Soaring To The Ceiling Quotes

No zek had the right to stay one second in his workroom without the supervision of a free employee because prudence dictated that the prisoner would be bound to use that unsupervised second to break into the steel safe with a lead pencil, photograph its secret documents with a trouser button, explode an atom bomb, and fly to the moon. ~ Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn

Story blew out a shaky breath toward the ceiling. "Dude."

Beside her, Daniel's body shook with silent laughter. "Did you really just say that?"

She rolled over to face him, a catlike yawn stretching her face. "In California, the word dude has over a thousand different meanings. Dude, Duuuuuude, Dude! It all depends on your tone. ~ Tessa Bailey

her mother had never done what was expected of her, had seemed determined to ignore proprieties. In so doing she had broken the glass ceiling. And it was not all that she had broken. ~ Brian McGilloway

The heart of the issue is not simply that a group that gets a large portion of its budget from the Walton family fortune is unlikely to be highly critical of Walmart. The 1990s was the key decade when the contours of the climate battle were being drawn - when a collective strategy for rising to the challenge was developed and when the first wave of supposed solutions was presented to the public.

It was also the period when Big Green became most enthusiastically pro-corporate, most committed to a low-friction model of social change in which everything had to be 'win- win.' And in the same period many of the corporate partners of groups like the EDF and the Nature Conservancy - Walmart, FedEx, GM - were pushing hard for the global deregulatory framework that has done so much to send emissions soaring.

This alignment of economic interests - combined with the ever powerful desire to be seen as 'serious' in circles where seriousness is equated with toeing the pro-market line - fundamentally shaped how these green groups conceived of the climate challenge from the start. Global warming was not defined as a crisis being fueled by overconsumption, or by high emissions industrial agriculture, or by car culture, or by a trade system that insists that vast geographical distances do not matter - root causes that would have demanded changes in how we live, work, eat, and shop. Instead, climate change was presented as a narrow technical problem with no end of profita ~ Naomi Klein

I just don't think there are any rules to color. You have a small space with no windows? Put lamps in there, make it dramatic, paint the ceiling black. Do something with it. If it's dark, accentuate the darkness. ~ David Bromstad

But caveat lector: we do not read the Bible in order to reduce our lives to what is convenient to us or manageable by us - we want to get in on the great invisibles of the Trinity, the soaring adorations of the angels, the quirky cragginess of the prophets, and ... Jesus. ~ Eugene H. Peterson

A random crack in the old plaster in the corner behind her seemed to grow, until it curled its way across the ceiling, circled the frosted chandelier, and swirled its way back down. It looked like a heart. A giant, looping, girly heart had just appeared in the cracking plaster of her bedroom ceiling.
"Lena."
"Yeah?"
"Is your ceiling about to fall in on our heads?"
She turned and looked at the crack. When she saw it, she bit her lip, and her cheeks turned pink. "I don't think so. It's just a crack in the plaster."
"Were you trying to do that?"
"No." A creeping pink spread across her nose and cheeks. She looked away. ~ Kami Garcia

I don't believe the sickest people that I meet throughout my day at work are in the business of having outlandish desires, either. I don't think they are staring at the square-tiled ceiling of the intensive-care unit and dreaming of being an astronaut or an explorer. I don't think they're holding the hand of their wife and thinking, "I hope we win the lottery and become rich." Perhaps I am wrong, but I think they are, for the most part, simply hoping they will get to be a part of life again. They are hoping for all the things we take for granted every day: the ability to breathe by yourself, to get out of bed, to sit on a toilet or lie in a bath. To swallow your food and choose what you want for breakfast. To walk out into the world and appreciate all its beauty, or complain about the weather - but to have that choice. ~ Aoife Abbey

The group's laughter echoed off the stained, plaster ceiling. I raised my beer, but before I clinked the bottles together, I challenged him. "You think you're a man I won't forget?"
"Ah'm nae any man ye've met before."
"Praise be," I smirked, "the others haven't been worth spit."
Then the whiskey came, and I was taken by the tawny light, forgetting to worry about my 'crazy'. Until Angus' efforts at gilding my heart, called my 'alter' to the fore. ~ Cheryl R Cowtan

for they were gifted, her children, but all in quite different ways. And the result of it was, she sighed, taking in the whole room from floor to ceiling, as she held the stocking against James's leg, that things got shabbier and got shabbier summer after summer....The wallpaper was flapping. You couldn't tell any more that those were roses on it. ~ Virginia Woolf

A strange illusion," I murmured shakily.
"Not an illusion," said Amar. His voice was brittle. "Didn't I promise you the power of a thousand kings?" He crossed the marble floor that had once been an ocean. Water glistened on his feet and a gray fish flopped helplessly in a corner.
He stood in front of me, his eyes hectic and alive. Even through my fury, I couldn't look away from him.
"You and I are the ground and ceiling of our empire," he said, his voice harsh and desperate, pleading and ruthless at once. "You and I can carve lines into the universe and claim all that we want. We need only share between ourselves. Don't you see?"
"All I see is your power," I said. "None of my own. All I see are my words and expectations thrown up against whatever it is that you choose to tell me--"
"--whatever I can tell you," finished Amar. "And as for your power, I was hoping you would ask that. It's time to practice."
"Leave me alone," I hissed.
"Your duties in Akaran will pay no heed to the whims of its empress."
I bared my teeth at Amar and he returned it with a half-grin.
"From now on, whatever concentration you use is yours alone. It is your power. Not mine."
"How would I know?"
"You'll feel it in your bones. Like blood singing to marrow."
I slid off the bed and when my feet hit the floor, something silvery trilled through my body, like light had seeped in and was rediscovering me. It was like being full for the first time. Li ~ Roshani Chokshi

The secret to life is to be a balloon
And fly.
Fly very high
Out of the range of needles and pins
Out of the range of BB guns rifles
FLY
Fly very very high, my Friends
And never stop soaring ~ Jose N Harris

We each have our own ways of sabotaging & keeping ourselves down…Do we need to remain the victim so strongly that we pull the ceiling down upon our own heads? There is a comfort in the familiar. Also, it is important to us to be in control because as children being abused we were not at all in control. In self-sabotage we can be both the victim & the victimizer. ~ Maureen Brady

Words

Be careful of words,
even the miraculous ones.
For the miraculous we do our best,
sometimes they swarm like insects
and leave not a sting but a kiss.
They can be as good as fingers.
They can be as trusty as the rock
you stick your bottom on.
But they can be both daisies and bruises.
Yet I am in love with words.
They are doves falling out of the ceiling.
They are six holy oranges sitting in my lap.
They are the trees, the legs of summer,
and the sun, its passionate face.
Yet often they fail me.
I have so much I want to say,
so many stories, images, proverbs, etc.
But the words aren't good enough,
the wrong ones kiss me.
Sometimes I fly like an eagle
but with the wings of a wren.
But I try to take care
and be gentle to them.
Words and eggs must be handled with care.
Once broken they are impossible
things to repair. ~ Anne Sexton

[ ... ] to catch those unrecorded gestures, those unsaid or half-said words, which form themselves, no more palpably than the shows of moths on the ceiling, when women are alone, unlit by the capricious and coloured light of the other sex. ~ Virginia Woolf

Meanwhile a certain amount of moaning and groaning was coming from upstairs. Sophie kept muttering to the dog and ignored it. A loud, hollow coughing followed, dying away into more moaning. Crashing sneezes followed the coughing, each one rattling the window and all the doors. Sophie found those harder to ignore, but she managed. Poot-pooooot! went a blown nose, like a bassoon in a tunnel. The coughing started again, mingled with moans. Sneezes mixed with the moans and the coughs, and the sounds rose to a crescendo in which Howl seemed to be managing to cough, groan, blow his nose, sneeze, and wail gently all at the same time. The doors rattled, the beams in the ceiling shook, and one of Calcifer's logs rolled off onto the hearth.
"All right, all right, I get the message!" Sophie said, dumping the log back into the grate. "It'll be green slime next". ~ Diana Wynne Jones

Lord,I love you truly with all my heart. Every moment with you is precious to me but I would give up even that if it meant peace between our peoples. Nothing else can be allowed to matter so much as that."
Dragon did not reply. He was staring at her very oddly. Of the others, she had no awareness at all. Only he existed for her just then.She felt as though there was no ground beneath her but this time instead of falling as she had off the cliff, she soared frantically, desperately,not knowing if at any moment gravity might reclaim her but soaring all the same.
"What did you say?" he demanded.
"Nothing else can be allowed to matter so much as the peace between our peoples! I understand full well how angry you are. The insult done you was profound,but I beg you,think of what you do.Do you go against my father,he wins!"
Slowly,Dragon shook his head as though trying to clear it. His gaze locked on Rycca's like a man holding fast to the rudder in a mighty storm. A dull flush crept over his high-boned cheeks. "Insult? You think I want to kill your father because he insulted me? For pity's sake, woman, I damn near lost you! Don't you have any idea what that means to me?"
Her eyes widened, never leaving him as he stalked across the stone floor of the Saxon's king's great hall and took firm hold of her by her shoulders. He dragged her up against him even as he near yelled, "Dammit to hell, woman, I love you! What care I for insults? Nothing matters to me save ~ Josie Litton

With every step I expected a poltergeist to sail down from the ceiling and take charge of my body or find a zombie hunkered in a corner eating Jerry's flesh. ~ Elle Klass

They had chains which they fastened about the leg of the nearest hog, and the other end of the chain they hooked into one of the rings upon the wheel. So, as the wheel turned, a hog was suddenly jerked off his feet and borne aloft. At the same instant the ear was assailed by a most terrifying shriek; the visitors started in alarm, the women turned pale and shrank back. The shriek was followed by another, louder and yet more agonizing--for once started upon that journey, the hog never came back; at the top of the wheel he was shunted off upon a trolley and went sailing down the room. And meantime another was swung up, and then another, and another, until there was a double line of them, each dangling by a foot and kicking in frenzy--and squealing. The uproar was appalling, perilous to the ear-drums; one feared there was too much sound for the room to hold--that the walls must give way or the ceiling crack. There were high squeals and low squeals, grunts, and wails of agony; there would come a momentary lull, and then a fresh outburst, louder than ever, surging up to a deafening climax. It was too much for some of the visitors--the men would look at each other, laughing nervously, and the women would stand with hands clenched, and the blood rushing to their faces, and the tears starting in their eyes. Meantime, heedless of all these things, the men upon the floor were going about their work. Neither squeals of hogs nor tears of visitors made any difference to them; one by one t ~ Upton Sinclair

Just because you can say something, doesn't mean you should. You are the Crown Princess - your attitude reflects on all of us. You must behave," I choke out the next word, "…properly."

Then I glance at the ceiling and brace for the lightning bolt that's sure to come down from the sky and strike me right in the arse. Because…the irony.

When it doesn't come, I continue.

"You should be humble, Jane. Show gratitude. ~ Emma Chase

There are times the lies get to me, times I weary of battering myself against the obstacles of denial, hatred, fear-induced stupidity, and greed, times I want to curl up and fall into the problem, let it sweep me away as it so obviously sweeps away so many others. I remember a spring day a few years ago, a spring day much like this one, only a little more sun, and warmer. I sat on this same couch and looked out this same window at the same ponderosa pine.
I was frightened, and lonely. Frightened of a future that looks dark, and darker with each passing species, and lonely because for every person actively trying to shut down the timber industry, stop abuse, or otherwise bring about a sustainable and sane way of living, there are thousands who are helping along this not-so-slow train to oblivion. I began to cry.
The tears stopped soon enough. I realized we are not so outnumbered. We are not outnumbered at all. I looked closely, and saw one blade of wild grass, and another. I saw the sun reflecting bright off the needles of pine trees, and I heard the hum of flies. I saw ants walking single file through the dust, and a spider crawling toward the corner of the ceiling. I knew in that moment, as I've known ever since, that it is no longer possible to be lonely, that every creature on earth is pulling in the direction of life--every grasshopper, every struggling salmon, every unhatched chick, every cell of every blue whale--and it is only our own fear that sets us apart. ~ Derrick Jensen

Instead, as the crystal splinters entered Hornwrack's brain, he experienced two curious dreams of the Low City, coming so quickly one after the other that they seemed simultaneous. In the first, long shadows moved across the ceiling frescoes of the Bistro Californium, beneath which Lord Mooncarrot's clique awaited his return to make a fourth at dice. Footsteps sounded on the threshold. The women hooded their eyes and smiled, or else stifled a yawn, raising dove-grey gloves to their blue, phthisic lips. Viriconium, with all her narcissistic intimacies and equivocal invitations welcomed him again. He had hated that city, yet now it was his past and it was he had to regret...The second of these visions was of the Rue Sepile. It was dawn, in summer. Horse-chestnut flowers bobbed like white wax candles above the deserted pavements. An oblique light struck into the street - so that its long and normally profitless perspective seemed to lead straight into the heart of a younger, more ingenuous city - and fell across the fronts of the houses where he had once lived, warming up the rotten brick and imparting to it a not unpleasant pinkish colour. Up at the second-floor casement window a boy was busy with the bright red geraniums arranged along the outer still in lumpen terra-cotta pots. He looked down at Hornwrack and smiled. Before Hornwrack could speak he drew down the lower casement and turned away. The glass which no separated them reflected the morning sunlight in a silent explos ~ M. John Harrison

I refer of course to the soaring wonder of the age known as the Eiffel Tower. Never in history has a structure been more technologically advanced, materially obsolescent, and gloriously pointless all at the same time. ~ Bill Bryson

The music throbbed in a voice of singular and delicate power; the air was resonant with melody, love and pain. The meanest Italian in the gallery far up beneath the ceiling, the most exalted of the land in the boxes and the stalls, leaned indulgently forward, to be swept by this sweet storm of song. ~ Gilbert Parker

It's Ky's move. In the quiet before the Ky takes his turn, Xander watches him carefully. Ky's hand hovers over the board. For a moment, as he holds the piece in the air, I see where he could put it to win and I know he sees it, too, that he planned the whole game for that last move. He looks at Xander and Xander looks back, both of them locked in some kind of challenge that seems to run deeper and older than what's happening here on this board.
Then Ky moves his hand and puts his piece down in a spot where Xander can eventually overtake him for the win. Ky doesn't hessitate once he places the piece; he sets it down with a solid sound and leans back in his chair, looking up at the ceiling. I think I see the slightest hint of a smile on his lips but I can't be sure. ~ Ally Condie

You know,' Reg said, 'we're going to get out. We really are. Even if we have to let fire to the ceiling.' He glopped jam onto a white crawdad tail with a grit covered finger. 'But we have to eat enough of this so that we get sick and die a couple days after. ~ N.D. Wilson

Boys," said Hermione Granger, "should not be allowed to love girls without asking them first! This is true in a number of ways and especially when it comes to gluing people to the ceiling! ~ Eliezer Yudkowsky

The moon! It smiled at her with all its might, she could see it! through the broken wood beams of a crude ceiling, nearly touch its cratered surface, stroke its circumference; oh, moon! bulbous and benevolent, guiding herds across planes on forlorn journeys; elucidating wisps of mist to lovers at midnight; absent to her for years but treasured still. ~ K.I. Hope

My one-time roommate Claire had inherited the house from her uncle, and when she went off to bigger and better things, she'd left it in my care. And it needed a lot of it.
Most importantly, it needed a new roof. There was a worrying stain on the ceiling of my bedroom that had started out roughly the shape of Rhode Island, but now looked more like North Carolina. Another few more days of rain and it was going to be Texas. And then it wouldn't be anything at all because the battered old shingles were going to cave in on my head. ~ Karen Chance

says- Last night, I lay in bed looking up at the stars in the sky and thought to myself, Where the heck is the ceiling? ~ Mike Gregory

At one level the story of the second fall of Zimbabwe can be read as tragic yet a courageous one: a simple but soaring binary about unfounded courage in the face of immeasurable oppression. But at another level, it is a window into a much more complex, perhaps even darker and sadder, narrative about contemporary slaveship and the terrible collision of aspiration and frustration and the need to survive that has been unleashed upon the people of Zimbabwe. Exploitation and oppression are not matters of race. ~ Thabo Katlholo

Making it through the ceiling to the other side was simply a matter of running on a path created by every other woman's footprints. ~ Shonda Rhimes

I rolled my eyes in aggravation and glared at the ceiling, hating what I had to confess. Lend knew how much it affected me, taking souls, and I always felt guilty and dirty, like he was judging me even though he tried not to. "The faerie came after me when Reth was down and I sucked out some of her soul."
"Good."
"I - Good?"
"Yes. Good."
I shuddered. "You don't have the creepy, ice thing in you. It's not good."
"You here, safe and alive? Good."
I smiled sadly and knocked on the wall three times. "I" - knock - "love" - knock - "you" - knock.
He knocked three times back. ~ Kiersten White

Van Houten was still staring at the ceiling beams. He took a drink. The glass was almost empty again. 'Lidewij, I can't do it. I can't. I can't.' He leveled his gaze to me. 'Nothing happens to the Dutch Tulip Man. He isn't a con man or not a con man; he's God. He's an obvious and unambiguous metaphorical representation of God, and asking what becomes of him if the intellectual equivalent of asking what becomes of the disembodied eyes of Dr. T.J. Eckleburg in Gatsby. Do he and Anna's man get married? We are speaking of a novel, dear child, not some historical enterprise. ~ John Green

I look up at the ceiling, at all the hardcover fiction. So very few people want it. It is operating as insulation rather than stock. The argument rages on about whether it is better to have books or ebooks, but while everyone gets heated about the choices, the hardcover fiction molders quietly away. ~ Deborah Meyler

I sometimes think we ought to bring a bill before Congress changing our national symbol from the eagle to the buffalo, because we are more like the buffalo than the eagle. The eagle is a powerful bird. It flies alone. It rises up into the sky with authority. It is master of all it surveys. The eagle is an individualist and was selected from among the rest of the birds to be our symbol. But the buffalo was never alone. It always ran in a herd with other buffaloes. And, friends, I call your attention that the buffaloes are gone from the open range, but the eagles are still soaring. ~ Norman Vincent Peale

Well, Jesus Christ, I'm not scared to die,
I'm a little bit scared of what comes after. Do I get the gold chariot? Do I float through the ceiling? ~ Jesse Lacey

A large and comfortable double-bedded room had been placed at our disposal, and I was quickly between the sheets, for I was weary after my night of adventure. Sherlock Holmes was a man, however, who when he had an unsolved problem upon his mind would go for days, and even for a week, without rest, turning it over, rearranging his facts, looking at it from every point of view, until he had either fathomed it, or convinced himself that his data were insufficient. It was soon evident to me that he was now preparing for an all-night sitting. He took off his coat and waistcoat, put on a large blue dressing-gown, and then wandered about the room collecting pillows from his bed, and cusions from the sofa and armchairs. With these he constructed a sort of Eastern divan, upon which he perched himself cross-legged, with an ounce of shag tobacco and a box of matches laid out in front of him. In the dim light of the lamp I saw him sitting there, an old brier pipe between his lips, his eyes fixed vacantly upon the corner of the ceiling, the blue smoke curling up from him, silent, motionless, with the light shining upon his strong-set aquiline features. So he sat as I dropped off to sleep, and so he sat when a sudden ejaculation caused me to wake up, and I found the summer sun shining into the apartment. The pipe was still between his lips, the smoke still curled upwards, and the room was full of a dense tobacco haze, but nothing remained of the heap of shag which I had seen upon the previ ~ Arthur Conan Doyle

John Berryman: The Song of the Tortured Girl

After a little I could not have told -
But no one asked me this – why I was there.
I asked. The ceiling of that place was high
And there were sudden noises, which I made.
I must have stayed there a long time today:
My cup of soup was gone when they brought me back.

Often 'Nothing worse now can come to us'
I thought, the winter the young men stayed away,
My uncle died, and mother broke her crutch.
And then the strange room where the brightest light
Does not shine on the strange men: shines on me.
I feel them stretch my youth and throw a switch.

Through leafless branches the sweet wind blows
Making a mild sound, softer than a moan;
High in a pass once where we put our tent,
Minutes I lay awake to hear my joy.
- I no longer remember what they want. -
Minutes I lie awake to hear my joy. ~ John Berryman

I, sole heir to the Munodi line and memory, am childless. A friend who knows such things has told me that this explains my compulsion to capture what I can with black ink on white paper." ("The Volatilized Ceiling of Baron Munodi") ~ Rikki Ducornet

It's never possible to know for certain the "true" source of any given interpretation, the dividing line between our association (i.e., projection) and reality. The question quickly becomes, What is real? It is always possible to consciously or unconsciously "see" almost anything we want. I can look at the ceiling and see an image of the Virgin Mary, or I can look at the ceiling and see that the spackler did a damn good job. ~ Derrick Jensen

Standing there in-between two disgusting Dumpsters in some crappy alley
with the whole world crumbling down around me, and hearing Alex say those
words, all the fear I have carried with me since I learned to sit, stand, breathe
since I was told that at the very heart of me was something wrong, something
rotten and diseased, something to be suppressed - since I was told that I was
always just a heartbeat away from being damaged - all of it vanishes at once.
That thing - the heart of hearts of me, the core of my core - stretches and unfurls
even further, soaring like a flag: making me feel stronger than I ever have before. ~ Lauren Oliver

Maybe you're the one that gave me up to the Darians at Oden's Ford."
"Right," she said, staring up at the ceiling. "And then I turned around and rescued you. You know women - changeable as a day in April. Sometimes we just can't make up our minds. ~ Cinda Williams Chima

He seemed to be staring at the chain hanging from the ceiling fan. Seconds later, he confirmed this by reaching out and tugging the chain.
Light clicked on.
He tugged the chain again.
Light went off.
Oh for gods' sake, he had a mean case of ADD sometimes. "Apollo," I snapped. ~ Jennifer L. Armentrout

The Broken Beauty
I see compassion in your eyes,
And I wonder,
What agony has taught you such tenderness?
I see kindness in your soul,
And I wonder,
What grief has taught you such gentleness?

I see light in your eyes,
And I wonder,
What suffering has broken into light?
I see wholeness rising in your heart,
And I wonder,
What brokenness has taught you such healing in life?

I see smiles blooming in your face,
And I wonder,
What bruise has brought you such beauty?
I smell fragrance of your soul.
And I wonder,
What murk has taught you to unfold?

I see kindness in your face,
And I wonder,
What severity has taught you such softness?
I see gratitude lighting your cheeks,
And I wonder,
What loss has taught you such humbleness?

I sense peace in your soul,
And I wonder,
What struggles have taught you to surrender?
I see shimmer in your eyes,
And I wonder,
What darkness has brought you to such light?

I sense peace in your heart,
And I wonder,
What defeat has taught you such a submission?
I see humility in your face,
And I wonder,
What trials have taught you such a gratitude?

I sense freedom in your breath,
And I wonder,
What restraint has brought such a release?
I see soaring of your wings,
And I wonder,
~ Jayita Bhattacharjee

The newer education put stress on culture ... Saturday mornings, the young were brushed and washed, forced into blue cheviot suits, and dragged to children's concerts to learn appreciation. They wriggled, squirmed, counted the light bulbs in the ceiling, dived under seats to gather ticket stubs, stampeded out at intermissions. The weakness of their bladders was astounding. ~ Zelda Popkin

My mother couldn't take having three boys. She was extremely jumpy, to say the least. Any noise startled her. The sound of a pot dropping on the ground could make her hit the ceiling. ~ Bruce Eric Kaplan

Raising the debt ceiling is not additional spending. It is simply saying, you, the United States of America, can continue to borrow the money you need to pay the bills you have already rung up. ~ Jay Carney