Curtain Quotes

1. "The writer is the duelist who never fights at the stated hour, who gathers up an insult, like another curious object, a collector's item, spreads it out on his desk later, and then engages in a duel with it verbally. Some people call it weakness. I call it postponement. What is weakness in the man becomes a quality in the writer. For he preserves, collects what will explode later in his work. That is why the writer is the loneliest man in the world; because he lives, fights, dies, is reborn always alone; all his roles are played behind a curtain. In life he is an incongruous figure."
Author: Anaïs Nin

2. "In our early youth we sit before the life that lies ahead of us like children sitting before the curtain in a theatre, in happy and tense anticipation of whatever is going to appear. Luckily we do not know what really will appear."
Author: Arthur Schopenhauer

3. "She stared at the dark shimmer of glass that faced the street. The Clares never pulled curtains. They were comftorable with the dark. But there was another kind of dark. The darkness of minds full of hate."
Author: Caroline B. Cooney

4. "Colored lights shone right across the northern sky, leaping and flaring, spreading in rainbow hues from horizon to zenith: blood red to rose pink, saffron yellow to delicate primrose, pale green, aquamarine to darkest indigo. Great veils of color swathed the heavens, rising and falling as light seen through cascading curtains of water. Streamers shot out in great shifting beams as if God had put his thumb across the sun."
Author: Celia Rees

5. "It drew aside the window-curtain and looked out; perhaps it saw dawn approaching, for, taking the candle, it retreated to the door. Just at my bedside, the figure stopped: the fiery eyes glared upon me-she thrust up her candle close to my face, and extinguished it under my eyes. I was aware her lurid visage flamed over mine, and I lost consciousness: for the second time in my life-only the second time-I became insensible from terror."
Author: Charlotte Brontë

6. "Not as the plants and flowers of Earth, growing peacefully beneath a simple sun, were the blossoms of the planet Lophai. Coiling and uncoiling in double dawns; tossing tumultuously under vast suns of jade green and balas-ruby orange; swaying and weltering in rich twilights, in aurora-curtained nights, they resembled fields of rooted serpents that dance eternally to an other-worldly music."
Author: Clark Ashton Smith

7. "It is moonlight. Alone in the silenceI ascend my stairs once more,While waves remote in pale blue starlightCrash on a white sand shore.It is moonlight. The garden is silent.I stand in my room alone.Across my wall, from the far-off moon,A rain of fire is thrown.There are houses hanging above the stars,And stars hung under the sea,And a wind from the long blue vault of timeWaves my curtains for me.I wait in the dark once more,swung between space and space:Before the mirror I lift my handsAnd face my remembered face."
Author: Conrad Aiken

8. "I danced. I danced without music. I screamed without sound. I celebrated in silence, in the dark, behind the curtains where no one could see."
Author: Cora Carmack

9. "Hey, monkey pussy, you might want to give those meat curtains a spit shine before you leave the house."
Author: Debra Anastasia

10. "Because forgiveness is like this: a room can be dank because you have closed the windows, you've closed the curtains. But the sun is shining outside, and the air is fresh outside. In order to get that fresh air, you have to get up and open the window and draw the curtains apart."
Author: Desmond Tutu

11. "The critic leaves at curtain fall To find, in starting to review it, He scarcely saw the play at all For starting to review it."
Author: E.B. White

12. "Look beyond that light,' says my father. 'Look hard and you'll see people filing into the theater. You'll see ushers run up and down the aisles; people talk, programs rustle-you'll hear a murmur. When the lights start to dim, the murmur rises, and then, just a moment before the curtain goes up, the noise stops-everyone in the house holds their breath, everyone knows what is going to happen. This is the moment I've always loved most:the anticipation of magic, the expectation of illusion."
Author: Elena Gorokhova

13. "The Eliots found it a queer sort of evening - a transition evening. Hitherto the Herb of Grace had been to them a summer home; they had known it only permeated with sun and light, flower-scented, windows and doors open wide. But now doors were shut, curtains drawn to hide the sad, grey dusk. Instead of the lap of the water against the river wall they heard the whisper of the flames, and instead of the flowers in the garden they smelt the roasting chestnuts, burning apple logs, the oil lamps, polish - all the home smells. This intimacy with the house was deepening; when winter came it would be deeper still. Nadine glanced over her shoulder at the firelight gleaming upon the dark wood of the panelling, at the shadows gathering in the corners, and marvelled to see how the old place seemed to have shrunk in size with the shutting out of the daylight. It seemed gathering them in, holding them close."
Author: Elizabeth Goudge

14. "I stopped in front of a florist's window. Behind me, the screeching and throbbing boulevard vanished. Gone, too, were the voices of newspaper vendors selling their daily poisoned flowers. Facing me, behind the glass curtain, a fairyland. Shining, plump carnations, with the pink voluptuousness of women about to reach maturity, poised for the first step of a sprightly dance; shamelessly lascivious gladioli; virginal branches of white lilac; roses lost in pure meditation, undecided between the metaphysical white and the unreal yellow of a sky after the rain."
Author: Emil Dorian

15. "This is all lie, she want to say to them. The dead are not hovering nearby to knock politely at teacups and tabletops and whisper through billowing curtains."
Author: Erin Morgenstern

16. "Her beauty climbed the rolling slope, it came into the room, rustling ghost-like through the curtains..."
Author: F. Scott Fitzgerald

17. "A breeze blew through the room, blew curtains in at one end and out the other like pale flags, twisting them up towards the frosted wedding-cake of the ceiling, and then rippled over the wine-coloured rug, making a shadow on it as wind does on the sea."
Author: F. Scott Fitzgerald

18. "The ocean rose up around me, hiding that low, dark patch from my eyes. The daylight, the trailing glory of the sun, went streaming out of the sky, was drawn aside like some luminous curtain, and at last I looked into the blue gulf of immensity which the sunshine hides, and saw the floating hosts of stars. The sea was silent, the sky was silent. I was alone with the night and silence."
Author: H.G. Wells

19. "There weren't any curtains in the windows, and the books that didn't fit into the bookshelf lay piled on the floor like a bunch of intellectual refugees."
Author: Haruki Murakami

20. "He liked however the open shutters; he opened everywhere those Mrs. Muldoon had closed, closing them as carefully afterwards, so that she shouldn't notice: he liked--oh this he did like, and above all in the upper rooms!--the sense of the hard silver of the autumn stars through the window-panes, and scarcely less the flare of the street-lamps below, the white electric lustre which it would have taken curtains to keep out. This was human actual social; this was of the world he had lived in, and he was more at his ease certainly for the countenance, coldly general and impersonal, that all the while and in spite of his detachment it seemed to give him."
Author: Henry James

21. "There are these rare moments when musicians together touch something sweeter than they´ve ever found before in rehearsals or performance, beyond the merely collaborative or technically proficient, when their expression becomes as easy and graceful as friendship or love. This is when they give us a glimpse of what might be, of our best selves, and of an impossible world in which you give everything you have to others, but lose nothing of yourself. Out in the real world there exist detailed plans, visionary projects for peacable realms, all conflicts resolved, happiness for everyone, for ever - mirages for which people are prepared to die and kill. Christ´s kingdom on earth, the workers´paradise, the ideal Islamic state. But only in music, and only on rare occasions, does the curtain actually lift on this dream of community, and it´s tantalisingly conjured, before fading away with the last notes."
Author: Ian McEwan

22. "I stop crying for a moment when light from the street steals into my bedroom as Silas gently pushes the curtain aside. He leans against the wall, arms folded across his bare chest and hair falling in front of his eyes. Almost silently, he moves to the tiny space between my bed and the wall and lowers himself to the floor. Raising his knees to his chest, he drops his head and reaches for my hand, running his thumb across my knuckles silently.I slide off the bed, sheets wrapped around my legs, and ease into his lap, tucking my face against his neck. He cradles me against him like he's afraid to let me go. I know I should shy away, that I should climb back into my bed out of loyalty to my sister. But there's something that locks me in place, something that won't let me stray from the gentle rise and fall of his chest or from his arms, supporting me like I'm something precious as his lips brush across my forehead.Without speaking, we finally fall asleep."
Author: Jackson Pearce

23. "He dismounted and lifted his arms to Shae. Light as she was, he had to step backward when she leaned into him. He steadied them both, and then turned to instruct the groom. When Kai looked for her again, Shae was gone. A smile touched his mouth as he went through an archway in the inner curtain wall. He would keep his knowledge of Shae's morning activities to himself. (from DawnSinger)"
Author: Janalyn Voigt

24. "How will I survive this missing? How do others do it? People die all the time. Every day. Every hour. There are families all over the world staring at beds that are no longer slept in, shoes that are no longer worn. Families that no longer have to buy a particular cereal, a kind of shampoo. There are people everywhere standing in line at the movies, buying curtains, walking dogs, while inside, their hearts are ripping to shreds. For years. For their whole lives. I don't believe time heals. I don't want it to. If I heal, doesn't that mean I've accepted the world without her?"
Author: Jandy Nelson

25. "I am the Wizard of Oz of housewives (in that I am both "Great and Terrible" and because I sometimes hide behind the curtains"
Author: Jenny Lawson

26. "The most fearsome monsters of all may inhabit the dark corners of our mind waiting for us to release them through our believes and gullibility. the phenomenon feeds on fear and believe. Sometimes it destroys us altogether other times it leads us upwards into the labyrinth of electromagnetic frequencies that form a curtain in the area we call windows and stalk us to drink our blood and create all kinds of mischievous beliefs and misconceptions in our feeble little terrestrial minds."
Author: John Keel

27. "Men do change, and change comes like a little wind that ruffles the curtains at dawn, and it comes like the stealthy perfume of wildflowers hidden in the grass."
Author: John Steinbeck

28. "It was like falling off a building and suddenly, bang, you hit the bottom. The first time it happened was on an ordinary day at home. I was taking down some curtains. I took one step, turned around, took another step and then I fell and hit my head hard on the rowing machine."
Author: Jonah Lomu

29. "Brannagh Maloney had lived with disappearances all her life. They were as familiar to her as the changing of the Fundy tides. People who disappeared left cast-off shadows of themselves, murky tremblings that slunk out of corners on drizzly autumn afternoons. They lurked offstage, silent or sighing or reaching out to run a finger across her arm. They were the curtains fluttering in the window on a breezeless morning, the musty scent that arose when opening an abandoned cellar door. LET THE SHADOWS FALL BEHIND YOU (Kunati Books)"
Author: Kathy Diane Leveille

30. "...and the smoke that creeps off the tip of my cigarette and into the dim, scattered strands of light leaking off the moon, in through the clefts in the curtains, is much like my spirit trying to escape the burn of yesterday's presence."
Author: Kellie Elmore

31. "She stared at the faded tile floor before her feet, but knew his every step around her small kitchen. When Martin touched the coffee cup patterned curtains he must assume she'd made, her fingers throbbed. When his eyes slid across the flowery aluminum water bottle at the table, her throat cracked with thirst.The radio clicked off.The silence of the room soaked up her raspy breaths, her pounding heart, her ache, and stirred them around the one man she ever longed for in a way that changes how you taste the world.Her desire swirled in a pulsing, betraying, blurry hook, and encouraged him to move closer.Martin obeyed."
Author: Kim Bongiorno

32. "I used to cover my windows in heavy curtains, never drawn. Now I danced in the sunlight on my hardwood floors."
Author: Kimberly Novosel

33. "Occasionally, events in one's life become clearer through the prism of experience, a phrase which simply means that things tend to be clearer as time goes on. For instance, when a person is just born, they usually have no idea what curtains are and spend a great deal of their first months wondering why on earth Mommy and Daddy have hung large pieces of cloth over each window in the nursery. But as the person grows older, the idea of curtains becomes clearer through the prism of experience. The person will learn the word "curtains" and notice that they are actually quite handy for keeping a room dark when it is time to sleep, and for decorating an otherwise boring window area. Eventually, they will entirely accept the idea of curtains of their own, or venetian blinds, and it is all due to the prism of experience."
Author: Lemony Snicket

34. "I entered my room, and undrew the window-curtains, just in time to see the sun burst in glory from his ocean-prison, and clothe the world in the light of a new day."
Author: Lewis Carroll

35. "The bathroom's down the hall if you want to take off your tights. I can throw ‘em in the dryer for you if you want. Or, you can hang them on the shower curtain rod." He turned. "It'sbeen a long time since I've had a woman's tights draped over my rod." A quick wink and he was gone before she could do anything more than gape."
Author: Linda Morris

36. "Before the sparrow arrived, you had almost stopped thinking about flight. Then, last winter, it soared through the sky and landed in front of you, or more precisely on the windowsill of the covered balcony adjoining your bedroom. You knew the grimy window panes were caked with dead ants and dust, and smelt as sour as the curtains. But the sparrow wasn't put off. It jumped inside the covered balcony and ruffled its feathers, releasing a sweet smell of tree bark into the air. Then it flew into your bedroom, landed on your chest and stayed there like a cold egg."
Author: Ma Jian

37. "Let us draw the curtain of charity over the rest of this scene"
Author: Mark Twain

38. "This was our last night. We only had one curtain call, Bree. And I thought they were going to give us a standing ovation, but no-o-o-. Do you know why half the audience stood up?""To get a head start on the traffic," Bree said."To get a head start on the traffic," Antonia agreed in indignation. "I mean, here we are, dancing and singing our little guts out, and all those folks want to do is get to bed early. I ask you, whatever happened to common courtesy? Whatever happened to decent manners? Doesn't anyone care about craft anymore? And on top of that, it's not even nice."
Author: Mary Stanton

39. "With Hitchcock I had little relationship. I was called to replace Bernard Herrmann, his favorite composer, in Torn Curtain, after the bitter fight between them."
Author: Maurice Jarre

40. "A magnificent natural view is a pink curtain. Open the curtain; you will then see the most horrible life struggles over there! Could it be that the beauty of the nature is a bribe given to us by God to forget the atrocities of the nature?"
Author: Mehmet Murat Ildan

41. "Just think of Emily Bronte, for example: psychotically bookish - but was there ever a woman screaming out so loudly for a good f***ing? I even suspect that's why Wuthering Heights carries on decades too long rather than sensibly drawing the curtains a little after Cathy's death. It was Bronte saying, 'Look - I'm simply going to keep on writing this stuff until someone comes and shags me raw."
Author: Mil Millington

42. "I write to raise the curtain on life's endless possibilities. Because you asked, "Pourquoi?"
Author: Peggy Kopman Owens

43. "Who has not sat, afraid, before his heart's curtain?"
Author: Rainer Maria Rilke

44. "That's what you do when the curtain is falling--you give the line that the audience wants to hear."
Author: Rick Yancey

45. "What seems a kind of temporal death to people choked between walls and curtains, is only a light and living slumber to the man who sleeps a-field."
Author: Robert Louis Stevenson

46. "I could live there all alone, she thought, slowing the car to look down the winding garden path to the small blue front door with, perfectly, a white cat on the step. No one would ever find me there, either, behind all those roses, and just to make sure I would plant oleanders by the road. I will light a fire in the cool evenings and toast apples at my own hearth. I will raise white cats and sew white curtains for the windows and sometimes come out of my door to go to the store to buy cinnamon and tea and thread. People will come to me to have their fortunes told, and I will brew love potions for sad maidens; I will have a robin..."
Author: Shirley Jackson

47. "So imagine a fire going -- wood snapping the way it does when it's a little green — the wind rattling the windows behind the curtains -- and one of those Chopin melodies that feel like sorrow and ecstasy all mixed together pouring from the keys -- and you have my idea of happiness. Or just reading, reading and lamplight, the sound of pages turning. And so you dare to be happy. You do that thing. You dare."
Author: Steven Millhauser

48. "South Richmond was a neighborhood of mouse holes, lace curtains, Sears catalogs, measles epidemics, baloney sandwiches- and men who knew more about the carburetor than they knew about the clitoris."
Author: Tom Robbins

49. "I was the shadow of the waxwing slainBy the false azure in the windowpane;I was the smudge of ashen fluff -and ILived on, flew on, in the reflected sky.And from the inside, too, I'd duplicateMyself, my lamp, an apple on a plate:Uncurtaining the night, I'd let dark glassHang all the furniture above the grass,And how delightful when a fall of snowCovered my glimpse of lawn and reached up soAs to make chair and bed exactly standUpon that snow, out in that crystal land!"
Author: Vladimir Nabokov

50. "They do not need the sun. Who needs the sun when the eyes glow? Darkness. A woolen fog has wrapped the earth, has dropped a heavy curtain. From far away, from beyond the curtain, comes the sound of drops falling on stone. Far, far away - the autumn, people, tomorrow. ("The North")"
Author: Yevgeny Zamyatin

Curtain Quotes Pictures