Herring Quotes

[Bertholt] Brecht looked very thin, like a herring with very sensitive hands. ~ Lotte Lenya

nearby New York or distant Beijing, but whenever I was in town, I'd call to say I was on my way. Each time I'd arrive, she'd already have covered half the dining room table with the kind of items I only seemed to consume with her. They were a reflection of her more traditional fare from the old world - hard-boiled eggs, pickled cucumbers, herring in brine, black bread and cream cheese. We'd supplement this with ethnic staples ~ Leon Berger

If you want to catch trout, don't fish in a herring barrel. ~ Ann Landers

Your explanation is good, but your herring doesn't fry, as we say in Ramaldah, he exploded. ~ Andrew Ashling

How about this? Hong Kong had been appropriated by British drug pushers in the 1840s. We wanted Chinese silk, porcelain, and spices. The Chinese didn't want our clothes, tools, or salted herring, and who can blame them? They had no demand. Our solution was to make a demand, by getting large sections of the populace addicted to opium, a drug which the Chinese government had outlawed. When the Chinese understandably objected to this arrangement, we kicked the fuck out of them, set up a puppet government in Peking that hung signs on parks saying NO DOGS OR CHINESE, and occupied this corner of their country as an import base. Fucking godawful behavior, when you think about it. And we accuse them of xenophobia. It would be like the Colombians invading Washington in the early twenty-first century and forcing the White House to legalize heroin. And saying, Don't worry, we'll show ourselves out, and take Florida while we're at it, okay? Thanks very much. ~ David Mitchell

You can paint a dead herring purple, and you can hang it on the wall, but hard as you try, you can't make it sing. ~ Raphael Bob-Waksberg

There are billions of gods in the world. They swarm as thick as herring roe. Most of them are too small to see and never get worshipped, at least by anything bigger than bacteria, who never say their prayers and don't demand much in the way of miracles. ~ Terry Pratchett

If people in power are artfully pulling a red herring to cover up the cataclysm of their commitments, keeping people on a short leash and driving them playfully into an alley of false promises, we would do well to rely on attentive and considerate observers who send out alarm signals in time to prevent social corrosion. (" High noon. ") ~ Erik Pevernagie

Just because you're scared to like someone doesn't make the like go away. ~ Ashley Herring Blake

Life is full of a thousand red herrings, and it takes the history of a civilisation to work out which are the red herrings and which aren't. ~ Peter Greenaway

Any great movie in the old days has a red herring. Hitchcock was so good at that. ~ Robert Knepper

At the time when Pope Pius VII had to leave Rome, which had been conquered by revolutionary French, the committee of the Chamber of Commerce in London was considering the herring fishery. One member of the committee observed that, since the Pope had been forced to leave Rome, Italy was probably going to become a Protestant country. "Heaven help us," cried another member. "What," responded the first, "would you be upset to see the number of good Protestants increase?" "No," the other answered, "it isn't that, but suppose there are no more Catholics, what shall we do with our herring?" - Alexandre Dumas, Le grand dictionnaire de cuisine, 1873 ~ Mark Kurlansky

Yet there will always be a problem about getting rid of the hyphen: if it's not extra-marital sex (with a hyphen), it is perhaps extra marital sex, which is quite a different bunch of coconuts. Phrases abound that cry out for hyphens. Those much-invoked examples of the little used car, the superfluous hair remover, the pickled herring merchant, the slow moving traffic and the two hundred odd members of the Conservative Party would all be lost without it. ~ Lynne Truss

I think the whole human-induced greenhouse gas thing is a red herring ... I see climate change as due to the ocean circulation pattern. I see this as a major cause of climate change ... These are natural processes. We shouldn't blame them on humans and CO2. ~ William M. Gray

It's okay not to be okay. Most people don't think so, but I do. It has to be okay to not be okay all the time ~ Ashley Herring Blake

The spectacular incident of the stones serves as a kind of red herring in this respect. Many researchers have adopted the erroneous belief that where there has been one incident, there must be others. To offer another analogy, this is like dispatching a crew of meteor watchers to Crater National Park because a huge asteroid struck there two million years ago. ~ Stephen King

I knew with The West Wing that that wasn't going to be for very long, that I was just the red herring. ~ William Devane

I tell myself that I don't need him. But he's the only person I want right now. ~ Ashley Herring Blake

I just want to move on. ~ Ashley Herring Blake

The past is not another country; it is another life. The texture of daily living is different now than in the past, more different the further back we look, until we find people whose experiences created a psychology we might find baffling or rude. Many details that once made up the daily round are lost to us because people considered them too trivial to write down. Knowing the past means knowing what people carried in their pockets, what they did with their sewage, where their dogs slept. Those details may seem unimportant, but what they convey is not. ~ Scott Herring

His eyes said everything. They always did. ~ Ashley Herring Blake

I'm left with a mouthful of words that wouldn't have made a difference anyway. ~ Ashley Herring Blake

At the door fo the dining-room he left us. 'Good night, Mr Jorkins,' he said. 'I hope you will pay us another visit when you next "cross the herring pond".' 'I say, what did your governor mean by that? He seemed almost to think I was American.' 'He's rather odd at times. ~ Evelyn Waugh

You and me, we're sandy spoons and fireworks, lighthouses and wishes and peanut butter" -Grace ~ Ashley Herring Blake

Murder mystery featuring woman detective and two suicide/murder victims. Threw in three read herring suspects before the big reveal (the cuckolded wife) which I saw coming. Way too much brainstorming different scenarios by the detective and her partner. They dreamed up every possible scenario but "the Easter Bunny did it", seemingly to fill pages. Meh. ~ Carolyn Arnold

Voluntary communism, together with laissez-faire capitalism, has nothing to be ashamed of on moral and economic grounds. They can each hold up their heads, high. Far from enemies, they are merely opposite sides of the same voluntaristic coin. Together, they must battle state coercion, whether called State Capitalism or State Socialism. The point is, "left" vs. "right" is a red herring. The reddest and perhaps most misleading red herring in all political-economic theory. ~ Walter Block

The best lies are layered in between solid truths. ~ Ashley Herring Blake

Concocting a statement that you have trouble believing in the first place (such as "A herring is a mammal"), and then negating it, requires two bouts of cognitive heavy lifting rather than one. ~ Steven Pinker

On a boat cruising down east, sardines are scooped out of the holding seine at Eastport at dawn. 'Sardines' may be any of several species of fish; in Maine they are usually small herring. Fish are penned in nets until the boats are ready to load. The fish are taken a short distance to canneries which work round the clock, according to the time of the catch. ~ Luis Marden

My heart is crushed within me. Here is the truth: You made me love you- your eyes and mouth and voice. You pulled me into your heart. You don't want me there and I don't want to be there, but it's where I will always live. ~ Ashley Herring Blake

Depression is a red herring," said Nariman. "I think a lot about the past, it's true. But at my age, the past is more present than the here and now. and there is not much percentage in the future. ~ Rohinton Mistry

Successful improvisation is mostly a matter of taking your thoughts out of the equation, because thinking can keep the magic from happening. You have to be open enough to let the magic happen, instead of trying to make it happen because magic is never made. ~ Jimmy Herring

Damn'd neuters, in their middle way of steering, Are neither fish, nor flesh, nor good red herring. ~ John Dryden

Good stuff!" [Knud] said. "All organic, of course! All fresh! We take care of the earth here! You like smoked herring? You will. Of course you will! I work in iron, though I have also done some of these wood carvings. All of my work is based on traditional Danish art. I am a Viking! Eat! ~ Maureen Johnson

It is a peculiarity of the English language that while most fish swim in schools, herring swim in shoals, a word of the same meaning derived from the same Anglo-Saxon root. ~ Mark Kurlansky

When you think of a great twist or a red herring or a way of misdirecting the reader, it is good, but you know that they are just tricks at the end of the day, and the way to keep interest is to write characters that people care about. ~ Mark Billingham

He is ever inglorious
His laugh is laborious
His smell is notorious
Impale the herring king! ~ Shannon Hale

First you must find ... another shrubbery! Then, when you have found the shrubbery, you must place it here, beside this shrubbery, only slightly higher so you get a two layer effect with a little path running down the middle. ("A path! A path!") Then, you must cut down the mightiest tree in the forrest ... with ... a herring! ~ Graham Chapman

I think I'm falling for a red herring here, ~ Liane Moriarty

Forget about the 10,000-hour rule you've heard so much about. It's a red herring. What's important is not the hours you've practiced, but the kind of practice in your hours. Focus on the tree, not the forest. ~ Jonathan Harnum

A wise word is not a substitute for a piece of herring. ~ Sholom Aleichem

She tilts her head and puts her soft hand on my face, letting her fingertips glide down my neck, to my chest. She flattens her palm there, the heat of her hand searing through my shirt. "You're..." She pauses and I take a breath, my heart thumping madly. "I don't know. It sounds stupid, but... you're like home. ~ Ashley Herring Blake

Potential was a red herring to plot a life of wandering curiosity. ~ Nicholas Dawidoff

Death. To die. To expire. To pass on. To perish. To peg out. To push up daisies. To push up posies. To become extinct. Curtains, deceased, Demised, departed And defunct. Dead as a doornail. Dead as a herring. Dead as a mutton. Dead as nits. The last breath. Paying a debt to nature. The big sleep. God's way of saying, "Slow down." ~ Patch Adams

A weird thing I'm learning about grief - grief in all its forms - is that you can feel almost everything once. You'd think all those tears, all that laughter, all that deep sadness and even deeper hope would still the lungs and stop the heart.
But no. It's sort of the opposite.
And that's the funny thing about wishes - only when one comes true do you realize the full scope of that wish. What you really wanted. The beauty of it. The complexity.
The cost." -Grace ~ Ashley Herring Blake

I still kept so much from her at that time, but she made me feel like, someday, I wouldn't anymore - she made me feel so many somedays. ~ Ashley Herring Blake

No contact with savage Indian tribes has ever daunted me more than the morning I spent with an old lady swathed in woolies who compared herself to a rotten herring encased in a block of ice. ~ Claude Levi-Strauss

If anyone can inspire you to believe in real, honest-to-God love stories again, it's William Shakespeare. ~ Ashley Herring Blake

Gay marriage is a complete red herring to distract everyone from the economy and the war and health care and education. ~ David O. Russell

I told them you hate herring."
"Why?"
"And that you love plum cake. And that Ana Kuya took a switch to you when you ruined your spring slippers jumping in puddles."
I winced. "Why would you tell them all that?"
"I wanted to make you human," he said. "All they see when they look at you is the Sun Summoner. They see a threat, another powerful Grisha like the Darkling. I want them to see a daughter or a sister or a friend. I want them to see Alina. ~ Leigh Bardugo

Foreshadow, plot buster or red herring ... only time will tell: P69
Cassie waited; in the evening light through the window her eyes looked huge, opaque and watchful. I knew she was giving me a chance to say, Fuck the hair clip, let's forget we ever found it. Even now the temptation, tired and profitless though it may be, is to wonder what would have happened if I had. ~ Tana French

Approach your lives as if they were novels, with their own heroes, villains, red herrings, and triumphs ~ Mary Higgins Clark

Even girls made of stars are captives, bound at the wrists and traded like property. Even girls made of stars aren't asked, aren't believed, aren't considered worth the effort unless they can offer something in return.
Even girls made of stars buy into those lies sometimes. ~ Ashley Herring Blake

Here's the thing about wishes: they're always changing on you. They're either dying out or they're realized, and then they're not wishes anymore. They're only truly alive in their anticipation" -Grace ~ Ashley Herring Blake

Yes sir, the fish was left in place of the crystal ball. It's been bagged and tagged for analysis.
Great. Now we have another red herring on our hands. ~ A.F. Stewart

This is okay?" he asks.
"Yes."
The word explodes through me, empowering and sexy, and I can't get my bra off fast enough. ~ Ashley Herring Blake

History gives us the facts, sort of, but from literary works we can learn what the past smelled like, sounded like, and felt like, the forgotten gritty details of a lost era. Literature brings us as close as we can come to reinhabiting the past. By reclaiming this use of literature in the classroom, perhaps we can move away from the political agitation that has been our bread and butter - or porridge and hardtack - for the last 30 years. ~ Scott Herring

We are trying to get marijuana reclassified medically. If we do that, we'll be using the issue as a red herring to give marijuana a good name. ~ Keith Stroup

Part of the value of TASK is not to invest into anything permanent; to really celebrate the moment-the fluidity of creative action. ~ Oliver Herring

The feeling was wild and sort of unpredictable, like a good summer storm. ~ Ashley Herring Blake

The Arabs could have peace tomorrow if sufficient numbers of Palestinians were not content to be used as cannon fodder in fruitless assaults on Israel, even as the surrounding Arab powers distract the Arab masses with the red herring of Israel while retarding their countries with their repression and corruption. ~ Conrad Black

The most difficult part of any crime novel is the plotting. It all begins simply enough, but soon you're dealing with a multitude of linked characters, strands, themes and red herrings - and you need to try to control these unruly elements and weave them into a pattern. ~ Ian Rankin

Six million Jews died in the Holocaust. Yet many people simply cannot accept this. They keep bringing up red herring after red herring to avoid finally admitting "YES, it happened exactly as the history books say, end of story." Which, of course, is the only correct response to the question anti-Semites raise about whether or not this historically and forensically-proven Nazi genocide even happened. ~ James Morcan

Bishop on "At the Fishhouses"
At the last minute, after I'd had a chance to do a little research in Cape Breton, I found
I'd said codfish scales once when it should have been herring scales. I hope they
corrected it all right.
2
Quite a few lines of "At the Fishhouses" came to me in a dream, and the scene - which
was real enough, I'd recently been there - but the old man and the conversation, etc.,
were all in a later dream ~ Elizabeth Bishop

Everyone is a creative agent ... The tools are your imagination and your imagination is limitless. ~ Oliver Herring

I shift the basketball from hand to hand, hating his tone, as though we're the only two levelheaded people on earth and everyone else is full of shit. ~ Ashley Herring Blake

The words fall out of my mouth like rain- I felt them coming, smelled them in the air, but there was nothing I could do to stop them. ~ Ashley Herring Blake

You can never really tell, it's kind of a red herring until you see the project I think. You just know if you like working with someone or not, and he does have a real sweetness about him, I think. ~ Mary-Louise Parker

after-meal sleepiness. ~ Bert Herring

Water is essential for life, books are essential for knowledge. ~ Redmond Herring

You and I, in our quest for truth, must set ourselves on a higher level. If the worldly reasoner
is like a butcher, we wish not to be found like them - minus fingers or thumbs. Spiritual reasoning
can be a very sharp blade; it behooves us, then, to 'rightly divide'. ~ D.L. Herring

If you accomplish nothing in life... do not tell your friends... they expected it. If you accomplish success in life... find new friends,"... Redmond Herring ~ Redmond Herring

Such a loaded word - live. It could simply mean existing. Heart pumping blood, lungs taking in air. Or it could meant settling into something. Being a part of what's around you. Investing." -Grace ~ Ashley Herring Blake

Society is the dynamic equilibrium of public complaint. ~ Del Herring

Sam and me- star-crossed and still entangled up on a hill overlooking the city. On top of the world. I almost laugh at how ridiculous it is. How silly it is that we found each other, that we grounded each other, that we gave each other a sense of freedom and a home. ~ Ashley Herring Blake

His own finance system was simple: whatever he got, he spent. ~ Peg Herring

Writing and directing might be a red herring, and really I'm just re-examining what it is to act, to do it well and do it properly. ~ Damian Lewis

We're going to stop this preposterous obsession with economic growth at the cost of all else. Great economic success doesn't produce national happiness. It produces Republicans and Switzerland. So we're going to concentrate on just being lovely and pleasant and civilized. We're going to have the best schools and hospitals, the most comfortable public transportation, the liveliest arts, the most useful and well-stocked libraries, the grandest parks, the cleanest streets, the most enlightened social policies. In short, we're going to be like Sweden, but with less herring and better jokes. ~ Bill Bryson

When the Basque whalers applied to cod the salting techniques they were using on whale, they discovered a particularly good marriage because the cod is virtually without fat, and so if salted and dried well, would rarely spoil. It would outlast whale, which is red meat, and it would outlast herring, a fatty fish that became a popular salted item of the northern countries in the Middle Ages. ~ Mark Kurlansky

The whole world was crying as everything fell apart. ~ Ashley Herring Blake

But there are too many other unsaid things that keep me from saying anything at all. ~ Ashley Herring Blake

How was Ivy supposed to know how to handle all these feelings for June, all these feelings at all, if everything she saw and read about and heard about was all boy-girl, girl-boy? ~ Ashley Herring Blake

If she were lying on a plate with a herring, you wouldn't be able to tell the difference. ~ Woody Allen

I didn't break then and I'm not breaking now. ~ Ashley Herring Blake

It's not what's in the looks that counts - it's what's in the broeks that counts! ~ Simon Herring

Most people are much more unusual and complicated and eccentric and playful and creative than they have time to express. ~ Oliver Herring

When I was nine years old, I wrote a short story called 'How to Build a Snowman,' from which no practical snowperson-crafting techniques could be gleaned. The story was an assignment for class and it featured a series of careful but meaningless instructions. Of course, the building of the snowman was a red herring. ~ Sloane Crosley

If I'd had a mirror I'd have looked at the whole of myself, though, as a matter of fact, I knew what I looked like already. A fat man of forty-five, in a grey herring-bone suit a bit the worse for wear and a bowler hat. Wife, two kids, and a house in the suburbs written all over me. Red face and boiled blue eyes. I know, you don't have to tell me. But the thing that struck me, as I gave my dental plate the once-over before slipping it back into my mouth, was that it doesn't matter. Even false teeth don't matter. I'm fat - yes. I look like a bookie's unsuccessful brother - yes. No woman will ever go to bed with me again unless she's paid to. I know all that. But I tell you I don't care. I don't want the women, I don't even want to be young again. I only want to be alive. And I was alive that moment when I stood looking at the primroses and the red embers under the hedge. It's a feeling inside you, a kind of peaceful feeling, and yet it's like a flame. ~ George Orwell

The moon shone like herrings in the water. ~ Dorothy Wordsworth

Because when they thought the stars were sticking to her, really all the loneliness and sadness were falling off. The stars were underneath. ~ Ashley Herring Blake

Have caviar if you like, but it tastes like herring to me. ~ William A. Drake

The argument that gay marriage doesn't affect straight marriages is a ridiculous red herring: Gay marriage affects society and law in dramatic ways. Religious groups will come under direct assault as federal and state governments move to strip them of their non-profit statuses if they refuse to perform gay marriages. ~ Ben Shapiro

For a long time, when I was a little younger, I thought that was how every girl saw other girls - this mix between beauty and awe and curiosity, a thin layer of lust just underneath. Took until I was fourteen to realize that no, the way I thought about other girls was a little different. ~ Ashley Herring Blake

Look here,' said Nigel suddenly, 'let's pretend it's a detective novel. Where would we be by this time? About halfway through, I should think. Well, who's your pick'

'I am invariably gulled by detective novels. No herring so red but I raise my voice and give chase.'

'Don't be ridiculous.' said Nigel.

'Fact. You see in real detection herrings are so often out of season.'

'Well, never mind, who's your pick?'

'It depends on the author. If it's Agatha Christie, Miss Wade's occulted guilt drips from every page. Dorothy Sayers's Lord Peter would plump for Pringle, I fancy. Inspector French would go for Ogden. Of course, Ogden, on the face of it, is the first suspect. ~ Ngaio Marsh

Faith is a wondrous thing; it is not only capable of moving mountains, but also of making you believe that a herring is a race horse. ~ Arthur Koestler

A blanket of herring clouds was rolling in from the east. ~ John Steinbeck

There's lots of good fish in the sea ... maybe ... but the vast masses seem to be mackerel or herring, and if you're not mackerel or herring yourself, you are likely to find very few good fish in the sea. ~ D.H. Lawrence

Belief isn't easy. It isn't black and white. ~ Ashley Herring Blake

Yet despite its current usage, the @ is not a product of the digital age, and may be almost as old as the ampersand. It had been associated with trade for many centuries, known as an *amphora* or jar, a unit of measurement. Most countries have their own term for it, often linked to food (in Hebrew it is *shtrudl*, meaning strudel, in Czech it is *zavinac* or rollmop herring) or to cute animals (*Affenschwanz* or monkey's tail in German, *snabel-a* meaning "the letter a, with a trunk," in Danish, *sobaka* or dog in Russian,), or both (*escargot* in French). ~ Simon Garfield

It's such a little thing, this skirt. For other girls, maybe it's makeup or a sport or having sex or not having sex or writing or music or kicking ass in school or wearing your hair so it looks like the sun's unruly rays. I think every girl has a thing or two, tiny details in her life that say This is me. I'm done hiding. I'm done feeling ashamed. ~ Ashley Herring Blake