The Book of Eels Quotes

“No human has ever seen eels reproduce; no one has seen an eel fertilize the eggs of another eel; no one has managed to breed European eels in captivity. We think we know that all eels are hatched in the Sargasso Sea, since that’s where the smallest examples of the willow leaf–like larvae have been found, but no one knows for certain why the eel insists on reproducing there and only there. No one knows for certain how it withstands the rigors of its long return journey, or how it navigates. It’s thought all eels die shortly after breeding, since no living eels have ever been found after breeding season, but then again, no mature eel, living or dead, has ever been observed at their supposed breeding ground. Put another way, no human has ever seen an eel in the Sargasso Sea. Nor can anyone fully comprehend the purpose of the eel’s many metamorphoses. No one knows how long eels can live for. In other words, more than two thousand years after Aristotle, the eel remains something of a scientific enigma, and in many ways, it has become a symbol of what is sometimes referred to as the metaphysical.”
― Patrik Svensson, The Book of Eels: Our Enduring Fascination with the Most Mysterious Creature in the Natural World

“We all came from the sea once, and therefore anyone wishing to understand life on this planet has to first understand the sea.”
― Patrik Svensson, The Book of Eels: Our Enduring Fascination with the Most Mysterious Creature in the Natural World

“In ancient Egypt, the eel was considered a might demon, an equal of gods and a forbidden food. A creature moving effortlessly beneath the glittering surface of the holy Nile, slithering through the sediments of existence itself. Archaeologists have found mummified eels in tiny sarcophagi, laid to their eternal rest next to bronze statuettes of the gods.”
― Patrik Svensson, The Book of Eels: Our Enduring Fascination with the Most Mysterious Creature in the Natural World

“The world is an absurd place full of contradictions and existential confusion; only those who have a goal are ultimately able to find meaning.”
― Patrik Svensson, The Book of Eels: Our Enduring Fascination with the Most Mysterious Creature in the Natural World

“The origin of the eel and its long journey are, despite their strangeness, things we might relate to, even recognize: its protracted drifting on the ocean currents in an effort to leave home, and its even longer and more difficult way back—the things we are prepared to go through to return home.”
― Patrik Svensson, The Book of Eels: Our Enduring Fascination with the Most Mysterious Creature in the Natural World

“The entire short story teeters on the brink of uncertainty. The narrative perspective shifts continually, nothing is truly known, things may be happening in the material world, or possibly only in Nathanael’s tormented mind. To Freud, the woman who turns out to be a robot and the theft of the eyes are also central symbols at the core of the uncanny; here is an example of the uncertainty about whether a creature is alive or dead, but also the fear of being robbed of one’s sight, of losing one’s ability to observe and experience the world as it truly is.”
― Patrik Svensson, The Book of Eels: Our Enduring Fascination with the Most Mysterious Creature in the Natural World

“When I held them in my hands and tried to look into their eyes, I was close to something that transcended the limits of the known universe. That is how the eel question draws you in. The eels’ mystique becomes an echo of the questions all people carry within them: Who am I? Where did I come from? Where am I going?”
― Patrik Svensson, The Book of Eels: Our Enduring Fascination with the Most Mysterious Creature in the Natural World

“Tom Crick, the history teacher and narrator of Graham Swift's novel Waterland, clings to the same feeling of a kind of fated inexplicability when he expounds on the eel: "Curiosity will never be content. Even today, when we know so much, curiosity has not unraveled the riddle of the birth and sex life of the eel. Perhaps there are things, like many others, destined to never be learnt before the world comes to its end. Or perhaps-but here I speculate, here my own curiosity leads me by the nose-the world is so arranged that when all things are learnt, when curiosity is exhausted (so, long live curiosity), that is when the world shall have come to its end. But even if we learn how, and what, and where, and when, will we ever know why? Why, why?”
― Patrik Svensson, The Book of Eels: Our Enduring Fascination with the Most Mysterious Creature in the Natural World

“But it is a misunderstanding that shows that when it comes to eels, not only are science and the eel itself suspect, you can't trust God either. Or God's interpreters. Or words.”
― Patrik Svensson, The Book of Eels: Our Enduring Fascination with the Most Mysterious Creature in the Natural World

“We know, then, that the old eels vanish from our ken into the sea, and that the sea sends us in return innumerable hosts of elvers. But whither have they wandered, these old eels, and whence have the elvers come? And what are the still younger stages like, which precede the 'elver' stage in the development of the eel? It is such problems as these that constitute the 'Eel Question.'" (quoted)”
― Patrik Svensson, The Book of Eels: Our Enduring Fascination with the Most Mysterious Creature in the Natural World

“The oldest creatures we’ve found so far all came from the sea. Ming the clam, a so-called ocean quahog caught off the coast of Iceland in 2006, turned out to be at least five hundred and seven years old. Scientists estimated its year of birth to be 1499, a few years after Columbus made it to North America and during the time of the Ming dynasty in China. Who knows how long it could have lived if the scientists in their efforts to establish its age hadn’t also accidentally killed it.”
― Patrik Svensson, The Book of Eels: Our Enduring Fascination with the Most Mysterious Creature in the Natural World

“Because memory is an unreliable thing that picks and chooses what to keep. When we look for a scene from the past, it is by no means certain that we end up recalling the most important or the most relevant; rather, we remember what fits into the preconceived image that we have.”
― Patrik Svensson, The Book of Eels: Our Enduring Fascination with the Most Mysterious Creature in the Natural World

“...knowledge becomes meaningful in itself, quite apart from considerations of utility or profit. It's at the heart of everything. When you talk about human experience, you're not talking about individual experience, you're talking about communal experience, which is passed on, retold, and reexperienced.”
― Patrik Svensson, The Book of Eels: Our Enduring Fascination with the Most Mysterious Creature in the Natural World

“He was the person destined to find the holy grail of natural science: the testicles of the eel.”
― Patrik Svensson, The Book of Eels: Our Enduring Fascination with the Most Mysterious Creature in the Natural World

“sometimes, objective probability is less important than what people want to believe.”
― Patrik Svensson, The Book of Eels: Our Enduring Fascination with the Most Mysterious Creature in the Natural World

“The narrow path looks different to different people.”
― Patrik Svensson, The Book of Eels: Our Enduring Fascination with the Most Mysterious Creature in the Natural World

“Una anguila, plateada y enorme, empieza a nadar mar adentro y emprende el viaje definitivo rumbo al mar de los Sargazos. ¿Cómo sabe adónde debe ir? ¿Cómo encuentra el camino? Cuando se trata de la anguila son pertinentes las preguntas banales, porque incluso las preguntas banales pueden carecer de respuesta. También hay que conformarse, alegrarse de que el conocimiento tenga sus límites pese a todo. No se trata solo de un mecanismo de defensa; también es un modo de afrontar como ser humano que el mundo es un lugar difícil de comprender. Lo misterioso tiene su atractivo. Porque, ¿qué significa en realidad la afirmación de que sabemos que la anguila se reproduce en el mar de los Sargazos? Significa que tenemos buenas razones para suponer que es así, puesto que Johannes Schmidt se pasó dieciocho años surcando el Atlántico y pescó allí las larvas transparentes. Decidimos creer en el trabajo de Johannes Schmidt, en sus observaciones y conclusiones. Creemos que las anguilas plateadas adultas recorren todo el trayecto hasta el mar de los Sargazos para desovar, que solo se reproducen en sus aguas, precisamente, y que ninguna sale de allí con vida. Lo creemos así porque todo apunta a que así es, y porque nadie propone otra explicación que sea digna de crédito. Podemos incluso permitirnos el lujo de decir que sabemos que es así. «Sabemos qué destino persiguen», escribió Johannes Schmidt. Después de tantos años en mar abierto, consideró que se había ganado el derecho a sustituir creencia por conocimiento.”
― Patrik Svensson, El evangelio de las anguilas (Libros del Asteroide nº 244)

“Pasaule ir absurda vieta, kur netrūkst pretrunu un eksistenciāla sajukuma, bet tikai tam, kuram ir mērķis, ir arī iespēja atrast jēgu. Ir jāiztēlojas laimīgs zutis.”
― Patrik Svensson, The Book of Eels: Our Enduring Fascination with the Most Mysterious Creature in the Natural World