a duck QUOTES

1 " Gundar seemed to come to a decision. " Well, as my old mam used to say, if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck and walks like a duck, it's probably a duck." " Very wise," Halt said. " And what exactly do your mother's words of wisdom have to do with this situation?" Gundar shrugged. " It looks like a channel. It's the right place for a channel. If I were digging one, this is where I'd dig a channel. So. . ." " So it's probably the channel?" Selethen said. Gundar grinned at him. " Either that or it's a duck. "

2 " Marcus couldn't believe it. Dead. A dead duck. OK, he'd been trying to hit it on the head with a piece of sandwich, but he tried to do all sorts of things, and none of them had ever happened before. He'd tried to get the highest score on the Stargazer machine in the kabab shop on Hornsey road - nothing. He'd tried to read Nicky's thoughts by staring at the back of his head every maths lesson for a week - nothing. It really annoyed him that the only thing he'd ever achieved through trying was something he hadn't really wanted to do that much in the first place. And anyway, since when did hitting a bird with a sandwich ever kill it? People spend half their lives throwing things at the ducks in Regent's Park. How come he managed to pick a duck that pathetic? "

― Nick Hornby , About a Boy

3 " Bloodthirsty little beasts. Never trust a duck. "

― Cassandra Clare , Clockwork Angel (The Infernal Devices, #1)

4 " Soon we could barely recognize them. They were taller than we were, and heavier. They were loud beyond belief. I feel like a duck that's hatched goose's eggs. "

― Julie Otsuka , The Buddha in the Attic

5 " The saddest thing of all was that their party represented a deviation from the conditions of the time. It was impossible to imagine that in the houses across the lane people were eating and drinking in the same way at such an hour. Beyond the window lay mute, dark, hungry Moscow. Her food stores were empty, and people had even forgotten to think of such things as game and vodka.

And thus it turned out that the only true life is one that resembles the life around us and drowns in it without leaving a trace, that isolated happiness is not happiness, so that duck and alcohol, when they seem to be the only ones in town, are not alcohol and a duck at all. "

― Boris Pasternak , Doctor Zhivago

6 " It’s not what I think? If it looks like a duck and walks like a duck...” I imply with a shrug “...well then you know what they say.”
“Nothing hap―”
“Quack! "

― K. Bromberg

7 " Girl going past clinging to a young man's arm. Putting up her face like a duck to the moon. Drinking joy. Green in her eyes. Spinal curvature. No chin, mouth like a frog. Young man like a pug. Gazing down at his sweetie with the face of a saint reading the works of God. Hold on, maiden, you've got him. He's your boy. Look out, Puggy, that isn't a maiden you see before you, it's a work of imagination. Nail him, girlie. Nail him to the contract. Fly laddie, fly off with your darling vision before she turns into a frow, who spends all her life thinking of what the neighbours think. "

― Joyce Cary , The Horse's Mouth

8 " It's a bird of some sort. It's like a duck, only I never saw a duck have so many colors." The bird swam swiftly and gracefully toward the Magic Isle, and as it drew nearer its gorgeously colored plumage astonished them. The feathers were of many hues of glistening greens and blues and purples, and it had a yellow head with a red plume, and pink, white and violet in its tail. "

9 " There's an epigram tacked to my office bulletin board, pinched from a magazine -- " Wanting to meet an author because you like his work is like wanting to meet a duck because you like pâté. "

10 " What, exactly, is the Internet? Basically it is a global network exchanging digitized data in such a way that any computer, anywhere, that is equipped with a device called a “modem” can make a noise like a duck choking on a kazoo. "

― Dave Barry

11 " If it looks like a duck and sounds like a duck, it could be a really ugly swan. "

― Timmothy Radman

12 " This is what men call genius, just as they call a painted face beauty and a richly attired figure majesty. The confound the brilliance of the firmament with the star-shaped footprints of a duck in the mud. "

― Victor Hugo , Les Misérables

13 " At last the magic caught, and she managed to vault clumsily onto it before it trundled into the night sky as gracefully as a duck with one wing missing. "

14 " Gorgeous,” he murmured.
She chuckled. “Think you’l say that in five months or so? When I waddle like a duck and you have to tie my shoes for me?”
“I’l say it then and forever. "

― Cherrie Lynn , Unleashed (Ross Siblings, #1)

15 " You're saying,' he said, weighing each word, 'that we should send Carrot away to be a duck among humans because Bjorn Stronginthearm is my uncle. "

― Terry Pratchett , Guards! Guards! (Discworld, #8; City Watch #1)

16 " He wouldn't give a duck a drink if he owned Lake Michigan. "

17 " When I see a bird that walks like a duck and swims like a duck and quacks like a duck, I call that bird a duck. "

― James Whitcomb Riley

18 " I took the process of doing as much myself as I could like a duck to water. I set up my own label and publishing, etc, and it was a fun learning curve two decades ago. "

19 " For me to go to America - which I find such a positive place - well, I took to it like a duck to water. "