Ultramarine Quotes

“She’s a ship captain’s daughter and there was never any question of her choosing a life on land: from the start she had learned too much about ships to turn away from the sea. She belongs to water the way others are proud of their distant origins. There was never any reason to break with or reject it. She chose navigation, this quintessentially human knowledge; she chose ancient artisanship and modern machines, numbers and sensations, cosmic abstractions and the sun on her face. And all of this gave her a certain maturity and density.”
― Mariette Navarro, Ultramarins

“They used to make sacrifices so that the fleets would set sail again. To prevent the moment when the soldiers suddenly went mad. to start up the winds, they led little girls to the altar—instead of lambs. They told themselves that it must be a god thing and a question of clemency to be implored, and that a young girl, as long as she was dressed in white, as long as she had long hair and lace undergarments, yes, a young girl should do the trick to wake the winds and set off again for war and navigation. That’s what she read in the tragedies when she was in high school. Without understanding what could possibly link this land-bound girl with the soldiers stuck over there. Without understanding that everything always had to be resolved through men’s great violence. She saw herself as Iphigenia, breaking her chains, climbing aboard the ships instead of onto the sacrificial mount, and putting herself to work steering them, these clumsy crews, to victory if that’s what they wished, or else toward the reasoning that would cool their rage.”
― Mariette Navarro, Ultramarins

“Her eyes had always spilled too much water at the least emotion he'd always told her, since she was a little girl.”
― Mariette Navarro, Ultramarins

“She knows that there is something powerful in this group, a humanity that aspires upward, the possibility, perhaps, of inventing something new, or of bringing down one of the small barriers in this world.”
― Mariette Navarro, Ultramarins

“Vous êtes marin vous aussi ? Vous savez ce que je veux dire par marin. Je ne parle pas de profession ni de carrière. Mais cette autre chose. Je crois que vous l'êtes. Marin. Rejeté par la terre.”
― Mariette Navarro, Ultramarins

“Non. Personne n'a de l'habitude dans la dérive.”
― Mariette Navarro, Ultramarins

“Ils se calment, et les vagues de nouveau se creusent. Ils sont un tableau saisissant, une réminiscence d'un autre radeau peint, ces hommes nus immobiles assis sur le plastique orange.”
― Mariette Navarro, Ultramarins

“Son noir des apnées, symphonie des apesanteurs.”
― Mariette Navarro, Ultramarins

“À présent, c'est nuit noire, sans étoiles. Sans lune. Sans rien. Un grand bouclier de nuages. C'est nuit noire sur l'eau noire qui ne se souvient même pas qu'il a plu (...).”
― Mariette Navarro, Ultramarins

“À chacun son image secrète de liberté, à chacun son choc en changeant d’élément. On voit sous leurs paupières passer des paysages, des vacances d’enfance, des plaines si vastes qu’on les croit préhistoriques, des pluies de déluge, des vélos lancés sous des soleils de plomb, des maisons minuscules cachées dans les rochers, des champs de tournesols et des champs de colza, des plages, des épices, des cabanes.

Voilà les visages extatiques, abandonnés, les corps arqués par le plaisir. Et chacun sait que c’est dans sa langue que la mer est la mer et l’océan, puissant.”
― Mariette Navarro, Ultramarins