Closing The Door Behind You Quotes

He was already beginning, as always happens at a respectable age, to take a firm stand for Raphael and the old masters––not because he was fully convinced of their lofty merit, but so as to shove them in the faces of young artists. ~ Nikolai Gogol

A few silent moments later, Peter tells me it's time to go. He barely looks at me, scowls at the back wall instead. I suppose it would have been too much to ask, to see a friendly face this morning. I stand, and together we walk down the hallway.
My toes are cold. My feet stick to the tiles. We turn a corner, and I hear muffled shouts. At first I can't tell what the voice is saying, but as we draw closer, it takes shape.
"I want to…her!" Tobias. "I…see her!"
I glance at Peter. "I can't speak to him one last time, can I?"
Peter shakes his head. "There's a window, though. Maybe if he sees you he'll finally shut up."
He takes me down a dead-end corridor that's only six feet long. At the end is a door, and Peter is right, there's a small window near the top, about a foot above my head.
"Tris!" Tobias's voice is even clearer here. "I want to see her!"
I reach up and press my palm to the glass. The shouts stop, and his face appears behind the glass. His eyes are red; his face, blotchy. Handsome. He stares down at me for a few seconds and then presses his hand to the glass so it lines up with mine. I pretend I can feel the warmth of it through the window.
He leans his forehead against the door and squeezes his eyes shut.
I take my hand down and turn away before he can open his eyes. I feel pain in my chest, worse than when I got shot in the shoulder. I clutch the front of my shirt, blink away tears, and rejoin Peter in the main hallway. < ~ Veronica Roth

As iAm cracked the door to his brother's room, the poor bastard's suffering stained the very air, making it hard to breathe - and even see properly.
Then again, everything was dark by design.
"Trez?"
The moaned answer was nothing good, a combination of wounded animal and sore throat from throwing up.
iAm lifted his wrist into the light streaming in from behind and cursed at his Piaget.
By this time, the SOB should have been solidly in recovery, his body digging itself out of the headache hole that had swallowed him. Not the case.
"You want something for your stomach?"
Mumble, mumble, groan, mumble?
"Okay, I'm sure they've got some."
Mumble, moan, moan. Mutter, mutter.
"Yeah, that, too. You want some Milanos?"
Mmmmmmmmmoan.
"Roger that. ~ J.R. Ward

They migrated to the usual room on the second floor. Heywood Broun was there by the door, setting up bottles of gin, scotch and beer. Alexander Woollcott sat ensconced behind the round table (not THE Round Table). He shuffled the cards and stacked up poker chips.

Dorothy stopped in the doorway and watched what they were doing. 'You boys sure know how to treat a woman,' she said. 'Liquor in the front and poker in the rear. ~ J.J. Murphy

The definition of a gentleman is a man who enters a revolving door in front of you and exits behind you. ~ Chloe Thurlow

As for me, some days I believe in God, and some days I do not."
Then Dodger said, "Is that allowed?"
Solomon pushed the door open and then fussily began locking it up again behind him. "Dodger, you fail to understand the unique arrangements between Jewish people and God. ~ Terry Pratchett

You run off when things get a little more complicated than you'd like, and leave us to cover your tracks so the whole valley doesn't find out that Hytanica bloody lost its King-meanwhile, the Cokyrians are infiltrating our lands to the north, so it becomes entirely possible that you've walked right into their camp. We have men out there still searching for you,men who should be helping to barricade the northern border-to make sure that in a week you still have a kingdom to rule. And you have the gall to strut in here and be an ass! I swear, Steldo, if we didn't need someone to sit on that throne, I'd dispatch you with my own hands!"
The two erstwhile companions stared at each other, Galen challenging Steldor to respond, and Steldor too staggered to do so.Eventually,the sergeant threw his hands in the air and marched into his office,slamming the door behind him.
In the silence that followed Galen's departure, I came to appreciate the true meaning of the word awkward. Steldor did not rise to his feet, and his eyes were glazed. I felt un-needed,but there was no way for me to make a polished exit. The Palace Gaurds,bound by duty to remaind, searched the walls, the floor, the ceiling, for anything plausible in which to show an interest, not wanting to be caught gawking at their King. ~ Cayla Kluver

You may not realize initially how many other opportunities are wrapped up inside the first one. After you go through the first door, you'll then discover more doors automatically opening behind that one. One door leads you to another door, which leads to another door, and so one. It's like ten other boxes packed inside one box. The initial door that God opens is your access to more opportunities. But you must be willing to walk through the first one to get to the other good things God has for you. ~ George Foreman

I'd been trying to get high off of bath salts unsuccessfully for twenty minutes when Lucas walked in and shut the door behind him.

Yeah, I was using again. Or at least trying. Shit, I wasn't even good at being a drug addict. How embarrassing was that?

"Don't even think about it." I sniffed, trying to light up the little rocks of salt. How the fuck could you get high on them? I needed new mates. New, young, loser mates who'd teach me how to get high on pathetic things. ~ L.J. Shen

So you scream from behind your door, say what's mine is mine, and not yours
I may have too much, but I'll take my chances
Cause God's stopped keeping score
And you cling to the things they sold you
Didn't you cover your eyes when they told you that he can't come back
Cause he has no children to come back for
It so hard to learn, there's so much to hate
Hanging on to hope when there is no hope to speak of
And the wounded skies above say it's much too late
So maybe we should all be praying for time ~ George Michael

Dear girl with the red scarf,
People will come and go in our lives. Most of them we won't give a second thought to as soon as the door closes behind them. But I had always imagined that you would leave the deepest, everlasting mark.
-Mr. Universe. ~ Maria La Serra

Okay, you've primped enough. Now go bug someone else," Ethan said, shooing me out the door. "I have to clean the bathroom." "That should be interesting," I quipped. "Maybe I should stay and watch." "Maybe you should stay and help." Cupping one hand behind my ear, I grinned, pretending to listen. "I think I hear Marc calling. ~ Rachel Vincent

In a vivid parable to Soeur Philippine Molinéry, Bernadette asks, "What do you do with a broom when you're done sweeping?" Soeur Philippine got surprised and answered, "What kind of a Question is that?"
"Yes, I am asking you where you put it when you are done with it?
"'....In a corner behind the door.'
Then gleefully Bernadette said, "Well, I was like a broomstick for the Blessed Virgin; when she no longer needed me, she put me in my place behind the door.'
And with a clap of her hands, she added, "Here I am and here I'll stay."
"Both her voice and gesture were very happy," the witness went on to say. ~ St. Bernadette

I love you."
The words come out almost in a panic, as if there's no time. As if he's about to walk into Eden again, and I've got to say it before he disappears behind the door.
"I love you too."
Jimmy' response startles me back to the room, the tobacco tin forgotten in my hand. I close it and set it on the counter, afraid of whatever drug it is inside that has me hallucinating.
"I must be losing my mind," I say, shaking my head. "I thought I just heard you say that you loved me."
"I did," Jimmy replies.
"You did?"
"Of course. You said it to me first. It woulda been rude to leave ya hangin' there, wouldn't it? ~ Ryan Winfield

Told you, something's good, it's worth fightin' for but not if you're the only one fightin'.
Then he opened the door, slamming it behind him and stalked out. ~ Kristen Ashley

I remember once, on a family skiing trip to the Alps, Dad's practical joking got all of us into a particularly tight spot.
I must have been about age ten at the time, and was quietly excited when Dad spotted a gag that was begging to be played out on the very serious-looking Swiss-German family in the room next door to us.
Each morning their whole family would come downstairs, the mother dressed head to toe in furs, the father in a tight-fitting ski suit and white neck scarf, and their slightly overweight, rather snooty-looking thirteen-year-old son behind, often pulling faces at me.
The hotel had the customary practice of having a breakfast form that you could hang on your door handle the night before if you wanted to eat in your room. Dad thought it would be fun to fill out our form, order 35 boiled eggs, 65 German sausages, and 17 kippers, then hang it on the Swiss-German family's door.
It was too good a gag to pass up.
We didn't tell Mum, who would have gone mad, but instead filled out the form with great hilarity, and sneaked out last thing before bed and hung it on their door handle.
At 7:00 A.M. we heard the father angrily sending the order back. So we repeated the gag the next day.
And the next.
Each morning the father got more and more irate, until eventually Mum got wind of what we had been doing and made me go around to apologize. (I don't know why I had to do the apologizing when the whole thing had been Dad's idea, but I gu ~ Bear Grylls

Did you just spit on your hand before you patted down my hair?" he asked indignantly.
"Oh, I did no such thing. Now be still. Of all the rude, impertinent accusations to make! Bend down lower. I will have you know that members of the aristocracy do not have 'spit' as you crudely refer to it, young man. We do not acknowledge saliva in any form. Straighten your collar. There, you look nearly presentable." She grumbled in aggravation, "Do you even own a brush?" Grabbing his chin, she brusquely turned his face from side to side. "For heaven's sake, Richard, what did you use to shave - a shovel?"
"Leave now, Catherine, and I may spare your life." There was a moment of quiet from behind the door. "Go, woman! I intend to begin ravishing my wife shortly; however, I will not even consider it before I see that little dwarflike body of yours waddling down this corridor! Away with you! Shoo!"
"Oh, all right!" she finally capitulated. "By the way, mon chou, I should tell you that when you two finally get around to reconciling and retire upstairs, Amanda is occupying the large blue suite down the east corridor, not your usual bachelor room at the end of the west corridor." She reached up to kiss his offered cheek then turned on her heels to leave. "You have finally earned an upgrade in accommodations, Richard. Well done, you. ~ Karen V. Wasylowski

How are you, Rory?' [the Doctor] asked.
I [Rory] ... answered him. 'It's been odd being you.'
'Isn't it?' The Doctor's smile didn't quite reach his eyes.
'How do you cope?'
'Ah ... ' The Doctor picked away at a scrap of loose paint on the door. 'Well, I just get as close as I can to a happy ending, then I shut the door behind me and move on.'
I nodded.
We shut the door behind us and moved on. ~ James Goss

What captivated me about you was that you opened the door to another world for me. The values that dominated my childhood had no place there. That world enchanted me. I could leave the real world behind and be someone else, without any ties or obligations. With you, I was elsewhere, in a foreign place, foreign to myself. You gave me access to another dimension when I'd always rejected any fixed identity and just worn different identities on top of each other, though none of them were mine.
By speaking to you in English, I made your language mine. I've continued to talk to you in English right up to this day, even when you answered me in French. For me, English, which I knew mainly through you and through books, was from the start like a private language that preserved our intimacy against the intrusion of the real world, and its prevailing social normals. I felt like I was building a protected and protective world with you. ~ Andre Gorz

Let me in! Quick, Caroline!"
Ma opened the door and Pa slammed it quickly behind him. He was out of breath. He pushed back his cap and said: "Whew! I'm scared yet."
"What was it, Charles?" said Ma.
"A panther," Pa said.
He had hurried as fast as he could go to Mr. Scott's. When he got there, the house was dark and everything was quiet. Pa went all around the house, listening, and looking with the lantern. He could not find a sign of anything wrong. So he felt like a fool, to think he had got up and dressed in the middle of the night and walked two miles, all because he heard the wind howl.
He did not want Mr. and Mrs. Scott to know about it. So he did not wake them up. He came home as fast as he could because the wind was bitter cold. And he was hurrying along the path, where it went on the edge of the bluff, when all of a sudden he heard that scream right under his feet.
"I tell you my hair stood up till it lifted my cap," he told Laura. "I lit out for home like a scared rabbit."
"Where was the panther, Pa?" she asked him.
"In a tree-top," said Pa. "In the top of that big cottonwood that grows against the bluffs there."
"Pa, did it come after you?" Laura asked, and he said, "I don't know, Laura."
"Well, you're safe now, Charles," said Ma.
"Yes, and I'm glad of it. This is too dark a night to be out with panthers," Pa said. ~ Laura Ingalls Wilder

Layla!" Don bounded into her sight. The door behind her was still bolted. Where had he come from?
The starshot tumbled from her hands and clattered to the floor. She snatched it up and slipped it back inside her dress. Bill was gone.But Don was-Daniel was right where she wanted him to be.
"What are you doing here?" Her voice broke with the force of having to act surprised to see him.
He didn't seem to hear it.He rushed toward her and wrapped her in his arms. "Saving your life."
"How did you get in?"
"Don't worry about that.No mortal man, no slab of stone can obstruct a love as true as ours. I will always find you."
In his bare, bronzed arms, it was Luce's instinct to feel comforted. But she couldn't right then.Her heart felt ragged and cold.This easy happiness, these feelings of complete trust, every one of the lovely emotions Daniel had shown her how to feel in every life-they were torture to her now.
"Fear not," he whispered. "Let me tell you, my love, what happens after this life.You come back,you rise again. Your rebirth is beautiful and real.You come back to me,again and again-"
The light from the lamp flickered and made his violet eyes sparkle.His body was so warm against hers.
"But I die again and again."
"What?" He tilted his head.Even when his physique looked exotic to her, she knew his expressions so well-that bemused adoration when she expressed something he hadn't expected her to understand. "How do you-Never mind. ~ Lauren Kate

Leaving the day to itself, you close the door behind you and pour a bowl of cereal, then another, and would a third if you didn't interrupt yourself with the statement - you aren't hungry.
Appetite won't attach you to anything no matter how depleted you feel. ~ Claudia Rankine

You may be keeping accounts, and presently you shall walk out of the door that for so long has seemed to you the barrier of your ideals, and shall find yourself before an audience - the pen still behind your ear, the ink stains on your fingers and then and there shall pour out the torrent of your inspiration. ~ James Allen

I remember standing against the bar in Budapest's airport with a couple of workmates, some chaps from McLaren too, waiting for our homeward flight to be called after the '92 race weekend. The chap behind the counter was doing the exact same thing: halving and squeezing oranges. Funny how these things spark memories. It was an exceedingly hot afternoon that day, and I remember seeing James Hunt walk through the door with Murray Walker. We were waiting for the same flight, a charter to London; I think pretty much the whole of the paddock's British contingent was on it. Murray looked perfectly normal . . . like Murray really . . . open-necked shirt, briefcase, what have you; but James was wearing nothing but a pair of red shorts. He carried a ticket, a passport and a packet of cigarettes. That was it. There wasn't even a pair of flip-flops to spoil the perfect minimalist look.
The thing that really made the event stick in my mind, though, was that James was absolutely at ease with himself, perfectly comfortable. This was real for him, no stunt or affectation designed to impress or shock, this was genuine: James Hunt, former world champion driver, current commentator for the BBC; work done for the day . . . going home. Take me, leave me; do what you bloody well want, just don't give me a hard time about your own petty hang-ups. He became a hero of mine that day. Sadly, his heart gave out the following summer and that was that. He was only forty-five. Mind you, he'd certainly ~ Steve Matchett

Ms. Terwilliger didn't have a chance to respond to my geological ramblings because someone knocked on the door. I slipped the rocks into my pocket and tried to look studious as she called an entry. I figured Zoe had tracked me down, but surprisingly, Angeline walked in.
"Did you know," she said, "that it's a lot harder to put organs back in the body than it is to get them out?"
I closed my eyes and silently counted to five before opening them again. "Please tell me you haven't eviscerated someone."
She shook her head. "No, no. I left my biology homework in Miss Wentworth's room, but when I went back to get it, she'd already left and locked the door. But it's due tomorrow, and I'm already in trouble in there, so I had to get it. So, I went around outside, and her window lock wasn't that hard to open, and I - "
"Wait," I interrupted. "You broke into a classroom?"
"Yeah, but that's not the problem."
Behind me, I heard a choking laugh from Ms. Terwilliger's desk.
"Go on," I said wearily.
"Well, when I climbed through, I didn't realize there was a bunch of stuff in the way, and I crashed into those plastic models of the human body she has. You know, the life size ones with all the parts inside? And bam!" Angeline held up her arms for effect. "Organs everywhere." She paused and looked at me expectantly. "So what are we going to do? I can't get in trouble with her."
"We?" I exclaimed.
"Here," said Ms. Terwilliger. I turned around, an ~ Richelle Mead

Belief In Self
If you quit while pursuing your dreams, you will never know how close you've come to success. It might have been hidden behind that next door you decided not to open, since the last fifty doors revealed little or nothing. ~ Kamil Ali

Nykyrian shifted to one side of the door frame. "Stop stalling, asshole. Do you honestly think I'd be stupid enough to stand here until your partner comes up behind me?" He snapped his fingers.
An unconscious man was shoved through the door. Pitala cursed.
"I really hate taking out the trash." Syn joined Nykyrian as he wiped his hands together.
-Nykyrian, Pitala, & Syn ~ Sherrilyn Kenyon

Behind the door lies the question: Have you ever heard of a thing called knocking? ~ Jarod Kintz

Is there a sense in which you miss being behind a locked door?" Ma turns to Morris. "Is she allowed to ask me such stupid questions?" The ~ Emma Donoghue

The door handle turned. Someone knocked, and a man's voice called, "Uh, hello?"
Valkyrie looked at Skulduggery, looked back at the others, looked at Skulduggery again.
"Hello," Skulduggery said, speaking loudly to be heard over the alarm.
"Hi," said the man. "The door's locked."
"Is it?"
"Yes."
"That's funny" said Skulduggery. "Hold on a moment." He reached out, jiggled the handle a few times, then stepped back. "Yes, it's locked. You wouldn't happen to have the key, would you?"
There was a delay in response from the other side. "I'm sorry," the man called, "Who am I speaking with?"
Skulduggery tilted his head. "Who am I speaking with?"
"This is Oscar Nightfall."
"Are you sure?"
"What?"
"Are you sure you are who you say you are? This is the Great Chamber, after all. It's a very important place for very important people. It is not beyond the realms of possibility that someone, and I'm not saying that this applies to you in particular, but someone could conceivably lie about who they are in order to gain access to this room. I have to be vigilant, especially now. There's a war on, you know."
Oscar Nightfall sounded puzzled. Who are you?"
"Me? I'm nobody. I'm a cleaner. I'm one of the cleaners. I was cleaning the thrones and the door shut behind me. Now I can't get out. Could you try and find a key?"
"What's your name? Give me you name."
"No. It's mine."
"Tell me your name!"
"My name is Os ~ Derek Landy

Thoughts of You
There were times when I was with him and it was too much. Does that make sense? When someone stirs a world of emotion in you and it's so intense you can barely stand to be with him.
During those moments, I wanted so desperately to leave - to go home, walk into my bedroom, and shut the door behind me. Crawl into bed and lay there in the dark, tracing the outline of my lips with my fingers - replaying everything he said, everything we did. I wanted to be left alone - with nothing other than my thought of him. ~ Lang Leav