“
Why is it no one sent me yet one perfect limousine, do you suppose? Ah no, it's always just my luck to get one perfect rose.
”
”
Dorothy Parker
“
Then, finally, we were ready to charge in and save Sadie, and she rides up in a limousine driven by an ugly dwarf in a swimsuit, and she accuses us of being late.
So when she told us the dwarf was driving us to Russia, I was like, "Whatever." And I got into the car.
”
”
Rick Riordan (The Throne of Fire (The Kane Chronicles, #2))
“
Friends of yours, eh?" I think one of them's about to faint." Oh, my god. "That's Chloe Dale," I said without turning arouind. "She suffers from high oestrogen levels. I can introduce you if you like."
Gideon's smile grew wilder. "Maybe I'll take you up on that some other time. Now, come on. We still have a lot to do today." He took my arm (a loud squel could be heard from the steps and guided me towards the limousine.
”
”
Kerstin Gier (Ruby Red (Precious Stone Trilogy, #1))
“
May I bring you a drink to go with those warm nuts, Mr. Sedaris?" this woman looking after me asked - this as the people in coach were still boarding. The looks they gave me as they passed were the looks I give when the door of a limousine opens. You always expect to see a movie star, or, at the very least, some better dressed than you, but time and time again it's just a sloppy nobody. Thus the look, which translates to, Fuck you, Sloppy Nobody, for making me turn my head.
”
”
David Sedaris (When You Are Engulfed in Flames)
“
Daydream delusion, limousine eyelash
Oh baby with your pretty face
Drop a tear in my wineglass.
Look at those big eyes
See what you mean to me
Sweet-cakes and milkshakes
I'm a delusion angel
I'm a fantasy parade.
I want you to know what I think
Don't want you to guess anymore
You have no idea where I came from
We have no idea where we're going
Lodged in life
Like branches in a river
Flowing downstream
Caught in the current
I carry you, You'll carry me
That's how it could be
Don't you know me?
Don't you know me by now?
”
”
before sunrise
“
In New York there is always something to look at, but it is all infinitely more interesting through a window in the backseat of a limousine.
”
”
Anna Godbersen (Bright Young Things (Bright Young Things, #1))
“
In the way our world is, everybody shoulder to shoulder, people knowing everything about you at first glance, a good veil is your tinted limousine window. The unlisted number for your face. Behind a good veil, you could be anyone.
”
”
Chuck Palahniuk (Invisible Monsters)
“
The media landscape of the present day is a map in search of a territory. A huge volume of sensational and often toxic imagery inundates our minds, much of it fictional in content. How do we make sense of this ceaseless flow of advertising and publicity, news and entertainment, where presidential campaigns and moon voyages are presented in terms indistinguishable from the launch of a new candy bar or deodorant? What actually happens on the level of our unconscious minds when, within minutes on the same TV screen, a prime minister is assassinated, an actress makes love, an injured child is carried from a car crash? Faced with these charged events, prepackaged emotions already in place, we can only stitch together a set of emergency scenarios, just as our sleeping minds extemporize a narrative from the unrelated memories that veer through the cortical night. In the waking dream that now constitutes everyday reality, images of a blood-spattered widow, the chromium trim of a limousine windshield, the stylised glamour of a motorcade, fuse together to provide a secondary narrative with very different meanings.
”
”
J.G. Ballard (The Atrocity Exhibition)
“
After she has gone back to sleep, after Etienne has blown out his candle, he kneels for a long time beside his bed. The bony figure of Death rides the streets below, stopping his mount now and then to peer into windows. Horns of fire on his head and smoke leaking from his nostrils and, in his skeletal hands, a list newly charged with addresses. Gazing first at the crew of officers unloading from their limousines into the chateau.
Then at the flowing rooms of the perfumer Claude Levitte.
Then at the dark tall house of Etienne LeBlanc.
Pass us by, Horseman. Pass this house by.
”
”
Anthony Doerr (All the Light We Cannot See)
“
You go first.
Go through the door before me.
Enter the limousine while I wait by your side.
Enter the shops while I stand behind, guarding your back.
Sit at the table before me.
Please, sample the tastiest morsels while I sit quietly.
My desire is that you go first, in every occasion of earthly life.
Only once will I go before you,
And that will be at my last moment.
For when death claims us, you must go last.
Because I can't live one second without you.
”
”
Jean Sasson
“
That can happen when people die, the argument with them drops away and people so flawed while they were drawing breath that at times they were all but unbearable now assert themselves in the most appealing way, and what was least to your liking the day before yesterday becomes in the limousine behind the hearse a cause not only for sympathetic amusement but for admiration.
”
”
Philip Roth (American Pastoral)
“
Somewhere in the cosmos, he said, along with all the planets inhabited by humanoids, reptiloids, fishoids, walking treeoids and superintelligent shades of the color blue, there was also a planet entirely given over to ballpoint life forms. And it was to this planet that unattended ballpoints would make their way, slipping away quietly through wormholes in space to a world where they knew they could enjoy a uniquely ballpointoid lifestyle, responding to highly ballpoint-oriented stimuli, and generally leading the ballpoint equivalent of the good life.
And as theories go this was all very fine and pleasant until Veet Voojagig suddenly claimed to have found this planet, and to have worked there for a while driving a limousine for a family of cheap green retractables, whereupon he was taken away, locked up, wrote a book and was finally sent into tax exile, which is the usual fate reserved for those who are determined to make fools of themselves in public.
”
”
Douglas Adams (The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy (Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, #1))
“
I'm in the back of a limousine with Charlie Chaplin and it’s 1928. Charlie is beautiful; his body language seems to skip, and reel and rhyme, heartbreaking and witty at the same time. It seems to promise a better world.
”
”
Geoff Ryman (Paradise Tales: and Other Stories)
“
Joseph McElroy is nineteen feet tall and can crush bombproof limousines with his biceps. He will live to be four hundred and thirty-five.
”
”
Mike Heppner
“
If there’s anything worse than a limousine liberal,” Morton said, “it’s a Gulfstream environmentalist.
”
”
Michael Crichton (State of Fear)
“
What a wonderful song, she thought-everything was wonderful tonight, most of all this romantic scene in the den with their hands clinging and the inevitable looming charmingly close. The future vista of her life seemed an unending succession of scenes like this: under moonlight and pale starlight, and in the backs of warm limousines and in low cosy roadsters stopped under sheltering trees-only the boy might change, and this one was so nice.
”
”
F. Scott Fitzgerald (This Side of Paradise)
“
We must have received our share of startled looks from the crew and other passengers—this seven-member family emerging from their third-class lower deck and climbing into a waiting chauffeur-driven limousine.
”
”
Katherine Paterson (Stories of My Life)
“
Our purest joy comes when people we envy get hurt. That most genuine form of joy. The joy you feel when a limousine turns the wrong way down a one-way street.
”
”
Chuck Palahniuk (Haunted)
“
It is virtually not assimilable to our reason that a small lonely man felled a giant in the midst of his limousines, his legions, his throng and his security. If such a nonentity destroyed the leader of the most powerful nation on earth, then a world of disproportion engulfs us, and we live in a universe that is absurd.
”
”
Norman Mailer
“
The workman cut to the left, still laying on his horn, and roared around the drunkenly weaving limousine. He invited the driver of the limo to perform an illegal sex act on himself. To engage in oral congress with various rodents and birds. He articulated his own proposal that all persons of Negro blood return to their native continent. He expressed his sincere belief in the position the limo driver's soul would occupy in the afterlife. He finished by saying that he believed he had met the limodriver's mother in a New Orleans house of prostitution.
”
”
Stephen King (The Shining (The Shining, #1))
“
You are the stuff of which consumer profiles – American Dream: Educated Middle-Class Model – are made. When you're staying at the Plaza with your beautiful wife, doesn't it make sense to order the best Scotch that money can buy before you go to the theater in your private limousine?
”
”
Jay McInerney (Bright Lights, Big City)
“
We made it, baby.
We’re riding in the back of the black
limousine. They have lined
the road to shout our names.
They have faith in your golden hair
& pressed grey suit.
They have a good citizen
in me. I love my country.
I pretend nothing is wrong.
I pretend not to see the man
& his blond daughter diving
for cover, that you’re not saying
my name & it’s not coming out
like a slaughterhouse.
I’m not Jackie O yet
& there isn’t a hole in your head, a brief
rainbow through a mist
of rust. I love my country
but who am I kidding? I’m holding
your still-hot thoughts in,
darling, my sweet, sweet
Jack. I’m reaching across the trunk
for a shard of your memory,
the one where we kiss & the nation
glitters. Your slumped back.
Your hand letting go. You’re all over
the seat now, deepening
my fuchsia dress. But I’m a good
citizen, surrounded by Jesus
& ambulances. I love
this country. The twisted faces.
My country. The blue sky. Black
limousine. My one white glove
glistening pink—with all
our American dreams.
”
”
Ocean Vuong (Night Sky with Exit Wounds)
“
What I like about limousines is they have tinted windows, so no-one can see if you're snogging in the back seat.
”
”
Elizabeth Jane Howard
“
Whether it was Disney or the Navy, management guys always behaved the same. They never understood the technical issues; and they thought that screaming was the way to make things happen. And maybe it was, if you were shouting at your secretaries to get you a limousine. But screaming didn’t make any difference at all to the problems that Arnold now faced. The computer didn’t care if it was screamed at. The power network didn’t care if it was screamed at. Technical systems were completely indifferent to all this explosive human emotion. If anything, screaming was counterproductive, because Arnold now faced the virtual certainty that Nedry wasn’t coming back, which meant that Arnold himself had to go into the computer code and try and figure out what had gone wrong. It was going to be a painstaking job; he’d need to be calm and careful.
”
”
Michael Crichton (Jurassic Park (Jurassic Park, #1))
“
Felicia managed to stagger to her feet, open the front door, and limp haltingly to the white limousine idling on the snowy street outside the house. Murphy went to the window to watch Felicia get into the limo and depart.
"Yeah," I said, deadpan. "The little blond woman has two of them.
”
”
Jim Butcher (Ghost Story (The Dresden Files, #13))
“
The relationship between the famous and the public who sustain them is governed by a striking paradox. Infinitely remote, the great stars of politics, film and entertainment move across an electric terrain of limousines, bodygurads and private helicopters. At the same time, the zoom lens and the interview camera bring them so near to us that we know their faces and their smallest gestures more intimately than those of our friends.
Somewhere in this paradoxical space our imaginations are free to range, and we find ourselves experimenting like impresarios with all the possibilities that these magnified figures seem to offer us.
”
”
J.G. Ballard
“
Fifteen minutes, a myriad of cups, kleenexes and freshly-vacuumed floor mats and seat cushions later, Kay had the interior of the limousine looking ship-shape. Inching backward out of the car on her knees, she caught a glimpse of one last bit of trash she’d missed hiding under the driver’s seat. Lowering her chest to the floor, she stretched her arm under the seat as far as it would go. She grabbed the item and pulled it out and raised herself up from her crouched position. She took one look at the used condom swinging from her fingers, screamed and flung it across the top of the front seat, where it stuck to the air conditioner vents on the dash. She knelt there staring at the thin latex mess, a million scenarios racing through her mind.
”
”
Delora Dennis (Same Old Truths (The Reluctant Avenger, #2))
“
He dreamed of ambassadorial limousines crashing into jack-knifing butane tankers, of taxis filled with celebrating children colliding head-on below the bright display windows of deserted supermarkets. He dreamed of alienated brothers and sisters, by chance meeting each other on collision courses on the access roads of petrochemical plants, their unconscious incest made explicit in this colliding metal, in the heamorrhages of their brain tissue flowering beneath the aluminized compression chambers and reactions vessels.
”
”
J.G. Ballard (Crash)
“
The bride and her hero are whisked away in their long black limousine, the one that drops you off at the beginning of your life.
”
”
Bruce Springsteen (Born to Run)
“
Limousines with liveried chauffers delivered earnest ladies to the picket lines, sometimes in strikes against businesses which helped pay for the limousines.
”
”
Eugene Lyons (The Red Decade: The Stalinist Penetration of America)
“
limousine swung off the road and drove through a gate
”
”
Jeffrey Archer (Heads You Win)
“
...à propos des intellectuels justement... C'est facile de se foutre de leur gueule... Ouais, c'est vachement facile... Souvent, ils sont pas très musclés et en plus, ils n'aiment pas ça, se battre... Ça ne les excite pas plus que ça les bruits des bottes, les médailles et les grosses limousines, alors oui, c'est pas très dur... Il suffit de leur arracher leur livre des mains, leur guitare, leur crayon ou leur appareil photo et déjà ils ne sont plus bons à rien, ces empotés... D'ailleurs, les dictateurs, c'est souvent la première chose qu'ils font: casser les lunettes, brûler les livres ou interdire les concerts, ça leur coûte pas cher et ça peut leur éviter bien des contrariétés par la suite... Mais tu vois, si être intello ça veut dire aimer s'instruire, être curieux, attentif, admirer, s'émouvoir, essayer de comprendre comment tout ça tient debout et tenter de se coucher un peu moins con que la veille, alors oui, je le revendique totalement: non seulement je suis une intello, mais en plus je suis fière de l'être... Vachement fière, même...
”
”
Anna Gavalda
“
In the limousine on the way to my father’s graveside services, I started to cry. My mother slapped me and told me to stop crying. I lacked a model to show me how to feel compassion for my pain.
”
”
Nancy Richards (Mother, I Don't Forgive You: A Necessary Alternative For Healing)
“
Passersby looked at us curiously. In the porch, Mr. Whitman held the church door open for us. “Hurry up, please,” he said. “We don’t want to attract attention.” No, sure, there was nothing likely to attract attention in two black limousines parking in North Audley Street in broad daylight so that men in suits could carry the Lost Ark out of the trunk of one of the cars, over the sidewalk, and into the church. Although from a distance the chest carrying it could have been a small coffin . . . The thought gave me goose bumps.
“I hope at least you remembered your pistol,” I whispered to Gideon.
“You have a funny idea of what goes on at a soiree,” he said, in a normal tone of voice, arranging the scarf around my shoulders. “Did anyone check what’s in your bag? We don’t want your mobile ringing in the middle of a musical performance.”
I couldn’t keep from laughing at the idea, because just then my ringtone was a croaking frog. “There won’t be anyone there who could call me except you,” I pointed out.
“And I don’t even know your number. Please may I take a look inside your bag?”
“It’s called a reticule,” I said, shrugging and handing him the little bag.
“Smelling salts, handkerchief, perfume, powder . . . excellent,” said Gideon. “All just as it should be. Come along.” He gave me the reticule back, took my hand, and led me through the church porch. Mr. Whitman bolted the door again behind us. Gideon forgot to let go of my hand once we were inside the church, which was just as well, because otherwise I’d have panicked at the last moment and run away.
”
”
Kerstin Gier (Saphirblau (Edelstein-Trilogie, #2))
“
Now that I'm thinking about it," I told Gerald, "they could make an incredibly long limousine that had it's back seat at your mom's VJ and it's front seat at your mausoleum, and it would be as long as your life.
”
”
Jonathan Safran Foer
“
He loved the city most at night. The night hid many of the sorrows. It silenced the city yet brought deep undercurrents to the surface. It was in this dark slipstream that he believed he moved most freely. Behind the cover of shadows. Like a rider in a limousine, he looked out but no one looked in.
There was a random feel to the dark, the quirkiness of chance played out in the blue neon light. So many ways to live. And to die.
”
”
Michael Connelly (The Black Ice (Harry Bosch, #2; Harry Bosch Universe, #2))
“
Harold's Bow and Food
Bowl bowl bowl bowl
Food food food food
The miracle of the heavenly restaurant
I mouth this
great dark sad evening
Suddenly they come for me in a limousine
How could I have believed I was vanquished
I never lay slain I
am the victor this parade is for me
Now they have led me to the doors of God
Long ago and forever
I was in this place
on the other side of eating
where I am full and the empty
bowl is beautiful
-- from Unleashed: Poems by Writers' Dogs
”
”
Denis Johnson
“
’Welcome to New York,’ said the sign. [...] We got our luggage from the carousel and went to queue in the taxi rank outside the arrivals hall. [...] As we waited, this massive yellow car drove by. It must have had nineteen or twenty doors on it.
‘I knew the cars here were big,’ I slurred, ‘but not that big!’
‘It’s a limousine, you idiot,’ said Tony [Iommi].
”
”
Ozzy Osbourne (I Am Ozzy)
“
Contrasts
The windows of my poetry are wide open on the boulevards and in the shop windows
Shine
The precious stones of light
Listen to the violins of the limousines and the xylophones of the linotypes
The sketcher washes with the hand-towel of the sky
All is color spots
And the hats of the women passing by are comets in the conflagration of the evening
Unity
There's no more unity
All the clocks now read midnight after being set back ten minutes
There's no more time.
There's no more money.
In the Chamber
They are spoiling the marvelous elements of raw material
("Contrasts")
”
”
Blaise Cendrars (Dix-neuf poèmes élastiques de Blaise Cendrars: Edition critique et commentée)
“
Eve was tall. Her face had cheekbones. Her shoulders slumped when she walked. The shelves in her living room were bent beneath the books. She worked for a publisher; oh, you’ve heard of him, she said.
Her life was one in which everything was left undone—letters unanswered, bills on the floor, the butter sitting out all night. Perhaps that was why her husband had left her; he was even more hopeless than she. At least she was gay. She stepped from her littered doorway in pretty clothes, like a woman who lives in the barrio walking to a limousine, stray dogs and dirt on the way.
”
”
James Salter (Light Years)
“
Lead generation services often provide a service to consumers while simultaneously aggregating a non-homogeneous industry. This is what I did for the limousine industry. I pooled a highly fragmented industry into one centralized source, brought consumers into the mix, and sold that consumer information to limo companies.
”
”
M.J. DeMarco (The Millionaire Fastlane)
“
It is virtually not assimilable to our reason that a small lonely man felled a giant in the midst of his limousines, his legions, his throng, and his security. If such a nonentity destroyed the leader of the most powerful nation on earth, then a world of disproportion engulfs us, and we live in a universe that is absurd. —Norman Mailer
”
”
Stephen King (11/22/63)
“
One look at the officials in the American Consulate where we went for dreary paper routines was enough to make you realize what was wrong with American 'diplomacy' throughout the Fellaheen world: - stiff offcious squares with contempt even for their own Americans who happened not to wear neckties, as tho a necktie or whatever it stands for meant anything to the hungry Berbers who came into Tangiers every Saturday morning on meek asses, like Christ, carrying baskets of pitiful fruit or dates, and returned at dusk to silhouetted parades along the hill by the railroad track. The railroad track where barefooted prophets still walked and taught the Koran to children along the way. Why didn't the American consul ever walk into the urchin hall where Mohammed Maye sat smoking? or squat in behind empty buildings with old Arabs who talked with their hands? or any thing? Instead it's all private limousines, hotel restaurants, parties in the suburbs, an endless phoney rejection in the name of 'democracy' of all that's pith and moment of every land.
”
”
Jack Kerouac (Desolation Angels)
“
Rolling through Manhattan in his limousine, Donald confided that he was nervous about his pending marriage to Slovenian model Melania Knauss, which was just ten days away. “It’s all in the hunt and once you get it, it loses some of its energy,” he said. “I think competitive, successful men feel that way about women. Don’t you agree? Really, don’t you agree?
”
”
Timothy L. O'Brien (TrumpNation: The Art of Being the Donald)
“
The day is short but the journey is long.
”
”
Raul Perales (Behind the Scenes of the Limousine Industry)
“
Right-wing nationalism is a bourgeois nationalism, and in our struggles against capitalist austerity we must emphasize that our enemy arrives in a limousine, and not on a boat.
”
”
Harsha Walia (Border and Rule: Global Migration, Capitalism, and the Rise of Racist Nationalism)
“
Once, when he couldn’t find his limousine upon leaving a ballpark, he was heard saying, “Rickey don’t like it when Rickey can’t find Rickey’s limo.
”
”
David Grann (The Devil & Sherlock Holmes: Tales of Murder, Madness & Obsession)
“
In your country the munitions makers ride in their limousines and prepare their wars, while the workers cannot afford new shoes.
”
”
Gregory Benford (Artifact)
“
She watched his other wife and their two children climb from the limousine & walk into the church.
”
”
Bernadette Marie (Amelia (The Three Mrs. Monroes #1))
“
To accommodate her hats, the limousine roof was raised five inches over her passenger seat.
”
”
Estella M. Chung (Living Artfully: At Home with Marjorie Merriweather Post)
“
leaned his head back onto the plush headrest of his private limousine and shut his eyes
”
”
Sarah Price (The Divine Secrets of the Whoopie Pie Sisters (Whoopie Pie Sisters #1-3))
“
and the last shot of the report was of King getting into a chauffeur-driven limousine in front of the black tower.
”
”
Bentley Little (The Store)
“
what was least to your liking the day before yesterday becomes in the limousine behind the hearse a cause not only for sympathetic amusement but for admiration.
”
”
Philip Roth (American Pastoral (The American Trilogy, #1))
“
Within the shielded darkness of the President’s limousine a geas unlocks in my head, and I can finally remember the message the PM wants me to convey to his counterpart
”
”
Charles Stross (The Labyrinth Index (Laundry Files, #9))
“
If Adolf Hitler flew in today, they'd send a limousine anyway.
”
”
Joe Strummer (The Clash Anthology)
“
My mother's advertising firm specialized in women's accessories. All day long, under the agitated and slightly vicious eye of Mathilde, she supervised photo shoots where crystal earrings glistened on drifts of fake holiday snow, and crocodile handbags-unattended, in the back seats of deserted limousines-glowed in coronas of celestial light. She was good at what she did; she preferred working behind the camera rather than in front of it; and I knew she got a kick out of seeing her work on subway posters and on billboards in Times Square. But despite the gloss and sparkle of the job (champagne breakfasts, gift bags from Bergdorf's) the hours were long and there was a hollowness at the heart of it that-I knew-made her sad.
”
”
Donna Tartt (The Goldfinch)
“
There are men who carefully manoeuvre a large limousine out of the garage at eight o'clock every morning. Others leave an hour earlier, traveling in a middle-class sedan. Still others leave when it is not yet light, wearing overalls and carrying lunch boxes, to catch buses, subways, or trains to factories or building sites. By a trick of fate, it is always the latter, the poorest, who are exploited by the least attractive women. For, unlike women (who have an eye for money), men notice only woman's external appearance. Therefore, the more desirable women in their own class are always being snatched away from under their noses by men who happen to earn more.
No matter what a particular man does or how he spends his day, he has one thing in common with all other men - he spends it in a degrading manner. And he himself does not gain by it. It is not his own livelihood that matters: he would have to struggle far less for that, since luxuries do not mean anything to him anyway it is the fact that he does it for others that makes him so tremendously proud. He will undoubtedly have a photograph of his wife and children on his desk, and will miss no opportunity to hand it around.
No matter what a man's job may be - bookkeeper, doctor, bus driver, or managing director - every moment of his life will be spent as a cog in a huge and pitiless system - a system designed to exploit him to the utmost, to his dying day. (...) We have long ceased to play the games of childhood. As children, we became bored quickly and changed from one game to another. A man is like a child who is condemned to play the same game for the rest of his life.
”
”
Esther Vilar (The Manipulated Man)
“
Those long uneven lines
Standing as patiently
As if they were stretched outside
The Oval or Villa Park,
The crowns of hats, the sun
On moustached archaic faces
Grinning as if it were all
An August Bank Holiday lark;
And the shut shops, the bleached
Established names on the sunblinds,
The farthings and sovereigns,
And dark-clothed children at play
Called after kings and queens,
The tin advertisements
For cocoa and twist, and the pubs
Wide open all day--
And the countryside not caring:
The place names all hazed over
With flowering grasses, and fields
Shadowing Domesday lines
Under wheat's restless silence;
The differently-dressed servants
With tiny rooms in huge houses,
The dust behind limousines;
Never such innocence,
Never before or since,
As changed itself to past
Without a word--the men
Leaving the gardens tidy,
The thousands of marriages,
Lasting a little while longer:
Never such innocence again.
- MCMXIV
”
”
Philip Larkin
“
A dead man passed us in a hearse heaped with blooms, followed by two carriages with drawn blinds and by more cheerful carriages for friends. The friends looked out at us with the tragic eyes and short upper lips of south-eastern Europe, and I was glad that the sight of Gatsby’s splendid car was included in their somber holiday. As we crossed Blackwell’s Island a limousine passed us, driven by a white chauffeur, in which sat three modish Negroes, two bucks and a girl. I laughed aloud as the yolks of their eyeballs rolled toward us in haughty rivalry.
”
”
F. Scott Fitzgerald (The Great Gatsby)
“
Fame requires every kind of excess. I mean true fame, a devouring neon, not the somber renown of waning statesmen or chinless kings. I mean long journeys across gray space. I mean danger, the edge of every void, the circumstance of one man imparting an erotic terror to the dreams of the republic. Understand the man who must inhabit these extreme regions, monstrous and vulval, damp with memories of violation. Even if half-mad he is absorbed into the public's total madness; even if fully rational, a bureaucrat in hell, a secret genius of survival, he is sure to be destroyed by the public's contempt for survivors. Fame, this special kind, feeds itself on outrage, on what the counselors of lesser men would consider bad publicity-hysteria in limousines, knife fights in the audience, bizarre litigation, treachery, pandemonium and drugs. Perhaps the only natural law attaching to true fame is that the famous man is compelled, eventually, to commit suicide.
(Is it clear I was a hero of rock'n'roll?)
Toward the end of the final tour it became apparent that our audience wanted more than music, more even than its own reduplicated noise. It's possible the culture had reached its limit, a point of severe tension. There was less sense of simple visceral abandon at our concerts during these last weeks. Few cases of arson and vandalism. Fewer still of rape. No smoke bombs or threats of worse explosives. Our followers, in their isolation, were not concerned with precedent now. They were free of old saints and martyrs, but fearfully so, left with their own unlabeled flesh. Those without tickets didn't storm the barricades, and during a performance the boys and girls directly below us, scratching at the stage, were less murderous in their love of me, as if realizing finally that my death, to be authentic, must be self-willed- a succesful piece of instruction only if it occured by my own hand, preferrably ina foreign city. I began to think their education would not be complete until they outdid me as a teacher, until one day they merely pantomimed the kind of massive response the group was used to getting. As we performed they would dance, collapse, clutch each other, wave their arms, all the while making absolutely no sound. We would stand in the incandescent pit of a huge stadium filled with wildly rippling bodies, all totally silent. Our recent music, deprived of people's screams, was next to meaningless, and there would have been no choice but to stop playing. A profound joke it would have been. A lesson in something or other.
In Houston I left the group, saying nothing, and boarded a plane for New York City, that contaminated shrine, place of my birth. I knew Azarian would assume leadership of the band, his body being prettiest. As to the rest, I left them to their respective uproars- news media, promotion people, agents, accountants, various members of the managerial peerage. The public would come closer to understanding my disappearance than anyone else. It was not quite as total as the act they needed and nobody could be sure whether I was gone for good. For my closest followers, it foreshadowed a period of waiting. Either I'd return with a new language for them to speak or they'd seek a divine silence attendant to my own.
I took a taxi past the cemetaries toward Manhattan, tides of ash-light breaking across the spires. new York seemed older than the cities of Europe, a sadistic gift of the sixteenth century, ever on the verge of plague. The cab driver was young, however, a freckled kid with a moderate orange Afro. I told him to take the tunnel.
Is there a tunnel?" he said.
”
”
Don DeLillo
“
Saturday morning, 6:52 a.m. The limousine is parked on 13th Street Northwest by the curb. Vice President Katherine Brandt sits in the back of the limo, her stomach churning, but not from hunger.
”
”
Bill Clinton (The President Is Missing)
“
The LBJ team also attempted to change the passenger configuration of the Dallas motorcade in order to get Governor Connally, a longtime LBJ ally, out of the limousine in which Kennedy was riding.
”
”
Richard Belzer (Hit List: An In-Depth Investigation Into the Mysterious Deaths of Witnesses to the JFK Assassination)
“
This kindly unjudging judgment of the Swede could well have been a new development in Jerry, compassion a few hours old. That can happen when people die--the argument with them drops away and people so flawed while they were drawing breath that at times they were all but unbearable now assert themselves in the most appealing way, and what was least to your liking the day before yesterday becomes in the limousine behind the hearse a cause not only for sympathetic amusement but for admiration. In which estimate lies the greater reality--the uncharitable one permitted us before the funeral, forged, without any claptrap, in the skirmish of daily life, or the one that suffuses us with sadness at the family gathering afterward--this even an outsider can't judge. The sight of a coffin can effect a great change of heart--all at once you find you are not so disappointed in the person who is dead--but what the sight of a coffin does for a mind in its search for the truth, this I don't profess to know.
”
”
Philip Roth (American Pastoral)
“
A junior high sports bus was, in the same vein as some fancier modes of passenger transport—limousines, private jets, coaches, whatever—a place where the important people, the king and queen, sat in the back.
”
”
A.D. Aliwat (Alpha)
“
It is probably difficult for the average person to imagine becoming accustomed to a yacht, servants, and limousines, but consider how you would feel if you could never take a hot shower again. Many people in wealthier nations have become used to this pleasure and actually think of it as a necessity. Actually, a hot shower is clearly a luxury, especially when we consider that most of the world’s population has never experienced such a pleasure.
”
”
Tim Kasser (The High Price of Materialism (A Bradford Book))
“
And Emily had yet to shed a single tear. It troubled her all the way back to the city, and she rode with one hand sandwiched between her cheek and the cool, shuddering glass of the limousine window, as if that might help. She tried whispering 'Daddy' to herself, tried closing her eyes and picturing his face, but it didn't work. Then she thought of something that made her throat close up: she might never have been her father's baby, but he had always called her 'little rabbit.' And she was crying easily now, causing her mother to reach over and squeeze her hand; the only trouble was that she couldn't be sure whether she cried for her father or for Warren Maddock, or Maddox, who was back in South Carolina now being shipped out to a division.
But she stopped crying abruptly when she realized that even that was a lie: these tears, as always before in her life, were wholly for herself—for poor, sensitive Emily Grimes whom nobody understood, and who understood nothing.
”
”
Richard Yates
“
Don’t tell me you’ve offended that one too.” Daeng shook her head. “Have we offended that one?” Siri asked. “Don’t recall,” said Civilai. “Wait. Isn’t he the one whose limousine we filled up with ducks?” “No. That was the Vice-Minister of Agriculture.
”
”
Colin Cotterill (Slash And Burn (Dr. Siri Paiboun, #8))
“
Most shocking of all, a long-standing dispute between the city’s taxi drivers and a local car service called Murray Hill Limousine Service over the right to pick up passengers from the airport exploded into violence, as if the two sides were warring principalities in medieval Europe. The taxi drivers descended on Murray Hill with gasoline bombs. Murray Hill’s security guards opened fire. The taxi drivers then set a bus on fire and sent it crashing through the locked doors of the Murray Hill garage. This is CANADA we’re talking about.
”
”
Malcolm Gladwell (David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants)
“
I had never been in a car by myself, at night. New York flowed and ebbed in perfect silence outside the thick windows. If I leaned back, the city disappeared behind the tasseled velvet curtains. Pedestrians, curious about the limousine’s passenger, peered in at every traffic light. This accentuated the oddity of the situation. I was out in the street while being, at the same time, in a secluded space. More than the mahogany panels, the cut-glass decanters, the embroidered upholstery and the capped, white-gloved driver on the other side of the partition, it was this strange paradox of being in private in public that felt so opulent—a feeling that was one with the illusion of suddenly having become untouchable and invulnerable, with the fantasy of being in total control of myself, of others and of the city as a whole.
”
”
Hernan Diaz (Trust)
“
This isn’t a religious book though I mention God, not a medical advisory though I speak of pain. It’s a circus, a mortuary, a grade school, a limousine ride. Will it be worth the paper it’s printed on or the screen you hold in your hand? I just hope you remember it next week.
”
”
Chila Woychik (On Being a Rat and Other Observations)
“
At the precise moment set out in the timetable, Meghan arrived at the chapel in a Rolls-Royce, the same vehicle that had carried Wallis Simpson, the American divorcee and the Duke of Windsor’s wife, to her husband’s funeral in 1972. The official’s choice was deliberate. As she stepped out of the limousine, Meghan’s bridal train was caught. The escorting officer who opened the door offered no help. The explanation foreshadowed what was to come. After her rudeness during the rehearsal the previous day, explained an officer, no one had any feelings of goodwill towards the bride.
”
”
Tom Bower (Revenge: Meghan, Harry and the War between the Windsors)
“
Bagpipe Music'
It's no go the merrygoround, it's no go the rickshaw,
All we want is a limousine and a ticket for the peepshow.
Their knickers are made of crêpe-de-chine, their shoes are made of python,
Their halls are lined with tiger rugs and their walls with heads of bison.
John MacDonald found a corpse, put it under the sofa,
Waited till it came to life and hit it with a poker,
Sold its eyes for souvenirs, sold its blood for whiskey,
Kept its bones for dumb-bells to use when he was fifty.
It's no go the Yogi-Man, it's no go Blavatsky,
All we want is a bank balance and a bit of skirt in a taxi.
Annie MacDougall went to milk, caught her foot in the heather,
Woke to hear a dance record playing of Old Vienna.
It's no go your maidenheads, it's no go your culture,
All we want is a Dunlop tyre and the devil mend the puncture.
The Laird o' Phelps spent Hogmanay declaring he was sober,
Counted his feet to prove the fact and found he had one foot over.
Mrs Carmichael had her fifth, looked at the job with repulsion,
Said to the midwife 'Take it away; I'm through with overproduction'.
It's no go the gossip column, it's no go the Ceilidh,
All we want is a mother's help and a sugar-stick for the baby.
Willie Murray cut his thumb, couldn't count the damage,
Took the hide of an Ayrshire cow and used it for a bandage.
His brother caught three hundred cran when the seas were lavish,
Threw the bleeders back in the sea and went upon the parish.
It's no go the Herring Board, it's no go the Bible,
All we want is a packet of fags when our hands are idle.
It's no go the picture palace, it's no go the stadium,
It's no go the country cot with a pot of pink geraniums,
It's no go the Government grants, it's no go the elections,
Sit on your arse for fifty years and hang your hat on a pension.
It's no go my honey love, it's no go my poppet;
Work your hands from day to day, the winds will blow the profit.
The glass is falling hour by hour, the glass will fall for ever,
But if you break the bloody glass you won't hold up the weather.
”
”
Louis MacNeice
“
The Depression, by the time it came, ratified what'd been under way. Slothrop grew up in a hilltop desolation of businesses going under, hedges around the estates of the vastly rich, half-mythical cottagers from New York lapsing back now to green wilderness or straw death, all the crystal windows every single one smashed, Harrimans and Whitneys gone, lawns growing to hay, and the autumns no longer a time for foxtrots in the distances, limousines and lamps, but only the accustomed crickets again, apples again, early frosts to send the hummingbirds away, east wind, October rain: only winter certainties.
”
”
Thomas Pynchon (Gravity’s Rainbow)
“
These old Australians or Californians who spend all their days staring at the ocean without leaving their limousines, which they have turned into their panoramic childhood sites and their coffins, and who dream there, while awaiting the last wave, the one that will come from the depths of the ocean to engulf them.
”
”
Jean Baudrillard (Cool Memories)
“
It was the 2040s, the time of the uranium bust. Nobody was having babies; the military had its crude hands on all the crude oil; whole industries were reeling; just taking away the Mercedes limousines away from all those grey-templed hustlers who sat on their boards had thrown most U.S. corporations into tailspins
”
”
Walter Tevis (The Steps of the Sun)
“
It is virtually not assimilable to our reason that a small lonely man felled a giant in the midst of his limousines, his legions, his throng, and his security. If such a nonentity destroyed the leader of the most powerful nation on earth, then a world of disproportion engulfs us, and we live in a universe that is absurd.
”
”
Stephen King (11.22.63)
“
We arranged ourselves in the back of the limousine while I ground my teeth, listening to the chauffeur’s thoughts. It astounded me how readily some men could be persuaded into thinking that women should be sidelined and locked up for their own safety. It never occurred to them just who exactly they should be made safe from.
”
”
Lauretta Hignett (Dying For My Vengeance Demon (Foils and Fury #4))
“
There are some females in the world who slip away from the public eye. You might see them walking past you in the lobby or behind the tinted windows of a limousine. They travel so much, you might only meet them in hotels. Last night, you wondered if you’d ever see those intelligent women again. How can any man be good enough for them?
”
”
Kristian Ventura (The Goodbye Song)
“
And conservatives and moderates alike could respect his keen pastoral sense and his personal frugality – a Prince of the Church who had given up a grand archbishop’s palace for a simple apartment in his episcopal office-block, who cooked his own meals and eschewed a chauffeur-driven limousine in favour of taking the subway and the bus. He was also a man of deep prayer.
”
”
Paul Vallely (Pope Francis: Untying the Knots)
“
And as theories go this was all very fine and pleasant until Veet Voojagig suddenly claimed to have found this planet, and to have worked there for a while driving a limousine for a family of cheap green retractables, whereupon he was taken away, locked up, wrote a book and was finally sent into tax exile, which is the usual fate reserved for those who are determined to make fools of themselves in public.
”
”
Douglas Adams (The Ultimate Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, #1-5))
“
Jeff: I'm saying I don't need a limousine to know who I am, alright?
Tim: Right on. You know what? He doesn't need to limo, man.
Jeff: I mean, you know, at least I admit I don't know. I know that things are fucked up beyond belief and I know that I have nothing original to say about any of it, alright? I don't have an answer. I don't have a fucking message.
Tim: Okay, great. Well, now he's crying. Are you guys happy?
”
”
Eric Bogosian (subUrbia)
“
When you are traveling by bus, it is always difficult to decide whether you should sit in a seat by the window, a seat on the aisle, or a seat in the middle. If you take an aisle seat, you have the advantage of being able to stretch your legs whenever you like, but you have the disadvantage of people walking by you and they can accidentally step on your toes or spill something on your clothing. If you take a window seat, you have the advantage of getting a clear view of the scenery, but you have the disadvantage of watching insects die as they hit the glass. If you take a middle seat, you have neither of these advantages, and you have the added disadvantage of people leaning all over you when they fall asleep. You can see at once why you should always arrange to hire a limousine or rent a mule rather than take the bus to your destination.
”
”
Lemony Snicket (The Vile Village (A Series of Unfortunate Events, #7))
“
Admiring and a little overwhelmed by the simple opulence of the limousine’s interior, she shook snowflakes from her scarf and tresses, hoping the rare effort she had put into doing her hair was not entirely ruined.
This is what you’re thinking? Not: You just got into a strange car to do some verbal sparring with a strange out-of-your-league man you’ve already tagged as dangerous?
Nope. Thinking about the hair. Totally.
”
”
Roberta Pearce (The Value of Vulnerability)
“
As the long limousine purred to life Edwina felt as if she were Elizabeth, setting sail to battle the Spanish Armada. She was Elizabeth, damn it! What she had built no one was going to take away from her. Not her house, not her hotels, not her fine stable of horses -- and most especially not the young thoroughbred she had left sleeping by the side of her Olympic-size outdoor pool. Some pleasures, she decided, were simply too enticing to give up.
”
”
Barbara Taylor Bradford (Power of a Woman)
“
After dark on Saturday night one could stand on the first tee of the golf-course and see the country-club windows as a yellow expanse over a very black and wavy ocean. The waves of this ocean, so to speak, were the heads of many curious caddies, a few of the more ingenious chauffeurs, the golf professional's deaf sister--and there were usually several stray, diffident waves who might have rolled inside had they so desired. This was the gallery.
The balcony was inside. It consisted of the circle of wicker chairs that lined the wall of the combination clubroom and ballroom. At these Saturday-night dances it was largely feminine; a great babel of middle-aged ladies with sharp eyes and icy hearts behind lorgnettes and large bosoms. The main function of the balcony was critical. It occasionally showed grudging admiration, but never approval, for it is well known among ladies over thirty-five that when the younger set dance in the summer-time it is with the very worst intentions in the world, and if they are not bombarded with stony eyes stray couples will dance weird barbaric interludes in the corners, and the more popular, more dangerous, girls will sometimes be kissed in the parked limousines of unsuspecting dowagers.
But, after all, this critical circle is not close enough to the stage to see the actors' faces and catch the subtler byplay. It can only frown and lean, ask questions and make satisfactory deductions from its set of postulates, such as the one which states that every young man with a large income leads the life of a hunted partridge. It never really appreciates the drama of the shifting, semicruel world of adolescence. No; boxes, orchestra-circle, principals, and chorus are represented by the medley of faces and voices that sway to the plaintive African rhythm of Dyer's dance orchestra.
”
”
F. Scott Fitzgerald (The Stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald)
“
For years many in the oil-rich states argued that their enormous wealth would bring modernizations. They pointed to the impressive appetites of Saudis and Kuwaitis for things Western, from McDonald's hamburgers to Rolex watches to Cadillac limousines. but importing Western good is easy; importing the inner stuffing of modern society - a free market, political parties, accountability, the rule of law - is difficult and even dangerous for the ruling elites
”
”
Fareed Zakaria (The Future of Freedom: Illiberal Democracy at Home and Abroad)
“
After graduating from college, I was expected to find a good job. I didn't and instead dove into entrepreneurial ventures.
My family thought I was crazy and proclaimed, “You're wasting a five-year education!” Peers thought I was delusional. Oh dear, delivering pizza and chauffeuring limousines while two business degrees hung from the wall?! Women wouldn't date me because I broke the professional, “college-educated” mold the fairy tale espoused.
Going Fastlane and building momentum will require you to turn your back at the people who fart headwinds in your direction. You have to break free of society's gravitational force and their expectations. If you aren't mindful to this natural gravity, life can denigrate into a viscous self-perpetuating cycle, which is society's prescription for normal: Get up, go to work, come home, eat, watch a few episodes of Law and Order, go to bed … then repeat, day after day after day.
”
”
M.J. DeMarco (The Millionaire Fastlane: Crack the Code to Wealth and Live Rich for a Lifetime!)
“
The train station—busy, swarming with people, luggage, porters, taxi drivers and limousine chauffeurs—a giant honeycomb, with worker bees flying in and out, carrying the trash, which covers the entire floor, in and out of the building. Only the honey has been consumed by the selected few, and nothing but the mucus remains. The line—a monstrous larva—the line stretches from the information window and extends almost out of the door. A human worm—hundreds of legs and hands, twisting and breathing disease. What was I thinking? This is just a city like any other, a city with its inhabitants, always busy, from the morning until the nighttime, always itching for a fight, always ready to chew me up and spit me out. A stripped and ragged bone, tossed aside when I can no longer feed its hungry belly. The belly of a beast—a human beast—merciless, yet placatory on the surface. I light a cigarette, spit on the floor, and walk towards the daylight.
”
”
Henry Martin (Eluding Reality (Mad Days of Me #3))
“
«Il mio problema?» «Sì! Il tuo problema. Perché sei mister Bravo Ragazzo con tutti gli altri e con me un maledetto stronzo?» «Non solo con te.»« Anche con Nicky. Cazzo. Mi puoi svelare cosa ha fatto uno di noi due a Sua Altezza Reale del rock ‘n’ roll per comportarti così?» «Con lui, è semplice: non mi piace. Con te, c’è molto di più.» «Cosa? Io non ti piaccio, e allora sono insulti su insulti? Ottimo.» «Tu sei un treno impazzito, okay? Un cliché. Sei l’incarnazione di ogni battuta mai detta sulle vecchie rock star sbandate, e non ti rendi nemmeno conto di quanto tu sia penoso. Sì, sono attratto da te. No, non voglio fare nulla. Odio che il mio corpo reagisca al tuo, perché non voglio avere niente a che fare con quel gran casino che è Shane Ventura. Niente.» Shane si mise comodo, poggiandosi ai cuscini del sedile, sotto shock. Dio, è orribile. Avrebbe voluto poter tornare indietro, non fare domande, scendere da quella cazzo di limousine, e non dover mai più vedere l’uomo che aveva davanti
”
”
Piper Vaughn (Moonlight Becomes You (Lucky Moon, #1))
“
jumping into limousines. They burned rubber racing to where they thought I was. It was a circus, and by now Florence radio and television had picked it up. For all I know Shug had enlisted their help. “Anyone who has seen country music star George Jones, believed to be in Florence tonight, is asked to call this number,” the newscasters said. Digits were flashed at the bottom of the screen. By the second night of the second day I weakened. I had been awake the entire time. Our tent leaked, and we had gotten
”
”
George Jones (I Lived to Tell It All)
“
When we got back to my room, Gilda gave the dog a bowl of water and set some newspaper down in the bathroom for her to pee on. After that was taken care of, I ordered the cheesecake and coffee that Gilda said she has a yen for, and then we continues talking. Sparkle didn’t make a sound — no barking or winning or heaving breathing — she just sat on the floor and looked at the two of us. It must have been strange for her. She was a year old and had been taken from a farm by a stranger, put on an airplane, driven in a limousine, and then hugged and kissed by another stranger. Even when the doorbell rang, she didn’t bark. I thought perhaps she wasn’t able to bark. The waiter brought in the cheesecake and poured out some coffee for us. When Gilda and I started eating the cheesecake, we heard a little peep form Sparkle. She sounded more like a bird than a dog — a very polite bird — but it was obvious that she wanted her share of cheesecake, which Gilda gave her. So the three of us polished off the cheesecake — “One piece, three forks, please.
”
”
Gene Wilder (Kiss Me Like a Stranger: My Search for Love and Art)
“
The workman cut to the left, still laying on his horn, and roared around the drunkenly weaving limousine. He invited the driver of the limo to perform an illegal sex act on himself. To engage in oral congress with various rodents and birds. He articulated his own proposal that all persons of Negro blood return to their native continent. He expressed his sincere belief in the position the limo driver’s soul would occupy in the afterlife. He finished by saying that he believed he had met the limodriver’s mother in a New Orleans house of prostitution.
”
”
Stephen King (The Shining (The Shining #1))
“
Once upon a time, we made a revolution. We said we were tired of hunger, of sweat and of lice. So we cut throats, and broke skulls, and poured blood, our blood, their blood, to wash a clean road for freedom. Now look around you. Look around you, Comrade Taganov, Party member since 1915! Do you see where men live, men, our brothers? Do you see what they eat? Have you ever seen a woman falling on the street, vomiting blood on the cobblestones, dying of hunger? I have. Did you see the limousines speeding at night? Did you see who’s in them? There’s a nice little comrade we have in the Party. A smart young man with a brilliant future. Pavel Syerov’s the name. Have you ever seen him open his wallet to pay for a whore’s champagne? Did you ever wonder where he gets the money? Did you ever go to the European roof garden? Not often, I bet. But if you had, you’d see the respectable Citizen Morozov getting indigestion on caviar. Who is he? Just assistant manager of the Food Trust. The State Food Trust of the Union of Socialist Soviet Republics. We’re the leaders of the world proletariat and we’ll bring freedom to all suffering humanity!
”
”
Ayn Rand (We the Living)
“
I love my passengers. I remember one woman in particular--a senior who had gotten on my bus. She seemed completely lost. She said she was going to a restaurant on City Island Avenue. I could see she was confused. There was just something about her. She looked so elegant, but with a fur coat on a hot summer day, so I said, 'Are you okay?' and she said, 'I'm fine, but I don't know what restaurant I'm meeting my friends at.' I said, 'Get on. Sit in the front.' I asked a gentleman to get up so she could sit near me, and I said, 'I'll run in and I'll check each restaurant for you.'
So I checked the restaurants and no luck, but at the very, very last restaurant on the left, I said, 'It's got to be this one. Let me swing the bus around,' and I swung it around. I said, 'Don't move. Let me make sure this is the place before you get out.'It was a hot day, and she's got fur on. She could pass out. So I said, 'Stay here, sweetie. It's nice and cool in here.' I went in and I said 'There's a lady in the bus and she's not sure of the restaurant,' and I saw a whole bunch of seniors there and they said, 'Oh, that's her!'
I ran back to the bus and I said, 'sweetie, your restaurant is right here.' I said, 'Let me kneel the bus.' Kneeling the bus means I bring it closer to the ground so she gets off easier. And I said, 'Don't move.' I remember my right hand grabbed her right hand. I wanted to make her feel special, like it was a limousine. It was a bus, but I wanted to make her feel like it was a limousine. And she said, 'I have been diagnosed with cancer--but today is the best day of my life.'
And I've never forgotten that woman (Weeping). She's diagnosed with cancer and just because I helped her off the bus, she said she felt like Cinderella. Can't get better than that. And doing your job and getting paid to do a job where you can do something special like that? It's pretty awesome.
”
”
Dave Isay
“
That can happen when people die—the argument with them drops away and people so flawed while they were drawing breath that at times they were all but unbearable now assert themselves in the most appealing way, and what was least to your liking the day before yesterday becomes in the limousine behind the hearse a cause not only for sympathetic amusement but for admiration. In which estimate lies the greater reality—the uncharitable one permitted us before the funeral forced without any claptrap in the skirmish of daily life, or the one that suffuses us with sadness at the family gathering afterward—even an outsider can’t judge.
”
”
Philip Roth (American Pastoral (The American Trilogy, #1))
“
The moment American bankers stop lending dollars to Argentina, the country is unable to refinance its mountain of dollar debt. Again, Greece is similar. Even though it has the same currency as Germany, the euro, the chronic Greek trade deficit with Germany translates into a constant flow of loaned euros from Germany to Greece so that the Greeks can keep buying more and more German goods. The slightest interruption in the flow of new loans from the surplus country to the deficit country causes the whole house of cards to collapse. This is when the IMF steps in. Its personnel fly into Buenos Aires or Athens, take black limousines to the finance minister’s office and state their terms: we shall lend you the missing dollars or euros on condition that you impoverish your people and sell the family silver to our mates, the oligarchs of this country and the world. Or words to that effect. That’s when TV screens fill with images of angry, and often hungry, demonstrators in Buenos Aires or Athens. Time and again history has shown that the periodic economic recessions that result from trade imbalances poison the deficit country’s democracy, incite contempt for its people in the surplus country, which then prompts xenophobia in the deficit country. Simply put, sustained trade deficits – and surpluses, their mirror image – never end well.
”
”
Yanis Varoufakis (Another Now: Dispatches from an Alternative Present)
“
The residence of Mr. Peter Pett, the well-known financier, on Riverside Drive is one of the leading eyesores of that breezy and expensive boulevard. As you pass by in your limousine, or while enjoying ten cents worth of fresh air on top of a green omnibus, it jumps out and bites at you. Architects, confronted with it, reel and throw up their hands defensively, and even the lay observer has a sense of shock. The place resembles in almost equal proportions a cathedral, a suburban villa, a hotel and a Chinese pagoda. Many of its windows are of stained glass, and above the porch stand two terra-cotta lions, considerably more repulsive even than the complacent animals which guard New York's Public Library.
”
”
P.G. Wodehouse (Piccadilly Jim)
“
Era diventato un conoscitore della poesia trovata nei nascondigli abbandonati. il minuscolo cuneo di spazio stentato fra i mobili ammucchiati e la porta di casa in cui si erano infilati coloro che se ne andavano. L'ampio arco invitante di una vecchia chiesa oppressa dai palazzoni, l'unica porta aperta nell'intero isolato, le macerie sulla scalinata spinte via durante la fuga e il passaggio sgombro a creare una sorta di tappeto per gli sposi diretti alla limousine della luna di miele. Fuori, in campagna, la sola finestra libera fra le altre rivestite di assi al primo piano della fattoria e lo zerbino di vetri infranti. Quelli dentro avevano tentato una sortita e lì la storia si interrompeva. Ce l'avevano fatta?
”
”
Colson Whitehead
“
The President of the United States had just been murdered -- and he, Virgil Edward Hoffman, had seen the men who did it. There was always a chance that someone else could have seen them, too, but even in the distress of the moment, Ed somehow doubted it. All he knew for certain was that he had to make sure the two men didn't get away with their unspeakable deed. They had to be caught and made to pay, he thought, as the image of the mortally wounded President flashed before his mind's eye and made him shudder. It was all Ed could do to keep from running across the busy freeway toward where he had last seen the two men. But logic told him that it was too far, and there were too many obstacles in the way. He knew he would never make it. As the limousine roared on past with its tragic cargo, Ed's eyes darted back to the area behind the wooden fence -- just in time to witness the final act unfolding in the deadly tableau 150 yards away. "The train man was still standing there. I could see him very plainly. I watched him take the gun apart. I don't know how he did it because I don't know anything about guns, but he dismantled it and put it inside the brown suitcase. Then he started running, too. He ran off to the north, into the railroad yards. I managed to keep him in sight until he ran behind a train. He ran right around the caboose and disappeared, and after that I couldn't see him anymore.
”
”
Bill Sloan (The Kennedy Conspiracy: 12 Startling Revelations About the JFK Assassination)
“
Like the Internet, environmentalism stretches back a long way, yet many people believe Al Gore invented it. There’s no question that Gore’s slideshow-turned-film documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, gave a huge jumpstart to the global warming … sorry, “climate change” … wait, sorry, “climate disruption” … no, hold on, “climate chaos” movement. (If the science is settled, why do they have to keep changing its name?) I won’t bother recounting all the challenges to Gore’s claims, as many others have already done so; or the widely noted disparities between the Spartan existence Gore prescribes for the rest of humanity and his own opulent, jet-set lifestyle. I’ll just point out what I consider the most damning fact of all: While he was prophesying that global warming would cause a twenty-foot sea-level rise by the year 2100, flooding coastal areas and leaving hundreds of millions homeless (a claim debunked by a University of Montana study), he spent nearly $9 million on an oceanfront mansion in the limousine-liberal enclave of Montecito, California [USA Today, “How Green Is Al Gore’s $9 Million Montecito Oceanfront Villa?” May 18, 2010]. If he truly believed in his own message, wouldn’t it have been wiser to spend $1 million on a mansion in Phoenix, Arizona, and then just wait for it to become oceanfront property? It’s no surprise that the biggest proponent of expanding government to combat “climate disruption” is also among the biggest emitters of hot gas.
”
”
Mike Huckabee (God, Guns, Grits, and Gravy: and the Dad-Gummed Gummint That Wants to Take Them Away)
“
Ten years ago, when I was living in a small flat above an off-licence in SW1, I learned that the big house next door had been bought by the wife of the dictator of Nicaragua, Anastasio Somoza Debayle. The street was obviously going down in the world, what with the murder of the nanny Sandra Rivett by that nice Lord Lucan at number 44, and I moved out a few months later. I never met Hope Somoza, but her house became notorious in the street for a burglar alarm that went off with surprising frequency, and for the occasional parties that would cause the street to be jammed solid with Rolls—Royce, Mercedes-Benz and Jaguar limousines. Back in Managua, her husband 'Tacho' had taken a mistress, Dinorah, and Hope was no doubt trying to keep her spirits up.
”
”
Salman Rushdie (The Jaguar Smile: A Nicaraguan Journey)
“
When Camilla and her husband joined Prince Charles on a holiday in Turkey shortly before his polo accident, she didn’t complain just as she bore, through gritted teeth, Camilla’s regular invitations to Balmoral and Sandringham. When Charles flew to Italy last year on a sketching holiday, Diana’s friends noted that Camilla was staying at another villa a short drive away. On her return Mrs Parker-Bowles made it quite clear that any suggestion of impropriety was absurd. Her protestations of innocence brought a tight smile from the Princess. That changed to scarcely controlled anger during their summer holiday on board a Greek tycoon’s yacht. She quietly simmered as she heard her husband holding forth to dinner-party guests about the virtues of mistresses. Her mood was scarcely helped when, later that evening, she heard him chatting on the telephone to Camilla.
They meet socially on occasion but, there is no love lost between these two women locked into an eternal triangle of rivalry. Diana calls her rival “the rotweiller” while Camilla refers to the Princess as that “ridiculous creature”. At social engagements they are at pains to avoid each other. Diana has developed a technique in public of locating Camilla as quickly as possible and then, depending on her mood, she watches Charles when he looks in her direction or simply evades her gaze. “It is a morbid game,” says a friend. Days before the Salisbury Cathedral spire appeal concert Diana knew that Camilla was going. She vented her frustration in conversations with friends so that on the day of the event the Princess was able to watch the eye contact between her husband and Camilla with quiet amusement.
Last December all those years of pent-up emotion came flooding out at a memorial service for Leonora Knatchbull, the six-year-old daughter of Lord and Lady Romsey, who tragically died of cancer. As Diana left the service, held at St James’s Palace, she was photographed in tears. She was weeping in sorrow but also in anger. Diana was upset that Camilla Parker Bowles who had only known the Romseys for a short time was also present at such an intimate family service. It was a point she made vigorously to her husband as they travelled back to Kensington Palace in their chauffeur-driven limousine. When they arrived at Kensington Palace the Princess felt so distressed that she ignored the staff Christmas party, which was then in full swing, and went to her sitting-room to recover her composure. Diplomatically, Peter Westmacott, the Wales’s deputy private secretary, sent her avuncular detective Ken Wharfe to help calm her.
”
”
Andrew Morton (Diana: Her True Story in Her Own Words)
“
Indie Rokkers"
i like the line between your belly and your thighs
the smell of your hair
the sparkle in your eyes
the smoke in your breath
the breathing hard and heavy
the back of your neck
the shine on your Chevy
the moon was so big when i drove it to the levy, girl
i found blood and i saw stars
all in the backseat of your car
and i told you it was love
but you don't wanna know the truth
i was young and in my prime
with my heart still filled with fear
and it goes on bleedin'
the clean dreams, the sexy limousine
Jason's (?) got the energy he used to be a coke fien
the skinny brown arms coming round in your shirt
heart is in the right place brain is in the dirt
you live life like everyone's an enemy
i found blood and i saw stars
all in the backseat of your car
and i told you it was love
but you don't wanna know the truth
i was young and in my prime
with my heart still filled with fear
and it goes on bleedin
”
”
MGMT
“
As expected, Nevada’s summer heat was oppressive; temperatures under the desert sun bubbled around the 130-degree mark, which made it even harder for Monroe and almost everyone except [Clark] Gable to put in a full day’s work. Though he had a chauffeured limousine at his disposal, he drove himself back and forth to work in his silver Mercedes-Benz SC. He always arrived punctually at eight-forty-five A.M., bringing along gallon Thermoses of booze-spiked lemonade and iced tea to fortify himself. For the better part of the morning, he would sit around studying that day’s script pages or gabbing with the crew while waiting for the other principals to arrive.
Though the delays were driving him mad, he tried not to show it. But one day while his writer-friend John Lee Mahin was visiting from Los Angeles, Gable told him, “It’s not professional, John, it’s stealing. It’s stealing the bank’s money and United Artists’ money. I don’t see how they’re going to get a picture out of this, but I’m stuck with it now, and I’m trying to do the best I can. It’s been hard on me.
”
”
Warren G. Harris (Clark Gable: A Biography)
“
Maggie chiuse gli occhi e contò sino a dieci.
Uno, due, tre…
Se voleva arrivare a casa di sua sorella prima che facesse notte, non aveva altra scelta che chiedere al cowboy di accompagnarla. Certo, avrebbe sempre potuto optare per il motel e attraversare quelle duecento iarde pullulanti di lupi.
Un altro ululato.
No, non avrebbe potuto.
«Lupi» disse Mitch, il braccio sinistro che sporgeva indolente dal finestrino, il mozzicone del sigaro stretto tra le dita.
«Lupi» ripeté lei con un’alzata di spalle, come se si trattasse di barboncini addestrati. Poi mosse un paio di passi esitanti verso il pick-up. Quell’affare era così alto che dovette allungare il collo e sollevare la testa per parlare al cowboy. «Mi chiedevo…» mormorò vincendo ogni residua resistenza.
Lui rimase immobile, se non per il sopracciglio sinistro che scattò verso l’alto.
«… se per caso tu non potessi darmi uno strappo.»
Lui finse di prendere in considerazione la cosa. Poi, con un altro sbuffo di fumo, disse: «Mi sembrava che avessi rifiutato la mia offerta, dieci minuti fa...».
«Perché non intendevo esserti di disturbo» rispose lei come se si stesse rivolgendo alla duchessa di Kent.
E di fatti lui scoppiò a ridere. «Essermi di disturbo? Dopo avermi assalito come un ninja? Ma sarò magnanimo. Dai, sali.»
Maggie tirò un sospiro di sollievo. Era così stanca e infreddolita che anche quel pick-up scassato le parve per un istante una limousine.
«Dove metto la valigia?»
«Buttala dietro, nel cassone.»
Buttare nel cassone la sua Samsonite rosa, costata una cifra improponibile?
«Preferirei sistemarla in cabina, se non ti spiace.»
«In cabina non c’è posto, qua dietro è pieno di roba. A meno che tu preferisca viaggiare nel cassone e la valigia sul sedile…»
Lei rimase zitta, gli occhi sgranati, per nulla certa che quella fosse solo una battuta.
«Ok, ci penso io» tagliò corto lui, aprendo la portiera e scivolando a terra con un balzo. Afferrò il trolley per la maniglia e, senza un’altra parola, lo fece volare nel cassone.
Oh!
Il botto risuonò nelle orecchie di Maggie come una granata.
Risistemandosi lo Stetson sulla testa, il cowboy girò intorno al pick-up e con un sorriso esagerato aprì la portiera del passeggero.
«Sali, sorella di Suzie, o vuoi che dia una mano anche a te?»
”
”
Viviana Giorgi (Tutta colpa del vento (e di un cowboy dagli occhi verdi))
“
New Rule: Conservatives have to stop complaining about Hollywood values. It's Oscar time again, which means two things: (1) I've got to get waxed, and (2) talk-radio hosts and conservative columnists will trot out their annual complaints about Hollywood: We're too liberal; we're out of touch with the Heartland; our facial muscles have been deadened with chicken botulism; and we make them feel fat. To these people, I say: Shut up and eat your popcorn. And stop bitching about one of the few American products--movies---that people all over the world still want to buy.
Last year, Hollywood set a new box-office record: $16 billion worldwide. Not bad for a bunch of socialists. You never see Hollywood begging Washington for a handout, like corn farmers, or the auto industry, or the entire state of Alaska.
What makes it even more inappropriate for conservatives to slam Hollywood is that they more than anybody lose their shit over any D-lister who leans right to the point that they actually run them for office. Sony Bono? Fred Thompson? And let'snot forget that the modern conservative messiah is a guy who costarred with a chimp. That's right, Dick Cheney.
I'm not trying to say that when celebrities are conservative they're almost always lame, but if Stephen Baldwin killed himself and Bo Derrick with a car bomb, the headline the next day would be "Two Die in Car Bombing."
The truth is that the vast majority of Hollywood talent is liberal, because most stars adhere to an ideology that jibes with their core principles of taking drugs and getting laid. The liebral stars that the right is always demonizing--Sean Penn and Michael Moore, Barbra Streisand and Alec Baldwin and Tim Robbins, and all the other members of my biweekly cocaine orgy--they're just people with opinions. None of them hold elective office, and liberals aren't begging them to run. Because we live in the real world, where actors do acting, and politicians do...nothing.
We progressives love our stars, but we know better than to elect them. We make the movies here, so we know a well-kept trade secret: The people on that screen are only pretending to be geniuses, astronauts, and cowboys.
So please don't hat eon us. And please don't ruin the Oscars. Because honestly, we're just like you: We work hard all year long, and the Oscars are really just our prom night. The tuxedos are scratchy, the limousines are rented, and we go home with eighteen-year-old girls.
”
”
Bill Maher (The New New Rules: A Funny Look At How Everybody But Me Has Their Head Up Their Ass)
“
Only as a young man playing pool all night for money had he been able to find what he wanted in life, and then only briefly. People thought pool hustling was corrupt and sleazy, worse than boxing. But to win at pool, to be a professional at it, you had to deliver. In a business you could pretend that skill and determination had brought you along, when it had only been luck and muddle. A pool hustler did not have the freedom to believe that. There were well-paid incompetents everywhere living rich lives. They arrogated to themselves the plush hotel suites and Lear Jets that America provided for the guileful and lucky far more than it did for the wise. You could fake and bluff and luck your way into all of it. Hotel suites overlooking Caribbean private beaches. Bl*wj*bs from women of stunning beauty. Restaurant meals that it took four tuxedoed waiters to serve, with the sauces just right. The lamb or duck in tureen sliced with precise and elegant thinness, sitting just so on the plate, the plate facing you just so on the heavy white linen, the silver fork heavy gleaming in your manicured hand below the broad cloth cuff and mother of pearl buttons. You could get that from luck and deceit even while causing the business or the army or the government that supported you to do poorly at what it did. The world and all its enterprises could slide downhill through stupidity and bad faith. But the long gray limousines would still hum through the streets of New York, of Paris, of Moscow, of Tokyo. Though the men who sat against the soft leather in back with their glasses of 12-year-old scotch might be incapable of anything more than looking important, of wearing the clothes and the hair cuts and the gestures that the world, whether it liked to or not, paid for, and always had paid for.
Eddie would lie in bed sometimes at night and think these things in anger, knowing that beneath the anger envy lay like a swamp. A pool hustler had to do what he claimed to be able to do. The risks he took were not underwritten. His skill on the arena of green cloth, cloth that was itself the color of money, could never be only pretense. Pool players were often cheats and liars, petty men whose lives were filled with pretensions, who ran out on their women and walked away from their debts. But on the table with the lights overhead beneath the cigarette smoke and the silent crowd around them in whatever dive of a billiard parlor at four in the morning, they had to find the wherewithal inside themselves to do more than promise excellence. Under whatever lies might fill the life, the excellence had to be there, it had to be delivered. It could not be faked. But Eddie did not make his living that way anymore.
”
”
Walter Tevis (The Color of Money (Eddie Felson, #2))
“
As we walked back into the hallway, Patrick held on to Diana’s hand. He was reluctant to let her go and gazed up at her with open adoration. I wish I could have taken another picture of that touching moment. With the royal staff clustering around, that was impossible. Diana seemed equally hesitant to say good-bye and bent down to squeeze Patrick tightly as we left. To Patrick that afternoon, Diana was truly a fairy-tale princess. Is it possible to imagine how her own sons felt about her?
I was tremendously proud of Patrick for being so poised and polite, so natural all afternoon. “God bless him,” I thought. “If he ever had to be on his best behavior, it was today, when it mattered so very much.” I was also feeling blissful, really floating on air, after our long and private visit with Diana and Charles. It was hard to believe that they had spent so much time with us that afternoon and later were heading to the White House to spend the evening with President and Mrs. Reagan and lots of celebrities. The often-seen photograph of Diana in a midnight blue evening gown dancing with John Travolta was taken that night.
On the taxi ride back to our hotel, we saw Diana and Charles’s limousine and security escort crossing an intersection in the distance. Our taxi driver explained to us that many streets in Washington were blocked off that day due to the important state visit of the Prince and Princess of Wales. Patrick, Adrienne, and I didn’t say a word. We just smiled and kept our visit a secret among ourselves. We all flew home later that afternoon.
”
”
Mary Robertson (The Diana I Knew: Loving Memories of the Friendship Between an American Mother and Her Son's Nanny Who Became the Princess of Wales)
“
Soon it was time for us to leave; the clock had struck midnight, and we had miles to go before we slept. After throwing my bouquet and saying good-byes, Marlboro Man and I ran through the doors of the club and climbed into the back of a smoky black limousine--the vehicle that would take us to the big city miles away, where we’d stay before flying to Australia the next day. As we pulled away from the waving, birdseed-throwing crowd at the front door of the club, we immediately settled into each other’s arms, melting into a puddle of white silk and black boots and sleepy, unbridled romance.
It was all so new. New dress…new love…a new country--Australia--that neither of us had ever seen. A new life together. A new life for me. New crystal, silver, china. A newly renovated, tiny cowboy house that would be our little house on the prairie when we returned from our honeymoon.
A new husband. My husband. I wanted to repeat it over and over again, wanted to shout it to the heavens. But I couldn’t speak. I was busy. Passion had taken over--a beast had been unleashed. Sleep deprived and exhausted from the celebration of the previous week, once inside the sanctity of the limousine, we were utterly powerless to stop it…and we let it fly. It was this same passion that had gotten us through the early stages of our relationship, and, ultimately, through the choice to wave good-bye to any life I’d ever imagined for myself. To become a part of Marlboro Man’s life instead. It was this same passion that assured me that everything was exactly as it should be. It was the passion that made it all make sense.
”
”
Ree Drummond (The Pioneer Woman: Black Heels to Tractor Wheels)
“
Questions surround nearly every aspect of the assassination. The chain
of possession regarding each piece of evidence was tainted beyond repair.
The presidential limousine, which represented the literal crime scene,
was taken over by officials immediately after JFK’s body was carried into
Parkland Hospital and tampered with. The Secret Service apparently cleaned
up the limousine, washing away crucial evidence in the process. Obviously,
whatever bullet fragments or other material that was purportedly found
there became immediately suspect because of this. On November 26, the
windshield on the presidential limo was replaced.
The supposed murder weapon—a cheap, Italian Mannlicher-Carcano
rifle with a defective scope, allegedly ordered by Oswald through a post office
box registered to his purported alias, Alex Hidell—is similarly troublesome.
The two Dallas officers who discovered the rifle on the sixth floor of the Texas School Book Depository building, Seymour Weitzman and Eugene Boone,
both swore in separate affidavits that the weapon was a German Mauser. As
was to become all too common in this case, they would later each claim to be
“mistaken” in a curiously identical manner.
In fact, as late as midnight on November 22, Dallas District Attorney
Henry Wade would refer to the rifle as a Mauser when speaking to the press.
Local WFAA television reported the weapon found as both a German Mauser
and an Argentine Mauser. NBC, meanwhile, described the weapon as a British
Enfield. In an honest court, the Carcano would not even have been permitted
into the record, because no reliable chain of possession for it existed. Legally
speaking, the rifle found on the sixth floor was a German Mauser, and no one
claimed Oswald owned a weapon of that kind.
”
”
Donald Jeffries (Hidden History: An Exposé of Modern Crimes, Conspiracies, and Cover-Ups in American Politics)
“
The relationship between the famous and the public who sustain them is governed by a striking paradox. Infinitely remote, the great stars of politics, film and entertainment move across an electric terrain of limousines, bodyguards and private helicopters. At the same time, the zoom lens and the interview camera bring them so near to us that we know their faces and their smallest gestures more intimately than those of our friends. Somewhere in this paradoxical space our imaginations are free to range, and we find ourselves experimenting like impresarios with all the possibilities that these magnified figures seem to offer us. How did Garbo brush her teeth, shave her armpits, probe a worry-line? The most intimate details of their lives seem to lie beyond an already open bathroom door that our imaginations can easily push aside. Caught in the glare of our relentless fascination, they can do nothing to stop us exploring every blocked pore and hesitant glance, imagining ourselves their lovers and confidantes. In our minds we can assign them any roles we choose, submit them to any passion or humiliation. And as they age, we can remodel their features to sustain our deathless dream of them.
In a TV interview a few years ago, the wife of a famous Beverly Hills plastic surgeon revealed that throughout their marriage her husband had continually re-styled her face and body, pointing a breast here, tucking in a nostril there. She seemed supremely confident of her attractions. But as she said: ‘He will never leave me, because he can always change me.’
Something of the same anatomizing fascination can be seen in the present pieces, which also show, I hope, the reductive drive of the scientific text as it moves on its collision course with the most obsessive pornography. What seems so strange is that these neutral accounts of operating procedures taken from a textbook of plastic surgery can be radically transformed by the simple substitution of the anonymous ‘patient’ with the name of a public figure, as if the literature and conduct of science constitute a vast dormant pornography waiting to be woken by the magic of fame.
”
”
J.G. Ballard (The Atrocity Exhibition)
“
Who really benefited from the death of President Kennedy? Oswald only served as a straw man.[86] Unbeknownst to him, he was being prepared by the CIA and the FBI for his role as a scapegoat. Do not forget that there are often mind control elements at work in these kinds of political assassinations (See chapter 44, Josef Mengele and Monarch Mind Control). Lyndon B. Johnson had foreknowledge of the plan to kill Kennedy. His longtime lover, Madeleine Brown, wrote about Johnson’s foreknowledge of the assassination in her book Texas in the Morning (see also Benjamin Bradlee, Conversations with Kennedy 1975). One day before Kennedy was killed, Johnson said: “Tomorrow those goddamn Kennedys will never embarrass me again. That’s no threat, that’s a promise.” Why John Kennedy choosed Lyndon Johnson as his running mate is unknown. He and his brother Robert did not like Johnson at all. They knew that Johnson stole the election that put him in the US Senate. There were also many scandals swirled around Johnson as vice president and a string of murders that may be associated with him. To his assistant Hyman Raskin, Kennedy once said: “You know, we had never considered Lyndon. But I was left with no choice. Those bastards were trying to frame me. They threatened me with problems.” Who were those bastards? Did he refer to the Illuminati? There is no doubt that Kennedy had been submitted to blackmail. Kennedy excused his choice of Johnson several times: “The whole story will never be known. And it’s just as well that it won’t be.” Lyndon Johnson, who was an Illuminati mole, was up to his neck into the conspiracy. He had orders to cover everything up. Within hours of the killing, he placed all the weight of his newly acquired authority to obstruct the quest for the truth. He received the full support of the CIA and FBI director Edgar Hoover, who circulated a memo asserting his conviction that Oswald had acted on his own initiative. Harvey Oswald fired just three bullets from above and behind. Did he really wound all the limousine’s occupants with these shots? The killing of Kennedy is more complex than is usually admitted. Officially, one of Oswald´s bullets hit Kennedy twice and Governor John Connally who was sitting in the front seat of the limousine, three times!
”
”
Robin de Ruiter (Worldwide Evil and Misery - The Legacy of the 13 Satanic Bloodlines)
“
A school bus is many things.
A school bus is a substitute for a limousine. More class. A school bus is a classroom with a substitute teacher. A school bus is the students' version of a teachers' lounge. A school bus is the principal's desk. A school bus is the nurse's cot. A school bus is an office with all the phones ringing. A school bus is a command center. A school bus is a pillow fort that rolls. A school bus is a tank reshaped- hot dogs and baloney are the same meat. A school bus is a science lab- hot dogs and baloney are the same meat. A school bus is a safe zone. A school bus is a war zone. A school bus is a concert hall. A school bus is a food court. A school bus is a court of law, all judges, all jury. A school bus is a magic show full of disappearing acts. Saw someone in half. Pick a card, any card. Pass it on to the person next to you. He like you. She like you. K-i-s-s-i . . . s-s-i-p-p-i is only funny on a school bus. A school bus is a stage. A school bus is a stage play. A school bus is a spelling bee. A speaking bee. A get your hand out of my face bee. A your breath smell like sour turnips bee. A you don't even know what a turnip bee is. A maybe not, but I know what a turn up is and your breath smell all the way turnt up bee. A school bus is a bumblebee, buzzing around with a bunch of stingers on the inside of it. Windows for wings that flutter up and down like the windows inside Chinese restaurants and post offices in neighborhoods where school bus is a book of stamps. Passing mail through windows. Notes in the form of candy wrappers telling the street something sweet came by. Notes in the form of sneaky middle fingers. Notes in the form of fingers pointing at the world zooming by. A school bus is a paintbrush painting the world a blurry brushstroke. A school bus is also wet paint. Good for adding an extra coat, but it will dirty you if you lean against it, if you get too comfortable. A school bus is a reclining chair. In the kitchen. Nothing cool about it but makes perfect sense. A school bus is a dirty fridge. A school bus is cheese. A school bus is a ketchup packet with a tiny hole in it. Left on the seat. A plastic fork-knife-spoon. A paper tube around a straw. That straw will puncture the lid on things, make the world drink something with some fizz and fight. Something delightful and uncomfortable. Something that will stain. And cause gas. A school bus is a fast food joint with extra value and no food. Order taken. Take a number. Send a text to the person sitting next to you. There is so much trouble to get into. Have you ever thought about opening the back door? My mother not home till five thirty. I can't. I got dance practice at four. A school bus is a talent show. I got dance practice right now. On this bus. A school bus is a microphone. A beat machine. A recording booth. A school bus is a horn section. A rhythm section. An orchestra pit. A balcony to shot paper ball three-pointers from. A school bus is a basketball court. A football stadium. A soccer field. Sometimes a boxing ring. A school bus is a movie set. Actors, directors, producers, script. Scenes. Settings. Motivations. Action! Cut. Your fake tears look real. These are real tears. But I thought we were making a comedy. A school bus is a misunderstanding. A school bus is a masterpiece that everyone pretends to understand. A school bus is the mountain range behind Mona Lisa. The Sphinx's nose. An unknown wonder of the world. An unknown wonder to Canton Post, who heard bus riders talk about their journeys to and from school. But to Canton, a school bus is also a cannonball. A thing that almost destroyed him. Almost made him motherless.
”
”
Jason Reynolds (Look Both Ways: A Tale Told in Ten Blocks)
“
THE PASSION eventually faded from Johnson’s relationship with Alice Glass. She married Charles Marsh, but quickly divorced him, and married several times thereafter. “She never got over Lyndon,” Alice Hopkins says. But the relationship itself survived; even when he was a Senator, Lyndon Johnson would still occasionally dismiss his chauffeur for the day and drive his huge limousine the ninety miles to Longlea; the friendship was ended only by the Vietnam War, which Alice considered one of history’s horrors. By 1967, she referred to Johnson, in a letter she wrote Oltorf, in bitter terms. And later she told friends that she had burned love letters that Johnson had written her—because she didn’t want her granddaughter to know she had ever been associated with the man responsible for Vietnam.
”
”
Robert A. Caro (The Path to Power (The Years of Lyndon Johnson, #1))
“
He then pointed to the right, and I turned to look. Exactly on cue, something massive came around the corner: a snaking, vehicular army that included a phalanx of police cars and motorcycles, a number of black SUVs, two armored limousines with American flags mounted on their hoods, a hazmat mitigation truck, a counterassault team riding with machine guns visible, an ambulance, a signals truck equipped to detect incoming projectiles, several passenger vans, and another group of police escorts. The presidential motorcade. It was at least twenty vehicles long, moving in orchestrated formation, car after car after car, before finally the whole fleet rolled to a quiet halt, and the limos stopped directly in front of Barack’s parked plane. I turned to Cornelius. “Is there a clown car?” I said. “Seriously, this is what he’s going to travel with now?” He smiled. “Every day for his entire presidency, yes,” he said. “It’s going to look like this all the time.” I took in the spectacle: thousands and thousands of pounds of metal, a squad of commandos, bulletproof everything. I had yet to grasp that Barack’s protection was still only half-visible. I didn’t know that he’d also, at all times, have a nearby helicopter ready to evacuate him, that sharpshooters would position themselves on rooftops along the routes he traveled, that a personal physician would always be with him in case of a medical problem, or that the vehicle he rode in contained a store of blood of the appropriate type in case he ever needed a transfusion. In a matter of weeks, just ahead of Barack’s inauguration, the presidential limo would be upgraded to a newer model—aptly named the Beast—a seven-ton tank disguised as a luxury vehicle, tricked out with hidden tear-gas cannons, rupture-proof tires, and a sealed ventilation system meant to get him through a biological or chemical attack.
”
”
Michelle Obama (Becoming)
“
It was not until they were climbing into the back of the black limousine that Claire truly understood that she would never see her husband again.
”
”
Karin Slaughter (Pretty Girls)
“
Travis wrapped his arms around her and they stumbled into the limousine, landing in a tangle of limbs on the plush leather backseat. “You got the job, Travis,” Georgie squealed, laying kisses all over his face. “You did it.”
“No,” he said, taking her mouth in a kiss that tasted like lust, wonder. “We did it.”
Georgie pulled back to study him, running her fingers through his hair, down his cheeks, completely incapable of keeping her heart out of her eyes. As thrilled as she was over Travis winning the contract, she didn’t want to think in terms of the end yet.
”
”
Tessa Bailey (Fix Her Up (Hot & Hammered, #1))
“
Georgie held her breath, whimpering when he grazed her neck with his teeth. “You know why I haven’t put my dick inside you from behind yet?”
She let out a shaking breath against the leather, her heart hammering. “Why?”
Travis rammed himself home and Georgie’s scream filled the limousine. “Because I wasn’t sure I’d be able to control myself once I got you on hands and knees. With your ass smacking off my belly, I worried I’d cross that line into disrespectful—and some part of me still thought of you as my friend’s little sister.” He made a choked sound, falling on top of her, thrusting with a groan. “Not anymore. You’re all mine now. I’ll take you how I want.
”
”
Tessa Bailey (Fix Her Up (Hot & Hammered, #1))
“
It's not the friends who ride up with you in the limousine, it's the one who comes home with you on the bus.
”
”
Adena Halpern (29)
“
While we were moving from Camden Town, London, to Cobble Hill, Brooklyn, there was much to do: and Elena did almost all of it. At the outset she made it clear that by far the greatest obstacle we would face -- the most time-consuming and labour-intensive, the most tediously labyrinthine, and the most extortionate -- had to do with American healthcare. One afternoon I gingerly looked into it; and after an hour or two I thought, Well at least there’ll be no ambiguity in our case: if any Amis gets so much as a headache or a nosebleed, it will be far simpler and thriftier for the four of us to fly first class to London, take a limousine each to the Savoy, and then, the next day, wander into one or another of the NHS.
”
”
Martin Amis (Inside Story)
“
Theresa was all about social cachet and prestige. If there was a chance to flaunt a high-profile client like Feliks by sticking her head out of the roof of his slick black limousine and shouting it to the moon, she wouldn’t miss a chance to do it.
”
”
Elle Cosimano (Finlay Donovan Is Killing It (Finlay Donovan, #1))
“
With all her talk about saving the planet, AOC has put a new spin on the phrase “limousine liberal.” According to a story in the New York Post, she runs up Uber tabs like crazy. It wouldn’t be so bad if she had no other way to get around. But her congressional district, which includes parts of Queens and the Bronx, has about five or six subway lines. She responded to the article in typical sanctimonious fashion: “Living in the world as it is isn’t an argument against working towards a better future.” Hey, listen, girlfriend, you want to get driven around by Uber, go for it. But if you’re going to keep telling people the apocalypse is upon us, you might want to think about carrying a MetroCard.
”
”
Donald Trump Jr. (Triggered: How the Left Thrives on Hate and Wants to Silence Us)
“
Garlock, you might have thought, had taken the Christian opposition to Rock as far as anyone could: “Bringing racism into his attack, Garlock noted that rock had its roots in the music of Africa, South America, and India, places he said where voodoo, sex orgies, human sacrifices, and devil worship abounded. Garlock linked some rock performers with Satan.”17 Yet, even further excesses of abuse on the theme of Rock-as-Satanic have followed as the years have passed. Possibly the craziest is Jacob Aranza’s claims that “75 percent of the rock and roll today (top 10 stuff!) deals with sex, evil, drugs, and the occult.” And that this is all part of a decades’ long, four step plan, “Satan’s Agenda”, to “pronounce rock stars as messiahs”.18 Jeff Godwin took this even further: “The Lord has also revealed to some Christians that incarnate demons from the netherworld actually are members of some of the most popular bands.”19 Converts are famous for their zeal, and as early as 1957 one celebrated rock’n’roller turned on the music that had propelled him to fame when he found religion. Richard Wayne Penniman, better known as Little Richard, stopped playing rock’n’roll and began to preach against it: “I was in the eighth grade at San Diego Adventist Elementary School, his conversion touched my life. Little Richard arrived at our school with an entourage of about three black limousines and a staff of personal assistants in black suits. He spoke in chapel, then preached Sabbath morning in a local church (probably San Diego 31st Street), then spoke and sang in the afternoon for a standing-room-only Associated MV (AY) meeting at the old San Diego Broadway church.
”
”
Andrew Muir (Bob Dylan & William Shakespeare: The True Performing of It)
“
Water, whether running or stagnant, reputedly sheltered many creatures, the majority of whom were dangerous. Mahwot from the Meuse River had the appearance of a lizard. Similar ones include the Vogeotte of the Doubs, the Carne Aquoire of the Blois region, the Drac of Auvergne, the Alsatian Hôgemann (the “Man with the Fang”), the “Havette Beast” of the region near the Hague, the Serpent of the Trou Baligan (Lower Normandy), the Gourgoule of the Underground Wells (Limousin), the Uillaout of Savoy, and the Morvandious Queular.
”
”
Claude Lecouteux (Demons and Spirits of the Land: Ancestral Lore and Practices)
“
They’re no more old hat to me than anybody else,” Simon said in response to Hugoson’s opening remark. “We all have fantastic dreams. I happen to have a knack for putting mine into practice. Your author has a knack for putting his on paper. It’s just that paper leaves quite a bit more freedom than real life.” Hugoson stuck close beside him as the Saint strolled through the rapidly emptying lobby towards the doors which led to the open area under the marquee. “You weren’t bored, then?” “Not a bit. As a matter of fact, I’ve read all seven of the books by your Mr Amos Klein, and he has an unabashed disregard for probability and the laws of nature that completely intrigues me. Reading him is the next best thing to floating free in space. And apparently several million other people think so too.” They stepped out into the wide space between the front doors of the theatre and the street, where a milling throng was gathered in a chaos of blinding lights, cameras, microphones, and departing taxicabs and limousines. “I’m sure Mr Klein would be delighted to hear your opinion of his work,” Hugoson said.
”
”
Leslie Charteris (The Saint and the Fiction Makers)
“
I’ve got my wife, Judy, in the car,” John said.
“I’ve heard of her,“ a young man shouted from the crowd.
“What you heard about her is not true,” John replied. “They never went to bed.”
Smokey was astonished. John was crazy drunk, making no sense.
“This guy is a killer,” John said, pointing at Smokey and throwing the problem of the stranger his way. Smokey backed away and guided John outside.
“What the hell was that about Judy?” Smokey asked. “It’s between us,” John replied.
In the limousine, the others were drinking champagne. “
I’m tired of you fooling around
,” John said to Judy.
She threw her glass of champagne in his face.
John leapt out of the car and ran toward the club. Smokey followed and grabbed John in a full body embrace, locking his arms at his side.
“Let me celebrate my birthday!” John yelled. He broke loose, turned and clutched Smokey’s jacket. “You piss me off,” he said. “Don’t ever grab me again—never, never!”
Smokey nodded. They walked to the car. Before they had driven the four blocks to Morton Street, John had passed out. Smokey carried him inside, undressed him and put him into bed.
”
”
Bob Woodward (Wired: The Short Life and Fast Times of John Belushi)
“
It was 1992, and the Knicks were hosting their first annual summer camp for youngsters. Like many camps with professional teams, the club wanted to have one of its players make an appearance for a day. Not someone like Ewing, a star who had too many demands on his time already. But not someone from the end of the bench, either. So they asked Mason—basically still new to the NBA—if he’d appear for $1,500. The forward said yes, and the team provided him with a limousine to the camp that day. Mason had his window rolled down as the vehicle arrived, and the kids hovered around it like paparazzi, wanting to catch a glimpse of him up close. Yet Mason stayed in the car. First for two minutes. Then five. Then almost fifteen. Finally Ed Tapscott, then the club’s administrative director, came outside. He’d been responsible for Mason’s appearance at the camp that day, and couldn’t figure out why Mason wasn’t making his way inside the gym. “I’m not getting out of the car for anything less than $2,000, bro. And I want cash,” Mason told him. Tapscott figured he was joking at first. But Mason was completely serious. Sure, he’d agreed to the $1,500 figure before, but now—with an army of young, excited kids waiting inside—he had the leverage to play hardball. Tapscott said he wasn’t even sure he could realistically get access to that much cash that soon. “I had to give one of our staffers my ATM card,” he recalls. “What choice did I really have in a situation like that?” With assurance of the pay increase, Mason hopped out. He played in a couple of scrimmages with the children. But, in classic Mason fashion, he couldn’t turn off his competitiveness. While playing, Mason inadvertently elbowed a kid, knocking the child out cold and breaking his nose, which gushed with blood. When the boy regained consciousness, he woke to find a worried Mason hovering over him. The child smiled and asked the Knick to sign his bloody T-shirt. Meanwhile, Tapscott said he and others running the camp were merely happy to escape the situation without the threat of a lawsuit.
”
”
Chris Herring (Blood in the Garden: The Flagrant History of the 1990s New York Knicks)
“
By 1912, more than six thousand types of electric vehicles were on offer, ranging in price from modest $850 town cars to luxurious $5,500 limousines (roughly equivalent to spending $22,600 to $146,000 for those same luxuries today).
”
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Amy Myers Jaffe (Energy's Digital Future: Harnessing Innovation for American Resilience and National Security (Center on Global Energy Policy Series))
“
I'll never forget the day I met Rudy (aka Rudolf Nureyev). He was at the St Peter's Theatre for a rehearsal with the Ballet of Nancy on the same stage I would dance with the Young Ballet of Sao Paulo some years later. I saw him leaving the place in the backdoor wearing his Black outfit boots and Bohemian hat. People surrounded him to get his autograph. My sister pulled me out so we wouldn't be massacred by the crowd. He did a very Russian move step-step and stop before a hole (such a cute role) in the sidewalk. Took the limousine and passed right in front of where my sister and I stood. He took a glance at me and had a gentle expression like saying, "yep you stood up from that crowd. I see you..." Lovely soul. I have this image in my heart ever since.
What I didn't know then and could never imagine it was that just a few months later I would be dancing with the Ballet of São Paulo in the same Theatre he performed his Apollo. He did send his charisma towards me!
”
”
Ana Claudia Antunes (Flat Feet: An Autobiography of a Cosmic Dancer)
“
limousine? Fighter jet? Hovercraft?’ ‘Bin lorry,
”
”
David Codd (The Weasel Has Landed (Hugo Dare #2))
“
The grounds at St. Andrew's were packed with limousines and hundreds of milling guests, dressed in the pastel shades of Easter. I looked absurdly out of place in my black blouse and skirt, but many of the guests were my former clients to whom my severity seemed perfectly natural. My impulse was to flee and head to a bar, the seedier the better, to wipe out this nauseating show of renewal and fine millinery. But before I could make my move, Kenneth, ever vigilant, spotted me through the crowd.
”
”
Sandi Tan (The Black Isle)
“
Welcome to Zurich Airport Limousine Services, where luxury and comfort meet to make your travel experience truly exceptional. We are your premier choice for professional chauffeur-driven limousine services in Zurich and the surrounding areas. Book Now!
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”
Zurich Airport Limousine
“
a blur of white satin and lace, Louisa Marie Honeycutt dove into the waiting limousine, slid across
”
”
Rhonda Nelson (Double Dare)
“
lace, Louisa Marie Honeycutt dove into the waiting limousine, slid across the expansive leather seat, then with a furtive look out the tinted window, issued the desperate order again. Befuddled, her driver started to protest.
”
”
Rhonda Nelson (Double Dare)
“
And as theories go this was all very fine and pleasant until Veet Voojagig suddenly claimed to have found this planet, and to have worked there for a while driving a limousine for a family of cheap green retractables, whereupon he was taken away, locked up, wrote a book and was finally sent into tax exile, which is the usual fate reserved for those who are determined to
”
”
Anonymous
“
After being rationed to a single ball, a whole box of them gave me a delightful feeling of sudden wealth. French politicians must have a similar sensation when elected to high office and permitted to dip into the chateaux and limousines and government-issue caviar. No wonder they cling to power long after they should be tucked away in an old folks' home. I'd do the same.
”
”
Peter Mayle
“
The chauffeur drove them home from the hospital, maneuvering the amphibious limousine smoothly through the waist-deep canals in the Back Bay neighborhood. When he pulled to a stop and popped the roof hatch, the oppressive heat stung Cacy’s tear-streaked face. The driver held out a hand to lift her onto the dock. She ignored it and scrambled out by herself, her sundress fanning out around her skinny, bruised legs. Her father, elegant and lean in his miraculously unwrinkled three-piece, climbed out after her.
”
”
Sarah Fine (Marked (Servants of Fate, #1))
“
He loved the city most at night. The night hid many of the sorrows. It silenced the city yet brought deep undercurrents to the surface. It was in this dark slipstream that he believed he moved most freely. Behind the cover of shadows. Like a rider in a limousine, he looked out but no one looked in.
”
”
Michael Connelly (The Black Ice (Harry Bosch, #2; Harry Bosch Universe, #2))
“
Zandra Rhodes
Zandra Rhodes is a British fashion designer who specializes in innovative textile design. Internationally recognized for her glamorous and dramatic style, she was honored by Queen Elizabeth II in 1997 and made a Commander of the British Empire. Currently in high demand by the rich and famous worldwide, Zandra designed many garments for Diana during the nineties.
Princess Diana married very young. She was a perfect, unspoiled flower with a strong, generous inner spirit, which she was probably unaware of when she married Prince Charles. She was thrust unprepared into the position of future queen of England. She had to grow up and mature in front of the public eye. That public eye was hard, judgmental, and unforgiving. Her strong inner spirit guided her to do things that normally someone in her position would not do--it would have been suppressed. Diana acted in a very genuine, caring, and natural way.
I was bicycling to work in London along the leafy Bayswater Road in very casual working clothes when a huge official limousine passed me. Against the rear window were two beautiful hats; the car was obviously going to Ascot. The two young girls in the car were waving at me (very enthusiastically), one with golden corn-colored hair and the other one blond. They looked exactly like Princess Diana and Sarah Ferguson, the Duchess of York. I thought, “It cannot be them, they would not be so friendly, casual, and outgoing, and anyway, it’s the wrong side of Kensington Palace, and cars going to Ascot do not come along this road.” I pretended I had not seen them and carried on cycling.
A few weeks later, I was fitting the Princess in Kensington Palace and she said to me, “Are you still riding your bike?” “Yes,” I replied. It was not until I left and drove my car out of the palace grounds that I realized the route took me exactly to the Bayswater Road, where I had seen the two waving girls!
Princess Diana always tried to make me feel at home when I was fitting her. She would talk about the problems of being recognized: how she came out of her gym in Kensington High Street in the pouring rain and bumped into a famous actor. As he entered the street, he hunched his shoulders and put on dark glasses. Princess Diana said to him, “I hope they disguise you more than they do me!
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Larry King (The People's Princess: Cherished Memories of Diana, Princess of Wales, From Those Who Knew Her Best)
“
No southerner had been elected President for more than a century, and it was a bitter article of faith among southern politicians that no southerner would be elected President in any foreseeable future; when members of the House of Representatives gave their Speaker, Sam Rayburn, ruler of the House for more than two decades, a limousine as a present, attached to the back of the front seat was a plaque that read 'To Our Beloved Sam Rayburn - Who Would Have Been President If He Had Come From Any Place but the South.
”
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Robert A. Caro (The Years of Lyndon Johnson Set: The Path to Power; Means of Ascent; Master of the Senate; The Passage of Power)
“
be and often is a private sector, for-profit activity. How might someone make a buck and also reduce drunk driving? It took hours in Wisconsin bars talking to young men for Michael Rothschild of the University of Wisconsin School of Business to hone a winning formula. His grand insight? Use limousines.
”
”
Richard H. Thaler (Nudge: Improving Decisions About Health, Wealth, and Happiness)
“
in this moment of orangutans, wolves, and scavengers,
of high heat redesigning the north & south poles
and the wanderings of new tribes in limousines,
with the confirmations of liars, thieves, and get-over artists,
in the wilderness of pennsylvania avenue,
standing rock, misspelled executive orders
on yellow paper with crooked signatures.
where are the kind language makers among us?
at a time of extreme climate damage,
deciphering fake news, alternative truths, and me-ism
you saw the twenty-first century and left us
not on your own accord or permission.
you have fought and fought most of the twentieth century
creating an army of poets who learned
and loved language and stories
of complicated rivers, seas, and oceans.
where is the kind green nourishment of kale and wheatgrass?
you thought, wrote, and lived poetry,
knew that terror is also language based
on denial, first-ism, and rich cowards.
you were honey and yes to us,
never ran from Black as in bones, Africa,
blood and questioning yesterdays and tomorrows.
we never saw you dance but you had rhythm,
you were a warrior before the war,
creating earth language, uncommon signs and melodies,
and did not sing the songs of career slaves.
keenly aware of tubman, douglass, wells-barnett, du bois,
and the oversized consciousness and commitment of never-quit people
religiously taking note of the bloodlust enemies of kindness
we hear your last words:
america
if you see me as your enemy
you have no
friends.
”
”
Haki R. Madhubuti
“
Depuis les siècles des siècles, les rillettes sont du Mans, le piment d’Espelette, le cassoulet de Castelnaudary, la poularde de Bresse, les escargots de Bourgogne, l’andouille de Vire, la saucisse de Strasbourg, la potée est limousine, l’aligot auvergnat, le poussin au riesling alsacien, la bouillabaisse de Marseille, le coq au vin du Berry, la quiche lorraine, la tête de veau sous la mère de Corrèze, l’huître de Marennes, la sole est dieppoise, la mouclade est de La Rochelle, le saucisson chaud de Lyon, les tripes de Caen, le morteau de Morteau et le camembert de Camembert. Chaque petit Français apprend cela plus sûrement que l’orthographe.
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”
François Hauter (Le bonheur d'être français (Documents) (French Edition))
“
take her" he said "Oliver is not going to be pleased, boy. Better go."
"I had to," Michael said. "I had to stake him. He was going to kill her."
"In point of fact, he wasn't; he was going to hurt her so badly that Amelie would feel it, that's al. But that's not what I meant. You crashed a car into the limousine. Oliver loves his limousine."
Michael opened his mouth, then closed it without thinking of anything to say to that.
”
”
Rachel Caine (Fade Out (The Morganville Vampires, #7))
“
was standard practice in the Vajpayee PMO for some journalists to get such limousines when travelling abroad with the PM. I was told that Vajpayee’s son-in-law, Ranjan Bhattacharya, who had befriended many senior editors, had taken personal interest in ensuring that the PMO’s favoured journalists were well looked after. I brought to an end all such privileges and incurred the wrath of some professional peers.
”
”
Sanjaya Baru (The Accidental Prime Minister: The Making and Unmaking of Manmohan Singh)
“
Before long, the plane was making its descent into Dubai International Airport. However, we did not land at the main commercial passenger terminal. We touched down at a private airstrip, set up especially for the United Arab Emirate V.I.P.s. Chauffeurs, two local Oasis guides and long, black, highly polished limousines met us.
”
”
Young (Initiation (A Harem Boy's Saga Book 1))
“
And I became a non-person in the Boston fog, and Lufthansa put me in a limousine with other non-persons and sent us to a motel for a non-night.
”
”
Kurt Vonnegut Jr. (Slaughterhouse-Five)
“
Capone once famously said, “All I do is to supply a public demand…somebody had to throw some liquor on that thirst. Why not me?” He brilliantly coordinated the importation of liquor from all across America while in charge of the operation of hundreds of distilleries. To do so, he had his own distribution system, which involved hiring delivery drivers, salespeople, and of course, armed bodyguards—his own “miniature army” riding beside his bullet-proof limousine—to protect his investments. Capone ingeniously bought immunity by paying off politicians, law enforcement agents, and even the Mayor of Chicago, William H. Thompson, whom he helped with thousands of dollars and votes enough to win the seat.
”
”
Charles River Editors (The Prohibition Era in the United States: The History and Legacy of America’s Ban on Alcohol and Its Repeal)
“
The commission proposed that Uber and its drivers obtain licenses to operate in the city, which would require background checks and regular inspections. Private drivers such as for black cars or limousines would have to charge a minimum of $50 — well above Uber’s $7 base fee. The regulations would also ban the practice used by Uber called “demand response booking,’’ where drivers pick up passengers without knowing their destination in advance. After a huge outcry, the licensing board backed away from its recommendations and said it will hold more meetings before deciding on new rules.
”
”
Anonymous
“
Drive, Jaynes!” In a blur of white satin and lace, Louisa Marie Honeycutt dove into the waiting limousine, slid across the expansive leather seat, then with a furtive look out the tinted window,
”
”
Rhonda Nelson (Double Dare)
“
Doncaster Railway Station, East Coast Line. Tuesday 5pm. Gil was halfway between London and Newcastle when a text came through on her mobile phone, informing her that her premium seat on the aircraft had been confirmed. Upon her arrival at Newcastle Central Station, a limousine would be waiting to whisk her away to the Britannia Hotel at Newcastle Airport.
”
”
J. Jackson Bentley (Chameleon (City of London, #2))
“
Limousine Orange County -1Blackdiamondlimo.com, check out the list of things to do in Southern California and experience the fun places for visit for you alone or groups. With your theme all set, no other charges or fee for helping you plan a great day/night outing.
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Limousine Orange County
“
Many have questioned how Lyndon Johnson could have put his closest protégé and right hand man John Connally in mortal danger by having him ride with JFK in the presidential limousine in the Dallas motorcade . Indeed, Johnson maneuvered desperately to get Connally moved to the vice-presidential car and substitute his archenemy Yarborough in the presidential vehicle. Senator George Smathers said in his memoirs that JFK complained to him prior to the trip about an effort by LBJ to get first lady Jacqueline Kennedy to ride in the vice presidential car, an idea JFK flatly rejected.39 Shortly before Kennedy’s death in the motorcade LBJ would visit the president’s hotel room and try again to convince him to have Connally and Yarborough swap places. Again, JFK refused, and Johnson stormed from the room after a shouting match.40 The outburst was so loud that first lady Jacqueline Kennedy expressed to her husband that Johnson “sounded mad.”41 Perhaps this explains LBJ’s taciturn behavior from the moment the presidential motorcade left Love Field for Dealey Plaza. An earlier rain had subsided, giving way to sunny skies. The crowds were large and friendly, yet LBJ stared straight ahead and never cracked a smile or waved to the crowds as did Lady Bird, Senator Yarborough, the Connallys, and the Kennedys. LBJ would actually tell Robert Kennedy, “of all things in life, this [campaigning] is what I enjoy most.”42 Normally, the gregarious Johnson would wave his hat, pose and wave to the crowd and shout “howdy,” but on this day he seemed non-expressive and focused. New 3-D imaging analysis and more sophisticated photographic analysis now show without question that LBJ ducked to the floor of his limousine before the first shots were fired.43
”
”
Roger Stone (The Man Who Killed Kennedy: The Case Against LBJ)
“
One cannot examine the actions of the Secret Service on November 22, 1963, without concluding that the Service stood down on protecting President Kennedy. Indeed, the 120-degree turn into Dealey Plaza violates Secret Service procedures, because it required the presidential limousine to come to a virtual stop. The reduction of the president’s motorcycle escort from six police motorcycles to two and the order for those two officers to ride behind the presidential limousine also violates standard Secret Service procedure. The failure to empty and secure the tall buildings on either side of the motorcade route through Dealey Plaza likewise violates formal procedure, as does the lack of any agents dispersed through the crowd gathered in Dealey Plaza. Readers who are interested in a comprehensive analysis of the Secret Service’s multiple failures and the conspicuous violation of longstanding Secret Service policies regarding the movement and protection of the president on November 22, 1963, should read Vince Palamara’s Survivor’s Guilt: The Secret Service and the Failure to Protect. The difference in JFK Secret Service protection and its adherence to the services standard required procedures in Chicago and Miami would be starkly different from the arrangements for Dallas. Palamara established that Agent Emory Roberts worked overtime to help both orchestrate the assassination and cover up the unusual actions of the Secret Service in the aftermath. Roberts was commander of the follow-up car trailing the presidential limousine. Roberts covered up the escapades of his fellow secret servicemen at The Cellar, a club in downtown Ft. Worth, where agents, some directly responsible for the safety of President Kennedy during the motorcade, drank until dawn on November 22. He also ordered a perplexed agent Donald Lawton off the back of the presidential limousine while at Love Field, thus giving the assassins clearer, more direct shots and more time to get them off. Also, although Roberts recognized rifle fire being discharged in Dealey Plaza, he neglected to mobilize any of the agents under his watch to act. To mask the inactivity of his agents, Roberts, in sworn testimony, falsely increased the speed of the cars (from 9–11 mph to 20–25 mph) and the distance between them (from five feet to 20–25 feet).85 No analysis of the Secret Service’s actions on the day of the assassination can be complete without mentioning that Secret Service director James Rowley was a former FBI agent and close ally of FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover, as well as a crony of Lyndon Johnson. Hoover was one of Johnson’s closest associates. The FBI Director would take the unusual step of flying to Dallas for a victory celebration in 1948 when Johnson illegally stole his Senate seat through election fraud. Johnson and Hoover were neighbors in the Foxhall Road area of the District of Columbia. Hoover’s budget would virtually triple during the years LBJ dominated the appropriations process as Senate Majority Leader. Rowley was a protégé of the director and one of the few men who left the FBI on good terms with Hoover. Rowley’s first public service job in the Roosevelt administration was arranged for him by LBJ. The neglect of assigning even one Secret Service agent to secure Dealey Plaza, as well as cleaning blood and other relatable pieces of evidence from the presidential limousine immediately following the assassination, seizing Kennedy’s body from Parkland Hospital to prevent a proper, well-documented autopsy, failing to record Oswald’s interrogation—all were important pieces of the assassination deftly executed by Rowley.
”
”
Roger Stone (The Man Who Killed Kennedy: The Case Against LBJ)
“
The casket was gunmetal gray with a blanket of white lilies covering the closed lid. The smell of wet earth was pungent as the machine lowered his body into the grave. Claire’s knees went weak. Her grandmother stroked her back. Her mother offered her arm. Claire shook her head. She thought of strong things: iron. Steel. Paul. It was not until they were climbing into the back of the black limousine that Claire truly understood that she would never see her husband again.
”
”
Karin Slaughter (Pretty Girls)
“
white satin and lace, Louisa Marie Honeycutt dove into the waiting limousine, slid across the expansive leather seat, then with a furtive look out the tinted window, issued the desperate order again. Befuddled, her driver started to protest. “But—
”
”
Rhonda Nelson (Double Dare)
“
Quattro"
Only for a piece of broken glass
I will be there waiting
For it
Always
Taken to another place
Where I see it happen
Bear witness to a spectacular
Spectacle
One day we'll be up as gods on high
That praise the beats of undeniable bliss
And kiss the stars of harmony gone blind
But all of this could be averted
All of this could be unearthed
We could go get gowns, spread loss
And force invisible lines and flaws
Take our time, and hurry up to die
Save it all or try, try, try
To be free, to be us
To be something real to us
Catered affairs, daytime nightmares
Standing on chairs three nights straight
County fairs, I said "who cares?"
And what he wears ain't that great
Freight train antics, slick camera tricks
Forty licks and I'm alright
Late night comics, black and white flicks
White trash hicks on TV tonight, alright
Living with weak CD compilations
Driving downtown again
Pop culture confrontations
Eye rolling people spend
Forgotten dates, old dinner plates
Rush the gates and we'll let you in
What she hates is how he waits
And fifty states are wrong again
Limousine got no time for you
Limousine got no time for you
Dollar bills soaked up red wine for you
Dollar bills soaked up red, white and blue
Living with weak CD compilations
Driving downtown again
Pop culture confrontations
Eye rolling people spend
Forgotten dates, old dinner plates
Rush the gates and we'll let you in
What she hates is how he waits
And fifty states are wrong again
”
”
Born Ruffians
“
New York City had 6,200 miles of streets, 31 bridges and tunnels, 188 theaters, 28,000 acres of parks, 500 museums and galleries, and who knows how many hotels and hospitals. If I was going to pass the taxi test—an eighty-question multiple-choice exam that “may include questions on geography, map reading, address location, planning routes and Taxi & Limousine Commission Rules and Regulations”—I had less than two months to learn it all.
”
”
Layne Mosler (Driving Hungry: A Memoir (Vintage Departures))
“
A story from this time demonstrates the culture clash between network executives and the leaner, more entrepreneurial acquirers. ABC, in fact the whole broadcasting industry, was a limousine culture—one of the most cherished perks for an industry executive was the ability to take a limo for even a few blocks to lunch. Murphy, however, was a cab man and from very early on showed up to all ABC meetings in cabs. Before long, this practice rippled through the ABC executive ranks, and the broader Capital Cities ethos slowly began to permeate the ABC culture. When asked whether this was a case of leading by example, Murphy responded, “Is there any other way?
”
”
William N. Thorndike Jr. (The Outsiders: Eight Unconventional CEOs and Their Radically Rational Blueprint for Success)
“
referring to the Limousin region of central France. It is thought that when the first limousine cars were produced, the outer covering of the passenger compartment so resembled the hoods of Limousin shepherds that the word stuck and eventually evolved the meaning by which it is most familiar today.
”
”
Paul Anthony Jones (Haggard Hawks and Paltry Poltroons: The Origins of English in Ten Words)
“
In a blur of white satin and lace, Louisa Marie Honeycutt dove into the waiting limousine, slid across the expansive leather seat, then with a furtive look out the tinted window,
”
”
Rhonda Nelson (Double Dare)
“
Look, I like to have a good time as much as anyone. And if the people putting on the Golden Globes can afford to spend such ungodly sums on a bunch of pampered liberals, so be it. However, I don’t need these same people, liquored up, caviar-stuffed, and driven around in limousines, to lecture us about how Republicans don’t care about the poor. These people pour more money down their throats on a single night than many Americans earn in an entire year.
”
”
Eric Bolling (Wake Up America: The Nine Virtues That Made Our Nation Great—and Why We Need Them More Than Ever)
“
Since her separation she had slowly, cautiously--perhaps even unconsciously--performed a kind of striptease, unpeeling the veils of convention which had surrounded her. During the 1980s she had been defined only by her fashions, seen merely as a glamorous clothes horse, a royal adjunct, a wife and mother. Since the separation, however, her regal wardrobe, which defined her royal mystique, had been left in the closet. Indeed, her decision, inspired by Prince William, to hold an auction of her royal wardrobe for Aids charities in New York in the summer of 1997 was a very public farewell to that old life. She no longer wanted to be seen as just a beautiful model for expensive clothes. Moreover, during her days as a semi-detached royal she had deliberately stripped away other trappings of monarchy, her servants, her ladies-in-waiting, her limousines and, most controversially, her bodyguards. The casting off of her royal title was one giant step on that journey.
She had spent much time grieving a failed relationship, lost hopes and broken ambitions. She had once said: ‘I had so many dreams as a young girl. I hoped for a husband to look after me, he would be a father figure to me, he would support me, encourage me, say “Well done” or “That wasn’t good enough”. I didn’t get any of that. I couldn’t believe it.’
The days of betrayal, anguish and hurt lay in the past. Now it was time to move on, to make the most of her position and her personality. Opportunity beckoned. As the Princess admitted: ‘I have learned much over the last years. From now on I am going to own myself and be true to myself. I no longer want to live someone else’s idea of what and who I should be.’
‘I am going to be me.
”
”
Andrew Morton (Diana: Her True Story in Her Own Words)
“
While reading some old articles to jog my memory for this book, I came across an article in the Chicago Sun-Times by Rick Kogan, a reporter who traveled with Styx for a few concert dates in 1979. I remember him. When we played the Long Beach Civic Center’s 12,000-seat sports arena in California, he rode in the car with JY and me as we approached the stadium. His recounting of the scene made me smile. It’s also a great snapshot of what life was like for us back in the day. The article from 1980 was called, “The Band That Styx It To ‘Em.” Here’s what he wrote: “At once, a sleek, gray Cadillac limousine glides toward the back stage area. Small groups of girls rush from under trees and other hiding places like a pack of lions attacking an antelope. They bang on the windows, try to halt the driver’s progress by standing in front of the car. They are a desperate bunch. Rain soaks their makeup and ruins their clothes. Some are crying. “Tommy, Tommmmmmmmmy! I love you!” one girl yells as she bangs against the limousine’s window. Inside the gray limousine, James Young, the tall, blond guitarist for Styx who likes to be called J.Y. looks out the window. “It sure is raining,” he says. Next to him, bass player Chuck Panozzo, finishing the last part of a cover story on Styx in a recent issue of Record World magazine, nods his head in agreement. Then he chuckles, and says, “They think you’re Tommy.” “I’m not Tommy Shaw,” J.Y. screams. “I’m Rod Stewart.” “Tommy, Tommmmmmmmmy! I love you! I love you!” the girl persists, now trying desperately to jump on the hood of the slippery auto. “Oh brother,” sighs J.Y. And the limousine rolls through the now fully raised backstage door and he hurries to get out and head for the dressing room. This scene is repeated twice, as two more limousines make their way into the stadium, five and ten minutes later. The second car carries young guitarist Tommy Shaw, drummer John Panozzo and his wife Debbie. The groupies muster their greatest energy for this car. As the youngest member of Styx and because of his good looks and flowing blond hair, Tommy Shaw is extremely popular with young girls. Some of his fans are now demonstrating their affection by covering his car with their bodies. John and Debbie Panozzo pay no attention to the frenzy. Tommy Shaw merely smiles, and shortly all of them are inside the sports arena dressing room. By the time the last and final car appears, spectacularly black in the California rain, the groupies’ enthusiasm has waned. Most of them have started tiptoeing through the puddles back to their hiding places to regroup for the band’s departure in a couple of hours.” Tommy
”
”
Chuck Panozzo (The Grand Illusion: Love, Lies, and My Life with Styx: The Personal Journey of "Styx" Rocker Chuck Panozzo)
“
The highway was teasing me with promises and visions of a country unseen, in a black limousine
”
”
Brandon Flowers
“
Not long after eight o' clock, the gang's luxury limousine was parked in rue Ordener. "We were fearflully armed", recalled Ganier, "I had no less than six revolvers on me, of which one was butt-mounted witha range of eight hundred meters; my companions each had three, and we had about four hundred rounds in our pockets; we were quite determined to defend ourselves to the death".
”
”
Richard Parry (The Bonnot Gang: The Story of the French Illegalists)
“
Only high-ranking student officers were allowed off campus in groups on Sunday afternoons, although cadets could leave for a meal with their parents. Fred Trump often came up to see his son. Once, when Fred arrived in a limousine driven by his chauffeur, Donald was too embarrassed to meet him. From then on, Fred drove his own Cadillac to check up on Donald. The
”
”
Michael Kranish (Trump Revealed: The Definitive Biography of the 45th President)
“
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Whoa!” Shawna paused on the sidewalk outside her Brooklyn apartment complex and gaped at the limousine idling in the street. “You went all out.
”
”
Sylvia Day (Reflected in You (Crossfire, #2))
“
Chapter 1 Prayer Points Pray for President Trump to walk humbly. Pray Proverbs 16:7, Psalm 25:9, Micah 6:8, Colossians 3:12-13, and James 4:10 over him. Pray for godly counsel to be released to President Trump and received by him. Pray Proverbs 19:20-21 over him. A Shocking Visit to the White House In a prophetic dream in early February of 2019, I arrived at the White House in a white limousine.
”
”
Jeremiah Johnson (Trump and the Future of America)
“
They came to a bumpy stretch in the country road. The jeep jounced up and down, and the tools and equipment bounced and clattered until it was impossible to talk over the noise. To Cloud the din was a symphony. That was the way a jeep was supposed sound. It wasn't a limousine for softies but a car for tough outdoorsmen who carried tow chains, crowbars, and camp stoves." The Year of the Jeep by Keith Robertson (also called The Jeep
”
”
Keith Robertson (The Year of the Jeep)
“
A New York senti che lo Stato si occupa di proteggere i cittadini, a Bologna in certe zone e in certe ore ti chiedi se lo Stato esista. Sono due città storicamente «di sinistra»: New York ha votato democratico per il 70 per cento. Però, almeno un pezzo della sinistra americana ha imparato questa lezione: la cultura della legalità, la tutela dell’ordine pubblico non sono valori di destra. Anzi, quando una città si sente insicura, i più angosciati sono i meno abbienti; non quelli che circolano a bordo di limousine con l’autista o che abitano nei condomini dove i portieri vigilano su chi entra.
”
”
Federico Rampini (Quando inizia la nostra storia: Le grandi svolte del passato che hanno disegnato il mondo in cui viviamo)
“
SAGEBRUSH AND AVOCADO TREES SHIMMERED IN THE afternoon heat as the huge gold limousine sped north through the hills of Escondido.
”
”
Armistead Maupin (Tales of the City (Tales of the City, #1))
“
Unruly Scots were also packed off to Barbados in the early days, and the numbers of the original Redlegs or, as they are alternately styled, the Mean Whites, were steadily augmented by the deportation of convicts from England to the West Indies, who lived here in the same loathsome circumstances as the slaves, and when their sentences had expired, often settled here. It is significant of the gulf that yawns between them and the other white islanders that even in this colony where a white complexion is considered to be of inestimable and intrinsic merit, they seldom rise in the world, or play, as the Negroes do, a rôle in island politics. These pale, Nordic people, standing barefoot in the dust with loads of sugar-cane on their heads and gazing listlessly as the trim limousines go bowling past, are pathetic and moving figures, and their aspect has none of the cheerfulness of the inhabitants of the Saints or of the pleasant solidity of the whites of the Guadeloupean hinterland. They look like poor devils and nothing else.
”
”
Patrick Leigh Fermor (The Traveller's Tree: A Journey through the Caribbean Islands)
“
But the feeling I got was that Phil sort of realized that most of these people were around for the external rather than the internal, and he would have preferred that he wasn’t liked for the limousines and the money and all that. Phil would have really liked to be loved for himself.
”
”
Mick Brown (Tearing Down the Wall of Sound: The Rise and Fall of Phil Spector)
“
They arrived in Copenhagen aboard private jets and roared through its quaint streets in armored limousines powered by internal combustion engines. Perhaps one day the oil would run out and the planet would grow too hot to sustain human life. But for now at least, the extractors of fossil fuels still reigned supreme.
”
”
Daniel Silva (The English Girl (Gabriel Allon, #13))
“
Mimi had always harbored a
secret love for limousines. It was tacky
to use one in the city, lest you run the
risk of looking like a tourist or like you
were off to prom. But this one shone
with a wicked gleam. She had to admit
it; the guy traveled in style
”
”
Melissa de la Cruz
“
I had never before been so tortured by the slowness of the Mexico City traffic; the irritability of the drivers; the savagery of the dilapidated trucks that ought to have been banned ages ago; the sadness of the begging mothers carrying children in their shawls and extending their calloused hands; the awfulness of the crippled and the blind asking for alms; the melancholy of the children in clown costumes trying to entertain with their painted faces and the little balls they juggled; the insolence and obscene bungling of the pot-bellied police officers leaning against their motorcycles at strategic highway entrances and exits to collect their bite-size bribes; the insolent pathways cleared for the powerful people in their bulletproof limousines; the desperate, self-absorbed, and absent gaze of old people unsteadily crossing side streets without looking where they were going, those white-haired, but-faced men and women resigned to die the same way as they lived; the giant billboards advertising an imaginary world of bras and underpants covering small swaths of perfect bodies with white skin and blonde hair, high-priced shops selling luxury and enchanted vacations in promised paradises.
”
”
Carlos Fuentes (Vlad)
“
Ci-ti-zen!" piped the Shah, smiling modestly at his newly acquired bilinguality.
"Drop dead," called one of the rock throwers. Reluctantly, surlily, he came down to the road and moved two wheelbarrows very slowly, studying the car and its occupants as he did it. He stepped to one side.
"Thanks! It's about time!" said Halyard as the limousine eased past the man.
"You're welcome, Doc," said the man, and he spat in Halyard's face.
Halyard sputtered, manfully regained his poise, and wiped his face. "Isolated incident," he said bitterly.
"Takaru yamu brouha, pu dinka bu," said the Shah sympathetically.
"The Shah," said Khashdrahr gravely, "he says it is the same with Takaru everywhere since the war."
"No Takaru," said Halyear apathetically, and let it go.
”
”
Kurt Vonnegut Jr. (Player Piano)
“
I am proud to say," said the girl, "that he's one of the few men on earth with a little self-respect left."
Khashdrahr translated that last bit, and the Shah shook his head sadly. The Shah removed a ruby ring and pressed it into her hand. "Ti, sibi Takaru. Dibo. Brahous brahouna, houna saki. Ippi goura Brahouna ta tippo a mismit." He opened the limousine door for her.
"What did the gentleman say?" she asked.
"He said to take the ring, pretty little citizen," said Khashdrahr tenderly. "He said goodbye and good luck, and that some of the greatest prophets were crazy as bedbugs.
”
”
Kurt Vonnegut Jr. (Player Piano)
“
walked, and wherever I looked the madness of history answered me. In the old GUM building, once host to the world’s most unwearable clothes, burly women of the new Russian rich sampled dresses by Hermès and scents by Estée Lauder, while their chauffeur-driven limousines waited in line outside, bodyguards and chase cars in attendance. Yet glance up and down the street, and there were the skeletons of yesterday dangling from their grimy gibbets: iron quarter-moons with the rusting stars of Soviet triumphalism trailing from their tails, hammers and sickles carved into crumbling façades, fragmented Partyspeak scrawled in drunken tracery against the rain-swept sky. And everywhere, as evening gathered, the beacons of the true conquerors flashing out their gospel: “Buy us, eat us, drink us, wear us, drive us, smoke us, die of us! We are what you get instead of slavery!
”
”
John le Carré (Our Game)
“
We were equally impressed to learn that senior executives at another company preferred the underground to chauffeured limousine when travelling around London. The number of IR representatives in attendance is a good indicator as to how carefully a company counts its pennies. Of course, we have made mistakes when assessing management teams. But, in our view, trying to spot a great manager remains a game very much worth playing.
”
”
Edward Chancellor (Capital Returns: Investing Through the Capital Cycle: A Money Manager’s Reports 2002-15)
“
Jack watched the limousine pull up to the bottom of the quad and stop, its motor running.
”
”
Stephen King (The Talisman)
“
If an ancient horror invites you into its limousine at gunpoint—
”
”
Charles Stross (The Labyrinth Index (Laundry Files, #9))
“
The security team there was unprepared and Henry and Donny were trapped at one point, separated from their limousine by an unregulated mass of humanity. Crisis was averted only when Henry put on his Fonzie voice to address the crowd, "I want to tell you something now." He said, "You're going to part like the red sea." He snapped his fingers, the same way he did on the show to summon chicks. The crowd obediently opened up a pathway to the car. When all four of us met up in Philadelphia, Hansen and I got a sense of how intense Fonzie-mania had already become.
”
”
Ron Howard (The Boys: A Memoir of Hollywood and Family)
“
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KON LIMOUSINE SERVICES
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He'll be fine. I bet brooding in his limousine is his favorite pastime right after yelling at his staff, menacing old ladies, and sucking lemons for fun.
”
”
Holly Roberds (Blackmailing Belle (The Lost Girls, #4))
“
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Backstage Limousine Services
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Miami Limousine Network, LLC delivers a refined transportation experience with professional chauffeurs, luxury vehicles, and a focus on punctual, first-class service. From executive travel to weddings and airport transfers, every ride is handled with precision and care. Clients enjoy clean, high-end interiors, reliable scheduling, and a seamless journey every time. With a commitment to excellence, this service sets the standard for premium ground transportation in Miami.
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Miami Limousine Network LLC
“
She had heard that some of those people made a whole lot of money and drove very fine cars. She had doubts about that. Most of them looked as if they were about to have a stroke or die of gas fumes from passing cars, but the notion there might be a nation of highly successful grifters with mansions and limousines to go home to at night allowed her to keep a tight grip on her dollar. Still, that whole begging thing might be a way to add enough to her coffers to get done what she needed to get done. She could show a little leg if she had to, wear something nice. Though, come to think of it, that might throw off her whole plan. If she looked too nice, or sexy, she might be thought to be a prostitute trying to move upscale, or a music teacher on her way down,
”
”
Joe R. Lansdale (Jane Goes North)
“
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Elite Limousine
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A Touch of Class Transportation
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