Rin Tin Tin Quotes

When Rin Tin Tin first became famous, most dogs in the world would not sit down when asked. Dogs performed duties: they herded sheep, they barked at strangers, they did what dogs do naturally, and people learned to interpret and make use of how they behaved. The idea of a dog's being obedient for the sake of good manners was unheard of. When dogs lived outside, as they usually did on farms and ranches, the etiquette required of them was minimal. But by the 1930s, Americans were leaving farms and moving into urban and suburban areas, bringing dogs along as pets and sharing living quarters with them. At the time, the principles of behavior were still mostly a mystery -- Ivan Pavlov's explication of conditional reflexes, on which much training is based, wasn't even published in an English translation until 1927. If dogs needed to be taught how to behave, people had to be trained to train their dogs. The idea that an ordinary person -- not a dog professional -- could train his own pet was a new idea, which is partly why Rin Tin Tin's performances in movies and onstage were looked upon as extraordinary. ~ Susan Orlean

Sense of smell, of course, is only one of those dog qualities that can't be replicated or improved upon. I've been researching dogs in warfare for my book about 'Rin Tin Tin,' and I've read many accounts of their heroics: carrying messages through battle, alerting troops to enemy planes, and even parachuting behind enemy lines. ~ Susan Orlean

I see myself in the mold of Rin Tin Tin. It didn't go to his head either. ~ Al Gore

What was the name of that dog on 'Rin Tin Tin'? ~ Mickey Rivers

Television wasn't getting rid of animals, but they were no longer cast as creatures that were omniscient and heroic. They were talking horses like Mr Ed or an absurdist pig like Arnold Ziffle ... Just like the heroic animals in silent films became comedians in talkies, animals on television were becoming jesters, something Rin Tin Tin had never been. ~ Susan Orlean

Last time, they spent eight hundred years running towards each other.
This time, it only took an instant to fall into each others embrace. ~ 墨香铜臭, 天官赐福 [Tiān Guān Cì Fú]

Once in those very early days my brother brought into the nursery the lid of a biscuit tin which he had covered with moss and garnished with twigs and flowers so as to make it a toy garden or a toy forest. That was the first beauty I ever knew. What the real garden had failed to do, the toy garden did. It made me aware of nature-not, indeed, as a storehouse of forms and colors but as something cool, dewy, fresh, exuberant ... As long as I live my imagination of Paradise will retain something of my brother's toy garden. ~ C.S. Lewis

I was at the Apollo Theater all the time, skipping school, and I worked in a barbershop. That's how I started with doo-wop. Now I've come full circle. I did all kinds of music. I used to work on Broadway and Tin Pan Alley. ~ George Clinton

I thought about the cast of The Wizard of Oz on the yellow brick road and wondered which character I was. Perhaps the Tin Man, in search of a red, pulsating heart. Or at least someone to give it to. ~ Kate Rockland

From Labor Day through Halloween, the place is almost unbearably beautiful. The air during these weeks seems less like ether and more like a semisolid, clear and yet dense somehow, as if it were filled with the finest imaginable golden pollen. The sky tends toward brilliant ice-blue, and every thing and being is invested with a soft, gold-ish glow. Tin cans look good in this light; discarded shopping bags do. I'm not poet enough to tell you what the salt marsh looks like at high tide. I confess that when I lived year-round in Provincetown, I tended to become irritable toward the end of October, when one supernal day after another seemed to imply that the only reasonable human act was to abandon your foolish errands and plans, go outside, and fall to your knees. ~ Michael Cunningham

I had a dream about you. At first you were a mannequin, and I was a fashion designer. Then, inexplicably, we switched roles and I became the mannequin. But instead of putting clothes on me, you laughed at my nakedness, and you sold me to the owner of a sex shop. ~ Dark Jar Tin Zoo

Sadie," Thad said, his gaze boring into her. He kept his voice low, almost a growl. "Don't ever scare me like that again. If anything had happened to you, I - " With a groan, he pulled her close again. Her cheek pressed to his chest, the points of the tin badge pricking her flesh. His heartbeat pounded fast and sure beneath her ear. She remained snug in his embrace for long seconds, absorbing the wonder of the moment. Her lips still tingled pleasantly from the pressure of his. She tasted the essence of coffee and salty ham. And she'd eaten oatmeal for breakfast. ~ Kim Vogel Sawyer

While the moon smoothly shifted the shadows from one side of Edgewood to the other, Daily Alice dreamed that she stood in a flower-starred field where on a hill there grew an oak tree and a thorn in deep embrace, their branches intertwined like fingers. Far down the hall, Sophie dreamed that there was a tiny door in her elbow, open a crack, through which the wind blew, blowing on her heart. Dr. Drinkwater dreamed he sat before his typewriter and wrote this: 'There is an aged, aged insect who lives in a hole in the ground. One June he puts on his summer straw, and takes his pipe and his staff and his lamp in half his hands, and follows the worm and the root to the stair that leads up to the door into blue summer.' This seemed immensely significant to him, but when he awoke he wouldn't be able to remember a word of it, try as he might. Mother beside him dreamed her husband wasn't in his study at all, but with her in the kitchen, where she drew tin cookie-sheets endlessly out of the oven; the baked things on them were brown and round, and when he asked her what they were, she said 'Years'. ~ John Crowley

What discordant vespers do the tinker's goods chime through the long twilight and over the brindled forest road, him stooped and hounded through the windy recrements of day like those old exiles who divorced of corporeality and enjoined ingress of heaven or hell wander forever the middle warrens spoorless increate and anathema. Hounded by grief, by guilt, or like this cheerless vendor clamored at heel through wood and fen by his own querulous and inconsolable wares in perennial tin malediction. ~ Cormac McCarthy

It's almost funny, isn't it?"
"What is?"
"How some animals are worth more than others?"
"Well," he handed Konrad a sugar cube from a tin on the shelf. "It isn't just the animal; it's the type of animal."
"Color, shape, size? If people pay for an animal based on what it looks like, what does that say about them?"
"It isn't necessarily what they look like." He frowned. "It's about where they come from."
"That's silly," she said. ~ Amanda Lance

Under Stars

The sleep of this night deepens

because I have walked coatless from the house

carrying the white envelope.

All night it will say one name

in its little tin house by the roadside.


I have raised the metal flag

so its shadow under the roadlamp

leaves an imprint on the rain-heavy bushes.

Now I will walk back

thinking of the few lights still on

in the town a mile away.


In the yellowed light of a kitchen

the millworker has finished his coffee,

his wife has laid out the white slices of bread

on the counter. Now while the bed they have left

is still warm, I will think of you, you

who are so far away

you have caused me to look up at the stars.


Tonight they have not moved

from childhood, those games played after dark.

Again I walk into the wet grass

toward the starry voices. Again, I

am the found one, intimate, returned

by all I touch on the way. ~ Tess Gallagher

Maggie, we're through with lies and liars in this house. Lock the door. ~ Tennessee Williams

I just meant touching me might feel uncomfortable. It's a little like chewing on tin foil. Feels unpleasant but isn't really a problem. ~ Donna Augustine

There are forces working in the world as never before in the history of mankind for standardization, for the regimentation of us all, or what I like to call making muffins of us, muffins all like every other muffin in the muffin tin. This is the limited universe, the drying dissipating universe that we can help our children to avoid by providing them with 'explosive material capable of stirring up fresh life endlessly'. ~ Madeleine L'Engle

If you've never shot a gun,
You can't understand
how it feels in your hands.
Cool to the touch, all its venom
coiled inside, deadly,
like a steel-scaled serpent. Awaiting your bidding.
You select it's prey… paper,
tin, or flesh. You lie in wait,
learn that patience is the killer's
most trustworthy accomplice.
You choose the moment. What. Where. When. Decided.
But the how is everything.
You lift your weapon,
ease it into place, cock it,
to load it, knowing the
satisfying snitch means a bullet is yours to command.
Now, make or break,
it's all up to you. You
aim knowing a hair either
way means bull's-eye or miss.
Success or failure. Life or death.
You have to relax,
convince your muscles
not to be tense, not to betray
you. Sight again. Adjust.
Don't become distracted by the heat of the hunt.
Instincts take over.
You shoot and adrenaline
screams as your target shreds
or the flesh drops. And for
one indescribable moment you are God. ~ Ellen Hopkins

As a child I read all kinds of stuff, whether it was 'Asterix and Obelix' and 'Tin Tin' comic books, or 'Lord of the Rings,' or Frank Herbert's sci-fi. Or 'The Wind in the Willows.' Or 'Charlotte's Web.' ~ Mohsin Hamid

I owe my first inkling of the problem of infinity to a large biscuit tin that was a source of vertiginous mystery during my childhood. ~ Jorge Luis Borges

Starting a revolution is like opening a tin can, though," Siyavash said to her. "You never know what you end up with when you get to the bottom! ~ Lili Naghdi

Inside the tin of sweets are four jewels, like candy drops. Look at them closely...and stories spill out. ~ Jun Mochizuki

Otto suspected that Franz would have been quite prepared to go to lunch naked if that was what was necessary and, despite his best efforts, a mental image of this formed that Otto feared might haunt him for ever.

Wing looked at him with concern. 'Are you all right, Otto? You've gone quite pale. Is the Contessa trying to manipulate you again?'

In Otto's mind's eye a naked Franz was pouring baked beans straight from the tin into his mouth.

'No, Wing, it's much worse than that . . . ~ Mark Walden

I used to come down from New Rochelle and go to Radio City. They'd have a floor show and a movie. I'm showing my age, but I saw 'Cat on a Hot Tin Roof' and 'Broken Arrow' with Jimmy Stewart. It was a great way for a kid to see a movie. ~ Vincent Pastore

So miss him. Send him some love and light every time you think about him, then drop it. ~ Elizabeth Gilbert

After all we did for Britain, selling that corduroy and making it swing, all we got was a bit of tin on a piece of leather. ~ George Harrison

Tin soldiers and Nixon's coming
We're finally on our own
This summer I hear the drumming
Four dead in Ohio
Gotta get down to it
Soldiers are gunning us down
Should have been done long ago
What if you knew her and
Found her dead on the ground
How can you run when you know ~ Neil Young

The writing style which is most natural for you is bound to echo the speech you heard when a child. English was the novelist Joseph Conrad's third language, and much of that seems piquant in his use of English was no doubt colored by his first language, which was Polish. And lucky indeed is the writer who has grown up in Ireland, for the English spoken there is so amusing and musical. I myself grew up in Indianapolis, where common speech sounds like a band saw cutting galvanized tin, and employs a vocabulary as unornamental as a monkey wrench.

In some of the more remote hollows of Appalachia, children still grow up hearing songs and locutions of Elizabethan times. Yes, and many Americans grow up hearing a language other than English, or an English dialect a majority of Americans cannot understand.

All these varieties of speech are beautiful, just as the varieties of butterflies are beautiful. No matter what your first language, you should treasure it all your life. If it happens not to be standard English, and if it shows itself when you write standard English, the result is usually delightful, like a very pretty girl with one eye that is green and one that is blue.

I myself find that I trust my own writing most, and others seem to trust it most, too, when I sound most like a person from Indianapolis, which is what I am. What alternatives do I have? The one most vehemently recommended by teachers has no doubt been pressed on you, as well: to w ~ Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

I was mainly raised by a working mum who didn't have much time or inclination for making food. So I had three or four basic meals: fish fingers and a tomato; a packet scotch egg and a tomato; pasta with a tin of tomatoes; and extra mild plastic-y cheddar chopped into cubes with bits of cucumber. ~ Paloma Faith

I'm about as musical as a rusty tin opener. ~ Lucy Holliday

Wars are generally fought for material things; they're not fought over ideals. After we get into them, we are told we are fighting for ideals. We are fighting for oil and tin and rubber and markets, and as long as we insist on a standard of life that is so high above all the rest of the world, we're going to have to pay for our standard of living with a lot of blood. I think we ought to re-examine the fact that Jesus was a pauper, and we should be committing ourselves to a very humble, simple way of life. ~ Clarence Jordan

And there was nothing left for me to do, but go.
Though the things of the world were strong with me still.
Such as, for example: a gaggle of children trudging through a side-blown December flurry; a friendly match-share beneath some collision-tilted streetlight; a frozen clock, bird-visited within its high tower; cold water from a tin jug; toweling off one's clinging shirt post–June rain.
Pearls, rags, buttons, rug-tuft, beer-froth.
Someone's kind wishes for you; someone remembering to write; someone noticing that you are not at all at ease. ~ George Saunders

While you might see a cat on a hot tin roof, a dog on a hot tin roof would be yowling its head off. ~ Bruce Fogle