A Quote by Amor Towles
Old times, as my father used to say: If you're not careful, they'll gut you like a fish.
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One fish. Two fish. Red fish. Blue fish. Black fish. Blue fish. Old fish. New fish. This one has a little star. This one has a little car. Say! What a lot of fish there are.
The old actors in the old days, they used to go on tour, to get the play ready for the West End, and to learn their lines. The old timers used to say, "Be very careful, dear boy, what you get in to during the first weeks of a long tour."
I enjoyed learning something and, uh, so I think like with anything in life, in the schoolroom in an artistic endeavor, if you have just a really good teacher, it's inspiring. I certainly use, in my work, I mean, I used to rely heavily on imagery. I was obsessed with this photograph that was in the NY Times of a fish engulfing a smaller fish and this smaller fish had this look in its eyes; it knew what was about to happen and, I don't know how they ever captured such an image, but I've used that for a play I (did). It's called "Saved."
I gut check my show. I say, I say, "Gut, gut, does that feel true to you?" And Gut says, "Yes it does, Stephen. Let's get a grilled cheese sandwich."
When my father and I were off in the woods or off fishing, we were communicating all the time. We didn't catch many fish and my father was a pretty good fisherman but he just like to take one or two fish and then we would make camp and broil those fish and eat them.
My father was a fish market porter. So I grew up on fish, because he used to steal one a day, I grew up on the very best fish that money could buy, 'cause he only stole the good stuff.
Of course, my father was a soccer player. He used to play very good. Then, when I was young, eight or nine years old, ten years old, I just want to be like my father.
As my poor father used to say In 1963, Once people start on all this Art Goodbye, moralitee! And what my father used to say Is good enough for me.
I'm going to gut you like a fish.
Well, my mom actually taught me how to fish. We used to go when I was little, like 5 or 6 years old.
It was beautiful in a harsh I'm-going-to-gut-you-like-a-fish kind of way.
Managers used to say, 'I have a gut feeling.' Do you know what a gut feeling is for a professional manager? It's a pattern that they recognize. But if your system can recognize that pattern, if it's not just a couple of managers who know that pattern, then the system's gut feeling can tell you which way to go. That's really liberating.
I like to sit on the front porch of an old cabin I built in the woods and just listen to the birds; I like to fish in the pond and I always throw the fish back.
When I was a young girl salmon fishing with my father in the Straits of Juan de Fuca in Washington State I used to lean out over the water and try to look past my own face, past the reflection of the boat, past the sun and darkness, down to where the fish were surely swimming. I made up charm songs and word-hopes to tempt the fish, to cause them to mean biting my hook. I believed they would do it if I asked them well and patiently and with the right hope. I am writing my poems like this. I have used the fabric and the people of my life as the bait.
The panic disappeared under those soothing old fingers and the breathing slowed down and stopped hurting the chest as if a fox was caught in it, and then at last Mr. Kroger began to lecture the boy as he used to, Pablo, he murmured, don't ever be so afraid of being lonely that you forget to be careful. Don't forget that you will find it sometimes but other times you won't be lucky, and those are the times when you have got to be patient, since patience is what you must have when you don't have luck.
I used to work in an office in New York for this terrible company, and we used to have staff meetings, and I would just count how many times the boss would use the phrase "in terms of." And he would say it like 30 or 40 times. And sometimes he would just say it. He'd be like, "Uhh, in terms of, how are we doing with that?" I realized nobody knows what they're talking about. Everyone's bullshitting. Maybe not everybody, but certainly a lot of people.
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