Rafters Quotes

I've actually got a new sorta-boyfriend and I suppose maybe I'll have shake-the-rafters, rattle-the-windows sex with him since I'll finally be legal and all."
"Eponine," Phil hissed. Maube I'd only said it for the reaction, because there was absolutely no way that would be happening withing the month. I could count the numbers of boys I'd merely kissed on one hand. I didn't even need a hand at all to number the guys I'd slept with. I figured the integer wasn't about to change any time soon, either.
"Obviously I'm kidding, Phil." His posture relaxed, only slightly. "We'll be quiet. ~ Megan Squires

It wasn't like the spare rooms of immigrants––packed to the rafters with all that they have ever possessed, no matter how defective or damaged, mountains of odds and ends––that stand testament to the fact that they have things now, where before they had nothing. ~ Zadie Smith

Delusions, errors and lies are like huge, gaudy vessels, the rafters of which are rotten and worm-eaten, and those who embark in them are fated to be shipwrecked. ~ Gautama Buddha

It's hard to put it in perspective right now. I'm starting to feel a little emotional about what's going to happen Friday night. Getting your number put in the rafters is always something that as a kid ... you dream of seeing happen to you. ~ Scottie Pippen

I avoid the looming visitor,
Flee him adroitly around corners,
Hating him, wishing him well;

Lest if he confront me I be forced to say what is in no wise true:
That he is welcome; that I am unoccupied;
And forced to sit while the potted roses wilt in the crate or the sonnet cools

Bending a respectful nose above such dried philosophies
As have hung in wreaths from the rafters of my house since I was a child.

Some trace of kindliness in this, no doubt,
There may be.
But not enough to keep a bird alive.

There is a flaw amounting to a fissure
In such behaviour. ~ Edna St. Vincent Millay

Before that first line of pale chalk, before the underdrawing fleshes out into shapes and proportions, there is a stab of grief for all the things she didn't get to paint. The finches wheeling in the rafters of the barn, Cornelis reading in the arbor, Tomas bent over in his roses in the flower garden, apple blossoms, walnuts beside oysters, Kathrijn in the full bloom of her short life, Barent sleeping in a field of lilacs, the Gypsies in the market, late-night revelers in the taverns…. Every work is a depiction and a lie. We rearrange the living, exaggerate the light, intimate dusk when it's really noonday sun. ~ Dominic Smith

A Second Childhood."

When all my days are ending
And I have no song to sing,
I think that I shall not be too old
To stare at everything;
As I stared once at a nursery door
Or a tall tree and a swing.

Wherein God's ponderous mercy hangs
On all my sins and me,
Because He does not take away
The terror from the tree
And stones still shine along the road
That are and cannot be.

Men grow too old for love, my love,
Men grow too old for wine,
But I shall not grow too old to see
Unearthly daylight shine,
Changing my chamber's dust to snow
Till I doubt if it be mine.

Behold, the crowning mercies melt,
The first surprises stay;
And in my dross is dropped a gift
For which I dare not pray:
That a man grow used to grief and joy
But not to night and day.

Men grow too old for love, my love,
Men grow too old for lies;
But I shall not grow too old to see
Enormous night arise,
A cloud that is larger than the world
And a monster made of eyes.

Nor am I worthy to unloose
The latchet of my shoe;
Or shake the dust from off my feet
Or the staff that bears me through
On ground that is too good to last,
Too solid to be true.

Men grow too old to woo, my love,
Men grow too old to wed;
But I shall not grow too old to see
Hung crazily overhead
Incredible rafters w ~ G.K. Chesterton

A big cigar was jammed in the corner of his wide mouth. Blue-gray smoke wafted to the ceiling rafters, curling around the big wagon-wheel chandelier like ghostly tendrils. ~ Kymber C. Hawke

When I did show up next door, at 6:34, it sounded like World War III had erupted in the house. I'd let myself in since no one answered the damn door.
"I can't believe you ate all the ice cream, Daemon!"
I cringed and stopped inside the dining room. There was no way I was going into that kitchen.
"I didn't eat all of it."
"Oh, so it ate itself?" Dee shrieked so loudly I thought I heard the rafters in the ceiling shake. "Did the spoon eat it? Oh wait, I know. The carton ate it."
"Actually, I think the freezer ate it," Daemon responded dryly.
I grinned when I heard what sounded like the empty container hitting what suspiciously sounded like flesh. ~ Jennifer L. Armentrout

I can't believe you ate all the ice cream, Daemon!"I cringed and stopped inside the dining room. There was no way I was going into that kitchen."I didn't eat all of it.""Oh, so it ate itself?" Dee shrieked so loudly I thought I heard the rafters in the ceiling shake."Did the spoon eat it? Oh wait, I know. The carton ate it.""Actually, I think the freezer ate it," Daemon responded dryly. ~ Jennifer L. Armentrout

The government passed more laws to protect women from dirty jokes than to protect men from death by faulty rafters at a construction site. ~ Warren Farrell

By not talking about death with our loved ones, not being clear through advanced directives, DNR (do not resuscitate) orders, and funeral plans, we are directly contributing to this future ... and a rather bleak present, at that. Rather than engage in larger societal discussions about dignified ways for the terminally ill to end their lives, we accept intolerable cases like that of Angelita, a widow in Oakland who covered her head with a plastic bag because the arthritic pain of her gnarled joints was too much to bear. Or that of Victor in Los Angeles, who hung himself from the rafters of his apartment after his third unsuccessful round of chemotherapy, leaving his son to discover his body. Or the countless bodies with decubitus ulcers, more painful for me to care for them even babies or suicides. When these bodies come into the funeral home, I can only offer my sympathy to their living relatives, and promise to work to ensure that more people are not robbed of a dignified death by a culture of silence. ~ Caitlin Doughty

There was a scream from inside.
Drawing his sword, Haung crept up to the door and slid inside, merging with the shadows. The source of the scream was illuminated by the conjured light-ball in the centre of the room. Haung took in the scene and felt all strength flee from muscles. His arms fell limp by his side and the tip of his sword struck the tiled floor with a bright clink. From the rafters, two small bodies hung, rope tight round their necks, blackened tongues swelling from their mouths and sightless eyes staring into the void. Below the bodies of the two children, a naked woman, bruised body and bloody face sat staring at him. Blood pooled from between her knees and it was clear to Haung what had happened to her, and to her young children. She screamed again and again. Her eyes were desperate and disbelieving. Her claw fingered hands tore at her cheeks again and again. Ragged lines of blood dripped down her face, tears of madness and grief. Haung stared at her, unable to move. ~ G.R. Matthews

He looked at the granite. To be cut, he thought, and made into walls. He looked at a tree. To be split and made into rafters. He looked at a streak of rust on the stone and thought of iron ore under the ground. To be melted and to emerge as girders against the sky.
These rocks, he thought, are waiting for me; waiting for the drill, the dynamite and my voice; waiting to be split, ripped, pounded, reborn; waiting for the shape my hands will give them. ~ Ayn Rand

Hidden in a toolbox, in the rafters of his four-car garage, was an envelope full of pictures taken by a private detective...They were pictures of a scrawny, boyish looking nine year old with a wide mouth and a tangle of brown hair...Her eyes were oblong and deep set, their color hidden from the camera by the slant of the sun. The angles and planes of her face were oddly beautiful just then, in that moment, frozen on Kodak paper. A hint of the woman she would someday become. ~ Shirley A. Martin

The bus here because they lost Rosa Parks's bus."

"Who lost Rosa Parks's bus?"

"White people. Who the fuck else? Supposedly, every February when schoolkids visit the Rosa Parks Museum, or wherever the fuck the bus is at, the bus they tell the kids is the birthplace of the civil rights movement is a phony. Just some old Birmingham city bus they found in some junkyard. That's what my sister says, anyway."

"I don't know."

Cuz took two deep swallows of gin. "What you mean, 'You don't know'? You think that after Rosa Parks bitch-slapped white America, some white rednecks going to go out of their way to save the original bus? That'd be like the Celtics hanging Magic Johnson's jersey in the rafters of the Boston Garden. No fucking way. ~ Paul Beatty

Hey - we have a problem. You have some unexpected guests down at the gate. You should go check it out."

Guests? Who would come here to see me?

I hop in the golf cart and drive down to the main gate. Just in time to hear Franny Barrister, the Countess of Ellington, tearing into a poor, clueless Matched security guard.

"Don't you tell me we can't come in, you horse's arse. Where's Henry - what have you done with him?"

Simon, my brother's best friend, sees me approach, his sparkling blue eyes shining. "There he is."

I nod to security and open the gate.

"Simon, Franny, what are you doing here?"

"Nicholas said you didn't sound right the last time he spoke to you. He asked us to peek in on you," Simon explains.

Franny's shrewd gaze rakes me over. "He doesn't look drunk. And he obviously hasn't hung himself from the rafters - that's better than I was expecting."

"Thanks for the vote of confidence."

Simon peers around the grounds, at the smattering of crew members and staging tents. "What the hell is going on, Henry?"

I clear my throat. "So . . . the thing is . . . I'm sort of . . . filming a reality dating television show here at the castle and we started with twenty women and now we're down to four, and when it's over one of them will get the diamond tiara and become my betrothed. At least in theory."

It sounded so much better in my head.

"D ~ Emma Chase

And anyway who the devil should I want to murder?"
"That would be a very good question," said Miss Marple. "I have not yet had the pleasure of sufficient conversation with you to evolve a theory as to that."
Mr. Rafter's smile broadened.
"Conversations with you might be dangerous," he said.
"Conversations are always dangerous, if you have something to hide," said Miss Marple. ~ Agatha Christie

Brightly and merrily swaying, like an April shower, came the young lady.

Perhaps if she had been sad and conscience stricken, like certain dames of old who left the site of their illicit love as woe-begone as the passing moment that never returns; if the lady had approached in full cognizance of her frailty, ready to forego a man's respectful handkisses of greeting, and trembling in shame at the tryst exposed in broad daylight, like Risoulette, sixty-six times, whenever having misbehaved, she hastened back home teary-eyed to her Captain; or if a lifelong memory's untearable veil had floated over her fine features, like the otherworldly wimple of a nun . . . Then Pistoli would have stood aside, closed his eyes, swallowed the bitter pill, and come next winter, might have scrawled on the wall something about women's unpredictability. Then he would have glimpsed ghostly, skeletal pelvic bones reflected in his wine goblet, and strands of female hair, once wrapped around the executioner's wrist, hanging from his rafters; and would have heard wails and cackles emanating from the cellar's musty wine casks, but eventually Pistoli would have forgiven this fading memory, simply because women are related to the sea and the moon, and that is why at times they know not what they do. ~ Gyula Krudy

What more consolation can there be! A God-believing Hindu may expect to be reborn a king; a Muslim or a Christian might dream of the luxuries he hopes to enjoy in paradise as a reward for his sufferings and sacrifices. What hope should I entertain? I know that will be the end when the rope is tightened round my neck and the rafters move from under my feet. To use more precise religious terminology, that will be the moment of utter annihilation. My soul will come to nothing. If I take the courage to take the matter in the light of 'Reward', I see that a short life of struggle with no such magnificent end shall itself be my 'Reward.' That is all. ~ Bhagat Singh

Safety is an illusion, Costis. A Thief might fall at any time, and eventually the day must come when the god will let him. Whether I am on a rafter three stories up or on a staircase three steps up, I am in my god's hands. He will keep me safe, or he will not, here or on the stairs. ~ Megan Whalen Turner

have a mind so quiet,
that you can hear doves whispering
as they rest their wings
in the rafters your silent sanctuary ~ Kate Mullane Robertson

If you are going to start psychoanalyzing me, Legna, just stop it right now," Noah warned her.
"You have had my undivided love and attention practically since the day I was born, Noah. Has it never occurred to you that you are simply unwilling to share me with anyone else? You joke about it, but there are reasons why you are not interested in finding a companion of your own. Why should you? You have a perfectly kept home, a beautiful hostess to manage your social affairs, and she is pretty much emotionally maintenance free. I give you completely unconditional love, respect, and admiration. I keep you company when there are so many around, but none are really close enough to your heart to safely be a King's confidant. There is only one thing I cannot do for you, and I already know you have your ways of obtaining that."
"Legna," he protested, his face flushing. "That is not true."
"Which part?" she countered, raising a single brow.
"I . . ." He hesitated, looking away from her penetrating gaze, realizing that she saw so much more than he had ever given her credit for. "Well, for one, the rafters of my 'perfectly kept home' are full of cobwebs," he said sheepishly.
Legna suddenly, gratefully, found herself laughing. It was a short burst of amusement that instantly defused the painful tension between them.
"As if it would kill you to spare a thought to giving them a two-second toasting and getting rid of them yourself? ~ Jacquelyn Frank

The old women were gone. They seemed to have ascended into the darkness like the waxy smoke from the candles after he capped them with the brass bell at the end of the snuffer. For a moment, staring into the darkness, he imagined the rafters full of smoky old women with hair sprouting from their chins. Hundreds of them. Thousands. Whispering in Italian, and Polish, and Latin about dead husbands and dead children. Like angels grown old but not allowed to die. He could smell them: the odor of candles. ~ Pete Hamill

At North Farm"

Somewhere someone is traveling furiously toward you,
At incredible speed, traveling day and night,
Through blizzards and desert heat, across torrents, through narrow passes.
But will he know where to find you,
Recognize you when he sees you,
Give you the thing he has for you?

Hardly anything grows here,
Yet the granaries are bursting with meal,
The sacks of meal piled to the rafters.
The streams run with sweetness, fattening fish;
Birds darken the sky. Is it enough
That the dish of milk is set out at night,
That we think of him sometimes,
Sometimes and always, with mixed feelings? ~ John Ashbery

Beer bottles and whisky jugs exploded from ill-aimed bullets. Wood chips showered down from the rafters and the air filled with the metallic smell of gun smoke. Trace fired a shot or two of his own, but decided his best option was to find some sort of shelter--drunks made horrible shooters. ~ Angela Scott

I think Hannah had two brothers. Yes, I'm sure she did. Theo and, and--this boy."
I shook my head. "If he's Hannah's brother, why isn't he in any of the other pictures?"
Aunt Blythe didn't answer right away. In the silence, rain pattered against the windows and dripped through holes in the roof. The wind crept in through cracks and stirred the folds of a long white dress hanging from the rafters.
Finally, my aunt raised her eyes from the photograph. "I think his name was Andrew. Isn't that strange? You share a face and a name with a boy who died years before you were born."
My throat tightened. "He died? Andrew died?"
Aunt Blythe looked at me. "Oh, dear," she said, "I didn't mean to frighten you."
"I'm not scared!" My voice came out as high and squeaky as a girl's. Furious at myself for being such a baby, I leapt to my feet and headed for the stairs.
"Slow down, Drew," my aunt called. "You'll go through the floor!"
Before the words were out of her mouth, a board split under my weight, and I fell flat on my face.
In seconds my aunt was beside me. "Are you all right?" she asked. "Did you hurt yourself?"
"I'm fine." Too embarrassed to meet her eyes, I peered into the hole I'd made. ~ Mary Downing Hahn

But five minutes later the five-hundred-year-old Roman chapel was filled to the rafters with the soaring sounds of Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody, ~ Tiffany Reisz

You're going to look your girl straight in the eye and say, Baby your mom rode to the rafters. Your mom lifted three girls in her hand, grinning all the way, she says, our voices rising to a baying now, all together. Your mom build pyramids and flew high in the sky, and back in Sutton Grove, they're still talking about the wonders they saw that night, still talking about how they watched us all reach to the heavens. ~ Megan Abbott

In the nearly total darkness of a Nighttown noon, who notices a few dozen mad children lost in the rafters? ~ William Gibson

It was peak season and packed to the rafters and Harry presumed that was why it was so difficult to gain eye contact with the waiters. "The waiters here are like the planet Pluto," Andrew said. "They orbit on the periphery, only making an appearance every twentieth year, and even then are impossible to glimpse with the naked eye. ~ Jo Nesbo

Hell came right along with God, hand in hand. The stink of sulfur swirled in the air of the church, fire burned in the aisles, and brimstone rained out of the rafters. From the evangelist's oven mouth spewed images of a place with pitchforks, and devils, and lakes of fire that burned forever. God had fixed a place like that because he loved us so much. ~ Harry Crews

I have passed in ignorance through a cycle of many rebirths, seeking the builder of the house. Continuous rebirth is a painful thing. But now, housebuilder, I have found you out. You will not build me a house again. All your rafters are broken, your ridge-pole shattered. My mind is free from active thought, and has made an end of craving. ~ Gautama Buddha

The whole house is spic and span and everybody's supposed to be real honest and full of what he calls 'the good'. We even leave food out for the mice in the rafters so they won't have to sin by stealing. And you know what happens when dinner's over? Everybody hunches over and licks his place clean so none of God's grace will be wasted. ~ Yukio Mishima

My mother lived alone in the ruins of the great Library, which was called Compleat, and a very passionate and dashing Library indeed. Under the slightly blackened rafters and more than slightly caved-in walls, my mother lived and read and dreamed, allowing herself to grow closer and closer to Compleat, to notice more and more how fine and straight his shelves remained, despite great structural stress. That sort of moral fortitude is rare in this day and age. By and by, my siblings and I were born and romped on the balconies, raced up and down the splintered ladders, and pored over many encyclopedias and exciting novels. I know just everything about everything - so long as it beings with A through L. ~ Catherynne M Valente

There goes the dismantled - Love has fallen off her wall. A religious woman," he thought to himself, "without the joy and safety of the Catholic faith, which at a pinch covers up the spots on the wall when the family portraits take a slide; take that safety from a woman," he said to himself, quickening his step to follow her, "and love gets loose and into the rafters. She sees her everywhere," he added, glancing at Nora as she passed into the dark. "Out looking for what she's afraid to find - Robin. There goes mother of mischief, running about, trying to get the world home. ~ Djuna Barnes

Juliana?" the words were low and far - too calm for her husband, who had found that he rather enjoyed the full spectrum of emotion now that he had experienced it.
"Yes?"
"What are you doing twenty feet in the air?"
"Looking for a book."
"Would you mind very much returning to the earth?"
"What are you thinking, climbing to the rafters in your condition?"
"I am not an invalid, Simon, I still have use of all my extremes."
"You do indeed - particularly your extreme ability to try my patience - I believe, however, that you mean extremities. ~ Sarah MacLean

A tree there towere Tall and branching That house upholding The hall's wonder Its leaves their hangings Its limbs rafters Its mighty bole In the midst standing. ~ J.R.R. Tolkien

We collided by mistake
fate dancing
in the rafters
as I wandered
the room
until I saw you
laughing to a friend
and I
closed my eyes
so I could see
the white swing
the children laughing
a thousand moments
of happy
and sad
and old hands
in old hands
a life in a flash
and there,
in my open eyes -
was you. ~ Atticus Poetry

Of course, it may be that the arts of writing and photography are antithetical. The hope and aim of a word-handler is that he maycommunicate a thought or an impression to his reader without the reader's realizing that he has been dragged through a series of hazardous or grotesque syntactical situations. In photography the goal seems to be to prove beyond a doubt that the cameraman, in his great moment of creation, was either hanging by his heels from the rafters or was wedged under the floor with his lens in a knothole. ~ E.B. White

He preached as if he had a flaming sword in his hand. Bats fell out of the rafters. The organ started up by itself. The water sloshed in the font. ~ Terry Pratchett

Fuchsia took three paces forward in the first of the attics and then paused a moment to re-tie a string above her knee. Over her head vague rafters loomed and while she straightened her-self she noticed them and unconsciously loved them. This was the lumber room. Though very long and lofty it looked relatively smaller than it was, for the fantastic piles of every imaginable kind of thing, from the great organ to the lost and painted head of a broken toy lion that must one day have been the plaything of one of Fuchsia's ancestors, spread from every wall until only an avenue was left to the adjacent room. This high, narrow avenue wound down the centre of the first attic before suddenly turning at a sharp angle to the right. The fact that this room was filled with lumber did not mean that she ignored it and used it only as a place of transit. Oh no, for it was here that many long afternoons had been spent as she crawled deep into the recesses and found for herself many a strange cavern among the incongruous relics of the past. She knew of ways through the centre of what appeared to be hills of furniture, boxes, musical instruments and toys, kites, pictures, bamboo armour and helmets, flags and relics of every kind, as an Indian knows his green and secret trail. Within reach of her hand the hide and head of a skinned baboon hung dustily over a broken drum that rose above the dim ranges of this attic medley. Huge and impregnable they looked in the warm still half-light, but Fuchsi ~ Mervyn Peake

I'm chasing a decade old ghost. Searching beneath the rafters of a cobweb-filled haven lined with old memories which my brain cannot accept are dead. The light of nostalgia is burning bright inside my heart. Ignoring the emptiness around me, and hoping for a resurrection of love. ~ LeAnne Mechelle

I'll find out who's inside. Wait here and keep alert!' Hallam rasped. He skirted the main path to skulk towards one of the shuttered windows on the building's eastern wall. There was a crack in the wood and he gently inched closer to peer inside.
There was a hearth-fire with a pot bubbling away and a battered table made of a length of wood over two pieces of cut timber. A small ham hung from the rafters, away from the rats and mice. He couldn't see anyone but there was a murmur of voices. Hallam leaned in even closer and a young boy with hair the colour of straw saw the movement to stare. It was Little Jim. Thank God, the child was safe. Snot hung from his nose and he was pale. Hallam put a finger to his lips, but the boy, not even four, did not understand, and just gaped innocently back.
Movement near the window. A man wearing a blue jacket took up a stone bottle and wiped his long flowing moustache afterwards. His hair was shoulder-length, falling unruly over the red collar of his jacket. Tied around his neck was a filthy red neckerchief. A woman moaned and the man grinned with tobacco stained teeth at the sound. Laughter and French voices. The woman whimpered and Little Jim turned to watch unseen figures. His eyes glistened and his bottom lip dropped. The woman began to plead and Hallam instinctively growled.
The Frenchman, hearing the noise, pushed the shutter open and the pistol's cold muzzle pressed against his forehead.
Hallam watched the man's eye ~ David Cook

I'm the fucking Horde King, I don't woo."
"Woo her," Ristan continues.
"I don't woo."
"Woo," he repeats.
"I'm not the kind of man to woo anyone. I can make her scream my name to the rafters, isn't that enough wooing?"
"Woo," Ristan smirks, which only served to irritate me more.
"Woo," I grind out on an exhale.
"Yes, woo," he says, already turning to walk away. I watch his shoulders quake with laughter.
"Woo," I growl.
"Woo!" He says over his shaking shoulders.
"Fuck me," I shake my head.
"No thanks, not my type ... ~ Amelia Hutchins

I am speaking of the evenings when the sun sets early, of the fathers under the streetlamps in the back streets
returning home carrying plastic bags. Of the old Bosphorus ferries moored to deserted
stations in the middle of winter, where sleepy sailors scrub the decks, pail in hand and one
eye on the black-and-white television in the distance; of the old booksellers who lurch from
one ϧnancial crisis to the next and then wait shivering all day for a customer to appear; of
the barbers who complain that men don't shave as much after an economic crisis; of the
children who play ball between the cars on cobblestoned streets; of the covered women
who stand at remote bus stops clutching plastic shopping bags and speak to no one as they
wait for the bus that never arrives; of the empty boathouses of the old Bosphorus villas; of
the teahouses packed to the rafters with unemployed men; of the patient pimps striding up
and down the city's greatest square on summer evenings in search of one last drunken
tourist; of the broken seesaws in empty parks; of ship horns booming through the fog; of
the wooden buildings whose every board creaked even when they were pashas' mansions,
all the more now that they have become municipal headquarters; of the women peeking
through their curtains as they wait for husbands who never manage to come home in the
evening; of the old men selling thin religious treatises, prayer beads, a ~ Orhan Pamuk

I'm supposed to believe you sold your emeralds out of some freakish start-out of a frivolous desire to go off with a man you claim was your brother?"
"Goodness, I don't know what you are supposed to believe. I only know I did it."
"Madam!" he snapped. "You were on the verge of tears, according to the jeweler to whom you sold them. If you were in a frivolous mood, why were you on the verge of tears?"
Elizabeth gave him a vacuous look. "I liked my emeralds."
Guffaws erupted from the floor to the rafters. Elizabeth waited until they were finished before she leaned forward and said in a proud, confiding tone, "My husband often says that emeralds match my eyes. Isn't that sweet?"
Sutherland was beginning to grind his teeth, Elizabeth noted. Afraid to look at Ian, she cast a quick glance at Peterson Delham and saw him watching her alertly with something that might well have been admiration.
"So!" Sutherland boomed in a voice that was nearly a rant. "We are now supposed to believe that you weren't really afraid of your husband?"
"Of course I was. Didn't I just explain how very cruel he can be?" she asked with another vacuous look. "Naturally, when Bobby showed me his back I couldn't help thinking that a man who would threaten to cut off his wife's allowance would be capable of anything-"
Loud guffaws lasted much longer this time, and even after they died down, Elizabeth noticed derisive grins where before there had been condemnation and disbel ~ Judith McNaught

This is your house, Reb. You are in the rafters, the floorboards, the walls, the lights. You are in every echo through every hallway. We hear you now. I hear you still. How can I - how can any of us - let you go? You are woven through us, from birth to death. ~ Mitch Albom

Like waking up in our home one night to find ourselves in a blazing fire, we must be arsonists of emotion, forcing ourselves to grab only what is truly important to us before our life-rafters collapse in on us and we can no longer escape alive. ~ A.J. Darkholme

I'm going to build that house with my own hands, from the foundation to the roof. I'm going to do it for us, and I'm going to do it right, so it lasts forever. Can't go raising walls on a shaky foundation. Can't go slapping thatch over rafters so thin, they'll topple with the first winter storm. Do you know?"
She nodded. "I know."
He reached for her hand. "It's the same with us. I mean to build something with you. Something that will last. Much as I want you, I don't want to rush and bollocks it up. ~ Tessa Dare

When we sing, the sound made even by small-scale earthbound creatures such as us rings around the rafters that we cannot otherwise reach. ~ N. T. Wright

Haiku Christmas Story

New light in the sky
announces a sacred birth.
Shine brightly young star.

Hallelujah song
carries on a gentle wind,
heralding a king.

Shepherds lift their heads,
not to gaze at a new light
but to hear angels.

"Unto you is born
in the city of David
a Savior for all."

Born on straw at night
under low stable rafters,
Baby Jesus cried.

Sheep and goats and cows
gather 'round a manger bed
to awe at a babe.

Wise men come to see
a child of greater wisdom
and honor divine.

Rare and precious gifts,
gold and myrrh and frankincense,
to offer a king.

Mary and Joseph
huddle snugly together.
They cradle God's son.

On this wise He came,
the Son of God to the earth.
A humble wonder. ~ Richelle E. Goodrich

Howard had a pine display case, fastened by fake leather straps and stained to look like walnut. Inside, on fake velvet, were cheap gold-plated earrings and pendants of semiprecious stones. He opened this case for haggard country wives when their husbands were off chopping trees or reaping the back acres. He showed them the same half-dozen pieces every year the last time he came around, when he thought, This is the season - preserving done, woodpile high, north wind up and getting cold, night showing up earlier every day, dark and ice pressing down from the north, down on the raw wood of their cabins, on the rough-cut rafters that sag and sometimes snap from the weight of the dark and the ice, burying families in their sleep, the dark and the ice and sometimes the red in the sky through trees: the heartbreak of a cold sun. He thought, Buy the pendant, sneak it into your hand from the folds of your dress and let the low light of the fire lap at it late at night as you wait for the roof to give out or your will to snap and the ice to be too thick to chop through with the ax as you stand in your husband's boots on the frozen lake at midnight, the dry hack of the blade on ice so tiny under the wheeling and frozen stars, the soundproof lid of heaven, that your husband would never stir from his sleep in the cabin across the ice, would never hear and come running, half-frozen, in only his union suit, to save you from chopping a hole in the ice and sliding into it as if it were a blu ~ Paul Harding

The laugh of Doctor Prunesquallor was part of his conversation and quite alarming when heard for the first time. It appeared to be out of control as though it were a part of his voice, a top-storey of his vocal range that only came into its own when the doctor laughed. There was something about it of wind whistling through high rafters and there was a good deal of the horse's whinny, with a touch of the curlew. When giving vent to it, the doctor's mouth would be practically immobile like the door of a cabinet left ajar. Between the laughs he would speak very rapidly, which made the sudden stillness of his beautifully shaven jaws at the time of laughter all the more extraordinary. The laugh was not necessarily connected with humour at all. It was simply a part of his conversation. ~ Mervyn Peake

Strings of chili hung from the rafters, chili to wake them from their dreams, dreams born of scents and rhythms, and the warmth that fell from the sky like the fleeciest blanket. ~ Anais Nin

You don't have books?!' Rose almost sat up and banged her head on the roof rafters. That made the rats jump. 'How can you live without reading?'
'Pretty well so far.' I laughed. 'Stories are just made-up stuff anyway.'
'Says who? I think they're a different way of telling the truth.' Then, 'Seriously - no books? Oh, Ella, you have no idea what you've been missing! Stories are food and drink and life...I mean, haven't you heard the story about a girl who made a gown out of starlight?'
'A gown out of starlight? How could you even do that...?'
'Well,' said Rose. 'Once upon a time...'
And that was that. No sleep for me till Rose wrapped up with a triumphant The End. ~ Lucy Adlington

Using the dagger next to him on the nightstand, Dante scored a fresh line on his wrist. He pressed the bleeding cut to Tess's lips, waiting to feel her respond, wanting to curse to the rafters when her mouth remained unmoving, his blood dripping down, useless, onto her chin.
"Come on, angel. Drink for me." He stroked her cool cheek, brushed a tangle of her honey-blond hair from her forehead. "Please live, Tess . . . drink, and live."

A throat cleared awkwardly from the area near the bedroom doorjamb. "I'm sorry, the uh . . . the door was open."

Chase. Just fucking great. Dante couldn't think of anyone he'd like to see less right now. He was too entrenched in what he was doing - in what he was feeling - to deal with another interruption, particularly one coming from the Darkhaven agent. He'd hoped the bastard was already long gone from the compound, back to where he came from - preferably with one of Lucan's size-fourteens planted all the way up his ass. Then again, maybe Lucan was saving the privilege for Dante instead.
"Get out," he growled.

"Is she drinking at all?"

Dante scoffed, low under his breath.

"What part of 'get out' did you fail to understand, Harvard? I don't need an audience right now, and I sure as hell don't need any more of your bullshit."
He pressed his wrist to Tess's lips again, parting them with the fingers of his blood by mild force. It wasn't happening. Dante's eyes stung as he stare ~ Lara Adrian

The desires of the heart ... are as crooked as a corkscrew. ~ Robert Stone

I'll be singing hymns to the rafters, be praising His goodness so loud they're going to have to turn down the volume in Heaven. ~ Diane Hammond

Even with his eyes concealed, I sensed Amar's gaze. "What world do you belong to? Theirs?" I pointed at an Otherworldly being sharpening his horns.
"No. My kingdom is neither among humans nor Otherworldly beings. It is between."
"Why did you come to Bharata?" I asked. "The invitation to my swayamvara was issued only to the nations we're at war with."
"Everyone is at war with my nation," he said with a smile.
"How did you even know about me?"
"Akaran has its eyes and ears."
He could have been lying. Nothing escaped me from the rafters where I had spied for years. But my father had other meetings…and he was not always in Bharata.
I hesitated. "How can I trust someone who won't even reveal their face?"
"It's far too easy to be recognized here."
He drew the cloak closer and the gesture was so final, so closed off and unwelcoming, that I stepped back, chastened. Amar removed the wedding garland from around his neck. From the sleeves of his jacket, he withdrew a small knife. Before I could react, he swiped the knife across his palm. Small beads of blood welled to the surface. He held his palm out to me like a perverse offering.
"I make this bond to you in blood, not flowers," he said. "Come with me and you shall be an empress with the moon for your throne and constellations to wear in your hair. Come with me and I promise you that we will always be equals."
My mouth went dry. A blood oath was no trifling undertaking. Vassals sw ~ Roshani Chokshi

I suppose we were worn down and shivering. Three a.m. is a mean spirited hour. I suppose we were drenched, with the cold hose water trickling in at our collars and settling down at the tail of our shirts. Without doubt the heavy brass couplings felt moulded from metal-ice. Probably the open roar of the pumps drowned the petulant buzz of the raiders above, and certainly the ubiquitous fire-glow made an orange stage-set of the streets. Black water would have puddled the city alleys and I suppose our hands and faces were black as the water. Black with hacking about among the burnt-up rafters. These things were an every-night nonentity. They happened and they were not forgotten because they were not even remembered. ~ William Sansom

He turned them into real-life versions of an M. C. Escher drawing, automating them to the rafters, with blinking lights on aisles and shelves to guide human workers to the right products, and conveyor belts that ran into and out of massive machines, called Crisplants, that took products from the conveyors and scanned and sorted them into customer orders to be packaged and shipped. These facilities, Wright decreed, would be called not warehouses but distribution centers, as they were in Walmart's internal lexicon. ~ Brad Stone

Mr. Constant," he said, "right now you're as easy for the Bureau of Internal Revenue to watch as a man on a street corner selling apples and pears. But just imagine how hard you would be to watch if you had a whole office building jammed to the rafters with industrial bureaucrats - men who lose things and use the wrong forms and create new forms and demand everything in quintuplicate, and who understand perhaps a third of what is said to them; who habitually give misleading answers in order to gain time in which to think, who make decisions only when forced to, and who then cover their tracks; who make perfectly honest mistakes in addition and subtraction, who call meetings whenever they feel lonely, who write memos whenever they feel unloved; men who never throw anything away unless they think it could get them fired. A single industrial bureaucrat, if he is sufficiently vital and nervous, should be able to create a ton of meaningless papers a year for the Bureau of Internal Revenue to examine. ~ Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

2012 has been an extraordinary year for our country. We cheered our Queen to the rafters with the Jubilee, showed the world what we're made of by staging the most spectacular Olympic and Paralympic Games ever and - let's not forget - punched way above our weight in the medals table. ~ David Cameron

I didn't eat all of it."
"Oh, so it ate itself?" Dee shrieked so loudly I thought I heard the rafters in the ceiling shake. "Did the spoon ate it? Oh wait, I know. The carton ate it."
"Actually, I think the freezer ate it. ~ Jennifer L. Armentrout

Dance till the stars come down from the rafters
Dance, Dance, Dance 'till you drop. ~ W. H. Auden

Every piece of wood in your house - from the windowsills to the furniture to the rafters - was once part of a living being, thriving in the open and pulsing with sap. If you look at these wooden objects across the grain, you might be able to trace out the boundaries of a couple of rings. The delicate shape of those lines tells you the story of a couple of years. If you know how to listen, each ring describes how the rain fell and the wind blew and the sun appeared every day at dawn. ~ Hope Jahren

He- for there could be no doubt of his sex, though the fashion of the time did something to disguise it- was in the act of slicing at the head of a Moor which swung from the rafters. ~ Virginia Woolf

She had seen it done. Wherever they glittered in the afterlife – flying among the high rafters of heaven, swimming with her mother in an undersea cave – she hoped the tigers had known it, and roared. ~ Leslie Parry

Constellations hanging overhead in the rafters of the universe ~ T.C. Boyle

Anyway, she loved horses a lot, my mother. When she was growing up she had a horse she said got lonely sometimes? and he liked to come right up to the house and put his head in at the window to see what was going on.
"What was his name?
"Paintbox." I'd loved it when my mother told me about the stables back in Kansas: owls and bats in the rafters, horses nickering and blowing. I knew the names of all her childhood horses and dogs.
Paintbox! Was he all different colors?
"He was spotted, sort of. I've seen pictures of him. Sometimes - in the summer - he'd come and look in on her while she was having her afternoon nap. She could hear him breathing, you know, just inside the curtains. ~ Donna Tartt

She rolled onto her back in the middle of the suddenly empty bed. Above her, the rafters glowed with the summer sun. Blue touched her mouth. It felt the same as it always did. Not at all like she had just gotten her first and last kiss. ~ Maggie Stiefvater

A girl is there. Dressed in a dirty rag of a dress, turning to look at him with the large, gold eyes that have studied everything from the rafters. Her hair in the overhead light appears dark for an instant, then when she shifts, fair. She is there in vivid detail, down to a mustache of beaded water above her generous mouth. A dead girl, looking more real and more alive than anyone he has ever seen.

She is not the girl - Oisin knows this with an instant, wrenching disappointment - whom he has been waiting for. ~ Lisa Carey

Instead of feeling like there's two or three of us in this town of hostile crackers, I'm in a big church filled with people who believe the same thing I believe and the power of song is raising what we're trying to do, raising it up to the rafters. ~ Stanley Nelson Jr.

Trust me, I never underestimate my charm or any of my other magnificent attributes. They work great on women. Alas, men tend to see me as an unwelcome rival. You, he might listen to. You're good at talking people into things."
"What makes you say that?"
"Because I'm perched in the rafters of a cannery, at risk from a man-slaying magical creature, and spending time with a drunk, a gangster, and an assassin at ... what time is it? ~ Lindsay Buroker

Verticality is ensured by the polarity of cellar and attic, the marks of which are so deep that, in a way, they open up two very different perspectives for a phenomenology of the imagination. Indeed, it is possible, almost without commentary, to oppose the rationality of the roof to the irrationality of the cellar. A roof tells its raison d'etre right away: it gives mankind shelter from the rain and sun he fears. Geographers are constantly reminding us that, in every country, the slope of the roofs is one of the surest indications of the climate. We "understand" the slant of a roof. Even a dreamer dreams rationally; for him, a pointed roof averts rain clouds. Up near the roof all our thoughts are clear. In the attic it is a pleasure to see the bare rafters of the strong framework. Here we participate in the carpenter's solid geometry.
As for the cellar, we shall no doubt find uses for it .. It will be rationalized and its conveniences enumerated. But it is first and foremost the dark entity of the house, the one that partakes of subterranean forces. When we dream there, we are in harmony with the irrationality of the depths. ~ Gaston Bachelard

Through the round of many births I roamed without reward, without rest, seeking the house-builder.
Painful is birth again & again.
House-builder, you're seen!
You will not build a house again.
All your rafters broken,
the ridge pole destroyed,
gone to the Unformed,
the mind has come to the end of craving. ~ Gautama Buddha

When he turned his head she saw him swallow. He mumbled, 'I'd ask you out, if I was alive.' Nothing was fair. 'I'd say okay,' she replied. She only had time to see him smile faintly. And then he was gone. She rolled back in the middle of the suddenly empty bed. Above her, the rafters glowed with the summer sun. Blue touched her mouth. It felt the same way as it always did. Not at all like she has just gotten her first and last kiss. ~ Maggie Stiefvater

Courtesy which oft is found in lowly sheds, with smoky rafters, than in tapestry halls and courts of princes, where it first was named. ~ John Milton

The recollection of how, when and where it all happened became vague as the lingering strains hung in the rafters of the studio. I wanted to shout back at it, Maybe I didn't write you, but I found you. ~ Hoagy Carmichael

Many of the artifacts of my house had become potential devices for my own destruction: the attic rafters (and an outside maple or two) a means to hang myself, the garage a place to inhale carbon monoxide, the bathtub a vessel to receive the flow from my opened arteries. The kitchen knives in their drawers had but one purpose for me. ~ William Styron

Who"

The month of flowering's finished. The fruit's in,
Eaten or rotten. I am all mouth.
October's the month for storage.

The shed's fusty as a mummy's stomach:
Old tools, handles and rusty tusks.
I am at home here among the dead heads.

Let me sit in a flowerpot,
The spiders won't notice.
My heart is a stopped geranium.

If only the wind would leave my lungs alone.
Dogsbody noses the petals. They bloom upside down.
They rattle like hydrangea bushes.

Mouldering heads console me,
Nailed to the rafters yesterday:
Inmates who don't hibernate.

Cabbageheads: wormy purple, silver-glaze,
A dressing of mule ears, mothy pelts, but green-hearted,
Their veins white as porkfat.

O the beauty of usage!
The orange pumpkins have no eyes.
These halls are full of women who think they are birds.

This is a dull school.
I am a root, a stone, an owl pellet,
Without dreams of any sort.

Mother, you are the one mouth
I would be a tongue to. Mother of otherness
Eat me. Wastebasket gaper, shadow of doorways.

I said: I must remember this, being small.
There were such enormous flowers,
Purple and red mouths, utterly lovely.

The hoops of blackberry stems made me cry.
Now they light me up like an electric bulb.
For weeks I can remember nothing at all. ~ Sylvia Plath

Inside a barn is a whole universe, with its own time zone and climate and ecosystem, a shadowy world of swirling dust illuminated in tiger stripes by light shining through the cracks between the boards. Old leather tack, lengths of chain, rope, and baling twine dangled from nails and rafters and draped over stall railings. Generations of pocketknives lay lost in the layers of detritus on the floor. ~ Carolyn Jourdan