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Quotes About Octopus

They eat the dainty food of famous chefs with the same pleasure with which they devour gross peasant dishes, mostly composed of garlic and tomatoes, or fisherman's octopus and shrimps, fried in heavily scented olive oil on a little deserted beach.
~ Luigi Barzini
It seemed to be a sort of monster, or symbol representing a monster, of a form which only a diseased fancy could conceive. If I say that my somewhat extravagant imagination yielded simultaneous pictures of an octopus, a dragon, and a human caricature, I shall not be unfaithful to the spirit of the thing. A
~ H.P. Lovecraft
If I say that my somewhat extravagant imagination yielded simultaneous pictures of an octopus, a dragon, and a human caricature, I shall not be unfaithful to the spirit of the thing. A pulpy, tentacled head surmounted a grotesque and scaly body with rudimentary wings; but it was the general outline of the whole which made it most shockingly frightful. Behind the figure was a vague suggestion of a Cyclopean architectural background.
~ H.P. Lovecraft
If I say that my somewhat extravagant imagination yielded simultaneous pictures of an octopus, a dragon, and a human caricature
~ H.P. Lovecraft
If you go to the octopus, and if you're not too squeamish, dissect it. You'll find that it has a camera eye which is remarkable similar to our own. And yet we know that the octopus belongs to an invertebrate group called cephalopod mulluses, evolutionarily very distant indeed from the chordates to which we belong.
~ Simon Conway Morris
She is submarine, she is an octopus, she is A biological process, So Arnaut turned there Above him the wave pattern cut in the stone Spire-top alevel the well-curb And the tower with cut stone above that, saying, "I am afraid of the life after death." and after a pause: "Now, at least, I have shocked him.
~ Ezra Pound
At the Seattle Aquarium, Sammy the giant Pacific octopus enjoyed playing with a baseball-size plastic ball that could be screwed together by twisting the two halves. A staffer put food inside the ball but later was surprised to find that not only had the octopus opened the ball, it had screwed it back together when it was done.
~ Sy Montgomery
There was a tank of special flounder about fifteen feet away from the octopus tank," he said. The fish were part of a study. But to the researchers' dismay, the flounder started disappearing, one by one. One day they caught the culprit red-handed. The octopus had been slipping out of her tank and eating the flounder! When the octopus was discovered, Scott said, "she gave a guilty, sideways look and slithered away.
~ Sy Montgomery
For more than a year and a half, since meeting Athena, since coming to know Octavia and now Kali, each time I've reached into the tanks where we have brought these creatures into our world, I've longed to enter theirs. At last, in the warm embrace of the sea, breathing underwater, surrounded by the octopus's liquid world, my breath rising in silver bubbles like a song of praise, here I am.
~ Sy Montgomery
If the person was out of the room, the octopus would pull off the magnet on the inside of the tank which, with another magnet on the outside of the tank, held a glass-cleaning tool in place. The outside magnet would then crash loudly to the ground, summoning the human much as one might call a butler by ringing a servant's bell. Ceph keeper Nancy King
~ Sy Montgomery
patches, she is radiantly beautiful, the very picture of a healthy octopus and a diligent mother. She fluffs the
~ Sy Montgomery
The affection the aquarists felt for the octopus appeared to be mutual. For the hours that they swam together, though the massive octopus could have easily escaped them, the Dude chose instead to keep his human friends by his side. Only when their tanks ran low on air did the divers reluctantly bid the Dude--the best giant Pacific octopus in the world, wrote one--goodbye.
~ Sy Montgomery
Octopuses appear to enjoy watching Many home aquarists report that their octopuses appear to enjoy watching television with them. They particularly like sports and cartoons, with lots of movement and color....King and her coauthor, Colin Dunlop, even suggest placing the tank in the same room as the TV, so owner and octopus can enjoy programs together.
~ Sy Montgomery
Mollusk expert Pierre Denys de Montfort's iconic pen-and-wash drawing of 1801 shows a giant octopus rising from the ocean, its arms twisting in great loops all the way to the top of a schooner's three masts.
~ Sy Montgomery
But look at all those neurons in the arms!" he said. "They may have a radically different style of psychological organization from us. Perhaps in octopus we see intelligence without a centralized self. If you have the design of an octopus," Peter asked, "is there a sense of self at all, a center of experience? If not, that involves imagining something so different from us it might be impossible to think of.
~ Sy Montgomery
That night, while the rest of the family had charcoal-grilled veal chops, which were my favorite Italian food and which were only served once each year when we were staying at the Pensione Biea and which Mom never made for us at home because we were missionaries and the Lord provided for our needs but not that well, I got a huge serving platter full of deep fried octopus pieces.
~ Frank Schaeffer
Right now I'd love to be sitting on a Greek island somewhere because of being Greek American, eating great octopus salad and some fantastic lamb. Or sipping a little ouzo. I think the Mediterranean diet is one of the healthiest... Lots of nuts, vegetables, fruits, fresh fish, lean meats, yogurt.
~ Cat Cora
The cloudy-eyed heads of the fish were stoically averted from the bare fronds of their ribs. The baby octopus wasn't moving, but the few he'd seen looked perfect, purple and white beneath a yellow haystack of frizzled ginger.
~ Michelle Wildgen
Talking animals were the topic of this morning's Patty Winters Show. An octopus was floating in a makeshift aquarium with a microphone attached to one of its tentacles and it kept asking - or so its trainer, who is positive that mollusks have vocal cords, assured us - for cheese. I watched, vaguely transfixed, until I started to sob.
~ Bret Easton Ellis
In their brief time together Slothrop forms the impression that this octopus is not in good mental health, though where's his basis for comparing?
~ Thomas Pynchon
Casolaro about the conspiratorial entity Casolaro was by now calling "the Octopus," a cabal which Casolaro believed had been started by CIA superspook James Jesus Angleton. Casolaro believed that the motive for creating the Octopus had been revenge for the notorious Albanian operation which had been compromised by Soviet mole Kim Philby.
~ Kenn Thomas
Here is an animal with venom like a snake, a beak like a parrot, and ink like an old-fashioned pen. It can weigh as much as a man and stretch as long as a car, yet it can pour its baggy, boneless body through an opening the size of an orange. It can change color and shape. It can taste with its skin. Most fascinating of all, I had read that octopuses are smart.
~ Sy Montgomery
There is another important difference as well. Human eyes have three visual pigments, allowing us to see color. Octopuses have only one—which would make these masters of camouflage, commanding a glittering rainbow of colors, technically color-blind. How, then, does the octopus decide what colors to turn? New evidence suggests cephalopods might be able to see with their skin.
~ Sy Montgomery
Octopus slime is sort of a cross between drool and snot. But in a nice way. And it's very useful. It helps to be slippery if you're squeezing your body in and out of tight places. Slime keeps the octopus moist if it wants to emerge from the water, which some species of octopus do with surprisingly frequency in the wild.
~ Sy Montgomery