He always thought of the sea as la mar, which is what people call her in spanish when they love her. Sometimes those who love her say bad things of her, but they are always said as though she were a woman. Some of the younger fisherman, those who used buoys as floats for their lines or had motorboats bought when the shark lovers had much money, spoke of her as el mar, which is masculine, they spoke of her as a contestant or a place or even an enemy. But the old man always thought of her as feminine, as something that gave or withheld great favors. If she did wild or wicked things, it is because she could not help them. The moon affects her as it does a woman, he thought.
Ernest HemingwayRelated topics
bad bought call contestant enemy feminine fisherman great help love man mar masculine money moon people place say sea shark something spanish spoke thought wild woman younger things linesRelated quotes
I shall inclose your Excellency a plan of the enemy's works, and of their strength, from the best ac counts we are able to get. They have never been out of their lines since the siege began, till, night be fore last, Colonel Bruce came out with one hundred and fifty men, to take off a small picket of ours, posted at the neck of Easton's beach. He partly succeeded in the attempt, by the carelessness of the old guard. He came over after dark, and lay in ambush, that when the new guard went down to take their post, the enemy came upon their backs before they discovered them, it being very dark. We lost twenty-four privates and two subalterns. Ten of the picket got off.
Nathanael Greene
Lost in the solitude of his immense power, he began to lose direction. He was bothered by the people who cheered him in neighboring villages, and he imagined that they were the same cheers they gave the enemy. Everywhere he met adolescents who looked at him with his own eyes, who spoke to him with his own voice, who greeted him with the same mistrust with which he greeted them, and who said they were his sons. He felt scattered about, multiplied, and more solitary than ever. He was convinced that his own officers were lying to him. He fought with the Duke of Marlborough. "The best friend a person has," he would say at that time, "is one who has just died."
Gabriel García Márquez
It was ready-made for them to call an emergency and pretend it was war-time, you know, the war on terrorism is a metaphor, and terrorism is an abstract noun. It's like a "war on dandruff." There's no such thing, you know. It isn't war, it's just a slogan. But using the slogan they got through the U. S. A. Patriot Act, which removes many of our liberties. Nobody made a sound when we lost Habeas Corpus-due process of law-and suddenly Bush managed to get rid of it. Where was a voice on television, aside from mine, that spoke out against this? Where were all those noble jurists, those great lawyers, those lovers of liberty, where the hell were they? They were nowhere!
Gore Vidal
Most imprisoned writers have been shut away for their activities as citizens striving for liberation against the oppression of the general society to which they belong. Others have been condemned by repressive regimes for serving society by writing as well as they can; for this aesthetic venture of ours becomes subversive when the shameful secrets of our times are explored deeply, with the artist's rebellious integrity to the state of being manifest in life around her or him; then the writer's themes and characters inevitably are formed by the pressures and distortions of that society as the life of the fisherman is determined by the power of the sea.
Nadine Gordimer
Gay activism has been naive in its belligerent confidence that "homophobia” will eventually disappear with proper "education” of the benighted. Reeducation of fractious young boys on the scale required would mean fascist obliteration of all individual freedoms. Furthermore, no truly masculine father would ever welcome an feminine or artistic son at the start, since the son's lack of virility not only threatens but liquidates that father's identity, dissolving husband into wife. Later there may be public rituals of acceptance, but the damage will already have been done. Gay men are aliens, cursed and gifted, the shamans of our time.
Camille Paglia
