Espresso House Quotes

It's mechanical," Leo said. "Maybe a doorway to the dwarfs' secret lair?" "Ooooo!" shrieked a nearby voice. "Secret lair?" "I want a secret lair!" yelled another voice from above. ... "If we had a secret lair," said Red Fur, "I would want a firehouse pole." "And a waterslide!" said Brown Fur, who was pulling random tools out of Leo's belt, tossing aside wrenches, hammers, and staple guns. "Stop that!" Leo tried to grab the dwarf's feet, but he couldn't reach the top of the pedestal. "Too short?" Brown Fur sympathized. "You're calling me short?" Leo looked around for something to throw, but there was nothing but pigeons, and he doubted he could catch one. "Give me my belt, you stupid-" "Now, now!" said Brown Fur. "We haven't even introduced ourselves. I'm Akmon, and my brother over there-" "-is the handsome one!" The red-furred dwarf lifted his espresso. Judging from his dilated eyes and maniacal grin, he didn't need any more caffeine. "Passolos! Singer of songs! Drinker of coffee! Stealer of shiny stuff!

American coffee can be a pale solution served at a temperature of 100 degrees centigrade in plastic thermos cups, usually obligatory in railroad stations for purposes of genocide, whereas coffee made with an American percolator, such as you find in private houses or in humble luncheonettes, served with eggs and bacon, is delicious, fragrant, goes down like pure spring water, and afterwards causes severe palpitations, because one cup contains more caffeine than four espressos.

But even while Rome is burning, there’s somehow time for shopping at IKEA. Social imperatives are a merciless bitch. Everyone is attempting to buy what no one can sell.  See, when I moved out of the house earlier this week, trawling my many personal belongings in large bins and boxes and fifty-gallon garbage bags, my first inclination was, of course, to purchase the things I still “needed” for my new place. You know, the basics: food, hygiene products, a shower curtain, towels, a bed, and umm … oh, I need a couch and a matching leather chair and a love seat and a lamp and a desk and desk chair and another lamp for over there, and oh yeah don’t forget the sideboard that matches the desk and a dresser for the bedroom and oh I need a coffeetable and a couple end tables and a TV-stand for the TV I still need to buy, and don’t these look nice, whadda you call ’em, throat pillows? Oh, throw pillows. Well that makes more sense. And now that I think about it I’m going to want my apartment to be “my style,” you know: my own motif, so I need certain decoratives to spruce up the decor, but wait, what is my style exactly, and do these stainless-steel picture frames embody that particular style? Does this replica Matisse sketch accurately capture my edgy-but-professional vibe? Exactly how “edgy” am I? What espresso maker defines me as a man? Does the fact that I’m even asking these questions mean I lack the dangling brass pendulum that’d make me a “man’s man”? How many plates/cups/bowls/spoons should a man own? I guess I need a diningroom table too, right? And a rug for the entryway and bathroom rugs (bath mats?) and what about that one thing, that thing that’s like a rug but longer? Yeah, a runner; I need one of those, and I’m also going to need…

This is the Hong Kong curse that expat housewives talk about in hushed voices: the man who takes to Hong Kong the wrong way. He moves from an egalitarian American society, where he’s supposed to take out the trash every day and help with the dinner dishes, to a place where women cater to his every desire—a secretary who anticipates his needs before he does, a servant in the house who brings him his espresso just the way he likes it and irons his boxers and his socks—and the local population is not as sassy with the comebacks as where he came from, so, of course, he then looks for that in every corner of his life.

Domestic If, when studying road atlases while taking, as you call it, your morning dump, you shout down to me names like Miami City, Franconia, Cancún, as places for you to take me to from here, can I help it if all I can think is things that are stupid, like he loves me he loves me not? I don’t think so. No more than, some mornings, waking to your hands around me, and remembering these are the fingers, the hands I’ve over and over given myself to, I can stop myself from wondering does that mean they’re the same I’ll grow old with. Yesterday, in the café I keep meaning to show you, I thought this is how I’ll die maybe, alone, somewhere too far away from wherever you are then, my heart racing from espresso and too many cigarettes, my head down on the table’s cool marble, and the ceiling fan turning slowly above me, like fortune, the part of fortune that’s half-wished- for only—it did not seem the worst way. I thought this is another of those things I’m always forgetting to tell you, or don’t choose to tell you, or I tell you but only in the same way, each morning, I keep myself from saying too loud I love you until the moment you flush the toilet, then I say it, when the rumble of water running down through the house could mean anything: flood, your feet descending the stairs any moment; any moment the whole world, all I want of the world, coming down.

I looked at her face. Besides being covered in tears, it was above all marked by dissatisfaction. Deep-lying dissatisfaction, the kind a person is born with. Nothing helps to drive out that dissatisfaction. Expensive espresso machines, attention, a new wing on the house— for a fleeting moment the dissatisfaction disappears into the background, but it's like a leak coming through the wallpaper: You can cover it with new wallpaper, but after a while the brown spots soak through, anyway. There's not much you can do about it. You can muffle it for a bit with medication, with what they call “mother’s little helpers,” but in the end it only comes back with renewed strength.

Confessing I didn’t, I scribbled the directions on the notepad I always kept by the phone. I hung up and my feet were already on the floor as adrenaline hit my nerves like espresso. The house was quiet. I grabbed my black medical bag, scuffed and worn from years of use. The

At first she felt overwhelmed by the house, its airy symmetry its silence. Now she was accustomed to the place, but she caught herself wondering, Is this still Berkeley? George's neighborhood felt as far from Telegraph as the hanging gardens of Babylon. You could get a good kebab in Jess's neighborhood, and a Cal T-shirt, and a reproduction NO HIPPIES ALLOWED sign. Where George lived, you could not get anything unless you drove down from the hills. Then you could buy art glass, and temple bells, and burled-wood jewelry boxes, and dresses of hand-painted silk, and you could eat at Chez Panisse, or sip coffee at the authentically grubby French Hotel where your barista took a bent paper clip and drew cats or four-leaf clovers or nudes in your espresso foam. You returned home with organic, free-range groceries, and bouquets of ivory roses and pale green hydrangeas, and you held dinner parties where some guests got lost and arrived late, and others gave up searching for you in the fog. That was George's Berkeley, and even in these environs, his home stood apart, hidden, grand, and rambling; windows set like jewels in their carved frames, gables twined with wisteria of periwinkle and ghostly white.

The kitchen glowed in the early morning light as I fired up my adored coffee maker, Mr. Miele, and watched as he hissed out a cup of Columbian roast. Although he was showing his age, Mr. Miele had been my first and only improvement when i moved into this drafty, old farm house. I liked to think those initial espressos helped restore my will to carry on, and, not long after, bring Barclay Meadow back to life