Mart Quotes

I couldn't let go of the thought that it had, in fact, been he, restless and moody Heathcliff. Day after day, he floated through all the Wal-Marts in America, searching for me in a million lonely aisles. ~ Marisha Pessl

Wal-Mart impoverished its own customer base. Google is facing exactly the same issue long-term, although not yet. ~ Jaron Lanier

Pink Balloons

My name is Olivia King

I am five years old

My mother bought me a balloon. I remember the day she walked through the front door with it. The curly hot pink ribbon trickling down her arm, wrapped around her wrist. She was smiling at me as she untied the ribbon and wrapped it around my hand.

"Here Livie, I bought this for you."

She called me Livie.

I was so happy. I'd never had a balloon before. I mean, I always saw balloon wrapped around other kids wrist in the parking lot of Wal-Mart, but I never dreamed I would have my very own.

My very own pink balloon.

I was excited! So ecstatic! So thrilled! I couldn't believe my mother bought me something! She'd never bought me anything before! I played with it for hours. It was full of heliu and it danced and swayed and floated as I drug it around from room to room with me, thinking of places to take it. Thinking of places the balloon had never been before. I took it in the bathroom, the closet, the laundry room, the kitchen, the living room. I wanted my new best friend to see everything I saw! I took it to my mother's bedroom!

My mothers

Bedroom?

Where I wasn't supposed to be?

With my pink

balloon...

I covered my ears as she screamed at me, wiping the evidence off her nose! She slapped me across the face as she told me how bad I was! How much I misbehaved! How I never ~ Colleen Hoover

It's just paper - all I own is a pickup truck and a little Wal-Mart stock. ~ Sam Walton

Five white candles surrounded my summoning circle, the points of an invisible pentacle. White for protection. And because they're the cheapest color at Wal-Mart. ~ Jim Butcher

You go to Main Street, and Wal-Mart is coming to town and kicking out all the mom and pop stores. All the people that were in the mom and pop stores are now working for Wal-Mart. ~ Dennis Quaid

I'm not itching to sue Amazon or Wal-Mart ... they sell a lot of books. But the future is very uncertain with books. ~ John Grisham

Calvin: Dad where do babies come from?
Dad: Well Calvin, you simply go to Sears, buy the kit and follow the assembly instructions.
Calvin: I came from Sears?
Dad: No you were a blue-light special at K-Mart - almost as good and a lot cheaper! ~ Bill Watterson

Indeed, if communist central planners could have organized the economy with as much detail, precision, and flexibility as a modern-day Toyota or Wal-Mart, communism would probably still exist. ~ Jim Stanford

To best serve the public happiness, government shouldn't do things it cannot do well - anymore than Wal-Mart should provide goods and services that people don't like. ~ Joel Miller

The effort of building an ideal society always leads to violence, often to very extensive violence. Because, whether we like it or not, it is not possible to create an ideal society with imperfect people. And this, unfortunately, we are. So the main purpose for Nazism as well as for Communism was to create a 'new person'. In order to make room for it, the world needed to be rid of its non-perfect models. ~ Mart Laar

I make the modest proposal that psychiatric care should be as easy to get as bullets at Wal-Mart. ~ Andy Borowitz

More and more, more and more digital, in particular, I think you'll see in our stores next year, as we start combining these digital products and they interface with each other, you'll see that represented in Wal-Mart. ~ Lee Scott

The strangest thing about becoming an atheist was how little things changed. With no divine rules or threat of eternal punishment hanging over my head, I still somehow managed to not lie, cheat, steal, or kill anybody. Although to be honest, I was a little confused as to why we weren't lying, cheating, or stealing. Not killing people still made sense, but why, for example, should we not steal some peanut butter crackers from the unmanned mini-mart in this Holiday Inn? ~ Pete Holmes

They had the lure of the Wal-Mart volume," [Jim] Wier said. "Once you get hooked on the volume, it's like getting hooked on cocaine. You've created a monster for yourself. ~ Charles Fishman

At the Feast of Fortune, she'll awaken, and the demigods will be cut down like
like
"
"Like our low prices at Bargain Mart!" Stheno suggested. ~ Rick Riordan

My name is Olivia King
I am five years old.
My mother bought me a balloon. I remember the day she walked through the front door with it. The curly hot pink ribbon trickling down her arm, wrapped around her wrist. She was smiling at me as she untied the ribbon and wrapped it around my hand.
"Here Livie, I bought this for you."
She called me Livie.
I was so happy. I'd never had a balloon before. I mean, I always saw balloons wrapped around other kids wrists in the
parking lot of Wal-Mart, but I never dreamed I would have my
very own.
My very own pink balloon. ~ Colleen Hoover

Do you have any idea how cheap stocks are? Wall Street is now being called Wall Mart Street ~ Jay Leno

Alright. Look. Don't take this the wrong way but...I couldn't care less whether you're the son of the prime minister or a random cashier at Food Mart...you're a human first...and humans kinda suck. ~ Quimchee

There was a proposal in California that would keep out Wal-Mart but allow Costco. You opposed it. Are you nuts? That's true: I always oppose these kinds of things. Competition makes us better. Some of our best stores have a Sam's Club next door. ~ James Sinegal

So cotton growers, siphoning from the Ogallala, get three billion dollars a year in taxpayer money for fiber that is shipped to China, where it is used to make cheap clothing sold back to American chain retail stores like Wal-Mart. ~ Timothy Egan

Our goal isn't to close Wal-Mart down. It is to make it a better, more humane company toward its employees and the communities it is in. ~ Robert Greenwald

You can find a lot of reasonable buys at Wal-Mart. But one key to making it on a budget is by donating your time and labor to the project. Do-it-yourself projects will always help you save. ~ Nate Berkus

Who better than Wal-Mart, after all, to make a kilowatt of electricity go twice as far, or a gallon of fuel move our trucks move three times the distance?" -Wal-Mart ad ~ Charles Fishman

One day as Father and I were returning from our walk we found the Grote Markt cordoned off by a double ring of police and soldiers. A truck was parked in front of the fish mart; into the back were climbing men, women, and children, all wearing the yellow star ...
"Father! Those poor people!" I cried ...
"Those poor people," Father echoed. But to my surprise I saw that he was looking at the solders now forming into ranks to march away. "I pity the poor Germans, Corrie. They have touched the apple of God's eye. ~ Corrie Ten Boom

I had no agenda in writing this play except expressing myself ... It later occurred to me that I was not only announcing things to my family; I was announcing it to the world. Of course, if the play had been a flop, only my family would have known. ~ Mart Crowley

The Pennsylvania Game Commission has charged a man with going deer hunting with a handgun in a Wal-Mart parking lot. He is being charged with reckless endangerment, but may plead guilty to the lesser charge of being a redneck ... Hunting in a Wal-Mart parking lot. That's got to be some good eating - a deer that lives on leftover Twizzlers and Mountain Dew. ~ Jay Leno

Creating a huge personal fortune was never particularly a goal of mine, and the proof of that lies in the fact that even to this day most of my, and my family's, wealth remains in the form of Wal-Mart stock. I think most people in our position would have hedged their bets a long time ago and diversified into all kinds of investments. As it's happened, though, our very simplistic, very personal investment strategy has turned out far better than anyone could ever have expected. So Wal-Mart stock has made the Waltons a very wealthy family - on paper anyway. I ~ Sam Walton

There is no lobbying interest on behalf of a low-paid worker. Nobody. Nobody represents them, yet somebody obviously represents Wal-Mart in Washington and McDonald's in Washington. ~ Leo Hindery

Adam didn't approve of Wal-Mart. ~ Patricia Briggs

More and more Americans are asking about the price that we have to pay when Wal-Mart comes into a community, treats workers poorly, violates immigration laws and squashes small businesses. ~ Anthony Weiner

O men, grown sick with toil and care, Leave for awhile the crowded mart; O women, sinking with despair, Weary of limb and faint of heart, Forget your years to-day and come As children back to childhood's house. ~ Phoebe Cary

Somehow over the years people have gotten the impression that Wal-Mart was ... just this great idea that turned into an overnight success. But ... it was an outgrowth of everything we'd been doing since [1945] ... And like most overnight successes, it was about twenty years in the making. ~ James C. Collins

I love Wal-Mart. You can put that down. I love Wal-Mart. My husband and I hang out there. ~ Viola Davis

I've never known of Wal-Mart to be a good neighbor in any town it's ever moved into. ~ Steve Earle

If I think too much about all of those Chinese factories where all the stuff in a Wal-Mart is made, I get that woozy feeling you get when you see ducks covered in crude oil. ~ Douglas Coupland

Jeff: You know, you don't have to do this.
Walter: Yeah, I could get a real job.
Jeff: What would you do?
Walter: I wanna be a greeter at Wal-Mart.
Walter: What the hell's so funny?
Jeff: At Wal-Mart, what would be your opening line?
Walter: Oh.
Walter: Welcome to Wal-Mart. Get your shit and get out!
Walter: Have a nice day! ~ Jeff Dunham

When your claim to be victims of secularism rests on Wal-Mart greeters wishing shoppers Happy Holidays, you are clearly a bunch of great big babies. ~ Katha Pollitt

I've seen articles suggesting that Wal-Mart buys at prices lower than our competitors', and that this gives Wal-Mart an unfair advantage. I don't believe it ... What we hear is concern that in some circumstances, Wal-Mart may actually be paying more than our competitors. ~ S. Robson Walton

Wal-Mart benefits from the impression that globalization is some kind of unmanageable economic weather system out of the control of everyone, affecting all players with indifference, benefiting those who happened to be properly prepared. ~ Charles Fishman

Gabriel didn't have to look at his parents to know they were thoroughly charmed by Pandora. As for him...
He hardly recognized himself in his reaction to her. She was full of life, burning like sunflowers in the rime of autumn frost. Compared to the languid and diffident girls of London's annual marriage mart, Pandora might have been another species altogether. She was just as beautiful as he'd remembered, and as unpredictable. Laughing after the dog had jumped on her in the front drive, when any other young woman in her place would have been angry or humiliated. As she'd stood there wanting to argue with him about carrots, all Gabriel had been able to think of was how much he wanted to carry her somewhere cool and dark and quiet, and have her all to himself. ~ Lisa Kleypas

I sound like a damn commercial, but half the crap in this house is from Wal-mart. The big deal about Wal-mart is that its open 24 hours. ~ Corbin Bernsen

My dream was to go to Nashville. I had my sights set on my dream. I used to have an '89 Toyota Ford truck. On the front of the truck, I had this license plate with cowboy boots and a guitar that I had airbrushed at Wal-Mart. It said 'Chasin' A Dream.' That was kind of my motto. ~ Josh Turner

The key to Operations at Wal-Mart is their ability to maintain the highest standards while at the same time getting things done with lockstep execution. ~ Michael Bergdahl

How do I like to spend my day off? I like to hit up the juice bar, the bookstore, tan, and then flirt with the pharmacy tech at Walmart. ~ Crystal Woods

There are going to be some people who never want Wal-Mart. That's OK. ~ Lee Scott

We are not quite sure that the Sermon on the Mount is the Sermon for the mart. We are not
sure, and an unsure place is an unsafe place*
We must go on or go back. We must be more
Christian or less. ~ E. Stanley Jones

Modern English is the Wal-Mart of languages: convenient, huge, hard to
avoid, superficially friendly, and devouring all rivals in its eagerness
to expand. ~ Mark Abley

Gus the driver is everywhere and yet he appears nowhere, not in portraits or photographs, not even in the stories of men like Barthelme and Carver, who were all about guys with jobs and prospects like Gus's but who insisted on more sorrow, more angst, than Gus remotely manifests. If Gus weeps sometimes for no reason, if he stands despairing in the aisle of a Wal-Mart, it is not apparent in his daily demeanor ... ~ Michael Cunningham

Wal-Mart and what Wal-Mart does contrasts sharply with what the Green Party believes. ~ Bill Vaughan

My grandma leaned out the backseat window, pointing at the cops. "Just so you know, I had no part in this! Ask anyone. They'll all tell you: I hate crime."
"Well, we won't mention to them how you 'forgot' to pay for those slippers at Wal-Mart, now, will we?" my mom hissed. ~ Emily Cassel

Those can most easily dispense with society who are the most calculated to adorn it; they only are dependent on it who possess no mental resources, for though they bring nothing to the general mart, like beggars, they are too poor to stay at home. ~ Marguerite Gardiner, Countess Of Blessington

My big places to shop are Wal-Mart and Target - seriously. That is where half of my stuff comes from now. ~ Kelly Preston

When a state trooper passes me on the highway, I grit my teeth, check my speed, and hope nobody put a dead guy in the trunk while I was in Wal-Mart last night at two a.m. ~ Diana Joseph

My parents were dishonest people. If it was my birthday, I knew my mother took me to the K-Mart and she stole my toy. She'd put it in the shopping cart and we'd walk out. I was raised with that. ~ Vincent Gallo

Liberals think their campaign against Wal-Mart is a way of introducing the subject of class into America's political argument, and they are more correct than they understand. Their campaign is liberalism as condescension. It is a philosophic repugnance toward markets, because consumer sovereignty results in the masses making messes. Liberals, aghast, see the choices Americans make with their dollars and their ballots and announce - yes, announce - that Americans are sorely in need of more supervision by ... liberals. ~ George F. Will

Isn't he utterly divine? Beautiful?"
"Somehow,I think he'd disagree with that last one." And not enough with the first.
"All right," she waved her dismissively. "Handsome then. Do you think he noticed me?"
"We were sprawled in a heap of twitching limbs and lace at his feet. He would have had to have been unconscious not to notice us."
She wrinkled her nose. "I meant,do you think he noticed I'm nearly on the Marriage Mart now?"
I didn't know how to reply. I didn't want to hurt her feelings,but I wasn't sure Frederic noticed anything other than cards and port.He was twenty years old,after all,and quite wealthy. He was acting exactly as he was expected to.
Her cheeks were red. "We should return before Mother wonders where we've gone off to.Heaven forbid we might be somewhere enjoying ourselves! ~ Alyxandra Harvey

When Wal-Mart brings water down to the Katrina victims, it's not doing that to be nice; it's doing it to make larger profits and to increase the value of its shares. If its actions are not accomplishing those objectives, the shareholders can sue the executives, and sue them successfully, because it is illegal for them to act on behalf of any other reason than increasing the value of their shares. There is nothing wrong with that. That is the way that they were created and the way we want them to function to increase prosperity in the market. ~ Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.

Merciless Mart, with its grand lobby. I glimpse the Abnegation ~ Veronica Roth

Now you know how I justify my addictions - if I can pay less for it than I would at Wal-Mart, I get to have it. ~ Karen Marie Moning

I LOVE WAL-MART. I CONSIDER MY JOKES TO BE VERY JEUVINILLE. STUFF A 14 YEAR OLD WOULD LAUGH AT BECAUSE THATS THE SENCE OF HUMOR I HAVE. ALL THE STUFF I TALK ABOUT MAY NOT BE APPROPRIATE FOR CHURCH GROUPS HOWEVER WAL-MART AINT SUNDAY SCHOOL. AS LONG AS I DIDNT USE OFFENSIVE FOUL LANGUAGE I KNEW ID BE FINE. WAL-MART GETS IT, THATS WHY THEY BLOW AWAY THE COMPETITION. BESIDES ITS THERE STORE THEY CAN DO WHAT THEY WANT. THATS AMERICA BABY! ~ Larry The Cable Guy

Yes. I think the anti-Wal-Mart is Costco, which pays much better and has much better health benefits and which is profitable and offers low prices. ~ Barbara Ehrenreich

Leadership and learning are indispensable to each other.
[Undelivered remarks for Dallas Trade Mart, November 22 1963] ~ John F. Kennedy

Every time Wal-Mart spends one dollar foolishly, it comes right out of our customers' pockets. Every time we save them a dollar, that puts us one more step ahead of the competition - which is where we always plan to be. ~ Sam Walton

I get a special joy in knowing people feel comfortable if they see me in Wal-Mart or in a no-frills section trying to get something on a discount. ~ Angie Stone

Now, okay, important knitting life lesson right here: don't go acrylic. Just don't. Acrylic's what you're gonna find at, like, Wal-Mart, and acrylic is crap. I have it on good authority that it's like knitting with barbed wire, that it's squeaky, yeah, that's right, squeaky, and that – although I can't vouch for this one personally – apparently it's what Satan uses to make Christmas sweaters for the ninth-circle sinners. ~ Hannah Johnson

Walk into a Chase branch and we can give you so much quicker, better and faster. Like Wal-Mart. ~ Jamie Dimon

Al Qaeda is nothing more than a mutant supply chain. They're playing off the same platform as Wal-Mart and Dell. They're just not restrained by it. What is al Qaeda? It's an open source religious political movement that works off the global supply chain. That's what we're up against in Iraq. We're up against a suicide supply chain. ~ Thomas Friedman

I was always intrigued when I was growing up, and then in engineering school, with the idea of a perpetual machine. I think of the Wal-Mart culture as that. ~ Mike Duke

Life is nothing more than a clean sheet of paper that most people use to write a dictation on, whereas only a select few ever use it to write their own essay. ~ Christopher Mart

Wal-Mart's size and scale is so vast they literally have the ability to change the face of the entire country. If Wal-Mart were to make a decision tomorrow to refuse to sell a single product made with partially hydrogenated oils, for example, we'd probably see rates from heart disease decline a few years later. That's how powerful Wal-Mart is. ~ Simon Sinek

I'm being accused of being a murderer! I'M being ACCUSED of being a molester! ... They say my idea of a fun day is a dark lonely field and the urunj of a car, and a large stick and a roll of duct tape! My MOM shops at Wal-Mart! She gets calls all the time now; she's worried about me! I'm not the most emotionally stable guy in the world; I'll admit that ... I do have some problems, but my God, I'm not a murderer! ~ Al Snow

I went to the WAL mart last night, but they were all out of you! ~ The Lexies

If one is of the masculine gender, a poodle is the insignia of one's deviation. ~ Mart Crowley

It's through neglecting all other values to bring the customer the lowest price that Wal-Mart ended up with such a horrible sex discrimination problem, but that model produces lots and lots of other problems as well, which I think are possibly going to be more difficult to fix. ~ Liza Featherstone

The key to competing and surviving against Wal-Mart is to focus your business into a niche or pocket where you can leverage your strengths in the local marketplace. ~ Michael Bergdahl

I didn't know what Guess jeans were. I just shopped at Wal-Mart and Kmart and stuff like that. ~ Anna Nicole Smith

Wal-Mart was a living hell full of bad lighting, sad faces, and screaming children. We had only started getting them everywhere in Mexico a few years ago, but it was like all the American stereotypes followed them down here. This was one of the supercenters that had a McDonald's in it and a produce section that pissed off all our farmers. It reeked of everything I hated. ~ Karina Halle

I really don't think anyone can blame us for wanting no part of the marriage mart if she is already the belle of the ball," Ella said. "My mother even had
the audacity to ask me earlier if I didn't think I should have a gown made like hers! Lord deliver me from the London season ~ Sarah MacLean

The Upton Sinclair of today's global economy is Charles Kernaghan, the New York based muckraker most famous for his expose of sweatshops producing the Kathie Lee Gifford line of clothing for Wal-Mart ... The Institute for Global Labour and Human Rights ... has been a leader in exposing sweatshops, mounting corporate campaigns, and fighting for the rights of vulnerable workers. ~ Charles Derber

At Wal-Mart, a co-worker once advised me that, although I had a lot to learn, it was also important not to "know too much," or at least never to reveal one's full abilities to management, because "the more they think you can do, the more they'll use you and abuse you." My mentors in these matters were not lazy; they just understood that there are few or no rewards for heroic performance. The trick lies in figuring out how to budget your energy so there'll be some left over for the next day. ~ Barbara Ehrenreich

What I have to face is that 'Barb,' the name on my ID tag, is not exactly the same person as Barbara. 'Barb' is what I was called as a child, and still am by my siblings, and I sense that at some level I'm regressing. Take away the career and the higher education, and maybe what you're left with is this original Barb, the one who might have ended up working at Wal-Mart for real if her father hadn't managed to climb out of the mines. So it's interesting, and more than a little disturbing, to see how Barb turned out - that she's meaner and slyer than I am, more cherishing of grudges, and not quite as smart as I'd hoped. ~ Barbara Ehrenreich

Main Street is dead, which is no news to the families whose families ran family businesses on Main Street. When I returned...I found that all the local businesses from my childhood had been extirpated by Wal-Mart. If there is one single symbol for the demise of regional American culture, it is this superstore prototype, a huge capitalist boot that stomped the moms and pops, like soft, damp worms, to death. Don't get me wrong. I love Wal-Mart. There is nothing I like more than to consign a mindless afternoon to those aisles, suspending thought, judgment. It's like television. But to a documentarian of American culture, Wal-Mart is a nightmare. When it comes to towns, Hope, Alabama, becomes the same as Hope, Wyoming, or, for that matter, Hope, Alaska, and in the end, all that remains of our pioneering aspirations are the confused and self-conscious simulacra of relic culture: Ye Olde Curiosities 'n' Copie Shoppe, Deadeye Dick's Saloon and Karaoke Bar - ingenious hybrids and strange global grafts that are the local businessperson's only chance of survival in economies of scale. ~ Ruth Ozeki

The point I'm trying to make is that we as a family have bent over backward not to take advantage of Wal-Mart, not to press our ownership position unfairly, and everybody in the company knows it. Alice ~ Sam Walton

The tiles in the Merciless Mart are always black and white, and here they are in a checkered pattern. If I unfocus my eyes, I see exactly what the Candor don't believe in - gray. ~ Veronica Roth

For all the folks whose job it was to be ready for [Hurricane] Katrina, but who weren't, from the Oval Office, right down the chain of command to the New Orleans police department, Wal-Mart was a vivid reproach. ~ Charles Fishman

Berkshire has the lowest turnover of any major company in the U.S.The Walton family owns more of Wal-Mart than Buffett owns of Berkshire, so it isn't because of large holdings. It's because we have a really unusual shareholder body that thinks of itself as owners and not holders of little pieces of paper. ~ Charlie Munger

Despite the obvious damage now visible in the entropic desolation of every American home town, Wal-Mart managed to install itself in the pantheon of American Dream icons, along with apple pie, motherhood, and Coca Cola. ~ James Howard Kunstler

It's a tough thing to know that when you're making your album, you're going to end up collaborating with, say, Wal-Mart, on your artwork. That just sucks. And the pressure behind getting the numbers real fast is, to me, dizzying. ~ Ben Folds

Every time you see the Wal-Mart smiley face, whistling and knocking down the prices, somewhere there's a factory worker being kicked in the stomach. - Sherrie Ford ~ Charles Fishman

Globalised manufacturing and procurement mean that a lot of high-polluting, heavy duty jobs are transferred to China. We will ask major companies, such as Wal-Mart, Microsoft and IBM to put pressure on their Chinese suppliers. ~ Ma Jun

I'm gonna be the first hip-hop designer and because of that I'm gonna be bigger than Wal-Mart. ~ Kanye West

The message from Wal-Mart today to the rest of the business community is there need not be any conflict between the environment and the economy. We will find the way not only to reconcile (those), but to find new profits and new opportunities as we do the right thing. ~ Al Gore

Contrast 1968, when the CEO of General Motors took home, in pay and benefits, about sixty-six times the amount paid to a typical GM worker. Today the CEO of Wal-Mart earns nine hundred times the wages of his average employee. Indeed, the wealth of the Wal-Mart founder's family in 2005 was estimated at about the same ($90 billion) as that of the bottom 40% of the US population: 120 million people. ~ Tony Judt

I keep hearing all these jokes on TV about how people in Arkansas are still barefoot hillbillies. Sure there are plenty of people living up in the hills and mountains on Arkansas. Why not? The scenery is breathtaking from their million-dollar houses up in those hills. Those people bought Wal-Mart stock early. They paid cash for those homes.
-Little Rock resident on how some people from "up North" view Arkansas ~ Maryln Schwartz

What's Wal*Mart? Is that were they sell wall stuff? ~ Paris Hilton

Wal-Mart provides a chilling example of the damage that low-wage, nonunion corporations can wreak, and their business model is going to set the standards for our children unless we do something now. Wal-Mart is the sewer pipe through which good jobs are being flushed. ~ Andy Stern

Yes, I'm too mad to punish you right now. We'll talk about it when we get home. Go brush your teeth, comb your hair, put on dry clothes, and get the guns. We're going to Wal-Mart. ~ Ilona Andrews

An unreflective passion for social justice may be one of the biggest obstacles to creating peace and prosperity in the 21st century. While there are most certainly factory owners in China whom we would rightly regard as criminal in their treatment of their workers, it is very important not to confuse these incidents with the phenomenon of globalization. It is a good thing that Wal-Mart is encouraging more humane standards in its supplier's factories. ~ Michael Strong

Once, a union job at GM or AT&T was a bridge to success. Now, a nonunion Wal-Mart job is a bridge to nowhere. ~ Andy Stern