“
Elli couldn’t help it, she had to. She smiled before saying, “Nothing much, but Shea?”
“Yeah?” he asked wearily as she smirked up at him.
“I’ll never break your heart. I’ll never make you cry,” she continued to sing the chorus of the well known Backstreet Boys song as Shea turned beet red with embarrassment.
“Grace, I swear I’m going to kill you!” Shea yelled.
”
”
Toni Aleo (Taking Shots (Assassins, #1))
“
I’ve played bingo with these senior citizens. They take that shit seriously. They might be old, but if you get I-22 when they were waiting for B-6? They’ll bust your fucking kneecaps as quick as any backstreet bookie, without an ounce of remorse.
”
”
Emma Chase (Sustained (The Legal Briefs, #2))
“
If you don't believe it, go down to your local karaoke bar on a busy night. Wait until the third hour, when the drunk frat boys and gastropub waitresses with headshots are all done with Backstreet Boys and Alicia Keys and locate the slightly older Asian businessman standing patiently in line for his turn, his face warmly rouged on Crown or Japanese lager, and when he steps up and starts slaying "Country Roads," try not to laugh, or wink knowingly or clap a little too hard, because by the time he gets to "West Virginia, mountain mama," you're going to be singing along, and by the time he's done, you might understand why a seventy-seven-year-old guy from a tiny island in the Taiwan Strait who's been in a foreign country for two-thirds of his life can nail a song, note perfect, about wanting to go home.
”
”
Charles Yu (Interior Chinatown)
“
The backstreet cafe in Casablanca was for me a place of mystery, a place with a soul, a place with danger. There was a sense that the safety nets had been cut away, that each citizen walked upon the high wire of this, the real world. I longed not merely to travel through it, but to live in such a city.
”
”
Tahir Shah (The Caliph's House: A Year in Casablanca)
“
I can come to your place."
"I don't think that's a good idea," I'd said...
"You don't want me to see where you live? What are you hiding over there? Another boy band?"
"Yes. You've found me out. I've got the Backstreet Boys in the attic."
He paused for a second and then began to laugh. "The Backstreet Boys? How old are you again?"
"Shut up, Hayes."
"You sure you don't have the Monkees over there as well?"
"I'm hanging up.
”
”
Robinne Lee (The Idea of You)
“
Scientists have reported that elephants grieve their dead, monkeys perceive injustice and cockatoos like to dance to the music of the Backstreet Boys.
”
”
Hal Herzog (Some We Love, Some We Hate, Some We Eat: Why It's So Hard to Think Straight About Animals)
“
One looks forward to the day when the General Theory of Relativity and the Principia will outsell the Kama Sutra in back-street bookshops.
”
”
J.G. Ballard
“
What did I say about speculating?” I warn. “One more word and I’ll have you all doing a music video with synchronized dancing faster than you can say Backstreet Boys.” Whip lifts up a hand. “Okay, geesh. Got it. You two are an impenetrable wall that no one shall gaze upon. No need to go all Simon Cowell on us.
”
”
Kristen Callihan (Managed (VIP, #2))
“
Well that's exactly the magic of the Backstreet Boys.
They Transcend all that stuff.
”
”
Maggie Thrash (Honor Girl: A Graphic Memoir)
“
Eddie Drood: Is this why we become agents? To play games, to chase after secrets that are rarely worth all the blood spilled on their behalf...To end up stabbed in the back, just when you thought you'd won, bleeding out in some nameless backstreet...With most people never even knowing who you were, or what you did, or why it mattered?
”
”
Simon R. Green (The Spy Who Haunted Me (Secret Histories, #3))
“
Before I answered, Seth broke into song, cracking out the Backstreet Boys classic, I Want It That Way. Caleb picked up the next line on cue and Seth started clicking his fingers to the beat.
They both started dancing, sashaying their way toward us and I stared on in surprise. Seth looked to Caleb and they both belted out the last line of the chorus together with their hands on their hearts.
”
”
Caroline Peckham (The Reckoning (Zodiac Academy, #3))
“
What about your
Your 10,000 promises?
That you gave to me (to me, babe)
Your 10,000 promises
That you promised me
You say I'll take you back
But I close the door
'Cause I don't want 10,000 more
”
”
Backstreet Boys (Backstreet Boys -- The Hits, Chapter One: Piano/Vocal/Chords)
“
We're like—we're like the Backstreet Boys in a way—only dead.
”
”
Alyson Noel (Radiance (Riley Bloom, #1))
“
You gotta Stand for Something, Even If U Stand Alone
”
”
Backstreet Boys
“
I don't care who you are
Where you're from
What you did
As long as you love me
”
”
Backstreet Boys (Backstreet Boys -- The Hits, Chapter One: Piano/Vocal/Chords)
“
—¿Qué te pongo? —lo miro de reojo.
Parece pensarlo un momento.
—Sorpréndeme.
Sonrío ampliamente.
—Muy bi..
—Sorpréndeme sin los Backstreet Boys —aclara enseguida.
—¡lba a ponerte una canción suya!
—Por eso. Ni se te ocurra.
”
”
Joana Marcús (La última nota (Canciones para ella, #1))
“
the seedy-garish world of back-street London... restless rootless... beautiful, amoral, modern siren of doom in a jungle of dance halls, caffs and pubs.
”
”
Mark McShane
“
You are missing in my heart...!
”
”
Backstreet Boys
“
—Jared, el líder del club de haters de los Backstreet Boys.
—Y líder del club de fans de las fotógrafas de bodas novatas.
”
”
Joana Marcús (La última nota (Canciones para ella, #1))
“
When I'm not scouring through the backstreets of every city in the state, I keep an eye on the girl. My girl.
”
”
Darynda Jones (Brighter Than the Sun (Charley Davidson, #8.5))
“
Living in London is like living in a movie set, from the Dickensian backstreets to the glinting tower blocks to the secret garden squares. You can be anyone you want to be.
”
”
Sophie Kinsella (My Not So Perfect Life)
“
Follow the fulsome fumes from the tanners and the reek from the brewery, butterscotch rotten, drifting across Seven Dials. Keep on past the mothballs at the cheap tailor’s and turn left at the singed silk of the maddened hatter. Just beyond you’ll detect the unwashed crotch of the overworked prostitute and the Christian sweat of the charwoman. On every inhale a shifting scale of onions and scalded milk, chrysanthemums and spiced apple, broiled meat and wet straw, and the sudden stench of the Thames as the wind changes direction and blows up the knotted backstreets. Above all, you may notice the rich and sickening chorus of shit.
”
”
Jess Kidd (Things in Jars)
“
Seriousness in play. At sunset in Genoa, I heard from a tower a long chiming of bells; it kept on and on, and over the noise of the backstreets, as if insatiable for itself, it rang out into the evening sky and the sea air, so terrible and so childish at the same time, so melancholy. then I thoughts of Platos's words and felt them suddenly in my heart: all in all, nothing human is worth taking very seriously; nevertheless ...
”
”
Friedrich Nietzsche
“
Seriousness in play. At sunset in Genoa, I heard from a tower a long chiming of bells: it kept on and on, and over the noise of the backstreets, as if insatiable for itself, it rang out into the evening sky and the sea air, so terrible and so childish at the same time, so melancholy. Then I thought of Plato's words and felt them suddenly in my heart: all in all, nothing human is worth taking very seriously; nevertheless...
”
”
Friedrich Nietzsche (Aphorisms on Love and Hate (Penguin Little Black Classics, #5))
“
Power loves not the light of day, nor the attention of curious eyes. In darkness it thrives most...A lord may send his army hither and thither, but the true testing of his power is in those places where his army is not...Has he sent its long fingers far enough through the backstreets and alleys, into the drinking dens and the lending-houses, so that he may gather them unto himself and hold them firm without a single swordsman?
”
”
Brian Ruckley (Bloodheir (The Godless World, #2))
“
For the law is not jurisprudence, not a weighty tome full of articles, not philosophical treatises, not peevish nonsense about justice, not hackneyed platitudes about morality and ethics. The law means safe paths and highways. It means backstreets one can walk along even after sundown. It means inns and taverns one can leave to visit the privy, leaving one’s purse on the table and one’s wife beside it. The law is the sleep of people certain they’ll be woken by the crowing of the rooster and not the crashing of burning roof timbers! And for those who break the law; the noose, the axe, the stake and the red-hot iron! Punishments which deter others.
”
”
Andrzej Sapkowski (The Tower of Swallows (The Witcher, #4))
“
Lose Yourself—Eminem Monsters—Shinedown Dear God—XTC Down with the Sickness—Disturbed Love and War—Fleurie Headstrong—Trapt I Want It That Way—Backstreet Boys Sober—Tool Angels Fall—Breaking Benjamin Black is the Soul—Korn Polyamorous—Breaking Benjamin Best Thing I Never Had—Beyoncé Bed of Lies—Nicki Minaj ft Skylar Grey Apologize—Timbaland ft OneRepublic Spastik—Plastikman Basiel—Amelie Lens Oh Bondage! Up Yours!—X Ray Spex Open Your Eyes—Disturbed Bring Me to Life—Evanescence So What—Pink Light My Fire—The Doors
”
”
B.B. Reid (Lilac)
“
If you want it to be good girl
Get yourself a bad boy
”
”
Backstreet Boys (Backstreet Boys -- Backstreet's Back: Piano/Vocal/Guitar)
“
My grandpa sells condoms to sailors,
He punctures the tips with a pin,
My grandma does back-street abortions,
My God how the money rolls in.
”
”
Neil Gaiman (The Monarch of the Glen (American Gods, #1.1))
“
Well, maybe, just maaaaybe, I might understand why Backstreet’s back, alright?
”
”
Nina G. Jones (Debt)
“
On the other side of the window a prairie snow fell across backstreet and tenement, looking for dry leaves upon which to rest and finding only concrete and steel.
”
”
Nelson Algren (The Man with the Golden Arm)
“
Thanks a lot for inviting assorted randos from my past to my wedding reception, Father D. Who else can I expect to show up? If you say the Backstreet Boys, I won't be held responsible for my actions.
”
”
Meg Cabot (Remembrance (The Mediator, #7))
“
Snatching it off the counter, Zach looks at the screen. “Has this been on the whole time? Did we just have sex to the Backstreet Boys?” “ 'Fraid so,” I laugh, taking my phone back and pausing the music.
”
”
S.J. Tilly (Sleet Sugar (Sleet, #2))
“
For our high school graduation party, our school hired a hypnotist. My best friend volunteered herself, went onstage, fell asleep, and then he had her dancing and singing Backstreet Boys songs. When she woke up again, she walked back to her seat and I tried to tell her what she'd done while she was out, but she said she was awake the whole time. It was easier to just do what he wanted me to do, she said, and I knew what she meant.
”
”
Chelsea Hodson (Tonight I'm Someone Else: Essays)
“
For my friend Fong,” he says, and begins singing John Denver. If you didn’t know it already, now you do: old dudes from rural Taiwan are comfortable with their karaoke and when they do karaoke for some reason they love no one like they love John Denver. Maybe it’s the dream of the open highway. The romantic myth of the West. A reminder that these funny little Orientals have actually been Americans longer than you have. Know something about this country that you haven’t yet figured out. If you don’t believe it, go down to your local karaoke bar on a busy night. Wait until the third hour, when the drunk frat boys and gastropub waitresses with headshots are all done with Backstreet Boys and Alicia Keys and locate the slightly older Asian businessman standing patiently in line for his turn, his face warmly rouged on Crown or Japanese lager, and when he steps up and starts slaying “Country Roads,” try not to laugh, or wink knowingly or clap a little too hard, because by the time he gets to “West Virginia, mountain mama,” you’re going to be singing along, and by the time he’s done, you might understand why a seventy-seven-year-old guy from a tiny island in the Taiwan Strait who’s been in a foreign country for two-thirds of his life can nail a song, note perfect, about wanting to go home.
”
”
Charles Yu (Interior Chinatown)
“
I see you look at me when you think I'm not aware
You're searching for clues of just how deep my feelings are
How do you prove the sky is blue, the oceans wide?
All I know is what I feel when I look into your eyes
I promise you from the bottom of my heart
I will love you till death do us part
I promise you as a lover and a friend
I will love you like I never love again
With everything that I am
”
”
Backstreet Boys (Backstreet Boys -- The Hits, Chapter One: Piano/Vocal/Chords)
“
A devil moon took me through the alley
Down by the Kardomah and the Centrale
To the mews running through the backstreets
Where the Blacks sell fire and sleep
The devil moon took me out of Soho
Up to Camden where the cold north winds blow
Sucked along by a winter shower
To stand beside your shining tower
”
”
Shane MacGowan
“
You see colors no one else can see
In every breath you hear a symphony
You understand me like nobody can
I feel like my soul unfolding like a flower blooming
When this whole world gets too crazy
And there's nowhere left to go
I know you give me sanctuary
You're the only truth I know
You're the road back home.
”
”
Backstreet Boys (Backstreet Boys -- The Hits, Chapter One: Piano/Vocal/Chords)
“
We are all of us the slaves of external circumstance: even at a table in some backstreet café, a sunny day can open up before us visions of wide fields; a shadow over the countryside can cause us to shrink inside ourselves, seeking uneasy shelter in the doorless house that is our self; and, even in the midst of daytime things, the arrival of darkness can open out, like a slowly spreading fan, a deep awareness of our need for rest.
”
”
Fernando Pessoa (The Book of Disquiet)
“
I can see that you've been crying
You can't hide it with a lie
What's the use in you denying
That what you have is wrong
I heard him promise you forever
But forevers come and gone
Baby he would say whatever
It takes to keep you blind
To the truth between the lines
Oh I will love you more than that
I won't say the words, then take them back
Don't give loneliness a chance
Baby listen to me when I say
I will love you more than that
”
”
Backstreet Boys (Backstreet Boys -- The Hits, Chapter One: Piano/Vocal/Chords)
“
As well as the [League of Nations] delegates themselves and their suites, there were innumerable campaigners of one sort and another, male and female, clerical and lay, young and old; all with some notion to publicise, some pet solution to offer, some organisation to promote. They gathered in droves, fanning out through the city, and settling in hotels and pensions, from the Lakeside ones down to tiny obscure back-street establishments. Ferocious ladies with moustaches, clergymen with black leather patches on the elbows of their jackets or cassocks and smelling of tobacco smoke, mad admirals who knew where to find the lost tribes of Israel, and scarcely saner generals who deduced prophetic warnings from the measurement of the pyramids; but one and all believers in the League's historic role to deliver mankind painlessly and inexpensively from the curse of war to the great advantage of all concerned.
”
”
Malcolm Muggeridge
“
Увидев немыслимые прибыли, которые получают Gap и Tommy Hilfiger благодаря своим связям с миром музыки, звукозаписывающие компании и сами начинают активно заниматься брэндингом. Они не только поддерживают работающих музыкантов с помощью изощренных технологий ко-брэндинга, но и сами группы все больше воспринимаются как брэнды и в качестве таковых проходят проверку на рынке — Spice Girls, Backstreet Boys, N' Sync, All Saints и другие — все это уже не группы, а брэнды.
”
”
Naomi Klein (No Logo)
“
Hey baby love I need a girl like you
But tell me if you feel it too
I'm in delusion every minute every hour
My heart is crying out for you
[Bridge:]
I feel in heaven when I look in your eyes
I know that you are the one for me (one for me)
You drive me crazy cuz
You're one of a kind
I want your lovin'
And I want it right now
[Refrain:]
Ooh baby you're so fine
I'm gonna make you mine
Your lips they taste so sweet
You're the one for me
You're my ecstasy
You're the one I need
”
”
Backstreet Boys (Backstreet Boys -- Backstreet's Back: Piano/Vocal/Guitar)
“
Whip shakes his head. “Fucking knew it.” “You know nothing,” Sophie hisses at him. Jax high-fives Rye. “You owe us each fifty bucks, Killian.” “Shit, and I was so sure he’d hold out longer. Thanks a lot, Scottie.” Killian glares at me. The little arse. “What did I say about speculating?” I warn. “One more word and I’ll have you all doing a music video with synchronized dancing faster than you can say Backstreet Boys.” Whip lifts up a hand. “Okay, geesh. Got it. You two are an impenetrable wall that no one shall gaze upon. No need to go all Simon Cowell on us.
”
”
Kristen Callihan (Managed (VIP, #2))
“
Functional, elegant, outrageous or wacky: the choice is yours. The capital’s decidedly nonmainstream chic is best explored by browsing the vast variety of design shops that spatter its centre. Whether examining iconic 20th-century Finnish forms in the flagship emporia of brands such as Iittala, Marimekko and Artek, or tracking down the cutting-edge and just plain weird in the creative Punavuori backstreets in the heart of its Design District, you’re sure to find something you didn’t know you needed, but just can’t do without. And yes, they can arrange shipping.
”
”
Lonely Planet Finland
“
From the perspective of my old laptop,
I am a numbers man,
something like that
every instruction he gives me is a one or a zero
I remember well
I have information about him
before he left for his new toy
thinner,
younger,
able to keep up with him,
I have information about him
may 15th 2008, he listened to a song
five times in succession
it was titled
Everybody, open parenthesis, Backstreet's Back, close parenthesis
it included the lyric
'Am I sexual, yeaaaaah'
He said once,
computers like a sense of finality to them
when I write something I don't want to be able to run from it
this was a lie
he was addicted to my ability to keep his secrets
I am a numbers man,
every instruction he gives me is a one, or a zero
I remember well
January, 7th 2007
I was young
just two week awake
he gave me, a new series of one's and zeros
the most sublime sequence I have ever seen
it had curves,
and shadow,
it was him
he gave his face in numbers
and trusted me to be the artist, and I was
do not laugh
I have read about your God
you kill each other over your grand fathers memory of him
I still remember the fingertips of my God dancing across my body
After I learnt to draw him
he trusted with more art rubric
jpeg 1063 was his favourite
Him,
and that woman,
resting her head in the curve of his nick
I read his correspondence
she hasn't written him back in years
but he asks for it,
constantly,
jpeg 1063, jpeg 1063, jpeg 1063
it was my master piece
it looked so, .., life like
I wanted to tell him
That's not her
that is me
that is not her face
those are my ones and zeros
waltzing in space for you
she is nothing more than my shadow puppet
you do not miss her,
you miss me,
I am a numbers man,
every instruction he gives is a one or a zero
I remember well
but he taught me to be a Da Vinci
and I sit here, with his portraits
waiting for him to return
I do not think he will
Is that what it means to be human
to be all powerful,
to build a temple to yourself
and leave
only the walls to pray
”
”
Phil Kaye
“
Dunia was a consummate whisperer, but she possessed, additionally, a rarer skill: the gift of listening, of approaching a sleeping man and placing her ear very gently against his chest and, by deciphering the secret language that the self speaks only to itself, discovering his heart’s desire. As she listened to Geronimo Manezes, she heard first his most predictable wishes, please let me sink down towards the earth so that my feet touch solid ground again, and beneath that the sadder unfulfillable wishes of old age, let me be young again, give me back the strength of youth and the confidence that life is long, and beneath that the dreams of the displaced, let me belong again to that faraway place I left so long ago, from which I am alienated, and which has forgotten me, in which I am an alien now even though it was the place where I began, let me belong again, walk those streets knowing they are mine, knowing that my story is a part of the story of those streets, even though it isn’t, it hasn’t been for most of a lifetime, let it be so, let it be so, let me see French cricket being played and listen to music at the bandstand and hear once more the children’s back-street rhymes. Still she listened and then she heard it, below everything else, the deepest note of his heart’s music, and she knew what she must do. —
”
”
Salman Rushdie (Two Years Eight Months and Twenty-Eight Nights)
“
Any prize off this bottom row,” the guy tells us, walking away to a waiting customer.
“You did it!” I jump down off the counter and wrap my arms around his neck. “You won me a prize!”
“Thank fuck.” His arms wrap around me. “I was starting to worry for a moment there. Felt like I was losing my man card.”
I reach up on my tiptoes and kiss his lips. “Never. And thank you.” I tip my head back to look into his face.
His hands slide down my back to my ass, and he gives it a squeeze. “Go pick your prize, Boston.”
Leaving Liam, I head back to the counter and lean over, looking at the bottom row of prizes. I see all kinds of crap here, including really cheap-looking stuffed animals and dolls.
I definitely do not want a doll. They freak me out.
Then, I spy this sad-looking odd toy. Reaching over, I grab it.
Liam comes up behind me as I right myself. His chest is pressed to my back. “Is that a…fucking knitted jellyfish?”
I turn my head to look up at him. He’s squinting at the toy I’ve picked up.
I look back down at it in my hands, and I think he’s right. It is a knitted jellyfish toy. “I think so.”
It’s white and pink and looks like a little princess jellyfish. And the more I look at it, the cuter it becomes…in a weird knitted jellyfish way.
“She looks like a jellyfish princess,” I say.
“It looks like a piece of shit.”
“Hey! You’ll hurt her feelings.” I jab him in the arm. Then, I hug her. “I shall call her Squishy, and she shall be mine.” I laugh, meeting Liam’s blank expression. “Finding Nemo? No?” I say.
Liam slowly shakes his head, looking at me like I’ve lost my mind.
“Okay, makes sense. You were probably too old to watch it when it first came out—you know, when I was still in diapers and you were out serenading teenage girls with the Backstreet Boys—hey!” I squeal when he digs me in the ribs with his fingers. “We’ll watch Nemo later, and then you’ll get the reference.”
I turn to the guy. “I’ll take Squishy,” I tell him, holding the stuffed animal up.
“Okay, what’s next?” I hook my arm through Liam’s, holding Squishy to my chest.
“Hook a Duck.”
“Hook a what?” I give him a confused look.
“Duck.”
“And what’s Hook a Duck?”
“You don’t know what Hook a Duck is?” Liam looks appalled.
“No…but I feel like I should.”
“You should.”
“What’s so special about it?”
“Well, nothing special per se, but it’s like a rite of passage. Every kid plays Hook a Duck when they come to the fair.”
“Hate to break it to you, Hunter, but we’re not kids.”
“Maybe not. But it’s your first time at a fair in England, and you have to play.” Liam grabs my hand and sets off, I assume, in search of this Hook a Duck game.
We find one a few minutes later, and it’s closed. All shut up with the tarpaulin covering the booth.
“It’s closed. Never mind,” I say to him.
I start to walk away, but Liam tugs me back by the hand he’s holding.
“Like a little thing like it being closed is going to stop us from playing.”
He gives me a grin and drops my hand. I watch as he unhooks the tarpaulin at the bottom and lifts it just enough so that he can sneak in underneath it.
“Hunter, what are you doing?” I hiss.
He ducks his head back out. “Come on,” he whispers, holding the material up for me to go under.
“I’m not going in there.”
“Yes you are. Now hurry the fuck up, or you’ll get me arrested for breaking into a Hook a Duck tent,” he whispers.
“Ugh,” I complain.
”
”
Samantha Towle (The Ending I Want)
“
Most of the mortgaged farmers.
Most of the white-collar workers who had been unemployed these three years and four and five.
Most of the people on relief rolls who wanted more relief.
Most of the suburbanites who could not meet the installment payments on the electric washing machine.
Such large sections of the American Legion as believed that only Senator Windrip would secure for them, and perhaps increase, the bonus.
Such popular Myrtle Boulevard or Elm Avenue preachers as, spurred by the examples of Bishop Prang and Father Coughlin, believed they could get useful publicity out of supporting a slightly queer program that promised prosperity without anyone's having to work for it.
The remnants of the Kuklux Klan, and such leaders of the American Federation of Labor as felt they had been inadequately courted and bepromised by the old-line politicians, and the non-unionized common laborers who felt they had been inadequately courted by the same A.F. of L.
Back-street and over-the-garage lawyers who had never yet wangled governmental jobs.
The Lost Legion of the Anti-Saloon League—since it was known that, though he drank a lot, Senator Windrip also praised teetotalism a lot, while his rival, Walt Trowbridge, though he drank but little, said nothing at all in support of the Messiahs of Prohibition. These messiahs had not found professional morality profitable of late, with the Rockefellers and Wanamakers no longer praying with them nor paying.
Besides these necessitous petitioners, a goodish number of burghers who, while they were millionaires, yet maintained that their prosperity had been sorely checked by the fiendishness of the bankers in limiting their credit.
These were the supporters who looked to Berzelius Windrip to play the divine raven and feed them handsomely when he should become President, and from such came most of the fervid elocutionists who campaigned for him through September and October.
”
”
Sinclair Lewis (It Can't Happen Here)
“
the seedy-garish world of back-street London... restless rootless... beautiful, amoral, modern siren(s) of doom in a jungle of dance halls, caffs and pubs".
”
”
Mark McShane
“
That Ghost Walk in New Orleans.” He turned to Miranda. “A lotta atmosphere, yeah?”
Miranda did her best to remember. “Sort of a winding route--I mean, it was easy to lose all sense of direction, and a couple times the guide swore we were lost.”
“For effect.”
“Definitely for effect. There were alleys and backstreets and little courtyards. Lots of closed-in places, lots of shadows and dead ends. Low doorways we had to duck under, things like that. And sometimes ghosts came out of the dark and scared us.”
“Right there on the tour?” Ashley’s eyes widened. “The ghosts actually let you see them in person?”
“No,” Parker said. “Only in spirit.”
“Actors, Ashley.” While the others laughed, Miranda tried to hold back a smile. “Just people pretending to be ghosts.”
Ashley looked immensely relieved. “Oh, I get it! Like a big outdoor haunted house!
”
”
Richie Tankersley Cusick (Walk of the Spirits (Walk, #1))
“
The art is in the savoring, in grasping the incidental poems of the nameless backstreets to create your own dialogue, a dialogue that rests between articulation and speech, between spell and its transpiring.
”
”
Lakshmi Bharadwaj
“
Quincy ducked through a small alleyway between buildings and worked her confident way through the backstreets. The route was abundantly full of refuse bins, forgotten crates, and various laundry, hanging from back windows. Several cats, the local monarchy that Qunicy had long been acquainted with, were granting them passage while sitting atop the maze of half-broken fences. Quincy saluted a black female—the reigning queen—and passed through a slender passage between two buildings, leading them out onto Fair Street and its adjoining park in a manner of minutes.
”
”
Beth Brower (The Q)
“
Forgetting Arch, forgetting tailors and backstreets and cats, Quincy lost herself in the magnificent architecture built to house even more magnificent machines. The train Quincy loved: its perfection of movement and speed and sound; its possibility and potential; its ability to efficiently transport the masses. It was here that Quincy always found the gears of her own mind worked loose, set back in place.
”
”
Beth Brower (The Q)
“
Cutting through Temple Bar toward the river, they pass the cinema outside which Howard met Halley for the first time: this nugget of history he does not pass on to the boys. He remembers walking with her down to the riverside, but it’s only as they are crossing Ha’penny Bridge – the elderly construction seeming to sway beneath their impatient feet, the quays of the city stretching away on either side – that he remembers the museum was where she had been headed that day too, was where he had promised to take her, but never did, instead falling in love with her, leading her away into the backstreets of his life. Now he’s finally on his way there, but with twenty-six hormonal teenage boys instead of her. Nice job, Howard.
”
”
Paul Murray (Skippy Dies)
“
She grumbled a slew of nasty words and paced, her black boots clunking against the uneven floorboards. Pirate Lord indeed. This was the best room he could offer them? She was Adarlan’s Assassin, the right arm of Arobynn Hamel—not some backstreet harlot!
”
”
Sarah J. Maas (The Assassin's Blade (Throne of Glass, #0.1-0.5))
“
Imbecile Schizophrenia has been recognized and paid for.
”
”
Petra Hermans (Voor een betere wereld)
“
It sounds like something you’d find in a pack of tarot cards. Or a Robert Louis Stevenson novel. Certainly not London in the twenty-first century.’ ‘That’s the thing about the backstreets of Bloomsbury. They’ve barely changed in hundreds of years. They’ll probably be the same long after—
”
”
Christopher Fowler (Bryant & May and the Bleeding Heart (Peculiar Crimes Unit #11))
“
Who knows? Tyler’s hot. Did you see those abs?”
I nodded, biting my lip to hold back my laughter. “He’d be a solid eight without those frosted tips. He looks like a nineties boyband member.”
“I hope you’re not talking about me,” Seth’s voice made my heart nearly stop.
I looked up, finding him standing at the end of the tunnel. Caleb stepped up beside him and they both started smiling. Like actually smiling.
Before I answered, Seth broke into song, “You are...my fire, the one...desire, believe...when I say, I want it that waaay.”
Caleb picked up the Backstreet Boys classic on cue. “Tell me why!”
“Ain’t nothing but a heart ache,” Seth sang, clicking his fingers.
“Tell me why!” Caleb started dancing.
“Ain’t nothing but a mistake.”
“Tell me why!”
“I never wanna hear you say.” Seth looked to Caleb and they both belted out the last line together with their hands on their hearts. “I want it that waaaay.”
“Oh my god, puke,” Tory said and I blew out a laugh. “If you keep singing at us I’ll throat punch you like I did to Max.”
Caleb shot to her side in a blur of motion, slinging his arm around her shoulders. “Ohh what beautiful poetry you weave for me, sweetheart. Gets me so hard.”
(darcy)
”
”
Caroline Peckham (The Reckoning (Zodiac Academy, #3))
“
It’s a damn shame this book doesn’t have a “play video” option because they are truly a sight to behold. However, you can watch rough videos of them in all their glory on YouTube by searching for “Big Bang Theory flash mobs.” You’ll never listen to the Backstreet Boys’ “Larger Than Life” the same way again.
”
”
Jessica Radloff (The Big Bang Theory: The Definitive, Inside Story of the Epic Hit Series)
“
Nesta lifted the bag. “So, I scatter these like some backstreet charlatan and it’ll find the Cauldron?” Amren let out a low laugh. “Something like that.” Arcs of mud lay beneath Nesta’s nails. She didn’t seem to notice as she untied the small pouch and dumped out its contents. Three stones, four bones. The latter were brown and gleamed with age; the former were white as the moon and smooth as glass, each marked with a thin, reedy letter I did not recognize. “Three stones for the faces of the Mother,” Amren said upon seeing Nesta’s raised brows. “Four bones … for whatever reason the charlatans came up with that I can’t be bothered to remember.
”
”
Sarah J. Maas (A Court of Wings and Ruin (A Court of Thorns and Roses, #3))
“
Did you read the letters that mentioned my mania for arson and my lurid history of backstreet goose-wrestling?” I turned around and stared at him. “A joke,” he supplied. “Ah. Are there going to be a lot of those?
”
”
Kaliane Bradley (The Ministry of Time)
“
So, I scatter these like some backstreet charlatan and it’ll find the Cauldron?
”
”
Sarah J. Maas (A Court of Wings and Ruin (A Court of Thorns and Roses, #3))
“
By the time we had passed St Clement Dane’s, the pavements had grown less crowded, and as we drew by the Temple, thick woolly clouds of vapour were curling up from the steep lanes leading down to the river on our right and were beginning to suffuse the light from the gas-lamps and to deepen the gloom of the quieter streets of that quarter. Past St Paul’s, on through the sepulchral City and up beyond Bishopsgate, the breeze had dropped and the haze grew thicker and heavier. By the time we had arrived at our rendezvous with Lestrade in a warren of dismal backstreets in Spitalfields, we were mired in the drab wraiths of a summer fog.
”
”
Séamus Duffy (Sherlock Holmes and the Four Corners of Hell)
“
But finally we found the place—an Irish pub, as seedy as the roughest ones on the backstreets of Galway.
”
”
Christina Baker Kline (Orphan Train)
“
Don't be afraid, don't have no fear
”
”
Backstreet Boys (Backstreet Boys -- The Hits, Chapter One: Piano/Vocal/Chords)
“
And what eyes they were. Calm and blue as deep water. Bright as stars. Hard as hammered iron. And ruthless as a backstreet knifing. Javre
”
”
Joe Abercrombie (Sharp Ends (First Law World #7))
“
I’m surprised you know a Christmas song, considering it’s the season of giving. Do you even know what that means, Anya?” he asks with a raised eyebrow.
“I’m well known for my ‘giving.’ It just so happens I deal a cruel hand.”
He smirks but makes no remark about the song, which pisses me off even more. I lean back over and play the Backstreet Boys.
“Classic, really, wouldn’t you say? Which was your favorite?” he asks, deadly serious.
But I know he’s fucking with me. “I prefer men, not boys,” I chide.
What else, what else? I switch to Britney Spears.
“I feel like you and Britney would have much in common,” he remarks.
Oh, fuck off.
”
”
Kia Carrington-Russell (Cunning Vows (Lethal Vows, #3))
“
Backstreet Boys? Ethan Montgomery, you dark horse.”
“Hey, ‘I Want It That Way’ is a classic.
”
”
Kendall Hale (The Ex-cavenger Hunt (Happily Ever Mishaps, #1))
“
the bed squeaked and creaked like a back-street hip replacement.
”
”
A.J. Desmond (Big Bang)
“
Excuse me?" Annie's voice rises, which is unusual for her. She's the queen of avoiding conflict, and I'm not a fan of it either, which means that the one and only serious argument we've ever been in happened in the fourth grade when she insisted that Howie was the cutest Backstreet Boy (a statement that was categorically false).
”
”
Kerry Winfrey (Not Like the Movies (Waiting for Tom Hanks, #2))
“
That’s true. What if I told you I owned every casino, backstreet dealing, and bookie in the city?” he questions, blocking the door, his arm outstretched.
“Then I would tell you that you have a gambling problem.”
“Or maybe I just like to win,” he murmurs
”
”
K.A. Knight (Den of Vipers)
“
I realized that everyone becomes a homeless wanderer after they are born and has difficulty finding a proper place for themselves as soon as they touch the ground and let out their initial cry. They will spend their whole life trying to determine their position—becoming anxious and griping about its vagueness. Everyone is a wanderer in space. Even the notion of possession carried out by those who own land, palaces, and mansions is in fact just an assumption based on imitation. Some people aren’t even satisfied by owning their own lands, palaces, and mansions, but to make it their own instead want to own whole cities, countries, and the universe itself. All of this comes from a kind of worry that is based on the feeling that a person can’t determine a lasting position in the universe. The more this happens, the more a person wants to own their place in the world and deny the idea that nothing can really belong to them. Or that they themselves were born into this world for no other reason than to be a wanderer for their whole life. They want to deny all of this by madly thinking that they can own things unceasingly.
”
”
Perhat Tursun (The Backstreets: A Novel from Xinjiang)
“
When a quarter of a million miners are unemployed, it is a part of the order of things that Alf Smith, a miner living in the back-streets of Newcastle, should be out of work. But no human being finds it easy to regard himself as a statistical unit. So long as Bert Jones across the street is still at work, Alf Smith is bound to feel himself dishonoured and a failure.
”
”
George Orwell (The Road to Wigan Pier)
“
He hated cocktail parties--"you see the same people again and again and it becomes boring"--and found the Westerners who hung around the Peking club "rather ridiculous. Very small frogs in a very small pond acting like they were big frogs in an ocean.
”
”
Michael Meyer (The Last Days of Old Beijing: Life in the Vanishing Backstreets of a City Transformed)
“
Marilyn Monroe was scraped out again and again by backstreet abortionists because she died almost a decade before the Pill was made available to unmarried women in all American states.
”
”
Louise Perry (The Case Against the Sexual Revolution: A New Guide to Sex in the 21st Century)
“
that I swore to myself that the law would rule on my turf. At any cost, and using any methods, per fas et nefas. For the law is not jurisprudence, not a weighty tome full of articles, not philosophical treatises, not peevish nonsense about justice, not hackneyed platitudes about morality and ethics. The law means safe paths and highways. It means backstreets one can walk along even after sundown. It means inns and taverns one can leave to visit the privy, leaving one’s purse on the table and one’s wife beside it. The law is the sleep of people certain they’ll be woken by the crowing of the rooster and not the crashing of burning roof timbers! And for those who break the law: the noose, the axe, the stake and the red-hot iron! Punishments which deter others. Those that break the law should be caught and punished. Using all available means and methods… Eh, witcher? Is the disapproval written on your countenance a reaction to the intention or the methods? The methods, I think! For it’s easy to criticise methods, but we would all prefer to live in a safe world, wouldn’t we? Go on, answer!” “There’s nothing to say.” “Oh, I believe there is.” “Mr. Fulko,” Geralt said calmly, “the world you envision quite pleases me.” “Indeed? Your expression suggests otherwise.” “The world you envision is made for a witcher. A witcher would never be short of work in it. Instead of codes, articles and peevish platitudes about justice, your idea creates lawlessness, anarchy, the licence and self-serving of princelings and mandarins, the officiousness of careerists wanting to endear themselves to their superiors, the blind vindictiveness of fanatics, the cruelty of assassins, retribution and sadistic vengeance. Your vision is a world where people are afraid to venture out after dark; not for fear of cut-throats, but of the guardians of public order. For, after all, the result of all great crackdowns on miscreants is always that the miscreants enter the ranks of the guardians of public order en masse. Your vision is a world of bribery, blackmail and entrapment, a world of turning imperial evidence and false witnesses. A world of snoopers and coerced confessions. Informing and the fear of being informed upon. And inevitably the day will come in your world when the flesh of the wrong person will be torn with pincers, when an innocent person is hanged or impaled. And then it will be a world of crime.
”
”
Andrzej Sapkowski (The Tower of Swallows (The Witcher, #4))
“
With my high heels that I couldn’t properly walk in on and my dress that was so snug that one wrong move might mean I would moon all of Catering, I felt so unnatural and unlike myself as I stood around awkwardly making sure I introduced myself to everyone, with dry hands this time. To my shock, someone actually came up to me and started a conversation. And not just anyone: he was Seth Rollins (real name Colby Lopez), one of WWE’s biggest stars, one-third of its hottest faction, The Shield, i.e., the Backstreet Boys of wrestling, along with Roman Reigns and Dean Ambrose. Colby had a plate of food in one hand and a sheet of paper in another. “Hey, I’m Colby.” “Nice to meet you, I’m Rebecca.” “What’s your story? Why are you here?” he asked, genuinely interested. An avalanche of words fell out of my mouth, and I divulged my whole life story up until that very moment, with my very short dress and my poorly done hair. By the time I was finished, his plate of food was gone. He had an ease about him. A familiar feeling, like we had been friends for years. As if I could tell him anything and everything and he’d understand. He was a megastar and held himself as such but was also personable and down-to-earth. We talked for forty-five minutes until he was summoned to work. “Good talk,” he said calmly and coolly as he walked away. “You too!” I yelled after him, nearly falling over in my high heels, not at all calm. Or cool. I liked it up here. I had even just made a new friend.
”
”
Rebecca Quin (Becky Lynch: The Man: Not Your Average Average Girl)
“
She was Adarlan’s Assassin, the right arm of Arobynn Hamel—not some backstreet harlot!
”
”
Sarah J. Maas (Throne of Glass)
“
The unceasing sound of the cars was precisely the silence of the city.
”
”
Perhat Tursun (The Backstreets)
“
She squeals. Like, the response you might give if you were a teenage girl in the late '90s and the Backstreet Boys walked into the room. And list, I'm no Brian Littrell.
”
”
Kerry Winfrey (Not Like the Movies (Waiting for Tom Hanks, #2))
“
For the law is not jurisprudence, not a weighty tome full of articles, not philosophical treatises, not peevish nonsense about justice, not hackneyed platitudes about morality and ethics. The law means safe paths and highways. It means backstreets one can walk along even after sundown. It means inns and taverns one can leave to visit the privy, leaving one’s purse on the table and one’s wife beside it. The law is the sleep of people certain they’ll be woken by the crowing of the rooster and not the crashing of burning roof timbers! And for those who break the law; the noose, the axe, the stake and the red-hot iron!
”
”
Andrzej Sapkowski (The Tower of Swallows (The Witcher, #4))
“
By now it was afternoon. Ted began to walk, still dazed, until he found himself among a skein of backstreets so narrow they felt dark. He passed churches blistered with grime, moldering palazzi whose squalid interiors leaked sounds of wailing cats and children. Soiled, forgotten coats of arms were carved above their massive doorways, and these unsettled Ted: such universal, defining symbols made meaningless by nothing more than time.” (p. 212)
”
”
Jennifer Egan (A Visit from the Goon Squad)
“
The rich never give you anything (dixit A.). Wealth is unrelenting; it always screws you. Those who are rich in intelligence, power and beauty don't give much away either. They make you pay all the more for the fact that their capital is symbolic.
Comparing that unrelenting face of wealth with Countess Bathory who tortured young peasant girls. She at least was tortured herself, walled up in total darkness, in absolute silence and her own excrement, with a hole in the wall for food to be passed through. The bloodbaths she had taken gave her the savage energy to hold out for two years in the dark. Thinking of those happy days while walking around in the backstreets of Rome. Here everything is deeply incestuous, though in a different way from Elisabeth Bathory for whom all those peasant girls were her daughters whose incest was to be sealed with blood. But that was a sadistic and violent incest, whereas the whole Roman culture practises a gentle, spiritual incest. Akin to fetishism: that of the mamma, the sister, the young adolescent, the Virgin and the Saints, all swirling about in the same incestuous spiral. The carnal perfection of the detail, the carnal softness of the marble, the lewd transparency of the fountains - little navels of the squares set deep in the backstreets - and the water which streams down from them. The miracle of a faultless urbanity, a total civility - even the ruins share in this. However far back you go in Italy, there has never been any nature. There has only ever been a baroque figuration.
”
”
Jean Baudrillard (Cool Memories)
“
Keep out of things you don’t understand!” we are told. “Teach people how to pray and don’t meddle in public affairs!” But followers of Jesus have no choice. A central part of our vocation is, prayerfully and thoughtfully, to remind people with power, both official (government ministers) and unofficial (backstreet bullies), that there is a different way to be human. A true way. The Jesus way. This doesn’t mean “electing into office someone who shares our particular agenda”; that might or might not be appropriate. It means being prepared, whoever the current officials are, to do what Jesus did with Pontius Pilate: confront them with a different vision of kingdom, truth, and power.
”
”
N.T. Wright (The Day the Revolution Began: Reconsidering the Meaning of Jesus's Crucifixion)
“
central part of our vocation is, prayerfully and thoughtfully, to remind people with power, both official (government ministers) and unofficial (backstreet bullies), that there is a different way to be human. A true way. The Jesus way. This doesn’t mean “electing into office someone who shares our particular agenda”; that might or might not be appropriate. It means being prepared, whoever the current officials are, to do what Jesus did with Pontius Pilate: confront them with a different vision of kingdom, truth, and power.
”
”
N.T. Wright (The Day the Revolution Began: Reconsidering the Meaning of Jesus's Crucifixion)
“
Alfie cries as he is confronted with the grisly product of a backstreet abortion he has procured for one of his ‘birds’.
”
”
Louise Perry (The Case Against the Sexual Revolution: A New Guide to Sex in the 21st Century)
“
There was even some part of me, buried so deep in my subconscious that it resided next to secrets like my opinion that the Backstreet Boys' Millennium album was a masterpiece...
”
”
Jennifer Fulwiler (One Beautiful Dream: The Rollicking Tale of Family Chaos, Personal Passions, and Saying Yes to Them Both)
“
Interest in such organizations is too often linked to the fringe and marginal or thought to be little more than conspiracy theories. While such a critique is not entirely incorrect, we will see that hidden organizations are far more common, more important, and more consequential than we have typically allowed ourselves to admit. As a result, they also need to be better integrated into thinking about organizations by scholars, policymakers, and everyday citizens.
”
”
Craig Scott (Anonymous Agencies, Backstreet Businesses, and Covert Collectives: Rethinking Organizations in the 21st Century)
“
Jenna was humming along to a Backstreet Boys song while girls screamed and danced nearby, because there was nothing a group of college coeds liked more than some throwback boy band songs.
”
”
C.R. Jane (Make Me Beg (Rich Demons of Darkwood, #2))
“
We set off to walk my favorite route, two American flâneurs in Paris, traversing the Place de la Concorde, the Seine, winding through Saint-Germain on backstreets like the rue de Bourgogne and the rue Barbet de Jouy and up the boulevard Raspail. I wanted to buy linens and
”
”
Kate Betts (My Paris Dream: An Education in Style, Slang, and Seduction in the Great City on the Seine)
“
I swear to god, I spent most of my childhood convinced I had breast cancer. One of my nipples was puffier than the other one (probably a cinnamon roll had gotten lodged in there) and I thought, That’s the lump. I have breast cancer. I’m the first male tween with breast cancer. I didn’t know what to do. Should I tell a doctor? Would they have to make a special awareness ribbon for me that was half pink, half blue, with the faces of all five Backstreet Boys?
”
”
Colin Jost (A Very Punchable Face)
“
【ϝAQ||HELP!!】Water Moon by Samantha Sotto YambaoA woman inherits a pawnshop where you can sell your regrets, and then embarks on a magical journey when a charming young physicist wanders into the shop, in this dreamlike and enchanting fantasy novel.
On a backstreet in Tokyo lies a pawnshop, but not everyone can find it. Most will see a cozy ramen restaurant. And only the chosen ones—those who are lost—will find a place to pawn their life choices and deepest regrets.
Hana Ishikawa wakes on her first morning as the pawnshop’s new owner to find it ransacked, the shop’s most precious acquisition stolen, and her father missing. And then into the shop stumbles a charming stranger, quite unlike its other customers, for he offers help instead of seeking it.
Together, they must journey through a mystical world to find Hana’s father and the stolen choice—by way of rain puddles, rides on paper cranes, the bridge between midnight and morning, and a night market in the clouds.
But as they get closer to the truth, Hana must reveal a secret of her own—and risk making a choice that she will never be able to take back.
”
”
Mountaineers Books (Mammals of North America Deck: 52 Playing Cards)
“
A woman inherits a pawnshop where you can sell your regrets, and then embarks on a magical journey when a charming young physicist wanders into the shop, in this dreamlike and enchanting fantasy nove+1⇄800⇄211⇄5032.l.
On a backstreet in Tokyo lies a pawnshop, but not everyone can find it. Most will see a cozy ramen restaurant. And only the chosen ones—those who are lost—will find a place to pawn their life choices and deepest regrets+1⇄800⇄211⇄5032..
Hana Ishikawa wakes on her first morning as the pawnshop’s new owner to find it ransacked, the shop’s most precious acquisition stolen, and her father missing. And then into the shop stumbles a charming stranger, quite unlike its other customers, for he offers help instead of seeking i+1⇄800⇄211⇄5032.t.
Together, they must journey through a mystical world to find Hana’s father and the stolen choice—by way of rain puddles, rides on paper cranes, the bridge between midnight and morning, and a night market in the clouds.
But as they get closer to the truth, Hana must reveal a secret of her own—and risk making a choice that she will never be able to take back+1⇄800⇄211⇄5032..
”
”
water moon (isekai no mahoutuka i: gensou no tabi 異世界の魔法使い: 幻想の旅 (kenshin) (Japanese Edition))