Drowning In Quotes

Let us not tire of preaching love; it is the force that will overcome the world. Let us not tire of preaching love. Though we see that waves of violence succeed in drowning the fire of Christian love, love must win out; it is the only thing that can. ~ Oscar Romero

We don't have to know everything. If you believe in fate and some kind of meaning and sense in this fucked-up world, then believe with abandon, love. Enjoy it. ~ Jessica Park

My hand was on the door handle when for a split second out of nowhere I was terrified, blue-blazing terrified, fear dropping straight through me like a jagged black stone falling fast. I'd felt this before, in the limbo instants before I moved out of my aunt's house, lost my virginity, took my oath as a police officer: those instants when the irrevocable thing you wanted so much suddenly turns real and solid, inches away and speeding at you, a bottomless river rising and no way back once it's crossed. I had to catch myself back from crying out like a little kid drowning in terror, I don't want to do this any more. ~ Tana French

Somewhere in the night a
human being is drowning. ~ Marina Tsvetaeva

Frantic as my arousal built. The feel of Gideon's finger in that darkly sexual place, thrusting in that gentle rhythm, had me rocking backward to meet his inward drives. "You're so beautiful," he murmured, his voice infinitely gentle. "I love making you feel good. Love watching an orgasm move through your body." "Gideon." I was lost, drowning in the powerful joy of being held by him, loved by him. Four days alone had taught me how miserable I'd be if we couldn't work things out, how dull and colorless my world would be without him in it. "I need ~ Sylvia Day

I only had to think of him - of the way it felt to be secured within his arms, of the sometimes soft and sometimes demanding (but always knee-dissolving) way that he kissed me, or of that look on his face whenever his steely-blue eyes locked with mine, like he was drowning in my soul and actually liked it there - and life's problems temporarily melted away. ~ Vanessa Garden

The trouble with drowning in the mess of your own life is that you're not in any shape to save anyone else. You can't be a lighthouse when you're underwater yourself. ~ Lisa Wingate

In this century the writer has carried on a conversation with madness. We might almost say of the twentieth-century writer that he aspires to madness. Some have made it, of course, and they hold special places in our regard. To a writer, madness is a final distillation of self, a final editing down. It's the drowning out of false voices. ~ Don DeLillo

It is the phenomenon somethings called "alienation from self." In its advanced stages, we no longer answer the telephone, because someone might want something; that we could say no without drowning in self-reproach is an idea alien to this game. Every encounter demands too much, tears the nerves, drains the will, and the specter of something as small as an unanswered letter arouses such disproportionate guilt that answering it becomes out of the question. To assign unanswered letters their proper weight, to free us from the expectations of others, to give us back to ourselves - there lies the great, the singular power of self-respect. Without it, one eventually discovers the final turn of the screw: one runs away to find oneself, and finds no one at home. ~ Joan Didion

She couldn't get enough, couldn't breathe, couldn't think. There was just Brady. She felt as if she was lost in a world of him, drowning in him, suffocating in him. ~ K.A. Linde

I've been shot at, hacked at, pummelled with catapult-stones, doused in flaming oil, tipped into drowning-pits, even covered by a landslide. I've seen every kind of violence humans know how to wreak, and I have learnt that you are creatures beyond cruel, beyond vengeful, beyond dishonest. So, yes, Knight. You are all villains in my mind. ~ Ben Galley

It was another one of his enigmatic brainteasers that he never elaborated on. I should have pressed for more, but I was too busy being swallowed up by him. I was distracted from everything, blinded by lust and drowning in his intensity. He completely consumed me. ~ Jodi Ellen Malpas

The horses suddenly began to neigh, protesting
Against those who were drowning them in the ocean.
The horses sank to the bottom, neighing, neighing.
Until they had all gone down.
That is all. Nevertheless, I pity them,
Those bay horses, that never saw land again. ~ Boris Slutsky

Why are we not tasting the bliss of Bhakti? Because we are taking shelter of stone boats. We are sinking and drowning in Maya & still we are further taking shelter of stone boats and this can go on life after life. ~ Radhanath Swami

I took the stone bowl in both hands and poured out my time onto the ground drowning hapless insects feeding the weeds until the sun stood looking down and stole the stain. Seeing in the vessel's cup a thousand cracks a thousand cracks I looked back the way I came and saw a trail green with memories lost whoever made this bowl was a fool but the greater he who carried it. Stone ~ Steven Erikson

Although sometimes I know it seems impossible, there ain't no need in drowning in your sorrow. If things are as bad as they can be, you can be sure there'll be a brighter tomorrow. ~ Shaggy

We are not a voice for the voiceless. The truth is that there is a lot of noise out there drowning out quiet voices, and many people have stopped listening to the cries of their neighbors. Lots of folks have put their hands over their ears to drown out the suffering. Institutions have distanced themselves from the disturbing cries..

It is a beautiful thing when folks in poverty are no longer just a missions project but become genuine friends and family with whom we laugh, cry, dream, and struggle. One of the verses I have grown to love is the one where Jesus is preparing to leave the disciples and says, "I no longer call you servants.... Instead, I have called you friends" (John 15:15). Servanthood is a fine place to begin, but gradually we move toward mutual love, genuine relationships. Someday, perhaps we can even say those words that Ruth said to Naomi after years of partnership: "Where you go I will go, and where you stay I will stay. Your people will be my people and your God my God. Where you die I will die, and there I will be buried" (Ruth 1:16-17). ~ Shane Claiborne

Don't worry. He's out there, and we're in here. If he couldn't manage to get through those bars in all the months they held him trapped on this side, he's not going to manage to get back through them before Racso's next visit, now is he? I'd barely got the words out before Mr. Cough drew in another gurgling breath as if he were drowning in whatever filth was filling his lungs. ~ Mark Lawrence

Did God get out of bed one morning and draw back the curtains (Reggie's imaginary God led a very domesticated life) and think, 'A drowning in a hotel swimming pool, I fancy. We haven't had that one in a while. ~ Kate Atkinson

CAN YOU SEE?
The first...
Tear once I found out that you left without a goodbye?
The first...
Drizzle of rain drowning all my hope?
The first...
And last heart of mine break in two?
The first...
Moment we met? ~ Elizabeth Heller

One of those chaps would make short work of a fellow. Pick the bones clean no matter who it was. Ordinary meat for them. A corpse is meat gone bad. Well and what's cheese? Corpse of milk. I read in that Voyages in China that the Chinese say a white man smells like a corpse. Cremation better. Priests dead against it. Devilling for the other firm. Wholesale burners and Dutch oven dealers. Time of the plague. Quicklime feverpits to eat them. Lethal chamber. Ashes to ashes. Or bury at sea. Where is that Parsee tower of silence? Eaten by birds. Earth, fire, water. Drowning they say is the pleasantest. See your whole life in a flash. But being brought back to life no. Can't bury in the air however. Out of a flying machine. Wonder ~ James Joyce

His mind filled with visions of a decadent kleptocracy in rapid decline, abetted by both political parties. America's masses, fed on processed poison bought with a food stamp swipe card. Low-skill workers, structurally unable to ever contribute again and too dumb to know their old jobs weren't coming back. The banks in Gotham leaching the last drops of wealth out of the country. Corporations unrestrained by any notion of national interest. The system of property law in shambles. The world drowning in debt. ~ George Packer

Only a shipwrecked person who has just escaped drowning could understand the psychology of someone who breaks out in laughter just because he is able to breathe ~ Kobo Abe

While Otto ran here and there, carefully choosing places to urinate, I felt over every inch of my body the scratches of sexual abandonment, the danger of drowning in scorn for myself and nostalgia for him. I got up and went back along the path; I whistled again, and waited for Otto to return. ~ Elena Ferrante

To love in absence is to float on ever still waters. No sudden currents, no treacherous tides, no possibility of drowning. ~ Steven Erikson

One way to overcome a fear of drowning is to become buoyant in the sea of life. ~ Gia Sola

The sudden departure of several quintillion atoms from a universe that they had no right to be in anyway caused a wild imbalance in the harmony of the Sum Totality which it tried frantically to retrieve, wiping out a number of subrealities in the process. Huge surges of raw magic boiled uncontrolled around the very foundations of the multiverse itself, welling up through every crevice into hitherto peaceful dimensions and causing novas, supernovas, stellar collisions, wild flights of geese and drowning of imaginary continents. ~ Terry Pratchett

He took her face in his hands and claimed her mouth with his. It felt like he had been drowning, and she was his life raft. This was not a soft, sensual kiss. This was a kiss of desperation. A kiss of need, not want. And Cali needed it just as much as Matthew. ~ Sherri Hayes

I think I'm just trying to find what's real. Dreamin' of mansions isn't a bad thing. But there's got to be more to life than just enduring or dreaming. And too often, it feels like hope is the only thing most people have. Rich, poor, sick, healthy - we're all just drowning in dreams and hoping someone else will make them come true. ~ Amy Harmon

He'd discovered that his memories of that summer were like bad movie montages - young lovers tossing a Frisbee in the park, sharing a melting ice-cream cone, bicycling along the river, laughing, talking, kissing, a sappy score drowning out the dialogue because the screenwriter had no idea what these two people might say to each other. ~ Richard Russo

The magic rarely happens within our comfort zone, but outside it, on the ragged, scary edge, where we have to fight like hell to keep from drowning in the unknown. ~ David DuChemin

My anxieties as to behavior are futile, ever more so, to infinity. If the other, incidentally or negligently, gives the telephone number of a place where he or she can be reached at certain times, I immediately grow baffled: should I telephone or shouldn't I? (It would do no good to tell me that I can telephone - that is the objective, reasonable meaning of the message - for it is precisely this permission I don't know how to handle.) What is futile is what apparently has and will have no consequence. But for me, an amorous subject, everything which is new, everything which disturbs, is received not as a fact but in the aspect of a sign which must be interpreted. From the lover's point of view, the fact becomes consequential because it is immediately transformed into a sign: it is the sign, not the fact, which is consequential (by its aura). If the other has given me this new telephone number, what was that the sign of? Was it an invitation to telephone right away, for the pleasure of the call, or only should the occasion arise, out of necessity? My answer itself will be a sign, which the other will inevitably interpret, thereby releasing, between us, a tumultuous maneuvering of images. Everything signifies: by this proposition, I entrap myself, I bind myself in calculations, I keep myself from enjoyment.
Sometimes, by dint of deliberating about "nothing" (as the world sees it), I exhaust myself; then I try, in reaction, to return -- like a drowning man who stamps on th ~ Roland Barthes

And the moment she held that diary in her hands, she summoned all her demons at once. The moment she opened it a hand from every page held her and pulled her inside. And in a moment even before she could realize what was happening to her she was drowning in the sea, fighting to breathe and fighting to swim back to the surface. But the hands kept pulling her down deep into the darkness until her voice died slowly. ~ Akshay Vasu

I'll hold you 'til the end of time, if that's all you want from me. But there's so much more I could do for you. I would treasure you. I would-" He broke off, leaning so close she felt as if she were drowning in the tropical azure and ocean green of his eyes. "Marry me, Cassandra- and we'll tell them all to go to hell. ~ Lisa Kleypas

You idiot!" She spat, flattening her ears. "What are you doing in my territory?"
"Drowning?" Replied Graystripe. ~ Erin Hunter

Telling me that I'm obsessed with talking about racism in America is like telling me I'm obsessed with swimming when I'm drowning. ~ Hari Kondabolu

Sometimes, drunk, I ruminate on the state of my liver, and think of all the cirrhotics I have watched turn yellow and die. They either bleed out, raving, coughing up and drowning in blood from ruptured esophageal veins, or, in coma, they slip away, slip blissfully away down the yellow-brick ammonia-scented road to oblivion. ~ Samuel Shem

You ain't no Hepburn and I ain't no Fonda, but if you were drowning in Golden Ponda, mouth to mouth I'd resuscitate you. ~ Alice Cooper

Natures of your kind, with strong, delicate senses, the soul-oriented, the dreamers, poets, lovers are always superior to us creatures of the mind. You take your being from your mothers. You live fully; you were endowed with the strength of love, the ability to feel. Whereas we creatures of reason, we don't live fully; we live in an arid land, even though we often seem to guide and rule you. Yours is the plentitude of life, the sap of the fruit, the garden of passion, the beautiful landscape of art. Your home is the earth; ours is the world of ideas. You are in danger of drowning in the world of the senses; ours is the danger of suffocating in an airless void. You are an artist; I am a thinker. You sleep at your mother's breast; I wake in the desert. For me the sun shines; for you the moon and the stars. ~ Hermann Hesse

Her feelings as dark as the night sky, the moon was the only thing making her come alive
So she got some paper and pen to let the ink spill it all out because talking never seemed to work.
Blood drops fell on her little piece of paper, drowning it along with her. By the time the blood dried up it left her with nothing but red dust. Red. The same color her eyes were captivated by.
They never told her that there is no way to get over crazy, messy things in life. There's only crossing that red sea as if you're walking through the wilderniss. The sun will rise when you've gone through the depts of it all. Writing wont matter anymore. Don't you understand? You're life is not messy little girl, you're just crazy sometimes. ~ N

People have been trying to understand dogs ever since the beginning of time. One never knows what they'll do. You can read every day where a dog saved the life of a drowning child, or lay down his life for his master. Some people call this loyalty. I don't. I may be wrong, but I call it love - the deepest kind of love. . . . It's a shame that people all over the world can't have that kind of love in their hearts. . . . There would be no wars, slaughter, or murder; no greed or selfishness. It would be the kind of world that God wants us to have - a wonderful world. - Wilson Rawls, Where the Red Fern Grows ~ Rebecca Frankel

He strokes my hair and tells me stories and tucks me close like he's afraid I'll disappear. He paints pictures of people and places until I'm drowning in a drug of dreams to escape a world with no refuge, no relief, no release but his reassurances in my ear. ~ Tahereh Mafi

People who are drowning in a sea of problems and have lost all sense of self-worth often grasp at egotism and alienation from everything outside themselves as their only point of fixity, and this can help anchor and fortify them--if only to the point of madness. This is what it can come to, then, if you live in a hostile environment and have lost all your dignity. (61) ~ Mahmoud Dowlatabadi

High expectations I have. In hardness I labor that, fuller joy at the top I may partake. Nevertheless, in vain I toil. And then, friends'and people's reproach I become, because of my drowning hopes that keeps me out of the circle of richies and honor. I'm the distance they keep like plague, because I have no physical wealth and glamour like them. But in all my stony falls and griefs, the word of restoration in the blood given to me upon the altar of salvation, I cling. For in the end, mercy will attend my situation and see to my hard labor with crown of great success. ~ Darmie Orem

What, concretely, is Enlightenment ?" "Seeing Reality as it is," said the Master. "Doesn't everyone see Reality as it is?" "Oh, no! Most people see it as they think it is." "What's the difference?" "The difference between thinking you are drowning in a stormy sea and knowing you cannot drown because there isn't any water in sight for miles around. ~ Anthony De Mello

I am drowning in negativism, self-hate, doubt, madness - and even I am not strong enough to deny the routine, the rote, to simplify. No, I go plodding on, afraid that the blank hell in back of my eyes will break through, spewing forth like a dark pestilence; afraid that the disease which eats away the pith of my body with merciless impersonality will break forth in obvious sores and warts, screaming Traitor, sinner, imposter. ~ Sylvia Plath

In the cramped confines of the toilet I had trouble getting out of my wet trousers, which clung to my legs like a drowning man. The new ones were quite complicated too in that they had more legs than a spider; either that or they didn't have enough legs to get mine into. The numbers failed to add up. Always there was one trouser leg too many or one of my legs was left over. From the outside it may have looked like a simple toilet, but once you were locked in here the most basic rules of arithmetic no longer held true. ~ Geoff Dyer

There is a gulf as wide as an ocean between should and want, and I am drowning in it. ~ Jodi Picoult

Most people go to the office and sit at a desk. When firefighters go to the office, we might birth a baby in the morning, save a drowning surfer in the afternoon, and run into a fire at night. What could be more interesting than that? ~ Caroline Paul

Fallon recognized what Logan was doing. Instead of drowning in wine as Fallon had done, Logan teased and joked his way through the day. ~ Donna Grant

There's always a siren, singing you to shipwreck. Some of us may be more susceptible than others are, but there's always a siren. It may be with us all our lives, or it may be many years or decades before we find it or it finds us. But when it does find us, if we're lucky we're Odysseus tied up to the ship's mast, hearing the song with perfect clarity, but ferried to safety by a crew whose ears have been plugged with beeswax. If we're not at all lucky, we're another sort of sailor stepping off the deck to drown in the sea. ~ Caitlin R. Kiernan

No one with an ounce of empathy could fail to be appalled by the distressing footage – taken on fur farms in Finland, Sweden, the
US, and other so-called "high-welfare" countries – of foxes, rabbits, minks, and other animals who were left to suffer in filthy wire cages with untreated wounds, injuries, and even missing limbs, sometimes alongside the rotting corpses of other animals.
These frightened, distressed animals often mutilate themselves and their cagemates before their short lives come to an end through painful anal electrocution, neck-breaking, drowning, gassing, or strangulation. ~ Mimi Bekhechi

Let it hurt. Pick those flowers on your lungs and let it wither. Let your heart stop beating for someone who doesn't deserves it. Let yourself be burn to your worst degree. Fall right down on your knees and scream the damn pain inside you. You've let the love to do its work, let it hurt. That's part of its work.
Let it bleed. Let the tears roll down your face. For once, allow yourself to be an artist. Let your mouth bleed with the unspoken feelings you've been wanting to say and be the author of your own story. Let the abstract in you be seen by the people who are doubting you. Do not cut your wrist, blood and scar might ruin your skin. I know, your heart was cut by the words they've stabbed on you, let it bleed with poetry and speak for yourself.
Let it heal. For how many times people could've told you that time heals. Let me now tell you that it's you, and you only, who could heal yourself. You could pick your broken pieces and build a better and stronger you. Let it heal, not for anyone. Let it heal for yourself. Even for once, let it be for yourself.
And let it go. Snap out of the darkness you're in right now. Let go of the pain that's stopping you from moving forward. Let the toxic people go, you could've been better without them. Stop holding on to the anchor. Stop drowning yourself from sadness. You could always be happy. Just learn to let go of the things that keep you away from that possibility, just let go. ~ Angela Diloy

I want to change my punctuation. I long for exclamation marks, but I'm drowning in ellipses. ~ Isaac Marion

It was a relief to see his father, who'd always been an unfailing source of reassurance and comfort. They clasped hands in a firm shake, and used their free arms to pull close for a moment. Such demonstrations of affection weren't common among fathers and sons of their rank, but then, they'd never been a conventional family.
After a few hearty thumps on the back, Sebastian drew back and glanced over him with the attentive concern that hearkened to Gabriel's earliest memories. Not missing the traces of weariness on his face, his father lightly tousled his hair the way he had when he was a boy. "You haven't been sleeping."
"I went carousing with friends for most of last night," Gabriel admitted. "It ended when we were all too drunk to see a hole through a ladder."
Sebastian grinned and removed his coat, tossing the exquisitely tailored garment to a nearby chair. "Reveling in the waning days of bachelorhood, are we?"
"It would be more accurate to say I'm thrashing like a drowning rat."
"Same thing." Sebastian unfastened his cuffs and began to roll up his shirtsleeves. An active life at Heron's Point, the family estate in Sussex, had kept him as fit and limber as a man half his age. Frequent exposure to the sunlight had gilded his hair and darkened his complexion, making his pale blue eyes startling in their brightness.
While other men of his generation had become staid and settled, the duke was more vigorous than ever, in part because his youngest s ~ Lisa Kleypas

I do not see how it is possible for a man to die worth fifty million of dollars, or ten million of dollars, in a city full of want, when he meets almost every day the withered hand of beggary and the white lips of famine. How a man can withstand all that, and hold in the clutch of his greed twenty or thirty million of dollars, is past my comprehension. I do not see how he can do it. I should not think he could do it any more than he could keep a pile of lumber on the beach, where hundreds and thousands of men were drowning in the sea. ~ Robert G. Ingersoll

They all seemed hungry, happy, and healthy enough in their buzzing - oh the days were hot, and the noise of bees filled the air that was dusty with pollen and sun haze, and there were tiny black flies stuck to one another crowded by the creek and a creek stink rising from the deep pool under the willow tree where a wheat sack of new kittens had been drowned, and their tiny terrible struggling had shot like an electric current through the confusion of muddy water and up the arm of the person who had tied the stone around the mouth of the sack and thrust it into the water; and the culprit had not been able to brush away the current; it penetrated her body and made her heart beat with fear and pity. I was the culprit. ~ Janet Frame

Describing passive violence in this culture is kinda like someone who is drowning in the middle of the ocean giving you the low-down on water. The only way you can really understand passive violence is by going somewhere far, far away from phones, news, TV, the Internet. ~ Inga Muscio

Hundreds of experiments into the misinformation effect have been conducted, and people have been convinced of all sorts of things. Screwdrivers become wrenches, white men become black men, and experiences involving other people get traded back and forth. In one study, [Elizabeth] Loftus convinced people they were once lost in a shopping mall as a child. She had subjects read four essays provided by family members, but the one about getting lost as a kid was fake. A quarter of the subjects incorporated the fake story into their memory and even provided details about the fictional event that were not included in the narrative. Loftus even convinced people they shook hands with Bugs Bunny, who isn't a Disney character, when they visited Disney World as a kid, just by showing them a fake advertisement where a child was doing the same. She altered the food preferences of subjects in one experiment where she lied to people, telling them they had reported becoming sick from eating certain things as a child. A few weeks later, when offered those same foods, those people avoided them. In other experiments, she implanted memories of surviving drowning and fending off animal attacks - none of them real, all of them accepted into the autobiography of the subjects without resistance. ~ David McRaney

You ought to know how to rise above the trivialities of life, in which most people are found drowning themselves. ~ D.T. Suzuki

A good father. A man with a head, a heart, and a soul. A man capable of listening, of leading and respecting a child, and not of drowning his own defects in him. Someone whom a child will not only love because he's his father, but will also admire for the person he is. Someone he would want to grow up to resemble. ~ Carlos Ruiz Zafon

Herveus is impervious to emotions, but Aveline has unlocked something in him. He is drowning in a great wave, just trying to get back to the shore. The main memories he has from his childhood are of hunger. Just the echo of the gnawing pain makes him double over clasping his stomach. The other strongest memories are of violence - beatings from strangers leaving him unable to move for days. In all the haunting recollections, it had always been just him, alone. How could I forget my sister? It was like an impenetrable gate had opened in his mind, bringing forth another set of sad blue eyes from a time forgotten. I hadn't been alone ~ Michelle Connor

I was awash on a sea of desire, drowning in everything about her. Her passion answered mine as she murmured my name and clung to me so tightly that her nails dug into my skin, as though she feared she might lose me if she let go. ~ Richelle Mead

Sure, QuizBowl wasn't a cool activity to join and, yeah, the idea of answering difficult questions in front of an audience terrified me. But it wasn't anything like the fear that accompanied my drowning nightmare - harrowing and visceral. No, this fear made me feel fizzy. Hopeful.
In fact, this fear felt like waking up do discover I am still here. ~ Emery Lord

I remember Liz, her face white, delicate as an ash on the wind; her red lips staining the cigarette; her full breasts under the taut black jersey. She said to me, "But think how happy you can make a man someday." Yes, I'm thinking, and so far it's all right. But then I do a flipover and reach out in my mind to E., seeing a baseball game, maybe, perhaps watching television, or roaring with careless laughter at some dirty joke with the boys, beer cans lying about green and shiny gold, and ash trays. I spiral back to me, sitting here, swimming, drowning, sick with longing. I have too much conscience injected in me to break customs without disasterous effects; I can only lean enviously against the boundary and hate, hate, hate the boys who can dispel sexual hunger freely, without misgiving, and be whole, while I drag out from date to date in soggy desire, always unfulfilled. The whole thing sickens me. ~ Sylvia Plath

I can't listen to you. I can't listen to your voice. It's as though I'd drunk a bottle of anise and fallen asleep wrapped in a quilt of roses. It pulls me along – and I know I'm drowning – but I go on down. ~ Federico Garcia Lorca

Maybe I can do some writing then. The phrase made him sick. It had no meaning anymore. Like a word that is repeated until it becomes gibberish that sentence, for him, had been used to extinction. It sounded silly; like some bit of cliché from a soap opera. Hero saying in dramatic tones – Now, by God, maybe I can do some writing. Senseless. For a moment, though, he wondered if it was true. Now that she was leaving could he forget about her and really get some work done? Quit his job? Go somewhere and hold up in a cheap furnished room and write? You have $123.89 in the bank, his mind informed him. He pretended it was the only thing that kept him from it. But, far back in his mind, he wondered if he could write anything. Often the question threw itself at him when he was least expecting it. You have four hours every morning, the statement would rise like a menacing wraith. You have time to write many thousands of words. Why don't you? And the answer was always lost in a tangle of becauses and wells and endless reasons that he clung to like a drowning man at straws.("Mad House") ~ Richard Matheson

I got lost in the feel of him, in the heat of his skin, in the way his body shook when he broke away and I felt like I was dreaming, like I'd forgotten how to think.
(...) We broke apart, fighting to breathe, holding on to each other like we were drowning, like we'd been lost, left for dead in a very large expanse of sea. ~ Tahereh Mafi

There are two easy ways to die in the desert - thirst and drowning. ~ Craig Childs

Alison's words were falling stones. Carole reached to grab them, to hold them, to put them in order. It was so hard, the stones so heavy. The words kept coming. Her daughter's face was before her, her lovely, dear face, and she could no nothing to help her. Not now, not while the voices were drowning her out, burying sense and decency and love. ~ Sonja Yoerg

My heart stopped twice. They had to stab me to drain the blood from my lungs because I was drowning in my own blood. ~ Ozzy Osbourne

Not satisfied with endlessly pulling drowning men from the torrents rushing past, Day went upstream to see who was throwing the poor bastards into the water in the first place - and ~ James Carroll

We should not laugh at the person who becoming caught up in his prayer bends his body or moves about in strange ways. Perhaps he moves in this manner to wave off unwelcome thoughts that would interrupt the prayer. Would we find it funny if we saw a person drowning going through strange motions doing whatever was necessary to save his life? ~ Baal Shem Tov

Man, I was drowning in sadness. And Angelina, she lifted me right up out of there. ~ Billy Bob Thornton

She was whispering into it in some language that sounded like butterflies drowning in honey. ~ Chris Cleave

What else is there to make life tolerable? We stand on the shore of an ocean, crying to the night and to emptiness. Sometimes a voice of one drowning, and in a moment the silence returns. The world seems to me quite dreadful, the unhappiness of many people is very great, and I often wonder how they all endure it. It is usually the central thing around which their lives are built, and I suppose if they did not live most of their lives in the things of the moment, they would not be able to go on. ~ Bertrand Russell

It felt like everything was rising up in me, like I was drowning in this weirdly painful joy, but I couldn't say it back. I just looked at him and let him look at me until he nodded, lips pursed and turned away, placing the side of his head against the window. ~ John Green

I nodded, unsure if Ted sounded admiring or angry. 'I waded in but I couldn't find him. I mean, is it possible - the water wasn't deep enough for him to drown. It doesn't make any sense.'
'My band made four brilliant albums and never had a single goddamn hit. We were supposed to be the American Rolling Stones, and we couldn't get more than five minutes of airplay. Does that make sense?' Ted stubbed out his cigarette. ~ Elizabeth Hand

I belong to the 8% of the world population who calm their apprehension by drowning it in numbers. ~ Muriel Barbery

I can't tell if a straw ever saved a drowning man, but I know that a mere glance is enough to make dspair pause. For in truth, we who are creatures of impulse, are creatures of despair. ~ Joseph Conrad

The Jinmoti of Bozlen Two kill the hereditary ritual assassins of the new Yearking's immediate family by drowning them in the tears of the Continental Empathaur in its Sadness Season. ~ Iain M. Banks

A week ago, the Water Rescue Society had held an evening there, as evidenced by the slogan hanging on the wall: THE CAUSE OF HELPING THE DROWNING IS IN THE HANDS OF THE DROWNING THEMSELVES. ~ Ilya Ilf

Comics play a trite but lusty tune on the C natural keys of human nature. They rouse the most primitive, but also the most powerful, reverberations in the noisy cranial sound-box of consciousness, drowning out more subtle symphonies. Comics scorn finesse, thereby incurring the wrath of linguistic adepts. They defy the limits of accepted fact and convention, thus amortizing to apoplexy the ossified arteries of routine thought. ~ William Moulton Marston

I realised I really didn't know what I was doing and I felt her trace drowning in the middle of the cars and the people, in the middle of the streets and far away, in the secrets she so jealously kept.
I felt it. We were ever so close, ever so far. ~ Emiliano Campuzano

We try, we struggle, all the time to find words to express our love. The quality, the quantity, certain that no two people have experienced it before in the history of creation. Perhaps Catherine and Heathcliff, perhaps Romeo and Juliet, maybe Tristan and Isolde, maybe Hero and Leander, but these are just characters, make-believe. We have known each other forever, since before conception even. We remember playing together in a playpen, crossing paths at FAO Schwarz. We remember meeting in front of the Holy Temple in the days before Christ, we remember greeting each other at the Forum, at the Parthenon, on passing ships as Christopher Columbus sailed to America. We have survived pogrom together, we have died in Dachau together, we have been lynched by the Ku Klux Klan together. There has been cancer, polio, the bubonic plague, consumption, morphine addiction. We have had children together, we have been children together, we were in the womb together. Our history is so deep and wide and long, we have known each other a million years. And we don't know how to express this kind of love, this kind of feeling. I get paralyzed sometimes. One day, we are in the shower and I want to say to him, I could be submerged in sixty feet of water right now, never drowning, never even fearing drowning, knowing I would always be safe with you here, knowing that it would be ok to die as long as you are here. I want to say this but don't. ~ Elizabeth Wurtzel

Haunted

You haunt me in my dreams
I can only hear my drowning screams
Is it because I'm afraid of you
Or am I afraid of this feeling
The feeling of being blue
Maybe it's me you are healing
Can I admit that it's my heart you are stealing
I'm afraid of being let down
Can you relieve me of the sound
The voices tell me to hide
In my mind is where they reside
Can I ignore the calmness you bring
You hold my heart on a string ~ Stace Lee

Faith shall save your Soul from Death. Without Faith, Death is a drowning, the end of ends, and what sane man wouldn't fear that? But with Faith, Death is nothing worse than the end of the voyage we call life, and the beginning of an eternal voyage in a company of our Loved Ones, with griefs and woes smoothed out, and under the capacity of our Creator... ~ David Mitchell

I once wrote a short story called 'The Best Blues Singer in the World,' and it went like this: 'The streets that Balboa walked were his own private ocean, and Balboa was drowning.' End of story. That says it all. Nothing else to say. I've been rewriting that same story over and over again. All my plays are rewriting that same story. ~ August Wilson

Sometimes I felt as if we were all wading around in grief, reluctant to admit to others how far we were waving or drowning. ~ Jojo Moyes

Pragmatism is cold comfort when millions of lives are in the balance," conceded Boucher. "It's a little like saying, 'Sorry, I can't rescue you from drowning until I finish waxing my car.'" The president chuckled ~ Jeremy Robinson

When I look at my daily schedule, I feel like a trout flopping about on a dock, drowning in the air. Some people are ruthless with their schedules. Not me. I wing it. ~ Douglas Coupland

Where do starfish come from?" asked Sam.
"From the sky," answered Stella. "Starfish are shooting stars that fell in love with the sea."
"Weren't the stars afraid of drowning?" asked Sam.
"No," said Stella. "They all learned how to swim. ~ Marie-Louise Gay

Asia discovered two remedies for the cruelty of man, art and religion. America discarded both and is drowning in hate and aggressivity. ~ Anais Nin

But, even drowning in Hawk, I didn't lose a hint of me. ~ Kristen Ashley

Even in a sea of names, a drowning mermaid has a way of standing out. ~ Erika Swyler

Drowning in silence; for in silence I shall never be disappointed … ~ Samiha Totanji

Nanak's encounter of God and God's court was in fact a profound hallucinatory Near-Death Experience caused by drowning that strengthened his pre-conceived notion of a rational, compassionate and unorthodox society. ~ Abhijit Naskar

Flora reached out and grabbed hold of William Spiver's hand, and he held on to her. It was as if he were drowning and she were standing on solid ground. According to TERRIBLE THINGS! drowning people were desperate, out of their minds with fear. In their panic they could pull you, the rescuer, under, if you weren't careful. So Flora held on tightly to William Spiver. And he held on tightly back. ~ Kate DiCamillo

If you're not going to immerse yourself in your work as a writer then don't write. But beware, if you're a writer who does not write, you stand a good chance of drowning in the world that surrounds you. ~ Jason E. Hodges

I'm a maker of ballads right pretty
I write them right here in the street
You can buy them all over the city
yours for a penny a sheet
I'm a word pecker out of the printers
out of the dens of Gin Lane
I'll write up a scene on a counter
- confessions and sins in the main, boys
confessions and sins in the main

Then you'll find me in Madame Geneva's
keeping the demons at bay
There's nothing like gin for drowning them in
but they'll always be back on a hanging day, on a hanging day

They come rattling over the cobbles
they sit on their coffins of black
Some are struck dumb, some gabble
top-heavy on brandy or sack
The pews are all full of fine fellows
and the hawker has set up her shop
As they're turning them off at the gallows
she'll be selling right under the drop, boys
selling right under the drop

Then you'll find me in Madame Geneva's
keeping the demons at bay
There's nothing like gin for drowning them in
but they'll always be back on a hanging day, on a hanging day ~ Mark Knopfler