Ailene Hicks

“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 relief of giving in to destruction.”
― Mary Jo Bang, Apology for Want

“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

“The last captain called to sea again
Sails intrepid forward
The waves they rock
But he cares not
He need only follow the stars

Looking down at that compass
Would just lead him astray
His great old vessel
Done in by monsters, maelstroms,
Tidal waves
Foundering toward lost Atlantis

But by ancient stars
Burning oh so bright
And sails high and strong
He’ll catch the gale
That will take him there
Out where he belongs

Not a distant shore
But heaven’s door
One with the sublime
Another bright light
In the starry night
Shining with
True greatness”
― A.D. Aliwat, In Limbo