Fish Quotes

“I am not eccentric. It's just that I am more alive than most people. I am an unpopular electric eel set in a pond of catfish.”
― Edith Sitwell

“She'd also called me brave...unless she was talking to the catfish.”
― Rick Riordan, The Lightning Thief

“Once there were brook trout in the streams in the mountains. You could see them standing in the amber current where the white edges of their fins wimpled softly in the flow. They smelled of moss in your hand. Polished and muscular and torsional. On their backs were vermiculate patterns that were maps of the world in its becoming. Maps and mazes. Of a thing which could not be put back. Not be made right again. In the deep glens where they lived all things were older than man and they hummed of mystery.”
― Cormac McCarthy, The Road

“Now I can look at you in peace; I don't eat you any more.”
― Franz Kafka

“Once we were blobs in the sea, and then fishes, and then lizards and rats and then monkeys, and hundreds of things in between. This hand was once a fin, this hand once had claws! In my human mouth I have the pointy teeth of a wolf and the chisel teeth of a rabbit and the grinding teeth of a cow! Our blood is as salty as the sea we used to live in! When we're frightened, the hair on our skin stands up, just like it did when we had fur. We are history! Everything we've ever been on the way to becoming us, we still are. [...]

I'm made up of the memories of my parents and my grandparents, all my ancestors. They're in the way I look, in the colour of my hair. And I'm made up of everyone I've ever met who's changed the way I think.”
― Terry Pratchett, A Hat Full of Sky

“Give a man a fish, and you'll feed him for a day. Teach a man to fish, and he'll buy a funny hat. Talk to a hungry man about fish, and you're a consultant.”
― Scott Adams

“A photographer is like a cod, which produces a million eggs in order that one may reach maturity.”
― George Bernard Shaw

“Alive without breath,
As cold as death;
Never thirsty, ever drinking,
All in mail never clinking.”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Hobbit

“Had I told the sea
What I felt for you,
It would have left its shores,
Its shells,
Its fish,
And followed me.”
― Nizar Qabbani

“That's the beauty of it. Have you seen the contraptions these magicians build to accomplish the most mundane feats? They are a bunch of fish covered in feathers trying to convince the public they can fly, I am simply a bird in their midst.”
― Erin Morgenstern, The Night Circus

“I know the human being and fish can co-exist peacefully.”
― George W. Bush

“The world is a show and the show is a performance of the wealthy, the beautiful and the fortunate. The invulnerable, the matchless and the exclusive live a life like dazzling fish in a scintillating seascape behind glass. Everybody may admire them, but nobody can touch them. ( “Keeping up with the Joneses” )”
― Erik Pevernagie

“I've never really wanted to go to Japan. Simply because I don’t like eating fish. And I know that's very popular out there in Africa.”
― Britney Spears

“I'm going to teach you to ride Princess."
"Princess?"
"My motorcycle."
I laugh. "You named your motorcycle Princess?"
"What can I say?" he teases. "I call all my favorite things princess.”
― Tera Lynn Childs, Forgive My Fins

“…I keep looking for one more teacher, only to find that fish learn from the water and birds learn from the sky.” (p.275)”
― Mark Nepo, Facing the Lion, Being the Lion: Finding Inner Courage Where It Livesosi

“If we don’t live in the same vibe, it is hard to be aware of each other. When our reading differs from our neighbors’ reality, our surroundings may take a range of discordant shades and daily episodes become unrecognizable. But if we endeavor to find out, the “who is who”, the “what is what” and the “where is Waldo”, we might demonstrate our social literacy and connectedness. ("Fish for silence.")”
― Erik Pevernagie

“Some have given up the expectation of meeting genuine, ‘heartfelt’ people and prefer to retire to a mute world, where fish, at least, give a feeling of recognition. In the wake of the unbearable sterile daily noise, their life has turned into a fluid universe of silence, dream, and stillness and their compass has come to be a space beyond fear, deception, and betrayal. Fish never disappoint. (Fish for silence)”
― Erik Pevernagie

“I flung open the door. I got a momentary flash of about a hundred and fifteen cats of all sizes and colours scrapping in the middle of the room, and then they all shot past me with a rush and out of the front door; and all that was left of the mobscene was the head of a whacking big fish, lying on the carpet and staring up at me in a rather austere sort of way, as if it wanted a written explanation and apology.”
― P.G. Wodehouse, A Wodehouse Bestiary

“They keep saying that sea levels are rising an' all this. It's nowt to do with the icebergs melting, it's because there's too many fish in it. Get rid of some of the fish and the water will drop. Simple. Basic science.”
― Karl Pilkington, The Ricky Gervais Show - First, Second and Third Seasons

“As I see it, life is an effort to grip before they slip through one's fingers and slide into oblivion, the startling, the ghastly or the blindingly exquisite fish of the imagination before they whip away on the endless current and are lost for ever in oblivion's black ocean.”
― Mervyn Peake

“The cure for unhappiness...It's this: What a person needs is always more than they say.”
― Avi

“I never understood why you would ever feel the need to shoot the fish in the barrel. I mean, they're in a barrel, you've already caught them. The hard work's done, they can't escape. So if you want them dead, just drain the water out. Why bring guns into it?”
― Craig Silvey, Jasper Jones

“All men are equal before fish.”
― Herbert Hoover

“I am a pisces, a fish out of water, searching for a way back home.”
― James Kidd

“The fish in the creek said nothing. Fish never do. Few people know what fish think about injustice, or anything else.”
― Ursula K. Le Guin, Catwings

“Yes, sir, but the Librarian likes bananas, sir."
"Very nourishin' fruit, Mr Stibbons."
"Yes, sir. Although, funnily enough it's not actually a fruit, sir."
"Really?"
"Yes, sir. Botanically, it's a type of fish, sir. According to my theory it's cladistically associated with the Krullian pipefish, sir, which of course is also yellow and goes around in bunches or shoals."
"And lives in trees?"
"Well, not usually, sir. The banana is obviously exploiting a new niche."
"Good heavens, really? It's a funny thing, but I've never much liked bananas and I've always been a bit suspicious of fish, too. That'd explain it.”
― Terry Pratchett, Hogfather

“Teach all men to fish, but first teach all men to be fair. Take less, give more. Give more of yourself, take less from the world. Nobody owes you anything, you owe the world everything.”
― Suzy Kassem, Rise Up and Salute the Sun: The Writings of Suzy Kassem

“Beauty without grace is like a fish far displaced from the water and looking at this kind of beauty is like watching that fish die right there on the cement in front of you.”
― C. JoyBell C.

“Fenchurch had red mullet and said it was delicious.
Arthur had a swordfish steak and said it made him angry. He grabbed a passing waitress by the arm and berated her.
“Why’s this fish so bloody good?” he demanded, angrily.”
― Douglas Adams, So Long, and Thanks for All the Fish

“Any creature, even one as unassuming as a fish, can become something mighty. When they courageously endure their trials, they meet their destiny.”
― Colleen Houck, Tiger's Promise