Passenger Book Quotes

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

No matter how old you are now. You are never too young or too old for success or going after what you want. Here’s a short list of people who accomplished great things at different ages 1) Helen Keller, at the age of 19 months, became deaf and blind. But that didn’t stop her. She was the first deaf and blind person to earn a Bachelor of Arts degree. 2) Mozart was already competent on keyboard and violin; he composed from the age of 5. 3) Shirley Temple was 6 when she became a movie star on “Bright Eyes.” 4) Anne Frank was 12 when she wrote the diary of Anne Frank. 5) Magnus Carlsen became a chess Grandmaster at the age of 13. 6) Nadia Comăneci was a gymnast from Romania that scored seven perfect 10.0 and won three gold medals at the Olympics at age 14. 7) Tenzin Gyatso was formally recognized as the 14th Dalai Lama in November 1950, at the age of 15. 8) Pele, a soccer superstar, was 17 years old when he won the world cup in 1958 with Brazil. 9) Elvis was a superstar by age 19. 10) John Lennon was 20 years and Paul Mcartney was 18 when the Beatles had their first concert in 1961. 11) Jesse Owens was 22 when he won 4 gold medals in Berlin 1936. 12) Beethoven was a piano virtuoso by age 23 13) Issac Newton wrote Philosophiæ Naturalis Principia Mathematica at age 24 14) Roger Bannister was 25 when he broke the 4 minute mile record 15) Albert Einstein was 26 when he wrote the theory of relativity 16) Lance E. Armstrong was 27 when he won the tour de France 17) Michelangelo created two of the greatest sculptures “David” and “Pieta” by age 28 18) Alexander the Great, by age 29, had created one of the largest empires of the ancient world 19) J.K. Rowling was 30 years old when she finished the first manuscript of Harry Potter 20) Amelia Earhart was 31 years old when she became the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic Ocean 21) Oprah was 32 when she started her talk show, which has become the highest-rated program of its kind 22) Edmund Hillary was 33 when he became the first man to reach Mount Everest 23) Martin Luther King Jr. was 34 when he wrote the speech “I Have a Dream." 24) Marie Curie was 35 years old when she got nominated for a Nobel Prize in Physics 25) The Wright brothers, Orville (32) and Wilbur (36) invented and built the world's first successful airplane and making the first controlled, powered and sustained heavier-than-air human flight 26) Vincent Van Gogh was 37 when he died virtually unknown, yet his paintings today are worth millions. 27) Neil Armstrong was 38 when he became the first man to set foot on the moon. 28) Mark Twain was 40 when he wrote "The Adventures of Tom Sawyer", and 49 years old when he wrote "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" 29) Christopher Columbus was 41 when he discovered the Americas 30) Rosa Parks was 42 when she refused to obey the bus driver’s order to give up her seat to make room for a white passenger 31) John F. Kennedy was 43 years old when he became President of the United States 32) Henry Ford Was 45 when the Ford T came out. 33) Suzanne Collins was 46 when she wrote "The Hunger Games" 34) Charles Darwin was 50 years old when his book On the Origin of Species came out. 35) Leonardo Da Vinci was 51 years old when he painted the Mona Lisa. 36) Abraham Lincoln was 52 when he became president. 37) Ray Kroc Was 53 when he bought the McDonalds Franchise and took it to unprecedented levels. 38) Dr. Seuss was 54 when he wrote "The Cat in the Hat". 40) Chesley "Sully" Sullenberger III was 57 years old when he successfully ditched US Airways Flight 1549 in the Hudson River in 2009. All of the 155 passengers aboard the aircraft survived 41) Colonel Harland Sanders was 61 when he started the KFC Franchise 42) J.R.R Tolkien was 62 when the Lord of the Ring books came out 43) Ronald Reagan was 69 when he became President of the US 44) Jack Lalane at age 70 handcuffed, shackled, towed 70 rowboats 45) Nelson Mandela was 76 when he became President
Pablo
Kindness Before you know what kindness really is you must lose things, feel the future dissolve in a moment like salt in a weakened broth. What you held in your hand, what you counted and carefully saved, all this must go so you know how desolate the landscape can be between the regions of kindness. How you ride and ride thinking the bus will never stop, the passengers eating maize and chicken will stare out the window forever. Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness, you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho lies dead by the side of the road. You must see how this could be you, how he too was someone who journeyed through the night with plans and the simple breath that kept him alive. Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside, you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing. You must wake up with sorrow. You must speak to it till your voice catches the thread of all sorrows and you see the size of the cloth. Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore, only kindness that ties your shoes and sends you out into the day to mail letters and purchase bread, only kindness that raises its head from the crowd of the world to say It is I you have been looking for, and then goes with you everywhere like a shadow or a friend.
Naomi Shihab Nye (Words Under the Words: Selected Poems (A Far Corner Book))
But I will tell you Squire that having read even a few dozen books in common is a force more binding than blood.
Cormac McCarthy (The Passenger (The Passenger #1))
A failure is always in the passenger seat in his or her life.
Stephen Richards (Boost Your Self Esteem)
Tom said to himself that it was not such a hollow world, after all. He had discovered a great law of human action, without knowing it -- namely, that in order to make a man or a boy covet a thing, it is only necessary to make the thing difficult to attain. If he had been a great and wise philosopher, like the writer of this book, he would now have comprehended that Work consists of whatever a body is obliged to do, and that Play consists of whatever a body is not obliged to do. And this would help him to understand why constructing artificial flowers or performing on a tread-mill is work, while rolling ten-pins or climbing Mont Blanc is only amusement. There are wealthy gentlemen in England who drive four-horse passenger-coaches twenty or thirty miles on a daily line, in the summer, because the privilege costs them considerable money; but if they were offered wages for the service, that would turn it into work and then they would resign.
Mark Twain (The Adventures of Tom Sawyer)
I am a book. Sheaves pressed from the pulp of oaks and pines a natural sawdust made dingy from purses, dusty from shelves. Steamy and anxious, abused and misused, kissed and cried over, smeared, yellowed, and torn, loved, hated, scorned. I am a book. I am a book that remembers, days when I stood proud in good company When the children came, I leapt into their arms, when the women came, they cradled me against their soft breasts, when the men came, they held me like a lover, and I smelled the sweet smell of cigars and brandy as we sat together in leather chairs, next to pool tables, on porch swings, in rocking chairs, my words hanging in the air like bright gems, dangling, then forgotten, I crumbled, dust to dust. I am a tale of woe and secrets, a book brand-new, sprung from the loins of ancient fathers clothed in tweed, born of mothers in lands of heather and coal soot. A family too close to see the blood on its hands, too dear to suffering, to poison, to cold steel and revenge, deaf to the screams of mortal wounding, amused at decay and torment, a family bred in the dankest swamp of human desires. I am a tale of woe and secrets, I am a mystery. I am intrigue, anxiety, fear, I tangle in the night with madmen, spend my days cloaked in black, hiding from myself, from dark angels, from the evil that lurks within and the evil we cannot lurk without. I am words of adventure, of faraway places where no one knows my tongue, of curious cultures in small, back alleys, mean streets, the crumbling house in each of us. I am primordial fear, the great unknown, I am life everlasting. I touch you and you shiver, I blow in your ear and you follow me, down foggy lanes, into places you've never seen, to see things no one should see, to be someone you could only hope to be. I ride the winds of imagination on a black-and-white horse, to find the truth inside of me, to cure the ills inside of you, to take one passenger at a time over that tall mountain, across that lonely plain to a place you've never been where the world stops for just one minute and everything is right. I am a mystery. -Rides a Black and White Horse
Lise McClendon
When you don't take an aggressive role in shaping your thoughts, feelings, and perceptions, you become a helpless passenger floating through the universe like a ghost ship, merely reacting to wherever it takes you.
Chris Hardwick (The Nerdist Way: How to Reach the Next Level (In Real Life))
To see a thing one has to comprehend it. An armchair presupposes the human body, its joints and limbs; a pair of scissors, the act of cutting. What can be said of a lamp or a car? The savage cannot comprehend the missionary’s Bible; the passenger does not see the same rigging as the sailors. If we really saw the world, maybe we would understand it.
Jorge Luis Borges (The Book of Sand and Shakespeare's Memory)
THE GREAT HUMANITY The great humanity is the deck-passenger on the ship third class on the train on foot on the causeway the great humanity. The great humanity goes to work at eight marries at twenty dies at forty the great humanity. Bread is enough for all except the great humanity rice the same sugar the same cloth the same books the same are enough for all except the great humanity. The great humanity has no shade on his soil no lamp on his road no glass on his window but the great humanity has hope you can't live without hope.
Nâzım Hikmet
Mierda.” José screeched to a halt, and reversed to start a three-point turn – of which points two and three never materialised as, looking back, the road from where we’d come was now filled side-to-side by an advancing column of police, some with riot shields, some on horseback, marching towards us. José decided, quite reasonably in my opinion, that this wasn’t a place to be trapped so his passenger could try out his Spanish with the Venezuelan Riot Police. His solution – drive straight ahead at a tangent to the road, across a vast stretch of wasteland.
Oliver Dowson (There's No Business Like International Business: Business Travel – But Not As You Know It)
When a passenger of foot heave in sight, tootle the horn. Trumpet at him melodiously first, but if he still obstacles your passage, then tootle him with vigor.
Donald J. Sobol (Encyclopedia Brown's Book of Wacky Cars (Encyclopedia Brown Books))
Look under the passenger seat in a black plastic bin. There should be a book.” Raphael hopped out, dug under the seat, and pulled out a dog-eared copy of The Almanac of Mystical Creatures. “Got it,” I said into the phone. “Page seventy-six.” Raphael flipped the book open and held it up. On the left page a lithograph showed a three-headed dog with a serpent for a tail. The caption under the picture said CERBERUS. “Is that your dog?” Kate asked. “Could be. How the heck did you know the exact page?” “I have perfect memory!” I snorted. She sighed into the phone. “I spilled coffee on that page and had to leave the book open to dry it out. It always opens to that entry now.
Ilona Andrews (Must Love Hellhounds)
The face of the water, in time, became a wonderful book- a book that was a dead language to the uneducated passenger, but which told its mind to me without reserve, delivering its most cherished secrets as clearly as if it uttered them with a voice. And it was not a book to be read once and thrown aside, for it had a new story to tell every day.
Mark Twain
The anger that had flooded her veins was so pure, she thought it must have turned her blood to acid. You could read a hundred books about the attitudes and beliefs of the past, but the impact of witnessing this casual, ignorant cruelty firsthand was like having a bucket of ice upended over your head. It forced Etta to see that the centuries padding this time and hers, along with simple privilege, had protected her from the true ugliness of it. People believed this trash, and they were spreading it around like it was nothing. Like they weren’t even talking about humans.
Alexandra Bracken (Passenger (Passenger, #1))
When strangers on a train or a plane ask what I do for a living, I say, "I kill people." This response makes for a short conversation. No eye contact and no sudden movement from my seat-mate. Only peace and quiet. Rare is the fellow passenger who asks why I do it. I suppose I got tired hanging out in a book all day waiting for a story to begin. I write the kind of novels I want to read. And why the theme of solving murders? Violent death is larger than life and it's the great equalizer. By law, every victim is entitled to a paladin and a chase, else life would be cheapened. And the real reason I do this? My brain is simply bent this way. There is nothing else I would rather do. This neatly chains into my theory of the writing life. If you scratch an artist, under the skin you will find a bum who cannot hold down a real job. Conversely, if you scratch a bum... but I have never done that. The heart of my theory has puritan roots: if you love what you do, you cannot call it honest work.
Carol O'Connell
The passenger booked by this history, was on the coach-step, getting in; the two other passengers were close behind him, and about to follow. He remained on the step, half in the coach and half out of; they remained in the road below him. They all looked from the coachman to the guard, and from the guard to the coachman, and listened. The coachman looked back and the guard looked back, and even the emphatic leader pricked up his ears and looked back, without contradicting.
Charles Dickens (A Tale of Two Cities)
Are you prepared?" she asked when the other Valkyries had their passengers in place. "Sure," Matt said. "But we could use a soundtrack this time. Maybe a little Wagner. Da-da-da DUM dum." Hildar looked back at hiim blankly. "Wagner? Ride of the Valkyries? Da-da-da...Er, never mind." "Oh!" Baldwin said. "I know that one!" "Don't feed the geek," Fen muttered. "Hey," Matt said. "I'm not a-" "Oh, yeah, you are, Thorsen. You really are," Fen said in a voice that might have been teasing.
M.A. Marr (Odin's Ravens (The Blackwell Pages, #2))
Solitary confinement, where no others are in the prisoner's space, always has a calming effect. Violence from passengers on aircraft increased during the 1990's when the airlines started packing people close together in the seats to compensate for revenue lost as a result of price discounting.
Barbara Pease (The Definitive Book of Body Language: The Hidden Meaning Behind People's Gestures and Expressions)
Can I admit I’m a little freaked out that Socrates only has one name? I know that’s how it was done in those days, but it bugs me. I can’t tell if it’s his last name or his first name or what. And it can’t be shortened—except to Sock, which is completely stupid. I want him to have a more familiar name—something laid back and modern, so I can relate to him better. So I stare at the picture in my book of the curly-bearded guy with the pug nose, and by the end of study hall, I name him Frank. Frank Socrates. Makes him more huggable.
A.S. King (Ask the Passengers)
Consider how flight attendants explain airline safety to passengers. In the event the cabin decompresses, you’re supposed to put on your oxygen mask before helping others put on their masks. Help yourself first. Then, assist others. These instructions aren’t intended to promote self-preservation. Rather, the airline knows that if you help others first, you risk succumbing to hypoxia. And that would prevent you from helping anyone.
Damon Zahariades (The Art Of Saying NO: How To Stand Your Ground, Reclaim Your Time And Energy, And Refuse To Be Taken For Granted (Without Feeling Guilty!) (The Art Of Living Well Book 1))
And of course it’s true that any number of these books were penned in lieu of burning down the world—which was their author’s true desire. But the real question is are we few the last of a lineage? Will children yet to come harbor a longing for a thing they cannot even name?
Cormac McCarthy (The Passenger (The Passenger #1))
In a striking metaphor, Michael Burleigh suggests that the Nazis sought to rebuild German society as engineers rebuild a bridge. They could not demolish it, since that would disrupt traffic, and therefore they replaced each individual part, so that passengers wouldn’t notice.
Kevin Passmore (Fascism: A Very Short Introduction)
I don't care about the rules or anyone else. People are awful - they're idiots - and if they try to hurt you, I won't need the revolver. I care about you and all I ask is that you try not to make me feel like an idiot for it. You're supposed to . . . you're my partner.
Alexandra Bracken (Passenger (Passenger, #1))
A merchant, then,” Nicholas clarified. Hasan nodded, his smile slightly crooked with the swelling on his face. “It is natural. Abbi brought me many books, taught me many languages. English, Turkish, French, Greek. So you see, I cannot travel in your way, but he has helped me to go far on my own feet.
Alexandra Bracken (Passenger (Passenger, #1))
The passenger door was wide open, nobody was around, and a purse was inside. Was this a trap? It seemed too good to be true. Temptation overtook me, so I reached in the car, popped the trunk, and closed myself in. Boy, the owner of the car was sure in for a surprise. And he got it too—two days later. With no food, water, or cell phone on me, I nearly lost my life, and my job. I showed up late to work, but they didn’t believe me when I said I was stuck in traffic for 48 hours.
Jarod Kintz (This Book Has No Title)
The British people have been nothing but data since William I carried out the first census for the Domesday book in 1086,” he began. “All we are, and all we have ever been, are statistics, so let’s not pretend this is a catastrophic crisis that risks tearing apart the very moral fibre of our society. How do you think you are approved for credit cards and loans? How are decisions made on what you pay for insurance? How do we decide the number of immigrants allowed into our country? Acquired data. All that’s happened here is that we’ve reached a new level in our history where decisions have been made as to your importance to your country.
John Marrs (The Passengers)
Surely it is better to read altogether only three pages of a four-hundred-page book a thousand times more thoroughly than the normal reader who reads everything but does not read a single page thoroughly... It is better to read twelve lines of a book with the utmost intensity and thus to penetrate into them to the full, as one might say, rather than read the whole book as the normal reader does, who in the end knows the book he has read no more than an air passenger knows the landscape he overflies.
Thomas Bernhard (Old Masters: A Comedy)
Only through annihilation of distance in every respect, as the conveyance of intelligence, transport of passengers and supplies and transmission of energy will conditions be brought about someday, insuring permanency of friendly relations. What we now want most is closer contact and better understanding between individuals and communities all over the earth, and the elimination of that fanatic devotion to exalted ideals of national egoism and pride which is always prone to plunge the world into primeval barbarism and strife.
Nikola Tesla (My Inventions)
It was their haughtiness that preserved them intact from all human sympathy, from arousing the least interest in the strangers seated round about them, among whom M. de Stermaria kept up the glacial, preoccupied, distant, stiff, touchy and ill-intentioned air that we assume in a railway refreshment-room in the midst of fellow-passengers whom we have never seen before and will never see again, and with whom we can conceive of no other relations than to defend from their onslaught our cold chicken and our corner seat in the train.
Marcel Proust (In Search of Lost Time, Volume II: Within a Budding Grove (A Modern Library E-Book))
...having read even a few dozen books in common is a force more binding than blood.
Cormac McCarthy (The Passenger (The Passenger #1))
My dreams and ambitions kept me company on the way there, and despair and regret were passengers on my return trip. I should have ridden a horse and not bothered with all that.
Jarod Kintz (At even one penny, this book would be overpriced. In fact, free is too expensive, because you'd still waste time by reading it.)
During a 3 hour flight, passengers can lose approximately 1.5 litres of water
Sam Paxinos (101 Amazing Facts About Planes: The Big Book of Plane Facts)
Sheddan said once that having read a few dozen books in common was more binding than blood.
Cormac McCarthy (The Passenger (The Passenger #1))
having read even a few dozen books in common is a force more binding than blood
Cormac McCarthy (The Passenger (The Passenger #1))
You might think that the most stolen vehicles are expensive sports vehicles or multipurpose passenger vehicles, but that's not always the case
V.J. Smith
Don't you dare call me Miss Spencer, it kills me when you act like we aren't friends.
Alexandra Bracken (Passenger (Passenger, #1))
I would only want to play for you.
Alexandra Bracken (Passenger (Passenger, #1))
the passengers slid out as if from a torn package.
Markus Zusak (The Book Thief)
He makes his way to the passenger seat, carefully placing my Kindle in the glove box. Swear, he thinks that Kindle is made of unicorn leather or something. He handles it with more care than he handles me… but then again… the books I’ve read have taught me that not all lovemaking should be sensual. Sometimes, you just want a good, hard, rough spanking. True story.
Jay McLean (More Than Enough (More Than, #5))
Everything becomes a blur when you travel beyond a certain speed. Distant objects may still be clear in outline, but the blurred foreground makes it impossible to attend to them. This landscape is unreal and the passengers in the express train turn to their books, their thoughts or their private fantasies. The subjectivism of our age has a good deal to do with this imprisonment in a speeding vehicle, and the fact that we made this vehicle ourselves, with all the tireless care that children give to a contrivance of wood and wire, does not save us from the sense of being trapped without hope of escape. A further effect of such vertiginous speed is a kind of anaesthesia, entirely natural when the operation of the senses by which we normally make contact with our environment is suspended. With no opportunity to assimilate what is going on, our powers of assimilation are inevitably weakened and certain numbness sets in; nothing is fully savoured and nothing is properly understood. Even fear (which exists to forewarn us of danger) is suspended. This would be so even if speed of change were the only factor involved, but the kind of environment in which a large part of humanity lives today --- the environment created by technology at the service of immediate, short-term needs – does much to intensify this effect. Outside of works of art which embody something beyond our physical needs, our own constructions bore us. Those who, when they have built something and admired the finished product for a decent moment, are ready to pull it down and start on something new have good sense on their side.
Charles Le Gai Eaton (King of the Castle: Choice and Responsibility in the Modern World (Islamic Texts Society))
Theoretically, I knew, Sholokov’s design for the hawking mat allowed it to fly vertically, the incipient containment field keeping the passenger—theoretically, his beloved niece—from tumbling off backward.
Dan Simmons (The Hyperion Cantos 4-Book Bundle: Hyperion, The Fall of Hyperion, Endymion, The Rise of Endymion)
Bright people often have a good load to carry. But boredom is seldom a part of it. It’s all right. I’m always pleased to see just that small bit deeper. You deny our brotherhood. Insisting as you do in your sly way that our genealogies and our socioeconomic standings have set us apart at birth in a manner not to be contravened. But I will tell you Squire that having read even a few dozen books in common is a force more binding than blood.
Cormac McCarthy (The Passenger (The Passenger #1))
The face of the water, in time, became a wonderful book- a book that was a dead language to the uneducated passenger, but which told its mind to me without reserve, delivering its most cherished secrets as clearly as if it uttered them with a voice
Mark Twain
People prefer fate to chance. Soldiers really do believe that there is a bullet out there with their name on it. I think most people believe not only in a book of life but in a book of their life. Fate can be appeased, gods prayed to. But chance is just what it says.
Cormac McCarthy (Stella Maris (The Passenger #2))
An interesting example is found in an article by Dr. Jennifer Roback titled “The Political Economy of Segregation: The Case of Segregated Streetcars,” in the Journal of Economic History (1986). During the late 1800s, private streetcar companies in Augusta, Houston, Jacksonville, Mobile, Montgomery, and Memphis were not segregated, but by the early 1900s, they were. Why? City ordinances forced them to segregate black and white passengers. Numerous Jim Crow laws ruled the day throughout the South mandating segregation in public accommodations.
Walter E. Williams (American Contempt for Liberty (Hoover Institution Press Publication Book 661))
The crowds that queued for snacks and knick-knacks, the constant stream of passengers recorded by the closed-circuit TVs, were wondrous proof of the sheer variety of human specimens, except that they were presumed to be identically faithless inside, duty-free in every sense of that word.
Michel Faber (The Book of Strange New Things)
I know certain days of your childhood. All but weeping with loneliness. Coming upon a certain book in the library and clutching it to you. Carrying it home. Some perfect place to read it. Under a tree perhaps. Beside a stream. Flawed youths of course. To prefer a world of paper. Rejects.
Cormac McCarthy (The Passenger (The Passenger #1))
The world of books is the most remarkable creation of man. Nothing else that he builds ever lasts. Monuments fall; nations perish; civilizations grow old and die out; and, after an era of darkness, new races build others. But in the world of books are volumes that have seen this happen again and again, and yet live on, still young, still as fresh as the day they were written, still telling men’s hearts of the hearts of men centuries dead. And even the books do not last that long, penetrate their own times at last, sailing farther than Ulysses even dreamed of, like ships on the seas. It is the author’s part to call into being their cargoes and passengers, - living thoughts and rich bales of study and jeweled ideas. And as for the publishers, it is they who build the fleet, plan the voyage, and sail on, facing wreck, till they find every possible harbor that will value their burden.
Clarence S. Day
A passenger isn't supposed to concern himself with the running of the ship; that is being taken care of by the crew, anonymous creatures down in the engine-room or up on deck, whom he never meets. But, in this case, I wasn't really a passenger. I was like a lazy or scared or drunken captain lying shut in his cabin when he ought to be on the bridge, giving orders. Sooner or later, I would have to come out and assume command and decide where we were going. But not yet, I told the crew. You don't need me yet. Can't you see I'm sick? You're doing all right without me. Sure, I'll come, when we get near land. Just let me lie here a little longer. Leave me alone, can't you? Let me sleep.
Christopher Isherwood
He made the mistake of booking first-class passage on the maiden voyage of the Titanic. When that liner struck an iceberg, the crew asked him, because of his sailing expertise, to row a lifeboat full of passengers to safety. He was an honorable man—the president of the Standard Chemical Company and a major in the Queen’s Own Rifles—and he was doing a heroic deed.
Robert J. Sawyer (Space (Complete Short Fiction Book 2))
I spent the nine days' voyage partly sketching my Turkish fellow passengers, and partly trying to learn Turkish, and after a time I was able to say, "I would like a shoe-horn," and "See how badly you have ironed my coat, you must do it again." Father Chantry-Pigg said this phrase book was little use, as it had no sentences about the Church being better than Islam...
Rose Macaulay (The Towers of Trebizond)
With that, the officer approached the cab with his hand on his pistol and opened the door, demanding that I get out and asking me who in the hell did I think I was talking to him that way. I attempted to get my passenger's name and address as a witness to the incident; but the officer warned him he'd better be on his way lest he be charged with interfering with a policeman.
Walter E. Williams (Up from the Projects: An Autobiography (Hoover Institution Press Publication Book 600))
Last year CNN brought me on live TV to discuss a proposal to create “kid-free planes,” and I explained if we were really going to start segregating passengers I’d prefer to ride in an “a-hole-free plane” because babies almost never ask you to join the Mile-High Club, or clip their toenails while in flight, or do any of a plethora of horrible things I’ve witnessed from others.
Jenny Lawson (Furiously Happy: A Funny Book About Horrible Things)
All last fall in Workshop, they’d side-eye each other if he praised my stories. Because surely they’d seen me leave class with him, walked past us chatting together in the hall, observed us exchanging books and vinyl. Caught us sitting together in cafés or in the basement of the Irish pub, having a drink, another drink, one more for the road, why not? They’d noticed him walk over and talk to me at department functions, sit beside me at readings. Then, in the winter semester, they might have observed how quite suddenly all of this stopped—that he no longer sat next to me at readings or talked to me at parties or met me off campus. And then, of course, in spring, on the night of the end-of-year party, they definitely observed me drunk in the passenger seat of his Subaru.
Mona Awad (Bunny)
English Passengers, a first novel by Matthew Kneale, relates what follows when a group of Englishmen arrive in mid-nineteenth-century Tasmania with different purposes: to find the Garden of Eden, to prove the natives are less intelligent than the British, and to escape from British law. Kneale also describes the tragic life of a young Aboriginal whose experiences are shaped by the arrival of the British.
Nancy Pearl (Book Lust: Recommended Reading for Every Mood, Moment, and Reason)
The Mercy The ship that took my mother to Ellis Island eighty-three years ago was named "The Mercy." She remembers trying to eat a banana without first peeling it and seeing her first orange in the hands of a young Scot, a seaman who gave her a bite and wiped her mouth for her with a red bandana and taught her the word, "orange," saying it patiently over and over. A long autumn voyage, the days darkening with the black waters calming as night came on, then nothing as far as her eyes could see and space without limit rushing off to the corners of creation. She prayed in Russian and Yiddish to find her family in New York, prayers unheard or misunderstood or perhaps ignored by all the powers that swept the waves of darkness before she woke, that kept "The Mercy" afloat while smallpox raged among the passengers and crew until the dead were buried at sea with strange prayers in a tongue she could not fathom. "The Mercy," I read on the yellowing pages of a book I located in a windowless room of the library on 42nd Street, sat thirty-one days offshore in quarantine before the passengers disembarked. There a story ends. Other ships arrived, "Tancred" out of Glasgow, "The Neptune" registered as Danish, "Umberto IV," the list goes on for pages, November gives way to winter, the sea pounds this alien shore. Italian miners from Piemonte dig under towns in western Pennsylvania only to rediscover the same nightmare they left at home. A nine-year-old girl travels all night by train with one suitcase and an orange. She learns that mercy is something you can eat again and again while the juice spills over your chin, you can wipe it away with the back of your hands and you can never get enough.
Philip Levine (The Mercy)
weather forecast that it was going to be rough and had taken a pill. Miss Abbott was tramping up and down the narrow lower deck, having, perhaps instinctively, hit upon that part of the ship which after the first few hours is deserted by almost everyone. In the plan shown to passengers it was called the promenade deck. It was Jemima who first noticed the break in the weather. A kind of thin warmth fell across the page of her book;
Ngaio Marsh (Singing in the Shrouds (Roderick Alleyn, #20))
The Aftermath When the fierce pure pleasure has clawed through, ripped open my tent of separateness, I lay in my lover's arms, weeping and exposed. I can't help seeing my sister, new widow whose heart hangs heavy, a side of beef in the ice box of her chest. I imagine her entering a bedroom like this, maples flaming beyond the window against a perfectly useless blue sky. And then my mother-in-law stops at the library on the way home from her husband’s funeral, picks up the book they've been holding. It sits in the passenger seat while she stares at the windshield, stunned, a bird flown into glass. Even my friend whose wife hasn’t died yet appears in this sex-drenched air. Tears pool in the shallows under his eyes. If his soul were a tin can, it would be sliced, the thick soup leaking out. The night is soaked with suffering. My dumb body, sprung open, can’t tell the difference between this blaze of pleasure and the sorrow it drags in. As I gaze out into the gathering darkness it seems I almost comprehend the mystery, glimpse the water of life pouring through my form into theirs, theirs back to mine, misery and ecstasy swirled like the blue white planet seen from space, but it lasts less than a moment-- the arms of my own dear one haul me back into my body, her flesh so ostentatiously alive.
Ellen Bass
I woke a few moments ago from a fever and a host of interlocking fever dreams, one after the next. There was one where I was in London, walking through old abandoned formerly beautiful buildings, all of them about to be demolished. Sometimes I'd find myself walking past the enormous line of people waiting to attend the television memorial for a dead author friend of mine, but his memorial was a television spectacular with comedians and big band music. There was the one where I had accidentally connected my bank card to a portable printer and the little printer kept printing cash but on the wrong paper and at the wrong size, so my money had huge, incredibly detailed faces on it, works of art that could not be spent. Then I woke from one dream into another: I was asleep in the passenger seat of the car, and saw that we were driving through a densely populated town, and that the driver was also asleep. I tried hard to wake her up and failed, and knew that no one was in control, no one was at the wheel, and soon someone was going to be killed, and I was shouting and calling without effect; but I whimpered and snuffled enough in the real world that my wife stroked my face and said, "Honey? You're having a nightmare," and, finally, I woke for real. But I woke into a world in which, somewhere, I am still being driven through my life by a sleeping driver, in which money is only good as art, in which we can write the finest books but at the end the crowds will come out and say good-bye for the entertainment, in which the buildings and cities we inhabit will relentlessly be destroyed by progress and time: a world colored by dreams and illuminated by them, too.
Neil Gaiman (The Sandman: Overture)
Everything started to move in slow motion. A vehicle was coming up the hill in the opposite direction, facing us but in its own lane. With vehicles parked on both sides of the road, this meant that there was just a narrow passage area for both vehicles to pass through. However, he had yet to reduce his speed, and now I knew which car he was going to hit. I was frozen stiff with fear in the front passenger seat, as I helplessly watched him slam into the back of a parked car. I was not wearing a seat belt, so upon impact my head crashed into the windshield. I was then slammed back into my seat, but with such force that everything went black.
Drexel Deal (The Fight of My Life is Wrapped Up in My Father (The Fight of My Life is Wrapped in My Father Book 1))
But as my little conductress, with her hair of gold and her frock of blue, danced before me round corners and pattered down passages, I had the view of a castle of romance inhabited by a rosy sprite, such a place as would somehow, for diversion of the young idea, take all colour out of story-books and fairy-tales. Wasn’t it just a story-book over which I had fallen a-doze and a-dream? No; it was a big ugly antique but convenient house, embodying a few features of a building still older, half-displaced and half-utilized, in which I had the fancy of our being almost as lost as a handful of passengers in a great drifting ship. Well, I was strangely at the helm!
Henry James (The Turn of the Screw and Other Ghost Stories)
You’re a grown-up, these days. You don’t wear a kamikaze pilot’s rising sun headband and a tee-shirt that screams DEBUG THIS! and you don’t spend your weekends competing in extreme programming slams at a windy campsite near Frankfurt, but it’s generally difficult for you to use any machine that doesn’t have at least one compiler installed: In fact, you had to stick Python on your phone before you even opened its address book because not being able to brainwash it left you feeling handicapped, like you were a passenger instead of a pilot. In another age you would have been a railway mechanic or a grease monkey crawling over the spark plugs of a DC-3. This is what you are, and the sad fact is, they can put the code monkey in a suit but they can’t take the code out of the monkey.
Charles Stross (Halting State (Halting State, #1))
They hung over the town, muted red, dark-pink, surrounded by every conceivable nuance of gray. The setting was wild and beautiful. Actually everyone should be in the streets, I thought, cars should be stopping, doors should be opened and drivers and passengers emerging with heads raised and eyes sparkling with curiosity and a craving for beauty, for what was it that was going on above our heads? However, a few glances at most were cast upward, perhaps followed by isolated comments about how beautiful the evening was, for sights like this were not exceptional, on the contrary, hardly a day passed without the sky being filled with fantastic cloud formations, each and every one illuminated in unique, never-to-be-repeated ways, and since what you see every day is what you never see, we lived our lives under the constantly changing sky without sparing it a glance or a thought.
Karl Ove Knausgård (My Struggle: Book 1)
The world of books is the most remarkable creation of man. Nothing else that he builds ever lasts. Monuments fall; nations perish; civilizations grow old and die out; and, after an era of darkness, new races build others. But in the world of books are volumes that have seen this happen again and again, and yet live on, still young, still as fresh as the day they were written, still telling men’s hearts of the hearts of men centuries dead. And even the books that do not last long, penetrate their own times at least, sailing farther than Ulysses even dreamed of, like ships on the seas. It is the author’s part to call into being their cargoes and passengers,--living thoughts and rich bales of study and jeweled ideas. As for the publishers, it is they who build the fleet, plan the voyage, and sail on, facing wreck, till they find every possible harbor that will value their burden.
Clarence C. Day
       If this isn't a guidebook, what is it? A book of sermons, perhaps.        I preach that air travel be scaled back, as a start, to the level of twenty years ago, further reductions to be considered after all the Boeing engineers have been retrained as turkey ranchers.        The state Game Department should establish a season on helicopters — fifty-two weeks a year, twenty-four hours a day, no bag limit.        Passenger trains must be restored, as a start, to the service of forty years ago and then improved from there.        The Gypsy Bus System must not be regularized (the government would regulate it to death) but publicized cautiously through the underground.        I would discourage, if not ban, trekking to Everest base camp and flying over the Greenland Icecap. Generally, people should stay home. Forget gaining a little knowledge about a lot and strive to learn about a little.
Harvey Manning (Walking the Beach to Bellingham (Northwest Reprints))
Like God, you hover above the page staring down on a small town. Outside a window some scenery loafs in a sleepy hammock of pastoral prose and here is a mongrel loping and here is a train approaching the station in three long sentences and here are the people in galoshes waiting. But you know this story about the galoshes is really About Your Life, so, like a diver climbing over the side of a boat and down into the ocean, you climb, sentence by sentence, into this story on this page. You have been expecting yourself as a woman who purrs by in a dress by Patou, and a porter manacled to the luggage, and a man stalking across the page like a black cloud in a bad mood. These are your fellow travelers and you are a face behind or inside these faces, a heartbeat in the volley of these heartbeats, as you choose, out of all the journeys, the journey of a man with a mustache scented faintly with Prince Albert. "He must be a secret sensualist," you think and your awareness drifts to his trench coat, worn, softened, and flabby, a coat with a lobotomy, just as the train pulls into the station. No, you would prefer another stop in a later chapter where the climate is affable and sleek. But the passengers are disembarking, and you did not choose to be in the story of the woman in the white dress which is as cool and evil as a glass of radioactive milk. You did not choose to be in the story of the matron whose bosom is like the prow of a ship and who is launched toward lunch at the Hotel Pierre, or even the story of the dog-on-a-leash, even though this is now your story: the story of the person-who-had-to-take-the-train-and-walk- the-dark-road described hurriedly by someone sitting at the tavern so you could discover it, although you knew all along the road would be there, you, who have been hovering above this page, holding the book in your hands, like God, reading.
Lynn Emanuel
His fingers unhooked from hers, following that same path up her arm, and then back down it again. The feeling was so distracting, so good, so sweet against her clammy skin. She didn't choose a piece from her repertoire; Etta gave herself over to the notes that started streaming through her mind, rising from somewhere deep inside of her. The melody of her heart had no name; it was quick, and light. It rolled with the waves, falling as the breath left his chest, rising as he inhaled. It was the rain sliding down the glass; the fog spreading its fingers over the water. The creaking of a ship's great body. The secrets whispered by the wind, and the unseen life that moved below. It was the flame against the candle. Nicholas's arm was a map of hard muscles and delicate sinews, heartbreakingly perfect. She wondered if he could hear her humming the piece against his skin over the droning roars overhead. Maybe. His free hand skimmed up her skin, leaving a trail of sparks in its wake. With the world blacked out around them, she could catalog all over her senses, capture this moment in the warm darkness forever. He brushed back the loose hair across her forehead, cheek, the corner of her lips, her jaw, and she knew it had to be the same for him, that they'd never been so aware of another person in their entire lives. She released his arm, and he drew it up around her, guiding both of them down so they were on their sides, their heads cushioned by the bag, his jacket drawn over them. Etta understood that here, in the darkness, they'd found a place beyond rules; a place that hung somewhere between the past and the future. This was a single moment of possibility. The clattering of the attack from above faded as he rested his forehead against hers, his thumb lightly stroking a bruise on her cheek. She traced his face - the straight nose, the high, proud cheekbones, the full curve of his lips. His hand caught her there, taking it in his own; he pressed a hard, almost despairing kiss to it. But when she tilted her face up, half - desperate with longing, her blood racing, Nicholas pulled back; and although Etta could feel him beside her, his heart pounding, his ragged breath, it was as if he had disappeared into the thundering dark.
Alexandra Bracken (Passenger (Passenger, #1))
I fisici di questo cosa dicono? Niente di che. Perlopiú alzano gli occhi al cielo. Non sono tipi kantiani. Il problema con l'assoluto inconoscibile è che se si potesse dirne qualcosa non sarebbe piú l'asso- luro inconoscibile. Si può passare dal noumenico al feno- menico stando comodamente seduti in poltrona. In altre parole, niente può essere estratto dall'assoluto senza essere reso percettivo. Tenendo presente che attribuire real tà all'inconoscibile è già glossolalia. Il guaio con il mondo perfetto e oggettivo - di Kant o di chiunque altro - è che è inconoscibile per definizione. Anche se amo la fisica io non la confondo con la realtà assoluta. È la nostra realtà. I concetti matematici hanno una durata a scaffale conside- revole. Esistono nell'assoluto? E possibile? Mi sono chiesta. Ma poi la me che se l'è chiesto è diventata un'altra. Com'è giusto. E si è portata via la matematica. Il concetto. Un lungo periodo di incertezza. Quando sono tornata a connettere ero da un'altra parte. Quasi mi fossi sottratta al mio stesso cono luce. Fuggita in quello che un tempo chiamavano l'altrove assoluto. all'altro capo di quelle equazioni. Non capisco. Lo so. Nemmeno io. È solo che allora credevo non si potesse cavare qualcosa dall'assoluto senza cavarlo dall'assoluto. Senza convertirlo in qualcosa di fenome- nologico. Facendolo cosí diventare una nostra proprie- tà tutta ricoperta dalle nostre impronte digitali e a quel punto l'assoluto si è volatilizzato. Adesso non sono piú cosí convinta. Possiamo parlare del Kid? Certo. E che cazzo.
Cormac McCarthy (McCarthy Cormac 2 Books Collection Set [The Passenger & Stella Maris] (The Passenger 2 book series))
But I haven’t mentioned the cheer relentlessness of modern life, the crowdedness, the incessant thumping music and braying voices, the near impossibility of finding solitude and silence and time to reflect. I haven’t mentioned the commercial pressures, the forces urging us to buy and discard and buy again. When everything in public life has a logo attached to it, when every public space is disfigured with advertisements, when nothing of public value and importance can take place without commercial sponsorship, when schools and hospitals have to act as if their guiding principle were market forces rather than human need, when adults and children alike are tempted to wear t-shirts with obscene words on them by the smirking little devices spelling the words wrongly, when citizens become consumers and clients; patients and guests, students and passengers are all flattened into customers, what price the school of morals? The answer is: what it would fetch in the market. And not a penny more. I haven’t mentioned the obsession with targets, and testing and tables; the management-driven and politics corrupted and all the clotted rubbish that so deforms the true work of schools. I haven’t mentioned something that might seem trivial but I think its importance is profound and rarely understood: that’s the difference between reading a story in a book and watching a story on a screen. It’s a psychological difference, not just a technical one. We need to take account of it and I fear we are not doing it, and the school of morals is suffering in result.
Philip Pullman (Dæmon Voices)
THE DEMANDS MADE by a work of this nature upon the generosity of specialists are very numerous, and the Editor would be wanting in all title to the generous treatment he has received were he not willing to make the fullest possible acknowledgment of his indebtedness. His thanks are due in the first place to the scholarly and accomplished Bahadur Shah, baggage elephant 174 on the Indian Register, who, with his amiable sister Pudmini, most courteously supplied the history of ‘Toomai of the Elephants’ and much of the information contained in ‘Servants of the Queen’. The adventures of Mowgli were collected at various times and in various places from a multitude of informants, most of whom desire to preserve the strictest anonymity. Yet, at this distance, the Editor feels at liberty to thank a Hindu gentleman of the old rock, an esteemed resident of the upper slopes of Jakko, for his convincing if somewhat caustic estimate of the national characteristics of his caste–the Presbytes. Sahi, a savant of infinite research and industry, a member of the recently disbanded Seeonee Pack, and an artist well known at most of the local fairs of Southern India, where his muzzled dance with his master attracts the youth, beauty, and culture of many villages, have contributed most valuable data on people, manners, and customs. These have been freely drawn upon, in the stories of ‘Tiger-Tiger!’ ‘Kaa’s Hunting’, and ‘Mowgli’s Brothers’. For the outlines of ‘Rikki-tikki-tavi’ the Editor stands indebted to one of the leading herpetologists of Upper India, a fearless and independent investigator who, resolving ‘not to live but know’, lately sacrificed his life through over-application to the study of our Eastern Thanatophidia. A happy accident of travel enabled the Editor, when a passenger on the Empress of India, to be of some slight assistance to a fellow-voyager. How richly his poor services were repaid, readers of the ‘White Seal’ may judge for themselves.
Jonathan Swift (The Adventure Collection: Treasure Island, The Jungle Book, Gulliver's Travels, White Fang, The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood (The Heirloom Collection))
Trumpets blared. ’Denham’s Dentifrice.’ Shut up, thought Montag. Consider the lilies of the field. ’Denham’s Dentifrice.’ They toil not — ’Denham’s —’ He tore the book open and flicked the pages and felt them as if he were blind, he picked at the shape of the individual letters, not blinking. ’Denham’s. Spelled: D-E-N —’ They toil not, neither do they … A fierce whisper of hot sand through empty sieve. ’Denham’s does it!’ Consider the lilies, the lilies, the lilies … ’Denham’s dental detergent.’ ‘Shut up, shut up, shut up!’ It was a plea, a cry so terrible that Montag found himself on his feet, the shocked inhabitants of the loud car staring, moving back from this man with the insane, gorged face, the gibbering, dry mouth, the flapping book in his fist. The people who have been sitting a moment before, tapping their feet to the rhythm of Denham’s Dentifrice, Denham’s Dandy Dental Detergent, Denham’s Dentifrice Dentifrice Dentifrice, one two, one two three, one two, one two three. The people whose mouths had been faintly twitching the words Dentifrice Dentifrice Dentifrice. The train radio vomited upon Montag, in retaliation, a great ton-load of music made of tin, copper, silver, chromium, and brass. The people were pounded into submission; they did not run; there was no place to run; the great air-train fell down its shafts in the earth. ’Lilies of the field.’ ’Denham’s.’ ’Lilies, I said!’ The people stared. ’Call the guard.’ ’The man’s off —’ ’Knoll View!’ The train hissed to its stop. ’Knoll View!’ A cry. ’Denham’s.’ A whisper. Montag’s mouth barely moved. ‘Lilies …’ The train door whistled open. Montag stood. The door gasped, started shut. Only then did he leap past the other passengers, screaming his mind, plunge through the slicing door only in time. He rain on the white tiles up through the tunnels, ignoring the escalators, because he wanted to feel his feet move, arms swing, lungs clench, unclench, feel his throat go raw with air. A voice drifted after him, ‘Denham’s Denham’s Denham’s,’ the train hissed like a snake. The train vanished in its hole.
Ray Bradbury (Fahrenheit 451)
Anne, did you ever get on a street car and then discover that you hadn’t any money with you to pay your fare? I did, the other day. It’s quite awful. I had a nickel with me when I got on the car. I thought it was in the left pocket of my coat. When I got settled down comfortably I felt for it. It wasn’t there. I had a cold chill. I felt in the other pocket. Not there. I had another chill. Then I felt in a little inside pocket. All in vain. I had two chills at once. “I took off my gloves, laid them on the seat, and went over all my pockets again. It was not there. I stood up and shook myself, and then looked on the floor. The car was full of people, who were going home from the opera, and they all stared at me, but I was past caring for a little thing like that. “But I could not find my fare. I concluded I must have put it in my mouth and swallowed it inadvertently. “I didn’t know what to do. Would the conductor, I wondered, stop the car and put me off in ignominy and shame? Was it possible that I could convince him that I was merely the victim of my own absentmindedness, and not an unprincipled creature trying to obtain a ride upon false pretenses? How I wished that Alec or Alonzo were there. But they weren’t because I wanted them. If I HADN’T wanted them they would have been there by the dozen. And I couldn’t decide what to say to the conductor when he came around. As soon as I got one sentence of explanation mapped out in my mind I felt nobody could believe it and I must compose another. It seemed there was nothing to do but trust in Providence, and for all the comfort that gave me I might as well have been the old lady who, when told by the captain during a storm that she must put her trust in the Almighty exclaimed, ‘Oh, Captain, is it as bad as that?’ “Just at the conventional moment, when all hope had fled, and the conductor was holding out his box to the passenger next to me, I suddenly remembered where I had put that wretched coin of the realm. I hadn’t swallowed it after all. I meekly fished it out of the index finger of my glove and poked it in the box. I smiled at everybody and felt that it was a beautiful world.
L.M. Montgomery (Anne of the Island: Book 3 in the Anne of Green Gables Series)
I am speaking of the evenings when the sun sets early, of the fathers under the streetlamps in the back streets returning home carrying plastic bags. Of the old Bosphorus ferries moored to deserted stations in the middle of winter, where sleepy sailors scrub the decks, pail in hand and one eye on the black-and-white television in the distance; of the old booksellers who lurch from one ϧnancial crisis to the next and then wait shivering all day for a customer to appear; of the barbers who complain that men don’t shave as much after an economic crisis; of the children who play ball between the cars on cobblestoned streets; of the covered women who stand at remote bus stops clutching plastic shopping bags and speak to no one as they wait for the bus that never arrives; of the empty boathouses of the old Bosphorus villas; of the teahouses packed to the rafters with unemployed men; of the patient pimps striding up and down the city’s greatest square on summer evenings in search of one last drunken tourist; of the broken seesaws in empty parks; of ship horns booming through the fog; of the wooden buildings whose every board creaked even when they were pashas’ mansions, all the more now that they have become municipal headquarters; of the women peeking through their curtains as they wait for husbands who never manage to come home in the evening; of the old men selling thin religious treatises, prayer beads, and pilgrimage oils in the courtyards of mosques; of the tens of thousands of identical apartment house entrances, their facades discolored by dirt, rust, soot, and dust; of the crowds rushing to catch ferries on winter evenings; of the city walls, ruins since the end of the Byzantine Empire; of the markets that empty in the evenings; of the dervish lodges, the tekkes, that have crumbled; of the seagulls perched on rusty barges caked with moss and mussels, unϩinching under the pelting rain; of the tiny ribbons of smoke rising from the single chimney of a hundred-yearold mansion on the coldest day of the year; of the crowds of men ϧshing from the sides of the Galata Bridge; of the cold reading rooms of libraries; of the street photographers; of the smell of exhaled breath in the movie theaters, once glittering aϱairs with gilded ceilings, now porn cinemas frequented by shamefaced men; of the avenues where you never see a woman alone after sunset; of the crowds gathering around the doors of the state-controlled brothels on one of those hot blustery days when the wind is coming from the south; of the young girls who queue at the doors of establishments selling cut-rate meat; of the holy messages spelled out in lights between the minarets of mosques on holidays that are missing letters where the bulbs have burned out; of the walls covered with frayed and blackened posters; of the tired old dolmuşes, ϧfties Chevrolets that would be museum pieces in any western city but serve here as shared taxis, huϫng and puϫng up the city’s narrow alleys and dirty thoroughfares; of the buses packed with passengers; of the mosques whose lead plates and rain gutters are forever being stolen; of the city cemeteries, which seem like gateways to a second world, and of their cypress trees; of the dim lights that you see of an evening on the boats crossing from Kadıköy to Karaköy; of the little children in the streets who try to sell the same packet of tissues to every passerby; of the clock towers no one ever notices; of the history books in which children read about the victories of the Ottoman Empire and of the beatings these same children receive at home; of the days when everyone has to stay home so the electoral roll can be compiled or the census can be taken; of the days when a sudden curfew is announced to facilitate the search for terrorists and everyone sits at home fearfully awaiting “the oϫcials”; CONTINUED IN SECOND PART OF THE QUOTE
Orhan Pamuk (Istanbul: Memories and the City)
Keynes was a voracious reader. He had what he called ‘one of the best of all gifts – the eye which can pick up the print effortlessly’. If one was to be a good reader, that is to read as easily as one breathed, practice was needed. ‘I read the newspapers because they’re mostly trash,’ he said in 1936. ‘Newspapers are good practice in learning how to skip; and, if he is not to lose his time, every serious reader must have this art.’ Travelling by train from New York to Washington in 1943, Keynes awed his fellow passengers by the speed with which he devoured newspapers and periodicals as well as discussing modern art, the desolate American landscape and the absence of birds compared with English countryside.54 ‘As a general rule,’ Keynes propounded as an undergraduate, ‘I hate books that end badly; I always want the characters to be happy.’ Thirty years later he deplored contemporary novels as ‘heavy-going’, with ‘such misunderstood, mishandled, misshapen, such muddled handling of human hopes’. Self-indulgent regrets, defeatism, railing against fate, gloom about future prospects: all these were anathema to Keynes in literature as in life. The modern classic he recommended in 1936 was Forster’s A Room with a View, which had been published nearly thirty years earlier. He was, however, grateful for the ‘perfect relaxation’ provided by those ‘unpretending, workmanlike, ingenious, abundant, delightful heaven-sent entertainers’, Agatha Christie, Edgar Wallace and P. G. Wodehouse. ‘There is a great purity in these writers, a remarkable absence of falsity and fudge, so that they live and move, serene, Olympian and aloof, free from any pretended contact with the realities of life.’ Keynes preferred memoirs as ‘more agreeable and amusing, so much more touching, bringing so much more of the pattern of life, than … the daydreams of a nervous wreck, which is the average modern novel’. He loved good theatre, settling into his seat at the first night of a production of Turgenev’s A Month in the Country with a blissful sigh and the words, ‘Ah! this is the loveliest play in all the world.’55 Rather as Keynes was a grabby eater, with table-manners that offended Norton and other Bloomsbury groupers, so he could be impatient to reach the end of books. In the inter-war period publishers used to have a ‘gathering’ of eight or sixteen pages at the back of their volumes to publicize their other books-in-print. He excised these advertisements while reading a book, so that as he turned a page he could always see how far he must go before finishing. A reader, said Keynes, should approach books ‘with all his senses; he should know their touch and their smell. He should learn how to take them in his hands, rustle their pages and reach in a few seconds a first intuitive impression of what they contain. He should … have touched many thousands, at least ten times as many as he reads. He should cast an eye over books as a shepherd over sheep, and judge them with the rapid, searching glance with which a cattle-dealer eyes cattle.’ Keynes in 1927 reproached his fellow countrymen for their low expenditure in bookshops. ‘How many people spend even £10 a year on books? How many spend 1 per cent of their incomes? To buy a book ought to be felt not as an extravagance, but as a good deed, a social duty which blesses him who does it.’ He wished to muster ‘a mighty army … of Bookworms, pledged to spend £10 a year on books, and, in the higher ranks of the Brotherhood, to buy a book a week’. Keynes was a votary of good bookshops, whether their stock was new or second-hand. ‘A bookshop is not like a railway booking-office which one approaches knowing what one wants. One should enter it vaguely, almost in a dream, and allow what is there freely to attract and influence the eye. To walk the rounds of the bookshops, dipping in as curiosity dictates, should be an afternoon’s entertainment.
Richard Davenport-Hines (Universal Man: The Seven Lives of John Maynard Keynes)
Although the book considers the cause of the crash, this study is much more concerned with the human side of the tragedy and what can be learnt about Japanese society from looking at the responses to it. It is for that reason that the names of the crew and passengers are listed in the footer of pages of the book. This study is not about a lifeless mixture of metal and other man-made objects falling out of the sky, but about real people.
Christopher P. Hood (Dealing with Disaster in Japan: Responses to the Flight JL123 Crash (Routledge Contemporary Japan Series))
There are fifty of your sisters in distress and about the same number of troops aboard Prince of Wales -" "Princely wails indeed." Nash disdained to notice the remark. "However, even with every man catered for, there was constant danger of insurrection. The captain, with whom I've been traveling as a passenger at my own expense, took counsel from me and wisely approved certain measures that, pour force majeure, eased the situation. However," he continued with heavy emphasis, "if such mutinous behaviour can erupt when the numbers are evenly balanced, what will it be when there's already not enough to go around?" He paused. "In short, you and two hundred others of your kind are about to be set upon by
James Talbot (A Willful Woman: Adversity is her opportunity in this prison camp dominated by men (The Alchemy of Distance Book 2))
Passengers unaware of this impending stroke of destiny are busy planning and dreaming. All efforts to make their life luxurious will soon be useless. All perishable things – money and precious relations – will soon be worthless. The stars, sprinkled like jewels, are speckled across the huge canvas of the sky and hypnotise people sitting at the window seats with their unmatched beauty. The inmates are eager for the touchdown, but they don’t know that it will be fatal. Time, in its own style, is going to give a lesson to humanity. It looks as if all is well, but it isn’t.
Vikas G. Gupta
One point of this book is to remind us that imperfection is the rule, not the exception. On Thursday, December 1, 1955, Rosa Parks, who worked as a seamstress at the Montgomery Fair department store, was arrested after refusing to give up her seat to a white passenger in Jim Crow–era Alabama.
Jon Meacham (The Soul of America: The Battle for Our Better Angels)
Smiling to myself, I pictured our family one sunny afternoon last fall. It had been a warm day, and we were on our way to the city aquarium. Dad had the car windows rolled down, and I recalled the feel of the wind in my hair and the scent of Mom’s perfume wafting from the seat in front of me. Mom and Dad were chatting and I was scrolling through my Instagram feed. But the moment the song sounded on the radio, I squealed. “Turn it up!” I said, leaning forward in my seat, enough that the belt tightened across my chest. As soon as Dad reached over and turned the knob, I started singing the lyrics aloud. Both Mom and Dad joined in. With the wind in my hair and the music filling the car, a warmth had filled my insides, almost as if I were wrapped in my favorite fuzzy blanket. The memory was fresh in my mind and I could still see Mom’s head bob up and down as she sang while Dad tapped his fingers on the steering wheel. “Come on, Dad!” I said, giggling. “Sing with us.” He glanced over his shoulder at me. “I’m waiting for my favorite part. I don’t want to stretch my singing muscles.” “What singing muscles?” Mom smiled at him. He put a finger in the air for her to wait. “Here we go.” When the chorus of the song began, Dad screeched out the lyrics in a really high voice. He was trying to mimic the singer’s voice but he wasn’t even close and the sound he made was terrible. I burst out laughing. He ignored me and continued to sing, all the while, waving a hand through the air with wide flourishes, as if conducting an orchestra. He tilted his head back and belted out the high notes. When we pulled up at a red traffic light and the car slowed to a stop, Dad was oblivious of the carload of people alongside us watching him. The passengers of the other car had their windows open too and I stared at them in horror. Their eyes were glued to Dad and they shook their heads and rolled their eyes. “Dad!” I called to him. “Those people are watching you.” But he didn’t hear me and continued to sing. I sank into my seat, my cheeks flushing. He finally realized he had an audience but instead of being embarrassed, he waved to them. “Hello, there!” he said. “Did you enjoy my singing?” The light turned green, and the carload of people cracked up laughing as their car lurched forward in their hurry to escape the weird man in the car next to theirs. Dad shrugged. “I guess not.’ Mom and I burst out laughing too, unable to hold it in any longer. Dad waved a dismissive hand. “They wouldn’t know good music if it hit them in the face.” Tears sprang from my eyes because I was laughing so hard. My dad could be so embarrassing sometimes, but that day, it didn’t bother me at all. Dad had always managed to make me laugh at the silliest things. He had a way of making me feel happy, regardless of what mood I was in. Deep down I thought he was a really cool dad. My friends thought so too. He wasn’t boring and super strict like their dads. He was fun to be around and everyone loved him for it, including my friends. Our little family was perfect, and I wouldn’t have changed it for the world.
Katrina Kahler (The Lost Girl - Part One: Books 1, 2 and 3: Books for Girls Aged 9-12)
In the case of the airport, code both facilitates and coproduces the environment. Prior to visiting an airport, passengers engage with an electronic booking system – such as SABRE – that registers their data, identifies them, and makes them visible to other systems, such as check-in desks and passport control. If, when they find themselves at the airport, the system becomes unavailable, it is not a mere inconvenience. Modern security procedures have removed the possibility of paper identification or processing: software is the only accepted arbiter of the process. Nothing can be done; nobody can move. As a result, a software crash revokes the building’s status as an airport, transforming it into a huge shed filled with angry people. This is how largely invisible computation coproduces our environment – its critical necessity revealed only in moments of failure, like a kind of brain injury.
James Bridle (New Dark Age: Technology and the End of the Future)
He saved for months (mowing lawns, taking extra shifts at the Dairy Queen) and when finally he brought it home, I helped him swirling rags, polishing until the hubcaps shone, the tires special ordered to fit. Easy ride, he'd say, slamming the brakes - his big joke - instrumental panel lighting the glove box filled with the manual's sweet talk - fuel injector, carburetor, exhaust manifold. So when the call came, I couldn't help but wonder if he'd planned it all along - the shut garage, engine idling, sunglasses slung from the mirror. On the passenger's side a school book lay open; chewed gun on the seat.
Bruce Snider (Paradise, Indiana)
He saved for months (mowing lawns, taking extra shifts at the Dairy Queen) and when finally he brought it home, I helped him swirling rags, polishing until the hubcaps shone, the tires special ordered to fit. Easy ride, he'd say, slamming the brakes - his big joke - instrumental panel lighting the glove box filled with the manual's sweet talk - fuel injector, carburetor, exhaust manifold. So when the call came, I couldn't help but wonder if he'd planned it all along - the shut garage, engine idling, sunglasses slung from the mirror. On the passenger's side a school book lay open; chewed gum on the seat.
Bruce Snider (Paradise, Indiana)
Alaska Airlines Reservations Phone Number +1-855-653-5006 Alaska Airlines is considered as a major airline company in the North America region. Headquartered at Seattle, Washington, Alaska is the fifth largest airline in the United States in terms of fleet size and passengers served. Millions of people travel by Alaska Airlines to major cities in the world. The airline company has an extensive circuit of flight network that connects to most of the important cities in the world. If you’re planning to travel by Alaska Airlines, then you would probably need Alaska Airlines reservations phone number to clear off all your doubts and queries related to Alaska Airlines flight booking. Why You Need Alaska Airlines Reservations Phone Number +1-855-653-5006? Alaska Airlines reservation is one among the highly searched terms in the airline industry. People who intend to travel on a domestic circuit which is within the United States would prefer Alaska Airlines. There are several reasons why you can benefit on air ticket booking with Alaska Airlines. The airline is supposedly offer low cost air tickets to passengers around the world. That is why sometimes it is great to avail the short-haul flights with Alaska Airlines. You will require Alaska Airlines customer care number to book your flight tickets, check for the limitations on checked and carry-on baggage and also to explore the services provided by the airline.
JOGOA L
Alaska Airlines Reservations Phone Number-+1-855-653-0624 Alaska Airlines Reservations Phone Number Alaska Airlines is considered as a major airline company in the North America region. Headquartered at Seattle, Washington, Alaska is the fifth largest airline in the United States in terms of fleet size and passengers served. Millions of people travel by Alaska Airlines to major cities in the world. The airline company has an extensive circuit of flight network that connects to most of the important cities in the world. If you’re planning to travel by Alaska Airlines, then you would probably need Alaska Airlines reservations phone number to clear off all your doubts and queries related to Alaska Airlines flight booking. Alaska Airlines reservation is one among the highly searched terms in the airline industry. People who intend to travel on a domestic circuit which is within the United States would prefer Alaska Airlines. There are several reasons why you can benefit on air ticket booking with Alaska Airlines. The airline is supposedly offer low cost air tickets to passengers around the world. That is why sometimes it is great to avail the short-haul flights with Alaska Airlines. You will require Alaska Airlines customer care number to book your flight tickets, check for the limitations on checked and carry-on baggage and also to explore the services provided by the airline.Alaska Airlines permits passengers to carry along with 1 carry-on bag plus 1 personal item. For checked baggage, Alaska Airlines charges each one for $25 specifically for the first and second bag and then $75 for each additional bag.
XUEFGIECNGWZ
Delta Airlines Contact Number +1(855) 653-615 Travelling with Delta Airlines is going to be a worthwhile experience for you owing to the amenities and facilities you will be offered online. You will be treated with customized and exclusive boarding experience, free entertainment, complimentary snacks, spacious seats, and much more. Let’s explore these incredible services. On most of Delta Airlines flights, you are allowed to stream TV shows, music, movies, and more to your phone, tablet, and laptop. You are not even required to purchase the on-board Wi-Fi, just download the Delta Airlines mobile app on your device. Go for Delta Airlines flight reservations and leave all your boredom away. American keeps updating its entertainment content in different languages and genres. If you are a guest of First Class, then you have access to various unparalleled amenities such as amenity kit, more privacy, fully-flat bed, flagship lounge, and much more. The airline offers different travel classes so passengers can choose as per their budget. In addition to these in-flight amenities, some other facilities are also offered on ground like easy check-in, 24/7 available customer service, hassle-free booking procedure, etc. You can anytime call on the American Airlines booking phone number +1-855-653-0615 to seek guidance related to the airline services. Passengers who are going to travel with American Airlines will definitely have a pure blissful flying experience. The airline is an epitome of sheer luxury; choose it as your travel partner and have an enjoyable flight.
XODEV S
Spirit Airlines Reservations +1855-653-5007 Phone Number Spirit Airlines Reservations Phone Number +1855-653-5007 is a low-budget carrier and thus you should not expect any of the on-board entertainment and free Wi-Fi facilities. However, its comfortable seats at such a low price make it worth booking for your next travel. In addition to this, Spirit Airlines offers you a wide range of food and beverage options while flying in the air so that you can fulfill the craving of your taste buds. But this is a paid facility and you will have to pay the extra price to order these meals and beverages. Nothing is included in your flight ticket. Spirit Airlines is known for its affordable price and amazing deals that it usually offers on the flight ticket to facilitate the passengers. Its major objective is to minimize your travel expenses to the maximum extent so that you can reach your destination without hitting your pocket hard. So, what are you waiting for? Get your Spirit Airlines Reservations now and make your journey a once-in-a-time experience As we all know, Spirit is an ultra-low-cost carrier and to keep its fares low; the airline has limited its services. However, it provides you various in-flight services depending upon the fare type, city of origin, and the destination. But there are some services that you will enjoy on all Spirit Airlines reservations, so let’s know more about them for a Wonderful and convenient travel experience in the future.
MOONRAN
Alaska Airlines Reservation Phone Number+1-855-653-5006 Alaska Airlines Reservation Phone Number Those passengers, who want to fly on Scandinavian Airlines, can check the flight fares on its official website. One can also check the availability of flights and upcoming routes announced by the airline. The air carrier’s website has an integrated search engine, which lets you find, compare, and book flights based on your preferences. Additionally, the airline also has its dedicated SAS Booking & Scandinavian Airlines reservations help desk, which provides round the clock assistance to the people to get their flight booked. Getting your seat booked has never been so easy, thanks to the advent of the internet and advancement of the technology. SAS Airlines offer multiple ways to book your flight tickets, be it browsing the official website or downloading the airline’s mobile app. There is no denying the fact that online flight booking is the best option to book an air ticket as you don’t have to go outside and get it done from the comfort of your space. Read on this below mentioned guide and get your hands on the flight tickets in the best way possible.
STXDCCVZZ
Dave heard BURRing. He turned and saw that the bouldering zombies had begun to clamber through the holes in the wall that the fire had created and climb down the ladder from the roof. Before long, the train was surrounded by gray zombies, trying to break in and get them. “We’re definitely gonna die now,” sighed Carl. “I might as well eat my final baked potatoes. At least I’ll die happy then. Well, as happy as someone can be while they’re being eaten alive by zombies.” “I thought you said this train drove itself?” Spidroth said to Dave. “I thought it did,” said Dave, starting to panic. Now that they were in the passenger car, there was no way of getting back to the train car without leaving the car and going through all the zombies. Then, just as Dave was starting to lose all hope, the train began to rumble, the redstone lights above them switching on, and a friendly robotic voice coming out of a speaker. “Hello, theme park visitors!” said the voice. “Are we all ready for a wonderful vacation?” “JUST GET THIS TRAIN MOVING, FOOL!” Spidroth bellowed.
Dave Villager (Dave the Villager 36: Unofficial Minecraft Books (The Legend of Dave the Villager))
By Christmas 1934, over three hundred claims totaling $1,-250,000 had been filed against the Ward Line by survivors and relatives of the dead. The Ward Line asked the federal court to limit the total of any single claim to $20,000 and offered $250,000 as a full and final settlement. Lawyers for the line based their case on the “limited liability” law that had been on the statute books since 1851. The 1851 law was clear that in the event of disaster, “only by proving the owners to have possessed knowledge of the unseaworthiness of the vessel or the inadequacy of the crew before sailing,” could passengers collect.
Gordon Thomas (Shipwreck: The Strange Fate of the Morro Castle)
Say, Joe, I know where you can book passage!” “Where?” “At Klack’s Agency. It’s not far from here. Next block.” He led the way to a dingy-looking establishment with several blackboards in the window. On them were chalked such legends as Cook Wanted, Fireman (First Class) for S.A., Cruise and Stokers Wanted. “A lot of freighter crews are signed up here,” Biff explained. “I’ve heard they book passengers as a sideline.
Franklin W. Dixon (The Phantom Freighter (Hardy Boys, #26))
I do not fight. I have never punched anyone. I have stolen books once and once some paperclips, without really knowing why. I almost killed three passengers in my car by looking for a cassette in the glove compartment while I was going one-eighty on the highway. I wanted to write a book entitled 'In the car', made up of remarks recorded while driving. I have never filed a complaint with the police.
Édouard Levé (Autoportrait)
Pleasure Cruise for 137 Corpses” The fire broke out in the ship’s writing-room at 2:30 AM. While the passengers and most of the crew slept soundly, the flames raced through the ship. In an unbelievably
Lawrence Block (The Naked and the Deadly: Lawrence Block in Men's Adventure Magazines (Men's Adventure Library Book 17))
I had to go to the courthouse and listen to an attorney for Sky High Airways claim that the crash of flight 672—which killed over three-quarters of the passengers as it skidded off the runway, broke in half, and then flipped before an engine exploded—wasn’t their fault. Mechanical records said otherwise. The aviation accident investigators said otherwise.
Aly Martinez (The Difference Between Somebody and Someone (The Difference Trilogy Book 1))
minutes later you can’t move. Diesel from the locomotive has sprayed into the carriage, you can hear the roar of the flames, passengers screaming, you try to free yourself, but to no avail. In the snow beneath the rails passengers from the rear carriages file past. You can hear the flames approaching your seat, you are trapped and can only wait until the fire reaches you. Outside, flakes of ash settle on the snow. Soon the first ambulances arrive. You can smell melting plastic, you can smell burning diesel. You sit there unable to move, in the escalating heat, until it becomes unbearable and in your helplessness you pray to your God, the Almighty, the Creator of Heaven and Earth, whom you have never been closer to than at this moment, for this is how He reveals himself to us now, in his purest and most beautiful form: a blazing train in the forest.
Karl Ove Knausgård (My Struggle: Book 5 (My Struggle #5))
Everything was predictable. Cinema had act structures. Music had beats. Poets had tricks. Books had arcs. Food tasted delicious as long as it was on the surface of one’s tongue. Any chance of happiness was but one single carousel round, so naturally, after a while, the passenger felt expired. To Andrei, there ceased to be anything worth chasing and this feeling of “running out” in an abundant globe confused him. He wished there was something in the world that was infinite or lasted forever—or was at least worth remembering forever. This was why the sleeper could not dream—his imagination writhed in his true-to-life gluttony.
Kristian Ventura (A Happy Ghost)
Driving University: Listen to audio books or financial news radio while stuck in traffic. Traffic nuisances transformed to education. Exercise University: Absorb books, podcasts, and magazines while exercising at the gym. In between sets, on the treadmill, or on the stationary bike, exercise is transformed to education. Waiting University: Bring something to read with you when you anticipate a painful wait: Airports, doctor’s offices, and your state’s brutal motor vehicle department. Don’t sit there and twiddle your thumbs—learn! Toilet University: Never throne without reading something of educational value. Extend your “sit time” (even after you finish) with the intent of learning something new, every single day. Toilet University is the best place to change your oil, since it occurs daily and the time expenditure cannot be avoided. This means the return on your time investment is infinite! Toilet time transformed to education. Jobbing University: If you can, read during work downtimes. During my dead-job employment (driving limos, pizza delivery) I enjoyed significant “wait times” between jobs. While I waited for passengers, pizzas, and flower orders, I read. I didn’t sit around playing pocket-poker; no, I read. If you can exploit dead time during your job, you are getting paid to learn. Dead-end jobs transformed to education. TV-Time University: Can’t wean yourself off the TV? No problem; put a television near your workspace and simultaneously work your Fastlane plan while the TV does its thing. While watching countless reruns of Star Trek, boldly going where no man has gone before, I simultaneously learned how to program websites. In fact, as I write this, I am watching the New Orleans Saints pummel the New England Patriots on Monday Night Football. Gridiron gluttony transformed to work and education.
M.J. DeMarco ([The Millionaire Fastlane: Crack the Code to Wealth and Live Rich for a Lifetime!] [By: DeMarco, MJ] [January, 2011])
The passengers were listening to some radio broadcast, which appeared to be important, judging by their earnest attentiveness. She caught brief snatches of fraudulent voices talking about some sort of new invention that was to bring some undefined benefits to some undefined public’s welfare. The words were obviously chosen to convey no specific meaning whatever; she wondered how one could pretend that one was hearing a speech; yet that was what the passengers were doing: They were going through the performance of a child who, not yet able to read, holds a book open and spells out anything he wishes to spell, pretending that it is contained in the incomprehensible black lines. But the child, she thought, knows that he is playing a game; these people pretend to themselves that they are not pretending; they know no other state of existence.
Ayn Rand (Atlas Shrugged)
passenger terminal was.
Blake Banner (Rogue Kill (Harry Bauer Book 19))
But the company had some additional items besides the net cash. Buffett noted the outstanding tickets. All sold—but unused—tickets were a liability; they were a form of deferred revenue. The company had received the cash, but the tickets were not yet redeemed. The value of this liability remained unchanged from 1952 to 1953, suggesting the tickets were very unlikely to be utilized. Plus, since the marginal cost of an additional passenger was zero, no cash expenditure would be incurred even if a passenger used the ticket. Therefore, it was appropriate to treat the cash as ‘earned’ and to write the liability down to zero, adding another $1.61 of value. Then there were the long-term assets. While the property and equipment might be worth less than their value on the company’s books, special deposits and insurance trusts had real value that would likely be released over time. These two items would add another $53.72 of value. With the stock trading below net cash, these assets were all gravy.
Brett Gardner (Buffett's Early Investments: A new investigation into the decades when Warren Buffett earned his best returns)
He knew she must’ve said some real fly shit that ticked his mother off. Nice let V lean her body weight on him as he walked her out the front door. When he looked down at her he was trying his hardest not to laugh but his Aunt was rocking the jail house cornrows under a stocking cap and her wig was halfway on her head. Nice tried to get her back right and fix her wig the best way he could. He was trying to save her dignity and not have her out here looking crazier than she already did when she stepped out of the house that morning with that wig on. Nice put the pedal to the medal to drive V back to her house as she cried and blubbered drunkenly in the passenger seat about Cathy doing her dirty.
Ivory B. (It is What it is: A Hood Love Story II - Secrets (Hood Series Book 2))