Rite Aid Quotes

The multitude of men and women choose the less adventurous way of the comparatively unconscious civic and tribal routines. But these seekers, too, are saved—by virtue of the inherited symbolic aids of society, the rites of passage, the grace-yielding sacraments, given to mankind of old by the redeemers and handed down through millenniums. It is only those who know neither an inner call nor an outer doctrine whose plight truly is desperate; that is to say, most of us today, in this labyrinth without and within the heart. Alas, where is the guide, that fond virgin, Ariadne, to supply the simple clue that will give us courage to face the Minotaur, and the means then to find our way to freedom when the monster has been met and slain?

It was Valentine's Day and I had spent the day in bed with my life partner, Ketel One. The two of us watched a romance movie marathon on TBS Superstation that made me wonder how people who write romantic comedies can sleep at night. At some point during almost every romantic comedy, the female lead suddenly trips and falls, stumbling helplessly over something ridiculous like a leaf, and then some Matthew McConaughey type either whips around the corner just in the nick of time to save her or is clumsily pulled down along with her. That event predictably leads to the magical moment of their first kiss. Please. I fall all-the-time. You know who comes and gets me? The bouncer. Then, within the two hour time frame of the movie, the couple meet, fall in love, fall out of love, break up, and then just before the end of the movie, they happen to bump into each other by "coincidence" somewhere absolutely absurd, like by the river. This never happens in real life. The last time I bumped into an ex-boyfriend was at three o'clock in the morning at Rite Aid. I was ringing up Gas-X and corn removers.

On a very hot day in August of 1994, my wife told me she was going down to the Derry Rite Aid to pick up a refill on her sinus medicine prescription - this is stuff you can buy over the counter these days, I believe. I’d finished writing for the day and offered to pick it up for her. She said thanks, but she wanted to get a piece of fish at the supermarket next door anyway; two birds with one stone and all that. She blew a kiss at me off the palm of her and and went out. The next time I saw her, she was on TV. That’s how you identify the dead here in Derry - no walking down a subterranean corridor with green tiles on the walls and long fluorescent bars overhead, no naked body rolling out of a chilly drawer on casters; you just go into an office marked PRIVATE and look at a TV screen and say yep or nope.

Heretic!” Anselm seethed. “Whore!” Now Alex laughed. “I’ve been called worse in line at Rite Aid.

Yet gun dealers sell guns in America the way Rite Aid sells toothpaste, denying at every step of the way the true nature of the products they sell and absolving themselves of any and all responsibility for their role in the resulting mayhem.

Rite To Tyr: Hail to the One-Handed God! Hail to Him whose name is Honor And whose Word is iron, Who alone never shirks the thankless task Whose reason is Lawful Necessity. Hail to the Lord of Swords, Who gave a weapon-bearing hand To see that what must be done was done in truth. Hail God of the sunset, last single ray of light, Lord of loyal morality, whose name none takes in vain. Now must I face loss to do what is right, O Lord Tyr, and I do not ask for your aid To take away that loss, that I might hope for ease of action. As you stood forth knowing you must lose to win, So I ask only that you keep my back straight, My arm strong, my hand from trembling, My voice from faltering, my words from vanishing, My head up, and my resolve unyielding As I reach into the challenging maw of my own future.

When I needed more pills, I ventured out to the Rite Aid three blocks away. That was always a painful passage. Walking up First Avenue, everything made me cringe. I was like a baby being born—the air hurt, the light hurt, the details of the world seemed garish and hostile.

He is famously kind, my husband. Always sending money to those afflicted with obscure diseases or shoveling the walk of the crazy neighbor or helloing the fat girl at Rite Aid. He’s from Ohio. This means he never forgets to thank the bus driver or pushes in front at the baggage claim. Nor does he keep a list of those who infuriate him on a given day. People mean well. That is what he believes. How then is he married to me? I hate often and easily. I hate, for example, people who sit with their legs splayed. People who claim to give 110 percent. People who call themselves “comfortable” when what they mean is decadently rich. You’re so judgmental, my shrink tells me, and I cry all the way home, thinking of it.

How should I worship your God, no matter how powerful, when I know what he will allow to befall us? Who would follow such a cruel god? And how should I lay aside the spirits by whose aid I have roiled the sea and riven rock, who for long years gifted me the power to cure the sick and to inflame my enemies’ blood? To begloom the bright day and set dim night ablaze? All this, my spirits have allowed to me. Your God may be stronger than these; I see that. As I see that he will prevail. But not yet. Not for me. While I live, I will not abandon my familiars and the rites that are due to them.

When I needed more pills, I ventured out to the Rite Aid three blocks away. That was always a painful passage. Walking up First Avenue, everything made me cringe. I was like a baby being born—the air hurt, the light hurt, the details of the world seemed garish and hostile. I relied on alcohol only on the days of these excursions—a shot of vodka before I went out and walked past all the little bistros and cafes and shops I’d frequented when I was out there, pretending to live a life. Otherwise I tried to limit myself to a one-block radius around my apartment.

Irene tries to keep up with politics wherever possible, attends talks on police intervention, participates in mutual aid, though increasingly she can’t help but feel that her will to be seen taking part is not matched by her actual desire to do do. She used to rage, to get involved with direct action and instigate chaos, but her anger has waned over time, the way laughter eventually becomes forced, and what is left feels unpleasant but nonetheless easier.

So now I was a beauty editor. In some ways, I looked the part of Condé Nast hotshot—or at least I tried to. I wore fab Dior slap bracelets and yellow plastic Marni dresses, and I carried a three-thousand-dollar black patent leather Lanvin tote that Jean had plunked down on my desk one afternoon. (“This is . . . too shiny for me,” she’d explained.) My highlights were by Marie Robinson at Sally Hershberger Salon in the Meatpacking District; I had a chic lavender pedicure—Versace Heat Nail Lacquer V2008—and I smelled obscure and expensive, like Susanne Lang Midnight Orchid and Colette Black Musk Oil. But look closer. I was five-four and ninety-seven pounds. The aforementioned Lanvin tote was full of orange plastic bottles from Rite Aid; if you looked at my hands digging for them, you’d see that my fingernails were dirty, and that the knuckle on my right hand was split from scraping against my front teeth. My chin was broken out from the vomiting. My self-tanner was uneven because I always applied it when I was strung out and exhausted—to conceal the exhaustion, you see—and my skin underneath the faux-glow was full-on Corpse Bride. A stylist had snipped out golf-ball-size knots that had formed at the back of my neck when I was blotto on tranquilizers for months and stopped combing my hair. My under-eye bags were big enough to send down the runway at Mercedes-Benz Fashion Week: I hadn’t slept in days. I hadn’t slept for more than a few hours at a time in months. And I hadn’t slept without pills in years. So even though I wrote articles about how to take care of yourself—your hair, your skin, your nails—I was falling apart.

MAC. Fear not then any longer the hostile spear of the Argives; for I myself, old man, before I am commanded, am prepared to die, and to stand for slaughter; for what shall we say if the city thinks fit for our sakes to encounter a great danger, but we putting toils on others, avoid death when we can be saved? Not so, since this would be ridiculous for suppliants sitting at the shrines of the Gods to mourn, but being of such a sire as we are, to be seen to be cowards; how can this seem good! it were more noble, I think, (which may it never happen!) to fall into the hands of the enemy, this city being taken, and afterward, being born of a noble father, having suffered dreadful things, to see Hades none the less; but shall I wander about, driven from this land, and shall I not indeed be ashamed if any one says, "Why have ye come hither with your suppliant branches, yourselves being too fond of life! Depart from the land, for we will not aid cowards." But neither, indeed, if these die, and I myself am saved, have I any hope to fare well; for before now many have in this way betrayed their friends. For who would choose to have me, a solitary damsel, for his wife, or to raise children from me? therefore it is better to die than to have such an unworthy fate as this; and this may even be more seemly for some other, who is not illustrious as I. Lead me then where this body must needs die, and crown me and begin the rites, if you think fit, and conquer your enemies; for this life is ready for you, willing, and not unwilling; and I promise to die for these my brethren, and for myself; for not caring for life, I have found this most glorious thing to find, namely, to leave life gloriously.

if Masonry will but be true to her mission and Masons to their promises and obligations; if re-entering vigorously upon a career of beneficence, she and they will but pursue it earnestly and unfalteringly remembering that our contributions to the cause of charity and education. Then deserve the greatest credit when it costs us something the curtailing of a comfort” or the relinquishment of a luxury to make them, “if we will but give aid to what were once Masonry’s great schemes for human improvement not fitfully and spasmodically but regularly and incessantly, as the vapors rise and the springs run, and as the sun rises and the stars come up into the heavens, then we may be sure that great results will be attained and a great work done, and then it will most surely be seen that Masonry is not effete or impotent nor degenerated nor drooping to a fatal decay.

Although I've been told I'm an ALCOHOLIC, which means I cannot stop drinking, I've also discovered, over years of experience, that if I have no money, or car, and it's cold in the winter, most days I am not terribly excited to run out and steal beers from the Rite Aid. Think for yourself.

The frame was one of those faux bronze numbers you get at Rite-Aid or a similar drugstore-cum-frame store.

The last time I bumped into an ex-boyfriend was at three o’clock in the morning at Rite Aid. I was ringing up Gas-X and corn removers.

Luther spared the altar, and hesitated to deny totally the real presence; Calvin, with superior dialectics, accepted as a commemoration and a seal the rites which the Catholics revered as a sacrifice. Luther favored magnificence in public worship, as an aid to devotion; Calvin, the guide of republics, avoided in their churches all appeals to the senses, as a peril to pure religion. Luther condemned the Roman church for its immorality; Calvin, for its idolatry. Luther exposed the folly of superstition, ridiculed the hair shirt and the scourge, the purchased indulgence, and dearly bought, worthless masses for the dead; Calvin shrunk from their criminality with impatient horror. Luther permitted the cross and the taper, pictures and images, as things of indifference; Calvin demanded a spiritual worship in its utmost purity. Luther, not from his own choice but from the overruling necessities of his position, left the organization of the church to princes and governments; Calvin reformed doctrine, ritual, and practice; and, by establishing ruling elders in each church and an elective synod, he secured to his polity a representative character, which combined authority with popular rights. Both Luther and Calvin insisted that, for each one, there is and can be no other priest than himself; and, as a consequence, both agreed in the parity of the clergy. Both were of one mind that, should pious laymen choose one of their number to be their minister, “the man so chosen would be as truly a priest as if all the bishops in the world had consecrated him.

In this Age the Mantras of the Tantras are efficacious, yield immediate fruit, and are auspicious for Japa, Yajna, and all such practices and ceremonies (14). The Vedic rites and Mantras which were efficacious in the First Age have ceased to be so in this. They are now as powerless as snakes, the poison-fangs of which are drawn and are like to that which is dead (15). The whole heap of other Mantras have no more power than the organs of sense of some pictured image on a wall. To worship with the aid of other Mantras is as fruitless as it is to cohabit with a barren woman. The labour is lost (16-17).

Why couldn’t other people be bothered to put on proper clothes? She saw them everywhere. At Starbucks. Rite Aid. The Giant Eagle. People who looked as if they were just going to, or just getting ready for, bed. Now she knew what it took for her to abandon the basics of propriety. Was everyone’s life in such a state of ruin? Were they all just barely going through the motions?

Irene tries to keep up with politics wherever possible, attends talks on police intervention, participates in mutual aid, though increasingly she can’t help but feel that her will to be seen taking part is not matched by her actual desire to do do. She used to rage, to get involved with direct action and instigate chaos, but her anger has waned over time, the way laughter eventually becomes forced, and what I left feels unpleasant but nonetheless easier.

I’ve been called worse in line at Rite Aid.

When Monte came home after we were able to get him stable after weeks in the hospital, he wanted nothing more than to be a self-sufficient man in the world, but the cycling in and out of juvie in his childhood, or drinking, or tagging, or just standing on a street with his boys. And then, of course, the time in prison meant that he had never had a single job in his life, save for any forced labor when he was locked up. We helped him get a low-wage low-level job at a local Rite Aid. Carla and I had both done our time at Rite-Aids in LA, and I still remember his excitement at the end of the first day. "Trisse, I got this." He was so deeply proud. But a week into his very first paid position, he was promptly fired. His background check had come back: no ex-felons, dude. Get the hell out. We tried pulling him closer to us, and my mother begged him to live with her, risking her Section 8 status. If you have government housing benefits, you cannot have anyone living with you if they've been convicted of a crime, even if they are a juvenile, and even if they are incapable of caring for themselves because of an illness, and even if they cannot get a job because even the most low-level jobs won't hire someone with a conviction. In California, there are more than 4,800 barriers to re-entry, from jobs to housing to food bans, school financial aid bans, and the list goes on. You can have a two year sentence, but it does not mean you're not doing life.

You'll read about at just about every possible turn I found new and innovative ways of self-sabotage. Chewing up and spitting out opportunities while making enemies out of friends, friends out of whoever hands me my Prozac prescription every month at RiteAid. There's a lot of that in this book. Self-sabotage I mean. Certainly more than self-love or self-care.