Kondo

There is absolutely no one, apart from yourself, who can prevent you, in the middle of the night, from sneaking down to tidy up the edges of that hunk of cheese at the back of the fridge. — Boris Johnson

I can't cook. I don't have the right brain for it, somehow. I can't walk into a room and tidy it up. I get distracted. I pick up one thing and I start looking at it. And my cooking is truly heinous. — Sophie Kinsella

In this life, nobody has forever in which to leave home, to return, to make a new home, or to open the door to someone. Death doesn't wait while we tidy everything up. And there are several kinds of dying. — Jean Little

The world we know at present is in no fit state to take over the dreariest little meteor ... If we have the courage and patience, the energy and skill, to take us voyaging to other planets, then let us use some of these to tidy up and civilize this earth. One world at a time, please. — J.B. Priestley

Maybe you ask, what has this all got to do with popularity? The answer is that popularity depends on your ability to get along with people, all kinds of people, and the better you learn to adjust to each situation the more easily you will make friends. You will find that you can make those adjustments more successfully if you have yourself well in hand. And the only way to get yourself in hand is to know yourself, to analyze yourself, to turn yourself inside and out as you would an old pocketbook--shake out the dust and tidy up the contents. — Betty Cornell

Eventually I realized that for contemporary philosophers conceptual analysis per se was an end in itself. For some, it was somehow supposed to lead to the truth about these phenomena, not just to tidy things up a bit. — Patricia Churchland

It's no good fooling about with love you know. You can't fall into it like a soft job without dirtying up your hands. It takes muscle and guts. If you can't bear the thought of messing up your nice, tidy soul, you better give up the whole idea of life and become a saint, because you'll never make it as a human being. It's either this world ... or the next. — John Osborne

Think back to your own childhood. I'm sure most of us have been scolded for not tidying up our rooms, but how many of our parents consciously taught us how to tidy as part of our upbringing? Our parents demanded that we clean up our rooms, but they, too, had never been trained in how to do that. When it comes to tidying, we are all self-taught. — Marie Kondo

It's [a miscarriage] all very thief-in-the-night. No one really knows what to say. You go into the emergency room, you think you're going to be a mum and you walk out empty. It's all neat and tidy, there's this potential being in your life and you're empty - all cleaned up and put back together, but completely shattered. — Tori Amos