Quicksand Quotes

“Let us not remain anchored in the quicksand of a waning past, and lose the war on obliviousness, but let us listen to the bracing sounds of new horizons, grasp the enchantment of the fleeting instants and seize the cleverness of the moment. (Could time be patient?)”
― Erik Pevernagie

“At a certain point, we have to stop ‘play time,’ start ‘construction time’ and get things going, instead of getting mired down in the quicksand of wishful thinking, clutching desperately to imaginary ‘dei ex machina.’ (" Swim or sink")”
― Erik Pevernagie

“Islanzadi sighed, and suddenly appeared tired. “Ormomis may have been your proper teacher, but you have proved yourself to be Brom’s heir, not Oromis’s. Brom is the only person who managed to entangle himself in as many predicaments as you. Like him, you seem compelled to find the deepest patch of quicksand and then dive into it.”
Eragon hid a smile, pleased by the comparison.”
― Christopher Paolini, Brisingr

“But there was, she knew, something else. Happiness, she supposed. Whatever that might be. What, exactly, she wondered, was happiness. Very positively she wanted it.”
― Nella Larsen, Quicksand

“Be careful… not all are what they seem. Some people pretend to be the beach, but they’re actually quicksand.”
― Steve Maraboli

“With me, the present is forever, and forever is always shifting, flowing, melting. This second is life. And when it is gone it is dead. But you can't start over with each new second. You have to judge by what is dead. It's like quicksand...hopeless from the start. A story, a picture, can renew sensation a little, but not enough, not enough. Nothing is real except the present, and already, I feel the weight of centuries smothering me. Some girl a hundred years ago once lived as I do. And she is dead. I am the present, but I know I, too, will pass. The high moments, the burning flash, come and are gone, continuous quicksand. And I don't want to die.”
― Sylvia Plath, The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath

“It took Pueblo a few seconds to take in his surroundings. The first thing he realised was that he felt bruised all over; the second was that his clothes were waterlogged, even more than before, from the quicksand; and the third, was that he had landed on his front and was lying on a large, uncomfortable stone.

No, wait… In his disoriented state, he shifted his weight. The stone didn't move. He was lying on his own fucking erection.”
― Dianna Hardy, The Sands Of Time

“Let your past be your spring-board, not your quicksand.”
― Steve Maraboli, Unapologetically You: Reflections on Life and the Human Experience

“Meditation takes you out of your mind and possibly into the future, negative thoughts are quicksands that keeps you glued to your past.”
― Michael Bassey Johnson, The Book of Maxims, Poems and Anecdotes

“In the case of sand as in that of woman, there is a fineness which is treacherous.”
― Victor Hugo

“To get out of that quicksand, she needed validation, and she sought it the most in the world than anything else. Every time someone she knew passed by and looked at her, she would say everything that led her to get stuck in that quicksand. And every time someone blamed her for getting stuck or would just pass away without acknowledging her story, the quicksand consumed her a bit more.”
― Akshay Vasu, Reflections in a Shattered Mirror

“Our virtues are the quicksands, which show themselves at calm and low water; but let the waves arise and the winds buffet them, and the poor devil whose hope was in their durability, finds them sink from under him.”
― Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, The Last Man

“That’s what life is all about. The obvious. The minute we start layering it with shades of grey, we start getting caught in quicksand.”
― Cristiane Serruya, Not A Book: Royal Love

“Political sensitivity is as rare as footprints on quicksand.”
― Stewart Stafford

“Luxury! more perilous to youth than storms or quicksand, poverty or chains.”
― Hannah More

“I learnt the most important thing you have to know: how to look after yourself. To stand by your own decisions. I didn't become an author during my time in Paris, but that wasn't important. I took the first step towards becoming a human being with self-awareness. The big step forward after that discovery I had made -- that I am myself and nobody else -- while standing outside the community centre in Sveg.”
― Henning Mankell, Arenas movedizas

“Even a short-lived visit to the bottom level of society means that one is faced with one of the most important decisions one has to make in life: what type of society do you want to help to create?

This is the question that has come to dominate my whole life.”
― Henning Mankell, Arenas movedizas

“The choices a human being has to make also involve deciding where one stands in an unjust society: we are all political beings, whether we like it or not. We live in a fundamentally political society, where we have a sort of contract with everybody else who lives alongside us. But it is also a contract that affects those who are not yet born.
On what grounds do we make our decisions? On what basis do we choose what we do or think or find offensive? What do we choose to do, and what to we refuse to go along with?
Having the possibility to make decisions about what to do with one's life is a great privilege. As far as most people on this planet are concerned, life is simply about survival.”
― Henning Mankell, Arenas movedizas

“I admit that I have been surprised during recent times. People I thought might well flee into the shadows have proved to be strong enough to remain in constant touch, while others of whom I expected more have disappeared over the horizon.
But I don't pass judgment on anybody. People are who they are. One doesn't need to have many friends -- but one should be able to rely on those one has.”
― Henning Mankell, Arenas movedizas

“Facing up to cancer is a battle conducted on many fronts. The important thing is not to waste too much strength fighting against one's own illusions. I need all my strength in order to increase my powers of resistance in confronting the enemy that has invaded me.”
― Henning Mankell, Arenas movedizas

“It is so incredibly easy to take risks with the lives of other people.”
― Henning Mankell, Arenas movedizas

“Just as everything in my life has changed, every new morning brings with it a fresh challenge. I have to think about something other than my illness. Every morning I spend a certain amount of time asking myself how I feel, if I have any new side effects, or if it looks like being a good day. But if I am unable to thrust aside such thoughts with a real ice-hockey tackle of an effort, the battle is lost before it has even begun. Then there is a risk that resignation, suffering and fear will gain the upper hand. What course is open to me in that case? To lie down and turn my face to the wall?”
― Henning Mankell, Arenas movedizas

“When I picked up a book that I had read many times before, the words opened themselves up again. What I was unable to cope with was the new and the unknown; but what I had read before, perhaps on several occasions, had the same effect as ever. I read and was able to stop thinking about my illness.”
― Henning Mankell, Arenas movedizas

“In my life I have met people who have committed horrendous and barbaric acts. I have met child soldiers who have murdered their parents or their siblings. But they were not born evil. They have carried out those brutal deeds when guns were aimed at their own heads. They have had to choose between their own lives and those they were forced to kill. What would I have done as a thirteen-year-old in that situation? The only honest answer I can give is that I don't know. I can hope that I would have acted differently, but I can't be sure.

. . .

There is always somebody who speculates and benefits from barbaric atrocities.

Barbaris always has human traits. That's what makes barbarism so inhuman.”
― Henning Mankell, Arenas movedizas

“Endless numbers of people surround you as you travel through life. Some you notice briefly, then forget. With others you make eye contact, which leads to a kind of emotional connection. And sometimes you have a conversation with some of these people.

And then you have your family, your friends, your workmates. All those who are close to you. Some move away, or your relationship cools, or they let you down in some way, and friends sometimes become enemies.

But most are simply folk who happen to live at the same time as you do. Millions of people who pay a short visit to the earth, whose stay overlaps your own.
. . .

Our real family is endless, even if we don't know who some of them were when we met them for an extremely brief moment.”
― Henning Mankell, Arenas movedizas

“Dusty, if you ever see any "Quicksand"---you can know that there is OIL somewhere very close to it.”
― John Everett Bass (Maternal Grandfather of Marsha Carol Watson Gandy)

“I was raised in the desert and always appreciated the way its landscape gives you a chance to see what's coming. In Florida, dangers don't reveal themselves until it's too late. The alligator lurking in the shallow pond, ready to devour your pet or your child. The snake hidden in the underbrush. The riptide slicing across that postcard-perfect Atlantic. Sinkholes. Encephalitis. Brain-destroying bacteria that flourish in overheated lakes. Quicksand.”
― Laura van den Berg, I Hold a Wolf by the Ears: Stories

“I was a very nervous kid, I was anxious all the time when I was younger, but what's nice is that some of the things I was anxious about don't bother me at all anymore. Like, uh, I always thought that quicksand was going to be a much bigger problem than it turned out to be. Because if you watch cartoons, quicksand is like the third biggest thing you have to worry about in adult life behind real sticks of dynamite and giant anvils falling on you from the sky. I used to sit around and think about what to do about quicksand. I never thought about how to handle real problems in adult life, I was never like "Oh, what's it gonna be like when relatives ask to borrow money?" Now that I've gotten older, not only have I never stepped in quicksand—I've never even heard about it! No one's ever been like, "Hey if you're coming to visit, take I-90 'cause I-95 has a little quicksand in the middle. Looks like regular sand, but then you're gonna start to sink into it.”
― John Mulvaney

“The Trenches of Comprehension by Stewart Stafford

Drowning at quicksand's smothering pace,
A lonely disappearance that leaves no trace.
As I struggle to get out, the deeper I sink,
Nothing bequeathed, just dusty ink.

Old wives say hearing is the last to go,
Second last wind as a bittersweet tango,
In sunken lethargy shouting aphorisms,
Spouting words fortifies alert mechanisms.

Communication fading as it nourishes,
From a dying man's lips, it flourishes,
The Reaper's bone dice leave you cheated,
Exhaustion cashing out the defeated.

Chin sinks below for past life crime,
Eyes and lungs fill in white light time,
Saviour's hand grasps mine in the sludge,
And from death's door, I slowly budge.

© 2024, Stewart Stafford. All rights reserved.”
― Stewart Stafford