“Our salmon sandwiches are so good you’ll want to swim upstream to our kitchen and spawn. But please don’t.”

“Gene Ray: Another thing, did you know your father is a fish?
Interviewer: No, I did not know my… [laughter]
Gene Ray: You know how salmon swim upstream, the male fertilizes the female eggs laid in the water?
Interviewer: Yes.
Gene Ray: The sperm fish swims upstream just like the salmon fertilizes female eggs laid in the water.”

“The salmon swimming upstream to spawn may be wily in a hundred ways, but she cannot even contemplate the prospect of abandoning her reproductive project and deciding instead to live out her days studying coastal geography or trying to learn Portuguese. The creation of a panoply of new standpoints is, to my mind, the most striking product of the euprimatic revolution.”

“I think we're going to the moon because it's in the nature of the human being to face challenges. It's by the nature of his deep inner soul ... we're required to do these things just as salmon swim upstream.”

“Independent will is our capacity to act. It gives us the power to transcend our paradigms, to swim upstream, to rewrite our scripts, to act based on principle rather than reacting based on emotion or circumstance.”

“Swim upstream. Go the other way. Ignore the conventional wisdom.”

“I’ve been swimming for 25 years, and I don’t think there is one swim that I have done where someone didn’t say beforehand, ‘I don’t think it’s possible’ or ‘You’ll never make it’. If someone tells you that you can’t achieve your dream, don’t waste good time arguing. Walk away and do it.”

“Some fish love to swim upstream. Some people love to overcome challenges.”

“Oh, things are frequently what they seem,
And this is wisdom's crown:
Only the game fish swims upstream,
But the sensible fish swims down.”

“Remember, a dead fish can float downstream, but it takes a live one to swim upstream.”