Octopus Quotations

The family, that dear octopus from whose tentacles we never quite escape, nor in our innermost hearts never quite wish to.

They eat the dainty food of famous chefs with the same pleasure with which they devour gross peasant dishes, mostly composed of garlic and tomatoes, or fisherman's octopus and shrimps, fried in heavily scented olive oil on a little deserted beach.

When I get through tearing a lobster apart, or one of those tender West Coast octopuses, I feel like I had a drink from the fountain of youth.

Ever since I was two, I've loved octopuses, monsters, abandoned buildings.

I got hit with an octopus in Detroit one time. It was the most gross thing I've ever had happen. I got it right in the back of the neck; all the juice was coming down. It was awful.

Talent without discipline is like an octopus on roller skates. There's plenty of movement, but you never know if it's going to be forward, backwards, or sideways.

On 'Chopped,' the time goes down a bit and there are several ingredients, usually one that makes no sense whatsoever with the rest of the ingredients. So it gets you out of your culinary comfort zone a little bit. Like we had octopus and cheese paired up with each other.

Fashion is such an octopus. You're connected to so many people: suppliers, pattern makers, production teams, marketing teams, vendors.

Antonio Sanchez is from Mexico City. I met him at a Pat Metheny concert. He did a solo, and I thought, 'This is an octopus man!'

Octopus can fish for prey while deciding what color and pattern to turn, what shape to make their bodies, be on alert for predators and aware how far away their dens are.

Dressing a baby is like putting an octopus into a string bag, making sure none of the arms hang out.

Every science is a mutilated octopus. If its tentacles were not clipped to stumps, it would feel its way into disturbing contacts.

Oh, I love hugging. I wish I was an octopus, so I could hug 10 people at a time!

Sometimes I pretend to be an octopus. But then people are like ‘Darren what’re you doing?’ And I just sit there and laugh because they’re not cool enough to be an octopus and I’m just like ‘Hah you’re just jealous because you’re not an octopus.’

There was no escape from the letter-writer who, a hundred or a hundred and twenty-five years ago, captured a coveted correspondent. It would have been as easy to shake off an octopus or a boa-constrictor.

We split from our common ancestor with the octopus half a billion years ago. And yet, you can make friends with an octopus.

When I would visit my octopus friend, Octavia, at New England aquarium, usually she would look me in the face, flow right over to see me, and flush red with emotion when she took my arms in hers. Often when I'd stroke her she'd turn white beneath my touch, the colour of a relaxed octopus.

I've traveled all over. I've been to all 50 states. With my dad in the Navy, I lived in the Philippines from nine to 12, and I had dog, monkey, lizard, everything. Then I was in Hawaii, and I'm spear-fishing, catching octopus with my hands.

It seems the height of antiquated hubris to claim that the universe carried on as it did for billions of years in order to form a comfortable abode for us. Chance and historical contingency give the world of life most of its glory and fascination. I sit here happy to be alive and sure that some reason must exist for "why me?" Or the earth might have been totally covered with water, and an octopus might now be telling its children why the eight-legged God of all things had made such a perfect world for cephalopods.

The monster of advertisement... is a sort of octopus with innumerable tentacles. It throws out to right and left, in front and behind, its clammy arms, and gathers in, through its thousand little suckers, all the gossip and slander and praise afloat, to spit out again at the public.

The phone went ballistic. If an octopus could pick up a phone every 2 seconds, that was how busy it was.

I heard one story about an octopus in a home tank who would get out, cruise around the house, take knick-knacks, and drag them back to its tank. Like a dog! They're so smart that there are octopus enrichment handbooks so you don't bore your octopus. I've seen them play with Legos, Mr. Potato Head, you name it!

Every politically controlled educational system will inculcate the doctrine of state supremacy sooner or later. . . . Once that doctrine has been accepted, it becomes an almost superhuman task to break the stranglehold of the political power over the life of the citizen. It has had his body, property and mind in its clutches from infancy. An octopus would sooner release its prey. A tax-supported, compulsory educational system is the complete model of the totalitarian state.

I was in the Far East and I went into a restaurant and I ordered octopus and the waiter said: "It takes four hours." I asked why and he said: "It keeps turning off the gas."

Have you ever heard a blindfolded octopus unwrap a cellophane-covered bathtub?

It's better to be an octopus than a fish. If an octopus loses a tentacle to a predator, the octopus will survive with seven tentacles left for itself.

...I got to try the bagpipes. It was like trying to blow an octopus.

the tentacles of today reach out like an octopus to swallow yesterday.

There's really not a difference between an octopus and, like, a giant pile of snot.

He had electric blue hair that had stuck around his head like tendrils of a startled octopus.

The most repulsive thing you could ever imagine is the inside of a camel's mouth. That and watching a girl eat octopus or squid.

Derek Randall bats like an octopus with piles

Those who believe in this type of thing [Paul the Octopus, who ‘predicted’ the result of World Cup matches] cannot be the leaders of the global nations that aspire, like Iran, to human perfection, basing themselves in the love of all sacred values.

Crank, You See isn't any ordinary monster. It's like a giant octopus, weaving its tentacles not just around you, but through you, squeezing not hard enough to kill you, but enough to keep you from reeling until you try to get away. Try, and you hunger for it grasping clutch, the way its tendrils prop you up, your need intensifying exponentially every minute you refuse to admit its being (p.469)

If my life were a corny horror movie, and the heroine was lost and alone, trapped in an underwater cave, what would happen next? If you guessed, “She drops her flashlight, and it hits a rock and breaks, leaving her in utter darkness,” you would be right. But I bet you didn’t guess the part about an attack by a giant octopus.

No one ever explained the octopuses.

That particular octopus committed suicide, didn't he? He stabbed himself with his own beak.

The mind is its own enemy, that fights itself with the innumerable pliant and ineluctable arms of the octopus.

Beware as you get the octopus on board. Suddenly he relaxes his grasp, and shhots out a jet of ink, which smarts considerably.

The monster of advertisement...is a sort of octopus with innumerable tentacles. It throws out to right and left, in front and behind, its clammy arms, and gathers in, through its thousand little suckers, all the gossip and slander and praise afloat...

I bear my burden proudly for all to see, to conquer prejudice and ignorance and hate with knowledge and sincerity and love. Whenever you are threatened by a hostile presence, you emit a thick cloud of love like an octopus squirts out ink...

I have sworn before a picture of the old and mourned comrade Stalin that I won’t rest until I see these capitalist octopuses annihilated.

But to ask pity of our body is like discoursing in front of an octopus, for which our words can have no more meaning than the sound of the tides, and with which we should be appalled to find ourselves condemned to live.

Talent without discipline is like an octopus on roller skates

We grew to our present size almost against ourselves. It was not a deliberately planned commercial venture in the sense that I sat down and said that we were going to make ourselves into a huge financial octopus. We evolved by necessity. We did not sit down and say to ourselves, 'How can we make a big pile of dough?' It just happened.