Deck Quotes

Seaworth had a lordly ring to it, but down deep he was still Davos of Flea Bottom, coming home to his city on its three high hills. He knew as much of ships and sails and shores as any man in the Seven Kingdoms, and had fought his share of desperate fights sword to sword on a wet deck. But to this sort of battle he came a maiden, nervous and afraid. Smugglers do not sound warhorns and raise banners. When they smell danger, they raise sail and run before the wind. ~ George R.R. Martin

I'm sort of an old man, always tinkering in the backyard. Since I grew up playing outdoors, I still like to plant things, sit out on the deck, or go hiking. ~ Josh Duhamel

He looks like something that fell out of a deck of cards! ~ Bobby Heenan

Once, when I was a child, I dreamed that Grimbeard the Ghastly, on the deck of his ship The Endless Journey, threw the sword Endeavor up into the air. Up and up it spun, through the inky blackness, across the cavernous span of a hundred years, until, entirely of its own accord, my own left hand sprang out of space and stars and never-ending time and caught it. Now that I am so very old, I am dreaming once again. And in my dream, I am the one throwing the sword. It is spinning now, in the black starlit waters of my dream, right above your head, dear reader. A sword that may look second-best, and secondhand, but but carries the memories of a thousand lost fights, a history lesson in itself. Reach out, and catch it by the hilt. Swear by its name, Endeavor, to do your utmost to make the world a better place than when you arrived in it. For look! There will be dragons all around you, as camouflaged as a Stealth Dragon. ~ Cressida Cowell

I am fully conscious that, not being a literary man , certain presumptuous persons will think that they may reasonably blame me; alleging that I am not a man of letters. Foolish folks! do they not know that I might retort as Marius did to the Roman Patricians by saying: That they, who deck themselves out in the labours of others will not allow me my own. They will say that I, having no literary skill, cannot properly express that which I desire to treat of, but they do not know that my subjects are to be dealt with by experience rather than by words; and experience has been the mistress of those who wrote well. And so, as mistress, I will cite her in all cases. ~ Leonardo Da Vinci

Will it be here that we shall find a place which will not elude us, or which if it remains does not exert on us a culpable attraction? Or must we, leaning over the deck and watching the shores glide by, move forever onward? ~ Andre Gide

Be not unwilling in what thou doest, neither selfish nor unadvised nor obstinate; let not over-refinement deck out thy thought; be not wordy nor a busybody. ~ Marcus Aurelius

Since it was my car, and since I felt confident it would make Marcus miserable, I pushed the Pearl Jam cassette into the tape deck as I got back on the freeway and turned it up. After a couple of tracks, Bas got hung up on trying to figure out the lyrics to "Yellow Ledbetter" - an unattainable goal since they were basically undecipherable sounds with a few words sprinkled in. The song was all feeling, but he was determined. We listened to it over and over, and caught a little more each time. Metaphorically, the song felt perfect for the mission we were on. ~ Veronica Rossi

Visualize the conversations your friends have about how they all knew you'd never be able to make it. Imagine having to explain quitting to every single person who knew you were going to BUD/S. You have to face them. You have to live with many of them. Imagine trying to find a way to overcome the shame of failing. How long is it going to take for them to stop thinking of you as a failure, a quitter, a pussy? How long until anyone takes anything you say seriously again? Visualize being sent to a crappy ship, an undesignated Seaman. Imagine, if you will, a life below deck where you spend 18 hours chipping paint and repainting the spot you chipped. Imagine not seeing the sun for days or weeks at a time. This picture is worse than anything in BUD/S. Experience the shame and humiliation of quitting once in your head. Feel how much you hate yourself for giving up on your dream. Then never, ever, ever experience it in real life. ~ Mark Owens

An oceanic expanse of pre-dawn gray white below obscures a checkered grid of Saskatchewan, a snow plain nicked by the dark, unruly lines of woody swales. One might imagine that little is to be seen from a plane at night, but above the clouds the Milky Way is a dense, blazing arch. A full moon often lights the planet freshly, and patterns of human culture, artificially lit, are striking in ways not visible in daylight. One evening I saw the distinctive glows of cities around Delhi diffused like spiral galaxies in a continuous deck of stratus clouds far below us. In Algeria and on the Asian steppes, wind-whipped pennants of gas flared. The jungle burned in incandescent spots in Malaysia and Brazil. One clear evening at 20,000 feet over Manhattan, I could see, it seemed, every streetlight halfway to the end of Long Island. A summer lightning bolt unexpectedly revealed thousands of bright dots on the ink-black veld of the northern Transvaal: sheep. ~ Barry Lopez

If I take a tumble, I'll mae quite a splash, but at least I won't smash against the deck and make a mess. Still be dead, though. ~ L.A. Meyer

The naked woman marched around the swimming pool, the corpses in the hearse rejoicing that she, too, was dead - these were the "down below" she had feared and fled once before but which mysteriously beckoned her. These were her vertigo: she heard a sweet (almost joyous) summons to renounce her fate and soul. The solidarity of the soulless calling her. And in times of weakness, she was ready to heed the call and return to her mother. She was already to dismiss the crew of her soul from the deck of her body; ready to descend to a place among her mother's friemd and laugh when one of them broke wind noisily; ready to march around the pool naked with them and sing. ~ Milan Kundera

Ben's dead," he says not moving or breaking his stare.

"And?"

"Just thought you should know," he says, looking at me in the eyes like he's waiting for me to confess.

"Thanks for waking me up to share the information," I tell him. "Where's Venessa?"

"At home," he says. "Needed to see you first, alone."

"Quit looking at me like that, partner," I tell him. "I ain't left this floor all night." Which isn't a lie. Ben's room is on this floor, but he doesn't know I know that.

"Even if you did, you know I wouldn't - "

"Partner," I tell him straight, letting him figure it out. "I didn't shut off his life support."

After he blinks several times he gives me that smirk. He looks around me to my sleeping wife and then back at me and tells me straight, too. "Go back to sleep partner. You look like shit."

With that he gets up and walks out.

Staring at the door he walks out of, I smile. He gets it. Turns out the staff at that front desk got it, too. They didn't stop my wife from doing what she needed to do; seems like they had other shit going at that time. Heard through the grapevine one of the women taken and held by Ben happened to work on this very floor. It also turns out the coffee pot wasn't working and it was an all hands on deck kinda thing to get it fixed. I get it, the women need their coffee. They also didn't run to his aid until I had my wife safe back in her bed. Those ~ K.S. Adkins

On New Year's Eve, when the children had gone up the hill to be with their father, I went to a Mensa party in San Francisco, but returned home relatively early, wanting to face the first few hours of the new year away from the noise and lurching of people who had drunk too much. I stood outside on the deck, in darkness, looking up at the star-frosted sky, letting myself feel without censoring the ache and hope that belonged to that night, and I sent out prayer for connection with someone who would be --finally -- the person I'd needed to be with all my life, someone who would have gone through his own changes and wars of the spirit and emerged a true adult. A grown-up man. Who wouldn't mind my being a grandmother, for Pete's sake. A man somewhat like Shura Borodin -- or what Shura seemed to be.
I cried a bit because the wanting was so very intense and the clear night sky so very indifferent, and everything I was in body and soul might yet grow old without a lover and friend who could be to me what I was capable of being to him. I toasted myself, hope, the new year and the magnificent cold stars with a bit of wine, then went to bed. ~ Ann Shulgin

What would happen," Zeitoun asked the captain, "if you and I went below the deck, and just went to our bedrooms and went to sleep?"
The captain gave him a quizzical look and answered that the ship would most certainly hit something
would run aground or into a reef. In any event, disaster.
"So without a captain, the ship cannot navigate."
"Yes," the captain said, "What's your point?"
Zeitoun smiled. "Look above you, at the stars and moon. How do the stars keep their place in the sky, how does the moon rotate around the earth, the earth around the sun? Who's navigating?"
The captain smiled at Zeitoun. He'd been led into a trap.
"Without someone guiding us," Zeitoun finished, "wouldn't the stars and moon fall to earth, wouldn't the oceans overrun the land? Any vessel, any carrier of humans, needs a captain, yes?"
The captain was taken with the beauty of the metaphor, and let his silence imply surrender. ~ Dave Eggers

The flowers are Nature's jewels, with whose wealth she decks her summer beauty. ~ George Croly

William Strachey, who would later write the most detailed account of the storm, must have made his way from his quarters to the deck so he could see conditions for himself. ~ Kieran Doherty

When it comes to the past, we all stack the deck. ~ Stephen King

Stop!" she called out.
To a one, the crewmen froze. A dozen heads swiveled to face her.
Sophia swallowed and turned to Mr. Grayson. "What about me? I'm also a virgin voyager."
His lips quirked as his gaze swept her from head to toe and then back up partway. "Are you truly?"
"Yes. And I haven't a coin to my name. Do you plan to dunk and shave me, too?"
"Now there's an idea." His grin widened. "Perhaps. But first, you must submit to an interrogation."
A lump formed in Sophia's throat, impossible to speak around.
Mr. Grayson raised that sonorous baritone to a carrying pitch. "What's your name then, miss?" When Sophia merely firmed her chin and glared at him, he warned dramatically, "Truth or eels."
Bang.
Excited whispers crackled through the assembly of sailors. Davy was completely forgotten, dropped to the deck with a dull thud. Even the wind held its breath in anticipation, and Sophia gave a slight jump when a sail smacked limp against the mast.
Though her heart pounded an erratic rhythm of distress, she willed her voice to remain even. "I've no intention of submitting myself to any interrogation, by god or man." She lifted her chin and arched an eyebrow. "And I'm not impressed by your staff."
She paused several seconds, waiting for the crew's boisterous laughter to ebb.
Mr. Grayson pinned her with his bold, unyielding gaze. "You dare to speak to me that way? I'm Triton." With each word, he stepped closer. "King of th ~ Tessa Dare

For all of its faults, it gives most hardworking people a chance to improve themselves economically, even as the deck is stacked in favor of the privileged few. Here are the choices most of us face in such a system: Get bitter or get busy. ~ Bill O'Reilly

Thats what a ship is, you know. Its not a keel and a hull and a deck and sails. Thats what a ship needs. But what a ship is. What the Black Pearl really is ... is freedom. ~ Johnny Depp

You never know beforehand what people are capable of, you have to wait, give it time, it's time that rules, time is our gambling partner on the other side of the table and it holds all the cards of the deck in its hand, we have to guess the winning cards of life, our lives. ~ Jose Saramago

I'm used to the older-fashioned way of mixing: playing with three decks, always turning and twisting knobs manically. ~ Adam Beyer

One day, putting my finger on a spot in the very middle of the then white heart of Africa, I declared that some day I would go there ... It is a fact that, about eighteen years afterwards, a wretched little stern-wheel steamboat I commanded lay moored to the bank of an African river.

Everything was dark under the stars. Every other white man on board was asleep. I was glad to be alone on deck, smoking the pipe of peace after an anxious day. The subdued thundering mutter of the Stanley Falls hung in the heavy night air of the last navigable reach of the Upper Congo ... Away in the middle of the stream, on a little island nestling all black in the foam of the broken water, a solitary little light glimmered feebly, and I said to myself with awe, 'This is the very spot of my boyish boast.'

A great melancholy descended on me. Yes, this was the very spot. But there was no shadowy friend to stand by my side in the night of the enormous wilderness, no great haunting memory, but only the ... distasteful knowledge of the vilest scramble for loot that ever disfigured the history of human conscience and geographical exploration. What an end to the idealised realities of a boy's daydreams!... Still, the fact remains that I have smoked a pipe of peace at midnight in the very heart of the African continent, and felt very lonely there. ~ Joseph Conrad

Lennon was not very fond of me. Lennon didn't like to be around somebody else who was likely to be the center of attention and didn't like being on deck with somebody who was intellectually as hot as he was. ~ Peter Fonda

I've seen that picture before. It was a two-seamer that didn't sink until it hit the upper deck somewhere. ~ Joe Torre

He peered up at the house.

"I know you're finished in there, Blake. May as well come out."

I breathed a silent sigh.

Blake strolled onto the deck wearing low-slung skater shorts and flip-flops. Being shirtless must've been mandatory in California. I kind of wished they'd get dressed so I could focus properly when I told them about the prophecy. Blake joined us beside the pool.

"So . . . ," said Blake, rocking back on his heels. "Lover's quarrel over?"

"We're not lovers," Kaidan and I said together.

"What's stopping you?" Blake smiled.

"What's stopping you and Ginger?" Kaidan asked.

"An ocean, man. Fu - " He glanced at me. "Uh . . . eff you."

"Eff me?" Kaidan asked, grinning. "No, eff you, mate."

Blake put a fist over his mouth when he caught what must have been a seething look on my face, and he laughed, punching Kaidan in the arm.

"Told you, man! She's pissed about the cursing thing! Ginger was right."

I shook my head. I wouldn't look at them. I was too humiliated to deny it.

"Girl, all you have to do is say the word, and Mr. Lusty McLust a Lot here will be happy to whisper some dirty nothings in your ear."

Kaidan half grinned, sexuality rolling off him as wild as the Pacific below us.

I took a shaky breath.

"I don't appreciate when people are fake with me." I pointed this statement at Kaidan.

Wendy Higgins

He tossed the deck to David. 'You get first deal.'
'I've got one hand.'
'Right, then. Deal those cards, Max, and let's have ourselves a game. ~ Henry H. Neff

Now here is an oddity. A question for the zombie philosophers. What does it mean that my past is a fog but my present is brilliant, bursting with sound and color? Since I became Dead I've recorded new memories with the fidelity of an old cassette deck, faint and muffled and ultimately forgettable. But I can recall every hour of the last few days in vivid detail, and the thought of losing a single one horrifies me. Where am I getting this focus? This clarity? I can trace a solid line from the moment I met Julie all the way to now, lying next to her in this sepulchral bedroom, and despite the millions of past moments I've lost or tossed away like highway trash, I know with a lockjawed certainty I'll remember this one for the rest of my life. ~ Isaac Marion

Broken glass showered from the windows. Chunks of the walls bounced off the pavement and the cars parked along the curb, crushing into smaller pieces. The asphalt on the street split in places into long ribbon-like slashes. The ground continued rolling like the deck of a ship. The noise of the destruction, screams of terrified people, and the car alarms mixed into a concerto of horror. ~ A.O. Peart

Kent Abbott is in the on-deck circuit. ~ Jerry Coleman

It's a difficult path that we tread, us Indie self-publishers, but we're not alone. How many bands practicing in their dad's garage have heard of a group from the neighbourhood who got signed by a recording company? Or how many artists who love to paint, but are not really getting anywhere with it hear of someone they went to art school with being offered an exhibition in a gallery? How many chefs who love to get creative around food hear of someone else who's just landed a job with Marco Pierre White?
There's no difference between us and them. There is, however, a huge difference in how everyone else perceives the writer. And there's a huge difference between all of us – the writers, the musicians, the composers, the chefs, the dance choreographers and to a certain extent the tradesmen - and the rest of society in that no one understands us. It's a wretched dream to hope that our creativity gets recognised while our family thinks we're wasting our time when the lawn needs mowing, the deck needs painting and the bedroom needs decorating.
It's acceptable to go into the garage to tinker about with a motorbike, but it's a waste of a good Sunday afternoon if you go into the garage and practice your guitar, or sit in your study attempting to capture words that have been floating around your brain forever. ~ Karl Wiggins

Afterward he collapsed onto the deck and gave in to the shakes. Naomi climbed into her couch and sobbed. It was the first time Holden had ever seen her cry. ~ James S.A. Corey

, Roosevelt was unmoved. Churchill had to agree to dispatch a political mission - the Cripps Mission - to India a few days after the fall of Rangoon. It failed and Churchill was delighted. He said to FDR, 'I feel absolutely satisfied we have done our utmost.' However, Roosevelt did not think so. He knew that Churchill had stacked the deck against the mission. He telegraphed Churchill to try again, saying that Britain's unwillingness 'to concede to the Indians the right of self-government was ~ Anonymous

Peter Parker: I mean, what I do sometimes requires violence, but I'm not a violent man, I'm really not. But I just--

Mary Jane: You wanted to deck her.

Peter: Twice. And I hate feeling that way. Why is it that people feel the need to take whatever little authority they have and shove it down your throat? And the smaller the authority, the bigger the shove.

Aunt May: It offends you, doesn't it?
Peter: Yeah, it does.
Aunt May: Why?
Peter: I -- What do you mean, why?
Aunt May: Why does it offend you?
Peter: Shouldn't it?

Aunt May: If a lion broke out of its cage at the zoo, and bit you, it would hurt, sure, and you'd be upset, of course. But would you be offended?

Peter: No, of course not.
Aunt May: Why?
Peter: Because that's the nature of a lion.

Aunt May: Some people by nature are kind and charitable. You could say that some people, including at least one person at this table, are by their nature heroes. Ben always reminded me that we each contain all the nobler and meaner aspects of humanity, but some get a bigger dose than others of one thing or another.
Some are petty, and mean, and uncharitable. That's their nature. You can hope for better, even try to lead them to be and you may even succeed. But when they behave badly, it's right to be upset by it, or hurt by it, but you can be no more offended by it than you can when a lion bites you. ~ J. Michael Straczynski

It's not enough just to do those things anymore; what you must do instead if you want success on any large scale is either figure out a way of getting yourself associated in the audience's mind with their pieties and their sense of 'community,' i.e. ram it home that you're one of THEM; or, alternately, deck and bake yourself into an image configuration so blatant or outrageous that you become a culture myth. ~ Lester Bangs

My ideal meal varies, depending on the time of year. Lobster on a deck overlooking a beach at sunset is one - but all my kids have to be there, because they are all lobster-lovers. Making a bolognese sauce over pappardelle for my husband on a winter evening, because he loves my bolognese sauce and it's his comfort food. ~ Amy Bloom

He was dead; I needed to let his memory go, too. That was the first step for me, before discrimination.
Yet my love was the ghost of a young girl's dream. It walked alone in the abyss, stubbornly, where only illusions prospered on tears and regrets. My love had a life of its own; it was perverted but nevertheless still vital. For that reason, I wanted to return to deep space. Honestly, I would have preferred it if we had traveled forever and never stopped at another star system. To fall into endless blackness, that was my new fantasy.
The young girl with the ancient dream wept. I could hear her; I even saw her tears on the glass of the observation deck. It made me feel old. I didn't want to know her name. I couldn't forget Tem but I needed to forget her. ~ Christopher Pike

I prefer to use 'The Medieval Scapini Tarot' deck produced by U.S. Games Systems Inc., Stamford, Connecticut. The cards are beautiful, captivating and of excellent quality, and I endorse them wholeheartedly.

I should add that I have no connection with U.S. Games Systems, and this is an unbiased endorsement. That having been said, if U.S. Games Systems were appreciative of my comments, and offered me many free packs of cards (or large sums of money) as a charming gesture of goodwill, I should be happy to accept such tokens without compromising my integrity in any way. They might like to bear in mind that in future editions of this book my endorsements may have 'evolved' in the direction of other card companies who are, perhaps, a little more generous in their appreciation of my valuable judgements. ~ Ian Rowland

They knew that life was a struggle, and though the odds were a bit longer for people like them, that fact didn't excuse failure. "Never be like these fucking losers who think the deck is stacked against them," my grandma often told me. "You can do anything you want to." Their community shared this faith, and in the 1950s that faith appeared well founded. ~ J.D. Vance

As they crept closer, I decided to make my move first and surprise them. I selected my prey, the biggest one! The reasoning behind this is that if you deck the largest and strongest one out of a group then it sends out a clear-cut message to the rest of them. ~ Stephen Richards

Georgie was the good in me. Without her, I was sure I'd sink into the darkness of my mind and never emerge. She gave me the light to keep coming back. To crawl away from the evil I was surrounded by, the nightmares, the coldness, and she made me human again." Deck ~ Nashoda Rose

While his one live leg made lively echoes along the deck, every stroke of his dead limb sounded like a coffin-tap. On life and death this old man walked. ~ Herman Melville

The point of war is to rig the deck, drug the opponent, and threaten to kneecap their family if they don't fold. ~ Yoon Ha Lee

From a productivity perspective, prioritization is key. And it's very easy to focus on clearing the decks of minutia, especially when one's very busy. It's almost easy to want to sit down at your desk when you have a free five minutes and try to clear out some of the incoming emails rather than strip things strategically and foundationally and ask about what the most important objectives for you and the company are. ~ Ivanka Trump

What if - " I stopped, swallowing hard. Nope. I couldn't even say it aloud. We'd figure something else out because we had to. Time for a subject change before I lost it. "What did your mom say?"
"Mostly that she thinks my hair is getting too long and I should cut it."
"That's not helpful."
"That's my mom for you." He was trying for humor but his voice caught, and I wondered if he was thinking about how if she left and he didn't, he'd never ever see her again.
"So," I said, sitting on the floor against the wall as close to the kitchen doorway as I could get without Lend dropping like a rock, "do you want your Christmas present?"
"You got me something?" He sounded surprised.
"I've been working on it for a while."
"I, uh, didn't find you anything yet. I was actually setting up for your party, not Christmas shopping like I said."
"Being kidnapped by the Dark Queen and then cursed gets you off the hook for a lot. Besides, my birthday party totally counted."
"This isn't how I wanted our first Christmas to go. We were going to go all out, pick out a Christmas tree on Christmas Eve, decorate it, watch cheesy holiday movies, drink hot chocolate, let my dad make his eggnog and then complain about how disgusting it was, then I was going to deck out my entire room in mistletoe . . ."
"Wait, you mean you didn't plan for us to be stuck in different rooms for the holidays?"
"Well, that part's kind of nice." I heard his head bang against ~ Kiersten White

The magic of life is its imprecision, the multiple narratives constantly unfolding before us. Every step we take, every decision we make, reshuffles the deck of our lives and sets a new trajectory of possibility in motion. ~ Jamie Metzl

Pardon me, Mr. Craig, but how are we going to defense Mr. McCovey ... in the upper deck or the lower deck? ~ Casey Stengel

If the cards are stacked against you, reshuffle the deck. ~ John D. MacDonald

And then-
The lights are on.My first reaction is the lack of one. I'm too stunned. One second later, though, I hit the deck, pulling at the blankets below me and shielding my eyes. ~ Alecia Whitaker

At times I am gripped by an absurd desire: that the sentence I am about to write be the one the woman is reading at that same moment. The idea mesmerizes me so much that I convince myself it is true: I write the sentence hastily, get up, go to the window, train my spyglass to check the effect of my sentence in her gaze, in the curl of her lips, in the cigarette she lights, in the shifts of her body in the deck chair, in her legs, which she crosses or extends. ~ Italo Calvino

Bursts as a wave that from the clouds impends, And swell'd with tempests on the ship descends; White are the decks with foam; the winds aloud Howl o'er the masts, and sing through every shroud: Pale, trembling, tir'd, the sailors freeze with fears; And instant death on every wave appears. ~ Homer

It was the strain of a forsaken lady, who after bewailing the perfidy of her lover, calls her pride to her aid, desires her attendant to deck her in her brightest jewels and richest robes and resolves to meet the false one that night at the ball, and prove to him, by the gaiety of her demeanor, how little his desertion has affected her. ~ Charlotte Bronte

Fate was dealing from the bottom of the deck. ~ S.J Perelman

No. When I was a girl, I wanted to be a pirate."
That brought up an all-too-pleasant image - Miss Marshall, the rich, dark red of her hair unbound and flying defiantly in the wind aboard a ship's deck. She'd wear a loose white shirt and pantaloons. He would definitely surrender.
"I am less shocked than you might imagine," Edward heard himself say. "Entirely unshocked."
She smiled in pleasure.
"A bloodthirsty cutthroat profession? Good thing you gave that up. It would never have suited you."
Her expression of pleasure dimmed.
"You'd have succeeded too easily," Edward continued, "and now you'd be sitting, bored as sin, atop a heap of gold too large to spend in one lifetime. Still, though, wouldn't it solve ever so many problems if you married a lord? James Delacey could never touch you again if you did. ~ Courtney Milan

Reading your sonnets?" asked Orphu. Mahnmut closed the book. "How'd you know? Have you taken up telepathy now that you've lost your eyes?" "Not yet," rumbled the Ionian. Orphu's great crab shell was lashed to the deck ten meters from where Mahnmut sat near the bow. "Some of your silences are more literary than others, is all. ~ Dan Simmons

Gray froze as Miss Turner emerged from the hold. For weeks, she'd plagued him-by day, he suffered glimpses of her beauty; by night, he was haunted by memories of her touch. And just when he thought he'd finally wrangled his desire into submission, today she'd ruined everything.
She'd gone and changed her dress.
Gone was that serge shroud, that forbidding thundercloud of a garment that had loomed in his peripheral vision for weeks. Today, she wore a cap-sleeved frock of sprigged muslin.
She stepped onto the deck, smiling face tilted to the wind. A flower opening to greet the sun. She bobbed on her toes, as though resisting the urge to make a girlish twirl. The pale, sheer fabric of her dress billowed and swelled in the breeze, pulling the undulating contour of calf, thigh, hip into relief.
Gray thought she just might be the loveliest creature he'd ever seen.
Therefore, he knew he ought to look away.
He did, for a moment. He made an honest attempt to scan the horizon for clouds. He checked the hour on his pocket watch, wound the small knob one, two, three, four times. He wiped a bit of salt spray from its glass face. He thought of England. And France, and Cuba, and Spain. He remembered his brother, his sister, and his singularly ugly Aunt Rosamond, on whom he hadn't clapped eyes in decades. And all this Herculean effort resulting in nothing but a fine sheen of sweat on his brow and precisely thirty seconds' delay in the inevitable.
He looked a ~ Tessa Dare

Sometimes, some foreign reporters who come to Singapore to interview me, and they wonder, why we conduct Meet-the-People's sessions at the void deck. So much for a first world nation. ~ Low Thia Khiang

Arin hadn't fallen asleep on the deck of his strangely still ship, yet, it felt as if he'd been dreaming. As if dreams and memories and lies were the same thing. ~ Marie Rutkoski

You start on Monday with the idea implanted in your bosom that you are going to enjoy yourself. You wave an airy adieu to the boys on shore, light your biggest pipe, and swagger about the deck as if you were Captain Cook, Sir Francis Drake, and Christopher Columbus all rolled into one. On Tuesday, you wish you hadn't come. On Wednesday, Thursday, and Friday, you wish you were dead. On Saturday, you are able to swallow a little beef tea, and to sit up on deck, and answer with a wan, sweet smile when kind-hearted people ask you how you feel now. On Sunday, you begin to walk about again, and take solid food. And on Monday morning, as, with your bag and umbrella in your hand, you stand by the gunwale, waiting to step ashore, you begin to thoroughly like it. ~ Jerome K. Jerome

The birds scratch the seed out of the feeder, then fly down to the deck to eat the seed. They know there's a cat, but still they go down to pick at the seed. When you think about it, people are often like this, too. ~ Robert Crais

If you want to play your part in the world's affairs, you must refuse to deck yourselves for pleasing man. ~ Mahatma Gandhi

Pat followed Mary outside to the deck. ~ Suzie O'Connell

As i emerge on deck the ordered arrangement of the stars meets my eye, unclouded, infinitely wearisome. There they are: stars, sun, sea, light, darkness, space, great waters; the formidable Work of the Seven Days, into which mankind seems to have blundered unbidden. Or else decoyed. ~ Joseph Conrad

Picture me then idle, basking, plump, and happy, stretched on a cushioned deck, warmed with constant sunshine, rocked by breezes indolently soft. ~ Charlotte Bronte

The gunslinger came awake from a confused dream which seemed to consist of a single image: that of the Sailor in the Tarot deck from which the man in black had dealt (or purported to deal) the gunslinger's own moaning future. ~ Stephen King

Don't talk the talk, if you can't walk the walk,
Phony niggaz are outlined in chalk ~ Inspectah Deck

You knew when a woman loves you like that, she can love you with every card in the deck and then pull a knife across your throat the next morning. ~ Van Heflin

Well, we try to - we definitely try to have a balance. And I think things have gotten a lot better at Pixar. When we did "Toy Story," that was an all hands on deck situation that really was time intensive. ~ Pete Docter

It's to do with knowing and being known. I remember how it stopped seeming odd that in biblical Greek, knowing was used for making love. Whosit knew so-and-so. Carnal knowledge. It's what lovers trust each other with. Knowledge of each other, not of the flesh but through the flesh, knowledge of self, the real him, the real her, in extremis, the mask slipped from the face. Every other version of oneself is on offer to the public. We share our vivacity, grief, sulks, anger, joy… we hand it out to anybody who happens to be standing around, to friends and family with a momentary sense of indecency perhaps, to strangers without hesitation. Our lovers share us with the passing trade. But in pairs we insist that we give ourselves to each other. What selves? What's left? What else is there that hasn't been dealt out like a deck of cards? Carnal knowledge. Personal, final, uncompromised. Knowing, being known. I revere that. Having that is being rich, you can be generous about what's shared - she walks, she talks, she laughs, she lends a sympathetic ear, she kicks off her shoes and dances on the tables, she's everybody's and it don't mean a thing, let them eat cake; knowledge is something else, the undealt card, and while it's held it makes you free-and-easy and nice to know, and when it's gone everything is pain. Every single thing. Every object that meets the eye, a pencil, a tangerine, a travel poster. As if the physical world has been wired up to pass a current back to the part o ~ Tom Stoppard

As they prepared themselves to go ashore no one doubted in theory that at least a certain percentage of them would remain on the island dead, once they set foot on it. But no one expected to be one of these. Still it was an awesome thought and as the first contingents came struggling up on deck in full gear to form up, all eyes instinctively sought out immediately this island where they were to be put, and left, and which might possibly turn out to be a friend's grave. ~ James Jones

Right," Thatcher said, "let's have a look at her."
Katherine hesitated. The kitten was fast asleep in her arms and she was afraid to wake her.
"Something amiss?" Thatcher asked.
Katherine giggled at her capricious emotions and shoved the kitten into the surgeon's arms. The animal woke up as Thatcher examined it. He set the kitten on the deck and watched as she wobbled around on clumsy paws. "Yes," Thatcher nodded conclusively. "This is indeed a cat. ~ Matt Tomerlin

When everyone was busy playing their cards, guessing others hands and counting chips, we took a deck and a bottle and a corner table. At the end of that dreamy night, rattles stopped, bottles emptied, everyone gone. But there on our table was this beautiful house erected of cards, stories, hopes and secrets. Something we built quite unknowingly. She looked at me with starry eyes and whispered – "Can we keep it?" The curious inn keeper, from a distance answered – "No".

She made a face and looked at me and I said – "We shall come back tomorrow and make a new one everyday".

And we never did. ~ Nahiar Ozar

Toward nightfall, Khrenov's temperature had risen. The thermometer was warm, alive - the column of mercury climbed high on the little red ladder. For a long time he muttered unintelligibly, kept biting his lips and gently shaking his head. Then he fell asleep. Natasha undressed by a candle's wan flame, and saw her reflection in the murky glass of the window - her pale, thin neck, the dark braid that had fallen across her clavicle. She stood like that, in motionless languor, and suddenly it seemed to her that the room, together with the couch, the table littered with cigarette stubs, the bed on which, with open mouth, a sharp-nosed, sweaty old man slept restlessly - all this started to move, and was now floating, like the deck of a ship, into the black night. ~ Vladimir Nabokov

No reason to be afraid of Nick," Jack said. "I could take you down there and introduce you, threaten to sic my wife on him if he steps out of line." "I bet one knee in the nuts straightens him right out," Ellie said. There was a strange sound from Noah, something of a growl. "I don't like this idea at all. If this guy got fresh with you, I'd have to deal with him. That wouldn't be good." "Horsefeathers," Ellie said. "I can take care of myself." This wouldn't be the best time to bring up the fact that she was having a tough time doing exactly that - taking care of herself. And in almost exactly twenty-four hours Noah was already feeling the urge to deck the imbecile who would dare put a hand on her. It had been years since he'd been in a fight; it wasn't nice for ministers to fight. He was supposed to counsel and pray his way out of tight spots. One ~ Robyn Carr

As a Magician, I try to show things to people that seem impossible. And I think magic whether I'm holding my breath or shuffling a deck of cards is pretty simple: It's practice, it's training and it's experimenting while pushing through the pain to be the best that I can be. And that's what magic is to me. ~ David Blaine

[...]a man and a boy, side by side on a yellow Swedish sofa from the 1950s that the man had bought because it somehow reminded him of a zoot suit, watching the A's play Baltimore, Rich Harden on the mound working that devious ghost pitch, two pairs of stocking feet, size 11 and size 15, rising from the deck of the coffee table at either end like towers of the Bay Bridge, between the feet the remains in an open pizza box of a bad, cheap, and formerly enormous XL meat lover's special, sausage, pepperoni, bacon, ground beef, and ham, all of it gone but crumbs and parentheses of crusts left by the boy, brackets for the blankness of his conversation and, for all the man knew, of his thoughts, Titus having said nothing to Archy since Gwen's departure apart from monosyllables doled out in response to direct yes-or-nos, Do you like baseball? you like pizza? eat meat? pork?, the boy limiting himself whenever possible to a tight little nod, guarding himself at his end of the sofa as if riding on a crowded train with something breakable on his lap, nobody saying anything in the room, the city, or the world except Bill King and Ken Korach calling the plays, the game eventless and yet blessedly slow, player substitutions and deep pitch counts eating up swaths of time during which no one was required to say or to decide anything, to feel what might conceivably be felt, to dread what might be dreaded, the game standing tied at 1 and in theory capable of going on that way forever, or at leas ~ Michael Chabon

Like Keats he may wander through the old-world forests of Latmos, or stand like Morris on the galley's deck with the Viking when king and galley have long since passed away. But the drama is the meeting-place of art and life; it deals, as Mazzini said, not merely with man, but with social man, with man in his relation to God and to Humanity. It is the product of a period of great national united energy; it is impossible without a noble public, and belongs to such ages as the age of Elizabeth in London and of Pericles at Athens; it is part of such lofty moral and spiritual ardour as came to Greek after the defeat of the Persian fleet, and to Englishman after the wreck of the Armada of Spain. ~ Oscar Wilde

We don't want anyone suspecting us of stacking the deck the way we are. ~ Michael J. Sullivan

I who had loved the image of old Geulincx, dead young, who left me free, on the black boat of Ulysses, to crawl towards the East, along the deck. That is a great measure of freedom, for him who has not the pioneering spirit. And from the poop, poring upon the wave, a sadly rejoicing slave, I follow with my eyes the proud and futile wake. Which, as it bears me from no fatherland away, bears me onward to no shipwreck. ~ Samuel Beckett

And suddenly, in the place of the woman-shape made of shadow, there was something else. Something huge, something ugly. Linay flung up both hands. The thing screamed like a hawk and opened to wings: one white as a death cap, one clotted in shadow. The wings came together and the whole pond shuddered.
Something hit Kate's ear and shoulder and smashed to the deck by her feet. It was a swallow, dead. She could hear them falling all over the pond. ~ Erin Bow

I don't object to nine aces in one deck. But when a man lays down five aces in one hand ... and besides, I know what I dealt him! ~ W.C. Fields

You can live for years next door to a big pine tree, honored to have so venerable a neighbor, even when it sheds needles all over your flowers or wakes you, dropping big cones onto your deck at still of night. ~ Denise Levertov

Waking or sleeping, I see a wreck,
And hear a cry from a reeling deck! ~ John Greenleaf Whittier

The steamboat left the harbor and it was something in this world, the paddle thundering, the smokestack blowing, and people lined up on the top deck waving handkerchiefs. I watched it ~ Sue Monk Kidd

Life as a shorty shouldn't be so rough. ~ Inspectah Deck

I'm telling you, you bastard, you're going to pay for that rum. In gold or goods, I don't care which."
"Captain Mallory." Gray's baritone was forbidding. "And I apply that title loosely, as you are no manner of captain in my estimation…I have no intention of compensating you for the loss of your cargo. I will, however, accept your thanks."
"My thanks? For what?"
"For what?" Now O'Shea entered the mix. "For saving that heap of a ship and your worthless, rum-soaked arse, that's what."
"I'll thank you to go to hell," the gravelly voice answered. Mallory, she presumed. "You can't just board a man's craft and pitch a hold full of spirits into the sea. Right knaves, you lot."
"Oh, now we're the knaves, are we?" Gray asked. "I should have let that ship explode around your ears, you despicable sot. Knaves, indeed."
"Well, if you're such virtuous, charitable gents, then how come I'm trussed like a pig?" Sophia craned her neck and pushed the hatch open a bit further. Across the deck, she saw a pair of split-toed boots tied together with rope.
Gray answered, "We had to bind you last night because you were drunk out of your skull. And we're keeping you bound now because you're sober and still out of your skull."
The lashed boots shuffled across the deck, toward Gray. "Let me loose of these ropes, you blackguard, and I'll pound you straight out of your skull into oblivion."
O'Shea responded with a stream of colorful profanity, which Captain Gra ~ Tessa Dare

What were any of us but a handful of weeds. Who was to say what our value was? What was the value of for Vietnam vets playing poker every afternoon in front of the Spanish market on Glendale boulevard, making their moves with a great deck missing a written and a five? Maybe the world depended on them, maybe they were the Fates, or the Graces. ~ Janet Fitch

Old Ironsides"

Aye tear her tattered ensign down
long has it waved on high,
And many an eye has danced to see
That banner in the sky;
Beneath it rung the battle shout,
And burst the cannon's roar;--
The meteor of the ocean air
Shall sweep the clouds no more.

Her deck, once red with heroes' blood,
Where knelt the vanquished foe,
When winds were hurrying o'er the flood,
And waves were white below,
No more shall feel the victor's tread,
Or know the conquered knee;--
The harpies of the shore shall pluck
The eagle of the sea!

Oh, better that her shattered hulk
Should sink beneath the wave;
Her thunders shook the mighty deep,
And there should be her grave;
Nail to the mast her holy flag,
Set every threadbare sail,
And give her to the god of storms,
The lightning and the gale! ~ Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr.

I left him and went up on deck to look out at the slithering city, its glitter of street lamps fizzy under the rain. There's something wrong about a ship in dock, something pathetic, like a bird fluttering in a spill of oil. The Nova was tethered to her berth by ropes and chains, caught in a pool of greasy water. I could feel her shifting under my feet, tugging to be free. ~ Beryl Bainbridge

ferryman's hefty Africans pace short reciprocating arcs on the deck, sweeping and shoveling the black water of the Charles Basin with long stanchion-mounted oars, minting systems of vortices that fall to aft, flailing about one another, tracing out fading and flattening conic sections that Sir Isaac could probably work out in his head. The Hypothesis of Vortices is pressed with many difficulties. The sky's a matted reticule of taut jute and spokeshaved tree-trunks. Gusts make the anchored ships start and jostle like nervous horses hearing distant guns. ~ Neal Stephenson

We can talk about republican or democratic approaches to the economy, but until you fix the student loan bubble - and that's where the real bubble is - and the tuition bubble, we don't have a chance. All this other stuff is shuffling deck-chairs on the Titanic. ~ Mark Cuban

What troubled people especially was not just the tragedy--or even the needlessness--but the element of fate in it all. If the Titanic had heeded any of the six ice messages on Sunday . . . if ice conditions had been normal . . . if the night had been rough or moonlit . . . if she had seen the berg 15 second sooner--or 15 seconds later . . . if she had hit the ice any other way . . . if her watertight bulkheads had been one deck higher . . . if she had carried enough boats . . . if the Californian had only come. Had any one of these "ifs" turned out right, every life might have been save. But they all went against her--a classic Greek tragedy. ~ Walter Lord

Nothin'," Alex says. "We'll talk later, chica. It's not a big deal."
"Don't chica me, Alex," his bride snaps.
"I think she's gonna deck him," Ben murmurs, amused. ~ Simone Elkeles

My silks and fine array, My smiles and languished air, By love are driv'n away And mournful lean Despair Brings me yew to deck my grave: Such end true lovers have. ~ William Blake

I could not help weeping with him - not over my own fate which, however clearly laid out, was just as sad as his, but over the injustices, the iniquities, and the crimes to which the exploited poor are always and everywhere subjected to, by a mob of scoundrels and trash who deck themselves out in many-colored robes, in helmet and plumed hats, in gold and silver embroideries, and take themselves titles of majesty, holiness, eminence, lordship, in order to fleece, bleed, and slaughter the poor. ~ Jean-Marie Deguignet

(Mavis led Lorelei over to a shaded spot on the deck where a large pile of shirts, pants, and socks waited. From where she stood, it was a daunting task.)
How long have you been working on that? Just since the dawn of time, or eternally? (Lorelei) ~ Kinley MacGregor

On your record deck, you played the sound of the middle passage, the blackest sound. You wanted the suffering you didn't have, the authority you thought it would bring. It scared you, but you thought of the swagger it would put in your walk, the admiring glances of your friends. Then came the terror when real darkness first seeped through the walls of your bedroom, the walls designed to keep you safe and dreaming. And finally your rising sense of shame when you admitted to yourself that you were relieved the walls were there. The shame of knowing that you would do nothing, that you would allow it all to carry on. ~ Hari Kunzru

They say you never know what you would do in a hypothetical situation. We'd all like to think we'd be one of the people who gave up their lifejackets and waved a stoic good-bye from the slanting deck of the titanic, someone who jumped in front of a bullet for a stranger, or turned and raced back up the stairs of one of the towers, in search of someone who needed help rather than our own security. But you just don't know for sure if, when things fall apart, you'll think safety first, or if safety will be the last thing on your mind. ~ Huntley Fitzpatrick

'Hairspray' was a movie turned Broadway musical turned Hollywood remake, and that is the 'Lion King' circle of life as we know it in Times Square, the creative loop that swings for the stars and sometimes crashes into the upper deck. ~ James Wolcott