Pinball Quotes

As a child, I remember my dad would sometimes drive me into town with him to play pinball machines together. It's a bittersweet memory but also a favorite. ~ Iggy Azalea

I just always loved pinball. ~ Kevin Dillon

Across the intersection he could see the crumbling blue-green facade of the Palace Amusements building, the grinning ten-foot-high face on its north wall smiling out on empty streets and vacant lots. The arcade entrances were covered with plywood; broken neon tubing hung from the walls. He thought of the hours he had spent there as a kid, playing pinball, firing the real .22s in the shooting gallery, riding the bumper cars. It hurt to look at it now. ~ Wallace Stroby

I like the 'Simpsons' pinball machines. Those are pretty great. ~ Matt Groening

Her parents, she said, has put a pinball machine inside her head when she was five years old. The red balls told her when she should laugh, the blue ones when she should be silent and keep away from other people; the green balls told her that she should start multiplying by three. Every few days a silver ball would make its way through the pins of the machine. At this point her head turned and she stared at me; I assumed she was checking to see if I was still listening. I was, of course. How could one not? The whole thing was bizarre but riveting. I asked her, What does the silver ball mean? She looked at me intently, and then everything went dead in her eyes. She stared off into space, caught up in some internal world. I never found out what the silver ball meant. ~ Kay Redfield Jamison

Programs to demonstrate Darwinian evolution are akin to a pinball machine. The steel ball bounces around differently every time but eventually falls down the little hole behind the flippers. ~ Robert J. Marks II

There is nothing so perfect as pinball and a pint at 11 a.m. ~ Tom Hodgkinson

I must confess I've always had a couple of pinball machines in my home and really have enjoyed some of the old classics, like Fireball. ~ Nolan Bushnell

The Earth is God's pinball machine and each quake, tidal wave, flash flood and volcanic eruption is the result of a TILT that occurs when God, cheating, tries to win free games. ~ Tom Robbins

It wasn't hard going to the gym, as long as he went as soon as he woke up, before he had time to think about not going. Those morning workouts made him feel like he was starting his day like a pinball, with a giant shot of momentum. The feeling sometimes didn't wear off until six or seven at night (when it was usually overtaken by the feeling that he was just bouncing haplessly from one situation to the next without any real purpose or direction). ~ Rainbow Rowell

Everyone's existence is filled with special stories. But my life is my story; an amazing journey, a bouncing steel ball in a living pinball machine flying through the molecules and empty spaces of primal experience. ~ Gerasimos I. Kambites

If a movie is described as a romantic comedy, you can usually find me next door playing pinball. ~ George Carlin

To be honest, I look at my Pinball program and feel that it is old stuff. I could do much better. ~ Bill Budge

Today's customer journey is an iterative, complex, pinball of touchpoints. ~ David Louis Edelman

I'm not a ball in a pinball machine. I know what I want. ~ Emile Hirsch

The coolest thing, and I have it at home, is a huge Hulk Hogan, normal-sized pinball machine. When people come over they play it for hours. When you hit the bumpers and the bells ring it goes, 'Oh yeah!' The whole time you're playing this machine it's yelling and screaming at you, 'What you gonna do, brother?!' I think that's the coolest. ~ Hulk Hogan

What are they doing?" he whispered.
The pinball machine's scoreboard was full, the bank's windows fogged. They were so involved- so cofaithed- that they didn't know we were there.
The VW's face joined, "Are they hurting each other?"
I took a breath. "There's risk involved, because of what they can't see. Plus the risk of trust. But no-they're not hurting each other."
The bank whispered something in the pinball machine's ear and the pinball machine giggled.
"What are they saying to each other?" the VW said.
"They're expressing their faith, VW-sharing it."
Just then I heard a rustle, soft at first, then louder…Distracted by other things-the VW, the faith in the trees- I had forgotten to keep the mountain straight in my mind. I had let it go, and now it was changing, reversing itself, growing young: the leaves were turning from brown back to green… THIS was western Massachusetts-unpredictable; a changing moving bitch; a switcher of faces…how could I have many any progress here when mountains were mountains one moment and something else the next; when people were here one day and then GONE? ~ Christopher Boucher

I knew you'd be lucky today. I was pretty lucky myself, 693 came out and I played 698. Had the first two numbers right, anyway." Andy smiled. "Are you a ducker for that number racket. I guess everybody is a sucker for some kind of racket. Horses, numbers, cards, bingo, pinball machines...the great American hobbies. Everybody trying anything to make a few bucks." "I only play two cents a day," Charley said weakly. "Go ahead, play, if you get a bang out of it. Maybe you'll hit...one of these days! There's our old pal, one of these days, and some day, popping up. ~ Len Zinberg

Contrary to what your friends' hyper-consciously constructed Facebook updates would have you believe, life isn't a series of discrete, pivotal, deeply meaningful lily pads. Life is a smear. It's messy, indistinct and disorienting: pinball, not chess. ~ Lindy West

I hope fans will go back and listen to the Beatles and the Beach Boys or Led Zeppelin, or put on 'Tommy' and let them experience like I did that moment when 'Pinball Wizard' comes on. ~ Drake Bell

I am learning slowly to bring my crazy pinball-machine mind back to this place ... ~ Anne Lamott

Somebody had tipped the American continent like a pinball machine and all the goofballs had come rolling to LA in the southwest corner. I cried for all of us. There was no end to the American sadness and the American madness. Someday we'll all start laughing and roll on the ground when we realize how funny it's been. ~ Jack Kerouac

The outdoors, the beautiful environment, both in fresh and salt water. And the thing that concerns me is the amount of kids that stand on street corners, or go into pinball parlours, and call it recreation. ~ Rex Hunt

Cliche but accurate: Kick a football, then ask it whether it meant to fly. All action demands an equal and opposite reaction. You can't blame an object battered by inertial forces; you can't blame me, bouncing through the pinball machine of life. ~ Robin Wasserman

Whatever adults don't understand, because they didn't grow up with it, is the thing they're going to be afraid of and try to legislate out of existence. It happened with videogames, it happened with television, it happened with pinball parlours and rock and roll. ~ Warren Spector

The only colors I could see were the vibrant primary hues of the pinball machine, where a cartoon spacewoman with big conical breasts straddled the earth in a formfitting blue space suit and thigh-high yellow boots. Behind her, a big red dildo-shaped spaceship was just blasting off for the moon. ~ Sue Grafton

Almost nothing can be gained from pinball. The only payoff is a numerical substitution for pride. The loses, however, are considerable. You could probably erect bronze statues of every American president (assuming you are willing to include Richard Nixon) with the coins you will lose, while your lost time is irreplaceable.

When you are standing before the machine engaged in your solitary act of consumption, another guy is plowing through Proust, while still another guy is doing some heavy petting with his girlfriend while watching "True Grit" at the local drive-in. They're the ones who may wind up becoming groundbreaking novelists or happily married men.

No, pinball leads nowhere. The only result is a glowing replay light. Replay, replay, replay - it makes you think the whole aim of the game is to achieve a form of eternity.

We know very little of eternity, although we can infer its existence.

The goal of pinball is self-transformation, not self-expression. It involves not the expansion of the ego but its diminution. Not analysis but all-embracing acceptance.

If it's self-expression, ego expansion or analysis you're after, the tilt light will exact its unsparing revenge.

Have a nice game! ~ Haruki Murakami

I am inundated with feeling. I feel like a pinball machine on tilt. All the buzzers are ringing, lights are flashing, and I am about to fry my circuits. Nothing is coming in,and nothing is going out. I feel electrified. The wires ignited, sparked, and fizzled. I want it all to slow down. I go right to the water to douse my flame. I immerse myself in the hot water. I want to wash the smells off my body. I can smell Isabella's hair, her breath, and her child vaginal scent. My hair smells of smoke,and I want to wash Francis off me. ~ Holly A. Smith

Nobody trusts anyone, or why did they put tilt on a pinball machine ... ~ Steve McQueen

I think we can all agree that this deaf elf sure plays a mean pinball. ~ Rick Riordan

In video you are starting with nothing but a black screen. There's no game there. With pinball you at least start with that basic concept, but not with video. The challenge of going from no game to something today is only different because you have to create something so damn fun people will pay $1.00 every two minutes to play it. ~ Eugene Jarvis

I think about pinball, and how being a kid's like being shot up the firing lane and there's no veering left or right; or you're just sort of propelled. But once you clear the top, like when you're sixteen, seventeen, or eighteen, suddenly there's a thousand different paths you can take, some amazing, others not. Tiny little differences in angles and speed'll totally alter what happens to you later, so a fraction of an inch to the right, and the ball'll just hit a pinger and a dinger and fly down between your flippers, no messing, a waste of 10 p. But a fraction to the left and it's action in the play zone, bumpers and kickers, ramps and slingshots and fame on the high-score table. ~ David Mitchell

Holes BY LOUIS SACHAR
"Nearly everything in the room was broken; the TV, the pinball machine, the furniture. Even the people looked broken, with their worn out bodies sprawled over the various chairs and sofas." (p.43)
This is Stanley's view of the "wreck room" at Camp Green Lake. It is the one place the boys are allowed to relax somewhat and they have trashed it. The inhumanity of the camp has possessed the boys. Stanley sees this room as a reminder that the boys have the capacity for violence, and he does not want to mess with the other campers. ~ Louis Sachar

The world changed from having the determinism of a clock to having the contingency of a pinball machine. ~ Heinz R. Pagels

And I think that it is certainly possible that the objective universe can be affected by the poet. I mean, you recall Orpheus made the trees and the stones dance and so forth, and this is something which is in almost all primitive cultures. I think it has some definite basis to it. I'm not sure what. It's like telekinesis, which I know very well on a pinball machine is perfectly possible. ~ Jack Spicer

My brain is so anxiety-prone, like a pinball machine. If I don't get up in the morning and focus my thinking, my breathing, and my being for about 12 minutes, I'm just a screwball all day long. ~ Rainn Wilson

That's when I gave up pinball. When the times comes, everybody gives up pinball. Nothing more to it. ~ Haruki Murakami

Giving advice is like playing pinball: only by pushing and pulling can you encourage the ball to go in a new direction and increase your score. But too much pushing and pulling can cause a tilt and stop the game. ~ Chip R. Bell