“Sometimes driven aground by the photon storms, by the swirling of the galaxies, clockwise and counterclockwise, ticking with light down the dark sea-corridors lined with our silver sails, our demon-haunted sails, our hundred-league masts as fine as threads, as fine as silver needles sewing the threads of starlight, embroidering the stars on black velvet, wet with the winds of Time that go racing by. The bone in her teeth! The spume, the flying spume of Time, cast up on these beaches where old sailors can no longer keep their bones from the restless, the unwearied universe. Where has she gone? My lady, the mate of my soul? Gone across the running tides of Aquarius, of Pisces, of Aries. Gone. Gone in her little boat, her nipples pressed against the black velvet lid, gone, sailing away forever from the star-washed shores, the dry shoals of the habitable worlds. She is her own ship, she is the figurehead of her own ship, and the captain. Bosun, Bosun, put out the launch! Sailmaker, make a sail! She has left us behind. We have left her behind. She is in the past we never knew and the future we will not see. Put out more sail, Captain for the universe is leaving us behind…”

Gene Wolfe

Gene Wolfe - “Sometimes driven aground by the photon...” 1

Similar quotes

“i am standing upon the seashore. a ship at my side spreads her white sails to the morning breeze and starts for the blue ocean. she is an object of beauty and strength. i stand and watch her until at length she hangs like a speck of white cloud just where the sea and sky come to mingle with each other. then someone at my side says: "there, she is gone!" "gone where?" gone from my sight. that is all. she is just as large in mast and hull and spar as she was when she left my side and she is just as able to bear the load of living freight to her destined port. her diminished size is in me, not in her. and just at the moment when someone at my side says: "there, she is gone!" there are other eyes watching her coming, and other voices ready to take up the glad shout: "here she comes!" and that is dying.”

Henry Van Dyke
Read more

“She stood in the storm, & when the wind did not blow her away, she adjusted her sails.”

Elizabeth Edwards
Read more

“She stood in the storm, and when the wind did not blow her way, she adjusted her sails.”

Elizabeth Edwards
Read more

“You would make a ship sail against the winds and currents by lighting a bonfire under her decks? I have no time for such nonsense.”

Napoleon Bonaparte
Read more

“Aye, ‘tis a legend. Yet, ‘tis also true. Cause that ship sailed under a different name once. Her name was Banshee’s Cry, and she was a fine ship. She was … my ship.Captain Daniel 'Drake' Davies.”

Jeffrey Kosh
Read more