As a kid, I loved this movie (the 1990's version with Anthony Quinn, Gary Cole) and remember fondly watching it with my grandmother. At the request of one my students, Johnny Sims, I read it today.

Beautiful. Powerful.

Here are some of my favorite quotes and pictures found on a simple google search.

He remembered the time he had hooked on of a pair of marlin. The male fish always let the female fish feed first and the hooked fish, the female, make a wild, panic-stricken, despairing fight that soon exhausted her, and all the time the male had stayed with her, crossing the line and circling with her on the surface. He had stayed so close that the old man was afraid he would cut the line with his tail which was sharp as a scythe and almost of that size and shape. When the old man had gaffed her and clubbed her, holding the rapier bill with its sandpaper edge and clubbing her across the top of her head until her colour turned to a colour almost like the backing of mirrors, and then, with the boy’s aid, joisted her aboard, the male fish had stayed by the side of the boat. While the old man clearing the lines and preparing the harpoon, the male fish jumped high into the air beside the boat to see where the female was and then went down deep, his lavender wings, that were his pectoral fins, spread wide and all his wide lavender stripes showing. He was beautiful, the old man remembered, and he had stayed. Pg 49-50

“Fish,” he said, “I love you and respect you very much. But I will kill you dead before this day ends.”

“I will kill him though,” he said. “In all his greatness and his glory.” Although it is unjust, he though. But I will show him what a man can do and what a man endures. Pg 66

It is good we do not have to try and kill the sun or the moon or the stars. It is enough to live on the sea and kill our true brothers. Pg 75

“Keep my head clear,” he said against the wood of the bow. “I am a tired old man. But I have killed this fish which is my brother and now I must do the slave work.” Pg 95

“But man is not made for defeat,” he said. “A man can be destroyed but not defeated.” Pg 103

You killed him for pride and because you are a fisherman. You loved him when he was alive and you loved him after. If you love him, it is not a sin to kill him. Or is it more? Pg 105

He spat into the ocean and said, Eat that, galanos. And make a dream you’ve killed a man.” Pg 119

“In the night I spat something strange and felt something in my chest was broken.” Pg 125

Also, here is Hemingway's Cocktail for Rough Times