"You know, it occurs to me that the best way you hurt rich people is by turning them into poor people."
— Billy Ray Valentine, Trading Places
"so the teacher is now homeless and totally broke and has no form of valid identification she is in for a one hell of bad time"
— Eraser35 on Emilia Lud(o)well after she was forcibly turned into a half-demon.
"The people I meet all look down on me. The words I say are neglected and can't be applied to my teeth. I've lost my job, I'm ashamed, I can't even see my family. Even if I try to work, I can only do as much as a teacher, but the work of a teacher can only be tolerated by royals. It was miserable every day. Even if I worked to make money, I was immediately faced with hostility because I was mixed blood, I got quarreled, I got only little money, and my food was poor and dirty. I don't even know what I'm living in, I feel like I was just breathing desperately..."
— Emilia Lud(o)well on her life after her Forced Transformation into a half-demon, The Misfit of Demon King Academy
It all happened so quickly: the invitation to dinner, the Proxy Kiss, the Embrace, the haven on the Riviera. Then you had one bad month, and everything went to shit. Unions in the States. Textiles from the East tripled in cost. Even the fucking freight company you used went under. A 27% profit margin vanished almost immediately under a seven-figure debt. Needless to say, the anziani weren't impressed: none of them would back your next play. Nobody wanted a once-successful neonate whose greatest legacy was the number of partners he'd dragged into his own clusterfuck. Even your mother turned you out of her haven once it became a social burden to have you lingering around the villa.
—The Failure, Vampire: The Masquerade - Clanbook: Giovanni (Revised)
"This note once held a pearl as big as your eye! Look at me now, look at me now! I'm wearing a cardboard belt!"
— Max Bialystock, The Producers
Once I lived the life of a millionaire,
Spent all my money, didn't have any care
Took all my friends out for a mighty good time,
Bought bootleg liquor, champagne and wine
Then I began to fall so low,
Lost all my good friends, had nowhere to go
I get my hands on a dollar again,
I'll hang on to it 'til that eagle grins
'Cause nobody knows you
When you're down and out
In your pocket, not one penny,
And as for friends, you don't have any
Spent all my money, didn't have any care
Took all my friends out for a mighty good time,
Bought bootleg liquor, champagne and wine
Then I began to fall so low,
Lost all my good friends, had nowhere to go
I get my hands on a dollar again,
I'll hang on to it 'til that eagle grins
'Cause nobody knows you
When you're down and out
In your pocket, not one penny,
And as for friends, you don't have any
—Nobody Knows You When You're Down And Out, Eric Clapton
Timothy Cavendish: Help, Denny, please. Thirty grand would be a start.
Denholme Cavendsh: Damn it to hell, Tim, my bank crashed! We were bled dry by those bloodsuckers at Lloyds! The days when I had that kind of spondulicks at my beck and call are gone, gone, gone! Our house is mortgaged, twice over! I'm the mighty fallen, you're the minuscule fallen.
Denholme Cavendsh: Damn it to hell, Tim, my bank crashed! We were bled dry by those bloodsuckers at Lloyds! The days when I had that kind of spondulicks at my beck and call are gone, gone, gone! Our house is mortgaged, twice over! I'm the mighty fallen, you're the minuscule fallen.
Once I was winning
In fortune and fame
Everything that I dreamed for
To get a start in life's game
Then suddenly it happened
I lost every dime
But I'm richer by far
With a satisfied mind
In fortune and fame
Everything that I dreamed for
To get a start in life's game
Then suddenly it happened
I lost every dime
But I'm richer by far
With a satisfied mind
—A Satisfied Mind, Johnny Cash
For this one occasion, when he had to be punctual, he bought a watch, and all it does is make him nervous. It is a piece of recyclable Polish street shit that cost lest than a single espresso, graphic film on a hexagon of varnished fibreboard, a bright orange cloth strip. It runs on the faint myo-electric field generated by Alex's wrist muscles - it's a time-binding parasite. There's a black eagle impressed on the watch-face, and the eagle raises its wings and breathes fire when Alex tilts his wrist to look at it. The hands are black silvers generated by the same chip that runs the eagle. The graphic film is already wrinkling; the eagle has a broken wing; the hour hand is kinked. It is eighteen minutes past three.
Alex once had a genuine antique stainless steel oyster Rolex; it came with a certificate proving it was manufactured in Switzerland, in 1967. It was given to him by the Wizard - the Wizard was always giving him stuff like that, in the days when Alex was the best and brightest of the Wizard's apprentices. But Alex lost the Rolex when he was banged up with the Wizard and the rest of his crew. Either the cops or one of Lexis's asshole toy boys swiped it. Alex lost a lot then, which is the reason why he's in a hole with Billy Rock and making risky, desperate deals with junior grade Indonesian diplomats.
—Fairyland, by Paul J McAuley
Dr. Facilier: Your lifestyle's high, but your funds are low/You need to marry a pretty honey whose daddy got dough! [now speaking] Mum and Dad cut you off, huh, pretty boy?
Prince Naveen: Sad, but true!
Prince Naveen: Sad, but true!
Once upon a time there was a miller. He lived contentedly with his wife. They had money and land, and their prosperity increased from year to year. But misfortune comes overnight. Just as their wealth had increased, so did it decrease from year to year, until finally the miller scarcely owned even the mill where he lived.
"All that wealth...vanished in one fateful moment. My achievements that took years to accomplish, gone overnight! My money!!! The money I worked for to the point of sacrificing my home life!!! It's laughable!!! Go on and laugh!!! Ah ha ha ha!!!"
—Jude Heartfilia, Fairy Tail
"HEY EVERY !! IT'S ME!!!
EV3RY BUDDY 'S FAVORITE [Number1RatedSalesman1997]
SPAMT-
SPAMTON G. SPAMTON!! [laughs]
WOAH! IF IT ISN"T A...LIGHT nER! HEY-HE Y HEY!!
LOOKS LIKE YOU'RE [All alone on a late night]?
ALL YOUR FRIENDS, [Abandoned you for the slime] YOU ARE?
SALES, GONE DOWN THE [Drain] [Drain]?
LIVING IN A GODDAMN GARBAGE CAN?!"
EV3RY BUDDY 'S FAVORITE [Number1RatedSalesman1997]
SPAMT-
SPAMTON G. SPAMTON!! [laughs]
WOAH! IF IT ISN"T A...LIGHT nER! HEY-HE Y HEY!!
LOOKS LIKE YOU'RE [All alone on a late night]?
ALL YOUR FRIENDS, [Abandoned you for the slime] YOU ARE?
SALES, GONE DOWN THE [Drain] [Drain]?
LIVING IN A GODDAMN GARBAGE CAN?!"
— Spamton, Deltarune
And every day he rode the rich merchant to the tavern, and made him drink up all his money, and his house, his clothes, his horses and carts and sledges—everything he had—until he was as poor as his brother had been in the beginning.
America finds itself nearing the end of the cheap-oil age having invested its national wealth in a living arrangement—suburban sprawl—that has no future. When media commentators cast about struggling to explain what has happened in our country economically, they uniformly overlook the colossal misinvestment that suburbia represents—a prodigious, unparalleled misallocation of resources. This is quite apart from its social, spiritual, and ecological deficiencies as an everyday environment. We constructed an armature for daily living that simply won’t work without liberal supplies of cheap oil, and very soon we will be without both the oil needed to run it and the wealth needed to replace it. Nor are we likely to come up with a miraculous energy replacement for oil that will allow us to run all this everyday infrastructure even remotely the same way.
— James Howard Kunstler, The Long Emergency, p. 17.
