Warren Miller Quotes

I made a gift for you, Good Proctor. I had to sit long hours in a chair, and passed the time with sewing." - Mary Warren

if you can afford college, there's no need to go.

Don't take life seriously because you can't come out of it alive.

She looked at me and the expression on her face was an expression of dislike, one I hadn't seen before but knew right away. Later I would see it turned toward other people. But the first time was looking at me and was because she believed she'd done all she could that was correct and the best thing, and it had only gotten her stuck with me. And I couldn't do anything that mattered. Though if I could I would've had my father be there, or Warren Miller, or somebody who had the right words that would take the place of hers, anybody she could speak to without just hearing her own voice in a room and having to go about the trouble of pretending she did not feel absolutely alone.

You can never let the market quote turn from an asset to a liability. Graham

Who the hell is Warren Ellis again?” Hardison gaped at the man. “Only one of the greatest comics writers in the past twenty years. Might as well ask who Alan Moore is, or Frank Miller, or Mark Waid, or Brian Michael Bendis, or Marv Wolfman, or Geoff Johns.” Eliot gave Hardison a blank look as they wove their way through the hall. Parker took the lead, toting a printed sign with her. Eliot and Hardison trailed in her wake. They made a point of striding right past Patronus’s booth. They didn’t turn to see if he noticed them. “No one?” Hardison said. “Nothing? Not even Kurt Busiek? Neil Gaiman?” “I have a life. I do things, active things. I date women.” “Stan Lee?” Eliot gave Hardison that one with a wag of his head. “Who hasn’t heard of Stan Lee?” “All right,” Hardison said with satisfaction. “You had me worried there, man.

One also, in our milieu, simply didn't meet enough Americans to form an opinion. And when one did—this was in the days of crew-cuts and short-legged pants—they, too, often really did sport crew-cuts and trousers that mysteriously ended several inches short of the instep. Why was that? It obviously wasn't poverty. A colleague of my father's had a daughter who got herself married and found that an American friend she had met on holiday had offered to pay the whole cost of the nuptial feast. I forget the name of this paladin, but he had a crew-cut and amputated trouser-bottoms and a cigar stub and he came from a place called Yonkers, which seemed to me a ridiculous name to give to a suburb. (I, who had survived Crapstone… ) Anyway, once again one received a Henry Jamesian impression of brash generosity without overmuch refinement. There was a boy at my boarding school called Warren Powers Laird Myers, the son of an officer stationed at one of the many U.S. Air Force bases in Cambridgeshire. Trousers at The Leys School were uniform and regulation, but he still managed to show a bit of shin and to buzz-cut his hair. 'I am not a Yankee,' he informed me (he was from Norfolk, Virginia). 'I am a CON-federate.' From what I was then gleaning of the news from Dixie, this was unpromising. In our ranks we also had Jamie Auchincloss, a sprig of the Kennedy-Bouvier family that was then occupying the White House. His trousers managed to avoid covering his ankles also, though the fact that he shared a parent with Jackie Kennedy meant that anything he did was accepted as fashionable by definition. The pants of a man I'll call Mr. 'Miller,' a visiting American master who skillfully introduced me to J.D. Salinger, were also falling short of their mark. Mr. Miller's great teacher-feature was that he saw sexual imagery absolutely everywhere and was slightly too fond of pointing it out [...]. Meanwhile, and as I mentioned much earlier, the dominant images projected from the United States were of the attack-dog-and-firehose kind, with swag-bellied cops lying about themselves and the political succession changed as much by bullets as by ballots.

We will not go into businesses where technology which is way over my head is crucial to the investment decision. I know about as much about semi-conductors or integrated circuits as I do of the mating habits of the chrzaszcz. (That’s a Polish May bug, students—if you have trouble pronouncing it, rhyme it with thrzaszcz.) Furthermore,

Operationally, a business can be improved in only three ways: (1) increase the level of sales; (2) reduce costs as a percent of sales; (3) reduce assets as a percentage of sales. The other factors, (4) increase leverage or (5) lower the tax rate, are the financial drivers of business value. These are the only ways a business can make itself more valuable. Buffett

The results of these [investment] companies in some ways resemble the activity of a duck sitting on a pond. When the water (the market) rises, the duck rises; when it falls, back goes the duck. … I think the duck can only take the credit (or blame) for his own activities. The rise and fall of the lake is hardly something for him to quack about. The water level has been of great importance to BPL’s performance … however, we have also occasionally flapped our wings.”5 While

You will not be right simply because a large number of people momentarily agree with you. You will not be right simply because important people agree with you. In many quarters the simultaneous occurrence of the two above factors is enough to make a course of action meet the test of conservatism. You will be right, over the course of many transactions, if your hypotheses are correct, your facts are correct, and your reasoning is correct. True conservatism is only possible through knowledge and reason. I

During all that time I didn't see Willie. I didn't see him again until he announced in the Democratic primary in 1930. But it wasn't a primary. It was hell among the yearlings and the Charge of the Light Brigade and Saturday night in the back room of Casey's saloon rolled into one, and when the dust cleared away not a picture still hung on the walls. And there wasn't any Democratic party. There was just Willie, with his hair in his eyes and his shirt sticking to his stomach with sweat. And he had a meat ax in his hand and was screaming for blood. In the background of the picture, under a purplish tumbled sky flecked with sinister white like driven foam, flanking Willie, one on each side, were two figures, Sadie Burke and a tallish, stooped, slow-spoken man with a sad, tanned face and what they call the eyes of a dreamer. The man was Hugh Miller, Harvard Law School, Lafayette Escadrille, Croix de Guerre, clean hands, pure heart, and no political past. He was a fellow who had sat still for years, and then somebody (Willie Stark) handed him a baseball bat and he felt his fingers close on the tape. He was a man and was Attorney General. And Sadie Burke was just Sadie Burke. Over the brow of the hill, there were, of course, some other people. There were, for instance, certain gentlemen who had been devoted to Joe Harrison, but who, when they discovered there wasn't going to be any more Joe Harrison politically speaking, had had to hunt up a new friend. The new friend happened to be Willie. He was the only place for them to go. They figured they would sign on with Willie and grow up with the country. Willie signed them on all right, and as a result got quite a few votes not of the wool-hat and cocklebur variety. After a while Willie even signed on Tiny Duffy, who became Highway Commissioner and, later, Lieutenant Governor in Willie's last term. I used to wonder why Willie kept him around. Sometimes I used to ask the Boss, "What do you keep that lunk-head for?" Sometimes he would just laugh and say nothing. Sometimes he would say, "Hell, somebody's got to be Lieutenant Governor, and they all look alike." But once he said: "I keep him because he reminds me of something." "What?" "Something I don't ever want to forget," he said. "What's that?" "That when they come to you sweet talking you better not listen to anything they say. I don't aim to forget that." So that was it. Tiny was the fellow who had come in a big automobile and had talked sweet to Willie back when Willie was a little country lawyer.

Andrew Mellon served as an officer or director for more than 160 corporations. In 1913, he and his brother established the Mellon Institute of Industrial Research, which later merged with the Carnegie Institute of Technology to become Carnegie Mellon University. During the First World War, he served on the board of the American Red Cross and other organizations supporting America’s wartime efforts. In 1921, President Warren G. Harding appointed Andrew Mellon to secretary of the treasury, and he continued as such under both Calvin Coolidge and Herbert Hoover. As secretary, Mellon was a pioneer of supply-side economics, cutting tax rates in order to spur investment and

Chapter 1: What to Expect in Investing   Similar to other concepts that you may grasp, there is no “real way” to prepare for investing. Initially, you just have to jump in to start learning how you can manage different aspects of this activity as you go along. However, you still have to make the necessary preparations by learning the fundamental techniques and other intricacies included in this art and science. Also included in the things you should know are the expectations that you need to have when investing. "You need to expect tax deductions from the government.

Various internal and external factors can contribute to uncontrollable inflation.

…if we’re having a bad time now, we were given a really rockbottom thorough training for it these past three hundred years and more.” “Past is past,” Mister Eddie says and he said it real easy. “Except when it’s present,” Lance says.

We live in an investment world, populated not by those who must be logically persuaded to believe, but by the hopeful, credulous and greedy, grasping for an excuse to believe. Finally,

Looking back, and continuing to think this problem through, I feel that if anything, I should have concentrated slightly more than I have in the past.” Stan

Stan Druckenmiller, reflecting on his unbelievable success as an investor, said that the only way to make superior returns is to concentrate heavily. He thinks “diversification and all the stuff they’re teaching at business school today is probably the most misguided concept everywhere. And if you look at great investors that are as different as Warren Buffett, Carl Icahn, Ken Langone, they tend to be very, very concentrated bets. They see something, they bet it, and they bet the ranch on it… . [T]he mistake I’d say 98 percent of the money managers and individuals make is they feel like they got to be playing in a bunch of stuff.”4

The evaluation of securities and businesses for investment purposes has always involved a mixture of qualitative and quantitative factors. At the one extreme, the analyst exclusively oriented to qualitative factors would say, “Buy the right company (with the right prospects, inherent industry conditions, management, etc.) and the price will take care of itself.” On the other hand, the quantitative spokesman would say, “Buy at the right price and the company (and stock) will take care of itself.” As is so often the pleasant result in the securities world, money can be made with either approach. And, of course, any analyst combines the two to some extent—his classification in either school would depend on the relative weight he assigns to the various factors and not to his consideration of one group of factors to the exclusion of the other group. Interestingly enough, although I consider myself to be primarily in the quantitative school (and as I write this no one has come back from recess—I may be the only one left in the class), the really sensational ideas I have had over the years have been heavily weighted toward the qualitative side where I have had a “high-probability insight.” This is what causes the cash register to really sing. However, it is an infrequent occurrence, as insights usually are, and, of course, no insight is required on the quantitative side—the figures should hit you over the head with a baseball bat. So the really big money tends to be made by investors who are right on qualitative decisions but, at least in my opinion, the more sure money tends to be made on the obvious quantitative decisions. As

So the really big money tends to be made by investors who are right on qualitative decisions but, at least in my opinion, the more sure money tends to be made on the obvious quantitative decisions. As

I am not in the business of predicting general stock market or business fluctuations. If you think I can do this, or think it is essential to an investment program, you should not be in the partnership.

my wife, children and I will have virtually our entire net worth invested in the partnership.4 Everyone

The availability of a quotation for your business interest (stock) should always be an asset to be utilized if desired. If it gets silly enough in either direction, you take advantage of it.”1 —

You can’t let the market do your thinking for you. Investors know they have to do their own work. When

The course of the stock market will determine, to a great degree, when we will be right, but the accuracy of our analysis of the company will largely determine whether we will be right. In other words, we tend to concentrate on what should happen, not when it should happen.”7 This

The true investor scarcely ever is forced to sell his shares, and at all other times he is free to disregard the current price quotation. He need pay attention to it and act upon it only to the extent that it suits his book, and no more. Thus the investor who permits himself to be stampeded or unduly worried by unjustified market declines in his holdings is perversely transforming his basic advantage into a basic disadvantage. That man would be better off if his stocks had no market quotation at all, for he would then be spared the mental anguish caused him by other persons’ mistakes of judgment.10

we tend to concentrate on what should happen, not when it should happen. In

I resurrect this “market-guessing” section only because after the Dow declined from 995 at the peak in February to about 865 in May, I received a few calls from partners suggesting that they thought stocks were going a lot lower. This always raises two questions in my mind: (1) if they knew in February that the Dow was going to 865 in May, why didn’t they let me in on it then; and, (2) if they didn’t know what was going to happen during the ensuing three months back in February, how do they know in May? There is also a voice or two after any hundred point or so decline suggesting we sell and wait until the future is clearer. Let me again suggest two points: (1) the future has never been clear to me (give us a call when the next few months are obvious to you—or, for that matter the next few hours); and, (2) no one ever seems to call after the market has gone up one hundred points to focus my attention on how unclear everything is, even though the view back in February doesn’t look so clear in retrospect. If

If a 20% or 30% drop in the market value of your equity holdings (such as BPL) is going to produce emotional or financial distress, you should simply avoid common stock type investments. In the words of the poet—Harry Truman—“If you can’t stand the heat, stay out of the kitchen.” It is preferable, of course, to consider the problem before you enter the “kitchen.

You can gain great insights about investing from a careful study of Buffett’s Generals. He was constantly appraising the value of as many stocks as he could find, looking for the ones where he felt he had a reasonable ability to understand the business and come up with an estimate for its worth. With a prodigious memory and many years of intense study, he built up an expansive memory bank full of these appraisals and opinions on a huge number of companies. Then, when Mr. Market offered one at a sufficiently attractive discount to its appraised value, he bought it; he often concentrated heavily in a handful of the most attractive ones. Good valuation work and proper temperament have always been the two keys pillars of his success as an investor. Buffett

Graham paid up for quality when he bought the insurance company GEICO—he ended up making more profits from that single investment than he did from all his other activities combined.16 Tom

In the great majority of cases the lack of performance exceeding or even matching an unmanaged index in no way reflects lack of either intellectual capacity or integrity. I think it is much more the product of: (1) group decisions—my perhaps jaundiced view is that it is close to impossible for outstanding investment management to come from a group of any size with all parties really participating in decisions; (2) a desire to conform to the policies and (to an extent) the portfolios of other large well-regarded organizations; (3) an institutional framework whereby average is “safe” and the personal rewards for independent action are in no way commensurate with the general risk attached to such action; (4) an adherence to certain diversification practices which are irrational; and finally and importantly, (5) inertia.6 Classical

I would consider a year in which we declined 15% and the Average 30% to be much superior to a year when both we and the Average advanced 20%. Over a period of time there are going to be good and bad years; there is nothing to be gained by getting enthused or depressed about the sequence in which they occur. The important thing is to be beating par; a four on a par three hole is not as good as a five on a par five hole and it is unrealistic to assume we are not going to have our share of both par three’s and par five’s.6 Investors

a declining Dow gives us our chance to shine and pile up the percentage advantages which, coupled with only an average performance during advancing markets, will give us quite satisfactory long-term results. Our target is an approximately ½% decline for each 1% decline in the Dow and if achieved, means we have a considerably more conservative vehicle for investment in stocks than practically any alternative.8 Buffett

Our job is to pile up yearly advantages over the performance of the Dow without worrying too much about whether the absolute results in a given year are a plus or a minus. I would consider a year in which we were down 15% and the Dow declined 25% to be much superior to a year when both the partnership and the Dow advanced 20%. I have stressed this point in talking with partners and have watched them nod their heads with varying degrees of enthusiasm. It is most important to me that you fully understand my reasoning in this regard and agree with me not only in your cerebral regions, but also down in the pit of your stomach. For

As Charlie Munger has said, “I think I’ve been in the top 5% of my age cohort almost my entire adult life in understanding the power of incentives, and yet I’ve always underestimated that power. Never a year passes but I get some surprise that pushes a little further my appreciation of incentive superpower.” An example from FedEx is one of his favorite cases in point. As he explains, the integrity of the FedEx system relies heavily on the ability to unload and then quickly reload packages at one central location within an allotted time. Years ago, the company was having a terrible problem getting its workers to get all the boxes off and then back on the planes in time. They tried numerous different things that didn’t work, until someone had the brilliant idea of paying the workers by the shift as opposed to by the hour. Poof, the problem was solved.2 FedEx’s old pay-by-the-hour system rewarded those who took longer to get the job done. They were incentivized to take longer. By switching to pay-by-the-shift, workers were motivated to work faster and without error so they could go home, yet still earn the wages of a full shift. For the workers, finishing early amounted to a higher effective hourly wage. By aligning the business’s interests with the worker’s incentives, FedEx got the outcome it and its workers both desired. The

The takeaway for the rest of us is to establish and ensure the yardsticks are in place ahead of time in order to avoid any misunderstanding about what you should be cheering for, because, as Buffett puts it, you don’t want soft fruit thrown when the expectation is for vigorous applause. If

Buffett also teaches investors that there is one important caveat to the multiyear test: Underperformance in the late stages of a speculative bull market is highly likely. It’s a caveat that he repeats to this day. We

One sidelight for the fundamentalists in our group: B.P.L. owns 71.7% of Dempster acquired at a cost of $1,262,577.27. On June 30, 1963 Dempster had a small safe deposit box at the Omaha National Bank containing securities worth $2,028,415.25. Our 71.7% share of $2,028,415.25 amounts to $1,454,373.70. Thus, everything above ground (and part of it underground) is profit. My security analyst friends may find this a rather primitive method of accounting, but I must confess that I find a bit more substance in this fingers and toes method than in any prayerful reliance that someone will pay me 35 times next year’s earnings.

When it comes to investing, it’s critical not to “force it.” Markets will cycle. There will be times when you too feel “out of step” with the market, just as Buffett did in the late 1960s. You’ll find that during the late bull market mania of the Go-Go years, his standards remained firmly set, while the pressure to perform caused the standards of many of even the best around him to crumble. It’s hard not to cave your principles in at the top of the cycle when your value approach has apparently stopped working and everyone around you seems to be making money easily (that’s why so many people do it). However, it’s more often than not a “buy high, sell low” strategy. Buffett set his plan, established his standards, and then entered the fray, maintaining the courage of his convictions, come what may.

I would rather sustain the penalties resulting from over-conservatism than face the consequences of error, perhaps with permanent capital loss, resulting from the adoption of a “New Era” philosophy where trees really do grow to the sky.

You could say that good results come primarily from a properly calibrated balance of hubris and humility—hubris enough to think you can have insights that are superior to the collective wisdom of the market, humility enough to know the limits of your abilities and to be willing to change course when errors are recognized. You

Praise by name, criticize by category. Buffett

The willingness and ability to see investment capital as completely fungible, whether it is capital tied up in the assets of a businesses or capital that’s invested in securities, is an exceedingly rare trait. With

Never count on making a good sale. Have the purchase price be so attractive that even a mediocre sale gives good results. The better sales will be the frosting on the cake.” Never

It doesn’t work that way … we have to work extremely hard to find just a very few attractive investment situations.” The

We live in an investment world, populated not by those who must be logically persuaded to believe, but by the hopeful, credulous and greedy, grasping for an excuse to believe.9

The final, and most important, consideration concerns personal motivation. When I started the partnership I set the motor that regulated the treadmill at “ten points better than the DOW.” I was younger, poorer and probably more competitive. Even without the three previously discussed external factors making for poorer performance, I would still feel that changed personal conditions make it advisable to reduce the speed of the treadmill. I have observed many cases of habit patterns in all activities of life, particularly business, continuing (and becoming accentuated as years pass) long after they ceased making sense. Bertrand Russell has related the story of two Lithuanian girls who lived at his manor subsequent to World War I. Regularly each evening after the house was dark, they would sneak out and steal vegetables from the neighbors for hoarding in their rooms; this despite the fact that food was bountiful at the Russell table. Lord Russell explained to the girls that while such behavior may have made a great deal of sense in Lithuania during the war, it was somewhat out of place in the English countryside. He received assenting nods and continued stealing. He finally contented himself with the observation that their behavior, strange as it might seem to the neighbors, was really not so different from that of the elder Rockefeller. Elementary

When the game is no longer being played your way, it is only human to say the new approach is all wrong, bound to lead to trouble, etc. I have been scornful of such behavior by others in the past. I have also seen the penalties incurred by those who evaluate conditions as they were—not as they are. Essentially I am out of step with present conditions. On one point, however, I am clear. I will not abandon a previous approach whose logic I understand (although I find it difficult to apply) even though it may mean foregoing large and apparently easy profits to embrace an approach which I don’t fully understand, have not practiced successfully and which, possibly, could lead to substantial permanent loss of capital. The

Interestingly enough, although I consider myself to be primarily in the quantitative school (and as I write this no one has come back from recess—I may be the only one left in the class), the really sensational ideas I have had over the years have been heavily weighted toward the qualitative side where I have had a “high-probability insight.” This is what causes the cash register to really sing. However, it is an infrequent occurrence, as insights usually are, and, of course, no insight is required on the quantitative side—the figures should hit you over the head with a baseball bat. So the really big money tends to be made by investors who are right on qualitative decisions but, at least in my opinion, the more sure money tends to be made on the obvious quantitative decisions. Such

I still sometimes get comments from partners like: “Say, Berkshire is up four points—that’s great!” or “What’s happening to us, Berkshire was down three last week?” Market price is irrelevant to us in the valuation of our controlling interests. We valued B-H at 25 at yearend 1967 when the market was about 20 and 31 at yearend 1968 when the market was about 37. We would have done the same thing if the markets had been 15 and 50 respectively. (“Price is what you pay. Value is what you get).” We will prosper or suffer in controlled investments in relation to the operating performances of our businesses—we will not attempt to profit by playing various games in the securities markets. Whether

about a new phenomenon that had emerged largely in this decade, the price/earnings (PE) ratio, which was calculated by dividing the price of a company’s shares by its earnings. The

If you can identify six wonderful businesses, that is all the diversification you need. And you will make a lot of money. And I can guarantee that going into a seventh one instead of putting more money into your first one is gotta be a terrible mistake. Very few people have gotten rich on their seventh best idea. But a lot of people have gotten rich with their best idea. So I would say for anyone working with normal capital who really knows the businesses they have gone into, six is plenty, and I [would] probably have half of [it in] what I like best.3 There

When a new idea comes along, only buy it when it’s more attractive than buying more of what you already own. Buffett

There is nothing at all conservative, in my opinion, about speculating as to just how high a multiplier a greedy and capricious public will put on earnings. You

We have never suffered a realized loss of more than 0.5% of 1% of total net assets, and our ratio of total dollars of realized gains to total realized losses is something like 100 to 1.

To many people conventionality is indistinguishable from conservatism. In my view, this represents erroneous thinking. Neither a conventional nor an unconventional approach, per se, is conservative. Truly conservative actions arise from intelligent hypotheses, correct facts and sound reasoning. These qualities may lead to conventional acts, but there have been many times when they have led to unorthodoxy. In some corner of the world they are probably still holding regular meetings of the Flat Earth Society. We derive no comfort because important people, vocal people, or great numbers of people agree with us. Nor do we derive comfort if they don’t. A public opinion poll is no substitute for thought. When we really sit back with a smile on our face is when we run into a situation we can understand, where the facts are ascertainable and clear, and the course of action obvious. In that case—whether conventional or unconventional—whether others agree or disagree—we feel we are progressing in a conservative manner. The

The world is full of sluts on skates. From Penn-warren's "All the Kings Men.

In the short term, the market is like a voting machine, but in the long term, it’s more like a weighing machine.

Security Analysis” by Benjamin Graham, “The Single Best Investment” by Lowell Miller, “The Snowball Effect” by Timothy J McIntosh, “Berkshire Hathaway Letters to Shareholders” by Warren Buffett and Max Olson, “The Ultimate Dividend Playbook: Income, Insight and Independence for Today’s Investor” by Morningstar and Josh Peters.

If you don’t do it this year, you’ll be one year older when you do.

We don’t buy and sell stocks based upon what other people think the stock market is going to do (I never have an opinion) but rather upon what we think the company is going to do.

But there was nothing of the southern bigot about her. On the Memphis street where Marilyn lived, there were only blacks for playmates, the children of servants who worked for the neighbors and her own relatives. The difference in color was meaningless to a little girl seeking companionship; that attitude never changed in adult life.

Some of you may view your investment policies on a shorter term basis. For your convenience, we include our usual table indicating the gains from compounding $100,000 at various rates: This table indicates the financial advantages of: 1. A long life (in the erudite vocabulary of the financial sophisticate this is referred to as the Methuselah Technique) 2. A high compound rate 3. A combination of both (especially recommended by this author) To be observed are the enormous benefits produced by relatively small gains in the annual earnings rate. This explains our attitude which while hopeful of achieving a striking margin of superiority over average investment results, nevertheless, regards every percentage point of investment return above average as having real meaning.

Take for example a $100,000 account earning 10% a year. The total return will be about 7% higher when the gains are reinvested rather than harvested after a 5-year period. Not that impressive. However, after 10 years, the account that reinvests its gains (let’s call this account the Compounder) will produce 30% more than one that doesn’t reinvest. Then the “pulse quickening”3 results start to get going by year 15. Now the Compounder is doing roughly 70% better. Compounding is exponential, it builds momentum as it goes; after 20 years, the advantage widens to 125%. There is nothing more powerful. Spending away your gains will diminish your total return significantly; as investors, we allow our gains to pile up upon themselves as the primary driver of our wealth creation. We do it patiently

Pelosi would create a special House committee to investigate the insurrection. A few weeks later, the House considered a bill to award a Congressional Gold Medal to every officer who defended the Capitol on January 6th. It was a simple, apolitical gesture of recognition. The Congressional Gold Medal bill did not call for any kind of investigation or cast aspersions on anyone. It merely honored the officers who risked their lives to stop a violent insurrection. Even so, twenty-one Republicans voted against it. For the historical record, here are the names of those twenty-one spineless fucks: Andrew Clyde, Paul Gosar, Jody Hice, Lauren Boebert, Barry Moore, Ralph Norman, Matthew Rosendale, Chip Roy, Warren Davidson, Scott Perry, Mary Miller, Andy Biggs, Thomas Massie, Andy Harris, Matt Gaetz, Marjorie Taylor Greene, Louie Gohmert, Michael Cloud, Greg Steube, Bob Good, and John Rose.

Just because something is conventional doesn't mean it's conservative or correct

Gabriel Miller is as bold as thunder, rumbling, unmistakable. Damon Scott is lightning, so bright he’ll blind you. They’re both forces of nature but only one will kill you just to touch him. Only one will burn you in a flash.

Gabriel Miller. The man your father stole from.

Gabriel Miller. The man your father stole from.” Gabriel Miller smiles faintly. “The last man he stole from.” Oh, and he made sure my father could never steal again. Never do anything again. Pinpricks against my eyes. No, I can’t cry in front of them. I can’t fall apart at all, because my father is lying in a bed, unable to get up, hardly able to move—because of what this man did. This is the man who turned my father in to the authorities. This is the man who caused my family’s fall from grace.

What do you even know about it?” I say, uncomfortable with their assessment. I know that Gabriel Miller is an asshole, but somehow it feels weird for other people to point it out. I have a strange impulse to defend him that I force down.

Oh no, Avery. You’re someone. The toast of the whole fucking town. The girl who captivated Gabriel Miller with her pretty little hymen.

it feels like a betrayal to Gabriel Miller. His hold on me is horrible and inescapable.

Where Gabriel Miller is a lion, wild and golden, Christopher’s is a sleek panther with dark eyes and black hair.

I want you, Gabriel Miller. And maybe you’re the one who should be afraid of that.