Small Boat Quotes

“But the fact is that no one is prepared to admit it’s an illusion, because the illusion hides the exact opposite, namely that everyone is guilty.”
― Vincent Delecroix, Small Boat

“It might have been an idea to ask this question, in seeking to shed light on the matter, and it might then have become clear that what happened to them was simply, in the end, the outcome of a long process or a long story that had nothing to do with me. I was just the last link in the chain, when it was almost too late.”
― Vincent Delecroix, Small Boat

“Empathy, I said to the police inspector, is an idiotic luxury indulged in by people who do nothing, and who are moved by the spectacle of suffering.”
― Vincent Delecroix, Small Boat

“But when it comes to protesting and calling other people monsters, then everyone has enough breath.”
― Vincent Delecroix, Small Boat

“There is no shipwreck without spectators. Even when there's no one, when it's far out at sea, at night, without witnesses, even when there's no living soul in sight for thousands of nautical miles, only waves and the viscous night, covering everything, swallowing everything; when there are no more eyes to see than there are arms to reach out, there are still spectators and the shore from which they are watching is never far away, even if, at the same time, it is infinitely distant. Even with their eyes shut, people are still watching, and I can't think of a single one who could say: I wasn't there. From inside their own homes, they are all watching the drama, and the drama is never ending; it plays out every day, every night, on high days and holidays, even when they're doing other things, they're still spectators of the 'drama at sea.”
― Vincent Delecroix, Small Boat

“Can you not see the difference between an irresponsible pleasure tripper and a dinghy full of migrants? It was not the most wellmeaning question, but actually it was quite easy to answer because my profession requires us to make no distinction, so that’s what I said, and that I should be congratulated for not making one: you rescue everyone without distinction. Should I be more intent on saving some more than others?”
― Vincent Delecroix, Small Boat

“…I’ll say: Hey, jerk, see that guy sleeping in a cardboard box at the foot of your building? He’s rowing across the tarmac, he’s sinking too. But he’s not dozens of kilometres out at sea, at dead of night, he is quite easy to geolocate, he’s just in front of your feet. So are you going to send him help or is that my job again?”
― Vincent Delecroix, Small Boat

“...the air we breathe in is another’s dying breath.”
― Vincent Delecroix, Small Boat

“So I was meant to understand that in fact the distance between doing wrong and wrong-doing was actually not that great, just as it is only one small step from unwillingness to ill-will.”
― Vincent Delecroix, Small Boat

“What she called absentmindedness seemed to me so unremarkable, so common, and so universal – indeed the basis of everyday life – that one could only conclude that all of us are monsters, that is to say, none of us is.”
― Vincent Delecroix, Small Boat

“I’m simply asking you, can you actually not imagine what they went through in those three hours, what it feels like to spend three hours watching yourself die. And I’m not asking you for my sake, she felt obliged to add, but for yours, because if you can’t get your head around that, you need to be asking yourself some questions: it doesn’t take much imagination to be a moral person.”
― Vincent Delecroix, Small Boat

“And if, listening to the recording, the investigator turns her gaze away, unable look at me, with that sad, devastated look in her eyes, it's because it's not me she'll hear, but herself and everyone along with her, saying: I will not save you, while she wanted to hear me say the opposite - wanted it for herself, for everyone, so humanity could be reassured about itself, so humanity need not doubt its humanity, and so she would not have to fear what she'd become, that is to say, a woman like me, like the one I've become.”
― Vincent Delecroix, Small Boat

“All of humanity's problem stem from our inability to stay sitting quietly in a room.”
― Vincent Delecroix, Small Boat

“Even with their eyes shut, people are still watching, and I can’t think of a single one who could say: I wasn’t there. From inside their own homes, they are all watching the drama, and the drama is never-ending; it plays out every day, every night, on high days and holidays, even when they’re doing other things, they’re still spectators of the ‘drama at sea’. Blind spectators and a spectacle for the blind. They watch, they see nothing; in fact they can’t see anything. The stage is blacked out, and at this distance, from their sofas or in front of their TVs, they can’t make anything out. They see nothing, but are still present at the drama.”
― Vincent Delecroix, Small Boat

“But since lack of empathy was an expression that the investigator had also used a few minutes earlier in connection with my way of recounting the facts, I reminded her of what I had said initially, namely that empathy is expressly discouraged and it isn’t hard to understand why. Either you save, or you sympathise.”
― Vincent Delecroix, Small Boat

“Also, I have to do it with the means available, and that’s something we might talk about, the means available, or rather the lack of means available for carrying out these missions,”
― Vincent Delecroix, Small Boat

“Should I be more intent on saving some more than others?”
― Vincent Delecroix, Small Boat

“I know people would have liked me to say: You’re not going to die, I’ll save you. And not because I would have actually saved them, done my job, done the necessary, sent rescue. Not because I’d done what you’re meant to do. They wanted me to have said it, at least to have said it, just to have said the words. That was what the investigator was waiting for anxiously, for everyone to hear, to hear their own voice in mine in these recordings. The voice of each of us saying I will save you. Each one in my place. The voice of the whole of humanity reassured to hear itself saying, uttering the words: I will save you; you will not die – not actually saving, no one cares about that, not acting, not even helping. But at least saying it, because to fail to say those words is to be less than human. In the end, whether they drowned or not didn’t matter; what mattered were my words. What mattered was not that they were saved; it was that I should be saved, and the whole world with me, through these words. Saved by my own words, not condemned by them.”
― Vincent Delecroix, Small Boat

“But it’s enough for one to be lost and there is always one, there has to be one – and it’s as if you had saved no one. So with all this going on, this ongoing shipwreck, why bother? I asked. And why save this person rather than that one, when they are all condemned. And what justice is there? Why save one, ten, twenty; it’s all same, since you can’t save them all. There is always one left.”
― Vincent Delecroix, Small Boat

“What sent them to the bottom wasn’t my so-called errors of judgement, or my so-called lack of humanity or my so-called incapacity to get my head round their suffering.”
― Vincent Delecroix, Small Boat

“There are only two possible explanations, as far as I can see, each as damning as the other. Either your attitude stems from a particularly stupid line of reasoning, by virtue of which, in an attempt to escape the obvious liabilities and avoid acknowledging anything whatsoever, you are getting yourself into a far more serious liability: or else you are quite consciously trying to sink yourself”
― Vincent Delecroix, Small Boat

“All of which enables me to become exactly what I should be, that is, a function, not an individual or a person but a function – about as personal, or individual, as a mathematical unit or a massproduced tinopener.”
― Vincent Delecroix, Small Boat

“Lucky then that she didn’t ask me why I’d finally decided to come, because I wouldn’t have known what to say, though I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t have used words like Moral Scruple or Sense of Duty, definitely not Courage, words like Exhaustion and Nausea more likely, and definitely Anger like Shame.”
― Vincent Delecroix, Small Boat

“J'étais tantôt un tout petit rouage dans la machine qui avait déconné, peut-être même une victime moi-même de cette machine qui finit par oublier complètement l'humain”
― Vincent Delecroix, Naufrage

“So, if someone asks me now if I can't see where the harm is, it makes me smile, and I answer: What do you think I have right in front of me day and night? It's not by chance that the sea consumes migrants all night long; it would consume everyone if the land didn't do its best to resist. Every night at my station I can hear the land resisting, digging its heels in, but then succumbing, and the immense sea, black as Hades, opening its maw. Every night we feed that gaping maw, and stuff into it little pieces we've scraped off the edges of the coast, spoonfuls of twenty, thirty poor people - men, women and children - and the monstrous maw gulps it all down, foaming at its mouth. It's the sacrifice the world pours into the mouth of evil, what it has to give it, so everyone else can sleep in peace and it won't devour everything.”
― Vincent Delecroix, Small Boat

“... You are all there. If I turned round I would see you all, sunk into your sofas on the sand, in your deck chairs, in your offices, watching without watching, while I keep my vigil like an idiot, and afterwards, once the drama is over, lashing out, saying: It's a scandal, It's revolting. And yet that night I saw not one of them jump into the water to help, not one offering to reinflate the rubber dinghy with his feeble lungs. But when it comes to protesting and calling other people monsters, then everyone has enough breath.

There is no shipwreck without spectators. Even when there's no one, when it's far out at sea, at night, without witnesses, even when there's no living soul in sight for thousands of nautical miles, only waves and the viscous night, covering everything, swallowing everything; when there are no more eyes to see than there are arms to reach out, there are still spectators and the shore from which they are watching is never far away, even if, at the same time, it is infinitely distant. Even with their eyes shut, people are still watching, and I can't think of a single one who could say: I wasn't there. From inside their own homes, they are all watching the drama, and the drama is never ending; it plays out every day, every night, on high days and holidays, even when they're doing other things, they're still spectators of the 'drama at sea'.

Blind spectators and a spectacle for the blind. They watch, they see nothing; in fact they can’t see anything. The stage is blacked out, and at this distance, from their sofas or in front of their TVs, they can’t make anything out. They see nothing, but are still present at the drama. I am the only one with opera glasses, who sees. But not one person in the audience asks me to lend them my glasses, not one wants to step onto the darkened stage, not one looks like getting up to step into the water.

There's only me who sees and hears and who reponds. And to the blind man, spitting on me as he finishes his copious lunch with colleagues and goes back to his little office, I'll say: Hey, jerk, see that guy sleeping in a cardboard box at the foot of you building? He's rowing across the tarmac, he's sinking too. But he's not dozens of kilometres out at sea, at dead of night, he is quite easy to geolocate, he's just in front of your feet. So are you going to send him help or is that my job again?”
― Vincent Delecroix, Small Boat

“...You are all there. If I turned round I would see you all, sunk into your sofas on the sand, in your deck chairs, in your offices, watching without watching, while I keep my vigil like an idiot, and afterwards, once the drama is over, lashing out, saying: It's a scandal, It's revolting. And yet that night I saw not one of them jump into the water to help, not one offering to reinflate the rubber dinghy with his feeble lungs. But when it comes to protesting and calling other people monsters, then everyone has enough breath.

There is no shipwreck without spectators. Even when there's no one, when it's far out at sea, at night, without witnesses, even when there's no living soul in sight for thousands of nautical miles, only waves and the viscous night, covering everything, swallowing everything; when there are no more eyes to see than there are arms to reach out, there are still spectators and the shore from which they are watching is never far away, even if, at the same time, it is infinitely distant. Even with their eyes shut, people are still watching, and I can't think of a single one who could say: I wasn't there. From inside their own homes, they are all watching the drama, and the drama is never ending; it plays out every day, every night, on high days and holidays, even when they're doing other things, they're still spectators of the 'drama at sea'.

Blind spectators and a spectacle for the blind. They watch, they see nothing; in fact they can’t see anything. The stage is blacked out, and at this distance, from their sofas or in front of their TVs, they can’t make anything out. They see nothing, but are still present at the drama. I am the only one with opera glasses, who sees. But not one person in the audience asks me to lend them my glasses, not one wants to step onto the darkened stage, not one looks like getting up to step into the water.

There's only me who sees and hears and who reponds. And to the blind man, spitting on me as he finishes his copious lunch with colleagues and goes back to his little office, I'll say: Hey, jerk, see that guy sleeping in a cardboard box at the foot of you building? He's rowing across the tarmac, he's sinking too. But he's not dozens of kilometres out at sea, at dead of night, he is quite easy to geolocate, he's just in front of your feet. So are you going to send him help or is that my job again?”
― Vincent Delecroix, Small Boat

“In other words”
― Vincent Delecroix, Small Boat

“I may not have given much thought to the ongoing legal investigation, but I did think a lot, because that’s what happens when you sit and look at the sea: either you think a lot, or you think about nothing, which is probably another way of thinking.”
― Vincent Delecroix, Small Boat

“Perhaps they are coming not to demand justice (what justice, I repeated) but rather to administer justice, do justice, or even to take the law into their own hands, as the saying goes, which is the precise opposite of justice, but anyway, and given the circumstances, shouldn’t I just throw myself into the sea and drown? The B movie aspect to this hypothesis, feasible though it seemed, made me smile.”
― Vincent Delecroix, Small Boat