“
Take care of your car in the garage, and the car will take care of you on the road.
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Amit Kalantri (Wealth of Words)
“
She was all cotton candy and pink champagne --- legs that stretched out for five or six miles, and one of those laughs that made you feel like riding around in a convertible.
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Linda Bloodworth-Thomason
“
I am emotional about engines, if you hurt my car, you hurt my heart.
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Amit Kalantri (Wealth of Words)
“
The Chinese say that you should never, ever buy a used desk unless you know the history of it. They claim that if it belonged to a bad businessman, his karma will befall you. This one here belonged to President Kennedy. So what do you think that means? (Randy)
I don’t know, but if I were you, I wouldn’t ride through Dallas in a convertible in November. Bad feng shui. (Steele)
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Sherrilyn Kenyon (Bad Attitude (B.A.D. Agency #1))
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Asking someone else to drive your sports car is like asking someone else to kiss your girlfriend.
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Amit Kalantri (Wealth of Words)
“
Among all the machines, motorcar is my favorite machine.
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Amit Kalantri (Wealth of Words)
“
Okay," I said. "Now can I try riding a broomstick?"
"No. Most witches don't use broomsticks because they aren't that comfortable. The only reason witches use broomsticks is because they are lightweight and easy to get off the ground."
"Okay, so what can I fly?"
"At the moment, nothing," responded Trillman. "When you are ready, you can fly whatever you find comfortable and can get off the ground, as long as it isn't me."
"So when do I get to fly my convertible?"
"Convertible?
”
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Jennifer Priester (Mortal Realm Witch: Learning about Magic (Mortal Realm Witch #1))
“
I am so obsessed with the cars that sometimes I feel like my heart is not a muscle, it's an engine.
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Amit Kalantri (Wealth of Words)
“
Suzanne Sugarbaker of Designing Women was so right when she said, “There’s just nothing better in life than to ride around on the back of a convertible with a crown on your head.” Words to live by.
”
”
Jill Conner Browne (The Sweet Potato Queens' Book of Love: A Fallen Southern Belle's Look at Love, Life, Men, Marriage, and Being Prepared)
“
OH, poor Ira!” Nancy Drew exclaimed and slowed her convertible. The two girls with her turned to look toward the sidewalk. Trudging along was an elderly mail carrier. He was lugging a heavy bag over one shoulder. His head was down and his eyes were almost closed against the strong November wind that swirled leaves and dirt around him. “Mr. Nixon!” Nancy called out of her open window. “Let me give you a ride.” The mail carrier looked up and managed a smile. “Hello, Nancy,” he said. “Thank you, but I have to stop at every house. Lots of letters today. There’s one in the bottom of my bag for you. It was sent air mail from London, England.” “How exciting!” Nancy said. “Well, I’ll see you at the house.” She added, “I’ll have some hot cocoa waiting for you.” Mr. Nixon smiled and Nancy drove on.
”
”
Carolyn Keene (Nancy's Mysterious Letter (Nancy Drew, #8))
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Your BMW’s a convertible?” she asked, raising her eyebrows. “Yes, ma’am.” “I like fast German cars.” “Riding or driving?” “Both.” “Is that a request?” “Mm-hm.” “I love my car, Savannah. I’m not a shallow man, but I love that vehicle. What’s your driving record look like?” “This question from the man who made me cry?” “I would love for you to drive my car as far and as fast as you like,” he amended. She leaned back and winked at him. “I thought so. Give me a minute to change?” “Must you?” “I’m afraid so.
”
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Katy Regnery (The Vixen and the Vet (A Modern Fairytale, #1))
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Allison stuffed him into her pink convertible as soon as he was within grabbing distance. Neil braced himself for questions, but Allison didn't speak to him the entire ride. Neil thanked her as he got out, got a bemused look in response, and waited on the curb for the others to arrive.
”
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Nora Sakavic (The King's Men (All for the Game, #3))
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First thing Monday morning, Ruby came in. She seemed upset. "Zach, I've had a vision," she said immediately.
"Was it a dream," Angelo began suddenly, with a wicked grin on his face, "where you see yourself standing in sort of sun-god robes on a pyramid with a thousand naked women screaming and throwing little pickles at you?"
Ruby and I both gaped at him. "Of course not," Ruby said with disgust, "Why would you even ask something like that?"
"Just wonderin'." He was facing her, But he held up a DVD case, facing me. 'Real Genius'. I had no idea what that was supposed to mean.
Ruby shook her head at him and then turned back to me. "There was a bird. It tried to land in your hands, but a giant horse scared it away."
As usual when Ruby announced her visions, I had no idea how to respond. I just smiled. "That's fascinating."
She nodded sagely. "I hope you're nat planning any horse riding this weekend."
Before I could answer, Nero Sensei burst through the doo, breathless. "Do any of you own the blue convertible parked at Jeremy's?"
Which meant another kid had pucked off the balcony.
"Hope the top wasn't down," Angelo said lightly.
Sensei shook his head as he headed back out the door. "No, but it's a soft top, and Tim had cranberry juice before class. It's gonna stain."
Ruby followed Nero out the door. Angelo turned to me. His eyes were sparkling and he was grinning from ear to ear. "Best job I ever had," he said. and I had to smile back.
”
”
Marie Sexton (A to Z (Coda, #2))
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As Petrus Alfonsi, the converted physician authored a book called the Disciplina Clericalis, which was essentially a collection of Arabic tales translated into Latin. These tales introduced a mode of Oriental storytelling and wisdom literature into Christendom that would become extremely popular. In the section called “The Mule and the Fox,” concerning the true nature of nobility, Alfonsi listed seven accomplishments expected of a knight. “The skills that one must be acquainted with are as follows: Riding, swimming, archery, boxing, hawking, chess, and verse writing.”6 So, by the beginning of the twelfth century, chess had become a mandatory skill for Spain’s elite warriors.
”
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Marilyn Yalom (Birth of the Chess Queen: A History)
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The first day we rode our bikes to Chelsey and parked them. It was a terrible feeling. Most of those kids, at least all the older ones, had their own automobiles, many of them new convertibles, and they weren't black or dark blue like most cars, they were bright yellow, green, orange, and red. The guys sat in them outside of the school and the girls gathered around and went for rides. Everybody was nicely dressed, the guys and the girls, they had pullover sweaters, wrist watches and the latest in shoes. They seemed very adult and poised and superior. And there I was in my homemade shirt, my one ragged pair of pants, my rundown shoes, and I was covered with boils. The guys with the cars didn't worry about acne. They were very handsome, they were tall and clean with bright teeth and they didn't wash their hair with hand soap. They seemed to know something I didn't know. I was at the bottom again.
Since all the guys had cars Baldy and I were ashamed of our bicycles. We left them home and walked to school and back, two-and-one-half miles each way. We carried brown bag lunches. But mot of the other students didn't even eat in the school cafeteria. They drove to malt shops with the girls, played the juke boxes and laughed. They were on their way to U.S.C.
”
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Charles Bukowski (Ham on Rye)
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Once the process of accounting for every available square inch of terrain and every raw material has begun, it is necessary to convince people to want the converted products. On the environmental end of the equation, the goal is to turn raw materials in the ground, or the ground itself, into a commodity. On the personal end of the equation, the goal is to convert the uncharted internal human wilderness into a form that desires to accumulate the commodities. The conversion process within the human is directed at experience, feeling, perception, behavior and desire. These must be catalogued, defined and reshaped. The idea is to get both ends of the equation in synchrony, like standard-gauge railways. The human becomes the terminus of the conversion of plants, animals and minerals into objects. The conversion of natural into artificial, inherent in our economic system, takes place as much inside human feeling and experience as it does in the landscape. The more you smooth out the flow, the better the system functions and, in particular, the more the people who activate the processes benefit. In the end, the human, like the environment, is redesigned into a form that fits the needs of the commercial format. People who take more pleasure in talking with friends than in machines, commodities and spectacles are outrageous to the system. People joining with their neighbors to share housing or cars or appliances are less “productive” than those who live in isolation from each other, obtaining their very own of every object. Any collective act, from sharing washing machines to car-pooling to riding buses, is less productive to the wider system in the end than everyone functioning separately in nuclear family units and private homes. Isolation maximizes production. Human beings who are satisfied with natural experience, from sexuality to breast feeding to cycles of mood, are not as productive as the not-so-satisfied, who seek vaginal sprays, chemical and artificial milk, drugs to smooth out emotional ups and downs, and commodities to substitute for experience.
”
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Jerry Mander (Four Arguments for the Elimination of Television)
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But sometimes love is smothering. It sucks the breath out of a person. It makes you feel like love itself is taking away your life. I’ll give you a hint, dolly. That’s not real love. Real love doesn’t smother. Real love is like a ride in a convertible on a cool fall day.
”
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Elise Sax (Matchmaker Mysteries 5-7: From Fear to Eternity / West Side Gory / Scareplane (Matchmaker Mysteries #5-7))
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Callie rode with Frank in the convertible, while Joe piled in with Iola and Chet. They drove to a spot just north of Barmet Bay, called Gremlin Beach, which had become popular for surf-riding because of its high swells. “What a day for surf-birds!” Joe cried as the foursome jumped out onto the clean white stretch of sand. An onshore breeze was blowing, and the waves from some distant storm were piling into high-crested breakers. Two boats came into view, kicking up plumes of spray.
”
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Franklin W. Dixon (A Figure in Hiding (Hardy Boys, #16))
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Hey,” Chet said, rolling his eyes, “that reminds me. What say we meet in the new drugstore downtown for some chow? I’m starved.” “Okay,” the Hardys agreed, and started toward their convertible. “I’ll take the girls and meet you in a little while,” Chet called, heading for his jalopy. About fifteen minutes later they walked toward the sandwich counter in the drugstore. “Chet will treat you all to a full-course dinner,” Joe announced with a wink when they sat down. “Are you kidding?” Chet protested. “I spent most of my money on rides.” “You’re safe, Chet.” Helen laughed. “We’re not hungry, anyway. Had too many hamburgers at the fair.” “I’m thirsty, though,” Iola said, a twinkle in her eye. In the end all the girls decided to have sodas, and the boys ordered sandwiches.
”
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Franklin W. Dixon (The Secret Panel (Hardy Boys, #25))
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Bizarre and Surprising Insights—Consumer Behavior Insight Organization Suggested Explanation7 Guys literally drool over sports cars. Male college student subjects produce measurably more saliva when presented with images of sports cars or money. Northwestern University Kellogg School of Management Consumer impulses are physiological cousins of hunger. If you buy diapers, you are more likely to also buy beer. A pharmacy chain found this across 90 days of evening shopping across dozens of outlets (urban myth to some, but based on reported results). Osco Drug Daddy needs a beer. Dolls and candy bars. Sixty percent of customers who buy a Barbie doll buy one of three types of candy bars. Walmart Kids come along for errands. Pop-Tarts before a hurricane. Prehurricane, Strawberry Pop-Tart sales increased about sevenfold. Walmart In preparation before an act of nature, people stock up on comfort or nonperishable foods. Staplers reveal hires. The purchase of a stapler often accompanies the purchase of paper, waste baskets, scissors, paper clips, folders, and so on. A large retailer Stapler purchases are often a part of a complete office kit for a new employee. Higher crime, more Uber rides. In San Francisco, the areas with the most prostitution, alcohol, theft, and burglary are most positively correlated with Uber trips. Uber “We hypothesized that crime should be a proxy for nonresidential population.…Uber riders are not causing more crime. Right, guys?” Mac users book more expensive hotels. Orbitz users on an Apple Mac spend up to 30 percent more than Windows users when booking a hotel reservation. Orbitz applies this insight, altering displayed options according to your operating system. Orbitz Macs are often more expensive than Windows computers, so Mac users may on average have greater financial resources. Your inclination to buy varies by time of day. For retail websites, the peak is 8:00 PM; for dating, late at night; for finance, around 1:00 PM; for travel, just after 10:00 AM. This is not the amount of website traffic, but the propensity to buy of those who are already on the website. Survey of websites The impetus to complete certain kinds of transactions is higher during certain times of day. Your e-mail address reveals your level of commitment. Customers who register for a free account with an Earthlink.com e-mail address are almost five times more likely to convert to a paid, premium-level membership than those with a Hotmail.com e-mail address. An online dating website Disclosing permanent or primary e-mail accounts reveals a longer-term intention. Banner ads affect you more than you think. Although you may feel you've learned to ignore them, people who see a merchant's banner ad are 61 percent more likely to subsequently perform a related search, and this drives a 249 percent increase in clicks on the merchant's paid textual ads in the search results. Yahoo! Advertising exerts a subconscious effect. Companies win by not prompting customers to think. Contacting actively engaged customers can backfire—direct mailing financial service customers who have already opened several accounts decreases the chances they will open more accounts (more details in Chapter 7).
”
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Eric Siegel (Predictive Analytics: The Power to Predict Who Will Click, Buy, Lie, or Die)
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I love the wheels, I mean steering wheel.
”
”
Amit Kalantri (Wealth of Words)
“
We can’t afford to build places where people just park their bodies at night,” Burden said. “We can’t afford to spend a single transportation dollar that doesn’t increase land value rather than decrease it.” We should go back to building towns the way our great-grandparents did, he suggested. Most people today want to live in a community where they don’t have to drive long distances. They want to live near enough to the stores and jobs so they can walk, take a bus, or ride a bike wherever they need to go. If Muscatine wanted to stay competitive, retain existing businesses, attract new ones, and have money in the treasury for parks and other amenities, then the best thing residents could do would be to focus on making their town walkable and livable, Burden said. That meant adding sidewalks, improving crosswalks, replacing intersections with roundabouts in some places, and converting one-way streets to run in both directions. “One-way streets help move people faster,” Burden said. “But is that your goal? To empty out downtown?” You should be doing just the opposite, he argued. You want people to linger downtown and enjoy themselves. “Then, before you know it, your children won’t be moving off to other cities. Everything they want will be right here in your own community.
”
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Dan Buettner (The Blue Zones Solution: Eating and Living Like the World's Healthiest People (Blue Zones, The))
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Has dress sense was anything but stylish. He still often favoured his plain blue suit.155 His trilby, light-coloured raincoat, leather leggings and riding-whip gave him – especially when arriving with his bodyguards in the big black six-seater Mercedes convertible he had bought in early 1925 – the appearance of an eccentric gangster.156 For relaxation, he preferred to wear traditional Bavarian lederhosen.157 But even when he was in prison, he hated to be seen without a tie.158 During the heat of the summer, he would never be seen in a bathing costume.
”
”
Anonymous
“
the risk of oversimplifying a bit, the carbohydrate from our doughnut has two possible fates. First, it can be converted into glycogen, the storage form of glucose, suitable for use in the near term. About 75 percent of this glycogen ends up in skeletal muscle and the other 25 percent goes to the liver, although this ratio can vary. An adult male can typically store a total of about 1,600 calories worth of glycogen between these two sites, or about enough energy for two hours of vigorous endurance exercise. This is why if you are running a marathon or doing a long bike ride, and do not replenish your fuel stores in some way, you are likely to “bonk,” or run out of energy, which is not a pleasant experience. One of the liver’s many important jobs is to convert this stored glycogen back to glucose and then to release it as needed to maintain blood glucose levels at a steady state, known as glucose homeostasis.
”
”
Peter Attia (Outlive: The Science and Art of Longevity)
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course, Disneyland in blue California was now Transtopia, with the “Small World” boat ride now called “Flotilla of Fluidity” and entirely devoted to the countless gender identities, while the Matterhorn had been converted into a huge fiberglass representation of a sex toy. In the red, Disney had been dissolved following a horrific pedophilia scandal not long after the Split. Disney World in Orlando was now Patriot Land, featuring Ernie Eagle and a muscular, flying version of the sixteenth president called Super Abe. EPCOT was converted into a huge beer garden, since the only interesting thing to ever do at EPCOT was drink.
”
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Kurt Schlichter (Overlord (Kelly Turnbull/PEOPLE'S REPUBLIC Book 8))
“
This may be the fundamental problem with caring a lot about what others think: It can put you on the established path—the my-isn’t-that-impressive path—and keep you there for a long time. Maybe it stops you from swerving, from ever even considering a swerve, because what you risk losing in terms of other people’s high regard can feel too costly. Maybe you spend three years in Massachusetts, studying constitutional law and discussing the relative merits of exclusionary vertical agreements in antitrust cases. For some, this might be truly interesting, but for you it is not. Maybe during those three years you make friends you’ll love and respect forever, people who seem genuinely called to the bloodless intricacies of the law, but you yourself are not called. Your passion stays low, yet under no circumstance will you underperform. You live, as you always have, by the code of effort/result, and with it you keep achieving until you think you know the answers to all the questions—including the most important one. Am I good enough? Yes, in fact I am. What happens next is that the rewards get real. You reach for the next rung of the ladder, and this time it’s a job with a salary in the Chicago offices of a high-end law firm called Sidley & Austin. You’re back where you started, in the city where you were born, only now you go to work on the forty-seventh floor in a downtown building with a wide plaza and a sculpture out front. You used to pass by it as a South Side kid riding the bus to high school, peering mutely out the window at the people who strode like titans to their jobs. Now you’re one of them. You’ve worked yourself out of that bus and across the plaza and onto an upward-moving elevator so silent it seems to glide. You’ve joined the tribe. At the age of twenty-five, you have an assistant. You make more money than your parents ever have. Your co-workers are polite, educated, and mostly white. You wear an Armani suit and sign up for a subscription wine service. You make monthly payments on your law school loans and go to step aerobics after work. Because you can, you buy yourself a Saab. Is there anything to question? It
doesn’t seem that way. You’re a lawyer now. You’ve taken everything ever given to you—the love of your parents, the faith of your teachers, the music from Southside and Robbie, the meals from Aunt Sis, the vocabulary words drilled into you by Dandy—and converted it to this. You’ve climbed the mountain. And part of your job, aside from parsing abstract intellectual property issues for big corporations, is to help cultivate the next set of young lawyers being courted by the firm. A senior partner asks if you’ll mentor an incoming summer associate, and the answer is easy: Of course you will. You have yet to understand the altering force of a simple yes. You don’t know that when a memo arrives to confirm the assignment, some deep and unseen fault line in your life has begun to tremble, that some hold is already starting to slip. Next to your name is another name, that of
some hotshot law student who’s busy climbing his own ladder. Like you, he’s black and from Harvard. Other than that, you know nothing—just the name, and it’s an odd one. Barack.
”
”
Becoming
“
At the risk of oversimplifying a bit, the carbohydrate from our doughnut has two possible fates. First, it can be converted into glycogen, the storage form of glucose, suitable for use in the near term. About 75 percent of this glycogen ends up in skeletal muscle and the other 25 percent goes to the liver, although this ratio can vary. An adult male can typically store a total of about 1,600 calories worth of glycogen between these two sites, or about enough energy for two hours of vigorous endurance exercise. This is why if you are running a marathon or doing a long bike ride, and do not replenish your fuel stores in some way, you are likely to “bonk,” or run out of energy, which is not a pleasant experience.
”
”
Peter Attia (Outlive: The Science and Art of Longevity)
“
God created them in the shape of lions,’ wrote a courtier of the Seljuk Turks, ‘with broad faces and flat noses, muscles strong, fists enormous.’ A Turkmen warlord named Seljuk had fought for the Jewish Khazar khagans in his youth. The names of his sons – Israel, Yusuf and Musa – suggest the family may have converted to Judaism, but in the 990s Seljuk switched to Islam, embracing jihad as his mission, and gathered a federation of tribes in Transoxiana, assisted by warlike sons. ‘They ascend great mountains, ride in face of danger, raid and go deep into unknown lands.’ Seljuk and son were just one of the Turkic warrior clans carving up the Arab empire.
”
”
Simon Sebag Montefiore (The World: A Family History of Humanity)
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Joy thrives on the alleviation of constraints. The delicious stretch you feel in your legs on stepping out of the car at a rest stop after many hours of driving is a joyful freedom. So is sleeping under the stars, riding in a convertible, and skinny-dipping, feeling cool water against bare skin.
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Ingrid Fetell Lee (Joyful: The Surprising Power of Ordinary Things to Create Extraordinary Happiness)
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God wouldn’t have put two studly cowboys in a red convertible onto Highway 69 just when I’d needed them if it wasn’t meant to be, that’s how I saw it.
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Juliette Jones (Wild Ride)