Plankton Quotes

• As a life's work, I would remember everything - everything, against loss. I would go through life like a plankton net.

  Annie Dillard

  Loss, Remembers Everything, Remember

  Annie Dillard (1994). “The Annie Dillard reader”, Harpercollins

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• There is the life of the plankton in almost endless variety; there are the many kinds of fish, both surface and bottom living; there are the hosts of different invertebrate creatures on the sea-floor; and there are those almost grotesque forms of pelagic life in the oceans depths. Then there are the squids and cuttlefish, and the porpoises, dolphins and great whales.

  Alister Hardy

  Ocean, Whales, Sea

  45 Copy quote

• For nine miles along a submerged ridge, the corals rise in lumpy hillocks that spread out 100 yards or more, resembling heaped scoops of rainbow sherbet and Neapolitan ice cream. The mounds, some 100 feet tall, sprout delicate treelike gorgonians that sift currents for a plankton meal. Fish, worms and other creatures dart or crawl in every crevice. This description could apply to thousands of coral reefs in shallow, sun-streaked tropical waters from Australia to the Bahamas. But this is the Sula Ridge, 1,000 feet down in frigid darkness on the continental shelf 100 miles off Norway's coast.

  James Dwight Dana

  Nature, Ice, Feet

  17 Copy quote

• Thalia had been turned into a pine tree when she was 12. Me... well, i was doing my best not to follow her example. I had nightmares about what Poseidon might turn me into if i were ever in the verge of death—plankton, maybe. Or a floating patch of kelp.

  Rick Riordan

  Tree, Might, Example

  Rick Riordan (2007). “The Sea of Monsters”, Disney-Hyperion

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• as a physician I examine the dying planet as I do a dying patient. The earth has a natural system of interacting homeostatic mechanisms similar to the human body's. If one system is diseased, like the ozone layer, then other systems develop abnormalities in function - the crops will die, the plankton will be damaged, and the eyes of all creatures on the planet will become diseased and vision impaired.

  Helen Caldicott

  Eye, Ozone, Vision

  Helen Caldicott (2009). “If You Love This Planet: A Plan to Save the Earth (Revised and updated)”, p.13, W. W. Norton & Company

  26 Copy quote

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• There is a gyre of discarded floating plastic the size of the continental USA in the ocean. In it, plastic trash outweighs plankton 40 to 1.

  David Suzuki

  Ocean, Usa, Environmental

  40 Copy quote

• If we don't manage this resource, we will be left with a diet of jellyfish and plankton stew.

  Daniel Pauly

  Ocean, Sea, Stew

  10 Copy quote

• What exists beneath the sea?I'd always pictured it in colors of emerald and aquamarine, where black velvet fish with sequined eyes swim among plankton.But, when my eyes adjust, I see gray stones, lost anchors, wet wood, buttons, hooks, and eyes, the salem witches who wouldn't float, stars and stripes, missing vessels, windup toys, the souls of Romeo and Juliet, peaches, cream, pistons, screams, cages of ribs and birds, tunnels, nutcracker soldiers, satin bows, drugstore signs, Pandora box ripped open at its hinges.

  Kelly Easton

  Stars, Eye, Color

  Kelly Easton (2001). “The Life History of a Star”, p.163, Simon and Schuster

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• That's the great thing about plankton. It pretty much keeps to itself.

  Gene Hackman

  Replacements, Great Things

  6 Copy quote

• Consumerism is hard to describe when it's the ocean and we're the plankton.

  Geoffrey Miller

  Ocean, Consumerism, Hard

  Geoffrey Miller (2009). “Spent: Sex, Evolution, and Consumer Behavior”, p.8, Penguin

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• Mostly I sit at home in the evenings watching the box and hoping that one day I'll evolve into plankton.

  Tom Holt

  Home, One Day, Evening

  7 Copy quote

• When you were sleeping on the sofa I put my ear to your ear and listened to the echo of your dreams. That is the ocean I want to dive in, merge with the bright fish, plankton and pirate ships. I walk up to people on the street that kind of look like you and ask them the questions I would ask you. Can we sit on a rooftop and watch stars dissolve into smoke rising from a chimney? Can I swing like Tarzan in the jungle of your breathing? I don’t wish I was in your arms, I just wish I was peddling a bicycle toward your arms.

  Jeffrey McDaniel

  Dream, Stars, Ocean

  9 Copy quote

• The rich plankton of pop heroes and pop villains on which we Americans are accustomed to feed, the daily media soup of sports figures, ax murderers, politicians, and rock singers, the ever-running river of celebs, heavies, and oddballs that we use to spice up our own relatively humdrum lives has of late become a very watery gruel. Where have all the good guys and bad guys gone? Why does everyone out there look so gray?

  Shana Alexander

  Sports, Running, Hero

  Shana Alexander (1976). “Talking woman”

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• I had nightmares about what Poseidon might turn me into if I were on the verge of death-plankton maybe." -Percy Jackson

  Rick Riordan

  Might, Nightmare, Poseidon

  34 Copy quote