houses

See Also: FURNITURE AND FURNISHINGS, ROOMS

1. [A modern building] all glossy undulations and shining declivities, like a razor haircut in concrete and glass —Jonathan Valin
2. (The place was) as conspicuously unadorned as a Presbyterian church —Jonathan Valin
3. (Tenement house with mean little) balconies pulled out one by one like drawers —Vladimir Nabokov
4. Bricks [in path to front door of house] laid close as your hairs —Sharon Olds
5. A building long and low like a loaf of bread —Marge Piercy
6. Buildings as badly painted as old whores —Larry McMurtry
7. Buildings, lined up like ships —Helen Hudson
8. Buying a new home is like raising children; there’s always room for improvement —Arlene Zalesky, Newsday/Viewpoints. September 27, 1986
9. The church has a steeple like the hat of a witch —William H. Gass
10. (Church) cold, damp and smelly as a tomb —Sean O’Faolain
11. Cottages looking like something the three little pigs might have built —Sue Grafton
12. Darkened houses loomed like medieval battlements —J. W. Rider
13. Decrepit houses lay scattered around the landscape like abandoned machines on a battlefield —Peter Meinke
14. Door … shut like an angry face —John Updike
15. A duplex co-op that made Lenny’s [Leonard Bernstein] look like a fourth-floor walkup —Tom Wolfe
16. An estate without a forest is like a house without a chimney —Sholom Aleichem
17. A first home, like the person who aroused our initial awakening to sex, holds forever strong sway over our emotions —Dorothea Straus
18. Frame houses collapsing at their centers like underdone cakes —Jean Thompson
19. A glass-and-concrete air-conditioned block of a building cantilevered from the hillside like a Swiss sanitorium —Walker Percy
20. The great glass doors … swished together behind him like an indrawn breath —A. Alvarez
21. Her house is like her chiffon cakes, all soft surfaces and pleasant colors —Bobbie Ann Mason
22. A home is like a reservoir equipped with a check valve: the valve permits influx but prevents outflow —E. B. White
23. A house like this is like some kinds of women, too expensive even —James Hilton
24. House narrow as a coffin —Angela Carter
25. Apartments … looking like giant bricks stabbed into the ground —W. P. Kinsella
26. Houses, like people, have personalities, and like the personalities of people they are partly molded by all that has happened to them —Louis Bromfield
27. Houses that aged nicely, like a handsome woman —James Crumley
28. Houses, their doors and windows open, drawing in freshness, were like old drunkards or consumptives taking a cure —Saul Bellow
29. The house stood like a huge shell, empty and desolate —H. E. Bates
30. House … trim and fresh as a birdcake and almost as small —William Faulkner
31. It [house] sat among ten acres of blackberry brambles, like an abandoned radio —Tom Robbins
32. [A ranch-style house] just too cute for words … it looked as if it had been delivered, already equipped, from a store —Christopher Isherwood
33. Kept it [an old historic house] up like a museum —Ruth Prawer Jhabvala

    See Also: ORDER/DISORDER

34. Long rows of apartment houses stood bald and desolate, like sad old prostitutes —Erich Maria Remarque
35. It [a big building

    looked as bleak as a barracks —Robert Silverberg

36. Looked as homey and inviting as the House of Usher —Sarah Bird
37. Houses (seen from belfry) looked like small caskets and boxes jumbled together —Boris Pasternak
38. A modern building made of … big cubes of concrete like something built by a child —Edna O’Brien
39. Modern buildings tend to look like call girls who came out of it intact except that their faces are a touch blank and the expression in their eyes is as lively as the tip of a filter cigarette —Norman Mailer
40. Paint peeled from it [an apartment house] in layers, like a bad sunburn —Paige Mitchell
41. A peculiar, suggestive heaviness, trapping the swooning buildings in a sweet, solid calm, as if preserving them in honey —Angela Carter
42. The pink stucco apartment house looked like a cake that was inhabited by hookers about to jump out of it any second —Robert Campbell
43. A pretty country retreat is like a pretty wife: one is always throwing away money decorating it —Washington Irving
44. Residences … of brick, whitewashed and looking faintly flushed, like a pretty girl, with the pink of the brick glowing through where the whitewash had worn off —Harvey Swados
45. Slate roofs … like the backs of pigeons —Don Robertson
46. Tents sprang up like strange plants. Camp fires, like red, peculiar blossoms, dotted the night —Stephen Crane
47. Victorian house … shaped like a wedding cake —Laurie Colwin
48. We require from buildings, as from men, two kinds of goodness: first, the doing their practical day well: then that they be graceful and pleasing in doing it —John Ruskin