I Am Sinking Quotes & Sayings

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

Fox's hand was a life raft, the only thing stopping me from sinking further into empty blackness. — Lili Wilkinson

Do you ever think about him?" Elise asks. "The baby?"
I nod slowly. "I wonder how much would have been different, if he'd-"
"Don't say it." There are tears in her eyes. "Let's do it this way, Charlie, all right? Let's just pick one sentence out of all of the ones we should have said
the best, most important sentence
and let's say just that."
This is my old Elise
whimsical, loopy
the one I couldn't help but fall for. And because I know she is sinking in the quicksand of regret just like me, I nod. "Okay. But I go first." I try to remember what it was like to be loved by someone who did not know limits, and had not yet been ruined by that. "I forgive you," I whisper; a gift.
"Oh, Charlie," Elise says, and she gives me one right back. "She turned out absolutely perfect. — Jodi Picoult

When your LinkedIn Profile doesn't sync with your Facebook persona, you are on a verge of sinking your brand — Bernard Kelvin Clive

Bones, sinking like stones, all that we've fought for
Homes, places we've grown, all of us are done for
And we live in a beautiful world
Yeah we do, yeah we do — Coldplay

I hardly remember what I was thinking then. We got a different set of circumstances facing us now, and sounds to me like you're risking an awful lot for this girl you've hardly had the chance to know." "Maybe I am," Jesse said, heart sinking under the strain come between him and Cade. "And call me a fool for it. But I think I've known her since I first looked into her eyes. I love her, Pa. — Lori Benton

Yes, there is no denying it, any longer, it is not you who are dead, but all the others. So you get up and go to your mother, who thinks she is alive. That's my impression. But now I shall have to get myself out of this ditch. How joyfully I would vanish here, sinking deeper and deeper under the rains. — Samuel Beckett

You have had Ravenscar murdered, and hidden his body in my cellar!" uttered her ladyship, sinking into a chair. "We shall all be ruined! I knew it!"
"My dear ma'am it is no such thing!" Deborah said amused. "He is not dead I assure you! — Georgette Heyer

That's what courage is. Taking your disappointments and your failures, your guilt and your shame, all the wounds received and inflicted, and sinking them in the past. Starting again. Damning yesterday and facing tomorrow with your head held high. Times change. It's those that see it coming, and plan for it, and change themselves to suit that prosper. — Joe Abercrombie

Trust, is the stone thrown into the sea, sinking deep in all its murkiness, unable to see what it once lived and believed to be a promise. — Anthony Liccione

Sinking, sinking, drinking water. When everyone in the village was fasting a long month,when not a grain, not a drop of water passed between the parched lips of any able-bodied man, woman or child over the age of ten, when the sun was hotter than the cooking pot and dusk was just a febrile wish, the hypocrite went down to the pond to duck his head, to dive and sink, to drink and sink a little lower. p. 105 — Monica Ali

Sinking into fiction: the if-only of if-onlys. — David Arnold

When I am away from Liturgy for too long, I find I burn for it now, for the steadiness of the calendar, the words" that ring out in repetition, the heavy scented air. When I return each week, I am coming home again. Liturgy is written into my flesh, sinking into my skin and my spirit. — Angela Doll Carlson

First impression: The Tijuana dump is beautiful. Second impression: It is like a military operation. It is at the top of a small mountain. A convoy of trucks comes to the top of the mountain and dumps the refuse of a developing city. [...]
Other equipment moves mountains of dirt to cover the wastes. At intervals, standpipes are inserted into the filled spaces to allow the biogas of the rotting materials below to escape. The wind blows across these vents, creating an eerie music. When the biogas envelops you, you sense that sinking feeling of doom. — Raymond Coppinger

There's an island over there. On that island there are trees. Under those trees there are animals carrying around chops and roast beefs, and I wouldn't mind a bit sinking my teeth into a little good meat. — Jules Verne

Like the body craves oxygen, the mind is desperate for certainty. It believes that without a safe foothold on reality, it will die.
But the fascinating thing is that the illusion of certainty is exactly the opposite of safety because it hardens and narrows the vision to make everything fit its own scope. Then when new information arrives which would be its ally, the mind pushes it away in favor of the leaky life raft to which it clings, sinking all the while beneath the waves of change.
In fact, the only antidote for this is to embrace 'I don't know' so deeply that a powerful, dynamic safety emerges. This is like learning to surf so well that a tsunami wave shows up as a challenge to test our mastery. — Jacob Nordby

Real comfort is found when I understand that I am held in the hollow of the hand of the One who created and rules all things. The most valuable thing in my life is God's love, a love that no one can take away. When my identity is rooted in him, the storms of trouble will not blow me away.

This is the comfort we offer people. We don't comfort them by saying things will work out. They may not. The people around them may change, but they may not. The Bible tells us again and again that everything around us is in the process of being taken away. God and his love are all that remain as cultures and kingdoms rise and fall. Comfort is found by sinking our roots into the unseen reality of God's ever-faithful love. — Paul David Tripp

oh, why am I a girl? Why am I not a stupid - ? Look at you; you're stupider than I am, not much, but some, and you can lope about and get bored and then lope somewhere else, and you can play around with girls without being involved in meshes of sentiment, and you can do anything and be justified - and here am I with the brains to do everything, yet tied to the sinking ship of future matrimony. If I were born a hundred years from now, well and good, but now what's in store for me - I have to marry, that goes without saying. Who? I'm too bright for most men, and yet I have to descend to their level and let them patronize my intellect in order to get their attention. — F Scott Fitzgerald

In other words, it's the familiar hot sinking feeling experienced by everyone who has let the waves of their own anger throw them far up on the beach of retribution, leaving them, in the poetic language of the everyday, up shit creek. — Terry Pratchett

You - " Mr Bellstrode began, and then leaning forward and sinking his voice, "You would kill for money?"
"Is there any other reason to? Well, I suppose there is revenge, but that, you know, never makes one feel as well as it should when it is all said and done. Money is a much better reward than retribution. Something substantial by way of compensation for emotional wrongs is much the best cure for an injured spirit. I do provide fatal retaliation for nothing when it is deserved, but as you are neither a poor helpless wretch nor the victim of national injustice, full payment is expected. — Michelle Franklin

Lately in a wreck of a Californian ship, one of the passengers fastened a belt about him with two hundred pounds of gold in it, with which he was found afterwards at the bottom. Now, as he was sinking- had he the gold? or the gold him? — John Ruskin

Basically, financial reporting is this sinking hole at the centre of journalism. You start by swimming around it until finally, reluctantly, you can't fight the pull anymore and you get sucked down the drain into the biz pages. — Tom Rachman

Fear is like the wilderland - Stepping stones or sinking sand — Joni Mitchell

Live to revel in just another twilight. Life may sink and disappear along with the sunset never to rise again — Munia Khan

Speeding toward him, my claws sinking into his chest. Fear sparked in his eyes when he realized that he'd gone too far and that I could break his neck in two with my bare hands. "Broach the subject again, Felix, and I will demonstrate just how weak I am by ripping your heart out with my bare hands. Her name is never to escape your lips again. Do you understand?" He nodded. "Yes. Of course. My apologies." With no — Bella Forrest

And you know what happens when a ship gets too many rats on board? It sinks. That's what.
I wondered if a ship had ever really sunk that way. — David Wong

Please don't follow in my footsteps. I'm already knee-deep in them, and am sinking rapidly... — Tony James Slater

Whenever you're struck by misfortune, either through an illness or an accident, the people around you suddenly change. There are those who scurry off the sinking ship, like rats, those who wait to see how the situation develops before making their next move, and finally those who remain loyal to their feelings and whose behavior doesn't change. Those friends are both rare and precious. He — Tahar Ben Jelloun

I opened my eyes; how could I keep them shut when I could not sleep? The same darkness brooded over me; the same unfathomable black eternity which my thoughts strove against and could not understand. I made the most despairing efforts to find a word black enough to characterize this darkness; a word so horribly black that it would darken my lips if I named it. Lord! how dark it was! and I am carried back in thought to the sea and the dark monsters that lay in wait for me. They would draw me to them, and clutch me tightly and bear me away by land and sea, through dark realms that no soul has seen. I feel myself on board, drawn through waters, hovering in clouds, sinking
sinking. — Knut Hamsun

The moment I start to feel that sinking feeling of dissatisfaction welling up in me, I know I need to message a friend, give her a call, or post a note telling her what I love about what she's doing. I need to deliberately write down how all the ways she's running confidently in her lane inspire me. Because the more I focus on how her work blesses, the less I'm able to want it for myself. It's hard to hate something that inspires you. — Lisa-Jo Baker

What is fear?" she breathed. 'Fear is nothing. Fear is illusion. Pass through its fire. Truth lies at its core. What it Truth?" She stood up, feeling calmer and glared up at the sinking sun. "I am Truth," she whispered fiercely. — J.D. Lakey

Pretend you're me, she says. I can barely see her over the frothy mound.
And it happens just like that.
A feeling of sinking, a falling deep inside.
And I'm her.
And this is my house, and Matt French is my husband, tallying columns all day, working late into the night for me, for me.
And here I am, my tight, my perfect body, my pretty, perfect face, and nothing could ever be wrong with me, or my life, not even the sorrow that is plainly
right there in the center of it. Oh, Colette, it's right there in the center of you, and some kind of despair too. Colette
that silk sucking into my mouth, the weight of it now, and I can't catch my breath, my breath. — Megan Abbott

In lots of books I read, the writer seems to go haywire every time he reaches a high point. He'll start leaving out punctuation and running his words together and babble about stars flashing and sinking into a deep dreamless sea. And you can't figure out whether the hero's laying his girl or a cornerstone. I guess that kind of crap is supposed to be pretty deep stuff - a lot of the book reviewers eat it up, I notice. But the way I see it is, the writer is just too goddam lazy to do his job. And I'm not lazy, whatever else I am. I'll tell you everything. — Jim Thompson

To the Harbormaster"

I wanted to be sure to reach you;
though my ship was on the way it got caught
in some moorings. I am always tying up
and then deciding to depart. In storms and
at sunset, with the metallic coils of the tide
around my fathomless arms, I am unable
to understand the forms of my vanity
or I am hard alee with my Polish rudder
in my hand and the sun sinking. To
you I offer my hull and the tattered cordage
of my will. The terrible channels where
the wind drives me against the brown lips
of the reeds are not all behind me. Yet
I trust the sanity of my vessel; and
if it sinks, it may well be in answer
to the reasoning of the eternal voices,
the waves which have kept me from reaching you. — Frank O'Hara

Thucydides wrote of people who made rules and followed them. Going by rule they killed entire classes of enemies without exception. Most of those who died felt, I am sure, that a terrible mistake was being made, that, whatever the rule was, it could not be meant for them. 'I--!': that was their last word as their throats were cut. A word of protest: I, the exception.

"Were they exceptions? The truth is, given time to speak, we would all claim to be exceptions. For each of us there is a case to be made. We all deserve the benefit of the doubt.

"But there are times when there is no time for all that close listening, all those exceptions, all that mercy. There is no time, so we fall back on the rule. And that is a great pity, the greatest pity. That is what you could have learned from Thucydides. It is a great pity when we find ourselves entering upon times like those. We should enter upon them with a sinking heart. They are by no means to be welcomed. — J.M. Coetzee

I am translucent, aquatic. Drifting, aimless. She is an anchor, sinking in my sea. - BENTON JAMES KESSLER — Colleen Hoover

But you know, even worrying about haircuts couldn't depress me. Because every time I started sinking low, I'd just remember about football. All this time I'd thought I wanted to be a trainer, when it turned out I wanted to be a player instead. I saw something I wanted to do and I decided to do it. The feeling of freedom this gave me - I can't even describe it. It was my decision. I chose it. I am not a cow. — Catherine Gilbert Murdock

But no monk am I in my head, God grant me pardon," he whispered. His body drew closer, velvet and taut elegance. "My confessor has chastised me oft, and bade me study on my sins at length. And so, lady"--he kissed her, the hunger in it sinking down through her like a comet falling--"I have studied. — Laura Kinsale

The uncertainty of my own experience is crushing. I am drowning in an infinite sea. Sinking slowly, the weight of the lightless depths forcing me down, forcing the air from my lungs, squeezing the blood from my heart. — Rick Yancey

you can lope about and get bored and then lope somewhere else, and you can play around with girls without being involved in meshes of sentiment, and you can do anything and be justified - and here am I with the brains to do everything, yet tied to the sinking ship of future matrimony. If I were born a hundred years from now, well and good, but now what's in store for me - I have to marry, that goes without saying. — F Scott Fitzgerald

Only those who will be sellers of equities in the near future should be happy at seeing stocks rise. Prospective purchasers should much prefer sinking prices. — Warren Buffett

Years have passed and how I am anxiously watching the twilight of my childhood, quietly sinking, never to rise again. — Shan Sa

Who am I? What am I doing here? I fall between the cold walls of human malevolence, a white figure fluttering, sinking down through the cold lake, a mountain of skulls above me. I settle down to the cold latitudes, the chalk steps washed with indigo. The earth in its dark corridors knows my step, feels a foot abroad, a wing stirring, a gasp and a shudder. — Henry Miller

All I need is just a beautiful hand which pulls me up when I am sinking — Nelson Jack

Kissing Bennet is like stepping into the lake. At first shocking, then slowly I acclimate until I'm sinking into the luxury of it. His hand wraps around my ribs, right below the swell of my breast, and I'm in way over my head, drowning in the sensations that overrun my body. No one has ever kissed me like this. Not even Andrew in all my wildest fantasies. Andrew. Andrew! Oh my gosh, what am I doing? — A.S. Green

Adultery often happens, I am sure, because you are on a sinking ship, and you need to leap but can't leap. You are too spineless, maybe, to leap.The water is too dark and choppy and the sea is too large. Saving your own life, even, isn't enough reason to jump- no, you need the hands at your back, pushing, the hands of something as unavoidable and inevitable and imperative as love.It's got to be something that big, you know, to get you to jump. — Deb Caletti

Grief is like sinking, like being buried. I am in water the tawny color of kicked-up dirt. Every breath is full of choking. There is nothing to hold on to, no sides, no way to claw myself up. There is nothing to do but let go.
Let go. Feel the weight all around you, feel the squeezing of your lungs, the slow, low pressure. Let yourself go deeper. There is nothing but bottom. There is nothing but the taste of metal, and the echoes of old things, and days that look like darkness. — Lauren Oliver

I AM a little worn out, raddled, squashed, downtrodden, shot full of holes. Mortars have mortared me to bits. I am a little crumbly, decaying, yes, yes. I am sinking and drying up a little. I am a bit scalded and scorched, yes, yes. That's what it does to you. That's life. I am not old, not in the least, certainly I am not eighty, by no means, but I am not sixteen any more either. Quite definitely I am a bit old and used up. That's what it does to you. I am decaying a little, and I am crumbling, peeling a little. That's life. Am I a little bit over the hill? Hmm! Maybe. But that doesn't make me eighty, not by a long way. I am very tough, I can vouch for that. I am no longer young, but I am not old yet, definitely not. I am aging, fading a little, but that doesn't matter; I am not yet altogether old, though I am probably a little nervous and over the hill. It's natural that one should crumble a bit with the passage of time, but that doesn't matter. — Robert Walser

Please love me the way I smile when you enter the room
A dumb grin that feels no pain
Unafraid of the future,
Not thinking of the past
Who I was, who I will be
But who I am in this very moment
Please love me for what's in me now
What's filling my heart
An overflowing into your open palms
Sinking in your skin
And melting into your heart
Please love me knowing I'm growing
And far away from the woman I will be
The woman who will keep loving you
And hope that you love me too. — Beverly Tan

We're all the same. We all want the same thing in life. Everybody going around like they know how to sail but there is no captain and we are all only passengers aboard the same sinking ship. — Donal O'Callaghan

Oblong stones sink
slow and sideways. Shaped
by the weight of waves,
dutifully vibrating nature's
lunar-bound graces,
they wash ashore only for
closed palms to forsake them.
The cheerful will
cherish them, place them
on windowsills, or on graves. — Kristen Henderson

Anne entered it with a sinking heart, anticipating an imprisonment of many months, and anxiously saying to herself, "Oh! when shall I leave you again? — Jane Austen

What's one more torpedo in a sinking ship. — Lynn Dickey

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

Dear me! how long is art!
And short is our life!
I often know amid the scholar's strife
A sinking feeling in my mind and heart.
How difficult the means are to be found
By which the primal sources may be breached;
And long before the halfway point is reached,
They bury a poor devil in the ground. — Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe

He would say, "How funny it will all seem, all you've gone through, when I'm not here anymore, when you no longer feel my arms around your shoulders, nor my heart beneath you, nor this mouth on your eyes, because I will have to go away some day, far away ... " And in that instant I could feel myself with him gone, dizzy with fear, sinking down into the most horrible blackness: into death. — Arthur Rimbaud

No one who has ever known what it is to lose faith in a fellow-man whom he has profoundly loved and reverenced, will lightly say that the shock can leave the faith in the Invisible Goodness unshaken. With the sinking of high human trust, the dignity of life sinks too; we cease to believe in our own better self, since that also is part of the common nature which is degraded in our thought; and all the finer impulses of the soul are dulled. — George Eliot

Presently we saw a curious thing: There were no clouds, the sun was going down in a limpid, gold-washed sky. Just as the lower edge of the red disk rested on the high fields against the horizon, a great black figure suddenly appeared on the face of the sun. We sprang to our feet, straining our eyes toward it. In a moment we realized what it was. On some upland farm, a plough had been left standing in the field. The sun was sinking just behind it. Magnified across the distance by the horizontal light, it stood out against the sun, was exactly contained within the circle of the disk; the handles, the tongue, the share - black against the molten red. There it was, heroic in size, a picture writing on the sun. Even — Willa Cather

Boys have their soft and gentle moods too. You would suppose by the morning racket that nothing could be more foreign to their nature than romance and vague sadness ... But boys have hours of great sinking and sadness, when kindness and fondness are peculiarly needful to them. — Henry Ward Beecher

Don't try to behave as though you were essentially sane and naturally good. We're all demented sinners in the same cosmic boat - and the boat is perpetually sinking. — Aldous Huxley

Bonnie saw ropes hanging loose, poles falling away, tree-tops sinking beneath her. As they rose, the sun rose with them. Its warmth turned the dark skin of the fiery balloon midnight blue. They flew straight up. Above them, the sweet, clear music of the lonely pipe called to them. Then the smooth sky puckered into cloth-of-blue and drew aside. They passed straight through ... — Pauline Fisk

Friends first."
"Even before Brett?"
"Always," Bekka said. Her lively freckled face was dead serious.
"Wow," Melody said in surprise. They really were friends. Hearing it helped her feel it. And feeling it was like sinking deeper into a warm bath. — Lisi Harrison

Every crime has, in the moment of its perpetration, Its own avenging angel-dark misgiving, An ominous sinking at the inmost heart. — Samuel Taylor Coleridge

This is going to be a lot for the Congress to swallow, even on the deck of a sinking ship. — Kenneth Eade

Better to sink with tempests raging o'er
Masts all dismantled and hull gaping wide
Than rest and rot on some unclouded shore
The idle plaything of the listless tide.

Better the grime of battle on the brow,
With grim defeat to crush thy dying hand
Than through long years of peace to tyrant bow
Or dwell captive in a strangers land.

Better the castle with beleaguered gate,
By battle's lightning shivered in a day
Than peaceful walls in pomp of sullen state,
Through centuries sinking to a dull decay.

Better resolve to win thy heart's desire,
And striving bravely, die in the endeavor
Than have the embers of some smothered fire
Lie smouldering in thy saddened soul forever. — Sam Davis

When we put too much hope in a candidate or a party we set ourselves up for disappointment. When I see a poster with [Barak] Obama's image with the word "hope" under it, something in me cringes - our hope is built on nothing less than Jesus' blood and righteousness, the old hymn goes, all other ground is sinking sand. — Shane Claiborne

My bright and merry star,
Things I would tell our child if I could-

1. Love matters.
2. So does friendship.
3. Everyone makes mistakes, including you. Be generous with others' errors, and honest about your own.
4.Your mother is the truest, kindest, sweetest soul I've ever know. I love her. And I love you-for your own sake, not solely for your mother's.
Dominic
Only then did she break. sinking to the floor, covering her head with her arms, Minuette huddled and wept. — Laura Anderson

It's wherever you are. If it's tapped into any of your senses, it knows where you are and what you're doing."
Oh no, I thought, my spirits sinking. I hadn't considered that. Did that mean nothing I did was ever anymore?
"Even in the bathroom?" the Gasman's eyes widened with surprise. — James Patterson

Finally, gentlemen, there are people with an hereditary animus against private property. You may call this phenomenon degeneracy. But I tell you that you cannot entice a true thief, and thief by vocation, into the prose of honest vegetation by any gingerbread reward, or by the offer of a secure position, or by the gift of money, or by a woman's love: because there is here a permanent beauty of risk, a fascinating abyss of danger, the delightful sinking of the heart, the impetuous pulsation of life, the ecstasy! — Thomas Seltzer

Life has played her like a cat weaving between her legs, pretending to be tame, friendly, before sinking its claws into soft, vulnerable flesh. — Wendy James

Laser beams slid around them, spurts of light sinking through the darkness, eventually touching the stars or lighting the water for a moment on their death ride to the murky bottom. — Dean Koontz

There were times when I consider simply taking the dagger and sinking it into his heart, I had ample opportunity after all, but I was still young and tough my hatred consumed me, I still lusted for life. I was a coward, a prisoner whose captivity was made worse by the knowledge of the vastness of his prison. Despair began to rot my heart. I fell to indulgence again, seeking escape in wine and drugs and flesh, an indulgence that would have seem me dead before long, had not the foreigners arrived. — Anthony Ryan

By the year 2025, 500 million people will die of smoking. Now, that's a Vietnam War every day for 27 years. That's the Titanic sinking every 27 minutes for 27 years. — C. Everett Koop

I was sinking deeper in and losing my grasp at the surface. I was drowning. Drowning in an emotion I'd never felt before. Never wanted to feel - until now. Something so fresh, so new. Even as I tried to place this emotion to something, it left me feeling bewildered. I needed more. More of this toxic sweetness I couldn't help but indulge. — R.J. Gonzales

Walking into the crowd was like sinking into a stew - you became an ingredient, you took on a certain flavour. — Margaret Atwood

I have had the opportunity to work with Andy Lincoln a lot. He's got a remarkable process. He just has these ways of sinking into the scene and into character that are very physical. He'll make these sounds and these grunts and these moans ... I don't know what it is that he's channeling! It lets you know it's okay for you to do that, too. — Andrew J. West

I am pitching it feebly," said young Bingo earnestly. "You haven't heard the thing. I have. Rosie shoved the cylinder on the dictating-machine last night before dinner, and it was grisly to hear the instrument croaking out those awful sentences. If that article appears I shall be kidded to death by every pal I've got. Bertie," he said, his voice sinking to a hoarse whisper, "you have about as much imagination as a warthog, but surely even you can picture to yourself what Jimmy Bowles and Tuppy Rogers, to name only tow, will say when they see me referred to in print as "half god, half prattling, mischievous child"?"
I jolly well could
"She doesn't say that?"I gasped.
"She certainly does. And when I tell you that I selected that particular quotation because it's about the only one I can stand hearing spoken, you will realise what I'm up against. — P.G. Wodehouse

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

I can cope with, and even somehow enjoy, the sinking melancholy of Venice, just for a few days. Somewhere in me I am able to recognize that this is not my melancholy; this is the city's own indigenous melancholy, and I am healthy enough these days to be able to feel the difference between me and it. This is a sign, I cannot help but think, of healing, of the coagulation of my self. There were a few years there, lost in borderless despair, when I used to experience all the world's sadness as my own. Everything sad leaked through me and left damp traces behind. — Elizabeth Gilbert

Again at eight o'clock, when the dark lanes of the Forties were five deep with throbbing taxicabs, bound for the theater district, I felt a sinking in my heart. Forms leaned together in the taxis as they waited, and voices sang, and there was laughter from unheard jokes, and lighted cigarettes outlined unintelligible gestures inside. Imagining that I, too, was hurrying toward gayety and sharing their intimate excitement, I wished them well. — F Scott Fitzgerald

I'd much rather be a woman than a man. Women can cry, they can wear cute clothes, and they are the first to be rescued off of sinking ships. — Gilda Radner

Science keeps religion from sinking into the valley of crippling irrationalism and paralyzing obscurantism. Religion prevents science from falling into the marsh of obsolete materialism and moral nihilism. — Martin Luther King Jr.

I fret for Sylvia.
She appears anchored
to the idea of sinking,
which is silly when she so clearly
soars above almost everyone. — Stephanie Hemphill

Just because you have stopped sinking doesn't mean you're not still underwater. — Amy Hempel

Kate collapsed onto a bench seat. "You were right" she said. "worst plan ever".
"Told you". Said Agust, sinking onto his knees. — Victoria Schwab

This feeling is not unlike the sinking in one's stomach when one is in an elevator that suddenly goes down, or when you are snug in your bed and your closet door suddenly creaks open to reveal the person who has been hiding there. — Lemony Snicket