Tiny House Quotes & Sayings

There was a tiny silence, only the soft hum of the fluorescence. I thought of her in the cold ruined house, with night birds keening above her and rain gentle all around, dying of breathing — Tana French

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

I'm trying to figure out how to record at home because I have a tiny house and a seven-year-old and my wife also works at home. So I can't work in the house because she's trying to write, so I pitched a tent in the backyard. I'm literally trying to record in the tent. — Matt Berninger

Morgon of Hed met the High One's harpist one autumn day when the trade-ships docked at Tol for the season's exchange of goods. A small boy caught sight of the round-hulled ships with their billowing sails striped red and blue and green, picking their way among the tiny fishing boats in the distance, and ran up the coast from Tol to Akren, the house of Morgon, Prince of Hed. There he disrupted an argument, gave his message, and sat down at the long, nearly deserted tables to forage whatever was left of breakfast. The Prince of Hed, who was recovering slowly from the effects of loading two carts of beer for trading the evening before, ran a reddened eye over the tables and shouted for his sister. — Patricia A. McKillip

I went to my friend's house one day, and he had an electric guitar he had just bought with a tiny little amp. I turned the volume up to 10 and I hit one chord, and I said, I'm in love. — Ace Frehley

Ted had the uneasy sense that the child was spinning them out as a way of filling the time, distracting them both from whatever was going on inside the house. And this made her seem much older than she really was, a tiny little woman, knowing, world-weary, too accepting of life's burdens even to mention them. — Jennifer Egan

You are trying to impress someone."
Was Jared a psychic?
I told myself to keep it together. "Is that an accusation?" I deadpanned.
"Stating a matter-of-fact. Is it your unkempt Jedi Master, or the big of a hot sauce that you are dating?"
I snorted. Jared would've loved Perry. They would've fallen head over heels at each other and then started a life together with a pair of dogs and tiny house with blue roof at some suburb area. "That unkempt Jedi, and the hot sauce, they have far more authentic nickname."
"Yes." My bother nodded. "Detective Yoda and Detective Sriracha. — Rea Lidde

Sometimes I worry that I'll slide back into the mindless rotisserie of work and projects that guided me in my old house... that I'll grow numb to the way nature can leave me awestruck. I worry that I'll fall asleep at the switch, only to wake up years later and find that I can't remember what I did last week or the month before that, nor do I recognize the old lady staring back at me in the mirror. — Dee Williams

In a word, learning is decontextualized. We break ideas down into tiny pieces that bear no relation to the whole. We give students a brick of information, followed by another brick, followed by another brick, until they are graduated, at which point we assume they have a house. What they have is a pile of bricks, and they don't have it for long. — Alfie Kohn

Death had come frequently to the bleak village where the family lived. Indeed, death had been a regular visitor in their own house, taking seven of Chase's twelve brothers and sisters before their fifth birthdays. Whenever, he thought of these children, it was to imagine an inexorable shadow advancing over their tiny forms, at length to darken hearts and eyes. — S.K. Rizzolo

This party is lame!" Braeden said loudly. "WOLVES, party at my dorm!" he yelled.
People cheered.
"Dude, how the fuck are you gonna fit all these people in your tiny-ass room?"
He grinned. "Sure as hell will be fun to try."
Out in front of the Omega house, there was hardly anyone around; they were all too busy in the back, checking out the drama. We were silent a moment. Then Braeden said, "You don't need them. You got more than enough talent to bring in the NFL on your own."
"Fuck," I muttered. "When did everything get so damn complicated?"
"When your life became about more than just football."
"You sound like Yoda." I grinned.
"It's the beer."
- Braeden & Romeo — Cambria Hebert

Honey, have you seen my measuring tape?"
"I think it's in that drawer in the kitchen with the scissors, matches, bobby pins, Scotch tape, nail clippers, barbecue tongs, garlic press, extra buttons, old birthday cards, soy sauce packets thick rubber bands, stack of Christmas napkins, stained take-out menus, old cell-phone chargers, instruction booklet for the VCR, some assorted nickels, an incomplete deck of cards, extra chain links for a watch, a half-finished pack of cough drops, a Scrabble piece I found while vacuuming, dead batteries we aren't fully sure are dead yet, a couple screws in a tiny plastic bag left over from the bookshelf, that lock with the forgotten combination, a square of carefully folded aluminum foil, and expired pack of gum, a key to our old house, a toaster warranty card, phone numbers for unknown people, used birthday candles, novelty bottle openers, a barbecue lighter, and that one tiny little spoon."
"Thanks, honey."
AWESOME! — Neil Pasricha

My family didn't go to church. Once when I slept over at the house of a friend, her parents brought me to Sunday school with her. I was given this little pamphlet of tiny poems about the natural world, about butterflies and sunsets. My 7-year-old self was so astounded by how these few words were creating pictures and feelings in me. — Cheryl Strayed

Let's throw his ass out the airlock," suggested the Speaker of the House.
"We can't do that," said the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court. He was a feeble old Mechanist who was subject to nosebleeds. "He is still Secretary of State and can't be sentenced without impeachment by the Senate."
The three Senators, two men and a woman, looked interested. The Senate didn't see much action in the government of the tiny Democracy. They were the least trusted members of the crew and were outnumbered by the House. — Bruce Sterling

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

The kitten was six weeks old. It was enchanting, a delicate fairy-tale cat, whose Siamese genes showed in the shape of the face, ears, tail, and the subtle lines of its body. [ ... ] She sat, a tiny thing, in the middle of a yellow carpet, surrounded by five worshipppers, not at all afraid of us. Then she stalked around that floor of the house, inspecting every inch of it, climbed up on to my bed, crept under the fold of a sheet, and was at home. — Doris Lessing

Life has little bits of magic at nearly every turn, if you're looking closely enough. Scrapbooking has refined myselses. it's made me hungry to use it before I lose it. It's made me remember that I don't remember what it was like to be nine years old. And that I will never live in a Pottery Barn house. And that as tiny as I am in the scope of the universe, no one lives a life like mine. Not even the people whose meals I cook, whose laundry I fold, and whose cheeks I kiss at night. — Cathy Zielske

Ultimately, I hoped the tiny-house guy was similar to me: a sane person without a big agenda, who simply wanted a way to make sense of the world, to create a new map with a big X in the middle labeled "Home," even if that meant shrinking his world down to the size of an area rug. — Dee Williams

The fatalism of the limits-to-growth alternative is reasonable only if one ignores all the resources beyond our atmosphere, resources thousands of times greater than we could ever obtain from our beleaguered Earth. As expressed very beautifully in the language of House Concurrent Resolution 451, 'This tiny Earth is not humanity's prison, is not a closed and dwindling resource, but is in fact only part of a vast system rich in opportunities ... ' — Gerard K. O'Neill

It would be easier if they named jeans for celebrities so you'd know exactly what you were getting without even having to try them on. 'Mary-Kate' for itty-bitty jeans that come with a cartoonishly oversized caramel latte cup; 'Angelina Jolie' for jeans that are sold with two tiny Cambodian orphans stitched right into the back pockets; 'Katie Holmes', jeans which spell out 'help me!' in the fabric if you look very closesly; and 'Dina Lohan', self-promoting stage mom of Lindsay, for jeans that look OK from a distance, but when you get closer, are actually transparent.
For men, there could be 'David Hasselhoff' jeans, made entirely of cheese, and 'John Mayer' jeans which, when removed, become instantly bored and walk themselves to to the house of next 'it' girl in Hollywood. — Celia Rivenbark

It's a tiny house. It's still there. In my memory, it is larger than life. It has to be, to hold all the memories. — Angela N. Hunt

We are wolves, which are wild dogs, and this is our place in the city. We are small and our house is small on our small urban street. We can see the city and the train line and it's beautiful in its own dangerous way. Dangerous because it's shared and taken and fought for.
That's the best way I can put it, and thinking about it, when I walk past the tiny houses on our street, I wonder about the stories inside them. I wonder hard, because houses must have walls and rooftops for a reason. My only query is the windows. Why do they have windows? Is it to let a glimpse of the world in? Or for us to see out? — Markus Zusak

THE HOUSE straightened up and then go on and fix some of that chicken salad now, say Miss Leefolt. It's bridge club day. Every fourth Wednesday a the month. A course I already got everthing ready to go - made the chicken salad this morning, ironed the tablecloths yesterday. Miss Leefolt seen me at it too. She ain't but twenty-three years old and she like hearing herself tell me what to do. She already got the blue dress on I ironed this morning, the one with sixty-five pleats on the waist, so tiny I got to squint through my glasses to iron. I don't hate much in life, — Kathryn Stockett

I grew up in St. Louis in a tiny house full of large music - Mahalia Jackson and Marian Anderson singing majestically on the stereo, my German-American mother fingering 'The Lost Chord' on the piano as golden light sank through trees, my Palestinian father trilling in Arabic in the shower each dawn. — Naomi Shihab Nye

When I was a tiny tot, we only had one record player in the house, so there was either Genesis on it or the Jungle Book or The Beatles as well, and various other things. — Rick Astley

A tiny number of very rich people, including fat cat bankers like us, are sucking up a bigger and bigger percentage of the wealth. And that gap will continue to widen, because with all our extra capital we go and buy up all the assets, so that for instance when Chang working down there in Spar needs somewhere to live, he has to rent his house from me, meaning that I'm getting most of his wages too. Now, provided you're me and not Chang, that's good news. But if you are Chang, then not only is your slice of the pie shrinking, but there are also more and more Changs trying to get a bite of it. — Paul Murray

The woman who had been born in an imperial palace, and then, as Queen of France, had had hundreds of rooms in her dwelling house, was now imprisoned in a tiny basement cell, its walls streaming with damp, and its grated window half occluded. — Stefan Zweig

The park sustained them, the green harbor they preserved as the town extended itself outward, block by block and house by house. Cora thought of her garden back on Randall, the plot she cherished. Now she saw it for the joke it was - a tiny square of dirt that had convinced her she owned something. It was hers like the cotton she seeded, weeded, and picked was hers. Her plot was a shadow of something that lived elsewhere, out of sight. The way poor Michael reciting the Declaration of Independence was an echo of something that existed elsewhere. Now that she had run away and seen a bit of the country, Cora wasn't sure the document described anything real at all. America was a ghost in the darkness, like her. — Colson Whitehead

I love the idea of a tiny window between the back stoop and the pantry, where the milkman would pass through the cheese. But of course, there is no milkman anymore. So somebody coming by the house and seeing the window would say, 'Oh, that must be original, because that's where the milkman passed the cheese through to the pantry.' — Chris Van Allsburg

Baby that's impossible, you can't give him something you don't have. That man who just walked out of this house, he's the one who has the majority of it. Chris, he only has the tiny pieces that were left behind when it got broken — R.S. Burnett

When she thought of the letter beit, it was not of the thickness of lines or the exactitude of spaces. It was of mysteries: the number two, the dual; the house, the house of God on earth. 'They will build me a temple and I will dwell in them.' In them, not in it. He would dwell within her. She would be the house of God. The house of transcendence. Just a single, tiny letter, and in it, such a path to joy. — Geraldine Brooks

And you are going to get her far away from here. Keep her hidden." She planted her hands on her hips. "And here we were just keeping her holed up in a tiny little house in a completely random mining sector. Why didn't it ever occur to us to try and keep her hidden?" Kinney's face was unreadable for a long moment before he asked, "You understand sarcasm?" "Of course I understand sarcasm," she spat. "It's not like it's theoretical physics, is it?" The guard's jaw worked for a moment, before he shook his head and turned away. — Marissa Meyer

And look at all I've accumulated---a house! piles of clothing! two children! an ex-husband! books! boxes of letters! dishes! tiny shampoos from fancy hotels! vases! canned goods! jewelry! computers! acres of old journals! couches! bedsteads! toys galore! stuffed animals! and heaps of memories like wet rags, bunches of them, hanging off me, weighing me down. — Martha Tod Dudman

There is nothing that is not beautiful about bread. The way it grows, from tiny grains, from bowls on the counter, from yeast blooming in a measuring cup like swampy islands. The way it fills a room, a house, a building, with its inimitable smells, submits to a firmly applied fist and contracts, swells again; the way it stretches and expands upon kneading, the warm, supple feel of it against skin. The sight of a warm roll on a table, the taste-sweet, sour, yeasty on the tongue. — Eleanor Brown

You don't need the White House to please people. You can be 24, earning $22,000 a year, and have people over to your tiny apartment. It's all about sharing and thinking about what will make others happy. — Letitia Baldrige

The homes I like the best are totally occupied, busy, and useful, whether it's a tiny little house or a great big one. Rarely do you find a great big house that's used in a good way. So I prefer smaller spaces that are full of books, full of things that people are doing. — Martha Stewart

People will watch you build a house, but won't pass you a brick. And once your home is built, they want to come inside for dinner. — Andrea L'Artiste

Was she Minh Thuy, finally, or was she Jenny? But the time when there had been a meaningful difference between the two would come to seem like a tiny neighborhood where you couldn't decide which house was yours. Which felt important when you were high above, you thought, in the foothills, but not so much at the truer remove of a continent, where the lives you'd lived and the places you'd come from, dwindled to a single point on the horizon, in the incorrigibly distant past. — Garth Risk Hallberg

There is something about Christmas that requires a rug rat. Little kids make Christmas fun. I wonder if could rent one for the holidays. When I was tiny we would by a real tree and stay up late drinking hot chocolate and finding just the right place for the special decorations. It seems like my parents gave up the magic when I figured out the Santa lie. Maybe I shouldn't have told them I knew where the presents really came from. It broke their hearts.
I bet they'd be divorced by now if I hadn't been born. I'm sure I was a huge disappointment. I'm not pretty or smart or athletic. I'm just like them- an ordinary drone dressed in secrets and lies. I can't believe we have to keep playacting till I graduate. It's a shame we just can't admit that we have failed at family living, sell the house, split up the money, and get on with our lives. Merry Christmas. — Laurie Halse Anderson

People really are like house with vast rooms and tiny windows. And maybe it's a good thing, the way we never stop surprising each other. — Becky Albertalli

There was a tiny house in town
That had always stayed the same,
Home to a girl wearing a sundress
Calling each flower by name.
It was the calm within the chaos,
The sun around which we revolved,
As stubborn as a stone
In its refusal to evolve.
I thought it had forever
Trapped within its weathered walls,
Watching all the lives
They built around its rise and fall.
But one day with no warning
The world felt shallower and strange,
And the view outside my window
Seemed to all at once have changed.
I ran with lungs near bursting
To that tiny house in town,
Yet the ashes of forever
Was the only thing I found.
Walking home it felt the world
Was made of me and salty tears,
And the woman in a sundress
Who watched me slowly disappear. — Emily Hanson

She could not have created this moment, these lovely faces, these candles flickering, the flash of the silverware, the fragrances of the food hanging over the table, the heads turning this way and that, the voices murmuring and laughing. She looked at Walter, who was so far away from her, all the way at the other end of the table, having a laugh with Andrea, who had a beautiful suit on, navy blue with a tiny waist and white collar and cuffs. As if on cue, Walter turned from Andrea and looked at Rosanna, and they agreed in that instant: something had created itself from nothing - a dumpy old house had been filled, if only for this moment, with twenty-three different worlds, each one of them rich and mysterious. — Jane Smiley

The dining room is a building; the bathroom is a building. If we scatter this single-program architecture inside of a domestic environment, we can link an interior urbanism in a way similar to a village or a township of tiny houses. — Jimenez Lai

I have a very tiny house in Burbank. I drive an 8-year-old car. I'm gonna drive it into the ground. I enjoy what I enjoy. — Patton Oswalt

Chances are, the aliens will not want to land on our backyard, or even the White House lawn, with their flying saucers. They may have tiny, robotic self-replicating probes which can reach near light speed and can proliferate around the galaxy. So instead of the Enterprise and huge star ships, the aliens might actually send tiny probes to explore the universe. One might land on our lawn and we won't even know. — Michio Kaku

I'm pretty sure that when babies are born in Oregon, they leave the hospital with birth certificates - and teeny-tiny sleeping bags. Everyone in the state camps. The hippies and the rednecks. The hunters and the tree huggers. Rich people. Poor people. Even rock musicians. Especially rock musicians. Our band had perfected the art of punk-rock camping, throwing a bunch of crap into the van with, like, an hour's notice and just driving out into the mountains, where we'd drink beer, burn food, jam on our instruments around the campfire, and sack out under the open sky. Sometimes, on tour, back in the early hardscrabble days, we'd even camp as an alternative to crashing in another crowded, roach-infested rock 'n' roll house.
I don't know if it's because no matter where you live, the wilderness is never that far off, but it just seemed like everyone in Oregon camped. — Gayle Forman

In a front of each home garden the villagers fixed a triangular wooden lamp-house on the top of a pole planted on the ground to hold a small statue of Lord Buddha and some deities. They used to offer flowers at this small shrine and light a tiny clay oil lamp. — Swarnakanthi Rajapakse

One day, I saw a tiny nopalito (cactus sapling) growing not too far from an old tree. I wanted to dig it up and replant it near our house in Zacatecas. I told my mom that I would protect it from the wind and that I would water it every day so that it could grow nice and tall and strong. My mom frowned at me. "You'd be destroying what makes it special," she said. "It's a nopalito, it is it's struggle that makes it so beautiful... — Jose N. Harris

I've never been good with asking for help; it seems risky, but at some point when things are really dicey, your stubbornness gives way to a certain form of humility that, after you get over yourself, feels liberating. I started to believe that the universe was conspiring to help me finish my house, sending people along at the right moment. — Dee Williams

Holding the knife with the blade against my palm, it became so clear how my life would only contain shadows now. Shadows of things gone; not just the people themselves but everything connected to them. Was this my future? Every moment, every tiny thing I saw and did and touched, weighted by loss. Every space in this house and
my town and the world in general, empty in a way that could never be filled. — Jennifer Castle

It was snowing. In the lamplight, blades of ice were growing on the outside of the blue-tinged window-panes and the hoarfroast, like melted sugar, glittered on the gold-spangled bottle-glass of the windows. Absolute silence enveloped the little house as it slumbered in the shadows.
Des Esseintes let his mind wander ... Like some great hanging of reverse ermine, the sky rose before him, black and dappled with white. An icy wind gusted, intensifying the wild scudding of the snow, inverting the proportions of black and white. The heraldic hanging of the sky turned itself over, becoming true white ermine, itself dappled with black by the tiny patches of night strewn among the snowflakes. — Joris-Karl Huysmans

In addition to Linda and me, there's a brother, a strange little guy named Bradley, obsessed with his own cowboy boots. He paces areound and around the house, staring at his feet and humming the G. I. Joe song from the television commmercial. He is the ringleader of a neighborhood gang of tiny boys, four-year olds, who throw dirt and beat each other with sticks all day long. In the evenings he comes to dinner with an imaginnary friend named Charcoal.
'Charcoal really needs a bath', my mother says, spooning Spaghettios onto his plate. His hands are perfectly clean right up to the wrists and the center of his face is cleared so we can see what he looks like. The rest of him is dirt. — Jo Ann Beard

She reminded me of something, and suddenly I knew. I was a tiny child again at Radford, my uncle's home, and he was walking me through the glass-houses in the gardens. There was one flower, an orchid, that grew alone; it was the colour of pale ivory, with one little vein of crimson running through the petals. The scent filled the house, honeyed, and sickly sweet. It was the loveliest flower I had ever seen. I stretched out my hand to stroke the soft velvet sheen, and swiftly my uncle pulled me by the shoulder. 'Don't touch it, child. The stem is poisonous. — Daphne Du Maurier

I wanted to say a lot but wasn't sure where to start; people don't want to hear about how your heart has melted into the dirt under your house. — Dee Williams

Sometimes, to keep things exciting, I decorate my house as if I owned a child. I'll toss a tiny pair of shoes in the hallway or lean small wooden crutches in what I refer to as 'the baby's room,' which is actually a tiny space where I make things. I continue to call it the baby's room because it confuses people and it's creepy. — Amy Sedaris

We think that it's the big moments that define our lives-the wedding, the baby, the new house, the dream job. But really, these big moments of happiness are just the punctuation marks of our personal sagas. The narrative is written every day in the small, the simple, and the common. In your tiny choices, in these tiny changes. In the unconsidered. The overlooked. The discarded. The reclaimed. — Sarah Ban Breathnach

Aaron loved to walk around shirtless and I overwhelmingly approved of his choice. Having seen the gym in one of the house's tiny bedrooms, I understood how he kept so ripped. Every time he caught me admiring the view, I pretended to be looking at his tats. He wasn't fooled. — Bijou Hunter

The more you keep your door closed, the more you will rot! Open your door! Let different ideas, different beliefs, different cultures and different attitudes flow into your mind. Anything different will help you to enlarge your little world! By opening your door, you invite the whole universe to your tiny house! Enlarge your house and enrich yourself! As long as your door remains closed, you shall continue rotting in your poor world! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

It's much easier to feel (and be) safer in a tiny house. After a very short time, you will know every little nook and cranny in your house. In a large house, there are more places for someone to break into, more places for someone to hide, and more places that you have to be wary of danger. — Michael Holtby

I feel Polish. More specifically, I feel like I'm from the tiny village in the Northeast of Poland where I have a house and where I love to spend time. But I don't work there. I cut wood. — Krzysztof Kieslowski

When a house is tottering to its fall,
The strain lies heaviest on the weakest part,
One tiny crack throughout the structure spreads,
And its own weight soon brings it toppling down. — Ovid

I was born in Newark, New Jersey, and grew up in Summit, an upscale town in north Jersey. There was this tiny area of Summit where most of the black families lived. My parents and I lived in a duplex house on Williams Street. — Ice-T

One time I saw a tiny Joshua tree sapling growing not too far from the old tree. I wanted to dig it up and replant it near our house. I told Mom that I would protect it from the wind and water it every day so that it could grow nice and tall and straight. Mom frowned at me. "You'd be destroying what makes it special," she said. "It's the Joshua tree's struggle that gives it its beauty. — Jeannette Walls

He places the skull in the palm of my hand. There are four canines; the top two are so long and curved I can feel them pricking my skin. There's a green tinge round the eye socket and in a fine line across the cranium. I'm not sure what animal it's from.
'Stoat,' Harris says, as if I've spoken out loud. 'They hunt grouse and partridge. I found it behind my house. I buried the body in the furze until it was just bone.'
His hand is still beneath mine, supporting it. I think of him seeing the small dead creature and digging a tiny grave for it. Planning ahead for all those months just so he'd see the skeleton. Or maybe he severed the animal's head and that was the only part he buried.
'It's been waiting for you all this time. Like I have. — Sanjida Kay

I work just as hard and have just as much fun whether in a 50-seat house or in a 1000-seat house. It's a luxury to be in a tiny space every once in a while and a rush to be on a giant stage every once in a while. — Laurie Metcalf

I never saw this coming - the little house was working its magic, connecting me to people and materials I never would have guessed would find their way into the picture. — Dee Williams

In the immortal children's Christmas pantomime Peter Pan, there comes a climactic moment when the little angel Tinkerbell seems to be dying. The glowing light that represents her on the stage begins to dim, and there is only one possible way to save the dire situation. An actor steps up to the front of the house and asks all the children, "Do you believe in fairies?" If they keep confidently answering "YES!" then the tiny light will start to brighten again. Who can object to this ? One wants not to spoil children's belief in magic - there will be plenty of time later for disillusionment - and nobody is waiting at the exit asking them hoarsely to contribute their piggy banks to the Tinkerbell Salvation Church. — Christopher Hitchens

I wanted to design the house around my body and my needs, instead of following the pattern that I'd fallen into in my big house: picking paint colors and finishing the woodwork with some future owner and salability in mind. This was going to be my house. — Dee Williams

He sank into the rocking chair, the same one in which Rebecca had sat during the early days of the house to give embroidery lessons, and in which Amaranta had played Chinese checkers with Colonel Gerineldo Marquez, and in which Amarana Ursula had sewn the tiny clothing for the child, and in that flash of lucidity he became aware that he was unable to bear in his soul the crushing weight of so much past. — Gabriel Garcia Marquez

One way of surviving heartache is to stay busy. Making something right in at least one tiny corner of the vast house of wrongs... — Barbara Kingsolver

I see," she whispered. She withdrew her hand, but Michael snatched it back just as quickly. "I still want to marry you," he insisted. "I love you and will marry you even though there is no house attached to you." He tilted her chin so she was forced to look at him. Tiny crinkles fanned out from his troubled blue eyes, and never had she seen such concern in a man's face. "Do you believe me, Libby? — Elizabeth Camden

One stifling summer afternoon last August, in the attic of a tiny stone house in Pennsylvania, I made a most interesting discovery: the shortest, cheapest method of inducing a nervous breakdown ever perfected. In this technique ... , the subject is placed in a sharply sloping attic heated to 340 F and given a mothproof closet known as the Jiffy-Cloz to assemble. — S.J Perelman

When she was older, after ten or so, she could tell she was being useful, but as a small child she was tolerated (only just, she knew) by this whirlwind of efficiency that was her mother organizing a party. Still she insisted on arranging fruit on a dish, or disposing ashtrays around the house, while her mother reduced her pace to Alice's. At least while "helping," Alice did not feel quite so much as if she were a tiny creature on top of a great wave, frantically and hopelessly signalling to her mother, who stood indifferently on the shore, not noticing her. — Doris Lessing

I can't see myself - I'm not really looking so far ahead in the future. I know that I kind of need to live in the country even though I'm not - my house isn't in the country right now. I bought a house, like a really tiny, cheap house in Wisconsin. — Justin Vernon

Together, we looked down at the tiny house, the sole thing on this vast, flat surface. Like the only person living on the moon. It could be either lonely or peaceful, depending on how you looked at it. "It's a start," I said. — Sarah Dessen

Her house being small. They ain't rich folk, that I know. Rich folk don't try so hard. I'm used to working for young couples, but I spec this is the smallest house I ever worked in. It's just the one story. Her and Mister Leefolt's room in the back be a fair size, but Baby Girl's room be tiny. The dining room and the regular living room kind a join up. Only two bathrooms, which is a relief cause I worked in houses where they was five or — Kathryn Stockett

The Flowers
All the names I know from nurse:
Gardener's garters, Shepherd's purse,
Bachelor's buttons, Lady's smock,
And the Lady Hollyhock.
Fairy places, fairy things,
Fairy woods where the wild bee wings,
Tiny trees for tiny dames
These must all be fairy names!
Tiny woods below whose boughs
Shady fairies weave a house;
Tiny tree-tops, rose or thyme,
Where the braver fairies climb!
Fair are grown-up people's trees,
But the fairest woods are these;
Where, if I were not so tall,
I should live for good and all — Robert Louis Stevenson

Had he but turned back then, and looked out once more on to the rose-lit garden, she would have seen that which would have made her own sufferings seem but light and easy to bear
a strong man, overwhelmed with his own passion and despair. Pride had given way at last, obstinacy was gone: the will was powerless. He was but a man madly, blindly, passionately in love and as soon as her light footstep had died away within the house, he knelt down upon the terrace steps, and in the very madness of his love he kissed one by one the places where her small foot had trodden, and the stone balustrade, where her tiny hand had rested last. — Emmuska Orczy

Haska - a dim legendary figure of a generation ago, who went back up the mountain and cleared six acres of brush in the tiny valley that took his name. He broke the soil, reared stone walls and a house, and planted apple trees. And already the site of the house is undiscoverable, the location of the stone walls may be deduced from the configuration of the landscape, and I am renewing the battle, putting in angora goats to browse away the brush that has overrun Haska's clearing and choked Haska's apple trees to death. So I, too, scratch the land with my brief endeavour and flash my name across a page of legal script ere I pass and the page grows musty. — Jack London

And in a small house five miles away was a man who held my mud-encrusted charm bracelet out to his wife.
Look what I found at the old industrial park," he said. "A construction guy said they were bulldozing the whole lot. They're afraid of sink holes like that one that swallowed the cars."
His wife poured him some water from the sink as he fingered the tiny bike and the ballet shoe, the flower basket and the thimble. He held out the muddy bracelet as she set down his glass.
This little girl's grown up by now," she said.
Almost. Not quite.
I wish you all a long and happy life. — Alice Sebold

May I be the tiniest nail in the house of the universe, tiny but useful. — Mary Oliver

There's a restaurant in Manhattan called Balthazar, and next to it is Balthazar Bakery. It's tiny, and it's very charming to have that little retail outlet to sell the house desserts and breads. — Tom Douglas

I had worked my way through a thousand problems, like when the tar paper bulged on the corners so I used a strap wrapped around the whole house and ratcheted it tight to attach the trim; I had figured that out without using a book, and that was just one of a bunch of ideas that had saved the day. I liked it; I was falling in love with the way my kneecaps knew how to hold a piece of plywood halfway up till I could grab the underside with my hand. I like the way the little house was taking shape, and the way it seemed to double-dog dare me to step in... move in. — Dee Williams

Its like a hypnotist put everyone from Seattle into a collective trance. You are getting sleepy, when you wake up you will want to live only in a Craftsman house, the year won't matter to you, all that will matter is that the walls will be thick, the windows tiny, the rooms dark, the ceilings low, and it will be poorly situated on the lot. — Maria Semple

The house felt strange. Altered. Like someone had come in during the day and shrunk all the furniture just a tiny bit. — Anne Ursu

Spread over what must have been at least a hectare or two was the most beautiful garden he had ever seen.
There was an entire miniature forest of cedar, cypress, and other sweet-smelling pines that couldn't normally live in the hot and dry Agrabah. There were formal rows of roses and other delicately petaled flowers. There was a garden just of mountain plants. There was a pool filled with flowering white lilies and their pads, and pink lotuses taller than most men. There was a fountain as big as a house and shaped like an egg. There was a delicate white aviary that looked like a giant's birdcage. Strangely, there were no birds in it.
And everywhere, entwined around every tiny building and every balustrade and every topiary ball, was jasmine. White jasmine, pink jasmine, yellow jasmine, night-flowering jasmine... the smell was heady enough to make Aladdin feel a little drunk.
Jasmine.
This was her garden. — Liz Braswell

I was looking into a darkened hallway, lined with a washing machine and dryer, and a few brooms and mops held in clamps on the wall. I put a hand on the doorknob and turned very slowly and quietly. It was unlocked. I took a deep breath - - and very nearly fell out of my skin as a horrible, shattering scream came from inside. It was the sound of anguish and horror and such a clear call for help that even Disinterested Dexter moved reflexively forward, and I had one foot actually inside the house when a tiny little question mark scuttled across the floor of my brain and I thought, I've heard that scream before. And as my second foot moved forward, farther into the house, I thought, Really? Where? The answer came quite quickly, which was comforting: it was the same scream that was on the "New Miami" videos that Weiss had made. - which meant that it was a recorded scream. - which meant it was intended to lure me inside. - which meant that Weiss was ready and waiting for me. — Jeff Lindsay

Raised herself on one round elbow and looked out on a tiny river like a gleaming blue snake winding itself around a purple hill. Right below the house was a field white as snow with daisies, and the shadow of the huge maple tree that bent over the little house fell lacily across it. Far beyond it were the white crests of Four Winds Harbour and a long range of sun-washed dunes and red cliffs. — L.M. Montgomery

Or consider how we citizens of rich countries obtain our oil and minerals. Teodoro Obiang, the dictator of tiny Equatorial Guinea, sells most of his country's oil to American corporations, among them Exxon Mobil, Marathon, and Hess. Although his official salary is a modest $60,000, this ruler of a country of 550,000 people is richer than Queen Elizabeth II. He owns six private jets and a $35 million house in Malibu, as well as other houses in Maryland and Cape Town and a fleet of Lamborghinis, Ferraris, and Bentleys. Most of the people over whom he rules live in extreme poverty, with a life expectancy of forty-nine and an infant mortality of eighty-seven per one thousand (this means that more than one child in twelve dies before its first birthday). — Peter Singer

It was a smooth silvery voice that matched her hair. It had a tiny tinkle in it, like bells in a doll's house. I thought that was silly as soon as I thought of it. — Raymond Chandler

Ugh," Turner groans from the kitchen. "That skinny tramp can go fuck herself. She doesn't stand a chance. Even if I wasn't fucking committed to marrying your ass making tiny Turner babies, she's a little below my usual standards." Naomi's eyes narrow, and I can't hold back my smile. God, I love the shit out of these stupid assholes. I hope they buy a house down the street from me, so I can watch Naomi throwing Turner's stuff out on the lawn every other Christmas. I don't admit to myself that in that fantasy, Lola Saints is in the kitchen with nothing but an apron on. — C.M. Stunich

The House Rules Committee is perhaps the free world's outstanding bureaucratic abomination - a tiny, airless closet deep in the labyrinth of the Capitol where some of the very meanest people on earth spend their days cleaning democracy like a fish. — Matt Taibbi

The whale house has not changed much. It still stands under the silk cotton tree, its windows shuttered and closed. When she pushes open the door, they don't see her. They are up under the window where the light is green and dim. Aidan is between Ivy's spread, honey legs. Ivy sees her first and makes a strangled cry, trying to push Aidan off and cover her breasts. Aidan climbs to his knees and turns to the door. Behind him, she catches a glimpse of Ivy, the pubic hair waxed to a tiny strip above the neat pink slit, the centre moist and slick. Aidan's face is shocked, moon-like in the dim light, his pants around his knees. Chuck — Sharon Millar

Dad's on a fishing boat in front of Carter's estate. If we get into trouble, all I have to do is press the button on the tiny transmitter in my pocket and he'll destroy the dome on top of Carter's house. Is that enough of a distraction for you?"
"Maybe we can work out something a little more subtle. — Janet Evanovich

Built at a time when servants had servants who had servants, there'd been a whole thriving community in the great house to wait upon the tiny family perched on top like a hut on a mountain. — Josa Young

Rather than dwelling on the past, we should make the most of today, of the here and now, doing all we can to provide pleasant memories for the future ... If you are still in the process of raising children be aware that the tiny fingerprints that show up on almost every newly cleaned surface, the toys scattered about the house, the piles and piles of laundry to be tackled, will disappear all too soon, and that you will, to your surprise, miss them, profoundly. — Thomas S. Monson

Sometimes the desire to be lost again, as long ago, comes over me like a vapor. With growth into adulthood, responsibilities claimed me, so many heavy coats. I didn't choose them, I don't fault them, but it took time to reject them. Now in the spring I kneel, I put my face into the packets of violets, the dampness, the freshness, the sense of ever-ness. Something is wrong, I know it, if I don't keep my attention on eternity. May I be the tiniest nail in the house of the universe, tiny but useful. May I stay forever in the stream. May I look down upon the windflower and the bull thistle and the coreopsis with the greatest respect. — Mary Oliver

This is, in fact, the biggest show that Marvel television has ever taken on, in the animation world. We had a real challenge that was posed to us, and that was this little, tiny art-house movie that came out last year, that I don't know if you saw, called Marvel's The Avengers, written and directed by our friend Joss Whedon, and it really set the template. — Jeph Loeb

Happiness
a small-scale, endearing, harmonious happiness
surely dwelt here beneath the low-powered lamps in the tiny rooms of these houses. A small-scale happiness and a modest harmony: let a man cry out, let him rage, let him howl with grief with all the power of which he was capable, what more than these could he ever hope to gain in this life? — Fumiko Enchi

Outside the drizzling rain had begun again. It pattered around the house, and on the roofs and eaves, like a million, tiny, stealthy feet: softly, as though the night were teeming with a host of minute, dark beings. — Evangeline Walton