Wharf Quotes & Sayings

TWILIGHT I have dreamed of flight. And I have dreamed of your laces strewn in the bedroom. I have dreamed of some mother walking the length of a wharf and at fifteen nursing the hour. I have dreamed of flight. A "forever" sighed at a fo'c'sle ladder. I have dreamed of a mother, of fresh sprigs of table-greens, and the stars stitched in bridals of the dawn. The length of a wharf ... the length of a drowning throat! Translated by John Knoepfle — Robert Bly

Running gives me a clearer perspective on the world ... I've always seen the world by running, and that has allowed me to view things in a different way. Places look different in the early-morning hours, when the streets are deserted. I've smelled crabs boiling on Fisherman's Wharf in San Francisco on my way to the Golden Gate Bridge, watched the sun rise over Diamond Head in Hawaii, and seen deer grazing on the Alps in St. Moritz, Switzerland. I clearly remember turning to my husband, Jack, in one of these places and saying, 'People don't know what they're missing.' — Grete Waitz

What I like about organizing things that way is that each story gets nearly full reign over its own space, but all of them are hung on a single string - the loosely-reined voice mentioned above. Thus the collection jogs away from suzerainty and past federation toward, I guess, alliance. Or maybe call each story a separate house on a single street? Or it's all a line of dive bars on some wharf front? What the hell, let's call reading the collection a pub crawl, but with words. — Roy Kesey

A third of the people who rush to psychiatrists for help could probably cure themselves if they could only do as Margaret Yates did: get interested in helping others. My idea? No, that is approximately what Carl Jung said. And he ought to know - if anybody does. He said: "About one third of my patients are suffering from no clinically definable neurosis, but from the senselessness and emptiness of their lives." To put it another way, they are trying to thumb a ride through life - and the parade passes them by. So they rush to a psychiatrist with their petty, senseless, useless lives. Having missed the boat, they stand on the wharf, blaming everyone except themselves and demanding that the world cater to their self-centered desires. — Dale Carnegie

The more you participate in our common endeavors, the more successful your work in the factory, mine, wharf or village, in an economic institute or in the arts, in commerce or administration, the sooner we will be where we all want to be. — Walter Ulbricht

While the melodrama of hucking crates of tea into Boston Harbor continues to inspire civic-minded hotheads to this day, it's worth remembering the hordes of stoic colonial women who simply swore off tea and steeped basil leaves in boiling water to make the same point. What's more valiant: littering from a wharf or years of doing chores and looking after children from dawn to dark without caffeine? — Sarah Vowell

Unable to swim, he had maneuvered to fall off an old-timers' party yacht in the Hudson River. His departure was not remarked by the revelers. They motored on toward the Atlantic and he bobbed around in the wash. He couldn't swim. But he did. He learned how. Before he knew it, he was making time and nearing the dock where a small Italian liner sat dead still, white, three stories high. Nobody was around when he pulled up on a stray rope on the wharf and walked erect to the street, where cars were flashing. Day after tomorrow was his seventieth birthday. What a past, he said. I've survived. Further, I'm horny and vindictive. Does the fire never stop? — Barry Hannah

I was doing a play in New York, which we had done in New Haven, Connecticut. It was an American premiere of a play called The Changing Room written by a wonderful man named David Story. It was about a rugby team in the North of England. It got just screaming rave reviews. At that time, virtually every major critic went up to the Long Wharf Theater to see a new play like that. — Richard Masur

FAR FROM THE WHARF, well across the bay and almost to the open sea, was a tangle of rocks so treacherous that no captain familiar with these waters would sail his ship there. — Dave Barry

I married him [Chris Sarandon] my senior year, and after I graduated, he went to the Long Wharf Theatre in New Haven, and I tagged along and was doing some local modeling and commercials and things like that. A woman named Jane Oliver, who handled Sylvester Stallone, saw Chris at the theater and asked him to come in and audition. We went in and auditioned - he needed someone to read with him. I read with him, and she said, "Well, why don't both of you come back in the fall." — Susan Sarandon

Now,' said Quilp, passing into the wooden counting-house, 'you mind the wharf. Stand upon your head agin, and I'll cut one of your feet off.' The boy made no answer, but directly Quilp had shut himself in, stood on his head before the door, then walked on his hands to the back and stood on his head there, and then to the opposite side and repeated the performance. There were indeed four sides to the counting-house, but he avoided that one where the window was, — Charles Dickens

The oldest, wisest politician grows not more human so, but is merely a gray wharf rat at last. — Henry David Thoreau

Lucas - You'll have to excuse Paige's overenthusiastic attempt to befriend the local wildlife. Not many of their type where she comes from.
Paige -Hey, we have gangs in Boston.
Lucas - Ah, yes. I believe they're particularly bad down by the wharf, where they're liable to descend upon the unwary, surround him with their yachts, and shout well-chosen and elegantly elocuted epithets. — Kelley Armstrong

In mid-September Soufan talked to an al-Qaeda prisoner named Ramzi Binalshibh, who was chained naked to the floor in a CIA black prison at the Bagram air base outside Kabul. He said he was starting to obtain "valuable actionable intelligence" before CIA officers ordered him to stop talking forty-five minutes later. On September 17, they flew their prisoner to a second black site in Morocco, then on to Poland; under extreme duress he described plots to crash airplanes into Heathrow Airport and Canary Wharf in London. He was also diagnosed as a schizophrenic. — Tim Weiner

Often undecided whether to desert a sinking ship for one that might not float, he would make up his mind to sit on the wharf for a day. — Max Aitken

Changed to the elevated at the South Station, and at about twelve o'clock had climbed down the steps at Battery Street and struck along the old waterfront past Constitution Wharf. I didn't keep track of the cross streets, and can't tell you yet which it was we turned up, but I know it wasn't Greenough Lane. — H.P. Lovecraft

I was on duty when our submarine went into port in Nassau and tied up at the Prince George Wharf, and I was the officer who accepted an invitation from the governor-general of the Bahamas for our officers and crewmen to attend an official ball to honor the U.S. Navy. There was a more private comment that a number of young ladies would be present with their chaperones. All of us were pleased and excited, and Captain Andrews responded affirmatively. We received a notice the next day that, of course, the nonwhite crewmen would not be included. When I brought this message to the captain, he had the crew assemble in the mess hall and asked for their guidance in drafting a response. After multiple expletives were censored from the message, we unanimously declined to participate. The decision by the crew of the K-1 was an indication of how equal racial treatment had been accepted - and relished. I was very proud of my ship. On leave — Jimmy Carter

His guess was confirmed when they approached the well-built harbour of a prosperous town and saw the banners flying from the bastions of the citadel. After the sultry heat of Zarzis, the sailors' hearts were lifted and refreshed by the airy music reaching their ears as they pulled in towards the marble wharf. Only when they docked did they realise that they were listening to the sound of the breeze strumming through countless wind-harps and chiming among webs and lattices of translucent shell. It felt as though the wind that had blown them there was now celebrating their arrival. — Lindsay Clarke

As he left Chinatown behind, Alan thought of the woman he'd seen on the wharf the other day, the golden splendor of her gown, her glossy hair and the turbulent emotion in her eyes. He wondered what she was doing right now and if she'd found happiness in her new home. — Bonnie Dee

After that, they got hot dogs at a frankfurter stand and walked down the wharf. At Ye Olde Curiosity Shoppe they saw shrunken heads and Egyptian mummies and cheap souvenirs. (Meg didn't point out the eight-foot-long petrified whale penis that hung suspended from the ceiling; she could just imagine what Ali would tell her friends.) — Kristin Hannah

My wife and I said good-bye the next morning in a little sheltered place among the lumber on the wharf; she was one of your women who never like to do their crying before folks.
She climbed on the pile of lumber and sat down, a little flushed and quivery, to watch us off. I remember seeing her there with the baby till we were well down the channel. I remember noticing the bay as it grew cleaner, and thinking that I would break off swearing; and I remember cursing Bob Smart like a pirate within an hour.
("Kentucky's Ghost") — Elizabeth Stuart Phelps

And now come with me, for I have kept you too long from your gondola: come with me, on an autumnal morning, to a low wharf or quay at the extremity of a canal, with long steps on each side down to the water, which latter we fancy for an instant has become black with stagnation; another glance undeceives us,
it is covered with the black boats of Venice. We enter one of them, rather to try if they be real boats or not, than with any definite purpose, and glide away; at first feeling as if the water were yielding continually beneath the boat and letting her sink into soft vacancy. — John Ruskin

Large signs were painted on the outsides of the warehouses, which were named after the spices stored inside them. Cayenne Court; Cumin Wharf; the Cardamon Building; there was a warehouse for each variety. Centuries of spices had infused the brickwork of the buildings; the smell of spices, and the stink from the mud and slime on the banks of the the river was overpowering. — Catherine Bailey

The Wharf Street part stood out for a different reason. She — Lindsay Buroker

A miracle happened. Right there and then, in amongst the lunchtime diners and tourists, with the sweeping views of San Francisco Bay outside the window and the sea lions making a racket on the wharf below, a miracle happened. And Samuel lost any hope of recovery. Lily laughed. — Lexxie Couper

He smoked a cigarette, standing in the dark and listening to her undress. She made sea sounds; something flapped like a sail; there was the creak of ropes; then he heard the wave-against-a-wharf smack of rubber on flesh. Her call for him to hurry was a sea-moan, and when he lay beside her, she heaved, tidal, moon-driven. — Nathanael West

You are a ghost, like you were a ghost before because you were never here, but everywhere at once, i wish i could talk like my eyes can see, word you with what i smell, knock your socks off with aromas of a tiny metropolis tourists only catch glimpses of at the Wharf. A thousand LSD trips and middle-aged folks remembering Timothy Leary playing like a Pied Piper leading them all off to jump off the pier. — Ana Castillo

Something snatched onto Crickets' left leg, and it was rapidly pulling her into the depths away from the wharf. Air-bubbles restricted her view in the pre-stirred water, as she kicked furiously against the high strength of her unknown assailant. Being from Louisiana, Cricket's first instinct told her she was going down to a certain-death by Alligator! — Darwun St. James

There was an ache in his heart like the farewell to a dear woman; there was a vague sorrow in him like the despair of autumn. He walked past the restaurants he used to smell with interest, and no appetite was aroused in him. He walked by Madam Zuca's great establishment, and exchanged no obscene jests with the girls in the windows. Back to the wharf he went. He leaned over the rail and looked into the deep, deep water. Do you know, Danny, how the wine of your life is pouring into the fruit jars of the gods? Do you see the procession of your days in the oily water among the piles? He remained motionless, staring down. — John Steinbeck

I recently did a play, Athol Fugard's 'Coming Home' at Long Wharf Theatre, where I played one character throughout - I sat at a table and didn't have any costume changes. Following one character's arc from beginning to end is a whole different mindset. — Colman Domingo