“I don't perform. Seals perform.”
Morrissey (1959) English singer
From an interview with Russell Brand in December 2006, also quoted in the March 2007 issue of Uncut.
In interviews etc., About himself and his work
“We are reading for our lives, not performing like seals for some fresh fish.”
Acceptance speech http://www.bookcritics.org/?go=leonardAcceptanceSpeech, National Book Critics Circle 2006 Ivan Sandrof Lifetime Achievement Award (8 March 2007) <br class="br">Context: My whole life I have been waving the names of writers, as if we needed rescue. From these writers, for almost 50 years, I have received narrative, witness, companionship, sanctuary, shock, and steely strangeness; good advice, bad news, deep chords, hurtful discrepancy, and amazing grace. At an average of five books a week, not counting all those sighed at and nibbled on before they go to the Strand, I will read 13,000. Then I'm dead. Thirteen thousand in a lifetime, about as many as there are new ones published every month in this country.<br>It's not enough, and yet rich to excess. The books we love, love us back. In gratitude, we should promise not to cheat on them — not to pretend we're better than they are; not to use them as target practice, agit-prop, trampolines, photo ops or stalking horses; not to sell out scruple to that scratch-and-sniff info-tainment racket in which we posture in front of experience instead of engaging it, and fidget in our cynical opportunism for an angle, a spin, or a take, instead of consulting compass points of principle, and strike attitudes like matches, to admire our wiseguy profiles in the mirrors of the slicks. We are reading for our lives, not performing like seals for some fresh fish.
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John Leonard42
American critic, writer, and commentator 1939–2008Related quotes
“On seals - Its between a fish and a dog.”
Karl Pilkington (1972) English television personality, social commentator, actor, author and former radio producer
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“Some men fish all their lives without knowing it is not really the fish they are after.”
Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862) 1817-1862 American poet, essayist, naturalist, and abolitionist
Fred Thompson (1942–2015) American politician and actor
(full quote in context) Asked why he had not done more debates, Thompson replied "Standing up here 10 in a row, you know, like a bunch of seals waiting for somebody to throw you the next fish, is not necessarily the best way to impart your information to the American people. I'm not above acting like a seal every once in a while and waiting for the next fish, I just don't want to do it all the time."
[Ryan Sager, The New York Sun, http://www.nysun.com/article/62678?page_no=3, Mr. Sunshine State, September 14, 2007, 2007-09-21]
Petra Němcová (1979) Czech fashion model
Explaining why she became vegan, spotted helping out at an OCRF Benefit, as quoted in "Petra Nemcova Goes Vegan For The Fish", in Celebrity-Gossip.net (31 July 2007) http://www.celebrity-gossip.net/celebrities/hollywood/petra-nemcova-goes-vegan-for-the-fish-201498#blog.
Jacob Rees-Mogg (1969) British politician
In response to a question in the House of Commons about the fishing industry losing money due to Brexit red tape https://hansard.parliament.uk/Commons/2021-01-14/debates/329F59AC-D8A3-464D-AF4D-58C7EAA560C6/BusinessOfTheHouse#contribution-F5E677D7-58DE-4634-88A4-E97E2AA8F7E6 (14 January 2021) <br class="br">2021
“We are like fish
In this vast sea.
And Satan fishes
For you and me.”
Isaac Leib Peretz (1852–1915) Yiddish language author and playwright
"Monish" (translated in J. Leftwich. Golden Peacock. Sci-Art, 1939, p. 56.), 1888.