Fire Engines

Famous quotes containing the words fire and/or engines:

    There was the murdered corpse, in covert laid,
    And violent death in thousand shapes displayed;
    The city to the soldier’s rage resigned;
    Successless wars, and poverty behind;
    Ships burnt in fight, or forced on rocky shores,
    And the rash hunter strangled by the boars;
    The newborn babe by nurses overlaid;
    And the cook caught within the raging fire he made.
    Geoffrey Chaucer (1340?–1400)

    America is like one of those old-fashioned six-cylinder truck engines that can be missing two sparkplugs and have a broken flywheel and have a crankshaft that’s 5000 millimeters off fitting properly, and two bad ball-bearings, and still runs. We’re in that kind of situation. We can have substantial parts of the population committing suicide, and still run and look fairly good.
    Thomas McGuane (b. 1939)