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nekojitachan · 7 years ago

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❛❛ I know how you look at him - even though you’re not his. ❜❜ (gimme angst gimme gimme gimme)

Aaah, you know I had to do this one for you since you’re so amazing! ❤️️❤️️❤️️ ❤️️ ❤️️ ❤️️ ❤️️ I hope it doesn’t disappoint?

So, Ravens!Neil, Ravens!Andrew, soulmates but with a huge dose of angst! Uhm… mention of Andrew’s past and of COURSE Riko, some slight abuse but I’d say… T rating? And swearing, of course swearing….

*******

Andrew was used to not getting what he wanted, to Fatealways fucking him over in various ways. There was the fact that he was the twin which Tilda had given upfor adoption and the long chain of nightmare foster ‘families’. There wasfinally finding what he’d thought was a home with Cass Spear and then Drake showing up to ruin it (to ruinhim). There had been the time in juvie, only for Pig Higgins to meddle andLuther to be an annoyance and off to Columbia Andrew had gone.

Things hadn’t gotten any better there, had they? Oh no,there it had been Tilda and Aaron and yet another new mess, had been Nickystepping in to try to make things better and the night out in Eden’s parkinglot with its ensuing consequences. Had been Andrew picking up Exy back in juvieas a means to escape some of the mandatory therapy sessions (everyone trying toget into his head and beneath his skin, everyone trying to control him), and then an attempt to keep an eye on Aaron, whichhad then led to a bunch of annoying birdies paying him a visit.

He didn’t give a shit about scholarships or Edgar Allan orthe best team in NCAA Class I division, about the promises of fame and fortunewhen the only thing that got him up each medicated day was the promise he’dmade to his brother. Yet an arrogant Riko Moriyama and demanding Kevin Day hadbrought with them a pretty shadow with red hair and a sardonic grin bearing a ‘3’tattoo on his left cheek, one Nathaniel Wesninski. Andrew had the impressionthat he was there as someone closer to Andrew’s age since the kid hadn’tgraduated yet and wasn’t ‘officially’ a Raven even though he bore the stupidPerfect Court tramp stamp and had lived at Edgar Allan the last few years.

All he knew was that he was in the middle of his fifthvariation of ‘fuck off and fuck you’ to Moriyama and Day when Wesninski shifteda little closer (he thought that Day had given him a push), and then it had happened; both of them stiffenedin reaction, Wesninski’s eyes widening a little but still the big grin onAndrew’s as Wesninski clutched at his left forearm and Andrew rubbed his, atthe throbbing area hidden beneath his armband.

At the dark patch of skin which could never be excised, nomatter how much he or anyone (Drake)had tried – it was his soul mark, after all, was waiting for his ‘other half’to find him so it could reveal its true form so he’d know that they’d finallycrossed paths (Drake at first had been bitter that it hadn’t changed for him,and then taunted Andrew that it never would change, that his soulmate wouldnever want him).

Wesninski was quick to drop his right hand, as was Andrew,but Riko Moriyama had noticed and snatched at the redhead’s left wrist with apleased grin. “Did it happen? Do you have something to show us, Nathaniel?” heasked in a too bright voice while Wesninski flinched, the motion slight. Hisfingers dug into the smaller boy’s forearm as he yanked back the sleeve of theblack shirt to reveal a bright black mark against skin marred by what looked tobe a few thin scars – an infinity symbol with a north star placed over thecenter of it. “That’s new,” Moriyama said as he turned toward Andrew whileWesninski – Nathaniel – shook his head.

“I… it’s nothing,” Nathaniel tried to argue, which surprisedAndrew since everyone (almost everyone) was so eager to find their soulmates;his words made Day stare at him in shock.

Moriyama clicked his tongue in disagreement. “No it’s not,you just found your soulmate!” He gave Andrew a sharp grin. “Your soulmate andour newest goalie, isn’t this such a happy occasion?” As he spoke, he dug hisfingers even more into Nathaniel’s forearm, into his wrist, until Nathanielgulped and closed his eyes as if to bear the pain… but he didn’t pull away andhe didn’t try to fight back.

Andrew never wanted a soulmate. He refused to believe thatsomeone was ‘his’, that he was tied to another person because of some stupidtwist of fate, that they were meant to be together because of some stupid markon their bodies when he could only stand to touch someone on his carefullydefined terms, when he knew thatsomeone wouldn’t willing choose anyone as broken and tainted as himself.

Yet he signed the contract with Edgar Allan to be theirgoalie for five years, signed it for room and board and a yearly allowance, andeven argued for an hardship scholarship for Aaron (there was no way they’dallow his brother on the team, not at his level of skill, but as long as Aaronkept his grades up he could get a Bachelor’s degree in Biology without havingto whore himself out for loans and then go elsewhere for medical school, whichwas all he wanted in the end). That saw through Andrew’s promise to his brotherand left Nicky free to finally return to Germany and Erik, so everyone (but Andrew)was happy (what else was new?).

He thought that Riko Moriyama only agreed to his terms as ameans to have that tighter of a leash on him, and as soon as they bothgraduated (Nicky was sticking around until Aaron left Columbia), Andrew was offto Edgar Allan for the start of training and any illusions of his lifeimproving were shattered.

Even though the Ravens had a nice big house on campus, theylived beneath Castle Evermore, the famous Exy stadium – all the better forTetsuji Moriyama to control them, he supposed. They were also formed into pairsfor the sake of sharing rooms and training, were told to stick together almostall the time… or else. Andrew hatedit, hated having to share space with another person, having someone close tohim all the time, being told he had to rely on that person, to trust them (notgoing to happen).

He hated that it wasn’t Nathaniel (he shouldn’t care).

He hated that Nathaniel was paired with Jean Moreau, number ‘4’of the Perfect Court, another backliner (he shouldn’t care, dammit).

He hated the way that Nathaniel looked at Moreau with suchtrust and affection, the way they were always murmuring in French to eachother, Moreau’s dark head bowed since he towered over Nathaniel’s 5’2” by atleast a foot (he didn’t care, dammit,it was just the drugs).

Andrew’s ‘partner’ was Ben Anders, a second year goalkeeperon the team, though his rank was much lower than Andrew’s – was ‘21’ and notthe ‘10’ that Andrew had been given. Apparently Day and Riko had argued aboutthat, with Day wanting Andrew as Perfect Court and Riko stating that Andrew hadto ‘prove’ it, so a compromise had been reached.

Anders wasn’t awful, he seemed to realize to give Andrewsome space and not to touch him, but he still was there all the time and… and he wasn’t Nathaniel. Apparently all ofthe Ravens knew that Andrew was Nathaniel’s (Nate’s) soulmate (he suspectedthat he had a certain captain to thank for that) and gave them odd lookswhenever they were near each other as if expecting some sort ofacknowledgement, but Nathaniel would only pay attention to Andrew when he wasout on the court, was in the goal.

Any other time his attention was reserved for Moreau andRiko and Day, for whatever Tetsuji (the ‘Master’) was telling the team to do,instructions on training drills or exercises. Despite his short stature he was morethan capable of taking on players twice his size on the court, in stymieingthem from the goal and snatching the ball from them to pass it on to Day orRiko or whoever else was on offense at the moment; the few times that Andrewwas in the goal which he was helping to defend they worked well together, wouldmanage an odd ‘sync’ where he could pass the ball to Nathaniel without any effortshould someone manage to get pass the kid and Moreau.

And then Nathaniel would be back to chasing after Moreauonce the skirmish was over, to sitting next to him and chatting aboutsomething, so animated and excited while Moreau smiled at him. Andrew didn’tunderstand it, especially since from what he’d seen in the showers (seen toomuch in the showers, as open as they were, seen the scars on both of thebackliners’ bodies which no one talked about), Moreau had his own soul mark – awave-like line overlaid with a fleur-de-lis.

Moreau belonged to someone else, someone not a Raven (notyet, or not anymore), so Nathaniel was fixated on someone who’d never be his.Was fixated on a man who wasn’t his soulmate.

From what Andrew could tell, few of the Ravens yet boresoulmate marks – Nathaniel, Moreau, Day, Lau, and Hebig. He and Nathaniel werethe only ones bound to each other, and they barely spoke more than a handful ofwords to each other. Yet any time Andrew performed ‘poorly’ during a practice,Riko would smile at him and tap his left forearm, right where the soul mark washidden beneath Andrew’s armband.

He’d grinned back at the prick one ‘afternoon’ anddeliberately missed all of the shots during the morning practice the next day,worn down by little sleep, by the memory of Drake’s hands on him, by how hecouldn’t leave the damn Nest and go out to drive away the awful feelings insideof him, by the fact that he was desperate for a cigarette and a drink and ten fucking minutes alone. What did itmatter if the ‘Master’ (never Andrew’s, never)beat him like he’d did Lincoln the other day for messing up the drills? Andrewwas used to pain.

Riko’s grin was a cruel, bright slash across his face whenNathaniel showed up the next morning with two black-eyes and a split lip,barely able to walk from being hunched over in pain as he hobbled onto thecourt with his racquet wavering in his hands. Moreau gave Andrew a look of pureloathing as he took his place beside his partner, and Nathaniel ignored Andrewthe entire ‘day’.

Despite his many faults, Andrew was a fast learner and didn’tslack off after that. He knew it would only get worse when classes started andAaron showed up, and had to resist the urge to dig off the damn black mark fromhis arm, to pull out his knives and put them to use.

There were numerous scars on his left (and right) arm fromhim trying to make the pain end in one way or another, but none ever took on that patch of skin. Fate indeed was amocking bastard. At least suffering through ridiculous sixteen hour daysworking out and repeating stupid drills and wasting time on an Exy court meantthat he didn’t have much time to answer Nicky’s bothersome calls. No, he justpopped his pills and counted down the days until classes started when he couldsee Aaron again and reminded himself about why he couldn’t bring his racquetdown on Riko’s or Moreau’s head.

It was getting near the end of summer training when Riko,Day and Moreau were off for some media event that Andrew came across Nathanielin one of the break rooms while fetching some coffee for himself; somethingtwisted inside of him to see the backliner wearing a sweatshirt with Moreau’sname and number across the back.

Nathaniel eyed him for a moment and resumed staring into themug of tea he was making. “You could be Perfect Court, you know, if you tried alittle harder.”

Andrew huffed as he set the pot of coffee back on the burnerand searched through the cupboards in vain for any sugar, yet another reason tohate the Nest. “Oh, he speaks, what an honor.” And of course it was about Exy.

That earned him a sour look as Nathaniel threw out theteabag. “Ever think there’s a reason why I don’t? Why don’t you try harder outon the-“

Andrew held out his left hand to stop the nonsense. “I don’tcare.”

Now Nathaniel appeared frustrated. “But you signed thecontract and came here. You’re playing Exy and everything, how can’t you care?”

How could someone be so stupid? “It’s a means to an end,”Andrew said as he pulled out some almond milk and grimaced before he added itto the coffee. “Not all of us give a damn about this stupid sport.”

“It’s not stupid,” Nathaniel argued. “So what, you’re doingit because of your brother? That’s a waste of talent.” Andrew gave him apointed look as he slurped his awful coffee, suffering through the taste for thesake of caffeine, the one vice he sort of was allowed. “You could have so muchif you just tried,” Nathaniel continued, his tea neglected on the counter andleft hand rubbing at his tattooed cheek, the sleeve of the overlarge sweatshirtsliding down enough to reveal the mark. “Go on to the pros and Court and… andgo anywhere. Could have anything youwant.”

He sounded jealous and a bit wistful.

“Not anything,”Andrew remarked as he lowered his mug, his gaze intent on Nathaniel. No, henever seemed to get what he wanted, now did he? Not the home with Cass, thebrother with Aaron, the soulmate with the gorgeous face and big blue eyes andbright red hair. It was all right, though, he was used to it by then.

It seemed to take a moment for that to sink in withNathaniel, who backed up against the counter near his mug. “I… no.” He shookhis head as he rubbed at his left forearm, right above the wrist where thedetested black mark was sunk into his skin. “It doesn’t matter, does it? It doesn’t mean anything, doesn’t mean we’rereally made for each other.” It sounded as if he was trying to convince himselfmore than anything. “Doesn’t mean we’ll be happy or fall in love.” He spat outthe words as if they were vile to him. “It’s just a meaningless symbol meant tohurt us, to betray us, so I’m not falling for it, I know better.”

It almost sounded like he was reciting those words frommemory.

Part of Andrew wanted to laugh – imagine that, someone whohated the mark just as much as he did, who thought it was bullshit, too. Whatwere the odds that it would be hissoulmate? That it wasn’t just another sign that Nathaniel was ‘meant’ for him?

Oh yes, Fate really did hate him, didn’t it?

“So what, you think you can just ignore it?” he asked with awide grin, even though that was exactly what he planned to do (even though he’dcome here in part because of that damn mark). “You think you can find someoneelse, someone who’ll ignore it?” As that acrid emotion filled him once more, asit burned hot and violent inside of his chest (it wasn’t real, that emotion, hetold himself) when Nathaniel flinched as he leaned a little closer. “You think Moreau will ignore it?”

“You don’t know anything,”Nathaniel told him, his tone sullen and expression guarded.

“I know how you look at him - even though you’re not his,” Andrewtaunted as that acrid emotion flared even hotter inside of him, strong enoughto burn through the high of the meds. “How you follow him around like apathetic puppy. Tell me, does he buy into that mark meaning nothing, too?” His gringrew wider when Nathaniel was quiet. “Oh ho, poor little birdy, yearning forsomeone who will never be his. I bethe puts up with you because you’re his widdle roommate, his partner, thispathetic child Tetsuji told him to watch over and now it’s even better, youbranded as someone else’s pro-“

He ducked as Nathaniel threw the mug of tea at him. “Fuckyou!” Nathaniel screamed, his face a mask of rage and fear, of all things. “You’rejust like him! I hate you! I’d burn this off if I could!” he yelled as he ran fromthe break room.

No, Andrew never got what he wanted. Though that time… thattime it looked as if he might be part of the reason why.

He left his half-finished mug of coffee behind as hestrolled out of the break room, past the various Ravens in the hallway who gavehim a wide berth. Just a few more days and Aaron would be there, would owe himenough to get his hands on some alcohol at the least to make Andrew’s time atthe Nest bearable.

As bearable as it could be, stuck with a soulmate who hatedhim, who he’d never have. Just one more thing on a long list of what he wantedand could never have.

He didn’t know who he hated more just then, himself orMoreau.

Or Nathaniel. He really, really hated Nathaniel just then.

******

#prompts #andreil #a little sad?#tfc #raven!neil #edgar allan ravens #raven!andrew #pining #OMFG so much pining #soulmates #now i feel bad and need to write something fluffy?#and of course I'm writing raven's partner #i'll figure it out

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luobingmeis · 7 years ago

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hawk in the raven nest, chapter nineteen

A/N: next chapter, we meet our beloved foxes!!!

tw(s): chapters 16-20 deal with sexual assault, mentions of abuse

read on ao3

previous chapter

chapter list

Waterhouse did come to the house the next day to take testimonies, and Andrew wasn’t lying when he said that they wouldn’t leave until Betsy and Abby did. They spent the night in the house, more specifically on the couch, and Nathaniel had a feeling Andrew didn’t sleep. When the morning came, it wasn’t hard to miss the bags under Andrew’s eyes. Nathaniel wondered if he didn’t sleep because he had too much on his mind, or if he didn’t because he wanted to stay up on watch for his brother.

The house was quiet for the most part, despite there being seven people in it. The adults usually spoke in a murmured fashion, low enough so that only they could hear each other’s words. Nicky stuck in the living room with them, and Andrew let him, but he stayed quiet most of the time. Nathaniel found Nicky staring at him a couple times, and he just knew that Nicky was curious about the Raven, who never met any of them, who followed his cousin to a different state.

Andrew did end up speaking to the lawyer. He refused to do it in the house where people could hear him, but Nathaniel assumed that Andrew knew how pivotal his testimony would be for Aaron’s case. Nathaniel still felt sick at even the thought of what Andrew was saying about what had happened.

Aaron only came downstairs when Waterhouse needed to speak to him. He didn’t look any better than the day before, but Nathaniel hadn’t expected him to. He was wearing the same sweats and sweatshirt that he left the hospital in the day before, and his head was still ducked down in its hood. Andrew watched as he made his way to the kitchen, but he didn’t say anything.

Once Waterhouse left was when everyone else started to disperse. The adults had to get back to Palmetto, but they made it clear before they left that the others, especially Aaron, could stay in the house as long as they needed to. Aaron decided to stay, not ready to be back with his teammates yet, and Nicky decided to stay with him. Nathaniel expected Andrew to do the same, but instead Andrew informed them that they have to go “pay Kevin a visit”.

So, Nathaniel found himself back in Andrew’s car on their way to Palmetto State University. He vividly remembered all the orange, but he knew it wouldn’t look nearly as bright. They would be walking into the Foxes’ territory uninvited. When they went there in October for their game, everyone expected their arrival and they wouldn’t have to worry about actually interacting with them. But now, it was just Nathaniel and Andrew. They had no protection behind gear or other teammates. Not to mention the fact that no one outside of Nicky and Aaron, not even Kevin, knew they were in South Carolina.

Nathaniel didn’t think he could handle his racing heartbeat, so he turned to asking Andrew the question that’s been plaguing him since the previous night.

“Why wouldn’t we leave until Abby and Betsy left?” Nathaniel was leaning his head against the window, watching everything fly by outside.

“I wasn’t leaving them with Aaron.”

“Yeah, but why?” Nathaniel asked. “There’s obviously a reason.”

“You already asked a question,” Andrew said. “You could at least be polite and let me ask one.”

Nathaniel noticed that this had become a common thing done between them. A question for a question, answer for an answer. It was a game of trust and a game of truths.

“What do you want to know?”

“Why did you come here?” Andrew asked. Nathaniel raised his eyebrows and looked over at Andrew. Andrew tended to ask questions about his life before the Ravens. He hadn’t expected a question about his personal motives. For a moment, he thought of deterring the question with saying that he answered that when they left. But, thinking back, that wasn’t really an answer, nor was it really a question. Andrew asked if he was coming, and Nathaniel said that he followed him. Andrew wouldn’t accept that bullshit answer.

“Because I wanted to,” Nathaniel said, hoping Andrew would hear the truth in it. “We’re supposed to stick together in this. That means not letting you go to a different state alone.”

Andrew glanced at him out of the corner of his eye. “One-hundred-and-four percent,” Andrew muttered.

Nathaniel huffed out a breath and rolled his eyes. “Are you gonna answer mine?”

Andrew didn’t say anything. He stared out the windshield at the traffic ahead of them, and his fingers resumed their tapping on the steering wheel. Nathaniel stared at him but Andrew acted like he didn’t even notice him. He was ready to accept that Andrew wasn’t going to give him an answer when Andrew said, “I don’t trust women around Aaron.” Nathaniel raised an eyebrow. “His mother beat him, and I had to be the one to take care of it. Aaron and I made a pact that we would stick together in high school, which meant that I had to stand in between him and everything else out to get him, whether it be his mother or drugs. This was the only time I’ve seen him do something for himself.”

Nathaniel blinked, processing what Andrew had just told him. One thing stood out to him out of everything else. Andrew had said that his and Aaron’s mother crashed her car and died, and Andrew proceeded to use that money to buy a fancy car. He had a feeling things were a lot more complicated than that. “ ‘Took care of it’?” he asked. “Something tells me it’s more fatal than that.”

Finally, Andrew glanced at him. He wore no expression, yet his next words sent a chill down Nathaniel’s spine, “I told her what would happen if she hit him again. Unfortunately for her, she didn’t listen. Unfortunately for Aaron, he didn’t either.”

Nathaniel furrowed his eyebrows, trying to make the connection. He then remembered Kevin’s off-hand comments about how Aaron never asked about his brother, and how Nathaniel had never heard Andrew talk about Aaron until recently. For brothers that, after not knowing each other for a large portion of their life, made a pact to stick together through everything and protect each other, it seemed rather odd that they preferred acting like the other didn’t exist. Especially after one saved the other from an abusive parent.

Something then occurred to Nathaniel. “Aaron didn’t take your side, did he?”

“I don’t like liars Nathaniel, you know that.” It was the unspoken truth. Andrew vowed to stick by Aaron’s side in high school as long as Aaron did the same. Aaron taking his mother’s side, after everything Andrew did to protect him, was the knife in Andrew’s back. Andrew’s trust in people was bone-deep; he would go to extreme measures to keep the people he vowed to protect safe. To turn against him and break that promise was a betrayal to Andrew. Once their pact was broken, so was any bond they tried to form as brothers.

There was something still there, though, between the brothers. Something that possibly hinted at them one day being able to remake their trust in one another. If Andrew truly didn’t care about Aaron, he wouldn’t have gone to Columbia. Nathaniel just hoped that, one day, each of them would be able to see that things could be different.

Nathaniel could think of so many more questions he wanted to ask Andrew, and so many more answers he would be willing to give up, but nothing felt appropriate.

He let the rest of the ride to Palmetto be silent.

#aftg #tfc #neil josten #andrew minyard #kevin day #stuff i write #hawk in the raven nest

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humongousvoidbear · 7 years ago

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Weight Of The Idiot

Words: 1.8k

Summary: Basically Andrew being a shit and not telling anyone he's ill. Consequences include fainting during practice with the Foxes and inciting his boyfriend's rage.

Andrew collapsed. In the middle of practise. Neil saw this all happen as if in slow motion, one minute he was aiming the ball at the goal and the next Andrew was swaying as he ultimately fell. Neil's heart stopped. All barriers, all pretences of not caring and nothing came to a screeching halt when he saw Andrew's slow descent to the ground. Andrew had been distant since this morning, he hadn't kissed Neil once since they had both woken up, but Neil had just attributed that to him having a bad day. Bad days when his mind was filled with memories he couldn't stop. Bad days when even a brush of a finger was enough to bring violence in those hazel eyes. So Neil left it and gave Andrew space as Andrew had often done for Neil. Neil couldn't breathe. Watching his rock, his promise collapse without warning was enough to scrape his heart raw. He couldn't move, but was just staring at Andrew's unmoving body. Seconds or hours passed and then Matt's voice, "Neil!" And Neil dropped his extremely expensive racket to the ground and jogged towards the goal. The rest of the Foxes had already gathered at a safe distance from Andrew, even now knowing not to touch him without permission. Neil was unbelievably grateful for that. Andrew's chest was moving up and down, he was alive. Relief so intense coursed through Neil's body he felt light headed.

He knelt down beside Andrew, and hurriedly removed his gloves. He unlocked Andrew's head gear and removed his goalkeeper gloves. "Andrew?", Neil asked softly, not wanting the Foxes to hear the edge in his voice. But Andrew did, even in his almost unconsious state he did. "I'm fine.", he said slowly opening his eyes. "Can I touch your head?" Andrew nodded with the little pint of strength he had. Burning. His forehead under Neil's hand was as hot as the dashboard lighter had felt in Neil's cheek. "Andrew Minyard you fucking asshole.", Neil said as he swore viciously. "Is he dying?", Nicky asked, concern lacing his voice. "He's burning up. Maybe a 103 or a 104 degree Farheniet. We need to get him somewhere cold.", Neil replied. "I'm still here.", Andrew said, his voice strained. "Shut the fuck up.", Neil replied. "But practice?", Kevin obviously asked. "Kevin for once in your goddamned life keep your fucking mouth shut or else Neil will bury you alive.", Matt told him. Neil had never looked at one of them like that. He had never let Nathaniel Wesninski's rage show. Kevin wisely kept his mouth shut when he saw the look Neil gave him. Neil didn't open his mouth, he knew that if he did, something terrible would come out. Thankfully, Renee intervened. She carefully knelt down on Andrew's other side and forced Neil's furious gaze away from Kevin. "Let's get him inside.", she told Neil. "Andrew, Neil and I are going to help you up, okay?", she told Andrew. Andrew was feeling too sick to reply. Renee looked at Neil when he didn't. Neil hated to do this without consent, but he slid his hands under Andrew's shoulders, the grass brushing his bare hands. He hoisted Andrew up with Renee's help. "Someone go and get a fucking tub or something with ice.", Neil said. "And go tell Wymack and Abby." He saw Dan, Nicky, Matt, Allison and Kevin run up ahead, immediately doing what he asked for, leaving Aaron alone with Renee and Neil. Aaron didn't say anything, but the crease between his eyebrows betrayed his worry. Neil and Renee slowly, so slowly carried Andrew's heavy, unco-operating body off the court.

"Go stick him in the shower, we've got cold water running. Nicky, Allison and Matt have gone to find Abby. Kevin's getting Wymack.", Dan told him when they reached the inner court. Neil huffed out a thanks and led the way to the locker room. A shower was on and he and Renee eased Andrew's body onto the floor beneath it, his back to the wall. Renee took a few steps back after this but Neil gently took hold of Andrew's head and held it under the freezing water, slowly moving his hands through Andrew's hair, the water seeping down the back of Andrew's neck. His body was still too feverish. "I'm fine.", Andrew said yet again. Neil finally understood why everyone else found these words so infuriating when he said them. Neil didn't reply. "I leave you all alone for a minute and this happens.", Wymack said from a corner of the room. Neil had been too distracted to notice Kevin and him were already in the locker room when they arrived. All of the Foxes were. Wymack shoved Neil aside and knelt in front of Andrew. "Andrew, do you want to go to the hospital?" "No." "Okay. Neil get him out of his gear. It's too thick and is increasing his body temperature. Get him in a jersey and shorts and take him to Abby.", he got up, "Everyone else, out. Now." They all left without a word, leaving Neil and Andrew alone in the locker room's shower stall.

Neil switched off the running water after Andrew had cooled down a bit. "Get up.", Neil said and helped Andrew up. He was barely aware of his own sopping clothes. Andrew's hands were shaking. He sat Andrew down on one of the benches and picked up the closest jersey and shorts. It didn't matter who's they were. Andrew was trying to remove the paddings in his things and chest, but his hands were shaking too much. Neil batted his hands away and did it for him. He removed Andrew's shirt and leg gear and wiped Andrew with a drytowel. Andrew refused to remove his armbands but Neil had expected that. He removed his own. Andrew's eyes flickered towards his when he dropped them on the bench. Andrew discarded his wet ones and quickly put on Neil's. Neil had successfully managed to get Andrew into dry clothes. "Neil.", Andrew said. "We have to go to Abby, come on." "Neil.", Andrew said again. Neil refused to meet his eyes. "You could've told me." "I know.", Andrew replied calmly, which increased the fire in Neil's gut. He was tired of not knowing things. Neil was breathing hard now. His anger threatened to erupt but this wasn't the time. "You're burning up. Let's go." "No", that stubborn bastard replied tiredly from the bench. "Look at me when I talk to you.", Andrew said and raised his arm. Even half deranged, he had seen the ungodly amount of panic, of fear that had slipped into Neil's eyes on the court. Andrew threaded his fingers into Neil's curls and pulled his face towards himself, so that it was level with his own. Those shocking blue eyes were wild. A flurry of emotions, too complex to discern passing through them. "I said I'm fine." "Liar. You can barely hold my head right now. It's draining you. I'm not fucking stupid Andrew." Andrew's blank face was completely opposite to that of Neil's. Andrew dropped his hand to his side. Neil straightened. "Let's go.", he said for the third damn time. This time, Andrew didn't argue.

"Leave this ice pack on your head. Do not remove it till it doesn't melt and when it does, put a new one on. You're staying here tonight, you have any problem, even a hiccup, ring me immediately. A 104 degree fever is no joke Andrew Minyard. Don't move. Doctor's orders.", Abby said and turned around to leave.

"I would never disobey you Abby. Not to forget this murder magnet here won't let me.", Andrew said, sounding oddly disappointed. "I'll be back in a few hours to check up on you kid. Take care.", she smiled and left them both alone. Andrew was lying on the bed in the room and Neil was sitting on one of the armchairs. He had changed into dry clothes while Andrew got checked. The rest of the Foxes, as per Kevin's insistence had continued practice. Neil for the first time in his life, had decided not to join them. "Come here.", Andrew said. Abby had given him a few tablets to give him energy and regulate his body temperature but he still was too worn out to move. This was perhaps the first time Neil had seen Andrew without any strength. Neil obediently got up and stood next to the bed. Andrew had a giant ice pack on his head and a blanket covering his body. He was surprised Andrew had been so compliant. "Enough with the anger." "I'm not angry.", Neil lied. Andrew stared at him, unblinking. "Talk." A beat of silence. "You should've told me you fucking moron. You don't feel sick in a minute. It takes time. You should've fucking told me. It's not that hard, just a few words maybe. Or just a "Hey Neil my body temperature is getting abnormally high" or maybe even an "I'm sick" would fucking suffice. But that doesn't work for you, does it? You have to pass out before anyone can help you.", Neil was fuming. He didn't care that he was over reacting. Seeing Andrew, probably the strongest person he knew, abruptly collapse had reminded him of his own mother. Both of them thought they were too strong and invincible to handle shit on their own. At least he had an inkling that something was wrong with his mother. If what happened to his mom happened to Andrew, he would lose himself.

Andrew understood all this. He knew just by looking at Neil's ragged face, the sheer force of will he was using to keep himself, his temper in check. "I'm not your mother junkie, I'm not going to die.", came Andrew's bored reply. To anyone else, this would have sounded rude. To Neil it said, I know what you're thinking. Calm down. I'm still here. It was enough. "Don't you ever do that again. I know you don't give a flying fuck about your own well being, unfortunately, I do. Tell me next time. It's not that hard." Andrew fought the urge to roll his eyes. Drama queen, he almost said. "Remove this fucking ice pack from my head." Neil knew better than to argue. As soon as he removed tha pack and set it aside, Andrew's hand snagged his collar and pulled his face down. He stopped Neil's face a hairs breath from his own, Neil's hands planted on either side of him. "Yes or no?" "Yes." "Even with all the germs?" He and Andrew were close enough Neil could see the tiny freckles beside Andrew's eyes. They were beautiful. "Even with all the germs.", he confirmed and finally closed the distance between them.

((send me prompts if you wish to))

#andreil #andrew minyard #neil josten #all for the game #aftg #the foxhole court #tfc #sick!andrew #nora sakavic #fanfic #hc #headcanon

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nickireadstfc · 7 years ago

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The Raven King, Chapter 8 – Epic Ass-Kicking, Pt 1: We Get Our Asses Kicked

In which – surprise! It’s Ravens vs Foxes Death Time™! Featuring: American colleges Doing Too Fucking Much, me thinking up crack AUs at the worst times, Kevandreil pulling some sweet (read: badass) moves, and Kevin being No 1 Proud Dad.

Sounds good? Then it’s time for Nicki to read The Raven King.

So, after the absolute sassfest two chapters ago and the gigantic dump of backstory last chapter, I thought this chapter would be a bit shorter, a bit more chill, a nice lil interlude before we get on with the fuckery again.

Well.

HO FUCKING BOY.

DOES NORA HAVE NEWS FOR ME.

October arrived without warning. Neil knew their match against the Ravens was coming up fast, but it still startled him when he realized they were already a week into the month. The game was only six days away.

Where did that come from.

Seriously, a few chapters ago Neil was still angsting about having to leave the Foxes after the Raven game, it seemed like the absolute end of the journey, and now it’s just… Here?

I AM NOT READY I DID NOT PREPARE WHAT IS HAPPENING.

To start this ride off, we are once again reminded of how fucking extra American colleges can be.

For real. They do not fuck around when it comes to school spirit.

Lawns are trimmed. Floors are scrubbed. Banners are hung from every square inch. Cheerleaders don’t sleep for days. Neither do bands. They have motivation parties. The mascot disturbs classes just to promote sportsball. They clean the fucking pond.

Seriously, these two pages read like the textbook definition of Doing Too Much.

Fucking chill.

Thursday was when Dan finally started to lose her cool. (…) Seeing people finally rally behind her and her team flustered her. She kept a brave face in front of the cameras, but she spent Thursday night in Matt’s bed.

My daughter :’(((((( you’re the best you’ll be fine don’t worry.

Hey, speaking of Doing Too Much: Remember when I was raving (hah) on about how Extra and Dramatic™ the Ravens were?

Kevin tried explaining Raven synchrony earlier this week, but Neil almost wished he could forget that story. (…) They were all enrolled in the same undergraduate degree and took their classes together in groups of three or four. They weren’t allowed to go anywhere without taking at least one teammate with them. They weren’t supposed to socialize with anyone outside the team.

What the actual fuck.

Why is Extra and Dramatic™ always paired with borderline abusive in this series. Why.

Their intense lifestyle, forced integration, and vicious punishments put them on a whole different scale than any of their opponents. They were, in short, the complete opposite of everything the Foxes knew and understood. Tonight’s game pitted a hive mind against a fractured bunch of rejects.

That last sentence is one of my favourite sentences in that book so far.

Also, what the actual fuck.

My dudes, I’m starting to get the sinking feeling y’all are getting your assess whooped big time tonight.

“Can you do this, Kevin?” Abby asked, searching his face for any sign he was okay. “Can you play?”

“If I am breathing, I can play,” Kevin said. “This is my game, too.”

Well, at least now we know what Tattooface McExtra over here is getting engraved on his tombstone.

If I am breathing, I can play, jesus fuck. My eyes are doing somersaults in their sockets right now.

“Neil, get at least five points or I’ll have you running marathons every month until graduation.”

Neil stared at him. “Five points?”

“You got four last week.”

“We weren’t playing Edgar Allan last week, Coach,” Neil said.

“Irrelevant,” Wymack said with a jerk of his hand.

Gotta love him. What a dude.

Wymack clapped his hands at his team until they fell in line.

“Let’s do this,” he said. “The sooner we kill these bastards, the sooner we can get roaring drunk at Abby’s place. I spent all damned morning stocking her fridge.”

GOTTA LOVE HIM. WHAT A DUDE.

#dicksoutforwymack

Neil looked up into a sea of orange. (…) [The Raven fans] had come in all black and took up an entire reserved section directly opposite the Foxes’ bench.

It is at this point that I have the idiotic realization that the Foxes and the Ravens together form the Wilde Kerle colours.

Why.

Why is my brain like this.

To all non-Germans reading this: Die Wilden Kerle (literally the wild guys/the wild bunch) is a German children’s book and film series about a ragtag football (meaning soccer) team. They are basically 10-year-old punks that stick it to the man, live and breathe football, and wear a lot of black and orange. They were huge around the time I was in elementary school and are probably the books that influenced me most as a child, aside from Harry Potter.

(The books were massively better than the films. Fight me.)

They look like this.

If anyone writes me a Wilde Kerle AU of TFC I will literally pay you in Ben & Jerry’s. No questions asked. This is the most bullshit AU idea I’ve had in a long time and it works.

Alright. Shut up, brain.

TIME TO FUCKING GO.

[The Ravens’ fight song] was a dark and heavy tune, an intimidating message of death and domination. The Ravens took their image seriously. Neil guessed they had a lot of intensive counseling in their futures.

Even in times like this, the Josten Sass™ cannot be tamed.

And they’re taking their spots, holy shit you guys, we’re actually doing this. I’m not ready.

[Riko] stopped at Kevin’s side. He took his helmet off, but the cheer echoing off the court walls drowned out whatever he was saying. Kevin unstrapped his own helmet and hooked it over his fingers as he answered.

What did they say, what did they say, I need to know.

I also have the feeling I’ll find out soon enough and I will not fucking like it.

That Fucker™ also hugs Kevin shortly before the game starts. I want to punch him.

Get your dirty abusive hands off my dramatic idiot.

Alright. Is it starting yet?

Neil closed his eyes and breathed. He locked away everything he was, burying his father and Nathaniel and the Moriyamas into a mental safe for later. (…) He wasn’t Neil right now. He wasn’t anything or anyone but a Fox, and he had a game to play.

IT’S FUCKING STARTING.

And from the beginning on, as expected, this game is not messing around.

Neil almost lost track of the ball as it shot between the Raven strikers. (…) Riko moved in a blur, and the goal lit up red. The buzzer sounded to signal the point and the crowd screamed. (…)

They were only two minutes into the first half; it was the fastest anyone had ever scored against Andrew.

Well – fuck.

Ain’t that motivating.

The Ravens have come to collect their aforementioned ass-whooping, I fear.

Riko wasn’t going back to the starting spot but was headed for Andrew. Andrew moved to meet him and they faced each other with just the goal line between them. Andrew waved off whatever Riko said to him with a careless waggle of his hand, but Riko didn’t leave.

Seriously, what is it with That Fucker™ and talking to my boys at the most inopportune moments?

Fuck off.

The game continues, and I take back everything I said about orange sportsball games earlier: I bloody love this. I can’t quote anything because it is just too much, but this time I am actually invested in the game and it’s thrilling.

I mean, the Foxes are so, so outplayed by the Ravens. But still. Exciting.

I have to quote one thing, though, because it is the most awesome thing anyone does this chapter:

It’s Episode 1 of Kevandreil Pull Badass Sportsball Shit Together!

It wasn’t against the rules for goalkeepers to leave their goals, but it was extremely ill-advised considering how big their goals were and how fast a ball could move. A goalkeeper only risked it in extreme cases. Apparently tonight was one of those nights.

Oh shit vas happening??

Neil only needed a second to realize Andrew was sending the ball to him, and his heart beat with savage triumph. (…)

All those long nights learning Raven drills had to pay off here. The perfect rebound wasn’t just about getting the ball to hit the right racquet; it was getting there at the right angle so Kevin wouldn’t have to aim. (…)

It was the same trick the Raven strikers had been pulling all night, but the Ravens weren’t ready to see it from Neil and Kevin. (…) The Raven goal lit up red when Kevin slammed the ball against it.

FFFFUUUUUUUCCCKKKKK YEEEAAAAAHHHHHHH.

Kevin’s smile was fleeting but fierce. He didn’t say anything, but he didn’t have to. It was the first sign of approval Neil had gotten from him since they’d met and Neil felt it like an adrenaline boost.

After that, the game turns violent pretty quickly – which my brain thought to comment on with a brilliant rendition of the Weather Girls while reading.

It’s raining cards, halleluhja!

And then, it’s over as fast as it begun and sadly, yet unsurprisingly, the Foxes get #owned, leaving them with a thirteen-six score. Which, you know, sucks because that’s a seven point gap and that’s also thirteen points on a bastion of a goal.

But which also fucking rules because hello, SIX POINTS against the absolute Douchemasters Of Exy™ themselves.

As Neil watched, Andrew leaned over to pick his racquet up. He tried, anyway. He only got it a foot off the floor before he lost his grip again.

It reminded Neil of their first practice together, when Neil almost blew his arms out playing against Andrew.

Shit, that seems like lifetimes ago. Has it really only been a few months?

Man, time flies when you’re busy with angst, drama, and gay shit. :’)

The Ravens had taken an incredible hundred and fifty shots on goal; it was unbelievable Andrew had only missed thirteen of them.

A FUCKING HUNDRED AND FIFTY.

Hello, I’d like to file a request to Andrew Joseph Minyard? I’d for him to formally LET ME LOVE HIM.

Nobody who doesn’t care about this game plays like this. Nobody. Don’t ever tell me Andrew doesn’t give a shit. He can’t move his arms anymore, for chrissakes.

Kevin, bless his idiot heart, knows exactly how to deal with the situation at hand:

“So,” Kevin said, “did you have fun?”

Andrew was too tired to put any heat in his words. “You are despicable, Kevin Day. I don’t know why I keep you around.”

Ma frickin BOYS. <3

Sadly, we are not left off the court to lick our wounds (with vodka, preferably) before That Fucker™ has added his irrelevant shitty commentary.

“I cannot thank you for tonight’s game because I can’t call this debacle a game. I thought I knew what to expect when we came here tonight, but I am still embarrassed on your behalf. You have fallen so far, Kevin. You should have stayed down and saved us the trouble of forcing you back on your knees.”

I was about to go into a rant about That Fucker™’s endless shittiness and lack of any sportsmanship – but! But!! BUT!!!!!

“I’m satisfied,” Kevin said.

UHMMM. What?

It was the last response any of the Foxes expected from him. They forgot about Riko in favor of gaping at Kevin. “Not with their score or performance, but with their spirit. I was right. There’s more than enough here for me to work with.”

MY DUDE. MY BOY.

I’M SO???????

Kevin ‘Stoic And Mighty’ Day finally praising his team and being proud of them nobody fucking tOUCH ME :’)))))))))

If Kevin finally grows into the No 1 Fox Dad he was destined to be (after Wymack obvs) I might actually light myself on fire.

Y’know. I’m, like, cool with all this.

Kevin only smiled, slow and sure and pleased, and offered Andrew a hand. Andrew looked at it, then at Kevin, and let Kevin haul him to his feet. Renee was ready when Kevin let go and looped her arms around Andrew in a fierce hug.

A HUG.

Renee you actual angel from the heavens, somebody finally gave this boy what I have been waiting for for chapters now – somebody hug that sad aggressive bean, and somebody did.

#hugsoutforandrew, this is the realest shit, get it trending, I’m not okay.

Is the irrelevant shitty Raven nuisance still there?

“One man cannot carry you that far,” he said, sounding torn between incredulity and disgust. “Even you are not stupid to believe that. You should give up now.”

It was a threat, not friendly advice, but Kevin said, “One is enough to start with.”

Okay. Okay.

Kevin Day, an anxious mess just two chapters ago, being openly threatened by his abuser and proudly sassing back right to his face, with the strength of his fierce ragtag team at his back.

This may be my favourite Kevin moment of this series so far.

That Fucker™ fucks off after that, and the Foxes are left for traditional post-game pep talk with grumpy dad Wymack.

“You should be pretty fucking proud of yourselves right now.”

“Proud of that mess?” Aaron asked, tired and annoyed. “We were destroyed.” (…)

“I’m proud,” Allison said, earning a startled look from Nicky and a half-smile from Wymack. She turned a condescending sneer on Aaron, looking more like herself than she had since Seth died. “This is only your second season with us. I wouldn’t expect you to understand what a game like this means.”

And welcome back, Allison! <333

Fucking finally. Nothing like a bit of good ol’ arch-enemy Exy smackdown to get over your dead boyfriend grief.

And to close things off, Wymack puts the cherry on top of all the good things that have happened this chapter:

“Starting next week everyone’s finally back in their proper spots. If you two can run a full game against Edgar Allan, you’re ready to take on the rest of the season alone. Everyone else: thank you for your patience and cooperation while Kevin and Neil got adjusted. Renee especially – you’ve been a damn good sport this year. Welcome back to goal.”

YEAAHH BOOOOIIIII.

Nicki happy. Nicki out.

If you like what I do here and you want to help me continue writing, please consider buying me a coffee! Thank you so much <3

#nicki reads tfc #trk #aftg #tfc #nora sakavic #the raven king #all for the game #the foxhole court #yall I'm not okay

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networkingdefinition · 5 years ago

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Chimneys Quotes

Official Website: Chimneys Quotes

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• A cold blast hit him and he laughed at the sting as he stepped outside, surveyed the night sky, and drank deeply. Such a good liar he was. Such a good one. Everyone thought he was fine because he’d camo’d his little problems. He wore a Sox hat to hide the eye twitch. Set his wristwatch to go off every half hour to beat back the dream. Ate though he wasn’t angry. Laughed though he found nothing funny. And he’d always smoked like a chimney. – J.R. Ward • A factory can be closed down, its chimneys smokeless, waiting for the worker to come back to his job, and all will be peaceful. But the moment workers are imported, and the striker sees his own place usurped, there is bound to be trouble. – Charles M. Schwab • A legal broom’s a moral chimney-sweeper, And that’s the reason he himself’s so dirty – Lord Byron • A Mocking Bird regularly resorts to the south angle of a chimney top and salutes us with sweetest notes from the rising of the moon until about midnight. – John James Audubon • A picture without sky has no glory. This present, unless we see gleaming beyond it the eternal calm of the heavens, above the tossing tree tops with withering leaves, and the smoky chimneys, is a poor thing for our eyes to gaze at, or our hearts to love, or our hands to toil on. – Alexander MacLaren • Accurately recalling an entire day of fishing is like trying to push smoke back down a chimney, so you settle on these specific moments. – John Gierach • And further, I tell you that the Jew is right, when he acts as he does – because we are too timid to be as German as the Jew is Jewish! … It happened at the time of the [Bavarian] Soviet Republic: When the unleashed subhumans rambled murdering through the streets, the deputies hid behind a chimney in the Bavarian parliament. – Julius Streicher • And so there would always be more to remember that could no longer be seen…our history is always returning to a little patch of weeds and saplings with an old chimney sticking up by itself…and here I look ahead to the resting of my case: I love the house that belonged to the chimney, holding it bright in memory, and love the saplings and the weeds. – Wendell Berry • And what is more melancholy than the old apple-trees that linger about the spot where once stood a homestead, but where there is now only a ruined chimney rising our of a grassy and weed-grown cellar? They offer their fruit to every wayfarer–apples that are bitter-sweet with the moral of times vicissitude. – Nathaniel Hawthorne • Anyone who is not an anarchist agrees with having a policeman at the corner of the street; but the danger at present is that of finding the policeman half-way down the chimney or even under the bed. – Gilbert K. Chesterton • As artists and traders in medieval cities began to form organizations, they instituted tough initiation ceremonies. Journeymen in Bergen, Norway, were shoved down a chimney, thrown three times into the sea, and soundly whipped. Such rites made belonging to the guild or corporation more precious to those who were accepted, and survived. – Isaac Asimov • As for me, I rarely write a song. But when I do write a song, like “Ain’t No Chimneys in the Projects,” which came to me at three a.m. one morning, on a whim – I get a percentage. • At present I am using a good sized bedroom in the 2 bedroom house here as a studio, and it is large enough to step back from my canvases, and has a good north light. It should serve very well until I can afford to have the storeroom half of the back building lined and insulated and a chimney put in. That may be in about two years. – E. J. Hughes

jQuery(document).ready(function($) var data = action: 'polyxgo_products_search', type: 'Product', keywords: 'Chimney', orderby: 'rand', order: 'DESC', template: '1', limit: '68', columns: '4', viewall:'Shop All', ; jQuery.post(spyr_params.ajaxurl,data, function(response) var obj = jQuery.parseJSON(response); jQuery('#thelovesof_chimney').html(obj); jQuery('#thelovesof_chimney img.swiper-lazy:not(.swiper-lazy-loaded)' ).each(function () var img = jQuery(this); img.attr("src",img.data('src')); img.addClass( 'swiper-lazy-loaded' ); img.removeAttr('data-src'); ); ); ); • Back up shall we? When my brother, the crazy chicken warrior, turned into a falcon and went up the pyramid’s chimney with his new friend, the fruit bat, he left me playing nurse to two very wounded people—which I didn’t appreciate, and which I wasn’t particularly good at. – Rick Riordan • Been having a fight with your blankets, Septimus?” A familiar voice echoed down the chimney. “Looks like you lost,” the voice continued with a chuckle. “Not wise to take on a pair of blankets, lad. One, maybe, but two blankets always gang up on you. Vicious things, blankets. – Angie Sage • Brands were a by-product of having great products and communicating them well to people. Power stations that generate a lot of electricity probably have a lot of steam coming out of the chimneys. That doesn’t mean to say that the engineers stand around working out how to make more steam. – Hans Snook

[clickbank-storefront-bestselling] • Christmas Pie Lo! now is come our joyfull’st feast! Let every man be jolly; Each room with ivy leaves is dressed, And every post with holly. Now all our neighbours’ chimneys smoke, And Christmas blocks are burning; Their ovens they with bakemeats choke, And all their spits are turning. Without the door let sorrow lie, And if for cold it hap to die, We’ll bury it in a Christmas pie, And ever more be merry. – George Wither • Even the pictures I was doing at college – a little narrative based on a butterfly catcher, or a chimney sweep – the images were always telling stories. They were all scenarios and moods which I storyboarded and worked through – it’s exactly what I do now. – Tim Walker • Every head turned to see two more security guards appear, each holding a Bagshaw by the back of the neck (which might have been considerably less conspicuous had the Bagshaws not been dressed as chimney sweeps). Kat turned back to Hale. ‘The Mary Poppins?’ ‘Seemed like a good idea at the time. – Ally Carter • Every year, dads will dress up as Santa and try to surprise their kids by coming down the chimney, and every year, a dad gets stuck and dies. -Kyle Dunnigan • Fear no more the heat o’ th’ sun Nor the furious winters’ rages; Thou thy worldly task hast done, Home art gone, and ta’en thy wages. Golden lads and girls all must, As chimney-sweepers, come to dust. – William Shakespeare • From whence it happens, that they which trust to books, do as they that cast up many little sums into a greater, without considering whether those little sums were rightly cast up or not; and at last finding the error visible, and not mistrusting their first grounds, know not which way to clear themselves; but spend time in fluttering over their books, as birds that entering by the chimney, and finding themselves enclosed in a chamber, flutter at the false light of a glass window, for want of wit to consider which way they came in. – Thomas Hobbes • Gain may be temporary and uncertain; but ever while you live, expense is constant and certain: and it is easier to build two chimneys than to keep one in fuel. – Benjamin Franklin • Golden lads and girls all must as chimney sweepers come to dust. – William Shakespeare • Halfway down a by-street of one of our New England towns stands a rusty wooden house, with seven acutely peaked gables, facing towards various points of the compass, and a huge, clustered chimney in the midst. The street is Pyncheon Street; the house is the old Pyncheon House; and an elm-tree, of wide circumference, rooted before the door, is familiar to every town-born child by the title of the Pyncheon Elm. – Nathaniel Hawthorne • Have you noticed how nobody ever looks up? Nobody looks at chimneys, or trees against the sky, or the tops of buildings. Everybody just looks down at the pavement or their shoes. The whole world could pass them by and most people wouldn’t notice. – Julie Andrews • He describes it as a large apartment, with a red brick floor and a capacious chimney; the ceiling garnished with hams, sides of bacon, and ropes of onions. – Charles Dickens • I am Envy, begotten of a chimney-sweeper and an oyster-wife. I cannot read, and therefore wish all books were burnt; I am lean with seeing others eat – O that there would come a famine through all the world, that all might die, and I live alone; then thou should’st see how fat I would be! But must thou sit and I stand? Come down, with a vengeance! – Christopher Marlowe • I got a flue shot and now my chimney works perfectly. – Steve Martin • I have discovered the secret of happiness – it is work, either with the hands or the head. The moment I have something to do, the draughts are open and my chimney draws, and I am happy. – John Burroughs • I have never felt like I was creating anything. For me, writing is like walking through a desert and all at once, poking up through the hardpan, I see the top of a chimney. I know there’s a house under there, and I’m pretty sure that I can dig it up if I want. That’s how I feel. It’s like the stories are already there. What they pay me for is the leap of faith that says: ‘If I sit down and do this, everything will come out okay.’ – Stephen King • I reveled in the smallness, the coziness of an upstairs bedroom in a traditional American Cape Cod house the half-floor that forces you to duck, to feel small and naive again, ready for anything, dying for love, your body a chimney filled with odd, black smoke. These square, squat, awkward rooms are like a fifty-square-foot paean to teenage-hood, to ripeness, to the first and last taste of youth. – Gary Shteyngart • I wander thro’ each charter’d street, Near where the charter’d Thames does flow, And mark in every face I meet Marks of weakness, marks of woe. In every cry of every Man, In every Infant’s cry of fear, In every voice, in every ban, The mind-forg’d manacles I hear. How the Chimney-sweeper’s cry Every black’ning Church appalls; And the hapless Soldier’s sigh Runs in blood down Palace walls. But most thro’ midnight streets I hear How the youthful Harlot’s curse Blasts the new born Infant’s tear, And blights with plagues the Marriage hearse. – William Blake • I was lookin’ high an’ low for them Reds everywhere, I was lookin’ in the sink an’ underneath the chair. I looked way up my chimney hole, I even looked deep inside my toilet bowl. – Bob Dylan • I wish we could grow up about it, I’m sure we are contributing to global warming, and we must do all we can to reduce that, but our climate has always changed. The Romans had vineyards in Yorkshire. We’re all on this bandwagon of ‘Ban the 4×4 in Fulham’. Why didn’t we have global warming during the Industrial Revolution? In those days you couldn’t have seen across the street for all the carbon emissions and the crap coming out of the chimneys. – Alan Titchmarsh • I’d like to start with the chimney jokes – I’ve got a stack of them. The first one is on the house. – Tim Vine • If a man will kick a fact out of the window, when he comes back he finds it again in the chimney corner. – Ralph Waldo Emerson • If SANTA CLAUS came down the chimney in a f**king jogging suit, you wouldn’t even know it was him. – Wayne Coyne • If you cannot avoid a quarrel with a blackguard, let your lawyer manage it, rather than yourself. No man sweeps his own chimney, but employs a chimney-sweeper, who has no objection to dirty work, because it is his trade. – Charles Caleb Colton • If you really think there’s a Santa, why don’t you sit on the front steps all night in the freezing cold and see if he climbs down any chimneys tonight. Good luck. And since we’re a family that isn’t lucky enough to have a chimney, how would Santa get into our house? Does he bring a locksmith with him? And it probably would have to be a Jewish locksmith, because a Christian locksmith is going to want to be home with his family. And how many Jewish locksmiths are there? None. – Lewis Black • I’m not an author, I’m a writer, that’s all I am. Authors want their names down in history; I want to keep the smoke coming out of the chimney. – Mickey Spillane • In winter we lead a more inward life. Our hearts are warm and cheery, like cottages under drifts, whose windows and doors are halfconcealed, but from whose chimneys the smoke cheerfully ascends…. We enjoy now, not an Oriental, but a Boreal leisure, around warm stoves and fireplaces, and watch the shadow of motes in the sunbeams. – Henry David Thoreau • Infectious disease is one of the few genuine adventures left in the world. The dragons are all dead and the lance grows rusty in the chimney corner. … About the only sporting proposition that remains unimpaired by the relentless domestication of a once free-living human species is the war against those ferocious little fellow creatures, which lurk in dark corners and stalk us in the bodies of rats, mice and all kinds of domestic animals; which fly and crawl with the insects, and waylay us in our food and drink and even in our love – Hans Zinsser • Is Adrian here?” “Who?” “Adrian. Tall. Brown hair. Green eyes.” She frowned. “Do you mean Jet?” “I … I’m not sure. Does he smoke like a chimney?” The girl nodded sagely. “Yup. You must mean Jet. – Richelle Mead • It is easier to build two chimneys than to keep one in fuel. – Benjamin Franklin • It is far more probable that our senses should deceive us, than that an old woman should be carried up a chimney on a broom stick; and that it is far less astonishing that witnesses should lie, than that witches should perform the acts that were alleged. – Michel de Montaigne • It is this refrain that we hear repeated by everyone: you are not at home, this is not a sanatorium, the only exit is by way of the Chimney. (What did it mean? Soon we were all to learn what it meant.) – Primo Levi • Its tall chimneys throw up black smoke, impregnating everything with soot, and the miners’ faces as they traveled the streets were also imbued with that ancient melancholy of smoke, unifying everything with its grayish monotones, a perfect coupling with the gray mountain days. – Che Guevara • It’s understandable that people are keeping one eye on the pot and another up the chimney. – Kevin Keegan • Let now the chimneys blaze And cups o’erflow with wine… The summer hath his joys, And winter his delights; Though love and all his pleasures are but toys, They shorten tedious nights. – Thomas Campion • Let now the chimneys blaze And cups o’erflow with wine; Let well-tuned words amaze With harmony divine. – Thomas Campion • Make the doors upon a woman’s wit, and it will out at the casement; shut that, and ’twill out at the key-hole; stop that, ’twill fly with the smoke out at the chimney. – William Shakespeare • Maybe that whole love thing is just a grown-up version of Santa Claus; just a myth we’ve been fed since childhood. So, we keep buying magazines, joining clubs, and doing therapy and watching movies with hit pop songs played over love montages all in a pathetic attempt to explain why our love Santa keeps getting caught in the chimney. – Meg Ryan • Morality has in the past made progress when we broadened the category of things we weren’t permitted to harm (animals, ‘infidels’); saw through some delusions and rationalisations about what harms are good for people themselves (prison punishment, hysterectomies for unhappy 1950s wives); and readjusted our for-the-good of others criteria so as to demand only reasonable sacrifices (ceasing to use children as handy chimney sweeps). – Catherine Wilson • Most religion-mongers have bated their paradises with a bit of toasted cheese. They have tempted the body with large promises of possessions in their transmortal El Dorado. Sancho Panza will not quit his chimney-corner, but under promise of imaginary islands to govern. – James Russell Lowell • My gripe is not with lovers of the truth but with truth herself. What succor, what consolation is there in truth, compared to a story? What good is truth, at midnight, in the dark, when the wind is roaring like a bear in the chimney? When the lightning strikes shadows on the bedroom wall and the rain taps at the window with its long fingernails? No. When fear and cold make a statue of you in your bed, don’t expect hard-boned and fleshless truth to come running to your aid. What you need are the plump comforts of a story. The soothing, rocking safety of a lie. – Diane Setterfield • My neighbor’s not even listening to me. He’s all excited about some garden hose he bought at Brookstone. He’s convinced it was designed by NASA. “Actually, it’s got two nozzles, one for the hot and one for the…” Really? Is it long enough to go around both our necks and the chimney so we can tandem jump off of this? That’s all I really care about you and your little garden hose. – Bill Burr • My once-keen analytical mind has become so dulled by endless hours of baking in the hot sun, thrashing about in tight chimneys, pulling at impossibly heavy loads, freezing my ass off…. so that now my mental state is comparable to that of a Peruvian Indian, well stoked on coca leaves. – Warren G. Harding • Nick, fetch my car, fetch my clothes, sweep the chimney, make my bed, watch my psychopath, fetch my slippers.’ Yeah, I’ll fetch those slippers and stick them someplace real uncomfortable. I swear, my mother should have named me Fido. (Nick) – Sherrilyn Kenyon • Nick, fetch my car, fetch my clothes, sweep the chimney, make my bed, watch my psychopath, fetch my slippers. – Sherrilyn Kenyon • No amount of rationalisation, reform, or Freudian analysis can quite annul the thrill of the chimney-corner whisper or the lonely wood. – H. P. Lovecraft • No; we have been as usual asking the wrong question. It does not matter a hoot what the mockingbird on the chimney is singing. The real and proper question is: Why is it beautiful? – Bertrand Russell • Non- Euclidean calculus and quantum physics are enough to stretch any brain; and when one mixes them with folklore, and tries to trace a strange background of multi-dimensional reality behind the ghoulish hints of Gothic tales and the wild whispers of the chimney-corner, one can hardly expect to be wholly free from mental tension. (Dreams In The Witch-House) – H. P. Lovecraft • Now I am old-fashioned. A woman, I consider, should be womanly. I have no patience with the modern neurotic girl who jazzes from morning to night, smokes like a chimney, and uses language which would make a billingsgate fishwoman blush! – Agatha Christie • Of all the ruinous and desolate places my uncle had ever beheld, this was the most so. It looked as if it had once been a large house of entertainment; but the roof had fallen in, in many places, and the stairs were steep, rugged, and broken. There was a huge fire-place in the room into which they walked, and the chimney was blackened with smoke; but no warm blaze lighted it up now. The white feathery dust of burnt wood was still strewed over the hearth, but the stove was cold, and all was dark and gloomy. – Charles Dickens • One day the wind blew through the town, and oh, how merry it was! It whistled down the chimneys, and scampered round the corners, and sang in the tree tops. “Come and dance, come and dance, come and dance with me,” that is what it seemed to say. – Maud Lindsay • One may have a blazing hearth in one’s soul and yet no one ever came to sit by it. Passers-by see only a wisp of smoke from the chimney and continue on their way. – Vincent Van Gogh • One sparrow is worth a thousand gulls, When it sings. The gull sits on chimney-tops. He mocks the guinea, challenges The crow, inciting various modes. The sparrow requites one, without intent. – Wallace Stevens • Our secret thoughts – do they ever show up? The small flame of our soul can be burning hot, but no one comes to its warmth. Passersby see only a small whiff going through the chimney. Don’t we need to take care of that flame, cherish it and patiently wait until someone will come and sit at it, do we? – Irving Stone • P.S. If it’s not a secret, will you tell me how you got my dollhouse inside our living room last Christmas? I know its too big to fit down the chimney. I measured. – Joanne Fluke • Praise the invisible sun burning beyond the white cold sky, giving us light and the chimney’s shadow. – Denise Levertov • She finds tales everywhere, in grains of sand she picks up from the garden, in puffs of smoke that drift out from the chimneys of the village, in fragments of smooth timber or glass in the jetsam. She will ask them, “Where did you come from? How did you get here?” And they will answer her in voices very like her own, but with new lilts and squeaks and splashes in them that show they are their own. – David Almond • She grew more and more silent about what really mattered. She curled inside herself like one of those black chimney brushes, the little shellfish you see on the beach, and you touch them, and then go inside and don’t come out. – Janet Frame • She’d become a governess. It was one of the few jobs a known lady could do. And she’d taken to it well. She’d sworn that if she did indeed ever find herself dancing on rooftops with chimney sweeps she’d beat herself to death with her own umbrella. – Terry Pratchett • Silkes and Satins put out the fire in the chimney. – George Herbert • Sitting by the chimney corner as we grow old, the commonest things around us take on live meanings and hint at the difference between these driving times and the calm, slow moving days when we were young. – Rebecca Harding Davis • Smell and taste are in fact but a single composite sense, whose laboratory is the mouth and its chimney the nose. – Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin • Smoke like a chimney, work like a horse, eat without thinking, go for a walk only in really pleasant company. – Albert Einstein • Snowstorms may yet whiten fields and gardens, high winds may howl about the trees and chimneys, but the little blue heralds persistently proclaim from the orchard and the garden that the spring procession has begun to move. – Neltje Blanchan • Soldiers in peace are like chimneys in summer. – William Cecil, 1st Baron Burghley • Some burn damp faggots, others may consume The entire combustible world in one small room As though dried straw, and if we turn about The bare chimney is gone black out Because the work had finished in that flare. – William Butler Yeats • Some critics are like chimney-sweepers; they put out the fire below, and frighten the swallows from their nests above; they scrape a long time in the chimney, cover themselves with soot, and bring nothing away but a bag of cinders, and then sing from the top of the house as if they had built it. – Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Someday I’ll wish upon a star And wake up where the clouds Are far behind me Where troubles melt like lemon drops Away above the chimney tops that’s where you’ll find me – Eva Cassidy • Sometimes, looking up at Sophiatown… I have felt I was looking at an Italian village somewhere in Umbria. For you do ‘look up’ at Sophiatown, and in the evening light, across the blue-grey haze of smoke from braziers and chimneys, against a saffron sky, you see close-packed, red-roofed little houses. …And above it all you see the Church of Christ the King, its tower visible north, south, east, and west. – Trevor Huddleston • Souldiers in peace are like chimneys in summer. – George Herbert • Such Roots as are soft, your best way is to dry in the Sun, or else hang them up in the Chimney corner upon a string; as for such as are hard you may dry them any where. – Nicholas Culpeper • The American Petroleum Institute filed suit against the EPA [and] charged that the agency was suppressing a scientific study for fear it might be misinterpreted… The suppressed study reveals that 80 percent of air pollution comes not from chimneys and auto exhaust pipes, but from plants and trees. – Ronald Reagan • The best way that a man could test his readiness to encounter the common variety of mankind would be to climb down a chimney into any house at random, and get on as well as possible with the people inside. And that is essentially what each one of us did on the day that he was born. – Gilbert K. Chesterton • The chimney is to some extent an independent structure, standing on the ground, and rising through the house to the heavens; evenafter the house is burned it still stands sometimes, and its importance and independence are apparent. – Henry David Thoreau • The city itself swung slowly toward us silent as a dream. No sign of life but puffs of steam from skyscraper chimneys, the motion of the traffic. The mighty towers stood like tombstones in a graveyard, leaning against the sky and waiting for — for what? Someday we’ll know. – Edward Abbey • The city was asleep on its right side and shaking with violent nightmares. Long puffs of snoring came out of the chimneys. Its feet were sticking out because the clouds did not cover it altogether. There was a hole in them and the white feathers were falling out. The city had untied all its bridges like so many buttons to feel at ease. Wherever there was a lamplight the city scratched itself until it went out. – Anais Nin • The clouds were flying fast, the wind was coming up in gusts, banging some neighboring shutters that had broken loose, twirling the rusty chimney-cowls and weathercocks, and rushing round and round a confined adjacent churchyard as if it had a mind to blow the dead citizens out of their graves. The low thunder, muttering in all quarters of the sky at once, seemed to threaten vengeance for this attempted desecration, and to mutter, “Let them rest! Let them rest! – Charles Dickens • The experienced illustrator subscribes to the principle of the application of the seat of the pants to the seat of the chair. Should inspiration whisk down your chimney, be at your table. The first ten thousand drawings are the hardest. Put another way, you have ten thousand bad drawings within and should expel them as quickly as possible. – Wallace Tripp • The Gingerbread House has four walls, a roof, a door, a window, and a chimney. It is decorated with many sweet culinary delights on the outside.But on the inside there is nothing-only the bare gingerbread walls.It is not a real house-not until you decide to add a Gingerbread Room.That’s when the stories can move in.They will stay in residence for as long as you abstain from taking the first gingerbread bite. – Vera Nazarian • The image by Barry Blitt of Barack Obama and Michelle in the White House with him dressed as a terrorist, her dressed as an Angela Davis character, a flag burning in the chimney, a portrait of Bin Laden on the wall is an image I’m extremely proud of. – Francoise Mouly • The nonexistent is whatever we have not sufficiently desired. Only after death, only in solitude, does a man’s true nature emerge. In death, as on the chimney sweep’s Saturday night, the soot gets washed from his body. • The rain and hail pattered against the glass; the chimneys quaked and rocked; the crazy casement rattled with the wind, as though an impatient hand inside were striving to burst it open. But no hand was there, and it opened no more. – Charles Dickens • The real and proper question is: why is it beautiful? – Annie Dillard • The sky was dark and gloomy, the air was damp and raw, the streets were wet and sloppy. The smoke hung sluggishly above the chimney-tops as if it lacked the courage to rise, and the rain came slowly and doggedly down, as if it had not even the spirit to pour. – Charles Dickens • The south-wind strengthens to a gale, / Across the moon the clouds fly fast, / The house is smitten as with a flail, / The chimney shudders to the blast. – Robert Bridges • The stockings were hung by the chimney with care, In hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there. – Clement Clarke Moore • The thing to remember about love affairs,” says Simone, “is that they are all like having raccoons in your chimney.” … We have raccoons sometimes in our chimney,” explains Simone. And once we tried to smoke them out. We lit a fire, knowing they were there, but we hoped the smoke would cause them to scurry out the top and never come back. Instead, they caught on fire and came crashing down into our living room, all charred and in flames and running madly around until they dropped dead.” Simone swallows some wine. “Love affairs are like that,” she says. “They are all like that. – Lorrie Moore • The things I believed in dont exist any more. It’s foolish to pretend that they do. Western Civilization finally went up in smoke in the chimneys at Dachau but I was too infatuated to see it. I see it now. – Cormac McCarthy • The wind outside nested in each tree, prowled the sidewalks in invisible treads like unseen cats. Tom Skelton shivered. Anyone could see that the wind was a special wind this night, and the darkness took on a special feel because it was All Hallows’ Eve. Everything seemed cut from soft black velvet or gold or orange velvet. Smoke panted up out of a thousand chimneys like the plumes of funeral parades. From kitchen windows drifted two pumpkin smells: gourds being cut, pies being baked. – Ray Bradbury • The winter evening settles down With smell of steaks in passageways. Six o’clock. The burnt-out ends of smoky days. And now a gusty shower wraps The grimy scraps Of withered leaves about your feet And newspapers from vacant lots; The showers beat On broken blinds and chimney-pots, And at the corner of the street A lonely cab-horse steams and stamps. And then the lighting of the lamps. – T. S. Eliot • The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap And seeing that it was a soft October night Curled once about the house, and fell asleep – T. S. Eliot • Their bodies will be raised from the dead as vessels for the soul-vessels of wrath. The soul will breathe hell-fire, and smoke and coal will seem to hang upon its burning lips, yea the face, eyes, and ears will seem to be chimneys and vents for the flame, and the smoke of the burning , which God, by His breath, hath kindled therein, and upon, them, which will be held one in another, to the great torment and distress of each other. – John Bunyan • Their houses are all built in the shape of tents, with very high chimneys. – Christopher Columbus • There did he sit shrivelled in his chimney corner, fretting on account of his weak legs, world weary, will weary, and one day he suffocated through his excessive pity. – Friedrich Nietzsche • There is in every American, I think, something of the old Daniel Boone – who, when he could see the smoke from another chimney, felt himself too crowded and moved further out into the wilderness. – Hubert H. Humphrey • There’s no way the new chimney will fall down, Lu. Not with you in charge. It wouldn’t dare. – Angie Sage • This is a valley of ashes–a fantastic farm where ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills and grotesque gardens; where ashes take the forms of houses and chimneys and rising smoke and, finally, with a transcendent effort, of men who move dimly and already crumbling through the powdery air. Occasionally a line of gray cars crawls along an invisible track, gives out a ghastly creak, and comes to rest, and immediately the ash-gray men swarm up with leaden spades and stir up an impenetrable cloud, which screens their obscure operations from your sight. – F. Scott Fitzgerald • Tis easier to build two chimneys, then to maintaine one. – George Herbert • To thousands of elder women in the late sixties and early seventies [the private women’s club movement] came like a new gospel ofactivity and service. They had reared their children and seen them take flight; moreover, they had fought through the war, their hearts in the field, their fingers plying needle and thread. They had been active in committees and commissions, the country over; had learned to work with and beside men, finding joy and companionship and inspiration in such work. How could they go back to the chimney-corner life of the fifties? – Laura E. Richards • Too much! Wait till you have lived here longer. Look down the valley! See the cloud of a hundred chimneys that overshadows it! I tell you that the cloud of murder hangs thicker and lower than that over the heads of the people. It is the Valley of Fear, the Valley of Death. The terror is in the hearts of the people from the dusk to the dawn. Wait, young man, and you will learn for yourself. – Arthur Conan Doyle • Two bones fell down my chimney and into the bedroom this morning. Hysterical thing to happen to a thriller writer. Murderous ravens perhaps? – Tobsha Learner • Walking the streets on winter nights kept him warm, despite the cold nocturnal passions of uprising winds. His footsteps led between trade-marked houses, two up and two down, with digital chimneys like pigs’ tits on the rooftops sending up heat and smoke into the cold trough of a windy sky. Stars hid like snipers, taking aim now and again when clouds gave them a loophole. Winter was an easy time for him to hide his secrets, for each dark street patted his shoulder and became a friend, and the gaseous eye of each lamp glowed unwinking as he passed. – Alan Sillitoe • We all ought to understand we’re on our own. Believing in Santa Claus doesn’t do kids any harm for a few years but it isn’t smart for them to continue waiting all their lives for him to come down the chimney with something wonderful. Santa Claus and God are cousins. – Andy Rooney • We are constituted a good deal like chickens, which, taken from the hen, and put in a basket of cotton in the chimney-corner, willoften peep till they die, nevertheless; but if you put in a book, or anything heavy, which will press down the cotton, and feel like the hen, they go to sleep directly. – Henry David Thoreau • We came to the house, and it is an old house, full of great chimneys where wood is burnt on ancient dogs upon the hearth, and grim portraits (some of them with grim legends, too) lower distrustfully from the oaken panels of the walls. – Charles Dickens • We have not wondered enough at the delights God has given us to appreciate them, and be good stewards. We have overworked the land, poured pollutants into river and stream, fouled the air we breathe with gas fumes and chemical smoke spiraling up from industrial chimneys. We have sown the wind. We are reaping the whirlwind. – Madeleine L’Engle • We launch our souls from the cannons of art and discipline, and on any one night, hovering over the chimney tops of Europe, halfway to the stars, there are armies of brightly spinning spirits that have risen like fireworks, tethered to the souls of those men and women who, by reflection, mortification, and devotion, effortlessly outdazzle kings. – Mark Helprin • Westminster Abbey, the Tower, a steeple, one church, and then another, presented themselves to our view; and we could now plainly distinguish the high round chimneys on the tops of the houses, which yet seemed to us to form an innumerable number of smaller spires, or steeples. – Karl Philipp Moritz • What good is truth, at midnight, in the dark, when the wind is roaring like a bear in the chimney? – Diane Setterfield • When an alluring woman comes in at the door,” warningly traced the austere Kien-fi on the margin of his well-known essay, “discretion may be found up the chimney”. It is incredible that beneath this ever-timely reminder an obscure disciple should have added the words: “The wiser the sage, the more profound the folly. – Ernest Bramah • When I walk across my living room from my chimney to my window, it takes me 10 seconds, but for a bird it takes one second, and for oxygen zero seconds! – Jean-Claude Van Damme • When I was a girl, my life was music that was always getting louder. Everything moved me. A dog following a stranger. That made me feel so much. A calendar that showed the wrong month. I could have cried over it. I did. Where the smoke from a chimney ended. How an overturned bottle rested at the edge of a table. I spent my life learning to feel less. Every day I felt less. Is that growing old? Or is it something worse? You cannot protect yourself from sadness without protecting yourself from happiness. – Jonathan Safran Foer • When my mother died I was very young, And my father sold me while yet my tongue Could scarcely cry weep weep weep weep. So your chimneys I sweep, and in soot I sleep. – William Blake • When we hold onto the negative in ourselves it comes with endless guilt. We hold onto a lifetime of floating visions and regrets about what we should have done or should have become. Conscience recognizes wrong and tries to atone. But guilt turns into resentment. Conscience brings us closer to each other; guilt drives us apart. Create a new feeling. Every time guilt settles in your stomach, write “I forgive” on a piece of paper. Send it up the chimney, tear it up and flush it, put it in the garbage. Don’t eat it. – Jennifer James • When we talk of architecture, people usually think of something static; this is wrong. What we are thinking of is an architecture similar to the dynamic and musical architecture achieved by the Futurist musician Pratella. Architecture is found in the movement of colours, of smoke from a chimney and in metallic structures, when they are expressed in states of mind which are violent and chaotic. – Carlo Carra • When you were sleeping on the sofa I put my ear to your ear and listened to the echo of your dreams. That is the ocean I want to dive in, merge with the bright fish, plankton and pirate ships. I walk up to people on the street that kind of look like you and ask them the questions I would ask you. Can we sit on a rooftop and watch stars dissolve into smoke rising from a chimney? Can I swing like Tarzan in the jungle of your breathing? I don’t wish I was in your arms, I just wish I was peddling a bicycle toward your arms. – Jeffrey McDaniel • Where you thinke there is bacon, there is no Chimney. – George Herbert • With a tale, forsooth, he cometh unto you; with a tale which holdeth children from play, and old men from the chimney corner. – Philip Sidney • With gas cookers and chip pans in every kitchen, the chip-pan fire was by far the most popular method these Proddies had for burning their houses down. The second technique was the ever popular chimney fire and number three had to be the drunken cigarette drop on the carpet. Mind you, why they’d be cooking chips at this hour was anyone’s guess. – Adrian McKinty • Writing was a chimney for my blazing ambitions. – Storm Jameson • You can’t build a chimney from the top, you know. – Marian Anderson • You have these ‘hot towers’, tropical storm clouds acting like chimneys to carry heat to the upper atmosphere. – Peter May • Your goal is to achieve the best results by following their wishes. If they want you to build a house upside down standing on its chimney, it’s up to you to do it. – Richard Morris Hunt

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Chimneys Quotes

Official Website: Chimneys Quotes

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[clickbank-storefront-bestselling] • Christmas Pie Lo! now is come our joyfull’st feast! Let every man be jolly; Each room with ivy leaves is dressed, And every post with holly. Now all our neighbours’ chimneys smoke, And Christmas blocks are burning; Their ovens they with bakemeats choke, And all their spits are turning. Without the door let sorrow lie, And if for cold it hap to die, We’ll bury it in a Christmas pie, And ever more be merry. – George Wither • Even the pictures I was doing at college �� a little narrative based on a butterfly catcher, or a chimney sweep – the images were always telling stories. They were all scenarios and moods which I storyboarded and worked through – it’s exactly what I do now. – Tim Walker • Every head turned to see two more security guards appear, each holding a Bagshaw by the back of the neck (which might have been considerably less conspicuous had the Bagshaws not been dressed as chimney sweeps). Kat turned back to Hale. ‘The Mary Poppins?’ ‘Seemed like a good idea at the time. – Ally Carter • Every year, dads will dress up as Santa and try to surprise their kids by coming down the chimney, and every year, a dad gets stuck and dies. -Kyle Dunnigan • Fear no more the heat o’ th’ sun Nor the furious winters’ rages; Thou thy worldly task hast done, Home art gone, and ta’en thy wages. Golden lads and girls all must, As chimney-sweepers, come to dust. – William Shakespeare • From whence it happens, that they which trust to books, do as they that cast up many little sums into a greater, without considering whether those little sums were rightly cast up or not; and at last finding the error visible, and not mistrusting their first grounds, know not which way to clear themselves; but spend time in fluttering over their books, as birds that entering by the chimney, and finding themselves enclosed in a chamber, flutter at the false light of a glass window, for want of wit to consider which way they came in. – Thomas Hobbes • Gain may be temporary and uncertain; but ever while you live, expense is constant and certain: and it is easier to build two chimneys than to keep one in fuel. – Benjamin Franklin • Golden lads and girls all must as chimney sweepers come to dust. – William Shakespeare • Halfway down a by-street of one of our New England towns stands a rusty wooden house, with seven acutely peaked gables, facing towards various points of the compass, and a huge, clustered chimney in the midst. The street is Pyncheon Street; the house is the old Pyncheon House; and an elm-tree, of wide circumference, rooted before the door, is familiar to every town-born child by the title of the Pyncheon Elm. – Nathaniel Hawthorne • Have you noticed how nobody ever looks up? Nobody looks at chimneys, or trees against the sky, or the tops of buildings. Everybody just looks down at the pavement or their shoes. The whole world could pass them by and most people wouldn’t notice. – Julie Andrews • He describes it as a large apartment, with a red brick floor and a capacious chimney; the ceiling garnished with hams, sides of bacon, and ropes of onions. – Charles Dickens • I am Envy, begotten of a chimney-sweeper and an oyster-wife. I cannot read, and therefore wish all books were burnt; I am lean with seeing others eat – O that there would come a famine through all the world, that all might die, and I live alone; then thou should’st see how fat I would be! But must thou sit and I stand? Come down, with a vengeance! – Christopher Marlowe • I got a flue shot and now my chimney works perfectly. – Steve Martin • I have discovered the secret of happiness – it is work, either with the hands or the head. The moment I have something to do, the draughts are open and my chimney draws, and I am happy. – John Burroughs • I have never felt like I was creating anything. For me, writing is like walking through a desert and all at once, poking up through the hardpan, I see the top of a chimney. I know there’s a house under there, and I’m pretty sure that I can dig it up if I want. That’s how I feel. It’s like the stories are already there. What they pay me for is the leap of faith that says: ‘If I sit down and do this, everything will come out okay.’ – Stephen King • I reveled in the smallness, the coziness of an upstairs bedroom in a traditional American Cape Cod house the half-floor that forces you to duck, to feel small and naive again, ready for anything, dying for love, your body a chimney filled with odd, black smoke. These square, squat, awkward rooms are like a fifty-square-foot paean to teenage-hood, to ripeness, to the first and last taste of youth. – Gary Shteyngart • I wander thro’ each charter’d street, Near where the charter’d Thames does flow, And mark in every face I meet Marks of weakness, marks of woe. In every cry of every Man, In every Infant’s cry of fear, In every voice, in every ban, The mind-forg’d manacles I hear. How the Chimney-sweeper’s cry Every black’ning Church appalls; And the hapless Soldier’s sigh Runs in blood down Palace walls. But most thro’ midnight streets I hear How the youthful Harlot’s curse Blasts the new born Infant’s tear, And blights with plagues the Marriage hearse. – William Blake • I was lookin’ high an’ low for them Reds everywhere, I was lookin’ in the sink an’ underneath the chair. I looked way up my chimney hole, I even looked deep inside my toilet bowl. – Bob Dylan • I wish we could grow up about it, I’m sure we are contributing to global warming, and we must do all we can to reduce that, but our climate has always changed. The Romans had vineyards in Yorkshire. We’re all on this bandwagon of ‘Ban the 4×4 in Fulham’. Why didn’t we have global warming during the Industrial Revolution? In those days you couldn’t have seen across the street for all the carbon emissions and the crap coming out of the chimneys. – Alan Titchmarsh • I’d like to start with the chimney jokes – I’ve got a stack of them. The first one is on the house. – Tim Vine • If a man will kick a fact out of the window, when he comes back he finds it again in the chimney corner. – Ralph Waldo Emerson • If SANTA CLAUS came down the chimney in a f**king jogging suit, you wouldn’t even know it was him. – Wayne Coyne • If you cannot avoid a quarrel with a blackguard, let your lawyer manage it, rather than yourself. No man sweeps his own chimney, but employs a chimney-sweeper, who has no objection to dirty work, because it is his trade. – Charles Caleb Colton • If you really think there’s a Santa, why don’t you sit on the front steps all night in the freezing cold and see if he climbs down any chimneys tonight. Good luck. And since we’re a family that isn’t lucky enough to have a chimney, how would Santa get into our house? Does he bring a locksmith with him? And it probably would have to be a Jewish locksmith, because a Christian locksmith is going to want to be home with his family. And how many Jewish locksmiths are there? None. – Lewis Black • I’m not an author, I’m a writer, that’s all I am. Authors want their names down in history; I want to keep the smoke coming out of the chimney. – Mickey Spillane • In winter we lead a more inward life. Our hearts are warm and cheery, like cottages under drifts, whose windows and doors are halfconcealed, but from whose chimneys the smoke cheerfully ascends…. We enjoy now, not an Oriental, but a Boreal leisure, around warm stoves and fireplaces, and watch the shadow of motes in the sunbeams. – Henry David Thoreau • Infectious disease is one of the few genuine adventures left in the world. The dragons are all dead and the lance grows rusty in the chimney corner. … About the only sporting proposition that remains unimpaired by the relentless domestication of a once free-living human species is the war against those ferocious little fellow creatures, which lurk in dark corners and stalk us in the bodies of rats, mice and all kinds of domestic animals; which fly and crawl with the insects, and waylay us in our food and drink and even in our love – Hans Zinsser • Is Adrian here?” “Who?” “Adrian. Tall. Brown hair. Green eyes.” She frowned. “Do you mean Jet?” “I … I’m not sure. Does he smoke like a chimney?” The girl nodded sagely. “Yup. You must mean Jet. – Richelle Mead • It is easier to build two chimneys than to keep one in fuel. – Benjamin Franklin • It is far more probable that our senses should deceive us, than that an old woman should be carried up a chimney on a broom stick; and that it is far less astonishing that witnesses should lie, than that witches should perform the acts that were alleged. – Michel de Montaigne • It is this refrain that we hear repeated by everyone: you are not at home, this is not a sanatorium, the only exit is by way of the Chimney. (What did it mean? Soon we were all to learn what it meant.) – Primo Levi • Its tall chimneys throw up black smoke, impregnating everything with soot, and the miners’ faces as they traveled the streets were also imbued with that ancient melancholy of smoke, unifying everything with its grayish monotones, a perfect coupling with the gray mountain days. – Che Guevara • It’s understandable that people are keeping one eye on the pot and another up the chimney. – Kevin Keegan • Let now the chimneys blaze And cups o’erflow with wine… The summer hath his joys, And winter his delights; Though love and all his pleasures are but toys, They shorten tedious nights. – Thomas Campion • Let now the chimneys blaze And cups o’erflow with wine; Let well-tuned words amaze With harmony divine. – Thomas Campion • Make the doors upon a woman’s wit, and it will out at the casement; shut that, and ’twill out at the key-hole; stop that, ’twill fly with the smoke out at the chimney. – William Shakespeare • Maybe that whole love thing is just a grown-up version of Santa Claus; just a myth we’ve been fed since childhood. So, we keep buying magazines, joining clubs, and doing therapy and watching movies with hit pop songs played over love montages all in a pathetic attempt to explain why our love Santa keeps getting caught in the chimney. – Meg Ryan • Morality has in the past made progress when we broadened the category of things we weren’t permitted to harm (animals, ‘infidels’); saw through some delusions and rationalisations about what harms are good for people themselves (prison punishment, hysterectomies for unhappy 1950s wives); and readjusted our for-the-good of others criteria so as to demand only reasonable sacrifices (ceasing to use children as handy chimney sweeps). – Catherine Wilson • Most religion-mongers have bated their paradises with a bit of toasted cheese. They have tempted the body with large promises of possessions in their transmortal El Dorado. Sancho Panza will not quit his chimney-corner, but under promise of imaginary islands to govern. – James Russell Lowell • My gripe is not with lovers of the truth but with truth herself. What succor, what consolation is there in truth, compared to a story? What good is truth, at midnight, in the dark, when the wind is roaring like a bear in the chimney? When the lightning strikes shadows on the bedroom wall and the rain taps at the window with its long fingernails? No. When fear and cold make a statue of you in your bed, don’t expect hard-boned and fleshless truth to come running to your aid. What you need are the plump comforts of a story. The soothing, rocking safety of a lie. – Diane Setterfield • My neighbor’s not even listening to me. He’s all excited about some garden hose he bought at Brookstone. He’s convinced it was designed by NASA. “Actually, it’s got two nozzles, one for the hot and one for the…” Really? Is it long enough to go around both our necks and the chimney so we can tandem jump off of this? That’s all I really care about you and your little garden hose. – Bill Burr • My once-keen analytical mind has become so dulled by endless hours of baking in the hot sun, thrashing about in tight chimneys, pulling at impossibly heavy loads, freezing my ass off…. so that now my mental state is comparable to that of a Peruvian Indian, well stoked on coca leaves. – Warren G. Harding • Nick, fetch my car, fetch my clothes, sweep the chimney, make my bed, watch my psychopath, fetch my slippers.’ Yeah, I’ll fetch those slippers and stick them someplace real uncomfortable. I swear, my mother should have named me Fido. (Nick) – Sherrilyn Kenyon • Nick, fetch my car, fetch my clothes, sweep the chimney, make my bed, watch my psychopath, fetch my slippers. – Sherrilyn Kenyon • No amount of rationalisation, reform, or Freudian analysis can quite annul the thrill of the chimney-corner whisper or the lonely wood. – H. P. Lovecraft • No; we have been as usual asking the wrong question. It does not matter a hoot what the mockingbird on the chimney is singing. The real and proper question is: Why is it beautiful? – Bertrand Russell • Non- Euclidean calculus and quantum physics are enough to stretch any brain; and when one mixes them with folklore, and tries to trace a strange background of multi-dimensional reality behind the ghoulish hints of Gothic tales and the wild whispers of the chimney-corner, one can hardly expect to be wholly free from mental tension. (Dreams In The Witch-House) – H. P. Lovecraft • Now I am old-fashioned. A woman, I consider, should be womanly. I have no patience with the modern neurotic girl who jazzes from morning to night, smokes like a chimney, and uses language which would make a billingsgate fishwoman blush! – Agatha Christie • Of all the ruinous and desolate places my uncle had ever beheld, this was the most so. It looked as if it had once been a large house of entertainment; but the roof had fallen in, in many places, and the stairs were steep, rugged, and broken. There was a huge fire-place in the room into which they walked, and the chimney was blackened with smoke; but no warm blaze lighted it up now. The white feathery dust of burnt wood was still strewed over the hearth, but the stove was cold, and all was dark and gloomy. – Charles Dickens • One day the wind blew through the town, and oh, how merry it was! It whistled down the chimneys, and scampered round the corners, and sang in the tree tops. “Come and dance, come and dance, come and dance with me,” that is what it seemed to say. – Maud Lindsay • One may have a blazing hearth in one’s soul and yet no one ever came to sit by it. Passers-by see only a wisp of smoke from the chimney and continue on their way. – Vincent Van Gogh • One sparrow is worth a thousand gulls, When it sings. The gull sits on chimney-tops. He mocks the guinea, challenges The crow, inciting various modes. The sparrow requites one, without intent. – Wallace Stevens • Our secret thoughts – do they ever show up? The small flame of our soul can be burning hot, but no one comes to its warmth. Passersby see only a small whiff going through the chimney. Don’t we need to take care of that flame, cherish it and patiently wait until someone will come and sit at it, do we? – Irving Stone • P.S. If it’s not a secret, will you tell me how you got my dollhouse inside our living room last Christmas? I know its too big to fit down the chimney. I measured. – Joanne Fluke • Praise the invisible sun burning beyond the white cold sky, giving us light and the chimney’s shadow. – Denise Levertov • She finds tales everywhere, in grains of sand she picks up from the garden, in puffs of smoke that drift out from the chimneys of the village, in fragments of smooth timber or glass in the jetsam. She will ask them, “Where did you come from? How did you get here?” And they will answer her in voices very like her own, but with new lilts and squeaks and splashes in them that show they are their own. – David Almond • She grew more and more silent about what really mattered. She curled inside herself like one of those black chimney brushes, the little shellfish you see on the beach, and you touch them, and then go inside and don’t come out. – Janet Frame • She’d become a governess. It was one of the few jobs a known lady could do. And she’d taken to it well. She’d sworn that if she did indeed ever find herself dancing on rooftops with chimney sweeps she’d beat herself to death with her own umbrella. – Terry Pratchett • Silkes and Satins put out the fire in the chimney. – George Herbert • Sitting by the chimney corner as we grow old, the commonest things around us take on live meanings and hint at the difference between these driving times and the calm, slow moving days when we were young. – Rebecca Harding Davis • Smell and taste are in fact but a single composite sense, whose laboratory is the mouth and its chimney the nose. – Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin • Smoke like a chimney, work like a horse, eat without thinking, go for a walk only in really pleasant company. – Albert Einstein • Snowstorms may yet whiten fields and gardens, high winds may howl about the trees and chimneys, but the little blue heralds persistently proclaim from the orchard and the garden that the spring procession has begun to move. – Neltje Blanchan • Soldiers in peace are like chimneys in summer. – William Cecil, 1st Baron Burghley • Some burn damp faggots, others may consume The entire combustible world in one small room As though dried straw, and if we turn about The bare chimney is gone black out Because the work had finished in that flare. – William Butler Yeats • Some critics are like chimney-sweepers; they put out the fire below, and frighten the swallows from their nests above; they scrape a long time in the chimney, cover themselves with soot, and bring nothing away but a bag of cinders, and then sing from the top of the house as if they had built it. – Henry Wadsworth Longfellow • Someday I’ll wish upon a star And wake up where the clouds Are far behind me Where troubles melt like lemon drops Away above the chimney tops that’s where you’ll find me – Eva Cassidy • Sometimes, looking up at Sophiatown… I have felt I was looking at an Italian village somewhere in Umbria. For you do ‘look up’ at Sophiatown, and in the evening light, across the blue-grey haze of smoke from braziers and chimneys, against a saffron sky, you see close-packed, red-roofed little houses. …And above it all you see the Church of Christ the King, its tower visible north, south, east, and west. – Trevor Huddleston • Souldiers in peace are like chimneys in summer. – George Herbert • Such Roots as are soft, your best way is to dry in the Sun, or else hang them up in the Chimney corner upon a string; as for such as are hard you may dry them any where. – Nicholas Culpeper • The American Petroleum Institute filed suit against the EPA [and] charged that the agency was suppressing a scientific study for fear it might be misinterpreted… The suppressed study reveals that 80 percent of air pollution comes not from chimneys and auto exhaust pipes, but from plants and trees. – Ronald Reagan • The best way that a man could test his readiness to encounter the common variety of mankind would be to climb down a chimney into any house at random, and get on as well as possible with the people inside. And that is essentially what each one of us did on the day that he was born. – Gilbert K. Chesterton • The chimney is to some extent an independent structure, standing on the ground, and rising through the house to the heavens; evenafter the house is burned it still stands sometimes, and its importance and independence are apparent. – Henry David Thoreau • The city itself swung slowly toward us silent as a dream. No sign of life but puffs of steam from skyscraper chimneys, the motion of the traffic. The mighty towers stood like tombstones in a graveyard, leaning against the sky and waiting for — for what? Someday we’ll know. – Edward Abbey • The city was asleep on its right side and shaking with violent nightmares. Long puffs of snoring came out of the chimneys. Its feet were sticking out because the clouds did not cover it altogether. There was a hole in them and the white feathers were falling out. The city had untied all its bridges like so many buttons to feel at ease. Wherever there was a lamplight the city scratched itself until it went out. – Anais Nin • The clouds were flying fast, the wind was coming up in gusts, banging some neighboring shutters that had broken loose, twirling the rusty chimney-cowls and weathercocks, and rushing round and round a confined adjacent churchyard as if it had a mind to blow the dead citizens out of their graves. The low thunder, muttering in all quarters of the sky at once, seemed to threaten vengeance for this attempted desecration, and to mutter, “Let them rest! Let them rest! – Charles Dickens • The experienced illustrator subscribes to the principle of the application of the seat of the pants to the seat of the chair. Should inspiration whisk down your chimney, be at your table. The first ten thousand drawings are the hardest. Put another way, you have ten thousand bad drawings within and should expel them as quickly as possible. – Wallace Tripp • The Gingerbread House has four walls, a roof, a door, a window, and a chimney. It is decorated with many sweet culinary delights on the outside.But on the inside there is nothing-only the bare gingerbread walls.It is not a real house-not until you decide to add a Gingerbread Room.That’s when the stories can move in.They will stay in residence for as long as you abstain from taking the first gingerbread bite. – Vera Nazarian • The image by Barry Blitt of Barack Obama and Michelle in the White House with him dressed as a terrorist, her dressed as an Angela Davis character, a flag burning in the chimney, a portrait of Bin Laden on the wall is an image I’m extremely proud of. – Francoise Mouly • The nonexistent is whatever we have not sufficiently desired. Only after death, only in solitude, does a man’s true nature emerge. In death, as on the chimney sweep’s Saturday night, the soot gets washed from his body. • The rain and hail pattered against the glass; the chimneys quaked and rocked; the crazy casement rattled with the wind, as though an impatient hand inside were striving to burst it open. But no hand was there, and it opened no more. – Charles Dickens • The real and proper question is: why is it beautiful? – Annie Dillard • The sky was dark and gloomy, the air was damp and raw, the streets were wet and sloppy. The smoke hung sluggishly above the chimney-tops as if it lacked the courage to rise, and the rain came slowly and doggedly down, as if it had not even the spirit to pour. – Charles Dickens • The south-wind strengthens to a gale, / Across the moon the clouds fly fast, / The house is smitten as with a flail, / The chimney shudders to the blast. – Robert Bridges • The stockings were hung by the chimney with care, In hopes that St. Nicholas soon would be there. – Clement Clarke Moore • The thing to remember about love affairs,” says Simone, “is that they are all like having raccoons in your chimney.” … We have raccoons sometimes in our chimney,” explains Simone. And once we tried to smoke them out. We lit a fire, knowing they were there, but we hoped the smoke would cause them to scurry out the top and never come back. Instead, they caught on fire and came crashing down into our living room, all charred and in flames and running madly around until they dropped dead.” Simone swallows some wine. “Love affairs are like that,” she says. “They are all like that. – Lorrie Moore • The things I believed in dont exist any more. It’s foolish to pretend that they do. Western Civilization finally went up in smoke in the chimneys at Dachau but I was too infatuated to see it. I see it now. – Cormac McCarthy • The wind outside nested in each tree, prowled the sidewalks in invisible treads like unseen cats. Tom Skelton shivered. Anyone could see that the wind was a special wind this night, and the darkness took on a special feel because it was All Hallows’ Eve. Everything seemed cut from soft black velvet or gold or orange velvet. Smoke panted up out of a thousand chimneys like the plumes of funeral parades. From kitchen windows drifted two pumpkin smells: gourds being cut, pies being baked. – Ray Bradbury • The winter evening settles down With smell of steaks in passageways. Six o’clock. The burnt-out ends of smoky days. And now a gusty shower wraps The grimy scraps Of withered leaves about your feet And newspapers from vacant lots; The showers beat On broken blinds and chimney-pots, And at the corner of the street A lonely cab-horse steams and stamps. And then the lighting of the lamps. – T. S. Eliot • The yellow fog that rubs its back upon the window-panes The yellow smoke that rubs its muzzle on the window-panes Licked its tongue into the corners of the evening Lingered upon the pools that stand in drains Let fall upon its back the soot that falls from chimneys Slipped by the terrace, made a sudden leap And seeing that it was a soft October night Curled once about the house, and fell asleep – T. S. Eliot • Their bodies will be raised from the dead as vessels for the soul-vessels of wrath. The soul will breathe hell-fire, and smoke and coal will seem to hang upon its burning lips, yea the face, eyes, and ears will seem to be chimneys and vents for the flame, and the smoke of the burning , which God, by His breath, hath kindled therein, and upon, them, which will be held one in another, to the great torment and distress of each other. – John Bunyan • Their houses are all built in the shape of tents, with very high chimneys. – Christopher Columbus • There did he sit shrivelled in his chimney corner, fretting on account of his weak legs, world weary, will weary, and one day he suffocated through his excessive pity. – Friedrich Nietzsche • There is in every American, I think, something of the old Daniel Boone – who, when he could see the smoke from another chimney, felt himself too crowded and moved further out into the wilderness. – Hubert H. Humphrey • There’s no way the new chimney will fall down, Lu. Not with you in charge. It wouldn’t dare. – Angie Sage • This is a valley of ashes–a fantastic farm where ashes grow like wheat into ridges and hills and grotesque gardens; where ashes take the forms of houses and chimneys and rising smoke and, finally, with a transcendent effort, of men who move dimly and already crumbling through the powdery air. Occasionally a line of gray cars crawls along an invisible track, gives out a ghastly creak, and comes to rest, and immediately the ash-gray men swarm up with leaden spades and stir up an impenetrable cloud, which screens their obscure operations from your sight. – F. Scott Fitzgerald • Tis easier to build two chimneys, then to maintaine one. – George Herbert • To thousands of elder women in the late sixties and early seventies [the private women’s club movement] came like a new gospel ofactivity and service. They had reared their children and seen them take flight; moreover, they had fought through the war, their hearts in the field, their fingers plying needle and thread. They had been active in committees and commissions, the country over; had learned to work with and beside men, finding joy and companionship and inspiration in such work. How could they go back to the chimney-corner life of the fifties? – Laura E. Richards • Too much! Wait till you have lived here longer. Look down the valley! See the cloud of a hundred chimneys that overshadows it! I tell you that the cloud of murder hangs thicker and lower than that over the heads of the people. It is the Valley of Fear, the Valley of Death. The terror is in the hearts of the people from the dusk to the dawn. Wait, young man, and you will learn for yourself. – Arthur Conan Doyle • Two bones fell down my chimney and into the bedroom this morning. Hysterical thing to happen to a thriller writer. Murderous ravens perhaps? – Tobsha Learner • Walking the streets on winter nights kept him warm, despite the cold nocturnal passions of uprising winds. His footsteps led between trade-marked houses, two up and two down, with digital chimneys like pigs’ tits on the rooftops sending up heat and smoke into the cold trough of a windy sky. Stars hid like snipers, taking aim now and again when clouds gave them a loophole. Winter was an easy time for him to hide his secrets, for each dark street patted his shoulder and became a friend, and the gaseous eye of each lamp glowed unwinking as he passed. – Alan Sillitoe • We all ought to understand we’re on our own. Believing in Santa Claus doesn’t do kids any harm for a few years but it isn’t smart for them to continue waiting all their lives for him to come down the chimney with something wonderful. Santa Claus and God are cousins. – Andy Rooney • We are constituted a good deal like chickens, which, taken from the hen, and put in a basket of cotton in the chimney-corner, willoften peep till they die, nevertheless; but if you put in a book, or anything heavy, which will press down the cotton, and feel like the hen, they go to sleep directly. – Henry David Thoreau • We came to the house, and it is an old house, full of great chimneys where wood is burnt on ancient dogs upon the hearth, and grim portraits (some of them with grim legends, too) lower distrustfully from the oaken panels of the walls. – Charles Dickens • We have not wondered enough at the delights God has given us to appreciate them, and be good stewards. We have overworked the land, poured pollutants into river and stream, fouled the air we breathe with gas fumes and chemical smoke spiraling up from industrial chimneys. We have sown the wind. We are reaping the whirlwind. – Madeleine L’Engle • We launch our souls from the cannons of art and discipline, and on any one night, hovering over the chimney tops of Europe, halfway to the stars, there are armies of brightly spinning spirits that have risen like fireworks, tethered to the souls of those men and women who, by reflection, mortification, and devotion, effortlessly outdazzle kings. – Mark Helprin • Westminster Abbey, the Tower, a steeple, one church, and then another, presented themselves to our view; and we could now plainly distinguish the high round chimneys on the tops of the houses, which yet seemed to us to form an innumerable number of smaller spires, or steeples. – Karl Philipp Moritz • What good is truth, at midnight, in the dark, when the wind is roaring like a bear in the chimney? – Diane Setterfield • When an alluring woman comes in at the door,” warningly traced the austere Kien-fi on the margin of his well-known essay, “discretion may be found up the chimney”. It is incredible that beneath this ever-timely reminder an obscure disciple should have added the words: “The wiser the sage, the more profound the folly. – Ernest Bramah • When I walk across my living room from my chimney to my window, it takes me 10 seconds, but for a bird it takes one second, and for oxygen zero seconds! – Jean-Claude Van Damme • When I was a girl, my life was music that was always getting louder. Everything moved me. A dog following a stranger. That made me feel so much. A calendar that showed the wrong month. I could have cried over it. I did. Where the smoke from a chimney ended. How an overturned bottle rested at the edge of a table. I spent my life learning to feel less. Every day I felt less. Is that growing old? Or is it something worse? You cannot protect yourself from sadness without protecting yourself from happiness. – Jonathan Safran Foer • When my mother died I was very young, And my father sold me while yet my tongue Could scarcely cry weep weep weep weep. So your chimneys I sweep, and in soot I sleep. – William Blake • When we hold onto the negative in ourselves it comes with endless guilt. We hold onto a lifetime of floating visions and regrets about what we should have done or should have become. Conscience recognizes wrong and tries to atone. But guilt turns into resentment. Conscience brings us closer to each other; guilt drives us apart. Create a new feeling. Every time guilt settles in your stomach, write “I forgive” on a piece of paper. Send it up the chimney, tear it up and flush it, put it in the garbage. Don’t eat it. – Jennifer James • When we talk of architecture, people usually think of something static; this is wrong. What we are thinking of is an architecture similar to the dynamic and musical architecture achieved by the Futurist musician Pratella. Architecture is found in the movement of colours, of smoke from a chimney and in metallic structures, when they are expressed in states of mind which are violent and chaotic. – Carlo Carra • When you were sleeping on the sofa I put my ear to your ear and listened to the echo of your dreams. That is the ocean I want to dive in, merge with the bright fish, plankton and pirate ships. I walk up to people on the street that kind of look like you and ask them the questions I would ask you. Can we sit on a rooftop and watch stars dissolve into smoke rising from a chimney? Can I swing like Tarzan in the jungle of your breathing? I don’t wish I was in your arms, I just wish I was peddling a bicycle toward your arms. – Jeffrey McDaniel • Where you thinke there is bacon, there is no Chimney. – George Herbert • With a tale, forsooth, he cometh unto you; with a tale which holdeth children from play, and old men from the chimney corner. – Philip Sidney • With gas cookers and chip pans in every kitchen, the chip-pan fire was by far the most popular method these Proddies had for burning their houses down. The second technique was the ever popular chimney fire and number three had to be the drunken cigarette drop on the carpet. Mind you, why they’d be cooking chips at this hour was anyone’s guess. – Adrian McKinty • Writing was a chimney for my blazing ambitions. – Storm Jameson • You can’t build a chimney from the top, you know. – Marian Anderson • You have these ‘hot towers’, tropical storm clouds acting like chimneys to carry heat to the upper atmosphere. – Peter May • Your goal is to achieve the best results by following their wishes. If they want you to build a house upside down standing on its chimney, it’s up to you to do it. – Richard Morris Hunt

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