Quotes & Sayings About Water's Edge

The four had rented a riverside cottage and lived together there as two couples. Their vice was public, official and perfectly obvious to all. It was referred to quite naturally as something entirely normal. There were rumours about jealous scenes that took place there and about the various actresses and other famous women who frequented the little cottage near the water's edge. One neighbour, scandalized by the goings-on, alerted the police at one stage and an inspector accompanied by one of his men came to make enquiries. It was a delicate mission: there was nothing the women could be prosecuted for, least of all prostitution. The inspector was deeply puzzled and could not understand what these alleged misdemeanours could possibly be. He asked a whole lot of pointless questions, compiled a lengthy report and dismissed the charges out of hand. The joke spread as far as Saint-Germain. — Guy De Maupassant

A pleasantly situated hotel close to the sea, and chalets by the water's edge where one breakfasted. Clientele well-to-do, and although I count myself no snob I cannot abide paper bags and orange peel. ("Not After Midnight") — Daphne Du Maurier

To grow is not to timidly sit on some safe shore at water's edge and clumsily grab whatever happens to float by me. Rather, it is to deliberately step into waters both calm and turbulent in order to wrestle great things to shore. — Craig D. Lounsbrough

Beyond the terrace, a light breeze stirred the reeds at the edge of the pond. Looking out at this intimate vista, one could see the reeds and a stone lantern and the brightest of the evening's stars floating on the gloaming mirror of the pond. Then the breeze came again to crack the water's surface, and the picture was flooded. — John Burnham Schwartz

Today and tomorrow you will be in your prime; but soon you will die,
in battle or in bed; either fire or water,
the fearsome elements, will embrace you,
or you will succumb to the sword's flashing edge,
or the arrow's flight, or terrible old age;
then your eyes, once bright, will be clouded over;
all too soon, O warrior, death will destroy you.
Hrothgar to Beowulf — Anonymous

Is this the girl?" Kieran's voice was very different: It sounded like waves sliding up the shore. Like warm water under pale light. It was seductive, with an edge of cold. He looked at Emma as if she were a new kind of flower, one he wasn't sure he liked. "She's pretty," he said. "I didn't think she'd be pretty. You didn't mention it."
Iarlath shrugged. "You've always been partial to blondes," he said.
"Okay, seriously?" Emma snapped her fingers. "I am right here. And I was not aware I was being invited to a game of 'Who's the Hottest?'"
I wasn't aware you were invited at all," said Kieran. His speech had a casual edge, as if he was used to talking to humans.
"Rude," said Emma. — Cassandra Clare

And though he would give anything to let Ture in, he knew better. He'd been down this bloody path too many times. As soon as his lovers realized that they could never supplant Darling in his heart, they turned on him with a justified hatred. Maris couldn't help how he felt. Darling owned him. He always had. Even though they could and would never be anything more than best friends, Darling was his heart. He'd been there for Maris when no one else had. When the entire universe had slammed down on him and no one had cared, Darling, alone, had traversed hell itself to save Maris's life. He shuttered every time he thought of where he'd be without his noble prince. If he'd even be alive. Sighing, he lifted himself out of the water to sit on the edge of the pool while Ture continued swimming. Memories surged as he reached for a towel. Even now, he could see Darling the day they'd met as tiny kids on a playground. Because — Sherrilyn Kenyon

(Watching her) was a little like watching water lilies; rather more like smelling a dinner he was not allowed to eat. Was it possible to be starved for so long as to forget the taste of food, for the pangs of hunger to burn out like ash? It seemed so. But both the pleasure and the pain were his heart's secret, here. He was put in mind, suddenly, of the soil at the edge of a recovering blight; the weedy bedraggled look of it, unlovely yet hopeful. Blight was a numb gray thing, without sensation. Did the return of green life hurt? Odd thought. — Lois McMaster Bujold

I don't like standing near the edge of a platform when an express train is passing through. I like to stand right back and if possible get a pillar between me and the train. I don't like to stand by the side of a ship and look down into the water. A second's action would end everything. A few drops of desperation. — Winston Churchill

Like the ripples from a stone tossed into the pond from the water's edge, the effects of our choices extend infinitely outward. Even the smallest of acts reverberates in the ears of unwritten histories. — Justin Young

The best thing about living at the water's edge: You only have assholes on three sides of you, and if they come this way you can hear them splash. — George Carlin

We must agree on what matters: kissing in public places, bacon sandwiches, disagreement, cutting-edge fashion, literature, generosity, water, a more equitable distribution of the world's resources, movies, music, freedom of thought, beauty, love. — Salman Rushdie

Will you look at us by the river! The whole restless mob of us on spread blankets in the dreamy briny sunshine skylarking and chiacking about for one day, one clear, clean, sweet day in a good world in the midst of our living. Yachts run before an unfelt gust with bagnecked pelicans riding above them, the city their twitching backdrop, all blocks and points of mirror light down to the water's edge. — Tim Winton

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

When it comes to foreign policy, it is important to remember that politics stops at the water's edge. — Hillary Clinton

But this is what I know about people getting ready to walk of the edge of their own lives: they want someone to know how they got there. Maybe they want to know that when they dissolve into earth and water, that last fragment will be saved, held in some corner of someone's mind; or maybe all they want is a chance to dump it pulsing and bloody into someone else's hands, so it won't weigh them down on the journey. They want to leave their stories behind. No one in all the world knows that better than I do. — Tana French

Beautiful." "And scary," Sara said. "It's not scary at all," said Artham with a laugh. He ran to the edge of the cliff and jumped. The others gasped and then fell into nervous laughter as he spread his wings and soared out over the water. — Andrew Peterson

Three children lay on the rocks at the water's edge.
A dark-haired girl, two boys, slightly older.
This image is caught forever in my memory, like some fragile creature preserved in amber. — Juliet Marillier

He walks toward the river, placing his feet carefully. His suit is too warm and tight. He reaches the water's edge. There is the dock, unused now, with its flaking paint and rotten boards, its underpilings drenched in green. Here at the great, dark river, here on the bank. It happens in an instant. It is all one long day, one endless afternoon, friends leave, we stand on the shore. Yes, he thought, I am ready, I have always been ready, I am ready at last. — James Salter

This beach I voyage on leads me through the earth's immortal consistencies. Each form I encounter obeys the principles of perfection and trial, a timelessness in the making. The proportions of truth are at hand. Existence is celebrated in a splinter of driftwood, worn by wind-driven sand into the shape of an arrow. The onshore waves jostle each other, busy with their eternal changing, mixing crab shells, sand grains, and fish bones together. The trim little shorebirds feeding at the water's edge are acutely aware of one another, under the light and shadow leaning and drifting over all awareness. Wither own mysteries behind their beady eyes, their quick, advantageous movements, they follow the great, unifying sea." ~ John Hay. Bird of Light. — John Hay

They caught hands again, and walked toward the water's edge, two small figures against the black waves. Only halfway there, one of them must have remembered again and it passed like a fresh current of joy between them. They stood at the water's edge, not letting go, and rocked with laughter. — Rachel Joyce

At the water's edge, barrels of pitch blazed like huge bonfires. Their reflection, crimson as the rising moon, crept to meet us in long, wide stripes. The burning barrels threw light on their own smoke and on the long human shadows that flitted about the fire; but further to the sides and behind them, where the velvet ringing rushed from, was the same impenetrable darkness. Suddenly slashing it open, the golden ribbon of a rocket soared skywards; it described an arc and, as if shattering against the sky, burst and came sifting down in sparks.
- Easter Night — Anton Chekhov

Long ago, men went to sea, and women waited for them, standing on the edge of the water, scanning the horizon for the tiny ship. Now I wait for Henry. He vanishes unwillingly, without warning. I wait for him. Each moment that I wait feels like a year, an eternity. Each moment is as slow and transparent as glass. Through each moment I can see infinite moments lined up, waiting. Why has he gone where I cannot follow? — Audrey Niffenegger

There is something about a home aquarium which sets my teeth on edge the moment I see it. Why anyone would want to live with a small container of stagnant water populated by a half-dead guppy is beyond me. — S.J Perelman

I am the woman at the water's edge,
offering you oranges for the peeling,
knife glistening in the sun.
This is the scent and taste
of my skin: citon and sweet.
Touch me and your life will unfold
before you, easily as this skirt
billows then sinks,
lapping against my legs, my toes
filtering through the rivers silt.
Following the current out to sea,
I am the kind of woman
who will come back to haunt
your dreams, move through your
humid nights the way honey
swirls through a cup of hot tea — Shara McCallum

Hoover Dam," Thalia said. "It's huge."
We stood at the river's edge, looking up at a curve of concrete that loomed between the cliffs. People were walking along the top of the dam. They were so tiny they looked like fleas.
The naiads had left with a lot of grumbling - not in words I could understand, but it was obvious they hated this dam blocking up their nice river. Our canoes floated back downstream, swirling in the wake from the dam's discharge vents.
"Seven hundred feet tall," I said. "Built in the 1930s."
"Five million cubic acres of water," Thalia said.
Graver sighed. "Largest construction project in the United States."
Zoe stared at us. "How do you know all that?"
"Annabeth," I said. "She liked architecture."
"She was nuts about monuments," Thalia said.
"Spouted facts all the time." Grover sniffled. "So annoying."
"I wish she were here," I said. — Rick Riordan

And then finally the magic flowed, but not the same way as when the Dragon's spell-lessons dragged it in a rush out of me. Instead it seemed to me the sound of the chanting became a stream made to carry magic along, and I was standing by the water's edge with a pitcher that never ran dry, pouring a thin silver line into the rushing current. — Naomi Novik

One of my earliest memories is of seeing my mother in her beach chair, reading a book under an umbrella by the water's edge while my sisters and I played beside her. Of all the life lessons she taught me, that is one of my favorites: to take time at a place I love, restore my spirit with books and the beach. — Luanne Rice

Like the long gone captains of the Confederacy, he stood watch at the edge of Dauphin Island, his old life just out of sight across the water. What he felt in those moments, pelicans skimming the chop, tankers lugging cargo to ports unknown, was not loneliness or loss, as you might expect, nor the weight of tragedy but its opposite, pure lightness, the hole left inside him by Suzette's death as big and hollow as a zeppelin and just as buoyant, as if the shape of her absence might lift him up and carrying him away. — Michael Knight

Why do so many Americans say they want their children to watch less TV, yet continue to expand the opportunities for them to watch it? More important, why do so many people no longer consider the physical world worth watching? The highway's edges may not be postcard perfect. But for a century, children's early understanding of how cities and nature fit together was gained from the backseat: the empty farmhouse at the edge of the subdivision; the variety of architecture, here and there; the woods and fields and water beyond the seamy edges
all that was and still is available to the eye. This was the landscape that we watched as children. It was our drive-by movie. — Richard Louv

To want nothing. Just to wait, until there is nothing left to wait for. Just to wander, and to sleep. To let yourself be carried along by the crowds, and the streets. To follow the gutters, the fences, the water's edge. To walk the length of the embankments, to hug the walls. To waste your time. To have no projects, to feel no impatience. To be without desire, or resentment, or revolt. — Georges Perec

Night lay upon the forest. There was no moon, but the stars of Silverpelt shed their frosty glitter over the trees. At the bottom of a rocky hollow, a pool reflected the starshine. The air was heavy with the scents of late greenleaf. Wind sighed softly through the trees and ruffled the quiet surface of the pool. At the top of the hollow, the fronds of bracken parted to reveal a cat; her bluish grey fur glimmered as she stepped delicately from rock to rock, down to the water's edge. Sitting on a flat stone that jutted out over the pool, she raised her head to look around. As if at a signal, more cats began to appear, slipping into the hollow from every direction. They padded down to sit as close to the water as they could, until the lower slopes were filled with lithe shapes gazing down into the pool. — Erin Hunter

Bipartisanship on behalf of an imprudent policy can be folly, just as partisanship on behalf of a just cause can be wise. What is clear is that politics will not stop at the water's edge simply because presidents plead for it. American foreign policy will return to the tradition of Truman and Vandenberg only when the American public demands it. — James M. Lindsay

It was one of the great myths of that time that foreign policy was this pure and uncontaminated area which was never touched by domestic politics, and that domestic politics ended at the water's edge. The truth, in sharp contrast, was that all those critical decisions were primarily driven by considerations of domestic politics, and by political fears of the consequences of looking weak in a forthcoming domestic election. — David Halberstam

You have been walking the water's edge, holding up your robes to keep them dry. You must dive naked under, deeper, under a thousand times deeper. Love flows down. — Rumi

Oh my God," Mrs. McIntire screamed. She'd dropped to her knees, the dark sand and water soaking into her jeans. "Neely!"
Mr. McIntire held his wife while she screeched her daughter's name over and over. "She's going to be fine, sweetie," he kept saying.
I really wanted to believe him.
"Is she on the other side?" I paced the shore. I couldn't see anything except a piece of driftwood lying at the water's edge. "I don't see her."
Mr. McIntire didn't answer, only pointed across the rolling water.
A log had washed up on the shore. It looked like maybe the water had rubbed all the bark off and left a naked, saturated trunk behind.
"Tell me where she is." Aggravated, I stared until my eyes blurred with stress. "All I see is a damn log."
"Son," Sheriff Mills said from behind me. "That ain't a log. — K.D. Wood

May I?" Jayden sat on the edge of the couch and poured me a fresh cup of tea. He placed his hand over the brew. As his eyes swirled a whirlpool of shimmering blues and greens, the liquid iced into a frozen block. He fanned his fingers and spider lines cracked the ice. Seconds later the tea boiled.
"You control tea?"
Jayden's satisfied smile faltered. "No. I ... I control water. The tea, the actual plant doesn't change, however - " He caught my look and nodded. "Ohhh. You were being
facetious."
"If that means joking, yes I was. — A&E Kirk

the soul is on the edge of what's visible, like a clear glass marble in a jar of water, — David Mitchell

After having produced aquatic animals of all ranks and having caused extensive variations in them by the different environments provided by the waters, nature led them little by little to the habit of living in the air, first by the water's edge and afterwards on all the dry parts of the globe. These animals have in course of time been profoundly altered by such novel conditions; which so greatly influenced their habits and organs that the regular gradation which they should have exhibited in complexity of organisation is often scarcely recognisable. — Jean-Baptiste Lamarck

Ali and the woman whose baby crawled out on the roof


A woman comes to Ali. My baby has crawled out on the roof near

the water drain, where I cannot go. He won't listen to me. I talk, but he doesn't understand

language. I make gestures. I show him my breast, but he turns away. What can I do?

Take another baby his age up to the roof. The woman does, and the child sees his friend and

crawls away from the edge. The prophets are human for this reason, that we may see them

and delight in their friendly presence, and crawl away from the downspout. Muhammad calls himself

a man like you. Likeness is a great drawing force. Those of mean dispositions learn hatred

from each other, and they try to draw others in. Anyone whose haystack has burned

does not enjoy seeing someone else's candle lit. — Jalaluddin Rumi

So,if it's all love or money, which is Alex Bainbridge?"
I blinked at him. "What?"
"He's a turd, Ella. He looked right through you like you were a ghost, but you still have a thing for him."
"I do n-"
"Don't even. You've gone through the whole week watching for him. So what is it? I would really like to know. Love or money?"
"I have not been watching for him!" I snapped. Oh, but I had, in every hallway, at lunch, when I took my seat at the edge of English class. "And if I have, it's just so I can look away first."
Frankie rolled his eyes. "Shall I get you a pail of water?"
"Why?"
"Your pants are on fire."
I actually looked down at my lap. "Oh, very funny." I shot Sadie a look when she giggled. — Melissa Jensen

into art or music, how about that exhilarating moment when, during the 1982 Winter Olympics, the U.S. hockey team pulverized the Russians? Whether in front of the television, in the stands, or on the ice, we all became "one" in the euphoria of victory. My strong, he-man father once told me about a time he was standing on the edge of a cliff overlooking Yellowstone Falls - with tears in his eyes, he described how he became one with the deafening roar of the water. If you have experienced any of this, it's an inkling of the joy that will overtake us when we take just one glance at the Lord of joy. We will lose ourselves in Him. We will become one with Him. We will be "in Christ," we will have "put on Christ" at the deepest, most profound and exhilarating level. The Lord's wedding gift to us will be the joy of sharing totally in His nature without us losing our identity; no, we shall receive our identity. Thanks be to God for His indescribable gift! — Joni Eareckson Tada

Pine trees rise through cloud
soar up into the blue skies,
bush clover spangled with dewdrops
sways in the autumn breeze;
As I dip cold, pure water
at the edge of the stream,
a solitary white crane
comes lolloping my way. — Baisao

We have a long-standing tradition in this country to follow the advice of Senator Vandenberg, which is that politics ends at the water's edge. — Mitt Romney

The cycles of Eric's life took in stony beaches and pine forests where you could walk in a daylight all but night dark and fields where there was no grass, only stones and moss, alongside tar and macadam measured at its edge with poles and wires and solar panels, and water, broken, flickering, so much water, as much water - salt and silver - as there was sky, enough to make you scream or laugh at such absurd vastness, swelling within until Eric became his self exploding through today toward tomorrow, water green as glass falling between rocks and wet grass, the smell of dust and docks and distances, and sometimes Shit stepped up and took Eric's rough hand in his rough hand. — Samuel R. Delany

A night of exhilaration, of boredom and terror, in which the merest of sounds took on other forms - grew large in the expanse of darkness. After several hours the sheep gradually stopped calling to each other from accross the river banks, and a brittle quiet descended. I desperately wanted to walk down to the water's edge. To see the black river in the moonlight. But a mixture of reason and fear kept me locked along the safe paths high above. — Richard Skelton

It wasn't my fault that Candace followed me down to the water's edge and it wasn't my fault that I picked her up and held her down in the water and watched her pass on to the great beyond. She wanted to be there, or she wouldn't have gone down there with me. She knew she was killing me and she knew that I was not the type to go down without a fight. — Caroline Kepnes

But I called, as we came near, to one who stood beside the water's edge, asking him what men did in Astahahn and what their merchandise was, and with whom they traded. He said, "Here we have fettered and manacled Time, who would otherwise slay the gods." I asked him what gods they worshipped in that city, and he said, "All those gods whom Time has not yet slain." (from "Idle Days on the River Yann") — Lord Dunsany

Black met black on the distant horizon, the stars alone distinguishing sky from lake. On the sand below, Silver Beach glittered at the water's edge while on the north side of the river the lighthouse's beacon signaled safe harbor. — Erin Farwell

Excerpted From Chapter Eighteen
Pacific Coast Highway ends with a sharp right turn onto Sepulveda. Approaching that intersection, I saw several cars pulled to the shoulder of the road and two fresh, black skid marks leading straight to the edge of the beach beyond Sepulveda. Halfway between the road and the water, a big red Caddy convertible lay upside down on the sand.
I parked and jogged to the wreckage. The windshield and the cloth top had collapsed, so the car was resting on its hood and trunk lid. A young man in swimming trunks and an older fellow in a suit were pulling at the driver's side door, trying to get it open. The twisted metal was resisting their efforts, but the door finally came loose just as I got there. Through the opening I could see Diana Dean sprawled across the shredded remains of her convertible top. From where I stood, she looked to be in about the same shape as her mangled red Caddy. Maybe worse. — H.P. Oliver

The white spruce forest along the banks is most inspiring, magnificent here. Down the terraced slopes and right to the water's edge on the alluvial soil it stands in ranks. — Ernest Thompson Seton

He stops to wait for her, but she has a sudden burst of energy, passing him. On and on she sprints, unobstructed, kicking up her heels at the water's edge. Dark hair to her chin, rearranged by the wind, obscuring her face. Just when he thinks she will have the energy to run forever, to escape his sight, she pauses. Turning back, breathing hard, her hand on her hip, making sure he is there. — Jhumpa Lahiri

In reference to the search for Lincoln's killers as it took to the Maryland swamps:
The method of searching the swamps is simple yet arduous. First, the troops assemble on the edge of bogs with names like Allen's Creek, Scrub Swamp, and Atchall's Swamp, standing at loose attention in the shade of a thick forest of beech, dogwood, and gum trees. Then they form two lines and march straight forward, from one side to the other. As absurd as it seems to the soldiers, marching headlong into cold mucky water, there is no other way of locating Booth and Herold. Incredibly, eighty-seven of these brave men will drown in their painstaking weeklong search for the killers. — Bill O'Reilly

I saw his face change. His eyes widen. He lunged at me. I wouldn't let go. We stared into eachother's eyes and clawed at eachother's throats. As we rolled over the edge of the water tower and fell the whole way down, I was only thinking one thing ... Lena — Kami Garcia

Ellen drank long and deep from her water bottle and wiped her mouth with her gauntleted arm. "Are you feeling all right, Jack? Your play's flat, all in all. I was hoping to give Seph more of a show."
Jack tested the edge of his blade with his thumb. "Actually, Ellen, I wondered if you were coming down with something. You were downright lethargic. I nearly dozed off once or twice."
"Well, that explains it. You looked like you were asleep."
With that, they threw down their weapons and it dissolved into a wrestling match. In the end they were kissing each other.
It was certainly a different kind of courtship, but there was a chemistry, an understanding, a kinship between Jack and Ellen that Seph envied. — Cinda Williams Chima

In nature, we find so may things. At the water's edge, atop a mountain, or in the middle of a park, I watch my children flourish in who they are. With all the distractions, toys, and walls out of the way, the essence of who they are just shines. When I remember to pay attention, I see it radiating so strongly that I can't help but be brought right into it myself. My children are experts on breathing, on living; they know how to do it. And the open air? Why, that's breath itself. When I find myself in the midst of unsettling chaos-full of more commitments and expectations that we can really handle-I need to look no further than my little ones for the answer to what I've forgotten: Stop. Breathe. Listen. Then we head straight to the beach, or right to the woods, and play until we find ourselves restored. — Amanda Blake Soule

The morning came, pale and clammy. Frodo woke up first, and found that a tree-root had made a hole in his back, and that his neck was stiff. "Walking for pleasure! Why didn't I drive?" he thought, as he usually did at the beginning of an expedition. "And all my beautiful feather beds are sold to the Sackville-Bagginses! These tree-roots would do them good." He stretched. "Wake up, hobbits!" he cried. "It's a beautiful morning."
"What's beautiful about it?" said Pippin, peering over the edge of his blanket with one eye. "Sam! Get breakfast ready for half-past nine! Have you got the bath-water hot?"
Sam jumped up, looking rather bleary. "No, sir, I haven't, sir!" he said.
Frodo stripped the blankets from Pippin and rolled him over, and then walked off to the edge of the wood. — J.R.R. Tolkien

Momma said that ghosts couldn't move over water. That's why Africans got trapped in the Americas.. They kept moving us over the water, stealing us away from our ghosts and ancestors, who cried salty rivers into the sand. That's where Momma was now, wailing at the water's edge, while her girls were pulled out of sight under white sails that cracked in the wind. — Laurie Halse Anderson

My dance shoes. I reached the water's edge and I felt the terrible despair of someone who is used to running because that is what she had always done, and now she faces a brick wall — Rachel Joyce

The Kalambo River and Waterfall exemplify life and afterlife: From birth at its source, the river twists and turns to overcome hurdles on its way to enhance the life of others before falling off the edge in death to flow quietly into Lake Tanganyika, while it's mist rises to heaven, freed from the burden of the body of water that held it. — Kamil Ali

FINISTERRE
The road in the end taking the path the sun had taken,
into the western sea, and the moon rising behind you
as you stood where ground turned to ocean: no way
to your future now but the way your shadow could take,
walking before you across water, going where shadows go,
no way to make sense of a world that wouldn't let you pass
except to call an end to the way you had come,
to take out each frayed letter you brought
and light their illumined corners, and to read
them as they drifted through the western light;
to empty your bags; to sort this and to leave that;
to promise what you needed to promise all along,
and to abandon the shoes that had brought you here
right at the water's edge, not because you had given up
but because now, you would find a different way to tread,
and because, through it all, part of you could still walk on,
no matter how, over the waves. — David Whyte

Under the moon, the road that ran from the edge of her forest gleamed like water, but when she stepped out onto it, away from the trees, she felt how hard it was, and how long. She almost turned back then; but instead she took a deep breath of the woods air that still drifted to her, and held it in her mouth like a flower, as long as she could. — Peter S. Beagle

It's nice, when fishing, to catch a fish. But it doesn't really matter if you don't. What you always catch is a quiet time sitting at the water's edge, or in a gently rocking boat, a silent time of water and sky and the movement of natural things. — Ruth Rudner

I thought of all the ancestors waiting at the water's edge for their stolen children to come home. Waiting and waiting and waiting . . . — Laurie Halse Anderson

Two weeks earlier than scheduled, she flew into Vancouver and signed on with Greenpeace.
The work was neither taxing nor truly exciting but the people she met more than compensated and she forged many new friendships. The high points were the trips they made by sea kayak, exploring the wild inlets farther up the coast. They watched bears scoop salmon from the shallows and paddled among pods of orcas, so close you could have reached out and touched them. At night they camped at the water's edge, listening to the blow of whales in the bay and the distant howls of wolves in the forest above. — Nicholas Evans

Until the Eighties, Oslo was a rather boring town, but it's changed a lot, and is now much more cosmopolitan. If I go downtown, I visit the harbour to see the tall ships and the ferries, and to admire the modern architecture such as the Opera House or the new Astrup Fearnley Museum on the water's edge. — Jo Nesbo

Calm down," comes a voice, and it's not Razor's. I rip my focus away from the water and there's a man [Pigpen] with blond hair and a cut like Razor's slowly approaching the bridge. His hands are up - a sign of submission. "Just calm down. — Katie McGarry

Chaos theory treats the behavior of a whole system like a drop of water moving on a complicated propeller surface. The drop may spiral down, or slip outward toward the edge. It may do many different things, depending. But it will always move along the surface of the propeller." "Okay." "Malcolm's models tend to have a ledge, or a sharp incline, where the drop of water will speed up greatly. He modestly calls this speeding-up movement the Malcolm Effect. The whole system could suddenly collapse. And that was what he said about Jurassic Park. — Michael Crichton

Partisanship must end at the waters edge. — Harry S. Truman

The man I am writing about is not famous. It may be that he never will be. It may be that when his life at last comes to an end he will leave no more trace of his sojourn on earth than a stone thrown into a river leaves on the surface of the water. — W. Somerset Maugham

Administration policies seem to tacitly encourage those who live below sea level in New Orleans to relocate permanently, to leave the dangerous water's edge for more prosperous inland cities such as Shreveport or Baton Rouge. — Douglas Brinkley

There's not much to be said for sightseeing. You go somewhere that has a waterfall. You have a beer, watch the water go over the edge, and move on. Tours are all the same. In the end, the only thing that matters is the beer. — Jack McDevitt

To say that I wished I wasn't there would be a ludicrous understatement, but I'd only ever had the illusion of choice: We have to do this, Hank had said. It's for Ellis. To refuse would have been an act of calculated cruelty. And so, because of my husband's war with his father and their insane obsession with a mythical monster, we'd crossed the Atlantic at the very same time a real madman, a real monster, was attempting to take over the world for his own reasons of ego and pride. — Sara Gruen

It's hard to see a river all at once, especially in the mountains. Down on the plains, rivers run in their course as straightforward as time, channeled toward the sea. But up in the headwaters, a river isn't a point where you stand. In the beginnings of the river, you teeter on the edge of a hundred tiny watersheds where one drop of water is always tipping the balance from one stream to another. History changes with each tiny event, shaping an outcome that we can only fully grasp in hindsight. And that view changes as we move farther downstream. — Lynn Culbreath Noel

WARRIOR LIGHT

Jafar, Muhammad's cousin, was a warrior of concentrated light. When he rode up

to a walled city, it was no more to him than a gulp of water in his dry mouth. This

happened at Mutah. No one went out to fight him. "What's to be done?" the king asked

his clairvoyant minister. "If you strap on your sword with this one," replied

the advisor, "also wrap your shroud around you!" "But he's only one man!"

"Ignore the singularity. Look with your wisdom. He gathers multitudes, as stars

dissolve in sunlight." Human beings can embody a collective, a majesty

of spirit, which is not like having a name or a body. A herd of onagers may display

a thousand antler points; then a lion comes to the edge of their field: they scatter. — Jalaluddin Rumi

Little sleep, no investment portfolio, no family around, no hot water. On an evening a few days after arriving in Cange, I wondered aloud what compensation he got for these various hardships. He told me, "If you're making sacrifices, unless you're automatically following some rule, it stands to reason that you're trying to lessen some psychic discomfort. So, for example, if I took steps to be a doctor for those who don't have medical care, it could be regarded as a sacrifice, but it could also be regarded as a way to deal with ambivalence." He went on, and his voice changed a little. He didn't bristle, but his tone had an edge: "I feel ambivalent about selling my services in a world where some can't buy them. You can feel ambivalent about that, because you should feel ambivalent. Comma." This was for me one of the first of many encounters with Farmer's — Tracy Kidder

Occasionally we glimpse the South Rim, four or five thousand feet above. From the rims the canyon seems oceanic; at the surface of the river the feeling is intimate. To someone up there with binoculars we seem utterly remote down here. It is this know dimension if distance and time and the perplexing question posed by the canyon itself- What is consequential? (in one's life, in the life of human beings, in the life of a planet)- that reverberate constantly, and make the human inclination to judge (another person, another kind of thought) seem so eerie ... Two kinds of time pass here: sitting at the edge of a sun-warmed pool watching blue dragonflies and black tadpoles. And the rapids: down the glassy-smooth tongue into a yawing trench, climb a ten-foot wall of standing water and fall into boiling, ferocious hydraulics ... — Barry Lopez

when the rain arrives" she said "I will dig a hole to meditate in"
she said a lot of good things, but i don't know if she did them
i asked if she would dig it so deep that no one could see her
unless they looked inside, and she said "let's get gin"
i didn't want gin though I wanted to put water balloons
in people's mail boxes, but she wanted gin so i bought gin
i sat on the edge of her bed and held her tarantula
i showed her my bob dylan book called "tarantula"
she was scrolling through instagram, and the tarantula was still
i said "wanna dig a hole to meditate in?"
she said "yeah do you wanna get naked?"
I set the tarantula in it's vitrine and placed bob dylan's book on top — Taj Bourgeois

Then I take a dump. Feel better. Take off my clothes and step into the pool. Ice water. But great. I walk along toward the deep end of the pool, the water rising inch by inch, chilling me. Then I plunge below the water. It's restful. The world doesn't know where I am. I come up, swim to the far edge, find the ledge, sit there. It must be about the 9th or 10th race. The horses are still running. I plunge again into the water, being aware of my stupid whiteness, of my age hanging onto me like a leech. Still, it's OK. I should have been dead 40 years ago. I rise to the top, swim to the far edge, get out. — Charles Bukowski

As he rose to his feet he noticed that he was neither dripping nor panting for breath as anyone would expect after being under water. His clothes were perfectly dry. He was standing by the edge of a small pool - not more than ten feet from side to side in a wood. The trees grew close together and were so leafy that he could get no glimpse of the sky. All the light was green light that came through the leaves: but there must have been a very strong sun overhead, for this green daylight was bright and warm. It was the quietest wood you could possibly imagine. There were no birds, no insects, no animals, and no wind. You could almost feel the trees growing. The pool he had just got out of was not the only pool. There were dozens of others - a pool every few yards as far as his eyes could reach. You could almost feel the trees drinking the water up with their roots. This wood was very much alive. — C.S. Lewis

... Tell me, Michael, who are you really?"
"Does it matter?" Munroe said. "Yesterday's truth is today's lie, and tomorrow we'll both be someone else."
"Indulge me," Sato said. "Two tigers meet by chance in a forest, seeing for the first time in all dimensions the same supple power that has, until then, only met them in the flat reflection at the water's edge. For that, it matters. — Taylor Stevens

up shells, and waded at the water's edge, — Danielle Steel

I went up above the quay past the steps to the hotel. I saw a man through the window with a beer in his hand, and another man with a basket full of eggs. I was feeling heavy now, and tired, and I stood there leaning backwards with my hands crossed behind my back at the end of the breakwater before I walked on to the beach on the other side and some way along on the hard-frozen white sand. It had started to blow a bit, and it was still cold with no snow, so I took off my scarf and tied it round my head and ears and sat down in the shelter of a dune and blew into my hands to warm them before I lit a cigarette. Poker ran along the edge of the water with a seagull's wing in his mouth, and I was so young then, and I remember thinking: I'm twenty-three years old, there is nothing left in life. Only the rest. — Per Petterson

Who will you be, my Little Ones? Will you dance for the fires of your youth and run at midnight to water's edge, diving into summer's heat? Will you ride a wild mare to any thought or dream or love of your making? Will you seek the artistry of your own infatuations and explore ... — Carew Papritz

Does it hurt here?" he asked, his fingers slipping over the swollen entrance of her sex.
"A little." She leaned back against his arm, her head lolling on the polished wooden rim of the huge porcelain bathtub.
Nick kneaded lightly with his fingertips, as if he could heal her with his touch. "I tried to be gentle."
"You were," she managed to say, her thighs floating apart.
Nick's thick lashes lowered as he stared at the shimmering blur of her body beneath the water. His handsome features were carved with such severity that his face could have been molded from bronze. The edge of his rolled-up sleeve dragged in the water, the velvet turning hot and sodden.
"I won't ever hurt you again," he said. "That's a promise. — Lisa Kleypas

Very well. I am now a man with now food, with two less fingers and one less toe than I was born with; I am a gunslinger with shells which may not fire; I am sickening from a monster's bite and have no medicine; I have a day's water if I'm lucky; I may be able to walk perhaps a dozen miles if I press myself to the last extremity. I am, in short, a man on the edge of everything. — Stephen King

From the mountain peaks for streams descend and flow near the town; in the cascades the white water is calling, but the mistis do not hear it. On the hillsides, on the plains, on the mountaintops the yellow flowers dance in the wind, but the mistis hardly see them. At dawn, against the cold sky, beyond the edge of the mountains, the sun appears; then the larks and doves sing, fluttering their little wings; the sheep and the colts run to and fro in the grass, while the mistis sleep or watch, calculating the weight of their steers. In the evening Tayta Inti gilds the sk, gilds the earth, but they sneeze, spur their horses on the road, or drink coffee, drink hot pisco.
But in the hearts of the Puquios, the valley is weeping and laughing, in their eyes the sky and the sun are alive; within them the valley sings with the voice of the morning, of the noontide, of the afternoon, of the evening. — Jose Maria Arguedas

Following the mirage
here I am at the water's edge
without the feeling of thirst. — Abbas Kiarostami

In the evening I came home and read about the Messina earthquake, and how the relief ships arrived, and the wretched survivors crowded down to the water's edge and tore each other like wild beasts in their rage of hunger. The paper set forth, in horrified language, that some of them had been seventy-two hours without food. I, as I read, had also been seventy-two hours without food; and the difference was simply that they thought they were starving. — Upton Sinclair

If you must speak ill of another, do not speak it, write it in the sand near the water's edge. — Ellery Adams

The pair sat relaxed and stared toward U.S. 1 at nothing in particular. Coleman rested his joint on the edge of the window and popped a beer. "This is the life." "You said it, buddy." Serge uncapped a bottle of water. "Florida, a full tank of gas, and no appointments. — Tim Dorsey

But the waves kept moving, with the white wake of the ship traced in them for an instant, and then smoothed over by the water. And it was as if my own footsteps were being erased behind me, the footsteps I'd made as a child on the beaches and pathways of the land I'd left, and the footsteps I'd made on this side of the ocean, since coming here; all the traces of me, smoothed over and rubbed away as if they had never been, like polishing the black tarnish from the silver, or drawing your hand across dry sand.
On the edge of sleep I thought: It's as if I never existed, because no trace of me remains, I have left no marks. And that way I cannot be followed. It is almost the same as being innocent.
And then I slept. — Margaret Atwood

Who will you be my Little Ones?
Who will you be, my Little Ones?
Will you dance for the fires of your youth
and run at midnight to water's edge,
diving into summer's heat?
Will you ride a wild mare
to any thought or dream or love of your making?
Will you seek the artistry of your own infatuations
and explore all the reckless and eccentric corners
of your own impetuous world? — Carew Papritz

One of a mother's greatest gifts is to teach her child that to grow is not to timidly sit on some safe shore at water's edge and clumsily grab whatever happens to float by. Rather, it is to deliberately step into waters both calm and turbulent in order to wrestle great things to shore. And that lesson can be best taught by a mother who stands before her child dripping wet. — Craig D. Lounsbrough

I POINT OUT the embankment leading down to the water's edge. "All the way down to that walking trail," I say to Ringer. "And don't wait for me." She shakes her head, frowning. I lean in, keeping my expression as serious as I can. "I thought I had you with the zombie remark. One of these days, I'm going to get a smile out of you, Private." Very much not smiling. "I don't think so, sir." "You have something against smiling?" "It was the first thing to go." Then the snow and the dark swallow her. The rest of the squad follows. I can hear Teacup whimpering beneath her breath as Dumbo leads her off, going, "Run hard when it goes, Cup, okay? — Rick Yancey

Tiptoe to the water's edge. They show their raiments. — Yann Martel

Daniel exposed his machete-like fangs much to the delight of Hartwell, who was gasping for air like a fish out of water. He furiously bit into Hartwell's neck and drank his blood until he could sense the injured party slipping away. The beauty of a life on the edge did not escape Daniel at this moment. He wiped his mouth clean of Hartwell's blood and then bit into his own wrist, while also using his powerful mind to pry open Hartwell's mouth.
Daniel's blood flowed through the body at rest and shot around Hartwell's veins like he had ingested a case of energy drinks. — Phil Wohl

Finally, I formulate and say a little prayer to God, and since we haven't officially spoken since my mom and Elliott died that takes up quite a bit of my time.
The rest of it I spend on trying to determine what I think love really is and what I actually feel for Tally Landon at this point. Upon deep reflection, I realize that I must be at the edge of life's abyss. This is me. All there is left of me; and yet, I'm looking over and contemplating its meaning on whether to jump or stay. I'm not sure this feeling for Tally Landon is made up of love any more than it is of hate. This must be a kind of purgatory - the in-between place - because these pervasive feelings of rage and passion for Tally are equalized and actually co-mingle together - like fire and water - each ready to extinguish the other. I've come to accept the truth. There may be nothing left for us. It could go either way. — Katherine Owen

The waves were shadows, snakes under a quilt, creeping in almost unseen until they emerged in milky ripples at the water's edge. — Winston Graham

Stop it." Isabelle tapped a booted foot in the shallow water at the lake's edge. "Both of you. In fact, all three of you. If we don't stick together in the Seelie Court, we're dead."
"But I haven't-," Clary started.
"Maybe you haven't, but the way you let those two act ... " Isabelle indicated the boys with a disdainful wave of her hand.
"I can't tell them what to do!"
"Why not?" the other girl demanded. "Honestly, Clary, if you don't start utilizing a bit of your natural feminine superiority, I just don't know what I'll do with you. — Cassandra Clare