Slippery As An Eel Quotes

Quiet as a shadow Light as a feather Quick as a snake Calm as still water Smooth as summer silk Swift as a deer Slippery as an eel Strong as a bear Fierce as a wolverine Still as stone

Besides,” Hatta said, tossing the shredded paper back at her. It wisped and fluttered and clung to the fabric of her gown. “I have a personal rule about not entering into business with spineless creatures. No snakes. No slippery eels. And worst of all, no fickle women.

You’re about to pay so hard for that, acushla. You think because I let you crawl all over me like a slippery eel that I’ll take you talking about another man that way with hunger in your voice?

Happiness is like a slippery eel. It is hard enough to catch and even harder to hold onto.

Metaphor is a slippery eel, if it wasn't for its shock I'd stick to the easy catch of prose.

I have a personal rule about not entering into business with spineless creatures. No snakes. No slippery eels. And worst of all, no fickle women. - Hatta

Nor was Israel’s historic claim to the land impressive; to Cullinane it was irrelevant. Once a man started opening the historical-rights barrel of eels, no one could predict where the slippery evidence might run.

Sion calls Anne an eel, he calls her a slippery dipper from the slime, and he remembers what the cardinal had called her: my serpentine enemy. Sion says, she goes to it with her brother; he says, what, her brother George? ‘Any brother she's got. Those kind keep it in the family. They do filthy French tricks, like –’ ‘Can you keep your voice down?’ He looks around, as if spies might be swimming by the boat. ‘– and that's how she trusts herself she don't give in to Henry, because if she lets him do it and she gets a boy he's, thanks very much, now clear off, girl – so she's oh, Your Highness, I never could allow – because she knows that very night her brother's inside her, licking her up to the lungs, and then he's, excuse me, sister, what shall I do with this big package – she says, oh,don't distress yourself, my lord brother, shove it up the back entry, it'll come to no harm there.

Low dark clouds raced over a steel sea toward Barkley Cove. The wind hit first, rattling windows and hurling waves over the wharf. Boats, tied to the dock, bobbed up and down like toys, as men in yellow slickers tied this line or that, securing. Then sideways rain slammed the village, obscuring everything except the odd yellow form moving about in the grayness. The wind whistled through the sheriff’s window, and he raised his voice. “So, Joe, you had something to tell me?” “Sure do. I found out where Miss Clark will claim she was the night Chase died.” “What? Did you finally catch up to her?” “Ya kiddin’? She’s slipperier’n a damn eel. Gets gone ever’ time I get near. So I drove over to Jumpin’s marina this morning to see if he knew when she’d be coming next. Like everybody else she hasta go there for gas, so I figured I’d catch her up sooner or later. You won’t believe what I found out.” “Let’s have it.” “I got two reliable sources say she was outta town that night.

He eases himself down to die. He thinks, others can do it and so can I. He inhales something: sweet raw smell of sawdust; from some-where, the scent of the Frescobaldi kitchen, wild garlic and cloves. He sees the movement from the corner of his eye as the spectators kneel and avert their faces. His mouth is dry, but he thinks, while I breathe I pray. 'All my confidence hope and trust, is in thy most merciful goodness...’ In the sky he senses movement. A shadow falls across his view. His father Walter is here, voice in the air. 'So now get up.' He lies broken on the cobbles of the yard of the house where he was born. His whole body is shuddering. 'So now get up. So now get up.' The pain is acute, a raw stinging, a ripping, a throb. He can taste his death: slow, metallic, not come yet. In his terror he tries to obey his father, but his hands cannot get a purchase, nor can he crawl. He is an eel, he is a worm on a hook, his strength has ebbed and leaked away beneath him and it seems a long time ago now since he gave his permission to be dead; no one has told his heart, and he feels it writhe in his chest, trying to beat. His cheek rests on nothing, it rests on red. He thinks, follow. Walter says, ‘That's right, boy, spew everywhere, spew everywhere on my good cobbles. Come on, boy, get up. By the blood of creeping Christ, stand on your feet?' He is very cold. People imagine the cold comes after but it is now. He thinks, winter is here. I am at Launde. I have stumbled deep into the crisp white snow. I flail my arms in angel shape, but now I am crystal, I am ice and sinking deep: now I am water. Beneath him the ground upheaves. The river tugs him; he looks for the quick-moving Pattern, for the flitting, liquid scarlet. Between a pulse-beat and the next he shifts, going out on crimson with the tide of his inner sea. He is far from England now, far from these islands, from the waters salt and fresh. He has vanished; he is the slippery stones underfoot, he is the last faint ripple in the wake of himself. He feels for an opening, blinded, looking for a door: tracking the light along the wall.

Don wan’ no job, Missa Digger. Thanks but I awright.’ ‘You don want no job!’ ‘I kin still come with you, though.’ He made it sound like he was doing me a favour. ‘Okay, Saturday I come pick you up.’ I watched him walk away, upright, fast-footed, the white shoes flashing in the late-evening gloom. Jana Ray – manboy, slippery as a river eel. Miss Stanislaus was right. I should have arrested him. Perhaps.

There are some additional unmeasurable and unstated requirements to be a lexicographer. First and foremost, you must be possessed of something called "sprachgefühl," a German word we've stolen into English that means "a feeling for language." Sprachgefühl is a slippery eel, the odd buzzing in your brain that tells you that "planting the lettuce" and "planting misinformation" are different uses of "plant," the eye twitch that tells you that "plans to demo the store" refers not to a friendly instructional stroll on how to shop but to a little exuberance with the sledgehammer. Not everyone has sprachgefühl, and you don't know if you are possessed of it until you are knee-deep in the English language, trying your best to navigate the mucky swamp of it. I use "possessed of" advisedly: YOU will never HAVE sprachgefühl, but rather sprachgefühl will have YOU, like a Teutonic imp that settles itself at the base of your skull and hammers at your head every time you read something like "crispy-fried rice" on a menu. The imp will dig its nails into your brain, and instead of ordering take-out Chinese, you will be frozen at the take-out counter, wondering if "crispy-fried rice" refers to plain rice that has been flash fried or to the dish known as "fried rice" but perhaps prepared in a new and exciting way. 'That hyphen,' you think, 'could just be slapdash misuse or...' And your Teutonic imp giggles and squeezes its claws a little harder.

Carnaby, the brother, survived childhood.’ ‘If he went into the army, then there will be records,’ John Armstrong announced firmly. ‘I’ll contact my sons and Cecily’s husband, Captain Derwent. Trust me, Lavender; if the rogue did survive and went on to join the army, then there will be records of him—somewhere.’ ‘I need to go and speak with Doctor Goddard,’ Lavender said as they hurried down the main street in Bellingham. ‘We need to split up, Ned. I’ll visit Goddard, then go to The Redesdale Arms and speak to the landlord. You must go to Newcastle, find Mr Agar the lawyer and pursue my request for a copy of Baxter Carnaby’s last will and testament. I must see that document. The last master of Linn Hagh had far more secrets than I ever imagined.’ ‘Didn’t he just,’ Woods said. ‘This case has turned into a sack full of squirmin’ river eels. Slippery buggers, all of them Carnabys—especially the father.’ ‘Indeed. I hope that this document at the lawyers’ will shed some light on what really went on at Linn Hagh.’ ‘I’ll grab a bite to eat from The Rose and Crown before I go,’ Woods told him. ‘Oh—and I might just call on young Anna at her mother’s cottage on me way—just to check she got home safely

So gosh-darned crooked, he could stand in the shadow of a corkscrew and nevuh see the sun. So slippery, gittin’ ahold of him is like grabbing an eel in an oil slick. So low a critter, Ah had to drain the swamp just to find him.

Dennis and I followed the slippery eel of I-5 and listened to the trees: the moan of a madrone, the counsel of a Douglas fir, the shimmer of a cherry tree, the whine of a whitebark pine, paper birches, dogwoods, and oaks and maples and sweet gums and cedars and elms. Some shared memories of things that had occurred many, many years before on the land around their trunks, slow stories of fights between lovers, the massacre during the lumber industry boom, the Great Seattle Fire, and the Klondike gold rush. Trees are super nostalgic. Others recited soothing poems in sotto voce—oral balms learned as seedlings. Some spoke of when the bison and the wolf roamed this land; they talked of change and whispered about a predestined event, repeating the word “renaissance” in harmony. I had no clue what all this had to do with Michelangelo, but you don’t argue with a tree.

made Peter Rachman look like Peter Pan. But Darke was as slippery as an eel in butter. And Figgis was right: Brighton's police had never been able to pin any criminal charges on him.

Life's got a habit of slipping through your fingers, slippery as an eel, and leaving you with nothing. Maybe if we're offered a chance at something good, we should grab it while we can