Quotes & Sayings About Paddling

I think this is when most people give up on their stories. They come out of college wanting to change the world, wanting to get married, wanting to have kids and change the way people buy office supplies. But they get into the middle and discover it was harder than they thought. They can't see the distant shore anymore, and they wonder if their paddling is moving them forward. None of the trees behind them are getting smaller and none of the trees ahead are getting bigger. They take it out on their spouses, and they go looking for an easier story. — Donald Miller

Every agent has a Sig Weiss - as a rosy dream. You sit there day after day paddling through oceans of slush, hoping one day to run across a manuscript that means something - sincerity, integrity, high word rates - things like that. You try to understand what editors want in spite of what they say they want, and then you try to tell it to writers who never listen unless they're talking. You lend them money and psychoanalyze them and agree with them when they lie to themselves. When they write stories that don't make it, it's your fault. When they write stories that do make it, they did it by themselves. And when they hit the big time, they get themselves another agent. In the meantime, nobody likes you. — Theodore Sturgeon

Wherever there is a channel for water, there is a road for the canoe. — Henry David Thoreau

The swans swam ahead, always ahead, their bodies gliding so that none could see the effort of their feet beneath the surface, paddling, moving, propelling them forward, forward, to that beautiful spot far ahead, an incandescent curtain of light, a shower of moonbeams, a heavenly constellation of stars. — Melanie Benjamin

Self-builders are the adrenalin junkies of the DIY world; it's the equivalent of base-jumping off the top of the Gherkin to land in a paddling pool. — Kevin McCloud

One day I saw the big jaguar,Calypso, jump up from the sand and run quickly, snarling, into the jungle. I looked around and the monkeys were jumping and screeching in the trees. Gazing across the water I saw something moving out there, getting closer. It was a canoe with three men paddling towards my shore. I started to smile and then I worried that they might want to kill me. I ran to my house and brought out my bow and arrows. I stood there on the beach, with my feet shoulder-width apart, and prepared for their arrival. — Doug Hiser

Writing is always a restorative process. It's like paddling a kayak. When you're writing, you can't do anything else. You're in the space you're in. So, in that way, it's enormously centering and restorative. — Tabitha King

I am walking up and down the line of sentries, under the dark boughs of the poplars. In the flooded ditch outside the rats are paddling about, making as much noise as otters. As the yellow dawn comes up behind us, the Andalusian sentry, muffled in his cloak, begins singing. Across no-man's-land, a hundred or two hundred yards away, you can hear the Fascist sentry also singing. — George Orwell

I come to Maui and go surfing, standup paddling, slacklining, swimming, and free-diving. — Julia Mancuso

He doesn't respond and this is his way of punishing me. To be ignored by him is worse than a spanking or paddling, because most times a spanking is quite enjoyable. He's learned that receiving pain from him is my weakness and not really a penalty at all and so he's taken to different forms of true punishment when the situation calls for it. — Ella Dominguez

The storms come and go, the waves crash overhead, the big fish eat the little fish, and I keep on paddling. (Varys) — George R R Martin

To some people, I may seem calm. But if you could peer beneath the surface, you would see that I'm like a duck
paddling, paddling, paddling. — Scott Stossel

The secret of success is to be like a duck, Smooth and unruffled on top, But paddling furiously underneath. — Bill Cosby

If you're one of the hundreds of thousands of people out there toiling over your unpublished manuscript, trying to make your way across that vast ocean in a bathtub, I can only say this to you: keep paddling. Well, either that or start vlogging. — John Niven

So I'm biding my time, like a surfer waiting for a wave. I'm pretty good at surfing, as it happens, and I know the wave will come. When the moment is right, I'll get Demeter's attention. She'll look at my stuff, everything will click, and I'll start riding my life. Not paddling, paddling, paddling, like I am right now. — Sophie Kinsella

And looking down on them, the other Londoners, those monsters who live in the air, the city's uncounted population of stone men and women and beasts, and things that are neither human nor beasts, fanged rabbits and flying hares, four-legged birds and pinioned snakes, imps with bulging eyes and duck's bills, men who are wreathed in leaves or have the heads of goats or rams; creatures with knotted coils and leather wings, with hairy ears and cloven feet, horned and roaring, feathered and scaled, some laughing, some singing, some pulling back their lips to show their teeth; lions and friars, donkeys and geese, devils with children crammed into their maws, all chewed up except for their helpless paddling feet; limestone or leaden, metalled or marbled, shrieking and sniggering above the populace, hooting and gurning and dry-heaving from buttresses, walls and roofs. — Hilary Mantel

How far can a person hear?
Malorie needs the children to hear into the trees, into the wind, into the dirt banks that lead to an entire world of living creatures. The river is an amphitheater, Malorie muses, paddling.
But it's also a grave.
The children must listen.
Malorie cannot stave off the visions of hands emerging from the darkness, clutching the heads of the children, deliberately untying that which protects them.
Breathing hard and sweating, Malorie prays a person can hear all the way to safety. — Josh Malerman

What sets a canoeing expedition apart is that it purifies you more rapidly and inescapably than any other travel. Travel a thousand miles by train and you are a brute; pedal five hundred miles on a bicycle and you remain basically a bourgeois; paddle a hundred in a canoe and you are already a child of nature. — Pierre Trudeau

Each outing in a canoe is a journey of self-discovery. What person paddling across reflections in morning waters does not see the inner self? The serenity of canoeing strips us of all but the essentials and encourages us to consider our place in the universe. Mind clutter drains away, like water dripping from a paddle blade, and makes space for clarity of thought. — Jim Poling Sr.

Did you bring the charms?" Wulf asked Diesel.
Diesel took the charms from his pocket and held them in his palm so Wulf could see.
"They have an excellent selection of baby carriages at Target," I whispered to Diesel.
"Not now," Diesel said. "Get a grip."
"Was I bad? DO I need to get punished? Maybe I need a good paddling."
Wulf looked like he was thinking about rolling his eyes, and Diesel wrapped an arm around my shoulders and dragged me to him.
"We'll get to that later," Diesel said.
"I'd be happy to paddle the wench if you're too bust." Hatchet said.
Diesel cut his eyes to him, and Hatchet took a step back.
-Lizzy, Diesel, and Hatchet, page 304. — Janet Evanovich

I'm like a duck: calm above the water, and paddling like hell underneath. — Fred Shero

Lord Maccon, being Lord Maccon and good at such things, then changed, right there in the Thames, from dog-paddling wolf to large man treading water. He did so flawlessly, so that his head never went under the water. Professor Lyall suspected him of practicing such maneuvers in the bathtub. — Gail Carriger

Waterhouse's new roommate is out of town just now, but by glancing over his personal effects, Waterhouse estimates that he is paddling a black kayak from Australia to Yokosuka Naval Base, where he will slip on board a battleship and silently kill its entire crew with his bare hands before doing an Olympic-qualifying dive into the bay, punching out a few sharks, climbing back into his kayak and paddling back to Australia for a beer. — Neal Stephenson

You are likely to fall when you stop paddling your bicycle. Such is life. As long as you don't give up, you will never end up failing! — Israelmore Ayivor

Coaches are like ducks. Calm on top, but paddling underneath. Believe me, there's a lot of leg movement. — Ken Hitchcock

In love madly,
traveling though the
life-raft's unraveling
in a beautiful tragedy,
but gladly i'm still
paddling through
the ocean
of your
anatomy. — Curtis Tyrone Jones

From Woody's Restaurant, Middlebury"


Today, noon, a young macho friendly waiter and three diners,
business types - two males, one female -
are in a quandary about the name of the duck paddling
Otter Creek,
the duck being brown, but too large to be a female mallard.
They really want to know, and I'm the human-watcher behind the nook
of my table,
camouflaged by my stillness and nonchalant plumage.
They really want to know.
This sighting I record in the back of my Field Guide to People. — Greg Delanty

More and more, paddling the Yellowstone feels like that bedside visit, like we are attending to a friend in dire straits, a friend whom we have seen in the full bloom of health, but with whom, now, there is little to say and only our companionship to offer. — Alan S. Kesselheim

The water here in Cardiff is much easier than in London, so for us it is more relaxing paddling here. This race is for us a continuation of our training, we will compete in only this World cup. We don't want to travel too much before the Olympic Games and we want to focus on the Games. — Pavol Hochschorner

Two hundred miles from the surface of the earth there is no gravity. The laws of motion are suspended. You could turn somersaults slowly slowly, weight into weightlessness, nowhere to fall. As you lay on your back paddling in space you might notice your feet had fled your head. You are stretching slowly slowly, getting longer, your joints are slipping away from their usual places. There is no connection between your shoulder and your arm. You will break up bone by bone, fractured from who you are, drifting away now, the centre cannot hold. — Jeanette Winterson

Paddling a canoe is a source of enrichment and inner renewal. — Pierre Trudeau

Along the wide curving moat surrounding the palace, rows of cherry trees announced the end of their seasonal beauty. Some of the trees were weeping: blossoms in white and palest pink, ponderous with decreptitude, eddying on the brown water, stirred by the paddling of ducks. — John Burnham Schwartz

Sometimes I get lost in the rhythm of the paddling. I even count the strokes it takes to get me to a point of land, The play of the muscles in one's arms and shoulders, and the feel of palm against worn wood, are preferable to glancing at a speedometer — Richard Proenneke

A part of me is missing when I can't ski, but I've learned there's more to define me and make me happy, like stand-up paddling and Jet Skiing - things I'd never done before. Or being with people I love and just enjoying life. — Lindsey Vonn

Everyone gets caught inside when surfing. You have 2 options. Give up or paddle outside. Life is the same. Keep paddling! — Gerry Lopez

I was never looking back in regret. I never thought, Oh, why didn't I become an actress? or Why did I just go paddling along after John? I've always walked along right by his side, and he's always supported everything I do. — June Carter Cash

At the window he sits and looks out, musing on the river, a little brown hen duck paddling upstream among the windwaves close to the far bank. What he has understood lies behind him like a road in the woods. He is a wilderness looking out at the wild. — Wendell Berry

You're off your fucking rocker!" "You have no idea. I don't have a rocker anymore. I don't even have a fucking porch to put it on. And there certainly aren't slow paddling fans or magnolia trees blossoming above aforementioned missing chair. — Karen Marie Moning

Acting in a scene is like paddling a canoe from a pebbly beach on to the river, the writer builds the canoe, and the actor provides the river. The river is the actor's thoughts and emotions. — Sanford Meisner

As an actor, what's interesting is what's hidden away beneath the surface. You want to be like a duck on a pond - very calm on the surface but paddling away like crazy underneath. — Alexander Skarsgard

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

Because just like all the other times I've drowned in my life, I'm determined to keep paddling forward, to believe that none of it has affected me at all. — Kerry Kletter

I've always thought you should concentrate on paddling your own canoe. — John Dos Passos

I love the ocean and have a passion for surfing, even though I'm not very good at it. I like getting out there and paddling around. — AnnaSophia Robb

If anarchists are idealists, they may simply be likened to someone who finds himself swimming in a cesspool and, rather than paddling about looking for the area with the least amount of floating faeces, seeks to climb out of the pool completely. — Robert Higgs

When your life feels like you're on a sailboat, with no wind to fill your sails, there are still choices. You can drop anchor and enjoy your surroundings. Start your motor, if you have one. Grab an oar and start paddling, or wait for the wind to fill your sails once again. There are always other choices while crossing the ocean of life ... — James A. Murphy

All that paddling around in the alphabet soup of one's childhood, scooping up letters, hoping to arrange them into enlightening sentences that would explain why things had turned out the way they had. It evoked a certain mutiny in me. — Sue Monk Kidd

Surfing is kind of a good metaphor for the rest of life.
The extremely good stuff - chocolate and great sex and weddings and hilarious jokes - fills a minute portion of an adult lifespan.
The rest of life is the paddling: work, paying bills, flossing, getting sick, dying. — Jaimal Yogis

I am paddling laps in a demitasse of home-brewed ennui — Michael Perry

Once upon a time, wasn't singing a part of everyday life as much as talking, physical exercise, and religion? Our distant ancestors, wherever they were in this world, sang while pounding grain, paddling canoes, or walking long journeys. Can we begin to make our lives once more all of a piece? Finding the right songs and singing them over and over is a way to start. And when one person taps out a beat, while another leads into the melody, or when three people discover a harmony they never knew existed, or a crowd joins in on a chorus as though to raise the ceiling a few feet higher, then they also know there is hope for the world. — Pete Seeger

In a bull market, one must avoid the error of the preening duck that quacks boastfully after a torrential rainstorm, thinking that its paddling skills have caused it to rise in the world. A right-thinking duck would instead compare its position after the downpour to that of the other ducks on the pond. — Warren Buffett

I believe in capitalism for everybody, not necessarily high finance but capitalism that works for the working men and women of this country who are out there paddling alone in America right now. — Rick Santorum

People go surfing before work and paddling afterward. My husband is from Wisconsin, and he goes to work in his Hawaiian shirt. — Kaui Hart Hemmings

Because that's what life's about. It's about paddling out and fighting the waves until you find the perfect one to ride home on. — Kandi Steiner

I had a dream about you. We were in a canoe, and we were paddling across the desert. You said you were thirsty, and I pointed to the sand that surrounded us and said, "No, I will not urinate in your mouth." At that point I woke up, because I realized I really had to pee - and get a drink of water. — Dora J. Arod

The danger with the internet is that you don't need to think about music, you just search for it and you find the answer. Singing used to be part of everyday life. Women sang while pounding corn. Men sang while paddling canoes. — Pete Seeger

Lucien expected to find Horatia somewhere in the hall, but it was his mother who was lying in wait for him. She looked more dangerous than a cobra nestled in a basket.
"I should like a private word with you, Lucien."
Her tone did not bode well. It was too close to the one she used to lure him into a false sense of security before he was paddled as a child. He was well beyond his paddling years, but should his mother entertain such thoughts again he would most assuredly escape out the nearest window or door before she could get her hands on him.
He'd often wondered if perhaps there was some secret pamphlet that a mother received upon the birth of her first child that bore instructions on how to instill fear in one's child with only a look. If there was, his mother had been a quick study. Perhaps she had written the latest edition.

-His Wicked Seduction — Lauren Smith

Be like a duck, paddling and working very hard inside the water, but what everyone sees is a smiling and calm face. — Manoj Arora

Well, in regards to surfing, I've learned that there is always another wave coming. Translated that means there is always tomorrow. No matter how badly you get caught inside, if you can just hang in there and keep paddling, the set is going to pass and there will be a lull afterwards. So don't give up, just take your pounding, wait until the set passes, then make your move. — Gerry Lopez

Yes, during the pilot, they gave me a little toy from the shop. It's like three little moose in a boat, paddling. It's very cute. And I got to keep some of the clothes. — Caroline Dhavernas

Oi!'
I drop in on him the first chance I get.
Round three. There's one coming on the inside and I start paddling for it. He starts for it too, telling me, 'It's mine, sunshine.'
'Get stuffed.'
As I feel the surge take my board, he grins across at me. 'Split it?'
So we split the peak, he goes left and I go right, and I know, like me, he's thinking, How good is this? — Kirsty Eagar

Treading water, a little dog-paddling - it's a lot like writing a novel, Clark," the dump reader told his former student. "It feels like you're going a long way, because it's a lot of work, but you're basically covering old ground - you're hanging out in familiar territory. — John Irving

A river is more than an amenity, it is a treasure. — Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr.

But when you're already swimming in a sea of humiliation deep enough to drown you, it doesn't matter much if somebody throws in another bucketful. It's not worth it to stop and pay attention to that when you need to keep paddling. — Catherine Ryan Hyde

In modern times we are often encouraged to protect our ego-force and individuality by securing a private world in which to develop our unique artistic voice. Many artists find themselves solo-paddling along a private and unchallenging river ... Could rivalry be a productive system? — Sara Genn

Public service announcements were first created by the Ad Council during World War II to get Rosie to work and to tighten loose lips. In 1971, on the second Earth Day, the world met "the crying Indian," played by Iron Eyes Cody. The famous anti-pollution ad, which showed Cody paddling a canoe and watching motorists litter, effectively gave the new ecology movement a huge boost. As it turns out, Cody was of Italian descent (real name Espera DeCorti), but he appeared in hundreds of movies and TV shows as a Native American and denied his European ancestry until his death in 1999. — Mark Jacob

Be like a duck. Calm on the surface, but always paddling like the dickens underneath. — Michael Caine

We were made to live slower than our fast-paced Western culture deems normal. But it means paddling upstream through strong currents. — Tsh Oxenreider