“
You don’t need fashion designers when you are young. Have faith in your own bad taste. Buy the cheapest thing in your local thrift shop - the clothes that are freshly out of style with even the hippest people a few years older than you. Get on the fashion nerves of your peers, not your parents - that is the key to fashion leadership. Ill-fitting is always stylish. But be more creative - wear your clothes inside out, backward, upside down. Throw bleach in a load of colored laundry. Follow the exact opposite of the dry cleaning instructions inside the clothes that cost the most in your thrift shop. Don’t wear jewelry - stick Band-Aids on your wrists or make a necklace out of them. Wear Scotch tape on the side of your face like a bad face-lift attempt. Mismatch your shoes. Best yet, do as Mink Stole used to do: go to the thrift store the day after Halloween, when the children’s trick-or-treat costumes are on sale, buy one, and wear it as your uniform of defiance.
”
”
John Waters (Role Models)
“
I'd spent way more years worrying about how to look like a poet -- buying black clothes, smearing on scarlet lipstick, languidly draping myself over thrift-store furniture -- than I had learning how to assemble words in some discernible order.
”
”
Mary Karr (Lit)
“
You’re the thousand-dollar dress on the rack in this thrift store and I can’t believe no one’s picked you up yet.
”
”
Sally Thorne (Second First Impressions)
“
In a really good thrift store you feel like you're in a room with all of these stories, and it's up to you to go and find the stories that you want to bring home with you. And then when you wear the clothes, they help you tell a new story, but they're bringing that old part with them and with you and you're benefiting from that in a way that you can't even really understand.
”
”
Kate Scelsa (Fans of the Impossible Life)
“
When I'd first brought it home from the thrift store, I'd planned to keep it in the closet I shared with Summer, But Jordis asked me to hang it in full view of the room because she liked the glitter.
”
”
Jennifer Echols (Love Story)
“
She could smell the boy spice beneath the thrift-store aroma of his jacket, and the rubbing and the smell began to work to soften her -- like butter before you add sugar, in the first steps of making something sweet. It was her first experience of how bodies could meld together, how breath could slip naturally into rhythm. It was hypnotic. Heady. And she wanted more.
”
”
Laini Taylor (Lips Touch: Three Times)
“
And where did you get the pajama set? A thrift store?' Another sniff. 'You smell of homelessness. Back the f*ck off. I hear it can be catching.
”
”
Scarlett Dawn (Chosen Thief (Forever Evermore, #4))
“
Talk is cheap, so leave it at the thrift store.
”
”
Lilly Singh (How to Be a Bawse: A Guide to Conquering Life)
“
Not having money is time consuming. There are hours spent at laundromats, hours at bus stops, hours at free clinics, hours at thrift stores, hours on the phone with the bank or the credit card company or the phone company over some fee, some little charge, some mistake
”
”
Eula Biss (Having and Being Had)
“
This isn’t a thrift store… We’re not selling them something less expensive, we’re selling them something more special. We have to tell them the story of what we’re showing them. And then we have to show them how they can be the new heroine in the story.
”
”
Erin McKean (The Secret Lives of Dresses)
“
I dressed in my bedroom, tugging on a pair of jeans, T-shirt, and heavy brown sweater that I’d picked up at a thrift store and loved down to holes.
”
”
Devon Monk (Magic in the Shadows (Allie Beckstrom, #3))
“
[Mom] said she didn't want her youngest daughter dressed in the thrift-store clothes the rest of us wore. Mom told us we would have to go shoplifting. "Isn't that a sin?" I asked Mom. "Not exactly," Mom said. "God doesn't mind you bending the rules a little if you have good reason. It's sort of like justifiable homicide. This is justifiable pilfering.
”
”
Jeannette Walls (The Glass Castle)
“
A year later we were in a coffee shop, the kind taking a last stand against Starbucks with its thrift-store chairs, vegan cookies, and over-promising teas with names like Serenity and Inner Peace. I was curled up with a stack of causes, trying to get in a few extra hours of work over the weekend, and Andrew sat with one hand gripping his mug, his nose in The New York Times; the two of us a parody of the yuppie couple of the new millennium. We sat silently that way, though there wasn't silence at all. On top of the typical coffee-shop sounds - the whir of an expresso machine, the click of the cash register, the bell above the door - Andrew was making his noises, an occasional snort at something he read in the paper, the jangle of his keys in his pocket, a sniffle since he was getting over a cold, a clearing of his throat. And as we sat there, all I could do was listen to those Andrew-specific noises, the rhythm of his breath, the in-out in-out, its low whistle. Snort. Jangle. Sniffle. Clear.
Hypnotized. I wanted to buy his soundtrack.
This must be what love is, I thought. Not wanting his noises to ever stop.
”
”
Julie Buxbaum (The Opposite of Love)
“
Millennials: We lost the genetic lottery. We graduated high school into terrorist attacks and wars. We graduated college into a recession and mounds of debt. We will never acquire the financial cushion, employment stability, and material possessions of our parents. We are often more educated, experienced, informed, and digitally fluent than prior generations, yet are constantly haunted by the trauma of coming of age during the detonation of the societal structure we were born into. But perhaps we are overlooking the silver lining. We will have less money to buy the material possessions that entrap us. We will have more compassion and empathy because our struggles have taught us that even the most privileged can fall from grace. We will have the courage to pursue our dreams because we have absolutely nothing to lose. We will experience the world through backpacking, couch surfing, and carrying on interesting conversations with adventurers in hostels because our bank accounts can't supply the Americanized resorts. Our hardships will obligate us to develop spiritual and intellectual substance. Maybe having roommates and buying our clothes at thrift stores isn't so horrible as long as we are making a point to pursue genuine happiness.
”
”
Maggie Georgiana Young
“
I had never been a dresser. My shirts were all faded and shrunken, 5 or 6 years old, threadbare. My pants the same. I hated department stores, I hated the clerks, they acted so superior, they seemed to know the secret of life, they had a confidence I didn't possess. My shoes were always broken down and old, I disliked shoe stores too. I never purchased anything until it was completely unusable, and that included automobiles. It wasn't a matter of thrift, I just couldn't bear to be a buyer needing a seller, seller being so handsome and aloof and superior. Besides, it all took time, time when you could just be laying around and drinking.
”
”
Charles Bukowski (Women)
“
Shortly after I started hitting some notable milestones on my Spiritual journey, I went into a thrift store that benefits veterans, My eyes were quickly drawn to a dusty and tattered image of Christ laying mixed in with some other things on a shelf. I picked it up, And on it was written these words:
"If you accept it...
I would give you the gift of seeing yourself as I see you..."
The truth and love of that image and simple words stopped me in my tracks and opened my heart. Since then I have received a wonderful gift, to know myself as an Eternal Spiritual Being, a Child of our Loving Father in Heaven.
...And no I didn't buy it, I received the message loud and clear, So I left it there, in hopes that the image and words would speak to someone else's Soul in the same way they had spoken to mine.
”
”
Raymond D. Longoria Jr.
“
Whether they come from Brooks Brothers or a thrift store, the sweaters we wear have a magnificent ancestry. Their history spans the worlds of Irish fishermen, French knights, World War I soldiers, busty Hollywood 'sweater girls,' and the television saint Mr. Rogers. That history lives in each garment. By being aware of it, we can better appreciate what we have.
”
”
Tim Gunn (Tim Gunn's Fashion Bible)
“
I like Fall, tending to prefer the transitional seasons, because they don’t have weather, just foreshadowing. It’s not cold yet, but it’s getting colder. You look hippest in this weather, dressed in your faux-proletariat thrift store jacket and long pants to hide your dorky knees. Fall seems pregnant with the possibility of simpler things, a straight-forward future.
”
”
Al Burian (Burn Collector: Collected Stories from One through Nine)
“
Josie examined the booklet, candelabra on the cover, a program. Brahms, and then Psalm 16, Psalm 32, Bach. A prayer, the Mourner's Kaddish, in the flamelike Hebrew, followed by an English pronunciation, a translation. At least she would not clap in the wrong part. She remembered that night at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion, Michael so handsome in his iridescent thrift-store suit and green silk tie, she in her Lana Turner black lace and spike heels. How they peered down from their seats in the top balcony at the horseshoe of musicians with their stands and instruments. When the music stopped, Michael caught hold of her hand. Lacing his fingers in hers, he tenderly bit her knuckles. She would have been the only one applauding.
”
”
Janet Fitch (Paint it Black)
“
With plastic siding that was cracked and fading, the trailer squatted on stacked cinder blocks, a temporary foundation that had somehow become permanent over time. It had a single bedroom and bath, a cramped living area, and a kitchen with barely enough room to house a mini refrigerator. Insulation was almost nonexistent, and humidity had warped the floors over the years, making it seem as if he were always walking on a slant. The linoleum in the kitchen was cracking in the corners, the minimal carpet was threadbare, and he’d furnished the narrow space with items he’d picked up over the years at thrift stores. Not a single photograph adorned the walls.
”
”
Nicholas Sparks (The Best of Me)
“
Look up and look around, and if you're not finding something inspiring, then you're probably not looking hard enough. Remember, I touched every piece of clothing in those thrift stores. You have to do that with your life.
”
”
Sophia Amoruso (#Girlboss)
“
When we were little, Mamá was our queen, looking like a million bucks in Gucci heels while scrubbing grilled cheese off the floor. Never mind that the Gucci was thrift store and the grilled cheese bought with food stamps.
”
”
Leah Raeder (Cam Girl)
“
But Dara missed the version of Noam that wore clothes he got from the thrift store—or, on one memorable occasion, from a dumpster. Dara had fallen in love with the Noam who drifted off surrounded by calculus books and made terrible decisions in the name of what he thought was right, who read Karl Marx and trusted himself more than he trusted anyone else.
The old version of Noam didn’t have this Noam’s eyes—wary, watchful. Dara could never have imagined his version of Noam killing Tom Brennan.
”
”
Victoria Lee (The Fever King (Feverwake, #1))
“
Where the hell are you, Cimil?"
"Popping tags with Roberto," she replied.
"Popping what?" he asked.
Cimil growled. "You shame Macklemore - I'm at a thrift store. Where else would a goddess find a microwave for her potpie and a new pair of pink hot pants? And a Lee Majors doll! Score!
”
”
Mimi Jean Pamfiloff (Vampires Need Not...Apply? (Accidentally Yours, #4))
“
Dying means letting go of everything,” I tell her. “Picture everything you have being given away to friends and to relatives. Some of it may wind up in a thrift store or a dumpster. You can take nothing with you. On the inbreath, think about this. On the outbreath, let go of everything that is yours.
”
”
Jodi Picoult (The Book of Two Ways)
“
If you’re on a budget, check out thrift stores or garage sales. Look for signs of quality, like copper bottoms, cast iron, or stainless steel. Someone with limited money would do far better buying used than buying cheap stuff from Walmart. If you are determined to buy new, check out places like T.J.Maxx, the HomeGoods store, Ross—anywhere that’s likely to have top-quality items for low prices.
”
”
Kelly Williams Brown (Adulting: How to Become a Grown-up in 468 Easy(ish) Steps)
“
Over the years, I've made good money in real estate, and for some reason, this hurts Stephen's feelings. He's not a churchman, but he's extremely big on piety and sacrifice and letting you know what fine values he's got. As far as I can tell, these values consist of little more than eating ramen noodles by the case, getting laid once every fifteen years or so, and arching his back at the sight of people like me -- that is, people who have amounted to something and don't smell heavily of thrift stores.
”
”
Wells Tower (Everything Ravaged, Everything Burned)
“
He had one room above a thrift store.
He had a trunk of books by Ayn Rand.
He was short-sighted and reclusive, resisting pleas to take his photograph.
He drew a super-hero comic.
He saw the world in terms of black and white.
He said 'A day's work for a day's pay. That is our one and only right.'
He takes a card and shades one half of it in dark
So he can demonstrate to you just what he means.
He says, 'There’s black and there is white,
And there is wrong, and there is right,
And there is nothing, nothing in between.'
That’s what Mr. A says.
”
”
Alan Moore
“
I wanted a real diary, but there wasn't time to visit a stationery store, so instead I ran down to Thrift Drug and got you. According to your cover, you're an 'Official Popeye the Sailor Spiral-Bound Notebook, copyright © 1959 King Features Syndicate.' When I look into your wizened face, Popeye, I know you're a man I can trust.
”
”
James K. Morrow (Towing Jehovah (Godhead, #1))
“
Packing to leave Atlanta is a lot easier than packing to come here. We bundle most everything up in our bedsheets and cram clothing into duffel bags, leaving the rugs and thrift store findings to whoever the next tenant may be. We leave the next morning, Scarlett waving a sarcastic farewell to the junkie downstairs before we take of in the hatchback, pop music blaring and me leaning toward Silas, both to avoid the door of death and to rest my head against his biceps.
Ellison hasn’t changed, unsurprisingly. Buildings here are yellow and pale gold instead of harsh steel and silver. Trees dapple the sunlight across the car. The air is warmer, like loving arms that swirl around me for comfort. It’s so good to be home.
”
”
Jackson Pearce (Sisters Red (Fairytale Retellings, #1))
“
You know how they say Black Flag got in a van, and they brought punk rock to the world? The Strokes got on a bus, and they brought “downtown cool” to the world. Along with the Internet, they were changing everything, not just music. They were changing attitudes. The Strokes were making New York travel with them. I saw kids in Connecticut and Maine and Philadelphia and DC looking like they had just been drinking on Avenue A all night. Sixteen-year-old kids in white belts and Converse Chuck Taylors with the greasy hair—hair that had been clean a week ago. Those kids had probably never even smelled the inside of a thrift store before Is This It came out. They found a band that they wanted to be like. They found their band. APRIL
”
”
Lizzy Goodman (Meet Me in the Bathroom: Rebirth and Rock and Roll in New York City 2001-2011)
“
I glance around the study, uncertain where she’s storing stationery supplies this week. Could be here, could be the trunk of her car, could be in her bra or at the bottom of her Louis Vuitton briefcase. I reach for the top drawer of the desk. Hesitate.
Mom is a mess monster. Her bedroom looks like a battle broke out between a hurricane and a thrift store. There are cold cups of tea in there, playing host to entire micro-nations. My Spider-Man mug went in two months and ten days ago . . . I haven’t seen it since. A shudder rips through me. When my mug finally does emerge, it will need to be destroyed in the fires of Mount Doom.
But that’s her space.
Our compromise.
She fights her natural urge to leave things lying around the rest of the house and we keep her bedroom door closed at all times.
”
”
Louise Gornall (Under Rose-Tainted Skies)
“
High Blade Xenocrates was a bloated bundle of contradictions. He wore a robe of rich baroque brocades, yet on his feet were frayed, treadworn slippers. He lived in a simple log cabin—yet the cabin had been reassembled on the rooftop of Fulcrum City’s tallest building. His furniture was mismatched and thrift-store shabby, yet on the floor beneath them were museum-quality tapestries that could have been priceless.
”
”
Neal Shusterman (Scythe (Arc of a Scythe, #1))
“
And there she is.
I touch my jaw and she touches hers. I watch her lips part in awe and, for the first time in a long time, it’s not in a tight frown. She blinks slowly. I blink slowly. Because this is me.
All I can do is stare. At some point the stretched-out neckline of my ratty thrift-store shirt slipped off my shoulder. A strand of hair falls across my face. A girl who could be my sister stares back at me—it’s not even that I did a good job with the makeup, because I didn’t, but she’s there.
There’s a surge of vertigo as I realize this is what it’s like to bridge the gap between me-the-body and me-the-self. Or the start of it. It feels like waves are crashing in my ears, warm foam rising up to envelop me. I wrap my arms around my stomach and take a long, clean breath. And that’s really it—I feel clean for the first time in years.
”
”
Meredith Russo (Birthday)
“
Later, this desire will invade and overwhelm me. It will begin, in the classic way, with an urge to travel to new places, destinations selected from maps and picture postcards. I will take trains, boats, planes, I will embrace Europe, discover London, a youth hostel next to Paddington Station, a Bronski Beat concert, thrift stores, the speakers of Hyde Park, beer gardens, darts, tawdry nights, Rome, walks among the ruins, finding shelter under the umbrella pines, tossing coins into fountains, watching boys with slicked-back hair whistle at passing girls. Barcelona, drunken wanderings along La Rambla and accidental meetings late on the waterfront. Lisbon and the sadness that’s inevitable before such faded splendor. Amsterdam with her mesmerizing volutes and red neon. All the things you do when you’re twenty years old. The desire for constant movement will come after, the impossibility of staying in one place, the hatred of the roots that hold you there, Doesn’t matter where you go, just change the scenery,
”
”
Philippe Besson (Lie With Me)
“
OPTIONS FOR REDUCING While thrift stores such as Goodwill or the Salvation Army can be a convenient way to initially let go, many other outlets exist and are often more appropriate for usable items. Here are some examples: • Amazon.com • Antiques shops • Auction houses • Churches • Consignment shops (quality items) • Craigslist.org (large items, moving boxes, free items) • Crossroads Trading Co. (trendy clothes) • Diggerslist.com (home improvement) • Dress for Success (workplace attire) • Ebay.com (small items of value) • Flea markets • Food banks (food) • Freecycle.org (free items) • Friends • Garage and yard sales • Habitat for Humanity (building materials, furniture, and/or appliances) • Homeless and women’s shelters • Laundromats (magazines and laundry supplies) • Library (books, CDs and DVDs) • Local SPCA (towels and sheets) • Nurseries and preschools (blankets, toys) • Operation Christmas Child (new items in a shoe box) • Optometrists (eyeglasses) • Regifting • Rummage sales for a cause • Salvage yards (building materials) • Schools (art supplies, magazines, dishes to eliminate class party disposables) • Tool co-ops (tools) • Waiting rooms (magazines) • Your curb with a “Free” sign
”
”
Bea Johnson (Zero Waste Home: The Ultimate Guide to Simplifying Your Life by Reducing Your Waste (A Simple Guide to Sustainable Living))
“
They hugged, hard. It was shocking to hold him. The truth of him was right there beneath Ronan's hands, and it still seemed impossible. He smelled like the leather of the thrift store jacket and the woodsmoke he'd ridden through to get here. Things had been the same for so long, and now everything was different, and it was harder to keep up than Ronan had thought.
Adam said, "Happy birthday, by the way."
"My birthday's tomorrow."
"I have a presentation I can't miss tomorrow. I can stay for"--Adam pulled away to check his dreamt watch--"three hours. Sorry I didn't get you a present."
The idea of Adam Parrish on a motorcycle was more than enough birthday present for Ronan; he was senselessly turned on. He couldn't think of anything else to say, so he said, "What the fuck." Normally this was his job, to be impulsive, to be wasteful of time, to visibly need. "What the fuck."
"That batshit bike you dreamt doesn't use gas," Adam said. "The tank's wood inside; I put a camera in it to look. Just as well I didn't have to stop for gas anyway because half the time, when I slow down, I dump the bike. You should see the bruises on my legs. I look like I've been fighting bears."
They hugged again, merrily, waltzing messily in the kitchen, and kissed, merrily, waltzing more.
"What do you want to do with your three hours?" Ronan asked.
Adam peered around the kitchen. He always looked at home in it; it was all the same colors as he was, washed out and faded and comfortable. "I'm starving. I need to eat. I need to take off your clothes. But first, I want to look at Bryde.
”
”
Maggie Stiefvater (Call Down the Hawk (Dreamer, #1))
“
Watching Cameron come toward us I could see why Katy used the words "hot" and "gorgeous" to describe him-he definitely had nice hair and a long, lean body with broad shoulders, and the eyes. I wondered what Jordana would think now if she saw him. He set his tray on the end of the table, not particularly near any of us.
"Everyone," I said, "this is Cameron Quick."
Ethan stood to reach over the table and shake his hand. "Hey. I'm Ethan."
"We were...we both went to the same elementary school," I said, even though they'd heard that basic explanation already, "and then he moved, and...now he's moved back, so he's here. Here he is."
Steph looked at me like she knew I needed help, and said, "I'm Steph, this is Katy." Katy smiled and waved; Steph pointed down the table, "Gil, Freshman Dave, Junior Dave, and obviously Jenna."
Cameron finally spoke, mostly to his lunch tray, "Hi. Nice to meet you all." I watched him to see if he sneaked any looks at Steph, like most guys did when they first met her, dazzled and intimidated by her starlet body and model face. He barely seemed to notice.
Ethan took a bite of his burrito. "So you and Jenna were in the same class when you were kids?"
Cameron glanced at me. "Basically."
"What was Jenna like back then?" Gil asked. "Got pictures?"
Cameron smiled. "Don't need pictures. I got her up here," he said, tapping his forehead. I groaned, making a joke of it, while inside I worried over what he would say. He might tell them I was fat, or about my lisp or my thrift-store clothes or how much I'd changed. "Two braids. Sweet eyes. Good heart. Adorable. Just like she is now."
Gil looked at Ethan.
Katy studied her apple, eyebrows raised.
Steph said, "Jenna has all that and more, except maybe the braids. Which is why everyone loves her. I dare you to find one person in this school who does not like Jenna Vaughn." Based on the color of Katy's neck, I think there might have been one person who didn't like me, at least for the moment.
”
”
Sara Zarr (Sweethearts)
“
We share so much every day, spend so much time together, that it's sometimes difficult to see all the little pieces of our days commingle and become whole within her: the playgrounds and nap-time routines, the first glimpses of death on a lonely sidewalk, the thrift stores and the slow realization that a father is not the strongest man in the world and just might, sometimes, scream out like a preschooler.
”
”
Andrea Richesin (What I Would Tell Her: 28 Devoted Dads on Bringing Up, Holding on to and Letting Go of Their Daughters)
“
This is a story about friendship and tragedy in the overshadow of an American city. Two brothers, three sisters, and a kid named Go. Fighting. Seeking. Looking after one another. Outsiders, doing what they can to survive. Kell has gone missing. Trust has been decimated yet loyalty runs deep. Ame searches for her little sister in all the strange places a junky might hide, painting the landscapes of identity in a world gone mad, where social fabric spills off counters in thrift stores on deep discount. This is a story about the lost and found. Alchemy and the turning of fear into vitality. Being real no matter what, even when you look bad. Colorful, in black and white. Fiction not fantasy. This is a story about heartbreak and redemption. About caring in a careless world. An oddity, out of step from mainstream literature, found its own rules and rhythm, placed into circulation by one who lives to tell.
”
”
Katya Mills (Ame and the Tangy Energetic (Daughter of Darkness, #3))
“
During an early break from the road in Buffalo, New York, Stevie and Chris were shopping for vintage clothes in a thrift store when Stevie came across an antique black silk top hat, the kind a gentleman once wore to the opera. She tried it on and decided it gave her a dramatic, even operatic look. Within months it would become her trademark.
”
”
Steven Davis (Gold Dust Woman: The Biography of Stevie Nicks)
“
Edward gets funky in Beverly Mitchell's (and Jessica Biel's) garage rec room by painting the walls gray, building room screens that are painted gray and chartreuse, upholstering thrift store and existing furniture...
Hildi brings a little refinement to George and Jeff Stolt'z bachelor pad living room...
(Season 3, Episode 52)
”
”
Amy Tincher-Durik (Trading Spaces Ultimate Episode Guide: Seasons 1 to 3)
“
No one understood how Chanel made all that money but still shopped at Burlington’s, Target, and even thrift stores. She knew what it was like to starve, to be dirt poor, and to literally only have forty-nine cents to your name.
”
”
Nako (The Chanel Cavette Story: From The Boardroom To The Block)
“
Honey, you can’t call dibs on a human being.” Her tone rose high enough to shatter glass. “Like calling something mine makes it so, because if it did, I’d be driving around town in a Porsche instead of Granddaddy’s broken down Ford. Ain’t nothing here that was yours.” Using the tray, she backed him against the office door. “Anything you left behind is at the DAV thrift store. They put a price tag on things, and let me tell you, yours wasn’t worth much.
”
”
Cindy Skaggs
“
Your home should be filled with things that matter most to you. It can come from a thrift store... as long as it has a story behind it that means something to you.
”
”
Nik A Ramli
“
I say, “It’s really really Bogart’s hat, I swear to god. Really. Just don’t tell my mom about this because I had to spend some serious money—like upwards of twenty-five grand I debited from her Visa card, which all goes to cancer research, all of it—and I had to get the hat just so that we might have a little piece of Bogie history, just so we might at least have that forever. Right?”
I feel so awful, because the truth is that I bought the hat at the thrift store for four dollars and fifty cents.
”
”
Matthew Quick (Forgive Me, Leonard Peacock)
“
The real Ashton—the quirky bastard with the smart-ass smile and thrift-store style—could get me to do anything.
”
”
Santino Hassell (Concourse (Five Boroughs, #5))
“
It doesn’t matter if the thing was actually theirs or not—it only needs to resemble something that Mom would have had on a shelf in our family home or Grandma would have displayed in her kitchen, and we snatch it up from a garage sale or thrift store and carry it home to add to our growing piles of mothball-scented memories.
”
”
Delilah . (One Heart at a Time)
“
I’d always fantasized about indulging in a nervous breakdown. I watched Girl, Interrupted with a twisted, jealous fervor, felt envy when I saw celebrities enter rehab. What entitlement. What privilege, to just let life fall to the wayside, to stop working and pretending and just fall apart. To let my grief-swollen brain split at the seams and spend my days crying and sitting in therapy and drinking lemonade in meditative silence on a manicured lawn. And what impossibility. Because rent. I didn’t have the money to enter some elite facility with groomed grounds and full-time therapists. But after ten years of constant work, buying the least expensive entrées, and thrift-store shopping, I had finally saved enough money to not work for several months. At last, a burnout of my very own.
”
”
Stephanie Foo (What My Bones Know: A Memoir of Healing from Complex Trauma)
“
So I bought some clothes at a thrift store, cleaned myself up,
”
”
Blake Crouch (Upgrade)
“
All day you have been on my mind
A seagull perched on an old wharf
piling by the steely grip of its claws
shrieking when any other comes too near
waiting for fish or what the tide brings
shaking out its long white wings like laundry.
All day you have been on my mind
a thrift store glamour hat that doesn't fit
with a perky veil scratching my cheek
with a feather hanging down like a broken tail.
”
”
Marge Piercy (The Moon Is Always Female: Poems)
“
Thrift shop smell to a young fairy formatting normalcy is basic Not in the sense of boring but Elemental A thing yr composed of n composing A face in the mirror makin mirror-face Have you ever wondered why thrift stores always smell the same? The musk settles like a dusty comfort feeling Feel the tide of decision swell in and roll out never quite catching it
”
”
Tommy Pico (Junk)
“
i wish i could clean up the mess that i made of myself pack it up in boxes drop it off at the thrift store fill garbage bags with my self-criticism rent a dumpster to toss out the insults i throw at myself have a trash fire kindled with unrequited love and all the longing i do that lasts for too long is it thursday already don’t let the garbage truck leave i’m not finished yet i just need a little more time to get this messed cleaned up
”
”
Michaela Angemeer (Please Love Me at My Worst)
“
I would like to say something about grace, and the brown corduroy thrift store coat I bought for eight-fifty when you told me my paintings were empty. Never finish a war without starting another. I've seen your true face: the back of your head. If you were walking away, keep walking.
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Richard Siken (War of the Foxes)
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You can find the pink mace in thrift stores, lipstick turned to blade, nail polish that changes color when dipped in a drugged drink. A reminder of the rituals we had to keep each other out.
A girl watches the sky go and keeps laughing. The water only knows her body moving.
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Olivia Gatwood (Life of the Party)
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Skimming through the letters, Isaias asked himself, how could a man who wrote, I saw this strange little figurine of a creature at the thrift store, and it made me think of you, maybe you’d like to give him a name when no one else would, be someone so in pain?
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Tyler Battaglia (Pray For Him)
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And Toby, with his thrift-store suit and stubborn insistence that we call him “O Captain My Captain.
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Robyn Schneider (The Beginning of Everything)
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It’s just hard when your woman has Gibson taste and a thrift store man.
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Aly Martinez (The Fall Up (The Fall Up, #1))
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The poor live on society's scraps--a few dollars in government assistance or charity, donated food, thrift-store clothes. They can afford neither transport to venture out of their communities nor simple luxuries such as movies or a cup of coffee with friends in a cafe. They cannot afford to vary the routines of their daily lives. Embarrassed by their poverty, worried about being judged failures in life, humiliated by that judgement, many told me they have essentially withdrawn from all but the most necessary, unavoidable social interactions,
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Sasha Abramsky
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The sky is turning from black to gray and I stop to remember this melancholy moment for my acting. I huddle on a bench in my big thrift-store overcoat and my painful hair, watching my breath make clouds and thinking Holden Caulfield-y thoughts, like how come you never see any baby pigeons? This is what those people on black-and-white French postcards must feel like. I find myself craving a cup of coffee and a cigarette despite the fact that I neither drink coffee nor smoke.
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Marc Acito (How I Paid for College: A Novel of Sex, Theft, Friendship & Musical Theater (Edward Zanni, #1))
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Playgrounds are only possible when we bracket the potential boredom or trauma in the things we encounter so that their material properties can guide us to new ways of engaging them. The crappy Instagram, Shore’s uncommon places, and the Mad Men crew’s thrift-store scavenging for set decoration all do the same thing. They recast something familiar in a relatively minor way, one that yields very little to our human desires unless we quiet them through physical therapy—by working with them, by manipulating them in our heads and then our hands. By playing with them. The
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Ian Bogost (Play Anything: The Pleasure of Limits, the Uses of Boredom, and the Secret of Games)
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I couldn’t stand it any longer. “So what are you reading?” He held the book up. “The Pilgrim’s Progress. I found it in a thrift store outside of Cleveland. Ever read it?” I nodded. “A few years ago.” His copy looked much thinner than what I’d read, though. “Is that the condensed version?” He laughed. “No, the consumed version. I buy old books and then use up what I’ve read as I travel.” I gasped. “For what?” “Sometimes to start a fire,” he said. I must have had a horrified expression on my face, because he said, “Sorry. I’m a pragmatist at heart.
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Leslie Gould (Courting Cate)
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I never buy anything new. I mostly shop the dollar rack at thrift stores, and I always find what I need. I cycle through dresses and then sell them back to thrift stores. I don't need to hold on to them.
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Becky Stark
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You make James Bond look like he shops at a thrift store and cuts his own hair.
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Melissa McClone (The Cinderella Princess (Royal Holiday, #1))
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A woman stood by the first desk, a battered piece of furniture that looked donated from a thrift store. A paper taped to the desk had the words OPERATIONAL MANAGER marked through and replaced with, La Reña de Todo. The Queen of Everything.
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Mario Acevedo (X-Rated Bloodsuckers (Felix Gomez, #2))
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item#1 Obsolete Media
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D.R. Farmer (Thrifit Store Profits: 10 Common Items That Sell For Huge Profit On Ebay and Amazon (Thrift Store Profits Book 1))
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The thing to look for is new. They no longer make this type of item and there are many people out there that still use the equipment. So you can get some very good prices. You want to find these in new unused condition to get top selling prices. Some of the types of
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D.R. Farmer (Thrifit Store Profits: 10 Common Items That Sell For Huge Profit On Ebay and Amazon (Thrift Store Profits Book 1))
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Blank 8mm tapes VHS-C Tapes Floppy Discs Typewriter Ribbon 3.5mm Disc Toner Cartridges Printer Ink
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D.R. Farmer (Thrifit Store Profits: 10 Common Items That Sell For Huge Profit On Ebay and Amazon (Thrift Store Profits Book 1))
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High Price Bags Item #3 Vacuum Cleaner Bags
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D.R. Farmer (Thrifit Store Profits: 10 Common Items That Sell For Huge Profit On Ebay and Amazon (Thrift Store Profits Book 1))
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Book 1 Item#4 Yearbooks Whenever I find yearbooks for one or two dollars I always pick them up. Many people want to revisit their high school or college
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D.R. Farmer (Thrifit Store Profits: 10 Common Items That Sell For Huge Profit On Ebay and Amazon (Thrift Store Profits Book 1))
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Filters Item#5 Water Filters
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D.R. Farmer (Thrifit Store Profits: 10 Common Items That Sell For Huge Profit On Ebay and Amazon (Thrift Store Profits Book 1))
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Final Note: Vineyard Vines is one of my all – time favorite brands to resell on eBay when it comes to clothing and clothing
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Jared Peterson (Selling on eBay: 27 Profitable Items to Sell on eBay from Thrift Stores, Garage Sales and Flea Markets (selling on ebay, ebay selling, how to sell on ebay, ... ebay marketing, ebay, sell on ebay))
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Owners of these vehicles who want to repair their cars need these and will be willing to pay whatever it costs to get their hands on the valuable information! If you find one of these you could be looking at some big money!
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Jared Peterson (Selling on eBay: 27 Profitable Items to Sell on eBay from Thrift Stores, Garage Sales and Flea Markets (selling on ebay, ebay selling, how to sell on ebay, ... ebay marketing, ebay, sell on ebay))
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Final Note: I advise when it comes to purchasing diet/health books to resell on eBay that you look them up first to see the selling history.
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Jared Peterson (Selling on eBay: 27 Profitable Items to Sell on eBay from Thrift Stores, Garage Sales and Flea Markets (selling on ebay, ebay selling, how to sell on ebay, ... ebay marketing, ebay, sell on ebay))
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Many customers who purchase these types of items on eBay are collectors, so be aware that condition can either make or break you in terms of your profits. One of my favorite teams to buy and sell is the Chicago bulls!
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Jared Peterson (Selling on eBay: 27 Profitable Items to Sell on eBay from Thrift Stores, Garage Sales and Flea Markets (selling on ebay, ebay selling, how to sell on ebay, ... ebay marketing, ebay, sell on ebay))
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Final Note: When it comes to the Robert Talbott ties I like to stick to the ones that say “Best of Class”. Also I find the ties within this brand that sell best have an interesting pattern
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Jared Peterson (Selling on eBay: 27 Profitable Items to Sell on eBay from Thrift Stores, Garage Sales and Flea Markets (selling on ebay, ebay selling, how to sell on ebay, ... ebay marketing, ebay, sell on ebay))
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Final Note: This is one of my favorite brands in terms of tie. Brioni is a high end Italian designer brand that makes a
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Jared Peterson (Selling on eBay: 27 Profitable Items to Sell on eBay from Thrift Stores, Garage Sales and Flea Markets (selling on ebay, ebay selling, how to sell on ebay, ... ebay marketing, ebay, sell on ebay))
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Final Note: The prices can range greatly on any baseball glove depending on the condition, age, style and model. As a general rule of thumb the more fancy the glove looks the more money it will bring.
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Jared Peterson (Selling on eBay: 27 Profitable Items to Sell on eBay from Thrift Stores, Garage Sales and Flea Markets (selling on ebay, ebay selling, how to sell on ebay, ... ebay marketing, ebay, sell on ebay))
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Chapter 3: Gaming Consoles Item# 7: Atari 2600
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Jared Peterson (Selling on eBay: 27 Profitable Items to Sell on eBay from Thrift Stores, Garage Sales and Flea Markets (selling on ebay, ebay selling, how to sell on ebay, ... ebay marketing, ebay, sell on ebay))
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What my parents didn’t transform they sold “as is”: those two little words that carry so many scars, and heart.
The phrase itself felt like me, like our life. It felt like enough.
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Robin Brown (Glitter Saints: The Cosmic Art of Forgiveness, a Memoir)
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On the subject of waste, it's always worth considering buying your tools second-hand. Thrift stores and garage sales are usually full of perfectly good kitchen gadgets that people bought and then didn't want.
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Bee Wilson (The Secret of Cooking: Recipes for an Easier Life in the Kitchen)
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Not a store-bought plastic monstrosity, but a homemade wooden frame, painted to glossy perfection. The sight of it sends a pang through me. As do the homemade bookshelves lining the far wall. There’s so much care, not just in the construction but in the organization, Charlie’s touch and Clint’s as visible as inky fingerprints. The books are meticulously ordered by genre and author, but not pretty. Not rows of leather-bound tomes, just paperbacks with creased spines and half-missing covers, books with five-cent thrift store stickers on them, and Dewey decimal indicators on the ones that came from library sales.
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Emily Henry (Book Lovers)
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A woman answered. She asked if we wanted to hear a story. My skin prickled. She was already talking when she picked up. It was like walking into a middle of a conversation. Then Becca said hello and she stoped. That's when she asked us, "Do you want to hear a story?" "Tell me you said yes." I gave him, a look, "Of course we did. Don't ask me what it was about though. I can't remember." It was true. Her story hit our brains like rain on dry dirt - cool and sweet, then gone. I wanted to write stories like that, tales that filled people up like a meal or a song they loved. The good kind of lie. The woman on the phone had inspired an entry in our goddess series. Me lying on a white-sheeted bed, surrounded by old phones we picked up at donation shops and thrift stores. My body would around with their cords, a book of fairy tales open in my arms. The goddess of open endings. James made a face, "Palmetto is a strange town, more than you think for a place that has two Chili's.
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Melissa Albert (The Bad Ones)
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He is come with Cindy. Somehow, he has convinced her he is a straight so he can punch on your head and make overpasses at me.” Roshan shivers and sticks out his tongue in feigned disgust. Wynn picks up his donut and looks it over before stealing another bite.
“It’s punch down, babe. He’s saying he’s going to punch down on me. Implying that his corporeal existence is above mine. Which would be funny if it didn’t feel true.” Wynn sinks his teeth into the donut, sighing heavily, and Roshan tries to smile encouragingly from his thrift store a seaboard away.
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Zofia Warwick (The Haunted Life of Matilda Harley: A Documentary (Part One): But Actually, A Novel)
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Gabe had put on weight. He looked like a tuskless walrus in thrift-store clothes. He had about three hairs on his head, all combed over his bald scalp, as if that made him handsome or something.
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Rick Riordan (The Lightning Thief (Percy Jackson and the Olympians, #1))
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I have since become a lifetime garage, rummage, and thrift store shopper, saving money and repurposing stuff. A rummage sale was my first reality check with distorted economics.
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Donna Maltz (Living Like The Future Matters: The Evolution of a Soil to Soul Entrepreneur)
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skinned knees Father’s Day library books thrift store sneakers popular girls SAT tests Rachel memorial arrangements long days anxious nights shark’s teeth spreadsheets promises kept and broken red dirt orange skies black oceans pointless deserts childhood lakes hot winds dying denying blistering burning seething wringing Lewis Mom “Stop.
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Emily Habeck (Shark Heart)
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When I was young, and my mother began filling my hope chest with bed sheets and serving spoons and cuttings of colorful fabrics, and saving pictures from the JC Penney catalog of china hutches and dinnerware and lush comforters for someday, I created shadow boxes for places I dreamed of visiting.
I’d spend birthday money on bags of seashells and craft sand from the hobby shop for a Hawaiian beach scene, create a Swiss ski village with cotton balls and thrift store sweaters cut into tiny versions for Popsicle stick skiers, prop toothpick tents on top of papier-mâché Kilimanjaros and Everests. These adorned my room, anointing my dresser and the fake wood paneling of our trailer walls with my fantasies.
My mother once came in while I was dusting them and said, “It’s all well and good to dream. Dreaming keeps a body moving.
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Kim Henderson
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While we dressed up, they dressed down. I'm talking fashion choices that would make a thrift store mannequin cringe.
-Kim Lee
‘The Big Apple Took a Bite Off Me’
Now on Amazon Books and Kindle
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Kim Lee (The Big Apple Took a Bite Off Me: A funny memoir of a SoHo-living foreigner who survived NYC)
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After school, we get dressed for the party at Aaron’s house, and I decide to be a total asshole and wear a black hoodie dress that says Ouija across the front with a picture of a spirit board on the back. It’s got a planchet necklace that I always pair with it, one that I made with the piece that came from an old version of the game that I stole from the thrift store.
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C.M. Stunich (Anarchy at Prescott High (The Havoc Boys, #4))
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Lou felt like she'd fallen headfirst into the rabbit hole, if that rabbit hole was also a thrift store run by two bunnies on ecstasy.
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Tori Bovalino (Not Good for Maidens)
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Hussar could wear it on parade. No medals, although the cut and, when she got closer, cloth were such that it could easily support a few decorative diamonds on a neat diagonal across her chest – no one would find them out of place. Either it was high fashion or it had been stolen from the daughter-in-law of some Eastern European dictator who had spent her youth watching old war movies. Brunetti knew that if he were to compliment it, she would look down, flick at it with the back of her fingers, and ask, ‘You mean this?’ After she’d taken a seat, Brunetti asked, anyway, ‘Where’d you get the jacket?’ thinking that Chiara would run mad to have one like it. ‘What? This thing?’ Griffoni never disappointed him. ‘Yes.’ ‘It’s something a cousin of mine picked up in a thrift store.’ ‘Where?’ ‘Tashkent, I think,’ she said seriously. ‘Anyway, someplace where there had been a recent change of government.’ ‘Then it wasn’t Uzbekistan,’ Brunetti said neutrally, adding, ‘How may I help?
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Donna Leon (So Shall You Reap (Commissario Brunetti #32))
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She picked out a pleasing mismatch of dishes from various thrift stores. “They speak the same language,” Maddy said, about the dishes. “But they’re not all saying the same thing.
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Elizabeth Berg (The Confession Club (Mason, #3))
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They all speak the same language, these women who make their millions with snappy lip gloss tutorials and guided tours of their make-up collections, their thrift store hauls, detailed inventories of the contents of their handbags and their fridges. They post pictures advertising online classes and teeth-whitening kits and vitamin-infused gummy bears that promise to make your hair grow thicker and faster, all marked with the ubiquitous #ad.
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Alice Slater (Death of a Bookseller)
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win a game of Scrabble using only three vowels. He can also bring fresh air into an unventilated bathroom, and he can renovate castles and huts on small budgets using knick-knacks from thrift stores and some well-chosen latex paint colours.
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Douglas Coupland (JPod)
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When I arrived in San Francisco, there was no way to find the Castro on any map. People were forever calling the bookstore for directions to the neighborhood. In my group there was the sense that we were a wave arriving on the West Coast from the East: postcollegiate youngsters seeking and finding a paradise of cheap apartments and thrift stores bursting with the old athletic T-shirts and jeans and flannel shirts we all prixed. I remember when I put the empty clothes together with the empty apartments, on an ordinary sunny afternoon walking down the sidewalk to work: there on a blanket stood a pari of black leather steel-toed boots, twelve-hole lace-ups. They gleamed, freshly polished, in the light of the morning. As I approached them, feeling the pull of the hill, I drew up short to examine the rest of the sidewalk sale. Some old albums, Queen and Sylvester; three pairs of jeans; two leather wristbands; a box of old T-shirts; a worn watch, the hands still moving; a pressed-leather belt, west style; and cowboy boots, the same size as the steel-toes. I tried the steel-toes on and took a long look at the salesman as I stood up, feelign that they were exactly my size.
This man was thin, thin in a way that was immediately familiar. Hollowing from the inside out. His skin reddened, and his brown eyes looked over me as if lighting might fall on me out of that clear afternoon sky. And I knew then, as I paid twenty dollars for the boots, that they'd been recently emptied. That he was watching me walk off in the shoes of the newly dead. And that all of this had been happening for some time now.
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Alexander Chee (How to Write an Autobiographical Novel)
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I followed him into the living room. His battered thrift-store entertainment center was empty and toppled in the thieves’ haste to leave, as were the makeshift bricks-and-boards shelves that had held his movie and game collection. The rest of the room looked okay, or at least okay by college-bro standards. In some guys’ places, you’d be hard-pressed to know if they had been ransacked or not.
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Jim Butcher (Shadowed Souls)
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in my late twenties. I was a receptionist at a multibillion-dollar corporation staffed by the same boring WASPs I had so happily escaped post–high school. I hid my large tattoo on my calf under pants I bought at a thrift store in high school for four dollars that I’d hemmed with duct tape and whose zipper was held in place with a safety pin because I REFUSED to spend any of the little money they paid me on business-casual work clothes. I was depressed as fuck and thought that this was my future. I truly thought that for the rest of my life, I’d be a low- to mid-level employee at some nameless company, never making enough to save for retirement and eating breakroom granola bars for lunch till I died. I’d get drunk with equally miserable friends every night because I was so unhappy with my day. I’d take hangover naps under my desk during my lunch break or
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Karen Kilgariff (Stay Sexy & Don't Get Murdered: The Definitive How-To Guide)
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What a sight I was in these big clothes. I must have looked like a mad poetical schoolboy who had raided thrift stores for the finest threads and was off now in fancy new shoes to search out the rock bands.
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Anne Rice (The Vampire Armand (The Vampire Chronicles, #6))
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She was eighteen-going-on-a-hundred and meth-skinny. Her thrift store coat had a tear in the sleeve and a style that hankered after the days when disco was king.
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Brian Panowich (Maybe I Should Just Shoot You In The Face)