Valet Parking Quotes

Because loving him is the same thing as tossing the keys to my heart to a valet without a driver’s license. He’ll drive me off a cliff.

Raj leaned over from the driver's seat to give her a quick, hard kiss. 'Don't think so hard sweetheart. I'm not dangerous.' He spun the wheel in a tight circle, taking them past the startled valets and out of the parking lot. 'Not to you anyway,' he muttered.

He’s a time bomb for me, do you see now? That he’ll hurt me. He’ll always hurt me. I’ll never be safe with him, even if I’m always safe next to him. So, it doesn’t matter if I love him—which I don’t—but if I did, it doesn’t matter, even now. Because loving him is the same thing as tossing the keys to my heart to a valet without a driver’s license. He’ll drive me off a cliff.

It's a funny thing about Americans, we love to bitch about paying too much for the things we really need and are really a bargain, like gas and postage stamps, but we willingly shell out outrageous amounts for unnecessary crap like gourmet coffee and soap to make your crotch smell good. Two dollars a gallon to go ten miles is too much, but five to the parking valet to go ten feet is okay.

The heroin flowing through me, I thought about the last time I saw my father alive. He was drunk and overweight in a restaurant in Beverly Hills, and curling into myself on the bed I thought: What if I had done something that day? I had just sat passively in a restaurant booth as the midday light filled the half-empty dining room, pondering a decision. The decision was: should you disarm him? That was the word I remember: disarm. Should you tell him something that might not be the truth but would get the desired reaction? And what was I going to convince him of, even though it was a lie? Did it matter? Whatever it was, it would constitute a new beginning. The immediate line: You’re my father and I love you. I remember staring at the white tablecloth as I contemplated saying this. Could I actually do it? I didn’t believe it, and it wasn’t true, but I wanted it to be. For one moment, as my father ordered another vodka (it was two in the afternoon; this was his fourth) and started ranting about my mother and the slump in California real estate and how “your sisters” never called him, I realized it could actually happen, and that by saying this I would save him. I suddenly saw a future with my father. But the check came along with the drink and I was knocked out of my reverie by an argument he wanted to start and I simply stood up and walked away from the booth without looking back at him or saying goodbye and then I was standing in sunlight. Loosening my tie as a parking valet pulled up to the curb in the cream-colored 450 SL. I half smiled at the memory, for thinking that I could just let go of the damage that a father can do to a son. I never spoke to him again.

Cynicism is idealism turned inside out. It stems from an expectation unrealized and a promise perverted. That is so much of Washington today in a nutshell.

The nation’s leaders keep throwing out the word “Washington” as a vulgar abstraction. Nothing new here: the anti-Washington reflex in American politics has been honed for centuries, often by candidates who deride the capital as a swamp, only to settle into the place as if it were a soothing whirlpool bath once they get elected. The city exists to be condemned.

We’d have valet parking, too, but the attendants would be disguised as hostile schizophrenic street people who would squeegee-attack your windshield right as you pull up. Those in the know would have figured out by now that all our valets were ex-cons,

Hainanese chicken rice, which could arguably be considered the national dish of Singapore. (And yes, Eleanor is ready for foodie bloggers to start attacking her restaurant choice. She chose Wee Nam Kee specifically because the United Square location is only five minutes from the Bao condo, and parking there is $2.00 after 6:00 p.m. If she took him to Chatterbox, which she personally prefers, parking at Mandarin Hotel would have been a nightmare and she would have had to valet her Jaguar for $15. Which she would RATHER DIE than do.)

You know you've made it in D.C. when someone says that--"It isn't clear what he does"--about you.

Many of us become walking self-caricatures at a certain point, and politicians can be particularly vulnerable, especially those who have maneuvered their very public lives as conspicuously as McCain. They tell and retell the same stories; things get musty. They engage in a lot of self-mythologizing,

For the rest of Kat’s childhood, she moved from one relative’s house to another’s, up and down the East Coast, living in four homes before entering high school. Finally, in high school, she lived for a few years with her grandmother, her mom’s mom, whom she called “G-Ma.” No one ever talked about her mom’s murder. “In my family, my past was ‘The Big Unmentionable’—including my role in putting my own father in jail,” she says. In high school, Kat appeared to be doing well. She was an honor student who played four varsity sports. Beneath the surface, however, “I was secretly self-medicating with alcohol because otherwise, by the time everything stopped and it got quiet at night, I could not sleep, I would just lie there and a terrible panic would overtake me.” She went to college, failed out, went back, and graduated. She went to work in advertising, and one day, dissatisfied, quit. She went back to grad school, piling up debt. She became a teacher. Kat quit that job too, when a relationship she had formed with another teacher imploded. At the age of thirty-four, Kat went to stay with her brother and his family in Hawaii. She got a job as a valet, parking cars. “I’d come home from parking cars all day and curl up on my bed in the back bedroom of my brother’s house, and lie there feeling desperate and alone, my heart beating with anxiety.

The day after she went to walk on the Pincian Hill—the Hyde Park of the Roman idlers—possibly in hopes to have another sight of Lord Steyne. But she met another acquaintance there: it was Mr. Fiche, his lordship's confidential man, who came up nodding to her rather familiarly and putting a finger to his hat. "I knew that Madame was here," he said; "I followed her from her hotel. I have some advice to give Madame." "From the Marquis of Steyne?" Becky asked, resuming as much of her dignity as she could muster, and not a little agitated by hope and expectation. "No," said the valet; "it is from me. Rome is very unwholesome." "Not at this season, Monsieur Fiche—not till after Easter." "I tell Madame it is unwholesome now. There is always malaria for some people. That cursed marsh wind kills many at all seasons. Look, Madame Crawley, you were always bon enfant, and I have an interest in you, parole d'honneur. Be warned. Go away from Rome, I tell you—or you will be ill and die.

they come to LA aspirting to be white. Even the ones who are biologically white aren't white white. Valet parking white. Brag about your Native American, Argentinian, Portuguese ancestry white. Pho white. Paparazzi white. I once got fired from a telemarketing job, now look at m, I'm famous white. Calabazas white. I love L.A. It's the only place where you can go skiing, to the beach and to the desert all in one day white.

The parking lot is jammed—the valets sprint from car to car. They play full-metal Tetris. They swerve, reverse at speed, never clip a bumper.

There’s some pretty high-profile people there,” Jay announces through the small chip in my ear. I’ll be taking it out before I get out of the car. Currently, I’m in a line, waiting for valet parking. “Including the president,” Jay tacks on at the end.

Of course, they were paying for more than the groceries. They were financing the parking valets, and the starched white tablecloths, and the waiters with rings in their ears and cobs up their butts, who acted like you were putting them out if you asked them to fetch you an extra helping of bread. They were paying for the fancy French name slapped on a filet of fish that used to be called the catch-of-the-day. He’d seen pretentious outfits like that in ports all over the world. A few had even cropped up here in Key West, and those he scorned most of all.

I’m sorry, Mr. Chavez,” the club’s young assistant reception manager, Talya, said. “This is a private club. If you’re not a member, your name has to be on the guest list.” Luis Chavez sighed. He wasn’t here by choice. “I was told to come here at this time,” Luis replied. “By whom?” Talya asked. Luis watched her eyes weigh his appearance. He was in black pants, heavy black shoes, and wore a gray jacket zipped up to his Adam’s apple even though it was almost summer. He was clean shaven with short black hair. That he wasn’t representative of the club’s regular clientele wasn’t even a question. “Mr. Alazraqui.” “I’m sorry. We don’t have a member by that name or anyone on our guest list.” Luis nodded. His job was done. He could go home in good conscience. “My mistake,” Luis said, nodding to the young woman. He turned and was almost out the door when a white Mercedes SUV rolled up to the valet stand just outside in the sublevel parking garage. Its driver was a large Hispanic man practically bursting through the seams of an off-white suit and mustard-yellow shirt. Even though he was only an inch or two taller than Luis’s diminutive five foot three, his expansive girth caused him to dwarf Luis. Talya stepped past Luis to open the door for him. “Good morning, Mr. Mata!” Mata nodded a greeting at her and stepped through the door. As soon as the big man was through, Talya jogged ahead to ring for an elevator. Though the club’s entrance was in a parking garage, the club itself was an elevator ride up to the ninth floor. “Have a good breakfast, sir.” Luis had just located the valet ticket in his pocket when he heard the older man’s voice. “Padre?” Luis winced. “Oh, is Mr. Chavez a guest of yours?” Talya asked. “He’s the priest. To deliver the benediction.” Luis caught the surprised look on Talya’s face, then felt Mata’s heavy hand on his shoulder. “Come on, Padre. Let’s get you upstairs.” As soon as they were inside the elevator, Mata nodded to the tiny strip of white peering over the top of Luis’s jacket. “Why didn’t you flash the collar?” Mata asked. “Waited too late,” Luis admitted. “Would’ve felt like a jerk.” “Ah,” Mata said, laughing. “Guess enough people out there think priests are assholes, huh?” Luis didn’t reply.

Washingtonians love the "So-and-so is spinning in his grave" cliché. Someone is always speculating about how some great dead American would be scandalized over some crime against How It Used to Be. The Founding Fathers are always spinning in their graves over something, as is Ronald Reagan, or FDR. Edward R. Murrow is a perennial grave spinner in the news business (though in fact, Murrow was cremated).

Skybridge parking?” Hardy asked as we drove through the huge sprawl of buildings in the medical center. We were passing the thirty-story Memorial Hermann tower sheathed with spandrel glass, one of a multitude of offices and hospitals in the complex. “No, there’s a valet at the main entrance,” Haven said, unbuckling her seat belt. “Hold on, honey, I haven’t stopped yet.” He glanced over his shoulder at me and saw that I was out of my seat belt, too. “Y’all mind waiting ’til I put the brakes on before you jump out?” he asked ruefully. -Hardy, Haven, Ella

Swicord is not a New Age nut; she's a writer. And even after mega-wrangles with Mattel's management—the musical was sketched out but never produced—she is still a fan of the doll. "Barbie," she said, "is bigger than all those executives. She has lasted through many regimes. She's lasted through neglect. She's survived the feminist backlash. In countries where they don't even sell makeup or have anything like our dating rituals, they play with Barbie. Barbie embodies not a cultural view of femininity but the essence of woman." Over the course of two interviews with Swicord, her young daughters played with their Barbies. I watched one wrap her tiny fist around the doll's legs and move it forward by hopping. It looked as if she were plunging the doll into the earth—or, in any event, into the bedroom floor. And while I handle words like "empowering" with tongs, it's a good description of her daughters' Barbie play. The girls do not live in a matriarchal household. Their father, Swicord's husband, Nicholas Kazan, who wrote the screenplay for Reversal of Fortune, is very much a presence in their lives. Still, the girls play in a female-run universe, where women are queens and men are drones. The ratio of Barbies to Kens is about eight to one. Barbie works, drives, owns the house, and occasionally exploits Ken for sex. But even that is infrequent: In one scenario, Ken was so inconsequential that the girls made him a valet parking attendant. His entire role was to bring the cars around for the Barbies.

Avery was so eager to begin their lives in their new home he'd held the reception in their backyard. The party tent sat between the house and the St. Croix River. Valets greeted guests, parked the cars, and shuttled people from the front of the house back to the tent. This was all designed to have Kane one step closer to moving into their new home tonight. That pleased Avery far more than anything else they'd done this evening. No more separate homes or forced separation for fear of living in sin.

Come on, Young. The debate is about to start. Are you with us or have you gone to another realm?”               Andy knelt beside me as he continued, “Are you okay? You haven’t been yourself since your return from the hospital.”               “I’m fine. I’m enjoying the beautiful landscape. Is it alright if I go for a walk? I’d like to see more of the gardens,” I replied.               “In that case, I’ll stroll with you. I’m sure we’ll never hear the end of Alain and Jabril’s colloquy, and your teacher will continue his ecclesiastical discussions in one of his Zentology sessions even if you miss this debate. As for Jabril, he’s not one to forgo a spirited contention. Rest assured, they’ll still be arguing upon our return,” My BB commented wittily.               I remarked, “Don’t you want to stay with Albert?”               “He’ll be safe with the group. Besides, he’s not as much of an explorer as you are,” he uttered smilingly.               Since Andy had become Albert’s chaperone, we’d hardly spent any alone time. We were always in the company of others. I welcomed the idea of some alone time with my ex-Valet and was glad he offered to accompany me around the park.

Andy remained seated. I chirped, “Sir, please tell me the reason for your visit. My guardian is fully aware of your proposal.” Struck by my candidness, Ozwalt stammered, “Very well, I will tell you the reason I’m here,” he raised his voice in displeasure. “Your counterproposal is deplorable!” My lover remarked aggressively, “What’s deplorable about Young wishing to be kept in the style he is accustomed to?” The Englishman exclaimed, “He’s not even of age to drive, and he wants a Lamborghini or a Ferrari? What is he thinking?!” “You offered him a city car,” my Valet countered. “He has every right to ask for what he desires.” The man repudiated defensively, “I offered him a city car upon his coming of age to drive, not before!” He was seething with anger. “Atop this, he demands a luxury penthouse in Mayfair or Park Lane, not to mention the live-in personal tutor! Is he insane? Most adults wouldn’t be able to afford a luxury flat and experienced educator, let alone an adolescent who is barely out of his teens.” “Sir, if you do not have the financial capabilities to accommodate the boy’s expectations, there are others who are perfectly capable of doing so,” my chaperone asserted. “Andy! Are you telling me that the lad has other well-endowed suitors willing to pay for such frivolousness?” My lover and I sniggered at the Englishman’s comment, but we managed to suppress our mirth. My guardian answered solemnly, “That, Sir, is none of your concern. I presume you’re here to discuss Young’s counterproposal, not the proposals of his other suitors.” He was taken aback by my mentor’s forthrightness. He raised his voice in retaliation. “I’m here to talk to Young. I would like Young to speak for himself.” I spoke unrelentingly, “I have asked Andy to negotiate on my behalf. I have heard everything he has said and challenge none of it. If my terms are not met, I’m afraid our arrangement is over. There is no further need for discussion.” By now, Ozwalt was on fire. He waved his fist at me and shouted, “You rapacious whore! You’re nothing but a self-indulgent sybaritic slut from a third-world country!” Before he could continue lambasting me with further insults, Wilhem entered. “What’s going on here?” my big-brother questioned. Mossey resumed berating my integrity, calling me a barrage of repugnant names while my chaperones carted him off the campus grounds to his waiting chauffeur and Bentley. Groups of students stood gaping at the wild man, speculating about the nature of the ruckus they were witnessing.

Everyone marveled--between courses at The Palm--at how out of touch Mittens was.

Genesis, chapter eleven. We came down, into the plain of Shinar, and said, ‘Hot damn, let’s show off how clever we are!’ So we built ourselves a fine city, and put a bodacious skyscraper in the middle. And yea verily, we did the whole thing in mirrored glass, and installed high-speed elevators, and AC, and an underground garage with valet parking.

Q: Why should old people always use valet parking? A: Valets don’t forget where they park your car.

I had always thought that a lost soul referred to the soul’s destination, not its condition. But it’s the condition that is the real problem. If a car no longer works, it doesn’t matter much whether it ends up in a junkyard or the valet parking section of the Ritz-Carlton. We are not lost because we are going to wind up in the wrong place. We are going to wind up in the wrong place because we are lost.

So I took a quick circuit around the circular driveway. There were a couple of cars parked ostentatiously along the edge of the pavement: a Ferrari, a Bentley, and a Corniche. I didn’t think our killer would be driving anything that cost more than a new house on the water, but I looked inside anyway. They were empty. The valet parking attendant watched me skeptically as I came back from looking into the Corniche. “You like it?” he asked me.

What really separates ordinary citizens from emperors, monsters, superstars and immortal leading brands? “Normal” people simply don’t have the huevos to withstand disgrace. They usually don’t use fire-hose blasts of negative attention as an opportunity to run out and court more negative attention, by throwing up on the prime minister, or purposefully running down the parking valet, or instigating an “ethnic cleansing” or “accidentally” shaving their crotch in a public water fountain. But,

Because loving him is the same thing as tossing the keys to my heart to a valet without a driver’s licence. He’ll drive me off a cliff.

So, it doesn’t matter if I love him—which I don’t—but if I did, it doesn’t matter, even now. Because loving him is the same thing as tossing the keys to my heart to a valet without a driver’s licence. He’ll drive me off a cliff.

We went to dinner the other night at a place that had a complimentary valet. I was disappointed when he only parked my car. I expected him to say, "You're a handsome man and eloquent of speech" since it was complementary and all, or at least, "You are dressed far better than that hobo over there and smell less odiferous" Alas it was not to be,

I told you the name of the commercial jingle I wrote. You could always google it and—” “That’s research. Not happening,” I huffed. “Too much work?” “Too annoying. You know my brother’s name and that my mom is miserable and that I know the words to more eighties songs than I should admit. Fess up. It’s only fair.” “Okay…” He pulled into the driveway of a posh boutique hotel on Sunset and parked behind a Tesla near the modern-looking entry. Then he unfastened his seat belt and glanced up at the valet rounding the front of his car before refocusing on me. “My favorite color is blue, I’m an only child, my parents both died five years ago within a month of each other and…I’m going commando right now. How ’bout that drink?