“
I do not know what makes a writer, but it probably isn't happiness.
”
”
William Saroyan (The Bicycle Rider In Beverly Hills)
“
Don't forget Mother's Day. Or as they call it in Beverly Hills, Dad's third wife Day.
”
”
Jay Leno
“
When he first said my diagnosis, I couldn't believe it. There must be another PTSD than post-traumatic stress disorder, I thought. I have only heard of war veterans who have served on the front lines and seen the horrors of battle being diagnosed with PTSD. I am a Beverly Hills housewife, not a soldier. I can't have PTSD. Well, I was wrong. Housewives can get PTSD, too, and yours, truly did.
”
”
Taylor Armstrong (Hiding from Reality: My Story of Love, Loss, and Finding the Courage Within)
“
Maybe, when you hear the name "Beverly," you think of Beverly Hills--people wandering the streets with their heads shot off by money.
”
”
Denis Johnson (Jesus’ Son)
“
Gillette--The best a man can get."
I stared at the screen. What happened to me? I was meant to be one of those guys, vigorous and athletic and successful and, most of all, American. I was going to walk on the moon, be a movie star or a rock got or a comedian. I was going to have an amazing life and kids with Helen and die like Chaplin a thousand years from now in my Beverly Hills mansion surrounded by my adoring family, with the grieving world media standing by. Instead, I was just another show-business mediocrity. A drunk who shat his pants and ran for help.
My life had been careless and selfish. Pleasure in the moment was my only thought, my solitary motivation. I had disappointed whoever had been foolish enough to love me, and left them scarred.
I was a very long way from being the best a man can get.
”
”
Craig Ferguson (American on Purpose: The Improbable Adventures of an Unlikely Patriot)
“
MARIA MADE A LIST of things she would never do. She would never: walk through the Sands or Caesar’s alone after midnight. She would never: ball at a party, do S-M unless she wanted to, borrow furs from Abe Lipsey, deal. She would never: carry a Yorkshire in Beverly Hills.
”
”
Joan Didion (Play It as It Lays)
“
I'll take a drive to Beverly Hills
Just before dawn
An' knock the little jockeys
Off the rich people's lawn
An' before they get up
I'll be gone, I'll be gone
Before they get up
I'll be knocking the jockeys off the lawn
”
”
Frank Zappa (Apostrophe ('))
“
The real story can never be told. It is untellable. The real (as real) is inaccessible, being gone in time. There is no point in glancing at the past, in summoning it up, in re-examining it, except on behalf of art — that is, the meaningful-real.
(The Bicycle Rider In Beverly Hills (1952))
”
”
William Saroyan
“
I've never felt as happy as I've been for the past month. And I've never loved anyone like I love you right now.
”
”
Natalie Ansard (The Sorceress from Beverly Hills)
“
I was told that the disorder was not really in my eyes, but in my central nervous system. I might or might not experience symptoms of neural damage all my life. These symptoms, which might or might not appear, might or might not involve my eyes. They might or might not involve my arms or legs, they might or might not be disabling. Their effects might be lessened by cortisone injections, or they might not. It could not be predicted. The condition had a name, the kind of name usually associated with telethons, but the name meant nothing and the neurologist did not like to use it. The name was multiple sclerosis, but the name had no meaning. This was, the neurologist said, an exclusionary diagnosis, and meant nothing.
I had, at this time, a sharp apprehension not of what it was like to be old but of what it was like to open the door to the stranger and find that the stranger did indeed have the knife. In a few lines of dialogue in a neurologist’s office in Beverly Hills, the improbable had become the probable, the norm: things which happened only to other people could in fact happen to me. I could be struck by lightning, could dare to eat a peach and be poisoned by the cyanide in the stone. The startling fact was this: my body was offering a precise physiological equivalent to what had been going on in my mind.
”
”
Joan Didion (The White Album)
“
In writing the short novel Fahrenheit 451 I thought I was describing a world that might evolve in four or five decades. But only a few weeks ago, in Beverly Hills one night, a husband and wife passed me, walking their dog. I stood staring after them, absolutely stunned. The woman held in one hand a small cigarette-package-sized radio, its antenna quivering. From this sprang tiny copper wires which ended in a dainty cone plugged into her right ear. There she was, oblivious to man and dog, listening to far winds and whispers and soap-opera cries, sleep-walking, helped up and down curbs by a husband who might just as well not have been there. This was not fiction.
”
”
Ray Bradbury
“
The heroin flowing through me, I thought about the last time I saw my father alive. He was drunk and overweight in a restaurant in Beverly Hills, and curling into myself on the bed I thought: What if I had done something that day? I had just sat passively in a restaurant booth as the midday light filled the half-empty dining room, pondering a decision. The decision was: should you disarm him? That was the word I remember: disarm. Should you tell him something that might not be the truth but would get the desired reaction? And what was I going to convince him of, even though it was a lie? Did it matter? Whatever it was, it would constitute a new beginning. The immediate line: You’re my father and I love you. I remember staring at the white tablecloth as I contemplated saying this. Could I actually do it? I didn’t believe it, and it wasn’t true, but I wanted it to be. For one moment, as my father ordered another vodka (it was two in the afternoon; this was his fourth) and started ranting about my mother and the slump in California real estate and how “your sisters” never called him, I realized it could actually happen, and that by saying this I would save him. I suddenly saw a future with my father. But the check came along with the drink and I was knocked out of my reverie by an argument he wanted to start and I simply stood up and walked away from the booth without looking back at him or saying goodbye and then I was standing in sunlight. Loosening my tie as a parking valet pulled up to the curb in the cream-colored 450 SL. I half smiled at the memory, for thinking that I could just let go of the damage that a father can do to a son. I never spoke to him again.
”
”
Bret Easton Ellis (Lunar Park)
“
Are You Driving With Your Eyes Open? Or Are You like Using The Force?
”
”
Eddie Murphy- Beverly Hills Cop
“
Life in Beverly Hills is a game, and I make the rules.
”
”
Lisa Vanderpump (Simply Divine: A Guide to Easy, Elegant, and Affordable Entertaining)
“
Thought Experiment: Imagine that you are Johnny Carson and find yourself caught in an intolerable one-on-one conversation at a cocktail party from which there is no escape. Which of the two following events would you prefer to take place: (1) That the other person become more and more witty and charming, the music more beautiful, the scene transformed to a villa at Capri on the loveliest night of the year, while you find yourself more and more at a loss; or (2) that you are still in Beverly Hills and the chandeliers begin to rattle, a 7.5 Richter earthquake takes place, and presently you find yourself and the other person alive and well, and talking under a mound of rubble.
If your choice is (2), explain why it is possible for a true conversation to take place under the conditions of (2) but not (1).
”
”
Walker Percy (Lost in the Cosmos: The Last Self-Help Book)
“
A car, a blue convertible, sleek and desirable, came sweeping west out of Beverly Hills along the, as I understand it, gracious curves of Sunset Boulevard. Anybody seeing such a car would have wanted it. Obviously. It was designed to make you want it. If people had turned out not to want it very much, the makers would have redesigned it and redesigned it until they did. The world is now full of things like this, which is, of course, why everybody is in such a permanent state of want.
”
”
Douglas Adams (The Salmon of Doubt (Dirk Gently, #3))
“
Some Promised Land. The honey was there, but the milk we brought in with our goats. To people in California, God gives a magnificent coastline, a movie industry, and Beverly Hills. To us He gives sand. To Cannes He gives a plush film festival. We get the PLO. Our winters are rainy, our summers hot. To people who didn't know how to wind a wristwatch He gives underground oceans of oil. To us He gives hernia, piles, and anti-Semitism.
”
”
Joseph Heller (God Knows)
“
Only Person U Can Trust In This World Is Yourself.
”
”
D. McKay
“
Everything depends exclusively on emotions.
”
”
Natalie Ansard (The Sorceress from Beverly Hills)
“
Bose was slightly less happy about the presence of Conrad Taylor, the celebrated anthropologist, who had made his reputation by uniquely combining scholarship and eroticism in his study of puberty rites in late-twentieth-century Beverly Hills.
”
”
Arthur C. Clarke (Rendezvous with Rama (Rama, #1))
“
Semua tahu, Sayang...agar nasib baik tetap langgeng, kerendahan hati harus selalu dipelihara. Tidak peduli keajaiban apa yang dihadiahkan hidup padamu, jangan pernah membual tentang itu.
”
”
Kavita Daswani (The Village Bride of Beverly Hills)
“
Outside of Piers Morgan’s home is a sign strategically positioned in the front of his property by the walkway. Its bold red-and-white typeface is a warning to all passersby: “Protected By Armed Response Security Systems.” James O’Keefe of Project Veritas discovered the sign as he sought signatures for a petition seeking to rid Hollywood films of all firearms. He took a photo of the sign and asked Morgan via Twitter “Hey, @piersmorgan, can you explain these signs on your Beverly Hills property?” Morgan could not, so he ignored it. While Morgan snores soundly in his bed, he has a security firm keep watch with a firearm and rush to Morgan’s defense if Morgan finds himself under threat. This way Morgan can pretend that he’s against firearms when, really, he’s just outsourced his gun. He is a royalist: He believes that commoners shouldn’t possess firearms, especially Americans. It’s the ultimate hypocrisy: Progressives view firearms as only situationally evil. They’re evil in the hands of anyone other than themselves or their security firms. Don
”
”
Dana Loesch (Hands Off My Gun: Defeating the Plot to Disarm America)
“
When Thomas said, “Love’s overrated,” I said, “You spoiled fucking brat.” And I reminded him, “Some boys have AIDS, retardation,” etc. Stuff he’d never se-e-e-en up in Beverly Hills.
“There are girls who’d dismember their boyfriends for one word from you,” I told him. He knew that, but he didn’t know some of them were crippled.
So I drove Thomas down to the hospital where I volunteer, where paraplegics with his posters taped around them like a sky, saw him and gasped like they’d been diagnosed God.
”
”
Dennis Cooper (The Dream Police: Selected Poems, 1969-1993)
“
Good things come in small packages....
”
”
Beverly Hills
“
Love is the most beautiful thing that can happen to someone. No one can explain that feeling and desires engrossing a person preparing to give their heart to someone.
”
”
Natalie Ansard (The Sorceress from Beverly Hills)
“
Jason, I love you and you cannot escape from it. Even if you could, I would never let you go.
”
”
Natalie Ansard (The Sorceress from Beverly Hills)
“
When I think of the good things still to be written I am glad, for there is no end to them, and I know I myself shall write some of them.
”
”
William Saroyan (The Bicycle Rider In Beverly Hills)
“
I remember how during a casting session in Beverly Hills, a director described an A-list actress as being "pretty for a black girl"; he thought it was a compliment.
”
”
Jeetendr Sehdev (The Kim Kardashian Principle: Why Shameless Sells (and How to Do It Right))
“
Whereas the rich residents of Beverly Hills eat lettuce salad and steamed tofu with quinoa, in the slums and ghettos the poor gorge on Twinkie cakes, Cheetos, hamburgers and pizza.
”
”
Yuval Noah Harari (Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow)
“
Unfortunately, not every dead body goes to what might be considered “noble ends.” There is a slim possibility that your donated head will be the head, the head that holds the key to the mysteries of the twenty-first century’s great disease epidemics. But it is equally possible your body will end up being used to train a new crop of Beverly Hills plastic surgeons in the art of the facelift. Or dumped out of a plane to test parachute technology. Your body is donated to science in a very . . . general way. Where your parts go is not up to you.
”
”
Caitlin Doughty (Smoke Gets in Your Eyes: And Other Lessons from the Crematory)
“
As bellhop closes the door behind him, you are left with a feeling of security and relaxation. Your mind starts to drift, and you wonder to yourself, who else has stayed in this room?
”
”
Ann Benjamin (Room 702: Six Degrees of Brendan Sullivan)
“
I love you, Jason. You have no idea how much I love you – she said. She wanted to add how she knew the shape of each of his fingernails, how she could know exactly which of his fingers was caressing her back, which fingertip was resting on her face. His every touch occupied her heart and increased her passion. She was never hiding that from him. That’s why she repeated – I love you.
”
”
Natalie Ansard (The Sorceress from Beverly Hills)
“
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.
”
”
Salman Rushdie (Quichotte)
“
PREFACE A New Look at the Legacy of Albert Einstein Genius. Absent-minded professor. The father of relativity. The mythical figure of Albert Einstein—hair flaming in the wind, sockless, wearing an oversized sweatshirt, puffing on his pipe, oblivious to his surroundings—is etched indelibly on our minds. “A pop icon on a par with Elvis Presley and Marilyn Monroe, he stares enigmatically from postcards, magazine covers, T-shirts, and larger-than-life posters. A Beverly Hills agent markets his image for television commercials. He would have hated it all,” writes biographer Denis Brian. Einstein is among the greatest scientists of all time, a towering figure who ranks alongside Isaac Newton for his contributions. Not surprisingly, Time magazine voted him the Person of the Century. Many historians have placed him among the hundred most influential people of the last thousand years.
”
”
Michio Kaku (Einstein's Cosmos: How Albert Einstein's Vision Transformed Our Understanding of Space and Time (Great Discoveries))
“
Indeed, in most countries today overeating has become a far worse problem than famine. In the eighteenth century Marie Antoinette allegedly advised the starving masses that if they ran out of bread, they should just eat cake instead. Today, the poor are following this advice to the letter. Whereas the rich residents of Beverly Hills eat lettuce salad and steamed tofu with quinoa, in the slums and ghettos the poor gorge on Twinkie cakes, Cheetos, hamburgers and pizza
”
”
Yuval Noah Harari (Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow)
“
Today, the poor are following this advice to the letter. Whereas the rich residents of Beverly Hills eat lettuce salad and steamed tofu with quinoa, in the slums and ghettos the poor gorge on Twinkie cakes, Cheetos, hamburgers and pizza.
”
”
Yuval Noah Harari (Homo Deus: A Brief History of Tomorrow)
“
He had told Flora all about his slim, expensive mistress, Lily, who made boring scenes and took up the time and energy which he would much sooner have spent with his wife, but he had to have Lily, because in Beverly Hills, if you did not have a mistress, people thought you were rather queer, and if, on the other hand, you spent all your time with your wife, and were quite firm about it, and said that you liked your wife, and, anyway, why the hell shouldn’t you, the papers came out with repulsive articles headed ‘Hollywood Czar’s Domestic Bliss’, and you had to supply them with pictures of your wife pouring your morning chocolate and watering the ferns.
So there was no way out of it, Mr Neck said.
Anyway, his wife quite understood, and they played a game called ‘Dodging Lily’, which gave them yet another interest in common.
”
”
Stella Gibbons (Cold Comfort Farm)
“
The Government set the stage economically by informing everyone that we were in a depression period, with very pointed allusions to the 1930s. The period just prior to our last 'good' war. ... Boiled down, our objective was to make killing and military life seem like adventurous fun, so for our inspiration we went back to the Thirties as well. It was pure serendipity. Inside one of the Scripter offices there was an old copy of Doc Smith's first LENSMAN space opera. It turned out that audiences in the 1970s were more receptive to the sort of things they scoffed at as juvenilia in the 1930s. Our drugs conditioned them to repeat viewings, simultaneously serving the ends of profit and positive reinforcement. The movie we came up with stroked all the correct psychological triggers. The fact that it grossed more money than any film in history at the time proved how on target our approach was.'
'Oh my God... said Jonathan, his mouth stalling the open position.
'Six months afterward we ripped ourselves off and got secondary reinforcement onto television. We pulled a 40 share. The year after that we phased in the video games, experimenting with non-narcotic hypnosis, using electrical pulses, body capacitance, and keying the pleasure centers of the brain with low voltage shocks. Jesus, Jonathan, can you *see* what we've accomplished? In something under half a decade we've programmed an entire generation of warm bodies to go to war for us and love it. They buy what we tell them to buy. Music, movies, whole lifestyles. And they hate who we tell them to. ... It's simple to make our audiences slaver for blood; that past hasn't changed since the days of the Colosseum. We've conditioned a whole population to live on the rim of Apocalypse and love it. They want to kill the enemy, tear his heart out, go to war so their gas bills will go down! They're all primed for just that sort of denouemment, ti satisfy their need for linear storytelling in the fictions that have become their lives! The system perpetuates itself. Our own guinea pigs pay us money to keep the mechanisms grinding away. If you don't believe that, just check out last year's big hit movies... then try to tell me the target demographic audience isn't waiting for marching orders. ("Incident On A Rainy Night In Beverly Hills")
”
”
David J. Schow (Seeing Red)
“
My first reaction was that the story of Pino Lella’s life in the last twenty-three months of the war could not possibly be true. We would have heard it before. But then I learned that Pino—pronounced pea-no—was still alive some six decades later and back in Italy after nearly thirty years in Beverly Hills and Mammoth Lakes, California.
”
”
Mark T. Sullivan (Beneath a Scarlet Sky)
“
- What’s there to talk about? I love you, you love me. Nothing else matters, love is the most important thing. The rest will come by itself.
- No, Elida. You’re mistaken. Everything is important while sharing a life together. Love, honesty, habits, affinities. Everything. One is fulfilling the other and one can’t exist without the other.
”
”
Natalie Ansard (The Sorceress from Beverly Hills)
“
In May 1993, Clinton ordered the presidential plane to wait on the tarmac at Los Angeles International Airport while he got a haircut from Christophe Schatteman, a Beverly Hills hairdresser. Schatteman’s clients have included Nicole Kidman, Goldie Hawn, and Steven Spielberg. “We flew out of San Diego to L.A. to pick him up,” recalls James Saddler, a steward on the infamous trip. “Some guy came out and said he was supposed to cut the president’s hair. Christophe cut his hair, and we took off. We were on the ground for an hour. They closed the runways.” While Christophe cut Clinton’s hair, two runways at LAX were closed. That meant all incoming and outgoing flights had to be halted. Clinton’s thoughtlessness inconvenienced passengers throughout the country. Like
”
”
Ronald Kessler (The First Family Detail: Secret Service Agents Reveal the Hidden Lives of the Presidents)
“
It made me wonder whether our ability and desire to interact with strangers is another muscle that risks atrophy in the smartphone world. You don’t need to make small talk with strangers when you can read the Beverly Hills, 90210 Wikipedia page anytime you want. Honestly, what stranger can compete with a video that documents the budding friendship of two baby hippopotamuses? No one, that’s who.
”
”
Aziz Ansari (Modern Romance: An Investigation)
“
He disappeared inside and I leaned back on the seat to stare straight up the star-crazed sky. It seemed about 6 feet above my eyes. Or maybe 60 feet, or 600. I couldn't be sure, and it didn't matter, anyway, because by that time I was convinced I was in the cockpit of a 727 coming into LA at midnight. Jesus, I thought, I am ripped straight to the tits. Where am I? Are we going up or down? Somewhere in the back of my brain, I knew I was sitting in a Jeep in the parking lot of a night club on an island off the Mexican coast - but how could I really be sure, with another part of my brain convinced that I was looking down on the huge glittering bowl of Los Angeles from the cockpit of a 727? Was that the Milky Way? Or Sunset Boulevard? Orion, or the Beverly Hills Hotel?
Who gives a fuck? I thought.
”
”
Hunter S. Thompson (The Great Shark Hunt: Strange Tales from a Strange Time (The Gonzo Papers, #1))
“
New Rule: Americans must realize what makes NFL football so great: socialism. That's right, the NFL takes money from the rich teams and gives it to the poorer one...just like President Obama wants to do with his secret army of ACORN volunteers. Green Bay, Wisconsin, has a population of one hundred thousand. Yet this sleepy little town on the banks of the Fuck-if-I-know River has just as much of a chance of making it to the Super Bowl as the New York Jets--who next year need to just shut the hell up and play.
Now, me personally, I haven't watched a Super Bowl since 2004, when Janet Jackson's nipple popped out during halftime. and that split-second glimpse of an unrestrained black titty burned by eyes and offended me as a Christian. But I get it--who doesn't love the spectacle of juiced-up millionaires giving one another brain damage on a giant flatscreen TV with a picture so real it feels like Ben Roethlisberger is in your living room, grabbing your sister?
It's no surprise that some one hundred million Americans will watch the Super Bowl--that's forty million more than go to church on Christmas--suck on that, Jesus! It's also eighty-five million more than watched the last game of the World Series, and in that is an economic lesson for America. Because football is built on an economic model of fairness and opportunity, and baseball is built on a model where the rich almost always win and the poor usually have no chance. The World Series is like The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills. You have to be a rich bitch just to play. The Super Bowl is like Tila Tequila. Anyone can get in.
Or to put it another way, football is more like the Democratic philosophy. Democrats don't want to eliminate capitalism or competition, but they'd like it if some kids didn't have to go to a crummy school in a rotten neighborhood while others get to go to a great school and their dad gets them into Harvard. Because when that happens, "achieving the American dream" is easy for some and just a fantasy for others.
That's why the NFL literally shares the wealth--TV is their biggest source of revenue, and they put all of it in a big commie pot and split it thirty-two ways. Because they don't want anyone to fall too far behind. That's why the team that wins the Super Bowl picks last in the next draft. Or what the Republicans would call "punishing success."
Baseball, on the other hand, is exactly like the Republicans, and I don't just mean it's incredibly boring. I mean their economic theory is every man for himself. The small-market Pittsburgh Steelers go to the Super Bowl more than anybody--but the Pittsburgh Pirates? Levi Johnston has sperm that will not grow and live long enough to see the Pirates in a World Series. Their payroll is $40 million; the Yankees' is $206 million. The Pirates have about as much chance as getting in the playoffs as a poor black teenager from Newark has of becoming the CEO of Halliburton.
So you kind of have to laugh--the same angry white males who hate Obama because he's "redistributing wealth" just love football, a sport that succeeds economically because it does just that. To them, the NFL is as American as hot dogs, Chevrolet, apple pie, and a second, giant helping of apple pie.
”
”
Bill Maher (The New New Rules: A Funny Look At How Everybody But Me Has Their Head Up Their Ass)
“
I know how easy it is to sound like a corny version of Noam Chomsky when talking about something like this, but in a country where millions of dollars are spent on nuclear weapons, corporate welfare, and many ridiculous things, doesn't it just make sense to take care of people first? As soon as we can make the South Bronx, Compton, Taos, and Astoria look like Beverly Hills I'll have no problem watching a guy orbit Mars.
”
”
Dito Montiel (A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints)
“
Nora Ephron is a screenwriter whose scripts for Silkwood, When Harry Met Sally, and Sleepless in Seattle have all been nominated for Academy Awards. Ephron started her career as a journalist for the New York Post and Esquire. She became a journalist because of her high school journalism teacher. Ephron still remembers the first day of her journalism class. Although the students had no journalism experience, they walked into their first class with a sense of what a journalist does: A journalists gets the facts and reports them. To get the facts, you track down the five Ws—who, what, where, when, and why. As students sat in front of their manual typewriters, Ephron’s teacher announced the first assignment. They would write the lead of a newspaper story. The teacher reeled off the facts: “Kenneth L. Peters, the principal of Beverly Hills High School, announced today that the entire high school faculty will travel to Sacramento next Thursday for a colloquium in new teaching methods. Among the speakers will be anthropologist Margaret Mead, college president Dr. Robert Maynard Hutchins, and California governor Edmund ‘Pat’ Brown.” The budding journalists sat at their typewriters and pecked away at the first lead of their careers. According to Ephron, she and most of the other students produced leads that reordered the facts and condensed them into a single sentence: “Governor Pat Brown, Margaret Mead, and Robert Maynard Hutchins will address the Beverly Hills High School faculty Thursday in Sacramento. . .blah, blah, blah.” The teacher collected the leads and scanned them rapidly. Then he laid them aside and paused for a moment. Finally, he said, “The lead to the story is ‘There will be no school next Thursday.’” “It was a breathtaking moment,” Ephron recalls. “In that instant I realized that journalism was not just about regurgitating the facts but about figuring out the point. It wasn’t enough to know the who, what, when, and where; you had to understand what it meant. And why it mattered.” For the rest of the year, she says, every assignment had a secret—a hidden point that the students had to figure out in order to produce a good story.
”
”
Chip Heath (Made to Stick: Why Some Ideas Survive and Others Die)
“
Човек не бива да е взискателен към родителите си, брат си или сестра си, към жена си или децата си. Човек трябва да е взискателен единствено към самия себе си, а към останалите да проявява любов и разбиране или и двете.
”
”
William Saroyan (The Bicycle Rider In Beverly Hills)
“
I was at a party in Beverly Hills, and everyone in sports was there. Magic Johnson, Wayne Gretzky, Kareem. And I spotted my idol—Hank Aaron! I walked up to him and introduced myself. He said, “I know who you are. You made a great decision going to the USFL.” I was shocked. Then he leaned in and whispered, “Tom, you always have to get the money. Get the fucking money. Because they don’t care about you.” —Tom Ramsey, quarterback, Los Angeles Express
”
”
Jeff Pearlman (Football For A Buck: The Crazy Rise and Crazier Demise of the USFL)
“
Maria would say that they were not her friends, but Maria has never understood friendship, conversation, the normal amenities of social exchange. Maria has difficulty talking to people with whom she is not sleeping.
"I go to the Wilshire or the Beverly Hills," I say. "I read the trades, I like to be alone at breakfast."
"In fact he doesn't always get breakfast out," Maria says, very low, to no one in particular. "In fact the last time he got breakfast out was on April 17.
”
”
Joan Didion (Play It As It Lays)
“
Chci současně obývat malé, bezvýznamné tělo a ohromný nezbadatelný vesmír. Chci si odžít svuj nezbadatelný čas a chci se pokusit žít věčne. Chci jíst a spát a pracovat a založit si rodinu a umřít, ale zároveň nechci být nikdy víc tělem nežli duchem.
”
”
William Saroyan (The Bicycle Rider In Beverly Hills)
“
Things changed after that between me and Mark. I stopped being mortified that people might mistake me for one of his acolytes. I was his Boswell, don’t you know. I interviewed him about his childhood—his father was a psychiarist in Beverly Hills. I cataloged the contents of his van. I followed him around at work, sitting in while he examined patients. He had been a bit of a prodigy when we were in college. After his father developed a tumor, Mark, who was pre-med, started studying cancer with an intensity that convinced many of his friends that his goal was to find a cure in time to save his father. As it turned out, his father didn’t have cancer. But Mark kept on with his cancer studies. His interest was not in fact in oncology—in finding a cure—but in cancer education and prevention. By the time he entered medical school, he had created, with another student, a series of college courses on cancer and coauthored The Biology of Cancer Sourcebook, the text for a course that was eventually offered to tens of thousands of students. He cowrote a second book, Understanding Cancer, that became a bestselling university text, and he continued to lecture throughout the United States on cancer research, education, and prevention. “The funny thing is, I’m not really interested in cancer,” Mark told me. “I’m interested in people’s response to it. A lot of cancer patients and suvivors report that they never really lived till they got cancer, that it forced them to face things, to experience life more intensely. What you see in family practice is that families just can’t afford to be superficial with each other anymore once someone has cancer. Corny as it sounds, what I’m really interested in is the human spirit—in how people react to stress and adversity. I’m fascinated by the way people fight back, by how they keep fighting their way to the surface.” Mark clawed at the air with his arms. What he was miming was the struggle to reach the surface through the turbulence of a large wave.
”
”
William Finnegan (Barbarian Days: A Surfing Life)
“
Jesus, just one hour ago we were sitting over there in that stinking bagnio, stone broke and paralyzed for the weekend, when a call comes through from some total stranger in New York, telling me to go to Las Vegas and expenses be damned—and then he sends me over to some office in Beverly Hills where another total stranger gives me $300 raw cash for no reason at all … I tell you, my man, this is the American Dream in action! We’d be fools not to ride this strange torpedo all the way out to the end.
”
”
Hunter S. Thompson (Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas)
“
The closer you looked at Los Angeles, the less sense the place made. Living here was like living inside a confusing dream that threatened to plunge into a nightmare at any moment. Richie viewed LA as their salvation, but Alabama saw the truth: It wanted to consume them.
”
”
Philip Elliott (Porno Valley)
“
The menu at the Hug Deli included, among other items, the Warm and Fuzzy Hug, the Beverly Hills Air Kiss Hug, and the Gangsta Hug, with side orders of Pinch, Tickle, and Back Scratch. She ordered the Long Uncomfortable Hug, because she thought that was funny, thereby prompting a nut-brown Venice Beach-looking dude to hold on to her, earnestly pokerfaced, for a seeming eternity.
"Are you uncomfortable yet?"
"Fairly, yes."
"Excellent. My work here is done."
She laughed and mounted on her bike, pedalling away from the zany mirage as her gratuitous hugger shouted "Namaste" in her direction.
”
”
Armistead Maupin (The Days of Anna Madrigal (Tales of the City, #9))
“
Bir otomobil, son derece çekici, ince çizgilere sahip ve üstü açık, mavi bir otomobil, Beverly Hills'in batısından geniş bir yay çizerek, anladığım kadarıyla Sunset Bulvarının zarif virajları boyunca ilerleyerek geliyordu. Böyle bir otomobili kim görse ona sahip olmayı isterdi. Tabii ki. O, sizin onu istemenizi sağlamak üzere tasarlanmıştı. Eğer insanların onu o kadar da istemedikleri ortaya çıkacak olsa yapımcıları onu istenir hale gelene kadar, yeni baştan tekrar tekrar tasarlardı. Dünya şimdi böyle şeylerle dolu, tabii bu da insanların neden sürekli bir isteme hali içinde olduklarını açıklar.
”
”
Douglas Adams (The Salmon of Doubt: Hitchhiking the Galaxy One Last Time)
“
Girl Snouts.” “We are not,” contradicted Sarah. “We’re Girl Scouts.” “Hup, two, three, four. Hup, two, three, four,” counted Mrs. Collins, who was the jolly type and did not understand how parents sometimes embarrass their children. Down the hill marched the class. Mitchell felt Bernadette’s toe on his heel again and jumped in time.
”
”
Beverly Cleary (Mitch and Amy)
“
Each Beatle is to receive one of the first four albums in the run, with a sequential number printed on each cover. John wants the first of the first, calling out, “Bagsy No. 1!” “John got 000001 because he shouted the loudest,”12 Paul remembers. Ringo keeps his double album in a bank vault. And there it stays until 2015, when the drummer discovers that his copy, not John’s,13 is the original — number 000001. That Saturday, December 5, 2015, Julien’s Auctions, in Beverly Hills, sets a guide price of $40,000 to $60,000, which will go to Ringo’s charity, the Lotus Foundation. The bidding shatters records, bringing $790,000. Ringo has a message for the buyer: “Whoever gets it it will have my fingerprints
”
”
James Patterson (The Last Days of John Lennon: ‘I totally recommend it’ LEE CHILD)
“
going anyplace outside L.A. Just bothering to go someplace other than Santa Monica was incomprehensible when I could just wake up every morning at dawn, yank on my bathing suit still on the floor from the night before when I’d yanked it off, hurry down to Hollywood and Gower to catch the 91S bus down Hollywood Boulevard and then Santa Monica Boulevard to Beverly Hills and transfer to the 83 going straight out to the beach untilfinally there I’d be, at 8:00 A.M. or so, able to feel the cool sand get warm as the morning sun glazed over the tops of the palm trees up on the palisades while waves of the ocean crashed down day after day so anyone could throw himself into the tides and bodysurf throughout eternity.
”
”
Eve Babitz (L.A.WOMAN)
“
En el siglo XVIII, al parecer, María Antonieta aconsejó a la muchedumbre que pasaba hambre que si se quedaban sin pan, comieran pasteles. Hoy en día, los pobres siguen este consejo al pie de la letra. Mientras que los ricos residentes de Beverly Hills comen ensalada y tofu al vapor con quinoa, en los suburbios y guetos los pobres se atracan de pastelillos Twinkie, Cheetos, hamburguesas y pizzas. En 2014, más de 2.100 millones de personas tenían sobrepeso, frente a los 850 millones que padecían desnutrición. Se espera que la mitad de la humanidad sea obesa en 2030.[4] En 2010, la suma de las hambrunas y la desnutrición mató a alrededor de un millón de personas, mientras que la obesidad mató a tres millones.[5]
”
”
Yuval Noah Harari (Homo Deus: Breve historia del mañana)
“
Indeed, in most countries today overeating has become a far worse problem than famine. In the eighteenth century Marie Antoinette allegedly advised the starving masses that if they ran out of bread, they should just eat cake instead. Today, the poor are following this advice to the letter. Whereas the rich residents of Beverly Hills eat lettuce salad and steamed tofu with quinoa, in the slums and ghettos the poor gorge on Twinkie cakes, Cheetos, hamburgers and pizza. In 2014 more than 2.1 billion people were overweight, compared to 850 million who suffered from malnutrition. Half of humankind is expected to be overweight by 2030.4 In 2010 famine and malnutrition combined killed about 1 million people, whereas obesity killed 3 million.5
”
”
Yuval Noah Harari (Homo Deus: A History of Tomorrow)
“
actualmente, en la mayoría de los países, comer en exceso se ha convertido en un problema mucho peor que el hambre. En el siglo XVIII, al parecer, María Antonieta aconsejó a la muchedumbre que pasaba hambre que si se quedaban sin pan, comieran pasteles. Hoy en día, los pobres siguen este consejo al pie de la letra. Mientras que los ricos residentes de Beverly Hills comen ensalada y tofu al vapor con quinoa, en los suburbios y guetos los pobres se atracan de pastelillos Twinkie, Cheetos, hamburguesas y pizzas. En 2014, más de 2.100 millones de personas tenían sobrepeso, frente a los 850 millones que padecían desnutrición. Se espera que la mitad de la humanidad sea obesa en 2030.[4] En 2010, la suma de las hambrunas y la desnutrición mató a alrededor de un millón de personas, mientras que la obesidad mató a tres millones.
”
”
Yuval Noah Harari (Homo Deus: Breve historia del mañana)
“
De hecho, actualmente, en la mayoría de los países, comer en exceso se ha convertido en un problema mucho peor que el hambre. En el siglo XVIII, al parecer, María Antonieta aconsejó a la muchedumbre que pasaba hambre que si se quedaban sin pan, comieran pasteles. Hoy en día, los pobres siguen este consejo al pie de la letra. Mientras que los ricos residentes de Beverly Hills comen ensalada y tofu al vapor con quinoa, en los suburbios y guetos los pobres se atracan de pastelillos Twinkie, Cheetos, hamburguesas y pizzas. En 2014, más de 2.100 millones de personas tenían sobrepeso, frente a los 850 millones que padecían desnutrición. Se espera que la mitad de la humanidad sea obesa en 2030.[4] En 2010, la suma de las hambrunas y la desnutrición mató a alrededor de un millón de personas, mientras que la obesidad mató a tres millones.
”
”
Yuval Noah Harari (Homo Deus: Breve historia del mañana)
“
SHE HAD WATCHED THEM in supermarkets and she knew the signs. At seven o'clock on a Saturday evening they would be standing in the checkout line reading the horoscope in Harper's Bazaar and in their carts would be a single lamb chop and maybe two cans of cat food and the Sunday morning paper, the early edition with the comics wrapped outside. They would be very pretty some of the time, their skirts the right length and their sunglasses the right tint and maybe only a little vulnerable tightness around the mouth, but there they were, one lamb chop and some cat food and the morning paper. To avoid giving off the signs, Maria shopped always for a household, gallons of grapefruit juice, quarts of green chile salsa, dried lentils and alphabet noodles, rigatoni and canned yams, twenty-pound boxes of laundry detergent. She knew all the indices to the idle lonely, never bought a small tube of toothpaste, never dropped a magazine in her shopping cart. The house in Beverly Hills overflowed with sugar, corn-muffin mix, frozen roasts and Spanish onions. Maria ate cottage cheese.
”
”
Joan Didion (Play It As It Lays)
“
The automobile, like the all-important domestic façade, is another mechanism for outdoor class display. Or class lack of display we'd have to say, if we focus on the usages of the upper class, who, on the principle of archaism, affect to regard the automobile as very nouveau and underplay it consistently. Class understatement describes the technique: if your money and freedom and carelessness of censure allow you to buy any kind of car, you provide yourself with the meanest and most common to indicate that you're not taking seriously so easily purchasable and thus vulgar a class totem. You have a Chevy, Ford, Plymouth, or Dodge, and in the least interesting style and color. It may be clean, although slightly dirty is best. But it should be boring. The next best thing is to have a "good" car, like a Jaguar or BMW, but to be sure it's old and beat-up. You may not have a Rolls, a Cadillac, or a Mercedes. Especially a Mercedes, a car, Joseph Epstein reports in The American Scholar (Winter 1981-82), which the intelligent young in West Germany regard, quite correctly, as "a sign of vulgarity, a car of the kind owned by Beverly Hills dentists or African cabinet ministers.
”
”
Paul Fussell
“
Bob was clearly a confused character, and it was thought that he might benefit from some professional attention. “My mother and sister,” said Mitchum, “doubting my sanity, implored the cooperation of my wife in suggesting a visit to a psychiatrist.”
Mitchum agreed to their suggestion—”What could I do? It was the family consensus”—and submitted himself to the leather couch in the Beverly Hills office of Dr. Frederick Hacker.
“Mr. Mitchum, do you know why you have come here?” asked the doctor, described by the patient as a dead ringer for Walter Slezak.
“Because my family thinks I’m crazy.”
“Very interesting,” said Dr. Hacker.
He saw the shrink a few more times. They “kicked things around” and Mitchum regaled the doc with stories of his life in Hollywood and the characters he knew there.
“Mr. Mitchum, you suffer from a state of over-amiability,” Hacker concluded, “in which failure to please everyone creates a condition of self-reproach. You are addicted to nothing but the good will of people, and I suggest that you risk their displeasure by learning to say ‘No’ and following your own judgement.”
Mitchum translated this into layman’s terms when he got home: “He said I should tell you all to go shit in your hats.
”
”
Lee Server (Robert Mitchum: "Baby I Don't Care")
“
She hadn’t always been obsessed with babies. There was a time she believed she would change the world, lead a movement, follow Dolores Huerta and Sylvia Mendez, Ellen Ochoa and Sonia Sotomayor. Where her bisabuela had picked pecans and oranges in the orchards, climbing the tallest trees with her small girlbody, dropping the fruit to the baskets below where her tías and tíos and primos stooped to pick those that had fallen on the ground, where her abuela had sewn in the garment district in downtown Los Angeles with her bisabuela, both women taking the bus each morning and evening, making the beautiful dresses to be sold in Beverly Hills and maybe worn by a movie star, and where her mother had cared for the ill, had gone to their crumbling homes, those diabetic elderly dying in the heat in the Valley—Bianca would grow and tend to the broken world, would find where it ached and heal it, would locate its source of ugliness and make it beautiful.
Only, since she’d met Gabe and become La Llorona, she’d been growing the ugliness inside her. She could sense it warping the roots from within. The cactus flower had dropped from her when she should have been having a quinceañera, blooming across the dance floor in a bright, sequined dress, not spending the night at her boyfriend’s nana’s across town so that her mama wouldn’t know what she’d done, not taking a Tylenol for the cramping and eating the caldo de rez they’d made for her. They’d taken such good care of her.
Had they done it for her? Or for their son’s chance at a football scholarship?
She’d never know.
What she did know: She was blessed with a safe procedure. She was blessed with women to check her for bleeding. She was blessed with choice.
Only, she hadn’t chosen for herself.
She hadn’t.
Awareness must come. And it did. Too late.
If she’d chosen for herself, she would have chosen the cactus spines. She would’ve chosen the one night a year the night-blooming cereus uncoils its moon-white skirt, opens its opalescent throat, and allows the bats who’ve flown hundreds of miles with their young clutching to their fur as they swim through the air, half-starved from waiting, to drink their fill and feed their next generation of creatures who can see through the dark. She’d have been a Queen of the Night and taught her daughter to give her body to no Gabe.
She knew that, deep inside.
Where Anzaldúa and Castillo dwelled, where she fed on the nectar of their toughest blossoms.
These truths would moonstone in her palm and she would grasp her hand shut, hold it tight to her heart, and try to carry it with her toward the front door, out onto the walkway, into the world.
Until Gabe would bend her over. And call her gordita or cochina. Chubby girl. Dirty girl.
She’d open her palm, and the stone had turned to dust.
She swept it away on her jeans.
A daughter doesn’t solve anything; she needed her mama to tell her this.
But she makes the world a lot less lonely. A lot less ugly.
”
”
Jennifer Givhan (Jubilee)
“
Remind yourself where you come from.
I spent the majority of my life running away from Utah, from the life I led there, from the memories I associated with those early years. It felt very someone-else-ago to me. London changed me profoundly.
When we were dancing on DWTS together, Jennifer Grey called me one night. She was having trouble with her back and wanted to see a physiotherapist. “Can you come with me?” she asked. She drove us through a residential section of Beverly Hills. We pulled into a house with a shed out back. Oddly, it didn’t look like a doctor’s office. There was a couch and incense burning. An Australian guy with a white beard came in : “Hey, mates.” I looked at Jen and she winked at me. This was no physical therapy. She’d signed us up for some bizarre couples therapy!
The guy spoke to us for a while, then he asked Jennifer if she wouldn’t mind leaving us to chat. I thought the whole thing was pretty out there, but I didn’t think I could make a run for it.
“So, Derek,” he said. “Tell me about your childhood.” I laid it all out for him--I talked for almost two hours--and he nodded. “You can go pick him up now.”
I raised an eyebrow. “Pick who up?”
The therapist smiled. “That younger boy, that self you left in Utah. You left him there while you’ve been on a mission moving forward so vigorously. Now you can go get him back.”
I sat there, utterly stunned and speechless. It was beyond powerful and enlightening. Had I really left that part of me behind? Had I lost that fun-loving, wide-eyed kid and all his creative exuberance?
When I came out of my therapy session, Jennifer was waiting for me. “If I’d told you this was where we were going, you wouldn’t have come,” she said. She was right. She had to blindside me to get me to grapple with this. She’s a very spiritual person, and she saw how I was struggling, how I seemed to be in some kind of emotional rut. Just visualizing myself taking the old Derek by the hand was an incredible exercise. I think we often tuck our younger selves away for safekeeping. In my case, I associated my early years with painful memories. I wanted to keep young Derek at a distance. But what I forgot was all the good I experienced with him as well: the joy, the hope, the excitement, the wonder. I forgot what a great kid Derek was. I gave myself permission to reconnect with that little boy, to see the world through his eyes again. It was the kick in the butt I needed.
Jennifer would say, “Told ya so.
”
”
Derek Hough (Taking the Lead: Lessons from a Life in Motion)
“
Sylphid was beginning to play professionally, and she was subbing as second harpist in the orchestra at Radio City Music Hall. She was called pretty regularly, once or twice a week, and she’d also got a job playing at a fancy restaurant in the East Sixties on Friday night. Ira would drive her from the Village up to the restaurant with her harp and then go and pick her and the harp up when she finished. He had the station wagon, and he’d pull up in front of the house and go inside and have to carry it down the stairs. The harp is in its felt cover, and Ira puts one hand on the column and one hand in the sound hole at the back and he lifts it up, lays the harp on a mattress they keep in the station wagon, and drives Sylphid and the harp uptown to the restaurant. At the restaurant he takes the harp out of the car and, big radio star that he is, he carries it inside. At ten-thirty, when the restaurant is finished serving dinner and Sylphid’s ready to come back to the Village, he goes around to pick her up and the whole operation is repeated. Every Friday. He hated the physical imposition that it was—those things weigh about eighty pounds—but he did it. I remember that in the hospital, when he had cracked up, he said to me, ‘She married me to carry her daughter’s harp! That’s why the woman married me! To haul that fucking harp!’ “On those Friday night trips, Ira found he could talk to Sylphid in ways he couldn’t when Eve was around. He’d ask her about being a movie star’s child. He’d say to her, ‘When you were a little girl, when did it dawn on you that something was up, that this wasn’t the way everyone grew up?’ She told him it was when the tour buses went up and down their street in Beverly Hills. She said she never saw her parents’ movies until she was a teenager. Her parents were trying to keep her normal and so they downplayed those movies around the house. Even the rich kid’s life in Beverly Hills with the other movie stars’ kids seemed normal enough until the tour buses stopped in front of her house and she could hear the tour guide saying, ‘This is Carlton Pennington’s house, where he lives with his wife, Eve Frame.’ “She told him about the production that birthday parties were for the movie stars’ kids—clowns, magicians, ponies, puppet shows, and every child attended by a nanny in a white nurse’s uniform. At the dining table, behind every child would be a nanny. The Penningtons had their own screening room and they ran movies. Kids would come over. Fifteen, twenty kids.
”
”
Philip Roth (I Married a Communist (The American Trilogy, #2))
“
Back in the days when the settlers were moving to the West, a wise man stood on a hill outside a new Western town. As the settlers came from the East, the wise man was the first person they met before coming to the settlement. They asked eagerly what the people of the town were like. He answered them with a question: "What were the people like in the town you just left?" Some said, "The town we came from was wicked. The people were rude gossips who took advantage of innocent people. It was filled with thieves and liars." The wise man answered, "This town is the same as the one you left." They thanked the man for saving them from the trouble they had just come out of. They then moved on further west. Then another group of settlers arrived and asked the same question: "What is this town like?" The wise man asked again, "What was the town like where you came from?" These responded, "It was wonderful! We had dear friends. Everyone looked out for the others' interest. There was never any lack because all cared for one another. If someone had a big project, the entire community gathered to help. It was a hard decision to leave, but we felt compelled to make way for future generations by going west as pioneers." The wise old man said to them exactly what he had
said to the other group: "This town is the same as the one you left." These people responded with joy, "Let's settle here!
”
”
John Bevere (The Bait Of Satan: Living Free from the Deadly Trap of Offense)
“
Show me." He looks at her, his eyes darker than the air. "If you draw me a map I think I'll understand better."
"Do you have paper?" She looks over the empty sweep of the car's interior. "I don't have anything to write with."
He holds up his hands, side to side as if they were hinged. "That's okay. You can just use my hands."
She smiles, a little confused. He leans forward and the streetlight gives him yellow-brown cat eyes. A car rolling down the street toward them fills the interior with light, then an aftermath of prickling black waves. "All right." She takes his hands, runs her finger along one edge. "Is this what you mean? Like, if the ocean was here on the side and these knuckles are mountains and here on the back it's Santa Monica, Beverly Hills, West L.A., West Hollywood, and X marks the spot." She traces her fingertips over the backs of his hands, her other hand pressing into the soft pads of his palm. "This is where we are- X."
"Right now? In this car?" He leans back; his eyes are black marble, dark lamps. She holds his gaze a moment, hears a rush of pulse in her ears like ocean surf. Her breath goes high and tight and shallow; she hopes he can't see her clearly in the car- her translucent skin so vulnerable to the slightest emotion. He turns her hands over, palms up, and says, "Now you." He draws one finger down one side of her palm and says, "This is the Tigris River Valley. In this section there's the desert, and in this point it's plains. The Euphrates runs along there. This is Baghdad here. And here is Tahrir Square." He touches the center of her palm. "At the foot of the Jumhurriya Bridge. The center of everything. All the main streets run out from this spot. In this direction and that direction, there are wide busy sidewalks and apartments piled up on top of shops, men in business suits, women with strollers, street vendors selling kabobs, eggs, fruit drinks. There's the man with his cart who sold me rolls sprinkled with thyme and sesame every morning and then saluted me like a soldier. And there's this one street...." He holds her palm cradled in one hand and traces his finger up along the inside of her arm to the inner crease of her elbow, then up to her shoulder. Everywhere he touches her it feels like it must be glowing, as if he were drawing warm butter all over her skin. "It just goes and goes, all the way from Baghdad to Paris." He circles her shoulder. "And here"- he touches the inner crease of her elbow-"is the home of the Nile crocodile with the beautiful speaking voice. And here"- his fingers return to her shoulder, dip along their clavicle-"is the dangerous singing forest."
"The dangerous singing forest?" she whispers.
He frowns and looks thoughtful. "Or is that in Madagascar?" His hand slips behind her neck and he inches toward her on the seat. "There's a savanna. Chameleons like emeralds and limes and saffron and rubies. Red cinnamon trees filled with lemurs."
"I've always wanted to see Madagascar," she murmurs: his breath is on her face. Their foreheads touch.
His hand rises to her face and she can feel that he's trembling and she realizes that she's trembling too. "I'll take you," he whispers.
”
”
Diana Abu-Jaber (Crescent)
“
The Lance deHaven-Smith book Conspiracy Theory in America (published by the University of Texas) reveals that the phrase “conspiracy theory” was invented by the CIA to discredit doubters of the Warren Commission, which claims that John F. Kennedy’s assassination was carried out alone by a single “lone gunman.” Distraught by the murder of President Kennedy, a Beverly Hills housewife named Mae Brussell took it upon herself to buy all 26 printed volumes issued by the Warren Commission report, and attempt to make sense of the thing by cross-indexing the entire work. Mae was disturbed by the contradictory information and unreported realities she discovered in those volumes. As a result, she started subscribing to many major newspapers and magazines, whose stories she filed and organized, uncovering disquieting connections and patterns behind government and corporate malfeasance.
”
”
Mae Brussell (The Essential Mae Brussell: Investigations of Fascism in America)
“
SYLVESTER STALLONE: Mike Ovitz carried a heavy hammer, and he swung it like he was Beverly Hills Thor. He went around smashing people, sometimes I think just for the fun of it. He did things to me that I thought were beyond unfair. We got into sort of a business with art, and the person he hooked me up with turned out to be a disaster, and had me spending a great deal of money on art that turned out to be—well, I don’t want to get into it because of the lawsuit, but it just wasn’t good. The next thing I know, he’s throwing an engagement party for them at CAA, a building that I basically put tons of money into with my commissions. I told him, “I find this to be really offensive. You know how much these people hurt me, yet you’re celebrating them?” He said to me, “What do you want me to do? Cancel it? Throw them out? And embarrass yourself and me all over the city? Would that make you happy?” I believe that was the last time I talked to him for many, many years. Is he beloved? That’s a rhetorical question.
”
”
James Andrew Miller (Powerhouse: The Untold Story of Hollywood's Creative Artists Agency)
“
As a manager of so-called talent, he was demoralized to find himself in such low company, sitting between an armed crackpot and a fake chicken farmer known to millions as "Captain Cock." Back home in Beverly Hills, rival agents were dining with classy A-listers such as Javier Bardem and the Cohen Brothers, or so Coolman bitterly imagined.
”
”
Carl Hiaasen (Razor Girl (Andrew Yancy, #2))
“
Cox knew the guys she was living with were criminals, but really it was more like the redistribution of wealth from Beverly Hills to Long Beach, almost like being a Democrat, so it was hard to see too much wrong with it. And nobody ever died.
”
”
John Sandford (Neon Prey (Lucas Davenport, #29))
“
Some people have a perpetual problem. They always have a sad song. If you allow them, they’ll use you as a trash can to dump all their garbage in. You spend an hour with them and you feel like you’ve run a marathon. They’re energy suckers. You leave them feeling drained and worn out.
You cannot continue to deal with them day after day if you expect to reach your highest potential. You won’t lift off. You won’t thrust forward into the good things God has in store if you’re weighted down, letting people dump their loads on you. They’ll make you discouraged and drain your energy.
It’s hard enough just to keep yourself cheered up. You’re not responsible for their happiness. Sure, there are times when we need to sow a seed and have a listening ear and take time to love people back into wholeness. But that should be for a season and not an ongoing drama. You shouldn’t spend every day listening to friends complain about their spouses or their neighbors.
If you do, your life will be like an episode of Guiding Light, Jersey Shore, and The Real Housewives of Beverly Hills all put together. You have enough drama in your life without listening to everyone else’s drama. You can’t allow someone to put that negativity in you day after day if you expect to soar.
You need to evaluate the people you’re spending time with. Are they lifters and encouragers? Do they make you feel better? Do you leave their company feeling inspired and happier, or are they dragging you down, making you feel drained, and sapping your energy?
”
”
Joel Osteen (You Can You Will: 8 Undeniable Qualities of a Winner)
“
Rossese di Dolceacqua,
”
”
Paul Hartford (Waiter to the Rich and Shameless: Confessions of a Five-Star Beverly Hills Server)
“
It was entertaining to watch the dance play out in silence, through the glass, like an old silent movie. I’m sure many of those early movie stars drank and dined here. Maybe their ghosts even haunted the grounds and were at least partially responsible for luring me behind the walls.
”
”
Paul Hartford (Waiter to the Rich and Shameless: Confessions of a Five-Star Beverly Hills Server)
“
Once people no longer fear starvation, they choose to eat for a whole variety of reasons, and these were not so different at the court of the Medici than they are at the food courts of Beverly Hills. Food is much more than a fuel; it is packed with meaning and symbolism. That
”
”
Michael Krondl (The Taste of Conquest: The Rise and Fall of the Three Great Cities of Spice)
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Lola was a tall blonde with no particular body features that worked in her favor.
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Paul Hartford (Waiter to the Rich and Shameless: Confessions of a Five-Star Beverly Hills Server)
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A vice is a vice, a drunk is a drunk, no matter what the booze costs. You can be a useless piece of shit drinking high-end Scotch whiskey just as easily as you can drinking swill at a neighborhood dive. You just feel better about yourself.
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Paul Hartford (Waiter to the Rich and Shameless: Confessions of a Five-Star Beverly Hills Server)
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During this period, I served many celebrities, including Jennifer Aniston, Vince Vaughn, Gary Oldman, Leonardo DiCaprio, Juliette Lewis, Rob Lowe, Colin Farrell, Tom Selleck, David Spade, Thomas Haden Church, Sharon Osbourne, Brad Pitt, John Malkovich, Tara Reid, Toby Maguire and Diane Keaton. You know all of them, so no explanation needed. The hardest thing about serving such famous Hollywood icons, at least for the first time, is trying not to stare at them. It’s so otherworldly to see someone like Selleck, who’s not just huge -he’s bigger than life- and who you´ve watched on big screen and small for years… they are, invariably, taller or shorter than you’d imagined. And the women are either spectacularly beautiful or very ordinary without screen makeup. But you can’t stare. It’s verbatim by ownership.
Brad Pitt was cool and very humble. He had a few Pyramid beers with a producer friend, and then took off on his motorcycle down Sunset Boulevard, heading West towards the Palisades. Am I saying that he was driving drunk? No. He was there for two hours and had two beers, so he wasn’t breaking the law. At least not with my assistance. He had been there many times before, I just hadn’t been the one serving him. I remember when he came in during his filming of Troy. He had long hair and a cast on his leg. Ironically, he had torn his Achilles’ tendon while playing Achilles in the epic film.
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Paul Hartford (Waiter to the Rich and Shameless: Confessions of a Five-Star Beverly Hills Server)
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I close my eyes. I hear the voices of the past in the wind and in the beating of my heart. My two mothers, my two fathers, and my dear uncle all tried to tell me I was wrong about the People's Republic of China. In the beginning, going all the way back to the University of Chicago, I thought socialism and communism were good, that people should share equally, that it wasn't fair that my family had suffered in America when others drove fancy cars, lived in big houses, and shopped in Beverly Hills. I ran away and came here in hopes of finding an ideal world, to find my birth father, to avoid my mother and aunt, and to crush my guilt. None of that worked the way I expected. The ideal world was filled with hypocrisy and with people like Z.G., who went to parties while the masses suffered. In finding my birth father, I only remembered how wonderful my father Sam was. He loved me unconditionally, while Z.G. wanted me as a muse, as a pretty daughter to show off, as a physical manifestation of his love for Auntie May, as an artist who would reflect how great an artist he is. I thought I could use idealism to solve my inner conflicts, but in healing my inner conflicts I destroyed my idealism.
As I gaze into my daughter's face, everything becomes very clear. My mother and aunt loved me, stood by me, and supported me, no matter what. They were both good mothers. My greatest misery and grief is that I have not been a good mother and I can't save my daughter. I pray that in our final days and hours Samantha will know how much I love her.
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Lisa See (Dreams of Joy (Shanghai Girls, #2))
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movie was going beautifully. Carmen was still shooting, and behaving herself, and her pregnancy had caused no problems, though Alan managed to show up every time they shot a love scene, and the director had called Allegra and was upset about it. But both movies were going well. And Allegra was helping Jeannie Morrison sell their house in Beverly Hills, and move to their ranch in Colorado. She wanted to get as far away as she could, and she wanted to complete the move before the kids started school in September. They still had bodyguards around the clock, but it appeared that the event that had shattered their lives had been the disturbed, passionate gesture
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Danielle Steel (The Wedding)
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When I watched Beverly Hills, 90210, I was so confused that Donna Martin, played by Tori Spelling, was considered a hot girl. To me, she looked like a sad horse in desperate need of a torta. Were all blond women automatically considered beautiful? Was I missing something? Was this some kind of conspiracy?
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Erika L. Sánchez (Crying in the Bathroom)
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Nothing testified more to the evanescence of position and wealth in Beverly Hills than its architecture. There was money in abundance to put up the settings of the grand life. But land—the one true mark of stable grandeur—was not to be had. The town was an industrial compound of the temporarily well-paid.
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Herman Wouk (Youngblood Hawke)
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The fugitives would either move on into Canada or integrate themselves in the Beacon Hill community.” “Something else I never knew.” “It was a maritime escape route. Many fugitives found freedom that way.
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Beverly Jenkins (To Catch a Raven (Women Who Dare, #3))
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Beverly Hills Demon Slayer Night
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Angie Fox (Beverly Hills Demon Slayer)
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The Beverly Hillbillies?" Roger says.
"Yeah," I say. "Call it therapy for the sleep-deprived."
"Really?" He shakes his head. "A bunch of hicks jumping around acting stupid?"
I stiffen. My acquired Yankee accent may sound like his, but I don't appreciate it when people from up north move south for the warm weather and then disrespect southerners. I recite the thesis from my freshman television studies paper. "Listen, Roger, The Beverly Hillbillies is based on a classic archetype: the stranger in a strange land."
"Oh yeah?" he says.
I lean against the kitchen doorway and hook one pink slipper over the other. "You see, the viewer identifies with the residents of Beverly Hills, who live by the rules of the 'regular' world. But Jed and Granny and Elly May reverse our expectations. We end up empathizing with them because our own cultural norms prove cold-hearted and illogical."
"This is so interesting," he says, checking his watch.
"Yes, it is, Roger, because we have come to understand that the naïve but kind 'hicks' are wiser than those who consider themselves sophisticated and smart.
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Virginia Hartman (The Marsh Queen)
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She looked like money, lean and round in only the right places, with a gap between her two front teeth she said she’d had filed by a cosmetic dentist in Beverly Hills. “Guys lose their shit over it,” she said, which, when I followed her on Instagram and scrolled her likes and comments, seemed to be true.
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Allie Rowbottom (Aesthetica)
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Her agency had arranged for Meghan to stay for free at the five-star Dorchester in Park Lane. Although she was unknown, Meghan insisted that she be registered using an alias. Soon after the booking was confirmed, Meghan announced that she could not stay in that hotel. The owner, the Sultan of Brunei Hassanal Bolkiah – whose Dorchester Collection included the Beverly Hills Hotel in Los Angeles and the Le Meurice in Paris – had recently suggested that adulterers and homosexuals should be punished according to sharia law; and that women who had abortions should be publicly flogged. Another hotel willing to provide free accommodation in return for Meghan agreeing to promote it was found. ‘She was protective of her image,’ said Nelthorpe-Cowne,
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Tom Bower (Revenge: Meghan, Harry and the war between the Windsors)
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He wouldn’t attract flies,’ was the verdict of a club owner invited to book Sinatra for a week of performances. Most believed that and because he’d angered so many people in the movies and recording industry few were willing to help including those who had made good money from his career. His friend Mickey Cohen stepped in with a ‘testimonial dinner’ in early 1951 at the Beverly Hills Hotel, the pink palace standing proudly on that tributary for fading stars, Sunset Boulevard, but it was a disappointing affair. Cohen had to outfit his own bodyguards and assorted other hoods in evening wear to make up the numbers. The invited ‘girls’ got more attention in the hotel’s Polo Lounge. Most of Hollywood thought it was all over for Frank Sinatra but across the country in New Jersey, which has a warm approach to all things Italian, was a pal who always believed the best was yet to come. Paul ‘Skinny’ D’Amato, a maestro of the entertainment business in Atlantic City, a Mafia indulged fixture of the Boardwalk, a gambler, and a fixer and, importantly, an entertaining and loveable man, met Sinatra in 1939. He proved a valuable connection and loyal ally.
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Mike Rothmiller (Frank Sinatra and the Mafia Murders)
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...my favorite Congressional incongruity: ...Red State legislators galumphing from meeting to meeting in full pancake makeup. Estee Lauder may well make more money on Capitol Hill than in Beverly Hills.
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Frank Bruni
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The desk phone trilled. The receptionist let out a loud sigh, set down her cell, and realigned her headset. “Fite Fitness, this is Carrie.” “Hi Carrie, this is Beverly Lewis, right next to you. I’m here to see Richard, the CFO.
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Gretchen Galway (Love Handles (Oakland Hills, #1))
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Sometimes, it was easy to forget to take a second and just breathe in the midst of everything that needed to be done.
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Angie Fox (Beverly Hills Demon Slayer)
Angie Fox (Beverly Hills Demon Slayer)
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Devrim sözcüğü kulağınıza hoş geliyor, değil mi? ama hiç öyle değildir, inanın bana. devrimin ne olduğunu bilmek ister misiniz? kan, bağırsak ve delilik. yolunuza çıktığı için ölen çocuklar, dünyadan habersiz yavrular. yanınızdaki kaltağın, hatta karınızın gözünüzün önünde kasaturalanıp ırzına geçilmesidir. bir zamanlar miki fare filmlerine gülen erkeklerin birbirine işkence etmeleridir. böyle bir eyleme geçmeden önce eylemin ruhunun nerede olduğunu ve eylem bittiğinde nerede olacağını çok iyi düşünmek gerek. Dostoyevski'nin Suç ve Ceza'sına katılmıyorum, koşullar ne olursa olsun kimseyi öldürme meselesi. ama iyi düşünmek gerek. işin delirtici yanı tek bir mermi bile sıkmadan canlarımızı alıyor olmaları. para babalarının şişko oğulları Beverly Hills'de on dört yaşında kızların ırzlarına geçerken ben bir yerlerde asgari ücretle belimi kırıyordum. helada beş dakika fazla kaldığı için işten kovulan adamlar biliyorum. anlatmak istemediğim çok şey gördüm. ama bir şeyi öldürmeden önce yerine daha iyisini koyabileceğinden emin olmalısın. parklarda nefret palavraları sıkan siyasi fırsatçılardan daha iyi bir şeyler olmalı elinizde. bir şeyin bedelini ödemek canınıza okuyacaksa otuz altı aylık garantiden fazlasını arayın. devrime duyulan romantik özlemin dışında bir şey göremedim henüz. ne gerçek bir lider ne de şimdiye kadar her devrim sonrası gelen ihanetin önüne geçebilecek bir platform. şayet birini yok edeceksem o adamın yerine karbon kopyasının gelmesini istemem. tarihi bar helasında barbut oynayan ayyaşlar gibi harcadık. insan ırkından utanç duyuyorum, ama bu utanca katkıda bulunmanın da bir anlamı yok. elimden gelirse utancı azaltmak isterim.
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Charles Bukowski (Notes of a Dirty Old Man)
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CAMILLE GRAMMER was a dancer on Club MTV. She later posed for Playboy, married (and divorced) actor Kelsey Grammer, and starred on the Real Housewives of Beverly Hills.
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Craig Marks (I Want My MTV: The Uncensored Story of the Music Video Revolution)
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A Pilonidal Cyst Removal is all the time organized close to the tailbone at the most paramount motivation behind the disconnected of the buttocks.The pimple can be depleted through a little section point or cleared surgically.
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pilonidalcystmd
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January 15: Fox holds a press party for Yves Montand, who has been cast (at Arthur Miller’s suggestion) to replace Gregory Peck in Let’s Make Love. Marilyn seems in better health and ready to work. Group photographs are taken of Miller, Simone Signoret (Montand’s wife), Montand, Marilyn, and Frankie Vaughan, a popular British singer, and Milton Berle, who also appears in Let’s Make Love. Marilyn is photographed with producer Buddy Adler, gossip columnist Dorothy Kilgallen, and director George Cukor. Marilyn and Miller join Montand and Signoret for dinner. The couples occupy adjoining bungalows in the Beverly Hills Hotel.
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Carl Rollyson (Marilyn Monroe Day by Day: A Timeline of People, Places, and Events)
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February 9: Gladys enters Rockhaven Sanitarium. Marilyn pays $250 a month to support her mother. Marilyn is honored as “A Rising Star” at the Photoplay Awards Dinner at the Crystal Room of the Beverly Hills Hotel. Sidney Skolsky accompanies her after Joe DiMaggio refuses to do so. Her gold lamé dress causes a sensation. Columnist Florabel Muir writes that the dress seems painted onto Marilyn’s body and is so striking (photographs of it are often reproduced) that Joan Crawford and Lana Turner were hardly noticed at the event.
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Carl Rollyson (Marilyn Monroe Day by Day: A Timeline of People, Places, and Events)