
On Comedy
Source: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2003/11/03/anchor-woman
When We Were Very Young (1924)
On Comedy
Source: https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2003/11/03/anchor-woman
“I walk up the stairs to my fourth-floor apartment, all alone.”
Eat, Pray, Love (2006)
Context: I walk up the stairs to my fourth-floor apartment, all alone. I let myself into my tiny little studio, all alone. I shut the door behind me. Another early bedtime in Rome. Another long night's sleep ahead of me, with nobody and nothing in my bed except a pile of Italian phrase books and dictionaries.
I am alone, I am all alone, I am completely alone.
Grasping this reality, I let go of my bag, drop to my knees, and press my forehead against the floor. There I offer up to the universe a fervent prayer of thanks.
First in English.
Then in Italian.
And then — just to get the point across — in Sanskrit.
And since I am already down there in supplication on the floor, let me hold that position as I reach back in time three years earlier to the moment where this entire story began — a moment that also found me in this exact same posture: on my knees, on a floor, praying.
"Wee Willie Winkie" (1841). The Oxford Dictionary of Nursery Rhymes, 2nd ed. 1997, page 511. ISBN 0-19-860088-7.
“I came up stairs into the world, for I was born in a cellar.”
Act II, scene vii; comparable to: "Born in a cellar, and living in a garret", Samuel Foote, The Author, act 2; "Born in the garret, in the kitchen bred", Lord Byron, A Sketch
Love for Love (1695)
“It sounds like typewriters eating tin foil being kicked down the stairs.”
On the German language.
Like, Totally (2006)
Source: All Men are Mortal (1946), p. 201
Context: What did today's sacrifices matter: the Universe lay ahead in the future. What did burnings at the stake and massacres matter? The Universe was somewhere else, always somewhere else! And it isn't anywhere: there are only men, men eternally divided.
“If you fall down those stairs and break both of your legs, don't come running to me!”
Source: Are These My Basoomas I See Before Me?
“In my little box
At the top of the stair
With my Indian rug
And a pipe to share.”
Pocahontas
Song lyrics, Rust Never Sleeps (1978)