[Writing] is edit, edit, edit. It's almost like getting a boat ready to go to sea. You've still got a countless number of things left to fix, but you've just got to go, "O. K. , everybody get on the boat. We're going, ready or not. "
Cantonese will eat anything in the sky but airplanes, anything in the sea but submarines, and anything with four legs but the table.
To be a good storyteller one must be gloriously alive. It is not possible to kindle fresh fires from burned-out embers. I have noticed that the best of the traditional storytellers whom I have heard have been those who live close to the heart of things-to the earth, the sea, wind and weather. They have been those who knew solitude, silence. They have been given unbroken time in which to feel deeply, to reach constantly for understanding. They have come to know the power of the spoken word. These storytellers have been sailors and peasants, wanderers and fisherman.
Does the sailor then live in exultation of having conquered the waves, or is he humbled by the magnanimity of the ocean? Does the climber believe that he conquered the mountain, or does he dissolve inwardly and face again and again all the times when the mountain was kind to him who was not even a little rag doll in the clutches of a giant? The craving is to merge, to become One with the mountain, the sea, the forest and the universe.
The sea of pleasures may drown its owner and the swimmer fears to open his eyes under the water.
He who lets the sea lull him into a sense of security is in very grave danger.
Remember. . . this year has already seen more billion-dollar weather-related disasters than any year in US history. Last year was the warmest ever recorded on planet Earth. Arctic sea ice is near all-time record lows. Record floods from Pakistan to Queensland to the Mississippi basin; record drought from the steppes of Russia to the plains of Texas. . . This is what climate change looks like in its early stages.
The sea drives truth into a man like salt.
I don't suppose I ever entirely release a fish. I may not eat it, but that does not mean I take nothing from it before I let it go.
Coming, as I do, from mountain folk on one side and sea followers on the other, there are few old songs of the hills or the sea with which I am not familiar.
From the sun did I learn this, when it goeth down, the exuberant one: gold doth it then pour into the sea, out of inexhaustible riches, -So that the poorest fisherman roweth even with golden oars! For this did I once see, and did not tire of weeping in beholding it. - Like the sun will also Zarathustra go down: now sitteth he here and waiteth, old broken tables around him, and also new tables half-written.
Since my childhood I learned that to understand the world we need to go further and take the risks of sailing in unknown seas.
In the beginning the Gods made man, and fashioned the sky and the sea, And the earth's fair face for man's dwelling-place, and this was the Gods' decree: "Lo, We have given to man five wits: he discerneth folly and sin; He is swift to deride all the world outside, and blind to the world within: So that man may make sport and amuse Us, in battling for phrases or pelf, Now that each may know what forebodeth woe to his neighbor, and not to himself.
I've always wanted to sail to the South Seas, but I can't afford it. What these men can't afford is not to go. They are enmeshed in the cancerous discipline of security. And in the worship of security we fling our lives beneath the wheels of routine — and before we know it our lives are gone.
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.
There are only two options for a ship: Either to sail to the sea and fight with the waves or rot in a port! The same is valid for the man!
The big icebergs that drift into warmer water melt much more rapidly under water than on the surface, and sometimes a sharp, low reef extending two or three hundred feet beneath the sea is formed. If a vessel should run on one of these reefs half her bottom might be torn away.
Sell a country! Why not sell the air, the clouds and the great sea, as well as the earth? Did not the Great Spirit make them all for the use of his children?
It's hard to tell the difference between sea and sky, between voyager and sea. Between reality and the workings of the heart.
The things fishermen know about trout aren't facts but articles of faith.