“Few tasks are more like the torture of Sisyphus than housework, with its endless repetition: the clean becomes soiled, the soiled is made clean, over and over, day after day.”

“in the day after humans disappear, nature takes over and immediately begins cleaning house - our houses.”

“Forgiveness is the answer to the child’s dream of a miracle by which what is broken is made whole again, what is soiled is made clean again.”

“Everyone starts out with a clean slate to soil.' (Daisy, 'Friendship on Fire', p. 280)”

“The mind that becomes soiled in youth can never again be washed clean. I know this by my own experience, & to this day I cherish an unappeased bitterness against the unfaithful guardians of my young life, who not only permitted but compelled me to read an unexpurgated Bible through before I was 15 years old. None can do that and ever draw a clean sweet breath again on this side of the grave.”

“Houses don't clean themselves, she'd mutter. Sometimes she cleaned the bits she had just cleaned. It wasn't like living in a house, but more a question hovering over the surfaces.”