Chengs Asian House Quotes

No surprises" is the motto of the franchise ghetto, its Good Housekeeping seal, subliminally blazoned on every sign and logo that make up the curves and grids of light that outline the Basin. The people of America, who live in the world's most surprising and terrible country, take comfort in that motto. Follow the loglo outward, to where the growth is enfolded into the valleys and the canyons, and you find the land of the refugees. They have fled from the true America, the America of atomic bombs, scalpings, hip-hop, chaos theory, cement overshoes, snake handlers, spree killers, space walks, buffalo jumps, drive-bys, cruise missiles, Sherman's March, gridlock, motorcycle gangs, and bun-gee jumping. They have parallel-parked their bimbo boxes in identical computer-designed Burbclave street patterns and secreted themselves in symmetrical sheetrock shitholes with vinyl floors and ill-fitting woodwork and no sidewalks, vast house farms out in the loglo wilderness, a culture medium for a medium culture. The only ones left in the city are street people, feeding off debris; immigrants, thrown out like shrapnel from the destruction of the Asian powers; young bohos; and the technomedia priesthood of Mr. Lee's Greater Hong Kong. Young smart people like Da5id and Hiro, who take the risk of living in the city because they like stimulation and they know they can handle it. ~ Neal Stephenson

Silence descended on the house. [....] Amma must have sensed that this was the sort of silence that, left unchallenged, could consume the family from within. ~ Vivek Shanbhag

I like to be around people, so I ended up being roommates, right? I had a house. I lived with four guys. ~ Kevin McCarthy

Find some people you give a shit about. Who care about you. Who are smarter than you are. Find a woman. Who laughs at you. Who'll kick your ass out of the house. You find that woman and she's the same woman who'll throw herself in front of a truck for you? Well, then you're somewhere. ~ Alexander Maksik

She had nothing against any of the other guests, but once she started she saw no way to stop. There was nothing to do but turn the hose against every arriving guest. No one coming out of the house to reason with her was safe either. ~ Katherine Paterson

I started buying records in the '80s. I listened to everything new wave, disco, funk synth-pop, rock, but in my house we were listening to bossa nova, tango, and folk. ~ Juan Campodonico

I wanted people to come to the restaurant and feel at home, so I put it in a house. ~ Alice Waters

Women's voices aren't heard often enough. Congress should reflect the population, but with only 20 percent women in the Senate and 18 percent in the House, it just doesn't. ~ Kirsten Gillibrand

I don't understand what people's fascination is with [our] relationship. If we're in the same city, we go out ... Sometimes when I'm in L.A., I stay at his [Ben Affleck's] house. But it's not what people think. We're not together, I swear on my life. ~ Gwyneth Paltrow

Less than twenty-four hours ago, I had a family and a home and a dreamworld I thought was as close to heaven as you could get without dying.
I have none of that now.
My brother is dead. My parents threw me out of the house - again - with barely enough to fill a small suitcase. And my dreamworld? I was right when I figured that, if God ever did exist, he turned his back on humanity centuries ago. ~ Erica Cameron

One of the earliest institutions in every New England community was a pair of stocks. The first public building was a meeting-house, but often before any house of God was builded, the devil got his restraining engine. ~ Alice Morse Earle

In his essay,Agastya had said that his real ambition was to be a domesticated male stray dog because they lived the best life.They were assured of food,and because they were stray they didn't have to guard a house or beg or shake paws or fetch trifles or be clean or anything similarly meaningless to earn their food.They were servile and sycophantic when hungry;once fed,and before sleep,they wagged their tails perfunctorily whenever their hosts passes,as an investment for future meals.A stray dog was free,he slept a lot,barked unexpectedly and only when he wanted to,and got a lot of sex. ~ Upamanyu Chatterjee

From Orient Point

The art of living isn't hard to muster:
Enjoy the hour, not what it might portend.
When someone makes you promises, don't trust her

unless they're in the here and now, and just her
willing largesse free-handed to a friend.
The art of living isn't hard to muster:

groom the old dog, her coat gets back its luster;
take brisk walks so you're hungry at the end.
When someone makes you promises, don't trust her

to know she can afford what they will cost her
to keep until they're kept. Till then, pretend
the art of living isn't hard to muster.

Cooking, eating and drinking are a cluster
of pleasures. Next time, don't go round the bend
when someone makes you promises. Don't trust her

past where you'd trust yourself, and don't adjust her
words to mean more to you than she'd intend.
The art of living isn't hard to muster.

You never had her, so you haven't lost her
like spare house keys. Whatever she opens,
when someone makes you promises, don't. Trust your
art; go on living: that's not hard to muster. ~ Marilyn Hacker

A house doesn't make a home. When the place has got history, family, emotions, worries, joys worked into the wood, that's when it gets a solid threshold. ~ Jim Butcher

When you live in a small house with five younger siblings, it's actually far more sensible - and much quicker - to cry alone. ~ Caitlin Moran

Eventually Theo would pick up their daughter, kiss the top of her head, and carry her to an old spruce stump. He'd crouch down, gather up the beach glass that was still scattered there, and whisper in her ear. "Let's build a fairy house. ~ Susan Elizabeth Phillips

I don't believe any more in democracy. But I can't believe in the old sort of aristocracy, either, nor can I wish it back, splendid as it was. What I believe in is the old Homeric aristocracy, when the grandeur was inside a man, and he lived in a simple wooden house. ~ D.H. Lawrence

Whenever we have had a need for a national security or public safety issue, Congress has always followed the recommendations of the White House, regardless of who is in control, giving them the resources to keep America safe and to enforce our laws. ~ Jim Sensenbrenner

White men get a choice. They get to choose they job, they house. They get to choose to make black babies, then disappear into thin air, like they wasn't never there to begin with, like these black women they slept with or raped done laid on top of themselves and got pregnant. White men get to choose for black men too. Used to sell 'em; now they just send 'em to prison like my daddy, so that they can't be with they kids. ~ Yaa Gyasi

The house stank; a stench all its own pervaded every corner. It was a threnody in the key of Cat minor, with a ground-bass of Old Dog, and modulations of old people, waning lives, and relinquished hopes. ~ Robertson Davies

Each work of criticism is supposed to build on the body of work, to increase the total sum of human understanding. It's not like filling your house with more and more beautiful wicker baskets. It's supposed to be cumulative - it believes in progress. ~ Elif Batuman

For it was important to have things to tell which interested your friends. And Miss Hearne had always been able to find interesting happenings where other people would find only dullness. It was, she often felt, a gift which was one of the great rewards of a solitary life. And a necessary gift. Because, when you were a single girl, you had to find interesting things to talk about. Other women always had their children and shopping and running a house to chat about. Besides which, their husbands often told them interesting stories. But a single girl was in a different position. People simply didn't want to hear how she managed things like accommodation and budgets. She had to find other subjects and other subjects were mostly other people. So people she knew, people she had heard of, people she saw in the street, people she had read about, they all had to be collected and gone through like a basket of sewing so that the most interesting bits about them could be picked out and fitted together to make conversation. ~ Brian Moore

Once a man and his wife were sitting by the entrance to their house. They had a roasted chicken in front of them and were about to eat it when the man saw his father coming toward them. So the man quickly grab the chicken and hid it because he didn't want to give him any. The old man came, had a drink, and went away. As the son reached to put the roasted chicken back on the table, he found that it had turned into a large toad, which then spring onto his face, sat right on it, and wouldn't leave him. If anyone tried to take it off, the toad would look at the person viciously as if it wanted to spring right into his face, too. So nobody dared touch it. And the ungrateful son had to feed the toad every day, otherwise, it would have eaten away part of his face. Thus the son wandered aimlessly all over the world. ~ Jacob Grimm

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

Give me a reason not to kill Ryzek right now, Noavek," Teka said, turning to me. "And if that reason is something about Kereseth, I will hit you."
"If you kill him, you won't have my cooperation in whatever plan the renegades concoct next," I said dully, without looking at her. "If you help me keep him alive, I'll help you conquer Shotet."
"Yeah? And what kind of help would you be, exactly?"
"Oh, I don't know, Teka," I snapped, finally breaking my spell to glare at her. "Yesterday the renegades were just squatting in a safe house in Voa, clueless, and now, because of me, you're standing over the unconscious body of Ryzek Noavek with Voa in utter chaos behind you. I think that suggests my capacity to help the renegade cause is considerable, don't you? ~ Veronica Roth

But what stupendous good fortune! What an answer to prayer. A guest house, and a charming hostess. My Rolls Royce, alas, has run into a snowdrift. blinding snow everywhere. I do not know where I am. Perhaps, I think to myself, I shall freeze to death. And then I take a little bag, I stagger through the snow, I see before me big iron gates. A habitation! I am saved. Twice I fall into the snow as I come up your drive, but at last I arrive and immediately - despair turns to joy. You can let me have a room - yes? ~ Agatha Christie

Outside, Her Ladyship coaxed her dog back toward the house, lifting both dog and cart up the few steps to her door. Gabe turned away from the window, rubbing his temples.
"The situation is untenable, and that makes the house unsellable. No one wants to live next to a barnyard. I've tried reasoning with her, but when it comes to those animals, she's surprisingly tenacious."
Tenacious, indeed. And sufficiently reckless to trespass in a house after midnight and recover a parrot from a near-naked stranger's shoulder.
However, even that degree of tenacity had poor odds against sheer ruthlessness. Lady Penelope Campion had a softness for animals. ~ Tessa Dare

After he left the house, she dried her hair and dressed in a pair of old, comfortable jeans and a white hoodie. Ordinarily, she'd take the time to put on makeup, but today she didn't feel the need to hide anything. She was who she was: a woman who'd survived a war of the heart and had the wrinkles to prove it. (Night Road, page 382) ~ Kristin Hannah

Windfall"

What is love if it is not an unravelling

against the dark? In the moonless field
between house and river, remember

how you stood with your arms
wide to the night, under every tumid
star, waiting for one to drop. ~ John Glenday

My show 'The Big House' was picked up; they flew me to New York. I'm about to step on stage to announce Kevin Hart's 'The Big House.' And a hand grabs my shoulder, 'Kevin no, they just decided to cancel it.' It's a serious smack-in-the-face business, and either you can take it, or you can't. ~ Kevin Hart

Just that winter she had found herself saying to a young woman who worked with her at the tasting bar on Saturdays that between a man and a woman there was always one person who was stronger than the other one. 'That doesn't mean the weaker one doesn't love the stronger,' she'd pleaded. The girl looked at her blankly. But for my mother what mattered was that as she spoke, she had suddenly identified herself as the weaker one. This revelation sent her reeling. What had she thought all those years but the opposite?
She pulled her chair as close to his head as she could and laid her face on the edge of his pillow to watch him breathing, to see the flutter of the eye beneath his eyelid when he dreamed. How could it be that you could love someone so far from home? She had put billboards and roads in between them, throwing roadblocks behind her and ripping off the rearview mirror, and thought that that would make him disappear? erase their life and children?
It was so simple, as she watched him, as his regular breathing calmed her, that she did not even see it happening at first. She began to think of the rooms in our house and the hours that she had worked so hard to forget spent inside of them. Like fruit put up in jars and forgotten about, the sweetness seemed even more distilled as she returned. There on that shelf were all the dates and silliness of thier early love, the braid that began to form of their dreams, the solid root of a burgeoning family. The first solid ~ Alice Sebold

And Joseph also went up from Galilee, out of the city of Nazareth, into Judaea, unto the city of David, which is called Bethlehem; (because he was of the house and lineage of David ~ Anonymous

So anyway," he continued.
That's when we heard the loud knocking on the pickup window. I jumped through the roof--it was after 2:00 A.M. Who on earth could it be? The Son of Sam--it had to be! Marlboro Man rolled down the window, and a huge cloud of passion and steam escaped. It wasn't the Son of Sam. Worse--it was my mother. And she was wearing her heather gray cashmere robe.
"Reeee?" she sang. "Is that yoooou?" She leaned closer and peered through the window.
I slid off of Marlboro Man's lap and gave her a halfhearted wave. "Uh…hi, Mom. Yeah. It's just me."
She laughed. "Oh, okay…whew! I just didn't know who was out here. I didn't recognize the car!" She looked at Marlboro Man, whom she'd met only one time before, when he picked me up for a date.
"Well, hello again!" she exclaimed, extending her manicured hand.
He took her hand and shook it gently. "Hello, ma'am," he replied, his voice still thick with lust and emotion. I sank in my seat. I was an adult, and had just been caught parking at 2:00 A.M. in the driveway of my parents' house by my robe-wearing mother. She'd seen the foggy windows. She'd seen me sitting on his lap. I felt like I'd just gotten grounded.
"Well, okay, then," my mom said, turning around. "Good night, you two!" And with that, she flitted back into the house.
Marlboro Man and I looked at each other. I hid my face in my hands and shook my head. He chuckled, opened the door, and said, "C'mon…I'd better get you home ~ Ree Drummond

Home, the idea of home, is my principal purpose. If people have bought a house as an investment or chosen the furniture because they'll be able to sell it for more, you can tell in two minutes. You know, our parents didn't buy a house as an investment. They bought it as a place to bring you up, to give you roots. ~ Sister Parish

I definitely keep myself to myself; I don't really go out. If my friends want to see me, they know to come around to my house. ~ FKA Twigs

Surely you remember the boy in your own school class who was exceptionally "bright", did most of the reciting and answering while the others sat like so many leaden idols, hating him. And wasn't it this bright boy you selected for beatings and tortures after hours? Of course it was. We must all be alike. Not everyone born free and equal, as the Constitution says, but everyone made equal. Each man the image of every other; then all are happy, for there are no mountains to make them cower, to judge themselves against. So! A book is a loaded gun in the house next door. ~ Ray Bradbury