A Boat Quotes & Sayings

You are her mother.
Why did you not warn her,
hold her like a rotting boat
and tell her that men will not love her
if she is covered in continents,
if her teeth are small colonies,
if her stomach is an island
if her thighs are borders?

What man wants to lie down
and watch the world burn
in his bedroom?

Your daughter 's face is a small riot,
her hands are a civil war,
a refugee camp behind each ear,
a body littered with ugly things.

But God,
doesn't she wear
the world well? — Warsan Shire

THE BLUE DRESS

Her blue dress is a silk train is a river
is water seeps into the cobblestone steps of my sleep, is still raining
is monsoon brocade, is winter stars stitched into puddles
is goodbye in a flooded, antique room, is goodbye in a room of crystal bowls
and crystal cups, is the ring-ting-ring of water dripping from the mouths
of crystal bowls and crystal cups, is the Mississippi river is a hallway, is leaks
like tears from windowsills of a drowned house, is windows open to waterfalls
is a bed is a small boat is a ship, is a currant come to carry me in its arms
through the streets, is me floating in her dress through the streets
is the moon sees me floating through the streets, is me in a blue dress
out to sea, is my mother is a moon out to sea. — Saeed Jones

The experts are right, he thought. Venice is sinking. The whole city is slowly dying. One day the tourists will travel here by boat to peer down into the waters, and they will see pillars and columns and marble far, far beneath them, slime and mud uncovering for brief moments a lost underworld of stone. Their heels made a ringing sound on the pavement and the rain splashed from the gutterings above. A fine ending to an evening that had started with brave hope, with innocence. ("Don't Look Now") — Daphne Du Maurier

I will have no man in my boat," said Starbuck, "who is not afraid of a whale." By this, he seemed to mean, not only that the most reliable and useful courage was that which arises from the fair estimation of the encountered peril, but that an utterly fearless man is a far more dangerous comrade than a coward.
(moby dick chap 26 p112) — Herman Melville

Because evangelicals view their primary task as evangelism and discipleship,1 they tend to avoid issues that hinder these activities. Thus, they are generally not counter-cultural. With some significant exceptions, they avoid "rocking the boat," and live within the confines of the larger culture. At times they have been able to call for and realize social change, but most typically their influence has been limited to alterations at the margins. So, despite having the subcultural tools to call for radical changes in race relations, they most consistently call for changes in persons that leave the dominant social structures, institutions, and culture intact. This avoidance of boat-rocking unwittingly leads to granting power to larger economic and social forces. It also means that evangelicals' views to a considerable extent conform to the socioeconomic conditions of their time. — Christian Smith

Buying from a local farmer can mean that he makes a two-hour extra truck drive, which can damage the environment more than a bunch of bananas on a boat. — Tyler Cowen

Yes, sir. I went downstairs to' - a blurry moment when no words come to me, then it passes and I continue - 'to pursue my investigations further. I sought to liberate the women I found, but they were secured with chains.'

Jackson nods. I'm doing well. 'And you weren't able to call for help, because...'

'Because of the women on the boat. If Sikorsky's men had heard police sirens, the women could have been tossed overboard immediately. I had to let those men come to me, so I could...um...'

Shoot the fuckers.

'Arrest them,' says Jackson.

'Exactly. So I could arrest them. — Harry Bingham

The essential point here is that all people with small, insecure incomes are in the same boat and ought to be fighting on the same side. Probably we could do with a little less talk about' capitalist' and 'proletarian' and a little more about the robbers and the robbed. — George Orwell

A marriage is like a long trip in a tiny row boat: if one passenger starts to rock the boat, the other has to steady it, otherwise, they will go to the bottom together. — David Reuben

She's contemplative; I can feel the air around her thick with her thoughts. "No," she says at last, "I want to believe you're being sincere but I know you're not. So I say no, because even if I allow myself to fantasize a little about our lives in a cabin on the beach, I still find myself being left by you. There's almost no scenario I can think of where we live happily ever after."
"There could be," I tell her and mean it at the moment. Maybe mean it for longer. Her fingers stop moving and she sighs. I open my eyes and she's staring down at me. The lights have come on around the parking lot and one of them shines directly into her face. She angelic, a neon seraphim under the brilliant skies of the spring. I can see us on our boat, eating our hand picked clams on the fire behind our place. I can see it so vividly I'm almost sure it's happened. — Jaden Wilkes

No country is so peaceful as the one that leads into death. Life arches above one's head like a bridgespan, and below it flows the water, carries the boat, takes it further. — Alfred Doblin

I wish that they could have more freedoms to be able to come and play. I know that the only way that they can get out is by, you know, defecting to another country or whatever, or getting on a boat. — Rafael Palmeiro

Somewhere among them - those green and untested boys - lay much of the stock from which he would have to select a crew capable of going all the way. The trick would be to find which few of them had the potential for raw power, the nearly superhuman stamina, the indomitable willpower, and the intellectual capacity necessary to master the details of technique. And which of them, coupled improbably with all those other qualities, had the most important one: the ability to disregard his own ambitions, to throw his ego over the gunwales, to leave it swirling in the wake of his shell, and to pull, not just for himself, not just for glory, but for the other boys in the boat. — Daniel James Brown

For one thing, I was no longer alone; a man is never alone with the wind-and the boat made three. — Hilaire Belloc

Life is a funny thing. We claim it to be our own; but the truth is, it's not. It belongs to something much bigger. We, like everything else, are transient. This life is temporary and everything about us is temporary. What we call our life is nothing more than borrowed energy from something much bigger--nature, the universe, God--whatever floats your boat. And one day, when we pass, we will give that energy back to the world we borrowed it from in the first place. — Leanne Waters

The city was asleep, and the bookshop felt like a boat adrift in a sea of silence and shadows. — Carlos Ruiz Zafon

I met her last summer on a moonlight boat trip... — Tennessee Williams

A single bomb of this type, carried by boat and exploded in a port, might very well destroy the whole port, together with some of the surrounding territory. — Albert Einstein

Coal is a portable climate. It carries the heat of the tropics to Labrador and the polar circle; and it is the means of transporting itself whithersoever it is wanted. Watt and Stephenson whispered in the ear of mankind their secret, that a half-ounce of coal will draw two tons a mile, and coal carries coal, by rail and by boat, to make Canada as warm as Calcutta, and with its comfort brings its industrial power. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

I grew up in Oregon, where as a teenager I worked with my grandfather Axel on his i shing boat at the mouth of the Columbia River. — Karl Marlantes

I'm not studying the heroes who lead navies - and armies - and win wars. I'm studying ordinary people who you wouldn't expect to be heroic, but who, when there's a crisis, show extraordinary bravery and self-sacrifice. Like Jenna Geidel, who gave her life vaccinating people during the Pandemic. And the fishermen and retired boat owners and weekend sailors who rescued the British Army from Dunkirk. And Wells Crowther, the twenty-four-year-old equities trader who worked in the World Trade Center. When it was hit by terrorists, he could have gotten out, but instead he went back and saved ten people, and died. I'm going to observe six different sets of heroes in six different situations to try to determine what qualities they have in common. — Connie Willis

[He] would drive his sculling boat through mile after mile, in a silent brutal programe of conditioning - he would work all alone, at first light, punishing himself without mercy. His was the private dignity of the lone athlete, with a grim purpose, fighting a solitary war with himself, toward a goal only he can see. — Daniel Topolski

The three sons of Bor had no liking for Ymir ... At last they attacked Ymir and killed him. His wounds were like springs; so much blood streamed from them and so fast, that the flood drowned all the frost giants except Bergelmir and his wife. They embarked in their boat and rode out on a tide of gore — Kevin Crossley-Holland

We might compare each day's decisions with the work of steering a boat. Our efforts will result in nebulous confusion if we make a wrong move at any point, even if it's only a small tack to the side. We absolutely cannot afford carelessness, lest we risk becoming lost ourselves. — Hideo Kojima

Without fear and disease, my life would be like a boat without oars. — Edvard Munch

We have one of the highest interest rates in the world, and we owe more money per capita than any other country. All we need is a nail hole in the bottom of the boat and we're sunk. — Pauline Hanson

There was a great difference in boats, of course. For a long time I was on a boat that was so slow we used to forget what year it was we left port in. — Mark Twain

The best long range shotgun load to have in one's boat for mallards is a fine retriever. — Nash Buckingham

We call it keeping up with the Joneses. They buy a boat and we buy a bigger one. They get a new TV and we get a big screen. They start a business and we start planning our articles of incorporation and the first stock release. And while we're so busy keeping up, we ignore our soul, the inner voice, that's telling us that it really wants to teach children to read. While it helps to identify with each other, we're not the same. So why compare ourselves on the basis of material things? Are you walking a path with heart in your own life, regardless of what others have? — Melody Beattie

This report is maybe 12-years-old. Parliament buried it, and it stayed buried till River dug it up. This is what they feared she knew. And they were right to fear because there's a whole universe of folk who are gonna know it, too. They're gonna see it. Somebody has to speak for these people. You all got on this boat for different reasons, but you all come to the same place. So now I'm asking more of you than I have before. Maybe all. Sure as I know anything I know this, they will try again. Maybe on another world, maybe on this very ground swept clean. A year from now, 10, they'll swing back to the belief that they can make people ... better. And I do not hold to that. So no more running. I aim to misbehave. — Joss Whedon

THE MYTH OF THE GOOD OL BOY AND THE NICE GAL
The good of boy myth and the nice gal are a kind of social conformity myth. They create a real paradox when put together with the "rugged individual" part of the Success Myth. How can I be a rugged individual, be my own man and conform at the same time? Conforming means "Don't make a wave", "Don't rock the boat". Be a nice gal or a good ol' boy. This means that we have to pretend a lot.
"We are taught to be nice and polite. We are taught that these behaviors (most often lies) are better than telling the truth. Our churches, schools, and politics are rampant with teaching dishonesty (saying things we don't mean and pretending to feel ways we don't feel). We smile when we feel sad; laugh nervously when dealing with grief; laugh at jokes we don't think are funny; tell people things to be polite that we surely don't mean."
- Bradshaw On: The Family — John Bradshaw

Jumped in the river, what did I see? Black-eyed angels swam with me A moonful of stars and astral cars And all the figures I used to see All my lovers were there with me All my past and futures And we all went to heaven in a little row boat There was nothing to fear and nothing to doubt — Thom Yorke

It seemed now as if, touched by human penitence and all its toil, divine goodness had parted the curtain and displayed behind it, single, distinct, the hare erect; the wave falling; the boat rocking, which did we deserve them, should be ours always. But alas, divine goodness, twitching the cord, draws the curtain; it does not please him; he covers his treasures in a drench of hail, and so breaks them, so confuses them that it seems impossible that their calm should ever return or that we should ever compose from their fragments a perfect whole or read in the littered pieces the clear words of truth. For our penitence deserves a glimpse only; our toil respite only. — Virginia Woolf

The CIA currently has in custody two FBI agents and a Boston police detective who is demanding they pay for the damage to his boat."
"He's okay?"
Burns nodded. "Emptied a double-barreled shotgun at a couple of Company lackeys, and then they arrested him. He spent all night claiming he thought they were the Men in Black coming to scan his brain"
Ty bit his lip so he wouldn't laugh.
about Nick — Abigail Roux

I am the twelve-year-old girl,
refugee on a small boat,
who throws herself into the ocean
after being raped by a sea pirate.
And I am the pirate,
my heart not yet capable
of seeing and loving. — Thich Nhat Hanh

She closed her eyes and took a deep breath for one last time and let his hand go. She saw his boat drifting away they both looked at each other and waved one last time before she could not see him anymore. — Akshay Vasu

The stretching, yearning stalks hiss against the boat's bottom, making a white noise that sounds like pollen coming out of a piss-blizzard. — Chuck Wendig

The river reflected whatever it chose of sky and bridge and burning tree, and when the undergraduate had oared his boat through the reflections they closed again, completely, as if they had never been. There one might have sat the clock round lost in thought. Thought
to call it by a prouder name than it deserved
had let its line down into the stream. It swayed, minute after minute, hither and thither among the reflections and the weeds, letting the water lift it and sink it until
you know the little tug
the sudden conglomeration of an idea at the end of one's line: and then the cautious hauling of it in, and the careful laying of it out? Alas, laid on the grass how small, how insignificant this thought of mine looked; the sort of fish that a good fisherman puts back into the water so that it may grow fatter and be one day worth cooking and eating. — Virginia Woolf

What most people find festive - a weekend at a beach shack with friends, a boat trip down a river, a crackling bonfire on a summer night - I see as a bleak nightmare to be grimly endured. I would sooner put lit cigarettes in my eyes than share a vacation house with a crowd. — Jancee Dunn

Right now I am kicking around an idea to do a web talk show on a boat. Guests would come on and go fishing with me. I would like to take people who have never fished: You get them out on the water and they really open up. — Tom Colicchio

There was something refreshingly and wildly musical to my ears in the very name of the white man's canoe, reminding me of Charlevoix and Canadian Voyageurs. The batteau is a sort of mongrel between the canoe and the boat, a fur-trader's boat. — Henry David Thoreau

As the station wagon pulled back onto the highway, the sun was slowly sinking below the horizon like a leaky boat. Well, except for that fact that boats are not generally round, orange and on fire. Hmm. Come to think of it, in no way whatsoever did the sun, in this instance, resemble a leaky boat. My apologies. That was a dreadful attempt at simile. Please allow me to try again.
As the station wagon pulled back onto the highway, the sun was slowly sinking below the horizon like a self-luminous, gaseous sphere comprised mainly of of hydrogen and helium. — Cuthbert Soup

My favorite Hepburn moment is in 'Sabrina,' when she steps off a boat in white shorts and a plaid shirt. Chic, classic, and unfussy. — Emilia Clarke

You go into a book and you're in the dark, really. You go in with a certain fear and trembling. You know one thing. You know you will not be the same person when this voyage is over. But you don't know what's going to happen to you between getting on the boat and stepping off. — James A. Baldwin

It takes a lot of wind to sail a leaky boat. — Tom Morrison

As adults, if our top priorities are constantly directed toward the acquisition of more and better worldly goods, it will not take long to increase our love in those directions. The purchase of a larger house or a nicer car or a more expensive boat may cause us to sacrifice our resources and develop an unwise love for these symbols of success and pleasure. We learn to love that which we serve, and we serve that which we love. — Marvin J. Ashton

The urge to change my mind and not go at all is enormous. I'm absolutely terrified to leave on that boat. But, if I don't go, there'll be one more broken person in this world who gave up a dream to sit in a chair, pick up the TV remote and shrink. — Lexis De Rothschild

Ambition without knowledge is like a boat on dry land -movie - Karate kid"What is the calculus of innovation?" "The calculus of innovation is really quite simple: knowledge drives innovation, innovation drives productivity, productivity drives our economic growth." — William R. Brody

Looks like someone will have to save him," said Brother Henry without much urgency. "Oh, Hell." Bastian gathered up the hem of his habit to disrobe. "Don't leap in after him," said Brother Lionel. "He'll drag you down. Well-documented fact. Best to save someone who's already unconscious. It's dangerous otherwise." "That's soon sorted," said Brother Henry, knelt up in the boat and raised one of the oars like a club. "Oi! Clement!" The drowning sacristan glanced upwards and Brother Henry struck downwards. — Heide Goody

If you rock the boat in a fragile family, the concern is that everyone will drown. Hmmm, — Susan Juby

I think of the old slavery, and of the way The Economy has now improved upon it. The new slavery has improved upon the old by giving the new slaves the illusion that they are free. The Economy does not take people's freedom by force, which would be against its principles, for it is very humane. It buys their freedom, pays for it, and then persuades its money back again with shoddy goods and the promise of freedom. "Buy a car," it says, "and be free. Buy a boat and be free." Is this not the raw material of bad dreams? Or is it maybe the very nightmare itself? — Wendell Berry

Such is a community
of inviolable immunity, protected
from tampering or harpooning
mutiny. Every better thinker's impulse
to shrink us (at the shoreline from our
lifeblood's deep pulse) uses disparaging
scrutiny to sink us. — Kristen Henderson

I'm a legend because I've survived over a long period of time and still seem to be master of my fate - I'm still paddling the goddamned boat myself. — Katharine Hepburn

The Ferryman will transport us across the moat," Chris informed.
"Yeah. This seems legit," Gabriella quipped as Chris helped her onto the boat. Andrew followed behind.
"Are you sure this isn't a trick?" Egnatious asked.
Again, uncertainty filtered into Chris's blue eyes, but he nodded anyway. "This is the only way. — Laura Kreitzer

Sometimes you can miss the boat and find a new life. — Benny Bellamacina

This body is the boat which will carry us to the other shore of the ocean of life. It must be taken care of. Unhealthy persons cannot be Yogis. Mental laziness makes us lose all lively interest in the subject, without which there will neither be the will nor the energy to practise. Doubts will arise in the mind about the truth of the science, however strong one's intellectual conviction may be, until certain peculiar psychic experiences come, as hearing or seeing at a distance, etc. These glimpses strengthen the mind and make the student persevere. Falling away ... when obtained. Some days or weeks when you are practicing, the mind will be calm and easily concentrated, and you will find yourself progressing fast. All of a sudden the progress will stop one day, and you will find yourself, as it were, stranded. Persevere. All progress proceeds by such rise and fall. — Swami Vivekananda

Come on," I said to Karrin. "Head for the other boat."
"Should we?" she asked. "That Erlking guy seems a little..do-it-yourselfy. — Jim Butcher

If the sky has turned a darkened grey and the sea threatens to spill the occupants in the boat, know that the Lord God made the storm still, and though you shall face storms in your life the Lord God will still them with his hand. When you are alone, Jesus will have his arms wrapped around you, holding you tightly, the angels shall call out your name when you feel that you have been deaf, and you shall see the light of Heaven when you think you are blind. When you feel your dreams are broken it does not do well to cast yourself into misery but look at the brighter side of life, and see all the Lord has blessed you with! — Ariana Pedigo

The process of writing a novel is like taking a journey by boat. You have to continually set yourself on course. If you get distracted or allow yourself to drift, you will never make it to the destination. It's not like highly defined train tracks or a highway; this is a path that you are creating discovering. The journey is your narrative. Keep to it and there will be a tale told. — Walter Mosley

He was thinking about men like his Uncle Ted, a Cornishman to his bones, who lived and would die in St. Mawes, part of the fabric of the place, remembered as long as there were locals, beaming out of fading photographs of the Life Boat on pub walls. When Ted died - and Strike hoped it would be twenty, thirty years hence - they would mourn him as the unknown Barrovian Grammar boy was being mourned: with drink, with tears, but in celebration that he had been given to them. What had dark, hulking Brockbank, child rapist, and fox-haired Laing, wife-torturer, left behind in the towns of their birth? Shudders of relief that they had gone, fear that they had returned, a trail of broken people and bad memories. — Robert Galbraith

He took his hands off the oars and pulled in the mooring rope. If I make a couple of loops, he thought, I can strap the axe on to my back.
He had a mental picture of what could happen to a man who plunged into the cauldron below a waterfall with a sharp piece of metal attached to his body.
GOOD MORNING.
Vimes blinked. A tall dark robed figure was now sitting in the boat.
'Are you Death?'
IT'S THE SCYTHE, ISN'T IT? PEOPLE ALWAYS NOTICE THE SCYTHE.
'I'm going to die?'
POSSIBLY.
'Possibly? You turn up when people are possibly going to die?'
OH, YES. IT'S QUITE THE NEW THING. IT'S BECAUSE OF THE UNCERTAINTY PRINCIPLE.
'What's that?'
I'M NOT SURE.
'That's very helpful. — Terry Pratchett

The terror, which would not end for another 28 years-if it ever did end-began, so far as I know or can tell, with a boat made from a sheet of newspaper floating down a gutter swollen with rain. — Stephen King

I was the first journalist allowed on a hunting boat during harp seal season in almost 15 years. Around the late 1970s, white coat pups became the poster child for the anti-fur movement, and by the '80s, the media was lambasting the hunters for killing them. — Brian Skerry

I think I've always been drawn to the second person. When I was growing up and playing with my friends, the usual way we interacted with imaginary worlds was as characters: a bench was 'your' boat, leaves on a lawn were the fins of sharks out to get 'you.' — Mohsin Hamid

I never thought I should like to wash dishes, but I do, said Rose, as she sat in a boat after supper lazily rinsing plates in the sea, and rocking luxuriously as she wiped them. — Louisa May Alcott

There was a man
Who made a boat
To sail away
And it sank. — J.P. Donleavey

of making the Grand Fleet turn away and open the range. Admiral Scheer claims that putting the van of his fleet again into action "diverted the enemy fire and rendered it possible for the torpedo-boat flotillas to take so effective a share in the proceedings," (S) but of course it is a question whether the same result might not have been obtained' by the use of the torpedo flotillas alone. In any case, it must be acknowledged that Admiral Scheer's extraordinary manoeuvres had accomplished a surprise effect upon his enemy as, besides forcing the Grand Fleet to turn away, the moral effect of this torpedo attack had a great influence upon the British conduct of the rest of the action. It is also evident that the British had not comprehended — Thomas Goddard Frothingham

Sometimes, if you want to live and breathe tomorrow, you have to dive into the black depths today, and that is a leap of faith - faith in your U-boat, and your crew - beside which the saints' religious epiphanies amount to nothing. — Neal Stephenson

The stock market is like a small row boat on a rough sea, bouncing around as it drifts, whereas the macro economy is like a large ocean liner, very ponderous and difficult to maneuver but without such a rough journey. — Clive Granger

This wasn't a commodifiable realization, the kind of thing in college essays or inspirational books or the hardbound journals of gentle ladies. There was no ah, no ha, no relaxation or humor folded into this realization. There was just something real in my head - a rescue boat in a sea where there was no one left to save. — Catherine Lacey

What do you think you are doing by infesting the whole world? Because I do it with one puny boat, I am called a pirate; because you do it with a great fleet, you are called an emperor. — Augustine Of Hippo

You ever have the feeling you were in the wrong place? That if you could just get over the next hill, cross the next river, look down into the next valley, it'd all ... fit. Be right."
"All my life, more of less"
"All your life spent getting ready for the next thing. I climbed a lot of hills now. I crossed a lot of rivers. Crossed the sea even, left everything I knew and came to Styria. But there I was, waiting for me at the docks when I got off the boat, same man, same life. Next valley ain't no different from this one. No better anyway. Reckon I've learned ... just to stick in the place I'm at. Just to be the man I am. — Joe Abercrombie

Brody cannot believe the size of the creature, and with a classic, practical understatement tells Quint his assessment: You're gonna need a bigger boat. Awestruck, they all view the full-sized, massive shark circling the boat. Quint estimates it is 25 feet long: Three tons of him. — Roy Scheider

This beginning motion, this first time when a sail truly filled and the boat took life and knifed across the lake under perfect control, this was so beautiful it stopped my breath ... — Gary Paulsen

Don't think of sea as color. Make it a solid that can support a boat. Think of 'wetness' as color-texture. — John French Sloan

I remember as a very young child being warned that libraries and bookstores were quiet places where noise wasn't allowed. Here was yet another thing the adults had gotten wrong, for these book houses pulsed with sounds; they just weren't noisy. The books hummed. The collective noise they made was like riding on a large boat where the motor's steady thrum and tickle vibrated below one's sneakers, ignorable until you listened, then omnipresent and relentless, the sound that carried you forward. Each book brimmed with noises it wanted to make inside your head the moment you opened it; only the shut covers prevented it from shouting ideas, impulses, proverbs, and plots into that sterile silence. — Wendy Welch

Once there was a man who filmed his vacation./He went flying down the river in his boat/with his video camera to his eye, making/a moving picture of the moving river/ ... [At the end of his vacation,]/With a flick of the switch, there it would be./But he would not be in it. He would never be in it. — Wendell Berry

I bled a lot. I got hit across the face. We couldn't film for seven days. I got hit, whacked, underwater, across the face. I finished the shot, got into the boat and blood started coming out. — Steve Irwin

If he was a ghost in the life he remembered, Jeff thought, he was also a ghost in his present life, just the same way. Except, in all the fourteen years, just a couple of times. With Melody that first summer he had felt alive. On the beach on the island. And when he played the guitar. Most of the time, he thought, he practiced not being anybody. If you weren't anybody then nobody could - what? Hurt you or leave you behind? Make you unhappy? But then they couldn't make you happy either, could they? If you played it safe, then you kept safe. Jeff figured he was pretty good at keeping safe - he didn't even look in mirrors because he didn't want to see Melody's eyes. But one result of that was that Jeff didn't know anything about himself. And he thought, sitting in the little boat, alone on the creek, alone with the creek and the sky and the marshes, that he might want to know more. — Cynthia Voigt

Even the most egregious captive state, bound and gagged on her damp bunk, felt eerily familiar to her. With nothing to do but lie there and think of things, she reflected that captivity took many different forms. A woman under the domination of her father or husband was as much a prisoner as a hostage on a boat. She had merely traded one form of servitude for another. — Susan Wiggs

We cannot be free of nagging desires through suppression. This is like trying to keep a rubber boat beneath the water. But we remove compulsive desires altogether by understanding their nature. — Vernon Howard

... a certain kind of wanderlust can only be assuaged by the acts of the body itself in motion, not the motion of the car, boat, or plane. — Rebecca Solnit

My father was a sailor and our summer vacations were always on a sailboat. I had a little boat before I had a moped. — Ernesto Bertarelli

Once upon a time in the dead of winter in the Dakota Territory, Theodore Roosevelt took off in a makeshift boat down the Little Missouri River in pursuit of a couple of thieves who had stolen his prized rowboat. After several days on the river, he caught up and got the draw on them with his trusty Winchester, at which point they surrendered. Then Roosevelt set off in a borrowed wagon to haul the thieves cross-country to justice. They headed across the snow-covered wastes of the Badlands to the railhead at Dickinson, and Roosevelt walked the whole way, the entire 40 miles. It was an astonishing feat, what might be called a defining moment in Roosevelt's eventful life. But what makes it especially memorable is that during that time, he managed to read all of Anna Karenina. I often think of that when I hear people say they haven't time to read. — David McCullough

The compass simply represents the ideal, present but unachievable, and sight-steering a compromise with perfection which allows your boat to exist at all. — John Steinbeck

The future is a fog that is still hanging out over the sea, a boat that floats home or does not. — Anne Sexton

Somewhat leaky boat are on the lookout for a human companion. Not me. I have learned to love the inside of my own head. There isn't much I'd rather say than think. Of course for more than thirty years I've had Chuck. We've known each other so long that we don't have to talk, and when we do we don't have to say anything. When he asks me if I'd like to take a trip around the world I can say yes knowing I'll never have to go. — Abigail Thomas

In lieu of descending to follow the Via Aurelia where it wound down a few miles off the coast, by Santa Maranella and Santa Severa and mediaeval Palo, and the volcanic soil and the steep ravines by Cervetri, where the long avenues of cliff-sepulchres are all that remain to show the site of Caere, and gaining so the mouth of Tiber to ascend the stream in any boat that he might find by Fiumicino, he still struck across the country by cattle-tracks known alone to himself and wild men like him, and chose to leave the Maccarese morasses untrodden in his rear, and had followed the course of the Arrone River as far as the high cliffs up by forsaken Galera. — Ouida

My parents immigrated from Italy and spent 40 days and 40 stinking nights on a boat so we didn't have to eat things like gizzards. — Nadia Giosia

Ever see a skinny guy on a cold day? You know they tremble like Chihuahuas. Then you see a fat guy in a tank top - nine degrees, he's sweatin'. Look at 'Titanic,' remember the boat goes into the icy cold waters? Little skinny Leonardo: dead. Final scene, Kathy Bates on a rowboat, coat open, eating a hotdog. — Greg Fitzsimmons

(Please excuse my lack of depth; I'm a generalist, not a specialist. Why bother learning all that biochemistry stuff - or how to design a building, or conn a boat, or balance accounts, or solve equations, or comfort the dying - when you can get other people to do all that for you in exchange for a blow job?) — Charles Stross

This creature's career could produce but one result, and it speedily followed. Boy after boy managed to get on the river. The minister's son became an engineer. The doctor's and the post-master's sons became 'mud clerks;' the wholesale liquor dealer's son became a barkeeper on a boat; four sons of the chief merchant, and two sons of the county judge, became pilots. Pilot was the grandest position of all. The pilot, even in those days of trivial wages, had a princely salary - from a hundred and fifty to two hundred and fifty dollars a month, and no board to pay. Two months of his wages would pay a preacher's salary for a year. Now some of us were left disconsolate. We could not get on the river - at least our parents would not let us. — Mark Twain

With my wolf's hunger
I haul my lamb's body
down like a sail
I am like
the wretched boat
and the lascivious sea — Giuseppe Ungaretti

At the edge of the still, dark pool that was the sea, at the brimming edge of freedom where no boat was to be seen, she spoke the first words of the few they were to exchange. 'I cannot swim. You know it?"

In the dark she saw the flash of his smile. 'Trust me.' And he drew her with a strong hand until the green phosphorescence beaded her ankles, and deeper, and deeper, until the thick milk-warm water, almost unfelt, was up to her waist. She heard him swear feelingly to himself as the salt water searched out, discovered his burns. Then with a rustle she saw his pale head sink back into the quiet sea and at the same moment she was gripped and drawn after him, her face to the stars, drawn through the tides with the sea lapping like her lost hair at her cheeks, the drive of his body beneath her pulling them both from the shore. They were launched on the long journey towards the slim shape, black against glossy black, which was the brigantine, with Thompson on board. — Dorothy Dunnett

I feel like my blood a giant river swell up inside me and I'm drowning. My head all dark inside. Feel like giant river I never cross in front me now. Ms Rain say, You not writing Precious. I say I drownin' in river. She don't look me like I'm crazy but say, If you just sit there the river gonna rise up drown you! Writing could be the boat to carry you to the other side. — Sapphire.

Our memories and the events of our lives are untidy things. We wish that we could file them away and shut the door, or we wish the opposite - that they would stay with us forever. You want to banish the remembrance of a tight hold on your ankle, a rope under a bed, the amber-colored medicine bottles of your father, the door your mother slams after a night of too much wine and jealousy. You want to keep close to you always that first sweet kiss, a maple leaf, that growing sense of yourself; you want to hold the sight of your dying father on that last boat trip, the calm you remember as your mother held you. Her voice. — Deb Caletti

Yes; but if dryads are foolish they must take the consequences, just as if they were real people," said Paul gravely. "Do you know what I think about the new moon, teacher? I think it is a little golden boat full of dreams. — L.M. Montgomery

If he had known unstructured
space is a deluge
and stocked his log house-
boat with all the animals
even the wolves,
he might have floated.
But obstinate he
stated, The land is solid
and stamped,
watching his foot sink
down through the stone
up to his knee.
From Progressive insanities of a pioneer — Margaret Atwood

There, below the cliffs, is a bay of sand where the rocks stand up like the fangs of wolves, and no boat or swimmer can live when the tide is breaking round them. To right and left of the bay the sea has driven arches through the cliff. The rocks are purple and rose-coloured and pale as turquoise in the sun, and on a summer's evening when the tide is low and the sun is sinking, men see on the horizon land that comes and goes with the light. It is the Summer Isle, which (they say) floats and sinks at the will of heaven, the Island of Glass through which the clouds and stars can be seen, but which for those who dwell there is full of trees and grass and springs of sweet water . . .' The — Mary Stewart

I could have stayed holding on to Masimo and riding round forever, round and round, like that bloke on that doomed phantom boat, The Flying Dutchman. Of course there are differences - he was not on a scooter, and I don't have a beard and I am not Dutch. — Louise Rennison