The House At Riverton Quotes

She took her secrets with her, into the cold earth, but I learned them in the end. I know a lot about secrets; I have made them my life ~ Kate Morton

I loved taking off. In my own house, I seemed to be often looking for a place to hide - sometimes from the children but more often from the jobs to be done and the phone ringing and the sociability of the neighborhood. I wanted to hide so that I could get busy at my real work, which was a sort of wooing of distant parts of myself. ~ Alice Munro

A word about Hope House: there are places in the world where so many desperate people have lived and so many bad things have happened that the places themselves have become desperately bad. They're damp and weird and smell like foot fungus. The windows are never clean, and the linoleum curls up at the edges because it can't stand the floor. Every corner is sprayed with cobwebs and quivering shadows. When you walk into those bad places, you can feel a headache brewing between your eyebrows, a churning in your gut, a cold prickle at the back of your neck. You feel sad and angry and helpless, all at the same time. These bad places seem to hate you but, they also seem to want to keep you there very very much. ~ Laura Ruby

He dies at the party where everyone laughs & all you want is to go into the kitchen & make seven omelets before burning down the house. ~ Ocean Vuong

Now, to tell my story
if not as it ought to be told, at least as I can tell it,
I must go back sixteen years, to the days when Whitbury boasted of forty coaches per diem, instead of one railway, and set forth how in its southern suburb, there stood two pleasant house side by side, with their gardens sloping down to the Whit, and parted from each other only by the high brick fruit-wall, through which there used to be a door of communication; for the two occupiers were fast friends. ~ Charles Kingsley

My grandparents live in Cley, and my dad now has the windmill which is a guest house. So I've spent much time up there, but a lot of it was at school as well, and my dad was sent abroad so often as well with the army. ~ James Blunt

The burning glow of fire basked him in a warm light. I feared to look at him, to study him again after the train, but found him darkly beautiful. There were statues in the graveyard near Hampshire House. Perfect lines chiseled and molded into stone, but many had tiny cracks and imperfections. Petre had worn his defect as a scar, but what else had he hidden beneath the surface? ~ Rae Z. Ryans

Izzy immediately pulled out the sword Zachariah had given her and turned, barely blocking the weapon aimed right for her. Izzy shoved the weapon - another sword - away and spun to give herself momentum, slashing at the attacker. But her opponent blocked the move, their weapons locking. Izzy, fed up, stepped close to see who the hell would attack her here, so near her home.

Shocked, Izzy roared, "Éibhear! What the bloody hells are you doing?"

"I've come to Claim you as my own, Iseabail, Daughter of Talaith and Briec."

"Oh." Izzy lowered her weapon at his dramatic announcement. "Why didn't you say so?" She stepped back. "I'll go home and get naked." She turned to head to her house.

"That's it?" Éibhear asked, sounding disappointed. ~ G.A. Aiken

How, I asked, could I have gone my whole life not knowing about my mother? How could I have not known what Keith knew when he saw our house? "It's your mom," Helder said. "Because it's Mom." He sounded firm and knowing and clear. "When a child has an alcoholic father, he sees him drink all day long but he doesn't have a label, a concept. You just know that at night, when the tires make a certain sound in the driveway and the doors slam a certain way, with a certain sound, you just know you need to hide. ~ Heather Sellers

Writer Somerset Maugham, after his parents deaths, spent a few stultifying years in his uncle's vicarage. Later, in his teens at a boarding-school, having lost his belief in the existence of God said: "The whole horrible structure, based not on the love of God, but on the fear of hell, tumbled down like a house of cards." ~ Selina Hastings, Countess Of Huntingdon

A cloud, hitherto unseen, came upon the moon, and hovered an instant like a dark hand before a face.The illusion went with it, and the lights in the windows were extinguished. I looked upon a desolate shell, soulless at last, unhaunted, with no whisper of the past about its staring walls.
The house was a sepulchre, our fear and suffering lay buried in the ruins. There would be no resurrection. When I thought of Manderley in my waking hours I would not be bitter. I should think of it as it might have been, could I have lived there without fear. I should remember the rose-garden in summer, and the birds that sang at dawn.Tea under the chestnut tree, and the murmur of the sea coming up to us from the lawns below.
I would think of the blown lilac, and the Happy Valley. These things were permanent, they could not be dissolved.They were memories that cannot hurt. ~ Daphne Du Maurier

Does it matter to you that I love you?" Julian asked as he looked away and up at the house.
Cameron stared at Julian, wishing he could see his lover's eyes.
"It's the most precious thing in my world," he answered brokenly. ~ Abigail Roux

It was a terrible mistake to say this. She got to screaming at me then. She'd scream like a great bird sometimes. She'd grow wings and fly around the house screaming. It was really awful. It was like arguing with a pterodactyl. You could do nothing. ~ Nico Walker

And now South Africa has finally woken up and it is doing great things. And if South Africa becomes the template to what AIDS is in the sub-Saharan continent, then all the other countries are going to follow suit. And Michel Sidibe, who spoke at the breakfast meeting this morning, was saying that there is so much hope for Africa now that South Africa has got its house in order. ~ Elton John

Kids shouting and skidding in the playground with no idea what future Hells awaited them: boring jobs and ruinous mortgages and bad marriages and hair loss and hip replacements and lonely cups of coffee in an empty house and a colostomy bag at the hospital. ~ Donna Tartt

I live up at about the 2000 feet level on a five acre piece of forest that I built a small house on. ~ Terence McKenna

The silence was shattered as the bedroom door flew open with a wall-shaking crash. Hermione shrieked and dropped Secrets of the Darkest Art; Crookshanks streaked under the bed, hissing indignantly; Ron jumped off the bed, skidded on a discarded Chocolate Frog wrapper, and smacked his head on the opposite wall; and Harry instinctively dived for his wand before realizing that he was looking up at Mrs. Weasley, whose hair was disheveled and whose face was contorted with rage.
"I'm so sorry to break up this cozy little gathering," she said, her voice trembling. "I'm sure you all need your rest . . . but there are wedding presents stacked in my room that need sorting out and I was under the impression that you had agreed to help."
"Oh yes," said Hermione, looking terrified as she leapt to her feet, sending books flying in every direction, "we will . . . we're sorry . . ."
With an anguished look at Harry and Ron, Hermione hurried out of the room after Mrs. Weasley.
"It's like being a house-elf," complained Ron in an undertone, still massaging his head as he and Harry followed. "Except without the job satisfaction. The sooner this wedding's over, the happier I'll be."
"Yeah," said Harry, "then we'll have nothing to do except find Horcruxes. . . . It'll be like a holiday, won't it?"
Ron started to laugh, but at the sight of the enormous pile of wedding presents waiting for them in Mrs. Weasley's room, stopped quite abruptly. ~ J.K. Rowling

Don't wait for success, but for the respect and interest of those who read you. At the start it could be a classmate, someone who shares your interests. Before sending off the manuscript for a novel to a publishing house, it would be a good idea to try writing short stories, and publishing them in a local magazine. ~ Dacia Maraini

That night I dreamed of Conrad. I was the same age I was now, but he was younger, ten or eleven maybe. I think he might even have been wearing
overalls. We played outside my house until it got dark, just running around the yard.
I said, "Susannah will be wondering where you are. You should go home." He said, "I can't. I don't know how.
Will you help me?" And then I was sad, because I didn't know how either. We weren't at my house anymore, and it was so dark. We were in the
woods. We were lost.
When I woke up, I was crying and Jeremiah was asleep next to me. I sat up in the bed. It was dark, the only light in the room was my alarm clock. It
read 4:57. I lay back down. ~ Jenny Han

My house has one integral living space and I am sitting on the couch facing the TV, while she is perched on a stool at the breakfast bar in the kitchen, my laptop open in front of her. We have adopted these same positions so many times over the years, it's like we have worn a groove in time. I imagine us suspended here for ever, like tiny figures in a doll's house. ~ Tammy Cohen

We lived in a tall, narrow Victorian house, which my parents had bought very cheaply during the war, when everyone thought London was going to be bombed flat. In fact, a V-2 rocket landed a few houses away from ours. I was away with my mother and sister at the time, but my father was in the house. ~ Stephen Hawking

I'm not the type to pat myself on the back and all that, but somebody has to be lucky, right? When I got to Dallas, I was struggling - sleeping on the floor with six guys in a three-bedroom apartment. I used to drive around, look at the big houses, and imagine what it would be like to live there and use that as motivation. ~ Mark Cuban

My energy and curiosity may be renewed but the larder isn't. There is probably less food in the house than there has ever been. I trudge out to buy a few chicken pieces and a bag of winter greens to make a soup with the spices and noodles I have in the cupboard. What ends up as dinner is clear, bright and life-enhancing. It has vitality (that's the greens), warmth (ginger, cinnamon) and it is economical and sustaining too. I suddenly feel ready for anything the New Year might throw at me. ~ Nigel Slater

I cooked at the White House for Easter, last year, with Michelle Obama. But it more had to do with cooking from the organic garden, and her message. I took my daughter and granddaughter there, and they were really charming, it was great. ~ Jacques Pepin

I stood here

in this kitchen

elaborating and embellishing this fantasy for some time instead of taking responsibility for what was happening around me because in truth what really tormented me was that all this filth and disorder offended my engineer's sense of structure, everything out of place and proper alignment, everything gathering towards some point of chaos beyond which it would be impossible to restore the place to its proper order and yet I stood looking at it, locked into a silent battle with the house itself and all the things which were slowly vacating their proper place, furniture and dishes and cutlery all over the place, curtains hanging awry and chairs and tables strewn about while books and papers slid across the floor, everything slowly shifting through the house as if they had a meeting to keep somewhere else, possibly in some higher realm where all this chaos would resolve into a refined harmony which had no need of my hand or intervention ~ Mike McCormack

Normally when I'm attempting a risky, clandestine, secret date and I need to escape my house undetected, I ask myself, 'What would MacGyver do?'"
Oh, my god, this chick just mentioned MacGyver?
Hell.
Yes.
I break my eyes away from hers long enough to hide the fact that I think I just fell for her and also to assess our escape route. I glance at the swing on the porch, then look back at Six when I'm sure the cheesy grin is gone from my face.
"I think MacGyver would take your porch swing and build an invisible force field out of grass and matches. Then he would attach a jet engine to it and fly it out of here undetected. Unfortunately I'm all out of matches. ~ Colleen Hoover

I moved out of my house at 17 and half, I rented an apartment ... I pulled all the things off. It was pretty amazing and I lived a pretty good life, I had a car and I was making good money. ~ Eric Hernandez

I got the letter about becoming a Sir in 2000, the same year that Pauline asked me if we could finally get married. My assistant, Colette, called up and it turned out both the wedding and the Buck House ceremony were happening on the same day. I was knighted at 11 and married at four. She became an instant Lady. ~ Paul Smith

We marvel at the story of the firefighter who has a sudden urge to escape a burning house just before it collapses, because the firefighter knows the danger intuitively, "without knowing how he knows." However, we also do not know how we immediately know that a person we see as we enter a room is our friend Peter. ~ Daniel Kahneman

To those at the great house it means nothing, this handful of earth, but to me it means how much!" (Buck, 57) ~ Pearl S. Buck

Only In Sleep
Only in sleep I see their faces,
Children I played with when I was a child,
Louise comes back with her brown hair braided,
Annie with ringlets warm and wild.
Only in sleep Time is forgotten
What may have come to them, who can know?
Yet we played last night as long ago,
And the doll-house stood at the turn of the stair.
The years had not sharpened their smooth round faces,
I met their eyes and found them mild
Do they, too, dream of me, I wonder,
And for them am I too a child? ~ Sara Teasdale