Piston Quotes & Sayings

You been shopping? no i been shopping. well what'd you buy? i bought a piston engine. well how you going to cook it? you don't cook it it's a piston engine! well your not going to eat it raw are you? oh, i never thought of that ... — Graham Chapman

You're cheery, which is important, you're cheeky, which is more important, and you've got a lovely bottom, which is all-important. The ass of a man is the piston that drives the world, and you have a good one. — Stephen King

To honour its first creation, no sound was permitted within the home of Muse for a full year, no sound save that of its Art: the slow, crisp, click of polished brass gears, the sensual hiss of pneumatic release, the insidious sibilance and decisive thud of a withdrawing and thrusting piston, and the soft groan of the boy held within the cube as each rod ran him through, over and over and over.
Powered by this action, the music box played.
Ashes, ashes, we all fall down...
And another piston rammed home.
A mechanism of intricate complexity exchanging great pain for a little beauty. This, here, then, was Life.
Muse was fulfilled. — Cameron Rogers

An automobile piston should be round; but this phrase means nothing unless there is a way to measure the roundness of a particular piston. — David Salsburg

Stay hungry. It worked for Michelangelo, it worked for Picasso, and it works for a hundred thousand artists who do it not for love (although that might play a part) but in order to put food on the table. If you want to translate the world, you need to use your appetites. Does this surprise you? It shouldn't. There's no creation without talent, I give you that, but talent is cheap. Talent goes begging. Hunger is the piston of art. — Stephen King

I must say Ive always composed music from the point of view of the performers. — Walter Piston

The ass of a man is the piston that drives the world, and you have a good one. In my prime, I would have corked it with my thumb and then eaten you alive. Preferably by the pool of Le Meridien in Monte Carlo, with an admiring audience to applaud my frontside and backside efforts. — Stephen King

Sherlock Holmes took his bottle from the corner of the mantelpiece, and his hypodermic syringe from its neat morocco case. With his long, white, nervous fingers he adjusted the delicate needle and rolled back his left shirtcuff. For some little time his eyes rested thoughtfully upon the sinewy forearm and wrist, all dotted and scarred with innumerable puncture-marks. Finally, he thrust the sharp point home, pressed down the tiny piston, and sank back into the velvet-lined armchair with a long sigh of satisfaction. — Arthur Conan Doyle

When he ran from a cop, his transitions from accelerating walk to easy jog trot to brisk canter to headlong gallop to flogged-piston sprint ... were as distinct and as soberly in order as an automatic gearshift. — James Agee

Saylor and Beau worked together not like a piston head turned by a camshaft, but like the torque created from such synchronicity. — Suzanne Cowles

The novel begins in a railway station, a locomotive huffs, steam from a piston covers the opening of the chapter, a cloud of smoke hides part of the first paragraph. — Italo Calvino

Without a guiding organization, the energy of the masses would dissipate like steam not enclosed in a piston box. But nevertheless what moves things is not the piston or the box, but the steam. — Leon Trotsky

Does it stand, but not straight enough? Is there a bend in the tool? Leaning left like the Marxist-Leninist Party? To the right, like the Jan Sangh fascists? Or wobbling mindlessly in the middle, like the Congress Party? Fear not, for it can be straightened! Does it refuse to harden even with rubbing and massage? Then try my ointment, and it will become hard as the government's heart! All your troubles will vanish with this amazing ointment made from the organs of these wild animals! Capable of turning all men into engine-drivers! Punctual as the trains in the Emergency! Back and forth you will shunt with piston power every night! The railways will want to harness your energy! Apply this ointment once a day, and your wife will be proud of you! Apply it twice a day, and she will have to share you with the whole block! — Rohinton Mistry

Yah-da, yah-da, yah-da, yah-da, yah, carburetor, gear ratio, compression, yah-da-yah, piston, plugs, intake, yah-da-yah, on and on and on. That is the romantic face of the classic mode. — Robert M. Pirsig

Hunger is the piston of art. — Stephen King

Tallow turned the corner into Bat and Scarly's office to be greeted by a large plastic robot on the bench waving its arms and shouting, "Say hello to my l'il frien'" in an electronically processed voiced as a small plastic penis repeatedly jabbed out from its groin on a short metal piston.
Bat emerged from behind the thing. "Don't judge me," he said. "I got bored. — Warren Ellis

That was enough dialogue for a few pages - he had to get into some fast, red-hot action.
There weren't any more hitches now. The story flowed like a torrent. The margin bell chimed almost staccato, the roller turned with almost piston-like continuity, the pages sprang up almost like blobs of batter from a pancake skillet. The beer kept rising in the glass and, contradictorily, steadily falling lower. The cigarettes gave up their ghosts, long thin gray ghosts, in a good cause; the mortality rate was terrible.
His train of thought, the story's lifeline, beer-lubricated but no whit impeded, flashed and sputtered and coursed ahead like lightning in a topaz mist, and the loose fingers and hiccuping keys followed as fast as they could. ("The Penny-A-Worder") — Cornell Woolrich

As he entered her, as the piston of lovemaking grew slick with her clear oils, she thought about being
crushed to death in his arms, and she - thought how odd it was for her to consider such a thing, and how
much stranger still to consider it without fear and with something very like desire, a melancholy longing, a
curiously pleasant anticipation, not a death wish but a sweet resignation,
and she knew that Dr. Cauvel
would say this was a sign of her sickness, that now she was prepared
to surrender even her ultimate
responsibility
(the fundamental responsibility for her own life, for deciding whether or not she was
worthy of life), and he would say that she needed to rely more on herself and less on Max, but she didn't
care, didn't care at all; she just felt the power, Max's power, and began to call his name, dug her fingers
into his unyielding muscle and surrendered
willingly. — Dean Koontz

Press the button, pump the water, build the pressure, push the piston, press the button. It's the perfect job. — Tori Amos