Breaker Yard Quotes

In a breaker's yard you discover anything can have a new life, be reborn as part of a car or railway carriage, or a shovel blade. You take that older life and you link it to a stranger.

That's what life is about, doing as good as you can. When the times comes for them to lay you down in the long black hole, they can say one thing: 'He did as good as he could.' That's the best thing you can say for a man. Horse breaker or yard sweeper, let them say the poor boy did it good as he could.

You should remember that, all of you. If you're just smart or just lucky, it's not worth a copper yard. You got to have both, or you're just like Sloth down at those bonfires, begging for someone to find a use for you.

The vocabulary of flattery and insult is continually enlarged at the expense of the vocabulary of definition. As old horses go to the knacker's yard, or old ships to the breakers, so words in their last decay go to swell the enormous list of synonyms for good and bad. And as long as most people are more anxious to express their likes and dislikes than to describe facts, this must remain a universal truth about language.

The New Palace had been a home, a sanctuary, a school, a training yard. Now it was a prison, a hunting ground, an executioner's block.

Andry joined him, standing with a shake of his head. "Sorrow touches us all, Lord Domacridhan, whether we believe in it or nor. It doesn't matter what you call the thing ripping you apart. It will still devour you if given the chance." "And how do I defend against such a thing, Squire?" the Elder demanded, his voice rising. Luckily, Corayne did not stir. "How do I fight what I cannot face?" In the training yard, the knights would bash their gauntlets, clutch hands, pull each other up after a particular nasty blow. Without thinking, Andry raised his own fingers, palm open, an offer as much as a plea. "With me," he said. "Together.

What does it say?" "What do you want it to say?" she asked. "You haven't bothered to tell me what you're after." "I want to buy a battleship, of course. Who has one for sale?" Barbara shot him a dour expression and studied the blue papers. "I'm afraid you're out of luck. The Soviet Union has one left, which is used to train naval cadets. France has long since scrapped hers. Same with Great Britain, even though she still keeps one on the rolls for the sake of tradition." "The United States?" "Five of them have been preserved as memorials." "What are their present locations?" "They're enshrined in the states they were named after: North Carolina, Texas, Alabama, and Massachusetts." "You said five." "The Missouri is maintained by the Navy in Bremerton, Washington. Oh, I almost forgot: the Arizona is still sentimentally kept on naval rolls as a commissioned ship." Jarvis put his hands behind his head and stared at the ceiling. "I seem to recall the battlewagons Wisconsin and Iowa were tied up at the Philadelphia Navy Yard a few years back." "Good memory," said Barbara. "According to the report, the Wisconsin went to the ship-breakers in 1984." "And the Iowa?" "Sold for scrap.

As old horses go to the knacker's yard, or old ships to the breakers, so words in their last decay go to swell the enormous list of synonyms for good and bad.

I’d hesitated as I followed him down through the high-vaulted entrance hall with its mahogany panelling and terrazzo floor, and the glass cases covering beautifully detailed models of straight-funnelled merchantmen long dissected by the breakers’ torch. The splendour of a bygone age in miniature, where even the scaled likenesses gleamed with the proud craftsmanship of the men who had built them. They didn’t make models in the yards today. Not of ordinary, slab-sided bonus-constructed containerships. Models didn’t show a profit; they weren’t economically viable; the real ships themselves were barely viable now, despite our brave new computerised, electronic maritime world.