Small Engines

Famous quotes containing the words small and/or engines:

    “What strikes me as odd now is how much my father managed to get across to me without those heart-to-hearts which I’ve read about fathers and sons having in the study or in the rowboat or in the car.... Somehow I understood completely how he expected me to behave, in small matters as well as large, even though I can’t remember being given any lectures about it beyond the occasional, undramatic “You might as well be a mensch.””
    —Calvin Trillin (20th century)

    “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)