Lamantia Executive Desk Quotes

The average vice-president is a form of executive fungus that attaches itself to a desk. On a boat this growth would be called a barnacle. ~ Fred Allen

My recommendation is to keep up the good work. I'm changing your title to senior executive assistant, and giving you a three percent raise effective next payday. Congratulations."
Wow, three percent. I could move up that early retirement plan to age seventy-five now, instead of eighty. Lucky me.
Thank you," I said. "That's very generous."
You're quite welcome." Ms. Saunders nodded and grabbed a gold-plated letter opener to begin attacking her stack of mail.
I turned to leave. Didn't want to outstay my welcome.
Damn it!" she exclaimed, and I turned back around. She winced and nodded at the letter opener that she'd dropped to her desktop. "Damn thing slipped. I'm probably going to need stitches now. Can you be a dear and fetch the first-aid kit for me?"
She held her left index finger and frowned at the steady flow of blood oozing out. A few small drops of red splashed onto the other letters spread out on the desk.
I felt woozy. And suddenly dizzy.
I blinked.
When I opened my eyes, I was no longer standing by the door about to leave. I was crouched down next to Ms. Saunders's imported black leather chair, grasping her wrist tightly…… and sucking noisily on her fingertip.
I shrieked and let go of her, staggering backward. I grabbed at her desk to keep from falling, but I dropped on my butt, anyhow, taking most of the contents of the top of her desk with me.
She held her injured finger far away from her and stared at me, wide- ~ Michelle Rowen

The vice-president of an advertising agency is a bit of executive fungus that forms on a desk that has been exposed to conference. ~ Fred Allen

Getting fired can produce a particularly bountiful payday for a CEO. Indeed, he can 'earn' more in that single day, while cleaning out his desk, than an American worker earns in a lifetime of cleaning toilets. Forget the old maxim about nothing succeeding like success: Today, in the executive suite, the all-too-prevalent rule is that nothing succeeds like failure. ~ Warren Buffett

Perhaps the Hungarian humorist Ferencz Karinthy captures the spirit of the situation best in a tableau about a bored businessman who amuses himself by looking through high-powered binoculars from his office high in a skyscraper into neighbouring office rooms. On one occasion he spies a middle-aged executive chasing a comely secretary around his desk. As it happens the observers knows the building in which this drama is taking place and can even make out the name of the occupant from the plaque on his desk. He consults the telephone directory and gives the culprit, who is still trying to force his attentions on the secretary, a ring. When the culprit answers the telephone the observer announces himself as God Almighty and tells him to stop molesting the young woman in his employ. The culprit, thunderstruck and unable to account fo the observer's exact knowledge of what has been going on, fall son his knees in a paroxysm of fear and wonder and begs forgiveness. The observer roundly berates the culprit who swears he will do anything to make amends and promises never to sin again. Hereupon the observer informs the culprit that he can indeed make amends by lending him 100 pengo [dollars]. The answer, of course is a burst of profanity and the abrupt termination of the call. Karinthy then draws his moral: if you want to play God don't try to borrow money... ~ George Bailey

It's finger time! Steve simply grunted.
Li responded like she always had to the request over the past years, by walking over to the tall oak cabinet in his office and pulling out a pack of Vienna Fingers. She then closed the door and walked around the desk and dropped to her knees, crawling the few extra feet under his desk. Li handed the red and white plastic package of cookies to Steve, who slid the tray open while his virtual slave unzipped the trousers of his blue Armani pinstripe suit and then dug deep to find his pleasure source.
Twenty seconds later, when both of them had consumed their mid-afternoon snacks, Steve transitioned back into his unrelenting work persona. ~ Phil Wohl

You mistake me. You'd be perfectly safe with my men,' said Gen shrewdly. 'If they touched a hair on your head, I'd make them castameri with this left hand.' Tess didn't know the term, but Gen made a clawed, cupping gesture, leaving no doubt as to what she would grasp and pluck like fruit. Tess flinched, and she didn't even own the requisite anatomy.
'Now ask me what I'll be doing with my other hand,' Boss Gen stage-whispered.
'Uh, what will you be doing, uh, with your - ' began Tess, not sure she wanted to know.
'I'll be writing a sonnet!' cried Gen, slapping her desk. ~ Rachel Hartman

The clerk is looking at me. His expression hasn't changed. What I want to do is punch a hole in the front of the desk, reach through, grab his balls, and make him sing The Mickey Mouse Club song. But these days, I'm working on the theory that killing everyone I don't like might be counterproductive. I'm learning to use my indoor voice like a big boy, so I smile back at the clerk. ~ Richard Kadrey

A lot of young writers wait for inspiration. The inspiration only hits you at the desk. ~ Robert Anderson

I am proud to offer my endorsement of Donald J. Trump for President of the United States. He is a successful executive and entrepreneur, a wonderful father, and a man who I believe can lead our country to greatness again. ~ Jerry Falwell, Jr.

But it was the doctor's body, the sudden way he moved the folders on his desk, the way he moved back from Harmon, that Harmon would always remember. As though he had known what Harmon didn't know, that lives get knit together like bones, and fractures might not heal. ~ Elizabeth Strout

There is no greater power on this earth than story." Will paced the length of the room. "People think boundaries and borders build nations. Nonsense - words do. Beliefs, declarations, constitutions - words. Stories. Myths. Lies. Promises. History." Will grabbed the sheaf of newspaper clippings he kept in a stack on his desk. "This, and these" - he gestured to the library's teeming shelves - "they're a testament to the country's rich supernatural history. ~ Libba Bray

I have often sat in that chair behind my desk and wondered how you would look lying naked here on this sofa. It was a form of self-inflicted torture."
"Good heavens ~ Amanda Quick

The school-room sends men to the Legislature, to the bench, and the executive office. The bar-room sends them to the scaffold and hell. ~ Thomas Jordan Jarvis

And suddenly the idea comes into your head that perhaps now, at this very moment while you are passing by, in one of the rooms behind those drab shutters, at a worm-eaten desk, among bundles of papers tied up with red or green tape, with scratchy old-fashioned penstrokes, your fate is being inscribed ~ Anna Kavan

As winter went on, longer than long, we both freaked out. My mania grew to insane proportions. I sat in the study room at night, wildly typing out Dali-esque short stories. I sat at my desk in our room, drinking tea, flying on speed. She'd bang into the room in a fury. Or, she'd bang into the room, laughing like a maniac. Or, she'd bang into the room and sit under the desk eating Nutter-Butters. She was a sugar freak. She'd pour packets of sugar down her throat, or long Pixie-Stix. She was in constant motion. At first I wondered if she too had some food issues, subsisting mostly on sugar and peanut butter-and-jelly sandwiches on Wonder Bread, but my concern (as she pointed out) was "total transference, seriously, Max. Maybe you're just hungry." Some Saturdays, we'd go to town together, buy bags and bags of candies, Tootsie Rolls (we both liked vanilla best; she always smelled delicious and wore straight vanilla extract as perfume, which made me hungry), and gummy worms and face- twisting sour things and butterscotch. We'd lie on our backs on the beds, listening to The Who and Queen, bellowing, "I AM THE CHAMPION, YES I AM THE CHAMPION" through mouths full of sticky stuff, or we'd swing from the pipes over the bed and fall shrieking to the floor. ~ Marya Hornbacher

If I wanted to know what a certain future would feel like to me, I would find someone who is already living that future. If I wonder what it's like to become a lawyer or marry a busy executive or eat at a particular restaurant, my best bet is to find people who have actually done these things and see how happy they are. ~ Daniel Gilbert

Social media is a really cool way to tell your story to people who are interested in hearing it. It's not getting put through the filter of a television executive who's decided you're too old to justify the expenditure. ~ Greg Behrendt

The missing remained missing and the portraits couldn't change that. But when Akhmed slid the finished portrait across the desk and the family saw the shape of that beloved nose, the air would flee the room, replaced by the miracle of recognition as mother, father, sister, brother, aunt, and cousin found in that nose the son, brother, nephew, and cousin that had been, would have been, could have been, and they might race after the possibility like cartoon characters dashing off a cliff, held by the certainty of the road until they looked down -- and plummeted is the word used by the youngest brother who, at the age of sixteen, is tired of being the youngest and hopes his older brother will return for many reasons, not least so he will marry and have a child and the youngest brother will no longer be youngest; that youngest brother, the one who has nothing to say about the nose because he remembers his older brother's nose and doesn't need the nose to mean what his parents need it to mean, is the one who six months later would be disappeared in the back of a truck, as his older brother was, who would know the Landfill through his blindfold and gag by the rich scent of clay, as his older brother had known, whose fingers would be wound with the electrical wires that had welded to his older brother's bones, who would stand above a mass grave his brother had dug and would fall in it as his older brother had, though taking six more minutes and four more bullets to die, would be bur ~ Anthony Marra

I obliged, taking a seat in front of her desk. Her office was small, not nearly as opulent as Dermott's. Still, it was an office, a space away from the communal drone ~ Meredith Wild

Writing helped to have jobs that involved running around, pushing things like dish carts and wheelbarrows. It would be hard to sit at a desk all day, and then come to sit at another desk. Also, it helps to abandon hope. If I sit at my computer, determined to write a New Yorker story I won't get beyond the first sentence. It's better to put no pressure on it. What would happen if I followed the previous sentence with this one, I'll think. If the eighth draft is torture, the first should be fun. At least if you're writing humor. ~ David Sedaris

A frightening number of whom had IQ scores in the low 70s? I stopped reading and just stuck the records out of sight in a bottom drawer of my desk, and never thought of them again until the end of the year when I was throwing away the accumulation of papers in my desk. I was furious with those scores. My kids were not dumb! I've never trusted standardized tests since. ~ Katherine Paterson

For twenty years I have sat alone at a desk tinkering with sentences and then sending them out, and for most of my literary life the difference between throwing something in the trash and publishing it was imperceptible... ~ Rebecca Solnit

There are still journalists who risk their lives in situations of conflict, versus those who sit behind a desk at 'News of the World' to report on whether someone is going out with somebody or not. ~ Romola Garai

was sitting in my detective office in R'lyeh. My partner Dagon sat at the desk across from me. We had been doing the detective thing for a couple of strange aeons now. ~ Dennis Liggio

Things got said, the kinds of embarrassing things that don't go away. Tempers ran high. My paternal grandfather's teak desk required a new panel, which never quite matched the others. Intellectual debate can be very hard on furniture. ~ Nancy Kress

Executive Mansion,
Washington, Nov. 21, 1864.
Dear Madam,
I have been shown in the files of the War Department a statement of the Adjutant General of Massachusetts that you are the mother of five sons who have died gloriously on the field of battle.
I feel how weak and fruitless must be any word of mine which should attempt to beguile you from the grief of a loss so overwhelming. But I cannot refrain from tendering you the consolation that may be found in the thanks of the Republic they died to save.
I pray that our Heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement, and leave you only the cherished memory of the loved and lost, and the solemn pride that must be yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of freedom.
Yours, very sincerely and respectfully,
A. Lincoln ~ Abraham Lincoln

Look, Ella..." He stared down at his hands, opening and closing his fists. I waited.
I think we might have a little bit of a misunderstanding here...
You're a nice girl and all,but...
I really like you,but I don't really like you...
The unmistakable notes of "Don't Stop Believin'," electronic version, suddenly filled my room, followed by the audible and visual treat of my phone vibrating its way across my desk toward Alex's hip. I flung myself on it. In a clear-headed moment, I would have just turned it off. As it was, I did manage a "Sorry!" to Alex before flipping it open/
"Are you dead?" Frankie demanded from the other end.
"No." I edged away from Alex, who was very politely pretending to be interested in the biscotti.
"Are you even sick?"
"No," I admitted.
"Of course not. Okay, I'm coming over."
"No!" I cringed as Alex jumped a little. I took a breath. "God, no. Don't. It's wedding central here. Sienna will have you trying up birdseed in little purple pouches."
There was a long pause. "You okay, Marino?"
"Yeah," I managed.
"Truth time.Where were you today?"
Could I do it? Could I actually use the word cramps with Alex Bainbridge standing three feet away? I could only imagine how the actual truth would sound. Here, in bed, hiding because I thought I'd made the queen of all fools out of myself e-mailing Alex Bainbridge over the break, and I can't even tell you about it because I promised...But it's okay- ~ Melissa Jensen

Charles realized his Academy office was far too small to contain the five feet of green eyed fury in front of his desk. Although, in fairness, an airship hanger might not have been large enough. ~ Eric James Spannerman

Many of Ronald A. Fisher's ideas were solutions to computational problems caused by the limitations of the era's desk calculators. ~ Sharon Bertsch McGrayne

In the two-room flat where I live in Japan, I try to take time every day to step away from the bombardment of e-mails and opportunities and papers around my desk, for an hour, and just sit on our 30-inch terrace in the sun, reading something sustaining, whether 'The Age of Innocence' or the latest by Colm Toibin. ~ Pico Iyer

He was lounging in a cubicle beside an outdated computer, hands shoved into the pockets of his faded jeans. A wavy lock of hair covered his forehead, brushing against thick lashes. His lips curled into a half smile. "I was wondering if you were ever going to find me." He made no move to clear up any space in the tiny 6x6 hole.
I dropped my bag outside the walls and hopped up on the desk opposite him. "Embarrassed someone would see you and think you're capable of reading?"
"I do have a reputation to maintain."
"And what a lovely reputation that is."
He stretched out his legs so that his feet were under mine. "So what did you want to talk about" - his voice lowered to a deep, sexy whisper - "in private?"
I shivered - and it had nothing to do with the temperature. "Not what you're hoping."
Daemon gave me a sexy smirk. ~ Jennifer L. Armentrout

If I get a ticket in an Aston Martin, I plan to frame it and put it on my desk." And with that Zach gunned the engine and spun out of the parking garage. ~ Tiffany Reisz

The police force cannot be completely independent of the executive government. ~ P. Chidambaram

Every president since George Washington has taken executive privilege seriously. Every Republican president has. ~ Jacob Lew

It is of the nature of war to increase the executive at the expense of legislative authority," the Federalist tell us. And modern commanders in chief tend to reflexively invoke the war metaphor when the public demands that they take action to solve the emergency of the month, real or imagined.

"War is the health of the state," Randolph Bourne's famous aphorism has it, but Bourne could just as easily written that "war is the health of the presidency." Throughout American history, virtually every major advance in executive power has come during a war or warlike crisis. Convince the public that we are at war, and constitutional barriers to actions fall, as power flows to the commander in chief.

Little wonder, then, that confronted with impossible expectations, the modern president tends to recast social and economic problems in military terms: war on crime, war on drugs, war on poverty. Martial rhetoric often ushers in domestic militarism, as presidents push to employ standing armies at home, to fight drug trafficking, terrorism, or natural disasters. And when the president raises the battle cry, he can usually count on substantial numbers of American opinion leaders to cheer him on. ~ Gene Healy

Later that day when I passed the Admin lieutenant and the Sargeant standing by the Desk, I said casually, "I'm leaving too, Sarge."
"Okay," he said, and I kept on walking. ~ Edward Conlon

Develop your leaders into a competitive advantage. Reconnect your leader-power to success. ~ Gene Morton

The neutral and level playing field provided by permissionless innovation has empowered all of us with the freedom to express ourselves and innovate online without having to seek the permission of a remote telecom executive. ~ Marvin Ammori

The programmer, who needs clarity, who must talk all day to a machine that demands declarations, hunkers down into a low-grade annoyance. It is here that the stereotype of the programmer, sitting in a dim room, growling from behind Coke cans, has its origins. The disorder of the desk, the floor; the yellow Post-It notes everywhere; the whiteboards covered with scrawl: all this is the outward manifestation of the messiness of human thought. The messiness cannot go into the program; it piles up around the programmer. ~ Ellen Ullman

He dropped his pile of papers onto the desk and indicated the sheet on top. "Here is the common I nominate in all the fires, Carl." "You what?" "The common I nominate." "Common denominator, Assad. A compound noun. What common denominator? ~ Jussi Adler-Olsen

Welcome to Rainbow Falls Gardens," said the man behind the desk. ~ Daisy Meadows

Evidence of defendants' lavish lifestyles is often used to provide a motive for fraud. Jurors sometimes wonder why an executive making tens of millions of dollars would cheat to make even more. Evidence of habitual gluttony helps provide the answer. ~ Alex Berenson

I did another commercial. Don't lose your loved ones, I wrote, because of excessive radioactivity. Don't be a wallflower at the dance because of strontium 90 in your bones. Don't be a victim of fallout. When the tart on Thirty-sixth Street gives you the big eye does your body stride off in one direction and your imagination in another? Does your mind follow her up the stairs and taste her wares in revolting detail while your flesh goes off to Brooks Brothers or the foreign exchange desk of the Chase Manhattan Bank? Haven't you noticed the size of the ferns, the lushness of the grass, the bitterness of the string beans, and the brilliant makings on the new breeds of butterflies? You have been inhaling lethal atomic waste for the last twenty-five years and only Elixircol can save you. ~ John Cheever