Attic Quotes

The attic smelled like dust and mice. Piper was sure she could hear faint scuttling sounds off in the shadows, feel beady eyes upon her. She hoped it was only mice and not something larger, something more dangerous.
Was it more than rustling?
Was that faint breathing she heard coming from the darkest corner, the place where no light touched? ~ Jennifer McMahon

Always keep a window in the attic open; not just cracked: open. ~ Henry James

There was someone in his little attic room. Geralt knew it before he even reached the door, sensing it through the barely perceptible vibration of his medallion. He blew out the oil lamp which had lit his path up the stairs, pulled the dagger from his boot, slipped it into the back of his belt and pressed the door handle. The room was dark. But not for a witcher. He was deliberately slow in crossing the threshold; he closed the door behind him carefully. The next second he dived at the person sitting on his bed, crushed them into the linen, forced his forearm under their chin and reached for his dagger. He didn't pull it out. Something wasn't right. "Not a bad start," she said in a muffled voice, lying motionless beneath him. "I expected something like this, but I didn't think we'd both be in bed so quickly. Take your hand from my throat please." "It's ~ Andrzej Sapkowski

Dance, ballerina, dance
And do your pirouette in rhythm with your achin' heart. ~ Nat Cole King

But her life was as cold as an attic facing north; and boredom, like a silent spider, was weaving its web in the shadows, in every corner of her heart. ~ Gustave Flaubert

What does the God of your childhood look like?
A soft apparition pigeoned in the attic,

a wound eating you one year at a time? ~ Rachel McKibbens

Prue touched piper's shoulder. "Don't worry, no one's going to the attic. but theres no point in leaving the house. we are perfectly safe here."
"Don't say that!" Piper cried. "in horror movies, the person that says that is always the next to die. ~ Constance M. Burge

It is curious to look back over life, over all the varying incidents and scenes - such a multitude of odds and ends. Out of them all what has mattered? What lies behind the selection that memory has made? What makes us choose the things that we have remembered? It is as though one went to a great trunk full of junk in an attic and plunged one's hands into it and said, 'I will have this - and this - and this. ~ Agatha Christie

At any rate, this was the weekend that things started to change, that the dark gaps between the street lamps begin to grow smaller and smaller, and farther apart, the first sign that one's train is approaching familiar territory, and will soon be passing through the well-known, well-lighted streets of town. The house was their trump card, their fondest treasure, and that weekend they revealed it to me slyly, by degrees – the dizzy little turret rooms, the high-beamed attic, the old sleigh in the cellar, big enough to be pulled by four horses, astring with bells. ~ Donna Tartt

I am imprinted with the whole sense of European history, especially German history, going back to World War I, which really destroyed all the old values and culture. My grandparents had been reasonably well-off but they became quite poor, living in an attic apartment. ~ Lisel Mueller

God does not want an apartment in our house. He claims our entire home from attic to cellar. ~ Billy Graham

There are children who will leave a game to go and be bored in a corner of the garret. How often have I wished for the attic of my boredom when the complications of life made me lose the very germ of freedom! ~ Gaston Bachelard

(A) trip to the attic is an excursion into history, and ... all over the world the present unravels beneath the stored detritus of the past; that's what attics are for. ~ Valerie Martin

America was the attic of French culture. ~ Edmund White

APPLES SCENT,
You arrive in the basement. Immediatly it catches you. Apples are here, lying on fruit trays, turned crates. You didn't think about it. You had no wish to be flooded by this melancholic wave. But you can't resist. Apple scent is a breaker. How could you manage without this childhood, bitter and sweet ?
Shrivelled fruits surely are delicious, from this feak dryness where candied taste seems to have wormed in each wrinkle. But you don't wish to eat them. Particularly don't turn into an identifiable taste this floating power of smell. Say that it smells good, strong? But not ..... It's beyond .... An inner scent, scent of a better oneself. Here is shut up school autumn, with purple ink we scratch paper with down strokes and thin strokes. Rain bangs against glasses, evening will be long ....
But apple perfume is more than past. You think about formerly because of fullness and intensity from a remembrance of salpetered cellar, dark attic. But it's to live here, stay here, stand up.
You have behind you high herbs and damp orchards. Ahead it's like a warm blow given in the shade. Scent got all browns, all reds with a bit of green acid. Scent distilled skin softness, its tiny roughness. Lips dried, we alreadyt know that this thirst is not to be slaked.
Nothing would happen if you bite the white flesh. You would need to become october, mud floor, moss of cellar, rain, expectation.
Apple scent is painful. It's from a stronger life, a slowness ~ Philippe Delerm

Mom! Look. This one is my favorite," Devin said, pulling out a faded pink dress with a red plaid sash. The crinoline petticoat underneath was so old and stiff it made snapping sounds, like beads or fire embers. She dropped the dress over her head, over her clothes. It brushed the floor. "When I'm old enough for it to fit me, I'm going to wear it with purple shoes," she said.
"A bold choice," Kate said as Devin dove back into the trunk. The attic in Kate's mother's house had always fascinated Devin with its promise of hidden treasures. When Kate's mother had been alive, she had let Devin eat Baby Ruth candy bars and drink grape soda and play in this old trunk full of dresses that generations of Morris women had worn to try entice rich men to marry them. Most of the clothes had belonged to Kate's grandmother Marilee, a renowned beauty who, like all the rest, had fallen in love with a poor man instead. ~ Sarah Addison Allen

I consider that a man's brain is originally 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 that might be useful to him gets crowded out. ~ Arthur Conan Doyle

You never realize how much your mother loves you till you explore the attic - and find every letter you ever sent her, every finger painting, clay pot, bead necklace, Easter chicken, cardboard Santa Claus, paperlace Mother's Day card and school report since day one. ~ Pam Brown

Instead of making myself write the book I ought to write, the novel that was expected of me, I conjured up the book I myself would have liked to read, the sort by an unknown writer, from another age and another country, discovered in an attic. ITALO CALVINO ~ Salman Rushdie

The olive grove of Academe, Plato's retirement, where the Attic bird Trills her thick-warbled notes the summer long. ~ John Milton

Yeah, I know what "off the horse" means. I just can't remember how we got to the point where I'm defending myself against the imaginary accusations of a man who gives hairless rats to neighborhood children, and who apparently trusts the nonexistent squirrel junkies in the attic. ~ Jenny Lawson

It was about having a box in the attic or basement or attic or garage, something we could return to over and over again, something that said, this is us, this is where we were last year, and this is where we'll stay, and this is where we'll pile on the memories, over and over again, until there are so many memories that it's blinding, the brightness of family, the way love and nurturing is like a color you can't name because it's so new. ~ Carrie Brownstein

…art owes its continuous evolution to the Apollonian-Dionysian duality…. The two creative tendencies developed alongside one another, usually in fierce opposition, each by its taunts forcing the other to more energetic production, both perpetuating in a discordant concord the agony which the term art but feebly denominates: until at last, by the thaumaturgy (magic or miracle) of a Hellenic act of will, the pair accepted the yoke of marriage and, in this condition, begot Attic tragedy, which exhibits the salient feature of both parents. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

I was a daughterless mother. I had nowhere to put the things a mother places on her daughter. The nail polish I used to paint our toenails hardened. Our favorite videos gathered dust. Her small apron was in a box in the attic. Her shoes - the sparkly ones, the leopard rain boots, the ballet slippers - stood in a corner. ~ Ann Hood

Here's the thing, Grace," Cal said, a smile playing at the corner of his mouth. "Ever since that first day when you smacked me in the head with your field hockey stick-"
"You just can't let that go, can you?" I muttered.
He grinned fully now. "-and even when you hit me with the rake and dented my truck, and when you were spying on me from your attic and your dog was mauling me, Grace, I always knew you were the one for me. ~ Kristan Higgins

Isn't the most reliable form of pleasure, Flaubert implies, the pleasure of anticipation? Who needs to burst into fulfilment's desolate attic? ~ Julian Barnes

This is the night of revelation. This is the night the dolls wake. This is the night of the dreamer in the attic. This is the night of the piper in the woods. ~ Steven Millhauser

But the not-very-highbrow truth of the matter was that the reading was how I got my ya-yas out.
For the sake of my bookish reputation I upgraded to Tolstoy and Steinbeck before I understood them, but my dark secret was that really, I preferred the junk. The Dragonriders of Pern, Flowers in the Attic, The Clan of the Cave Bear. This stuff was like my stash of Playboys under the mattress. ~ Julie Powell

He was once a captive in her attic. Now she was the one held captive, enraptured by his unwavering trust. ~ Pam Godwin

It's funny, really: the older you get, the more you know about the world. The synapses in your brain fire at a higher level and quicker function, your knowledge expands. But you lose part of yourself, that part able to imagine great armies that wait for nothing more than your command; the dragon that hides under your bed that only you can see, its long emerald tail flashing in the darkness; the ghost that lives in your attic that only moans at 3:23 in the morning. When you lose that innocence, the world's hues become dark and muted, and you know that dragons aren't real. There is no army. There is no ghost in the attic. But when you're nine? When you're nine, it's all probable, it's all realistic, and even more so, it's all true. ~ T.J. Klune

It's a beautiful smile. One that brightens the rat-infested attic room. No one has ever smiled like that at me. No one. Everything inside me twists with the need to keep her close.
I should be pissed. Who knows if I'll ever see the money from Eric. Who knows if Noah and I will lose the lease, sending me back into the system. Right now, I don't f*cking care. I'm touching an angel. ~ Katie McGarry

One day I'll own my own house, but I won't forget who I am or where I came from. Passing bums will ask, Can I come in? I'll offer them the attic, ask them to stay, because I know how it is to be without a house.

Some days after dinner, guests and I will sit in front of a fire. Floorboards will squeak upstairs. The attic grumbling.
Rats? they'll ask.
Bums, I'll say, and I'll be happy. ~ Sandra Cisneros

Sure you can be a coward and hope somone else changes the wrld for you. You can hide up in that attic of yours until someone knocks on the door and says, 'Oh, hey, they freed the hidden. Want to come out?' Is that what you want"
Luke didnt answer
"You've got to come, Luke, or you'll hate yourself the rest of your life. When you dont have to hide anymore, even years from now, there'll always be some small part of you whispering 'I don't deserve this. I didnt fight for it. I'm not worth it.' And you are, Luke, you are. You're smart and funny and nice, and you should be living life, instead of being buried alive in that old house of yours ~ Margaret Peterson Haddix

So many broken promises, each day an aborted wish, a lost object, a misplaced unread book, cluttering the room like an attic with discarded possessions. ~ Anais Nin

I had a toy theater and a magic lantern, and when I was eight I built a stage for theatricals in the attic. ~ James Broughton

And Numenius, the Pythagorean philosopher, expressly writes: 'For what is Plato, but Moses speaking in Attic Greek.' ~ Clement Of Alexandria

She's the Indian who lives in my attic. ~ Tracy Letts

He takes the view that mornings happen to other people. I think I once saw him at breakfast, although possibly it was just someone who looked a bit like him who was lying with their head in the plate of baked beans. He likes good sushi, and quite likes people, too, although not raw; he is kind to fans who are not total jerks, and enjoys talking to people who know how to talk. He doesn't look as though he's forty; that may have happened to someone else, too. Or perhaps there's special picture locked in his attic. ~ Terry Pratchett

So bleary with jet lag that she could not sleep or make any sense in conversation, and feeling that her brain was a haunted house in which bats flew randomly from one attic beam to another, ~ Charles Baxter

By the year 1670, wooden chimneys and log houses of the Plymouth and Bay colonies were replaced by more sightly houses of two stories, which were frequently built with the second story jutting out a foot or two over the first, and sometimes with the attic story still further extending over the second story. ~ Alice Morse Earle

Poetry is no less than this:
An unexpected workplace kiss
The brandy in the spirit cage
A salve upon our wounded age
That lustful swell, the secret damp
The yellow of the attic lamp
The drifting, smoky, hazel haze
Of wooded hills on autumn days
Between the thoughts of summer lost
And anvil of the winter frost ~ Martin Newell

You look ill," Matthew observed. "Is it my dancing? Is it me personally?"
"Perhaps I'm nervous," she said. "Lucie did say you didn't like many people."
Matthew gave a sharp, startled laugh, before schooling his face back into a look of lazy amusement. "Did she? Lucie's a chatterbox."
"But not a liar," she said.
"Well, fear not. I do not dislike you. I hardly know you," said Matthew. "I do know your brother. He made my life miserable at school, and Christopher's, and James's."
"Alastair and I are very different," Cordelia said. She didn't want to say more than that. It felt disloyal to Alastair. "I like Oscar Wilde, for instance, and he does not."
The corner of Matthew's mouth curled up. "I see you go directly for the soft underbelly, Cordelia Carstairs. Have you really read Oscar's work?"
"Just Dorian Gray," Cordelia confessed. "It gave me nightmares."
"I should like to have a portrait in the attic," Matthew mused, "that would show all my sins, while I stayed young and beautiful. And not only for sinning purposes - imagine being able to try out new fashions on it. I could paint the portrait's hair blue and see how it looks."
"You don't need a portrait. You are young and beautiful," Cordelia pointed out.
"Men are not beautiful. Men are handsome," objected Matthew.
"Thomas is handsome. You are beautiful," said Cordelia, feeling the imp of the perverse stealing over her. Matthew was looking stubborn. "James is beautiful too, ~ Cassandra Clare

rats?" "I just said that." "But the attic is clean." "Well, okay, we've got tidy rats!" "No rats." "Karl, I heard them last night." "Maybe plumbing," Karl probed; "maybe boards." "Maybe rats! Will you buy the damn traps and quit arguing?" Bustling away, Karl, said, "Yes! I go now!" "No not now, Karl! The ~ William Peter Blatty

Behind my office, to the south-east, was Police Headquarters, and I imagined all the good hard work that was being done there to crack down on Berlin's crime. Villainies like speaking disrespectfully of the Führer, displaying a 'Sold Out' sign in your butcher's shop window, not giving the Hitler Salute, and homosexuality. That was Berlin under the National Socialist Government: a big, haunted house with dark corners, gloomy staircases, sinister cellars, locked rooms and a whole attic full of poltergeists on the loose, throwing books, banging doors, breaking glass, shouting in the night and generally scaring the owners so badly that there were times when they were ready to sell up and get out. But most of the time they just stopped up their ears, covered their blackened eyes and tried to pretend that there was nothing wrong. Cowed with fear, they spoke very little, ignoring the carpet moving underneath their feet, and their laughter was the thin, nervous kind that always accompanies the boss's little joke. ~ Philip Kerr

He just existed before it and within the terrible presence that filled the cramped space of the attic. ~ Adam Nevill

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

Reader, I married him.

It turned out the sounds I heard coming from the attic weren't the screams of Mr Rochester's mad wife Bertha. It wasn't the wife who burned to death in the fire that destroyed Thornfield Hall and blinded my future husband when he tried to save her.
After we'd first got engaged, he'd had to admit that he was already married, and we'd broken off our engagement. He'd asked me to run away with him anyway. Naturally, I'd refused.
But later, after we were properly married, he insisted that it hadn't happened that way. It turned out there had been no wife. It turned out that it had been a parrot, screaming in the attic. The parrot had belonged to his wife. She had got it in the islands, where she had also contracted the tropical fever that killed her. She'd died long before I came to work for him as a governess. That was never Bertha, in the attic. ~ Francine Prose

If I'm stuck, I get up from my chair and I wash windows. Or ... clean the bathroom. Or vacuum the attic. There's always something to be done. ~ David Sedaris

American journalism's crazy old aunt in the attic. ~ Helen Thomas

Never trust a man with a lunatic wife in an attic," Richard told me. "And anyone named Heathcliff should make you suspicious. ~ John Irving

Silence reigned.
Well, except for Mallory's thundering heartbeat. She was in an attic loft, flat beneath her Mr. Wrong. Her common sense was screaming flee! But her secret inner bad girl was screaming oh please can't we have him? Just once?
-Mallory ~ Jill Shalvis

It would be inaccurate, however, to say that my childhood was untroubled. The normal fears and worries of every child were in me developed to a high degree; every day was an awesome prospect. I was uneasy about practically everything: the uncertainty of the future, the dark of the attic, the panoply and discipline of school, the transitoriness of life, the mystery of the church and of God, the frailty of the body, the sadness of afternoon, the shadow of sex, the distant challenge of love and marriage, the far-off problem of a livelihood. ~ Bret Lott

Back home, I went to my closet and pulled out the old engineer's transit case stored there. When we were kids, Emma and I had found it in the attic, dusty and empty, and the leather strap used to carry it had a small cut in it. The tag on the top of the wooden-hinged lid read Circa 1907. It was mostly weatherproof and offered plenty of room for the things I valued - like books. ~ Charles Martin

Designing a website can be a bit like being a kid and inheriting a sweetshop. It's easy to get carried away. There are so many choices. A website can be like an attic that never fills up. Space is not the problem. Attention is. ~ Gerry McGovern

Back in Georgie's attic, he yanks the phone out of the socket and begins scrolling down the names under dialed calls, praying to anyone who will listen. God. Baby Jesus. Saint Thomas the doubter. Saint Whoever, patron saint of losers. Praying, Please, please, don't let it be true.
The first name shatters him.
The second makes his head spin. ~ Melina Marchetta

The girls seemed unconcerned and went about their days, each as lovely in their own way as the flowers they tended. Sorrel's black hair became streaked with premature white, which gave her an exotic air, although the elegance was somewhat ruined by the muddy jeans and shorts she practically lived in. Nettie, on the other hand, had a head of baby-fine blonde hair that she wore short, thinking, wrongly, that it would look less childlike. Nettie wouldn't dream of being caught in dirty jeans and was always crisply turned out in khaki capris or a skirt and a white shirt. She considered her legs to be her finest feature. She was not wrong.
Patience was the sole Sparrow redhead, although her hair had deepened from its childhood ginger and was now closer to the color of a chestnut. It was heavy and glossy as a horse's mane, and she paid absolutely no attention to it or to much else about her appearance, nor did she have to. In the summer her wide-legged linen trousers and cut-off shorts were speckled with dirt and greenery, her camisoles tatty and damp. The broad-brimmed hat she wore to pick was most often dangling from a cord down her back. As a result, the freckles that feathered across her shoulders and chest were the color of caramel and resistant to her own buttermilk lotion (Nettie smoothed it on Patience whenever she could make her stand still). When it was terribly hot, Patience wore the sundresses she'd found packed away in the attic. She knew they were her mother's, an ~ Ellen Herrick

One of the reasons we keep so many sentimental items in our homes is because there is no boundary to force our hand in making a decision. As a result, more and more boxes get moved into the attic to store this ever-increasing collection. Instead, set an arbitrary boundary: one box, one drawer, or one shelf. ~ Joshua Becker

Ideas, of course, have a place in fiction, and any writer of fiction needs a mind. But ideas are not the best subject matter for fiction. They do not dramatize well. They are, rather, a by-product, something the reader himself is led to formulate after watching the story unfold. The ideas, the generalizations, ought to be implicit in the selection and arrangement of the people and places and actions. They ought to haunt a piece of fiction as a ghost flits past an attic window after dark. ~ Wallace Stegner

C'mon. We can turn it into a fun game - What's Scarier, The Basement Or The Attic? ~ Darcy Coates

His hope was that she would finish her damn book quietly and just leave; that one morning he would awaken and go up to the attic, and Anne Frank would be gone, and he could go on with his life, Anne-free. One hundred percent Frankless. Now with Less Genocide. ~ Shalom Auslander

She waited by the blackboard, trying to scrape up enough of her abysmal Japanese to ask what was going on. Lectures were always in English, which was just as well, because she had the linguistic capability of a sea cucumber. As far as she could tell, the word for 'husband' and the word for 'prisoner' were identical. Half the faculty were still worried that she'd got Baron Matsumoto locked away in her attic. ~ Natasha Pulley

He had no friends and for the first time in his life he became aware of loneliness. Sometimes, in his attic room at night, he would look up from a book he was reading and gaze in the dark corners of his room, where the lamplight flickered against the shadows. If he stared long and intently, the darkness gathered into a light, which took the insubstantial shape of what he had been reading. ~ John Williams

Look down your shirt and spell attic. ~ David Foster Wallace

I always kinda liked our attic ghost. When I was a kid, I used to go up there and read stories to it. Show it my new toys. It's just an old spirit stuck between the worlds, right? What's to be scared of?""
~Vic ~ Claudia Gray

Maybe pick it up by mistake with the cleaning?" "It is there." "With the cleaning?" "In the closet." "No, it isn't. I looked." About to speak, Willie tightened her lips and scowled. Karl had walked in. "Good evening, Madam." He went to the sink for a glass of water. "Did you set those traps?" asked Chris. "No rats." "Did you set them?" "I set them, of course, but the attic is clean." "Tell me, how ~ William Peter Blatty

By day she studied and touched her mother's things, and by night, she dreamed about them. The dreams gave her as fragmented a vision of Marley as the boxes in the attic did. There were a thousand dramatic episodes, but very little sense of the person linking them together ~ Ann Brashares

You must go back to bed."
"No," I shouted. "Not yet! I have to finish this game." I couldn't leave Andrew, not now, not when I was finally winning.
Hannah released me so suddenly I staggered backward. "I'll fetch Papa!" she cried.
Andrew threw himself at her. "Hannah, stop, you're ruining everything!"
I grabbed his arm. "Let her go. We don't have much time!"
Casting a last terrified look at me, Hannah ran downstairs, calling for Mama and Papa.
Andrew turned to me, his face streaked with tears. "Quick, Drew. Shoot four more marbles out of the ring!"
Holding my breath I aimed. Click, click, click. An immie, a cat's-eye, and a moonstone spun across the floor, but I missed the fourth.
Andrew knuckled down and shot at the scattered marbles. Of the seven in the ring, he managed to hit two before he missed.
Downstairs I heard Hannah pounding on Papa and Mama's door.
"One more, Drew," Andrew whispered.
It was hard to aim carefully. Papa and Mama were awake. Their voices rose as Hannah tried to explain I was in the attic acting as if I'd lost my mind. My hand shook and the first marble I hit merely clicked against another.
Andrew took his turn, hit three, and missed the fourth. "Send me home, Drew," he begged. "I don't care if I die when I get there."
Two marbles were left--a carnelian and an immie, widely separated. Neither was close to my aggie. Even for someone as good as Andrew, it was a hard shot.
Holding his b ~ Mary Downing Hahn

For her, life was as cold as an attic with a window looking to the north, and ennui, like a spider, was silently spinning its shadowy web in every cranny of her heart. ~ Gustave Flaubert

As he carefully made his way back to the stairs and awkwardly turned off the light, he did not notice that the dark shadow he had assumed was his reflection remained in the mirror. He didn't see the hands press against the surface and make large, liquid-like bulges beneath the glass. Nor did he hear the whispers that so suddenly and violently filled the dark, cluttered space as he had closed and locked the heavy attic door. ~ "The Mirror ~ Cassie McCown

The classic think-tank is supposed to be sitting in an attic thinking up grand ideas. ~ Geoff Mulgan

The design of the building addresses the public nature of both the urban context and the internal program. In order to reinforce the building's associative or mimetic qualities, the facades are organized in a classical three-part division of base, middle or body, and attic or head. ~ Michael Graves

Holmes says that "a man should keep his little brain-attic stocked with all the furniture that he is likely to use" - and little else. ~ Ransom Riggs

Sara!" she cried, aghast. "Mamma Sara!" She was aghast because the attic was so bare and ugly and seemed so far away from all the world. Her short legs had seemed to have been mounting hundreds of stairs. ~ Frances Hodgson Burnett

I wanted to tell Sam this. I wanted to tell him all of it, in beautiful handwritten letters or at least in long, rambling emails that we would later save and print out and that would be found in the attic of our house when we had been married fifty years for our grandchildren to coo over. But I was so tired those first few weeks that all I did was email him about how tired I was.

I'm so tired. I miss you.
Me too.
No, like really, really tired. Like cry at TV advertisements and fall asleep while brushing my teeth and end up with toothpaste all over my chest tired.
Okay, now you got me.

I tried not to mind how little he emailed me. I tried to remind myself that he was doing a real, hard job, saving lives and making a difference, while I was sitting outside manicurists' studios and running around Central Park.

His supervisor had changed the rota. He was working four nights on the trot and still waiting to be assigned a new permanent partner. That should have made it easier for us to talk but somehow it didn't. I would check in on my phone in the minutes I had free every evening but that was usually the time he was heading off to begin his shift.

Sometimes I felt curiously disjointed, as if I had simply dreamt him up.

One week, he reassured me. One more week.

How hard could it be? ~ Jojo Moyes

Oh, if I had had a friend at this moment, a friend in an attic room, dreaming by candlelight and with a violin lying ready at his hand! How I should have slipped up to him in his quiet hour, noiselessly climbing the winding stair to take him by surprise, and then with talk and music we should have held heavenly festival throughout the night! ~ Hermann Hesse

The cat came first, in order to be absolute first. It arrived when all the cribs and closets and cellar bins and attic hang-spaces still needed October wings, autumn breathings, and fiery eyes. ~ Ray Bradbury

We all have a secret buried under lock and key in the attic of our soul ~ Carlos Ruiz Zafon

The Attic warbler pours her throat, Responsive to the cuckoo's note, The untaught harmony of spring. ~ Thomas Gray

And Jane Eyre. Oh, smart, resourceful, sad Jane. Her prize, readers, after a youth of fighting for some smidgen of autonomy? Marrying him: The bad-tempered guy who kept his first wife in the attic, wooed Jane through a series of elaborate head games, and was, by the time she landed him, blind and missing a hand. ~ Rebecca Traister

Will looked at his sister. "And you don't care about being a Shadowhunter. How is this: I shall write a letter and give it to you if you promise to deliver it home yourself - and not to return."

Cecily recoiled; she had many memories of shouting matches with Will, of the china dolls she had owned that he had broken by dropping them out an attic window; but there was also kindness in her memories: the brother who had bandaged up a cut knee, or retied her hair ribbons when they came loose. That kindness was absent from the Will who stood before her now. Her mother had used to cry for the first year or two after Will went; she had said, in Welsh, holding Cecily to her, that they - the Shadowhunters - would "take all the love out of him." A cold, unloving people, she had told Cecily, who had forbidden her marriage to her husband. What could he want with them, her Will, her little one?

"I will not go," Cecily said, staring her brother down. "And if you insist that I must, I will - I will - "

The door of the attic slid open and Jem stood silhouetted in the doorway… ~ Cassandra Clare

The atheist staring from his attic window is often nearer to God than the believer caught up in his own false image of God. ~ Martin Buber

Fanfiction is the madwoman in mainstream culture's attic, but the attic won't contain it forever. Writing and reading fanfiction isn't just something you do; it's a way of thinking critically about the media you consume, of being aware of all the implicit assumptions that a canonical work carries with it, and of considering the possibility that those assumptions might not be the only way things have to be. ~ Anne Jamison

There is magic in this sad, hard world. A magic stronger than fate, stronger than chance. And it is seen in the unlikeliest of places.
By a hearth at night, as girl leaves a bit of cheese for a hungry mouse.
In a slaughter yard, as the old and infirm, the weak and discarded, are made to matter more than money.
In a poor carpenter's small attic room, where three sisters learned that the price of forgiveness is forgiving.
And now, on a battlefield, as a mere girl tries to turn the red tide of war.
It is the magic of a frail and fallible creature, one capable of both unspeakable cruelty and immense kindness. It lives inside every human being ready to redeem us. To transform us. To save us. If we can only find the courage to listen to it.
It is the magic of the human heart. ~ Jennifer Donnelly

I care with the brightened curiosity of one who loves a subject for no rational reason, but who loves it nonetheless and prodigally. This is the ardor of the academic Austenologist who believes that if she looks beneath the floorboards of the right dusty attic, she will find the diary entry explaining why Jane Austen rejected her one marriage proposal the day after she'd accepted it; of the birder in Costa Rica tiptoeing through tails of biting ants and fer-de-lance serpents in hopes of glimpsing a rare hummingbird that no one has seen for fifteen years. I could list such loves forever, the sort that visit our imaginations on the cusp of the impossible but that we cannot erase from our minds. We follow the trail with whatever breadcrumbs we can gather, with hope, with love, with an almost magical combination of urgency and patience... ~ Lyanda Lynn Haupt

in the sweltering attic, and ~ Elin Hilderbrand

Your sister came after me," Jack says. "Halloway got her riled up or something."
"My sister?" Graham repeats. "My sister, Ellie?"
"No, the sister you keep locked in the attic," I say. ~ Ingrid Paulson

What am I supposed to do with this memory now? I know that the wise answer is that I should let it be, but there's so much shame in having a bright, hopeful start and a heavy, lead-footed, choked-up end. I want to put this moment forth like a picture that you slide across the table and you say, "This was this. I was here." When your life breaks apart it's hard to know if you are allowed to keep little pieces that are still nice-looking, or if you have to crush them up in order to move on. Do I have to ruin everything that survived the blast in order to accept that the blast occurred? That seems like a bit too much. Do we have to live with shards, carry them around, have new little cuts all the time? Or can these moments be rounded and just left floating in the attic of a nice old beach house, the one I don't live in yet, the one where I will live when I am old, the oldest person on the planet, the softest crone. When I asked my father this question, "What am I supposed to do with this moment now?" he told me to be unashamed while mentioning it, and to consider the idea that some people stay with you in a group, while others drift away. But the reliving of that moment causes me sharp pain, and I don't know if I'm allowed to talk about it and my guess is that I'm not, because of the damage I will do or reveal within myself. ~ Jenny Slate

Do the books that writers don't write matter? It's easy to forget them, to assume that the apocryphal bibliography must contain nothing but bad ideas, justly abandoned projects, embarrassing first thoughts. It needn't be so: first thoughts are often best, cheeringly rehabilitated by third thoughts after they've been loured at by seconds. Besides, an idea isn't always abandoned because it fails some quality control test. The imagination doesn't crop annually like a reliable fruit tree. The writer has to gather whatever's there: sometimes too much, sometimes too little, sometimes nothing at all. And in the years of glut there is always a slatted wooden tray in some cool, dark attic, which the writer nervously visits from time to time ~ Julian Barnes

Nahum did not send her to the county asylum, but let her wander about the house as long as she was harmless to herself and others. Even when her expression changed he did nothing. But when the boys grew afraid of her, and Thaddeus nearly fainted at the way she made faces at him, he decided to keep her locked in the attic. ~ H.P. Lovecraft

For a moment, I thought I heard laughter, the click of one croquet ball striking another, a dog barking.
I stared at the empty yard, trying hard to see what Great-grandfather saw, but nothing shifted, nothing changed. If the Tylers were playing croquet, they were visible to him and him alone. The only dog in sight was Binky. Running across the lawn to meet him, I took the stick he carried and threw it as hard as I could. It sailed across the sky, and Binky dashed after it.
As the dog disappeared into the bushes, I looked up at the attic window and remembered the flash of white I'd seen the day I arrived--my first glimpse of Andrew. Funny to think I'd been scared. Nothing stirred in the attic now. No one watched, no one waited.
Deep in my pocket, I touched the red bull's-eye, warm as blood and twice as lucky. The marbles were mine for keeps. They were safe, and so was Andrew. ~ Mary Downing Hahn

Whatever symbiosis existed between us was real, tangible, and now, without her presence I could feel the absence of it, as if she were an extension of my own person. She was, I realized, that awful, wretched part of me that should be locked away and boarded up forever - like Jane's madwoman in the attic. She was the unfiltered version, the rawness that no one should ever see. She was every wicked thought, every forbidden desire turned real and visceral. ~ Christine Mangan

Nature hav no music; nor would ther be for theeany better melody in the April woods at dawnthan what an old stone-deaf labourer, lying awakeo'night in his comfortless attic, might perchancebe aware of, when the rats run amok in his thatch? ~ Robert Bridges

And this is how we danced: with our mothers'
white dresses spilling from our feet, late August

turning our hands dark red. And this is how we loved:
a fifth of vodka and an afternoon in the attic, your fingers

sweeping though my hair - my hair a wildfire.
We covered our ears and your father's tantrum turned

into heartbeats. When our lips touched the day closed
into a coffin. In the museum of the heart

there are two headless people building a burning house.
There was always the shotgun above the fireplace.

Always another hour to kill - only to beg some god
to give it back. If not the attic, the car. If not the car,

the dream. If not the boy, his clothes. If not alive,
put down the phone. Because the year is a distance

we've traveled in circles. Which is to say: this is how
we danced: alone in sleeping bodies. Which is to say:

This is how we loved: a knife on the tongue turning
into a tongue. ~ Ocean Vuong

Jules: Emma. I need you, always, always think about you, I was wishing you were with me in that goddamned attic and then I turned around and you were there, like you heard me, like you're always there when I need you ... ~ Cassandra Clare

I like attics. They're as peaceful as God's church. Alone and apart, but a body can hear everything. The past stacked up like forgotten memories, but with a small effort, brought down and enjoyed again. ~ Kim Harrison

Besides, it somehow helped to imagine that the orders came from somewhere else, somewhere unknowable and irresistible. It was nice to have an attic in which to stack the blame. Friendly ~ Joe Abercrombie

The large, gaping flaws in the construction of the stories
mad wives in the attic, strange apparitions in Belgium
are a representation of the life she could not face; these gothic subterfuges represent the mind at a breaking point, frantic to find any way out. If the flaws are only to be attributed to the practicce of popular fiction of the time, we cannot then explain the large amount of genuine feeling that goes into them. They stand for the hidden wishes of an intolerable life. ~ Elizabeth Hardwick

Venice is a Dorian Gray city. Somewhere up there in the world's attic, there's another place with the haggard, poxed and ravaged face of unspeakable evil. And I suspect it's Cardiff. ~ A.A. Gill

Don't you think we're going to go to hell for this?" asked Lissa.
He reached out and touched her face, trailing his fingers along her cheek and neck and down to the top of her silky shirt. She breathed heavily at that touch, at the way it could be so gentle and small, yet evoke such a strong passion within her.
"For this?" He played with the shirt's edge, letting his finger just barely brush inside of it.
"No," she laughed. "For this." She gestured around the attic. "This is a church. We shouldn't be doing this kind of, um, thing up here."
"Not true," he argued. Gently, he pushed her onto her back and leaned over her. "The church is downstairs. This is just storage. God won't mind. ~ Richelle Mead

So many old and lovely things are stored in the world's attic because we don't want them around us and we don't dare throw them out. ~ John Steinbeck