Quotes & Sayings About Boats

there is a man blocking our way. Sitting astride a tractor with a big scooping bucket on the front, he yells at us for being on his property. We explain the boats, and he says we can't tie up there, that this is his restaurant. We say there's no room anywhere, that the Coast Guard won't let us leave, that they'll shoot at us if we do. He tells us we better go fucking home and get our guns. He tells us we're at war. — Hugh Howey

There is a level of fame that is really unmanageable. But most of the people who experience that level of fame are compensated in other ways. Private villas and chauffeured boats. — John C. Reilly

And then as the little plane climbed higher and Olive saw spread out below them fields of bright and tender green in this morning sun, farther out the coastline, the ocean shiny and almost flat, tiny white wakes behind a few lobster boats
then Olive felt something she had not expected to feel again: a sudden surging greediness for life. She leaned forward, peering out the window: sweet pale clouds, the sky as blue as your hat, the new green of the fields, the broad expanse of water
seen from up here it all appeared wondrous, amazing. She remembered what hope was, and this was it. That inner churning that moves you forward, plows you through life the way the boats below plowed the shiny water, the way the plane was plowing forward to a place new, and where she was needed. — Elizabeth Strout

The Mexicans descend from the Aztecs; the Peruvians descend from the Incas; the Argentineans descend from the boats. — Carlos Fuentes

Morgon of Hed met the High One's harpist one autumn day when the trade-ships docked at Tol for the season's exchange of goods. A small boy caught sight of the round-hulled ships with their billowing sails striped red and blue and green, picking their way among the tiny fishing boats in the distance, and ran up the coast from Tol to Akren, the house of Morgon, Prince of Hed. There he disrupted an argument, gave his message, and sat down at the long, nearly deserted tables to forage whatever was left of breakfast. The Prince of Hed, who was recovering slowly from the effects of loading two carts of beer for trading the evening before, ran a reddened eye over the tables and shouted for his sister. — Patricia A. McKillip

I have always been the lover - never the beloved - and I have spent much of my life waiting for trains, planes, boats, footsteps, doorbells, letters, telephones, snow, rain, thunder. — John Cheever

It's just a superstition, but looking at the river, the boats, the sign leaving Brooklyn that says "Watchtower" in big red letters, is a ritual that reminds me I am small, I am one of thousands--no--one of millions of people who looked at this river before me, from a boat or a car or the window of the D train, who came to New York with a dream, who achieved it or didn't, but nonetheless made the same effort I'm making now. It keeps things in perspective, and strangely, it gives me hope. — Lauren Graham

On one of my birthdays I did 1,000 chin-ups and 1,000 push-ups. For my 70th birthday I towed 70 boats with 70 people in it, my feet and hands tied-my hands were in handcuffs, my feet were tied together-and I towed these boats a mile-and-a-half in Long Beach Harbor. For my 93rd birthday I'm going to tow my wife across the bathtub. — Jack LaLanne

I love boats. I can be on a boat for days. — Olga Kurylenko

Best not to look back. Best to believe there will be happily ever afters all the way around - and so there may be; who is to say there will not be such endings? Not all boats which sail away into darkness never find the sun again, or the hand of another child; if life teaches anything at all, it teachers that there are so many happy endings that the man who believes there is no God needs his rationality called into serious question. — Stephen King

Chief Gray of the Osage Nation said, "Today, our neighbors are beginning to understand that when tribes are strong, everyone benefits. A rising tide lifts all boats. This has been done, not on the white man's terms, but on our own. It's not revenge, it's rebirth, and as our elders say, it is good." This — Nalo Hopkinson

There has never been a military operation remotely approaching the scale and the complexity of D-Day. It involved 176,000 troops, more than 12,000 airplanes, almost 10,000 ships, boats, landing craft, frigates, sloops, and other special combat vessels
all involved in a surprise attack on the heavily fortified north coast of France, to secure a beachhead in the heart of enemy-held territory so that the march to Germany and victory could begin. It was daring, risky, confusing, bloody, and ultimately glorious [p.25] — Tom Brokaw

The great city seemed to weigh upon me, as though it were crushing me under its heap of brick and stone. Gray, drizzly skies, congested streets, the soot-belching boats and barges chugging up and down the Thames, the teeming mass of four millions hastening about the countless activities of daily life in a metropolis, things adventurous, meaningful, spiritual, quotidian, futile, criminal, meaningless and absurd. Amidst this seething stew of humanity, I painted. — Gary Inbinder

I myself was nothing more than a collection of marginal selves who sit out their time like unpaid stevedores on an unfinished pier where no boats ever dock. — Andre Aciman

We beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past. — Ellery Adams

Summer came whirling out of the night and stuck fast. One morning late in November everybody got up at Cloudstreet and saw the white heat washing in through the windows. The wild oats and buffalo grass were brown and crisp. The sky was the color of kerosene. The air was thin and volatile. Smoke rolled along the tracks as men began to burn off on the embankment. Birds cut singing down to a few necessary phrases, and beneath them in the streets, the tar began to bubble. The city was full of Yank soldiers; the trams were crammed to standing with them. The river sucked up the sky and went flat and glittery right down the middle of the place and people went to it in boats and britches and barebacked. Where the river met the sea, the beaches ran north and south, white and broad as highways in a dream, and men and babies stood in the surf while gulls hung in the haze above, casting shadows on the immodest backs of the oilslicked women. — Tim Winton

Judge, then, to what pitches of inflamed, distracted fury the minds of his more desperate hunters were impelled, when amid the chips of chewed boats, and the sinking limbs of torn comrades, they swam out of the white curds of the whale's direful wrath into the serene, exasperating sunlight, that smiled on, as if at a birth or a bridal. — Herman Melville

But still we go on, he thinks with a sigh as he crosses his legs, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the police station and doctor's office. — Andrew Holleran

Splash or crash? Do you want special ops messing about in boats? Or special ops messing in aeroplanes? — Robert Radcliffe

In civilizations without boats, dreams dry up, espionage takes the place of adventure and the police take the place of pirates — Michel Foucault

Could be off one of your own boats, Lavette," Whittier said. "The crab I mean." Whittier was hostile, contriving his hostility in witless remarks. Dan said nothing, only thinking that if this small, pompous, foolish man, so uninformed about the essence of his own business, was a measure of the hundred tycoons who ruled the hills of San Francisco, then his own way up would be none too difficult. It came down to money; if you had money, you functioned and you could do without guts or brains; and if you had money, you saw a girl like Jean Sheldon more than once, more than by accident. — Howard Fast

There is no safe," Kaz snarled. "Not in the Barrel. Not anywhere." He threw his strength into rowing. No seal. No ship. Their money spent.
"What do we do now?" Wylan said quietly, his voice barely audible above the sound of the water and the other boats on the canal.
"Pick up a pair of oars and make yourself useful," said Kaz. "Or I'll put your pampered ass in the drink and let your father fish you out. — Leigh Bardugo

If
you sing a sad song loud enough, the boys
on those torpedo boats
can hear you under the sea. — Laura Kasischke

I've done my share of period stuff. I'm not sure why, but people say I have a period face. The bread and butter of British TV is Jane Austen adaptations and bridges and bonnets and boats and horses. — Tom Hiddleston

If in some cases a bit of a nautical Murat in setting forth his person ashore, the Handsome Sailor of the period in question evinced nothing of the dandified Billy-be-Dam, an amusing character all but extinct now, but occasionally to be encountered, and in a form yet more amusing than the original, at the tiller of the boats on the tempestuous Erie Canal or, more likely, vaporing in the groggeries along the towpath. — Herman Melville

Problem Boats
We keep extra boats stuck to these doors for people to use if there's a problem that makes them not want to be in space anymore, but no one will come get them. — Randall Munroe

I love boats. Boats are great. You can get all kinds of places and meet all kinds of interesting people, and you never know if they're going to try to eat you or worship you. — Ursula Vernon

It feels like somehow our hearts have become intertwined. Like when she feels something, my heart moves in tandem. Like we're two boats tied together with rope. Even if you want to cut the rope, there's no knife sharp enough to do it. Later — Haruki Murakami

Show me a completely smooth operation and I'll show you someone who's covering mistakes. Real boats rock. — Frank Herbert

One with God is always a majority. But many have been burned at the stake while the boats were being counted. Thomas Reed — H.W. Brands

The Arabs from Zanzibar convinced them to become Muslim, then recruited them to capture our Chewa people and put us into bondage. They raided our villages, killed our men, then sent our women and children across the lake in boats. Once there, the slaves were shackled by the neck and made to march across Tanzania. This took three months. Once they reached the ocean, most of them were dead. Later on, the Yao captured and traded us to the Portuguese in exchange for guns, gold, and salt. — William Kamkwamba

Basically my wife was immature. I'd be at home in my bath and she'd come in and sink my boats. — Woody Allen

I wanted to putt my hand on this hand and hold it still under mine, made still by his made still. Oh he was bright and I was dark and I gave him all my darkness on that ship; but we joined, for all good things in the world, and to find somethin together; and loved, I never knew I could do it and was afraid; and on the bow of the ship that night that he said, "What have we done Christy?"
I said, wonderin too, "But somethin good will come of this, I know somethin good will come of this ... "
Only sorrow came. — William Goyen

Flowers floating down the river; yellow and scarlet cannas, roses, jasmine, hibiscus. They are placed in boats made of broad leaves, then consigned to the waters with a prayer. The strong current carries them swiftly downstream, and they bob about on the water for fifty, sometimes a hundred yards, before being submerged in the river. Do the pursued prayers sink too, or do they reach the hearts of the many gods who have favoured Hardwar - 'door of Hari,or Vishnu'- these several hundred years? — Ruskin Bond

Calling someone equally as anxious on the phone makes you feel less alone. Sometimes the best thing to hear is not "Don't worry, it's going to be okay" but actually "Tell me about it! The whole world is going to explode and I haven't slept for weeks. Now let me tell you about my specific fears of small boats and big businesses! — Amy Poehler

Drifting downstream in a row boat doesn't count against your life span. — James Patterson

Burn the boats as you enter the island and you will take the island. — Napoleon Hill

During winter sunsets, standing on a promontory so I saw the scenic sea as a surface rather than a line and, as coal-boats appeared from all sides of the horizon, I thought that, as they opened their portholes, they would throw their coals onto this fire. They swarmed over the ocean like blowflies ready to devour the decomposed star, and the blank gesture of a cloud fanned them. — Georges Limbour

She glanced at Tyson, who'd lost interest in our conversation and was happily making toy boats out of cups and spoons in the lava. — Rick Riordan

At this point in my boating education, I didn't even know what a "norther" was. Nor did I appreciate what happens when wind blows against the direction of a current. I can tell you now what happens: The wind pushing against the flowing water causes the seas to build and build. They go vertical. They get steep. They form cliffs of ocean blue that boats can fall right off. I'd never heard of nor imagined such a thing. Scott and I were about to see such waves up close. — Hugh Howey

In my land we don't question someone who has been touched deeply.
There is no malign shadow over capsized boats. — Rene Char

I love the ocean. Boats, not so much. — Jeff Goldblum

I'm focusing on quality versus quantity - a nicer tee-shirt with organic cotton and buying just one or two instead of five that are cheaper but made with GMO cotton, which is hard on Earth, sewn by slave labor, shipped all the way from China on boats that use lots of oil and can kill whales with ship strikes and sold by (some) companies that could treat their — Kristin Bauer Van Straten

The stillness of the water, the horizon framed by other glass towers and miniature boats drifting in the distance. — Emily St. John Mandel

Pride & honor & truth & virtue & kindliness," he enumerated silkily. "You are right, Scarlett. They aren't important when a boat is sinking. But look around you at your friends. Either they are bringing their boats ashore safely with cargoes intact or they are content to go down with all flags flying. — Margaret Mitchell

You can get used to anything, especially when you have no option. If you have to pay, you pay; it's just a question of attitude. At a particular moment in your life you adopt a certain position, whether mistaken or not. You decide to be like this or that. You burn your boats, and then all you can do is defend that position, come what may. — Arturo Perez-Reverte

We were approaching the Louvre, but he paused to lean on the parapet, and we both stood there contemplating the passing boats, which dazzled us with their spotlights. 'Look at them,' I said, because I needed to talk about something, afraid that he might get bored and go home. 'They only see what the spotlights show them. When they go home home, they'll say they know Paris. Tomorrow they'll go and see the Mona Lisa and claim they've visited the Louvre. But they don't know Paris and have never really been to the Louvre. All they did was go on a boat and look at a painting, one painting, instead of looking at a whole city and trying to find out what's happening in it, visiting the bars, going down the streets that don't appear in any of the tourist guides, and getting lost in order to find themselves again. It's the difference between watching a porn movie and making love. — Paulo Coelho

The boat is safer anchored at the port; but that's not the aim of boats. — Paulo Coelho

Me was the glittering desolation of the sea, the awful solitude upon which I had already suffered so much; behind me the island, hushed under the dawn, its Beast People silent and unseen. The enclosure, with all its provisions and ammunition, burnt noisily, with sudden gusts of flame, a fitful crackling, and now and then a crash. The heavy smoke drove up the beach away from me, rolling low over the distant tree-tops towards the huts in the ravine. Beside me were the charred vestiges of the boats and these four dead bodies. — H.G.Wells

Every abyss is navigable by little paper boats. — Joao Guimaraes Rosa

That's what sailing is, a dance, and your partner is the sea. And with the sea you never take liberties. You ask her, you don't tell her. You have to remember always that she's the leader, not you. You and your boat are dancing to her tune. — Michael Morpurgo

Now," she said when all was ready and lit the silver sconces on either side of the mirror. What woman would not have kindled to see what Orlando saw then burning in the snow
for all about the looking glass were snowy lawns, and she was like a fire, a burning bush, and the candle flames about her head were silver leaves; or again, the glass was green water, and she a mermaid, slung with pearls, a siren in a cave, singing so that oarsmen leant from their boats and fell down, down to embrace her; so dark, so bright, so hard, so soft, was she, so astonishingly seductive that it was a thousand pities that there was no one there to pt it in plain English, and say outright "Damn it Madam, you are loveliness incarnate," which was the truth. — Virginia Woolf

I feel there is something almost sacred about building a boat ... It is almost like creating a living being, a boat seems to have a soul and character all her own ... It requires more thought to give a boat a good name than it does a child. — John Guzzwell

That sort of news travels faster than horses, faster than boats. The messengers of the gods carry rumors through the sky the way bees carry pollen and drop them from their wings onto the earth below. — Megan Whalen Turner

the rain falls, catching the trailing edges of net curtains which flow out of open windows like fishing nets lowered over the backs of boats, nets hung neatly between the outside and the in, keeping floundering secrets firmly hidden... — Jon McGregor

At pier four there is a 34-foot yawl-rigged yacht with two of the three hundred and twenty-four Esthonians who are sailing around in different parts of the world, in boats between 28 and 36 feet long and sending back articles to the Esthonian newspapers. These articles are very popular in Esthonia and bring their authors between a dollar and a dollar and thirty cents a column. They take the place occupied by the baseball or football news in American newspapers and are run under the heading of Sagas of Our Intrepid Voyagers. No well-run yacht basin in Southern waters is complete without at least two sunburned, salt bleached-headed Esthonians who are waiting for a check from their last article. When it comes they will sail to another yacht basin and write another saga. They are very happy too. Almost as happy as the people on the Alzira III. It's great to be an Intrepid Voyager. — Ernest Hemingway,

In the three boats story, a man is floating alone in an ocean without a life jacket when a boat passes by. "Get in. I'll save you," the boatman says. "Oh, no, it's fine," the floating man answers, "I'm putting my faith in the Lord." In time, two more boats come along, and to each rescuer the man - usually me, in Wade's telling - says, "No, no, I'm putting my faith in the Lord." Eventually, and it isn't very long in coming, the man drowns. Yet when he stands up to meet his Maker at the fated spot where some rejoice but many more cower, his Maker looks sternly down and says, "You're a fool. You're assigned to hell forever. Go there now." To which the drowned man says, "But your honor, I put my faith in you. You promised to save me." "Save you!?" fearsome God shouts from misty marmoreal heights. "Save you? Save you?" God thunders. "I sent you three boats! — Richard Ford

I can see others in the sunlight; I can see our boats' crews and our athletic young men on the glistening water, or speckled with the moving lights of sunlit leaves; but I myself am always in the shadow looking on. Not unsympathetically, - God forbid! - but looking on alone, much as I looked at Sylvia from the shadows of the ruined house, or looked at the red gleam shining through the farmer's windows, and listened to the fall of dancing feet, when all the ruin was dark that night in the quadrangle. — Charles Dickens

So I walked as day was dawning
Where small birds sang and leaves were falling
Where we once watched the row boats landing
On the broad majestic Shannon — Shane MacGowan

It's funny because you always think a real friendship can weather any storm, but human relationships can be as flimsy as paper boats in a tsunami."
~ page 97 — Steven Parlato

Forward now. Forward to battle slaughter. Beware the man who loves battle. Ravn had told me that only one man in three or perhaps one man in four is a real warrior and the rest are reluctant fighters, but I was to learn that only one man in twenty is a lover of battle. Such men were the most dangerous, the most skillful, the ones who reaped the souls, and the ones to fear. I was such a one, and that day, beside the river where the blood flowed into the rising tide, and beside the burning boats, I let Serpent-Breath sing her song of death. I remember little except a rage, an exultation, a massacre. This was the moment the skalds celebrate, the heart of the battle that leads to victory, and the courage had gone from those Danes in a heartbeat. — Bernard Cornwell

And her mother still struggled in these white kitchens in town, humming sweet hymns, tiny, mild eyed and bent, her father still labored on the oyster boats; after a lifetime of labor, should they drop dead tomorrow, there would not be a penny for their burial clothes. — James Baldwin

My wife is immature. Whenever I take a bath, she sinks my boats. — Woody Allen

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 gracefulness of the slender fishing boats that glided into the harbor in Dakar was equaled only by the elegance of the Senegalese women who sailed through the city in flowing robes and turbaned heads. I wandered through the nearby marketplace, intoxicated by the exotic spices and perfumes. The Senegalese are a handsome people and I enjoyed the brief time that Oliver and I spent in their country. The society showed how disparate elements
French, Islamic, and African
can mingle to create a unique and distinctive culture. — Nelson Mandela

What is more beautiful than a sea of water with a number of white-winged boats skirting its surface? Poetry and beauty contesting with the wind and the waves! — George Matthew Adams

We folded up newspapers and made them into boats. We'd see whose would float the longest before it got bogged down, soggy, and sank. My father gave us a few pennies each day, which we'd toss and try to land on rocks.We'd wade in and get them again and again.Then we'd flip them in one final time to make a wish. Bliss and I could keep ourselves entertained for hours, but of course we became more and more aware that the whole forest was right there -- waiting for us to explore.
We didn't go far at first, not beyond where we could hear Mom call for us from the back door of the barn, but it gave us a whole new playground. We found a fallen log that we walked like a plank. There was a tree with a low straight branch that we could dangle and swing from. We gathered pine cones and tossed and batted them with twigs. — Riel Nason

My formative years, until I was 12, was all shaped by Jamaican culture, by that economy, by the people in my family, who are agriculturalists, who were plantation workers, who harvested those crops and took them down to the boats run by the United Food Company, to load those ships at night, hence all the songs that I sing that come from that environment. — Harry Belafonte

A war of ideas can no more be won without books than a naval war can be won without ships. Books, like ships, have the toughest armor, the longest cruising range, and mount the most powerful guns. — Franklin D. Roosevelt

Strolling down a white-graveled walk to the cliff above the ocean, he let his eyes rove aimlessly over the expanse of sea and sand: The icy-looking whitecaps, the blinking, faraway sails of boats, the sweeping, constantly searching gulls. Desolation. Eternal, infinite. Like Dostoevski's conception of eternity, a fly circling about a privy, the few signs of life only emphasized the loneliness. — Jim Thompson

I read used books because fingerprint-smudged and dog-eared pages are heavier on the eye. Because every book can belong to many lives. Books should be kept in public places and step out with passersby who'll onto them for a spell. Books should die like people, consumed by aches and pains, infected, drowning off a bridge together with the suicides, poked into a potbellied stove, torn apart by children to make paper boats. They should die of anything, in other words, except boredom, as private property condemned to a life sentence on a shelf. — Erri De Luca

No amphibious attack in history has approached this one in size. Along miles of coastline there were hundreds of vessels and small boats afloat and ant-like files of advancing troops ashore. — Dwight D. Eisenhower

Some boats are rotten in the ports; some boats shine in the hard journeys! — Mehmet Murat Ildan

I have always loved to sit in ferry and railroad stations and watch the people, to walk on crowded streets, just walk along among the people, and see their faces, to be among people on street cars and trains and boats. — Ella R. Bloor

My eyes drift down the cliffs that rise abruptly from the beach and to the fishing boats resting by the shore. There is a comforting rhythm to the waves. They rise and swell, demanding full attention, only to subside to a faint whisper. I watch the interplay of sand and water in a cavernous outlet beneath the bluff. (p.97) — Angella M. Nazarian

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

Ramona was willing to talk about anything, now, about things beyond the present moment. Childhoods in El Modena and at the beach. The boats offshore. Their work. The people they knew. The huge rocks jumbled under them: "Where did they come from, anyway?" They didn't know. It didn't matter. What do you talk about when you're falling love? It doesn't matter. All the questions are, Who are you? How do you think? Are you like me? Will you love me? And all the answers are, I am like this, like this, like this. I am like you. I like you. — Kim Stanley Robinson

The sea is the same as it has been since before men ever went on it in boats. — Ernest Hemingway,

Sitting there, watching the shades of evening settle slowly on the drab little town, it seemed to me that nothing but blind blundering vengeance, howsoever camouflaged, awaits all those who dare to step out of its stifling confines. It is a confrontation whose outcome is as certain as the end of solitary boats beating against a maelstrom. — Arun Joshi

I spent most of my dough on booze, broads and boats and the rest I wasted. — Elmore Leonard

You have city centre pubs where men go to meet girls, not realising that all girls in city centre pubs have thighs like tug boats and morals that would surprise a zoo animal. — Jeremy Clarkson

Vietnam is still, as it was thirty years ago, a poor country of rice paddy farms and sandy harbors, where fishermen cast nets from boats with eyes painted on the bows. It is overcrowded, prey to floods and sweatshops, dotted by modern cities and tiny hamlets of thatched huts with TV antennae. It is not a great capital of industry, or an international oil field or bread basket. There is nothing in Vietnam, now, that America truly needs. And there was even less thirty years ago. This country, these people, posed no real threat to us. It was a strange place to send our youth - not to learn a new culture or to enjoy the beaches, but to kill and be killed, to be maimed and to patch up the maimed. I am convinced that, to our government, Vietnam really, truly Didn't Mean Nothing. — Susan O'Neill

Of tobacco and its consequences, I will say nothing but that the practice is at too bad a pass to leave hope that anything that could be said in books would work a cure. If the floors of boarding-houses, and the decks of steam-boats, and the carpets of the Capitol, do not sicken the Americans into a reform; if the warnings of physicians are of no avail, what remains to be said? I dismiss the nauseous subject. — Harriet Martineau

Boats are something I am very, very passionate about; cars are something I grew up with ... I used to race cars since I was a child. — Gautam Singhania

The conquest was not achieved without one frightful convulsion of revolt. "In this year A.D. 61", according to Tacitus, "a severe disaster was sustained in Britain." Suetonius, the new governor, had engaged himself deeply in the West. He transferred the operational base of the Roman army to Chester. Because it was the centre of Druid resistance he prepared to attack "the populous island of Mona [Anglesey], which had become a refuge for fugitives, and he built a fleet of flat-bottomed vessels suitable for those shallow and shifting seas. The infantry crossed in the boats, the cavalry went over by fords: where the water was too deep the men swam alongside of their horses. The enemy lined the shore, a dense host of armed men, interspersed with women clad in black like the Furies, with their hair hanging down and holding torches in their hands. Round this were Druids — Winston S. Churchill

Several sailors, sheltered behind the curved bottoms of their boats, were watching this battle of the sky and the sea. — Guy De Maupassant

The children of this world and the adults of this world are in entirely separate boats and only drift near each other when we need a ride from someone or when someone needs us to wash our hands. — Lemony Snicket

She remembered what hope was, and this was it. That inner churning that moves you forward, plows you through life the way the boats below plowed the shiny water, the way the plane was plowing forward to a place new, and where she was needed. She had been asked to be part of her son's life. But — Elizabeth Strout

The whales always fell silent when the throbbing hum of humanity grew overwhelming. Whenever a ship of any size came near, I had to take off the headset to protect my ears. I wondered if a species that had taken millennia to evolve such a delicate and sophisticated sense of hearing could adapt to humanity's sonic onslaught. My notes from the time bear witness to the effect on my own primitive ears: "I have been listening to boats all day; my head is throbbing; the silence of my canvas tent feels good tonight - poor whales." That — Alexandra Morton

When you don't cling to anything, there is nowhere to go - all boats have been abandoned, you cannot go anywhere; all paths have been dropped, you cannot go anywhere; all dreams and desires have disappeared, there is no way to move. Relaxation happens of its own accord. Just think of the word relax. Be, settle, you have come home. — Rajneesh

No more'n four to a boat!" Hagrid called, pointing to a fleet of little boats sitting in the water by the shore. Harry and Ron were followed into their boat by Neville and Hermione. — J.K. Rowling

He'd watch the loading and unloading of boats; the building of houses, shacks, and huts; and above all, the people, each carrying a bundle of stories inside them. — Marcus Sedgwick

Genres are just bottles for the various boats. The boats matter to me. — Julianna Baggott

Writing is the dragon that lives underneath my floorboards. The one I incessantly feed for fear it may turn and devour my ass. Writing is the friend who doesn't return my phone calls; the itch I'm unable to scratch; a dinner invitation from a cannibal; elevator music for a narcoleptic. Writing is the hope of lifting all boats by pissing in the ocean. Writing isn't something that makes me happy like a good cup of coffee. It's just something I do because not writing, as I've found, is so much worse. — Quentin R. Bufogle

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

Growing up, there was only classical music on BBC Radio. We had to listen to the American Forces Network in Germany, which played pop songs, or the pirate radio boats off the coast. — Michael Caine

Ah, well ... hell is full of burning boats, did you know that, Nadir? I daresay that's what makes it so bloody hot. — Susan Kay

You know how this is:
if I look
at the crystal moon, at the red branch
of the slow autumn at my window,
if I touch
near the fire
the impalpable ash
or the wrinkled body of the log,
everything carries me to you,
as if everything that exists,
aromas, light, metals,
were little boats
that sail
toward those isles of yours that wait for me. — Pablo Neruda

Let me see a complete reorganization of the North Atlantic fleet's defensive strategy against Nazi U-boats. And if it won't go on one side of one sheet of paper, it hasn't been properly thought out - Winston Churchill. — Patrick Robinson

Sophia and Grandmother sat down by the shore to discuss the matter further. It was a pretty day, and the sea was running a long, windless swell. It was on days just like this
dog days
that boats went sailing off all by themselves. Large, alien objects made their way in from sea, certain things sank and others rose, milk soured, and dragonflies danced in desperation. Lizards were not afraid. When the moon came up, red spiders mated on uninhabited skerries, where the rock became an unbroken carpet of tiny, ecstatic spiders. — Tove Jansson