Dream House Quotes

“The past never leaves us; there's always atmosphere to consider; you can wound air as cleanly as you can wound flesh. In this way, the Dream House was a haunted house. You were the sudden, inadvertent occupant of a place where bad things had happened.”
― Carmen Maria Machado, In the Dream House

“I wanted shelves for my books, and a finer chair for this desk. Of course there should be another library. What was a house to me if it did not possess a library?”
― Anne Rice, Blood And Gold

“My dream house . . . Each room a different texture, a different mood, a different poem, and at its heart, a creaking ladder sliding along floor-to-ceiling bookshelves in a timeless oak-paneled room that smells of leather and eternity.”
― Olga Grushin, Forty Rooms

“Nonstalgia (noun): 1. The unsettling sensation that you will never be able to fully access the past; that once you are departed from an event, some essential quality of it is lost forever. 2. A reminder to remember: just because the sharpness of the sadness has faded does not mean that it was not, once, terrible. It means only time and space, creature of infinite girth and tenderness, have stepped between the two of you, and they are keeping you safe as they were once unable to.”
― Carmen Maria Machado, In the Dream House

“She looked at his face, his lined, well-lived face. You were right. This perfect moment, in her once-desolate bedroom, was John’s belief at its apotheosis. She realized she wouldn’t have believed it before—that, in the most hopelessly constricted of places, you could find the fulfillment to all your dreams of adventure and romance. No, she wouldn’t have believed it. Not twenty years ago, not ten years ago, not a year ago. She had to reach forty-eight years of age to realize the truth and to internalize it. Forty-eight long years of groping in the dark. How silly she felt now and how blessed.”
― Ray Smith, The Magnolia That Bloomed Unseen

“The house is not essential for domestic abuse, but hell, it helps: a private space where private dramas are enacted behind, as the cliché goes, closed doors; but also windows sealed against the sound, drawn curtains, silent phones. A house is never apolitical. It is conceived, constructed, occupied, and policed by people with power, needs, and fears. Windex is political. So is the incense you burn to hide the smell of sex, or a fight.”
― Carmen Maria Machado, In the Dream House

“It's so hard to think about designing our dream home when all l wanna do is lay you out like a blueprint & bring you the lumber you require.”
― Curtis Tyrone Jones

“A dream house unfolding at some magical juncture of the past and the future, bypassing the dull, heartbroken, trivial present, born equally out of memory and promise . . .”
― Olga Grushin, Forty Rooms

“Ellie made her way up the familiar twist of Wicker Road. Even with just the porch light on, her house looked inviting and settled. The single oak that took up the majority of her front lawn was already beginning to collect the first measures of snow. She quickly walked up the three steps and went in.
There was nothing grandiose about the place, but it was a perfect fit for Ellie. The house looked a little like an old English cottage. It was tiny, reminding her of a dollhouse. Which suited her perfectly. Any bigger and the place would have echoed, and Ellie would have been aware of how acutely alone she was. She filled the walls with various pieces of artwork, and her queen-sized bed with pillows she made from pieces of vintage fabric. There were two fireplaces and wall-to-wall hardwood floors with perfectly worn-in wainscoting. The back rooms were all windows that could be opened up so it seemed almost a part of the garden. Ellie's study was lined with bookshelves on every wall except the alcove, in front of which she had placed an old secretary. She even had a small balcony off the master that looked over the garden and was a wonderful place to read.”
― Amy S. Foster, When Autumn Leaves

“The house was squashed like a mushroom by a thatched roof that hung far out over the walls. A pair of windows sparkled on either side of a rounded, heavy wooden door. There was nothing particularly creepy or witch-ish about it at all, except for maybe some leeks that grew on the roof around the higgledy-piggledy chimney (out of which wafted a lovely, homey-smelling smoke).
Next to the cottage was a small fenced-in kitchen garden, and even in the low light Rapunzel could see it wasn't given over just to herbs and vegetables. Tall rockets of flowers and pretty, feathery foliage shot colorfully out of the corners.
There was even a neat flagstone path that led up to the front door.
"Witch?" Flynn asked, skeptical. "Or, like... crunchy earth mother type who drinks herbal teas and pretends the goddess speaks to her?”
― Liz Braswell, What Once Was Mine

“Your actions are mightier than the architect's intentions.”
― Carmen Maria Machado, In the Dream House

“A reminder, perhaps, that abusers do not need to be, and rarely are, cackling maniacs. They just need to want something, and not care how they get it.”
― Carmen Maria Machado, In the Dream House

“You did not believe this was a battle that would be won in your lifetime, and so you resolved yourself to live in that wobbly space where your humanity and rights were openly debated on cable news, and the defense of them was not a requirement for the presidency. You were already a woman, so you knew. Occupying that space was your goddamned specialty.”
― Carmen Maria Machado, In the Dream House

“When you try to talk about the Dream House afterward, some people listen. Others politely nod while slowly closing the door behind their eyes; you might as well be a proselytizing Jehovah's Witness or an encyclopedia peddler. Kind to you in person, what they say to others makes its way back to you: We don't know for certain that it's as bad as she says. The woman from the Dream House seems perfectly fine, even nice. Maybe things were bad, but it's changed? Relationships are like that, right? Love is complicated. Maybe it was rough, but was it really abusive? What does that mean, anyway? Is that even possible?”
― Carmen Maria Machado, In the Dream House

“They are simply a memory, and as you overwrite that data card, erasing them forever, you feel an irrational twinge of loss.”
― Carmen Maria Machado, In the Dream House

“The townhouse was in a community called Waterview, a pretty green place with a common that had a gazebo and a fountain. The homes were red-brick colonial and beautiful. The townhouse Paxton had loved from the moment Kirsty showed it to her last year was in a cup-de-sac. Wisteria vines grew around the door, and Paxton remembered thinking how wonderful it would be to walk in and out in the springtime, when the wisteria would be in full bloom. It would be like walking through a wedding arch every day.”
― Sarah Addison Allen, The Peach Keeper

“The low, white house nestled at the top of the meadows, its back against the hill that rose behind it, protecting it from the north winds. The slate room shimmered under the late August sun. Honeysuckle twisted up over the front door, knitting its way across the wall, heavy with butter-yellow blooms. A barn and a short run of stables formed a farmyard, which had mostly been put down to grass. Foxgloves grew at will. Dog roses spilled from the hedges and tumbled over the Payne's grey of the stone walls.
Laura slowed the car as they skirted the oak woods before the final stretch of bumpy lane. Fractured light fell through the high canopy of leaves, picking out lemon yellow celandines and glowing violets on the dry forest floor.”
― Paula Brackston, Lamp Black, Wolf Grey

“Other people’s pockets are our money’s dream home.”
― Mokokoma Mokhonoana, On Friendship: A Satirical Essay