"Let's spell things out plainly: It is beyond the scope of my understanding of how we are still, after everything we know, polluting our oceans with plastics, and worse. A whale just died after consuming more than 80 plastic bags. A whale!" -Shenita Etwaroo" ― Shenita Etwaroo

If you swim with sharks, make sure you have the appetite of a whale.

"There she blows!-there she blows! A hump like a snow-hill! It is Moby Dick!"
"It is not not curious, that so vast a being as the whale should see the world through so small an eye, and hear the thunder through an ear which is smaller than a hare's? But if his eyes were broad as the lens of Herschel's great telescope; and his ears capacious as the porches of cathedrals; would that make him any longer of sight, or sharper of hearing? Not at all. - Why then do you try to "enlarge" your mind? Subtilize it." ― Herman Melville, Moby-Dick, or, the Whale

"The heroic and often tragic stories of American whalemen were renowned. They sailed the world's oceans and brought back tales filled with bravery, perseverance, endurance, and survival. They mutinied, murdered, rioted, deserted, drank, sang, spun yarns, scrimshawed, and recorded their musings and observations in journals and letters. They survived boredom, backbreaking work, tempestuous seas, floggings, pirates, putrid food, and unimaginable cold. Enemies preyed on them in times of war, and competitors envied them in times of peace. Many whalemen died from violent encounters with whales and from terrible miscalculations about the unforgiving nature of nature itself. And through it all, whalemen, those "iron men in wooden boats" created a legacy of dramatic, poignant, and at times horrific stories that can still stir our emotions and animate the most primal part of our imaginations. "To produce a mighty book, you must choose a mighty theme," proclaimed Herman Melville, and the epic story of whaling is one of the mightiest themes in American history." ― Eric Jay Dolin, Leviathan: The History of Whaling in America

"One of my own stray childhood fears had been to wonder what a whale might feel like had it been born and bred in captivity, then released into the wild-into its ancestral sea-its limited world instantly blowing up when cast into the unknowable depths, seeing strange fish and tasting new waters, not even having a concept of depth, not knowing the language of any whale pods it might meet. It was my fear of a world that would expand suddenly, violently, and without rules or laws: bubbles and seaweed and storms and frightening volumes of dark blue that never end" ― Douglas Coupland, Girlfriend in a Coma
"Joe was right when he said that the whale is just a whale. And so was Leonora when she said the whale is everything. What if we grant the whale his whaleness, grant him furlough from our metaphoric employ, but still allow the contours of his second self - the one we've made - and admit what he's done for us?" ― Leslie Jamison, Make it Scream, Make it Burn

"For every inch of skin, there is memory. Devils are so made. Saints, too, if you believe in them. His humanity has been broken as an old walking stick that once held up a crippled man named Thomas. He realizes the stick and the man are one thing and he can fall. He has violated the laws beneath the laws of men and countries, something deeper, the earth and the sea, the explosions of trees. He has to care again. He has to be water again, rock, earth with its new spring wildflowers and its beautiful, complex mosses." ― Linda Hogan

"There are people in this world who can wear whale masks and people who cannot, and the wise know to which group they belong." ― Tom Robbins, Jitterbug Perfume

"For every inch of skin, there is memory. Devils are so made. Saints, too, if you believe in them. His humanity has been broken as an old walking stick that once held up a crippled man named Thomas. He realizes the stick and the man are one thing and he can fall. He has violated the laws beneath the laws of men and countries, something deeper, the earth and the sea, the explosions of trees. He has to care again. He has to be water again, rock, earth with its new spring wildflowers and its beautiful, complex mosses." ― Linda Hogan