The North Water Quotes

“He finds the lying comes easy enough, of course. Words are just noises in a certain order, and he can use them any way he wishes. Pigs grunt, ducks quack, and men tell lies: that is how it generally goes.”
― Ian McGuire, The North Water

“Cleverness, he thinks, will get you nowhere; it is only the stupid, the brilliantly stupid, who will inherit the earth.”
― Ian McGuire, The North Water

“Oh, the others will talk and plan and make oaths and promises, but there are precious few fuckers who will do.”
― Ian McGuire, The North Water

“It is not a sin, he tells himself, there is no sin left now, there is only the blood and the water and the ice; there is only life and death and the gray-green spaces in between. He will not die, he tells himself, not now, not ever. When he is thirsty, he will drink his own blood; when he is hungry, he will eat his own flesh. He will grow enormous from the feasting, he will expand to fill the empty sky.”
― Ian McGuire, The North Water

“So you have no remorse for your actions? No guilt for what you’ve done?” Drax’s mouth lolls half open; he wrinkles up his nose and sniffs. “Did you think I was going to murder you down in the cabin?” he asks. “Split open your skull like I did Brownlee. Is that what you were thinking?” “What else were you intending?” “Oh, I don’t intend too much. I’m a doer, not a thinker, me. I follow my inclination.” “You have no conscience then?” “One thing happens, then another comes after it. Why is the first thing more important than the second? Why is the second more important than the third? Tell me that.” “Because each action is separate and distinct; some are good and some are evil.” Drax sniffs again and scratches himself. “Them’s just words. If they hang me, they will hang me ’cause they can, and ’cause they wish to do it. They will be following their own inclination as I follow mine.” “You recognize no authority at all then, no right or wrong beyond yourself?” Drax shrugs and bares his upper teeth in something like a grin. “Men like you ask such questions to satisfy themselves,” he says. “To make them feel cleverer or cleaner than the rest. But they int.” “You truly believe we are all like you? How is that possible? Am I a murderer like you are? Is that what you accuse me of?” “I seen enough killing to suspect I int the only one to do it. I’m a man like any other, give or take.” Sumner shakes his head. “No,” he says. “That I won’t accept.” “You please yourself, as I please myself. You accept what suits you and you reject what don’t. The law is just a name they give to what a certain kind of men prefer.” Sumner”
― Ian McGuire, The North Water

“It is a grave mistake to think too much, he reminds himself, a grave mistake. Life will not be puzzled out, or blathered into submission; it must be lived through, survived, in whatever fashion a man can manage. Sumner”
― Ian McGuire, The North Water

“The most important questions are the ones we can't hope to answer with words. Words are like toys : they amuse and educate us for a time, but when we come to manhood, we should give them up.'
Sunmer shakes his head.
' The words are all we have,' he says.' If we give them up, we are no better than the beasts.'
Otto smiles at Sunmer's wrong headedness.
' Then you must find out the explanations on your own, if that is what you truly think.”
― Ian McGuire , The North Water

“He is not ashamed of what he has been or done: a man makes his mistakes, he tells them, a man suffers as he must suffer, but the readiness is all.”
― Ian McGuire, The North Water

“I’ve brought the sufferings on myself, I’d say. I’ve made mistakes aplenty.” “Show me a man who hasn’t, and I will show you a saint or a great liar. And I haven’t met too many saints in my long lifetime.” The”
― Ian McGuire, The North Water

“The redundancy of flesh, he thinks, the helplessness of meat, how can we conjure spirit from a bone?”
― Ian McGuire, The North Water

“Why would you believe such things?” he asks. “What good does it do you?” “The world we see with our eyes is not the whole truth. Dreams and visions are just as real as matter. What we can imagine or think exists as truly as anything we can touch or smell. Where do our thoughts come from, if not from God?” “They come from our experience,” Sumner says, “from what we’ve heard and seen and read, and what’s been told to us.” Otto shakes his head. “If that were true, then no growth or advancement would be possible. The world would be stagnant and unmoving. We would be doomed”
― Ian McGuire, The North Water

“but to be nothing is also, looked at from a different angle, to be anything at all.”
― Ian McGuire, The North Water

“The ache he feels is his body speaking its needs, talking to him—sometimes a whisper, sometimes a mumble, sometimes a shriek. It never goes silent; if it ever goes silent then he will know that he is finally dead, that some other fucker has finally killed him, and that will be that. He”
― Ian McGuire, The North Water

“Beneath the standard military-issue stiffness there lies a vast and heedless confidence born of wealth and leisure, a sense that the world is malleable, that it will bend to his desires. Sumner”
― Ian McGuire, The North Water

“Why would you believe such things?” he asks. “What good does it do you?” “The world we see with our eyes is not the whole truth. Dreams and visions are just as real as matter. What we can imagine or think exists as truly as anything we can touch or smell. Where do our thoughts come from, if not from God?” “They come from our experience,” Sumner says, “from what we’ve heard and seen and read, and what’s been told to us.” Otto shakes his head. “If that were true, then no growth or advancement would be possible. The world would be stagnant and unmoving. We would be doomed to live our lives facing backwards.”
― Ian McGuire, The North Water

“Life will not be puzzled out, or blathered into submission; it must be lived through, survived, in whatever fashion a man can manage”
― Ian McGuire, The North Water

“Death, he believes, is a kind of making, a kind of building up. What was one thing, he thinks, is become something else.”
― Ian McGuire, The North Water

“As he sits and weeps, he feels himself liquefying, losing form, sliding away into a stew of sadness and regret.”
― Ian McGuire, The North Water

“He hasn’t joined them—he is not an Esquimaux any more than he is a Christian or an Irishman or a doctor. He is nothing, and that is a privilege and a joy he is loath to give up.”
― Ian McGuire, The North Water

“What matters is what happens next.”
― Ian McGuire, The North Water

“Le parole sono tutto quello che abbiamo. Se ci rinunciamo non siamo migliori delle bestie.”
― Ian McGuire, The North Water

“Le domande più importanti sono quelle cui non possiamo sperare di rispondere con le parole. Le parole sono come giocattoli, per un po' ci divertono e ci insegnano qualcosa, ma quando diventiamo adulti dobbiamo rinunciarci.”
― Ian McGuire, The North Water

“Ci allontaniamo dal Signore perché il Signore ci permette di farlo. E' la nostra libertà, ma anche la nostra condanna.”
― Ian McGuire, The North Water

“chromolithograph”
― Ian McGuire, The North Water

“sea leopard,”
― Ian McGuire, The North Water

“When Sumner tells him he needs a berth and will pay whatever is required for the privilege, the Swede looks him over skeptically, smiles, and asks how many men he has murdered. “Only the one,” Sumner says.”
― Ian McGuire, The North Water

“Only actions count, he thinks for the ten-thousandth time, only events. All the rest is vapor, fog. He takes another drink and licks his lips. It is a grave mistake to think too much, he reminds himself, a grave mistake. Life will not be puzzled out, or blathered into submission; it must be lived through, survived, in whatever fashion a man can manage. Sumner”
― Ian McGuire, The North Water

“It is the body, he thinks, not the mind. It is the blood, the chemistry that counts. In a few more minutes he is feeling much better about himself and about the world.”
― Ian McGuire, The North Water

“The covering stones have been scattered and the corpse itself has been half-consumed by animals. All that is left is a grotesque and bloody gallimaufry of bones, sinew, and innards.”
― Ian McGuire, The North Water

“The baleen is then detached from the jaw with spades and separated into smaller sections for stowing. What remains of the upper jawbone is stowed in the hold. “By Christmas, the bones of this dead and gruesome stinker will be nestling in the delicately perfumed corsets of some as yet unfucked lovely dancing the Gay Gordons in a ballroom on the Strand. That’s a thought to fairly make your head spin, is it not, Mr. Black?” Cavendish says. “Behind every piece of sweet-smelling female loveliness lies a world of stench and doggery,” Black agrees. “He’s a lucky man who can forget that’s true or pretend it isn’t.” After”
― Ian McGuire, The North Water