Beautiful Hotel Quotes

It’s not that we have to quit this life one day, it’s how many things we have to quit all at once: holding hands, hotel rooms, music, the physics of falling leaves, vanilla and jasmine, poppies, smiling, anthills, the color of the sky, coffee and cashmere, literature, sparks and subway trains... If only one could leave this life slowly!

On the information sheet in a New York hotel, I recently read: 'Dear guest! To guarantee that you will fully enjoy your stay with us, this hotel is totally smoke-free. For any infringement of this regulation, you will be charged $200.' The beauty of this formulation, taken literally, is that you are to be punished for refusing to fully enjoy your stay.

It reminded him that time was short, but that beautiful endings could still be found at the end of cold, dreary days.

You look beautiful sitting there spitting at me like a she-cat. All I have to do is look at you, and I lust. I'm going to take you back to the hotel and take off that delectable dress and make love to you until you don't have the energy to be mad at me anymore." Ian Connelly, Marquis of Derne

did you think i was a city big enough for a weekend getaway i am the town surrounding it the one you've never heard of but always pass through there are no neon lights here no skyscapers or statues but there is thunder for i make bridges tremble i am not street meat i am homemade jam thick enough to cut the sweetest thing you lips will touch i am not police sirens i am the crackle of a fireplace i'd burn you and you still couldn't take your eyes off of me cause i'd look so beautiful doing it you'd blush i am not a hotel room i am home i am not the whiskey you want i am the water you need don't come here with expectations and try to make a vacation out of me

A revelation earned only in hindsight: beauty can have a corrosive effect on character. It is possible to coast for some years on no more than a few polished lines and a dazzling smile, and those years are formative.

Miracles are like meatballs, because nobody can exactly agree on what they are made of, where they come from, or how often they should appear. Some people say that a sunrise is a miracle, because it is somewhat mysterious and often very beautiful, but other people say it is simply a fact of life, because it happens every day and far too early in the morning. Some people say that a telephone is a miracle, because it sometimes seems wondrous that you can talk with somebody who is thousands of miles away, and other people say it is merely a manufactured device fashioned out of metal parts, electronic circuitry, and wires that are very easily cut. And some people say that sneaking out of a hotel is a miracle, particularly if the lobby is swarming with policemen, and other people say it is simply a fact of life, because it happens every day and far too early in the morning. So you might think that there are so many miracles in the world that you can scarcely count them, or that there are so few that they are scarcely worth mentioning, depending on whether you spend your mornings gazing at a beautiful sunset or lowering yourself into a back alley with a rope made of matching towels.

Now, back to my vacation idea.” Finn grinned, showing off his perfect white teeth. “Just think about it. You, Owen, me, and Bria, all happily ensconced in a swanky hotel by a beautiful beach. Bria in a bikini. You and Owen doing your own thing, Bria in a bikini. Did I mention Bria in a bikini?

And one day we will die and our ashes will fly from the aeroplane over the sea, but for now we are young, let us lay in the sun, and count every beautiful thing we can see... Can't believe how strange it is to be anything at all.

I came out of the park. The city streets rose up around me. There was a hotel with a courtyard with metal tables and chairs for people to sit in more clement weather. Today they were snow-strewn and forlorn. A lattice of wire was strung across the courtyard. Paper lanterns were hanging from the wires, spheres of vivid orange that blew and trembled in the snow and the thin wind; the sea-grey clouds raced across the sky and the orange lanterns shivered against them. The Beauty of the House is immeasurable; its Kindness infinite.

Fire         i   The morning you were made to leave she sat on the front steps, dress tucked between her thighs, a packet of Marlboro Lights near her bare feet, painting her nails until the polish curdled. Her mother phoned–   What do you mean he hit you? Your father hit me all the time but I never left him. He pays the bills and he comes home at night, what more do you want?   Later that night she picked the polish off with her front teeth until the bed you shared for seven years seemed speckled with glitter and blood.       ii   On the drive to the hotel, you remember “the funeral you went to as a little boy, double burial for a couple who burned to death in their bedroom. The wife had been visited by her husband’s lover, a young and beautiful woman who paraded her naked body in the couple’s kitchen, lifting her dress to expose breasts mottled with small fleshy marks, a back sucked and bruised, then dressed herself and walked out of the front door. The wife, waiting for her husband to come home, doused herself in lighter fluid. On his arrival she jumped on him, wrapping her legs around his torso. The husband, surprised at her sudden urge, carried his wife to the bedroom, where she straddled him on their bed, held his face against her chest and lit a match.       iii   A young man greets you in the elevator. He smiles like he has pennies hidden in his cheeks. You’re looking at his shoes when he says the rooms in this hotel are sweltering. Last night in bed I swear I thought my body was on fire.

I used to walk in here and have to fight for my life as the place fell down around me,” Jace mused. “Now it’s all velvet cushions and insistent offers of immortal beauty.

We stayed at a cheap hotel that had a view out the window more beautiful than anything I’d ever seen. The water was wickedly blue. A cliff of dark rock jutted out of the sea. I wanted to cry because I was sure I would never get to be in such a place again.

Sometimes the beautiful memories are the saddest ones of all" -Elias

You, Doctor Martin, walk from breakfast to madness. Late August, I speed through the antiseptic tunnel where the moving dead still talk of pushing their bones against the thrust of cure. And I am queen of this summer hotel or the laughing bee on a stalk of death. We stand in broken lines and wait while they unlock the doors and count us at the frozen gates of dinner. The shibboleth is spoken and we move to gravy in our smock of smiles. We chew in rows, our plates scratch and whine like chalk in school. There are no knives for cutting your throat. I make moccasins all morning. At first my hands kept empty, unraveled for the lives they used to work. Now I learn to take them back, each angry finger that demands I mend what another will break tomorrow. Of course, I love you; you lean above the plastic sky, god of our block, prince of all the foxes. The breaking crowns are new that Jack wore. Your third eye moves among us and lights the separate boxes where we sleep or cry. What large children we are here. All over I grow most tall in the best ward. Your business is people, you call at the madhouse, an oracular eye in our nest. Out in the hall the intercom pages you. You twist in the pull of the foxy children who fall like floods of life in frost. And we are magic talking to itself, noisy and alone. I am queen of all my sins forgotten. Am I still lost? Once I was beautiful. Now I am myself, counting this row and that row of moccasins waiting on the silent shelf.

There is evidence that the honoree [Leonard Cohen] might be privy to the secret of the universe, which, in case you're wondering, is simply this: everything is connected. Everything. Many, if not most, of the links are difficult to determine. The instrument, the apparatus, the focused ray that can uncover and illuminate those connections is language. And just as a sudden infatuation often will light up a person's biochemical atmosphere more pyrotechnically than any deep, abiding attachment, so an unlikely, unexpected burst of linguistic imagination will usually reveal greater truths than the most exacting scholarship. In fact. The poetic image may be the only device remotely capable of dissecting romantic passion, let alone disclosing the inherent mystical qualities of the material world. Cohen is a master of the quasi-surrealistic phrase, of the "illogical" line that speaks so directly to the unconscious that surface ambiguity is transformed into ultimate, if fleeting, comprehension: comprehension of the bewitching nuances of sex and bewildering assaults of culture. Undoubtedly, it is to his lyrical mastery that his prestigious colleagues now pay tribute. Yet, there may be something else. As various, as distinct, as rewarding as each of their expressions are, there can still be heard in their individual interpretations the distant echo of Cohen's own voice, for it is his singing voice as well as his writing pen that has spawned these songs. It is a voice raked by the claws of Cupid, a voice rubbed raw by the philosopher's stone. A voice marinated in kirschwasser, sulfur, deer musk and snow; bandaged with sackcloth from a ruined monastery; warmed by the embers left down near the river after the gypsies have gone. It is a penitent's voice, a rabbinical voice, a crust of unleavened vocal toasts -- spread with smoke and subversive wit. He has a voice like a carpet in an old hotel, like a bad itch on the hunchback of love. It is a voice meant for pronouncing the names of women -- and cataloging their sometimes hazardous charms. Nobody can say the word "naked" as nakedly as Cohen. He makes us see the markings where the pantyhose have been. Finally, the actual persona of their creator may be said to haunt these songs, although details of his private lifestyle can be only surmised. A decade ago, a teacher who called himself Shree Bhagwan Rajneesh came up with the name "Zorba the Buddha" to describe the ideal modern man: A contemplative man who maintains a strict devotional bond with cosmic energies, yet is completely at home in the physical realm. Such a man knows the value of the dharma and the value of the deutschmark, knows how much to tip a waiter in a Paris nightclub and how many times to bow in a Kyoto shrine, a man who can do business when business is necessary, allow his mind to enter a pine cone, or dance in wild abandon if moved by the tune. Refusing to shun beauty, this Zorba the Buddha finds in ripe pleasures not a contradiction but an affirmation of the spiritual self. Doesn't he sound a lot like Leonard Cohen? We have been led to picture Cohen spending his mornings meditating in Armani suits, his afternoons wrestling the muse, his evenings sitting in cafes were he eats, drinks and speaks soulfully but flirtatiously with the pretty larks of the street. Quite possibly this is a distorted portrait. The apocryphal, however, has a special kind of truth. It doesn't really matter. What matters here is that after thirty years, L. Cohen is holding court in the lobby of the whirlwind, and that giants have gathered to pay him homage. To him -- and to us -- they bring the offerings they have hammered from his iron, his lead, his nitrogen, his gold.

We are never as beautiful as now. The crushing sadness of hotel rooms; the gelid lights and clean notepads; the blank walls and particles of someone else’s erased life.

A young nurse, someone new whom he didn't recognise, came up to Henry and patted him on the arm. "Are you a friend or a family member?" She whispered the question in his ear, trying not to disturb Sheldon. The question hung there like a beautiful chord, ringing in the air. Henry was Chinese, Sheldon obviously wasn't. They looked nothing alike. Nothing at all. "I'm distant family," Henry said.

In the Grand Canyon, Arizona has a natural wonder which is in kind absolutely unparalleled throughout the rest of the world. I want to ask you to keep this great wonder of nature as it now is. I hope you will not have a building of any kind, not a summer cottage, a hotel or anything else, to mar the wonderful grandeur, the sublimity, the great loneliness and beauty of the canyon. Leave it as it is. You cannot improve on it. The ages have been at work on it, and man can only mar it.

The blue, mosquitoey night pushes in from the hotel windows.

Maybe this could be enough. Maybe not everyone needs to have a specific ambition. I could be the sort of person who just goes to beautiful places and owns beautiful things.

It was Sunday morning. I woke very early to a bright and cheery day, anxious to join my fellow Christians in this lovely garden of a land. The clerk in the hotel eyed me a little dubiously when I asked for a church. 'We don't have many of those, you know,' he said. 'Besides, you couldn't understand the language.' 'Didn't you know?' I said, 'Christians speak a kind of universal language.' 'Oh. What's that?' 'It's called "agape".' 'Agape? I never heard of it.' 'Too bad. It's the most beautiful language in the world.

When we acknowledge that all of our blessings are like a fancy rental car or a beautiful Airbnb, we are free to enjoy them without living in constant fear of losing them. We are all the lucky vacationers enjoying our stay in Hotel Earth.

On the information sheet in a New York hotel, I recently read: "Dear guest! To guarantee that you will fully enjoy your stay with us, this hotel is totally smoke-free. For any infringement of this regulation, you will be charged $200:' The beauty of this formulation, taken literally, is that you are to be punished for refusing to fully enjoy your stay . . . The superego imperative to enjoy thus functions as the reversal of Kant's "Du kannst, denn du soUstf" (You can, because you must ! ) ; it relies on a "You must, because you can ! " That is to say, the superego aspect of today's "nonrepressive" hedonism (the constant provocation we are exposed to, enjoining us to go right to the end and explore all modes of jouissance) resides in the way permitted jouissance necessarily turns into obligatory jouissance.

Franny’s Hollywood name, her acting name, is one you know. This is our family’s story, and it’s inappropriate for me to use Franny’s stage name – but I know that you know her. Franny is the one you always desire. She is the best one, even when she’s the villain; she always the real hero, even when she dies, even when she dies for love – or worse, for war. She’s the most beautiful, the most unapproachable, but the most vulnerable too, somehow – and the toughest. (She’s why you go to the movie, or why you stay.)

A sand trap is like a politician in its duality. It represents two opposing viewpoints. You see, it was designed to trap your ball. So it exists to have balls land in it. But it was also designed to be avoided. So it also exists to not have balls land in it. This is the beauty of golf. The game of golf is a Zen koan in action.

They like bright colors," she said. He smiled at her, those dark tameless eyes, half-bold and half-shy. "They like beautiful things," he said.

At the age of fifty-six Eleanor Stoddard was still a beautiful woman. She owned three hotels in France and another two in England. From nothing at all, she had built an empire. Eleanor had it all. Her one weakness was the young man sleeping beside her.

I looked down at my bloody shirt and jeans. “My face hurts all over,” I said to Ranger. “Where’s all the blood coming from?” “You’re getting a bruise on your cheek. You have a small cut on your lower lip. You were bleeding from your nose, but that seems to have stopped. You have a puncture wound on your neck.” “I’m a mess!” Ranger wrapped his arms around me and held me close. “You’re beautiful. You evacuated the hotel and you delivered Vlatko.

In the kitchen Valeria was making breakfast, his aunt never made breakfast even though Carlo insisted for years that a hotel hoping to cater to French and Americans must offer breakfast. “It’s a lazy man’s meal.", she always said. "What laggard expects to eat before doing any work?

Valencia. City by the sea, birthplace of her favorite painter, Sorolla. Hotel guests speak of Valencia’s tranquil beauty, fragrant orange trees, and rolling blue waters. What does a large body of water sound and smell like? Ana wonders. Landlocked, fenced by circumstance, she has never seen the sea. She sees Spain only through images on postcards that guests collect in their rooms. If she transfers to the hotel business office, perhaps one day she too will walk along the beach in Valencia.

The fairy tale is accused of giving children a false impression of the world they live in. But I think no literature that children could read gives them less of a false impression. I think what profess to be realistic stories for children are far more likely to deceive them. I never expected the real world to be like the fairy tales. I think that I did expect school to be like the school stories. The fantasies did not deceive me: the school stories did. All stories in which children have adventures and successes which are possible, in the sense that they do not break the laws of nature, but almost infinitely improbable, are in more danger than the fairy tales of raising false expectations… This distinction holds for adult reading too. The dangerous fantasy is always superficially realistic. The real victim of wishful reverie does not batten on the Odyssey, The Tempest, or The Worm Ouroboros: he (or she) prefers stories about millionaires, irresistible beauties, posh hotels, palm beaches and bedroom scenes—things that really might happen, that ought to happen, that would have happened if the reader had had a fair chance. For, as I say, there are two kinds of longing. The one is an askesis, a spiritual exercise, and the other is a disease.

Climbing the steps to the hotel, Grace paused, taking a long look at Paris, in all its shimmering, enigmatic elegance, wearing the nigh as a beautiful woman wears diamonds.

Yes,” said Miss Marple. “The children of Lucifer are often beautiful—And as we know, they flourish like the green bay tree.

He never had time to read on the outside, but here he joins a book club where they discuss The Great Gatsby and The Beautiful and Damned and Tender Is The Night with a fervent young professor who seems unaware that anyone other than F. Scott Fitzgerald has ever written a book.

It should have been the Arabian Nights, but to Bond, seeing it first above the tops of trams and above the great scars of modern advertising along the river frontage, it seemed a once beautiful theatre-set that modern Turkey had thrown aside in favour of the steel and concrete flat-iron of the Istanbul-Hilton Hotel, blankly glittering behind him on the heights of Pera.

Mind the faeries,” Brian said with a grin. “Christ, it’s been years since I stepped into a country wood. Roarke, do you remember when we skinned those Germans in the hotel, then hid out for two days with travelers in the wood down in Wexford till the heat was off?” “Jesus, I’m standing right here,” Eve pointed out. “Cop.” “There was that girl,” Brian continued, unabashed. “Ah, the sultry beauty. And no matter how I tried to charm her, she only had eyes for you.” “Again, right here. Married.” “It was long ago and far away.

on the continent I'm soft. I dream too. I let myself dream. I dream of being famous. I dream of walking the streets of London and Paris. I dream of sitting in cafes drinking fine wines and taking a taxi back to a good hotel. I dream of meeting beautiful ladies in the hall and turning them away because I have a sonnet in mind that I want to write before sunrise. at sunrise I will be asleep and there will be a strange cat curled up on the windowsill. I think we all feel like this now and then. I'd even like to visit Andernach, Germany, the place where I began, then I'd like to fly on to Moscow to check out their mass transit system so I'd have something faintly lewd to whisper into the ear of the mayor of Los Angeles upon to my return to this fucking place. it could happen. I'm ready. I've watched snails crawl over ten foot walls and vanish. you mustn't confuse this with ambition. I would be able to laugh at my good turn of the cards - and I won't forget you. I'll send postcards and snapshots, and the finished sonnet.

In winter you wake up in this city, especially on Sundays, to the chiming of its innumerable bells, as though behind your gauze curtains a gigantic china teaset were vibrating on a silver tray in the pearl-gray sky. You fling the window open and the room is instantly flooded with this outer, peal-laden haze, which is part damp oxygen, part coffee and prayers. No matter what sort of pills, and how many, you've got to swallow this morning, you feel it's not over for you yet. No matter, by the same token, how autonomous you are, how much you've been betrayed, how thorough and dispiriting in your self-knowledge, you assume there is still hope for you, or at least a future. (Hope, said Francis Bacon, is a good breakfast but bad supper.) This optimism derives from the haze, from the prayer part of it, especially if it's time for breakfast. On days like this, the city indeed acquires a porcelain aspect, what with all its zinc-covered cupolas resembling teapots or upturned cups, and the tilted profile of campaniles clinking like abandoned spoons and melting in the sky. Not to mention the seagulls and pigeons, now sharpening into focus, now melting into air. I should say that, good though this place is for honeymoons, I've often thought it should be tried for divorces also - both in progress and already accomplished. There is no better backdrop for rapture to fade into; whether right or wrong, no egoist can star for long in this porcelain setting by crystal water, for it steals the show. I am aware, of course, of the disastrous consequence the above suggestion may have for hotel rates here, even in winter. Still, people love their melodrama more than architecture, and I don't feel threatened. It is surprising that beauty is valued less than psychology, but so long as such is the case, I'll be able to afford this city - which means till the end of my days, and which ushers in the generous notion of the future.

I want to see the Parthenon by moonlight.' I had my way. They floodlight it now, to great advantage I am told, but it was not so then, and since it was late in the year there were few tourists. My companions were all intelligent men, including my own husband, and they had the sense to stay mute. I suppose, being a woman, I confuse beauty with sentiment, but, as I looked on the Parthenon for the first time in my life, I found myself crying. It had never happened to me before. Your sunset weepers I despise. It was not full moon, or anywhere near it. The half circle put me in mind of the labrys, the Cretan double axe, and the pillars were the most ghostly in consequence. What a shock for the modern aesthete, I thought when my crying was done, if he could see the ruddy glow of colour, the painted eyes, the garish lips, the orange-reds and blues that were there once, and Athene herself a giantess on her pedestal touched by the rising sun. Even in those distant times the exigencies of a state religion had brought their own traffic, the buying and selling of doves, of trinkets: to find himself, a man had to go to the woods, to the hills. "Come on," said Stephen. "It's beautiful and stark, if you like, but so is St. Pancras station at 4 A.M. It depends on your association of ideas." We crammed into Burns's small car, and went back to our hotel. ("The Chamois")

Every month when the bills came in, there was trouble. Mother seemed to have no great extravagances. But she loved pretty things. She had a passion for china, for instance. She saw hundreds of beautiful cups and saucers that it was hard to walk away from and leave. She knew she couldn't buy them, and mustn't, but every so often she did. No one purchase seemed large by itself, but they kept mounting up, and Father declared that she bought more china than the Windsor Hotel.

This afternoon I walked through the city, making for a café where I was to meet Raphael. It was about half-past two on a day that had never really got light. It began to snow. The low clouds made a grey ceiling for the city; the snow muffled the noise of the cars until it became almost rhythmical; a steady, shushing noise, like the sound of tides beating endlessly on marble walls. I closed my eyes. I felt calm. There was a park. I entered it and followed a path through an avenue of tall, ancient trees with wide, dusky, grassy spaces on either side of them. The pale snow sifted down through bare winter branches. The lights of the cars on the distant road sparkled through the trees: red, yellow, white. It was very quiet. Though it was not yet twilight the streetlights shed a faint light. People were walking up and down on the path. An old man passed me. He looked sad and tired. He had broken veins on his cheeks and a bristly white beard. As he screwed up his eyes against the falling snow, I realised I knew him. He is depicted on the northern wall of the forty-eighth western hall. He is shown as a king with a little model of a walled city in one hand while the other hand he raises in blessing. I wanted to seize hold of him and say to him: In another world you are a king, noble and good! I have seen it! But I hesitated a moment too long and he disappeared into the crowd. A woman passed me with two children. One of the children had a wooden recorder in his hands. I knew them too. They are depicted in the twenty-seventh southern hall: a statue of two children laughing, one of them holding a flute. I came out of the park. The city streets rose up around me. There was a hotel with a courtyard with metal tables and chairs for people to sit in more clement weather. Today they were snow-strewn and forlorn. A lattice of wire was strung across the courtyard. Paper lanterns were hanging from the wires, spheres of vivid orange that blew and trembled in the snow and the thin wind; the sea-grey clouds raced across the sky and the orange lanterns shivered against them. The Beauty of the House is immeasurable; its Kindness infinite.

And what I said was I’ll miss you, What I meant to say was that I love you, What I wanted to say was that I meant what I said I miss you like I miss my own bed after too many nights of sleeping on couches or hardwood floors Or sitting silently behind the doors Of hotel rooms became wounds Breathing life in to this loneliness I miss you Like a burn victim must miss their own skin I miss you like a sad ending Must miss someplace new to begin Because some say that the highway becomes a flat line if you travel it for too long I can’t tell if that’s true or false, But I’m racing down it towards you trying to find my Pulse.

There were days so clear and skies so brilliant blue, with white clouds scudding across them like ships under full sail, and she felt she could lift right off the ground. One moment she was ambling down a path, and the next thing she knew, the wind would take hold of her, like a hand pushing against her back. Her feet would start running without her even willing it, even knowing it. And she would run faster and faster across the prairie, until her heart jumped like a rabbit and her breath came in deep gasps and her feet barely skimmed the ground. It felt good to spend herself this way. The air tasted fresh and delicious; it smelled like damp earth, grass, and flowers. And her body felt strong, supple, and hungry for more of everything life could serve up. She ran and felt like one of the animals, as though her feet were growing up out of the earth. And she knew what they knew, that sometimes you ran just because you could, because of the way the rush of air felt on your face and how your legs reached out, eating up longer and longer patches of ground. She ran until the blood pounded in her ears, so loud that she couldn't hear the voices that said, You're not good enough, You're not old enough, You're not beautiful or smart or loveable, and you will always be alone. She ran because there were ghosts chasing her, shadows that pursued her, heartaches she was leaving behind. She was running for her life, and those phantoms couldn't catch her, not here, not anywhere. She would outrun fear and sadness and worry and shame and all those losses that had lined up against her like a column of soldiers with their guns shouldered and ready to fire. If she had to, she would outrun death itself. She would keep on running until she dropped, exhausted. Then she would roll over onto her back and breathe in the endless sky above her, sun glinting off her face. To be an animal, to have a body like this that could taste, see hear, and fly through space, to lie down and smell the earth and feel the heat of the sun on your face was enough for her. She did not need anything else but this: just to be alive, cool air caressing her skin, dreaming of Ivy and what might be ahead.

The alley is a pitch for about twenty women leaning in doorways, chain-smoking. In their shiny open raincoats, short skirts, cheap boots, and high-heeled shoes they watch the street with hooded eyes, like spies in a B movie. Some are young and pretty, and some are older, and some of them are very old, with facial expressions ranging from sullen to wry. Most of the commerce is centred on the slightly older women, as if the majority of the clients prefer experience and worldliness. The younger, prettier girls seem to do the least business, apparent innocence being only a minority preference, much as it is for the aging crones in the alley who seem as if they’ve been standing there for a thousand years. In the dingy foyer of the hotel is an old poster from La Comédie Française, sadly peeling from the all behind the desk. Cyrano de Bergerac, it proclaims, a play by Edmond Rostand. I will stand for a few moments to take in its fading gaiety. It is a laughing portrait of a man with an enormous nose and a plumed hat. He is a tragic clown whose misfortune is his honour. He is a man entrusted with a secret; an eloquent and dazzling wit who, having successfully wooed a beautiful woman on behalf of a friend cannot reveal himself as the true author when his friend dies. He is a man who loves but is not loved, and the woman he loves but cannot reach is called Roxanne. That night I will go to my room and write a song about a girl. I will call her Roxanne. I will conjure her unpaid from the street below the hotel and cloak her in the romance and the sadness of Rostand’s play, and her creation will change my life.

I turn and I walk my tray to the conveyor and I drop it on the belt and I start to walk out of the Dining Hall. As I head through the Glass Corridor separating the men and women, I see Lilly sitting alone at a table. She looks up at me and she smiles and our eyes meet and I smile back. She looks down and I stop walking and I stare at her. She looks up and she smiles again. She is as beautiful a girl as I have ever seen. Her eyes, her lips, her teeth, her hair, her skin. The black circles beneath her eyes, the scars I can see on her wrists, the ridiculous clothes she wears that are ten sizes too big, the sense of sadness and pain she wears that is even bigger. I stand and I stare at her, just stare stare stare. Men walk past me and other women look at me and LIlly doesn’t understand what I’m doing or why I’m doing it and she’s blushing and it’s beautiful. I stand there and I stare. I stare because I know where I am going I’m not going to see any beauty. They don’t sell crack in Mansions or fancy Department Stores and you don’t go to luxury Hotels or Country Clubs to smoke it. Strong, cheap liquor isn’t served in five-star Restaurants or Champagne Bars and it isn’t sold in gourmet Groceries or boutique Liquor stores. I’m going to go to a horrible place in a horrible neighborhood run by horrible people providing product for the worst Society has to offer. There will be no beauty there, nothing even resembling beauty. There will be Dealers and Addicts and Criminals and Whores and Pimps and Killers and Slaves. There will be drugs and liquor and pipes and bottles and smoke and vomit and blood and human rot and human decay and human disintegration. I have spent much of my life in these places. When I leave here I will fond one of the and I will stay there until I die. Before I do, however, I want one last look at something beautiful. I want one last look so that I have something to hold in my mind while I’m dying, so that when I take my last breath I will be able to think of something that will make me smile, so that in the midst of the horror I can hold on to some shred of humanity.

Vida was sound asleep when I went back to my room. I turned on the light and it woke her up. She was blinking and her face had that soft marble quality to it that beautiful women have when they are suddenly awakened and are not quite ready for it yet. "What's happening?" she said. "It's another book," she replied, answering her own question. "Yes," I said. "What's it about?" she said automatically like a gentle human phonograph. "It's about growing flowers in hotel rooms.

beautiful things are always beautiful. It's how we perceive them that makes us think they're not.

This is what's beautiful about staying in a club or hotel: you're invisible, as is your neighbour.

I guess that’s just one of the reasons it’s the most beautiful bar in the world, in my opinion: it has the grace to make no one feel self-conscious about any unhappiness.

beauty can have a corrosive effect on character. It is possible to coast for some years on no more than a few polished lines and a dazzling smile, and those years are formative.)

After the meal, Borman dropped me off at my hotel, then went to visit his wife at the nursing home where she lives. As he drove away, it seemed to me strange—I felt I’d come to know Susan as well as I had Frank, despite having met her for just a few minutes, despite the fact that she had been too ill to speak. When I returned home and transcribed the tapes of my interviews, I understood why. Borman spoke of Susan constantly; there didn’t seem an aspect of his life he could explain without discussing how much she meant to him or how much he loved her. I’d heard the same from Lovell and Anders about their wives. When I discovered that Apollo 8 was the only crew in which all the marriages survived (astronaut careers were notoriously hard on marriages) it didn’t surprise me. In a singularly beautiful story, it seemed only fitting that the first men to leave Earth considered home to be the most important place in the universe.

Villiers, that woman, if I can call her a woman, corrupted my soul. The night of the wedding I found myself sitting in her bedroom in the hotel, listening to her talk. She was sitting up in bed, and I listened to her as she spoke in her beautiful voice, spoke of things which even now I would dare not whisper in the blackest night, though I stood in the midst of a wilderness.

He devoured morning shows, daytime shows, late-night talk shows, soaps, situation comedies, Lifetime Movies, hospital dramas, police series, vampire and zombie serials, the dramas of housewives from Atlanta, New Jersey, Beverly Hills and New York, the romances and quarrels of hotel-fortune princesses and self-styled shahs, the cavortings of individuals made famous by happy nudities, the fifteen minutes of fame accorded to young persons with large social media followings on account of their plastic-surgery acquisition of a third breast or their post-rib-removal figures that mimicked the impossible shape of the Mattel company’s Barbie doll, or even, more simply, their ability to catch giant carp in picturesque settings while wearing only the tiniest of string bikinis; as well as singing competitions, cooking competitions, competitions for business propositions, competitions for business apprenticeships, competitions between remote-controlled monster vehicles, fashion competitions, competitions for the affections of both bachelors and bachelorettes, baseball games, basketball games, football games, wrestling bouts, kickboxing bouts, extreme sports programming and, of course, beauty contests.

As he left the hotel, Henry looked west to where the sun was setting, burnt sienna flooding the horizon. It reminded him that time was short, but that beautiful endings could still be found at the end of cold, dreary days.

Then the voice - which identified itself as the prince of this world, the only being who really knows what happens on Earth - began to show him the people around him on the beach. The wonderful father who was busy packing things up and helping his children put on some warm clothes and who would love to have an affair with his secretary, but was terrified on his wife's response. His wife who would like to work and have her independence, but who was terrified of her husband's response. The children who behave themselves because they were terrified of being punished. The girl who was reading a book all on her own beneath the sunshade, pretending she didn't care, but inside was terrified of spending the rest of her life alone. The boy running around with a tennis racuqet , terrified of having to live up to his parents' expectations. The waiter serving tropical drinks to the rich customers and terrified that he could be sacket at any moment. The young girl who wanted to be a dance, but who was studying law instead because she was terrified of what the neighbours might say. The old man who didn't smoke or drink and said he felt much better for it, when in truth it was the terror of death what whispered in his ears like the wind. The married couple who ran by, splashing through the surf, with a smile on their face but with a terror in their hearts telling them that they would soon be old, boring and useless. The man with the suntan who swept up in his launch in front of everybody and waved and smiled, but was terrified because he could lose all his money from one moment to the next. The hotel owner, watching the whole idyllic scene from his office, trying to keep everyone happy and cheerful, urging his accountants to ever greater vigilance, and terrified because he knew that however honest he was government officials would still find mistakes in his accounts if they wanted to. There was terror in each and every one of the people on that beautiful beach and on that breathtakingly beautiful evening. Terror of being alone, terror of the darkness filling their imaginations with devils, terror of doing anything not in the manuals of good behaviour, terror of God's punishing any mistake, terror of trying and failing, terror of succeeding and having to live with the envy of other people, terror of loving and being rejected, terror of asking for a rise in salary, of accepting an invitation, of going somewhere new, of not being able to speak a foreign language, of not making the right impression, of growing old, of dying, of being pointed out because of one's defects, of not being pointed out because of one's merits, of not being noticed either for one's defects of one's merits.

[The Edwardian era] was a time of booming trade, of great prosperity and wealth in which the pageant of London Society took place year after year in a setting of traditional dignity and beauty. The great houses—Devonshire, Dorchester, Grosvenor, Stafford and Lansdowne House—had not yet been converted into museums, hotels and flats, and there we danced through the long summer nights till dawn. The great country-houses still flourished in their glory, and on their lawns in the green shade of trees the art of human intercourse was exquisitely practised by men and women not yet enslaved by household cares and chores who still had time to read, to talk, to listen and to think.

Gentlewomen of the jury! Bear with me! Allow me to take just a tiny bit of your precious time. So this was le grand moment. I had left my Lolita still sitting on the edge of the abysmal bed, drowsily raising her foot, fumbling at the shoelaces and showing as she did so the nether side of her thigh up to the crotch of her panties she had always been singularly absent-minded, or shameless, or both, in matters of legshow. This, then, was the hermetic vision of her which I had locked inafter satisfying myself that the door carried no inside bolt. The key, with its numbered dangler of carved wood, became forthwith the weighty sesame to a rapturous and formidable future. It was mine, it was part of my hot hairy fist. In a few minutes say, twenty, say half-an-hour, sicher its sicher as my uncle Gustave used to say I would let myself into that “342” and find my nymphet, my beauty and bride, imprisoned in her crystal sleep. Jurors! If my happiness could have talked, it would have filled that genteel hotel with a deafening roar. And my only regret today is that I did not quietly deposit key “342” at the office, and leave the town, the country, the continent, the hemisphere,indeed, the globe that very same night.

Martin thought of the iron El trestles winding and stretching across the city, of department store windows and hotel lobbies, of electric elevators and street-car ads, of the city pressing its way north on both sides of the great park, of dynamos and electric lights, of ten-story hotels, of the old iron tower near the depot at West Brighton with its two steam-driven elevators rising and falling in the sky--and in his blood he felt a surge of restlessness, as if he were a steam train spewing fiery coal smoke into the black night sky as he roared along a trembling El track, high above the dark storefronts, the gaslit saloons, the red-lit doorways, the cheap beer dives, the dance halls, the gambling joints, the face in the doorway, the sudden cry in the night.

I could lick it off with my tongue, if I had a tongue again, if my tongue was wet, and I could taste it for what it is. Beautiful dirt, grey and vintage, the grime left by life, sticking to the bony roof of a mouth and tasting of next to nothing, which is always better than nothing.

California during the 1940s had Hollywood and the bright lights of Los Angeles, but on the other coast was Florida, land of sunshine and glamour, Miami and Miami Beach. If you weren't already near California's Pacific Coast you headed for Florida during the winter. One of the things which made Miami such a mix of glitter and sunshine was the plethora of movie stars who flocked there to play, rubbing shoulders with tycoons and gangsters. Sometimes it was hard to tell the difference between the latter two. Miami and everything that surrounded it hadn't happened by accident. Carl Fisher had set out to make Miami Beach a playground destination during the 1930s and had succeeded far beyond his dreams. The promenade behind the Roney Plaza Hotel was a block-long lovers' lane of palm trees and promise that began rather than ended in the blue waters of the Atlantic. Florida was more than simply Miami and Miami Beach, however. When George Merrick opened the Biltmore Hotel in Coral Gables papers across the country couldn't wait to gush about the growing aura of Florida. They tore down Collins Bridge in the Gables and replaced it with the beautiful Venetian Causeway. You could plop down a fiver if you had one and take your best girl — or the girl you wanted to score with — for a gondola ride there before the depression, or so I'd been told. You see, I'd never actually been to Florida before the war, much less Miami. I was a newspaper reporter from Chicago before the war and had never even seen the ocean until I was flying over the Pacific for the Air Corp. There wasn't much time for admiring the waves when Japanese Zeroes were trying to shoot you out of the sky and bury you at the bottom of that deep blue sea. It was because of my friend Pete that I knew so much about Miami. Florida was his home, so when we both got leave in '42 I followed him to the warm waters of Miami to see what all the fuss was about. It would be easy to say that I skipped Chicago for Miami after the war ended because Pete and I were such good pals and I'd had such a great time there on leave. But in truth I decided to stay on in Miami because of Veronica Lake. I'd better explain that. Veronica Lake never knew she was the reason I came back with Pete to Miami after the war. But she had been there in '42 while Pete and I were enjoying the sand, sun, and the sweet kisses of more than a few love-starved girls desperate to remember what it felt like to have a man's arm around them — not to mention a few other sensations. Lake had been there promoting war bonds on Florida's first radio station, WQAM. It was a big outdoor event and Pete and I were among those listening with relish to Lake's sultry voice as she urged everyone to pitch-in for our boys overseas. We were in those dark early days of the war at the time, and the outcome was very much in question. Lake's appearance at the event was a morale booster for civilians and servicemen alike. She was standing behind a microphone that sat on a table draped in the American flag. I'd never seen a Hollywood star up-close and though I liked the movies as much as any other guy, I had always attributed most of what I saw on-screen to smoke and mirrors. I doubted I'd be impressed seeing a star off-screen. A girl was a girl, after all, and there were loads of real dolls in Miami, as I'd already discovered. Boy, was I wrong." - Where Flamingos Fly

the essence of Paris is lost if seen through the double glazing of a hotel room or from the top of a tour bus. You must be on foot, with chilled hands thrust into your pockets, scarf wrapped round your throat, and thoughts of a hot café crème in your imagination. It made the difference between simply being present and being there.

Now, granted, Howard doesn't fit the conventional psychological profile of a rebounder - that of the no-nonsense, utilitarian "dirty work" specialist. Rather, this is a guy who sings Beyoncé at the free throw line, who quotes not Scarface but Finding Nemo, whose idea of humor is ordering 10 pizzas to be delivered to another player's hotel room, or knocking on teammates' doors and sprinting off down the hall, giggling. He goofs around during practice, during press conferences and during team shootarounds, for which Magic coach Stan Van Gundy has had to institute a no-flatulence rule because, as teammate Rashard Lewis says, "Dwight really likes to cut the cheese.

She’d never really existed to him. She was of no consequence in his life. He was married to a beautiful woman. Jane was pornography. Jane was the adult movie that didn’t appear on his hotel bill. Jane was Internet porn, where every fetish can be fulfilled. You have a fetish for humiliating fat girls? Enter your credit card number and click right here.

How long have you ever been genuinely happy in one stretch? Jean considered this. "About four hours. I was driving from Paris to Mazan. I wanted to see my sweetheart, and we'd arranged to meet at a small hotel called Le Siecle, opposite the church. I was happy then. For the whole journey. I sang. I imagined her whole body and I sang to it. "Four hours? That's so terribly beautiful." "Yes. I was happier in those four hours than during the four days that followed. But looking back, I'm happy to have had those four days too." Jean faltered. "Do we only decide in retrospect that we've been happy? Don't we notice when we're happy, or do we realize only much later that we were?" Samy sighed. "That would be really stupid.

As they walked through the hotel lobby to reach the beach-access boardwalk, Gabe watched three different men give Nic the once-over. Whether it was the clichéd pregnancy glow or the easing of her fears of the future or simply the effect of a good vacation, his new wife glowed. She was as relaxed and carefree as he had ever seen her—beautiful, vivacious, and sparkling. He

I should have bolted out of that hotel like a bat out of hell the second I laid eyes on him, standing there in all his muscled, male beauty. He was the devil. A sometimes sweet, funny devil, true. But wasn't that just like Lucifer himself? That's how he lured you in, ready to give up your very soul for one taste of those sinful lips, flashing that damn dimple for extra measure.

One time I sat down in a bath where there was a beautiful girl sitting with a guy who didn’t seem to know her. Right away I began thinking, “Gee! How am I gonna get started talking to this beautiful nude babe?” I’m trying to figure out what to say, when the guy says to her, “I’m, uh, studying massage. Could I practice on you?” “Sure,” she says. They get out of the bath and she lies down on a massage table nearby. I think to myself, “What a nifty line! I can never think of anything like that!” He starts to rub her big toe. “I think I feel it,” he says. “I feel a kind of dent—is that the pituitary?” I blurt out, “You’re a helluva long way from the pituitary, man!” They looked at me, horrified—I had blown my cover—and said, “It’s reflexology!” I quickly closed my eyes and appeared to be meditating. That’s just an example of the kind of things that overwhelm me. I also looked into extrasensory perception and PSI phenomena, and the latest craze there was Uri Geller, a man who is supposed to be able to bend keys by rubbing them with his finger. So I went to his hotel room, on his invitation, to see a demonstration of both mindreading and bending keys. He didn’t do any mindreading that succeeded; nobody can read my mind, I guess. And my boy held a key and Geller rubbed it, and nothing happened. Then he told us it works better under water, and so you can picture all of us standing in the bathroom with the water turned on and the key under it, and him rubbing the key with his finger. Nothing happened. So I was unable to investigate that phenomenon.

That evening on the beach below her hotel, Miranda was seized by a loneliness she couldn’t explain. She’d thought she knew everything there was to know about this remnant fleet, but she was unprepared for its beauty. The ships were lit up to prevent collisions in the dark, and when she looked out at them she felt stranded, the blaze of light on the horizon both filled with mystery and impossibly distant, a fairy-tale kingdom.

was virtually certain of that. As the coach drew into St. Giles’, the sky was an open blue, and the sunlight gleamed on the cinnamon-coloured stone along the broad tree-lined avenue. “Here we are, in St. Giles.’ ” (Ashenden slipped into over-drive now.) “You can see the plane trees on either side of us, ablaze with the beautifully golden tints of autumn—and, on the left here, St. John’s College—and Balliol just beyond. And here in front of us, the famous Martyrs’ Memorial, modelled on the Eleanor Crosses of Edward the First, and designed by Gilbert Scott to honour the great Protestant martyrs—Cranmer and Latimer and, er …” “Nicholas Ridley,” supplied Mrs. Roscoe, as the coach turned right at the traffic lights and almost immediately pulled in on the left of Beaumont Street beneath the tall neo-Gothic façade of The Randolph Hotel. “At last!” cried Laura Stratton, with what might have been

As awkward as our first night together was, our honeymoon was even worse. As soon as we arrived in Hawaii, I became ill with strep throat. I mostly slept and lay in the bathtub in our hotel room for a week shaking violently with a fever. Missy looked out the window at the beautiful beach and Pacific Ocean and cried. It was miserable. I was sweating profusely and thought I was going to die. We’d saved our money for months--about eight hundred dollars--to go to Hawaii, and it ended up being the worst trip of our lives. My getting sick actually saved us from the embarrassment of realizing that we couldn’t do much on eight hundred bucks anyway. We laugh now at being so naïve and young. When we went back to Hawaii for the season finale of Duck Dynasty last year, Missy was determined to make up for a lot of bad memories. I did everything she wanted to do. We went on helicopter rides, boat rides, romantic dinners, and everything else you could do in Hawaii. She got her money’s worth the second time!

who is actually delusional? Who is actually following Jesus: fundamentalist Christians rejecting gay men and lesbians’ right to marry, or atheist humanists treating men and women with love and dignity? Fact-based, enlightened atheists sometimes treat people like shit, and delusional fundamentalists sometimes miss a book event in order to help a lonely hotel maid. Labels don’t mean anything. Who cares about labels when someone is slapping you in the face? Who cares about labels when someone is saving you from drowning?

Even reading the words ‘snow hotel’ can shoot a shiver up your spine, but spending a night in one of these ethereally beautiful, extravagantly artistic icy buildings is a marvellous, though expensive, experience. There are several to choose from in Lapland, including Lumihotelli in Kemi. Heavy-duty sleeping bags ensure a relatively cosy slumber, and a morning sauna banishes any lingering chills. If you don’t fancy spending the night inside, you can visit the complexes, maybe pausing for a well-chilled vodka cocktail in the bar.

There’s something pure and infinite in you, that wants to come out of you, and can come out of no other person on the planet. That’s what you’ve got to share, and that’s as real and important as the fact that you’re alive. We were able… to somehow protect each other so we could feel that. The world at large, careerism, money, magazines, your parents, other kids, nothing is going to give you that message, necessarily. In fact, most things are going to lead you away from it, sadly, because humanity is really confused at the moment. But you wouldn’t exist if the universe didn’t need you. And any time I encounter something beautiful that came out of a human somewhere, that’s them, that’s their own soul. That’s just pure, whatever its physicality is, if the person can play piano, if they can’t play piano, if they’re tone deaf, whatever it is, if it’s pure, it hits you like a sledge-hammer. It fills up your own soul, it makes you want to cry, it makes you glad you’re alive, it lets you come out of you. And that’s what we need: we desperately need you.” -Julian Koster of Neutral Milk Hotel

But the first time I saw you. Rio. I took that down to the gardens. I pressed it into the leaves of a silver maple and recited it to the Waterloo Vase. It didn’t fit in any rooms. You were talking with Nora and June, happy and animated and fully alive, a person living in dimensions I couldn’t access, and so beautiful. Your hair was longer then. You weren’t even a president’s son yet, but you weren’t afraid. You had a yellow ipê-amarelo in your pocket. I thought, this is the most incredible thing I have ever seen, and I had better keep it a safe distance away from me. I thought, if someone like that ever loved me, it would set me on fire. And then I was a careless fool, and I fell in love with you anyway. When you rang me at truly shocking hours of the night, I loved you. When you kissed me in disgusting public toilets and pouted in hotel bars and made me happy in ways in which it had never even occurred to me that a mangled-up, locked-up person like me could be happy, I loved you. And then, inexplicably, you had the absolute audacity to love me back. Can you believe it? Sometimes, even now, I still can’t.

Mr. Stelling was very far from being led astray by enthusiasm, either religious or intellectual; on the other hand, he had no secret belief that everything was humbug. He thought religion was a very excellent thing, and Aristotle a great authority, and deaneries and prebends useful institutions, and Great Britain the providential bulwark of Protestantism, and faith in the unseen a great support to afflicted minds; he believed in all these things, as a Swiss hotel-keeper believes in the beauty of the scenery around him, and in the pleasure it gives to artistic visitors.

Then they had a day together in Melbourne and Jenny stayed in her first hotel, with Luc sparing no expense and treating her to the Windsor for the night. Here, Jenny experienced a luxury that had her wide-eyed, where men in their fine uniform of burgundy jackets, trimmed with gold, fussed around them and suggested an afternoon tea like never before. Luc couldn’t help but grin to see his daughter engulfed in a leather chair, near the huge arched picture windows that fronted Spring Street, choosing cucumber sandwiches and beautiful little cakes and pastries from a silver tiered cake stand.

When we came back to Paris it was clear and cold and lovely. The city had accommodated itself to winter, there was good wood for sale at the wood and coal place across our street, and there were braziers outside of many of the good cafés so that you could keep warm on the terraces. Our own apartment was warm and cheerful. We burned boulets which were molded, egg-shaped lumps of coal dust, on the wood fire, and on the streets the winter light was beautiful. Now you were accustomed to see the bare trees against the sky and you walked on the fresh-washed gravel paths through the Luxembourg gardens in the clear sharp wind. The trees were beautiful without their leaves when you were reconciled to them, and the winter winds blew across the surfaces of the ponds and the fountains were blowing in the bright light. All the distances were short now since we had been in the mountains. Because of the change in altitude I did not notice the grade of the hills except with pleasure, and the climb up to the top floor of the hotel where I worked, in a room that looked across all the roofs and the chimneys of the high hill of the quarter, was a pleasure. The fireplace drew well in the room and it was warm and pleasant to work.

lived within a mile of the place." My grandmother, who held that, when one went to the seaside, one ought to be on the beach from morning to night, to taste the salt breezes, and that one should not know anyone in the place, because calls and parties and excursions were so much time stolen from what belonged, by rights, to the sea-air, begged him on no account to speak to Legrandin of our plans; for already, in her mind's eye, she could see his sister, Mme. de Cambremer, alighting from her carriage at the door of our hotel just as we were on the point of going out fishing, and obliging us to remain indoors all afternoon to entertain her. But Mamma laughed her fears to scorn, for she herself felt that the danger was not so threatening, and that Legrandin would shew no undue anxiety to make us acquainted with his sister. And, as it happened, there was no need for any of us to introduce the subject of Balbec, for it was Legrandin himself who, without the least suspicion that we had ever had any intention of visiting those parts, walked into the trap uninvited one evening, when we met him strolling on the banks of the Vivonne. "There are tints in the clouds this evening, violets and blues, which are very beautiful, are they not, my friend?" he said to my father. "Especially a blue which is far more floral than atmospheric, a cineraria blue, which it is surprising to see in the sky.

You asked me why I wrote you all those years," he said suddenly. "You know, I'd seen you around that summer, always hanging back but with this intent look on your face--always quiet but pissed off. And then that day, I saw you wait till everyone had left before you climbed. And turned out you could climb higher than any of them." He smiled. "You know what I was thinking?" I shook my head. "I was thinking, this world is full of people making a big deal out of any little thing they do: look at me, look at this cappuccino I'm about to drink, look at me looking good in this hotel lobby. And here was someone who only did her most beautiful things when no one was watching." He paused. "And you're still like that.

Traveling is not only the art of getting lost, but true travelers, in a sense, never return home. If they do return, they never see home the same way they did before leaving. They begin to see the foreignness of home after experiencing being at home in other foreign lands. Traveling, I have learned, is not all about the touristy and the beautiful places as we see them in tourist guides. Traveling can be frightening in many ways, most important of which is the realization of how much sadness, pain, impoverishment, and despair exist next to, behind, under, over, and above the mountains, the blue lakes, the pristine beaches, the highly rated hotels and restaurants, the well-designed museums and historic and cultural sites, the fancy shops that, in many places, most locals can neither access nor afford. There are places so sad that the fanciest building one can see there is the airport! There are other places where the airports are run down and depressing, but once you step out of the airport, you discover that such places are full of life, meaning, and physical and spiritual nourishment. There are countries, namely the developed countries, where everything looks shiny and perfect, yet as soon as you enter, you encounter so much loneliness, depression, hate, racism, and lifelessness. Things are never as they appear at first glance. Traveling leaves us with more questions than answers – it is so bittersweet." [From “Can We Travel Without Being Tourists?” published on CounterPunch on March 15, 2024]

hotel where their relationship had finally been consummated. The Hôtel du Cap was one of the most beautiful, exclusive, and illustrious hotels in Europe, with prices to match. The main building had marble halls, high ceilings, and magnificent rooms and suites, most of them looking out at the sea shimmering like glass. There was an impressive outdoor staircase leading down to the even more exclusive Eden Roc, with gardens on either side of the wide path and closer to the water. It was the vacation spot for aristocrats, royalty, the immensely rich, and in recent years jet-setters, Russian tycoons, and movie stars, many of whom preferred to stay at the less formal lower building, with smaller but still elegantly appointed suites, and even better views of the sea from their balconies. There

Yes, I'm the one who washes the plates and glasses They call me an easy woman When they give me a penny I still have to say thank you Here I am, in ragged clothes At the bottom of this shabby hotel Today, you don't know who I am Today, you don't know who I am   But one evening, one beautiful evening A big commotion People running along the shore Saying: "Look who's coming!" And me, I'll smile for the first time They'll say: "You, you're smiling now?"   A big ship A hundred cannons at the portholes Will enter the harbour!   I'll always be washing The glasses and plates I'll always be an "easy woman" When they give me a penny I'll always say thank you I'll keep my ragged clothes At the bottom of this shabby hotel And tomorrow, tomorrow like today You'll never know who I am!   But one evening, that beautiful evening for which I live Look how the cannons Wake up and turn For the first time, I'll burst out laughing "What, brat, you have the heart to laugh?"   That big ship A hundred cannons at the portholes Will bombard the harbour!   Then the sailors will come to shore More than a hundred, they'll mark with a cross of blood Every house, every door And it's before me that will be brought Enchained, imploring, mutilated and bloodied Your kind, all your kind, fine gentlemen! Your kind, all your kind, fine gentlemen!   Then the one I'm waiting for will appear, he'll say to me: "What is it that you want from all these people I'm killing?" And I'll sweetly reply: "Kill them all! For each head that falls I'll clap my hands, here we go! And that big ship, Far from the city where everything will be dead Will carry me towards life!

The Americans fished on, not hoping for much anymore, perhaps for a miracle, searching for small things to be happy about, because they were Americans and this was what their upbringings had taught them to do. They found a brief happiness, for example, in the potato chips that came to their rooms on expensive china and in the genuinely hopeful way the hotel girl asked if they’d had any luck. They took pleasure in their morning calls to the Lufthansa man, his wriggly explanations for the canceled flights to Norway. They smiled at the way a church had been built so the setting sun hit it high and perfect and orange, and the way they could follow the river to a park where miniskirted women lay in the grass with headphones clamped over their ears, and even at the way the little student-girls came filing down at noon behind their English-teaching beauty to call them fools.

You're beginning to see, aren't you, Peter? Shall I make it clearer. You've never wanted me to be real. You never wanted anyone to be. But you didn't want to show it. You wanted an act to help your act--a beautiful, complicated act, all twists, trimmings and words. All words. You didn't like what I said about Vincent Knowlton. You liked it when I said the same thing under cover of virtuous sentiments. You didn't want me to believe. You only wanted me to convince you that I believed. My real soul, Peter? It's real only when it's independent--you've discovered that, haven't you? It's real only when it chooses curtains and desserts--you're right about that--curtains, desserts and religions, Peter, and the shapes of buildings. But you've never wanted that. You wanted a mirror. People want nothing but mirrors around them. To reflect them while they're reflecting too. You know, like the senseless infinity you get from two mirrors facing each other across a narrow passage. Usually in the more vulgar kind of hotels. Reflections of reflections and echoes of echoes. No beginning and no end. No center and no purpose. I gave you what you wanted. I became what you are, what your friends are, what most of humanity is so busy being--only with the trimmings. I didn't go around spouting book reviews to hide my emptiness of judgment--I said I had no judgment. I didn't borrow designs to hide my creative impotence--I created nothing. I didn't say that equality is a noble conception and unity the chief goal of mankind--I just agreed with everybody. You call it death, Peter? That kind of death--I've imposed it on you and on everyone around us. But you--you haven't done that. People are comfortable with you, they like you, they enjoy your presence. You've spared them the blank death. Because you've imposed it--on yourself.

Bree arched, trying to stretch out her muscles and Alessandro gave her a dirty look as if she was displaying herself to him on purpose. Well, maybe she was a little. Even though he blocked her from the hotel attendant’s gaze with his body in the doorway, Bree was sure to cover herself with the blanket. Alessandro turned around, pulling in the tray with him and his eyes flared hungrily as he looked down at her. “You look like a beautiful debauched angel,” he said, his voice rough with desire. “And you’re what, the demon that’s corrupted me?” Bree asked raising an eyebrow and letting the blanket fall down to her waist, baring her to him. “It’s my life’s work, you know?” Alessandro grinned, going down on to his knees and leaning over her. Bree placed a hand on his chest, halting him. “Is that coffee, I smell?” she asked. “The debauched angel is kind of hungry.” She bit her lip and smiled up at his frustrated face.

Leonard: I remember Marianne and I were in a hotel in Piraeus, some inex- pensive hotel. We were both about twenty-five and we had to catch the boat back to Hydra. We got up and I guess we had a cup of coffee or something and got a taxi, and I’ve never forgotten this. Nothing happened, just sitting in the back of the taxi with Marianne, [lighting] a cigarette, a Greek cigarette that had that delicious deep flavour of a Greek cigarette that has a lot of Turkish to- bacco in it, and thinking, I have a life of my own, I’m an adult, I’m with this beautiful woman, we have a little money in our pocket, we’re going back to Hydra, we’re passing these painted walls. That feeling I think I’ve tried to recreate hun- dreds of times unsuccessfully. Just that feeling of being grown up, with some- body beautiful that you’re happy to be beside and all the world is in front of you. Your body is suntanned and you’re going to get on a boat. That’s a feeling I remember very, very accurately.

He stepped around the island and toward the cabinet, which would have been way too high over her head for her to reach anything anyway. It was a dumb place to put everyday glassware in his opinion. She moved in the same direction he did, and they crashed against each other hard enough to knock his breath out of him with an oomph. He reached out to steady her. "I'm sorr---" Becca never quite finished the word. Her eyes went soft as they gazed into his, and Tuck found his hands were no longer safely on her arms but now down holding on to her hips. Those round, beautiful hips he'd held on to for dear life while plunging into her in the hotel. Tuck swallowed hard and found it hard to breathe. The situation only got worse when she took a single step closer, putting her dangerously near the rising erection in his jeans. He drew in a deep breath, which filled him against with her scent. It was all too much. There was no fighting this attraction. Tuck dipped his head low and claimed Becca's mouth with his own.

One evening in 1930, as he was struggling to recapture the feverish spirit that had fueled his first book, Look Homeward, Angel, Wolfe decided to give up on an uninspired hour of work and get undressed for bed. But, standing naked at his hotel-room window, Wolfe found that his weariness had suddenly evaporated and that he was eager to write again. Returning to the table, he wrote until dawn with, he recalled, “amazing speed, ease, and sureness.” Looking back, Wolfe tried to figure out what had prompted the sudden change—and realized that, at the window, he had been unconsciously fondling his genitals, a habit from childhood that, while not exactly sexual (his “penis remained limp and unaroused,” he noted in a letter to his editor), fostered such a “good male feeling” that it had stoked his creative energies. From then on, Wolfe regularly used this method to inspire his writing sessions, dreamily exploring his “male configurations” until “the sensuous elements in every domain of life became more immediate, real, and beautiful.

I am thirty. I made two girls within my own body, felt the rush of bringing them into the world, and when I saw their bodies, I saw a miracle. Their skin and eye lashes perfect. Tiny lips, tiny fingernails, eyes embodying innocence and awe. They grow and run around my house naked and scream wildly without self-awareness or social concern. I teach them about our culture and what is and isn’t acceptable. But what I will not teach them is shame of their body. It was beautiful from moment one, and that will not change - not with age, not with anything. One daughter looks at her body in the mirror, we talk about the organs and skin, how her body will change. She is beautiful on every count. I remember when I was six, and I know I have to warn her. Not shame her, but tell her how some people were not taught to love, but take for themselves and she must be brave and aware. It pains me as I tell her, her innocent mind not know why one person would hurt another in such a way. “Do not be afraid,” I tell her. “But this is our culture, so be smart and be aware my brave girl.” Shame teaches us, but I will not teach my daughters in this way. I will empower them to be proud of their bodies, respectful of their bodies, in awe of how miraculous it is and what it is capable of. I will tell my daughter that to be a woman is not to be lesser, not object, not the bed in the red light district, nor the “bitch” in the hotel. She is not the body to exploit or product to consume. “She” is not shame. “She” is beautiful woman with beautiful body, capable of cosmic realities. Holding someone close, experiencing love, making love, creating life, accepting another human life as her own, feeling pain, joy, giving strength, healing with a kiss, wholeness with a touch; giving physical and mental nourishment with her own body. “She” is grounded enough to follow, still capable to lead from a child to a nation. The woman’s body is made in the image of Love, from Love herself, Life herself, so she herself is of God. For my Grandmother, for my Mother, for my daughters, my friends, and as a reminder to myself: be proud, beautiful woman, your body is intrinsically good, perfectly good. Perfect from moment one.

Well this wasn’t Vegas, and this wasn’t Disneyland, this was ‘Erotica- The Theme Park – featuring Femdom World, Slave World, Bondage World, Spanking World – and so much more!’ -according to the brochure Jillian and Rebecca handed me with great fanfare the next day. -This is a beautiful brochure, I said – very- -Glossy , said Rebecca. -Right, I studied it some more – so is this…I mean – legal? I mean, is it for real? -O yes, they said. -Well. Wow, I guess. -Wow is right, they said. Jillian had been on some trip with one of her many very rich and very ugly men friends, and they had shown her the place. (no she didn’t say to what extent she was ’shown’ the place. She was very tight lipped about it, -wanted everything to be a surprise, she said) To be aware of Erotica-The Theme Park, and its Hotel Ecstasy you need money, connections, and more. In fact you need at least a 100 ft yacht to dock at its private Marina. And no I can’t tell you where it is, otherwise they will revoke my membership pass and kill my first born. But let’s say - it’s on an island, with warm water ,pure white sand beaches, it’s for the very rich, and it’s not far , by private helicopter from certain well known islands in let’s say, the Caribbean.

The billboards ruin everything. The historical flavor, the old-time architecture, even the beauty of the wooded hillside—all are sacrificed. Pole-lines and wires may be accepted, like fences, as part of the basic American landscape. They do their work without striving to be conspicuous, and often their not-ungraceful curves add a touch of interest, an intricacy of pattern, even some beauty. Billboards are different. . . . billboards blast themselves into the viewer's consciousness. . . . some of the smaller billboards—those advertising local hotels, service-stations, or small industries—seem to have a certain rooting in the soil, and are often modest and comparatively harmonious to the setting. The large billboards—owned by special companies, usually advertising the products of mass-production—are always placed in the most conspicuous spots, and have designs and colors carefully chosen to clash with the background. One feels a difference between a home-produced: "Stop at Joe's Service Station for Gas—Two Miles," or "The Liberty Café—Short Orders at All Hours—Give Us a Try!" and some gigantic rectangle advertising tires or beer. Large billboards are now springing up along U. S. 40 even in the vastnesses of the Nevada sagebrush country. They are an abomination! Personally, I try to buy as little as possible of anything that is so advertised.

Only as a young man playing pool all night for money had he been able to find what he wanted in life, and then only briefly. People thought pool hustling was corrupt and sleazy, worse than boxing. But to win at pool, to be a professional at it, you had to deliver. In a business you could pretend that skill and determination had brought you along, when it had only been luck and muddle. A pool hustler did not have the freedom to believe that. There were well-paid incompetents everywhere living rich lives. They arrogated to themselves the plush hotel suites and Lear Jets that America provided for the guileful and lucky far more than it did for the wise. You could fake and bluff and luck your way into all of it. Hotel suites overlooking Caribbean private beaches. Bl*wj*bs from women of stunning beauty. Restaurant meals that it took four tuxedoed waiters to serve, with the sauces just right. The lamb or duck in tureen sliced with precise and elegant thinness, sitting just so on the plate, the plate facing you just so on the heavy white linen, the silver fork heavy gleaming in your manicured hand below the broad cloth cuff and mother of pearl buttons. You could get that from luck and deceit even while causing the business or the army or the government that supported you to do poorly at what it did. The world and all its enterprises could slide downhill through stupidity and bad faith. But the long gray limousines would still hum through the streets of New York, of Paris, of Moscow, of Tokyo. Though the men who sat against the soft leather in back with their glasses of 12-year-old scotch might be incapable of anything more than looking important, of wearing the clothes and the hair cuts and the gestures that the world, whether it liked to or not, paid for, and always had paid for. Eddie would lie in bed sometimes at night and think these things in anger, knowing that beneath the anger envy lay like a swamp. A pool hustler had to do what he claimed to be able to do. The risks he took were not underwritten. His skill on the arena of green cloth, cloth that was itself the color of money, could never be only pretense. Pool players were often cheats and liars, petty men whose lives were filled with pretensions, who ran out on their women and walked away from their debts. But on the table with the lights overhead beneath the cigarette smoke and the silent crowd around them in whatever dive of a billiard parlor at four in the morning, they had to find the wherewithal inside themselves to do more than promise excellence. Under whatever lies might fill the life, the excellence had to be there, it had to be delivered. It could not be faked. But Eddie did not make his living that way anymore.

That same day we drove to Seville to celebrate. I asked someone for the name of the smartest hotel in Seville. Alfonso XIII, came the reply. It is where the King of Spain always stays. We found the hotel and wandered in. It was amazing. Shara was a little embarrassed as I was dressed in shorts and an old holey jersey, but I sought out a friendly-looking receptionist and told her our story. “Could you help us out? I have hardly any money.” She looked us up and down, paused--then smiled. “Just don’t tell my manager,” she whispered. So we stayed in a $1,000-a-night room for $100 and celebrated--like the King of Spain. The next morning we went on a hunt for a ring. I asked the concierge in my best university Spanish where I would find a good (aka well-priced) jeweler. He looked a little surprised. I tried speaking slower. Eventually I realized that I had actually been asking him where I might find a good mustache shop. I apologized that my Spanish was a little rusty. Shara rolled her eyes again, smiling. When we eventually found a small local jeweler, I had to do some nifty subcounter mathematics, swiftly converting Spanish pesetas into British pounds, to work out whether or not I could afford each ring Shara tried on. We eventually settled on one that was simple, beautiful--and affordable. Just. Love doesn’t require expensive jewelry. And Shara has always been able to make the simple look exquisite. Luckily.

Tina was hosting. She's a thirty-five-year-old version of Sienne, only bottle blonde.Same blind-you lipstick, same taste in clothes,same complete disregard for anyone else's opinion on anything. They hate each other. "You hate me!" Sienna wailed. It wasn't Tina's voice that snapped back, but Dad's, "Oh,no. I am not playing that game with you. Do you have any idea what a hundred pounds of filet is gonna cost me? And now you want lobster?" "But it's my wedding! Daddy-" "Don't you Daddy me, princess! I'm already five grand in the hole for the damned hotel,not to mention two for the dress, and every time I turn around, you and your mother have added a new guest, bridesmaid,or crustacean!" First of all,Dad was yelling.Almost. Second,he was swearing.Even damn is fighting talk for him.I set down my pizza and debated the best route for a sealthy escape. I'd seen the dress.Pretty, in a Disney-princess, twenty-yards-of-tulle, boobs-shaped-into-missiles sort of way. Sienne looked deliriously happy in it. She looked beautiful.The less said about the bridesmaids' dressed, I'd decided, on seeing the purple sateen,the better. "No lobster!" he yelled. There was a dramatic howl, followed by the bang of the back door. When I peeked out,it was like a photo. Everything was frozen.Dad was standing over the massive pasta pot, red-faced and scowling, wooden spoon brandished like a sword. Leo and Ricky had retreated to the doorway of the freezer. Nonna had her eyes turned heavenward, and Tina was halfway through the dining room door, smirking a little.

Dubrovnik, Croatia Dubrovnik’s old architecture, all wrapped within its ancient stone walls, have made this city a World Heritage Site. It’s an old sea port that sits above the Adriatic Sea. Its background, from medieval times was trade between the east and Europe and the city rivalled Venice for its reach and connections. Today, however, the principle economy is based on tourism. The old town is a warren of narrow, cobbled streets, sometimes steep, but pedestrianised which makes it easy to walk. However, be careful – signs do not always point to where they say they are going – many of them are old and the hotels, restaurants, bus stations have moved. The City Walls might look familiar to fans of Game of Thrones – many scenes were filmed here and there are Game of Thrones tours to visit the film’s settings. The area suffered a devastating earthquake in the 17th century, therefore much of the original architecture did not survive. The Sponza Palace, near the Bell Tower, is one of the few Gothic buildings left in the city. The Stradun is the main street in the Old Town – restaurants, shops and bars all pour out onto here. It’s lively, especially towards the end of the day. Don’t forget that the city’s location on the coast means that it also has beautiful beaches. Lapad Beach is two miles outside of town, and has a chilled atmosphere. Banje Beach is closer to the old town. It has an entrance fee and is livelier. One of the reasons Dubrovnok appeals to solo travellers is because it has a low crime rate. In addition, its cobbled streets and artistic shops all make browsing easy.

El aliento del mar fue alejando lentamente la marea de la orilla, y dejó la arena lisa y espejeante bajo las estrellas. Las algas mojadas, enmarañadas, plagadas de insectos. Las dunas agrupadas y tranquilas, el viento frío combando la hierba. El camino asfaltado que subía de la playa en silencio ahora, cubierto por una capa de arena blanca; un brillo tenue sobre los techos curvos de las caravanas; los coches aparcados, formas oscuras y agazapadas sobre la hierba. Y luego la feria, el quiosco de helados con la persiana bajada, y siguiendo la calle, ya en el pueblo, la oficina de correos, el hotel, el restaurante. El Sailor’s Friend, con las puertas cerradas, pegatinas ilegibles en las ventanas. La estela de los faros de un único coche al pasar. Las luces traseras rojas como ascuas. Más allá, una hilera de casas, las ventanas reflejando impasibles la luz de las farolas, los cubos de basura alineados enfrente, y luego la carretera de la costa que salía del pueblo, silenciosa, desierta, los árboles alzándose por entre la oscuridad. El mar hacia el oeste, una extensión de manto negro. Y al este, cruzando la verja, la antigua rectoría, de un azul lechoso. Dentro, cuatro cuerpos durmiendo, despertando, durmiendo otra vez. De lado, o tumbados de espaldas, sacudiéndose las colchas con los pies, cruzando de sueño en sueño en silencio. Y ya por detrás de la casa empezaba a salir el sol. En los muros traseros y entre las ramas de los árboles, entre las hojas coloridas de los árboles y la hierba verde y húmeda, se filtra la luz del alba. Mañana de verano. Agua fría y clara en el hueco de la mano.

Stay there,’ said Mathis. He kicked back his chair and hurtled through the empty window-frame on to the pavement. 6 ....... TWO MEN IN STRAW HATS WHEN BOND left the bar he walked purposefully along the pavement flanking the tree-lined boulevard towards his hotel a few hundred yards away. He was hungry. The day was still beautiful, but by now the sun was very hot and the plane-trees, spaced about twenty feet apart on the grass verge between the pavement and the broad tarmac, gave a cool shade. There were few people abroad and the two men standing quietly under a tree on the opposite side of the boulevard looked out of place. Bond noticed them when he was still a hundred yards away and when the same distance separated them from the ornamental ‘porte cochère’ of the Splendide. There was something rather disquieting about their appearance. They were both small and they were dressed alike in dark and, Bond reflected, rather hot-looking suits. They had the appearance of a variety turn waiting for a bus on the way to the theatre. Each wore a straw hat with a thick black ribbon as a concession, perhaps, to the holiday atmosphere of the resort, and the brims of these and the shadow from the tree under which they stood obscured their faces. Incongruously, each dark, squat little figure was illuminated by a touch of bright colour. They were both carrying square camera-cases slung from the shoulder. And one case was bright red and the other case bright blue. By the time Bond had taken in these details, he had come to within fifty yards of the two men. He was reflecting on the ranges of various types of weapon and the possibilities of cover when an extraordinary and terrible scene was enacted.

Instead there was a rush on me of people having to have immediate action; some hand-hacked old kitchen stiff as thickened with grease as a miner or sandhog would be with clay, wanting me to go and see his boss, subito; or an Indian would bring his grievances written in a poem on a paper bag soaked with doughnut oil.[….] There were Greek and Negro chambermaids from all the hotels, porters, doormen, checkroom attendants, waitresses, specialists [….]. All kinds were coming. The humanity of the under-galleries of pipes, storage, and coal made an appearance, maintenance men, short-order grovelers; or a ducal Frenchman, in homburg, like a singer, calling himself “the beauty cook,” who wrote down on his card without taking off his gloves. And then old snowbirds and white hound-looking faces, guys with Wobbly cards from an earlier time, old Bohunk women with letters explaining what was wanted, and all varieties of assaulted kissers, infirmity, drunkenness, dazedness, innocence, limping, crawling, insanity, prejudice, and from downright leprosy the whole way again to the most vigorous straight- backed beauty. So if this collection of people has nothing in common with what would have brought up the back of a Xerxes’ army or a Constantine’s, new things have been formed; but what struck me in them was a feeling of antiquity and thick crust. But I expect happiness and gladness have always been the same, so how much variation should there be in their opposite? Dealing with them, signing them into the organization and explaining what to expect, wasn’t all generous kindness. In large part it was rough, when I wanted to get out of the way. The demand was that fierce, the idea having gotten around that it was a judgment hour, that they wanted to pull you from your clerical side of the desk to go with them.

Mike continued to walk unhurriedly toward the crowd until he loomed up in the stereo tank in life size, as if he were in the room with his water brothers. He stopped on the grass verge in front of the hotel, a few feet from the crowd. "You called me?" He was answered with a growl. The sky held scattered clouds; at that instant the sun came out from behind one and a shaft of golden light hit him. His clothes vanished. He stood before them, a golden youth, clothed only in his own beauty, beauty that made Jubal's heart ache, thinking that Michelangelo in his ancient years would have climbed down from his high scaffolding to record it for generations unborn. Mike said gently, "Look at me. I am a son of man." . . . . "God damn you!" A half brick caught Mike in the ribs. He turned his face slightly toward his assailant. "But you yourself are God. You can damn only yourself and you can never escape yourself." "Blasphemer!" A rock caught him just over his left eye and blood welled forth. Mike said calmly, "In fighting me, you fight yourself... for Thou art God and I am God * . . and all that groks is God-there is no other." More rocks hit him, from various directions; he began to bleed in several places. "Hear the Truth. You need not hate, you need not fight, you need not fear. I offer you the water of life-" Suddenly his hand held a tumbler of water, sparkling in the sunlight. "-and you may share it whenever you so will . . . and walk in peace and love and happiness together." A rock caught the glass and shattered it. Another struck him in the mouth. Through bruised and bleeding lips he smiled at them, looking straight into the camera with an expression of yearning tenderness on his face. Some trick of sunlight and stereo formed a golden halo back of his head. "Oh my brothers, I love you so! Drink deep. Share and grow closer without end. Thou art God." Jubal whispered it back to him. . . . "Lynch him! Give the bastard a nigger necktie!" A heavy-gauge shotgun blasted at close range and Mike's right arm was struck off at the elbow and fell. It floated gently down, then came to rest on the cool grasses, its hand curved open in invitation. "Give him the other barrel, Shortie-and aim closer!" The crowd laughed and applauded. A brick smashed Mike's nose and more rocks gave him a crown of blood. "The Truth is simple but the Way of Man is hard. First you must learn to control yourself. The rest follows. Blessed is he who knows himself and commands himself, for the world is his and love and happiness and peace walk with him wherever he goes." Another shotgun blast was followed by two more shots. One shot, a forty-five slug, hit Mike over the heart, shattering the sixth rib near the sternum and making a large wound; the buckshot and the other slug sheered through his left tibia five inches below the patella and left the fibula sticking out at an angle, broken and white against the yellow and red of the wound. Mike staggered slightly and laughed, went on talking, his words clear and unhurried. "Thou art God. Know that and the Way is opened." "God damn it-let's stop this taking the Name of the Lord in vain!"- "Come on, men! Let's finish him!" The mob surged forward, led by one bold with a club; they were on him with rocks and fists, and then with feet as he went down. He went on talking while they kicked his ribs in and smashed his golden body, broke his bones and tore an ear loose. At last someone called out, "Back away a little so we can get the gasoline on him!" The mob opened up a little at that waning and the camera zoomed to pick up his face and shoulders. The Man from Mars smiled at his brothers, said once more, softly and clearly, "I love you." An incautious grasshopper came whirring to a landing on the grass a few inches from his face; Mike turned his head, looked at it as it stared back at him. "Thou art God," he said happily and discorporated.