“
I can sue you for harassment".
"Lets play that fucking game." Lo replies "lets see whose lawyers are better. I'm a goddamn Hale. My family eats shitty fucks like you for brunch. Don't you ever force yourself on a girl ever again
”
”
Krista Ritchie (Addicted for Now (Addicted, #3))
“
In the past, when gays were very flamboyant as drag queens or as leather queens or whatever, that just amused people. And most of the people that come and watch the gay Halloween parade, where all those excesses are on display, those are straight families, and they think it's funny. But what people don't think is so funny is when two middle-aged lawyers who are married to each other move in next door to you and your wife and they have adopted a Korean girl and they want to send her to school with your children and they want to socialize with you and share a drink over the backyard fence. That creeps people out, especially Christians. So, I don't think gay marriage is a conservative issue. I think it's a radical issue.
”
”
Edmund White
“
Feminism … I think the simplest explanation, and one that captures the idea, is a song that Marlo Thomas sang, 'Free to be You and Me.' Free to be, if you were a girl—doctor, lawyer, Indian chief. Anything you want to be. And if you’re a boy, and you like teaching, you like nursing, you would like to have a doll, that’s OK too. That notion that we should each be free to develop our own talents, whatever they may be, and not be held back by artificial barriers—manmade barriers, certainly not heaven sent.
”
”
Ruth Bader Ginsburg (My Own Words)
“
How can you say young girls don't get it? They're our future. Our future doctors, lawyers, mothers, presidents, they kind of keep the world going.
”
”
Harry Styles
“
in my day, molay, a girl couldn’t dream like that. But you, my namesake, you can be a doctor, or lawyer, or journalist—anything you imagine. We lit that lamp to light your path.
”
”
Abraham Verghese (The Covenant of Water)
“
Girls don't go to law school," I told him.
"No, but women do.
”
”
Rikki Klieman (Fairy Tales Can Come True: How a Driven Woman Changed Her Destiny)
“
This woman lawyer said the best men wanted to be pure for their wives, and even if they weren't pure, they wanted to be the ones to teach their wives about sex. Of course they would try to persuade a girl to have sex and say they would marry her later, but as
soon as she gave in, they would lose all respect for her and start saying that if she did that with them she would do that with other men and they would end up by making her life
miserable.
”
”
Sylvia Plath
“
When your mom and I were your age, there weren't a lot of options for girls. Like, you know how your mother's always telling you that you can be anything you want to be when you grow up? That wasn't what we heard. Men could be doctors or lawyers. We were just supposed to marry them.
”
”
Jennifer Weiner (Mrs. Everything)
“
Doctors, lawyers, and princes come and go. Oil money lasts forever.
”
”
Babe Walker (White Girl Problems)
“
I was about to warn the girl about John’s coffee, which tasted like a cup of battery acid someone had pissed in and then cursed at for several hours, but John turned to her and in a lawyerly voice said, “Shelly, tell us your story.
”
”
David Wong (John Dies at the End (John Dies at the End #1))
“
What about you and me, Adina?” Duff said, sidling up to her by the railing. “I know I screwed up. But do you think we could start over?”
Adina thought about everything that had happened. Part of her wanted to kiss Duff McAvoy, the tortured British trust-fund-runaway-turned-pirate-of-necessity who loved rock ‘n’ roll and mouthy-but-vulnerable bass-playing girls from New Hampshire. But he didn’t exist. Not really. He was a creature of TV and her imagination, a guy she’d invented as much as he’d invented himself. And this was what she suddenly understood about her mother: how with each man, each husband, she was really trying to fill in the sketchy parts of herself and become somebody she could finally love. It was hard to live in the messiness and easier to believe in the dream. And in that moment, Adina knew she was not her mother after all. She would make mistakes, but they wouldn’t be the same mistakes. Starting now.
“Sorry,” she said, heading for the bow, where a spot of sun looked inviting. ”Oh, also, about that blog? Just so you know, my dads know a lot of gay lawyers. Bitches will take your ass down if you try to publish that. Peace out.
”
”
Libba Bray (Beauty Queens)
“
Okay, so he's hot and he's alone, but how do you know he's not a serial killer or even worse, a lawyer?
”
”
Helena S. Paige (GIRL WALKS INTO WEDDING (Your Fantasy, Your Rules, 2))
“
We’re women. Not girls. I am a twenty-seven-year-old pioneer in the wellness space who reincorporated her company as a B-corp without needing to hire a lawyer. Would you refer to my male equivalent as a boy?
”
”
Jessica Knoll (The Favorite Sister)
“
Against all the odds, Marguerite Carlough found a lawyer to take her case. And on February 5, 1925, she filed suit against the United States Radium Corporation for $75,000 ($1 million). The dial-painters’ fight back had begun.
”
”
Kate Moore (The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America's Shining Women)
“
CALVIN: Hey, I got some mail! It's a Valentine card.
HOBBES: From Susie Derkins!
CALVIN: It says "Please be my Valentine."
HOBBES: You're Susie's Valentine!
CALVIN: I'm not her Valentine just because I got this in the mail, am I? Does the Post Master General know about this?
HOBBES: Calvin and Susie, sitting in a tree-ee! Kay-eye-ess-ess-eye-en-gee!
CALVIN: I don't have the KISS her, do I?! Is that what Valentines do??! Oh, gross!
HOBBES: First comes lo-ove, then comes marriage, then comes a baby in a baby carriage!
CALVIN: This can't be happening! I need a lawyer! She can't make me be her Valentine!
HOBBES: Here she comes! Here comes Susie!
SUSIE: Hi, Calvin.
CALVIN: Get away from me! I'm not your Valentine! Take your card back! Eww! Girls! YECCHH!
SUSIE: That card wasn't for YOU, you Moron. Didn't you read the back of the envelope?
CALVIN: "Calvin, please give this to Hobbes." HOBBES?!
HOBBES: Me? Really? Hot dog! Smooch City, here I come!
”
”
Bill Watterson (The Indispensable Calvin and Hobbes)
“
If you are a millionaire beset by blackmailers or anyone else to whose comfort the best legal advice is essential, and have decided to put your affairs in the hands of the ablest and discreetest firm in London, you proceed through a dark and grimy entry and up a dark and grimy flight of stairs; and, having felt your way along a dark and grimy passage, you come at length to a dark and grimy door. There is plenty of dirt in other parts of Ridgeway's Inn, but nowhere is it so plentiful, so rich in alluvial deposits, as on the exterior of the offices of Marlowe, Thorpe, Prescott, Winslow and Appleby. As you tap on the topmost of the geological strata concealing the ground-glass of the door, a sense of relief and security floods your being. For in London grubbiness is the gauge of a lawyer's respectability.
”
”
P.G. Wodehouse (The Girl on the Boat)
“
This isn’t girl power,” I say, panic-talking now. “You’re Skye’s puppet. In court your lawyer’s going to claim emotional coercion. You weren’t responsible for your actions. The man was in charge all the way. You’ll be just another victim of a powerful, manipulative male.
”
”
Grady Hendrix (The Final Girl Support Group)
“
Ivy just had to look at him to know that Dean Bennet would never look at her. He was the kind of guy who dated flamenco dancers or famous actresses or multi-lingual international human rights lawyers. Not sheltered little daddy’s girls who could barely look at him without turning red.
”
”
Amy Andrews (The Colonel's Daughter (Men of the Zodiac, #8))
“
One described those using radium as “fools” and said he thought that radium curatives “should be abolished.” “[Aren’t they] approved by the Council of Pharmacy?” asked USRC’s lawyers indignantly. “I suppose so,” retorted the esteemed doctor airily, “but they accept so many things it means nothing to me, sir.
”
”
Kate Moore (The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America's Shining Women)
“
Didn’t you hear about the study that came out of England? The smarter you are, the less likely you are of getting married. The dumb girls are getting the guys.’
‘So, you say that you give facials for a living, instead of that you’re a lawyer who graduated with top honors from Harvard Law School?’
‘Yes, and it works.
”
”
Liz Tuccillo (How to Be Single)
“
You will recall that she had expected she might be scolded for entering Lord Fredrick’s study and perhaps falsely accused of taking the almanac. It had even occurred to her that the police might be summoned and criminal charges filed, after which she would have to bravely defend herself in front of a stern, white-wigged judge. Her eloquence would earn a standing ovation from the dazzled spectators, who would find it impossible to believe that this mere girl of fifteen was not a trained lawyer.
”
”
Maryrose Wood (The Mysterious Howling (The Incorrigible Children of Ashton Place #1))
“
If the ghost that haunts the towns of Ypres and Arras and Albert is the staturory British Tommy, slogging with rifle and pack through its ruined streets to this well-documented destiny ‘up the line’, then the ghost of Boulogne and Etaples and Rouen ought to be a girl. She’s called Elsie or Gladys or Dorothy, her ankles are swollen, her feet are aching, her hands reddened and rough. She has little money, no vote, and has almost forgotten what it feels like to be really warm. She sleeps in a tent. Unless she has told a diplomatic lie about her age, she is twenty-three. She is the daughter of a clergyman, a lawyer or a prosperous businessman, and has been privately educated and groomed to be a ‘lady’. She wears the unbecoming outdoor uniform of a VAD or an army nurse. She is on active service, and as much a part of the war as Tommy Atkins.
”
”
Lyn Macdonald (The Roses of No Man's Land)
“
Girls, murder trials, secret witnesses. Life was suddenly very complicated.
”
”
John Grisham (Theodore Boone: Kid Lawyer (Theodore Boone, #1))
“
With a gang of sharp lawyers you can safely steal whatever you like. Lawyers are the hit men of our times.
”
”
David Lagercrantz (The Girl in the Spider's Web (Millennium, #4))
“
When I grow up, I’ll be a lawyer, like Shada, to defend other little girls like me.
”
”
Nujood Ali (I Am Nujood, Age 10 and Divorced: A Memoir)
“
I hope the lawyers don’t upset it…
”
”
Kate Moore (The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America's Shining Women)
“
a note that read: “Recovery? OK,”11 which Barry explained meant that she had recovered from the anesthetic; the lawyers, however, said tartly, “Isn’t the ‘Recovery’ here recovery from the treatment?
”
”
Kate Moore (The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America's Shining Women)
“
What do you want to do forever?'
He shrugged. 'I used to want to be a lawyer.'
'Used to?' She nudged him. 'I think you could be great at that.'
'Hmm, not when the only GCSEs I got spell out the word DUUUDDEE.
”
”
Holly Jackson (A Good Girl’s Guide To Murder Series 4 Books Set By Holly Jackson (Hardcover))
“
There are no parents, no lawyers. The girl’s father is unreachable, has been unreachable for years. Someone called the girl’s mother, but not until after Anna places herself at the scene where the body was found.
”
”
Kit Frick (I Killed Zoe Spanos)
“
Russia was in any event a country in which, well in advance of the rest of Europe, girls were educated, none more so than three daughters of a successful Petersburg lawyer, in particular one without a son on whom to settle the mantle of intellectual heir.
”
”
Stacy Schiff (Vera: Mrs. Vladimir Nabokov)
“
I don't have children. I can't say I'd feel the same way if one of them was killed. And I don't have the answers-believe me, if I did, I'd be a lot richer-but you know, I'm starting to think that's okay. Maybe instead of looking for answers, we ought to be asking some questions instead. Like: What's the lesson we're teaching here? What if it's different every time? What if justice isn't equal to due process? Because at the end of the day, this is what we're left with: a victim, who's become a file to be dealt with, instead of a little girls, or a husband. An inmate who doesn't want to know the name of a correctional officer's child because that makes the relationship too personal. A warden who carries out executions even if he doesn't think they should happen in principle. And and ACLU lawyer who's suppose to go to the office, close the case, and move on. What we're left with is death, with the humanity removed from it." I hesitated a moment. "So you tell me...did this execution really make you feel safer? Did it bring us all together? Or did it drive us further apart?
”
”
Jodi Picoult
“
I sat on a bench and did what, as a girl, I had done whenever I needed to calm myself: instead of pressing the button with the number 4 on it, I let myself go up to the sixth floor. That space had been empty and dark for many years, ever since the lawyer who had his office there had left, taking with him even the light bulb from the landing. When the elevator stopped, I let my breath glide into my stomach and then return slowly to my throat. As always, after a few seconds, the light in the elevator went out, too. I thought of reaching my hand out to one of the door handles: you had only to pull it and the light would return. But I didn't move and continued to send my breath deep into my body. The only sound was that of the woodworms eating into the panelled walls.
Just a few months earlier (five, six?), on a sudden impulse, I had revealed to my mother, during one of my brief visits, that as an adolescent I used to retreat to that secret place, and I brought her up there, to the top. Maybe I wanted to try to establish an intimacy that there had never been, maybe I wanted to let her know in some confused way that I had always been unhappy. But she seemed to me only amused by the fact that I had sat suspended in the void, in a dilapidated elevator.
”
”
Elena Ferrante (Troubling Love)
“
Mademoiselle de Watteville, with a little flush of pride in thinking of the success of her Belvedere, discerned in herself a vast superiority over every one about her. No one guessed that a little girl, supposed to be a witless goose, had simply made up her mind to get a closer view of the lawyer Savaron’s private study.
”
”
Honoré de Balzac (Works of Honore de Balzac)
“
You are a bright young man,” Judge Lambert continued solemnly. One of the girls muttered “ass-munch” and was loudly shushed by her friend. “You’d have made a good lawyer, and I’d have loved to have you practice in front of me. But you went another way, partner. Take care of yourself. I don’t have any animosity, and I want you to understand that.
”
”
Jessica Knoll (Bright Young Women)
“
Hi girls,' Hank says. I let that slide because Hank is in his seventies. But Diggers have rules. The establishing tenet: We're women. Not girls. I am a twenty-seven-year-old pioneer in the wellness space who reincorporated her company as a B-corp without needing to hire a lawyer. Would you refer to my male equivalent as a boy? Try saying it out loud. It sounds non-native.
”
”
Jessica Knoll (The Favorite Sister)
“
But I have a flash of Good News from the Police Atrocity front, which is heating up in Denver.… Stand back! Good News is rare in the Criminal Justice System, but every once in a while you find it, and this is one of those times. To wit: the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers has formally entered the Appeals trial of young Lisl Auman—the girl who remains locked up in a cell at the Colorado State Prison for the Rest of Her Life with No Possibility of Parole for a bogus crime she was never even Accused of committing. She is a living victim of a cold-blooded political trial that will cast a long shadow on Denver for many years to come. Lisl is the only person ever convicted in the United States for Felony Murder who was in police custody when the crime happened.
”
”
Hunter S. Thompson (Hey Rube: Blood Sport, the Bush Doctrine & the Downward Spiral of Dumbness: Modern History from the Sports Desk)
“
When I tell my family I want to be a writer, they smile and say, We see you in the backyard with your writing. They say, We hear you making up all those stories. And, We used to write poems. And, It’s a good hobby, we see how quiet it keeps you. They say, But maybe you should be a teacher, a lawyer, do hair . . . I’ll think about it, I say. And maybe all of us know this is just another one of my stories.
”
”
Jacqueline Woodson (Brown Girl Dreaming)
“
How are things going with your brothers?”
“The judge set a date to hear me out after graduation. Mrs.Collins has been prepping me.”
“That is awesome!”
“Yeah.”
“What’s wrong?”
“Carrie and Joe hired a lawyer and I lost visitation.”
Echo placed her delicate hand over mine.“Oh, Noah. I am so sorry."
I’d spent countless hours on the couch in the basement, staring at the ceiling wondering what she was doing. Her laughter, her smile, the feel of her body next to mine, and the regret that I let her walk away too easily haunted me. Taking the risk, I entwined my fingers with hers. Odds were I’d never get the chance to be this close again. "No, Mrs. Collins convinced me the best thing to do is to keep my distance and follow the letter of the law."
"Wow, Mrs. Collins is a freaking miracle worker. Dangerous Noah Hutchins on the straight and narrow. If you don’t watch out she’ll ruin your rep with the girls."
I lowered my voice. "Not that it matters. I only care what one girl thinks about me."
She relaxed her fingers into mine and stroked her thumb over my skin.
Minutes into being alone together, we fell into each other again, like no time had passed. I could blame her for ending us, but in the end, I agreed with her decision. “How about you, Echo? Did you find your answers?”
“No.”
If I continued to disregard breakup rules, I might as well go all the way. I pushed her curls behind her shoulder and let my fingers linger longer than needed so I could enjoy the silky feel. “Don’t hide from me, baby. We’ve been through too much for that.”
Echo leaned into me, placing her head on my shoulder and letting me wrap an arm around her. “I’ve missed you, too, Noah. I’m tired of ignoring you.”
“Then don’t.” Ignoring her hurt like hell. Acknowledging her had to be better.
I swallowed, trying to shut out the bittersweet memories of our last night together. “Where’ve you been? It kills me when you’re not at school.”
“I went to an art gallery and the curator showed some interest in my work and sold my first piece two days later. Since then, I’ve been traveling around to different galleries, hawking my wares.”
“That’s awesome, Echo. Sounds like you’re fitting into your future perfectly.
Where did you decide to go to school?”
“I don’t know if I’m going to school.”
Shock jolted my system and I inched away to make sure I understood. “What the fuck do you mean you don’t know?
You’ve got colleges falling all over you and you don’t fucking know if you want to go to school?”
My damned little siren laughed at me. “I see your language has improved.”
Poof—like magic, the anger disappeared.
“If you’re not going to school, then what are your plans?”
"I’m considering putting college off for a year or two and traveling cross-country, hopping from gallery to gallery.”
“I feel like a dick. We made a deal and I left you hanging. I’m not that guy who goes back on his word. What can I do to help you get to the truth?”
Echo’s chest rose with her breath then deflated when she exhaled. Sensing our moment ending, I nuzzled her hair, savoring her scent. She patted my knee and broke away. “Nothing. There’s nothing you can do.”
"I think it’s time that I move on. As soon as I graduate, this part of my life will be over. I’m okay with not knowing what happened.” Her words sounded pretty, but I knew her better. She’d blinked three times in a row.
”
”
Katie McGarry (Pushing the Limits (Pushing the Limits, #1))
“
All the progress made for human rights could be wiped out. All the girls, all the women, who went to school, got an education. Got jobs. Became teachers and doctors and lawyers, bus drivers. You know what will happen to them if the Taliban has its way.” “Well, I guess we’ll need a strong, internationally respected Secretary of State to let any Afghan government know that rights must be respected. And that Afghanistan must not once again become home to terrorists.
”
”
Hillary Rodham Clinton (State of Terror)
“
most popular soul belonged to a beautiful girl with a dead father and domineering mom, a girl with a heart-shaped face, a sex tape, reality show, celebrity wedding, and slim, ribless waist, giant ass. When she declared she wanted to be a lawyer, to fight for the rights of the wrongly accused, people said it was impossible. But impossible is what we loved her for, followed and paid her for. It was only when she wanted to be smart, useful, that we wondered if she could.
”
”
Allie Rowbottom (Aesthetica)
“
If I am a parent, what is my relationship with my child? First of all, have I any relationship at all? The child happens to be my son or my daughter, but is there actually any relationship, any contact, companionship, communion between myself and my child, or am I too busy earning money, or whatever it is, and therefore pack him off to school? So I really have no contact or communion at all with the boy or the girl, have I? If I am a busy parent, as parents generally are, and I merely want my son to be something, a lawyer, a doctor, or an engineer, have I any relationship with him even though I have produced him?
Do parents ever ask themselves why they have children? Do they have children to perpetuate their name, to carry on their property? Do they want children merely for the sake of their own delight, to satisfy their own emotional needs? If so, then the children become a mere projection of the desires and fears of their parents.
”
”
J. Krishnamurti (Relationships to Oneself, to Others, to the World)
“
Joanne had one requirement: Her child must be adopted by college graduates. So the doctor arranged for the baby to be placed with a lawyer and his wife. But when a boy was born—on February 24, 1955—the designated couple decided that they wanted a girl and backed out. Thus it was that the boy became the son not of a lawyer but of a high school dropout with a passion for mechanics and his salt-of-the-earth wife who was working as a bookkeeper. Paul and Clara named their new baby Steven Paul Jobs.
”
”
Walter Isaacson (Steve Jobs)
“
What could I say? … All those people knew I had killed her; the only other person who could have helped me at all was dead too. So I just stood there, looking at the judge and shaking my head. I didn’t have a leg to stand on. ‘Ask the mercy of the court,’ said Epstein, the lawyer they had assigned to defend me. ‘What was that?’ the judge said. ‘Your Honour,’ Epstein said, ‘ – we throw ourselves on the mercy of the court. This boy admits killing the girl, but he was only doing her a personal favour –
”
”
Horace McCoy (They Shoot Horses, Don't They?)
“
My dear boy,” said the old man, laying the document on his knee, “where is the mother who ever lacked heart and wit and yearning to such a degree as to fall below the inspirations suggested by her animal instinct? A mother is as cunning to get at her children as a girl can be in the conduct of a love intrigue. If your Marquise really wanted to give her children food and clothes, the Devil himself would not have hindered her, heh? That is rather too big a fable for an old lawyer to swallow! — To proceed.
”
”
Honoré de Balzac (Works of Honore de Balzac)
“
Because…the person she asked for help wasn’t exactly a knight in shining armor.” “And you think I am?” “You’re a lawyer.” “Doesn’t make me a hero.” “A hero is the last thing women like my mom and that girl need.” “Why is that?” “Because heroes follow rules and think about the world’s wellbeing. They’re shackled by outdated codes of honor and self-imposed morals, and that might work in a black and white platonic idealism, but that’s not reality, that’s not how it works. In life, sometimes, the hero has to turn into a villain.
”
”
Rina Kent (Empire of Sin (Empire, #2))
“
He was always saying: “Don’t get ideas above your station. Don’t think you’re anything special.” When the boys in their high spirits declared that they wanted to become professional footballers when they grew up, or lawyers or millionaires, he would always snap back: “One should know one’s place!” He was stingy when it came to praise and encouragement, and certainly when it came to money. He distilled his own spirits, ate the meat of animals which he himself had shot or slaughtered, and the farm was as good as self-sufficient. Nothing was ever bought unless heavily discounted or in a
”
”
David Lagercrantz (The Girl Who Takes an Eye for an Eye (Millennium, #5))
“
No. I wanted to talk to you first.” It was true that I had not told our lawyers yet. I wanted to keep to my word about this being a personal decision and I wanted to show her respect by coming to her in person, and first. I was a bit hurt that she thought I had already contacted an actual lawyer but felt clean knowing I had not. The idea had not come from Perry or Andre—they were just helping with practical elements. “Well then, do whatcha gotta do.” There was a hint of her thinking it bullshit that I wanted to save our personal relationship. I saw her smirk as if I were just using it as the excuse. She was a mix of hungover and
”
”
Brooke Shields (There Was a Little Girl: The Real Story of My Mother and Me)
“
Geralt,' said the lawyer, closing his eyes. 'What drives you? If you want to save Ciri . . . I wouldn't have thought you could afford the luxury of contempt. No, that was badly expressed. You can't afford the luxury of spurning contempt. A time of contempt is approaching, Witcher, my friend, a time of great and utter contempt. You have to adapt. What I'm proposing is a simple solution. Someone will die, so someone else can live. Someone you love will survive. A girl you don't know, and whom you've never seen, will die—' 'And who am I free to despise?' interrupted the Witcher. 'Am I to pay for what I love with contempt for myself?
”
”
Andrzej Sapkowski (Witcher Series 6 Books Set Collection (The Witcher #1-6))
“
One might have thought that on learning of Quinta’s death—this woman the company doctors had professed was not going to die—the United States Radium Corporation might, at last, have softened. But one would be wrong. Berry did manage to win a settlement of $8,000 ($113,541) for Mae Canfield in the new year, but the company had a straitjacket clause attached. The only way they would pay his client any money, they said, was if Berry himself was incorporated into the deal. He was far too knowledgeable about their activities—and becoming far too skilled in court—to be left off a leash. And so Raymond Berry, legal champion, the pioneering attorney who had been the only lawyer to answer Grace’s call for help, found himself forced into signing his name to the following statement: “I agree not to be connected with, directly or indirectly, any other cases against the United States Radium Corporation, nor to render assistance to any persons in any actions against said Company, nor to furnish data or information to any such persons in matters against said Company.”37 Berry was gone. He had been a serious fighter against the firm, an irksome thorn in their side. But now, with surgical precision, they had plucked him out and banished him. They were two settlements down, but the United States Radium Corporation was winning the war.
”
”
Kate Moore (The Radium Girls: The Dark Story of America's Shining Women)
“
It is not about the scientists and teachers and lawyers they become and the things such people accomplish for others. It is not about the immigrants like Chaya who worked and saved and sacrificed to get a decent footing in America. It is not about the wonderful peaceful days and nights you spent growing up in our house. It is not about the lovely friends you always had. No, it’s about Essie and her hammer, and Sidney and his chorus girls, and that shyster of Essie’s and his filthy mouth, and, as best I can see, about what a jerk I was begging them to reach a decent compromise before the whole family had to be dragged up in front of a goyisher judge.” “I didn’t depict you as a jerk.
”
”
Philip Roth (The Ghost Writer: A Novel)
“
But whereas previous U.S. administrations at least pretended to possess some degree of neutrality, Trump burst onto the scene fully embracing Israel’s right-wing policies and appointing Zionists to key positions. He tapped his bankruptcy lawyer, David Friedman, as his ambassador to Israel. Friedman threatened the International Criminal Court over a war crimes investigation into Israel and declared that the illegal settlements did not violate international law. Trump’s own son-in-law and senior adviser, Jared Kushner, was a personal friend of then–Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and even had financial ties to the illegal settlements. And this was the man Trump had tasked with leading the “peace process.
”
”
Ahed Tamimi (They Called Me a Lioness: A Palestinian Girl's Fight for Freedom)
“
Adrian gets the Saab. Everything else is for you to take care of. You’ve got the house keys. The cat eats tuna fish twice per day and doesn’t like shitting in other people’s houses. Please respect that. There is a lawyer in town who has all the bank papers and so on. There is an account with 11,563,013 kronor and 67 öre. From Sonja’s dad. The old man had shares. He was mean as hell. Me and Sonja never knew what to do with it. Your kids should get a million each when they turn eighteen, and Jimmy’s girl should get the same. The rest is yours. But please don’t let Patrick bloody take care of it. Sonja would have liked you. Don’t let the new neighbors drive in the residential area. Ove At the bottom of the sheet he’s written in capitals “YOU ARE NOT A COMPLETE IDIOT!
”
”
Fredrik Backman (A Man Called Otto)
“
As for us, we saw the police as a natural catastrophe— like floods, fires, earthquakes. There was nothing you could do about these things except to try and escape them. We had no analysis, no understanding that society could be changed. We simply tried to survive, as ourselves, as kamp girls, natural rebels. We did not feel that the police might not be entitled to hunt us, but accepted them as inevitable.
I was beaten up for suggesting that a woman ask for a lawyer. It was seem as a stupid— even dangerous— suggestion. Fighting back with threats of lawyers would only make the police even angrier at us. But part of me felt that what was happening was unfair and unjust, though I had no idea how things could ever be different.
Melbourne and Adelaide were exactly the same. The public lesbian scene was dangerous and difficult. There were many other New Zealand lesbians around, too. In spite of everything, I loved it. The “mateship” was amazing and close, important enough for any risk. And the freedom to be ourselves, to be real, to be queer, affirmed us.
There were private, closeted scenes too, but they were hard to find and cliquey. They were fearful of being “sprung” by kamps who were too obvious. They were mainly older middle-class women. I knew some of them, learnt many things from them— like how to behave in a nice restaurant if you are taken to dinner. But they too had no sense of anything being able to change— except for the one strange woman who danced naked to Beethoven and lent me de Beauvoir’s The Second Sex. She sowed some wild ideas, more than a decade too early for them to make any sense.
”
”
Julia Penelope (Finding the Lesbians: Personal Accounts from Around the World)
“
Your feet know more about the forest than that government lawyer. Your toes know more about the forest than all of Civilization.” She nodded, unmoved by the thought, kept her eyes trained on the courtroom. She knew that already. When she was a young girl, on the trek with my father to the missionary village, she was bitten by a pit viper. The venom had coursed through her toes, up her ankles, her legs. Her feet had stepped on uncountable roots, seeds, leaves, mushrooms, thorns and been bitten by bullet ants and mosquitos, stung by wasps and scorpions and stingrays, dusted by tarantulas, burned by caterpillar hairs. Her feet could press into a garden’s soil and tell her when it was time to plant and when it was time to burn. Her toes could distinguish between the bark of cedar and mahogany, of peach palm and cinnamon, of kapok and guava.
”
”
Nemonte Nenquimo (We Will Be Jaguars: A Memoir of My People)
“
What’s the most frightening thing to a child? The pain of being the outsider, of looking ridiculous to others, of being teased or picked on in school. Every child burns with fear at the prospect. It’s a primal instinct: to belong. McDonald’s has surely figured this out—along with what specific colors appeal to small children, what textures, and what movies or TV shows are likely to attract them to the gray disks of meat. They feel no compunction harnessing the fears and unarticulated yearnings of small children, and nor shall I. “Ronald has cooties,” I say—every time he shows up on television or out the window of the car. “And you know,” I add, lowering my voice, “he smells bad, too. Kind of like … poo!” (I am, I should say, careful to use the word “alleged” each and every time I make such an assertion, mindful that my urgent whisperings to a two-year-old might be wrongfully construed as libelous.) “If you hug Ronald … can you get cooties?” asks my girl, a look of wide-eyed horror on her face. “Some say … yes,” I reply—not wanting to lie—just in case she should encounter the man at a child’s birthday party someday. It’s a lawyerly answer—but effective. “Some people talk about the smell, too… I’m not saying it rubs off on you or anything—if you get too close to him—but…” I let that hang in the air for a while. “Ewwww!!!” says my daughter. We sit in silence as she considers this, then she asks, “Is it true that if you eat a hamburger at McDonald’s it can make you a ree-tard? I laugh wholeheartedly at this one and give her a hug. I kiss her on the forehead reassuringly. “Ha. Ha. Ha. I don’t know where you get these ideas!” I may or may not have planted that little nugget a few weeks ago, allowing her little friend Tiffany at ballet class to “overhear” it as I pretended to talk on my cell phone.
”
”
Anthony Bourdain (Medium Raw: A Bloody Valentine to the World of Food and the People Who Cook)
“
Revitalized and healthy, I started dreaming new dreams. I saw ways that I could make a significant contribution by sharing what I’ve learned. I decided to refocus my legal practice on counseling and helping start-up companies avoid liability and protect their intellectual property. To share some of what I know, I started a blog, IP Law for Startups, where I teach basic lessons on trade secrets, trademarks, copyrights, and patents and give tips for avoiding the biggest blunders that destroy the value of intellectual assets. Few start-up companies, especially women-owned companies that rarely get venture capital funding, can afford the expensive hourly rates of a large law firm to the get the critical information they need. I feel deeply rewarded when I help a company create a strategy that protects the value of their company and supports their business dreams. Further, I had a dream to help young women see their career possibilities. In partnership with my sister, Julie Simmons, I created lookilulu.com, a website where women share their insights, career paths, and ways they have integrated motherhood with their professional pursuits. When my sister and I were growing up on a farm, we had a hard time seeing that women could have rewarding careers. With Lookilulu® we want to help young women see what we couldn’t see: that dreams are not linear—they take many twists and unexpected turns. As I’ve learned the hard way, dreams change and shift as life happens. I’ve learned the value of continuing to dream new dreams after other dreams are derailed. I’m sure I’ll have many more dreams in my future. I’ve learned to be open to new and unexpected opportunities. By way of postscript, Jill writes, “I didn’t grow up planning to be lawyer. As a girl growing up in a small rural town, I was afraid to dream. I loved science, but rather than pursuing medical school, I opted for low-paying laboratory jobs, planning to quit when I had children. But then I couldn’t have children. As I awakened to the possibility that dreaming was an inalienable right, even for me, I started law school when I was thirty; intellectual property combines my love of law and science.” As a young girl, Jill’s rightsizing involved mustering the courage to expand her dreams, to dream outside of her box. Once she had children, she again transformed her dreams. In many ways her dreams are bigger and aim to help more people than before the twists and turns in her life’s path.
”
”
Whitney Johnson (Dare, Dream, Do: Remarkable Things Happen When You Dare to Dream)
“
Early on it is clear that Addie has a rebellious streak, joining the library group and running away to Rockport Lodge. Is Addie right to disobey her parents? Where does she get her courage? 2. Addie’s mother refuses to see Celia’s death as anything but an accident, and Addie comments that “whenever I heard my mother’s version of what happened, I felt sick to my stomach.” Did Celia commit suicide? How might the guilt that Addie feels differ from the guilt her mother feels? 3. When Addie tries on pants for the first time, she feels emotionally as well as physically liberated, and confesses that she would like to go to college (page 108). How does the social significance of clothing and hairstyle differ for Addie, Gussie, and Filomena in the book? 4. Diamant fills her narrative with a number of historical events and figures, from the psychological effects of World War I and the pandemic outbreak of influenza in 1918 to child labor laws to the cultural impact of Betty Friedan. How do real-life people and events affect how we read Addie’s fictional story? 5. Gussie is one of the most forward-thinking characters in the novel; however, despite her law degree she has trouble finding a job as an attorney because “no one would hire a lady lawyer.” What other limitations do Addie and her friends face in the workforce? What limitations do women and minorities face today? 6. After distancing herself from Ernie when he suffers a nervous episode brought on by combat stress, Addie sees a community of war veterans come forward to assist him (page 155). What does the remorse that Addie later feels suggest about the challenges American soldiers face as they reintegrate into society? Do you think soldiers today face similar challenges? 7. Addie notices that the Rockport locals seem related to one another, and the cook Mrs. Morse confides in her sister that, although she is usually suspicious of immigrant boarders, “some of them are nicer than Americans.” How does tolerance of the immigrant population vary between city and town in the novel? For whom might Mrs. Morse reserve the term Americans? 8. Addie is initially drawn to Tessa Thorndike because she is a Boston Brahmin who isn’t afraid to poke fun at her own class on the women’s page of the newspaper. What strengths and weaknesses does Tessa’s character represent for educated women of the time? How does Addie’s description of Tessa bring her reliability into question? 9. Addie’s parents frequently admonish her for being ungrateful, but Addie feels she has earned her freedom to move into a boardinghouse when her parents move to Roxbury, in part because she contributed to the family income (page 185). How does the Baum family’s move to Roxbury show the ways Betty and Addie think differently from their parents about household roles? Why does their father take such offense at Herman Levine’s offer to house the family? 10. The last meaningful conversation between Addie and her mother turns out to be an apology her mother meant for Celia, and for a moment during her mother’s funeral Addie thinks, “She won’t be able to make me feel like there’s something wrong with me anymore.” Does Addie find any closure from her mother’s death? 11. Filomena draws a distinction between love and marriage when she spends time catching up with Addie before her wedding, but Addie disagrees with the assertion that “you only get one great love in a lifetime.” In what ways do the different romantic experiences of each woman inform the ideas each has about love? 12. Filomena and Addie share a deep friendship. Addie tells Ada that “sometimes friends grow apart. . . . But sometimes, it doesn’t matter how far apart you live or how little you talk—it’s still there.” What qualities do you think friends must share in order to have that kind of connection? Discuss your relationship with a best friend. Enhance
”
”
Anita Diamant (The Boston Girl)
“
I could see the road ahead of me. I was poor and I was going to stay poor. But I didn't particularly want money. I didn't know what I wanted. Yes, I did. I wanted someplace to hide out, someplace where one didn't have to do anything. The thought of being something didn't only appall me, it sickened me. The thought of being a lawyer or a councilman or an engineer, anything like that, seemed impossible to me. To get married, to have children, to get trapped in the family structure. To go someplace to work every day and to return. It was impossible. To do things, simple things, to be part of family picnics, Christmas, the 4th of July, Labor, Mother's Day . . . was a man born just to endure those things and then die? I would rather be a dishwasher, return alone to a tiny room and drink myself to sleep.
My father had a master plan. He told me, "My son, each man during his lifetime should buy a house. Finally he dies and leaves that house to his son. Then his son gets his own house and dies, leaves both houses to his son. That's two houses. That son gets his own house, that's three houses . . ."
The family structure. Victory over adversity through the family. He believed in it. Take the family, mix with God and Country, add the ten-hour day and you had what was needed.
I looked at my father, at his hands, his face, his eyebrows, and I knew that this man had nothing to do with me. He was a stranger. My mother was non-existent. I was cursed. Looking at my father I saw nothing but indecent dullness. Worse, he was even more afraid to fail than most others. Centuries of peasant blood and peasant training. The Chinaski bloodline had been thinned by a series of peasant-servants who had surrendered their real lives for fractional and illusionary gains. Not a man in line who said, "I don't want a house, I want a thousand houses, now!"
He had sent me to that rich high school hoping that the ruler's attitude would rub off on me as I watched the rich boys screech up in their cream-colored coupes and pick up the girls in bright dresses. Instead I learned that the poor usually stay poor. That the young rich smell the stink of the poor and learn to find it a bit amusing. They had to laugh, otherwise it would be too terrifying. They'd learned that, through the centuries. I would never forgive the girls for getting into those cream-colored coupes with the laughing boys. They couldn't help it, of course, yet you always think, maybe . . . But no, there weren't any maybes. Wealth meant victory and victory was the only reality.
What woman chooses to live with a dishwasher?
”
”
Charles Bukowski (Ham On Rye)
“
Ian rested his hands behind his head. “I’m already picturing myself in the Sterling luxury suite at Soldier Field, right above the fifty-yard line.”
Both the lawyer and pragmatic woman in Brooke felt the need to manage her CEO’s expectations. “You’re getting way ahead of yourself here, Ian. In fact, I think you just lapped yourself.”
“A man can dream, Brooke.”
She chuckled. “Who are you kidding? You barely use our suites at Wrigley Field and the United Center.”
He waved this off. “Yeah, but football’s different. If we get this deal with the Bears, you better believe my butt will be at Soldier Field for every home game.” He saw her fighting back a grin. “What?”
“I just wonder what it is about men and football,” Brooke said. Sure, because of her job she could hold her own when it came to talking sports, but—wow—had her eyes been opened when she’d been down in Dallas, negotiating the Cowboys deal. Those men didn’t just love football, they lived football. “Is it a warrior-metaphor kind of thing? The idea that the strongest, toughest men of the region strap on their armor and step onto the battlefield to face off against the strongest, toughest opponents?”
“As a matter of fact, that’s exactly what it is.”
“I see. And remind me: in what century did it become customary for one’s army to be attended at the battle ground by hot girls with spanky pants and pom-poms? Was that a tradition Napoleon started?” Brooke pretended to muse. “Or maybe it was Genghis Khan.”
“You scoff at America’s sport. I have fired people for less.”
Brooke threw Ian a get-real look. “No, you haven’t. You don’t fire anyone without trotting down to my office and asking me first whether you’ll get sued. And then I’m always the one that has to fire them, anyway.”
“Because you do it with such charm,” Ian said with a grin
”
”
Julie James (Love Irresistibly (FBI/US Attorney, #4))
“
Read the following chain of events and see whether a similar pattern might apply to other toxic products that were reported in the news during your lifetime:
1. Workers were told that the paint was nontoxic, although there was no factual basis for this declaration. The employers discounted scientists. The workers believed their superiors.
2. Health complaints were made in ever-increasing frequency. It became obvious that something was seriously wrong.
3. U.S. Radium and other watch-dial companies began a campaign of disinformation and bogus medical tests - some of which involved X-rays and may even have made the condition worse.
4. Doctors, dentists, and researchers complied with U.S. Radium's and other companies' requests and refused to release their data to the public.
5. Medical professionals also aided the companies by attributing worker deaths to other causes. Syphilis was often cited as the diagnosis, which had the added benefit to management of being a smear on the victims' reputations.
6. One worker, Grace Fryer, decided to sue U.S. Radium. It took Fryer two years to find a lawyer who was willing to take on U.S. Radium. Only four other workers joined her suit; they became known as the "Radium Girls."
7. In 1928, the case was settled in the middle of the trial before it went to the jury for deliberation. The settlement for each of the five "Radium Girls" was $10,000 (the equivalent of $124,000 in 2009 dollars), plus $600 a year while the victim lived and all medical expenses.
Remember the general outline of this scenario because you will see it over and over again: The company denies everything while the doctors and researchers (and even the industrial hygienists) in the company's employ support the company's distorted version of the facts. Perhaps one worker in a hundred will finally pursue justice, one lawyer out of the hundreds of thousands in the United States will finally step up to the plate, and the case will be settled for chump change.
”
”
Monona Rossol
“
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 year 1789 does not yet affirm the divinity of man, but the divinity of the people, to the degree in
which the will of the people coincides with the will of nature and of reason. If the general will is freely
expressed, it can only be the universal expression of reason. If the people are free, they are infallible.
Once the King is dead, and
the chains of the old despotism thrown off, the people are going to express what, at all times and in all
places, is, has been, and will be the truth. They are the oracle that must be consulted to know what the
eternal order of the world demands. Vox populi, vox naturae. Eternal principles govern our conduct:
Truth, Justice, finally Reason. There we have the new God. The Supreme Being, whom cohorts of young
girls come to adore at the Feast of Reason, is only the ancient god disembodied, peremptorily deprived of
any connection with the earth, and launched like a balloon into a heaven empty of all transcendent
principles. Deprived of all his representatives, of any intercessor, the god of the lawyers and philosophers
only has the value of a demonstration. He is not very strong, in fact, and we can see why Rousseau, who
preached tolerance, thought that atheists should be condemned to death. To ensure the adoration of a
theorem for any length of time, faith is not enough; a police force is needed as well. But that will only
come later. In 1793 the new faith is still intact, and it will suffice, to take Saint-Just's word, to govern
according to the dictates of reason. The art of ruling, according to him, has produced only monsters
because, before his time, no one wished to govern according to nature. The period of monsters has come
to an end with the termination of the period of violence. "The human heart advances from nature to
violence, from violence to morality." Morality is, therefore, only nature finally restored after centuries of
alienation. Man only has to be given law "in accord with nature and with his heart," and he will cease to
be unhappy and corrupt. Universal suffrage, the foundation of the new laws, must inevitably lead to a
universal morality. "Our aim is to create an order of things which establishes a universal tendency toward
good.
”
”
Albert Camus (The Rebel)
“
I didn’t think we were being quiet, particularly. High heels may have looked dainty, but they didn’t sound that way on a tile floor. Maybe it was just that my dad was so absorbed in the convo on his cell phone. For whatever reason, when we emerged from the kitchen into the den, he started, and he stuffed the phone down by his side in the cushions. I was sorry I’d startled him, but it really was comical to see this big blond manly man jump three feet off the sofa when he saw two teenage girls. I mean, it would have been funny if it weren’t so sad.
Dad was a ferocious lawyer in court. Out of court, he was one of those Big Man on Campus types who shook hands with everybody from the mayor to the alleged ax murderer. A lot like Sean, actually. There were only two things Dad was afraid of. First, he wigged out when anything in the house was misplaced. I won’t even go into all the arguments we’d had about my room being a mess. They’d ended when I told him it was my room, and if he didn’t stop bugging me about it, I would put kitchen utensils in the wrong drawers, maybe even hide some (cue horror movie music). No spoons for you! Second, he was easily startled, and very pissed off afterward. “Damn it, Lori!” he hollered.
“It’s great to see you too, loving father. Lo, I have brought my friend Tammy to witness out domestic bliss. She’s on the tennis team with me.” Actually, I was on the tennis team with her.
“Hello, Tammy. It’s nice to meet you,” Dad said without getting up or shaking her hand or anything else he would normally do. While the two of them recited a few more snippets of polite nonsense, I watched my dad. From the angle of his body, I could tell he was protecting that cell phone behind the cushions.
I nodded toward the hiding place. “Hot date?”
I was totally kidding. I didn’t expect him to say, “When?”
So I said, “Ever.” And then I realized I’d brought up a subject that I didn’t want to bring up, especially not while I was busy being self-absorbed. I clapped my hands. “Okay, then! Tammy and I are going upstairs very loudly, and after a few minutes we will come back down, ringing a cowbell. Please continue with your top secret phone convo.”
I turned and headed for the stairs. Tammy followed me. I thought Dad might order me back, send Tammy out, and give me one of those lectures about my attitude (who, me?). But obviously he was chatting with Pamela Anderson and couldn’t wait for me to leave the room. Behind us, I heard him say, “I’m so sorry. I’m still here. Lori came in. Oh, yeah? I’d like to see you try.”
“He seems jumpy,” Tammy whispered on the stairs.
“Always,” I said.
“Do you have a lot of explosions around your house?”
I glanced at my watch. “Not this early.
”
”
Jennifer Echols (Endless Summer (The Boys Next Door, #1-2))
“
The lawyers could not possibly call Juliet or Pauline as witnesses. There was no legal obstacle to either girl giving evidence, but their rudeness, their arrogance and conceit, their abusiveness—which Medlicott and Bennett had recently experienced—would alienate the jury. The fact they crowed about having killed Mrs Rieper would appall anyone who had to listen to them.
”
”
Peter Graham (Anne Perry and the Murder of the Century)
“
I hate to hear people talk of knowing their hearts. My idea is that, if you like a young man, and he asks you to marry him, you ought to have him — that is, if there’s enough to live on. I don’t know what more is wanted. But girls are getting to talk and think as though they were to send their hearts through some fiery furnace of trial before they give them up to a husband’s keeping. I’m not at all sure that the French fashion is not the best, and that these things shouldn’t be managed by the fathers and mothers, or perhaps by the family lawyers.
”
”
Anthony Trollope (Christmas at Thompson Hall: And Other Christmas Stories)
“
What are we doing here, lawyer girl?”
“What?” she asked, a little breathless.
“I want to kiss you again. I’d like to keep doing that actually, preferably not in a used car lot and without interruption. But it feels damn selfish.
”
”
Roni Loren (The One You Can't Forget (The Ones Who Got Away, #2))
“
health intervention and a support system that’s sustainable for you. But this could change everything. Think about Wylie.” “You want me to say I tried to kill myself?” she asked, her words broken with emotion. “I don’t think I can do that. I can’t go there and lie.” “You can’t say it’s a lie,” he cut in. “You admit you don’t remember what happened that night. If the prosecutor can’t find any evidence of habitual drug use, then what other explanation is there? They’ll know they can’t prove their case, and they’ll back the charges down. Isn’t that worth it?” “Worth saying I’m suicidal?” Tara cupped her hands over her mouth, the word seeming too bitter and unsavory to let out again. “Better than being a drug addict,” he argued, his voice raising a few octaves. “You have no idea how lucky you are that Willow stumbled upon this. Just think about it for a minute before you shoot it down completely.” She bit at her lip to force herself to do what Reid was asking. “What would we do next if I say what you want me to say?” A smile accompanied by a look of relief cascaded over Reid’s face. “We’re about to enter the discovery stage of the trial now that the arraignment is over. That means the prosecutor has to share information and evidence they’ve gathered.” “Everything?” she asked, feeling like she was about to be stripped bare and paraded through the court when the day came. “By law it’s any information reasonably calculated to lead to admissible evidence. We’ll get a good idea of what they intend to do in court, who they’ll call as witnesses. Once we have that information I think we should present this new evidence and petition the court to reduce the charges.” “Sorry to interrupt,” a small and unfamiliar voice called from behind Tara. “This was just delivered,” a girl said as she handed an envelope over to Tara who took it, assuming this was some kind of mistake. “It’s for me?” she asked, but the girl was gone before she had the question fully formed. “That’s my assistant, Elise. She’s kind of skittish. Apparently I don’t give off a real warm and fuzzy feel as a boss. She’s always afraid to knock on the door.” When Tara read her name across the front of the envelope she flipped it and peeled it open. “It’s a request for me to relinquish my legal rights as a parent and allow the adoption of Wylie by the Oldens. They have a lawyer.” She handed the paper over to Reid and hoped he’d tell her to rip this up and forget about it. It wasn’t time for that yet. She wasn’t ready. “Damn,” he muttered, slapping the document down on his desk.
”
”
Danielle Stewart (Three Seconds to Rush (Piper Anderson Legacy Mystery, #1))
“
Do try it on,” Cassandra urged. Despite Kathleen’s refusal, the girls insisted on draping it over her shoulders, just to see how it looked.
“How beautiful,” Helen said, beaming.
It was the most luxurious fabric she had ever felt, the fleece soft and cushiony. Kathleen ran her hand across the rich hues, and sighed. “I suppose I can’t ruin it with aniline dye,” she muttered. “But I’m going to tell him that I did.”
“You’re going to lie?” Cassandra asked, her eyes wide. “That’s not setting a very good example for us.”
“He must be discouraged from sending unsuitable gifts,” Kathleen said.
“It’s not his fault if he doesn’t know any better,” Pandora pointed out.
“He knows the rules,” Kathleen said darkly. “And he enjoys breaking them.”
My Lord,
It was very kind of you to send the lovely gift which is very useful now that the weather has turned. I am pleased to relate that the cashmere absorbed an application of black dye quite evenly so that it is now appropriate for mourning.
Thank you for your thoughtfulness.
Lady Trenear
“You dyed it?” Devon asked aloud, setting the note on his desk with mixture of amusement and irritation.
Reaching for a silver penholder, he inserted a fresh nib and pulled a sheet of writing paper from a nearby stack. That morning he had already written a half-dozen missives to lawyers, his banker, and contractors, and had hired an outside agent to analyze the estate’s finances. He grimaced at the sight of his ink-stained fingers. The lemon-and-salt paste his valet had given him wouldn’t entirely remove the smudges. He was tired of writing, and even more so of numbers, and Kathleen’s letter was a welcome distraction.
The challenge could not go unanswered.
”
”
Lisa Kleypas (Cold-Hearted Rake (The Ravenels, #1))
“
secretly still considers Pittsburgh home. In college, she majored in English literature with concentrations in creative writing poetry and medieval literature and was stunned, upon graduation, to learn that there's not exactly a job market for such a degree. After working as an editor for several years, she returned to school to earn a law degree. She was that annoying girl who loved class and always raised her hand. She practiced law for fifteen years, including a stint as a clerk for a federal judge, nearly a decade as an attorney at major international law firms, and several years running a two-person law firm with her lawyer husband. Now, powered by coffee, she writes
”
”
Melissa F. Miller (Critical Vulnerability: A Sasha McCandless Companion Novel)
“
In the desert. How you looked at your father. Not looking to see him, but to see if he was paying attention. He was focused on Bud and his lawyer and me, so you would say something outrageous to get his attention. You needed to have him see you.” She glanced out the window. “I don’t care if he sees me or not.” “Not now maybe, but once. You wouldn’t need it so badly if you didn’t care.” She looked back at him, and now the line between her brows had softened. “And you can see all that by watching me?” “By seeing you. There’s a difference.” “And how is it you see so clearly?” Pike thought about whether or not he wanted to answer. Pike was a private man. He never talked about himself, and didn’t care much for people who did, but he figured the girl had a right to ask. “My folks and I would be watching TV, my mom and dad and me, or we’d be eating, and something would set him off. My old man would knock the hell out of me. Or her. I learned to watch for the signs. How his shoulders bunched, the way his lips pressed together, how much booze he poured. Half an inch more in the glass, he was ready to go. Little things tell you. You see them, you’re okay. You miss them, you go to the hospital. You learn to watch.” She was silent, and when Pike glanced over, her face was sad.
”
”
Robert Crais (The Watchman (Elvis Cole, #11; Joe Pike, #1))
“
Burr was talking about justice. "When I get to run the world," he announced comfortably to the steaming lake, "I'm going to hold the Nuremberg Trials Part Two. I'm going to get all the arms dealers and shit scientists, and all the smooth salesmen who push the crazies one step further than they thought of going, because it's good for business, and all the lying politicians and the lawyers and accountants and bankers, and I'm going to put them in the dock to answer for their lives. And you know what they'll say? 'If we hadn't done it someone else would have.' And you know what I'll say? I'll say, 'Oh, I see. And if you hadn't raped the girl some other fellow would have raped her. And that's your justification for rape. Noted.' Then I'd napalm the lot of them. Fizz.
”
”
John Le Carré (The Night Manager)
“
Korie: When I was a student at Ouachita Christian School, my senior-year Bible teacher, David Matthews, adopted a little five-year-old boy. In class that year, we talked a lot about how important it was for Christians families to adopt and that children should never be left without a home and loving parents. The idea always stuck with me. James 1:27 says: “Religion that God our Father accepts as pure and faultless is this: to look after orphans and widows in their distress and to keep oneself from being polluted by the world.” When we were dating, like most couples, Willie and I talked about how many kids we wanted to have. I told Willie about my desire to adopt and he was all for it. We both grew up with big families so we decided we wanted to have four kids, with at least one of them through adoption. We never knew how that would happen. We didn’t know if we would adopt a boy or a girl or a newborn baby or older child. We decided we would remain open, and if God wanted it to happen, it would happen. There were several families at White’s Ferry Road Church that adopted children, including one couple that had adopted biracial twins. Their lawyer came to them and asked if they were interested in adopting another biracial child who was about to be born. They told her they couldn’t do it at the time, but they remembered that we had expressed an interest in adopting a child. Their lawyer called Willie and me and told us how difficult it was to place biracial children in homes in the South. We were shocked. It was the twenty-first century. We committed to being a part of changing that in our society. Skin color should not make a difference.
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”
Willie Robertson (The Duck Commander Family)
“
Some of my Black sistas don’t know any better, so I’d like to give them some enlightening food-for-thought. Many of them are in awe when it comes to Michelle Obama. They admire and celebrate her intelligence and beauty. For many Black women, she’s a positive and powerful role model. Our former First Lady is phenomenal to say the least! She’s a lawyer, writer, and she fearlessly wears many other hats with integrity and grace. But, here’s what I’d like to point out: If you can admire and celebrate her, why can’t you do the same for YOUR family and friends? Why is it that when people that you personally know obtain degrees, start a successful business, buy a home, are financially secure, happily married, etc… Here you go hatin’ on them. Why can’t you genuinely be happy for them and share in their greatness? I encourage you to celebrate the Black women around you, too!
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”
Stephanie Lahart
“
She felt the lawyer and Noah staring at her, but her eyes were locked on Rowland’s, a silent flood of communication roaring between them.
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Lisa Regan (The Girl With No Name (Detective Josie Quinn, #2))
“
The women of Jane worry themselves sick, but there is nothing to show that Margot didn’t just get tired and pack it all in, maybe to join that ex-boyfriend in Canada. And besides, they’re preoccupied with their own troubles. A year later, Jane is raided. Eight women are arrested. Their lawyer keeps delaying the case for months and months, awaiting the outcome of a big trial that she says will change women’s rights to be in control of their own bodies, forever.
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”
Lauren Beukes (The Shining Girls)
“
I suppose the family claimed that the balance of her mind had been disturbed, that there had been undue influence?” “I think probably it might have come to that,” said Spence. “But the lawyers, as I say, got on to the forgery sharply. It was not a very convincing forgery, apparently. They spotted it almost at once.” “Things came to light to show that the opera girl could have done it quite easily,” said Elspeth. “You see, she wrote a great many of Mrs. Llewellyn-Smythe’s letters for her and it seems Mrs. Llewellyn-Smythe had a great dislike of typed letters being sent to friends or anything like that. If it wasn’t a business letter, she’d always say ‘write it in handwriting and make it as much like mine as you can and sign it with my name.’ Mrs. Minden, the cleaning woman, heard her say that one day, and I suppose the girl got used to doing it and copying her employer’s handwriting and then it came to her suddenly that she could do this and get away with it. And that’s how it all came about. But as I say, the lawyers were too sharp and spotted it.
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Agatha Christie (Hallowe'en Party (Hercule Poirot, #41))
“
And our own beloved Carl Sandburg had this to say about the fire-belching evangelist Billy Sunday: You come along—tearing your shirt—yelling about Jesus. I want to know what the hell you know about Jesus. Jesus had a way of talking soft, and everybody except a few bankers and higher-ups among the con men of Jerusalem liked to have Jesus around because he never made any fake passes, and he helped the sick and gave people hope. You come along calling us all damn fools—so fierce the froth of your own spit slobbers over your lips—always blabbering we’re all going to hell straight off and you know all about it. I’ve read Jesus’s words. I know what he said. You don’t throw any scare into me. I’ve got your number. I know how much you know about Jesus. You tell people living in shanties Jesus is going to fix it up all right with them by giving them mansions in the skies after they’re dead and the worms have eaten ’em. You tell $6-a-week department store girls all they need is Jesus. You take a steel trust wop, dead without having lived, gray and shrunken at forty years of age, and you tell him to look at Jesus on the cross and he’ll be all right. You tell poor people they don’t need any more money on pay day, and even if it’s fierce to be out of a job, Jesus’ll fix that all right, all right—all they gotta do is take Jesus the way you say. Jesus played it different. The bankers and corporation lawyers of Jerusalem got their murderers to go after Jesus because Jesus wouldn’t play their game. I don’t want a lot of gab from a bunkshooter in my religion.
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”
Kurt Vonnegut Jr. (If This Isn't Nice, What Is?: The Graduation Speeches and Other Words to Live By)
“
After John’s arrest, I felt like I had no time to Pause and Think. I just needed to Act. Call back the lawyer, get interviewed by the detectives, find a divorce attorney, figure out who was going to pick up the girls, cancel my conference call, monitor the news, clean up the disaster from the police search, remember to feed the girls, remember to feed myself, remember to sleep, try to get my confiscated computers back from the police, remember to breathe . . .
But as someone who is no stranger to working too hard, I reminded myself that if I kept Acting without Pausing and Thinking, I’d only end up in more of a mess. I’d learned that the hard way, and those painful lessons served as the backdrop for developing this model. When I was going into that climb, I was lucky that I had a strong Thoughtfully Fit core. And that core got me to the top of the mountain.
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”
Darcy Luoma (Thoughtfully Fit: Your Training Plan for Life and Business Success)
“
A barista and a lawyer are not evenly matched. Not in their bank accounts. Public opinion. Not even self-worth. It wouldn't be David and Goliath if I squared up with her. It would be more like David and God.
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Danielle Stewart (The Girl at the Party)
“
In 2007, US Attorney for South Florida Alex Acosta worked with the FBI, then headed by Robert Mueller, and Epstein’s lawyers, Alan Dershowitz (who went on to defend Donald Trump) and Ken Starr (who had previously prosecuted Bill Clinton), in a plea deal to give Epstein a mere eighteen-month sentence for soliciting, molesting, and raping underage girls. Epstein never spent a day of his sentence in prison, and in 2009, he was granted early “release” from his pseudo-confinement. He
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Sarah Kendzior (They Knew: How a Culture of Conspiracy Keeps America Complacent)
“
Mark, at dinner, said he’d been re-reading “Anna Karenina”. Found it good, as novels go. But complained of the profound untruthfulness of even the best imaginative literature. And he began to catalogue its omissions. Almost total neglect of those small physiological events that decide whether day-to-day living shall have a pleasant or unpleasant tone. Excretion, for example, with its power to make or mar the day. Digestion. And, for the heroines of novel and drama, menstruation. Then the small illnesses—catarrh, rheumatism, headache, eyestrain. The chronic physical disabilities—ramifying out (as in the case of deformity or impotence) into luxuriant insanities. And conversely the sudden accessions, from unknown visceral and muscular sources, of more than ordinary health. No mention, next, of the part played by mere sensations in producing happiness. Hot bath, for example, taste of bacon, feel of fur, smell of freesias. In life, an empty cigarette-case may cause more distress than the absence of a lover; never in books. Almost equally complete omission of the small distractions that fill the greater part of human lives. Reading the papers; looking into shops; exchanging gossip; with all the varieties of day-dreaming, from lying in bed, imagining what one would do if one had the right lover, income, face, social position, to sitting at the picture palace passively accepting ready-made day-dreams from Hollywood
Lying by omission turns inevitably into positive lying. The implications of literature are that human beings are controlled, if not by reason, at least by comprehensible, well-organized, avowable sentiments. Whereas the facts are quite different. Sometimes the sentiments come in, sometimes they don’t. All for love, or the world well lost; but love may be the title of nobility given to an inordinate liking for a particular person’s smell or texture, a lunatic desire for the repetition of a sensation produced by some particular dexterity. Or consider those cases (seldom published, but how numerous, as anyone in a position to know can tell!), those cases of the eminent statesmen, churchmen, lawyers, captains of industry—seemingly so sane, demonstrably so intelligent, publicly so high-principled; but, in private, under irresistible compulsion towards brandy, towards young men, towards little girls in trains, towards exhibitionism, towards gambling or hoarding, towards bullying, towards being whipped, towards all the innumerable, crazy perversions of the lust for money and power and position on the one hand, for sexual pleasure on the other. Mere tics and tropisms, lunatic and unavowable cravings—these play as much part in human life as the organized and recognized sentiments. And imaginative literature suppresses the fact. Propagates an enormous lie about the nature of men and women.
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”
Aldous Huxley (Eyeless in Gaza)
“
For example, I learned that it was my right under international law to be told why I was being arrested, but the night the military took me from my home, I wasn’t told why. The International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights, which Israel also ratified in 1991, says that all persons, including children, should be given reasons for their arrest at the time of their arrest. Another violation occurred when the soldiers posed with me, a minor, while taking my picture before leading me into the police station. They had no right to humiliate me like that, nor to film my arrest and publish the video without my parents’ permission. And then there was the interrogation. Banning my parents and my lawyer from being with me and putting me in a room alone with men and no female officers were all clear violations. The way the interrogators shouted at me, threatened me, and sexually harassed me by commenting on my appearance in order to coerce a confession were all breaches of the Convention Against Torture. The fact that I was held so long in pretrial detention was another violation.
”
”
Ahed Tamimi (They Called Me a Lioness: A Palestinian Girl's Fight for Freedom)
“
Mrs. Lawrence and Mrs. Hallberg are already in the cafetorium. So is Mrs. Staughton, Heather’s mom. Mrs. Staughton is a substitute gym teacher. She’s sticking around to help out. (You will never see my mother at a Junior Guide meeting; she is a lawyer and she works a thousand hours a week.) Mrs. Lawrence is our leader. Now that her girls are in college, we are her girls. It’s too soon to tell how long Mrs.
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Suzy Becker (Kate the Great, Except When She's Not)
“
I’m a lawyer. No one wants someone to represent them that looks like a convict themselves.
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”
Holly Renee (Where Good Girls Go To Die (Good Girls, #1))
“
He shrugged. "I used to want to be a lawyer."
"That's what my dad does. I think you could be great at that," she said, nudging him.
"Hmm, not when the only grades I got spell 'DUUUDEE.'"
He'd said it like a joke, but she knew it wasn't.
”
”
Holly Jackson (A Good Girl's Guide to Murder (A Good Girl's Guide to Murder, #1))
“
You don’t introduce women to men, Lady Stott. You present men to women.’ ‘Is that right?’ she said. ‘Even a detective such as yourself and a lawyer like him?’ ‘Even a duke and a shop girl,’ I said. ‘The only male person I have ever been presented to in my life was His Majesty the King.
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Catriona McPherson (Dandy Gilver and the Unpleasantness in the Ballroom (Dandy Gilver, #10))
“
It’s as if the media is saying to teenage girls, “Remember all those kid TV shows you used to watch that told you you could be any way you want to be and become anything you want to become? We were just kidding. You can be a lawyer, a scientist, or whatever, but what’s most important is that you look gorgeous, act simpering, and fall in love with a confident, good-looking hunk.” A
”
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Helene Brenner (I Know I'm In There Somewhere)
“
Most Americans were familiar with their Miranda rights; they’d heard the words recited so often on the plethora of police and detective shows populating television, they could recite their Miranda rights from memory. What most didn’t know was their right to an attorney was guaranteed by the Fifth Amendment, but only during a criminal interrogation, and only if the person was taken into police custody—the right was intended to prevent coercion and intimidation. Even fewer knew the Sixth Amendment embodied a second constitutional right to counsel when a prosecutor commenced a criminal prosecution by filing a complaint, or the suspect was indicted by a grand jury. The fallacy most Americans harbored was that they could simply shout, “I want a lawyer!” when confronted by a police officer, and the officer couldn’t talk to them. Not so. In fact, in the absence of a criminal charge, and so long as they didn’t take Strickland into custody, Tracy and Kins could talk to him until the cows came home. For now, however, Tracy was content to humor Montgomery.
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Robert Dugoni (The Trapped Girl (Tracy Crosswhite, #4))
“
Girls, in those days, couldn't do anything to you (they couldn't call the lawyers, the tabloids, the cops) except kill themselves or get pregnant. All they had was life: they could augment it, they could bear it away. They could subtract from it or they could add to it; and that was all.
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”
Martin Amis (The Information)
“
Normal. Me. I rolled that thought around in my head for a few seconds and tossed it out as a lie. I was a fifteen-year-old warlock, a demon’s runaway slave, a fugitive from the wizard’s Conclave, and I had a man’s life-blood on my hands. I owed a demon lawyer a debt of honor. Oh, yeah: the girl I had the hots for was a werewolf. I barely shared the same planet as “normal.” As we turned down my street, I remembered that I was very late, and my mom would be REALLY pissed.
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Ben Reeder (The Demon's Apprentice (The Demon's Apprentice, #1))
“
So this is your brilliant plan? To use yourself as bait. To get that psycho to try to kill you." He had a grin on his face that managed to be both childish and clueless. Like a boy who catches a viper and shows it to a girl in the misguided belief she will immediately want to start necking.
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Paul Levine (Kill All the Lawyers)
“
errand girl, lawyer, mommy, and to pacify a grown man’s
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Robert Dugoni (Damage Control)
“
The FLDS was in the news in 2008 when Texas authorities raided their Yearning for Zion Ranch, and discovered girls who appeared to be pregnant, records of underage marriages, and a bed in the sanctuary.65 The authorities prosecuted and convicted eleven men, including Warren Jeffs.66 Throughout the proceedings, their lawyers argued that the prosecutions were “anti-religious” and were in violation of their constitutional rights. This is the kind of discourse we, as a culture, have encouraged. It is dangerous when courts listen.
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Marci A. Hamilton (God vs. the Gavel: The Perils of Extreme Religious Liberty)
“
The muscles of Sue’s legs tensed, and the saddle lurched. One of the little girls screamed. And then the Tyrannosaur came down from the leap that had carried her over the besieged Wardens. Sue landed with one clawed foot on the street, and the other came down squarely on the Caddy’s hood, like a falcon descending upon a rabbit. There was an enormous sound of shrieking metal and breaking glass, and the saddle lurched wildly again. I leaned over to see what had happened. The car’s hood and engine block had been compacted into a two-foot-thick section of twisted metal. Even as I looked, Sue leaned over the car in a curiously birdlike movement, opened her enormous jaws, and ripped the roof off. Inside was Li Xian, dressed in a black shirt and trousers. The ghoul’s forehead had a nasty gash in it, and green-black blood had sheeted over one side of his face. His eyes were blank and a little vague, and I figured he’d clipped his head on the steering wheel or window when Sue brought his sliding car to an abrupt halt. Li Xian shook his head and then started to scramble out of the car. Sue roared again, and the sound must have terrified Li Xian, because all of his limbs jerked in spasm and he fell on his face to the street. Sue leaned down again, her jaws gaping, but the ghoul rolled under the car to get away from them. So Sue kicked the car, and sent it tumbling end over end three or four times down the street. The ghoul let out a scream and stared up at Sue in naked terror, covering his head with his arms. Sue ate him. Snap. Gulp. No more ghoul. “What’s with that?” Butters screamed, his voice high and frightened. “Just covering his head with his arms? Didn’t he see the lawyer in the movie?” “Those who do not learn the lessons of history are doomed to repeat them,” I replied, turning Sue around. “Hang on!” I rode the dinosaur into the stream of zombies following in the Wardens’ wake and let her go to town. Sue chomped and stomped and smacked zombies fifty feet through the air with swinging blows of her snout. Her tail batted one particularly vile-looking zombie into the brick wall of the nearest building, and the zombie hit so hard and so squishily that it just stuck to the wall like a refrigerator magnet, arms and legs spread in a sprawl.
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”
Anonymous
“
You wanna go see my old bedroom?”
“Is that a pickup line?”
“Come on inside and you’ll find out.”
How was a girl supposed to resist an offer like that?
”
”
Jamie Farrell (Matched (Misfit Brides, #2))
“
Why don’t we consider moving in together? While we head for this event?” She gulped. “What?” she asked weakly. “Let’s clear the debt, get Kid Crawford out of the picture, I’ll take on your upkeep rather than Vanni and Paul shouldering your food and board, and we’ll evolve into…” He cleared his throat. “We don’t have to explain anything. People will just say, ‘Dr. Michaels likes that nice pregnant girl.’ We’ll share a house. I’ll be your roommate. You’ll have your own room. But there will be late nights you’re worried about some belly pain or later, night crying from the babies. You don’t want to do that to Vanni and Paul and—” “I was just going to go home to Seattle. To my mom and dad’s.” “They have room for me?” he asked, lifting his fork and arching that brow. “Oh, for God’s sake,” she said, slamming down her fork. “You can’t mean to say you plan to just follow me and demand to live with the babies!” “Well, no,” he said. “That would be obsessive. But Jesus, Ab, I don’t want to miss out on anything. Do you know how much babies change from two to six weeks? It just kills me to think you’d take them that far away from me. I mean, they are—” “I know,” she said, frustrated. “Yours.” “Yeah, sweetheart. And they’re also yours. And I swear to God, I will never try to take them away from you. That would be cruel.” He had just aimed an arrow at her sense of justice. The shock of realization must have shown on her face, but he took another bite, had another drink of his beer, smiled. “Live together?” “Here’s how it’ll go if you stay with Vanni and Paul. Toward the end, when you’re sleepless, you’ll be up at night. You’ll be tired during the day, but there will be a toddler around, making noise and crying. And you’ll have all those late pregnancy complaints, worries. Then you’ll have a small guest room stuffed to the ceiling with paraphernalia. Then babies—and grandmothers as additional guests? Newborns, sometimes, cry for hours. They could have Vanni and Paul up all night, walking the floor with you. Nah, that wouldn’t be good. And besides, it’s not Paul’s job to help, it’s mine.” “Where do you suggest we live? Here?” “Here isn’t bad,” he said with a shrug. “But Mel and Jack offered us their cabin. It’s a nice cabin—two bedrooms and a loft, ten minutes from town. Ideally, we should hurry and look around for a place that can accommodate a man, a woman, two newborns, two grandmothers and… We don’t have to make room for the lawyers, do we?” “Very funny,” she said, crossing her arms over her chest. “Abby, we have things to work out every single day. We have to buy cribs, car seats, swings, layette items, lots of stuff—it’s going to take more than one trip to the mall. We have to let the families know there will be babies coming—it’s only fair. We should have dinner together every day, just so we can communicate, catch up. If there’s anything you need or anything you’re worried about, I want to be close so I can help. If you think I’m going to molest you while you’re huge with my babies—” “You know, I’m getting sick of that word, huge.
”
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Robyn Carr (Paradise Valley)
“
ten-year, five-year and one-year goals, broken down all the way to daily task lists. He kept a catalogue of people he hoped to meet, all corporate movers and shakers or folks who could advance his career. Ruthlessly organized and efficient, he was a top corporate lawyer at a premier
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”
Nancy Warren (Kiss a Girl in the Rain (Take a Chance, #1))
“
Modern art is a waste of time. When the zombies show up, you can't worry about art. Art is for people who aren't worried about zombies. Besides zombies and icebergs, there are other things that Soap has been thinking about. Tsunamis, earthquakes, Nazi dentists, killer bees, army ants, black plague, old people, divorce lawyers, sorority girls, Jimmy Carter, giant quids, rabid foxes, strange dogs, new anchors, child actors, fascists, narcissists, psychologists, ax murderers, unrequited love, footnotes, zeppelins, the Holy Ghost, Catholic priests, John Lennon, chemistry teachers, redheaded men with British accents, librarians, spiders, nature books with photographs of spiders in them, darkness, teachers, swimming pools, smart girls, pretty girls, rich girls, angry girls, tall girls, nice girls, girls with superpowers, giant lizards, blind dates who turn out to have narcolepsy, angry monkeys, feminine hygiene commercials, sitcoms about aliens, things under the bed, contact lenses, ninjas, performances artists, mummies, spontaneous combustion, Soap has been afraid of all of these things at one time or another, Ever since he went to prison, he's realized that he doesn't have to be afraid. All he has to do is come up with a plan. Be prepared. It's just like the Boy Scouts, except you have to be even more prepared. You have to prepare for everything that the Boy Scouts didn't prepare you for, which is pretty much everything.
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”
Kelly Link (Magic for Beginners)
“
Miss Minton, what on earth made you let a young girl travel up the Amazon and spend weeks living with savages? What made you do it? The British consul thinks that you must all have been drugged.”
“Perhaps. Yes, perhaps we were drugged. Not by the things the Xanti smoked--none of us touched them--but by…peace…by happiness. By a different sense of time.”
“I don’t think you have explained why you let Maia--”
Miss Minton interrupted him. “I will explain. At least I will try to. You see, I have looked after some truly dreadful children in my time, and it was easy not to get fond of them. After all, a governess is not a mother. But Maia…well, I’m afraid I grew to love her. And that meant I began to think what I would do if she were my child.”
“And you would let her--” began Mr. Murray.
But Miss Minton stopped him. “I would let her…have adventures. I would let her…choose her path. It would be hard…it was hard…but I would do it. Oh, not completely, of course. Some things have to go on. Cleaning one’s teeth, arithmetic. But Maia fell in love with the Amazon. It happens. The place was for her--and the people. Of course there was some danger, but there is danger everywhere. Two years ago, in this school, there was an outbreak of typhus, and three girls died. Children are knocked down and killed by horses every week, here in these streets--” She broke off, gathering her thoughts. “When she was traveling and exploring…and finding her songs, Maia wasn’t just happy, she was…herself. I think something broke in Maia when her parents died, and out there it was healed. Perhaps I’m mad--and the professor, too--but I think children must lead big lives…if it is in them to do so. And it is in Maia.”
The old lawyer was silent, rolling his silver pencil over and over between his fingers.
“You would take her back to Brazil?”
“Yes.”
“To live among savages?”
“No. To explore and discover and look for giant sloths and new melodies and flowers that only blossom once every twenty years. Not to find them necessarily, but to look--”
She broke off, remembering what they had planned, the four of them, as they sailed up the Agarapi. To build a proper House of Rest near the Carters’ old bungalow and live there in the rainy season, studying hard so that if Maia wanted to go to music college later, or Finn to train as a doctor, they would be prepared. And in the dry weather, to set off and explore.
Mr. Murray had risen to his feet. He walked over to the window and stood with his back to her, looking out at the square.
“It’s impossible. It’s madness.”
There was a long pause.
“Or is it?” the old man said.
”
”
Eva Ibbotson (Journey to the River Sea)
“
It would not be until 1979—when a stalwart young lawyer by the name of Mark Hough took on the case of the “Hello Girls”—that the women switchboard operators of World War I would be given the benefits and honors they had earned for their service. Of the 228 women who served as operators in the US Army Signal Corps, only 28 of them lived long enough to hear the verdict on their case.
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Aimie K. Runyan (Girls on the Line)