Possum Quotes & Sayings

Alone was not something you saw among tribes she'd studied. From an early age children were warned against it. Alone was how your soul got stolen by spirits, or your body kidnapped by enemies. Alone was when your thinking turned to evil. The culture often had proverbs against it. Not even a possum walks alone was the Tam's most repeated one. — Lily King

Most of the January firsts in recent memory have involved splitting headaches and roiling stomachs and often being
surprised about where I was waking up. ("No, Officer, I have no idea why I'm wearing this possum costume. I called you what? Oh. My bad.") — Cate Tiernan

The South was a scary new world. The first time I saw a possum in my driveway, I shook a bony fist at the sky and cursed this godforsaken rustic hellhole. My ancestors spent centuries in the hills of County Kerry, waist-deep in sheep shit, getting shot at by English soldiers, and my grandparents crossed the ocean in coffin ships to come to America, just so I could get possum rabies? — Rob Sheffield

Why did the chicken cross the road? To prove to the possum that it could be done. — S. Truett Cathy

And so Deb is the only person in the world who gives a rusty possum fart whether I live or die. — Jeff Lindsay

Appleblossom can't believe the taste of the dark square. Is tehre a way to describe this morsel of goodness? It is so sweet adn smooth. It makes a green snail seem like an old pinecone seed, and every possum knows that a green snail is fantastic eating. — Holly Goldberg Sloan

All in all, it was the goldarndest, Barnum-and-Baileyest, rib-stickinest, rough-and-tumblest infernal foofaraw of a media circus anybody had seen since grandpaw chased the possum down the road and lost his store teeth, and I was heartily sorry to have been a part of it. — John Varley

...playing possum was a skill he'd learned in China once upon a time, and it had come in handy more than once. When, oh, Chinese gangsters, for example, thought you were down for the count, they were less prepared when you suddenly resurrected yourself and beat them to death with a goofy jade Buddha you didn't know why you had. Life was weird that way, and it always helped to have an edge. — Taylor Anderson

You know what I wisht I had, Ma? A pouch like a 'possum, to tote things.
The Yearling — Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings

Reagan promised everyone a seven-course dinner. Ours turned out to be a possum and a six-pack. — Jim Hightower

I was a little excited but mostly blorft. "Blorft" is an adjective I just made up that means 'Completely overwhelmed but proceeding as if everything is fine and reacting to the stress with the torpor of a possum.' I have been blorft every day for the past seven years. — Tina Fey

Kill every enemy twice, Wilky said. Better than gettin' shot by a soldier pretending to be dead. — Joseph Bruchac

I think that my favourite animal is a baby possum, or a joey. The face of a really little joey is so divine - so, so gorgeous. — Mem Fox

Although her book did include compelling recipes for scrapple, ox cheek, and baked calf's head and tips for the preparation of raccoon, possum, snipe, plovers, and blackbirds (for blackbird pie) and "how to broil, fricassee, stew or fry a squirrel," it was much more than just a cookbook. — Erik Larson

You can't put this possum in a cage — George Jones

It is true that almost everyone in the foothills farmed and hunted, so there were no breadlines, no men holding signs that begged for work and food, no children going door to door, as they did in Atlanta, asking for table scraps. Here, deep in the woods, was a different agony. Babies, the most tenuous, died from poor diet and simple things, like fevers and dehydration. In Georgia, one in seven babies died before their first birthday, and in Alabama it was worse.
You could feed your family catfish and jack salmon, poke salad and possum, but medicine took cash money, and the poorest of the poor, blacks and whites, did not have it. Women, black and white, really did smother their babies to save them from slow death, to give a stronger, sounder child a little more, and stories of it swirled round and round until it became myth, because who can live with that much truth. — Rick Bragg

Cobb was in a Klan group back in the 60's, and told me stories about how they used to throw live 'coons, possums, porcupines, or ganders into Black houses at night in attempts to run them out of Johnston and Harnett County. Cobb said that late one night, he and three or four other local rednecks snuck up on the house of one Black family, peered through the window and saw a huge Black woman sitting in front of a TV watching Gunsmoke, with a gang of children all around her.
The window was open and Cobb threw a live possum in her lap. Cobb said she squalled about the loudest and longest he'd ever heard, and jumped about four feet up in the air. Cobb then ran and jumped into a nearby ditch to observe what would happen next, and it wasn't long before they saw the Black woman bust out of the back door and run across a cotton field with a trail of children behind. Cobb said she was as wide as three rows of cotton, but fast and agile. She outran all the young'uns. — Frazier Glenn Miller

Long middle finger resembling a twig that it could use for probing for grubs. There is a telling example of convergent evolution when an unrelated species (the Long-Fingered Possum from Papua New Guinea) devised a similar strategy to address the same problem. (Douglas was very intrigued by the implications of convergence. What need is there to posit a designer if the operation of random forces, constrained by the reality of the world, produces the same elegant solution, as if there were no choice in the matter?) We monkeys have — Nick Webb

One of the most outgoing and affectionate of all cat breeds, the rare and beautiful Turkish Angora has a fascinating history...Elegant, finely-boned creatures, Turkish Angoras are graceful, energetic and usually the first to welcome visitors into your home. It is also not unusual for a pet Turk to act as the "host" at a party or other gathering, inspecting and interacting with every guest. — Cat Fanciers' Association Inc.

was a little excited but mostly blorft. "Blorft" is an adjective I just made up that means "Completely overwhelmed but proceeding as if everything is fine and reacting to the stress with the torpor of a possum. — Tina Fey

I sat back in my seat and stared out the windshield, much of what I knew about the order of the universe rearranging itself. Perhaps Jennifer Sylvester wasn't feeble after all. Perhaps Jennifer Sylvester was fierce.

That makes no sense. Nobody is that good at playing possum. Well . . . nobody but me. — Penny Reid

No food is as delicious as food you eat standing a foot away from a trash can. Ask any possum. — Mindy Kaling

As grand and glorious as love is, it is not without its perils. Anyone who has felt the cruel pangs of rejection knows that love is best approached cautiously, as one would approach an angry, cornered brush-tailed possum. Yes, before throwing yourself into a relationship, it's wise to buy a sturdy pair of leather gloves, and to be extra careful of love's front claws and rows of needle-sharp teeth. — Michael J. Nelson

But I know rodents. Also, I believe I was a rodent, but that was only for a little while - I don't remember it clearly and I don't want to discuss it. I think I can handle a possum — Cassandra Clare

No parents. You have Uncle Jesse, forever in overalls. Then there's Bo and Duke. What do they do? I never saw them working for food or gas money. You can only kill so many possum. — Bill Engvall

The institution of the family has very few friends in Washington. There are lobbyists in Washington for every possible entity, from the possum-growers of America to every kind of crazy thing. There's somebody in Washington paid to advance the cause of that particular business, but there's not a lot of support for the family. — James Dobson

Through her voice I saw a free woman, down on her land, a woman who knew how to kill her own chickens, hunt her own possum, cut her own cotton, fix her own roof, make her own whiskey, walk in her own shoes, and speak her mind, tell her own story.

A black woman.
Ready for the journey.
The Journey. — Bonnie Greer

Convalescence. Such an utter weakness that you lie like an animal hibernating, playing possum. You float. You are adrift. Every current is stronger than you. — Anais Nin

Sure, you can break a man. Bend his will, even, but be careful with the ones that break easily. Those are the ones you have to keep a close eye on. Those are the ones that play possum and hide in the shadows. Just waiting for their time to strike! That's when you're most vulnerable. When you're surrounded by friends. — Joe Reyes

I played possum. I did this, as the possum does, out of fear. — Suzanne Finnamore

We could say that people who eat grits, listen to country music, follow stock-car racing, support corporal punishment in the schools, hunt 'possum, go to Baptist churches and prefer bourbon to Scotch are likely to be Southerners. — John Shelton Reed

When you're out of options, the best option is to do nothing. Play dead. The possum option. — Rick Yancey

Hey Susie Derkins, is that your face, or is a 'possum stuck in your collar? — Bill Watterson

No, officer, I have no idea why I'm wearing this possum costume. I called you what? OH. My bad.
-Nastasya — Cate Tiernan

I'd heard the boys at school say you needed to run after your first drink, to get the alcohol working. It got you drunk faster. I didn't bother with that. I wish drinking Brandivo, a foul, sultana-flavoured brew. I took a painful gulp of it, and watched as a possum came gripping along the wire of a telegraph pole, not knowing the death humming along beside it. Its eyes were filmed with light as it reached the safety of wood, and then it went down face first like a lizard. — Tegan Bennett Daylight

It was a very imaginative, bitey possum and also a total douche-canoe. — Jenny Lawson

I've eaten weird things through the course of my life. I've eaten wild game, I've eaten possum - possum's no good. — Chris Pratt

A spa?"
"Yeah, Avalon Spa, you know the place near the mall?"
"Oh, right. What do you do there?"
Again, the nervous glance at the floor, and the small flush of color rising up his neck. "I'm a masseur. Which I know sounds phony as hell, but I'm licensed and everything. Also, my clients are women- the only men at Avalon are the ones on staff. And while I've got nothing against women at all- I'd have no friends in high school if it weren't for women- I find them as sexually attractive as roadkill possum."
Roan had to swallow back a laugh. "Don't tell them that."
"Oh, God no! I'd never get any tips then. — Andrea Speed

Dad called this the shadow time. The sun sucks colour from the world, he'd said. He'd taught her to see the softer colours of the dusk, the green and orange bark, the purple shadows. At times like this Flinty felt her edges vanish, leaving her part of the mountains, like the wallaby pulling wonga vine down from a thorn bush, or the sleepy possum peering from a tree. — Jackie French