Harpoon Quotes & Sayings

Thirsty for being, the poet ceaselessly reaches out to reality, seeking with the indefatigable harpoon of the poem a reality that is always better hidden, more re(g)al. The poem's power is as an instrument of possession but at the same time, ineffably, it expresses the desire for possession, like a net that fishes by itself, a hook that is also the desire of the fish. To be a poet is to desire and, at the same time, to obtain, in the exact shape of the desire. — Julio Cortazar

So I'm at the wailing wall, standing there like a moron, with my harpoon. — Emo Philips

The feel of a good row stays with you hours afterward. Your muscles glow, your mind wanders from the papers on you desk and goes back, again and again, to that terrific power piece at the end of the workout when it felt as if you and the boat were flying, as if you legs were two cannons and your arms were two oars and the great lateral muscles of your back were pterodactyl wings and the brim of your baseball cap was a harpoon. — Barry S. Strauss

A man moves through time. It means nothing except that, like a harpoon, once thrown he will arrive. — Anne Carson

Fifty years ago did Nathan Swain kill fifteen whales between a sunrise and a sunset. And that harpoon - so like a corkscrew now - was flung — Herman Melville

Now, art thou the man to pitch a harpoon down a live whale's throat, and then jump after it? Answer, quick! — Herman Melville

You know what really keeps your staff on their toes? A harpoon gun. — Daniel Tosh

Captain Ahab was a man possessed with an obsessional drive to pursue the white whale which had harmed him - which had torn his leg out - to the ends of the Earth, no matter what happened. In the final scene of the novel, Captain Ahab is being borne out to sea, wrapped around the white whale with the rope of his own harpoon and going obviously to his death. It was a scene of almost suicidal finality. — Edward Said

to catch it called for harpooning it - which was Ned Land's business; to harpoon it called for sighting it - which was the crew's business; and to sight it called for encountering it - which was a chancy business. — Jules Verne

When a chainsaw rips into a 2,000 year old redwood tree, it's ripping into my guts. When a bulldozer plows through the Amazon rainforest, it's ripping through my side. And when a Japanese whaling ship fires an exploding harpoon into a great whale it's my heart that's being blown to smithereens. — David Foreman

Ma'am, please," the older man said, sparing a brief glance up at the heavens. "If I may, I would far prefer death by harpoon to death by grappling hook. Less of a mess for the men to clean up after, believe me. — Alexandra Bracken

Well, the bad news," Swedish said from the wheel, "is that Chess still thinks he's funny."
"What's the good news?" Loretta asked, leaning on our little copper-tubed harpoon. "That Kodoc dropped a bomb on the city? — Joel N. Ross

Never approach a crying woman entering a sports bar carrying a harpoon gun. — George Carlin

Tell me my heart beats a war drum
that my eyes are not just armies
but my spine
is a harpoon. — Buddy Wakefield

All men live enveloped in whale-lines. All are born with halters round their necks; but it is only when caught in the swift, sudden turn of death, that mortals realize the silent, subtle, ever-present perils of life. And if you be a philosopher, though seated in the whale-boat, you would not at heart feel one whit more of terror, than though seated before your evening fire with a poker, and not a harpoon, by your side. — Herman Melville

A man of the mouth, formerly the most oral of surgeons, Henry had the habit of giving his lady patients laughing gas, putting them out, then fiercely fucking them, while tugging on their wisdom teeth. His getting caught was a slip of the tongue, so to speak. While he was buried deep in a muff, some sharp thing slipped, and his prize patient, Mrs Mavis Gilette, woke to find a harpoon hole in her cheek and her lost licker languishing on the floor. — A.M. Homes

Overhead soft-bellied clouds panic toward the horizon like whales before the harpoon, and the wind runs addict's fingers through the trees that line the street. — Richard K. Morgan

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

Have you tried to drive a harpoon through a body? No? Tut, tut, my dear sir, you must really pay attention to these details. — Arthur Conan Doyle

Or like a poet woo the Moon,
Riding an armchair for my steed,
And with a flashing pen harpoon
Terrific metaphors of speed. — Roy Campbell

There was a bag of coffee beans beneath a harpoon gun and a frozen hunk of spinach, but there was no way to grind the beans into tiny pieces to make coffee. Near a picnic basket and a large bag of mushrooms was a jug of orange juice, but it had been close to one of the bullet holes in the trunk, and so had frozen completely solid in the cold. And after Sunny moved aside three chunks of cold cheese, a large can of water chestnuts, and an eggplant as big as herself, she finally found a small jar of boysenberry jam, and a loaf of bread she could use to make toast, although it was so cold it felt more like a log than a breakfast ingredient. — Lemony Snicket

American whale oil lit the world. It was used in the production of soap, textiles, leather, paints, and varnishes, and it lubricated the tools and machines that drove the Industrial Revolution. The baleen cut from the mouths of whales shaped the course of feminine fashion by putting the hoop in hooped skirts and giving form to stomachtightening
and chest-crushing corsets. Spermaceti, the waxy substance from the heads of sperm whales, produced the brightest- and cleanest-burning candles the world has ever known, while ambergris, a byproduct of irritation in a sperm whale's bowel, gave perfumes great staying power and was worth its weight in gold. — Eric Jay Dolin

We have sat on the river bank and caught catfish with pin hooks. The time has come to harpoon a whale. — John Hope

Then, while the old man was clearing the lines and preparing the harpoon, the male fish jumped high into the air beside the boat to see where the female was and then went down deep, his lavender wings, that were his pectoral fins, spread wide and all his wide lavender stripes showing. He was beautiful, the old man remembered, and he had stayed.
That was the saddest thing I ever saw with them, the old man thought. — Ernest Hemingway,

Tell me what it is, or prepare to eat harpoon. — Lemony Snicket

A gun is not a weapon! It's a tool, like a butcher's knife, or a harpoon, or an alligator. — Homer

The art of the great historic civilizations never impress us as much as an Eskimo harpoon or a mask from the South Pacific. The contact is physical, and the feeling we experience is very much like acute anxiety. Inner or outer space, the world below or beyond, becomes a great weight pressing down upon us. Each work is a solid block of time, time standing still, time more massive than a mountain, despite the fact that it is as intangible as air or thought. The handiwork of primitive peoples reveals the time before time. — Octavio Paz