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

“I know people would have liked me to say: You’re not going to die, I’ll save you. And not because I would have actually saved them, done my job, done the necessary, sent rescue. Not because I’d done what you’re meant to do. They wanted me to have said it, at least to have said it, just to have said the words. That was what the investigator was waiting for anxiously, for everyone to hear, to hear their own voice in mine in these recordings. The voice of each of us saying I will save you. Each one in my place. The voice of the whole of humanity reassured to hear itself saying, uttering the words: I will save you; you will not die – not actually saving, no one cares about that, not acting, not even helping. But at least saying it, because to fail to say those words is to be less than human. In the end, whether they drowned or not didn’t matter; what mattered were my words. What mattered was not that they were saved; it was that I should be saved, and the whole world with me, through these words. Saved by my own words, not condemned by them.”
― Vincent Delecroix, Small Boat

“Some men are happiest when they don't have to move an inch from their hearths. But for some of us, to sit still is to feel the weight of six feet of earth on our chests.”
― Deepa Anappara, The Last of Earth

“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