Canteen Quotes

• I never thought I want to do anything, really, except not go to work properly and turn up at the same place every day and eat sandwiches in the same canteen, if I can possibly help it, as I don't think I'd be very good at it.

  Dylan Moran

  Funny, Humor, Thinking

  "Biography / Personal Quotes". www.imdb.com.

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• Rebus was eating breakfast in the canteen and wishing there was more caffeine in the coffee, or more coffee in the coffee come to that.

  Ian Rankin

  Coffee, Wish, Breakfast

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• A canteen I remember vividly, and maybe one other thing, I can't remember. And I knew then that he had bought them in an army surplus store that day and he wanted to maybe enhance himself in my eyes, and say, "Well, yes, I have been in the army." Or [he] simply just didn't want to disappoint me. It could have been one or the other. But I knew that he had lied to me. And this filled me with a tremendous sort of anger towards him. At the same time, knowing he was trying to please me, so feeling good about him.

  Paul Auster

  Eye, Army, Please Me

  Interview with Lotte Hansen, www.timeout.com.

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• One of the great mind destroyers of college education is the belief that if it's very complex, it's very profound.

  Dennis Prager

  College, Profound, Mind

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• First Lieutenant Jimmy Cross carried letters from a girl named Martha, a junior at Mount Sebastian College in New Jersey. They were not love letters, but Lieutenant Cross was hoping, so he kept them folded in plastic at the bottom of his rusack. In the late afternoon, after a day's march, he would dig his foxhole, wash his hands under a canteen, unwrap the letters, hold them with the tips of his fingers, and spend the last hour of light pretending.

  Tim O'Brien

  Girl, College, Light

  Tim O'Brien (2009). “The Things They Carried”, p.1, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

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• I worked in Tesco's staff canteen because I fancied a boy on the tills. I served him his lunch in a hairnet and tan tights. Not just that, of course - I had a lovely white onesie.

  Lena Headey

  Boys, Lunch, White

  Interview with Rosanna Greenstreet, www.theguardian.com. August 17, 2013.

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• The Canteen Boy, the reason you feel bad for him and you can laugh is because he, and I guess a lot of my characters, they don't notice they're getting made fun of. So they'll say something back that's not that great a quip, but in their mind they won the argument.

  Adam Sandler

  Fun, Character, Boys

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• Cheats, liars and criminals may resist every blandishment while respectable gentlemen have been moved to appalling treasons by watery cabbage in a departmental canteen.

  John le Carre

  Loyalty, Liars, Gentleman

  The Spy Who Came in from the Cold (1963).

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• Most of the boys would come with bits of equipment that their fathers had given them from their war days - helmets, canteens, binoculars, these kinds of things - that leant a kind of authenticity to the games we were playing. But, of course, my father never gave me anything. So I began to question him. You know, Why don't you have anything from the war? And I think he was...embarrassed to tell me he hadn't fought, because, you know, little boys want to turn their fathers into heroes, and he didn't want to be diminished in my eyes.

  Paul Auster

  Father, War, Hero

  Interview with Lotte Hansen, www.timeout.com.

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• You can play guitar in your canteen, you know, your hair might be longer, but there's a lot more to playing than travelling around universities and things.

  Syd Barrett

  Hair, Guitar, Play

  Source: sydbarrett.net

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• Here's to the drunken Marine
  With beer in his canteen!
  You've heard of the Unknown Soldier
  But, never an unknown Marine!

  John Ripley

  Beer, Marine, Soldier

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• You want soldiers who, when they get to a river after a long march, don't start rooting for their canteen in their pack, but just dive right in.

  Tom Waits

  Rivers, Long, Soldier

  "Tom Waits: 'I look like hell but I'm going to see where it gets me'". Interview With Tim Adams, www.theguardian.com. October 22, 2011.

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• TO ALL THE ambulance drivers firewatchers air-raid wardens nurses canteen workers airplane spotters rescue workers mathematicians vicars vergers shopgirls chorus girls librarians debutantes spinsters fishermen retired sailors servants evacuees Shakespearean actors and mystery novelists WHO WON THE WAR.

  Connie Willis

  Girl, War, Airplane

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• I worked in an insurance office for six years, and it was there that I just woke up one day and realised there was something massively lacking in my life, and a non-contributory pension and a subsidised canteen could not fill it.

  Jamie Sives

  Years, Office, One Day

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