“Better to be happy with the cod fish in your plate now, than to linger for the taste of a tuna that is still swimming in the sea.”

“Is this chicken, what I have, or is this fish? I know it's tuna, but it says 'Chicken by the Sea.”

“It doesn't matter if there are a lot of fish in the sea. Finding the ONE FISH to love for the rest of your life is difficult no matter where you swim.”

“Ah, but surely you must now be saying, "waitaminute, tuna fish would go bad if you kept it in your pocket for weeks and weeks without refrigerating it."To that I simply say: You obviously haven't read Professor P.S. Schackman's informative book How to Keep Tuna Fish in Your Pocket for Weeks and Weeks Without it Going Bad. I suggest you read it before complaining about the tuna situation again.”

“When you ate her tuna casserole, you didn’t talk or flip through a National Geographic. Your eyes and ears stayed inside your mouth. Your whole world kept inside your mouth, feeling and careful for the little balled-up tinfoils Irene Casey would hide in the tuna parts. A side effect of eating slow was, you naturally, genuinely tasted, and the food tasted better. Could be other ladies were better cooks, but you’d never notice.”

“We speak now or I do, and others do. You've never spoken before. You will. You'll be able to say how the city is a pit and a hill and a standard and an animal that hunts and a vessel on the sea and the sea and how we are fish in it, not like the man who swims weekly with fish but the fish with which he swims, the water, the pool. I love you, you light me, warm me, you are suns.You have never spoken before.”