85
" Where would tourism be without a little luxury and a taste of night life? There were several cities on Deanna, all moderate in size, but the largest was the capital, Atro City. For the connoisseur of fast-foods, Albrechts’ famous hotdogs and coldcats were sold fresh from his stall (Albrecht’s Takeaways) on Lupini Square. For the sake of his own mental health he had temporarily removed Hot Stuff Blend from the menu. The city was home to Atro City University, which taught everything from algebra and make-up application to advanced stamp collecting; and it was also home to the planet-famous bounty hunter – Beck the Badfeller. Beck was a legend in his own lifetime. If Deanna had any folklore, then Beck the Badfeller was one of its main features. He was the local version of Robin Hood, the Davy Crockett of Deanna. The Local rumor mill had it he was so good he could find the missing day in a leap year. Once, so the story goes, he even found a missing sock. "
― Christina Engela , Loderunner
89
" She fell silent, remembering the jolt of envy and longing she’d felt when she’d framed the Browns in her viewfinder. Now, weeks and miles later, it was another jolt for Bryan to realize she hadn’t brushed off the peculiar feeling. She has managed to put it aside, somewhere to the back of her mind, but it popped out again now as she thought of the couple in the bleachers of a small-town park.
Family, cohesion. Bonding. Did some people just keep promises better than others? she wondered. Or where some people simply unable to blend their lives with someone’s else, make those adjustments, the compromises?
When she looked back, she believed both she and Rob had tried, but in their own ways. There’d been no meeting of the minds, but two separate thought patterns making decisions that never melded with each other. Did that mean that a successful marriage depended on the mating of two people who thought along the same lines?
With a sigh, she turned onto the highway that would lead them into Tennessee. If it was true, she decided, she was much better off single. Though she’d met a great many people she liked and could have fun with, she’d never met anyone who thought the way she did. Especially the man seated next to her with his nose already buried in the newspaper. There alone they were radically different.”
For more quotes visit my blog: frommybooks.wordpress.com "
― Nora Roberts , Summer Pleasures (Celebrity Magazine #1 & 2)
93
" You don’t understand,” my dad said. “They stop you.”
“Who? What are you talking about?” my mom asked.
“That’s why I was being cautious.”
“Who stops you?”
“The police. If you’re white, or maybe Oriental, they let you drive however you want. But if you’re not, they stop you.”
“Who told you that?”
“The guys at the diner. That’s what they say. If you’re black or if you’re brown, they automatically think you’ve done something wrong.”
“Rafa, that’s ridiculous. We’ve lived here for fifteen years. We’re citizens.”
“The police don’t know that by looking at us. They see a brown face through the windshield and boom! Sirens!”
My mom shook her head. “That’s what that was about?”
“I didn’t want to give them reason to stop me.”
“You were driving like a blind man, Rafa. That will give them reason to stop you.”
“Everybody else just has to obey the law. We have to obey it twice as well.”
“But that doesn’t mean you have to go twice as slow as everybody else!”
The light turned green and my dad brought the car out of first. We cruised under the overpass, a shadow draping over the car like a blanket.
“Next time, just try to blend in with everyone else and you’ll be fine,” my mom offered.
“The way of the world,” my dad said.
“What?” my mom asked as we emerged back into the sunlight.
“Just trying to blend in. That’s the way of the world.”
“Well, that’s the way of America, at least,” my mom said. "
― , The Book of Unknown Americans
95
" … that sour blend of loneliness and lust for recognition, shyness and extravagance, deep insecurity and self-intoxicated egomania, that drives poets and writers out of their rooms to seek each other out, to rub shoulders with one another, bully, joke, condescend, feel each other, lay a hand on a shoulder or an arm round a waist, to chat and argue with little nudges, to spy a little, sniff out what is cooking in other pots, flatter, disagree, collude, be right, take offence, apologise, make amends, avoid each other, and seek each other’s company again. "
― Amos Oz , A Tale of Love and Darkness
99
" All of us—employers, parents, schools, government agencies, and interns themselves—are complicit in the devaluing of work, the exacerbation of social inequality, and the disillusionment of young people in the workplace that are emerging as a result of the intern boom. Informal, barely studied, and little regulated, internships demand our scrutiny. We need a view of the entire sprawling system and its history, a glimpse of its curious blend of privilege and exploitation; we need to hear from interns themselves, and also from those who proffer internships, the people who sell them, the few who work to improve them, an the many who are unable to access them at all. only then can we consider ethical, legal alternatives to a system that is broken, a practice that is often poisonous. "