Motor Oil Quotes

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

For thousands of years, human beings had screwed up and trashed and crapped on this planet, and now history expected me to clean up after everyone. I have to wash out and flatten my soup cans. And account for every drop of used motor oil. And I have to foot the bill for nuclear waste and buried gasoline tanks and landfilled toxic sludge dumped a generation before I was born.
Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club)
Who cared whether you could change motor oil when you could snap a rottweiler’s neck in 2.8 seconds? Now there was a practical skill.
Kelley Armstrong (Stolen (Women of the Otherworld, #2))
His palm rests on the knob so I can't try to shut him out again. Rain droplets glisten along his sleek hair, which no doubt took gallons of glaze and hours to perfect. It's the one part of his appearance Taelor will actually approve of. As for me, I favour the messy look - hair out of sorts, body slicked in sweat with motor oil or watercolours splashed across his olive skin. That's the Jeb I grew up with. The one I could count on. The one I've lost.
A.G. Howard (Splintered (Splintered, #1))
I've been accustomed to mysteries, holy and otherwise, since I was a child. Some of us care for orphans, amass fortunes, raise protests or Nielsen ratings; some of us take communion or whiskey or poison. Some of us take lithium and antidepressants, and most everyone believes these pills are fundamentally wrong, a crutch, a sign of moral weakness, the surrender of art and individuality. Bullshit. Such thinking guarantees tradgedy for the bipolar. Without medicine, 20 percent of us, one in five, will commit suicide. Six-gun Russian roulette gives better odds. Denouncing these medicines makes as much sense as denouncing the immorality of motor oil. Without them, sooner or later the bipolar brain will go bang. I know plenty of potheads who sermonize against the pharmaceutical companies; I know plenty of born-again yoga instructors, plenty of missionaries who tell me I'm wrong about lithium. They don't have a clue.
David Lovelace (Scattershot: My Bipolar Family)
Holly, I understand that you are upset because Gemma pulled down your ants, but why did you think pouring motor oil inside her backpack is the way to solve the problem?
Wendelin Van Draanen (Runaway)
Ranger slung an arm around my shoulders and kissed me on the top of my head. “Someday I need to talk to you about car care.” “I know about car care. I kept a case of motor oil in the back.” “That’s my girl.
Janet Evanovich (Smokin' Seventeen (Stephanie Plum #17))
At the pub my dad was waiting for me, a black-as-night beer and his open laptop on the table in front of him. I sat down and swiped his beer before he'd had the chance to even look up from typing. 'Oh, my sweet lord,' I sputtered, chocking down a mouthful, 'what is this? Fermented motor oil?' 'Just about,' he said, laughing.
Ransom Riggs (Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children (Miss Peregrine's Peculiar Children, #1))
If you were put on this earth to take care of me, what was I put on this earth to do for you?” … “To make me happy.
Kristen Ashley (The Hookup (Moonlight and Motor Oil, #1))
You never know what’s deep inside a soul. You just never know. And since you don’t know, you’re never, not ever, in the position to judge.
Kristen Ashley (The Hookup (Moonlight and Motor Oil, #1))
And love never really dies, but it does fade, as you well know.” He looked back at Izzy. “And when it fades, the part that remains teaches us how to love better the next time,” she said softly, putting her hand on his forearm.
Kristen Ashley (The Hookup (Moonlight and Motor Oil, #1))
The shallow forests toward the west glowed with an almost preternatural haze, and the highway blacktop shimmered beneath a slick cocktail of rainwater and motor oil.
Ronald Malfi (Bone White)
Creasy, when she’d defended him, was a man like used motor oil. If you tried to get a grip on him, he slipped through your fingers, leaving you with the feel of grit and dirt and a desire to wash yourself clean.
William Kent Krueger (The River We Remember)
He was a boy breaking out and into himself at once. That's what I wanted—not merely the body, desirable as it was, but its will to grow into the very world that rejects its hunger. Then I wanted more, the scent, the atmosphere of him, the taste of French fries and peanut butter under the salve of his tongue, the salt around his neck from two hour drives to nowhere and a Burger King at the edge of the county, a day of tense talk with his old man, the rust from the electric razor he shared with that old man, how I would always find it on the sink in its sad plastic case, the tobacco, weed and cocaine smoke on his fingers mixed with motor oil, all of it accumulating into the afterscent of wood smoke caught and soaked in his hair, as if when he came to me, his mouth wet and wanting, he came from a place on fire, a place he could never return to.
Ocean Vuong (On Earth We're Briefly Gorgeous)
She was iron,” I whispered. “Iron and steel and granite and everything strong packaged up in feathers and goose down and kitten fur and everything soft.
Kristen Ashley (The Hookup (Moonlight and Motor Oil, #1))
You named your cats after Charlie’s Angels?” he asked. “They don’t fight crime. They mostly just shed, eat, nap and make me feel inferior. But they’re still beautiful.
Kristen Ashley (The Hookup (Moonlight and Motor Oil, #1))
Exposure to nature - cold, heat, water - is the most dehumanizing way to die. Violence is passionate and real - the final moments as you struggle for your life, firing a gun or wrestling a mugger or screaming for help, your heart pumps loudly and your body tingles with energy; you are alert and awake and, for that brief moment, more alive and human than you've ever been before. Not so with nature. At the mercy of the elements the opposite happens: your body slows, your thoughts grow sluggish, and you realize just how mechanical you really are. Your body is a machine, full of tubes and valves and motors, of electrical signals and hydraulic pumps, and they function properly only within a certain range of conditions. As temperatures drop, your machine breaks down. Cells begin to freeze and shatter; muscles use more energy to do less; blood flows too slowly, and to the wrong places. Your sense fade, your core temperature plummets, and your brain fires random signals that your body is too weak to interpret or follow. In that stat you are no longer a human being, you are a malfunction - an engine without oil, grinding itself to pieces in its last futile effort to complete its last meaningless task.
Dan Wells (I Am Not a Serial Killer (John Cleaver, #1))
She shouldn’t have looked for the dreamers. She should have found a man who knows all the different types of motor oil.
Kristen Ashley (The Hookup (Moonlight and Motor Oil, #1))
I make love like sausage is to bacon as brick is to blanket. Somebody get me some utensils. And some lubrication (not Castrol Motor Oil).

Dark Jar Tin Zoo (Love Quotes for the Ages. Specifically Ages 19-91.)
Magnolias don't look like that," Ignatius said, thrusting his cutlass at the offending pastel magnolia. "You ladies need a course in botany. And perhaps geometry, too." "You don't have to look at our work," an offended voice said from the group, the voice of the lady who had drawn the magnolia in question. "Yes, I do!" Ignatius screamed. "You ladies need a critic with some taste and decency. Good heavens! Which one of you did this camellia? Speak up. The water in this bowl looks like motor oil." "Let us alone," a shrill voice said. "You women had better stop giving teas and brunches and settle down to the bustiness of learning how to draw," Ignatius thundered. "First, you must learn how to handle a brush. I would suggest that you all get together and paint someone's house for a start." "Go away." "Had you 'artists' had a part in the decoration of the Sistine Chapel, it would have ended up looking like a particularly vulgar train terminal," Ignatius snorted.
John Kennedy Toole (A Confederacy of Dunces)
Ranger slung an arm around my shoulders and kissed me on the top of my head. “Someday I need to talk to you about car care.” “I know about car care. I kept a case of motor oil in the back.” “That’s my girl.” His Porsche 911 turbo
Janet Evanovich (Smokin' Seventeen (Stephanie Plum #17))
We all gotta settle in with what we got and just rejoice if life gives us more or gives us better.
Kristen Ashley (The Hookup (Moonlight and Motor Oil, #1))
You deserve to be the love of someone's life, not the one who followed that first act.
Kristen Ashley (The Hookup (Moonlight and Motor Oil, #1))
Fuck,” he whispered, his arms spasming around me. My voice got soft again. “Johnny, it’s okay.” His voice got soft too. “I wish I met you before she fucked me up.
Kristen Ashley (The Hookup (Moonlight and Motor Oil, #1))
Give me five more seconds.” “Why? Just to stand in the bathroom and hold me?” “Yeah.” My God. This man. I moved my hand to stroke his beard at his jaw, whispering, “Toby.” “Waited a long time for this five seconds.
Kristen Ashley (The Slow Burn (Moonlight and Motor Oil, #2))
After drinks, we’ll come back to my place and I’ll fuck you stupid.
Kristen Ashley (The Hookup (Moonlight and Motor Oil, #1))
We fight wars over dirt and oil and ego when we should fight wars against men who force women to live that kind of life with their children.
Kristen Ashley (The Hookup (Moonlight and Motor Oil, #1))
Her skin felt smooth and firm. Her hair smelled faintly of motor oil. Her mouth tasted like coffee. She was absolutely real, and it was the sexiest combination on the planet.
Jerry Stahl (Permanent Midnight)
But I did feel the grace of God last night, a different kind of god, one made of thunder and motor oil and wicked deeds, held together by leather and ink.
Giana Darling (Welcome to the Dark Side (The Fallen Men, #2))
In books, boys smell of a variety of unrealistic things (unicorn dust, freshly chopped down pine trees, the motor oil of classic cars), but he’s so . . . familiar. Baking spices. Cologne.
Carlie Sorosiak (Wild Blue Wonder)
Vic just laughed at that, didn’t bother to tell him she had pulled his cell phone apart and shoved it in the garbage the day before. He took her in his arms, held her in his bearish embrace. He was a big man, glum about being overweight, but he smelled better than any guy she had ever met. His chest smelled of cedar and motor oil and the outdoors. He smelled like responsibility. For a moment, being held by him, she remembered what it had been like to be happy.
Joe Hill (NOS4A2)
Modernity has abandoned the household gods, not because we have rejected the idolatry as all Christians must, but because we have rejected the very idea of the household. We no longer worship Vesta, but have only turned away from her because our homes no longer have any hearths. Now we worship Motor Oil. If our rejection of the old idols were Christian repentance, God would bless it, but what is actually happening is that we are sinking below the level of the ancient pagans. But when we turn to Christ in truth, we find that He has ordained every day of marriage as a proclamation of his covenant with the church. A man who embraces what is expected of him will find a good wife and a welcoming hearth. He who loves his wife loves himself.
Douglas Wilson (Angels in the Architecture: A Protestant Vision for Middle Earth)
My grandfather was an exception among Chileans because no man from the middle class up knows how to decipher a manual, nor does he dirty his hands with motor oil—that’s what maestros are for; they can improvise ingenious solutions with the most modest resources and a minimum of fuss.
Isabel Allende (My Invented Country: A Nostalgic Journey Through Chile)
Was it Roosevelt who said, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself”? But he was never locked in a store in the dark, pumped full of adrenaline, covered in motor oil, with dozens of eager monsters banging on the gate six feet away, determined to kill him. I’m sure he would’ve been afraid. Fucking afraid.
Manel Loureiro (Apocalypse Z: The Beginning of the End (Apocalypse Z, #1))
Potter," Lily greeted him, eyes wide. James blushed and crossed his arms over his chest nervously, leaving motor oil streaks on his skin. "Oh, umm... Hi." He cleared his throat as he attempted to lean up against the wall, only to have the small amount of oil left on his palm cause him to slip and stumble and leave a greasy print behind.
Shaya Lonnie (The Debt of Time)
Is she back?” “Oh no. Hell no.” His forehead rolled on mine as he underlined a negative I thought I understood, but when he went on I would find I did not. “She doesn’t get this. She doesn’t get us. We’ve talked about her all we’re ever gonna talk about her. She doesn’t get to be a part of whatever it is that’s gonna be the me and you we become.
Kristen Ashley (The Hookup (Moonlight and Motor Oil, #1))
She was three years ago, Eliza. I loved her. That fact doesn’t change. I loved her and she wrecked me when she left because that was how much I loved her. I’m not going to apologise for that or deny it or walk on eggshells with you about it while we figure out what we got and why it’s so fuckin’ good and so fuckin’ intense and so fuckin’ everything.
Kristen Ashley (The Hookup (Moonlight and Motor Oil, #1))
You Gamble men really don’t fuck around, do you?” “No, babe, we don’t.
Kristen Ashley (The Slow Burn (Moonlight and Motor Oil, #2))
She gave him another soft look before she hid it and sassed, “You’re into me too.” “Totally into you,” he admitted openly.
Kristen Ashley (The Slow Burn (Moonlight and Motor Oil, #2))
He tasted her, finally tasted Adeline… And what was left of him she didn’t already have was lost. To her.
Kristen Ashley (The Slow Burn (Moonlight and Motor Oil, #2))
The going will get tough, and you’ll stick. We’ll fight, and you’ll stick. Our world could rock, Eliza, and there’s one thing I’m certain about, you’ll stick.
Kristen Ashley (The Hookup (Moonlight and Motor Oil, #1))
we take care of each other. And we look after those in our hearts and lives. So the Forrester Girls Club has a new member, baby. And he’s got a dick.
Kristen Ashley (The Hookup (Moonlight and Motor Oil, #1))
He told us never to willfully break a woman’s heart because there’d come a time when a woman would break ours and we’d feel what we’d made her feel and we wouldn’t be able to live with the guilt.
Kristen Ashley (The Hookup (Moonlight and Motor Oil, #1))
He wept when his father died and sobbed when he lost his mother, but way before that he told us only stupid men hide emotion. There’s strength in being who you are and feeling what you feel and not giving a shit what people think. He said one of the worst things a man could be is inauthentic. He told us never to willfully break a woman’s heart because there’d come a time when a woman would break ours and we’d feel what we’d made her feel and we wouldn’t be able to live with the guilt. He loved us and he showed it. He was proud of us and he showed it.” Johnny Gamble talking about his father
Kristen Ashley (The Hookup (Moonlight and Motor Oil, #1))
Don't think of this as extinction. Think of this as downsizing. For thousands of years, human beings had screwed up and trashed and crapped on this planet, and now history expected me to clean up after everyone. I have to wash out and flatten my soup cans. And account for every drop of used motor oil. And I have to foot the bill for nuclear waste and buried gasoline tanks and landfilled toxic sludge dumped a generation before I was born.
Chuck Palahniuk (Fight Club)
instance, he and a friend set a cat on fire. The previous year a neighbor’s dog returned home half-castrated, and the neighbor suspected Steve was behind that, too. He once threatened to run his former girlfriend off the road and shoot out her car windows. He told her he was going to put sugar in her gas tank, and a week later she found sand in her motor oil. He was so distraught over their break-up that he told her he was going to burn down her parents’ house
Michael Griesbach (The Innocent Killer: A True Story of a Wrongful Conviction and its Astonishing Aftermath)
She was iron,” I whispered. “Iron and steel and granite and everything strong packaged up in feathers and goose down and kitten fur and everything soft. She was the most precious gift I’ve ever received and will be until I have my own babies.
Kristen Ashley (The Hookup (Moonlight and Motor Oil, #1))
Life wasn’t about disappointment. Life was a journey. The journey of finding what I’d seen on my sister’s face the night before. Finding your place. Finding your people. And settling in so when those cold winds blew, you had warmth to see you through.
Kristen Ashley (The Slow Burn (Moonlight and Motor Oil, #2))
Then came cheap oil, electricity, and the motorized centrifugal pump. Finally freed from all constraints but nature’s (irrigation would last only as long as the finite aquifer held out), the farmers began pumping in the finest California tradition—which is to say, as if tomorrow would never come.
Marc Reisner (Cadillac Desert: The American West and Its Disappearing Water)
There is a tendency among environmentalists to single out the big players in the market as the principal culprits: to pin environmental crime on those – like oil companies, motor manufacturers, logging corporations, agribusinesses, supermarkets – that make their profits by exporting their costs to others (including others who are not yet born). But this is to mistake the effect for the cause. In a free economy such ways of making money emerge by an invisible hand from choices made by all of us. It is the demand for cars, oil, cheap food and expendable luxuries that is the real cause of the industries that provide these things. Of course it is true that the big players externalize their costs whenever they can. But so do we. Whenever we travel by air, visit the supermarket, or consume fossil fuels, we are exporting our costs to others, and to future generations. A free economy is driven by individual demand. And in a free economy individuals, just as much as big businesses, strive to pass on their costs to others, while keeping the benefits. The solution is not the socialist one, of abolishing the free economy, since this merely places massive economic power in the hands of unaccountable bureaucrats, who are equally in the business of exporting their costs, while enjoying secure rents on the social product.16 The solution is to adjust our demands, so as to bear the costs of them ourselves, and to find the way to put pressure on businesses to do likewise. And
Roger Scruton (Green Philosophy: How to think seriously about the planet)
Should the soul vanish from the earth, the motors would stop, because that is the power which keeps them going—not the oil under the floor under her feet, the oil that would then become primeval ooze again—not the steel cylinders that would become stains of rust on the walls of the caves of shivering savages—the power of a living mind—the power of thought and choice and purpose.
Ayn Rand (Atlas Shrugged)
A petrol engine is sheer magic,” he said to me once. “Just imagine being able to take a thousand different bits of metal . . . and if you fit them all together in a certain way . . . and then if you feed them a little oil and petrol . . . and if you press a little switch . . . suddenly those bits of metal will all come to life . . . and they will purr and hum and roar . . . they will make the wheels of a motor-car go whizzing round at fantastic speeds . . .
Roald Dahl (Danny the Champion of the World)
As Marlboro Man slid open the huge barn doors and flipped on the enormous lights mounted to the beams, my heart began beating quickly. I couldn’t wait to smell its puppy breath. “Happy wedding,” he said sweetly, leaning against the wall of the barn and motioning toward the center with his eyes. My eyes adjusted to the light…and slowly focused on what was before me. It wasn’t a pug. It wasn’t a diamond or a horse or a shiny gold bangle…or even a blender. It wasn’t a love seat. It wasn’t a lamp. Sitting before me, surrounded by scattered bunches of hay, was a bright green John Deere riding lawn mower--a very large, very green, very mechanical, and very diesel-fueled John Deere riding lawn mower. Literally and figuratively, crickets chirped in the background of the night. And for the hundredth time since our engagement, the reality of the future for which I’d signed up flashed in front of me. I felt a twinge of panic as I saw the tennis bracelet I thought I didn’t want go poof, disappearing completely into the ether. Would this be how presents on the ranch would always be? Does the world of agriculture have a different chart of wedding anniversary presents? Would the first anniversary be paper…or motor oil? Would the second be cotton or Weed Eater string? I would add this to the growing list of things I still needed to figure out.
Ree Drummond (The Pioneer Woman: Black Heels to Tractor Wheels)
The houses were left vacant on the land and the land was vacant because of this. Only the tractor sheds of corrugated iron, silver and gleaming were alive, and they were alive with metal and gasoline and oil, discs of the plows shining. The tractors had lights shining, for there is no day and night for a tractor, and the discs turn the earth in the darkness and they glitter in the daylight. And when a horse stops work and goes into the barn, there is a life and vitality left. There is a breathing and a warmth, and the feet shift on the straw, and the jaws champ on the hay, and the ears and the eyes are alive. There is a warmth of life in the barn and the heat and smell of life, but when the motor of a tractor stops it is as dead as the ore it came from. The heat goes out of it like the living heat that leaves a corpse. Then the corrugated iron doors are closed and the tractor man drives home to town, perhaps twenty miles away, and he need not come back for weeks or months, for the tractor is dead. And this is easy and efficient. So easy, that the wonder goes out of work. So efficient, that the wonder goes out of land, the working of it, and with the wonder, the deep understanding and the relation. And in the tractor man the grows the contempt that comes only to a stranger who has little understanding and no relation, for nitrates are not the land, nor phosphates, and the length of fiber in the cotton is not the land. Carbon is not a man, nor salt, water, nor calcium. He is all these, but he is much more, much more. And the land is so much more than its analysis. The man who is more than his chemistry walking on the earth, turning his plow point for a stone, dropping his handles to slide over an outcropping, kneeling in the earth to eat his lunch, that man who is more than his elements knows the land that is more than it's analysis. But the machine man, driving a dead tractor on land he does not know and love understands only chemistry, and he is contemptuous of the land and of himself. When the corrugated iron doors are shut he goes home, and his home is not the land.
John Steinbeck (The Grapes of Wrath)
Lucid Motors was started under the name Atieva (which stood for “advanced technologies in electric vehicle applications” and was pronounced “ah-tee-va”) in Mountain View in 2008 (or December 31, 2007, to be precise) by Bernard Tse, who was a vice president at Tesla before it launched the Roadster. Hong Kong–born Tse had studied engineering at the University of Illinois, where he met his wife, Grace. In the early 1980s, the couple had started a computer manufacturing company called Wyse, which at its peak in the early 1990s registered sales of more than $480 million a year. Tse joined Tesla’s board of directors in 2003 at the request of his close friend Martin Eberhard, the company’s original CEO, who sought Tse’s expertise in engineering, manufacturing, and supply chain. Tse would eventually step off the board to lead a division called the Tesla Energy Group. The group planned to make electric power trains for other manufacturers, who needed them for their electric car programs. Tse, who didn’t respond to my requests to be interviewed, left Tesla around the time of Eberhard’s departure and decided to start Atieva, his own electric car company. Atieva’s plan was to start by focusing on the power train, with the aim of eventually producing a car. The company pitched itself to investors as a power train supplier and won deals to power some city buses in China, through which it could further develop and improve its technology. Within a few years, the company had raised about $40 million, much of it from the Silicon Valley–based venture capital firm Venrock, and employed thirty people, mostly power train engineers, in the United States, as well as the same number of factory workers in Asia. By 2014, it was ready to start work on a sedan, which it planned to sell in the United States and China. That year, it raised about $200 million from Chinese investors, according to sources close to the company.
Hamish McKenzie (Insane Mode: How Elon Musk's Tesla Sparked an Electric Revolution to End the Age of Oil)
Taking away coffee from Americans is like taking away oil from the motors.
M.F. Moonzajer (LOVE, HATRED AND MADNESS)
he was reveling in the possibilities inherent in selling a car that behaved like a fighter jet. “Yeah, it’s mad,” he continued, with a dimpled grin. And then he added, “In the option selection, you’ll be able to choose three settings: Normal, Sport, and Insane.” A ripple of laughter washed over the crowd. Then, as if to reassure himself as much as everyone else: “It will actually say ‘Insane.’” He hunched his shoulders forward and laughed. Videos posted by people who had experienced “Insane Mode” during test rides at the event appeared on YouTube the next day. Invariably, the accompanying commentary was littered with expletives and other delighted expressions of shock as the car’s spine-straightening acceleration took effect. In the weeks and months that followed, more reaction videos appeared and spread, with one especially spicy compilation coming to accrue more than ten million views. Insane Mode could be seen as more than just a product feature, more than just a marketing gimmick. It would be the mind-set required to fend off the short-sellers of Tesla’s stock, traditional automakers, political opponents, and an increasingly nervous oil industry. It represented the intensity of fervor needed to win the public over to electric cars. And it was a statement about the velocity of innovation required to transition the world to sustainable energy before the planet’s climate changes beyond repair. Even as a feature for a luxury motor vehicle, though, Insane Mode was audacious in both intent and implication.
Hamish McKenzie (Insane Mode: How Elon Musk's Tesla Sparked an Electric Revolution to End the Age of Oil)
it was the tzero that ultimately caught their imagination, like it did for Musk. Eberhard, who was growing increasingly worried about global warming, saw potential for commercialization and a chance to show that gasoline wasn’t the only answer for motor vehicles. At the same time, he and Tarpenning had noticed that lithium-ion batteries had been improving at a rapid rate and were getting cheaper, thanks largely to their use in laptop computers. The auto industry, too, no longer seemed as impenetrable as it once was. Since the 1990s, automakers had been outsourcing many aspects of vehicle production, including the sourcing of components and in some cases even assembly. The men figured it would be possible for a start-up to design and build at least a prototype, with the hope of later raising more money to advance their ambitions. If things went well, a low-volume electric sports car with kick-ass acceleration might
Hamish McKenzie (Insane Mode: How Elon Musk's Tesla Sparked an Electric Revolution to End the Age of Oil)
his peers have expressed considerably more skepticism. “There is nothing Tesla [can] do that we cannot also do,” Fiat Chrysler CEO Sergio Marchionne said in June 2016. Two years earlier, he had asked customers not to buy the Fiat 500e electric car, because the company lost $14,000 on the sale of each one. Fiat would sell the minimum number of electric cars needed to meet government mandates and “not one more,” he said. In April 2016, Marchionne continued that theme in an interview on the sidelines of his company’s annual meeting, this time responding to the price of the Model 3. If Musk could show him that the car would be profitable at the $35,000 price tag, Marchionne said, “I will copy the formula, add the Italian design flair, and get it to the market within twelve months.” The German automakers have been even more dismissive. In November 2015, Edzard Reuter, the former CEO of Daimler, called Tesla a “joke” and Musk a “pretender,” suggesting in an interview with a German newspaper that Tesla didn’t stand up to serious comparison with “the great car companies of Germany.” Daimler, BMW, and Volkswagen were slow to accept that Tesla could one day challenge their market dominance. “German carmakers have been in denial that electric vehicles can create an emotional appeal to customers,” Arndt Ellinghorst, an automotive analyst at Evercore ISI, told the Los Angeles Times in April 2016. “Many still believe that Tesla is a sideshow catering to a niche product to some tree-hugging Californians and eccentric US hedge fund managers.” GM wasn’t quite so blasé. In 2013, then CEO Dan Akerson established a team within the company to study Tesla, based on the belief that it could be a big disrupter. GM’s Chevrolet Volt, a hybrid sedan that could drive about forty miles in full electric mode, had won Motor Trend’s 2011 Car of the Year, but GM was looking further into the future. At the 2015 Detroit auto show, it unveiled a concept of the Chevy Bolt, a two-hundred-mile electric car that would retail for $30,000 (after a $7,500 rebate from the US government). It was seen as a direct response to Tesla and new CEO Mary Barra’s biggest risk since she took over in 2014. Wired magazine celebrated the Bolt’s impending arrival with a February 2016 cover story about how GM had beaten Tesla “in the race to build a true electric car for the masses
Hamish McKenzie (Insane Mode: How Elon Musk's Tesla Sparked an Electric Revolution to End the Age of Oil)
The tech start-up world from which Musk hails embraces disruption as one of its organizing principles, encouraged in part by the influential blog TechCrunch, which named its flagship conference, TechCrunch Disrupt, for the concept. Silicon Valley’s budding capitalists have long been encouraged to use their software prowess and processes to disrupt existing industries, and hence we have Facebook, which disrupted the news media industry, Airbnb, which disrupted hotels, and crowdfunding, which disrupted traditional investing. When Ted Craver asked Musk to share his thoughts on disruption with an audience of old-school electricity providers, you could see why the chairman might nervously fiddle with his pen. Could Tesla, with its emerging energy-storage business, disrupt the utilities? It might have come as some comfort to those at the conference that Musk is no fan of disruption. Indeed, he and Straubel were probably there to convince utilities to work with Tesla on energy storage projects that could benefit both parties. But the industry’s fear that it might have been on the wrong side of history would not have dissipated completely. The same was true for at least one auto industry leader. The man who, until May 2017, was CEO of the Ford Motor Company is one person who does appear to be a fan of disruption. Mark Fields, a Harvard business grad and Clayton Christensen follower, was fifty-three when he was appointed to succeed outgoing CEO Alan Mulally.
Hamish McKenzie (Insane Mode: How Elon Musk's Tesla Sparked an Electric Revolution to End the Age of Oil)
It was 1908 when Henry Ford unveiled the first Model T, a product that would reorient the infrastructure of civilization, and around which civilization would reorient itself. Just over a century later, Elon Musk unveiled the Model S at a time when civilization is more than ready for a cultural rebirth—one that could be catalyzed by something as innocuous as a beautiful car that drives itself. Autonomy, after all, is a term not limited to the automatic control of a motor vehicle. Its meaning also speaks of self-determination. It is through the power of this autonomy that we can turn a revolution into a renaissance.
Hamish McKenzie (Insane Mode: How Elon Musk's Tesla Sparked an Electric Revolution to End the Age of Oil)
If the apology is true, my beautiful queens, a genuinely kind heart is an open heart you never close against anybody.
Kristen Ashley (The Slow Burn (Moonlight and Motor Oil, #2))
According to a 1936 report from Ambassador William Dodd to President Roosevelt, a half-dozen key U.S. companies—International Harvester, Ford, General Motors, Standard Oil of New Jersey, and du Pont—had become deeply involved in German weapons production, in part because of difficulties in repatriating profits from more conventional business.
Christopher Simpson (The Splendid Blond Beast: Money, Law, and Genocide in the Twentieth Century (Forbidden Bookshelf))
Credit” is the third-person singular conjugation of the present tense of the Latin verb credere, “to believe.” It’s the most exceptional and interesting thing in the financial world. Similar leaps of belief underlie every human transaction in life: Your wife might cheat on you, but you hope otherwise. The online store you paid may not ship you your goods, but you trust otherwise. Credit derivatives are just the explicit encapsulations of such beliefs, in financial and contractual form, for corporate entities. Unlike other financial securities, such as shares of IBM stock or oil futures, a credit derivative is not even some theoretical value of a tangible good. It’s the perceived value of a complete intangible, the perception of the probability of meeting some future obligation. People often asked me in the early days of my tech career how I had gone from Wall Street to ads technology. Such a person almost certainly knew nothing about either industry, or the answer would have been obvious. I did the same thing the whole time: putting a price on a human’s perception, be it of a General Motors bond or a pair of shoes coveted on Zappos. It’s the same difference either way; only the scale of the money pile changes.
Antonio García Martínez (Chaos Monkeys: Obscene Fortune and Random Failure in Silicon Valley)
Iz, I hate to break this to you,” she started, swinging out an arm, “but bad stuff, really bad stuff, happens. Even in Mayberry.” I didn’t think of Matlock as Mayberry. With the gazebo in the square and the cute shops and handsome buildings with their bright bunting all around it, I thought it looked more like Stars Hollow.
Kristen Ashley (The Hookup (Moonlight and Motor Oil, #1))
Helpful Tips For Getting The Nutrition You Need Your interest in nutrition means that you are probably already a label reader as you traverse the supermarket aisles. You also hear about food and nutrition on the evening news. The knowledge you acquire about nutrition for optimal health can truly be life-changing. These tips will help you in your efforts to get the health and energy-giving nutrients that you need. Remember that portions are extremely important. To make sure you are eating the correct portion sizes, fill up your plate with the healthiest foods first and then the least healthy. It also helps to eat the foods on your plate in the same order. Carefully inspect food labels to determine the nutrition facts. Just because something says that it has reduced fat doesn't mean that it is full of healthy ingredients. Avoid highly processed foods when losing weight. Any label that is trustworthy is a label that has ingredients which are common and that people know what they are. Avoid buying foods with a lot of artificial ingredients listed on their label. Take some ideas from other countries when evaluating your nutrition. For centuries, other cultures have incorporated unusual and inventive ingredients that can be very good for you. Taking the time to research some of these ideas and finding the ingredients, can definitely add some spice to a potentially boring menu. Treatment Wheatgrass shoots may not be rated #1 in taste, but they contain many nutrients and vitamins that are great for your nutrition. Incorporate more wheatgrass in your diet to get healthy. It is a great way to detoxify your body and rebuild your bloodstream. In fact, it is a great treatment for anyone with blood disorders. Sugary drinks like apple juice contain a large amount of sugar. People who are trying to lose weight should avoid fruit drinks because they are deceptively filled with carbohydrates. Oranges, apples, and peaches all contain very high levels of sugar which in turn provides a ton of calories. Hospitals are often known to use fruit juice as a treatment for severely malnourished patients, due to its caloric value. These are just a few ideas that can get you going in the right direction or that can give you some new ways to get the nutrients that you need. Don't expect instant results - this is a long-term process. Ignoring the advice is like running a motor without ever changing the oil. Sure, you won't see any effects for a long time, but little by little the motor is sustaining irreversible damage. Don't let that happen to your body!
heroindetox
Let’s call it a draw,” Molly said. “This is a family full of good-looking men, particularly their father.” Charley covered her ears. “Tell me when it’s over,” she said to her sister Hannah. Hannah patted her good knee. “There’s nothing sexier than the smell of motor oil and sweat on a man after a hard day of work,” Hannah said, fanning her face as the others screamed with laughter.
Marie Force (Ain't She Sweet (Green Mountain, #6))
His brother Najib owned an auto-parts store at bustling Shikarpur Gate, the mouth of the narrow road linking their village to the city—an ancient byway that had once led southward through the passes all the way to India. At dusk it is clogged with a riot of vegetable sellers’ handcarts beset by shoppers, Toyota pickup trucks, horse-drawn taxis, and three-wheeled rickshaws clambering around and through the throng like gaudy dung beetles. Nurallah’s brother Najib had gone to Chaman, just across the border in Pakistan, where the streets are lined with cargo containers serving as shops, and used motor oil cements the dust to the ground in a glossy tarmac, and every variety of automotive organ or sinew is laid bare, spread out, and strung up for sale. He had made his purchases and set off back to Kandahar. “He paid his customs dues”—Nurallah emphasized the remarkable point—“because that’s the law. He paid at every checkpoint on the way back, fifty afghanis, a hundred afghanis.” A dollar or two every time an unkempt, underage police boy in green fatigues slouched out of a sandbagged lean-to into the middle of the road—eight times in the sixty-six miles when last I counted. “And then when he reached the entrance to town, the police there wanted five hundred afghanis. Five hundred!” A double arch marks the place where the road that swoops down from Kabul joins the road leading in from Pakistan. The police range from one side to the other, like spear fishermen hunting trout in a narrows. “He refused,” Nurallah continued. “He said he had paid his customs dues—he showed them the receipt. He said he had paid the bribes at every checkpoint all along the way, and he was not paying again.” I waited a beat. “So what happened?” “They reached into his window and smacked him.” “They hit him?” I was shocked. Najib might be a sunny guy, but Kandahar tempers are strung on tripwires. For a second I thought we’d have to go bail him out. “What did he do?” Nurallah’s eyes, beneath his widow’s peak, were banked and smoldering. “What could he do? He paid the money. But then he pulled over to the side of the road and called me. I told him to stay right there. And I called Police Chief Matiullah Qatih, to report the officer who was taking the bribes.” And Matiullah had scoffed at him: Did he die of it? The police buzzards had seen Najib make the call. They had descended on him, snatched the phone out of his hand, and smashed it. “You call that law?” Now Nurallah was ablaze. “They’re the police! They should be showing people what the law is; they should be enforcing the law. And they’re the ones breaking it.” Nurallah was once a police officer himself. He left the force the day his own boss, Kabul police chief Zabit Akrem, was assassinated in that blast in the mosque in 2005.1 Yet so stout was Nurallah’s pride in his former profession that he brought his dark green uniform into work and kept it there, hung neatly on a hook in his locker. “My sacred oath,” he vowed, concluding: “If I see someone planting an IED on a road, and then I see a police truck coming, I will turn away. I will not warn them.” I caught my breath. So maybe he didn’t mean it literally. Maybe Nurallah wouldn’t actually connive with the Taliban. Still, if a former police officer like him was even mouthing such thoughts, then others were acting on them. Afghan government corruption was manufacturing Taliban.
Sarah Chayes (Thieves of State: Why Corruption Threatens Global Security)
Instead, the weeds are being read as a parable, a lesson that a monolithic, oil-based urban culture is unsustainable in the twenty-first century, and that there might be other, more ecologically gentle ways of living in cities. Families too poor to buy fresh food are starting neighbourhood organic farms on the sites of demolished local blocks. Young people from all over America – musicians, Green activists, social pioneers – are flooding into the abandoned areas, keen to experiment with new patterns of urban living which accept nature – including its weedy frontiersmen – rather than attempting to drive it out. As Julien Temple, director of the remarkable TV documentary Requiem for Detroit, has written: ‘amid the ruins of the Motor City it is possible to find a first pioneer’s map to the post-industrial future that awaits us all’.
Richard Mabey (Weeds: In Defense of Nature's Most Unloved Plants)
Outside the closed windshield, birds hovered mid-air, held aloft by the relentless breeze. Lethbridge was a prairie city, dusty and slow-moving, but it had one constant that separated it from other places on the flatland: Wind. Bracing for it, Lou swung the door open and caught the handle before the gusts could tear it from her hand. Black hair whipped around her face. Scents rose and swirled past, carried by the breeze. Lou breathed in sunbaked soil and sparse golden grasses, motor oil and fast food.
Danika Stone (The Dark Divide)
Many major automakers have established research centers in Silicon Valley to work on autonomy, including Nissan, Toyota, Mercedes, Ford, and GM. The newcomers—Apple, Lucid Motors, Faraday Future, Byton, and Nio—have made autonomy central to their business models and established software development teams in California. Che He Jia and Singulato Motors are working on the technology in Beijing and Shanghai. In the meantime, other tech companies and start-ups, such as Uber, Lyft, Comma.ai, Nauto, Luminar, Aurora, Caracal, Starsky Robotics, and Zoox, are all chasing variations of the self-driving prize, be it for cars, buses, or trucks.
Hamish McKenzie (Insane Mode: How Elon Musk's Tesla Sparked an Electric Revolution to End the Age of Oil)
Booze is the oil in our motors, the thing that keeps us purring when we should be making other kinds of noise.
Kristi Coulter (Nothing Good Can Come from This)
Product scope. Is motor oil used in cars part of the same industry as motor oil used in trucks and stationary engines? The oil itself is similar. But automotive oil is marketed through consumer advertising, sold to fragmented customers through powerful channels, and produced locally to offset the high logistics costs of small packaging. Truck and power generation lubricants face a different industry structure—different customers and selling channels, different supply chains, and so on. From a strategy perspective, these are distinct industries.
Joan Magretta (Understanding Michael Porter: The Essential Guide to Competition and Strategy)
They are alive, she thought, but their soul operates them by remote control. Their soul is in every man who has the capacity to equal this achievement. Should the soul vanish from the earth, the motors would stop, because that is the power which keeps them going—not the oil under the floor under her feet, the oil that would then become primeval ooze again—not the steel cylinders that would become stains of rust on the walls of the caves of shivering savages—the power of a living mind—the power of thought and choice and purpose.
Ayn Rand (Atlas Shrugged)
Driving University: Listen to audio books or financial news radio while stuck in traffic. Traffic nuisances transformed to education. Exercise University: Absorb books, podcasts, and magazines while exercising at the gym. In between sets, on the treadmill, or on the stationary bike, exercise is transformed to education. Waiting University: Bring something to read with you when you anticipate a painful wait: Airports, doctor’s offices, and your state’s brutal motor vehicle department. Don’t sit there and twiddle your thumbs—learn! Toilet University: Never throne without reading something of educational value. Extend your “sit time” (even after you finish) with the intent of learning something new, every single day. Toilet University is the best place to change your oil, since it occurs daily and the time expenditure cannot be avoided. This means the return on your time investment is infinite! Toilet time transformed to education. Jobbing University: If you can, read during work downtimes. During my dead-job employment (driving limos, pizza delivery) I enjoyed significant “wait times” between jobs. While I waited for passengers, pizzas, and flower orders, I read. I didn’t sit around playing pocket-poker; no, I read. If you can exploit dead time during your job, you are getting paid to learn. Dead-end jobs transformed to education. TV-Time University: Can’t wean yourself off the TV? No problem; put a television near your workspace and simultaneously work your Fastlane plan while the TV does its thing. While watching countless reruns of Star Trek, boldly going where no man has gone before, I simultaneously learned how to program websites. In fact, as I write this, I am watching the New Orleans Saints pummel the New England Patriots on Monday Night Football. Gridiron gluttony transformed to work and education.
M.J. DeMarco ([The Millionaire Fastlane: Crack the Code to Wealth and Live Rich for a Lifetime!] [By: DeMarco, MJ] [January, 2011])
Whether it’s a symphony or a coal mine, all work is an act of creating and comes from the same source: from an inviolate capacity to see through one’s own eyes—which means: the capacity to perform a rational identification—which means: the capacity to see, to connect and to make what had not been seen, connected and made before. That shining vision which they talk about as belonging to the authors of symphonies and novels—what do they think is the driving faculty of men who discovered how to use oil, how to run a mine, how to build an electric motor? That sacred fire which is said to burn within musicians and poets—what do they suppose moves an industrialist to defy the whole world for the sake of his new metal, as the inventors of the airplane, the builders of the railroads, the discoverers of new germs or new continents have done through all the ages? . . . An intransigent devotion to the pursuit of truth, Miss Taggart? Have you heard the moralists and the art lovers of the centuries talk about the artist’s intransigent devotion to the pursuit of truth? Name me a greater example of such devotion than the act of a man who says that the earth does turn, or the act of a man who says that an alloy of steel and copper has certain properties which enable it to do certain things, and it is and does—and let the world rack him or ruin him, he will not bear false witness to the evidence of his mind! This,
Ayn Rand (Atlas Shrugged)
So, let’s remember exactly what we’ve been up to, because it should fill us with awe; it’s by far the biggest thing humans have ever done. Those of us in the fossil fuel–consuming classes have, over the last two hundred years, dug up immense quantities of coal and gas and oil, and burned them: in car motors, basement furnaces, power plants, steel mills.
Bill McKibben (Falter: Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out?)
Not as troubling as your hair. Did you fight an owl last night?” I reached up to feel the springy locks of hair that had gone rogue. They were numerous, free of any pattern, and vaguely damp from the dew that settled on me in the night. I’d need a hat and some motor oil to slick them down; when my hair gets crazy, it becomes an alien life form that can threaten cities.
Terry Maggert (Halfway Dead (Halfway Witchy, #1))
When we look beyond the conventional matrix, we will realize that we do not actually have an energy crisis. If we can look beyond the illusions created by big energy corporations, we will realize that we already have the necessary technologies to solve the energy crisis. Right now we have technologies that can give us an abundance of clean energies, such as cold fusion (non-radioactive) and magnetic motors. Even better, we have the technology to tap into the limitless energy in space, such as zero-point technology. These alternative energy methods have been suppressed and hidden from us for two main reasons: profit and control. Many inventors who tried to build technologies to utilize free energy were manipulated, bought off or even assassinated by the people who control the big energy corporations. Unless we wake up and take actions to stop them from controlling us, the energy crisis will get out of control and many people will perish. The Gulf of Mexico oil disaster is a wake-up call for all of us. If we do not learn from this mistake, there will be major consequences for years to come.
Pao Chang (Staradigm: A Blueprint for Spiritual Growth, Happiness, Success and Well-Being)
When I was a child, I enjoyed thinking about the future, and especially loved to imagine flying around in one of those cool bubble cars I’d seen on The Jetsons cartoons. Here we are, fifty years later, and we have the same gas- and oil-guzzling motor vehicles, the same basic planes, the same trains, the same utility companies to monitor and charge for our electricity, gas, and water usage. Jimmy Carter talked a lot about new sources of energy back in the 1970s. So did some of the hippies. And yet, decades later, there has been little progression on this front.
Donald Jeffries (Hidden History: An Exposé of Modern Crimes, Conspiracies, and Cover-Ups in American Politics)
Tongues and odors mixed on the air: Iskari and motor oil, sweat and leather, Camlaander and Archipelagese and some Shining Empire dialect like silk-muffled cymbals.
Max Gladstone (Full Fathom Five (Craft Sequence, #3))
At the mercy of the elements the opposite happens: your body slows, your thoughts grow sluggish, and you realize just how mechanical you really are. Your body is a machine, full of tubes and valves and motors, of electrical signals and hydraulic pumps, and they function properly only within a certain range of conditions. As temperatures drop, your machine breaks down. Cells begin to freeze and shatter; muscles use more energy to do less; blood flows too slowly, and to the wrong places. Your senses fade, your core temperature plummets, and your brain fires random signals that your body is too weak to interpret or follow. In that state you are no longer a human being, you are a malfunction—an engine without oil, grinding itself to pieces in its last futile effort to complete its last meaningless task.
Dan Wells (I Am Not a Serial Killer (John Cleaver, #1))
By 2030, China will need the same amount of oil that is now being consumed in the United States. At this time, the U.S. uses over eighteen million barrels of oil a day, almost nine million of which is consumed by motor vehicles.2
Perry Stone (Unusual Prophecies Being Fulfilled Book 8: The Seal of Satan - The Mysterious Mark and Number of the Coming Antichrist)
made of iron and steel and everything strong all bound up in feathers and kitten fur and everything soft.
Kristen Ashley (The Hookup (Moonlight and Motor Oil, #1))
Sex was more of a mechanical need to ‘oil the motor’ and keep me somewhat cooled off. I never understood why people made such a big deal about sex. It did nothing more for me than a good workout could get me.
S.K. Pryntz (Shattered Reflections (Reflections #1))
After several failed attempts to negotiate a settlement, Abdulaziz invaded Yemen. One Saudi column led by his eldest son, Prince Saud, captured Najran and advanced to Sa’dah, the center of today’s Houthi movement. Facing tremendous difficulties with mountainous terrain and tribesmen, he subsequently had no more success than the Roman General Gallus had had 2,000 years earlier or the Royal Saudi Air Force would have eighty years later. A second column led by the second son, Prince Faisal, was more successful. Using motor transport and modern weapons paid for with a loan from the newly arrived Standard Oil of California (today’s Chevron), Faisal advanced rapidly down the flat Red Sea coast.38 The Yemeni coastal tribes—notably, the Zaraniq—are Shafi Sunnis and were happy to join the war against the Zaydi Shia. They facilitated the surrender of the coastal city of Hodeidah without a fight.
David Rundell (Vision or Mirage: Saudi Arabia at the Crossroads)
The millennia-old way of life of the Arabian nomads began changing rapidly in the 1940s. Even before the oil era, the development of motorized transport in Saudi Arabia and other Middle Eastern countries had deprived the camel-breeders of the main markets for their livestock. With the creation of the centralized state, they lost their income from raids on settled peoples and from the duties imposed on caravans.
Alexei Vassiliev (The History of Saudi Arabia)
In the background, given my commitment to the outer ecology of environmentalism, I replaced all the company cars with diesels, which used less crude oil and lasted longer than gasoline engines. The diesel cars did pay off briefly during the Second Energy Crisis of 1979, but they gave us a lot of trouble in the long run because the diesel-powered Oldsmobile station wagons that General Motors rushed into production had nothing but a beefed-up gasoline engine (internal pressures are much greater in a diesel) and they were in the shop more often than on the road. We aggressively redesigned the stores to conserve energy. To this day, Trader Joe’s stores don’t have very many windows, and all panes of glass are very small, an idea that had an accidental payoff in every subsequent earthquake and riot. As the young lady said back there in the God of Fair Beginnings chapter, I did the right thing for the wrong reasons.
Joe Coulombe (Becoming Trader Joe: How I Did Business My Way and Still Beat the Big Guys)
Since the time of Edison, American business innovation and entrepreneurship have given the United States a technological edge over geopolitical rivals and ensured U.S. military supremacy. Ford’s mass-produced trucks and cars proved critical in many battles of World War I in overcoming Germany’s advantageous access to European railroad transport. Over the course of the war, the United States manufactured more than 70 percent of all allied war material, with Ford Motor Company alone contributing more than the entire Italian national war effort. By the 1940s, the U.S. domestic oil industry, dominated by Rockefeller’s Standard Oil, constituted two-thirds of world oil production and was a crucial factor in closing Britain’s fuel deficit compared to Germany and Japan.
Amy Myers Jaffe (Energy's Digital Future: Harnessing Innovation for American Resilience and National Security (Center on Global Energy Policy Series))
year-old man in a matter of hours.”13 Moored alongside the West Virginia inboard to Ford Island, the Tennessee had taken two bomb hits from the high-altitude bombers of the first wave. Far more seriously, the Tennessee had been inundated by a wall of blazing oil and debris blowing onto its stern from the burning Arizona. The heat was intense, and fires started on the stern and port quarter of the ship. There were no thoughts about abandoning ship, but with his crew engaged in major firefighting efforts, the Tennessee’s captain tried to move his ship forward to escape the inferno astern. He signaled for all engines ahead five knots, but the Tennessee didn’t budge. The battleship was wedged too tightly against the quays by the stricken West Virginia. Nonetheless, its engines were kept turning throughout the day and long into the night so that the propeller wash would keep the burning oil from the Arizona away from its stern as well as the West Virginia. As it was, one of the Tennessee’s motor launches caught fire from the burning oil and sank as it tried to rescue survivors.
Walter R. Borneman (Brothers Down: Pearl Harbor and the Fate of the Many Brothers Aboard the USS Arizona)
The world of 1800 was closer to the world of 1500 than it was to the mundane realities of 1900.50 By 1900, half of the world’s fuel production came from coal and oil, electricity generation was rapidly expanding, and new prime movers—steam engines, internal combustion engines, steam and water turbines, and electric motors—were creating new industries and transportation capabilities.
Vaclav Smil (Size: How It Explains the World)
A red toy lawnmower and a small pink scooter rested on its square of grass. They stepped from the car into a smell of lawn clippings and motor oil. The quiet felt abrupt, as if children had been playing there just moments before.
Jennifer Egan (The Candy House)
Dagny, we who’ve been called ‘materialists’ by the killers of the human spirit, we’re the only ones who know how little value or meaning there is in material objects as such, because we’re the ones who create their value and meaning. We can afford to give them up, for a short while, in order to redeem something much more precious. We are the soul, of which railroads, copper mines, steel mills and oil wells are the body—and they are living entities that beat day and night, like our hearts, in the sacred function of supporting human life, but only so long as they remain our body, only so long as they remain the expression, the reward and the property of achievement. Without us, they are corpses and their sole product is poison, not wealth or food, the poison of disintegration that turns men into hordes of scavengers. Dagny, learn to understand the nature of your own power and you’ll understand the paradox you now see around you. You do not have to depend on any material possessions, they depend on you, you create them, you own the one and only tool of production. Wherever you are, you will always be able to produce. But the looters—by their own stated theory—are in desperate, permanent, congenital need and at the blind mercy of matter. Why don’t you take them at their word? They need railroads, factories, mines, motors, which they cannot make or run. Of what use will your railroad be to them without you? Who held it together? Who kept it alive? Who saved it, time and time again? Was it your brother James? Who fed him? Who fed the looters? Who produced their weapons? Who gave them the means to enslave you? The impossible spectacle of shabby little incompetents holding control over the products of genius—who made it possible? Who supported your enemies, who forged your chains, who destroyed your achievement?
Ayn Rand (Atlas Shrugged)
Pooling on the grimy asphalt of a city street or oozing onto the dirt floor of a mud hut, blood is placidly silent and more akin to used motor oil or spilled chocolate syrup than a vital life force. But smeared and sprayed with all the attendant gore against the crystalline white backdrop of snow, it becomes the visual equivalent of a scream.
Marc Cameron (Stone Cross (Arliss Cutter #2))
Today he smells like motor oil. It's sort of exotic-erotic.
Eliot Schrefer (The Darkness Outside Us (The Darkness Outside Us, #1))
Do yourself a favor and run down the list of businesses started during depressions or economic crises. Fortune magazine (ninety days after the market crash of 1929) FedEx (oil crisis of 1973) UPS (Panic of 1907) Walt Disney Company (After eleven months of smooth operation, the twelfth was the market crash of 1929.) Hewlett-Packard (Great Depression, 1935) Charles Schwab (market crash of 1974–75) Standard Oil (Rockefeller bought out his partners in what became Standard Oil and took over in February 1865, the final year of the Civil War.) Coors (Depression of 1873) Costco (recession in the late 1970s) Revlon (Great Depression, 1932) General Motors (Panic of 1907) Procter & Gamble (Panic of 1837) United Airlines (1929) Microsoft (recession in 1973–75) LinkedIn (2002, post–dot-com bubble) For the most part, these businesses had little awareness they were in some historically significant depression. Why? Because the founders were too busy existing in the present—actually dealing with the situation at hand.
Ryan Holiday (The Obstacle Is the Way: The Timeless Art of Turning Trials into Triumph)
The houses were left vacant on the land, and the land was vacant because of this. Only the tractor sheds of corrugated iron, silver and gleaming, were alive; and they were alive with metal and gasoline and oil, the disks of the plows shining. The tractors had lights shining, for there is no day and night for a tractor and the disks turn the earth in the darkness and they glitter in the daylight. And when a horse stops work and goes into the barn there is a life and a vitality left, there is a breathing and a warmth, and the feet shift on the straw, and the jaws champ on the hay, and the ears and the eyes are alive. There is a warmth of life in the barn, and the heat and smell of life. But when the motor of a tractor stops, it is as dead as the ore it came from. The heat goes out of it like the living heat that leaves a corpse. Then the corrugated iron doors are closed and the tractor man drives home to town, perhaps twenty miles away, and he need not come back for weeks or months, for the tractor is dead. And this is easy and efficient. So easy that the wonder goes out of work, so efficient that the wonder goes out of land and the working of it, and with the wonder the deep understanding and the relation. And in the tractor man there grows the contempt that comes only to a stranger who has little understanding and no relation. For nitrates are not the land, nor phosphates; and the length of fiber in the cotton is not the land. Carbon is not a man, nor salt nor water nor calcium. He is all these, but he is much more, much more; and the land is so much more than its analysis. The man who is more than his chemistry, walking on the earth, turning his plow point for a stone, dropping his handles to slide over an outcropping, kneeling in the earth to eat his lunch; that man who is more than his elements knows the land that is more than its analysis. But the machine man, driving a dead tractor on land he does not know and love, understands only chemistry; and he is contemptuous of the land and of himself. When the corrugated iron doors are shut, he goes home, and his home is not the land.
John Steinbeck (The Grapes of Wrath)
Directors of the League were identified as also being directors of U.S. Steel, General Motors, Standard Oil, Chase National Bank, Goodyear Tire, and Mutual Life Insurance Company.
Anne Venzon Jules Archer (The Plot to Seize the White House: The Shocking TRUE Story of the Conspiracy to Overthrow F.D.R.)
She left. I wasn’t Sleeping Beauty, unconscious and unmoving, waiting for her to return. Life happens and it happened. I met you.
Kristen Ashley (The Hookup (Moonlight and Motor Oil, #1))
A good engine oil can breathe new life in a car If you want to keep your vehicle running smoothly in cold and hot weather conditions then synthetic motor oil is your perfect choice.
Groomyourcar
That man has swagger for days! Those thick thighs, corded forearms - every girl loves arm porn - and the most stunning blue eyes I have ever seen. He smells so masculine like broken hearts, bad decisions, a damn good time, with a hint of motor oil.
Elyse Kelly (The Sweet Spot (Magnolia Springs, #1))