#frankie loses their memory and fronts as a different frankie each time and that’s part of the situational memory bursts

[coincasual]

a lil frankie sketch!

[cliffordchick]

Author’s Note: Wow, it’s been a long time since I’ve done this but here goes. I originally wrote this as a writing exercise with different characters in mind but decided it would be the perfect piece to test out my fic writing skills again. Please be kind but also don’t be shy with the criticism or love. 

“I never imagined myself in a wedding dress,” you say. You study your reflection for a moment in the floor-length mirror before your eyes drift towards Calum. He’s kneeling on the floor in front of you, pushpins balancing dangerously in between his lips. You can tell he’s trying not to look up at you, his eyes trained on the hem he’s working on. You stifle a sigh and push on. “I always thought if I got married, I’d just show up at the courthouse in jeans and a t-shirt. Oh! Maybe a bikini fresh from a dip in a hotel pool!”

The pushpins scatter, flying in all different directions as Calum lets out a hearty laugh. “You’re something else, you know that?” He drops the hem of the gown and runs his now free hands through his hair.

“You’d be so bored without me,” you pipe. 

Bored doesn’t even begin to describe it; he thinks as he steals a glance at you for the first time. He thinks back to the moment he first laid eyes on you, all those years ago. You guys were seven, and you were hanging upside down on the monkey bars, pigtails grazing the wood chip-covered ground in the breeze. He was drawn to you instantly, even when you let out the most menacing, Wicked Witch of the West style laugh.

Calum’s so lost in the memory he doesn’t even have time to process what you’re doing until it’s too late. You’re on your hands and knees, helping him pick up the stray pins. His heart nearly stops when the delicate lace on the bodice catches on the crystal appliqués of the floor-length mirror.

“Would you please just stand there and look pretty,” Calum hisses, shaking his head.

His words may be harsh, but you know there’s nothing but love underneath them. There’s never been anything but love underneath his words. Even that time he told you to “fuck off” when you barged into his dorm room freshman year, moments before he lost his virginity. You shake your head, willing the memory to go back into its box in the deepest, darkest corner of her mind.

You stand, looking down at Calum with a pout forming on her face. The Y/N Pout™ as Calum has come to refer to it as. “Am I not always pretty?”

Calum lets out an exasperated sigh. This is what he gets for asking you to fill in for a bride-to-be who had to cancel her fitting for a “venue emergency.” As if the wedding venue was more important than the wedding dress that cost the same as several month’s worths of rent at his shitty studio apartment.

“You’re gorgeous, Y/N; you don’t need me to tell you that.”

“Doesn’t mean I don’t like hearing it,” you say, sticking your tongue out. Truthfully, he’s the only one who has ever called you gorgeous, but you’re not about to tell him that. It’ll just make him blush. And if there’s one thing you can’t resist, it’s a blushing Calum. Instead, you make a big show of getting back onto the pedestal, picking the bottom of the gown up as if you’re an eighteenth-century Princess who has just let the love of her life walk out on her. “How does she expect to dance in this thing?”

Calum reclaims his spot, kneeling in front of you. One hand holding the delicate fabric, the other working a pushpin through it for the seamstress. “She won’t. That’s what the reception dress is for.”

“A reception dress?” you choke out. “But she spent,” you pause, looking at the receipt on the small side table. “$10,000!” You fan yourself and turn around. “Ty, I don’t think I should be wearing this dress.”

Calum grunts in response, pushpins back between his lips. If there’s anyone who should be wearing this dress, it’s you. He quickly shakes the thought away, steadying his hands as he works the pushpin through.

“What kind of monster spends $10,000 on a dress she’s not even going to wear the whole night! I think I’m going to be sick.”

“Don’t you dare,” Calum warns, working the final pushpin through the fabric, securing the hemline. He stands, wiping his hands on his pants before offering you his hand. “Come on queasy, let’s get you out of that dress before you do something stupid.”

“I don’t think anything is stupider than spending $10,000 on a wedding dress,” you say, accepting his hand. You try to ignore the static shock that jolts through your body at the contact. He’s helped you up millions of times, and this should be no different. Before you have time to dwell, you carefully make your way back to the small dressing room.

Calum cleans up as you wrestle with the gown in the dressing room. A thread of profanities falls from your lips before you emerges a moment later in a bright pair of jeans and a polka-dotted sweater. You gently hand the gown to Calum, who gingerly hangs it back up on a rack full of white dresses — none of which sparkle quite like this one.

“I feel human again!” you shout, dancing around the room. “Next time you need a fill-in bride for a fitting, do me a favor and don’t call me.”

It’s Calum’s turn to pout, brown eyes growing three times the size. “But whatever are best friends for if not for trying on ridiculously expensive wedding dresses?”

“Fine,” you say, giving in. “But I expected a proper proposal next time. None of this five am emergency text nonsense.”

Calum grabs your hand and immediately drops to his knees; a playful glint dances across his eyes. You look at him wide-eyed, lips tugging up at the corners. “Y/N Y/L/N, will you be my fake bride from now until eternity?”

You clap your free hand over your mouth. “Oh, Calum,” you say, taking on a British accent for reasons not even she knows. “It would be my honor.”

Calum laughs so hard he loses his balance, sending you both tumbling to the pearly white floor. “What was that accent?” Calum manages to get out between laughs and gasps for air.

“I don’t know!” you shout, eyes brimming with tears from laughter. “It sort of just popped out.”

“Don’t you mean it, popped out?” Calum says, delivering the last part in his own take on a terrible British accent.

You shove him away before quickly pulling him back towards you. You bury your face in the crook of his neck. “I hate you.”

“Hate you too,” he says as his smile spreads across his face revealing a dimple on his cheek.

You stay like that for a moment. A tangled web of limbs, laughing and enjoying each other’s closeness. It’s been a while since you’ve just reveled in each other’s company even though you both live in the same city. Calum’s been busy, working crazy hours to prove himself at Something Blue, the wedding gown boutique that specializes in outrageous, occasionally blue-dyed wedding gowns. And you’ve been holed up in random libraries, working on your dissertation. You do text throughout the day. You send him various gifs of a person jumping off a bridge, and Calum responds with various pictures of glorious diner food items you’d miss if you did it. And you try to FaceTime at least once a week, but it’s not the same as being in each other’s presence. When the two of you are together, it’s almost like you’re two sides of the same person. You complete each other.

Neither of you is ready to pull apart, but your stomach doesn’t get the memo, sending an echoing growl through Something Blue. You move from the crook of Calum’s neck and instead muffle your laughter in his chest. Calum does his best to keep his heartbeat under control.

“Come on. I think I owe you and your Hungry, Hungry Hippo stomach breakfast.”

“Frankie’s breakfast extravaganza?” you ask, pulling away from Calum so you can look up into his eyes. It takes all your might not to reach out and poke the dimple on his cheek.

Calum gasps dramatically, “I’m offended you have to ask!”

Just as quickly as you fell, you’re back on your feet and standing a safe distance away from each other. The loss of contact is immediately felt between both of you but neither wants to admit it, out loud or to yourselves. Calum runs a nervous hand through his hair as his cheek dimple disappears. You tug at your sweater that had ridden up before you turn towards him, smiling again.

“Shall we,” you ask, British accent back in full force.

Calum shakes his head before offering you his arm, “Lead the way, m’lady.”

[wanderlustxprincess]

Daily Writing Prompt Challenge - Day 1

“I never imagined myself in a wedding dress,” Delilah says. She studies her reflection for a moment in the floor-length mirror before her eyes drift towards Tyler. He’s kneeling on the floor in front of her, pushpins balancing dangerously in between his lips. She can tell he’s trying not to look up at her, his eyes trained on the hem he’s working on. She stifles a sigh and pushes on. “I always thought if I got married, I’d just show up at the courthouse in jeans and a t-shirt. Oh! Maybe a bikini fresh from a dip in a hotel pool!”

The pushpins scatter, flying in all different directions as Tyler lets out a hearty laugh. “You’re something else, Del.” He drops the hem of the gown and runs his now free hands through his hair.

“You’d be so bored without me,” Delilah pipes. 

Bored doesn’t even begin to describe it; he thinks as he steals a glance at Delilah for the first time. He thinks back to the moment he first laid eyes on her, all those years ago. They were seven, and she was hanging upside down on the monkey bars, pigtails grazing the wood chip-covered ground in the breeze. He was drawn to her instantly, even when she let out the most menacing, Wicked Witch of the West style laugh. 

Tyler’s so lost in the memory he doesn’t even have time to process what Delilah is doing until it’s too late. She’s on her hands and knees, helping him pick up the stray pins. His heart nearly stops when the delicate lace on the bodice catches on the crystal appliqués of the floor-length mirror. 

“Would you please just stand there and look pretty,” Tyler hisses, shaking his head.

His words may be harsh, but Delilah knows there’s nothing but love underneath them. There’s never been anything but love underneath his words. Even that time he told her to “fuck off” when she barged into his dorm room freshman year, moments before he lost his virginity. Delilah shakes her head, willing the memory to go back into its box in the deepest, darkest corner of her mind.

Delilah stands, looking down at Tyler with a pout forming on her face. The Delilah Pout™ as Tyler has come to refer to it as. “Am I not always pretty?” 

Tyler lets out an exasperated sigh. This is what he gets for asking Delilah to fill in for a bride-to-be who had to cancel her fitting for a “venue emergency.” As if the wedding venue was more important than the wedding dress that cost the same as several month’s worths of rent at his shitty studio apartment.

“You’re gorgeous, Delilah; you don’t need me to tell you that.” 

“Doesn’t mean I don’t like hearing it,” she says, sticking her tongue out. Truthfully, he’s the only one who has ever called her gorgeous, but she’s not about to tell him that. It’ll just make him blush. And if there’s one thing Delilah can’t resist, it’s a blushing Tyler. Instead, she makes a big show of getting back onto the pedestal, picking the bottom of the gown up as if she’s an eighteenth-century Princess who has just let the love of her life walk out on her. “How does she expect to dance in this thing?” 

Tyler reclaims his spot, kneeling in front of Delilah. One hand holding the delicate fabric, the other working a pushpin through it for the seamstress. “She won’t. That’s what the reception dress is for.” 

“A reception dress?” Delilah chokes out. “But she spent,” she pauses, looking at the receipt on the small side table. “$10,000!” She fans herself as she turns around. “Ty, I don’t think I should be wearing this dress.” 

Tyler grunts in response, pushpins back between his lips. If there’s anyone who should be wearing this dress, it’s you. He quickly shakes the thought away, steadying his hands as he works the pushpin through. 

“What kind of monster spends $10,000 on a dress she’s not even going to wear the whole night! I think I’m going to be sick.” 

“Don’t you dare,” Tyler warns, working the final pushpin through the fabric, securing the hemline. He stands, wiping his hands on his pants before offering his hand to Delilah. “Come on queasy, let’s get you out of that dress before you do something stupid.” 

“I don’t think anything is stupider than spending $10,000 on a wedding dress,” she says, accepting his hand. She tries to ignore the static shock that jolts through her body at the contact. He’s helped her up millions of times, and this should be no different. Before she has time to dwell, she carefully makes her way back to the small dressing room.

Tyler cleans up as Delilah wrestles with the gown in the dressing room. A thread of profanities falls from her lips before she emerges a moment later in a bright pair of jeans and a polka-dotted sweater. She gently hands the gown to Tyler, who gingerly hangs it back up on a rack full of white dresses — none of which sparkle quite like this one. 

“I feel human again!” Delilah says, dancing around the room. “Next time you need a fill-in bride for a fitting, do me a favor and don’t call me.”

It’s Tyler’s turn to pout, brown eyes growing three times the size. “But whatever are best friends for if not for trying on ridiculously expensive wedding dresses?” 

“Fine,” Delilah says, giving in. “But I expected a proper proposal next time. None of this five am emergency text nonsense.”

Tyler grabs her hand and immediately drops to his knees; a playful glint dances across his eyes. Delilah looks at him wide-eyed, her lips tugging up at the corners. “Delilah Albright, will you be my fake bride from now until eternity?” 

Delilah claps her free hand over her mouth. “Oh, Tyler,” she says, taking on a British accent for reasons not even she knows. “It would be my honor.” 

Tyler laughs so hard he loses his balance, sending them both tumbling to the pearly white floor. “What was that accent?” Tyler manages to get out between laughs and gasps for air. 

“I don’t know!” Delilah shouts, eyes brimming with tears from laughter. “It sort of just popped out.” 

“Don’t you mean it, popped out?” Tyler says, delivering the last part in his own take on a terrible British accent. 

Delilah shoves him away before quickly pulling him back towards her. She buries her face in the crook of his neck. “I hate you.” 

“Hate you too,” he says as his smile spreads across his face revealing a dimple on his cheek. 

They stay like that for a moment. A tangled web of limbs, laughing and enjoying each other’s closeness. It’s been a while since they’ve just reveled in each other’s company even though they both live in the same city. Tyler’s been busy, working crazy hours to prove himself at Something Blue, the wedding gown boutique that specializes in outrageous, occasionally blue-dyed wedding gowns. And Delilah’s been holed in random libraries, working on her dissertation. They do text throughout the day. Delilah sends him various gifs of a person jumping off a bridge, and Tyler responds with various pictures of glorious diner food items she’d miss if she did it. And they try to FaceTime at least once a week, but it’s not the same as being in each other’s presence. When they’re together, it’s almost like they’re two sides of the same person. They complete each other. 

Neither one is ready to pull apart, but Delilah’s stomach doesn’t get the memo, sending an echoing growl through Something Borrowed. Delilah moves from the crook of Tyler’s neck and instead muffles her laughter in his chest. Tyler does his best to keep his heartbeat under control. 

“Come on. I think I owe you and your Hungry, Hungry Hippo stomach breakfast.”

“Frankie’s breakfast extravaganza?” Delilah asks, pulling away from Tyler so she can look up into his eyes. It takes all her might not to reach out and poke the dimple on his cheek. 

Tyler gasps dramatically, “I’m offended you have to ask!”

Just as quickly as they fell, they’re back on their feet and standing a safe distance away from each other. The loss of contact is immediately felt between them but neither wants to admit it, out loud or to themselves. Tyler runs a nervous hand through his hair as his cheek dimple disappears. Delilah tugs at her sweater that had ridden up before she turns towards him, smiling again. 

“Shall we,” Delilah asks, British accent back in full force. 

Tyler shakes his head before offering her his arm, “Lead the way, m’lady.” 

[secretlittlerandezvous]

Rediscovered - Pavel Francouz

Summary: Pavel and Y/n see each other for the first time after they broke up.

Words: 3251

He spotted her in the crowd almost immediately. His friends didn’t seem to notice her, but Pavel recognized her the moment they walked in. A strange guy was standing next to her with his hands wrapped around her waist, she was laughing at something he told her, and Pavel couldn’t help but think that whatever the guy said wasn’t funny at all. He could hear her laughter just from his memory, the dozens of memories of her laughing at something he said or did come back quickly. He felt his heart beat faster and then it dropped to his stomach once he realized she moved on just a few months after they parted ways. Her hair seemed to be a little longer than he remembered but nothing else seemed to change. He noticed she wore her lucky bracelet she only wore to special occasions and it hurt to think he wasn’t her special occasion anymore. She then looked over her shoulder and around the room as if she sensed his presence and then she turned her attention back to the guy next to her. She didn’t seem to notice him but unfortunately for Pavel, he did notice her, and she looked amazing. She looked much happier; a smile was decorating her face which was enough of a proof to him that she was doing fine. It wasn’t the face Pavel saw the last time they saw each other. That day she was heartbreakingly sad: her eyes were red and full of tears, her lips were closed in a thin straight line and color completely drained from her face. She looked so tired for the last days of their relationship and now she was blooming. Pavel couldn’t believe she was happy with someone who wasn’t him and he couldn’t accept the fact that it wasn’t him who made her feel happy anymore.

For the past few months, Pavel did everything he could to move on and accept the fact that sometimes things don’t work out no matter how hard you try. It was clearer than ever before that sometimes you make a mistake, and everything falls apart thanks to it and there’s no hope things would go back to how they used to be, and you must live with the consequences. You make a mistake and you pay the price, right? Losing her and seeing her with another guy was the punishment. He knew there would come a day when he would find out she’s with someone else and maybe already engaged or married or in a more distant future he would see her walking across the street holding a child’s hand while her other hand would rest on her growing belly. But she came back to his life much earlier than he thought and it hurt, and his heart was burning. Months of moving on, months of trying to make himself believe he didn’t miss her, and months of preparation for seeing her one day were useless because no matter what he did or told himself it wasn’t stronger than his heartache.

For a moment he thought of going to her to say hi. Maybe she would smile at him and start a conversation. Maybe they would forget about time together and talk about whatever was on their minds. Maybe she would feel the same as him and maybe she would leave with him hand in hand. But then he looked at her once again and when he realized she truly looked happy he decided not to ruin it for her. After all, he always wanted only the best for her. And so, he walked away and lost sight of her.

Y/n had a very uncomfortable feeling that evening. As if a ghost was following her, breathing on her neck and reaching out his hand to touch her but whenever she turned around there was nothing and no one standing behind her. For a few minutes, she was able to shake off the feeling and relax under the touch of her date. His name was Matt and he fought for her attention for so long that she gave in and finally gave him a chance. He turned out to be a really nice guy, but he couldn’t compare to Pavel. After months of crying herself to sleep, hiding in the bathroom to cry when she was at work, and avoiding as many friends as possible because she feared someone would ask how she was doing she deserved to have one good night. After all the hurting and crying she was desperate for a company of a stranger who wouldn’t ask any questions.

Because how could she explain the way she felt her heartbreak, waking up in the middle of the night, and reaching out to him only to realize the bed was empty, how to explain she felt his presence at all times and how to explain pain strong enough to make her want to disappear. Would someone understand how hard it was to walk around the city and see the Avalanche posters with his face on them or how shattering it was to hear his name when he helped the team win? How she could explain the ending of such a strong bond?

Then she looked over her shoulder once again because this time she was sure she felt someone’s gaze on her. And there he was standing in the distance surrounded by his friends. The same people who at one point were like a family to her. Tall, handsome with a fresh haircut and freshly trimmed beard. Oh, how she adored him for taking care of his hair and beard. It was such a small detail, a common thing for most people but she couldn’t help it and absolutely adored the fact he was doing it. As usual, he was dressed in a white shirt with short sleeves and tight jeans and he wore his white Nike sneakers where he drew Bart Simpson one night after they watched the show. Nothing seemed to change yet everything was different. She slowly turned back because it was hard to look at him and even harder to look away knowing it might be the last time for who knows long. Now when she knew he was nearby it was hard to focus on what her date was saying and so she just nodded and laughed when he was laughing, and she prayed for the night to end quickly. Y/n saw Pavel’s face in front of her all the time, whenever a guy with brown hair and about the same height walked by her heart stopped beating and she didn’t know whether to feel relieved or sad it wasn’t him. For the rest of the night, she only thought of him. He was still the same person, just as handsome and just as cute as she remembered. Not even the haunting memory of the last time she saw him could erase the memories of his warm smile and honest laugh and happy eyes. The last time she saw him he looked so broken, so tired and so ready to walk away and leave it all behind. With heavy eyes, he looked at her for a few seconds and then looked away as if it hurt to see her face. And then he was gone. He was her person, closest friend, and the love of her life. How could the very same person be nothing but a stranger now?

Flashback

Y/n and Pavel sat quietly on the couch in his living room. They looked at each other but never at the same time and their lips were closed for the most part. They both opened their mouths to say something but there were no words that could make it hurt less. They both knew the worst kind of a breakup wasn’t the one where people argue or when nasty things are said. The worst break up, the worst end of the relationship was between two people who love each other but aren’t happy together. They continued to love each other even after all the pain and struggling but love, unfortunately, wasn’t enough. They simply weren’t ready to let each other go.

“You’re going to leave,” Pavel said after what felt like ages of silence. He looked sad and angry and serious. All at the same time. “Right?” He looked up at her and waited for her reaction.

She opened her mouth and closed it again, tears were filling her tired eyes quickly and one tear ran down her cheek and fell on her hand. Pavel reached out to her, with his thumb he wiped away the tear and then he grabbed her hand into his and held it tightly. She wanted to say no, hug him and stay with him even if it meant they were never going to find happiness, but she couldn’t do it to him and she certainly couldn’t do that to herself. “I wish it wasn’t you, you know? I wish it was someone else I was leaving. It’s unfair and it hurts to know you aren’t the one. You’re the sweetest, kindest, most loving and the funniest person I know so why, why it is not you?” She was desperate at that point and even angrier. She wasn’t angry at him or herself, she was angry because it didn’t make any sense.

“I understand,” he whispered. “I feel the same.”

“I’m tired Frankie, I’m so tired of this situation. I’m tired of trying to find the missing thing and of trying to figure out what’s wrong and what to do. Life simply doesn’t feel the same anymore. We’re not the same people we once were. I wanted to be with you more than anything else but it’s just a hopeless wish.” Y/n’s voice was shaking just as her hands and he held her and nodded and agreed with everything she said. He wanted to hug her and protect her, make her feel better like he did so many times before, but she wasn’t his and it felt wrong to even think of touching her. They were strangers from now on. “I hope you know how much I loved you and that I tried my best.” She added and looked at him with a brave face, yet her heart was breaking.

“I loved you too,” he said it so quietly she almost didn’t hear him, and then he continued. “So, freaking much.”

After that Y/n stood up, grabbed her bag, and left his apartment for good. There was no yelling, no fighting, no blaming each other, no remorse, and no fake promises or lies. There were two very tired people who loved each other so much that it drained the life out of them. Two people who looked like they were meant to be but couldn’t figure it out. Maybe the timing wasn’t right, and they weren’t ready. Maybe one day they would finally understand. But until then they had to part ways, wish each other good luck, and walk away.

End of flashback

Later that very same night both Y/n and Pavel were lying sleeplessly in their beds thinking about each other. He saw her so clearly, smiling and laughing and all he could think about was all the memories of her and him laughing at the most random things. All the late nights where they started serious conversations but always ended up joking around and laughing until the early hours of the morning. The world was asleep and to him, it felt like they were the only people in the universe. Having her was enough. Y/n on the other hand was thinking about all the nights she was sad and hurting and how he held her so tightly like he wanted to squeeze all the pain out of her. He kissed the side of her head, stroked her hair, and told her the worst jokes she ever heard but it still made her laugh. She would give anything to have his strong hands around her body, close her eyes, and smile happily and then fall asleep and wake up in the morning with him by her side.

Thirty minutes later Y/n against all logic and against her mind telling her not to do it found herself knocking on his apartment’s door. There was a good chance he was asleep already or maybe still out with his friends. In that case, she would have to leave this place once again with her heartbroken over again without him knowing. However, she didn’t know what would happen if he was home and awake, and if he opened the door. It was probably an enormous mistake to go there and throw away all the months of moving on, but she needed to try it and see if things changed or if they stayed the same.

“Y/n?” He blurted out when he opened the door. He was in pure shock and for a second, he thought it was just a dream and she would soon disappear. She stood right in front of him, looking up to see his face better because she was much shorter than him and her eyes were full of hurt while her face was full of anticipation.

“I had to see you,” she said softly. “I didn’t know what else to do or where else to go.”

“Did something happen to you? Are you okay?” Panic was taking over him, the thought of her being hurt frightened him more than anything. He immediately remembered the guy she was with this evening and created different scenarios of what happened after they went home together.

“Nothing happened,” she said quickly after she noticed his face. “Well, something did happen but not what you think.”

“Come in then,” he opened the door a little more and let her walk in. She took off her jacket and shoes and put her bag into the corner next to the door. She always did the same thing when she came to his place. And Pavel once again realized she didn’t change at all. They went to the living room and sat down on the couch at exactly the same spots where they sat the last time they saw each other.

“I saw you earlier today and I, I just wanted to talk to you,” she started explaining. Pavel was surprised by the fact she saw him, and he wondered if it was in that moment she looked over her shoulder or if it happened when he no longer saw her.

“I saw you there as well,” he chuckled. “I wanted to say hi but it looked like you were having a good time with that guy, so I didn’t.”

“Oh,” she breathed out. Her cheeks got a little red and she suddenly felt embarrassed. “He’s no one important. He actually told me he doesn’t want to see me again. I can’t blame him.” Y/n confessed. Although Matt liked her, he didn’t like her enough to ignore she was still thinking of someone else. The date was going good but once she stopped paying attention to him and when got bored he decided to end it. For the sake of them both.

Then they fell into silence. Neither one of them knew what to say next. Y/n came without a plan and Pavel was so surprised he was lost for words. But it was a quite comfortable silence. Not many people who were broken up could sit next to each other at night, alone and in silence and enjoy it. Y/n nervously looked around the living room and then she looked at him. “I don’t know what the hell I am doing here Frankie,” she said out of desperation and almost broke down in tears. Pavel got closer to her, grabbed her hands, and waited patiently for her to calm down and catch her breath. “All I know is that I wanted and needed to see you and hear your voice. I needed your presence. And I’m sorry if this is not a good time and maybe you’re seeing someone new and you want to kick me out. But I truly needed this.”

“I’m not seeing anyone,” and how could he when he only dreamt of her? “And the last thing I wanna do is to kick you out.” And how could he when it felt so good to have her back? She nodded and finally relaxed. The stress and fear slowly disappeared, and she could think a little clearer than before.

Time and the world stopped existing. It was just them and this apartment where they could hide away from everything and everyone. They shyly smiled at each other and they desperately tried to find the courage to grab the other person’s hand, pull them closer, and lay comfortable in each other’s arms. But they couldn’t forget the pain. It still lingered in the air; the untold things needed to be said in order to fully move on. They were laying down, facing each other and it brought them peace and confusion. It most likely wasn’t the right thing to do, it would most likely end for the same reason it did the first time and neither one of them would make it out alright this time. Yet something changed. Maybe it was the restored hope. The possibility of things being different now and the timing being right this time.

“Do you ever think about us? I mean about what could’ve been?” He asked.

Y/n turned to lay on her back and stared at the ceiling while she tried to figure out her answer. “I think about it more than I should. We had what it takes to be in love, didn’t we? The chemistry was there, we made each other feel safe and happy, we laughed together, we had common interests and opinions. We had love. We had the whole world. Or at least I felt like we were at the top of the world. So, what it was? What caused the ending?”

“Maybe we just needed to be apart for a while. And figure things out. I missed you so much, Y/n. This whole time I missed you and it was unbearable.”

“What did you figure out?”

“I don’t know. I really don’t. But I knew that if we ever find a way to be together, find our way back to each other then I would be better this time.”

“It wasn’t just you Frankie. And it wasn’t just me. There was something off, something I can’t describe. But I know for sure I don’t regret it.” Her face was serious, and her tone was low but still soft. He looked at her with adoration and he smiled because this was what he missed the most. Listening to her for hours and adoring her face, the little wrinkles on her forehead when she was thinking or how she scratched the back of her neck when she was nervous, how she played with her ring whenever they fell into silence.

And so, they lay there looking at each other for the first time in painfully long months and the emptiness they felt inside was slowly filled in by the pieces of themselves they gave each other without realizing it. Just like before there was so much love between them yet something was different, something definitely changed. The timing seemed to be right and they finally felt ready for each other. And they were reunited.

[softspaceboibrian]

Golden Slumber (Ben Hardy)

Ben Hardy x reader

Summary: ever since after seeing a beautiful girl, Ben goes to this small café, at the same time, every single day. He never had the courage to talk to her, but one day, things change.

A/N: I had this saved in my drafts for so long I almost forgot about it. I don't think it's great, but the idea behind it is pretty cute.

Warnings: mentions of blindness (I do not know much about it, I tried to make it as real as possible), except for that nothing, just pure fluff

She sat there every day. The same table for two, right next the window, drinking a warm cup of coffee, listening to music, with her dog laying right there, at her feet. And every single day, Ben would walk inside the café and smile, noticing she was there already.

He had found himself staring at her more than once. She had something different, she was different, and he didn't need to talk to her to know it. It was the gentle way she would smile to the waitress, the way her fingers would brush through her dog's fur, the way she let her hair fall in front of her face, as if it didn't bother her. It was the sound of her laugh echoing into the small café whenever the waitress told her something funny. And deep down he wished he was the one to cause that laugh, but he never built up the courage to go and talk to her, introduce himself. Why? He had nothing to lose. He knew he was handsome, he was usually pretty confident when it came to women. Then why? It was probably because she wasn't like other girls, but he still couldn't put his finger on why she was different.

The first time he talked with her it was on a grayed-out Monday, it was later than usual and he had the feeling he had missed her, that she had already left. He raced down the street, only the hood of his sweater to protect his hair from the gentle rain. He wasn't really paying attention to where he was going, his head filled with thoughts. He turned around a corner and, to his surprise, he bumped into someone.

"Oh, fuck! Sorry!" he immediately started apologising, helping the woman to get up, not realising until it was too late who she was.

"Don't worry, it's probably my fault" she said, her eyes low on the ground, while she touched her pockets, as if to check everything was there. "Freyja, the wallet" she said and right afterwards, the dog was standing between them, pressing the wallet into her hand.

He looked at the girl, studying her, wishing she wasn't wearing sunglasses, so that he could look her in the eyes. His eyes were set on her and he couldn't really understand what was going on. She was there, the girl he wanted to talk to for months was standing right there, in front of him, and he still couldn't bring himself to say something, anything.

"I'm sorry again for this little accident. Thanks for the help." She said, smiling, before starting to walk away.

"Wait!" He turned around, calling for her, surpring both himself and the girl, given the expression she had on her face when she turned around. "Let me buy you a cup of coffee, or lunch. It was definitely my fault and I'd like to make up for it"

The girl simply nodded, taking a step towards the voice, a gentle smile on her lips. "Can you please help me? It's getting slippery because of the rain and Freyja is definitely distracted today" She giggled, reaching out for his arm or anything she could hold onto.

That's when it hit him. She was blind.

He said a soft "yes", realising a nod would have been pointless with her, letting her hold onto his arm and walking her to their café.

"Hope you're not going to think I'm a stalker or something" he said after spending the first 15 minutes of sitting down at her table on introducing each other and starting to get to know the other. "I come here at the same time everyday, and... well, I've been meaning to talk to you for quite a while now. You always look so... beautiful"

She felt her cheeks get warmer at the comment, her hands immediately reaching for her own face. She was blushing. Her cheeks were coloured with a soft tint of pink, a strand of hair fell in front of her face, and his hand immediately reached for it, moving it out or the way, tucking it behind her ear, his digits brushing lightly her soft skin. "I'm sorry."

"Don't worry... and thank you"

The rest of the day was spent in that bar, talking about everything, eating chips and drinking coffee. She told him about her condition, how she became blind; she told him how she got over the depression that took hold of her life after everything happened and he was fascinated by the way she spoke about it, the way she talked about her discovering new passions, new things to do, new hobbies, how she adapted to this new life. But most of all he couldn't help but smile when she started talking about how everything got better for her when Freyj, her dog, got into her life. He told her about Frankie, his own dog, and how important she was for him. When she smiled, saying that Frankie and Freyja should definitely meet, he felt his heart melt.

It was around mid afternoon when they finally headed out of that café to take a stroll in the nearby park. Luckily, it had stopped raining. "What time is it?" she asked, taking Ben's arm and walking side by side with him, while Freyja walked right before them, unleashed outside for the first time in so long.

"Do you have anything to do?" Ben was worried she was going to leave soon.

"No, I was just wondering, since it's getting a little chilly" she smiled, leaning closer to the boy who immediately stopped walking. "Is everything okay?" Next thing she knew, she felt something warm on her shoulders. It took her a few moments to realise in was actually the man's jacket.

"It's almost sunset" he replied, letting her grab his arm, before starting to walk again. "Do you remember what sunsets look like?" His was a genuine question, raised from curiousness.

"Not really. I remember I used to love them; my parents would take me to the countryside on the weekends when i was little and we would sit on the porch of our house just admiring the sky."

It was probably the melancholic feeling in the way she talked about that memory that led him to stop by a bench and help her sit down, Freyja by their feet. "I'll tell you what it looks like" He smiled, instinctively taking her hand in his. "The sky isn't totally clear, but definitely better than before. It's a bit clearer, but the clouds are actually good for the view. The sun is no longer visible from here, it's gone down behind some trees in the distance. The sunlight hits the clouds in the most magical way." He turned towards her, her soft smile had something in it that felt like sadness. It was in that moment that it all hit him: it was pointless to describe the image to her, talking about the colours and shades. He had to compare it to something closer to her, more familiar. "If it was a song, it would definitely be Golden Slumber by The Beatles. You know, both soft and a bit aggressive, but for sure something I would spend hours staring at"

She leaned into him, resting her head on his shoulder, smiling sincerely at the way Ben tried to make her feel comfortable. His thumb gently traced circles on the back of her hand, while he laid his head on top of hers, his eyes closed, not caring about anything but her.

Half an hour later he was walking her back home, telling her about how nice it was to spend time with her, repeating over and over again how beautiful she was, holding her hand instead of her arm. When they arrived in front of her door, he sighed, coming to an alt. "Today was lovely, thank you" she smiled turning towards him, without exactly facing him. "I hadn't spent such a nice day with someone in so long."

"Do you think we could... I mean, would you like to..." he was glad she couldn't see the redness that raised to his cheeks.

"Tomorrow, you know where to find me" she said, her hand sliding up his arm, until she found his neck. She placed her hand behind his head, gently pulling him down, helping herself with the other hand to find his lips. At first the blonde couldn't really understand what she was trying to do but soon enough it started to make sense. When she could feel him close enough, she leaned in, pressing a quick kiss to his lips. Feeling his hands pressed against the small of her back, bringing her even closer, made her smile in the kiss.

"I'll bring Frankie, so Freyja can meet her" he whispered when they parted, bodies still close.

"She will love that"

[banditthewriter]

Remember The Tin Man - 20 - Payment For Services Rendered

Just know that I was going to end the story here but decided not to. One part left after this!

A Billy Russo X Reader story. Tags are at the bottom. Let me know if you would like to be added to one of my tag lists! Enjoy!

***** The four of you looked between yourselves uncertainly. You knew that you didn't want to go first because that would mean not knowing if everyone got what they wanted. And it looked like neither Frank or Billy were willing to offer themselves up. "I'll go first," David said as he stepped forward. Curtis gave a wide smile and stepped forward with his hands outstretched. David grabbed his hands, his chest heaving as he tried to steady himself. "You want your family," Curtis said with his head bowed, his voice deeper than it had been before. "Close your eyes David; I'm bringing your family to you." There was a bright orb that seemed to be growing from nothing off to the side. It grew and grew until it was just a little smaller than the glistening gems in the room. In a flash of light, the orb disappeared to reveal a woman and two young children. She looked around in confusion until her eyes landed on David. "David?" The kids followed her gaze and they called out for their father before they started to rush forward. David barely glanced at Curtis before he ran to where his kids were. He wrapped them in his arms, kissing each of them on the forehead and their cheeks. His wife followed suit with one hand pressed to her mouth, tears pouring down her face as she fell to her knees in front of the three of them. You looked away from the reuniting family and over to the wizard once more. He was smiling as he turned his attention to Frank and Billy. He seemed to mentally calculate before he stepped up to stand in front of Frank. "Your memories were stolen from you but they are in the palace somewhere. And if they are here, then I can get them. You want them back?" Frank hesitated with a glance at Billy before he gave a short nod. As he placed his hands in Curtis's, you wondered if his hesitation was because he was worried about what those memories would be. It would be the memory of the loss of his family, yes. It would also be the memory of Karen. And the memory that Billy was not the villain he had thought him to be. He would know who he was and what he had gone through to get to where he was. You watched as Curtis called the magic forth. It seemed to hover for a bit before it drifted up to cover Frank's head. His face was covered in the white haze for a moment before it seemed to completely seep into him. When Frank's eyes opened, you could see tears gathering in his eyes. He wobbled a bit before he pitched forward. Curtis caught him but Billy darted forward to help lower him to the ground. "You okay there Frankie?" He shook his head at first and then looked up at Billy. Then he shook his head again, his eyes wide in awe. "I forgot you Bill," he said quietly, his voice hoarse and filled with emotion. "I just remembered bits and pieces of what happened. I hated you. Hell, I decked you." You could see something pass over Billy's face before he gave Frank a smile, tugging him into a hug as they both were kneeling on the floor. "You only got that punch in because I let you. Normally I'd have you out cold before you could twitch." It was said to break up the tension and it worked. David and his family had moved over the proceedings with a smile on his lips. Curtis stood up, stepping back so that he wasn't putting his weight on his prosthetic. The movement was enough to make Frank look up and notice the rest of you in the room. His gaze barely went over you before he locked in on who was beside you. In the next instant he was up and crossing the short distance to get to Karen. "You," he whispered before he cupped her face, tugging her into a kiss. She was holding on to him so tightly that her knuckles were pure white. Frank had lost so much, but he wasn't the only one. Karen blamed herself for Frank being turned into a scarecrow; you knew that from your earlier conversation with her. And she had come so close to losing everything if you hadn't been able to free the wizard and save magic. When you turned around to face Billy and Curtis once more, you noticed that Billy looked almost regretful. He looked to the wizard and smirked as he shook his head. "My heart would have to be in this palace for you to be able to fix me. I highly doubt she hid it here before I killed her." Curtis shrugged his shoulders, his fingers flexing at his side as if he was checking anyways. You stepped closer and Billy's eyes darted to where you stood. He shook his head minutely. He didn't want to get his hopes up, you realized. He had spent all of this time thinking that he'd never have his heart again only for you to give him that hope for a day. The thought of it not working made you feel almost sick to your stomach. "We can find it," you said as you took another step forward. "I'm sure there's some kind of tracking magic that we can use that will lead us to where she's hidden it. Then Curtis can give it back to you." Billy sighed and turned to face you, his hand coming out to wrap around your wrist. "I don't think it's as simple as that, not with dark magic. And you're going home, remember? You're not sticking around here to help me find something that I'm probably better off without." You turned your hand in his so that you were holding his hand. "I made a decision to help all of us get what we truly want and deserve; I'm not about to abandon that just because it's gotten hard. I can go home afterwards." He pulled his hand from yours and grabbed your shoulders, giving you a slight shake as he stared down at you. "You don't belong here and you aren't staying. I can find my heart on my own. You have something to get back to, remember? It's what you want so it's what's going to happen." Was it what you wanted? You had thought so, but as the time grew closer, you weren't so sure. A look down at Toto showed that the dog was watching curiously. Could you stay here? It wasn't your place, but Billy had made a home here. And the bond you had formed with these three men—and Karen by default—was stronger than any bond you had back home. When was the last time you went back to see your family? How many of your coworkers could even say where you lived or, hell, your last name? Oz was terrifying at times. It was unpredictable and dangerous and awe-inspiring and beautiful. You reached up to cover Billy's wrists, your eyes unwavering from his. "That's my decision to make," you said softly. "I don't think it matters," Curtis said as he stepped forward, apologetically interrupting the moment. "I have a theory that I want to test. Billy, will you let me?" He held his hand up and it took you both a moment to realize what Curtis was asking. With a careful nod, Billy released you and moved to untuck his shirt. He raised it up to his collarbones, exposing the healed scar. Curtis waved his hand over it, magic weaving through his fingers, before he simply reached his hand into Billy's chest. It was eerie to see, but it looked like it probably felt even worse. Billy looked a little bit like he was trying not to gag, a wince on his face as Curtis's hand moved inside of him. "Your heart is still in your chest," Curtis said in awe as he proved his theory. "She must have put it back while you were unconscious at some point. It's covered in dark magic which is why it doesn't beat, but it's there." It was there this whole time? You could see the astonishment on Billy’s face and you glanced back at Curtis. "What can you do? Can you break the spell?" He frowned as he twisted his arm a bit, shaking his head. "My magic is a hybrid of pure and manufactured; it's not enough to break this type of magic. I need pure magic to help." He looked at you and jerked his chin towards Billy's chest. "Y/N, mind giving me a hand?" Put your hand in Billy's chest? You looked up and met Billy's gaze. He looked like he was in pain but he gave you a grin with clenched teeth. "I usually take a girl to dinner before I let her put her hand in my chest, but I'm down if you are," he said with something like humor. You raised your hand and let Curtis guide you through the movements of the spell before you too reached your hand in Billy's chest. Curtis grasped your hand and moved it to where the heart was, letting you wrap your fingers around it. It felt warm and slimy, but at the same time you were almost having an out of body experience. You were holding a heart. You were holding Billy's heart. His eyes met yours and you saw him smile before he glanced at Curtis. "What's the next step here buddy," he said between shallow breaths. "No offense to Y/N, but this is a little intimate for the middle of the day." Oh god, Frank and Karen and David were all watching this. You closed your eyes and took a deep breath before you turned your head to meet Curtis's eyes. "You can use the pure magic to get rid of the dark magic that's keeping it prisoner. I can guide you but then it's up to you." With another deep breath, you let Curtis talk you through the magic necessary to undo the dark magic that was surrounding the heart. You could feel it like a tangible presence in his chest; dark threads were woven around the organ in your hand. You untangled them one by one until Curtis removed his—thankfully clean—hand. One calming breath after another, you looked up and met Billy's eyes. You saw the pain from your ministrations, but there was something else there too: trust. Billy was trusting you with his heart. "Last one," you said quietly as you felt the thread come undone in your hand. You looked to Curtis and then back to Billy with your hand still in its place. "Do you feel any different?" He opened his mouth but then the strangest thing happened. The heart started to beat. You quickly pulled your hand free from his chest, marveling at the fact that your hand wasn't covered in anything while Billy stumbled a bit. Before he could tip over, you grabbed his elbows and steadied him as best as you could. "Billy?" He dropped the shirt but reached up to press a hand against his chest. You had already felt the beating in your hand but you still raised your hand to press against his chest. The tell-tale beating against your palm had you smiling up at Billy. "How'd you know Curtis?" His chest was heaving as he looked away from you and over to the wizard. "How'd you know that I still had it?" Curtis shrugged a bit before he smiled, his eyes darting to you for a moment. "Someone who has truly been made hollow doesn't care about anything. You showed too much heart for someone who supposedly didn't have one. The dark witch that did that was very cunning; the torture of thinking your heart was lost to you when it was with you all this time? Cruelty beyond belief." You stepped back when Frank approached, letting the old friends greet each other on an equal footing. Karen came up and gave you a brilliant smile as you both watched the men talk like nothing had changed. Like Curtis hadn't been locked away for months. Like David hadn't had to hide to keep his family safe. Like Frank hadn't lost his memories for no reason. Like Billy hadn't been living heartless for so long. Karen laughed and moved into the circle, greeting David's wife and kids with a smile. All that was left was you going home. Your hand clenched at the thought and you looked down at Toto who gave a gentle whine as he placed his paw on your foot. "Don't think I've forgotten you," Curtis said softly as he moved over to you. "I can send you home quicker than a storm could move. If that's what you want," he added with a smile. Is it what you wanted? You looked up at the group of people that were celebrating the return of their normal lives and felt the tears begin to well up in your eyes. It was going to hurt so much to say goodbye. "It's time," you whispered as you looked up at Curtis. "I just want to say goodbye." "Of course," he said as he placed his hand on your shoulder, giving it a squeeze before he stepped back a bit. When you approached the group, David quickly introduced you to Sarah, Zach, and Leo. You greeted each of them with a smile, listening to them thank you for helping to get David back to them. You weren't sure how long you smiled, but Frank's voice caused you to freeze. "You're leaving," he accused in a low voice. It made the entire group fall silent. "Even after all of this, you're still going to leave." You nodded shortly, trying and failing not to look at the betrayal on Billy's face. "I wanted to say goodbye." David and his family approached as one, tugging you into a hug that was so tight that it hurt. He pulled back and leaned in to press a kiss to your forehead. "Thanks for saving me. And for getting me back to my family," he said as he stepped back. Next was Karen who held her arms out for a hug with a teary eyed smile. You hugged her tight, unable to keep from sniffling a bit as you did so. "I'm going to miss your voice in my ear." "I'm going to miss it too," she admitted with a laugh as she pulled back. She passed you over to Frank who seemed almost hesitant to hug you. You wrapped your arms around his neck and buried your face there as he held you tight. "You were the first person that I trusted when I didn't know more than my name," he said quietly to you, his voice low enough that the others probably couldn't even hear him. "I won't forget that." "Me either," you said as you pulled back, smiling when he reached up to wipe away your tears. "Thanks for keeping me safe through all of this." All of them stepped back at the same time to give you a moment alone with Billy. The betrayal had melted into desperation as he reached out to cup your face in his palms. "You don't have to leave. What I said, I was just deflecting. You do belong here. With us." With him. He didn't have to add it; it was obvious on his face. You had wondered why you could read him so well all this time. To think that he had his heart this whole time. Though you supposed if he hadn't, you wouldn't have fallen for him. "Earth is my home. I can go back and know that I made a difference here and there as well. I have a life there." Billy stepped closer to you, his forehead dropping to rest on yours. Both of you simply stayed like that for a moment, your breathing evening out until you were breathing in sync. "You gave me back my heart only to take it away once more," he said softly as he pulled back, his eyes searching yours for a moment. Not wanting to waste another second, you tugged him in close so that you could give him a kiss. Your lips moved over his easily; familiar, like it had happened a thousand times before. He held you close until the kiss ended. With a sniffle to make sure that you didn't start crying right then and there, you turned and faced the group. Frank was kneeling next to Toto and you laughed, wiping away a few stray tears before you called Toto over to you. "C'mon Toto, let's go home," you said as you grabbed the leash. Curtis came back and directed you to approach the diamond. "It seems to be the one that you're bonded to," he said with a sympathetic tone. He squeezed your hand and then pressed his hand against the diamond. "When you're ready, step through. Your magic will take you back home to Earth." You took a deep breath and started to step forward but you hesitated. With a quick glance over your shoulder, you turned to look at Curtis with a thought. "Will I ever be able to come back?" Curtis gave a short shake of his head. "These pathways aren't meant to exist. The storms that Karen cooked up were dangerous, but she was looking for our savior. She found that in you. The stories of Y/N will stretch from end to end of Oz; every man, woman, and child will know your name. You saved us," he said solemnly as he bowed his head to you. "We're forever grateful." It was final. You took a shuddering breath and turned to face the group once more. As you committed their faces to your memory, you felt tears begin to well in your eyes. You let your gaze linger on Billy’s face, the look of resignation and pain almost enough to make you give in.

“I’ll remember you,” you promised with a smile. Then, before you could talk yourself out of it, you turned and tugged Toto to the diamond with you. Everything was white and warm and then it was gone.

X

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[sarehime]

The Shadow of Madness (Frankenstein Castlevania AU) Chapter 1

Even though Frankenstein was a regular and clean young man, his working room always dominated by a chaos. Three walls of his room was bookcase but book towers stretched out towards the ceiling because the shelves did not suffice. There were a lot of books from different languages. Latin, Hebrew, French, English and Scandinavian languages... There were open books and papers on the table right in front of the window. There was a pendulum next to the papers and books, sometimes Frankenstein watched this pendulum for hours on end. At that time you could understand that he was designing something or having a problem in his brain. A strange mechanism showing the movement of the moon around a globe made of gold stood in a corner of the room as if it had just been thrown. There was a little window on ceiling, long and heavy telescope's eye always facing that window. İt was Frankenstein's favorite tool. At night when he can't sleep, he watched movements of planets and stars.

Frankenstein loved his working room although all its untidy. This room completely belonged to him, just to him.

Now he looked carefully red liquit in a test tube. When red liquit was steady, he frowned deeply. While he put test tube in place, he turned to his book.

"What did I do wrong?" he mumbled. He really didn't like to fail. He did everything written in the book. He sighed. It would be good ask to Ignes this problem. He was looking for an excuse to see Ignes. He closed the book and dressed quickly. When he left the his mansion, he informed his housekeeper about where he go. Ignes' house was forty five minutes away with horse. Luckily today was a beautiful day! He could watch spectacular scenery along the way. While he passed through the village that under the protection of his family, people greeted him. Frankenstein responted their greet with a fake smile. He didn't like the people. Ignes was living in a mountainous place far from the village. She preferred to stay away from the people too and Frankenstein loved her attitude so much. He loved her completely actually. Finally he arrived Ignes' house, he pulled halter towards himself, the horse stopped immediately. He smiled flirtatiously when he dismounted. He knocked the door with a melody on his part, in this way Ignes could understand he coming.

When the door opened, Ignes welcomed him with her usual beauty. Today she wore a white dress. There were violet colour flower embroidery on collar of dress. She made a nice bun with a purple ribbon to her raven, wavy and long hair. Frankenstein admired Ignes. Again and again.

"Don't look at me with that stupid expression," said Ignes. Frankenstein laughed.

"Well, usual Ignes. When will you leave being a grumpy witch?" he said. Ignes rolled her eyes.

"Never!" She said and started walking inside, leaving the door open. Frankenstein entered the house with a smirking.

"I have a problem," he said and extended his book to Ignes. "No matter how hard I try, the metal in the liquit always remains constant." Ignes got the book and took a look.

"Allow me to review this book for a few days. I can extract a formula you can understand."

"Of course!" Frankenstein said and took a look the house. There was no change. Books scaddered all around and big and noisy clock kept working. Ink spilled on the her work table and the papers on the table were ruined. Frankenstein immediately headed there. He was in the clear ink bootle and papers. After arranging and claening the table, he turned to Ignes who sitting on cane rocker. He raised one his eyebrow.

"I worried for my book," he said.

"I am too," said Ignes while still reading the book. "This book is amazing! I try to make sure nothing happened to this book but I don't promise."

"At least spill tea, if you would spill ink, it is become completely unreadable!" Ignes looked at him with deadpan look.

"Your trust to me make my eyes water!" Frankenstein widened his smirk.

"Please come on, Ignes! You can't say I am wrong!" he said tauntingly. Ignes closed the book harshly.

"Very well, I will not discuss more. Do you want a glass of tea?"

"I would like to of course! I miss your tea," said Frankenstein with a cheerful voice. "But I forgot to bring snacks."

"No need," said Ignes. "I made cookies. In this cupboard." While Ignes was making tea, Frankenstein put the cookies on the table in the hall.

While they drunk their tea, Frankenstein looked at Ignes.

"Cookies is tasty. I am surprised." Ignes glared to him but then she turned enjoyed her tea. Frankenstein giggled.

"I am joking, you know Ignes."

"Shut up," she said. Frankenstein put the tea cup on the table.

"It's great to watch you while drink tea but I prefer chat. I like your conversation, dear," he said. There was a tone trying to seduce her in his voice. He tried flirting with Ignes hopelessly again.

Frankenstein started observing Ignes' face carefully. Young woman  seemed a little tired and she lost her weight. She was paled. Frankenstein frowned.

"Are you sick?" Ignes looked at him wonderingly.

"No, I am not sick. Why did you think so?"

"You are pale and tired. What happened Ignes? There is nothing bothering you, right?" Ignes sighed. She closed her eyes and she tilted her head to her hand.

"A week ago I heared a letter from my mother. My father was... plague-stricken." Frankenstein gaped.

"I am so sorry," he just said.

"I want visit my father." Frankenstein looked at her with surprise. His heart started beating with fear.

"Ignes.. you can't go. You told me that if you go back to there, they are going to execute you? Also... This plague is communicable. Ignes I understand you but-" Ignes cut his word.

"I said I wanted to visit, fool, I didn't say I am going to visit!" Frankenstein hove a sigh of relief.

"Oh... Well. I am sorry, I acted selfishly. How do you feel? Ah... My bad. Of course you don't feel well!" Ignes dropped her eyes to tea cup.

"Nothing " she said in a low voice. Frankenstein stare at Ignes. He didn't know what to say. He gulped. He could feel Ignes' pain and her pain hurted him so much. "And it hurts Frankenstein. I never had a deep relationship with my father. When they excommunicated me, he didn't support me. When they exiled me from my own home, he just watched. Actually I get pain for unfulfilled memories. We are to late for being father and daughter and we will not be anymore." Frankenstein listened Ignes' words with a ache in his.

"I am really sorry," he said. Ignes shrugged.

"Nevermind. How are you, prince? Night creatures have often attacked to the village these days."

"It was good open this matter," said Frankenstein. "How long do you plan to live alone in this house? It's dangerous!"

"What do you suggest I do?" Ignes said tauntingly.

"Marry up with someone!" Ignes raised one her eyebrow.

"With whom?" Frankenstein run his hand through his hair.

"With someone who can protect you, of course!" Ignes put her hand under her chin and pretended to think.

"Hımm... Actually you are right! Some sort of think, the blacksmith from the village is a pretty good candidate for me!" Frankenstein glared at her.

"When you see me as a candidate for marrying?!" Ignes laughed loudly.

"I think never! You brat!" Frankenstein frowned.

"Marry me woman!"

"I refuse! I don't know how many times!" Frankenstein put his hand on his heart in a dramatic way.

"You are breaking my heart!"

"Come on Franky, you like it!" Frankenstein rolled his eyes. After they a little more conversation, Frankenstein looked out the window.

"I think it's time to take my leave." Ignes nodded. She was upset.

"Okey," she said.

Ignes saw him to the door. When Frankenstein went out of the door, he turned to Ignes suddenly. They looked at each other eyes for a while. Then Frankenstein placed his hand to Ignes' cheek.

"Please think about my proposal of marriage," he said. His finger tips caressed to young women's silky skin. Frankenstein closed the distance between their faces. "I am serious," he said sotto voce. Ignes wanted tilted her head but she just stared his sky-blue eyes. Both had lips were open part but thin wall that always in their between was show itself. Frankenstein looked at her lips he had always yearned and longed for. His fingers caressed her lower lip already. Not now... Young man gulped and tilted his head toward Ignes.  

Ignes closed her eyes when she felt soft lips on her cheek. Sometimes she wanted to lose herself in these arms that now surround her.

Frankenstein glanced her eyes.

"Have a nice evening, la belle dame sans merci," he whispered and finally he leaved from Ignes.

Frankenstein was careful not to listen to his heart as he walked towards his horse. If he listened, he would go back to Ignes and that was not the time. Of course the time would come. Frankenstein looked forward to this time. The time that he lost himself in Ignes' arms...

[exquisitley-obsessed]

The Three Women Of Durin - Stone & Ice (47)

MASTERLIST FOR THS STORY

(not my gif)

Gripping onto the reigns so tight that she could feel her heartbeat in her arms, Rosie followed her friends into battle. Her sword was bouncing in the air as she was jostled from side to side on the goat. She could almost feel the adrenaline being released into her body as she collided with a mass of fighting bodies.

Rosie’s goat seemed to take control as they entered the sea, weaving in and out of ruthless clashing weapons. For the first few moments, Rosie found that she could not move, she was frozen, like an ice sculpture, on top of her goat as people fought for their lives around her, some even dying.

Ahead of her, she could spot Thorin, pulling his sword down at every opportunity to slash at any orcs close by, all other dwarves were doing the same thing it seemed. Rosie however simply lowered her sword to her side and kept to near her gut, her heart was beating at a remarkable rate and it was taking all her energy to focus on the goat’s ears and stay stable, never mind trying to attack the enemy.

So Rosie kept to herself as did Cece, Frankie was able to jab here and seemed to be more at ease atop her goat than the others, oh how times had changed from when she first climbed her pony. Cece had cramped up and could feel a rising panic within her which she was suppressing with all her energy. This was nor the time or place to have a panic attack. She was focusing on her breath, in out, in out, shutting her eyes tight and blocking the image she had just seen of a man getting stabbed in the chest.

Cece only opened her eyes when the unbearable noises quietened down, and when she opened her eyes she was pleasantly surprised to find that they had made it out of the battle and were now riding along the quite large ridge made up of stone and ice. The wind blew harshly in her face, thrashing like a whip against her ears. The frost in the air was stronger now, with no trees to block the bitter gale, it pinched at their cheeks until they turned pink with pain.

“Just along this ridge and into that building there!” Rosie heard Thorin’s voice before it was carried away with the wind to God knows where. Rosie peeked out from her undershirt which she had pulled up as a sort of snood to where Thorin was pointing his sword. The building was old, the stone cracked with an assortment of weeds growing through it and there was a layer of snow and ice almost burying it. A lot of the building was open, with roofs that were either never build or had broken off, this seemed far too familiar to the three girls. As all three of them gazed at this building in wonder, almost in synch they all looked over at Fili. This was his deathbed.

Rosie’s goat again took charge following the others as the rode into the building, the ice and snow not affecting the strong pace of the goat’s hooves. Rosie took this moment to look out, not at where a battle was commencing, but to the other side of the ridge, where she could see a field of mountains. Spikes of stone breaking through blankets of ice which was turned almost golden in the sun’s glare. It was unsettlingly quiet compared to the other side. Rosie gripped onto the view, the powerful scenery alighting something within her and just when her courage reached its peak the mountains disappeared, concealed from view by cracking stone. The goats in front of her slowed and eventually stopped, their riders gracefully swinging off and pulling out their swords.

“Keep together!” Rosie heard Thorin say. Once everyone was off a clicking noise filled the air and the goats turned around and charged right back into battle, their riders soon forgotten. Rosie watched them go for a moment before she turned around, meeting the eyes of almost the entire company.

“So,” Kili asked, eager as always, “What happens next?” Rosie sighed, slightly annoyed at her previous self for making this part of the plan. But it was either this or telling the company in front of Thranduil, Bard and Dain.

“Okay,” Frankie said, her voice neither calm nor concerned, “There’s a reason why we haven’t told you this…you will understand why,” This did nothing but make the company even more interested, all but Fili, who wasn’t even looking in the girl’s direction. No, he was staring up at a large building, one that had been described to him many moons ago. His face unreadable.

“Go on,” A voice called out. The girls shared a look. Cece then spoke.

“This is the part of the story where Fili dies,” It was such a simple sentence, so honest, so brutal. The company reacted in different ways, those who knew staying silent, and those who didn’t…Unfortunately, there was no time to mourn a death that has never happened, time was a race that they could not afford to lose.

“We have to move on,” Rosie spoke up, firm and reassuring as always, “Now, what did happen is that the group split up with Fili going up that large building there,” Rosie gestured to little ways ahead of the company, “We know for a fact that it is a trap and that Azog is waiting there…” Rosie trailed off, “He’s waiting there because he wants to kill off the line of Durin,” Another mixture of reactions that none of the girls took the time to see.

“But he will not, will he?” Frankie joined in, a silence hung in the air, “Will he?” Her voice strong and full. No one spoke but everyone shook their heads, raising their weapons of choice ever so slightly, “That’s what I thought, so what we’re going to do is we’re going to go into that building there, and once and for all kill Azog,” She said this rather coolly, as if she were talking about doing her washing. The company didn’t make a sound, simply puffed out their chests a little bigger, flickers of faint smiles dancing across a few lips.

“Let’s go lads,” Rosie smiled, and so they did. They moved through the haunting stone which gave the appearance that it was prepared to break off and fall into nothing right below you. But soon they were on ice and were moving with less grace than they hoped for, but they soon got the hang of it, weaving their way in and out of broken stone and sharp ice. It seemed strangely still up here, and the further they travelled inwards the thicker the silence seemed to be. It truly did feel like a deathbed. Unfortunately, the silence did not last.

“What’s that noise?” Someone from behind Rosie. She didn’t hear it at first but after the clinking of her friend’s belts stopped she found the noise was all that she could hear. A rumbling of multiple footsteps that was growing by the second.

“Ready yourselves,” Thorin called out sternly, everyone already one step ahead of him.

“Wow this could not happen at a worse time,” It was true. The company were currently slipping around a sea of ice, a few meters away from a set of stone steps. The girls thought something like this would happen, the memories of the story now dipped in a fuzzy concoction which was making it harder and harder to remember each time they looked back.

Next, a swarm of black creatures swooped low over the ice, the company raising their hands in protection. Unfortunately, they let their guards down and whilst the company were turning away a vicious yell sounded and orcs swarmed over the ice. The next part was nothing but a blur. Swing, kill, swing, kill, swing, kill. A time that seemed to go distressingly quick. The girls spinning round and round always coming into contact another burst of orcs.

Rosie was swinging with everything she had, the blade from Mirkwood light in her hands. She was becoming increasingly tired and was just questioning how many more orcs there could possibly be when she was grabbed harshly by her waist and dragged back up stone steps into a hidden corner.

“Get off me!” Rosie called out as she squirmed viciously.

"Shush, it's me!" The voice of Frankie hissed in her ear. Rosie relaxed, a dampness growing on her lower back as she allowed herself to breathe. Her first taste of battle Staring at the curves and creases of the stone in front of her she listened to the battle cries which surprising died down a few seconds later replaced by the sound of uneven footsteps growing more and more distant by the second. Rosie turned around and found both Frankie and Cece looking at her, the same thoughtful faces on both of her best friends.

"Why did you do that?" Rosie questioned, checking her wrist which had sneakily been caught by one of the orc's wretched daggers.

"Because you were the only one out there fighting," Frankie said. At another point in time, Rosie might have laughed.

"Oh...where are the others?" Rosie asked.

"Thorin, Fili and Kili hid a while ago. The orcs didn't see them and since they're who they're after...they pissed off basically," Cece explained as she carefully peeked over the stone.

"Oh," Rosie said again, "Well let's go get them," She sighed as she stood, stumbling a little, still not used to the feeling over her body being so much heavier than before. The girls slowly and quietly made their way back down to the icy expanse, softly calling out for their friends. When that didn't work Frankie tried whistling.

"Frankie their not dogs," Cece said softly as she peeked behind an archway.

"From the way they eat you wouldn't know the difference,"

"Where the hell is everyone?" Rosie huffed once they had finished checking the area...twice.

"Oh God, we can't lose them...I mean we really can't lose them," Cece began worrying, which was slightly amusing watching an armoured goddess hop from one foot to the other in worry.

"Well...this isn't part of the plan,"

TAG LIST: @britney8793​

[notesbyfleur]

john and alizeh.

John is the most accurate definition of tall, dark and handsome. We have known each other since we were eleven, or twelve. We were in the same circle of friends—who grew up together from pre-puberty kids to teenagers with keypad mobile phones and independence—but sadly, we rarely talk. I never said ‘hi’ whenever we passed by, and neither did he. But he knows whenever I am present, and I would always secretly find his face when everyone gathers. We only exchanged smiles, occassionally, and communicates with each other via friends, very subtly.

There was a certain unspoken agreement that when your best friend has a crush on a guy, you do not talk to the guy. So despite not talking to John because Alizeh likes him so dearly, I have spend most evenings sitting at the bus stop down the school hill, watching the boys play football in their shorts. He was there. Tall, dark and handsome. His hair is always in a classic Frankie Muniz updo, and his eyes were dark, mysterious and calm. He was funny, and he likes cracking jokes, but he also retreats himself into a shy demeanour shortly after.

Alizeh talks about him nearly half of the time we hung out together in school and after school, so by time, I was able to get used to listening to stories of John. And when we were fourteen, they dated each other. I guess he must’ve liked her for so long too. Alizeh is a lovely person, and while she might not be the star student in our school, she walks with grace and beauty. Jet black spill of hair tucked behind her ears, and soft white skin with a subtle tan that reminds you of thick cheesecakes. There is a certain politeness in her smile, as if she was playing Dutchess all the time, but they were the most warm, genuine smile.

One afternoon when I was thirteen, I smashed the little glass swan John gave me for my twelfth birthday and practiced playing Game of Love on my father’s guitar until the tip of my fingers burned in pain.

Alizeh moved away when we were fifteen, and I still hadn’t talked to John in the most casual and direct conversation. By that time, I was able to recite the entire Science syllabus, played many songs on the guitar and sat with the boys of my class in my pinafore while they helped changing the strings of my father’s guitar.

John and I only started properly talking when we were sixteen, but not much words are exchanged. Most of the time, there were silence. Which had led us to this very moment—when he was waiting outside the gates of my house on his motorcycle on a Wednesday evening.

I refused to wear the helmet, because we were only heading a few blocks away from my house for Maths tution. I have no problem with walking, but our friend suggested that he gave me a lift.

“Okay, get behind me,” he said, already mounted on his motorcycle. His voice was slow and soft.

I climbed behind him and held on to my tote bag, which was sandwiched between us. He made a turn and we left. Again, very few words were exchanged between us—as it was in school and during tuition.

***

I remember evenings from my teenage years very faintly, but often times the recalling would come in the most beautiful form I could never explain—like old recordings of the five senses in the most comforting way that makes you feel like old memories are things that are so intangible, no matter how close they are to your heart. Often decorated with orange sunsets or gloomy skies, and framed with beautiful bokeh or grey diamonds of raindrops, my recollections of youth revolves around everything that was truly innocent.

Innocent, but nothing was within my grasp. Not the one I couldn’t control, at least.

Worn out debate cards tucked into my tote bag. Pages of my physics schoolbook turned chilly by the air-conditioning of my own bedroom, untouched and clean from scribbles. I lay in bed with my limbs sprawled, eyes staring into the nothingness that was on the ceiling. The five o’clock evening sun cast orange hues through slits of the curtains, on whichever surface it could touch.

Love Is Only A Feeling by The Darkness was playing. My lips mouthed its lyrics, my throat releasing nearly-inaudible vocals. It was an anthem. Music was my element.

It was also sad how music is something that guitar-playing John is something we could always bond over. Yet besides motorcycle rides and tuitions, our conversations were almost obsolete. Words exchanged between us could compare to the likeliness of solar eclipses.

Alizeh was long gone. Distance was a difficult barrier when you’re a highschooler of the 2000s—and the Nokias and Sony Ericssons were only promises on one end. Phone calls and instant messages with Alizeh became less and less, until one day, it stopped. Like a long-distance relationship with a faint ending, friendship faded into the background, like a slow score of an eventful scene.

Without Alizeh, eye contacts happened more often.

***

I have never had a proper conversation with John, and even two years after Alizeh has left us in this smaller, peaceful town, I still have not had a proper conversation with John. I regretted smashing the glass swan when I was thirteen, but we don’t carry or keep things that no longer serves us.

As Alizeh faded into the void behind us, making her presence no longer felt among our group of not-so tight knit friends, I breathed a new life into my courage. No, not the kind of courage you need to speak in front of the crowd, carrying the school’s name on your forehead and aiming for the grand prize.

Courage is a funny thing. It was as if we all exists on different planes and we view courage differently. One could fear the act of making decisions for a group of teenage mankind and strutting forward spouting instructions from his mouth. I have no such fear. One could fear the act of being left alone with a person she had known for five to six years, fear of stuttering and fidgeting not knowing what to talk about. That would be my fear.

For the rest of my high school days, I knew his full name. I knew his birthday. I knew his family, I visited his house. I knew that he broke his hand in the sixth grade from an accident. I knew how he liked his hair done. I knew he enjoys his motorcycle rides to and fro school in the evening. I knew what everyone else knew. I didn’t know what lies below the surface instead—insecurities, fears, everything personal and everything sentimental. Yet times spent whenever he was in my scene, my field of vision, and my presence; they felt somewhat cinematic. Time slows down to make way for the sun to give its golden warmth upon us, and whenever it was raining, alternative rock music often played in independent movies plays in its own plane. But that was ultimately everything. It was as if we have a cackling chemistry, but we never had an existing bond between us. It was like a metal bridge being built from both sides, having never met in the middle.

***

The town where I grew up in was such a small town, but when you have everything so close around you, physically and sentimentally, it becomes your entire world. There was nothing you could lose and even with the lack of this and that, everything felt sufficient. I have been fed with the idea of a wistful high school experience, from the sappy books I’ve read. I found out later that I was wrong, that I thought everything I had in my teenage years would stick with me throughout the rest of my life, growing with me. It’s such a beautiful thought—to be able to transition into a much more serious part of life with the people you grew up with.

Alizeh was the first warning that not everything lasts, and people grow apart. What the town gives you to nurture your growth doesn’t necessarily cling with you as you transition. Butterflies don’t bring their coccoon with them after metamorphosis. The first to leave was my best friend. And then, everything else.

John looked at me with obscure sorrow in his eyes. It was that one evening where our friends were as energetic despite the lack of sun. John’s hands clung onto his motorcycle as he stood beside it. Like everyone else, we weren’t in the rush to get home.

I was prepared—as usual—to go with him. After several times, he was used to giving me a ride from and back home. I forgot when did the favour turned into an unspoken one. Perhaps we took it as an arrangement, which unfortunately did not last under certain circumstances—changes.

But I was waiting for him to climb onto his motorcycle first, so I could climb behind him. That’s the way it is always, isn’t it?

He didn’t. Instead, he looked at me with obscure sorrow in his eyes. Head slightly tilted sideways, updo unwavered—he looked at me like someone looked at a nostalgic past, something he longed for but can never touch.

I didn’t ask questions. I never do. We never have proper conversations. I felt like asking would lead to and intrusion of personal space of his.

He opened his mouth and sucked his breath. My friends were already on the road, with laughter so loud it might have echoed the entire neighbourhood. He wasn’t curious enough to see what was so amusing.

And that was when I finally asked, “what?”

“I’m moving.” He said so with a tone that was only meant to be heard by me and no one else. I turned to the rest of my friends, but they were too occupied to be in the conversation—or perhaps John had only meant it to be a one-to-one announcement. The rest of our friends could probably wait.

“You’re moving?” I repeated rethorically—what else am I supposed to say?

He nodded. “I’m leaving next month.”

“Where to?”

“KL. The big city.”

I said nothing else. I clutched my fist, hoping not to look indifferent about his announcement of departure. But I couldn’t bring myself to produce a proper spoken response, or any response at all. I couldn’t keep the conversation going, mostly because asking things in which you could easily predict the answer is useless. He is moving because his father has to move for work—his mother is a housewife. He doesn’t know what school will he enroll in once he got there. He will come to visit—he has family staying in town still. And he will at least throw a farewell barbecue party for his friends before he leaves.

“How do you feel about it?”

“Sad. I mean, I grew up here.”

He moved away the month after. You’d think it would be cinematic. You’d think I would be sending him love letter like Lara Jean, and we’d be making out on an all-green football field under the sun, at least before he leaves forever. But it didn’t happen, I said nothing, and one day we stopped seeing his face around school.

***

A/N: This was written as a part of my memoir-themed novella, Oxygen and Other Dreams, that remained as unfinished as I left it in 2018. As much as I could recall a lot of details accurately, I couldn't bring myself to write the following part. It was something that I never have apologised to John for—but someday, maybe I will.

John and I remained friends on social media, as Alizeh too. They married different people now, and they're very blessed to have found lifetime love. I was never someone who could fit into their narratives comfortably—a misfit—and I feel like I am still the misfit. I'm still here, and I'm still me.

— steff fleur // july 2, 2021

[networkingdefinition]

Shark Quotes

Official Website: Shark Quotes

• A boxer is like a lion, the greatest predator on land, but you throw him in the shark tank and he’s just another meal. Renzo Gracie • A lawyer is basically a mouth, like a shark is a mouth attached to a long gut. The business of lawyers is to talk, to interrupt one another, and to devour each other if possible. – Joyce Carol Oates • After the clinch, it doesn’t matter what happens, one way or another, we’re going to hit the ground, and we’ll be in my world. The ground is my ocean, I’m the shark, and most people don’t even know how to swim. Carlos Machado • All right, you got that out of your system. Can I get back in the boat without you striking me again? Or should I stay out here enjoying the marine life?” “Why don’t you swim around until you find a shark? Then you can discuss how much the two of you have in common – Jeaniene Frost • All sharks were born swimming.” —Rebecca McNutt •Almost any shark, three or four feet long, could kill a human being if it chose to do it. It could make you bleed to death. But they don’t.” —Peter Benchley • And it was there that I saw the most appealing creature in the whole shop. He had a slight chink out of one foot and his ‘topknot’ was missing (a ‘topknot’ is on the top of a dragon’s head and looks a bit like a shark’s fin) but I bought him in an instant. – Chris d’Lacey • Annoyance and pathos warred in my breast, and after a short struggle, annoyance punched pathos in the snout like the voracious shark it was. Kate Elliott • Anyone who thinks cryptozoology is the study of the impossible has never really taken a very good look at the so-called “natural world.” Once you get past the megamouth sharks, naked mole rats, and spotted hyenas, then the basilisks, dragons, and cuckoos just don’t seem that unreasonable. Unpleasant, yes, but unreasonable? Not really.- Mira GrantAs an entrepreneur, you can always find a solution if you try hard enough.- Lori Greiner

• At this point in our global ecological crisis, the survival of humanity will require a fundamental shift in our attitude toward nature: from finding out how we can dominate and manipulate nature to how we can learn from her. In this brilliant and hopeful book, Jay Harman shows us how far the new field of Biomimicry has already progressed toward this goal. The Shark’s Paintbrush makes for fascinating and joyful reading – much needed in these dark times. – Fritjof Capra

jQuery(document).ready(function($) var data = action: 'polyxgo_products_search', type: 'Product', keywords: 'Shark', orderby: 'rand', order: 'DESC', template: '1', limit: '68', columns: '4', viewall:'Shop All', ; jQuery.post(spyr_params.ajaxurl,data, function(response) var obj = jQuery.parseJSON(response); jQuery('#thelovesof_shark').html(obj); jQuery('#thelovesof_shark img.swiper-lazy:not(.swiper-lazy-loaded)' ).each(function () var img = jQuery(this); img.attr("src",img.data('src')); img.addClass( 'swiper-lazy-loaded' ); img.removeAttr('data-src'); ); ); ); • Being able to turn to Jesus after the shark attack kept me alive. – Bethany Hamilton • Being nearly naked around Barrons felt a lot like going to a shark convention lightly basted in blood. – Karen Marie Moning • Better a dish of husks to the accompaniment of a muted lute than to be satiated with stewed shark’s fin and rich spiced wine of which the cost is frequently mentioned by the provider. Ernest Bramah • Between highway sounds I heard waves and thought how the curve of the coastline here had sheltered and nurtured live-born sharks, humans, and migrating whales. Here, at the edge of the continent, time and distance stopped; in the lull between sets of waves I could get a fresh start. – Gretel Ehrlich • Brody cannot believe the size of the creature, and with a classic, practical understatement tells Quint his assessment: You’re gonna need a bigger boat. Awestruck, they all view the full-sized, massive shark circling the boat. Quint estimates it is 25 feet long: Three tons of him. – Roy Scheider • Brooding, she changed the pool into the sea, and made the minnows into sharks and whales, and cast vast clouds over this tiny world by holding her hand against the sun, and so brought darkness and desolation, like God himself, to millions of ignorant and innocent creatures, and then took her hand away suddenly and let the sun stream down. – Virginia Woolf

• Businesspeople are like sharks, not just because we’re gray and slightly oily, or because our teeth trail the innards of those we have eviscerated, but because we must move forward or die. – Stanley Bing • But as they say about sharks, it’s not the ones you see that you have to worry about, it’s the ones you don’t see. – David Blaine • But it’s also true that my memory is a card shark, reshuffling the deck to hide what I fear to know, unable to keep from fingering the ace at the bottom of the deck even when I’m doing nothing more than playing Fish in the daylight with children. – Lorene Cary • By his machines man can dive and remain under water like a shark; can fly like a hawk in the air; can see atoms like a gnat; can see the system of the universe of Uriel, the angel of the sun; can carry whatever loads a ton of coal can lift; can knock down cities with his fist of gunpowder; can recover the history of his race by the medals which the deluge, and every creature, civil or savage or brute, has involuntarily dropped of its existence; and divine the future possibility of the planet and its inhabitants by his perception of laws of nature. – Ralph Waldo Emerson • By nature, I keep moving, man. My theory is, be the shark. You’ve just got to keep moving. You can’t stop. Brad Pitt • By the end of the 20th century, up to 90 percent of the sharks, tuna, swordfish, marlins, groupers, turtles, whales, and many other large creatures that prospered in the Gulf for millions of years had been depleted by overfishing. – Sylvia Earle • Consider the subtleness of the sea; how its most dreaded creatures glide under water, unapparent for the most part, and treacherously hidden beneath the loveliest tints of azure. Consider also the devilish brilliance and beauty of many of its most remorseless tribes, as the dainty embellished shape of many species of sharks. Consider, once more, the universal cannibalism of the sea; all whose creatures prey upon each other, carrying on eternal war since the world began. – Herman Melville • Considering their impact, you might expect mosquitoes to get more attention than they do. Sharks kill fewer than a dozen people every year, and in the U.S. they get a week dedicated to them on TV every year. Bill Gates • Crikey means gee whiz, wow! Crikey, mate. You’re far safer dealing with crocodiles and western diamondback rattlesnakes than the executives and the producers and all those sharks in the big MGM building. Steve Irwin • Did you know that mako shark fetuses eat each other in the womb?… Its true. Only cannibal fetuses survive to be born. Can you imagine if people were like that? – Laini Taylor • Does anyone know a word that rhymes with shark? – Mike Birbiglia Dolphins and sharks are natural enemies. Dolphins are like,Quit eating us,” and sharks are like,Stop smiling all the time, you morons.” —Dan Florence • Don’t believe what the spiritual sharks and clever carnival hustlers tell you about fearless living – they lie. Guy Finley • Don’t you dare underestimate the power of your own instinct. Instinct is a lifesaver for sharks and entrepreneurs alike. Most people can recall times they ignored their gut only to regret it later. Learning to actually listen to your instinct is a great form of self-preservation. It’s both incredibly easy and tough at the same time, but worth the effort to master. Barbara Corcoran • EBay may be a shark in the ocean, but I’m a crocodile in the Yangtze River. If we fight in the ocean, we lose, but if we fight in the river, we win. – Jack Ma • Even a mentally challenged shark would figure out that sea turtles did not wear boxer shorts printed in flying piggies, and no sea turtle would be yattering streams of obscenities between chain-smoker gasps of breath. – Christopher Moore • Expand the definition of ‘reading’ to include non-fiction, humor, graphic novels, magazines, action adventure, and, yes, even websites. It’s the pleasure of reading that counts; the focus will naturally broaden. A boy won’t read shark books forever. – Jon Scieszka • Fathers and sons are natural enemies. Look at any species. Shark, sees his father in the water, he’s not thinking, Hey dad, wassup ? He’s thinking, Back off, old man, this surfer carcass is mine. Of course, when his girlfriend swims up and she’s like, Way, you know, there’s enough surfer for everybody. You and your dad need to frenzy together more. Leave you father a thigh. Christopher Titus • For an actor, its great fun to play one of these hungry white sharks. Audiences love to hate them. – Michael Douglas • Forgetting isn’t enough. You can paddle away from the memories and think they are gone. But they will keep floating back, again and again and agian. They circle you, like sharks. Until, unless, something, someone? Can do more than just cover the wound. – Sara Zarr • French fries kill more people than guns and sharks, yet nobody’s afraid of French fries.- Robert Kiyosaki • Gerard’s spirit animal is a gazelle – that’s how he’s always answered – Frankie would definitely be a wolverine, I would be a shark because of my inability to sit still, and Ray? Ray would be… I’m thinking super intelligent, super articulate, I would think owl. Mikey Way • Going from ‘Shark Night’ to ‘Piranha,’ a guy holding a fish on a stick in front of you that they’re going to replace in post-production, it’s a lot different than seeing this animatronic shark that, if you get caught up in the moment, looks, acts and you sometimes think could be real. Chris Zylka • Hand me down the shark repellent Bat-Spray! Adam West Harriet Beecher Stowe • He asks me what happened to my leg. I told him I was shot by a shark. He doesn’t react. Doesn’t seem confused or amused or anything. Like getting shot by a shark is a perfectly natural thing in the aftermath of the arrival. – Rick Yancey • He described to me how crocodiles kill more people than sharks. There are just a lot of things in Australia that can kill you. – Barack Obama • Here is a list of terrible things, The jaws of sharks, a vultures wings The rabid bite of the dogs of war, The voice of one who went before, But most of all the mirror’s gaze, Which counts us out our numbered days. – Clive Barker • Hey Rid?” She stopped and turned to look at him, almost ruefully. Like she couldn’t help what she was any more then a shark could help being a shark, but if she could… “Yeah, Shrinky Dink?” “You’re not all bad.” She looked right at him and almost smiled. “You know what they say. Maybe I’m just drawn that way. – Kami Garcia • Honolulu, it’s got everything. Sand for the children, sun for the wife, sharks for the wife’s mother. Ken Dodd • How fishy on the fishiness scale? Ten is a stickleback and one is a whale shark.” “A whale isn’t a fish, Thursday.” “A whale shark is–sort of.” “All right, it’s as fishy as a crayfish.” “A crayfish isn’t a fish.” “A starfish, then.” “Still not a fish.” “This is a very odd conversation, Thursday. – Jasper Fforde • Humanity from the first has had its vultures and sharks, and representatives of the fraternity who prey upon mankind may be expected no less in America than elsewhere. That this virulence breaks out most readily and commonly against colored persons in this country, is due of course to the fact that they are, generally speaking, weak and can be imposed upon with impunity. Bullies are always cowards at heart. Anna Julia Cooper • I always read. You know how sharks have to keep swimming or they die? I’m like that. If I stop reading, I die. – Patrick Rothfuss • I am a shark, Cassie,” he says slowly, drawing the words out, as if he might be speaking to me for the last time. Looking into my eyes with tears in his, as if he’s seeing me for the last time. “A shark who dreamed he was a man. Rick Yancey • I am a shark, the ground is my ocean, and most people can’t even swim. – Rickson Gracie • I am not a demon. I am a lizard, a shark, a heat-seeking panther. I want to be Bob Denver on acid playing the accordion. – Nicolas Cage • I am passionate about my family, adventure, good wine, nature and the outdoors, sharks, the ocean, and working hard to preserve it all for future generations. Mehgan Heaney-Grier • I am terrified of sharks, so I don’t surf! Janel Parrish • I believe implicitly that every young man in the world is fascinated with either sharks or dinosaurs. – Peter Benchley • I did 50 takes on Robert Shaw assembling the Greener Gun on ‘Jaws.’ The shark wasn’t working, so I just kept shooting to make the production report look like we were accomplishing something and to keep cast and crew from going crazy from boredom. It was a strategic indulgence. Steven Spielberg • I didn’t care about the backlash. I think the reason it was so severe was because they didn’t know anything about me in New Zealand. If I had made jokes about a shark attack in the US, no one would have cared. Anthony Jeselnik • I discovered I scream the same way whether I’m about to be devoured by a great white shark or if a piece of seaweed touches my foot. – Axl Rose • I do my very best to avoid shark fin. – Anthony Bourdain • I do not believe that all books will or should migrate onto screens: as Douglas Adams once pointed out to me, more than 20 years before the Kindle turned up, a physical book is like a shark. Sharks are old: there were sharks in the ocean before the dinosaurs. And the reason there are still sharks around is that sharks are better at being sharks than anything else is. Neil Gaiman • I do not believe that one can become rich without being a shark; a sensitive man will never amass wealth. Petrus Borel • I don’t believe there’s anything cosmic or divine or morally superior about whales and dolphins or sharks or trees, but I do think that everything that lives is holy and somehow integrated; and on cloudy days I suspect that these extraordinary phenomena, and the hundreds of tiny, modest versions no one hears about, are an ocean, an earth, a Creator, something shaking us by the collar, demanding our attention, our fear, our vigilance, our respect, our help. – Tim Winton • I don’t enjoy the boo scare when you’re watching a movie and then suddenly there’s a big shark on the screen. The only thing they’re doing is catching you off guard. – Sergio Aragones • I don’t get ‘shark’ – but who cares! Isaac • I don’t like sex … I’m a single working mom with nine cats, a dog-shark, a lizard, and a bunny. I don’t go to bed, I pass out. The idea that I’d get to my bed and there’d be someone in there with whom I was supposed to have an activity is horrifying to me. – Paula Poundstone • I dont like the idea of being eaten by a shark. I like to swim in the ocean, and I think much more about sharks than anyone should. I really resent the fact that my oceangoing experiences are ruined by Jaws.- David Duchovny • I don’t look back. I’m like a shark – I only look forward. Rita Rudner • I don’t think you can be a diver without a shark on the list. Natalie Dormer • I give [Barack Obama] a 10 [on a scale of 1 to 10] because he’s not God, and he inherited a couple of wars, and a financial mess.I want to see him curse somebody out on TV. You can’t finesse a bull. He’s gotta throw down. He’s in the shark tank. Tracy Morgan • I hate the beach – I’m a mountain guy. I’d much rather face a bear than a shark. Jeff Dunham • I have a hard problem, being some part Native American – being a Christian: do you get burned, do you get cremated, do you get – let the sharks eat you? How do you die? Duane Chapman • I have a ridiculous fear of sharks but I’d jump in the water in a second for an amazing role. – Kate Mara • I have a slight fear of sharks for some reason.I have a slight fear of sharks for some reason. – Scott Speedman • I have been called a Rogue Elephant, a Cannibal Shark, and a crocodile. I am none the worse. I remain a caged, and rather sardonic, lion, in a particularly contemptible and ill-run zoo. Wyndham Lewis • I have come up with a sure-fire concept for a hit television show, which would be called `A Live Celebrity Gets Eaten by a Shark’. – Dave Barry • I have snakes, three sharks, moray eels, piranhas, five scorpions and a bird spider. All of them are predators. They are dangerous but it’s cool to have strong and powerful pets. – Tracy Morgan • I just believe that sometimes in life you’re like a shark – you have to keep moving through water; otherwise, you’ll die. – Michelle Ryan • I know this is your hand now,’ she tells him. “Roland would have never touched me like that.” Connor smiles, and Risa takes a moment to look down at the shark on his wrist. It holds no fear for her now, because the shark has been tamed by the soul of a boy. No- the soul of a man. – Neal Shusterman • I love contemporary art, although I wouldn’t want a pickled shark in my house. – Bruno Tonioli • I often prefer the shapes within the raw materials to ‘do their thing’, as this makes it movre interesting for me. Sometimes a piece of hubcap fits in such a way that the shark becomes almost alive in my hands, climbing, twisting or just hanging motionless and predatory, and this gives me a buzz. It makes me feel like a vehicle for the creation process rather than a controller, and not knowing the exact outcome is exciting. Ptolemy • I shall attack Chemistry, like a Shark. Samuel Taylor Coleridge • I swear on St. Francis, the patron saint of all animals.” Seeing Poppy’s hesitation, Beatrix added enthusiastically,If a band of pirates kidnapped me and took me to their ship and threatened to make me walk the plank over a shiver of starving sharks unless I told them your secret, I still wouldn’t tell it. If I were tied by a villain and thrown before a herd of stampeding horses all shod in iron, and the only way to keep from being trampled was to tell the villain your secret, I— – Lisa Kleypas • I tell you Dain is a splendid catch. I advise you to set your hooks and reel him in.” Jessica took a long swallow of her cognac.This is not a trout, Genevieve. This is a great, hungry shark.”Then use a harpoon. – Loretta Chase • I think a relationship is like a shark. It has to constantly move forward or it dies. – Woody Allen • I think I’m a bit like a kind of shark, that if I stop swimming, I won’t be able to breathe, something like that. Alan Moore • I think I’ve always been drawn to the second person. When I was growing up and playing with my friends, the usual way we interacted with imaginary worlds was as characters: a bench was ‘your’ boat, leaves on a lawn were the fins of sharks out to get ‘you.’ – Mohsin Hamid I think sharks are beautiful creatures, and I don’t think we should stop going in the ocean because of them. You drive down the road and you get in an accident, but most people end up driving down the road again. Surfing is you’re going into their home and it’s just a natural part of life.’ Bethany Hamilto • I think sharks are beautiful creatures, and I don’t think we should stop going in the ocean because of them. You drive down the road and you get in an accident, but most people end up driving down the road again. Surfing is you’re going into their home and it’s just a natural part of life. Bethany Hamilton • I thought beforehand, if [Marie] Henein is going to be a shark, I’m going to be a jellyfish, because you can’t catch a jellyfish. Not that I didn’t want to be caught, I just wanted to present solid. – Lucy DeCoutere • I try my best to avoid the sharks of life, but I have had my share of experiences with them, and in those cases I just have to handle them accordingly. But I do not swim with sharks … sharks swim with sharks. Rihanna • I want to build a wired ocean that helps us take back the seas from poachers and illegal fishers. To do this, we need the latest technology applied to large pelagic fish and sharks, surveillance technology that helps protect marine protected areas, and tags that help prevent shark finning and illegal fishing. We must use modern sensors to help protect our seas! Barbara Block • I wanted a shark that’s big enough to eat you, and in a large enough amount of liquid so that you could imagine you were in there with it. Damien Hirst • I was once stranded on a broken-down boat in shark-infested waters in the middle of the Indian Ocean for five days before we were rescued while doing a ‘Vogue’ shoot. • I was watching one of those animal shows on the Discovery Channel. There was a guy inventing a shark bite suit. And there’s only one way to test it. All right Jimmy, you got that shark suit on, it looks good… They want you to jump into this pool of sharks, and you tell us if it hurts when they bite you. Well, all right, but hold my sign. I don’t wanna lose it. Bill Engvall • I wasn’t surprised at all. In fact, I thought, why stop there? Why not add the Big Show, or Chris Jericho, or the whole state of Nebraska for that matter? And don’t you think a wrestling ring is a little old school, Lilian? Why not put the match in a shark tank, with real live sharks? Hungry sharks! And the only way to beat your opponent is to stuff him down a shark’s throat, and pin the shark. Wouldn’t that be a hoot?- Kurt Angle • I wish you good writing and good luck. Even if you’ve already done the good writing, you’ll still need the good luck. It’s a shark-filled lagoon out there. Cross your fingers and watch your back. – Margaret Atwood • I won’t swim in a pool by myself, because I think that somehow a little magic door is going to open up and let a shark out. Christina Ricci • I would stay at my grandma’s house on my birthday every year and I remember she had a bookshelf of murder mystery books along with really frightening books, like one on Jack the Ripper. She also had a poster of a shark in the closet which also terrified me at the time. Christopher Bollen • If I swim in the ocean, I have a shark thought. Not a bad one, but just a little one. – Tea Leoni • If incredible creatures like sharks can exist, why not Bigfoot? When I look at sharks, they’re the most terrifying, monstrous, dinosaur-like things. To this day, I’m so fascinated by them and can’t get my head around how they are on Planet Earth at all. Rachael Taylor • If men are obsolete, then women will soon be extinct — unless we rush down that ominous Brave New World path where women clone themselves by parthenogenesis, as famously do Komodo dragons, hammerhead sharks, and pit vipers. Camille Paglia If size really mattered, the whale, not the shark, would rule the waters.” —Matshona Dhliwayo • If you are in the job for glamour, you’re in for the shock of your life. The media is a huge shark pool. – Trisha Goddard • I’m 100% proud of the TV work I achieved. The work I did on shows on insects and Great White sharks… stuff that’s in school curriculums in England. Now they are showing up on Discovery Channel. – John Lydon • I’m a blowfish. I’m not a shark, I’m a blowfish. – Kanye West • I’m a blowfish. I’m not a shark, I’m a blowfish. So that perfect example about me hitting my head, it’s like a blowfish. I wasn’t coming out of my house going to a paparazzi’s house to attack them. I’m defending my family in front of my own house. I’m defending my name as someone’s screaming something negative at me. That’s a blowfish. People have me pinned as a shark or a predator in some way, and in no way am I that. I wouldn’t want to hurt anyone. I want to defend people. I want to help people. – Kanye West • I’m actually very scared of sharks. I wanted to be a marine biologist when I was young, which may not have been compatible with that fear. – Gillian Anderson • I’m afraid of sharks – but only in a water situation. – Demetri Martin • I’m an old school guy and love the guys in the monster suits and JAWS; even though everyone makes fun of the shark I think it’s awesome. You know it’s fake, but with my generation that was part of the charm. – Larry Fessenden • I’m haunted by the thought of what Ray Anderson calls ‘tomorrow’s child,’ asking why we didn’t do something on our watch to save sharks and bluefin tuna and squids and coral reefs and the living ocean while there still was time. Well, now is that time. – Sylvia Earle • I’m just a simple guy swimming in a sea of sharks. – Don Johnson • I’m like a shark, right at the top of the food chain. I take what I want, when I want. I truly am the reflection of perfection. Ricky Martin • I’m like a shark. I’ve got to be constantly moving. Kenny Chesney • I’m not saying that everyone should swim with sharks, but sometimes you have to jump over your own shadow in order to learn something that you will never forget for the rest of your life. Then you know you can conquer your fears. – Heidi Klum • I’m obsessed with crocodiles and getting eaten by one. When I hear that someone’s been eaten by a crocodile or shark, I just get all gooey. I start salivating. Tori Amos Impact, Years, People In a world full of fish be a shark.” —Unknown • In life, (the fashion world) is full of sharks. In this world the young girls lose themselves; become the property of others, live but for the job and their craziness…they don’t know anymore where their home is. Many take drugs. It’s strange. Perhaps the girls understand that this does not work for me. I don’t have many friendships with other models. I respect them and enjoy working with them, but I probably would not invite them into my home. My house is like my heart, and I open it only to those with whom I have a close relationship. Laetitia Casta • In the end, my love for surfing helped me overcome my fear of sharks. Bethany Hamilton • In the Mediterranean of my childhood, there were no large groupers, sharks, or whales. All I saw was seaweed and a few fish, smaller than my little diving mask. All the large animals were gone, simply because we had eaten them. Enric Sala • In university courses we do exercises. Term papers, quizzes, final examinations are not meant for publication. We move through a course on Dostoevsky or Poe as we move through a mildly good cocktail party, picking up the good bits of food or conversation, bearing with the rest, going home when it comes to seem the reasonable thing to do. Art, at those moments when it feels most like art — when we feel most alive, most alert, most triumphant — is less like a cocktail party than a tank full of sharks. – John Gardner • Instead of squirreling away your earnings early in your career, spend on experiences that will enrich your life – like diving with great white sharks. It can expose you to influential people who could open doors for you. – Blake Mycoskie • Interceded? You threw me to the sharks! Stephenie Meyer • Interesting fact: a shark will only attack you if you’re wet. – Sean Lock • Is there no Villain in this World who doth not regard himself as a poor abus’d Innocent, no She-Wolf who doth not think herself a Lamb, no Shark who doth not fancy that she is a Goldfish? – Erica Jong • It comes down to finding something you love to do and then just trying to be great at it – Mark Cuban • It holds no fear for her now, because the shark has been tamed by the soul of a boy. No–the soul of a man. – Neal Shusterman • It is as if the Photograph always carries its referent with itself, both affected by the same amorous or funereal immobility, at the very heart of the moving world: they are glued together, limb by limb, like the condemned man and the corpse in certain tortures; or even like those pairs of fish (sharks, I think, according to Michelet) which navigate in convoy, as though united by an eternal coitus. – Roland Barthes • It is estimated that one-third of all reef-building corals, a third of all fresh-water mollusks, a third of sharks and rays, a quarter of all mammals, a fifth of all reptiles, and a sixth of all birds are headed toward oblivion. The losses are occurring all over: in the South Pacific and in the North Atlantic, in the Arctic and the Sahel, in lakes and on islands, on mountaintops and in valleys. – Elizabeth Kolbert • It looks like I’m this huge shark going in for the kill… I don’t know what I was thinking. David Gest • It was such a dramatic escalator that I was on. It was at 90 degrees. I was going straight up like a rocket ship into space. And I was thrown in with the sharks. They said sink or swim in this Cup deal. Kurt Busch Italian, Blood, Bread • It’s a moment. A defining moment when you know that your favorite television program has reached its peak. That instant that you know from now on…it’s all downhill. Some call it the climax. We call it ‘Jumping the Shark.’ From that moment on, the program will simply never be the same. – Jon Hein • It’s kind of ridiculous that I find inspiration in just getting away from everything. But when you’ve gone through it, you realize that it’s the enemy. It’s a distraction from what you’re really doing. You’ve got to keep moving. Like a shark. – Jack White • It’s really not as bad as it sounds. I was attacked by a shark once, back when I was alive. Well, not so much a shark as a rather large fish. And not so much attacked as looked at menacingly. But it had murder in its eyes, that fish. I knew, in that instant, if our roles had been reversed and the fish had been holding the fishing pole and I had been the one to be caught, it wouldn’t hesitate a moment before eating me. So I cooked it and ate before it had a chance to turn the tables. – Derek Landy • I’ve always been freaked out in deep open water if there’s a potential of sharks around. Theo James • I’ve sat looking down into a volcano that could blow at any moment; I’ve helped catch a shark and several rattlesnakes; I let a tarantula walk across my hand, and I ate rat soup. – Alan Alda • I’ve seen young men in college going into the NFL and then bite the cheese that’s in the trap. They’ll throw you a pair of Jordans or a moneybag for their services. It’s in that moment where most compromise. This business is unforgivable, and you got a bunch of sharks out there. It’s mind boggling that universities don’t prepare athletes for what they’re going to experience. Eddie George • Lenders, including major credit companies as well as payday lenders, have taken over the traditional role of the street-corner loan shark, charging the poor insanely high rates of interest. – Barbara Ehrenreich • Let’s be perfectly clear, shall we. The fox is not a little orange puppy dog with doe eyes and a waggly tail. It’s a disease-ridden wolf with the morals of a psychopath and the teeth of a great white shark. Jeremy Clarkson • Life is little more than a loan shark: It exacts a very high rate of interest for the few pleasures it concedes – Luigi Pirandello

• Live every week like it’s shark week. – Tracy Morgan • Look, Chief, you can’t go off half-cocked looking for vengeance against a fish. That shark isn’t evil. It’s not a murderer. It’s just obeying its own instincts. Trying to get retribution against a fish is crazy. – Peter Benchley • Losing is like smoking. It’s habit forming”;Fear is the basis of all mankind. In cards, you psyche ’em out, you shark ’em, you put the fear of God in ’em Puggy Pearson • Love’s pure free joy when it works, but when it goes bad you pay for the good hours at loan-shark prices. – David Mitchell • Make no mistake, your relationships are the heaviest components in your life. All those negotiations and arguments and secrets, the compromises. The slower we move the faster we die. Make no mistake, moving is living. Some animals were meant to carry each other. To live symbiotically over a lifetime. Star crossed lovers, monogamous swans. We are not swans. We are sharks. – Ryan Bingham • Man is a carnivorous production, And must have meals, at least one meal a day; He cannot live, like woodcocks, upon suction, But, like the shark and tiger, must have prey; Although his anatomical construction Bears vegetables, in a grumbling way, Your laboring people think beyond all question, Beef, veal, and mutton better for digestion. Lord Byron • Man Swims in Shark Infested Waters, Forgets He’s Shark Food. – Gary Larson • Many people continue to think of sharks as man-eating beasts. Sharks are enormously powerful and wild creatures, but youre more likely to be killed by your kitchen toaster than a shark! – Ted Danson • Maybe we’ll live to see sharks recover. Right now, that seems as improbable as seeing all these falcons. Hope is the ability to see how things could be better. The world of human affairs has long been a shadowy place, but always backlit by the light of hope. Each person can add hope to the world. A resigned person subtracts hope. The more people strive, the more change becomes likely. – Carl Safina • Men, specifically in the West, have no rights of passage, no way to know when they become a man. Everywhere else in the world you gotta kill a lion or stab a shark, or go on some journey, and you come back and you’re a man. But here in the West, we’re really kind of clueless as to what makes us a man. – LeCrae • Meryl Streep is an acting machine in the same sense that a shark is a killing machine. Cher • More people are killed every year by pigs than by sharks, which shows you how good we are at evaluating risk. Bruce Schneier • Mr.Blank’s reputation as a card shark had preceded him. No one accused him of being dishonest, but on the other hand no one accused him of being honest. Groucho Marx • My dad was kind of a pool shark and had a Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin thing going on. I’ve always been fascinated by the fifties because of him. There was a hip, cool, anything-goes atmosphere back then, but looking good was still a priority. – Dylan McDermott • My phobias worsen as I get older. I’m scared of flying, driving. I’m terrified of sharks. I’m a germaphobe. But I try to face my fears; I do. Well, most of them. – Eli Roth • My position is this. If we can’t protect sanctuaries, if we can’t save the whales, the sharks, the fish, our oceans will die. Paul Watson • My tattoo is a cross, a rose and a shark. A cross is a cross, a rose like love and a shark is a pretty tough animal. Goran Ivanisevic • National Geographic contacted me about getting on their label, and I was like, ‘Wow, I want to be label mates with the sharks and lemurs!’ Bjork • Never underestimate a woman who loves sharks.” —Unknown

• No good book has ever been written that has in it symbols arrived at beforehand and stuck in. … I tried to make a real old man, a real boy, a real sea and a real fish and real sharks. But if I made them good and true enough they would mean many things – Ernest Hemingway • No rescue boat can save the touches I left bobbing in the wild ocean of your flesh, but if they cut open your heart, like the belly of a shark, dumped its contents on a table—would there be any trace of me? – Jeffrey McDaniel • No, the shark in an updated JAWS could not be the villain; it would have to be written as the victim, for, worldwide, sharks are much more the oppressed than the oppressors. -Peter Benchley • Nobody had ever instructed him that a slave-ship, with a procession of expectant sharks in its wake, is a missionary institution, by which closely-packed heathen are brought over to enjoy the light of the Gospel. • Nothing has prepared sharks, squid, krill and other sea creatures for industrial-scale extraction that destroys entire ecosystems while targeting a few species. Sylvia Earle • Nothing is more important than saving … the Lions, Tigers, Giraffes, Elephants, Froggies, Turtles, Apes, Raccoons, Beetles, Ants, Sharks, Bears, and, of course, the Squirrels. The humans? The planet does not need humans. – James Lee • Of all the creatures in the world that really frighten me – the hyena in Africa, the great white shark – leopard seals are near the top of the list. They’re killers. If my team spots one, they’ll pull me out of the water. – Lewis Gordon • Oh, the shark has pretty teeth, dear, And he shows them pearly white. Just a jackknife has Macheath, dear, And he keeps them out of sight. – Kurt Weill • Once Henry had heard a crying noise at sea, and had seen a mermaid floating on the ocean’s surface. The mermaid had been injured by a shark. Henry had pulled the mermaid out of the water with a rope, and she had died in his arms…”what language did the mermaid speak?” Alma wanted to know, imagining that it like almost have to be Greek. “English!” Henry said. “By God, plum, why would I rescue a deuced foreign mermaid? – Elizabeth Gilbert • One of them hissed-not the hiss of a cat, a long, steady tone-more like the hiss of air escaping the rubber raft that is all that lies between you and a dark sea full of sharks, the hiss of your life leaking out at the seams. – Christopher Moore • One shark turned to the other to say he was fed up chasing tuna and the other said, ‘Why don’t we go to Morecambe Bay and get some Chinese?’ – Ann Winterton • Only the strongest players can swim in the shark-infested waters of the Masters’ Seas. – Victor Niederhoffer • Orchestras have often been used to conjure up the natural world: Swans, sharks, trout, but not, as far as I know, the often maligned jellyfish. Bill Bailey • Passion, for me, is like a shark – it never stops moving. – Jack White • Personally, I say, “Out of the frying pan and into the deadly pit filled with sharks who are wielding chainsaws with killer kittens stapled to them.” However, that one’s having a rough time catching on. – Brandon Sanderson • Pigs eat more tuna than all the planet’s sharks combined. – Paul Watson Pigs, Years, People • Piscary killed people, but he didn’t have the concept of pity or remorse. It would be like telling a shark he was a bad fish and to stop eating people. But Trent? He knew he was doing wrong, and he did it anyway. Kim Harrison Player, Sea, Water • pools of blood are not recreational even lifeguards drown when the undertow breaks bread with the underbelly demons disguised as sharks have not put enough thought into their costumes a wiseman stays ashore when pointed fins read like italian subtitles the end is near (…) the beginning – Saul Williams Powerful, Men, Thinking • Raphael painted, Luther preached, Corneille wrote, and Milton sang; and through it all, for four hundred years, the dark captives wound to the sea amid the bleaching bones of the dead: for four hundred years the sharks followed the scurrying ships; for four hundred years America was strewn with the living and dying millions of a transplanted race; for four hundred years Ethiopia stretched forth her hands unto God. W. E. B. Du Bois • Relationships are like sharks. They’ve got to keep going into deeper, colder water, sometimes scarier, darker territories … to stay alive. Richard Gere Remove the predators, and the whole ecosystem begins to crash like a house of cards. As the sharks disappear, the predator prey balance dramatically shifts, and the health of our oceans declines.” Brian Skerry • Roy Keane’s like a shark. He has those eyes. You don’t know if he is going to buy you a drink or eat you. Ian Holloway • Royal Young has accomplished a rare feat in his fresh and riveting debut: he manages to recount his fascinating youth and unconventional family with a mixture of humor, scathing honesty and tenderness. Much more than simply a book about a kid who dreams of stardom, Fame Shark is a thoughtful, hilarious and moving love letter to his family and the Lower East Side of New York City. – Kristen Johnston • Rule number four for me as a writer? Plotlines are like sharks: They either keep moving or they die. ~J.R. Ward – J.R. Ward • Seafood is simply a socially acceptable form of bush meat. We condemn Africans for hunting monkeys and mammalian and bird species from the jungle yet the developed world thinks nothing of hauling in magnificent wild creatures like swordfish, tuna, halibut, shark, and salmon for our meals. The fact is that the global slaughter of marine wildlife is simply the largest massacre of wildlife on the planet. – Paul Watson • Setting off unknown to face the unknown, against parental opposition, with no money, friends, or influence, ran it a close second. Clichés like “blazing trails,” flying over “shark-infected seas,” “battling with monsoons,” and “forced landings amongst savage tribes” became familiar diet for breakfast. Unknown names became household words, whilst others, those of the failures, were forgotten utterly except by kith and kin. Amy Johnson • Shark Tale feels borrowed, sampled and dittoed from the collective funniness of the past 10 years in studio-made animation. – Desson Thomson • Shark Tales: How I turned $1,000 into a Billion Dollar Business. – Barbara Corcoran Sharks are among the most perfectly constructed creatures in nature. Some forms have survived for two hundred million years.” Eugenie Clark • Sharks are as tough as those football fans who take their shirts off during games in Chicago in January, only more intelligent. Dave Barry • Sharks are beautiful animals, and if you’re lucky enough to see lots of them, that means that you’re in a healthy ocean. You should be afraid if you are in the ocean and don’t see sharks. – Sylvia Earle Sharks are being driven to extinction because people want to eat their fins and their flesh.” —Barbara Block • Sharks are being driven to extinction because people want to eat their fins and their flesh. Barbara Block • Sharks are just evil bastards. I’m quite happy if all the sharks just went, because they eat fish and us. And we need the fish. – Eddie Izzard • Sharks are like dogs. They only bite when you touch their private parts.” —Rob Schneider • Sharks are the criminals of the sea. Dolphins are the outlaws.Tom Robbins Sharks are the lions of the sea.They glamorize the oceanic glory.” —Munia Khan Sharks aren’t the monsters we make them out to be.” —Yasmine Hamdi • Sharks attack surfers because they look like a seal. Apparently, when you’re layng on your board and you have your arms and legs hanging off, from underneath you look like a seal. So I just got a picture of a seal and put a red line through it and put it underneath my board. Henry Cho • Sharks don’t target human beings, and they certainly don’t hold grudges. – Peter Benchley • Sharks have a deadly form of claustrophobia. It’s not so much fear of enclosed spaces as it is inability to exist in them. No one knows why. Some say it’s the metal in aquariums that throws their equilibrium off. But whatever it is, big sharks don’t last long in captivity – Neal Shusterman Sharks have been swimming the oceans unchallenged for thousands of years; chances are, the species that roams corporate waters will prove just as hardy.”Eric Gelman • Sharks have everything a scientist dreams of. They’re beautiful―God, how beautiful they are! They’re like an impossibly perfect piece of machinery. They’re as graceful as any bird. They’re as mysterious as any animal on earth. No one knows for sure how long they live or what impulses―except for hunger―they respond to. There are more than two hundred and fifty species of shark, and everyone is different from every other one. – Peter Benchley • Sharks have swum the oceans for over 400 million years, but we’re threatening this critically important species for the purpose of making soup – it’s sad and wasteful. – Ted Danson Sharks hug with their mouths.” —Unknown • Sharks will scare me. I went out to Malibu a couple of weeks ago. Beautiful, clear day, out in five feet of water, going to surf, and there was this big ol’ freakin’ leopard shark… I’m looking at him and I’m thinking, ‘OK, he won’t hurt me. Timothy Olyphant Sharks” They’re not so bad. If a stranger entered my house wearing only a speedo, l’d probably attack him too.” —Unknown • Since I began exploring the ocean in the 1950s, 90 percent of the big fish have been stripped away. Tuna, sharks, swordfish, cod, halibut, you name it, the numbers have just collapsed. Also, about half of the coral reefs are gone, globally, from where they were just a few decades ago. Sylvia Earle • So the hotel tells us that it is not safe to go in the water because its shark mating time. I know how I’d feel if someone interrupted me. Bill Engvall • Some people like being a big fish in a small pond, others a ferocious shark in the ocean, I rather be the ocean. In the end, fish die. Behdad Sami • Sometimes making a story is as easy as putting two characters in a room and seeing what happens. So, imagine a great white shark and a giant squid in the same bathroom. Jim Toomey • Somewhere in the ocean, a shark was missing its cold eyes because this man had them. – Steve Hamilton • Stop saying athletes do it for the love of the game. They do it for the love of their 32-room mansion with the live shark tank in the living room. If pro sports paid minimum wage, Shaquille O’Neal would be a bouncer at Scores, and Anna Kournikova would be a mail-order bride from Minsk. – Bill Maher • Testing her sexuality, she thinks she’s caught a beautiful fish, when in reality, she’s netted a shark. – Tammara Webber • That’s not news! When a shark comes out of the water, walks into a 7-11, and bites you in the ass, then it’s news! Carlos Mencia • The audience should go out and see Shark Night 3D because you can bring your whole family. – Sinqua Walls • The computer revolution has allowed white-collar criminals to do what the Mob would have loved to do – put a pawnshop and a loan shark in every home! – Kurt Vonnegut • The country’s newest aquarium, opened in November, bills itself as the largest in the world, holding more than 100,000 animals representing 500 species. It is the first in the USA to display whale sharks, the largest fish in the world. – John Grant • The credit card companies have put the loan sharks out of business. – Elizabeth Warren • The Earth is beautiful, and bright, and kindly, but that is not all. The Earth is also terrible, and dark, and cruel. The rabbit shrieks dying in the green meadows. The mountains clench their great hands full of hidden fire. There are sharks in the sea, and there is cruelty in men’s eyes. – Ursula K. Le Guin • The Giant Ocean Tank, with its 52 large viewing windows, is the main attraction here. Myrtle, a giant green sea turtle, is one of the tank’s most popular animals, along with sharks, rays and more than 100 other species. The Aquarium Medical Center is a working animal hospital exhibit that allows visitors to observe veterinarians examining and treating sea creatures. – John Grant • The goblins want girls who dream so hard about being pretty their yearning leaves a palpable trail, a scent goblins can follow like sharks on a soft bloom of blood. The girls with hungry eyes who pray each night to wake up as someone else. Urgent, unkissed, wishful girls. Like Kizzy. – Laini Taylor • The great common people of this country are slaves, and monopoly is the master. . . . The politicians said we suffered from overproduction. Overproduction, when 10,000 little children, so statistics tell us, starve to death every year in the United States. . . . We will stand by our homes and stay by our fireside by force if necessary, and we will not pay our debts to the loan-shark companies until the government pays its debts to us. Mary Elizabeth Lease • The ground is my ocean, I’m the shark, and most people don’t even know how to swim. Carlos Machado • The main courtyard was filled with warriors – mermen with fish tails from the waist down and human bodies from the waist up, except their skin was blue, which I’d never known before.Some were tending the wounded. Some were sharpening spears and swords. One passed us, swimming in a hurry. His eyes were bright green, like that stuff they put in glo-sticks, and his teeth were shark teeth. They don’t show you stuff like that in “The Little Mermaid. – Rick Riordan • The moon had risen behind him, the color of a shark’s underbelly. It lit the ruined walls, and the skin of his arms and hands, with its sickly light, making him long for a mirror in which to study his face. Surely he’d be able to see the bones beneath the meat; the skull gleaming the way his teeth gleamed when he smiled. After all, wasn’t that what a smile said? Hello, world, this is the way I’ll look when the wet parts are rotted. – Clive Barker • The number-one show in America on Sundays will be Celebrity Apprentice. Monday nights, The Voice will be number one. Wednesday nights, Survivor will be number one. And Friday nights, Shark Tank will be number one. It just takes some time management for me to focus. Scott Raab • The ocean is a place of paradoxes. It is the home of the great white shark, two-thousand-pound killer of the seas, and of the hundred-foot blue whale, the largest animal that ever lived. It is also the home of living things so small that your two hands might scoop up as many of them as there are stars in the Milky Way. Rachel Carson • The only thing on the mind of a shark is to eat. Lil Wayne • The only use for a knife during a shark attack is pure treachery: Stab your buddy, swim like hell, and hope the munchies take him. Tim Cahill • The pointless snide remarks of hammerheaded sharks – Thom Yorke • The publishers and others should quit worrying about losing customers to TV. The guy who can sit through a trio of deodorant commercials to look at Flashgun Casey or swallow a flock of beer and loan-shark spiels in order to watch a couple of fourth-rate club fighters rub noses on the ropes is not losing any time from book reading. Raymond Chandler • The reason I do Shark Tank isn’t to try take make more money of the deals, even though every deal I want to make money off of and even more so I want the entrepreneurs to be very successful and make money, but Shark Tank sends a message to everybody that the American Dream is alive and well. Mark Cuban • The shark has its head to the west and tail to the east, very much the way the Indians would put a human in the ground.” Bob Carr • The shark heart slows down in the cold, just as our own heart would. But what sets it apart is where our heart would simply stop, the salmon shark keeps on ticking.” Barbara Block • The shark is the apex predator in the sea. Sharks have molded evolution for 450 million years. All fish species that are prey to the sharks have had their behavior, their speed, their camouflage, their defense mechanisms molded by the shark. – Paul Watson • The studios will go wherever they smell money. It’s like sharks to the blood. – Don Bluth • The word relationship best refers to the connection between parasite and host, or shark and remora. It’s a biological term. I’d rather be a jerk than a scientist when it comes to love. – Ian Shoales • There are 350 varieties of shark, not counting loan and pool. L. M. Boyd • There are no rules about investment. Sharks can be good. Artist’s dung can be good. Oil on canvas can be good. – Charles Saatchi • There are no true friends in politics. We are all sharks circling, and waiting, for traces of blood to appear in the water. – Alan Clark There are plenty of fish in the sea, so don’t settle for a shark.” —Unknown • There are three points of doctrine the belief of which forms the foundation of all morality. The first is the existence of God; the second is the immortality of the human soul; and the third is a future state of rewards and punishments. Suppose it possible for a man to disbelieve either of these three articles of faith and that man will have no conscience, he will have no other law than that of the tiger or the shark. The laws of man may bind him in chains or may put him to death, but they never can make him wise, virtuous, or happy. – John Quincy Adams • There is a big difference between a disappointing friend and a deadly enemy. Of course the Democrats are disappointing. That’s what makes them Democrats. If they were any more frustrating they’d be your relatives. But in this country they are all that stands between you and darkest night. You know why their symbol is the letter ‘D’? Because it’s a grade that means good enough, but just barely. You know why the Republican symbol is ‘R’? Because it’s the noise a pirate makes when he robs you and feeds you to a shark. – Bill Maher • There is an awful lot of what I call recreational jazz going on, where people go out and learn a particular language or style and become real sharks on somebody else’s language.Steve Lacy There is no fire like passion, there is no shark like hatred, there is no snare like folly, there is no torrent like greed.” —Siddharta Gautama • There is no fire like passion, there is no shark like hatred, there is no snare like folly, there is no torrent like greed. – Gautama Buddha • There is this sweet spot in time when we have an opportunity to stop killing sharks and tunas and swordfish and other wildlife in the sea before it’s too late. Sylvia Earle • There’s still a lot of people out there who think the only good shark is a dead shark.” —Brain Skerry • There’s a cardinal rule that you don’t talk about sharks. If you don’t see it, it’s not there. – Mark Warkentin • There’s a good case to be made that having fun is a key evolutionary advantage right next to opposable thumbs in terms of importance. Without that little chemical twist in our brains that makes us enjoy learning new things, we might be more like the sharks and ants of the world.- Raph Koster There’s nothing in the sea this fish would fear. Other fish run from bigger things. That’s their instinct. But this fish doesn’t run from anything. He doesn’t fear.” Peter Benchley • There’s still a lot of people out there who think the only good shark is a dead shark. – Brian Skerry • They will tell you tough stories of sharks all over the Cape, which I do not presume to doubt utterly,–how they will sometimes upset a boat, or tear it in pieces, to get at the man in it. I can easily believe in the undertow, but I have no doubt that one shark in a dozen years is enough to keep up the reputation of a beach a hundred miles long. – Henry David Thoreau • They’re like sharks. Circling. Cute, single guy, good job, nice car. It’s all they know about me.” His tone was light but his expression serious. Maybe that’s because it’s all you show them.” Maybe it’s all they want to see. – Megan Hart • This is what it means to be alone: everyone is connected to everyone else, their bodies are a bright liquid life flowing around you, sharing a single heart that drives them to move all together. If the shark comes they will all escape, and leave you to be eaten. – Barbara Kingsolver • Though amid all the smoking horror and diabolism of a sea-fight, sharks will be seen longingly gazing up to the ship’s decks, like hungry dogs round a table where red meat is being carved, ready to bolt down every killed man that is tossed to them.- Herman Melville • Throwing blondes at Locke Lamora was not unlike throwing lettuce at sharks. – Scott Lynch • Tobias asked. “Weird? Weird?” Marco crowed. “The talking bird wants to know if getting information on the location of an alien from a whale, that you’ve just saved from sharks, by turning into dolphins . . . You’re suggesting that’s weird? – Katherine Applegate • Today I saw cancer, cigarettes, and shortness of breath. This is why I walk to the ocean. Swim with sharks and jellyfish. I may never get this chance again. This is why if you want to kiss, you should kiss. If you want to cry, you should cry. And if you want to live, you should live. You don’t have to love me. You already did. – Ryan Ross • Turns out, I couldn’t catch them – or even get close to them. I realized that sharks are amazing, beautiful animals who have absolutely no interest in checking me out. – Malin Akerman • Twenty-five years ago nobody knew much about white sharks. – Peter Benchley • Watching Jaws just scared the living daylights out of me when I was young. I know a lot of people my age who are still petrified of sharks because of that film. – Ashley Scott • We developed microfinance to fight loan sharks – I was telling people don’t go to loan sharks – not trying to take advantage and make money for myself. I would be a junior loan shark if I did … It is not a panacea. Muhammad Yunus • We don’t like to think of ourselves as prey—it is a lessening thought—but the truth is that in our arrogance and so-called knowledge we forget that we are not unique. We are part of nature as much as other animals, and some animals—sharks, fever-bearing mosquitoes, wolves and bear, to name but a few—perceive us as a food source, a meat supply, and simply did not get the memo about how humans are superior. It can be shocking, humbling, painful, very edifying and sometimes downright fatal to run into such an animal. – Gary Paulsen • We don’t have any changes in the movie [Pineapple Express] and so picking the right outfit was fairly important. So I wasn’t a fan of the Guatemalan pants, but I was convinced that I should wear that. Then the T-shirt is a special creation by David Gordon Green. It’s a kitten sitting in a shark’s mouth, but he’s happy about it. – Seth Rogen • We have been shark to one another, but also lifeboat. Margaret Atwood We have been shark to one another, but also lifeboat.” —Unknown • We keep the negative stuff because it’s the negative stuff that’s going to, you know, potentially kill us. That fin in the water – maybe it is a shark. That yellow thing behind the tree – maybe it is a lion. You need to be scared. – Mohsin Hamid We provoke a shark every time we enter the water where sharks happen to be, for we forget: The ocean is not our territory – it’s theirs.” —Peter Benchely • We still have 10 percent of the sharks. We still have half of the coral reefs. However, if we wait another 50 years, opportunities might well be gone. – Sylvia Earle • We still have the illusion that the ocean will recover. That even if we do have to lose sharks, people don’t understand why this matters. The evidence is in front of us, and we fail to take it in and say, “Now I get it. Now I understand.” Sylvia Earle • We want the accursed foreclosure system wiped out…. We will stand by our homes and stay by our firesides by force if necessary, and we will not pay our debts to the loan-shark companies until the government pays its debts to us. Mary Elizabeth Lease • Well, everyone, welcome to Shark Week. Oh that’s on CBS and there’s been a lot of cutbacks, so it’s just Friday night for a couple of minutes. And we don’t have any sharks, just an immigrant with a puppet. Hey, but it’s a start! – Craig Ferguson • Were the diver to think on the jaws of the shark, he would never lay hands on the precious pearl. – Saadi • What I compare bike lanes to is swimming with the sharks. Sooner or later you’re going to get bitten… Roads are built for buses, cars, and trucks, not for people on bikes. My heart bleeds for them when I hear someone gets killed, but it’s their own fault at the end of the day. – Rob Ford • What Wall Street and credit card companies are doing is really not much different from what gangsters and loan sharks do who make predatory loans. While the bankers wear three-piece suits and don’t break the knee caps of those who can’t pay back, they still are destroying people’s lives. – Bernie Sanders • What we share may be a lot like a traffic accident but we get one another. We are survivors of each other. We have been shark to one another, but also lifeboat. That counts for something. Margaret Atwood • What’s the inside of a shark smell like? I always thought it would smell like chicken. – Judd Hirsch • When I put something into motion, the creativity starts to make other people want to jump in, and then a lot of people get employed. I’m just like a shark, in that way. If I stop swimming, I’ll die. Adam Shankman • When I was a kid I would write songs, little plays, and poetry in school. If you’re an adult and you’re a poet, it’s all about love and pain, but if you’re a kid it’s, “Does anyone know a word that rhymes with shark?” Mike Birbiglia • When I was about five, I gave my heart to Jesus Christ, and since then it’s just been a stronghold in my life. Really, through the shark attack and all the hard times that my family and I went through, it gave us unity and perseverance to push through all this crazy stuff that we never knew was going to happen. – Bethany Hamilton • When I was starting out, young actresses had the studio system to protect them. Now you have a host of sharks, from your agent to your publicist to your lawyer. – Francesca Annis • When I went to Australia, I went shark diving. It was crazy. It was called ‘extreme’ shark diving because even though we were in cages, we literally could touch the sharks swimming by. They were huge and I’m terrified of sharks. Then I went to a wildlife park and held kangaroos. That was nice. – Taylor Lautner • When the sands are all dry, he is gay as a lark, And will talk in contemptuous tones of the Shark: But, when the tide rises and sharks are around, His voice has a timid and tremulous sound. – Lewis Carroll • When you come to ‘Shark Tank,’ the only person you should listen to is me, because you know you’re getting the truth. I’ll decide if it’s worth it, and after I’m finished, the rest of the people can look into it. – Kevin O’Leary When you enter the ocean you enter the food chain, and not always at the top.” —Unknown • Winter near the shore is cold. The wind kicks up a salty mist and elephant seals come to shore to trumpet and rut and birth their pups. Retired people put sweaters on their lap dogs and drag them down the street on retractable leashes in a nightly parade of doggy humiliation. Surfers don their wetsuits against the chill of storm waves and white sharks adjust their diets to include shrink-wrapped dude-snacks on fiberglass crackers. Christopher Moore Wise, Men, Law • With acting, there are a lot of subtleties and non-verbals involved. If someone is over there, getting eaten by a shark, there’s a non-verbal way of how to act that. There’s a certain nuance to acting that does not come intuitively to me. It’s something I still have to learn. Mark McGrath Without sharks, you take away the apex predator of the ocean, and you destroy the entire food chain.” Peter Benchley • Without sharks, you take away the apex predator of the ocean, and you destroy the entire food chain Peter Benchley • Writing and performing are to me what water and movement are to sharks. Rachael Yamagata • Yet the reality is that I’m a stage actor from the Midwest – probably the opposite of a shark agent. – Jeremy Piven • You always hear a headline like this, ‘Man Killed By Shark’, you never hear it from the other perspective, ‘Man Swims in Shark Infested Waters, Forgets He’s Shark Food’. – Gary Larson • You can’t afford to make the shark look good so you do most of it with ominous music and a fin. Jim Howick • You don’t have to swim faster than the shark, just faster than the person you’re with. – Kevin Nealon • You Know the Most Dangerous Thing In the Water? A Shark Fart. – Gary Busey • You know, it actually can happen. I mean, the chances of it happening are very rare, but it can happen actually. Which is crazy. Not that it—the chances of it are, like, you know, it’s like probably ‘pigs could fly.’ Like, I don’t think pigs could fly, but actually sharks could be stuck in tornados. There could be a sharknado. Tara Reid • You might not think a hippo could inspire terror. ScreamingHippo!” doesn’t have the same impact as screamingShark!” But I’m telling you—as the Egyptian Queen careened to one side, its paddle wheel lifting completely out of the water, and I saw that monster emerge from the deep, I nearly discovered the hieroglyphs for accident in my pants. – Rick Riordan • Your dead sleep quietly, at least, Captain, out of reach of sharks” “Yes, sir, of sharks and men. Jules Verne • You’re more likely to drown in the sea of sameness than get eaten by a shark while navigating new waters. Amy Jo Martin

[equitiesstocks]

Shark Quotes

Official Website: Shark Quotes

• A boxer is like a lion, the greatest predator on land, but you throw him in the shark tank and he’s just another meal. Renzo Gracie • A lawyer is basically a mouth, like a shark is a mouth attached to a long gut. The business of lawyers is to talk, to interrupt one another, and to devour each other if possible. – Joyce Carol Oates • After the clinch, it doesn’t matter what happens, one way or another, we’re going to hit the ground, and we’ll be in my world. The ground is my ocean, I’m the shark, and most people don’t even know how to swim. Carlos Machado • All right, you got that out of your system. Can I get back in the boat without you striking me again? Or should I stay out here enjoying the marine life?” “Why don’t you swim around until you find a shark? Then you can discuss how much the two of you have in common – Jeaniene Frost • All sharks were born swimming.” —Rebecca McNutt •Almost any shark, three or four feet long, could kill a human being if it chose to do it. It could make you bleed to death. But they don’t.” —Peter Benchley • And it was there that I saw the most appealing creature in the whole shop. He had a slight chink out of one foot and his ‘topknot’ was missing (a ‘topknot’ is on the top of a dragon’s head and looks a bit like a shark’s fin) but I bought him in an instant. – Chris d’Lacey • Annoyance and pathos warred in my breast, and after a short struggle, annoyance punched pathos in the snout like the voracious shark it was. Kate Elliott • Anyone who thinks cryptozoology is the study of the impossible has never really taken a very good look at the so-called “natural world.” Once you get past the megamouth sharks, naked mole rats, and spotted hyenas, then the basilisks, dragons, and cuckoos just don’t seem that unreasonable. Unpleasant, yes, but unreasonable? Not really.- Mira GrantAs an entrepreneur, you can always find a solution if you try hard enough.- Lori Greiner

• At this point in our global ecological crisis, the survival of humanity will require a fundamental shift in our attitude toward nature: from finding out how we can dominate and manipulate nature to how we can learn from her. In this brilliant and hopeful book, Jay Harman shows us how far the new field of Biomimicry has already progressed toward this goal. The Shark’s Paintbrush makes for fascinating and joyful reading – much needed in these dark times. – Fritjof Capra

jQuery(document).ready(function($) var data = action: 'polyxgo_products_search', type: 'Product', keywords: 'Shark', orderby: 'rand', order: 'DESC', template: '1', limit: '68', columns: '4', viewall:'Shop All', ; jQuery.post(spyr_params.ajaxurl,data, function(response) var obj = jQuery.parseJSON(response); jQuery('#thelovesof_shark').html(obj); jQuery('#thelovesof_shark img.swiper-lazy:not(.swiper-lazy-loaded)' ).each(function () var img = jQuery(this); img.attr("src",img.data('src')); img.addClass( 'swiper-lazy-loaded' ); img.removeAttr('data-src'); ); ); ); • Being able to turn to Jesus after the shark attack kept me alive. – Bethany Hamilton • Being nearly naked around Barrons felt a lot like going to a shark convention lightly basted in blood. – Karen Marie Moning • Better a dish of husks to the accompaniment of a muted lute than to be satiated with stewed shark’s fin and rich spiced wine of which the cost is frequently mentioned by the provider. Ernest Bramah • Between highway sounds I heard waves and thought how the curve of the coastline here had sheltered and nurtured live-born sharks, humans, and migrating whales. Here, at the edge of the continent, time and distance stopped; in the lull between sets of waves I could get a fresh start. – Gretel Ehrlich • Brody cannot believe the size of the creature, and with a classic, practical understatement tells Quint his assessment: You’re gonna need a bigger boat. Awestruck, they all view the full-sized, massive shark circling the boat. Quint estimates it is 25 feet long: Three tons of him. – Roy Scheider • Brooding, she changed the pool into the sea, and made the minnows into sharks and whales, and cast vast clouds over this tiny world by holding her hand against the sun, and so brought darkness and desolation, like God himself, to millions of ignorant and innocent creatures, and then took her hand away suddenly and let the sun stream down. – Virginia Woolf

• Businesspeople are like sharks, not just because we’re gray and slightly oily, or because our teeth trail the innards of those we have eviscerated, but because we must move forward or die. – Stanley Bing • But as they say about sharks, it’s not the ones you see that you have to worry about, it’s the ones you don’t see. – David Blaine • But it’s also true that my memory is a card shark, reshuffling the deck to hide what I fear to know, unable to keep from fingering the ace at the bottom of the deck even when I’m doing nothing more than playing Fish in the daylight with children. – Lorene Cary • By his machines man can dive and remain under water like a shark; can fly like a hawk in the air; can see atoms like a gnat; can see the system of the universe of Uriel, the angel of the sun; can carry whatever loads a ton of coal can lift; can knock down cities with his fist of gunpowder; can recover the history of his race by the medals which the deluge, and every creature, civil or savage or brute, has involuntarily dropped of its existence; and divine the future possibility of the planet and its inhabitants by his perception of laws of nature. – Ralph Waldo Emerson • By nature, I keep moving, man. My theory is, be the shark. You’ve just got to keep moving. You can’t stop. Brad Pitt • By the end of the 20th century, up to 90 percent of the sharks, tuna, swordfish, marlins, groupers, turtles, whales, and many other large creatures that prospered in the Gulf for millions of years had been depleted by overfishing. – Sylvia Earle • Consider the subtleness of the sea; how its most dreaded creatures glide under water, unapparent for the most part, and treacherously hidden beneath the loveliest tints of azure. Consider also the devilish brilliance and beauty of many of its most remorseless tribes, as the dainty embellished shape of many species of sharks. Consider, once more, the universal cannibalism of the sea; all whose creatures prey upon each other, carrying on eternal war since the world began. – Herman Melville • Considering their impact, you might expect mosquitoes to get more attention than they do. Sharks kill fewer than a dozen people every year, and in the U.S. they get a week dedicated to them on TV every year. Bill Gates • Crikey means gee whiz, wow! Crikey, mate. You’re far safer dealing with crocodiles and western diamondback rattlesnakes than the executives and the producers and all those sharks in the big MGM building. Steve Irwin • Did you know that mako shark fetuses eat each other in the womb?… Its true. Only cannibal fetuses survive to be born. Can you imagine if people were like that? – Laini Taylor • Does anyone know a word that rhymes with shark? – Mike Birbiglia Dolphins and sharks are natural enemies. Dolphins are like,Quit eating us,” and sharks are like,Stop smiling all the time, you morons.” —Dan Florence • Don’t believe what the spiritual sharks and clever carnival hustlers tell you about fearless living – they lie. Guy Finley • Don’t you dare underestimate the power of your own instinct. Instinct is a lifesaver for sharks and entrepreneurs alike. Most people can recall times they ignored their gut only to regret it later. Learning to actually listen to your instinct is a great form of self-preservation. It’s both incredibly easy and tough at the same time, but worth the effort to master. Barbara Corcoran • EBay may be a shark in the ocean, but I’m a crocodile in the Yangtze River. If we fight in the ocean, we lose, but if we fight in the river, we win. – Jack Ma • Even a mentally challenged shark would figure out that sea turtles did not wear boxer shorts printed in flying piggies, and no sea turtle would be yattering streams of obscenities between chain-smoker gasps of breath. – Christopher Moore • Expand the definition of ‘reading’ to include non-fiction, humor, graphic novels, magazines, action adventure, and, yes, even websites. It’s the pleasure of reading that counts; the focus will naturally broaden. A boy won’t read shark books forever. – Jon Scieszka • Fathers and sons are natural enemies. Look at any species. Shark, sees his father in the water, he’s not thinking, Hey dad, wassup ? He’s thinking, Back off, old man, this surfer carcass is mine. Of course, when his girlfriend swims up and she’s like, Way, you know, there’s enough surfer for everybody. You and your dad need to frenzy together more. Leave you father a thigh. Christopher Titus • For an actor, its great fun to play one of these hungry white sharks. Audiences love to hate them. – Michael Douglas • Forgetting isn’t enough. You can paddle away from the memories and think they are gone. But they will keep floating back, again and again and agian. They circle you, like sharks. Until, unless, something, someone? Can do more than just cover the wound. – Sara Zarr • French fries kill more people than guns and sharks, yet nobody’s afraid of French fries.- Robert Kiyosaki • Gerard’s spirit animal is a gazelle – that’s how he’s always answered – Frankie would definitely be a wolverine, I would be a shark because of my inability to sit still, and Ray? Ray would be… I’m thinking super intelligent, super articulate, I would think owl. Mikey Way • Going from ‘Shark Night’ to ‘Piranha,’ a guy holding a fish on a stick in front of you that they’re going to replace in post-production, it’s a lot different than seeing this animatronic shark that, if you get caught up in the moment, looks, acts and you sometimes think could be real. Chris Zylka • Hand me down the shark repellent Bat-Spray! Adam West Harriet Beecher Stowe • He asks me what happened to my leg. I told him I was shot by a shark. He doesn’t react. Doesn’t seem confused or amused or anything. Like getting shot by a shark is a perfectly natural thing in the aftermath of the arrival. – Rick Yancey • He described to me how crocodiles kill more people than sharks. There are just a lot of things in Australia that can kill you. – Barack Obama • Here is a list of terrible things, The jaws of sharks, a vultures wings The rabid bite of the dogs of war, The voice of one who went before, But most of all the mirror’s gaze, Which counts us out our numbered days. – Clive Barker • Hey Rid?” She stopped and turned to look at him, almost ruefully. Like she couldn’t help what she was any more then a shark could help being a shark, but if she could… “Yeah, Shrinky Dink?” “You’re not all bad.” She looked right at him and almost smiled. “You know what they say. Maybe I’m just drawn that way. – Kami Garcia • Honolulu, it’s got everything. Sand for the children, sun for the wife, sharks for the wife’s mother. Ken Dodd • How fishy on the fishiness scale? Ten is a stickleback and one is a whale shark.” “A whale isn’t a fish, Thursday.” “A whale shark is–sort of.” “All right, it’s as fishy as a crayfish.” “A crayfish isn’t a fish.” “A starfish, then.” “Still not a fish.” “This is a very odd conversation, Thursday. – Jasper Fforde • Humanity from the first has had its vultures and sharks, and representatives of the fraternity who prey upon mankind may be expected no less in America than elsewhere. That this virulence breaks out most readily and commonly against colored persons in this country, is due of course to the fact that they are, generally speaking, weak and can be imposed upon with impunity. Bullies are always cowards at heart. Anna Julia Cooper • I always read. You know how sharks have to keep swimming or they die? I’m like that. If I stop reading, I die. – Patrick Rothfuss • I am a shark, Cassie,” he says slowly, drawing the words out, as if he might be speaking to me for the last time. Looking into my eyes with tears in his, as if he’s seeing me for the last time. “A shark who dreamed he was a man. Rick Yancey • I am a shark, the ground is my ocean, and most people can’t even swim. – Rickson Gracie • I am not a demon. I am a lizard, a shark, a heat-seeking panther. I want to be Bob Denver on acid playing the accordion. – Nicolas Cage • I am passionate about my family, adventure, good wine, nature and the outdoors, sharks, the ocean, and working hard to preserve it all for future generations. Mehgan Heaney-Grier • I am terrified of sharks, so I don’t surf! Janel Parrish • I believe implicitly that every young man in the world is fascinated with either sharks or dinosaurs. – Peter Benchley • I did 50 takes on Robert Shaw assembling the Greener Gun on ‘Jaws.’ The shark wasn’t working, so I just kept shooting to make the production report look like we were accomplishing something and to keep cast and crew from going crazy from boredom. It was a strategic indulgence. Steven Spielberg • I didn’t care about the backlash. I think the reason it was so severe was because they didn’t know anything about me in New Zealand. If I had made jokes about a shark attack in the US, no one would have cared. Anthony Jeselnik • I discovered I scream the same way whether I’m about to be devoured by a great white shark or if a piece of seaweed touches my foot. – Axl Rose • I do my very best to avoid shark fin. – Anthony Bourdain • I do not believe that all books will or should migrate onto screens: as Douglas Adams once pointed out to me, more than 20 years before the Kindle turned up, a physical book is like a shark. Sharks are old: there were sharks in the ocean before the dinosaurs. And the reason there are still sharks around is that sharks are better at being sharks than anything else is. Neil Gaiman • I do not believe that one can become rich without being a shark; a sensitive man will never amass wealth. Petrus Borel • I don’t believe there’s anything cosmic or divine or morally superior about whales and dolphins or sharks or trees, but I do think that everything that lives is holy and somehow integrated; and on cloudy days I suspect that these extraordinary phenomena, and the hundreds of tiny, modest versions no one hears about, are an ocean, an earth, a Creator, something shaking us by the collar, demanding our attention, our fear, our vigilance, our respect, our help. – Tim Winton • I don’t enjoy the boo scare when you’re watching a movie and then suddenly there’s a big shark on the screen. The only thing they’re doing is catching you off guard. – Sergio Aragones • I don’t get ‘shark’ – but who cares! Isaac • I don’t like sex … I’m a single working mom with nine cats, a dog-shark, a lizard, and a bunny. I don’t go to bed, I pass out. The idea that I’d get to my bed and there’d be someone in there with whom I was supposed to have an activity is horrifying to me. – Paula Poundstone • I dont like the idea of being eaten by a shark. I like to swim in the ocean, and I think much more about sharks than anyone should. I really resent the fact that my oceangoing experiences are ruined by Jaws.- David Duchovny • I don’t look back. I’m like a shark – I only look forward. Rita Rudner • I don’t think you can be a diver without a shark on the list. Natalie Dormer • I give [Barack Obama] a 10 [on a scale of 1 to 10] because he’s not God, and he inherited a couple of wars, and a financial mess.I want to see him curse somebody out on TV. You can’t finesse a bull. He’s gotta throw down. He’s in the shark tank. Tracy Morgan • I hate the beach – I’m a mountain guy. I’d much rather face a bear than a shark. Jeff Dunham • I have a hard problem, being some part Native American – being a Christian: do you get burned, do you get cremated, do you get – let the sharks eat you? How do you die? Duane Chapman • I have a ridiculous fear of sharks but I’d jump in the water in a second for an amazing role. – Kate Mara • I have a slight fear of sharks for some reason.I have a slight fear of sharks for some reason. – Scott Speedman • I have been called a Rogue Elephant, a Cannibal Shark, and a crocodile. I am none the worse. I remain a caged, and rather sardonic, lion, in a particularly contemptible and ill-run zoo. Wyndham Lewis • I have come up with a sure-fire concept for a hit television show, which would be called `A Live Celebrity Gets Eaten by a Shark’. – Dave Barry • I have snakes, three sharks, moray eels, piranhas, five scorpions and a bird spider. All of them are predators. They are dangerous but it’s cool to have strong and powerful pets. – Tracy Morgan • I just believe that sometimes in life you’re like a shark – you have to keep moving through water; otherwise, you’ll die. – Michelle Ryan • I know this is your hand now,’ she tells him. “Roland would have never touched me like that.” Connor smiles, and Risa takes a moment to look down at the shark on his wrist. It holds no fear for her now, because the shark has been tamed by the soul of a boy. No- the soul of a man. – Neal Shusterman • I love contemporary art, although I wouldn’t want a pickled shark in my house. – Bruno Tonioli • I often prefer the shapes within the raw materials to ‘do their thing’, as this makes it movre interesting for me. Sometimes a piece of hubcap fits in such a way that the shark becomes almost alive in my hands, climbing, twisting or just hanging motionless and predatory, and this gives me a buzz. It makes me feel like a vehicle for the creation process rather than a controller, and not knowing the exact outcome is exciting. Ptolemy • I shall attack Chemistry, like a Shark. Samuel Taylor Coleridge • I swear on St. Francis, the patron saint of all animals.” Seeing Poppy’s hesitation, Beatrix added enthusiastically,If a band of pirates kidnapped me and took me to their ship and threatened to make me walk the plank over a shiver of starving sharks unless I told them your secret, I still wouldn’t tell it. If I were tied by a villain and thrown before a herd of stampeding horses all shod in iron, and the only way to keep from being trampled was to tell the villain your secret, I— – Lisa Kleypas • I tell you Dain is a splendid catch. I advise you to set your hooks and reel him in.” Jessica took a long swallow of her cognac.This is not a trout, Genevieve. This is a great, hungry shark.”Then use a harpoon. – Loretta Chase • I think a relationship is like a shark. It has to constantly move forward or it dies. – Woody Allen • I think I’m a bit like a kind of shark, that if I stop swimming, I won’t be able to breathe, something like that. Alan Moore • I think I’ve always been drawn to the second person. When I was growing up and playing with my friends, the usual way we interacted with imaginary worlds was as characters: a bench was ‘your’ boat, leaves on a lawn were the fins of sharks out to get ‘you.’ – Mohsin Hamid I think sharks are beautiful creatures, and I don’t think we should stop going in the ocean because of them. You drive down the road and you get in an accident, but most people end up driving down the road again. Surfing is you’re going into their home and it’s just a natural part of life.’ Bethany Hamilto • I think sharks are beautiful creatures, and I don’t think we should stop going in the ocean because of them. You drive down the road and you get in an accident, but most people end up driving down the road again. Surfing is you’re going into their home and it’s just a natural part of life. Bethany Hamilton • I thought beforehand, if [Marie] Henein is going to be a shark, I’m going to be a jellyfish, because you can’t catch a jellyfish. Not that I didn’t want to be caught, I just wanted to present solid. – Lucy DeCoutere • I try my best to avoid the sharks of life, but I have had my share of experiences with them, and in those cases I just have to handle them accordingly. But I do not swim with sharks … sharks swim with sharks. Rihanna • I want to build a wired ocean that helps us take back the seas from poachers and illegal fishers. To do this, we need the latest technology applied to large pelagic fish and sharks, surveillance technology that helps protect marine protected areas, and tags that help prevent shark finning and illegal fishing. We must use modern sensors to help protect our seas! Barbara Block • I wanted a shark that’s big enough to eat you, and in a large enough amount of liquid so that you could imagine you were in there with it. Damien Hirst • I was once stranded on a broken-down boat in shark-infested waters in the middle of the Indian Ocean for five days before we were rescued while doing a ‘Vogue’ shoot. • I was watching one of those animal shows on the Discovery Channel. There was a guy inventing a shark bite suit. And there’s only one way to test it. All right Jimmy, you got that shark suit on, it looks good… They want you to jump into this pool of sharks, and you tell us if it hurts when they bite you. Well, all right, but hold my sign. I don’t wanna lose it. Bill Engvall • I wasn’t surprised at all. In fact, I thought, why stop there? Why not add the Big Show, or Chris Jericho, or the whole state of Nebraska for that matter? And don’t you think a wrestling ring is a little old school, Lilian? Why not put the match in a shark tank, with real live sharks? Hungry sharks! And the only way to beat your opponent is to stuff him down a shark’s throat, and pin the shark. Wouldn’t that be a hoot?- Kurt Angle • I wish you good writing and good luck. Even if you’ve already done the good writing, you’ll still need the good luck. It’s a shark-filled lagoon out there. Cross your fingers and watch your back. – Margaret Atwood • I won’t swim in a pool by myself, because I think that somehow a little magic door is going to open up and let a shark out. Christina Ricci • I would stay at my grandma’s house on my birthday every year and I remember she had a bookshelf of murder mystery books along with really frightening books, like one on Jack the Ripper. She also had a poster of a shark in the closet which also terrified me at the time. Christopher Bollen • If I swim in the ocean, I have a shark thought. Not a bad one, but just a little one. – Tea Leoni • If incredible creatures like sharks can exist, why not Bigfoot? When I look at sharks, they’re the most terrifying, monstrous, dinosaur-like things. To this day, I’m so fascinated by them and can’t get my head around how they are on Planet Earth at all. Rachael Taylor • If men are obsolete, then women will soon be extinct — unless we rush down that ominous Brave New World path where women clone themselves by parthenogenesis, as famously do Komodo dragons, hammerhead sharks, and pit vipers. Camille Paglia If size really mattered, the whale, not the shark, would rule the waters.” —Matshona Dhliwayo • If you are in the job for glamour, you’re in for the shock of your life. The media is a huge shark pool. – Trisha Goddard • I’m 100% proud of the TV work I achieved. The work I did on shows on insects and Great White sharks… stuff that’s in school curriculums in England. Now they are showing up on Discovery Channel. – John Lydon • I’m a blowfish. I’m not a shark, I’m a blowfish. – Kanye West • I’m a blowfish. I’m not a shark, I’m a blowfish. So that perfect example about me hitting my head, it’s like a blowfish. I wasn’t coming out of my house going to a paparazzi’s house to attack them. I’m defending my family in front of my own house. I’m defending my name as someone’s screaming something negative at me. That’s a blowfish. People have me pinned as a shark or a predator in some way, and in no way am I that. I wouldn’t want to hurt anyone. I want to defend people. I want to help people. – Kanye West • I’m actually very scared of sharks. I wanted to be a marine biologist when I was young, which may not have been compatible with that fear. – Gillian Anderson • I’m afraid of sharks – but only in a water situation. – Demetri Martin • I’m an old school guy and love the guys in the monster suits and JAWS; even though everyone makes fun of the shark I think it’s awesome. You know it’s fake, but with my generation that was part of the charm. – Larry Fessenden • I’m haunted by the thought of what Ray Anderson calls ‘tomorrow’s child,’ asking why we didn’t do something on our watch to save sharks and bluefin tuna and squids and coral reefs and the living ocean while there still was time. Well, now is that time. – Sylvia Earle • I’m just a simple guy swimming in a sea of sharks. – Don Johnson • I’m like a shark, right at the top of the food chain. I take what I want, when I want. I truly am the reflection of perfection. Ricky Martin • I’m like a shark. I’ve got to be constantly moving. Kenny Chesney • I’m not saying that everyone should swim with sharks, but sometimes you have to jump over your own shadow in order to learn something that you will never forget for the rest of your life. Then you know you can conquer your fears. – Heidi Klum • I’m obsessed with crocodiles and getting eaten by one. When I hear that someone’s been eaten by a crocodile or shark, I just get all gooey. I start salivating. Tori Amos Impact, Years, People In a world full of fish be a shark.” —Unknown • In life, (the fashion world) is full of sharks. In this world the young girls lose themselves; become the property of others, live but for the job and their craziness…they don’t know anymore where their home is. Many take drugs. It’s strange. Perhaps the girls understand that this does not work for me. I don’t have many friendships with other models. I respect them and enjoy working with them, but I probably would not invite them into my home. My house is like my heart, and I open it only to those with whom I have a close relationship. Laetitia Casta • In the end, my love for surfing helped me overcome my fear of sharks. Bethany Hamilton • In the Mediterranean of my childhood, there were no large groupers, sharks, or whales. All I saw was seaweed and a few fish, smaller than my little diving mask. All the large animals were gone, simply because we had eaten them. Enric Sala • In university courses we do exercises. Term papers, quizzes, final examinations are not meant for publication. We move through a course on Dostoevsky or Poe as we move through a mildly good cocktail party, picking up the good bits of food or conversation, bearing with the rest, going home when it comes to seem the reasonable thing to do. Art, at those moments when it feels most like art — when we feel most alive, most alert, most triumphant — is less like a cocktail party than a tank full of sharks. – John Gardner • Instead of squirreling away your earnings early in your career, spend on experiences that will enrich your life – like diving with great white sharks. It can expose you to influential people who could open doors for you. – Blake Mycoskie • Interceded? You threw me to the sharks! Stephenie Meyer • Interesting fact: a shark will only attack you if you’re wet. – Sean Lock • Is there no Villain in this World who doth not regard himself as a poor abus’d Innocent, no She-Wolf who doth not think herself a Lamb, no Shark who doth not fancy that she is a Goldfish? – Erica Jong • It comes down to finding something you love to do and then just trying to be great at it – Mark Cuban • It holds no fear for her now, because the shark has been tamed by the soul of a boy. No–the soul of a man. – Neal Shusterman • It is as if the Photograph always carries its referent with itself, both affected by the same amorous or funereal immobility, at the very heart of the moving world: they are glued together, limb by limb, like the condemned man and the corpse in certain tortures; or even like those pairs of fish (sharks, I think, according to Michelet) which navigate in convoy, as though united by an eternal coitus. – Roland Barthes • It is estimated that one-third of all reef-building corals, a third of all fresh-water mollusks, a third of sharks and rays, a quarter of all mammals, a fifth of all reptiles, and a sixth of all birds are headed toward oblivion. The losses are occurring all over: in the South Pacific and in the North Atlantic, in the Arctic and the Sahel, in lakes and on islands, on mountaintops and in valleys. – Elizabeth Kolbert • It looks like I’m this huge shark going in for the kill… I don’t know what I was thinking. David Gest • It was such a dramatic escalator that I was on. It was at 90 degrees. I was going straight up like a rocket ship into space. And I was thrown in with the sharks. They said sink or swim in this Cup deal. Kurt Busch Italian, Blood, Bread • It’s a moment. A defining moment when you know that your favorite television program has reached its peak. That instant that you know from now on…it’s all downhill. Some call it the climax. We call it ‘Jumping the Shark.’ From that moment on, the program will simply never be the same. – Jon Hein • It’s kind of ridiculous that I find inspiration in just getting away from everything. But when you’ve gone through it, you realize that it’s the enemy. It’s a distraction from what you’re really doing. You’ve got to keep moving. Like a shark. – Jack White • It’s really not as bad as it sounds. I was attacked by a shark once, back when I was alive. Well, not so much a shark as a rather large fish. And not so much attacked as looked at menacingly. But it had murder in its eyes, that fish. I knew, in that instant, if our roles had been reversed and the fish had been holding the fishing pole and I had been the one to be caught, it wouldn’t hesitate a moment before eating me. So I cooked it and ate before it had a chance to turn the tables. – Derek Landy • I’ve always been freaked out in deep open water if there’s a potential of sharks around. Theo James • I’ve sat looking down into a volcano that could blow at any moment; I’ve helped catch a shark and several rattlesnakes; I let a tarantula walk across my hand, and I ate rat soup. – Alan Alda • I’ve seen young men in college going into the NFL and then bite the cheese that’s in the trap. They’ll throw you a pair of Jordans or a moneybag for their services. It’s in that moment where most compromise. This business is unforgivable, and you got a bunch of sharks out there. It’s mind boggling that universities don’t prepare athletes for what they’re going to experience. Eddie George • Lenders, including major credit companies as well as payday lenders, have taken over the traditional role of the street-corner loan shark, charging the poor insanely high rates of interest. – Barbara Ehrenreich • Let’s be perfectly clear, shall we. The fox is not a little orange puppy dog with doe eyes and a waggly tail. It’s a disease-ridden wolf with the morals of a psychopath and the teeth of a great white shark. Jeremy Clarkson • Life is little more than a loan shark: It exacts a very high rate of interest for the few pleasures it concedes – Luigi Pirandello

• Live every week like it’s shark week. – Tracy Morgan • Look, Chief, you can’t go off half-cocked looking for vengeance against a fish. That shark isn’t evil. It’s not a murderer. It’s just obeying its own instincts. Trying to get retribution against a fish is crazy. – Peter Benchley • Losing is like smoking. It’s habit forming”;Fear is the basis of all mankind. In cards, you psyche ’em out, you shark ’em, you put the fear of God in ’em Puggy Pearson • Love’s pure free joy when it works, but when it goes bad you pay for the good hours at loan-shark prices. – David Mitchell • Make no mistake, your relationships are the heaviest components in your life. All those negotiations and arguments and secrets, the compromises. The slower we move the faster we die. Make no mistake, moving is living. Some animals were meant to carry each other. To live symbiotically over a lifetime. Star crossed lovers, monogamous swans. We are not swans. We are sharks. – Ryan Bingham • Man is a carnivorous production, And must have meals, at least one meal a day; He cannot live, like woodcocks, upon suction, But, like the shark and tiger, must have prey; Although his anatomical construction Bears vegetables, in a grumbling way, Your laboring people think beyond all question, Beef, veal, and mutton better for digestion. Lord Byron • Man Swims in Shark Infested Waters, Forgets He’s Shark Food. – Gary Larson • Many people continue to think of sharks as man-eating beasts. Sharks are enormously powerful and wild creatures, but youre more likely to be killed by your kitchen toaster than a shark! – Ted Danson • Maybe we’ll live to see sharks recover. Right now, that seems as improbable as seeing all these falcons. Hope is the ability to see how things could be better. The world of human affairs has long been a shadowy place, but always backlit by the light of hope. Each person can add hope to the world. A resigned person subtracts hope. The more people strive, the more change becomes likely. – Carl Safina • Men, specifically in the West, have no rights of passage, no way to know when they become a man. Everywhere else in the world you gotta kill a lion or stab a shark, or go on some journey, and you come back and you’re a man. But here in the West, we’re really kind of clueless as to what makes us a man. – LeCrae • Meryl Streep is an acting machine in the same sense that a shark is a killing machine. Cher • More people are killed every year by pigs than by sharks, which shows you how good we are at evaluating risk. Bruce Schneier • Mr.Blank’s reputation as a card shark had preceded him. No one accused him of being dishonest, but on the other hand no one accused him of being honest. Groucho Marx • My dad was kind of a pool shark and had a Frank Sinatra, Dean Martin thing going on. I’ve always been fascinated by the fifties because of him. There was a hip, cool, anything-goes atmosphere back then, but looking good was still a priority. – Dylan McDermott • My phobias worsen as I get older. I’m scared of flying, driving. I’m terrified of sharks. I’m a germaphobe. But I try to face my fears; I do. Well, most of them. – Eli Roth • My position is this. If we can’t protect sanctuaries, if we can’t save the whales, the sharks, the fish, our oceans will die. Paul Watson • My tattoo is a cross, a rose and a shark. A cross is a cross, a rose like love and a shark is a pretty tough animal. Goran Ivanisevic • National Geographic contacted me about getting on their label, and I was like, ‘Wow, I want to be label mates with the sharks and lemurs!’ Bjork • Never underestimate a woman who loves sharks.” —Unknown

• No good book has ever been written that has in it symbols arrived at beforehand and stuck in. … I tried to make a real old man, a real boy, a real sea and a real fish and real sharks. But if I made them good and true enough they would mean many things – Ernest Hemingway • No rescue boat can save the touches I left bobbing in the wild ocean of your flesh, but if they cut open your heart, like the belly of a shark, dumped its contents on a table—would there be any trace of me? – Jeffrey McDaniel • No, the shark in an updated JAWS could not be the villain; it would have to be written as the victim, for, worldwide, sharks are much more the oppressed than the oppressors. -Peter Benchley • Nobody had ever instructed him that a slave-ship, with a procession of expectant sharks in its wake, is a missionary institution, by which closely-packed heathen are brought over to enjoy the light of the Gospel. • Nothing has prepared sharks, squid, krill and other sea creatures for industrial-scale extraction that destroys entire ecosystems while targeting a few species. Sylvia Earle • Nothing is more important than saving … the Lions, Tigers, Giraffes, Elephants, Froggies, Turtles, Apes, Raccoons, Beetles, Ants, Sharks, Bears, and, of course, the Squirrels. The humans? The planet does not need humans. – James Lee • Of all the creatures in the world that really frighten me – the hyena in Africa, the great white shark – leopard seals are near the top of the list. They’re killers. If my team spots one, they’ll pull me out of the water. – Lewis Gordon • Oh, the shark has pretty teeth, dear, And he shows them pearly white. Just a jackknife has Macheath, dear, And he keeps them out of sight. – Kurt Weill • Once Henry had heard a crying noise at sea, and had seen a mermaid floating on the ocean’s surface. The mermaid had been injured by a shark. Henry had pulled the mermaid out of the water with a rope, and she had died in his arms…”what language did the mermaid speak?” Alma wanted to know, imagining that it like almost have to be Greek. “English!” Henry said. “By God, plum, why would I rescue a deuced foreign mermaid? – Elizabeth Gilbert • One of them hissed-not the hiss of a cat, a long, steady tone-more like the hiss of air escaping the rubber raft that is all that lies between you and a dark sea full of sharks, the hiss of your life leaking out at the seams. – Christopher Moore • One shark turned to the other to say he was fed up chasing tuna and the other said, ‘Why don’t we go to Morecambe Bay and get some Chinese?’ – Ann Winterton • Only the strongest players can swim in the shark-infested waters of the Masters’ Seas. – Victor Niederhoffer • Orchestras have often been used to conjure up the natural world: Swans, sharks, trout, but not, as far as I know, the often maligned jellyfish. Bill Bailey • Passion, for me, is like a shark – it never stops moving. – Jack White • Personally, I say, “Out of the frying pan and into the deadly pit filled with sharks who are wielding chainsaws with killer kittens stapled to them.” However, that one’s having a rough time catching on. – Brandon Sanderson • Pigs eat more tuna than all the planet’s sharks combined. – Paul Watson Pigs, Years, People • Piscary killed people, but he didn’t have the concept of pity or remorse. It would be like telling a shark he was a bad fish and to stop eating people. But Trent? He knew he was doing wrong, and he did it anyway. Kim Harrison Player, Sea, Water • pools of blood are not recreational even lifeguards drown when the undertow breaks bread with the underbelly demons disguised as sharks have not put enough thought into their costumes a wiseman stays ashore when pointed fins read like italian subtitles the end is near (…) the beginning – Saul Williams Powerful, Men, Thinking • Raphael painted, Luther preached, Corneille wrote, and Milton sang; and through it all, for four hundred years, the dark captives wound to the sea amid the bleaching bones of the dead: for four hundred years the sharks followed the scurrying ships; for four hundred years America was strewn with the living and dying millions of a transplanted race; for four hundred years Ethiopia stretched forth her hands unto God. W. E. B. Du Bois • Relationships are like sharks. They’ve got to keep going into deeper, colder water, sometimes scarier, darker territories … to stay alive. Richard Gere Remove the predators, and the whole ecosystem begins to crash like a house of cards. As the sharks disappear, the predator prey balance dramatically shifts, and the health of our oceans declines.” Brian Skerry • Roy Keane’s like a shark. He has those eyes. You don’t know if he is going to buy you a drink or eat you. Ian Holloway • Royal Young has accomplished a rare feat in his fresh and riveting debut: he manages to recount his fascinating youth and unconventional family with a mixture of humor, scathing honesty and tenderness. Much more than simply a book about a kid who dreams of stardom, Fame Shark is a thoughtful, hilarious and moving love letter to his family and the Lower East Side of New York City. – Kristen Johnston • Rule number four for me as a writer? Plotlines are like sharks: They either keep moving or they die. ~J.R. Ward – J.R. Ward • Seafood is simply a socially acceptable form of bush meat. We condemn Africans for hunting monkeys and mammalian and bird species from the jungle yet the developed world thinks nothing of hauling in magnificent wild creatures like swordfish, tuna, halibut, shark, and salmon for our meals. The fact is that the global slaughter of marine wildlife is simply the largest massacre of wildlife on the planet. – Paul Watson • Setting off unknown to face the unknown, against parental opposition, with no money, friends, or influence, ran it a close second. Clichés like “blazing trails,” flying over “shark-infected seas,” “battling with monsoons,” and “forced landings amongst savage tribes” became familiar diet for breakfast. Unknown names became household words, whilst others, those of the failures, were forgotten utterly except by kith and kin. Amy Johnson • Shark Tale feels borrowed, sampled and dittoed from the collective funniness of the past 10 years in studio-made animation. – Desson Thomson • Shark Tales: How I turned $1,000 into a Billion Dollar Business. – Barbara Corcoran Sharks are among the most perfectly constructed creatures in nature. Some forms have survived for two hundred million years.” Eugenie Clark • Sharks are as tough as those football fans who take their shirts off during games in Chicago in January, only more intelligent. Dave Barry • Sharks are beautiful animals, and if you’re lucky enough to see lots of them, that means that you’re in a healthy ocean. You should be afraid if you are in the ocean and don’t see sharks. – Sylvia Earle Sharks are being driven to extinction because people want to eat their fins and their flesh.” —Barbara Block • Sharks are being driven to extinction because people want to eat their fins and their flesh. Barbara Block • Sharks are just evil bastards. I’m quite happy if all the sharks just went, because they eat fish and us. And we need the fish. – Eddie Izzard • Sharks are like dogs. They only bite when you touch their private parts.” —Rob Schneider • Sharks are the criminals of the sea. Dolphins are the outlaws.Tom Robbins Sharks are the lions of the sea.They glamorize the oceanic glory.” —Munia Khan Sharks aren’t the monsters we make them out to be.” —Yasmine Hamdi • Sharks attack surfers because they look like a seal. Apparently, when you’re layng on your board and you have your arms and legs hanging off, from underneath you look like a seal. So I just got a picture of a seal and put a red line through it and put it underneath my board. Henry Cho • Sharks don’t target human beings, and they certainly don’t hold grudges. – Peter Benchley • Sharks have a deadly form of claustrophobia. It’s not so much fear of enclosed spaces as it is inability to exist in them. No one knows why. Some say it’s the metal in aquariums that throws their equilibrium off. But whatever it is, big sharks don’t last long in captivity – Neal Shusterman Sharks have been swimming the oceans unchallenged for thousands of years; chances are, the species that roams corporate waters will prove just as hardy.”Eric Gelman • Sharks have everything a scientist dreams of. They’re beautiful―God, how beautiful they are! They’re like an impossibly perfect piece of machinery. They’re as graceful as any bird. They’re as mysterious as any animal on earth. No one knows for sure how long they live or what impulses―except for hunger―they respond to. There are more than two hundred and fifty species of shark, and everyone is different from every other one. – Peter Benchley • Sharks have swum the oceans for over 400 million years, but we’re threatening this critically important species for the purpose of making soup – it’s sad and wasteful. – Ted Danson Sharks hug with their mouths.” —Unknown • Sharks will scare me. I went out to Malibu a couple of weeks ago. Beautiful, clear day, out in five feet of water, going to surf, and there was this big ol’ freakin’ leopard shark… I’m looking at him and I’m thinking, ‘OK, he won’t hurt me. Timothy Olyphant Sharks” They’re not so bad. If a stranger entered my house wearing only a speedo, l’d probably attack him too.” —Unknown • Since I began exploring the ocean in the 1950s, 90 percent of the big fish have been stripped away. Tuna, sharks, swordfish, cod, halibut, you name it, the numbers have just collapsed. Also, about half of the coral reefs are gone, globally, from where they were just a few decades ago. Sylvia Earle • So the hotel tells us that it is not safe to go in the water because its shark mating time. I know how I’d feel if someone interrupted me. Bill Engvall • Some people like being a big fish in a small pond, others a ferocious shark in the ocean, I rather be the ocean. In the end, fish die. Behdad Sami • Sometimes making a story is as easy as putting two characters in a room and seeing what happens. So, imagine a great white shark and a giant squid in the same bathroom. Jim Toomey • Somewhere in the ocean, a shark was missing its cold eyes because this man had them. – Steve Hamilton • Stop saying athletes do it for the love of the game. They do it for the love of their 32-room mansion with the live shark tank in the living room. If pro sports paid minimum wage, Shaquille O’Neal would be a bouncer at Scores, and Anna Kournikova would be a mail-order bride from Minsk. – Bill Maher • Testing her sexuality, she thinks she’s caught a beautiful fish, when in reality, she’s netted a shark. – Tammara Webber • That’s not news! When a shark comes out of the water, walks into a 7-11, and bites you in the ass, then it’s news! Carlos Mencia • The audience should go out and see Shark Night 3D because you can bring your whole family. – Sinqua Walls • The computer revolution has allowed white-collar criminals to do what the Mob would have loved to do – put a pawnshop and a loan shark in every home! – Kurt Vonnegut • The country’s newest aquarium, opened in November, bills itself as the largest in the world, holding more than 100,000 animals representing 500 species. It is the first in the USA to display whale sharks, the largest fish in the world. – John Grant • The credit card companies have put the loan sharks out of business. – Elizabeth Warren • The Earth is beautiful, and bright, and kindly, but that is not all. The Earth is also terrible, and dark, and cruel. The rabbit shrieks dying in the green meadows. The mountains clench their great hands full of hidden fire. There are sharks in the sea, and there is cruelty in men’s eyes. – Ursula K. Le Guin • The Giant Ocean Tank, with its 52 large viewing windows, is the main attraction here. Myrtle, a giant green sea turtle, is one of the tank’s most popular animals, along with sharks, rays and more than 100 other species. The Aquarium Medical Center is a working animal hospital exhibit that allows visitors to observe veterinarians examining and treating sea creatures. – John Grant • The goblins want girls who dream so hard about being pretty their yearning leaves a palpable trail, a scent goblins can follow like sharks on a soft bloom of blood. The girls with hungry eyes who pray each night to wake up as someone else. Urgent, unkissed, wishful girls. Like Kizzy. – Laini Taylor • The great common people of this country are slaves, and monopoly is the master. . . . The politicians said we suffered from overproduction. Overproduction, when 10,000 little children, so statistics tell us, starve to death every year in the United States. . . . We will stand by our homes and stay by our fireside by force if necessary, and we will not pay our debts to the loan-shark companies until the government pays its debts to us. Mary Elizabeth Lease • The ground is my ocean, I’m the shark, and most people don’t even know how to swim. Carlos Machado • The main courtyard was filled with warriors – mermen with fish tails from the waist down and human bodies from the waist up, except their skin was blue, which I’d never known before.Some were tending the wounded. Some were sharpening spears and swords. One passed us, swimming in a hurry. His eyes were bright green, like that stuff they put in glo-sticks, and his teeth were shark teeth. They don’t show you stuff like that in “The Little Mermaid. – Rick Riordan • The moon had risen behind him, the color of a shark’s underbelly. It lit the ruined walls, and the skin of his arms and hands, with its sickly light, making him long for a mirror in which to study his face. Surely he’d be able to see the bones beneath the meat; the skull gleaming the way his teeth gleamed when he smiled. After all, wasn’t that what a smile said? Hello, world, this is the way I’ll look when the wet parts are rotted. – Clive Barker • The number-one show in America on Sundays will be Celebrity Apprentice. Monday nights, The Voice will be number one. Wednesday nights, Survivor will be number one. And Friday nights, Shark Tank will be number one. It just takes some time management for me to focus. Scott Raab • The ocean is a place of paradoxes. It is the home of the great white shark, two-thousand-pound killer of the seas, and of the hundred-foot blue whale, the largest animal that ever lived. It is also the home of living things so small that your two hands might scoop up as many of them as there are stars in the Milky Way. Rachel Carson • The only thing on the mind of a shark is to eat. Lil Wayne • The only use for a knife during a shark attack is pure treachery: Stab your buddy, swim like hell, and hope the munchies take him. Tim Cahill • The pointless snide remarks of hammerheaded sharks – Thom Yorke • The publishers and others should quit worrying about losing customers to TV. The guy who can sit through a trio of deodorant commercials to look at Flashgun Casey or swallow a flock of beer and loan-shark spiels in order to watch a couple of fourth-rate club fighters rub noses on the ropes is not losing any time from book reading. Raymond Chandler • The reason I do Shark Tank isn’t to try take make more money of the deals, even though every deal I want to make money off of and even more so I want the entrepreneurs to be very successful and make money, but Shark Tank sends a message to everybody that the American Dream is alive and well. Mark Cuban • The shark has its head to the west and tail to the east, very much the way the Indians would put a human in the ground.” Bob Carr • The shark heart slows down in the cold, just as our own heart would. But what sets it apart is where our heart would simply stop, the salmon shark keeps on ticking.” Barbara Block • The shark is the apex predator in the sea. Sharks have molded evolution for 450 million years. All fish species that are prey to the sharks have had their behavior, their speed, their camouflage, their defense mechanisms molded by the shark. – Paul Watson • The studios will go wherever they smell money. It’s like sharks to the blood. – Don Bluth • The word relationship best refers to the connection between parasite and host, or shark and remora. It’s a biological term. I’d rather be a jerk than a scientist when it comes to love. – Ian Shoales • There are 350 varieties of shark, not counting loan and pool. L. M. Boyd • There are no rules about investment. Sharks can be good. Artist’s dung can be good. Oil on canvas can be good. – Charles Saatchi • There are no true friends in politics. We are all sharks circling, and waiting, for traces of blood to appear in the water. – Alan Clark There are plenty of fish in the sea, so don’t settle for a shark.” —Unknown • There are three points of doctrine the belief of which forms the foundation of all morality. The first is the existence of God; the second is the immortality of the human soul; and the third is a future state of rewards and punishments. Suppose it possible for a man to disbelieve either of these three articles of faith and that man will have no conscience, he will have no other law than that of the tiger or the shark. The laws of man may bind him in chains or may put him to death, but they never can make him wise, virtuous, or happy. – John Quincy Adams • There is a big difference between a disappointing friend and a deadly enemy. Of course the Democrats are disappointing. That’s what makes them Democrats. If they were any more frustrating they’d be your relatives. But in this country they are all that stands between you and darkest night. You know why their symbol is the letter ‘D’? Because it’s a grade that means good enough, but just barely. You know why the Republican symbol is ‘R’? Because it’s the noise a pirate makes when he robs you and feeds you to a shark. – Bill Maher • There is an awful lot of what I call recreational jazz going on, where people go out and learn a particular language or style and become real sharks on somebody else’s language.Steve Lacy There is no fire like passion, there is no shark like hatred, there is no snare like folly, there is no torrent like greed.” —Siddharta Gautama • There is no fire like passion, there is no shark like hatred, there is no snare like folly, there is no torrent like greed. – Gautama Buddha • There is this sweet spot in time when we have an opportunity to stop killing sharks and tunas and swordfish and other wildlife in the sea before it’s too late. Sylvia Earle • There’s still a lot of people out there who think the only good shark is a dead shark.” —Brain Skerry • There’s a cardinal rule that you don’t talk about sharks. If you don’t see it, it’s not there. – Mark Warkentin • There’s a good case to be made that having fun is a key evolutionary advantage right next to opposable thumbs in terms of importance. Without that little chemical twist in our brains that makes us enjoy learning new things, we might be more like the sharks and ants of the world.- Raph Koster There’s nothing in the sea this fish would fear. Other fish run from bigger things. That’s their instinct. But this fish doesn’t run from anything. He doesn’t fear.” Peter Benchley • There’s still a lot of people out there who think the only good shark is a dead shark. – Brian Skerry • They will tell you tough stories of sharks all over the Cape, which I do not presume to doubt utterly,–how they will sometimes upset a boat, or tear it in pieces, to get at the man in it. I can easily believe in the undertow, but I have no doubt that one shark in a dozen years is enough to keep up the reputation of a beach a hundred miles long. – Henry David Thoreau • They’re like sharks. Circling. Cute, single guy, good job, nice car. It’s all they know about me.” His tone was light but his expression serious. Maybe that’s because it’s all you show them.” Maybe it’s all they want to see. – Megan Hart • This is what it means to be alone: everyone is connected to everyone else, their bodies are a bright liquid life flowing around you, sharing a single heart that drives them to move all together. If the shark comes they will all escape, and leave you to be eaten. – Barbara Kingsolver • Though amid all the smoking horror and diabolism of a sea-fight, sharks will be seen longingly gazing up to the ship’s decks, like hungry dogs round a table where red meat is being carved, ready to bolt down every killed man that is tossed to them.- Herman Melville • Throwing blondes at Locke Lamora was not unlike throwing lettuce at sharks. – Scott Lynch • Tobias asked. “Weird? Weird?” Marco crowed. “The talking bird wants to know if getting information on the location of an alien from a whale, that you’ve just saved from sharks, by turning into dolphins . . . You’re suggesting that’s weird? – Katherine Applegate • Today I saw cancer, cigarettes, and shortness of breath. This is why I walk to the ocean. Swim with sharks and jellyfish. I may never get this chance again. This is why if you want to kiss, you should kiss. If you want to cry, you should cry. And if you want to live, you should live. You don’t have to love me. You already did. – Ryan Ross • Turns out, I couldn’t catch them – or even get close to them. I realized that sharks are amazing, beautiful animals who have absolutely no interest in checking me out. – Malin Akerman • Twenty-five years ago nobody knew much about white sharks. – Peter Benchley • Watching Jaws just scared the living daylights out of me when I was young. I know a lot of people my age who are still petrified of sharks because of that film. – Ashley Scott • We developed microfinance to fight loan sharks – I was telling people don’t go to loan sharks – not trying to take advantage and make money for myself. I would be a junior loan shark if I did … It is not a panacea. Muhammad Yunus • We don’t like to think of ourselves as prey—it is a lessening thought—but the truth is that in our arrogance and so-called knowledge we forget that we are not unique. We are part of nature as much as other animals, and some animals—sharks, fever-bearing mosquitoes, wolves and bear, to name but a few—perceive us as a food source, a meat supply, and simply did not get the memo about how humans are superior. It can be shocking, humbling, painful, very edifying and sometimes downright fatal to run into such an animal. – Gary Paulsen • We don’t have any changes in the movie [Pineapple Express] and so picking the right outfit was fairly important. So I wasn’t a fan of the Guatemalan pants, but I was convinced that I should wear that. Then the T-shirt is a special creation by David Gordon Green. It’s a kitten sitting in a shark’s mouth, but he’s happy about it. – Seth Rogen • We have been shark to one another, but also lifeboat. Margaret Atwood We have been shark to one another, but also lifeboat.” —Unknown • We keep the negative stuff because it’s the negative stuff that’s going to, you know, potentially kill us. That fin in the water – maybe it is a shark. That yellow thing behind the tree – maybe it is a lion. You need to be scared. – Mohsin Hamid We provoke a shark every time we enter the water where sharks happen to be, for we forget: The ocean is not our territory – it’s theirs.” —Peter Benchely • We still have 10 percent of the sharks. We still have half of the coral reefs. However, if we wait another 50 years, opportunities might well be gone. – Sylvia Earle • We still have the illusion that the ocean will recover. That even if we do have to lose sharks, people don’t understand why this matters. The evidence is in front of us, and we fail to take it in and say, “Now I get it. Now I understand.” Sylvia Earle • We want the accursed foreclosure system wiped out…. We will stand by our homes and stay by our firesides by force if necessary, and we will not pay our debts to the loan-shark companies until the government pays its debts to us. Mary Elizabeth Lease • Well, everyone, welcome to Shark Week. Oh that’s on CBS and there’s been a lot of cutbacks, so it’s just Friday night for a couple of minutes. And we don’t have any sharks, just an immigrant with a puppet. Hey, but it’s a start! – Craig Ferguson • Were the diver to think on the jaws of the shark, he would never lay hands on the precious pearl. – Saadi • What I compare bike lanes to is swimming with the sharks. Sooner or later you’re going to get bitten… Roads are built for buses, cars, and trucks, not for people on bikes. My heart bleeds for them when I hear someone gets killed, but it’s their own fault at the end of the day. – Rob Ford • What Wall Street and credit card companies are doing is really not much different from what gangsters and loan sharks do who make predatory loans. While the bankers wear three-piece suits and don’t break the knee caps of those who can’t pay back, they still are destroying people’s lives. – Bernie Sanders • What we share may be a lot like a traffic accident but we get one another. We are survivors of each other. We have been shark to one another, but also lifeboat. That counts for something. Margaret Atwood • What’s the inside of a shark smell like? I always thought it would smell like chicken. – Judd Hirsch • When I put something into motion, the creativity starts to make other people want to jump in, and then a lot of people get employed. I’m just like a shark, in that way. If I stop swimming, I’ll die. Adam Shankman • When I was a kid I would write songs, little plays, and poetry in school. If you’re an adult and you’re a poet, it’s all about love and pain, but if you’re a kid it’s, “Does anyone know a word that rhymes with shark?” Mike Birbiglia • When I was about five, I gave my heart to Jesus Christ, and since then it’s just been a stronghold in my life. Really, through the shark attack and all the hard times that my family and I went through, it gave us unity and perseverance to push through all this crazy stuff that we never knew was going to happen. – Bethany Hamilton • When I was starting out, young actresses had the studio system to protect them. Now you have a host of sharks, from your agent to your publicist to your lawyer. – Francesca Annis • When I went to Australia, I went shark diving. It was crazy. It was called ‘extreme’ shark diving because even though we were in cages, we literally could touch the sharks swimming by. They were huge and I’m terrified of sharks. Then I went to a wildlife park and held kangaroos. That was nice. – Taylor Lautner • When the sands are all dry, he is gay as a lark, And will talk in contemptuous tones of the Shark: But, when the tide rises and sharks are around, His voice has a timid and tremulous sound. – Lewis Carroll • When you come to ‘Shark Tank,’ the only person you should listen to is me, because you know you’re getting the truth. I’ll decide if it’s worth it, and after I’m finished, the rest of the people can look into it. – Kevin O’Leary When you enter the ocean you enter the food chain, and not always at the top.” —Unknown • Winter near the shore is cold. The wind kicks up a salty mist and elephant seals come to shore to trumpet and rut and birth their pups. Retired people put sweaters on their lap dogs and drag them down the street on retractable leashes in a nightly parade of doggy humiliation. Surfers don their wetsuits against the chill of storm waves and white sharks adjust their diets to include shrink-wrapped dude-snacks on fiberglass crackers. Christopher Moore Wise, Men, Law • With acting, there are a lot of subtleties and non-verbals involved. If someone is over there, getting eaten by a shark, there’s a non-verbal way of how to act that. There’s a certain nuance to acting that does not come intuitively to me. It’s something I still have to learn. Mark McGrath Without sharks, you take away the apex predator of the ocean, and you destroy the entire food chain.” Peter Benchley • Without sharks, you take away the apex predator of the ocean, and you destroy the entire food chain Peter Benchley • Writing and performing are to me what water and movement are to sharks. Rachael Yamagata • Yet the reality is that I’m a stage actor from the Midwest – probably the opposite of a shark agent. – Jeremy Piven • You always hear a headline like this, ‘Man Killed By Shark’, you never hear it from the other perspective, ‘Man Swims in Shark Infested Waters, Forgets He’s Shark Food’. – Gary Larson • You can’t afford to make the shark look good so you do most of it with ominous music and a fin. Jim Howick • You don’t have to swim faster than the shark, just faster than the person you’re with. – Kevin Nealon • You Know the Most Dangerous Thing In the Water? A Shark Fart. – Gary Busey • You know, it actually can happen. I mean, the chances of it happening are very rare, but it can happen actually. Which is crazy. Not that it—the chances of it are, like, you know, it’s like probably ‘pigs could fly.’ Like, I don’t think pigs could fly, but actually sharks could be stuck in tornados. There could be a sharknado. Tara Reid • You might not think a hippo could inspire terror. ScreamingHippo!” doesn’t have the same impact as screamingShark!” But I’m telling you—as the Egyptian Queen careened to one side, its paddle wheel lifting completely out of the water, and I saw that monster emerge from the deep, I nearly discovered the hieroglyphs for accident in my pants. – Rick Riordan • Your dead sleep quietly, at least, Captain, out of reach of sharks” “Yes, sir, of sharks and men. Jules Verne • You’re more likely to drown in the sea of sameness than get eaten by a shark while navigating new waters. Amy Jo Martin