Ironing Board Quotes

What's beautiful, grey and wears glass slippers? Cinderelephant. Why are elephants wrinkled? They don't fit on the ironing board. How do you get down from an elephant? You don't. You get down from a goose. Why do elephants have trunks? Because they'd look funny with a glove compartments ~ Jodi Picoult

Time passes and the pain begins to roll in and out as though it's a woman standing at an ironing board, passing the iron back and forth, back and forth across a white tablecloth. ~ Audrey Niffenegger

My Father Comes Home From Work"



My father comes home from work

sweating through layers of bleached cotton t-shirts

sweating through his wool plaid shirt.


He kisses my mother

starching our school dresses

at the ironing board,


swings his metal lunchbox

onto the formica kitchen table

rattling the remnants

of the lunch she packed

that morning before daylight:


crumbs of baloney sandwiches,

empty metal thermos of coffee,

cores of hard red apples

that fueled his body through

the packing and unpacking of sides

of beef into the walk-in refrigerators

at James Allen and Sons Meat Packers.


He is twenty-six.

Duty propels him each day

through the dark to Butcher Town

where steers walk streets

from pen to slaughterhouse.


He whispers Jesus Christ

to no one in particular.

We hear him-- me,

my sister Linda, my baby brother Willy,

and Mercedes la cubana's daughter

who my mother babysits.

When he comes home

we have to be quiet.


He comes into the dark living room.

Dick Clark's American Bandstand

lights my father's face

white and unlined

like a movie star's.
Barbara Brinson Curiel

Ironing boards are a classic example of something I find horrible about modern society: the excitementation, for want of a better word, of mundane things. Funny ironing board covers - I hate them. ~ Daniel Radcliffe

We don't just have equipment to set up, we have a whole stage set: TVs tuned to static, a busted old Moog synthesizer (also tuned to static - it basically just sits onstage, drooling, like a demented robot friend), an ironing board we use as a percussion stand, lamps (because we prefer mood lighting to rock-show lighting), various car parts and kitchen utensils (for hitting), a movie screen we project slides onto and a pair of mannequin legs in a gold lamé miniskirt with a TV for a torso. All this may sound arty, but really, it's just overenthusiastic. ~ Kristin Hersh

Over a quarter of a century ago she and Vernon had made a household for almost a year, in a tiny rooftop flat on the rue de Seine. There were always damp towels on the floor then, and cataracts of her underwear tumbling from drawers she never closed, a big ironing board that was never folded away, and in the one overfilled wardrobe dresses , crushed and shouldering sideways like commuters on the metro. Magazines, makeup, bank statements, bead necklaces, flowers, knickers, ashtrays, invitations, tampons, LPs, airplane tickets, high heeled shoes- not a single surface was left uncovered by something of Molly's, so that when Vernon was meant to be working at home, he took to writing in a cafe along the street. And yet each morning she arose fresh from the shell of this girly squalor, like a Botticelli Venus, to present herself, not naked, of course, but sleekly groomed, at the offices of Paris Vogue. ~ Ian McEwan

I still can't set up the ironing-board. A complete Luddite. ~ Jenny Eclair

His ironing seemed highly rational, with a constant speed that allowed him to get the best results, with the least effort; all the economy and elegance of his mathematical proofs performed right there on the ironing board. The Professor was definitely the best man for this job, we had to admit, since the tablecloth was made of delicate lace. ~ Yoko Ogawa

Sofia take up the clothes, straighten them out, stand by the ironing board with her hand on the iron. Sofia the kind of woman no matter what she have in her hand it look like a weapon. ~ Alice Walker

Mrs. Turner was a milky sort of a woman that belonged to child-bed. Her shoulders rounded a little, and she must have been conscious of her pelvis because she kept it stuck out in front of her so she could always see it. Tea Cake made a lot of fun about Mrs. Turners shape behind her back. He claimed that she had been shaped up by a cow kicking her from behind. She was an ironing board with things throwed at it. Then that same cow took and stepped in her mouth when she was a baby and left it wide and flat with her chin and nose almost meeting. ~ Zora Neale Hurston

In Sardinia one summer my best friend Marisa Berenson and I ironed each other's hair. We used a hot laundry iron and took turns putting our hair on the ironing board, literally ironing it. That's a recipe for straightening that may be highly successful, but is definitely not recommended. ~ Diane Von Furstenberg

Inside the room there sat a rocker, which she sat on, and which had rocked her while she sipped the beer, because in spite of herself she had become so giddy to have so quickly relieved her heart that she allowed herself to lean backwards while in the rocker, which had made it possible for the rocker to rock her, although it was not her intention to be so rocked. Also there stood an ironing board with a still hot iron on it that was burning a yellow shift, and there was, among several items that were not as noticeable to the woman, and yet were noticeable enough to at least bear mention, a fake man.
"I hope you don't mind me asking," said the woman who lived in the room, but then while in her chair she nodded off. ~ Justin Dobbs

The only time I ever enjoyed ironing was the day I accidentally got gin in the steam iron. ~ Phyllis Diller

Sophia Loren is the embodiment of what a woman should be
the epitome of femaleness. Most of the young people today are just ironing boards. ~ Rona Barrett

A kitchen without an ironing board? Are you kidding? It's un-American. It's like Simon without Garfunkel. ~ Erma Bombeck

Radio, sewing machine, bookends, ironing board and that great big piano lamp - peace, that's what I like. Butterbean vines planted all along the front where the strings are. ~ Eudora Welty

She kept too much in herself. Her life was such that she had to keep too much in herself. My wisdom came too late. She is a child of her age, of depression, of war, of fear. Let her be. So, all that is in her will not bloom, but in how many does it? There is still enough left to live by. Only help her to know, help make it so there is cause for her to know that she is more than this dress on the ironing board, helpless before the iron. ~ Tillie Olsen

They want to do something - anything - to help me. Anything to change my situation. But they are as powerless as I am. The two of them are in a lifeboat, together, but so alone. The boat leaks, and they must bail in tandem to keep themselves afloat. It must be exhausting.
The terrible truth of their helplessness is almost too much to bear. I wish I would take them on board, but even if they could reach us, the captain would never allow it.
Right now it sucks to be me - but until now, it never occurred to me that it also sucks to be them. ~ Neal Shusterman

CBSE - Central Board of Secondary Education ~ Azeem Ahmad Khan

I sighed again, tipping my head back. My skin was still flushed, whether from anger or adrenaline or both, and my dragon crackled and snapped in myriad different directions. I needed to calm down. I wished I had my board. It was impossible to stay tense while floating on the surface of the ocean, its cold, dark depths lulling you to sleep. The sea was fascinating. It always amazed me how calm and peaceful it was one moment, only to bear down on you a moment later with the power and savagery of a hurricane. ~ Julie Kagawa

Passion is so contagious. When you're working on a project where people care, on every level, from the key grips to the main writer to the star of the show, you can't help but want to jump on board and create something. ~ Seth Gabel

I'm involved in everything from highly progressive lighting systems to airline interiors. In the field of transportation I can go from the micro to the macro: architecture, transportation, industrial product design, right across the board. It's Russian dollism, because they all interrelate: one goes into the other. ~ Ross Lovegrove

According to the latest wealth data of the Federal Reserve Board in the Flow of Funds, the total net worth of households is around $56.8 trillion.27 The wealth of the top 1 percent is therefore around $20.6 trillion. With roughly 113 million households, the average wealth of the richest 1 percent is roughly $18.2 million per household. ~ Jeffrey D. Sachs

Well, we have two major goals. The most important one is to get the station arm on board the station, because that's this really milestone in the space station building since from now on they will be using this arm to continue building the space station. ~ Umberto Guidoni

The Los Angeles Air Pollution Control Board is established in 1946 in an effort to discover the cause of the brown cloud hanging over the city and decide how to combat and disperse it. In 1949, after intense lobbying from both the automobile and oil industries, and against the recommendations and position of the Los Angeles Air Pollution Control Board, the public rail system, which at one time was the largest in the world, and still serves a majority of the city's population, is decommissioned and torn out. It is replaced by a small fleet of buses. ~ James Frey

Cooking isn't taught," Patch said. "It's inherent. Either you've got it or you don't. Like chemistry. You think you're ready for chemistry?" I pressed the knife down through the tomato; it split in two, each half rocking gently on the cutting board.
"You tell me. Am I ready for chemistry?" Patch made a deep sound I couldn't decipher and grinned. ~ Becca Fitzpatrick

It's when I'm around some people that my entire vocabulary goes on vacation. Like now, when Dave's walking next to me wearing an old black singlet and board shorts and the tattoo of a bird on his wrist, every single word in my head except "no" and "huh" is lying somewhere on a beack getting a suntan ~ Cath Crowley

The summer of 1999, we went on holiday to Spain to visit my cousin Penny, who runs a horse farm in Andalucia. It is a beautiful, wild part of the country.
Shara would ride out early each day in the hilly pine forests and along the miles of huge, deserted Atlantic beaches. I was told I was too tall for the small Andalucian ponies.
But I didn't want to be deterred.
Instead I ran alongside Shara and tried to keep up with the horse. (Good training, that one.)
Eventually, on the Monday morning we were to leave, I took her down to the beach and persuaded her to come skinny-dipping with me. She agreed. (With some more eye-rolling.)
As we started to get out after swimming for some time, I pulled her toward me, held her in my arms, and prepared to ask for her hand in marriage.
I took a deep breath, steadied myself, and as I was about to open my mouth, a huge Atlantic roller pounded in, picked us both up, and rolled us like rag dolls along the beach.
Laughing, I went for take two. She still had no idea what was coming.
Finally, I got the words out. She didn't believe me.
She made me kneel on the sand (naked) and ask her again.
She laughed--then burst into tears and said yes.
(Ironically, on our return, Brian, Shara's father, also burst into tears when I asked him for his blessing. For that one, though, I was dressed in a jacket, tie, and…board shorts.)
I was unsure whether his were tears of joy or despair.
What really ma ~ Bear Grylls

The evolution was always to greater scale and speed. Other countries did that here and there - GB in textiles, Germany in steel - but we went in that direction almost across the board. ~ Charles R. Morris

The trains in any country contain the essential paraphernalia of the culture: Thai trains have the shower jar with the glazed dragon on its side, Singhalese ones the car reserved for Buddhist monks, Indian ones a vegetarian kitchen and six classes, Iranian ones prayer mats, Malaysian ones a noodle stall, Vietnamese ones bulletproof glass on the locomotive, and on every carriage of a Russian train there is a samovar. The railway bazaar, with its gadgets and passengers, represented the society so completely that to board it was to be challenged by the national character. ~ Paul Theroux

For a company culture to change, the top executives must be on board with changing it. This means they must understand what the change means for them. ~ Janet Gregory

At that time there were no written guidelines stating that doctors should not treat members of their families or themselves. Doctors routinely wrote prescriptions in their own names to replenish medications used in their medical bags for immediate treatment of patients. After legitimate causes were established for the "special cases," they were both dropped before being debated by the board. ~ George Nichopoulos

The next day I ask Mr. Frank about extra help, and he points disinterestedly to the student tutoring sign-up sheet tacked to the bulletin board. ~ Danielle Pearl

My role is not so much to lobby but be a sounding board for people. That's a more effective place for me to be. ~ Bob Corker

Imagine you are tied to a chair with your hands tightly bound behind you, preventing you from covering your ears. Before you is a giant chalkboard. A woman enters the room. Her fingernails are long, hard, and ready for attack. You follow her with your eyes as she saunters to the chalkboard and raises her hand to make a claw. She looks at you with a blank stare as she digs her fingernails into the chalkboard and drags downward. As the harsh sound hits your ears, you squeeze your eyes shut in an instinctive yet vain effort to shut out the noise, but the absence of sight only magnifies the vile sound. Your ears have become hypersensitive, and you feel an unpleasant chill shoot through your body down to the toes of your feet. Finally, the sound stops as she removes her nails from the board, and a wave of relief passes over you. But the reprieve is short-lived. Again, the nails dig into the board and screech all the way down. The process repeats itself several times, and each time she stops dragging, you think it has ended for good, but soon she starts all over again. You frantically call out to her and ask her why she is doing this. You wonder what you have done to earn this perpetual torture. But she only looks back at your with a blank, almost quizzical stare, and that is when you realize that she is unaware of the pain she is causing. You feel the hopelessness pass over you. You squirm to free yourself from the chair, but it's no use. This is your life now, listening to this t ~ Rachel Cinelli

Harriet groaned as Adam turned around and revealed what he had just bought at the bar. "I said one more drink, not one more pitcher," she called across to him. "We're expected home already!"

"Listen to yourself, woman!" Adam said incredulously, reaching the table and putting the jug of Snakebite down. "They're not our parents!"

"Yeah, but – its board game night, 'The Game of Life'…" Harriet said, stupid with her share of the two jugs of Snakebite they'd imbibed already.

"Fuck 'The Game of Life'," Adam replied, with great delight, refilling their pint glasses with a clumsy slosh from the pitcher. "I always get the shit jobs anyway. ~ Erin Lawless

I take mentoring very seriously and I am on the board of an organization called Girls Write Now, where we match teen girls and writing mentors because it changes their lives. ~ Tayari Jones

Okay, God, I thought. Get me out of this and I'll stop my half-assed church-going ways. You got me past a pack of Strigoi tonight. I mean, trapping that one between the doors really shouldn't have worked, so clearly you're on board. Let me get out of here, and I'll ... I don't know. Donate Adrian's money to the poor. Get baptized. Join a convent. Well, no. Not that last one. ~ Richelle Mead

A porpoise sounded twenty yards away from us in an explosion of breath, startling us. . . . Then another porpoise broke the water and rolled toward us. A third and a fourth porpoise neared the board and we could feel great secret shapes eyeing us from below. I reached out to touch the back of one, its skin the color of jade, but as I reached the porpoise dove and my hand touched moonlight where the dorsal fin had been cutting through the silken waters. The dolphins had obviously smelled the flood tide of boyhood in the sea and heard the hormones singing in the boy0scented water. None of us spoke as the porpoises circled us. The visitation was something so rare and perfect that we knew by instinct not to speak – and then, as quickly as they had come, the porpoises moved away from us, moved south where there were fish to be hunted.
"Each of us would remember that night floating on the waves all during our lives. It was the year before we went to high school when we were poised on the slippery brink between childhood and adulthood, admiring our own daring as we floated free from the vigilance and approval of adult eyes, ruled only by the indifference of stars and fate. It was the purest moment of freedom and headlong exhilaration that I had ever felt. A wordless covenant was set among us the night of the porpoises. ~ Pat Conroy

I am the daughter of the Chairman of the Board and thus, was raised with great music. ~ Nancy Sinatra

We have feudal governments in a commercial age. It would be but an easy extension of our commercial system, to pay a private emperor a fee for services, as we pay an architect, an engineer, or a lawyer. If any man has talent for righting wrong, for administering difficult affairs, for counselling poor farmers how to turn their estates to good husbandry, for combining a hundred private enterprises to a general benefit, let him in the county- town, or in Court-street, put up his sign-board, Mr. Smith, Governor, Mr. Johnson, Working king. ~ Ralph Waldo Emerson

There were letters on the bottom, letters he'd seen before, on the ship that had carried him from London, the ship that had broken up on the reef that guarded the island. The letters said: NEVER LAND.
Peter looked at it. And then he looked around him
at the lagoon; at the rock where the mermaids (Mermaids!) lounged; at the palm-fringed beach; at the tinkling fairy flitting over his head; at his new friends the Mollusks; at the jungle-covered, pirate-infested mountains looming over it all.
Then he looked at the board again, and he laughed out loud.
'That's exactly where I am,' he said. ~ Dave Barry

My father used to always give me a basketball, a skate board, and a bike every Christmas. That's all I wanted every year. ~ Amar'e Stoudemire

Given that I don't know anything, when I am making up stories about the future, why not make it a good story instead of a scary one? ~ Sharon Weil

Why not throw in an amnesia victim, a crazy parrot, and a Ouija board to keep it interesting? ~ Christina A. Burke

A woman who spends all day washing and cooking and ironing doesn't want to go to the movies to watch a film about a woman who spends all day washing and cooking and ironing. ~ Alfred Hitchcock

Theseus Within the Labyrinth pt.1

The lives of Greeks in the old days were deep,
mysterious and often lead to questions like
just what was wrong with Ariadne anyway, that's
what I'd like to know? She would have done
anything for that rascally Theseus, and what
did he do but sneak out in the night and row
back to his ship with black sails. Let's get
the heck out of here, he muttered to his crew
and they leaned on their oars as he went whack-
whack on the whacking board - a human metronome
of adventure and ill-fortune. She was King Minos's
daughter and had helped Theseus kill the king's
pet monster, her half-brother, so possibly
he didn't like feeling beholden - people might
think he wasn't tough. But certainly he'd spent
his life knocking chips off shoulders and flattening
any fellow reckless enough to step across a line
drawn in the dust. If you wanted a punch thrown,
Theseus was just the cowboy to throw it. I'm only
happy when hitting and scratching, he'd told Ariadne
that first night. So he'd been the logical choice
to sail down from Athens to Crete to stop this
nonsense of a tribute of virgins for some
monster to eat. Those Cretans called it eating but
Theseus thought himself no fool and liked a virgin
as well as the next man. Not that he could have got
into the Labyrinth without Ariadne's help or out
either for that matter. As f ~ Stephen Dobyns

A genial hearth, a hospitable board, and a refined rusticity. ~ William Wordsworth

To instill the values for the culture was and is the responsibility of the leadership, and staff alignment was critical to its success. It started with both board and staff. They realized that they needed to share the same value system that says, "I am the equipper, not the doer." If not, there were going to be immense roadblocks to effectively mobilizing people for ministry. ~ Sue Mallory

I often give this metaphor where I say that writing short fiction is like surfing, while writing a novel is like navigating with your car. So when you navigate with your car, you want to get somewhere. When you surf, you don't want to get somewhere, you just don't want to fall off your board. ~ Etgar Keret