Spades Game Quotes

I didn’t invent this twisted system that pits us against each other and makes us do crappy things for status—but I do know how to play it.

I wanna hold 'em like they do in Texas, please Fold 'em, let 'em hit me, raise it, baby, stay with me (I love it) Love game intuition, play the cards with spades to start And after he's been hooked, I'll play the one that's on his heart

There were many advantages to a well-tailored suit, and Dominic was treated to one of them right now: a view of soft wool clinging to the lines of lean, strong thighs and a tight ass that defined the word spankable.

Yes!" He says. "Fear is an excellent motivator. I find that it really brings out the true ingenuity of a creature.

You hunt... Your fellow creatures?" I ask, still in disbelief. "Of course. A hunt is only as interesting as the prey is clever!

Vigilantism appealed to the darker side of human nature, the thirst for primal justice that knew no constraints.

A week earlier, Dominic couldn’t have imagined Levi describing him as trustworthy under any circumstances. Now he felt the same way he did when his sister Angela’s cat—a standoffish bastard with a wicked set of claws—came to him for petting while regally ignoring everyone else in the room. Not that he would ever make that comparison to Levi’s face.

I think about how many Black spirits have been killed by white supremacy and lies. How many of us were experiments. Worthless bodies in some game.

My dear boy', Le Chiffre spoke like a father, 'the game of Red Indians is over, quite over. You have stumbled by mischance into a game for grown-ups and you have already found it a painful experience. You are not equipped, my dear boy, to play games with adults and it very foolish of your nanny in London to have sent you out here with your spade and bucket. Very foolish indeed and most unfortunate for you.' 'But we must stop joking, my dear fellow, although I am sure you would like to follow me in developing this amusing little cautionary tale.

Daniel had known Zephyr since she was seven. He used to sit in the living room while she and Trixie performed the cheerleading moves they'd made up during an afternoon of play or lip-synched to the radio, or presented tumbling routines. He could practically still hear them doing a hand-clapping game: "The spades go eeny-meeny pop zoombini.

You have the white knight syndrome in spades,” she murmured. “Don’t kid yourself, baby, there’s nothing white knight about me.

Stay the fuck away from me, okay?” I move back. “Keep me out of your games.

The advisors, on the other hand, were like older brothers and sisters. My favorite was Bill Symes, who'd been a founding member of Fellowship in 1967. He was in his early twenties now and studying religion at Webster University. He had shoulders like a two-oxen yoke, a ponytail as thick as a pony's tail, and feet requiring the largest size of Earth Shoes. He was a good musician, a passionate attacker of steel acoustical guitar strings. He liked to walk into Burger King and loudly order two Whoppers with no meat. If he was losing a Spades game, he would take a card out of his hand, tell the other players, "Play this suit!" and then lick the card and stick it to his forehead facing out. In discussions, he liked to lean into other people's space and bark at them. He said, "You better deal with that!" He said, "Sounds to me like you've got a problem that you're not talking about!" He said, "You know what? I don't think you believe one word of what you just said to me!" He said, "Any resistance will be met with an aggressive response!" If you hesitated when he moved to hug you, he backed away and spread his arms wide and goggled at you with raised eyebrows, as if to say, "Hello? Are you going to hug me, or what?" If he wasn't playing guitar he was reading Jung, and if he wasn't reading Jung he was birdwatching, and if he wasn't birdwatching he was practicing tai chi, and if you came up to him during his practice and asked him how he would defend himself if you tried to mug him with a gun, he would demonstrate, in dreamy Eastern motion, how to remove a wallet from a back pocket and hand it over. Listening to the radio in his VW Bug, he might suddenly cry out, "I want to hear... 'La Grange' by ZZ Top!" and slap the dashboard. The radio would then play "La Grange.

Work hard. Work dirty. Choose your favourite spade and dig a small, deep hole; located deep in the forest or a desolate area of the desert or tundra. Then bury your cellphone and then find a hobby. Actually, 'hobby' is not a weighty enough word to represent what I am trying to get across. Let's use 'discipline' instead. If you engage in a discipline or do something with your hands, instead of kill time on your phone device, then you have something to show for your time when you're done. Cook, play music, sew, carve, shit - bedazzle! Or, maybe not bedazzle... The arrhythmic is quite simple, instead of playing draw something, fucking draw something! Take the cleverness you apply to words with friends and utilise it to make some kick ass cornbread, corn with friends - try that game. I'm here to tell you that we've been duped on a societal level. My favourite writer, Wendell Berry writes on this topic with great eloquence, he posits that we've been sold a bill of goods claiming that work is bad. That sweating and working especially if soil or saw dust is involved are beneath us. Our population especially the urbanites, has largely forgotten that working at a labour that one loves is actually a privilege.

Rule one: Wealth is power. If you don’t have it, keep your head down. I thought I’d gotten that one down to a science over the past twelve years. Rule two: Knowledge is too—now that power I had in spades. But with knowledge comes the responsibility to know when to keep your mouth shut and when not to (see rule one). I chose not to and I chose wrong.

The old woman sat in her leather recliner, the footrest extended, a dinner tray on her lap. By candlelight, she turned the cards over, halfway through a game of Solitaire. Next door, her neighbors were being killed. She hummed quietly to herself. There was a jack of spades. She placed it under the queen of hearts in the middle column. Next a six of diamonds. It went under the seven of spades. Something crashed into her front door. She kept turning the cards over. Putting them in their right places. Two more blows. The door burst open. She looked up. The monster crawled inside, and when it saw her sitting in the chair, it growled. “I knew you were coming,” she said. “Didn’t think it’d take you quite so long.” Ten of clubs. Hmm. No home for this one yet. Back to the pile. The monster moved toward her. She stared into its small, black eyes. “Don’t you know it’s not polite to just walk into someone’s house without an invitation?” she asked. Her voice stopped it in its tracks. It tilted its head. Blood—from one of her neighbor’s no doubt—dripped off its chest onto the floor. Belinda put down the next card. “I’m afraid this is a one-player game,” she said, “and I don’t have any tea to offer you.” The monster opened its mouth and screeched a noise out of its throat like the squawk of a terrible bird. “That is not your inside voice,” Belinda snapped. The abby shrunk back a few steps. Belinda laid down the last card. “Ha!” She clapped. “I just won the game.” She gathered up the cards into a single deck, split it, then shuffled. “I could play Solitaire all day every day,” she said. “I’ve found in my life that sometimes the best company is your own.” A growl idled again in the monster’s throat. “You cut that right out!” she yelled. “I will not be spoken to that way in my own home.” The growl changed into something almost like a purr. “That’s better,” Belinda said as she dealt a new game. “I apologize for yelling. My temper sometimes gets the best of me.

Have you ever played Killer Bunnies?” she asked. “Killer Bunnies?” he repeated, blinking the way people always did when they didn’t follow her brain’s train. “It’s a card game. Not spades and clubs, kings and jacks cards. It’s like a board game, with cards instead of a board. Here. I’ll show you.” She stretched up to the top shelf beside her TV and pulled down a bright blue box. “But I have to warn you, I never hesitate to use the nuclear warheads or the anti-matter raisins. Your bunnies are going down.

The worldview of the underdog socialist is that the neoliberals have mastered the game of reason, judgment, and statistics, leaving the left with emotion. Its heart is in the right place. Underdog socialists have a surfeit of compassion and find prevailing policies deeply unfair. Seeing the welfare state crumbling to dust, they rush in to salvage what they can. But when push comes to shove, the underdog socialist caves in to the arguments of the opposition, always accepting the premise on which the debate takes place... The underdog socialist forgets that the real problem isn't the national debt, but overextended households and businesses. He forgets that fighting poverty is an investment that pays off in spades. And he forgets that, all the while, the bankers and the lawyers are polishing turds at the expense of waste collectors and nurses.

The hip world, the vast majority of the acid heads, were still playing the eternal charade of the middle-class intellectuals—Behold my wings! Freedom! Flight!—but you don’t actually expect me to jump off that cliff, do you? It is the eternal game in which Clement Attlee, bald as Lenin, lively as a toy tank, yodels blood to the dockworkers of Liverpool—and dies buried in striped pants with a magenta sash across his chest and a coin with the Queen’s likeness upon each eyelid. In their heart of hearts, the heads of Haight-Ashbury could never stretch their fantasy as far out as the Hell’s Angels. Overtly, publicly, they included them in—suddenly, they were the Raw Vital Proles of this thing, the favorite minority, replacing the spades. Privately, the heads remained true to their class, and to its visceral panics … One trouble with this Kesey was, he really meant it.

Mr. Fish told my mother that he would make a “gift” of Sagamore’s body—to my grandmother’s roses. He implied that a dead dog was highly prized, among serious gardeners; my grandmother wished to be brought into the discussion, and it was quickly agreed which rosebushes would be temporarily uprooted, and replanted, and Mr. Fish began with the spade. The digging was much softer in the rose bed than it would have been in Mr. Fish’s yard, and the young couple and their baby from down the street were sufficiently moved to attend the burial, along with a scattering of Front Street’s other children; even my grandmother asked to be called when the hole was ready, and my mother—although the day had turned much colder—wouldn’t even go inside for a coat. She wore dark-gray flannel slacks and a black, V-necked sweater, and stood hugging herself, standing first on one foot, then on the other, while Owen gathered strange items to accompany Sagamore to the underworld. Owen was restrained from putting the football in the burlap sack, because Mr. Fish—while digging the grave—maintained that football was still a game that would give us some pleasure, when we were “a little older.” Owen found a few well-chewed tennis balls, and Sagamore’s food dish, and his dog blanket for trips in the car; these he included in the burlap sack, together with a scattering of the brightest maple leaves—and a leftover lamb chop that Lydia had been saving for Sagamore (from last night’s supper).

I think one of the reasons my family survived its difficult times and is so close today is because we are always laughing at one another’s faults and mistakes, and despite whatever injustices are done, we have a good time doing it. We aren’t afraid to poke fun at one another and no one ever takes it personal for long. My brothers and I are highly competitive and world-class trash-talkers, and if you ever walk in while we are playing cards or dominoes--just like our games with Granny and Pa--you probably would think someone is fixing to die. Our neighbor, who was about my parents’ age, came over to our house once looking for my mom. She found my brothers and me playing the card game hearts. She offered to be the fourth. But about midway through the second hand, we looked up and she had tears streaming down her face. She threw her cards in the middle of the table, declared she didn’t want to play anymore, and left the house. We were a bit miffed about it and didn’t realize until later that our trash talking had led to her emotional exit. Another time, I brought a girl from high school down to my parents’ house for supper and cards because she told me she was quite the spades player. Halfway through the game, she was crying hysterically. Her sister later stood nose to nose with me and gave me quite the tongue-lashing. I came to realize that our banter was a bit extreme to people outside of our family. Maybe that is one of the reasons I married a woman who couldn’t care less about winning or losing any game.

The ownership of land is not natural. The American savage, ranging through forests who game and timber are the common benefits of all his kind, fails to comprehend it. The nomad traversing the desert does not ask to whom belong the shifting sands that extend around him as far as the horizon. The Caledonian shepherd leads his flock to graze wherever a patch of nutritious greenness shows amidst the heather. All of these recognise authority. They are not anarchists. They have chieftains and overlords to whom they are as romantically devoted as any European subject might be to a monarch. Nor do they hold as the first Christians did, that all land should be held in common. Rather, they do not consider it as a thing that can be parceled out. “We are not so innocent. When humanity first understood that a man’s strength could create good to be marketed, that a woman’s beauty was itself a commodity for trade, then slavery was born. So since Adam learnt to force the earth to feed him, fertile ground has become too profitable to be left in peace. “This vital stuff that lives beneath our feet is a treasury of all times. The past: it is packed with metals and sparkling stones, riches made by the work of aeons. The future: it contains seeds and eggs: tight-packed promises which will unfurl into wonders more fantastical than ever jeweller dreamed of -- the scuttling centipede, the many-branched tree whose roots, fumbling down into darkness, are as large and cunningly shaped as the boughs that toss in light. The present: it teems. At barely a spade’s depth the mouldy-warp travels beneath my feet: who can imagine what may live a fathom down? We cannot know for certain that the fables of serpents curving around roots of mighty trees, or of dragons guarding treasure in perpetual darkness, are without factual reality. “How can any man own a thing so volatile and so rich? Yet we followers of Cain have made of our world a great carpet, whose pieces can be lopped off and traded as though it were inert as tufted wool.

St Cuthbert was called to be a hermit on Lindis­farne. This was more than a thousand years ago. There were only small wooden huts there then, and the wind and the wild sea and everything that lived in the wild sea. Cuthbert went out there to the mon­astery, but the monastery was not far enough and he was called out further. He rowed to an empty island, where he ate onions and the eggs of seabirds and stood in the sea and prayed while sea otters played around his ankles. He lived there alone for years, but then he was called back. The King of Northumbria came to him with some churchmen, and they told him he had been elected Bishop of Lindisfarne and they asked him to come back and serve. There’s a Victorian painting of the king and the her­mit. Cuthbert wears a dirty brown robe and has one calloused hand on a spade. The king is offering him a bishop’s crosier. Behind him, monks kneel on the sands and pray he will accept it. Behind them are the beached sailboats that brought them to the island. The air is filled with swallows. Cuthbert’s head is turned away from the king, he looks down at the ground and his left hand is held up in a gesture of refusal. But he didn’t refuse, in the end. He didn’t refuse the call. He went back. We head out because the emptiness negates us. We leave the cities and we go to the wild high places to be dissolved and to be small. We live and die at once, the topsoil is washed away and the rock is exposed and it is not possible to play the games anymore. Now I am exposed rock. Like Cuthbert, I have been washed clean. What do I see?

I wanna hold 'em like they do in Texas, please Fold 'em, let 'em hit me, raise it, baby, stay with me (I love it) Love game intuition, play the cards with spades to start And after he's been hooked, I'll play the one that's on his heart Oh, whoa, oh, oh Oh, oh-oh I'll get him hot, show him what I got Oh, whoa, oh, oh Oh, oh-oh I'll get him hot, show him what I got Can't read my, can't read my No, he can't read my poker face (She's got me like nobody) Can't read my, can't read my No, he can't read my poker face (She's got me like nobody) P-p-p-poker face, f-f-fuck her face (mum-mum-mum-mah) P-p-p-poker face, f-f-fuck her face (mum-mum-mum-mah) I wanna roll with him, a hard pair we will be A little gamblin' is fun when you're with me (I love it) Russian roulette is not the same without a gun And baby, when it's love, if it's not rough, it isn't fun (fun) Oh, whoa, oh, oh Oh, oh-oh I'll get him hot, show him what I got Oh, whoa, oh, oh Oh, oh-oh I'll get him hot, show him what I got Can't read my, can't read my No, he can't read my poker face (She's got me like nobody) Can't read my, can't read my No, he can't read my poker face (She's got me like nobody) P-p-p-poker face, f-f-fuck her face (mum-mum-mum-mah) P-p-p-poker face, f-f-fuck her face (mum-mum-mum-mah) (Mum-mum-mum-mah) (Mum-mum-mum-mah) I won't tell you that I love you, kiss or hug you 'Cause I'm bluffin' with my muffin I'm not lyin', I'm just stunnin' with my love-glue-gunnin' Just like a chick in the casino Take your bank before I pay you out I promise this, promise this Check this hand 'cause I'm marvelous Can't read my, can't read my No, he can't read my poker face (She's got me like nobody) Can't read my, can't read my No, he can't read my poker face (She's got me like nobody) Can't read my, can't read my No, he can't read my poker face (She's got me like nobody) Can't read my, can't read my No, he can't read my poker face (She's got me like nobody) Can't read my, can't read my No, he can't read my poker face (She's got me like nobody) Can't read my, can't read my No, he can't read my poker face (She's got me like nobody) P-p-p-poker face, p-p-poker face P-p-p-poker face, f-f-fuck her face (she's got me like nobody) P-p-p-poker face, f-f-fuck her face (mum-mum-mum-mah) P-p-p-poker face, f-f-fuck her face (mum-mum-mum-mah) P-p-p-poker face, f-f-fuck her face (mum-mum-mum-mah) P-p-p-poker face, f-f-fuck her face (mum-mum-mum-mah)

I don't know how to tend this garden full of wild red things. Before, I would have gone running. Now, the thing I do to stay calm are things a stranger would do: ride the bus play card games on my phone: poker, spades, Razz memorize street maps play music so loud it makes my head hurt and never songs I like. Anything to escape my brain, body. Anything to be somewhere someone else.

La regina si alzò. "E cosa dici del mio furore, lord Stark?" La sua voce era soffice, i suoi occhi gli scrutavano il viso. "Avresti dovuto salire tu sul Trono di Spade. Era già tuo. Jaime mi ha parlato del giorno della caduta di Approdo del Re, di quando l'hai trovato seduto sul trono e di come tu l'abbia costretto ad alzarsi. Quello era il tuo momento. Tutto ciò che dovevi fare era salire quei pochi gradini e sederti. Quale triste errore." "Ho commesso molti più errori di quanti tu possa mai immaginare" ribattè Ned "ma questo non lo è stato." "E invece sì, mio lord" insistè Cersei. "Quando si gioca al gioco del trono, o si vince o si muore. Non esistono terre di nessuno.

«Avresti dovuto salire tu sul Trono di Spade. Era già tuo. Jaime mi ha parlato del giorno della caduta di Approdo del Re, di quando l'hai trovato seduto sul trono e di come tu l'abbia costretto ad alzarsi. Quello era il tuo momento. Tutto ciò che dovevi fare era salire quei pochi gradini e sederti. Quale triste errore.» «Ho commesso molti più errori di quanti tu possa mai immaginare» ribatté Ned «ma questo non lo è stato.» «E invece sì, mio lord» insisté Cersei. «Quando si gioca al gioco del trono, o si vince o si muore. Non esistono terre di nessuno.»

«Gli dei ci aiutino, ragazzo. Perché tu non sei né cieco né stupido. Quando i morti vengono a camminare nel buio, credi davvero che abbia importanza chi siede sul Trono di Spade?»

«Oh, a momenti dimenticavo...» le disse. «Tutte le grandi spade hanno un nome.» «Come Ghiaccio» convenne Arya studiando la sua lama. «E questa? Ce l'ha, un nome? Dimmelo, Jon!» «Non indovini?» fece lui con un sorriso ironico. «Qual è la tua cosa preferita?» Arya apparve perplessa, ma non durò che un batter d'occhi perché era rapida, molto rapida. Dissero in coro anche questo: «Ago!». Il ricordo della loro ultima risata insieme riscaldò Jon Snow per tutta la lunga cavalcata averso settentrione.

Without taking use of ox or man, Or of creature as Mary desired, Without spinning thread of silk or of satin, Without sowing, without harrowing, without reaping, Without rowing, without games, without fishing, Without going to the hunting hill, Without trimming arrows on the Lord's Day, Without cleaning byre, without threshing corn, Without kiln, without mill on the Lord's Day. Whosoever would keep the Lord's Day, Even would it be to him and lasting, From setting of sun on Saturday Till rising of sun on Monday.17 Beltaine remained the central festival in the cycle of the agricultural pastoral year, the season of light, the time of growth. It was then that the sheep and cattle would be driven up to the summer pastures, the “shielings” in Scotland, the “hafods” in Wales. This was a virtual migration since these might be six or eight or even twelve or fourteen miles away, and it often meant crossing land that was rough and rugged or full of swamps, even sometimes having to swim across channels or rivers. The procession included the men carrying spades, ropes, and other things that might be needed to repair their summer huts, while the women carried the bedding, meal, and dairy utensils. As they went, there were songs to be sung on the journey, a dedicatory hymn to the Trinity and to the most familiar of the saints, Michael, Bride, and Columba, respectively the protector, the woman who knew about dairies, the guardian of their cattle—and, of course, to Mary herself, who on this occasion they address as mother of the White Lamb: Valiant Michael of the white steeds, Who subdued the Dragon of blood, For love of God, for pains of Mary's Son, Spread

I believe that people can complement each other so well that they’re like two halves of one whole, yes. Not necessarily that there’s only one match in the entire world for each person.

The human species has a responsibility to purge its diseased. Like cutting off moldy bread before it ruins the entire loaf.

I like your necklace. Sh’kula tsdakâ ke’nêged kol ha’mitzvot.” Charity outweighs all other commandments.

We are unlike the Christians of New Testament times. Our approach to life is conventional and static; theirs was not. The thought of "safety first" was not a drag on their enterprise as it is on ours. By being exuberant, unconventional and uninhibited in living by the gospel they turned their world upside down, but you could not accuse us twentieth-century Christians of doing anything like that. Why are we so different? Why, compared with them, do we appear as no more than halfway Christians? Whence comes the nervous, dithery, take-no-risks mood that mars so much of our discipleship? Why are we not free enough from fear and anxiety to allow ourselves to go full stretch in following Christ? One reason, it seems, is that in our heart of hearts we are afraid of the consequence of going the whole way into the Christian life. We shrink from accepting burdens of responsibility for others because we fear we should not have the strength to bear them. We shrink from accepting a way of life in which we forfeit material security because we are afraid of being left stranded. We shrink from being meek because we are afraid that if we do not stand up for ourselves we shall be trodden down and victimized, and end up among life's casualties and failures. We shrink from breaking with social conventions in order to serve Christ because we fear that if we did, the established structure of our life would collapse all around us, leaving us without a footing anywhere. It is these half-conscious fears, this dread of insecurity, rather than any deliberate refusal to face the cost of following Christ, which make us hold back. We feel that the risks of out-and-out discipleship are too great for us to take. In other words, we are not persuaded of the adequacy of God to provide for all the needs of those who launch out wholeheartedly on the deep sea of unconventional living in obedience to the call of Christ. Therefore, we feel obliged to break the first commandment just a little, by withdrawing a certain amount of our time and energy from serving God in order to serve mammon. This, at the bottom, seems to be what is wrong with us. We are afraid to go all the way in accepting the authority of God, because of our secret uncertainty as to his adequacy to look after us if we do. Now, let us call a spade a spade. The name of the game we are playing is unbelief.....

And anyone who isn't on L's side must be on Rae's side. There is only the two of them, after all. The only people that matter, for ever and ever, stupid fucking game. Good versus evil, and good will win. Rae will win. Rae always wins.

KNIGHTS, KNAVES, POPES, AND PENTACLES: THE HISTORY OF THE HOLY GRAIL THROUGH TAROT “Not surprising,” Langdon said to Sophie. “Some of our keywords have the same names as individual cards.” He reached for the mouse to click on a hyperlink. “I’m not sure if your grandfather ever mentioned it when you played Tarot with him, Sophie, but this game is a ‘flash-card catechism’ into the story of the Lost Bride and her subjugation by the evil Church.” Sophie eyed him, looking incredulous. “I had no idea.” “That’s the point. By teaching through a metaphorical game, the followers of the Grail disguised their message from the watchful eye of the Church.” Langdon often wondered how many modern card players had any clue that their four suits—spades, hearts, clubs, diamonds—were Grail-related symbols that came directly from Tarot’s four suits of swords, cups, scepters, and pentacles. Spades were Swords—The blade. Male. Hearts were Cups—The chalice. Feminine. Clubs were Scepters—The Royal Line. The flowering staff. Diamonds were Pentacles—The goddess. The sacred feminine.

That’s one way. “Will we bury him?” “Why?” Sandor said. “He don’t care, and we’ve got no spade. Leave him for the wolves and wild dogs. Your brothers and mine.” He gave her a hard look. “First we rob him, though.

Work hard. Work dirty. Choose your favourite spade and dig a small, deep hole; located deep in the forest or a desolate area of the desert or tundra. Then bury your cell phone. And then find a hobby. Actually, 'hobby' is not a weighty enough word to represent what I am trying to get across. Let's use 'discipline' instead. If you engage in a discipline or do something with your hands, instead of kill time on your phone device, then you have something to show for your time when you're done. Cook. Play music. Sew. Carve. Shit, bedazzle! Or, maybe not bedazzle. The arrhythmic is quite simple, instead of playing Draw Something, fucking draw something. Take the cleverness you apply to Words with Friends and utilize it to make some kick ass corn bread, Corn Bread with Friends - try that game. I'm here to tell you that we've been duped on a societal level. My favourite writer, Wendell Berry writes on this topic with great eloquence, he posits that we've been sold a bill of goods claiming that work is bad. That sweating and working especially if soil or saw dust is involved are beneath us. Our population especially the urbanites, has largely forgotten that working at a labor that one loves is actually a privilege.

This, at bottom, seems to be what is wrong with us. We are afraid to go all the way in accepting the authority of God, because of our secret uncertainty as to his adequacy to look after us if we do. Now let us call a spade a spade. The name of the game we are playing is unbelief, and Paul’s “he will give us all things” stands as an everlasting rebuke to us. Paul is telling us that there is no ultimate loss or irreparable impoverishment to be feared; if God denies us something, it is only in order to make room for one or other of the things he has in mind. Are we, perhaps, still assuming that a person’s life consists, partly at any rate, in the things he possesses?

Christ, don’t give me your occupation-game labels! we are Beautiful People, ascendent from your robot junkyard :::::: and at this point they used to sit down and write home the Beautiful People letter. Usually the girls wrote these letters to their mothers. Mothers all over California, all over America, I guess, got to know the Beautiful People letter by heart. It went: “Dear Mother, “I meant to write to you before this and I hope you haven’t been worried. I am in [San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York, Arizona, a Hopi Indian Reservation!!!! New York, Ajijic, San Miguel de Allende, Mazatlán, Mexico!!!!] and it is really beautiful here. It is a beautiful scene. We’ve been here a week. I won’t bore you with the whole thing, how it happened, but I really tried, because I knew you wanted me to, but it just didn’t work out with [school, college, my job, me and Danny] and so I have come here and it a really beautiful scene. I don’t want you to worry about me. I have met some BEAUTIFUL PEOPLE and …” … and in the heart of even the most unhip mamma in all the U.S. of A. instinctively goes up the adrenal shriek: beatniks, bums, spades—dope.

I had a catalog of faults, but I possessed loyalty in spades.

Dominic shifted his grip from Levi’s wrists to his hands. “This isn’t how it happens, you and me,” he said quietly. “Not like this.

I’ve come to believe that what we need is a republic. People need to be run by people who like them, not boxed into a game they can’t win by people who can’t lose it. We need a head of state who’s been on the run. An interior minister who’s had the two o’clock knock and done solitary. A minister of agriculture who’s seen a spade fired in anger and done twenty years on the land. A health minister who’s had his life saved through swift transportation to a well-staffed, properly equipped hospital. An interior minister dedicated to dismantling the state with its futile bureaucratic waste and saving real money. And a police force that would put an end to the Bowmans of this world.

I’ll become a Spade brother—a member of a secret society that is fucked up, for a lack of a better word. Centuries ago, some bored rich men came up with a game.

Vigilantism appealed to the darker side of human nature, the thirst for primal justice that knew no constraints. This killer was banking on that, maybe even expecting law enforcement to be less diligent in their search because of it. Not on Levi’s watch.