Silver Nitrate Quotes

Silver nitrate and water in a super soaker," he told her. "My own invention. Ought to be good at twenty feet, kind of like wasp spray." Oh. "You get me the nicest things." "Anybody can get jewelry. Posers

Are you armed?" Oliver asked her. She glanced down at her backpack and instantly, instinctively held back. "No." "Lie to me again and I'll put you out on the street and do this myself." Claire swallowed. "Uh, yeah." "With what?" "Silver-coated stakes, wooden stakes, a crossbow, about ten bolts . . . oh, and a squirt gun with some silver-nitrate solution." He smiled grimly at the dark windshield. "What, no grenade launchers?" "Would they work?" "I choose not to comment.

You made a haunted house out of your own flesh and bones.

I feel so alone sometimes, you have no idea. And the loneliness seems to seep into my bones and I get scared because I feel numb. Not depressed or upset: I’m a blank tape. Like someone dragged a magnet against the tape inside my brain and erased all the information. There’s nothing left to feel. I felt it all and I’ll never feel anything new again and I’ll always be alone.

Montserrat had three loves. One was horror movies. The other was her car. The third was Tristán.

Even if the darkness never ended and swallowed him whole, he'd still run to her.

When they were kids, she could outrun all the other children in the neighborhood despite her bad foot. He supposed she was still trying to outrun everyone.

He was attuned to Montserrat’s phases, like memorizing an almanac and knowing if it was a gibbous or waxing moon without having to glance at the sky.

Throw nails behind you when you walk so you cannot be followed,

One must have hobbies,” Clarimonde said, still focused on her drawing. “Or else the mind atrophies.

Tristán, greedily delighting in the opportunities his eroding shyness afforded him, had decided Montserrat’s earnest affection was not as enticing as miniskirts and plunging necklines.

The first week of December. It was the season to devour empanadas, eat rosca de reyes, and listen to the fireworks exploding late at night. He was hoping to drink all the way through the posadas—he’d work off the calories in January. It was not the month to be chasing after murderers

It's oneiric, a beautiful, formless sequence of silver nitrate shadows, and when it ends I wonder what happened, and then I begin to rebuild it in my head

The whiter you were, the better. Even his “exotic” looks were only allowed on television because he had the correct mix of facial features, height, and skin tone. Yet he still stared at Montserrat in surprise and then at Urueta.

Why? Because to imagine Indigenous intelligence and power would have been unthinkable. We are all taught to despise the whiff of darkness, of Indigenous blood and of Blackness. We speak about ‘bettering the race,’ and by that we mean injecting more European blood into our veins. What Wilhelm said wasn’t considered outrageous at the time. It’s not even outrageous now, sadly.

I thought I had one of your father, but it didn’t develop.” Tremaine nodded ruefully. “It’s the silver nitrate in the film stock. He doesn’t show up on it.” Giaren stared at her blankly. “That was a joke,” she added belatedly. “Oh.” He sounded relieved.

She had been a pretty girl when she was young, but the years had corroded her easy beauty. What was left was a hard shell. It reminded Montserrat a little of Ewers’s look. He’d had that trace of resentment in his mouth as if something had been denied to him. A hunger, in the pit of their bellies.

Her meeting with Alma had, despite her indifferent façade in front of Tristán, jolted her a little.

The mirrors were supposed to be “wall art” and lend an air of class to the joint, but the results were more tacky than elegant

It was a thankless job that had her sometimes catching three hours of sleep on one of the couches around Antares so she could keep working through the night.

Even nowadays, when Tristán phoned his mother, she sometimes mentioned that one of his uncles might employ him at his furniture shop.

Why would José tell Alma anything? I thought he was your friend. Does he have something against you?

It gave his face a faintly mismatched air where once before it had possessed an elegant, near-perfect symmetry

No. You’re not going to lug around your mattress on top of my car to save yourself money with the movers.

When he was single, though, he stuck to her like glue. It irritated her when she recalled Tristán’s inconsiderate behavior, his patterns.

You’re not driving me home looking like you were just mashed by a steamroller and stinking of tequila. Come on, let’s tuck you in bed.

Alma is the only person who has benefited from this whole thing. All these years she’s been using the magic Ewers originally invoked in those nitrate reels to keep herself young.

I’d go to the track and pick five winners in a row. He made people who had dismissed me into my admirers, rid me of enemies . . . I thought this spell would be good for us.

definitely shouldn’t have a romantic relationship for the next three decades. He fucked them up with an expertise that was astonishing.

It’s one thing to cut off a rooster’s head, and another to steal a corpse from a cemetery.

Abel Urueta would get a sunburn if he stood at the beach for three minutes. Alma: same story. The elites in Mexico are proud of their European roots.

Now you can be a stubborn coward and live the rest of your life inside my guest room, or maybe you can help me put an end to Ewers’s spell.

don’t shave my armpits, either. Are you going to tell Cosmopolitan to arrest me?” she replied, sitting up and shaking her head, as if getting rid of a kink in her neck.

Mercado de Sonora.

He wondered if, underneath layers of cheap paper and colorful ink, there were symbols of old magic, like corpses bricked into walls.

López says the living hold on to ghosts. You made a haunted house out of your own flesh and bones.

Tristán, the pill pusher who had stuffed Karina Junco full of chemical substances. This was a great exaggeration. For one, back in those days, Tristán didn’t do any hard drugs.

Did Yolanda dump you a second time?” she continued. “Or were you unable to score at the bar? What’s the motherfucking stupid reason why you’re here at this hour?

Even if he didn’t contemplate suicide anymore, he might slide into another period of drug use and destruction that would sink him into the gutter for good.

She did this because she didn’t fancy Ewers’s complicated runes, but also because magic, from what Ewers seemed to be saying, was an exercise in belief and the self.

I was willing, until two hours ago, to toss myself on a couch and tell a psychiatrist how the other kids bullied me when I was little and that I wasn’t potty-trained until I was three.

That was a year and a half ago. And ‘seeing’ is a big word. If you go out with someone twice you are not seeing them,” she said calmly. “Anyway, we’re talking about you and Yolanda, not me.

earned most of my money as a copy editor, which is what I still do to this day to pay the bills. José López the copy editor and Romeo Donderis the writer. I thought it sounded more distinguished.

You’re kidding me, right? The ‘team-building exercise’ was drinking beer in very big glasses and pinching waitresses’ behinds. I don’t need to play sexist caveman games with the boys to do my job.

Montserrat, stop at the deli, get a slice of ham and a bit of cheese and make yourself a real lunch. No wonder your gums bleed. You probably have the nutritional deficiencies of a seventeenth-century sailor.

You always leave, you do. You find a new fling and off you go, merrily forgetting I exist, and then you come back six months later once that’s done and you need attention. You’re never there when I need you.

Then came all the mutts of the world. That’s what he called them. The ‘mutts.’ The mixed people of Mexico. And then all the other races that made him shudder; each level of the pyramid was carefully color-graded.

The only thing Montserrat had done with her hair was tie it into a ponytail, but Nando was a horny dog trying to butter her up like a succulent lobster. She’d dodged enough creeps to know how to deal with this one.

Tristán had always felt uncomfortable with all those women and their plastic smiles. It reminded him, in a way, that he himself was all plastic and had been sold as easily as the steak the women brought to the table.

Last time you landed parts you weren’t close to forty with a bit of gray in your hair,” Dorotea said with a chilling finality. “Smoking also fucks with your skin, Tristán. You could use a little less nicotine and a bit more humility.

I don’t care if you fuck a man, a woman, or sign up for a threesome with a set of twins, what I care about is the fact I kept trying to get in touch with you and you simply weren’t there. I needed you to keep an eye on Abel. You are an unreliable—

Do you want to wait a few more decades until I can’t masticate my own food? ’Cause I’ll love you until then and feed you pureed prunes, but it would be a shame to start living together at eighty-nine and die of a heart attack the first time we have sex.

No, it’s bigger than that,” Tristán insisted. “The more you become immersed in his books, in his magic, the more you become immersed in him. You don’t realize it, but sometimes you sound like you admire the guy. He was clever, creative, and determined, right?

Yeah, I was fucking someone, if you must know,” he said, his tone cool, but with a bite. “I’m allowed to fuck, unless they’ve established a new morality police I haven’t heard about. Screw you, Montserrat. If you can’t get any it doesn’t mean I’ll go without it.

Tatiasha, my wife, I got cookies from you and Janie, anxious medical advice from Gordon Pasha (tell him you gave me a gallon of silver nitrate), some sharp sticks from Harry (nearly cried). I’m saddling up, I’m good to go. From you I got a letter that I could tell you wrote very late at night. It was filled with the sorts of things a wife of twenty-seven years should not write to her far-away and desperate husband, though this husband was glad and grateful to read and re-read them. Tom Richter saw the care package you sent with the preacher cookies and said, “Wow, man. You must still be doing something right.” I leveled a long look at him and said, “It’s good to know nothing’s changed in the army in twenty years.” Imagine what he might have said had he been privy to the fervent sentiments in your letter. No, I have not eaten any poison berries, or poison mushrooms, or poison anything. The U.S. Army feeds its men. Have you seen a C-ration? Franks and beans, beefsteak, crackers, fruit, cheese, peanut butter, coffee, cocoa, sacks of sugar(!). It’s enough to make a Soviet blockade girl cry. We’re going out on a little scoping mission early tomorrow morning. I’ll call when I come back. I tried to call you today, but the phone lines were jammed. It’s unbelievable. No wonder Ant only called once a year. I would’ve liked to hear your voice though: you know, one word from you before battle, that sort of thing . . . Preacher cookies, by the way, BIG success among war-weary soldiers. Say hi to the kids. Stop teaching Janie back flip dives. Do you remember what you’re supposed to do now? Kiss the palm of your hand and press it against your heart.   Alexander   P.S. I’m getting off the boat at Coconut Grove. It’s six and you’re not on the dock. I finish up, and start walking home, thinking you’re tied up making dinner, and then I see you and Ant hurrying down the promenade. He is running and you’re running after him. You’re wearing a yellow dress. He jumps on me, and you stop shyly, and I say to you, come on, tadpole, show me what you got, and you laugh and run and jump into my arms. Such a good memory. I love you, babe.

There is a common phrase I grew up with in Mexico: “mejorar la raza.” It translates to “better the race” and means you should marry whiter, more European-looking people, so, although there was no Wilhelm Friedrich Ewers in the 1950s in Mexico City, he might not have been unwelcome.

An occultist and a writer. I can’t even remember my appointments for Monday,” he said with a cheeky grin. “But I do admit people can get into bizarre hobbies when they’re in show business. Is that why the film ought to be infamous? Because that German boy said abracadabra and presto?

Tristán felt everything was a bit too raw to think about having sex so soon after their breakup, and he suspected Yolanda might want to get back together with him, because that had happened once before. That would be unfair to her since he was as lukewarm about their relationship as he had been

Let’s try another route. How about power, Montserrat? The power you’ve craved since you were a little girl, when they mocked you and shoved you and called you dirty names. The power you lack when those men sneer at you and ignore your contributions, your brilliance. The power to make the whole world see you.

But he hadn’t always played nice, and his image of youthful excess, which had once garnered free publicity, had sunk him, eliciting awful headlines: “Party Monster’s Bacchanal Ends in Tragedy” had been one of the best ones. Plus, Karina’s father, Evaristo Junco, was a vindictive asshole who had blamed Tristán

Montserrat, let’s talk about us. I am willing to alleviate your financial woes and provide you with the other trinkets you desire, including Tristán. The love of your life, am I correct?” “I can get a raise and go on dates on my own, asshole,” she said, unable to maintain a composed tone against the mockery of his voice.

She supposed it hadn’t been that hard for Hitler’s followers to make it to America, not with greedy people willing to harbor them. Some of those mass murderers must have been flush with Jewish loot, with the belongings of the poor Romani they tried to exterminate, and the coins stolen from the corpses of disabled people. And so they’d come to the Americas, to be greeted with open arms by Perón and others like him.

They called them Turks, no matter where they came from, they said aboneros should be expelled from the country, like the Chinese had been kicked out. By the late 1950s, when Ewers presided over his crowd of admirers, Mexico City was warming up to certain Lebanese businesspeople who wielded their wealth as an entry card into society, but it didn’t mean a poor boy like Tristán would have been welcomed with open arms.

nerves. This structure is surrounded in both the root and crown by the dentine or tooth bone which is nourished from within. The dentine of the root is covered by cementum which receives nourishment from the membrane which attaches the root to the jaw bone. The dentine of the crown or exposed part of the tooth is covered with enamel. Tooth decay proceeds slowly through the enamel and often rapidly in the dentine, always following the minute channels toward the pulp, which may become infected before the decay actually reaches the pulp to expose it; nearly always the decay infects the pulp when it destroys the dentine covering it. When a tooth has a deep cavity of decay, the decalcified dentine has about the density of rotten wood. With an adequate improvement in nutrition, tooth decay will generally be checked provided two conditions are present: in the first place, there must be enough improvement in the quality of the saliva; and in the second, the saliva must have free access to the cavity. Of course, if the decay is removed and a filling placed in the cavity, the bacteria will be mechanically shut out. One of the most severe tests of a nutritional program, accordingly, is the test of its power to check tooth decay completely, even without fillings. There are, however, two further tests of the sufficiency of improvement of the chemical content of the saliva. If it has been sufficiently improved, bacterial growth will not only be inhibited, but the leathery decayed dentine will become mineralized from the saliva by a process similar to petrification. Note that this mineralized dentine is not vital, nor does it increase in volume and fill the cavity. When scraped with a steel instrument it frequently takes on a density like very hard wood and occasionally takes even a glassy surface. When such a tooth is placed in silver nitrate, the chemical does not penetrate this demineralized dentine, though it does rapidly penetrate the decayed dentine of a tooth extracted when decay is active

I’ll figure a way out,” he promises, and in some part of his own mind sees a monochrome image, himself and Reno, Raul and Lupe, Sarah looking as if she’s been lit by von Sternberg and bearing a resemblance to Louise Brooks, all in some improbably large delta cabin, sailing against a background of gray watercolor-wash clouds pierced by the bright swords of sunbeams, a happy silver nitrate ending glowing on the screen of Cowboy’s closed lids, and he has a feeling he can work it somehow, flick a switch and things will turn out that way, if he just knows what switch and when.

photographers at the time often rubbed their fingers with solid lumps of cyanide to remove silver nitrate stains.

By 1850, worldwide population had grown to 1.3 billion; by 1900, 1.7 billion; by 1950, 2.6 billion. And then things really took off. Over the next fifty years, the population more than doubled, reaching well beyond 6 billion. If you had to pick a single silver bullet that allowed this surge, it would be ammonium nitrate, an astonishingly cheap and effective crop fertilizer

1994 was going to begin on a downward spiral.

The houses were left vacant on the land and the land was vacant because of this. Only the tractor sheds of corrugated iron, silver and gleaming were alive, and they were alive with metal and gasoline and oil, discs of the plows shining. The tractors had lights shining, for there is no day and night for a tractor, and the discs turn the earth in the darkness and they glitter in the daylight. And when a horse stops work and goes into the barn, there is a life and vitality left. There is a breathing and a warmth, and the feet shift on the straw, and the jaws champ on the hay, and the ears and the eyes are alive. There is a warmth of life in the barn and the heat and smell of life, but when the motor of a tractor stops it is as dead as the ore it came from. The heat goes out of it like the living heat that leaves a corpse. Then the corrugated iron doors are closed and the tractor man drives home to town, perhaps twenty miles away, and he need not come back for weeks or months, for the tractor is dead. And this is easy and efficient. So easy, that the wonder goes out of work. So efficient, that the wonder goes out of land, the working of it, and with the wonder, the deep understanding and the relation. And in the tractor man the grows the contempt that comes only to a stranger who has little understanding and no relation, for nitrates are not the land, nor phosphates, and the length of fiber in the cotton is not the land. Carbon is not a man, nor salt, water, nor calcium. He is all these, but he is much more, much more. And the land is so much more than its analysis. The man who is more than his chemistry walking on the earth, turning his plow point for a stone, dropping his handles to slide over an outcropping, kneeling in the earth to eat his lunch, that man who is more than his elements knows the land that is more than it's analysis. But the machine man, driving a dead tractor on land he does not know and love understands only chemistry, and he is contemptuous of the land and of himself. When the corrugated iron doors are shut he goes home, and his home is not the land.

silver nitrate eyedrops. This almost completely eradicated the disease. But it turns out that silver nitrate is nasty. It can cause chemical burns and temporary blindness itself.

You’re the type of ho that is always trying to talk your friends out of the guys that holla at them, right? You’re just jealous because no one is tryna talk to your Al Pacino, Tony Montana, ‘Say hello to my little friend’, lookin’ ass! You’re single, but hating it. Liiiivin’! Single! In a ’90’ s kinda, woooorld! I’m, glad, I, got, my girls!” he sang, laughing.

Truth hurt, don’t it? I would’ve been gone by now but you just had to throw your two cents in. Save that for your pimp. Wouldn’t want to come up short now, would you?” “Look, little drummer boy, go on somewhere, alright? You’re not wanted.

During chemistry, it’s another experiment/observation. Alex swirls test tubes full of silver nitrate and potassium chloride liquids. “Looks like they’re both water to me, Mrs. P.,” Alex says. “Looks are deceiving,” Mrs. Peterson replies. My gaze travels to Alex’s hands. Those hands that are now busy measuring the right amount of silver nitrate and potassium chloride are the same ones that traced my lips intimately. “Earth to Brittany.” I blink my eyes, snapping out of my daydream. Alex is holding a test tube full of clear liquid out to me. Which reminds me I should help him pour the liquids together. “Uh, sorry.” I pick up one test tube and pour it into the tube he’s holding. “We’re supposed to write down what happens,” he says, using the stirring rod to mix the chemicals together. A white solid magically appears inside the clear liquid. “Hey, Mrs. P.! I think we found the answer to our problems for the ozone layer depletion,” Alex teases. Mrs. Peterson shakes her head. “So what do we observe in the tube?” he asks me, reading off of the sheet Mrs. Peterson handed out at the start of class. “I’d say the watery liquid is probably potassium nitrate now and the white solid mass in silver chloride. What’s your assumption?” As he hands me the tube, our fingers brush against each other. And linger. It leaves a tingling sensation I can’t ignore. I glance up. Our eyes meet, and for a minute I think he’s trying to send me a private message but his expression turns dark and he looks away. “What do you want me to do?” I whisper. “You’re gonna have to figure that one out yourself.” “Alex…” But he won’t tell me what to do. I guess I’m a bitch to even ask him for advice when he can’t possibly be unbiased. When I’m close to Alex I feel excitement, the way I used to feel on Christmas morning.

My gaze travels to Alex’s hands. Those hands that are now busy measuring the right amount of silver nitrate and potassium chloride are the same ones that traced my lips intimately. “Earth to Brittany.” I blink my eyes, snapping out of my daydream. Alex is holding a test tube full of clear liquid out to me. Which reminds me I should help him pour the liquids together. “Uh, sorry.” I pick up one test tube and pour it into the tube he’s holding. “We’re supposed to write down what happens,” he says, using the stirring rod to mix the chemicals together. A white solid magically appears inside the clear liquid. “Hey, Mrs. P.! I think we found the answer to our problems for the ozone layer depletion,” Alex teases. Mrs. Peterson shakes her head. “So what do we observe in the tube?” he asks me, reading off of the sheet Mrs. Peterson handed out at the start of class. “I’d say the watery liquid is probably potassium nitrate now and the white solid mass in silver chloride. What’s your assumption?” As he hands me the tube, our fingers brush against each other. And linger. It leaves a tingling sensation I can’t ignore. I glance up. Our eyes meet, and for a minute I think he’s trying to send me a private message but his expression turns dark and he looks away.

The houses were left vacant on the land, and the land was vacant because of this. Only the tractor sheds of corrugated iron, silver and gleaming, were alive; and they were alive with metal and gasoline and oil, the disks of the plows shining. The tractors had lights shining, for there is no day and night for a tractor and the disks turn the earth in the darkness and they glitter in the daylight. And when a horse stops work and goes into the barn there is a life and a vitality left, there is a breathing and a warmth, and the feet shift on the straw, and the jaws champ on the hay, and the ears and the eyes are alive. There is a warmth of life in the barn, and the heat and smell of life. But when the motor of a tractor stops, it is as dead as the ore it came from. The heat goes out of it like the living heat that leaves a corpse. Then the corrugated iron doors are closed and the tractor man drives home to town, perhaps twenty miles away, and he need not come back for weeks or months, for the tractor is dead. And this is easy and efficient. So easy that the wonder goes out of work, so efficient that the wonder goes out of land and the working of it, and with the wonder the deep understanding and the relation. And in the tractor man there grows the contempt that comes only to a stranger who has little understanding and no relation. For nitrates are not the land, nor phosphates; and the length of fiber in the cotton is not the land. Carbon is not a man, nor salt nor water nor calcium. He is all these, but he is much more, much more; and the land is so much more than its analysis. The man who is more than his chemistry, walking on the earth, turning his plow point for a stone, dropping his handles to slide over an outcropping, kneeling in the earth to eat his lunch; that man who is more than his elements knows the land that is more than its analysis. But the machine man, driving a dead tractor on land he does not know and love, understands only chemistry; and he is contemptuous of the land and of himself. When the corrugated iron doors are shut, he goes home, and his home is not the land.

Editing rooms all looked like war zones unless a client was poking their head around.