Rowing Quotes

The rower need to know technique and has to be in shape. He won't wrong by using strategy. Yet what it takes to win races is the ability to reach inside and pull out something to keep you going - no, to go faster - when you have nothing left to give. There's a word for what that takes and the word is not magic, the word is guts. ~ Barry S. Strauss

Most people are rowing against the current of life. Instead of turning the boat around, all they need to do is let go of the oars. ~ Esther Hicks

Why don't you snap your oars, you rascals? Bite something, you dogs! So, so, so, then: - softly, softly! That's it - that's it! long and strong. Give way there, give way! The devil fetch ye, ye ragamuffin rapscallions; ye are all asleep. Stop snoring, ye sleepers, and pull. Pull, will ye? pull, can't ye? pull, won't ye? Why in the name of gudgeons and ginger-cakes don't ye pull? - pull and break something! pull, and start your eyes out! Here," whipping out the sharp knife from his girdle; "every mother's son of ye draw his knife, and pull with the blade between his teeth. That's it - that's it. Now ye do something; that looks like it, my steel-bits. Start her - start her, my silverspoons! Start her, marling-spikes!" Stubb's exordium to his crew is given here at large, because he had rather a peculiar way of talking to them in general, and especially in inculcating the religion of rowing. ~ Herman Melville

Go out there and row faster. ~ Roger Moore

And thus, through the courage and great skill in obstetrics of Queequeg, the deliverance, or rather, delivery of Tashtego, was successfully accomplished, in the teeth, too, of the most untoward and apparently hopeless impediments; which is a lesson by no means to be forgotten. Midwifery should be taught in the same course with fencing and boxing, riding and rowing. ~ Herman Melville

Let the boat work - and not me! ~ Phillip Thomas

Rowing, particularly sculling, inflicts on the individual in every race a level of pain associated with few other sports. There was certainly pain in football during a head-on collision, pain in other sports on the occasion of a serious injury. That was more the threat of pain; in rowing there was the absolute guarantee of it every time. ~ David Halberstam

There's no earthly way of knowing Which direction they are going! There's no knowing where they're rowing, Or which way the river's flowing! Not a speck of light is showing, So the danger must be growing, For the rowers keep on rowing, And they're certainly not showing Any signs that they are slowing. . . . ~ Roald Dahl

Go as hard as you can on the first piece and then pray that you get switched. Repeat. ~ Mike Teti

Gentlemen, let's go row! ~ Robert A. Heinlein

When a politician states that we are all in the same boat, be on Your guard. Does it mean that YOU are supposed to be doing all the rowing? ~ Vilhelm Moberg

I took my solo and beat hell out of the skins. Then Spoof swiped at his mouth and let go with a blast and moved it up into that squeal and stopped and started playing. It was all headwork. All new to us.

New to anybody.

I saw Sonny get a look on his face, and we sat still and listened while Spoof made love to that horn.

Now like a scream, now like a laugh - now we're swinging in the trees, now the white men are coming, now we're in the boat and chains are hanging from our ankles and we're rowing, rowing - Spoof, what is it? - now we're sawing wood and picking cotton and serving up those cool cool drinks to the Colonel in his chair - Well, blow, man! - now we're free, and we're struttin' down Lenox Avenue and State & Madison and Pirate's Alley, laughing, crying - Who said free? - and we want to go back and we don't want to go back - Play it, Spoof! God, God, tell us all about it! Talk to us! - and we're sitting in a cellar with a comb wrapped up in paper, with a skin-barrel and a tinklebox - Don't stop, Spoof! Oh Lord, please don't stop! - and we're making something, something, what is it? Is it jazz? Why, yes, Lord, it's jazz. Thank you, sir, and thank you, sir, we finally got it, something that is ours, something great that belongs to us and to us alone, that we made, and that's why it's important and that's what it's all about and - Spoof! Spoof, you can;t stop now --

But it was over, middle of the trip. And there was Spoof st ~ Charles Beaumont

We must row in whatever boat we find ourselves in. ~ Christie Watson

Mileage makes champions ~ Steve Fairbairn

You must approach each test with the seriousness and passion that you would use to prepare to challenge your death. You must prepare-not to die- but to battle for your life in each moment with every faculty and power available to you. ~ Mike Livingston

Harmony, balance, and rhythm. They're the three things that stay with you your whole life. Without them civilization is out of whack. And that's why an oarsman, when he goes out in life, he can fight it, he can handle life. That's what he gets from rowing. ~ Daniel James Brown

I never realized how many holidays encroached on the collegiate training schedule. When I was training for the Olympics, only one holiday interested me, the Day After the Games. ~ Brad Alan Lewis

He always had to know who was going. I swear, if that guy was shipwrecked somewhere, and you rescued him in the god damn boat, he'd want to know who the guy that was rowing it before he'd even get in. ~ J.D. Salinger

Wild Nights - Wild Nights!
Were I with thee
Wild Nights should be
Our luxury!

Futile - the winds -
To a heart in port -
Done with the compass -
Done with the chart!

Rowing in Eden -
Ah, the sea!
Might I but moor - Tonight -
In thee! ~ Emily Dickinson

Be not afraid of rowing slowly. Be afraid of standing still. ~ Hannah Whitall Smith

Anyone who manages to experience the history of humanity as a whole as his own history will feel in an enormously generalized way all the grief of an invalid who thinks of health, of an old man who thinks of the dream of his youth, of a lover deprived of his beloved, of the martyr whose ideal is perishing, of the hero on the evening after a battle that has decided nothing but brought him wounds and the loss of his friend. But if one endured, if one could endure this immense sum of grief of all kinds while yet being the hero who, as the second day of battle breaks, welcomes the dawn and his fortune, being a person whose horizon encompasses thousands of years, past and future, being the heir of all the nobility of all past spirit - an heir with a sense of obligation, the most aristocratic of old nobles and at the same time the first of a new nobility - the like of which no age has yet seen or dreamed of; if one could burden one's soul with all of this - the oldest, the newest, losses, hopes, conquests, and the victories of humanity; if one could finally contain all this in one soul and crowd it into a single feeling - this would surely have to result in a happiness that humanity has not known so far: the happiness of a god full of power and love, full of tears and laughter, a happiness that, like the sun in the evening, continually bestows its inexhaustible riches, pouring them into the sea, feeling richest, as the sun does, only when even the poorest fishermen is still rowing ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

For a thorough understanding of rowing, for the what, the how and the why, the books making up Peter Mallory's The Sport of Rowing certainly do it all. ~ Anita DeFrantz

He nods, quiet for a moment. "I applied to Brown, Cornell and Harvard. I was accepted to all three. I ended up at Harvard because they had the best rowing program."

Damn. Of course he's a rower. I have a bit of a thing for rowers. Sophomore year I dated two of them. Not at the same time or anything. But still, it was a good year. ~ Jana Aston

Ergometer is Greek for 'work meter' ~ Barry S. Strauss

The universe was a disorderly mess, the only interesting bits being the organised anomalies. Hackworth had once taken his family out rowing on the pond in the park, and the ends of the yellow oars spun off compact vortices, and Fiona, who had taught herself the physics of liquids through numerous experimental beverage spills and in the bathtub, demanded an explanation for these holes in water. She leaned over the gunwale, Gwendolyn holding the sash of her dress, and felt those vortices with her hands, wanting to understand them. The rest of the pond, simply water in no particular order, was uninteresting. ~ Neal Stephenson

Go out there and thrill me. ~ Roger Moore

The single sculler, alone on the river at dawn, or spotlighted in his lane during a race, is th emost romantic, the most quixotic figure in all rowing. ~ Barry S. Strauss

My two major faults are that I row too long and pick up too many women ~ John Hersey

In terms of pure physical effort, today was probably as hard as I've worked in any part. I spent the morning rowing, including the change of speeds Arrius [the Roman commander] test Judah with. A real bone-breaker. ~ Charlton Heston

Abraham as a boy crawled around the synagogue bum-in-air with his nose pressed against antique Chinese blue. He never told his mother that his father had reappeared in ceramic form on the synagogue floor a year after he decamped, in a little blue rowing-boat with blue-skinned foreign-looking types by his side, heading off towards an equally blue horizon. ~ Salman Rushdie

You must assume full responsibility for choosing to pursue power. Know that you alone have chosen to be tested, and then proceed without doubt, remorse, or blame. You alone are responsible. ~ Mike Livingston

That evening, rowing on the quiet river as sunset turned to dusk, I saw an occasional smoky smudge on the towpath, always slightly ahead of me, like a dark star guiding me home. ~ Deborah Harkness

Competitive rowing is an undertaking of extraordinary beauty preceded by brutal punishment. Unlike most sports, which draw primarily on particular muscle groups, rowing makes heavy and repeated use of virtually every muscle in the body, despite the fact that a rower, as Al Ulbrickson liked to put it, "scrimmages on his posterior annex." And rowing makes these muscular demands not at odd intervals but in rapid sequence, over a protracted period of time, repeatedly and without respite. On one occasion, after watching the Washington freshmen practice, the Seattle Post-Intelligencer's Royal Brougham marveled at the relentlessness of the ~ Daniel James Brown

Rowing it was pointed out, was a sport that risked few injuries. So it was, I ould discover, but only if you did it right. ~ Barry S. Strauss

The difficulty in weaning the mind from worldly thoughts, from external objects, and fixing it on God is the same as in making the Ganga flow towards Gangotri instead of its natural flow towards Ganga-Sagar. It is like rowing against the current of the Yamuna. ~ Sivananda Saraswati

If you work hard and try your best absolutely anyone can do anything. ~ Helen Glover British Rowing Gold Medalist London 2012

When I was young, I read everything I could lay my hands on, but the Scots in my storybooks spent their time fighting glorious battles, rowing across lochs, or escaping over moors of purple heather. Even those Scots were hard to find. For at school, we recited poetry according to the set texts the teachers taught us. ~ Theresa Breslin

If you are the only one who's rowing in the boat, you have no right to complain about which way you are heading! ~ Mehmet Murat Ildan

It was toward the middle part of their relationship, though neither she nor Vohannes knew it then. She had found him sitting beneath a tree, watching the rowing team practicing in the Khamarda River, next to the academy. The girls' team had just set their shell in the water and was climbing in. When Shara joined him and sat in his lap, as she often did, she felt a soft lump pressing into her lower back. ~ Robert Jackson Bennett

Before big bridges, deep tunnels and the advent of health and safety regulations, there were many ways to cross rivers. They would use rowing boats, rickety rafts or in the absence of a vessel, swim or wade. Everyone knew what a stepping-stone was. They all understood that it was not something that you would want to stand on for any length of time. It was a means to an end, an important point and a route from A to B. ~ Johnathan Cainer

I climbed on the rowing ergometer, and started to pull - losing myself in the rhythm of sweat and pain. ~ Stefan Kieszling

I pushed
your boat
out of the gentle
stream

where
you were merrily
singing
and rowing

Forgive me
life
is but
a nightmare ~ Gail Carson Levine

The greatest poet who ever wrote about rowing is Virgil, the greatest historian is Thucydides, but the greatest imagination ever to turn its attention to the sport is that of painter, Thomas Eakins. ~ Barry S. Strauss

This is very simple in the world of chicks: some are hoochies, some are not, and some should never try to be. It's no different from the idea of sports. Now, I can go on my little rowing machine for four times a week, twenty-two minutes a time, and I can feel as if I flirt with the sporting world. Similar to the idea that a woman can put on something cuter for her man, for those moments, and flirt with garments that a hoochie woman might be pushing. But never for one moment should you get confused. My little rowing machine and I cannot consider ourselves athletes. Wearing the same garment does not a hoochie woman make. So if you are a true hoochie woman, may garments below the navel always be in your future. If you are not, then please don't throw away your cotton zippy jacket. ~ Tori Amos

Every student of physics knows the axiom 'nature abhors a vacuum.' A little known corollary is that 'rowing coaches detest sending their crews in early.' Coaches will always find something to fill the end-of-practice vacuum. ~ Brad Alan Lewis

It was like falling off a building and suddenly, bang, you hit the bottom. The first time it happened was on an ordinary day at home. I was taking down some curtains. I took one step, turned around, took another step and then I fell and hit my head hard on the rowing machine. ~ Jonah Lomu

The ship is going by a mighty engine, and you are busy rowing. ~ Mooji

Yet my great-grandfather was but a water-man, looking one way and rowing another: and I got most of my estate by the same occupation. ~ John Bunyan

[Letter to William Ward, 11 July 1878]
Dear Boy,
Why don't you write to me? I don't know what has become of you.
As for me I am ruined. The law suit is going against me and I am afraid I will have to pay costs, which means leaving Oxford and doing some horrid work to earn bread. The world is too much for me.
However, I have seen Greece and had some golden days of youth. I go back to Oxford immediately for viva voce and then think of rowing up the river to town with Frank Miles. Will you come?
Yours
Oscar ~ Oscar Wilde

One training device is the ergometer. I never owned one, never trained on one, and practically never used one. The few national team tests I took on ergs were dismal failures, which worked wonders to further my dislike of these beastly creatures. Boring. Tedious. Noisy. Ergs have greatly cheapened rowing. Graceless. Greasy. Grim. The erg is to rowing what having sex by yourself is to having sex. Stop it! ~ Brad Alan Lewis

Poetry invades loneliness in a way that nothing else can. I thought that if I changed that people, beautiful people, arrogant people, narcissists, intellectuals, readers, teachers, spiritual gurus would come into my life but they did not. I am still rowing my boat ashore. It still feels like Hiroshima out there. ~ Abigail George

Long live the elite rower's motto:'early to bed, early to rise, never meet the regular guys.' ~ Brad Alan Lewis

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

Learning is like rowing upstream; not to advance is to drop back.
- Chinese proverb ~ Alvin Toffler

She gazed at the man across from her. Her lover. His powerful shoulders worked beneath his shirt as he pulled on the oars. The display of strength and agility, set to a steady rhythm…memories of their lovemaking assailed her with quiet force.
In some other place, under some other circumstance, they might have been a courting couple. Rowing across a placid lake, caressed by a glowing sunset. From a distance, this could have been the picture of romance.
But the reality was confusion, and resentment, and pain. Did she feel sorry for misleading him? Sophia considered. She was not sure she could. By his own admission, he would not have made love to her had she not. And she could not regret that exquisite pleasure; nor could she regret sharing it with him. She looked at the handsome, strong, charismatic, passionate, exhausted man across from her. Selfish and wicked though she might be, she could not feel sorry that he was now bound to her-that for good or ill, he had not left her behind.
Sophia was, however, unequivocally sorry for one thing.
"Gray," she said, "I'm so sorry I've hurt you."
His eyes flashed, and there was a slight hitch in his stroke. ~ Tessa Dare

I AM ROWING (a hex poem)

i have cursed your forehead, your belly, your life
i have cursed the streets your steps plod through
the things your hands touch
i have cursed the inside of your dreams

i have placed a puddle in your eye so that you cant see anymore
an insect in your ear so that you cant hear anymore
a sponge in your brain so that you cant understand
anymore

i have frozen you in the soul of your body
iced you in the depths of your life
the air you breathe suffocates you
the air you breathe has the air of a cellar
is an air that has already been exhaled
been puffed out by hyenas

the dung of this air is something no one can breathe
your skin is damp all over
your skin sweats out waters of great fear
your armpits reak far and wide of the crypt

animals drop dead as you pass
dogs howl at night their heads raised toward your house
you cant run away
you cant muster the strength of an ant to the tip of your feet

your fatigue makes a lead stump in your body
your fatigue is a long caravan
your fatigue stretches out to the country of nan
your fatigue is inexpressible

your mouth bites you
your nails scratch you
no longer yours, your wife
no longer yours, your brother
the sole of his foot bitten by an angry snake

someone has slobbered on your descendents
someone has droo ~ Henri Michaux

Our suicidal poets (Plath, Berryman, Lowell, Jarrell, et al.) spent too much of their lives inside rooms and classrooms when they should have been trudging up mountains, slogging through swamps, rowing down rivers. The indoor life is the next best thing to premature burial. ~ Edward Abbey

But the greatest paradox of the sport has to do with the psychological makeup of the people who pull the oars. Great oarsmen and oarswomen are necessarily made of conflicting stuff - of oil and water, fire and earth. On the one hand, they must possess enormous self-confidence, strong egos, and titanic willpower. They must be almost immune to frustration. Nobody who does not believe deeply in himself or herself - in his or her ability to endure hardship and to prevail over adversity - is likely even to attempt something as audacious as competitive rowing at the highest levels. The sport offers so many opportunities for suffering and so few opportunities for glory that only the most tenaciously self-reliant and self-motivated are likely to succeed at it. And yet, at the same time - and this is key - no other sport demands and rewards the complete abandonment of the self the way that rowing does. Great crews may have men or women of exceptional talent or strength; they may have outstanding coxswains or stroke oars or bowmen; but they have no stars. The team effort - the perfectly synchronized flow of muscle, oars, boat, and water; the single, whole, unified, and beautiful symphony that a crew in motion becomes - is all that matters. Not the individual, not the self. ~ Daniel James Brown

Those barbaric contraptions at the gym intimidate me. I once sprained my wrist trying to change the amount of weight resistance on a rowing machine, and have you seen all the different strap, rope, and handle attachments for the cable machine? Half of them look like sex toys for horses. ~ R.S. Grey

Maybe the future is like rowing for shore. Your only choice is to try or give up. ~ Kristen Chandler

Then the coxswain called out, 'Ready all!' Joe turned and faced the rear of the boat, slid his seat forward, sank the white blade of his oar into the oil-black water, tensed his muscles, and waited for the command that would propel him forward into the glimmering darkness. ~ Daniel James Brown

I went to university (Brown), I worked as a designer, I competed in Olympic sport (rowing) ... and I ended up being a musician. It's in the DNA, I guess. ~ Dhani Harrison

Now, in my middle age,
about nineteen in the head I'd say,
I am rowing, I am rowing ... ~ Anne Sexton

In the early morning on the lake sitting in the stern of the boat with his father rowing, he felt quite sure that he would never die. ~ Ernest Hemingway,

Aelin Galathynius said quietly, "You never stop seeing their faces."
It was only when they were rowing for the shore, spindrift soaking them, that Manon realized the queen hadn't meant the Thirteen. And Manon wondered if Aelin, too, had watched that cloak floating out to sea and thought it looked like spilled blood. ~ Sarah J. Maas

Every good rowing coach, in his own way, imparts to his men the kind of self-discipline required to achieve the ultimate from mind, heart, and body. Which is why most ex-oarsmen will tell you they learned more fundamentally important lessons in the racing shell than in the classroom. ~ Daniel James Brown

If you're looking for fine art or literature, you might want to read some stuff written by the Greeks. Because to create true fine art, slaves are a necessity. That's how the ancient Greeks felt, with slaves working the fields, cooking their meals, rowing their ships, all the while their citizens, under the Mediterranean Sun, indulged in poetry writing and grappled with mathematics. That was their idea of fine art. ~ Haruki Murakami

Physically, rowing was remarkable resistant to the camera ... the camera liked power exhibited more openly, and the power of the oarsmen [is] exhibited in far too controlled a setting. Besides, the camera liked to focus on individuals, and except for the single scull, crew was sport without faces. ~ David Halberstam

The Night-Swans
by Walter De la Mare

'Tis silence on the enchanted lake,
And silence in the air serene,
Save for the beating of her heart,
The lovely-eyed Evangeline.

She sings across the waters clear
And dark with trees and stars between,
The notes her fairy godmother
Taught her, the child Evangeline.

As might the unrippled pool reply,
Faltering an answer far and sweet,
Three swans as white as mountain snow
Swim mantling to her feet.

And still upon the lake they stay,
Their eyes black stars in all their snow,
And softly, in the glassy pool,
Their feet beat darkly to and fro.

She rides upon her little boat,
Her swans swim through the starry sheen,
Rowing her into Fairyland--
The lovely-eyed Evangeline.

'Tis silence on the enchanted lake,
And silence in the air serene;
Voices shall call in vain again
On earth the child Evangeline.

'Evangeline! Evangeline!'
Upstairs, downstairs, all in vain.
Her room is dim; her flowers faded;
She answers not again. ~ Walter De La Mare

Winning a rowing race is not like winning anything else. Here's my theory: you're facing backwards, so you're looking at the people you're beating
and there's something exquisite about that. ~ Hugh Laurie

An Olympic rowing career had left Porter Collins a bit inured to the pain of others, as he assumed they usually didn't know what pain was. No, ~ Michael Lewis

A rower knows the underlying presence that moves a boat; it is quite simply force and energy. The force needs to be penetrating, and the energy needs to be driving and uninhibited. ~ Drew Ginn

Make your blade a water-seeking missle ~ Christopher Allsopp

Shandy looked ahead. Blackbeard, apparently willing to get the explanation later, had picked up his oars and was rowing again.
'May I presume to suggest,' yelled Shandy giddily to Davies,
'that we preoceed the hell out of here with all due haste.'
Davies pushed a stray lock of hair back from his forehead and sat down on the rower's thwart. 'My dear fellow consider it done. ~ Tim Powers

I mean to do something grand. I don't know what, yet; but when I'm grown up I shall find out.Perhaps,it will be rowing out in boats, and saving peoples' lives,like that girl in the book. Or perhaps I shall go and nurse in the hospital, like Miss Nightingale. Or else I'll head a crusade and ride on a white horse, with armor and a helmet on my head, and carry a sacred flag. Or if I don't do that, I'll paint pictures,or sing, or scalp – sculp – what is it? you know – make figures in marble. Anyhow it shall be something. ~ Susan Coolidge

Ocean rowing is very much what you make it. Rowing technique is pretty irrelevant on the ocean. It's the psychology that's important. ~ Roz Savage

When one rows it is not the rowing which moves the ship: rowing is only a magical ceremony by means of which one compels a demon to move the ship. ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

To improve the oarsman you must improve the man. ~ Steve Fairbairn

West Wind #2

You are young. So you know everything. You leap
into the boat and begin rowing. But listen to me.
Without fanfare, without embarrassment, without
any doubt, I talk directly to your soul. Listen to me.
Lift the oars from the water, let your arms rest, and
your heart, and heart's little intelligence, and listen to
me. There is life without love. It is not worth a bent
penny, or a scuffed shoe. It is not worth the body of a
dead dog nine days unburied. When you hear, a mile
away and still out of sight, the churn of the water
as it begins to swirl and roil, fretting around the
sharp rocks – when you hear that unmistakable
pounding – when you feel the mist on your mouth
and sense ahead the embattlement, the long falls
plunging and steaming – then row, row for your life
toward it. ~ Mary Oliver

On June 14, 1998, I pushed off under quiet gray skies from Nags Head, N.C, in the American Pearl, a 23 foot long boat made of plywood and fiberglass. I planned to row 3,637 miles across the North Atlantic to France. I was alone. There were no chase vessels. No one planned to drop food or equipment to me along the way. The physical goal was easy to explain: I was attempting to do something no American and no woman had ever done - to row solo across an ocean. ~ Tori Murden

It's great to see the World Rowing Championships returning to U.S. soil for the first time in 25 years. I am even more excited that it will be taking place in my home state of Florida. Regardless of where my rowing career takes me, I am sure to be in attendance in Sarasota in 2017. ~ Stephen Young

A believer who has been giving in to the pull of his sinful heart never learns the extent of its power over him until he begins to do right. It is very much like the experience of one who is rowing a canoe. As long as he is going with the current, he has no idea how strong the current really is. Only when he decides to turn his canoe around and start rowing against the current does he experience its true strength. ~ Jim Berg

Once one is beyond a certain level of commitment to the sport, life begins to seem an allegory of rowing rather than rowing an allegory of life. ~ Stefan Kieszling

There's way more pressure cooking for cooks than rowing at the Olympics. ~ Bryan Volpenhein

There is a place where cerebral an corporeal meet: they call it rowing ~ Barry S. Strauss

Pocock paused and stepped back from the frame of the shell and put his hands on his hips, carefully studying the work he had so far done. He said for him the craft of building a boat was like religion. It wasn't enough to master the technical details of it. You had to give yourself up to it spiritually; you had to surrender yourself absolutely to it. When you were done and walked away from the boat, you had to feel that you had left a piece of yourself behind in it forever, a bit of your heart. He turned to Joe. "Rowing," he said, "is like that. And a lot of life is like that too, the parts that really matter anyway. Do you know what I mean, Joe? ~ Daniel James Brown

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

I think I have experience in rowing, and that has given me some ability to go about racing. I'm lucky genetically. I have a good VO2 max - I can hold a lot of air in my lungs - and that definitely helps. ~ Bryan Volpenhein

you're rowing by wordlight ~ Paul Celan

Swimming and athletics are the big gigs at the Olympic games. Cycling and rowing are pretty big for Britain, but globally, the two big things are athletics and swimming. ~ Clare Balding

If rowing is a trial then the ergometer is the courtroom, the meter is the jury. And an honest jury at that, because the numbers do not lie. ~ Barry S. Strauss

Physiologists, in fact, have calculated that rowing a two-thousand-meter race - the Olympic standard - takes the same physiological toll as playing two basketball games back-to-back. And it exacts that toll in about six minutes. A well-conditioned oarsman or oarswoman ~ Daniel James Brown

The Head of the Charles in Cambridge, Mass., is the great American crew event, athletically and socially. It occurs the second weekend in October; secondary schools and colleges send shells in all categories in the three-mile race up the Charles River. Drunken Preps line the banks and bridges at Harvard, ready to howl with glee as a coxswain rams his shell into a stanchion of the Eliot Street Bridge (where the river narrows and curves with treacherous suddenness). ~ Lisa Birnbach

Satan may win some present battles, but the outcome of the war has already been determined - and Satan knows it. When we know that truth as well, it gives us courage to persevere through the downturns. Like castaways who keep on rowing because the map shows an island ahead, we'll have the courage to press on. Perhaps this is the reason the devil tries to discourage people from reading this amazing book. The devil has turned thousands of people away from this portion of God's Word. He does not want anyone to ~ David Jeremiah

If you want to be your best, spend a lot of time exploring what is more than enough. Push yourself until the bar is lying immobile across your chest. Push yourself right off the edge of your capacity. ~ Brad Alan Lewis

"Stepping outside your comfort zone is supposed to feel uncomfortable because we're in new and unfamiliar territory. Being uncomfortable is a sign of success, NOT of failure! So if we are uncomfortably outside our comfort zones, then than means we are growing!!! And THAT is cause for celebration!" (modified from a passage in Roz Savage's "Rowing the Atlantic") ~ Roz Savage

My dear boy, you are under a wrong impression. It is not a race, it is merely a means of getting crews to do long rows ~ Steve Fairbairn

[G]rowing into your future with health and grace and beauty doesn't have to take all your time. It rather requires a dedication to caring for yourself as if you were rare and precious, which you are, and regarding all life around you as equally so, which it is. (267-268) ~ Victoria Moran

And I put my hand on her arm to stop her rowing.
Aaron's Noise roars up in red and black.
The current takes us on.
"I'm sorry!" I cry as the river takes us away, my words ragged things torn from me, my chest pulled so tight I can't barely breathe. "I'm sorry, Manchee!"
"Todd?" he barks, confused and scared and watching me leave him behind. "Todd?"
"Manchee!" I scream.
Aaron brings his free hand towards my dog.
"MANCHEE!"
"Todd?"
And Aaron wrenches his arms and there's a CRACK and a scream and a cut-off yelp that tears my heart in two forever and forever.
And the pain is too much it's too much it's too much and my hands are on my head and I'm rearing back and my mouth is open in a never-ending wordless wail of all the blackness that's inside of me. ~ Patrick Ness

Another boat, a straight-four, four sweep oarsmen without a coxswain, raced through our flotilla. I looked at them as they jetted past, and I quickly looked again. This boat appeared to be manned by four skeletons. Their cheek bones stood out like knots, their ribs were clearly defined as if they were painted on. Every leg and arm muscle showed as taut as steel cabling. Four pairs of deep-set eyes peered at us, conveying 'the look.' The four men who were rowing that shell were a special breed of oarsmen known as 'lightweights' ... ~ Brad Alan Lewis