Interior Design Quotes

Barbara was actually Jeff Foxworthy's interior designer when we first met. So, not only was Jeff responsible for my success in my career, he also introduced me to the woman who I'm going to spend the rest of my life with, which, I think, makes us even.

There is an effective strategy open to architects. Whereas doctors deal with the interior organisms of man, architects deal with the exterior organisms of man. Architects might join with one another to carry on their work in laboratories as do doctors in anticipatory medicine.

It's time to shop high heels if your fiance kisses you on the forehead.

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

I asked my interior designer to give me something appropriate for defiling virgins.

The interior designer must’ve been a medieval vampire, judging from the cold, lifeless colors and the giant iron chandeliers hanging from the ceilings.

New Rule: Stop putting all those pillows on the bed. Attention, interior designers, hotel maids, and real housewives of New Jersey: It's a bed, not an obstacle course. I'm sorry, baby, I'd like to make sweet love to you all night long, but by the time I get all that crap off your bed, I'm exhausted. A bed needs only two pillows: one to put my head on, and one to cuddle with and pretend it's Robert Pattinson.

Black and White always look good. A lot of it has to do with the lighting, designed to hit their faces just right. Someday you want the light to hit your face like that. To look like the hero. Or for a moment to actually be the hero

Look. Folks. It's simple. If you have poor taste in decorating, don't go nuts in the entryway. Wait until your guests are inside before you spring something unusual on them.

Your Home should tell the story of who you are, and be a Collection of what you Love.

In the early '70s, the nation was afflicted with incurable pattern viruses - small microbes that reproduced and multiplied from a single swatch left on a sofa, and soon covered an entire room.

She looked surprised. “You remember.” “Of course.” Blake couldn’t forget the way Farrah’s eyes lit up when she talked about the competition. She was studying interior design because she loved it, not because everyone said she should. Her passion was refreshing…and depressing. Blake had never felt that way about football or anything else in his life, really.

You want me to explain myself! give me a brush, not a pen

I'm more preoccupied with furnishing my head than the place where I live. The most beautiful rooms I have entered have been empty ones.

Dresses don't look beautiful on hangers.

the transcendent gladness of grapes and wine so beneficial to body, soul and psyche’s interior design.

Being internally distraught by his interior design helped me ignore the long, drawn-out silence between us.

Design is all about desire, but strangely this desire seems almost subject-less today, or at least lack-less; that is, design seems to advance a new kind of narcissism, one that is all image and no interiority - an apotheosis of the subject that is also its disappearance. Poor little rich man: he is 'precluded from all fuure living and striving, developing and desiring' in the neo-Art Nouveau world of total design and Internet plenitude.

On the opposite wall was a Damien Hirst spot painting, bought by Arabella after a decent bonus season. Roger's considered view of the painting, looking at it from aesthetic, art-historical, interior-design, and psychological points of view, was that it had cost forty-seven thousand pounds, plus VAT.

Over-indulgence blinds us to the truth, turning us inward, making us slaves to our own insatiable desires.”11 Don W. King

Simple is complicated.

Dresses won't worn out in the wardrobe, but that is not what dresses are designed for.

Our interiors are an insight into our brains. It is a collaboration of design, art, humor, irony, functionality, and the street.

Slowly what she composed with the new day was her own focus, to bring together body and mind. This was made with an effort, as if all the dissolutions and dispersions of her self the night before were difficult to reassemble. She was like an actress who must compose a face, an attitude to meet the day. The eyebrow pencil was no mere charcoal emphasis on blond eyebrows, but a design necessary to balance a chaotic asymmetry. Make up and powder were not simply applied to heighten a porcelain texture, to efface the uneven swellings caused by sleep, but to smooth out the sharp furrows designed by nightmares, to reform the contours and blurred surfaces of the cheeks, to erase the contradictions and conflicts which strained the clarity of the face’s lines, disturbing the purity of its forms. She must redesign the face, smooth the anxious brows, separate the crushed eyelashes, wash off the traces of secret interior tears, accentuate the mouth as upon a canvas, so it will hold its luxuriant smile. Inner chaos, like those secret volcanoes which suddenly lift the neat furrows of a peacefully ploughed field, awaited behind all disorders of face, hair, and costume, for a fissure through which to explode. What she saw in the mirror now was a flushed, clear-eyed face, smiling, smooth, beautiful. The multiple acts of composure and artifice had merely dissolved her anxieties; now that she felt prepared to meet the day, her true beauty emerged which had been frayed and marred by anxiety.

Domestic interior design is a fraught affair. It makes me hanker for the mild and soothing and tasteless red velvet interiors in which people lived so undiscriminatingly no more than twenty years ago. It was unhygienic, dark, cool, probably stuffed full of dangerous bacteria, and pleasant.

What in the fuck," Carter muttered after walking into the rather large skull of an animal I didn't think I'd ever seen before. "It's certainly not the interior design choice I would have gone for," Kelly whispered to him. "You think? Nothing says 'welcome to my murder shack' like skeletons hanging from the ceiling." "Is that a jar of eyeballs on the shelf?" "What? No, don't be stup—that's a jar of eyeballs on the shelf. Well, now I'm officially that person that shouldn't have gone inside the house.

If you are unprepared to live the way God wants you to, chances are, you’ll reject sound teaching and will simply gravitate toward teachers who will tell you what you want to hear.

Books aren't for decoration, they are to improve the design of one's interior.

Just because the restaurant had Dynamite Shrimp on the menu, was that any reason for the place to blow up? (re April 15 release, Killer Kitchens

Of all the books I own, this is the only one I've read twice. It's also the only one I've read once. All my other books are used as decoration, like props to impress visitors.

A man must have a less than ordinary share of sense that would furnish such plain and common rooms with silver-footed couches and purple coverlets and gold and silver plate.

Every design choice we make has a sensual effect on us.

Interior design courtesy of Franz Kafka.

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Somewhere in their twenties, people like me become far too horny for interior design.

I am one of the small group of people who go to Halloween stores not for temporary plastic decorations but for actual interior design ideas.

The majority of things in life are about picking your battles. You'll learn that too. And that will never be clearer than when you're at IKEA. You'd have to visit a Danish vacation village after two weeks of pouring rain and no beer to come across as many couples arguing as you'll hear in the IKEA section for changeable sofa covers on any given Tuesday. People take this whole interior design thing really seriously these days. It's become a national pastime to over interpret the symbolism of the fact that "he wants frosted glass, that just proves he never listens to my FEELINGS." "Ahhhhh! She wants beech veneer. Do you hear me? Beech veneer! Sometimes, it feels like I've woken up next to a stranger!" That's how it is, every single time you go there. And I'm not going to lecture you, but if there's just one thing I can get across then let it be this: no one has ever, in the history of the world, had an argument in IKEA that really is about IKEA. People can say whatever they life, but when a couple who has been married for ten years walks around the bookshelves section calling one another words normally only used by alcoholic crime fiction detectives, they might be arguing about a number of things, but trust me: cupboard doors is not one of them. Believe me. You're a Backman. Regardless of how many shortcomings the person you fall in love with might have, I can guarantee that you still come out on top of that bargain. So find someone who doesn't love you for the person you are, but despite the person you are. And when you're standing there, in the storage section at IKEA, don't focus too much on the furniture. Focus on the fact that you've actually found someone who can see themselves storing their crap in the same place as your crap. Because, hand on heart: you have a lot of crap.

Fashion is a double-edged sword; the more fashionable it is, the less timeliness it has. However, the life expectancy of hotel design is usually between seven to ten years. Too fashionable design may be out of date after two years; that is the reason why hotel design prefers to classic elements. (Chen Tao, Chen Tao’s Interior Design Co., Ltd – Hangzhou, China)

Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect.” Romans 12:2

Opening night is in a week. Already announced to the papers, already sent out in the newsletter in fancy, glossy, full-color glory. Which means I have two days, max, to finish the framing—easily a week’s worth of work—and then four days for drilling the star maps I’ve already marked on the plywood, painting, wiring, installing, and finessing.Leaving me only one day—the day of the evening gala—to clean and get the actual exhibits set up. It’s impossible. I will make it happen or die trying. I don’t realize I’ve said that last part aloud until I notice Michelle’s horrified face.

Reluctantly, he knew that he despised his fellow residents for the way in which they fit so willingly into their appointed slots in the apartment buildings, for their overdeveloped sense of responsibility and lack of flamboyance. Above all, he looked down on them for their good taste. The building was a monument to good taste, to the well-designed kitchen, to sophisticated utencils and fabrics, to elegant and never ostentatious furnishings. In short, to that whole aesthetic sensibility which these well-educated, professional people had inherited from all the schools of industrial design, all the award-winning schemes of interior decoration institutionalized by the last quarter of the century. Royal detested this orthodoxy of the intelligent. Visiting his neighbors’ apartments, he would find himself physically repelled by the contours of an award-winning coffee pot, but the well-modulated color schemes, by the good taste and intelligence that, Midas-like, had transformed everything in these apartments into an ideal marriage of function and design. In a sense, these people were the vanguard of a well-to-do and well-educated proletariat of the future, boxed up in these expensive apartments with their elegant furniture, and intelligent sensibilities, and no possibility of escape.

An architect is a generalist, not a specialist-the conductor of a symphony, not a virtuoso who plays every instrument perfectly. As a practitioner, an architect coordinates a team of professionals that include structural and mechanical engineers, interior designers, building-code consultants, landscape architects, specifications writers, contractors, and specialists from other disciplines. Typically, the interests of some team members will compete with the interests of others. An architect must know enough about each discipline to negotiate and synthesize competing demands while honoring the needs of the client and the integrity of the entire project.

What's the deal with putting animal feet on tubs? It's like insisting that all pianos should have tails, or dinner tables should have scrotal sacs. One of the things we like about tubs is their immobility, their general disinclination to bolt out of the room, scramble down the stairs, and make for the woods in a blind feral panic.

Everything was pale grey stone, vaguely pearlescent, like a shell Alice might pick up by the sea and spend several long moments gazing at before deciding to keep or toss. The inside of a purple mussel, perhaps, fascinating in its silveriness that might have been the beginning of a gem- or just a stain from the mud in which it lived.

Sadly kitchens often fall into the decorative trap of defaulting to basics: plain white units, tiled splash-back behind the sink or hob and possibly a large jolly-coloured standalone fridge-freezer as the one note of individuality.

Spiritual discernment involves using God’s Word as the standard for distinguishing and separating ideas and behaviors. It distinguishes and separates truth from falsehood, darkness from light, healthy from unhealthy, sound from unsound, and good from evil, based on the Bible’s plumb line.

A skilled interior designer can look at five shades of blue and distinguish azure, cobalt, ultramarine, royal blue, and cyan. My husband, on the other hand, would call them all blue. My students and I had discovered a similar phenomenon for emotions, which I described as emotional granularity.

The world is full of interiors that bleach the spirit. Hospitals, police stations, job centres, local government offices and prisons all have their own subtle type of vampire colour scheme and black-hole furnishing, capable by accident or design of wiping away a person's self-esteem and will to resist, like boiled-over soup off a ceramic hob.

unthinkingly exposed themselves to so much deception that they do not even realize they are being deceived.

For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions.” 2 Timothy 4:3

Most people—even Christians—have unthinkingly exposed themselves to so much deception that they do not even realize they are being deceived.

And there are no shortcuts or substitutes for “constant practice” when it comes to developing spiritual discernment—

Organization is a masculine trait, cleanliness a feminine one. Cleanliness is next to godliness because manliness is godliness.

If a texture looks inviting, we take this as a "haptic invitation" (an appeal to our sense of touch to have a positive tactile experience).

Every seat needs a horizontal surface within reach to support drinks, books, remotes, and the like.

In the words of the famous tea master Sen no Rikyu, a delicious cup of tea should be served so that it is cooling in summer and warming in winter.

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

I feel like I've lived numerous lives...and you can explore my incarnations through my works.

Don’t design your lifestyle for comfort, design it for passion. Don’t design it for functionality, design it for sensuality.

We create our own sensuality.

Sensual innovation is the new hustle in today’s world of love and romance.

Understanding the person or people living in a home is a far greater need in design than focusing purely on the aesthetics. The home is designed around emotional needs.

Finland is world-famous for its architects and decorators, who know how to produce beautiful effects in simple ways. On my first visit to Finland, I remember being invited into the living room of one of my host’s homes, and immediately thinking to myself, “This is the most beautiful room that I’ve ever seen!” On reflection, I then wondered why I found it so beautiful, because the room was a nearly-empty cubicle with just a few pieces of simple furniture. But the materials and form of the room, and those few pieces of furniture, were typically Finnish in their simplicity and beauty

It is ridiculous to lay down to people where a thing should stand, design everything for them from the lavatory pan to the ashtray. On the contrary, I like people to move their furniture so that it suits them (not me!), and it's quite natural (and I approve) when they bring the old pictures and mementos they have come to love into a new interior, irrespective of whether they are good taste or bad.

When designing an interior space,” Marta writes,[1] “design for how you actually live, not how you aspire to live…your space must be designed to accommodate the reality of your life, without shame or judgement.

Fully aware that life is too short for the choice to be anything but irreparable, he had been distressed to discover that he felt no spontaneous attraction to any occupation. Rather sceptically, he looked over the array of available possibilities: prosecutors, who spend their whole lives persecuting people; schoolteachers, the butt of rowdy children; science and technology, whose advances bring enormous harm along with a small benefit; the sophisticated, empty chatter of the social sciences; interior design (which appealed to him because of his memories of his cabinetmaker grandfather), utterly enslaved by fashions he detested; the occupation of the poor pharmacists now reduced to peddlars of boxes and bottles. When he wondered; what should I choose for my whole life's work? his inner self would fall into the most uncomfortable silence.

Cora, the daughter of Isidore Levinson, a dry goods millionaire from Cincinnati, arrived in England in 1888, when she was 20 years old, with her mother as chaperone. By this time, even respectable rich American girls preferred to find their husbands amongst the nobility. Thanks to the successes of the earlier Buccaneers and a fashion for all things European, from interiors to dress designers such as the House of Worth, pursuing an English marriage had now become desirable. For these families, the many years in which Americans had fought to escape the clutches of colonial rule and create their own republic appeared to have been forgotten.

Wooden scrabble letters offer a whole forest of literature, tiled down for easy shower installment. If you limit your use to only the letters q, u, a, c, and k, your ducks will love what you've done with your bathroom.

The Founder-Director purposely designed the building in a U-shape, in the interior of which is a courtyard with a central fountain, to reflect the introspective nature of a true Muslim, a universal and perfect man. These interior parts of the building are hidden from the outside in contrast to secularized buildings which face the road and are exposed to the busy traffic of secular life and are therefore without real privacy and introspective spirit.

All that happens in the human brain is but the result of electro-chemical reactions. Be it of love, hate, of pleasure, of suffering, of imagination, or all other states of mind, sentiment or sickness; the process depends in every case on the chemical reactions produced in the interior of the brain, and the resulting electrical impulses or messages, be they visual, auditory, based on memory, or an interpretation of new events based on elements that one has in the memory.

had found the only hippie-opera-singer-dream-cabin-in-the-woods in Westchester! It was perfection, and I knew exactly what to do to bring it to life. I took it on like I was an interior designer on one of those makeover shows. I picked out and paid for every piece of brand-new furniture, all the knickknacks and accouterments. I chose every detail, from light fixtures to paint colors, all in “Pat’s palette.” I hung wooden flower boxes outside and filled them with romantic wildflowers. I got photo prints made of her Irish family members and Irish crests, had them mounted and framed, and hung them ascending the wall along the staircase.

Our culture is obsessed with physical health and soundness. It advises us to avoid junk food, read labels, shop in whole-food stores, and pay more for organic foods. As a result, many people watch what they eat. But sadly, most are utterly unconcerned about their spiritual consumption. They are unaware that they are ingesting a lot of contaminated, unhealthy ideas.

A True Woman is characterized by right thinking … She is not swayed by every “wind of doctrine” (Eph. 4:14) that comes along. She has a heart for solid biblical teaching and has a growing knowledge of God’s Word. She knows how to evaluate what she hears to see if it measures up to Scripture. And she knows how to live her life in a way that “accords with sound doctrine” (Titus 2:1).

Soul" is a barrier against reduction, against human life reduced to biology and genitals, culture and utility, race and ethnicity. It signals an interiority that permeates all exteriority, an invisibility that everywhere inhabits visibility. "Soul" carries with it resonances of God-created, God-sustained, and God-blessed. It is our most comprehensive term for designating the core being of men and women.

Rosie’s heart swelled with pride. She had poured her heart, her soul, and her life savings into this venture. Rosie had spent hours painstakingly deliberating over every inch of the shop. Her past life as an interior designer meant she knew just how to make the shop into the welcoming time capsule that made her heart soar every time she stepped inside. There was a herringbone floor, finished with a walnut stain, which was complimented by the dark wallpaper adorning the walls, covered with floral blooms in muted pinks, blues, yellows, oranges, and whites. It was dramatic - the perfect backdrop to selling snippets of people’s lives. Velvet pink lampshades with tassels hanging from the ceiling flooded the shop with light. Rosie had displayed the vintage clothes, jewellery, shoes, bags, and accessories in several ways. From shelves made of driftwood, an up-cycled antique sideboard, and brass clothes rails.

Grace cut across an Oriental rug done in a plum, navy, and cream geometric pattern. The colors in the carpet pulled the richness of the furniture together. She noticed that Cade walked the perimeter of the room, sticking to the hardwood floor. Off to the right, a glassed-in sunroom caught the first rays of sunshine from the overcast day. The forest-green wicker furniture, abundant greenery, and a small bookcase with monthly magazines and mystery novels offered peace and solitude.

Frasier stepped in and reached for a wall switch. A crystal light fixture popped on, raining down variegated light. The building revealed itself to be like a geode---rocky on the outside but sparkling with unexpected decadence inside. It was small, just one room. The furniture was covered with white sheets, but everything else she could see was lovely---the golden parquet floor, the whitewashed rafters, and the long kitchen counter on the far wall, which sported kitschy, pale pink appliances.

This basic evolutionary concept has been developed over the years into what we now know as biophilic design, which offers a set of three core design principles that aim to improve our connection with nature: Nature in the space: bringing real forms of nature and ways to connect to natural systems into your space... Natural analogues: including references to- or representations of- nature, taking inspiration from its forms, shapes, colors, patterns, and textures... Nature of the space: mimicking the spatial qualities of natural environments to enhance or evoke human responses.

Even if he didn’t profit from the options, at least he got to enjoy the airplane. Not surprisingly he fretted over how the interior would be designed. It took him more than a year. He used Ellison’s plane as a starting point and hired his designer. Pretty soon he was driving her crazy. For example, Ellison’s had a door between cabins with an open button and a close button. Jobs insisted that his have a single button that toggled. He didn’t like the polished stainless steel of the buttons, so he had them replaced with brushed metal ones. But in the end he got the plane he wanted, and he loved it. “I look at his airplane and mine, and everything he changed was better,” said Ellison.

Marie Antoinette would have loved this place!" Piper Donovan stood agape, her green eyes opened wide, as she took in the magical space. Crystal chandeliers, dripping with glittering prisms, hung from the mirrored ceiling. Gilded moldings crowned the pale pink walls. Gleaming glass cases displayed vibrant fruit tarts, puffy éclairs, and powdered beignets. Exquisitely decorated cakes of all flavors and sizes rested on pedestals alongside trays of pastel meringues and luscious napoleons. Cupcakes, cookies, croissants, and cream-filled pastries dusted with sugar or drizzled with chocolate beckoned from the shelves. "It's unbelievable," she whispered. "I feel like I've walked into a jewel box---one made of confectioners' sugar but a jewel box nonetheless.

The platforms, designed to accommodate and harvest infinite data, inspired an infinite scroll. They encouraged a cultural impulse to fill all spare time with someone else’s thoughts. The internet was a collective howl, an outlet for everyone to prove that they mattered. The full spectrum of human emotion infused social platforms. Grief, joy, anxiety, mundanity flowed. People were saying nothing, and saying it all the time. Strangers swapped confidences with other strangers in return for unaccredited psychological advice. They shared stories of private infidelities and public incontinence; photos of their bedroom interiors; photos, faded and cherished, of long-dead family members; photos of their miscarriages. People were giving themselves away at every opportunity.

You are all talking a bit too much, said Armando, who had cautioned them from the beginning to stay out of popular culture and in their own interior worlds. When you are caught up in the world that you did not design as support for your life and the life of earth and people, it is like being caught in someone else's dream or nightmare. Many people exist in their lives in this way. I say exist because it is not really living. It is akin to being suspended in a dream one is having at night, a dream over which one has no control. You are going here and there, seeing this and that person; you do not know or care about them usually, they are just there, on your interior screen. Humankind will not survive if we continue in this way, most of us living lives in which our own life is not the center.

Narrative nonfiction is an act of conception and construction; it is formation of a personal legend from the mist of memory using mental hydraulics plied with the tools of logic, structure, design, and imagination. An engaged mind possesses a documentary sensibility that fabricates a memoirist identity, which alliance mollifies their bleak interior critic. A conscientious mind hews a residue of meaning from the verisimilitude of a person’s metafictional baggage. A basic impulse of all free people is to speak to an appreciative audience. Writing the story of our life constitutes asserting the universal human right to declare and define who we are. When we write our story, we become a stakeholder of our place in the world, we affirm the right to shape our future, and avow the verity to heal our torn souls.

I DIDN’T START OUT AS A BOOK LOVER,” admits Phillip Lim. “Initially, it was more about pragmatism: seeking knowledge having to do with research on work, on my interiors, building a home, even a word I wanted to understand more. But what I love about books is, once you start, you get to go deeper and deeper and deeper into a subject, and from there you go to another book, and another book, and soon after, you have a wall of books. And then you have two walls of books. And then—” The designer indicates the floor-to-ceiling bookcases that serve as the focal point of his loft apartment. “Books are how I learn,” Lim continues, “but I’m not nostalgic. I hate to look back; books inform you, but then they also become decoration. That may sound horrible to a true book lover, but I feel I honor them by making these objects part of my aesthetic world.” PHILLIP LIM

His house was certainly peculiar, and since this was the first thing that Fenchurch and Arthur had encountered it would help to know what it was like. It was like this: It was inside out. Actually inside out, to the extent that they had had to park on the carpet. All along what one would normally call the outer wall, which was decorated in a tasteful interior-designed pink, were bookshelves, also a couple of those odd three-legged tables with semicircular tops which stand in such a way as to suggest that someone just dropped the wall straight through them, and pictures which were clearly designed to soothe. Where it got really odd was the roof. It folded back on itself like something that M. C. Escher, had he been given to hard nights on the town, which it is no part of this narrative’s purpose to suggest was the case, though it is sometimes hard, looking at his pictures, particularly the one with all the awkward steps, not to wonder, might have dreamed up after having been on one, for the little chandeliers which should have been hanging inside were on the outside pointing up. Confusing. The sign above the front door said “Come Outside,” and so, nervously, they had. Inside, of course, was where the Outside was. Rough brickwork, nicely done pointing, guttering in good repair, a garden path, a couple of small trees, some rooms leading off. And the inner walls stretched down, folded curiously, and opened at the end as if, by an optical illusion which would have had M. C. Escher frowning and wondering how it was done, to enclose the Pacific Ocean itself. “Hello,” said John Watson, Wonko the Sane. Good, they thought to themselves, “hello” is something we can cope with. “Hello,” they said, and all, surprisingly, was smiles.

When you are caught up in the world that you did not design as support for your life and the life of earth and people, it is like being caught in someone else’s dream or nightmare. Many people exist in their lives this way. I say exist because it is not really living. It is akin to being suspended in a dream one is having at night, a dream over which one has no control. You are going here and there, seeing this and that person; you do not know or care about them usually, they are just there, on your interior screen. Humankind will not survive if we continue in this way, most of us living lives in which our own life is not the center. You would not drive a car looking out the side of the window, would you? Yet that is what it has come to for many human beings; they are driving their lives forward while watching what is happening along the road or even in the rearview mirror.

The Coach’s head was oblong with tiny slits that served as eyes, which drifted in tides slowly inward, as though the face itself were the sea or, in fact, a soup of macromolecules through which objects might drift, leaving in their wake, ripples of nothingness. The eyes—they floated adrift like land masses before locking in symmetrically at seemingly prescribed positions off-center, while managing to be so closely drawn into the very middle of the face section that it might have seemed unnecessary for there to have been two eyes when, quite likely, one would easily have sufficed. These aimless, floating eyes were not the Coach’s only distinctive feature—for, in fact, connected to the interior of each eyelid by a web-like layer of rubbery pink tissue was a kind of snout which, unlike the eyes, remained fixed in its position among the tides of the face, arcing narrowly inward at the edges of its sharp extremities into a serrated beak-like projection that hooked downward at its tip, in a fashion similar to that of a falcon’s beak. This snout—or beak, rather—was, in fact, so long and came to such a fine point that as the eyes swirled through the soup of macromolecules that comprised the man’s face, it almost appeared—due to the seeming thinness of the pink tissue—that the eyes functioned as kinds of optical tether balls that moved synchronously across the face like mirror images of one another. 'I wore my lizard mask as I entered the tram, last evening, and people found me fearless,' the Coach remarked, enunciating each word carefully through the hollow clack-clacking sound of his beak, as its edges clapped together. 'I might have exchanged it for that of an ox and then thought better. A lizard goes best with scales, don’t you think?' Bunnu nodded as he quietly wondered how the Coach could manage to fit that phallic monstrosity of a beak into any kind of mask, unless, in fact, this disguise of which he spoke, had been specially designed for his face and divided into sections in such a way that they could be readily attached to different areas—as though one were assembling a new face—in overlapping layers, so as to veil, or perhaps even amplify certain distinguishable features. All the same, in doing so, one could only imagine this lizard mask to be enormous to the extent that it would be disproportionate with the rest of the Coach’s body. But then, there were ways to mask space, as well—to bend light, perhaps, to create the illusion that something was perceptibly larger or smaller, wider or narrower, rounder or more linear than it was in actuality. That is to say, any form of prosthesis designed for the purposes of affecting remedial space might, for example, have had the capability of creating the appearance of a gap of void in occupied space. An ornament hangs from the chin, let’s say, as an accessory meant to contour smoothly inward what might otherwise appear to be hanging jowls. This surely wouldn’t be the exact use that the Coach would have for such a device—as he had no jowls to speak of—though he could certainly see the benefit of the accessory’s ingenuity. This being said, the lizard mask might have appeared natural rather than disproportionate given the right set of circumstances. Whatever the case, there was no way of even knowing if the Coach wasn’t, in fact, already wearing a mask, at this very moment, rendering Bunnu’s initial appraisal of his character—as determined by a rudimentary physiognomic analysis of his features—a matter now subject to doubt. And thus, any conjecture that could be made with respect to the dimensions or components of a lizard mask—not to speak of the motives of its wearer—seemed not only impractical, but also irrelevant at this point in time.

p.cm. Includes indexes.ISBN-13: 978-0-7360-6278-7 (soft cover) ISBN-10: 0-7360-6278-5 (soft cover) 1. Hatha yoga.2. Human anatomy.I.Title.RA781.7. K356 2007 613.7’046--dc22 2007010050 ISBN-10: 0-7360-6278-5 (print) ISBN-13: 978-0-7360-6278-7 (print) ISBN-10: 0-7360-8218-2 (Adobe PDF) ISBN-13: 978-0-7360-8218-1 (Adobe PDF) Copyright © 2007 by The Breathe Trust All rights reserved. Except for use in a review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in any form or by any electronic, mechanical, or other means, now known or hereafter invented, including xerography, photocopying, and recording, and in any information storage and retrieval system, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher. Acquisitions Editor: Martin Barnard Developmental Editor: Leigh Keylock Assistant Editor: Christine Horger Copyeditor: Patsy Fortney Proofreader: Kathy Bennett Graphic Designer: Fred Starbird Graphic Artist: Tara Welsch Original Cover Designer: Lydia Mann Cover Revisions: Keith Blomberg Art Manager: Kelly Hendren Project Photographer: Lydia Mann Illustrator (cover and interior): Sharon Ellis Printer: United Graphics Human Kinetics books are available at special discounts for bulk purchase. Special editions or book excerpts

To pastors and teachers If all who laboured for the conversion of others were to introduce them immediately into Prayer and the Interior Life, and make it their main design to gain and win over the heart, numberless as well as permanent conversions would certainly ensue. On the contrary, few and transient fruits must attend that labour which is confined to outward matters; such as burdening the disciple with a thousand precepts for external exercises, instead of leaving the soul to Christ by the occupation of the heart in him . . . O when once the heart is gained, how easily is all moral evil corrected! It is, therefore, that God above all things requires the heart. It is the conquest of the heart alone that can extirpate those dreadful vices which are so predominant, such as drunkenness, blasphemy, lewdness,envy, and theft. Jesus Christ would become the universal and peaceful Sovereign, and the face of the church would be wholly renewed. The decay of internal piety is unquestionably the source of the various errors that have arisen in the church, all which would would speedily be sapped and overthrown should inward religion be reestablished . . . O how inexpressibly great is the loss sustained by mankind from the neglect of the Interior Life!

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.

AESTHETIC SIMPLICITY For some people simplicity is an aesthetic value, so one further sense that might be attached to the notion of simple living is a preference for an uncomplicated, uncluttered living environment. Imagine, for instance, an apartment with white walls, white trim, bare wood floors, simple wooden furniture, plain white kitchenware, white towels in the bathroom, and white blankets on the simple wooden beds. Or a house where the brick walls and overhead beams are left exposed, the furniture is rustic, and any artwork on display is clearly local and amateurish. Or a study containing nothing but a desk and a chair. All these are interiors that people deliberately create for themselves. Simplicity of this sort is not necessarily frugal. The uncluttered apartment could be in the center of Paris; the plain wooden furniture might be custom-made. Wittgenstein designed a house in Vienna for his sister Margaret characterized by austere, almost minimalist aesthetic lines, yet built with no concern for cost. But although such setups may not be cheap, they make no exhibition of expense. And the styles have symbolic significance. They bespeak sympathy with the plain, the unpretentious, the unostentatious. They connote honesty, purity, and a mind focused on essentials. In the case of country retreats, closeness to nature may also be sought and expressed.

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.

Perspective does not appear to me to be a subjective deformation of things but, on the contrary, to be one of their properties, perhaps their essential property. It is precisely because of it that the perceived possesses in itself a hidden and inexhaustible richness, that it is a 'thing'...Far from introducing a coefficient of subjectivity into perception, it provides us with the assurance of communicating with a world which is richer than what we know of it, that is, of communicating with a real world...The perceived is grasped in an indivisible manner as an 'in-itself,' that is, as gifted with an interior which I will never have finished exploring; and as 'for-me,' that is, as given 'in person' through its momentary aspects. Neither this metallic spot which moves while I glance toward it, nor even the geometric and shiny mass which emerges from it when I look at it, nor finally, the ensemble of perspectival images which I have been able to have of it are the ashtray; they do not exhaust the meaning of the 'this' by which I designate it; and, nevertheless, it is the ashtray which appears in all of them...Thus, to do justice to our direct experience of things it would be necessary to maintain at the same time, against empiricism, that they are beyond their sensible manifestations and, against intellectualism, that they are not unities in the order of judgment, that they are embodied in their apparitions. The 'things' in naive experience are evident as perspectival beings ...I grasp in a perspectival appearance, which I know is only one of its possible aspects, the thing itself which transcends it. A transcendence which is nevertheless open to my knowledge--this is the very definition of a thing as it is intended by naive consciousness.

[Magyar] had an intense dislike for terms like 'illiberal,' which focused on traits the regimes did not possess--like free media or fair elections. This he likened to trying to describe an elephant by saying that the elephant cannot fly or cannot swim--it says nothing about what the elephant actually is. Nor did he like the term 'hybrid regime,' which to him seemed like an imitation of a definition, since it failed to define what the regime was ostensibly a hybrid of. Magyar developed his own concept: the 'post-communist mafia state.' Both halves of the designation were significant: 'post-communist' because "the conditions preceding the democratic big bang have a decisive role in the formation of the system. Namely that it came about on the foundations of a communist dictatorship, as a product of the debris left by its decay." (quoting Balint Magyar) The ruling elites of post-communist states most often hail from the old nomenklatura, be it Party or secret service. But to Magyar this was not the countries' most important common feature: what mattered most was that some of these old groups evolved into structures centered around a single man who led them in wielding power. Consolidating power and resources was relatively simple because these countries had just recently had Party monopoly on power and a state monopoly on property. ... A mafia state, in Magyar's definition, was different from other states ruled by one person surrounded by a small elite. In a mafia state, the small powerful group was structured just like a family. The center of the family is the patriarch, who does not govern: "he disposes--of positions, wealth, statuses, persons." The system works like a caricature of the Communist distribution economy. The patriarch and his family have only two goals: accumulating wealth and concentrating power. The family-like structure is strictly hierarchical, and membership in it can be obtained only through birth or adoption. In Putin's case, his inner circle consisted of men with whom he grew up in the streets and judo clubs of Leningrad, the next circle included men with whom he had worked with in the KGB/FSB, and the next circle was made up of men who had worked in the St. Petersburg administration with him. Very rarely, he 'adopted' someone into the family as he did with Kholmanskikh, the head of the assembly shop, who was elevated from obscurity to a sort of third-cousin-hood. One cannot leave the family voluntarily: one can only be kicked out, disowned and disinherited. Violence and ideology, the pillars of the totalitarian state, became, in the hands of the mafia state, mere instruments. The post-communist mafia state, in Magyar's words, is an "ideology-applying regime" (while a totalitarian regime is 'ideology-driven'). A crackdown required both force and ideology. While the instruments of force---the riot police, the interior troops, and even the street-washing machines---were within arm's reach, ready to be used, ideology was less apparently available. Up until spring 2012, Putin's ideological repertoire had consisted of the word 'stability,' a lament for the loss of the Soviet empire, a steady but barely articulated restoration of the Soviet aesthetic and the myth of the Great Patriotic War, and general statements about the United States and NATO, which had cheated Russia and threatened it now. All these components had been employed during the 'preventative counter-revolution,' when the country, and especially its youth, was called upon to battle the American-inspired orange menace, which threatened stability. Putin employed the same set of images when he first responded to the protests in December. But Dugin was now arguing that this was not enough. At the end of December, Dugin published an article in which he predicted the fall of Putin if he continued to ignore the importance of ideas and history.

What interior designers and psychologists have known for years is that colors in a room can have a dramatic impact on your mood. Yet the science behind this is inexact. Small changes in shades produce different responses in each of us. And moods can change in a moment.

A deeper knowledge of truth leads to deeper godliness. Healthy beliefs lead to healthy behavior. Right thinking, empowered by the Holy Spirit, leads to right living. “Sanctify them in the truth; your word is truth.” John 17:17

And then there’s Stella. Stella is an interior decorator who’s been in the business for more than a decade. She had a thriving design firm and accolades out the wazoo. And yet, she still felt a niggling need to go to school to get certified. “Why would you want to waste your time doing that?” I asked. “You have a waiting list for your clients.” “Well, I’d feel more legit,” she said. FOR BUSINESS For the love of God and the information highway, please write your bio in first person—we all know you wrote it anyway. One of the most highly trafficked pages on small business websites is the “About” page. People are hiring you, paying attention to you, coming to see you. So they want to hear from… you. “You made more than a hundred grand last year and your clients refer you all the time. Isn’t that legit?” I asked. She was resisting, so I ramped up my persisting. “You know what you should say in your bio?” I said to her. “Say that you’re self-taught, in eighteen-point bold type. Let people know that you never set foot in a design college because you were too busy sewing your own drapes, shopping for textiles with your grandma, and learning how to build cabinets after school with your dad. It’s in your blood. Self-taught says ‘extra amazing.’ Self-taught says ‘natural talent.’ Just come out with it.” She skipped school.

A woman doesn’t just wake up one morning and decide to have an affair. No. The affair happens when day after day she fails to put on the brakes with her thoughts, fantasies, and sexual boundaries.

God the Father invented the family. He’s the one who determines its meaning, purpose, and role. He’s the one who instituted marriage as a lifelong covenant between husband and wife. He’s the one who enables couples to be fruitful and multiply. He’s the Patēr (Father) from whom every patria (family) in heaven and earth is named. Marriage and family were created by Him and exist for Him.