Jill Fredston > Quotes

“But though we must pretend otherwise in order to function, none of us can know the script for any day.”
― Jill Fredston, Snowstruck: In the Grip of Avalanches – The Expert's Story of Nature's Deadly Forces and Human Survival

“We have had the opportunity to learn from the misjudgments of others, and we have been imbued with determination to use our time wisely, to cause as little pain as possible to others, to pay attention, to live and love with few regrets.”
― Jill Fredston, Rowing to Latitude: Journeys Along the Arctic's Edge

“The next summer, accompanied by a friend in an equally undersized sailboat, I made the seven-mile crossing to Long Island. We swam gleefully, uninvited and unnoticed, in the outdoor pool of a stately Gatsby-type house with a sloping green lawn lined by bright beds of flowers. On our way home and scarcely a mile from Larchmont Harbor, we were stopped by the Coast Guard. A pockmarked, humorless man in an orange jumpsuit asked our ages, carefully logged our names and addresses onto a clipboard, and called our parents. It hadn’t occurred to us to think about the distance or the danger. We were simply heading for another shore, propelled by a spirit that reminds me of Joseph Conrad’s words: “I remember my youth and the feeling that will never come back any more—the feeling that I could last for ever, outlast the sea, the earth, and all men.”
― Jill Fredston, Rowing to Latitude: Journeys Along the Arctic's Edge

“If he could rewrite the day, his life would be the way it always had been, and his future would be as he had planned. But though we must pretend otherwise in order to function, none of us can know the script for any day.”
― Jill Fredston

“It only looked as though we were making the journey in two separate boats. The journey was ours, together, and the burden of having someone to watch out for, someone to care about more than myself, both deepened the risk and heightened the joy.”
― Jill Fredston, Rowing to Latitude: Journeys Along the Arctic's Edge

“God made Labrador in six days. And on the seventh, he threw rocks at it. —Old Newfoundland saying”
― Jill Fredston, Rowing to Latitude: Journeys Along the Arctic's Edge