“
We all too often have socialism for the rich and rugged free market capitalism for the poor.
”
”
Martin Luther King Jr.
“
In reality it was just what is usually seen in the houses of people of moderate means who want to appear rich, and therefore succeed only in resembling otherslike themselves: there are damasks, dark wood, plants, rugs, and dull and polished bronzes -- all the things people of a certain class have in order to resemble other people of that class. His house was so like the others that it would never have been noticed, but to him it all seemed to be quite exceptional.
”
”
Leo Tolstoy (The Death of Ivan Ilych)
“
In reaffirming the greatness of our nation, we understand that greatness is never a given. It must be earned. Our journey has never been one of shortcuts or settling for less. It has not been the path for the faint-hearted, for those who prefer leisure over work, or seek only the pleasures of riches and fame. Rather, it has been the risk-takers, the doers, the makers of things -- some celebrated, but more often men and women obscure in their labor -- who have carried us up the long, rugged path towards prosperity and freedom.
”
”
Barack Obama
“
As time went by, I realized that the particular place I'd chose was less important than the fact that I'd chosen a place and focused my life around it. Although the island has taken on great significance for me, it's no more inherently beautiful or meaningful than any other place on earth. What makes a place special is the way it buries itself inside the heart, not whether it's flat or rugged, rich or austere. wet or arid, gentle or harsh, warm or cold, wild or tame. Every place, like every person, is elevated by the love and respect shown toward it, and by the way in which its bounty is received.
”
”
Richard Nelson (The Island Within)
“
In reality it was just what is usually
seen in the houses of people of moderate
means who want to appear rich, and therefore succeed only in resembling others
like themselves: there are damasks,
dark wood, plants, rugs, and dull and
polished bronzes -- all the things people of
a certain class have in order to
resemble other people of that class. His
house was so like the others that it
would never have been noticed, but to him it
all seemed to be quite exceptional.
”
”
Leo Tolstoy (The Death of Ivan Ilych)
“
In reality it was just what is usually seen in the houses of people of moderate means who want to appear rich, and therefore succeed only in resembling others
like themselves: there are damasks, dark wood, plants, rugs, and dull and polished bronzes -- all the things people of a certain class have in order to resemble other people of that class. His house was so like the others that it would never have been noticed, but to him it all seemed to be quite exceptional.
”
”
Leo Tolstoy (The Death of Ivan Ilych)
“
It was a beautiful room, not an office at all, and much bigger than it looked from outside--airy and white, with a high ceiling and a breeze fluttering in the starched curtains. In the corner, near a low bookshelf, was a big round table littered with teapots and Greek books, and there were flowers everywhere, roses and carnations and anemones, on his desk, on the table, in the windowsills. The roses were especially fragrant; their smell hung rich and heavy in the air, mingled with the smell of bergamot, and black China tea, and a faint inky scent of camphor. Breathing deep, I felt intoxicated. Everywhere I looked was something beautiful--Oriental rugs, porcelains, tiny paintings like jewels--a dazzle of fractured color that struck me as if I had stepped into one of those little Byzantine churches that are so plain on the outside; inside, the most paradisal painted eggshell of gilt and
”
”
Donna Tartt (The Secret History)
“
Everybody is on welfare in this country. The problem is that we all to often have socialism for the rich and rugged free enterprise capitalism for the poor."
“The Minister to the Valley,”
February 23, 1968
”
”
Martin Luther King Jr.
“
Everybody is on welfare in this country. The problem is that we all too often have socialism for the rich and rugged free enterprise capitalism for the poor."
“The Minister to the Valley,”
February 23, 1968
”
”
Martin Luther King Jr.
“
Everybody is on welfare in this country. The problem is that we all too often have socialism for the rich and rugged free enterprise capitalism for the poor. That’s the problem."
“The Minister to the Valley,”
February 23, 1968
”
”
Martin Luther King Jr.
“
First, I see her catch the scent. It's a combination of many things; the Christmas tree in the corner; the musty aroma of old house; orange and clove; ground coffee; hot milk; patchouli; cinnamon- and chocolate, of course; intoxicating, rich as Croesus, dark as death.
She looks around, sees wall hangings, pictures, bells, ornaments, a dollhouse in the window, rugs on the floor- all in chrome yellow and fuchsia-pink and scarlet and gold and green and white. It's like an opium den in here, she almost says, then wonders at herself for being so fanciful. In fact she has never seen an opium den- unless it was in the pages of the Arabian Nights- but there's something about the place, she thinks. Something almost- magical.
”
”
Joanne Harris (The Girl with No Shadow (Chocolat, #2))
“
The impact of a dollar upon the heart"
The impact of a dollar upon the heart
Smiles warm red light
Sweeping from the hearth rosily upon the white table,
With the hanging cool velvet shadows
Moving softly upon the door.
The impact of a million dollars
Is a crash of flunkeys
And yawning emblems of Persia
Cheeked against oak, France and a sabre,
The outcry of old beauty
Whored by pimping merchants
To submission before wine and chatter.
Silly rich peasants stamp the carpets of men,
Dead men who dreamed fragrance and light
Into their woof, their lives;
The rug of an honest bear
Under the feet of a cryptic slave
Who speaks always of baubles,
Forgetting state, multitude, work, and state,
Champing and mouthing of hats,
Making ratful squeak of hats,
Hats.
”
”
Stephen Crane
“
Emptiness was an index. It recorded the incomprehensible chronicle of the metropolis, the demographic realities, how money worked, the cobbled-together lifestyles and roosting habits. The population remained at a miraculous density, it seemed to him, for the empty rooms brimmed with evidence, in the stragglers they did or did not contain, in the busted barricades, in the expired relatives on the futon beds, arms crossed over their chests in ad hoc rites. The rooms stored anthropological clues re: kinship rituals and taboos. How they treated their dead.
The rich tended to escape. Entire white-glove buildings were devoid, as Omega discovered after they worried the seams of and then shattered the glass doors to the lobby (no choice, despite the No-No Cards). The rich fled during the convulsions of the great evacuation, dragging their distilled possessions in wheeled luggage of European manufacture, leaving their thousand-dollar floor lamps to attract dust to their silver surfaces and recount luxury to later visitors, bowing like weeping willows over imported pile rugs. A larger percentage of the poor tended to stay, shoving layaway bureaus and media consoles up against the doors. There were those who decided to stay, willfully uncomprehending or stupid or incapacitated by the scope of the disaster, and those who could not leave for a hundred other reasons - because they were waiting for their girlfriend or mother or soul mate to make it home first, because their mobility was compromised or a relative was debilitated, crutched, too young. Because it was too impossible, the enormity of the thought: This is the end. He knew them all from their absences.
”
”
Colson Whitehead (Zone One)
“
Every inch of the interior space, high and low, glittered with arrangements of star-like patterns, all interwoven into a series of larger geometric shapes. The soaring domed ceilings glimmered from high above, a mirage of infinity that seemed to reach the heavens. Two large windows were thrown open to grant entrée to the sun: sharp shafts of light penetrated the room, further illuminating constellation after constellation of shattered glow. Even the floors were covered in mirrored tiles, though the delicate work was protected by a series of rich, intricately woven rugs.
”
”
Tahereh Mafi (This Woven Kingdom (This Woven Kingdom #1))
“
But all over-expression, whether by journalists, poets, novelists, or clergymen, is bad for the language, bad for the mind; and by over-expression, I mean the use of words running beyond the sincere feeling of writer or speaker or beyond what the event will sanely carry. From time to time a crusade is preached against it from the text: ‘The cat was on the mat.’ Some Victorian scribe, we must suppose, once wrote: ‘Stretching herself with feline grace and emitting those sounds immemorially connected with satisfaction, Grimalkin lay on a rug whose richly variegated pattern spoke eloquently of the Orient and all the wonders of the Arabian Nights.’ And an exasperated reader annotated the margin with the shorter version of the absorbing event. How the late Georgian scribe will express the occurrence we do not yet know. Thus, perhaps: ‘What there is of cat is cat is what of cat there lying cat is what on what of mat laying cat.’ The reader will probably the margin with ‘Some cat!
”
”
John Galsworthy (Candelabra: Selected Essays and Addresses)
“
What mattered more was the feeling, a rich sweet undertow so commanding that in class, on the school bus, lying in bed trying to think of something safe or pleasant, some environment or configuration where my chest wasn’t tight with anxiety, all I had to do was sink into the blood-warm current and let myself spin away to the secret place where everything was all right. Cinnamon-colored walls, rain on the windowpanes, vast quiet and a sense of depth and distance, like the varnish over the background of a nineteenth-century painting. Rugs worn to threads, painted Japanese fans and antique valentines flickering in candlelight, Pierrots and doves and flower-garlanded hearts. Pippa’s face pale in the dark.
”
”
Donna Tartt (The Goldfinch)
“
American Indians share a magnificent history — rich in its astounding diversity, its integrity, its spirituality, its ongoing unique culture and dynamic tradition. It's also rich, I'm saddened to say, in tragedy, deceit, and genocide. Our sovereignty, our nationhood, our very identity — along with our sacred lands — have been stolen from us in one of the great thefts of human history. And I am referring not just to the thefts of previous centuries but to the great thefts that are still being perpetrated upon us today, at this very moment. Our human rights as indigenous peoples are being violated every day of our lives — and by the very same people who loudly and sanctimoniously proclaim to other nations the moral necessity of such rights.
Over the centuries our sacred lands have been repeatedly and routinely stolen from us by the governments and peoples of the United States and Canada. They callously pushed us onto remote reservations on what they thought was worthless wasteland, trying to sweep us under the rug of history. But today, that so-called wasteland has surprisingly become enormously valuable as the relentless technology of white society continues its determined assault on Mother Earth. White society would now like to terminate us as peoples and push us off our reservations so they can steal our remaining mineral and oil resources. It's nothing new for them to steal from nonwhite peoples. When the oppressors succeed with their illegal thefts and depredations, it's called colonialism. When their efforts to colonize indigenous peoples are met with resistance or anything but abject surrender, it's called war. When the colonized peoples attempt to resist their oppression and defend themselves, we're called criminals.
I write this book to bring about a greater understanding of what being an Indian means, of who we are as human beings. We're not quaint curiosities or stereotypical figures in a movie, but ordinary — and, yes, at times, extraordinary — human beings. Just like you. We feel. We bleed. We are born. We die. We aren't stuffed dummies in front of a souvenir shop; we aren't sports mascots for teams like the Redskins or the Indians or the Braves or a thousand others who steal and distort and ridicule our likeness. Imagine if they called their teams the Washington Whiteskins or the Washington Blackskins! Then you'd see a protest! With all else that's been taken from us, we ask that you leave us our name, our self-respect, our sense of belonging to the great human family of which we are all part.
Our voice, our collective voice, our eagle's cry, is just beginning to be heard. We call out to all of humanity. Hear us!
”
”
Leonard Peltier (Prison Writings: My Life Is My Sun Dance)
“
Lions may not think, at least not the way people think... but they see. And when antelopes start away from a waterhole alerted by that dusty-rug scent of approaching death, the cats can observe which one falls to the rear of the pack, maybe because it has a lame leg, maybe because it is just naturally slower or maybe because its sense of danger is less developed. And it might even be possible that some antelopes- and some women want to be brought down.
”
”
Stephen King (it)
“
Grace cut across an Oriental rug done in a plum, navy, and cream geometric pattern. The colors in the carpet pulled the richness of the furniture together. She noticed that Cade walked the perimeter of the room, sticking to the hardwood floor.
Off to the right, a glassed-in sunroom caught the first rays of sunshine from the overcast day. The forest-green wicker furniture, abundant greenery, and a small bookcase with monthly magazines and mystery novels offered peace and solitude.
”
”
Kate Angell (The Cottage on Pumpkin and Vine)
“
But these were essentially the accoutrements that appeal to all people who are not actually rich but who want to look rich, though all they manage to do is look like each other: damasks, ebony, plants, rugs and bronzes, anything dark and gleaming-everything that all people of a certain class affect so as to be like all other people of a certain class. And his arrangements looked so much like everyone else's that they were unremarkable, though he saw them as something truly distinctive.
”
”
Leo Tolstoy (The Death of Ivan Ilych)
“
He saw a chamber, broad and low, designed, in its every rich stain of picture and slumberous hanging, to appeal to the sensuous. And here the scent was thick and motionless. Costly marqueterie; Palissy candlesticks reflected in half-concealed mirrors framed in embossed silver; antique Nankin vases brimming with pot-pourri; in one comer a suit of Milanese armour, fluted, damasquinee, by Felippo Negroli; in another a tripod table of porphyry, spectrally repeating in its polished surface the opal hues of a vessel of old Venetian glass half filled with some topaz-coloured liqueur - such and many more tokens of a luxurious aestheticism wrought in the observer an immediate sense of pleasurable enervation. He noticed, with a swaying thrill of delight, that his feet were on a padded rug of Astrakhan - one of many, disposed eccentrically about the yellow tassellated-marble floor; and he noticed that the sole light in the chamber came from an iridescent globed lamp, fed with some fragrant oil, that hung near an alcove traversed by a veil of dark violet silk.
("The Accursed Cordonnier")
”
”
Bernard Capes (Gaslit Nightmares: Stories by Robert W. Chambers, Charles Dickens, Richard Marsh, and Others)
“
I was eager to try these delicacies, and was thrilled when Bugnard instructed me on where to buy a proper haunch of venison and how to prepare it. I picked a good-looking piece, then marinated it in red wine, aromatic vegetables, and herbs, and hung the lot for several days in a big bag out the kitchen window. When I judged it ready, by smell, I roasted it for a good long while. The venison made a splendid dinner, with a rich, deep, gamy-tasting sauce, and for days afterward Paul and I feasted on its very special cold meat. When the deer had given us its all, I offered the big leg-bone structure to Minette. “Would you like to try this, poussiequette?” I asked her, laying the platter on the floor. She approached tentatively and sniffed. Then the wild-game signals must have hit her central nervous system, for she suddenly arched her back and, with hair standing on end, let out a snarling groowwwwllll! She lunged at the bone and, grabbing it with her sharp teeth, dragged it out onto the living-room rug—luckily a well-worn Oriental—where she chewed at it for a good hour before stalking off. (Even in such intense circumstances, she rarely laid paw on bone, preferring to use her teeth.)
”
”
Julia Child (My Life in France)
“
Jane doesn't watch very much television. She used to watch it more. She used to watch comedy series, in the evenings, and when she was a student at university she would watch afternoon soaps about hospitals and rich people, as a way of procrastinating. For a while, not so long ago, she would watch the evening news, taking in the disasters with her feet tucked up on the Chesterfield, a throw rug over her legs, drinking a hot milk and rum to relax before bed. It was all a form of escape.
But what you can see on the television, at whatever time of day, is edging too close to her own life; though in her life, nothing stays put in those tidy compartments, comedy here, seedy romance and sentimental tears there, accidents and violent deaths in thirty-second clips they call bites, as if they were chocolate bars. In her life, everything is mixed together.
”
”
Margaret Atwood (Wilderness Tips)
“
What can I tell them? Sealed in their metallic shells like molluscs on wheels, how can I pry the people free? The auto as tin can, the park ranger as opener. Look here, I want to say, for godsake folks get out of them there machines, take off those fucking sunglasses and unpeel both eyeballs, look around; throw away those goddamned idiotic cameras! For chrissake folks what is this life if full of care we have no time to stand and stare? eh? Take off your shoes for a while, unzip your fly, piss hearty, dig your toes in the hot sand, feel that raw and rugged earth, split a couple of big toenails, draw blood! Why not? Jesus Christ, lady, roll that window down! You can't see the desert if you can't smell it. Dusty? Of course it's dusty—this is Utah! But it's good dust, good red Utahn dust, rich in iron, rich in irony. Turn that motor off. Get out of that peice of iron and stretch your varicose veins, take off your brassiere and get some hot sun on your old wrinkled dugs! You sir, squinting at the map with your radiator boiling over and your fuel pump vapor-locked, crawl out of that shiny hunk of GM junk and take a walk—yes, leave the old lady and those squawling brats behind for a while, turn your back on them and take a long quiet walk straight into the canyons, get lost for a while, come back when you damn well feel like it, it'll do you and her and them a world of good. Give the kids a break too, let them out of the car, let them go scrambling over rocks hunting for rattlesnakes and scorpions and anthills—yes sir, let them out, turn them loose; how dare you imprison little children in your goddamned upholstered horseless hearse? Yes sir, yes madam, I entreat you, get out of those motorized wheelchairs, get off your foam rubber backsides, stand up straight like men! like women! like human beings! and walk—walk—WALK upon your sweet and blessed land!
”
”
Edward Abbey
“
You must not enquire too far, Marianne—remember I have no knowledge in the picturesque, and I shall offend you by my ignorance and want of taste if we come to particulars. I shall call hills steep, which ought to be bold; surfaces strange and uncouth, which ought to be irregular and rugged; and distant objects out of sight, which ought only to be indistinct through the soft medium of a hazy atmosphere. You must be satisfied with such admiration as I can honestly give. I call it a very fine country—the hills are steep, the woods seem full of fine timber, and the valley looks comfortable and snug—with rich meadows and several neat farm houses scattered here and there. It exactly answers my idea of a fine country, because it unites beauty with utility—and I dare say it is a picturesque one too, because you admire it; I can easily believe it to be full of rocks and promontories, grey moss and brush wood, but these are all lost on me. I know nothing of the picturesque.
”
”
Jane Austen (Jane Austen: The complete Novels)
“
A lovely home atmosphere is one of the flowers of the world, than which there is nothing more tender, nothing more delicate, nothing more calculated to make strong and just the natures cradled and nourished within it. Those who have never experienced such a beneficent influence will not understand wherefore the tear springs glistening to the eyelids at some strange breath in lovely music. The mystic chords which bind and thrill the heart of the nation, they will never know. Hurstwood’s residence could scarcely be said to be infused with this home spirit. It lacked that toleration and regard without which the home is nothing. There was fine furniture, arranged as soothingly as the artistic perception of the occupants warranted. There were soft rugs, rich, upholstered chairs and divans, a grand piano, a marble carving of some unknown Venus by some unknown artist, and a number of small bronzes gathered from heaven knows where, but generally sold by the large furniture houses along with everything else which goes to make the “perfectly appointed house.
”
”
Theodore Dreiser (Delphi Collected Works of Theodore Dreiser (Illustrated) (Delphi Series Eight Book 25))
“
He just wanted a walk- and a few books. It had been an age since he'd even had free time to read, let alone do so for pleasure.
But there she was.
His mate.
She was nothing like Jesminda.
Jesminda had been all laughter and mischief, too wild and free to be contained by the country life that she'd been born into. She had teased him, taunted him- seduced him so thoroughly that he hadn't wanted anything but her. She'd seen him not as a High Lord's seventh son, but as a male. Had loved him without question, without hesitation. She had chosen him.
Elain had been... thrown at him.
He glanced toward the tea service spread on a low-lying table nearby. 'I'm going to assume that one of those cups belongs to your sister.' Indeed, there was a discarded book in the viper's usual chair. Cauldron help the male who wound up shackled to her.
'Do you mind if I held myself to the other?'
He tried to sound casual- comfortable. Even as his heart raced and raced, so swift he thought he might vomit on the very expensive, very old carpet. From Sangravah, if the patterns and rich dyes were any indication.
Rhysand was many things, but he certainly had good taste.
The entire place had been decorated with thought and elegance, with a penchant for comfort over stuffiness.
He didn't want to admit he liked it. Didn't want to admit he found the city beautiful.
That the circle of people who now claimed to be Feyre's new family... It was what, long ago, he'd once thought life at Tamlin's court would be.
An ache like a blow to the chest went through him, but he crossed the rug. Forced his hands to be steady while he poured himself a cup of tea and sat in the chair opposite Nesta's vacated one.
'There's a plate of biscuits. Would you like one?'
He didn't expect her to answer, and he gave himself all of one more minute before he'd rise from this chair and leave, hopefully avoiding Nesta's return.
But sunlight on gold caught his eye- and Elain slowly turned from her vigil at the window.
He had not seen her entire face since that day in Hybern.
Then, it had been drawn and terrified, then utterly blank and numb, her hair plastered to her head, her lips blue with cold and shock.
Looking at her now...
She was pale, yes. The vacancy still glazing her features.
But he couldn't breathe as she faced him fully.
She was the most beautiful female he'd ever seen.
Betrayal, queasy and oily, slid through his veins. He'd said the same to Jesminda once.
But even as shame washed through him, the words, the sense chanted, Mine. You are mine, and I am yours. Mate.
”
”
Sarah J. Maas (A Court of Wings and Ruin (A Court of Thorns and Roses, #3))
“
The man with laughing eyes stopped smiling
to say, “Until you speak Arabic,
you will not understand pain.”
Something to do with the back of the head,
an Arab carries sorrow in the back of the head,
that only language cracks, the thrum of stones
weeping, grating hinge on an old metal gate.
“Once you know,” he whispered, “you can
enter the room
whenever you need to. Music you heard
from a distance,
the slapped drum of a stranger’s wedding,
well up inside your skin, inside rain, a thousand
pulsing tongues. You are changed.”
Outside, the snow has finally stopped.
In a land where snow rarely falls,
we had felt our days grow white and still.
I thought pain had no tongue. Or every tongue
at once, supreme translator, sieve. I admit my
shame. To live on the brink of Arabic, tugging
its rich threads without understanding
how to weave the rug…I have no gift.
The sound, but not the sense.
I kept looking over his shoulder for someone else
to talk to, recalling my dying friend
who only scrawled
I can’t write. What good would any grammar
have been
to her then? I touched his arm, held it hard,
which sometimes you don’t do in the Middle East,
and said, I’ll work on it, feeling sad
for his good strict heart, but later in the slick street
hailed a taxi by shouting Pain! and it stopped
in every language and opened its doors.
”
”
Naomi Shihab Nye
“
A train horn blew, but it seemed a little distant, like it was coming from somewhere up ahead. It blew again, louder this time. “There’s another train coming!” shouted Ruby. “We’re going to crash!” “Don’t worry,” said the captain cheerfully. “Vermillion knows what to do.” Matt closed his eyes and waited for impact, but it never came. The train picked up speed, faster and faster. It roared so loud Matt couldn’t even hear his own voice. He covered his ears. The whole train was vibrating violently, and then it lurched forward with such a jolt that the three Hudsons toppled over each other and landed hard on the floor. Ruby gasped. “The floor!” she said. “What the . . . what?” said Corey. Matt looked down. He could hardly believe his eyes. The floor appeared to be melting, morphing from the smooth worn floors of the subway car to cracked and rough wooden planks. A nail head poked at his hand. Matt looked up. All around him the train car was altering, growing, transforming. The walls expanded, and the windows shrank. Lacy curtains unfurled and crawled down the sides of the windows like fast-growing vines. The hard plastic benches of the subway swelled into plush chairs and tables with white tablecloths. The fluorescent lights on the ceiling contracted and then dropped, forming crystal chandeliers. A plush rug sprouted beneath him. It grew through the floor as though it were a carpet of grass pushing through dirt. Matt picked himself up, then helped Corey and Ruby, who had somehow gotten tangled in the rug. It seemed to have grown up and around Ruby’s wrists and ankles, as though it were trying to weave her into itself. Matt and Corey helped free her, and then Ruby yelped as the white rat leaped across their faces and landed on a little table. It pulled a match out of the table drawer with its tail, struck it against the wall, and began lighting lanterns and sconces, then the crystal chandeliers hanging from the ceiling, until the space was well lit once again. It was not at all like the train they had been in before. The subway car no longer looked like a subway at all. Rather, it looked like a very old-fashioned train, but one for rich passengers.
”
”
Liesl Shurtliff (The Mona Lisa Key (Time Castaways #1))
“
Taking a deep breath, Sailor decided to lay himself at her feet. "I was imagining the future and thinking of how if everything went according to plan, I'd have a very successful business with a high turnover."
He made sure his hands were locked behind Ísa's back--just in case she decided to leave him in her dust a fourth time. "And since I'd be rich, I'd be able to buy houses and other nice things for my family."
Ísa frowned. "I don't think your family expects that."
"They don't exactly need my largess either," Sailor muttered. "But in my future fantasy, I'm buying everyone fancy cars and houses. Go with it."
Ísa's lips twitched. "Okay, big spender. What else is fantasy Sailor doing?"
"He's building a ginormous mansion. Swimming pool, tennis court, the works."
"Is he hiring a buff personal masseuse named Sven?"
"Hell no." He glared at her. "The masseuse is a fifty-year-old forner bodybuilder named Helga. Now, can I carry on?"
Pretending to zip up her lips and throw away the key, Ísa made a "go on" motion.
"Future Sailor is also creating a huge walk-in closet for you and filling it with designer shoes and clothes. He's giving you everything your heart desires."
A flicker of darkness in Ísa's gaze, but she didn't interrupt... though her hands went still on his shoulders.
"And there's a tricked-out nursery too," he added. "Plus a private playground for our rug rats."
Throat moving, Ísa said, "How many?" It was a husky question.
"Seven, I think."
"Very funny, mister."
"I'm not done." Sailor was the one who swallowed this time. "And in this fantasy house, future Sailor walks in late for dinner again because of a board meeting, and he has a gorgeous, sexy, brilliant wife and adorable children. But his redhead doesn't look at him the same anymore. And it doesn't matter how many shoes he buys her or how many necklaces he gives her, she's never again going to look at him the way she did before he stomped on her heart.
Ísa's lower lip began to quiver, but she didn't speak.
"I'm so sorry, baby." Sailor cupped her face, made sure she saw the sheer terror he felt at the thought of losing her. "I've been so tied to this idea of becoming a grand success that I forgot what it was all about in the first place--being there for the people I love. Sticking through the good and the bad. Never abandoning them."
Silent tears rolled own Ísa's face.
"But that great plan of mine?" he said, determined not to give himself any easy outs. "It'd have mean abandoning everyone. How can I be there for anyone when all I do is work? When I shove aside all other commitments? When the people I love hesitate to ask for my time because I'm too tired and too busy?"
Using his thumbs, he rubbed away her tears. More splashed onto the backs of his hands, her hurt as hot as acid. "Spitfire, please," he begged, breaking. "I'll let you punch me as many times as you want if you stop crying. With a big red glove. And you can post photos online."
Ísa pressed her lips together, blinked rapidly several times. And pretended to punch him with one fist, the touch a butterfly kiss.
Catching her hand, he pressed his lips to it. "That's more like my Ísa." He wrapped his arms around her again. And then he told her the most important thing. "I realized that I could become a multimillionaire, but it would mean nothing if my redhead didn't look at me the way she does now, if she expected to have to take care of everything alone like she's always done--because her man was a selfish bastard who was never there."
Ísa rubbed her nose against his. "You're being very hard on future Sailor," she whispered, her voice gone throaty.
"That dumbass deserves it," Sailor growled. "He was going to put his desire to be a big man above his amazing, smart, loving redhead.
”
”
Nalini Singh (Cherish Hard (Hard Play, #1))
“
Here is one of life’s little shortcuts: If someone is meeting you in their “study,” they have money. Normal people have a home office or a family room or maybe a man cave. Rich people have studies. This one was particularly opulent, loaded up with leather-bound books and wooden globes and Oriental rugs. It looked like someplace Bruce Wayne would hang out before heading down to the Batcave. Larry
”
”
Harlan Coben (The Stranger)
“
We find ourselves rich in goods, but rugged in spirit; reaching with magnificent precision for the moon, but falling into raucous discord on earth
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Watson Omulokoli (Life Face to Face)
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When we reached his door, he went inside, leaving it open for me to follow. I stepped across the threshold and closed out the hall, then surveyed what lay before me: a lavish main room much like mine in Hytanica, with a fireplace; a rich, comfortable sofa upon which Narian settled; several armchairs; a carved wooden table scattered with papers; and two bookshelves stocked with volumes. Heavy drapes covered one wall, and when I crossed the thick rug that blanketed the floor to push the fabric aside, I learned the reason--they hid a set of large windows. I turned around and saw that an expansive mural covered the wall above and to the sides of the door. It combined horses, a sunrise and sunset, stars in a deep blue sky, noblewomen and men, creatures of myth and a Cokyrian flag into a single stunning piece of artwork. Intricate tapestries were common in Hytanica, but I had never seen anything approaching the beauty of this painting before.
Narian was content to let me explore, so I approached the table, skimming the papers atop it, which ranged from correspondence and scrawled notes to maps and battle strategies. Spying his bedroom beyond, which was open to the main room but secluded by a wall, I glanced at him for approval, and went inside upon his nod. His bed was built into a corner, on a raised platform, permitting access from only one side by what appeared to be a climbing net. Practical for a military man--and fun for a child.
He followed me, stopping in the archway to watch me explore his private space.
“May I?” I asked, crossing to his wardrobe, for I was curious about the style of his attire here in Cokyri, and he again motioned me ahead.
I glanced between Narian and the clothing inside the wardrobe several times, trying to understand the disparity. The Narian I knew dressed practically, ever a soldier, thinking of comfort and of blending into his surroundings. Yet he possessed a collection of rich clothing, the fabrics similar to what I would have expected to find in Steldor’s or my father’s wardrobe, not in his. Mounted on the inside of one of the doors were dress swords, and on the other, shelves that held jewels far more valuable than anything we had in Hytanica.
“Narian, this is…” I started, then shook my head in wonder.
“Ridiculous, I know.” He crossed to his bed and leaned against the netting.
“No!” I exclaimed. “It’s unbelievably beautiful.”
I pointed to an exquisite ruby ring and flashed him a smile. “This could have been my betrothal ring.
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Cayla Kluver (Sacrifice (Legacy, #3))
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She understood that becoming a nun was a lifetime commitment. Testing her daughter’s resolve was wise. The Koehler family together, 1923 First Homes As an adult, I visited Rosie’s first home at 83 Beals Street in Brookline, Massachusetts, to get a sense of her early life and that of her famous family. The compact Victorian residence stands three stories tall on a small lot in the Boston suburb. It was easy to picture the young Kennedy children playing in the back yard. Rose Kennedy wrote in Times to Remember, her 1974 autobiography: “It was a nice old wooden-frame house with clapboard siding; seven rooms, plus two small ones in the converted attic, all on a small lot with a few bushes and trees . . . about twenty-five minutes from the center of the city by trolley.” 5 The family home on Beals Street is now the John Fitzgerald Kennedy National Historic Site, run by the National Park Service. From the deep browns and reds of the rugs on the hardwood floors to the homey couch and chairs, the home felt warm and comfortable to me. I suppressed a desire to kick off my sandals and flop on the sofa. The Kennedys’ house on Beals Street, Rosie’s first home But my perspective as a child would have triggered a different impression. I would have whispered to my mother, “They’re rich!” (I’ve since discovered that money isn’t the only measure of wealth. There’s wealth in memories, too.) A lovely grand piano occupies one corner of the Kennedys’ old living room. It was a wedding gift to Rose Kennedy from her uncles, and she delighted in playing her favorite song, “Sweet Adeline,” on it. Although her children took piano lessons, Mrs. Kennedy lamented that her own passion never ignited a similar spark in any of her daughters. She did often ask Rosemary to perform, however. I see an image of Rosemary declaring she couldn’t, her hands stretching awkwardly across the keys. But her mother encouraged Rosie to practice, confident she’d
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Elizabeth Koehler-Pentacoff (The Missing Kennedy: Rosemary Kennedy and the Secret Bonds of Four Women)
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Party guests, the very rich and their friends, had broken off into special little subcommittees of twos and threes. I saw a couple kissing on a Persian rug next to a coffee table full of red plastic cups, having reached a moment of perfect invisibility. Nobody cared that they were there. The party had reached the point at which the rules weren’t in effect anymore.
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Joe Schreiber (Au Revoir, Crazy European Chick (Perry & Gobi, #1))
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The long mahogany table was piled with riches: golden cups, statuettes, and platters sat amongst chests filled with jewellery that glittered even in the muted light of the captain’s quarters. “I was just pickin’ out the things I thought ye’d like. Ye know… for yer fancy meals and, ah… things.” The first mate held a heavily ornamented spoon aloft, the smile on his rugged face enthusiastic.
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Bey Deckard (Sacrificed: Heart Beyond the Spires (Baal's Heart, #2))
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My palms began sweating as I took in the enormous, opulent study. Tomes lined each wall like the soldiers of a silent army, and couches, desks, and rich rugs were scattered throughout the room.
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Sarah J. Maas (A Court of Thorns and Roses (A Court of Thorns and Roses, #1))
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If you value your balls and your life, you will hand that back over right now.” His dark eyes widened and a smile lit up his rugged face. “And I say you’ll wait for it.” Without warning, I lunged for him, being careful not to land in the actual food sitting in between us. Taylor flew back until he was lying on the ground, and he stretched his arms way above his head to keep the container away from me. But I’d landed on him, which meant I had the advantage here. And that cheesecake was mine. I started crawling over him, but he just laughed and brought one of his arms down to restrain me. “Since when are you impatient?” “Since you brought cheesecake, damn it!” If he didn’t release me soon, I was about to go full baby-mode and start making grabby hands toward the dessert; maybe I’d even cry. “Please!” His rich laugh filled the room, and he barely grunted when I punched him in the side. I managed to wiggle my way a few more inches up his body and didn’t even notice his laughing had stopped; because at the same time, the arm around me stopped restraining me, and just simply held me. Which meant I could make another grab for it. I dug my knees into the concrete floor and pushed myself closer, and nearly cried in victory when my hand grabbed the cheesecake right out of the container and brought it to my mouth. I took a huge bite out of it and moaned before rolling off Taylor. Not caring to go back to my mattress, I stayed there, on my back, and finished my cheesecake. It was so fucking delicious I wanted to cry. Turning my head to the side, I smiled at Taylor, but the smile slid from my face when I noticed him watching me intently with those dark eyes. “What?” His eyes seemed to focus, and he shook his head and turned it to look at the ceiling. “Nothing, just didn’t know a simple piece of cheesecake would turn you into a crazed fiend looking for their next fix.” “Hmm, next time, Ben and Jerry’s. It’s like water for me.” “Ice cream”—he huffed a laugh and sat up—“got it. Now come back here and eat real food, or are you not hungry anymore?” “Does it matter? I got what I wanted,” I said with a smile. “Yeah, I noticed that,” he said so softly that if I hadn’t been passing him to get back to the mattress, I wouldn’t have heard him. I
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Molly McAdams (Deceiving Lies (Forgiving Lies, #2))
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To make a bathroom feel relaxing and restful, it’s best to choose colors that provide feelings of warmth and comfort. These colors include earth tones ranging from rich chocolate to tan to cream. Accenting with these nurturing colors relaxes us and makes us feel safe. Paint, tile, towels, rugs, shower curtains, and artwork can be used to bring warm colors into the bathroom. Try this:
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Anonymous
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If you can't love me in my rugs, you don't deserve me in my riches
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Bernard Kelvin Clive
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Brigham Young himself had sent my great-great-grandfather, William Jordan Flake, and others down from Utah to colonize the area. Legend has it that after experiencing Arizona’s rugged and unforgiving terrain, some colonizers returned to Utah and told Brigham Young that there was nothing worth settling down there. But Brigham Young had instructed William Jordan to sell everything that he owned—including all of his land holdings in rich Utah bottomland. His exact words were, “Leave nothing to come back to.” And so he did, and he eventually would purchase the valley where Snowflake is today. Shortly thereafter he met up with Erastus Snow, the Mormon apostle who was overseeing the church’s colonization efforts, and they combined their names to give my town its name. My great-great-grandfather was a rancher, and he passed some of the land down to his son, James Madison Flake, and James Madison passed some of it down to my grandfather Virgil Maeser, who passed it down to four of his sons, the eldest of whom is my father, Dean Flake. And that land—the F-Bar Ranch—
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Jeff Flake (Conscience of a Conservative: A Rejection of Destructive Politics and a Return to Principle)
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Now that I was rich I worried a lot more than I had [ before ] .... Or let's say I didn't worry more, but that I worried harder, because all my life I'd wanted to live lazily and glossily, and now I had it and didn't want it taken away from me. Before I became rich it was only a matter of hanging onto life, a good, rugged, animalistic, instinctive thing that kept me hard and on my toes. This was different, this petulant, craven business of sweating over my wealth, and over what it was doing ...
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Elliott Chaze (Black Wings Has My Angel)
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His features are precise, a five-o’clock shadow darkening his skin. Thick brown hair falls in waves across his forehead—the kind any woman would want to run her hands through. Broad shoulders and an expensive suit. He looks ruggedly wealthy, as opposed to polished rich, which strikes me as an important distinction.
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Olivia Hayle (Billion Dollar Enemy (Seattle Billionaires, #1))
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In the late afternoon he was standing by a tent run by a trapper-merchant from Oregon, an Englishman named Haversham, the only man at the rendezvous in European dress, and Haversham asked, “Care for a cup of tea?” It had been a long time since McKeag had drunk tea and he said, “Don’t mind if I do.” The Englishman had two china cups and a small porcelain pot. Washing the cups with steaming water, he took down a square brown tin, opened the top carefully and placed a small portion of leaves in the pot. To McKeag they bore no visible difference from the tea leaves his mother had used, but when Haversham poured him a cup and he took his first sip, an aroma unlike any he had ever known greeted him. He sniffed it several times, then took a deep taste of the hot tea. It was better than anything he had previously tasted, better even than whiskey. What did it taste like? Well, at first it was tarry, as if the person making the tea had infused by mistake some stray ends of well-tarred rope. But it was penetrating too, and a wee bit salty, and very rich and lingering. McKeag noticed that its taste dwelled in the mouth long after that of an ordinary tea. It was a man’s tea, deep and subtle and blended in some rugged place. “What is it?” he asked. Haversham pointed to the brown canister, and McKeag said, “I can’t read.” Haversham indicated the lettering and the scene of tea-pickers in India. “Lapsang souchong,” he said. “Best tea in the world.” Impulsively McKeag asked, “You have some for sale?” “Of course. We’re the agents.” It was a tea, Haversham explained, blended in India especially for men who had known the sea. It was cured in a unique way which the makers kept secret. “But smoke and tar must obviously play a part,” he said. It came normally from India to London, but the English traders in Oregon imported theirs from China. “How long would a can like that last?” McKeag asked, cautiously again. “It’ll keep forever … with the top on.” “I mean, how many cups?” “I use it sparingly. It would last me a year.” “I’ll take two cans,” McKeag said, without asking the price. It was expensive, and as he tucked his small supply of coins back into his belt, Haversham explained, “The secret in making good lapsang souchong lies in heating the cup first. Heat it well. Then the flavor expands.” McKeag hid the canisters at the bottom of his gear, for he knew they were precious.
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James A. Michener (Centennial)
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But the reengineering was helped along because the masterminds of the economic right brilliantly used the madly proliferating nostalgia. By dressing up their mean new rich-get-richer system in old-time patriotic drag. By portraying low taxes on the rich and unregulated business and weak unions and a weak federal government as the only ways back to some kind of rugged, frontiersy, stronger, better America. And by choosing as their front man a winsome 1950s actor in a cowboy hat, the very embodiment of a certain flavor of American nostalgia
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Kurt Andersen (Evil Geniuses: The Unmaking of America)
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Backlash theorists, as we shall see, imagine countless conspiracies in which the wealthy, powerful, and well connected—the liberal media, the atheistic scientists, the obnoxious eastern elite—pull the strings and make the puppets dance. And yet the backlash itself has been a political trap so devastating to the interests of Middle America that even the most diabolical of stringpullers would have had trouble dreaming it up. Here, after all, is a rebellion against “the establishment” that has wound up cutting the tax on inherited estates. Here is a movement whose response to the power structure is to make the rich even richer; whose answer to the inexorable degradation of working-class life is to lash out angrily at labor unions and liberal workplace-safety programs; whose solution to the rise of ignorance in America is to pull the rug out from under public education.
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Thomas Frank (What's the Matter With Kansas?: How Conservatives Won the Heart of America)
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KEEP IT SIMPLE Offering to close a story loop is much more simple than you think. Even the inclusion of smiley, happy people on your website is a strong way to offer the closing of a story loop. People want to be happy, and those images promise your product will deliver. If you sell rugs, a successful resolution might be a beautiful floor or a room that finally feels finished. If you sell ice cream, a successful resolution might be a rich, creamy taste of heaven. Camping gear? An adventure to remember. While I’ve been slightly philosophical in this chapter, try not to overthink it. What problem are you resolving in your customer’s life, and what does that resolution look like? Stick to basic answers because basic answers really do work. Then, when you get good, start diving deeper into the levels of problems your brand resolves. The important idea in this section is that we need to show repeatedly how our product or service can make somebody’s life better. If we don’t tell people where we’re taking them, they won’t follow. A story has to go somewhere. Have you told your customers where you want to take them?
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Donald Miller (Building a StoryBrand: Clarify Your Message So Customers Will Listen)
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Tomes lined each wall like the soldiers of a silent army, and couches, desks, and rich rugs were scattered throughout the room.
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Sarah J. Maas (A Court of Thorns and Roses (A Court of Thorns and Roses, #1))
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We moved to Eugene, Oregon, a small college town in the Pacific Northwest. The city sits near the source of the Willamette River, which stretches 150 miles north, from the Calapooya Mountains outside of town to its mouth on the Columbia. Carving its way between mountains, the Cascade Range to the east and the Oregon Coast Range to the west, the river defines a fertile valley where tens of thousands of years ago a series of ice age floods surged southwest from Lake Missoula, traveling over eastern Washington and bringing with their floodwaters rich soil and volcanic rock that now shore up the layers of its earth, alluvial plains fit for a vast variety of agriculture. The town itself is coated in green, hugging the banks of the river and spreading out up into the rugged hills and pine forests of central Oregon. The seasons are mild, drizzly, and gray for most of the year but give way to a lush, unspoiled summer. It rains incessantly and yet I never knew an Oregonian to carry an umbrella. Eugenians are proud of the regional bounty and were passionate about incorporating local, seasonal, and organic ingredients well before it was back in vogue. Anglers are kept busy in fresh waters, fishing for wild chinook salmon in the spring and steelhead in the summer, and sweet Dungeness crab is abundant in the estuaries year-round. Local farmers gather every Saturday downtown to sell homegrown organic produce and honey, foraged mushrooms, and wild berries. The general demographic is of hippies who protest Whole Foods in favor of local co-ops, wear Birkenstocks, weave hair wraps to sell at outdoor markets, and make their own nut butter. They are men with birth names like Herb and River and women called Forest and Aurora.
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Michelle Zauner (Crying in H Mart)
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When there is massive unemployment in the black community, it’s called a social problem. But when there is massive unemployment in the white community, it’s called a depression. With the black man, it’s “welfare,” with the whites it’s “subsidies.” This country has socialism for the rich, rugged individualism for the poor. Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.[1
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Victor Ray (On Critical Race Theory: Why It Matters & Why You Should Care)
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Here, after all, is a rebellion against “the establishment” that has wound up cutting the tax on inherited estates. Here is a movement whose response to the power structure is to make the rich even richer; whose answer to the inexorable degradation of working-class life is to lash out angrily at labor unions and liberal workplace-safety programs; whose solution to the rise of ignorance in America is to pull the rug out from under public education.
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Thomas Frank (What's the Matter With Kansas?: How Conservatives Won the Heart of America)
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Second, there is the attempt by some to justify the rise of the prisons by claiming, “well, we have to do something about those people who fail to act ‘responsibly,’ who, for whatever reason, are ‘disruptive and violent’.” As I consider this kind of response, let us recall that the most “disruptive and violent” in our society are actually the architects of U.S. war and of carceral state terror. Their acts are usually accepted, assumed by public ideologies to be innocent. Moreover, the violations by the rich, as distinct from those by the poor, are often swept under the rug, routinely treated with less harshness, if punished at all. One major example of this is the fact that the most widespread use and distribution of drugs is by whites, even though black and Latinos are punished more for drug use at strikingly higher rates.
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Mark Lewis Taylor (The Executed God: The Way of the Cross in Lockdown America, 2nd Edition)
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Most well-to-do homes in Pakistan have a lot of mod-cons, ornate ashtrays, excellent crystal, expensive crockery, beautiful rugs, hideous paintings, ornate lamps but no books. I do not mean the obligatory Encyclopedia Brittannica - in a bookshelf provided by the publishers -- but ordinary, real books. When I mentioned this, casually, in a speech delivered in Saginaw, Michigan, I drew a silent round of applause. The Americans who came to talk to me afterwards said that I had drawn an apt picture of many rich American homes.
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Zia Mohyeddin (A Carrot is a Carrot (Memoirs & Reflections))
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Jumping from Opportunity to Opportunity is going to be a wild ride - There is nothing as volatile as the Crypto market. As a new investor, you need strategies NOT get-rich-quick schemes. Aside from watching out for RUG PULLS, you should Dollar Cost Average and buy Bitcoin — this means resisting any temptation to get into short-term hype and lose your hard earned money. In Bitcoin, a passive long play investment has a better chance of succeeding than an active trading company.
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Najah Roberts
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What did you get?” “I didn’t know what you like, so I got a mix of random things from this Japanese fusion place on Seamless.” My brows flew up after entering the living room. He’d done more than order random things. His industrial kingdom had been tidied so there was nothing but dark leather furniture, a rich burgundy rug, and wood that gleamed under golden lamplight. His coffee table—which had once been a massive brushed metal steamer trunk—was laden with containers of sushi, rice, teriyaki dishes, and various sides. He’d also laid out plates and a bottle of sake.
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Santino Hassell (First and First (Five Boroughs, #3))
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Rich people are a weird bunch. As if we can do something like what basically amounts to an exorcism without getting the rug dirty.
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Kay Solo (Moon and Flame)