Boiler Quotes

We've searched our database for all the quotes and captions related to Boiler. Here they are! All 100 of them:

Stolen bodies working stolen land. It was an engine that did not stop, its hungry boiler fed with blood.
Colson Whitehead (The Underground Railroad)
She remember her granny telling her, 'Men are like coal boilers, Ellie. If you find a man you reckon to keep, you got to feed his belly every day, make him burn for you, then release some steam purty regular, or you ain't ever gonna get him to work.
Kresley Cole (Lothaire (Immortals After Dark, #11))
Art isn't only a painting. Art is anything that's creative, passionate, and personal. And great art resonates with the viewer, not only with the creator. What makes someone an artist? I don't think is has anything to do with a paintbrush. There are painters who follow the numbers, or paint billboards, or work in a small village in China, painting reproductions. These folks, while swell people, aren't artists. On the other hand, Charlie Chaplin was an artist, beyond a doubt. So is Jonathan Ive, who designed the iPod. You can be an artists who works with oil paints or marble, sure. But there are artists who work with numbers, business models, and customer conversations. Art is about intent and communication, not substances. An artists is someone who uses bravery, insight, creativity, and boldness to challenge the status quo. And an artists takes it personally. That's why Bob Dylan is an artist, but an anonymous corporate hack who dreams up Pop 40 hits on the other side of the glass is merely a marketer. That's why Tony Hsieh, founder of Zappos, is an artists, while a boiler room of telemarketers is simply a scam. Tom Peters, corporate gadfly and writer, is an artists, even though his readers are businesspeople. He's an artists because he takes a stand, he takes the work personally, and he doesn't care if someone disagrees. His art is part of him, and he feels compelled to share it with you because it's important, not because he expects you to pay him for it. Art is a personal gift that changes the recipient. The medium doesn't matter. The intent does. Art is a personal act of courage, something one human does that creates change in another.
Seth Godin (Linchpin: Are You Indispensable?)
If he doesn’t love me in a boiler suit, he’s not worth dressing up for in the first place.
Kate Quinn (The Rose Code)
The ship is sinking The ship is sinking There's leak, there's a leak,in the boiler room The poor, the lame, the blind Who ore the ones that we kept in charge Killers, thieves, and lawyers God's Away, God's away God's away on Business
Tom Waits
I thought of a remark . . . that the United States is like a 'gigantic boiler. Once the fire is lighted under it there is no limit to the power it can generate.' Being saturated and satiated with emotion and sensation, I went to bed and slept the sleep of the saved and thankful.
Winston S. Churchill
Why is there always one bloke in these boy bands who looks like he came to fix the boiler and somehow got bullied into joining the group?
John Connolly (The Infernals (Samuel Johnson, #2))
That was close,"he said, helping himself to coffee. Yeah, you almost opened the door to Morelli." I wasn't talking about Morelli. I was talking about us." That too," I said. Ranger sliced a bagel and looked for the toaster. It's broken,"I told him. He truned the boiler on and slid the bagel into the oven. That's surprisingly domestic for a man of mystery," I said to him. He looked at me over the rim of his coffee mug. "I like things hot.
Janet Evanovich (Twelve Sharp (Stephanie Plum, #12))
Felix Mersey might be the cream of the aristocracy, but in the boiler room Soap was undisputed king—grimy empire though it might be.
Gail Carriger (Curtsies & Conspiracies (Finishing School, #2))
Is it the boiler room? Is this the part where we both fall asleep and Freddy comes after us? ’Cause I could so kick his ass.
Julie Halpern (The F-It List)
When I was twelve I was obsessed. Everything was sex. Latin was sex. The dictionary fell open at 'meretrix', a harlot. You could feel the mystery coming off the word like musk. 'Meretrix'! This was none of your mensa-a-table, this was a flash from a forbidden planet, and it was everywhere. History was sex, French was sex, art was sex, the Bible, poetry, penfriends, games, music, everything was sex except biology which was obviously sex but not really sex, not the one which was secret and ecstatic and wicked and a sacrament and all the things it was supposed to be but couldn't be at one and the same time - I got that in the boiler room and it turned out to be biology after all.
Tom Stoppard (The Real Thing)
We walked to his Harley, and when I wrapped my arms around him, he rested his hand on mine. “I’m glad you were there tonight, Pidge. I’ve never had so much fun at a fight in my life.” I perched my chin on his shoulder and smiled. “That was because you were trying to win our bet.” He angled his neck to face me. “Damn right I was.” There was no amusement in his eyes, he was serious, and he wanted me to see it. My eyebrows shot up. “Is that why you were in such a bad mood today? Because you knew they’d fixed the boilers, and I would be leaving tonight?” Travis didn’t answer; he only smiled as he started his motorcycle. The drive to the apartment was uncharacteristically slow. At every stoplight, Travis would either cover my hands with his, or he would rest his hand on my knee.
Jamie McGuire (Beautiful Disaster (Beautiful, #1))
But the snags were thick, the water was treacherous and shallow, the boiler seemed indeed to have a sulky devil in it, and thus neither that fireman nor I had any time to peer into our creepy thoughts.
Joseph Conrad (Heart of Darkness)
I just want to know...if I am special,’ finished September, halfway between a whisper and a squeak. ‘In stories, when someone appears in a poof of green clouds and asks a girl to go away on an adventure, it’s because she’s special, because she’s smart and strong and can solve riddles and fight with swords and give really good speeches, and . . . I don’t know that I’m any of those things. I don’t even know that I’m as ill-tempered as all that. I’m not dull or anything, I know about geography and chess, and I can fix the boiler when my mother has to work. But what I mean to say is: Maybe you meant to go to another girl’s house and let her ride on the Leopard. Maybe you didn’t mean to choose me at all, because I’m not like storybook girls. I’m short and my father ran away with the army and I wouldn’t even be able to keep a dog from eating a bird.
Catherynne M. Valente (The Girl Who Circumnavigated Fairyland in a Ship of Her Own Making (Fairyland, #1))
Nanny Ogg was sitting in a chair by the fire with a quart mug in one hand, and was conducting the reprise with a cigar. She grinned when she saw Granny’s face. “What ho, my old boiler,” she screeched above the din. “See you turned up, then. Have a drink. Have two. Wotcher, Magrat. Pull up a chair and call the cat a bastard.
Terry Pratchett (Wyrd Sisters (Discworld, #6; Witches, #2))
Originally, the cellar served primarily as a coal store. Today it holds the boiler, idle suitcases, out-of-season sporting equipment, and many sealed cardboard boxes that are almost never opened but are always carefully transferred from house to house with every move in the belief that one day someone might want some baby clothes that have been kept in a box for twenty-five years.
Bill Bryson (At Home: A Short History of Private Life)
The rule apparently is – once a social revolution takes place there’s no need to stoke the boiler. But I ask you: why, when this whole business started, should everybody suddenly start clumping up and down the marble staircase in dirty galoshes and felt boots? Why must we now keep our galoshes under lock and key? And put a soldier on guard over them to prevent them from being stolen? Why has the carpet been removed from the front staircase? Did Marx forbid people to keep their staircases carpeted? Did Karl Marx say anywhere that the front door of No. 2 Kalabukhov House in Prechistenka Street must be boarded up so that people have to go round and come in by the back door? What good does it do anybody? Why can’t the proletarians leave their galoshes downstairs instead of dirtying the staircase?’ ‘But the proletarians don’t have any galoshes, Philip Philipovich,’ stammered the doctor.
Mikhail Bulgakov (Heart of a Dog)
Despina can be reached in two ways: by ship or by camel. The city displays one face to the traveler arriving overland and a different one to him who arrives by sea. When the camel driver sees, at the horizon of the tableland, the pinnacles of the skyscrapers come into view, the radar antennae, the white and red wind-socks flapping, the chimneys belching smoke, he thinks of a ship; he knows it is a city, but he thinks of it as a vessel that will take him away from the desert, a windjammer about to cast off, with the breeze already swelling the sails, not yet unfurled, or a steamboat with its boiler vibrating in the iron keel; and he thinks of all the ports, the foreign merchandise the cranes unload on the docks, the taverns where crews of different flags break bottles over one another’s heads, the lighted, ground-floor windows, each with a woman combing her hair. In the coastline’s haze, the sailor discerns the form of a camel’s withers, an embroidered saddle with glittering fringe between two spotted humps, advancing and swaying; he knows it is a city, but he thinks of it as a camel from whose pack hang wine-skins and bags of candied fruit, date wine, tobacco leaves, and already he sees himself at the head of a long caravan taking him away from the desert of the sea, toward oases of fresh water in the palm trees’ jagged shade, toward palaces of thick, whitewashed walls, tiled courts where girls are dancing barefoot, moving their arms, half-hidden by their veils, and half-revealed. Each city receives its form from the desert it opposes; and so the camel driver and the sailor see Despina, a border city between two deserts.
Italo Calvino (Invisible Cities)
So who is guilty? Everyone, or no one? Why should the worker assigned to the gas chamber be guiltier than the worker assigned to the boilers, the garden, the vehicles? The
Jonathan Littell (The Kindly Ones)
The land she tilled and worked had been Indian land. She knew the white men bragged about the efficiency of the massacres, where they killed women and babies, and strangled their futures in the crib. Stolen babies working stolen land. It was an engine that did not stop, its hungry boiler fed with blood.
Colson Whitehead (The Underground Railroad)
The city of Leonia refashions itself every day: every morning the people wake between fresh sheets, wash with just-unwrapped cakes of soap, wear brand-new clothing, take from the latest model refrigerator still unopened tins, listening to the last-minute jingles from the most up-to-date radio. On the sidewalks, encased in spotless plastic bags, the remains of yesterday's Leonia await the garbage truck. Not only squeezed tubes of toothpaste, blown-out light bulbs, newspapers, containers, wrappings, but also boilers, encyclopedias, pianos, porcelain dinner services. It is not so much by the things that each day are manufactured, sold, bought, that you can measure Leonia's opulence, but rather by the things that each day are thrown out to make room for the new. So you begin to wonder if Leonia's true passion is really , as they say, the enjoyment of new things, and not, instead, the joy of expelling, discarding, cleansing itself of a recurrent impurity. The fact is that street cleaners are welcomed like angels.
Italo Calvino (Invisible Cities)
Are we, intellectual sirs, not actively or passively 'producing' more and more words, more books, more articles, ceaselessly refilling the pot-boiler of speech, gorging ourselves on it rather, seizing books and 'experiences', to metamorphose them as quickly as possible into other words, plugging us in here, being plugged in there, just like Mina on her blue squared oilcloth, extending the market and the trade in words of course, but also multiplying the chances of jouissance, scraping up intensities wherever possible, and never being sufficiently dead, for we too are required to go from forty to the hundred a day, and we will never play the whore enough, we will never be dead enough
Jean-François Lyotard (Libidinal Economy)
No," Nathan grumbled. "Like, not piss on him, just all around him." Stuart raised an eyebrow. "Nath, you need to chill. We're in a bar, a busy bar. We can't stop people talking to each other." "I know but-" "Look, don't worry about it," Stuart insisted. "Try not to turn into a bunny boiler just yet.
Melanie Tushmore (A Bar Tender Tale (Bar Tenders, #1))
Oh, my dear fellow, if you want to be a gentleman you must give up being an artist. They’ve got nothing to do with one another. You hear of men painting pot-boilers to keep an aged mother – well, it shows they’re excellent sons, but it’s no excuse for bad work. They’re only tradesmen. An artist would let his mother go to the workhouse.
W. Somerset Maugham (Of Human Bondage)
Besides," said Kennedy, "the time when industry gets a grip of everything and uses it to its own advantage may not be particularly amusing. If men go on inventing machinery they'll end up by being swallowed by their own machines. I've always thought that the last day will be brought about by some colossal boiler heated to three thousand atmospheres blowing up the world." "And I bet the Yankees will have had a hand in it," said Joe.
Jules Verne (Five Weeks in a Balloon)
She still looked like a force to be reckoned with. Her short stature made her look cute and innocent, but I knew that was an illusion. She had fire in her boiler. Maybe it was misdirected, but I liked that fire.
Bud Rudesill (Hurricane Ginger)
This was the foreman—a boiler-maker by trade—a good worker. He was a lank, bony, yellow-faced man, with big intense eyes. His aspect was worried, and his head was as bald as the palm of my hand; but his hair in falling seemed to have stuck to his chin, and had prospered in the new locality, for his beard hung down to his waist.
Joseph Conrad (Heart of Darkness)
Its 300 stokers, trimmers, and firemen, working 100 per shift, would shovel 1,000 tons of coal a day into its 192 furnaces to heat its 25 boilers and generate enough superheated steam to spin the immense turbines of its engines.
Erik Larson (Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania)
Stephenson had large wrought-iron boiler plates available and he also had the courage of his calculations... The idea found its best-known expression in the Menai railway bridge opened in 1850. Stephenson's beams, which weighed 1,500 tons each, were built beside the Straits and were floated into position between the towers on rafts across a swirling tide. They were raised rather over a hundred feet up the towers by successive lifts with primitive hydraulic jacks. All this was not done without both apprehension and adventure; they were giants on the earth in those days.
J.E. Gordon (The New Science of Strong Materials: Or Why You Don't Fall through the Floor (Princeton Science Library, 58))
With the front casing removed, he fired up the boiler and showed him the colour of the gas flame. ‘It should normally burn blue, but due to corrosion, the flame is blue to orange, which is a tell-tale sign of leaking carbon monoxide.
B.P. Smythe (From a Poison Pen)
Stolen bodies working stolen land. It was an engine that did not stop, its hungry boiler fed with blood. With the surgeries that Dr. Stevens described, Cora thought, the whites had begun stealing futures in earnest. Cut you open and rip them out, dripping. Because that's what you do when you take away someone's babies - steal their future. Torture them as much as you can when they are on this earth, then take away the hope that one day their people will have it better.
Colson Whitehead (The Underground Railroad)
Strange things began to happen that made Holmes’s claims about being the devil seem almost plausible. Detective Geyer became seriously ill. The warden of Moyamensing prison committed suicide. The jury foreman was electrocuted in a freak accident. The priest who delivered Holmes’s last rites was found dead on the grounds of his church of mysterious causes. The father of Emeline Cigrand was grotesquely burned in a boiler explosion. And a fire destroyed the office of District Attorney George Graham, leaving only a photograph of Holmes unscathed.
Erik Larson (The Devil in the White City)
Let me sing the beauty of my Maggie. Legs:--the knees attached to the thighs, knees shiny, thighs like milk. Arms:--the levers of my content, the serpents of my joy. Back:--the sight of that in a strange street of dreams in the middle of Heaven would make me fall sitting from glad recognition. Ribs?--she had some melted and round like a well formed apple, from her thigh bones to waist I saw the earth roll. In her neck I hid myself like a lost snow goose of Australia, seeking the perfume of her breast. . . . She didn't let me, she was a good girl. The poor big alley cat, though almost a year younger, had black ideas about her legs that he hid from himself, also in his prayers didn't mention . . . the dog. Across the big world darkness I've come, in boat, in bus, in airplane, in train standing my shadow immense traversing the fields and the redness of engine boilers behind me making me omnipotent upon the earth of the night, like God--but I have never made love with a little finger that has won me since. I gnawed her face with my eyes; she loved that; and that was bastardly I didn't know she loved me--I didn't understand.
Jack Kerouac (Maggie Cassidy)
His life was absurd. He went all over the world accepting all kinds of bondage and escaping. He was roped to a chair. He escaped. He was chained to a ladder. He escaped. He was handcuffed, his legs were put in irons, he was tied up in a strait jacket and put in a locked cabinet. He escaped. He escaped from bank vaults, nailed-up barrels, sewn mailbags; he escaped from a zinc-lined Knabe piano case, a giant football, a galvanized iron boiler, a rolltop desk, a sausage skin. His escapes were mystifying because he never damaged or appeared to unlock what he escaped from. The screen was pulled away and there he stood disheveled but triumphant beside the inviolate container that was supposed to have contained him. He waved to the crowd. He escaped from a sealed milk can filled with water. He escaped from a Siberian exile van. From a Chinese torture crucifix. From a Hamburg penitentiary. From an English prison ship. From a Boston jail. He was chained to automobile tires, water wheels, cannon, and he escaped. He dove manacled from a bridge into the Mississippi, the Seine, the Mersey, and came up waving. He hung upside down and strait-jacketed from cranes, biplanes and the tops of buildings. He was dropped into the ocean padlocked in a diving suit fully weighted and not connected to an air supply, and he escaped. He was buried alive in a grave and could not escape, and had to be rescued. Hurriedly, they dug him out. The earth is too heavy, he said gasping. His nails bled. Soil fell from his eyes. He was drained of color and couldn't stand. His assistant threw up. Houdini wheezed and sputtered. He coughed blood. They cleaned him off and took him back to the hotel. Today, nearly fifty years since his death, the audience for escapes is even larger.
E.L. Doctorow (Ragtime)
Can I make you happier with powder on my chest? Do you need a thousand movie shows? Sixteen million people to ride the bus with, hit the stop—I shoulda never let you go away from home—“ Rich lips brooded in my deaf ear. “The fog’ll fall all over you, Jacky, you’ll wait in fields—You’ll let me die—you wont come save me—I wont even know where your grave is—remember what you were like, where your house, what your life—you’ll die without knowing what happened to my face—my love—my youth—You’ll burn yourself out like a moth jumping in a locomotive boiler looking for light—Jacky—and you’ll be dead—and lose yourself from yourself—and forget—and sink—and me too—and what is all this then?” “I dont know—“ “Then come back to our porch of the river the night time the trees and you love stars—I hear the bus on the corner—where you’re getting off—no more, boy, no more—I saw, had visions and idees of you handsome my husband walking across the top of the America with your lantern... Out of her eyes I saw smoldering I’d like to rip this damn dress off and never see it again!
Jack Kerouac (Maggie Cassidy)
Biff.. What he had said to Alice was true - he did like freaks. He had a special friendly feeling for sick people and cripples. Whenever somebody with a harelip or TB came into the place he would set him up to beer. Or if the customer were a hunchback or a bad cripple, then it would be whisky in the house. There was one fellow who had had his peter and his left leg blown off in a boiler explosion, and whenever he came to town there was a free pint waiting for him.
Carson McCullers (Heart Is a Lonely Hunter)
My first crush was a sarcastic know-it-all Immortal named Methos, a character from Highlander. To this day I am convinced he is my perfect soulmate. And the focus of my sexual awakening. Lots of people cite the boiler room scene from My So-Called Life, Jareth in Labyrinth, Colin Firth in Pride & Prejudice, or any/all members of the Fellowship of the Ring. But mine happened when Methos rolled out of bed in nothing but boxers to defend his life with a Roman short sword. Unf.
J.M. Frey (The Secret Loves of Geek Girls)
Don't be a bunny boiler.
Arianne Richmonde (Forty Shades of Pearl (The Pearl Trilogy, #1))
Alfred Simmonds, Horse Slaughterer and Glue Boiler, Willingdon. Dealer in Hides and Bone-Meal. Kennels Supplied.
George Orwell (Animal Farm)
Overlook’s boiler had exploded, and how the old hotel had burned to the ground in a driving blizzard.
Stephen King (Doctor Sleep (The Shining, #2))
Stolen bodies working stolen land. It was an engine that did not stop, its hungry boiler fed with blood. With the surgeries that Dr. Stevens described, Cora
Colson Whitehead (The Underground Railroad)
If the fires go out in the boiler room of the church, the place will still look smart and clean... but it will be cold. The prayer room of the church is the boiler room for the spiritual life.
Leonard Ravenhill (Revival God's Way)
Torrance? What’s the trouble?” “No trouble,” he said. “The boiler’s okay and I haven’t even gotten around to murdering my wife yet. I’m saving that until after the holidays, when things get dull.
Stephen King (The Shining (The Shining, #1))
Mari took one more look at the Mechanic boiler, bit her lip, then looked at him. "I'm going to say this because in another minute we may be dead, and I don't want to die not having told you. I love you.
Jack Campbell (The Dragons of Dorcastle (The Pillars of Reality, #1))
This was fresh, rich, heavenly, succulent, soft, creamy, kiss-my-ass, cows-gotta-die-for-this, delightfully salty, moo-ass, good old white folks cheese, cheese to die for, cheese to make you happy, cheese to beat the cheese boss, cheese for the big cheese, cheese to end the world, cheese so good it inspired a line every first Saturday of the month: mothers, daughters, fathers, grandparents, disabled in wheelchairs, kids, relatives from out of town, white folks from nearby Brooklyn Heights, and even South American workers from the garbage-processing plant on Concord Avenue, all patiently standing in a line that stretched from the interior of Hot Sausage’s boiler room to Building 17’s outer doorway, up the ramp to the sidewalk, curling around the side of the building and to the plaza near the flagpole.
James McBride (Deacon King Kong)
Well, let me go and wake Soap." "Oh, no need to disturb him." "Course there's need. Why do you think I was set to watch the hatch? Waiting on the ghost of boilers past? He'll box my ears if I don't tell him you came.
Gail Carriger (Etiquette & Espionage (Finishing School, #1))
Before water generates steam, it must register two hundred and twelve degrees of heat. Two hundred degrees will not do it; two hundred and ten will not do it. The water must boil before it will generate enough steam to move an engine, to run a train. Lukewarm water will not run anything. A great many people are trying to move their life trains with lukewarm water—or water that is almost boiling—and they are wondering why they are stalled, why they cannot get ahead. They are trying to run a boiler with two hundred or two hundred and ten degrees of heat, and they cannot understand why they do not get anywhere.” Lukewarmness in his work stands in the same relation to man’s achievement as lukewarm water does to the locomotive boiler. No man can hope to accomplish anything great in this world until he throws his whole soul, flings his force to his whole life, into it.
Orison Swett Marden
The word went wild, echoing against the hoist-house walls and adjacent boiler rooms, banging off the time shack and the bit-building across the way, rattling against last century’s mining equipment abandoned on the end of the track.
George R.R. Martin (Rogues)
Many terrible things begin with B: blindness, boilers, bats, bridges, and brain tumors. But no one brings any of those to a party to up the fun quotient. When I look at a balloon, all I see is an imminent explosion. Where's the fun in that?
Roz Chast
Doc awakened very slowly and clumsily like a fat man getting out of a swimming pool. His mind broke the surface and fell back several times. There was red lipstick on his beard. He opened one eye, saw the brilliant colors of the quilt and closed his eye quickly. But after a while he looked again. His eye went past the quilt to the floor, to the broken plate in the corner, to the glasses standing on the table turned over on the floor, to the spilled wine and the books like heavy fallen butterflies. There were little bits of curled red paper all over the place and the sharp smell of firecrackers. He could see through the kitchen door to the steak plates stacked high and the skillets deep in grease. Hundreds of cigarette butts were stamped out on the floor. And under the firecracker smell was a fine combination of wine and whiskey perfume. His eye stopped for a moment on a little pile of hairpins in the middle of the floor. He rolled over slowly and supporting himself on one elbow he looked out the broken window. Cannery Row was quiet and sunny. The boiler was open. The door of the Palace Flophouse was closed. A man slept peacefully among the weeds in the vacant lot. The Bear Flag was shut up tight.
John Steinbeck
As he neared the conclusion of the speech, he fired his boilers. “We shall go on to the end,” he said, in a crescendo of ferocity and confidence. “We shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be. We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender—
Erik Larson (The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz)
Only now did Pierre realize the full strength of life in man and the saving power he has of transferring his attention from one thing to another, which is like the safety valve of a boiler that allows superfluous steam to blow off when the pressure exceeds a certain limit.
Leo Tolstoy (War and Peace : Complete and Unabridged)
He looked down at the desk, at his notebook resting there with the pen on top. He had never thought of engineering as a way to escape the world; after all, engineers didn't build stories or other worlds. Or, well, perhaps they did; perhaps, late at night, huddled around the boiler with the driver and the conductor, they told their own stories. Famous robberies in the west, derailments, perhaps even ghost trains or passengers long dead who still prowled the carriages. Either way, Jack had turned his profession into his escape, which Ellis could respect.
Sam Starbuck (The Dead Isle)
My father was a blacksmith, my uncle was a horse doctor, and I was both, along at first. Then I went over to the great arms factory and learned my real trade; learned all there was to it; learned to make everything; guns, revolvers, cannon, boilers, engines, all sorts of labor-saving machinery.
Mark Twain (A Connecticut Yankee in King Arthur's Court)
steam boiler, delivering so and so many pounds of steam to its engines as long as the envelope can contain the pressure; but let a breach in its continuity arise—relieving the boiling water of all restraint—and in a moment the whole mass flashes into vapour, developing a power no work of man can oppose.
Carl von Clausewitz (On War)
She remembered her granny telling her, “Men are like coal boilers, Ellie. If you find a man you reckon to keep, you got to feed his belly every day, make him burn for you, then release some steam purty regular, or you ain’t ever gonna get him to work.” Hell, Saroya could take a lesson from Granny Peirce!
Kresley Cole (Lothaire (Immortals After Dark, #12))
Today it holds the boiler, idle suitcases, out-of-season sporting equipment, and many sealed cardboard boxes that are almost never opened but are always carefully transferred from house to house with every move in the belief that one day someone might want some baby clothes that have been kept in a box for twenty-five years.
Bill Bryson (At Home: A Short History of Private Life)
This epoch will pass away, people have already begun to understand that, if there can be force in a boiler, there can be no force except in the brain; in other words, that which leads and drags on the world, is not locomotives, but ideas. Harness locomotives to ideas,—that is well done; but do not mistake the horse for the rider.
Victor Hugo (Complete Works of Victor Hugo)
As he neared the conclusion of the speech, he fired his boilers. “We shall go on to the end,” he said, in a crescendo of ferocity and confidence. “We shall fight in France, we shall fight on the seas and oceans, we shall fight with growing confidence and growing strength in the air, we shall defend our island, whatever the cost may be. We shall fight on the beaches, we shall fight on the landing grounds, we shall fight in the fields and in the streets, we shall fight in the hills; we shall never surrender—” As the House roared its approval, Churchill muttered to a colleague, “And…we will fight them with the butt end of broken bottles, because that’s bloody well all we’ve got.
Erik Larson (The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz)
I see now how this must have come across to my mother, who was then in the ninth year of a job she’d taken primarily so she could help finance my college education, after years of not having a job so that she’d be free to sew my school clothes, cook my meals, and do laundry for my dad, who for the sake of our family spent eight hours a day watching gauges on a boiler at the filtration plant. My mom, who’d just driven an hour to fetch me from the airport, who was letting me live rent-free in the upstairs of her house, and who would have to get herself up at dawn the next morning in order to help my disabled dad get ready for work, was hardly ready to indulge my angst about fulfillment.
Michelle Obama (Becoming)
and near victims are very concerned after a disaster. After each significant earthquake, Californians are for a while diligent in purchasing insurance and adopting measures of protection and mitigation. They tie down their boiler to reduce quake damage, seal their basement doors against floods, and maintain emergency supplies in good order. However,
Daniel Kahneman (Thinking, Fast and Slow)
Besides,” said Kennedy, “that may prove to be a very dull period when industry will swallow up every thing for its own profit. By dint of inventing machinery, men will end in being eaten up by it! I have always fancied that the end of the earth will be when some enormous boiler, heated to three thousand millions of atmospheric pressure, shall explode and blow up our Globe!
Jules Verne (Jules Verne: The Extraordinary Voyages Collection (The Greatest Writers of All Time Book 42))
Lewis’s first novel appeared in November 1912 under the pseudonym of Tom Graham, because Lewis regarded it as a pot boiler, which was written quickly to pay the bills rather than for any artistic endeavour. It had an initial print run of 1,000 copies and sold less than 800 of those. Lewis later revealed that it was written “on a wharf in Provincetown, Mass. on a vacation from my bosses”.
Sinclair Lewis (Delphi Collected Works of Sinclair Lewis (Illustrated))
but be sure not to have it boil. Remove from the fire, and add a piece of butter the size of an egg. This is sufficient for eight people. =Potato Soup= 4 Potatoes 3 Pints of Milk Piece of Butter size of an Egg Small piece of Onion Take four large potatoes, boil until done and mash smooth, adding butter and salt to taste. Heat the milk in a double boiler, cook the onion in it a few minutes and then
Lydia Maria Gurney (Things Mother Used to Make A Collection of Old Time Recipes, Some Nearly One Hundred Years Old and Never Published Before)
Anyone looking up from the dock saw only beauty, on a monumental scale, while on the far side of the ship men turned black with dust as they shoveled coal—5,690 tons in all—into the ship through openings in the hull called “side pockets.” The ship burned coal at all times. Even when docked it consumed 140 tons a day to keep furnaces hot and boilers primed and to provide electricity from the ship’s dynamo to power lights, elevators, and, very important, the Marconi transmitter, whose antenna stretched between its two masts. When the Lusitania was under way, its appetite for coal was enormous. Its 300 stokers, trimmers, and firemen, working 100 per shift, would shovel 1,000 tons of coal a day into its 192 furnaces to heat its 25 boilers and generate enough superheated steam to spin the immense turbines of its engines.
Erik Larson (Dead Wake: The Last Crossing of the Lusitania)
After a haf hour or so, they was beatin on the tables with they knives an forks like in a prison riot, an I knowed I had to do somethin fast, so I turned the boiler up high as it could go. I’m settin there watchin it, so nervous I didn’t know what to do, when all of a sudden the first sergeant come bustin thru the door. “What in hell is goin on here?” he axed. “Where is these men’s food?” “It is almost ready, Sergeant,” I say, an jus about then, the boiler commenced to rumble an shake. Steam begun to come out of the sides an one of the legs on the boiler tore loose from the floor. “What is that?” the sergeant axed. “Is you cookin somethin in that boiler!” “That is the supper,” I says, an the sergeant got this real amazed look on his face, an a secont later, he got a real frightened look, like you might get jus before an automobile wreck, an then the boiler blew up. I am not exactly sure what happened nex. I do remember that it blowed the roof off the mess hall an blowed all the winders out an the doors too. It blowed the dishwasher guy right thru a wall, an the guy what was stackin plates jus took off up in the air, sort of like Rocket Man. Sergeant an me, we is miraculously spared somehow, like they say will happen when you are so close to a han grenade that you aren’t hurt by
Winston Groom (Forrest Gump (Vintage Contemporaries))
They're installing a boiler system," Pandora said, flipping through a book. "It's a set of two large copper cylinders filled with water pipes that are heated by gas burners. One never has to wait for the hot water- it comes at once through expansion pipes attached to the top of the boiler." "Pandora," Kathleen asked suspiciously, "how do you know all that?" "The master plumber explained it to me." "Dear," Helen said gently, "it's not seemly for you to converse with a man when you haven't been introduced. Especially a laborer in our home." "But Helen, he's old. He looks like Father Christmas." "Age has nothing to do with it," Kathleen said crisply. "Pandora, you promised to abide by the rules." "I do," Pandora protested, looking chagrined. "I follow all the rules that I can remember." "How is it that you remember the details of a plumbing system but not basic etiquette?" "Because plumbing is more interesting.
Lisa Kleypas (Cold-Hearted Rake (The Ravenels, #1))
Stolen bodies working stolen land. It was an engine that did not stop, its hungry boiler fed with blood. With the surgeries that Dr. Stevens described, Cora thought, the whites had begun stealing futures in earnest. Cut you open and rip them out, dripping. Because that's what you do when you take away someone's babies--steal their future. Torture them as much as you can when they are on this earth, then take away the hope that one day their people will have it better.
Colson Whitehead (The Underground Railroad)
Even Henry and Caroline, whom she saw every day, were half hidden under their accumulations--accumulations of prosperity, authority, daily experience. They were carpeted with experience. No new event could set jarring feet on them but they would absorb and muffle the impact. If the boiler burst, if a policeman climbed in at the window waving a sword, Henry and Caroline would bring the situation to heel by their massive experience of normal boilers and normal policemen.
Sylvia Townsend Warner
Electricity," Purva said, rolling the strange new word around in her mouth, giving it at once an Australian and a French inflection. "Sir William was playing around with it when we met, do you remember?" Jack said to Clare. "He was storing charges in boxes." "I remember he was blowing things up," Clare replied. "Six of one..." Jack grinned. "Nobody really knows how it works, but down here it powers most of the lights in the big cities and parts of the automobiles and the stoves in the train kitchen. You can store the power in blocks, then hook it up to anything you might otherwise run on a boiler. It's cooler, and the blocks last longer than coal. I think I can reproduce it when we get home, if I can take enough schematics with me." "He is going to kill himself," Purva said, but her tone was casual, not overly worried. "I'm not going to kill myself," Jack answered, equally casual. "Just because it can cause your heart to stop doesn't mean it always does.
Sam Starbuck (The Dead Isle)
I think I would make a very good astronaut. To be a good astronaut you have to be intelligent and I’m intelligent. You also have to understand how machines work and I’m good at understanding how machines work. You also have to be someone who would like being on their own in a tiny spacecraft thousands and thousands of miles away from the surface of the earth and not panic or get claustrophobia or homesick or insane. And I really like little spaces, so long as there is no one else in them with me. Sometimes when I want to be on my own I get into the airing cupboard outside the bathroom and slide in beside the boiler and pull the door closed behind me and sit there and think for hours and it makes me feel very calm. So I would have to be an astronaut on my own, or have my own part of the space craft which no one else could come into. And also there are no yellow things or brown things in a space craft, so that would be okay too. And I would have to talk to other people from Mission Control, but we would do that through a radio linkup and a TV monitor, so they wouldn’t be like real people who are strangers, but it would be like playing a computer game. Also I wouldn’t be homesick at all because I’d be surrounded by things I like, which are machines and computers and outer space. And I would be able to look out of a little window in the spacecraft and know that there was no one near me for thousands and thousands of miles, which is what I sometimes pretend at night in the summer when I go and lie on the lawn and look up at the sky and I put my hands round the sides of my face so that I can’t see the fence and the chimney and the washing line and I can pretend I’m in space. And all I could see would be stars. And stars are the places where molecules that life is made of were constructed billions of years ago. For example, all the iron in your blood which keeps you from being anemic was made in a star. And I would like it if I could take Toby with me into space, and that might be allowed because they sometimes do take animals into space for experiments, so if I could think of a good experiment you could do with a rat that didn’t hurt the rat, I could make them let me take Toby. But if they didn’t let me I would still go because it would be a Dream Come True.
Mark Haddon (The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time)
Oh, my dear fellow, if you want to be a gentleman you must give up being an artist. They've got nothing to do with one another. You hear of men painting pot-boilers to keep an aged mother--well, it shows they're excellent sons, but it's no excuse for bad work. They're only tradesmen. An artist would let his mother go to the workhouse. There's a writer I know over here who told me that his wife died in childbirth. He was in love with her and he was mad with grief, but as he sat at the bedside watching her die he found himself making mental notes of how she looked and what she said and the things he was feeling. Gentlemanly, wasn't it? (381)
W. Somerset Maugham
Die alone in one of his old rooms and what's the last thing he thinks of before he kicks the bucket--Nickel. Nickel hunting him to his final moment--a vessel in his brain explodes or his heart flops in his chest--and then beyond, too. Perhaps Nickel was the very afterlife that awaited him, with a White House down the hill and an eternity of oatmeal and the infinite brotherhood of broken boys. He hadn't thought about going out like that in years--he'd packed it up in a box and put it in his basement, next to the boiler and the neglected fishing gear. With the rest of the stuff from the old days. He stopped embroidering that fantasy long ago.
Colson Whitehead (The Nickel Boys)
wreckage before the sun went down. The final toll was a hundred and two. Eighty-eight of the dead were children. On the following Wednesday, while the city still lay in stunned silent contemplation of the tragedy, a woman found the head of nine-year-old Robert Dohay caught in the limbs of her back-yard apple tree. There was chocolate on the Dohay lad’s teeth and blood in his hair. He was the last of the known dead. Eight children and one adult were never accounted for. It was the worst tragedy in Derry’s history, even worse than the fire at the Black Spot in 1930, and it was never explained. All four of the Ironworks’ boilers were shut down. Not just banked; shut down. But:
Stephen King (It)
clothes off, cept for the big chef’s hat I was wearin at the time. An it blowed stew all over us, so’s we looked like—well, I don’t know what we looked like—but man, it was strange. Incredibly, it didn’t do nothin to all them guys settin out there in the mess hall neither. Jus lef em settin at they tables, covered with stew, actin kinda shell-shocked or somethin—but it sure did shut their asses up about when they food is gonna be ready. Suddenly the company commander come runnin into the buildin. “What was that!” he shouted. “What happen?” He look at the two of us, an then holler, “Sergeant Kranz, is that you?” “Gump—Boiler—Stew!” the sergeant say, an then he kind of git holt of hissef an grapped a meat cleaver off the wall. “Gump—Boiler—Stew!” he scream, an come after me with the cleaver. I done run out the door, an he be chasin me all over the parade grounds, an even thru the Officer’s Club an the Motorpool. I outrunned him tho, cause that is my specialty, but let me say this: they ain’t no question in my mind that I am up the creek for sure. One night, the next fall, the phone rung in the barracks an it was Bubba. He say they done dropped his atheletic scholarship cause his foot broke worst than they thought, an so he’s leavin school too. But he axed if I can git off to come up to Birmingham to watch the University play them geeks from Mississippi. But I am confined to quarters that Saturday, as I have been ever weekend since the stew
Winston Groom (Forrest Gump (Vintage Contemporaries))
In stories when someone appears in a poof of green clouds and asks a girl to go away on an adventure, it's because she's special, because she's smart and strong and can solve riddles and fight with swords, and give really good speeches, and... I don't know if I'm any of those things. I don't even know that I'm as ill-tempered as all that. I'm not dull or anything. I know about geography and chess, and I can fix the boiler when my mother has to work. But what I mean to say is: Maybe you meant to go to another girl's house and let her ride on the Leopard. Maybe you didn't mean to choose me at all, because I'm not like storybook girls. I'm short and my father ran away with the army and I wouldn't even be able to keep a dog from eating a bird.
Catherynee M. Valente
When I opened my eyes, we were still surrounded by darkness. A lantern, standing on the ground, showed a bubbling well. The water splashing from the well disappeared, almost at once, under the floor on which I was lying, with my head on the knee of the man in the black cloak and the black mask. He was bathing my temples and his hands smelt of death. I tried to push them away and asked, ‘Who are you? Where is the voice?’ His only answer was a sigh. Suddenly, a hot breath passed over my face and I perceived a white shape, beside the man’s black shape, in the darkness. The black shape lifted me on to the white shape, a glad neighing greeted my astounded ears and I murmured, ‘Cesar!’ The animal quivered. Raoul, I was lying half back on a saddle and I had recognized the white horse out of the PROFETA, which I had so often fed with sugar and sweets. I remembered that, one evening, there was a rumor in the theater that the horse had disappeared and that it had been stolen by the Opera ghost. I believed in the voice, but had never believed in the ghost. Now, however, I began to wonder, with a shiver, whether I was the ghost’s prisoner. I called upon the voice to help me, for I should never have imagined that the voice and the ghost were one. You have heard about the Opera ghost, have you not, Raoul?” “Yes, but tell me what happened when you were on the white horse of the Profeta?” “I made no movement and let myself go. The black shape held me up, and I made no effort to escape. A curious feeling of peacefulness came over me and I thought that I must be under the influence of some cordial. I had the full command of my senses; and my eyes became used to the darkness, which was lit, here and there, by fitful gleams. I calculated that we were in a narrow circular gallery, probably running all round the Opera, which is immense, underground. I had once been down into those cellars, but had stopped at the third floor, though there were two lower still, large enough to hold a town. But the figures of which I caught sight had made me run away. There are demons down there, quite black, standing in front of boilers, and they wield shovels and pitchforks and poke up fires and stir up flames and, if you come too near them, they frighten you by suddenly opening the red mouths of their furnaces … Well, while Cesar was quietly carrying me on his back, I saw those black demons in the distance, looking quite small, in front of the red fires of their furnaces: they came into sight, disappeared and came into sight again, as we went on our winding way. At last, they disappeared altogether. The shape was still holding me up and Cesar walked on, unled and sure-footed. I could not tell you, even approximately, how long this ride lasted; I only know that we seemed to turn and turn and often went down a spiral stair into the very heart of the earth. Even then, it may be that my head was turning, but I don’t think so: no, my mind was quite clear. At last, Cesar raised his nostrils, sniffed the air and quickened his pace a little. I felt a moistness in the air and Cesar stopped. The darkness had lifted. A sort of bluey light surrounded us. We were on the edge of a lake, whose leaden waters stretched into the distance, into the darkness; but the blue light lit up the bank and I saw a little boat fastened to an iron ring on the wharf!” - Chapter 12: Apollo’s Lyre
Gaston Leroux (The Phantom of the Opera)
For a man who had gone out of his way to avoid her during the first few days of her employment, Darius Thornton had become annoyingly attentive of late. He’d dined with her each of the last three nights, to Mrs. Wellborn’s delight and Nicole’s dismay. He insisted she attend him in the workshop every afternoon, either to talk through his latest investigative hypothesis or to assist with his efforts at salvaging what parts he could from the exploded boilers. And tonight, he’d called her into the study hours after the sun had set to go over the article chronicling the results of the boiler plate experiment she’d been working on for submission to the Franklin Institute’s journal. How in the world was she supposed to maintain a healthy emotional distance from the man if he insisted on constantly thrusting his physical self into her presence day and night?
Karen Witemeyer (Full Steam Ahead)
Will you need assistance with the boilers, as well?” “I can manage those on my own, but we’ll need two wheelbarrow loads of wood to fuel the fireboxes. There’s a barrow out by the woodshed. If you would start loading it while I move the boilers down to the pond, that would save considerable time.” “Aye, aye, Captain.” Nicole clicked her heels together and snapped a salute. Her employer seemed a bit nonplussed by her actions until she winked at him and allowed the smile she’d been fighting to bloom across her face. He laughed then and gave her a playful push in the direction of the shed. “Hop to, sailor, before I make you walk the plank for insubordination.” Nicole scurried away, giving her best imitation of a cowed crew member, bowing and scraping as she trotted over the packed dirt of the yard. Darius’s deep chuckles followed her, the rich sound warming a place inside her that she hadn’t even realized had been cold.
Karen Witemeyer (Full Steam Ahead)
So, these competitors . . . What do they hope to gain by interfering with your journey?” The instant the question left his mouth, he knew it was too direct. Nicole dropped her gaze and removed her hand from his arm. “With all due respect, Mr. Thornton . . .” Drat. They were back to Mr. Thornton again. “ . . . the details of the business I’m conducting for my father are not your concern.” “They are if they put you in danger. And what of the rest of my staff?” Darius snatched the napkin from his lap and threw it onto the table before lurching to his feet and pacing behind his chair. “I have a right to know if having you here is putting them at risk.” “No greater risk than they face from your exploding boilers!” Nicole shot from her seat, color running high in her cheeks. The audacity of the chit. “I take every precaution—” “As do I.” She glared at him. “The Wellborns are in no peril, especially if they keep my presence here a secret. It’s doubtful that Jenkins’s sons will find me, anyway. Heaven knows they aren’t the sharpest knives in the drawer.” “As master of this house, it’s my duty to know the business of those under my roof.” He didn’t know what nonsense he was spouting now. He didn’t care. Nicole had let a vital piece of information slip in her anger, and he wasn’t about to let the argument cool long enough for her to notice her lapse. “Well, perhaps it’s time I collect the pay I’ve earned and leave you and your roof to your own devices.” Not on her life. The woman would be unprotected. Vulnerable. Easy prey for that Jenkins scum. But he couldn’t let her know his refusal was out of concern for her. She’d simply assure him she’d be fine and walk out the door. Darius crossed his arms over his chest and looked down his nose at her. “You agreed to accept payment after a term of two weeks. I’ll not pay a cent before then. You owe me ten more days, Miss Greyson. Or do you plan to renege on our agreement?” Her hands fisted at her sides. “I never go back on my word.
Karen Witemeyer (Full Steam Ahead)
She knew she was rambling but couldn’t seem to stop. His continued silence had stretched her nerves nearly to the snapping point. “Miss Greyson?” His deep voice cut through her babble, sparing her from further maligning her own intelligence. “Yes?” She forced her chin up. The lines that had grooved his face mere moments ago were now barely visible. It was as if ten years of hard living had just fallen away. Her own heart lightened in response. A grin broke out across Darius Thornton’s face. “I think I might just have to kiss you.” Chapter 11 And then, unbelievably, he did. His warning gave Nicole no time to react, for as soon as the words left his mouth, Darius Thornton gripped her upper arms and planted a fast yet fierce kiss on her lips. Oh, it was perfectly chaste—a celebratory kiss, not anything with romantic intent—but it rattled her just the same. He laughed, called her a genius, and immediately snatched his logbook from her fingers and began jotting notes in the margin as he returned his attention to the boilers.
Karen Witemeyer (Full Steam Ahead)
You’ve been good for him, you know. For all of us, really, but especially for the master.” Nicole’s pulse sped at the thought even as her mind discounted the comment as illogical. “I don’t see how you could think that. I’ve been here less than a week, and before today he avoided my company as much as possible.” A knowing grin curved the housekeeper’s lips. “You’re young, dearie. You don’t have the experience to see what I can. Believe me, I’ve noticed a change in him since your arrival. That burden he’s been carrying for the last year and a half has been grinding him down with its weight month after month, draining his life like an insatiable leech. Then you came, and it was as if the load lightened.” As Nicole opened her mouth to respond, Mrs. Wellborn hurried to add, “And not just because you’re helping him transcribe all those notebooks of his.” She winked at Nicole over her teacup, and Nicole immediately raised her own cup to her lips, desperate for an excuse to drop her gaze. “You give him something to think about besides those horrible boilers. Something much more uplifting, if you ask me.
Karen Witemeyer (Full Steam Ahead)
But I drew the line, one evening, at Jerry O'Keefe's, the fish-shop where people crammed in late for hot plates of peas and chips and yellow-battered fish, in a kind of boiler house of steaming fat, after the last cinema show or the old theatre. 'But why?' she said. 'Why? It looks fun in there.' I said I did not think it the place for her, and she said: 'You talk like a parson or something. You talk just like old Miss Crouch.' 'I'm not taking you,' I said. 'Why? If it's good enough for these people it's good enough for us, isn't it?' 'No.' 'That's because you're really an awful snob,' she said. 'You're too uppish to be seen in there.' 'It's not myself,' I said. 'It's you.' 'Are you going to take me or aren't you?' she said. 'No,' I said. 'I'm not.' She turned and walked down the street. I stood for a moment alone, stubbornly, watching her swinging away into darkness out of the steamy, glowing gas-light. Then I had a moment of sickness when I felt she was walking out of my life, that I had given her impossible offence and that I should never see her again. 'Wait,' I said, 'wait. Don't go like that. I'll take you.
H.E. Bates (Love for Lydia)
I’ll go myself,” the sergeant said tersely. He was getting annoyed. The stairway went down underneath the ground floor to a depth of about eight feet. A short paved corridor ran in front of the boiler room at right angles to the stairs, where each end was closed off by unpainted panelled doors. Both the stairs and the corridor felt like loose gravel underfoot, but otherwise they were clean. Splotches of blood were more in evidence in the corridor and a bloody hand mark showed clearly on the unpainted door to the rear. “Let’s not touch anything,” the sergeant cautioned, taking out a clean white handkerchief to handle the doorknob. “I better call the fingerprint crew,” the photographer said. “No, Joe will call them; I’ll need you. And you local fellows better wait outside, we’re so crowded in here we’ll destroy the evidence.” “Ed and I won’t move,” Grave Digger said. Coffin Ed grunted. Taking no further notice of them, the sergeant pushed open the door. It was black and dark inside. First he shone his light over the wall alongside the door and all over the corridor looking for electric light switches. One was located to the right of each door. Taking care to avoid stepping in any of the blood splotches, the sergeant moved from one switch to another, but none worked. “Blown fuse,” he muttered, picking his way back to the open room. Without having to move, Grave Digger and Coffin Ed could see all they wanted through the open door. Originally made to accommodate a part-time janitor or any type of laborer who would fire the boiler for a place to sleep, the room had been converted into a pad. All that remained of the original was a partitioned-off toilet in one corner and a washbasin in the other. An opening enclosed by heavy wire mesh opened into the boiler room, serving for both ventilation and heat. Otherwise the room was furnished like a boudoir. There was a dressing-table with a triple mirror, three-quarter bed with chenille spread, numerous foam-rubber pillows in a variety of shapes, three round yellow scatter rugs. On the whitewashed walls an obscene mural had been painted in watercolors depicting black and white silhouettes in a variety of perverted sex acts, some of which could only be performed by male contortionists. And everything was splattered with blood, the walls, the bed, the rugs. The furnishings were not so much disarrayed, as though a violent struggle had taken place, but just bloodied. “Mother-raper stood still and let his throat be cut,” Grave Digger observed. “Wasn’t that,” Coffin Ed corrected. “He just didn’t believe it is all.
Chester Himes (Blind Man with a Pistol (Harlem Cycle, #8))
Even though Jasmine was supposed to try Marcella's Stone Plum Soup tonight, she pulled at her baking cupboard. She wanted chocolate. She wanted oozing, rich, creamy, comforting chocolate. She would throw chops on the grill and toss a salad for dinner. Tonight, she was going to concentrate her efforts on dessert. She pulled out her big bowl and mixer. She took down blocks of chocolate, vanilla, sugar. Poked her head into the refrigerator to count the eggs. Ten. Just enough. Her mouth watered, her tongue repeatedly swallowing the swamp that had become her mouth. Cream? A pint poked from behind the mayonnaise. She smelled it. One day to spare. She padded to the liquor cabinet and examined her choices. Brandy, amaretto, Grand Marnier. Mmm, yes. Grand Marnier, a subtle orange swirl. The chocolate and butter wobbled over the heat of the double boiler. Unctuous and smooth. Jasmine beat the eggs and sugar until lemony light. She poured in the chocolate in a long professional sweep. A few deft turns of the spatula turned the mixture into what she really craved. She stood over the bowl tasting slabs of it from the spatula. A good dash of Grand Marnier. Another taste. And another. She had to discard a number of egg whites to fit with the reduced mixture. She finally tipped the glossy beaten whites into the chocolate.
Nina Killham (How to Cook a Tart)
Using Holmes’s instructions, workmen in the employ of undertaker John J. O’Rourke filled a coffin with cement, then placed Holmes’s body inside and covered it with more cement. They hauled him south through the countryside to Holy Cross Cemetery, a Catholic burial ground in Delaware County, just south of Philadelphia. With great effort they transferred the heavy coffin to the cemetery’s central vault, where two Pinkerton detectives guarded the body overnight. They took turns sleeping in a white pine coffin. The next day workers opened a double grave and filled this too with cement, then inserted Holmes’s coffin. They placed more cement on top and closed the grave. “Holmes’ idea was evidently to guard his remains in every way from scientific enterprise, from the pickling vat and the knife,” the Public Ledger reported. Strange things began to happen that made Holmes’s claims about being the devil seem almost plausible. Detective Geyer became seriously ill. The warden of Moyamensing prison committed suicide. The jury foreman was electrocuted in a freak accident. The priest who delivered Holmes’s last rites was found dead on the grounds of his church of mysterious causes. The father of Emeline Cigrand was grotesquely burned in a boiler explosion. And a fire destroyed the office of District Attorney George Graham, leaving only a photograph of Holmes unscathed.
Erik Larson (The Devil in the White City)
I arrived at the house, after walking through those silent and deserted streets, in which the few who stood seemed occupied on some dark official business, and in which party slogans and symbols disfigured every building. The staircase of the apartment building was also deserted. Everywhere the same expectant silence hung in the air, as when an air raid has been announced, and the town hides from its imminent destruction. Outside the apartment, however, I encountered two policemen, who seized me as I rang the bell and demanded my papers. Dr Tomin came out, and an altercation ensued, during which I was pushed down the stairs. But the argument continued and I was able to push my way up again, past the guards and into the apartment. I found a room full of people, and the same expectant silence. I realized that there really was going to be an air raid, and that the air raid was me. In that room was a battered remnant of Prague’s intelligentsia – old professors in their shabby waistcoats; long-haired poets; fresh-faced students who had been denied admission to university for their parents’ political ‘crimes’; priests and religious in plain clothes; novelists and theologians; a would-be rabbi; and even a psychoanalyst. And in all of them I saw the same marks of suffering, tempered by hope; and the same eager desire for the sign that someone cared enough to help them. They all belonged, I discovered, to the same profession: that of stoker. Some stoked boilers in hospitals; others in apartment blocks; one stoked at a railway station, another in a school. Some stoked where there were no boilers to stoke, and these imaginary boilers came to be, for me, a fitting symbol of the communist economy.
Roger Scruton (How to Be a Conservative)
It is conceivable that an interplay of genes and epigenes coordinates human embryogenesis. Let us return, yet again, to Morgan's problem: the creation of a multicellular organism from a one-celled embryo. Seconds after fertilization, a quickening begins in the embryo. Proteins reach into the nucleus of the cell and start flicking genetic switches on and off. A dormant spaceship comes to life. Genes are activated and repressed, and these genes, in turn, encode yet other proteins that activate and repress other genes. A single cell divides to form two, then four, and eight cells. An entire layer of cells forms, then hollows out into the outer skin of a ball. Genes that coordinate metabolism, motility, cell fate, and identity fire "on." The boiler room warms us. The lights flicker on in the corridors. The intercom crackles alive. Now a second code stirs to life to ensure that gene expression is locked into place in each cell, enabling each cell to acquire and fix an identity. Chemical marks are selectively added to certain genes and erased from others, modulating the expression of the genes in that cell alone. Methyl groups are inserted and erased, and histones are modified to repress or activate genes. The embryo unfurls step by step. Primordial segements appear, and cells take their positions along various parts of the embryo. New genes are activated that command subroutines to grow limbs and organs, and more chemical marks are appended on the genomes of individual cells. Cells are added to create organs and structures-forelegs, hind legs, muscles, kidneys, bones, eyes. Some cells die a programmed death. Genes that maintain function, metabolism, and repair are turned on. An organism emerges from a cell.
Siddhartha Mukherjee (The Gene: An Intimate History)
CHOCOLATE TRUFFLES 6 tablespoons chilled butter ( ¾ stick, 3 ounces) 12-ounce package semi-sweet chocolate chips (two cups—I used Ghirardelli’s) ½ cup firmly packed powdered sugar (confectioner’s sugar) 6 egg yolks 1 Tablespoon rum, brandy, flavored brandy, or vanilla extract   Put an inch or so of water in the bottom half of a double boiler and heat it to a gentle boil. Cut the butter in chunks and place them in the top half of the double boiler. Add the chips and then the powdered sugar and set the top half over the bottom half. Put on the cover and let everything melt while you…   Beat the egg yolks in a small bowl with a whisk. Whisk until they’re thoroughly combined, but stop before they get fluffy or lighter in color.   Stir the chocolate until it’s completely melted. It will be thick, almost like fudge. Remove the top half of the double boiler and set it on a cold burner.   Stir several spoonfuls of beaten egg yolk into the chocolate mixture. When that’s incorporated, stir in several more spoonfuls. Keep adding egg yolk in small amounts, stirring constantly, until all the egg yolks have been incorporated and the chocolate mixture is smooth and glossy.   Stir in the rum, brandy, or vanilla. Put the lid back on the top of the double boiler and refrigerate the chocolate mixture for 3 hours. To Decorate Truffles: finely chopped nuts powdered (confectioner’s) sugar chocolate sprinkles shaved chocolate cocoa powder finely shredded coconut   Warning: This next step is fairly messy. If you like, wear disposable plastic food-server gloves. You can also lightly grease your hands, or spray them with Pam or other non-stick cooking spray so the chocolate won’t stick to your fingers.   Form small balls of chilled chocolate with your hands and roll them in bowls of the above ingredients.
Joanne Fluke (Cherry Cheesecake Murder (Hannah Swensen, #8))
sure what happened after the accident was client-protected,” he told Mazzone. By their silence, “Markham and Gargan were taking the big fall to protect Ted Kennedy.” Paul Redmond doubted the lawyer-client issue would even arise at the inquest. “People were walking around Boston whaling the bee-jesus out of Paul Markham and Joe Gargan for not reporting the accident—that was so unfair. Here were two guys, good lawyers and fine men, made to look like stooges or worse by the press.” Gargan had told him he could not have reported an accident in which a driver faced a possible manslaughter charge, Redmond said. “It’s no secret Joe was a dear friend. When I left the U.S. Attorney’s office, Paul Markham took my spot.” A week before the inquest, Redmond bumped into Gargan in the elevator of the building in which both had law offices. The Boiler Room girls were “upstairs,” Redmond said. “They haven’t seen you in a long time. I think they’d like to say hello.” Gargan went straight to Redmond’s office for “a nice reunion, a pleasant chat. Very friendly.” There was no discussion about the inquest. Gargan did not want to become involved in the preparation of anybody else’s testimony. As one of two persons at the party who wasn’t “a bit bombed,” Gargan’s memory of the occasion was “clear as a bell.” So it was Gargan’s description of the party that, along with the Senator’s two public versions of the accident, would provide the scenario for inquest testimony. If Gargan testified to the Senator’s attempt to cover up his involvement in the accident as the reason he had failed to report it until the next day, he could blow the entire lid off the case. But that prospect became moot when a writ of certiorari was filed on Tuesday, September 2, asking the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court to determine whether “errors of law” had been made in Judge Boyle’s ruling on the conduct of the scheduled inquest in re: Mary Jo Kopechne. Justice Paul Reardon scheduled a hearing for three o’clock. Notified an appeal had been filed,
Leo Damore (Chappaquiddick: Power, Privilege, and the Ted Kennedy Cover-Up)
The trail wasn’t hard to follow. It had a pattern. An irregular patch of scattered spots that looked like spots of tar in the artificial light was interspersed every fourth or fifth step by a dark gleaming splash where blood had spurted from the wound. Now that all the soul people had been removed from the street, the five detectives moved swiftly. But they could still feel the presence of teeming people behind the dilapidated stone façades of the old reconverted buildings. Here and there the white gleams of eyes showed from darkened windows, but the silence was eerie. The trail turned from the sidewalk into an unlighted alleyway between the house beyond the rooming house, which described itself by a sign in a front window reading: Kitchenette Apts. All conveniences, and the weather-streaked red-brick apartment beyond that. The alleyway was so narrow they had to go in single file. The sergeant had taken the power light from his driver, Joe, and was leading the way himself. The pavement slanted down sharply beneath his feet and he almost lost his step. Midway down the blank side of the building he came to a green wooden door. Before touching it, he flashed his light along the sides of the flanking buildings. There were windows in the kitchenette apartments, but all from the top to the bottom floor had folding iron grilles which were closed and locked at that time of night, and dark shades were drawn on all but three. The apartment house had a vertical row of small black openings one above the other at the rear. They might have been bathroom windows but no light showed in any of them and the glass was so dirty it didn’t shine. The blood trail ended at the green door. “Come out of there,” the sergeant said. No one answered. He turned the knob and pushed the door and it opened inward so silently and easily he almost fell into the opening before he could train his light. Inside was a black dark void. Grave Digger and Coffin Ed flattened themselves against the walls on each side of the alley and their big long-barreled .38 revolvers came glinting into their hands. “What the hell!” the sergeant exclaimed, startled. His assistants ducked. “This is Harlem,” Coffin Ed grated and Grave Digger elaborated: “We don’t trust doors that open.” Ignoring them, the sergeant shone his light into the opening. Crumbling brick stairs went down sharply to a green iron grille. “Just a boiler room,” the sergeant said and put his shoulders through the doorway. “Hey, anybody down there?” he called. Silence greeted him. “You go down, Joe, I’ll light your way,” the sergeant said. “Why me?” Joe protested. “Me and Digger’ll go,” Coffin Ed said. “Ain’t nobody there who’s alive.
Chester Himes (Blind Man with a Pistol (Harlem Cycle, #8))
SHOE CARE To dust, use a worn-out sock. To remove salt marks, use the Basic Mix cleaner. To polish, use worn-out nylons. To protect, use the Multipurpose Balm recipe (see “Bathroom, Toiletries, and Wellness”). WATERPROOFING DIRECTIONS 1. Melt 2 tablespoons beeswax and 11/ 2 teaspoons oil in a double boiler (I use a small glass jar in an inch of water). 2. Brush onto leather. (The wax will streak the shoe as it cools during application. It might look scary but don’t be alarmed. The streaks will disappear when you dry the shoe.) 3. Use a blow dryer and an old sock to work the wax into the shoe or boot.
Bea Johnson (Zero Waste Home: The Ultimate Guide to Simplifying Your Life by Reducing Your Waste (A Simple Guide to Sustainable Living))
Drills and explosives did what Willie believed all technologies did: They killed feeling. By assassinating time and space under the guise of saving them, they keep people out of touch when the better state of being, according to Willie and others, is in touch. In his more delirious screeds, Willie claimed that industrialization was a Christian plot to destroy the pagan reflex between sensation and emotion.
Jim Dodge (Stone Junction: An Alchemical Pot-Boiler (Canons))
In the first fire engines, a boy was constantly employed to open and shut alternately the communication between the boiler and the cylinder, according as the piston either ascended or descended. One of those boys, who loved to play with his companions, observed that, by tying a string from the handle of the valve which opened this communication to another part of the machine, the valve would open and shut without his assistance, and leave him at liberty to divert himself with his play-fellows.
Bengt-Åke Lundvall (The Learning Economy and the Economics of Hope (Anthem Studies in Innovation and Development))
He was the supreme lord of this underworld of his, like Lucifer, and he seemed marked out as such by the loneliness of his position, without a soul within yards of him, and by the light-coloured boiler suit which he wore, and by the untroubled loftiness of his expression.
C.S. Forester (The Ship)
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As cadets, we constantly hammered, scraped and wire brushed rusting steel, before applying red lead paint. Most of the paint we used was Navy surplus or a concoction made up of fish oil, lampblack and china dryer. We found that by mixing all different color paints, we would wind up with a paint we called “Sh-t Grindle Brown.” Inventiveness was key as we repaired, replaced, and painted the State of Maine from stem to stern. This work, being in addition to our studies, consumed all of our time. How we managed to fit all of this into the time we had, is still a mystery. The conversion of the ship was labor intensive and expensive, but the U.S. Maritime Commission contributed to the Academy’s financial needs where possible. The mounting expenses remained a challenge but we didn’t give up. We never did finish the entire conversion prior to our first cruise, but one thing we managed to do was paint over the name “USS Comfort” and hand letter in her new name “State of Maine.” If you looked carefully, you could still see her previous name outlined by a welded bead, but this was a minor detail that would eventually be taken care of. Perhaps because of my experience with the letters on the front of “Richardson Hall,” the task of lettering her name and her new homeport on the stern became mine. Much of the ship’s superstructure was still covered with a sticky preservative made up of paint and crank case oil, which never really dried and indelibly got onto our working uniforms. However, from a distance, you couldn’t tell the difference and it looked all right, but more importantly it prevented further rusting. One bulkhead at a time, using a mixture of gasoline and paint remover, we scraped the gunk off and repainted it. The engineers had been busy rebuilding the pumps and generators, as well as repacking steam pipes with asbestos wrapping. We finally got the ship to where we could sail her to Portland under her own power. The twin Babcock and Wilcox heater-type boilers had to be repaired and re-bricked there. After this, we would continue on to the dry dock in Boston for additional work and the hull inspection that was required below the water line.
Hank Bracker
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