Sink Or Swim Quotes

Live or die, sink or swim. ~ George Peele

Terrified, because his father had said Billy was going to learn to swim by the method of sink-or-swim. His father was going to throw Billy into the deep end, and Billy was going to damn well swim. It was like an execution. ~ Kurt Vonnegut

Once they arrive, affirmative action kids are generally left to sink or swim academically. Brown (University) offers plenty of counseling and tutoring to struggling students, but, as any academic Dean will tell you, it's up to the students to seek it out, something that a drowning minority student will seek to avoid at all costs, fearing it will trumpet a second-class status. ~ Ron Suskind

There had been trials involving water, a time when witches were persecuted, bound, and tossed into the largest nearby body of water to see if they would sink or swim. ~ Kayla Krantz

I decided to try things, and I started to do things that would take me out of my comfort zone, and a lot of the times, that will cause you to either sink or swim. Really, I just lean on my inner circle and my faith to try to continue to encourage me so that I'm never out. I can be down, but I'm never out. ~ Omar Benson Miller

We can write morals into law, and enforce those morals harshly, or we can return to a true Free Enterprise System, which has the sink-or-swim justice of Caesar Augustus built into it. I emphatically favor the latter alternative. We must be hard, for we must become again a nation of swimmers, with the sinkers quietly disposing of themselves. ~ Kurt Vonnegut Jr.

Change will force you to step off the path, to venture from the nest, to close your eyes and dive right in, knowing that the greatest opportunities in life are found in the sink or swim, do or die moments. ~ Stella Payton

I was afraid of Korean food when I moved to L.A., let alone sushi. I remember thinking either sink or swim. Living here in Studio City, Ventura Blvd. is the Mecca of sushi restaurants. What you thought was so exotic is just run of the mill. ~ Parvesh Cheena

...I am for going on, and venturing my eternal state with Christ, whether I have comfort here or no; if God doth not come in, thought I, I will leap off the ladder even blindfold into eternity, sink or swim, come heaven, come hell; Lord Jesus, if thou wilt catch me, do; if not, I will venture for thy name. ~ John Bunyan

No matter what grief or loss takes place, most of life flows on all around us, as though nothing's changed. At some point in our sorrow, we each make a choice to sink or swim. There's no alternative. ~ Tammara Webber

As marriage was woman's business, unmarried women, though doubtless unfortunate, must simply be considered as business failures: harsh, doubtless, but in tune with the sink-or-swim capitalist times. ~ Ruth Brandon

Nothing will serve you better than a strong work ethic. Nothing. And it's something that you can't teach. You have to be thrown into it, where you're going to sink or swim. It's amazing how self-correcting and how clarifying a good, hard, shitty job can be. Because at the end of the day, any profession I've seen anybody in, when you peer behind the curtains of Oh, wouldn't that be a great job? Wow, what an amazing thing, a philanthropic endeavor! it really just comes down to It's a f**king grind. ~ Robert Downey, Jr.

Sail, sail thy best, ship of democracy,
Of value is thy freight, 'tis not the present only,
The past is also stored in thee,
Thou holdest not the venture of thyself alone, not of the western continent alone,
Earth's resume entire floats upon thy keel, O ship, is steadied by thy spars,
With thee Time voyages in trust, the antecedent nations sink or swim with thee,
With all their ancient struggles , martyrs, heroes, epics, wars, thou bear'st the other continents,
Theirs, theirs as much as thine, the destination-port triumphant.. ~ Walt Whitman

In this business you either sink or swim or you don't. ~ David Smith

After the war, they took Army dogs and rehabilitated them for civilian life. But they turned soldiers into civilians immediately, and let em sink or swim. ~ Audie Murphy

Tucker was my safe place for three years, my secure dock in a sea of indecision as I dealt with my father's illness and death. And now I had to sink or swim. It was time to let go ... and move on. Slowly, I pushed off from the dock that was Tucker Montgomery and prepared to swim ... praying I wouldn't drown. ~ Melissa Brown

I love improvisation. You can't blame it on the writers. You can't blame it on direction. You can't blame it on the camera guy ... It's you. You're on. You've got to do it, and you either sink or swim with what you've got. ~ Jonathan Winters

What do you mean? Why do you think you like them? That's all you and I did together when you were little. Don't you remember? I. Don't. Remember. I remember, It's a sink-or-swim world, Noah. I remember, Act tough and you are tough. I remember every heart-stomping look of disappointment, of embarrassment, of bewilderment from him. I remember: If your twin sister wasn't my spitting image I'd swear you came about from parthenogenesis. I remember the 49ers, the Miami Heat, the Giants, the World Cup. I do not remember Animal Planet. ~ Jandy Nelson

As a very small child I found recorded noise and the solitary singer beneath the spotlight so dramatic and so brave ... walking the plank ... willingly ... It was sink or swim. The very notion of standing there, alone, I found beautiful. ~ Morrissey

Things cannot go on as they have been doing. Circumstances will force me to sink or swim, either to rise from this slough and weakness or collapse utterly, ~ Wallace E. Baker

Financial institutions are not being bailed out as a favor to them or their stockholders. In fact, stockholders have come out worse off after some bailouts. The real point is to avoid a major contraction of credit that could cause major downturns in output and employment, ruining millions of people, far beyond the financial institutions involved. If it was just a question of the financial institutions themselves, they could be left to sink or swim. But it is not. ~ Thomas Sowell

sea//c.
i.
I have been
told
by many
that
men
taste
like the
ocean.
Maybe it's because
so many
of their ancestors
got lost at sea
but finally made their way to
shore;
the salt in their pores.
ii.
-A sailor & his sinking ship-
buoyant & blue
there is siren in the sea,
instead of salt
there is death
on her skin
-you cannot let waves win you over as easily as this-
sink or swim
choose one;
swim.
iii.
You make it to shore
and I tell you
the sea and the sky look the same to me.
Except one
is not as wet as
your eyes when
you weep
and our lips
when they meet.
iv.
meanwhile,
mermaids
make love
to men
they do not know. ~ Ingrid Vargas

Newfoundland is both a simple place and a complex one. The people are warm and friendly but their humour is sharp and biting. Newfoundland is always walking the line between prosperity and poverty. The people who live here are forced to go away for work, but they would never leave. This place is not black and white. It is as grey as the sky above it, the water around it, and the fog that links the two. It takes and it gives, just like the surrounding ocean. Sink or swim: it will make of you what it wants. ~ Mark Critch

Born on an island, I could swim before I could walk, thrown many times into swimming pools and warm transparent Caribbean waters: sink or swim, that was my first lesson. While I'm not a natural athlete, I'm still a strong swimmer and feel a great affinity with the sea. ~ Monique Roffey

Fear will give you Fight

Fight will give you Freedom

Dive in and Swim ~ Sarah Gray

I guess it's ridiculously romantic, but I wanted to be a full tilt, sink-or-swim writer. ~ Daniel Woodrell

Life in our world is very sink or swim, and that's for the best. If you can't survive in the deep end, you should get out before you drown. ~ Seanan McGuire

I have insecurities about being a good mom, or balancing my career with motherhood. All of those are very strong, very real obstacles. My motto is just unconsciously, and maybe now consciously because I'm saying it, is sink or swim. I'm a fighter. ~ Charisma Carpenter

I always thought that I was a good swimmer, you know? That in a sink or swim situation I would rise to the top. But the truth is I was drowning. I was sinking fast and you threw me a lifeline. I never expected to love you. But you saved my life. How could I not? ~ Rachel Hayes

I think there is more creative freedom as a solo artist by far because you might get a group push back on an idea because it's more of a democratic process. You can sink or swim on your own ideas on a solo project. ~ Myka 9

Sink or swim! You never really feel ready, there is always sometime more that your mind tells you you should be doing. However, the trick is to be able to show up and perform no matter what the circumstance. ~ Natalie Cook

WHEN YOU WORK FOR OTHERS, YOU ARE AT THEIR MERCY. THEY OWN YOUR WORK; THEY OWN YOU. YOUR CREATIVE SPIRIT IS SQUASHED. WHAT KEEPS YOU IN SUCH POSITIONS IS A FEAR OF HAVING TO SINK OR SWIM ON YOUR OWN. INSTEAD YOU SHOULD HAVE A GREATER FEAR OF WHAT WILL HAPPEN TO YOU IF YOU REMAIN DEPENDENT ON OTHERS FOR POWER. YOUR GOAL IN EVERY MANEUVER IN LIFE MUST BE OWNERSHIP, WORKING THE CORNER FOR YOURSELF. WHEN IT IS YOURS TO LOSE-YOU ARE MORE MOTIVATED, MORE CREATIVE, MORE ALIVE. THE ULTIMATE POWER IN LIFE IS TO BE COMPLETELY SELF-RELIANT, COMPLETELY YOURSELF. ~ 50 Cent

All things and all people in life have to sink or swim on their own merits, not their reputation; that just as a wise man can say a foolish thing, a fool can say something wise. ~ Vincent Bugliosi

In the concrete jungle it's sink or swim: you can't be timid or tentative; you have to forge through, make your mark, enter the fray. ~ Belinda Jones

Whatever our struggles,and whether we sink or swim,our world is no more permanent than a wave rising on the ocean ~ Arthur Golden

All sharks were born swimming. ~ Rebecca McNutt

How did Biot arrive at the partial differential equation? [the heat conduction equation] ... Perhaps Laplace gave Biot the equation and left him to sink or swim for a few years in trying to derive it. That would have been merely an instance of the way great mathematicians since the very beginnings of mathematical research have effortlessly maintained their superiority over ordinary mortals. ~ Clifford A. Truesdell

The traditional gross anatomy lab represented a sort of sink-or-swim mentality about dealing with death. To cope with what was being asked of them, medical students had to find ways to desensitize themselves. They quickly learned to objectify cadavers, to think of the dead as structures and tissues, and not a former human being. Humor--at the cadaver's expense--was tolerated, condoned even. ~ Mary Roach

The best lessons are learned when it's sink or swim, and you're quite the swimmer! ~ Chris Colfer

It was sink or swim for him - and happens he's swimming. ~ Esther Forbes

Henry by the compulsion of love had cheated her of her chosen life, yet he had given her another life, an ample life, a life in touch with the greater world, if that took her fancy; or a life, alternatively, pressed close up against her own nursery. For a life of her own, he had substituted his life with its interests, or the lives of her children with their potentialities. He assumed that she might sink herself in either, if not both, with equal joy. It had never occurred to him that she might prefer simply to be herself. ~ Vita Sackville-West

The pain makes you so numb,
At times, you feel as if you are hallucinating,
Seeing things happen to you as if it were happening to someone else like an " out of body experience".

How could life be so cruel?

Is this what perseverance and enduring pain is all about;I ask myself ?
Somehow I have made myself believe that
" jumping off the cliff " or
" drowning myself "
would do nothing to ease this "pain " ! this " numbness "!
Seeing my loved one suffer after I am "gone" , I guess ,will make me more and more anxious ;
Angry "ghosts " don't make good " providers" , I assume.
So I carry on ..
I carry on every day .
It's a weight I have ...
It makes my heart sink to the bottomless pit ,
But
Then again,
a man like me; a giver & a man with no choice has " literally" no choice" but to " live with this hollowed numb"! ~ BinYamin Gulzar

Welcome to the real world of marriage, where hairs are always on the sink and little white spots cover the mirror, where arguments center on which way the toilet paper comes off and whether the lid should be up or down. It is a world where shoes do not walk to the closet and drawers do not close themselves, where coats do not like hangers and socks go AWOL during laundry. In this world, a look can hurt and a word can crush. Intimate lovers can become enemies, and marriage a battlefield. ~ Gary Chapman

Captain MacWhirr had sailed over the surface of the oceans as
some men go skimming over the years of existence to sink gently into
a placid grave, ignorant of life to the last, without ever having been
made to see all it may contain of perfidy, of violence, and of terror.

There are on sea and land such men thus fortunate--or thus disdained by
destiny or by the sea. ~ Joseph Conrad

The city reveals itself as a set of cells, a hundred thousand windows, some darkened and some flooded with green or white or golden light. Inside, strangers swim to and fro, attending to the business of their private hours. You can see them, but you can't reach them, and so this commonplace urban phenomenon, available in any city of the world on any night, conveys to even the most social a tremor of loneliness, its uneasy combination of separation and exposure. ~ Olivia Laing

They sit and stare and stare and sit
Until they're hypnoti[z]ed by it,
Until they're absolutely drunk
With all that shocking ghastly junk.
Oh yes, we know it keep them still,
They don't climb out the window sill,
They never fight or kick or punch,
They leave you free to cook the lunch
And wash the dishes in the sink-
But did you ever stop to think,
To wonder just exactly what
This does to your beloved tot?
It rots the senses in the head!
It kills imagination dead!
It clogs and clutters up the mind!
It makes a child so dull and blind
He can no longer understand
A fantasy, a fairyland!
His brain becomes as soft as cheese!
His powers of thinking rust and freeze!
He cannot think-he only sees!
'All right' you'll cry. 'All right' you'll say,
'But if we take the set away,
What shall we do to entertain
Our darling children? Please explain!'
We'll answer this by asking you,
'How used they keep themselves contented
Before this monster was invented?'
Have you forgotten? Don't you know?
We'll say it very loud and slow:
They... used ... to... read! They'd read and read,
And read and read, and then proceed
To read some more, Great Scott! Gadzooks!
One half their lives was reading books!...
Oh books, what books they used to know,
Those children living long ago!
So please, oh please, we beg, we pray,
Go throw ~ Roald Dahl

"Just to have my kids be in the sun every day-picking avocados, going for a swim," she says. "Even for two years or something, and come back when they go to senior school." Just what kids want to do, pick avocados. Also: senior school? ~ Gwyneth Paltrow

When a child first catches adults out
when it first walks into his grave little head that adults do not always have divine intelligence, that their judgments are not always wise, their thinking true, their sentences just
his world falls into panic desolation. The gods are fallen and all safety gone. And there is one sure thing about the fall of gods: they do not fall a little; they crash and shatter or sink deeply into green muck. It is a tedious job to build them up again; they never quite shine. And the child's world is never quite whole again. It is an aching kind of growing. ~ John Steinbeck

It would be better for you to turn around and go into the thick grasses, there where one of those strange grassy islets in the riverbed will completely cover you, it would be better if you do this for once and for all, because if you come back tomorrow, or after tomorrow, there will be no one at all to understand, no one to look, not even a single one among all your natural enemies that will be able to see who you really are; it would be better for you to go away this very evening when twilight begins to fall, it would be better for you to retreat with the others, if night begins to descend, and you should not come back if tomorrow, or after tomorrow, dawn breaks, because for you it will be much better for there to be no tomorrow and no day after tomorrow; so hide away now in the grass, sink down, fall onto your side, let your eyes slowly close, and die, for there is no point in the sublimity that you bear, die at midnight in the grass, sink down and fall, and let it be like that - breathe your last. ~ Laszlo Krasznahorkai

I close my eyes And sink within myself Relive the gift of precious memories In need of a fix called innocence When did it begin?The change to come was undetectable The open wounds expose the importance of Our innocence A high that can never be bought or sold ~ Chuck Schuldiner

species have the potential to sink or save the ecosystem, depending on the circumstances. Knowing that we must preserve ecosystems with as many of their interacting species as possible defines our challenge in no uncertain terms. It helps us to focus on the ecosystem as an integrated functioning unit, and it deemphasizes the conservation of single species. Surely this more comprehensive approach is the way to go. ~ Douglas W. Tallamy

An indisputable law of physics, water always finds the lowest level in an incredibly efficient manner. It penetrates any crevice or path that will facilitate its downward flow, steadily meandering and descending in search of lower planes. In our physical world, water is as efficient as gravity is unforgiving.
Human beings are mostly water. The body is comprised of more than 70% water and it is always tragic when human beings, true to their chemical composition, emulate the efficiency of water during dark, difficult periods in their lives, allowing one misstep or transgression to lead to lower and lower descent. Water can be beautiful to watch as it cascades downward in its transparent and fluid simplicity, but some human beings also have a tendency to fall and sink, like water without the beauty. ~ Michael Bowe

I was treading water, trying neither to drown nor to swim to safety, just staying in place, because here was the truth - even if I couldn't speak the truth, or even hint at it, yet I could swear it lay around us, the way we say of a necklace we've just lost while swimming: I know it's down there somewhere. ~ Andre Aciman

There are records that you just sink into. They coincide with what you're going through and become an ally. If our records do that for people, that's the greatest compliment I could ever receive. That's one of the reasons making music is so important to me, because there's a very strange emotional reach. For me - more than books or movies or other things - music is like a mainline to your heart. ~ Matt Berninger

Now, take a breath, lay back, close the book, brush your eyebrows, go check that pimple on your face in the mirror, or better get yourself a cup of coffee. Let this part sink in for a while because the ride will get bumpier when you continue reading. ~ Cameron Jace

My father is standing at the sink wearing a too-tight long-sleeved red T-Shirt, a pair of too-high jeans and sporting the type of orange glow that belongs only on Chernobyl victims. Plus his hair looks like an oil spill.
'Hey you,' he says, washing what looks to be some carrots under the sink. Are they carrots or are they parsnips reflecting the sheen of my father's tangerine skin? Hard to tell.
'You've fake tanned yourself again,' I say - it's a statement, not a question. 'Too much?' he says, innocently. 'I just didn't want to be one of those pasty office workers and I thought it wouldn't hurt to back up last week's application with another hit.'
'Dad, you look-'
'Sun kissed?'
'Radioactive. And what the hell happened to your hands?'
- Cat ~ Rebecca Sparrow

Before Diagnosis"

The lake is dead for a second time
this January. And no matter
how many geese lay their warm breasts
against the ice or fly across
its hard chest, it doesn't break,
or sink, or open up and swallow them.
The ice is frozen water.
There is no metaphor for exile.
Even if these trees continue to shake
the crows from their branches,
my sister is still farther away from her mind
than we are from each other
sitting on opposite ends of a park bench
waiting for evening to swallow us whole.
In the last moments of a depressive, a sun.
In the last moments of a sun, my sister
says a man is chasing a goose through the snow. ~ Roger Reeves

I swim with all my strength. No superhuman surge, or pony heroics; it's just me at my most desperate. ~ Karen Russell

In the moment all is dear to me, dear that in this logic there is no redemption, the city itself being the highest form of madness and each and every part, organic or inorganic, an expression of this same madness. I feel absurdly and humbly great, not as megalomaniac, but as human spore, as the dead sponge of life swollen to saturation. I no longer look into the eyes of the woman I hold in my arms but I swim through, head and arms and legs, and I see that behind the sockets of the eyes there is a region unexplored, the world of futurity, and here there is no logic whatever, just the still germination of events unbroken by night and day, by yesterday and tomorrow. The eye, accustomed to concentration on points in space, now concentrates on points in time; the eye sees forward and backward at will. The eye which was the I of the self no longer exists; this selfless eye neither reveals nor illuminates. It travels along the line of the horizon, a ceaseless, uninformed voyager. Trying to retain the lost body I grew in logic as the city, a point digit in the anatomy of perfection. I grew beyond my own death, spiritually bright and hard. I was divided into endless yesterdays, endless tomorrows, resting only on the cusp of the event, a wall with many windows, but the house gone. I must shatter the walls and windows, the last shell of the lost body, if I am to rejoin the present. That is why I no longer look into the eyes or through the eyes, but by the legerdemain of will swim throug ~ Henry Miller

You lived intensely with others, only to have them disappear overnight, since the shadow class was condemned to movement. The men left for other jobs, towns, got deported, returned home, changed names. Sometimes someone came popping around a corner again, or on the subway then they vanished again. Addresses, phone numbers did not hold. The emptiness Biju felt returned to him over and over, until eventually he made sure not to let friendships sink deep anymore. ~ Kiran Desai

And whether you fall in or dive in, it's good to get wet now and again. If you never got wet, you'd never learn how to swim. ~ Jacqueline Edgington

It wasn't often that I had difficulty tasting something. Flavor was the way people like me made sense of the world.
We knew that there was a flavor that explained you-even to yourself. A flavor whose truth you recognized when you tasted it. A flavor that answered the question you didn't know you had.
Perhaps it was a voluptuous vanilla that your sharp-edged self could sink into like a pillow. Or a homesick pomegranate, each seed like a ruby slipper that would take you back to the place where you were loved and where people had missed you. ~ Judith Fertig

Love does not cost anything. Kind words and deeds do not cost anything. The real beauty of the world is equal for everyone to see. It was given by God equally to all, without restrictions.

Everyone, was given a beautiful vehicle in which to express love to others. Feelings are free to express and give to ourselves and each other through our willingness to give and care.

What is complicated about this... Why have we made others feel they have to climb mountains and swim oceans in order to make a difference.

All we need to understand my friends, is that human life was given equally to us all, not partially but in totality.

The sun was given to all. It does not shine on the few. So, just has nature is indifferent to our station or situation, we need to know that we are all equal. We need to focus on the things that are constant and not place our values on things that can be blown away with the next, great, wind.

Value life in what ever house it dwells. For when it comes time that we are all stripped to bare bones before the divine and facing eternity, we will understand that the only law we were meant to follow, was to love ourselves and each other. Nothing more...nothing less. ~ Carla Jo Masterson

We suffer the threat of breathing in water; we fight the nightmares that would drown us. And just as we feel the deceptive joy of floating, we flex our muscles and learn to kick, propelling ourselves into deeper waters where we can't see the bottom or touch the side.

There, in the deep, we stroke.

Then, surprising ourselves, saving ourselves, we swim. ~ Lynne Hugo

If not met promptly and decidedly, the two portions of the Union will gradually become thoroughly alienated, when no alternative will be left to us, as the weaker of the two, but to sever all political ties or sink down into abject submission. ~ John C. Calhoun

After more hours in a carriage with Archer than he ever wanted to experience again, Grey returned to Ryeton House. All he wanted to do was find Rose, climb into bed with her, and sleep for the rest of the day. Honestly, sleep. Entwine his legs with hers, sink into her arms, bury his face in the sweet warm hollow of her neck…
"You coming?"
Grey blinked and turned his head. He was standing in the drive with Archer and the others watching him expectantly.
Archer shook his head, clearly exasperated. "Are we going inside, Your Grace, or shall we conduct our business on the street for all Mayfair to witness?"
"Inside," he mumbled. Could he be any more of an idiot? He walked toward the door, the others falling into step behind him. Archer took Bronte's arm and led their pale, scared-looking sister into the house. Grey hadn't had much of a chance to talk to her, to let her know that everything would be fine. She probably thought he was going to rant and rave and tell her she could never see Alexander again.
Truth be told, ranting and raving was tempting. And a little fear was a small price to pay for what she'd put him through-and for thinking so ill of him to begin with. When had he ever given her reason to think him a monster? ~ Kathryn Smith

What the devil is 'wordsharing'? Does the word for 'speak' mean 'listen' just as well? If I said, 'Listen to me!' you might talk, instead."

"What use is the one without the other? It took me a long time to see this distinction in Valan speech."

Spinel thought over the list of 'share forms': learnsharing, worksharing, lovesharing. "Do you say 'hitsharing,' too? If I hit a rock with a chisel, does the rock hit me?"

"I would think so. Don't you feel it in your arm?"

He frowned and sought a better example; it was so obvious, it was impossible to explain. "I've got it: if Beryl bears a child, does the child bear Beryl? That's ridiculous."

"A mother is born when her child comes."

"Or if I swim in the sea, does the sea swim in me?"

"Does it not?"

Helplessly he thought, She can't be that crazy. "Please, you do know the difference, don't you?"

"Of course. What does it matter? ~ Joan Slonczewski

3. There is a good scared and a bad scared. Try to learn the difference. The wrong kind of fear will feel like driving into a storm, stepping onto a boat and feeling it begin to sink, knowing you don't have a life jacket. If that's what you feel, something needs to change. But the right kind of fear is more like meeting a friend of a friend you've been told you would love, or visiting a new country you don't know well- you might not understand the language, but you still want to learn. Good scared means you're growing. Know the difference. 4. ~ Elizabeth McNamara

They've never known a time when people drank rain water because it was pure, or could eat snow, or swim in any river or brook. The last time I drove to Washington the traffic was so bad that I could have made better time with a horse. ~ Madeleine L'Engle

I hate the small looking-glass on the stairs," said Jinny. "It shows our heads only; it cuts off our heads...So I skip up the stairs past them, to the next landing, where the long glass hangs, and I see myself entire. I see my body and head in one now; for even in this serge frock they are one, my body and my head. Look, when I move my head I ripple all down my narrow body; even my thin legs rippled like a stalk in the wind. I flicker between the set face of Susan and Rhoda's vagueness; I leap like one of those flames that run between the cracks of the earth; I move, I dance, I never cease to move and dance. I move like the leaf that moved in the hedge as a child and frightened me. i dance over these streaked, these impersonal, distempered walls with their yellow skirting as firelight dances over teapots. i catch fire even from women's cold eyes. when I read, a purple rim runs around the black edge of the textbook. yet I cannot follow any word through its changes. I cannot follow any thought from present to past. I do not stand lost, like Susan, with tears in my eyes remembering home; or lie, like Rhoda, crumpled among the ferns, staining my pink cotton green, while I dream of plants that flower under the sea, and rocks through which the fish swim slowly. I do not dream. ~ Virginia Woolf

When a man is out of his depth, whether he has fallen into a little swimming-bath or into mid-ocean, he has to swim all the same. ~ Plato

When this is over ... we will got to the rainforest, or a beach as white as bone. We will eat grapes from the vine, we will swim with sea turtles, we will walk miles on cobblestone streets. We will laugh and talk and confess. We will. ~ Jodi Picoult

For those who must deal with human corpses regularly, it is easier (and, I suppose, more accurate) to think of them as objects, not people. For most physicians, objectification is mastered their first year of medical school, in the gross anatomy lab, or "gross lab," as it is casually and somewhat aptly known. To help depersonalize the human form that students will be expected to sink knives into and eviscerate, anatomy lab personnel often swathe the cadavers in gauze and encourage students to unwrap as they go, part by part. ~ Mary Roach

But, this dark place is not the end. Remember that the darkness of night precedes the dawn. And as long as your heart still beats, this is not the death of it. You don't have to die here. Sometimes, the ocean floor is only a stop on the journey. And it is when you are at this lowest point, that you are faced with a choice. You can stay there at the bottom, until you drown. Or you can gather pearls and rise back up - stronger from the swim, and richer from the jewels. ~ Yasmin Mogahed

To a person who expects every desert to be barren sand dunes, the Sonoran must come as a surprise. Not only are there no dunes, there's no sand. At least not the sort of sand you find at the beach. The ground does have a sandy color to it, or gray, but your feet won't sink in. It's hard, as if it's been tamped. And pebbly. And glinting with
what else
mica. ~ Jerry Spinelli

If a person cannot swim across the river, he must take the bridge. He is not afraid of the water or worried that he may drown. But he takes the bridge out of necessity. It is a fact. To fear or worry over necessities (over facts), stills the mind. The stagnant mind only focuses and refocuses on a single point, without peripheral vision - it ponders danger, but it does not prepare for it. The brave man is not bound immobile with caution or lost scouting the fog of hazard calculating insurmountable variables. His sight and sense is not hindered and he may confront danger upon its arrival. To be brave is not to be careless or headstrong, but to act without expectation. ~ M.N. O’Brien

All that could run or leap or swim
Whether in wood, water or cloud,
Acclaiming, proclaiming, declaiming Him. ~ William Butler Yeats

I cannot have a man who is afraid of everything, I don't have the time to soothe insecurities and fears, I cannot have a man who is standing on a stone by a creek, watching for the fish to swim by and every time he sees a fish he says "Oh look, this fish scares me, I wonder what this fish means, this fish might mean- this, or this fish might mean- that" for God's sake, they are just fish, and they don't mean anything! Such a sad thing, so many fine, strong men standing on top of little stones, pointing at fish all the time! Such a waste! Such a waste of time! I can only have a man who will leap into the water, not minding the damn fish and whatever other little things that scare him. I need to have someone who is braver than me; if I am a pirate, he has to be the pirate Captain, if I am a pirate Captain he has to be the flying dragon. ~ C. JoyBell C.

But there are a thousand ways to look at it: maybe the strings break, or maybe our ship s sink, or maybe we're grass
our roots so interdependent that no one is dead as long as someone is still alive. We don't suffer from a shortage of metaphors, is what I mean. But you have to be careful which metaphor you choose, because it matters. ~ John Green

The pool," said Kallorek, pointing. "The pool, right there."
"You mean the pond?"
"I mean the pool," growled the booker. "Get in. Swim." He accompanied these words with effusive gestures that set his jewellery ringing.
Clay examined the pond. "Swim to where?" he asked.
"What do you mean swim to where?" Kallorek's brow deepened.
"Is it a healing spring?" Gabe asked. He flexed his arm, wincing as he extended it fully. "Because I think my elbow - "
"Listen, fuck your elbow!" Kallorek blew up. Clay had forgotten how short the booker's fuse was. That big toothy smile one moment, and the next …"It ain't a spring, or a pond, or a godsdamned sea nymph's bathtub. It's a fucking pool. Just a pool! You swim around in it to relax. ~ Nicholas Eames

[Fall, 1951]

To me Acapulco is the detoxicating cure for all the evils of the city: ambition, vanity, quest for success in money, the continuous contagious presence of power-driven, obsessed individuals who want to become known, to be in the limelight, noticed, as if life among millions gave you a desperate illness, a need of rising above the crowd, being noticed, existing individually, singled out from a mass of ants and sheep. It has something to do with the presence of millions of anonymous faces, anonymous people, and the desperate ways of achieving distinction. Here, all this is nonsense. You exist by your smile and your presence. You exist for your joys and your relaxations. You exist in nature. You are part of the glittering sea, and part of the luscious, well-nourished plants, you are wedded to the sun, you are immersed in timelessness, only the present counts, and from the present you extract all the essences which can nourish the senses, and so the nerves are still, the mind is quiet, the nights are lullabies, the days are like gentle ovens in which infinitely wise sculptor's hands re-form the lost contours, the lost sensations of the body. The body comes to life. Quests, pursuits of concrete securities of one kind or another lose all their importance. As you swim, you are washed of all the excrescences of so-called civilization, which includes the incapacity to be happy under any circumstances. ~ Anais Nin

None were left now to unname, and yet how close I felt to them when I saw one of them swim or fly or trot or crawl across my way or over my skin, or stalk me in the night, or go along beside me for a while in the day. They seemed far closer than when their names had stood between myself and them like a clear barrier: so close that my fear of them and their fear of me became one same fear. And the attraction that many of us felt, the desire to feel or rub or caress one another's scales or skin or feathers or fur, taste one another's blood or flesh, keep one another warm, that attraction was now all one with the fear, and the hunter could not be told from the hunted, nor the eater from the food. ~ Ursula K. Le Guin

Tiered body, mined, with soul. When ones must swim through all the fake while it is what it is not what one thinks it can be worded it in to and or glamour shot it to be. ~ Shane Edward Thompson

I think it's a real danger, as an actor, when you try to make some statement through your career about what the business should be doing or ultimately what your image should be or how you want to be perceived. I look at every project that comes along and say, "Is this something I can sink my teeth into and can do a good job on?" That's really how I choose roles. ~ Leonardo DiCaprio