Frowsy Curtains Quotes

Then my gaze slid over the people to the blaze of green beyond the diaphanous
curtains, and I felt as if I were sitting in the window of an enormous department store. The figures around me weren't people, but shop dummies, painted to resemble people and propped up in attitudes counterfeiting life. ~ Sylvia Plath

It's curtains for you, Mighty Mouse! This gun is so futuristic that even I don't know how it works! ~ Ralph Bakshi

For a moment man is a boy, for a moment a lovesick youth, for a moment bereft of wealth, for a moment in the height of prosperity; then at life's end with limbs worn out by old age and wrinkles adorning his face, like an actor he retires behind the curtain of death. ~ Bhartrhari

The afternoon our story begins, the quiet parts of being alive were the busiest: wind unlocking Windows; rainlight nudging curtains apart; fresh-cut grass tickling unsocked feet. Days like this made Alice want to set off on a great adventure. ~ Tahereh Mafi

they convinced me
i only had a few good years left
before i was replaced by a girl younger than me
as though men yield power with age
but women grow into irrelevance
they can keep their lies
for i have just gotten started
i feel as though i just left the womb
my twenties are the warm-up
for what i'm really about to do
wait till you see me in my thirties
now that will be a proper introduction
to the nasty. wild. woman in me.
how can i leave before the party's started
rehearsals begin at forty
i ripen with age
i do not come with an expiration date
and now
for the main event
curtains up at fifty
let's begin the show ~ Rupi Kaur

Instructions for Dad.

I don't want to go into a fridge at an undertaker's. I want you to keep me at home until the funeral. Please can someone sit with me in case I got lonely? I promise not to scare you.
I want to be buried in my butterfly dress, my lilac bra and knicker set and my black zip boots (all still in the suitcase that I packed for Sicily). I also want to wear the bracelet Adam gave me.
Don't put make-up on me. It looks stupid on dead people.
I do NOT want to be cremated. Cremations pollute the atmosphere with dioxins,k hydrochloric acid, hydrofluoric acid, sulphur dioxide and carbon dioxide. They also have those spooky curtains in crematoriums.
I want a biodegradable willow coffin and a woodland burial. The people at the Natural Death Centre helped me pick a site not for from where we live, and they'll help you with all the arrangements.
I want a native tree planted on or near my grave. I'd like an oak, but I don't mind a sweet chestnut or even a willow. I want a wooden plaque with my name on. I want wild plants and flowers growing on my grave.
I want the service to be simple. Tell Zoey to bring Lauren (if she's born by then). Invite Philippa and her husband Andy (if he wants to come), also James from the hospital (though he might be busy).
I don't want anyone who doesn't know my saying anything about me. THe Natural Death Centre people will stay with you, but should also stay out of it. I want the people I love to ge ~ Jenny Downham

When she was a girl, and still growing, ravenous, whenever there had been a cake – a sponge cake, dusted with sugar, which Mrs Hill had conjured up out of eggs and flour and creamy butter – Sarah would never even let herself look at it, because she knew that it was not for her. Instead, she would carry it upstairs to be rendered into crumbs, and the crumbs lifted from the plate by a moistened Bennet finger, and the empty smeared plate carried back again. So Sarah would stare instead at the carpet underneath her feet, or at the painting of a horse with a strangely small head that hung at the end of the hall, or the rippled yellow curtains in the parlour, and would do her best not to breathe, not to inhale the scent of vanilla or lemon or almonds; even to glance at the cake was an impossible agony.
And for months, she realized, James had hardly looked at her at all. ~ Jo Baker

His tired gaze - from passing endless bars -
has turned into a vacant stare which nothing holds.
to him there seem to be a thousand bars,
and out beyond these bars exists no world.
his supple gait, the smoothness of strong strides
that gently turn in ever smaller circles
perform a dance of strength, centered deep within
a will, stunned, but untamed, indomitable.
but sometimes the curtains of his eyelids part,
the pupils of his eyes dilate as images
of past encounters enter while through his limbs
a tension strains in silence
only to cease to be, to die within his heart.
[the panther] ~ Rainer Maria Rilke

The curtain of the universe is moth-eaten, and through its holes we see nothing now but mask and ghost. ~ Emile M. Cioran

Clothes were scattered across the floor in piles, a duffel bag open on the floor as if it had exploded. Isabelle's bright silver-gold whip hung from one bedpost, a lacy white bra from another. Simon averted his eyes. The curtains were drawn, the lamps extinguished.
Isabelle flopped down on the edge of the bed and looked at him with bitter amusement. A blushing vampire. Who would have guessed. ~ Cassandra Clare

It was the breeze that made her look up, a change in the texture of the unseen, a change in the texture of her heart. She was ready. Charlotte moved with firm footing around a stand of beech trees and onto a moonbeam path. A pearly, full moon glowed over Red Mountain, burning back the curtains of night. ~ Rachel Hauck

While they poured their troubles into the comforting depth of his comprehending silence, he watched their faces in the soft light that shone through the spotless muslin curtains in the window, and learned more from the shadows around the eyes and the play of expression about the mouth than he did from the flow of confused words. Yet he listened attentively while he watched, quick to detect alike the hesitant truth and the glib evasion, and though he was impatient by nature, he never interrupted until the last word had been uttered. He knew how a flow of words, like a flow of blood, can wash away poison. ~ Elizabeth Goudge

Sometimes, a stage curtain parts and you see: life could be better if you had more. Usually, I think, we can get just as good a different way. But tricks, they do not always work. ~ Mona Simpson

They leave things behind sometimes, the guests. A bottle of scent. A crumpled handkerchief. A pearl button that fell off a dress and rolled under a bed. And sometimes they leave other sorts of things. Things you can't see. A sigh trapped in a corner. Memories tangled in the curtains. A sob fluttering against the windowpane like a bird that flew in and can't get back out. I can feel these things. They dart and crouch and whisper. ~ Jennifer Donnelly

Sottoportico San Zaccaria"

It rains on the roofs
As it rains in my poems
Under the thunder
We fit together like parts
Of a magic puzzle
Twelve winds beat the gulls from the sky
And tear the curtains
And lightning glisters
On your sweating breasts
Your face topples into dark
And the wind sounds like an army
Breaking through dry reeds
We spread our aching bodies in the window
And I can smell the odor of hay
In the female smell of Venice ~ Kenneth Rexroth

How like a queen comes forth the lonely Moon From the slow opening curtains of the clouds Walking in beauty to her midnight throne! ~ George Croly

I was going to have to use my teeth to pull the curtains aside. I was leaning over, barng my teeth, when the thick curtain was yanked aside.
"What on earth are you doing?" Peter drawled. "You look positively feral. ~ Alyxandra Harvey

Virginity is a myth, by the way. There is no on-off switch, no point of return. It's just a first experience, like any other. Everything surrounding it, all the lights and curtains and special effects- that's just part of the myth. ~ Eleanor Catton

A heroin-thin boy with enough rings in his eyebrows to resemble a shower curtain rod ... ~ Jodi Picoult

Thirty years later he could not come to any other conclusion: women were indisputably better than men. They were gentler, more affectionate, more loving and more compassionate, they were rarely violent, selfish, cruel or self-centred. Moreover, they were more rational, more intelligent and more hardworking.
What on earth were men for? Michael wondered as he watched sunlight play across the closed curtains. In earlier times, when bears were more common, perhaps masculinity served a particular function, but for centuries now, men served no useful purpose. For the most part, they assuaged their boredom playing squash, which was a lesser evil; but from time to time they felt the need to change history - which expressed itself in leading a revolution or starting a war somewhere. Aside from the senseless suffering they caused, revolutions and war destroyed the achievements of the past, forcing societies to build again. Without the notion of continuous progress, human evolution took random, irregular and violent turns for which men (with their predilection for risk and danger, their repulsive egotism, their volatile nature and their violent tendencies) were directly to blame. A society of women would be immeasurably superior, tracing a slow, unwavering progression, with no U-turns and no chaotic insecurity, towards a general happiness. ~ Michel Houellebecq

THE ACCIDENT maybe you read it in the paper i was so young just a child i did something stupid nightstand by the bed found it in the drawer that was so often locked but not this time sunlight through curtains high noon reflected on polished steel heavy in my hand pretending to be a cop like my father but more like dirty harry like i saw on tv my little brother burst into the room four years old just four years old without thinking i aimed killer instinct squeeze tug bang slow motion exploding blood not a sound from him as if what happened was completely natural i replay it again and again efficient little hum that burning memory pulled the trigger and watched him fold like a house of cards and the questions hammer through my brain and i ask you again "how much more do i have to pay before becoming whole again? ~ Thee Karkajou Automaton

Open yer mind to the world, kids. No point havin' yer windows open if yer don't pull back the curtains to let in the light! - Grandpa's favourite saying to Kirsten and Jeremy. Quoted in The Hybrid and the Emeralds of Elisar ~ Suellen Drysdale

Moving islands in the ocean of sky.
Beautiful white curtains in the sky,
Veiling and unveiling portions, as time passes by.
I watch clouds, when my mind feels clouded. ~ Innocent Mwatsikesimbe

I loved the stage not because it provided an escape from myself or my humdrum life but because when the curtain went up I could be whoever I wanted to be, and that was true freedom - to be myself. ~ Suzanne Farrell

Perfection is a thousand mistakes behind curtains. ~ Yarro Rai

The outside world, the world of free time in the yard or the garden or on the street, is only a distant murmur in the sickroom. Inside, a whole world of characters and stories proliferate out of the books you read. The fever that weakens your perception as it sharpens your imagination turns the sickroom into something new, both familiar and strange; monsters come grinning out of the patterns on the curtains and the carpet, and chairs, tables, bookcases and wardrobes burst out of their normal shapes and become mountains and buildings and ships you can almost touch although they're far away ~ Bernhard Schlink

That's it. Curtains. Off to the races. Treetops. Seashells and balloons. ~ Al McGuire

The patterns overhead shifted so that, had she an imagination prone to hysteria, she could easily convince herself something hid in the curtains above her head. She imagined a face in the shadows and folds of fabric, a face with sad, hollow eyes. The sliver of light shining through a crack in the window curtains disappeared. Shadows deepened and swirled and the face became even more uncannily real. ~ Carolyn Jewel

The windows were ajar and gleaming white against the fresh grass outside that seemed to grow a little way into the house. A breeze blew through the room, blew curtains in at one end and out the other like pale flags, twisting them up toward the frosted wedding-cake of the ceiling, and then rippled over the wine-colored rug, making a shadow on it as wind does on the sea. The only completely stationary object in the room was an enormous couch on which two young women were buoyed up as though upon an anchored balloon. They were both in white, and their dresses were rippling and fluttering as if they had just been blown back in after a short flight around the house. ~ F Scott Fitzgerald

To his relief, the curtains were drawn shut. He didn't really want to explain himself to whoever was staying there what he was doing acting like a flying squirrel outside of their hotel room. ~ Seth Sjostrom

You could get in rehearsals, pre-production, anything that would actually contribute to the understanding of how a film gets made. I actually find those things increase people's interest in a movie and like that better than worrying about showing the tricks behind the curtain. ~ Jay Roach

We are all actors, set on the stage of the world, as the curtains open we put on our best performance to this audience of life. ~ Anthony Liccione

We rarely get to prepare ourselves in meadows or on graveled walks; we do it on short notice in places without windows, hospital corridors, rooms like this lounge with its cracked plastic sofa and Cinzano ashtrays, where the cafe curtains cover blank concrete. In rooms like this, with so little time, we prepare our gestures, get them by heart so we can do them when we're frightened in the face of Doom. ~ Thomas Harris