Colin Jack

“Even with their eyes shut, people are still watching, and I can’t think of a single one who could say: I wasn’t there. From inside their own homes, they are all watching the drama, and the drama is never-ending; it plays out every day, every night, on high days and holidays, even when they’re doing other things, they’re still spectators of the ‘drama at sea’. Blind spectators and a spectacle for the blind. They watch, they see nothing; in fact they can’t see anything. The stage is blacked out, and at this distance, from their sofas or in front of their TVs, they can’t make anything out. They see nothing, but are still present at the drama.”
― Vincent Delecroix, Small Boat

“But it’s enough for one to be lost and there is always one, there has to be one – and it’s as if you had saved no one. So with all this going on, this ongoing shipwreck, why bother? I asked. And why save this person rather than that one, when they are all condemned. And what justice is there? Why save one, ten, twenty; it’s all same, since you can’t save them all. There is always one left.”
― Vincent Delecroix, Small Boat

“…I’ll say: Hey, jerk, see that guy sleeping in a cardboard box at the foot of your building? He’s rowing across the tarmac, he’s sinking too. But he’s not dozens of kilometres out at sea, at dead of night, he is quite easy to geolocate, he’s just in front of your feet. So are you going to send him help or is that my job again?”
― Vincent Delecroix, Small Boat

“The depth of night always felt adjacent to real life, a fourth dimension of the world that allowed the honesty and courage that daylight forbade. Perhaps it was that the moon and stars reminded people of their finite lives in the margins of the universe’s story—what did it matter what human beings did or didn’t do? Or perhaps it was only the clock losing its tether to the day’s routines and yielding to pure time.”
― Megha Majumdar, A Guardian and a Thief