Panel Van Quotes

The kid stepped into the office, skittish like a baby deer who’d just been offered a salt lick by a pervert in an off-white panel van.

He devoted a whole panel to the etymology of the term, its derivation from ancient Greek, its shared meaning with the scientific term for the seahorse genus, and its mythological connection to sea monsters. Maybe we all have sea monsters living in our brains,

What do you mean, this isn't my property?!"  One entrepreneurial Federal employee backed his panel van up to the office door one night and stole all the computer equipment. He wasn't too hard to catch: he tried to sell everything at a yard sale the next day — with barcodes and "Property of US Government" stickers still prominently displayed. 

The office, which had an outside entrance for ordinary visitors, was separated from the parlor by a sliding door; though Mr. Clutter occasionally shared the office with Gerald Van Vleet, a young man who assisted him with the management of the farm, it was fundamentally his retreat—an orderly sanctuary, paneled in walnut veneer, where, surrounded by weather barometers, rain charts, a pair of binoculars, he sat like a captain in his cabin, a navigator piloting River Valley’s sometimes risky passage through the seasons.

New Rule: Democrats must get in touch with their inner asshole. I refer to the case of Van Jones, the man the Obama administration hired to find jobs for Americans in the new green industries. Seems like a smart thing to do in a recession, but Van Jones got fired because he got caught on tape saying Republicans are assholes. And they call it news! Now, I know I'm supposed to be all reinjected with yes-we-can-fever after the big health-care speech, and it was a great speech--when Black Elvis gets jiggy with his teleprompter, there is none better. But here's the thing: Muhammad Ali also had a way with words, but it helped enormously that he could also punch guys in the face. It bothers me that Obama didn't say a word in defense of Jones and basically fired him when Glenn Beck told him to. Just like dropped "end-of-life counseling" from health-care reform because Sarah Palin said it meant "death panels" on her Facebook page. Crazy morons make up things for Obama to do, and he does it. Same thing with the speech to schools this week, where the president attempted merely to tell children to work hard and wash their hands, and Cracker Nation reacted as if he was trying to hire the Black Panthers to hand out grenades in homeroom. Of course, the White House immediately capitulated. "No students will be forced to view the speech" a White House spokesperson assured a panicked nation. Isn't that like admitting that the president might be doing something unseemly? What a bunch of cowards. If the White House had any balls, they'd say, "He's giving a speech on the importance of staying in school, and if you jackasses don't show it to every damn kid, we're cutting off your federal education funding tomorrow." The Democrats just never learn: Americans don't really care which side of an issue you're on as long as you don't act like pussies When Van Jones called the Republicans assholes, he was paying them a compliment. He was talking about how they can get things done even when they're in the minority, as opposed to the Democrats , who can't seem to get anything done even when they control both houses of Congress, the presidency, and Bruce Springsteen. I love Obama's civility, his desire to work with his enemies; it's positively Christlike. In college, he was probably the guy at the dorm parties who made sure the stoners shared their pot with the jocks. But we don't need that guy now. We need an asshole. Mr. President, there are some people who are never going to like you. That's why they voted for the old guy and Carrie's mom. You're not going to win them over. Stand up for the seventy percent of Americans who aren't crazy. And speaking of that seventy percent, when are we going to actually show up in all this? Tomorrow Glenn Beck's army of zombie retirees descending on Washington. It's the Million Moron March, although they won't get a million, of course, because many will be confused and drive to Washington state--but they will make news. Because people who take to the streets always do. They're at the town hall screaming at the congressman; we're on the couch screaming at the TV. Especially in this age of Twitters and blogs and Snuggies, it's a statement to just leave the house. But leave the house we must, because this is our last best shot for a long time to get the sort of serious health-care reform that would make the United States the envy of several African nations.

of food, François Mitterrand, the French president, ordered a final course of ortolan, a tiny yellow-throated songbird no bigger than his thumb. The delicacy represented to him the soul of France. Mitterrand’s staff supervised the capture of the wild birds in a village in the south. The local police were paid off, the hunting was arranged, and the birds were captured, at sunrise, in special finely threaded nets along the edge of the forest. The ortolans were crated and driven in a darkened van to Mitterrand’s country house in Latche where he had spent his childhood summers. The sous-chef emerged and carried the cages indoors. The birds were fed for two weeks until they were plump enough to burst, then held by their feet over a vat of pure Armagnac, dipped headfirst and drowned alive. The head chef then plucked them, salted them, peppered them, and cooked them for seven minutes in their own fat before placing them in a freshly heated white cassole. When the dish was served, the wood-paneled room—with Mitterrand’s family, his wife, his children, his mistress, his friends—fell silent. He sat up in his chair, pushed aside the blankets from his knees, took a sip from a bottle of vintage Château Haut-Marbuzet. —The only interesting thing is to live, said Mitterrand.

6 Eight days before he died, after a spectacular orgy of food, François Mitterrand, the French president, ordered a final course of ortolan, a tiny yellow-throated songbird no bigger than his thumb. The delicacy represented to him the soul of France. Mitterrand’s staff supervised the capture of the wild birds in a village in the south. The local police were paid off, the hunting was arranged, and the birds were captured, at sunrise, in special finely threaded nets along the edge of the forest. The ortolans were crated and driven in a darkened van to Mitterrand’s country house in Latche where he had spent his childhood summers. The sous-chef emerged and carried the cages indoors. The birds were fed for two weeks until they were plump enough to burst, then held by their feet over a vat of pure Armagnac, dipped headfirst and drowned alive. The head chef then plucked them, salted them, peppered them, and cooked them for seven minutes in their own fat before placing them in a freshly heated white cassole. When the dish was served, the wood-paneled room—with Mitterrand’s family, his wife, his children, his mistress, his friends—fell silent. He sat up in his chair, pushed aside the blankets from his knees, took a sip from a bottle of vintage Château Haut-Marbuzet. —The only interesting thing is to live, said Mitterrand. He shrouded his head with a white napkin to inhale the aroma of the birds and, as tradition dictated, to hide the act from the eyes of God. He picked up the songbirds and ate them whole: the succulent flesh, the fat, the bitter entrails, the wings, the tendons, the liver, the kidney, the warm heart, the feet, the tiny headbones crunching in his teeth. It took him several minutes to finish, his face hidden all the time under the white serviette. His family could hear the sounds of the bones snapping. Mitterrand dabbed the napkin at his mouth, pushed aside the earthenware cassole, lifted his head, smiled, bid good night and rose to go to bed. He fasted for the next eight and a half days until he died. 7 In Israel, the birds are tracked by sophisticated radar set up along the migratory routes all over the country—Eilat, Jerusalem, Latrun—with links to military installations and to the air traffic control offices at Ben Gurion airport.

All these thoughts crowded the creature’s brain, as it explored the memory cells of Jim Brender. With an effort that was a special pain, the thing wrenched its mind from the metal, and fastened its eyes on Jim Brender. It caught the full flood of the wonder in his mind, as he stood up. “Good lord,” said Jim Brender, “who are you?” “My name’s Jim Brender,” said the thing, conscious of grim amusement, conscious, too, that it was progress for it to be able to feel such an emotion. The real Jim Brender had recovered himself. “Sit down, sit down,” he said heartily. “This is the most amazing coincidence I’ve ever seen.” He went over to the mirror that made one panel of the left wall. He stared, first at himself, then at the creature. “Amazing,” he said. “Absolutely amazing.” “Mr. Brender,” said the creature, “I saw your picture in the paper, and I thought our astounding resemblance would make you listen, where otherwise you might pay no attention. I have recently returned from Mars, and I am here to persuade you to come back to Mars with me.” “That,” said Jim Brender, “is impossible.

Jillian Ramsay, PhD, was driving a panel van without air-conditioning through an area known as the Devil’s Armpit.

Madame Egloff, who stood, hands held out in front of her, expressing her admiration. ‘Please make the alterations, Madame, and have the gowns sent round to Brown’s Hotel by the weekend.’ Half an hour later, when they left Madame Egloff’s salon, Sophie had been dressed and pinned into each of the garments Matty had chosen, and promises had been made to deliver the clothes to the hotel by Saturday morning at the latest. * Monday morning saw them at Paddington Station being conducted to a private compartment on the train. Sophie had never travelled in such style before, being more used to the uncomfortable rowdiness of a third-class carriage, but Matty had insisted. ‘I always travel this way,’ she said. ‘The journey is quite tiring enough without being crammed in next to crying children and shrill women.’ Having directed the porter to place their luggage in the guard’s van, Matty had settled herself into their compartment with a copy of the new Murray’s Magazine, which she had bought from a news-stand at the station. Beside her on the seat was a hamper, provided by Brown’s, with the food and drink they would need for the journey. As the train drew out of the station and started its long journey west, Sophie felt keyed up with anxious anticipation and was grateful for the comforting presence of Hannah, ensconced on the other side of the compartment. Dressed in her new plaid travelling dress, with a matching hat perched on her head, Sophie knew she was a different person from the one who had sat at her dying mother’s bedside, holding her hand. No longer a young girl on the brink of adulthood... but who? There had been too much change in her life in the past weeks that she still had to come to terms with. Who am I? she wondered. I don’t feel like me! She looked across at Hannah, so familiar, so safe, huddled in a corner, her eyes shut as she dozed, and Sophie felt a wave of affection flood through her. Dear Hannah, she thought, I’m so glad you came too. When they had left Madame Egloff, Matty had taken Sophie for afternoon tea at Brown’s. Looking round the famous tea room, with its panelled walls, its alcoved fireplace and its windows giving onto Albemarle Street, Sophie

THERE is a place in front of the Royal Exchange where the wide pavement reaches out like a promontory. It is in the shape of a triangle with a rounded apex. A stream of traffic runs on either side, and other streets send their currents down into the open space before it. Like the spokes of a wheel converging streams of human life flow into this agitated pool. Horses and carriages, carts, vans, omnibuses, cabs, every kind of conveyance cross each other's course in every possible direction. Twisting in and out by the wheels and under the horses' heads, working a devious way, men and women of all conditions wind a path over. They fill the interstices between the carriages and blacken the surface, till the vans almost float on human beings. Now the streams slacken, and now they rush amain, but never cease; dark waves are always rolling down the incline opposite, waves swell out from the side rivers, all London converges into this focus. There is an indistinguishable noise—it is not clatter, hum, or roar, it is not resolvable; made up of a thousand thousand footsteps, from a thousand hoofs, a thousand wheels—of haste, and shuffle, and quick movements, and ponderous loads; no attention can resolve it into a fixed sound. Blue carts and yellow omnibuses, varnished carriages and brown vans, green omnibuses and red cabs, pale loads of yellow straw, rusty-red iron cluking on pointless carts, high white wool- packs, grey horses, bay horses, black teams; sunlight sparkling on brass harness, gleaming from carriage panels; jingle, jingle, jingle! An intermixed and intertangled, ceaselessly changing jingle, too,of colour; flecks of colour champed, as it were, like bits in the horses' teeth, frothed and strewn about, and a surface always of dark-dressed people winding like the curves on fast-flowing water. This is the vortex and whirlpool, the centre of human life today on the earth. Now the tide rises and now it sinks, but the flow of these rivers always continues. Here it seethes and whirls, not for an hour only, but for all present time, hour by hour, day by day, year by year.

Emmanuel, leafed through a book of photographs, color printouts, bound in black plastic and covered with a thin transparent sheet: There was green grass and a white-paneled house and a little blond girl smiling. There was a large van and an even larger play set. There was a countertop completely covered with food. “This is a very nice place,” Emmanuel said in a quiet voice. “I would like to go to this place.” For Emmanuel, the snapshots of suburban America presented an impossible dream, a portrait of manicured abundance as distant and as glorious as a preacher’s description of heaven.

always wanted, but it came with a price. He scanned the oak-paneled room. He had made the office his own. There was an old bookcase he had brought from home filled with law books. Paintings and sketches of the New York Harbor, the Kill Van Kull, and various Staten Island scenes and pictures of his family encircled the walls and usually kept him focused. He

Panel vans were working vans. There were no windows behind the front seats, and the rear bay was a dirty metal box smelling of pesticide and grease. Angelo Buono and Kenneth Bianchi had used an identical van as a place to torture and murder their victims, and record their screams. Wander

I left the house and headed for the Lauriergracht, where Van Hoogstraten had taken up residence since leaving Vienna and his post as court painter specializing in optical deceits. He currently made peepshow boxes constructed of wood, with one missing side that allowed light to enter as if through a shuttered window, and two small holes for viewing the painted panels of scenes inside. I had never seen one of these peepshows personally, and hoped he would have at least one to show me.

Such command and honesty! Your figures are full of emotion, for instance, here – points at the panel – the figure of Judas on his knees, wringing his hands in self-hatred and pleading for forgiveness… Who would have thought that someone your age, a miller at that, could put so much into a figure!

And then she remembers when she was twelve and started walking to the library after school, when her mom told her that kidnappers and murderers don’t come to you as gross old men in panel vans, but disguised as something that will giggle and compliment and lure you despite your defenses.

Another significant problem arises from our national leaders’ disagreement over what actually constitutes policy objectives. [...] In practice, the many NSS’ [National Security Strategy] have presented national interests in ambiguous or broad terms or as statements of the obvious, making the value of the exercise suspect. There are respected public officials and scholars who feel strongly that the US must articulate its national interests if we are to successfully chart our future. One such group even developed a hierarchy of interests ranging from “vital interests,” “extremely important interests,” and “important interests,” to “less important or secondary interests.” I saw this problem first hand as a member of the Quadrennial Defense Review Independent Panel, established by Congress to assess the 2010 QDR. Early on, panel members discovered they could find no meaningful and authoritative description of the nation’s vital national interests. Members recognized that without such a description the panel could not effectively assess the QDR. To contend with the issue the co-chairmen established a subcommittee, which it was my privilege to chair, to determine “enduring national security interests of the United States and examine how emerging trends may affect those interests over the next 20 years.” This subcommittee concluded that: At the root of the Department‘s force-planning problem is a failure of our political leadership to explicitly recognize and clearly define these essential strategic interests. To be sure, it would have been easier for the Department had post–Cold War presidents provided more specific guidance on this subject. But what presidents actually do with America‘s military, on a bipartisan basis and over time, indicates what they believe must be done to protect America. It is, therefore, possible to discern the strategic thinking that has guided our country from the strategic practices it has followed. (Excerpt from article “From Grand Strategy to Operational Design: Getting it Right”)

Roger Hayes, Braddock’s father-in-law, was a Navy veteran who liked to go to the VFW and would invite Will to join him on occasion for beers. Brule was often there, especially on weeknights. As Braddock and Tori pulled up to the front entrance, they had immediate verification Brule was inside. His white panel van was parked on the street in front of the bar.

Smith turned the panel van left into the alley and pulled three-quarters of the way down toward Western Avenue. He stopped and then backed in behind a small office building housing an accounting office with a storefront facing Western. From this position, the back of the café was visible at a forty-five-degree angle to the right. Smith had watched the area and this parking spot in particular every Sunday for the last month. Nobody ever came to the building or parked in the back on a Sunday afternoon. He expected this day would be no different.

Well, if it isn’t my favorite passenger, Ms. Caitlin Hart,” John Goodwin said as I drove the white panel van with the Harthaven Cat Sanctuary logo painted on the side onto the ferry just moments before it was due to pull away from the mainland and head toward Madrona Island.

Jillian Ramsay, PhD, was driving a panel van without air-conditioning through an area known as the Devil’s Armpit. She wished that was an exaggeration, or a misprint on the map. But there it was, in bold print on the highway sign, “You are entering the Devil’s Armpit.

Reacher kept the guy talking all the way through Minnesota, which he figured was his job, like human amphetamine. Anything to keep the guy awake. Anything to avoid the old joke: I want to die peacefully in my sleep like Grandpa. Not screaming in terror like his passengers. The resulting conversation spiralled off in all kinds of different directions. Institutional injustices in the milk business were exposed. Grievances were aired. Then the guy wanted to hear war stories, so Reacher made some up. The big truck stop came along soon enough. The guy had not been exaggerating. There was an acres- wide fuel stop, and a spreading two- storey motel a hundred yards long, and a warehouse- sized family restaurant, blazing with neon outside and fluorescence inside. There were back- to- back eighteen- wheelers wheezing in and out, and all kinds of cars and trucks and panel vans.

The 97 by 110 foot ceiling mural that Trumbull painted in the Chrysler Building is titled Energy, Result, Workmanship, and Transportation.51 A muscular figure of Atlas dominates a triangular panel above the information booth. From this figure, three bands extend following the triangular form of the main concourse. One consists of a series of abstract patterns symbolizing primitive, natural forces. Another depicts construction workers and techniques, in tribute to the men who built the Chrysler Building. The last showcases the development of modern transportation, emphasizing airplanes rather than automobiles. On the ceiling of the Lexington Avenue entrance lobby is a panel which shows the building as seen from the outside. The warm tones of the mural are harmonious with the rich colors of the stone used in the walls and floor of the space.