O Stock Quotes

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

That's not a run in your stocking, it's a hand on your leg.
Frank O'Hara
I have found, in short, from reading my own writing, that my subject in fiction is the action of grace in territory largely held by the devil. I have also found that what I write is read by an audience which puts little stock either in grace or the devil. You discover your audience at the same time and in the same way that you discover your subject, but it is an added blow.
Flannery O'Connor (Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose (FSG Classics))
But land is land, and it's safer than the stocks and bonds of Wall Street swindlers.
Eugene O'Neill (Long Day’s Journey into Night)
I could barely manage myself sometimes, let alone some miniature kleinman person whose sole method of communication was crying. How would I know what she wanted? How would I keep her happy?
M.J. O'Shea (Stuff My Stocking: M/M Romance Stories that are Nice and… Naughty)
If you cannot understand my argument, and declare "It's Greek to me", you are quoting Shakespeare; if you claim to be more sinned against than sinning, you are quoting Shakespeare; if you recall your salad days, you are quoting Shakespeare; if you act more in sorrow than in anger; if your wish is farther to the thought; if your lost property has vanished into thin air, you are quoting Shakespeare; if you have ever refused to budge an inch or suffered from green-eyed jealousy, if you have played fast and loose, if you have been tongue-tied, a tower of strength, hoodwinked or in a pickle, if you have knitted your brows, made a virtue of necessity, insisted on fair play, slept not one wink, stood on ceremony, danced attendance (on your lord and master), laughed yourself into stitches, had short shrift, cold comfort or too much of a good thing, if you have seen better days or lived in a fool's paradise -why, be that as it may, the more fool you , for it is a foregone conclusion that you are (as good luck would have it) quoting Shakespeare; if you think it is early days and clear out bag and baggage, if you think it is high time and that that is the long and short of it, if you believe that the game is up and that truth will out even if it involves your own flesh and blood, if you lie low till the crack of doom because you suspect foul play, if you have your teeth set on edge (at one fell swoop) without rhyme or reason, then - to give the devil his due - if the truth were known (for surely you have a tongue in your head) you are quoting Shakespeare; even if you bid me good riddance and send me packing, if you wish I was dead as a door-nail, if you think I am an eyesore, a laughing stock, the devil incarnate, a stony-hearted villain, bloody-minded or a blinking idiot, then - by Jove! O Lord! Tut tut! For goodness' sake! What the dickens! But me no buts! - it is all one to me, for you are quoting Shakespeare.
Bernard Levin
Wesley went everywhere with me from then on. I even wrapped him in baby blankets and held him in my arms while grocery shopping, to keep him warm during the first cold winter. Occasionally someone would ask to see "the baby," and when I opened the blanket, would leap back shrieking, "What is that?! A dinosaur?" Apparently, the world is full of educated adults with mortgages and stock portfolios who think people are walking around grocery stores with dinosaurs in their arms.
Stacey O'Brien (Wesley the Owl: The Remarkable Love Story of an Owl and His Girl)
Nearly a Valediction" You happened to me. I was happened to like an abandoned building by a bull- dozer, like the van that missed my skull happened a two-inch gash across my chin. You were as deep down as I’ve ever been. You were inside me like my pulse. A new- born flailing toward maternal heartbeat through the shock of cold and glare: when you were gone, swaddled in strange air I was that alone again, inventing life left after you. I don’t want to remember you as that four o’clock in the morning eight months long after you happened to me like a wrong number at midnight that blew up the phone bill to an astronomical unknown quantity in a foreign currency. The U.S. dollar dived since you happened to me. You’ve grown into your skin since then; you’ve grown into the space you measure with someone you can love back without a caveat. While I love somebody I learn to live with through the downpulled winter days’ routine wakings and sleepings, half-and-half caffeine- assisted mornings, laundry, stock-pots, dust- balls in the hallway, lists instead of longing, trust that what comes next comes after what came first. She’ll never be a story I make up. You were the one I didn’t know where to stop. If I had blamed you, now I could forgive you, but what made my cold hand, back in prox- imity to your hair, your mouth, your mind, want where it no way ought to be, defined by where it was, and was and was until the whole globed swelling liquefied and spilled through one cheek’s nap, a syllable, a tear, was never blame, whatever I wished it were. You were the weather in my neighborhood. You were the epic in the episode. You were the year poised on the equinox.
Marilyn Hacker (Winter Numbers: Poems)
Outside much has changed. I don't know how. But inside and before you, O my God, inside before you, spectator, are we not without action? We discover, indeed, that we do not know our part, we look for a mirror, we want to rub off the make-up and remove the counterfeit and be real. But somewhere a bit of mummery still sticks to us that we forget. A trace of exaggeration remains in our eyebrows, we do not notice that the corners of our lips are twisted. And thus we go about, a laughing-stock, a mere half-thing: neither existing, not actors.
Rainer Maria Rilke (The Notebooks of Malte Laurids Brigge)
The End of the Raven "On a night quite unenchanting, when the rain was downward slanting I awakened to the ranting of the man I catch mice for. Tipsy and a bit unshaven, in a tone I found quite craven, Poe was talking to a Raven perched above the chamber door. 'Raven's very tasty,' thought I, as I tiptoed o'er the floor. 'There is nothing I like more.' [...] Still the Raven never fluttered, standing stock-still as he uttered In a voice that shrieked and sputtered, his two cents' worth -- 'Nevermore.' While this dirge the birdbrain kept up, oh, so silently I crept up, Then I crouched and quickly leapt up, pouncing on the feathered bore. Soon he was a heap of plumage, and a little blood and gore -- Only this and not much more.
Henry N. Beard (Poetry for Cats: The Definitive Anthology of Distinguished Feline Verse)
The moral of the story is: never argue with the market. Your health and peace of mind are always more important than any stock.
William J. O'Neil (How to Make Money in Stocks: A Winning System in Good Times and Bad)
I was having dinner…in London…when eventually he got, as the Europeans always do, to the part about “Your country’s never been invaded.” And so I said, “Let me tell you who those bad guys are. They’re us. WE BE BAD. We’re the baddest-assed sons of bitches that ever jogged in Reeboks. We’re three-quarters grizzly bear and two-thirds car wreck and descended from a stock market crash on our mother’s side. You take your Germany, France, and Spain, roll them all together and it wouldn’t give us room to park our cars. We’re the big boys, Jack, the original, giant, economy-sized, new and improved butt kickers of all time. When we snort coke in Houston, people lose their hats in Cap d’Antibes. And we’ve got an American Express card credit limit higher than your piss-ant metric numbers go. You say our country’s never been invaded? You’re right, little buddy. Because I’d like to see the needle-dicked foreigners who’d have the guts to try. We drink napalm to get our hearts started in the morning. A rape and a mugging is our way of saying 'Cheerio.' Hell can’t hold our sock-hops. We walk taller, talk louder, spit further, fuck longer and buy more things than you know the names of. I’d rather be a junkie in a New York City jail than king, queen, and jack of all Europeans. We eat little countries like this for breakfast and shit them out before lunch.
P.J. O'Rourke (Holidays in Hell: In Which Our Intrepid Reporter Travels to the World's Worst Places and Asks, "What's Funny about This?")
The soft sound of the rain on the rooftop sounded like young girls sneaking off in stockings to elope. She felt lonesome for Pierrot.
Heather O'Neill (The Lonely Hearts Hotel)
You starvelling, you eel-skin, you dried neat’s-tongue, you bull’s-pizzle, you stock-fish—O for breath to utter what is like thee!—you tailor’s-yard, you sheath, you bow-case, you vile standing tuck!
Lian Dolan (Elizabeth the First Wife)
After all,' added Sheala, pouting her lips, 'it's befallen all of us at some time. Each of us, sitting here, has been cheated, taken advantage of, and made a laughing stock of by some man, at some time.
Andrzej Sapkowski (Pani Jeziora (Saga o Wiedźminie, #5))
One can try to evade the problem by adopting a ‘morality of intentions’. What’s important is what I intend, not what I actually do or the outcome of what I do. However, in a world in which everything is interconnected, the supreme moral imperative becomes the imperative to know. The greatest crimes in modern history resulted not just from hatred and greed, but even more so from ignorance and indifference. Charming English ladies financed the Atlantic slave trade by buying shares and bonds in the London stock exchange, without ever setting foot in either Africa or the Caribbean. They then sweetened their four o’clock tea with snow-white sugar cubes produced in hellish plantations – about which they knew nothing.
Yuval Noah Harari (21 Lessons for the 21st Century)
The whole secret to winning big in the stock market is not to be right all the time, but to lose the least amount possible when you’re wrong.
William J. O'Neil (How to Make Money in Stocks: A Winning System in Good Times and Bad)
I stand on the corner of the block slinging amethyst rocks. Drinkin 40’s of mother earth’s private nectar stock. Dodgin cops. ’Cause Five-O be the 666 and I need a fix of that purple rain. The type of shit that drives membranes insane. Oh yeah, I’m in the fast lane. Snorting candy yams. That free my body and soul and send me like Shazaam! Never question who I am. God knows. And I know God, personally. In fact, he lets me call him me. I be one with rain and stars and things, with dancing feet and watermelon wings. I bring the sunshine and the moon. And wind blows my tune.
Saul Williams (The Dead Emcee Scrolls: The Lost Teachings of Hip-Hop)
I watch the stock-car races sometimes but you don't see anything but cars. I know about Fireball Roberts though and I watched an interview with Tiny Lunn. He is a huge dead-serious innocent-faced boy who must have made it big, he had just won the one in Jacksonville when I saw him but he never smiled once.
Flannery O'Connor (The Habit of Being: Letters of Flannery O'Connor)
What city doesn’t like to brag about itself? The gargoyle fauns leaned off the front of the buildings, whispering about their sex lives. The fat catfish in the greenhouse swore they had stock market tips. The horses on the carousel reared their heads, ready for a battle against the mermaid statues in the pond. An electric train rode around and around a tiny mountain in the toy-shop window, while its Lilliputian passengers dreamed in tiny berths.
Heather O'Neill (The Lonely Hearts Hotel)
So-called Islamic 'fundamentalism' does not spring, in Pakistan, from the people. It is imposed on them from above. Autocratic regimes find it useful to espouse the rhetoric of faith, because people respect that language, are reluctant to oppose it. This how religions shore up dictators; by encircling them with words of power, words which the people are reluctant to see discredited, disenfranchised, mocked. But the ramming-down-the-throat point stands. In the end you get sick of it, you lose faith in the faith, if not qua faith then certainly as basis for a state. And then the dictator falls, and it is discovered that he had brought God down with him, that the justifying myth of the nation has been unmade. This leaves only two options: disintegration, or a new dictatorship ... no, there is a third, and I shall not be o pessimistic as to deny its possibility. The third option is the substitution of a new myth for the old one. Here are three such myths, all available from stock at short notice: liberty; equality; fraternity. I recommend them highly.
Salman Rushdie (Shame)
There was music from my neighbor's house through the summer nights. In his blue gardens men and girls came and went like moths among the whisperings and the champagne and the stars. At high tide in the afternoon I watched his guests diving from the tower of his raft, or taking the sun on the hot sand of his beach while his two motor-boats slit the waters of the Sound, drawing aquaplanes over cataracts of foam. On week-ends his Rolls-Royce became an omnibus, bearing parties to and from the city between nine in the morning and long past midnight, while his station wagon scampered like a brisk yellow bug to meet all trains. And on Mondays eight servants, including an extra gardener, toiled all day with mops and scrubbing-brushes and hammers and garden-shears, repairing the ravages of the night before. Every Friday five crates of oranges and lemons arrived from a fruiterer in New York--every Monday these same oranges and lemons left his back door in a pyramid of pulpless halves. There was a machine in the kitchen which could extract the juice of two hundred oranges in half an hour if a little button was pressed two hundred times by a butler's thumb. At least once a fortnight a corps of caterers came down with several hundred feet of canvas and enough colored lights to make a Christmas tree of Gatsby's enormous garden. On buffet tables, garnished with glistening hors-d'oeuvre, spiced baked hams crowded against salads of harlequin designs and pastry pigs and turkeys bewitched to a dark gold. In the main hall a bar with a real brass rail was set up, and stocked with gins and liquors and with cordials so long forgotten that most of his female guests were too young to know one from another. By seven o'clock the orchestra has arrived, no thin five-piece affair, but a whole pitful of oboes and trombones and saxophones and viols and cornets and piccolos, and low and high drums. The last swimmers have come in from the beach now and are dressing up-stairs; the cars from New York are parked five deep in the drive, and already the halls and salons and verandas are gaudy with primary colors, and hair shorn in strange new ways, and shawls beyond the dreams of Castile. The bar is in full swing, and floating rounds of cocktails permeate the garden outside, until the air is alive with chatter and laughter, and casual innuendo and introductions forgotten on the spot, and enthusiastic meetings between women who never knew each other's names. The lights grow brighter as the earth lurches away from the sun, and now the orchestra is playing yellow cocktail music, and the opera of voices pitches a key higher. Laughter is easier minute by minute, spilled with prodigality, tipped out at a cheerful word. The groups change more swiftly, swell with new arrivals, dissolve and form in the same breath; already there are wanderers, confident girls who weave here and there among the stouter and more stable, become for a sharp, joyous moment the centre of a group, and then, excited with triumph, glide on through the sea-change of faces and voices and color under the constantly changing light. Suddenly one of the gypsies, in trembling opal, seizes a cocktail out of the air, dumps it down for courage and, moving her hands like Frisco, dances out alone on the canvas platform. A momentary hush; the orchestra leader varies his rhythm obligingly for her, and there is a burst of chatter as the erroneous news goes around that she is Gilda Gray's understudy from the FOLLIES. The party has begun.
F. Scott Fitzgerald (The Great Gatsby)
My old man 16 years old during the depression I’d come home drunk and all my clothing– shorts, shirts, stockings– suitcase, and pages of short stories would be thrown out on the front lawn and about the street. my mother would be waiting behind a tree: “Henry, Henry, don’t go in . . .he’ll kill you, he’s read your stories . . .” “I can whip his ass . . .” “Henry, please take this . . .and find yourself a room.” but it worried him that I might not finish high school so I’d be back again. one evening he walked in with the pages of one of my short stories (which I had never submitted to him) and he said, “this is a great short story.” I said, “o.k.,” and he handed it to me and I read it. it was a story about a rich man who had a fight with his wife and had gone out into the night for a cup of coffee and had observed the waitress and the spoons and forks and the salt and pepper shakers and the neon sign in the window and then had gone back to his stable to see and touch his favorite horse who then kicked him in the head and killed him. somehow the story held meaning for him though when I had written it I had no idea of what I was writing about. so I told him, “o.k., old man, you can have it.” and he took it and walked out and closed the door. I guess that’s as close as we ever got.
Charles Bukowski (Love Is a Dog from Hell)
ECKHART TOLLE: HELPING PEOPLE ACHIEVE INNER PEACE AND GREATER FULFILLMENT, A PREREQUISITE TO OPTIMIZED TRADING AND LIVING
Gil Morales (Trade Like an O'Neil Disciple: How We Made Over 18,000% in the Stock Market (Wiley Trading Book 494))
You start making big money in the market and you think you know something—you don’t know anything! It’s the market that knows something, not you!
Gil Morales (Trade Like an O'Neil Disciple: How We Made Over 18,000% in the Stock Market (Wiley Trading Book 494))
Remember that, in reality, there is no failure, only feedback, and that if we learn from our failures, we are actually failing forward.
Gil Morales (Trade Like an O'Neil Disciple: How We Made Over 18,000% in the Stock Market (Wiley Trading Book 494))
A pair of stockings is no less suitable o make a painting of than wood,nails,turpentine,oil,and fabric.
Robert Rauschenberg
investment books in the library. The best was How to Trade in Stocks, by Jesse Livermore.
William J. O'Neil (How to Make Money in Stocks: A Winning System in Good Times and Bad)
Big market price changes happen when lots of people are forced to reevaluate their prejudices, not necessarily when the world actually changes. — Colm O'Shea
Jack D. Schwager (Hedge Fund Market Wizards: How Winning Traders Win (Market Wizards, #4))
Charts plus earnings will help you tell the best stocks and general markets from the weaker, riskier stocks and markets that you must avoid altogether.
William J. O'Neil (How to Make Money in Stocks: A Winning System in Good Times and Bad)
Also, if one of the indexes is down for the day on volume larger than the prior day’s volume, it should decline more than 0.2% for this to be counted as a distribution day. After
William J. O'Neil (How to Make Money in Stocks: A Winning System in Good Times and Bad)
LARRY comes to the door and opens it a trifle—then, with a puzzled expression, pulls it wide. ANNA CHRISTOPHERSON enters. She is a tall, blond, fully-developed girl of twenty, handsome after a large, Viking-daughter fashion but now run down in health and plainly showing all the outward evidences of belonging to the world's oldest profession. Her youthful face is already hard and cynical beneath its layer of make-up. Her clothes are the tawdry finery of peasant stock turned prostitute. She comes and sinks wearily in a chair by the table, left front.
Eugene O'Neill (Anna Christie)
The winning investor’s objective should be to have one or two big winners rather than dozens of very small profits” (How to Make Money in Stocks, 4th ed. [New York: McGraw-Hill, 2009], 274).
Gil Morales (Trade Like an O'Neil Disciple: How We Made Over 18,000% in the Stock Market (Wiley Trading Book 494))
The greatest crimes in modern history resulted not just from hatred and greed, but even more so from ignorance and indifference. Charming English ladies financed the Atlantic slave trade by buying shares and bonds in the London stock exchange, without ever setting foot in either Africa or the Caribbean. They then sweetened their four o'clock tea with snow-white sugar cubes produced in hellish plantations - about which they knew nothing.
Yuval Noah Harari (21 Lessons for the 21st Century)
I made a rule that I’d buy each stock exactly at the pivot buy point and have the discipline not to pyramid or add to my position at more than 5% past that point. Then I’d sell each stock when it was up 20%, while it was still advancing.
William J. O'Neil (How to Make Money in Stocks: A Winning System in Good Times and Bad)
Today I am bothered by the story of King Canute. (...) The story is, of course, that he was so arrogant and despotic a leader that he believed he could control everything - even the tide. We see him on the beach, surrounded by subjects, sceptre in hand, ordering back the heedless waves; a laughing stock, in short. But what if we've got it all wrong? What if, in fact, he was so good and great a king that his people began to elevate him to the status of a god, and began to believe that he was capable of anything? In order to prove to them that he was a mere mortal, he took them down to the beach and ordered back the waves, which of course kept on rolling up the beach. How awful it would be if we had got it so wrong, if we had misunderstood his actions for so long.
Maggie O'Farrell
In a world in which everything is interconnected, the supreme moral imperative becomes the imperative to know. The greatest crimes in modern history resulted not just from hatred and greed, but even more so from ignorance and indifference. Charming English ladies financed the Atlantic slave trade by buying shares and bonds in the London stock exchange, without ever setting foot in either Africa or the Caribbean. They then sweetened their four o'clock tea with snow-white sugar cubes produced in hellish plantations – about which they knew nothing.
Yuval Noah Harari (21 Lessons for the 21st Century)
The paraphernalia is astounding. They are girls who have spent their lives in nothing more than a cotton dress, and here are liberty bodices, vests, stockings, socks, skirts, underskirts, kilts, Fair Isle sweaters, blouses, hats, scarves, coats, gaberdines, all, seemingly, intended to be worn at once.
Maggie O'Farrell (The Vanishing Act of Esme Lennox)
By the time the Victorian era began in 1837, women enjoying almost anything at all was associated with sinfulness. They were seen as the weaker sex who were more prey to temptation, so it was better for everyone involved if they just stayed at home. Maybe even closed inside a stockings drawer or hatbox. Just in case.
Mallory O'Meara (Girly Drinks: A World History of Women and Alcohol)
Jesse Livermore, who declared in How to Trade in Stocks, “I absolutely believe that price movement patterns are being repeated. They are recurring patterns that appear over and over, with slight variations. This is because markets are driven by humans—and human nature never changes” (Greenville: Traders Press, 1991, 96).
Gil Morales (Trade Like an O'Neil Disciple: How We Made Over 18,000% in the Stock Market (Wiley Trading Book 494))
completely objective and recognize what the marketplace is telling you, rather than trying to prove that what you said or did yesterday or six weeks ago was right. The fastest way to take a bath in the stock market is to try to prove that you are right and the market is wrong. Humility and common sense provide essential balance.
William J. O'Neil (How to Make Money in Stocks: A Winning System in Good Times and Bad)
There have been many times when I, like many other speculators, have not had the patience to await the sure thing. I wanted to have an interest at all times. You may say, “With all your experience, why did you allow yourself to do so?” The answer to that is that I am human and subject to human weakness. —Jesse Livermore, How to Trade in Stocks
Gil Morales (Trade Like an O'Neil Disciple: How We Made Over 18,000% in the Stock Market (Wiley Trading Book 494))
Two blue jackets, sir, one pea jacket, two pair of blue trousers, two pair of shoes, six shirts, four pairs of stockings, two Guernsey frocks, two hats, two black Barcelona handkerchiefs, a comforter, several pair of flannel . . .’ he blushed and in a low voice said ‘drawers. And two waistcoats; as well as one bed, one pillow, two blankets and two hammocks,
Patrick O'Brian (Treason's Harbour (Aubrey & Maturin, #9))
• SECRET TIP—The first step in learning how to pick big stock market winners is to examine leaders of the past, like those you’re about to see, to learn all the characteristics of the most successful stocks. From these observations, you will be able to recognize the types of price and earnings patterns these stocks developed just before their spectacular price advances.
William J. O'Neil (How to Make Money in Stocks: A Winning System in Good Times and Bad)
C Current Quarterly Earnings and Sales: The Higher, the Better A Annual Earnings Increases: Look for Significant Growth N New Products, New Management, New Highs: Buying at the Right Time S Supply and Demand: Shares Outstanding Plus Big Volume Demand L Leader or Laggard: Which Is Your Stock? I Institutional Sponsorship: Follow the Leaders M Market Direction: How You Can Learn to Determine It
William J. O'Neil (How to Make Money in Stocks: A Winning System in Good Times and Bad)
The news that she had gone of course now spread rapidly, and by lunch time Riseholme had made up its mind what to do, and that was hermetically to close its lips for ever on the subject of Lucia. You might think what you pleased, for it was a free country, but silence was best. But this counsel of perfection was not easy to practice next day when the evening paper came. There, for all the world to read were two quite long paragraphs, in "Five o'clock Chit-Chat," over the renowned signature of Hermione, entirely about Lucia and 25 Brompton Square, and there for all the world to see was the reproduction of one of her most elegant photographs, in which she gazed dreamily outwards and a little upwards, with her fingers still pressed on the last chord of (probably) the Moonlight Sonata. . . . She had come up, so Hermione told countless readers, from her Elizabethan country seat at Riseholme (where she was a neighbour of Miss Olga Bracely) and was settling for the season in the beautiful little house in Brompton Square, which was the freehold property of her husband, and had just come to him on the death of his aunt. It was a veritable treasure house of exquisite furniture, with a charming music-room where Lucia had given Hermione a cup of tea from her marvellous Worcester tea service. . . . (At this point Daisy, whose hands were trembling with passion, exclaimed in a loud and injured voice, "The very day she arrived!") Mrs. Lucas (one of the Warwickshire Smythes by birth) was, as all the world knew, a most accomplished musician and Shakespearean scholar, and had made Riseholme a centre of culture and art. But nobody would suspect the blue stocking in the brilliant, beautiful and witty hostess whose presence would lend an added gaiety to the London season.
E.F. Benson (Lucia in London (The Mapp & Lucia Novels, #3))
but he just slipped the pantyhose over his nose and breathed deep and let the magic do its work. It turned us into a platoon of believers. You don't dispute facts. But then, near the end of October, his girlfriend dumped him. It was a hard blow. Dobbins went quiet for a while, staring down at her letter, then after a time he took out the stockings and tied them around his neck as a comforter. 'No sweat,' he said. 'The magic doesn't go away.
Tim O'Brien (The Things They Carried)
Blythe's favorite shelf near the coffee area. She'd labeled it W.O.W. (WORDS OF WISDOM) and it was stocked with her perennial favorites with bookmarked passages. Natalie used to love browsing that shelf. A book would never betray you or change its mind or make you feel stupid. She took down The Once and Future King and found a marked passage: "The best thing for being sad," replied Merlyn, beginning to puff and blow, "is to learn something. That is the only thing that never fails."
Susan Wiggs (The Lost and Found Bookshop (Bella Vista Chronicles, #3))
Though I am sometimes reluctant to admit it, there really is something 'timeless' in the Tyndale/King James synthesis. For generations, it provided a common stock of references and allusions, rivalled only by Shakespeare in this respect. It resounded in the minds and memories of literate people, as well as of those who acquired it only by listening. From the stricken beach of Dunkirk in 1940, faced with a devil’s choice between annihilation and surrender, a British officer sent a cable back home. It contained the three words 'but if not…' All of those who received it were at once aware of what it signified. In the Book of Daniel, the Babylonian tyrant Nebuchadnezzar tells the three Jewish heretics Shadrach, Meshach, and Abednego that, if they refuse to bow to his sacred idol, they will be flung into a 'burning fiery furnace.' They made him an answer: 'If it be so, our god whom we serve is able to deliver us from the burning fiery furnace, and he will deliver us out of thy hand, o King. But if not, be it known unto thee, O king, that we will not serve thy gods, nor worship the golden image which thou hast set up.' A culture that does not possess this common store of image and allegory will be a perilously thin one. To seek restlessly to update it or make it 'relevant' is to miss the point, like yearning for a hip-hop Shakespeare. 'Man is born unto trouble as the sparks fly upward,' says the Book of Job. Want to try to improve that for Twitter?
Christopher Hitchens
Sure, there are good things, lots, sure, blow jobs, chocolate mousse, winning streaks, the warm fire in your enemy’s house, good book, hunk of cheese, flagon of ale, office raise, championship ring, the misfortunes of others, sure, good things, beyond count, queens, kings, old clocks, comfy clothes, lots, innumerable items in stock, baseball cards and bingo buttons, pot-au-feu, listen, we could go on and on like a long speech, sure it’s a great world, sights to see, canyons full of canyon, corn on the cob, the eroded great pyramids, contaminated towns, eroded hillsides, deleafed trees, those whitened limbs stark and noble in the evening light, geeeez, what gobs of good things, no shit, service elevators, what would we do without, and all the inventions of man, Krazy Glue and food fights, girls wrestling amid mounds of Jell-O, drafts of dark beer, no end of blue sea, formerly full of fish, eroded hopes, eruptions of joy, because we’re winning, have won, won, won what? the . . . the Title.
William H. Gass (Tests of Time)
... If I am correct... ... the secret to this sauce is honey and balsamic vinegar ." "Got it one, sir! Both ingredients have a mild sweetness that adds a layer of richness to the dish. The tartness of the vinegar ties it all together, ensuring the sweetness isn't too cloying and giving the overall dish a clean, pure aftertaste. The guide told me that Hokkaido bears really love their honey... ... so I tried all kinds of methods to add it to my recipe!" "Is that how he gave his sauce a rich, clean flavor powerful enough to cause the Gifting? Unbelievable! That's our Master Yukihira!" Something doesn't add up. A little honey and vinegar can't be enough to create that level of aftertaste. There has to be something else to it. But what? "...?! I got it! I know what you did! You caramelized the honey!" CARAMELIZATION Sugars oxidize when heated, giving them a golden brown color and a nutty flavor. Any food that contains sugar can be caramelized, making caramelization an important technique in everything from French cooking to dessert making. "I started out by heating the honey until it was good and caramelized. Then I added some balsamic vinegar to stretch it and give it a little thickness. Once that was done, I poured it over some diced onions and garlic that I'd sautéed in another pan, added some schisandra berries and then let it simmer. After it had reduced, I poured bear stock over it and seasoned it with a little salt... The result was a deep, rich sauce perfect for emphasizing the natural punch of my Bear-Meat Menchi Katsu!" "Oho! You musta come up with that idea while I was relaxing with my cup o' chai! Not bad, Yukihira-chin! Not bad at all! Don'tcha think?" "Y-yes, sir..." Plus, there is no debating how well honey pairs well with bear meat. The Chinese have long considered bear paws a great delicacy... ... because of the common belief that the mellow sweetness of the honey soaks into a bear's paw as it sticks it into beehives and licks the honey off of it. What a splendid idea pairing honey with bear meat, each accentuating the other... ... then using caramelization and balsamic vinegar to mellow it to just the right level. It's a masterful example of using both flavor subtraction and enhancement in the same dish!
Yūto Tsukuda (食戟のソーマ 22 [Shokugeki no Souma 22] (Food Wars: Shokugeki no Soma, #22))
She senses, too, somewhere off to the left, her own mother. She would be here with her had life taken a different turn. She would be the one holding her hand as Agnes walked to her wedding, her fingers encasing her daughter’s. Her footsteps would have followed her beat. They would be walking this path together, side by side. It would have been her making the crown, affixing it to Agnes’s head, brushing the hair so that it hung all around her. She would have taken the blue ribbons and wound them around her stockings, woven them into the hanks of her hair. It would have been her.
Maggie O'Farrell (Hamnet)
Sal and Henry return with a gust of warm garden air and I settle down to create miniature roses from sugarpaste using tiny ivory spatulas and crimpers. I will have no antique tester bed crowning my cake, only a posy of flowers: symbols of beauty and growth, each year new-blossoming. I let Henry paint the broken pieces with spinach juice, while I tint my flowers with cochineal and yellow gum. As a pretty device I paint a ladybird on a rose, and think it finer than Sèvres porcelain. At ten o'clock tomorrow, I will marry John Francis at St. Mark's Church, across the square. As Sal and I rehearse our plans for the day, pleasurable anticipation bubbles inside me like fizzing wine. We will return from church for this bride cake in the parlor, then take a simple wedding breakfast of hot buttered rolls, ham, cold chicken, and fruit, on the silver in the dining room. Nan has sent me a Yorkshire Game Pie, so crusted with wedding figures of wheatsheafs and blossoms it truly looks too good to eat. We have invited few guests, for I want no great show, and instead will have bread and beef sent to feed the poor. And at two o'clock, we will leave with Henry for a much anticipated holiday by the sea, at Sandhills, on the southern coast. John Francis has promised Henry he might try sea-bathing, while I have bought stocks of cerulean blue and burnt umber to attempt to catch the sea and sky in watercolor.
Martine Bailey (A Taste for Nightshade)
So Germany can’t pay France and Britain and France and Britain can’t pay America because the Gold Standard says money = gold and America already has all the gold. But America won’t forgive the loans so Germany starts printing dumpsters full of money just to keep up appearances until one U.S. dollar is worth six hundred and thirty BILLION marks. There’s so much cash, kids are building money forts it is tragic/pimp as hell. Britain does convince America to go easy and lower the interest rates on the loans but in order to do that America has to lower ALL THE INTEREST RATES so everybody back in the U.S. is like “SWEET FREE MONEY BETTER USE IT TO BUY STOCKS” and they just go nuts the whole stock market goes completely bonkers shoe-shine boys are giving out hot tips hobos have stock portfolios and the dudes in charge are TERRIFIED because they know that at this point the market is just running on bullshit and dreams and real soon it’s gonna get to that part in the dream where you’re naked at your tuba recital and you never learned to play the tuba. There are other people who are like “NAW THE MARKET WILL BE GREAT FOREVER PUT ALL YOUR MONEY IN IT” but you know what those people are? WRONG. WRONG LIKE A DOG EATING MAYONNAISE. The market goes down like a clown and a bunch of people lose a bunch of money. It happens on a Tuesday and everybody calls it Black Tuesday and then it happens again on Black Thursday also Black Monday. Everyone is so poor they have even pawned their creativity.
Cory O'Brien (George Washington Is Cash Money: A No-Bullshit Guide to the United Myths of America)
You, my dear, do not know how to have fun." "I do, too!" "You do not. You are as bad as Lucien. And do you know something? I think it's time someone showed you how to have fun. Namely, me. You can worry all you like about our situation tomorrow, but tonight ... tonight I'm going to make you laugh so hard that you'll forget all about how afraid of me you are." "I am not afraid of you!" "You are." And with that, he pushed his chair back, stalked around the table, and in a single easy movement, swept her right out of her chair and into his arms. "Gareth!  Put me down!" He only laughed, easily carrying her toward the bed. "Gareth, I am a grown woman!" "You are a grown woman who behaves in a manner far too old for her years," he countered, still striding toward the bed. "As the wife of a Den member, that just will not do." "Gareth, I don't want — I mean, I'm not ready for that!" "That? Who said anything about that?"  He tossed her lightly onto the bed. "Oh, no, my dear Juliet. I'm not going to do that —" She tried to scoot away. "Then what are you going to do?" "Why, I'm going to wipe that sadness out of your eyes if only for tonight. I'm going to make you forget your troubles, forget your fears, forget everything but me. And you know how I'm going to do that, O dearest wife?"  He grabbed a fistful of her petticoats as she tried to escape. "I'm going to tickle you until you giggle ... until you laugh ... until you're hooting so loudly that all of London hears you!" He fell upon the bed like a swooping hawk, and Juliet let out a helpless shriek as his fingers found her ribs and began tickling her madly. "Stop!  We just ate!  You'll make me sick!" "What's this? Your husband makes you sick?" "No, it's just that — aaaoooooo!" He tickled her harder. She flailed and giggled and cried out, embarrassed about each loud shriek but helpless to prevent them. He was laughing as hard as she. Catching one thrashing leg, he unlaced her boot and deftly removed it. She yelped as his fingers found the sensitive instep, and she kicked out reflexively. He neatly ducked just in time to avoid having his nose broken, catching her by the ankle and tickling her toes, her soles, her arch through her stockings. "Stop, Gareth!"  She was laughing so hard, tears were streaming from her eyes. "Stop it, damn it!" Thank goodness Charlotte, worn out by her earlier tantrum, was such a sound sleeper! The tickling continued. Juliet kicked and fought, her struggles tossing the heavy, ruffled petticoats and skirts of her lovely blue gown halfway up her thigh to reveal a long, slender calf sheathed in silk. She saw his gaze taking it all in, even as he made a grab for her other foot. "No!  Gareth, I shall lose my supper if you keep this up, I swear it I will — oooahhhhh!" He seized her other ankle, yanked off the remaining boot, and began torturing that foot as well, until Juliet was writhing and shrieking on the bed in a fit of laughter. The tears streamed down her cheeks, and her stomach ached with the force of her mirth. And when, at last, he let up and she lay exhausted across the bed in a twisted tangle of skirts, petticoats, and chemise, her chest heaving and her hair in a hopeless tumbled-down flood of silken mahogany beneath her head, she looked up to see him grinning down at her, his own hair hanging over his brow in tousled, seductive disarray.
Danelle Harmon (The Wild One (The de Montforte Brothers, #1))
#The Vanity of all Worldly Things. As he said vanity, so vain say I, Oh! Vanity, O vain all under sky; Where is the man can say, "Lo, I have found On brittle earth a consolation sound"? What isn't in honor to be set on high? No, they like beasts and sons of men shall die, And whilst they live, how oft doth turn their fate; He's now a captive that was king of late. What isn't in wealth great treasures to obtain? No, that's but labor, anxious care, and pain. He heaps up riches, and he heaps up sorrow, It's his today, but who's his heir tomorrow? What then? Content in pleasures canst thou find? More vain than all, that's but to grasp the wind. The sensual senses for a time they pleasure, Meanwhile the conscience rage, who shall appease? What isn't in beauty? No that's but a snare, They're foul enough today, that once were fair. What is't in flow'ring youth, or manly age? The first is prone to vice, the last to rage. Where is it then, in wisdom, learning, arts? Sure if on earth, it must be in those parts; Yet these the wisest man of men did find But vanity, vexation of the mind. And he that know the most doth still bemoan He knows not all that here is to be known. What is it then? To do as stoics tell, Nor laugh, nor weep, let things go ill or well? Such stoics are but stocks, such teaching vain, While man is man, he shall have ease or pain. If not in honor, beauty, age, nor treasure, Nor yet in learning, wisdom, youth, nor pleasure, Where shall I climb, sound, seek, search, or find That summum bonum which may stay my mind? There is a path no vulture's eye hath seen, Where lion fierce, nor lion's whelps have been, Which leads unto that living crystal fount, Who drinks thereof, the world doth naught account. The depth and sea have said " 'tis not in me," With pearl and gold it shall not valued be. For sapphire, onyx, topaz who would change; It's hid from eyes of men, they count it strange. Death and destruction the fame hath heard, But where and what it is, from heaven's declared; It brings to honor which shall ne'er decay, It stores with wealth which time can't wear away. It yieldeth pleasures far beyond conceit, And truly beautifies without deceit. Nor strength, nor wisdom, nor fresh youth shall fade, Nor death shall see, but are immortal made. This pearl of price, this tree of life, this spring, Who is possessed of shall reign a king. Nor change of state nor cares shall ever see, But wear his crown unto eternity. This satiates the soul, this stays the mind, And all the rest, but vanity we find.
Anne Bradstreet
But not more than what’s in the Bible, Aunt,” said Dinah. “Yes, and the Bible too, for that matter,” Mrs. Poyser rejoined, rather sharply; “else why shouldn’t them as know best what’s in the Bible — the parsons and people as have got nothing to do but learn it — do the same as you do? But, for the matter o’ that, if everybody was to do like you, the world must come to a standstill; for if everybody tried to do without house and home, and with poor eating and drinking, and was allays talking as we must despise the things o’ the world as you say, I should like to know where the pick o’ the stock, and the corn, and the best new-milk cheeses ‘ud have to go. Everybody ‘ud be wanting bread made o’ tail ends and everybody ‘ud be running after everybody else to preach to ‘em, istead o’ bringing up their families, and laying by against a bad harvest. It stands to sense as that can’t be the right religion.
George Eliot (Complete Works of George Eliot)
The ghost was not a ghost at all, or so it claimed - it claimed to be a psychic energy baby, birthed in some ethereal dimension, and pulled into the phone by the powerful magnetism of phone signals. It remembered with perfect clarity how it came to be - remembered coalescing from the membranous surface of the world, streaked with reflected light, humming with surface tension under the pressure of emptiness underneath. The Psychic Energy Baby found form among the emanations of people's minds and the susurrus of their voices, it found flesh in the shapes of their lips and eyes made, the surprise of 'o's and the sibilations of 's's; its skin stretched taut like a soap bubble, forged from the wet sound of lips touching; its thoughts were the musky smells and the nerves twined around the transparent water balloons of the muscles like stems of toadflax, searching restlessly for every available crevice, stretching along cold rough surfaces. Its veins, tiny rivers, pumped heartbeats striking in unison, the dry dallying of billions of ventricular contractions. And it spoke, spoke endlessly, it spokes words that tasted of dark air and formic acid. It could speak long before it took it's final shape. And when it happened, when all the sounds and smells and words in the world, when all the thoughts had aligned so that it could become - then it found itself pulled into the wires, surrounded by taut copper and green and red and yellow insulation; twined and quartered among the cables, rent open by millions of voices that shouted and whispered and pleaded and threatened, interspersed with the rasping of breaths and tearing laughter. It traveled through the criss-crossing of the wires so fast that it felt itself being pulled into a needle, head spearing into the future while its feet infinitely receded into the past, until it came into a dark quiet pool of the black rotary phone, where it could reassemble itself and take stock.
Ekaterina Sedia (The House of Discarded Dreams)
Keep a clear conscience. Contentment is the manna that is laid up in the ark of a good conscience: O take heed of indulging any sin! it is as natural for guilt to breed disquiet, as for putrid matter to breed vermin. Sin lies as Jonah in the ship, it raiseth a tempest. If dust or motes be gotten into the eye, they make the eye water, and cause a soreness in it; if the eye be clear, then it is free from that soreness; if sin be gotten into the conscience, which is as the eye of the soul, then grief and disquiet breed there; but keep the eye of conscience clear, and all is well. What Solomon saith of a good stomach, I may say of a good conscience, "to the hungry soul every bitter thing is sweet:"Pr. 27. 7 so to a good conscience every bitter thing is sweet; it can pick contentment out of the cross. A good conscience turns the waters of Marah into wine. Would you have a quiet heart? Get a smiling conscience. I wonder not to hear Paul say he was in every state content, when he could make that triumph, "I have lived in all good conscience to this day." When once a man's reckonings are clear, it must needs let in abundance of contentment into the heart. Good conscience can suck contentment out of the bitterest drug, under slanders; "our rejoicing is this, the testimony of our conscience."2 Cor. 1. 12 In case of imprisonment, Paul had his prison songs, and could play the sweet lessons of contentment, when his feet were in the stocks.Ac. 16. 25 Augustine calls it "the paradise of a good conscience;" and if it be so, then in prison we may be in paradise. When the times are troublesome, a good conscience makes a calm. If conscience be clear, what though the days be cloudy? is it not a contentment to have a friend always by to speak a good word for us? Such a friend is conscience. A good conscience, as David's harp, drives away the evil spirit of discontent. When thoughts begin to arise, and the heart is disquieted, conscience saith to a man, as the king did to Nehemiah, "why is thy countenance sad?" so saith conscience, hast not thou the seed of God in thee? art not thou an heir of the promise? hast not thou a treasure that thou canst never be plundered of? why is thy countenance sad? O keep conscience clear, and you shall never want contentment! For a man to keep the pipes of his body, the veins and arteries, free from colds and obstructions, is the best way to maintain health: so, to keep conscience clear, and to preserve it from the obstructions of guilt, is the best way to maintain contentment. First, conscience is pure, and then peaceable.
Thomas Watson (The Art of Divine Contentment)
Once, men turned their thinking over to machines in the hope that this would set them free. But that only permitted other men with machines to enslave them.” “‘Thou shalt not make a machine in the likeness of a man’s mind,’” Paul quoted. “Right out of the Butlerian Jihad and the Orange Catholic Bible,” she said. “But what the O.C. Bible should’ve said is: ‘Thou shalt not make a machine to counterfeit a human mind.’ Have you studied the Mentat in your service?” “I’ve studied with Thufir Hawat.” “The Great Revolt took away a crutch,” she said. “It forced human minds to develop. Schools were started to train human talents.” “Bene Gesserit schools?” She nodded. “We have two chief survivors of those ancient schools: the Bene Gesserit and the Spacing Guild. The Guild, so we think, emphasizes almost pure mathematics. Bene Gesserit performs another function.” “Politics,” he said. “Kull wahad!” the old woman said. She sent a hard glance at Jessica. “I’ve not told him, Your Reverence,” Jessica said. The Reverend Mother returned her attention to Paul. “You did that on remarkably few clues,” she said. “Politics indeed. The original Bene Gesserit school was directed by those who saw the need of a thread of continuity in human affairs. They saw there could be no such continuity without separating human stock from animal stock—for breeding purposes.
Frank Herbert (Frank Herbert's Dune Saga Collection (Dune #1-6))
To-day a rude brief recitative, Of ships sailing the seas, each with its special flag or ship-signal, Of unnamed heroes in the ships—of waves spreading and spreading far as the eye can reach, Of dashing spray, and the winds piping and blowing, And out of these a chant for the sailors of all nations, Fitful, like a surge. Of sea-captains young or old, and the mates, and of all intrepid sailors, Of the few, very choice, taciturn, whom fate can never surprise nor death dismay. Pick'd sparingly without noise by thee old ocean, chosen by thee, Thou sea that pickest and cullest the race in time, and unitest nations, Suckled by thee, old husky nurse, embodying thee, Indomitable, untamed as thee. (Ever the heroes on water or on land, by ones or twos appearing, Ever the stock preserv'd and never lost, though rare, enough for seed preserv'd.) Flaunt out O sea your separate flags of nations! Flaunt out visible as ever the various ship-signals! But do you reserve especially for yourself and for the soul of man one flag above all the rest, A spiritual woven signal for all nations, emblem of man elate above death, Token of all brave captains and all intrepid sailors and mates, And all that went down doing their duty, Reminiscent of them, twined from all intrepid captains young or old, A pennant universal, subtly waving all time, o'er all brave sailors, All seas, all ships.
Walt Whitman (Leaves of Grass)
That black horse we used for packin’ up here is the most cantankerous beast alive,” Jake grumbled, rubbing his arm. Ian lifted his gaze from the initials on the tabletop and turned to Jake, making no attempt to hide his amusement. “Bit you, did he?” “Damn right he bit me!” the older man said bitterly. “He’s been after a chuck of me since we left the coach at Hayborn and loaded those sacks on his back to bring up here.” “I warned you he bites anything he can reach. Keep your arm out of his way when you’re saddling him.” “It weren’t my arm he was after, it was my arse! Opened his mouth and went for it, only I saw him outter the corner of my eye and swung around, so he missed.” Jakes’s frown darkened when he saw the amusement in Ian’s expression. “Can’t see why you’ve bothered to feed him all these years. He doesn’t deserve to share a stable with your other horses-beauties they are, every one but him.” “Try slinging packs over the backs of one of those and you’ll see why I took him. He was suitable for using as a pack mule; none of my other cattle would have been,” ian said, frowning as he lifted his head and looked about at the months of accumulated dirt covering everything. “He’s slower’n a pack mule,” Jake replied. “Mean and stubborn and slow,” he concluded, but he, too, was frowning a little as he looked around at the thick layers of dust coating every surface. “Thought you said you’d arranged for some village wenches to come up here and clean and cook fer us. This place is a mess.” “I did. I dictated a message to Peters for the caretaker, asking him to stock the place with food and to have two women come up here to clean and cook. The food is here, and there are chickens out in the barn. He must be having difficulty finding two women to stay up here.” “Comely women, I hope,” Jake said. “Did you tell him to make the wenches comely?” Ian paused in his study of the spiderwebs strewn across the ceiling and cast him an amused look. “You wanted me to tell a seventy-year-old caretaker who’s half-blind to make certain the wenches were comely?” “Couldn’ta hurt ‘t mention it,” Jake grumbled, but he looked chastened. “The village is only twelve miles away. You can always stroll down there if you’ve urgent need of a woman while we’re here. Of course, the trip back up here may kill you,” he joked referring to the winding path up the cliff that seemed to be almost vertical. “Never mind women,” Jake said in an abrupt change of heart, his tanned, weathered face breaking into a broad grin. “I’m here for a fortnight of fishin’ and relaxin’, and that’s enough for any man. It’ll be like the old days, Ian-peace and quiet and naught else. No hoity-toity servants hearin’ every word what’s spoke, no carriages and barouches and matchmaking mamas arrivin’ at your house. I tell you, my boy, though I’ve not wanted to complain about the way you’ve been livin’ the past year, I don’t like these servents o’ yours above half. That’s why I didn’t come t’visit you very often. Yer butler at Montmayne holds his nose so far in t’air, it’s amazin’ he gets any oxhegen, and that French chef o’ yers practically threw me out of his kitchens. That what he called ‘em-his kitchens, and-“ The old seaman abruptly broke off, his expression going from irate to crestfallen, “Ian,” he said anxiously, “did you ever learn t’ cook while we was apart?” “No, did you?” “Hell and damnation, no!” Jake said, appalled at the prospect of having to eat anything he fixed himself.
Judith McNaught (Almost Heaven (Sequels, #3))
Fatmah Hassan Tabashe Sufian, sixty-one years old, married and a mother of four, was woken up on 6 April 1993 at three o’clock in the morning. Soldiers broke into her house, pushed her up against the wall and asked her where her children were; they are asleep, she replied. They woke up her son Saad, thirty years old, kicking him and beating him with their hands and rifle stocks, until he was spitting blood all over the place. Her other son, Ibrahim, was badly beaten, and the B’Tselem researcher who took Fatmah’s evidence testified that long after the incident he could still see signs of ecchymosis – subcutaneous bleeding – on his back. Both sons were taken out to the yard and put against a wall. The soldiers found two toy guns and began slashing the two men with them until the toys broke. Then they gathered everyone in the complex, twenty-seven people, into one room and threw in a shock grenade. Saad and Ibrahim were ordered to empty the cupboard while they were continuously beaten by the soldiers shouting at them, ‘You are Hamas and we are Golani [the name of the military brigade to which they belonged].’ Nor did they spare Fatmah’s old, blind brother who was a hundred years old. He too was abused by the soldiers, who threw mattresses and blankets at him.25 Thus, every April from 1987 until 1993 this was the routine of the collective punishment. But it was not only these three days that mattered. Collective punishment in March–May 1993 robbed 116,000 Palestinian workers of their source of living, bisected the Occupied Territories into four disconnected areas and barred any access to Jerusalem.26 Seen from that perspective, when the Oslo Accord was implemented as a territorial and security arrangement, it was just official confirmation of a policy already in place since 1987.
Ilan Pappé (The Biggest Prison on Earth: A History of the Occupied Territories)
Wave after wave of an orgasm broke over her, but soon it would be over for him. “Stop,” Livia panted. Blake paused as Livia swallowed to try to compose herself. She was here for a reason. “The mask. Take it off. I want you to kiss me.” Livia watched his eyes. He was scared. “Blake, you’re inside of me. I’ll keep you safe. You’re inside of me.” Livia squeezed him again, reminding him exactly where he was. Blake smiled at the sensation. “Do it for me, Livia. Please.” And even though they were naked and locked in the most intimate embrace, this was the striptease. Livia went slowly, rolling up the knit ski mask like a stocking. First his jaw came into the light. Livia slowed, tracing its strong line with her finger. Next, his lips lost their frame, then his eyes left their prison. He closed them. Finally, his wild, messy hair was free. Livia tossed the mask aside. And waited. Open your eyes. After a moment Blake looked around his sunny meadow. A breeze stirred the trees high up, and they released a shower of fall colors. In the silence of the day, the leaves hitting the ground sounded like applause. Quiet applause for a quiet victory. The o in sorry vanished. Blake looked at Livia beneath him. She smiled. “Five hundred ninety-eight,” he whispered. Still counting. “Yes! Yes. I knew you could do this. I knew you could do this.” Livia beamed with pride. Blake blurred as her eyes became two pools of tears. He kissed her softly, but Livia wanted the rough thrusts back. She pulled away and wiped her eyes. “Giddy up!” Livia spanked Blake playfully. He gave a little chuckle before he put her out of her misery. If she thought he was going fast and hard before, she was wrong. Blake was almost done when he let Livia’s leg slip from his shoulder. He kissed her with his clever tongue and moaned loudly into her mouth.
Debra Anastasia (Poughkeepsie (Poughkeepsie Brotherhood, #1))
a guitar. A hammock is swung near the table. It is three o'clock in the afternoon of a cloudy day. MARINA, a quiet, grey-haired, little old woman, is sitting at the table knitting a stocking. ASTROFF is walking up and down near her. MARINA. [Pouring some tea into a glass] Take a little tea, my son. ASTROFF. [Takes the glass from her unwillingly] Somehow, I don't seem to want any. MARINA. Then will you have a little vodka instead? ASTROFF. No, I don't drink vodka every day, and besides, it is too hot now. [A pause] Tell me, nurse, how long have we known each other? MARINA. [Thoughtfully] Let me see, how long is it? Lord—help me to remember. You first came here, into our parts—let me think—when was it? Sonia's mother was still alive—it was two winters before she died; that was eleven years ago—[thoughtfully] perhaps more. ASTROFF. Have I changed much since then? MARINA. Oh, yes. You were handsome and young then, and now you are an old man and not handsome any more. You drink, too. ASTROFF. Yes, ten years have made me another man. And why? Because I am overworked. Nurse, I am on my feet from dawn till dusk. I know no rest; at night I tremble under my blankets for fear of being dragged out to visit some one who is sick; I have toiled without repose or a day's freedom since I have known you; could I help growing old? And then, existence is tedious, anyway; it is a senseless, dirty business, this life, and goes heavily. Every one about here is silly, and after living with them for two or three years one grows silly oneself. It is inevitable. [Twisting his moustache] See what a long moustache I have grown. A foolish, long moustache. Yes, I am as silly as the rest, nurse, but not as stupid; no, I have not grown stupid. Thank God, my brain is not addled yet, though my feelings have grown numb. I ask nothing, I need nothing, I love no one, unless it is yourself alone. [He kisses her head] I had a nurse just like you when I was a child. MARINA. Don't you want a bite of something to eat? ASTROFF. No. During the third week of Lent I went to the epidemic at Malitskoi. It was eruptive typhoid. The peasants were all lying side by side in their huts, and the calves and pigs were running about the floor among the sick. Such dirt there was, and smoke! Unspeakable! I slaved among those people all day, not a crumb passed my lips, but when I got home there was still no rest for me; a switchman was carried in from the railroad; I laid him on the operating table and he went and died in my arms under chloroform, and then my feelings that should have been deadened awoke
Anton Chekhov (Uncle Vanya)
Charts plus earnings will help you tell the best stocks
William J. O'Neil (How to Make Money in Stocks Complete Investing System)
You have read New England history, dear, but you’ve let the ugly parts slip into the back of your mind. Your forefathers hanged helpless old women as witches.” “Yes, Lanny, but they believed the devil was in them.” “The Communists believe the devil is in the capitalists, the great landlords and others who monopolize the means of life and use them to exploit the laboring masses. It is a different set of ideas, but the fundamental attitude, the type of mind, is the same. Your forefathers put men in stocks, they ducked women in ducking stools, they drove Roger Williams, a gentle mystic, out into the wilderness.” “Surely they never murdered people wholesale as the Communists have done!” “Are you sure? Just go to your public library and get a history of Ireland, and see what Oliver Cromwell did to the Irish people, the names he called them, and the wholesale ferocious slaughter. Ireland is a smaller country than Russia, but proportionately I doubt if the Communists have killed as many people in Russia as the Roundheads killed in the Emerald Isle. You and I are used to seeing social progress made by means of the ballot, but we have to bear in mind that some peoples haven’t reached that stage of development and cannot get any sort of change without violence, and a lot of it.
Upton Sinclair (O Shepherd, Speak! (The Lanny Budd Novels #10))
Party time Part 1 After school, we go to Maddie’s. When we were little, like freshman year and even some of the sophomore year, we would sometimes stay in her room and put on x-out and pluck out eyebrows into that fine little line, and color our hair with highlights, and order pizza, cramming down as much as we could eat. Those days are going, we can’t get fat. Now Jenny hardly eats anything, and if she does, she can hardly keep it down. I think maybe that’s what I get so lightheaded, I only eat like once a day now. Jenny back then had a little extra around the middle, and now you can see her ribs, she even has that two-defined line on her tummy that goes into her underwear. I remember sneaking around late at night in her hose stealing a cookie from the jar on the top shelf in the old wood cabinet, that is also where her mom would hide her cigarettes that Jenny loved also, and the condoms were in a trinity box on top of the fridge, I sorry but I find that hilarious. At that time, we would stretch out on one of her, old enormous worn-out couches and watch, TV or movies until we fell asleep in our nightshirts’-the TV in Maddie’s living room is like 80 inches it’s like being in a movie theater our legs tangled together under an enormous fleece blanket. Maddie and liv are always entangled more passionately than Jenny and me on the loveseat! Maddie has an ancient TV in her room from the 1990s. It sucks and is small, it’s one of those with the big back on it, and the color is green, like looking into a fish tank. It’s funny her mom and dad don’t have money blinds on the windows, yet they have a big ass TV. You can sometimes see the people in the next condo overlooking us like we can see them get busy in their room! Yet nothing beats the hot guy taking a leak in room 302, he looks to be in his late twenties. He takes the boxes off at 10 pm and we get a free show. He knows we can see him because he makes it look inflexible and you are no more personable. Jenny and we girls love to press upon the glass, and just have fun and be a little crazy, like lifting our nighties and flashing the goods. Facebook stocking gets boring quickly anymore, so some nights the webcam comes out too. After her mom and dad are asleep… I like it’s more fun to be bad! Like we all have profiles and fake names because none of us are eighteen yet. Any- how’s mine is ‘Angel Pink Wings 01’ Maddie goes by: ‘Mad kitty 69’ Jenny goes by: ‘Ms. Little Lover 14’ Liv goes by: ‘Olivia O 123’ Yet everyone knows her by Liv so that name is okay- I guess. We make good money- ‘Double Clicking the Mouse.’ You would not believe all the pervs on this cam. the site, just wanting to see us doing it. Like old guys like our PE teacher! Man- that I didn’t even think about how to turn on a computer. Just like him, I guess they need too to see more of us close up. We have our checks mailed to Jenny's college boyfriend’s PO Box. Me this is what I do and yes- I come for you all, I just put in fake blue hair dye in, and have fake long lashes, and put in my blue contacts, and you don’t even know me. And then pen in more eyebrows. Fake, fake, fake, fake FAKE! Boys don’t like it when you fake it or do, they look at me, that's why I am Bi.
Marcel Ray Duriez (Young Taboo (Nevaeh))
Party time Part 1 After school, we go to Maddie’s. When we were little, like freshman year and even some of the sophomore year, we would sometimes stay in her room and put on x-out and pluck out eyebrows into that fine little line, and color our hair with highlights, and order pizza, cramming down as much as we could eat. Those days are going, we can’t get fat. Now Jenny hardly eats anything, and if she does, she can hardly keep it down. I think maybe that’s what I get so lightheaded, I only eat like once a day now. Jenny back then had a little extra around the middle, and now you can see her ribs, she even has that two-defined line on her tummy that goes into her underwear. I remember sneaking around late at night in her hose stealing a cookie from the jar on the top shelf in the old wood cabinet, that is also where her mom would hide her cigarettes that Jenny loved also, and the condoms were in a trinity box on top of the fridge, I sorry but I find that hilarious. At that time, we would stretch out on one of her, old enormous worn-out couches and watch, TV or movies until we fell asleep in our nightshirts’-the TV in Maddie’s living room is like 80 inches it’s like being in a movie theater our legs tangled together under an enormous fleece blanket. Maddie and liv are always entangled more passionately than Jenny and me on the loveseat! Maddie has an ancient TV in her room from the 1990s. It sucks and is small, it’s one of those with the big back on it, and the color is green, like looking into a fish tank. It’s funny her mom and dad don’t have money blinds on the windows, yet they have a big ass TV. You can sometimes see the people in the next condo overlooking us like we can see them get busy in their room! Yet nothing beats the hot guy taking a leak in room 302, he looks to be in his late twenties. He takes the boxes off at 10 pm and we get a free show. He knows we can see him because he makes it look inflexible and you are no more personable. Jenny and we girls love to press upon the glass, and just have fun and be a little crazy, like lifting our nighties and flashing the goods. Facebook stocking gets boring quickly anymore, so some nights the webcam comes out too. After her mom and dad are asleep… I like it’s more fun to be bad! Like we all have profiles and fake names because none of us are eighteen yet. Any- how’s mine is ‘Angel Pink Wings 01’ Maddie goes by: ‘Mad kitty 69’ Jenny goes by: ‘Ms. Little Lover 14’ Liv goes by: ‘Olivia O 123’ Yet everyone knows her by Liv so that name is okay- I guess. We make good money- ‘Double Clicking the Mouse.’ You would not believe all the pervs on this cam the site, just wanting to see us doing it. Like old guys like our PE teacher! Man- that I didn’t even think about how to turn on a computer. Just like him, I guess they need too to see more of us close up. We have our checks mailed to Jenny's college boyfriend’s PO Box. Me this is what I do and yes- I come for you all, I just put in fake blue hair dye in, and have fake long lashes, and put in my blue contacts, and you don’t even know me. And then pen in more eyebrows. Fake, fake, fake, fake FAKE! Boys don’t like it when you fake it or do, they look at me, that's why I am Bi.
Marcel Ray Duriez (Young Taboo (Nevaeh))
¿Cómo podríamos definir el concepto de pool? Dow (Nelson, 1902) dijo que un pool es, básicamente, un profesional o grupo de profesionales que, tras valorar que una acción está demasiado barata (en principio, sus métodos de valoración no son relevantes para nosotros), deciden, de forma más o menos coordinada, empezar a comprar acciones de dicha compañía. Al mismo tiempo merodean otros profesionales, que al conocer sus técnicas de actuación se unen a ese interés comprador, intensificando así el grado de manipulación sobre el precio del activo. El inversor amateur, víctima del pánico que acompaña a los mercados bajistas, y alentado por las malas noticias de los medios de comunicación, se ve impulsado a vender sus activos, con lo que se convierte, sin ser consciente de ello, en la contrapartida del pool profesional, que es quien adquiere poco a poco todos los activos, en una fase que denominada “de acumulación”. Cuando el interés vendedor ha remitido, todo el stock está en poder del pool. Sin presión vendedora, el precio no puede hacer otra cosa nada más que subir, lo que le proporciona al profesional sus primeros beneficios. Pasado un tiempo, cuando el miedo se empieza a diluir y el gran público vuelve a interesarse por la inversión en Bolsa, viene la fase “de participación”. Los inversores mejor informados, que son capaces de detectar la acción profesional de forma prematura, aún podrán sacar algo de tajada de las subidas de los precios; el resto, la gran masa de inversores desinformados, entrarán al juego demasiado tarde. Entonces será el mismo profesional que compró en los mínimos quien le transmita sus propios títulos al amateur, en un proceso que denominamos “de distribución” y que culminará, tarde o temprano, en un desplome de las cotizaciones, justo en el preciso momento en que el interés comprador haya desaparecido por completo. Esto dejará encerrados a todos aquellos operadores que entraron en la cima con la esperanza de que la fiesta alcista no tendría final.
Enrique Díaz Valdecantos (El método Wyckoff: Claves para entender los fundamentos del trading)
First, you bought something you didn’t really understand, so it was no better or worse than throwing a dart into the stock market list.
Edward O. Thorp (A Man for All Markets: From Las Vegas to Wall Street, How I Beat the Dealer and the Market)
The classic view of the correct price of a common stock is that it is derived from the value of all the future earnings. These earnings are uncertain and subject to unknowable factors. Could anyone have known beforehand how to allow for the impact of 9/11 on the future earnings, hence on the then current market price, of firms headquartered in the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center?
Edward O. Thorp (A Man for All Markets: From Las Vegas to Wall Street, How I Beat the Dealer and the Market)
challenge efficient market theorists to answer these questions: Why were people willing to pay $14,850 for 135 shares of PALM when they could have paid $7,000, and why were some investors buying PALM stock at a price that set a value of $53 billion for the company instead of acquiring it at a price of less than half as much by buying it via 3Com stock? It’s not a question of information. The terms were simple, public, and known in advance.
Edward O. Thorp (A Man for All Markets: From Las Vegas to Wall Street, How I Beat the Dealer and the Market)
The classic view of the correct price of a common stock is that it is derived from the value of all the future earnings. These earnings are uncertain and subject to unknowable factors. Could anyone have known beforehand how to allow for the impact of 9/11 on the future earnings, hence on the then current market price, of firms headquartered in the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center? These future payoffs are discounted to a present value reflecting their various probabilities and risks.
Edward O. Thorp (A Man for All Markets: From Las Vegas to Wall Street, How I Beat the Dealer and the Market)
The safety of municipal bonds no longer seemed so assured. However, although they would have done better in equities, they still had enough money and, feeling safe, didn’t worry as they would have done watching the ups and downs in the value of a stock portfolio.
Edward O. Thorp (A Man for All Markets: From Las Vegas to Wall Street, How I Beat the Dealer and the Market)
Overall, US equity investments increased four or five times on average (before taxes, investment adviser fees, and other costs), and Berkshire Hathaway advanced from $12,000 to almost $150,000, fell to $75,000 during the crisis, then rose above $200,000 per share in 2016. When the crisis of 2008 struck, equities lost half their value before rebounding. As tax receipts shriveled, the massive deficits of the US government were echoed at state and local levels. The safety of municipal bonds no longer seemed so assured. However, although they would have done better in equities, they still had enough money and, feeling safe, didn’t worry as they would have done watching the ups and downs in the value of a stock portfolio.
Edward O. Thorp (A Man for All Markets: From Las Vegas to Wall Street, How I Beat the Dealer and the Market)
In its simplest form, investors sell losing stocks before the end of the current year, realizing losses that reduce the year’s income taxes. This behavior contributes to the so-called January effect where selling pressure in December further depresses the stock prices of the year’s losers, followed by a rebound and excessive performance in January.
Edward O. Thorp (A Man for All Markets: From Las Vegas to Wall Street, How I Beat the Dealer and the Market)
In its simplest form, investors sell losing stocks before the end of the current year, realizing losses that reduce the year’s income taxes. This behavior contributes to the so-called January effect where selling pressure in December further depresses the stock prices of the year’s losers, followed by a rebound and excessive performance in January. The impact is greater for smaller companies. Investors used to realize a tax loss by selling a loser and buying it back immediately, with little risk of economic loss (or gain). To inhibit this loss of tax revenue by making it risky, the US government introduced the “wash sale rule,” which says that anyone who sells a stock at a loss and buys it back within thirty-one days may not recognize the loss for tax purposes. The rule is worded also to thwart savvy investors inclined to swap into an “equivalent” stock to get around this. The flip side of tax-loss selling is tax-gain deferral, where an investor who wishes to sell a security with a large gain waits until after the end of the year, deferring the tax due on it by one year. The money can be used for an additional year before being turned over to the government.
Edward O. Thorp (A Man for All Markets: From Las Vegas to Wall Street, How I Beat the Dealer and the Market)
Though many details of these schemes are either complex or not yet public knowledge, one of the mechanisms is. Some exchanges, such as NASDAQ, let HF traders peek at customer orders ahead of everyone else for thirty milliseconds before the order goes to the exchange. Seeing an order to buy, for instance, the HF traders can buy first, pushing the stock price up, then resell to the customer at a profit. Seeing someone’s order to sell, the HF trader sells first, causing the stock to fall, and then buys it back at the lower price. How is this different from the crime of front-running, described in Wikipedia as “the illegal practice of a stock broker executing orders on a security for its own account while taking advantage of advance knowledge of pending orders from its customers”?
Edward O. Thorp (A Man for All Markets: From Las Vegas to Wall Street, How I Beat the Dealer and the Market)
In any case, the theory of Brownian motion was independently developed in 1900 by a Frenchman, Louis Bachelier. Bachelier was not actually concerned with the motion of microscopic particles suspended in a liquid. He was concerned with prices on the French stock market. Prices on the Bourse, like particles in a liquid, are subject to a vast array of random forces, so many that the prices’ behavior can only be studied probabilistically. This is exactly what Bachelier did in his remarkable doctoral thesis, “The Theory of Speculation.” Yet although his paper is couched in terms of futures and stock options and “call-o-more’s” (whatever those are), the mathematics is identical to that of Brownian motion, and Bachelier’s equation explaining the drift of prices with time is the same as the one Einstein later derived for the position of particles. In his paper Bachelier anticipated the Black-Scholes approach to options trading, and for his prescient work he has in recent years been crowned the “father of economic modeling.” At the time, though, Bachelier seems to have been ignored, and he passed into obscurity. Could Einstein have known of his predecessor’s work and merely transplanted the mathematics to particles? I am aware of no evidence that this is the case.
Tony Rothman (Everything's Relative: And Other Fables from Science and Technology)
I leaned down to grab my backpack, but a band of iron caught me before I could grab it. No, not iron. Strong, unyielding arms wrapped around my shoulders from behind and yanked me backward into something hard. Alarm bells rang in my ears, but before I could scream, a big hand covered my mouth. “Elise,” a low voice gritted in my ear. “Stop. Look in front of you. One o’clock.” My brain raced to catch up. It was Weston holding me, not some crazed rapist or cannibal from the hills. His tall, lean body pressed into mine, crushing my backside against him. “Are you stalking me?” I mumbled from behind his hand. “Let go of me!” He gave me a shake. “Look in front of you, baby. Stay calm.” He turned my head slightly to the right, and though everything inside me wanted to ignore his orders, I focused on the spot. And nearly pissed my pants. No more than twenty feet away stood a mountain lion. Stock-still, it watched us both, standing in the exact path I would have taken had Weston not stopped me.
Julia Wolf (Dear Grumpy Boss (The Harder They Fall, #1))
And then, not to be mentioned on the same page, because some apothecary or medical man may renew my stock as it was renewed in Stockholm. I should be sorry to be reduced to the state of the two animals I see but do not hear in the corner by my stool – do not hear, so that their frenzied, tight-locked battle has a horror of its own – yet man (or at all events this particular man) is so weak that if an innocent leaf can protect him even a little then hey for the innocent
Patrick O'Brian (The Nutmeg of Consolation (Aubrey/Maturin, #14))
Executives should spend most of their time managing their company in private, not promoting it to the investing public. All too often, CEOs complain that their stock is undervalued no matter how high it goes—forgetting Graham’s insistence that managers should try to keep the stock price from going either too low or too high.8 Meanwhile, all too many chief financial officers give “earnings guidance,” or guesstimates of the company’s quarterly profits. And some firms are hype-o-chondriacs, constantly spewing forth press releases boasting of temporary, trivial, or hypothetical “opportunities.
Benjamin Graham (The Intelligent Investor)
To succeed, as individual investors and a free nation, we must learn to separate facts from the personal political opinions and strong agenda-driven biases of the majority of the national media. This could be the number one problem in our country today.
William J. O'Neil (How to Make Money in Stocks: A Winning System in Good Times and Bad)
In F&O what you earn is not real, because you up your bets - yes, it is betting - But, what you lose is real.
Sandeep Sahajpal (The Twelfth Preamble: To all the authors to be! (Short Stories Book 1))
All of the short-selling chart pattern set-ups that we use rely on a high-volume break off of the peak, and this is often the first sign of institutional money exiting a stock en masse as they begin “distributing” stock.
Gil Morales (Short-Selling with the O'Neil Disciples: Turn to the Dark Side of Trading)
Only sell short stocks that trade a minimum of 1–2 million shares a day, and preferably more. In general, avoid thinly traded stocks as short-sale candidates, as risk can correlate inversely to a stock's trading liquidity.
Gil Morales (Short-Selling with the O'Neil Disciples: Turn to the Dark Side of Trading)
A pocket pivot buy point occurs when a stock moves up through or off of the 10-day, 50-day, or 200-day moving average on volume that is higher than the volume on any down day (the volume on up days is not a factor) over the prior 10 trading days.
Gil Morales (Short-Selling with the O'Neil Disciples: Turn to the Dark Side of Trading)
Screening for stocks with heavy-volume price breaks on a daily and weekly basis is the most effective way to catch potential short-sale targets once they start to come under distribution.
Gil Morales (Short-Selling with the O'Neil Disciples: Turn to the Dark Side of Trading)
Late-stage cup-with-handle formations seem to be particularly vulnerable, especially when they are very wide and loose. A cup-with-handle formation is often a very productive first-stage base to see when a stock is just starting a big upside price run, but when you start to see these sloppy late-stage cup-with-handle formations after a long upside price move, they can often mean that trouble is brewing.
Gil Morales (Short-Selling with the O'Neil Disciples: Turn to the Dark Side of Trading)
LSFB set-ups are generally shortable as the stock drops back below the prior base breakout point and the 10-week (50-day) moving average.
Gil Morales (Short-Selling with the O'Neil Disciples: Turn to the Dark Side of Trading)
From a psychological point of view, the POD occurs when a hot-stock high-flyer breaks down severely, at which point it is able to bring in investors who missed the prior big price run and see the stock as “cheap.” This sets off a very rapid price advance back up to the highs and the left side of the POD that is quite simply unsustainable. At that point, everyone who is going to buy the stock has, and the sellers who hit the stock at the left side peak of the POD can now finish distributing their stock. With fewer “suckers” left to buy it, the stock then breaks down in rapid fashion and in most cases to new lows.
Gil Morales (Short-Selling with the O'Neil Disciples: Turn to the Dark Side of Trading)
The action of a wedging rally or a bear flag occurs after a prior price breakdown, and the two formations are really just different versions of the same phenomenon. The difference is that a wedging rally following a prior price break or downtrend occurs as a stock bounces while a bear flag occurs when there is not a significant bounce and the stock just moves sideways. In both cases, the stock is consolidating the prior downside move.
Gil Morales (Short-Selling with the O'Neil Disciples: Turn to the Dark Side of Trading)
Wedging rallies up into the 50-day moving average, or any other moving average for the matter, rarely stop exactly at the moving average itself. It is very common for a stock to rally just past a key moving average, only encountering resistance once it has rallied 2–3 percent and sometimes as much as 5 percent or more beyond the moving average. The key is to watch how the stock acts as it moves above the moving average and be on the lookout for voodoo days or a high-volume outside reversals to the downside.
Gil Morales (Short-Selling with the O'Neil Disciples: Turn to the Dark Side of Trading)
In most right-side POD failures, once the stock breaks down it will generally carry through the 20-day moving average and then find support at the 50-day or 200-day moving averages, depending on where they lie within the overall pattern, and then try to rally. In most cases this rally will carry back up into the 20-day moving average, which presents a secondary short-sale entry point. The breakdown from there is nothing short of exhilarating for any short-seller short the stock at that point!
Gil Morales (Short-Selling with the O'Neil Disciples: Turn to the Dark Side of Trading)
Stocks can often begin an overall topping phase with the formation of a big, ugly pattern whose dimensions are so exaggerated as to resemble something outlandish, which we might refer to as “Clown's Foot Syndrome.” They're like the oversized shoes that clowns typically wear and which look woefully out-of-place within the context of the overall picture.
Gil Morales (Short-Selling with the O'Neil Disciples: Turn to the Dark Side of Trading)
The gun industry collectively reinforced Glock’s pitch that small handguns were the perfect response to crime-ridden streets. The prolific Massad Ayoob advised in Shooting Industry, a periodical aimed at gun retailers: “Customers come to you every day out of fear. Fear is what they read in the newspaper. Fear of what they watch on the 11 o’clock news. Fear of the terrible acts of violence they see on the street. Your job, in no uncertain terms, is to sell them confidence.… An impulse of fear has sent that customer to your shop, so you want a quality product in stock to satisfy the customer’s needs and complete the impulse purchase.
Paul M. Barrett (Glock: The Rise Of America's Gun)
A: .................................. Jefe de ventas de coches nuevos DE: Mark R. Stuart Fax: (404)XXX-XXXX RE: Solicitud de precios Si está interesado en mi propuesta, por favor, respóndame por fax al (404) XXX-XXXX. Se trata de una compra en efectivo sujeta al impuesto correspondiente en el condado de ................... Si usted no tiene este vehículo en stock o pedido, dado que no tengo ninguna prisa, puedo esperar para la entrega. Las especificaciones que solicito son las siguientes: Ford Explorer Limited 4X4, último modelo Marfil Perla, tapicería de cuero Opciones: techo solar Lector de CD Licencias pertinentes Su presupuesto debe detallar el precio de partida, incluyendo impuestos, título y demás cargos. Espero con interés recibir su respuesta por fax. Por favor, no me llame por teléfono, si tiene alguna pregunta, inclúyala en el fax. Si necesito alguna aclaración, le llamaré yo. Gracias.
Thomas J. Stanley (El millonario de la puerta de al lado: Los sorprendentes secretos de los millonarios estadounidenses)
El encierro claustrofóbico de la Biblioteca Nacional se quebró, años después, con el descubrimiento de la calle Corrientes, que abrió nuevos caminos en mis avatares de lector. Las puertas de sus librerías de viejo, abiertas hasta altas horas de la noche, me atraían con el mismo magnetismo que para otros adolescentes tenía un burdel. La calle Corrientes, entre Talcahuano y Callao, que conocí hacia fines de los años cuarenta, se había convertido en una zona donde circulaba la bohemia artística y literaria. Recalaron en ella las librerías de viejo, que formaban su stock con los remates de bibliotecas privadas vendidas cuando sus dueños cambiaban las grandes mansiones por departamentos. Conocí a los pioneros de estas librerías, al socialista César Moro y a Rafael Palumbo. La librería de este último —cuyo pintoresquismo aprovechó Roberto Arlt en El juguete rabioso— era una cueva oscura y polvorienta, atestada hasta el techo de libros rotos, donde su dueño, ya viejo, envuelto con un chal por sobre una camiseta, vigilaba el local desde el fondo, tomando mate, algunas veces con los pies en una palangana o acompañado por su hija, Rosita Contreras, vedette de teatro de revistas y actriz de cine. También conocí a otros pioneros, más bizarros aún: con el cierre de los prostíbulos en 1936, algunos rufianes y regentas cambiaron insólitamente su anterior profesión por la de libreros de viejo; recuerdo haber visto sorprendido a una mujer madura con aire inocultable de madama retirada frente a la caja registradora. La búsqueda de libros viejos me ocupaba tardes enteras; revolver las mesas o subir a tambaleantes escaleras para alcanzar los estantes altos deparaba la emoción del buscador de tesoros, del cazador furtivo en el bosque: encontrar una presa escondida entre la maleza cuyo valor consistía en ser escasa o difícil de atrapar; descubrir el libro agotado mezclado, en la mesa de ofertas, con fracasadas ediciones de autor, libros de un momento pronto olvidados, saldos de editoriales.
Juan José Sebreli (El tiempo de una vida)
He had gone on the Stock Exchange for six months; but what was a butterfly to do among bulls and bears?
Terry O'Brien (50 Greatest Short Stories)
iStock, Shutterstock o Envato Market
Richard Gracia (El Método RICO: La guía definitiva para conseguir ÉXITO y DINERO. Reduce tus gastos, elimina tus deudas, aprende a ahorrar e invertir y alcanza tu LIBERTAD FINANCIERA. (Spanish Edition))