"They say when you meet the love of your life, time stops, and that's true. What they don't tell you is that when it starts again, it moves extra fast to catch up."
Edward says this about seeing the love of his life, Sandra Templeton, for the first time, from afar at the circus. When he says this, time literally stops and we see the circus suspended in midair as Edward walks through the stationary crowd towards the girl he sees. All of a sudden, time catches up, and the girl disappears in the crowd, leaving Edward to wonder who she was.
"There are some fish that cannot be caught. It's not that they are faster or stronger than other fish, they're just touched by something extra."
This is the first line of the film and illustrates the central symbolic image of the film, that of a large fish that is immune to being caught. There is a parallel to be drawn between the fish that Edward describes and himself. While he himself is not a particularly special man, he is undeniably "touched by something extra."
"Have you ever heard a joke so many times you've forgotten why it's funny? And then you hear it again and suddenly it's new. You remember why you loved it in the first place."
Will, through the entire story, is fighting not to believe his father's stories. He's heard them enough his entire life, and he wants the truth rather than a tall tale. Towards the end of the film, however, he accepts a deeper understanding of what it means to love his father, and why his dad is the way he is. With this line, he explains that after hearing his father's stories for years and years, he finds himself reacquainted with his father's sense of the magical, allowing him to understand his father in a way that he never was able to before.
"A man tells his stories so many times that he becomes the stories. They live on after him, and in that way he becomes immortal."
This is Will's main takeaway from the death of his father. After not understanding why his father exaggerated and told such tall tales throughout his life, Will finally understands that Edward's penchant for storytelling was a way for him to create a legacy for himself and to merge himself with his own imagination, in ways that would reverberate eternally. This line marks the moment that Will connects with his own spirituality.
"You don't know me but my name is Edward Bloom and I love you."
After working for Amos for no money for three years in hopes of learning about Sandra's identity, Edward goes to Auburn and knocks on the door of Sandra's sorority. When she answers, he says this. This line illustrates Edward's courage and foolhardy confidence. Without even knowing Sandra, he has the sheer gumption to go to her school and tell her he loves her.
"The grass so green. Skies so blue. Spectre is really great!"
Norther Winslow is a great poet who has settled in the idyllic town of Spectre. When Edward asks to read a poem that Norther says he's been working on for several years, he has high hopes. This is the poem that Norther passes to him, an unimpressive and juvenile piece of writing that is beneath the great writer. This poem is humorous in that it seems impossible that someone could spend several years working on it, and it just goes to show the stultifying effects of easy living in Spectre.
"I loved a man who could never love me back. I was living in a fairytale."
Will goes to visit Jenny, an old friend of his father's. When he asks her if she and Edward ever had an affair, she tells him their story, and reveals that they never had an affair. She loved him, but he did not love her back. Her own narrative fits into the theme of fairytales and make-believe, but in her own experience, fairy tales are delusional and self-defeating modes of being, rather than whimsical and adventurous, as they are for Edward.
"You become what you always were: a very big fish."
At the end of the film, just before Edward dies, Will takes up the mantle of his father's myth-making, and turns the story of Edward's death into a fairytale. In it, he posits that instead of dying, Edward will turn into a big river fish, a particularly apt transformation.
"Your mother came in about three in the afternoon. Her neighbor drove her, on account of your father was on business in Wichita. You were born a week early, but there were no complications. It was a perfect delivery. Now, your father was sorry to miss it, but it wasn't the custom for the men to be in the room for deliveries then, so I can't see as it would have been much different had he been there. And that's the real story of how you were born. Not very exciting, is it? And I suppose if I had to choose between the true version and an elaborate one involving a fish and a wedding ring, I might choose the fancy version. But that's just me."
When he notices that Will is still being hard on his father, even in the final moments of his father's life, Dr. Bennett gives Will the real story he's been craving his whole life. As it turns out, the facts that Will craves are not all that interesting, and as Dr. Bennett points out, Edward's magical versions are preferable, and enrich life.
"I don't think I'll ever dry out."
When Edward goes off chemotherapy, Sandra stays strong for him, but one day, when she sees him sitting in the bathtub, she climbs in with him and says this while embracing him. It's her way of telling him that she's scared of his imminent death, and suggests that she'll never be able to stop crying about his loss. It's a tender moment shared between two people long married.
