...when I started doing chemistry, I did it the way I fished – for the excitement, the discovery, the adventure, for going after the most elusive catch imaginable in uncharted seas.

I often went fishing up in Maine during the summer. Personally I am very fond of strawberries and cream, but I have found that for some strange reason, fish prefer worms. So when I went fishing, I didn’t think about what I wanted. I thought about what they wanted. I didn't bait the hook with strawberries and cream. Rather, I dangled a worm or grasshopper in front of the fish and said: "Wouldn't you like to have that?" Why not use the same common sense when fishing for people?

I got to be quite the fish, I must say.

The beautiful thing is that when you catch one fish that you love, even if it’s a little fish — a fragment of an idea — that fish will draw in other fish, and they’ll hook onto it. Then you’re on your way. Soon there are more and more and more fragments, and the whole thing emerges. But it starts with desire.

Well, I have tried to learn as much as possible from prior attempts.

One year, on vacation in Hawaii, I was relaxing at a beach, watching whales in the distance, when a fisherman, obviously a local, drove up in his pick-up truck. He got out with a dozen fishing rods. Not one. A dozen. He baited each hook, cast all the lines into the ocean, and set the rods in the sand. Intrigued, I wandered over and asked him for an explanation. “It’s simple,” he said. “I love fish but I hate fishin’. I like eatin’, not catchn’. So I cast out 12 lines. By sunset, some of them will have caught a fish. Never all of ’em. So if I only cast one or two I might go hungry. But 12 is enough so some always catch. Usually there’s enough for me and extras to sell to local restaurants. This way, I live the life I want.” The simple fellow had unwittingly put his finger on a powerful secret. The flaw in most businesses, that keeps them always in desperate need — which suppresses prices — is: too few lines cast in the ocean.

Last year I went fishing with Salvador Dali. He was using a dotted line. He caught every other fish.

Let your hook be always cast in the pond. when you least expect it, there will be fish.

Good coaches tell you where the fish are, great coaches teach you how to find them.

Sometimes it's wiser to give a quarry extra line — that's how to catch a fish, neh?

When they had come recruiting to his school - 'for fishers of men' - all those years ago and had offered the glittering lures of sanctity and safety, Michael had jumped selflessly. It was a long time before the line pulled taut and he felt the pain of the hooks within him and the irony of the fisherman caught.

Fishers get a high-quality catch and therefore make more money per trap whilst reducing negative ecological impacts

There is a time to fish and a time to mend nets.

If you drop a hook in, you'll get a bite right quick," I said. "Maybe not the biggest fish, but the best fighter. They'd fight one another to take the hook."
"There's some sort of parable to that thought," she said, not air way cheerfully. "How life gives you something you think is good and wholesome, and then uses it to yank you out of your world.