The Shipping News Quotes
"Stumbled through his twenties and into his thirties learning to separate his feelings from his life, counting on nothing."
"At thirty-six, bereft, brimming with grief and thwarted love, Quoyle steered away to Newfoundland."
"Quoyle knew the flavor of brack and waterweed."
"Failure to speak clearly; failure to sit up straight; failure to get up in the morning; failure in attitude; failure in ambition and ability; indeed, in everything."
"His earliest sense of self was as a distant figure: there in the foreground was his family; here, at the limit of the far view, was he."
"But Partridge, dribbling oil, said, 'Ah, fuck it.'"
"For Quoyle was a failure at loneliness, yearned to be gregarious, to know his company was a pleasure to others."
"Partridge knew a thousand things, that wet ropes held greater weight, why a hard-boiled egg spun more readily than a raw."
"In atmospheres of disintegration and smoking jealousy he imagined rational compromise."
"Everything that counts is for love, Quoyle. It's the engine of life."
"In another time, another sex, she would have been a Genghis Khan."
"The sharper the pain, the greater the proof."
"He got in the habit of walking around the trailer and asking aloud, 'Who knows?'"
"A spinning coin, still balanced on its rim, may fall in either direction."
"Quoyle suffered in the upholstery, the aunt strode the deck."
"With his last drowsy energy the father phoned the paper and left a message on Quoyle’s answering machine."
"Quoyle at the back of the meeting, writing on his pad."
"By day she sold burglar alarms at Northern Security, at night, became a woman who could not be held back from strangers’ rooms."
"The aunt, in a black and white checked pantsuit, sat on the sofa."
"Quoyle, in the teeth of trouble, saw a stouthearted older woman."
"How many had come here, leaning on the rail as she leaned now."
"Fifteen hundred miles, across New York, Vermont, angling up through Maine’s mauled woods."
"And so Quoyle and the aunt in the front seat, the children in the back, and old Warren sometimes with the suitcases, sometimes clambering awkwardly up to sit between Bunny and Sunshine."
"Oh make ’er fast and stow yer gear, Leave ’er, Johnny, leave ’er!"
"The wind screamed in the ill-fitted window frames."
"Sunshine rushed at Quoyle, grabbed his shirt, hauling herself up into his lap, thumb in her mouth before she even leaned against his chest."
"Not yet, not yet," said Quoyle. "Everybody brush their teeth. Everybody wash their face."
"And so Quoyle began. 'Once there was a moose, a very poor, thin, lonely moose who lived on a rocky hill where only bitter leaves grew and bushes with spiky branches.'"
"In the night Bunny woke in nightmare, sobbed while Quoyle rocked her back and forth and said 'It’s only a bad dream, only a bad dream, it’s not real.'"
"The Old Hag’s got her,' muttered the aunt. But Quoyle kept on rocking, for the Old Hag knew where to find him, too."
"A morning of hurling snow. Stupendous snores beyond the walls."
"I like a storm, but this is more than enough," said the aunt, "and if I ever get out of this motel I will lead a good life, go to church regularly, bake bread twice a week and never let the dirty dishes stand."
"He spent the rest of the day, the rest of the week, leafing through the old phone book and reading back issues of the Gammy Bird."
"He dodged through the rattle of lift trucks and winches on Wharf Road. Boats varnished with rain."
"You ought to see it in a storm, the great clouds rolling off the shoulders of the mountains."
"Behind him a profound sigh, the sigh of someone beyond hope or exasperation. Quoyle turned. A hundred feet away a fin, a glistening back."
"To prevent slipping, a knot depends on friction, and to provide friction there must be pressure of some sort."
"It was like mirror writing. The slightest change in reverse sent the trailer on the opposite tack."
"He poured in gas from the red can. The motor started on the first pull."
"She was on the last row. It was fast now because he could straddle the ridge."
"The water curled. Traveling on a glass arrow."
"They were out of there. The university paid them money for that cut-off tentacle."
"The aunt’s shop was in the lane behind Wharf Road."
"The lobster buoy hitch … was particularly good to tie to timber."
"The Pirate and the Jolly Boat. A pirate, having more prisoners than he has room for, tows one boatload astern."
"Nobody hangs a picture of an oil tanker on their wall."
"There’s many of my relatives down under this water, so it’s homey, in a way."
"If there is a vibration from the outside that tilts all your pictures askew, hang them from a single wire which passes through both screw eyes and makes fast to two picture hooks."
"The difference between the CLOVE HITCH and TWO HALF HITCHES is exceedingly vague in the minds of many."
"The mysterious power that is supposed to reside in knots can be injurious as well as beneficial."
"A dog has to see your eyes clear to know your heart."
"The goal was twenty-five letters a week, every week."
"Fog … The warm water of the Gulf Stream penetrating high latitudes is productive of fog."
"For God's sake, help me to get a Royal Commission to inquire into their truth!"
"There are some days it just doesn’t pay to get up."
"Two years ago, we took 170,000 pounds of cod off Bumpy Banks. This year—less than zero."
"The worst of it is that she sank under the weight of empty traps."
"Quoyle slumped at his desk, thinking of old men standing in the rain, telling him how it had been."
"The bay was an aluminum tray dotted with paper boats."
"It’s easier to die if others around you are dying."
"Like two ducks swimming at first on opposite sides of the water but who end in the middle, together."
"In love with himself, always has been. And no competition."
"Every man for hisself, while you’re fiddling around the Rome burns."
"You glance at that, somebody who knows boats, you can see the whole thing right there."
"She had given him something, the eggs, after all, only a symbol, but they had come from her hands as a gift."
"Every day. S’elp me, it’s true! Every day. Life was terrible ’ard in the old days."
"She couldn’t fall down if she was pushed. She thinks."
"Why don’t you wear a wristwatch like everybody else?"
"There are still old knots that are unrecorded, and so long as there are new purposes for rope, there will always be new knots to discover."
"No. A paper has a life of its own, an existence beyond earthly owners."
"Thought of the corpse as wet, as though they could not dry him off, the seawater running from him in streams."
"But, m'dear, if they don't know what death is how can they understand the deep part of life?"
"The water is a dark flower and a fisherman is a bee in the heart of her."
"He's wedged in pretty good. Gets half up and looks at us."
"The landscape historian John Stilgoe, in his 'Shallow-Water Dictionary,' mourns, and I with him, the loss of 'estuary English, the marshland vocabulary.'"
"For if Jack Buggit could escape from the pickle jar, if a bird with a broken neck could fly away, what else might be possible?"
"Water may be older than light, diamonds crack in hot goat's blood, mountaintops give off cold fire."