Halfway down the stairs, is a stair, where I sit. There isn't any, other stair, quite like, it. I'm not at the bottom, I'm not at the top; So this is the stair, where, I always, stop. Halfway up the stairs, isn't up, and isn't down. It isn't in the nursery, it isn't in the town. And all sorts of funny thoughts, run round my head: It isn't really anywhere! It's somewhere else instead!

You know how it is when you’re walking up the stairs, and you get to the top, and you think there’s one more step? I’m like that all the time.

Stairs, are they going up or are they going down? They’re so confusing! If love were a physical thing, it would be stairs.

Should I go up one flight of stairs and then come back down, or should I go down one flight of stairs and then come back up? Same destination, same distance, same amount of work, but two different paths. Who knows, I might find love on one path. Probably the path I don’t choose.

Lost in the shadows of the shelves, I almost fall off the ladder. I am exactly halfway up. The floor of the bookstore is far below me, the surface of a planet I've left behind.

Halfway isn't all the way, but it's better than no way.

The staircase was deserted — the higher up the building the more reluctant were the residents to use the stairs, as if this in some way demeaned them.

People in France have a phrase: "Spirit of the Stairway." In French: esprit d'Escalier. It means that moment when you find the answer but it's too late. So you're at a party and someone insults you. You have to say something. So, under pressure, with everybody watching, you say something lame. But the moment you leave the party...As you start down the stairway, then - magic. You come up with the perfect thing you should've said. The perfect crippling put down. That's the Spirit of the Stairway. The trouble is, even the French don't have a phrase for the stupid things you actually do say under pressure. Those stupid, desperate things you actually think or do.

Do you have stairs in your house?

He crosses the front room, which he calls his study, and comes down the staircase. The stairs turn a corner; they are narrow and steep. You can touch both handrails with your elbows, and you have to bend your head, even if, like George, you are only five eight. This is a tightly planned little house. He often feels protected by its smallness; there is hardly room enough here to feel lonely. Nevertheless.

I like to think of stairs, if I may. Stairs because we have climbed a few steps, but a lot more steps remain to be climbed on the way up to the top.

Life is like a staircase. Some climb it, others stumble and fall, but those who reach the top realize the true worth of their journey.

Often, what seems like an impossible climb is just a staircase without the steps drawn in.

Missing me one place, search another. I stop somewhere waiting for you.