Quotes with backing

Inspirational quotes with backing.

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What doesthis F. — I.W. mean?”“Initial-slang,” informed Baines. “Made correctby common usage. It has become a worldwidemotto. You’ll see it all over the place if you haven’tnoticed it already.”“I have seen it here and there but attached no importanceto it and thought nothing more about it. Iremember now that it was inscribed in several placesincluding Seth’s and the fire depot.”“It was on the sides of that bus we couldn’tempty,” put in Gleed. “It didn’t mean anything tome.”“It means plenty,” said Jeff. “Freedom — IWon’t!”“That kills me,” Gleed responded. “I’m stonedead already. I’ve dropped in my tracks.” Hewatched Harrison thoughtfully pocketing the plaque.“A piece of abracadabra. What a weapon!”“Ignorance is bliss,” asserted Baines, strangelysure of himself. “Especially when you don’t knowthat what you’re playing with is the safety catch ofsomething that goes bang.”“All right,” challenged Gleed, taking him up onthat. “Tell us how it works.”“I won’t.” Baines’ grin reappeared. He seemed tobe highly satisfied about something.“That’s a fat lot of help.” Gleed felt let down, especiallyover that momentary hoped-for reward.“You brag and boast about a one-way weapon, tossacross a slip of stuff with three letters on it and thengo dumb. Any folly will do for braggarts and anybraggart can talk through the seat of his pants. Howabout backing up your talk?”“I won’t,” repeated Baines, his grin broader thanever. He gave the onlooking Harrison a fat, significantwink.It made something spark vividly within Harrison’smind. His jaw dropped, he dragged the plaque fromhis pocket and stared at it as if seeing it for the firsttime.“Give it back to me,” requested Baines, watchinghim.Replacing it in his pocket, Harrison said veryfirmly, “I won’t.”Baines chuckled. “Some people catch on quicker than others.

Kelsier exhaled in exasperation. “Elend Venture? You risked your life—risked the plan, and our lives—for that fool of a boy?”Vin looked up, glaring at him. “Yes.”“What is wrong with you, girl?” Kelsier asked. “Elend Venture isn’t worth this.”She stood angrily, Sazed backing away, the cloak falling the floor. “He’s a good man!”“He’s a nobleman!”“So are you!” Vin snapped. She waved a frustrated arm toward the kitchen and the crew. “What do you think this is, Kelsier? The life of a skaa? What do any of you know about skaa? Aristocratic suits, stalking your enemies in the night, full meals and nightcaps around the table with your friends? That’s not the life of a skaa!”She took a step forward, glaring at Kelsier. He blinked in surprise at the outburst.“What do you know about them, Kelsier?” she asked. “When’s the last time you slept in an alley, shivering in the cold rain, listening to the beggar next to you cough with a sickness you knew would kill him? When’s the last time you had to lay awake at night, terrified that one of the men in your crew would try to rape you? Have you ever knelt, starving, wishing you had the courage to knife the crewmember beside you just so you could take his crust of bread? Have you ever cowered before your brother as he beat you, all the time feeling thankful because at least you had someone who paid attention to you?”She fell silent, puffing slightly, the crewmembers staring at her.“Don’t talk to me about noblemen,” Vin said. “And don’t say things about people you don’t know. You’re no skaa— you’re just noblemen without titles.”She turned, stalking from the room. Kelsier watched her go, shocked, hearing her footsteps on the stairs. He stood, dumbfounded, feeling a surprising flush of ashamed guilt.And, for once, found himself without anything to say.

Reading Chip's college orientation materials, Alfred had been struck by the sentence New England winters can be very cold. The curtains he'd bought at Sears were of a plasticized brown-and-pink fabric with a backing of foam rubber. They were heavy and bulky and stiff. "You'll appreciate these on a cold night," he told Chip. "You'll be surprised how much they cut down drafts." But Chip's freshman roommate was a prep-school product named Roan McCorkle who would soon be leaving thumbprints, in what appeared to be Vaseline, on the fifth-grade photo of Denise. Roan laughed at the curtains and Chip laughed, too. He put them back in the box and stowed the box in the basement of the dorm and let it gather mold there for the next four years. He had nothing against the curtains personally. They were simply curtains and they wanted no more than what any curtains wanted - to hang well, to exclude light to the best of their ability, to be neither too small nor too large for the window that it was their task in life to cover; to be pulled this way in the evening and that way in the morning; to stir in the breezes that came before rain on a summer night; to be much used and little noticed. There were numberless hospitals and retirement homes and budget motels, not just in the Midwest but in the East as well, where these particularly brown rubber-backed curtains could have had a long and useful life. It wasn't their fault that they didn't belong in a dorm room. They'd betrayed no urge to rise above their station; their material and patterning contained not a hint of unseemly social ambition. They were what they were. If anything, when he finally dug them out of the eve of graduation, their virginal pinkish folds turned out to be rather less plasticized and homely and Sears-like than he remembered. They were nowhere near as shameful as he'd thought.

He was almost at his door when Vik’s earsplitting shriek resounded down the corridor. Tom was glad for the excuse to sprint back toward him. “Vik?”He reached Vik’s doorway as Vik was backing out of it. “Tom,” he breathed, “it’s an abomination.”Confused, Tom stepped past him into the bunk. Then he gawked, too.Instead of a standard trainee bunk of two small beds with drawers underneath them and totally bare walls, Vik’s bunk was virtually covered with images of their friend Wyatt Enslow. There were posters all over the wall with Wyatt’s solemn, oval face on them. She wore her customary scowl, her dark eyes tracking their every move through the bunk. There was a giant marble statue of a sad-looking Vik with a boot on top of its head. The Vik statue clutched two very, very tiny hands together in a gesture of supplication, its eyes trained upward on the unseen stomper, an inscription at its base, WHY, OH WHY, DID I CROSS WYATT ENSLOW?Tom began to laugh.“She didn’t do it to the bunk,” Vik insisted. “She must’ve done something to our processors.”That much was obvious. If Wyatt was good at anything, it was pulling off tricks with the neural processors, which could pretty much be manipulated to show them anything. This was some sort of illusion she was making them see, and Tom heartily approved.He stepped closer to the walls to admire some of the photos pinned there, freeze-frames of some of Vik’s more embarrassing moments at the Spire: that time Vik got a computer virus that convinced him he was a sheep, and he’d crawled around on his hands and knees chewing on plants in the arboretum. Another was Vik gaping in dismay as Wyatt won the war games.“My hands do not look like that.” Vik jabbed a finger at the statue and its abnormally tiny hands. Wyatt had relentlessly mocked Vik for having small, delicate hands ever since Tom had informed her it was the proper way to counter one of Vik’s nicknames for her, “Man Hands.” Vik had mostly abandoned that nickname for “Evil Wench,” and Tom suspected it was due to the delicate-hands gibe.Just then, Vik’s new roommate bustled into the bunk.He was a tall, slim guy with curly black hair and a pointy look to his face. Tom had seen him around, and he called up his profile from memory:NAME: Giuseppe NicholsRANK: USIF, Grade IV Middle, Alexander DivisionORIGIN: New York, NYACHIEVEMENTS: Runner-up, Van Cliburn International Piano CompetitionIP: 2053:db7:lj71::291:ll3:6e8SECURITY STATUS: Top Secret LANDLOCK-4Giuseppe must’ve been able to see the bunk template, too, because he stuttered to a stop, staring up at the statue. “Did you really program a giant statue of yourself into your bunk template? That’s so narcissistic.”Tom smothered his laughter. “Wow. He already has your number, man.”Vik shot him a look of death as Tom backed out of the bunk.

Excuse me, sir.” One the young officers put his hand up to stop them. “Are you Furious Barkley?”“Maybe. Maybe not. Is there a problem, officers?” Doug stepped in front of Furi.“Damn straight there’s a problem.” Syn stepped inside the door, yanking his dark aviator glasses off his face. The scowl he wore told Furi this was not a pleasant coincidence. “Thanks guys, you can go.”Furi stood with his mouth hanging open while Syn dismissed the officers.“Seriously, Starsky. You gonna track my boy down every time he leaves the house?” Doug said angrily, still blocking Furi.“He’s not your boy. And what I do regarding Furi is none of your goddamn business.” Syn’s clenched jaw made his words sound like an evil hiss. He shouldered past Doug and got directly in Furi’s face. “When I’ve been calling him for over six hours and he hasn’t picked up or returned any of my calls, I’ll send a fuckin’ SWAT team to find him if I want to.”Syn spun and pointed his finger in Doug’s face, “That’s my say, not yours.” Syn’s voice was rising with his growing temper, and all eyes were on them.“Okay, let’s get out of here.” Furi pushed at both men, urging them out the door.As soon as they were out in the brisk fall air, Syn rounded on Furi, pushing their chest together. “Where have you been, Furious? I’ve been going crazy trying to check on you, and you’re sitting here casually eating pancakes,” Syn growled.“Hey, back up, man.” Doug tried to wedge in between Furi and Syn.Syn looked up in annoyance. “Doug, I swear, if you touch me, I’m gonna ensure that you never regain the use of that hand.”“Okay, okay.” Furi put both hands flat on Syn’s chest, feeling his rapid heartbeat underneath all that muscle. Fuck. He really was scared. What was I thinking turning off my phone with everything that’s going on? “Syn. I’m so sorry. I turned my phone off because–”“You don’t owe him an explanation. You’re a grown man, Furious. You were having a business meeting; he has no right to demand you be available to him at all times, just like Patrick.”Furi and Syn both snapped at Doug. But Furi took control. “Hey! Don’t you ever say that again. This man is nothing like that asshole.” Furi shook his head at the absurdity of Doug’s accusation. “Don’t even say his name in the same sentence as Patrick’s.”Doug looked at Furi as if he were a stranger.“Doug, you don’t know everything that’s been going on. But I promise I’ll catch you up, okay? Then you’re going to feel pretty shitty about what you just said about Syn.” Furi nodded his head. “Go home. I’ll call you when I’m back at Syn’s place.”“You’re staying with him?” Doug yelled.“Doug. You know it’s not safe at my place,” Furi said softly, his eyes pleading with his friend for him to understand.“Then you should come to stay with me. I don’t trust this guy!”“This is fuckin’ crazy,” Syn snarled. “I know you’re his friend, but you’re sounding more pissed than a friend should be.”“Don’t try to read me, Detective. Furi is my best friend, and I’ve had his back since the first day he got here.” Doug wasn’t backing down from Syn’s intimidating posture. Syn’s dark glasses were back on, creating a perfectly badass look with his black leather coat and boots. All the hardware Syn had tucked under his arms and the shiny badge hanging around his neck was a sight right out of a sexy cop porno.



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