Dirty Tricks Quotes

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Love is only a dirty trick played on us to achieve continuation of the species.
W. Somerset Maugham
Weapons are allowed. Dirty tricks are expected. But try not to kill anybody!” Tantalus smiled at us like we were all naughty children. “Any killing will result in harsh punishment. No s’mores at the campfire for a week! Now ready your chariots!
Rick Riordan (The Sea of Monsters (Percy Jackson and the Olympians, #2))
Love is just another dirty lie. Love is ergoapiol pills to make me come around because you were afraid to have a baby. Love is quinine and quinine and quinine until I'm deaf with it. Love is that dirty aborting horror that you took me to. Love is my insides all messed up. It's half catheters and half whirling douches. I know about love. Love always hangs up behind the bathroom door. It smells like lysol. To hell with love. Love is making me happy and then going off to sleep with your mouth open while I lie awake all night afraid to say my prayers even because I know I have no right to anymore. Love is all the dirty little tricks you taught me that you probably got out of some book. All right. I'm through with you and I'm through with love.
Ernest Hemingway
Hell isn’t some fiery pit “down there.” It’s right here on Earth, in every dirty city, every yawning town.
Ellen Hopkins (Tricks (Tricks, #1))
So one day he found her crying Coiled up on the dirty ground Her prince finally came to save her & the rest you can figure out But it was a trick & the clock struck twelve Well make sure to build your home brick by boring brick or the wolf's gonna blow it down Keep your feet on the ground When your head's in the clouds
Hayley Williams
Even without them touching me, I feel dirty about what I do. Alex does even filthier things but says it all washes off with soap. I don’t believe that. I think it all leaves stains. Indelible stains.
Ellen Hopkins (Tricks (Tricks, #1))
Lord, how unutterably disgusting life is! What dirty tricks it plays us, one moment free; the next, this. Here we are among the breadcrumbs and the stained napkins again. That knife is already congealing with grease. Disorder, sordidity and corruption surrounds us. We have been taking into our mouths the bodies of dead birds. It is with these greasy crumbs, slobbering over napkins, and little corpses that we have to build. Always it begins again; always there is the enemy; eyes meeting ours; fingers twitching ours; the effort waiting. Call the waiter. Pay the bill. We must pull ourselves up out of the chairs. We must find our coats. We must go. Must, must, must — detestable word. Once more, I who had thought myself immune, who had said, "Now I am rid of all that", find that the wave has tumbled me over, head over heels, scattering my possessions, leaving me to collect, to assemble, to head together, to summon my forces, rise and confront the enemy.
Virginia Woolf (The Waves)
Love is all the dirty little tricks you taught me that you probably got out of some book.
Ernest Hemingway (To Have and Have Not)
I am a teller of stories...a weaver of dreams. I can dance, sing, and in the right weather stand on my head. I know seven words of Latin. I have a little magic and a trick or two. I know the proper way to meet a dragon, can fight dirty but not fair, and once swallowed thirty oysters in a minute. I am not domestic. I am a luxury, and in that sense, necessary.
Anthony Minghella (Jim Henson's The Storyteller)
How I feel is cheap and used, dirty and humiliated. Dirty and tricked and thrown away.
Chuck Palahniuk (Survivor)
I'm just so weary, Vivian. But I love this kid so much, sometimes I think it will break me in half. Is that the dirty trick? Is this how they get mothers to ruin their lives for their children? By tricking them into loving them so much? Maybe. It's not a bad strategy.
Elizabeth Gilbert (City of Girls)
My code of life and conduct is simply this: work hard, play to the allowable limit, disregard equally the good and bad opinion of others, never do a friend a dirty trick, eat and drink what you feel like when you feel like, never grow indignant over anything, trust to tobacco for calm and serenity, bathe twice a day . . . learn to play at least one musical instrument and then play it only in private, never allow one's self even a passing thought of death, never contradict anyone or seek to prove anything to anyone unless one gets paid for it in cold, hard coin, live the moment to the utmost of its possibilities, treat one's enemies with polite inconsideration, avoid persons who are chronically in need, and be satisfied with life always but never with one's self.
George Jean Nathan
I've watched two-year-old humans with interest for centuries. They're miserable. They rush about, fall down, and scream almost constantly. They hate being human! They know already that it's some sort of dirty trick.
Anne Rice (The Tale of the Body Thief (The Vampire Chronicles, #4))
Never fight fair-- that's not how you win. Use every dirty trick you can, Expect pain. Expect to get hurt. If you're surprised by the pain, you just lost.
James Patterson
I always feel when I meet people that I am lower than all, and that they all take me for a buffoon; so I say let me play the buffoon, for you are, every one of you, stupider and lower than I." He longed to revenge himself on every one for his own unseemliness. He suddenly recalled how he had once in the past been asked, "Why do you hate so and so, so much?" And he had answered them, with his shameless impudence, "I'll tell you. He has done me no harm. But I played him a dirty trick, and ever since I have hated him.
Fyodor Dostoevsky (The Brothers Karamazov)
You run away for freedom. You run away because you can’t be trapped by the people who love you but don’t understand you. You run away because you want to be missed, you want them to start a worried search party combing far and wide for any scrap of evidence that you’re going to be back, safe and sound. Running away is a way to play a dirty trick on the perfect fate that will suffocate you if you’re not careful.
Liz Reinhardt (Perfectly Unmatched (Youngblood, #2))
Real gold doesn't start its journey in a display window at Tiffany. It's dug out of the dirty earth. Sometimes true gold doesn't glitter. It may need a little polishing, but don't let that bit of needed patience or effort trick you into discarding what could be the greatest treasure of your life.
Cleo Coyle (Billionaire Blend (Coffeehouse Mystery, #13))
I had a dream about you. It's been a while since I could remember any of my dreams, and still, this one has left me with such strong impression. Even now, when I am fully awake, your face flashes before my eyes. It's a face I can totally relate to, as if it wasn't any more yours than it is mine. Terrifying thing, you know? I can't say I've felt that sort of intimacy with anyone. For a moment you knew all my secrets, without me even having to tell them. For a moment I even knew them myself… While I was looking into your eyes, I suddenly started to realize things about myself that were unspoken for years, like fragments of my inner life that were deeply repressed. It’s hard to distinguish if they were buried inside because dealing with them was such a dirty work, or if leaving them unnamed meant that it was not possible to define them precisely enough, so they would keep their true meaning. Perhaps, all this life that I've known so far was in fact no more but a dream about living. The only thing that has kept me in touch with reality was you… I know it comes as a surprise, and you may be wondering why it took me so long to come clean. You also may be wondering how come you've never noticed before. I've tricked you on purpose, yes, and you must realize it really has nothing to do with you. It’s always been me. This is why, seeing you in my dream like that, came out as a shock. You also must forgive me. You must forgive me because I know how it looks like, that everything we ever shared was a lie, and it wasn't… I am more of an illusionist that a deceiver, but it all comes from being in fact, a very private person. Even if it was true that you knew me better than anyone, I’d never admit it. I’d rather dig my own heart out, with a rotten spoon, than admitting it. I may let people in my own little world occasionally, but I would never let them be aware of it. I don’t throw my intimacy in front of others, especially when I care. The more I care, the less I give away, and this is something for you to understand, and grant me your forgiveness. I didn't play my tricks on you in order to deceive you, but rather to save myself, and maybe even deceive myself as well. I’ve had hidden my feelings for you so deeply that I've learned to live with them, as if any other casualty. I have done wrong to myself as much as I did to you, and I don’t know if I can forgive myself. So now I wonder, could you forgive me without feeling sorry for me? I certainly don’t deserve your pity. Especially not now that I am awake.
Aleksandra Ninković (Dreaming is for lovers)
Love was the greatest thing, wasn't it? Love was what we had that no one else had or could ever have? And you were a genius and I was your whole life. I was your partner and your little black flower. Slop. Love is just another dirty lie. Love is ergoapiol pills to make me come around because you were afraid to have a baby. Love is quinine and quinine and quinine until I'm deaf with it. Love is that aborting horror you took me to. Love is my insides all messed up. It's half catheters and half whirling douches. I know about love. Love always hangs up behind the bathroom door. It smells like lysol. To hell with love. Love is you making me happy and then going off to sleep with your mouth open while I lie awake all night afraid to say my prayers even because I know I have no right to say anymore. Love is all the dirty little tricks you taught me that you probably got out of some book. All right. I'm through with you and I'm through with love. Your kind of picknose love. You writer.
Ernest Hemingway (To Have and Have Not)
I am writing this book because I want to have a real conversation with the public and most especially you. I am honored that my words will enter your consciousness and conscience, that my thoughts will rest in your mind. I take that responsibility seriously. Call what I’m doing a public service and you’d be correct. It is. Hollywood is a dirty town up to some dirty tricks. This is not a tell-all. This is a tell-it-how-it-is.
Rose McGowan (Brave)
In projecting onto others their own moral sense, therapists sometimes make terrible errors. Child physical abusers are automatically labeled “impulsive," despite extensive evidence that they are not necessarily impulsive but more often make thinking errors that justify the assaults. Sexual and physical offenders who profess to be remorseful after they are caught are automatically assumed to be sincere. After all, the therapist would feel terrible if he or she did such a thing. It makes perfect sense that the offender would regret abusing a child. People routinely listen to their own moral sense and assume that others share it. Thus, those who are malevolent attack others as being malevolent, as engaging in dirty tricks, as being “in it for the money,“ and those who are well meaning assume others are too, and keep arguing logically, keep producing more studies, keep expecting an academic debate, all the time assuming that the issue at hand is the truth of the matter. Confessions of a Whistle-Blower: Lessons Learned Author: Anna C. Salter. Ethics & Behavior, Volume 8, Issue 2 June 1998 p122
Anna C. Salter
Everybody's got dirty laundry they don't want other people to see. The trick is figuring out how to not care about it. Make peace with it, accept it as part of who you are.
Heidi Cullinan (Dirty Laundry (Tucker Springs, #3))
Badmouthing things and other people is another way to appear smarter in front of the many. It's sad that some people use this dirty trick just to increase their self worth...
Adrian Alconera
But it's a sound you'll fall out of touch with, kid, he thought. Things have a way of changing. It's a dirty trick, so be prepared for it.
Stephen King
The USA claims to be the greatest nation on earth, but routinely engages in dirty tricks with the poor, sick and elderly to deny them their benefits.
Steven Magee
They knew that synfees were evil, and tricked you into thinking that they were beautiful just so that they could drag you off to whatever dirty cave they lived in and start munching on your limbs.
Jane Washington (Hereditary (Beatrice Harrow, #1))
Lawless stood off to the side, one black boot resting to the wall, the same shade of long coat hanging down by his ankles, his shaved head and ink along his neck giving the only impression needed, he was a mean bastard when he had to be. He was flipping a silver coin along the backs of his knuckles like he was out for the day and enjoying himself. Crazy fucker was juiced just waiting for the call to the plate, his bag of tricks sitting at his feet as though he'd brought his gym clothes to work. There was nothing in that bag made for fun, not if you were on the receiving end anyway. Lawless always had a lot of fun using his tools.
V. Theia (Dirty Salvation (Renegade Souls MC Romance Saga #1))
The thing about fires most people don’t realise is the noise. It’s deafening so even if you shout, you can’t be heard three feet away. You can never quite get used to the fury of it, it’s like a mighty roar of anger that just keeps going. I suppose flame is beautiful, the way it leaps into the air like it’s free to do what it wants. Other elements are also free and I guess the sea can be pretty awesome, wind too, and lightning, but fire has a mind and a determination. You don’t see it as a blind raging thing, which I suppose it is, but something that attacks and thinks and changes tactics. It has a malevolence that uses surprise, dirty tricks, cunning. You get to think of it as someone, not something, and it’s someone you have to beat, but right from the start you don’t like your chances because it’s so big and unpredictable and can do so much harm.
Bryce Courtenay (Four Fires)
Whatever you're thinking of. Just don't. I don't want anything to do with it." "What I was about to say," said Miles, giving him an extremely dry look, "was that we, being on the side of truth and justice, need not stoop to such chicanery as, say, bribery, assassination or milder forms of physical diversion, or—heh!—blackmail. ... "If we're not stooping, what do you call that shell game with the Vortugalovs and the uterine replicator?" Ivan demanded indignantly. "A piece of wholly unexpected good fortune. None of us here had anything to do with it," Miles replied tranquilly. "So it's not a dirty trick if it's untraceable?" "Correct, Ivan. You learn fast.
Lois McMaster Bujold (A Civil Campaign (Vorkosigan Saga, #12))
The only scorecard that ever gets tallied in the real world is how many times you walk away from the fight and leave your opponent dead in the dust. I can shoot damn straight when the occasion calls for it, but I’m not a bulls-eye expert. The difference is, I can hit a man on the other side of the street while I'm running, ducking, and dodging automatic weapons fire. Sacrificing pinpoint accuracy for shooting fast and on the move may mean you burn a little more ammo, but in the end, it's going to keep you alive a lot longer. Gunfighting isn't a biathlon. It's an ugly business that rewards dirty tricks and being faster and meaner and more ruthless than the other guy. It's the only way you're going to win.
Jack Badelaire (Killer Instincts)
He was coming to understand why the other sentinels had nicknamed her Tricks. It wasn’t just because they had taught her all the dirty fighting tricks they knew.
Thea Harrison (Storm's Heart (Elder Races #2))
Of course you can pull every dirty lawyer trick to deny my Disability and Workers Compensation benefits...but there will be payback for you at a later time.
Steven Magee
She used to make me wear earplugs at night so I wouldn’t hear her in the next room, talking dirty to tricks in other time zones.
Ernest Cline (Ready Player One (Ready Player One, #1))
Who threw the overalls in Mrs. Murphy’s chowder? Nobody spoke so he said it all the louder It’s a dirty Irish trick and I can lick the Mick Who threw the overalls in Murphy’s chowder.
Frank McCourt (Angela's Ashes: A Memoir)
Then imagine”—he told her, pushing harder, half hoping she shoved him off and walked away, half hoping she told him to take her right then—“because I talk as dirty as I fight, and I fuck as hard as I play.
Skye Jordan (Quick Trick (Rough Riders Hockey, #1))
the KGB was working hard to try to ensure that Thatcher lost the 1983 general election. In the eyes of the Kremlin, Thatcher was “the Iron Lady”—a nickname intended as an insult by the Soviet army newspaper that coined it, but one in which she reveled—and the KGB had been organizing “active measures” to undermine her ever since she came to power in 1979, including the placing of negative articles with sympathetic left-wing journalists. The KGB still had contacts on the left, and Moscow clung to the illusion that it might be able to influence the election in favor of the Labour Party, whose leader, after all, was still listed in KGB files as a “confidential contact.” In an intriguing harbinger of modern times, Moscow was prepared to use dirty tricks and hidden interference to swing a democratic election in favor of its chosen candidate.
Ben Macintyre (The Spy and the Traitor: The Greatest Espionage Story of the Cold War)
It was only natural that the intellectuals who questioned the necessity of American purpose did not rush from Cambridge and New Haven to inflict their doubts about American power and goals upon the nation’s policies. So people like Riesman, classic intellectuals, stayed where they were while the new breed of thinkers-doers, half of academe, half of the nation’s think tanks and of policy planning, would make the trip, not doubting for a moment the validity of their right to serve, the quality of their experience. They were men who reflected the post-Munich, post-McCarthy pragmatism of the age. One had to stop totalitarianism, and since the only thing the totalitarians understood was force, one had to be willing to use force. They justified each decision to use power by their own conviction that the Communists were worse, which justified our dirty tricks, our toughness.
David Halberstam (The Best and the Brightest)
If Kris could play enough of these, in the right order, without stopping, she could block out everything: the dirty snow that never melted, closets full of secondhand clothes, overheated classrooms at Independence High, mind-numbing lectures about the Continental Congress and ladylike behavior and the dangers of of running with the wrong crowd and what x equals and how to find for y and what the third person plural for cantar is and what Holden Caulfield's basement glove symbolizes and what the whale symbolizes and what the green light symbolizes and what everything in the world symbolizes, because apparently nothing is what it seems and everything is a trick.
Grady Hendrix (We Sold Our Souls)
I tried to turn my heart to the living, to the place I was, but putting seed in land not owned by me or my family seemed alien. The sandy, gray-white soil looked like dirty beach sand, not fit for growing anything. It smelled like dust. Yet weeds and trees and wildflowers grew along the roads. When we drove into town, we passed dense, impenetrable woods and fields of corn, peas, and peppers. Such new combinations of seemingly poor soil and happy flora puzzled me. Everywhere I went, I picked up the dirt, examining it for clues. Bringing anything out of such soil would require a whole new language on my part. I imagined there must be something richer and darker under the gray sand, or some trick the farmers all knew. Trick or no trick, what I had always been able to do well now seemed inaccessible. Still, I searched the yard around our house for the best spot to plant my fall garden.
Rhonda Riley (The Enchanted Life of Adam Hope)
If people with good reputations are a resource for whom others compete, this leads to all the dirty tricks that people use against one another when they are competing for something of value. One such move is to “poison the well,” to destroy the perceived value of the resource. When the resource is a person’s reputation, some individuals will spread malicious gossip to destroy or damage it (Roland Barthes described this as “murder by language”).
David Livingstone Smith (Why We Lie: The Evolutionary Roots of Deception and the Unconscious Mind)
But, at the end of the day, the problem isn’t money, lies, propaganda, negative ads, dirty tricks, decentralized news, talking points, or trumped up investigations. The problem is that they work on us. And they work because we’re uncritical, uneducated, and uninformed. A smarter electorate would be more skeptical of the lies. In fact, the incendiary tone and hyperbolic rhetoric in the message would instantly lead one to question the content. And
Ian Gurvitz (WELCOME TO DUMBFUCKISTAN: The Dumbed-Down, Disinformed, Dysfunctional, Disunited States of America)
He nodded slowly. “Okay.” He squeezed her shoulder gently, then leaned forward until his lips were almost touching her ear. “But for what it's worth...I'm not sorry.” And then he turned his head and kissed her. It was a dirty trick, right in the middle of the break room, where anyone could walk in. But she couldn't help kissing him back, smelling his scent, familiar as always, but now somehow new—it made her shiver. But when she finally leaned into him, to steady herself, to let him steady her, he wrapped his hands around her upper arms and moved her back, just an inch. Then he placed one final, close-mouthed kiss on her primed lips. “Have a nice class, Emma.” Then he turned and walked away. She opened her mouth to say something, then closed it. Then opened and closed it again. Giving up, she crossed her arms, rubbing the skin that Noah had just touched. And she was ten minutes late for class.
Claire Matthews (Intimate Friends)
Al Gore just entered, talking with Sergey Brin’s parents. They’re so cute and tiny and don’t speak great English. • All eyes on the veep, waiting to see how he reacts to the fact that his seat is taken. Nehru jacket offers to move, but Al Gore declines. Nehru hands Al Gore a business card! What a dirty trick. He’s practically booed by the audience, but nobody will admit to being that interested. Al Gore takes business card with a smile. I heart Al Gore.
Maria Semple (Where'd You Go, Bernadette)
Free-market economics is an antiquated, smutty and careless box of tricks whose whimsical main flaw is clear even to a child. Still look how many adults fall breathlessly with lust to its promise -- even though they must abandon empathy and moral judgment to embrace it. "Their dirty secret puts all their intelligence to work throwing dust in the air around one glaring truth: that without trickery or eroding value, without extortion, manipulation, deceit or outright theft -- profit will simply not perpetually grow.
D.B.C. Pierre
Marijuana will be legal some day, because the many law students who now smoke pot will some day become Congressmen and legalize it in order to protect themselves. You wouldn't believe how many people smoke pot. If anyone reading this would like to become mayor, believe me, there is a vast, untapped vote. Of course, you wouldn't want to be the Marijuana Mayor, so you'd have to make it a trick statute, like: 'The Crippled Catholic Jewish War Children in Memory of Ward Bond Who Died for Your Bill to Make Marijuana Legal.
Lenny Bruce (How to Talk Dirty and Influence People)
One day in September 2015, FBI agent Adrian Hawkins placed a call to the Democratic National Committee headquarters in Washington, D.C., and asked to speak to the person in charge of technology. He was routed to the DNC help desk, which transferred the call to Yared Tamene, a young IT specialist with The MIS Department, a consulting firm hired by the DNC. After identifying himself, Hawkins told Tamene that he had reason to believe that at least one computer on the DNC’s network was compromised. He asked if the DNC was aware of this and what it was doing. Tamene had nothing to do with cybersecurity and knew little about the subject. He was a mid-level network administrator; his basic IT duties for the DNC were to set up computer accounts for employees and be on call to deal with any problems. When he got the call, Tamene was wary. Was this a joke or, worse, a dirty trick? He asked Hawkins if he could prove he was an FBI agent, and, as Tamene later wrote in a memo, “he did not provide me with an adequate response.… At this point, I had no way of differentiating the call I received from a prank call.” Hawkins, though, was real. He was a well-regarded agent in the FBI’s cyber squad. And he was following a legitimate lead in a case that would come to affect a presidential election. Earlier in the year, U.S. cyber warriors intercepted a target list of about thirty U.S. government agencies, think tanks, and several political organizations designated for cyberattacks by a group of hackers known as APT 29. APT stood for Advanced Persistent Threat—technojargon for a sophisticated set of actors who penetrate networks, insert viruses, and extract data over prolonged periods of time.
Michael Isikoff (Russian Roulette: The Inside Story of Putin's War on America and the Election of Donald Trump)
Did he ever ask you . . . or suggest to you . . . that he might want to pull some kind of dirty trick on Senator Smalls?” “Oh, no, he would never have done that,” Fey said. “I mean, he might have tried to pull a dirty trick, but he wouldn’t have spoken to me about it. I like Senator Smalls and Robert knew that. The senator and I have common interests. He likes classical piano and he likes Postimpressionist art. If Robert had asked me to do a dirty trick on Senator Smalls, I would have refused and I would have told Senator Smalls. Robert teased me about that. About me being loyal.
John Sandford (Silken Prey (Lucas Davenport #23))
But this is for the best. I can see that. We were never meant to be. You were never as strong as I thought you were. Such a shame though. You had such dirty wings. Such promise. Power makes the world go around, angel. It keeps you alive when you should be dead. Don’t you want that immortality? Or are you so happy with a boring, ordinary life? With a boring, ordinary man?
Karina Halle (Bold Tricks (The Artists Trilogy, #3))
The first duty of an officer—whether a lieutenant or a captain or the Commander in Chief—is to the enlisted men. That was a basic principle of command. He could not justify not calling up the best qualified officers simply because they had already done their duty. They were needed again. They could save some lives. It was a dirty goddamned trick on them, but that’s the way it was going to have to be.
W.E.B. Griffin (The Captains (Brotherhood Of War, #2))
In the 80s a Tennessee cousin decided he wanted to be a pro-wrestler. There was no real need to train or prepare back then. They just had him arrive a bit early to learn all he needed to know. After showing him a few tricks to sell the action he was handed a fake blood capsule. Fans liked to see the match end in blood. But that cousin was there to fight. Wrestling was real. The bell rang and punches were thrown. "Dirty" Dick Slater split my cousin's head open with an elbow. The match ended in blood as the crowd cheered. Anything can be real for a single night.
Damon Thomas (Some Books Are Not For Sale)
It was safe to say, standing as close to him as she was, that she was very aware of the rise of his aroused sensuality. Even if his hand had not been burning across her skin, the unapologetic hardness of his body pressing with erotic familiarity against hers would have told her how very much lost in his need for her he was. Gideon had to be the most sexual creature she had ever encountered. And yet, only a few short days ago, if she had been asked her opinion on that particular subject, she would have made suppositions that were quite the opposite. Was he telling her the truth when he said it was because of her? “I never lie, my beauty,” he murmured, reminding her of her own understandings about that. His lips against her hair, just beneath the back of her ear, were warm and smiling even as he kissed the thrillingly sensitive spot. “And even if I were just a dirty old man, Neliss,” he whispered like the warmth of sunshine in her ear, “it would never account for the tenderness you see in me even now.” He tightened his hold on her, drawing her so close that he burned hotly against her. “And you would have been in my bed, beneath the press of my body, open and inviting me in by now.” The raw observation and the aggressive heat of his body made her grasp, a mix between shocked sensibilities and excited delight. Legna looked up into his famished eyes, licking her lips with a hunger all her own. “If we do not find something to do, we will end up in bed together,” she reminded him with her heart pounding so obviously against his chest. “Yes. Perhaps without the intention of rousing until Jacob and Bella’s Beltane wedding,” he mused, the pleasure of the speculation quite evident in his expression. It was an attractive thought to Legna as well, especially as his mouth dipped beneath her hair to continue to tease the sensitive skin of her neck. But just the same, she took matters into her own hand, so to speak, and teleported out of his grasp, reappearing all the way on the other side of the room. Finding his arms so abruptly vacated, Gideon gave her an eloquent look. She was going to pay for her little trick one day, and his eyes promised it to her as thoroughly as a worded threat.
Jacquelyn Frank (Gideon (Nightwalkers, #2))
However, if the moneylenders are not some other country but are situated within your own kingdom, and you’ve borrowed what you feel is too much money from them, you can play a very dirty trick. This dirty trick has indeed been played, and quite often. It’s called “Kill the Creditors.” (Please don’t try this at your local bank.) Consider, for instance, the sad fate of the Knights Templar. They were a religious order of fighting knights who’d amassed a great store of capital through gifts given to them by the pious, as well as through various treasures they’d acquired during the Crusades, and they acted as Europe’s major moneylenders to kings as well as to others for more than two centuries. It was unlawful for Christians to charge for the use of money, but it wasn’t unlawful for them to charge “rent” for the use of land, so the Templars charged so-called “rent” for the use of money, which you paid at the same time you got the loan, rather than after you’d used it. But you still had to pay the principal amount back at the stipulated time. This could be a problem for those who’d borrowed the money, as it still is today. In 1307, Philip the Fourth of France found he owed a cumbersome lot of money to the Templars. With the aid of the Pope and of torture, he accused them falsely of heretical and sacrilegious activities and had them rounded up and burned at the stake. As if by magic, his debts disappeared. (So did the vast wealth of the Templars, which has never been adequately accounted for since.)
Margaret Atwood (Payback: Debt and the Shadow Side of Wealth)
Those who live in the country get idiotic in time, without noticing it, for a while they think it's original and good for their health, but life in the country is not original at all, for anyone who wasn't born in and for the country it shows a lack of taste and is only harmful to their health. The people who go walking in the country walk right into their own funeral in the country and at the very least they lead a grotesque existence which leads them first into idiocy, then into an absurd death. To recommend country life to a city person so that he can stay alive is a dirty internist's trick, I thought. All these people who leave the city for the country so they can live longer and healthier lives are only horrible specimens of human beings, I thought
Thomas Bernhard (The Loser)
Those who live in the country get idiotic in time, without noticing it, for a while they think it's original and good for their health, but life in the country is not original at all, for anyone who wasn't born in and for the country it shows a lack of taste and is only harmful to their health. The people who go walking in the country walk right into their own funeral in the country and at the very least they lead a grotesque existence which leads them first into idiocy, then into an absurd death. To recommend country life to a city person so that he can stay alive is a dirty internist's trick, I thought. All these people who leave the city for the country so they can live longer and healthier lives are only horrible specimens of human beings, I thought.
Thomas Bernhard (The Loser)
The people who support and defend those accused of child sexual abuse indiscriminately, those who join organizations dedicated to defending people who are accused of child sexual abuse with no screening whatsoever to keep out those who are guilty as charged are likewise not necessarily people engaged in an objective search for the truth. Some of them can and do use deceit, trickery, misstated research, harassment, intimidation, and charges of laundering federal money to silence their opponents. Those of us who are the recipients of bogus lawsuits and frivolous ethics charges and phony phone calls and pickets outside our offices must know more than the research to survive such tactics. We must know something about endurance and about the importance of refusing to be intimidated. Confessions of a Whistle-Blower: Lessons Learned Author: Anna C. Salter. Ethics & Behavior, Volume 8, Issue 2 June 1998
Anna C. Salter
afternoon. You put a dirty little mouse on the table. That makes me think all three of you are up to something. So if you know where Bruno’s hiding, kindly tell me at once.” “That was no trick I played on you,” my grandmother said. “That mouse I tried to give you was your own little boy, Bruno. I was being kind to you. I was trying to restore him to the bosom of his family. You refused to take him in.” “What the blazes do you mean, madam?” shouted Mr Jenkins. “My son isn’t a mouse!” His black moustache was jumping up and down like crazy as he spoke. “Come on, woman! Where is he? Out with it!” The family at the table nearest to us had all stopped eating and were staring at Mr Jenkins. My grandmother sat there puffing away calmly at her black cigar. “I can well understand your anger, Mr Jenkins,” she said. “Any other English father would be just as cross as you are. But over in Norway where I come from, we are quite used to these sort of happenings. We have learnt to accept them as part of everyday life.
Roald Dahl (The Witches)
I have had so many Dwellings, Nat, that I know these Streets as well as a strowling Beggar: I was born in this Nest of Death and Contagion and now, as they say, I have learned to feather it. When first I was with Sir Chris. I found lodgings in Phenix Street off Hogg Lane, close by St Giles and Tottenham Fields, and then in later times I was lodged at the corner of Queen Street and Thames Street, next to the Blew Posts in Cheapside. (It is still there, said Nat stirring up from his Seat, I have passed it!) In the time before the Fire, Nat, most of the buildings in London were made of timber and plaister, and stones were so cheap that a man might have a cart-load of them for six-pence or seven-pence; but now, like the Aegyptians, we are all for Stone. (And Nat broke in, I am for Stone!) The common sort of People gawp at the prodigious Rate of Building and exclaim to each other London is now another City or that House was not there Yesterday or the Situacion of the Streets is quite Changd (I contemn them when they say such things! Nat adds). But this Capital City of the World of Affliction is still the Capitol of Darknesse, or the Dungeon of Man's Desires: still in the Centre are no proper Streets nor Houses but a Wilderness of dirty rotten Sheds, allways tumbling or takeing Fire, with winding crooked passages, lakes of Mire and rills of stinking Mud, as befits the smokey grove of Moloch. (I have heard of that Gentleman, says Nat all a quiver). It is true that in what we call the Out-parts there are numberless ranges of new Buildings: in my old Black-Eagle Street, Nat, tenements have been rais'd and where my Mother and Father stared without understanding at their Destroyer (Death! he cryed) new-built Chambers swarm with life. But what a Chaos and Confusion is there: meer fields of Grass give way to crooked Passages and quiet Lanes to smoking Factors, and these new Houses, commonly built by the London workmen, are often burning and frequently tumbling down (I saw one, says he, I saw one tumbling!). Thus London grows more Monstrous, Straggling and out of all Shape: in this Hive of Noise and Ignorance, Nat, we are tyed to the World as to a sensible Carcasse and as we cross the stinking Body we call out What News? or What's a clock? And thus do I pass my Days a stranger to mankind. I'll not be a Stander-by, but you will not see me pass among them in the World. (You will disquiet your self, Master, says Nat coming towards me). And what a World is it, of Tricking and Bartering, Buying and Selling, Borrowing and Lending, Paying and Receiving; when I walk among the Piss and Sir-reverence of the Streets I hear, Money makes the old Wife trot, Money makes the Mare to go (and Nat adds, What Words won't do, Gold will). What is their God but shineing Dirt and to sing its Devotions come the Westminster-Hall-whores, the Charing-cross whores, the Whitehall whores, the Channel-row whores, the Strand whores, the Fleet Street whores, the Temple-bar whores; and they are followed in the same Catch by the Riband weavers, the Silver-lace makers, the Upholsterers, the Cabinet-makers, Watermen, Carmen, Porters, Plaisterers, Lightemen, Footmen, Shopkeepers, Journey-men... and my Voice grew faint through the Curtain of my Pain.
Peter Ackroyd (Hawksmoor)
The fury which destroys an opponent’s character, would stop at nothing, if barriers were thrown down. That which is true of the leaders in politics, is true of subordinates. Political dishonesty in voters runs into general dishonesty, as the rotten speck taints the whole apple. A community whose politics are conducted by a perpetual breach of honesty on both sides, will be tainted by immorality throughout. Men will play the same game in their private affairs, which they have learned to play in public matters. The guile, the crafty vigilance, the dishonest advantage, the cunning sharpness;—the tricks and traps and sly evasions; the equivocal promises, and unequivocal neglect of them, which characterize political action, will equally characterize private action. The mind has no kitchen to do its dirty work in, while the parlor remains clean. Dishonesty is an atmosphere; if it comes into one apartment, it penetrates into every one. Whoever will lie in politics, will lie in traffic. Whoever will slander in politics, will slander in personal squabbles. A professor of religion who is a dishonest politician, is a dishonest Christian. His creed is a perpetual index of his hypocrisy.
Henry Ward Beecher (Twelve Causes of Dishonesty)
The river twists and turns to face the city. It looms suddenly, massive, stamped on the landscape. Its light wells up around the surrounds, the rock hills, like bruise-blood. Its dirty towers glow. I am debased. I am compelled to worship this extraordinary presence that has silted into existence at the conjunction of two rivers. It is a vast pollutant, a stench, a klaxon sounding. Fat chimneys retch dirt into the sky even now in the deep night. It is not the current which pulls us but the city itself, its weight sucks us in. Faint shouts, here and there the calls of beasts, the obscene clash and pounding from the factories as huge machines rut. Railways trace urban anatomy like protruding veins. Red brick and dark walls, squat churches like troglodytic things, ragged awnings flickering, cobbled mazes in the old town, culs-de-sac, sewers riddling the earth like secular sepulchres, a new landscape of wasteground, crushed stone, libraries fat with forgotten volumes, old hospitals, towerblocks, ships and metal claws that lift cargoes from the water. How could we not see this approaching? What trick of topography is this, that lets the sprawling monster hide behind corners to leap out at the traveller? It is too late to flee.
China Miéville (Perdido Street Station (New Crobuzon, #1))
I’ll tell you what,” he says. “You keep me company while I finish my dinner. I won’t even ask you what you have…or don’t have…under that coat. Deal?” I smile tentatively and smooth down my hair. “Deal.” “You don’t have to do that for me,” he says, gently taking my hand away from my hair. “I’ll get a blanket so you don’t get dirty.” I wait until he pulls a clean light green fleece blanket out of a closet. We sit on the blanket and Alex looks at his watch. “Want some?” he asks, pointing to his dinner. Maybe eating will calm my nerves. “What is it?” “Enchiladas. Mi’amá makes kick-ass enchiladas.” He stabs a small portion with a fork and holds it out to me. “If you’re not used to this kind of spicy food--” “I love spicy,” I interrupt, taking it into my mouth. I start chewing, enjoying the blend of flavors. But when I swallow, my tongue slowly catches on fire. Somewhere behind all the fire there’s flavor, but the flames are in the way. “Hot,” is all I can say as I attempt to swallow. “I told you.” Alex holds out the cup he’d been drinking from. “Here, drink. Milk usually does the trick, but I only have water.” I grab the cup. The liquid cools my tongue, but when I finish the water it’s as if someone stokes it again. “Water…,” I say. He fills another cup. “Here, drink more, though I don’t think it’ll help much. It’ll subside soon.” Instead of drinking it this time, I stick my tongue in the cold liquid and keep it there. Ahhh… “You okay?” “To I wook otay?” I ask. “With your tongue in the water like that, actually, it’s erotic. Want another bite?” he asks mischievously, acting like the Alex I know. “Mo mank ooh.” “Your tongue still burnin’?” I lift my tongue from the water. “It feels like a million soccer players are stomping on it with their cleats.” “Ouch,” he says, laughing. “You know, I heard once that kissin’ reduces the fire.” “Is that your cheap way of telling me you want to kiss me?” He looks into my eyes, his dark gaze capturing mine. “Querida, I always want to kiss you.
Simone Elkeles (Perfect Chemistry (Perfect Chemistry, #1))
The end of the war will see the final ruin of the Jew. The Jew is the incarnation of egoism. And their egoism goes so far that they're not even capable of risking their lives for the defence of their most vital interests. The Jew totally lacks any interest in things of the spirit. If he has pretended in Germany to have a bent for literature and the arts, that's only out of snobbery, or from a liking for speculation. He has no feeling for art, and no sensibility. Except in the regions where they live in groups, the Jews are said to have reached a very high cultural level! Take Nuremberg, for example: for four hundred years—that is to say, until 1838—it hadn't a single Jew in its population. Result: a situation in the first rank of German cultural life. Put the Jews all together: by the end of three hundred years, they'll have devoured one another. Where we have a philosopher, they have a Talmudistic pettifogger. What for us is an attempt to get to the bottom of things and express the inexpressible, becomes for the Jew a pretext for verbal juggleries. His only talent is for masticating ideas so as to disguise his thought. He has observed that the Aryan is stupid to the point of accepting anything in matters of religion, as soon as the idea of God is recognised. With the Aryan, the belief in the Beyond often takes a quite childish form ; but this belief does represent an effort towards a deepening of things. The man who doesn't believe in the Beyond has no understanding of religion. The great trick of Jewry was to insinuate itself fraudulently amongst the religions with a religion like Judaism, which in reality is not a religion. Simply, the Jew has put a religious camouflage over his racial doctrine. Everything he undertakes is built on this lie. The Jew can take the credit for having corrupted the Graeco- Roman world. Previously words were used to express thoughts; he used words to invent the art of disguising thoughts. Lies are his strength, his weapon in the struggle. The Jew is said to be gifted. His only gift is that of juggling with other people's property and swindling each and everyone. Suppose I find by chance a picture that I believe to be a Titian. I tell the owner what I think of it, and I offer him a price. In a similar case, the Jew begins by declaring that the picture is valueless, he buys it for a song and sells it at a profit of 5000 per cent. To persuade people that a thing which has value, has none, and vice versa—that's not a sign of intelligence. They can't even overcome the smallest economic crisis! The Jew has a talent for bringing confusion into the simplest matters, for getting everything muddled up. Thus comes the moment when nobody understands anything more about the question at issue. To tell you something utterly insignificant, the Jew drowns you in a flood of words. You try to analyse what he said, and you realise it's all wind. The Jew makes use of words to stultify his neighbours. And that's why people make them professors. The law of life is : "God helps him who helps himself!" It's so simple that everybody is convinced of it, and nobody would pay to learn it. But the Jew succeeds in getting himself rewarded for his meaningless glibness. Stop following what he says, for a moment, and at once his whole scaffolding collapses. I've always said, the Jews are the most diabolic creatures in existence, and at the same time the stupidest. They can't produce a musician, or a thinker. No art, nothing, less than nothing. They're liars, forgers, crooks. They owe their success only to the stupidity of their victims. If the Jew weren't kept presentable by the Aryan, he'd be so dirty he couldn't open his eyes. We can live without the Jews, but they couldn't live without us. When the Europeans realise that, they'll all become simultaneously aware of the solidarity that binds them together. The Jew prevents this solidarity. He owes his livelihood to the fact that this solidarity does not exist.
Adolf Hitler (Hitler's Table Talk, 1941-1944)
First, an egg is not an egg is not an egg. I don't know what to call the things that are produced by hens crowded into dirty cages, their beaks snipped, tricked into laying constantly. Whatever they are, they are only edible in the sense that we can cram anything down if we need to; their secrets merit airing, but not eating.
Tamar Adler (An Everlasting Meal: Cooking with Economy and Grace)
The Lowly Thermostat, Now Minter of Megawatts How Nest is turning its consumer hit into a service for utilities. Peter Fairley | 945 words • Google’s $3.2 billion acquisition of Nest Labs in January put the Internet of things on the map. Everyone had vaguely understood that connecting everyday objects to the Internet could be a big deal. Here was an eye-popping price tag to prove it. Nest, founded by former Apple engineers in 2010, had managed to turn the humble thermostat into a slick, Internet-connected gadget. By this year, Nest was selling 100,000 of them a month, according to an estimate by Morgan Stanley. At $249 a pop, that’s a nice business. But more interesting is what Nest has been up to since last May in Texas, where an Austin utility is paying Nest to remotely turn down people’s air conditioners in order to conserve power on hot summer days—just when electricity is most expensive. For utilities, this kind of “demand response” has long been seen as a killer app for a smart electrical grid, because if electricity use can be lowered just enough at peak times, utilities can avoid firing up costly (and dirty) backup plants. Demand response is a neat trick. The Nest thermostat manages it by combining two things that are typically separate—price information and control over demand. It’s consumers who control the air conditioners, electric heaters, and furnaces that dominate a home’s energy diet. But the actual cost of energy can vary widely, in ways that consumers only dimly appreciate and can’t influence. While utilities frequently carry out demand
Anonymous
I had a dream about you. I’d just invented a flying bathtub, and you were dirty and afraid of heights. I thought I could cure both at once, so I tricked you into getting naked and getting in. Actually, that’s all I really wanted was to get you naked, so I never even pushed the launch button or turned on the water. Isn’t love wonderful?
Jarod Kintz (Dreaming is for lovers)
Balfour paused to swat irritably at a fly near his face, and with that gesture Lachlan suddenly realised why he had been summoned, because he knew all of Balfour’s tricks. For all his pretended geniality, Colonel Balfour had the skill of a scorpion. He always started with a smile and flattery, paused to swat a fly ... then dished out the dirty work.
Gretta Curran Browne (By Eastern Windows (Macquarie, #1))
Steinem recruited about one hundred Americans into a delegation to confront the 17,000 youth at the 1959 Vienna Youth Festival under the banners of Marxism and national liberation. Her bloc employed dirty tricks to disrupt the proceedings, including distributing anti-communist propaganda to fill a shortage of toilet paper and invading discussion groups to attack communist dogma. Pleased with her work in Vienna, the CIA sent Steinem to lead a similar delegation to Helsinki in 1962, where the CIA courted African students with American jazz and, according to Paget, left "memorable images of Steinem parting the beaded curtains to enter the nightclub as if she was Mata Hari.
Anonymous
Fake engine noise has become one of the auto industry's dirty little secrets, with automakers from BMW to Volkswagen turning to a sound-boosting bag of tricks. Without them, today's more fuel-efficient engines would sound far quieter and, automakers worry, seemingly less powerful, potentially pushing buyers away.
Anonymous
✜♊✜ SONY5.OA.TO ✜♊✜ Love is only ✜♊✜ SONY5.OA.TO ✜♊✜ a dirty trick ✜♊✜ SONY5.OA.TO ✜♊✜ played on us to achieve continuation of the species. ✜♊✜ SONY5.OA.TO ✜♊✜
SONY5.OA.TO
I hope I have not upset you,” Mrs. Wattlesbrook said with an innocent smile. “I pride myself on matching each client with her perfect gentleman. But one cannot anticipate a woman’s every fancy, and so our talent pool runs deep. You understand?” “Very deep indeed.” Jane felt like a woman drowning, and she grasped for anything. And as it turned out, bald-faced lies are, temporarily anyway, impressively buoyant, so she said, “It will make the ending to my article all the more interesting.” “Your…your article?” Mrs. Wattlesbrook peered over her spectacles as if at a bug she would like to squash. “Mm-hm,” said Jane, lying extravagantly, outrageously, but also, she hoped, gracefully. “Surely you know I work for a magazine? The editor thought the story of my experience at Pembrook Park would be the perfect way to launch my move from graphic design to staff writer.” She had no intention of becoming a staff writer, and in fact the artist bug was raging through her blood now more than ever, but she just had to give Mrs. Wattlesbrook a good jab before departure. She was smarting enough to crave the reprieve that comes from fighting back. Mrs. Wattlesbrook twitched. That was satisfying. “And I’m sure you realize that since I’m a member of the press,” Jane said, “the confidentiality agreement you made me sign doesn’t apply.” Mrs. Wattlesbrook’s right eyebrow spasmed. Jane guessed that behind it ran her barrister’s phone number, which she would dial ASAP. Jane, of course, had been lying again. And wasn’t it fun! Mrs. Wattlesbrook appeared to be trying to moisten her mouth and failing. “I did not know…I would have…” “But you didn’t. The cell phone scandal, the dirty trick with Martin…You assumed that I was no one of influence. I guess I’m not. But my magazine has a circulation of over six hundred thousand. I wonder how many of those readers are in your preferred tax bracket? And I’m afraid my article won’t be glowing.” Jane curtsied in her jeans and turned to leave. “Oh, and, Mrs. Wattlesbrook?” “Yes, Jane, my dear?” the proprietress responded with a shaky, fawning voice. “What is Mr. Nobley’s first name?” Mrs. Wattlesbrook stared at her, blinkless. “It’s J…Jonathon.” Jane wagged her finger. “Nice try.
Shannon Hale (Austenland (Austenland, #1))
As soon as you turn your fucking back life it just plays dirty tricks on you
Melek bj
Her silk scarf was the same wine color as her unpainted lips—a dirty trick.
Norman Ollestad (Gravity)
The trick of switching words’ meanings is one of the oldest in the book. Just think of “freedom” and “democracy” … Ultimately, it’s a problem of shortsightedness. An addiction to what’s next. People become so obsessed with the future, they make it up. Fabricate the “news.” Invent their own “analysis.” We’ve been doing that for years. It seems only natural that eventually we’d move on to manufacturing words.… But Synchronic didn’t invent accelerated obsolescence. As a nation we’ve been practicing mass production since before World War II. We believed wastefulness would morph, by magic, into wealth. That if we created enough disposable products, it would help fire consumerism. And it did, for a while. But here’s a dirty secret: resources are finite. Waste enough, and eventually it’s all used up. Language, too. You can’t just coin a word, use it once, and toss it out. But language is just the latest casualty. We always think there’s more of everything, even as we deplete it. Not just petroleum or gold, glacial ice or water, bandwidth. Now even our thoughts and memories are disposable.
Alena Graedon (The Word Exchange)
Just Go...Just Go No need of your compliments Your smiles are knifes Your words of swords They hit my soul deep inside Every time I cut myself Dark inside... You thought I would never survive Look, Look I'm strong than before I killed my pretty self for you I had I'm change...I'm change Just of you Here is no need to explain That way, I'm not going Now...Just for now It will bad for me if I go C'oz then I wanna kill you Like you never get killed But you feel ever: I killed you deep inside Now I'm a little devil of yours You killed your little princess With the dirty steps of yours Wanna taste me now ??? Just fade...Just fade I don't wanna destroy The ending day of my life. Your face, Your Name Makes me fire deep inside Now listen dear Da...y It's my time to assassinate you assassinate you deep inside No swords, no knifes No guns, no old tricks In my own way, I will kill you Curious ? Wanna know ??? Angry ? Just blow !!! Just wait...Just wait Genius...! You will know, one day On your own...C'oz It's just a start I'm not over yet I have more to say I have to burn each drop Of your blood, you have inside I have more to do for you C'oz, I'm your little devil...!
Irfa Adam
Love is only a dirty trick played on us to achieve the continuation of the species.
Lionel Fisher (Celebrating Time Alone)
I know. I’ll tell you what, when you spend your life doing investigations, you become wary of coincidences. Because they happen. It’s possible that there was a dirty trick, followed by two killings, at a critical moment in a political campaign, and it’s all purely a coincidence that the person who most benefits had two killers standing around. I personally am not ready to believe that.
John Sandford (Silken Prey (Lucas Davenport #23))
By afternoon Jack found her down on her hands and knees scouring the bathroom floor around the toilet and tub. “For the love of God,” he said. “What?” “What the hell are you doing? If you want the bathroom cleaned, why don’t you just tell me? I know how to clean a goddamn bathroom.” “It wasn’t all that dirty, but since I’m in the cleaning mood, I thought I’d whip it into shape.” “David is ready for his nap. Why don’t you join him.” “I don’t feel like a nap. I’m going to vacuum the area rugs.” “No, you’re not,” he said. “I’ll do that if it has to be done right now.” “Okay,” Mel said, smiling. “I’ve been tricked.” “Only by yourself, darling,” she said, whirling away to get the Pledge and Windex. After that was done—and there was a lot of wood and glass and stainless steel to occupy her—she was sweeping off the porch and back steps. Not long after that, she was caught dragging the cradle into the master bedroom. “Melinda!” he shouted, startling her and making her jump. “Jack! Don’t do that!” “Let go of that thing!” He brushed her out of the way and grabbed the cradle. “Where do you want it?” “Right there,” she said. He put it beside the bed. “No,” she said. “Over there, kind of out of the way.” He put it there. “No,” she said. “Against that wall—we’ll put it where we need it when she comes.” He moved it again. “Thank you,” she said. The phone rang. “I’ll get it,” he said. He picked up a pencil and put it in her face. “If you lift anything heavier than this, I’m going to beat you.” Then he turned and left the room. He has cabin fever, she thought. Spending too much time at home with me, making sure I don’t pick up anything heavier than a pencil. He should get out more, and out of my hair. When Jack was done with the phone, she was on her knees in front of the hearth, brushing out the barely used fireplace. “Aw, Jesus Christ,” he said in frustration. “Can that not wait until at least frickin’ winter?” She sat back on her heels. “You are really getting on my last nerve. Don’t you have somewhere you can go?” “No, but we do. Go shower and get beautiful. Paul and Vanessa are back and after they view the prom couple, they’re going to the bar for dinner. We’ll all meet there, look at some pictures.” “Great,” she said. “I’m in the mood for a beer.” “Whatever you want, Melinda,” he said tiredly. “Just stop this frickin’ cleaning.” “You know I’m not going to be able to do much of this after the baby comes, so it’s good to have it all done. And the way I like it.” “You’ve always been good at cleaning. Why couldn’t you just cook?” he asked. “You don’t cook anything.” “You cook.” She smiled. “How many cooks does one house need?” “Just go shower. You have fireplace ash on your nose.” “Pain in the ass,” she said to him, getting clumsily to her feet. “Ditto,” he said. An
Robyn Carr (Second Chance Pass)
Loving yourself when you’re down and dirty is hard, but loving yourself into the next transformation, that’s the real trick.
Andrea Hairston (Mindscape)
As with all things, reality was far less glamorous than the Hollywood depiction and mostly involved dirty tricks, lies, cheating, stealing, and generally being an untrustworthy weasel and sociopath, all in the name of God and country.
Russell Blake (JET - Ops Files II: Terror Alert)
The funniest example would have to be the curious case of the informal, small collective of liberal, center-left Hollywood insiders and operators who deployed every dirty trick they could muster to ensure that Trump’s inaugural festivities were as punishingly lame as humanly possible. We are, for now, withholding the names of the members of this shadowy cabal, on the condition of our reporting certain details
Lachlan Markay (Sinking in the Swamp: How Trump's Minions and Misfits Poisoned Washington)
it is queer how when you got time by yourself & are getting on in life your brain can play tricks You might be having a normal morning Putting sheep shit on the vegetables & then for no reason at all you get this wave of memory come over you so strong you have to sit down there in the dirt for fear you might keel over probably some stupid little memory Something you haven’t thought of for years But it comes back so strong you feel undone You have no defence against it & then you’re crying into the shit & strawberry plants & no one can tell you to stop it or hand you their dirty pocket rag to dry your eyes with, because there’s no one left You finally got the Peace & Quiet you thought you was after all these years & now that it’s here, you wish there was something to fill it back up again. I say You but I mean Me These days I live more in my mind than on the ground The Past seems more real than what I spend my time doing.
Sara Tilley (Duke)
The ï⌁ᵶ⎔ctogon8⌁ð Do not beat your nik, Or play at fiddlesticks. Prefix not thy rhetoric With suffix that transfix. Play no dirty tricks, That try to s’nick or nix. Go the quick route fix– With things that intermix. Do not be thick, Or over politic. Be ye no sophistahick, Playin’ smartass in the sticks. Do not be sad or heartsick, If your neck has no ies full of hick. If you are not on the River Styx, Look alive–give Charon a kick. If a bad guy has given all the slip, Be chivalric: use a *sharp stick. If with a bovine that is lovesick, She’ll smooch you a wet cowlick. Light a candlestick: Let it all brightly click– [Eighth power of a # ∞8: ≒ ∼ ≓ —be sure well to remember]. Zenzic aside, Do not panic but abide. ’Tis just a mathematic– Past the deep end sixth— It is nothing ’cept a ⇌ ’twixt ⇋. Quite a simple pick: Avoid the contradixts– Choose humble little⌁ Zenzizenzizenzics ⌁—
Douglas M. Laurent
However, instead of getting pulled into a struggle, you could pause for an empowering moment of self-awareness and simply say, “I don’t know,” or “I can’t really answer that right now.” If EIPs try to prompt an argument, you can enjoy a nice breath, then sidestep them with, “I guess I don’t have anything to say about that right now.” Another slippery response to anything that seems false or crazy is to make noncommittal sounds, like “Uh-huh,” “Hmmm,” or just, “Huh.” Slipperiness is effective because no friction is created, and your minimal feedback makes you a less desirable opponent. Think of this skill as flowing around an obstacle instead of making yourself a target. Because EIPs aren’t mature enough to fight fair, confrontations with them are full of dirty tricks and red herrings. They will wear you down and distract you from the outcome you want. If you accept a battle of wills, they might win because their self-centered arguments will exhaust your brain just trying to make sense of their illogical responses.
Lindsay C. Gibson (Recovering from Emotionally Immature Parents: Practical Tools to Establish Boundaries & Reclaim Your Emotional Autonomy)
A still more sobering social media example of a different kind, one so important that it could well have influenced the presidential election of 2016, was the cooperation between Cambridge Analytica and Facebook. Cambridge Analytica, a political data firm, was largely the creation of Steve Bannon and his billionaire sponsor, Robert Mercer. One former co-executive referred to Cambridge Analytica as “Bannon’s arsenal of weaponry to wage a culture war on America using military strategies.” Cambridge Analytica combined a particularly vicious version of traditional “dirty tricks” with cutting-edge social media savvy. The dirty tricks, according to its former CEO, Alexander Nix, included bribery, sting operations, the use of prostitutes, and “honey traps” (usually involving sexual behavior, sometimes even initiated for the purposes of obtaining compromising photographs) to discredit politicians on whom it conducted opposition research. The social media savvy included advanced methods developed by the Psychometrics Centre of Cambridge University. Aleksandr Kogan, a young Russian American psychologist working there, created an app that enabled him to gain access to elaborate private information on more than fifty million Facebook users, information specifically identifying personality traits that influenced behavior. Kogan had strong links to Facebook, which failed to block his harvesting of that massive data; he then passed the data along to Cambridge Analytica. Kogan also taught at the Saint Petersburg State University in Russia; and given the links between Cambridge Analytica and Russian groups, the material was undoubtedly made available to Russian intelligence. So extensive was Cambridge Analytica’s collection of data that Nix could boast, “Today in the United States we have somewhere close to 4 or 5 thousand data points on every individual…. So we model the personality of every adult across the United States, some 230 million people.” Whatever his exaggeration, he was describing a new means of milieu control that was invisible and potentially manipulable in the extreme. Beyond Cambridge Analytica or Kogan, Russian penetration of American social media has come to be recognized as a vast enterprise involving extensive falsification and across-the-board anti-Clinton messages, with special attention given to African American men in order to discourage them from voting. The Russians apparently reached millions of people and surely had a considerable influence on the outcome of the election. More generally, one can say that social media platforms can now create a totality of their own, and can make themselves available to would-be owners of reality by means of massive deception, distortion, and promulgation of falsehoods. The technology itself promotes mystification and becomes central to creating and sustaining cultism. Trump is the first president to have available to him these developments in social media. His stance toward the wild conspiracism I have mentioned is to stop short of total allegiance to them, but at the same time to facilitate them and call them forth in his tweets and harbor their followers at his rallies. All of this suggests not only that Trump and the new social media are made for each other, but also that the problem will long outlive Trump’s brief, but all too long, moment on the historical stage.
Robert Jay Lifton (Losing Reality: On Cults, Cultism, and the Mindset of Political and Religious Zealotry)
Hopefully, you like beer because it’s all I have.” So much for crashing. My body was wide awake now. “Beer’s good. I just got off though. I need to change real quick.” I tugged at my work tank top. “I’ll be here.” He grinned, and I couldn’t help but notice he had a perfect smile. Really nice teeth. God, that was weird to notice. But man, he was a seriously good-looking guy. Nothing I could pinpoint as the feature that made him exceptionally attractive; everything just came together nicely. Like those people who have perfect facial symmetry, which tricks the brain, making them attractive to everyone. He was one of those people. And my brain most definitely appreciated the flawlessness. He was still grinning as I studied him, and it suddenly hit me, I was standing there. Staring. Geez. “Sorry. I’m exhausted from my shift. Sort of out of it.” He nodded slowly, clearly not buying my excuse. “Well, get changed and come relax. We can bitch about our day, gripe about our aching bones, maybe get in a fight over whose turn it is to cook dinner.” I stifled a laugh and played along with his old married couple reference. “Which will, of course, lead me into reminding you that my lasagna is never as good as your mother’s.” “Ah, but we can’t forget, I always overseason when I cook.” “And while we are talking about dinner, we should probably discuss the fact that dishes don’t wash themselves.” “Well, if we’re going there, you might as well remind me that the floor is not a hamper.” “Obviously.” My smile finally broke free. “Then I’ll complain of a headache, and we’ll call it a night.” “Wow.” He leaned back and rubbed his chin. “I’m sorry to say it, but I think this relationship is moving too fast.” “Relationship?” I raised an eyebrow. “We’re one dirty sock away from divorce.” He laughed, and my chest fluttered because it was one hell of a sexy laugh. “Get changed and come on over. I’m eager to get to know my future ex-wife.” With what I’m sure could only be described as a stupid grin, I said, “Be right back.
Renita Pizzitola (Just a Little Kiss (Crush, #3))
Wait a goddamn minute!” Rick snapped. “You have to tell me about the fucking spaceship!” “Will your ride be waiting?” Jerry asked. “He’ll wait!” “Well, okay then. I was camping with a couple of friends. We were in Arizona, way out in the middle of nowhere. We’d been in Sedona, but we moved out into the desert. When my friends woke up in the morning, I was gone. I woke up—I don’t know when—inside this spaceship. I had no memory of being snatched. It was like silver glass on the inside and the people—the aliens—had on suits that covered them from head to toe, breathing like Darth Vader, and I was stripped bare and lying out on a silver table. They were studying me and poking at me and talking in what sounded like high-pitched squeaks. Like dolphins. “My friends got a search party going back in Arizona, but after two weeks of not being able to find me, they all gave up the search. They assumed I’d wandered off and died in the desert. But at some point, again in a total blackout, I found myself back in the desert of Arizona—alone. A park ranger found me and picked me up. The story goes that I wandered off from our camp and hallucinated due to dehydration, but that isn’t what happened.” “Maybe it did,” Rick said. Jerry shook his head. “I wasn’t dehydrated. And after weeks of being missing in the desert, my clothes weren’t damaged. Not torn or dirty or anything.” He looked at his watch. “I’ve researched—mine is not the lone account of such a thing. I’ll be glad to give you what other details I can remember at the end of our next session, if you’re interested.” Rick sat back in his chair and just stared at the guy. “How often does this spaceship trick work for you?” Jerry grinned. “Every time.” *
Robyn Carr (Paradise Valley)
Forgive me, Mother.” He bowed. “My argument is with my father.” “Well,” the duke announced himself and paused for dramatic effect in the doorway of the private parlor. “No need to look further. You can have at me now.” “You are having Anna Seaton investigated,” the earl said, “and it could well cost her her safety.” “Then marry her,” the duke shot back. “A husband can protect a wife, particularly if he’s wealthy, titled, smart, and well connected. Your mother has assured me she does not object to the match.” “You don’t deny this? Do you have any idea the damage you do with your dirty tricks, sly maneuvers, and stupid manipulations? That woman is terrified, nigh paralyzed with fear for herself and her younger relation, and you go stomping about in her life as if you are God Almighty come to earth for the purpose of directing everybody else’s personal life.” The duke paced into the room, color rising in his face. “That is mighty brave talk for a man who can’t see fit to take a damned wife after almost ten years of looking. What in God’s name is wrong with you, Westhaven? I know you cater to women, and I know you are carrying on with this Seaton woman. She’s comely, convenient, and of child-bearing age. I should have thought to have her investigated, I tell you, so I might find some way to coerce her to the altar.” “You already tried coercion,” Westhaven shot back, “and it’s only because Gwen Allen is a decent human being her relations haven’t ruined us completely in retaliation for your failed schemes. I am ashamed to be your son and worse than ashamed to be your heir. You embarrass me, and I wish to hell I could disinherit you, because if I don’t find you a damned broodmare, I’ve every expectation you will disinherit me.” “Gayle!” His mother was on her feet, her expression horror-stricken. “Please, for the love of God, apologize. His Grace did not have Mrs. Seaton investigated.” “Esther…” His Grace tried to get words out, but his wife had eyes only for her enraged son. “He most certainly did,” Westhaven bit out. “Up to his old tricks, just as he was with Gwen and with Elise and with God knows how many hapless debutantes and scheming widows. I am sick to death of it, Mother, and this is the last straw.” “Esther,” His Grace tried again. “Hush, Percy,” the duchess said miserably, still staring at her son. “His Grace did not have your Mrs. Seaton investigated.” She paused and dropped Westhaven’s gaze. “I did.” “Esther,” the duke gasped as he dropped like a stone onto a sofa. “For the love of God, help me.
Grace Burrowes (The Heir (Duke's Obsession, #1; Windham, #1))
Just remember, love ain't nothing but a dirty trick makin' sure we continue the species.
Ashley Lynn Willis (Summer's Temptation (Vandeveer University, #1))
The polarization of terms of employment between an ultraflexible fixed-term contract and an ultrarigid permanent contract divides the labor market between those who spend more and more time trying to find a real job, and those who have been hired for an unlimited period and whose jobs are protected. In other words, this polarization is a dirty trick played on employees in general, and especially on the young.17 Even so, political debate is focused on dismissals of employees who have permanent contracts.
Jean Tirole (Economics for the Common Good)
Specifically, each of our three deals contained something that had come to be known in the industry as the “CA clause” in honor of the infamous software company Computer Associates, or CA for short. The CA clause had come about as a result of some of CA’s business practices. Apparently CA had tricked their customers by selling them maintenance contracts that gave them rights to free upgrades forever for products named “X.” CA would then change the name of product “X” to product “Y” and charge their customers for an upgrade the customers thought they were entitled to for free. It was very clever, and totally dirty.
Ben Horowitz (The Hard Thing About Hard Things: Building a Business When There Are No Easy Answers)
That didn’t make any sense to me because a god who would play dirty tricks on a kid like that didn’t know very much about being a god.
Vince Vawter (Paperboy)
Winning will use every dirty trick in the book—and make up new ones just to entertain itself—to keep you in hell. It’s too hard, it whispers … you’ll never get there… your parents don’t believe in you… your friends think you’re crazy… look at you, you’re already a failure. Which, by no coincidence, is exactly what you were already thinking. So you stay there, waiting. Waiting to feel different, waiting to be told what to do, waiting for an answer that never comes. And meanwhile, the flames are getting hotter and hotter, until you can’t take it. You have to take action, or you burn out. But instead of being propelled by the heat, you can become frozen where you are.
Tim S. Grover (Winning: The Unforgiving Race to Greatness (Tim Grover Winning Series))
Democratic representative Pat Schroeder called him “the most evil man in America.” Reverend Pat Robertson said, “Lee Atwater has used every dirty trick known to mankind” and “the Republican campaign was blamed for planting specious rumors about the mental-health history of Michael Dukakis.” (William Greider, Rolling Stone, 1/12/89)
Larry Beinhart (Wag the Dog: A Novel)
he had once in the past been asked, 'why do you hate so-and-so so much?' and he had answered them, with his shameless impudence, ' I'll tell you. He has done me no harm. But I played him a dirty trick, and ever since I have hated him.
Carol Tarvis
He wanted to take his revenge on them all for his own dirty tricks.
Fyodor Dostoevsky (The Brothers Karamazov)
You can use dirty legal tricks to deny my government disability payments and I can use research, discovery and the internet to shut your toxic enterprise down.
Steven Magee
I probably should stop being a dumbass, but fuck, that’s so much easier said than done.
K.M. Neuhold (Dirty Trick (Palm Island #3))
He leaned down and kissed me, warm and soft. "I do have a trick to get you to relax though." And I knew exactly what his idea of "relaxing" was. "We're at work!" "We're alone at work," he teased, lifting me off my feet and walking away with me in his arms. "You're insatiable!" I laughed as he bound up the stairs. "Only when it comes to you, love." In his office, he kicked the door shut behind him before setting me on the small couch by the bookshelves. He caged me in his arms and leaned down to kiss my neck. "What do you think you're doing?" My lips protested, but my head moved to the side, giving him more room to kiss me. "Are we still trying for a faeling?" he asked. "These things can take quite a bit of time, you know." "It could take decades!" "A sacrifice I'm willing to make," he teased. Wrapping my fingers around his tie, I gently tugged his face down to mine so I could kiss him, reminiscent of our first kiss that had cemented the bond between us half a year ago. "Whatever happens, happens. I'm not as impatient as you, Lord of Winter." "Only for you," Devin answered. "Only ever for you, love." He kissed me again, deeper and hungrier than before, and I wrapped my arms around his neck and melted into him.
Sabrina Blackburry (Dirty Lying Faeries (The Enchanted Fates, #1))
The occupying troops left the village on 28th June. “They had been downhearted for 24 hours, now they are gay, especially when they are together. The little darling said sadly that ‘the happy times are over.’ They are sending their parcels home. They are overexcited, that’s obvious. Admirable discipline and, I think, deep down no rebelliousness. I make an oath here and now never to heap my grudges, however justified they may be, on to a body of men, whatever their race, religion, conviction, prejudices, wrongs. I feel sorry for these poor children. But I cannot forgive individuals, those who reject me, those who coldly drop us, those who are ready to play dirty tricks on you. Those people … if I could get my hands on them one day …
Olivier Philipponnat (The Life of Irene Nemirovsky: 1903-1942)
But the team I’m seeing out there tonight? That’s not my team. My goalie doesn’t miss glove saves, and my defensemen don’t throw dirty hits. My offensemen don’t give away the puck on breakaways and trip over their own skates. My team doesn’t play without passion and confidence. So, what gives?
Hannah Cowan (Lucky Hit (Swift Hat-Trick Trilogy, #1))
I choose truth. She thinks for a moment, tapping her pointer finger to her lips in concentration. Her dark brown eyes narrow on me, and I freeze, hoping she can’t read my mind and the dirty turn it’s taken. “What are you thinking right now?” Fuck. “That I’m really drunk,” I evade, but she calls me on my bullshit. “Wrong answer. What are you really thinking?” Her gaze digs a hole to my very soul, and I know I won’t be able to lie. “I’m thinking,” I start carefully. “That I really want to know what it feels like to have your body pressed against mine in the most intimate way.” Her breath catches on an inhale, but I keep going. “I’m thinking about how badly I want to kiss you and learn how every inch of your body tastes. If we’re being honest, I’ve thought about that since the moment I met you, and my desire for you has only grown in the last ten years. You’re the perfect match to my chaos, and I’m ready to risk it all for you.” I’ve barely finished speaking before she’s in my lap, and every train of thought has effectively left the building. Instinctively, I grab her waist, pulling her closer, rubbing her cotton-covered center against my erection on purpose. We both groan, and that single sound from her makes my dick twitch against her. I know she feels it. Her next words are a whisper against my lips. “Truth or dare?” “Dare,” I whisper back. “Kiss me.” With my heart completely in her hands, I kiss Macey Veronica Rosario with all I have for the very first time, and I hope beyond all hope, that it won’t be the last.
Ella Market (Hat Trick Heart (Thunderclap, #1))