Flippers Quotes & Sayings

A fucking rat race that is. CosaNostra Pizza doesn't have any competition. Competition goes against the Mafia ethic. You don't work harder because you're competing against some identical operation down the street. You work harder because everything is on the line. Your name, your honor, your family, your life. Those burger flippers might have a better life expectancy - but what kind of life is it anyway, you have to ask yourself. That's why nobody, not even the Nipponese, can move pizzas faster than CosaNostra. The Deliverator is proud to wear the uniform, proud to drive the car, proud to march up the front walks of innumerable Burbclave homes, a grim vision in ninja black, a pizza on his shoulder, red LED digits — Neal Stephenson

I think about pinball, and how being a kid's like being shot up the firing lane and there's no veering left or right; or you're just sort of propelled. But once you clear the top, like when you're sixteen, seventeen, or eighteen, suddenly there's a thousand different paths you can take, some amazing, others not. Tiny little differences in angles and speed'll totally alter what happens to you later, so a fraction of an inch to the right, and the ball'll just hit a pinger and a dinger and fly down between your flippers, no messing, a waste of 10 p. But a fraction to the left and it's action in the play zone, bumpers and kickers, ramps and slingshots and fame on the high-score table. — David Mitchell

Being on the side of the Light is much tougher than being on the side of the Dark ... — Sergei Lukyanenko

Some in Westminster have talked about her receiving a state funeral when she dies, which seems a bizarre sort of tribute to someone who believed the state should do as little as possible. It would be far more appropriate to allow competitive bids from private companies to run the funeral arrangements. 'And we now go over live to Westminster, where state leaders are lining up for Lady Thatcher's funeral sponsored by McDonald's. And there we see the coffin respectfully borne on the shoulders of six part-time burger-flippers dressed in the official Ronald McDonald costume, before the private cremation when the body will be flame-grilled with gherkins and a slice of cheese.'
It's what she would have wanted. — John O'Farrell

Suddenly, Lisa pulled her face out of the water and her legs started flailing, the long flippers on her feet dropping so low their movement raised sand from the ocean floor. Hank lifted his head to check on her.

"What's wrong?"

"Holy crap," she sputtered. She stared at him with wide blue eyes. "I think I found Nemo! — Elle Rush

The round silence of night,
one note on the stave
of the infinite.

Ripe with lost poems,
I step naked into the street.
The blackness riddled
by the singing of crickets:
sound,
that dead
will-o'-the-wisp,
that musical light
perceived
by the spirit.

A thousand butterfly skeletons
sleep within my walls.

A wild crowd of young breezes
over the river.

- Hour of Stars (1920) — Federico Garcia Lorca

It's a bit like a fledgeling duck, finding your flippers. — Martin Freeman

Neither I nor the four flippers of the sea-bear of the Boreal ocean have been able to solve the riddle of life. — Comte De Lautreamont

Programs to demonstrate Darwinian evolution are akin to a pinball machine. The steel ball bounces around differently every time but eventually falls down the little hole behind the flippers. — Robert J. Marks II

I used to think how dangerous the world would have been if these ants were the size of dogs. They would have cut the humans in two halves just by a single strike of their flippers. — Abhishek Leela Pandey

I love my Force Fins, which are the kind of fins Special Forces use and really are adapted from the fins of fish. They're very efficient. They are so beautiful, a pair is in the Museum of Modern Art. The set I have are ruby red. I call them my ruby flippers. — Sylvia Earle

This is Necropolis Enforcement. Drop any non-organic weapons, put your arms, flippers, claws, tentacles, or any other extremities up, and walk, slither, stomp, crawl, et cetera, out of the darkness or be exterminated with extreme prejudice. — Gini Koch

He was wearing a scuba mask and snorkel set pushed off his handsome face . . . a set of flippers that slapped over the slick floor as he approached the pool's edge . . . a slingshot bathing suit that was hot pink . . . and a children's — J.R. Ward

Remember that no relationship is a total waste of time. You can always learn something about yourself. — H. Jackson Brown Jr.

As hardware doubles its density every 18-24 months, courtesy of Moore's Law, and as software eats the world, technology will replace a broad swathe of jobs outright - from burger-flippers to diagnosticians - and atomize many others from full-time positions into gigs performed by many fungible workers. Tech, in short, will eat jobs. — Jon Evans

Maybe if I put gardenias in both ears, or wore flippers over both hands, somebody might take a second look. But that'd be it. They'd put it all behind them after three steps. Their eyes not looking at anything. Nor my eyes. I felt emptied out, a blank. Would I ever again have anything to give to anyone? — Haruki Murakami

My father ran a famous L.A. nightclub complete with roller-rink - Flippers - in the early Eighties which was the West Coast's answer to Studio 54. — Liberty Ross

The right man won't care — Cassandra Clare

Up on the bridge of the Anubis, the storm paws loudly on the glass, great wet flippers falling at random in out of the night whap! the living shape visible just for the rainbow edge of the sound - it takes a certain kind of maniac, at least a Polish cavalry officer, to stand in this pose behind such brittle thin separation, and stare each blow full in its muscularity. Behind Procalowski the clinometer bob goes to and fro with his ship's rolling: a pendulum in a dream. Stormlight has turned the lines of his face black, black as his eyes, black as the watchcap cocked so tough and salty aslant the furrows of his forehead. Light clusters, clear, deep, on the face of the radio gear . . . fans up softly off the dial of the pelorus . . . spills out portholes onto the white river. — Thomas Pynchon

I think of the turtles swimming steadily against the current all the way to Ascension. I think of them swimming through all that golden-green water over the dark, over the chill of the deeps and the jaws of the dark. And I think of the sun over the water, the sun through the water, the eye holding the sun, being held by it with no thought and only the rhythm of the going, the steady wing-strokes of the flippers in the water. Then it doesn't seen hard to believe. It seems the only way to do it, the only way in fact to be: swimming, swimming, the eye held by the sun, no sharks in the mind, nothing in the mind. — Russell Hoban

If you're in the middle of the ocean with no flippers and no life preserver and you hear a helicopter, this is music. You have to adjust to your needs at the moment. — Tom Waits

He, the true writer, is the department store dummy at the very center of the whole establishment, the one left alone on display all night, a price tag stapled to every piece of clothing they've yanked onto him, binoculars and frog flippers included. He is the neutral, generic human form, the gray center who must always assume disguises - in order to be seen and, therefore, to feel himself. — Allan Gurganus

It all began when ... they're funny, those words. Everyone uses them, without thinking what they mean. When does anything begin? With everyone it begins when you're born. Or before that, when your parents got married. Or before that, when your parents were born. Or when your ancestors colonised the place. Or when humans came squishing out of the mud and slime, dropped off their flippers and fins, and started to walk. But all the same, all that aside, for what's happened to us there was quite a definite beginning — John Marsden

There's something to be said about practice-even if I'm not actually practicing anything. Just hanging out in the water, holding my breath, withering my skin to grandma-like wrinkles.
I pull off the flippers Toraf brought me and chuck them onto shore. I keep my back turned while he maneuvers his shorts into place. "Are you decent?" I call after a few seconds. No matter how many times I tell him I can't see into the water yet, he insists I'm just trying to look at his "eel." For crying out loud.
"Oh, I'm more than decent. I'm actually quite a catch."
I couldn't agree more. Toraf is good-looking, funny, and considerate-which makes me question Rayna's attitude. — Anna Banks

Unconscious bias influences our lives in exactly the same manner as that undercurrent that took me out so far that day. When undercurrents aid us ... we are invariably unconscious of them. We never credit the undercurrent for carrying us so swiftly; we credit ourselves, our talents, our skills. I was completely sure that it was my swimming ability that was carrying me out so swiftly that day. It did not matter that I knew in my heart that I was a very average swimmer, it did not matter that I knew that I should have worn a life jacket and flippers. On the way out, the idea of humility never occurred to me. It was only at the moment I turned back, when I had to go against the current, that I even realized the current existed. — Shankar Vedantam

He turned to look at me straight on, and I saw a kind of purplish fire in his eyes, a hint that this whiny, plump little man was only showing me the tiniest bit of his true nature. I saw visions of grape vines choking unbelievers to death, drunken warriors insane with battle lust, sailors screaming as their hands turned to flippers, their faces elongating into dolphin snouts. I knew that if I pushed him, Mr D would show me worse things. He would plant a disease in my brain that would leave me wearing a straitjacket in a rubber room for the rest of my life. 'Would you like to test me, child?' he said quietly. 'No. No, sir. — Rick Riordan

The only way one should buy stocks is if you understand the underlying business. You stay within the circle of competence. You buy businesses you understand. — Mohnish Pabrai

I have big friends who won't go swimming because they're too embarrassed about it. I feel that's such a shame, because actually people should be encouraging fat people who are exercising to do it, not pointing and laughing. — Jo Brand

Other people - store clerks, burger flippers, software engineers, the whole vocabulary of meaningless jobs that make up Life in America - other people just rely on plain old competition. Better flip your burgers or debug your subroutines faster than your high school classmate two blocks down the strip is flipping or debugging, because we're in competition with those guys, and people notice these things.
What a fucking rat race that is. — Neal Stephenson

I volunteered at Meals on Wheels, which is a place where you go and deliver healthy meals to people who are more homebound. I did that, and I had so much fun doing it, and I'm definitely planning on doing it again. — Kendall Jenner

I hoped they couldn't run very fast with those stubby little legs and flippers, but they waddled along pretty well. — Rick Riordan

Astounded - and indifferent - for he was a man who, in effect, had no 'day before'. — Oliver Sacks

Night never needs a shade
but it requires to fade
into the grin of twinkling stars
where light is just a glint of scars — Munia Khan

Invest in places that make sense so you can afford to live in places that don't make sense. — Jason Hartman

Let not the wise disturb the mind of the unwise in their selfish work. Let him, working with devotion, show them the joy of good work. — Anonymous

I've seen the needle
And the damage done
A little part of it in everyone
But every junkie's
Like a settin' sun. — Neil Young

Nothing is so charming as the ruddy tints that happiness can shed around a garret room. — Victor Hugo

This work is the link between my Dear Natalie piece and my upcoming Agatha work. It bridges that lapse in time and shows how my thinking has changed. It shows me telling a story through the surreal and trying to use thought fragments alone to show a tortured existence. This piece was written after the Dear Natalies and before the Agatha mystery, but it is meant to be read after you've already read both.
This book is a bridge between two books, which would make it a bridge between two bridges. That's strange, but I've seen stranger. Like the time I woke up in a fish tank, having morphed into a goldfish during my sleep. I still fear the sound of a flushing toilet, and since then I refuse to let myself fall asleep while wearing flippers.
This book is 3,088 words of pure nonsense, strung together like pearls hurled at bacon. Yum! — Jarod Kintz

He woke whimpering in the night and the man held him. Shh, he said. Shh. It's okay.
I had a bad dream.
I know.
Should I tell you what it was?
If you want to.
I had this penguin that you wound up and it would waddle and flap its flippers. And we were in that house that we used to live in and it came around the corner but nobody had wound it up and it was really scary.
Okay.
It was a lot scarier in the dream.
I know. Dreams can be really scary.
Why did I have that scary dream?
I dont know. But it's okay now. I'm going to put some wood on the fire. You go to sleep.
The boy didnt answer. Then he said: The winder wasnt turning. — Cormac McCarthy

What do you know about being a person?"
She sniffed primly. "We have a lot to discuss. This would all be much easier if you'd cooperate. Wouldn't you rather be useful, make a difference to humanity, than be locked up in this cell for the rest of your life?"
I laughed. "Don't talk to me about humanity. I know a pair of freaking seals that have more humanity in their flippers than you do in your whole organization. — Kiersten White

Word of mouth is the most valuable form of marketing, but you can't buy it. You can only deliver it. And you have to really deliver. — G-Eazy

It really bothers me how in books it seems like the only two choices are perfection or self-hatred. — E. Lockhart

I guess they're having what you might call panic attacks. It's an old place and smells a little musty. The hallways are sort of long and narrow. The exhibits are gory. The people are listening to some creepy, nasty stuff on their earphones. It apparently just overwhelms some of them, especially on a busy day when there might be some congestion in the rooms and hallways. You'll have flippers, fainters and barfers every so often.'
'It's sounding more fun all the time.' 'Not as much fun as the heart attacks.' 'You get heart attacks?'
'I don't, they do. Not often, though. — Richard Laymon

Our wings serve as flippers that carry us across the ocean; not in the sky!
Why, us penguins have so much fun time in the water, we don't even want to fly! — Jasmine Jean