Bebe Mennen

“Gene Berdichevsky, one of the members of the solar-powered-car team, lit up the second he heard from Straubel. An undergraduate, Berdichevsky volunteered to quit school, work for free, and sweep the floors at Tesla if that’s what it took to get a job. The founders were impressed with his spirit and hired Berdichevsky after one meeting. This left Berdichevsky in the uncomfortable position of calling his Russian immigrant parents, a pair of nuclear submarine engineers, to tell them that he was giving up on Stanford to join an electric car start-up. As employee No. 7, he spent part of the workday in the Menlo Park office and the rest in Straubel’s living room designing three-dimensional models of the car’s powertrain on a computer and building battery pack prototypes in the garage. “Only now do I realize how insane it was,” Berdichevsky said.”
― Ashlee Vance, Elon Musk: Inventing the Future

“Cheating isn’t a mistake; it’s a choice.”
― Vi Keeland, Stuck-Up Suit

“She had been like a roller coaster aficionado for whom tame county fair roller coasters were as good as the ones that spun you upside down and dropped you so fast your eyes turned red. It was all just a ride.”
― Peter Straub, The Hellfire Club

“The hand that rested on my shoulder rubbed it a bit, comfortingly. Then it gave my shoulder a little squeeze. I leaned into him.

Maybe it was that I was broken. Maybe it was just that I was out of my mind. But it occurred to me that I was going to kiss him. The thought just arrived, certain knowledge, delivered from some greater, more knowledgeable place. I was going to kiss him. Stephen would not want to kiss me. He would back up in horror. And yet, I was still going to do it. I reached over, and put my hand against his chest, then I moved closer. I could feel just the very tips of the gentle stubble on his cheek brushing against my skin.

"Rory," he said. But it was a quiet protest, and it went nowhere.

For the first few seconds, he didn't move-he accepted the kiss like you might accept a spoonful of medicine. Then I heard it, a sigh, like he had finally set down a heavy weight.

I was pretty sure we were both kind of terrified, but I was completely sure that we were both doing this. We kissed slowly, very deliberately, coming together and then pulling apart and looking at each other. Then each kiss got longer, and then it didn't stop. Stephen put his hand just under the edge of my shirt, holding it on the spot where the scar was. Sometimes the skin around the scar got cold-now it was warm. Now it was alive.

"So Thorpe says that-Seriously?"

Callum was in the doorway.

Stephen mumbled what I think was a very obscene word right against my mouth.

"You realize I now owe Boo five pounds?" Callum said. "Boo! I owe you five pounds!”
― Maureen Johnson, The Madness Underneath