Selected Quotes From Coffee Crash
“Mayday, mayday, mayday! Declarando emergência!”
“Unlike common coffee leaf rust disease, this organism kills the trees that it infects. Unless we can stop its spread very quickly, we are at risk of losing the whole of our crop for the next three to four years, which is how long it would take for newly planted coffee trees to bear fruit, and up to five years to reach full yield.”
“This seems to be an awful lot of work and a highly complicated process, just to produce a beverage that doesn’t even taste that good unless it’s loaded with cream and sugar.”
“Follow me.”
“My guess is that the pilot had some kind of seizure.”
“Would that have been before or after the plane crashed?”
“Hard to say. The patient had a wound on the side of his head, a skull fracture, which appeared to have happened during the crash, and that injury could have caused the seizure. But if the seizure happened before, the seizure could have caused the crash which gave him the head injury. O ovo ou a galinha? Which came first, the egg or the chicken?”
“Those coffee trees turned out to be a previously undiscovered species, that is, not just a subspecies of Coffea arabica, but a distinct new species. Paul named it Coffea gracinha. In Portuguese, one of the meanings of the word gracinha is ‘sweet.’”
“He chose the name because the beans taste sweet, I presume?”
“The word for that kind of sweetness would be doce. Gracinha means sweet as in to be very pleasant. He named the new species in honor of his wife, Fabiana. Gracinha was his term of endearment for her, like ‘sweetie.’”
“He said he might have discovered a three-way symbiosis, although he wouldn't tell me what the three things were. He said he was keeping it a sweet surprise.”
“Can you confirm that employees at Delcese Agricola refer to the disease outbreak currently among the coffee plants as O Vampiro [The Vampire], because of its red color and the way it sucks moisture out of the plants?”
“I haven’t even confirmed that there is a disease outbreak among the coffee plants.”
“Which fungicides have you tried thus far?”
“E-F-T-W-G.”
“I’m not familiar with that one.”
“It means, pardon my French, Every F-ing Thing We Got.”
“The experimental coffee field has far fewer insects than the control field.”
“Any negative side effects?”
“Some people consider fewer insects to be a negative side effect.”
“A bad day of bird watching is better than a good day of lab work.”
“Some of the farm workers who are no longer employed called the fungus o Sangue de Cristo, the Blood of Christ, as though God sent this plague to cleanse their sins.”
“Cê tá brincando?” [Are you shittin' me?]
“If I was shittin’ you, I’d be in one of the stalls.”
“Thanks for tipping me off. I owe you another case of Cachaça Anísio Santiago. You have fine taste in liquor, Senhor.”
“I’m going to show those punks up north who’s the king of coffee in this country.”
“Uncertainty is the father of opportunity.”
“Have our broker on the BM&F exchange buy us as many Coffee ‘C’ futures as he can, as quickly as he can. I want him to hit the allowable limit.”
“Do you want to buy options as well?”
“Options are for wussies.”
“Que é wussies?”
As if they had been prompted by a conductor from the San Francisco Symphony, in unison, all hundred attendees glanced at their iPhones to check for tweets about a coffee fungus infestation in Brazil.
“We won’t have to bury the corpse, we’ll just roast it and grind it.”
[Author’s note: This quote doesn’t mean what it seems to say. Kudos if you understand what it actually means without having read the book. The first 10 people to explain it correctly through the Contact link on this website will each get a free copy of the book in their choice of format.]
“Portions of this press conference contain forward-looking statements based on management’s expectations and projections. Actual results may differ materially from what is discussed here due to a variety of factors, including but not limited to: our CEO’s inability to stick to a single business model for more than two consecutive quarters; increasingly fickle customer preferences in pastry fruit filling flavors; a possible shortage of soy-based yellow ink to print our trademark paper cups; labor unrest on the part of our Squawkie bird toys seeking free range status; and my distant cousin from Central America, El Niño.”
“This is no longer a scientific problem. It is a business problem.”
“Should I just give him a ‘no comment’?”
“That would be like pleading the Fifth Amendment on the witness stand. It’s like waving a flag that says, ‘I’m guilty, but you can’t prove it.’ No, you can’t give him a ‘no comment.’ You just have to not give him a comment.”
“It’s for jiu-jitsu class.”
“Like in those mixed martial arts fights I’ve seen on TV?”
“Sort of, but we practice straight jiu-jitsu, not MMA. Nobody gets beaten up, and nobody bleeds, unless you count the occasional scrape from mat burn.”
“Just what I needed, a 12-year-old pickpocket telling me to behave.”
“Not a single bean has failed to show up for delivery yet, and this is how the markets react? I guess I would have failed as an economist.”
“A bird in the hand is worth two in the burning coffee bush.”
“If there are anaerobes on this, they’re dead ones now.”
“Please tell me you’re joking.”
“If I was joking, your husband might still be alive.”
Upon deplaning through the jetway into the terminal at McCarran International Airport, after nearly nine months of traveling far and wide, the first thing he encountered, on his first visit ever to the United States of America, was a row of slot machines blaring out, “Wheel of Fortune!”
“By virtue of these similar emblems, we indelibly mark ourselves as members of a unified tribe. And by virtue of our uniquely personal choices of exact species and location of these markings, we recognize and signify the importance of individuality within that unified tribe.”
“If you were a bunch of nature loving terrorists, what kind of critter names would you use to symbolize the utmost fragility of the environment?”
“This new weapon is not a weapon of mass destruction, but a weapon of economic destruction. And with it, my friends, we will bring a whole new meaning to the term ‘eco-terrorism.’”
“This is even better than what we had been planning. And we won’t have to kill anyone ourselves, although they might start killing each other.”
The bottom fell out of the stock market in a record day of trading that would become known as Red Tuesday.
The two women, both startled to see a familiar face and embarrassed to be discovered, said exactly the same thing at exactly the same time, “What are you doing here?” A moment later, both women were thinking exactly the same thought, I should have told her not to tell anyone she saw me here.
“Would you gentlemen care to tell me where these samples came from?”
“We're not at liberty to discuss the source of the samples at this time.”
“How about if I tell you where they came from? Delcese Agricola.”
“If it had been easy to synthesize toxins, we wouldn’t be known as The Snake Farm.”
“I’ve been around long enough to know when something’s up with someone. And when that someone is a woman, the something that’s up usually involves a man.”
“Did she resist arrest?”
“Not exactly, sir. The arresting officers say she fainted.”
“That’s what they say. I say your valentões [bullies] hit me.”
“I love that he’s touting the worst case scenario. I couldn’t have asked for a better way of inciting panic.”
“Butterfly. It’s such an odd word. What's its origin?”
“It comes from folklore about witches who were believed to fly into peoples’ homes and steal their milk and butter.”
“A hundred years from now, when our deeds have become folklore, perhaps the word will become ‘coffeefly.’”
“He said his group was going to make The Monkey Wrench Gang look like a bunch of grade school kids.”
“There's an entirely different approach that would be a whole lot easier than this massive decryption effort.”
“What’s that?”
“Find the person’s username and password, then just log into the email account and see what’s in the folders. You’d be amazed at how many covert operatives don’t delete everything.”
“Decker’s Theory of Political Relativity: Normal rules of the space-time continuum don’t apply in Washington D.C.”
The President had specifically instructed the speechwriter to avoid using the word terrorists, since the mere mention of the word actually fostered terror among the public, effectively giving the terrorists more of what they wanted. "Besides," he had told the speechwriter, "nobody ever died from not having a cup of coffee."
“Technically, my answer should be yes, but that would be a misleading and incomplete characterization of my findings.”
“Presumably the Senator’s intention is to present a misleading and incomplete characterization.”
“Don’t play dumb with me, senhorita. We’ve decoded your email.”
“Email? What email?”
“The one in which you encoded the message that says you discovered a new species and that your manager found your jar of toxin in the lab. Ring any bells yet?”
“She won’t get out of the country unless it’s in um caixão.” A coffin.
“There’s always another leaf to turn over.”
“I have, at long last, tasted the perfect cup of coffee.”
“How do we stop the spread of a microorganism that just won’t die?”
“Unlike common coffee leaf rust disease, this organism kills the trees that it infects. Unless we can stop its spread very quickly, we are at risk of losing the whole of our crop for the next three to four years, which is how long it would take for newly planted coffee trees to bear fruit, and up to five years to reach full yield.”
“This seems to be an awful lot of work and a highly complicated process, just to produce a beverage that doesn’t even taste that good unless it’s loaded with cream and sugar.”
“Follow me.”
“My guess is that the pilot had some kind of seizure.”
“Would that have been before or after the plane crashed?”
“Hard to say. The patient had a wound on the side of his head, a skull fracture, which appeared to have happened during the crash, and that injury could have caused the seizure. But if the seizure happened before, the seizure could have caused the crash which gave him the head injury. O ovo ou a galinha? Which came first, the egg or the chicken?”
“Those coffee trees turned out to be a previously undiscovered species, that is, not just a subspecies of Coffea arabica, but a distinct new species. Paul named it Coffea gracinha. In Portuguese, one of the meanings of the word gracinha is ‘sweet.’”
“He chose the name because the beans taste sweet, I presume?”
“The word for that kind of sweetness would be doce. Gracinha means sweet as in to be very pleasant. He named the new species in honor of his wife, Fabiana. Gracinha was his term of endearment for her, like ‘sweetie.’”
“He said he might have discovered a three-way symbiosis, although he wouldn't tell me what the three things were. He said he was keeping it a sweet surprise.”
“Can you confirm that employees at Delcese Agricola refer to the disease outbreak currently among the coffee plants as O Vampiro [The Vampire], because of its red color and the way it sucks moisture out of the plants?”
“I haven’t even confirmed that there is a disease outbreak among the coffee plants.”
“Which fungicides have you tried thus far?”
“E-F-T-W-G.”
“I’m not familiar with that one.”
“It means, pardon my French, Every F-ing Thing We Got.”
“The experimental coffee field has far fewer insects than the control field.”
“Any negative side effects?”
“Some people consider fewer insects to be a negative side effect.”
“A bad day of bird watching is better than a good day of lab work.”
“Some of the farm workers who are no longer employed called the fungus o Sangue de Cristo, the Blood of Christ, as though God sent this plague to cleanse their sins.”
“Cê tá brincando?” [Are you shittin' me?]
“If I was shittin’ you, I’d be in one of the stalls.”
“Thanks for tipping me off. I owe you another case of Cachaça Anísio Santiago. You have fine taste in liquor, Senhor.”
“I’m going to show those punks up north who’s the king of coffee in this country.”
“Uncertainty is the father of opportunity.”
“Have our broker on the BM&F exchange buy us as many Coffee ‘C’ futures as he can, as quickly as he can. I want him to hit the allowable limit.”
“Do you want to buy options as well?”
“Options are for wussies.”
“Que é wussies?”
As if they had been prompted by a conductor from the San Francisco Symphony, in unison, all hundred attendees glanced at their iPhones to check for tweets about a coffee fungus infestation in Brazil.
“We won’t have to bury the corpse, we’ll just roast it and grind it.”
[Author’s note: This quote doesn’t mean what it seems to say. Kudos if you understand what it actually means without having read the book. The first 10 people to explain it correctly through the Contact link on this website will each get a free copy of the book in their choice of format.]
“Portions of this press conference contain forward-looking statements based on management’s expectations and projections. Actual results may differ materially from what is discussed here due to a variety of factors, including but not limited to: our CEO’s inability to stick to a single business model for more than two consecutive quarters; increasingly fickle customer preferences in pastry fruit filling flavors; a possible shortage of soy-based yellow ink to print our trademark paper cups; labor unrest on the part of our Squawkie bird toys seeking free range status; and my distant cousin from Central America, El Niño.”
“This is no longer a scientific problem. It is a business problem.”
“Should I just give him a ‘no comment’?”
“That would be like pleading the Fifth Amendment on the witness stand. It’s like waving a flag that says, ‘I’m guilty, but you can’t prove it.’ No, you can’t give him a ‘no comment.’ You just have to not give him a comment.”
“It’s for jiu-jitsu class.”
“Like in those mixed martial arts fights I’ve seen on TV?”
“Sort of, but we practice straight jiu-jitsu, not MMA. Nobody gets beaten up, and nobody bleeds, unless you count the occasional scrape from mat burn.”
“Just what I needed, a 12-year-old pickpocket telling me to behave.”
“Not a single bean has failed to show up for delivery yet, and this is how the markets react? I guess I would have failed as an economist.”
“A bird in the hand is worth two in the burning coffee bush.”
“If there are anaerobes on this, they’re dead ones now.”
“Please tell me you’re joking.”
“If I was joking, your husband might still be alive.”
Upon deplaning through the jetway into the terminal at McCarran International Airport, after nearly nine months of traveling far and wide, the first thing he encountered, on his first visit ever to the United States of America, was a row of slot machines blaring out, “Wheel of Fortune!”
“By virtue of these similar emblems, we indelibly mark ourselves as members of a unified tribe. And by virtue of our uniquely personal choices of exact species and location of these markings, we recognize and signify the importance of individuality within that unified tribe.”
“If you were a bunch of nature loving terrorists, what kind of critter names would you use to symbolize the utmost fragility of the environment?”
“This new weapon is not a weapon of mass destruction, but a weapon of economic destruction. And with it, my friends, we will bring a whole new meaning to the term ‘eco-terrorism.’”
“This is even better than what we had been planning. And we won’t have to kill anyone ourselves, although they might start killing each other.”
The bottom fell out of the stock market in a record day of trading that would become known as Red Tuesday.
The two women, both startled to see a familiar face and embarrassed to be discovered, said exactly the same thing at exactly the same time, “What are you doing here?” A moment later, both women were thinking exactly the same thought, I should have told her not to tell anyone she saw me here.
“Would you gentlemen care to tell me where these samples came from?”
“We're not at liberty to discuss the source of the samples at this time.”
“How about if I tell you where they came from? Delcese Agricola.”
“If it had been easy to synthesize toxins, we wouldn’t be known as The Snake Farm.”
“I’ve been around long enough to know when something’s up with someone. And when that someone is a woman, the something that’s up usually involves a man.”
“Did she resist arrest?”
“Not exactly, sir. The arresting officers say she fainted.”
“That’s what they say. I say your valentões [bullies] hit me.”
“I love that he’s touting the worst case scenario. I couldn’t have asked for a better way of inciting panic.”
“Butterfly. It’s such an odd word. What's its origin?”
“It comes from folklore about witches who were believed to fly into peoples’ homes and steal their milk and butter.”
“A hundred years from now, when our deeds have become folklore, perhaps the word will become ‘coffeefly.’”
“He said his group was going to make The Monkey Wrench Gang look like a bunch of grade school kids.”
“There's an entirely different approach that would be a whole lot easier than this massive decryption effort.”
“What’s that?”
“Find the person’s username and password, then just log into the email account and see what’s in the folders. You’d be amazed at how many covert operatives don’t delete everything.”
“Decker’s Theory of Political Relativity: Normal rules of the space-time continuum don’t apply in Washington D.C.”
The President had specifically instructed the speechwriter to avoid using the word terrorists, since the mere mention of the word actually fostered terror among the public, effectively giving the terrorists more of what they wanted. "Besides," he had told the speechwriter, "nobody ever died from not having a cup of coffee."
“Technically, my answer should be yes, but that would be a misleading and incomplete characterization of my findings.”
“Presumably the Senator’s intention is to present a misleading and incomplete characterization.”
“Don’t play dumb with me, senhorita. We’ve decoded your email.”
“Email? What email?”
“The one in which you encoded the message that says you discovered a new species and that your manager found your jar of toxin in the lab. Ring any bells yet?”
“She won’t get out of the country unless it’s in um caixão.” A coffin.
“There’s always another leaf to turn over.”
“I have, at long last, tasted the perfect cup of coffee.”
“How do we stop the spread of a microorganism that just won’t die?”
