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Fish Quotes

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Fish Quotes

“Kimaya is also looking in the mirror, and I meet her gaze there. There is a look I do not like in her expression, a hint of something that doesn’t match her sweet tone and seems totally alien for my warm, generous femme sister. It is a look like I might wear—eyes narrow and lips pursed. She’s peering at herself, not liking what she sees. And I think about how fish means jealousy among femmes. About how we are all so hungry for what each other has, when the truth is none of us has enough to begin with. I think about how strange and funny it is that there are many femmes who would kill, who would sell their souls to Dr. Crocodile, for the chance to leave the Street of Miracles, when all my life I have been running toward it. And I think about how Kimaya is right, how fish means opportunity and privilege. Someday, I may swim away from here into another place. I remember my little sister back in Gloom, and how escaping always seems to mean leaving someone behind.”

PrivilegeJealousyEscapingFishFemme
Book:Fierce Femmes and Notorious Liars
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“The strings on a guitar are like fishing lines, and I strum them out at sea. Each string has a distinct sound and flavor, but the most popular with the sharks is Leftover Meatloaf, which sounds like Color Me Badd’s 1991 song “I Wanna Sex You Up.”

HumorSexSoundMusicGuitarFishingSurrealFishShark
Book:There are Two Typos of People in This World: Those Who Can Edit and Those Who Can't
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“The abyss was awake, and its entire population was stirring, some to flee, some to investigate, but many, all too many, to feed. Fishes with fangs came. Bulbous bloated creatures came. Shelled monsters with massive jaws came. Things that defied description came. Every form or shape that stalked the nightmares of a child lurked there in the deep, and they all descended on the Lifemaker, no eyes to see, but many mouths to taste.”

SeaOceanFishesMonstersAbyssFishMouthFang
Book:Lifemaker
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“If Alessandro and Rosy are working from a disadvantage in terms of product recognition, they have put generations of accumulated experience into practice to fill the menu with dozens of little tastes of Como. They make fragrant, full-flavored stocks from the bones and bodies of perch and chub. They cure whitefish eggs in salt, creating a sort of freshwater bottarga, ready to be grated over pasta and rice. Shad is brined in vinegar and herbs, whitefish becomes a slow-cooked ragù or a filling for ravioli, and pigo and pike form the basis of Mella's polpettine di pesce, Pickled, dried, smoked, cured, pâtéd: a battery of techniques to ensure that nothing goes to waste. If you can make it with meat, there's a good chance Alessandro and Rosy have made it with lake fish. And then there's missoltino, the lake's most important by-product, a staple that stretches back to medieval times and has been named a presidio by Slow Food, a designation reserved for the country's most important ingredients and food traditions. The people still making missoltino can be counted on a single hand. Alessandro guts and scales hundreds of shad at a time, salts the bodies, and hangs them like laundry to dry under the sun for forty-eight hours or more. The dried fish are then layered with bay leaves, packed into metal canisters, and weighed down. Slowly the natural oils from the shad escape and bubble to the surface, forming a protective layer that preserves the missoltino indefinitely. It can be used as a condiment of sorts, a weapons-grade dose of lake umami to be detonated in salads and pastas. In its most classic preparation, served with toc, a thick, rich scoop of polenta slow cooked in a copper pot over a wood fire, it tastes of nothing you've eaten in Italy- or anywhere else.”

ItalyFishItalian CookingLake ComoLake Water
Book:Pasta, Pane, Vino: Deep Travels Through Italy's Food Culture
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“Here's the soup. Nothing new, but if you're going to have broth in summer, it has to be botan-hamo: lightly boiled hamo eel, named for the way it's cut into the shape of a peony to remove the bones. As for this ayu rice, the only ingredient is in the name. The fish are deboned, so all you need to do is sprinkle some of these chopped mitsuba leaves on top. The pickles on the side are eggplant and myoga ginger. Now, you tuck in, and I'll bring you a cup of hojicha.”

SummerSoupSeafoodFishJapanese CuisineGreen TeaEel
Book:The Restaurant of Lost Recipes
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“When I was a child I had a fishless aquarium. My father set it up for me with gravel and plants and pebbles before he'd got the fish and I asked him to leave it as it was for a while. The pump kept up a charming burble, the green-gold light was wondrous when the room was dark. I put in a china mermaid and a tin horseman who maintained a relationship like that of the figures on Keat's Grecian urn except that the horseman grew rusty. Eventually fish were pressed upon me and they seemed an intrusion, I gave them to a friend. All that aquarium wanted was the sound of the pump, the gently waving plants, the mysterious pebbles and the silent horseman forever galloping to the mermaid smiling in the green-gold light. I used to sit and look at them for hours. The mermaid and the horseman were from my father. I have them in a box somewhere here, I'm not yet ready to take them out and look at them again.”

FatherChildFishMermaidAquariumKeatsGrecian Urn
Book:Turtle Diary
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“As Augustus basked in self-praise, he became aware of a movement beyond his reflection, beyond the glass. At first he saw the flicking tail of the yellow goatfish, then a blue and gold tang, then a school of pearl wrasses. As he refocused his eyes into the tank he realized that all of the creatures of the aquarium were just across the glass, all of them staring at him. What on Earth is going on here, their expressions seemed to say. Augustus shook his head, suddenly uncomfortable. “Youse all there in the fish tank,” he growled, pointing, “youse can go stuff yerself for all I care! I’m done here.”

ScienceClimate ChangePublic PolicyFishMisinformationAllegoryFableAquarium
Book:FISH TANK: A Fable for Our Times
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“Surprisingly few tussles occurred over the falling food. ... Only Push the puffer and Hammy the parrotfish regularly stole more than their fair share. But they argued that as they were bigger than the others, they deserved more. “Plus,” Push said, “and I don’t mean to be indelicate here, but some of you eat our ordure. Thus if we get more, you get more.” “Let’s face it,” added Hammy, wanting to add to Push’s words, “that is the way the world works.”

ScienceClimate ChangePublic PolicyFishMisinformationAllegoryFableAquarium
Book:FISH TANK: A Fable for Our Times
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“What Roop says is correct. That thermometer hasn’t worked in years.” Sanger paused, looking around for Hansom before continuing. Not seeing the goatfish, he proceeded confidently, “Actually, I daresay my own studies have found the instrument to be so imprecise that it is my professional opinion that the temperature is just as likely to be going down as to be going up!”

ScienceClimate ChangePublic PolicyFishMisinformationAllegoryFableAquarium
Book:FISH TANK: A Fable for Our Times
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