Merman Quotes

My career at Warner Brothers consisted of one musical short subject. I was running around in a bear skin. Very chic. ~ Ethel Merman

So does that mean we get Eric, too?" Willa said. "Because Eric is definitely hot, and if I had my choice I'd take Eric over some white-haired king merman any day. ~ Ridley Pearson

You were given a task by the Lord and Lady of High Heaven themselves. Quit now, and forsake all Grens who care for peace. Rise, and create a legend that will live on longer than you. Make your choice, Nicholes Merman. Rise or fall. ~ Ethan Melman

I was lucky enough to have the songs in my first show written by George and Ira Gershwin. Then Cole Porter wrote five shows for me. ~ Ethel Merman

Legend has it that when God created me, he gave me a big distinctive voice, a lot of boldness and no heart. ~ Ethel Merman

I wouldn't trust any man as far as you can throw a piano. ~ Ethel Merman

Any audience that gets a laugh out of me gets it while I'm facing them. ~ Ethel Merman

Ethel Merman would stay with a show for years and tour with it. So would Mary Martin, the great stars. They recognized the value of that success and nurtured it. Now, you come from Hollywood, you play 12 weeks and go away. I don't think that's the best policy. ~ Harold Prince

[Cole Porter] sang like a hinge. ~ Ethel Merman

Who's happy these days? ~ Ethel Merman

So the merman cannot belong to Agnes unless, after having made the infinite movement, the movement of repentance, he makes still one more movement by virtue of the absurd. ~ Soren Kierkegaard

The cut, which the merman had placed on my hip, was shimmering with a soft, almost transparent, lavender glow. Like a stained-glass window, it refracted any light that touched it into lavender shimmers. ~ Meaghan Rauscher

Under the sea, the merman feast on starfish soup and all the serving men are crabs. ~ George R R Martin

Your boyfriend dive into, like, three feet of water. He didn't come up, either.He is probably drowned or turned into a merman. Honestly, I don't know which would be worse. .. ~ Meg Cabott

Be yourself
it's the one thing you can do better than anyone else. ~ Ethel Merman

This angered me. "Nothing has changed!?!?" I screamed at him. I was furious with him. He had duped me. "Your a mermaid! Your a freak!"
Calling him a freak hurt his feelings. "I am the same boy you fell in love with. I can't help who I was born as, but that doesn't affect the boy in which I want to be."
"And what is that?" I asked, really emotional right now.
"A boy who wants to be given the chance to love you."
With these tender words, I instantly ran into his arms. "Oh Trysten, I don't care who you are, or what you can become, but I love you for loving me. ~ Keira D. Skye

When you are in deep conflict about something, sometimes the most trivial thing can tip the scales. ~ Ethel Merman

There was a bounty on my head, it was four days before Christmas, and I was having turtle gumbo with a merman, an undead pirate king, two loups-garou, and my best friend - a human pregnant with the half-elven child who had unknowingly helped set this whole debacle in motion. Plus a newbie vampire who didn't like the smell of food anymore. ~ Suzanne Johnson

My beloved Mom and Pop always rated tops with each other, and that's the way it will always be. ~ Ethel Merman

In my case, things have pretty much been handed to me. ~ Ethel Merman

I Got Rhythm really put me on the map. ~ Ethel Merman

I've made a wonderful living playing that theatrical character - the professional brassy dame. ~ Ethel Merman

Now what kind of an attitude is that, 'These things happen?' They only happen because this whole country is just full of people who, when these things happen, they just say, 'These things happen,' and that's why they happen! We gotta have control of what happens to us. ~ Ethel Merman

I can never remember being afraid of an audience. If the audience could do better, they'd be up here on stage and I'd be out there watching them. ~ Ethel Merman

Up the still, glistening beaches,
Up the creeks we will hie,
Over banks of bright seaweed
The ebb-tide leaves dry.
We will gaze, from the sand-hills,
At the white, sleeping town;
At the church on the hill-side
And then come back down.
Singing: There dwells a loved one,
But cruel is she!
She left lonely for ever
The kings of the sea.
(from poem 'The Forsaken Merman') ~ Matthew Arnold

Music, in the past few years ... anything singable or understandable is square. ~ Ethel Merman

The Sultan tapped his tented fingers, staring into the distance. Suddenly, he lunged toward me, took hold of my wrist, and pulled me roughly down to sit on the cushion beside him. "This . . . mermaid," he said through clenched teeth, leaning in so close to me that I could smell the mint on his breath. "The one who sang to the king at night." His voice was fierce, but quiet. I couldn't tell if anyone but me could hear. "How . . ." he began. "How did she think of the king . . . in her heart?"
I glanced quickly up at his face and saw there a look that took me by surprise. An oddly soft, vulnerable, hurting look. The look of a man who might cry out in his sleep at night, like a child. But then the stony mask slid back.
"Did she despise him," the Sultan asked, "for making her sing for her life each night? Did she only pretend affection to save her own skin? Did she . . . loathe him for what he had done before, to his other wives? For his . . . sins?"
"No, my lord," I said softly. "She loved him."
"Do you swear it?" He gripped my wrist harder, until it hurt.
"Yes, my lord. She told me - " I stopped, corrected myself. "She told the mermaid with the broken fin. She said the king - the merman king, my lord - she said that he had a deep hurting inside him. She said that she wanted to soothe him. And when the mermaid with the broken fin . . . questioned how the queen could love him - because of the things you just said, my lord - the queen said, 'I'm not ashamed ~ Susan Fletcher

You'll never prove you're too good for a job by not doing your best. ~ Ethel Merman

You gotta have a gimmick. ~ Ethel Merman

I'll admit - I was honored to be on the cover of Time. ~ Ethel Merman

I have been ambitious to be a somebody from the time I was 5 years old. ~ Ethel Merman

I don't want you two hurt because of me." ...
"At least try, sweetling. Please." At her slight nod, he did what came natural and lowered his head. She gasped into his mouth, and he pressed his lips to hers. The electric shock between them only pushed him to kiss her deeper ...
"I think I can try if you're going to keep kissing me like that," she finally said, and he grinned. ~ Carrie Ann Ryan

Of my four marriages, the one to Bob Levitt is the only one I don't regret. ~ Ethel Merman

Serafina, Ava, Ling, and Becca swam inside. Neela followed them, but at the very last second, shield. "I can't," she said. "Once I go in, there's no way out again. This is real. You're real. All this time, a part of me was hoping you were only a dream."

The witch cocked her head. "Only a dream?" she said mockingly. "Long ago, a great mage dreamed of stealing the gods' powers. Abbadon was born of that dream. Atlantis died because of it. Now, because of a new dreamer, all the waters of the world may fall. There is nothing more real than a dream." She nodded at the waters behind Neela. Silt was rising in the distance, a great deal of it. "The merman Traho knows this. He's coming. If you do not believe me, perhaps he can convince you. ~ Jennifer Donnelly

I was born in my parents' bedroom on January 16. The World Almanac says it was 1909. I say it was 1912. But what difference does it make as long as I feel 33? ~ Ethel Merman

Compared to me, everyone has normal relationships.'
Sera laughed. 'Right. Especially me. I'm the queen of normal relationships. The merman I love is about to marry someone else. We have to pretend to hate each other. And his future wife is trying to kill me. Totally normal. ~ Jennifer Donnelly

First, there will be no kidnapping. I know you're stronger and bigger and have magic and crap, but I'm drawing the line at kidnapping. ~ Carrie Ann Ryan

I leaned down and looked at his handsome face. I wanted to kiss him in a way that would remain soft and true on his lips, all the while help him from escaping the overwhelming sense of sadnes that he felt. I pressed forward and kissed him, tasting the saltiness of fish against his lips, and the disappointment that he held so very deeply inside. I kissed him long and wide, yet limp and yielding, pulling myself away from reality to only drown in the fantasy of our love. I touched his mouth in such a loving way, that not even his incapability to reach into my soul, could tear us away from exchanging such romance. He immediately gave into the kiss, his sadness slowly giving way to the moment that we so intimately shared. It amazed me what a merman could do, even when flowing tears streamed down his face. Through the bridge of kissing, I had healed him, and he had healed me in return. ~ Keira D. Skye

Broadway has been very good to me. But then, I've been very good to broadway. ~ Ethel Merman

Always give them the old fire, even when you feel like a squashed cake of ice. ~ Ethel Merman

Everything's coming up roses - for me. ~ Ethel Merman

The sea had jeeringly kept his finite body up, but drowned the infinite of his soul. Not drowned entirely, though. Rather carried down alive to wondrous depths, where strange shapes of the unwarped primal world glided to and fro before his passive eyes; and the miser-merman, Wisdom, revealed his hoarded heaps; and among the joyous, heartless, ever-juvenile eternities, Pip saw the multitudinous, God-omnipresent, coral insects, that out of the firmament of waters heaved the colossal orbs. He saw God's foot upon the treadle of the loom, and spoke it; and therefore his shipmates called him mad. So man's insanity is heaven's sense; and wandering from all mortal reason, man comes at last to that celestial thought, which, to reason, is absurd and frantic; and weal or woe, feels then uncompromised, indifferent as his God. ~ Herman Melville

I always believed that for every good thing that happens in life, two tragedies rush in to kick your ass to keep you from getting all saccharine and deluded. It was as if just before you turned left into paradise, Ethel Merman popped up in your backseat and shouted, 'Turn right, you idiot! ~ Barry Brennessel

I preferred delivering my performance in person. I liked to be in control. You couldn't be in films. ~ Ethel Merman

Eisenhower was my war hero and the President I admire and respect most. ~ Ethel Merman

If you do a musical, it's really thrilling and it's a lot of work, but it's very rewarding. I would say, for me, what I like best is what I do, which is, I call it vaudeville, I call it live, I call it in concert, I call it what Bette Midler does, and what Garland did for years, and Ethel Merman. ~ Debbie Reynolds

I work as often as I want and yet I'm free as a bird. ~ Ethel Merman

How To Make A Human

Take the cat out of the sphinx
and what is left? Riddle Me That.

Take the horse from the centaur
and you take away the sleek grace,
the strength of harnessed power.
What is left can still run across fields,
after a fashion, but is easily winded;
what is left will therefore erect buildings
to divide the open plains so he no longer
must face the wide expanse where once
his equine legs raced the winds
and, sometimes, won.

Take the bull from the Minotaur
but what is left will still assemble
a herd for the sake of ruling over it.
What is left will kill for sport,
in an arena thronged with spectators
shouting "Ole" at each deadly thrust.

Take the fish from the Merman:
What is left can still swim,
if only with lots of splashing; gone
is the sleek sliding through the waves,
alert to the subtle changes in the current.
What is left will build ships
so he can cross the oceans without
getting his feet wet, what is left won't care
if his boats pollute the seas he can no
longer breathe so long as their passage
can keep him from sinking.

Take the goat from the satyr
but what is left will dance out of reach
before you have the chance
to get that Dionysian streak of myschief,
the love of music and wine, the rutting parts
that like to party all th ~ Lawrence Schimel

I wasn't straining at the bit to become a movie star any more than I had plotted to get out of vaudeville and into Broadway musicals. ~ Ethel Merman

Once I had all the attention, all I had to do was deliver. ~ Ethel Merman

Christmas carols always brought tears to my eyes. I also cry at weddings. I should have cried at a couple of my own. ~ Ethel Merman

I worshipped Ethel Merman and I worshipped Ethel Merman a lot. It's incredible - Ethel Merman was a conventional singer. Her naming her child Ethel Merman, Jr., was, to me, one of the coolest feminist things. ~ Beth Ditto

Mom claimed that I could carry a tune at 2 or 3 years of age. Maybe she was a little prejudiced. ~ Ethel Merman

Maybe he's an exotic dancer. He must be used to walking around with that monstrosity dangling like that. Stop looking at it. ~ Monica La Porta

I won't meet his glare. "I guess I didn't care." Telling him I meant to murder his sister probably wouldn't go over very well. It would definitely cancel out the Hallmark vote.
"Unacceptable. Don't ever risk your life like that again, do you understand?"
I snort, sending little air bubbles dancing upward. "Hey, you know what else I don't care about? You giving me orders. I acted stupid, but-"
"Actually, this is a good time to point out that I'm a Royal," he says, pointing to the small tattoo of a fork on his stomach, just above the border where his abs turn into fish. "And since you're obviously Syrena, you do have to obey me."
"I'm what?" I say, trying to figure out how an eating utensil could possibly validate his claim of seniority.
"Syrena. That's what we-including you-are called."
"Syrena? Not mermaids?"
Galen clears his throat. "Uh, mermaid?"
"Really? You're gonna go there now? Fine, merman-wait, I wouldn't be a merman." Really though, what do I know about fish gender? Except that Galen is definitely male, no matter what species he is.
"Just for the record, we hate that word. And by we, I mean you also."
I roll my eyes. "Fine. But I'm not Syrena. Did I mention I don't have a big fin-"
"You're not trying hard enough."
"Trying hard enough? To grow a fin? ~ Anna Banks

I mentioned that I was thinking of getting out of the business after Call Me Madam. I thought maybe I should become a homebody. ~ Ethel Merman

I have plenty of invitations to go places, lots to do. If I'm not working, I go to have my hair taken care of and work at needlepoint. ~ Ethel Merman

At one time I smoked, but in 1959 I couldn't think of anything else to give up for Lent so I stopped - and I haven't had a cigarette since. ~ Ethel Merman