Ailene Hicks

“When the sea is calm, the landscape (seascape) seems simple and even monotonous, sometimes with a distant, sometimes with a close coastline, but usually with no land in sight at all. You feel 'free', not only free of care, but also free of the solidity of the earth's crust. It is a wonderful sensation, feeling the liquidity of the water under the ship. This salutary freedom is constantly present, on deck by day, in bed at nights. The movements of the ship vary from a gentle rocking to swinging and hurtling; you are never motionless while at sea. Then you start to observe and assimilate all these natural phenomena surrounding you: the infinite variety of the waves and the swell of the sea, and for the first time in ages you look again at the heavenly bodies, the sun, the moon and the stars, and you see the living creatures in and over the sea, the fish and the birds.”
― M.C. Escher, Leven en werk van M.C. Escher : het levensverhaal van de graficus : met een volledig geïllustreerde catalogus van zijn werk

“It doesn’t matter if you mess up, choose the wrong road, flop in Vegas. What’s important is to throw yourself in head first, to “go for the gusto.” And if you blow it, you blow it. What we have to worry about now is success. Once you’re successful, it becomes embarrassing to make mistakes, and more difficult to grab onto the nearest straw and hold on. You can always be a star, so what’s the rush?”
― Lindsey Hilsum, In Extremis: The Life and Death of the War Correspondent Marie Colvin

“The sea-shore is a sort of neutral ground, a most advantageous point from which to contemplate this world.”
― Henry David Thoreau, Cape Cod

“The real difficulty is having enough faith in humanity to believe that someone will care,” she said.”
― Lindsey Hilsum, In Extremis: The Life and Death of the War Correspondent Marie Colvin