Cupboards Quotes

It's a comfort to always find pasta in the cupboard and garlic and parsley in the garden. ~ Alice Waters

Vegetarian and frugal it may be, but the chickpea is one of the most versatile ingredients you could keep in your cupboards. ~ Yotam Ottolenghi

He went through the cupboards, found the olive oil, and started upstairs again. He glanced down at the green and gold label and had to bite back a laugh at the words Extra Virgin.
That about summed it up. ~ Josh Lanyon

'Dog Days' was recorded with pens and the wall, and half a stolen drum kit that was out of tune, in what was basically a cupboard. The only instrument I could really play was my voice, so we just layered everything a hundred times. It was enthusiasm over skill. ~ Florence Welch

England is not the jewelled isle of Shakespeare's much-quoted message, nor is it the inferno depicted by Dr Goebbels. More than either it resembles a family, a rather stuffy Victorian family, with not many black sheep in it but with all its cupboards bursting with skeletons. It has rich relations who have to be kow-towed to and poor relations who are horribly sat upon, and there is a deep conspiracy of silence about the source of the family income. It is a family in which the young are generally thwarted and most of the power is in the hands of irresponsible uncles and bedridden aunts. Still, it is a family. It has its private language and its common memories, and at the approach of an enemy it closes its ranks. A family with the wrong members in control - that, perhaps is as near as one can come to describing England in a phrase. ~ George Orwell

Henry successfully kept his mind on the game, which might seem strange for a boy who slept beside a wall of magic. But baseball was as magical to him as a green, mossy mountain covered in ancient trees. What's more, baseball was a magic he could run around in and laugh about. While the magic of the cupboards was not necessarily good, the smell of leather mixed with dusty sweat and spitting and running through sparse grass after a small ball couldn't be anything else. ~ N.D. Wilson

Lyle and Luann are strict Pentecostal. They don't have indoor plumbing, and decades from now, at the time of the trials, they still won't. They don't play music. They take in children who need help, they're kind like that - but sometimes, with Luann's sternness and the way they keep taking in children even when the cupboards are bare, you never can tell if it's generosity or if it's that God won't give them enough suffering to prove their faith to him, and so they'll arrange privation themselves. ~ Alexandria Marzano-Lesnevich

But now, sitting on this airplane on my way back to the life I went on to fashion after she left, I think of her differently. I see her so many ways: sitting back on her heels at the side of the bathtub, singing softly as she washes Sharla and my backs; watching at the window for the six o'clock arrival of our father; wrapping Christmas presents on the wide expanse of her bed; biting her lip as she stood before the open cupboards, making out the grocery list; leaning out the kitchen window that last summer to call Sharla and me in for supper. Most clearly, though, I see her sitting at the kitchen table, in her old, usual spot. There is a cup of coffee before her, but she doesn't drink it. Instead, she stares out the window. I see the sharp angle of her cheekbone, the beautiful whitish down at the side of face, illuminated by the sun. Her hands are quiet, resting in the cloth bowl of her apron. She sits still as a statue - waiting, I can see now; she was always waiting. -What We Keep ~ Elizabeth Berg

Some secrets can't be kept too long. No matter how hard you try to hide them, sooner or later they scurry out from your cupboards, cockroaches on the run. ~ Ellen Hopkins

Edison pressed on and designed a range of concrete furnishings - bureaus, cupboards, chairs, even a concrete piano - to go with his concrete houses. He promised that soon he would offer, for just $5, a double bed that would never wear out. The entire range was to be unveiled at a cement industry show in New York in 1912. In the event, when the show opened, the Edison stand was bare. No one from the Edison company ever offered an explanation. It was the last anyone ever heard of concrete furniture. As far as is known, Edison never discussed the matter. A ~ Bill Bryson

What woman, however old, has not the bridal-favours and raiment stowed away, and packed in lavender, in the inmost cupboards of her heart? ~ William Makepeace Thackeray

I like my old nose. If I could get it out the cupboard and put it on, then I would. ~ Katie Price

There are all sorts of families," Tom's grandmother had remarked, and over the following few weeks Tom became part of the Casson family, as Micheal and Sarah and Derek-from-the-camp had done before him.
He immediately discovered that being a member of the family was very different from being a welcome friend. If you were a Casson family member, for example, and Eve drifted in from the shed asking, "Food? Any ideas? Or shall we not bother?" then you either joined in the search of the kitchen cupboards or counted the money in the housekeeping jam jar and calculated how many pizzas you could afford. Also, if you were a family member you took care of Rose, helped with homework (Saffron and Sarah were very strict about homework), unloaded the washing machine, learned to fold up Sarah's wheelchair, hunted for car keys, and kept up the hopeful theory that in the event of a crisis Bill Casson would disengage himself from his artistic life in London and rush home to help. ~ Hilary McKay

Some medical beast had revived tar-water in those days as a fine medicine, and Mrs. Joe always kept a supply of it in the cupboard; having a belief in its virtues correspondent to its nastiness. At the best of times, so much of this elixir was administered to me as a choice restorative, that I was conscious of going about, smelling like a new fence. ~ Charles Dickens

What, no wine?" said Dantes, turning pale, and looking alternately at the hollow cheeks of the old man and the empty cupboards. "What, no wine? Have you wanted money, father? ~ Alexandre Dumas

she had plenty of time as she went down to look about her and to wonder what was going to happen next. First, she tried to look down and make out what she was coming to, but it was too dark to see anything; then she looked at the sides of the well, and noticed that they were filled with cupboards and book-shelves; here and there she saw maps and pictures hung upon pegs. ~ Lewis Carroll

The ideal vacuum cleaner would be one you never see. It needs to not just be a cool gadget, but a product that cleans your floor correctly. I can imagine people having a cupboard full of robots that only come out when you need them to fulfil a specific purpose. ~ Colin Angle

The first thing you have to understand is that I was not desperate to be a writer. I was never a closet writer filing away notes in a cupboard. ~ Vikas Swarup

A plague of ennui afflicted London's many prophets. Warning signs were discarded, pamphlets pulped, megaphones thrown into cupboards. Those who could count questionable presences insisted that even since the Architeuthis had disappeared, something new had been walking. Something driven and intense and intent on itself. And since shortly after that, it had unfolded again and become something a little more itself, emerged from a pupa of unspecificity
into sentience, a obsessive moment of now that trod heavy in time.
No, they didn't really know what that mean, either, but that was their very strong impression. And it was freaking them out. ~ China Mieville

The cat which isn't let out of the bag often becomes a skeleton in the cupboard. ~ Geoffrey Madan

Open your refrigerator, your freezer, your kitchen cupboards, and look at the labels on your food. You'll find 'natural flavor' or 'artificial flavor' in just about every list of ingredients. The similarities between these two broad categories are far more significant than the differences. ~ David Chang

By November, you wish you were dead. You want nothing more. Every day, every fucking day, you run up the steps of the house, breathing hard, swing open the cupboards, thinking: You pitiful little bitch. Fucking cow. Greedy pig. All day, your stomach pinches and spits up its bile. You sway when you walk. You begin to get cold again. ~ Marya Hornbacher

Real life security and contentment come not from putting a gun in the cupboard, but from taking a role in the world's future. ~ Bob Brown

The stove, the bins, the cupboards, I had learned forever, make an inviolable throne room. From them I ruled; temporarily I controlled. I felt powerful, and I loved that feeling. ~ Mary Francis Kennedy Fisher

I use a lot of fresh citrus, garlic, and fresh herbs when cooking to cut down on fat and sodium but punch up flavor. Our cupboards and fridge are full of condiments - mustards, vinegars, etc. that also add tons of flavor but are low in fat, calories, or other processed additives. ~ Cat Cora

Everything was curved to fit the walls: the stove, the sink and the cupboards, and all of it had been painted with flowers, insects and birds in bright primary colours. ~ J.K. Rowling

His hand was a claw, sharp enough to open her. She would be like all the others - Ruta Badowski, in her broken dancing shoes. Tommy Duffy, still with the dirt of his last baseball game under his nails. Gabriel Johnson, taken on the best day of his life. Or even Mary White, holding out for a future that never arrived. She'd be like all those beautiful, shining boys marching off to war, rifles at their hips and promises on their lips to their best girls that they'd be home in time for Christmas, the excitement of the game showing in their bright faces. They'd come home men, heroes with adventures to tell about, how they'd walloped the enemy and put the world right side up again, funneled it into neat lines of yes and no. Black and white. Right and wrong. Here and there. Us and them. Instead, they had died tangled in barbed wire in Flanders, hollowed by influenza along the Western Front, blown apart in no-man's-land, writhing in trenches with those smiles still in place, courtesy of the phosgene, chlorine, or mustard gas. Some had come home shell-shocked and blinking, hands shaking, mumbling to themselves, following orders in some private war still taking place in their minds. Or, like James, they'd simply vanished, relegated to history books no one bothered to read, medals put in cupboards kept closed. Just a bunch of chess pieces moved about by unseen hands in a universe bored with itself. ~ Libba Bray

The cupboards start opening and closing by themselves, drawers slamming shut and the walls start to bleed. Slamming doors and smashing plates. Anna is acting like a common poltergeist. How embarrassing. ~ Kendare Blake

I have a tendency when I feel myself getting stuck, my impulse is to go to my cupboard and find chips to eat. ~ Sara Bareilles

When you're a cat, most of the time you're thinking about cat things. Little movements in the grass, cupboards that aren't quite closed, patches of sunlight on rocks, narrow places at the backs of closets - you're always noticing those things. You can't help yourself. It's boring if you think about it, but you don't think about it because you're a cat. ... sometimes you know what people want. You don't always care; but you know what they want. ~ Kristin Kladstrup

I don't want you to be lonely," Cedar couldn't help saying. "Or hungry! You two always forget to go shopping till the cupboards are bare. I'll be right back." She grabbed some baskets and ran out of the house.
Old Mother Hubbard's Corner Market was always open early, so Cedar filled her baskets with Pinocchio's and Gepetto's favorite foods: bread, fruitcake, sardines, and humble pie. ~ Shannon Hale

Knowing that there was such a thing as outdoors bred in us a hunger for property, for ownership. The firm possession of a yard, a porch, a grape arbor. Propertied black people spent all their energies, all their love, on their nests. Like frenzied, desperate birds, they overdecorated everything; fussed and fidgeted over their hard-won homes; canned, jellied, and preserved all summer to fill the cupboards and shelves; they painted, picked, and poked at every corner of their houses. And these houses loomed like hothouse sunflowers among the rows of weeds that were the rented houses. ~ Toni Morrison

Silence. Ah (...) Isn't that something? Did you know this is how other families are? They're quiet. Ask one of these people sitting here. They'll tell you. They've got famillies. This is how some families are all the time. And some people like to call these families repressed, or emotionally stunted or whatever, but do you know what I say? (...) I say, lucky fuckers. Lucky, lucky fuckers. (...) What a peaceful existence. What a joy their lives must be. They open a door and all they've got behind it is a bathroom or a lounge. Just neutral spaces. And not this endless maze of present rooms and past rooms and the things said in them years ago and everybody's old historical shit all over the place. They're not constantly making the same old mistakes. They're not always hearing the same old shit. They don't do public performances of angst on public transport. Really, these people exist. I'm telling you. The biggest traumas of their lives are things like recarpeting. Bill-paying. Gate-fixing. They don't mind what their kids do in life as long as they're reasonably, you know, healthy. Happy. And every single fucking day is not this huge battle between who they are and who they should be, what they were and what they will be. Go on, ask them. And they'll tell you. No mosque. Maybe a little church. Hardly any sin. Plenty of forgiveness. No attics. No shit in attics. No skeletons in cupboards. No great-grandfathers. I will put twenty quid down now that Samad is the only person in here ~ Zadie Smith

​Immediately he became convinced that all the cupboards in the house were full of pineapples. ~ Susanna Clarke

I'm just totally into being strong. There's something about wanting to get a jar or whatever out of a high cupboard, or moving a sofa over because my dog's bone rolled under it, and not having to call anyone for help. There's comfort in that. ~ Maggie Q

Some things come with their own punishments. ~ Arundhati Roy

Yet she is happy -- is it happiness she feels? -- as she places her things in the cupboards and drawers. Her quills, stockings, shoes. The room is dotted by porcelain figures. Punctuated, she thinks. She picks one up, puts it down. The former wife's collection? Then opens a window to London bells and that green-silk scent of spring. And she sees now, here in this room, how badly she'd needed to leave. ~ Danielle Dutton

I am no theologian. I would not be surprised, however, if Heaven proved to be a cozy kitchen, where delicious treats appeared in the oven and in the refrigerator whenever you wanted them, and where the cupboards were full of good books. ~ Dean Koontz

How do you lose a word? Does it vanish into your memory, like an old toy in a cupboard, and lie hidden in the cobwebs and dust, waiting to be cleaned out or rediscovered? ~ Amitav Ghosh

The glacier knocks in the cupboard, The desert sighs in the bed, And the crack in the teacup opens A lane to the land of the dead. ~ W. H. Auden

The elderly are all someone's flesh and blood and we cannot just shut them in a cupboard and hand over the responsibility for taking care of them to the state. ~ Simon Callow

He always had trouble opening his heart. Tonight it was stuck again. It was a wooden chest secured by locked iron bands. An army duffel, rusted zipper. Kitchen cupboards glued shut. Tabernacle. Desk. Closet. He had to wedge apart doors, lift covers. He was always disappointed to find a drab or menacing interior. To make a welcoming place of his heart was mentally slippery work. Sometimes cleaning was involved, rearrangements. He had to dust. He had to throw out old junk to make room. ~ Louise Erdrich

Downstairs, I could hear the return of a long-lost sound: Amy making breakfast. Banging wooden cupboards (rump-thump!), rattling containers of tin and glass (ding-ring!), shuffling and sorting a collection of metal pots and iron pans (ruzz-shuzz!). A culinary orchestra tuning up, clattering vigorously toward the finale, a cake pan drumrolling along the floor, hitting the wall with a cymballic crash. ~ Gillian Flynn

It's like the day you realize dolls are dolls. I pick up my old self and I see it's silly. A toy I've played with too often. It's a little sad, like an old golliwog at the bottom of the cupboard. Innocent and used-up and proud and silly. ~ John Fowles

Her laugh was sad and taciturn, seemingly detached from any feeling of the moment, like something she kept in the cupboard and took out only when she had to, using it with no feeling of ownership, as if the infrequency of her smiles had made her forget the normal way to use them. ~ Gabriel Garcia Marquez

Faith is the key that unlocks all of God's cupboards. ~ Jack Hyles

Either the well was very deep, or she fell very slowly, for she had plenty of time as she went down to look about her, and to wonder what was going to happen next. First, she tried to look down and make out what she was coming to, but it was too dark to see anything: then she looked at the sides of the well, and noticed that they were filled with cupboards and book-shelves: here and there she saw maps and pictures hung upon pegs. She took down a jar from one of the shelves as she passed: it was labelled "ORANGE MARMALADE," but to her great disappointment it was empty: she did not like to drop the jar, for fear of killing somebody underneath, so managed to put it into one of the cupboards as she fell past it. ~ Lewis Carroll

In 1934, strongman Fulgencio Batista forced President Grau's resignation. Then in 1940, Grau lost his bid for the Presidency to his adversary Batista. Four years later in 1944, he did win the election and took office for a four-year term starting on October 10th. After Grau won the election and was the President elect, Batista still in office, blatantly attacked the National Treasury, leaving the cupboards bare by the time Grau was actually sworn in as President.
Since Grau and Batista were staunch adversaries, it is highly unlikely that any deal could have been made in 1946 to allow "Lucky" Luciano into Cuba, especially with Luciano having been exiled to Sicily by the United States government that preceding February. Still, Lansky had enough political pull within the Cuban government to prepare for a strong Mafia presence in Havana.
In October of 1946, in an attempt to keep his whereabouts a secret, "Lucky" Luciano covertly boarded a freighter taking him from Naples, Italy, to Caracas, Venezuela. Then Luciano flew south to Rio de Janeiro and returned north to Mexico City. On October 29, 1946, he arranged for a private flight from Mexico City to Camagüey, Cuba, where Meyer Lansky met him. Having the right connections, Luciano passed through Cuban customs unimpeded and was whisked by car to the splendid Grand Hotel.
Luciano, having just arrived in Cuba, was looking forward to setting up operations. Cuba would actually be a better place than the United States fo ~ Hank Bracker

All those Nupboards in the Cupboards they're good fun to have about. But that Nooth gush on my tooth brush ... Him I could do without. ~ Dr. Seuss

The world is wrong. You can't put the past behind you. It's buried in you; it's turned your flesh into its own cupboard. Not everything remembered is useful but it all comes from the world to be stored in you. Who did what to whom on which day? Who said that? She said what? What did he just do? Did she really say that? He said what? What did she do? Did I hear what I think I heard? Did that just come out of my mouth, his mouth, your mouth? Do you remember when you sighed? ~ Claudia Rankine

As Simon went to see if Andrew was up, I wandered into the kitchen, where Derek was eyeing a rusty can of beans.
"That hungry?" I said.
"I will be soon."
He prowled the kitchen, flipping open cupboards.
"So you don't want me asking Andrew about that kid?" I said. "You trust him, though, right?"
"Sure."
He took down a box of crackers and turned it over, looking for a 'best before' date.
***
"Is he drinking the ketchup yet?" Simon swung into the kitchen. "Ten minutes, bro. Andrew's on his way - ~ Kelley Armstrong

My first novel is loaded with food references largely because my cupboards were bare, and I was writing hungry. ~ Jan Karon

In the John Paul II days, Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger had the advantage of staying in his cupboard - the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith - exchanging views only with the Pope, and speaking publicly only through carefully written missives on doctrinal issues. ~ Carl Bernstein

The Limoges set has brought us more joy in its absence than it ever did in our cupboards. Of course, we no longer own a set of china to pass down to our kids, but that's okay. Francois and I plan on giving our children something more valuable, the simple truth that the best way to go through life is to be a major donor of kindness. We'll tell them that it's possible to own a whole bunch of beautiful, valuable things and still be miserable. But sometimes just having a recipe for chocolate Bunt cake can make a person far, far happier. ~ Firoozeh Dumas

They only asked for punishments that fitted their crimes. Not ones that came like cupboards with built-in bedrooms. Not ones you spent your whole life in, wandering through its maze of shelves. ~ Arundhati Roy

Children are very overprotected now, in lots of ways. We're very nervous about them. You know, people go, "Don't go outside! Or inside! Get into the cupboard with some spinach!" When I was a child they'd kick you out and you weren't expected to come back until there were bats! ~ Dylan Moran

Sometimes Valène dreamt of cataclysms and tempests, of whirlwinds that would carry the whole house off like a wisp of straw and display the infinite marvels of the solar system to its shipwrecked inhabitants; or that an unseen crack would run through the building from top to bottom, like a shiver, and with a long, deep, snapping sound it would open in two and be slowly swallowed up in an indescribable yawning chasm; then hordes would overrun it, bleary-eyed monsters, giant insects with steel mandibles, blind termites, great white worms with insatiable mouths: the wood would crumble, the stone would turn to sand, the cupboards would collapse under their own weight, all would return to dust. But no. Only these shabby squabbles over buckets and tubs, over matches and sinks. And behind that ever-closed door the morbid gloom of that slow revenge, that ponderous business of two senile monomaniacs churning over their feigned histories and their wretched traps and snares. ~ Georges Perec

I live in an old house with no closets and no built-ins. I hate big cupboards. ~ Martha Stewart

He described to her the house he had built for himself, in outside appearance a shack, but delightful inside, at least to him. A sleeping loft with a little round window. Everything he needed right where he could put his hand to it, out in the open, nothing in cupboards. A short walk from the house he had a bathtub sunk in the earth, in the middle of a bed of sweet herbs. He would carry hot water to it by the pailful and lounge there under the stars, even in the winter. He grew vegetables, and shared them with the deer.
(From the story "Powers") ~ Alice Munro

When I was a deacon, the ominous signs of the Great Depression began to appear. Tens of thousands lost their jobs. Money was scarce. Families had to do without. Some young people did not ask their mothers, 'What's for dinner?' because they knew all too well that their cupboards held very little. ~ Joseph B. Wirthlin

When he gets back to the house, every damn snack in the cupboards and the fridge is going into the trash. Then he thinks, Make it the garbage disposal. Too easy to weaken and fish stuff out of the trash. ~ Stephen King

But I will stretch my toes so that they touch the rail at the end of the bed; I will assure myself, touching the rail, of something hard. Now I cannot sink; cannot altogether fall through the thin sheet now. Now I spread my body on this frail mattress and hang suspended. I am above the earth now. I am no longer upright, to be knocked against and damaged. All is soft, and bending. Walls and cupboards whiten and bend their yellow squares on top of which a pale glass gleams. Out of me now my mind can pour. ~ Virginia Woolf

I am not good at small talk. I will hide in a cupboard to avoid chitty-chat. ~ Caitlin Moran

The Confederate government cupboards were practically bare: in recent months the purchasing orders for its agent James Bulloch in Liverpool had broadened from military supplies to include such ordinary items as "one dozen erasers," "two dozen memorandum books of different sizes, and 12 dozen best lead pencils. ~ Anonymous

Freddie experienced the sort of abysmal soul-sadness which afflicts one of Tolstoy's Russian peasants when, after putting in a heavy day's work strangling his father, beating his wife, and dropping the baby into the city's reservoir, he turns to the cupboards, only to find the vodka bottle empty. ~ P.G. Wodehouse

Are you hungry?" Livvie asked. I could barely hear her as I set the bags in the living room. Livvie had made her way toward the bedroom. "Yes," I called out, "but I don't think you have anything in your cupboards worth - " "Then get in here and eat my pussy!" Livvie interrupted. ~ C.J. Roberts

Architecture was, or is, a kind of hobby, an inclination I have to fiddling around and building things. Putting up shelves or cupboards, or making tools, or designing houses ... it always has a functional or social motivation. If social changes are in the air, I am gripped immediately by the desire to build, and I think that I accelerate or anticipate changes in my life by doing so, at least in draft. In the case of my house, that was anticipation: in other words, first build, then change one's life. ~ Gerhard Richter

The truth is despite the hard work and juggling required to keep the different facets of the frantic life afloat, the "superwoman" has one marvelous compensation. Being busy and being seen to be busy lets you off the hook. Buys you a way out of all aspects of your many roles you secretly despise ... like cleaning cupboards ... or entertaining your husband's business friends. When you combine wife, mother, career and all, each role become the perfect excuse for avoiding the worst aspects of the other. ~ Bettina Arndt

For Archie was an expert in dividing the affairs of life into men's business and women's business. An empty cupboard and a full plate were the man's business, a full cupboard and an empty plate the concern of the woman. ~ Annie Proulx

Brillat-Savarin, said: 'Tell me what you eat and I'll tell you who you are.' He had it wrong. It's not just what we eat that shows who we are, it's what we buy but don't eat that says more about the people we think we are. Or want to be. Look at the ingredients in your cupboards. All those hopes and dreams. ~ Kate Lord Brown

I'm not a collector. I don't like the toy cupboard syndrome that causes so many good cars to evaporate. ~ Rowan Atkinson

Civilization never stands still; if in one country it is falling back, in another it is changing, evolving, becoming more complicated, bringing fresh experience to body and mind, breeding new desires, and exploiting Nature's cupboard for their satisfaction. ~ Arthur Keith

Her cupboards are crammed with Cappuccino mix. No one needs Cappuccino mix. It's not diginified. She watched 'Super Size Me' and went straight to McDonald's. She did the Atkins Diet, but with potatoes. ~ Anna Maxted

By now it's March, and it's too late to start another new year's resolution: you'll simply have to wait until December 31st again. Everybody knows you can't start something new in March. That would be ridiculous. Similar to starting a diet on a Thursday. Madness. (All diets start on a Monday, as on the Thursday before you start you have to eat everything out of your fridge and cupboards for the following Monday. It's a marvellous system.) ~ Miranda Hart

The population at large is neither 'ordinary' or 'normal'. They seem to be bound together by a collective ignorance of themselves and what they are. They have, every one of them, got their deep dark thoughts with many a skeleton rattling in their secret cupboards. Their fascination with 'types' like myself plagues them with the mystery of why and how a living person can actually do things which may be only those dark images and acts secretly within them. I believe they can identify with these 'dark images and acts' and loathe anything which reminds them of this dark side of themselves. ~ Dennis Nilsen

I will have no locked cupboards in my life. ~ Gertrude Bell

All elongated objects, such as sticks, tree-trunks and umbrellas(the opening of these last being comparable to an erection) may stand for the male organ ... Boxes, cases, chests, cupboards, and ovens represent the uterus ... Rooms in dreams are usually women ... Many landscapes in dreams, especially any containing breidges or wooded hills, may clearly be recognized as descriptions of the genitals. ~ Sigmund Freud

When we finally meet how much do I confess? Our bond is tenuous. Frail as a drift of moonlight on open sea. Would the truth crash us apart? Some secrets can't be kept for too long. No matter how hard you try to hide them, sooner or later, they scurry out from your cupboards, cockroaches on the run. No way to grow closer with deceit wedged between us. Should I tell or should I hide it away? Would you run away? ~ Ellen Hopkins

THE SERVANTS CALLED them malenchki, little ghosts, because they were the smallest and the youngest, and because they haunted the Duke's house like giggling phantoms, darting in and out of rooms, hiding in cupboards to eavesdrop, sneaking into the kitchen to steal the last of the summer peaches. ~ Leigh Bardugo

The crushed flowers and
The scented letters
Hidden between the pages,
I hide them under the pillows,
I take them on a trip,
Sometimes, they lay in the cupboards

The broken flowers still glow,
The perfumed letters can
Give the peace to my soul. ~ Jyoti Patel

A glacier rattles in the cupboard, the desert sighs in the bed, and the crack in the teacup opens a door to the land of the dead. The Maya call this Xibalba (Shibalba), the road to the dimension of the dead. ~ Terence McKenna

Temporary Insanity had come a-knocking and I had shouted "Come on in the door is open." Luckily, Reality had come unexpectedly and found Temporary Insanity roaming the corridors of my mind unchecked, going into rooms, opening cupboards, reading my letters, looking in my underwear drawer, that kind of thing. Reality had run and got Sanity. And after a tussle, they both had managed to throw out Temporary Insanity and slam the door in his face. Temporary Insanity now lay on the gravel in the driveway of my mind, panting and furious, shouting, "She invited me in, you know. She asked me in. She wanted me there. ~ Marian Keyes

Do you know how I think we should spend the first night of our honeymoon?" She asked in a soft, low voice.
For the first time since the announcement of their betrothal, G knew exactly how he wanted to spend the night. A pit of anxiety and anticipation formed in his stomach. He raised his eyebrows expectantly.
Her eyes got brighter, if that was possible. "I think we should raid our food cupboards and take some smoked meat down to the peasants who were attacked earlier!"
G worked hard to keep his face from falling. "My lady, you read my mind," he said, grateful that his lady could not read minds. ~ Cynthia Hand

As far as Aunty Lee was concerned, people ought to go through the ideas they carried around in their heads as regularly as they turned out their store cupboards. No matter how wisely you shopped, there would be things in the depths that were past their expiration dates or gone damp and moldy---or that has been picked up on impulse and were no longer relevant. Aunty Lee believed everything inside a head or cupboard could affect everything else in it by going bad or just taking up more space than it was worth. ~ Ovidia Yu

i stand up and open the cupboards, cruising for something-anything- to eat. there's nothing- only a stale loaf of bread in my refrigerator and a single slice of moldy cheese. i've been living off coffee and takeout. i decide to go shopping and use up the hours and minutes that torture me with their lack of direction. i used to have a compass. i used to have charlie. ~ Amy Hatvany

Each poet probably has his or her own cupboard of magnets. For some, it is cars; for others, works of art, or certain patterns of form or sound; for others, certain stories or places, Philip Levine's Detroit, Gwendolyn Brooks's Chicago, Seamus Heaney's time-tunneled, familied Ireland. ~ Jane Hirshfield

The last lingering shadow of the Jesuit, gliding behind curtains and concealing himself in cupboards, faded from my young life about the time when I first caught a distant glimpse of the late Father Bernard Vaughan. He was the only Jesuit I ever knew in those days; and as you could generally hear him half a mile away, he seemed to be ill-selected for the duties of a curtain-glider. ~ G.K. Chesterton

I collect imported teas, I have a few cupboards full! It's like wine, each has it's own flavour and you get into their little nuances. ~ Maggie Grace

Did you know this is how other families are?...What a peaceful existence. What a joy their lives must be. They open a door and all they've got behind it is a bathroom or living room. Just neutral spaces. And not this endless maze of present rooms and past rooms and the things said in them years ago and everybody's old historical shit all over the place. They're not constantly making the same old mistakes. They're not always hearing the same old shit. They don't do public performances of angst on public transport. Really, these people exist. I'm telling you. The biggest traumas of their lives are things like recarpeting. Bill-paying. Gate-fixing. They don't mind what their kids do in life as long as they're reasonably, you know, healthy. Happy. And every single fucking day is not this huge battle between who they are and who they should be, what they were and what they will be. Go on, ask them. And they'll tell you. No mosque. Maybe a little church. Hardly any sin. Plenty of forgiveness. No attics. No shit in attics. No skeletons in cupboards. No great-grandfathers. I will put twenty quid down now that Samad is the only person in here who knows the inside bloody leg measurement of his great-grandfather. And you know why they don't know? Because it doesn't fucking matter. As far as they're concerned, it's the past. This is what it's like in other families. They're not self-indulgent. They don't run around relishing, relishing the fact that they are utterly dysfunctional. They d ~ Zadie Smith

A Local Government Stationery Store is something to behold. It's like walking through the back of a cupboard into a really dull Narnia. ~ Sally Phillips