Tricks Of The Trade Quotes

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

For a guy who claimed not to be a stalker he sure knows the tricks of the trade. Give up the Ghost
Megan Crewe (Give Up the Ghost)
Don’t learn the tricks of the trade. Learn the trade.
Sherry Argov (Why Men Love Bitches: From Doormat to Dreamgirl-A Woman's Guide to Holding Her Own in a Relationship)
He possessed the logic of all good intentions and a knowledge of all the tricks of his trade, and yet he never succeeded at anything, because he believed too much in the impossible. Surprising? Why so? He was forever in the act of conceiving it!
Charles Baudelaire
I firmly believe if you want to be a guitar player, you better start on acoustic and then graduate to electric. Don’t think you’re going to be Townshend or Hendrix just because you can go wee wee wah wah, and all the electronic tricks of the trade. First you’ve got to know that fucker. And you go to bed with it. If there’s no babe around, you sleep with it. She’s just the right shape.
Keith Richards (Life)
Don't learn the tricks of the trade. Learn the trade.
Sherry Argov (Why Men Love Bitches: From Doormat to Dreamgirl―A Woman's Guide to Holding Her Own in a Relationship)
Birthdays were wretched, delicious things when you lived in Beau Rivage. The clock stuck midnight, and presents gave way to magic. Curses bloomed. Girls bit into sharp apples instead of birthday cake, chocked on the ruby-and-white slivers, and collapsed into enchanted sleep. Unconscious beneath cobweb canopies, frozen in coffins of glass, they waited for their princes to come. Or they tricked ogres, traded their voices for love, danced until their glass slippers cracked. A prince would awaken, roused by the promise of true love, and find he had a witch to destroy. A heart to steal. To tear from the rib cage, where it was cushioned by bloody velvet, and deliver it to the queen who demanded the princess's death. Girls became victims and heroines. Boys became lovers and murderers. And sometimes... they became both.
Sarah Cross (Kill Me Softly (Beau Rivage, #1))
How well I would write if I were not here! If between the white page and the writing of words and stories that take shape and disappear without anyone's ever writing them there were not interposed that uncomfortable partition which is my person! Style, taste, individual philosophy, subjectivity, cultural background, real experience, psychology, talent, tricks of the trade: all the elements that make what I write recognizable as mine seem to me a cage that restricts my possibilities. If I were only a hand, a severed hand that grasps a pen and writes...who would move this hand? The anonymous throng? The spirit of the times? The collective unconscious? I do not know.
Italo Calvino (If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler)
An influencer has the mindset of “I would like to help you make decisions that are good for you.” A manipulator has the mentality of “I want to secretly control you to benefit myself.
Michael Pace (Dark Psychology 101: Learn The Secrets Of Covert Emotional Manipulation, Dark Persuasion, Undetected Mind Control, Mind Games, Deception, Hypnotism, Brainwashing And Other Tricks Of The Trade)
The past may or may not be a foreign country. It may morph or lie still, but its capital is always Regret, and what flushes through it is the grand canal of unfledged desires that feed into an archipelago of tiny might-have-beens that never really happened but aren't unreal for not happening and might still happen though we fear they never will. And I thought of Ole Brit holding back so much, as we all do when we look back to see that the roads we've left behind or not taken have all but vanished. Regret is how we hope to back into our real lives once we find the will, the blind drive and courage, to trade in the life we're given for the life that bears our name and ours only. Regret is how we look forward to things we've long lost yet never really had. Regret is hope without conviction, I said. We're torn between regret, which is the price to pay for things not done, and remorse, which is the cost for having done them. Between one and the other, time plays all its cozy little tricks.
André Aciman (Enigma Variations)
All the mystery and wisdom of the Masters, when it’s out in the daylight, doesn’t amount to so much, you know. Tricks of the trade—wonderful illusions. But people don’t want to know that. They want the illusions, the mysteries. Who can blame them? There’s so little in life that’s beautiful or worthy.
Ursula K. Le Guin (The Books of Earthsea: The Complete Illustrated Edition)
The only really detestable character in Chaucer’s company of Canterbury pilgrims is the Pardoner with his stringy locks, his eunuch’s hairless skin, his glaring eyes like a hare’s, and his brazen acknowledgment of the tricks and deceits of his trade.
Barbara W. Tuchman (A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century)
The idea of safety had shrunk into particles - one snug moment, then the next. Meanwhile, the brain piped fugues of worry and staged mind-theaters full of tragedies and triumphs, because unfortunately, the fear of death does wonders to focus the mind, inspire creativity, and heightens the senses. Trusting one's hunches only seems gamble if one has time for seem; otherwise the brain goes on autopilot and trades the elite craft of analysis for the best rapid insights that float up from its danger files and ancient bag of tricks.
Diane Ackerman (The Zookeeper's Wife)
Now let’s take up the minorities in our civilization, shall we? Bigger the population, the more minorities. Don’t step on the toes of the dog-lovers, the cat-lovers, doctors, lawyers, merchants, chiefs, Mormons, Baptists, Unitarians, second-generation Chinese, Swedes, Italians, Germans, Texans, Brooklynites, Irishmen, people from Oregon or Mexico. The people in this book, this play, this TV serial are not meant to represent any actual painters, cartographers, mechanics anywhere. The bigger your market, Montag, the less you handle controversy, remember that! All the minor minor minorities with their navels to be kept clean. Authors, full of evil thoughts, lock up your typewriters. They did. Magazines became a nice blend of vanilla tapioca. Books, so the damned snobbish critics said, were dishwater. No wonder books stopped selling, the critics said. But the public, knowing what it wanted, spinning happily, let the comic books survive. And the three-dimensional sex-magazines, of course. There you have it, Montag. It didn’t come from the Government down. There was no dictum, no declaration, no censorship, to start with, no! Technology, mass exploitation, and minority pressure carried the trick, thank God. Today, thanks to them, you can stay happy all the time, you are allowed to read comics, the good old confessions, or trade journals.
Ray Bradbury (Fahrenheit 451)
There is a beautiful consistency about Buzzard; he is a porcupine among men, with his quills always flared. If he won a new car with a raffle ticket bought in his name by some momentary girlfriend, he would recognize it at once as a trick to con him out of a license fee. He would denounce the girl as a hired slut, beat up the raffle sponsor, and trade off the car for five hundred Seconals and a gold-handled cattle prod.
Hunter S. Thompson (Hell's Angels)
How well I would write if I were not here! If between the white page and the writing of words and stories that take shape and disappear without anyone's ever writing them there were not interposed that uncomfortable partition which is my person! Style, taste, individual philosophy, subjectivity, cultural background, real experience, psychology, talent, tricks of the trade: all the elements that make what I write recognizable as mine seem to me a cage that restricts my possibilities. If I were only a hand, a severed hand that grasps a pen and writes... Who would move this hand? The anonymous throng? The spirit of the times? The collective unconscious? I do not know. It is not in order to be the spokesman for something definable that I would like to erase myself. Only to transmit the writable that waits to be written, the tellable that nobody tells.
Italo Calvino (If on a Winter’s Night a Traveler)
Tricks of the trade are not taught in a classroom, but through hard-learnt, hard-earned experience.
Rashmi Bansal (ARISE, AWAKE THE INSPIRING STORIES OF YOUNG ENTREPRENEURS WHO GRADUATED FROM COLLEGE INTO A BUSINESS OF THEIR OWN)
Teams that spend a lot of time learning the tricks of the trade will probably never really learn the trade.
Yuri Boganov
The way the kids of immigrants heard about America, you would think it was not down the stairs and out the door but still across the ocean, a distant place where everything is promised and, for hard work, everything is given. From the day he left his parents' house, Abe [Reles] had to know his father was right, that America promises everything, but he also had to know his father was wrong--America gives nothing. Those things that are promised, they cannot be worked for but must be taken, conned away with good looks, obsequiousness, mimicry; or traded for with bit of your soul or the morals of the stories your parents told; or tricked away with lies; or wrested away with brute force.
Rich Cohen (Tough Jews: Fathers, Sons, and Gangster Dreams)
Things are set up as contraries that are not even in the same category. Listen to me: the opposite of radical is superficial; the opposite of liberal is stingy; the opposite of conservative is destructive. Thus I will describe myself as a radical conservative liberal; but certain of the tainted red fish will swear that there can be no such fish as that. Beware of those who use words to mean their opposites. At the same time have pity on them, for usually this trick is their only stock in trade. But do not pity them overly, it is your own death and your soul's death that they work by their deception.
R.A. Lafferty
I'm imagining the reader, whom I conjure as an aspiring artist much like my own younger, less grizzled self, to whom I hope to impart a little starch and inspiration and prime, a little, with some hard-knocks wisdom and a few tricks of the trade.
Steven Pressfield (The War of Art)
I am a hero. It is a trade, no more, like weaving or brewing, and like them it has its own tricks and knacks and small arts. There are ways of perceiving witches, and of knowing poison streams; there are certain weak spots that all dragons have, and certain riddles that hooded strangers tend to set you. But the true secret of being a hero lies in knowing the order of things. The swineherd cannot already be wed to the princess when he embarks on his adventures, nor can the boy knock at the witch's door when she is away on vacation. The wicked uncle cannot be found out and foiled before he does something wicked. Things must happen when it is time for them to happen. Quests may not simply be abandoned; prophecies may not be left to rot like unpicked fruit; unicorns may go unrescued for a long time, but not forever. The happy ending cannot come in the middle of the story. Heroes know about order, about happy endings -- heroes know that some things are better than others.
Peter S. Beagle (The Last Unicorn (The Last Unicorn, #1))
Who do you think taught me the tricks of the trade, so to speak?” I paused. Then, suddenly, it all became clear. “OMG!” I looked directly at Even. “You’re the Master?” He bowed his head. “That’d be me, sister dear.” Beyond dumbfounded, Nik leaned down and queried, “You’ve heard of him before?” Renée answered, “Who hasn’t? He’s known in at least six States.” Still, I sat there with my mouth gaping open and stared in shock. Alex added, “Yes. It’s questionable if the clubs are legal.” Even fired back, “That’s what I have you for. To make sure I toe the very gray line.” I finally found my voice. “So, you’re the teacher?” I
Lora Ann (Branded (Strand Brothers, #1))
The traditional arts and crafts are, in fact, “mysteries,” with “secrets” that are not merely “tricks of the trade” of economic value (like the so-much-abused European “patents”), but pertain to the worldwide and immemorial symbolism of the techniques, all of which are analogies or imitations of the creative nature in operation
Ananda K. Coomaraswamy
Roughly, execution and understanding are merely different exercises of knowledge of the tricks of the same trade.
Gilbert Ryle (The Concept of Mind)
After spending many years in Wall Street and after making and losing millions of dollars I want to tell you this: It never was my thinking that made the big money for me. It always was my sitting. Got that? My sitting tight! It is no trick at all to be right on the market. You always find lots of early bulls in bull markets and early bears in bear markets. I've known many men who were right at exactly the right time, and began buying or selling stocks when prices were at the very level which should show the greatest profit. And their experience invariably matched mine that is, they made no real money out of it. Men who can both be right and sit tight are uncommon. I found it one of the hardest things to learn. But it is only after a stock operator has firmly grasped this that he can make big money. It is literally true that millions come easier to a trader after he knows how to trade than hundreds did in the days of his ignorance.
Edwin Lefèvre (Reminiscences of a Stock Operator)
Maybe he'd never come across anybody as well versed at objectifying body parts as I was. In my defense, this was an occupational hazard; one of the tricks of my trade was the ability to work with whatever was at hand. Over the years I'd learned to pinpoint my focus to the width of a pubic hair if there was nothing else to work with. (...) Before my eyes -or, more precisely, in my mind- Rasher became Lovely Bum Man.
Aiden Shaw (Sordid Truths: Selling My Innocence for a Taste of Stardom)
The bigger the population, the more minorities. Don't step on the toes of the dog-lovers, the cat-lovers, doctors, lawyers, merchants, chiefs, Mormons, Baptists, Unitarians, second-generation Chinese, Swedes, Italians, Germans, Texans, Brooklynites, Irishmen, people from Oregon or Mexico...The bigger your market, Montag, the less you handle controversy, remember that! All the minor minorities with their navels to be kept clean. Authors, full of evil thoughts, lock up your typewriters. They did...There you have it Montag. It didn't come from the Government down. There was no dictum, no declaration, no censorship, to start with, no! Technology, mass exploitation, and minority pressure carried the trick, thank God. Today, thanks to them, you can stay happy all the time, you are allowed to read comics, the good old confessions, or trade journals.
Ray Bradbury (Fahrenheit 451)
I discovered there was an endless source of robust enjoyment in trifling with psychiatrists: cunningly leading them on; never letting them see that you know all the tricks of the trade; inventing for them elaborate dreams, pure classics in style (which make them, the dream-extortionists, dream and wake up shrieking); teasing them with fake “primal scenes”; and never allowing them the slightest glimpse of one’s real sexual predicament
Vladimir Nabokov (Lolita)
I THINK THE REAL TRICK to finding that sense of satisfaction is to realize you don’t need much to attain it. A window-box salad garden and a banjo hanging on the back of the door can be all the freedom you need. If it isn’t everything you want for the future, let it be enough for tonight. Don’t look at your current situation as a hindrance to living the way you want, because living the way you want has nothing to do with how much land you have or how much you can afford to spend on a new house. It has to do with the way you choose to live every day and how content you are with what you have. If a few things on your plate every season come from the work of your own hands, you are creating food for your body, and that is enough. If the hat on your head was knitted with your own hands, you’re providing warmth from string and that’s enough. If you rode your bike to work, trained your dog to pack, or just baked a loaf of bread, let it be enough. Accepting where you are today, and working toward what’s ahead, is the best you can do. You can take the projects in this book as far as your chosen road will take you. Maybe your gardens and coops will outgrow mine, and before you know it you’ll be trading in your Audi for a pickup. But the starting point is to take control of what you can and smile with how things are. Find your own happiness and dance with it.
Jenna Woginrich (Made from Scratch: Discovering the Pleasures of a Handmade Life)
At the highest level of this type of initiatory activity, far from those tricks-of-the-trade by which magic so frequently replaces true spiritual insight, we find the Hindu master yogis. In their trance states they go far beyond the normal categories of thought.
C.G. Jung (Man and His Symbols)
There was no dictum, no declaration, no censorship, to start with, no! Technology, mass exploitation, and minority pressure carried the trick, thank God. Today, thanks to them, you can stay happy all the time, you are allowed to read comics, the good old confessions, or trade-journals.
Ray Bradbury (Fahrenheit 451)
That’s a general point. Nothing stays the same. Nothing is the same as anything else. We do not operate in the world of physicists, where we can take a sample of a pure substance off the shelf and know that it is, near enough as makes no difference, the same substance any other scientist in the world will be handling under that name. None of our “substances” are pure anything. They are all historically contingent, geographically influenced combinations of a variety of processes, no two of the combinations alike. So we can never ignore a topic just because someone has already studied it.
Howard S. Becker (Tricks of the Trade: How to Think about Your Research While You're Doing It (Chicago Guides to Writing, Editing, and Publishing))
It didn’t come from the Government down. There was no dictum, no declaration, no censorship, to start with, no! Technology, mass exploitation, and minority pressure carried the trick, thank God. Today, thanks to them, you can stay happy all the time, you are allowed to read comics, the good old confessions, or trade journals.
Ray Bradbury (Fahrenheit 451)
Maybe he'd never come acrross anybody as well versed at objectifying body parts as I was. In my defense, this was an occupational hazard; one of the tricks of my trade was the ability to work with whatever was at hand. Over the years I'd learned to pinpoint my focus to the width of a pubic hair if there was nothing else to work with.
Aiden Shaw (Sordid Truths: Selling My Innocence for a Taste of Stardom)
The next step after love bombing is often positive reinforcement. This is a switch of behavior in which the manipulator no longer displays relentless, unconditional positivity toward their victim. Instead, the manipulator withholds any positivity whatsoever until a time when the victim is performing a desired behavior. So, for example, if the manipulator wants their victim to call them frequently, the manipulator will only show a positive response when this happens. The victim will be unaware that positive attention is being used strategically against them, but will subconsciously comply with the wishes of the manipulator to experience the good feelings on offer.
Michael Pace (Dark Psychology 101: Learn The Secrets Of Covert Emotional Manipulation, Dark Persuasion, Undetected Mind Control, Mind Games, Deception, Hypnotism, Brainwashing And Other Tricks Of The Trade)
There you have it, Montag. It didn’t come from the Government down. There was no dictum, no declaration, no censorship, to start with, no! Technology, mass exploitation, and minority pressure carried the trick, thank God. Today, thanks to them, you can stay happy all the time, you are allowed to read comics, the good old confessions, or trade journals.
Ray Bradbury (Fahrenheit 451)
This astounding success is owing to one of the cleverest evolutionary strategies ever chanced upon by a plant: the trick of producing a psychoactive compound that happens to fire the minds of one especially clever primate, inspiring that animal to heroic feats of industriousness, many of which ultimately redound to the benefit of the plant itself. For coffee and tea have not only benefited by gratifying human desire, as have so many other plants, but these two have also assisted in the construction of precisely the kind of civilization in which they could best thrive: a world ringed by global trade, driven by consumer capitalism, and dominated by a species that by now can barely get out of bed without their help.
Michael Pollan (This Is Your Mind on Plants)
Maybe he'd never come acrross anybody as well versed at objectifying body parts as I was. In my defense, this was an occupational hazard; one of the tricks of my trade was the ability to work with whatever was at hand. Over the years I'd learned to pinpoint my focus to the width of a pubic hair if there was nothing else to work with. (...) Before my eyes -or, more precisely, in my mind- Rasher became Lovely Bum Man.
Aiden Shaw (Sordid Truths: Selling My Innocence for a Taste of Stardom)
...Women have preserved this `baby look' for as long as possible so as to make the world continue to believe in the darling, sweet little girl she once was, and she relies on the protective instinct in man to make him take care of her. As with everything a woman undertakes on her own initiative, this whole maneuvre is as incredible as it is stupid. It is amazing, in fact, that it succeeds. It would appear very shortsighted to encourage such an ideal of beauty. For how can any woman hope to maintain it beyond the age of twenty-five? Despite every trick of the cosmetics industry, despite magazine advice against thinking or laughing (both tend to create wrinkles), her actual age will inevitably show'- through in the end. And what on earth is a man to do with a grown-up face when he has been manipulated into considering only helpless, appealing little girls to be creatures of beauty? What is a men to do with a woman when the smooth curves have become flabby tires of flesh, the skin slack and pallid, when the childish tones have grown shrill and the laughter sounds like neighing? What is to become of this shrew when her face no longer atones for her ceaseless inanities and when the cries of `Ooh' and Ah' begin to drive him out of his mind? This mummified `child' will never fire a man's erotic fantasy again. One might think her power broken at last. But no, she still manages to get her own way - and for two reasons. The first is obvious: she now has children, who enable her to continue feigning helplessness. As for the second - there are simply not enough young women to go around. It is a safe bet that, given the choice, man would trade in his grown-up child-wife for a younger model, but, as the ratio between the sexes is roughly equal, not every man can have a younger woman. And as he has to have a wife of some sort. he prefers to keep the one he already possesses. This is easy to prove. Given the choice, a man will always choose a younger woman.
Esther Vilar (The Manipulated Man)
The triple-A tranches all traded at one price, the triple-B tranches all traded at another, even though there were important differences from one triple-B tranche to another. As the bonds were all priced off the Moody’s rating, the most overpriced bonds were the bonds that had been most ineptly rated. And the bonds that had been most ineptly rated were the bonds that Wall Street firms had tricked the rating agencies into rating most ineptly. “I cannot fucking believe this is allowed,” said Eisman.
Michael Lewis (The Big Short: Inside the Doomsday Machine)
The indignation and rage of the small merchant against the monopolies was given eloquent expression by Luther in his pamphlet “On Trading and Usury,” printed in 1524. “They have all commodities under their control and practice without concealment all the tricks that have been mentioned; they raise and lower prices as they please and oppress and ruin all the small merchants, as the pike the little fish in the water, just as though they were lords over God’s creatures and free from all the laws of faith and love".
Erich Fromm (Escape from Freedom)
The emotional side of the manipulation refers to the specific focus of the manipulator. Other types of possible manipulation include people’s behaviors, beliefs and willpower. CEM focuses specifically on impacting a person’s emotional state and reality. Many manipulators focus in on this area of influence as they know a person’s emotions are the key to all other aspects of their personality. Manipulating someone’s emotions is like slicing their jugular vein. If a person has emotional control, they have full control.
Michael Pace (Dark Psychology 101: Learn The Secrets Of Covert Emotional Manipulation, Dark Persuasion, Undetected Mind Control, Mind Games, Deception, Hypnotism, Brainwashing And Other Tricks Of The Trade)
Grazer and Cohn - two outsiders with learning disabilities-played a trick. They bluffed their way into professions that would have been closed to them. The man in the cab assumed that no one would be so audacious as to say he knew how to trade options if he didn't. And it never occurred to the people Brian Grazer called that when he said he was Brian Grazer from Warner Brothers, what he meant was that he was Brian Grazer who pushed the mail cart around at Warner Brothers. What they did is not "right," just as it is not "right" to send children against police dogs. But we need to remember that our definition of what right is, often as not, simply the way that people in positions of privilege close the door on those on the outside. David has nothing to lose, and because he has nothing to lose, he has the freedom to thumb his nose at the rules set by others. That's how people with brains a little bit different from the rest of ours get jobs as options traders and Hollywood producers-and a small band of protesters armed with nothing but their wits have a chance against the likes of Bull Connor
Malcolm Gladwell (David and Goliath: Underdogs, Misfits, and the Art of Battling Giants)
Who is Zozie? I ask myself. Those eyes see much farther than dishes to be washed, or a banknote folded under the rim of a plate. Blue eyes are easier to read, and yet the trick of the trade that has served me so often- if not so well- along the years, for some reason fails to work at all with her. Some people are like that, I tell myself. But dark or light, soft-centered or brittle, bitterest orange or rose cream or manon blanc or vanilla truffle, I have no idea whether she even likes chocolate at all, still less her favorite. So- why is it I think that she knows mine?
Joanne Harris (The Girl with No Shadow (Chocolat, #2))
Metalearning: First Draw a Map. Start by learning how to learn the subject or skill you want to tackle. Discover how to do good research and how to draw on your past competencies to learn new skills more easily. Focus: Sharpen Your Knife. Cultivate the ability to concentrate. Carve out chunks of time when you can focus on learning, and make it easy to just do it. Directness: Go Straight Ahead. Learn by doing the thing you want to become good at. Don’t trade it off for other tasks, just because those are more convenient or comfortable. Drill: Attack Your Weakest Point. Be ruthless in improving your weakest points. Break down complex skills into small parts; then master those parts and build them back together again. Retrieval: Test to Learn. Testing isn’t simply a way of assessing knowledge but a way of creating it. Test yourself before you feel confident, and push yourself to actively recall information rather than passively review it. Feedback: Don’t Dodge the Punches. Feedback is harsh and uncomfortable. Know how to use it without letting your ego get in the way. Extract the signal from the noise, so you know what to pay attention to and what to ignore. Retention: Don’t Fill a Leaky Bucket. Understand what you forget and why. Learn to remember things not just for now but forever. Intuition: Dig Deep Before Building Up. Develop your intuition through play and exploration of concepts and skills. Understand how understanding works, and don’t recourse to cheap tricks of memorization to avoid deeply knowing things. Experimentation: Explore Outside Your Comfort Zone. All of these principles are only starting points. True mastery comes not just from following the path trodden by others but from exploring possibilities they haven’t yet imagined.
Scott H. Young (Ultralearning: Master Hard Skills, Outsmart the Competition, and Accelerate Your Career)
The atmosphere in Washington was different. President Reagan remained popular, despite having committed crimes far worse than those that had brought Nixon down: financing terrorism in Nicaragua, trading weapons for hostages with Iran, and turning women and girls into mangled corpses on the streets of Beirut. Reagan’s collaborator Vice President George H. W. Bush looked likely to become the next president. Somehow—and Jasper could not figure out how this trick had been worked—people who challenged the president and caught him out cheating and lying were no longer heroes, as they had been in the seventies, but instead were considered disloyal and even anti-American.
Ken Follett (Edge of Eternity (The Century Trilogy, #3))
Adelia began to get cross. Why was it women who were to blame for everything—everything, from the Fall of Man to these blasted hedges? “We are not in a labyrinth, my lord,” she said clearly. “Where are we, then?” “It’s a maze.” “Same difference.” Puffing at the horse: “Get back, you great cow.” “No, it isn’t. A labyrinth has only one path and you merely have to follow it. It’s a symbol of life or, rather, of life and death. Labyrinths twist and turn, but they have a beginning and an end, through darkness into light.” Softening, and hoping that he would, too, she added, “Like Ariadne’s. Rather beautiful, really.” “I don’t want mythology, mistress, beautiful or not, I want to get to that sodding tower. What’s a maze when it’s at home?” “It’s a trick. A trick to confuse. To amaze.” “And I suppose Mistress Clever-boots knows how to get us out?” “I do, actually.” God’s rib, he was sneering at her, sneering. She’d a mind to stay where she was and let him sweat. “Then in the name of Christ, do it.” “Stop bellowing at me,” she yelled at him. “You’re bellowing.” She saw his teeth grit in the pretense of a placatory smile; he always had good teeth. Still did. Between them, he said, “The Bishop of Saint Albans presents his compliments to Mistress Adelia and please to escort him out of this hag’s hole, for the love of God. How will you do it?” “My business.” Be damned if she’d tell him. Women were defenseless enough without revealing their secrets. “I’ll have to take the lead.” She stumped along in front, holding Walt’s mount’s reins in her right hand. In the other was her riding crop, which she trailed with apparent casualness so that it brushed against the hedge on her left. As she went, she chuntered to herself. Lord, how disregarded I am in this damned country. How disregarded all women are. ... Ironically, the lower down the social scale women were, the greater freedom they had; the wives of laborers and craftsmen could work alongside their men—even, sometimes, when they were widowed, take over their husband’s trade. Adelia trudged on. Hag’s hole. Grendel’s mother’s entrails. Why was this dreadful place feminine to the men lost in it? Because it was tunneled? Womb-like? Is this woman’s magic? The great womb? Is that why the Church hates me, hates all women? Because we are the source of all true power? Of life? She supposed that by leading them out of it, she was only confirming that a woman knew its secrets and they did not. Great God, she thought, it isn't a question of hatred. It’s fear. They are frightened of us. And Adelia laughed quietly, sending a suggestion of sound reverberating backward along the tunnel, as if a small pebble was skipping on water, making each man start when it passed him. “What in hell was that?” Walt called back stolidly, “Reckon someone’s laughing at us, master.” “Dear God.
Ariana Franklin (The Serpent's Tale (Mistress of the Art of Death, #2))
The bigger your market, Montag, the less you handle controversy, remember that! All the minor minor minorities with their navels to be kept clean. Authors, full of evil thoughts, lock up your typewriters. They did. Magazines became a nice blend of vanilla tapioca. Books, so the damned snobbish critics said, were dishwater. No wonder books stopped selling, the critics said. But the public, knowing what it wanted, spinning happily, let the comic books survive. And the three-dimensional sex magazines, of course. There you have it, Montag. It didn't come from the Government down. There was no dictum, no declaration, no censorship, to start with, no! Technology, mass exploitation, and minority pressure carried the trick, thank God. Today, thanks to them, you can stay happy all the time, you are allowed to read comics, the good old confessions, or trade journals.
Ray Bradbury (Fahrenheit 451)
For two years I've read the scrolls and learned the language, and I know more about magick than anyone here...You ask what the greatest power is, and I know that niether the dwarf magick of Terus, nor the dragon power of Victus is superior, even though I should say that Terus is because my father's a Mender and his spells come from the Green book. Even the elf magick that is so rare that none in Darton is a master or matron of it, is still just one of the three colours and no better than any other. That's the whole point of the system, and it's stupid...None of the scrolls explain anything, and niether do you. Instead we have to run around an obstacle course, trade jewels between rings and sit here and write rubbish answers to a trick question. And to end it all we have to listen to a Wizard from Celenia and hope to hear some more spells. Well I know as many spells as anyone here, but they're as useless as whistling to me.
T.B. McKenzie (The Dragon and the Crow)
Naomi Wolf wrote, in The Beauty Myth, about the peculiar fact that beauty requirements have escalated as women’s subjugation has decreased. It’s as if our culture has mustered an immune-system response to continue breaking the fever of gender equality—as if some deep patriarchal logic has made it that women need to achieve ever-higher levels of beauty to make up for the fact that we are no longer economically and legally dependent on men. One waste of time had been traded for another, Wolf wrote. Where women in mid-century America had been occupied with “inexhaustible but ephemeral” domestic work, beating back disorder with fastidious housekeeping and consumer purchases, they were now occupied by inexhaustible but ephemeral beauty work, spending huge amounts of time, anxiety, and money to adhere to a standard over which they had no control. Beauty constituted a sort of “third shift,” Wolf wrote—an extra obligation in every possible setting.
Jia Tolentino (Trick Mirror: Reflections on Self-Delusion)
It was the secret no one told you, the thing you had to learn for yourself: viz. that in the antiques trade there was really no such thing as a “correct” price. Objective value—list value—was meaningless. If a customer came in clueless with money in hand (as most of them did) it didn’t matter what the books said, what the experts said, what similar items at Christie’s had recently gone for. An object—any object—was worth whatever you could get somebody to pay for it. In consequence, I’d started going through the store, removing some tags (so the customer would have to come to me for the price) and changing others—not all, but some. The trick, as I discovered through trial and error, was to keep at least a quarter of the prices low and jack up the rest, sometimes by as much as four and five hundred percent. Years of abnormally low prices had built up a base of devoted customers; leaving a quarter of the prices low kept them devoted, and ensured that people hunting for a bargain could still find one, if they looked. Leaving a quarter of the prices low also meant that, by some perverse alchemy, the marked-up prices seemed legitimate in comparison: for whatever reason, some people were more apt to put out fifteen hundred bucks for a Meissen teapot if it was placed next to a plainer but comparable piece selling (correctly, but cheaply) for a few hundred.
Donna Tartt (The Goldfinch)
And, so, what was it that elevated Rubi from dictator's son-in-law to movie star's husband to the sort of man who might capture the hand of the world's wealthiest heiress? Well, there was his native charm. People who knew him, even if only casually, even if they were predisposed to be suspicious or resentful of him, came away liking him. He picked up checks; he had courtly manners; he kept the party gay and lively; he was attentive to women but made men feel at ease; he was smoothly quick to rise from his chair when introduced, to open doors, to light a lady's cigarette ("I have the fastest cigarette lighter in the house," he once boasted): the quintessential chivalrous gent of manners. The encomia, if bland, were universal. "He's a very nice guy," swore gossip columnist Earl Wilson, who stayed with Rubi in Paris. ""I'm fond of him," said John Perona, owner of New York's El Morocco. "Rubi's got a nice personality and is completely masculine," attested a New York clubgoer. "He has a lot of men friends, which, I suppose, is unusual. Aly Khan, for instance, has few male friends. But everyone I know thinks Rubi is a good guy." "He is one of the nicest guys I know," declared that famed chum of famed playboys Peter Lawford. "A really charming man- witty, fun to be with, and a he-man." There were a few tricks to his trade. A society photographer judged him with a professional eye thus: "He can meet you for a minute and a month later remember you very well." An author who played polo with him put it this way: "He had a trick that never failed. When he spoke with someone, whether man or woman, it seemed as if the rest of the world had lost all interest for him. He could hang on the words of a woman or man who spoke only banalities as if the very future of the world- and his future, especially- depended on those words." But there was something deeper to his charm, something irresistible in particular when he turned it on women. It didn't reveal itself in photos, and not every woman was susceptible to it, but it was palpable and, when it worked, unforgettable. Hollywood dirt doyenne Hedda Hoppe declared, "A friend says he has the most perfect manners she has ever encountered. He wraps his charm around your shoulders like a Russian sable coat." Gossip columnist Shelia Graham was chary when invited to bring her eleven-year-old daughter to a lunch with Rubi in London, and her wariness was transmitted to the girl, who wiped her hand off on her dress after Rubi kissed it in a formal greeting; by the end of lunch, he had won the child over with his enthusiastic, spontaneous manner, full of compliments but never cloying. "All done effortlessly," Graham marveled. "He was probably a charming baby, I am sure that women rushed to coo over him in the cradle." Elsa Maxwell, yet another gossip, but also a society gadabout and hostess who claimed a key role in at least one of Rubi's famous liaisons, put it thus: "You expect Rubi to be a very dangerous young man who personifies the wolf. Instead, you meet someone who is so unbelievably charming and thoughtful that you are put off-guard before you know it." But charm would only take a man so far. Rubi was becoming and international legend not because he could fascinate a young girl but because he could intoxicate sophisticated women. p124
Shawn Levy (The Last Playboy : the High Life of Porfirio Rubirosa)
Mattis and Gary Cohn had several quiet conversations about The Big Problem: The president did not understand the importance of allies overseas, the value of diplomacy or the relationship between the military, the economy and intelligence partnerships with foreign governments. They met for lunch at the Pentagon to develop an action plan. One cause of the problem was the president’s fervent belief that annual trade deficits of about $500 billion harmed the American economy. He was on a crusade to impose tariffs and quotas despite Cohn’s best efforts to educate him about the benefits of free trade. How could they convince and, in their frank view, educate the president? Cohn and Mattis realized they were nowhere close to persuading him. The Groundhog Day–like meetings on trade continued and the acrimony only grew. “Let’s get him over here to the Tank,” Mattis proposed. The Tank is the Pentagon’s secure meeting room for the Joint Chiefs of Staff. It might focus him. “Great idea,” Cohn said. “Let’s get him out of the White House.” No press; no TVs; no Madeleine Westerhout, Trump’s personal secretary, who worked within shouting distance of the Oval Office. There wouldn’t even be any looking out the window, because there were no windows in the Tank. Getting Trump out of his natural environment could do the trick. The idea was straight from the corporate playbook—a retreat or off-site meeting. They would get Trump to the Tank with his key national security and economic team to discuss worldwide strategic relations. Mattis and Cohn agreed. Together they would fight Trump on this. Trade wars or disruptions in the global markets could savage and undermine the precarious stability in the world. The threat could spill over to the military and intelligence community. Mattis couldn’t understand why the U.S. would want to pick a fight with allies, whether it was NATO, or friends in the Middle East, or Japan—or particularly with South Korea.
Bob Woodward (Fear: Trump in the White House)
Hi again ! My fav quote from "Kisses from Katie " By Katie J Davis frm page 174 As an 8 year old ,when I first started hearing Céline Dion’s songs, I did not realize that she was almost always singing about someone she is sooooo desperately in love with ! She has such longing and such agony as she is away from her lover .But now a I feel so much longing for my boyfriend whom Im losing .I see a lesson in this : I think the way Celine Dion feels about her lover is the way God must feel about the church ,which in some ways seems to have strayed so far from Him . I think God allowed me to REALLY MISS my boyfriend so I could catch a tiny glimpse of what God’s heart must feel as the church strays into religion and away from things that are so important to Him like helping the impoverished, unwanted people of the world . He longs and desires for my heart to come back to Him each and every minute of each and every day . God so deeply ,passionately , desperately loves us . He intensely longs for his lover to come back to his teachings of giving all we a have to Him ,our beloved , who lives in the hearts of the suffering poor people of this world and unite as a community in an effort to serve HIM in Them and I am so awed by his love for me .I feel so precious and dear to him that He is singing to me even more longingly and passionately than Celine Dion sings to her lover. That is pretty WONDERFUL !!! Satan is not a fan of God our love affair with God and so Satan is battling every day to keep us from giving our hearts to God. I am becoming more keenly aware than ever before of this battle between God and Satan to claim my heart . The devil tricks us into giving our hearts to materialistically selfish desires: wanting more and more for ourselves so we forget Love for God and our neighbor. So that we trade our noble inheritance : the precious treasure of LOVE God wants to shower on us which no money or processions can buy for more ME ME ME . No where in the bible does it say I deserve a reward (boy friend and material abundance ) here on this earth but it does say that I will have a joy so great that it is greater than all good things of this world combined . Colossians 3:23 says “Whatever work you do do it with all your heart (it does not say “and after this work you deserve a long hot bath and some me time “ it does say “Serve with all your heart since you KNOW that you will receive an in heritance in heaven from the Lord as a reward “ …And we KNOW in our hearts that God is ALL we need to overflow with joy …. (Matthew 19-21 says Do not lay up for your selves treasures in this world where moth and rust doth corrupt …..but lay up for yourselves treasure (Love for God )which will be yours for eternity “ Bless you , Dari
Katie Davis
interpersonal level? If a mind controller finds a victim who is desperately craving something in their life, usually the fulfillment of some deep emotional need, the manipulator will be able to control their mind with greater ease. If, for example, a victim has
Michael Pace (Dark Psychology 101: Learn The Secrets Of Covert Emotional Manipulation, Dark Persuasion, Undetected Mind Control, Mind Games, Deception, Hypnotism, Brainwashing And Other Tricks Of The Trade)
Deception can be seen as dark when it is carried out with either a negative or indifferent intention toward the person being deceived. Normal deception is usually motivated by an inability to face up to the truth in one way or another. Dark deception, on the other hand, is an understanding that the truth does not serve the deceptive aims of the deceiver. Therefore, the truth is either changed, hidden, or ignored in favor of a version of events that better suits the purpose of the person deceiving.
Michael Pace (Dark Psychology 101: Learn The Secrets Of Covert Emotional Manipulation, Dark Persuasion, Undetected Mind Control, Mind Games, Deception, Hypnotism, Brainwashing And Other Tricks Of The Trade)
Ideally, you want components with a flat frequency/response curve: they apply identical amounts of energy to every sound frequency, so the proper balance between high and low is maintained. Although Neat Acoustics isn’t as well known in the States, I’d heard some of their speakers demoed at a conference in Brussels once and decided I needed a pair if I could ever afford them. When I bought the house, I settled on a pair of Ultimatum XL6s. Only three feet high, they use some neat engineering tricks to generate a much fuller frequency range than you’d expect. For example, each speaker contains an isobaric bass chamber, with two drivers lined up one behind the other inside the closed compartment. With the two woofers rigged so their cones move simultaneously, you can create the same bass sound in half the cabinet space. Unfortunately, the trade-off for such a compact design is density, of
Joseph Reid (Takeoff (Seth Walker #1))
All the mystery and wisdom of the masters, when it's out in the daylight, doesn't amount to so much, you know. Tricks of the trade. Wonderful illusions. But people don't want to know that. They want the illusions, the mysteries. Who can blame them? There's so little in life that's beautiful and worthy.
Ursula K. Le Guin (Tales from Earthsea (Earthsea Cycle, #5))
Listen, now. Read this carefully, because I am going to tell you something important. More than that: I am about to tell you one of the secrets of the trade. I mean it. This is the magic trick upon which all good fiction depends: it’s the angled mirror in the box behind which the doves are hidden, the hidden compartment beneath the table. It’s this: There is room for things to mean more than they literally mean. That was it.
Neil Gaiman (Adventures in the Dream Trade)
I believe the course of events is dictated by a Leninist and Stalinist political culture which has grown out of the precedents of czarism and Bolshevism, involving a bag of tricks in which six elements are used to achieve political and economic results: (1) provocation; (2) divide and conquer; (3) infiltration of the enemy camp; (4) disinformation; (5) controlled opposition; (6) and strategic deception. Various special formations and ideological sub-weapons have been developed by Moscow to amplify the working power of these six elements, including organized crime, drug trafficking, international terrorism, national liberation movements, revolutionary Islam, free trade, global warming, feminism, the homosexual movement, gun control and multiculturalism.
J.R. Nyquist
Love bombing is a technique typically used by emotional manipulators at the start of their interaction with a victim. It involves the intense, sudden, and forceful display of positive feelings toward a victim. This may seem counterintuitive at first. If a person is trying to harm someone, why do they act so intensively positive at first? Because it serves their own objectives!
Michael Pace (Dark Psychology 101: Learn The Secrets Of Covert Emotional Manipulation, Dark Persuasion, Undetected Mind Control, Mind Games, Deception, Hypnotism, Brainwashing And Other Tricks Of The Trade)
The theory behind love bombing is it creates an intense feeling of trust, affection, and compliance from a victim to their manipulator. The extent to which love bombing is used, and the people it is used on, depends upon the manipulator’s assessment of the situation. A victim who is lonely, desperate, and seeking support and comfort is likely to be love bombed more intensely and overtly as the manipulator feels they will be receptive to it. Similarly, a more grounded victim will require a less intense and more subtle onslaught of positivity.
Michael Pace (Dark Psychology 101: Learn The Secrets Of Covert Emotional Manipulation, Dark Persuasion, Undetected Mind Control, Mind Games, Deception, Hypnotism, Brainwashing And Other Tricks Of The Trade)
Love bombing is the unconditional, unearned, and intense display of positivity from a manipulator to their target in the earliest days of their interaction. It has the purpose of softening up a victim’s defenses, increasing their reliance on the person manipulating them and setting the frame of a positive relationship, friendship, or whatever other form the interaction takes.
Michael Pace (Dark Psychology 101: Learn The Secrets Of Covert Emotional Manipulation, Dark Persuasion, Undetected Mind Control, Mind Games, Deception, Hypnotism, Brainwashing And Other Tricks Of The Trade)
The Long Con involves the dark persuader taking their time to earn their victim's trust. They will carefully befriend their victim and make sure the victim likes and trust them. This is usually achieved by excessive, artificial rapport building, and other ways of increasing comfort levels.
Michael Pace (Dark Psychology 101: Learn The Secrets Of Covert Emotional Manipulation, Dark Persuasion, Undetected Mind Control, Mind Games, Deception, Hypnotism, Brainwashing And Other Tricks Of The Trade)
Learn the trade before you learn the tricks of the trade.
J. Earp
Legal obfuscation and amnesty schemes The UPA government is trying to use every trick of the trade to provide escape routes for black money looters. Take, for example, the complex strategy being adopted to change the colour of money from black to white, with a unique ‘Fair and Lovely’ amnesty recipe. The press reported in 2011 that the Central Board of Direct Taxes (CBDT) was “seriously considering” recommending to the government a scheme on the lines of the Voluntary Disclosure of Income Scheme (VDIS) announced in 1996 to bring back black money stashed in tax havens abroad for productive use in India. It is reported that the source of the money will not have to be disclosed, but criminal action will be taken if the money (or the assets) pertain to proceeds of crime. How the two halves of the sentence can be harmonised defies logic. In a democracy, every citizen is entitled to know the character and integrity of every other citizen, lest one day a crook manipulates a constituency of voters and colleagues in his party and occupies the office of prime minister. Concealing vast amounts of money and depriving a poverty-stricken nation of the revenue it badly needs is a criminal offence by itself. How would we find out whether or not one such criminal is already in office, instead of being in Tihar Jail?
Ram Jethmalani (RAM JETHMALANI MAVERICK UNCHANGED, UNREPENTANT)
I was quick to learn the tricks of the trade, the most important being: when you run into an unsolvable problem, use grease liberally; it opens all doors.
Khushwant Singh (The Company of Women)
Through a trick lighting technique the skyline was made and faded with the care of a pointillist— maybe aiding us to think nothing was missing. We traded verbs about what was happening in the metropolis, realizing, in the scorched plum of dusk, actual human infinity was occurring on an island before us....
Kristen Henderson
The world is theatre with the different artists playing their own tricks of the trade to attract and get what they want from you.
Aiyaz Uddin
In his essay “A Painter of Modern Life,” Baudelaire wrote that Guys’s earliest scribblings were so barbarian that “most of the people who know what they are talking about, or who claim to, could, without shame, have failed to discern the latent genius that dwelt in these obscure beginnings.” Latent genius. Baudelaire noted that for over fifteen years Guys taught himself tricks of the trade while still being true to his own vision and sense of beauty. Isn’t that the question for so many of us? How do we stay true to our original vision? How, as Ellen Gilchrist asks, do we “hold on to that native genius and also learn the things we need to survive”?
Jeffrey Davis (Tracking Wonder: Reclaiming a Life of Meaning and Possibility in a World Obsessed with Productivity)
Had we begun cutting global emissions in 1990, we could still have tackled the climate crisis with confidence,” he writes. “The back of the envelope take is that we could then have cut emissions by something on the order of one quarter per decade and kept within our CO2 budget.” It “wouldn’t have been child’s play,” but “well-understood incremental regulatory reforms and well-designed carbon trading or pricing systems” would have done the trick.
Bill McKibben (Falter: Has the Human Game Begun to Play Itself Out?)
Carson used a number of tricks to get Hyplains the best cattle without spending a penny more than he had to, a process called “putting the kill together.” To assemble a good kill, Carson employed a team of buyers who visited the feedlots and reported back to him what they saw. Carson employed a strategy called “laying the noose.” He gave each of his buyers a secret order to buy several pens of cattle at a given price. Then at an appointed time later in the afternoon, Carson instructed all of them to make the trade. That was called “pulling the noose.” Within minutes, Hyplains locked up thousands of cattle before the competition could get at them. The competitors found out the next morning that the first cut of cattle was off the market.
Christopher Leonard (The Meat Racket: The Secret Takeover of America's Food Business)
Those who master the art know that it requires special habits of attention, tricks such as slightly defocusing the eyes to permit one somehow to suppress the contribution of what one knows (the penny is circular, the table top is rectangular) so that one can observe the actual angles subtended by the lines in the drawing (the penny shape is elliptical, the table top trapezoidal). It often helps to superimpose an imaginary vertical and horizontal grid or pair of cross hairs, to help judge the actual angles of the lines seen. Learning to draw is largely a matter of learning to override the normal processes of vision in order to make one’s experience of the item in the world more like looking at a picture. It can never be just like looking at a picture, but once it has been adulterated in that direction, one can, with further tricks of the trade, more or less “copy” what one experiences onto the paper.
Daniel C. Dennett (Consciousness Explained)
CEM is a dark psychological stealth bomber, avoiding detection and defense until it is too late.
Michael Pace (Dark Psychology 101: Learn The Secrets Of Covert Emotional Manipulation, Dark Persuasion, Undetected Mind Control, Mind Games, Deception, Hypnotism, Brainwashing And Other Tricks Of The Trade)
The president has great confidence in him because he made his pile, has invested all his money in Government securities and knows all of the tricks of the trade. Apparently he is going on the assumption that Kennedy would now like to make a name for himself for the sake of his family, but I have never known many of these cases to work out as expected.”29
Richard E. Farley (Wall Street Wars: The Epic Battles with Washington that Created the Modern Financial System)
However, realize that every day, we are tending our garden as planting seeds of ideas, mowing down weeds of unproductivity, tending our thought life which impacts our actions, leading others by example as a wise sage leads the novice gardener through useful tips and tricks of the trade to improve crops. In short, life is the garden and we are the gardeners whose choices make the difference between fertile harvests and dismal defeat. Herein lies the road we choose to travel. Choose wisely. Philippians 3:8
Aurora A. Ambrose (Live Sunny Side Up: The B's of Joyful Living)
Your calling is not just one thing; it’s a few things. The trick is to not be a jack-of-all-trades but to become a master of some.
Jeff Goins (The Art of Work: A Proven Path to Discovering What You Were Meant to Do)
Adopting tricks of the trade from colleagues is done everywhere else in research-why not in writing?
Scott L. Montgomery (The Chicago Guide to Communicating Science (Chicago Guides to Writing, Editing, and Publishing))
I was a dog in my former life, a very good dog, and, thus, I was promoted to a human being. I liked being a dog. I worked for a poor farmer guarding and herding his sheep. Wolves and coyotes tried to get past me almost every night, and not once did I lose a sheep. the farmer rewarded me with good food, food from his table. He may have been poor, but he ate well. and his children played with me, when they weren’t in school or working in the field. I had all the love any dog could hope for. When I got old, they got a new dog, and I trained him in the tricks of the trade. He quickly learned, and the farmer brought me into the house to live with them. I brought the farmer his slippers in the morning, as he was getting old, too. I was dying slowly, a little bit at a time. The farmer knew this and would bring the new dog in to visit me from time to time. The new dog would entertain me with his flips and flops and nuzzles. And then one morning I just didn’t get up. They gave me a fine burial down by the stream under a shade tree. That was the end of my being a dog. Sometimes I miss it so I sit by the window and cry. I live in a high-rise that looks out at a bunch of other high-rises. At my job I work in a cubicle and barely speak to anyone all day. This is my reward for being a good dog. The human wolves don’t even see me. They fear me not.
James Tate
Persson did not create Minecraft because he wanted to create a billion-dollar company; he loved video games and kept his day job while developing it. When the game soared in popularity, he started a company, Mojang, with some of the profits, but kept it small, with just 12 employees. Even with zero dollars spent on marketing and no user instructions, Minecraft grew exponentially, flying past the 100 million registered user mark in 2014 based largely on word of mouth.2 Players shared user-generated extras like modifications (“mods”) and custom maps with each other, and the game caught on not only with children but their parents and even educators. Still, Persson avoided the valuation game, refusing an investment offer from former Facebook president Sean Parker. Finally, he and his co-founders sold Mojang to Microsoft for $2.5 billion, a fortune built on one man’s focus on creating something that people loved.3 On the other end of the spectrum is Zynga, one of the fastest startups ever to reach a $1 billion valuation.4 The social game developer had its first hit in 2009 with FarmVille. Next came Zynga’s partnership with Facebook that turned into a growth engine. The company began trading on the NASDAQ in December 2011 and had 253 million active users per month as late as the first quarter of 2013.5 Then the relationship with Facebook ended and the wheels started coming off. Flush with IPO cash, Zynga started exhibiting all the symptoms of ego-driven, grow-at-any-cost syndrome. They moved into a $228 million headquarters in San Francisco. They began hastily acquiring companies like NaturalMotion, Newtoy, and Area/Code. They infuriated customers by launching new games without sufficient testing and filling them with scripts that signed players up for unwanted subscriptions and services. When customer outrage went viral, instead of focusing on building better products, Zynga hired a behavioral psychologist to try to trick customers into loving its games.6 In a 2009 speech at Startup@Berkeley, CEO Mark Pincus said, “I funded [Zynga] myself but I did every horrible thing in the book to just get revenues right away. I mean, we gave our users poker chips if they downloaded this Zwinky toolbar, which . . . I downloaded it once — I couldn’t get rid of it. We did anything possible just to just get revenues so that we could grow and be a real business.”7 By the spring of 2016, Zynga had laid off about 18 percent of its workforce and its share price had declined from $14.50 in 2012 to about $2.50.
Brian de Haaff (Lovability: How to Build a Business That People Love and Be Happy Doing It)
Franks goal of pleasing his homeowners is almost an obsession, so he took it to heart when Pam, the female homeowner on his team for the Seattle:137th St episode, saw her own living room and ran out sobbing. Frank had worked with Pam and her husband for two days, and he sympthetisized entirely: "Every time I see that show, I just physically tighten up, " he says. "I know how much that reaction ruined her life." That's why Frank's makeovers are often less drastic and retain elements of the old room. "Many times people don't have the money to put it back, so you don't want to screw up their house just for a TV show," he says. "That's why I don't take down ceiling fans, because it costs to put them back up.
Brian Kramer (Trading Spaces Behind the Scenes: Includes Decorating Tips and Tricks)
The Swedish economy—dependent, then, on mining and timber—was quite big in the mid-17th century. It needed money to finance its trade. But there was a problem: its currency, the daler, was made of heavy copper plates measuring one foot by two feet! The king needed a bank to store his ‘coins’. No good ideas were forthcoming from his subjects until a Latvian man called Johan Palmstruch convinced him that he would do it. He would set up the bank and, in return, give the king half the profits. When the king died, problems arose which were eventually resolved by the oldest sovereign trick in the book: the nationalisation of Palmstruch’s bank. Thus the concept of a central bank was born.
T.C.A. Srinivasa Raghavan (A Crown of Thorns: The Governors of the RBI)
The biggest secret that traders don’t want the world to know is that anyone with a more or less sane disposition can do what they’re doing. The trick is getting access to the trough, to the P&L, to the “book.” The road toward it is tough, treacherous and crowded. On the way there, you will be misled into believing that in order to be a trader you must have a physics PhD, or know how to write code and build models, or have a top-school MBA, or, when all else fails, just be a young Caucasian male. But in the end, it doesn’t matter who made it to the top. In the end, it all comes down to merely placing a bet.
K. G. Cohen (The American Spellbound)
While their powers might not have been as acute as mine, their future was equally as bleak. We were all in service to Nix. We were all bound to the destiny he laid out for us. And he had no interest in letting us be free. He would use us for his own twisted plots and evil gain. He would use us until he couldn’t anymore. He would use every last ounce of us until we shrivelled into nothing and disappeared without another thought. Welcome to the sophisticated sex trade. Our buyers paid more and our pimp was an international and highly respected businessman, but our tricks were the same and our bodies equally enslaved. In a world where human trafficking was at the highest numbers in all of history, combined, our branch of the insidious business seemed almost human compared to what others went through. But our freedom was still ripped from us and we were still forced to sell ourselves so that others could gratify their greed. A woman shouldn’t have to live like this. A woman should be able to decide everything that happened to her body. And not just women, but girls. Especially girls.
Rachel Higginson (The Fall (The Siren, #2))
If Laurie busts a budget, it's usually fabric that puts her over. While most of the other designers spen $5 to $7 a yard for their fabrics, the crewelwork for Laurie's pillows cost $45 a yard - on sale.
Brian Kramer (Trading Spaces Behind the Scenes: Includes Decorating Tips and Tricks)
Doug has experimented with materials as diverse as crayons, convex mirrors, and tinted plaster.His rooms received write-ups in the New York Times as well as a bit in House and Garden, which quoted Doug as an expert on color and reproduced his preferred palette - one ranging from bubble gum pink and fiery reds to royal blues and brilliant purples....The write up caught the attention of Trading Spaces producers.
Brian Kramer (Trading Spaces Behind the Scenes: Includes Decorating Tips and Tricks)
That was the trouble with political appointees. They still didn’t really know the tricks of the trade. All they could do was talk and order people around, and play games with people’s lives without ever having paid the price themselves.
L.E. Modesitt Jr. (Ghosts of Columbia (Ghost, #1-2))
It seemed a shame to bargain with one who had learned the tricks of guarding her business, of protecting her trade against greedy intruders.
Murzban F. Shroff (Breathless in Bombay: Stories)
Ma'am I am still a strong believer if my tough Queen HILLARY CLINTON, she was the only technical person who deserve the white-House,Millions across the world thought she could win at all cost but as we know no one is GOD and none can predict with accuracy with trying the Faiths in form of TRYING . Trump is a tough man with reliable and sustainable wealth so I don't doubt his abilities and strategic business tricks by utilizing his technical brains to his advantage at all times ,My queen relaxed big time at the beginning ,and mid-campaigning moments ,she speed up at the last days which led to our Lost . Trump on the other side ,create a very tougher audience attraction and mass dominance with NEGATIVITY and DIVISION , captured the attention of the whole world at the Mid-Campain moments and Relax with Comfort knowing he will be walk into Victory with the stronger Mess he created from the very Beginning . I admire and still think Trump should rate his Brains for playing his Political Game with ultra-Modern BRANDING tricks that made him the most viewed ,followed and the center of attention for the world not just America. I respect such business logic tricks ,cos they productive but Trump should trade with Caution and remember he is just an ordinary creature and flawed just like any other person ,unless our first father and mother were not create the same and Equal . A technical person like him who understands Business should know ,weapons and killings are not part of business ,in business all you requires and constantly has to invest in is your TECHNICAL BRAINS ,always beat your enemies and oppositions with their individual and personal Unique and Ultra Modern Innovations to distinguishes between a Leader and a follower. I am still a tough and firm believer of my queen and I don't even have to think about their Past or what people claims about them cos I understand the reasons why great minds always attract violent and deadly opposition from mediocre minds so I don't judge anyone and can even judge anyone not even myself but watching her back is my Pledge and if a worthless person makes the wrong move towards hurting her ,it's turn will be know who true SNIPERS are and why we have accurate general snipers . Cos a YoungMan claims when that hour arrives can he give all the crew plotting evil against her an accurate shots to hell until we meet there one day
Chief-Icons Rashid Bawah
The best hunters are not those with a natural aptitude for hunting, but those who have had to struggle long and hard to learn every trick of the trade.
Théun Mares (Return of the Warriors: The Toltec Teachings - Volume I (The Toltec Teachings - Théun Mares Book 1))
If your art is going to have the impact you want, you had better learn the tricks of the trade—not so you can become part of the system, but so you can start changing lives. I
Jeff Goins (You Are A Writer (So Start Acting Like One))
Paige's full name is Mindy Paige Davis, and until Tradung Spaces, that was her showbiz name too. She likes the name Paige and tacked it onto her first name, so her family and friends still call her Mindy Paige. When she got the Trading Spaces job, the producers asked her I'd "Mindy" was short for anything more mature-sounding. Paige decided to drop her first name. That solved one problem, but it caused another when her boyfriend, Patrick, proposed: his last name is Page. So Paige kept her maiden name. Patrick had always called her Mindy, but for her 32nd birthday, he gave his wife a unique gift: He started calling her Paige.
Brian Kramer (Trading Spaces Behind the Scenes: Includes Decorating Tips and Tricks)
It’s going to take more than a few sultry glances to make me your willing slave, Archer. You should know better than to try the tricks of your trade on me.” “And I think you know well enough to realize when I’m not actually using them. If I were, then we would have left the restaurant already.” “That’s a bold, bold claim. I don’t think you’d want to go head-to-head with me when it comes to tricks of the trade.” “Oh, I want to do a lot of things with you.
Sarah J. Maas (Crown of Midnight (Throne of Glass, #2))
She actually needed to take a long sip from her wine this time. “It’s going to take more than a few sultry glances to make me your willing slave, Archer. You should know better than to try the tricks of your trade on me.
Sarah J. Maas (Crown of Midnight (Throne of Glass, #2))
They'd tricked her. She'd sat there, pulling strings and trading favors and thinking that she was doing something real. For months - maybe years - she hadn't noticed that she was being closed out. They'd made a fool of her. She should have been humiliated. Instead, she felt alive. This was her game, and if she was behind at halftime, it only meant they expected her to lose. There was nothing better than being underestimated.
James S.A. Corey (Caliban’s War)
its trend. And right here let me say one thing: After spending many years in Wall Street and after making and losing millions of dollars I want to tell you this: It never was my thinking that made the big money for me. It always was my sitting. Got that? My sitting tight! It is no trick at all to be right on the market. You always find lots of early bulls in bull markets and early bears in bear markets. I've known many men who were right at exactly the right time, and began buying or selling stocks when prices were at the very level which should show the greatest profit. And their experience invariably matched mine—that is, they made no real money out of it. Men who can both be right and sit tight are uncommon. I found it one of the hardest things to learn. But it is only after a stock operator has firmly grasped this that he can make big money. It is literally true that millions come easier to a trader after he knows how to trade than hundreds did in the days of his ignorance.
Jesse Lauriston Livermore (Jesse Livermore's Two Books of Market Wisdom: Reminiscences of a Stock Operator & Jesse Livermore's Methods of Trading in Stocks)
Do not understand only the words; also understand their contexts since they illuminate you precisely. If you vote wisely, you won’t have to fight for your rights and peace everywhere. The political mafia is the mother of all mafias and often causes wars and uses vetoes to disrupt global peace. My every minute of life is for the entire humanity and human rights; it is a core prayer of all my prayers. What is a mafia, how do you understand it, and when do you overcome it? It is neither easy nor difficult; just be brave for your rights and never ignore them. No one can stand in front of your rights if you truly believe that. I have described the context of the mafia in the form of quotations that may guide and enlighten your life journey honourably. When a nation faces the Mafia Judiciary, which employs and applies an unfair way that fractures justice, the criminal mafia groups become licensed, and freehand is a juristic disaster. Wherever the medical, trade, business, media, and political interests of the mafia prevail, there is certainly neither a cure nor freedom possible nor justice nor peace. A vote holds not only significant power; it also carries a key to a system, essence to the welfare, surety to the career of a future generation, and a magnet to the stability of the state. The wrong choice or emotional pledge and favor of the vote-casting can indeed victimize a voter himself as a consequence. Realize this power and use it wisely, disregarding all external influences and tricks. Such a political party remains the proprietorship of a particular family, a rich circle, a corrupt mafia, or an establishment that accomplishes neither transparent democratic legitimacy nor fair democracy. Undoubtedly, such a party enforces majority dictatorship when it comes to power. It is mendacious dishonesty and severe corruption in a precise democratic voting context. I have been critical of the undemocratic rule, but now I think it may be the option of neutral law, but not martial law, which is essential for the stability and unity of Pakistan’s state, constitution, economy, and institutions to eliminate the democratic mafia and terror. International intelligence agencies and their hired ones avoid the weapons now; however, they utilize deadly chemicals to kill their rivals, whether high-level or low-level, whereas doctors diagnose that as a natural death. Virtually becoming infected and a victim of deathly diseases through chemicals is neither known publicly nor common. As a fact, the intelligence mafia can achieve and gain every task for their interests.
Ehsan Sehgal
let’s turn to the formula, talking about accumulation: M C C’ M’. M, money, C, input commodities, one cycle; M prime, more money. What happens in this process to allow M to become M prime, which is the whole point? You wouldn’t go through all of this if you ended up at the end with the same money as you started out with at the beginning. M just came out as M. The whole point is to get from M to M prime. To understand this, we have to examine this peculiar commodity of labor power. As an analysis of how more money emerges from the production process than goes in, Marx first rules out any possibilities of cheating or unfairness. In his analysis of the capitalist system, Marx is in a conversation with, and often in argumentation with, the economists, and political economists who came before them, principally the classical political economists. People like David Ricardo, Adam Smith, and a number of others. He wanted to make his analysis within their frame of rules, which presents capital in its best light. So that if in fact he shows it not to produce the advantages that they claim, he will have done it on their terms. One of the things he does is to rule out things like cheating, like buying low and selling high, which is a sort of principal character of mercantilism. The reason he rules this out is, he says, that on balance in society, this doesn’t produce any additional surplus value or wealth. It simply redistributes what value or wealth already exists. That it all averages out; if you cheat somebody, you may have gotten something, but they lost something. It’s a kind of zero-sum thing. He rules that out. Everything in the process as Marx analyzes it trades at its true value. The means of production cannot be the source of the additional value. Remember, he’s trying to figure out in his process how we get from M to M prime. One of the things that capitalists do is buy means of production. He says, those cannot be the source of additional value. The reasons are this. They either transfer part of their value to the new products, or, for example, you depreciate machinery over time. You can calculate how much of the value goes into a production in each cycle of production. Or the means of production actually end up incorporated into the new product itself, but there is no new value there. So, if you make something, if you make bread out of wheat, it becomes incorporated in the bread, but there is no new value there. It’s necessary for the capitalists to find on the market the commodity that produces more value than it itself costs. That’s the trick. This unique commodity is labor power, and is the only element in the process that produces surplus value, which is the source of profit.
Noam Chomsky (Consequences of Capitalism: Manufacturing Discontent and Resistance)
Rabbit Is Up to Tricks In a world long before this one, there was enough for everyone, Until somebody got out of line. We heard it was Rabbit, fooling around with clay and wind. Everybody was tired of his tricks and no one would play with him; He was lonely in this world. So Rabbit thought to make a person. And when he blew into the mouth of the crude figure to see What would happen, The clay man stood up. Rabbit showed the clay man how to steal a chicken. The clay man obeyed. Rabbit showed him how to steal corn. The clay man obeyed. Then he showed him how to steal someone else’s wife. The clay man obeyed. Rabbit felt important and powerful. Clay man felt important and powerful. And once that clay man started he could not stop. Once he took that chicken he wanted all the chickens. And once he took that corn he wanted all the corn. And once he took that wife, he wanted all the wives. He was insatiable. Then he had a taste of gold and he wanted all the gold. Then it was land and anything else he saw. His wanting only made him want more. Soon it was countries, then it was trade. The wanting infected the earth. We lost track of the purpose and reason for life. We began to forget our songs. We forgot our stories. We could no longer see or hear our ancestors, Or talk with each other across the kitchen table. Forests were being mowed down all over the world. And Rabbit had no place to play. Rabbit’s trick had backfired. Rabbit tried to call the clay man back. But when the clay man wouldn’t listen, Rabbit realized he’d made a clay man with no ears.
Joy Harjo
learn the trade, not the tricks of the trade.
Mark Frost (The Grand Slam: Bobby Jones, America, and the Story of Golf)