Wallpaper Quotes

“This wallpaper is dreadful, one of us will have to go.”
― Oscar Wilde

“A photograph shouldn't be just a picture, it should be a philosophy.”
― Amit Kalantri, Wealth of Words

“My wallpaper and I are fighting a duel to the death. One or the other of us has to go.”
― Oscar Wilde

“Creating is living doubly. The groping, anxious quest of a Proust, his meticulous collecting of flowers, of wallpapers, and of anxieties, signifies nothing else.”
― Albert Camus, The Myth of Sisyphus and Other Essays

“When I was a little girl,' I said, sitting down, 'the wallpaper in my room had pictures of Noah's story.' [...]
You know what's weird though? It's weird that the ark would be such a kids' story, you know? I mean, it's...really a story about death. Every person who isn't in Noah's family? They die. Every animal, apart from two of each on the boat? They die. They all die in the flood. Billions of creatures. It's the worst tragedy ever,' I finished, my voice tied off by a knot in my chest.[...] 'What the hell,'I said, 'pardon my language, was that doing on my wallpaper?”
― Adam Rex, The True Meaning of Smekday

“These are her accomplishments. Challenges she's lived through. Shithead was just along for the ride. In the background. Like wallpaper. You can change the color of the walls anytime, and it might look different, but the room's still the same.”
― Emma Chase, Tangled

“Lovers tend to be philosophical, achievers are practical.”
― Amit Kalantri

“A painting shouldn't be just a picture, it should be a philosophy.”
― Amit Kalantri

“He had a long thin nose, a moustache like flock wallpaper, sparse, carefully combed hair, and the complexion of a Hovis loaf.”
― Len Deighton, The Ipcress File

“My stove is old. My wallpaper is old. It's the same wallpaper from when I moved here and I never changed it. Why would I change it? I just keep it clean. If you take better care of things, you can hold onto them longer. That's how I still run things. If it works, I keep it. If it doesn't, I see if I can use it for something else. If I can't, and I usually can, I toss it.”
― Clara Cannucciari, Clara's Kitchen: Wisdom, Memories, and Recipes from the Great Depression

“Pragmatism is good prevention for problems.”
― Amit Kalantri

“I only enjoy what I can see, because I don't feel anything. For example, your new wallpaper. I like it and it can stay, it's quiet and it keeps quiet at least. Luckily I don't have to feel it, just see it.”
― Elfriede Jelinek, Greed

“He kept seeing the brains dribbling down the wallpaper. It wasn’t the killing that stayed on his mind, it was the spilled talent. A lifetime of honing and shaping torn apart in less than a second. All those stories, all those images, and what came out looked like so much oatmeal. What was the point?”
― Stephen King, Finders Keepers

“I rode up, walked past a few miles of wallpaper that was someone's revenge for life's disappointments.”
― Keith Laumer, A Plague of Demons & Other Stories

“Every plain wall deserves a piece of work, so why not cover it with a smile?”
― Shawn Lukas

“Those were my last words. To be listed in some book of quotations, alphabetically after Wilde:

Wilde, Oscar (of the wallpaper in his bedroom): “Either it goes, or I do.”
Wilding, Adelyn (of the gum splooches on the sidewalk): “Ditto.””
― Roberta Pearce, Famous Penultimate Words

“At home in the nursery, I usually played alone. Actually, I seldom played, I spoke to the wallpaper. The many dark circles in the pattern of the wallpaper seemed like people to me. I made up stories in which they appeared, either I told them the stories or they played with me, I never got tired of the wallpaper people and I could talk to them for hours.”
― Elias Canetti, Die gerettete Zunge: Geschichte einer Jugend

“The first thing she noticed when the light popped on was that the wallpaper had rows and rows of tiny lilacs on it, like scratch-and-sniff paper, and the room actually smelled a little like lilacs. There was a four-poster bed against the wall, the torn, gauzy remnants of what had once been a canopy now hanging off the posts like maypoles.”
― Sarah Addison Allen, The Girl Who Chased the Moon

“You asked what the wallpaper was in Mom's old room. It's lilacs."
"Ah. It was always flowers, usually roses, when she was a little girl. It changed a lot as she got older. I remember once it was lightning bolts on a tar-black background. And then another time it was this scaly blue color, like a dragon's belly. She hated that one, but couldn't seem to change it.”
― Sarah Addison Allen, The Girl Who Chased the Moon

“I'm not a child, Grandpa Vance. Wallpaper doesn't change on its own."
Instead of arguing, he asked, "What did it change to?"
As if he didn't know. "Butterflies. Crazy butterflies!"
"Just think of that room as a universal truth," Grandpa Vance said. "How we see the world changes all the time. It all depends on our mood.”
― Sarah Addison Allen, The Girl Who Chased the Moon

“The butterfly wallpaper was now gone. It had been replaced by a moody, breathless wallpaper of silver, sprinkled with tiny white dots that looked like stars. It made her feel an odd sense of anticipation, like last night. Grandpa Vance couldn't have come in last night and done this.
Did it really change on its own?
It was beautiful, this wallpaper. It made the room look like living in a cloud. She put her hand against the wall by her dresser. It was soft, like velvet. How could her mother not have told her a room like this existed? She'd never mentioned it. Not even in a bedtime story.”
― Sarah Addison Allen, The Girl Who Chased the Moon

“The light from the moon shone along the door casing and spread across the walls a few inches inside, far enough for her to suddenly notice that the phases-of-the-moon wallpaper she'd been living with all week was gone. It was a now curious dark color she couldn't quite make out, punctuated by long strips of yellow. It looked almost like dark doors and windows opening, letting in light. The wallpaper was usually some reflection of her mood or situation, but what did this mean? Some new door was opening? Something was being set free?”
― Sarah Addison Allen, The Girl Who Chased the Moon

“Sarah was soon lugging pasteboard boxes, paper packages and rolled samples of wallpaper. She had seen all of this before: she had daydreamed it. It was all very fine, but it was not as lovely as the daydream, and the packages slithered and slipped from her grip, and a box dug into her side, and how could it be that one printed paper was so vitally, importantly lovely and another was entirely dismissable, or that any or that any of it really mattered so very much, or indeed at all?”
― Jo Baker

“One morning while drinking coffee with Amos, Daniel Haws looked up suddenly, as if feeling the boy’s eyes on him, and said:
“Tryin’ to burn holes starin’ like that?”
“Guess I was just resting my eyes on you so as not to look at your wallpaper,” Amos gave a sour apology.
Daniel closed the book he was reading, a volume of Rhodes’s history of the United States, and took a careful look at the kitchen wallpaper.
“Yes,” he admitted, “that wallpaper is goddam ancient.”
― James Purdy, Eustace Chisholm and the Works

“I admit I’m easy to disturb. Heck, I’m about as disturbed as it’s possible to get without actually needing a self-hugging jacket and bubble wrap wallpaper.”
― Garon Whited, Knightfall

“It was the Riverton drawing room. Even the wallpaper was the same. Silver Studios' burgundy Art Nouveau, "Flaming Tulips," as fresh as the day the paperers had come from London. A leather chesterfield sat at the center by the fireplace, draped with Indian silks just like the ones Hannah and Emmeline's grandfather, Lord Ashbury, had brought back from abroad when he was a young officer. The ship's clock stood where it always had, on the mantelpiece beside the Waterford candelabra.”
― Kate Morton, The House at Riverton

“I quickly shifted my gaze to the wallpaper, where it skimmed across the bright flowers and mischievous rabbits and landed on one of the bees in the print. I swear I saw its wings flutter. I reached out to touch it only to realize the bee was warm under my fingertip.
"Do you like the wallpaper?" Cora Bee asked. "Some people think it's too busy, too colorful, too much."
I turned to face Cora Bee. "It's not any of that. It's perfect."
Though her eyes were tired, haunted, she smiled. "I think you'll fit in around here just fine, Emme."
And I smiled, too, because I knew she wasn't lying.”
― Heather Webber, In the Middle of Hickory Lane