The Book Of Eels Quotes

«Such is the irony of life,» Kruppe proclaimed, raising one pastry-filled hand over his head, «that one learns to distrust the obvious, surrendering instead to insidious suspicion and confused conclusion. But, is Kruppe deceived? Can an eel swim? Hurrah, these seeming muddy waters are home to Kruppe, and his eyes are wide with wonder.»

We all came from the sea once, and therefore anyone wishing to understand life on this planet has to first understand the sea.

The world is an absurd place full of contradictions and existential confusion; only those who have a goal are ultimately able to find meaning.

The narrow path looks different to different people.

What, is the jay more precious than the lark Because his fathers are more beautiful? Or is the adder better than the eel Because his painted skin contents the eye?

My Dolphin, you only guide me by surprise, a captive as Racine, the man of craft, drawn through his maze of iron composition by the incomparable wandering voice of Phèdre. When I was troubled in mind, you made for my body caught in its hangman's-knot of sinking lines, the glassy bowing and scraping of my will. . . . I have sat and listened to too many words of the collaborating muse, and plotted perhaps too freely with my life, not avoiding injury to others, not avoiding injury to myself-- to ask compassion . . . this book, half fiction, an eelnet made by man for the eel fighting my eyes have seen what my hand did.

In ancient Egypt, the eel was considered a might demon, an equal of gods and a forbidden food. A creature moving effortlessly beneath the glittering surface of the holy Nile, slithering through the sediments of existence itself. Archaeologists have found mummified eels in tiny sarcophagi, laid to their eternal rest next to bronze statuettes of the gods.

sometimes, objective probability is less important than what people want to believe.

He was the person destined to find the holy grail of natural science: the testicles of the eel.

But it is a misunderstanding that shows that when it comes to eels, not only are science and the eel itself suspect, you can't trust God either. Or God's interpreters. Or words.

The eel's pause gave Kim far too long to weigh how incredibly stupid this impulse was-- as if the tattoo covering his wrist weren't reminder enough of how irrevocable some rash ideas could be.

Moray eels have a second set of jaws deep at the back of their throat which shoot forward at high speed, grab the prey and rapidly protract backwards again, pulling the prey down into the oesophagus as the animal closes its mouth.

No human has ever seen eels reproduce; no one has seen an eel fertilize the eggs of another eel; no one has managed to breed European eels in captivity. We think we know that all eels are hatched in the Sargasso Sea, since that’s where the smallest examples of the willow leaf–like larvae have been found, but no one knows for certain why the eel insists on reproducing there and only there. No one knows for certain how it withstands the rigors of its long return journey, or how it navigates. It’s thought all eels die shortly after breeding, since no living eels have ever been found after breeding season, but then again, no mature eel, living or dead, has ever been observed at their supposed breeding ground. Put another way, no human has ever seen an eel in the Sargasso Sea. Nor can anyone fully comprehend the purpose of the eel’s many metamorphoses. No one knows how long eels can live for. In other words, more than two thousand years after Aristotle, the eel remains something of a scientific enigma, and in many ways, it has become a symbol of what is sometimes referred to as the metaphysical.

Because memory is an unreliable thing that picks and chooses what to keep. When we look for a scene from the past, it is by no means certain that we end up recalling the most important or the most relevant; rather, we remember what fits into the preconceived image that we have.

The origin of the eel and its long journey are, despite their strangeness, things we might relate to, even recognize: its protracted drifting on the ocean currents in an effort to leave home, and its even longer and more difficult way back—the things we are prepared to go through to return home.

...knowledge becomes meaningful in itself, quite apart from considerations of utility or profit. It's at the heart of everything. When you talk about human experience, you're not talking about individual experience, you're talking about communal experience, which is passed on, retold, and reexperienced.

When I held them in my hands and tried to look into their eyes, I was close to something that transcended the limits of the known universe. That is how the eel question draws you in. The eels’ mystique becomes an echo of the questions all people carry within them: Who am I? Where did I come from? Where am I going?

We know, then, that the old eels vanish from our ken into the sea, and that the sea sends us in return innumerable hosts of elvers. But whither have they wandered, these old eels, and whence have the elvers come? And what are the still younger stages like, which precede the 'elver' stage in the development of the eel? It is such problems as these that constitute the 'Eel Question.'" (quoted)

The oldest creatures we’ve found so far all came from the sea. Ming the clam, a so-called ocean quahog caught off the coast of Iceland in 2006, turned out to be at least five hundred and seven years old. Scientists estimated its year of birth to be 1499, a few years after Columbus made it to North America and during the time of the Ming dynasty in China. Who knows how long it could have lived if the scientists in their efforts to establish its age hadn’t also accidentally killed it.

Sensing that this stranger was not the dangerous kind, and being the caring, big-hearted dog that he had built his reputation on, Lucky decided that a good dose of tongue licking would put matters right. However, in a twist of bad timing, unluckily for Lucky, he landed his lick just as Felicity rolled over onto her back. So, instead of a friendly lick across the ears as he intended, Lucky’s long slobbery, pink tongue made a trail from Felicity’s chin to her cherry red lips and up to her forehead. ‘AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARRRRRRRRRGHHHH!

The entire short story teeters on the brink of uncertainty. The narrative perspective shifts continually, nothing is truly known, things may be happening in the material world, or possibly only in Nathanael’s tormented mind. To Freud, the woman who turns out to be a robot and the theft of the eyes are also central symbols at the core of the uncanny; here is an example of the uncertainty about whether a creature is alive or dead, but also the fear of being robbed of one’s sight, of losing one’s ability to observe and experience the world as it truly is.

Every dictionary contains a world. I open a book of thieves’ slang from Queen Anne’s reign and they have a hundred words for swords, for wenches, and for being hanged. They did no die, they danced on nothing. Then I peek into any one of my rural Victorian dictionaries, compiled by a lonely clergyman, with words for coppices, thickets, lanes, diseases of horses and innumerable terms for kinds of eel. They gave names to the things of their lives, and their lives are collected in these dictionaries – every detail and joke and belief. I have their worlds piled up on my desk.

You appraise every word of them, each abstruse, unwavering and rousing word. Book II of the Taittiriya Upanishad, the book of joy: Man’s elemental Self comes from food: this his head; this his right arm; this his left arm; this his heart; these legs his foundation. You get up and pace. Food gives rise to the Self? Food gives rise to the Self? The Self—Atman—is in food, and rises from food to vegetation to earth to water to air to Spirit to Brahman. Atman and Brahman are in the eel pressed indecorously between two pieces of stale bread! In the lowest things the glow of universal Spirit—but wait, the elemental Self, the living Self, the thinking Self. Legs are the elemental Self, but is the head, the brain, the mind?

Tom Crick, the history teacher and narrator of Graham Swift's novel Waterland, clings to the same feeling of a kind of fated inexplicability when he expounds on the eel: "Curiosity will never be content. Even today, when we know so much, curiosity has not unraveled the riddle of the birth and sex life of the eel. Perhaps there are things, like many others, destined to never be learnt before the world comes to its end. Or perhaps-but here I speculate, here my own curiosity leads me by the nose-the world is so arranged that when all things are learnt, when curiosity is exhausted (so, long live curiosity), that is when the world shall have come to its end. But even if we learn how, and what, and where, and when, will we ever know why? Why, why?

Mason recalls well enough that autumn of ’56, when the celebrated future Martyr of Quebec, with six companies of Infantry, occupied that unhappy Town after wages were all cut in half, and the master weavers began to fiddle the Chain on the Bar, and a weaver was lucky to earn tuppence for eight hours’ work. Mason in those same Weeks was preparing to leave the Golden Valley, to begin his job as Bradley’s assistant, even as Soldiers were beating citizens and slaughtering sheep for their pleasure, fouling and making sick Streams once holy,— his father mean-times cursing his Son for a Coward, as Loaves by the Dozens were taken, with no payment but a Sergeant’s Smirk. Mason, seeing the Choices, had chosen Bradley, and Bradley’s world, when he should instead have stood by his father, and their small doom’d Paradise. “Who are they,” inquires the Revd in his Day-Book, “that will send violent young troops against their own people? Their mouths ever keeping up the same weary Rattle about Freedom, Toleration, and the rest, whilst their own Land is as Occupied as ever it was by Rome. These forces look like Englishmen, they were born in England, they speak the language of the People flawlessly, they cheerfully eat jellied Eels, joints of Mutton, Treacle-Tarts, all that vile unwholesome Diet which maketh the involuntary American more than once bless his Exile,— yet their intercourse with the Mass of the People is as cold with suspicion and contempt, as that of any foreign invader.” “We shall all of us learn, who they are,” Capt. V. with a melancholy Phiz, “and all too soon.

Good God, Miss Butterfield,” Lord Jarret said. “Don’t tell me you read Minerva’s Gothic horrors.” “They’re not Gothic horrors!” Maria protested. “They’re wonderful books! And yes, I’ve read every single one, more than once.” “Well, that explains a few things,” Oliver remarked. “I suppose I have my sister to thank for turning a sword on me at the brothel.” Lord Gabriel laughed. “You took a sword to old Oliver? Oh, God, that’s rich!” Lord Jarret sipped some wine. “At least the mystery of the ‘weapons at her disposal’ is now solved.” “He was misbehaving,” Maria said, with a warning glance for Oliver. Did he want them to know everything, for pity’s sake? “He left me no choice.” “Oh, Maria’s always doing things like that,” Freddy said through a mouth full of eel. “That’s why we won’t teach her to shoot. She always goes off half-cocked.” Maria thrust out her chin. “A woman has to stand up for herself.” “Hear, hear!” Lady Celia raised her goblet of wine to Maria. “Don’t mind these clod-pates. What can you expect from a group of men? They would prefer we let them run roughshod over us.” “No, we wouldn’t,” Lord Gabriel protested. “I like a woman with a little fire. Of course, I can’t speak for Oliver-“ “I assure you, I rarely feel the need to run roughshod over a woman,” Oliver drawled. An arch smile touched his lips as his gaze locked with Maria’s. “I’ve kissed one or two when they weren’t prepared for it, but every man does that.” Lady Minerva snorted. “Yes, and most of them get slapped, but not you, I expect. Even when you misbehave, you have a talent for turning ladies up sweet. How else would you go from having a sword thrust at you to gaining Miss Butterfield’s consent to be your bride-eh, Miss Butterfield?” Maria didn’t answer. Something was nagging at the back of her brain-a vaguely familiar line from one of Lady Minerva’s books: “He had a talent for turning ladies up sweet, which both thrilled and alarmed her.” “Heavens alive.” She stared at Oliver. “You’re the Marquess of Rockton!” She hardly realized she’d said it aloud until his brothers and sisters laughed. A pained look crossed Oliver’s face. “Don’t remind me.” Sparing a glare for his sister, Oliver muttered, “You have no idea how my friends revel in the fact that my sister made me a villain in her novel.” “They only revel because she made them into heroes,” Lord Jarret pointed out, eyes twinkling. “Foxmoor got quite a big head over it, and Kirkwood’s been strutting around ever since the last one came out. He loved that he got to trounce you.” “That’s because he knows he couldn’t trounce me in real life,” Oliver remarked. “Though he keeps suggesting we should have a ‘rapier duel’ to prove whether he could.” Maria stared at them agape. “Do you mean that the Viscount Churchgrove is real? And Foxmoor…great heavens, that’s Wolfplain!” “Yes.” Oliver rolled his eyes. “Churchgrove is my friend, the Viscount Kirkwood, and Wolfplain is another friend, the Duke of Foxmoor. Apparently Minerva has trouble coming up with original characters.” “You know perfectly well that I only used a version of their names,” Lady Minerva said smoothly. “The characters are my own.” “Except for you, Oliver,” Lord Jarret remarked. “You’re clearly Rockton.

What a joy this book is! I love recipe books, but it’s short-lived; I enjoy the pictures for several minutes, read a few pages, and then my eyes glaze over. They are basically books to be used in the kitchen for one recipe at a time. This book, however, is in a different class altogether and designed to be read in its entirety. It’s in its own sui generis category; it has recipes at the end of most of the twenty-one chapters, but it’s a book to be read from cover to cover, yet it could easily be read chapter by chapter, in any order, as they are all self-contained. Every bite-sized chapter is a flowing narrative from a well-stocked brain encompassing Balinese culture, geography and history, while not losing its main focus: food. As you would expect from a scholar with a PhD in history from Columbia University, the subject matter has been meticulously researched, not from books and articles and other people’s work, but from actually being on the ground and in the markets and in the kitchens of Balinese families, where the Balinese themselves learn their culinary skills, hands on, passed down orally, manually and practically from generation to generation. Vivienne Kruger has lived in Bali long enough to get it right. That’s no mean feat, as the subject has not been fully studied before. Yes, there are so-called Balinese recipe books, most, if I’m not mistaken, written by foreigners, and heavily adapted. The dishes have not, until now, been systematically placed in their proper cultural context, which is extremely important for the Balinese, nor has there been any examination of the numerous varieties of each type of recipe, nor have they been given their true Balinese names. This groundbreaking book is a pleasure to read, not just for its fascinating content, which I learnt a lot from, but for the exuberance, enthusiasm and originality of the language. There’s not a dull sentence in the book. You just can’t wait to read the next phrase. There are eye-opening and jaw-dropping passages for the general reader as Kruger describes delicacies from the village of Tengkudak in Tabanan district — grasshoppers, dragonflies, eels and live baby bees — and explains how they are caught and cooked. She does not shy away from controversial subjects, such as eating dog and turtle. Parts of it are not for the faint-hearted, but other parts make you want to go out and join the participants, such as the Nusa Lembongan fishermen, who sail their outriggers at 5.30 a.m. The author quotes Miguel Covarrubias, the great Mexican observer of the 1930s, who wrote “The Island of Bali.” It has inspired all writers since, including myself and my co-author, Ni Wayan Murni, in our book “Secrets of Bali, Fresh Light on the Morning of the World.” There is, however, no bibliography, which I found strange at first. I can only imagine it’s a reflection of how original the subject matter is; there simply are no other sources. Throughout the book Kruger mentions Balinese and Indonesian words and sometimes discusses their derivations. It’s a Herculean task. I was intrigued to read that “satay” comes from the Tamil word for flesh ( sathai ) and that South Indians brought satay to Southeast Asia before Indonesia developed its own tradition. The book is full of interesting tidbits like this. The book contains 47 recipes in all, 11 of which came from Murni’s own restaurant, Murni’s Warung, in Ubud. Mr Dolphin of Warung Dolphin in Lovina also contributed a number of recipes. Kruger adds an introduction to each recipe, with a detailed and usually very personal commentary. I think my favorite, though, is from a village priest (pemangku), I Made Arnila of the Ganesha (Siwa) Temple in Lovina. water. I am sure most will enjoy this book enormously; I certainly did.” Review published in The Jakarta Globe, April 17, 2014. Jonathan Copeland is an author and photographer based in Bali. thejakartaglobe/features/spiritual-journey-culinary-world-bali

The birds were starting to leave for Scandinavia and Siberia. Long V shapes trailed across the sky and, at night, flocks of bar-tailed godwits wheeled above the beach. The e icy wind, straight off the Arctic tundra, had abated slightly, and the days were growing longer. One night there was a storm, and in the morning the beach was littered with debris: eel grass torn from the beds around Holy Island, bladderwrack encrusted with barnacles, scraps of fishing net and opaque plastic bottles. The blaze roared, orange and amber and red; sparks danced in the darkening sky. In the distance, the sea pounded on the shore and the wind wheeled about her; a curlew keened, calling like a lost child.

We ate spiral-wrapped eel meat. We ate guts. We ate liver, which is somehow different from guts. We (mostly Iris) ate two bowls of of crispy fried eel backbones. We ate eel meat wrapped around burdock root and eel fin wrapped around garlic chives. We ate smoked eel that tasted like Jewish deli food. I ate better than anyone, because I was the only member of the family willing to try the offal. All of it was precisely like Oishinbo, down to the eel anatomy chart on the wall. It was like stepping into a book, Neverending Story-style, and isn't a Luck Dragon just a big furry eel?

It is well known that some persons like cheese in a state of decay, and even "alive." There is no accounting for tastes, and it maybe hard to show why mould, which is vegetation, should not be eaten as well as salad, or maggots as well as eels. But, generally speaking, decomposing bodies are not wholesome eating, and the line must be drawn somewhere.

Love is a bag of electric eels sleeping in a lagoon full of goons and legumes. And I can say that with experience, brought by years of confidence.

She slides between these walls one foot, two feet, a hand and two this is the space in which she lives breathes, empties all that she is   she knows, where the eye seeks to spy through circles drilled into the walls the hidden, they watch, scratching idly starving for love, the thing she lost   the ones she forgot were left behind they hide now like ghosts in the leaves rustling they leap upon the breeze echoes of the past haunting mirrors   the scribe knows, he laughs sometimes knowing all the things he does it only makes him fail, too self-absorbed to comprehend what she really is   the ghosts they circle inside these walls pushing their fingers through the paper seeking to caress the curls of her hair twisting, she knows they linger   inside, watching where the beetle runs trailing all his miniscule unlived lives between the pages of a book unseen she lived it, breathed it, all that ripples   thus she dances here alone, casting rainbow dust upon the bleakest grey the steel that rusts in crusts of red rosebud offerings to the elements   laughter so raw covers an ache so deep like a monster it yearns to spring inside, where the waiting ends inside, where the spiral grows   there’s a twist in the passage that eels a malevolent darkness screams opening the chasm that yawns awake stealing tomorrow for its own sake   it twists, but nothing can touch her, lost as she is in the echoes of her past

Bali Style Magazine, Book Review. James Fenton. "Books About Food and Spirit. Bali's Food Culture." Vol. 10, no.2 May 2014 “To an outsider, the cuisine of Bali is perhaps one of its least visible cultural features. Just about every visitor to the ‘island of the gods’ will have witnessed the spell-binding beauty of Bali’s brightly festooned temples and colourful ceremonies. Many of us have had the experience of being stopped in traffic while a long procession of Balinese in traditional dress pass by. However, how many of us have witnessed first-hand the intrinsic cultural links between Bali’s cuisine and its culture and religion? How many of us have witnessed the pains-taking predawn rituals of preparing the many and varied dishes that accompany a traditional celebration, such as Lawar or Babi Guling? In Balinese Food: The Traditional Cuisine & Food Culture of Bali, social and cultural historian Dr. Vivienne Kruger has compiled a meticulously researched record of the many aspects of Balinese cuisine—from the secular to the spiritual—with an eye for detail that evades most observers. In the book Dr Kruger chronicles in careful detail the ceremonies, rituals and practices that accompany virtually all of Bali’s unique culinary arts—from satay to sambal. All the classic Balinese dishes are represented such as a babi guling, the popular spit-roast pork to bebek betutu, whole smoked duck—each accompanied with a detailed recipe for those who would like to have a go at preparing the dish themselves. Lesser known aspects of Bali’s intriguing eating habits are also presented here. You may not know that the Balinese enjoy catching and eating such delicacies as dragon flies and rice paddy eels. Dog is also widely eaten around the island, and regretfully, endangered species of turtle are still consumed on some occasions. In all, Dr. Kruger has prepared a spicy and multi-layered dish as delicious and pains-takingly prepared as the dishes described within to create an impressive work of scholarship jampacked with information and insight into the rarely seen world of Bali’s cultural cuisine.

He felt his own fear racing through his body, and it was with trembling hands that he read the Eel’s message.

Were the eels themselves responsible for her death, or were they simply predators on a body that had already expired?

As I said previously do not eat the scavengers of the sea such as oysters, crabs, clams, snails, shrimp, eels, or catfish.

as the hog is a scavenger of the earth. Shrimp, crabs, oysters, catfish, eels (water snakes), and many other species of the water; all types of beans, peas, and nuts were not produced by nature for us to try to use as a diet for our delicate stomachs to digest -- not to mention the pig.

Sonnet 1010 Life is but life's religion, Life is but life's philosophy. Books may be a part of life's growth, But no book is handbook to sensibility. Take no book as life's handbook, Believe no being as life's authority. Neither me, nor any other figure, Can be north star to your senility. You are but an electric eel, You don't need second hand electricity. Generate your own electric current, And light up your part of humanity. It is time to end all lies of authoritarianism, And take the leap of living faith across divisionism.

Oh, I don’t like that at all, Bugg. You know, I am tasting something fishy. A hint, anyway. Just how dried up was this eel you found?’ The manservant probed with his ladle and lifted the mentioned object into view. Black, wrinkled and not nearly as limp as it should have been. Tehol leaned closer and studied it for a moment. ‘Bugg . . .’ ‘Yes, master?’ ‘That’s the sole of a sandal.’ ‘It is? Oh. I was wondering why it was flatter at one end than the other.’ Tehol settled back and took another sip. ‘Still fishy, though. One might assume the wearer, being in the fish market, stepped on an eel, before the loss of his or her sole.’ ‘I am mildly disturbed by the thought of what else he or she might have stepped in.

Who are they,” inquires the Revd in his Day-Book, “that will send violent young troops against their own people? Their mouths ever keeping up the same weary Rattle about Freedom, Toleration, and the rest, whilst their own Land is as Occupied as ever it was by Rome. These forces look like Englishmen, they were born in England, they speak the language of the People flawlessly, they cheerfully eat jellied Eels, joints of Mutton, Treacle-Tarts, all that vile unwholesome Diet which maketh the involuntary American more than once bless his Exile,— yet their intercourse with the Mass of the People is as cold with suspicion and contempt, as that of any foreign invader.” “We shall all of us learn, who they are,” Capt. V. with a melancholy Phiz, “and all too soon.

The weapon chasing her through the wreckage looked like a long silvery ribbon. It moved as if it were organic, darting around pieces of metal with a lithe, sinuous glide as it followed Kira. It reminded her of Earth's eels. She'd never seen one personally but she'd seen pictures in books and in video.

People were asleep in the surrounding houses. Old Bariteau, somewhere in the rustling darkness, was looking for holes in the seabed to place his eel nets. ‘Maybe it’s for the best.’ It was the judge speaking again. ‘Would you like to come inside?’ He took a few steps, as if forgetting his package. There was such an oppressive calm around them that they had the impression they were living in slow motion. ‘Perhaps it would be more convenient to take the body back indoors?’ the judge suggested, reluctantly.

Aye,” Richard grumbled, “but it ruins the eeling, and there’ll be not so many birds. We live well enough now, with no drainage done, a goose to the table whenever we wish, eels and pike for the eating or the market, and our patches of crop land no tax gatherer can find. If the fens be drained, strangers will come in. Wild and lawless they say we be, and that we stink of our fens, but we are free men and better it is to remain so. “Once the gentry ken how rich is the land they’ll have it from us by hook or crook, or they’ll come on with their laws to interfere with the hunting, the digging of peat, or the cutting of thatch. They’d have us bound out to labor on their farms instead of us living free.

People went around warning you: Never imagine you can change someone, for people NEVER CHANGE. Then they talked about leopards and spots. Forgetting altogether about chameleons. Or that octopus, which lives on the ocean floor and can change its shape to become a stingray, a sea anemone, or even an eel,

That’s old Bariteau on his way to laying his eel nets. He won’t be back for another two hours.’ How could old Bariteau see his way in all this blackness? God knows. You sensed the presence of the sea, very close, just at the end of the narrows. You could breathe it in. It was swelling, irresistibly invading the straits.

The American Home Cook Book proposed cooking eels with a little parsley. Another suggested terrapin turtles boiled with salt.

The sun shone brightly on a stack of cauldrons outside the nearest shop. Cauldrons- All Sizes- Copper, Brass, Pewter, Silver- Self-Stirring- Collapsible, said a sign hanging over them. "Yeah, you'll be needin' one," said Hagrid, "but we gotta get yer money first." Harry wished he had about eight more eyes. He turned his head in every direction as they walked up the street, trying to look at everything at once: the shops, the things outside them, the people doing their shopping. A plump woman outside an Apothecary was shaking her head as they passed, saying, "Dragon liver, seventeen Sickles an ounce, they're mad...." A low, soft hooting came from a dark shop with a sign saying Eeylops Owl Emporium- Tawny, Screech, Barn, Brown, and Snowy. Several boys about Harry's age had their noses pressed against a window with broomsticks in it. "Look," Harry heard one of them say, "the new Nimbus Two Thousand- fastest ever-" There were shops selling robes, shops selling telescopes and strange silver instruments Harry had never seen before, windows stacked with barrels of bat spleens and eels' eyes, tottering piles of spell books, quills, and rolls of parchment, potion bottles, globes of the moon....

Pasaule ir absurda vieta, kur netrūkst pretrunu un eksistenciāla sajukuma, bet tikai tam, kuram ir mērķis, ir arī iespēja atrast jēgu. Ir jāiztēlojas laimīgs zutis.