Floors Quotes

My little brother Paul. He owns his own floor sanding business called Silly P Hardwood Floors and hes really good. ~ Amy Sedaris

Women and men are lost in the same labyrinth .. on different floors. ~ Bogdan Vaida

When I was 12, I forgot the keys to my parent's apartment. So I simply climbed up seven floors to get in. ~ Alain Robert

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 bungee 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. ~ Neal Stephenson

Are you mad? We're five floors up." You could die. Annie cried out. "Something much worse could happen we could forget to live." Said Evie. ~ Hannah Rothschild

Are there things about yourself which you have never told anyone? Way back upon the creaky floors of your childhood, in your solitude, the shadows of your private mind, the things you've done and said and thought that compound and contain you: shameful things, sexual things, often solitary acts, but sometimes not, sometimes agonizing stabs of cruelty you've inflicted on people you love, or the moments where reality itself seemed to tear as they looked into your eyes and told you 'you are nothing'. And for a moment you stand there adjusting to the pain, the pain that someone could say that to you, and what that must mean about who you are. ~ Russell Brand

What are the dead, anyway, but waves and energy? Light shining from a dead star?

That, by the way, is a phrase of Julian's. I remember it from a lecture of his on the Iliad, when Patroklos appears to Achilles in a dream. There is a very moving passage where Achilles overjoyed at the sight of the apparition – tries to throw his arms around the ghost of his old friend, and it vanishes. The dead appear to us in dreams, said Julian, because that's the only way they can make us see them; what we see is only a projection, beamed from a great distance, light shining at us from a dead star…

Which reminds me, by the way, of a dream I had a couple of weeks ago.

I found myself in a strange deserted city – an old city, like London – underpopulated by war or disease. It was night; the streets were dark, bombed-out, abandoned. For a long time, I wandered aimlessly – past ruined parks, blasted statuary, vacant lots overgrown with weeds and collapsed apartment houses with rusted girders poking out of their sides like ribs. But here and there, interspersed among the desolate shells of the heavy old public buildings, I began to see new buildings, too, which were connected by futuristic walkways lit from beneath. Long, cool perspectives of modern architecture, rising phosphorescent and eerie from the rubble.

I went inside one of these new buildings. It was like a laboratory, maybe, or a museum. My footsteps echoed on the tile floors.There was a cluste ~ Donna Tartt

With plastic siding that was cracked and fading, the trailer squatted on stacked cinder blocks, a temporary foundation that had somehow become permanent over time. It had a single bedroom and bath, a cramped living area, and a kitchen with barely enough room to house a mini refrigerator. Insulation was almost nonexistent, and humidity had warped the floors over the years, making it seem as if he were always walking on a slant. The linoleum in the kitchen was cracking in the corners, the minimal carpet was threadbare, and he'd furnished the narrow space with items he'd picked up over the years at thrift stores. Not a single photograph adorned the walls. ~ Nicholas Sparks

Nevertheless, to commit burglary you must cross some imaginary border, or invisible plane, and enter another clearly defined architectural space - a volume of air, an enclosure - with the intention of committing a crime there. Without walls and thresholds - without doorways, floors, and window frames, or even roofs, awnings, and screened-in porches - burglary would not be legally possible. It is a spatial crime, one whose parameters are baked into the very elements of the built environment. ~ Geoff Manaugh

Christmas in Barbados

I miss being in Barbados in December,
That is a time I always remember,
The smell of varnish on the wooden floors
and the smell of paint on the wooden floors.
The smell of cloves as the ham was baked
And the smell of the rum in mother's fruit cake
The smell of coconut as she bake de sweetbread,
And the smell of the cloth, as she made up de bed ~ Charmaine J Forde

But there was nothing. No village or town as far as her eyes could strain. Nowhere for her saviours to come from and take her to; just fields and trees and the weeping arc of the river Greave all the way to the horizon. Just like in the books, Greaveburn was all there was; building and building until streets were foundations, roofs were floors, constantly climbing away from itself. now that Abrasia saw it, her dream of escape crumbled completely like an ancient map in her fingers. The horizon was the world's edge and there was nothing beyond it but mist and falling.

Greaveburn stood alone on this little circle of earth, the river running around and into itself like a snake eating its tail. And Abrasia was doomed to watch the sun and stars trade places for all eternity. ~ Craig Hallam

It really reminds me of the great movies of the 30's and 40's with huge sets and voluminous fireplaces you could walk around in. Glazed floors. I was expecting a Busby Berkley dance number. Big fanfare and all the girls coming out. I'd have joined in. It's got that scale, you know? ~ Ray Stevenson

Good morning! The sun is up! Wake up! Time to eat," said the birds.
"Good morning," Ashlynn said back.
There was a clink of glass slippers against the wood floor, and then her mother appeared in the doorway. She had the same strawberry-blond hair and green eyes as Ashlynn. Her mother was already dressed, but Ashlynn didn't notice the clothes she was wearing. As always, her eyes went right to the glass slippers. Oh, how she loved those shoes.
"Chores, dear!" her mother said, leaning over to kiss the top of Ashlynn's head. "And then you should pack."
"Yes, Mother!"
Ashlynn washed her face, put on an apron, and then opened wide the door to her shoe closet. This princess wouldn't care if she wore a burlap sack every day, so long as she had dozens of footwear choices. Today she settled on a pair of scrappy teal wedges and went to start breakfast. Even though her father's grand house came fully stocked with servants, her mother believed in good, solid, character-forming chores. After all, Ashlynn would inherit her mother's story and become the next Cinderella someday, and there would be lots of floors to mop and hearths to sweep before her Happily Ever After. ~ Shannon Hale

Reporting is all about legwork, getting out and finding the story. But all the stories are on the top floors, so you have to learn to climb stairs. That's what reporting is all about, climbing tenement stairs. ~ Jimmy Breslin

A great many film stars perched on unstable ravine edges in the canyon systems of Los Angeles will, like the cemeteries there, eventually slide down to join their unfortunate fellows in the canyon floors, with mud, cars, and embalmed or living film stars in one glorious muddy mass. We should not lend our talents to creating such spectacular catastrophes ... ~ Bill Mollison

I've spent a lot of time being bohemian and sleeping on floors, but eventually I want to have kids and I want to bring them up in a secure environment. ~ Paloma Faith

School is a terrible place, I have decided. There is nothing good about it except for math class. Everything else is a total waste of time. As I mentioned before I have done a lot of reading about prisons, and I notice that they always describe them as painted in very dull colors, and my school is also painted in these kinds of colors, with greenish lockers and brownish walls and grayish floors. Actually they recently fixed up one wing of the school, and now that part of the school is just the opposite - all the colors are really bright, with bright red and yellow lockers and blue doors and shiny white floors that are already all scuffed up. It's funny because I thought the other colors were terrible but these are much worse, because they make it seem like it's normal to be happy there when it isn't. ~ Dara Horn

Krisztina played the song. It was a lament made of eight notes, repeated. It was an empty melody. It sounded elemental too; it made Krisztina think of the snow falling beyond the window and across Budapest. She wondered if it was snowing in England. Alice's mother would be here again later, all the way from London. There was so much grief. They were mourning her little girl before she had gone. Without realising she heard these words making themselves part of the song. She played what she could, her head down, her face solemn and determined. She went back to the start, and felt the world falling away, the tears drying on her face. She heard the words coming, falling like the luminous snow. After a few minutes she looked across what seemed like a huge divide to Alice on the bed and faltered. In the house of the body, the lights were being extinguished, one by one. The floors were now bare, the walls unadorned, all sound hollow and lost; all that remained was the ghost of what was, the glimmer of the melody, the tune, the song of a life lived and lost in three minutes. ~ Simon Avery

The cigar-box which the European calls a 'lift' needs but to be compared with our elevators to be appreciated. The lift stops to reflect between floors. That is all right in a hearse, but not in elevators. The American elevator acts like a man's patent purge-it works. ~ Mark Twain

Human beings don't work like this in China. Time goes slower there. Here we have to hurry, feed the hungry children before we're too old to work. I feel like a mother cat hunting for its kittens. She has to find them fast because in a few hours she will forget how to count or that she had any kittens at all. I can't sleep in this country because it doesn't shut down for the night. Factories, canneries, restaurants - always somebody somewhere working through the night. It never gets done all at once here. Time was different in China. One year lasted as long as my total time here; one evening so long, you could visit your women friends, drink tea, and play cards at each house, and it would still be twilight. It even got boring, nothing to do but fan ourselves. Here midnight comes and the floor's not swept, the ironing's not ready, the money's not made. I would be still young if we lived in China. (1983: 98) ~ Maxine Hong Kingston

She fell down fifty-five floors. It took 10.6 seconds for her to hit the ground. It took my father forty-eight hours to come back home from his business trip in Sweden. ~ Chelsea Ballinger

To shoes and skirts may they end up on our floors. ~ Luke Barnes

If there is a more dispiriting place in Miami than the county jail, I haven't found it . . . and I've spent a lot of time at the morgue. Approaching the jail, you can hear the anguished shouts of inmates on the upper floors, yelling through the barred windows at their wives, girlfriends, and homies below. Inside, you've got that institutional smell, as if a harsh cleanser has been laced with urine. Buzzers blare and lights flash. Steel crashes against steel as doors bang shut with the finality of a coffin closing. ~ Paul Levine

He called back with an incredible report: there were people lined up around the store already.
Wow, I thought.
Wow!
Wow didn't begin to cover it. People lined up on two floors of the store to talk to Chris and get their books signed, hours before he was even scheduled to arrive. Chris was overwhelmed when he got there, and so was I. The week before, he'd been just another guy walking down the street. Now, all of a sudden he was famous.
Except he was still the same Chris Kyle, humble and a bit abashed, ready to shake hands and pose for a picture, and always, at heart, a good ol' boy.
"I'm so nervous," confided one of the people on the line as he approached Chris. "I've been waiting for three hours just to see you."
"Oh, I'm sorry," said Chris. "Waitin' all that time and come to find out there's just another redneck up here."
The man laughed, and so did Chris. It was something he'd repeat, in different variations, countless times that night and over the coming weeks.
We stayed for three or four hours that first night, far beyond what had been advertised, with Chris signing each book, shaking each hand, and genuinely grateful for each person who came. For their part, they were anxious not just to meet him but to thank him for his service to our country-and by extension, the service of every military member whom they couldn't personally thank. From the moment the book was published, Chris became the son, the brother, the nephew, the cousin, ~ Taya Kyle

My idea of superwoman is someone who scrubs her own floors. ~ Bette Midler

Everything seemed to him a uniform shade of gray- even the people! He had been unable to believe it could rain so much in one place, and so unceasingly. The damp had seemed to come up from the floors and into his bones, so that he'd thought he would eventually sprout mold, in the manner of a tree. "You do get used to it," he said "Even if sometimes you feel as if you out to be able to be wrung out like a washrag." p 311 ~ Cassandra Clare

The library door is already open when I dash in, but the room is empty. Books line shelves three floors high, and windows just as tall let in rays of dying sunlight. Three balconies wrap above me and a grand piano stands in the center of the bottom level, but there are no people, not even a servant dusting old books in a corner. ~ Sara Raasch

...I had believed she believed it, and I believed that someday I might could, too, when I were grown enough, but now, kneeling on the hard floors of the boardinghouse with Eliza praying for all of us, I can't feel it. I feel propped up -- on Mam's faith, on Eliza's, on all the women in this room. But all I feel is hollowed out and empty, like someone's scraped their fingernails along the inside of my heart. ~ Mackenzi Lee

Prayer is asking God to incarnate, to get dirty in your life. Yes, the eternal God scrubs floors. For sure we know he washes feet. So take Jesus at his word. Ask him. Tell him what you want. Get dirty. Write out your prayer requests; don't mindlessly drift through life on the American narcotic of busyness. If you try to seize the day, the day will eventually break you. Seize the corner of his garment and don't let go until he blesses you. He will reshape the day. ~ Paul E. Miller

(Taken from the scene in which protagonist Rebeka is caught snooping around down in the underground floors of Project Code-X...)
"I was just curious as to what was down here," I said boldly.
He studied me, evaluating the situation carefully. His face relaxed.
"They say curiosity is the mark of a great scientist," he mused light-heartedly. "It is often the loss of that child-like curiosity that ends the career of many a great scientist prematurely. Their minds go dead and they are no longer inspired. Once that light goes, they are completely and utterly useless to me."
He had a habit of ruminating aloud, so I said nothing. Then perceiving me again, he took me by the arm. "Well now, Doctor Taft. Let me show you precisely what we are doing down here in the basement," he said, proceeding to guide me around the corridor. ~ S.J. Robinson

To me heaven would be a big bull ring with me holding two barrera seats and a trout stream outside that no one else was allowed to fish in and two lovely houses in the town; one where I would have my wife and children and be monogamous and love them truly and well and the other where I would have my nine beautiful mistresses on nine different floors. ~ Ernest Hemingway,

In just two years, CSAS ignited the flame Grandmother lit years before. Carl would never succeed in his attempts to extinguish it. But his parental authority was able to keep it dormant and unthreatening for several years. At Ooltewah High School, I was like a lion forced into captivity after a liberating romp in the jungle. Nothing challenged me. Nothing motivated me. Nothing moved me. My claustrophobia itched to the point where clawing at my own skin seemed to be my only method of relief. With no social outlets and no intellectual nourishment, I caved into self-destruction. My bulimia amplified from throwing up obligatory family dinners to driving to grocery stores, Dollar Generals, and gas stations, shoving junk food into my purse in between security camera reach, devouring the calories in the corners of desolate parking lots, and scurrying into remote public restrooms in the outskirts of town. My knees would rest on the cold, sticky tile floors as I wrapped my arms around bleach-scented toilets as if embracing an old friend. ~ Maggie Georgiana Young

Traders today complain of living in fear that chats from a bygone era will be dredged up and used against them. They paint a picture of a world where communications are monitored, compliance officers roam the trading floors and it's hard to make an honest living. Banks have finally got the picture, they claim. Market manipulation on the scale we've seen over the past few years is no longer possible. Time will tell (p. 174). ~ Gavin Finch

The women kept washing floors. It seemed to be what they did in difficult times. Unvarying things, she saw, must have a deeper value than we know. ~ Don DeLillo

There was too much noise. Sirens from police cars and ambulances. Shouts from the crowd on the street eighteen floors below. Traffic from other streets and all of the noises of San Francisco. Mostly, though, there were the voices. Whispering to him. Reminding him of the dark things he had done - all of the little things he had forgotten, all of the big things he had tried to forget. Mostly they reminded him of his biggest secret, a betrayal of trust and friendship long ago. He squeezed his eyes shut as if that could somehow keep the voices away. ~ Don Bassingthwaite

On the floors above Delivery, in flowerless rooms, women lay recovering from hysterectomies and mastectomies. Teenage girls with burst ovarian cysts nodded out on morphine. It was all around me from the beginning, the weight of female suffering, with its biblical justification and vanishing acts. ~ Jeffrey Eugenides

We are not members, . . . we are commodities. . . . When our men have used us up so that we look sixty when we're thirty and our wombs have literally dropped out of our bodies onto our spotless kitchen floors, finished, they turn to our daughters. ~ Miriam Toews

Restrooms at gas stations were an unpleasant and shocking surprise; I had never considered the serious drawbacks of such lazily-cleaned rooms. I was completely unable to ignore the filth, and wasted a burst of power to turn the sink, floors and porcelain toilet into sparkling, clean examples of their kind before using the facility. I felt that was a much less judgmental response than simply blowing the place off the face of the Earth, which was also a distinct temptation, especially when the storekeeper overcharged me for a bottle of cold water. ~ Rachel Caine

Boswell and Thompson write, Every night the rooms on the two upper floors of the Castle were filled to overflowing. Holmes reluctantly accommodated a few men as paying guests, but catered primarily to women - preferably young and pretty ones of apparent means, whose homes were distant from Chicago and who had no one close to them who might make inquiry if they did not soon return. Many never went home. Many, indeed, never emerged from the castle, having once entered it ~ Erik Larson

You aren't made for sweeping floors, little beastie," he said quietly. "Don't you know that? ~ Megan Shepherd

People usually focus on what burglars take, but it's how they move that's so consistently interesting. Burglars explore. They might not live in a city full of secret passages and trapdoors - but they make it look as if they do. They have their own tools and floor plans, their own ways to get from A to B. They'll curl up inside refrigerators, climb through ceilings, use garbage chutes and fall twenty-one floors straight into the emergency room when they could simply have taken the stairs. They'll slip through porch screens and stow themselves inside clothes dryers till the police come busting in to find them. ~ Geoff Manaugh

By the way," Arizona interrupted rather casually, "how long are you two gonna shack up together out there at Dreamscape?" Anger surged, temporarily submerging the little thrill of dread Hannah had felt a few seconds ago. She jerked to a halt, spun around, and glared at Arizona. "We are not shacking up." Rafe tightened his grip on her arm. "Hannah, this isn't the time to go into it." "The heck it isn't." Hannah grabbed the edge of the door as Rafe tried to haul her forcibly out into the hall. "I want to set the record straight before we leave. Listen, Arizona, Rafe and I are sharing Dreamscape until we negotiate a way out of the mess Isabel left us in. We are not shacking up there." "Sorta hard to tell the difference," Arizona answered through a cloud of smoke. "Not from where I stand," Hannah retorted. "We're sleeping on separate floors." "Sounds uncomfortable," Arizona said. ~ Jayne Ann Krentz

Aubade Ending with the Death of a Mosquito"

- at Apollo Hospital, Dhaka

Let me break
free of these lace-frail
lilac fingers disrobing
the black sky
from the windows of this
room, I sit helpless, waiting,
silent - sister,
because you drew from me
the coil of red twine: loneliness -
spooled inside -
once, I wanted to say one
true thing, as in, I want more
in this life,
or, the sky is hurt, a blue vessel -
we pass through each other,
like weary
sweepers haunting through glass
doors, arcing across gray floors
faint trails
of dust we leave behind - he
touches my hand, waits for me
to clutch back
while mosquitoes rise like smoke
from this cold marble floor,
from altars,
seeking the blood still humming
in our unsaved bodies - he sighs,
I make a fist,
I kill this one leaving raw
kisses raised on our bare necks -
because I woke
alone in the myth of one life, I will
myself into another - how strange,
to witness
nameless, the tangled shape
our blood makes across us,
my open palm. ~ Tarfia Faizullah

Here, the name of the game was opulence. The floors were cherrywood, the tablecloths silk, and the guests sparkling with enough diamonds to send a Christmas tree into an epileptic seizure. ~ Ella Summers

B-b-but who will I have cleaning marathons with?"
"Casey. I'll be there in spirit."
"She's not neurotic and cranky like you."
"You'll miss that, ay?"
"Hell yes, I'll miss that! When you're obsessive and pissy, you tell those floors who's boss. They won't shine like that when Casey scrubs them. And don't get me started on our Covenant Series discussions. The girl thinks Alex should pick Seth. Seth, Em. How can I clean with someone who isn't Team Aiden? It's like ... madness. Madness on Earth. The fucking apocalypse - "
"Whitney," I chuckled, squeezing her tighter, "I assure you, you'll survive. The second she starts running her mouth about Aiden, just spray her with bleach. That'll teach her a lesson."
-Emma and Whitney ~ Rachael Wade

There was scarcely a woman alive, it seemed, who could resist the urge to haul men down onto beds, car seats, kitchen floors, dining-room tables, park grass, parlor sofas, or packing crates, entwine warm thighs around them, and pant in ecstasy. ~ Russell Baker

Alex was raised in this house along with his sisters, Katherine and Cecile. Their world was this house, with its mahogany globes the size of cantaloupes on the newel posts of every stairway, with wedding cake plaster on the ceilings, the wainscoting in the parlor and the library, and antique Persian carpets of red and purple and blue and gold on the wide plank floors, rugs knotted by little hands that had long since turned to dust. ~ Chase Novak

I know people who have, until recently, lived with dirt floors. There are people who live way back off the grid, without electricity. Not a whole lot, but quite a few. That's a choice for a lot of them. There might be a religious element in their isolation, at least with some of them. ~ Daniel Woodrell

If you are self-motivated, wow, this world is tailored for you. The boundaries are all gone. But if you're not self-motivated, this world will be a challenge because the walls, ceilings and floors that protected people are also disappearing. That is what I mean when I say "it is a 401(k) world." Government will do less for you. Companies will do less for you. Unions can do less for you. There will be fewer limits, but also fewer guarantees. Your specific contribution will define your specific benefits much more. Just showing up will not cut it. ~ Thomas Friedman

I know what you're thinking - that anybody with proper sensitive feelings would rather scrub floors for a living. But I should scrub floors very badly, and I write detective stories rather well. I don't see why proper feelings should prevent me from doing my proper job. ~ Dorothy L. Sayers

Chinese people are very superstitious and do not have floors for any "unlucky" numbers - that is, no numbers that include the number four (e.g., fourteen, twenty four, etc.) since "four" sounds like the word "death" in Chinese. No number thirteen either, as the country has adopted Western superstitions about unlucky thirteen. So, a building that shows fifteen floors on the floor plans physically only has twelve floors. ~ Wen-Szu Lin

A trip to the hospital is always a descent into the macabre. I have never trusted a place with shiny floors. ~ Terry Tempest Williams

I just go with it, focus on whichever feeling I have most often and try to keep my mouth shut when it's the other. But most folks got Id and Ego living on different floors in their head's house, in different rooms, and they've locked all the doors between them, and nailed sheets of plywood over that, because they think they're, like, sworn enemies that can't hang together. ~ Karen Marie Moning

Take a moment in between breaths to let yourself see what's left to be seen, all the places you've been. Your old haunts. I pass by them every day, and after all these years I'll find myself wondering if they're just facades, like the saloon fronts and gun shops of an old ghost town set. As if I can poke my head inside the doors in the light of day and see nothing but framed out rooms and sandy floors, existing for no other reason than to give structure to who I used to be. ~ Anne Clendening

But how do they get inside?"
"They fly," Jace said, and indicated the upper floors of the building.
[ ... ]
"We don't fly," Clary felt impelled to point out.
"No," Jace agreed. "We don't fly. We break and enter." He started across the street toward the hotel.
"Flying sounds like more fun," Clary said, hurrying to catch up with him.
"Right now everything sounds like more fun. ~ Cassandra Clare

As we move, a roar like the voice of some satanic creature bellows from the staircase. The fire's voice. I've heard it in lots of places, and the sound turns my insides to jelly. There's a reason human beings will jump ten floors onto concrete to escape being burned alive. That roar is part of it. ~ Greg Iles

Elsewheres
South
The long green shutters are drawn.
Against what parades?
Closing our eyes against the sun,
We try to imagine
The darkness of an interior
Where something might still happen:
The razor lying open
On the cool marble washstand,
The drip of something
is it water?
Upon stone floors. ~ Donald Justice

That's it. Fucking look at you." Furi reared back to get a better look. The finger in Syn's ass slammed inside one final time and Furi shook it so fast it felt like a vibration against his gland and he didn't stop until Syn started yelling loud enough to wake the neighbors two floors below him. The first jet sent Syn crashing down to his knees and Furi went with him, never breaking stride. "That's ~ A.E. Via

There was, apparently, a nuclear reactor at a place called Indian Point, just thirty miles away in Westchester County. If something bad happened there, we were constantly being informed, the 'radioactive debris', whatever this might be, was liable to rain down on us. (Indian Point: the earliest, most incurable apprehensions stirred in its very name.) Then there was the question of dirty bombs. Apparently any fool could build a dirty bomb and explode it in Manhattan. How likely was this? Nobody knew. Very little about anything seemed intelligible or certain, and New York itself - that ideal source of the metropolitan diversion that serves as a response to the largest futilities - took on a fearsome, monstrous nature whose reality might have befuddled Plato himself. We were trying, as I irreverently analysed it, to avoid what might be termed a historic mistake. We were trying to understand, that is, whether we were in a pre-apocalyptic situation, like the European Jews in the thirties or the last citizens of Pompeii, or whether our situation was merely near-apocalyptic, like that of the Cold War inhabitants of New York, London, Washington and, for that matter, Moscow. In my anxiety I phoned Rachel's father, Charles Bolton, and asked him how he'd dealt with the threat of nuclear annihilation. I wanted to believe that this episode of history, like those old cataclysms that deposit a geologically telling layer of dust on the floors of seas, had sooted its survivors with special in ~ Joseph O'Neill

Doing something was better than doing nothing.
Without warning Lucas hit the emergency stop but-ton, and the elevator braked with an uncomfortable jolt. Then he mashed the OPEN DOOR button and punched the door itself. The front doors opened in between the second and first floors.
Lucas's heart pumped in his chest. I hear that baby in the parking lot crying. ~ Paul Aertker

Chester Stone said nothing. Just stood up and threaded his way by all the furniture and over to the door. Through the reception area and into the corridor and into the elevator. Down eighty-eight floors and back outside, where the bright morning sun hit him in the face like a blow. ~ Lee Child

The dealing rooms were a con, and only the river was real. The money was all on tick, a stream of coded voltages sluicing through concealed conduits under the foreign exchange floors. Facing them across the river were two more fakes, the replica of Shakespeare's Globe, and an old power station made over into a middle class disco – Tate Modern. ~ J.G. Ballard

I won't eat in a restaurant with filthy bathrooms. This isn't a hard call. They let you see the bathrooms. If the restaurant can't be bothered to replace the puck in the urinal or keep the toilets and floors clean, then just imagine what their refrigeration and work spaces look like. ~ Anthony Bourdain

Writers often have the cleanest windows, floors, fridges and toilets, the most up-to-date filing system or the best record for returning calls or e-mails because, in the moment, just about any task seems more palatable than sitting down to write." (p.136) ~ Mark David Gerson

I have spent 11 horrific years in solitary confinement in a 6-square-meter dungeon three floors underground without sunlight or fresh air. But I endured my hardships because I was merely living my convictions. ~ Samir Geagea

It really is a helluva fiver-upper," Henry said, because someone had to say it. "I feel like they should possibly renovate this basement if they want to get a good sale price. Hardwood floors, update the doorknobs, maybe put the wall back. ~ Maggie Stiefvater

In summer, intolerable closeness; in winter, unendurable cold. All the floors were rotten. Filth on the floors an inch thick; one could slip and fall ... ~ Fyodor Dostoevsky

Help" is a prayer that is always answered. It doesn't matter how you pray
with your head bowed in silence, or crying out in grief, or dancing. Churches are good for prayer, but so are garages and cars and mountains and showers and dance floors. Years ago I wrote an essay that began, "Some people think that God is in the details, but I have come to believe that God is in the bathroom. ~ Anne Lamott

A jump from the sixth floor is definitely more harmful than taking heroin, yet we don't forbid building sixth floors. ~ Janusz Korwin-Mikke

What are you doing?"
Celaena lifted another piece of paper. "If His Pirateness can't be bothered to clean for us, then I don't see why I can't have a look."
"He'll be here any second," Sam hissed. She picked up a flattened map, examining the dots and markings along the coastline of their continent. Something small and round gleamed beneath the map, and she slipped it into her pocket before Sam could notice.
"Oh, hush," she said, opening the hutch on the wall adjacent to the desk. "With these creaky floors, we'll hear him a mile off." The hutch was crammed with rolled scrolls, quills, the odd coin, and some very old, very expensive-looking brandy. She pulled out a bottle, swirling the amber liquid in the sunlight streaming through the tiny porthole window. "Care for a drink? ~ Sarah J. Maas

PAPER TOWERS
The library was on the second floor of the House, not far from my room. It had two floors - the first held the majority of the books and a balcony wrapped in a wrought-iron railing held another set. It was a cavalcade of tomes, all in immaculate rows, and with study carrels and tables thrown in for good measure. It was my home away from home(away from home.
I walked inside and paused for a moment to breathe in the scent of paper and dust - the perfumes of knowledge. The library was empty of patrons as far as I could tell, but I could hear the rhythmic squeal of a library cart somewhere in the rows. I followed them down until I found the dark-haired vampire shelving books with mechanical precision. I knew him only as "the librarian." He was a fount of information, and he had a penchant for leaving books outside my door. ~ Chloe Neill

This is the time of myths, Orphan. They are the cables that run under the floors and power the world, the conduits of unseen currents, the steam that powers the great engines of the earth. ~ Lavie Tidhar

People often write me and ask how I keep my wood floors so clean when I live with a child and a dog, and my answer is that I use a technique called Suffering From a Mental Illness. ~ Heather Armstrong

I look back on those days and regret none of it, not the risks, not the shame, not the total lack of foresight. The lyric cast of the sun, the teeming fields with tall plants nodding away under the intense midafternoon heat, the squeak of our wooden floors, or the scrape of the clay ashtray pushed ever so lightly on the marble slab that used to sit on my nightstand. I knew that our minutes were numbered, but I didn't dare count them, just as I knew where all this was headed, but I didn't care to read the signposts. This was a time when I intentionally failed to drop bread crumbs for my return journey; instead, I ate them. He could turn out to be a creep; he could change me or ruin me forever, while time and gossip might ultimately disembowel everything we shared and trim the whole thing down till nothing but fish bones remained. I might miss this day, or I might do far better, but I'd always know that on those afternoons in my bedroom I had held my moment. ~ Andre Aciman

Not being able to swipe into the subway when people are backing up behind you. Waiting for him at the bar. Leaving your purse open on a stool with a mess of bills visible. Mispronouncing the names while presenting French wines. Your clogs slipping on the waxed floors. The way your arms shoot out and you tense your face when you almost fall. Taking your job seriously. Watching the sex scene from Dirty Dancing on repeat and eating a box of gingersnaps for dinner on your day off. Forgetting your stripes, your work pants, your socks. Mentally mapping the bar for corners where you might catch him alone. Getting drunker faster than everyone else. Not knowing what foie gras is. Not knowing what you think about abortion. Not knowing what a feminist is. Not knowing who the mayor is. Throwing up between your feet on the subway stairs. On a Tuesday. Going back for thirds at family meal. Excruciating diarrhea in the employee bathroom. Hurting yourself when you hit your head on the low pipe. Refusing to leave the bar though it's over, completely over. Bleeding in every form. Beer stains on your shirt, grease stains on your jeans, stains in every form. Saying you know where something is when you have absolutely no idea where it is.

At some point, I leveled out. Everything stopped being embarrassing. ~ Stephanie Danler

Within, walls continued upright, bricks met neatly, floors were firm, and doors were sensibly shut; silence lay steadily against the wood and stone of Hill House, and whatever walked there, walked alone. ~ Shirley Jackson

The bleached ceilings, walls, and floors gleam in perfection. Drained of color, wiped of contamination, forever untainted they exist; a cold reminder of my purity. ~ Celeste Simone

I lived rough, by my wits, was homeless, lived on the streets, lived on friends' floors, was happy, was miserable. ~ Ben Okri

There was little sign of culture, and the luxury was senseless and haphazard, and was as ill fitting as that uniform. The floors irritated him with their brilliant polish, the lustres on the chandelier irritated him, and he was reminded for some reason of the story of the merchant who used to go to the baths with a medal on his neck ... ~ Anton Chekhov

Nor count compartments of the floors, But mount to paradise By the stairway of surprise. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

You smell like the floor of a bar."
"Hey. I resent that. I have lots of fond memories of bar floors. ~ Nichole Chase

I'm not going to be part of this," said Leo. He opened his hand and dropped the flowers. Fragrant, obedient, they beheaded themselves on Saina's salvaged-wood floors. ~ Jade Chang

For every nineteenth-century middle-class family that protected its wife and child within the family circle, there was an Irish ora German girl scrubbing floors in that home, a Welsh boy mining coal to keep the home-baked goodies warm, a black girl doing the family laundry, a black mother and child picking cotton to be made into clothes for the family, and a Jewish or an Italian daughter in a sweatshop making "ladies" dresses or artificial flowers for the family to purchase. ~ Stephanie Coontz

As with many teens, my first jobs included babysitting and mopping floors at McDonald's. Since then, I've held jobs a diverse as selling used cars, selling apparel, cosmetics, and real-estate, substitute-teaching six graders, teaching undergraduate creative writing, and working as an editorial assistant for a literary magazine. ~ Therese Fowler

And the PRCS [Palestinian Red Crescent Society] had not lost just one hospital: thirteen clinics and nine hospitals all over Lebanon had been destroyed in this way. Only Gaza Hospital, for a reason I was to discover three years later, was still standing. At the height of the air raids, when the Palestinians found out that every single PRCS hospital and clinic was a bomb target, they put three Israeli soldiers captured in south Lebanon on the upper floors of Gaza Hospital, and radioed a message to the Israeli Army saying that any further military action on Gaza Hospital would result in Israeli lives being lost. That saved Gaza Hospital from further destruction. ~ Ang Swee Chai

When I think of the farm, I think of mud. Limning my husband's fingernails and encrusting the children's knees and hair. Sucking at my feet like a greedy newborn on the breast. Marching in boot-shaped patched across the plank floors of the house. There was no defeating it. The mud coated everything. I dreamed in brown. When it rained, as it often did, the yard turned into a thick gumbo, with the house floating in it like a soggy cracker. ~ Hillary Jordan

Empowered Women 101: Everyone wants to be a princess, but you weren't the first princess in his life. They scrubbed his floors, washed his workout clothes, picked up his dirty socks and dealt with his issues. Always remember that history leaves a pattern of what to expect. A real woman knows that the bible is a motivator, but the real instruction manual is observing the last woman's struggle. ~ Shannon L. Alder

I somehow got the idea that oak floors were located exclusively in New York City. This came chiefly from watching Woody Allen movies. I wanted to live someplace that looked like Mia Farrow's apartment in 'Hannah and Her Sisters' (little did I know that it was Mia Farrow's apartment). To me, this kind of space did not connote wealth. These were places where paint was peeling and the rugs were frayed, places where smart people sat around drinking gin and tonics, having interesting conversations, and living, according to my logic, in an authentic way. ~ Meghan Daum

Not a single object seems to possess a practical use. The antechamber itself seems useless, a sort of vestibule to a barn, It is exactly the same sort of sensation I get when I enter the Comedie-Francaise or the Palaise- Royal Theatre; ; it is a world of bric-a-brac, of trap doors, of arms and busts and waxed floors, of candelabras and men in armor, of statues without eyes and love letters lying in glass cases. Something is going on, but it makes no sense; it's like finishing the half-empty bottle of Calvados because there's no room in the valise. ~ Henry Miller

We spent the first night of our honeymoon in a country hotel, with Tudor architecture oak beams, and floors which sloped, of the Queen-Elizabeth-Slept-Here variety. There were old tennis-courts - the Tudor kind where Henry VIII was said to have played; and gardens filled with winter heather, jasmine and yellow chrysanthemums. [ ... ] So that first night together was spent in the ancient bedroom with the tiny leaded paned windows, through which shafts of moonlight touched the room with a dreamlike radiance [ ... ] ~ Jean Plaidy

I thought I'd reached the bottom a few times, but then I'd realise there was another 30 floors of despair below that. ~ Trent Reznor

Joseph, you're out of clean towels." Lucia poked her head into the living room, the rest of her hidden behind the wall. Her red hair dripped water onto my wooden floors.
"She's in the buff." Jenna guffawed. Gabriella rolled her eyes, beaming.
I rose. "Go back to the bathroom. I'll bring you a towel," I ordered Lucia. She disappeared down the hall.
"You have naked angels running around your house," Jenna continued through her laughter. Gabby laughed louder. ~ Laura Kreitzer

Scrubbing floors and emptying bedpans has as much dignity as the Presidency. ~ Richard M. Nixon

Manufacturers are not allowed to enforce retail prices for their products. But they can decide which retailers to sell to, and one way they wield that power is by setting price floors with a tool called MAP, or minimum advertised price. MAP requires offline retailers like Walmart to stay above a certain price threshold in their circulars and newspaper ads. Online retailers have a higher burden. Their product pages are considered advertisements, so they have to set their promoted prices at or above MAP or else face the manufacturer's wrath and risk the firm's limiting the number of products allocated or withdrawing them altogether. ~ Brad Stone

I retain a searing memory of the smell of fresh varnish on wooden floors, and the feeling that I was entering incarceration as I stepped through the door for my first day of kindergarten. ~ James Edwin Turner

The heels of military boots, striking marble floors, made a sound like thrown stones. ~ Gregory Maguire

Straining to hear, I can make out something acoustic. Coming from...the backyard?

I glance down from my bedroom window and feel my jaw fall open. Matt Finch is standing below my window, guitar strapped across his chest. I pull my window up, and I expect the song from that old movie - the one about a guy with a trench coat and the big radio and his heart on his sleeve.

But it's not that. It's not anything I recognise, and I strain to make out the lyrics: Stop being ridiculous, stop being ridiculous, Reagan.

What an asshole.

The mesh screen and two floors between us don't seem like enough to protect him from my anger.

"Nice apology," I call down to him.
"I've apologised thirteen times," he yells back, "and so far you haven't called me back."

I open my mouth to say it doesn't matter, but he's already redirecting the song.

"Now I'm gonna stand here until you forgive me," he sings loudly, "or at least until you hear me out, la-la, oh-la-la. I drove seven hours overnight, and I won't leave until you come out here."

(...) "This is private property!" My throat feel coarse from how loudly I'm yelling. "And that doesn't even rhyme!"

The guitar chord continues as he sings, "Then call the cops, call the cops, call the cops..."

I storm downstairs, my feet pounding against the staircase. When I turn the corner, my dad looks almost amused from his seat in the recliner. Noticing ~ Emery Lord

The way they heat their homes in Korea is to put bricks under the floors, so the heat actually radiates from underneath the floor. ~ Rick Smolan

in the car. For seven floors, he's all mine. I dare ~ Magda Alexander

Young man," he went on, raising his head again, "in your face I seem to read some trouble of mind. When you came in I read it, and that was why I addressed you at once. For in unfolding to you the story of my life, I do not wish to make myself a laughing-stock before these idle listeners, who indeed know all about it already, but I am looking for a man of feeling and education. Know then that my wife was educated in a high-class school for the daughters of noblemen, and on leaving, she danced the shawl dance before the governor and other personages for which she was presented with a gold medal and a certificate of merit. The medal … well, the medal of course was sold - long ago, hm … but the certificate of merit is in her trunk still and not long ago she showed it to our landlady. And although she is most continually on bad terms with the landlady, yet she wanted to tell some one or other of her past honours and of the happy days that are gone. I don't condemn her for it. I don't blame her, for the one thing left her is recollection of the past, and all the rest is dust and ashes. Yes, yes, she is a lady of spirit, proud and determined. She scrubs the floors herself and has nothing but black bread to eat, but won't allow herself to be treated with disrespect. That's why she would not overlook Mr. Lebeziatnikov's rudeness to her, and so when he gave her a beating for it, she took to her bed more from the hurt to her feelings than from the blows. She was a widow when I married ~ Fyodor Dostoyevsky