Quotes from Whale Talk

Chris Crutcher ·  224 pages

Rating: (9.8K votes)


“...racist thought and action says far more about the person they come from than the person they are directed at.”
― Chris Crutcher, quote from Whale Talk


“I walk outside and scream at the top of my lungs, and it maybe travels two blocks. A whale unleashes his cry, and it travels hundreds or even thousands of miles. Every whale in the ocean will at one time or another run into that song. And I figure whales probably don't edit. If they think it, they say it...Whale talk is the truth, and in a very short period of time, if you're a whale, you know exactly what it is to be you.”
― Chris Crutcher, quote from Whale Talk


“Adopted.
Big Deal; so was Superman”
― Chris Crutcher, quote from Whale Talk


“...the Magnificent Seven consisted of one swimmer of color, a representative from each extreme of the educational spectrum, a muscle man, a giant, a chameleon, and a one-legged psychopath. When I envision us walking seven abreast through the halls of Cutter High, decked out in the sacred blue and gold, my heart swells.”
― Chris Crutcher, quote from Whale Talk


“You have to see everyone in relationship to you. Just because you understand the shit in someone else's life doesn't mean you don't stand up for your own”
― Chris Crutcher, quote from Whale Talk



“He knew that we take what the universe gives us, and we either get the most out of it or we don’t, but in the end we all go out the same way.”
― Chris Crutcher, quote from Whale Talk


About the author

Chris Crutcher
Born place: in Dayton, Ohio, The United States
Born date July 7, 1946
See more on GoodReads

Popular quotes

“There is no way to tell which version of a lie is the truth.”
― Steven Galloway, quote from The Cellist of Sarajevo


“I’ve never felt anything so strong and it’s love—actual love. Heart wrenching, stomach churning, toe curling love.
I’ve been completely consumed by him and I didn’t even know it.”
― Skyla Madi, quote from Consumed


“The demon had trouble remembering what she was doing, but she was powerful, sort of the crazy Wendy of the lost lord-of-the-flies boys.”
― Kim Harrison, quote from Ever After


“Whether they are part of a home or home is a part of them is not a question children are prepared to answer. Having taken away the dog, take away the kitchen–the smell of something good in the oven for dinner. Also the smell of washing day, of wool drying in the wooden rack. Of ashes. Of soup simmering on the stove. Take away the patient old horse waiting by the pasture fence. Take away the chores that kept him busy from the time he got home from school until they sat down to supper. Take away the early-morning mist, the sound of crows quarreling in the treetops.
His work clothes are still hanging on a nail beside the door of his room, but nobody puts them on or takes them off. Nobody sleeps in his bed. Or reads the broken-back copy of Tom Swift and His Flying Machine. Take that away too, while you are at it.
Take away the pitcher and bowl, both of them dry and dusty. Take away the cow barn where the cats, sitting all in a row, wait with their mouths wide open for somebody to squirt milk down their throats. Take away the horse barn too–the smell of hay and dust and horse piss and old sweat-stained leather, and the rain beating down on the plowed field beyond the door. Take all this away and what have you done to him? In the face of a deprivation so great, what is the use of asking him to go on being the boy he was. He might as well start life over again as some other boy instead.”
― William Maxwell, quote from So Long, See You Tomorrow


“found Rolly in his office, sitting at his computer, staring at something on the monitor. He pointed at the screen. “They want more testing. Pretty soon, we won’t have any time to teach them anything. We’ll just test them from the moment they get here to the moment they go home.”
― Linwood Barclay, quote from No Time for Goodbye


Interesting books

Peter Darling
(1.8K)
Peter Darling
by Austin Chant
Undressing the Moon
(752)
Undressing the Moon
by T. Greenwood
We Should Hang Out Sometime: Embarrassingly, a True Story
(8.5K)
We Should Hang Out S...
by Josh Sundquist
The Scribe
(8K)
The Scribe
by Elizabeth Hunter
Stieg Larsson's Millennium Trilogy Deluxe Boxed Set
(40.6K)
Stieg Larsson's Mill...
by Stieg Larsson
The Stone Sky
(17K)
The Stone Sky
by N.K. Jemisin

About BookQuoters

BookQuoters is a community of passionate readers who enjoy sharing the most meaningful, memorable and interesting quotes from great books. As the world communicates more and more via texts, memes and sound bytes, short but profound quotes from books have become more relevant and important. For some of us a quote becomes a mantra, a goal or a philosophy by which we live. For all of us, quotes are a great way to remember a book and to carry with us the author’s best ideas.

We thoughtfully gather quotes from our favorite books, both classic and current, and choose the ones that are most thought-provoking. Each quote represents a book that is interesting, well written and has potential to enhance the reader’s life. We also accept submissions from our visitors and will select the quotes we feel are most appealing to the BookQuoters community.

Founded in 2023, BookQuoters has quickly become a large and vibrant community of people who share an affinity for books. Books are seen by some as a throwback to a previous world; conversely, gleaning the main ideas of a book via a quote or a quick summary is typical of the Information Age but is a habit disdained by some diehard readers. We feel that we have the best of both worlds at BookQuoters; we read books cover-to-cover but offer you some of the highlights. We hope you’ll join us.