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In order to grow, I promise you'll have to let go of some habits. 10 times out of 10, they'll be the habits you're most in love with.Brandi L. Bates
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David’s mouth dripped open slowly. He stood with his heels dug into my carpet, a dashed hope, a broken dream. No amount of money could top the priceless look that gathered on his face like an unmade bed. His eyebrows crumpled and furrowed like disheveled sheets. His lips curled into an acidic smirk. Confusion and shock collided in the cornea of his dilated pupils. He was a B.B. King song, personified. His entire body sang the blues.Brandi L. Bates
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All those other girls are cake... I'm Crème brûlée... Tiramisu, if you will. Just a few notches above.Brandi L. Bates
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I will Basquiat the canvas of your body like a Broadway Junction wall…and Gordon Parks you for those dark midnights when your scent fades.Brandi L. Bates
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You and those shot-glass eyes, deep swirling pools of 80-proof firewater, with the depth and profundity of Saturn’s spinning pulsars…Brandi L. Bates
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Wrote my way out of the hood...thought my way out of poverty! Don't tell me that knowledge isn't power. Education changes everything.Brandi L. Bates
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When the door to my writing chamber gasps shut and the almost imperceptible sigh of a rose petal falls on my desk, I know that my muse is present.Brandi L. Bates
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No matter what the industry you choose to ultimately invest all your time and energy in, be sure you're the owner, founder, and CEO. Remember, if you don't own it, you can't control it nor can you depend on it.Brandi L. Bates
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The most empowering thing you can do though is to create innovative ways to bring in livable wages. That begins with a debt free lifestyle.Brandi L. Bates
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Unapologetically smitten with thunderstorms...the thought of rough sex beneath an acid washed moon and hydrated stars...Brandi L. Bates
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Lowkey punchdrunk off this Sangria-sweet love and all it’s prodigious trappings…Brandi L. Bates
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Give me Pablo Neruda, picnic beneath a full moon & iridescent stars, black olives, cherries, dark things, canoe on a river...that's romance.Brandi L. Bates
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Can't even sleep through the night without you and those sun-dried ginger ale complected limbs crocheted into my thighs...Brandi L. Bates
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THE NEXT DAY WAS RAIN-SOAKED and smelled of thick sweet caramel, warm coconut and ginger. A nearby bakery fanned its daily offerings. A lapis lazuli sky was blanketed by gunmetal gray clouds as it wept crocodile tears across the parched Los Angeles landscape. When Ivy was a child and she overheard adults talking about their break-ups, in her young feeble-formed mind, she imagined it in the most literal of essences. She once heard her mother speaking of her break up with an emotionally unavailable man. She said they broke up on 69th Street. Ivy visualized her mother and that man breaking into countless fragments, like a spilled box of jigsaw pieces. And she imagined them shattered in broken shards, being blown down the pavement of 69th Street.For some reason, on the drive home from Marcel’s apartment that next morning, all Ivy could think about was her mother and that faceless man in broken pieces, perhaps some aspects of them still stuck in cracks and crevices of the sidewalk, mistaken as grit. She couldn’t get the image of Marcel having his seizure out of her mind. It left a burning sensation in the center of her chest. An incessant flame torched her lungs, chest, and even the back door of her tongue. Witnessing someone you cared about experiencing a seizure was one of those things that scribed itself indelibly on the canvas of your mind. It was gut-wrenching. Graphic and out-of-body, it was the stuff that post traumatic stress syndrome was made of.Brandi L. Bates
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Thighs made of hymns, I read 'em like I'm reading runes. Now tell me where my future lies...your neck, can I Savion on it?Brandi L. Bates
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A writer will divine a metaphor from a pattern on a dress, or a gesture, because sunsets have been done before.Brandi L. Bates
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Whatever it is you want in this life, be it material things, a place you want to be, or an experience you want to have, you must first make it real in the realm of your consciousness.Brandi L. Bates
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Some books must be sipped slowly like a strong bourbon. Most books must be devoured more than once because as you age you distill more.Brandi L. Bates
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Remember to remember: sometimes your adversary is your biggest asset. Where would David be without Goliath? Jesus without Judas?Brandi L. Bates
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Sometimes transitional periods in life leave you feeling like a great big jumble of loose, split ends.Brandi L. Bates
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His ruby red rimmed moist eyes were two glasses of cranberry. He wore a cashmere sweater the color of Earl Grey tea...Brandi L. Bates
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Most people don't have real friends. You have people in your life waiting for opportunities to see what YOU can do for them.Brandi L. Bates
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Every morning I look in the mirror and remind myself: "No one owes you sh*t! " In this way, I am never disappointed. Never placing blame.Brandi L. Bates
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Do little things every day that no one else seems to want to do, be patient, and success will find you.Brandi L. Bates
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Never accept yourself as a finished product. Be a finished product when you die. As long as you have breath in your lungs, expand yourself.Brandi L. Bates
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I would tell my 14 year old self to never ever, ever put all of your money in one bank account. And love the ones who love you back. You're going to want to quit... D O N' T! Oh, and get everything in writing.Brandi L. Bates
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You will be perpetually unhappy if you continue to refuse to walk in your calling.Brandi L. Bates
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Drama does not just walk into our lives. Either we create it, invite it, or associate with it.Brandi L. Bates
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When my son speaks of playing sports, I've always told him: playing on the team is great, but aspire to be the guy who owns the team. I've always told my son: most of the guys on the team will end up bankrupt with bum knees, but not the guy who owns that franchise.Brandi L. Bates
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Understand: I don't ever want to be equal to any other being. I always want to be greater...in all things, in all circumstances.Brandi L. Bates
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The reason why many people remain on the bottom is because they play to 'not lose', as opposed to playing to win at all costs.Brandi L. Bates
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No one is born with equality. We all come here with varying degrees of opportunities, qualities, strengths, weaknesses, IQ, etc.Brandi L. Bates
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I don't want to be around people who accept me as is, in my unrefined state of becoming. I consistently want people around me who push and encourage me to be my ultimate best, who bring out the inner diamonds. I want to be around those intellectual giants who extract the gold within me, those who force me to read, to attend classes, seminars, conferences, and who steep me in an environment of perpetual growth and upward mobility. Not trying to be funny, but I've learned that I simply cannot afford to invest too much time around mediocrity. It's contagious.Brandi L. Bates
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Some roses grow through concrete. Remember that.Brandi L. Bates
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Everyone's life changes when they meet their Obi-Wan & their Yoda, or their Morpheus & their Oracle; those who help remove the veil.Brandi L. Bates
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Be selective in your battles...Brandi L. Bates
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Like caterpillars our metamorphosis begins with what comes from our mouth. Caterpillars spin silk cocoons from the mouth. We speak life or death, success or failure. All transformation starts with what comes from our mouth.Brandi L. Bates
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Fruit falls when you shake the tree. You have to keep making things happen.Brandi L. Bates
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On Slavery: The saddest slap in the face is we have NO monument, no real statues or memorials, no special day of Atonement or Remembrance (NOT ONE), no thanks for 400+ years of free labor, forced servitude across the Trans-Atlantic, ass beatings, buying ourselves and families out of slavery, rape and plunder..but everyone else has monuments, special museums, and even movies. This is what America thinks of black people, so-called black president and all, who has been largely silent on this subject..we'll even celebrate Leprechauns, Easter Bunnies, and Secretary's Day before we acknowledge our history.Brandi L. Bates
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Quality sells itself. No hype needed.Brandi L. Bates
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The greatest minds are like film, they take the negatives and develop themselves in darkness...Brandi L. Bates
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The light of an early Summer afternoon as it slips toward dusk has so many good things wrapped up in it..Brandi L. Bates