Fins Quotes

He had never recognized how noisy the civilized world was. Here, drifting in almost total silence, with no scents other than the singed odor of the raft, no flavors on his tongue, nothing moving but the slow procession of shark fins, every vista empty save water and sky, his time unvaried and unbroken, his mind was freed of an encumbrance that civilization had imposed on it. ~ Anonymous

How do you always know just what to say?" I ask.
His laugh rumbles through me. "Practice, I guess."
I pull back and give him a quizzical look.
"I spent three years imagining what I would say to you if you were mine," he says, tugging me close.
"I should hope I know what to say now that I've got you. ~ Tera Lynn Childs

We may think of them as silent, but fish make many sounds that are rarely appreciated by the human ear. Clownfish chirp and pop by gnashing their teeth together. Oyster toadfish hum and blare like foghorns by quickly contracting muscles attached to their swim bladders. Croaking gourami make their signature noise by snapping the tendons of their pectoral fins. Altogether, more than eight hundred fish species are known to hoot, moan, grunt, groan, thump, bark, or otherwise vocalize. ~ Anonymous

Let me love you, girl who came from the sea. Let us swim to the bottom of the ocean where we can be anything and where no one can find us. We will grow gills and breathe salt water. We will sprout fins and scales and make our home in underground caves. Or else will drown there. But either way, i will be happy ~ Carolee Dean

Everything drifts. Everything is slowly swirling, philosophies tangled with the grocery lists, unreal-real anxieties like rose thorns waiting to tear the uncertain flesh, nonentities of thoughts floating like plankton, green and orange particles, seaweed
lots of that, dark purple and waving, sharks with fins like cutlasses, herself held underwater by her hair, snared around auburn-rusted anchor chains. ~ Margaret Laurence

Poetry is a fossil rock-print of a fin and a wing, with an illegible oath between. ~ Carl Sandburg

Anything's possible in Human Nature," Chacko said in his Reading Aloud voice. Talking to the darkness now, suddenly insensitive to his little fountain-haired niece. "Love. Madness. Hope. Infinite joy."
Of the four things that were Possible in Human Nature, Rahel thought that Infinnate Joy sounded the saddest. Perhaps because of the way Chacko said it.
Infinnate Joy. With a church sound to it. Like a sad fish with fins all over. ~ Arundhati Roy

I love my Force Fins, which are the kind of fins Special Forces use and really are adapted from the fins of fish. They're very efficient. They are so beautiful, a pair is in the Museum of Modern Art. The set I have are ruby red. I call them my ruby flippers. ~ Sylvia Earle

Pools of blood are not recreational even lifeguards drown when the undertow breaks bread with the underbelly demons disguised as sharks have not put enough thought into their costumes a wiseman stays ashore when pointed fins read like italian subtitles the end is near ( ... ) the beginning ~ Saul Williams

My set comes with a smaller fin in the back, i find this helps me release off the top a lot easier ~ Julian Wilson

Having fins in the water was useful to travel quickly, but the bulky appendage left much to be desired for exerting dominance. Something about being unable to sit, legs open, left me feeling feminine."
~Fin ~ Brenda Pandos

OUR SPECIES has always been itching for a fight. Some say we started strangling each other with our fish fins as soon as we crawled out of the primordial ooze. ~ John O'Bryan

Like many kids, I used to pretend all sorts of things. I would climb into a tree and imagine that I was on an island, that the grass below we was an ocean, that the leaves were the fins of sharks. Perhaps unlike many people, I never really stopped. I still have a childlike predisposition to fantasise and share my fantasies. ~ Mohsin Hamid

Cocktail hour at the embassy consisted of lots of charming men and women in suits and LBDs drinking Buck's Fizz and being friendly to one another, and so what if half of them had gill slits and dorsal fins under the tailoring, and the embassy smelled of seaweed because it was on an officially derelict oil rig in the middle of the North Sea, and the Other Side has the technical capability to exterminate every human being within two hundred kilometers of a coastline if they think we've violated the Benthic Treaty? ~ Charles Stross

You planned this? Why?"
"Yes." He walked over to one of the picnic tables and grabbed a backpack, which just happened to be there. He pulled a blanket from the pack and laid it down on the sand next to her.
She jumped up and away from him with her fins in her hands. She held them up like a weapon, not taking her eyes off of him. He saw her reaction and it didn't take long to figure out the thoughts running through her mind.
"Hey! No. It's not what you think." He stepped closer, but she swung her fins at him and whacked him across the arm. "Ouch!" He looked at her like she was insane.
"Stay away from me. This is so not happening. I'll hit you again, I swear. ~ S. Jackson Rivera

A snake doesn't need feet in grass.
A seed doesn't need eyes in soil.
A bird doesn't need a parachute in air.
A fish doesn't need a suit in water.
A bee doesn't need sugar in a hive.
A spider doesn't need thread in a bush.
A flower doesn't need perfume in a garden.
A bat doesn't need binoculars in a cave.
A giraffe doesn't need a ladder in the woods.
A cricket doesn't need a violin in nature.
A camel doesn't need wheels in a desert.
A wolf doesn't need a knife in a forest.
A lion doesn't need a spear in a jungle.

If you throw a bird off a cliff, you are helping it find its wings.
If you throw a fish into water, you are helping it find its fins.
If you throw a seed into soil, you are helping it find its roots.
If you throw a bat into the dark, you are helping it find its eyes.
If you throw a flower into dirt, you are helping it find its petals.
If you throw a cub into the jungle, you are helping it find its fight.
If you throw a camel into the desert, you are helping it find its stride.
If you throw a scorpion into nature, you are helping it find its sting.
If you throw a serpent into grass, you are helping it find its fangs.
If you throw a wolf into the jungle, you are helping it find its bite. ~ Matshona Dhliwayo

There is usually a time in life when one wakes up wondering where life is leading, the future still a rushing brace of questions and ambition and opportunity. lately for Matthew, waking up feels like one thousand rhetorical questions asked without urgency, in sleepy disbelief. The one currently wedged into the head like something parasitic with spiny little fins or teeth to anchor in with is this: Am I living in a Goddam Steely Dan song? ~ Dan Kennedy

He loves her. Circumstances and considerations - what are those? The whole world recedes and there is room for only one thought: he loves her. She had not misunderstood him. She is not an eccentric and a burden. He has been thinking of her as she has of him. Above her bed the broad fins whirl gently; the night will pass and the morning will come and he loves her. ~ Ahdaf Soueif

Well ... I love moving in extra dimensions. Not just backwards and forwards, but up and down and around. And fins. I love swimming with fins - human feet are practically useless underwater. I love all the unique things you see on each dive. Millions of
little aquatic soap operas playing out between all the creatures. And the silence. Well, it's not really silent
down there, but the roar of bubbles blocks any other
sound ... ~ Kirsten Hubbard

Cats can derive their nutrition from the air they breathe until you get the message that the Fish Fin Buffet you put in their bowl three days ago will never be acceptable. ~ Kathy Young

Darius was clearly of the opinion
That the air is also man's dominion,
And that, with paddle or fins or pinion,
We soon or late
Shall navigate
The azure, as now we sail the sea. ~ John Townsend Trowbridge

It all began when ... they're funny, those words. Everyone uses them, without thinking what they mean. When does anything begin? With everyone it begins when you're born. Or before that, when your parents got married. Or before that, when your parents were born. Or when your ancestors colonised the place. Or when humans came squishing out of the mud and slime, dropped off their flippers and fins, and started to walk. But all the same, all that aside, for what's happened to us there was quite a definite beginning ~ John Marsden

I look forward to the day when animals will have the right to run if they have legs, swim if they have fins, and fly if they have wings. ~ Gretchen Wyler

Pleased to meet you," Tellin says, shaking me out of my reverie. "Lily told me much about you last weekend."
"Funny." Quince throws me a questioning glance. "She didn't mention you at all. ~ Tera Lynn Childs

Look at life from our perspective, and you eukaryotes will soon cease giving yourselves such airs. You bipedal apes, you stump-tailed tree-shrews, you desiccated lobe-fins, you vertebrated worms, you Hoxed-up sponges, you newcomers on the block, you eukaryotes, you barely distinguishable congregations of a monotonously narrow parish, you are little more than fancy froth on the surface of bacterial life. Why, the very cells that build you are themselves colonies of bacteria, replaying the same old tricks we bacteria discovered a billion years ago. We were here before you arrived, and we shall be here after you are gone. ~ Richard Dawkins

Food for us comes from our relatives, whether they have wings or fins or roots. That is how we consider food. Food has a culture. It has a history. It has a story. It has relationships. ~ Winona LaDuke

Writers fish for the right words like fishermen fish for, um, whatever those aquatic creatures with fins and gills are called. ~ Jarod Kintz

I learnt to test the size of my brain..by trying this simple thought ! Look out for the good things, not the faults.It takes a good deal bigger sized brain to find out what is not wrong with people and things than to fins out what is wrong!!! ~ Abha Maryada Banerjee

Could she possibly have
someone who really could love
And add to her fins the wings
of a dove

So not only the waves could
she enjoy through the day
But soar 'bove the clouds,
perhaps see a new way

To enjoy a full life she didn't
think she'd deserve
Too far out of reach so far as
she could observe

The final decision she and she
alone must make
One heart is committed,
but both are at stake ~ Ken Maxon

Packing all of your belongings into a U-Haul and then transporting them across several states is nearly as stressful and futile as trying to run away from lava in swim fins. ~ Allie Brosh

If you stop to listen every once in a while, you might hear good things. ~ Tera Lynn Childs

The cute little fish had big eyes and a rounded body with black polka dots and fins on either side of him that fluttered like hummingbird wings.
"He's staring at me."
"He knows a beautiful thing when he sees it. ~ Robin Bielman

We call them groundsharks."
Sanguine shook his head immediately. "That's a stupid name. Makes them sound like little shark fins slicing through the living room carpet."
"I wanted to call them razorworms," said Persephone.
"That's a damn sight better than groundsharks."
(Eyes of the Beholder) ~ Derek Landy

It is the beginning of the end.
[Fr., C'est le commencement de al fin.] ~ Charles Maurice De Talleyrand

Like That"

Love me like a wrong turn on a bad road late at night, with no
moon and no town anywhere
and a large hungry animal moving heavily through the brush in
the ditch.
Love me with a blindfold over your eyes and the sound of rusty
water
blurting from the faucet in the kitchen, leaking down through
the floorboards to hot cement. Do it without asking,
without wondering or thinking anything, while the machinery's
shut down and the watchman's slumped asleep before his small TV
showing the empty garage, the deserted hallways, while the thieves
slice through
the fence with steel clippers. Love me when you can't find
a decent restaurant open anywhere, when you're alone in a glaring
diner
with two nuns arguing in the back booth, when your eggs are
greasy
and your hash browns underdone. Snick the buttons off the front
of my dress
and toss them one by one into the pond where carp lurk just
beneath the surface,
their cold fins waving. Love me on the hood of a truck no one's
driven
in years, sunk to its fenders in weeds and dead sunflowers;
and in the lilies, your mouth on my white throat, while turtles
drag
their bellies through slick mud, through the footprints of coots and
ducks.
Do it when no one's looking, when the riots begin and the planes
open up,
when the bus leaps the curb and the driver hits the brakes and the
Kim Addonizio

He hopes at least after pulling himself up from one branch to another he will be able to see farther, discover where the roads lead; but the foliage beneath him is dense, the ground is soon out of sight, and if he raises his eyes toward the top of the tree he is blinded by The Sun, whose piercing rays make the leaves gleam with every colour against the light. However, the meaning of those two children seen in the tarot should also be explained: they must indicate that, looking up, the young man has realized he is no longer alone in the tree; two urchins have preceeded him, scrambling up the boughs.

They seem twins: identical, barefoot, golden blond. At this point the young man spoke, asked: "what are you two doing here?" or else: "how far is it to the top?" And the twins replied, indicating with confused gesticulation toward something seen on the horizon of the drawing, beneath the sun's rays: the walls of a city.

But where are these walls located, with respect to the tree? The Ace of Cups portrays, in fact, a city, with many towers and spires and minarets and domes rising above the walls. And also palm fronds, pheasants' wings, fins of blue moonfish which certainly jut from the city's gardens, aviaries, aquariums, among which we can imagine the two urchins, chasing each other and vanishing. And this city seems balanced on top of a pyramid, which could also be the top of a great tree; in other words, it would be a city suspended on the highest branches l ~ Italo Calvino

When you find something that's whole, you do what you can to keep it that way.
And when you fins something that isn't, then maybe it's not a bad idea to try to make it whole again. Maybe. ~ Gary D. Schmidt

The idea ... seemed about as likely as a shark strolling out of the sea on its fins to ask for a bowl of soup. ~ Brian Staveley

I do my very best to avoid shark fin. ~ Anthony Bourdain

You'll do fine."
"What, you're psychic now?"
"Didn't you know?" he asks seriously. "Must be an aftereffect of the bond. ~ Tera Lynn Childs

I'm trying to paint an underwater ocean scene. It's just not working. My queen angelfish is supposed to have these bright yellow eyes and electric-blue stripes along the edge of her fin. Instead, it looks like I'm trying to paint a fried egg with some blue bacon. Maybe I can pass it off as postmodern. ~ Susane Colasanti

After a while Luce curled up with her head leaning on a rock, wondering why she wasn't consumed with despair. Instead she felt an inexplicable sense of peace. She was cradled in music. The rocks around her chanted like slow, growling bells, and each curl of the water stroked her fins with silky notes. She'd been so afraid of leaving her tribe, but she understood that she never would have heard the music resonating out of every crook of the world if she hadn't taken so many risks. She'd opened her heart to the music of solitude, and it had come to her. ~ Sarah Porter

I'm not a vegetarian by any means; I eat fish. But the problem with shark finning is they catch the shark, cut their fins and throw them back in the ocean, and to me, that's wrong. If you're going to kill an animal, you should use the entire animal and do it humanely. I'm definitely not a big fan. ~ Bethany Hamilton

I was born the same year the greatest automobile in the history of automobiles was created, the 1957 Chevrolet. Thank God only one of us had tail fins. ~ Michael Buffalo Smith

And then she fell, from standing, foot-fins together, straight into the wavelets, where she was now seal, and she flung herself down toward the deeper water. ~ Margo Lanagan

I felt the full breadth and depth of the ocean around the sphere of the Earth, back billions of years to the beginning of life, across all the passing lives and deaths, the endless waves of swimming joy and quiet losses of exquisite creatures with fins and fronds, tentacles and wings, colourful and transparent, tiny and huge, coming and going. There is nothing the ocean has not seen ~ Sally Andrew

If about a dozen genera of birds had become extinct or were unknown, who would have ventured to have surmised that birds might have existed which used their wings solely as flappers, like the logger-headed duck (Micropterus of Eyton); as fins in the water and front legs on the land, like the penguin; as sails, like the ostrich; and functionally for no purpose, like the Apteryx. Yet the structure of each of these birds is good for it, under the conditions of life to which it is exposed, for each has to live by a struggle; but it is not necessarily the best possible under all possible conditions. It must not be inferred from these remarks that any of the grades of wing-structure here alluded to, which perhaps may all have resulted from disuse, indicate the natural steps by which birds have acquired their perfect power of flight; but they serve, at least, to show what diversified means of transition are possible. ~ Charles Darwin

The layout was griping, the glide is awesome. Two ten-inch fins up, way up. ~ Roger Ebert

On the barren shore, and on the lofty ice barrier in the background, myriads of grotesque penguins squawked and flapped their fins; while many fat seals were visible on the water, swimming or sprawling across large cakes of slowly drifting ice. ~ H.P. Lovecraft

In Ecuador the Indian mate was too poor to buy Polaroid glasses but he saw the caudal fins of marlin long before my perfect eyes noticed anything. Benny played pool as if the cue stick emerged from his body. Not my alcohol & geometry. She was an asshole and I couldn't have loved her at gunpoint. ~ Jim Harrison

I've been in the water so much these past few days, I swear I'm growing fins & scales. ~ April Mae Monterrosa

For the natural polytheist, whose gods arise in and from the natural material world ... Our gods not only have transcendent eyes and metaphysical hands. They have antlers and feathers, hooves and scales, fangs and horns and wings and fins and claws. They are in the lands we strip for veins of precious ore. They are in the waters we poison. - Alison Leigh Lilly, "Anatomy of a God ~ John Halstead

Every queen begins as a siren, and when the crown passes to her, it's magic steals her fins and leaves in their place mighty tentacles that hold the strength of armies. She becomes more squid than fish, and with that transformation comes the magic, unyielding and grand. Enough to shape the seas to her whim. Sea queen and sea witch both. ~ Alexandra Christo

Part of me felt like I was throwing my life away, for a guy I barely knew. But I wasn't just doing it for him. Since my parents died, I'd had absolutely no control over my life. If I really thought about it, maybe I'd given up control long before - that day in Oregon when I almost drowned. Since then, I'd always relied on others to take care of me. Maybe it was time to take my life back into my own hands… even if it meant growing fins. ~ D.S. Murphy

The water is alive. It is alive. If we could get a mask and fins and drop down off these docks, we'd see snook and redfish and probably goliath grouper. And it's an amazing world unto itself and a very thin demarcation between one world and the other. You know, the distance of the water surface. ~ Randy Wayne White

Wolsey sits with his elbows on his desk, his fingers dabbing his closed lids. He takes a great breath, and begins to talk: he begins to talk about England. You can't know Albion, he says, unless you can go back before Albion was thought of. You must go back before Caesar's legions, to the days when the bones of giant animals and men lay on the ground where one day London would be built. You must go back to the New Troy, the New Jerusalem, and the sins and crimes of the kings who rode under the tattered banners of Arthur and who married women who came out of the sea or hatched out of eggs, women with scales and fins and feathers; beside which, he says, the match with Anne looks less unusual. These are old stories, he says, but some people, let us remember, do believe them. ~ Hilary Mantel

Emma this is not a joke. Look at your hands! They're ... they're ... wrinkled!"
"Yes that's because-"
"No way. I'm not going down for this. This isn't my fault."
"Toraf-"
"Galen will find some way to blame me though. He always does. 'You wouldn't have gotten caught if you didn't swim so close to that boat, tadpole.' No it couldn't be the humans fault for fishing in the first place-"
"Toraf."
"Or how about. 'Maybe if you'd stop trying to kiss my sister, she'd stop bashing your head with a rock.' How does my kissing her have anything to do with her bashing my head with a rock? If you ask me, it's just a result of poor parenting-"
"Toraf."
"Oh and my favorite: 'If you play with a lionfish, you're going to get pricked.' I wasn't playing with it! I was just helping it swim faster by grabbing its fins-"
"TOR-AF."
He stops pacing along the water, even seems to remember that I exist. "Yes, Emma? What were you saying? ~ Anna Banks

We were told that a strong attraction to a patient with a repeated history of failed treatment is a danger sign - like the fins on the parallel lines. It is an illusion - a cognitive illusion - and I (System 2) was taught how to recognize it and advised not to believe it or act on it. The question that is most often asked ~ Daniel Kahneman

Sometimes I wish I had every different sort of board that I could just bring out for this surf when I feeling like surfing this board. I love riding old single fins and twin fins. ~ Mick Fanning

The Proustian aquarium: grotesque and gorgeous fish drifting with languid fins through a subaqueous medium of pale violet polluted ink. ~ Edward Abbey

1944 - Exploring London in wartime, a city with stiff upper lip, gritted teeth, clenched fists, makes you realize that Paris is a bit of whore.

Every day and every night for weeks now, London has been bleeding and hiding its wounds with impressive dignity. A 'don't show off' attitude prevails. From time to time a sputtering doodle-bug (a VI) shatters the torpor of the overcast sky. One second, sometimes two ... at most three ... of silence. Visualizing that fat cigar with shark fins as it stops dead, sways, idiotically tips over, then goes into a vertical dive. And explodes. Usually it's an entire building that's destroyed.

Apparently the Civil Defense rescue teams observe a very strict rule of discretion and restraint. You never see any panic. In this impassive city detachment is the expression of panic. ~ Jacques Yonnet

Quince leans in over the map, studying, and I think he's going to ask me something about the kingdoms or my plan or Daddy's trident.
Instead, without taking his eyes off the map, he asks, "What happens if I fail?"

"What?" I whisper.

"If I don't pass the three tests," he says. "What's the consequence?"

I suck in a shaky breath. This is the part I didn't want to talk about, the part I hoped he wouldn't ask about. But I guess he's too clever - or has learned too much about how mer-world magic works - to assume there won't be a price.

There is, and it's a big one.

"If you fail," I say, keeping my voice steady, "then you are banished from the water forever."

He lifts his Caribbean-blue eyes to stare into mine. "And?"

"And?" I echo.

"I know that can't be it," he says. "Nothing in your world is ever that simple."

A part of my heart breaks when he calls it my world. I want it to feel like his world, too. But now isn't the time. He's right; there's more to the consequence of failure than him being exiled.

"And . . . ," I say, wishing I didn't have to tell him this, "I'll be banished from land." I swallow hard. "Forever."

He stares into my eyes, unblinking, and I can't read any sort of reaction. His mind is racing, I'm sure, but everything on the outside is a stone facade.

Finally, after what feels like an eternity, he says, "Then I won't fail. ~ Tera Lynn Childs

Vengeance burns,Torak." said Fin-Kedinn as the river bore him away. "It burns your heart. It makes the pain worse. Dont let that happen to you. ~ Michelle Paver

like the big bed it was enclosed in a permanent canopy of heavy netting. Mosquitoes were the least of the creatures this net was intended to exclude; its absence, at any time, night or day, would have been an invitation for snakes and scorpions to make their way between the sheets. In a hut by the pond a woman was even said to have found a large dead fish in her bed. This was a koimachh, or tree perch, a species known to be able to manipulate its spiny fins in such a way as to drag itself overland for short distances. It had found its way into the bed only to suffocate on the mattress. ~ Amitav Ghosh

Are you going to distract me by playing footsie?"
"Absolutely, princess," he says with a wink.
"Then I won't remember a thing."
"It's a samurai training technique," he teases, spinning the test prep book toward him. "I distract you as much as possible right now." He slides the book into his lap. "And you'll learn how to test through anything. ~ Tera Lynn Childs

Mother Earth needs us to keep our covenant. We will do this in courts, we will do this on our radio station, and we will commit to our descendants to work hard to protect this land and water for them. Whether you have feet, wings, fins, or roots, we are all in it together. ~ Winona LaDuke

Many fishermen "fin" sharks - that is, slice their fins off, then dump them back into the water to die. ~ Bill Bryson

You're watching me, princess." His soft lips spread into an appreciative smile.
"People might get the wrong idea."
"What, that I actually like you now?" I tease.
He shakes his head and leans toward me. "No, that you're trying to see past me to get an eyeful of Benson."
I shift my gaze to the board and fix an innocent look on my face.
"What makes you think that's the WRONG idea?"
Quince leans even closer and says, "Because you came back for me. ~ Tera Lynn Childs

Then, while the old man was clearing the lines and preparing the harpoon, the male fish jumped high into the air beside the boat to see where the female was and then went down deep, his lavender wings, that were his pectoral fins, spread wide and all his wide lavender stripes showing. He was beautiful, the old man remembered, and he had stayed.
That was the saddest thing I ever saw with them, the old man thought. ~ Ernest Hemingway,

There, at a depth to which divers would find it difficult to descend, are caverns, haunts, and dusky mazes, where monstrous creatures multiply and destroy each other. Huge crabs devour fish and are devoured in their turn. Hideous shapes of living things, not created to be seen by human eyes wander in this twilight. Vague forms of antennae, tentacles, fins, open jaws, scales, and claws, float about there, quivering, growing larger, or decomposing and perishing in the gloom, while horrible swarms of swimming things prowl about seeking their prey.
To gaze into the depths of the sea is, in the imagination, like beholding the vast unknown, and from its most terrible point of view. The submarine gulf is analogous to the realm of night and dreams. There also is sleep, unconsciousness, or at least apparent unconsciousness, of creation. There in the awful silence and darkness, the rude first forms of life, phantomlike, demoniacal, pursue their horrible instincts. ~ Victor Hugo

For the real movements of a life are gradual, then sudden; they resist becoming anecdotes, they pulse like quasars from long-dead stars to reach the vivid planet of the present, they drift like fog over the ship until the spread sails are merely panels of gray in grayer air and surround becomes object, as in those perceptual tests where figure and ground reverse, the kissing couple in profile turn into the outlines of the mortuary urn that holds their own ashes. Time wears down resolve
then suddenly violence, something irrevocable flashes out of nowhere, there are thrashing fins and roiled, blood-streaked water, death floats up on its side, eyes bulging. ~ Edmund White

California is responsible for selling, trading and distributing large amounts of shark fins that come from all over the world. ~ Ted Danson

Louie found the raft offered an unlikely intellectual refuge. He had never recognized how noisy the civilized world was. Here, drifting in almost total silence, with no scents other than the singed odor of the raft, no flavors on his tongue, nothing moving but the slow porcession of shark fins, every vista empty save water and sky, his time unvaried and unbroken, his mind was freed of an encumbrance that civilization had imposed on it. In his head, he could roam anywhere, and he found that his mind was quick and clear, his imagination unfettered and supple. He could stay with a thought for hours, turning it about. ~ Laura Hillenbrand

I think I've always been drawn to the second person. When I was growing up and playing with my friends, the usual way we interacted with imaginary worlds was as characters: a bench was 'your' boat, leaves on a lawn were the fins of sharks out to get 'you.' ~ Mohsin Hamid