Quotes from We, the Drowned

“Two drowning people can't save each other. All they can do is drag each other down.”
― Carsten Jensen, quote from We, the Drowned

“Life had taught him about something far more complicated than justice. Its name was balance.”
― Carsten Jensen, quote from We, the Drowned

“You died in the end, but you fought first.”
― Carsten Jensen, quote from We, the Drowned

“We thought we knew everything about him. But that's not how life is. When all's said and done, we can never truly know one another.”
― Carsten Jensen, quote from We, the Drowned

“That's the strange thing about a good story. No pleasure if you can't share it.”
― Carsten Jensen, quote from We, the Drowned

“Is there anything more heartbreaking than drowning in sight of land? Is there a single one of us who hasn't at least once felt haunted by the fear of slipping away within sight of a safe haven?”
― Carsten Jensen, quote from We, the Drowned

“Now I remembered a captain's honor and his only duty: to bring his crew back alive.”
― Carsten Jensen, quote from We, the Drowned

“Hope can be like a plant that sprouts and grows and keeps people alive. But it can also be a wound that refuses to heal.”
― Carsten Jensen, quote from We, the Drowned

“Everyone in our town has a story--but it's not the one he tells himself. Its author has a thousand eyes, a thousand ears, and five hundred pens that never stop scribbling.”
― Carsten Jensen, quote from We, the Drowned

“Many years ago there lived a man called Laurids Madsen who went up to heaven and came down again thanks to his boots.”
― Carsten Jensen, quote from We, the Drowned

“That's how it is, he told himself. If you dread something enough, even your worst fears coming true brings comfort.”
― Carsten Jensen, quote from We, the Drowned

“Even terror needs a yardstick, and surely the yardstick for the unknown is the known?”
― Carsten Jensen, quote from We, the Drowned

“When it came to choosing between education and religion, Albert said, he'd choose education every time. The school represented young people and the future - and the church didn't. If the school in Vestergade was bigger than the church, so much the better. Any town that believed in the future should take note.”
― Carsten Jensen, quote from We, the Drowned

“Without discussing it with his mother, Anton went up to his teacher, Miss Katballe, and informed her that after seven years he was now quitting school. It was the best day of her life, she replied. With unexpected politeness he bowed, thanked her, and said, likewise.”
― Carsten Jensen, quote from We, the Drowned

“There shall come a day when all the women in the world will lie in the gutter screaming for cock,' he intoned. 'But not an inch shall they be given!'
'Am I to understand,' Knud Erik asked, 'that nobody wanted to screw you?”
― Carsten Jensen, quote from We, the Drowned

“Freedom had a thousand faces. But so did crime. The thought of what a man might do made me dizzy.”
― Carsten Jensen, quote from We, the Drowned

“But that's how it is on a sailing ship, and in this respect its journey parallels that of life: simply knowing where you want to go isn't enough, because life is a windblown voyage, consisting mainly of the detours imposed by alternating calm and storm.”
― Carsten Jensen, quote from We, the Drowned

“We don't sail because the sea is there. We sail because there's a harbour. We don't start by heading for distant shores. We seek protection first.”
― Carsten Jensen, quote from We, the Drowned

“No, he hadn't known anything about children, but now he'd learned something: a child's mind is open to everything.”
― Carsten Jensen, quote from We, the Drowned

“We were familiar with the line that separates grief from madness, and we know that sometimes the only way to stay on the right side of it is to scream.”
― Carsten Jensen, quote from We, the Drowned

“With no other choices open to us, we'd turned our gaze seaward. The oceans were our America: they reached farther than any prairie, untamed as on the first day of creation. Nobody owned them.”
― Carsten Jensen, quote from We, the Drowned

“Contrary to what most people think, weeping isn't an uncontrollable emotion that spills into tears. It's the opposite, a channel for feelings, a way to divert them in a healthy direction.”
― Carsten Jensen, quote from We, the Drowned

“At times he agreed with Anton: they were united by their silence. If they began articulating their thoughts, they'd feed one another's insanity and everything would fall apart.”
― Carsten Jensen, quote from We, the Drowned

“As he passed through the dining room, he stopped and took a white daisy from the bouqet his housekeeper had placed in the middle of the table..and put the daisy in the buttonhole of his summer jacket. Then he opened the front door and walked down the steps to Prinsegade, filled with the blind triumph that people sometimes experience when they've conquered their own better judgment.”
― Carsten Jensen, quote from We, the Drowned

“Take the sailor," he said. "he signs on to a new ship. He's surrounded by nothing but strangers. Not only do they come from other towns and parts of his own country, but often from completely different nations. He has to learn to work with them. His vocabulary's broadened, he learns new words and grammar, and he comes across new ways of thinking. he turns into a different man, unlike the one who spends his life plowing the same old furrow. These are the men the world needs, not nationalists and warmongers.”
― Carsten Jensen, quote from We, the Drowned

“Human beings are afflicted by a need to judge.”
― Carsten Jensen, quote from We, the Drowned

“War was like sailing. You could learn about clouds, wind direction, and currents, but the sea remained forever unpredictable. All you could do was adapt to it and try to return home alive.”
― Carsten Jensen, quote from We, the Drowned

“...the miller's hefty wife, Madam Weber, already armed with a pitchfork, insisted on joining the fight, and because she appeared more intimidating than most of us men, we instantly welcomed her to our bloodthirsty ranks.”
― Carsten Jensen, quote from We, the Drowned

“But he didnt want to be thought of as a fool. To walk around the town fully dressed and yet appear naked to the world was a shame he couldn't bear.”
― Carsten Jensen, quote from We, the Drowned

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Popular quotes

“I feel more strongly with every recurring year that our country has no tradition which does it so much honour and which it should guard so jealously as that of its hospitality. It is a tradition that is unique as far as my experience goes (and I have visited not a few places abroad) among the modern nations. Some would say, perhaps, that with us it is rather a failing than anything to be boasted of. But granted even that, it is, to my mind, a princely failing, and one that I trust will long be cultivated among us. Of one thing, at least, I am sure. As long as this one roof shelters the good ladies aforesaid- and I wish from my heart it may do so for many and many a long year to come- the tradition of genuine warm-hearted courteous Irish hospitality, which our forefathers have handed down to us and which we must hand down to our descendants, is still alive among us.”
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