“
It is better for you to be free of fear lying upon a pallet, than to have a golden couch and a rich table and be full of trouble.
”
”
Epicurus
“
His tunic was unbuttoned at the top, and he ran a hand through his blue-black hair before he wordlessly slumped against the wall across from me and slid to the floor.
"What do you want?" I demanded.
"A moment of peace and quiet," he snapped, rubbing his temples.
I paused. "From what?"
He massaged his pale skin, making the corners of his eyes go up and down, out and in. He sighed. "From this mess."
I sat up farther on my pallet of the hay. I'd never seen him so candid.
"That damned bitch is running me ragged," he went on, and dropped his hands from his temples to lean his head against the wall. "You hate me. Imagine how you'd feel if I made you serve in my bedroom. I'm High Lord of the Night Court - not her harlot."
So the slurs were true. And I could imagine very easily how much I would hate him - what it would do to me - to be enslaved to someone like that. "Why are you telling me this?"
The swagger and nastiness were gone. "Because I'm tired and lonely, and you're the only person I can talk to without putting myself at risk." He let out a low laugh. "How absurd: a High Lord of Prythian and a - "
"You can leave if you're just going to insult me."
"But I'm so good at it". He flashed one of his grins. I glared at him, but he sighted. "One wrong move tomorrow, Freyre, and we're all doomed.
”
”
Sarah J. Maas (A Court of Thorns and Roses (A Court of Thorns and Roses, #1))
“
At the end of the warehouse was a dais constructed from pallets of books: stack of vampire novels, walls of James Patterson thrillers, and a throne from about a thousand copies of something called The Five Habits of Highly Aggressive Women.
”
”
Rick Riordan (The Son of Neptune (The Heroes of Olympus, #2))
“
He knew that on the day of his death he would see her face and he could hope to carry that beauty into the darkness with him, the last pagan on earth, singing softly upon his pallet in an unknown tongue.
”
”
Cormac McCarthy (The Passenger (The Passenger #1))
“
When he came back, he fed the fire, rolled out his pallet, turned off the light and laid down. After several minutes of quiet darkness, she heard his voice. "Sorry if I scared you. I don't roar that often."
-Ian to Marcie
”
”
Robyn Carr (A Virgin River Christmas (Virgin River, #4))
“
From a limited pallet of molecular components including cellulose, chitosan, and pectin; the very same materials found in trees, crustaceans and apple skins - natural systems embody an extensive array of functional materials that outperform human engineered ones through their resilience, sustainability and adaptability.
”
”
Neri Oxman
“
They began work at 5:30 and quit at 7 at night. Children six years old going home to lie on a straw pallet until time to resume work the next morning! I have seen the hair torn out of their heads by the machinery, their scalps torn off, and yet not a single tear was shed, while the poodle dogs were loved and caressed and carried to the seashore.
”
”
Mary Harris Jones
“
Sheets, towels and blankets surrounded Travis. He had fashioned a soft pallet to sleep on while I expelled the fifteen shots of tequila I’d consumed the night before. Travis had held my hair out of the toilet, and sat with me all night.
”
”
Jamie McGuire (Beautiful Disaster (Beautiful, #1))
“
Up, lad: thews that lie and cumber
Sunlit pallets never thrive;
Morns abed and daylight slumber
Were not meant for man alive.
”
”
A.E. Housman
“
I drove on, and between the north and southbound lanes a construction crew worked under daylight-bright industrial lamps. I saw them through a gauzy fog of dust and strong light...they wore blood-red vests and hardhats and massive goggles, and as the road sank I saw that the workers were bone thin, with skeletal jaws and long teeth. They labored on platforms over gaping holes in the earth, and among the men, piled atop rickety pallets, lolled babies, piles of them, in ashy cerements. I could not tell whether the crew was excavating or burying them.
”
”
Matthew M. Bartlett (Gateways to Abomination)
“
He has told us that He is the hungry one. He is the naked one. He is the thirsty one. He is the one without a home. He is the one who is suffering. These are our treasures, she said, looking at the rows of pallets in the caravanserai. They are Jesus.
”
”
Mother Teresa
“
When I was a boy I first learned how much better water tastes when it has set a while in a cedar bucket. Warmish-cool, with a faint taste like the hot July wind in cedar trees smells. It has to set at least six hours, and be drunk from a gourd. Water should never be drunk from metal.
And at night it is better still. I used to lie on the pallet in the hall, waiting until I could hear them all asleep, so I could get up and go back to the bucket. It would be black, the shelf black, the still surface of the water a round orifice in nothingness, where before I stirred it awake with the dipper I could see maybe a star or two in the bucket, and maybe in the dipper a star or two before I drank,
”
”
William Faulkner (As I Lay Dying)
“
Fridrik sat many a night by a smoking lamp, translating into Danish descriptions of the latest methods of keeping us poor humans alive, while on pallets around him lay the corpses, beyond any aid, despite the encouraging news of advances in electrical cures.
”
”
Sjón (The Blue Fox)
“
He lay down on his pallet and drew the fawn down beside him. He often lay so with it in the shed, or under the live oaks in the heat of the day. He lay with his head against its side. its ribs lifted and fell with its breathing. It rested its chin on his hand. It had a few short hairs there that prickled him. He had been cudgeling his wits for an excuse to bring the fawn inside at night to sleep with him, and now he had one that could not be disputed. He would smuggle it in and out as long as possible, in the name of peace.
”
”
Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings (The Yearling)
“
lay there on my pallet, hoping it would improve soon and wondering, in a distant, unreproachful sort of way, if I was any kind of man at all, and decided that I probably wasn’t.
”
”
Megan Whalen Turner (A Conspiracy of Kings (The Queen's Thief, #4))
“
Don’t even try to count all the colors of spring. God’s pallet keeps generating new hues.
”
”
Toni Sorenson
“
Before that summer, I had many times heard long-winded Baptist preachers take ten minutes to pray over card tables of potato salad and fried chicken at church picnics, but the way those sweating, red-faced men sat around on stacked pallets of lumber gulping oysters taught me most of what I knew about simple gladness.
”
”
Mary Karr (The Liars' Club)
“
He grasped my hand. “Let’s take this off.” He gently drew the ring from my finger, like a reverse engagement. A nullification. But I let him. He set it beside the pallet. “Be with me,” he said, his accent thickening. “Stay with me.” He nipped my bottom lip, as exciting and sexy as he’d ever been. “Let’s stop regretting and start living.” With a breathless nod, I allowed myself to fall under his spell. I gave myself up to it, to him.
”
”
Kresley Cole (The Dark Calling (The Arcana Chronicles, #5))
“
In class I had been taught about neurotransmitters and their effect on brain chemistry; I understood that disease is not a choice. This knowledge might have made me sympathetic to my father, but it didn’t. I felt only anger. We were the ones who’d paid for it, I thought. Mother. Luke. Shawn. We had been bruised and gashed and concussed, had our legs set on fire and our heads cut open. We had lived in a state of alert, a kind of constant terror, our brains flooding with cortisol because we knew that any of those things might happen at any moment. Because Dad always put faith before safety. Because he believed himself right, and he kept on believing himself right—after the first car crash, after the second, after the bin, the fire, the pallet. And it was us who paid.
”
”
Tara Westover (Educated)
“
The passageway smelled of smoke: burning wood, a torch, acrid. His head ached. Blood was wet and sticky upon his arm and on his fingers, and the orange glow of torchlight played from behind his back and over the corridor walls, leaping like a bonfire. There was a strange familiarity to it: the narrow walls in around him. And when he came to a wooden door set in the wall, he put his hand upon it and pushed it open.
There was a room, and a pallet inside it; a small torch burned low in a socket upon the wall. A man lay upon the cot, his face bruised and battered, his hands curled against his chest bloody: and Laurence knew him; knew him and knew himself. He remembered another door opening, in Bristol, three years before, and a voice asking him to come outside his prison, in a Britain under siege.
“Tenzing,” Laurence said, and, as Tharkay opened feverish eyes, went to help him stand.
”
”
Naomi Novik (Blood of Tyrants (Temeraire, #8))
“
She gave life a meaning.
She was art, dressed like a painters pallet, bright and unaware of how goddam beautiful she could be turned into; with the right touch, her smile was the brush and her story was the canvas.
”
”
Nikki Rowe
“
He’d taken up a pallet between Toadvine and another Kentuckian, a veteran of the war. This man had returned to claim some darkeyed love he’d left behind two years before when Doniphan’s command pulled east for Saltillo and the officers had had to drive back hundreds of young girls dressed as boys that took the road behind the army.
”
”
Cormac McCarthy (Blood Meridian: Or the Evening Redness in the West)
“
And everyone loved sunsets. The light lost its sanity as it fell over the hills and into the Pacific--it went red and deeper red, orange, and even green. The skies seemed to melt, like lava eating black rock into great bite marks of burning. Sometimes all the town stopped and stared west. Shopkeepers came from their rooms to stand in the street. Families brought out their invalids on pallets and in wheelbarrows to wave their bent wrists at the madness consuming their sky. Swirls of gulls and pelicans like God's own confetti snowed across those sky riots.
”
”
Luis Alberto Urrea (The House of Broken Angels)
“
Everyday we are all presented with the same primary colors(red, yellow, blue), some mix their colors to get secondary and tertiary colors to paint their life's portrait beautifully, others sit and complain that they don't have enough colors. It's not the number of colors on your pallet that does the magic, it's what you do with what you have. Go ahead and paint anyway. It's your life's portrait.
”
”
Bernard Kelvin Clive
“
At night it is better still. I used to lie on the pallet in the hall waiting until I could hear them all asleep, so I could get up and go back to the bucket. It would be black, the shelf black, the still surface of the water a round orifice in nothingness, where before I stirred it awake with the dipper I could see maybe a star or two in the bucket, and maybe in the dipper a star or two before I drank. After that I was bigger, older.
”
”
William Faulkner (As I Lay Dying)
“
It didn't take long for her to help him remove his armor.
She gestured to the pallet. "Lie down."
"Not yet." He pulled her into his arms and held her against his chest. This is what he was fighting for. Not just for himself, but for all men to hold their women in their arms - and to raise families free from tyranny.
”
”
Amy Jarecki (Rise of a Legend (Guardian of Scotland #1))
“
All these women, Huila thought: Mothers of God. These skinny, these dirty and toothless, these pregnant and shoeless. These with an issue of blood, and these with unsuckled breasts and children cold in the grave. These old forgotten ones too weak to work. These fat ones who milked all day. These twisted ones tied to their pallets, these barren ones, these married ones, these abandoned ones, these whores, these hungry ones, these thieves, these drunks, these mestizas, these lovers of other women, these Indians, and these littlest ones who faced unknowable tomorrows. Mothers of God. If it was a sin to think so, she would face God and ask Him why. “The
”
”
Luis Alberto Urrea (The Hummingbird's Daughter)
“
His anxiety about the safety of his son, his conjectures concerning the issue of his mission to the Duke of Burgundy, and a thousand other thoughts which recalled past events, or speculated on those which were to come, rushed upon his mind like the waves of a perturbed sea, and prevented all tendency to repose. He had been in bed about an hour, and sleep had not yet approached his couch, when he felt that the pallet on which he lay was sinking below him, and that he was in the act of descending along with it he knew not whither.
”
”
Walter Scott (Anne of Geierstein)
“
Together, they will see to the girl, lift down the pallet, give her the medicine. They will take this matter in hand.
”
”
Maggie O'Farrell (Hamnet)
“
And, like you told you, the skeletons just stacked them onto a wooden pallet, tied some rope around it, and the dragon lifted everything into the air and flew away.
”
”
Dr. Block (Firestorm (Tales of the Glitch Guardians #3))
“
We all have the same pallet of emotional paints. It is how we pigment them on the canvas of life that dictates our artistry.
”
”
Ged Thompson Liverpool Poet
“
I used intentionally compromised words because I knew no one would suspect a false bottom to the archaic pallets of shadings I applied.
”
”
André Aciman (Call Me by Your Name)
“
The continual mismanagement is what keeps us from enjoying the full pallet of emotions that truly enrich us. .
”
”
Ruben Papian
“
The blow, Iota goes down, the bucket rolls, Iota crawls for his pallet, Cla turns to look for the bucket.
”
”
Stephen King (Fairy Tale)
“
I love belief it can move the pallet on a Ouija board or put a man into space. The problem that we have is the wrong beliefs we can't erase.
”
”
Stanley Victor Paskavich
“
Somehow the words in her head have freed themselves from the architecture of teeth and tongue pallet
”
”
Cass Green (In a Cottage in a Wood)
“
Several pallets had been pulled to the middle of the open space and stacked two high with a large blanket over them. The implication stunned her – it was so unexpected, so unlike what she believed about him – her mind only registered denial.
She heard Ash bolt the door and remove his leather jacket, felt his hands on her shoulders as he turned her around to face him. He stroked her cheek with one hand while the other reached for his belt. “My sweet, innocent Sage,” he whispered, and still her thoughts could gain no traction.
There was the snap of a release from his belt, and though she continued to meet his eyes, she saw a sheathed dagger in the hand he raised between them.
“Tonight I must teach you how to kill a man.
”
”
Erin Beaty (The Traitor's Kiss (The Traitor's Circle, #1))
“
On the day of his death he would see her face and he could hope to carry that beauty into the darkness with him, the last pagan on earth, singing softly on his pallet in an unknown tongue.
”
”
Cormac McCarthy (The Passenger (The Passenger #1))
“
To the worst of them, she had been just another piece of Mr. Alexander’s choice livestock, and her pallet, in an alcove off the laundry room, had afforded her no lock or door bar. Since then, she and Jarret had managed to live in the precarious intimacy that is the only kind possible when one partner still ardently loves another. When Jarret sat by his hearth under the oil painting of Lexington, gazing at her lovely face in the firelight, he tried to forget that. As he tried to forget that it wasn’t a legal marriage and that, for all his authority at Woodburn, he was still enslaved.
”
”
Geraldine Brooks (Horse)
“
IV
REVEILLE
Wake: the silver dusk returning
Up the beach of darkness brims,
And the ship of sunrise burning
Strands upon the eastern rims.
Wake: the vaulted shadow shaatters,
Trampled to the floor it spanned,
And the tent of night in tatters
Straws the sky-pavilioned land.
Up, lad, up, 'tis late for lying:
Hear the drums of morning play;
Hark, the empty highways crying
"Who'll beyond the hills away?"
Towns and countries woo together,
Forelands beacon, belfries call;
Never lad that trod on leather
Lived to feast his heart with all.
Up, lad: thews that lie and cumber
Sunlit pallets never thrive;
Morns abed and daylight slumber
Were not meant for man alive.
Clay lies still, but blood's a rover;
Breath's a ware that will not keep
Up, lad: when the journey's over
There'll be time enough to sleep.
”
”
A.E. Housman (A Shropshire Lad)
“
As Plutarch later wrote, “It is a most agreeable spectacle for a Roman soldier when he sees a general eating common bread in public, or sleeping on a simple pallet, or taking a hand in the construction of some trench or palisade. For they have not so much admiration for those leaders who share honor and riches with them as for those who take part in their toils and dangers.” Marius personified this type of leadership.
”
”
Mike Duncan (The Storm Before the Storm: The Beginning of the End of the Roman Republic)
“
In his delirium he ransacked the linens of his pallet for arms but there were none. The judge smiled. The fool was no longer there but another man and this other man he could never see in his entirety but he seemed an artisan and a worker in metal. The judge enshadowed him where he crouched at his trade but he was a coldforger who worked with hammer and die, perhaps under some indictment and an exile from men’s fires, hammering out like his own conjectural destiny all through the night of his becoming some coinage for a dawn that would not be. It is this false moneyer with his gravers and burins who seeks favor with the judge and he is at contriving from cold slag brute in the crucible a face that will pass, an image that will render this residual specie current in the markets where men barter. Of this is the judge judge and the night does not end.
”
”
Cormac McCarthy (Blood Meridian, or, the Evening Redness in the West)
“
Sabism is thematic pallet, philosophical colourism, chromatic signature and dual art, bi-chromatic scale, soft scale, poetics of attractiveness, mythologism, actual value, logism of color, active color, logical panel.
”
”
Lepota L. Cosmo
“
and a heart that throbs most queerly. I’m queer for other queers, queer for their shapes and colors and sizes, queer for their tastes. I’m queer for the ruthless sea. I’m queer for all the little queer creatures in the tide pools. I’m queer for the light when it breaks the horizon and queer for it when it sinks behind the trees. I’m plain queer for these people and queer for this world. I’m downright queer in love with this wreck of a world, queer in love with love itself—love’s always queer, always arriving in our hearts from queer nowheres, queering everything—and there we are; wide awake all night, queer as queer can be; queer orphans, queer widows, queer boys, and queer girls; sorrel girls queer for ivory boys, daffodil boys queer for lilac girls; carmine girls queer for sable girls, cinnamon boys so very queer for boys of bluest milk. Wicked shepherds! Burn me at the stake and hang me from a tree. Clap me in the stocks; send me down the mine; set me in the burning fields. But I am queer. And I say, Here is water, bread, a dull penny. Here’re my old shirt, my plane and hammer, a roof I’ll help you raise above your head. Here is my queer old body, in a barn, behind a hedge, beneath a shadow, on a bare pallet—
”
”
Paul Harding (This Other Eden)
“
Look — here it comes, its bones are plastic, it builds itself from pallet slat & bottle top, rises from sift, is lashed & trussed with fishing line. It is drift: it has cuttlefish nails & sea-poppy horns, it breathes in rain & it breathes out rust.
”
”
Robert Macfarlane (Ness)
“
He was here. But in this world, how long could we possibly have together? "Jack, I love you. I can't ever lose you again." Adrenaline and fear morphed into heat. Desire. I turned my head to nuzzle one of his palms, kissing the callused skin. He sucked in a breath, and his big body tensed against mine. Combustion ignited. When I faced him, his attention dropped to my lips, so I wetted them. His eyes met mine, his smoldering expression asking, Do you want this? Mine answered: Try to deny me. He bent down; I'd already gone to my toes. When our lips met, logic evaporated like a water drop on a sizzling skillet. I tasted cold and salt on his lips. Almost lost him. I deepened the kiss, tugging on his neck as he yanked off his heavy coat. The tension that have been building between us erupted. I drank in his raw passion, unable to get enough. Between kisses, he tore off his soaked shirt as I snatched at his belt. His strong chest heaved breaths. Tumbling to the pallet. More kissing. Tongues twirling. My God, he's a sinful kisser.
”
”
Kresley Cole (The Dark Calling (The Arcana Chronicles, #5))
“
I think I have a lot going for me as far as dating. I have a high IQ, I'm 6'3", and on May 23rd I'll be Forklift Certified. That's right, I'll soon be qualified to transport stacked pallets, and I know that's the first thing women look for in a potential partner.
”
”
Jarod Kintz (Eggs, they’re not just for breakfast)
“
My primary duty was to lift the floor tile onto a shipping pallet and prepare that pallet for departure. It wasn’t easy, but it paid thirteen dollars an hour and I needed the money, so I took the job and collected as many overtime shifts and extra hours as I could.
”
”
J.D. Vance (Hillbilly Elegy: A Memoir of a Family and Culture in Crisis)
“
No matter how I prayed, no fairy godmother appeared. No elf or leprechaun or world-weary wizard materialised to provide the secret weapon against my foe. I remained alone in a mouse-infested cell, empty but for a pallet and the nightdress into which I now had to struggle.
”
”
Catherine Gilbert Murdock (Princess Ben)
“
I began to feel my misery in pallet on floor, listening to music, my misery,
that's why I want to sing.
The room closed down on me, I expected the presence of the Creator, I saw
my gray painted walls and ceiling, they contained my room, they
contained me
as the sky contained my garden,
”
”
Allen Ginsberg (Howl and Other Poems)
“
There was silence then, and I did not care about the damp pallet or how sweaty I was. His eyes were unwavering, green flecked with gold. A surety rose in me, lodged in my throat. I will never leave him. It will be this, always, for as long as he will let me.
If I had had words to speak such a thing, I would have. But there were none that seemed big enough for it, to hold that swelling truth.
As if he had heard me, he reached for my hand. I did not need to look; his fingers were etched into my memory, slender and petal-veined, strong and quick and never wrong.
"Patroclus," he said. He was always better with words than I.
”
”
Madeline Miller (The Song of Achilles)
“
But creativity, she doesn’t fit in a box. She’s a wild, fluid, uncontrollable energy that spreads out sensuously from a curious, wide open mind in large expanses of aimless time on dreamy liminal train journeys or in subtle moments between waking and sleep. She can’t be pushed, or coughed up, or beaten into submission by a brutal and unmerciful regime. She needs light, and breath, and space and then, maybe, if the mood takes her, she’ll unfurl her wings and let her colors run into the atmosphere. And this energy, this wild, fun, unpredictable magic that I’d played with so happily as a child, that had flowed through me like it was my very life force up until this point; I didn’t understand it anymore.
Creativity was this swirling wild mysterious language, but now I lived in a colorless angular world that promised me a certainty I valued above all else. And where before, I was just scribbling, writing, moving for the mere joy of it, now I tried to commodify my creativity. I tried to squeeze it out and make it do something worthwhile, be special, be important, be good. I could no longer see the point of art if it wasn’t good.
But that’s the tricky thing about art, it’s never strictly good or bad, it’s just expression, or excretion. It couldn’t be measure by scales or charts, or contained in small manageable segments in the day. It was always, by its very nature, so imperfect. And the imperfections drove me mad. The anxiety and frustration with my creative endeavors turned into an actual fear of blank pages and pallets of paint. There was too much potential and too much room to fail so day by day, I chose perfection over creativity. I chose no more creativity, and no more mistakes.
There are things that eating disorders takes from you that are more important, much greater and more profound a loss, and much much more difficult to recover and restore completely than body fat. And that reckless urge to create, just for the pure, senseless joy of it, would become the one I missed the most.
”
”
Evanna Lynch (The Opposite of Butterfly Hunting: The Tragedy and The Glory of Growing Up (A Memoir))
“
Boaz Asleep
Boaz, overcome with weariness, by torchlight
made his pallet on the threshing floor
where all day he had worked, and now he slept
among the bushels of threshed wheat.
The old man owned wheatfields and barley,
and though he was rich, he was still fair-minded.
No filth soured the sweetness of his well.
No hot iron of torture whitened in his forge.
His beard was silver as a brook in April.
He bound sheaves without the strain of hate
or envy. He saw gleaners pass, and said,
Let handfuls of the fat ears fall to them.
The man's mind, clear of untoward feeling,
clothed itself in candor. He wore clean robes.
His heaped granaries spilled over always
toward the poor, no less than public fountains.
Boaz did well by his workers and by kinsmen.
He was generous, and moderate. Women held him
worthier than younger men, for youth is handsome,
but to him in his old age came greatness.
An old man, nearing his first source, may find
the timelessness beyond times of trouble.
And though fire burned in young men's eyes,
to Ruth the eyes of Boaz shone clear light
”
”
Victor Hugo
“
IN THE DAWN there is a man progressing over the plain by means of holes which he is making in the ground. He uses an implement with two handles and he chucks it into the hole and he enkindles the stone in the hole with his steel hole by hole striking the fire out of the rock which God has put there. On the plain behind him are the wanderers in search of bones and those who do not search and they move haltingly in the light like mechanisms whose movements are monitored with escapement and pallet so that they appear restrained by a prudence or reflectiveness which has no inner reality and they cross in their progress one by one that track of holes that runs to the rim of the visible ground and which seems less the pursuit of some continuance than the verification of a principle, a validation of sequence and causality as if each round and perfect hole owed its existence to the one before it there on that prairie upon which are the bones and the gatherers of bones and those who do not gather. He strikes fire in the hole and draws out his steel. Then they all move on again.
”
”
Cormac McCarthy (Blood Meridian, or, the Evening Redness in the West)
“
I switched to wine – for better or worse and carried over – rather shuffled back to the table with an overflowing pint of ‘Jimmie Crickets Finest Burning Bum Bitter,’ or words to that effect. Is there such a thing as one-word bitter anymore? ‘Sgt Stiffies Severed Nippy.’ ‘Hair Of The Bastard Dog That Bit Me.’ ‘The Devils Own Salty Piss.’ I’ve never had a pallet for bitter. I was mainly a girly-drink-drunk.
”
”
Daniel Bashford (Normal Extreme)
“
Torrens kicked at the door until it was finally opened. The farm couple and three youngsters had been eating breakfast in the common room. The yard dog would have bounded in had not Torrens kicked the door shut.
'I want a bed. Quilts. A hot drink. I am a doctor. This woman is my patient.'
The farm couple was terrified. The look on the face of Torrens cut short any questions. They did as he ordered. One of the children ran to fetch his medical kit from the cart. The woman motioned for Torrens to set Caroline on a straw pallet. The farmer kept his distance, but his wife, shyly, fearffully, ventured closer. She glanced at Torrens, as if requesting his permission to help. Between them, they made Caroline as comfortable as they could.
Torrens knelt by the pallet. Caroline reached for his hand. 'Leave while you can. Do not burden yourself with me.'
'A light burden.'
'I wish you to find Augusta.'
'You have my promise.'
'Take this.' Caroline had slipped off a gold ring set with diamonds. 'It was a wedding gift from the king. It has not left my finger since then. I give it to you now - ' Torrens protested, but Caroline went on - 'not as a keepsake. You and I have better keepsakes in our hearts. I wish you to sell it. You will need money, perhaps even more than this will bring. But you must stary alive and find my child. Help her as you have always helped me.'
'We shall talk of this later, when you are better. We shall find her together.'
'You have never lied to me.' Caroline's smile was suddenly flirtacious. 'Sir, if you begin now, I shall take you to task for it.'
Her face seemed to grow youthful and earnest for an instant. Torrens realized she held life only by strength of will.
'I am thinking of the Juliana gardens,' Caroline said. 'How lovely they were. The orangerie. And you, my loving friend. Tell me, could we have been happy?'
'Yes.' Torrens raised her hand to his lips. 'Yes. I am certain of it.'
Caroline did not speak again. Torrens stayed at her side. She died later that morning. Torrens buried her in the shelter of a hedgerow at the far edge of the field. The farmer offered to help, but Torrens refused and dug the grave himself. Later, in the farmhouse, he slept heavily for the first time since his escape. Mercifully, he did not dream.
Next day, he gave the farmer his clothing in trade for peasant garb. He hitched up the cart and drove back to the road. He could have pressed on, lost himself beyond search in the provinces. He was free. Except for his promise.
He turned the cart toward Marianstat.
”
”
Lloyd Alexander (The Beggar Queen (Westmark, #3))
“
Then he sat very still with his hands on his knees, his shaggy head against the bricks, restored to patience and a look of tried inviolate sanctity, the faded blue eyes looking out down the row of cages, a forest of sweating iron dowels, forms of men standing or huddled upon their pallets, and the old man felt the circle of years closing, the final increment of the curve returning him again to the inchoate, the prismatic flux of sound and color wherein he had drifted once before and now beyond the world of men.
”
”
Cormac McCarthy (The Orchard Keeper)
“
From the Bullens’ cottage came Father and Alf. They were carrying Granny on her old straw pallet. Hannah followed with the rest of the family. Showers of sparks were blowing on to the roof and against the side wall that was weather-boarded. Mother was clutching her case of stuffed birds and the family Bible. Granny was singing. Hannah said: ‘Yer’d best take ‘er up near the church and put ‘er somewheres out of the wind. Ermie and Doris, you go with Gran and stay close to ‘er, see? Don’t come down ‘ere again. Now mind what I says, you two stays by yer Gran; and Mother, you’d better go along with ‘em.
”
”
Radclyffe Hall (Radclyffe Hall: The Complete Novels)
“
Women had their cycles, you know. I was never so disgusted by my own body. We had pallets the relief gave out. I was on that pallet with a plague of flies all around me. I couldn't get off it because the first few days we was there they didn't have anything for girls on their monthly and there weren't rags or anything to spare. A circle of blood spread around me, from my knees up to my back. I was beyond shame. You don't think about things like that-when people tell you about wars and disasters, they leave out body shame. A body won't stop doing even when the world is ending; it just keeps on. Nasty machine.
”
”
Ayana Mathis (The Unsettled)
“
Very well, then. If it is yours, perhaps you should like to inhabit it? With me, of course.” He winked suggestively. “We can always engage in some royal encounters in the palatial comfort of yon lousy pallet . . . It grows lonely, don’t you think?” “Shut up!” she snarled. “I don’t have to stand here and listen to your sly innuendos!” “Sly? Forgive me. I thought I was being quite direct. Allow me to steer a more . . . decided course.” He rose to his feet, towering over her, and, with a mocking sweep of his arm around the dark cell, the stone floor, the filthy mat said, “Perhaps you will join me for a bout of lusty coupling upon the forgiving comfort of—
”
”
Danelle Harmon (My Lady Pirate (Heroes of the Sea #3))
“
Optimal Tower is a skyscraper unlike its predecessors, rising skyward as an artistic endeavor, spirited and soulful, with a steel and glass manifestation reminiscent of Claude Monet's water lilies, and instantly dismissive of the gray, steel and mortar structures of the past. The architects and builders have pilfered Monet's color pallet and painted this vertical stretch of the Cavanaugh skyline with the delicate greens and blues and grays and yellows of Giverny. Somehow, in the structure, the sensibility of an impressionist painting emerges as the muted colors are faded in splotches and sunlit in others, with gradual transitions as subtle as the delicate brush strokes of the master himself. Steel beams crisscross haphazardly throughout the towering facade, which only reinforces its intrinsic impressionistic essence by emulating the natural randomness of the lily pond. Atop the structure, a simple fifty foot spire seems to rein in the freeform work beneath it as it merges the natural splendor into one straight pinnacle skyward. This one hundred and fifteen story building reaches twenty-five stories above its surroundings, creating a gloriously artful and peaked skyline not unlike the Alps in France that will be instantly recognizable the world over and cause onlookers to gasp and utter, "C'est Magnifique.
”
”
Michael Bowe (Skyscraper of a Man)
“
Part of what kept him standing in the restive group of men awaiting authorization to enter the airport was a kind of paralysis that resulted from Sylvanshine’s reflecting on the logistics of getting to the Peoria 047 REC—the issue of whether the REC sent a van for transfers or whether Sylvanshine would have to take a cab from the little airport had not been conclusively resolved—and then how to arrive and check in and where to store his three bags while he checked in and filled out his arrival and Post-code payroll and withholding forms and orientational materials then somehow get directions and proceed to the apartment that Systems had rented for him at government rates and get there in time to find someplace to eat that was either in walking distance or would require getting another cab—except the telephone in the alleged apartment wasn’t connected yet and he considered the prospects of being able to hail a cab from outside an apartment complex were at best iffy, and if he told the original cab he’d taken to the apartment to wait for him, there would be difficulties because how exactly would he reassure the cabbie that he really was coming right back out after dropping his bags and doing a quick spot check of the apartment’s condition and suitability instead of it being a ruse designed to defraud the driver of his fare, Sylvanshine ducking out the back of the Angler’s Cove apartment complex or even conceivably barricading himself in the apartment and not responding to the driver’s knock, or his ring if the apartment had a doorbell, which his and Reynolds’s current apartment in Martinsburg most assuredly did not, or the driver’s queries/threats through the apartment door, a scam that resided in Claude Sylvanshine’s awareness only because a number of independent Philadelphia commercial carriage operators had proposed heavy Schedule C losses under the proviso ‘Losses Through Theft of Service’ and detailed this type of scam as prevalent on the poorly typed or sometimes even handwritten attachments required to explain unusual or specific C-deductions like this, whereas were Sylvanshine to pay the fare and the tip and perhaps even a certain amount in advance on account so as to help assure the driver of his honorable intentions re the second leg of the sojourn there was no tangible guarantee that the average taxi driver—a cynical and ethically marginal species, hustlers, as even their smudged returns’ very low tip-income-vs.-number-of-fares-in-an-average-shift ratios in Philly had indicated—wouldn’t simply speed away with Sylvanshine’s money, creating enormous hassles in terms of filling out the internal forms for getting a percentage of his travel per diem reimbursed and also leaving Sylvanshine alone, famished (he was unable to eat before travel), phoneless, devoid of Reynolds’s counsel and logistical savvy in the sterile new unfurnished apartment, his stomach roiling in on itself in such a way that it would be all Sylvanshine could do to unpack in any kind of half-organized fashion and get to sleep on the nylon travel pallet on the unfinished floor in the possible presence of exotic Midwest bugs, to say nothing of putting in the hour of CPA exam review he’d promised himself this morning when he’d overslept slightly and then encountered last-minute packing problems that had canceled out the firmly scheduled hour of morning CPA review before one of the unmarked Systems vans arrived to take him and his bags out through Harpers Ferry and Ball’s Bluff to the airport, to say even less about any kind of systematic organization and mastery of the voluminous Post, Duty, Personnel, and Systems Protocols materials he should be receiving promptly after check-in and forms processing at the Post, which any reasonable Personnel Director would expect a new examiner to have thoroughly internalized before reporting for the first actual day interacting with REC examiners, and which there was no way in any real world that Sylvanshine could expect
”
”
David Foster Wallace (The Pale King)
“
She hooked a small stool over with her foot, climbed up on it, and began to count the bottles of floor-wax on the top shelf, touching each one lightly with the tips of her right thumb and forefinger as she went. She had to reach, and when she did, her dress pulled up and he could see beyond the brown tops of her stockings to the waffled white flesh of her upper thighs and he turned his eyes away, suddenly and aimlessly recalling what had happened to Noah’s third son when he looked at his father as the old man lay drunk and naked on his pallet. Poor guy had ended up being a hewer of wood and fetcher of water ever after. Him and all his descendants. And that’s why we have race riots today, son. Praise God.
”
”
Stephen King (The Stand)
“
It's just that when a woman is kidnapped and forced into agreeing to marriage, she hopes for a bit more... excitement. Than this."
He rolled slowly- maddeningly- to face her, the air between them thickened, and Penelope was instantly aware of their position, scant inches apart, on a warm pallet in a small room in an empty house, beneath the same blanket- which happened to be his greatcoat. And she realized that perhaps she should not have implied that the evening was unexciting.
Because she was not at all certain that she was prepared for it to become any more exciting. "I didn't mean-" She rushed to correct herself.
"Oh, I think you did an excellent job of meaning." The words were low and dark, and suddenly she was not so very sure that she wasn't afraid after all. "I am not stimulating enough for you?"
"Not you..." she was quick to reply. "The whole..." She waved one hand, lifting the greatcoat as she thought better of finishing. "Never mind."
His gaze was on her, intent and unmoving and, while he had not moved, it seemed as though he had grown larger, more looming. As though he had sucked a great deal of air from the room. "How can I make this night more satisfying for you, my lady?"
The soft question sent a thrum of feeling through her... the way the word- satisfying- rolled languid from his tongue set her heart racing and her stomach turning.
It seemed the night was becoming very exciting very quickly.
And everything was moving much too quickly for Penelope's tastes. "No need," she said, at an alarmingly high pitch. "It's fine."
"Fine?" The word rolled lazily from his tongue.
"Quite thrilling." She nodded, bringing one hand to her mouth to feign a yawn. "So thrilling, in fact, that I find myself unbearably exhausted." She made to turn her back to him. "I shall bid you good night."
"I don't think so," he said, the soft words as loud as a gunshot in the tiny space between them.
”
”
Sarah MacLean (A Rogue by Any Other Name (The Rules of Scoundrels, #1))
“
Two days later, I started my job.
My job involved typing friendly letters full of happy lies to dying children. I wasn't allowed to touch my computer keyboard. I had to press the keys with a pair of Q-tips held by tweezers -- one pair of tweezers in each hand.
I’m sorry -- that was a metaphor.
My job involved using one of those photo booths to take strips of four photographs of myself. The idea was to take one picture good enough to put on a driver’s license, and to be completely satisfied with it, knowing I had infinite retries and all the time in the world, and that I was getting paid for it. I’d take the photos and show them to the boss, and he would help me think of reasons the photos weren't good enough. I’d fill out detailed reports between retakes. We weren't permitted to recycle the outtakes, so I had to scan them, put them on eBay, arrange a sale, and then ship them out to the buyer via FedEx. FedEx came once every three days, at either ten minutes till noon or five minutes after six.
I’m sorry -- that was a metaphor, too.
My job involved blowing ping-pong balls across long, narrow tables using three-foot-long bendy straws. At the far end of the table was a little wastebasket. My job was to get the ping-pong ball into that wastebasket, using only the bendy straw and my lungs. Touching the straw to the ping-pong ball was grounds for a talking-to. If the ping-pong ball fell off the side of the table, or if it missed the wastebasket, I had to get on my computer and send a formal request to commit suicide to Buddha himself. I would then wait patiently for his reply, which was invariably typed while very stoned, and incredibly forgiving. Every Friday, an hour before Quitting Time, I'd put on a radiation suit. I'd lift the wastebaskets full of ping-pong balls, one at a time, and deposit them into drawstring garbage bags. I'd tie the bags up, stack them all on a pallet, take them down to the incinerator in the basement, and watch them all burn. Then I'd fill out, by hand, a one-page form re: how the flames made me feel. "Sad" was an acceptable response; "Very Sad" was not.
”
”
Tim Rogers
“
I still don’t see why we couldn’t sleep in that cave,” Mari said as MacRieve led her out into the night.
“Because my cave’s better than their cave.”
“You know, that really figures.” After the rain, the din of cicadas and frogs resounded in the underbrush all around them, forcing her to raise her voice. “Is it far?” When he shook his head, she said, “Then why do I have to hold your hand through the jungle? This path looks like a tractor busted through here.”
“I went back this way while you ate to make sure everything was clear. Brought your things here, too,” he said as he steered her toward a lit cave entrance.
When they crossed the threshold, wings flapped in the shadows, building to a furor before settling. Inside, a fire burned. Beside it, she saw he’d unpacked some of his things, and had made up one pallet. “Well, no one can call you a pessimist, MacRieve.” She yanked her hand from his. “Deluded fits, though.”
He merely leaned back against the wall, seeming content to watch her as she explored on her own. She’d read about this part of Guatemala and knew that here limestone caverns spread out underground like a vast web. Above them a cathedral ceiling soared, with stalactites jutting down. “What’s so special about this cave?”
“Mine has bats.”
She breathed, “If I stick with you, I’ll have nothing but the best.”
“Bats mean fewer mosquitoes. And then there’s also the bathtub for you to enjoy.” He waved her attention to an area deeper within. A subterranean stream with a sandy beach meandered through the cavern. Her eyes widened. A small pool sat off to the side, not much larger than an oversize Jacuzzi, and laid out along its edge were her toiletries, her washcloth, and her towel. Her bag—filled with all of her clean clothes—was off just to the side.
Mari cried out at the sight, doubling over to yank at her bootlaces. Freed of her boots, she hopped forward on one foot then the other as she snatched off her socks. She didn’t pause until she was about to start on the button fly of her shorts.
She glanced up to find him watching her with a gleam of expectation in his eyes. “You will be leaving, of course.”
“Or I could help you.”
“I’ve had a bit of practice bathing myself and think I can stumble my way through this.”
“But you’re tired. Why no’ let me help? Now that I’ve two hands again, I’m eager to use them.”
“You give me privacy or I go without.”
“Verra well.” He shrugged. “I’ll leave—because your going without is no’ an option. Call me if you need me.
”
”
Kresley Cole (Wicked Deeds on a Winter's Night (Immortals After Dark, #3))
“
His tunic was unbuttoned at the top, and he ran a hand through his blue-black hair before he wordlessly slumped against the wall across from me and slid to the floor.
'What do you want?' I demanded.
'A moment of peace and quiet,' he snapped, rubbing his temples.
I paused. 'From what?'
He massaged his pale skin, making the corners of his eyes go up and down, out and in. He sighed. 'From this mess.'
I sat up farther on my pallet of hay. I'd never seen him so candid.
'That damned bitch is running me ragged,' he went on and dropped his hands from his temples to lean his head against the wall. 'You hate me. Imagine how you'd feel if I made you serve in my bedroom. I'm High Lord of the Night Court- not her harlot.'
So the slurs were true. And I could imagine very easily how much I would hate him- what it would do to me- to be enslaved to someone like that. 'Why are you telling me this?'
The swagger and nastiness were gone. 'Because I'm tired and lonely, and you're the only person I can talk to without putting myself at risk.' He let out a low laugh. 'How absurd: a High Lord of Prythian and a -'
'You can leave if you're just going to insult me.'
'But I'm so good at it.' He flashed one of his grins. I glared at him, but he sighed.
”
”
Sarah J. Maas (A Court of Thorns and Roses (A Court of Thorns and Roses, #1))
“
Chris.” Michael had another bag, and he added it to the stack. “Less talk. More work.”
A spark of irritation lit Chris’s features, but he turned toward the garage. “Come on. Talk to me while I load. He’s just pissed because he’s already late.”
Becca followed him into the cool cavern of the garage. He picked up a bag from the stack and heaved it onto his shoulder.
This felt awkward. “Can I help you? Or—”
“Go ahead.” He flashed a smile. “Bring one out.”
She bent and slid her hands under the slick edges of the sack. It felt like a bag of sand, and it was marked 35KG. She could never remember if kilograms were more than pounds or the other way around, but she crouched and heaved and attempted to lift the sack of limestone.
Christ. It’s more. Kilograms are more. The bag had to weigh at least eighty pounds. She couldn’t even get it off the pallet.
“Excuse me.”
One of the twins, his voice threaded with humor. She stepped back, already sensing sweat on her back, just from that moment of effort. She felt like an idiot.
Especially when he hooked his hands under two bags and lifted them against his chest.
“Showoff,” she said.
He shook the hair off his forehead. “Maybe you could go in the kitchen and bake us some cookies or something.”
“Shut up.”
He gave her a wicked grin over his shoulder. “Just saying.
”
”
Brigid Kemmerer (Storm (Elemental, #1))
“
In that sleep and in sleeps to follow the judge did visit. Who would come other? A great shambling mutant, silent and serene. Whatever his antecedents he was something wholly other than their sum, nor was there system by which to divide him back into his origins for he would not go. Whoever would seek out his history through what unraveling of loins and ledgerbooks must stand at last darkened and dumb at the shore of a void without terminus or origin and whatever science he might bring to bear upon the dusty primal matter blowing down out of the millennia will discover no trace of any ultimate atavistic egg by which to reckon his commencing. In the white and empty room he stood in his bespoken suit with his hat in his hand and he peered down with his small and lashless pig’s eyes wherein this child just sixteen years on earth could read whole bodies of decisions not accountable to the courts of men and he saw his own name which nowhere else could he have ciphered out at all logged into the records as a thing already accomplished, a traveler known in jurisdictions existing only in the claims of certain pensioners or on old dated maps.
In his delirium he ransacked the linens of his pallet for arms but there were none. The judge smiled. The fool was no longer there but another man and this other man he could never see in his entirety but he seemed an artisan and a worker in metal. The judge enshadowed him where he crouched at his trade but he was a coldforger who worked with hammer and die, perhaps under some indictment and an exile from men’s fires, hammering out like his own conjectural destiny all through the night of his becoming some coinage for a dawn that would not be. It is this false moneyer with his gravers and burins who seeks favor with the judge and he is at contriving from cold slag brute in the crucible a face that will pass, an image that will render this residual specie current in the markets where men barter. Of this is the judge judge and the night does not end.
”
”
Cormac McCarthy (Blood Meridian, or, the Evening Redness in the West)
“
thực hành thế nào tôi xây đắp ghế sofa gỗ pallet sẽ đưa người trong gia đình đã từng bước trong các công việc tạo trong số những đồ gia dụng nội thất không tính trời mặc sức. Moc Kien Xinh Nam Dinh
”
”
Moc Kien Xinh
“
Yet another reason Jamie was willing to pay out for expensive, hard-capped boots. You never knew where you’d be stepping. Right in the centre of the settlement a side-path led down a narrow little alley between the backs of two squats made out of shipping pallets, and opened into a little square where three tents all opened towards each other. Two of them looked ancient, propped up by sticks and other rigid objects, tied off and hanging from the bridge overhead with their support strings. But the third tent looked pretty new. It was a modest green and orange striped thing — big enough to fit no more than two people. But it matched the description that Reggie had given. He said that it looked too nice to be there, and this one did. ‘Grace?’ Jamie called softly. Roper was right at her shoulder. She could smell the cigarettes on his breath. There was no answer. She stepped forward a little. ‘Grace? Are you in there? Can you hear me?’ There was an equal chance that the tent was empty, or that Grace was strung out and unresponsive. Either way, she needed to take a look. Jamie glanced at Roper, whose face she couldn’t read. His nose was wrinkled in disgust, but his flushed cheeks told her that he was as nervous as she was. As much as she hated to generalise — confronting homeless people was never an easy thing to do. They could be unpredictable at best, and it was always smart to tread lightly. She steadied her heart, took a breath and then clenched her hand to stop it from shaking. The zipper toggle hung at the top of the entrance, shimmering gently in the half-light. Jamie couldn’t tell if it was from movement inside, or from vibrations coming through the other squats around them. She swallowed and reached for it, taking it lightly between her fingers, not wanting to startle whoever was inside. Roper’s breath was short and sharp in her ear. ‘Grace?’ she tried again, but there was no response. She tugged left and the zipper began to unfurl, grinding its way along the teeth. Roper exhaled behind her, filling the already ripe gap with hot air. Jamie craned her neck to look through the widening gap as the flap began to fold down, but inside was shaded and dark. The smell of urine wafted out and stung her nostrils. She was aware of her boots in the mud, aware of the sounds around her, of the closeness of Roper as he looked over her head. Everything was still, the zipper not seeming to move at all.
”
”
Morgan Greene (Bare Skin (DS Jamie Johansson, #1))
“
Mevrouw van cafetaria, Broodje Aap, hebt u voor mij een pallet aan servetten, alstublieft?
”
”
Petra Hermans (Voor een betere wereld)
Thomas Merton (The Sign of Jonas)
“
Kệ để Pallet là một trong những giải pháp tối ưu cho việc sắp xếp và lưu trữ hàng hóa tải trọng nặng tại các khu công nghiệp, kho vận tải vừa và lớn. Với chất lượng đảm bảo, Kệ sắt để Pallet NTPL07 của Ngọc Tín là một sự lựa chọn hoàn hảo cho việc giải quyết vấn đề hàng hóa tải trọng lớn.
”
”
Ngọc Tín
“
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”
”
Hallam Express
“
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”
”
Jama Logistics
“
This is what it had come to. The people who had nursed him from the beginning of his life, whose energies he had harnessed for his own use up until this moment, were now called upon to care for him as he faced his last days on earth—sitting up with him at night, sleeping on pallets around his bed to be ready to hear when he called out in need, in fear, or out of simple loneliness. These African Americans, whom he had sentimentalized as having the best hearts of any people in the world, had given their lives to him—followed him about, cleaned up after him, no doubt worried about him, for his sake and their own—slept with him, and borne him children. He had held them as chattel, trying, in the case of the Hemingses, to soften a reality that could never be made soft. While he claimed to know and respect the quality of their hearts, he could never truly see them as human beings separate from him and his own needs, desires, and fears. In the end, all he really knew of their hearts was what they were willing to show him, and they carried enough knowledge in their heads to know his limitations and the perils of giving too much of themselves in the context of their society.
”
”
Annette Gordon-Reed (The Hemingses of Monticello)
“
One night I was lying in bed and cuddling my eighteen-month-old. She was asleep in my arms with her angelic face resting in the crook of my elbow. We were lying next to my husband, a man whom I love deeply and who loves me. On the floor on a little pallet was my three-year-old, a spitfire little sprite who brightens my world. I realized that I only ever wanted to be skinny because I wanted to be loved and happy. But I already have that. Skinny hasn’t seemed very important to me since then.
”
”
K.C. Davis (How to Keep House While Drowning)
“
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”
”
Eurosonix Freight Management Ltd
“
Jaren was allocated work in the tunnels. It was Tipp who told Kiva; Tipp who had left the infirmary in a hurry upon Kiva’s return that night, hastening back to their shared cell block to make sure Jaren snagged a pallet next to his; Tipp who had whispered Zalindov’s secrets to the newcomer, all the warnings and hints that Kiva had failed to offer.
”
”
Lynette Noni (The Prison Healer (The Prison Healer, #1))
“
It's a change, and I don't like changes, especially changes I don't understand.”
“Life is change,” the Fool observed placidly. “And death is an even greater change. I think we must resign ourselves to change, Fitz.”
“I'm tired of resigning myself to things. My entire life has been one long resignation.” I dropped the robe on his pallet and then sat down heavily on the end of it, forcing him to draw his feet up out of the way. I pulled my mittens off and held my hands out to his feeble fire, trying to warm myself.
“Ah, Catalyst, can it be that you do not see all the changes you have made? Some by your resignation and acceptance of circumstances, some by your wild struggles. You can say that you hate change, but you are change.
”
”
Robin Hobb (Fool's Fate (Tawny Man, #3))
Jullian Scott (Ring Around the Rosie (Olivia Thompson Mystery, #1))
“
Wendell rummaged around a bit—I could not see exactly what he was doing—and pulled a handful of blankets from one of the folds.
I couldn’t help laughing. “What else have you stored in here? A bottle of wine, perhaps?”
“I’m afraid not,” he said cluelessly, preoccupied with folding the blankets into perfect rectangles. I supposed I shouldn’t have been surprised; I’ve never had a knack for flirtation. When he began sorting the blankets into separate pallets, I yanked the entire bundle away from him and strewed them upon the floor.
“What on earth are you doing? The creases, Em, the creases—
”
”
Heather Fawcett (Emily Wilde’s Map of the Otherlands (Emily Wilde, #2))
“
Her gaze returned to my wings, and then her brow pursed. “You’re bleeding,” she said on a gulp and pointed over my left shoulder. When I looked, I could just see a trickle of blue from the cut the guard’s sword had made. Rising, I went to my satchel again and removed a vial of antiseptic that our healers in Gadlizel made. I poured some on a clean cloth and stretched out my left wing. I could barely reach the cut, but I could see that the guard’s blade hadn’t gone to the bone. Still, it was wide enough to cause infection. “Damn,” I muttered, reaching back to try and wipe the blue blood still streaming lightly from the wound. “Let me.” I actually startled, finding Murgha standing right next to me. Without a word, I handed her the cloth. “You’ll need to sit down. I can’t reach.” She was quite small, even for a light fae. I sat on the pallet and spread my wing. She stood eye level with the top of my wing. Then she dabbed at the cut, the sting of the medicine sharp, but I didn’t move a muscle. “This needs to be stitched,” she said softly. I looked up at her. “I don’t suppose you know how to stitch wounds.” She swallowed nervously. “I do, actually. I sew all my own clothes, and Papa has needed cuts treated in the past. My sister was always too squeamish to do it.
”
”
Juliette Cross (The Lovely Dark: A Monster Romance Anthology)
“
How about during the day and the evening you can hate me all you want, and we can burn one another with all the ire we can muster for one another as much as we desire… But at night… Here… Whether it’s in our bed or a pallet of furs on the forest floor… Where it’s only us, and the space between us is reduced to this blissful barrier of flesh-the only thing that separates my soul from yours-let us seek solace in one another as we are meant to…
”
”
Chiara Forestieri (A Kingdom of Blood and Magic (Hallowed Fates, #1))
“
You don’t want me?” I sniff and lift my chin. “That’s right.” “So then...you don’t sit awake in your pallet at night, thinking about arguing with me just enough to get our blood heated, and then wrapping those long legs of yours around my hips and fucking me till you see stars?
”
”
Raven Kennedy (Glow (The Plated Prisoner, #4))
“
He stretched out on the pallet and stared at the wooden ceiling, wishing he wasn't the one who would have to tell his parents that their favourite son was dead.
”
”
Demelza Carlton (Silence: Little Mermaid Retold (Romance a Medieval Fairytale, #5))
“
loved the rainy days, when shadows made their mysterious ways around corners and across alleys. And everyone loved sunsets. The light lost its sanity as it fell over the hills and into the Pacific—it went red and deeper red, orange, and even green. The skies seemed to melt, like lava eating black rock into great bite marks of burning. Sometimes all the town stopped and stared west. Shopkeepers came from their rooms to stand in the street. Families brought out their invalids on pallets and in wheelbarrows to wave their bent wrists at the madness consuming their sky. Swirls of gulls and pelicans like God’s own confetti snowed across those sky riots.
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Luis Alberto Urrea (The House of Broken Angels)
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Americold is one of the largest providers of temperature-controlled warehouse space, not only in the United States but around the world. Globally, the company maintains 1.5 billion cubic feet of cold, storing everything from ground beef destined for school lunch programs to frozen lobsters on their way to upscale restaurant chains like McCormick & Schmick’s. In Ontario, most of the 100,000-square-foot warehouse is given over to Danone products: pallet after pallet of Horizon chocolate milk, Land O’Lakes creamer, Silk soy milk, and Greek yogurt, much of which comes from a plant just forty-five minutes away. “They focus on creating food,” explained Espinoza. “We focus on making sure it gets to their customers intact.
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Nicola Twilley (Frostbite: How Refrigeration Changed Our Food, Our Planet, and Ourselves)
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Beneath these annual rhythms, the aseasonal fulfillment of American desires continued unabated. For hour after hour, we received, stocked, restocked, and picked: frozen guava juice in barrels, destined for a Dr. Smoothie bottling plant; cans of refrigerated peanut butter paste, imported from Argentina to fill M&M’s and Clif Bars; pallets stacked with rolls of X-ray film for local hospitals; and thousands and thousands of freshly baked King’s Hawaiian buns, trucked in hot from Torrance—a thermal disruption for which Americold charges extra. “We need to bring it down slowly to keep the moisture in the product. Bread will crystallize if it’s cooled too fast,” explained Espinoza. “People think it’s so fresh and soft,” said Carlos. “I tell them it’s been in here for months, and they don’t believe me.
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Nicola Twilley (Frostbite: How Refrigeration Changed Our Food, Our Planet, and Ourselves)
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Moses stepped into his cabin. Priscilla had made him supper but he did not want it. There was the last traces of the hearth fire and he sat at the side of their pallet and ate the tea biscuits. His wife and his son watched him. An hour after he went inside Alice wandered out, sniffed at each cabin door and went on her way. Her voice was hoarse from all the talk of the day but she chanted anyway. There were angels by the hundreds waiting for her songs.
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Edward P. Jones (The Known World)
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Elen let him lead her to the pallet near the fire. She had tricked the Master Warder with a veiling of sight. She knew she should not have been able to do that. Not ever. Perhaps they were right. Perhaps she was mad. She hoped so. It might be her only chance.
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Martha Wells (City of Bones)
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Too much information is key to a more diverse, non-deterministic future. Once we have information overload we have choice, we never know which instructions a computer or a person is going to load into their thinking. We look at our newborn babies in a hospital maternity ward, and newborn computers stacked on a pallet, and we never know what rhetoric they may encounter, which instructions or question/answer sets they will leave more permanently loaded in their mental processing. Even the variance of permanence is a dimension no one knows, and will shape them or the world they shape.
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Lance Miller (AnthroTechne)
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And how messed up is this? Suddenly Parks is in charge of a kindergarten. He finds himself defending a base that isn’t doing a damn thing apart from nursemaiding these little hungries. They’ve got their own rooms, the same pallet beds as the soldiers, weekly feeding (which if you ever want to eat again yourself, you don’t want to see), even a schoolroom. Why
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M.R. Carey (The Girl With All the Gifts)
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This Blue Coat’s woman?” he demanded, gesturing toward Lily. Caleb shook his head. “She’s her own woman. Just ask her.” Lily’s heart was jammed into her throat. She had an urge to go for the rifle again, but this time it was Caleb she wanted to shoot. “He lies,” she said quickly, trying to make sign language. “I am too his woman!” The Indian looked back at his followers, and they all laughed. Lily thought she saw a hint of a grin curve Caleb’s lips as well but decided she must have imagined it. “You trade woman for two horses?” Caleb lifted one hand to his chin, considering. “Maybe. I’ve got to be honest with you. She’s a lot of trouble, this woman.” Lily’s terror was exceeded only by her wrath. “Caleb!” The Indian squinted at Lily and then made an abrupt, peevish gesture with the fingers of one hand. “He wants you to get down from the buggy so he can have a good look at you,” Caleb said quietly. “I don’t care what he wants,” Lily replied, folding her trembling hands in her lap and squaring her shoulders. The Indian shouted something. “He’s losing his patience,” Caleb warned, quite unnecessarily. Lily scrambled down from the buggy and stood a few feet from it while the Indian rode around her several times on his pony, making thoughtful grunting noises. Annoyance was beginning to overrule Lily’s better judgment. “This is my land,” she blurted out all of a sudden, “and I’m inviting you and your friends to get off it! Right now!” The Indian reined in his pony, staring at Lily in amazement. “You heard me!” she said, advancing on him, her hands poised on her hips. At that, Caleb came up behind her, and his arms closed around her like the sides of a giant manacle. His breath rushed past her ear. “Shut up!” Lily subsided, watching rage gather in the Indians’ faces like clouds in a stormy sky. “Caleb,” she said, “you’ve got to save me.” “Save you? If they raise their offer to three horses, you’ll be braiding your hair and wearing buckskin by nightfall.” The Indians were consulting with one another, casting occasional measuring glances in Lily’s direction. She was feeling desperate again. “All right, then, but remember, if I go, your child goes with me.” “You said you were bleeding.” Lily’s face colored. “You needn’t be so explicit. And I lied.” “Two horses,” Caleb bid in a cheerful, ringing voice. The Indians looked interested. “I’ll marry you!” Lily added breathlessly. “Promise?” “I promise.” “When?” “At Christmas.” “Not good enough.” “Next month, then.” “Today.” Lily assessed the Indians again, imagined herself carrying firewood for miles, doing wash in a stream, battling fleas in a tepee, being dragged to a pallet by a brave. “Today,” Lily conceded. The man in the best calico shirt rode forward again. “No trade,” he said angrily. “Blue Coat right—woman much trouble!” Caleb laughed. “Much, much trouble,” he agreed. “This Indian land,” the savage further insisted. With that, he gave a blood-curdling shriek, and he and his friends bolted off toward the hillside again. Lily turned to face Caleb. “I lied,” she said bluntly. “I have no intention of marrying you.” He brought his nose within an inch of hers. “You’re going back on your word?” “Yes,” Lily answered, turning away to climb back into the buggy. “I was trying to save myself. I would have said anything.” Caleb caught her by the arm and wrenched her around to face him. “And there’s no baby?” Lily lowered her eyes. “There’s no baby.” “I should have taken the two horses when they were offered to me,” Caleb grumbled, practically hurling her into the buggy. Lily
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Linda Lael Miller (Lily and the Major (Orphan Train, #1))
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But there is also a depth-psychology which can discover in physical sickness a spiritual guilt, a person’s covert acquiescence in being bound by the “strong man” in such a way that he cannot break free. Here Jesus starts by loosing the spiritual bond: the first thing he says to the lame man who is set before him is: “My son, your sins are forgiven you,” and only after his power to forgive sins has been called into question does he utter the second word (which was in principle included in the first): “Rise, take up your pallet and go home” (Mt 2:5, 11). To the sick man by the pool, whom Jesus knew to have been “lying there a long time”, he gave this admonition: “See, you are well! Sin no more, that nothing worse befall you” (Jn 5:6, 14). The
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Hans Urs von Balthasar (Does Jesus Know Us?: Do We Know Him?)
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Why didn’t you say something?”
Flushing beet red, I replied, “Your inheritance was unexpected. I wanted to live there again, thought that it may have been . . . mine.”
“And so it is!” he crowed. “Every brick, every weapon, every bloody blade of grass is as much yours as I am, darling, supposing you’ll give me a pallet in the stables and a crust from time to time. Are you quite mad?”
“I don’t want you to live on a pallet.” My tears spilled, and he painted his fingertips over my jaw. “I want you to live in my bones.
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Lyndsay Faye (Jane Steele)
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Brooke fussed over the wounded lady as they transferred her to the pallet, going so far as to plant a kiss on her brow to praise her bravery. “What a kiss,” Portia complained. “As if I were a child.” Brooke cupped her face in his hands and kissed her thoroughly. He released her only when Portia’s faint growl of protest melted to a pleased sigh. “There, was that better?” “Quite.” Portia’s cheeks pinked. “All right, then. Now be a good little girl, and lie still.” She swatted at him feebly as he and Denny lifted the pallet—Brooke carrying the end at Portia’s head, and Denny lifting her feet.
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Tessa Dare (How to Catch a Wild Viscount)
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Aedion shifted on his pallet of moldy hay and bit back his bark of agony at the pain exploding along his ribs. Worse—worse by the day. His diluted Fae blood was the only thing that had kept him alive this long, trying desperately to heal him, but soon even the immortal grace in his veins would bow to the infection. It would be such a relief—such a blessed relief to know he couldn’t be used against her, and that he would soon see those he had secretly harbored in his shredded heart all these years. So he bore down on every spike of fever, every roiling fit of nausea and pain. Soon—soon Death would come to greet him. Aedion just hoped Death arrived before Aelin did.
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Sarah J. Maas (Queen of Shadows (Throne of Glass, #4))
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The second ward was declared a temporary holding cell for their prisoner, the ba, who followed in the procession, bound to a float pallet. Miles scowled as the pallet drifted past, towed on its control lead by a watchful, muscular sergeant.
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Lois McMaster Bujold (Diplomatic Immunity (Vorkosigan Saga, #13))