We, the Drowned Quotes

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

“You died in the end, but you fought first.”
― Carsten Jensen, We, the Drowned

“We thought we knew everything about him. But that's not how life is. When all's said and done, we can never truly know one another.”
― Carsten Jensen, We, the Drowned

“Life had taught him about something far more complicated than justice. Its name was balance.”
― Carsten Jensen, We, the Drowned

“Is there anything more heartbreaking than drowning in sight of land? Is there a single one of us who hasn't at least once felt haunted by the fear of slipping away within sight of a safe haven?”
― Carsten Jensen, We, the Drowned

“That's the strange thing about a good story. No pleasure if you can't share it.”
― Carsten Jensen, We, the Drowned

“Hope can be like a plant that sprouts and grows and keeps people alive. But it can also be a wound that refuses to heal.”
― Carsten Jensen, We, the Drowned

“Everyone in our town has a story--but it's not the one he tells himself. Its author has a thousand eyes, a thousand ears, and five hundred pens that never stop scribbling.”
― Carsten Jensen, We, the Drowned

“Our mother sticks a knife in our heart when we say goodbye on the wharf. And we stick a knife in hers when we go. And that's how we're connected: through the hurt we inflict on one another.”
― Carsten Jensen, We, the Drowned

“Now I remembered a captain's honor and his only duty: to bring his crew back alive.”
― Carsten Jensen, We, the Drowned

“We were familiar with the line that separates grief from madness, and we know that sometimes the only way to stay on the right side of it is to scream.”
― Carsten Jensen, We, the Drowned

“We don't sail because the sea is there. We sail because there's a harbour. We don't start by heading for distant shores. We seek protection first.”
― Carsten Jensen, We, the Drowned

“But that's how it is on a sailing ship, and in this respect its journey parallels that of life: simply knowing where you want to go isn't enough, because life is a windblown voyage, consisting mainly of the detours imposed by alternating calm and storm.”
― Carsten Jensen, We, the Drowned

“Nature was neither fair nor unfair. Those terms belonged to the world of men.”
― Carsten Jensen, We, the Drowned

“Though I had no respect for Jack Lewis, I respected the hole in his chest. He was dying, and you owe the dying your attention.”
― Carsten Jensen, We, the Drowned

“That's how it is, he told himself. If you dread something enough, even your worst fears coming true brings comfort.”
― Carsten Jensen, We, the Drowned

“But tonight we danced with the drowned. And they were us.”
― Carsten Jensen, We, the Drowned

“Even terror needs a yardstick, and surely the yardstick for the unknown is the known?”
― Carsten Jensen, We, the Drowned

“Freedom had a thousand faces. But so did crime. The thought of what a man might do made me dizzy.”
― Carsten Jensen, We, the Drowned

“War was like sailing. You could learn about clouds, wind direction, and currents, but the sea remained forever unpredictable. All you could do was adapt to it and try to return home alive.”
― Carsten Jensen, We, the Drowned

“When it came to choosing between education and religion, Albert said, he'd choose education every time. The school represented young people and the future - and the church didn't. If the school in Vestergade was bigger than the church, so much the better. Any town that believed in the future should take note.”
― Carsten Jensen, We, the Drowned

“There comes a time in the life of a sailor when he no longer belongs ashore. It's then that he surrenders to the Pacific, where no land blocks the eye, where sky and ocean mirror each other until above and below have lost their meaning, and the Milky Way looks like the spume of a breaking wave and the globe itself rolls like a boat in the midst of the sinking and heaving surf of that starry sky, and even the sun is nothing but a tiny glowing dot of phosphorescence on the sea of the night.”
― Carsten Jensen, We, the Drowned

“Contrary to what most people think, weeping isn't an uncontrollable emotion that spills into tears. It's the opposite, a channel for feelings, a way to divert them in a healthy direction.”
― Carsten Jensen, We, the Drowned

“Without discussing it with his mother, Anton went up to his teacher, Miss Katballe, and informed her that after seven years he was now quitting school. It was the best day of her life, she replied. With unexpected politeness he bowed, thanked her, and said, likewise.”
― Carsten Jensen, We, the Drowned

“No, he hadn't known anything about children, but now he'd learned something: a child's mind is open to everything.”
― Carsten Jensen, We, the Drowned

“There shall come a day when all the women in the world will lie in the gutter screaming for cock,' he intoned. 'But not an inch shall they be given!'
'Am I to understand,' Knud Erik asked, 'that nobody wanted to screw you?”
― Carsten Jensen, We, the Drowned

“With no other choices open to us, we'd turned our gaze seaward. The oceans were our America: they reached farther than any prairie, untamed as on the first day of creation. Nobody owned them.”
― Carsten Jensen, We, the Drowned

“As he passed through the dining room, he stopped and took a white daisy from the bouqet his housekeeper had placed in the middle of the table..and put the daisy in the buttonhole of his summer jacket. Then he opened the front door and walked down the steps to Prinsegade, filled with the blind triumph that people sometimes experience when they've conquered their own better judgment.”
― Carsten Jensen, We, the Drowned

“Take the sailor," he said. "he signs on to a new ship. He's surrounded by nothing but strangers. Not only do they come from other towns and parts of his own country, but often from completely different nations. He has to learn to work with them. His vocabulary's broadened, he learns new words and grammar, and he comes across new ways of thinking. he turns into a different man, unlike the one who spends his life plowing the same old furrow. These are the men the world needs, not nationalists and warmongers.”
― Carsten Jensen, We, the Drowned

“An unused conscience is no conscience at all.”
― Carsten Jensen, We, the Drowned