“
Hale, this life . . .' she started slowly, still practically speechless. 'This . . . what we do--what my family does--it looks a lot more glamorous when you choose it.'
'So choose it.' He handed her another envelope. Smaller this time. Thinner.
'What's this?' she asked.
'That, darling, is my full confession. Dates. Times.' Hale leaned against the antique table. 'I thought the crane rental receipt was a particularly nice touch.' Kat looked at him, speechless. 'It's your ticket back into Colgan. If you want it.'
'Hale, I . . .'
But Hale was still moving, shrinking the distance between them. He seemed impossibly close as he whispered. 'And I didn't choose it, Kat. I chose you.
”
”
Ally Carter (Heist Society (Heist Society, #1))
“
The thing about old friends is not that they love you, but that they know you. They remember that disastrous New Year's Eve when you mixed White Russians and champagne, and how you wore that red maternity dress until everyone was sick of seeing the blaze of it in the office, and the uncomfortable couch in your first apartment and the smoky stove in your beach rental. They look at you and don't really think you look older because they've grown old along with you, and, like the faded paint in a beloved room, they're used to the look. And then one of them is gone, and you've lost a chunk of yourself. The stories of the terrorist attacks of 2001, the tsunami, the Japanese earthquake always used numbers, the deaths of thousands a measure of how great the disaster. Catastrophe is numerical. Loss is singular, one beloved at a time.
”
”
Anna Quindlen (Lots of Candles, Plenty of Cake)
“
Okay, okay, backing off. Um, I suppose this would be a bad time to ask you to talk to Pete for me, you know, about the car?'
His eyes widened. I could almost hear him thinking, Of all the nerve! 'You were driving,' he said.
'But he likes you so much better than me.'
'That is because I do not keep wrecking the rentals.
”
”
Jennifer Rardin (Once Bitten, Twice Shy (Jaz Parks, #1))
“
We were fools and now we were driving to our deaths in a rental car. Janet Jackson was tinkling from the speakers, asking what we had done for her as of late
”
”
Dave Eggers (You Shall Know Our Velocity!)
“
I don’t think it’s overstating it to say that my religion of choice became VHS rentals, and that its messages came in Technicolor and musical montages and fades and jump cuts and silver-screen legends and B-movie nobodies and villains to root for and good guys to hate. But Ruth was wrong, too. There was more than just one other world beyond ours; there were hundreds and hundreds of them, and at 99 cents apiece I could rent them all.
”
”
Emily M. Danforth (The Miseducation of Cameron Post)
“
And that point is, it doesn't matter how long you've known somebody. People change. Or you don't really know them as well as you thought you did in the first place.
”
”
Mary Kay Andrews (Summer Rental)
“
A Home without Equity Is Just a Rental with Debt,
”
”
Michael Lewis (The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine)
“
Jenk shook his head as he headed for the rental car counter. He felt his shoulders tightening as he walked away, certain that Izzy wasn't quite ready to be silent or invisible yet. He was halfway there when Izzy shouted, "Jenkins! I wish I could quit yew!"
Of course. The obligatory Brokeback Mountain reference. Jenk flipped Zanella a double bird without bothering to look back.
”
”
Suzanne Brockmann (Into the Storm (Troubleshooters, #10))
“
Abel. I can’t let you…sell your body.”
“The transaction is closer to a rental.
”
”
Claudia Gray (Defy the Stars (Constellation, #1))
“
I view investing as a method of purchasing assets to gain profit in the form of reasonably predictable income (dividends, interest, or rentals) and /or appreciation over the long term.
”
”
Burton G. Malkiel (A Random Walk Down Wall Street)
“
How often had she wondered what would have happened if she'd remained with Jonathan? Not often, but regularly over the years. It was impossible not to have imagined that rejected future, a life of many countries, of vast and enduring adventure, of tiny rooms and rental houses. It was the sense of missed opportunity that returned to her, frightening but real, overwhelmingly real.
”
”
Michael Stein (In the Age of Love)
“
Once upon a time there was an empress, trapped as a ghost in the ruins of a jewelled palace, cursed to find another soul to take her place. At least, that's what the empress heard. But, as it turned out, stories can have any ending you like.
”
”
Kirsty Logan (The Rental Heart and Other Fairytales)
“
With great effort, I pushed my questions to the side for the time being. We were still fugitives, still undoubtedly pursued. Sydney's car was a brand new Honda CR-V with Louisiana plates and rental sticker.
"What the hell? Is this daring escape sponsored by Honda?"
- Rose Hathaway
”
”
Richelle Mead (Last Sacrifice (Vampire Academy, #6))
“
Book your life choices in advance the same way you would book flights, car rentals, hotels, and excursions. Figure out early on in your career whether you intend to be financially independent or marry a rich man, join the ranks of the professional elite or be the stay-at- home type, postpone having children or find part-time employment. Then fasten your seat belt and sit tight as you watch your trajectory veer off course.
”
”
Veronique Vienne (The Art of Being a Woman: A Simple Guide to Everyday Love and Laughter)
“
Settling is not a destination, rather a vacation rental staring at an endless sea that dares you to cross its waves.
”
”
Shannon L. Alder
“
Texas was ungodly hot. Like the circles of hell kind of hot. Even in the shaded interior of the rental car with cool air blasting from the vents, the heat seeped in from every tiny crack.
”
”
J. Lynn (Trust in Me (Wait for You, #1.5))
“
In Monterey, at the small airport rental agency, he hired a vomit-green Ford Tempo. It was an offense to his refined sense of color. The Tempo's tempo was satisfyingly allegro on flat roads but a bit adagio on the hills.
”
”
Dean Koontz (Strangers)
“
I may be furious and sad about what happened with us, but that doesn't make me believe that what we had wasn't real. And it doesn't make me believe that I won't find something that real again.
”
”
Mary Kay Andrews (Summer Rental)
“
While researching this answer, I managed to lock up my copy of Mathematica several times on balloon-related differential equations, and subsequently got my IP address banned from Wolfram|Alpha for making too many requests. The ban-appeal form asked me to explain what task I was performing that necessitated so many queries. I wrote, “Calculating how many rental helium tanks you’d have to carry with you in order to inflate a balloon large enough to act as a parachute and slow your fall from a jet aircraft.” Sorry, Wolfram.
”
”
Randall Munroe (What If?: Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions)
“
When we acknowledge that all of our blessings are like a fancy rental car or a beautiful Airbnb, we are free to enjoy them without living in constant fear of losing them. We are all the lucky vacationers enjoying our stay in Hotel Earth.
”
”
Jay Shetty (Think Like a Monk: Train Your Mind for Peace and Purpose Everyday)
“
Shane waved a hand. “Please, we know that all it
takes to get into your pants is a Hot Pocket and a
NetFlix rental.
”
”
Stephani Hecht North's Complications
“
but hey, she works in a video rental store and since it’s such a demanding high-powered profession her bitchy behavior is completely reasonable, right? The
”
”
Bret Easton Ellis (American Psycho (Vintage Contemporaries))
“
Nobody ever washes a rental car.
”
”
William Stewart
“
The worst kind of loneliness is when you're unable to be where you want to be, where you wouldn't have to be alone.
”
”
Jeff Backhaus (Hikikomori and the Rental Sister)
“
In many cases, it was the woman’s stomach—not her heart—that fell for her man.
”
”
Mokokoma Mokhonoana (The Selfish Genie: A Satirical Essay on Altruism)
“
Life itself is so extraordinary and unique that the only thing keeping people ordinary is themselves.
”
”
Brandon Turner (The Book on Rental Property Investing: How to Create Wealth and Passive Income Through Smart Buy & Hold Real Estate Investing)
“
If your life can hang from a chewing gum wrapper it can hang from anything in the book. It can hang from a bullet no bigger than a bean, or from a cigarette smoked in bed, or a bad breakfast that causes the doctor to sew the absorbent cotton inside you. From a slick tire tread or the hiccups or from kissing the wrong woman. Life is a rental proposition with no lease. For everybody, tall and short, muscles and fat, white and yellow, rich and poor. I know that now. And it is good to know at a time like this
”
”
Elliott Chaze (Black Wings Has My Angel)
“
I look at all the houses along the street. They're all so similar, and I can't help trying to imagine the diffrrences of all the families inside their homes. I wonder if any of them are hiding secrets? If any of them are falling in love. Or out of love. Are they happy? Sad? Scared? Broke? Lonely? Do they appreciate what they have? Do Gus and Erica appreaciate their health? Does Scott appreciate his supplemental rental income? Because every bit of it, every last bit of it, is fleeting. Nothing is permanent. The only thing any of us have in common is the inevitable. We'll all eventually die.
”
”
Colleen Hoover (Slammed (Slammed, #1))
“
Did you get me that movie about Genghis Khan?
'It's in the Netflix queue, but that's not the surprise. You don't need to worry, it'll be something good. I just don't want you to feel depressed about going home.'
Oh, I won't. But it would be cool to have a stream like this in the backyard. Can you make one?
'Ummm... no.'
I figured. Can't blame a hound for trying.
Oberon was indeed surprised when we got back home to Tempe. Hal had made the arrangements for me and Oberon perked up as soon as we were dropped off by the shuttle from the car rental company.
'Hey, smells like someone's in my territory,' he said.
'Nobody could be here without my permission, you know that.'
'Flidais did it.'
'That isn't Flidais you smell, believe me.'
I opened the front door, and Oberon immediately ran to the kitchen window that gazed upon the backyard. He barked joyously when he saw what was waiting for him there.
'French poodles! All black and curly with poofy little tails!'
'And every one of them in heat.'
'Oh, WOW! Thanks Atticus! I can't wait to sniff their asses!'
He bounded over to the door and pawed at it because the doggie door was closed to prevent the poodles from entering.
'You earned it, buddy. Hold on, get down off the door so I can open it for you, and be careful, don't hurt any of them.'
I opened the door, expecting him to bolt through it and dive into his own personal canine harem, but instead he took one step and stopped, looking up at me with a mournful expression, his ears drooping and a tiny whine escaping his snout.
'Only five?
”
”
Kevin Hearne (Hounded (The Iron Druid Chronicles, #1))
“
I’m nearly thirty and I want to go back and meet my childhood self.
”
”
Shoji Morimoto (Rental Person Who Does Nothing)
“
We, in that way siblings do for outsiders, tried to make a travelling circus out of our childhood. Stories about old holiday rentals and falling out of trees.
”
”
Caroline O'Donoghue (The Rachel Incident)
“
Where is the motorcycle?”
“I ditched it. Someone will find it sooner or later and return it to the rental company.”
“Not in the U.S.”
“We're not in the U.S., in case you haven't noticed. People don't steal lost property, they return it.”
“How did you get this car?”
“I stole it.
”
”
Anne Stuart (Fire and Ice (Ice, #5))
“
MAX STARED AT her phone. The temptation to turn it on was burning a hole in her hand. “Ugh!” She shoved it into the glove compartment of the rental car so that she wouldn’t be tempted to make any foolish
”
”
Melissa Foster (Lovers At Heart)
“
She paid for the coffee, took a used newspaper out of the bin, and sat in a comfortable leather armchair. She was shocked to see that people didn't move on after twenty minutes. Apparently, the price of one cup of coffee brought you the rental of an armchair and a free newspaper for as long as you liked, the whole morning if you wished.
”
”
William Kuhn (Mrs Queen Takes the Train)
“
When in Rome, Alexander," said Magnus, "one drives a Maserati."
They had to get to Rome as fast as possible, and they couldn't use a Portal, so Magnus said he was selecting the next best option. Shinyun was reading the Red Scrolls of Magic and ignoring them both, which was fine with Alec.
"An excellent choice," said the attendant at teh luxury car rental lot. "Gotta love a classic 3500 GT Spyder."
Alec leaned into Magnus. "The car is also a spider?"
Magnus shrugged, flashing Alec an irresistibly bright smile. "No idea. I just picked it because it was Italian and red.
”
”
Cassandra Clare (The Red Scrolls of Magic (The Eldest Curses, #1))
“
We fall asleep as close as ears of wheat: chest to back, fingers entwined. I kiss the skin at the nape of her neck, soft like rabbit fur. I dream of nothing.
”
”
Kirsty Logan (The Rental Heart and Other Fairytales)
“
I felt comfortable in a community that existed just for the moment, with simple, temporary relationships uncomplicated by past or future.
”
”
Shoji Morimoto (Rental Person Who Does Nothing)
“
I think that when I was looking for a job, I felt exactly as I do today—that I don’t want my identity to be defined by a set of abilities.
”
”
Shoji Morimoto (Rental Person Who Does Nothing)
“
The last day i was home i took the rental car up old 14 behind the Sandia Mountains. as i drove north toward Santa Fe past Madrid I rolled the window down halfway and let the cold, brisk, February air come into the car. I smelled the pinon trees and the damp earth. The Gray came over me. My life flashed through my heart in one deep rush of feeling. When I made the turn around the mountain to the west, the mesas and valleys spread out before me under the orange and gold horizon. The sun hit me like a wave that flooded out the past and dissolved any idea of the future, and I felt okay and whole for about twenty minutes.
”
”
Marc Maron (The Jerusalem Syndrome: My Life as a Reluctant Messiah)
“
Were you sent by someone who wanted me dead?
Did you sleep with a gun underneath our bed?
Were you writing a book? Were you a sleeper cell spy?
In fifty years, will all this be declassified?
And you'll confess why you did it
And I'll say, "Good riddance"
'Cause it wasn't sexy once it wasn't forbidden
I would've died for your sins
Instead, I just died inside
And you deserve prison, but you won't get time
You'll slide into inboxes and slip through the bars
You crashed my party and your rental car
You said normal girls were boring
But you were gone by the morning
You kicked out the stage lights
But you're still performing
And in plain sight you hid
But you are what you did
And I'll forget you, but I'll never forgive
The smallest man who ever lived
”
”
Taylor Swift
“
While still practising law, he'd run a hearse-rental agency. Then, later, he'd bought into a handkerchief factory in Baker Park. Their most famous innovation was the funeral hankerchief, a plain white cotton handkerchief with a black border. Not long afterwards he patented the first black-edged tissue. He'd made millions, apparently, though nobody knew what he'd done with the money. His only extravagance had been to install an elevator in the house, so he could move between floors without getting out of his wheelchair.
'So what did he mean about hearing money?' Jed asked.
'It's his factory across the river. He claims he can hear the money being made.
”
”
Rupert Thomson (The Five Gates of Hell)
“
I lifted the remote control, pushed the Play button, and started the video. I guess, in that moment, I also started my new life as Cameron-the-girl-with-no-parents. Ruth was sort of right, I would learn: A relationship with a higher power is often best practiced alone. For me it was practiced in hour-and-half or two-hour increments, and paused when necessary. I don't think it's overstating it to say that my religion of choice became VHS rentals, and that its messages came in Technicolor and musical montages and fades and jump cuts and silver-screen legends and B-movie nobodies and villains to root for and good guys to hate. But Ruth was wrong, too. There was more than just one other world beyond ours; there were hundreds and hundreds of them, and at 99 cents apiece I could rent them all.
”
”
Emily M. Danforth (The Miseducation of Cameron Post)
“
My childhood home in Coeur-de-Lune was now a vacation rental, managed by efficient strangers. I'd never gone back. But my mother kept a buzzing gossip line into her church women from town, and gave me sporadic updates on Casey's life.
She always brought Casey up when I was lulled into complacency. When we'd had a surprisingly peaceful afternoon together. When we were outside on her balcony, or sharing a piece of her peach pie like other mothers and daughters did.
Only then would she jab, a master fencer going for the unprotected sliver of my heart.
”
”
Amy Mason Doan (The Summer List)
“
There was one, a Mr. Omuro, who had bought control of a great area of rental property in downtown San Francisco, and who for a time had been Frank’s landlord. There was a bad apple, he thought. A shark who had never made repairs, had partitioned rooms smaller and smaller, raised rents
”
”
Philip K. Dick (The Man in the High Castle)
“
Elimae was a magician with a key in her mouth, a foreign language, a matryoshka doll: uncomplicated on the surface, but with a dozen secret selves hidden inside. She thought I didn't notice her, but she's all I did notice.
”
”
Kirsty Logan (The Rental Heart and Other Fairytales)
“
Ishbel read maps like storybooks. She was getting off the island, and no one was going to stop her. That was all just romance, just fairytales, because anyone can leave the island. Since they built the bridge, leaving should be as easy as sticking your keys in the car ignition. But leaving is never easy.
”
”
Kirsty Logan (The Rental Heart and Other Fairytales)
“
I was thirty-three years old, and like a tree, I’d lost all of my leaves, so much of what had made me me; but just like a tree, my branches and my roots were still there. And I was being reborn with a whole new set of leaves, bright and green and full of life. So I had to try. I had to. There weren’t any other rentals like this.
”
”
Mariana Zapata (All Rhodes Lead Here)
“
The end result was that people stopped investing in apartment buildings, and a huge shortage in rentals and housing forced many Egyptians to live in horrible conditions with several families sharing one small apartment. The effects of the harsh rent control is still felt today in Egypt. Mistakes like that can last for generations.2
”
”
Thomas Sowell (Economic Facts and Fallacies)
“
His kiss was light but lingering, like smoke from shivering lips on a freezing winter morning.
”
”
Rebecca Berto (Converge (The Rental, #1))
“
– that people have a value even if they do nothing.
”
”
Shoji Morimoto (Rental Person Who Does Nothing)
“
In some cases, it is the woman’s stomach—not her heart—that has left her man for another.
”
”
Mokokoma Mokhonoana (The Selfish Genie: A Satirical Essay on Altruism)
“
It was hard to get ahead when your energy and time were dedicated to keeping a roof over your head and the utilities on.
”
”
Grace Greene (Beach Rental (Emerald Isle, NC #1))
“
I met Baba Yaga at the end of childhood – past pigtails and fairytales, but not quite ready to give up on make-believe.
”
”
Kirsty Logan (The Rental Heart and Other Fairytales)
“
Having goals is great--but it's not enough! You need action, too! You will need to get off your butt and change the world yourself, because no one else will do it for you.
”
”
Brandon Turner (The Book on Rental Property Investing: How to Create Wealth and Passive Income Through Smart Buy & Hold Real Estate Investing)
“
Don't wait to buy real estate. Buy real estate and wait
”
”
Will Rogers
“
It's a rental," I said, realizing when I said it that our house was the only rental on the block. Maybe something unseemly had happened there: adultery, Judaism, modern dance.
”
”
Emma Straub (Other People We Married)
“
Today Baba got a blister when he put his palm down on the hood of our rental car! Mother had to put toothpaste on it.
”
”
Khaled Hosseini (And the Mountains Echoed)
“
Our rental car was now encased in a brick of ice, waiting to be chipped free by future archaeologists.
”
”
Felix Blackwell (Stolen Tongues)
“
We don't own life, we live under a rental agreement which can be terminated at anytime without notice.
”
”
Will Leamon
“
First there is the World. Then there is the Other World. The Other World is where I sometimes lose my footing. In its calendar turnings, its preinvented existence. The barrage of twists and turns where I sometimes get weary trying to keep up with it, minute by minute adapt: the world of the stoplight, the no-smoking signs, the rental world, the split-rail fencing shielding hundreds of miles of barren wilderness from the human step. A place where by virtue of ha ing been born centuries late one is denied access to earth of space, choice or movement. The brought up world; the owned world. The world of coded sounds: the world of language, the world of lies. The packaged world; the world of speed in metallic motion. The Other World where I've always felt like an alien.
”
”
David Wojnarowicz (Close to the Knives: A Memoir of Disintegration)
“
We’ll have to devise another means of income.”
“How?”
“At this point, our swiftest and more reliable means of making money is prostitution.”
“You–you didn’t just say– you think I should become a prostitute?”
“Of course not. You’re my commander. I serve you. Therefore, I would be the more logical choice to take on sex work.”
…
“Abel, I can’t let you.. sell your body.”
“The transaction is closer to a rental.
”
”
Claudia Gray (Defy the Stars (Constellation, #1))
“
Cicero himself had large amounts of money invested in low-grade property and once joked, more out of superiority than embarrassment, that even the rats had packed up and left one of his crumbling rental blocks.
”
”
Mary Beard (SPQR: A History of Ancient Rome)
“
Sweet tea with milk, three Oreos, and Bob Roy’s snug and cozy flat helped Sue breathe deeply for the first time in months. She let out a sigh as big as a cresting wave and leaned back into a chair so soft it put the z in cozy. “Okay,” Bob said. “Tell me everything.” She opened up about, well, everything, cued by Bob’s sympathy. He uttered his support at every story, every anecdote: New York was the only place for Sue to be! Shelley and her “yeah, okay” attitude were to be expected from such a see-you-next-Tuesday! The subway was survivable as long as you never made eye contact with anyone. You found an apartment by reading the Rental classifieds in the Times and The Village Voice, but you had to get them early, at seven in the morning, and then you had to hightail it to the apartments with a bag of donuts because the super would always open up for a pretty girl who shared her donuts.
”
”
Tom Hanks (Uncommon Type: Some Stories)
“
has always found comfort in the anonymity of travel, in the no-man’s-land of vast airport lounges, the plastic smell of rental cars, the hotel key cards that wiped your identity clean on checkout. All those spaces free of emotional weight.
”
”
Charmaine Wilkerson (Black Cake)
“
You know what—gyms make the largest chunk of their profit from clients who pay their monthly dues on auto-pay but never bother to show up and use the gym. The DVD-rental companies make a good chunk of their profits from late fees; the credit-card companies make a fortune on sundry fines and penalties; the airlines’ margins are highest on ticket changes and cancellations… So, the key to running a successful business in America is to sign up a customer and pray he’ll somehow screw up…
”
”
Ali Sheikh (Closure of the Helpdesk — A Geek Tragedy)
“
How about you walk around back and I’ll show you my rental. You’re going to love it.” I had a suspicion that he was still giving me shit. “Now, Van, this is no Cadillac, but she does turn heads,” he said as I walked around back with him. O’Fallon, hot on our heels. “There she is.” I couldn’t help myself that time. I laughed. And then I laughed a little more. There sat a red and orange, nineteen eighty-something piece of suburban history. “The Astro Van?” I asked. He answered, “The Astro Vaughn.
”
”
M. Mabie (Roots and Wings (City Limits, #1))
“
I seriously don’t understand how men came to rule the world,” she’d said to her sister, Bridget, this morning, after she’d told her about how John-Paul had lost his rental car keys in Chicago. It had driven Cecilia bananas seeing that text message from him. There was nothing she could do! This type of thing was always happening to John-Paul. Last time he went overseas he’d left his laptop in a cab. The man lost things constantly. Wallets, phones, keys, his wedding ring. His possessions just slid right off him.
”
”
Liane Moriarty (The Husband's Secret)
“
Guthrie is best known for “This Land Is Your Land,” his ballad about the Dust Bowl, which gave farmers in his native Oklahoma an extra kick in the pants during the Great Depression. He set his thoughts about Trump’s rental policies to a song he titled “Old Man Trump.” The lyrics continue with this: Beach Haven ain’t my home! No, I just can’t pay this rent! My money’s down the drain, And my soul is badly bent! Beach Haven is Trump’s Tower Where no black folks come to roam, No, no, Old Man Trump! Old Beach Haven ain’t my home! More
”
”
David Cay Johnston (The Making of Donald Trump)
“
Would you like to dance?"
I knew I had frosting on my nose.
Alex leaned over and wuped it off with his thumb. "Well?"
I could only nod. I had a full mouth, too. I stood up, swallowed, and accepted the napkin he was holding. "You're here."
"I'm here," he agreed, like it hadn't been a ridiculous thing to say. "I am crashing your sister's wedding. Hope she won't mind."
"She won't mind."
He was wearing a tux. A real tux, complete with bow tie and silk lapels. I stroked one. "I'm guessing this isn't a rental."
He squirmed a little. "No, it's mine. Nice dress."
I looked down at the snug purple monstrosity my sister had chosen. At least it had a mandarin collar and some sleeves. "It's a cheongsam," she'd announced proudly. "It's Eggplant Ho Lee Mess" was Frankie's take. My pear-shaped cousin Vanessa got strapless. Now she looked like an eggplant.
"You look beautiful," Alex said, but the corner of his mouth was twitching.
"Well,you look like...like..." I sighed. "Okay, you look really really good." Then, again, "You're here."
"I'm here."
"Why?"
"I missed you," he said simply.
"It's only been four days."
"A very,very long four days. But your e-mail helped." He reached for my hand. "Now,are we dancing or not?"
We did, and it wasn't as complicated as I'd thought it might be. I stood on my toes, he bent down a little, and we fit together pretty well. The song ended way too soon.
"So," Alex said.
"So."
"We can stay here if you want to...or if you have to. But I have another suggestion. Let's go watch the sun rise."
It sounded like a good idea to me. Except... "It's ten o'clock. And it's freezing out there."
"Trust me," he said.
"okay.
”
”
Melissa Jensen (The Fine Art of Truth or Dare)
“
Mike’s Tuxedo Rental was a bolt-hole of polyester knockoffs sandwiched between a Dunkin’ Donuts on the corner and a local flower shop on the other side. As Anne parallel-parked across the street from it, she checked the clock on her dash and was relieved they had an hour before the shop closed at five.
”
”
J.R. Ward (The Rehearsal Dinner (The Wedding From Hell, #1; Firefighters, #0.5))
“
I had found the apartment in San Telmo with the help of a motherly rental agent in a pink suit who had tried to cheat me on her percentage not once but twice, and reacted with a broad and charming laugh both times I pointed it out, as if we were flirting on a date and I was removing her hand from my thigh.
”
”
Rosalie Knecht (Who Is Vera Kelly? (A Vera Kelly Story))
“
when they leave uni it’s gonna be with a huge debt and crazy competition for jobs and the outrageous rental prices out there mean her generation will have to move back home forever, which will lead to even more of them despairing at the future and what with the planet about to go to shit with the United Kingdom soon to be disunited from Europe which itself is hurtling down the reactionary road and making fascism fashionable again and it’s so crazy that the disgusting perma-tanned billionaire has set a new intellectual and moral low by being president of America and basically it all means that the older generation has RUINED
”
”
Bernardine Evaristo (Girl, Woman, Other)
“
corruption is defined in narrow terms to nail the poor deluded fool who slips a £20 note inside the cover of their passport before handing it to the Border Force officer who is checking travel documents with a CCTV camera looking over her shoulder. There’s nothing corrupt about the government minister who announces new and impossible performance targets for a hitherto just-about-coping agency that manages transport infrastructure, drives it into a smoking hole in the ground, and three years later retires and joins the board of the corporation that subsequently took over responsibility for maintaining all the bridges on behalf of the state—for a tidy annual fee, of course. After all, the minister is a demonstrable expert on the ownership and management of bridges, and there’s no provable link between their having set up the agency for failure and their subsequently being granted a nonexecutive directorship that gets them their share of the rental income from the privatized bridge, is there?
”
”
Charles Stross (The Delirium Brief (Laundry Files, #8))
“
Specialization gives the people in your civilization the opportunity to go further in any direction of study than any other human has gone before. It unlocks doctors who can devote their entire lives to curing disease, librarians who can devote their entire lives to ensuring the accumulated knowledge of humanity remains safe and accessible, and writers who, fresh out of school, take the first job they find and devote the most productive years of their lives to writing corporate repair manuals for rental-market time machines that their bosses almost certainly don't even read,* ironically for so little money that they can't possibly afford to go back and fix that one horrible, horrible mistake.
”
”
Ryan North (How to Invent Everything: Rebuild All of Civilization (with 96% fewer catastrophes this time))
“
I adore these words, worship them actually, and yet I do not buy that part about ‘the last time in history.’ Because the narrator himself is having such a wondrous moment; because every American who comes to love this lovable, hateful place knows this wonder, too. Because screeching the brakes on my rental bike and watching a turtle that is who knows how old creep across the wilderness of palm fronds that juts against such a painfully cute subset of civilization, I know exactly why the painfully cute civilization wants to be here, build here, make their homes and babies at such a place. So what if they got it wrong? Is there anything more American than constructing some squeaky-clean city on a hill looking out across the terrible beauty of this land? While most of the rest of us have internalized these impulses, turned them into metaphors, at Celebration, Disney is attempting the real deal; like the Puritans and the pioneers, they’re carving out a new community. An eerie, xenophobic, nostalgic community I can’t wait to leave, but still.
”
”
Sarah Vowell
“
I guess getting out of homelessness doesn’t happen all at once, either. We were lucky. Some people live in their cars for years. I’m not looking on the bright side. It was pretty scary. And stinky. But my parents took care of us the best they could. After a month, my dad got a part-time job at a hardware store. My mom picked up some extra waitressing shifts, and my dad kept singing for tips. Every time his fishing sign got wet, I made him a new one. Slowly they started saving money, bit by bit, to pay for a rental deposit on an apartment. It was sort of like getting over a cold. Sometimes you feel like you’ll never stop coughing. Other times you’re sure tomorrow is the day you’ll definitely be well.
”
”
Katherine Applegate (Crenshaw)
“
The wasted life, we all think it's a shame, but what about the full life, what about the full life that can never be full enough, the life full by every measure but time?
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”
Jeff Backhaus (Hikikomori and the Rental Sister)
“
Don't buy things you can't afford with money you don't have to impress people you don't like it.
”
”
Graham Stephan (Build your Rental Property Empire - How to get the Best Tenant at Top Dollar)
“
small office space Columbus Ohio ,Virtual Office Space Rental Executive Office Place offers a prestigious Virtual Office Club for business owners and entrepreneurs that require full time office services, but don’t necessarily need a full time office. We offer three exclusive business addresses, and phone service that includes a trained receptionist that answers the phone in your business name. We also provide 24
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”
small office space Columbus Ohio
“
Linc didn't know if it was his imagination, but the streets seemed to have gotten older and dirtier - more so, surely, then was possible in the time that had gone by. What he remembered as the center of where the action was, and where all of life happened had turned into tired and shabby remnants of an age that was running down.
Had the store fronts always been so grubby with their cloudy windows, half hearted displays, the paint around the doors dulled and peeling like the once-high hopes of some forgotten opening day long ago? Had trash always stunk like this, piled in alleys and strewn along the gutters?
Above it all, high-rental buildings that had once thrust proudly toward the sky crumbled silently amid the winds, the rain, and the corrosive fames eating into them. They had degenerated into cheap hotels and apartments while business fled the cities for manicured office parks by the interstates.
But the people no longer stopped to gaze at these buildings, in any case. The figures on the sidewalks hurried on, avoiding each other's eyes, enwrapped in their own isolation.
Even those who stood or walked together aimed words at each other from behind facades that had become so second nature that even they themselves now mistook them for the persons atrophying within.
A city of brooding shells, inhabited by beings who hid inside shells.
”
”
James P. Hogan (Outward Bound)
“
Szabo reckoned that the future of libraries was a combination of a people’s university, a community hub, and an information base, happily partnered with the Internet rather than in competition with it. In practical terms, Szabo felt the library should begin offering classes and voter registration and literacy programs and story times and speaker series and homeless outreach and business services and computer access and movie rentals and e-book loans and a nice gift shop. Also, books.
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”
Susan Orlean (The Library Book)
“
Creating instances of david, john, pat, & steve in Setup moves characters out of the individual test methods, but doesn’t provide us any other advantage. It also comes with the conceptual overhead of each Customer being created, whether or not it’s used. By adding a level of indirection we’ve removed characters from tests, but we’ve forced ourselves to remember who has what rentals. Removing a setup method almost always reveals an opportunity for a local or global improvement within a universe.
”
”
Anonymous
“
In those days there was no money to buy books. Books you borrowed from the rental library of Shakespeare and Company, which was the library and bookstore of Sylvia Beach at 12 rue de l’Odéon. On a cold windswept street, this was a lovely, warm, cheerful place with a big stove in winter, tables and shelves of books, new books in the window, and photographs on the wall of famous writers both dead and living.
The photographs all looked like snapshots and even the dead writers looked as though they had really been alive.
Sylvia had a lively, very sharply cut face, brown eyes that were as alive as a small animal’s and as gay as a young girl’s, and wavy brown hair that was brushed back from her fine forehead and cut thick below her ears and at the line of the collar of the brown velvet jacket she wore. She had pretty legs and she was kind, cheerful and interested, and loved to make jokes and gossip. No one that I ever knew was nicer to me.
I was very shy when I first went into the bookshop and I did not have enough money on me to join the rental library. She told me I could pay the deposit any time I had the money and made me out a card and said I could take as many books as I wished. There was no reason for her to trust me. She did not know me and the address I had given her, 74 rue Cardinal Lemoine, could not have been a poorer one. But she was delightful and charming and welcoming and behind her, as high as the wall and stretching out into the back room which gave onto the inner court of the building, were the shelves and shelves of the richness of the library.
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Ernest Hemingway (A Moveable Feast: The Restored Edition)
“
eye cap is a simple ten-cent piece of plastic. It is slightly larger than a contact lens, less flexible, and considerably less comfortable. The plastic is repeatedly lanced through, so that small, sharp spurs stick up from its surface. The spurs work on the same principle as those steel spikes that threaten Severe Tire Damage on behalf of rental car companies: The eyelid will come down over an eye cap, but, once closed, will not easily open back up. Eye caps were invented by a mortician to help dead people keep their eyes shut. There have been times this
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Mary Roach (Stiff: The Curious Lives of Human Cadavers)
“
Tony Williams: You’ve often mentioned that Tales of Hoffmann (1951) has been a major influence on you.
George Romero: It was the first film I got completely involved with. An aunt and uncle took me to see it in downtown Manhattan when it first played. And that was an event for me since I was about eleven at the time. The imagery just blew me away completely. I wanted to go and see a Tarzan movie but my aunt and uncle said, “No! Come and see a bit of culture here.” So I thought I was missing out. But I really fell in love with the film. There used to be a television show in New York called Million Dollar Movie. They would show the same film twice a day on weekdays, three times on Saturday, and three-to-four times on Sunday. Tales of Hoffmann appeared on it one week. I missed the first couple of days because I wasn’t aware that it was on. But the moment I found it was on, I watched virtually every telecast. This was before the days of video so, naturally, I couldn’t tape it. Those were the days you had to rent 16mm prints of any film. Most cities of any size had rental services and you could rent a surprising number of films. So once I started to look at Tales of Hoffmann I realized how much stuff Michael Powell did in the camera. Powell was so innovative in his technique. But it was also transparent so I could see how he achieved certain effects such as his use of an overprint in the scene of the ballet dancer on the lily ponds. I was beginning to understand how adept a director can be. But, aside from that, the imagery was superb. Robert Helpmann is the greatest Dracula that ever was. Those eyes were compelling. I was impressed by the way Powell shot Helpmann sweeping around in his cape and craning down over the balcony in the tavern. I felt the film was so unique compared to most of the things we were seeing in American cinema such as the westerns and other dreadful stuff I used to watch. Tales of Hoffmann just took me into another world in terms of its innovative cinematic technique. So it really got me going.
Tony Williams: A really beautiful print exists on laserdisc with commentary by Martin Scorsese and others.
George Romero: I was invited to collaborate on the commentary by Marty. Pat Buba (Tony’s brother) knew Thelma Schoonmaker and I got to meet Powell in later years. We had a wonderful dinner with him one evening. What an amazing guy! Eventually I got to see more of his movies that I’d never seen before such as I Know Where I’m Going and A Canterbury Tale. Anyway, I couldn’t do the commentary on Tales of Hoffmann with Marty. But, back in the old days in New York, Marty and I were the only two people who would rent a 16mm copy of the film. Every time I found it was out I knew that he had it and each time he wanted it he knew who had it! So that made us buddies.
”
”
George A. Romero (George A. Romero: Interviews)
“
Most of the crime-ridden minority neighborhoods in New York City, especially areas like East New York, where many of the characters in Eric Garner’s story grew up, had been artificially created by a series of criminal real estate scams.
One of the most infamous had involved a company called the Eastern Service Corporation, which in the sixties ran a huge predatory lending operation all over the city, but particularly in Brooklyn.
Scam artists like ESC would first clear white residents out of certain neighborhoods with scare campaigns. They’d slip leaflets through mail slots warning of an incoming black plague, with messages like, “Don’t wait until it’s too late!” Investors would then come in and buy their houses at depressed rates. Once this “blockbusting” technique cleared the properties, a company like ESC would bring in a new set of homeowners, often minorities, and often with bad credit and shaky job profiles. They bribed officials in the FHA to approve mortgages for anyone and everyone. Appraisals would be inflated. Loans would be approved for repairs, but repairs would never be done.
The typical target homeowner in the con was a black family moving to New York to escape racism in the South. The family would be shown a house in a place like East New York that in reality was only worth about $15,000. But the appraisal would be faked and a loan would be approved for $17,000. The family would move in and instantly find themselves in a house worth $2,000 less than its purchase price, and maybe with faulty toilets, lighting, heat, and (ironically) broken windows besides. Meanwhile, the government-backed loan created by a lender like Eastern Service by then had been sold off to some sucker on the secondary market: a savings bank, a pension fund, or perhaps to Fannie Mae, the government-sponsored mortgage corporation.
Before long, the family would default and be foreclosed upon. Investors would swoop in and buy the property at a distressed price one more time. Next, the one-family home would be converted into a three- or four-family rental property, which would of course quickly fall into even greater disrepair.
This process created ghettos almost instantly. Racial blockbusting is how East New York went from 90 percent white in 1960 to 80 percent black and Hispanic in 1966.
”
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Matt Taibbi (I Can't Breathe: A Killing on Bay Street)
“
Being asked about dreams can be depressing for people, forcing them to think about the future. My dream of doing nothing is already a reality, so in fact, it is a dream of keeping things as they are. Why shouldn’t a dream focus on the here and now? Why is there an assumption that it must be about the future?
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Shoji Morimoto (Rental Person Who Does Nothing)
“
Science is more than a body of knowledge; it is a way of thinking. I have a foreboding of an America in my children’s or grandchildren’s time—when the United States is a service and information economy; when nearly all the key manufacturing industries have slipped away to other countries; when awesome technological powers are in the hands of a very few, and no one representing the public interest can even grasp the issues; when the people have lost the ability to set their own agendas or knowledgeably question those in authority; when, clutching our crystals and nervously consulting our horoscopes, our critical faculties in decline, unable to distinguish between what feels good and what’s true, we slide, almost without noticing, back into superstition and darkness. The dumbing down of America is most evident in the slow decay of substantive content in the enormously influential media, the 30-second sound bites (now down to 10 seconds or less), lowest common denominator programming, credulous presentations on pseudoscience and superstition, but especially a kind of celebration of ignorance. As I write, the number-one videocassette rental in America is the movie Dumb and Dumber. “Beavis and Butthead” remain popular (and influential) with young TV viewers. The plain lesson is that study and learning—not just of science, but of anything—are avoidable, even undesirable.
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”
Carl Sagan (The Demon-Haunted World: Science as a Candle in the Dark)
“
had spent more than a year writing a second draft of his book during the hours he wasn’t at one of his jobs. He worked late at night in a small room we’d converted to a study at the rear of our apartment—a crowded, book-strewn bunker I referred to lovingly as the Hole. I’d sometimes go in, stepping over his piles of paper to sit on the ottoman in front of his chair while he worked, trying to lasso him with a joke and a smile, to tease him back from whatever far-off fields he’d been galloping through. He was good-humored about my intrusions, but only if I didn’t stay too long. Barack, I’ve come to understand, is the sort of person who needs a hole, a closed-off little warren where he can read and write undisturbed. It’s like a hatch that opens directly onto the spacious skies of his brain. Time spent there seems to fuel him. In deference to this, we’ve managed to create some version of a hole inside every home we’ve ever lived in—any quiet corner or alcove will do. To this day, when we arrive at a rental house in Hawaii or on Martha’s Vineyard, Barack goes off looking for an empty room that can serve as the vacation hole. There, he can flip between the six or seven books he’s reading simultaneously and toss his newspapers on the floor. For him, the Hole is a kind of sacred high place, where insights are birthed and clarity comes to visit. For me, it’s an off-putting and disorderly mess. One requirement has always been that the Hole, wherever it is, have a door
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Michelle Obama (Becoming)
“
win. I thought the bureaucrats who had overseen the Emergency Rental Assistance program deserved a parade. They had to settle for scattered applause. When the ERA program was sputtering in the unsteady early days, it seemed that everyone was writing and tweeting about it. Later, when the rollout was working, it was ignored. Because journalists and pundits and social influencers did not celebrate the program, ERA garnered few champions in Washington. Elected leaders learned that they could direct serious federal resources to fighting evictions, make a real dent in the problem, and reap little credit for it. So, the Emergency Rental Assistance program became a temporary program, and we returned to normal, to a society where seven eviction filings are issued every minute.[31] Imagine if we had met the results of the ERA program with loud cheers. Imagine if we had taken to social media and gushed over what a difference it had made. Imagine if newspapers had run headlines that read, “Biden Administration Passes Most Important Eviction Prevention Measure in American History.” Imagine if we’d worked together to ensure that the low eviction regime established during the pandemic became the new normal. But we chose to shrug instead. Poor renters in the future will pay for this, as will the Democratic Party, incessantly blamed for having a “messaging problem” when perhaps the matter is that liberals have a despondency problem: fluent in the language of grievance and bumbling in the language of repair. Meaningful, tangible change had arrived, and we couldn’t see it. When we refuse to recognize what works, we risk swallowing the lie that nothing does.
”
”
Matthew Desmond (Poverty, by America)
“
When I come down the stairs, Peter is sitting on the couch with his mom. He is shaking his knee up and down, which is how I know he’s nervous too. As soon as he sees me, he stands up.
He raises his eyebrows. “You look--wow.” For the past week, he’s been asking for details on what my dress looks like, and I held him at bay for the surprise, which I’m glad I did, because it was worth it to see the look on his face.
“You look wow too.” His tux fits him so nicely, you’d think it was custom, but it’s not; it’s a rental from After Hours Formal Wear. I wonder if Mrs. Kavinsky made a few sly adjustments. She’s a marvel with a needle and thread. I wish guys could wear tuxedos more often, though I suppose that would take some of the thrill away.
Peter slides my corsage on my wrist; it is white ranunculus and baby’s breath, and it’s the exact corsage I would have picked for myself. I’m already thinking of how I’ll hang it over my bed so it dries just so.
Kitty is dressed up too; she has on her favorite dress, so she can be in the pictures. When Peter pins a daisy corsage on her, her face goes pink with pleasure, and he winks at me. We take a picture of me and her, one of me and Peter and her, and then she says in her bossy way, “Now just one of me and Peter,” and I’m pushed off to the side with Trina, who laughs.
“The boys her age are in for it,” she says to me and Peter’s mom, who is smiling too.
“Why am I not in any of these pictures?” Daddy wonders, so of course we do a round with him too, and a few with Trina and Mrs. Kavinsky.
Then we take pictures outside, by the dogwood tree, by Peter’s car, on the front steps, until Peter says, “Enough pictures! We’re going to miss the whole thing.” When we go to his car, he opens the door for me gallantly.
On the way over, he keeps looking at me. I keep my eyes trained straight ahead, but I can see him in my periphery. I’ve never felt so admired. This must be how Stormy felt all the time.
”
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Jenny Han (Always and Forever, Lara Jean (To All the Boys I've Loved Before, #3))
“
It was an old tradition: landlords barring children from their properties. In the competitive postwar housing market of the late 1940s, landlords regularly turned away families with children and evicted tenants who got pregnant.3 This was evident in letters mothers wrote when applying for public housing. “At present,” one wrote, “I am living in an unheated attic room with a one-year-old baby….Everywhere I go the landlords don’t want children. I also have a ten-year-old boy….I can’t keep him with me because the landlady objects to children. Is there any way that you can help me to get an unfurnished room, apartment, or even an old barn?…I can’t go on living like this because I am on the verge of doing something desperate.” Another mother wrote, “My children are now sick and losing weight….I have tried, begged, and pleaded for a place but [it’s] always ‘too late’ or ‘sorry, no children.’ ” Another wrote, “The lady where I am rooming put two of my children out about three weeks ago and don’t want me to let them come back….If I could get a garage I would take it.”4 When Congress passed the Fair Housing Act in 1968, it did not consider families with children a protected class, allowing landlords to continue openly turning them away or evicting them. Some placed costly restrictions on large families, charging “children-damage deposits” in addition to standard rental fees. One Washington, DC, development required tenants with no children to put down a $150 security deposit but charged families with children a $450 deposit plus a monthly surcharge of $50 per child.5 In 1980, HUD commissioned a nationwide study to assess the magnitude of the problem and found that only 1 in 4 rental units was available to families without restrictions.6 Eight years later, Congress finally outlawed housing discrimination against children and families, but as Pam found out, the practice remained widespread.7 Families with children were turned away in as many as 7 in 10 housing searches.8
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Matthew Desmond (Evicted: Poverty and Profit in the American City)
“
How long does it last?" Said the other customer, a man wearing a tan shirt with little straps that buttoned on top of the shoulders. He looked as if he were comparing all the pros and cons before shelling out $.99. You could see he thought he was pretty shrewd.
"It lasts for as long as you live," the manager said slowly. There was a second of silence while we all thought about that. The man in the tan shirt drew his head back, tucking his chin into his neck. His mind was working like a house on fire
"What about other people?" He asked. "The wife? The kids?"
"They can use your membership as long as you're alive," the manager said, making the distinction clear.
"Then what?" The man asked, louder. He was the type who said things like "you get what you pay for" and "there's one born every minute" and was considering every angle. He didn't want to get taken for a ride by his own death.
"That's all," the manager said, waving his hands, palms down, like a football referee ruling an extra point no good. "Then they'd have to join for themselves or forfeit the privileges."
"Well then, it makes sense," the man said, on top of the situation now, "for the youngest one to join. The one that's likely to live the longest."
"I can't argue with that," said the manager.
The man chewed his lip while he mentally reviewed his family. Who would go first. Who would survive the longest. He cast his eyes around to all the cassettes as if he'd see one that would answer his question. The woman had not gone away. She had brought along her signed agreement, the one that she paid $25 for.
"What is this accident waiver clause?" She asked the manager.
"Look," he said, now exhibiting his hands to show they were empty, nothing up his sleeve, "I live in the real world. I'm a small businessman, right? I have to protect my investment, don't I? What would happen if, and I'm not suggesting you'd do this, all right, but some people might, what would happen if you decided to watch one of my movies in the bathtub and a VCR you rented from me fell into the water?"
The woman retreated a step. This thought had clearly not occurred to her before.
”
”
Michael Dorris (A Yellow Raft in Blue Water)
“
Ballad"
Oh dream, why do you do me this way?
Again, with the digging, again with the digging up.
Once more with the shovels.
Once more, the shovels full of dirt.
The vault lid. The prying. The damp boards.
Mother beside me.
Like she’s an old hat at this.
Like all she’s got left is curiosity.
Like curiosity didn’t kill the red cat.
Such a sweet, gentle cat it was.
Here we go again, dream.
Mother, wearing her take-out-the-garbage coat.
I haven’t seen that coat in years.
The coat she wore to pick me up from school early.
She appeared at the back of the classroom, early.
Go with your mother, teacher said.
Diane, you are excused.
I was a little girl. Already a famous actress.
I looked at the other kids. I acted lucky.
Though everyone knows what an early pick-up means.
An early pick-up, dream.
What’s wrong, I asked my mother. It is early spring.
Bright sunlight. The usual birds.
Air, teetering between bearable and unbearable.
Cold, but not cold enough to shiver.
Still, dream, I shiver.
You know, my mother said.
Her long garbage coat flying.
There was a wind, that day.
A wind like a scurrying grandmother, dusting.
Look inside yourself, my mother said.
You know why I have come for you.
And still I acted lucky. Lucky to be out.
Lucky to be out in the cold world with my mother.
I’m innocent, I wanted to say.
A little white girl, trying out her innocence.
A white lamb, born into a cold field.
Frozen almost solid. Brought into the house.
Warmed all night with hair dryers.
Death? I said. Smiling. Lucky.
We’re barely to the parking lot.
Barely to the car ride home.
But the classroom already feels like the distant past.
Long ago, my classmates pitying me.
Arriving at this car full of uncles.
Were they wearing suits? Death such a formal occasion.
My sister, angry-crying next to me.
Me, encountering a fragment of evil in myself.
Evilly wanting my mother to say it.
What? I asked, smiling. My lamb on full display at the fair.
He’s dead! my sister said. Hit me in the gut with her flute.
Her flute case. Her rental flute. He’s dead!
Our father.
Our father, who we were not supposed to know had been dying.
He’s dead! The flute gleaming in its red case.
Here, my mother said at home.
She’d poured us each a small glass of Pepsi
We normally couldn’t afford Pepsi.
Lucky, I acted.
He’s no longer suffering, my mother said.
Here, she said. Drink this.
The little bubbles flew. They bit my tongue.
My evil persisted. What is death? I asked.
And now, dream, once more you bring me my answer.
Dig, my mother says. Pry, she says.
I don’t want to see, dream.
The lid so damp it crumbles under my hands.
The casket just a drawerful of bones.
A drawerful. Just bones and teeth.
That one tooth he had. Crooked like mine.
”
”
Diane Seuss
“
While amassing one of the most lucrative fortunes in the world, the Kochs had also created an ideological assembly line justifying it. Now they had added a powerful political machine to protect it. They had hired top-level operatives, financed their own voter data bank, commissioned state-of-the-art polling, and created a fund-raising operation that enlisted hundreds of other wealthy Americans to help pay for it. They had also forged a coalition of some seventeen allied conservative groups with niche constituencies who would mask their centralized source of funding and carry their message. To mobilize Latino voters, they formed a group called the Libre Initiative. To reach conservative women, they funded Concerned Women for America. For millennials, they formed Generation Opportunity. To cover up fingerprints on television attack ads, they hid behind the American Future Fund and other front groups. Their network’s money also flowed to gun groups, retirees, veterans, antilabor groups, antitax groups, evangelical Christian groups, and even $4.5 million for something called the Center for Shared Services, which coordinated administrative tasks such as office space rentals and paperwork for the others. Americans for Prosperity, meanwhile, organized chapters all across the country. The Kochs had established what was in effect their own private political party.
”
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Jane Mayer (Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right)
“
The best entrepreneurs don’t just follow Moore’s Law; they anticipate it. Consider Reed Hastings, the cofounder and CEO of Netflix. When he started Netflix, his long-term vision was to provide television on demand, delivered via the Internet. But back in 1997, the technology simply wasn’t ready for his vision—remember, this was during the era of dial-up Internet access. One hour of high-definition video requires transmitting 40 GB of compressed data (over 400 GB without compression). A standard 28.8K modem from that era would have taken over four months to transmit a single episode of Stranger Things. However, there was a technological innovation that would allow Netflix to get partway to Hastings’s ultimate vision—the DVD. Hastings realized that movie DVDs, then selling for around $ 20, were both compact and durable. This made them perfect for running a movie-rental-by-mail business. Hastings has said that he got the idea from a computer science class in which one of the assignments was to calculate the bandwidth of a station wagon full of backup tapes driving across the country! This was truly a case of technological innovation enabling business model innovation. Blockbuster Video had built a successful business around buying VHS tapes for around $ 100 and renting them out from physical stores, but the bulky, expensive, fragile tapes would never have supported a rental-by-mail business.
”
”
Reid Hoffman (Blitzscaling: The Lightning-Fast Path to Building Massively Valuable Companies)
“
When the attendant at Britz Rentals of Australia whipped around in our prepaid-in-full honeymoon car, my eyes grew wide and I knew we were in trouble. It was an SUV, yes, and a Toyota Land Cruiser at that--just as Marlboro Man had ordered. It was white and clean and very shiny. And painted in huge bright orange and royal blue lettering across the hood, the roof, all four doors, and the tailgate of the vehicle, were scrawled the enormous words: BRITZ RENTALS OF AUSTRALIA.
I could see Marlboro Man’s jaw muscles flex as he beheld his worst nightmare playing out in front of his eyes. He could hardly even bear to gaze upon such an attention-grabbing abomination, let alone conceive of driving it all over an entire continent. Unfortunately, our last-minute attempts to trade to another vehicle proved to be futile; even if Britz hadn’t been completely booked that week, it wouldn’t have mattered anyway. Every single car in their fleet was smeared with the exact same orange and blue promotional graffiti.
Having no other transportational alternative, we set off on our drive, a black cloud of conspicuousness and, in Marlboro Man’s case, dread following us everywhere we went. Being an attention-seeking middle child, I didn’t really mind it much. But for Marlboro Man, this was more than his makeup was programmed to handle. As far as he was concerned, we were the Griswolds, and the Land Cruiser was our Family Truckster.
It was a pox on what might have been the perfect honeymoon.
Except for my inner ear disturbance. And the vomiting. And the slightly marsupial undertone to the hamburgers.
”
”
Ree Drummond (The Pioneer Woman: Black Heels to Tractor Wheels)
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For most people moving is a tiring experience. When on the verge of moving out to a new home or into a new office, it's only natural to focus on your new place and forget about the one you’re leaving. Actually, the last thing you would even think about is embarking on a heavy duty move out clean. However, you can be certain that agents, landlords and all the potential renters or buyers of your old home will most definitely notice if it's being cleaned, therefore getting the place cleaned up is something that you need to consider.
The process of cleaning will basically depend to things; how dirty your property and the size of the home. If you leave the property in good condition, you'll have a higher the chance of getting back your bond deposit or if you're selling, attracting a potential buyer. Below are the steps you need to consider before moving out.
You should start with cleaning. Remove all screws and nails from the walls and the ceilings, fill up all holes and dust all ledges. Large holes should be patched and the entire wall checked the major marks. Remove all the cobwebs from the walls and ceilings, taking care to wash or vacuum the vents. They can get quite dusty. Clean all doors and door knobs, wipe down all the switches, electrical outlets, vacuum/wipe down the drapes, clean the blinds and remove all the light covers from light fixtures and clean them thoroughly as they may contain dead insects. Also, replace all the burnt out light bulbs and empty all cupboards when you clean them. Clean all windows, window sills and tracks. Vacuum all carpets or get them professionally cleaned which quite often is stipulated in the rental agreement.
After you've finished the general cleaning, you can now embark on the more specific areas. When cleaning the bathroom, wash off the soap scum and remove mould (if any) from the bathroom tiles. This can be done by pre-spraying the tile grout with bleach and letting it sit for at least half an hour. Clean all the inside drawers and vanity units thoroughly. Clean the toilet/sink, vanity unit and replace anything that you've damaged. Wash all shower curtains and shower doors plus all other enclosures. Polish the mirrors and make sure the exhaust fan is free of dust. You can generally vacuum these quite easily. Finally, clean the bathroom floors by vacuuming and mopping.
In the kitchen, clean all the cabinets and liners and wash the cupboards inside out. Clean the counter-tops and shine the facet and sink. If the fridge is staying give it a good clean. You can do this by removing all shelves and wash them individually. Thoroughly degrease the oven inside and out. It's best to use and oven cleaner from your supermarket, just take care to use gloves and a mask as they can be quite toxic. Clean the kitchen floor well by giving it a good vacuum and mop . Sometimes the kitchen floor may need to be degreased.
Dust the bedrooms and living room, vacuum throughout then mop. If you have a garage give it a good sweep. Also cut the grass, pull out all weeds and remove all items that may be lying or hanging around.
Remember to put your garbage bins out for collection even if collection is a week away as in our experience the bins will be full to the brim from all the rubbish during the moving process. If this all looks too hard then you can always hire a bond cleaner to tackle the job for you or if you're on a tight budget you can download an end of lease cleaning checklist or have one sent to you from your local agent. Just make sure you give yourself at least a day or to take on the job. Its best not to rush through the job, just make sure everything is cleaned thoroughly, so it passes the inspection in order for you to get your bond back in full.
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Tanya Smith
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a young Goldman Sachs banker named Joseph Park was sitting in his apartment, frustrated at the effort required to get access to entertainment. Why should he trek all the way to Blockbuster to rent a movie? He should just be able to open a website, pick out a movie, and have it delivered to his door. Despite raising around $250 million, Kozmo, the company Park founded, went bankrupt in 2001. His biggest mistake was making a brash promise for one-hour delivery of virtually anything, and investing in building national operations to support growth that never happened. One study of over three thousand startups indicates that roughly three out of every four fail because of premature scaling—making investments that the market isn’t yet ready to support. Had Park proceeded more slowly, he might have noticed that with the current technology available, one-hour delivery was an impractical and low-margin business. There was, however, a tremendous demand for online movie rentals. Netflix was just then getting off the ground, and Kozmo might have been able to compete in the area of mail-order rentals and then online movie streaming. Later, he might have been able to capitalize on technological changes that made it possible for Instacart to build a logistics operation that made one-hour grocery delivery scalable and profitable. Since the market is more defined when settlers enter, they can focus on providing superior quality instead of deliberating about what to offer in the first place. “Wouldn’t you rather be second or third and see how the guy in first did, and then . . . improve it?” Malcolm Gladwell asked in an interview. “When ideas get really complicated, and when the world gets complicated, it’s foolish to think the person who’s first can work it all out,” Gladwell remarked. “Most good things, it takes a long time to figure them out.”* Second, there’s reason to believe that the kinds of people who choose to be late movers may be better suited to succeed. Risk seekers are drawn to being first, and they’re prone to making impulsive decisions. Meanwhile, more risk-averse entrepreneurs watch from the sidelines, waiting for the right opportunity and balancing their risk portfolios before entering. In a study of software startups, strategy researchers Elizabeth Pontikes and William Barnett find that when entrepreneurs rush to follow the crowd into hyped markets, their startups are less likely to survive and grow. When entrepreneurs wait for the market to cool down, they have higher odds of success: “Nonconformists . . . that buck the trend are most likely to stay in the market, receive funding, and ultimately go public.” Third, along with being less recklessly ambitious, settlers can improve upon competitors’ technology to make products better. When you’re the first to market, you have to make all the mistakes yourself. Meanwhile, settlers can watch and learn from your errors. “Moving first is a tactic, not a goal,” Peter Thiel writes in Zero to One; “being the first mover doesn’t do you any good if someone else comes along and unseats you.” Fourth, whereas pioneers tend to get stuck in their early offerings, settlers can observe market changes and shifting consumer tastes and adjust accordingly. In a study of the U.S. automobile industry over nearly a century, pioneers had lower survival rates because they struggled to establish legitimacy, developed routines that didn’t fit the market, and became obsolete as consumer needs clarified. Settlers also have the luxury of waiting for the market to be ready. When Warby Parker launched, e-commerce companies had been thriving for more than a decade, though other companies had tried selling glasses online with little success. “There’s no way it would have worked before,” Neil Blumenthal tells me. “We had to wait for Amazon, Zappos, and Blue Nile to get people comfortable buying products they typically wouldn’t order online.
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Adam M. Grant (Originals: How Non-Conformists Move the World)
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The Biggest Property Rental In Amsterdam
Amsterdam has been ranked as the 13th best town to live in the globe according to Mercer contacting annual Good quality of Living Review, a place it's occupied given that 2006. Which means that the city involving Amsterdam is among the most livable spots you can be centered. Amsterdam apartments are equally quite highly sought after and it can regularly be advisable to enable a housing agency use their internet connections with the amsterdam parkinghousing network to help you look for a suitable apartment for rent Amsterdam.
Amsterdam features rated larger in the past, yet continuing plan of disruptive and wide spread construction projects - like the problematic North-South town you live line- has intended a small scores decline. Amsterdam after rated inside the top 10 Carolien Gehrels (Tradition) told Dutch news company ANP that the metropolis is happy together with the thirteenth place. "Of course you want is actually the first place position, however shows that Amsterdam is a fairly place to live.
Well-known places to rent in Amsterdam
Your Jordaan. An old employees quarter popularised amang other things with the sentimental tunes of a quantity of local vocalists. These music painted an attractive image of the location. Local cafes continue to attribute live vocalists like Arthur Jordaan and Tante Leeni. The Jordaan is a network of alleyways and narrow canals. The section was proven in the Seventeenth century, while Amsterdam desperately needed to expand. The region was created along the design of the routes and ditches which already existed. The Jordaan is known for the weekly biological Nordermaarkt on Saturdays.
Amsterdam is famous for that open air market segments. In Oud-zuid there is a ranging Jordan Cuypmarkt open year long. This part of town is a very popular spot for expats to find Expat Amsterdam flats due in part to vicinity of the Vondelpark. Among the largest community areas A hundred and twenty acres) inside Amsterdam, Netherlands. It can be located in the stadsdeel Amsterdam Oud-Zuid, western side from the Leidseplein as well as the Museumplein. The playground was exposed in 1865 as well as originally named the "Nieuwe Park", but later re-named to "Vondelpark", after the 17th one hundred year author Joost lorrie den Vondel. Every year, the recreation area has around 10 million guests. In the park can be a film art gallery, an open air flow theatre, any playground, and different cafe's and restaurants.
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