Tim Dorsey > Quotes

“Relieve stress through hysterical screaming.”
― Tim Dorsey

“I don't suffer from insanity. I can actually say that I enjoy it.”
― Tim Dorsey

“But you have to understand, mental illness is like cholesterol. There is is good kind and the bad. Without the good kind- less flavor to life. Van Gogh, Beethoven, Edgar Allen Poe, Sylvia Plath, Pink Floyd (the early Piper at the Gates of Dawn line up), scientific breakthroughs, spiritual revolution, utopian visions, zany nationalism that kills millions- wait, that’s the bad kind. Tim Dorsey (Hurricane Punch)”
― Tim Dorsey, Hurricane Punch

“The whole family is a bunch of dangerous freaks...Most are ex-cons or junkies or deranged from inbreeding. Five have died violently, three are back in prison, two have gone insane from untreated venereal disease, and one writes book reviews.”
― Tim Dorsey, Triggerfish Twist

“A prosthetic leg with a Willie Nelson bumper sticker washed ashore on the beach, which meant it was Florida.


Then it got weird.”
― Tim Dorsey, Pineapple Grenade

“Murder is such a charged word. You know how some people fixate and won't let things go? They're called cops. ”
― Tim Dorsey, Nuclear Jellyfish

“There was no Disney World then, just rows of orange trees. Millions of them. Stretching for miles And somewhere near the middle was the Citrus Tower, which the tourists climbed to see even more orange trees. Every month an eighty-year-old couple became lost in the groves, driving up and down identical rows for days until they were spotted by helicopter or another tourist on top of the Citrus Tower. They had lived on nothing but oranges and come out of the trees drilled on vitamin C and checked into the honeymoon suite at the nearest bed-and-breakfast.
"The Miami Seaquarium put in a monorail and rockets started going off at Cape Canaveral, making us feel like we were on the frontier of the future. Disney bought up everything north of Lake Okeechobee, preparing to shove the future down our throats sideways.
"Things evolved rapidly! Missile silos in Cuba. Bales on the beach. Alligators are almost extinct and then they aren't. Juntas hanging shingles in Boca Raton. Richard Nixon and Bebe Rebozo skinny-dipping off Key Biscayne. We atone for atrocities against the INdians by playing Bingo. Shark fetuses in formaldehyde jars, roadside gecko farms, tourists waddling around waffle houses like flocks of flightless birds. And before we know it, we have The New Florida, underplanned, overbuilt and ripe for a killer hurricane that'll knock that giant geodesic dome at Epcot down the trunpike like a golf ball, a solid one-wood by Buckminster Fuller.
"I am the native and this is my home. Faded pastels, and Spanish tiles constantly slipping off roofs, shattering on the sidewalk. Dogs with mange and skateboard punks with mange roaming through yards, knocking over garbage cans. Lunatics wandering the streets at night, talking about spaceships. Bail bondsmen wake me up at three A.M. looking for the last tenant. Next door, a mail-order bride is clubbed by a smelly ma in a mechanic's shirt. Cats violently mate under my windows and rats break-dance in the drop ceiling. And I'm lying in bed with a broken air conditioner, sweating and sipping lemonade through a straw. And I'm thinking, geez, this used to be a great state.
"You wanna come to Florida? You get a discount on theme-park tickets and find out you just bough a time share. Or maybe you end up at Cape Canaveral, sitting in a field for a week as a space shuttle launch is canceled six times. And suddenly vacation is over, you have to catch a plane, and you see the shuttle take off on TV at the airport. But you keep coming back, year after year, and one day you find you're eighty years old driving through an orange grove.”
― Tim Dorsey, Florida Roadkill

“Always walk away from a fight. Then ambush.”
― Tim Dorsey, Gator A-Go-Go

“We’re all damaged. It’s a universal component of the human condition, like the stages of grief, deja vu, and expired coupons.”
― Tim Dorsey, Nuclear Jellyfish

“Nothing builds confidence like live ammo.”
― Tim Dorsey, Atomic Lobster

“Serge's attention-deficit disorder was the first of many hyphens. Obsessive-compulsive, manic-depressive, anal-retentive, paranoid-schizophrenic. He was believed to be the only self-inflicted case of shaken-baby syndrome.”
― Tim Dorsey

“Serge bowed his own head and closed his eyes "God, please protect us from your followers. Amen”
― Tim Dorsey, The Stingray Shuffle

“Belong to a religion? Doesn't bother me if you do, as long as it's not one that says to stop thinking and be loud about it.”
― Tim Dorsey, Torpedo Juice

“Look forward to the wonderment of growing up, raising a family and driving by the gas station where the popular kids now work.”
― Tim Dorsey, Gator A-Go-Go

“That, and the untended mental health problems. We have all these insane armed hobos coming from the Midwest, usually Ohio. Fuck Ohio.”
― Tim Dorsey, Florida Roadkill

“Don't make fun of people who are different. Unless they have more money and influence. Then you must”
― Tim Dorsey, Gator A-Go-Go

“Do you think heaven's like that?

Could be worse, said Serge. You know all those pushy people who keep telling us we're not going to heaven? It could be full of them instead.”
― Tim Dorsey, Electric Barracuda

“...And another item from the growing file of people who voluntarily wear dunce caps... You'll be talking cordially to someone and make an offhand reference, 'I recently read where--' and they'll cut you off and say, 'Oh, I don't read'... This is a tragedy on so many different levels. First, because they don't read, they don't know enough to keep it to themselves. Next, and this is the most amazing part, they use a demeaning tone like I'm the stupid one for wasting time with books.”
― Tim Dorsey, Tiger Shrimp Tango

“Florida is a theme park,” said Serge. “And the theme is weirdness.”
― Tim Dorsey, Electric Barracuda

“Nature's what it's all about, but our people have been brainwashed into thinking that life is a cell phone against your head and the TV on a beer commercial with hot chicks.”
― Tim Dorsey, Nuclear Jellyfish

“The television was on Florida Cable News. A gray-haired man behind the anchor desk reported near tragedy at a state motor vehicle office, where a man who had failed the eye exam pulled a gun and fired fifteen shots at the staff, hitting nobody.”
― Tim Dorsey, Florida Roadkill

“Hang on to your dreams with everything you got. Because the best life is when your dreams come true. The second-best is when they don't but you never stop chasing them.”
― Tim Dorsey, Gator A-Go-Go

“my life’s motto: If you’re not willing to invent cool-sounding bullshit about yourself, don’t expect others to.”
― Tim Dorsey, Nuclear Jellyfish

“Remember the key to life,” Serge shouted over the engine. “Always act like you deserve to be here.”
― Tim Dorsey, Hurricane Punch

“First, they set the hook with mind-bending kinky shit. Then a year later you're living in a Talking Heads song, dressed like Teddy Ruxpin, living with a strange woman in a big house full of frilly throw pillows, experiencing the frequency of sex that can only be charted by Halley's Comet. and you're wondering: How did I get here?”
― Tim Dorsey, Nuclear Jellyfish

“He’s wrong, but I don’t say anything. That’s how you make a marriage last.”
― Tim Dorsey, Triggerfish Twist

“My problem is with the warped value system our culture has. Why is it that if you knife a woman in a movie it's PG, but if you swear at her it's rated R and if you make love to her it's rated X?”
― Tim Dorsey, Squall Lines

“I go over my own escape routes all the time. To survive in this state, you have to think like the French Resistance.”
― Tim Dorsey, The Stingray Shuffle

“Jesus. Why'd you do that?" "That motherfucker slapped me!" "And you just kill him?" "You never motherfuckin' hit a woman!" "How could he have missed you dedication of feminine virtue, especially when you keep saying motherfucker?”
― Tim Dorsey, Atomic Lobster

“That’s just the way life is. It can be exquisite, cruel, frequently wacky, but above all utterly, utterly random. Those twin imposters in the bell-fringed jester hats, Justice and Fairness—they aren’t constants of the natural order like entropy or the periodic table. They’re completely alien notions to the way things happen out there in the human rain forest. Justice and Fairness are the things we’re supposed to contribute back to the world for giving us the gift of life—not birthrights we should expect and demand every second of the day. What do you say we drop the intellectual cowardice? There is no fate, and there is no safety net. I’m not saying God doesn’t exist. I believe in God. But he’s not a micromanager, so stop asking Him to drop the crisis in Rwanda and help you find your wallet. Life is a long, lonely journey down a day-in-day-out lard-trail of dropped tacos. Mop it up, not for yourself, but for the guy behind you who’s too busy trying not to drop his own tacos to make sure he doesn’t slip and fall on your mistakes. So don’t speed and weave in traffic; other people have babies in their cars. Don’t litter. Don’t begrudge the poor because they have a fucking food stamp. Don’t be rude to overwhelmed minimum-wage sales clerks, especially teenagers—they have that job because they don’t have a clue. You didn’t either at that age. Be understanding with them. Share your clues. Remember that your sense of humor is inversely proportional to your intolerance. Stop and think on Veterans Day. And don’t forget to vote. That is, unless you send money to TV preachers, have more than a passing interest in alien abduction or recentlypurchased a fish on a wall plaque that sings ‘Don’t Worry, Be Happy.’ In that case, the polls are a scary place! Under every ballot box is a trapdoor chute to an extraterrestrial escape pod filled with dental tools and squeaking, masturbating little green men from the Devil Star. In conclusion, Class of Ninety-seven, keep your chins up, grab your mops and get in the game. You don’t have to make a pile of money or change society. Just clean up after yourselves without complaining. And, above all, please stop and appreciate the days when the tacos don’t fall, and give heartfelt thanks to whomever you pray to….”
― Tim Dorsey, Triggerfish Twist