“
Step Away from the Mean Girls…
…and say bye-bye to feeling bad about your looks.
Are you ready to stop colluding with a culture that makes so many of us feel physically inadequate? Say goodbye to your inner critic, and take this pledge to be kinder to yourself and others.
This is a call to arms. A call to be gentle, to be forgiving, to be generous with yourself. The next time you look into the mirror, try to let go of the story line that says you're too fat or too sallow, too ashy or too old, your eyes are too small or your nose too big; just look into the mirror and see your face. When the criticism drops away, what you will see then is just you, without judgment, and that is the first step toward transforming your experience of the world.
”
”
Oprah Winfrey
“
We walk and walk through the gray ashy dusk and the forest starts to fall asleep: The trees lie down side by side by side, the creek halts, the plants sink back into the earth, the animals switch places with their shadows, and then, so do we.
”
”
Jandy Nelson (I'll Give You the Sun)
“
To subdue one's self to one's own ends might be dangerous, but to subdue one's self to other people's ends was dust and ashes. Yet there were those, still more unhappy, who envied even the ashy saltness of those dead sea apples.
”
”
Dorothy L. Sayers (Gaudy Night (Lord Peter Wimsey, #12))
“
Modern colonialism won its great victories not so much through its military and technological prowess as through its ability to create secular hierarchies incompatible with the traditional order.
”
”
Ashis Nandy (The Intimate Enemy: Loss and Recovery of Self Under Colonialism)
“
In India the choice could never be between chaos and stability, but between manageable and unmanageable chaos, between humane and inhuman anarchy, and between tolerable and intolerable disorder. ASHIS NANDY, sociologist, 1990.
”
”
Ramachandra Guha (India After Gandhi: The History of the World's Largest Democracy)
“
He held her forever. Ashy flickers swam in his eyes, shadows of temptation drawing her into infinite depths. A breath away from his tantalising mouth, she parted her lips. The thudding of her pulse hurt. The knocking of her heart brushed her soul. She sank into him.
”
”
Chris Lange (The Lord of the Clans)
“
She turned of an ashy paleness as cold hatred and desire for revenge took possession of her vindictive soul.
”
”
Charlotte Dacre (Zofloya)
“
I drove on, and between the north and southbound lanes a construction crew worked under daylight-bright industrial lamps. I saw them through a gauzy fog of dust and strong light...they wore blood-red vests and hardhats and massive goggles, and as the road sank I saw that the workers were bone thin, with skeletal jaws and long teeth. They labored on platforms over gaping holes in the earth, and among the men, piled atop rickety pallets, lolled babies, piles of them, in ashy cerements. I could not tell whether the crew was excavating or burying them.
”
”
Matthew M. Bartlett (Gateways to Abomination)
“
Ah, world, what lessons you prepare for us,
even in the leafless winter,
even in the ashy city.
I am thinking now
of grief, and of getting past it
from “Starlings in Winter
”
”
Mary Oliver (Owls and Other Fantasies: Poems and Essays)
“
The young were always theoretical; only the middle-aged could realize the deadliness of principles. To subdue one’s self to one’s own ends might be dangerous, but to subdue one’s self to other people’s ends was dust and ashes. Yet there were those, still more unhappy, who envied even the ashy saltiness of those dead sea apples.
”
”
Dorothy L. Sayers (Gaudy Night (Lord Peter Wimsey, #12))
“
Holy shit!” Moondance swung around, her face now streaked with the ashy remains of the nephilim, her eyes wide at the sight of me. “Callie’s back, and she brought a laser gun!
”
”
Carol Goodman (The Angel Stone (Fairwick Chronicles, #3))
“
Endovier?” It was a fool’s plea. Slowly, so slowly, Rowan shook his head. “Once he got word of the uprising in Eyllwe, the King of Adarlan sent two other legions north. None were spared in Endovier.” She did not see Rowan’s face when he gripped her arms as if he could keep her from falling into the abyss. No, all she could see were the slaves she’d left behind, the ashy mountains and those mass graves they dug every day, the faces of her people, who had worked beside her—her people whom she had left behind. Whom she had let herself forget, had let suffer; who had prayed for salvation, holding out hope that someone, anyone would remember them.
”
”
Sarah J. Maas (Heir of Fire (Throne of Glass, #3))
“
She sits and listens with crossed legs under the batik house-wrap she wears, with her heavy three-way-piled hair and cigarette at her mouth and refuses me - for the time being, anyway - the most important things I ask of her.
It's really kind of tremendous how it all takes place. You'd never guess how much labor goes into it. Only some time ago it occurred to me how great an amount. She came back from the studio and went to take a bath, and from the bath she called out to me, "Darling, please bring me a towel." I took one of those towel robes that I had bought at the Bon Marche' department store and came along with it. The little bathroom was in twilight. In the auffe-eua machine, the brass box with teeth of gas
burning, the green metal dropped crumbs inside from the thousand-candle blaze. Her body with its warm woman's smell was covered with water starting in a calm line over her breasts. The glass of the medicine chest shone (like a deep blue place in the wall, as if a window to the evening sea and not the ashy fog of Paris. I sat down with the robe over my; shoulder and felt very much at peace. For a change the apartment seemed clean and was warm; the abominations were gone into the background, the stoves drew well and they shone. Jacqueline was cooking dinner and it smelled of gravy. I felt settled and easy, my chest free and my fingers comfortable and open. And now here's the thing. It takes a time like this for you to find out how sore your heart has been, and, moreover, all the while you thought you were going around
idle terribly hard work was taking place. Hard, hard work, excavation and digging, mining, moiling through tunnels, heaving, pushing, moving rock, working, working, working, working, panting, hauling, hoisting. And none of this work is seen from the outside. It's internally done. It happens because you are powerless and unable to get anywhere, to obtain justice or have requital, and therefore in yourself you labor, you wage and combat, settle scores, remember insults, fight, reply, deny, blab, denounce, triumph, outwit, overcome, vindicate, cry, persist, absolve, die and rise again. All by yourself? Where is everybody? Inside your breast and skin, the entire cast.
”
”
Saul Bellow (All Marbles Accounted for)
“
When you first look down, you see everything — and nothing. It’s as if your eyes can see only grayness. But if you tell yourself that there’s treasure at your feet, your eyes will begin to see differences in the shades of gray: silvery cracks, charcoal pebbles, ashy litter. Then, when you find your first glimmering coin, your brain will understand exactly what you want, and it will start to find coins everywhere. It just takes patience.
”
”
Jennifer Richard Jacobson (Paper Things)
“
Once you own history, it begins to own you.
”
”
Ashis Nandy
“
Face devoid of darkness, Tanu kissed her on both cheeks. “Live an extraordinary life, won’t you, Ashi? Fate has promised me you’ll make it.
”
”
Nalini Singh (Archangel's Shadows (Guild Hunter, #7))
“
Clare arose in the light of a dawn that was ashy and furtive, as though associated with crime. The fireplace confronted him with its extinct embers; the spread supper-table, whereon stood the two full glasses of untasted wine, now flat and filmy; her vacated seat and his own; the other articles of furniture, with their eternal look of not being able to help it, their intolerable inquiry what was to be done?
”
”
Thomas Hardy (Tess of the D'Urbervilles)
“
She noticed immediately that they were now in an altogether paler country. The sun had disappeared above a film of vapour. The air was becoming cooler every minute. The land was flat and treeless and there seemed to be no colour in it at all. Every minute, the mist became thicker. The air became colder still and everything became paler and paler until soon there was nothing but grey and white all around them. They were in a country of swirling mists and ghostly vapours. There was some sort of grass underfoot but it was not green. It was ashy grey.
”
”
Roald Dahl (The BFG)
“
In fact, the anti-Muslim stance of much of Hindu nationalism can be construed as partly a displaced hostility against the colonial power which could not be expressed directly because of the new legitimacy created within Hinduism for this power. Such a dynamic would seem to roughly duplicate the displacement of Oedipal hostilities in the authoritarian personality.
”
”
Ashis Nandy (The Intimate Enemy: Loss and Recovery of Self Under Colonialism)
“
People in coats and ties were milling around the Talley gallery, and on the wall were the minimally rendered still lifes by Giorgio Morandi, most of them no bigger than a tea tray. Their thin browns, ashy grays, and muted blues made people speak softly to one another, as if a shouted word might curdle one of the paintings and ruin it. Bottles, carafes, and ceramic whatnots sat in his paintings like small animals huddling for warmth, and these shy pictures could easily hang next to a Picasso or Matisse without feeling inferior.
”
”
Steve Martin (An Object of Beauty)
“
I think all this doctrine, that hell-fire is a punishment for sin, is a doctrine of cruelty. It is a doctrine that put cruelty into the world and gave the world generations of cruel torture; and the Christ of the Gospels, if you could take Him asHis chroniclers represent Him, would certainly have to be considered partly responsible for that.
”
”
Bertrand Russell (Why I Am Not a Christian (Grapevine edition))
“
He sees his world in black and white: Filthy snow, a hollow sky, the gray cement of the walls - water stains, like giant ink spills, eating into them - and his own skin, an ashy patina enveloping his body. Even the wounds on his feet, hardened and crusted, have lost their red. He has come to think of colour as something fantastic that exists only in his mind - the red of a tomato sliced and salted at the lunch table, the deep blue of a lapis lazuli on Farnaz's finger, the honey hue of his daughter's hair in the sun.
”
”
Dalia Sofer (The Septembers of Shiraz)
“
As the campfire burned to an ashy bowl of red-hot embers, the boys would ramble on, piling up horror upon horror, like cordwood stacked under a blood-red-barked madrona tree.
”
”
Gregg Olsen (Starvation Heights: A True Story of Murder and Malice in the Woods of the Pacific Northwest)
“
He watched as her sister read it. Watched as her face crumpled, as her shoulders shook. Ashy. Caught her and held her, and they fell against each other.
”
”
Kelley Armstrong (Sea of Shadows (Age of Legends, #1))
“
What had once been an ashy blond brightened to ashen silver as it grew to a slightly longer,
”
”
Harper L. Woods (What Lies Beyond the Veil (Of Flesh & Bone, #1))
“
Somehow I cannot let it go yet, funeral though it is,
Let it remain back there on its nail suspended,
With pink, blue, yellow, all blanch'd, and the white now gray
and ashy,
One wither'd rose put years ago for thee, dear friend;
But I do not forget thee. Hast thou then faded?
Is the odor exhaled? Are the colors, vitalities, dead?
No, while memories subtly play—the past vivid as ever;
For but last night I woke, and in that spectral ring saw thee,
Thy smile, eyes, face, calm, silent, loving as ever:
So let the wreath hang still awhile within my eye-reach,
It is not yet dead to me, nor even pallid.
”
”
Walt Whitman
“
A thin, pale-grey serpent with glowing red eyes, it will rise from the embers of an unsupervised fire and slither away into the shadows of the dwelling in which it finds itself, leaving an ashy trail behind it.
”
”
J.K. Rowling (Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them)
“
A thin, pale-grey serpent with glowing red eyes, it will rise from the embers of an unsupervised fire and slither away into the shadows of the dwelling in which it finds itself, leaving an ashy trail behind it.
”
”
Newt Scamander (Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them)
“
The physical suffering of the disease and its aspect of evil mystery were expressed in a strange Welsh lament which saw “death coming into our midst like black smoke, a plague which cuts off the young, a rootless phantom which has no mercy for fair countenance. Woe is me of the shilling in the armpit! It is seething, terrible … a head that gives pain and causes a loud cry … a painful angry knob … Great is its seething like a burning cinder … a grievous thing of ashy color.” Its eruption is ugly like the “seeds of black peas, broken fragments of brittle sea-coal … the early ornaments of black death, cinders of the peelings of the cockle weed, a mixed multitude, a black plague like halfpence, like berries.…
”
”
Barbara W. Tuchman (A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century)
“
Thinking back, ladies, looking back, gentlemen, thinking and looking back on my European tour, I feel a heavy sadness descend upon me. Of course, it is partly nostalgia, looking back at that younger me, bustling around Europe, having adventures and overcoming obstacles that, at the time, seemed so overwhelming, but now seem like just the building blocks of a harmless story. But here is the truth of nostalgia: we don’t feel it for who we were, but who we weren’t. We feel it for all the possibilities that were open to us, but that we didn’t take. Time is like wax, dripping from a candle flame. In the moment, it is molten and falling, with the capability to transform into any shape. Then the moment passes, and the wax hits the table top and solidifies into the shape it will always be. It becomes the past, a solid single record of what happened, still holding in its wild curves and contours the potential of every shape it could have held.
It is impossible - no matter how blessed you are by luck or the government or some remote, invisible deity gently steering your life with hands made of moonlight and wind - it is impossible not to feel a little sad, looking at that bit of wax. That bit of the past. It is impossible not to think of all the wild forms that wax now will never take. The village, glimpsed from a train window, beautiful and impossible and impossibly beautiful on a mountaintop, and you wonder what it would be if you stepped off the train and walked up the trail to its quiet streets and lived there for the rest of your life. The beautiful face of that young man from Luftknarp, with his gaping mouth and ashy skin, last seen already half-turned away as you boarded the bus, already turning towards a future without you in it, where this thing between you that seemed so possible now already and forever never was. All variety of lost opportunity spied from the windows of public transportation, really. It can be overwhelming, this splattered, inert wax recording every turn not taken.
‘What’s the point?’ you ask. ’Why bother?’ you say. ’Oh, Cecil,’ you cry. ’Oh, Cecil.’ But then you remember - I remember! - that we are even now in another bit of molten wax. We are in a moment that is still falling, still volatile, and we will never be anywhere else. We will always be in that most dangerous, most exciting, most possible time of all: the Now. Where we never can know what shape the next moment will take. Stay tuned next for, well, let’s just find out together, shall we?
”
”
Cecil Baldwin
“
He was an artist, and she, an anarchist, the destroyer of his beautiful creations. His body tensed, pushing hot adrenaline through his body with irascible rage. His anger gave way to lamentation as his heart wailed for his lost inventions. His mind saw each one desperately screaming for help, their outcries echoing between the orange flames and ashy ruins of their compatriots.
”
”
Emmie White (Captive)
“
He would pick up eggshells, a bird’s wing, a jawbone, the ashy fragment of a wasp’s nest. He would peer at each of them with the most absolute attention, and then put them in his pockets, where he kept his jackknife and his loose change. He would peer at them as if he could read them, and pocket them as if he could own them. This is death in my hand, this is ruin in my breast pocket, where I keep my reading glasses.
”
”
Marilynne Robinson (Housekeeping)
“
This essay was originally going to be nothing but a series of photos of me kneeling before a Solange Knowles shrine I built for her (which is just images of all her various hairstyles, Lawry’s seasoning salt, shea butter lotion, a piece of weave I found off the street because Solange likes “found art,” and flakes from my ashy kneecap as a sacrifice), but then my editor was like, “That’s ignorant.” To which I responded, “Good. Point.
”
”
Phoebe Robinson (You Can't Touch My Hair: And Other Things I Still Have to Explain)
“
Then there was the craving. Consuming. Incessant. Brutal. The flavors from the tasting were a wild, live thing inside her. She wasn't able to taste one damn thing she put in her mouth. When she had stopped at the restaurant, Ashi had given her some chicken kababs in a mint chutney. They had tasted like coming home. Even before Ashna told her who had made them, she had known. After that she had found herself at the restaurant again this morning. Ashi had given her all the kababs she had left over and Trisha had pulled over to the side of the road and eaten them in her car, chewing at them slowly, reverently, desperately stretching out the pleasure of his flavors.
It had only intensified her craving for everything about him that the taste of his food invoked. The strength that poured from him in waves, the steadiness, the gentle humor, the merciless challenge of things she had always accepted without question.
”
”
Sonali Dev (Pride, Prejudice, and Other Flavors (The Rajes, #1))
“
In his youth, Ser Eustace Osgrey must have been the very picture of chivalry, tall and broad and handsome. Time and grief had worked their will on him, but he was still unbent, a big-boned, broad-shouldered, barrel-chested man with features as strong and sharp as some old eagle. His close-cropped hair had gone white as milk, but the thick mustache that hid his mouth remained an ashy grey. His eyebrows were the same color, the eyes beneath a paler shade of grey, and full of sadness. They
”
”
George R.R. Martin (A Knight of the Seven Kingdoms (The Tales of Dunk and Egg, #1-3))
“
I must tell you something about necks in Japan, if you don't know it; namely, that Japanese men, as a rule, feel about a woman's neck and throat the same way that men in the West might feel about a woman's legs. This is why geisha wear the collars of their kimono so low in the back that the first few bumps of the spine are visible; I suppose it's like a woman in Paris wearing a short skirt. Auntie painted onto the back of Hatsumomo's neck a design called sanbon-ashi-"three legs." It makes a very dramatic picture, for you feel as if you're
looking at the bare skin of the neck through little tapering points of a white fence. It was years before I understood the erotic effect it has on men; but in a way, it's like a woman peering out from between her fingers. In fact, a geisha leaves a tiny margin of skin bare all around the hairline, causing her makeup to look even more artificial, something like a mask worn in Noh drama. When a man sits beside her and sees her makeup like a mask, he becomes that much more aware of the bare skin beneath.
”
”
Arthur Golden (Memoirs of a Geisha)
“
We sailed onward, and the smoke hung in the sky like a great cloud black with thunder. As we drew nearer, an ashy dust began to fall on us, darkening all the ship, and our flesh and clothes. Presently the lookout called to the pilot, and I saw them chattering on the beak. Going up there I found their faces pale. The pilot said, “The land itself has changed.” I looked at the gray landfall; and it was true. My belly crept with awe and fear. I drew into myself, to listen for the god; some dreadful wrath seemed written on the very sky. He sent no warning; but for the black cloud, all was peace.
”
”
Mary Renault (The King Must Die (Theseus, #1))
“
Even then, only a child, she knew she had to pretend to be someone else -- for her parents, for their customers, for everyone else in that miserable factory town, dark and ashy with smoke -- even if it made her sad. If she ran fast enough on those raw, dark mornings through the woods, she might see the trees and the morning stars, merrily alive, scurry back to their rightful places. She might hear the animals whisper and sing. And she would gain something special -- a secret knowledge, an awakening. Something else no one else could know. But until then she had to pass unnoticed, waiting to be delivered to another world where she belonged.
”
”
Leslie Parry (Church of Marvels)
“
ASHWINDER M.O.M. CLASSIFICATION: XXX The Ashwinder is created when a magical fire12 is allowed to burn unchecked for too long. A thin, pale-grey serpent with glowing red eyes, it will rise from the embers of an unsupervised fire and slither away into the shadows of the dwelling in which it finds itself, leaving an ashy trail behind it. The Ashwinder lives for only an hour and during that time seeks a dark and secluded spot in which to lay its eggs, after which it will collapse into dust. Ashwinder eggs are brilliant red and give off intense heat. They will ignite the dwelling within minutes if not found and frozen with a suitable charm. Any wizard realising that one or more Ashwinders are loose in the house must trace them immediately and locate the nest of eggs. Once frozen, these eggs are of great value for use in Love Potions and may be eaten whole as a cure for ague. Ashwinders are found worldwide.
”
”
Newt Scamander (Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them)
“
Hands- there were hands on my shoulders, shaking me, squeezing me. I thrashed against them, screaming, screaming-
'FEYRE.'
The voice was at once the night and the dawn and the stars and the earth, and every inch of my body calmed at the primal dominance in it.
'Open your eyes,' the voice ordered.
I did.
My throat was raw, my mouth full of ash, my face soaked and sticky, and Rhysand- Rhysand was hovering above me, his eyes wide.
'It was a dream,' he said, his breathing as hard as mine.
The moonlight trickling through the windows illuminated the dark lines of swirling tattoos down his arm, his shoulders, across his sculpted chest. Like the ones I bore on my arm. He scanned my face. 'A dream,' he said again.
Velaris. I was in Velaris, at his house. And I had- my dream-
The sheets, the blankets were ripped. Shredded. But not with a knife. And that ashy, smoky taste coating my mouth...
My hand was unnervingly steady as I lifted it to find my fingers ending in simmering embers. Living claws of flame that had sliced through my bed linens like they were cauterising wounds-
”
”
Sarah J. Maas (A Court of Mist and Fury (A Court of Thorns and Roses, #2))
“
And don’t get me started on Canadians. It’s a whole thing. Remember when the feds busted in on that Mormon polygamist cult in Texas a few years back? And the dozens of wives were paraded in front of the camera? And they all had this long mouse-colored hair with strands of gray, no hairstyle to speak of, no makeup, ashy skin, Frida Kahlo facial hair, and unflattering clothes? And on cue, the Oprah audience was shocked and horrified? Well, they’ve never been to Seattle. There are two hairstyles here: short gray hair and long gray hair. You go into a salon asking for hair color, and they flap their elbows and cluck, “Oh, goody, we never get to do color!” But what really happened was I came up here and had four miscarriages. Try as I might, it’s hard to blame that one on Nigel Mills-Murray. Oh, Paul. That last year in L.A. was just so horrible. I am so ashamed of my behavior. I’ve carried it with me to this day, the revulsion at how vile I became, all for a stupid house. I’ve never stopped obsessing about it. But just before I completely self-immolate, I think about Nigel Mills-Murray. Was I really so bad that I deserved to have three years of my life destroyed for some rich prick’s practical joke? So I had some cars towed, yes. I made a gate out of trash doorknobs. I’m an artist. I won a MacArthur grant, for fuck’s sake. Don’t I get a break? I’ll be watching TV and see Nigel Mills-Murray’s name at the end. I’ll go nuts inside. He gets to keep creating, and I’m the one who’s still in pieces?
”
”
Maria Semple (Where'd You Go, Bernadette)
“
And now this mofiient also had come and gone. The dark-
red sun still hung, round as a ball, above the blue snowdrifts
on the skyline, and the snowy plain greedily sucked in its
juicy pineapple light, when the sleigh swept into sight and
vanished. “ Good-bye, Lara, until we meet in the next world,
AGAIN YARYKINO 441
good-bye, my Icwe, my inexhaustible, everlasting joy. I’ll
never see you again. I’ll never, never see you again.’*
It was getting dark. Swiftly the bronze-red patches of
sunset on the ^low faded and went out. The soft, ashy dis-
tance filled with lilac dusk turning to deep mauve, and its
smoky haze smudged the fine tracery of the roadside birch^
lightly hand-drawn on the pink sky, pale as thou^ it had
sudd^y grown shallow.
Grief had sharpened Yury’s vision and quickened his per-
ception a hundredfold. The very air surrounding him seemed
unique. The evening breathed witness of all that had befallen him. As if there had never
been such a dusk before and evening were falling now for
the first time in order to console him in his loneliness and
bereavement. As if the valky were not always girded by
woods growing on the surrounding hills and facing away from
the horizon, but the trees had only taken up their places
now, rising out of the ground on purpose to offer their
condolences.
He almost waved away the tangible beauty of the hour like
a crowd of persistent friends, almost said to the lingering
afterglow: “Thank you, thank you, I’ll be all right.”
Still standing on the veranda, he turned his face to the
closed door, his back to the world. “ My bri^t sun has set
something was repeating this inside him, as if to learn it by
heart. He had not the strength to say these words out loud
”
”
Boris Pasternak (Doctor Zhivago)
“
Sky's The Limit"
[Intro]
Good evening ladies and gentlemen
How's everybody doing tonight
I'd like to welcome to the stage, the lyrically acclaimed
I like this young man because when he came out
He came out with the phrase, he went from ashy to classy
I like that
So everybody in the house, give a warm round of applause
For the Notorious B.I.G
The Notorious B.I.G., ladies and gentlemen give it up for him y'all
[Verse 1]
A nigga never been as broke as me - I like that
When I was young I had two pair of Lees, besides that
The pin stripes and the gray
The one I wore on Mondays and Wednesdays
While niggas flirt I'm sewing tigers on my shirts, and alligators
You want to see the inside, I see you later
Here comes the drama, oh, that's that nigga with the fake, blaow
Why you punch me in my face, stay in your place
Play your position, here come my intuition
Go in this nigga pocket, rob him while his friends watching
And hoes clocking, here comes respect
His crew's your crew or they might be next
Look at they man eye, big man, they never try
So we rolled with them, stole with them
I mean loyalty, niggas bought me milks at lunch
The milks was chocolate, the cookies, butter crunch
88 Oshkosh and blue and white dunks, pass the blunts
[Hook: 112]
Sky is the limit and you know that you keep on
Just keep on pressing on
Sky is the limit and you know that you can have
What you want, be what you want
Sky is the limit and you know that you keep on
Just keep on pressing on
Sky is the limit and you know that you can have
What you want, be what you want, have what you want, be what you want
[Verse 2]
I was a shame, my crew was lame
I had enough heart for most of them
Long as I got stuff from most of them
It's on, even when I was wrong I got my point across
They depicted me the boss, of course
My orange box-cutter make the world go round
Plus I'm fucking bitches ain't my homegirls now
Start stacking, dabbled in crack, gun packing
Nickname Medina make the seniors tote my Niñas
From gym class, to English pass off a global
The only nigga with a mobile can't you see like Total
Getting larger in waists and tastes
Ain't no telling where this felon is heading, just in case
Keep a shell at the tip of your melon, clear the space
Your brain was a terrible thing to waste
88 on gates, snatch initial name plates
Smoking spliffs with niggas, real-life beginner killers
Praying God forgive us for being sinners, help us out
[Hook]
[Verse 3]
After realizing, to master enterprising
I ain't have to be in school by ten, I then
Began to encounter with my counterparts
On how to burn the block apart, break it down into sections
Drugs by the selections
Some use pipes, others use injections
Syringe sold separately Frank the Deputy
Quick to grab my Smith & Wesson like my dick was missing
To protect my position, my corner, my lair
While we out here, say the Hustlers Prayer
If the game shakes me or breaks me
I hope it makes me a better man
Take a better stand
Put money in my mom's hand
Get my daughter this college grant so she don't need no man
Stay far from timid
Only make moves when your heart's in it
And live the phrase sky's the limit
Motherfuckers
See you chumps on top
[Hook]
”
”
The Notorious B.I.G
“
I was made to look at the convention that lurks in all truth and on the essential sincerity of falsehood. He appealed to all sides at once—to the side turned perpetually to the light of day, and to that side of us which, like the other hemisphere of the moon, exists stealthily in perpetual darkness, with only a fearful ashy light falling at times on the edge.
”
”
Anonymous
“
A last red ray lighting up that stern soldier-like head, on which the tonsure lay like a cicatrised wound from the blow of a club; then the ray faded away and the priest, now wrapped in shadow, seemed nothing more than a black silhouette against the ashy grey of the gloaming.
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Émile Zola (Delphi Complete Works of Emile Zola)
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Black people of all shapes, sizes, and personalities value the moisturizing product known as body lotion. Lotioning alleviates ashiness. To be “ashy” is to be unkempt. Lotioning is the very least one can do to be socially presentable and physically acceptable. Cocoa butter, shea butter, and aloe vera are black-people essentials; some treat the moisturizing process as a meditative ritual. Some use only as much as necessary to cover the ashiest areas (knuckles, elbows, and knees). But all understand its importance.
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Issa Rae (The Misadventures of Awkward Black Girl)
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Shrewdly and deliberately, Julius orchestrated every aspect of his building campaigns, tomb project, paintings, and ceremonial pageantry to convey the message that he was born to be-and had rightly assumed his God-given role as-his Christian Caesar.
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John T. Spike (Young Michelangelo: The Path to the Sistine)
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My eyes slid to him. I let them rest there for a long moment, taking him in now that I was seeing him in the light. He looked Bloodborn in every sense. His eyes, the pupils slightly slitted against the lantern light, held those telltale strings of crimson and gold. The red marks at his throat lingered just beneath the edge of his collar, which was high and stiff in burgundy fabric of the traditional House of Blood style, simple and tailored. Before I hadn’t been able to tell if his hair was blonde or silver, and now I realized that it was both—ashy blond-gray with shocks of near-white.
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Carissa Broadbent (The Serpent and the Wings of Night (Crowns of Nyaxia, #1))
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He flexed his large yellow-orange wings and Quinn noticed these were not exactly like the demon’s—they were smaller across, but also slightly longer from end to end, lankier and more proportional to the man’s human body. They were much less scarred and ashy than the creature’s had been, and he moved them more delicately, deliberately folding them close to avoid knocking around Quinn’s remaining battered furniture. He was at least a more polite, more talkative guest than the last monster.
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Apollo Blake (Digital Demon)
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Above me a black oak wiggled in the ashy breeze. The tree was higher than the house. Its trunk was weighted with experience.
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Manjula Martin (The Last Fire Season: A Personal and Pyronatural History)
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My grandfather seemed to me stricken and afflicted, and indeed he was, like a man everlastingly struck by lightening, so that there was an ashiness about his clothes and his hair never settled and his eye had a look of tragic alarm when he wasn't actually sleeping. He was the most unreposeful human being I ever knew, except for certain of his friends. All of them could sit on their heels into their old age, and they'd do it by preference, as if they had a grudge against furniture. They had no flesh on them at all. They were like the Hebrew prophets in some unwilling retirement, or like the primitive church still waiting to judge the angels...It was the most natural thing in the world that my grandfather's grave would look like a place where someone had tried to smother a fire.
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Marilynne Robinson (Gilead (Gilead, #1))
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have to wonder, though, is it me? Am I not sexy to my mate now that I’ve got two kids strapped to my boobs and stretch marks all over my belly? Then again, I’ve never been the prettiest or sexiest human on the planet. Tiffany’s gorgeous, and Liz has lovely blonde hair that goes on for miles. Georgie’s got an incredible figure even after giving birth, and Josie’s delicate and adorable. Stacy has incredible skin and Ariana has impressive boobs. I’m…well, I’m nice. I’m a little chunky in the thighs and breasts, my face is pretty unremarkable, and my blonde highlights grew out a long time ago. Now my long hair is two-toned - below my shoulders is a light blonde and above it is a darker, ashy brown. I never really gave a crap…until now, when Dagesh rushed out of the cave. Of course, now I can’t stop thinking about it.
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Ruby Dixon (Ice Ice Babies (Ice Planet Barbarians, #6.2))
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AIDANCE (A'IDANCE) n.s.[from aid.]Help; support: a word little used. Oft have I seen a timely parted ghost,Of ashy semblance, meagre, pale, and bloodless,Being all descended to the lab’ring heart,Who, in the conflict that it holds with death,Attracts the same for aidance ’gainst the enemy.Sh.Hen. VI.
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Samuel Johnson (A Dictionary of the English Language (Complete and Unabridged in Two Volumes), Volume One)
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You are what I want, Ashy, and I know I’m what you want. I feel it in the lightness of your touch. I see it in the intimacy of your gaze, and I taste it in the sweetness of your kiss. My role as a man is to give my woman what she has always wanted. I will give you your happily-ever-after, Ashy, and it will be my greatest accomplishment. Your bruises and hurt are mine to heal, and I will protect you for the rest of my life. You have my word. You’re mine, Ashy, and what’s mine is mine forever.
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Rachel Brookes (Be My Temptation (The Crawford Brothers Book 2))
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with every vet Jed knew. He’d taken a bullet through the left eye, which was bad enough, but then the round’s diagonal trajectory had cored down and out the back of his head. In an instant, his left eye was jelly and his right occipital lobe went from functional to oatmeal. Technically, his right eye still worked, but the brain damage meant that, after ’Nam, he couldn’t read or recognize words. Color was gone, too. His waking world had existed in ashy shades of gray, although his dreams and the flashbacks were always in Technicolor. Worse, his brain had conjured eerie shimmers the Navy shrinks said were hallucinations, like visual phantom limbs. Like Grace, though … these days, he was different. Now he stood, looking up at that distant cabin. Oh, he was still blind in that left eye, the eyeball itself long gone and the socket filled with a plastic implant sheathed with flesh. He never had gotten around to getting fitted for an artificial eye, maybe because he didn’t mind making other people uncomfortable. Vietnam was wedged in his brain, good and tight, like a stringy piece of meat caught between his teeth that wouldn’t be dislodged for love or money. So why should everybody else forget if he couldn’t? But his good right eye still worked, nowadays better than ever, and that was what he aimed at the
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Ilsa J. Bick (Shadows (Ashes Trilogy, #2))
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sakura saku koro / tori ashi nihon / uma shihon2 When cherry trees bloom birds have two legs horses four
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Faubion Bowers (The Classic Tradition of Haiku: An Anthology (Dover Thrift Editions: Poetry))
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Peterson’s Golden Retriever. Before the Wolf Flu, it had been a show dog. The dog’s coat was a deep orange, highlighted with golden, metallic, shiny waves. After the Wolf Flu, Asa had mistaken the dog for a coyote. The creature had somehow lost all of its hair—Asa suspected that some cruel kid might have burned it off, or perhaps the dog had succumbed to a disease. The dog’s skin was grey and ashy. It had grown skinny and it had lost its left eye. Once Asa had seen the post-Wolf Flu dog trotting through the neighborhood with something bloody in its mouth—about a dozen foot-long strands of hair had been hanging from the animal’s closed jaws. To Asa it had looked like some woman’s hair.
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Chad Leito (The Academy: Book 3)
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Sherry would have been attractive, but hard living was not only worn on her yellow face. It was in the wrinkled frailty of her neck, like new-born skin. It was the crooked movement of her mouth when she talked, as if she spoke to someone to the left of her. And her ashy, knobby hands that smelled of cigarette smoke, especially the right one. It was the stiff way she walked with her shoulders so high, as if she had gotten used to being rejected and run off the property. The hard living was in her movements, even in her spirit.
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Holliday Vann (When Sexy Came Black to Cleveland)
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Bread baked in medieval ovens got ashy on the bottom because it was placed directly on stone just heated by a fire. Because of this, the poshest medieval diners wouldn’t have bothered with the lower crust, but rather the upper crust.
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Danièle Cybulskie (Life in Medieval Europe: Fact and Fiction)
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We’d ended it. Tarnished the institution they thought they’d built on brick and stone, only to send it crumbling to an ashy pile of the darkest deceptions with the proof of their lies in the forefront. Saint’s fate lies in living out the rest of his days with the daily reminder of the faith he once held in his hands. The hands that now hold his scars. The weight of his guilt on his shoulders every time he sees the reflection of truth within that mirror.
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Jescie Hall (That Sik Luv)
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My wax apple is proudly stationed next to a portrait of the ashy remnants of Delaney Grove, and I smirk at all the nails sticking out of it. The last one was added over a month ago. There’s only one more nail to go before the apple art is complete.
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S.T. Abby (Paint It All Red (Mindf*ck, #5))
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As my eyes fell on the seat, I shuddered. Flashes of ashy cheeks passed through my mind,
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Jessica Cage (I Accidentally Summoned a Demon Boyfriend (Accidents Happen))
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The color of his face went from a deep obsidian black to an ashy gray, which is what happens when you are an enderman and all the blood runs out of your face.
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Dr. Block (Diary of a Surfer Villager, Books 6-10 (Diary of a Surfer Villager #6-10))
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Good night, Bray,” Mia says, amusement in her voice. “Night, Mia.” “Good night, Drew,” she sings. “Night, beautiful.” “Good night, Ashy C.” “Night, MiMi.” I drift off with Brayden wrapped around me like a goddamn koala bear, Mia nuzzled against my neck, and Drew’s hand in mine. If this is a dream, I don’t want to wake up.
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K. Webster (Bound Together (Torn and Bound Duet, #2))
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Fishmonger
I have taken scales from off
The cheeks of the moon.
I have made fins from bluejays’ wings,
I have made eyes from damsons in the shadow.
I have taken flushes from the peachlips in the sun.
From all these I have made a fish of heaven for you,
Set it swimming on a young October sky.
I sit on the bank of the stream and watch
The grasses in amazement
As they turn to ashy gold.
Are the fishes from the rainbow
Still beautiful to you,
For whom they are made,
For whom I have set them,
Swimming?
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Marsden Hartley
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THE ECONOMIC barometer at Harvard University had consistently pointed to bad weather. But even its precise readings could not have predicted such a swift deepening of the crisis. Wars and the elements had turned the earth into a waster of its own energies. Oil wells were running dry. Black, white, and brown coals were producing less and less power every year. An unprecedented drought had swaddled the sere earth in what felt like a dozen equators. Crops burned to their roots. Forests caught fire in the infernal heat. The selvas of South America and the jungles of India blazed with smoky flames. Agrarian countries were ravaged first. True, forests reduced to ashes had given place to ashy boles of factory smoke. But their days too were numbered. Fuellessness was threatening machines with motionlessness. Even glacier snowcaps melted by the perennial summer could not provide an adequate supply of waterpower; the beds of shrinking rivers lay exposed, and soon the turbine generators would stop. The earth had a fever. Flogged mercilessly by the sun’s yellow whips, it whirled around like a dervish dancing his last delirious dance.
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Sigizmund Krzhizhanovsky (Autobiography of a Corpse)
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I have to consider the honour of my house.'
'Honour?' Jaikie queried.
'Yes, honour,' said Ashie severely. 'Have you anything to say against it?'
'N-o-o. But it’s an awkward word and apt to obscure reason.'
'It is a very real thing, which you English do not understand.'
'We understand it well enough, but we are shy of talking about it.
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John Buchan (The House of the Four Winds (Dickson McCunn #3))
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i am ashis sarkar. i love my passion....
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Ashis Sarkar (In Front of Mom)
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It warps reality with its unseen hold:
The colors of your world are drained out,
Bled from your mind until
All you have left is an ashy, unending gray.
You are unable to see beauty any more,
It killed all that was beautiful
And left you to flounder in the ugly abandon.
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Maddy Kobar (Simply Not Meant To Be: Maddy Kobar's 2014-2018 Poems)
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Her father stood stiffly, as if his knees ached. Of a sudden Evie realized that he was, in fact, old: or at least middle-aged, which from a twenty-three-year-old perspective was the same thing. Hair thinning and graying to ashy silver, belly sagging over the waistband of the jeans he wore on his day off, a reminder that he’d met her mother after a rock concert in 1980.
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Charles Stross (Dead Lies Dreaming (Laundry Files #10; The New Management, #1))
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In India the choice could never be between chaos and stability, but between manageable and unmanageable chaos, between humane and inhuman anarchy, and between tolerable and intolerable disorder. ASHIS NANDY, sociologist, 1990
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Ramachandra Guha (India After Gandhi: The History of the World's Largest Democracy)
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Alex closed his eyes and listened: a storefront gate sliding down. A dog barking hoarsely. The lowing of trucks over bridges. The velvety night in his ears. And the hum, always that hum, whih maybe wasn't an echo after all, but the sound of time passing.
th blu nyt
the stRs u cant c
th hum tht nevr gOs awy
A sound of clicking heels on the pavement punctured the quiet. Alex snapped open his eyes, and he and Bennie both turned – whirled, really, peering for Sasha in the ashy dark. But it was another girl, young and new to the city, fiddling with her keys." (p. 336)
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Jennifer Egan (A Visit from the Goon Squad)
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Empathy is sickening. It reminds me of funeral salesmen who like ashy-faced owls appear deeply moved by your great loss, while giving Lord God Almighty thanks for throwing their way yet another stiff.
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Vinko Vrbanic
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The ashy smell of broken illusions rose around us.
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Seanan McGuire (Ashes of Honor (October Daye, #6))
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Only in love is there a real springtime, she would sadly reflect. Only love makes us immortal and immune to living; only in love is there youth and hope. Without it, we are blasted trees in an ashy forest where nothing moves or has a significant being, and where there is no sunset and no rising of the sun, but only a smoky twilight.
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Taylor Caldwell (Captains and the Kings)
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Have you eaten dinner? I made some varan bhaat."
Now she felt stupid. Boiled rice and dal was the only thing she knew how to cook. But like her, Ashna had loved the simple comfort food as a child.
Maybe it was Shobi's imagination, but a sparkle broke through the weariness in Ashna's eyes. "Varan bhaat?" But she got a hold of herself. "I didn't have ghee in the house."
Shobi went to the kitchen and Ashna followed her with her usual tentativeness.
"I made some." Shobi popped the two bowls she had mixed into the microwave. "Ghee, now that I know how to make. I used to love the smell when our cook made it when I was little. So she showed me how to. Of course, she used to churn the butter from the cream first; I just walked down to the store and bought butter." Shobi put the bowl of rice and lentils mixed in with ghee and fresh lemon juice in front of Ashi.
For the next few minutes- the first peaceful minutes she'd shared with her daughter since she'd arrived- the two of them ate, letting the sticky, wholesome goodness melt on their tongues and stick to their palates and fill their mouths with that internal hug of a cherished comfort food.
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Sonali Dev (Recipe for Persuasion (The Rajes, #2))
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Gracias a este experimento, aprenderás los hábitos más importantes de un trader profesional. Aprenderás a seguir tus reglas, a cerrar las pérdidas rápidamente y a mantenerte el mayor tiempo posible en tus operaciones ganadoras.
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Heikin Ashi Trader (Cómo Empezar un Negocio de Trading con $500 (Spanish Edition))