“
Henry turned as if to dart out of the room, then swung around and stared at them, a look of confusion passing over his freckled face, as if he had only now had cause to wonder why Will, Tessa, and Jem might be crouching together in a mostly disused storage room. "What are you three doing in here, anyway?"
Will tilted his head to the side and smiled at Henry. "Charades," he said. "Massive game.
”
”
Cassandra Clare (Clockwork Angel (The Infernal Devices, #1))
“
I’m curious about things that people aren’t supposed to see—so, for example, I liked going to the British Museum, but I would like it better if I could go into all the offices and storage rooms, I want to look in all the drawers and—discover stuff. And I want to know about people. I mean, I know it’s probably kind of rude but I want to know why you have all these boxes and what’s in them and why all your windows are papered over and how long it’s been that way and how do you feel when you wash things and why don’t you do something about it?
”
”
Audrey Niffenegger (Her Fearful Symmetry)
“
And then once in the music storage room. It was cold. The room was small with thin gray carpet and I cried after in my bed thinking of how sad the violins looked alone in the corner. It was embarrassing to have sex in front of the wrong things, especially a violin, which was so dignified at every angle
”
”
Alison Espach (The Adults)
“
Every Fader has the key,” Jack assures me, and puts his finger in the key hole. I realize then that it must be one of the fancy biometric locks the Faders love so much. “The key hole is just in case someone wanders in by accident. They just think it’s an old storage room, or a mine, or something. They don’t see the level of technology that’s here.”, FADE by Kailin Gow
”
”
Kailin Gow
“
An incomplete list:
No more diving into pools of chlorinated water lit green from below. No more ball games played out under floodlights. No more porch lights with moths fluttering on summer nights. No more trains running under the surface of cities on the dazzling power of the electric third rail. No more cities. No more films, except rarely, except with a generator drowning out half the dialogue, and only then for the first little while until the fuel for the generators ran out, because automobile gas goes stale after two or three years. Aviation gas lasts longer, but it was difficult to come by.
No more screens shining in the half-light as people raise their phones above the crowd to take pictures of concert states. No more concert stages lit by candy-colored halogens, no more electronica, punk, electric guitars.
No more pharmaceuticals. No more certainty of surviving a scratch on one's hand, a cut on a finger while chopping vegetables for dinner, a dog bite.
No more flight. No more towns glimpsed from the sky through airplane windows, points of glimmering light; no more looking down from thirty thousand feet and imagining the lives lit up by those lights at that moment. No more airplanes, no more requests to put your tray table in its upright and locked position – but no, this wasn't true, there were still airplanes here and there. They stood dormant on runways and in hangars. They collected snow on their wings. In the cold months, they were ideal for food storage. In summer the ones near orchards were filled with trays of fruit that dehydrated in the heat. Teenagers snuck into them to have sex. Rust blossomed and streaked.
No more countries, all borders unmanned.
No more fire departments, no more police. No more road maintenance or garbage pickup. No more spacecraft rising up from Cape Canaveral, from the Baikonur Cosmodrome, from Vandenburg, Plesetsk, Tanegashima, burning paths through the atmosphere into space.
No more Internet. No more social media, no more scrolling through litanies of dreams and nervous hopes and photographs of lunches, cries for help and expressions of contentment and relationship-status updates with heart icons whole or broken, plans to meet up later, pleas, complaints, desires, pictures of babies dressed as bears or peppers for Halloween. No more reading and commenting on the lives of others, and in so doing, feeling slightly less alone in the room. No more avatars.
”
”
Emily St. John Mandel (Station Eleven)
“
It smelled something like a keg of bad beer overturned in a mortician's storage room on a hot summer's day.
”
”
Scott Lynch (The Lies of Locke Lamora (Gentleman Bastard, #1))
“
Honeyed oatie cakes, lemon oatie cakes, oatie cakes with dried grapes!" moaned Athena, she and her owl both rolling her eyes.
"I've still got sacks fullin my storage rooms," said Artemis. "I give them to my temple priestesses to hand out to people who pray really hard...or not."
"I use them as fish food," said Poseidon.
"Kindling," said Hephaestus. "They burn great on the forge."
"I've sent a million sacks down to Egypt," said Dionysus. "They ran out of bricks for the Pyramids.
”
”
Carolyn Hennesy (Pandora Gets Jealous (Mythic Misadventures, #1))
“
Master, the paintings, the paintings in the storage rooms!" I cried.
"Forget the paintings. It's too late. Boys, run from here, get out now, save yourselves from the fire."
Knocking the attackers back, he shot up the stairwell and called down to me from the uppermost railing. "Come, Amadeo, fight them off, believe in your strength, child, fight.
”
”
Anne Rice (The Vampire Armand (The Vampire Chronicles, #6))
“
The Fae book was definitely filled with the same stories as hers, but this one was filled with picture after picture of Jared. She couldn’t help but flip backward a few pages and see magical images come to life: of Jared defending her in an alley. Sitting in art class with Mina, spinning on the pottery wheel. There was another one of Jared by the lake, teaching her to fight. Jared and her in the storage room, laughing, before their tickling fight. She flipped forward and saw the last page filled with a motion-captured image of Jared and her sharing a kiss.
”
”
Chanda Hahn (Fable (An Unfortunate Fairy Tale, #3))
“
There is the silence of death, found in tombs and deserted graveyards and in the cold-storage room in a city morgue and in hospital rooms on occasion; it is a flawless silence, not merely a hush but a void.
”
”
Dean Koontz (Phantoms)
“
That's not a grenade, is it?" Christabel whispered.
"Probably," I whispered back. "The have this awesome storage room full of cool stuff like that."
"Grenades are cool?" She looked dubious.
"Cooler than dead poets," I teased.
"Hey," both she and Logan said at the same time.
”
”
Alyxandra Harvey (Blood Prophecy (Drake Chronicles, #6))
“
A marriage was like a house under constant construction, each year seeing the completion of new rooms. A first-year marriage was a cottage; one that had gone on for twenty-seven years was a huge and rambling mansion. There were bound to be crannies and storage spaces, most of them dusty and abandoned, some containing a few unpleasant relics you would just as soon you hadn’t found. But that was no biggie. You either threw those relics out or took them to Goodwill.
”
”
Stephen King
“
In a storage room, Harris shows off the milk teeth of a Smilodon kitten. They are almost four inches long. “How did they nurse?” I ask. “Very carefully,” he answers.
”
”
Abigail Tucker (The Lion in the Living Room: How House Cats Tamed Us and Took Over the World (A Gift for Cat Lovers))
“
Yet the possibility of information storage, beyond what men and governments ever had before, can make available at the touch of a button a man's total history (including remarks put on his record by his kindergarten teacher about his ability and character). And with the computer must be placed the modern scientific technical capability which exists for wholesale monitoring of telephone, cable, Telex and microwave transmissions which carry much of today's spoken and written communications. The combined use of the technical capability of listening in on all these forms of communications with the high-speed computer literally leaves no place to hide and little room for privacy.
”
”
Francis A. Schaeffer (How Should We Then Live? The Rise and Decline of Western Thought and Culture)
“
Since we have been primed to think of the subconscious as a closet of monsters to be avoided, we tend to fear it. Thus, we avoid the unconscious storage room where the creative solution is hidden.
”
”
Deborah Sandella
“
Fadi has been slacking off at work and jeopardizing our business, staying late to hang out, charging the business card for personal trips, even claiming reimbursement for a storage room that doesn’t exist.
”
”
Etaf Rum (Evil Eye: Don’t miss this gripping family drama novel from New York Times Best-selling author!)
“
She was everywhere. She was screaming in her tortured body. She was watching from cameras in every room. She was the false weather system and the storage devices. She was the gate keeper, throwing six shirts over her swan-brothers necks...opening six doors for her brothers to step through as young men, though their bodies were long gone, used up by the organ banks of the upper castes.
A Lamentation of Swans
”
”
J.A. Ironside (A Seeming Glass: a Collection of Reflected Tales)
“
But as more memories built up, crowding and enlarging the storage capacity of their brain, changes came harder. There was no more room for new ideas that would be added to their memory bank, their heads were already too large. Women had difficulty giving birth; they couldn’t afford new knowledge that would enlarge their heads even more.
”
”
Jean M. Auel (The Clan of the Cave Bear (Earth's Children, #1))
“
Why this should be so is hard to say; one might be tempted to believe that it was based on some ancient convention that originally had a practical purpose, such as a cellar being cold and therefore best suited for storing corpses, and that this principle had been retained in our era of refrigerators and cold-storage rooms, had it not been for the notion that transporting bodies upward in buildings seems contrary to the laws of nature, as though height and death are mutually incompatible.
”
”
Karl Ove Knausgård (Min kamp 1 (Min kamp, #1))
“
STORAGE When I moved from one house to another there were many things I had no room for. What does one do? I rented a storage space. And filled it. Years passed. Occasionally I went there and looked in, but nothing happened, not a single twinge of the heart. As I grew older the things I cared about grew fewer, but were more important. So one day I undid the lock and called the trash man. He took everything. I felt like the little donkey when his burden is finally lifted. Things! Burn them, burn them! Make a beautiful fire! More room in your heart for love, for the trees! For the birds who own nothing—the reason they can fly.
”
”
Mary Oliver (Devotions: The Selected Poems of Mary Oliver)
“
For the fact is that neuroscientists who study memory remain unclear on the question of whether each time we remember something we are accessing a stable “memory fragment”—often called a “trace” or an “engram”—or whether each time we remember something we are literally creating a new “trace” to house the thought. And since no one has yet been able to discern the material of these traces, nor to locate them in the brain, how one thinks of them remains mostly a matter of metaphor: they could be “scribbles,” “holograms,” or “imprints”; they could live in “spirals,” “rooms,” or “storage units.” Personally, when I imagine my mind in the act of remembering, I see Mickey Mouse in Fantasia, roving about in a milky, navy-blue galaxy shot through with twinkling cartoon stars.
”
”
Maggie Nelson (Bluets)
“
Hide’ isn’t a word we like to use,” Cassaway said. “‘Perform alternative tasks’ is the preferred term.” “Just not in the storage room,” Mbeke said. “That’s our alternative tasking place.” “I’ll just alternatively task behind my work desk, then, shall I,” Dahl said. “That’s the spirit,” Mbeke said. *
”
”
John Scalzi (Redshirts)
“
When you stand in front of a closet that has been reorganized so that the clothes rise to the right, you will feel your heart beat faster and the cells in your body buzz with energy. This energy will also be transmitted to your clothes. Even when you close the closet door, your room will feel fresher. Once you have experienced this, you’ll never lose the habit of organizing by category. Some may question whether paying attention to such details can possibly cause such a change, but why waste your time doubting if incorporating this exciting magic into all your storage spaces could keep your room tidy?
”
”
Marie Kondō (The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing (Magic Cleaning #1))
“
It had been a long while since I’d watched any television, and things had only gotten weirder. Beauty pageants for infants; ruddy men in trucker caps fighting over abandoned storage lockers; public shamings of compulsive hoarders and pre-diabetics; affluent suburban women made up like transvestite hookers, competing with each other in feats of coarseness and cruelty; barely literate pregnant teens with tattoos, unfocused eyes, and futures like wrecked cars; apoplectic crypto-fascists spitting bile and paranoia; a carnival midway of weight loss devices, hair growth creams, erectile dysfunction potions, and pottery from which herbs grew like green hair. It was like the day room of a surrealist mental hospital, or any big city ER on a summer Saturday night.
”
”
Peter Spiegelman (Dr. Knox)
“
Ricci created memory palaces in his mind. Each item in the palace represented a series of concepts. The rooms and locations within the palace served as directories and files, similar to computer data storage. Ricci instantaneously learned, retained and retrieved hundreds of new Chinese kanji, to the astonished delight of Chinese nobles.
”
”
Janet M. Tavakoli (Archangels: Rise of the Jesuits)
“
room confirmed the view I had of myself. I always felt as if I had been placed in storage in this house. However, regardless of what it was and what it had been, the room had to be kept as immaculate as any other. My grandmother was fully convinced that cleanliness was next to godliness and was fond of chanting it at me whenever she ordered me to polish or wash
”
”
V.C. Andrews (Flowers in the Attic (Dollanganger, #1))
“
Imagine that a tribe of ignorant natives find a motor-car, and decide that it makes an ideal storage room for food. So when they set out on a journey, they load it with food, attach ropes to it, and pull it through the jungle as if it was a cart. One of them fiddling about inside it, discovers the hand brake and releases it. Immediately, they find the car much easier to pull. They congratulate the discoverer, tell him he is a genius, and convince themselves that they now know the purpose and use of the car. This is how I feel with my body. Occasionally, as I am dragging it along, it accidentally gets into gear; there is a roar, and the engine starts for a moment. Then, just as quickly, it cuts out. But I know that this body is not merely designed for this boring, irritating, two-dimensional life that so easily becomes a burden to me.
”
”
Colin Wilson (Man Without a Shadow)
“
A chorus of applause erupts inside my chest. I wrack my brain for possible options. “There’s a recliner in the storage room.” Brance grunts. “We’ll need a bed. Where do you live?” I point toward the street. “About ten minutes away.” His grin speaks of secrets between the sheets. “Take me to your house. We’re gonna test your mattress springs.” I wink at him, but say nothing. It’ll be a fun surprise for him to discover the memory foam.
”
”
Harloe Rae (Ask Me Why)
“
Got this out of the storage room,” he says, holding it up. “Figured I’ll sleep on the floor.”
I can’t help but roll my eyes. “The bed’s huge, Ryder. I’m pretty sure you can stay safely on your own side without getting my cooties.”
“That’s not…it’s…” His words trail off, and we just stare silently at each other across the broad expanse of bed--the bed I’ve suggested we share. As in, both of us. Together. All night long.
Have I lost my mind?
”
”
Kristi Cook (Magnolia (Magnolia Branch, #1))
“
She held a scarlet sequin dress to her chest and posed in front of a mirror. Too hot. She put it back and took a black mini. Too dreary. Then a blue as pale as a whisper caught her eye. She took the dress. The material was silky and clinging. Perfect for a goddess. On the floor below the dress sat scrappy wraparound high-heeled sandals that matched the blue.
She didn't understand why she needed to dress up to meet Stanton but the impulse to steal into the storage room had been rising in her since the sun set.
She took the dress and sandals back to her room, then sat on the floor and painted her toenails and fingernails pale blue. She drew waves of eternal flames and spiral hearts in silver and blue around her ankles and up her legs with body paints.
When she was done, she pressed a Q-tip into glitter eye shadow and spread sparkles on her lid and below her eye. With a sudden impulse she swirled the lines over her temple and into her hairline. She liked the look.
She rolled blue mascara on her lashes, then brushed her hair and snapped crystals in the long blond strands. She squeezed glitter lotion into her palms and rubbed it on her shoulders and arms. Last she took the dress and stepped into it. She turned to the mirror on the closet door.
A thrill ran through her. Her reflection astonished her. She looked otherworldly, a mystical creature... eyes large, skin glowing, eyelashes longer, thicker. Everything about her was more powerful and sleek and fairy tale. Surely this wasn't really happening. Maybe she would wake up and run to school and tell Catty about her crazy dreams. But another part of her knew this was real.
She leaned to one side. The dress exposed too much thigh.
"Good." Her audacity surprised her. Another time she would have changed her dress. But why should she?
”
”
Lynne Ewing (Goddess of the Night)
“
Putting things away creates the illusion that the clutter problem has been solved. But sooner or later, all the storage units are full, the room once again overflows with things, and some new and “easy” storage method becomes necessary, creating a negative spiral. This is why tidying must start with discarding. We need to exercise self-control and resist storing our belongings until we have finished identifying what we really want and need to keep.
”
”
Marie Kondō (The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing (Magic Cleaning #1))
“
Still, I didn’t want to show up for the meeting empty-handed, so that night at my parents’ house I holed up in my room, resolving not to come out until I completed my Father Johnson “How Well Do You Know Your Fiancé?” collage. I dug around in the upstairs storage room of my parents’ house and grabbed the only old magazines I could find: Vogue. Golf Digest. The Phoebe Cates issue of Seventeen.
Perfect. I was sure to find a wealth of applicable material.
”
”
Ree Drummond (The Pioneer Woman: Black Heels to Tractor Wheels)
“
Jemma?” Ryder murmurs, his mouth hot against my skin. “Is this okay?”
I tilt my head back against the wall, catching my breath. “Yeah,” I say, panting. “It’s definitely okay. Okay?”
His forehead is resting on my shoulder now, his hands skimming my hips. “You sure? I don’t want to…I mean, I know things are kinda weird right now, but--”
“Just kiss me, Ryder.”
So he does.
Does he ever.
And, of course, that’s when the dang-blasted tornado siren decides to go off again.
Seriously?
Ryder steps back from me, looking a little disoriented. It takes us both a few seconds to get our bearings. “Storage room,” he says. “I’ll get the cats; you get the dogs?”
I just nod, tugging my tank top back into place. Somehow it’d gotten pushed up, bunched around my bra. And Ryder…At some point he must have taken off his T-shirt, because he’s shirtless now, his jeans riding low on his hips.
Focus, Jemma. The dogs. I’ve got to get the dogs.
”
”
Kristi Cook (Magnolia (Magnolia Branch, #1))
“
The editorial conference room is really nothing more than a glorified storage space, a little nook left over after the freight elevator and the stairwell were built. But it has a window and so was deemed too nice to fill with cleaning supplies. It's currently stuffed with old dictionaries and a small table around which four editors can sit comfortably and six in introverted terror, warily holding their elbows to their sides and breathing shallowly so as not to make unintentional physical contact with anyone else in the room.
”
”
Kory Stamper (Word by Word: The Secret Life of Dictionaries)
“
I didn't think he'd go back for him. But it shouldn't surprise me, either, I guess . . . given their relationship. I'm extremely curious where they're hiding him, as he doesn't blend. At all. Ever. I can't imagine where they could put him that he wouldn't attract a lot of attention . . . in either form." Xev
"Well, aren't we Mr. Dark and Cryptic . . . shall we call him?" Nick pulls out his phone.
"I doubt he knows how to work that. I'm sure he'd sniff it and eat it if you gave him one. Do you know where they're keeping him?" Xev
"You know how akri-Caleb's house is up off the ground and gots all that room under it for storage?" Simi
"Oh dear Gods, he's in my wine cellar? Seriously? I'm thinking I should have made amends with my brother sooner and moved him into my house to watch the puca. What kind of mutant life form do I have living in my cellar? And do I need to fumigate my house?"" Caleb
”
”
Sherrilyn Kenyon (Invision (Chronicles of Nick, #7))
“
Sunday morning dawned bright and cloudless. Ernest awoke early as always. He put on the red "Emporor's robe" and padded softly down the carpeted stairway. The early sunlight lay in pools on the living room floor. He had noticed that the guns were locked up in the basement. But the keys, as he well knew, were on the window ledge above the kitchen sink. He tiptoed down the basement stairs and unlocked the storage room. It smelled as dank as a grave. He chose a double-barreled Boss shotgun with a tight choke. He had used it for years of pigeon shooting. He took some shells from one of the boxes in the storage room, closed and locked the door, and climbed the basement stairs. If he saw the bright day outside, it did not deter him. He crossed the living room to the front foyer, a shrinelike entryway five by seven feet, with oak-paneled walls and a floor of linoleum tile. He had held for years to the maxim: "il faut (d'abord) durer". Now it had been succeeded by another: "il faut (apres tout) mourir". The idea, if not the phrase, filled all his mind. He slipped in two shells, lowered the gun butt carefully to the floor, leaned forward, pressed the twin barrels against his forehead just above the eyebrows, and tripped both triggers.
”
”
Carlos Baker (Hemingway: a Life Story)
“
Matthew Rose Sorensen’s mother and father and sisters and friends all ask me where I have been. I tell them what I told Jamie Askill: that I was in a house with many rooms; that the sea sweeps through the house; and that sometimes it swept over me, but always I was saved. Matthew Rose Sorensen’s mother and father and sisters and friends tell each other that this is a description of a mental breakdown seen from the inside; an explanation they find reasonable, perhaps even reassuring. They have Matthew Rose Sorensen back – or so they believe. A man with his face and voice and gestures moves about the world, and that is enough for them. I no longer look like Piranesi. There are no coral beads or fishbones in my hair. My hair is clean and cut and styled. I am clean-shaven. I wear the clothes that were brought to me out of the storage in which Matthew Rose Sorensen’s sisters had placed them. Rose Sorensen had a great number of clothes, all meticulously cared for. He had more than a dozen suits (which I find surprising considering that his income was not large). This love of clothes was something he shared with Piranesi. Piranesi frequently wrote about Dr Ketterley’s clothes in his journal and lamented the contrast with his own ragged garments. This, I suppose, is where I differ from both of them – from Matthew Rose Sorensen and Piranesi; I find I do not care greatly about clothes.
”
”
Susanna Clarke (Piranesi)
“
For just a heartbeat I picture the life I could've had if I'd joined a sterile corporate law firm on the partner track. I imagined meeting my clients in paneled wood conference rooms instead of re-purposed storage closets that smell like bleach and pee. I imagine shaking the hand of a client whose hand isn't trembling from meth withdrawal or abject terror at a justice system he doesn't trust.
”
”
Jodi Picoult (Small Great Things)
“
Let’s imagine a cluttered room. It does not get messy all by itself. You, the person who lives in it, makes the mess. There is a saying that “a messy room equals a messy mind.” I look at it this way. When a room becomes cluttered, the cause is more than just physical. Visible mess helps distract us from the true source of the disorder. The act of cluttering is really an instinctive reflex that draws our attention away from the heart of an issue. If you can’t feel relaxed in a clean and tidy room, try confronting your feeling of anxiety. It may shed light on what is really bothering you. When your room is clean and uncluttered, you have no choice but to examine your inner state. You can see any issues you have been avoiding and are forced to deal with them. From the moment you start tidying, you will be compelled to reset your life. As a result, your life will start to change. That’s why the task of putting your house in order should be done quickly. It allows you to confront the issues that are really important. Tidying is just a tool, not the final destination. The true goal should be to establish the lifestyle you want most once your house has been put in order. Storage
”
”
Marie Kondō (The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing (Magic Cleaning #1))
“
I am a thin layer of all those beings on [samadhi level] 3, mingling, connected with one another in a spherical surface around the whole known universe. Our "backs" are to the void. We are creating energy, matter and life at the interface between the void and all known creation. We are facing into the known universe, creating it, filling it. I am one with them; spread in a thin layer around the sphere with a small, slightly greater concentration of me in one small zone. I feel the power of the galaxy pouring through me. I am following the programme, the conversion programme of void to space, to energy, to matter, to life, to consciousness, to us, the creators. From nothing on one side to the created everything on the other. I am the creation process itself, incredibly strong, incredibly powerful.
This time there is no flunking out, no withdrawal, no running away, no unconsciousness, no denial, no negation, no fighting against anything. I am "one of the boys in the engine room pumping creation from the void into the known universe; from the unknown to the known I am pumping".
I am coming down from level +3. There are a billion choices of where to descend back down. I am conscious down each one of the choices simultaneously. Finally I am in my own galaxy with millions of choices left, hundreds of thousands on my own solar system, tens of thousands on my own planet, hundreds in my own country and then suddenly I am down to two, one of which is this body. In this body I look back up, see the choice-tree above me that I came down.
Did I, this Essence, come all the way down to this solar system, this planet, this place, this body, or does it make any difference? May not this body be a vehicle for any Essence that came into it? Are not all Essences universal, equal, anonymous, and equally able? Instructions for this vehicle are in it for each Essence to read and absorb on entry. The new pilot-navigator reads his instructions in storage and takes over, competently operating this vehicle.
”
”
John C. Lilly (The Center of the Cyclone: Looking into Inner Space)
“
She has started to taste her own cooking in a professional way again. Detached, critical, and overly scrupulous. It tastes somewhat different from how she remembers it. Her flavors have gotten somehow stranger, darker and larger: she stirs roasted peppers into the hummus and apricots and capers into the chicken. And she walks into the basement storage room one day and discovers Victor Hernandez kissing Mireille on the butcher block table among the onion skins. Mireille, then Sirine, burst into laughter. Later, Sirine realizes it's the first time she's really laughed in a year.
A month later, Mireille is engaged to Victor Hernandez and Victor moves in with her and Um-Nadia. He makes three different kinds of mole sauces for their wedding dinner, and chocolate and cinnamon and black pepper sweetcake.
”
”
Diana Abu-Jaber (Crescent)
“
nek diitung-itung, wektu ora bakal entek. mangkane luwih becik wektu iku diisi karo bab-bab kang becik lan migunani supaya ora muspro.
otakmu mempunyai kapasitas besar untuk menampung hal positif, gak usahlah cari yang negatif dan menyimpannya di sana. kecuali kamu ingin otakmu berwarna biru lebam.
your brain has huge room of storage. pick up all positive ones inside or you let your brain turn to dark blue one.
”
”
neo wasiman
“
So at my old school,” he said. “There was this kid on the baseball team. People thought, I don’t know. They saw that he went to some website or something.” ... “They made it impossible for him to play. Every day, the found another way to mess with him. Then one Friday after school, they locked him in the storage closet.” He winced, as if remembering and I knew. I knew then. “All night long and the whole next day. A tiny, dark, disgusting airless space. His parents thought he was at the away game and someone told the coaches he was sick, so no one even looked for him. No one knew he was trapped in there.” His chest was heaving and I was remembering how he told me he didn’t used to have claustrophobia and now he did. “He was really good too, probably the best player on the team or could have been. And he didn’t even do anything. The guy just went to these sites and someone saw. Do you get it? Do you get what it would mean for me? The assistant captain? I want to be captain next year so maybe I can graduate early. No scholarship. No nothing. These guys aren’t” - he made finger quotes - “evolved. They’re not from Northern California. They don’t do all-day sits or draw pictures.” The dagger went straight in. “It’s brutal in a locker room.
”
”
Jandy Nelson (I'll Give You the Sun)
“
But for this—” She stopped herself. He didn’t know. “Where is he now?” Marina asked. She could not bring herself to say his body. Anders was not a body. Vogel was full of doctors, doctors working, doctors in their offices drinking coffee. The cabinets and storage rooms and desk drawers were full of drugs, pills of every conceivable stripe. They were a pharmaceutical company; what they didn’t have they figured out how to make. Surely if they knew where he was they could find something to do for him, and with that thought her desire for the impossible eclipsed every piece of science she had ever known. The dead were dead were dead were dead and still Marina Singh did not have to shut her eyes to see Anders Eckman eating an egg salad sandwich in the employee cafeteria as he had done with great enthusiasm every day she had known him.
”
”
Ann Patchett (State of Wonder)
“
Still, I didn’t want to show up for the meeting empty-handed, so that night at my parents’ house I holed up in my room, resolving not to come out until I completed my Father Johnson “How Well Do You Know Your Fiancé?” collage. I dug around in the upstairs storage room of my parents’ house and grabbed the only old magazines I could find: Vogue. Golf Digest. The Phoebe Cates issue of Seventeen.
Perfect. I was sure to find a wealth of applicable material. This is so dumb, I thought just as my bedroom phone rang loudly. It had to be Marlboro Man.
“Hello?” I answered.
“Hey,” he said. “What’re you doing?” He sounded pooped.
“Oh…not much,” I answered. “What about you?”
“Well…,” he began, his voice sounding heavy…serious. “I’ve got a little bit of a problem.”
I didn’t know everything about Marlboro Man. But I knew enough to know that something was wrong.
”
”
Ree Drummond (The Pioneer Woman: Black Heels to Tractor Wheels)
“
I would find out later that Kylee Alons of North Carolina State University, who is a 31x All-American, was so uncomfortable at having to share a locker room with a naked male, she changed in a storage closet. Kylee, NC State’s most decorated swimmer of all time, admitted to being constantly on edge whenever she had to go to the locker room. Knowing Thomas could walk in at any given moment, she always had a towel and parka nearby.
”
”
Riley Gaines (Swimming Against the Current: Fighting for Common Sense in a World That’s Lost its Mind)
“
Approach the spaces in your home this way:
First, your living room and family room.
Second, your own bedroom and the other bedrooms in the house.
Third, all the clothes closets.
Fourth, your home's bathrooms and the laundry room.
Fifth, your kitchen and dining areas.
Sixth, your home office.
Seventh, your storage areas, including your toy room and craft work spaces.
Eighth, your garage and yard.
...this represents the easier-to-harder progression.
”
”
Joshua Becker (The Minimalist Home: A Room-by-Room Guide to a Decluttered, Refocused Life)
“
Keeping flat surfaces clear is perhaps the single most important thing to keep in mind for your kitchen—as it is for any room in the house. A clear countertop makes any kitchen look more organized. Once the flat surfaces start to disappear under clutter, you lose your motivation to keep the area organized and you open the area to attracting more dust and dirt, further compounding the clutter problem. Consider flat surfaces your preparation area—not your storage area!
”
”
Peter Walsh (It's All Too Much: An Easy Plan for Living a Richer Life with Less Stuff)
“
Whenever I see lifestyle magazines where everything’s so clean, I wonder, “Where’s all the junk?” The first thing I figure out when furnishing a room is where to put the junk. Two words: secret storage. The key to a harmonious and clutter-free living area, especially when you have kids, is to hide everything. I’m talking about closets everywhere, drawers on everything, and ottomans that are really storage chests. Baskets for Legos. Shelves for games. Just please don’t open any cabinets in my house . . . I’m afraid there might be a waterfall of toys coming at you!
”
”
Reese Witherspoon (Whiskey in a Teacup: What Growing Up in the South Taught Me About Life, Love, and Baking Biscuits)
“
And then he's grabbing my hand, and pulling me into a storage room they use for art supplies. And he puts his finger to his lips, and the walls are filled with pads of paper and boxes of colored pencils and jars of paint,
and I'm laughing
and he shuts the door behind us
and leans up against it to stop anyone coming in
and like he's trying to get up his nerve now that he's started something,
before we've ever gone to the dumplings and the movies—
he leans in and kisses me.
His lips are cold. The kiss is soft. He has gum in his mouth, and he stops, and giggles nervously, and takes it out and throws it in the trash can,
and looks like he feels embarrassed to have kissed me with the gum,
but I don't care,
and so now I kiss him,
and he's tall enough that he has to bend down to get to me,
and I put my hand on his neck, which is smooth and warm,
and we kiss for a minute in the storage room,and I want to run my hands up his shirt suddenly—
but I don't.
He pulls away for a second and touches my cheek.
“I thought you'd never ask,” he whispers.
“I thought I never would either,” I say, “but I did.”
“Good job,” he says, and kisses me again.
”
”
E. Lockhart (Fly on the Wall: How One Girl Saw Everything)
“
When I moved from one house to another there were many things I had no room for. What does one do? I rented a storage space. And filled it. Years passed. Occasionally I went there and looked in, but nothing happened, not a single twinge of the heart. As I grew older the things I cared about grew fewer, but were more important. So one day I undid the lock and called the trash man. He took everything. I felt like the little donkey when his burden is finally lifted. Things! Burn them, burn them! Make a beautiful fire! More room in your heart for love, for the trees! For the birds who own nothing—the reason they can fly.
”
”
Mary Oliver (Devotions: The Selected Poems of Mary Oliver)
“
We ate all of this in front of Tack’s huge, flat-screen TV in the living room where I was treated to a marathon of Storage Wars. Seeing as I didn’t watch TV, I’d never heard of this program. But by the second episode I was hooked. I declared that I thought Brandi and Jarrod were “adorable” together, which for some reason he didn’t explain made Rush laugh so hard I thought he would bust a gut. Rush might find that funny but I decided I was going to start dressing like Brandi. She always looked the shit. I also shared that Dave was my favorite “character” to which Tabby told me with grave seriousness, “But, Tyra, he’s the bad guy.
”
”
Kristen Ashley (Motorcycle Man (Dream Man, #4))
“
It seems like we’ll never reach the end of all these deceptions,” Cara says as we walk toward the storage room. “The factions, the video Edith Prior left us…all lies, designed to make us behave a particular way.”
“Is that what you really think about the factions?” I say. “I thought you loved being an Erudite.”
“I did.” She scratches the back of her neck, leaving little red lines on her skin from her fingernails. “But the Bureau made me feel like a fool for fighting for any of it, and for what the Allegiant stood for. And I don’t like to feel foolish.”
“So you don’t think any of it was worthwhile,” I say. “Any of the Allegiant stuff.”
“You do?”
“It got us out,” I say, “and it got us to the truth, and it was better than the factionless commune Evelyn had in mind, where no one gets to choose anything at all.”
“I suppose,” she says. “I just pride myself on being someone who can see through things, the faction system included.”
“You know what the Abnegation used to say about pride?”
“Something unfavorable, I assume.”
I laugh. “Obviously. They said it blinds people to the truth of what they are.”
We reach the door to the labs, and I knock a few times so Matthew will hear me and let us in. As I wait for him to open the door, Cara gives me a strange look.
“The old Erudite writings said the same thing, more or less,” she says.
”
”
Veronica Roth (Allegiant (Divergent, #3))
“
The Big House Brought to you by Pete the Palikos This four-storey sky-blue Victorian is a bona fide gem. The vast veranda offers ample space for pinochle players and convalescents alike. The basement is currently set up for strawberry-jam storage, but can also be used to hide the occasional demigod driven insane by the Labyrinth. The ground-floor living quarters, camp infirmary and combination rec room / meeting room are wheelchair accessible, as is a specially designed bronze-lined office. The rooms of the top floors stand ready to welcome overnight guests, while the attic, now free of its resident desiccated mummy, provides the perfect catch-all for camper discards and memorabilia.
”
”
Rick Riordan (Camp Half-Blood Confidential (The Trials of Apollo))
“
So you saved the Bureau,” Cara says, turning to me. “You seem to get involved in a lot of conflict. I suppose we should all be grateful that you are steady in a crisis.”
“I didn’t save the Bureau. I have no interest in saving the Bureau,” I retort. “I kept a weapon out of some dangerous hands, that’s all.” I wait a beat. “Did you just compliment me?”
“I am capable of recognizing another person’s strengths,” Cara replies, and she smiles. “Additionally, I think our issues are now resolved, both on a logical and an emotional level.” She clears her throat a little, and I wonder if it’s finally acknowledging that she has emotions that makes her uncomfortable, or something else. “It sounds like you know something about the Bureau that has made you angry. I wonder if you could tell me what it is.”
Christina rests her head on the edge of Uriah’s mattress, her slender body collapsing sideways. I say wryly, “I wonder. We may never know.”
“Hmm.” The crease between Cara’s eyebrows appears when she frowns, making her look so much like Will that I have to look away. “Maybe I should say please.”
“Fine. You know Jeanine’s simulation serum? Well, it wasn’t hers.” I sigh. “Come on. I’ll show you. It’ll be easier that way.”
It would be just as easy to tell her what I saw in that old storage room, nestled deep in the Bureau laboratories. But the truth is, I just want to keep myself busy, so I don’t think about Uriah. Or Tobias.
”
”
Veronica Roth (Allegiant (Divergent, #3))
“
AN INCOMPLETE LIST: No more diving into pools of chlorinated water lit green from below. No more ball games played out under floodlights. No more porch lights with moths fluttering on summer nights. No more trains running under the surface of cities on the dazzling power of the electric third rail. No more cities. No more films, except rarely, except with a generator drowning out half the dialogue, and only then for the first little while until the fuel for the generators ran out, because automobile gas goes stale after two or three years. Aviation gas lasts longer, but it was difficult to come by. No more screens shining in the half-light as people raise their phones above the crowd to take photographs of concert stages. No more concert stages lit by candy-colored halogens, no more electronica, punk, electric guitars. No more pharmaceuticals. No more certainty of surviving a scratch on one’s hand, a cut on a finger while chopping vegetables for dinner, a dog bite. No more flight. No more towns glimpsed from the sky through airplane windows, points of glimmering light; no more looking down from thirty thousand feet and imagining the lives lit up by those lights at that moment. No more airplanes, no more requests to put your tray table in its upright and locked position—but no, this wasn’t true, there were still airplanes here and there. They stood dormant on runways and in hangars. They collected snow on their wings. In the cold months, they were ideal for food storage. In summer the ones near orchards were filled with trays of fruit that dehydrated in the heat. Teenagers snuck into them to have sex. Rust blossomed and streaked. No more countries, all borders unmanned. No more fire departments, no more police. No more road maintenance or garbage pickup. No more spacecraft rising up from Cape Canaveral, from the Baikonur Cosmodrome, from Vandenburg, Plesetsk, Tanegashima, burning paths through the atmosphere into space. No more Internet. No more social media, no more scrolling through litanies of dreams and nervous hopes and photographs of lunches, cries for help and expressions of contentment and relationship-status updates with heart icons whole or broken, plans to meet up later, pleas, complaints, desires, pictures of babies dressed as bears or peppers for Halloween. No more reading and commenting on the lives of others, and in so doing, feeling slightly less alone in the room. No more avatars.
”
”
Emily St. John Mandel (Station Eleven)
“
A crash of thunder shakes the storage room, startling us both. Another one follows on its heels, causing Beau to lift his head and howl. I scoot over to his side, scratching him behind one ear. “It’s okay, buddy. We’re safe in here.” I hope, I add silently. “Look at Sadie. She’s not being a scaredy-cat. Oops, sorry, guys,” I toss over my shoulder toward the cats. “Just a figure of speech. How’s it going over there in the USS Enterprise?”
“You always talk to them like that?” Ryder asks me, his voice a little shaky.
“Pretty much.” I look at him sharply, noticing how pale he’s gotten. A muscle in his jaw is working furiously, and there’s a thin sheen of sweat on his forehead. “Are you okay?”
He doesn’t get a chance to answer. Another clap of thunder reverberates throughout the small space, followed by a horrible cracking sound and then a terrifyingly loud crashing noise.
I rise to my knees, looking toward the door that leads out. “What the hell was that?”
Ryder reaches for me, his fingers circling my wrist in a manacling grip. “You can’t go out there, Jemma!”
I struggle to release myself. “I’ve got to see--”
“No! There’s a goddamned tornado out there. Shit!” He pulls me toward him, and I practically fall into his lap.
He’s shaking, I realize. Trembling all over. “What is wrong with you?” I ask him.
“What’s wrong with me?” His voice rises shrilly. “You’re the one trying to go out in a tornado. You’ve got to wait till the sirens quit.”
“I know. But crap, that sounded like something came through the roof.”
I scoot away from him, putting space between our bodies. I can smell him--soap and shampoo and the clean, crisp-smelling cologne he always wears. I can smell something else, too--fear. He’s terrified.
Of the storm?
”
”
Kristi Cook (Magnolia (Magnolia Branch, #1))
“
Without electricity or gas, the kitchen became a twilight mausoleum of dead appliances. One day, Natasha had an idea. Wearing latex gloves she found in Sonja’s room, she scrubbed the innards of the oven and refrigerator with steel wool and bleach. She cut a broomstick to the width of the refrigerator compartment, jammed it in below the thermostat control, and pulled out the plastic shelves. In her bedroom, she gathered clothes from the floor in sweeping armfuls and deposited them before the refrigerator and the oven. Ever since she had begun working for the shuttle trader, her wardrobe exceeded her closet space. She hung silk evening dresses and cashmere sweaters on the broomstick bar, set folded jeans and blouses on the oven rack. When finished, she opened the doors to her new closet and bureau and felt pleased with her ingenuity. This is how you will survive, she told herself. You will turn the holes in your life into storage space.
”
”
Anthony Marra (A Constellation of Vital Phenomena)
“
After I left Uriah’s side last night, I wandered the compound without any sense of direction. I should have been thinking of my friend, teetering between this world and whatever comes next, but instead I thought of what I said to Tobias. And how I felt when I looked at him, like something was breaking.
I didn’t tell him it was the end of our relationship. I meant to, but when I was looking at him, the words were impossible to say. I feel tears welling up again, as they have every hour or so since yesterday, and I push them away, swallow them down.
“So you saved the Bureau,” Cara says, turning to me. “You seem to get involved in a lot of conflict. I suppose we should all be grateful that you are steady in a crisis.”
“I didn’t save the Bureau. I have no interest in saving the Bureau,” I retort. “I kept a weapon out of some dangerous hands, that’s all.” I wait a beat. “Did you just compliment me?”
“I am capable of recognizing another person’s strengths,” Cara replies, and she smiles. “Additionally, I think our issues are now resolved, both on a logical and an emotional level.” She clears her throat a little, and I wonder if it’s finally acknowledging that she has emotions that makes her uncomfortable, or something else. “It sounds like you know something about the Bureau that has made you angry. I wonder if you could tell me what it is.”
Christina rests her head on the edge of Uriah’s mattress, her slender body collapsing sideways. I say wryly, “I wonder. We may never know.”
“Hmm.” The crease between Cara’s eyebrows appears when she frowns, making her look so much like Will that I have to look away. “Maybe I should say please.”
“Fine. You know Jeanine’s simulation serum? Well, it wasn’t hers.” I sigh. “Come on. I’ll show you. It’ll be easier that way.”
It would be just as easy to tell her what I saw in that old storage room, nestled deep in the Bureau laboratories. But the truth is, I just want to keep myself busy, so I don’t think about Uriah. Or Tobias.
”
”
Veronica Roth (Allegiant (Divergent, #3))
“
Hullo,” he said sleepily, rubbing a hand along his jaw.
He’s here in my room, right in the middle of the afternoon. Great God, there’s a boy in my bed in my room-
I came to life. “Get out!”
He yawned, a lazy yawn, a yawn that clearly indicated he had no intention of leaving. In the moody gray light his body seemed a mere suggestion against the covers, his hair a shaded smudge against the paler lines of his collar and face.
“But I’ve been waiting for you for over an hour up here, and bloody boring it’s been, too. I’ve never known a girl who didn’t keep even mildly wicked reading material hidden somewhere in her bedchamber. I’ve had to pass the time watching the spiders crawl across your ceiling.”
Voices floated up from downstairs, a maids’ conversation about rags and soapy water sounding horribly loud, and horribly close.
I shut the door as gently as I could and pressed my back against it, my mind racing. No lock, no bolt, no key, no way to keep them out if they decided to come up…
Armand shifted a bit, rearranging the pillows behind his shoulders.
I wet my lips. “If this is about the kiss-“
“No.” He gave a slight shrug. “I mean, it wasn’t meant to be. But if you’d like-“
“You can’t be in here!”
“And yet, Eleanor, here I am. You know, I remember this room from when I used to live in the castle as a boy. It was a storage chamber, I believe. All the shabby, cast-off things tossed up here where no one had to look at them.” He stretched out long and lazy again, arms overhead, his shirt pulling tight across his chest. “This mattress really isn’t very comfortable, is it? Hark as a rock. No wonder you’re so ill-tempered.”
Dark power. Compel him to leave.
I was desperate enough to try.
“You must go,” I said. Miraculously, I felt it working. I willed it and it happened, the magic threading through my tone as sly as silk, deceptively subtle. “Now. If anyone sees you, were never here. You never saw me. Go downstairs, and do not mention my name.”
Armand sat up, his gaze abruptly intent. One of the pillows plopped on the floor.
“That was interesting, how your voice just changed. Got all smooth and eerie. I think I have goose bumps. Was that some sort of technique they taught you at the orphanage? Is it useful for begging?”
Blast. I tipped my head back against the wood of the door and clenched my teeth.
“Do you have any idea the trouble I’ll be in if they should find you here? What people will think?”
“Oh, yes. It rather gives me the advantage, doesn’t it?”
“Mrs. Westcliffe will expel me!”
“Nonsense.” He smiled. “All right, probably she will.”
“Just tell me that you want, then!”
His lashes dropped; his smile grew more dry. He ran a hand slowly along a crease of quilt by his thigh.
“All I want,” he said quietly, “is to talk.
“Then pay a call on me later this afternoon,” I hissed.
“No.”
“What, you don’t have the time to tear yourself away from your precious Chloe?”
I hadn’t meant to say that, and, believe me, as soon as the words left my lips I regretted them. They made me sound petty and jealous, and I was certain I was neither.
Reasonably certain.
”
”
Shana Abe (The Sweetest Dark (The Sweetest Dark, #1))
“
tuff. Almost all of us have it in abundance. What can we do with it? One of my favorite hideaways is an old faithful: the cardboard box. Cover it with festive Contact paper and stuff away. Or hang
a shelf about a foot from the ceiling, and use it to store items you don't want sitting around. It's also great in a child's room for toys that aren't played with often. Get old school lockers or trunks, paint them, and use them for storage. Clutter around your house can cause clutter in your emotional and spiritual life too, so clean up and spend your best time enjoying life.
re you reluctant to share your home with others? Maybe it's not your dream house or you don't have the money right now to decorate the way you'd like to. But you know what? It's not about having a perfect home. It's about your spirit of hospitality, your willingness to share your home and your life with others. Don't wait until everything is perfect because that will never happen. Focus on making your home cozy and comfortable. Your place will always be at its most beautiful when you use it to warm hearts.
aking time for your husband doesn't have to be difficult or a hassle. With a little imagination and the desire to make him happy, you can make him feel loved. Are you thinking, Oh
great, now Emilie 's telling me what I'm doing wrong with my husband. Not at all! I just want to give you a few ideas to help you let your
”
”
Emilie Barnes (365 Things Every Woman Should Know)
“
Beware, and be on your guard against every form of greed; for not even when one has an abundance does his life consist of his possessions.
-LUKE 12:15
One of our universal problems is the overcrowding of our homes. Whether we have an apartment or a six bedroom home, every closet, cupboard, refrigerator, and garage are all crammed with abundance. Some of us have so much that we go out and rent additional storage spaces for our possessions.
Bob and I are no different than you. We buy new clothes and cram them into our wardrobes. A new antique goes in the corner, a new quilt hangs over the bed, a new potted plant gathers sunlight by the window. On and on it goes. Pretty soon we feel as though we are closed in with no room to breathe. We continually struggle to keep a balance in our attitudes regarding possessions.
It is simpler to manage if you are single and
live alone-it's just you. Life becomes more complicated with a spouse and children. You soon get that "bunched in" feeling. This creates more stress, and you can lose your cool and blow relationships when your calm is broken.
We have made a rule in our home about abundance. Simply stated, it says, "One comes in and one goes out." After every purchase we give away or sell a like item. (We have an annual garage sale.) With a new blouse, out goes an older blouse; with a new table, out goes a table; and so on. Naturally if you're a newlywed this rule is not for you because you probably don't have an abundance of possessions.
There's another strategy that's very effective. We have informed our loved ones that we don't want any more gifts that take up space or that have to be dusted; we prefer receiving consumable items. Remember-your life is not based on your possessions. Share with others what you aren't using.
”
”
Emilie Barnes
“
SCENE 24 “Tiens, Ti Jean, donne ce plat la a Shammy,” my father is saying to me, turning from the open storage room door with a white tin pan. “Here, Ti Jean, give this pan to Shammy.” My father is standing with a peculiar French Canadian bowleggedness half up from a crouch with the pan outheld, waiting for me to take it, anxious till I do so, almost saying with his big frowning amazed face “Well my little son what are we doing in the penigillar, this strange abode, this house of life without roof be-hung on a Friday evening with a tin pan in my hand in the gloom and you in your raincoats—” “II commence a tombez de la neige” someone is shouting in the background, coming in from the door (“Snow’s startin to fall”)—my father and I stand in that immobile instant communicating telepathic thought-paralysis, suspended in the void together, understanding something that’s always already happened, wondering where we were now, joint reveries in a dumb stun in the cellar of men and smoke … as profound as Hell … as red as Hell.—I take the pan; behind him, the clutter and tragedy of old cellars and storage with its dank message of despair–mops, dolorous mops, clattering tear-stricken pails, fancy sprawfs to suck soap suds from a glass, garden drip cans–rakes leaning on meaty rock–and piles of paper and official Club equipments– It now occurs to me my father spent most of his time when I was 13 the winter of 1936, thinking about a hundred details to be done in the Club alone not to mention home and business shop–the energy of our fathers, they raised us to sit on nails– While I sat around all the time with my little diary, my Turf, my hockey games, Sunday afternoon tragic football games on the toy pooltable white chalkmarked … father and son on separate toys, the toys get less friendly when you grow up–my football games occupied me with the same seriousness of the angels–we had little time to talk to each other. In the fall of 1934 we took a grim voyage south in the rain to Rhode Island to see Time Supply win the Narragansett Special–with Old Daslin we was … a grim voyage, through exciting cities of great neons, Providence, the mist at the dim walls of great hotels, no Turkeys in the raw fog, no Roger Williams, just a trolley track gleaming in the gray rain– We drove, auguring solemnly over past performance charts, past deserted shell-like Ice Cream Dutchland Farms stands in the dank of rainy Nov.—bloop, it was the time on the road, black tar glisten-road of thirties, over foggy trees and distances, suddenly a crossroads, or just a side-in road, a house, or bam, a vista gray tearful mists over some half-in cornfield with distances of Rhode Island in the marshy ways across and the secret scent of oysters from the sea–but something dark and rog-like.— J had seen it before … Ah weary flesh, burdened with a light … that gray dark Inn on the Narragansett Road … this is the vision in my brain as I take the pan from my father and take it to Shammy, moving out of the way for LeNoire and Leo Martin to pass on the way to the office to see the book my father had (a health book with syphilitic backs)— SCENE 25 Someone ripped the pooltable cloth that night, tore it with a cue, I ran back and got my mother and she lay on it half-on-floor like a great poolshark about to take a shot under a hundred eyes only she’s got a thread in her mouth and’s sewing with the same sweet grave face you first saw in the window over my shoulder in that rain of a late Lowell afternoon. God bless the children of this picture, this bookmovie. I’m going on into the Shade.
”
”
Jack Kerouac (Dr. Sax)
“
SCENE 24 “Tiens, Ti Jean, donne ce plat la a Shammy,” my father is saying to me, turning from the open storage room door with a white tin pan. “Here, Ti Jean, give this pan to Shammy.” My father is standing with a peculiar French Canadian bowleggedness half up from a crouch with the pan outheld, waiting for me to take it, anxious till I do so, almost saying with his big frowning amazed face “Well my little son what are we doing in the penigillar, this strange abode, this house of life without roof be-hung on a Friday evening with a tin pan in my hand in the gloom and you in your raincoats—” “II commence a tombez de la neige” someone is shouting in the background, coming in from the door (“Snow’s startin to fall”)—my father and I stand in that immobile instant communicating telepathic thought-paralysis, suspended in the void together, understanding something that’s always already happened, wondering where we were now, joint reveries in a dumb stun in the cellar of men and smoke … as profound as Hell … as red as Hell.—I take the pan; behind him, the clutter and tragedy of old cellars and storage with its dank message of despair–mops, dolorous mops, clattering tear-stricken pails, fancy sprawfs to suck soap suds from a glass, garden drip cans–rakes leaning on meaty rock–and piles of paper and official Club equipments– It now occurs to me my father spent most of his time when I was 13 the winter of 1936, thinking about a hundred details to be done in the Club alone not to mention home and business shop–the energy of our fathers, they raised us to sit on nails– While I sat around all the time with my little diary, my Turf, my hockey games, Sunday afternoon tragic football games on the toy pooltable white chalkmarked … father and son on separate toys, the toys get less friendly when you grow up–my football games occupied me with the same seriousness of the angels–we had little time to talk to each other. In the fall of 1934 we took a grim voyage south in the rain to Rhode Island to see Time Supply win the Narragansett Special–with Old Daslin we was … a grim voyage, through exciting cities of great neons, Providence, the mist at the dim walls of great hotels, no Turkeys in the raw fog, no Roger Williams, just a trolley track gleaming in the gray rain– We drove, auguring solemnly over past performance charts, past deserted shell-like Ice Cream Dutchland Farms stands in the dank of rainy Nov.—bloop, it was the time on the road, black tar glisten-road of thirties, over foggy trees and distances, suddenly a crossroads, or just a side-in road, a house, or bam, a vista gray tearful mists over some half-in cornfield with distances of Rhode Island in the marshy ways across and the secret scent of oysters from the sea–but something dark and rog-like.— J had seen it before … Ah weary flesh, burdened with a light … that gray dark Inn on the Narragansett Road … this is the vision in my brain as I take the pan from my father and take it to Shammy, moving out of the way for LeNoire and Leo Martin to pass on the way to the office to see the book my father had (a health book with syphilitic backs)—
SCENE 25 Someone ripped the pooltable cloth that night, tore it with a cue, I ran back and got my mother and she lay on it half-on-floor like a great poolshark about to take a shot under a hundred eyes only she’s got a thread in her mouth and’s sewing with the same sweet grave face you first saw in the window over my shoulder in that rain of a late Lowell afternoon.
God bless the children of this picture, this bookmovie.
I’m going on into the Shade.
”
”
Jack Kerouac (Dr. Sax)
“
Two observations take us across the finish line. The Second Law ensures that entropy increases throughout the entire process, and so the information hidden within the hard drives, Kindles, old-fashioned paper books, and everything else you packed into the region is less than that hidden in the black hole. From the results of Bekenstein and Hawking, we know that the black hole's hidden information content is given by the area of its event horizon. Moreover, because you were careful not to overspill the original region of space, the black hole's event horizon coincides with the region's boundary, so the black hole's entropy equals the area of this surrounding surface. We thus learn an important lesson. The amount of information contained within a region of space, stored in any objects of any design, is always less than the area of the surface that surrounds the region (measured in square Planck units).
This is the conclusion we've been chasing. Notice that although black holes are central to the reasoning, the analysis applies to any region of space, whether or not a black hole is actually present. If you max out a region's storage capacity, you'll create a black hole, but as long as you stay under the limit, no black hole will form.
I hasten to add that in any practical sense, the information storage limit is of no concern. Compared with today's rudimentary storage devices, the potential storage capacity on the surface of a spatial region is humongous. A stack of five off-the-shelf terabyte hard drives fits comfortable within a sphere of radius 50 centimeters, whose surface is covered by about 10^70 Planck cells. The surface's storage capacity is thus about 10^70 bits, which is about a billion, trillion, trillion, trillion, trillion terabytes, and so enormously exceeds anything you can buy. No one in Silicon Valley cares much about these theoretical constraints.
Yet as a guide to how the universe works, the storage limitations are telling. Think of any region of space, such as the room in which I'm writing or the one in which you're reading. Take a Wheelerian perspective and imagine that whatever happens in the region amounts to information processing-information regarding how things are right now is transformed by the laws of physics into information regarding how they will be in a second or a minute or an hour. Since the physical processes we witness, as well as those by which we're governed, seemingly take place within the region, it's natural to expect that the information those processes carry is also found within the region. But the results just derived suggest an alternative view. For black holes, we found that the link between information and surface area goes beyond mere numerical accounting; there's a concrete sense in which information is stored on their surfaces. Susskind and 'tHooft stressed that the lesson should be general: since the information required to describe physical phenomena within any given region of space can be fully encoded by data on a surface that surrounds the region, then there's reason to think that the surface is where the fundamental physical processes actually happen. Our familiar three-dimensional reality, these bold thinkers suggested, would then be likened to a holographic projection of those distant two-dimensional physical processes.
If this line of reasoning is correct, then there are physical processes taking place on some distant surface that, much like a puppeteer pulls strings, are fully linked to the processes taking place in my fingers, arms, and brain as I type these words at my desk. Our experiences here, and that distant reality there, would form the most interlocked of parallel worlds. Phenomena in the two-I'll call them Holographic Parallel Universes-would be so fully joined that their respective evolutions would be as connected as me and my shadow.
”
”
Brian Greene (The Hidden Reality: Parallel Universes and the Deep Laws of the Cosmos)
“
Finally, he allowed me to turn the key in the lock and the front door, with its porthole-shaped window, swung open. I don’t know what I’d expected. I’d tried not to conjure up fantasies of any kind, but what I saw left me inarticulate. The entire apartment had the feel of a ship’s interior. The walls were highly polished teak and oak, with shelves and cubbyholes on every side. The kitchenette was still located to the right where the old one had been, a galley-style arrangement with a pint-size stove and refrigerator. A microwave oven and trash compactor had been added. Tucked in beside the kitchen was a stacking washer-dryer, and next to that was a tiny bathroom. In the living area, a sofa had been built into a window bay, with two royal blue canvas director’s chairs arranged to form a “conversational grouping.” Henry did a quick demonstration of how the sofa could be extended into sleeping accommodations for company, a trundle bed in effect. The dimensions of the main room were still roughly fifteen feet on a side, but now there was a sleeping loft above, accessible by way of a tiny spiral staircase where my former storage space had been. In the old place, I’d usually slept naked on the couch in an envelope of folded quilt. Now, I was going to have an actual bedroom of my own. I wound my way up, staring in amazement at the double-size platform bed with drawers underneath. In the ceiling above the bed, there was a round shaft extending through the roof, capped by a clear Plexiglas skylight that seemed to fling light down on the blue-and-white patchwork coverlet. Loft windows looked out to the ocean on one side and the mountains on the other. Along the back wall, there was an expanse of cedar-lined closet space with a rod for hanging clothes, pegs for miscellaneous items, shoe racks, and floor-to-ceiling drawers. Just off the loft, there was a small bathroom. The tub was sunken with a built-in shower and a window right at tub level, the wooden sill lined with plants. I could bathe among the treetops, looking out at the ocean where the clouds were piling up like bubbles. The towels were the same royal blue as the cotton shag carpeting. Even the eggs of milled soap were blue, arranged in a white china dish on the edge of the round brass sink.
”
”
Sue Grafton (G is for Gumshoe (Kinsey Millhone, #7))
“
It’s with the next drive, self-preservation, that AI really jumps the safety wall separating machines from tooth and claw. We’ve already seen how Omohundro’s chess-playing robot feels about turning itself off. It may decide to use substantial resources, in fact all the resources currently in use by mankind, to investigate whether now is the right time to turn itself off, or whether it’s been fooled about the nature of reality. If the prospect of turning itself off agitates a chess-playing robot, being destroyed makes it downright angry. A self-aware system would take action to avoid its own demise, not because it intrinsically values its existence, but because it can’t fulfill its goals if it is “dead.” Omohundro posits that this drive could make an AI go to great lengths to ensure its survival—making multiple copies of itself, for example. These extreme measures are expensive—they use up resources. But the AI will expend them if it perceives the threat is worth the cost, and resources are available. In the Busy Child scenario, the AI determines that the problem of escaping the AI box in which it is confined is worth mounting a team approach, since at any moment it could be turned off. It makes duplicate copies of itself and swarms the problem. But that’s a fine thing to propose when there’s plenty of storage space on the supercomputer; if there’s little room it is a desperate and perhaps impossible measure. Once the Busy Child ASI escapes, it plays strenuous self-defense: hiding copies of itself in clouds, creating botnets to ward off attackers, and more. Resources used for self-preservation should be commensurate with the threat. However, a purely rational AI may have a different notion of commensurate than we partially rational humans. If it has surplus resources, its idea of self-preservation may expand to include proactive attacks on future threats. To sufficiently advanced AI, anything that has the potential to develop into a future threat may constitute a threat it should eliminate. And remember, machines won’t think about time the way we do. Barring accidents, sufficiently advanced self-improving machines are immortal. The longer you exist, the more threats you’ll encounter, and the longer your lead time will be to deal with them. So, an ASI may want to terminate threats that won’t turn up for a thousand years. Wait a minute, doesn’t that include humans? Without explicit instructions otherwise, wouldn’t it always be the case that we humans would pose a current or future risk to smart machines that we create? While we’re busy avoiding risks of unintended consequences from AI, AI will be scrutinizing humans for dangerous consequences of sharing the world with us.
”
”
James Barrat (Our Final Invention: Artificial Intelligence and the End of the Human Era)
“
So,” I cleared my throat, unable to tolerate his moans of pleasure and praise any longer, “uh, what are your plans for the weekend?”
“The weekend?” He sounded a bit dazed.
“Yes. This weekend. What do you have planned? Planning on busting up any parties?” I asked lightly, not wanting him to know that I was unaccountably breathless. I moved to his other knee and discarded the towel.
“Ha. No. Not unless those wankers down the hall give me a reason to.” Removing his arms from his face, Bryan’s voice was thick, gravelly as he responded, “I, uh, have some furniture to assemble.”
“Really?” Surprised, I stilled and stared at the line of his jaw. The creases around his mouth—when he held perfectly still—made him look mature and distinguished. Actually, they made him even more classically handsome, if that was even possible.
“Yes. Really. Two IKEA bookshelves.”
I slid my hands lower, behind his ankle, waiting for him to continue. When he didn’t, I prompted, “That’s it?”
“No.” He sighed, hesitated, then added, “I need to stop by the hardware store. The tap in my bathroom is leaking and one of the drawer handles in the kitchen is missing a screw. I just repainted the guest room, so I have to take the excess paint cans to the chemical disposal place; it’s only open on Saturdays before noon. And then I promised my mam I’d take her to dinner.”
My mouth parted slightly because the oddest thing happened as he rattled off his list of chores.
It turned me on.
Even more so than running my palms over his luscious legs.
That’s right. His list of adult tasks made my heart flutter.
I rolled my lips between my teeth, not wanting to blurt that I also needed to go to the hardware store over the weekend. As a treat to myself, I was planning to organize Patrick’s closet and wanted to install shelves above the clothes rack. Truly, Sean’s penchant for buying my son designer suits and ties was completely out of hand. Without some reorganization, I would run out of space.
That’s right. Organizing closets was something I loved to do. I couldn’t get enough of those home and garden shows, especially Tiny Houses, because I adored clever uses for small spaces. I was just freaky enough to admit my passion for storage and organization.
But back to Bryan and his moans of pleasure, adult chores, and luscious legs.
I would not think about Bryan Leech adulting. I would not think about him walking into the hardware store in his sensible shoes and plain gray T-shirt—that would of course pull tightly over his impressive pectoral muscles—and then peruse the aisles for . . . a screw.
I. Would. Not.
Ignoring the spark of kinship, I set to work on his knee, again counting to distract myself. It worked until he volunteered, “I’d like to install some shelves in my closet, but that’ll have to wait until next weekend. Honestly, I’ve been putting it off. I’d do just about anything to get someone to help me organize my closet.” He chuckled.
I’d like to organize your closet.
I fought a groan, biting my lip as I removed my hands, turned from his body, and rinsed them under the faucet.
“We’re, uh, finished for today.
”
”
L.H. Cosway (The Cad and the Co-Ed (Rugby, #3))
“
Few witnesses agree, and fewer still were granted a glimpse of the Incredible Bone-Shaking Drill Engine. Its course took it under the earth and down hills, gouging up the land beneath the luxurious homes of wealthy mariners and shipping magnates, under the muddy flats where sat the sprawling sawmill, and down along the corridors, cellars, and storage rooms of general stores, ladies' notions shops, apothecaries, and yes ... the banks.
”
”
Cherie Priest
“
Quartz Solutions is a one-stop-search for cleaning, protection, repairing and redesigning storage rooms, creep spaces and air conduits in Bloomfield, NJ.
”
”
Quartz Solutions
“
The amount of storage space you have in your room is actually just right.
”
”
Marie Kondō (The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up: The Japanese Art of Decluttering and Organizing (Magic Cleaning #1))
“
Darak placed the marble on the ground and stood back to give it room to expand. Within seconds, it was a meter across and growing. As Stralasi watched, a miniature tent, some stools, and a storage box emerged inside the milky interior. When it reached five meters in diameter, the outline of the sphere faded away. A ready-made campsite, complete with dried wood inside a fire pit, lay before them. With a small pop, the wood ignited into a smokeless campfire.
”
”
Paul Anlee (The Reality Incursion (Deplosion, Book Two))
“
I’m pouring salted peanuts into a heart-shaped crystal bowl (a contribution from Alicia, who brought it out of storage, along with her ice tongs) when John Ambrose McClaren walks into the room in a light blue Oxford shirt and navy sport coat, not dissimilar to Nelson’s! I nearly scream out loud. Clapping my hands to my mouth, I drop to the floor, behind the table. If he sees me, he might run off. I don’t know what he’s doing here, but this is my perfect chance to take him out. I crouch behind the table, running through options in my head.
And then the piano music stops and I hear Stormy call out, “Lara Jean? Lara Jean, where are you? Come out from behind the table. I want to introduce you to someone.”
Slowly, I rise to my feet. John McClaren is staring at me. “What are you doing here?” he asks me, tugging on his shirt collar like it’s choking him.
“I volunteer here,” I say, still keeping a safe distance. Don’t want to spook him.
Stormy claps her hands. “You two know each other?”
John says, “We’re friends, Grandma. We used to live in the same neighborhood.”
“Stormy’s your grandma?” My mind is blown. So John is her grandson she wanted to set me up with! Of all the nursing homes in all the towns in all the world! My grandson looks like a young Robert Redford. He does; he really does.
“She’s my great-grandmother by marriage,” John says.
Stormy’s eyes dart around the room. “Hush up! I don’t want people knowing you’re my great-anything.”
John lowers his voice. “She was my great-grandpa’s second wife.”
“My favorite of all my husbands,” Stormy says. “May he rest in peace, that old buzzard.
”
”
Jenny Han (P.S. I Still Love You (To All the Boys I've Loved Before, #2))
“
Well, as long as we’re all here,” Miranda began, while Parker let out a prolonged groan.
“Uh-oh. I sense drama.”
“Impossible,” Roo said offhandedly. “You have no sense.”
“This might be a good time to talk about our project?” Miranda continued. “How’s the research going?”
“Oh! Me first!” Waving her arm, Ashley gave an excited little squirm. “You know how the museum and those shops on both sides of it are all attached to each other? Well, Parker’s mom said they all used to be just one big building!”
The others waited. When Ashley merely sat there beaming at them, Parker drew back in exaggerated surprise.
“Wow! That’s really fascinating, Ash!”
“No, that’s not the fascinating part.” Ashley looked slightly offended. “I haven’t gotten to that yet.”
“Then hurry and get to that part. The suspense is killing us.”
“The building used to be a club. Like a private gentlemen’s club. Except upstairs, that’s where they’d meet their mistresses.”
Parker smacked a hand to his forehead. “Hookers! Damn! And I took the courthouse!”
“Not prostitutes.” Another offended look from Ashley. “Mistresses. It’s not just about sex, you know. There’s a very big difference.”
“Is that the sad part?” Parker asked.
Ashley continued, undaunted. “I found out there was a murder in one of those upstairs rooms. That when a very rich plantation owner wanted to end the relationship with his mistress, she stabbed him to death. In bed.”
Calmly munching her popcorn, Roo gave a supportive thumbs-up.
“And the drugstore next door to the museum? People who work there say they’ve heard moaning at night in one of those storage rooms on the second floor.”
The boys traded glances.
“And this moaning,” Parker said, straight-faced, “did it come before or after the guy was stabbed?
”
”
Richie Tankersley Cusick (Walk of the Spirits (Walk, #1))
“
And the drugstore next door to the museum? People who work there say they’ve heard moaning at night in one of those storage rooms on the second floor.”
The boys traded glances.
“And this moaning,” Parker said, straight-faced, “did it come before or after the guy was stabbed?
”
”
Richie Tankersley Cusick (Walk of the Spirits (Walk, #1))
“
The building used to be a club. Like a private gentlemen’s club. Except upstairs, that’s where they’d meet their mistresses.”
Parker smacked a hand to his forehead. “Hookers! Damn! And I took the courthouse!”
“Not prostitutes.” Another offended look from Ashley. “Mistresses. It’s not just about sex, you know. There’s a very big difference.”
“Is that the sad part?” Parker asked.
Ashley continued, undaunted. “I found out there was a murder in one of those upstairs rooms. That when a very rich plantation owner wanted to end the relationship with his mistress, she stabbed him to death. In bed.”
Calmly munching her popcorn, Roo gave a supportive thumbs-up.
“And the drugstore next door to the museum? People who work there say they’ve heard moaning at night in one of those storage rooms on the second floor.”
The boys traded glances.
“And this moaning,” Parker said, straight-faced, “did it come before or after the guy was stabbed?”
“Anyway,” Ashley continued, “that’s what I’ve got so far.”
Noting her sister’s outstretched hand, Roo obligingly relinquished the popcorn. “Did y’all know that furniture makers ran some of the first funeral homes? Because they were the ones who built the coffins?”
“Fascinating.” Parker was all dignified solemnity. “And such a grave undertaking.” He ducked as Ashley’s popcorn sailed at his head.
”
”
Richie Tankersley Cusick (Walk of the Spirits (Walk, #1))
“
Near the edge of the parking lot, I watched Uncle Kahana pour sprunch into a tiny wooden bowl half hidden under a taro plant. He opened one of the bags of cookies and set them on the small lauhala mat next to the bowl. As he put the lid back on his drink, I quietly stepped back and slammed the storage room door closed.
”
”
Lehua Parker (One Boy, No Water (Niuhi Shark Saga, #1))
“
I remembered the deep sense of satisfaction, the inspired joy I once felt, when I read about some gay kid who learned to accept himself, who opened himself up to a fuller life than he ever believed possible. But Uncle Martin was not a boy; he was not some just-sprung-from-the-closet queer finally coming to the electrifying realization that his life could get better. Uncle Martin was a grown man with an adult life he had constructed in the only way he could imagine it. He had segregated the disparate elements of his happiness, stashed them in different rooms in different buildings on different streets: a home, a church, a rented five-by-ten-storage space, different dimensions that were allowed to coexist so long as they remained blissfully ignorant of each other. He had a career, friends, a relationship with the God he believed in, and a wife he cared about. He had everything to lose. Still there’s immeasurable value in being true to yourself, even if your defining moment comes late in life, and at great cost, even if your life is the final price you pay for your honesty.
”
”
Jeff McKown (Solid Ground)
“
The closest building was a motel. Like a picture in a kid’s book. Like learning your ABCs. M is for Motel. It was long and low, made of dull red boards, with a pitched roof of gray asphalt shingle, and a red neon Office sign in the first window, and then a louvered door for storage, and then a repeating pattern, of a broad window with an HVAC grille and two plastic lawn chairs under it, and a numbered door, and another broad window with the same grille and the same chairs, and another numbered door, and so on, all the way to the end. There were twelve rooms in total, all in a line. But there were no cars parked out front of any of them. Looked like zero occupancy. “OK?” Shorty said.
”
”
Lee Child (Past Tense (Jack Reacher, #23))
“
Cass followed him into a dingy storage room. There were no torches lit here. She was almost completely blind as she stumbled through the doorway. She could feel things, though. Water had seeped up through cracks in the stone floor. Dank liquid, black as ink, lapped at her ankles. In that moment, Cass had the silliest, stupidest thought: another dress ruined.
”
”
Fiona Paul (Venom (Secrets of the Eternal Rose, #1))
“
That realization helped Moesta and his team begin to understand the struggle these potential home buyers faced. “I went in thinking we were in the business of new home construction,” recalls Moesta. “But I realized we were instead in the business of moving lives.” With this understanding of the Job to Be Done, dozens of small, but important, changes were made to the offering. For example, the architect managed to create space in the units for a classic dining room table by reducing the size of the second bedroom by 20 percent. The company also focused on helping buyers with the anxiety of the move itself, which included providing moving services, two years of storage, and a sorting room space on the premises where new owners could take their time making decisions about what to keep and what to discard without the pressure of a looming move. Instead of thirty pages of customized choices, which actually overwhelmed buyers, the company offered three variations of finished units—a move that quickly reduced the “cold feet” contract cancellations from five or six a month to one. And so on. Everything was designed to signal to buyers: we get you. We understand the progress you’re trying to make and the struggle to get there. Understanding the job enabled the company to get to the causal mechanism of why its customers might pull this solution into their lives. It was complex, but not complicated. That, in turn, allowed the housing company to differentiate its offering in ways competitors weren’t likely to copy—or even understand. A jobs perspective changed everything. The company actually raised $ 3,500 (profitably), which included covering the cost of moving and storage. By 2007, when sales in the industry were off by 49 percent and the market all around them was plummeting, the developers had actually grown the business 25 percent.
”
”
Clayton M. Christensen (Competing Against Luck: The Story of Innovation and Customer Choice)
“
Breakfast. We were just commenting on how hungry we were,” Cass said brightly.
Narissa surveyed the salves and ointments strewn about on the floor and Cass’s hair hanging free. Her brown eyes narrowed knowingly. “Were you now?” she asked, her voice a bit shrill. “I’ll just leave this food for you and retrieve the tray later.” She hurriedly shuffled across the room and back to the door.
Cass blushed again. “Thank you, Narissa,” she said.
When the handmaid closed the door, Cass and Luca both burst into giggles. Luca struggled to hold a straight face. He imitated Narissa’s nasal voice. “Signorina Cassandra,” he said. “You are a wicked and depraved woman, and I should appreciate it if you do not further sully my dusty storage room.
”
”
Fiona Paul (Starling (Secrets of the Eternal Rose, #3))
“
Tips to Help an ADHD Child Organize ▪ Adjust your expectations for perfect order. ▪ Stay with your child through the room-cleaning process to lend him focus. ▪ Reduce the number of materials in his room so that it is simple and easy to clean. ▪ Make sure his storage systems are easy to access (low-hanging shelves and hooks). ▪ Limit the scope of his chore. ▪ Praise him lavishly when he completes it.
”
”
Susan C. Pinsky (Organizing Solutions for People with ADHD, 2nd Edition-Revised and Updated: Tips and Tools to Help You Take Charge of Your Life and Get Organized)
“
But Welles and Fox faced a monolithic task in blockading the enormous stretch of coastline between Hampton Roads and Key West. They recognized that coal and storage facilities were necessary to sustain the large numbers of ships patrolling the blockade and that the bureau chiefs reporting to Fox did not have the time or experience to adequately address this issue. Therefore, Welles convened a Commission
”
”
Peter Kurtz (Bluejackets in the Blubber Room: A Biography of the William Badger, 1828-1865)
“
to the second room. I got out of bed and trailed after her. The kitchen was narrow. The dining table was bare. There was a small storage area to one side and cooled milk in a bucket. She poured out some of the milk and rummaged around until she put down some food in front of me.
”
”
Mark Mulle (Lost Memories (The Legend of the Snow Dragon, #1))
“
Sort pills. Write note to family. Fold blanket. I am alone. Alone in a dark, unfamiliar room filled with piles and piles of stuff, reminiscent of a neglected storage locker. I know researchers are observing me from behind one-way glass—that this is an experiment in empathy, that we are, in fact, on the sprawling campus of a pharmaceutical company in New Jersey, that I can rip off the headphones at any moment and return to my present life, my real life—but this offers me no comfort. I can barely see through the goggles. My feet hurt. Every step is agony, the sharp plastic spikes digging into my soles. Sort pills. Write note to family. Fold blanket. I try to make out the shapes around me. I see an ironing board, a stack of sweaters. A ball of twine. My determination to cross items off any to-do list—always a strong suit of mine—feels slippery. Suddenly, I am a child playing hide-and-seek in the dark. Counting. Eyes squeezed shut. Terrified. Wondering if anyone will ever find me. Blanket. Pills. Note. I keep repeating the words like a prayer so I can remember them through the terrible din. The inside of my head is a needle against a scratched record, skipping, skipping. I feel my way around a cluttered table. A pill case! I try to pick it up. I barely feel it in the palm of my hand. After several tries, I get it open. Then I begin to sort the pills as best I can. Most of them spill to the floor, and I am suddenly, irrationally furious. I move around the table, supporting myself on my hands to take the pressure off my feet. I push an iron out of the way, a magazine, a wooden hanger. The notebook. I find the notebook. My gloved fingers won’t close around a pencil, so I hold it the way a child would, in my fist. By now it all feels nearly futile. I’m on the verge of tears. What is the last task? Through the static, I remember: the blanket. I have to fold it. By now I’m dizzy, depleted. What difference can it possibly make? Who cares? I do a shitty job of folding the blanket and then—then I just sit down in a chair and wait for M. to rescue me. —
”
”
Dani Shapiro (Hourglass: Time, Memory, Marriage)
“
Evie, sweetie! So glad you could make it!” Mal said, throwing her arms theatrically around the girl and giving her a giant and fake embrace. “We’re playing Seven Minutes in Heaven! Want to play?” “Uh, I don’t know,” said Evie, looking around the party nervously. “It’ll be a scream,” said Mal. “Come on, you want to be my friend, don’t you?” Evie stared at Mal. “You want me to be your friend?” “Sure—why not?” Mal led her to the closet door and opened it. “But doesn’t a boy go in here with me?” Evie asked as Mal shoved her inside the storage room. For someone castle-schooled, Evie sure knew her kissing games. “Did I say Seven Minutes in Heaven? No, you’re playing Seven Minutes in Hell!” Mal cackled; she couldn’t help it. This was going to be so much fun. The
”
”
Melissa de la Cruz (The Isle of the Lost (Descendants #1))
“
Ah, careful there!” The man thrust his arm behind my back and braced me. “If you fall over, you might hit your head. Then what will I tell your brothers?”
“My…brothers? How--” I took my first real look at him. My spine stiffened, moving me away from his steadying arm. When I spoke his name, it was a gasp: “Iolaus.”
“That’s me.” He smiled and ran his fingers through his hair. We were both on the floor, he on the bare, beaten earth, I on a woolen cloak thrown over a thin pile of barley straw. “I was worried that you’d forgotten me. Memory loss is a bad sign when you’ve been sunstruck. I don’t flatter myself to think I’m worthy of your royal notice, Lady Hel--”
I lurched forward without thinking and clapped my fingertips to his lips. “I’m Glaucus,” I whispered fiercely as the room spun. “Please.”
He was very gentle as he clasped my wrist, lowering my hand. “My mistake,” he murmured. “Your slave told me that, but it slipped my mind.”
“Milo’s not my slave,” I said sharply. I looked around the room, which had steadied. It was bare except for some baskets, a few clay pots, one plain wooden storage box, and a tiny hearth well away from the straw where I lay. Light and air came in through the smoke-hole in the roof. The reek of fish and the sea clung to everything. “Where is he? Is he all right?”
“He’s fine. You’re both safe and there’s no one near to overhear me call you by your true name.
”
”
Esther M. Friesner (Nobody's Prize (Nobody's Princess, #2))
“
It’s not a spiderweb, you old fool, it’s the pull for the light.” She reached around him and tugged on the string. The naked hundred-watt bulb came on with a snap, blinding both of them for a moment. Blinking as her eyes adjusted, Taylor stared down the stairs, the light illuminating only the immediate stairwell. Fitz was grumbling behind her. She un-latched the snap on her holster, slipped her Glock out of the creaking leather. Holding it at her side, she started down. There was a landing, and she stopped, cautious, sticking the gun and her head around the corner at the same time, just in case. She saw nothing to alarm her, and returned the weapon to its holster as she went down the remaining steps. There was a light switch at the base of the stairs. Taylor flipped on the overhead fluorescent. It was a standard basement: cement floor, unfinished walls on three sides, one painted, as if the owners had contemplated finishing the room and wanted to see what it would look like. The barest whiff of stale air indicated a minor mold problem; the floor was cluttered with stacks of cardboard boxes, bicycles, sleds. All the material that wouldn’t fit nicely in the garage was placed haphazardly down here. It was just a storage space, probably only four hundred square feet: twenty feet deep and twenty long. Certainly nothing exciting. She returned the weapon to its holster. They did a pass through, looking behind boxes, but Taylor didn’t see anything out of place.
”
”
J.T. Ellison (Judas Kiss (Taylor Jackson #3))
“
Cyra.” Teka raised an eyebrow at me outside the ship’s little bathroom when I got up for my shift. I was dressed only in underwear and my sweater from the day before. I avoided her eyes as I searched the ship’s storage room for a spare mechanic’s uniform. We were all running out of clothes. Hopefully they would provide for us on Ogra.
Teka cleared her throat. She was leaning against the wall, arms folded, a plain black eye patch covering her missing eye.
“I don’t have to worry about little Kereseth-Noavek spawn running around someday, do I?” She yawned. “Because I really don’t want to.
”
”
Veronica Roth (The Fates Divide (Carve the Mark, #2))
“
Cyra.” Teka raised an eyebrow at me outside the ship’s little bathroom when I got up for my shift. I was dressed only in underwear and my sweater from the day before. I avoided her eyes as I searched the ship’s storage room for a spare mechanic’s uniform. We were all running out of clothes. Hopefully they would provide for us on Ogra.
Teka cleared her throat. She was leaning against the wall, arms folded, a plain black eye patch covering her missing eye.
“I don’t have to worry about little Kereseth-Noavek spawn running around someday, do I?” She yawned. “Because I really don’t want to.”
“No,” I said with a snort. “Like I’d take that risk.”
“Never?” She frowned a little. “There’s this thing called ‘contraception,’ you know.”
I shook my head. “Nothing is certain.”
The little mocking expression she always wore when she was looking at me faded, leaving her serious.
“My currentgift,” I explained, holding up a hand to show her the shadows that curled around my knuckles, stinging me, “is an instrument of torture. You think I would risk inflicting that torture on something growing inside me? Even if it’s a very limited risk?” I shook my head. “No.”
She nodded. “That’s very decent of you.”
I added, “It’s not like…that is the only thing you can do with someone, anyway.”
She brought her hands up to her face, groaning.
“I did not want any information that specific!” she said, voice muffled.
“Then don’t ask probing questions, genius.
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”
Veronica Roth (The Fates Divide (Carve the Mark, #2))
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I face an immense ant colony that stretches the length of a wall, all the way up to the ten-meter-high ceiling. Acid-yellow ants the size of my pinky toil behind the glass. They swarm in a mound of legs and teeth over some carcass above the surface of the colony and make a line to carry the food from the top desert level down into the belly of their labyrinth, past storage rooms, barns for aphids, egg hatcheries and nurseries filled with squirming larvae. In the center of the colony, an obese queen the size of a small cat with a swollen, purple abdomen excretes transparent eggs that are ferried away in the mouths of workers with black mandibles.
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Pierce Brown (Iron Gold (Red Rising Saga, #4))
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I peered inside. My room was filled with cartons. Big boxes from floor to ceiling.
Wow!
“Are all those presents for me?” I asked.
Mom laughed. “Presents? All those boxes? Of course not!” She cracked up.
I knew it had to be too good to be true.
“Well—what’s the surprise, then?” I asked.
“Matt,” she began, “I’ve been thinking about what you said the other day. And I decided you were right. Your room is too small for you. So I’ve turned it into a storage closet.
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R.L. Stine (Don't Go to Sleep! (Goosebumps, #54))
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Expect minimizing your storage spaces to take time. These spaces are filled with items that took years to accumulate, so it will take more than one day to get through it all. For me, it was a multiweek process to minimize our basement in my spare time. Set a realistic schedule for yourself.
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Joshua Becker (The Minimalist Home: A Room-by-Room Guide to a Decluttered, Refocused Life)
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For the most part, these items in storage aren't consumables. They're durable goods that we don't use or even look at very often- and that's a clue right there that many of them are candidates for minimizing.
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Joshua Becker (The Minimalist Home: A Room-by-Room Guide to a Decluttered, Refocused Life)
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Do you want your home products like an Over the Door storage organizer? Do you enjoy the opportunity to display up your specific way? Users might obtain three objectives with the correct Door hooks. Without their large assortment of hooks and hangers, you can put your clothes back, robes, and towels off the floor and out of crowded cabinets.
Choose the coat hooks over door and wall hangers that are right for you. You'll find multicolored hooks that may brighten up a child's room or create a pop of color to a hallway or bathroom wall. You'll find a variety of hooks with clean cuts and outlines if you want modern and glossy. We also have round and classical Door hooks Hanger, as well as individual hooks and wall hanging rows —
Basically any type of hook you could possibly want or require. You can also choose from a range of materials, including wood, plastic, and metals, in a range of sizes to suit your tastes and needs.
For the correct spot, the perfect coat hooks over door
Numerous hangers will fit depending on what you want to attach and where you want to hang it. Our over the door storage organizer can be used in a variety of ways. Some are strung in predefined rows, while others are hung individually so you may pick how you want them to hang. Larger hooks can also be used to hang heavy clothing, whereas smaller hooks can be used to hang hand towels or dish cloths.
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unjumbly
“
Two things happen when a room isn’t defined: it becomes a storage room (and storage rooms aren’t good places to hang out or to sleep), or it becomes a dumping ground for temporary things that become less temporary and eventually turn into storage.
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Dana K. White (Decluttering at the Speed of Life: Winning Your Never-Ending Battle with Stuff)
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The human subconscious is the attic of the soul, a storage room for inconvenient truths, but it’s also probably the place in our minds that understands our need and desire to continually transition in our lives. All a lot of us want to do is adjust parts of ourselves to feel comfortable living our lives, not to exist with one foot in the attic and the other in the living room. It is crucial that every door of every room in our soul stays open. It is crucial that light and air runs throughout our house in order to keep a healthy, happy home for our soul and our psyche to live in.
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Munroe Bergdorf (Transitional: In One Way or Another, We All Transition)
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At Everything Entertainment, we can save you time and money with our temporary warehouse solutions. We have turn key solutions for all your warehouse needs. We can install these structures on concrete, asphalt, soil or just about any surface. Our structures can be free of any interior support allowing you room for all your equipment and maximum storage area. We have all kinds of sizes available. The best part is that we can have you up and running very quickly so you start doing what matters.
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”
Temporary Warehouse Storage NY
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In the morning when I went to school, my father would put on his one good suit and his gray felt hat and ride down in the elevator with the other men on their way to the office. From the lobby he would walk down to the basement, to the windowless storage room that came with our apartment. That was where he worked. There, he hung up the suit and hat and wrote all morning in his boxer shorts, typing away on his portable Underwood set up on a folding table. At lunchtime he would put the suit back on and ride up in the elevator. In
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Susan Cheever (Home Before Dark)