Water Song Quotes & Sayings

You've been so long in the rain, you feel like a dirty dish rag. But despite the misery of your water soaked body, you look around to see verdant leaves dripping with water. The air entering your lungs smells vibrantly clean. To experience adventure, you must be willing to be uncomfortable at times and enjoy the loneliness by being happy with your own singing. A song pops out of your mouth ... "It rained all night the day I left, the weather it was fine ... " — Frosty Wooldridge

Blood in the water I sing, and one who shed it: deadliest hunger I sing, and one who fed it- weaving the ancient-most tale of the Sea's sending: singing the tragedy, singing the joy unending This is our shame- this is the whole Ocean's glory: this is the Song of the Twelve. Hark to the story! Hearken, and bring it to pass: swift lest the sorrow long ago laid to it's rest devour us tomarrow! — Diane Duane

Though her head was aching too much for her to reason with herself, she could think of nice things - the Cumberland hills, her lambs, her Nannie, who had taught her this trick of detachment. "When you're sick or sorry, child" she had said, "think of other things as much as you are able. It's just practice, Start young and you'll get the trick of it." And most astonishingly, after a little while of going back to childhood and remembering Nannie in her blue print dress, with her white apron on and her sleeves rolled up, turning on the bath-water and humming a little song as she did it, she fell asleep. — Elizabeth Goudge

First slow dance, you get out there and ask her. Promise?"
Max knocked back his shot. "Fine, I can probably manage that."
I chugged my water as another good song came on. So I grabbed his hand. "Don't be self-conscious. I'm going to teach you some move. Nothing fancy."
He watched me for a few seconds than shook his head. "My pelvis only moves that way under one circumstance. This isn't it. — Ann Aguirre

Yes ... I love how the Irish are so comfortable with paradox that they revel in it. In fact, if you took it away from them, I suspect they would start gasping like fish out of water. No wonder their land's name, now removed from its Gaelic notions of abundance in 'eire,' evokes anger, or 'ire,' and yet also the rich, cooling green of a sea-colored jewel. A 'terrible beauty' indeed. They understand oppression and repression and explosion, but they remain a culture of faith-faith that creaks and groans and pulls, but is alive and never dull. And which urges them to art, to poetry, to song-these, too, are forms of action. Of passion. Of conviction. Yes, of love. — Carolyn Weber

Let us have wine and women, mirth and laughter, sermons and soda water the day after. — George Gordon Byron

On the edge of a laughing teacup
Did Kubla Kat decree
The the corn fritter festooned with medals
Shall make the brownies free
And so the walls turned to water
To let our sorrows drown
As the chairs burned themselves for warmth
So they need not face the clown
Then the spoons burst into song
And all the forks they understood
As I stared at my talking claws
Becasue this catnip is just that good — Francesco Marciuliano

Then another clear voice, as young and as ancient as Spring, like the song of a glad water flowing down into the night from a bright morning in the hills, came falling like silver to meet them: Now — J.R.R. Tolkien

I am in need of music that would flow
Over my fretful, feeling finger-tips,
Over my bitter-tainted, trembling lips,
With melody, deep, clear, and liquid-slow.
Oh, for the healing swaying, old and low,
Of some song sung to rest the tired dead,
A song to fall like water on my head,
And over quivering limbs, dream flushed to glow!
There is a magic made by melody:
A spell of rest, and quiet breath, and cool
Heart, that sinks through fading colors deep
To the subaqueous stillness of the sea,
And floats forever in a moon-green pool,
Held in the arms of rhythm and of sleep. — Elizabeth Bishop

In the canoe, the Indian smiled. Once he paused in a stroke, and rested his blade. For that instant he looked like his own Paddle. There was a song in his heart. It crept to his lips, but only the water and the wind could hear.

You, Little Traveler! You made the journey, the Long Journey. You now know the things I have yet to know. You, Little Traveler! You were given a name, a true name in my father's lodge. Good Medicine, Little Traveler! You are truly a Paddle Person, a Paddle-to-the-Sea! — Holling Clancy Holling

It is satisfying, and after a while he finds himself singing an old song: the same one he sang with Oldenburg in Broad Arrow Tower. He keeps time with his hammer, and draws out those notes that make the cargo-hold resonate. All round him, water seeps through the cracks between Minerva's hull-planks (for he is well below the water-line) and trickles down merrily into the bilge, and the four-man pumps take it away with a steady suck-and-hiss that's like the systole and diastole of a beating heart. — Neal Stephenson

By fate, not option, frugal Nature gave One scent to hyson and to wall-flower, One sound to pine-groves and to water-falls, One aspect to the desert and the lake. It was her stern necessity : all things Are of one pattern made; bird, beast, and flower, Song, picture, form, space, thought, and character Deceive us, seeming to be many things, And are but one. — Ralph Waldo Emerson

I forget myself sometimes, but then I look up, as I am looking up now, and I see in my mind's eye a sheild, strangely changed by a rich encrusting of jewel-like barnacles and cold-water coral, with an eight foot tooth sticking right out of the middle of it. I reach out and the edge of that tooth is still so bitingly sharp after all these years that just a gentle brush with the fingers might send a rain of blood down on these pages. And I bend my head, not too close, and I am sure I can hear, very faintly:
Once I set the sea alight
With a single fiery breath ...
Once I was so mighty that I thought
My name was Death ...
Sing out loud until you're eaten,
Song of melancholy blisss,
For the mighty and the middling
All shall come to THIS ...
The Supper is still singing. — Cressida Cowell

The earth will never be the same again
Rock, water, tree, iron, share this greif
As distant stars participate in the pain.
A candle snuffed, a falling star or leaf,
A dolphin death, O this particular loss
A Heaven-mourned; for if no angel cried
If this small one was tossed away as dross,
The very galaxies would have lied.
How shall we sing our love's song now
In this strange land where all are born to die?
Each tree and leaf and star show how
The universe is part of this one cry,
Every life is noted and is cherished,
and nothing loved is ever lost or perished. — Madeleine L'Engle

The song writing is different because with this stuff, I write it on my own and with Hot Water, we're more of a collective and I love both sides of that. Honestly, it's two different animals but I love and respect them both and feel really honored to be blessed with people who care about it and come out and support both sides of it. — Chuck Ragan

How fathomless the mystery of the Unseen is! We cannot plumb its depths with our feeble senses - with eyes which cannot see the infinitely small or the infinitely great, nor anything too close or too distant, such as the beings who live on a star or the creatures which live in a drop of water ... with ears that deceive us by converting vibrations of the air into tones that we can hear, for they are sprites which miraculously change movement into sound, a metamorphosis which gives birth to harmonies which turn the silent agitation of nature into song ... with our sense of smell, which is poorer than any dog's ... with our sense of taste, which is barely capable of detecting the age of a wine!
Ah! If we had other senses which would work other miracles for us, how many more things would we not discover around us! — Guy De Maupassant

Songs are like fish. You just gotta have your line in the water. And it's a bad idea to fish downstream from Bob Dylan. — Arlo Guthrie

When music sounds, gone is the earth I know, And all her lovelier things even lovelier grow; Her flowers in vision flame, her forest trees Lift burdened branches, stilled with ecstasies. When music sounds, out of the water rise Naiads whose beauty dims my waking eyes, Rapt in strange dream burns each enchanted face, With solemn echoing stirs their dwelling-place. When music sounds, all that I was I am Ere to this haunt of brooding dust I came; And from Time's woods break into distant song The swift-winged hours, as I hasten along. — Walter De La Mare

As the days go on toward July, the earth becomes dry and all the flowers begin to thirst for moisture. Then from the hillside, some warm, still evening, the sweet rain-song of the robin echoes clear, and next day we wake up to a dim morning; soft flecks of cloud bar the sun's way, fleecy vapors steal across the sky, the southwest wind blows lightly, rippling the water into little waves that murmur melodiously as they kiss the shore. — Celia Thaxter

Language was all that I could do, but it never, I felt, came close to a dance or a song or a gliding through water. Language could serve as a weapon, a shield and a disguise, it had many strengths. It could bully, cajole, deceive, wheedle and intimidate. Sometimes it could even delight, amuse, charm, seduce and endear, but always as a solo turn, never a dance. — Stephen Fry

This water was very different from any ordinary food. It was born from the walk under the stars, the song of the pulley, the effort of carrying him in my arms. It did the heart good, like a present. When I was a little boy, the lights of the Christmas tree, the music of the midnight mass, the sweetness of people's smiles, all formed part of the radiance of the Christmas gifts I received. — Antoine De Saint-Exupery

Well I'm not just gon' go and do rap songs. I wanna touch, and maybe help, and see what I can do in these areas.' As I start looking around me, looking at things in ways that I can become helpful, starting at the first thing, water. Something as simple as water. — Jay-Z

And I made a rural pen, And I stained the water clear, And I wrote my happy songs Every Child may joy to hear. — William Blake

Owens, our minister, would get up from his seat and stop the song. He'd sit behind his pulpit in a spiritual trance, his eyes closed, clad in a long blue robe with a white scarf and billowed sleeves, as if he were prepared to float away to heaven himself, until one of Mommy's clunker notes roused him. One eye would pop open with a jolt, as if someone had just poured cold water down his back. He'd coolly run the eye in a circle, gazing around at the congregation of forty-odd parishioners to see where the whirring noise was coming from. When his eye landed on Mommy, he'd nod as if to say, "Oh, it's just Sister Jordan"; then he'd slip back into his spiritual trance. — James McBride

When I go out clubbing I can dance 'til three o'clock in the morning with just a water bottle in my hand. I love dancing to anything with a good beat really. My favorite song to dance to at the moment is probably Drake's 'Best I Ever Had.' — Jordin Sparks

Liesel crossed the bridge over the Amper River. The water was glorious and emerald and rich. She could see the stones at the bottom and hear the familiar song of water. The world did not deserve such a river. — Markus Zusak

The song is called "The Itsy Bitsy Spider," and it is one of the saddest songs ever composed. It tells the story of a small spider who is trying to climb up a water spout, but every time its climb is half over, there is a great burst of water, either due to rain or somebody turning the spout on, and at the end of the song, the spider has decided to try one more time, and will likely be washed away once again. — Lemony Snicket

You crossed the water, left me ashore
It killed me enough, but you wanted more
You blew up the bridge, a mad terrorist
Waved from your side, through me a kiss
I started to follow but realized too late
There was nothing but air underneath my feet"
- from the song "Bridge" on the Collateral Damage album — Gayle Forman

Oh, Issyk-Kul, my Issyk-Kul
my unfinished song! Why did I have to remember that day when I came here with Asel and stopped on the same rise, right above the water? Everything was the same. The blue-and-white waves ran up the yellow shore holding hands. The sun was setting behind the mountains, and at the far end of the lake the water was tinged with pink. The swans wheeled over the water with excited, exultant cries. They soared up and dropped down on outspread wings that seemed to hum. They whipped up the water and started wide, foaming circles. Everything was the same, only there was no Asel with me. Where are you, my slender poplar in a red kerchief, where are you now? — Chingiz Aitmatov

We didn't have words. We didn't have writing or maps or language, but we had music and in that music, we spoke victory and loss, sadness and rage. We sang fire and water, earth and sky. We wrote the history of the Battle of Lamos and told the story of Selisanae of the Sun and wove the tragedy of the lives and deaths of dragons in every land. It was marvellous. — H. Leighton Dickson

One thing she realized soon was that the rain here was eternal. The weather must have changed since the Emperor's time, because now the tower loomed constantly in its cloud of drizzle; all the long afternoons rain trickled in runnels and gutters and spouts, spattering through gargoyles of hideous beasts and goblins that spat far down on the heads of hurrying clerks. Always the roofs ran with water; it dripped and plopped and splashed through culverts and drains, or sheeted down, a relentless liquid gurgle that never stopped, until she started to imagine that this was the song the tower sang, through all the throats and mouths and pipes of its endless body. — Catherine Fisher

Between the years of ninety-two and a hundred and two, however, we shall be the ribald, useless, drunken, outcast person we have always wished to be. We shall have a long white beard and long white hair; we shall not walk at all, but recline in a wheel chair and bellow for alcoholic beverages; in the winter we shall sit before the fire with our feet in a bucket of hot water, a decanter of corn whiskey near at hand, and write ribald songs against organized society ... We look forward to a disreputable, vigorous, unhonoured, and disorderly old age. — Don Marquis

Traffic's not too bad on Sheridan, and I'm cornering the car like it's the Indy 500, and we're listening to my favorite NMH song, "Holland, 1945," and then onto Lake Shore Drive, the waves of Lake Michigan crashing against the boulders by the Drive, the windows cracked to get the car to defrost, the dirty, bracing, cold air rushing in, and I love the way Chicago smells - Chicago is brackish lake water and soot and sweat and grease and I love it, and I love this song, and Tiny's saying I love this song, and he's got the visor down so he can muss up his hair a little more expertly. — John Green

This song is dedicated to Frank Zappa, and River Phoenix, Fred Gwynne who played Herman Munster, Dixie Lee Ray, Thomas P, Tip O'Neil, and you, dumb ass, who just threw water on me. — Kurt Cobain

Within your own generation-the same songs, the same wars, the same attitudes toward those wars, the same rules and radio shows in the air-you can gauge the possibilities and impossibilities. With a person of another generation, you are treading water, playing with fire. — John Updike

When you're standing in deep water
And you're bailing yourself out with a straw
And when you're drowning in deep water
And you wake up making love to a wall
Well it's these little time that help to remind
It's nothing without love, love, love — Jewel

Her name was a silent song on his lips. Her love was like a circle in the water, radiating ever outward, inevitably encompassing even the remotest of hearts. — Susan Wiggs

A little light in the dark night
A faint voice is calling you
This way! This way!
This flickering, wavering little voice
Like dew, like a bonfire
The voice of insects
the sound of the water
You can never lose them
once you've heard them ... — Natsumi Mukai

Water, wind and birdsong were the echoes in this quiet place of a great chiming symphony that was surging around the world. Knee-deep in grasses and moon daisies, Stella stood and listened, swaying a little as the flowers and trees were swaying, her spirit voice singing loudly, though her lips were still, and every pulse in her body beating its hammer strokes in time to the song. — Elizabeth Goudge

I personally would like to bring a tortoise onto the stage, turn it into a racehorse, then into a hat, a song, a dragoon and a fountain of water. One can dare anything in the theatre and it is the place where one dares the least. — Eugene Ionesco

There has to be a song. There are too many dark nights, too many troublesome days, and too many wearisome miles. Somewhere deep in the forgotten corner of one's heart- there has to be a song. Like a cool, clear drink of water and like the gentle warmth of sunshine, and like the tender love of a child, there has to be a song! — Bob Benson

Water. Its sunny track in the plain; its splashing in the garden canal, the sound it makes when in its course it meets the mane ofthe grass; the diluted reflection of the sky together with the fleeting sight of the reeds; the Negresses fill their dripping gourds and their red clay containers; the song of the washerwomen; the gorged fields the tall crops ripening. — Jacques Roumain

Old black water, keep on rollin'
Mississippi moon won't you keep on shinin' on me? — Patrick Simmons

I saw you dancing out the ocean
Running fast along the sand
A spirit born of earth and water
Fire flying from your hands — Elton John

I think Bridge Over Troubled Water was a very good song. Artie sang it beautifully. The Boxer was a really nice record. But I don't think I've written any great songs. — Paul Simon

God, we thank you for this earth, our homes; for the wide sky and the blessed sun, for the salt sea and the running water, for the everlasting hills and the never resting winds, for trees and the common grass underfoot. We thank you for our senses by which we hear the songs of birds, and see the splendor of the summer fields, and taste of the autumn fruits, and rejoice in the feel of the snow, and smell the breath of the spring. Grant us a heart wide open to all this beauty; and save our souls from being so blind that we pass unseeing when even the common thorn bush is aflame with your glory. — Walter Rauschenbusch

The many-voiced song of the river echoed softly. Siddhartha looked into the river and saw many pictures in the flowing water. The river's voice was sorrowful. It sang with yearning and sadness, flowing towards its goal ... Siddhartha was now listening intently ... to this song of a thousand voices ... then the great song of a thousand voices consisted of one word: Om - Perfection ... From that hour Siddhartha ceased to fight against his destiny. — Hermann Hesse

There's a heart-wrenching scene in Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer, the old stop-motion Christmas TV special, that has always resonated with me. After his run-in with the Abominable Snowman, Rudolph and his buddies seek asylum on the Island of Misfit Toys, a haven for crappy, deformed, and unwanted toys presumably built by an elf with substance abuse issues. There's the choo-choo train with square wheels, the water pistol that shoots jelly, the cowboy riding an ostrich, the white elephant with pink polka dots, the infelicitously named Charlie-in-the-Box. "Hey we're all misfits, too!" Rudolph squeals to his newfound friends, and everyone breaks into song. I cry every time I see it. — Anonymous

All the little duckies with their heads in the water
Heads in the water
All the little duckies with their heads in the water
Oh, such sweet little duckies. — Ruta Sepetys

Lighter and lighter, until at last the sun touched the tops of the still trees, a poured the radiance over the hill. in the glow, the water of the chateau fountain seem to turn to blood, and the stone faces crimsond. the coral of the birds was loud and high, and, on the weather-beaten sill of the great window of the bed-chamber of monsieur the morquis, one little bird sang its sweetest song with all its might. at this,the nearest stone face seemed to stare amazed, and, with open mouthand dropped under-jaw, looked awe- stricken. — Charles Dickens

Rafe had sat back in his chair so his face was in the shadow, but she knew he
was watching her through half-closed eyes. When he leaned forward,
the fire from the candles flickered, throwing shadows on the planes
of his face. She could see his eyes clearly now, and their steady focus
was causing her insides to stir. There was romance in the still air; the
rhythm of dripping water from the fountain behind him, the velvet
sky studded with stars, the balmy perfumes of the night, all combined
to accompany the endless song that had begun in her heart again as
she watched him, enthralled. — Hannah Fielding

I closed my eyes and dived into foreign water. — Erica Sehyun Song

We walked at night towards a cafe blooming with Japanese lanterns and I followed your white shoes gleaming like radium in the damp darkness. Rising off the water, lights flickered an invitation far enough away to be interpreted as we liked; to shimmer glamourously behind the silhouette of retrospective good times when we still believed in summer hotels and the philosophies of popular songs. — Zelda Fitzgerald

The first song Ben taught me was Deep Purple's 'Smoke on the Water', when i was 10, and I would play it on the top string with one finger. I did it so much that there was a massive crease in the skin and i think I must have driven everyone crazy, playing that same song all the time, — 5 Seconds Of Summer

I felt like lying down by the side of the trail and remembering it all. The woods do that to you, they always look familiar, long lost, like the face of a long-dead relative, like an old dream, like a piece of forgotten song drifting across the water, most of all like golden eternities of past childhood or past manhood and all the living and the dying and the heartbreak that went on a million years ago and the clouds as they pass overhead seem to testify (by their own lonesome familiarity) to this feeling. — Jack Kerouac

The Net
I made you many and many a song,
Yet never one told all you are
It was as though a net of words
Were flung to catch a star;
It was as though I curved my hand
And dipped sea-water eagerly,
Only to find it lost the blue
Dark splendor of the sea. — Sara Teasdale

Swift as a deer. Quiet as a shadow. Fear cuts deeper than swords. Quick as a snake. Calm as still water. — George R R Martin

Slowly, he starts to hum. I recognize the tune as the sad song, the one we kissed to in a room full of moonlight.
Thunder rumbles in the clouds, threatening to burst. Raindrops pitter on the dome above us. It shocks and sizzles the rain, but the water keeps coming in a steady downpour. Even the sky weeps for our loss. — Victoria Aveyard

All the charming and beautiful things, from the Song of Songs, to bouillabaisse, and from the nine Beethoven symphonies to the Martini cocktail, have been given to humanity by men who, when the hour came, turned from tap water to something with color in it, and more in it than mere oxygen and hydrogen. — H.L. Mencken

Let's swim to the moon
Let's climb through the tide
Surrender to the waiting worlds
That lap against our side. — Jim Morrison

As they drifted down the Apple River, Virgil felt as though a medicine was moving through him, flushing his cells with a natural liquid peace. The quiet shrilly of katydids and the soft song of moving water permeated the air. He watched Chantel slowly spinning in the currents, her eyelids fluttering in a way he'd never seen before, her ebony face drenched in sunshine, feet kicking lazily in the water. He wanted to think only of her, in this calm river vision, releasing all other thoughts from his head like flocks and flocks of birds, every species known to man, shooting out of a cavern and filling the sky. — Ron Parsons

As oil will find its way into crevices where water cannot penetrate, so song will find its way where speech can no longer enter. — Harriet Beecher Stowe

I leaned my back against an oak Thinking it was a trusty tree. But first it bent, And then it broke And let me down as my love did me. - "The Water Is Wide," traditional folk song — Jill Barnett

A pity it is evening, yet
I do love the water of this spring
seeing how clear it is, how clean;
rays of sunset gleam on it,
lighting up its ripples, making it
one with those who travel
the roads; I turn and face
the moon; sing it a song, then
listen to the sound of the wind
amongst the pines. — Li Bai

Ten minutes before you go onstage and you begin singing that torchy blues song, you may just be drinking a glass of water and brushing your teeth and doing some deep breathing. — Ronee Blakley

My son was singing to us of our Father! Of Yeshua ... Of himself, the truest part of him, and of me, the me that was now risen and complete, joined in Yeshua's identity, like water in a bowl and the bowl in the water at once. He was the Way. The Truth. Life. No one could know the Father without this joining. And the song said more, all at once, like the opening of eyes to see an entire landscape once darkened by blindness. The mystery Talya sang to me in that single note could fill a hundred scrolls. I stood high in that arena and I trembled with wonder. TALYA — Ted Dekker

When I was a young girl salmon fishing with my father in the Straits of Juan de Fuca in Washington State I used to lean out over the water and try to look past my own face, past the reflection of the boat, past the sun and darkness, down to where the fish were surely swimming. I made up charm songs and word-hopes to tempt the fish, to cause them to mean biting my hook. I believed they would do it if I asked them well and patiently and with the right hope. I am writing my poems like this. I have used the fabric and the people of my life as the bait. — Tess Gallagher

I don't think of community as being a romantic notion. I think it's as vital as air and water, and so I think that informs a lot of what I write about. It could be a story about a couple, or a song about the slow death of the family farm or a small town. — Greg Brown

That reminds me of a song," said Emilia. The women laughed; the men groaned. But the fire was blazing and the night was long, and folk will want entertainment after the tedium of a day's work. Emilia's song detailed the amorous adventures of a water horse who fell in love - if love was the right word - with a series of young women who passed beside the lake in which the creature dwelled and from which he emerged in the form of a good-looking young man of exactly the right sort to catch a young woman's fancy. She had a clear voice and a pleasing timbre, and every local knew the chorus, whose euphemisms about mounting and galloping embarrassed me. We did not sing these sorts of songs in the Barahal house. Rory caught right on and sang the chorus as if born to it. In the laughter and pounding of tables that followed, I said, to no one in particular, "I thought kelpies drowned and then devoured their victims!" The words, innocently spoken, only caused the gathered folk to laugh even — Kate Elliott

He goes along just as a water lily
Gentle on the surface of his thoughts his body floats
Unweighed down by passion or intensity
Yet unaware of the depth upon which he coasts
And he finds a home in me
For what misfortune sows, he knows my touch will reap — Fiona Apple

Oh, you are indeed there, my skylark! Come to me. You are not gone: not vanished? I heard one of your kind an hour ago, singing high over the wood: but its song had no music for me, any more than the rising sun had rays. All the melody on earth is concentrated in my Jane's tongue to my ear (I am glad it is not naturally a silent one): all the sunshine I can feel is in her presence." The water stood in my eyes to hear this avowal of his dependence; just as if a royal eagle, chained to a perch, should be forced to entreat a sparrow to become its purveyor. — Charlotte Bronte

I put my hand on the altar rail. 'What if ... what if Heaven is real, but only in moments? Like a glass of water on a hot day when you're dying of thirst, or when someone's nice to you for no reason, or ... ' Mam's pancakes with Toblerone sauce; Dad dashing up from the bar just to tell me, 'Sleep tight, don't let the bedbugs bite'; or Jacko and Sharon singing 'For She's A Squishy Marshmallow' instead of 'For She's A Jolly Good Fellow' every single birthday and wetting themselves even though it's not at all funny; and Brendan giving his old record player to me instead of one of his mates. 'S'pose Heaven's not like a painting that's just hanging there for ever, but more like ... Like the best song anyone ever wrote, but a song you only catch in snatches, while you're alive, from passing cars, or ... upstairs windows when you're lost ... — David Mitchell

If we do not now dare everything, the fulfillment of that prophecy, re-created from the Bible in song by a slave, is upon us: God gave Noah the rainbow sign. No more water, fire next time. — James A. Baldwin

The woods do that to you, they always look familiar, long lost, like the face of a long-dead relative, like an old dream, like a piece of forgotten song drifting across the water, most of all like golden eternities of past childhood or past manhood and all the living and the dying and the heartbreak that went on a million years ago and the clouds as they pass overhead seem to testify by their own lonesome familiarities to this feeling. Ecstasy, even , I felt, with flashes of sudden remembrance, and feeling sweaty and drowsy I felt like sleeping and dreaming in the grass. — Jack Kerouac

Imagination is the politics of dreams; imagination turns every word into a bottle rocket ... Imagine every day is Independence Day and save us from traveling the river changed; save us from hitchhiking the long road home. Imagine an escape. Imagine that your own shadow on the wall is a perfect door. Imagine a song stronger than penicillin. Imagine a spring with water that mends broken bones. Imagine a drum which wraps itself around your heart. Imagine a story that puts wood in the fireplace. — Sherman Alexie

A man is an island, but the water is deep
And the shore on the other side is ragged and steep
To look for perfection is a lonely old ride
It takes a whole lot of courage and a whole lot of pride
When you look for independence and you get what you want
How come you look back, thinking what have I done?
But time and again, it dawns on me
It's the price we pay for liberty
I should have know, we all need a place to call home — Joey Tempest

my life too would become a new song, a life as pure and straightforward and simple as a glass of water on a hot day. — Amos Oz

Is this true on smaller scales too? Apart from a visible fragment is everybody largely invisible - invisible like the magic part of magic mushrooms and the song part of songbirds? Maybe the balance between one's visibility and invisibility is like the balance between the salt and the water in the blood, delicate and critical, as becomes obvious when the balance deteriorates: people with an invisibility deficiency seem like paper dolls, subject to crumple. Other people have the opposite problem: they cannot be seen building a bicycle, nor making lentil soup, nor knitting a green wool sweater by candlelight; neither can you look down from your second-story window in the morning and see them tromping off through the snow — Amy Leach

O beautiful human life! Tears come to my eyes as I think of it. So beautiful, so inexpressibly beautiful! The song should never be silent, the dance never still, the laugh should sound like water which runs forever. — Richard Jefferies

Blessed be the Lord for the beauty of summer and spring, for the air, the water, the verdure, and the song of birds. — Carl Linnaeus

The poem, the song, the picture, is only water drawn from the well of the people, and it should be given back to them in a cup of beauty so that they may drink - and in drinking understand themselves. — Federico Garcia Lorca

If God is Mother, then we need only gather together with people and adore her through rituals intended to satisfy the female soul, ritual involving dance, fire, water, air, earth, songs, music, flowers, and beauty. — Paulo Coelho

What are they doing?' Mathys cried.
'They are mating, lad. And what a wondrous thing.'
Flukes grinding back and forth somewhere in the depths their song became a symphony vibrating across the ocean and ships in other latitudes vibrated and maybe continents vibrated and suddenly pressed close so close they looked like giantly godly Siamates and they drove themselves up and up rising out of the water all of them the massiveness the length of them high high into the blue above the blue below and they were blue and blue oceans sluicing down their sides and joined yes joined and everything all earthly things were small and they just stood there in the sky a young boys memory and then they dove back down into other atmospheres a deafening resounding roar that shook the timbers of the ship and shook the hearts of watching men and threw them to their knees. — Kiana Davenport

To understand the song of life, listen to the melody of wind and ocean and watch the dance of waves and water. — Debasish Mridha

When I get all focused on songwriting, I get into all the marketing and promotion that we do to make it happen. Then the right song comes along and blows it all out of the water. The right song will do it for you every time. — Ronnie Dunn

I'm just trying to unite the western crowd and the bluegrass crowd a little more ... I get to do that again on my new album, Tall Grass and Cool Water ... This is the first time I've had every song on an album be a Bluegrass and Cowboy Song at the same time. — Michael Martin Murphey

A small stream ... sings a carefree song as it runs by your house. It is so nonthreatening that you can sit by it, look at your reflection in the water, and even wash your hands in it. It is yours, your personal stream. Yet you know that it has originated in the sea and is on its way back to where it has come from. When passing by your house, however, it is yours. You can say it is a personal moment you have torn out of eternity to keep in your pocket for yourself. — Fatemeh Keshavarz

It's one thing to play a Muddy Waters song. It's another thing to play with him. — Keith Richards

The sound of the chorus came across the water and I felt leap up that old impulse, which has moved me all my life, to be thrown up and down on the roar of other people's voices, singing the same song; to be tossed up and down on the roar of almost senseless merriment, sentiment, triumph, desire. — Virginia Woolf

Ghosts can haunt damned near anything. I have heard them in the breathy voice of a song and seen them between the covers of a book. They have hidden in trees so that their faces peer out of the bark, and hovered beneath the silver surface of water. They disguise themselves as cracks in concrete or come calling in a delirium of fever. On summer days they keep pace like the shadow of our shadow. They lurk in the breath of young girls who give us our first kiss. I've seen men who were haunted to the point of madness by things that never were and things that should have been. I've seen ghosts in the lines on a woman's face and heard them in the jangling of keys. The ghosts in fire freeze and the ghosts in ice burn. Some died long ago; some were never born. Some ride the blood in my veins until it reaches my brain. Sometimes I even mistake myself for one. Sometimes I am one. — Damien Echols

Rain is a lullaby heard through a thick, isolating blanket of clouds. It is the tinkling harp of water droplets; a moist breath whistling through willow reeds; a pattering beat background to the mourner's melody. Rain is a soft song of compassion for the brokenhearted. — Richelle E. Goodrich

An old Russian folk song is like water held back by a dam. It looks as if it were still and were no longer flowing, but in its depths it is ceaselessly rushing through the sluice gates and the stillness of its surface is deceptive. By every possible means, by repetitions and similes, the song slows down the gradual unfolding of its theme. Then at some point it suddenly reveals itself and astounds us. That is how the song's sorrowing spirit comes to expression. The song is an insane attempt to stop time by means of its words. — Boris Pasternak

This water was indeed a different thing from ordinary nourishment. Its sweetness was born of the walk under the stars, the song of the pulley, the effort of my arms. It was good for the heart, like a present. — Antoine De Saint-Exupery

I was surrounded by hundreds of drowned children, heads in the water, their little feet in the air.
All the little duckies, with their heads in the water
Heads in the water.
It was my punishment. Honor lost. Everything lost.
Shame is a hunter.
My shame was all around me now. — Ruta Sepetys

In time of rain I come:
I can sing among the flowers:
I utter my song: my heart is glad.

Water of flowers foams over the earth:
My heart was intoxicated. — Jane Bierhorst

Owls hoot in B flat, cuckoos in D, but the water ousel sings in the voice of the stream. She builds her nest back of the waterfalls so the water is a lullaby to the little ones. Must be where they learn it. — Karen Joy Fowler

When the Dark comes rising six shall turn it back;
Three from the circle, three from the track;
Wood, bronze, iron; Water, fire, stone;
Five will return and one go alone.
Iron for the birthday; bronze carried long;
Wood from the burning; stone out of song;
Fire in the candle ring; water from the thaw;
Six signs the circle and the grail gone before.
Fire on the mountain shall find the harp of gold
Played to wake the sleepers, oldest of old.
Power from the Green Witch, lost beneath the sea.
All shall find the Light at last, silver on the tree. — Susan Cooper

Song

This is the love I bring,
Absolute and nothing:
A tree but with no roots,
A cloud heavy with fruit,
A wide stone stair
That leads nowhere
But to empty sky,
Ambiguous majesty.

This is the love I bear:
It is light as air,
Yet weighs like an earth;
It is water flowing,
Yet adamant as fire.
It is coming from going.
It is dying and growing.

A love so rare and hard
It cuts a diamond word
Upon the windowpane,
"Never, never again,
Never upon my breast,"
Having no time to bring,
Having no place to rest,
Absolute and nothing. — May Sarton

When we hang up, I sigh long and look out the window to the darkness over the ocean, no delineation between water and sky. It's always disorienting when I speak to my mother, that pull of her voice back into our old life even though both of us have tried to move beyond it.

In her soft Caribbean accent I hear my brother's laughter, see us both as children playing together in the backyard when it was still covered in crunch green grass and our toys were new.

Mami's voice was the song of our home, even with no father, even as we lived with that black mass of the unspoken, even with the marks on our bones we didn't know we carried.

Through all life's uncertainty, we felt anchored by the love in her voice. — Patricia Engel

Just having the pain of being alive without anything else, whether it's good or bad. There's a lot of serious songs on the record, you know. That song is just about feeling like a fish out of water, feeling like you don't belong on the planet sometimes. — Jon Crosby