Big Fish Quotes and Quotation

(2003) Directed by ; Screenplay by John August based on Big Fish: A Novel of Mythic Proportions by Daniel Wallace

There are some fish that cannot be caught. It's not that they're faster or stronger than other fish. They're just touched by something extra. Call it luck. Call it grace. One such fish was "The Beast".
Sometimes, the only way to catch an uncatchable woman is to offer her a wedding ring.
In telling the story of my father's life, it's impossible to separate the fact from the fiction, the man from the myth. The best I can do is to tell it the way he told me. It doesn't always make sense, and most of it never happened. But that's what kind of story this is.
Now, it's common knowledge that most towns of a certain size have a witch, if only to eat misbehaving children and the occasional puppy who wanders into her yard. Witches use those bones to cast spells and curses that make the land infertile... Yet of the all the witches in Alabama, there was one who was the most feared. For she had one glass eye, which was said to contain mystical powers.
I was thinking about death and all. About seeing how you're gonna die. I mean, on one hand, if dying was all you thought about, it could kind of screw you up. But it could kind of help you, couldn't it? Because you'd know that everything else you can survive.
Edward: Having a kid changes everything. I mean, there's the diapers and the burping and the midnight feedings...
Will: Did you do any of that?
Edward: No, but I hear it's terrible. Then you spend years trying to corrupt and mislead this child, fill its head with nonsense and still it turns out perfectly fine.
I was never much for being at home, Will. It's too confining. And this, here... being stuck in bed. Dying is the worst thing that ever happened to me.
Man in crowd: Mayor, he ate an entire cornfield!
Young girl in crowd: He ate my dog!
Mayor: Son that creature could crush you without trying.
Edward: Oh trust me— he'll have to try.
Armed with the foreknowledge of my own death, I knew the giant couldn't kill me. All the same, I preferred to keep my bones unbroken.
Oh, come on. I can't go back, I'm a human sacrifice. If I go back they'll think I'm a coward. I'd rather be dinner than a coward.
I don't eat anybody. I just get so hungry. I'm just too big.
Did you ever think maybe you're not too big— but, maybe this town's just too small?
The biggest fish in the river gets that way by never being caught.
There were two roads out of Ashton, a new one which was paved, and an older one that wasn't. People didn't use the old road anymore, and it had developed the reputation of being haunted. Well, Since I had no intention of ever returning to Ashton, this seemed as good a time as any to find out what lay down that old road.
Now, there comes a point where a reasonable man will swallow his pride and admit that he's made a terrible mistake. The truth is, I was never a reasonable man.
What I recalled of Sunday School was that the more difficult something became, the more rewarding it was in the end.
I agreed to spend the afternoon, if only to understand the mystery of how a place could feel so strange, and yet so familiar.
Norther Winslow: I've been working on this poem for 12 years.
Edward: Really.
Norther Winslow: There's a lot of expectation. I don't want to disappoint my fans...
The grass so green
Skies so blue
Spectre is really great!
Edward: It's only three lines long.
Norther Winslow: This is why you should never show a work in progress.
Jenny: It's not a woman, it's a fish. No one ever catches her. Fish looks diff'rent to diff'rent people. My daddy said it looked like the coon dog he had when he was kid... back from the dead.
Jenny: I'm eight. That means when I'm eighteen, you'll be 28. And when I'm 28, you'll only be 38.
Edward: You're pretty good at arithmetic.
Jenny: And when I'm 38, you'll be 48. And that's not much difference at all.
Edward: Sure is a lot now, though, huh?
This town is more than any man could ask for. And if I were to end up here, I'd consider myself lucky. But the truth is, I'm not ready to end up anywhere.
Beamen: You won't find a better place!
Edward: I don't expect to.
Jenny: Promise me you'll come back.
Edward: I promise. Someday. When I'm really supposed to.
As difficult as it was to reach Spectre, I was fated to get there eventually. After all, no man can avoid reaching the end of his life.
This isn't how I die.
The crow didn't tell how it was going to happen, just those words: "Your Daddy is going to die."
We didn't have a proper wedding. Your mother-in-law was never supposed to marry me. She was engaged to somebody else.
Edward: Will never told you?... Ah, Probably just as well. He would have told it wrong anyway. All the facts and none of the flavor.
Josephine: Oh... so this is a tall tale?
Edward: Well, it's not a short one.
I had just left Ashton, and was on my way to discover my destiny. Not knowing what that would be exactly, I explored every opportunity that presented itself.
Ladies and Gentlemen, you may think you've seen the unusual. You may think you've seen the bizarre. But I've travelled to the five corners of the world, and let me tell you, I've never seen anything like this. When I met this man, he was picking oranges in Florida. His fellow workers called him El Penumbra— The Shadow— because when you were working beside him, he blocked out the daylight.
It was on that night Karl met his destiny. And I met mine. Almost.
They say when you meet the love of your life, time stops. And that's true. What they don't tell you, is that once time starts again, it moves extra fast to catch up.
Amos: Tell me Karl, have you ever heard the term “involuntary servitude?”
Karl: No.
Amos: "Unconscionable contract?”
Karl: Uh... Nope.
Amos: Great! Here you go.
Edward: I just saw the woman I'm going to marry, I know it. But I lost her.
Amos: Oh, Tough break. Well, most men have to get married before they lose their wives.
Edward: I'm going to spend the rest of my life looking for her. That or die alone.
Amos: Damn, Kid!
Amos: Forget it Kid. Don't waste your time. She's out of your league.
Edward: What do you mean? You don't even know me.
Amos: Sure I do. You were hot shit back in Hickville, but here in the real world, you got squat. You don't have a plan. You don't have a job. You don't have anything except the clothes on your back... You were a big fish in a small pond, but this here is the ocean, and you're drowning. Take my advice and go back to Puddleville. You'll be happy there.
I may not have much, but I have more determination than any man you're ever going to meet.
From that moment on, I did everything Mr. Calloway asked. I'd go three days without stopping to eat, and four days without sleeping. The only thing that kept me going was the promise of meeting the girl who would be my wife.
This girl, the love of your life: her favorite flowers are daffodils.
Music! She likes music.
Over the months, I learned a lot about the woman I was going to marry, but not her name, and not where to find her. That time had come. I couldn't wait any longer.
It was that night I discovered that most things you consider evil or wicked are simply lonely, and lacking in social niceties.
Amos: Didn't kill anything, did I?
Edward: A few rabbits, but I think one of them was already dead.
Amos: Oh, that would explain the indigestion.
Her name is Sandra Templeton. She goes to Auburn.
After saying my goodbyes, I hopped three trains to get to Auburn that afternoon.
You don't know me, but my name is Edward Bloom and I love you. I've spent the last three years working to find out who you are. I've been shot and stabbed and trampled a few times— I broke my ribs twice— but it's all been worth it to see you here, now, and to finally get to talk to you. Because I'm destined to marry you. I knew it the first moment I saw you at the circus. And I know it now more than ever.
I'm sorry. I'm engaged to be married.
Well, congratulations. I'm sorry to have bothered you...
Fate has a cruel way of circling around on you. After all this work to leave Ashton, the girl I loved was now engaged to one of its biggest jerks. There's a time when a man needs to fight, and a time when he needs to accept that his destiny is lost, that the ship has sailed, and that only a fool will continue. The truth is, I've always been a fool.
Sandra Templeton! I love you! And I will marry you!
Sandra: Daffodils?
Edward: They're your favorite flower.
Sandra: How did you get so many?
Edward: I called everywhere in five states. I told them it was the only way to get my wife to marry me.
Sandra: You don't even know me.
Edward: I have the rest of my life to find out.
A man's voice: Sandra!
Sandra: It's Don. Promise you won't hurt him.
Edward: If that's what you want, I swear to it.
Don Price: What the hell are you doing? This is my girl. Mine!
Edward: I wasn't aware that she belonged to anyone.
Don Price: What the matter? Are you too scared to fight back?
Edward: I promised I wouldn't.
While I took the beating of a lifetime, it was Don Price who was ultimately defeated.
Edward: As it turned out, Sandra was able to keep her same date at the chapel. Only the groom had changed.
Josephine: I thought you said you didn't have a church wedding.
Edward: We were all set to, but there was a complication.
Truth is, I've been thirsty my whole life. Never really known why.
Josephine: You were talking about your wedding.
Edward: I didn't forget. I was just working on a tangent. Y'see, most men, they'll tell a story straight through— it won't be complicated, but it won't be interesting either.
It seems that while my heart belonged to Sandra, the rest of my body belonged to the U.S. Government... A hitch in the Army was up to three years at that point, and having waited three years just to meet Sandra, I knew I couldn't survive being away from her that long. So I took every hazardous assignment I could find, with the hope of getting my time down to less than a year.
Ping (singing): Sometimes a girl can feel so all alone Without a lover to call her own. Sometimes it's so bad, she wants to explode... grab the first man she sees and tear off all of his clothes... But she won't. No, she can't. She needs a special special different unusual man. Because that girl, Who looks like me, She has wants, but she has needs... Any of you got needs?
Ping & Jing: I've had twice the adventure, I've cried double the tears. I've had two times the bad times in only half the years. And now I need a man with twice the will to give, I need twice the man, because baby, I've got twice the love to give.
Ping: How could you miss your cue? You make me look like a fool, out there alone.
Jing: You weren't alone.
Ping (seeing Edward): Who the hell are you?
Edward (in Chinese): I'm not going to hurt you.
Ping: Damn right you're not— GUARD!
Over the next hour, I described my love for Sandra Kay Templeton, and the ordeal that brought me before them. As it had always been, this love was my salvation. It was destined to be.
Ping: And what are we supposed to do when we get to America?
Edward: I can get you bookings. I know the biggest man in show business.
Jing: Bob Hope?
Edward: Bigger.
Unfortunately there was no way to send a message back to America, and so it was no surprise that the Army believed I was dead... After four months, Sandra had gotten over the worst of the nightmares. When the phone rang, she didn't think it was somehow me calling her. When a car drove past, she didn't get up to check out the window...
Josephine: You never told me how your parents met.
Will: They met at Auburn.
Josephine: What about the details? How they fell in love. The Circus. The War. You never told me any of that.
Will: That's because most of it never happened.
Josephine: But it's romantic.
I know better than to argue romance with a french woman.
Everyone loves my father. He's a very likeable guy.
Will: You have to understand. When I was growing up, he was gone more than he was here. And I started thinking— maybe he has a second life somewhere else. With another family, another house— he leaves us, he goes to them. Or maybe there is no second family. Maybe he never wanted a family. But whatever it is, maybe he likes that second life better. And the reason he tells all those stories is because he can't stand this boring place.
Josephine: But it's not true.
Will: What is "true"? He's never told me a single true thing.
Will: Do you know much about icebergs, Dad?
Edward: Do I? I saw an iceberg once. They were hauling it down to Texas for drinking water— they didn't count on an elephant being frozen inside. The woolly kind. A mammoth.
Will: I'm trying to make a metaphor here.
Edward: Then you shouldn't have started with a question. Because people want to answer questions... You should have started with, "The thing about icebergs is..."
Will:: Okay, okay— The thing about icebergs is you only see 10 percent. The other 90 percent is below the water where you can't see it.That's what it is with you Dad. I'm only seeing this little bit that sticks above the water.
Will: I have no idea who you are because you have never told me a single fact.
Edward: I've told you a thousand facts. That's all I do, Will. I tell stories.
Will: You tell lies, Dad. You tell amusing lies. Stories are what you tell a fiveyear old at bedtime. They're not elaborate mythologies that you maintain when your son is ten and fifteen and twenty and thirty. And, I believed you. I believed your stories so much longer than I should have. And then when I realized, of course, that everything you said was impossible— everything!— I felt like a fool to have trusted you. You're like Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny combined. Just as charming and just as fake.
Edward: You think I'm fake.
Will: Only on the surface, Dad. But it's all I've ever seen.
Will: Look, I'm about to have a kid of my own here... It would kill me if he went through his whole life never understanding me.
Edward: It would kill you, huh?
Edward: What do you want, Will? Who do you want me to be?
Will: Yourself. Good, bad, everything. Just show me who you are for once.
Edward: I have been nothing but myself since the day I was born. And if you can't see that, it's your failing, not mine.
Sandra: It was during the war. Your father went missing. They thought he was dead.
Will: That really happened?
Sandra: Not everything your father says is a complete fabrication.
Norther Winslow: I want you to know, when you left Spectre it opened my eyes. There was a whole life out there that I was not living. So I travelled. I saw France, and Africa, half of South America. Every day a new adventure, that’s my motto.
I knew then that while my days as a criminal were over, Norther’s were just beginning.
When Norther made his first million dollars, he sent me a check for ten thousand. I protested, but he said it was my fee as his career advisor... it was enough to buy my wife a proper house with a white picket fence. And for that, it was all the riches a man could ever want.
Edward: I was drying out.
Sandra: I see. I think we ought to get you a plant mister, so we can just spray you like a fern.
Will: Hello... Are you Jennifer Hill?
Jenny: I am. And you're Will. I've seen a picture of you, that's how I recognize you.
Will: Were you having an affair?
Jenny: Wow. Wow, you just said it. I was expecting to dance around this for another half hour.
Will: I've seen him with women. He flirts. He always has. On some level, I presumed he was cheating on my mother. I just never had proof.
Jenny: Look, I don't know how much you want to know about any of this. You have one image of your father and it would be wrong for me to go and change it. Especially this late in the game.
Will: My father talked about a lot of things he never did, and I'm sure he did a lot of things he never talked about. I'm just trying to reconcile the two.
Jenny: The first thing you have to understand, is that your father never meant to end up here. And yet he did, twice. The first time, he was early. The second time, he was late.
Those days, your father was working for himself. If there was one thing you could say about Edward Bloom, it's that he was a social person, and people took a liking to him. One night he was returning from three weeks on the road, when he hit a thunderstorm unlike any in his life.
Fate has a way of circling back on a man, and taking him by surprise. A man sees things differently at different times in his life. This town didn't seem the same now that he was older.
He was never a wealthy man, but he had made other men rich, and now he asked for their favors. Most of them had never seen Spectre— they only had Edward's words to describe it. That's all they needed. He sold them on the dream.
Jenny: Now let me get this straight. You'll buy the swamp from me, but I'll stay in it. You'll own the house, but it'll still be mine. I'll be here, and you'll come and go as you please to one place or another. Do I have that right?
Jenny: Why are you buying this land Mr. Bloom? Some sort of midlife crisis? Instead of buying a convertible, you buy a town?
Edward: Helping people makes me happy.
Jenny: I'm not convinced you should be happy.
Edward: I'm sorry— have I offended you?
Jenny: No, you did exactly what you promised. You came back. I was just expecting you sooner.
Most men in that situation would accept their failure and move on. But Edward was not like most men... As the months passed, he found more and more things to fix, until the shack no longer resembled itself.
Edward: I'm in love with my wife.
Jenny: Yeah... I know.
Edward: And from the moment I saw her until the moment I die, she's the only one.
Jenny: Lucky girl.
One day, Edward Bloom left, and never returned to the town he'd saved.
Jenny: As for the girl, the common belief was that she'd become a witch, and crazy at that. She became something of a legend herself. And the story ended where it began.
Will: Well, logically, you couldn't be the Witch, because she was old when he was young.
Jenny: Well, it's logical if you think like your father. See, to him, there's only two women: your mother and everyone else... And one day I realized I was in love with a man who could never love me back. I was living in a fairy tale... I'm not sure I should have told you any of this... I wanted to be as important to him as you were, and I was never going to be. I was make-believe and... his other life, you, you were real.
Sandra: I don't suppose that I could stay here with him. I mean in case... In case he wakes up, I really ought to be here.
Dr. Bennet: Glad to see you're not trying to have a heartfelt talk. one of my greatest annoyances is when people talk to those who can't hear them.
Will: Well we have an advantage. My father and I never talk.
Dr. Bennet: Your father ever tell you about the day you were born?
Jenny:Will: Yeah, a thousand times. He caught an uncatchable fish.
Dr. Bennett Not that. The real story. Did he ever tell you that?
Will: No.
Edward: Tell me how it happens. Will: How what happens?
Edward: How I go.
Will: You mean what you saw in The Eye? I don't know that story, Dad. You never told me that one.... Okay, hey, okay. I'll try. I need your help— tell me how it starts.
Edward: Like this.
Edward: Hurry up ! We haven't have much time.
Will: As we get closer to the river, we see that everybody's already there. And I mean everyone. It's unbelievable.
Edward: The story of my life.
Will: You become what you always were. A very big fish. And that's how it happens.
Edward: Yeah. Exactly.
Have you ever heard a joke so many times you've forgotten why it's funny? then you hear it again and suddenly it's new. You remember why you loved it in the first place.
That was my fathers final joke I guess. The man tells his stories so many times that he becomes the stories. They live on after him. And in that way, he becomes immortal.

The Man of the Hour (Themesong by Eddy Vedder):

Tidal waves don’t beg forgiveness, crashed, and on their way...
Nature has its own religion; gospel from the land. Father ruled by long division, young men they pretend— old men comprehend...
Now the man of the hour is taking his final bow. As the curtain comes down, I feel that this is just goodbye for now.

Cast:

Ewan McGregor - Ed Bloom (Young)

Albert Finney - Ed Bloom (Senior)
Billy Crudup - Will Bloom
Jessica Lange - Sandra Bloom (Senior)
Helena Bonham Carter - Jenny (Young & Senior) & The Witch
Alison Lohman - Sandra Bloom (Young)
Robert Guillaume - Dr. Bennett (Senior)
Marion Cotillard - Josephine
Matthew McGrory - Karl the Giant
David Denman - Don Price (Age 18-22)
Missi Pyle - Mildred
Loudon Wainwright III - Beamen
Ada Tai - Ping
Arlene Tai - Jing
Steve Buscemi - Norther Winslow
Danny DeVito - Amos Calloway
Perry Walston - Ed Bloom (Age 10)
Hailey Anne Nelson - Jenny (Age 8)

External links

Big Fish at Rotten Tomatoes
Big Fish at IMDb
Movie trailer at Apple
Official homepage at Sony Pictures

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