The Desert and the Sea Quotes

“But then hope is like heroin for a hostage , and it can be just as destructive.”
― Michael Scott Moore, The Desert and the Sea: 977 Days Captive on the Somali Pirate Coast

“My mind felt strange, like a caged animal’s. I wondered how much ferocity and gnashing regret a human heart could stand. But the swim had been fabulous, invigorating, the very opposite of suicide. It had reminded me of freedom.”
― Michael Scott Moore, The Desert and the Sea: 977 Days Captive on the Somali Pirate Coast

“It took fear and desperation to urge me off
the ship, but fear and desperation are forms of energy, which convert into something powerful if you express them well. Emotionally I had made no mistake: I felt fantastic. I no longer wanted to die.”
― Michael Scott Moore, The Desert and the Sea: 977 Days Captive on the Somali Pirate Coast

“The fear and helplessness were so extreme, and so contradictory, that I sank into a dark and peculiar calm…After the mortal shock I found a strange, ice-cold balance.”
― Michael Scott Moore, The Desert and the Sea: 977 Days Captive on the Somali Pirate Coast

“Good writing could be a release from narcissism, a declaration of independence, a way to furnish the mental prison.”
― Michael Scott Moore, The Desert and the Sea: 977 Days Captive on the Somali Pirate Coast

“The stress of captivity had turned my mind into a cauldron of contradictory ideas — frustration, self-hatred, surprising impulses to violence — and nothing but the discipline of composition could lead me out of the soup.”
― Michael Scott Moore, The Desert and the Sea: 977 Days Captive on the Somali Pirate Coast

“I’d never started down the borehole of a firearm before. My heart vibrated, and the dark notion that he might pull the trigger — that I might just see a muzzle flash and flop over in the dust — infected me with a heavy, unusual calm. I wanted to leap and run, but that would have been stupid. I had to sit and accept the prospect of a sudden death.”
― Michael Scott Moore, The Desert and the Sea: 977 Days Captive on the Somali Pirate Coast

“The watchful silence in the camp made an eerie counterpoint to my ferocious instinct to be free. My still-intact sense of self — the energetic part that identified with possessions, habits, achievements, needs — protested in panic.”
― Michael Scott Moore, The Desert and the Sea: 977 Days Captive on the Somali Pirate Coast

“I was still fresh enough as a hostage to care about my things, like a man who’d lost his head and wanted to put it back on.”
― Michael Scott Moore, The Desert and the Sea: 977 Days Captive on the Somali Pirate Coast

“Even in the dark, I could sense the allure of this wild coast. Idaan had a deep quiet, a spooky sense of wilderness and desolation.”
― Michael Scott Moore, The Desert and the Sea: 977 Days Captive on the Somali Pirate Coast

“love isn’t a question of dramatic demonstration or lyrical words. It’s a question of attention, presence, and time.”
― Michael Scott Moore, The Desert and the Sea: 977 Days Captive on the Somali Pirate Coast

“act:”
― Michael Scott Moore, The Desert and the Sea: 977 Days Captive on the Somali Pirate Coast