Melvin Quotes

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

Sometimes maybe you need an experience. The experience can be a person or it can be a drug. The experience opens a door that was there all the time but you never saw it. Or maybe it blasts you into outer space...All that negative stuff. All the pain...It just floted away from me, I just floated away from it...up and away...
Melvin Burgess (Smack)
What does borderline personality mean, anyhow? It appears to be a way station between neurosis and psychosis: a fractured but not disassembled psyche. Though to quote my post-Melvin psychiatrist: "It's what they call people whose lifestyles bother them.
Susanna Kaysen (Girl, Interrupted)
You can do anything you want. You don't believe me. You think, she's out of her head. Yeah, I'm out of my head- on being me. What are you on? On being them. You don't even know. I bet you were never given a chance to know. ....Listen. You can be anything you want to be. Be careful. It's a spell. It's magic. Listen to the words.... You are anything...everyone, anyone. ...You listen to them, teachers, parents, politicians. They're always saying, if you steal you're a thief, if you sleep aroung you're a slut, if you take drugs you're a junkie. They want to get inside your head and control you with their fear. ...Don't play their game. Nothing can touch you; you stay beautiful.
Melvin Burgess (Smack)
Try it. You don't have to do it ever again if you don't want to. But try it once. Try everything once.
Melvin Burgess
Sometimes maybe you need an experience. The experience can be a person or it can be a drug. The experience opes a door that was there all the time but you never saw it. Or maybe it blasts you into outer space.
Melvin Burgess (Smack)
That's her secret, I suppose. Everything that happens to her she's proud of. She makes it special by it happening to her.
Melvin Burgess (Smack)
I've done everything. All of it. You think it, I've done it. All the things you never dared, all the things you dream about, all the things you were curious about and then forgot because you knew you never would. I did 'em, I did 'em yesterday while you were still in bed. What about you? When's it gonna be your turn?
Melvin Burgess (Smack)
She wrote, 'Dandelion, I love you.' And I thought that was magic. It's not in you, it's between you. It's bigger and stronger than you are
Melvin Burgess (Smack)
She didn't have to be offered anything; it was already hers. She was more herself than anyone else ever was and as soon as I clapped eyes on her I knew I wanted to be myself just as much as she was herself.
Melvin Burgess (Smack)
Listen. You can be anything you want to be. Be careful. It's a spell. It's magic. Listen to the words. You can be anything, you can do anything, you can be anything, you can do anything. Listen to the magic. You are anything . . . everyone, anyone. Whatever you want. I'm showing you. So long as you stay yourself inside, you can eat dirt and it'll taste good because it's you that's eating it. You can even lick their arses if you have to. You listen to them, teachers, parents, politicians. They're always saying, if you steal you're a thief, if you sleep around you're a slut, if you take drugs you're a junkie. They want to get inside your head and control you with their fear. Maybe you think your mum and dad love you but if you do the wrong things they'll try and turn you into dirt. It's your punishment for being you. Don't play their game. Nothing can touch you; you stay beautiful. I've done everything. All of it. You think it, I've done it. All the things you never dared, all the things you dream about, all the things you were curious about and then forgot because you knew you never would. I did 'em, I did 'em yesterday while you were still in bed, What about you? When's it going to be your turn?
Melvin Burgess (Smack (rack))
Love is a secret society, a community for two.
Melvin Burgess (Bloodsong (Blood, #2))
It wasn't a love story." -Tar's dad It was a love story. Me, Gemma, and junk." -Tar
Melvin Burgess (Smack)
The Holy Spirit doesn't need to equip you for what you're not going to do, so if you're in rebellion against Jesus and refusing His right to be Lord, He doesn't need to send the Holy Spirit to equip you for service. And, tragically, you miss out on the joy that He brings. So let the Holy Spirit deal with anything that's keeping you from obeying Christ.
Henry T. Blackaby
The only thing that isn't free is you. You do as you're told. You sit in your seat until they say 'Stand'. You stay put til they say 'Go'. Maybe that's the way you like it. It's easy. It's all there. You don't have to think about. You don't even have to feel it.
Melvin Burgess (Smack)
you want to be loved if only to prove it possible: to tell the world that someone saw you as a conquest & came back alive. that above all else, you are worthy of the risk, the effort. you want someone to serve you the evidence: you are not as damned as you think you are. you are not as damned as you think you are.
silas denver melvin
And in that moment, I swear we were infinite
Melvin Burgess
Zinnia always wants to hug me and pat me because she has a boy my same age named Melvin. I said maybe some day Melvin could come play at our farm, and I could bring him to the maze and show him the shortcuts. Zinnia started crying. That’s when I seen that she has freckles.
Wally Lamb (The Hour I First Believed)
Do you know what I did? I urrrrrinated on the cake at my ex-wife's wedding. Pissssed all over the icing." Melvin Baylor - Seven Up
Janet Evanovich
Anarchy loves theatre. That's the whole point. People forget that. You have to laugh at the devil, not fight him. They'll always have more guns, they'll always have more bombs that go off with a bigger bang. No matter how revolting you become they'll always be willing to be more revolting to you. They've had so much more practice.
Melvin Burgess (Smack)
The only thing suffering teaches us is that we are capable of suffering.
Melvin Jules Bukiet
He'd come back, all open and helpless, and I suppose that's what won her around in the end. But it was so sad, because it was being himself that he found so difficult to cope with.
Melvin Burgess (Smack)
And then I noticed the dandelions.
Melvin Burgess (Smack)
It had this amazing spicy, pee-y smell.
Melvin Burgess
Receptionist: How do you write women so well? Melvin Udall: I think of a man, and I take away reason and accountability.
Melvin Udall played by Jack Nicholson in AS GOOD AS IT GETS.
The thing that truly amazes me about myself is that I’m actually more scared of being embarrassed than anything else.
Melvin Burgess (Doing It)
Here is hurting me, Pilot … I can’t choose us because I need to choose me. I’m not ready for this. Here, I’m still in school and I’m still dependent. I can’t break from my shit path. But in 2017, maybe I can do something. I have some money saved, and I’ll break up with Melvin and start over or something. I can figure something out there.
Christine Riccio (Again, But Better)
The magic girl licked the wet off her arms and looked over to me as if to say, See? You don't have to behave like them, you don't have to behave like anyone.
Melvin Burgess (Smack)
I've done everything. All of it. You think it, I've done it. All the things yo never dared, all the things you dream about, all the things you were curious about and then forgot because you knew you never would. I did'em, I did em yesterday while you were still in bed. What about you? When's it gonna be your turn?
Melvin Burgess (Smack)
He longed for the oblivion at the end of it, but lacked the courage to face the fall
Melvin Burgess (The Hit)
إننا جميعاً نعيش بعقول صُممت لأن تنشط في مجال و تتعثر في آخر … دكتور مِل لفين
Mel Levine (A Mind at a Time: America's Top Learning Expert Shows How Every Child Can Succeed)
Technology is neither good nor bad; nor is it neutral
Melvin Kranzberg
Melvin Kranzberg, a historian, once observed “technology is neither good nor bad; nor is it neutral.
Bill Hammack (Eight Amazing Engineering Stories: Using the Elements to Create Extraordinary Technologies)
As Melvin Thompson screamed, he saw his life flash before his eyes. He was disappointed it was not a good life. Nothing good ever seemed to happen to him.
Jason Medina (The Manhattanville Incident: An Undead Novel)
Welcome to my world, Melvin! Girls have to work harder than boys... and we still get less!!! Less respect... less money... less freedom... less opportunities... and dopes like you never even notice!!!
Dav Pilkey (Perspectives (Cat Kid Comic Club #2))
Sometimes maybe you need an experience. The experience can be a person or it can be a drug. The experience opens a door that was there all the time but you never saw it. Or maybe it blasts you into outer space...
Melvin Burgess (Smack)
Sometimes when we were hiding behind the breakers with the crowd, he'd hold me so tight, I'd think he's not just holding me, he's holding onto me, like I'm stopping him from falling off. I'd see him looking at me and his eyes were so full of...I dunno. Like he was about to cry. And, it's stupid, I know, but I think maybe he's hurting because he loves me and I don't love him, and this great lump used to come up into my throat and I'd hold him tight and try and squeeze him as tight as I could and try as hard as I could to fall in love with him the way he loved me. And then other times I'd think, it's just the way his face is that makes him look like that.
Melvin Burgess (Smack)
Because what Miranda represents . . . it’s dead, as dead to me as Gwen’s marriage is to her. I tell myself that, even as I recognize that Melvin’s ghost has never stopped haunting either one of us. Dead doesn’t mean gone.
Rachel Caine (Wolfhunter River (Stillhouse Lake, #3))
Anyone, anyone can break loose from his chains. That courage, no matter how deeply buried, is always waiting to be called out. All it needs is the right coaxing, the right voice to do that coaxing, and it will come roaring like a tiger.
William Melvin Kelley (A Different Drummer)
You had the feeling they were nice because they'd decided it was the fashion to be nice.
Melvin Burgess (Smack)
No matter what happens in our lives, we have to keep moving forward,” I told them. “We have to keep doing our best, no matter what the circumstances. It is about your heart, dedication, and spirit.
Leland Melvin (Chasing Space: An Astronaut's Story of Grit, Grace, and Second Chances)
i think i never arrived, so they stopped waiting. i think a grief was stitched into me long before i was born. i think there is more to life than being understood, but at night it hurts, illogically, like a star mourning its own existence. i think i never had a chance.
silas denver melvin
My experiences in the Astronaut Corps had taught me that you never know what will happen from day to day. It’s best to experience life as fully as possible while you have the time, health, and opportunity. •
Leland Melvin (Chasing Space: An Astronaut's Story of Grit, Grace, and Second Chances)
At the conclusion of all our studies we must try once again to experience the human soul as soul, and not just as a buzz of bioelectricity; the human will as will, and not just a surge of hormones; the human heart not as a fibrous, sticky pump, but as the metaphoric organ of understanding. We need not believe in them as metaphysical entities -- they are as real as the flesh and blood they are made of. But we must believe in them as entities; not as analyzed fragments, but as wholes made real by our contemplation of them, by the words we use to talk of them, by the way we have transmuted them to speech. We must stand in awe of them as unassailable, even though they are dissected before our eyes.
Melvin Konner
I had this guy’s file pulled this morning, along with the rest of your neighbors. His name is Desperado.” Pause. A few seconds passed. He was waiting for my reaction. “Did you say Desperado?” I couldn’t stop the snort of laughter that bubbled to the surface. “Yeah,” the Director confirmed. “He changed his name when he turned eighteen. It was Melvin.” I was still laughing. “’Cause Desperado is so much better than Melvin.
Laura Kreitzer (Keepers (Timeless, #3.5))
Deborah felt his erection against her stomach and smiled up at him. She grabbed hold of his bum and moved him gently from side to side so that it rocked against her, twitching like Frankenstein's monster in an electric storm.
Melvin Burgess (Doing It)
I found myself one evening in the dreams of the night, in that sacred building, the Temple. After a season of prayer and rejoicing, I was informed that I should have the privilege of entering into one of those rooms, to meet a glorious personage, and as I entered the door, I saw, seated on a raised platform, the most glorious Being my eyes have ever beheld, or that I ever conceived existed in all the eternal worlds. As I approached to be introduced, he arose and stepped towards me with extended arms, and he smiled as he softly spoke my name. If I shall live to be a million years old, I shall never forget that smile. He took me into his arms and kissed me, pressed me to His bosom, and blessed me, until the marrow of my bones seemed to melt! When He had finished, I fell at His feet, and as I bathed them with my tears and kisses, I saw the prints of the nails in the feet of the Redeemer of the world. The feeling that I had in the presence of Him who hath all things in His hands, to have His love, His affection, and His blessings was such that if I ever can receive that of which I had but a foretaste, I would give all that I am, all that I ever hope to be, to feel what I then felt (as cited in Bryant S. Hinckley, The Faith of Our Pioneer Fathers, pp. 226-27.)
Melvin J. Ballard
If it’s a choice between being shat on and pissed on and used and being a bastard, I’ll choose being a bastard any time.
Melvin Burgess (Doing It)
I felt that her tears would trickle out of the telephone and on to my hands.
Melvin Burgess (Smack)
Tar had a reason, plenty of reasons. The latest were painted on his face, too.
Melvin Burgess (Smack)
i'll skin you an apple, tight between the knife & my thumb, if you let me feed you every slice.
silas denver melvin (GRIT: a poetry collection)
i can’t shape my shame into an answer on the spot.
silas denver melvin (GRIT: a poetry collection)
when you cannot justify / your origin / when you say / “i was only playing / a game / to see how it felt” / & the lie lands heavy / like a marble / on the kitchen floor
silas denver melvin (GRIT: a poetry collection)
Dr. Melvin Connors sums it up nicely in just three words: "culture stretches biology
Leonard Sax (Why Gender Matters: What Parents and Teachers Need to Know about the Emerging Science of Sex Differences)
Go sell crazy someplace else; we're all stocked up." (Melvin Udall aka Jack Nicholson, 1997)
Jack Nicholson
Sei un innamorato dell'amore, Mel.
Vittorio De Agrò (Essere Melvin: Tra finzione e realtà)
Receptionist: How do you write women so well? Melvin Udall: I think of a man, and I take away reason and accountability. -As Good As it Gets (1997)
Mark Andrus (As Good As It Gets: The Shooting Script)
Melvin Brands took bread, and the foot, wrapped in camphored cloth.
Julie Berry (All the Truth That's in Me)
Merle. You wouldn’t happen to know a man named Melvin, would you?
T.J. Klune (Somewhere Beyond the Sea (Cerulean Chronicles, #2))
John Clausen and Melvin Kohn from the National Institute of Mental Health described the schizophrenogenic mother as “cold,” “perfectionistic,” “anxious,” “overcontrolling,” and “restrictive
Robert Kolker (Hidden Valley Road: Inside the Mind of an American Family)
My favorite joke of his occurred when George was telling me about the joys of grandfatherhood. “If I could have figured out how to have grandchildren without having children first, I would have done so.” Later on, I knew just what he meant – high relatedness, no work. Or as Melvin Newton (Huey’s brother) once put it, “You can serve them ice cream for breakfast, what do you care?
Robert Trivers (Wild Life: Adventures of an Evolutionary Biologist)
The fact is, I can’t put together the sort of feelings that I get when I’m having a dirty big wank together with the kind of feelings I get when I’m having a nice friendly chat with someone. It just doesn’t work.
Melvin Burgess (Doing It)
Bugger off kitty!" - Ryou "But before we begin this duel to the death, I have just one question. Could I get a hug?" - Melvin "Help! This supermodel is one of my fangirls!" - Ryou "A locked door?! Impossiblllllll- No wait, that's totally possible. What am I talking about?" - Melvin "Let's ditch the tosser!" - Ryou "What a lovely day." - Melvin "Gangway; women and shemales first!" -Ryou "This door is a bitch!" - Melvin "Can I be the main character now?" - Ryou "'STAB'. (Denied.) 'KILL'. (Denied.) 'MUTIL-' Ah dammit, there aren't enough spaces! Umm... 'PAIN'. (Denied.) Why are these the only words I know?!" - Melvin "I'm here to kick ass and drink cups of tea. And I'm all out of tea." - Ryou
Little Kuriboh Ryou and Melvin
Erik Erikson coined the term “pseudo-speciation” to describe our xenophobic instinct. It is as if we rejected out of hand the unity of the species, setting up in its place a thousand egregious dichotomies. —Melvin Konner, Why the Reckless Survive
Oliver Benjamin (The Tao of the Dude: Awesome Insights of Deep Dudes from Lao Tzu to Lebowski)
we want every latter day saint to come to the sacrament table because it is the place for self-investigation, for self-inspection, where we may learn to rectify our course and to make right our own lives, bringing ourselves into harmony with the teachings of the Church and with our brothers and sisters.
Melvin J. Ballard
We may deceive men, but we cannot deceive the Holy Ghost, and our blessings will not be eternal until they are also sealed by the holy spirit of promise, the Holy Ghost, one who reads the thoughts and hearts of men and gives his sealing approval to the blessings pronounced upon their heads. Then it is binding, and of full force.
Melvin J. Ballard
When you look at the Earth from the vantage point of space, our planet looks like a little blue marble. Seeing our world from that vantage point cognitively changes you. My orbital shift happened after breaking bread with my space station crewmates and my shuttle crewmates. it showed me how close we are as countries, as races, as a species. I marveled that on Earth we have all these distances and separations and geographic boundaries, but they vanish quickly in the weightless interior of the space station.
Leland Melvin (Chasing Space: An Astronaut's Story of Grit, Grace, and Second Chances)
Lepiej jest nie wiedzieć za dużo, przyjacielu. To znaczy, rozsądnie jest wiedzieć tyle, ile się da, ale jeszcze rozsądniej jest utrzymywać innych w niewiedzy co do własnej wiedzy.
Melvin Burgess (Smack)
Seeing the world without geographic boundaries really puts things in perspective and makes one wonder why there is so much division, hatred, and malice. We
Leland Melvin (Chasing Space: An Astronaut's Story of Grit, Grace, and Second Chances)
We have been given two ears but a single mouth, in order that we may hear more and speak less.
Melvin L. Silberman (PeopleSmart: Developing Your Interpersonal Intelligence)
Reading and writing go hand in hand.
Sylvia Melvin
الوقت هو ما يوجد ضمنه فرصة ... و الفرصة هى ما لا يوجد فيها وقت كثير ... الشفاء أمر عائد إلى الزمن، لكنه أيضاً عائد إلى الفرصة ... هيبوقراط، الأوبئة
Mel Levine (A Mind at a Time: America's Top Learning Expert Shows How Every Child Can Succeed)
Invece, mi è capitato spesso nella vita che, quando tutti mi danno per spacciato, riesco a stupire per la mia reazione.
Vittorio De Agrò (Essere Melvin: Tra finzione e realtà)
A volte l'amore di un padre può fare danni involontariamente. Bisogna sapere distinguere le cose positive da quelle negative.
Vittorio De Agrò (Essere Melvin: Tra finzione e realtà)
Empowering women is the next step in human evolution, and as the uniquely endowed creatures we are, we can choose to help bring it about.
Melvin Konner (Women After All: Sex, Evolution, and the End of Male Supremacy)
As astronauts we’re trained not to be alarmed by things. We’re trained to ask, “How will I fix this? How will I do all the steps required to make sure that we come home safely?” Surprises
Leland Melvin (Chasing Space: An Astronaut's Story of Grit, Grace, and Second Chances)
I'm really looking forward to being clean again. It's this weird thing with smack. First off it makes you feel so good. But after a bit, after your body gets used to it, it stops working like that. You start needing it just to stay normal... Then you get sick of it and give it up for a few days. And that's the really nasty thing because then, when you're clean, that's when it works so well.
Melvin Burgess
To walk on the beach was the most incredible thing. When you look at the horizon it helps regauge your gyros and your inner ear. It helps you know exactly what’s up and down and what’s right and left.
Leland Melvin (Chasing Space: An Astronaut's Story of Grit, Grace, and Second Chances)
He had experienced the fear of failure, which is frequently mistaken for failure. He made his resolve and he proceeded to work again. He forgot, in the interest of his work, that he might possibly fail.
Melvin Ryder
Where do they teach you to talk like this? In some Panama City "Sailor wanna hump-hump" bar, or is it getaway day and your last shot at his whiskey? Sell crazy someplace else, we're all stocked up here.
Melvin Udall played by Jack Nicholson in AS GOOD AS IT GETS.
My experiences in the Astronaut Corps had taught me that you never know what will happen from day to day. It's best to experience life as fully as possible while you have the time, health and opportunity.
Leland Melvin (Chasing Space: An Astronaut's Story of Grit, Grace, and Second Chances)
Mathematics is much more than a language for dealing with the physical world. It is a source of models and abstractions which will enable us to obtain amazing new insights into the way in which nature operates.
Melvin Schwartz (Principles of Electrodynamics (Dover Books on Physics))
Si Melvin était un artiste, je l'avais privé d'une qualité essentielle à l'art: le doute. Un artiste qui ne doute pas est un individu aussi accablant qu'un séducteur qui se croit en pays conquis. Derrière toute œuvre, se cache une prétention énorme, celle d'exposer sa vision du monde. Si une telle arrogance n'est pas contrebalancée par les affres du doute, on obtient un montre qui est à l'art ce que le fanatique est à la foi.
Amélie Nothomb (Une Forme de vie)
Sometimes maybe you need an experience. The experience can be a person or it can be a drug. The experience opens a door that was there all the time but you never saw it. Or maybe it blasts you into outer space...All that negative stuff. All the pain...It just floted away from me, I just floated away from it...up and away...” ― Melvin Burgess, Smack “You can do anything you want. You don't believe me. You think, she's out of her head. Yeah, I'm out of my head- on being me. What are you on? On being them. You don't even know. I bet you were never given a chance to know. ....Listen. You can be anything you want to be. Be careful. It's a spell. It's magic. Listen to the words.... You are anything...everyone, anyone. ...You listen to them, teachers, parents, politicians. They're always saying, if you steal you're a thief, if you sleep aroung you're a slut, if you take drugs you're a junkie. They want to get inside your head and control you with their fear. ...Don't play their game. Nothing can touch you; you stay beautiful.” ― Melvin Burgess, Smack “Try it. You don't have to do it ever again if you don't want to. But try it once. Try everything once.” ― Melvin Burgess “The only thing that isn't free is you. You do as you're told. You sit in your seat until they say 'Stand'. You stay put til they say 'Go'. Maybe that's the way you like it. It's easy. It's all there. You don't have to think about. You don't even have to feel it.” ― Melvin Burgess, Smac “That's her secret, I suppose. Everything that happens to her she's proud of. She makes it special by it happening to her.” “She didn't have to be offered anything; it was already hers. She was more herself than anyone else ever was and as soon as I clapped eyes on her I knew I wanted to be myself just as much as she was herself.” “I've done everything. All of it. You think it, I've done it. All the things yo never dared, all the things you dream about, all the things you were curious about and then forgot because you knew you never would. I did'em, I did em yesterday while you were still in bed. What about you? When's it gonna be your turn?” ― Melvin Burgess, Smack
Melvin Burgess
Ja zrobiłam wszystko. Wszystko. Pomyśl o tym - wszystko. Wszystkie rzeczy, na które byś się nie odważył, wszystkie rzeczy, których byłeś ciekaw, a potem o tym zapomniałeś, bo wiesz, że nigdy byś nie spróbował. Zrobiłam je. Zrobiłam je wczoraj, kiedy ty ciągle tkwiłeś w swoim łóżku.
Melvin Burgess (Smack)
But there was no denying Purvis’s ineptitude in the Dillinger hunt. Suspects were found then lost. His informants were hopeless. He raided the wrong apartments. He built no bridges to the Chicago police while annoying other departments. He’d had his car stolen from in front of his house.
Bryan Burrough (Public Enemies: America's Greatest Crime Wave and the Birth of the FBI, 1933-34)
I’d made a point of meeting our closest neighbors the first week we moved in, because it seemed like a good precaution to assess them early for threats, or as possible resources in an emergency. I don’t count the Johansens as either. They are just . . . there. Most people just take up space anyway. The whisper comes and goes in my head, and it frightens me, because I hate remembering Melvin Royal’s voice. That was nothing he’d ever said at home, ever said to me, but I’d seen the video of him saying it at the trial. He’d said it utterly casually about the women he’d torn apart.
Rachel Caine (Stillhouse Lake (Stillhouse Lake, #1))
Vampires > Zombies: The Fabulous Life There are so many famous vampires! They’re like the rock stars of the monster world. Without even reading this book, I bet you could ask anybody and that person would be able to tell you at least one of their names. Are there any famous zombies, though? Nope. Losers.
Matt Melvin (Dracula Is a Racist:)
Sis rolls her eyes and leads the elderly lady over to the S-shaped tables crammed with silver trays of ham biscuits, pickled shrimp, stuffed mushrooms, venison pate, fruit and cheese in ornately carved-out watermelons, smoked salmon with all the trimmings, sausage balls, and pimento cheese garnished with little cocktail pickles. Sis's mama gets a nibble of shrimp and a ham biscuit and points to another corner of the tent where Richadene's brother, Melvin, is carving a beef tenderloin and serving it on rolls with horseradish and mayonnaise. Next to Melvin, R.L.'s chef friend from Savannah is serving up shrimp and grits in large martini glasses.
Beth Webb Hart (The Wedding Machine (Women of Faith Fiction))
What was critical to my father was that we not "go into government". His father and mother had both worked in the Treasury Department; and to him, "going into government" meant getting "hooked" on the salary and job security, and spending the rest of one's life in predictable, routinized labor that stunted the mind and sapped the spirit. My father would tell us of accountant friends who had passed their C.P.A. exam, then gone to work for the generous starting salaries offered by the I.R.S. While he was struggling in his mid-twenties, they were bragging about the cash they were taking home. Now, he said, he rarely saw them. Now, they had a defeated look; now, they were taking orders from some bureaucrat, and would be taking orders for the rest of their lives. He admired the disposition to roll the dice and risk everything that his Jewish friends and clients, Benny Ouresman, the Chevrolet dealer, and Harry Viner and his son Melvin, who had made a fortune with Sunshine Laundry, had exhibited. "They didn't have a damn dime when they started," Pop would tell us, emphatically. "They went to friends, borrowed money, started a business, went broke, went back to their friends, borrowed again, went broke again. Finally, they made it. They built something of their own. Now they work for themselves, and everybody else works for them. Be your own man!" That was the attitude we should adopt.
Patrick J. Buchanan (Right from the Beginning)
Moi je vole, je plane, tandis qu'il y a pleins de gens qui sont morts de l'interieur. […] L'argent qu'ils gagnent, ils le dépensent dans une télévision neuve, alors que l'ancienne marche encore, dans une nouvelle voiture, parce que la précédente est trop vielle, ou dans des vacances pour se distraire et oublier cet affreux boulot qu'ils sont obligés de faire parce qu'ils ont besoin de cet argent…
Melvin Burgess
Answers I began two hundred hours of continuous reading in the twelve hours that remained before examinations. Melvin Bloom my roommate flipped the pages of his textbook in a sweet continuous trance. Reviewing the term's work was his pleasure. He went to sleep early. While he slept I bent into the night reading eating Benzedrine smoking cigarettes. Shrieking dwarfs charged across my notes. Crabs asked me questions. Melvin flipped a page blinked flipped another. He effected the same flipping and blinking with no textbook during examinations. For every question answers marched down his optical nerve neck arm and out onto his paper where they stopped in impeccable parade. I'd look at my paper oily scratched by ratlike misery and I'd think of Melvin Bloom. I would think Oh God what is going to happen to me.
Leonard Michaels (I Would Have Saved Them If I Could)
Wtedy trafiasz na policję i do sądu. Jeśli masz pieniądze, ukarzą cię grzywną. Jeśli nie masz pieniędzy, każą ci odpracować pewną liczbę godzin na rzecz gminy. To jest w porządku. Coś takiego nie zdarza się często. Znam ludzi, którzy przez całe lata nie zostali przyłapani, zapewniam cię… Praca dla gminy to może czterdzieści, może sto godzin. A jaką masz alternatywę? Chodzić codziennie do pracy przez resztę życia? Powiedz, jak nazwać taki wyrok?
Melvin Burgess (Smack)
As a scientist, I know that predicting outcomes is based as much on probability as on cause and effect. It isn’t always possible to isolate the one factor that led to a particular result. Still, as I stepped forward to receive my award, I couldn’t help rethinking, however briefly, my journey backward through time, from an NFL event in Maui, through two missions on the space station, to a football field at Heritage High. It had all begun with a dropped pass. In
Leland Melvin (Chasing Space: An Astronaut's Story of Grit, Grace, and Second Chances)
Sex is . . . well, it’s so rude, isn’t it? You wouldn’t think girls would like sex. You’d think it’s too rude for them. Doing sex with a girl, it’s a bit like putting a frog down their backs or scaring them with dead mice or throwing worms at them. They’re such sensible, grown-up sorts of people. And yet apparently even the nice ones like you sticking the rudest thing you have on your whole body up the exact, rudest part of their body that they have. It doesn’t make a lot of sense to me!
Melvin Burgess (Doing It)
When you look at the Earth from the vantage point of space, our planet looks like a little blue marble. Seeing our world from that vantage point cognitively changes you. My orbital shift happened after breaking bread with my space station crewmates and my shuttle crewmates. It showed me how close we are as countries, as races, as a species. I marveled that on Earth we have all these distances and separations and geographic boundaries, but they vanish quickly in the weightless interior of the space station. I’d
Leland Melvin (Chasing Space: An Astronaut's Story of Grit, Grace, and Second Chances)
Paley’s book Boys and Girls is about the year she spent trying to get her pupils to behave in a more unisex way. And it is a chronicle of spectacular and amusing failure. None of Paley’s tricks or bribes or clever manipulations worked. For instance, she tried forcing the boys to play in the doll corner and the girls to play in the block corner. The boys proceeded to turn the doll corner into the cockpit of a starship, and the girls built a house out of blocks and resumed their domestic fantasies. Paley’s experiment culminated in her declaration of surrender to the deep structures of gender. She decided to let the girls be girls. She admits, with real self-reproach, that this wasn’t that hard for her: Paley always approved more of the girls’ relatively calm and prosocial play. It was harder to let the boys be boys, but she did. “Let the boys be robbers,” Paley concluded, “or tough guys in space. It is the natural, universal, and essential play of little boys.” I’ve been arguing that children’s pretend play is relentlessly focused on trouble. And it is. But as Melvin Konner demonstrates in his monumental book The Evolution of Childhood, there are reliable sex differences in how boys and girls play that have been found around the world. Dozens of studies across five decades and a multitude of cultures have found essentially what Paley found in her midwestern classroom: boys and girls spontaneously segregate themselves by sex; boys engage in much more rough-and-tumble play; fantasy play is more frequent in girls, more sophisticated, and more focused on pretend parenting; boys are generally more aggressive and less nurturing than girls, with the differences being present and measurable by the seventeenth month of life. The psychologists Dorothy and Jerome Singer sum up this research: “Most of the time we see clear-cut differences in the way children play. Generally, boys are more vigorous in their activities, choosing games of adventure, daring, and conflict, while girls tend to choose games that foster nurturance and affiliation.
Jonathan Gottschall (The Storytelling Animal: How Stories Make Us Human)
I will, from today, cease trying to impress others as being someone other than who I am or what I am. I will, from today try to express myself as I really am; no pretensions, no misrepresentations and no real concerns for what I think others expect of me. I’m just going to be me! I am going to forgive myself for all my human foibles and frailties, to date, and accept my many past indiscretions as natural and normal in a personal growth process. Oh what a relief - I’ll just be the best me I can be and do the best I can. If I do the best I can - what more can any one want of me.
Melvin Hassan (A Guaranteed Formula For Happiness)
In the eight months he had been away, he had almost forgotten the gaze he found there, the gaze which came in moments like this, for it was not one of the looks that New Englanders use or have ever used to express a turn of mind or heart; it was a gaze more cold, more mean, more cruel even than the gaze a Vermont farmer gives a stranger asking directions; more cold, more mean, more cruel because it was completely blank, that very blankness a sign of the renunciation of alternatives, of tenderness or brutality, of pleasure or pain, of understanding or ignorance, of belief or disbelief, of compassion or intolerance, of reason or unswerving fanaticism; it was a gaze which signals the flicking off of the switch which controls the mechanism making man a human being; it said: Now we must fight. There is no time or need for talking; violence is already with us, part of us.
William Melvin Kelley (A Different Drummer)
And as a long-short fund, he'd also been obligated to take short positions — betting against companies — which was a tactic that, to most experts in finance, was uncontroversial. The thinking went, when companies were performing poorly, or were mismanaged, or were in an industry that was being overrun, or were simply likely to fail, taking a short position wasn't just logical — it protected the marketplace by pointing out overpriced stocks, prevented fraud by acting as a check against dubious management, and poked holes in potential bubbles. Short sellers also added liquidity and volume to a stock — because they were obligated to buy the stock back at some point in the future. Yes, short sellers profited when companies failed, but usually a short seller wasn't banking on a company failing — just that the stock's price would eventually correct toward its true valuation. Sometimes, though, a trader picked up a short position because the company in question really was going to fail. Because, perhaps, it was in an industry that was dying; had management that seemed completely unable or unwilling to pivot; and had deep fundamental issues in its financing that seemed impossible to overcome.
Ben Mezrich (The Antisocial Network: The GameStop Short Squeeze and the Ragtag Group of Amateur Traders That Brought Wall Street to Its Knees)
FACT 4 – There is more to the creation of the Manson Family and their direction than has yet been exposed. There is more to the making of the movie Gimme Shelter than has been explained. This saga has interlocking links to all the beautiful people Robert Hall knew. The Manson Family and the Hell’s Angels were instruments to turn on enemy forces. They attacked and discredited politically active American youth who had dropped out of the establishment. The violence came down from neo-Nazis, adorned with Swastikas both in L.A. and in the Bay Area at Altamont. The blame was placed on persons not even associated with the violence. When it was all over, the Beatles and the Rolling Stones were the icing on this cake, famed musicians associated with a racist, neo-Nazi murder. By rearranging the facts, cutting here and there, distorting evidence, neighbors and family feared their own youth. Charles Manson made the cover of Life with those wide eyes, like Rasputin. Charles Watson didn’t make the cover. Why not? He participated in all the killings. Manson wasn’t inside the house. Manson played a guitar and made records. Watson didn’t. He was too busy taking care of matters at the lawyer’s office prior to the killings, or with officials of Young Republicans. Who were Watson’s sponsors in Texas, where he remained until his trial, separate from the Manson Family’s to psychologically distance him from the linking of Watson to the murders he actually committed. “Pigs” was scrawled in Sharon Tate’s house in blood. Was this to make blacks the suspects? Credit cards of the La Bianca family were dropped intentionally in the ghetto after the massacre. The purpose was to stir racial fears and hatred. Who wrote the article, “Did Hate Kill Tate?”—blaming Black Panthers for the murders? Lee Harvey Oswald was passed off as a Marxist. Another deception. A pair of glasses was left on the floor of Sharon Tate’s home the day of the murder. They were never identified. Who moved the bodies after the killers left, before the police arrived? The Spahn ranch wasn’t a hippie commune. It bordered the Krupp ranch, and has been incorporated into a German Bavarian beer garden. Howard Hughes knew George Spahn. He visited this ranch daily while filming The Outlaw. Howard Hughes bought the 516 acres of Krupp property in Nevada after he moved into that territory. What about Altamont? What distortions and untruths are displayed in that movie? Why did Mick Jagger insist, “the concert must go on?” There was a demand that filmmakers be allowed to catch this concert. It couldn’t have happened the same in any other state. The Hell’s Angels had a long working relationship with law enforcement, particularly in the Oakland area. They were considered heroes by the San Francisco Chronicle and other newspapers when they physically assaulted the dirty anti-war hippies protesting the shipment of arms to Vietnam. The laboratory for choice LSD, the kind sent to England for the Stones, came from the Bay Area and would be consumed readily by this crowd. Attendees of the concert said there was “a compulsiveness to the event.” It had to take place. Melvin Belli, Jack Ruby’s lawyer, made the legal arrangements. Ruby had complained that Belli prohibited him from telling the full story of Lee Harvey Oswald’s murder (another media event). There were many layers of cover-up, and many names have reappeared in subsequent scripts. Sen. Philip Hart, a member of the committee investigating illegal intelligence operations inside the US, confessed that his own children told him these things were happening. He had refused to believe them. On November 18, 1975, Sen. Hart realized matters were not only out of hand, but crimes of the past had to be exposed to prevent future outrages. How shall we ensure that it will never happen again? It will happen repeatedly unless we can bring ourselves to understand and accept that it did go on.
Mae Brussell (The Essential Mae Brussell: Investigations of Fascism in America)