Scrap Metal Quotes

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

Grover wore his fake feet and his pants to pass as human. He wore a green rasta-style cap, because when it rained his curly hair flattened and you could just see the tips of his horns. His bright orange backpack was full of scrap metal and apples to snack on. In his pocket was a set of reed pipes his daddy goat had carved for him, even though he only knew two songs: Mozart's Piano Concerto no. 12 and Hilary Duff's "So Yesterday," both of which sounded pretty bad on reed pipes.
Rick Riordan (The Lightning Thief (Percy Jackson and the Olympians, #1))
Our defeat was always implicit in the victory of others; our wealth has always generated our poverty by nourishing the prosperity of others - the empires and their native overseers. In the colonial and neocolonial alchemy, gold changes into scrap metal and food into poison.
Eduardo Galeano (Open Veins of Latin America: Five Centuries of the Pillage of a Continent)
Rowww!” Bast wailed. The wrecking ball rolled straight over her, but she didn’t appear hurt. She leaped off and pounced aain. Her knives sliced through the metal like wet clay. Within seconds, the wrecking ball was reduced to a mound of scraps. Bast sheathed her blades. “Safe now.” “You saved us from a metal ball,” Sadie said. “You never know,” Bast said. “It could’ve been hostile.
Rick Riordan (The Red Pyramid (The Kane Chronicles, #1))
It's like the people and places I love are nuts and bolts keeping me upright; without them, I'm just scrap metal.
Tahereh Mafi (Reveal Me (Shatter Me, #5.5))
By now you know: I come from another planet. But I will never say to you, "Take me to your leaders." Even I--unused to your ways though I am--would never make that mistake. We ourselves have such beings among us, made of cogs, pieces of paper, small disks of shiny metal, scraps of coloured cloth. I do not need to encounter more of them. Instead I will say, "Take me to your trees. Take me to your breakfasts, your sunsets, your bad dreams, your shoes, your nouns. Take me to your fingers; take me to your deaths." These are worth it. These are what I have come for.
Margaret Atwood (Good Bones)
Maybe we walked past each other in the crowd.” “No.” “Why not?” “Because I wouldn’t have walked past you.
Harper Fox (Scrap Metal)
You know how it is with ex-lovers—you like to look as if you’re doing okay. Just ordinary pride, not at all a desire to shove down their throats what they’re missing…
Harper Fox (Scrap Metal)
I looked around me to make sure it was clear. That's when I noticed the still, white figure. Edward Cullen was leaning against the front door of the Volvo, three cars down from me, and staring intently in my direction. I swiftly looked away and threw the truck into reverse, almost hitting a rusty Toyota Corolla in my haste. Lucky for the Toyota, I stomped on the brake in time. It was just the sort of car that my truck would make scrap metal of. I took a deep breath, still looking out the other side of my car, and cautiously pulled out again, with greater success. I stared straight ahead as I passed the Volvo, but from a peripheral peek, I would swear I saw him laughing.
Stephenie Meyer (Twilight (The Twilight Saga, #1))
I don't know what's wrong with me tonight. I feel off, unbalanced. Aching for something. I'm losing sight of my purpose, my sense of direction. I always tell myself that I'm fighting every day for hope, for the salvation of humanity, but every time I survive only to return to yet more loss and devastation, something comes loose inside of me. It's like the people and places I love are the nuts and bolts keeping me upright; without them, I'm just scrap metal.
Tahereh Mafi (Reveal Me (Shatter Me, #5.5))
My sister compares her body to a junkyard and I find bits of scrap metal beneath her bed from boys who bury promises in her belly. Maybe love ruins you a little bit. Maybe we don’t care. We are so young to hate everything so much. Can recite the periodic table from memory but still can’t quite believe it when they say that they love us, too.
Kristina Haynes
I’m not some kind of…hallowed ground, you know,” I whispered. “Not something special, or sacred, or—” “You are to me. Oh, God, Nichol, you are to me.
Harper Fox (Scrap Metal)
The mug was so warm, and my hands so cold, that it didn't feel as if we belonged in the same universe.
Harper Fox (Scrap Metal)
By now you must have guessed: I come from another planet. But I will never say to you, Take me to your leaders. Even I - unused to your ways though I am - would never make that mistake. We ourselves have such beings among us, made of cogs, pieces of paper, small disks of shiny metal, scraps of coloured cloth. I do not need to encounter more of them. Instead I will say, Take me to your trees. Take me to your breakfasts, your sunsets, your bad dreams, your shoes, your nouns. Take me to your fingers; take me to your deaths. These are worth it. These are what I have come for.
Margaret Atwood (Good Bones and Simple Murders)
Maybe I was being stupid, but an old faith was stirring inside me, a willingness to lean on the tides of the universe instead of swimming desperately against them.
Harper Fox (Scrap Metal)
the abandoned traffic lights stare at us like empty eye sockets. Fields have gone to weed. There’s a little town of houses that have been haphazardly repaired by boards and scraps of metal.
Lauren DeStefano (Sever (The Chemical Garden, #3))
Positive attitude enables you to go with passion and see possibility in every challenging circumstance. It was by that, that great achievers picked up metal scraps on the floor and saw machines built from it.
Israelmore Ayivor (Michelangelo | Beethoven | Shakespeare: 15 Things Common to Great Achievers)
Maybe that’s as good as it gets.” “Shit. I wish it had been better.” “Maybe it will be. We just live our lives, good ones. Pay that way.” He leaned into me and sobbed. “Nic, I love you. You saved my fucking soul.
Harper Fox (Scrap Metal)
There is freedom there; there is always freedom in the past. The self you left behind lives in endless possibility. The older you get, the bigger and wilder the past becomes, a place that can never again be tended and which is therefore prone to that loveliness that happens on wastelands and wildernesses, where grass has grown over scrap metal and wheat has sprung up in cracks between concrete and there is no regular shape for the light to fall flat on, so it vaults and multiplies and you want to go there. You want to go there like you want to go to a lover.
Samantha Harvey (Dear Thief)
A stretch of time when I was rewarded with so many mystic moments, a chunk of red chalk, a chestnut, a rusted piece of scrap metal, a nail, a flat stone shaped like an ancient tablet. Although suggesting little of the magnificent work I had seen, these objects helped inspire my newfound contentedness. I placed them with the same care as a police detective into a clean plastic bag. Evidence of an awareness of the relative value of insignificant things.
Patti Smith (Year of the Monkey)
He was the heart of my world, my gravity, my sun. My life before him was a dream from which I’d joyously awoken. He turned this dusty cell into a prince’s chamber, hung it with satin and silks. I loved him.
Harper Fox (Scrap Metal)
We live in hope that the good we do here on earth will be rewarded in heaven. We also hope to win the war. We hope that right and goodness will triumph, and that when the war is won, we shall have a better world. And we work toward that end. We buy war bonds and put out incendiaries and knit stockings---" And pumpkin-colored scarves, Polly thought. "---and volunteer to take in evacuated children and work in hospitals and drive ambulances" - here Alf grinned and nudged Eileen sharply in the ribs - "and man anti-aircraft guns. We join the Home Guard and the ATS and the Civil Defence, but we cannot know whether the scrap metal we collect, the letter we write to a solider, the vegetables we grow, will turn out in the end to have helped win the war or not. We act in faith. "But the vital thing is that we act. We do not rely on hope alone, thought hope is our bulwark, our light through dark days and darker nights. We also work, and fight, and endure, and it does not matter whether the part we play is large or small. The reason that God marks the fall of the sparrow is that he knows that it is as important to the world as the bulldog or the wolf. We all, all must do 'our bit'. For it is through our deeds that the war will be won, through our kindness and devotion and courage that we make that better world for which we long.
Connie Willis (All Clear (All Clear, #2))
On first glance the yard was piled high with scrap metal, but a closer inspection revealed it to be the place where new life was given to old things.
Mandy Morton (The No. 2 Feline Detective Agency (A Hettie Bagshot Mystery: Center Point Large Print, 1))
Sometimes I feel like going down to the recycling plant. Turning myself in, jumping into the inferno, getting melted down, coming out again as someone else. Scrap metal man.
Henry Rollins (The First Five: "High Adventure in the Great Outdoors", "Pissing in the Gene Pool", "Art to Choke Hearts", "Bang!", "One from None" (Henry Rollins))
So even if you got it loaded it could not be anything more than a study in still-life until you took the jacks away, and then the scrap metal wouldn't be funny.
Paul Brickhill (The Dam Busters)
It’s like the people and places I love are the nuts and bolts keeping me upright; without them, I’m just scrap metal.
Tahereh Mafi (Reveal Me (Shatter Me, #5.5))
While most science moves in a sort of curve, being constantly corrected by new evidence, this science flies off into space in a straight line uncorrected by anything. But the habit of forming conclusions, as they can really be formed in more fruitful fields, is so fixed in the scientific mind that it cannot resist talking like this. It talks about the idea suggested by one scrap of bone as if it were something like the aeroplane which is constructed at last out of whole scrapheaps of scraps of metal. The trouble with the professor of the prehistoric is that he cannot scrap his scrap. The marvellous and triumphant aeroplane is made out of a hundred mistakes. The student of origins can only make one mistake and stick to it.
G.K. Chesterton (The Everlasting Man)
She smiled, lifted her arm, and tugged on a couple of his pain-in-the-ass curls, her expression tender enough to bring him back to cold reality. He was an ex-cop. She was the president’s daughter. He was scrap metal. She was pure gold. Beyond all that, he had a dead zone a mile wide inside him, while she bubbled with life. “Lucy …” “Oh lord …” She rolled her eyes and flopped to her back. “Here we go. The speech.” She deepened her voice in exaggerated imitation of him. “Before this goes any further, Lucy, I need to make sure you don’t get the wrong idea. I’m a cowboy, wild and free. No little filly can ever tame a man like me.” She sneered. “As if I’d want to.
Susan Elizabeth Phillips (The Great Escape (Wynette, Texas, #7))
Tears comes to my eyes when I think about some of God's people I have had the privilege to meet in the past few years. These are people with families, with dreams, people who are made in God's image as much as you and I are. And these people are suffering. Many of them are sick, some even dying, as they live out their lives in dwellings that we would not consider good enough for our household pets. I am not exaggerating. Much of their daily hardship and suffering could be relieved with access to food, clean water, clothing, adequate shelter, or basic medical attention. I believe that God wants His people, His church, to meet these needs. The Scriptures are filled with commands and references about caring for the poor and for those who cannot help themselves. The crazy part about God's heart is that He doesn't just ask us to give; He desires that we love those in need as much as we love ourselves. That is the core of the second greatest command, to 'love your neighbor as yourself' (Matthew 22:39). He is asking that you love as you would want to be loved if it were your child who was blind from drinking contaminated water; to love the way you would want to be loved if you were the homeless woman sitting outside the cafe; to love as though it were your family living in the shack slapped together from cardboard and scrap metal...
Francis Chan (Crazy Love: Overwhelmed by a Relentless God)
My cheeks are hot when he stalks right up to me, eyes narrowed. Pinched between his bloody fingers is a piece of scrap metal laced with seilgflùr from the blunderbuss—a shot that would have killed any other faery. “Really?” he says. “You were traipsing around in a low-visibility field while enemy fae are afoot,” I say defensively, hoping he can’t tell I’m blushing. “What is wrong with you?” Aithinne snickers and Kiaran casts her a sharp glance. “It’s not funny.” His sister tries to hold back a laugh, but doesn’t quite succeed. “I’m sorry,” she says. “But you just . . . I’ve never seen you look like such a complete mess.” Kiaran studies her with a narrowed gaze. “And both of you look like you’ve gone three rounds with a roving band of feral cats. I’d say we’re even.” “Even? Oh, please.” Aithinne ticks off each finger. “Thus far the Falconer and I escaped through a forest of spiked trees, fought off the mara, fled from Lonnrach’s soldiers, and defeated two mortair. You were shot by accident with some weapon composed of a wooden stick with a barrel on the end—” “A blunderbuss,” I correct helpfully. Kiaran gives me a pointed look that says, Whose side are you on? “—so I’d say I win this round.” She finishes with the sort of arrogant grin that makes it very clear that this must be an ongoing competition. Sibling rivalry, it seems, is not just for humans. If Kiaran’s glare is any indication, he’s contemplating about fifty different ways of killing his own sister. “Just remember,” I whisper to him, “murder is frowned upon in most societies.” “Not mine,” Kiaran says shortly. “She’s lucky I love her.
Elizabeth May (The Vanishing Throne (The Falconer, #2))
If I'm in this war, too, then I should be upset. You know I'm not the type to think collecting bacon grease and scrap metal will keep anyone from dying. How about you give me the words so you don't have to hold them in? It's the least I can do.
Suzanne Hayes (I'll Be Seeing You (I'll Be Seeing You, #1))
The men digging in on both sides of me cursed the stench and the mud. I began moving the heavy, sticky clay mud with my entrenching shovel to shape out the extent of the foxhole before digging deeper. Each shovelful had to be knocked off the spade, because it stuck like glue. I was thoroughly exhausted and thought my strength wouldn’t last from one sticky shovelful to the next. Kneeling on the mud, I had dug the hole no more than six or eight inches deep when the odor of rotting flesh got worse. There was nothing to do but continue to dig, so I closed up my mouth and inhaled with short shallow breaths. Another spadeful of soil out of the hole released a mass of wriggling maggots that came welling up as though those beneath were pushing them out. I cursed and told the NCO as he came by what a mess I was digging into. ‘You heard him, he said put the holes five yards apart.’ In disgust, I drove the spade into the soil, scooped out the insects, and threw them down the front of the ridge. The next stroke of the spade unearthed buttons and scraps of cloth from a Japanese army jacket in the mud—and another mass of maggots. I kept on doggedly. With the next thrust, metal hit the breastbone of a rotting Japanese corpse. I gazed down in horror and disbelief as the metal scraped a clean track through the mud along the dirty whitish bone and cartilage with ribs attached. The shoved skidded into the rotting abdomen with a squishing sound. The odor nearly overwhelmed me as I rocked back on my heels. I began choking and gagging as I yelled in desperation, ‘I can’t dig in here! There’s a dead Nip here!’ The NCO came over, looked down at my problem and at me, and growled, ‘You heard him; he said put the holes five yards apart.
Eugene B. Sledge (With the Old Breed: At Peleliu and Okinawa)
He folded into my arms. I buried my face in his hair, and I listened to the sounds of midsummer on my island. Gorse pods were crackling in the sun. When the wind shifted, I could hear the voice of the sea, woven through always with birdsong and mermaids.
Harper Fox (Scrap Metal)
Suddenly your whole life is like a car crash, no brakes, gaining momentum, piling up behind you. Your mistakes, missed opportunities, all the time you’ve wasted, a twisted, rusting heap of scrap metal that can’t be salvaged. Overwhelming you. Crushing you.
Debbie Howells (The Beauty of the End)
It had changed to hate. The hate that she prayed for Jesus to take away. But it was also part of what had kept her going so how could she do without it now? That kind of hate is a species of animated scrap metal. Rusting, corroding inside, leaching into the vital organs.
Ann-Marie MacDonald (Fall on Your Knees)
He hired me on the spot for forty dollars a week, in cash. I was thrilled. It was my first real job. Babysitting and tutoring and doing other kids' homework and mowing lawns and redeeming bottles and selling scrap metal didn't count. Forty dollars a week was serious money.
Jeannette Walls (The Glass Castle)
Celaena drew the sword from her belt. If only she had a blade like Ansel’s, not some bit of scrap metal. It shook in her hands as she realized who, exactly, stood between her and the Master. Not some nameless soldier, not some stranger, or a person she’d been hired to kill. But Ansel.
Sarah J. Maas (The Assassin's Blade (Throne of Glass, #0.1-0.5))
He has been standing there, motionless, in the press for 3.2 minutes when the smart door announces: “Peter, you have a customer.” Then the door adds in a whisper: “Peter, please come out of the scrap-metal press. One of my anonymous surveys has shown that 81.92 percent of all your customers find this behavior disturbing.
Marc-Uwe Kling (QualityLand (QualityLand, #1))
I don't know if it's a forever deal, a sheep farm in the middle of nowhere. But I want to try, for Harry's sake. And I love it all when you're here. It's like you made it new for me. You--you are my forever deal." There it was again, that dangerous, beautiful word. In Gaelic, wilder and lovelier still. "A-chaoidh." "Yes, forever, Nic. A-chaoidh.
Harper Fox (Scrap Metal)
The sun was coming out, and steam rose up off every jutting muddy piece of the land, which sparkled in a great show of democracy. A discarded truck bumper shone just like the sandstone, just like a scrap of metallic insulation and the white of yarrow flowers and the flash of blue jays’ wings, a coil of chicken wire, an old license plate half entombed in mud.
Madeline Ffitch (Stay and Fight)
The evening sun catches every bolt and scrap of metal on the train, and for an instant we are suspended in an atmosphere of stars.
Lauren DeStefano (Perfect Ruin (The Internment Chronicles, #1))
My other big mistake was letting it slide when she promised me a cut of her earnings. Because it turns out not many people want to stroll through head-high piles of scrap metal and rusty baby buggies down a path lined with artificial yucca plants to have their fortune told by a chain-smoking butterball in a dirty pink sweat suit. If I had thought about it long and hard enough I could’ve predicted that myself.
Kerry-Lee Powell (Willem De Kooning's Paintbrush)
Heroines usually are the Kingdom of Death's worst nightmares. They're always barging in, waving scraps of metal around, and demanding things. No manners whatsoever." "Excuse you!" said Aru. "What about heroes! I bet they're just as bad as heroines." " It's a compliment! Heroes rarely have the guts to demand things. Usually they just sulk until a magical sidekick feels bad for them and does all the work while they get all the credit.
Roshani Chokshi (Aru Shah and the End of Time: the Graphic Novel)
For three thousand years it had been the concent’s policy to accept any and all folding chairs and collapsible tables made available to it, and never throw one away. On one and only one occasion, this had turned out to be a wise policy: the millennial Apert of 3000, when 27,500 pilgrims had swarmed in through the gates to enjoy a square meal and see the End of the World. We had folding chairs made of bamboo, machined aluminum, aerospace composites, injection-molded poly, salvaged rebar, hand-carved wood, bent twigs, advanced newmatter, tree stumps, lashed sticks, brazed scrap metal, and plaited grass. Tabletops could be made of old-growth lumber, particle board, extruded titanium, recycled paper, plate glass, rattan, or substances on whose true nature I did not wish to speculate. Their lengths ranged from two to twenty-four feet and their weights from that of a dried flower to that of a buffalo.
Neal Stephenson (Anathem)
One day in the spring of 1894 or so, Amanda Cobb looked out her kitchen window and saw Tyrus and a bunch of Negro boys merrily hauling a cart laden with scrap metal, broken furniture, and other things they’d found in backyards and vacant lots around town. They were headed toward the junkyard to try to make a few dollars, and Mrs. Cobb knew for what. “He was always thinking up ways of earning money to buy baseball supplies,” she would tell a writer for the Springfield (Massachusetts) Sunday Union and Republican in 1928. “He was always playing when he was a child. In fact, we had a hard time getting him to go to school. I remember that the first money he earned he spent for a mitt. He couldn’t have been more than six years old when a neighbor asked him to take his cow to the pasture and gave Ty some change for doing it. Ty didn’t buy candy or ice cream. He knew what he wanted, and he got it—a baseball glove.
Charles Leerhsen (Ty Cobb: A Terrible Beauty)
Here they are. Two sets of sneakers on a scrap of metal. Two girls in the middle of a hurricane, tearing down the line. She's looking up at Jane, and Jane's looking down at her, and August feels her everywhere, even the places she's not touching, pressed close as the world roars on.
Casey McQuiston (One Last Stop)
Last summer I picked up a yellow scrap of newspaper and read of a Biloxi election in 1948, and in it I caught the smell of history more pungently than from the metal marker telling of the French and Spanish two hundred years ago and the Yankees one hundred years ago. 1948. What a faroff time.
Walker Percy (The Moviegoer)
The warehouse had rusted iron ribs holding up the roof, and what little light there was inside came from hundreds of tiny bright speckles of sun showing through lacy holes in the siding. It was a big place, close to three hundred feet long, but largely empty, except for unexplained piles of abandoned equipment and scrap metal. The floor was concrete, worn smooth in some places, stained with oil in others, and covered with rusty fragments and pigeon feathers everywhere. The crunch of the tires and the engine noise and the beat of the exhaust came back loud through Chang’s open window.
Lee Child (Make Me (Jack Reacher, #20))
You,—you!” he exclaimed, after a burst of sound that seemed rather like the convulsion of a demoniac, than the mirth, however frantic, of a human being—“you!—oh, there’s metal more attractive! Satan himself, however depraved, has a better taste than to crunch such a withered scrap of orthodoxy as you between his iron teeth. No!
Charles Robert Maturin (Melmoth the Wanderer)
Your job is to spot things that are actually valuable. Newer current motors and engines, intact scrap metal, broken or discarded weapons. Do not cause trouble, and if you see any native observers, be courteous and show them to either me or Commander Noavek, who has just joined us. Welcome, sir.” Vakrez nodded to him, and added, “Remember, the reputation of your sovereign, and of Shotet itself, is at stake here. They see us as barbaric and ignorant. You must behave as if that is not the case.” A few of the soldiers laughed, like they weren’t sure they ought to, since Vakrez wasn’t smiling even a little. Akos wasn’t sure the commander’s face remembered how to do it.
Veronica Roth (Carve the Mark (Carve the Mark, #1))
No surprise, China leads the world in the consumption of steel, copper, aluminum, lead, stainless steel, gold, silver, palladium, zinc, platinum, rare earth compounds, and pretty much anything else labeled “metal.” But China is desperately short of metal resources of its own. For example, in 2012 China produced 5.6 million tons of copper, of which 2.75 million tons was made from scrap. Of that scrap copper, 70 percent was imported, with most coming from the United States. In other words, just under half of China’s copper supply is imported as scrap metal. That’s not a trivial matter: copper, more than any other metal, is essential to modern life. It is the means by which we transmit power and information.
Adam Minter (Junkyard Planet: Travels in the Billion-Dollar Trash Trade)
It was a horse-world, that’s what it was. When I think of him sitting beside me up there on the cart I don’t think of scrap metal, brass, copper, lead, cast-iron. I think of Duke. I think of the life of carters and pedlars. I see him lean forward, elbows on knees, after I’ve taken up the reins, and start to look around him as if he hadn’t noticed the world passing by. I see him scratch his neck and reset his cap. I see him light up a snout, dicky chest or no dicky chest, and breathe out the first drag, bottom lip jutting, then rub his chin with the tip of his thumb, cigarette between his fingers, then run the ball of his thumb across his forehead, and I know I do all those things, without helping it, the same gestures, the same motions.
Graham Swift (Last Orders)
Paris-Plage: the operation would be perfect if an oil slick drifted in to pollute this pretty little beach. Then the illusion would be total: the beach attendants would be transformed into ecological clean-up agents; they would have stopped sunbathing stupid. WTC: no trace of the bodies of the 3,000 victims. It's as though they had been dropped into quicklime. All the images without the sound, silent, vitrified, pellicularized. The scrap metal and the rubble are auctioned off. The event has more or less vanished into thin air. The pope has reached the state of 'martyr', that is to say, of witness: witness to the possibility that the human race can live beyond death. Living experience of brain-death, of spirituality on a life-support system, of automatic piloting of the vital functions in their death throes. A great model for future generations
Jean Baudrillard (Cool Memories V: 2000 - 2004)
I can see it in your eyes. If it weren’t for this I would have stopped trying long ago, to communicate with you in this halfway language which is so difficult for both of us, which exhausts the throat and fills the mouth with sand; if it weren’t for this I would have gone away, gone back. It’s this knowledge of death, which we share, where we overlap. Death is our common ground. Together, on it, we can walk forward. By now you must have guessed: I come from another planet. But I will never say to you, take me to your leaders. Even I – unused to your ways though I am – would never make that mistake. We ourselves have such beings among us, made of cogs, pieces of paper, small disks of shiny metal, scraps of coloured cloth. I do not need to encounter more of them. Instead I will say, take me to your trees. Take me to your breakfasts, your sunsets, your bad dreams, your shoes, your nouns. Take me to your fingers; take me to your deaths. These are worth it. These are what I have come for.
Margaret Atwood (Good Bones and Simple Murders)
THE ANTHEM OF HOPE Tiny footprints in mud, metal scraps among thistles Child who ambles barefooted through humanity’s war An Elderflower in mud, landmines hidden in bristles Blood clings to your feet, your wee hands stiff and sore You who walk among trenches, midst our filth and our gore Box of crayons in hand, your tears tumble like crystals Gentle, scared little boy, at the heel of Hope Valley, The grassy heel of Hope Valley. And the bombs fall-fall-fall Down the slopes of Hope Valley Bayonets cut-cut-cut Through the ranks of Hope Valley Napalm clouds burn-burn-burn All who fight in Hope Valley, All who fall in Hope Valley. Bullets fly past your shoulder, fireflies light the sky Child who digs through the trenches for his long sleeping father You plant a kiss on his forehead, and you whisper goodbye Vain corpses, brave soldiers, offered as cannon fodder Nothing is left but a wall; near its pallor you gather Crayon ready, you draw: the memory of a lie Kind, sad little boy, sketching your dream of Hope Valley Your little dream of Hope Valley. Missiles fly-fly-fly Over the fields of Hope Valley Carabines shoot-shoot-shoot The brave souls of Hope Valley And the tanks shell-shell-shell Those who toiled for Hope Valley, Those who died for Hope Valley. In the light of gunfire, the little child draws the valley Every trench is a creek; every bloodstain a flower No battlefield, but a garden with large fields ripe with barley Ideations of peace in his dark, final hour And so the child drew his future, on the wall of that tower Memories of times past; your tiny village lush alley Great, brave little boy, the future hope of Hope Valley The only hope of Hope Valley. And the grass grows-grows-grows On the knolls of Hope Valley Daffodils bloom-bloom-bloom Across the hills of Hope Valley The midday sun shines-shines-shines On the folk of Hope Valley On the dead of Hope Valley From his Aerodyne fleet The soldier faces the carnage Uttering words to the fallen He commends their great courage Across a wrecked, tower wall A child’s hand limns the valley And this drawing speaks volumes Words of hope, not of bally He wipes his tears and marvels The miracle of Hope Valley The only miracle of Hope Valley And the grass grows-grows-grows Midst all the dead of Hope Valley Daffodils bloom-bloom-bloom For all the dead of Hope Valley The evening sun sets-sets-sets On the miracle of Hope Valley The only miracle of Hope Valley (lyrics to "the Anthem of Hope", a fictional song featured in Louise Blackwick's Neon Science-Fiction novel "5 Stars".
Louise Blackwick (5 Stars)
Zaitsev records in his memoirs one difficult duel he had with a German sniper. While there is no actual proof of the identity of the German sniper, many believe that he was Heinz Thorvald, the head of the Berlin sniper school. Thorvald was also known as Erwin Konig. Zaitsev stated that the German sniper was difficult to find but when two Soviet soldiers were shot in the same area, Zaitsev and his partner Kulikov began searching the area for the German sniper. While searching, Zaitsev spotted a flash of light beneath a scrap of metal. As soon as Zaitsev’s partner, Kulikov placed a helmet on a rod and lifted it up to a window, Konig shot the helmet. Then when Konig peeked out of his hiding spot to determine if the victim was dead, he got a headshot from Zaitsev.
Mark Black (The Battle of Stalingrad: A Very Brief History)
a good story, I’ll give you that. So, how many times have you done this sort of thing?  Send the inbred trash out ahead on the road to spook up unsuspecting travelers and you all hang back, jerking each other off, waiting to ambush anyone that makes it past them?” The wounded man looked away, ignoring Shane’s comments. “Don’t worry kid, I won’t kill ya today. But if I catch you in a lie, or if I find more of your inbred cousins at this camp, I will make the last moments of your life very painful,” Shane said in a calm voice. “Why are you doing this?” Shane feigned laughter and ignored the question. “What’s your name kid?” “Kyle,” he answered. “Kyle, everything I do, I do for her.” “You kill for her?” “No, I protect her and I destroy anything that tries to harm her—” “It’s right up here, follow the white fence,” Kyle interrupted using his neck to point out a quickly approaching high fence skinned in white sheet metal. The fence was tall and set back off the road. Mounds of stacked cars and other junk could be seen piled high at points. Shane slowed the car and carefully eased over to the shoulder of the road. He put the car in park and killed the engine. Shane sat silently for a minute, hushing Kyle when he tried to speak. He opened the door and slowly walked to the front of the car while listening for sounds. He climbed onto the hood and moved to the roof of the sedan. He could just barely see inside the compound. As it appeared from the outside, it was definitely a scrap yard. Piles of sorted metal were scattered around a central building while rows of smashed and stacked cars made up the far sides of the lot. From
W.J. Lundy (Something To Fight For (Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, #5))
A stylus was a metal-tipped drawing instrument widely used by artists before the invention of the pencil (graphite was not discovered until in 1504, and the wooden-cased graphite pencil appeared only in the second half of the seventeenth century). For drawing with a stylus, artists used paper specially coated with a ground made from, among other things, powdered bone. One fifteenth-century recipe recommended incinerated table scraps, such as chicken wings, whose ground-up ashes were sprinkled thinly on the paper or parchment and then brushed off with a hare’s foot.44 With the paper thus prepared, the artist went to work on its granular surface with his stylus, which was usually made from silver and sharpened to a point, and which, as it was drawn across the surface, left particles behind; these traces quickly oxidized, producing delicate lines of silvery gray.
Ross King (Leonardo and the Last Supper)
Open All Night" (originally by Bruce Springsteen) I had the carburetor cleaned and checked With her line blown out, she's hummin' like a turbojet Propped her up in the backyard on concrete blocks For a new clutch plate and a new set of shocks Took her down to the carwash, check the plugs and points I'm goin' out tonight, I'm gonna rock that joint Early north Jersey industrial skyline I'm a all-set cobra jet creepin' through the nighttime Gotta find a gas station, gotta find a payphone This turnpike sure is spooky at night when you're all alone Gotta hit the gas, baby, I'm runnin' late This New Jersey in the mornin' like a lunar landscape The boss don't dig me, so he put me on the nightshift It takes me two hours to get back to where my baby lives In the wee wee hours, your mind gets hazy Radio relay towers, won't you lead me to my baby? Underneath the overpass, trooper hits his party light switch Goodnight, good luck, one two powershift I met Wanda when she was employed Behind the counter at the Route 60 Bob's Big Boy Fried chicken on the front seat, she's sittin' in my lap We're wipin' our fingers on a Texaco roadmap I remember Wanda up on scrap metal hill With them big brown eyes that make your heart stand still 5 A.M., oil pressure's sinkin' fast I make a pit stop, wipe the windshield, check the gas Gotta call my baby on the telephone Let her know that her daddy's comin' on home Sit tight, little mama, I'm comin' round I got three more hours, but I'm coverin' ground Your eyes get itchy in the wee wee hours Sun's just a red ball risin' over them refinery towers Radio's jammed up with gospel stations Lost souls callin' long distance salvation Hey Mr. DJ, won't you hear my last prayer? Hey ho rock 'n' roll, deliver me from nowhere Ryan Adams, Nebraska (2022)
Ryan Adams
he snuffed the remaining powder into his other nostril and threw the scrap of thin plastic to the floor. There was no sensation, nothing at all, the world was the same and Billy knew that he had been cheated. Two D’s shot, gone for nothing. He leaned out of the glassless, frameless window and tears mixed with the perspiration on his face. He cried and thought about that for a while and thought how glad he was it was dark and no one could see him crying, not him, eighteen years old. Under his fingers the rough metal of the window opening had the feel of miniature mountain peaks and valleys. Jagged, smooth, soft, hard. He leaned close and stroked with his fingertips and the pleasure of the touch sent shivers of love running the length of his spine. Why had he never noticed this before? Bending, he put out his tongue and the sweet-sour-iron-dirt taste was so wonderful, and when he let the sharp front edges of his teeth touch the metal it felt as though he had bitten off a piece of steel half as big as the bridge.
Harry Harrison (Make Room! Make Room!)
Loneliness covers the earth like a blanket. It flows in the stream down through the Callows to the lake. It's in the muck in the yard and the briars in the haggard and the empty outbuildings are bursting with it. It runs down the walls inside of the house like tears and grows on the walls outside like a poisonous choking weed. It's in the sky and the stones and the clouds and the grass. The air is thick with it: you breath it into your lungs and you feel like it might suffocate you. It runs into hollow places like rainwater. It settles on the grass and on trees and takes their shapes and all the earth is wet with it. It has a smell, like the inside of a saucepan: scrapped metal, cold and sharp. When it hits you, it feels like a rap of a hurl across your knuckles on a frosty winter's morning. in PE: sharp, shocking pain, but inside you, so it can't be seen and no one says sorry for causing it nor asks are you ok, and no kind teacher wants to look at it and tut-tut and tell you you'll be grand, good lad. But you know if another man stood where you're standing and looked at the same things he wouldn't see it or feel it.
Donal Ryan
Though it’s best not to be born a chicken at all, it is especially bad luck to be born a cockerel. From the perspective of the poultry farmer, male chickens are useless. They can’t lay eggs, their meat is stringy, and they’re ornery to the hens that do all the hard work of putting food on our tables. Commercial hatcheries tend to treat male chicks like fabric cutoffs or scrap metal: the wasteful but necessary by-product of an industrial process. The sooner they can be disposed of—often they’re ground into animal feed—the better. But a costly problem has vexed egg farmers for millennia: It’s virtually impossible to tell the difference between male and female chickens until they’re four to six weeks old, when they begin to grow distinctive feathers and secondary sex characteristics like the rooster’s comb. Until then, they’re all just indistinguishable fluff balls that have to be housed and fed—at considerable expense. Somehow it took until the 1920s before anyone figured out a solution to this costly dilemma. The momentous discovery was made by a group of Japanese veterinary scientists, who realized that just inside the chick’s rear end there is a constellation of folds, marks, spots, and bumps that to the untrained eye appear arbitrary, but when properly read, can divulge the sex of a day-old bird. When this discovery was unveiled at the 1927 World Poultry Congress in Ottawa, it revolutionized the global hatchery industry and eventually lowered the price of eggs worldwide. The professional chicken sexer, equipped with a skill that took years to master, became one of the most valuable workers in agriculture. The best of the best were graduates of the two-year Zen-Nippon Chick Sexing School, whose standards were so rigorous that only 5 to 10 percent of students received accreditation. But those who did graduate earned as much as five hundred dollars a day and were shuttled around the world from hatchery to hatchery like top-flight business consultants. A diaspora of Japanese chicken sexers spilled across the globe. Chicken sexing is a delicate art, requiring Zen-like concentration and a brain surgeon’s dexterity. The bird is cradled in the left hand and given a gentle squeeze that causes it to evacuate its intestines (too tight and the intestines will turn inside out, killing the bird and rendering its gender irrelevant). With his thumb and forefinger, the sexer flips the bird over and parts a small flap on its hindquarters to expose the cloaca, a tiny vent where both the genitals and anus are situated, and peers deep inside. To do this properly, his fingernails have to be precisely trimmed. In the simple cases—the ones that the sexer can actually explain—he’s looking for a barely perceptible protuberance called the “bead,” about the size of a pinhead. If the bead is convex, the bird is a boy, and gets thrown to the left; concave or flat and it’s a girl, sent down a chute to the right.
Joshua Foer (Moonwalking with Einstein: The Art and Science of Remembering Everything)
As I tried various restaurants, certain preconceptions came crashing down. I realized not all Japanese food consisted of carefully carved vegetables, sliced fish, and clear soups served on black lacquerware in a highly restrained manner. Tasting okonomiyaki (literally, "cook what you like"), for example, revealed one way the Japanese let their chopsticks fly. Often called "Japanese pizza," okonomiyaki more resembles a pancake filled with chopped vegetables and your choice of meat, chicken, or seafood. The dish evolved in Osaka after World War II, as a thrifty way to cobble together a meal from table scraps. A college classmate living in Kyoto took me to my first okonomiyaki restaurant where, in a casual room swirling with conversation and aromatic smoke, we ordered chicken-shrimp okonomiyaki. A waitress oiled the small griddle in the center of our table, then set down a pitcher filled with a mixture of flour, egg, and grated Japanese mountain yam made all lumpy with chopped cabbage, carrots, scallions, bean sprouts, shrimp, and bits of chicken. When a drip of green tea skated across the surface of the hot meal, we poured out a huge gob of batter. It sputtered and heaved. With a metal spatula and chopsticks, we pushed and nagged the massive pancake until it became firm and golden on both sides. Our Japanese neighbors were doing the same. After cutting the doughy disc into wedges, we buried our portions under a mass of mayonnaise, juicy strands of red pickled ginger, green seaweed powder, smoky fish flakes, and a sweet Worcestershire-flavored sauce. The pancake was crispy on the outside, soft and savory inside- the epitome of Japanese comfort food. Another day, one of Bob's roommates, Theresa, took me to a donburi restaurant, as ubiquitous in Japan as McDonald's are in America. Named after the bowl in which the dish is served, donburi consists of sticky white rice smothered with your choice of meat, vegetables, and other goodies. Theresa recommended the oyako, or "parent and child," donburi, a medley of soft nuggets of chicken and feathery cooked egg heaped over rice, along with chopped scallions and a rich sweet bouillon. Scrumptious, healthy, and prepared in a flash, it redefined the meaning of fast food.
Victoria Abbott Riccardi (Untangling My Chopsticks: A Culinary Sojourn in Kyoto)
I remember every detail of it, you insignificant cow,” Morwen panted, affecting a crooked grin that failed to convey the same confidence it had before. “You screamed. You cried and blubbered like a baby before you died.” “It won’t work,” said Jenny. “You can’t rile me anymore.” “No? You should have seen your handsome Howard Carson after our vamp got through with him,” Morwen went on. For all her venom, she looked as though she might pass out at any moment. The trip through the wall had left several gashes along her arms, and her eyes appeared to be having difficulty focusing. “You could barely recognize his butchered corpse in the end,” she hissed. “We pitched what was left into the fire like greasy table scraps.” Jenny did not rise to the bait. She only drifted slowly to a stop, looming over Morwen. Morwen gripped her dark dagger so tightly her knuckles whitened. She lashed out wildly at the specter, but the blade met nothing more substantial than moonlight. The effort cost the nixie her balance, and she collapsed again onto the carpet. “It’s frustrating, isn’t it?” said Jenny calmly. “Not being able to make contact.” She reached down and easily plucked the blade out of Morwen’s grasp. She shifted the weapon from one hand to the other, regarding the dark metal curiously. The solidity of the thing sat at odds with her translucent fingers. Morwen pushed herself up with great difficulty, swaying to an unsteady slouch on one knee. The fight had left the nixie, but not her fury. Her dress was torn and she had plaster ground into her hair. Her voice was hollow. “Just get it over with.” “It is over,” said Jenny. She dropped the blade onto the carpet behind her with a soft thump. Morwen narrowed her eyes. “Don’t waste your pity on me, ghost,” she spat. “I won’t,” said Jenny. “Nor any fear nor fury. I’m done with you, Morwen. My friends, however . . . are not. Mr. Jackaby?” Jackaby stepped forward. He unwound the chain from his hand as he moved around toward Morwen. “Done with me?” Morwen spat. “You only exist because of me, ghost! You’re nothing but a ripple in my wake, you worthless trash. I made you!” “You didn’t make me,” Jenny said gently. “I made myself, and I will continue to make myself forever after. What you did to me? That made you. It made you a murderer and it made you a monster. They buried the girl you killed, Morwen. I’m the spirit you couldn’t kill. You have no power over me.
William Ritter (Ghostly Echoes (Jackaby, #3))
George Gey paid his way through a biology degree at the University of Pittsburgh by working as a carpenter and mason, and he could make nearly anything for cheap or free. During his second year in medical school, he rigged a microscope with a time-lapse motion picture camera to capture live cells on film. It was a Frankensteinish mishmash of microscope parts, glass, and 16-millimeter camera equipment from who knows where, plus metal scraps, and an old motor from Shapiro’s junkyard. He built it in a hole he’d blasted in the foundation of Hopkins, right below the morgue, its base entirely underground and surrounded by a thick wall of cork to keep it from jiggling when streetcars passed. At night, a Lithuanian lab assistant slept next to the camera on a cot, listening to its constant tick, making sure it stayed stable through the night, waking every hour to refocus it. With that camera, Gey and his mentor, Warren Lewis, filmed the growth of cells, a process so slow - like the growth of a flower - the naked eye couldn’t see it. They played the film at high speed so they could watch cell division on the screen in one smooth motion, like a story unfolding in a flip book.
skloot, Rebecca
A young American was almost hit by a piece of enemy shrapnel, then found his father’s name cut into the metal—his father, a mechanic at Boeing Aircraft, had cut his name on the engine of his 1929 automobile but had no idea how the scrap fell into the hands of the “Japs” and nearly killed the son.
John Dunning (On the Air: The Encyclopedia of Old-Time Radio)
Assign a file or paper tray to collect single-side printed paper for reuse. Boycott paper sourced from virgin forests and reams sold in plastic. Cancel magazine and newspaper subscriptions; view them online instead. Digitize important receipts and documents for safekeeping. Digital files are valid proofs for tax purposes. Download CutePDF Writer to save online files without having to print them. Email invitations or greeting cards instead of printing them (see “Holidays and Gifts” chapter). Forage the recycling can when paper scraps are needed, such as for bookmarks or pictures (for school collages, for example). Give extra paper to the local preschool. Hack the page margins of documents to maximize printing. Imagine a paperless world. Join the growing paperless community. Kill the fax machine; encourage electronic faxing through a service such as HelloFax. Limit yourself to print only on paper that has already been printed on one side. Make online billing and banking a common practice. Nag the kids’ teachers to send home only important papers. Opt out of paper newsletters. Print on both sides when using a new sheet of paper (duplex printing). Question the need for printing; print only when absolutely necessary. In most cases, it is not. Repurpose junk mail envelopes—make sure to cross out any barcode. Sign electronically using the Adobe Acrobat signing feature or SignNow.com. Turn down business cards; enter relevant info directly into a smartphone. Use shredded paper as a packing material, single-printed paper fastened with a metal clip for a quick notepad (grocery lists, errands lists), and double-printed paper to wrap presents or pick up your dog’s feces. Visit the local library to read business magazines and books. Write on paper using a pencil, which you can then erase to reuse paper, or better yet, use your computer, cell phone, or erasable board instead of paper. XYZ: eXamine Your Zipper; i.e., your leaks: attack any incoming source of paper.
Bea Johnson (Zero Waste Home: The Ultimate Guide to Simplifying Your Life by Reducing Your Waste (A Simple Guide to Sustainable Living))
I thought of the men who claim that wealth is a matter of natural resources—and of the men who claim that wealth is a matter of seizing the factories—and of the men who claim that machines condition their brains. Well, there was the motor to condition them, and there it remained as just exactly what it is without man’s mind—as a pile of metal scraps and wires, going to rust.
Ayn Rand (Atlas Shrugged)
As Yasu popped open a giant Kirin- the champagne of Japanese beers- Tomiko placed bowls of special buckwheat noodle soup at everyone's place, since the noodles represent long life. They are also said to bring prosperity, because in the past silversmiths and goldsmiths used to pick up the scraps of metal in their workshops with soba noodle dough. A salty seafood vapor wafted up from my soup bowl, holding a wobbly poached egg in a nest of gray noodles. A pink wheat gluten flower and sprig of Japanese chervil lay submerged in the hot dashi broth, along with two round slices of kamaboko, the springy sweet fish paste eaten all over Japan.
Victoria Abbott Riccardi (Untangling My Chopsticks: A Culinary Sojourn in Kyoto)
then another, through the door and into the damp, frigid air of the basement. ‘Take off your robe,’ he tells me. I try to protest but he picks up the belt so I undress as slowly as possible, clinging to every scrap of warmth until I’m naked, shivering, strapped into the chair. He wheels the metal trolley over, cursing the wheel that has recently started to squeak.
Mark Edwards (The Devil's Work)
That afternoon he invited me to his house for an after-school snack and showed me his collection of strange gadgets made from bits of scrap metal, which he kept in his room.
Carlos Ruiz Zafón (The Shadow Of The Wind)
On March 12, 2015, the AIM Development Company, that deals in scrap metal, met to discuss demolishing the now defunct Verso Paper Mill in Bucksport, located at the head of Penobscot Bay. The paper mill was first built by the Maine Seaboard Paper Company in 1930. Demolition of the mill is expected to be completed in 2016. However, company representatives and town officials did not discuss what AIM might do with the 250-acre waterfront site once the demolition work is complete. Originally it was believed that a recycling facility, using the deep-water port access to export salvaged metals, would be the most likely thing to be built on this site; however this plan has now been scrapped. In 1980 this mill employed more than 1,350 workers and was the largest employer in Bucksport, a town of about 5,000 residents. The demolition and removal took much longer than anyone expected and as salvage crews continued working, a fire broke out on March 19, 2017. Apparently the fire erupted at about 8:30 a,m. as workers using cutting torches, cut into the metal exterior wall of the mill. Spreading to the roof of the building, it was debated as to the feasibility of allowing the fire to destroy the remaining structure. Considering the safety involved firefighters from Bucksport and surrounding towns extinguished the fire. It is expected that the remaining remnants will be demolished by the middle of 2017 in fact the company has open rail cars in position, waiting to remove whatever is left of the mill.
Hank Bracker
spring and summer. Not this one. He continued a quarter mile through heavy scrub oak, pine, and aspen. At a bend to the left, a light shimmered in the tree branches. Buzz drove toward it, onto a gravel drive leading to a double-wide. Before he’d parked, a man pushed out the front door and descended three wooden stairs, crossing a dirt yard cluttered with unstacked firewood, scrap metal, and an empty clothesline. Buzz checked the name he’d jotted on his pocket notepad and got out. The air, smelling of pine, was heavy with the weight of impending snow. First of the season. His girls would be excited. The ground, starting
Robert Dugoni (In the Clearing (Tracy Crosswhite, #3))
Here is the story, which I have abridged (with acknowledgement to Sergey Parkhomenko, journalist and broadcaster, who reported it): The River Ob makes a turn at Kolpashevo, and every year it eats away a few feet of a sand cliff there. On April 30, 1979, the Ob's waters eroded another six-foot section of bank. Hanging from the newly exposed wall were the arms, legs and heads of people who had been buried there. A cemetery at least several yards wide had been exposed. The bodies had been packed in and layered tightly. Some of the skulls from the uppermost layer rolled out from the sandbank, and little boys picked them up and began playing with them. News of the burial spread quickly and people started gathering at the sandbank. The police and neighbourhood watch volunteers quickly cordoned off the whole thing. Shortly afterwards, they built a thick fence around the crumbling sandbank, warning people away. The next day, the Communist Party called meeting in the town, explaining that those buried were traitors and deserters from the war. But the explanation wasn't entirely convincing. If this were so, why was everyone dressed in civilian clothes? Why had women and children been executed as well? And from where, for that matter, did so many deserters come in a town of just 20,000 people? Meanwhile, the river continued to eat away at the bank and it became clear that the burial site was enormous; thousands were buried there. People could remember that there used to be a prison on these grounds in the late 1930s. It was general knowledge that there were executions there, but nobody could imagine just how many people were shot. The perimeter fence and barbed wire had long ago been dismantled, and the prison itself was closed down. But what the town's people didn't know was that Kolpashevo's prison operated a fully-fledged assembly line of death. There was a special wooden trough, down which a person would descend to the edge of a ditch. There, he'd be killed by rifle fire, the shooter sitting in a special booth. If necessary, he'd be finished off with a second shot from a pistol, before being added to the next layer of bodies, laid head-to-toe with the last corpse. Then they'd sprinkle him lightly with lime. When the pit was full, they filled in the hole with sand and moved the trough over a few feet to the side, and began again. But now the crimes of the past were being revealed as bodies fell into the water and drifted past the town while people watched from the shore. In Tomsk, the authorities decided to get rid of the burial site and remove the bodies. The task, it turned out, wasn't so easy. Using heavy equipment so near a collapsing sandbank wasn't wise and there was no time to dig up all the bodies by hand. The Soviet leadership was in a hurry. Then from Tomsk came new orders: two powerful tugboats were sent up the Ob, right up to the riverbank, where they were tied with ropes to the shore, facing away from the bank. Then they set their engines on full throttle. The wash from the ships' propellers quickly eroded the soft riverbank and bodies started falling into the water, where most of them were cut to pieces by the propellers. But some of the bodies escaped and floated away downstream. So motorboats were stationed there where men hooked the bodies as they floated by. A barge loaded with scrap metal from a nearby factory was moored near the boats and the men were told to tie pieces of scrap metal to the bodies with wire and sink them in the deepest part of the river. The last team, also composed of local men from the town, worked a bit further downstream where they collected any bodies that had got past the boats and buried them on shore in unmarked graves or sank them by tying the bodies to stones. This cleanup lasted almost until the end of the summer.
Lawrence Bransby (Two Fingers On The Jugular)
Here, supposing that neither Harry Perkins nor the servants nor some outsider called ‘X’ had killed Stephen Anthony, was a murderer. He or she was drinking with the rest, talking with the rest casually, remembering little family jokes with the rest and saying with them, ‘Remember when we all—’ and laughing when they laughed. And perhaps the murderer, sitting there with the others, almost forgot at times he was a murderer, because even a murderer cannot always remember, as the grief-stricken cannot always remember grief. But it must come back again and again, that sense of being a murderer. Sometimes it must come in the middle of speech, confusing a thought already formulated—it must go round and round in the head, the knowledge of murder and of pursuit. The thought that shrewd men and clumsy men, intelligent men and dogged men, men in blue uniforms and men in slouch hats, were everywhere after you must make a coldness in your mind. Here a man was talking to somebody, and perhaps a word would give you away. Here a man was peering through a comparison microscope at tiny scratches on a piece of metal, and perhaps some scratch would give you away. Here a man was sifting through papers, steadily, unwearingly, looking for some written word that would give you away. And when he was tired, another man would look. And somewhere men in white uniforms were probing with knives into the body of the man you had killed, looking for something which would give you away. All over the city, you would think, men would be searching for you—in words and in metal, in scraps of paper, in the things you did yesterday and the things your victims had planned to do tomorrow—and there would be no stopping them. Because, whatever they tolerated, the police did not tolerate murder, or ever give up looking for a murderer.
Richard Lockridge (Hanged for a Sheep (Mr. and Mrs. North #5))
concentrating on just one. The William Badge was only one of hundreds of ships of her kind. They played a significant role in pre-Civil War maritime commerce, when cotton was still king. Many of them later traded bales of cotton for kegs of oil, their decks eventually mired in brine, blubber, and blood. But once the American Civil War started, only a few did not end up as so much kindling and metal scrap. The William Badger was one of them.
Peter Kurtz (Bluejackets in the Blubber Room: A Biography of the William Badger, 1828-1865)
Capture Criteria #2: Is It Useful? Carpenters are known for keeping odds and ends in a corner of their workshop—a variety of nails and washers, scraps of lumber cut off from larger planks, and random bits of metal and wood. It costs nothing to keep these “offcuts” around, and surprisingly often they end up being the crucial missing piece in a future project.
Tiago Forte (Building a Second Brain: A Proven Method to Organize Your Digital Life and Unlock Your Creative Potential)
We found Booker in one grove or another by spotting his truck. It was a heap, like a pile of scrap metal someone abandoned
Anne Hull (Through the Groves: A Memoir)
We can twist the fate of your world and bind its luck up with our will, but we cannot make anything of our own." "Make?" "In Fae, nothing grows. There is no ore hidden beneath our barren soil. We must ply whatever we would use from what we are given in trade. Some things--- silk, silver, bone--- we can work better than others." Her pale fingers moved against her hair; a sheer filament of silver wove a plait of her mist-colored hair from one temple to another. "This was spun from one of your pins." Alaine leaned forward, looking closer. Wrought into the thread of metal were flowers and leaves, their minute veins and even dustings of pollen worked in silver. "Everything that you have is remade from our world?" "Yes." She let the breeze stir her hair and her gown, and Alaine wondered what scrap of silk ribbon had been stretched and unspooled to a thin shadow of itself to produce the diaphanous cloud of pale blue surrounding the Fae woman, the wonder of it almost enough to make her forget the reason she had summoned the Fae.
Rowenna Miller (The Fairy Bargains of Prospect Hill)
Embargoes and sanctions against Japan were frequently considered and carefully evaluated as to risk of provocation. However, in July 1940 the Export Control Act authorized the President in the interest of national defense to prohibit or curtail the export of certain war materials, including scrap metal and oil.
Homer N. Wallin (Why, How, Fleet Salvage And Final Appraisal [Illustrated Edition])
There was strong opposition to the exportation of scrap metal and oil to Japan before these items were embargoed in 1940 and 1941 especially when these commodities were in short supply in the United States. Yet Ambassador Grew stated that economic sanctions were more likely to cause war than to avoid it. This was one of the dilemmas which the Administration had to face. The Japanese, he explained, could not be bluffed or forced into submission. They would not "back down" as the Oriental psychology would consider this a "loss of face.
Homer N. Wallin (Why, How, Fleet Salvage And Final Appraisal [Illustrated Edition])
to release his bed, and there was probably an alcove behind it with storage, maybe some traps to keep out unwanted visitors. At least, that’s the way Leo would’ve designed it. A fire pole came down from the second floor, even though the cabin didn’t appear to have a second floor from the outside. A circular staircase led down into some kind of basement. The walls were lined with every kind of power tool Leo could imagine, plus a huge assortment of knives, swords, and other implements of destruction. A large workbench overflowed with scrap metal—screws, bolts, washers, nails, rivets, and a million other machine parts. Leo had a strong urge to shovel them all into his coat pockets. He loved that kind of stuff. But he’d need a hundred more coats to fit it all. Looking around, he could almost imagine he was back in his mom’s machine shop. Not the weapons, maybe—but the tools, the piles of scrap, the smell of grease and metal and hot engines. She would’ve loved this place. He pushed that thought away. He didn’t like painful memories. Keep moving—that was his motto. Don’t
Rick Riordan (The Lost Hero (The Heroes of Olympus, #1))
How could you blame Mia’s parents for not understanding? They had been born in the wartime years; they’d been raised by parents who’d come of age in the Depression, who threw nothing out, not even moldy food. They were old enough to remember when rags became felt for the war effort, when cans and scrap metal could become bullets and cans of grease explosives. Practicality was baked into their bones. They wasted nothing, especially not time.
Celeste Ng (Little Fires Everywhere)
Some pull back. Some cry. Some scrabble for crying babies, rot-gutted women, soft-eyed men, shivering children clustered about us in the dim cold before dawn. To this death before death. To this selling. Nan and Cleo and my mother talked about what it was to be sold—we all did, since we heard stories about what it was like, stories carried from one farm to another, one work camp to another. Bog bottomed, the boy sent to trade scrap metal with our blacksmith said. Manacle awash, the man sent to trade livestock said. Smoked and sunk, the farrier sent through the rice counties to shoe horses said. Hell, my mother said, and more of us marching there every day.
Jesmyn Ward (Let Us Descend)
The why’s twofold. Intertwined and simultaneous. The first why is that Yann the man is evil. He claims ownership of the tools and the fruits of other people’s work and smashes those who ask for scraps beneath his heel. His actions stain the earth. The remedy to this is your little knife. You kill him, he’ll butcher no more workers. Second reason why,” Uthste said, “is why the first emperor of Bellona sacked the patchwork city-states
August Clarke (Metal from Heaven)
Those eyes are seriously flirting with my pulse and I cannot let that happen. . If I'm ever too tired for you, then there'd be something seriously wrong with me, babe. . I press a kiss on her forehead, then turn around, feeling half of me is still where she’s standing. . I am stunned, but my feet are making their way toward him like he’s a magnet and I'm a scrap of metal. I can’t stop. Part of me wants to. A very small part. But I know I can’t. . There is one flower here for every day that I have known and loved you, Natalia. One hundred and seventy two, to be exact.
J.Q. Anderson (Intercepted)
One day in 1885, the twenty-three-year old Henry Ford got his first look at the gas-powered engine, and it was instant love. Ford had apprenticed as a machinist and had worked on every conceivable device, but nothing could compare to his fascination with this new type of engine, one that created its own power. He envisioned a whole new kind of horseless carriage that would revolutionize transportation. He made it his Life’s Task to be the pioneer in developing such an automobile. Working the night shift at the Edison Illuminating Company as an engineer, during the day he would tinker with the new internal-combustion engine he was developing. He built a workshop in a shed behind his home and started constructing the engine from pieces of scrap metal he salvaged from anywhere he could find them. By 1896, working with friends who helped him build a carriage, he completed his first prototype, which he called the Quadricycle, and debuted it on the streets of Detroit. At the time there were many others working on automobiles with gas-powered engines. It was a ruthlessly competitive environment in which new companies died by the day. Ford’s Quadricycle looked nice and ran well, but it was too small and incomplete for large-scale production. And so he began work on a second automobile, thinking ahead to the production end of the process. A year later he completed it, and it was a marvel of design. Everything was geared toward simplicity and compactness. It was easy to drive and maintain. All that he needed was financial backing and sufficient capital to mass-produce it. To manufacture automobiles in the late 1890s was a daunting venture. It required a tremendous amount of capital and a complex business structure, considering all of the parts that went into production. Ford quickly found the perfect backer: William H. Murphy, one of the most prominent businessmen in Detroit. The new company was dubbed the Detroit Automobile Company, and all who were involved had high hopes. But problems soon arose. The car Ford had designed as a prototype needed to be reworked—the parts came from different places; some of them were deficient and far too heavy for his liking. He kept trying to refine the design to come closer to his ideal. But it was taking far too long, and Murphy and the stockholders were getting restless. In 1901, a year and a half after it had started operation, the board of directors dissolved the company. They had lost faith in Henry Ford.
Robert Greene (Mastery (The Modern Machiavellian Robert Greene Book 1))
So I lean over carefully, and there, piled a foot high against the sides of the metal bin, are beat-up U.S. quarters, dimes, nickels, and pennies. Next to the filling bin is another bin, a full bin of coins that fell from the pockets of Americans who had more pressing matters than loose change. According to Jack, an average junked U.S. automobile contains $1.65 in loose change when it’s shredded. If that’s right—and from what I see, I believe that it must be—then the 14 million cars scrapped in good years (good for automobile recyclers, at least) in the United States contain within them more than $20 million in cash just waiting to be recovered. Understandably, Huron Valley isn’t interested in revealing just how much money they recover from U.S. automobiles (they have a deal whereby they return the currency to the U.S. Treasury for a percentage of the original value), but David is willing to note that the coin recovery system has “paid for itself.” It occurs to me that Huron Valley has happened upon the most brilliant of businesses: one whose product is money itself! That is, rather than make something that needs to be marketed for money, Huron Valley just makes money.
Adam Minter (Junkyard Planet: Travels in the Billion-Dollar Trash Trade)
He continued a quarter mile through heavy scrub oak, pine, and aspen. At a bend to the left, a light shimmered in the tree branches. Buzz drove toward it, onto a gravel drive leading to a double-wide. Before he’d parked, a man pushed out the front door and descended three wooden stairs, crossing a dirt yard cluttered with unstacked firewood, scrap metal, and an empty clothesline.
Robert Dugoni (In the Clearing (Tracy Crosswhite, #3))
Leaving the Connecticut River March 8, 1704 Temperature 40 degrees By the time Mercy had sorted this out, her three brothers were gone. She panicked. “Sam!” she screamed. “John! Benny!” She ran from group to group, darting behind sledges, racing among the dogs, circling the fires. “Sam! John!” What was the matter with her? How could she have stayed separate from them? Why had she not kicked Tannhahorens in the shins, as Ruth would have, and marched with her brothers no matter what he said? Ruth was right, he was nothing but an Indian! O Father! she thought. O Mother! I let you down again. I didn’t protect Tommy. I didn’t save Marah or Stepmama or the baby. And now the boys are gone. On her second screaming circle of the camp, Tannhahorens caught her. “Boys go,” he said. “But are they all right? I didn’t say good-bye! You never let me talk to them at all! I don’t even know their masters’ names!” A new and even more horrifying thought struck Mercy. It tore the wind from her lungs and her voice broke. “Will my brothers and I go to the same place? Will I see them again?” Poor Father, come home to find his entire family ripped away in a night. Father would comfort himself that Mercy was taking care of the boys--and he would be wrong. Tannhahorens had fewer English words than Mercy had Mohawk. He could not understand this outpouring. He steered her back to his possessions. “Raquette,” he said. Mercy jumped in front of him, blocking his path. He was hung with weapons in preparation for departure: knives, tomahawk, hatchet, gun, two bows, quiver of arrows. But something new hanging from Tannhahorens’ chest gave her pause. A Catholic cross. Although in her whole life, Mercy had seen only one spoon and a belt buckle made of silver, she knew this cross to be silver. She wrenched her eyes from its beauty. It would be a sin to find a cross beautiful. Religion must be heart and soul, not scraps of metal. Tannhahorens pushed her along in front of him. “Raquette,” he said irritably. “Raquette?” she begged. “Is that your town? Is that Sam’s master’s name? Are the boys together? Is Same going to be able to watch out for John and Benny?” This time, ragged trousers and a torn stained coat blocked Tannhahorens’s way The Indian looked harshly at the Englishman in front of him, and Mercy wished she had learned words like please. But Tannhahorens walked on and left them together. “Oh, Uncle Nathaniel!” she said, and they wrapped their arms around each other. He held her tightly. He had to clear his throat several times to find his voice. “Your brothers are not together,” he said, “but they seemed all right. They were not afraid. Benny’s Indian has a sled and he will ride as he did yesterday. John’s with five other English, all adults. They will watch for him. And Sam is with the Kellogg girls. He’ll be busy taking care of Joanna and Rebecca.” Her three brothers, going in three directions in the hands of strangers. “They took my Will and my Mary in the last band,” said her uncle. “I have some hope. The Indians treat my children tenderly. When nobody else had a morsel to eat, their masters fed them.” Sam. John. Benny. Will. Little Mary. Gone.
Caroline B. Cooney (The Ransom of Mercy Carter)
It’s impossible to deny it: Filipinos have a zest for life that may be unrivalled on our planet. The national symbol, the jeepney, is an apt metaphor for the nation. Splashed with colour, laden with religious icons and festooned with sanguine scribblings, the jeepney flaunts the fact that, at heart, it’s a dilapidated pile of scrap metal. No matter their prospects in life, Filipinos face them with a laugh and a wink. Whatever happens…‘so be it’.
Lonely Planet (Lonely Planet Philippines (Travel Guide))
... the cylinder itself has only just begun its revolutions ... as it gathers speed the objects grouped around its fulcrum assume, collectively ... no ... as it gathers speed the whole intricate system of cords, weights, metal spikes and rods, brass plates engraved with labyrinthine patterns, bricks, scraps of fabric, paper, canvas, unmarked sheets ... the entire elaborate network of components begins to shudder into wild spasmodic motion, rattling almost farcically within the framework of the machine.
Martin Vaughn-James (The Cage)
He thought about it for a minute. The kitty was only around seven thousand give or take a gold tooth and some coinage – minus the ship – which must’ve been worth well, a lot more than seven thousand, even in scrap metal. An alarm was going off somewhere, faintly.
Christina Engela (Loderunner)
Behind the parking lot was a larger, two-story corrugated-steel building. The front building blocked most of what lay behind it from view, but Pike could see that the grounds were crowded with stacked auto chassis, rusting pipes, and other types of scrap metal. Two new sedans were parked out front on the street, and two more sedans and a large truck were in the parking lot, but the gravel drive was chained off, and a sign in the front office window read CLOSED. As Pike watched, a man in a blue shirt came out of the front office building, and crunched across the parking lot to the corrugated building. As he reached the door, he spoke to someone Pike didn’t see, and then that man stepped out from behind the parked truck. He was a big man with a big gut, and thick legs to carry it. The two men laughed about something, then the man in the blue shirt went into the building. The big man studied the passing traffic, then slowly returned to his place behind the truck. Everything
Robert Crais (The First Rule (Elvis Cole, #13; Joe Pike, #2))
Seeing the sky darken & the fields turn brown & the lake lead-grey as some enormous scrap of sheet metal & wind grabs the world around the equator I am most thankful then for knowing about the little gold hairs on your belly
Al Purdy (Rooms for Rent in the Outer Planets: Selected Poems 1962-1996)
Justice is the recognition of the fact that you cannot fake the character of men as you cannot fake the character of nature, that you must judge all men as conscientiously as you judge inanimate objects, with the same respect for truth, with the same incorruptible vision, by as pure and as rational a process of identification—that every man must be judged for what he is and treated accordingly, that just as you do not pay a higher price for a rusty chunk of scrap than for a piece of shining metal, so you do not value a rotter above a hero—that your moral appraisal is the coin paying men for their virtues or vices, and this payment demands of you as scrupulous an honor as you bring to financial transactions—that to withhold your contempt from men’s vices is an act of moral counterfeiting, and to withhold your admiration from their virtues is an act of moral embezzlement—that to place any other concern higher than justice is to devaluate your moral currency and defraud the good in favor of the evil, since only the good can lose by a default of justice and only the evil can profit—and that the bottom of the pit at the end of that road, the act of moral bankruptcy, is to punish men for their virtues and reward them for their vices, that that is the collapse to full depravity, the Black Mass of the worship of death, the dedication of your consciousness to the destruction of existence.
Ayn Rand (Atlas Shrugged)
There are large and stately studios, panelled and high, in strong stone houses filled with gleaming brass and polished oak. There are workaday studios – summer perching-places rather than settled homes – where a good north light and a litter of brushes and canvas form the whole of the artistic stock-in-trade. There are little homely studios, gay with blue and red and yellow curtains and odd scraps of pottery, tucked away down narrow closes and adorned with gardens, where old-fashioned flowers riot in the rich and friendly soil. There are studios that are simply and solely barns, made beautiful by ample proportions and high-pitched rafters, and habitable by the addition of a tortoise stove and a gas-ring. There are artists who have large families and keep domestics in cap and apron; artists who engage rooms, and are taken care of by landladies; artists who live in couples or alone, with a woman who comes in to clean; artists who live hermit-like and do their own charing. There are painters in oils, painters in water-colours, painters in pastel, etchers and illustrators, workers in metal; artists of every variety, having this one thing in common – that they take their work seriously and have no time for amateurs.
Dorothy L. Sayers (Five Red Herrings (Lord Peter Wimsey, #7))
Yes, you can kiss me. But let’s make them small kisses so you don’t struggle breathing.” Her fingers dance along my ear, then move up to my broken horns, two ugly stumps capped off with metal. “You can strip me naked. You can lick me all over. Think of me as a blank canvas and you’re the artist.” That’s far more poetic than how I feel. “More like I’m just the lucky bit of scrap that you’ve decided to craft into something new.” She grabs me by the ears, her expression fierce as she forces me to look her in the eye. “You’re not scrap. You’re just as worthwhile as anyone I’ve ever met. Better, even. You saw me hurting and did something about it instead of walking away like so many others. That shows your true character. I probably cost all of your credits, was a bother and an annoyance because I remember crying like a madwoman, and then you even found me a new place to live where I’d be safe. You didn’t just sell me to another person and hope for the best. You made sure that I was taken care of, even if it was a problem. You’re amazing. Your heart is amazing. I don’t care that you don’t have a good family name or that your father’s father was a splice. I don’t care that you have a criminal record. All the things that you think make you unworthy don’t bother me, because I know how you really are when the chips are down.” “What are chips⁠—” “Hush,” Melody says, exasperated. “I’m trying to build you up here.
Ruby Dixon (When She's Handy: A Risdaverse Short Story)
If our strength in learning the arts is not turned to weakness, that is, in coming down along side to console and comfort, attending the infirm, the poor, the needy and the elderly, then we have pathetically failed with our true art, the art of humanity–of life. If this is so, all of our studies have been, like a warped, pitiless, cruel pile of cold rusty scrap metal on a gray drizzly day, in vain. If this lesson is too tough for us, we must remember that it is Jesus’ preferred way. He comes along side the sick, the feeble, the downtrodden, even the most wretched, disgusting and perverse. As He hung upon that splintˊry red cross and imparts His Spirit to all who seek Him, no, not even the fiery excelsior angels of the Highest Courts of Heaven have an excuse not to unflinchingly obey the clarion call of Him who beckons us to reach out and help lift from the mud those who cannot get up. (Martial Arts on Noah's Ark)
Douglas M. Laurent
Their destiny – hers, his, that of every descendant from the Cave – would be the same as the thistle the image of which obsessed Tolstoy, the same stubborn thistle he sought out in the Caucasian mountains. He was travelling in a scrap metal car along the muddy track to Shatoi and caught a glimpse, beneath them, of tanks and vehicles incinerated in an ambush similar to the one set for the Tsar’s soldiers a century and a half earlier. He witnessed once more history’s stupid repetitions, its obtuse cruelty.
Juan Goytisolo (Blind Rider)
It was a vast, low-ceilinged room in the lower levels of the basement. The ceiling was supported by pillars at regular intervals. The room was almost impossible to navigate, being crammed with sixty years’ worth of electronic flotsam and jetsam. He slowly worked his way backward, deeper into the room and further into the past. Toward the back, he came across a large cabinet that he mistook at first for an antique computer. It contained over a hundred vacuum tubes, each with its own set of inductors and capacitors. Then he uncovered the piano-style keyboard with the name HAMMOND above it. “Oh, that must be the Novachord,” said the Teleplay Director. “It’s like an organ, except not. It was used on various radio dramas for a few years, but when we got the Hammond B3’s it went into storage.” Philo told Viridios about it. “They have a Novachord?” Viridios said in surprise. “I’ve heard of it, but I’ve never played one. It was so far ahead of its time that nobody really knew what to do with it. It’s not an organ at all. It’s more like a polyphonic synthesizer.” “That’s not all,” said Philo. “I found some of your old equipment. It’s marked ‘Valence Sound Laboratory.’ It doesn’t look like musical equipment at all, more like scientific equipment. There’s an eight-foot metal cabinet full of circuitry like nothing I’ve ever seen before. The front panel is full of knobs and jacks labeled with mathematical symbols.” Viridios was astonished. “It still exists!” he exclaimed. “I thought it was dismantled and sold for scrap.” “What is it?” “That’s the instrument we used to create the soundtrack for Prisoners of the Iron Star. It’s called a Magneto-Thermion.
Fenton Wood (Five Million Watts (Yankee Republic Book 2))