Tinny Quotes & Sayings

The very first hit factory was T.B. Harms, a Tin Pan Alley publishing company overseen by Max Dreyfus. With staff writers like Jerome Kern, George and Ira Gershwin, Cole Porter, and Richard Rodgers, T.B. Harms was the dominant publisher of popular music in the early twentieth century. Dreyfus called his writers "the boys" and installed pianos for them to compose on around the office on West Twenty-Eighth, the street that gave Tin Pan Alley its name, allegedly for the tinny-sounding pianos passersby heard from the upper-story windows of the row houses. The sheet-music sellers also employed piano players in their street-level stores, who would perform the Top 40 of the 1920s for browsing customers. — John Seabrook

Museum architectural search committees have invariably included the Kimbell in their international scouting tours of exemplary art galleries (a practice pioneered by Velma Kimbell, the founder's widow, in 1964). Those groups no doubt respond to the Kimbell with suitable reverence, but given the buildings they later commissioned, many post-Bilbao museum patrons obviously wanted something quite different. The disparity between Kahn's museums and recent examples of that genre parallels the discrepancy he saw between postwar Modernism and ancient Classicism: "Our stuff looks tinny compared to it." At a time when commercial values are systematically corrupting the museum - one of civilized society's most elevating experiences - the example of Kahn, among the most courageous and successful architectural reformers of all time, seems more relevant and cautionary than ever. — Martin Filler

She finds the door wide open and the place empty, another failed dotcom joining the officescape of the time - tarnished metallic surfaces, shaggy gray soundproofing, Steelcase screens and Herman Miller workpods - already beginning to decompose, littered, dust gathering . . . Well, almost empty. From some distant cubicle comes a tinny electronic melody Maxine recognizes as "Korobushka," the anthem of nineties workplace fecklessness, playing faster and faster and accompanied by screams of anxiety. Ghost vendor indeed. Has she entered some supernatural timewarp where the shades of office layabouts continue to waste uncountable person-hours playing Tetris? Between that and Solitaire for Windows, no wonder the tech sector tanked. — Thomas Pynchon

Fabulous Jack said, reaching down and plucking a crimson flower. A small scream sounded from it as he severed the stem. He smiled maliciously, then started stomping with abandon through the beds of blossoms, a chorus of tinny, shrill screams punctuating every step. — Kiersten White

My buildings are not particularly expensive. It is not a tin shed. If you want a tinny car, you pay for that. — Zaha Hadid

This kiss is zeroes and ones jumbled
and tossed into a pneumatic system,
unscrambled at the end and scrawled
onto a tape recorder slowly rolling
at the side of your bed,
then slapping back, reverbed
off the ringer, a tinny phantom
of the smooch like a smack on
an aluminum can, up the same
veins through the belly of the same satellite
and softly to the side of my head; — Mike Doughty

He spoke in one of the American accents; Lydia couldn't distinguish among them. To her they all sounded dry and tinny. Almost quack-like. — Gregory Maguire

Harl whirled round, all his attention ... on Skulker. "What is that on your carapace?""What?" Skulker tried to peer back ... A tinny voice issued from somewhere ... It took Skulker a moment to recognize it as that of the human male he earlier encountered. "It's CTD gecko mine - yield of about five kilotones." Skulker's shriek terminated in a blast that peeled back four square kilometers of jungle canopy and sunk a crater down to the bedrock. — Neal Asher

There are those who wrap themselves in flags and blow the tinny trumpet of patriotism as a means of fooling the people. — George Galloway

What does she look like?" he asked again, his voice taking on a tinny phonograph quality as his sister consumed my attention.
"A candle flame that can't decide if it has the strength to keep burning. — Cat Winters

The day had begun to feel tinny: a pretend day, a dream day, that for some unaccountable reason she had to go on and on with as if it were real. — Sarah Waters

If you can see a cop in your rear view mirror - no matter how far back the cop is - TURN! The sooner you turn the better. Your goal while driving should be to never let a law enforcement officer into a position where he can pull you over. Don't even let them come close enough to read your tag. — Ian Tinny

Very often, things that people may think come from the writer, very often don't. There's a lot of cooks in the kitchen when it comes to making a movie. When you hear a line of dialogue that sounds kind of tinny, it's pretty easy to cite the screenwriter. But there's a lot of stuff that goes into making a movie. — Evan Daugherty

What I want from the church, or any faith community, I see now, is a look between human beings that says we are knitted together, standing in a circle, holding each other up, waiting for the next ax to fall, rather than persons following a crowned Jesus, believing in an oppressive creed and tinny, false hope. That "religion" is about wanting the thing to last forever and make the pain go away. The reality is, instead, more about Jesus kneeling in the dust making a paste of spit and dirt. The reality is much more raw. — Nora Gallagher

In a world where nearly everything that passes for art is tinny and commercial and often, in addition, hollow and academic, I argue
by reason and by banging the table
for an old-fashioned view of what art is and does and what the fundamental business of critics ought therefore to be. Not that I want joy taken out of the arts; but even frothy entertainment is not harmed by a touch of moral responsibility, at least an evasion of too fashionable simplifications. — John Gardner

When I made my way across childhood to the tinny AM radio, it was dark. Lights out. I listened intently. More intently than I ever had before. Something was speaking to my unformed-ness like a long lost friend. Something that I had never met but forgotten nonetheless. I was 'realizing' that music was 'different' from other things in life. — Jane Siberry

Why did you do this?" He was shaking. "Just tell me why."
I tried to muster up some of the righteous indignation that I'd felt on Friday night as I said, "You knocked over my gravestone!" But even to my ears the words sounded tinny and pathetic.
Dan's face was pale. "It was just a gravestone, Chelsea. And it was a mistake. I told you that already, and I meant it. I've never lied to you. My God, can't you tell the difference between a gravestone and a person you love? Can't you tel which one matters?"
But if I had to point to the real problem in my life, it's that I've never known the difference between a gravestone and a person I love. I have never known which is which until it's too late.
"All's fair in love and war," I reminded him, aiming for Tawny's tone. But my voice came out sounding just like me.
"Oh, yeah? And which is this?" he asked. "Love or war? — Leila Sales

When you hear a great two-track of a performance in Carnegie Hall, let's say, it sounds like you're right there at that moment. It's true to reality. And the closer it gets, once it gets too technical, it becomes very tinny to hear notes. It doesn't sound right. It has to be natural. — Tony Bennett

Jace's ears were ringing with a harsh, tinny sound. He felt dizzy. "Even Valentine," he said, "even Valentine would never do that - " "Please," said Sebastian. "Do you really think my father won't go through with what he's planned?" "Our father," Jace said. Sebastian glanced down at him. His hair was a white halo; he looked like the sort of bad angel who might have followed Lucifer out of heaven. "Pardon me," he said, with some amusement. "Are you praying?" "No. I said our father. I meant Valentine. Not your father. Ours." For — Cassandra Clare

It doesn't matter how cheap and tinny the show is ... Soon as the house lights go down and the band starts up, I could cry. — Frank D. Gilroy

It closed with a muffled thump that whispered money into the silent interior. The sound of my car door closing was vaguely reminiscent of a nickel hitting the bottom of a tuna can - cheap and tinny. — M. Leighton

By focusing on the interior of a speaker's larynx and using infrared, he was able to convert the visible vibrations of the vocal cords into sound of fair quality, but that did not satisfy him. He worked for a while on vibrations picked up from panes of glass in windows and on framed pictures, and he experimented briefly with the diaphragms in speaker systems, intercoms and telephones. He kept on into October without stopping, and finally achieved a device that would give tinny but recognizable sound from any vibrating surface - a wall, a floor, even the speaker's own cheek or forehead. — Damon Knight

There's no working radio tower in the country. It's all static," she said, without looking to him. "I know. But 102.3 plays the best. Not too tinny. Full and robust. If a cello were to perform static, it would sound like this." She shook her head and turned the dial. "I prefer 93.9," she said. She still hadn't looked at him. "It's too thin and monotone. There's no variation. It just sounds like static." "And that's why I like it," she said. "It sounds like static is supposed to sound. — Anthony Marra

I don't know one thing about the future. I don't know what the next hour will hold. There may be sickness, accident, personal or world catastrophe. Before this day is over I may have to deal with death, pain, loss, rejection. I don't know what the future holds for me, for those I love, for my nation, for this world. Still, despite my ignorance and surrounded by tinny optimists and cowardly pessimists, I say that God will accomplish his will, and I cheerfully persist in living in the hope that nothing will separate me from Christ's love. — Eugene H. Peterson

Talk of citizenship today is often thin and tinny. The word has a faintly old-fashioned feel to it when used in everyday conversation. When evoked in national politics, it's usually accompanied by the shrill whine of a descending culture-war mortar. — Eric Liu

Aunt Tinny's man, never married, married man — Vievee Francis

The unpleasant sound Bush is emitting as he traipses from one conservative gathering to another is a thin, tinny "arf" - the sound of a lap dog. — George Will

And floating in the Sound was a triangle of silver scales, trembling a little to the stiff, tinny drip of the banjoes on the lawn. — F Scott Fitzgerald

The silence that makes it possible to hear God speak also makes it possible for us to hear the world's words for what they really are - tinny and unconvincing lies. — Eugene H. Peterson

It is true that success is the most boring thing, it is tinny and brittle, failure runs deeper. Success is dangerous. I have a very complicated relationship with that word. — Arundhati Roy