“The swell was gently lifting and lowering the boat. My breathing grew slower, falling into step with the creaking of the hull, until I could no longer tell the difference between the faint rhythmic motion of the cabin and the sensation of filling and emptying my lungs. It was like floating in darkness: every inhalation buoyed me up, slightly; every exhalation made me sink back down again.”

—  Greg Egan

Oceanic http://gregegan.customer.netspace.net.au/OCEANIC/Complete/Oceanic.html, ch. 1 <br class="br">Fiction, Oceanic and Other Stories (2000)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "The swell was gently lifting and lowering the boat. My breathing grew slower, falling into step with the creaking of th…" by Greg Egan?
Greg Egan photo
Greg Egan23
Australian science fiction writer and former computer progr… 1961

Related quotes

Richard Ashcroft photo

“Sinking faster than a boat without a hull.”

Richard Ashcroft (1971) English singer-songwriter

Sonnet
Urban Hymns (1997)

Richard Wright photo

“In buoying me up, reading also cast me down, made me see what was possible, what I had missed.”

Richard Wright book Black Boy

Black Boy (1945)

Friedrich List photo

“… every nation which makes no forward progress sinks lower and lower, and must ultimately fall”

Friedrich List (1789–1846) German economist with dual American citizenship

Source: The National System of Political Economy (1841), p. 8

Sarah Waters photo

“With every step I took away from her, the movement at my heart and between my legs grew more defined: I felt like a ventriloquist, locking his protesting dolls in to a trunk.”

Sarah Waters book Tipping the Velvet

Source: Tipping the Velvet

Ed Harcourt photo

“I see my body float like leaves. Every day I want to breathe. Rap my knuckles till they bleed. A river deep.”

Ed Harcourt (1977) British musician

Bleed A River Deep

“An aching to be once again in the land from which he grew gave him no rest. There is no calm for those who are uprooted. They are wanderers, homesick and defiant. Love itself is helpless to heal them though the dust rises with every footfall—drifts down the corridors—settles on branch or cornice—each breath an inhalation from the past so that the lungs, like a miner’s, are dark with bygone times.
Whatever they eat, whatever they drink, is never the bread of home or the corn of their own valleys. It is never the wine of their own vineyards. It is a foreign brew.”

Mervyn Peake book Titus Alone

Source: Titus Alone (1959), Chapter 34 (p. 862)

David Abram photo

“Breathing involves a continual oscillation between exhaling and inhaling, offering ourselves to the world at one moment and drawing the world into ourselves at the next…”

David Abram (1957) American philosopher, ecologist

Source: Becoming Animal: An Earthly Cosmology

David Levithan photo

“You leave the phone on beside you as you fall asleep. I sit in my bed and listen to your breathing, until I know you are safe, until I know you no longer need me for the night.”

David Levithan The Lover's Dictionary

Source: The Lover's Dictionary

Tamsin Greig photo

“Every drama school in the country turned me down, and so I was lucky to study drama at all, even if it was lowly Birmingham University. But even when I came out with my degree, my mother promptly insisted I go straight to secretarial college to have something to fall back on, just in case – which didn’t exactly fill me with confidence.”

Tamsin Greig (1966) English actress

About studying drama.
From an interview with the Independent on Sunday, "Green Goddess."

Related topics