Don't Swim Quotes & Sayings

We live our lives by the water and if you don't know how to swim in Australia, it's like not knowing how to cross a road. It's an incredible survival thing that you really must learn when you're a child. — Eric Bana

I still don't know how to work out a poem.
A poem needs understanding through the senses. The point of diving into a lake is not immediately to swim to the shore, but to be in the lake, to luxuriate in the sensation of water. You do not work the lake out, it is an experience beyond thought. Poetry soothes and emboldens the soul to accept the mystery. — John Keats

7. But what kind of love is it, really? Don't fool yourself and call it sublimity. Admit that you have stood in front of a little pile of powdered ultramarine pigment in a glass cup at a museum and felt a stinging desire. But to do what? Liberate it? Purchase it? Ingest it? ... You might want to reach out and disturb the pile of pigment, for example, first staining your fingers with it, then staining the world. You might want to dilute it and swim in it, you might want to rouge your nipples with it, you might want to paint a virgin's robe with it. But still you wouldn't be accessing the blue of it. Not exactly. — Maggie Nelson

I love the St. Louis Cardinals baseball team for many reasons and they have given me some wonderful memories. When I look back, I don't think about the games they lost but I remember going to see the games when I was a little boy with my grandfather. I remember talking to my mom on the phone after the Cardinals won the World Series in 2006 while I was dressed up in my Captain of the Fallopian Swim Team Halloween costume. I remember taking my lovely wife to her first Cardinals game where she broke out in hives due to the heat and humidity. I remember the joy I felt as I sat with my little man watching our first Cardinals game together at Busch Stadium. I know I need to take my obsession down a notch but in the end it is worth it because it takes me back to times I will never forget and always cherish. — Matt Shifley

We don't need to eat anyone who would run, swim, or fly away if he could. — James Cromwell

I don't want to swim on the surface anymore and I never want to pretend again that I know you completely. Let me dive deep inside you, take me in and allow me to look into your
secrets, make me feel every breath I take and crave for it more . Carry me to your darker side where you are afraid to allow
anyone. Pull me deep inside and make me one of your secrets. — Akshay Vasu

It is very difficult to appreciate from the outside what a person in severe anxiety is experiencing. Brown rightly remarked about his friends 'imploring a drowning man [me] to swim when they don't know that under the water his hands and feet are tied. — Rollo May

I will always take on a new challenge. I believe in jumping off the ship every now and then. If you don't, you won't really learn how to swim — Alec Broers, Baron Broers

I don't know why we do it. But sometimes we just swim straight for the net. — Deb Caletti

Things change when you learn to loosen your grip. I think one way and the future is desperate. I think another way everything is in sight. Trees bend so branches don't have to break. We mend the wounds of our last mistake ... I live one way holding onto the fence post. I live another way sliding off into space. Each life is loosely assembled ... Birds swim, fish do fly. Proud man begins to cry. Birds swim, fish do fly. Things change, so why can't I? — Tim Finn

I didn't go to high school. I think that after you learn to read and write and do your numbers and flush the toilet behind yourself, you don't need no more schoolin'. You need to get out in the water and swim. — Wilford Brimley

You walk until you come to the ocean. You don't walk or run in the ocean - you float and swim. Like this once you come to the Master, seeking stops, blossoming begins. — Sri Sri Ravi Shankar

People that watch Adult Swim don't watch the Oscars. — T-Pain

I made a deal with sharks. I don't swim near them and they don't play cricket. — J.E. Fison

The time arrives. 'It is a waltz, I think,' Miss Larkins doubtfully observes, when I present myself. 'Do you waltz? If not, Captain Bailey - ' But I do waltz (pretty well, too, as it happens), and I take Miss Larkins out. I take her sternly from the side of Captain Bailey. He is wretched, I have no doubt; but he is nothing to me. I have been wretched, too. I waltz with the eldest Miss Larkins! I don't know where, among whom, or how long. I only know that I swim about in space, with a blue angel, in a state of blissful delirium, until I find myself alone with her in a little room, resting on a sofa. She admires a flower (pink camellia japonica, price half-a-crown), in my button-hole. I give it her, and say: 'I ask an inestimable price for it, Miss Larkins.' 'Indeed! What is that?' returns Miss Larkins. 'A flower of yours, that I may treasure it as a miser does gold.' 'You're a bold boy,' says Miss Larkins. 'There. — Charles Dickens

There," he said with a smirk. "Now I don't have a swim suit either."
Andi bit her bottom lip and felt the heat begin to flood her cheeks. The sharp pinch on her arm snapped her out of her trance and she quickly swatted at the bug. "Okay, okay. Turn around and don't peak." The light from the moon made it easy for her to see his questioning glare. "What?"
"Turn around?" Zane asked, trying to hold back a smile. "Need I remind you that I've seen you naked before, Miss Ford." - Zane and Andi in, Zane: The McKades of Texas — Kimberly Lewis

People can't fly because they don't believe they can. If nobody ever showed people they could swim, everybody'd drown if they were dropped into the water. — William Wharton

Are you jealous of the ocean's generosity?
Why would you refuse to give
this joy to anyone?
Fish don't hold the sacred liquid in cups!
They swim the huge fluid freedom. — Rumi

And indeed, that IS the question: whether to float with the tide, or to swim for a goal. It is a choice we must all make consciously or unconsciously at one time in our lives. So few people understand this! Think of any decision you've ever made which had a bearing on your future: I may be wrong, but I don't see how it could have been anything but a choice however indirect - between the two things I've mentioned: the floating or the swimming. — Hunter S. Thompson

Yeah, I like to keep myself interested - I'll kind of throw myself into some area that I don't completely know or understand, that I'm not adept at, so I'm forced to swim in order to stay afloat. There's a good feeling that comes from that. — David Byrne

Didn't they understand that for some people the opera, the drama, the ballet, were only boring, and yet a peepshow on Market Street was art? They want to make everything gray and tasteful. Don't they understand how awful good taste seems to people who don't have it? Ha, what do they care about people with bad taste! Nothing. But I do. I love them. They wear cheap perfume and carry transistor radios. They buy plastic dog turds and painted turtles and pennants and signs that say, "I don't swim in your toilet, so please don't pee in my pool!" and they buy smelly popcorn and eat it on the street and go to bad movies and stand here in doorways sneaking nips of whiskey just like I'm doing, and they're all so nice. — Don Carpenter

In this business you either sink or swim or you don't. — David Smith

These waters are sacred to us and for you to be allowed to swim in these waters is a rare honour. What are you waiting for?"
Vartan turned to look at Trisa.
She winked at him and whispered, "Don't worry young man, I've seen it all before. You have nothing to be shy around me for."
"I wasn't ... " began Vartan, his cheeks reddening, "Never mind. — Peter Koevari

I don't swim! That's like athletic. — Chloe Sevigny

If it doesn't swim, run, or fly, or isn't green and grow in the ground, don't eat it. — Charles Poliquin

He grinned up at her, treading water. "Coming in?" "Me?" He moved closer, propelling himself toward the rock, only his head above the water's surface. His arms were long. Maybe long enough to reach her ankle. She stepped back. "It's nice. Cold, but you get used to it." His lips were turning purple. "I don't swim, remember?" "I'm not likely to forget. But I can teach you. It's not hard." She shook her head. "Suit yourself." Still grinning, he sank under the rippling surface. — Lori Benton

Odd, yes, here in the capital of eternal youth, endless summer and all, that fear should be running the town again as in days of old, like the Hollywood blacklist you don't remember and the Watts rioting you do - it spreads, like blood in a swimming pool, till it occupies all the volume of the day. And then maybe some playful soul shows up with a bucketful of piranhas, dumps them in the pool, and right away they can taste the blood. They swim around looking for what's bleeding, but they don't find anything, all of them getting more and more crazy, till the craziness reaches a point. Which is when they begin to feed on each other. — Thomas Pynchon

The ground is my ocean, I'm the shark, and most people don't even know how to swim. — Carlos Machado

So if you're drowning, keep your life jacket on and fight. But once you're able to swim, don't convince yourself you forgot how to. Take your life jacket off, front-crawl your way to the shore, walk off that beach, and set your GPS to the top of a hill, because you WILL conquer the climb. — Lilly Singh

It's the Olympics. If you can't get up to swim early in the morning, don't go. — Michael Phelps

I try to swim for 30 minutes and walk for 30 minutes, because if I don't, my finely honed body will slip into its old ways. — Terry Wogan

No walking! No standing, no bending, no moving, no accessing the Shadow Roads, nothing. You don't swim for an hour after eating, you don't swan around like an idiot for an hour after narrowly avoiding death.'
'Toby does,' said Quentin.
'Toby is genetically predisposed to swan around like an idiot,' Jin shot back. 'Now sit. — Seanan McGuire

Leave it to the English to fabricate a lake," she tossed over her shoulder to Carla, who snickered.
"And leave it to the Italians to fall into it!"
"I was retrieving my hat!"
"Ah . . . that makes it all much more logical. Do you even know how to swim?"
"Do I know how to swim?" she asked, and he took more than a little pleasure in her offense.
"I was raised on the banks of the Adige! Which happens to be a real river."
"Impressive," he said, not at all impressed. "And tell me, did you ever swim in said river?"
"Of course! But I wasn't wearing" - she waved a hand to indicate her dress - "sixteen layers of fabric!"
"Why not?"
"Because you don't swim in sixteen layers of fabric!"
"No?"
"No!"
"Why not?" He had her now.
"Because you will drown!"
"Ah," he said, rocking back on his heels. "Well, at least we've learned something today. — Sarah MacLean

Sharks don't particularly have a great interest in divers. It seemed that in a normal dive, I would jump in the water, and one or two gray reef sharks would swim in and kind of check me out - and then they would keep their distance. So they weren't particularly threatening or anything to be afraid of. — Brian Skerry

It was Kelda who said she wished there was a pool in Belvedere, because they were obviously very lucky to have a swim coach living in town. I hadn't said I was a swim coach, but I knew what she meant. It was a shame.
Then a strange thing happened. I was looking down at my shoes on the brown linoleum floor and I was thinking about how I bet this floor hadn't been washed in a million years and I suddenly felt like I was going to die. But instead of dying, I said: I can teach you how to swim. And we don't need a pool. — Miranda July

The swim at Deception Island was by far the hardest swim I've ever done. Antarctica is a very unforgiving environment. If you don't train properly, you'll die. — Lewis Gordon Pugh

Depression weighs you down like a rock in a river. You don't stand a chance. You can fight and pray and hope you have the strength to swim, but sometimes, you have to let yourself sink. Because you'll never know true happiness until someone or something pulls you back out of that river
and you'll never believe it until you realize it was you, yourself who saved you. — Alysha Speer

Dead fish don't swim around in jealous tides. — Scott Weiland

Don't worry. If we sink, we'll swim together to shore. We'll use your bewitching chapeau as a float."
The nose of the yacht dipped hard, then rose. The wing began a low howl around us.
"I'm not blotto," he said, in response to my expression. He turned to the railing and chucked the empty flute to the waves. "Not yet, in any case."
I went to stand beside him. The flute had sunk beneath the surface already, on its way to an eternity of sand and tide.
"That's good. Because I can't swim."
"Why did you go swimming in the grotto, then," he asked too pleasantly, "if you can't swim?"
"I wasn't swimming there. I was smoke, at the ceiling, when you came in. Falling into the water was an accident."
"You're welcome," Armand said.
I refused to ask for what. We both knew. — Shana Abe

Swlmmlng After swallowing some water at Changsha I taste a Wuchang fish in the surf and swim across the Yangtze River that winds ten thousand li. I see the entire Chu sky. Wind batters me, waves hit me-I don't care. Better than walking lazily in the patio. Today I have a lot of time. Here on the river the Master said "Dying-dying into the past-is like a river flowing." — Mao Zedong

Most people have no desire to swim until they are able to. Isn't that a laugh? Of course they don't want to swim! After all, they were born to live on dry land, not in water. Nor, of course, do they want to think. They weren't made to think, but to live! It's true, and anyone who makes thinking his priority may well go far as a thinker, but when all's said and done he has just mistaken water for dry land, and one of these days he'll drown. — Hermann Hesse

To have faith is to trust yourself to the water. When you swim you don't grab hold of the water, because if you do you will sink and drown. Instead you relax, and float. — Alan W. Watts

Today I saw cancer, cigarettes, and shortness of breath. This is why I walk to the ocean. Swim with sharks and jellyfish. I may never get this chance again. This is why if you want to kiss, you should kiss. If you want to cry, you should cry. And if you want to live, you should live. You don't have to love me. You already did. — Ryan Ross

I don't even know how to swim! — Lea Thompson

Amma gave me some of her best stinkeye. How does a bird know to fly south? How does a catfish know how to swim? I don't know how many times I have to tell you, Ethan Wate. They don't call me a Seer for nothin'. — Kami Garcia

As long as it's a regular day, not too rough to begin with, the ocean is pretty smooth once you make it out past the first set of waves. That's why people are afriad to swim in the ocean. They try to jump over those waves and get slammed down to the bottom and pulled across the sand like a piece of shell. You've got to go throught them, dive under just when they're rising up for you, set your direction, close your eyes, and just swim like hell. Once you get throught that, you'll find there isn't a better place for swimming because it's the ocean and it goes on forever. You don't have to see anyone if you don't want to. If you look out, away from the beach, it's easy to imagine that there's no one else but you in the whole world, you and maybe a couple of sea gulls. — Ann Patchett

Revolution? You're an idiot. You don't even know what that word means. Forget your precious Mao and Che and Fidel. If they've appeared on a T-shirt, they haven't changed shit. You want revolution, look at Alexander Fleming. Penicillin transformed the world in ways Lenin and Washington only dreamt of. Now sit down and shut up, you autocratic frat boy. It's adult swim. — Marcus Sakey

Often it's just a short swim from the shipwreck of your life to the island paradise of your dreams, assuming you don't drown in the metaphor. — Robert Breault

You swim and you keep swimming without a thought in your head because that's what you have to do. And you do the push-ups and you jog and you do all the things beyond exhaustion because you have to. Then one day you'll discover you're in the zone and you don't feel your legs anymore, you don't feel your arms anymore. You exist just as motion. That's the zone. Then you can do anything. — Lisa Gardner

We don't want to swim against cosmic currents, do we? — Stefan Emunds

It's always been clear to me, as it was to Michel Thomas himself, that learning to speak a new language is like learning to swim or dance - you don't start with books or notes on swimming or dance. You get into the water, or on the dance floor, with a good coach, and get on with it. — Akshay Bakaya

Don't you love being alive?" asked Miranda. "Don't you love weather and the colors at different times of the day, and all the sounds and noises like children screaming in the next lot, and automobile horns and little bands playing in the street and the smell of food cooking?"
"I love to swim, too." said Adam.
"So do I," said Miranda, "we never did swim together. — Katherine Anne Porter

You don't see yourself at all, do you? It seems to me that you're good at everything you try," said Ethan sincerely.
"I had a dream I could breathe underwater," I said flippantly, "Maybe I'll go swim with the mermaids."
Ethan turned to look at me with shock in his eyes.
"Just kidding," I said, alarmed at his reaction — Derrolyn Anderson

We don't swim for the attention. We don't swim to be rock stars. There is something beautiful about being in an anonymous sport and being fairly anonymous. It enables you do something you love without any of the other effects. — Aaron Peirsol

In a relativistic universe you don't cling to anything, you learn to swim. And you know what swimming is - it's kind of a relaxed attitude with the water. In which you don't keep yourself afloat by holding the water, but by a certain giving to it. — Alan W. Watts

Before even considering an exercise and nutrition program, I recommend that the person put on some swim trunks and have somebody take a photo of them. Then take a good look and ask yourself: Is this who I really am? If you don't see yourself as that, you have the opportunity to change it. But you need to change your mindset. — Bill Phillips

It is true from early habit, one must make love mechanically as one swims; I was once very fond of both, but now as I never swim unless I tumble into the water, I don't make love till almost obliged. — Lord Byron

It would be so easy, Ismay thinks. You walk out. You swim for a while. You swim too far. You don't try to swim back. Your lungs fill up. It hurts for a bit, but then it's over. Nothing ever hurts again, and your conscience is clear. You don't leave a mess. Maybe your body washes up some day. Maybe it doesn't. — Gabrielle Zevin

Don't be a fish; be a frog. Swim in the water and jump when you hit ground. — Kim Young-ha

Someone tried to kill me, and I'm going swimming. I'm going swimming, because it doesn't matter. I'm going swimming, because I don't matter. I'm going swimming, because that's what Claires do. We swim and we daydream and we read and we wait for someone to care, and they never, ever, ever do. — Jennifer Lynn Barnes

But now, everything is so quiet. Not just the pool, but my mind, too. I don't even feel the urge to swim to the beat of a song. I'm mentally spent. Out of words. Out of thoughts. It feels so good to be this empty. It's so peaceful. -Sam — Tamara Ireland Stone

He sighed. 'Your life is your own,Miss Kingston. We have only one. Don't allow anyone else to dictate to you what you should do with yours.'
She blinked and frowned as if she didn't understand what he meant.
'It's yours,' he advised softly. 'Don't waste it on petty conventions or conformity. Swim against the tide if you want to. — Val Wood

I didn't mean I don't want to do it again. I just can't give you what you want. I can't give you what you deserve. What happened back there is all I know. There will never be anything more than that with me. I do not get close to people. I don't care for people," he explained, and my head began to swim with all of this information. — Teresa Mummert

People don't need to be scared. I tickle sharks. I do, when they swim by. — Michael Muller

Great ideas are fish in a stream. Your pen/pencil is a spear. If you don't spear them, they'll swim on by. Be ready. — James Scott

It's time to be the leader of your own journey. There are far too many capable people who don't pursue their dreams and goals because they let their fears and others talk them out of it. They give up before they even try, and simply let life's river flow them downstream. Choose to be stronger than that and swim upstream when you have to. Choose to do the things in life that move you and make you happy. Let others lead small lives and argue over small things. Let others cry over small wounds and leave their future in someone else's hands. If you don't take the initiative to make your own dreams a reality, you will end up working for someone else, making their dreams reality. — Anonymous

I'm not an outdoor girl. I can barely swim. I don't ride a horse. — China Machado

wearing only a bathing suit interjected, "We would never swim in the Pacific Ocean, Carolyn. The waves at Santa Monica Beach are so lame. You don't have to worry at all. We just want to roast marshmallows. — Brighton Hill

Try to be surprised by something every day. It could be something you see, hear, or read about. Stop to look at the unusual car parked at the curb, taste the new item on the cafeteria menu, actually listen to your colleague at the office. How is this different from other similar cars, dishes or conversations? What is its essence? Don't assume that you already know what these things are all about, or that even if you knew them, they wouldn't matter anyway. Experience this once thing for what it is, not what you think it is. Be open to what the world is telling you. Life is nothing more than a stream of experiences - the more widely and deeply you swim in it, the richer your life will be. — Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi

I don't know. I never heard anything about her again after I landed her man," she said, peering back at me. "She was drowned in my wake. You better hope you can swim if you go up against me."
This bitch was lucky I was letting her leave in one piece. "Like a damn fish. — Nicole Williams

You don't want to hear the story
of my life, and anyway
I don't want to tell it, I want to listen
to the enormous waterfalls of the sun.
And anyway it's the same old story - - -
a few people just trying,
one way or another,
to survive.
Mostly, I want to be kind.
And nobody, of course, is kind,
or mean,
for a simple reason.
And nobody gets out of it, having to
swim through the fires to stay in
this world.
(from, Dogfish) — Mary Oliver

You don't throw the baby out with the bathwater, but you want to get rid of the bathwater so the baby can swim the next couple of days and be OK. — Greg Norman

What! I don't care about being a princess! And since I'm already a young lady, how else could I behave? That's like asking a fish not to swim!"
~Princess Eilonwy, daughter of Angharad, daughter of Regat, of the Royal house of Llyr — Lloyd Alexander

Don't let yourself drown. Don't run or swim away from the safety of the boat. The boat, that's your home, your family, your life. The preserver that keeps you afloat will always be your wife, your partner. Without a preserver you drown, a preserver without something to hold onto has no purpose, so you see, you need each other ... you need to rely on one another for everything. Never forget that if it's not worth fighting for, it's not worth having. — Rachel Van Dyken

I used to go swimming and passed the tennis courts every day, and that's how it started. My mum said, 'Why don't you play tennis in your summer holidays because you have nothing to do except swim for an hour or whatever?,' and that's how I started playing. — Sania Mirza

We were in the gondolas at The Venetian. You said you couldn't swim, that I'd have to save you if we capsized."
His Adam's apple jumped. "Yeah."
"I was terrified for you."
"I know. You hung onto me so tight I could barely breathe."
I drew back so I could see his face.
"Why do you think we stayed on them for so long?" he asked. "You were practically sitting in my lap."
"Can you swim?"
He laughed quietly. "Of course I can swim. I don't even think the water was that deep."
"It was all a ruse. You're tricky, David Ferris."
"And you're funny, Evelyn Thomas." His face relaxed, his eyes softening again. — Kylie Scott

Swimming is probably the ultimate of burnout sports. It's ironic because millions of people who swim as their regular exercise love the meditation aspect of it; you don't wind up with any orthopedic injuries. But when you swim at a world class level for hours and hours - the loneness of the long distance runner. — Diana Nyad

Go, fly, swim, bound descend, cross, love the unknown, love the uncertain, love what has not yet been seen, love no one, whom you are, whom you will be, leave yourself, shrug off the old lies, dare what you don't dare, it is there that you will take pleasure ... and rejoice, in the terror, follow it where you're afraid to go, go ahead, take the plunge, you're on the right trail. — Helene Cixous

I cannot have a man who is afraid of everything, I don't have the time to soothe insecurities and fears, I cannot have a man who is standing on a stone by a creek, watching for the fish to swim by and every time he sees a fish he says "Oh look, this fish scares me, I wonder what this fish means, this fish might mean- this, or this fish might mean- that" for God's sake, they are just fish, and they don't mean anything! Such a sad thing, so many fine, strong men standing on top of little stones, pointing at fish all the time! Such a waste! Such a waste of time! I can only have a man who will leap into the water, not minding the damn fish and whatever other little things that scare him. I need to have someone who is braver than me; if I am a pirate, he has to be the pirate Captain, if I am a pirate Captain he has to be the flying dragon. — C. JoyBell C.

Most of the time you don't even know they're there. Now, that's the scary thing. It's really strange and invading, but I'm still working it all out. I try to not let it bother me. And if I
want to swim naked in my pool, I'm still going to do it. I certainly don't want to feel that I have to change everything in my life that I do to cater to them. I just won't let it happen. — Heath Ledger

What do you mean? Why do you think you like them? That's all you and I did together when you were little. Don't you remember? I. Don't. Remember. I remember, It's a sink-or-swim world, Noah. I remember, Act tough and you are tough. I remember every heart-stomping look of disappointment, of embarrassment, of bewilderment from him. I remember: If your twin sister wasn't my spitting image I'd swear you came about from parthenogenesis. I remember the 49ers, the Miami Heat, the Giants, the World Cup. I do not remember Animal Planet. — Jandy Nelson

Promise me we'll stay together, okay?" His eyes are once again the clear blue of a perfectly transparent pool. They are eyes to swim in, to float in, forever. "You and me."
"I promise," I say.
Behind us the door creaks open, and I turn around, expecting Raven, just as a voice cuts through the air: "Don't believe her. — Lauren Oliver

His expression softened, which made Sterling's throat tighten just a little. "You've cannonballed into the deep end when you don't know how to swim, haven't you?"
Sterling looked at him solemnly and smiled. "Yes," he said. "Don't let me drown. — Jane Davitt

As a teenager, my blackness was also questioned by some of the life choices I made that weren't considered to be 'black' choices. For example, joining the swim team when it is a known fact that 'black folk don't swim'; or choosing to become a vegetarian when blacks clearly love chicken. — Issa Rae

Don't wait for your ship to come in, swim out to it. — Cathy Hopkins

He's not safe. He's the shark-infested deep end of the sea and if I agree to go out with him, I'd be walking the plank, right off the boat and into his dark depth. How am I supposed to do that when I don't even know if I can swim? — Colleen Hoover

One of my good friends said, in a reggae riddim, don't jump in the water if you can't swim ... — Bob Marley

Sharks don't eat seafood because they like it, but because chicken can't swim. — Michael J. Sullivan

Wealthier Mennonites even though they're not technically supposed to be wealthy do their drinking in North Dakota or Hawaii. They are sort of like rock bands on tour in that the rules of this town don't apply to them when they're on the road. An embarrassing situation for wealthy Mennonites is to meet other wealthy Mennonites at the swim-up bar at the Honolulu Holiday Inn. — Miriam Toews

Life is short, and that's why, I don't test people; because we all fail tests sometimes, but that is supposed to be okay! I don't play games with people; because people aren't toys. And I don't risk what I don't want to lose; because if I do lose it, it's definitely my loss and not theirs! How short is life, you ask me. Well, life is as short as one drop in eternity. I swim in a single drop in this basin of eternal waters, and after that drop evaporates, it's gone! But then you could argue that if life is just a drop, then why even bother? Well, yes it is a drop, but it's a meaningful drop, an unforgettable drop, and a beautiful one! It's so unforgettable, that when you come back again, if you choose to, you will remember it in your dreams at night! So you see, I don't test people, I don't play games, and I don't risk who and what I don't want to lose. — C. JoyBell C.

You're trying to swim upstream against the current. What is there about the natural flow of the river of life that has shocked you so strongly that you should want to swim against the current, even against time? You ought to know you're lost even before you begin. I don't understand you but I love you and I suppose you are obeying the law of your being. — Francoise Gilot

Just make sure the unknown is a place you the writer understand. If you're going to write, you have to love. ... You have to fall on your face, swim against the tide, make terrible mistakes, and pay the price; you have to tune in, turn on, drop out, drop back in, fight, cry, lose, win. ... Above all, don't get too comfortable. Go out there and get your heart broken. You won't be able to write until you do. — Holly Peterson

She thought, He's afraid I'll make a mess of it. She was sure she had been careful to think that on the safe, private side of the silent border, but Ebon turned on her and said, Don't ever think that. About anything. You're my heart's sister, even if you are a funny shape and walk on your hind legs all the time and rattle away out loud like a donkey or a bird. I'm frightened because you're frightened, and because it's hard-it can be hard-the first time going into the Caves, and you're old for it-you can't do ssshuuwuushuu and the ssshasssha will be like ... being thrown in a cold dark lake when you can't swim and you've never seen water before. — Robin McKinley

I love to swim. I need goggles. If I don't have goggles I run in to the walls of the pool. I have no sense of directions. — Julianne Hough

But the bigger part of me remembers what my dad taught me about the undertow when he was trying to coax me into the water to teach me how to swim. "If you ever get caught in the undertow," he'd said, "just let it take you. Just let it pull you right out. Whatever you do, don't fight it and waste your energy and oxygen. That's how people die. The people who don't die wait it out. The undertow lets go eventually, right when you think you can't hold your breath any longer. You just have to be patient."
Because right now I'm caught in an undertow. And I've got to hold my breath, be patient, until it gives me my life back. — Anna Banks

Arista," the wizard said, "sharks don't eat seafood because they like it, but because chickens don't swim. We all do the best we can with the tools we have, but at some point you have to ask yourself where the tools came from. — Michael J. Sullivan

Writing a novel is a huge adventure; when it's going well it's more fun than fun. When it stutters to a halt put it aside. Go for a swim, go for a walk, take a week off. Don't panic or be afraid; you and your characters are in it together. Trust them to come to your rescue. — Deborah Moggach

You're not swimming in glory until you find someone to swim with you. Glory isn't glory if you don't have someone to share it with. It's just pride and bullshit on your own.
Unbelievable. Will Jones wasn't only one badass cowboy; he pretty much could have been the love child of John Wayne and Yoda. — Nicole Williams

My body melts into his hard one until his strong arm, coiled around my small waist, is all that hols me upright. I don't know if I'm bad for him, or him for me. All I know is that this is as inevitable as an incoming tsunami, and I'm just bracing for the swim of my life. — Katy Evans

CUP AND OCEAN
These forms we seem to be are cups floating in an ocean of living consciousness.
They fill and sink without leaving an arc of bubbles or any good-bye spray. What we
are is that ocean, too near to see, though we swim in it and drink it in. Don't
be a cup with a dry rim, or someone who rides all night and never knows the horse
beneath his thighs, the surging that carries him along. — Rumi