Rowboat Quotes

During dinner a sea turtle stopped by for a visit. At three or four feet in length... the turtle swam alongside for about twenty minutes, its head bobbing just above the surface of the water. Then with laughing eyes the turtle passed me..being left behind by a turtle pricked up my competitive nature. I pulled harder trying to keep up, but I couldn't catch the turtle. Soon I was reduced to laughter. " I am in the North Atlantic in a rowboat, racing a turtle...and loosing. Okay, so they can swim thirty miles an hour. Out here, I am the tortoise and it's the hare. ~ Tori Murden McClure

He uncovered the boat, his hands working the knots like he'd been doing it his whole life. Under the tarp was an old steel rowboat with no oars. The boat had been painted dark blue at one point, but the hull was so crusted with tar and salt it looked like one massive nautical bruise.
On the bow, the name Pax was still readable, lettered in gold. Painted eyes drooped sadly at the water level, as if the boat were about to fall asleep. On board were two benches, some steel wool, an old cooler, and a mound of frayed rope with one end tied to the mooring. At the bottom of the boat, a plastic bag and two empty Coke cans floated in several inches of scummy water.
"Behold," Frank said. "The mighty Roman navy. ~ Rick Riordan

They drove together under the stars to the lake, where they sat with fishing poles in a metal rowboat and waited for something to bite. Zack ate the toast, Uncle Orson gave some pointers, and then they cast their lines, again and again, into the pale fog. Dawn broke. The sunrise cracked. Clouds settled across the sky. The fog scattered as the air heated. And they still weren't catching anything. And that whole time, the exact same gull was circling overhead. "Nothing's happening," Zack complained. But Uncle Orson smiled at the clouds and smiled at the rowboat and smiled at the gull and smiled at the poles. "Nothing has to happen," Uncle Orson had said. ~ Matthew Baker

Once upon a time in the dead of winter in the Dakota Territory, Theodore Roosevelt took off in a makeshift boat down the Little Missouri River in pursuit of a couple of thieves who had stolen his prized rowboat. After several days on the river, he caught up and got the draw on them with his trusty Winchester, at which point they surrendered. Then Roosevelt set off in a borrowed wagon to haul the thieves cross-country to justice. They headed across the snow-covered wastes of the Badlands to the railhead at Dickinson, and Roosevelt walked the whole way, the entire 40 miles. It was an astonishing feat, what might be called a defining moment in Roosevelt's eventful life. But what makes it especially memorable is that during that time, he managed to read all of Anna Karenina. I often think of that when I hear people say they haven't time to read. ~ David McCullough

cosine wherry, a wooden rowboat hand ~ Susan Wiggs

It goes on," Tuck repeated, "to the ocean. But this rowboat now, it's stuck. If we didn't move it out ourself, it would stay here forever, trying to get loose, but stuck. That's what us Tucks are, Winnie. Stuck so's we can't move on. We ain't part of the wheel no more. Dropped off, Winnie. Left behind. And everywhere around us, things is moving and growing and changing. You, for instance. A child now, but someday a woman. And after that, moving on to make room for the new children. ~ Natalie Babbitt

Was it a convent you escaped from, Miss Turner?" He turned the boat with a deft pull on one oar.
"Escaped?" Her heart knocked against her hidden purse. "I'm a governess, I told you. I'm not running away, from a convent or anywhere else. Why would you ask that?"
He chuckled. "Because you're staring at me as though you've never seen a man before."
Sophia's cheeks burned. She was staring. Worse, now she found herself powerless to turn away. What with the murky shadows of the tavern and the confusion of the quay, not to mention her own discomposure, she hadn't taken a good, clear look at his eyes until this moment.
They defied her mental palette utterly.
The pupils were ringed with a thin line of blue. Darker than Prussian, yet lighter than indigo. Perhaps matching that dearest of pigments-the one even her father's generous allowance did not permit-ultramarine. Yet within that blue circumference shifted a changing sea of color-green one moment, gray the next…in the shadow of a half-blink, hinting at blue.
He laughed again, and flinty sparks of amusement lit them.
Yes, she was still staring.
Forcing her gaze to the side, she saw their rowboat nearing the scraped hull of a ship. She cleared her throat and tasted brine. "Forgive me, Mr. Grayson. I'm only trying to make you out. I understood you to be the ship's captain."
"Well," he said, grasping a rope thrown down to him and securing it to the boat, "now you know I'm not."
"Might I ~ Tessa Dare

The last fire in the drawer was 1890. It was the year Edward painted Across the Delaware (acquired in 1961 by Jacqueline Kennedy and now hanging in the White House foyer), the year he married Diana (April), and the year he nearly made her a widow on their extended honeymoon (May) when he overestimated the water temperature at the cliffs in Brontallo, Switzerland, and had to be pulled, nearly unconscious and hyppthermic, from the water by a pair of passing Norwegian tourists in a rowboat. ~ Melissa Jensen

I always envisioned myself as traveling the ocean of life in a rowboat where my mother was one oar and my father, the other. Having two good, solid oars made rowing much easier. ~ Richelle E. Goodrich

You remind me of the man that lived by the river. He heard a radio report that the river was going to rush up and flood the town, and that the all the residents should evacuate their homes.

But the man said, "I'm religious. I pray. God loves me. God will save me." The waters rose up. A guy in a rowboat came along and he shouted, "Hey, hey you, you in there. The town is flooding. Let me take you to safety." But the man shouted back, "I'm religious. I pray. God loves me. God will save me."

A helicopter was hovering overhead and a guy with a megaphone shouted, "Hey you, you down there. The town is flooding. Let me drop this ladder and I'll take you to safety." But the man shouted back that he was religious, that he prayed, that God loved him and that God will take him to safety.

Well... the man drowned. And standing at the gates of St. Peter he demanded an audience with God. "Lord," he said, "I'm a religious man, I pray, I thought you loved me. Why did this happen?"

God said, "I sent you a radio report, a helicopter and a guy in a rowboat. What the hell are you doing here?

He sent you a priest, a rabbi and a Quaker. Not to mention his son, Jesus Christ. What do you want from him? ~ Aaron Sorkin

For me, the music is always like the small rowboat I get into at the very beginning of my process. ~ Jim Jarmusch

I'm not saying Abbott Computing Services suffered from an acute form of TV demographics, but, how did I get the job? I wasn't under 40. I wasn't anorexic slim. I didn't have a face that would launch a thousand ships, or even a rowboat. Of course, I was a temp, and the young and beautiful wouldn't have to look at me forever." Jo Durbin ~ Norma Huss

And so in time the rowboat and I became one and the same-like the archer and his bow or the artist and his paint. What I learned wasn't mastery over the elements; it was mastery over myself, which is what conquest is ultimately all about. ~ Richard Bode

Ode, Elegy, Aubade, Pslam"

1
The songbird that escapes
from a burning house
will build its nest
in the shape of a cage.

2
This is one thing
we know: song begs
for the places that make it
grow from seed to starling,

3
places that put the heart's hemlock
in an empty rowboat
and heave it from the shore.

4
We only praise what we cannot
keep: violin strings berried with rain,
teacups overflowing with brandywine,
radios sickened with static.

5
Glass tossed out with the tide
will come back smoother and stranger,
but never to the same person.

6
This is something we want
to know. The woman in love
never touches her ears.

7
The man in his house is always lost
without her.

8
Morning pulls light
from the dark like a boy
hoisting a trout from the lake
by its clean, pink gills.

9
When the woman escapes
from a burning house
she will know the path of the wind,

10
how it writes its scripture
in peach blossoms blown
into a baby's empty pram.

11
She'll feel it compose its words
against her body, against the night,
against the water, in an endless, artless psalm. ~ Ryan Teitman

Ladies have come up with all these expressions to reassure men. "Oh, honey, it's not the size of the ship, it's the motion of the ocean." That may be true, but it takes a long time to get to England in a rowboat. ~ Jeff Foxworthy

I'm no longer a child and I still want to be, to live with the pirates. Because I want to live forever in wonder. The difference between me as a child and me as an adult is this and only this: when I was a child, I longed to travel into, to live in wonder. Now, I know, as much as I can know anything, that to travel into wonder is to be wonder. So it matters little whether I travel by plane, by rowboat, or by book. Or, by dream. I do not see, for there is no I to see. That is what the pirates know. There is only seeing and, in order to go to see, one must be a pirate. ~ Kathy Acker

Okay, so how does this work exactly?" I ask as we walk toward his car. "Do we float down the bayou in rowboat while little critters sing 'Kiss the Girl'. ~ Colleen Hoover

It might seem to you that living in the woods on a riverbank would remove you from the modern world. But not if the river is navigable, as ours is. On pretty weekends in the summer, this riverbank is the very verge of the modern world. It is a seat in the front row, you might say. On those weekends, the river is disquieted from morning to night by people resting from their work.
This resting involves traveling at great speed, first on the road and then on the river. The people are in an emergency to relax. They long for the peace and quiet of the great outdoors. Their eyes are hungry for the scenes of nature. They go very fast in their boats. They stir the river like a spoon in a cup of coffee. They play their radios loud enough to hear above the noise of their motors. They look neither left nor right. They don't slow down for - or maybe even see - an old man in a rowboat raising his lines...
I watch and I wonder and I think. I think of the old slavery, and of the way The Economy has now improved upon it. The new slavery has improved upon the old by giving the new slaves the illusion that they are free. The Economy does not take people's freedom by force, which would be against its principles, for it is very humane. It buys their freedom, pays for it, and then persuades its money back again with shoddy goods and the promise of freedom. ~ Wendell Berry

I sometimes think we're a rowboat society."

"A what?" asked Jean.

"A rowboat. It's why we do things like that." He jerked his head toward the window and the dot on the river. "It's why Québec is so perfectly preserved. It's why we're all so fascinated with history. We're in a rowboat. We move forward, but we're always looking back. ~ Louise Penny

If you want to sail your pretty little rowboat down the Nile and take in the scenery, then I'm not going to be the one to stop you. ~ L. H. Cosway

Ever see a skinny guy on a cold day? You know they tremble like Chihuahuas. Then you see a fat guy in a tank top - nine degrees, he's sweatin'. Look at 'Titanic,' remember the boat goes into the icy cold waters? Little skinny Leonardo: dead. Final scene, Kathy Bates on a rowboat, coat open, eating a hotdog. ~ Greg Fitzsimmons

Uh, yeah," Percy said. "The Romans aren't big on navies. They had, like, one rowboat. Which I sank. Speaking of violent storms, you're doing a first-rate job upstairs." "Thank you," said Kym. "Thing is, our ship is caught in it, and it's kind of being ripped apart. I'm sure you didn't mean to - " "Oh, yes, I did." "You did." Percy grimaced. "Well...that sucks. I don't suppose you'd cut it out, then, if we asked nicely?" "No," the goddess agreed. "Even now, the ship is close to sinking. I'm rather amazed it's held together this long. Excellent workmanship." Sparks ~ Rick Riordan

He believed that every individual was responsible for his conduct on earth, that there was a judge within. Could even a blazingly Christ inflict greater retribution? Could Dante's Charon in his rowboat on the river Acheron whip the miscreants into a deeper, more everlasting hell than man's unvarnished verdict of himself? ~ Irving Stone

It's like, imagine the ripples on top of an ocean. And I'm in a rowboat, reactively dealing with the waves and water coming into my boat. What I need to do is dive into the deeper solace, the calmness beneath the surface. ~ Mehmet Oz

I was Olivia, and I sat in a rowboat oared by Sage along the Tiber River.
"If you think the Society is so ridiculous, tell your father you refuse to go!" I said.
"Really? And lose my share of the family fortune? I'd be destitute. You'd have to leave me for a Medici-a fiancé who could keep you in the style to which you're accustomed."
"Paints, canvas, and you. That's all I need. Maybe a little extra artistic talent."
Sage gave me a pointed look. He loved my artwork and always gave me a hard time for doubting my own ability. I liked to remind him he was biased.
"How about food?" he asked. "You'd need food."
"Wild fruits and vegetables."
"Roof over your head?"
"We'll build a hut."
"Clothing?"
I gave Sage a knowing smile, and he almost tipped the boat.
"Sage!" I cried, holding the sides for dear life. "I can't swim!"
"I'm sorry, but that was an absolutely valid response. Any man would tell you the same."
I laughed. "So what do you do in the Society meetings?"
"I can't tell you. I'm sworn to absolute secrecy." He said it with a haughty affectation that I mimicked as I pretended to zip closed my lips and throw away the key.
"My lips are sealed," I intoned.
"Really? Because mine are not. ~ Hilary Duff

I'm so optimistic, I'd go after Moby Dick in a rowboat and take the tartar sauce with me. ~ Zig Ziglar

My fictional worlds were those of a fabulist, of an intellectual fantasist. I was the lawgiver, and the countries and inhabitants of my imagination were answerable to me. If I wished for a man to levitate; to enter another's story by rowboat or by intoning a sentence or by performing a shadow-puppet play; if I wanted him to become a swarm of intelligent elementary particles and enter the Internet and travel into the past and far into the future, it was so. ~ Norman Lock

The sea is endless when you are in a rowboat. ~ Adolfo Bioy Casares