“
You want to know about voting. I'm here to tell you about voting. Imagine you're locked in a huge underground night-club filled with sinners, whores, freaks and unnameable things that rape pitbulls for fun. And you ain't allowed out until you all vote on what you're going to do tonight. You like to put your feet up and watch "Republican Party Reservation". They like to have sex with normal people using knives, guns, and brand new sexual organs you did not even know existed. So you vote for television, and everyone else, as far as your eye can see, votes to fuck you with switchblades. That's voting. You're welcome.
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”
Warren Ellis (Transmetropolitan, Vol. 3: Year of the Bastard)
“
Who’s to say what a ‘literary life’ is? As long as you are writing often, and writing well, you don’t need to be hanging-out in libraries all the time.
Nightclubs are great literary research centers. So is Ibiza!
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”
Roman Payne (Cities & Countries)
“
She went out in the city with its lights like a radioactive phosphorescence, wandered through galleries where the high-priced art on the walls was the same as the graffiti scrawled outside by taggers who were arrested or killed for it, went to parties in hotel rooms where white-skinned, lingerie-clad rock stars had been staying the night their husbands shot themselves in the head, listened to music in nightclubs where stunning boyish actors had OD'd on the pavement.
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Francesca Lia Block (The Rose and the Beast: Fairy Tales Retold)
“
I went to the club to escape my life and pretend I'm somebody else. Now I don't know who I am anymore.
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”
E. Leo Foster
“
At 14, I am an experiment. Inside, I am resurrected. I am in the middle of the kind of explosion of perspective that, in later years, I will pay a great deal of money to emulate in nightclubs, and at parties, in bathrooms--counting out tenners for pills in order to feel a tenth this remorseless, expanded, and inspired.
”
”
Caitlin Moran (How to Be a Woman)
“
She’d been hunting for an indescribable thrill, a feeling she remembered from nights out with her friends, but she’d misunderstood where the feeling came from. It wasn’t about drinking and partying in some dingy club. It had been about the people. The constant laughter they shared, too high on each other to care that they were being obnoxious. Group trips to the bathroom like a small army unit, where the mission objective was helping each other squat over filthy toilets without their dresses touching the seat. Belonging.
”
”
Talia Hibbert (Get a Life, Chloe Brown (The Brown Sisters, #1))
“
Kimrean sighted purple caged dancers, mud wrestlers, tattooed devils, G-stringed Atlases erected like Pillars of Hercules out of a liquid crowd waving in worship of ancient twerk masters summoning cellulite tsunamis.
”
”
Edgar Cantero (This Body's Not Big Enough for Both of Us)
“
You used to be able to spot an ain't-shit man a lot easier. At pool halls and juke joints, speakeasies and rent parties and sometimes in church, snoring in the back pew. The type of man our brothers warned us about because he was going nowhere and he would treat us bad on the way to that nowhere. But nowadays? Most of these young men seem ain't-shit to us. Swaggering around downtown, drunk and swearing, fighting outside nightclubs, smoking reefer in their mamas' basements. When we were girls, a man who wanted to court us sipped coffee in the living room with our parents first. Nowadays, a young man fools around with any girl who's willing and if she gets in trouble - well, you just ask Luke Sheppard what these young men do next.
A girl nowadays has to get nice and close to tell if her man ain't shit and by then, it might be too late. We were girls once. It's exciting, loving someone who can never love you back. Freeing, in its own way. No shame in loving an ain't-shit man, long as you get it out of your system good and early. A tragic woman hooks into an ain't-shit man, or worse, lets him hook into her. He will drag her until he tires. He will climb atop her shoulders and her body will sag from the weight of loving him.
Yes, those are the ones we worry about.
”
”
Brit Bennett (The Mothers)
“
Truth to tell, the modern man is bored to tears in his home; so he goes to his club. The modern woman is bored outside her boudoir; she goes to tea-parties. The modern man and woman are bored at home; they go to night-clubs.
But lesser folk who have no clubs gather together in the evening under the chandelier and hardly dare to walk through the labyrinth of their furniture which takes up the whole room and is all their fortune and their pride.
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”
Le Corbusier (Towards a New Architecture)
“
Despite the blackout, theaters were full, there were plenty of nightclubs for late dancing after restaurants closed, and many people still gave dinner parties, often organized round a son on leave.
”
”
Erik Larson (The Splendid and the Vile: A Saga of Churchill, Family, and Defiance During the Blitz)
“
I adhered to this strategy right up to Mum's death, sharing experiences that I probably should have kept to myself, telling tales of drug-taking and STDs over a cup of tea at the kitchen table, graduating to infertility and marriage breakdown as I got older. There was never any condemnation from Mum, although she did gasp and shake her head sometimes. Whenever my life collapsed – which was often – I'd move back in with her, and no matter my age or what I was up to, she always put a hot-water bottle in my bed at night. [...]
Mum advised, supported and steered me through my many disasters. Whether I'd said something stupid to someone at a party, made a mistake at work, fallen out with a colleague, was lonely, applying for a job, in a difficult relationship or spiked with drugs at a nightclub, she helped me make sense of the situation and find a way forward.
”
”
Viv Albertine (To Throw Away Unopened)
“
To all my friends who constantly talk disparagingly about the supposed 'homosexual lifestyle' and stereotype gay people and the community, I'd like to get this straight.
There are essentially two worlds – the 'gay scene' and the gay (or LGBTIQ) community. The 'scene' is like the tip of the iceberg; what is seen by others because it is visible on a street, suburb or pride parade. Like the ninety percent of the submerged iceberg, the community is larger and less visible. It consists of organisations, groups, support networks and also gay and lesbian singles and couples living 'normal' lives in the suburbs. Occasionally there is an overlap but not often. Some live, socialise and work in both. Many never enter each others worlds. The values, lifestyles and culture of these two worlds are as different as Asian culture is to western is to African is to Middle Eastern.
Dig down even deeper below the surface and you find it is not a single community but diverse communities and subcultures that are separate but not necessarily divided. The common thing that binds them together is their experience of inequality, discrimination and their desire to make a better world for themselves, others and future generations.
If you believe that all gays and lesbians are shallow and obsessed with sex, body image, partying, nightclubs and bars then you are obviously an observer from the outside or mixing in the wrong circles.
”
”
Anthony Venn-Brown OAM (A Life of Unlearning - a journey to find the truth)
“
If you wanted to design the perfect environment for the would-be rapist, then you couldn’t do much better than a party or nightclub filled with young women who are wearing high heels (limiting mobility) and drinking or taking drugs (limiting awareness).
”
”
Louise Perry (The Case Against the Sexual Revolution: A New Guide to Sex in the 21st Century)
“
I thought leaving home would be a liberation. I thought university would be a dance party. I thought I would live in a room vined with fairy lights; hang arabesque tapestries up on the wall. I thought scattered beneath my bed would be a combination of Kafka, coffee grounds, and a lover’s old boxer shorts. I thought I would spend my evenings drinking cheap red wine and talking about the Middle East. I thought on weekends we might go to Cassavetes marathons at the independent cinema. I thought I would know all the good Korean places in town. I thought I would know a person who was into healing crystals and another person who could teach me how to sew. I thought I might get into yoga. I thought going for frozen yogurt was something you would just do. I thought there would be red cups at parties. And I thought I would be different. I thought it would be like coming home, circling back to my essential and inevitable self. I imagined myself more relaxed—less hung up on things. I thought I would find it easy to speak to strangers. I thought I would be funny, even, make people laugh with my warm, wry, and only slightly self-deprecating sense of humor. I thought I would develop the easy confidence of a head girl, the light patter of an artist. I imagined myself dancing in a smoky nightclub, spinning slackly while my arms floated like laundry loose on the breeze. I imagined others watching me, thinking, Wow, she is so free.
”
”
Lara Williams (Supper Club)
“
There’s a thin line between rot and fermentation, and that line might best be understood as an actual line, like the kind you’d find outside a nightclub. Rot is a club where everyone gets in: bacteria and fungi, safe or unsafe, flavor enhancing or destructive. When you ferment something, you’re taking on the role of a bouncer, keeping out unwanted microbes and letting in the ones that are going to make the party pop.
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René Redzepi (Foundations of Flavor: The Noma Guide to Fermentation)
“
Men told Lucia I was lovely looking, but completely cold. Why cold? I let them kiss me when they must, in cabs, dancing in hot nightclubs, at parties. They were not real. Neither was the office.
Clothes were real. I bought many clothes so that, when Peter called up, I could say “come over instantly” and I would be marvellously dressed. I dressed carefully, always, because I might meet some friend of Peter’s, who would go back to him and say, “I saw Patricia; she was looking beautiful.” Then he would call up sooner.
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Ursula Parrott (Ex-Wife)
“
A lot of us who were from Lizzy in particular, those who were in the front line of leadership, we were not drinkers or smokers. We liked to party and have fun, go to the dance/nightclubs, and we would take our tool [gun]. If we see fellas we had to deal with, then we dealt with them. When you look at it, Scrooge was never a drinker or a smoker. I knew he would drink his Guinness every now and then, but other than that, that was it. Then there was Troit, he never used to drink nor smoke. And I could call off a lot of fellas who never used to drink nor smoke, and yet they were die-hard gangsters.
Then he stopped and asked me, Do you used to drink and smoke?
I just smiled and answered, No.
Satisfied with himself, Apples said with passion,
“My point exactly. When we were gangbanging out there, that was our drug. It was the lifestyle itself that got us high. Shelton ‘Apples’ Burrows reform gang leader
”
”
Drexel Deal (The Fight of My Life is Wrapped Up in My Father (The Fight of My Life is Wrapped in My Father Book 1))
“
We shape our buildings,’ he said, ‘and afterwards our buildings shape us. Having dwelt and served for more than forty years in the late Chamber, and having derived very great pleasure and advantage therefrom, I, naturally, should like to see it restored in all essentials to its old form, convenience, and dignity.’28 He believed that the party system was ‘much favoured by the oblong form of the chamber. It is easy for an individual to move through those insensible gradations from Left to Right, but the act of crossing the floor requires serious consideration. I am well informed on this matter.’29 Churchill was also of the view that the Chamber should be capable of fitting only two-thirds of its members, because ‘If the House is big enough to contain all its Members, nine-tenths of its debates will be conducted in the depressing atmosphere of an almost empty or half-empty Chamber. The essence of good House of Commons speaking is the conversational style, the facility for quick, informal interruptions and interchanges.’30 Elsewhere he said of MPs, ‘They must have to crowd to get to their seats. And when it is a great occasion they must stand in the passages, and in the gangways. There must be an air of excitement. Why, even a nightclub can’t succeed if you have a place where everybody could sit or dance.
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Andrew Roberts (Churchill: Walking with Destiny)
“
We’re all going to die, everyone knows that, but back in our time we keep ourselves so busy, so occupied with cell phones and texting, television shows, movies, parties, bars, nightclubs, fancy restaurants, sixty-hour-a-week jobs, shopping, buying clothes and furniture and jewelry, working to save up for a car, a house, a second house, a beach house. Here people have time to live, really live. I’ve done more, I mean drawing, making friends, doing things that really matter, than I did my entire life before.
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”
Jerry Dubs (Imhotep (Imhotep #1))
“
General Gerardo Machado always had an eye for the ladies and enjoyed partying at the swankiest nightclubs in Havana. For a time he even owned his own club, which was the place for his political hacks to be seen. Machado was frequently there in the company of some of the most enticing ladies in the country.
Through a combination of threats and bribery, he maintained control of the Army. In April of 1928 the Cuban Congress at the behest of Machado passed a law barring any presidential nominations by any party other than the Liberal, Conservative and Popular parties. Interestingly enough Machado declared himself the only legal candidate for those parties, and thus ran for a second term unopposed. Not only had he overspent money from the national treasury, but now he also alienated the Cuban public, who denounced him as an authoritarian nationalist and tyrant. Students, labor unions and intellectuals branded him an outright dictator. It was during this time that Marxist thinking was gaining strength throughout the world. The Communist philosophy was also becoming ever more popular among intellectuals, professors and students at the Universidad de La Havana. Realizing that he was now in danger of losing control, Machado made a power grab and declared Martial Law in Cuba. Intent on holding on to power, he became even more despotic than ever, creating a secret police known to the people as La Porra, meaning a big stick! As President, Machado became openly vindictive and did not hesitate to torture or even assassinate his foes in order to maintain tight sway over the Cuban population.
With the Great Depression of 1928, things only got worse. The economy, which was single-sided, was extremely dependent upon sugar. Poverty was widespread, and even necessities all but disappeared, leaving the Cuban people destitute and in misery.
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Hank Bracker
“
But Larson was also more than even his combined, prolific creative output. While he was known for leaving parties to go home and fix songs, he would also charm the ladies, attend New York’s most exclusive nightclub, and obsessively follow the New York Mets. He was the man who called his friends in the middle of the day to play Frisbee, sent cards on every possible occasion, and hosted generous holiday meals. An awkward introvert who wanted to be a star. A self-confident composer who knew how good his work was - and how terrified he was of never being able to make a living from it. A broke waiter who produced some of the most advanced demo recordings of his day. A ladies’ man who became one of the gay community’s most important straight allies in the 1990s, as his work spread a message of tolerance around the world. A man who composed fun, catchy songs but rarely listened to music for pleasure as an adult. A performer who wanted to be Billy Joel but wrote lyrics like Harry Chapin. A driven creative who took as few shifts as possible to focus on his music, turning poverty into creativity: a simple 4th of July party meant a hand-coloured collage for an invitation, and Larson’s annual Peasant Feast pot-luck meals at Christmas were the season’s highlight for all attending. A passionate progressive who would be endlessly disappointed that RENT could still cause controversy after so many years.
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”
J. Collis (Boho Days: The Wider Works of Jonathan Larson)
“
It took her back to the heady days of her twenties, when it was fashionable for girls to kiss each other, at nightclubs or parties, usually for the benefit of the boys watching. Then, like now, Ella had enjoyed the kisses more than she felt she should.
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Sally Hepworth (Uncharted Waters (Getaway, #1))
“
Indeed, you didn’t need to upset him with a critical newspaper article, Sinatra was violent on an equal opportunity basis. Yet, always with some heavyweight help nearby. The columnist Lee Mortimer was held down by toughs outside Ciro’s nightclub on Sunset Strip as Sinatra punched and kicked him about. On the couch you could argue it was the way he was brought up. There were lurid stories about sex parties and his on-off infatuation with Lana Turner who had her own close mobster associations with muscle man Johnny Stompanato and a strong, platonic friendship with his boss Mickey Cohen. With Bing Crosby, who Sinatra saw as a singing rival, she was more familiar.
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Mike Rothmiller (Frank Sinatra and the Mafia Murders)
“
As Amelia explained it to me, because the landlords knew that the coloured folk couldn’t get lodgings in the white neighbourhoods, they could charge more than twice the normal rent. Since coloured folk mostly got paid half of what a white worker got, people in Harlem were nearly always short on the rent. To bridge the gap, the good citizens of Harlem had taken to holding rent parties in which private homes were turned into temporary nightclubs, at 25 cents per guest. Cram enough people in, sell enough hooch and enough food and, even after expenses and paying the entertainment, you could clear a month’s rent, maybe two.
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”
Ben Aaronovitch (The Masquerades of Spring)
“
March 8: Love Happy is released. Marilyn’s total screen time is thirty-eight seconds—long enough for Groucho to respond to her slinking into his detective agency office with the question, “Is there anything I can do for you?” He promptly responds, “What a ridiculous statement.” Marilyn tells him that men keep following her and sways out of camera range as Groucho comments, “Really? I can’t understand why.” Marilyn later recalled, “There were three girls there and Groucho had us each walk away from him. . . . I was the only one he asked to do it twice. Then he whispered in my ear, ‘You have the prettiest ass in the business.’ I’m sure he meant it in the nicest way.” Groucho later said Marilyn was “Mae West, Theda Bara and Bo Peep rolled into one.” Marilyn received $500 for her appearance and another three hundred to pose for promotional photographs. Marilyn is sent on a promotional tour for a fee of one hundred dollars a week. She meets dress manufacturer Henry Rosenfeld in New York City, and they become lifelong friends. During this period she also does her famous Jones Beach photo sessions with Andre de Dienes. The tour takes her to Detroit, Cleveland, Chicago, Milwaukee, and Rockford, Illinois. Marilyn attends a party at the Chicago nightclub Ricketts with Roddy McDowell. Marilyn appears in print advertisement for Kyron diet pills, with accompanying text: “If you want slim youthful lines like Miss Monroe and other stars, start the KYRON Way to slenderness—today!
”
”
Carl Rollyson (Marilyn Monroe Day by Day: A Timeline of People, Places, and Events)
“
She never let her intelligence get in the way of a good time.
”
”
Christopher Paul Meyer (Icarus Falling: The True Story of a Nightclub Bouncer Who Wanted to Be a Fucking Movie Star But Settled for Being a Fucking Man)
“
Partying on the Malecon
One of the most exciting areas in Havana is the Malecon, a protective sea wall which buffers the northern edge of the Vedado neighborhood of Havana, from the Straits of Florida. Busiest during weekends, it is the most popular place to stroll and is an unrivaled meeting spot for guys and dolls. For this activity the primary party area is the corner of the Malecon and La Rampa, and for a country as poor as Cuba the Malecon offers a reasonable form of entertainment and people watching. Although there are nightclubs in Havana, spending an evening along the Malecon, is probably the best way to enjoy the pulse of Havana and offers visitors a chance to interact with friendly locals.
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Hank Bracker (The Exciting Story of Cuba: Understanding Cuba's Present by Knowing Its Past)
“
In fact the massacre at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando in June 2016 had been carried out by a young Muslim who swore allegiance to Islamic State (ISIS). Yet this detail didn’t detain Advocate or the Gay Pride march in New York later the same month. On that occasion the parade led with a huge rainbow banner emblazoned with the words ‘Republican Hate Kills!’, clearly forgetting that Omar Mateen had not been a member of the Republican Party. It
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Douglas Murray (The Madness of Crowds: Gender, Race and Identity)
“
If you are going to notice every little thing in a situation, and if the situation is complicated (many things to remember), intense (noisy, cluttered, etc.), or goes on too long (a two-hour commute), it seems obvious that you will also have to wear out sooner from having to process so much so thoroughly. Others, not noticing much or any of what you have, will not tire as quickly. They may even think it quite strange that you find it too much to sightsee all day and go to a nightclub that night. They might talk blithely on when you need them to be quiet a moment so that you can have some time just to think, or they might enjoy an “energetic” restaurant or a party when you can hardly bear the noise. Indeed this is often the behavior we and others have noticed most—that HSPs are easily stressed by overstimulation
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Elaine N. Aron (The Highly Sensitive Person)
“
January 2014, the Party ordered high-end nightclubs to shut down in Beijing. But David Li’s Moutai Club didn’t close its doors.
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Desmond Shum (Red Roulette: An Insider's Story of Wealth, Power, Corruption, and Vengeance in Today's China)
“
Once, while leaving a nightclub, a famous musician plucked twenty young girls off the dance floor and had them sit in a room next to his recording studio until five in the morning. He took their phones, made them sign NDAs, and put them all together, out of the way, to wait till he was done playing his new album for some friends. Then they would all party, he said. A guy I know was there, and as he was leaving, he saw the girls crowded together. He said the room looked like the DMV. I pictured the girls exhausted, with no internet or cameras or texts to distract themselves. A little drunk. I saw their push-up bras, their curls falling flat under the fluorescent lights. Why do you think they waited in that room, Steve? Maybe many years from now, maybe next week, those girls will suddenly feel upset at something and not know why. Where is this reaction coming from? They really won’t know, they won’t be able to place it, but it will be because of the way they let themselves sit in that room. The way they put on their makeup and dressed themselves up. They’ll feel small and blame no one but themselves. I so desperately craved men’s validation that I accepted it even when it came wrapped in disrespect. I was those girls in that room, waiting, trading my body and measuring my self-worth in a value system that revolves around men and their desire.
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Emily Ratajkowski (My Body)
“
I adhered to this strategy right up to Mum's death, sharing experiences that I probably should have kept to myself, telling tales of drug-taking and STDs over a cup of tea at the kitchen table, graduating to infertility and marriage breakdown as I got older. There was never any condemnation from Mum, although she did gasp and shake her head sometimes. Whenever my life collapsed – which was often – I'd move back in with her, and no matter my age or what I was up to, she always put a hot-water bottle in my bed at night. [...]
Mum advised, supported and steered me through my many disasters. Whether I'd said something stupid to someone at a party, made a mistake at work, fallen out with a colleague, was lonely, applying for a job, in a difficult relationship or spiked with drugs at a nightclub, she helped me make sense of the situation and find a way forward.
”
”
Viv Albertine (To Throw Away Unopened)
“
So just tell your friends the truth. Tell them you're angry, sad, annoyed, hurt, tired, anxious; that you'd rather eat poison than go to a birthday party at a fucking nightclub again, and that you'll just take them out for dinner instead.
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”
Anne T. Donahue (Nobody Cares)
“
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fact the massacre at the Pulse nightclub in Orlando in June 2016 had been carried out by a young Muslim who swore allegiance to Islamic State (ISIS). Yet this detail didn’t detain Advocate or the Gay Pride march in New York later the same month. On that occasion the parade led with a huge rainbow banner emblazoned with the words ‘Republican Hate Kills!’, clearly forgetting that Omar Mateen had not been a member of the Republican Party.
”
”
Douglas Murray (The Madness of Crowds: Gender, Race and Identity)
“
After Netanyahu was defeated in the 1999 election, his more liberal successor, Ehud Barak, made efforts to establish a broader peace in the Middle East, including outlining a two-state solution that went further than any previous Israeli proposal. Arafat demanded more concessions, however, and talks collapsed in recrimination. Meanwhile, one day in September 2000, Likud party leader Ariel Sharon led a group of Israeli legislators on a deliberately provocative and highly publicized visit to one of Islam’s holiest sites, Jerusalem’s Temple Mount. It was a stunt designed to assert Israel’s claim over the wider territory, one that challenged the leadership of Ehud Barak and enraged Arabs near and far. Four months later, Sharon became Israel’s next prime minister, governing throughout what became known as the Second Intifada: four years of violence between the two sides, marked by tear gas and rubber bullets directed at stone-throwing protesters; Palestinian suicide bombs detonated outside an Israeli nightclub and in buses carrying senior citizens and schoolchildren; deadly IDF retaliatory raids and the indiscriminate arrest of thousands of Palestinians; and Hamas rockets launched from Gaza into Israeli border towns, answered by U.S.-supplied Israeli Apache helicopters leveling entire neighborhoods. Approximately a thousand Israelis and three thousand Palestinians died during this period—including scores of children—and by the time the violence subsided, in 2005, the prospects for resolving the underlying conflict had fundamentally changed. The Bush administration’s focus on Iraq, Afghanistan, and the War on Terror left it little bandwidth to worry about Middle East peace, and while Bush remained officially supportive of a two-state solution, he was reluctant to press Sharon on the issue. Publicly, Saudi Arabia and other Gulf states continued to offer support to the Palestinian cause, but they were increasingly more concerned with limiting Iranian influence and rooting out extremist threats to their own regimes.
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Barack Obama (A Promised Land)