Ladder Like Shelves Quotes

I could see the stories that stretched for years into the future, much like the ones that stretched back years into the past. More bombs, more sudden death, more adrenaline. Never had I felt as alive as in Pakistan and Afghanistan, so close to chaos, so constantly reminded of how precious, temporary, and fragile life was. I had certainly grown here. I knew how to find money in a war zone, how to flatter a warlord, how to cover a suicide bombing, how to jump-start a car using a cord and a metal ladder, how to do the Taliban shuffle between conflict zones. I knew how to be alone. I knew I did not need a man, unless that man was my fixer. But also, I knew I had turned into this almost drowning caricature of a war hack, working, swearing, and drinking my way through life and relationships. ~ Kim Barker

Every room I've lived in since I was given my own room at eleven was lined with, and usually overfull of, books. My employment in bookstores was always continuous with my private hours: shelving and alphabetizing, building shelves, and browsing
in my collection and others
in order to understand a small amount about the widest possible number of books. Such numbers of books are constantly acquired that constant culling is necessary; if I slouch in this discipline, the books erupt. I've also bricked myself in with music
vinyl records, then compact discs. My homes have been improbably information-dense, like capsules for survival of a nuclear war, or models of the interior of my own skull. That comparison
room as brain
is one I've often reached for in describing the rooms of others, but it began with the suspicion that I'd externalized my own brain, for anyone who cared to look. ~ Jonathan Lethem

I smiled at these books every time I saw them on my shelves. In many ways I sill feel like an incomplete person, but at least I had those books; I was more complete than anyone unlucky enough not to have them. ~ Josh Hanagarne

The first time I opened one I felt indecent. I love the feel of a book. I love the touch and smell and sound of the pages. I love the handling. A book is a sensual thing. You sit curled in a chair with it or like me you take it to bed and it's, well, enveloping. Weird I am. I know. What the Hell? as Bobby Bowe says to everything. You either get it or you don't. When my father first took me to Ennis Library I went down among the shelves and felt company, not only the company of the writers, but the readers too, because they had lifted and opened and read these books. The books were worn in a way they can only get worn by hands and eyes and minds; these were the literal original Facebooks, the books where faces had been, and I just loved it, the whole strange sense of being aboard a readership. ~ Niall Williams

I am a book.

Sheaves pressed from the pulp of oaks and pines
a natural sawdust made dingy from purses, dusty
from shelves.
Steamy and anxious, abused and misused,
kissed and cried over,
smeared, yellowed, and torn,
loved, hated, scorned.

I am a book.

I am a book that remembers,
days when I stood proud in good company
When the children came, I leapt into their arms,
when the women came, they cradled me against their soft breasts,
when the men came, they held me like a lover,
and I smelled the sweet smell of cigars and brandy as we sat together in leather chairs,
next to pool tables, on porch swings, in rocking chairs,
my words hanging in the air like bright gems, dangling,
then forgotten, I crumbled,
dust to dust.

I am a tale of woe and secrets,
a book brand-new, sprung from the loins of ancient fathers clothed in tweed,
born of mothers in lands of heather and coal soot.
A family too close to see the blood on its hands,
too dear to suffering, to poison, to cold steel and revenge,
deaf to the screams of mortal wounding,
amused at decay and torment,
a family bred in the dankest swamp of human desires.

I am a tale of woe and secrets,
I am a mystery.

I am intrigue, anxiety, fear,
I tangle in the night with madmen, spend my days cloaked in black,
hiding from myself, from dark angels,
Lise McClendon

If you're like most people, you'll do one thing for two to three years, then something else for two to three years, and then - somewhere in that five- to seven-year distance from Yale - you'll see a need to fully commit to something that's a longer-term project: graduate school, for example, or a job you need to stick with for some real time. The question is: where do you need to be with yourself such that when the time comes to 'cast your whole vote,' you're reasonably confident you're not being either fear-based or ego-driven in your choice . . . that the journey you're on is really yours, and not someone else's? If you think of your first few jobs after Yale in this way - holistically and in terms of your growth as a person rather than as ladder rungs to a specific material outcome - you're less likely to wake up at age forty-five married to a stranger." Yikes! ~ Marina Keegan

You don't have body parts there do you?" my mother interrupted. "I don't want to open the fridge and find a head on the shelf" Rodney laughed. "No Justina, it doesn't look like Jeffrey Dahmer's hideaway. ~ Jeaniene Frost

How will we seize Wensan's ship?" a Herrani asked.
"We'll climb its hull ladder."
Kestrel laughed. "You'll be picked off one at a time by Wensan's crew as soon as they realize what's happening."
The room went still. Spines stiffened. Arin, who had been facing the Herrani, turned to stare at Kestrel. The look he gave her prickled the air between them like static.
"Then we'll pretend we're their Valorian sailors who have been on shore," he said, "and ask for our launches to be winched up to the deck from the water."
"Pretend to be Valorian? That will be believable."
"It will be dark. They won't see our faces, and we have the names of sailors on shore."
"And your accent?"
Arin didn't answer.
"I suppose you hope that the wind will blow your accent away," Kestrel said. "But maybe the sailors will still ask you for the code of the call. Maybe your little plan will be dead in the water, just like all of you."
There was silence.
"The code of the call," she repeated. "The password that any sane crew uses and shares with no one but themselves, in order to prevent people from attacking them as you so very foolishly hope to do."
"Kestrel, what are you doing?"
"Giving you some advice."
He made an impatient noise. "You want me to burn the ships."
"Do I? Is that what I want?"
"We'll be weaker against the empire without them."
She shrugged. "Even with them, you won't stand a chance. ~ Marie Rutkoski

You look…exactly the same."
Gulp. Is that a good thing or a bad thing? "I do?" I get up on my tiptoes. "I think I've grown at least an inch since eighth grade." And my boobs are at least a little bigger. Not much. Not that I want John to notice--I'm just saying.
"No, you look…just like how I remembered you." John Ambrose reaches out, and I think he's trying to hug me but he's only trying to take my bag from me, and there's a brief but strange dance that mortifies me but he doesn't seem to notice. "So thanks for inviting me."
"Thanks for coming."
"Do you want me to take this stuff up for you?"
"Sure," I say.
John takes the bag from me and looks inside. "Oh, wow. All of our old snacks! Why don't you climb up first and I'll pass it to you." So that's what I do: I scramble up the ladder and he climbs up behind me. I'm crouched, arms outstretched, waiting for him to pass me the bag.
But when he gets halfway up the ladder, he stops and looks up at me and says, "You still wear your hair in fancy braids."
I touch my side braid. Of all the things to remember about me. Back then, Margot was the one who braided my hair. "You think it looks fancy?"
"Yeah. Like…expensive bread."
I burst out laughing. "Bread!"
"Yeah. Or…Rapunzel."
I get down on my stomach, wriggle over to the edge, and pretend like I'm letting down my hair for him to climb. He climbs up to the top of the ladder and passes me the bag, which I take, and then he grin ~ Jenny Han

The brigadier I knew has left his bombed-out face, leaving me alone with the clock, shelves of handsome books nobody ever reads, and one certainty: that whatever I do with my life, however much power, wealth, experience, knowledge, or beauty I'll accrue, I, too, will end up like this vulnerable old man. When I look at Brigadier Reginald Philby, I'm looking down time's telescope at myself. M ~ David Mitchell

Like other parties of the kind, it was first silent, then talky, then argumentative, then disputatious, then unintelligible, then altogether, then inarticulate, and then drunk. When we had reached the last step of this glorious ladder, it was difficult to get down again without stumbling. ~ Lord Byron

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

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

I closed my eyes, flared my nostrils, and let the scents flood in. The strongest of them, caramel and brown sugar, smell as yellow-orange as the sun, came first. That one was easy. The one that anyone would notice coming into the shop. And then chocolate of course, the bitter dark and the sugary milk chocolate. I don't think a normal girl would've smelled anything else, and part of me wanted to stop there. But I could feel Sam's heart pounding behind me, and for once, I gave in.
Peppermint swirled into my nostrils, sharp as glass, then raspberry, almost too sweet, like too-ripe fruit. Apple, crisp and pure. Nuts, buttery, warm, earthy, like Sam. The subtle, mild scent of white chocolate. Oh, God, some sort of mocha, rich and dark and sinful. I sighed with pleasure, but there was more. The butter cookies on the shelves added a floury, comforting scent, and the lollipops, a riot of fruit scents too concentrated to be real. The salty bite of pretzels, the bright smell of lemon, the brittle edge of anise. Smells I didn't even know names for. I groaned. ~ Maggie Stiefvater

Waiting for a book to be published is like having a baby. It would be nine months before we heard the patter of tiny pages trotting through the letter box, and the bookcase shuffled it's shelves in boredom and I was a martyr to morning sickness. ~ Deric Longden

Agnes shut her eyes, clenched her fists, opened her mouth and screamed.

It started low. Plaster dust drifted down from the ceiling. The prisms on the chandelier chimed gently as they shook.
It rose, passing quickly through the mysterious pitch at fourteen cycles per second where the human spirit begins to feel distinctly uncomfortable about the universe and the place in it of the bowels. Small items around the Opera House vibrated off shelves and smashed on the floor.

The note climbed, rang like a bell, climbed again. In the Pit, all the violin strings snapped, one by one.
As the tone rose, the crystal prisms shook in the chandelier. In the bar, champagne corks fired a salvo. Ice jingled and shattered in its bucket. A line of wine-glasses joined in the chorus, blurred around the rims, and then exploded like hazardous thistledown with attitude.

There were harmonics and echoes that caused strange effects. In the dressing-rooms the No. 3 greasepaint melted. Mirrors cracked, filling the ballet school with a million fractured images.
Dust rose, insects fell. In the stones of the Opera House tiny particles of quartz danced briefly...

Then there was silence, broken by the occasional thud and tinkle.
Nanny grinned.
'Ah,' she said, 'now the opera's over. ~ Terry Pratchett

There are things that can be forgotten. And things that cannot - that sit on dusty shelves like stuffed birds with baleful, sideways staring eyes. ~ Arundhati Roy

I was leaving this small Arizona town in a few weeks, and I felt less like someone preparing to climb a career ladder than a buzzing electron about to achieve escape velocity, flinging out into a strange and sparkling universe. ~ Paul Kalanithi

Steadily, the room shrank, till the book thief could touch the shelves within a few small steps. She ran the back of her hand along the first shelf, listening to the shuffle of her fingernails gliding across the spinal cord of each book. It sounded like an instrument, or the notes of running feet. She used both hands. She raced them. One shelf against the other. And she laughed. Her voice was sprawled out, high in her throat, and when she eventually stopped and stood in the middle of the room, she spent many minutes looking from the shelves to her fingers and back again.

How many books had she touched?

How many had she felt?

She walked over and did it again, this time much slower, with her hand facing forward, allowing the dough of her palm to feel the small hurdle of each book. It felt like magic, like beauty, as bright lines of light shone down from a chandelier. Several times, she almost pulled a title from its place but didn't dare disturb them. They were too perfect. ~ Markus Zusak

My dislike has no consequences. It accrues only in my mind - like preserves on a shelf or guns zeroing in, and never firing. ~ Renata Adler

What's more, his costume designs testified to the fact that both female Legionnaires and their male counterparts felt comfortable exposing plenty of flesh. (They were, after all, hormonal teenagers.) Detractors have dinged Grell's designs for their Ming-the-Merciless collars, bikini bottoms, and pixie boots (and that's just on the men) - and it's true that in some panels, Legion HQ crowd scenes seem more like the VIP lounge at Studio 54, but his designs made the book look like nothing else on the shelves. ~ Glen Weldon

I wanted so much when I was young. I was an endless abyss of want, of need of desperate dreams for myself that defied logic. The promise of what was to come hung like rings around the moon on clear autumn nights; the future was unmistakeable. It was always there, glistening in the dark and suggesting that life was little more than climbing a ladder into the sky, where I could reach up with one hand and secure everything that I had ever hoped for in my grasping fingers.
Oh, I dreamed.
And they are not easy to give up, these dreams. ~ Nicole Baart

The wooden shelves were tall and packed with worn covers of books read many times over. Pages were yellowed and paperbacks had arched spines like old sway-backed horses. It was an old folks' home for secondhand books, with that smell of old newsprint and slightly musty wood smell. ~ Nathan Fillion

She herself was a victim of that lust for books which rages in the breast like a demon, and which cannot be stilled save by the frequent and plentiful acquisition of books. This passion is more common, and more powerful, than most people suppose. Book lovers are thought by unbookish people to be gentle and unworldly, and perhaps a few of them are so. But there are others who will lie and scheme and steal to get books as wildly and unconscionably as the dope-taker in pursuit of his drug. They may not want the books to read immediately, or at all; they want them to possess, to range on their shelves, to have at command. ~ Robertson Davies

I wondered whether mad people would be better off if their memories could be neatened up, or taken off the shelves on which they were stored and replaced with nicer ones, and if they'd be the same person then, or completely different ones, and whether dreams were like a vandal rampaging through a library of memories, tearing out random pages and turning them into paper boats ... ~ Michelle Cooper

Dress everyday like you are going to land your dream job, no matter if you already have it. The ladder for success doesn't stop when you accomplish one dream". ~ Briann Dane

I spent the afternoon in a bookstore. There were no books in it. None had been printed for nearly half a century. And how I have looked forward to them, after the micro films that made up the library of the Prometheus! No such luck. No longer was it possible to browse among shelves, to weigh volumes in hand, to feel their heft, the promise of ponderous reading. The bookstore resembled, instead, an electronic laboratory. The books were crystals with recorded contents. They can be read the aid of an opton, which was similar to a book but had only one page between the covers. At a touch, successive pages of the text appeared on it. But optons were little used, the sales-robot told me. The public preferred lectons - like lectons read out loud, they could be set to any voice, tempo, and modulation. ~ Stanislaw Lem

When People Ask

How he's doing now, I have

no idea what to say except for,

"Better." I don't know if that's

true, or what goes on in a place

like Aspen Springs, not that any-

one knows he's there, thank God.

He has dropped off most people's

radar, although that's kind of odd.

Before he took this unbelievable

turn, Conner was top rung on our

social ladder. But with his crash

and burn no longer news of the day,

all but a gossipy few have quit

trying to fill in the blanks.

One exception is Kendra, who

for some idiotic reason still

loves him and keeps asking about

him, despite the horrible way he

dumped her. Kendra may be pretty,

but she's not especially bright. ~ Ellen Hopkins

Pa was on top of the walls, stretching the canvas wagon-top over the skeleton roof of saplings. The canvas billowed in the wind, Pa's beard blew wildly and his hair stood up from his head as if it were trying to pull itself out. He held on to the canvas and fought it. Once it jerked so hard that Laura thought he must let go or sail into the air like a bird. But he held tight to the wall with his legs, and tight to the canvas with his hands, and he tied it down.
"There!" he said to it. "Stay where you are, and be--"
"Charles!" Ma said. She stood with her arms full of quilts and looked up at him reprovingly.
"--and be good," Pa said to the canvas. "Why, Caroline, what did you think I was going to say?"
"Oh, Charles!" Ma said. "You scalawag!"
Pa came right down the corner of the house. The ends of the logs stuck out, and he used them for a ladder. He ran his hand through his hair so that it stood up even more wildly, and Ma burst out laughing. Then he hugged her, quilts and all. ~ Laura Ingalls Wilder

Tell me what happened."
"He was here," I said, hoarse. "He lit the can on fire and took the extinguisher nearby. I ran to the back to get the other and he pushed one of the shelves over on me."
The muscles in Holt's jaw clenched and flexed beneath the stubble that lined his face.
"Do you ever shave?" I wondered out loud.
He smiled and rubbed at the gruffness. "I just trim it."
I nodded.
"Do you like it?" he asked.
Once again, I touched him, brazenly running my hand along his jaw. It was soft and rough at the same time - the perfect balance. "Yeah, I do."
"Good to know," he said, taking my hand, linking our fingers together, and then his face grew serious again.
"Obviously, I avoided the shelf."
"Did you get a look at his face?" I cringed at the hopefulness in his voice.
"No," I admitted. "I tried, but he kicked me."
His eyes went murderous. Maybe I shouldn't have said that.
"He. Kicked. You," he ground out, making each word into a pointed sentence.
This time I kept my mouth shut.
"Where?" he demanded.
I wasn't going to reply, but his eyes narrowed and I knew he would eventually make me tell him. I was going to have to tell the cops anyway. Weariness floated over me at the thought of enduring yet another one of their hours-long interrogations.
I lifted my wrist, the bandage just dangling from the area now, not covering or protecting a thing.
The waves of hatred that roll ~ Cambria Hebert

I think my playing has been orchestral throughout the years, and this is another way of expressing that. But I primarily see it as the ultimate accomplishment of a musician. Composing makes me feel like I've finally gotten all the way up the ladder as a musician. ~ Tony Williams

One thing I would like to see is a stronger ladder series for up-and-coming American drivers. ~ Michael Andretti

It is a strange time, my dear.
A novel virus haunts our streets.
Days feel like weeks,
weeks like months.
We're blasted with new news every second -
yes and then no and then yes and no,
feeding our primal panic
to hoard goods and leave shelves
breadless, riceless.
They tell us the pandemic
makes all equal - the poor and very rich -
then why are the poor poorer
and the rich profiting?

It is a strange time, my dear.
Army men are marching our streets.
They force us to stay inside,
threaten and arrest
for a walk in the park.
They wage small wars against us,
but this battle began long ago.
The elite technocrats are crowing
in their silicone valleys
as corporations grow
and small businesses fold
with mountains of debt -
the centre cannot, will not, hold!

It is a strange time, my dear.
Mainstream media reports
the world has never been safer
as they terrorise the chambers
of our minds.
This stress, this anxiety
is killing our immunity.
But we must do it all for the elderly -
or so they say!
When have they ever cared for our elders?
When have they ever cared for our vulnerable?
We go to bed dreaming of toilet paper
while they dismantle the world economy.
Family businesses go bust
all so we can protect the people,
but only the pe ~ Kamand Kojouri

Be a lamp, or a lifeboat, or a ladder. Help someone's soul heal. Walk out of your house like a shepherd. ~ Rumi

Success isn't one straight line - it's a ladder, and there's always another rung above you to reach out for. Like anything else, there are ups and downs. ~ Joan Jett

I never saw anything like it. He was like the bit in the movie where Tom Cruise is a lawyer and he's decided he's really going to win this case, for the sake of justice and the American way, and that? And it's suddenly like bang-bang-bang - grabbing files off shelves and slamming them down on the desk and punching numbers in the telephone and shaking out the phone cord dramatically , and you know, snapping out instructions to all the assistants around the desk, like: "Get me all the phone records of the President of the United States for the last fifty years," and "Get me the names of every client who ever ate a banana," and "Let's get some Chinese take-out up here, on the double! ~ Jaclyn Moriarty

Beyond all of that, I could see the wall I had seen from inside the train, the wall that runs along the train line. I assumed that there, behind it, was the west, and I was right. I could have been wrong, but I was right.' If she had any future it was over there, and she needed to get to it.
I sit in the chair exploring the meaning of dumbstruck, rolling the word around in my mind. I laugh with Miriam as she laughs at herself, and at the boldness of being sixteen. At sixteen you are invulnerable. I laugh with her about rummaging around for a ladder in other people's sheds, and I laugh harder when she finds one. We laugh at the improbability of it, of someone barely more than a child poking around in Beatrix Potter's garden by the Wall, watching out for Mr McGregor and his blunderbuss, and looking for a step-ladder to scale one of the most fortified barriers on earth. We both like the girl she was, and I like the woman she has become.
She says suddenly, 'I still have the scars on my hands from climbing the barbed wire, but you can't see them so well now.' She holds out her hands. The soft parts of her palms are crazed with definite white scares, each about a centimeter long.
The first fence was wire mesh with a roll of barbed wire along the top. ~ Anna Funder

The multiverse, she said, was like an old library whose shelves were packed with books arranged by a cataloguing system that ranked them according to similarity, each book containing within its covers a story that varied only slightly from the stories of its immediate neighbours, but by increasing degrees from those of increasingly distant books. ~ Paul McAuley

And then I'm in a porn store. It's kinda boring, actually. It looks like a regular store - shelves of DVDs and old VHS tapes and a rack of magazines, all under this harsh fluorescent glow. I mean, there are some differences from a regular video store, I guess, like A. At the regular video store, very few of the DVDs have the words guzzling or slut in them, whereas here the opposite seems to be the case, and also B. I'm pretty sure the regular video store doesn't have any devices used for spanking, whereas this place has several. Also, C. There are very few items for sale at the regular video store that make you think, "I have no earthly idea what that is supposed to do or where it is supposed to do it." Other ~ John Green

Time seemed to drag with dreamlike slowness, like a knife through cold honey, and the room took on a surreal golden sheen as if I was looking through that same jar of honey. Maybe at that moment, the sun shone just right though the grimy windows, but the woman, the shelves, the jars, everything in the room appeared in tones of gold and sepia, except for the painting behind the counter. From behind the shopkeeper's head, a fluorescent Mary and Jesus glared at me, their cartoon-like faces reproaching me for being there. ~ Sara Stark

What is it going to be like this time?' I slide his glasses off, setting them on one of the empty shelves.

Elliot kisses a slow path up my neck "It's going to be what we wanted before."

"Thanksgiving on the floor in our underwear?"

He growls out a little laugh, pressing his hips forward when I reach down, lowering his zipper.

"And you in my bed, every night. ~ Christina Lauren

The idols of modern culture have had a profound influence on the shape of our work today. In traditional societies people found their meaning and sense of value by submitting their interests and sacrificing their desires to serve higher causes like God, family, and other people. In modern societies there is often no higher cause than individual interests and desires. This shift powerfully changed the role of work in people's lives - it now became the way we defined ourselves. Traditional cultures tended to see people's place on the social ladder as assigned by nature or convention, each family having its "proper place." That view had put too little stock in the role of individual talent, ambition, and hard work for determining the outcome of one's life. But modern society responded by putting too much stock in the autonomous person. ~ Timothy Keller

Ethan sidled next to me, a hand propped on the shelf. "Come here often?" he said. "Excuse me?" "I see you're here in this" - he gestured at the shelves - "library all alone. You must be a student here?" He traced a fingertip down the hollow of my throat, lifting goose bumps on my arms. Since my mind hardly worked when he did things like that, it took a moment for his words to register. Was he initiating a bout of role-playing ... about a library? "Ethan Sullivan," I marveled. "You have a library fantasy." He smiled slyly. "I have a doctoral-student-turned-vampire fantasy. ~ Chloe Neill