Packed Like Sardines Quotes

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How this is possible is, first, by being, literally, several in a single body. “We are twelve in my body. We are packed like sardines.” In other words, the being that I am exists each time in several modes—or, let us say, several beings, which, although sometimes mutually exclusive, are nevertheless inside one another.
Achille Mbembe (On the Postcolony (Studies on the History of Society and Culture Book 41))
They were given Christian names that went with their new summarily acquired (with the help of the lash and the threat of annihilation) religion, and then, having been branded on face or body, they were prodded onto the ships, packed, as the cliché goes, like sardines in a can.
Alice Walker (The Color Purple)
If they bring you down, put you down, keep you down in a can of sardines – my question is the following – why did you let them pack you into a can of sardines – if you are not a sardine – and your boss and other sardines who are sardines don’t realize that you are not a sardine? You’ve been so conditioned to act like a sardine – you think your canned existence is your sole existence – and you can’t tell yourself apart from the other sardines that oppress you because you’re all stuck together in one big clump […]. If you let them pack you into a sardine can, it’s because you are a sardine – just like all the rest – made of salt and oil, scales and tails, slimy and thick.
Giannina Braschi (Yo-Yo Boing! (Discoveries))
your legs buckle like a tired horse running for safety drag them by the hips and move faster you do not have the privilege to rest in a country that wants to spit you out you have to keep going and going and going till you reach the water hand over everything in your name for a ticket onto the boat next to a hundred others like you packed like sardines you tell the woman beside you 'this boat is not strong enough to carry this much sorrow to a shore what does it matter' she says 'if drowning is easier than staying' how many people has this water drunk up is it all one long cemetery bodies buried without a country perhaps the sea is your country perhaps the boat sinks because it is the only place that will take you
Rupi Kaur
Cannery Row in Monterey in California is a poem, a stink, a grating noise, a quality of light, a tone, a habit, a nostalgia, a dream. Cannery Row is the gathered and scattered, tin and iron and rust and splintered wood, chipped pavement and weedy lots and junk heaps, sardine canneries of corrugated iron, honky-tonks, restaurants and whore-houses, and little crowded groceries, and laboratories and flop-houses. Its inhabitants are, as the man once said, "whores, pimps, gamblers, and sons of bitches," by which he meant Everybody. Had the man looked through another peep-hole he might have said: "Saints and angels and martyrs and holy men," and he would have meant the same thing. In the morning when the sardine fleet has made a catch, the purse-seiners waddle heavily into the bay blowing their whistles. The deep-laden boats pull in against the coast where the canneries dip their tails into the bay. The figure is advisedly chosen, for if the canneries dipped their mouths into the bay the canned sardines which emerge from the other end would be metaphorically, at least, even more horrifying. Then cannery whistles scream and all over the town men and women scramble into their clothes and come running down to the Row to go to work. Then shining cars bring the upper classes down: superintendents, accountants, owners who disappear into offices. Then from the town pour Wops and Chinamen and Polaks, men and women in trousers and rubber coats and oilcloth aprons. They come running to clean and cut and pack and cook and can the fish. The whole street rumbles and groans and screams and rattles while the silver rivers of fish pour in out of the boats and the boats rise higher and higher in the water until they are empty. The canneries rumble and rattle and squeak until the last fish is cleaned and cut and cooked and canned and then the whistles scream again and the dripping, smelly, tired Wops and Chinamen and Polaks, men and women, straggle out and droop their ways up the hill into the town and Cannery Row becomes itself again-quiet and magical. Its normal life returns. The bums who retired in disgust under the black cypress-tree come out to sit on the rusty pipes in the vacant lot. The girls from Dora's emerge for a bit of sun if there is any. Doc strolls from the Western Biological Laboratory and crosses the street to Lee Chong's grocery for two quarts of beer. Henri the painter noses like an Airedale through the junk in the grass-grown lot for some pan or piece of wood or metal he needs for the boat he is building. Then the darkness edges in and the street light comes on in front of Dora's-- the lamp which makes perpetual moonlight in Cannery Row. Callers arrive at Western Biological to see Doc, and he crosses the street to Lee Chong's for five quarts of beer. How can the poem and the stink and the grating noise-- the quality of light, the tone, the habit and the dream-- be set down alive? When you collect marine animals there are certain flat worms so delicate that they are almost impossible to capture whole, for they break and tatter under the touch. You must let them ooze and crawl of their own will on to a knife blade and then lift them gently into your bottle of sea water. And perhaps that might be the way to write this book-- to open the page and to let the stories crawl in by themselves.
John Steinbeck
It wasn't just this street that she was afraid of or that was bad. It was any street where people were packed together like sardines in a can. And it wasn't just this city. It was any city where they set up a line and say black folks stay on this side and white folks on this side, so that the black folks were crammed on top of each other—jammed and packed and forced into the smallest possible space until they were completely cut off from light and air. It was any place where the women had to work to support the families because the men couldn't get jobs and the men got bored and pulled out and the kids were left without proper homes because there was nobody around to put a heart into it. Yes. It was any place where people were so damn poor they didn't have time to do anything but work, and their bodies were the only source of relief from the pressure under which they lived; and where the crowding together made the young girls wise beyond their years. It all added up to the same thing, she decided—white people. She hated them. She would always hate them.
Ann Petry (The Street)
Every July, when Eli was grwoing up, his mother would close the cabin and move the family to the Sun Dance. Eli would help the other men set up the tepee, and then he and Norma and Camelot would run with the kids in the camp. They would ride horses and chase each other across the prairies, their freedom interrupted only by the ceremonies. Best of all, Eli liked the men’s dancing. The women would dance for four days, and then there would be a day of rest and the men would begin. Each afternoon, toward evening, the men would dance, and just before the sun set, one of the dancers would pick up a rifle and lead the other men to the edge of the camp, where the children waited. Eli and the rest of the children would stand in a pack and wave pieces of scrap paper at the dancers as the men attacked and fell back, surged forward and retreated, until finally, after several of these mock forays, the lead dancer would breach the fortress of children and fire the rifle, and all the children would fall down in a heap, laughing, full of fear and pleasure, the pieces of paper scattering across the land. Then the dancers would gather up the food that was piled around the flagpole—bread, macaroni, canned soup, sardines, coffee—and pass it out to the people. Later, after the camp settled in, Eli and Norma and Camelot would lie on their backs and watch the stars as they appeared among the tepee poles through the opening in the top of the tent. And each morning, because the sun returned and the people remembered, it would begin again.” (p. 116)
Thomas King (Green Grass, Running Water)
Engine room fire alarm’?” Rusty said. There was a moment of confusion before it kicked in. “ENGINE ROOM FIRE ALARM?” * * * “What the hell is that sound?” Harvey Tharpe said, rubbing his eyes as he opened the cabin door. Being on this yacht was better than being on the lifeboat but not much. They were packed in like sardines. There was food but being woken up in the middle of the night by a blaring “Squeee! Squeee! ” was not his idea of fun. The former businessman had been “robust” before being cast adrift on a lifeboat in a zombie apocalypse. He still had his height and some solidity. So he was more than a bit surprised when the short, blonde skipper of the boat, wearing not much more than a camisole and panties smashed him out of the way like an NFL linebacker on her way aft. “MOVE PEOPLE!” the boat captain shouted, continuing to hammer her way through the crowd of refugees. * * * “Fuck a freaking duck,” Sophia said, opening the door to the engine compartment. The smoke wasn’t so bad she needed a respirator but it was bad. And they were dead in the water. All the power except the shrieking alarm was out. She threw the main battery disconnect, then picked up one of the industrial fire extinguishers and played it over the exterior of the main breakers which were the source of the fire. “Skipper?” Paula said, picking another one up. “We need to get it open before we use them all up,” Sophia said, putting her hand on the extinguisher. “Get Rusty to get all the passengers up, out and on the sundeck.” She slid one hand into a rubber glove and popped open the main breaker panel. The whole thing was smoldering so she played the rest of the fire extinguisher over it until it was cold. A tick checker showed that the whole thing was electrically cold as well. Now if only the batteries hadn’t discharged their whole load into the panel and killed themselves as well. “What can I do, Skipper?” Patrick said groggily. The “engineer” was wearing not much more than the skipper. “Get a hand-held,” Sophia said. “See if there’s a sub in range. Tell them we had a major electrical fire. Fire is under control. No power at this time. May be repairable but we may need assistance. Don’t at this time but may. Got it? Do not call mayday or PON-PON. Do not.” “Got it, Skipper,” Patrick said. “And get these people the HELL OUT OF MY ENGINE COMPARTENT!
John Ringo (To Sail a Darkling Sea (Black Tide Rising, #2))
Gallagher plays the torch’s beam forward and back. The whole length of the hall, they’re packed in like sardines. The hungries they were running from a few hours ago, and their friends, and their friends’ friends. They move peristaltically as the light passes over them. Their jaws open and close. The
M.R. Carey (The Girl With All the Gifts)
A significant proportion, then and now, was from the beginning devoted to the violation of laws, the disregard of rights of any kind, and the casual murder or rape of those who resisted them. Something in the neighborhood of fifty thousand convicts were transported to the New World in an effort to provide law and order in the Old.3 Third, a substantial number of immigrants arrived in the New World with their foreseeable future years already mortgaged to pay for their passage over. “Redemptioners” or “free-willers” booked passage for America and on their arrival were auctioned off by the ship captain to the highest bidder. Many English merchants specialized in this trade and fraudulent practices in recruiting were commonplace. The immigrants were packed aboard like sardines, and a mortality of more than 50 percent during a trip to the New World was not unusual. These
Vine Deloria Jr. (Spirit and Reason: The Vine Deloria Jr. Reader)
There’re going to be thousands and thousands of people there—people I don’t know—all packed in like people-shaped sardines.” She shuddered. “If I believed in hell, this would be my version of it.” “Aubry, of course you believe in hell. You were just talking about how you’ll own a nice little piece of property there when you die.
Katee Robert (Fool Me Once (Foolproof Love, #2))
Here, we pack'em in like sardines in a can.
Anthony T. Hincks
And then she thought about the other streets. It wasn’t just this street that she was afraid of or that was bad. It was any street where people were packed together like sardines in a can.
Ann Petry (The Street)
All that preamble out of way, here’s what Big Dom eats. Keep in mind that he weighs roughly 100 kg (220 lbs), so scale as needed: Breakfast 4 eggs (cooked in a combo of butter and coconut oil) 1 can of sardines packed in olive oil (such as Wild Planet brand) ½ can oysters (Crown Prince brand. Note: Carbs on the label are from non-glycemic phytoplankton) Some asparagus or other vegetable TF: Both Dom and I travel with boxes of sardines, oysters, and bulk macadamia nuts. “Lunch” Instead of lunch, Dom will consume a lot of MCT throughout the day via Quest Nutrition MCT Oil Powder. He will also make a Thermos of coffee with a half stick of butter and 1 to 2 scoops of MCT powder, which he sips throughout the day, totaling about 3 cups of coffee. Dinner “One trick I’ve learned is that before dinner, which is my main meal of the day, I’ll have a bowl of soup, usually broccoli cream soup or cream of mushroom soup. I use concentrated coconut milk in place of the dairy cream. I thin it out [with a bit of water] so it’s not super dense in calories. After eating that, the amount of food that I want to consume is cut in half.” Dom’s dinner is always some kind of large salad, typically made up of: Mixed greens and spinach together Extra-virgin olive oil Artichokes Avocado MCT oil A little bit of Parmesan or feta cheese A moderate amount—about 50 g—of chicken, beef, or fish. He uses the fattiest versions he can get and increases the protein in the salad to 70 to 80 g if he had a workout that day. In addition to the salad, Dom will make some other vegetable like Brussels sprouts, asparagus, collard greens, etc., cooked in butter and coconut oil. He views vegetables as “fat delivery systems.
Timothy Ferriss (Tools of Titans: The Tactics, Routines, and Habits of Billionaires, Icons, and World-Class Performers)
MY FIRST IMPRESSION OF PŁASZÓW as hell on earth never changed. I only needed one look to see that this was an entirely foreign place. No matter how difficult life had been in the ghetto, at least outwardly it had appeared a familiar world. Yes, we were packed like sardines into too few rooms, but those rooms were in normal apartment buildings. There were streets and sidewalks and the sounds of a city beyond the walls.
Leon Leyson (The Boy on the Wooden Box: How the Impossible Became Possible . . . on Schindler's List (No Series))
In one of the camp buildings, victims were squeezed together in extremely horrific conditions, with some rooms holding more than 45 people in very small closet sized rooms. They were even forced to clean the torture rooms. The prisoners’ faces were broken and mutilated from torture. Their blood stained the walls with pieces of skin and hair spread all around. The guards at the camp targeted the kidneys and hearts of the Bosniak victims when beating them to death. Prisoners were frequently beaten with spiked metal weapons and sticks, rifle butts, brass knuckles etc. They were “packed like sardines” with unbearable heat. In addition, they also died from suffocation due to a lack of oxygen during the night. Several survivors testified that they heard constant and intense wailing from people being beaten. They were in a state of endless fear. There are documented cases of prisoners being burned alive by setting tires ablaze around them. Prisoners were made to carry the dead bodies to trucks for disposal. Mass dead bodies were also bulldozed onto trucks. Every night, gunshots could be heard until dawn during mass executions. There were mounds of corpses everywhere on the camp, and Serb forces frequently shot ammunition into the bodies to ensure death.
Aida Mandic
Sleeping Arrangements In many societies, children sleep with their parents at least through infancy and sometimes much longer. Some do so because they don’t have much space, but also because they believe co-sleeping to be an essential way to feed, comfort, protect, and bond with their babies and children. Here is a sampling of sleep arrangements in some traditional communities compiled by Carol Worthman and Melissa Melby: • In the leaf huts of Efe foragers of Africa, no one sleeps alone. Two adults, a baby, other children, a set of grandparents, and even a visitor routinely crash in the same small space. • Gebusi women in Papua New Guinea sleep together in a narrow area, about seven and a half feet wide, packed like sardines along with infants and children of varying ages. Men and older boys lie on sleeping platforms in a nearby space. • For the Gabra nomads in northern Kenya and southern Ethiopia, sleeping arrangements include separate beds for husband (and small boys) and wife (with infant and small children) in the sleeping portion of the tent. • The Balinese in Indonesia are social, even in sleep: “Being alone for even five minutes is undesirable, even when asleep, so widows and widowers who sleep alone are viewed as unfortunate and even socio-spiritually vulnerable,” Worthman and Melby wrote. • The Swat Pathan in Afghanistan and Pakistan allow a bed for each person, but no one gets his own room.
Mei-Ling Hopgood (How Eskimos Keep Their Babies Warm: And Other Adventures in Parenting (from Argentina to Tanzania and Everywhere in Between))
The cancer sticks stood neatly side by side like sardines packed in a tin
C.M. Sutter (Snapped (Agent Jade Monroe FBI Thriller, #1))
She tore away the red cellophane strip on the cigarette pack and peeled back the foil. The cancer sticks stood neatly side by side like sardines packed in a tin can. She pulled the first one out with her long nails and slipped it between her lips. With the
C.M. Sutter (Snapped (Agent Jade Monroe FBI Thriller, #1))
it was simply a pain in the ass being packed in a hall like sardines just to take some silly test. It didn't even determine if you got in or not. It helped the guidance counsellors figure out the best skill set to match you with and place you in that so-called power level system which determined what color blazer we got. Totally silly and unethical, but hey, I was a girl pretending to be a guy, hoping I wouldn't get caught on the first day of school so I couldn’t really judge.
Yumoyori Wilson (Reflections of You (Brighten Magic Academy, #1))