Meda Melange Quotes

And since when does Hell have royalty? I thought they were all bureaucrats." "Oh, sweetie," he says, patronizing. "That's cute." "What's cute?" "That you think celebrity children of powerful people aren't royalty." "Are you accusing me of being a Hilton?" I sputter. "Or a, a–" my head might explode, "Kardashian?" "The Hellish equivalent. ~ Eliza Crewe

But I am not sick, or crazy, or broken.
I am Meda Melange, demon-saint monster girl. I make full-grown men scream in terror. I break bones and drain blood. I turn nightmares into reality.
I am the most powerful creature on earth. I do not wear a leash. ~ Eliza Crewe

Ah well, no rest for the wicked and all that. I'll just have to kill him myself. ~ Eliza Crewe

No, I should kill him. He said himself he would eventually go back to the demons. But he turns long-lashed eyes on me, full of entreaty, as if he were saying: please, please let me come murder the molester with you. How do you say "no" to eyes like those? They are a magical combination of sex and puppy.
Better than it sounds, I promise. ~ Eliza Crewe

The gang may be a safer place than home, but it's not without its problems. In some instances, especially in the Latino community, the boys have very traditional views of femininity even though they are gang members. The girls can be [seen] as sexually available, but not the good girl that you want to take home to your family, even by young men in the gangs. ~ Meda Chesney-Lind

A beginning is a very delicate time. Know then, that is is the year 10191. The known universe is ruled by the Padishah Emperor Shaddam the Fourth, my father. In this time, the most precious substance in the universe is the spice Melange. The spice extends life. The spice expands consciousness. A product of the Spive, the red Sapho juice, stains the lips of the Mentats but allows them to be human computers, as thinking machines have been outlawed. The spice is vital to space travel. The Spacing Guild and its navigators, who the spice has mutated over 4000 years, use the orange spice gas, which gives them the ability to fold space. That is, travel to any part of the universe without moving. Because the Guild controls all interplanetary travel, they are the highest power in the Universe. The Spice also plays a very secret role in the Bene Gesserit sisterhood, of which I am a part. The sisterhood has been interfering with the marriages, and the children thereof, of the great Houses of the Universe, cleverly intermixing one bloodline with another to form the Kwisatz Haderach, a super being. They plan to control this super being and use his powers for their own selfish purposes. The breeding plan has been carried out in a strict manner for 90 generations. The goal of the super being is in sight. But now, so close to the prize, a Bene Gesserit woman, Jessica, the bound concubine of Duke Leto Atreides, who has been ordered to bear only daughters, has given birth to a son. Oh, yes. I ~ Frank Herbert

I just like the continue doing what I've been doing. A melange of funny, straight drama, television, movies, a little theater here and there wouldn't hurt. So if I can keep doing that, I'll be a very happy person. ~ Mary Tyler Moore

My hands twitch and wiggle.
Jo sees them, shakes her head and mouths, "Sit on your hands."
She can't be serious. As if my butt would stop my hands even if it could. Does she not realize it's in league with the rest of me? ~ Eliza Crewe

You are a total nerd."
Not what he's expecting, the darkness wiped away by a startled laugh. "What?"
"Why else would you possibly know that?" I say it like I'm piecing together a puzzle – and I'm appalled by the picture it's making. "You're a nerd. A complete nerd. You nerdified sex. That just happened. ~ Eliza Crewe

Girls often feel very powerless in their lives and their families, and they kind of mimic the male violence as a way to try and get some of that male power that they see lacking in their own lives. ~ Meda Chesney-Lind

Why don't you have a room done up in every color green? This will take months, years, to collect, but it will be delightful-a melange of plants, green glass, green porcelains, and furniture covered in sad greens, gay greens, clear, faded, and poison greens? ~ Diana Vreeland

Therese was propped up on one elbow. The milk was so hot, she could barely let her lip touch it at first. The tiny sips spread inside her mouth and released a melange of organic flavors. The milk seemed to taste of bone and blood, of warm flesh, or hair, saltless as chalk yet alive as a growing embryo. It was hot through and through to the bottom of the cup, and Therese drank it down, as people in fairy tales drink the potion that will transform, or the unsuspecting warrior the cup that will kill, Then Carol came and took the cup, and Therese was drowsily aware that Carol asked her three questions, on that had to do with happiness, one about the store and one about the future. Therese heard herself answering. She heard her voice rise suddenly in a babble, like a spring that she had no control over, and she realized she was in tears. She was telling Carol all that she feared and disliked, of her loneliness, of Richard, and of gigantic disappointments. ~ Patricia Highsmith

They came on one of April's most brilliant days--a day as sparkling as a newly-washed lemon...a day when even the shadows were a melange of blue and orange and jade, like the shadows that poured from the tipsy brush of Monet. ~ Beverley Nichols

I hear Jo in my head trying to douse the fire in my heart. "Be good, Meda." Good, good, good, good, good. The word plays in a loop until it means nothing. I've been good and they refuse to feed me. I've been good and they won't train me. I've been good and they changed the locks. I've been good and they want to send me away. ~ Eliza Crewe

Get him! My hormones scream.
Don't fall for it, my brain cautions.
Pretty! They whine. Stupid hormones.
Calm down, hormones. We are just pumping him – (really brain, you chose the word pumping?) – for information. He is literally evil. We need to keep our distance. ~ Eliza Crewe

Girls come to the gang for very different reasons than boys. For boys in marginalized communities, they have a gender problem, and they solve it often through gang membership. They find an ability to do masculinity in a way that reasserts their importance in a society that mostly ignores them. For girls, they're coming out of more damaged backgrounds. Their families are often the reason they get propelled into gang membership. ~ Meda Chesney-Lind

You said you'd cooperate."
I knew I'd regret my promise, just not quite this soon. "You don't wear pink!"
"Yeah, well, no one thinks I'm in league with the devil."
She shoves it into my chest. I narrow my eyes. "I do. ~ Eliza Crewe

They say curiosity killed the cat but I am unconcerned. I am smarter, though slightly less evil, than any cat. ~ Eliza Crewe

Because the dumb slut slept with him, and he's too nice to–" WHAM, out of nowhere he nose-butts me in the fist! ~ Eliza Crewe

Girls begin to have second thoughts about the violence. Studies show they feel a considerable amount of guilt about it. They feel bad later and want to apologize. ~ Meda Chesney-Lind

Even the poorest House can be rich in loyalty. Allegiance that must be purchased by bribes or wages is hollow and flawed, and could break at the worst possible moment. Allegiance that comes from the heart, though, is stronger than adamantium and more valuable than purest melange. ~ Brian Herbert

Many books in popular psychology are a melange of the author's comments, a dollop of research, and stupefyingly dull transcriptions from interviews. ~ Carol Tavris

One of the differences between boy gangs and girl gangs is for girls it's much more relational and much less violent. ~ Meda Chesney-Lind

I laugh. "How exactly do you see this…" I wave between the two of us, unable to come up with a descriptor
"Beautiful friendship?" he supplies with a devilish grin.
"…going?" I finish, ignoring him. "Us being mortal enemies and all."
"I prefer the term 'star-crossed lovers.'"
I snort. "Regardless, it can't end well."
"The best romances don't. ~ Eliza Crewe

Violence among boys is so valorized and so encouraged that you have to do things different in violence prevention with boys than with girls. ~ Meda Chesney-Lind

Forget them, Meda. Forget her." He reaches up and puts his hand on the side of my face, tugging it toward him. "I like you as you are. Good, evil, whatever. All I care about is that you're alive. Please, Meda. ~ Eliza Crewe

A man sits in an office deciding what stocks to buy. He imagines, no doubt, that he is planning his purchases according to his own judgment. In actual fact his judgment is a melange of impressions stamped on his mind by outside influences which unconsciously control his thought. He buys a certain railroad stock because it was in the headlines yesterday and hence is the one which comes most prominently to his mind; because he has a pleasant recollection of a good dinner on one of its fast trains; because it has a liberal labor policy, a reputation for honesty; because he has been told that J. P. Morgan owns some of its shares. ~ Edward L. Bernays

Rowdy, hopped-up college kids pass us in an endless, noisy blur like they're being mass produced or squeezed out of a tube - guys skulking in their T-shirts and cargo shorts, girls in low-slung jeans and flip-flops, pimples and breasts and tattoos and lipstick and legs and bra straps, and cigarettes; a colorful, sexy melange. I feel old and tired and I just want to be them again, want to be young and stupid, filled with angst and attitude and unbridled lust. Can I have a do-over, please? I swear to God I'll make a real go of it this time. ~ Jonathan Tropper

And he thought then about the Guild - the force that had specialized for so long that it had become a parasite, unable to exist independently of the life upon which it fed. They had never dared grasp the sword ... and now they could not grasp it. They might have taken Arrakis when they realized the error of specializing on the melange awareness-spectrum narcotic for their navigators. They could have done this, lived their glorious day and died. Instead, they'd existed from moment to moment, hoping the seas in which they swam might produce a new host when the old one died. ~ Frank Herbert

I am so changeable, being everything by turns and nothing long - such a strange melange of good and evil. ~ George Gordon Byron

In the '60s and '70s, people didn't pay a lot of attention to gangs. I think gangs still existed, but gangs had fallen out of criminological favor. ~ Meda Chesney-Lind

I suppose it should bother me to be so hated but, without it, I wouldn't have the delight of torturing them with my presence. What can I say? My cheerful spirit can't help but spot silver linings. ~ Eliza Crewe

The most precious substance in the universe is the spice Melange ... The spice extends life ... expands consciousness ... gives them the ability to fold space ... that is, travel to any part of the universe without moving. ~ Frank Herbert