Swimmer Quotes & Sayings

I start to feel like an empty canvas under the hands of Michelangelo. No! Like a swimmer who's gone out to far in the ocean being pulled back to shore by a fashion lifeguard. — Alecia Whitaker

Being a non-swimmer, I've never been excited by the sea so avoid it on holidays. — Donald Sinden

The Magnificent Seven consisted of one swimmer of color, a representative from each extreme of the educational spectrum, a muscle man, a giant, a chameleon, and a one-legged psychopath. When I envision us walking seven abreast through the halls of Cutter High, decked out in the sacred blue and gold, my heart swells. — Chris Crutcher

Brody felt a shimmy of fear skitter up his back. He was a very poor swimmer, and the prospect of being on top of - let alone in - water above his head give him what his mother used to call the wimwams: sweaty palms, a persistent need to swallow, and a ache in his stomach - essentially the sensation some people feel about flying. In Brody's dreams, deep water was populated by slimy, savage things that rose from below and shredded his flesh, by demons that cackled and moaned. — Peter Benchley

The bus's wipers slapped out of synch, like poorly rehearsed ballroom dancers, arms of a neophyte swimmer dogpaddling, wobbling grocery-cart wheel and its unencumbered mate. — Dennis Vickers

At the end of the sky I am a swimmer. In the water I can become a child again, splashing, sighing, holding my breath until enough is enough, I come up choking, my lungs needful of a fresh supply of air. — Abigail George

I was the only swimmer in movies. Tarzan was long gone, and he couldn't have done them anyway; he could never have gotten into my bathing suit. — Esther Williams

At length the Turk turned to Larry:
'You write, I believe?' he said with complete lack of interest.
Larry's eyes glittered. Mother, seeing the danger signs, rushed in quickly before he could reply.
'Yes, yes' she smiled, 'he writes away, day after day. Always tapping at the typewriter'
'I always feel that I could write superbly if I tried' remarked the Turk.
'Really?' said Mother. 'Yes, well, it's a gift I suppose, like so many things.'
'He swims well' remarked Margo, 'and he goes out terribly far'
'I have no fear' said the Turk modestly. 'I am a superb swimmer, so I have no fear. When I ride the horse, I have no fear, for I ride superbly. I can sail the boat magnificently in the typhoon without fear'
He sipped his tea delicately, regarding our awestruck faces with approval.
'You see' he went on, in case we had missed the point, 'you see, I am not a fearful man. — Gerald Durrell

Born on an island, I could swim before I could walk, thrown many times into swimming pools and warm transparent Caribbean waters: sink or swim, that was my first lesson. While I'm not a natural athlete, I'm still a strong swimmer and feel a great affinity with the sea. — Monique Roffey

He descended and came to a small basin of sea enclosed by the cliffs. Troy's nature freshened within him; he thought he would rest and bathe here before going farther. He undressed and plunged in. Inside the cove the water was uninteresting to a swimmer, being smooth as a pond, and to get a little of the ocean swell, Troy presently swam between the two projecting spurs of rock which formed the pillars of Hercules to this miniature Mediterranean. Unfortunately for Troy a current unknown to him existed outside, which, unimportant to craft of any burden, was awkward for a swimmer who might be taken in it unawares. Troy found himself carried to the left and then round in a swoop out to sea. — Thomas Hardy

Sturdy swimmers afloat on water-couch
Beneath the heavy bill their treasured pouch
Fishes pray for them to fly far away
Inland lakes toast to the Pelican's day — Munia Khan

I was a competitive swimmer as a teenager, only stopping when I got persistent ear infections. Every day was a 6 A.M. start to swim before lessons, then choir or dance classes after. — Ella Eyre

We just need to figure out how to navigate the rest of the world, and we'll either sink or swim. I'm a really good swimmer. The question is, how long can you hold your breath? — Melissa Foster

And the HE stands up. if frenchy's could bottle him up and sell him as porn, they'd probably own half of chicago within a year. he's what would happen after nine months if abercrombie fucked fitch. he's like a movie star, an olympic swimmer, and america's next top male model all at once. he's wearing a silver shirt and pink pants. everything about him sparkles.
not my type at all. but ... — David Levithan

Patrick West." Nick spoke so quietly the words were hardly more than a soft exhalation. "Student. Swimmer. Fan of lurid supernatural romances, €linore, and BadMadRad. Casual gamer. Admirer of Jaguar, fictional warrior princesses, and soprano witch queens. Lover of historical buildings. Idealist who wants to build cities where people can live well. Owner of strong opinions he never hesitates to defend, no matter how obviously wrong. Quick to laugh. Spontaneous and unselfconscious, except when he thinks too much, or tries too hard. Talks too much, with hardly any filter between the brain and the mouth. Adaptable. Outgoing. Unreserved. Loud. Talented. Whole-hearted. Foolhardy. Stronger than he thinks. Wiser than he seems. — Alex Gabriel

That I was a swimmer made no waves; it seems to be a law of human nature
that those who live by the sea are suspicious of swimmers, just as those who live in the mountains are suspicious of mountain climbers. — Yann Martel

There must be some wisdom in the folk saying: Its the strong swimmers who drown. — Charlie Munger

We have to look deeply at things in order to see. When a swimmer enjoys the clear water of the river, he or she should also be able to be the river. — Thich Nhat Hanh

He dived under and let the cool water soothe his throbbing wings and raise them off his back. He glided in a lazy circle around Bumblewind, who was not a fast swimmer. Morningleaf paddled above them, her wings extended and her neck flat, the sunlight filtering through her aqua feathers casting stripes of color across the water. Star floated over the tops of the lake plants. — Jennifer Lynn Alvarez

Days, when the ball of our vision
Had eagles that flew unabashed to sun;
When the grasp on the bow was decision,
And arrow and hand and eye were one;
When the Pleasures, like waves to a swimmer,
Came heaving for rapture ahead!-
Invoke then, they dwindle, they glimmer
As lights over mounds of the dead.
-Ode to Youth and Memory — George Meredith

We do believe in setting goals. We live by goals. In athletics we always have a goal. When we go to school, we have the goal of graduation and degrees. Our total existence is goal-oriented. We must have goals to make progress, encouraged by keeping records ... as the swimmer or the jumper or the runner does ... Progress is easier when it is timed, checked, and measured ... Goals are good. Laboring with a distant aim sets the mind in a higher key and puts us at our best. Goals should always be made to a point that will make us reach and strain. — Spencer W. Kimball

Hope is to a man as a bladder to a learning swimmer
it keeps him from sinking in the bosom of the waves, and by that help he may attain the exercise; but yet it many times makes him venture beyond his height, and then if that breaks, or a storm rises, he drowns without recovery. How many would die, did not hope sustain them! How many have died by hoping too much! This wonder we find in Hope, that she is both a flatterer and a true friend. — Owen Feltham

if one desires to have the body type of, say, a champion swimmer, the best course is to start by having the same parents as that champion swimmer - rather than his or her training methods. — Doug McGuff

It is the swimmer who first leaps into the frozen stream who is cut sharpest by the ice; those who follow him find it broken, and the last find it gone. It is the men or women who first tread down the path which the bulk of humanity will ultimately follow, who must find themselves at last in solitudes where the silence is deadly. — Olive Schreiner

I feel akin to the Platypus. An orphan in a family. A swimmer, a recluse. Part bird, part fish, part lizard. — Trevor Dunn

Author compares the impact of biases to his experience as an average swimmer who overcame a considerable fear of water. While the swimming was easy in one particular experience, he was internally congratulating himself on his acquired skill. But when he realized he was swimming with a current he would now have to fight against, he realized just how definite his limits were. — Shankar Vedantam

She could give herself up to the written word as naturally as a good dancer to music or a fine swimmer to water. The only difficulty was that after finishing the last sentence she was left with a feeling at once hollow and uncomfortably full. Exactly like indigestion. — Jean Rhys

Especially she dreaded the isolation of the swimmer, amid propelled and splashing figures yet she was isolated, always one isolated in the water where thoughts await like froth on the surface of the water that smelled like chemicals. — Joyce Carol Oates

I was an avid swimmer and was state champ at age 12. — Apolo Ohno

I played lacrosse for a hot second, but I was mainly a swimmer - captain of my swim team. — Grace Gummer

I was a better basketball player growing up in high school than I was a swimmer. Basketball to this day is my favorite sport. — Ryan Lochte

When I was a swimmer and I would lose a heat in something I was doing whether it backstroke or breaststroke, were two of my most strongest strokes, I would look at how whoever it was that won and beat me and think, "What did they do? What were ... What were the qualities that they had that I can incorporate into my swimming to make me better?" — Hilary Swank

Most of the people near Hitler were mental breast-stroke swimmers. — Ernst Hanfstaengl

Trying to teach creativity is the major hoax of our time along with the Iraq war and plastic surgery"
~ Snarky comment of Clive from "The River Swimmer" (pg 47) — Jim Harrison

I started out doing triathlons because they terrified me! I'm a good swimmer, I learned to ride a bike in college, and I hate running. It seemed like something I could never do, so I decided, 'I'm gonna do it.' — Megyn Price

(American swimmer, 1972 Summer Olympics, on winning seven gold medals Inspirational)
I swam my brains out. — Mark Spitz

A man or a woman is said to be absorbed when the water has total control of him, and he no control of the water. A swimmer moves around willfully. An absorbed being has no will but the water's going. Any word or act is not really personal, but the way the water has of speaking or doing. As when you hear a voice coming out of a wall, and you know that it's not the wall talking, but someone inside, or perhaps someone outside echoing off the wall. Saints are like that. They've achieved the condition of a wall, or a door. — Rumi

The writer, like a swimmer caught by an undertow, is borne in an unexpected direction. He is carried to a subject which has awaited him
a subject sometimes no part of his conscious plan. Reality, the reality of sensation, has accumulated where it was least sought. To write is to be captured
captured by some experience to which one may have given hardly a thought. — Elizabeth Bowen

She plunged into a sea of platitudes, and with the powerful breast stroke of a channel swimmer, made her confident way towards the white cliffs of the obvious. — W. Somerset Maugham

Abraham Lincoln wasn't much of a dancer. "Miss Todd, I should like to dance with you in the worst way," he told his future wife. Miss Todd later said to a friend, "He certainly did."

"John Quincy Adams was a first-rate swimmer. Once when he was skinny-dipping in the Potomac River, a women reporter snatched his clothes and sat on them until he gave her an interview."

"(Andrew Johnson couldn't read until he was fourteen! He didn't learn to write until after he was married!) — Judith St. George

I'm a great swimmer, probably due to the size of my feet. — Cat Deeley

Be Your Best Without the Stress!Be the director and actor in your movie, called My Life. — Katrina Radke

Botha swimmer and a drowned man are in the water; the latter is borne by the water and controlled by it, while the swimmer is borne along by his own power and of his own volition. Every movement made by the drowned man - indeed, every act and word that issue from him - comes from the water, not from him ... The saints are like this. They have died before death. — Rumi

let us start by picturing the Japan archipelago lying in the sea by the Chinese mainland. If its proximity allowed it to become part of the Sinosphere and acquire a written culture, its distance benefited the development of indigenous writing. The Dover Strait, separating England and France, is only 34 kilometers (21 miles) wide. A fine swimmer can swim across it. In contrast, the shortest distance between Japan and the Korean Peninsula is five or six times greater, and between Japan and the Chinese mainland, twenty-five times greater. The current, moreover, is deadly. . . . Japan's distance from China gave it political and cultural freedom and made possible the flowering of its own writing. — Minae Mizumura

No matter whether you're an Olympic swimmer or you're someone who doesn't like to swim, your kids should learn this life skill. You can't be next to them every second, so they must be able to relax in the water and get themselves to safety. — Summer Sanders

The sport is definitely growing, and has become much more competitive. When I started, you were either a former swimmer or runner who took up triathlons. Now, you have a generation of triathletes coming up that started competing at a young age - these are the people that will change the game. — Timothy O'Donnell

Back on the beach, I went through the ritual a tropical surfer should perform to avoid the ailments and irritations that come with surfing in warm water: drink as much fresh water as soon as possible to ward off dehydration; remove wet trunks immediately; dry all body parts and apply Desitin to the crotch and armpits to avoid rash; irrigate the ears with a vinegar-and-alcohol solution to prevent swimmer's ear; and smear any open cuts with antibiotic ointment to guard against staph infection. Warm water produces more bacteria than cold water, and to all those little microscopic beasties, human flesh is a luscious treat. — Steve Sorensen

A secret that has been buried too long, eating a hole in me, worms its way to the surface, like a swimmer who can't hold his breath any longer. — Michael R. French

I don't linger on the fact that Dawn Fraser was a great swimmer 40 years ago. That was in the past. I did break 41 world records, but I don't live on that today. — Dawn Fraser

If you're on a beach and a tsunami hits, you'll drown whether you're a small child or an Olympic swimmer. Some things will go bad no matter how good you are. — Lloyd Blankfein

I'm not a natural ocean person. I married into a family of swimmers, and I've slowly been drawn into the sea. — Glenn Close

Huge waves that would frighten an ordinary swimmer produce a tremendous thrill for the surfer who has ridden them. — Oswald Chambers

Just as an octopus may have his den in some ocean cave, and come floating out a silent image of horror to attack a swimmer, so I picture such a spirit lurking in the dark of the house which he curses by his presence, and ready to float out upon all whom he can injure. — Arthur Conan Doyle

Either you came in here a swimmer or you'd better be a really fast learner — Suzanne Collins

In the early years of the Roaring Twenties, American women not only won the right to vote but they also earned headlines along side their male counterparts during the Golden Age of American sports. Michael Bohn shares an engaging story of how two sports heroines, tennis player Helen Wills and swimmer Gertrude Ederle, helped embolden women to seek self-fulfillment by challenging the status quo. — Donna De Varona

The Swimmer's Advantage:
1)The goal is measured first by seeing; The distance is accomplished by the strategy of believing that the same set of repetitious acts will get them there.
2)Even when the elements around you are overwhelming, have the confidence to keep your head the above water.
3) Though at times you may not even see it, faith is knowing that the shore is always straight ahead.
4) By consistently reaching out over and over, you are bound to be rewarded by touching something worth more than when you started. — Johnnie Dent Jr.

#anks for the swim. You are a majestic swimmer," Simon said
as we neared the walkway to Wind Song.
"You talk a lot of crap, you know that?"
"I thank you for appreciating my verbal stylings," Simon replied,
with a formal bow. — Amanda Howells

She didn't do anything at all
except arrived without warning
in the middle of the night
(right when I least expected it)

She walked by me, with a strut in her step
smelling like summer
causing me to turn my head
(even the leaves swayed her way)

All she did was look at me
with bright, curious eyes
filled with mirth and secrets
(as if an adventure was about to happen)

I tried not to think of her at all
not the curves of her body
or the stories that she told
(you knew there'd never be dull conversations)

By then, I couldn't walk away
I got caught up in her storm
without a care in the world
(I was a very good swimmer)

She was a hurricane who created her own sunshine. — M.J. Abraham

Day after day, Mersault let himself sink into his life as if he were sliding into water. And just as the swimmer advances by the complicity of his arms and the water which bears him up, helps him on, it was enough to make a few essential gestures - to rest one hand on a tree trunk, to take a run on the beach - in order to keep himself intact and conscious. — Albert Camus

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

He who endeavors to serve, to benefit, and improve the world, is like a swimmer, who struggles against a rapid current, in a river lashed into angry waves by the winds. Often they roar over his head, often they beat him back and baffle him. Most men yield to the stress of the current ... Only here and there the stout, strong heart and vigorous arms struggle on toward ultimate success. — Albert Pike

Although our intellect always feels itself urged towards clearness and certainty, still our mind often feels itself attracted by uncertainty. Instead of threading its way with the understanding along the narrow path of philosophical investigations and logical conclusions, in order, almost unconscious of itself, to arrive in spaces where it feels itself a stranger, and where it seems to part from all well-known objects, it prefers to remain with the imagination in the realms of chance and luck. Instead of living yonder on poor necessity, it revels here in the wealth of possibilities; animated thereby, courage then takes wings to itself, and daring and danger make the element into which it launches itself as a fearless swimmer plunges into the stream. — Carl Von Clausewitz

Water. Like a blanket. Dark. Intoxicating. Cold. — Shannon Celebi

Good swimmers at length are drowned. — George Herbert

Coming from a barely clothed childhood as a swimmer makes me really comfortable with my body. — Estella Warren

It took a lot of guts to change it and say 'I don't like the life that I'm living and I don't like the swimmer I am', so let's change it completely and say 'Look, I've got to learn to love myself'. And that's been a really hard thing to do because when you've done a performance that you're not proud of and the public and the media have criticized you ... people are really quick to make judgements so it was tough to say 'Well I don't care what you have to say. I'm going to do this for myself and if you don't like me after this, well then, it's too bad'. — Leisel Jones

The Beauty of It If all I have is Now, where will I look for Joy? Without hope for the future, without hope that things will change, with no hope of finding what's been lost, and no hope of restoring the past, with only the risk to crack open all that has hardened about me, what will I do with what I have? At first, this might seem scary or sad, but as a tired swimmer comes ashore surprised to find pearls washing through his legs, I lift my tired head again and again to find all I need is right where I am. But being human, I stray and dream of lives other than my own, and soon I am busy wanting something else, somewhere else, someone else; busy imagining something just out of reach to strive for. It leads me to say if you are unhappy or in pain, nothing will remove these surfaces. But acceptance and a strong heart will crack them like a shell, exposing a softness that has always been, exposing a soft thing waiting to take form. It glows. I think it is the one spirit we all share. — Mark Nepo

The sea of pleasures may drown its owner and the swimmer fears to open his eyes under the water. — Ibn Qayyim Al-Jawziyya

Swimmer of noonday, lean for the perfect dive
To the dead Mother's face, whose subtile down
You had not seen take amber light alive. — Allen Tate

My boyfriend is not a swimmer! — Katie Hoff

I'd skipped the crush kiddie pool and jumped right into the deep, shark-infested ocean of emotions. And, if you'll forgive the dramatic metaphor, I was a lousy swimmer. — Kody Keplinger

I've defined myself, privately and publicly, by my brief, intense years as an athlete, a swimmer. I practices five or six hours a day, six days a week, eating and sleeping as much as possible. Weekends were either spent training or competing. I wasn't the best; I was relatively fast... — Leanne Shapton

People wanted to be friends with me for not the right reasons. They'd introduce me to somebody else as the Olympian or the swimmer. I didn't want to stand out. I wanted to blend in. — Amanda Beard

I was a competitive swimmer in middle school and high school. — Katharine McPhee

The ocean extends an invitation to the swimmer that it withholds from the person who has never learned to swim. With every skill we learn, the world reshapes itself to reveal greater possibilities. — Nicholas Carr

I have a strong upper body; I'm an arms swimmer, and I always have been. — Natalie Du Toit

From age eleven to age sixteen I lived a spartan life without the usual adolescent uncertainty. I wanted to be the best swimmer in the world, and there was nothing else. — Diana Nyad

I've been a swimmer and a diver for quite a while. It was something that I think I got too comfortable with, and I dove into my black-bottomed pool and hit the slope from the shallow end to the deep end. And I had a chin to chest paralyzing break. — Brooke Burns

I was a swimmer growing up. I was a miler - like long, long distance. So I was in the water for four or five hours a day. That's not the way you want to spend your teenage years. — Scott Speedman

I could feel the tug of morbid curiosity, like an outgoing tide pulling on a swimmer, urging me to look again. I — Rick Yancey

People were actually approaching me on the street and thinking that I was an athlete. They couldn't quite place it, but a runner, or swimmer or something. — Kristanna Loken

She loves swimming," said Ellen, who I knew had been a competitive swimmer in college.
Ellen looked in the rearview mirror at Kara.
"Don't you Kara?" asked Ellen.
There was no response.
"I didn't start until I was three," said Ellen. "She's got a two year start on me. — Daniel Amory

We are all swimmers in God's mighty sea. — Henry Van Dyke

On our swim team, they had something called the 'developmental meet.' I didn't know it was a meet only for the worst kids so that they could get a ribbon, and I'd show up with my friend who was also a terrible swimmer, and we would be amazed that the best kids hadn't bothered to show up. I didn't get it until after college. — Jeff Kinney

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'm not a highly outgoing person. I'm pretty guarded when you first meet me. But being in a Speedo for my entire life growing up, because I was a swimmer, and being naked in front of people now, doesn't really bother me. — Anders Holm

In the dark water he was only Gansey, now. He'd never died, he wasn't going to die again. He was only Gansey, now, now, only now.
He could not see him, but Noah stood on the edge of the pool and watched. He had been a swimmer himself, once. — Maggie Stiefvater

You can tell a great athlete by, like, not how many times he wins, unlike when he loses. Because that's what is gonna make a swimmer. — Ryan Lochte

It seems to me that we all look at Nature too much, and live with her too little. I discern great sanity in the Greek attitude. They never chattered about sunsets, or discussed whether the shadows on the grass were really mauve or not. But they saw that the sea was for the swimmer, and the sand for the feet of the runner. They loved the trees for the shadow that they cast, and the forest for its silence at noon. — Oscar Wilde

He stepped off the pavement like a man jumping off a bridge, as calm as a swimmer with an ocean out below. Lucy had known what he was going to do the instant their eyes met. She'd know what he intended because she would have done the very same thing if she'd had his courage. Nothing was going to break his fall. — Alice Hoffman

I was being singled out as the best in the class at this, that and the other, nearly always to do with art. And then I was a very good swimmer from a very early age, and once again the best in the class, and when I was about five or six, I was the best in the school. — Rolf Harris

There are objects made up of two sense elements, one visual, the other auditory - the colour of a sunrise and the distant call of a bird. Other objects are made up of many elements - the sun, the water against the swimmer's chest, the vague quivering pink which one sees when the eyes are closed, the feeling of being swept away by a river or by sleep. These second degree objects can be combined with others; using certain abbreviations, the process is practically an infinite one. There are famous poems made up of one enormous word, a word which in truth forms a poetic object, the creation of the writer. The fact that no one believes that nouns refer to an actual reality means, paradoxically enough, that there is no limit to the numbers of them. — Jorge Luis Borges

I always thought that I was a good swimmer, you know? That in a sink or swim situation I would rise to the top. But the truth is I was drowning. I was sinking fast and you threw me a lifeline. I never expected to love you. But you saved my life. How could I not? — Rachel Hayes

Long have you timidly waded
Holding a plank by the shore,
Now I will you to be a bold swimmer,
To jump off in the midst of the sea,
Rise again, nod to me, shout,
And laughingly dash with your hair. — Walt Whitman

I can't play soccer, and I'm not a great swimmer. I won't drown, but you won't see me doing laps in a pool. — Michelle Obama

You know how hard it is to swim take after take and perform the next day swimming again? Me, I'm a terrible swimmer, but most actors with that tight schedule would be sick pretty quick. — Jaume Collet-Serra

Q. What if I took a swim in a typical spent nuclear fuel pool? Would I need to dive to actually experience a fatal amount of radiation? How long could I stay safely at the surface? - Jonathan Bastien-Filiatrault A. Assuming you're a reasonably good swimmer, you could probably survive treading water anywhere from 10 to 40 hours. At that point, you would black out from fatigue and drown. This is also true for a pool without nuclear fuel in the bottom. — Randall Munroe

If you bound the arms and legs of gold-medal swimmer Michael Phelps, weighed him down with chains, threw him in a pool and he sank, you wouldn't call it a 'failure of swimming.' So, when markets have been weighted down by inept and excessive regulation, why call this a 'failure of capitalism'? — Peter Boettke

You the swimmer, after all. And then you see the waves without pattern, scooping up everyone, throwing them around like so many floating heads, and you can only laugh in your sobbing at all the silly head bobbers. Laughter can shake you from the delirium of grief. — Lidia Yuknavitch

As long as I kept moving, my grief streamed out behind me like a swimmer's long hair in water. I knew the weight was there but it didn't touch me. Only when I stopped did the slick, dark stuff of it come floating around my face, catching my arms and throat till I began to drown. So I just didn't stop. — Barbara Kingsolver