Canteen Quotes

Canteen and took a long swig. The dragon smacked its tongue several times, making it clear that it too needed ~ Joseph R. Lallo

We were still so young when our eyes first met. We would run holding hands through the lawn of the college campus. I vividly remember the grass beneath the cherry tree that had water at the tip which touched our legs. I vividly remember how we would talk about our future as the sun rays sparkled like diamonds through the leaves of the trees outside the campus auditorium. I vividly remember your urge to touch my erratic strands in the gentle breeze outside the canteen. And then we allowed distance to conquer the space between us so we could build a career, sculpt a life and keep the promises. And did we not do well! ~ Debalina Haldar

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

People have no value in looking for God. They have not delved deep into it. They have delved deep into earning money. They look at the map and wonder which port to disembark? Then they search to see if they will find a "canteen" (restaurant) or not. They search for such things. But for them God has 'no value'. Should one not search for Him? ~ Dada Bhagwan

He holds the canteen out to me, and I take a sniff. It's water. "She dumped all of my flasks into the sea while I slept," Kearan says. "Didn't realize she cared so much. ~ Tricia Levenseller

Our living quarters were in the same compound as the Eastern District administration. Government offices were mostly housed in large mansions which had been confiscated from Kuomintang officials and wealthy landlords. All government employees, even senior officials, lived at their office. They were not allowed to cook at home, and all ate in canteens. The canteen was also where everyone got their boiled water, which was fetched in thermos flasks.

Saturday was the only day married couples were allowed to spend together. Among officials, the euphemism for making love was 'spending a Saturday." Gradually, this regimented life-style relaxed a bit and married couples were able to spend more time together, but almost all still lived and spent most of their time in their office compounds.

My mother's department ran a very broad field of activities, including primary education, health, entertainment, and sounding out public opinion. At the age of twenty-two, my mother was in charge of all these activities for about a quarter of a million people. She was so busy we hardly ever saw her. The government wanted to establish a monopoly (known as 'unified purchasing and marketing') over trade in the basic commodities grain, cotton, edible o'fi, and meat. The idea was to get the peasants to sell these exclusively to the government, which would then ration them out to the urban population and to parts of the country where they were in short supply. ~ Jung Chang

Watched the close-cropped, long-legged policeman with the bad back stride quickly out of the canteen. ~ Jo Nesbo

I ... I sang," she whispered, "if that matters," and Karou felt her heart pulled to pieces. This Misbegotten warrior, fiercest of them all, had crouched in an icy stream bed to sing a chimera soul into her canteen, because she hadn't known what else to do.
The singing wouldn't have mattered, but she wasn't going to tell Liraz that. If Ziri's soul was in that canteen, Karou would happily learn whatever song Liraz had sung and make it part of her resurrection ritual forever, just so that the angel would never feel that she'd been foolish. ~ Laini Taylor

In Los Angeles, I drive a hybrid and live in a very simple home. Anything you do from carrying a canteen of water to starting a recycling program in your office makes a difference. Reusing what you already have has always been green - from clothes to boxes to glass jars from the supermarket. ~ Rachel Boston

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

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

I never married either. No one could put up with my lifestyle. I just wasn't ready for the diaper service and the white picket fence. I mean sailing, surfing, it's exciting. It's an adventure. It's one of the few things left around where you're totally responsible for your own outcome - except for maybe going across the Mojave with a donkey and a canteen. Everything else is stoplights, or follow the yellow line, or do this but don't do that. Surfing's one of the few things left. ~ Anonymous

Cigarettes to be fetched for me from the canteen,' said Rubashov.
'Have you got prison vouchers?'
'My money was taken from me on my arrival,' said Rubashov.
'Then you must wait until it has been changed for vouchers.'
'How long will that take in this model establishment of yours?' asked Rubashov.
'You can write a letter of complaint,' said the old man.
'You know quite well that I have neither paper nor pencil,' said Rubashov.
'To buy writing materials you have to have vouchers,' said the warder. ~ Arthur Koestler

It was a belt canteen of flexible synthetic divided into half-litre pockets. The weight was taken by shoulder straps and a tube ran up the left suspender, ending in a nipple near his mouth, so that he might drink without taking it off. ~ Robert A. Heinlein

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

Mike stood in-line, waiting for the mealtime muck that passed for lunch at his school canteen. He knew he was getting close to the front now, as he tightly held his tray. Not just because he could see this as you might expect, but because he could smell Margery the school cook's body odour. The children at the front were already holding their breath. You could see a line of pink faces close to him, to red, then purple closest to Margery. Only when they left at the end did they breathe for air and turn back to their normal colour again, like a deep sea diver after a long plunge.

"Margery the Meal Murderer" was her name for most school kids. ~ L.P. Donnelli

I slip my canteen strap over my head, open the lid, and take a drink. Then I hand it to Hampton. A peace offering. "It's not communionif there's no wine."
Hampton tips it to his lips and swallows long and hard. He wipes his mouth when he's done. "Well, darn. The Savior got confused and turned this wine into water."
"The Lord works in mysterious ways," Henry says, taking the canteen fromHampton ~ Rae Carson

The policemen had clearly been there all morning: four big white tea mugs from the canteen were drained and drip-stained, red-and-gold wrappers from caramel log biscuits were folded into interesting shapes on one side of the table, rolled up into tight little balls on the other. ~ Denise Mina

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

When I first came here copyboys wouldn't have been allowed to eat in the canteen with journalists." A smile twitched at one corner of his mouth. "I was a copyboy once, at the Lanarkshire Gazette. Can ye believe that?"

He left a space for her to respond, so she did.

"Can I believe that a man as important as you was ever a copyboy or that Lanarkshire has its own gazette? ~ Denise Mina

We probably won't arrive home in time for your wedding."
She pictured the wedding gown hanging in her closet. The veil. The shoes. Even the strands of pearls, all laid out awaiting her return. Return. The heavy word weighed on her as Ira continued to snore and Oscar continued to study her in a way that made her feel captivating and beautiful.
Camille stood up, not sure if she'd been inching toward him. His lips had certainly seemed to be getting closer.
"Randall will understand, I'm sure. He's a very reasonable person," she said, her voice rapid.
Oscar started to stand. "Where are you going?"
"No, please, sit," she said. "I…I just need to, um, use the trees." Camille jiggled her nearly empty canteen to strengthen her excuse. She turned in a circle until she spotted a copse of trees. She had to be somewhere other than hidden in the flowers with Oscar, somewhere she could try and convince herself that Randall might one day be able to look at her with the same intensity Oscar had just displayed.
Oscar sat back down, and Camille trampled the grass on the way to the safety of the trees. Another attack of guilt snuck up on her as she glanced back at Oscar, who was watching her walk away. Camille would miss her own wedding-and she didn't care one bit. ~ Angie Frazier

Your basic-type jailhouse tatt is homemade with sewing needles from the jailhouse canteen and some blue ink from the cartridge of a fountain pen promoted from the breast pocket of an unaltert public defender, is why the jailhouse genre is always the same night-sky blue. The needle is dipped in the ink and jabbed as deep into the tattooee as it can be jabbed without making him recoil and fucking up your aim. Just a plain ultraminimal blue square like Gately's got on his right wrist takes half a day and hundreds of individual jabs. How come the lines are never quite straight and the color's never quite all the way solid is it's impossible to get all the individualized punctures down to the same uniform deepness in the, like, twitching flesh. This is why jailhouse tatts always look like they were done by sadistic children on rainy afternoons. ~ David Foster Wallace

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

People are complicated. There is so much more to everybody than you realize. You see someone in school everyday, or at work, in the canteen, and you share a cigarette of a coffee with them, and you talk about the weather or last night's air raid. But you don't talk so much about what was the nastiest thing you ever said to your mother, or how you pretended to be David Balfour, the hero of Kidnapped, for the whole of the year when you were 13, or what you imagine yourself doing with the pilot who looks like Leslie Howard if you were alone in his bunk after a dance. ~ Elizabeth Wein

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

So you want to turn around? Give up on the chance of having him back?"
Oscar took a swig of his canteen, then capped it. He held her stare. "I just want you alive."
Camille glanced toward Ira. He sat far enough away to hear just the murmur of their voices. This was her only opportunity to clean up after the messy scene in the pantry. Where to begin baffled her. The cold manner in which they were now acting made it difficult to believe Oscar had held her so lovingly, her body curled into his. She'd felt his hot breath on her shoulder as he dipped into sleep and out again to bury his nose in her hair or race her scar from the Christina with his finger. Camille had never wanted to leave that bed.
"I don't love him," she said with little fanfare. Plain. Simple. The truth. "He's a decent man, and things would be easier if I did love him. But I want what only you can give me, Oscar."
She couldn't imagine feeling warm and safe and loved in Randall's arms the way she had in Oscar's. She didn't know what would happen once her father returned to them or how he'd react. Right then, it didn't matter.
"Good night, then," she said when he remained quiet. Camille turned onto her other side, away from the fire. The immediate cold lashed at her. A moment passed before she heard the scrape of his boots on the ground. His footsteps rounded the fire. Without saying a word, he lay down beside her. Oscar pulled her close to him without checking to see if Ira was watching.< ~ Angie Frazier

But even in Gavle I went on digging into the case."

"I don't suppose that Henrik would ever let up."

"That's true, but that's not the reason. The puzzle about Harriet still fascinates me to this day. I mean... it's like this: every police officer has his own unsolved mystery. I remember from my days in Hedestad how older colleagues would talk in the canteen about the case of Rebecka. There was one officer in particular, a man named Torstensson - he's been dead for years - who year after year kept returning to that case. In his free time and when he was on holiday. Whenever there was a period of calm among the local hooligans he would take out those folders and study them."

"Was that also a case about a missing girl?"

Morell looked surprised. Then he smiled when he realised that Blomkvist was looking for some sort of connection.

"No, that's not why I mentioned it. I'm talking about the soul of a policeman. The Rebecka case was something that happened before Harriet Vanger was even born, and the statute of limitations has long since run out. Sometime in the forties a woman was assaulted in Hedestad, raped, and murdered. That's not altogether uncommon. Every officer, at some point in his career, has to investigate that kind of crime, but what I'm talking about are those cases that stay with you and get under your skin during the investigation. This girl was killed in the most brutal way. The killer tied her up and stuck ~ Stieg Larsson

They would know that inconsistency in human decision can make nonsense of the best-planned espionage approach; that 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

I was thinking that if it really was my fault, if every reaction could be traced to an action before, then at the very beginning would be me at the canteen queue with my twenty-dollar note instead of my packed lunch. In turn I could blame my mother for not caring enough and maybe I could blame my father for making my mum stop caring. Maybe all this was supposed to happen. It had been happening all along. It was too hard to try and stop it now. In a twisted way, there was cold comfort in that. ~ Shirley Marr