Sea Story Quotes & Sayings

You oil field workers, come and listen to me I'm goin' to tell you a story about old John D. That company union made a fool out of me. That company union don't charge no dues It leaves you a-singing them Rockefeller blues. That company union made a fool out of me. Takes that good ole C.I.O., boys To keep that oil a-rollin', rollin' over the sea. Takes that good ole C.I.O., boys To keep that oil a-rollin' over the sea. — Woody Guthrie

It's not enough to wish, dream, hope. Even children know this. We must set sail into the sea of uncertainty. We must meet fear face-to-face. We must take our dreams as maps for a greater journey. Dreams, to come true, need a good story. So go live one. — Vironika Tugaleva

Gentlemen, four-fifths of the earth's surface is covered by seas; that is unquestionably too much; the world's surface, the map of oceans and dry land, must be corrected. We shall give the world the workforce of the sea, gentlemen. This will no longer be the style of Captain van Toch; we shall replace the adventure story of pearls by the hymnic paean of labour. — Karel Capek

Mr. Piscine Molitor Patel, Indian citizen, is an astounding story of courage and endurance in the face of extraordinarily difficult and tragic circumstances. In the experience of this investigator, his story is unparalleled in the history of shipwrecks. Very few castaways can claim to have survived so long at sea as Mr. Patel, and none in the company of an adult Bengal tiger. — Yann Martel

God has stepped in at the last minute more than once in history (remember Moses at the Red Sea?). And He can do the same for you. Keep turning the pages by faith and let the story play out to the end. — David Jeremiah

That night, she told me the old story again about the woman who had been left behind on a desert island by the man she loved. She waited for him to return for many years, surviving on seaweed and sand, until at last she grew so small she could fit herself inside a bottle and roll into the sea. Who found the bottle, I wondered, but my mother said no one knew what happened to it or where the woman had wanted to go. A fish could have swallowed the bottle, she said, or it could have been dashed against rocks. Other possibilities: sharks, mermaids, lonely sailors at sea. — Jenny Offill

If this was another kind of story, I'd tell you about the sea — Junot Diaz

How do you know, when you think blue - when you say blue - that you are talking about the same blue as anyone else?

You cannot get a grip on blue.

Blue is the sky, the sea, a god's eye, a devil's tail, a birth, a strangulation, a virgin's cloak, a monkey's ass. It's a butterfly, a bird, a spicy joke, the saddest song, the brightest day.

Blue is sly, slick, it slides into the room sideways, a slippery trickster.

This is a story about the color blue, and like blue, there's nothing true about it. Blue is beauty, not truth. 'True blue' is a ruse, a rhyme; it's there, then it's not. Blue is a deeply sneaky color. — Christopher Moore

This was the story of our lives: minor insurrections, tiny victories, a brief chance to ridicule our oppressors, little floating vessels of hope amid a great sea of uncertainty, deprivation and fear. — Jojo Moyes

Children need to see that they are part of a history and that the story of their family is a living thing. God tells it, a new story in each generation, and each must hold hands across the sea of time, joining together the ones who went before and the ones who come after. It is given from above. Little do we understand this in the beginning, but time teaches us many things we did not expect to learn. That is life. It is the same everywhere. — Michael D. O'Brien

Now my second story. Three years later, on a clear, bright, calm Sunday afternoon at Bondi Beach, also not far from where we now stood, from out of nowhere there came four freak waves, each up to twenty-five feet high. More than 200 people were carried out to sea in the undertow. Fortunately, fifty lifeguards were in attendance that day, and they managed to save all but six people. I am aware that we are talking about incidents that happened many years ago. I don't care. My point remains: the ocean is a treacherous place. — Bill Bryson

One day, I decided to be an island. I took off my clothes and walked into the sea, then floated there, bobbing along with the tide, suspended by my inflatable tube and water wings. — Ng Yi-Sheng

Who that has ever visited the borders of this classic sea, has not felt at the first sight of its waters a glow of reverent rapture akin to devotion, and an instinctive sensation of thanksgiving at being permitted to stand before these hallowed waves? All that concerns the Mediterranean is of the deepest interest to civilized man, for the history of its progress is the history of the development of the world; the memory of the great men who have lived and died around its banks; the recollection of the undying works that have come thence to delight us for ever; the story of patient research and brilliant discoveries connected with every physical phenomenon presented by its waves and currents, and with every order of creatures dwelling in and around its waters. The science of the Mediterranean is the epitome of the science of the world. — Edward Forbes

When I wrote a long story about the retreat of sea ice, I made clear it could go the other way for a while, and that doesn't mean we don't know that a warmer world will have less sea ice. It just means there's a lot of variability and people can pay too much attention to the big swings in one direction or the other. — Andrew Revkin

The people are a story that never ends,
A river that winds and falls and gleams erect in many dawns;
Lost in deep gulleys, it turns to dust, rushes in the spring freshet,
Emerges to the sea. The people are a story that is a long incessant
Coming alive from the earth in better wheat, Percherons,
Babies, and engines, persistent and inevitable.
The people always know that some of the grain will be good,
Some of the crop will be saved, some will return and
Bear the strength of the kernel, that from the bloodiest year
Some survive to outfox the frost. — Meridel Le Sueur

I could not disagree more," said Ganesh, my father giving me a hidden wink. "If we build toward them they'll see it as hostile and we'll be pulled into a confrontation. Now, I agree that we've got to expand - these last few days in Bridewell have clearly shown that. Within a few years Bridewell and the towns against the sea will be at maximum capacity, and then what will we do? We have over ten miles between us and Ainsworth, which I think is a good healthy distance. We can't expand off the cliffs from Lathbury or Turlock, so those are dead ends. Bridewell is stuck in the middle with no place to grow. I think our best option is to start building two-and three-story buildings. Grow up instead of out. We could grow to twice our size if we just abolished the single-level rule. — Patrick Carman

But I can't help but long for a real return to the Western. Westerns are true Americana. They tell of the struggles of our ancestors who came West seeking new homes, new ways of living, freedom and the promise of a bright future. The story of the West is inspiring and terrible, idealistic and bloody, sublime and atrocious. It embodies this country's best and worst characteristics. The good parts of the story inspire us. The bad parts warn us of what we have to do to make things better. Even though many Western films have only a slight connection to the true history of the West, I believe exposure to these motion pictures can stimulate kids to learn more about what their forefathers endured to make the United States one nation, from sea to shining sea. — Clayton Moore

If you want to know the age of the Earth - look upon the sea in a storm. But what storm can fully reveal the heart of a man? Between Suez and the China Sea are many nameless men who prefer to live and die unknown. This is the story of one such man. Among the great gallery of rogues and heroes thrown up on the beaches and ports - no man was more respected or more damned than - Lord Jim. — Joseph Conrad

So wait a minute. I go looking for the story of the guy who wrote this awesome wind scale tha tblew my mind. I start reading about his life, and before he's sixteen years old I've already run across a family's flight from the poorhouse, an early balloon flight, an eccentric father, a young man at sea, Malay pirates, shipwreck, castaways, buried treasure, and Captain Bligh, fresh off the mutiny on the Bounty. Not a single word about the wind, but honestly, at this point, who cares? — Scott Huler

Everyone in Denmark has at least two or three sailors in their family; sea travel is part of the DNA of our nation, and because of that, I'd always wanted to tell a story aboard a ship. — Tobias Lindholm

I drove out of Dartmouth and after a while Start Bay emerged out of the brightening gloom like the end of a set of parentheses in a book about the natural world. Inside the parentheses was a story about the sea. Outside them, the land: green, red and brown fields, and hills curling over the landscape. I saw small, delicate clumps of snowdrops, big rough patches of gorse, and along the thin road, houses with yellow roses and mimosa growing in their gardens. — Scarlett Thomas

Life is a sea of vibrant color. Jump in. — A.D. Posey

I want to know everything. I want to know how the clouds move and why islands fall into the sea. I want to know how to plant almond trees and how to make children grow up straight and healthy. I want to know how princes should govern and why people love. I want to understand the stars in the heavens and all the words that were ever made. I want to remember every story that was ever told. — Jo Graham

The privilege of money, as Edgar's parents saw it, was that you could get yourself into the great wild beauty - the thousand-meter-deep sea, the wide open West, an island inhabited mostly by dangerous animals, and feel alive and real - and then come over the crest of the hill and have someone meet you with a silver tray containing fresh fruit, aged scotch, a cold towel for your hands, and show you to a seat with a perfect view from which to tell the story of your adventure. — Ramona Ausubel

What say you, can you love the gentleman?
This night you shall behold him at our feast.
Read o'er the volume of young Paris' face,
And find delight writ there with beauty's pen;
Examine every married lineament,
And see how one another lends content;
And what obscured in this fair volume lies
Find written in the margent of his eyes.
This precious book of love, this unbound lover,
To beautify him only lacks a cover.
The fish lives in the sea, and 'tis much pride
For fair without the fair within to hide.
That book in many's eyes doth share the glory,
That in gold clasps locks in the golden story.
So shall you share all that he doth possess,
By having him, making yourself no less. — William Shakespeare

It was years ago now, on a warm summer night,
When the boy came out of the sea.
His skin was blue and his hair was white,
And he was in love with me.
He was wild and true, and right then I knew
That he was in love with me.

In our ship we sailed for years on the ocean,
Unfettered and totally free.
And he gave all his days to his endless devotion,
For he was in love with me.
I called it a phase and made endless delays,
Though he was in love with me.

One day the waves swept him right off the ship
And dropped him into the blue.
As his skin turned to water, his hair into fish,
He asked if I loved him too.
Too late I called through the wind and the water,
'I was always in love with you.'
I was always in love with you. — Traci Chee

The Israelites got out of Egypt, but Pharoah and his army chased after them. They got to the Red Sea and they couldn't cross it. The Egyptian army was getting closer. So Moses got on his walkie-talkie, the Israeli air force bombed the Egyptians, and the Israeli navy built a pontoon bridge so the people could cross." The mother was shocked. "Is that the way they taught you the story?" "Well, no," the boy admitted, "but if I told it to you the way they told it to us, you'd never believe it." Centuries ago, — Harold S. Kushner

Tell me, Laurel, what
do you know of erosion?"
Laurel couldn't imagine what this had to do with anything, but she answered anyway. "Like when water or
wind wears away the ground?"
"That's right. Given enough time, wind and rain will carry the tallest mountain into the sea. But," he said,
raising a finger, "a hillside covered in grass will resist erosion, and a riverbank may be held in place by
bushes and trees. They spread their roots," he said, extending his hands with his story, "and grab hold. And
though the river will pull at the soil, if the roots are strong enough, they will prevail. If they cannot, they
will eventually be carried away too. — Aprilynne Pike

What's your story? It's all in the telling. Stories are compasses and architecture; we navigate by them, and to be without a story is to be lost in the vastness of world that spreads in all directions like arctic tundra or sea ice. To love someone is to put yourself in their place, we say, which is to put yourself in their story, or figure out how to tell yourself their story. Which means that a place is a story, and stories are geography, and empathy is first of all an act of imagination, a storyteller's art, and then a way of traveling from here to there. — Rebecca Solnit

A story then...is water trying to get back to sea level — Henry Kitchell Webster

This is a story that could only have taken place in the tropics, where the climate draws sea rovers, pirates, and desperadoes from all corners of the world. They come and go, these adventurers, bedazzled and dazzling, and they leave women behind, lovers, who repeat outlandish tales, murmuring to themselves unheard, and if heard, not believed ... — Margaret Cezair-Thompson

The shoes always tell the story,' said the shoe poet.
'Not always,' I countered.
'Yes, always. Your boots, they are expensive, well made. That tells me that you come from a wealthy family. But the style is one made for and older woman. That tell me they probably belong to your mother. A mother sacrificed her boots for her daughter. That tells me you are loved, my dear. And your mother is not here, so that tells me that you are sad, my dear. The shoes tell the story. — Ruta Sepetys

There is a splendid story that, during the long sea voyage, Cowdrey was observed by Frank Tyson being addressed with some passion by a well-dressed man whom Tyson didn't recognize: 'When you reach Australia, just remember one thing,' exclaimed the older gentleman, 'Hate the bastards!' Tyson enquired of scorer and baggage man George Duckworth as to the man's identity: 'That," confided the 'bodyline' veteran, 'was Douglas Jardine. — Dave Wilson

Are you a storyteller, Thomas Covenant?"
Absently he replied, "I was, once."
"And you gave it up? Ah, that is as sad a tale in three words as any you might have told me. But a life without a tale is like a sea without salt. How do you live?"
... Unconsciously, he clenched his fist over his ring. "I live."
"Another?" Foamfollower returned. "In two words, a story sadder than the first. Say no more
with one word you will make me weep. — Stephen R. Donaldson

We have been told we cannot do this by a coarse of sentence: it will only grow louder and more dissident. we have been asked to pause for a reality check, we have been warned about offering this nation false hope, but in the unlikely story that is america there has never been anything false about hope.
nothing can stand in the way of millions of voices calling for change
the hopes of little girl who goes to a public school in Dillon are the same as the dreams of a little boy who learns on the streets of L.A. We will remember that there is something happening in America, that we are not as devided as our politics suggest, that we are one people, we are one nation and together we will begin the next great chapter in the American story with three words that will ring from coast to coast, from sea to shining sea: YES WE CAN!
yes we can to justice and equality
yes we can to oppurtunity and prosperity — Barack Obama

If you aren't a fisher you'll see many things, but the river, except where it is ridden by waterfowl or waded by moose, will rarely enter your thoughts, much less stimulate your spirit. It's different if you fish. The surface of the water tells a story ... — Paul Schullery

I'll tell you the story of the wave and the rock. It's an old story. Older than we are. Listen. Once upon a time there was a wave who loved a rock in the sea, let us say in the Bay of Capri. The wave foamed and swirled around the rock, she kissed him day and night, she embraced him with her white arms, she sighed and wept and besought him to come to her. She loved him and stormed about him and in that way slowly undermined him, and one day he yielded, completely undermined, and sank into her arms."
"And suddenly he was no longer a rock to be played with, to be loved, to be dreamed of. He was only a block of stone at the bottom of the sea, drowned in her. The wave felt disappointed and deceived and looked for another rock
"What does that mean? He should have remained a rock."
"The wave always says that. But things that move are stronger than immovable things. Water is stronger than rocks. — Erich Maria Remarque

Cabeza de Vaca had wrapped her in his arms and in his language, whispering about a life she did not understand although understanding seemed to form just beyond the sea and sand, waiting there for her to grow older. Even when the story confused her, she had caught words or phrases, ideas like fish, bold and surprising, tasting of her father's mind. She had learned quickly to nod and speak because he needed her to do this, because his need surrounded her like the blue sky. She was his bastard, and he had loved her. Yes, he had loved her. That was the memory she couldn't bear. — Sharman Apt Russell

Great Britain, for instance, is too big and too diverse to be home to a small-island civilization, but in modern times the English - though not, I think, other peoples of the island - have cultivated what might be called a small-island mentality: all their most tiresome history books stress, sometimes in their opening words, that their history is a function of their insularity. They still write and read histories with such titles as Our Island Story and The Offshore Islanders.4The conviction that their island "arose from the azure main" and is like a gem "set in the silver sea" resounds in national songs and scraps of verse which they hear repeatedly. In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the English invested heavily in naval security. They created the cult of the "English eccentric" - which is a way of idealizing the outcome of isolation. They have projected an image as "a singular race, one which prides itself on being a little mad. — Felipe Fernandez-Armesto

I mean, what kind of literature do you think ants would make if they could read? Not F. Scott Fuckin' Fitzgerald, not Joyce or D-D - D-Dostoyevsky, not even friggin' Steinbeck. Wouldn't make any sense to 'em. You ever read Nabokov's Lolita? Best book of the twentieth century, but old-fashioned my friend, old fuckin' fashioned. Same old story over and over again, one more guy mesmerized by his own dick, wandering around the wreckage of his life. Who the fuck cares about that? Give me the Knights of the Round Table! Give me Merlin! Or better, the "wine dark sea"! Much more interesting. — Eric Bogosian

All the colors of the rainbow
All of voices of the wind
Every dream that reaches out
That reaches out to find where love begins
Every word of every story
Every star in every sky
Every corner of creation lives to testify

chorus:
For as long as I shall live
I will testify to love
I'll be a witness in the silences when words are not enough
With every breath I take I will give thanks to God above
For as long as I shall live
I will testify to love

From the mountains to the valleys
From the rivers to the sea
Every hand that reaches out
Every hand that reaches out to offer peace
Every simple act of mercy
Every step to kingdom come
All the Hope in every heart will speak what love has done

chorus
churus — Avalon

The most worst scenario.... I mean if this happen to me and to be so deep in the sea and sailing oh hell... let's go be with me...

(The Finest Hours: The True Story of the U.S. Coast Guard's Most Daring Sea Rescue

Book by Tougias, Michael J., Sherman, Casey) — Deyth Banger

Being friends is different from being lovers. It's a sea change. — Barbara Delinsky

In school I ended up writing three different papers on "The Castaway" section of Moby-Dick, the chapter where the cabin boy Pip falls overboard and is driven mad by the empty immensity of what he finds himself floating in. And when I teach school now I always teach Crane's horrific "The Open Boat," and get all bent out of shape when the kids find the story dull or jaunty-adventurish: I want them to feel the same marrow-level dread of the oceanic I've always felt, the intuition of the sea as primordial nada, bottomless, depths inhabited by cackling tooth-studded things rising toward you at the rate a feather falls. — David Foster Wallace

Peter Geye has rendered the Minnesota north shore in all its stark, dangerous beauty, and it is the perfect backdrop for this deeply moving story of conflict and forgiveness. Safe from the Sea is a remarkable debut. — Ron Rash

A little boy, he can play like he's a fireman or a cop
although fewer and fewer are pretending to be cops, thank God
or a deep-sea diver or a quarterback or a spaceman or a rock 'n roll star or a cowboy, or anything else glamorous and exciting (Author's note: What about a novelist, Jellybean?), and although chances are by the time he's in high school he'll get channeled into safer, duller ambitions, the great truth is, he can be any of those things, realize any of those fantasies, if he has the strength, nerve and sincere desire ... But little girls? Podner, you know that story as well as me. Give 'em doll babies, tea sets and toy stoves. And if they show a hankering for more bodacious playthings, call 'em tomboy, humor 'em for a few years and then slip 'em the bad news ... And the reality is, we got about as much chance of growing up to be cowgirls as Eskimos have got being vegetarians. — Tom Robbins

I like a good story and I also like staring at the sea
do I have to choose between the two? — David Byrne

The story line of Kings is so overcrowded, it's hard to keep track. The narrator complains, there's so much going on, Solomon can't love God "wholeheartedly." This is a crucial word. The new Jerusalem opens up a whole new layer of human problems. We are in a fluid world, full of lush possibilities. Religions, jobs, marriages, all forms of life feel like open questions. In this atmosphere, can anybody be "wholehearted" about anything? Cosmopolitan culture, when it thrives, is scary. But it is also thrilling, and the people love it: "Judah and Israel prospered, as many as the sand on the sea; they ate and drank and were happy. — Anonymous

Moshup made this island He dragged his toe through the water and cut this land from the mainland. He went on then, with much animation, to relate a fabulous tale of giants and whales and shape-shifting spirits. I let hi speak, because I did not want to vex him, but also because I liked to listen to the story as he told it, with expression and vivid gesture. Of course, I thought it all outlandish. But ... it came to me that our story of a burning bush and a parted sea might also seem fabulous, to one not raised up knowing it was true. — Geraldine Brooks

In order to write a memoir, I've sat still inside the swirling vortex of my own complicated history like a piece of old driftwood, battered by the sea. I've waited - sometimes patiently, sometimes in despair - for the story under pressure of concealment to reveal itself to me. I've been doing this work long enough to know that our feelings - that vast range of fear, joy, grief, sorrow, rage, you name it - are incoherent in the immediacy of the moment. It is only with distance that we are able to turn our powers of observation on ourselves, thus fashioning stories in which we are characters — Dani Shapiro

It was then I thought of Corsica, the place we had discovered together. I craved the wind, the sun and salt, the simplicity of the island. — Lucy Foley

There was a man here, lashed himself to a spar as his ship went down, and for seven days and seven nights he was on the sea, and what kept him alive while others drowned was telling himself stories like a madman, so that as one ended another began. On the seventh day he had told all the stories he knew and that was when he began to tell himself as if he were a story, from the earliest beginnings to his green and deep misfortune. The story he told was of a man lost and found, not once, but many times, as he choked his way out of the waves. And the night fell, he saw the Cape Wrath light, only lit a week it was, but it was, and he knew that if he became the story of the light, he might be saved. With his last strength he began to paddle towards it, arms on either side of the spar, and in his mind the light became a shining rope, pulling him in. He took hold of it, tied it round his waist, and at that moment, the keeper saw him, and ran for the rescue boat. — Jeanette Winterson

I think the novel is not so much a literary genre, but a literary space, like a sea that is filled by many rivers. The novel receives streams of science, philosophy, poetry and contains all of these; it's not simply telling a story. — Jose Saramago

It is not the task of a writer to 'tell all,' or even to decide what to leave in, but to decide what to leave out. Whatever remains, that meager sum of this profane division, that's the bastard chimera we call a 'story.' I am not building, but cutting away. And all stories, whether advertised as truth or admitted falsehoods, are fictions, cleft from the objective facts by the aforementioned action of cutting away. A pound of flesh. A pile of sawdust. Discarded chips of Carrara marble. And what's left over.
Houses Under The Sea — Caitlin R. Kiernan

Patrul Rinpoche tells the story of an old frog who had lived all his life in a dank well. One day a frog from the sea paid him a visit. "Where do you come from?" asked the frog in the well. "From the great ocean," he replied. "How big is your ocean?" "It's gigantic." "You mean about a quarter of the size of my well here?" "Bigger." "Bigger? You mean half as big?" "No, even bigger." "Is it ... as big as this well?" "There's no comparison." "That's impossible! I've got to see this for myself." They set off together. When the frog from the well saw the ocean, it was such a shock that his head just exploded into pieces. — Sogyal Rinpoche

Tell me how many songs that I must sing before I can see you in your glory, hear your whole entire story, bathe inside your golden, golden sea? — Trevor Hall

Go gather by the humming sea
Some twisted, echo-harbouring shell,
And to its lips thy story tell. — W.B.Yeats

A general agreement that time, like a story, was not a line; it was an ocean. If you couldn't find the precise moment you were looking for, it was possible you hadn't swum far enough. It was possible that you simply weren't a good enough swimmer yet. It was also possible, the women grudgingly agreed, that some moments were hidden far enough in time that they really should be left to deep-sea creatures. — Maggie Stiefvater

We're weird roman candles burning bright at both ends. At the end of the road's where this story begins. Where the green of the gulf meets the blue of the sea. What makes it all happen is still a mystery to me. But those crazy days and those crazy ways, we never want to undo. We'll be together, now and forever. — Jimmy Buffett

The choice, as Wells once said, is the Universe-or nothing ... The challenge of the great spaces between the worlds is a stupendous one; but if we fail to meet it, the story of our race will be drawing to its close. Humanity will have turned its back upon the still untrodden heights and will be descending again the long slope that stretches, across a thousand million years of time, down to the shores of the primeval sea. — Arthur C. Clarke

A huge fleet comprised of thousands of large naval and other seaworthy vessels from almost every nation on earth laid in wait off the coasts of the United States of America. The ships were stationary, poised and ready, positioned miles out to sea but still within plain view of every major port city, along every coastal waterway on all three sides of the great North American land mass. — J.A. Willoughby

Death, like fiction, is brutal in its symmetry. Take this story and strip it down -all the way back- until you are left with two points. Two dots on a vast, blank canvas, separeted by a sea of white. Here, we have come to the first point, where the batj is drawn and the hand is reachinh for the razor blade. I will meet you at the next, by the axle of a screaming wheel, the revolution of a clock, the closing of an orbit. — Lang Leav

The holistic acupuncturist and the sea turtle rescuer may not be able to explain the feeling, 'We are serving the same thing,' but they are. Both are in service to an emerging story of the People that is the defining mythology of a new kind of civilization. — Charles Eisenstein

I wonder, what's in a book while it's closed. Oh, I know it's full of letters printed on paper, but all the same, something must be happening, because as soon as I open it, there's a whole story with people I don't know yet and all kinds of adventures, deeds and battles. And sometimes there are storms at sea, or it takes you to strange cities and countries. All those things are somehow shut in a book. Of course you have to read it to find out. But it's already there, that's the funny thing. I just wish I knew how it could be. — Michael Ende

She was floating in the midst of a black sea, in the darkest of nights, with no hope or care to see light again. She was a mere wave away from drowning in blackness. — Anam Iqbal

A story of remarkable simplicity and charm. A young swimmer invites us into sea off the coast of California where through her eyes we see an entire realm of creatures we have never known so intimately before. Truly for people of all ages, Lynne Cox's adventure with the baby whale, Grayson, becomes a parable and an experience, thanks not only to the author's great and generous spirit, but through her immense gift for describing nature. — Anne Rice

I have read that long ago there was a land of glass castles that sank beneath the sea. It was not called Atlantis, but Lyonesse. This happened before history and across the ocean, but when I was little I wondered about that place, how it could be so beautiful and so lost. Sometimes it seemed that the land around my New England home was like that flooded country, with mud where the streets of gold should be and mayflies swarming where there should be lovely fishes, but here and there a shard of crystal to call the heart to beauty.
"Wetlands," in Phoebe. — Claudia Putnam

The young man could stand it no more.
What is this? I've been ambushed by a night patrol
in full daylight! Your blitherings try to keep me
from the presence of a holy man,
but I know what light led me here, the same
that turned the golden calf into words in a sacred story.
A saint is a theater where the qualities of God can be seen.
Don't try to keep me out. Puff on this candle, and your face will get burned! Rather try blowing out the sun, or fitting a muzzle on the sea!
Old bats like you dream that their cave-dark
is everywhere, but it's not. — Rumi

Bastian looked at the book.
'I wonder,' he said to himself, 'what's in a book while it's closed. Oh, I know it's full of letters printed on paper, but all the same, something must be happening, because as soon as I open it, there's a whole story with people I don't know yet and all kinds of adventures, deeds and battles. And sometimes there are storms at sea, or it takes you to strange cities and countries. All those things are somehow shut in a book. Of course you have to read it to find out. But it's already there, that's the funny thing. I just wish I knew how it could be.'
Suddenly an almost festive mood came over him.
He settled himself down, picked up the book, opened it to the first page, and began to read ... — Michael Ende

Where dark woods hide secrets and mountains are fierce and bold. Deep waters hold reflections of times lost long ago. I will heed every story, take hold of my own dream. Be as strong as the sea is stormy, be as proud as an eagle's scream. — Julie Fowlis

Any film I've made, I've only really begun to understand in the cutting room. That's when the story shows itself to you, like a wreck coming out of the sea. — Roger Michell

No literature is richer than that of the sea. No story is more enthralling, no tradition is more secure. — Felix Riesenberg

I have not much faith in women in fiction ... Women are so horribly subjective and they have such scorn for the healthy commonplace. When a woman writes a story of adventure, a stout sea tale, a manly battle yarn, anything without wine, women, and love, then I will begin to hope for something great from them, not before. — Willa Cather

Here ends the story of a ship, but there will always be other ships, for we are an island race. Through all our centuries, the sea has ruled our destiny. There will always be other ships and men to sail in them. It is these men, in peace or war, to whom we owe so much. Above all victories, beyond all loss, in spite of changing values in a changing world, they give to us, their countrymen, eternal and indomitable pride. — Noel Coward

I saw everyone, a shifting sea of discomfort and sadness, each person carrying his own pain, each telling her own stories, no story more or less tragic or triumphant than any other. — Jennifer Brown

The thin child knew enough fairy stories to know that a prohibition in a story is only there to be broken. The first humans were fated to eat the apple. The dice were loaded against them. The grandfather was pleased with himself. The thin child found no one in this story with whom to sympathise. Except maybe the snake, which had no asked to be made use of as a temper.
The snake wanted simply to coil about in the branches.
What was there in the beginning in the Asgard stories?
In the first age there was nothing. Nor sand, nor the sea, nor cold waves; there was no earth, no sky on high. The gulf galped and grass grew nowhere. — A.S. Byatt

'The Sea Wolf' is the story of a man who believes only in brute force. He is so firm in belief in his own ideas that he despises all who disagree with him. He preaches the doctrine of intolerance. He flaunts the notion that democracy is anything but weakness. — Ida Lupino

We'll act as if all this were a bad dream.
A bad dream.
To the person in the bell jar, blank and stopped as a dead baby, the world itself is the bad dream.
A bad dream.
I remembered everything.
I remembered the cadavers and Doreen and the story of the fig tree and Marco's diamond and the sailor on the Common and Doctor Gordon's wall-eyed nurse and the broken thermometers and the Negro with his two kinds of beans and the twenty pounds I gained on insulin and the rock that bulged between sky and sea like a gray skull.
Maybe forgetfulness, like a kind snow, would numb and cover them.
But they were part of me. They were my landscape. — Sylvia Plath

Once upon a time Karen saw somebody nobody else could see. She thought to ask an old man: who were you? Once upon a time I thought to dream of medicine. Now I dream of medicine by the sea. — Nicholaus Patnaude

I actually thought and believed that the story would be compelling enough to cause a real sea change in the way Congress reacted to that issue. I thought they would be startled, too. And they weren't. — Al Gore

Why can you hear the ocean inside a seashell? This is just a trick your ears play on you. What you hear is not the sound of the ocean, but rather the sound of your own blood rushing through your ears. All the shell does is amplify the sound so that you can hear it, the way a stethoscope lets you hear the beating of your heart. Some people say you hear the sea inside a shell because the shell remembers its home even when it has been taken away, but this is just a story. — Jenny Offill

That's your story? And you're sticking to it?" Brandt asked. "That you're suggesting a mission that is super dangerous, but Lopez could get us out of it on unicycles? Driven into the sea? — Carolyn McCray

Hegel claimed that the 'world spirit' is developing toward an ever-expanding knowledge of itself. It's the same with rivers
they become broader and broader as they get nearer to the sea. According to Hegel, history is the story of the 'world spirit' gradually coming to consciousness of itself. Although the world has always existed, human culture and human development have made the world spirit increasingly conscious of its intrinsic value. — Jostein Gaarder

He'd probably no more view his life as a story than he would view his life that of a sea cucumber. — Douglas Coupland

We all start out the same in our mothers' wombs. We, all of us, when floating in the amniotic sea of our earliest oblivion, have gonads. If the Y chromosome didn't swoop in to act on the gonads of some of us and make testes, we would all become women. In biology, the Genesis story is reversed: Adam becomes Adam out of Eve, not the other way around. — Siri Hustvedt

Stories are compasses and architecture, we navigate by them, we build our sanctuaries and our prisons out of them, and to be without a story is to be lost in the vastness of a world that spreads in all directions like arctic tundra or sea ice. — Rebecca Solnit

I should have liked this particular story to end with me settled happily ever after in the hut on the island, but it didn't happen. It wasn't long before I had to face the fact that I was living in the sea. — Meg Rosoff

What he told himself on those sea-soaked nights ... Others joined in and it was discovered that every light had a story-no, every light was a story. And the flashes themselves were the stories going out over the waves, as markers and guides and comfort and warning. — Jeanette Winterson

It was early spring, 326 BC, in the beautiful city of Chersonesus protected by a haunting deep blue sea and a giant wall. Today was the second day of the Festival of Dionysus. — Destin Bays

Her eyes were like the sea before a storm on the Carolina coast. — Kami Garcia

I need to tell you a story.'

What about?

Zachariah, Zachariah, my foundling boy. 'A boy. A boxer, a fighting man. A brother. No. About brothers, sisters. Foundlings, laid-in-the-streets. Fights, fighting. A boy, it all begins with the boy. My love. A wolf. Peter and the Wolf! Oh dear! I am very crazy! Let me - I must tell you this story.'

Why?

'I'm frightened.'

Of?

'Fractals. Patterns.'

Ah, says the fish, looking at Rachel with his wise eyes. Chaos!

'Yes,' thinks Rachel. 'Chaos. Fearful symmetry.'

Go home, says the fish, flipping over, flashing in light, and diving down into the great blue sea. — Emma Richler

Building a museum case and filling it with types of mussels is one way of knowing mussels; but on the shore, a mussel leads to a crab or a curious stone, which leads to another thing and eventually leads back to mussels, which is another and perhaps a more far-reaching way to know mussels. The sea that always seems like a metaphor, but one that is always moving, cannot be fixed, like a heart that is a like a tongue that is like a mystery that is like a story that is like a border that is like something altogether different and like everything at once. One thing leads to another, and this is the treasure that always runs through your fingers and never runs out. — Rebecca Solnit

I didn't leave early that morning. I waited for him to wake up and kiss me good morning. He said he was going to take a shower and I should come join him. I thought now was as good of a time as any and placed the ring on his corner table with my note.

It read:
My Love, I don't know how you will accept my decision. I do love you with all my heart but you are not my first love. I am always going to be infatuated with my love for the sea. Accept my proposal after I have completed my education, claim my heart for thy own & obtain thy love in which it possesses.
With all My Love, Zara

-emerald eyes of the sea — Hazel Cartwright

We sit cuddled together in the last warmth of summer, dreaming of narwhals, as mermaids sing far out at sea. — Kathleen Valentine

A story is a map of the world. A gloriously colored and wonderful map, the sort one often sees framed and hanging on the wall in a study full of plush chairs and stained-glass lamps: painstakingly lettered, researched down to the last pebble and participle, drawn with dash and flair, with cloud-goddesses in the corners and giant squid squirming up out of the sea ... [T]here are more maps in the world than anyone can count. Every person draws a map that shows themselves at the center. — Catherynne M Valente

Indeed, the point of the famous story about the king and the waves, as originally told, was not to illustrate his stupidity, but rather to prove what a good Christian he had been. 'Let all the world know', says a damp Cnut, having conspicuously failed to stop the tide from rising, 'that the power of kings is empty and worthless, and there is no king worthy of the name save Him by whose will heaven, earth and sea obey eternal laws.'2 — Marc Morris

We will remember that we are not as divided as our politics suggests; that we are one people; we are one nation and together, we will begin the next great chapter in the American story with three words that will ring from coast to coast, from sea to shining sea:- Yes. We. Can. — Barack Obama

I Need a Good Book

I need a good story.
I need a good book.
The kind that explodes
Off the shelf.
I need some good writing,
Alive and exciting,
To contemplate all by myself.

I need a good novel,
I need a good read.
I probably need
Two or three.
I need a good tale
Of love and betrayal
Or perhaps an adventure at sea.

I need a good saga.
I need a good yarn.
A momentous and mightily
Or slight one.
But with thousands and thousands
And thousands of books,
I need someone to tell me
The right one.

-John Lithgow — John Lithgow

There is an old lady who lives on the moon. You can see her spinning thread on her spinning wheel. Her isolation and distance from the world has made her a sage. She weaves stories. She knows every wanderer who crosses the sea grass meadows, she knows every woman who uses her blackened blue hands to grind grain in the hand mill, she is friends with the little girl who got lost in the corn fields and was never found, and she knows the story of the boy who played flute on the little hill when his lambs slept. Grandmother said that if I had been a good girl the moon lady would weave for me a magical blanket and every stitch will be made from a moment of my life, a forgotten moment, a memory. Every stitch would be special. It would be made especially for me. — Kanza Javed

I am most grateful for company this evening, even of the quiet variety. I am no great conversationalist, myself."
Gray snorted. Not a conversationalist. The girl had coaxed the life story out of every sailor in this ship.
She had just picked up her spoon again when Joss spoke.
"You do not find the voyage too tedious, Miss Turner?" Joss asked. "I regret that you are left to entertain yourself, being the sole passenger."
She laid down her spoon. "Thank you, Captain, but I find sufficient activity to occupy my hands and my mind. Reading, sketching, walking the deck for fresh air and healthful exertion. I'm surprisingly content, living at sea."
Gray's heart gave an odd kick. — Tessa Dare