Curtain Design Quotes

In most people's vocabularies, design means veneer. It's interior decorating. It's the fabric of the curtains and the sofa. But to me, nothing could be further from the meaning of design. Design is the fundamental soul of a man-made creation that ends up expressing itself in successive outer layers of the product or service

There is a design working behind the curtain of the stars, and we are fulfilling it, drawn toward the future on the tide of time, toward our destiny as the first settlers of a new world." The room was still. He has them, she thought.

The dining-room was in the good taste of the period. It was very severe. There was a high dado of white wood and a green paper on which were etchings by Whistler in neat black frames. The green curtains with their peacock design, hung in straight lines, and the green carpet, in the pattern of which pale rabbits frolicked among leafy trees, suggested the influence of William Morris. There was blue delft on the chimneypiece. At that time there must have been five hundred dining-rooms in London decorated in exactly the same manner. It was chaste, artistic, and dull.

They walked in silence through the little streets of Chinatown. Women from all over the world smiled at them from open windows, stood on the doorsteps inviting them in. Some of the rooms were exposed to the street. Only a curtain concealed the beds. One could see couples embracing. There were Syrian women wearing their native costume, Arabian women with jewelry covering their half-naked bodies, Japanese and Chinese women beckoning slyly, big African women squatting in circles, chatting together. One house was filled with French whores wearing short pink chemises and knitting and sewing as if they were at home. They always hailed the passers-by with promises of specialities. The houses were small, dimly lit, dusty, foggy with smoke, filled with dusky voices, the murmurs of drunkards, of lovemaking. The Chinese adorned the setting and made it more confused with screens and curtains, lanterns, burning incense, Buddhas of gold. It was a maze of jewels, paper flowers, silk hangings, and rugs, with women as varied as the designs and colors, inviting men who passed by to sleep with them.

Nature seems dead, and wicked dreams abuse the curtained sleep. Witchcraft celebrates Pale Hecate’s offerings; and withered murder, Alarumed by his sentinel, the wolf, whose howl’s his watch, thus with his stealthy pace, with Tarquin’s ravishing side, towards his design Moves like a ghost

There are a thousand 'greatest' melodies, just as there are a thousand 'greatest' poems and a thousand 'greatest' pictures, because there are a thousand moods in the mind of man when a certain note rings with the most clarity--when a certain design is most sharply silhouetted against the changing curtain of his mind.

My Last Duchess That’s my last Duchess painted on the wall, Looking as if she were alive. I call That piece a wonder, now: Fra Pandolf’s hands Worked busily a day, and there she stands. Will’t please you sit and look at her? I said “Fra Pandolf” by design, for never read Strangers like you that pictured countenance, The depth and passion of its earnest glance, But to myself they turned (since none puts by The curtain I have drawn for you, but I) And seemed as they would ask me, if they durst, How such a glance came there; so, not the first Are you to turn and ask thus. Sir, ’twas not Her husband’s presence only, called that spot Of joy into the Duchess’ cheek: perhaps Fra Pandolf chanced to say “Her mantle laps Over my lady’s wrist too much,” or “Paint Must never hope to reproduce the faint Half-flush that dies along her throat”: such stuff Was courtesy, she thought, and cause enough For calling up that spot of joy. She had A heart—how shall I say?—too soon made glad, Too easily impressed; she liked whate’er She looked on, and her looks went everywhere. Sir, ’twas all one! My favour at her breast, The dropping of the daylight in the West, The bough of cherries some officious fool Broke in the orchard for her, the white mule She rode with round the terrace—all and each Would draw from her alike the approving speech, Or blush, at least. She thanked men,—good! but thanked Somehow—I know not how—as if she ranked My gift of a nine-hundred-years-old name With anybody’s gift. Who’d stoop to blame This sort of trifling? Even had you skill In speech—(which I have not)—to make your will Quite clear to such an one, and say, “Just this Or that in you disgusts me; here you miss, Or there exceed the mark”—and if she let Herself be lessoned so, nor plainly set Her wits to yours, forsooth, and made excuse, —E’en then would be some stooping; and I choose Never to stoop. Oh sir, she smiled, no doubt, Whene’er I passed her; but who passed without Much the same smile? This grew; I gave commands; Then all smiles stopped together. There she stands As if alive. Will’t please you rise? We’ll meet The company below, then. I repeat, The Count your master’s known munificence Is ample warrant that no just pretence Of mine for dowry will be disallowed; Though his fair daughter’s self, as I avowed At starting, is my object. Nay, we’ll go Together down, sir. Notice Neptune, though, Taming a sea-horse, thought a rarity, Which Claus of Innsbruck cast in bronze for me!

Is this a dagger which I see before me, The handle toward my hand? Come, let me clutch thee. I have thee not, and yet I see thee still. Art thou not, fatal vision, sensible To feeling as to sight? or art thou but A dagger of the mind, a false creation, Proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain? I see thee yet, in form as palpable As this which now I draw. Thou marshall'st me the way that I was going; And such an instrument I was to use. Mine eyes are made the fools o' the other senses, Or else worth all the rest; I see thee still, And on thy blade and dudgeon gouts of blood, Which was not so before. There's no such thing: It is the bloody business which informs Thus to mine eyes. Now o'er the one halfworld Nature seems dead, and wicked dreams abuse The curtain'd sleep; witchcraft celebrates Pale Hecate's offerings, and wither'd murder, Alarum'd by his sentinel, the wolf, Whose howl's his watch, thus with his stealthy pace. With Tarquin's ravishing strides, towards his design Moves like a ghost. Thou sure and firm-set earth, Hear not my steps, which way they walk, for fear Thy very stones prate of my whereabout, And take the present horror from the time, Which now suits with it. Whiles I threat, he lives: Words to the heat of deeds too cold breath gives. [a bell rings] I go, and it is done; the bell invites me. Hear it not, Duncan; for it is a knell That summons thee to heaven or to hell.

Spartan in its design, with exterior and interior columns adorned by several white diaphanous curtains that billowed elegantly in the sea breeze.

To consider the world in its length and breadth, its various history, the many races of man, their starts, their fortunes, their mutual alienation, their conflicts; and then their ways, habits, governments, forms of worship; their enterprises, their aimless courses, their random achievements, and acquirements, the impotent conclusion of long-standing facts, the tokens so faint and broken of a superintending design, the blind evolution of what turn out to be great powers or truths, the progress of things, as if from unreasoning elements, not toward final causes, the greatness and littleness of man, his far-reaching aims, his short duration, the curtain hung over his futurity, the disappointments of life, the defeat of good, the success of evil, physical pain, mental anguish, the prevalence of sin, the pervading idolatries, the corruptions, the dreary hopeless irreligion, that condition of the whole race, so fearfully yet exactly described in the Apostle's words, "having no hope and without God in the world," - all this is a vision to dizzy and appall; and inflicts upon the mind the sense of a profound mystery, which is absolutely beyond human solution.

The offices are decorated with neon-Louis XVI furniture and are dominated by grey, Mr. Dior’s favourite colour when he opened the famous house on avenue Montaigne back in 1947. The design is even more stunning than I remembered: both chic and understated, with lots of open space –the apex of luxury. The silk curtains dressing the window fall to the floor like ball gowns, delicate silver vases holding pink roses have been artfully placed throughout the room, and grey and white settees and oval-backed chairs provided artful seating areas.

That evening, the monuments of the city were made known by the movements of the bodies. Each had the dignity of her movements Each sat at rest as pure and massy gold. Care weighs so heavily. Cloth is by nature heavy and falls to earth. I wanted to describe the difference in sensation. With grace the curtains when struck with the wind showed the citizens. I designed all these movements for painting. The rooms felt patient, like concepts. I disliked solitude and I also craved it. I have given thought to making my words clear rather than ornate.

God Will, I wish you'd stop telling me what to do. What if I like watching television? What if I don't want to do much else other than read a book?" My voice had become shrill. "What if I'm tired when I get home? What if I don't need to fill my days with activity?" "Bur one day you might wish you had", he said quietly. "Do you know what I would do if I were you?" I put down my peeler. "I suspect you're going to tell me." "Yes. And I'm completely unembarrassed about telling you. I'd be doing night school. I'd be training as a seamstress or a fashion designer or whatever it is that taps into what you really love." He gestured at my minidress, a Sixties-inspired Pucci-type dress, made with the fabric that had once been a pair of Grandad's curtains. The first time Dad had seen it he had pointed at me and yelled, "Hey, Lou, pull yourself together!" It had taken him a full five minutes to stop laughing. "I'd be finding out what I could do that didn't cost much - keep-fit classes, swimming, volunteering, whatever. I'd be teaching myself music or going for long walks with somebody else's dog, or -" "Okay, okay, I get the message," I said, irritably. "But I'm not you, Will." "Luckily for you.

Tyger Salazar had been his best friend—but such designations meant little after one has spent a year learning how to kill. Rowan imagined it must be what mortal-age soldiers felt when they returned from war. Old friendships seemed trapped behind a clouded curtain of experiences that old friends didn’t share.

The Gift Time wants to show you a different country. It's the one that your life conceals, the one waiting outside when curtains are drawn, the one Grandmother hinted at in her crochet design, the one almost found over at the edge of the music, after the sermon. It's the way life is, and you have it, a few years given. You get killed now and then, violated in various ways. (And sometimes it's turn about.) You get tired of that. Long-suffering, you wait and pray, and maybe good things come-maybe the hurt slackens and you hardly feel it any more. You have a breath without pain. It is called happiness. It's a balance, the taking and passing along, the composting of where you've been and how people and weather treated you. It's a country where you already are, bringing where you have been. Time offers this gift in its millions of ways, turning the world, moving the air, calling, every morning, "Here, take it, it's yours.

Now o'er the one-half world nature seems dead, and wicked dreams abuse the curtained sleep. Witchcraft celebrates pale Hecat's offerings; and withered Murder, alarumed by his sentinel the wolf, whose howl's his watch, thus with his stealthy pace, with Tarquin's ravishing strides, towards his design moves like a ghost.

All elves were jaw-droppingly gorgeous, but there was something particularly handsome about Keefe Sencen—and the boy was well aware of it. Though he seemed a little off his game at the moment. His smug smirk was noticeably absent as he scrounged around his blankets, searching for something. “Here,” Ro said, tossing Keefe a wrinkled black tunic from the floor. “Bet you’re wishing it didn’t smell so much like sweaty boy in here, huh?” “It’s fine,” Sophie promised, even if the room could definitely use some airing out. A good cleaning would work wonders too. Everywhere she looked were piles of crumpled clothes and scattered shoes and stacks of papers and plates of half-eaten food. And all the thick curtains were drawn tight, leaving the space dim and stuffy. The room was clearly designed to be beautiful, with marble floors broken up by rugs woven to look like pristine sand, and seafoam walls inlaid with starfish and anemone shells. But under Keefe’s care, it was a disaster zone. Even the furniture had a strange randomness to the arrangement that made Sophie wonder if he’d moved it all just to bug his dad.

The work lifts his spirits, when spirits can be lifted, but darkness still catches him now and then. That’s the nature of darkness. It comes at the end of every day, predictable as the striking of a clock’s chime, even in the heart of summer, when the light is full and lingering. You can never quite escape the night. Perhaps that’s as God wills; this must be His design. How are we to know when our lives are good and when we are blessed, if we have no sorrow, no deprivation for comparison’s sake? There is, he believes, a purpose to all the Creator’s ways. But the mind and heart of God are beyond the understanding of Man. You can know your suffering serves a purpose—that the suffering of others plays some inscrutable part in the grand drama of Creation. But knowing brings you little comfort. When night drops its heavy curtain across the world, darkness is cruel and unforgiving. The way all your happiness can snuff itself in an instant, like the flame of a candle pinched between a licked finger and thumb—it can shake your faith, or strip faith away entirely, if you let it.

eight thousand Republicans crammed into Crosby’s Opera House for a veritable coronation of Ulysses S. Grant. To play on wartime memories, General John “Black Jack” Logan was designated to place his name in nomination. His speech was followed by a well-staged extravaganza: hats and handkerchiefs fluttered, rounds of applause rippled across the house, and a pigeon, dyed red, white, and blue, flapped through the cavernous space. As a huge ovation for his son gathered strength, Jesse Grant stood before the speaker’s platform in “mute astonishment,” said a reporter.8 Then a curtain rose to reveal huge images drawn by Thomas Nast of the Goddess of Liberty, juxtaposed with Grant. To no one’s surprise, Grant won by acclamation on the first ballot.

You're beginning to see, aren't you, Peter? Shall I make it clearer. You've never wanted me to be real. You never wanted anyone to be. But you didn't want to show it. You wanted an act to help your act--a beautiful, complicated act, all twists, trimmings and words. All words. You didn't like what I said about Vincent Knowlton. You liked it when I said the same thing under cover of virtuous sentiments. You didn't want me to believe. You only wanted me to convince you that I believed. My real soul, Peter? It's real only when it's independent--you've discovered that, haven't you? It's real only when it chooses curtains and desserts--you're right about that--curtains, desserts and religions, Peter, and the shapes of buildings. But you've never wanted that. You wanted a mirror. People want nothing but mirrors around them. To reflect them while they're reflecting too. You know, like the senseless infinity you get from two mirrors facing each other across a narrow passage. Usually in the more vulgar kind of hotels. Reflections of reflections and echoes of echoes. No beginning and no end. No center and no purpose. I gave you what you wanted. I became what you are, what your friends are, what most of humanity is so busy being--only with the trimmings. I didn't go around spouting book reviews to hide my emptiness of judgment--I said I had no judgment. I didn't borrow designs to hide my creative impotence--I created nothing. I didn't say that equality is a noble conception and unity the chief goal of mankind--I just agreed with everybody. You call it death, Peter? That kind of death--I've imposed it on you and on everyone around us. But you--you haven't done that. People are comfortable with you, they like you, they enjoy your presence. You've spared them the blank death. Because you've imposed it--on yourself.

...the letters begin to cross vast spaces in slow sailing ships and everything becomes still more protracted and verbose, and there seems no end to the space and the leisure of those early nineteenth century days, and faiths are lost and the life of Hedley Vicars revives them; aunts catch cold but recover; cousins marry; there is the Irish famine and the Indian Mutiny, and both sisters remain, to their great, but silent grief, for in those days there were things that women hid like pearls in their breasts, without children to come after them. Louisa, dumped down in Ireland with Lord Waterford at the hunt all day, was often very lonely; but she stuck to her post, visited the poor, spoke words of comfort (‘I am sorry indeed to hear of Anthony Thompson's loss of mind, or rather of memory; if, however, he can understand sufficiently to trust solely in our Saviour, he has enough’) and sketched and sketched. Thousands of notebooks were filled with pen and ink drawings of an evening, and then the carpenter stretched sheets for her and she designed frescoes for schoolrooms, had live sheep into her bedroom, draped gamekeepers in blankets, painted Holy Families in abundance, until the great Watts exclaimed that here was Titian's peer and Raphael's master! At that Lady Waterford laughed (she had a generous, benignant sense of humour); and said that she was nothing but a sketcher; had scarcely had a lesson in her life—witness her angel's wings, scandalously unfinished. Moreover, there was her father's house for ever falling into the sea; she must shore it up; must entertain her friends; must fill her days with all sorts of charities, till her Lord came home from hunting, and then, at midnight often, she would sketch him with his knightly face half hidden in a bowl of soup, sitting with her notebook under a lamp beside him. Off he would ride again, stately as a crusader, to hunt the fox, and she would wave to him and think, each time, what if this should be the last? And so it was one morning. His horse stumbled. He was killed. She knew it before they told her, and never could Sir John Leslie forget, when he ran down-stairs the day they buried him, the beauty of the great lady standing by the window to see the hearse depart, nor, when he came back again, how the curtain, heavy, Mid-Victorian, plush perhaps, was all crushed together where she had grasped it in her agony.

The stranger drew the curtains round the bed, took up the light, and inspected the apartment. The walls of both rooms were hung with drawings of masterly excellence. A portfolio was filled with sketches of equal skill,—but these last were mostly subjects that appalled the eye and revolted the taste: they displayed the human figure in every variety of suffering,—the rack, the wheel, the gibbet; all that cruelty has invented to sharpen the pangs of death seemed yet more dreadful from the passionate gusto and earnest force of the designer. And some of the countenances of those thus delineated were sufficiently removed from the ideal to show that they were portraits; in a large, bold, irregular hand was written beneath these drawings, “The Future of the Aristocrats.” In a corner of the room, and close by an old bureau, was a small bundle, over which, as if to hide it, a cloak was thrown carelessly. Several shelves were filled with books; these were almost entirely the works of the philosophers of the time,—the philosophers of the material school, especially the Encyclopedistes, whom Robespierre afterwards so singularly attacked when the coward deemed it unsafe to leave his reign without a God.

after many hours of feasting and dance, the King and Queen took their sleeping girl to her bedchamber. “Good night, little bird,” said the Queen as she kissed Snow. The girl’s cheek felt as soft as silk on the Queen’s lips. She left the child to her dreams. She was sure they were filled with lovely ladies spinning in circles and colorful dresses and banners swirling all around her. The King took his new wife by the hand and led her to their chamber. The sun, now coming through their curtains, was casting an otherworldly glow. They stood there for a moment looking at each other. Bliss. “I see you have opened my gift,” the King said looking at the mirror. The mirror was oval-shaped and beautifully ornate, gilded, with serpentine designs around the perimeter, and crowned with an engraving of a headpiece fit for a Queen. It was nearly perfect. But something about it made her feel that same uneasiness that had shaken her before the ceremony. Her chest tightened and the room suddenly felt oppressively confining. “What is the matter, my love?” the King asked. The Queen moved to speak, but she could not. “You don’t like it?” he asked, looking crestfallen. “No, my love, it…I’m just…tired. So tired,” she finally muttered. But she couldn’t take her eyes off of the mirror.

A real house with a copper pot for making jam, and sugar cookies in a metal box hidden deep inside a dresser. A long farmhouse table, thick and homey, and cretonne curtains. She smiled. She had no idea what cretonne was, or even if she'd like it, but she liked the way the words went together: cretonne curtains. She'd have a guest room and- who knows- maybe even some guests. A well-kept little garden, hens who'd provide her with tasty boiled eggs, cats to chase after the field mice and dogs to chase after the cats. A little plot of aromatic herbs, a fireplace, sagging armchairs and books all around. White tablecloths, napkin rings unearthed at flea markets, some sort of device so she could listen to the same operas her father used to listen to, and a coal stove where she could let a rich beef-and-carrot stew simmer all morning along. A rich beef-and-carrot stew. What was she thinking. A little house like the ones that kids draw, with a door and two windows on either side. Old-fashioned, discreet, silent, overrun with Virginia creeper and climbing roses. A house with those little fire bugs on the porch, red and black insects scurrying everywhere in pairs. A warm porch where the heat of the day would linger and she could sit in the evening to watch for the return of the heron.

In Amsterdam, I took a room in a small hotel located in the Jordann District and after lunch in a café went for a walk in the western parts of the city. In Flaubert’s Alexandria, the exotic had collected around camels, Arabs peacefully fishing and guttural cries. Modern Amsterdam provided different but analogous examples: buildings with elongated pale-pink bricks stuck together with curiously white mortar, long rows of narrow apartment blocks from the early twentieth century, with large ground-floor windows, bicycles parked outside every house, street furniture displaying a certain demographic scruffiness, an absence of ostentatious buildings, straight streets interspersed with small parks…..In one street lines with uniform apartment buildings, I stopped by a red front door and felt an intense longing to spend the rest of my life there. Above me, on the second floor, I could see an apartment with three large windows and no curtains. The walls were painted white and decorated with a single large painting covered with small blue and red dots. There was an oaken desk against a wall, a large bookshelf and an armchair. I wanted the life that this space implied. I wanted a bicycle; I wanted to put my key in that red front door every evening. Why be seduced by something as small as a front door in another country? Why fall in love with a place because it has trams and its people seldom have curtains in their homes? However absurd the intense reactions provoked by such small (and mute) foreign elements my seem, the pattern is at least familiar from our personal lives. My love for the apartment building was based on what I perceived to be its modesty. The building was comfortable but not grand. It suggested a society attracted to the financial mean. There was an honesty in its design. Whereas front doorways in London are prone to ape the look of classical temples, in Amsterdam they accept their status, avoiding pillars and plaster in favor of neat, undecorated brick. The building was modern in the best sense, speaking of order, cleanliness, and light. In the more fugitive, trivial associations of the word exotic, the charm of a foreign place arises from the simple idea of novelty and change-from finding camels where at home there are horses, for example, or unadorned apartment buildings where at home there are pillared ones. But there may be a more profound pleasure as well: we may value foreign elements not only because they are new but because they seem to accord more faithfully with our identity and commitments than anything our homeland can provide. And so it was with my enthusiasms in Amsterdam, which were connected to my dissatisfactions with my own country, including its lack of modernity and aesthetic simplicity, its resistance to urban life and its net-curtained mentality. What we find exotic abroad may be what we hunger for in vain at home.

The next room was a great round ballroom. Its walls were arrayed in gold-painted moldings; its floor was a swirling mosaic of blue and gold; its dome was painted with the loves of all the gods, a vast tangle of plump limbs and writhing fabric. The air was cool, still, and hugely silent. My footsteps were only a soft tap-tap-tap, but they echoed through the room. After that came what seemed like a hundred more rooms and hallways. In every one, the air was different: hot or cold, fresh or stuffy, smelling of rosemary, incense, pomegranates, old paper, pickled fish, cedarwood. None of the rooms frightened me like the first hallway. But sometimes--especially when sunlight glowed through a window--I thought I heard the faint laughter. Finally, at the end of a long hallway with a cherrywood wainscot and lace-hung windows between the doors, we came to my room. I could see why the Gentle Lord called it the "bridal suite": the walls were papered with a silver pattern of hearts and doves, and most of the room was taken up by a huge canopied bed, more than big enough for two. The four posts were shaped like four maidens, coiffed and dressed in gauzy robes that clung to their bodies, their faces serene. They were exactly like the caryatids holding up the porch of a temple. The bed curtains were great falls of white lace, woven through with crimson ribbons. A vase of roses sat on the bedside table. Their red petals had blossomed wide to expose their gold centers, and their musk wove through the air. It was a bed that had been built for pleasure, just like my dress, and as I stared at it I felt hot and cold at once.

Oliver reached past her to yank the curtains closed, then moved to sit beside her. She stiffened, but didn’t resist as he looped one arm about her waist to pull her back against his hard body. “You don’t even know what you’re giving up,” he rasped, “what it’s like to shatter beneath a man’s touch. If you knew, you wouldn’t be so eager to throw that away for the cold comfort of a respectable marriage.” She closed her eyes against his words, but they were designed to tempt her, and tempt her they did. Last night had only roused her curiosity. Now, with the spicy scent of his cologne in her nostrils and his breath warming her cheek, she wanted to know more, feel more. His voice lowered to a whisper. “Let me at least show you what you’d be missing.” She felt rather than saw him shrug off his cloak, leaving him in his shirtsleeves. That sent a wayward thrill down her spine. “Have you forgotten that I’m deplorably a virgin?” she said, attempting to regain control over the situation. “No. And you’ll still be one when I’m done.” He pressed his lips against the bit of neck below her bonnet, making her shiver deliciously. Then he untied her bonnet and tossed it onto the opposite seat so he could press a kiss into her hair. “I only want to give you a taste of passion, sweetheart. Enough for you to see what it could be like between us.” “Oliver…” she protested, turning toward him. That proved a mistake, for he caught her head in his hands and kissed her. Boldly. Deeply. And she couldn’t bring herself to stop him. Mercy, how fiercely he kissed! He scarcely allowed her breath as his mouth plundered hers over and over, startling her pulse into a wild gallop. She curled her fingers into his shirt, not sure whether she was trying to hold him closer or push him away. It didn’t matter. He had full command of her, and he knew it. His large hands held her still as his tongue tangled with hers, and his thumbs slid down to caress her throat with a tenderness at odds with the wild abandon of his kisses.

After the Grand Perhaps” After vespers, after the first snow has fallen to its squalls, after New Wave, after the anorexics have curled into their geometric forms, after the man with the apparition in his one bad eye has done red things behind the curtain of the lid & sleeps, after the fallout shelter in the elementary school has been packed with tins & other tangibles, after the barn boys have woken, startled by foxes & fire, warm in their hay, every part of them blithe & smooth & touchable, after the little vandals have tilted toward the impossible seduction to smash glass in the dark, getting away with the most lethal pieces, leaving the shards which travel most easily through flesh as message on the bathroom floor, the parking lots, the irresistible debris of the neighbor’s yard where he’s been constructing all winter long. After the pain has become an old known friend, repeating itself, you can hold on to it. The power of fright, I think, is as much as magnetic heat or gravity. After what is boundless: wind chimes, fertile patches of the land, the ochre symmetry of fields in fall, the end of breath, the beginning of shadow, the shadow of heat as it moves the way the night heads west, I take this road to arrive at its end where the toll taker passes the night, reading. I feel the cupped heat of his left hand as he inherits change; on the road that is not his road anymore I belong to whatever it is which will happen to me. When I left this city I gave back the metallic waking in the night, the signals of barges moving coal up a slow river north, the movement of trains, each whistle like a woodwind song of another age passing, each ambulance would split a night in two, lying in bed as a little girl, a fear of being taken with the sirens as they lit the neighborhood in neon, quick as the fire as it takes fire & our house goes up in night. After what is arbitrary: the hand grazing something too sharp or fine, the word spoken out of sleep, the buckling of the knees to cold, the melting of the parts to want, the design of the moon to cast unfriendly light, the dazed shadow of the self as it follows the self, the toll taker’s sorrow that we couldn’t have been more intimate. Which leads me back to the land, the old wolves which used to roam on it, the one light left on the small far hill where someone must be living still. After life there must be life.

If the curtain is indeed about to drop on Sapiens history, we members of one of its final generations should devote some time to answering one last question: what do we want to become? This question, sometimes known as the Human Enhancement question, dwarfs the debates that currently preoccupy politicians, philosophers, scholars and ordinary people. After all, today's debate between today's religions, ideologies, nations and classes will in all likelihood disappear along with Homo sapiens. If our successors indeed function on a different level of consciousness (or perhaps possess something beyond consciousness that we cannot even conceive), it seems doubtful that Christianity or Islam will be of interest to them, that their social organizations could be Communist or capitalist or that their genders could be male or female. And yet the great debates of history are more important because at least the first generation of these gods would be shaped by the cultural ideas of their human designers. Would they be created in the image of capitalism, of Islam, or of feminism? The answer to this question might send them careening in entirely different directions. Most people prefer not to think about it. Even the field of bioethics prefers to address another question: 'What is it forbidden to do?' Is it acceptable to carry out genetic experiments on living human beings? On aborted fetuses? On stem cells? Is it ethical to clone sheep? And chimpanzees? And what about humans? All of these are important questions, but it is naive to imagine that we might simply hit the brakes and stop the scientific projects that are upgrading Homo sapiens into a different kind of being. For these projects are inextricably meshed together with the Gilgamesh Project. Ask scientists why they study the genome, or try to connect a brain to a computer, or try to create a mind inside a computer. Nine out of ten times you'll get the same standard answer: we are doing it to cure diseases and save human lives. Even though the implications of creating a mind inside a computer are far more dramatic than curing psychiatric illnesses, this is the standard justification given, because nobody can argue with it. This is why the Gilgamesh Project is the flagship of science. It serves to justify everything science does. Dr Frankenstein piggybacks on the shoulders of Gilgamesh. Since it is impossible to stop Gilgamesh, it is also impossible to stop Dr Frankenstein. The only thing we can try to do is to influence the direction scientists are taking. But since we might soon be able to engineer our desires too, the real question facing us is not 'What do we want to become?, but 'What do we want to want?' Those who are not spooked by this question probably haven't given it enough thought.

So, you want to improve your home like you have some knowledge and respect for the endeavor, yes? Very well. First, you need to know the basics associated with it to showcase what type of knowledge you actually have about it. If that is not enough, try reviewing the article listed below to assist you. Home improvement is often a daunting task. This is because of the time and the amounts of money required. However, it doesn't have to be so bad. If you have several projects in your house, divide them up into several smaller DIY projects. For example you may want to redo the entire living room. Start simple, by just replacing the carpet, and before you know it, your living room will be like new. One great way to make the inside of your home sparkle is to put new molding in. New molding helps create a fresh sense in your living space. You can purchase special molding with beautiful carvings on them to add a unique touch of elegance and style to your home. When it comes to home improvement, consider replacing your windows and doors. This not only has a chance of greatly improving the value of the home, but may also severely decrease the amount of money required to keep your house warm and dry. You can also add extra security with new doors and windows. Change your shower curtain once a month. Showering produces excessive humidity in a bathroom that in turn causes shower curtains to develop mold and mildew. To keep your space fresh and healthy, replace your curtains. Don't buy expensive plastic curtains with hard to find designs, and you won't feel bad about replacing it. Sprucing up your walls with art is a great improvement idea, but it doesn't have to be a painting. You can use practically anything for artwork. For instance, a three-dimensional tile works great if you contrast the colors. You can even buy some canvas and a frame and paint colored squares. Anything colorful can work as art. If you are renovating your kitchen but need to spend less money, consider using laminate flooring and countertops. These synthetic options are generally much less expensive than wood, tile, or stone. They are also easier to care for. Many of these products are designed to closely mimic the natural products, so that the difference is only visible on close inspection. New wallpaper can transform a room. Before you add wallpaper, you need to find out what type of wall is under the existing wallpaper. Usually walls are either drywall or plaster smoothed over lath. You can figure out what kind of wall you are dealing with by feeling the wall, plaster is harder, smoother, and colder than drywall. You can also try tapping the wall, drywall sounds hollow while plaster does not. Ah, you have read the aforementioned article, or you wouldn't be down here reading through the conclusion. Well done! That article should have provided you with a proper foundation of what it takes to properly and safely improve your home. If any questions still remain, try reviewing the article again.

The footman opened the door, and three women entered the room. Two of them were dressed in diaphanous gowns in the pleasure house's Grecian theme, designed to tantalize and tease. The pastel silk draping their bodies only suggested modesty while revealing more than enough to incite the lust of the men avidly observing their movements. Between these sensual nymph-like creatures walked a third woman. Her slim arms were linked with the other two as they came forward to take their places before the fireplace. This third woman was young and dressed in a modest gown of white with a pale-blue sash cinched beneath full breasts well covered by a pleated bodice. Whereas her two companions looked boldly out at the small crowd with flashing, inviting gazes and knowing smiles, the woman standing between them kept her chin lowered shyly. Her features were obscured by a curtain of brunette tresses falling in silken waves over her shoulders and down to her waist. Avenell's blood ignited in a furious storm of awareness, and his stomach clenched violently. His fingers tightened around the brandy snifter as he studied the details of the third woman's appearance, uncertain if he could believe what his eyes were suggesting. But there was no doubt. It was her.

The walls were painted a robin's-egg blue. Antique wood-and-glass display cases had mottled milk chocolate-brown marble countertops. Antique iron-and-glass stands would make the future little cakes (under their glass domes) pop up and down on the counter like jaunty hats. From the top of the left wall of the bakery, Gavin had hung a canvas curtain and arranged a display area in front of it. Both the curtain and display would change each month- as would, of course, the colors and flavors we showcased. The idea was to sell not only cakes, but also cake stands, serving pieces, plates, paper napkins, and other goodies, so once your little cakes got home, they'd look as good as they did in my bakery. One-stop shopping. On the right, Gavin had arranged a seating area with dark bentwood chairs and cafe tables. It looked like a tea salon in Paris. I sighed with delight. But I wanted to see where I would spend most of my time. The work and storage areas were screened off in the back, although I would have been happy to show off my two Vulcan convection-ovens-on-wheels and the big stainless steel worktable with the cool marble slab at one end for chocolate work. The calm milk-chocolate plaster walls, stainless steel, and white marble made the workspace look like a shrine to the cake baker's art.

Dampen excess noise [in the dining room] Soften live acoustics with curtains and soft furnishings to improve speech intelligibility.

IF you live alone, you’d be a fucking masochistic freak to buy an opaque shower curtain. I started thinking about this in the Silver Seahorse, where the shower curtain was white, save a few spots of mold on the bottom. It’s like they were trying to make the rooms feel like Psycho. I thought buying a shower curtain would be the easiest fucking thing in the world but you go to Bed Bath & Beyond and they have like six hundred opaque shower curtains that are obviously not an option. And then you go online and there are thousands to choose from. I didn’t buy a totally clear one because you need something to look at while you’re on the can, but when you think about it, this shower curtain is something you are going to look at Every. Fucking. Day. So I started going through hundreds of options online. Most of the designs are bullshit you could never stomach every day (a map of the world, go fuck yourself, fish, a map of Brooklyn, really go fuck yourself, snowmen, the Eiffel Tower, nautical signs—I mean, I’m not some fucker who buys scarves at Urban Outfitters and rates movies on IMDB).

Every day may not be good but there is something good in every day.

These are for you.  You have two choices.  You can use them when Rachel’s gone, or you can wait until she’s back, and I’m sure she’d be happy to help you.” He studied me for a moment then walked out of the kitchen, turning toward the bathroom.  I followed a few steps behind. A startled yelp escaped me when I rounded the corner and caught sight of a naked backside.  Without much thought, I tossed the soap and toothbrush in and slammed the door shut. “You could have waited until I put the stuff in there,” I said through the door as my heart thundered in my ears.  I took a steadying breath and heard the water turn on, the clink of his dog tag hitting the sink, then the shower curtain move. Who would have thought he would even know how to use a shower?  I hadn’t.  On the way home, I’d started to think of all the different things I would need to explain, like making sure to position the curtain inside the tub.  Standing outside the door, still reeling from the view I’d gotten, I realized I might see the same thing again if I didn’t get him a towel. I’d packed two bath towels.  Purchased from a discount store, they both sported gaudy floral designs.  I grabbed one and waited outside the door again until I heard him splashing in the shower.  Then, I knocked. “I have a towel for you,” I said through the door.  “If you’re still in the shower, I can open the door and toss it on the toilet seat.  Okay?”  I didn’t hear anything.  No surprise.  “Okay, I’m coming in.”  I waited a moment for any indication that I shouldn’t enter. When the water continued to run, I cautiously opened the door.  As soon as I saw a clear path to the toilet seat, I tossed the towel.  Standing just inside the bathroom with my hand wrapped around the door handle for a quick exit, I paused.  His new toothbrush rested on the sink. “My toothpaste is the one marked with the pink nail polish on the cap.  I’ll let you use it as long as you promise not to squeeze the tube from the middle.” His answer took the form of an accurately aimed splash of water over the top of the shower curtain.  I barely dodged it. “You’re cleaning that up.” I

If I pulled back the curtain to allow you to view heavenly realms, you would understand much more. However, I have designed you to live by faith, not by sight.

Creating and Enjoying Then God looked over all he had made, and he saw that it was very good! GENESIS 1:31 NLT Mary had been working diligently on tiling her bathroom. It was a big project for her and required a lot of planning and thought to design it just right. There was the mortarboard that had to replace the old, moldy drywall, and the plumber had to frame in the tub for her. She measured, sawed, carried heavy boards, nailed, cut, glued, and grouted. Every night after work she labored carefully and fell into bed exhausted for nearly three weeks straight. Finally it was done, and she loved it! She adorned it with new curtains and a few fresh towels. She found herself going in the bathroom just to be in that room, she was so pleased. A few days later she found her son standing in the bathroom. “I like to come in here and just look at it, Mom; it’s so nice. I can’t imagine how good you must feel!” Mary thought about it and smiled. “God made us like Him. You know, how He stood back and enjoyed His creation after He made it.” Lord God, thank You for allowing us to be creative and enjoy the work of our hands. Most of all, thank You for making us and watching over us every day because You love what You’ve made! Amen.

We love the unexpected, the gloriously chaotic combination of a million different elements. We love things that have history. We’re not looking for perfection. If we love something, we will find a way to make it fit. We love rock ’n’ roll style as well as farmhouse. We love boho and hippie and country. The truth is, we’re a little of all those things combined. You could say we have commitment issues. We love color, but we also love white. We love vintage concert posters mixed with red-lacquered Asian pieces, then combined with chippy, peely farmhouse furniture and maybe topped off with fringed velvet curtains. For us, the design process is a gut-wrenchingly beautiful thing, a deeply meditative process, a cultural exploration of who you are, and it’s one of the most personal things you can do. If a home is set up the right way, there’s something you can feel, and it’s not for anyone else; it’s for yourself. All the stars (or the chandeliers) align, and you just know: It’s right.

No one can take in a building all at once. It's like when we take a photograph – we're looking at only a few things, half a dozen or even a dozen – and yet the photo records everything in our frame of vision. And it's those thousand other details that anchor us far below what we consciously see. It's what we unconsciously see that gives us the feeling of familiarity with the mind behind a building. Sometimes it seems as if the architect had full knowledge of these thousand other details in his design, not just the different kinds of light possible across a stone facade, or across the floor, or filling the crevices of an ornament, but as if he knew just how the curtains would blow into the room through the open window and cause just that particular shadow and turn a certain page of a certain book at just that moment of the story, and that the dimness of the Sunday rain would compel the woman to rise from the table and draw the man's face to the warmth of her.

With its green curtains and green carpet, with its green valences round its green arm-chairs, with its green tassels round its vase-bearing brackets, this spacious chamber, designed to pleasure their dead mother before either of them were born, was like a mausoleum to Ruth and Rodney.

On the Thursday after Wallace left, I wandered over to Fifth Avenue after work to see the windows at Bergdorf’s. A few days before, I’d noticed that they’d been curtained for the installation of the new displays. Winter, Spring, Summer, Fall, I always looked forward to the unveiling of the new seasons at Bergdorf’s. Standing before the windows, you felt like a tsarina receiving one of those jeweled eggs in which an elaborate scene in miniature has been painstakingly assembled. With one eye closed you spy inside, losing all sense of time as you marvel at every transporting detail. And transporting was the right word. For the Bergdorf’s windows weren’t advertising unsold inventory at 30 % off. They were designed to change the lives of women up and down the avenue—offering envy to some, self-satisfaction to others, but a glimpse of possibility to all. And for the Fall season of 1938, my Fifth Avenue Fabergé did not disappoint. The theme of the windows was fairy tales, drawing on the well-known works of the Brothers Grimm and Hans Christian Andersen; but in each set piece the “princess” had been replaced with the figure of a man, and the “prince” with one of us.

Then I opened a door of dull brown wood, and a breath of warm, fragrant air struck me. I stood on the threshold of a kitchen with red poppies painted around the rim of its walls, and wide windows whose lacy white curtains glowed with morning light. It looked as if the cooks had just vanished, for oatmeal bubbled on the stove next to a pan of sizzling sausages, mushrooms, and capers, while on the table a fresh-baked loaf of bread sat fragrant next to a little dish of olives and a pile of pastries.

I lie splayed out on the bed, staring numbly at the world's most beautiful bedroom. I've been given the Duchess Suite, a relic from the days when husbands and wives slept in separate rooms. The bedroom's damask walls are painted robin's-egg blue, the same shade as Tiffany's famous little boxes, with matching curtains framing the French windows. The ceiling above my bed is gilded in a mosaic pattern, and impressionist paintings grace the walls. Delicate white-and-gold furniture softens the room's edges, and the freshly cut peonies in a vase on my bedside table lend the air a sweet smell.

Because failures consume time and resources, you’re smart to use both judiciously. Failures can also threaten reputations. One way to mitigate the reputational cost of failure is to experiment behind closed doors. If you’ve ever tried on a bold new style of clothing to see if it suits you, you probably did it behind the curtain of a store’s changing area. Similarly, most innovation departments and scientific labs are private, with scientists and product designers trying all sorts of crazy things without an audience.

Small Changes, Big Impact: Decor Ideas for Your Home - The theory of small changes and their significant impact holds true when it comes to interior design Little things such as adding rugs, changing curtains, and decorating walls can bring functionality, comfort, and aesthetic beauty to your space.

Amelia was a porcelain doll inside a suit of armor. As indestructible as she appeared, she was designed to shatter.

Once both male canines had collected enough smell samples from Sabrina's crotch/my dinner, we stopped laughing and managed to get inside the apartment. It was a two-room apartment on the ground floor and it was quite dark inside, with the curtains closed and only one or two lamps turned on in the entire place. Two big cats, two big dogs and two Jewish guys were sitting in the living room. There were a variety of products scattered all over the place. The room was a mess, not necessarily caused by the pets. They told us that they also have two more large cats at home in Belgium. Mario introduced us to Tom Titelany: the short, dark-haired guy who had opened the door and was the owner of the Dogue de Bordeaux. The other guy, sitting in the dark, a bit taller and skinnier with brighter skin, and brighter hair, and much brighter eyes, called Adam Maraudin, was the owner of the two large cats and the Bull Terrier jumping around. There was a huge serpent tattoo winding around Adam's shoulder, and though his tank top only revealed part of the design, it was clear that this was not an ordinary tattoo, it seemed to me to be of Far-Eastern origin or Thai. They then introduced us to Adam's girlfriend, the British Rachel Conarts, whom Adam called Shifra for some reason. She had ginger hair and was as tall as Adam, taller than Tom. There was a big bag of scuba diving kit in the living room and, when I asked them about it, they told me that Shifra and Adam had first met in Thailand, where they had been scuba diving. One of them was called Tom, the same as my name, and the other one was called Adam, coincidentally the same as my middle name. Coincidence? I don’t know.

Small Changes, Big Impact: Décor Ideas for Your Home - The theory of small changes and their significant impact holds true when it comes to interior design Little things such as adding rugs, changing curtains, and decorating walls can bring functionality, comfort, and aesthetic beauty to your space.

The nearest watch-tower, at which the driver pointed, was sharply silhouetted. It was closer than the other had been and had no higher hills behind it, only the clearing sky with its suggestion of of pale gold, now perhaps employed in the propaganda services of the people’s free republic. All the fences, designed to keep those people feeling free and happy without a chance of break-out, could be seen from this vantage point. It was as if the landscape was now within the brain of some giant power lunatic, with barbed and electrified wire running towards nerve ends, watch-towers completing the optical system.

this shower curtain is something you are going to look at Every. Fucking. Day. So I started going through hundreds of options online. Most of the designs are bullshit you could never stomach every day (a map of the world, go fuck yourself, fish, a map of Brooklyn, really go fuck yourself, snowmen, the Eiffel Tower, nautical signs—I mean, I’m not some fucker who buys scarves at Urban Outfitters and rates movies on IMDB). I just wanted something funny and classic.

I stood under the arch and absorbed the image. Rose and blue and ancient oriental rugs held pale pink loveseats with curved arms and perfectly faded silk upholstery. Sheer white-winged angels floated on a ceiling of baby-blue sky with clouds of spun gold. And eastern-facing windows of blue stained glass held paler blue stained-glass crosses in the middle. Daylight and streetlamps were obliterated by thick velvet curtains with gold tasseled ropes, and a small, dusty beam of faded light managed to seep past the heavy drapes, making it look like the tail end of the day instead of the early part of the afternoon. His home was lavish and seductive, and I thought it rare that a man living alone could create a thing of such intensity. For the second time in two days I found myself having to adjust my opinion of Michael Bon Chance. It was a marble fountain that ended my reverie and brought me back down to earth. It was the true centerpiece of the room, with water slowly seeping from a cracked jug and dripping over a statue of a nude couple, bathing. I cringed at the sound. Michael looked at me. "Something wrong?" "It's the dripping." He went over to the bar and poured me a glass of wine. "You're tense. Maybe this will help." I took a sip from the glass and put it down on the fireplace mantel. I caught a glimpse of Michael and myself in the mirror above the fire and felt trapped by how beautiful we looked in the rose glow of the dragon's-head lamps with pale pink bulbs.

For there is one thing that the designers of this sea-palace seem to have forgotten and seem to be a little ashamed of—and that is the sea itself. There it lies, an eternal prospect beyond these curtained windows, by far the most lovely and wonderful thing visible; but it seems to be forgotten there.

The Easy Decor is here to help. Visit our website to explore our latest designs or contact us at theeasydecor@gmail.com for expert advice. Let us bring your vision to life!

introduction: Crescent Fabrics is an influential name in the fabric distribution industry, providing high-quality fabrics across multiple categories to suit a range of creative needs. Whether you're a quilter, home decorator, or fashion designer, Crescent offers a versatile selection of fabrics to bring your creative projects to life. Key Highlights of Crescent Fabrics: Fabric Collections: Crescent Fabrics is known for its curated fabric lines, often featuring unique prints and patterns. These collections are designed in collaboration with well-known fabric designers and cater to various aesthetic preferences—from modern and bold designs to more traditional or whimsical prints. Diverse Fabric Types: Crescent offers a variety of fabric types, including: Cotton fabrics: A primary focus for quilting, available in prints, solids, and blenders. Apparel fabrics: Rayon, linen, jersey knit, and cotton fabrics suitable for sewing garments. Home Decor fabrics: Textiles designed for creating upholstery, curtains, and other decorative items. Batiks and Speciality Fabrics: Unique hand-dyed fabrics that are highly valued in quilting and craft communities. Focus on Quality: Crescent Fabrics is dedicated to providing high-quality materials that can withstand the test of time. Their fabrics are known for their durability, softness, and vibrant colours, making them popular among quilters and other fabric enthusiasts.