Drowning Quotes

“I went down to the river,
I set down on the bank.
I tried to think but couldn't,
So I jumped in and sank.”
― Langston Hughes

“He was swimming in a sea of other people’s expectations. Men had drowned in seas like that.”
― Robert Jordan, New Spring

“The stars are brilliant at this time of night
and I wander these streets like a ritual I don’t dare to break
for darling, the times are quite glorious.

I left him by the water’s edge,
still waving long after the ship was gone
and if someone would have screamed my name I wouldn’t have heard for I’ve said goodbye so many times in my short life that farewells are a muscular task and I’ve taught them well.
There’s a place by the side of the railway near the lake where I grew up and I used to go there to burry things and start anew.
I used to go there to say goodbye.
I was young and did not know many people but I had hidden things inside that I never dared to show and in silence I tried to kill them,
one way or the other,
leaving sin on my body
scrubbing tears off with salt
and I built my rituals in farewells.
Endings I still cling to.

So I go to the ocean to say goodbye.

He left that morning, the last words still echoing in my head
and though he said he’d come back one day I know a broken promise from a right one
for I have used them myself and there is no coming back.
Minds like ours are can’t be tamed and the price for freedom is the price we pay.

I turned away from the ocean
as not to fall for its plea
for it used to seduce and consume me
and there was this one night
a few years back and I was not yet accustomed to farewells
and just like now I stood waving long after the ship was gone.
But I was younger then and easily fooled
and the ocean was deep and dark and blue
and I took my shoes off to let the water freeze my bones.
I waded until I could no longer walk and it was too cold to swim but still I kept on walking at the bottom of the sea for I could not tell the difference between the ocean and the lack of someone I loved and I had not yet learned how the task of moving on is as necessary as survival.

Then days passed by and I spent them with my work
and now I’m writing letters I will never dare to send.
But there is this one day every year or so
when the burden gets too heavy
and I collect my belongings I no longer need
and make my way to the ocean to burn and drown and start anew
and it is quite wonderful, setting fire to my chains and flames on written words
and I stand there, starring deep into the heat until they’re all gone.
Nothing left to hold me back.

You kissed me that morning as if you’d never done it before and never would again and now I write another letter that I will never dare to send, collecting memories of loss
like chains wrapped around my veins,
and if you see a fire from the shore tonight
it’s my chains going up in flames.

The time of moon i quite glorious.
We could have been so glorious.”
― Charlotte Eriksson, You're Doing Just Fine

“Nobody wanted your dance,
Nobody wanted your strange glitter, your floundering
Drowning life and your effort to save yourself,
Treading water, dancing the dark turmoil,
Looking for something to give.”
― Ted Hughes, Birthday Letters

“You don't drown by falling in the water; you drown by staying there.”
― edwin louis cole

“She had a strange feeling in the pit of her stomach, like when you're swimming and you want to put your feet down on something solid, but the water's deeper than you think and there's nothing there”
― Julia Gregson, East of the Sun

“Toxic people attach themselves like cinder blocks tied to your ankles, and then invite you for a swim in their poisoned waters.”
― John Mark Green

“I read once that water is a symbol for emotions. And for a while now I've thought maybe my mother drowned in both.”
― Jessi Kirby, Moonglass

“I can’t listen to you. I can’t listen to your voice. It’s as though I’d drunk a bottle of anise and fallen asleep wrapped in a quilt of roses. It pulls me along – and I know I’m drowning – but I go on down.”
― Federico García Lorca, Bodas de sangre

“Two drowning people can't save each other. All they can do is drag each other down.”
― Carsten Jensen, We, the Drowned

“There's always a siren, singing you to shipwreck. Some of us may be more susceptible than others are, but there's always a siren. It may be with us all our lives, or it may be many years or decades before we find it or it finds us. But when it does find us, if we're lucky we're Odysseus tied up to the ship's mast, hearing the song with perfect clarity, but ferried to safety by a crew whose ears have been plugged with beeswax. If we're not at all lucky, we're another sort of sailor stepping off the deck to drown in the sea.”
― Caitlín R. Kiernan, The Drowning Girl

“Tell her this
And more,—
That the king of the seas
Weeps too, old, helpless man.
The bustling fates
Heap his hands with corpses
Until he stands like a child
With surplus of toys.”
― Stephen Crane, The Complete Poems of Stephen Crane

“They call it the drowning instinct. It's when drowning doesn't look like drowning.”
― Ilsa J. Bick, Drowning Instinct

“The world is drowning in weirdness and lies......and here we are, so used to it that we're actually bored!”
― Inio Asano, Solanin

“When it comes to the crusty behavior of some people, give them the benefit of the doubt. They may be drowning right before your eyes, but you can't see it. And you would never ask someone to drown with a smile on his face.”
― Richelle E. Goodrich, Smile Anyway: Quotes, Verse, and Grumblings for Every Day of the Year

“Sometimes you're drowning yourself in your own words.”
― Steve Maraboli

“For in tremendous extremities human souls are like drowning men; well enough they know they are in peril; well enough they know the causes of that peril;--nevertheless, the sea is the sea, and these drowning men do drown.”
― Herman Melville, Pierre Or The Ambiguities

“I hit him on the back of the neck. He submerged.Help. I've drowned the Beast Lord.”
― Ilona Andrews, Magic Strikes

“The LSD phenomenon, on the other hand, is—to me at least—more interesting. It is an intentionally achieved schizophrenia, with the expectation of a spontaneous remission—which, however, does not always follow. Yoga, too, is intentional schizophrenia: one breaks away from the world, plunging inward, and the ranges of vision experienced are in fact the same as those of a psychosis. But what, then, is the difference? What is the difference between a psychotic or LSD experience and a yogic, or a mystical? The plunges are all into the same deep inward sea; of that there can be no doubt. The symbolic figures encountered are in many instances identical (and I shall have something more to say about those in a moment). But there is an important difference. The difference—to put it sharply—is equivalent simply to that between a diver who can swim and one who cannot. The mystic, endowed with native talents for this sort of thing and following, stage by stage, the instruction of a master, enters the waters and finds he can swim; whereas the schizophrenic, unprepared, unguided, and ungifted, has fallen or has intentionally plunged, and is drowning.”
― Joseph Campbell, Myths to Live By

“He feels himself buried in those two infinities, the ocean and the sky, at one and the same time: the one is a tomb; the other is a shroud.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

“Two people making love, she once said, are like one drowned person resuscitating the other.”
― Anatole Broyard, Kafka Was the Rage: A Greenwich Village Memoir

“For the first time in his existence, he knew he was drowning and he wasn't thinking about survival.”
― Christine Feehan, Water Bound

“Drowning,
Drowning on the land,
Drowning,
It doesn't end.”
― C.G. Visser

“Sometimes, a child will go under
while their parent is watching,
and they don’t even know
anything is wrong.
My mom asks if everything’s okay,
and I say of course.
Drowning is a quiet,
desperate thing.”
― Brenna Twohy, Forgive Me My Salt

“There’s an old adage: the sensation of drowning reminds you of everything you ever knew about swimming.”
― Frederick Weisel, Teller

“She stooped for a stone and dropped it down.

'Fancy being where that is now,' she said, peering into the blackness; 'fancy going round and round like a mouse in a pail, clutching at the slimy sides, with the water filling your mouth, and looking up to the little patch of sky above.'

'You had better come in,' said Benson, very quietly. 'You are developing a taste for the morbid and horrible.' ( "The Well" )”
― W.W. Jacobs, Ghost Stories

“I don't ask what Alex sees in him because I'm afraid my disapproval will make her latch on to him even more. That's how it works. I'll have to pretend he doesn't bother me and that I don't want to drown him in the bay.”
― Kaui Hart Hemmings, The Descendants

“If we found a ticket to Disneyland would you think we should arrest Mickey Mouse?”
― Diane L. Randle, Spectral Witness

“Jeopardy, Mom! You have got to get on Jeopardy! Seriously! You could marry Alex Trebek! You could be Alex and Alex Trebek! You could be Alex SQUARED!”
― Diane L. Randle, Spectral Witness

“I feel submerged at parties. I wade out of my depth and I can't swim. I will stay here, holding on to the handrail. Safe.”
― Jeanette Winterson, Night Side of the River