Cadillac Escalade Quotes

One does not simply walk into Mordor these days; one drives a rented Cadillac Escalade the size of a county, shiny black and chrome, with a fake walnut dash, and enough black leather to clothe a battalion of Hell’s Angels.

If your ultimate goal is not to have a home that looks like it belongs in a magazine or to drive a Cadillac Escalade, then what sense does it make to compare yourself - or your home or your vehicle - to the friends who has made that her primary objective?

Their most radical conclusion is that inequality breeds stress among poor and rich alike; the more unequal a society, the less benefit is obtained from an individual’s wealth. The stress of inequality does not just breed envy, it is not just about coveting your neighbor’s ox/Cadillac Escalade. Inequality breeds depression, addiction, resignation, and physical symptoms including premature aging, that affect the entire population. In other words, the well-being of individuals, rich or poor, is mutually dependent.

Four of the men peeled off the group and headed inside, leaving Bob alone with one guy. The guy was younger and wore a suit so shiny it looked like a disco ball. Bob seemed to be giving Shiny Suit instructions. Shiny Suit nodded a lot. When Bob was done, he headed into the funeral. Shiny Suit did not. Instead he swaggered with almost cartoon exaggeration in the other direction, toward a bright white Cadillac Escalade. I

His suit today was clearly a first cousin to the one he’d worn to see me at TGK. It was a lighter shade, but the same unearthly fabric: light, supple, and very nearly self-aware. Kraunauer turned to face me as I came in, gave me his polite-shark smile, and waved at a chair that almost certainly cost more than a new Cadillac Escalade. I sat in it carefully, determined to avoid wrinkling it, while at the same time savoring the luxury. There wasn’t a lot to savor. It didn’t feel much different from the chair I had at home that cost twenty-nine dollars at a thrift shop.

Kraunauer turned to face me as I came in, gave me his polite-shark smile, and waved at a chair that almost certainly cost more than a new Cadillac Escalade. I sat in it carefully, determined to avoid wrinkling it, while at the same time savoring the luxury. There wasn’t a lot to savor. It didn’t feel much different from the chair I had at home that cost twenty-nine dollars at a thrift shop.

41. Among the Rewards of My Sloth . . . . . . is that the tree in our backyard that we had cut down because it was mostly dead and waiting to pierce the asphalt-shingled roof and, more urgently maybe, the neighbor’s (and always, yes, mourn a tree by my hand felled, for it is a home, dead or not) is still, about three and a half months later, sprawled in many parts of the backyard. Probably about one hundred little and not so little logs chucked in a pile out near the black walnut tree, very much alive. And a brush pile about the size of a Cadillac Escalade leaning up against the building you’d be very generous to call a garage, twisting slowly apart on its cracked foundation. Sometimes the brush pile and logs would make me feel like a piece of shit, perhaps especially when Stephanie looked wistfully out into that yard, remembering, I imagine, when she could visualize a garden there. Not to mention my mother, who, when I first got this house in Bloomington, Indiana, in a kind of terror I have to think is informed by some unspoken knowledge (black husband, brown kids in the early seventies kind of knowledge), pleaded with my brother and uncle to convince me to mow my grass lest the neighbors burn my house down. (Of which, let it be known, there was no danger in my case. Despite the Confederate flags in the windows three doors down. You should see his yard. By the way, if you haven’t seen the movie A Man Named Pearl, you should.) Anyway, I’d think, very much pervious to all of the above despite my affect to the contrary, we’ll get a splitting maul and wood chipper and turn a lot of that wood into good mulch, which turns into good soil, trying to make myself feel better about myself. But today, going out back to grab some wood for the stove, past my mess, there was a racket blasting from that thicket like the most rambunctious playground you’ve ever heard, and getting closer, looking inside, I saw maybe one hundred birds hopping around in this enormous temporary nest, sharing a song I never would’ve heard and been struck dumb with glee by had I had my shit more together.