The Shape Of Water Quotes
"The things he did in Korea under Hoyt have shackled him to the general for twelve years."
"His job will be to look out for "US interests" and keep the crew, as Hoyt puts it, 'motivated.'"
"Monotony, though, might be the jungle’s stealthiest killer."
"The most advantageous feeling is to feel nothing at all."
"The man from the dream, hazy as he is, is better."
"The moon this particular evening is a great hole carved through nightflesh to reveal pale, luminescent bone."
"Feet are what connect you to the ground, and when you are poor, none of that ground belongs to you."
"What’s the point of being alive if you don’t at least try to do something remarkable?"
"To introduce invaders such as we, it is setting a fire. Everything burns."
"It was his protective instinct, perhaps, against the disorienting assaults of the city."
"He was sick of his T-bird breaking down, he said, and he wouldn’t have his wife taking public transport while he was off saving the world."
"The best thing for tonight is to scrub the images from her mind, and scrubbing is something Elisa is good at."
"How nice, to see a municipality taking pride in its upkeep."
"Memories of the inciting event deject Giles, mostly because of its pedestrian predictability; clichés are anathema to any artist."
"Giles applies a big, red grin, just like the father in his newest painting. More advertising, he thinks, this time for himself."
"The old broad made doe eyes at a beverage bottler and whoosh. They make off to Los Angeles."
"It’s photographs. Every client who walks through that door, they want photo shoots, pretty girls holding hamburgers or encyclopedia sets or what have you."
"The red, Bernie sighs. Too red, Giles says. I concur wholeheartedly."
"You people need to work on your vocabulary. You keep repeating the same words."
"Elisa wasn’t handicapped; she was stupid and recalcitrant."
"The mysterious advent of Strickland has supplanted Brewster stories as the favored topic of conversation."
"Occam’s constant is its uncompromising brightness. Lights do not turn off."
"It’s like air coming out of the vents, all at once. Whoosh."
"Zelda turns around. She’s been avoiding it. She doesn’t want to look at Elisa right now."
"The scene of the crime still vibrates from the ordeal."
"Occam labs, however, mock people like her; they’re impossible to decode, provisioned with instruments of arcane utility."
"You deal with me. And I represent who? The US government."
"He looks like me. Like you. Though let’s be honest. He looks a little bit more like me."
"This beautiful being, however he might have hurt those who hurt him first, is pointing at her and only her."
"The water does the thing’s bidding, barely rippling."
"Elisa catches her breath: It’s like distant fireflies."
"First time you meet a lesser, show him how little he means to you."
"You only need to look, really look, to see the water breathe."
"Believe in the future, son, and it’ll come. Just wait and see."
"The idea that he and the asset share a light sensitivity enrages him. He’s no animal."
"The trumpet is let loose above it all like a tossed dove."
"Encounters in F-1 are too wondrous to grasp undividedly."
"The V-shaped current of the creature gliding underwater to meet her."
"The massive, bladed weapon of the creature’s hand, signing 'egg' with motions gentle enough to stroke a gosling."
"Miles or Frank or Hank or Billie or Patsy or Nina or Nat or Fats or Elvis or Roy or Ray or Buddy or Jerry Lee turned into angelic choirs."
"His sensational lights, a symphonic reply to the purple glow of crooners, the blue pulse of rock and roll, the dusky yellow of country, the blinking orange of jazz."
"The universe folds itself along dull axial lines generation after generation, but what truly reshapes life are the foibled folds, the outright tears."
"This woman—this janitor—is keeping it alive, not through serums or solutions but through force of spirit."
"The happiest of homecomings awaits you. Listen, comrade, to the advice I give. You are no man of adventure."
"Civilized men like to pretend that Moreau is a monster. But this is the Black Sea, Dmitri. We are alone. We can be honest with each other."
"The creature’s melding with the natural world only begins with the Amazon, and that its death might mean the death of emergence, the cessation of progress, the end of everything and all of us."
"The creature looked at Hoffstetler through a tank window and acknowledged him in that distinctive way of humans and primates."
"The creature, too, was a contradiction, its own biology aligning with historical evidence from the Devonian Period."
"Strickland, his family, all of Baltimore will be strangled inside of it."
"The moments preceding torture are always sensuous. The tumescence of fear."
"She is purposely messy, her nightie half-open, one hand sunk into her tangled hair, the other gripping the coverlet."
"In this racket, you find someone good, you lock her down. Otherwise, she ends up spilling all our trade secrets."
"This is the sixties. A few years from now, it’s going to be a woman’s world. You’ll have every single opportunity a man has."
"You’re a parasite, and when your host begins to die—say, from an infection in his fingers—your bloodstream is poisoned, too."
"Things patched together, without meaning, from which we, in our needful minds, create myths to suit us."
"Mutually assured destruction. You know the concept."
"The next time I come, I expect your ad men to be wearing cravats and discussing the finer points of cricket."
"Each passed second further instills Giles’s profile with nobility."
"We’re all alone! It’s a truth too cruel to be spoken."
"Forget the rockets everyone’s shooting into the sky. Sputnik’s got nothing on the de Ville."
"You cannot franchise the alchemy of greasy food and human affection."
"His fist shoots out as if by slingshot. Grabs Fleming by the collar. Their only instance of touching besides the first-day handshake."
"Seems too big for a hand, but it flexes like one, with palm cradle and finger posts."
"Imagine being a planet. Don’t laugh, he’d tell them. Try to imagine it."
"There is strength enough here to squash her, but instead she is lifted, as gently as if she were a butterfly."
"There are no Russians. He just blew Occam’s electrical grid with Mihalkov’s popper, and the only person here to help him is a frail-boned woman who can’t speak."
"The grooves across the creature’s body glow red, but only for an instant."
"Fine stitching in Fleming’s collar rips as Strickland curls his biceps."
"You moved the dock camera, didn’t you? You’re taking it out of here, aren’t you?"
"She pushes, and it’s hard, but what’s harder is acting normal at the approach of a confused-looking man."
"His ears seal off with his own liquefied flesh. The job he’d nearly completed at Occam, everything he’d achieved in the Amazon. All of it had been plenty enough to bargain away the binds roping him to Hoyt."
"The color of a star, you can be sure, is mostly due to its temp-era-ture."
"The only hug Zelda dares is the infinitesimal squeeze of Elisa’s fingers inside hers. Knuckle presses to knuckle, before Elisa’s hand cedes the foxtail brush and pushes her cart from the room."
"The same man who’d just been in his office. Bob Hoffstetler. The Russkie."
"The creature watches from beneath bathwater. It is still learning how to breathe the water of the Arcade Apartments, and can do little but roll."
"She does it with such affection that Hoffstetler hates to snap at her, but he does."
"Everything to sustain him but love. In the end, it isn’t enough."
"He paints the finest slivers of detail without arthritic tremor."
"Everyone struggles against the qualms and uncertainties that life twines about them."
"In all of time and space, there is nothing sadder."
"To survive under so much water, she thinks, she’ll have to learn to breathe inside it."
"He laughs as he dies. Because it is also the beginning."