Squad Friends Quotes

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

Your Majesty, please get down. My friend Aris is really a very good man, and if you fall off that wall he's going to hang for it, and so will his squad, most of whom are also nice men, and though I can't say I really care if your attendants hang, there are probably many people that do care, and would you please, please get down?" The king looked at him, eyes narrowed. "I don't think I've ever heard you say that many words in a row. You sounded almost articulate.
Megan Whalen Turner (The King of Attolia (The Queen's Thief, #3))
Rebecca was an academic star. Her new book was on the phenomenon of word casings, a term she'd invented for words that no longer had meaning outside quotation marks. English was full of these empty words--"friend" and "real" and "story" and "change"--words that had been shucked of their meanings and reduced to husks. Some, like "identity" and "search" and "cloud," had clearly been drained of life by their Web usage. With others, the reasons were more complex; how had "American" become an ironic term? How had "democracy" come to be used in an arch, mocking way?
Jennifer Egan (A Visit from the Goon Squad)
He’s my best friend, and I love him, but I’m not in love with him
Kelly Oram (The Avery Shaw Experiment (Science Squad, #1))
There is something seriously wrong with your friend.
Kelly Oram (The Avery Shaw Experiment (Science Squad, #1))
No one needs a relationship. What you need is the basic cop-on to figure that out, in the face of all the media bullshit screaming that you're nothing on your own and you're a dangerous freak if you disagree. The truth is, if you don't exist without someone else, you don't exist at all. And that doesn't just go for romance. I love my ma, I love my friends, I love the bones of them. If any of them wanted me to donate a kidney or crack a few heads, I'd do it, no questions asked. And if they all waved good-bye and walked out of my life tomorrow, I'd still be the same person I am today.
Tana French (The Trespasser (Dublin Murder Squad #6))
Hello, madness, my old friend. *
Marv Wolfman (Suicide Squad: The Official Movie Novelization)
An' you turn your back on your friend, you may as well go ahead an' join the asshole squad, 'cause you just became one more reason why the damn world's gone to hell.
Garth Ennis
If I had to get there without friends, I could do it. Had been doing it. I'd never met anyone who brought me somewhere I wanted to stay, looked at me and saw someone I wanted to be for good; anyone who was worth giving up the more I wanted down the line.
Tana French (The Secret Place (Dublin Murder Squad, #5))
I don’t know. I think I’ve seen this movie, and it doesn’t turn out so well for me.” I smiled at that, even though she hadn’t meant it to be funny. “How much you want to bet? I’m sure you’ve seen nature shows on alpha males or pack leaders or whatever—the whole flock of sheep thing, right?” I turned my smile extra confident because I know it annoys her when I act cocky. “Aves,Grayson Kennedy is at the top of the Spanish Fork High food chain. I’m the king of the jungle. My friends will like you because I like you.
Kelly Oram (The Avery Shaw Experiment (Science Squad, #1))
Aden had only ever had one true friend, someone he knew would fight for him and with him regardless of whether he held any power or not. The others in the squad he trusted, but Vasic occupied an entirely different place in his life, until it was as if their blood was the same.
Nalini Singh (Shield of Winter (Psy-Changeling, #13))
I think when you’re kids, you’re less . . . defined? Then you get older and you start deciding what kind of person you want to be, and it doesn’t always match up with what your friends are turning into.
Tana French (Broken Harbour (Dublin Murder Squad, #4))
How can I ever make you understand Cassie and me? I would have to take you there, walk you down every path of our secret shared geography. The truism says it’s against all odds for a straight man and woman to be real friends, platonic friends; we rolled thirteen, threw down five aces and ran away giggling. She was the summertime cousin out of storybooks, the one you taught to swim at some midge-humming lake and pestered with tadpoles down her swimsuit, with whom you practiced first kisses on a heather hillside and laughed about it years later over a clandestine joint in your granny’s cluttered attic. She painted my fingernails gold and dared me to leave them that way for work…We climbed out her window and down the fire escape and lay on the roof of the extension below, drinking improvised cocktails and singing Tom Waits and watching the stars spin dizzily around us. No.
Tana French (In the Woods (Dublin Murder Squad, #1))
Everyone knows a wife and kids tie you down. What people miss sometimes is that mates, the proper kind, they do the same just as hard. Mates mean you've settled, made your bargain: this, wherever you are together, this is as far as you're going, ever. This is your stop; this is where you get off.
Tana French (The Secret Place (Dublin Murder Squad, #5))
I have a counteroffer. I'll tell you the job description I really want." Raine's throat tightened in frustration. If he was going to keep it on this level, it was up to her to force them to the next one. As always. Seth looked down at his feet. She saw his Adam's apple bob, once. Twice. He met her eyes, with the look of a man who was facing the firing squad. "Full-time lover," he said hoarsely. "Father of your children. Companion in adventure, champion, guardian, protector, helpmeet, mate. Love of you life. Forever.
Shannon McKenna (Behind Closed Doors (McClouds & Friends #1))
Full-Private Number One in the Awkward Squad of the rank and file of life was Sloppy, and yet had his glimmering notions of standing true to the Colours.
Charles Dickens (Our Mutual Friend)
It was-this always seems to shock people all over again- a happy childhood. For the first few months I spent a lot of time at the bottom of the garden, crying till I threw up and yelling rude words at the neighborhood kids who tried to make friends. But children are pragmatic, they come alive and kicking out of a whole lot worse than orphanhood, and I could only hold out so long against the fact that nothing would bring my parents back and against the thousand vivid things around me, Emma-next-door hanging over the wall and my new bike glinting red in the sunshine and the half-wild kittens in the garden shed, all fidgeting insistently while they waited for me to wake up again and come out to play. I found out early that you can throw yourself away, missing what you've lost.
Tana French (The Likeness (Dublin Murder Squad, #2))
The sudden, painful flare of envy caught me by surprise. I was a loner, my last few years in school. I could have done with a friend like that.
Tana French (Broken Harbour (Dublin Murder Squad, #4))
Friends are a family in a world like this. And family is more important than anything under heaven.
Jay Kristoff (DEV1AT3 (Lifelike, #2))
The good news is good friends—make that great friends—will see you through everything. They are your sounding board, your cheerleading squad, your cross-my-heart-hope-to-die secret keepers. You may rely on an old one you’ve known since preschool or lean on a new one you met in homeroom. The point is, this person is going to have your back no matter how long you’ve known him or her.
Zendaya (Between U and Me: How to Rock Your Tween Years with Style and Confidence)
Who who whose smell in the air of her room, whose fingerprints all over her friends’ secret places.
Tana French (The Secret Place (Dublin Murder Squad, #5))
My memories of them had rubbed thin with overuse, worn to frail color transparencies flickering on the walls of my mind: Jamie scrambling intent and surefooted up to a high branch, Peter's laugh arcing out of the trompe-l'oeil dazzle of green ahead. Through some slow sea change they had become children out of a haunting storybook, bright myths from a lost civilization; it was hard to believe they had once been real and my friends.
Tana French (In the Woods (Dublin Murder Squad, #1))
Oh we'll know each other for forever' Bix said. 'The days of losing touch are almost gone.' 'What does that mean? ' Drew asks. 'We're going to meet again in a different place,' Bix said. 'Everyone we've lost, we'll find. Or they'll find us.
Jennifer Egan (A Visit from the Goon Squad)
I recall a battle once,’ said Dickens, looking up at a tree. 'In history, it was. And there was this company, see, and they was a ragtag of different squads and covered in mud in any case, and they found themselves hiding in a field of carrots. So as a badge they all pulled up carrots and stuck them on their helmets so’s they’d know who their friends were and incidentally have a nourishing snack for later, which is never to be sneezed at on a battlefield.’ 'Well? So what?“ said Dibbler. 'So what’s wrong with a lilac flower?’ said Dickens, reaching up and pulling down a laden branch. 'Makes a spanking plume, even if you can’t eat it…’ And now, Vimes thought, it ends.
Terry Pratchett (Night Watch (Discworld, #29; City Watch, #6))
Considering our states of mind just the week before, it was hard to believe that the five of us could all be so free and happy, so uninhibited, and all dancing at once, but I guess when we joined together and finally opened up, we made more than a star: We made music.
Willa Strayhorn (The Way We Bared Our Souls)
We don’t owe anyone our sadness, but the sharing of it is what friends do. It makes the sadness less. Friends don’t care if you like the same football squad.
Daniel Nayeri (Everything Sad Is Untrue: (a true story))
I listened to the static echoing in my ear and thought of those herds of horses you get in the vast wild spaces of America and Australia, the ones running free, fighting off bobcats or dingoes and living lean on what they find, gold and tangled in the fierce sun. My friend Alan from when I was a kid, he worked on a ranch in Wyoming one summer, on a J1 visa. He watched guys breaking those horses. He told me that every now and then there was one that couldn't be broken, one wild to the bone. Those horses fought the bridle and the fence till they were ripped up and streaming blood, till they smashed their legs or their necks to splinters, till they died of fighting to run.
Tana French (The Likeness (Dublin Murder Squad, #2))
My friend Emma, who likes things to add up neatly, claims that this is because my parents died when I was too young to take it in: they were there one day and gone the next, crashing through that fence so hard and fast they left it splintered for good. When I was Lexie Madison for eight months she turned into a real person to me, a sister I lost or left behind on the way; a shadow somewhere inside me, like the shadows of vanishing twins that show up on people's X-rays once in a blue moon. Even before she came back to find me I knew I owed her something, for being the one who lived.
Tana French (The Likeness (Dublin Murder Squad, #2))
My Lesbian history tells me that the vice squad is never our friend even when it is called in by women; that when police rid a neighborhood of 'undesirables,' the undesirables have also included street Lesbians; that I must find another way to fight violence against women without doing violence to my Lesbian self. I must find a way that does not cooperate with the state forces against sexuality, forces that raided my bars, beat up my women, entrapped us in bathrooms, closed our plays, and banned our books.
Joan Nestle (A Restricted Country)
My squad was my family, my gun was my provider and protector, and my rule was to kill or be killed. The extent of my thoughts didn’t go much beyond that. We had been fighting for over two years, and killing had become a daily activity. I felt no pity for anyone.
Ishmael Beah
We don’t, not any of us, get to this point clean. No. We’re all dirty and ragged. Rough edges and sharp corners. Fault lines and demolition zones. We’ve got tear gas riot squads aiming straight for the protest lines of our weary souls. Landmines in our chests that we trip over every time we try to hide from the terrifying tremble of our own war torn hearts....But it is your history that delivered you this roadmap of scars. Those healed wounds and their jagged edges are proof of your infinite ability to survive, to knit broken back to wholeness, to refuse that the end is every really the end... Make friends with your teardown. Do not run from your bar brawl for forgiveness. Sit with the times you’ve fucked up and the times you lost all and the days your redemption was delivered by the hand of the last person you ever expected to give anything but darkness. And through it all know that your walled up and torn down, graffiti-covered heart is still the most beautiful thing I have ever seen.
Jeanette LeBlanc
She isn’t simply unafraid of a good fight, she lives for it, and will often actively go looking for a fight. This is what differentiates your run-of-the-mill fighter from a crusader. The Warrior Princess Submissive is no shrinking violet. She is that dyed-in-the-wool Republican who attends the Democratic National Convention wearing a Rand Paul t-shirt. She is the African-American woman who invites herself to a Ku Klux Klan rally without a hood... and hands out business cards to everyone there. She is the woman who invites the Jehovah's Witnesses into her home and feeds them dinner, just for the opportunity to defend Christmas - even though she may be a Pagan. When the other girls in high school or college were trying out for the pep squad or cheerleading, she set her sights on the debate team. While her friends agonize over how to “fit in” socially, she is war gaming ideas on how to change society to fit her ideals and principles. Are you someone she considers to be immoral or evil? Run. She will eviscerate you.
Michael Makai (The Warrior Princess Submissive)
No one needs a relationship. What you need is the basic cop-on to figure that out, in the face of all the media bullshit screaming that you're nothing on your own and you're a dangerous freak if you disagree. The truth is, if you don't exist without someone else, you don't exist at all. And that doesn't just go for romance. I love my ma, I love my friends, I love the bones of them. If any of them wanted me to donate a kidney or crack a few heads, I'd do it, no questions asked. And if they all waved goodbye and walked out of my life tomorrow, I'd still be the same person I am today. I live inside my own skin. Anything that happens outside it doesn't change who I am. This isn't something I'm proud of; as far as I'm concerned, it's a bare minimum baseline requirement for calling yourself an adult human being, somewhere around the level of knowing how to do your own washing or change a toilet roll. All those idiots on the websites, begging for other people to pull their sagging puppet-strings, turn them real: they make me want to spit.
Tana French (The Trespasser (Dublin Murder Squad #6))
a bad bitch couldn’t be judged by the amount of friends and followers she had; but by the level and the magnitude of her enemies.
David Weaver (The Finale (Bankroll Squad, #3))
my friends and I were all poor together; it had very little to recommend it, but at least it had involved less effort.
Tana French (Broken Harbor (Dublin Murder Squad, #4))
On our own, we’d look totally normal. Together, we’re something else. Together, we’re special.
Corey Ann Haydu (The Careful Undressing of Love)
At some point, probably during your second year, you’ll realize the trust you feel for your friends and family has nothing on the loyalty you develop for your squad.
Rebecca Yarros (Iron Flame (The Empyrean, #2))
People spoke to foreigners with an averted gaze, and everybody seemed to know somebody who had just vanished. The rumors of what had happened to them were fantastic and bizarre though, as it turned out, they were only an understatement of the real thing. Before going to see General Videla […], I went to […] check in with Los Madres: the black-draped mothers who paraded, every week, with pictures of their missing loved ones in the Plaza Mayo. (‘Todo mi familia!’ as one elderly lady kept telling me imploringly, as she flourished their photographs. ‘Todo mi familia!’) From these and from other relatives and friends I got a line of questioning to put to the general. I would be told by him, they forewarned me, that people ‘disappeared’ all the time, either because of traffic accidents and family quarrels or, in the dire civil-war circumstances of Argentina, because of the wish to drop out of a gang and the need to avoid one’s former associates. But this was a cover story. Most of those who disappeared were openly taken away in the unmarked Ford Falcon cars of the Buenos Aires military police. I should inquire of the general what precisely had happened to Claudia Inez Grumberg, a paraplegic who was unable to move on her own but who had last been seen in the hands of his ever-vigilant armed forces [….] I possess a picture of the encounter that still makes me want to spew: there stands the killer and torturer and rape-profiteer, as if to illustrate some seminar on the banality of evil. Bony-thin and mediocre in appearance, with a scrubby moustache, he looks for all the world like a cretin impersonating a toothbrush. I am gripping his hand in a much too unctuous manner and smiling as if genuinely delighted at the introduction. Aching to expunge this humiliation, I waited while he went almost pedantically through the predicted script, waving away the rumored but doubtless regrettable dematerializations that were said to be afflicting his fellow Argentines. And then I asked him about Senorita Grumberg. He replied that if what I had said was true, then I should remember that ‘terrorism is not just killing with a bomb, but activating ideas. Maybe that’s why she’s detained.’ I expressed astonishment at this reply and, evidently thinking that I hadn’t understood him the first time, Videla enlarged on the theme. ‘We consider it a great crime to work against the Western and Christian style of life: it is not just the bomber but the ideologist who is the danger.’ Behind him, I could see one or two of his brighter staff officers looking at me with stark hostility as they realized that the general—El Presidente—had made a mistake by speaking so candidly. […] In response to a follow-up question, Videla crassly denied—‘rotondamente’: ‘roundly’ denied—holding Jacobo Timerman ‘as either a journalist or a Jew.’ While we were having this surreal exchange, here is what Timerman was being told by his taunting tormentors: Argentina has three main enemies: Karl Marx, because he tried to destroy the Christian concept of society; Sigmund Freud, because he tried to destroy the Christian concept of the family; and Albert Einstein, because he tried to destroy the Christian concept of time and space. […] We later discovered what happened to the majority of those who had been held and tortured in the secret prisons of the regime. According to a Navy captain named Adolfo Scilingo, who published a book of confessions, these broken victims were often destroyed as ‘evidence’ by being flown out way over the wastes of the South Atlantic and flung from airplanes into the freezing water below. Imagine the fun element when there’s the surprise bonus of a Jewish female prisoner in a wheelchair to be disposed of… we slide open the door and get ready to roll her and then it’s one, two, three… go!
Christopher Hitchens (Hitch 22: A Memoir)
Girlfriends aren’t allowed to care if you have Stilton socks. Friends are.” All the same, she gave her hands a quick, professional shake and took hold of my foot. “Plus, you might be less of a pain in the arse if you got more action.
Tana French (In the Woods (Dublin Murder Squad, #1))
he had been lost somewhere in the wild borderlands of nineteen, half in love with his friends with a love passing the love of women, desperate for some mystical rite that would reverse time and put their disintegrating private world back together.
Tana French (In the Woods (Dublin Murder Squad, #1))
At a lunchtime reception for the diplomatic corps in Washington, given the day before the inauguration of Barack Obama as president, I was approached by a good-looking man who extended his hand. 'We once met many years ago,' he said. 'And you knew and befriended my father.' My mind emptied, as so often happens on such occasions. I had to inform him that he had the advantage of me. 'My name is Hector Timerman. I am the ambassador of Argentina.' In my above album of things that seem to make life pointful and worthwhile, and that even occasionally suggest, in Dr. King’s phrase as often cited by President Obama, that there could be a long arc in the moral universe that slowly, eventually bends toward justice, this would constitute an exceptional entry. It was also something more than a nudge to my memory. There was a time when the name of Jacobo Timerman, the kidnapped and tortured editor of the newspaper La Opinion in Buenos Aires, was a talismanic one. The mere mention of it was enough to elicit moans of obscene pleasure from every fascist south of the Rio Grande: finally in Argentina there was a strict ‘New Order’ that would stamp hard upon the international Communist-Jewish collusion. A little later, the mention of Timerman’s case was enough to derail the nomination of Ronald Reagan’s first nominee as undersecretary for human rights; a man who didn’t seem to have grasped the point that neo-Nazism was a problem for American values. And Timerman’s memoir, Prisoner without a Name, Cell without a Number, was the book above all that clothed in living, hurting flesh the necessarily abstract idea of the desaparecido: the disappeared one or, to invest it with the more sinister and grisly past participle with which it came into the world, the one who has been ‘disappeared.’ In the nuances of that past participle, many, many people vanished into a void that is still unimaginable. It became one of the keywords, along with escuadrone de la muerte or ‘death squads,’ of another arc, this time of radical evil, that spanned a whole subcontinent. Do you know why General Jorge Rafael Videla of Argentina was eventually sentenced? Well, do you? Because he sold the children of the tortured rape victims who were held in his private prison. I could italicize every second word in that last sentence without making it any more heart-stopping. And this subhuman character was boasted of, as a personal friend and genial host, even after he had been removed from the office he had defiled, by none other than Henry Kissinger. So there was an almost hygienic effect in meeting, in a new Washington, as an envoy of an elected government, the son of the brave man who had both survived and exposed the Videla tyranny.
Christopher Hitchens (Hitch 22: A Memoir)
You asked me what I wanted. I spent a lot of time asking myself the same thing. By a year or two ago, I had come to the conclusion that I truly wanted only two things in this world: the company of my friends, and the opportunity for unfettered thought.
Tana French (The Likeness (Dublin Murder Squad, #2))
Using the acronym PAS – the internal abbreviation for Politiavdelingssjef, the head of Crime Squad – particularly pleased him. Brandhaug sat down, winked at his old friend Kurt Meirik, the head of Politiets overvåkningstjeneste, or POT, the Security Service, and studied the others sitting round the table.
Jo Nesbø (The Redbreast (Harry Hole))
Malina and Parsons are of particular interest in this book’s research, as Ghislaine Maxwell’s brother-in-law Roger Malina’s father was this very man—Frank Malina—one of the original “Rocketmen” from the “Suicide Squad” and a good friend of Jack Parsons, whose own iconoclastic interests in turn involved devotion to the dark teachings of Aleister
Thomas Horn (Shadowland: From Jeffrey Epstein to the Clintons, from Obama and Biden to the Occult Elite, Exposing the Deep-State Actors at War with Christianity, Donald Trump, and America's Destiny)
When she opens it, there’s not a squad of Peacekeepers but a single, snow-caked figure. Madge. She holds out a small, damp cardboard box to me. “Use these for your friend,” she says. I take off the lid of the box, revealing half a dozen vials of clear liquid. “They’re my mother’s. She said I could take them. Use them, please.” She runs back into the storm before we can stop her.
Suzanne Collins (Catching Fire (The Hunger Games, #2))
A best friend, the kind I read about in books . Everyone had best friends in the books I've loved, the ones about ordinary girls like me. They had multiple best friends, sometimes. Whole squads of them. A lot of the time they made me feel lonely in my own friendless reality, but I kept reading them. I devoured them, learning how to be a good best friend, so one day-one day- I'd be ready.
Sara Barnard
But orgies and womanly companionship were denied me. Not one friend. I saw myself in front of an angry mob, facing a firing squad, weeping incomprehensible sorrows and forgiving them, like Joan of Arc: “Priests, professors, masters: you falter bringing me to justice. I was never one of you; I was never Christian; my race sang upon the rack; I don’t understand your laws; I have no moral compass, I’m a beast: you falter …
Arthur Rimbaud (A Season in Hell & Illuminations)
Once people started coming up with ways to maintain larger groups, like armies, cities, and nations, humans started subdividing those groups. Dunbar’s number explains why big groups are made of smaller, more manageable groups like companies, platoons, and squads—or branches, divisions, departments, and committees. No human institution can efficiently function above 150 members without hierarchies, ranks, roles, and divisions.
David McRaney (You Are Not So Smart: Why You Have Too Many Friends on Facebook, Why Your Memory Is Mostly Fiction, and 46 Other Ways You're Deluding Yourself)
Most victims went looking for exactly what they got … If you try to sell smack on some other scumbag’s turf, or if you go ahead and marry Prince Charming after he puts you in the ICU four times running, or if you stab some guy because his brother stabbed your friend for stabbing his cousin, then ... you’re just begging for exactly what you’re eventually going to get. ... you would be amazed at how seldom murder has to break into people’s lives. Ninety-nine times out of a hundred, it gets there because they open the door and invite it in.
Tana French (Broken Harbor (Dublin Murder Squad, #4))
So,” he said. “You think there’s nothing inherently wrong with believing in something—or saying you do—for money?” “‘Inherently wrong,’” she said. “Gosh, that’s a great example of calcified morality. I have to remember that for my old modern ethics teacher, Mr. Bastie; he collects them. Look,” she said, straightening her spine and flicking her rather grave (despite the friendly antics of her face) gray eyes at Alex, “if I believe, I believe. Who are you to judge my reasons?” “Because if your reasons are cash, that’s not belief. It’s bullshit.
Jennifer Egan (A Visit from the Goon Squad)
Picture a summer stolen whole from some coming-of-age film set in the small-town 1950s. This is none of Ireland's subtle seasons mixed for a connoisseur's palate, watercolor nuances within a pinch-sized range of cloud and soft rain; this is summer full-throated and extravagant in a hot pure silkscreen blue. This summer explodes on your tongue tasting of chewed blades of long grass, your own clean sweat, Marie biscuits with butter squirting through the holes and shaken bottles of red lemonade picnicked in tree houses. It tingles on your skin with BMX wind in your face, ladybug feet up your arm; it packs every breath full of mown grass and billowing wash lines; it chimes and fountains with birdcalls, bees, leaves and football-bounces and skipping-chants, One! two! three! This summer will never end. It starts every day with a shower of Mr. Whippy notes and your best friend's knock at the door, finishes it with long slow twilight and mothers silhouetted in doorways calling you to come in, through the bats shrilling among the black lace trees. This is Everysummer decked in all its best glory.
Tana French (In the Woods (Dublin Murder Squad, #1))
We have been waiting for an hour when we see a squad of German soldiers line up on the roadbed alongside the train. Next comes a column of people in civilian clothes. Surely they are Jews. All of them are rather well dressed, with suitcases in their hands as if departing peacefully on vacation. They climb aboard the train while a sergeant major keeps them moving along, “Schnell, schnell.” There are men and women of all ages, even children. Among them I see one of my former students, Jeanine Crémieux. She got married in 1941 and had a baby last spring. She is holding the infant in her left arm and a suitcase in her right hand. The first step is very high above the rocky roadbed. She puts the suitcase on the step and holds on with one hand to the doorjamb, but she can’t quite hoist herself up. The sergeant major comes running, hollers, and kicks her in the rear. Losing her balance, she screams as her baby falls to the ground, a pathetic little white wailing heap. I will never know if it was hurt, because my friends pulled me back and grabbed my hand just as I was about to shoot. Today I know what hate is, real hate, and I swear to myself that these acts will be paid for.
Lucie Aubrac (Outwitting the Gestapo)
Their minds race wild along its trail. They see Joanne wiggling and giggling and sneering in the Court to make the Colm’s guys fancy her, they see Orla howling helpless into her sodden pillow after Andrew Moore and his friends ripped her apart, they see themselves trying desperately to stand right and dress right and say the right things under the guys’ grabbing eyes, and they think: Never, never ever, never never never again. Break that open the way superheroes burst handcuffs. Punch it in the face and watch it explode. My body my mind the way I dress the way I walk the way I talk, mine all mine. The power of it, buzzing inside them to be unlocked, makes their bones shake.
Tana French (The Secret Place (Dublin Murder Squad #5))
How can I ever make you understand Cassie and me? I would have to take you there, walk you down every path of our secret shared geography. The truism says it’s against all the odds for a straight man and woman to be real friends, platonic friends; we rolled thirteen, threw down five aces and ran away giggling. She was the summertime cousin out of storybooks, the one you taught to swim at some midge-humming lake and pestered with tadpoles down her swimsuit, with whom you practiced first kisses on a heather hillside and laughed about it years later over a clandestine joint in your granny’s cluttered attic. She painted my fingernails gold and dared me to leave them that way for work.
Tana French (In the Woods (Dublin Murder Squad, #1))
The people and events that had come along and healed me never went unnoticed. My dad pointed out recently that after my botched baptism, I started to gather people--congregants, squads, cheerleaders. I knew in some way that if I was ever going to see this or any dream come true, I needed people. I now realized where this instinct had come from. It was an early childhood tactic that I had been given by being the first child born on both sides of my family. I was adored by my grandparents, parents, and aunts and uncles. Showered with affection. that religious rejection was enough to send me back to one of my earliest and most primitive instincts: to simply surround myself with love and acceptance. It saved my life many times.
Brandi Carlile (Broken Horses)
The reason Dr. Caner’s flameout didn’t make a bigger dent in this school’s spiritual life, I think, is that Liberty students have much more pressing things to do than contemplate the existence of God. There are papers to write, grad school applications to complete, girls to ask out. Even if you were convinced by the Rational Response Squad, entertaining a crisis of faith would mean reevaluating every aspect of your life, from the friends you hang out with to the classes you take to, really, whether you should be at Liberty at all. In a faith system as rigorous and all-encompassing as this, severe doubt is paralyzing. Better just to keep believing, keep living life, and take up the big questions later, when not so much is at stake.
Kevin Roose (The Unlikely Disciple: A Sinner's Semester at America's Holiest University)
He paused. Perhaps he had a son. He intoned their names, and then he said, "I sentence you to death. The sentence shall be carried out by firing squad, at the customary time, in the execution yard of this prison, one week from today." Then Fabio asked, "Why a week?" as coolly and with as much detachment as a customer in a bank wanting to know why his funds had not cleared. The court president did not object to this unceremonious interruption, for the sentence was severe enough to cover any and all offenses, past, present, future, and imagined. His tone was friendly and somehow reassuring. "We need a little extra time for your friend Grigi." At this, the soldiers of the 19th River Guard, now condemned, began to laugh, and the gavel struck.
Mark Helprin (A Soldier of the Great War)
At the same time, he expressed accurately and powerfully the state of mind of the countless underground fighters dying in the battle against Nazism. Why did they throw their lives into the scale? Why did they accept tor­ture and death? They had no point of support like the Fuhrer for the Germans or the New Faith for the Communists. It is doubtful whether most of them believed in Christ. It could only have been loyalty, loyalty to something called fatherland or honor, but something stronger than any name. In one of his stories, a young boy, tortured by the police and knowing that he will be shot, gives the name of his friend because he is afraid to die alone. They meet before the firing squad, and the betrayed forgives his betrayer. This forgiveness cannot be justified by any utilitarian ethic; there is no reason to forgive traitors. Had this story been written by a Soviet author, the betrayed would have turned away with disdain from the man who had succumbed to base weakness.
Czesław Miłosz (The Captive Mind)
On my fourth day in the sick quarters I had just been detailed to the night shift when the chief doctor rushed in and asked me to volunteer for medical duties in another camp containing typhus patients. Against the urgent advice of my friends (and despite the fact that almost none of my colleagues offered their services), I decided to volunteer. I knew that in a working party I would die in a short time. But if I had to die there might at least be some sense in my death. I thought that it would doubtless be more to the purpose to try and help my comrades as a doctor than to vegetate or finally lose my life as the unproductive laborer that I was then. For me this was simple mathematics, not sacrifice. But secretly, the warrant officer from the sanitation squad had ordered that the two doctors who had volunteered for the typhus camp should be “taken care of” till they left. We looked so weak that he feared that he might have two additional corpses on his hands, rather than two doctors.
Viktor E. Frankl (Man's Search for Meaning)
It was now that Rieux and his friends came to realize how exhausted they were. Indeed, the workers in the sanitary squads had given up trying to cope with their fatigue. Rieux noticed the change coming over his associates, and himself as well, and it took the form of a strange indifference to everything. Men, for instance, who hitherto had shown a keen interest in every scrap of news concerning the plague now displayed none at all. Rambert, who had been temporarily put in charge of a quarantine station—his hotel had been taken over for this purpose—could state at any moment the exact number of persons under his observation, and every detail of the procedure he had laid down for the prompt evacuation of those who suddenly developed symptoms of the disease was firmly fixed in his mind. The same was true of the statistics of the effects of anti-plague inoculations on the persons in his quarantine station. Nevertheless, he could not have told you the week’s total of plague deaths, and he could not even
Albert Camus (The Plague)
soldier named James A. Miller, of Harpers Ferry, had gotten drunk and shot and wounded his captain. An army court-martial had found him guilty and sentenced him to death by firing squad. Because Jackson was in a position to commute the sentence, a number of pleas for leniency were made to him on Miller’s behalf, including an impassioned one from Jackson’s friend Reverend James Graham. Jackson refused. He upheld the court-martial, and Miller was shot to death by the 2nd Virginia in Winchester on November 6. (It was later learned that Jefferson Davis, more sympathetic than his major general, actually did commute Miller’s sentence, but a messenger bearing his order got drunk and never delivered it.4) The men were learning quickly that, in Jackson’s command, unlike most of the rest of the army, or the army they thought they knew, there would be no bending of the rules. Jackson may have had trouble enforcing discipline in his section room with mischievous, fresh-faced college boys, but he had no trouble doing so in a rough army camp.
S.C. Gwynne (Rebel Yell: The Violence, Passion, and Redemption of Stonewall Jackson)
Doremus, reading the authors he had concealed in the horsehair sofa—the gallant Communist, Karl Billinger, the gallant anti-Communist, Tchernavin, and the gallant neutral, Lorant—began to see something like a biology of dictatorships, all dictatorships. The universal apprehension, the timorous denials of faith, the same methods of arrest—sudden pounding on the door late at night, the squad of police pushing in, the blows, the search, the obscene oaths at the frightened women, the third degree by young snipe of officials, the accompanying blows and then the formal beatings, when the prisoner is forced to count the strokes until he faints, the leprous beds and the sour stew, guards jokingly shooting round and round a prisoner who believes he is being executed, the waiting in solitude to know what will happen, till men go mad and hang themselves—Thus had things gone in Germany, exactly thus in Soviet Russia, in Italy and Hungary and Poland, Spain and Cuba and Japan and China. Not very different had it been under the blessings of liberty and fraternity in the French Revolution. All dictators followed the same routine of torture, as if they had all read the same manual of sadistic etiquette. And now, in the humorous, friendly, happy-go-lucky land of Mark Twain, Doremus saw the homicidal maniacs having just as good a time as they had had in central Europe.
Sinclair Lewis (It Can't Happen Here)
It is a painful irony that silent movies were driven out of existence just as they were reaching a kind of glorious summit of creativity and imagination, so that some of the best silent movies were also some of the last ones. Of no film was that more true than Wings, which opened on August 12 at the Criterion Theatre in New York, with a dedication to Charles Lindbergh. The film was the conception of John Monk Saunders, a bright young man from Minnesota who was also a Rhodes scholar, a gifted writer, a handsome philanderer, and a drinker, not necessarily in that order. In the early 1920s, Saunders met and became friends with the film producer Jesse Lasky and Lasky’s wife, Bessie. Saunders was an uncommonly charming fellow, and he persuaded Lasky to buy a half-finished novel he had written about aerial combat in the First World War. Fired with excitement, Lasky gave Saunders a record $39,000 for the idea and put him to work on a script. Had Lasky known that Saunders was sleeping with his wife, he might not have been quite so generous. Lasky’s choice for director was unexpected but inspired. William Wellman was thirty years old and had no experience of making big movies—and at $2 million Wings was the biggest movie Paramount had ever undertaken. At a time when top-rank directors like Ernst Lubitsch were paid $175,000 a picture, Wellman was given a salary of $250 a week. But he had one advantage over every other director in Hollywood: he was a World War I flying ace and intimately understood the beauty and enchantment of flight as well as the fearful mayhem of aerial combat. No other filmmaker has ever used technical proficiency to better advantage. Wellman had had a busy life already. Born into a well-to-do family in Brookline, Massachusetts, he had been a high school dropout, a professional ice hockey player, a volunteer in the French Foreign Legion, and a member of the celebrated Lafayette Escadrille flying squad. Both France and the United States had decorated him for gallantry. After the war he became friends with Douglas Fairbanks, who got him a job at the Goldwyn studios as an actor. Wellman hated acting and switched to directing. He became what was known as a contract director, churning out low-budget westerns and other B movies. Always temperamental, he was frequently fired from jobs, once for slapping an actress. He was a startling choice to be put in charge of such a challenging epic. To the astonishment of everyone, he now made one of the most intelligent, moving, and thrilling pictures ever made. Nothing was faked. Whatever the pilot saw in real life the audiences saw on the screen. When clouds or exploding dirigibles were seen outside airplane windows they were real objects filmed in real time. Wellman mounted cameras inside the cockpits looking out, so that the audiences had the sensation of sitting at the pilots’ shoulders, and outside the cockpit looking in, allowing close-up views of the pilots’ reactions. Richard Arlen and Buddy Rogers, the two male stars of the picture, had to be their own cameramen, activating cameras with a remote-control button.
Bill Bryson (One Summer: America, 1927)
Predictable but Contingent: The First ‘Political’ Killing at Karachi University On 25 February 1981, a group of left-wing students from the NSF and PSF was gathered at the Arts Faculty lobby of KU for a demonstration in downtown Karachi when they heard that a military jeep was parked in front of the Administration building. An army major had come to help his daughter get admitted to the university and though he was there for personal reasons, the students were enraged—this was Zia’s Pakistan, a country under military rule, where the left was living its twilight but remained a force to be reckoned with on the campuses, particularly in Karachi. As the organiser of the demonstration, Akram Qaim Khani, recalls, ‘it was a surprise. It was a challenge to us. I was a student leader and the army was in my university…’. At Khani’s instigation, the fifty-odd crowd set off for the Administration building, collected petrol from parked cars, filled a Coca-Cola bottle with it and tried to set fire to the jeep. Khani claims that he saved the driver (‘he ran away, anyway…’), so no one was hurt in the incident, but while the students—unsuccessfully—tried to set the jeep on fire, a group of Thunder Squad militants arrived on the scene and assaulted the agitators. Khani (who contracted polio in his childhood and thus suffered from limited mobility) had been spared from physical assault in the past (‘even the big badmash thought “we cannot touch Akram, otherwise his friends will kill us’”), but this time he was roughed up by Thunder Squad badmashs Farooq and Zarar Khan, and he was eventually captured, detained, and delivered to the army, which arrested him.
Laurent Gayer (Karachi: Ordered Disorder and the Struggle for the City)
We end up at an outdoor paintball course in Jersey. A woodsy, rural kind of place that’s probably brimming with mosquitos and Lyme disease. When I find out Logan has never played paintball before, I sign us both up. There’s really no other option. And our timing is perfect—they’re just about to start a new battle. The worker gathers all the players in a field and divides us into two teams, handing out thin blue and yellow vests to distinguish friend from foe. Since Logan and I are the oldest players, we both become the team captains. The wide-eyed little faces of Logan’s squad follow him as he marches back and forth in front of them, lecturing like a hot, modern-day Winston Churchill. “We’ll fight them from the hills, we’ll fight them in the trees. We’ll hunker down in the river and take them out, sniper-style. Save your ammo—fire only when you see the whites of their eyes. Use your heads.” I turn to my own ragtag crew. “Use your hearts. We’ll give them everything we’ve got—leave it all on the field. You know what wins battles? Desire! Guts! Today, we’ll all be frigging Rudy!” A blond boy whispers to his friend, “Who’s Rudy?” The kid shrugs. And another raises his hand. “Can we start now? It’s my birthday and I really want to have cake.” “It’s my birthday too.” I give him a high-five. “Twinning!” I raise my gun. “And yes, birthday cake will be our spoils of war! Here’s how it’s gonna go.” I point to the giant on the other side of the field. “You see him, the big guy? We converge on him first. Work together to take him down. Cut off the head,” I slice my finger across my neck like I’m beheading myself, “and the old dog dies.” A skinny kid in glasses makes a grossed-out face. “Why would you kill a dog? Why would you cut its head off?” And a little girl in braids squeaks, “Mommy! Mommy, I don’t want to play anymore.” “No,” I try, “that’s not what I—” But she’s already running into her mom’s arms. The woman picks her up—glaring at me like I’m a demon—and carries her away. “Darn.” Then a soft voice whispers right against my ear. “They’re already going AWOL on you, lass? You’re fucked.” I turn to face the bold, tough Wessconian . . . and he’s so close, I can feel the heat from his hard body, see the small sprigs of stubble on that perfect, gorgeous jaw. My brain stutters, but I find the resolve to tease him. “Dear God, Logan, are you smiling? Careful—you might pull a muscle in your face.” And then Logan does something that melts my insides and turns my knees to quivery goo. He laughs. And it’s beautiful. It’s a crime he doesn’t do it more often. Or maybe a blessing. Because Logan St. James is a sexy, stunning man on any given day. But when he laughs? He’s heart-stopping. He swaggers confidently back to his side and I sneer at his retreating form. The uniformed paintball worker blows a whistle and explains the rules. We get seven minutes to hide first. I cock my paintball shotgun with one hand—like Charlize Theron in Fury fucking Road—and lead my team into the wilderness. “Come on, children. Let’s go be heroes.” It was a massacre. We never stood a chance. In the end, we tried to rush them—overpower them—but we just ended up running into a hail of balls, getting our hearts and guts splattered with blue paint. But we tried—I think Rudy and Charlize would be proud
Emma Chase (Royally Endowed (Royally, #3))
My God. How can people be so cruel and thoughtless? They should be thanking you for your service!” “That’s even worse! What the fuck do they think they’re thanking me for? They don’t know what I did over there! They don’t understand that I’ve got seconds to make a judgment call that will either save my guys or end someone’s life—and that someone could be an enemy combatant or it could be a civilian. A farmer. A woman. A child. Or it could be both! That’s the real fucked-up part of it. It could be both a child and the enemy. That kid you’ve been giving candy and comic books to? The one that brought you fresh bread and knows your name and taught you a few words in his language? Is he the one reporting your position? Did he pull the trigger wire on the IED that killed your friend and wounded every single guy in your squad? Has he been the enemy all along? Is it your fault for talking to him?” I was so shocked, I didn’t know what to say. Tears burned my eyes, and my chest ached as I raced along beside him. “Oh, Ryan, no. Of course it isn’t.” “It is. I should have known. I let them down.” “You didn’t,” I said, trying to touch his arm, but he shrugged me off, refusing to be comforted. “And how about the time Taliban fighters lined up women and children as shields behind a compound wall while they fired at you, only you didn’t realize what they’d done until after you’d fired back, killing dozens of innocents?” The tears dripped down my cheeks, but I silently wiped them away in the dark. This wasn’t about me, and I didn’t want him to stop if he needed to get these things out. “Or how about the farmer I killed that didn’t respond to warning shots, the one whose son later told us was deaf and mute? Should I be thanked for that?” I could see how furious and heartsick he was, and I hated that I’d brought this on. “Yes,” I said firmly, although I continued to cry. “Because you’re brave and strong and you did what you were trained to do, what you had to do.
Melanie Harlow (Only Love (One and Only, #3))
Sidney, is that what you girls go for these days?” Kathleen asked, pointing toward her oldest son. “All this scruffy whatnot?” Well, nothing like putting her on the spot here. Personally, Sidney thought that the dark hint of scruff along Vaughn’s angular jaw looked fine. Better than fine, actually. She would, however, rather be trapped for the next thirty-six hours in a car with the crazy pregnant lady before admitting that in front of him. “I generally prefer clean-shaven men.” She shrugged—sorry—when Vaughn gave her the side-eye as he began setting the table. “See? If you don’t believe me, at least listen to her,” Kathleen said, while peeling a carrot over a bowl at the island. “If you want to find a woman of quality, you can’t be running around looking like you just rolled out of bed.” “I’ll keep that in mind. But for now, the ‘scruffy whatnot’ stays. I need it for an undercover role,” Vaughn said. Surprised to hear that, Sidney looked over as she dumped the tomatoes into a large salad bowl filled with lettuce. “You’re working undercover now?” “Well, I’m not in the other identity right this second,” Vaughn said. “I’m kind of guessing my mother would be able to ID me.” Thank you, yes, she got that. “I meant, how does that work?” Sidney asked him. “You just walk around like normal, being yourself, when you’re not . . . the other you?” “That’s exactly how it works. At least, when we’re talking about a case that involves only part-time undercover work.” “But what if I were to run into the other you somewhere? Say . . . at a coffee shop.” A little inside reference there. “If I called you ‘Vaughn’ without realizing that you were working, wouldn’t that blow your cover?” “First of all, like all agents who regularly do undercover work, I tell my friends and family not to approach me if they happen to run into me somewhere—for that very reason. Second of all, in this case, the ‘other me’ doesn’t hang out at coffee shops.” “Where does the other you hang out?” Sidney asked. Not to contribute to his already healthy ego, but this was pretty interesting stuff. “In dark, sketchy alleys doing dark, sketchy things,” Vaughn said as he set the table with salad bowls. “So the other you is a bad guy, then.” Sidney paused, realizing something. “Is what you’re doing dangerous?” “The joke around my office is that the agents on the white-collar crime squad never do anything dangerous.” Sidney noticed that wasn’t an actual answer to her question
Julie James (It Happened One Wedding (FBI/US Attorney, #5))
When America stood on the threshold of World War II, Hoover continued a friendly relationship with the Nazis dominating Interpol, the Berlin-based international secret police. He’d been obsessed with the “Red menace” since 1919, when he took the helm of the Bureau’s General Intelligence Division. Heinrich Himmler, Reinhard Heydrich, Arthur Nebe and other Nazi fanatics were active in Interpol. Even after Hitler occupied Czechoslovakia, Hoover ignored all evidence of Nazi death squads and atrocities and cooperated with the boys in Berlin. When France fell, Hoover exchanged lists of wanted criminals, enclosing autographed photographs of himself. It was not until three days before Pearl Harbor that he called a halt to the fraternization—and then only because he feared his image might be tarnished.
Mae Brussell (The Essential Mae Brussell: Investigations of Fascism in America)
In addition to its elements of adolescent titillation, the world of JA2 contains racism, sexism, xenophobia, government-sponsored torture, child labor, and extreme economic inequality. And yet it’s difficult to say what the game’s overall stance is on these issues. JA2 is highly pluralistic, allowing you to play all sorts of characters from all sorts of backgrounds. That pluralism leads to a kind of moral relativism. While you can have a squad of friendly heroes who help each other as well as the downtrodden people of Arulco, you can also play as a squad of psychotic good ol’ boys who ignore issues of social justice, seeking only to get a paycheck for putting a bullet in the queen’s head.
Anonymous
Lilac curled her upper lip in a dead-eyed sneer, and it made my skin crawl. The girl looked like she might fillet me and have me for a snack later. She made the Dale R. Fielding High School Cheer Squad look like Barney and Friends, and I vowed to give her a wide berth.
Veronica Wolff (Isle of Night (The Watchers, #1))
Why did these men fight? The answer is simple. We were ordinary people molded into Marines. The same can be said of those who served in the army. We all had the proper upbringings of common folk, when you have a task to do, you work hard, give it your best and get the job done. We came from different backgrounds; however, we became a team, moving and fighting as if we had known each other all of our lives. All of us have bonded for life and still keep in touch by phone, letters, and visits. If anyone of the second squad needs help you can be sure the rest of the squad would be there. All of those I have kept in touch with have been successful in the life endeavors they chose. "Not one of them is bitter about giving up two years of their life to 'Serve Their Country'" -George E. Krug
James Brady (Why Marines Fight)
day, the trigger was an older woman with deep wrinkles. To this day, I cannot be certain about what caused her to react so strongly. Perhaps she had used up her patience simmering in the sun for hours at the back of the line. Perhaps she had some desperately hungry grandchildren who she needed to get back to. It is impossible to know exactly what happened. But after she received her allocation of wheat, she broke the established rules of the feeding site and moved toward Bubba. She looked up at him and unleashed a verbal attack. Bubba, as gentle as ever, simply smiled at her. The more he smiled, the angrier she got. I noticed the commotion when our Somali guards suddenly tensed and turned toward the disturbance. All I could see was Bubba, head and shoulders above a gathering crowd, seemingly unperturbed, and smiling down at someone. His patient response only fueled the woman’s rage. I heard her sound of fury long before I spotted the source when she launched a long stream of vile curses at Bubba. Thankfully, he didn’t understand a word that she was saying. It was now possible to understand her complaint. She was upset about the quality of the “animal feed” that was being distributed for human consumption. She was probably right in her assessment of the food. These were surplus agricultural products that United Nations contributing members didn’t want, couldn’t sell, and had no other use for. As this hulking American continued to smile, the woman realized that she was not communicating. Now, furious and frustrated, she bent down, set her plastic bag on the ground, grabbed two fistfuls of dirty, broken wheat, grain dust, dirt and chaff. She straightened to her full height and flung the filthy mixture as hard as she could into Bubba’s face. The crowd was deathly silent as I heard a series of loud metallic clicks that indicated that an entire squad of American soldiers had instinctively locked and loaded all weapons in readiness for whatever might happen next. Everything felt frozen in time as everyone waited and watched for Bubba’s reaction. A Somali man might have beaten the woman for such a public insult—and he would have considered his action and his anger entirely justified. I knew that Bubba had traveled half-way around the world at his own expense to spend three months of personal vacation time to help hurting people. And this was the thanks that he received? He was hot, sweaty, and drained beyond exhaustion—and he had just been publicly embarrassed. He had every reason to be absolutely livid. Instead, he raised one hand to rub the grit out of his eyes, and then he gave the woman one more big smile. At that point, he began to sing. And what he sang wasn’t just any song. She didn’t understand the words, of course. But she, and the entire crowd, stood in silent amazement as Bubba belted out the words to the 1950’s Elvis Presley rock-n-roll classic: You ain’t nothin’ but a hound dog Cryin’ all the time You ain’t nothin’ but a hound dog Cryin’ all the time Well, you ain’t never caught a rabbit And you ain’t no friend of mine. By the time he started singing the next verse, the old woman had turned and stomped off in frustration, angrily plowing a path through the now-smiling crowd of Somalis to make her escape. Watching her go, Bubba raised his voice to send her off with rousing rendition of the final verse: Well they said you was high-classed Well, that was just a lie Ya know they said you was high-classed Well, that was just a lie Well, you ain’t never caught a rabbit And you ain’t no friend of mine.
Nik Ripken (The Insanity of God: A True Story of Faith Resurrected)
If by ‘problems’ you mean I got all jacked up on rock climbing endorphins and tried to twist myself around my community service volunteer like a bag full of pretzels, only to have him friend-zone me without the friendship, then yup. That’s exactly what I’ve got going on right now.” Sara’s
Kimberly Kincaid (Reckless (Rescue Squad #1))
Something welled inside at her fearful tone. Jake darted forward, his feet digging into the sand. The shadows clarified. Meridith went down hard; the guy came down on her. Jake honed in on him. As he neared, he heard Meridith struggling. He grabbed the guy’s shirt, hauled him up. He heard a ripping sound, and then his fist found its mark. The loud pop was gratifying. Sean hit the sand, moaning. Jake braced his feet, ready—eager—to have another go at him. The kid only rolled to his other side. A sound at his feet drew his attention. “Meridith.” He dove to his knees beside her. “I’m okay.” He helped her sit up. She looked impossibly small. Behind him, Sean was standing, staggering. Jake stood, placing his body between them. Sean held up his hands, surrendering. “Hey, man, didn’t mean nothin’ . . . just flirting with the girl.” Jake took a step, ready to plant his fist in the guy’s face. A hand, surprisingly firm, on his leg stopped him. “Don’t, Jake.” He took a breath. Tried to calm himself. He wanted to plow the guy down and show him what it felt like to be powerless. Make him feel as powerless as Meridith had. Jake had no doubt he could do it. Apparently, neither did Sean. He was backing away toward the house. “Sorry, Meridith. Swear I didn’t mean nothin’.” The words meant squat to Jake. He clenched his fists at his side. Dirtbag. “Let him go.” Meridith’s voice, all tired and shaky, was the only thing that stopped him. He should call the cops and have the guy hauled off. Then he thought of the squad car pulling up to Summer Place, lights spinning. Summer Place didn’t need the bad publicity. The kids didn’t need the distress. He looked down at Meridith, huddled in the sand. She didn’t either. Jake glared at Sean. “Pack your things and get out of here. Now.” Sean stopped and turned. “What am I s’posed to tell my friends?” “Couldn’t care less.” Sean shifted in the sand, grabbed the railing. Finally he turned and stumbled up the beach steps and across the yard. Jake turned to Meridith. She’d pulled her knees to her chest, wrapped her arms around them. He extended his hands and she took them. They were icy cold. He pulled her to her feet, then took her chin and turned her face into the moonlight. He scanned her face for damage and found none. Just dazed eyes and chattering teeth. “You okay? He hurt you?” She shook her head. He could feel her trembling. He remembered feeling something on the sand and stooped to collect a bulky robe. Downwind, he shook out the sand, then draped the robe over her shoulders. The weight of it buckled her knees. He caught her around the waist. She came into his arms willingly. Jake tucked the robe around her, freed her hair, and the wind stole it from his fingers. She shivered. He could feel her cold fists through his shirt, tucked into his stomach. “You’re cold.” He wrapped his arms around her, turned his back to the wind. Shallow puffs of breath hit his chest, warm and quick. He cradled her head in his palm. She was so small. Helpless. What would’ve happened if he hadn’t come? And where was Lover Boy when Meri needed him? Halfway across the country. He ground his teeth together, fighting the anger that had barely begun to simmer. “The
Denise Hunter (Driftwood Lane (Nantucket, #4))
Guurl. Tell me. Do you keep your hair this long for religious reasons? Like, will you lose your strength if you cut it?--Terry, a member of the glam squad, to Khloe Richardson
Naima Simone (The Millionaire Makeover (Bachelor Auction, #2))
True friends, regardless of their age, lift you up and make you a better person than you were before. They help make things right.
Laura Bradford (Éclair and Present Danger (An Emergency Dessert Squad Mystery, #1))
Hundreds of ladybugs had taken shelter from the winter in the crevices of the decayed windows. From there, they broke into the apartment in commando squads. My joy at that first sighting of the ladybug spreading its lower winglets on the rim of the jam glass, flashing three spots of fortune, soon turned into something tragic and Greek, a bloodied slaughter. Like in Ajax, I had to pluck ladybugs from my toothbrush every evening and in the morning shake out my shirt that, overnight, was infested with too much luck, and at lunch, I'd fish kamikazee-ladybugs out of my soup bowl, their Etna's crater in the middle of the round kitchen table. When I shut my eyes and held the hose to my ear and heard the little crackle of tiny bodies sucked into the eye of the tornado, I couldn't remain neutral. Putting away the vacuum, I consoled myself with sentences of friends who, after a beer or three, like to repeat to me the axiom that sooner or later, living in the city, each person discovers himself to be the murder of his own happiness. They were genuine Berlin ladybugs, they'd occupied the windows illegally like my friends in apartments from which they were later evicted.
Aleš Šteger (Berlin)
down tower structure. “Ugh! What a waste of time!” I started running toward the battle again, but slower this time, due to the slow effect of the fireball. “So annoying!” In the distance, I saw the elder dragon whupping on my friends. I saw it swat one of the nightwings so hard that their cape came off. Then the boss swept the area with its tails as well as shot fireballs at the same time. Some of the troops got knocked off the island by the tails, some got teleported away, some got floated up and then swatted into the abyss. It was just a crazy dangerous situation, and we were losing troops so fast. “Take evasive maneuvers!” I yelled as I ran there. And right as I arrived, the boss dragon teleported again. I shook my head as I breathed heavily. “It’s like he knows to run out my rage timer.” “We need to stop him from teleporting,” said Arceus as he ran up to me. I nodded. “I agree.” “Let’s focus on his wings. I think they are the key to his teleportation powers.” “Got it.” Then Arceus turned to his squad and said, “Lily, Harper, keep both wings marked with Focus Fire.
Steve the Noob (Diary of Steve the Noob 45 (An Unofficial Minecraft Book) (Diary of Steve the Noob Collection))
Friends are squad. Squad is family. Family is forever.
Malaika Gilani
When I boarded the plane, I found to my surprise that Tatum had decided to return to Norman with the team rather than go to Maryland. .... When I saw Tatum on board, I had momentary regret that I had abandoned [my other flight]. I had no desire to spend several hours on the flight with him; I had learned from past encounters that he could talk endlessly, with exhausting intensity. Hoping to avoid him, I walked to the front end of the DC-4 and took a seat on the right side next to the window; but I had scarcely sat down when Tatum plumped down beside me. He spent the first few minutes telling me how unethical he thought I had been to offer one of his assistant coaches the head coaching job at OU before he resigned and only hours before his team was to compete in a bowl game. He was offended and hurt, he said, by such treatment. I listened patiently, with the unhappy thought that there would be several hours of such conversation before I could find relief at the journey's end. However, shortly after takeoff we ran into turbulent air. The plane rose over a series of updrafts and dropped violently between them. Tatum, who was not a good air traveler, soon began to feel the effects. When he stopped talking for a moment, I glanced at him and noticed that he had begun to turn a little pale. The paleness soon turned to a greenish cast, and I had a feeling that my problem might be solved. Finally, when he became noticeably ill, I signaled for a hostess and suggested to my sick friend that we remove the armrest between the two seats so that he could lie down. I would find a seat elsewhere. He accepted the suggestion, and when I left him he was in a semireclining position with his head on a pillow, holding a sick sack. We soon got out of the rough air, and I enjoyed most of the rest of the trip, visiting with as many members of the squad as I could.
George Lynn Cross (Presidents Can't Punt: The OU Football Tradition)
I've heard of more ways to die in this war than I knew there were corpses. I've heard there isn't a battle where both sides don't shoot their own men -- sometimes on purpose and sometimes for mercy, but most of the time by mistake. I've heard boys on both sides are killing themselves, so they don't burn or smother or drown or starve, or pass whatever they're dying of to others. I've heard about guerrillas and murders and firing squads. I've reached the point where I don't know if anyone ever just dies from the other side's bullets.
Cynthia Bass (Sherman's March)
Just about every kid in America wished they could be Kyle Keeley. Especially when he zoomed across their TV screens as a flaming squirrel in a holiday commercial for Squirrel Squad Six, the hysterically crazy new Lemoncello video game. Kyle’s friends Akimi Hughes and Sierra Russell were also in that commercial. They thumbed controllers and tried to blast Kyle out of the sky. He dodged every rubber band, coconut custard pie, mud clod, and wadded-up sock ball they flung his way. It was awesome. In the commercial for Mr. Lemoncello’s See Ya, Wouldn’t Want to Be Ya board game, Kyle starred as the yellow pawn. His head became the bubble tip at the top of the playing piece. Kyle’s buddy Miguel Fernandez was the green pawn. Kyle and Miguel slid around the life-size game like hockey pucks. When Miguel landed on the same square as Kyle, that meant Kyle’s pawn had to be bumped back to the starting line. “See ya!” shouted Miguel. “Wouldn’t want to be ya!” Kyle was yanked up off the ground by a hidden cable and hurled backward, soaring above the board. It was also awesome. But Kyle’s absolute favorite starring role was in the commercial for Mr. Lemoncello’s You Seriously Can’t Say That game, where the object was to get your teammates to guess the word on your card without using any of the forbidden words listed on the same card. Akimi, Sierra, Miguel, and the perpetually perky Haley Daley sat on a circular couch and played the guessers. Kyle stood in front of them as the clue giver. “Salsa,” said Kyle. “Nachos!” said Akimi. A buzzer sounded. Akimi’s guess was wrong. Kyle tried again. “Horseradish sauce!” “Something nobody ever eats,” said Haley. Another buzzer. Kyle goofed up and said one of the forbidden words: “Ketchup!
Chris Grabenstein (Mr. Lemoncello's Library Olympics (Mr. Lemoncello's Library, #2))
Just about every kid in America wished they could be Kyle Keeley. Especially when he zoomed across their TV screens as a flaming squirrel in a holiday commercial for Squirrel Squad Six, the hysterically crazy new Lemoncello video game. Kyle’s friends Akimi Hughes and Sierra Russell were also in that commercial. They thumbed controllers and tried to blast Kyle out of the sky. He dodged every rubber band, coconut custard pie, mud clod, and wadded-up sock ball they flung his way. It was awesome. In the commercial for Mr. Lemoncello’s See Ya, Wouldn’t Want to Be Ya board game, Kyle starred as the yellow pawn. His head became the bubble tip at the top of the playing piece. Kyle’s buddy Miguel Fernandez was the green pawn. Kyle and Miguel slid around the life-size game like hockey pucks. When Miguel landed on the same square as Kyle, that meant Kyle’s pawn had to be bumped back to the starting line. “See ya!” shouted Miguel. “Wouldn’t want to be ya!” Kyle was yanked up off the ground by a hidden cable and hurled backward, soaring above the board. It was also awesome. But Kyle’s absolute favorite starring role was in the commercial for Mr. Lemoncello’s You Seriously Can’t Say That game, where the object was to get your teammates to guess the word on your card without using any of the forbidden words listed on the same card. Akimi, Sierra, Miguel, and the perpetually perky Haley Daley sat on a circular couch and played the guessers. Kyle stood in front of them as the clue giver. “Salsa,” said Kyle. “Nachos!” said Akimi. A buzzer sounded. Akimi’s guess was wrong. Kyle tried again. “Horseradish sauce!” “Something nobody ever eats,” said Haley. Another buzzer. Kyle goofed up and said one of the forbidden words: “Ketchup!” SPLAT! Fifty gallons of syrupy, goopy tomato sauce slimed him from above. It oozed down his face and dribbled off his ears. Everybody laughed. So Kyle, who loved being the class clown almost as much as he loved playing (and winning) Mr. Lemoncello’s wacky games, went ahead and read the whole list of banned words as quickly as he could. “Mustard-mayonnaise-pickle-relish.” SQUOOSH! He was drenched by buckets of yellow glop, white sludge, and chunky green gunk. The slop slid along his sleeves, trickled into his pants, and puddled on the floor. His four friends busted a gut laughing at Kyle, who was soaked in more “condiments” (the word on his card) than a mile-
Chris Grabenstein (Mr. Lemoncello's Library Olympics (Mr. Lemoncello's Library, #2))
What if we run into them?” I ask. Her eyes meet mine in the mirror and she gives me a small shrug. “You know seeing you has to hurt them too.” She sets the iron down and runs her fingers through my hair. “Elle must be torn up about what she did.” I open my mouth to argue, but Rosie shakes her head. “She’s not a monster. She might be a terrible friend, but we both know somewhere in there she has a heart.” With Rosie and me being so near in age, she was almost as close to Elle as I was. Elle had even encouraged Rosie to try out for the junior varsity cheer squad, and would help her with the routines—something that the previous varsity cheer captain wouldn’t have dreamed of doing.
Sarah White , Our broken pieces
My Fav 100% Savage Friends are on my side, by my side in my fucking way. in my fav 100% Savage Friends Squad's Kingdom. Don't mess with me&them! Hmm. Love them&they're there to protect me including each other. We don't give a fuck about rude people. My Fav 100% Savage Friends Squad for life. I'm 100% Savage/so emotional&so sensitive queen forever.
100% Savage Queen Sarah
In Vietnam, lying became so much part of the system that sometimes not lying seemed immoral...The teenage adrenaline-drained patrol leader has to call in the score so analysts, newspaper reporters, and politicians back in Washington have something to do. Never mind that Smithers and his squad may have stopped a developing attack planned to hit the company that night, saving scores of lives and maintaining control over a piece of ground. All they'll be judged on, and all their superiors have to be judged on, is the kill ratio. Smithers's best friend has just been killed. Two other friends are missing pieces of their bodies and are going into shock. No one in the squad knows if the enemy is 15 meters away waiting to open up again or running. Smithers is tired and has a lot of other things on his mind. With scorekeepers often 25 kilometers away, no one is going to check on the score. In short, Smithers has a great incentive to lie. He also has a great need to lie. His best friend is dead. "Why?" he asks himself. This is where the lying in Vietnam all began. It had to fill the long silence following Smithers's anguished "Why?" So it starts. "Nelson, how many did you get?" Smithers asks. PFC Nelson looks up from crying over the body of his friend Katz and says, "How the fuck do I know?" His friend Smithers says, "Well, did you get that bastard that came around the dogleg after Katz threw the Mike-26?" Nelson looks down at Katz's face, hardening and turning yellow like tallow. "You're goddamn right I got him," he almost whispers. It's all he can offer his dead friend. "There's no body." "They drug the fucker away. I tell you I got him!" Nelson is no longer whispering. … The patrol leader doesn't have a body, but what are the odds that he's going to call his friend a liar or, even more difficult, make Katz's death meaningless, given that the only meaning now lies in this one statistic? No one is congratulating him for exposing the enemy, keeping them screened from the main body, which is the purpose of security patrols. He calls in one confirmed kill. ... Just then PFC Schroeder comes crawling over with Kool-Aid stains all around his mouth and says, "I think I got one, right by the dogleg of the trail after Katz threw the grenade." "Yeah, we called that one in." "No, it ain't the one Nelson got. I tell you I got another one." Smithers thinks it was the same one but he's not about to have PFC Schroeder feeling bad, particularly after they've all seen their squad mate die. … the last thing on Smithers's mind is the integrity of meaningless numbers. The message gets relayed to the battalion commander. He's just taken two wounded and one dead. All he has to report is one confirmed, one probable. This won't look good. Bad ratio. He knows all sorts of bullets were flying all over the place. It was a point-to-point contact, so no ambush, so the stinkin' thinking' goes round and round, so the probable had to be a kill. But really if we got two confirmed kills, there was probably a probable. I mean, what's the definition of probable if it isn't probable to get one? What the hell, two kills, two probables. Our side is now ahead. Victory is just around the corner. … [then the artillery has to claim their own additional kills…] By the time all this shit piles up at the briefing in Saigon, we've won the war.
Karl Marlantes (What It is Like to Go to War)
The best-case scenario is to find friends to cleave to and rise with together. Compare notes, be sounding boards and sometimes jumping boards. If or when you fall, be buffers for each other. People can be everlasting buffoons at their worst, but at their best, they are the soft place for us to land. So how do you do this? How do you build this community of people? Be intentional with building a squad that will ride for you, challenge you, hold you accountable, and pick you up in the valley moments.
Luvvie Ajayi Jones (Professional Troublemaker: The Fear-Fighter Manual)
On 3 September he sentenced three of the chiefs – Uso, Obakhavbaye and Ologbosere – to death, and pardoned another on grounds of youth. Uso and Obakhavbaye were shot by firing squad the next morning and Moor threatened reprisals against other chiefs if they did not help the British to catch Ologbosere, who was still at large. Gallwey wrote that the chiefs were ‘executed in the main market place of the city in the presence of an enormous crowd of their awe-stricken countrymen…the prisoners, with jaunty air, occasionally waved their hands to some friend in the crowd, as if they were going to market for quite another reason. They died without flinching’.
Barnaby Phillips (Loot: Britain and the Benin Bronzes (Revised and Updated Edition))
He sounds like a power trip waiting to happen,” a student behind me whispered. PM4K turned around. “Hey, who said that?” “But remember,” said JD, “you may only command your squad to do city business related things.” My friend turned back to the front. “Um, what about… pushups? Can I command them to do pushups?” “Oh, actually, that’s something you can do. Because as a sergeant, you’re responsible for the fitness level of your squad.” PM4K laughed. “I’m going to make my squad do so many pushups.” “If you do, then you better have a good reason for it.” “Because I want our squad to be the strongest?” JD shrugged. “I guess that works.” “YESSSS!
Steve the Noob (Steve the Noob in a New World: Book 3 (Steve the Noob in a New World (Saga 2)))
There's no ledger. You were there for one another, and because of that, I have a man who lives in my heart and he has a friend he knows he can rely on no matter what.
Nalini Singh (Shield of Winter (Psy-Changeling, #13))
What I want most is exactly what I don’t have. I was the one who gave you the clothes and accessories and advice. But suddenly, it was you being invited to exclusive parties like Daisy’s and getting featured by the magazines I’ve always wanted to be in. And Tim was my best friend, one of the only people who stuck by me. But once you two got together, he barely had any time for me.
Kyla Zhao (The Fraud Squad: The most dazzling and glamorous debut of 2023!)
don’t even know why you have such a chip on your shoulder when it comes to your family. You only got your column in the first place because of your parents’ friend. On your own, you are nothing.
Kyla Zhao (The Fraud Squad: The most dazzling and glamorous debut of 2023!)
The media gleefully reported that many of Janice’s society friends ended up taking her ex-husband’s side due to her mercenary tactics. Her premarriage career as a yacht girl only cemented her gold-digger reputation.
Kyla Zhao (The Fraud Squad: The most dazzling and glamorous debut of 2023!)
But why would you want to sabotage your mom’s friend? You heard Cassandra—if she’s elected to the board, she might be able to make your mom a committee member.
Kyla Zhao (The Fraud Squad: The most dazzling and glamorous debut of 2023!)
The crowd were cheering and Geraldine led the Ass squad in that annoying as fuck song about princesses as they all celebrated her win, but I ignore them as I moved forward to offer Roxy a hand up. “I’ll toss Mildred back in her room, heal her and cast a sleeping spell on her so that she can properly recover,” Cal announced as he moved around us and I couldn’t help but smile at him. It might have annoyed the fuck out of me that he’d been with my girl, but he really was a good friend. A true brother. He threw Mildred over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes and shot out of the room as Seth howled in excitement. “Come on,” I said to Roxy. “I’ll clean you up and heal those wounds.” “Okay.” Roxy followed me back to the couch and I sat her down in my spot before throwing a ring of fire and a silencing bubble up around us to give us some pretence of privacy. “Doesn’t this count as us being alone?” Roxy asked as I dropped to my knees in front of her and she pulled her busted bottom lip between her teeth. That shouldn’t have been hot, but it really fucking was. “I’m going with no,” I replied, but as the ground trembled beneath my knees I had to admit it did. “Maybe you should just-” “I’m going to look after you,” I growled, leaving no room for negotiation. “So just let me.” Her lips parted, eyes flared, fingers gripped the edge of the couch and I was sure she was about to tell me no, but instead she just nodded. I reached out and curled my fingers wound around her waist as I pressed healing magic from my skin into hers, closing my eyes so that I could concentrate. She had cracked ribs and healing bones was more difficult than damaged tissue. (Darius POV)
Caroline Peckham (Cursed Fates (Zodiac Academy, #5))
The crowd were cheering and Geraldine led the Ass squad in that annoying as fuck song about princesses as they all celebrated her win, but I ignore them as I moved forward to offer Roxy a hand up. “I’ll toss Mildred back in her room, heal her and cast a sleeping spell on her so that she can properly recover,” Cal announced as he moved around us and I couldn’t help but smile at him. It might have annoyed the fuck out of me that he’d been with my girl, but he really was a good friend. A true brother. He threw Mildred over his shoulder like a sack of potatoes and shot out of the room as Seth howled in excitement. “Come on,” I said to Roxy. “I’ll clean you up and heal those wounds.” “Okay.” Roxy followed me back to the couch and I sat her down in my spot before throwing a ring of fire and a silencing bubble up around us to give us some pretence of privacy. “Doesn’t this count as us being alone?” Roxy asked as I dropped to my knees in front of her and she pulled her busted bottom lip between her teeth. That shouldn’t have been hot, but it really fucking was. “I’m going with no,” I replied, but as the ground trembled beneath my knees I had to admit it did. “Maybe you should just-” “I’m going to look after you,” I growled, leaving no room for negotiation. “So just let me.” Her lips parted, eyes flared, fingers gripped the edge of the couch and I was sure she was about to tell me no, but instead she just nodded. I reached out and curled my fingers wound around her waist as I pressed healing magic from my skin into hers, closing my eyes so that I could concentrate. She had cracked ribs and healing bones was more difficult than damaged tissue. She fell still as I shifted my hands over her flesh and I tried to ignore the way the floor quaked beneath me. We couldn’t stay in this bubble for long, but I wished that we could. I wished we could just build a bubble where the stars couldn’t see us and stay in it forever. Although I guessed if I offered her that she’d just say no again. I sighed as my magic depleted, using the last drops of it to heal her and clean the blood from her skin after burning through so much in the game. A soft touch against my hair made me open my eyes and I looked up at her as she pushed the crown onto my head. “Mildred knocked me off of the couch first,” she explained in answer to the question in my eyes. “So you win. Besides, you need a big head like yours to pull off a crown like this.” I snorted a laugh as the ground trembled so violently that I was almost knocked back onto my ass. Roxy quickly pulled the rings and bracelets from her hands and offered them to me too and I pushed them into my pockets wordlessly. But as she reached up to unclasp the blood ruby pendant from around her neck I caught her wrist to stop her. “Keep it,” I said, my gaze slipping to the priceless heart where it lay against her flesh. Dragons didn’t give treasure away. Ever. It was inherited through the family or we bought more of it, but we never gifted it to anyone. It went against everything we stood for and the fierce possessiveness of our natures. But for some reason that I couldn’t fully comprehend, I wanted her to keep that necklace. “It looks better on you anyway.” Her eyes widened but before she could reply, I dropped the wall of fire and stepped away from her. Darcy hurried forward with wild eyes, looking between me and her sister for a long moment like she’d expected us to be arguing or something. But the last thing I was going to do was call Roxy out for beating Mildred’s ass for me. She’d absolutely been working in my interests and I wasn’t even going to pretend to be pissed about it. “Darius fixed me up like new. Did you see the bit when I kneed her in the vag?” Roxy asked as she grinned and Darcy started laughing. “It was classic, you’ve gotta come see Tyler’s slow motion footage of you punching her in the throat too!” (Darius POV)
Caroline Peckham (Cursed Fates (Zodiac Academy, #5))
We’re going to ride those ?’ ‘Yes, Mortal Sword. They were bred for you and for the Shield Anvil.’ ‘The one for Stormy’s got the saddle around the wrong way. How’s he going to stick his head up the Ve’Gath’s ass, where he’ll feel at home?’ Kalyth’s eyes widened. Stormy laughed. ‘With you in charge, Ges, I’ll hide anywhere. You barely managed a measly squad. Now you got thirty thousand lizards expectin’ you to take charge.’ Gesler looked sick. ‘Got any spare room up that butt hole, Stormy?’ ‘I’ll let you know, but just so you’re clear on this, when I shut the door it stays shut.’ ‘You always were a selfish bastard. Can’t figure why we ever ended up friends.
Steven Erikson (Dust of Dreams (Malazan Book of the Fallen, #9))
Enemies were central to the anxieties that helped inflame the fascist imagination. Fascists saw enemies within the nation as well as outside. Foreign states were familiar enemies, though their danger seemed to intensify with the advance of Bolshevism and with the exacerbated border conflicts and unfulfilled national claims that followed World War I. Internal enemies grew luxuriantly in number and variety in the mental landscape as the ideal of the homogeneous national state made difference more suspect. Ethnic minorities had been swollen in western Europe after the 1880s by an increased number of refugees fleeing pogroms in eastern Europe. Political and cultural subversives—socialists of various hues, avant-garde artists and intellectuals—discovered new ways to challenge community conformism. The national culture would have to be defended against them. Joseph Goebbels declared at a book-burning ceremony in Berlin on May 10, 1933, that “the age of extreme Jewish intellectualism has now ended, and the success of the German revolution has again given the right of way to the German spirit.” Though Mussolini and his avant-garde artist friends worried less than the Nazis about cultural modernism, Fascist squads made bonfires of socialist books in Italy. The discovery of the role of bacteria in contagion by the French biologist Louis Pasteur and the mechanisms of heredity by the Austrian monk-botanist Gregor Mendel in the 1880s made it possible to imagine whole new categories of internal enemy: carriers of disease, the unclean, and the hereditarily ill, insane, or criminal. The urge to purify the community medically became far stronger in Protestant northern Europe than in Catholic southern Europe. This agenda influenced liberal states, too. The United States and Sweden led the way in the forcible sterilization of habitual offenders (in the American case, especially African Americans), but Nazi Germany went beyond them in the most massive program of medical euthanasia yet known.
Robert O. Paxton (The Anatomy of Fascism)
He said, It’s the truth that saves us, but some people’s truth is bitter gall. You’re a woman, Mary, with the curse of Eve on you. I wondered where were the ubiquitous squad cars that had plagued my friends and me. The doughnut-munching bastards. You wanna see my truth? Sam asked. I firmly doubted I had a choice. I said of course I’d be honored to see his truth, wise in the arcana as he seemed to be. Then I waited for him to raise up the hatchet or samurai sword with which he would surely split my skull to the gizzard. With some ceremony, Sam drew from under his shirt a suede pouch on a leather cord slung around his neck. Opening it, he drew out a thin object a few inches long and wrapped in red silk with tiny Chinese ideograms on it. On his lap, he unfolded it with one hand—a small brownish-black burnt-looking thing like an umbilicus. A root or charm, I thought. That’s my twin brother’s finger, he said.
Mary Karr (Lit)
I think after she tore it up, Sunny thought the song was lost for good. But some things are forever . . . like the story about that time in kindergarten when you got caught eating a glue stick . . . or that permanent marker stain you accidentally put on your teacher’s dry-erase board . . . or your red-haired best friend and the lyrics she inspired.
Leigh Alley (Starr of the Show (Shiny Friends Super Squad Book 1))
A giant gang of kids crammed around a locker trying to look casual is almost never a good sign. It’s basically the definition of a bad omen. One you can spot from the other end of the hallway, like a black cat, or a broken mirror, or a ladder you’re not supposed to walk under, or a crack you’re not supposed to step on.
Leigh Reagan Alley (Starr of the Show (Shiny Friends Super Squad, #1))