Motor Oil Quotes

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.

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.

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.

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

She shouldn’t have looked for the dreamers. She should have found a man who knows all the different types of motor oil.

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).


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.

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

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.

You deserve to be the love of someone's life, not the one who followed that first act.

We all gotta settle in with what we got and just rejoice if life gives us more or gives us better.

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.

After drinks, we’ll come back to my place and I’ll fuck you stupid.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

You Gamble men really don’t fuck around, do you?” “No, babe, we don’t.

She gave him another soft look before she hid it and sassed, “You’re into me too.” “Totally into you,” he admitted openly.

He tasted her, finally tasted Adeline… And what was left of him she didn’t already have was lost. To her.

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 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

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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 . . .

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.

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.

Taking away coffee from Americans is like taking away oil from the motors.

A quick way to improve food-related fuel economy would be to buy a quart of motor oil and drink it.

Maybe there was estrogen in there somewhere. Under the motor oil and f-bombs.

The new GST: A halfway house In spite of all the favourable features of the GST, it introduces the anomaly of having an origin-based tax on interstate trade he proposed GST would be a single levy. 1141 words From a roadblock during the UPA regime, the incessant efforts of the BJP government have finally paved way for the introduction of the goods and services tax (GST). This would, no doubt, be a major reform in the existing indirect tax system of the country. With a view to introducing the GST, Union finance minister Arun Jaitley has introduced the Constitution (122nd Amendment) Bill 2014 in Parliament. The new tax would be implemented from April 1, 2016. Both the government and the taxpayers will have enough time to understand the implications of the new tax and its administrative nuances. Unlike the 119th Amendment Bill, which lapsed with the dissolution of the previous Lok Sabha, the new Bill will hopefully see the light of the day as it takes into account the objections of the state governments regarding buoyancy of the tax and the autonomy of the states. It proposes setting up of the GST Council, which will be a joint forum of the Centre and the states. This council would function under the chairmanship of the Union finance minister with all the state finance ministers as its members. It will make recommendations to the Union and the states on the taxes, cesses and surcharges levied by the Union, the states and the local bodies, which may be subsumed in the GST; the rates including floor rates with bands of goods and services tax; any special rate or rates for a specified period to raise additional resources during any natural calamity or disaster etc. However, all the recommendations will have to be supported by not less than three-fourth of the weighted votes—the Centre having one-third votes and the states having two-third votes. Thus, no change can be implemented without the consent of both the Centre and the states. The proposed GST would be a single levy. It would aim at creating an integrated national market for goods and services by replacing the plethora of indirect taxes levied by the Centre and the states. While central taxes to be subsumed include central excise duty (CenVAT), additional excise duties, service tax, additional customs duty (CVD) and special additional duty of customs (SAD), the state taxes that fall in this category include VAT/sales tax, entertainment tax, octroi, entry tax, purchase tax and luxury tax. Therefore, all taxes on goods and services, except alcoholic liquor for human consumption, will be brought under the purview of the GST. Irrespective of whether we currently levy GST on these items or not, it is important to bring these items under the Constitution Amendment Bill because the exclusion of these items from the GST does not provide any flexibility to levy GST on these items in the future. Any change in the future would then require another Constitutional Amendment. From a futuristic approach, it is prudent not to confine the scope of the tax under the bindings of the Constitution. The Constitution should demarcate the broad areas of taxing powers as has been the case with sales tax and Union excise duty in the past. Currently, the rationale of exclusion of these commodities from the purview of the GST is solely based on revenue considerations. No other considerations of tax policy or tax administration have gone into excluding petroleum products from the purview of the GST. However, the long-term perspective of a rational tax policy for the GST shows that, at present, these taxes constitute more than half of the retail prices of motor fuel. In a scenario where motor fuel prices are deregulated, the taxation policy would have to be flexible and linked to the global crude oil prices to ensure that prices are held stable and less pressure exerted on the economy during the increasing price trends. The trend of taxation of motor fuel all over the world suggests that these items

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.

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.

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.

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.

She left. I wasn’t Sleeping Beauty, unconscious and unmoving, waiting for her to return. Life happens and it happened. I met you.

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.

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.

Forgiveness does for a community what oil does for a motor. If someone begins a trip in a car without a drop of oil in the engine, after a few minutes the whole car will be on fire. Like oil, forgiveness neutralizes friction.

Love never really dies, but it does fade. And when it fades, the part that remains teaches us how to love better the next time.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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’.

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.

made of iron and steel and everything strong all bound up in feathers and kitten fur and everything soft.

We’re allowed to want things and not only earn them and work for them and fight for them, but have someone maybe once in a while give them to us because they love us and they want us to have what we want.

Reacher said, “I’m looking for Jimmy Rat.” The guy glanced at one of the other bikes. Couldn’t help himself. But he said, “Don’t know him,” and walked away, stiff and bow-legged, to the door of the bar. He was pear shaped, and maybe forty years old. Maybe five-ten, and bulky. He had a sallow tan, like his skin was rubbed with motor oil. He pulled the door and stepped inside.

To give me a wife made of iron and steel and everything strong all bound up in feathers and kitten fur and everything soft. One I’ll always know loves me.

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.

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.

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.

You didn’t get much from your dad, but even if it was forged through adversity he gave you the drive to find something better in your life. That’s yours. You work it. You own it. But he gave it to you. I’m not saying you should be grateful. You don’t thank a rapist for teaching you how to be more careful as you walk to your car at night. But you own the strength you earned by getting through that even if it’s all kinds of unfair you had to find that strength. He played a part in making you the Izzy you are, and you should be proud this is who you became when it could have gone another way entirely.

There’s strength in being who you are and feeling what you feel and not giving a shit what people think.

That’s the guy I am. Yours. Simple. That’s it. And you’re mine. Mine, Iz. And 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.

Thank God for you. Dave and you. Thank God Dad had you so he could give you to us. If he hadn’t, I wouldn’t have a lot of things, Margot. Too many to name. It’d take a week just to get through table manners. But there’s a new one now. And that would be, if I didn’t have you, I wouldn’t know how to love her like she needs me to do it.

Ich liebe dich auch.” He kept looking at her. Then he busted out laughing. But while doing it, he curled his Eliza to his front and he kissed her.

Booze is the oil in our motors, the thing that keeps us purring when we should be making other kinds of noise.

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.

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.

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.

Pear Muffins P MAKES 12 MUFFINS; PREPARATION TIME 15 MINUTES, COOKING TIME 15 MINUTES 1 egg (or egg-free substitute) 1/3 cup golden syrup (for eczema-safe sweeteners see section entitled “Sweetener: rice malt syrup”; see Notes) 1 cup organic soy milk (G) or rice milk (see ‘Non-dairy milks’) 1/2 teaspoon real vanilla essence 1/3 cup rice bran oil 2 cups spelt flour (G) (wholemeal if available) 3 teaspoons baking powder (wheat-free) 1/2 teaspoon bicarbonate of soda (baking soda) 2 large ripe pears, peeled and diced Preheat the oven to 180°C (355°F). Place paper patty pans into the holes of a 12-cup muffin tray (or alternatively grease the muffin tray holes with rice bran oil). In a food processor, blend the egg, golden syrup, milk and vanilla essence until smooth. Then, while the motor is running, open the shute and slowly drizzle in the rice bran oil and blend well until smooth and creamy. In a separate bowl, sift the flour, baking powder and bicarbonate of soda and mix. Add the dry ingredients to the wet ingredients and briefly mix on low speed until combined (or alternatively use a spoon to mix). Then using a spoon, gently mix in the diced pear. Spoon the mixture into each muffin cup, filling each only three-quarters. Bake for 15 minutes or until slightly golden on top. Test with a toothpick to see if cooked; the toothpick should come out clean. NOTES These muffins can be stored in the freezer for 3 months. If golden syrup is not available use real maple syrup or rice malt syrup (rice malt syrup is not as sweet). If using egg, don’t eat the raw muffin mixture (see ‘Biotin’). Stage 2 only: if you are not sensitive to cinnamon, sprinkle a little cinnamon into the muffin mix before cooking.

If anyone recognized Lucas Randall, he was a dead man. He knocked on the plain black door and shifted his weight from one foot to the other. The start of a beard sprouted from his grimy cheeks. Motor oil rimmed his fingernails, and the smell of it radiated from his clothes in subtle waves. Even his old scuffed trainers were smeared with grease. He hunched his shoulders and stuffed his hands deep into the pockets of a stained nylon jacket, shivering from the cold.

you’re about to hear the most important thing a man can tell you. That’s what you do. That’s your job. The most important job you’ll ever have. You find a woman and you let her live with her head in the clouds. But even if you’re flyin’ a plane or swimmin’ with the dolphins, you keep your feet firm on the ground so you can keep an eye on her. Don’t ever take your eye off her, boy, don’t ever let her crash to the ground.” Dave fell silent a moment and his voice was gruff when he finished. “Let her fly.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Today he smells like motor oil. It's sort of exotic-erotic.

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?

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.

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,

Do not ever, to anyone, for any reason, get into debt, my queens, she’d said, more than once. A kind-hearted soul can be a lender, but a borrower you should never be. Debt is a string. Strings tie you down. And I want my queens to fly free.