When she was eighteen years old she had almost drowned in the Kennebec River, not because of the pummeling current, but because she couldn't come up with a casual phrase with which to call for rescue. "Help!" was such a cliche. By the time she was willing to scream, she had no breath left, and it was just blind luck that somebody saw her gasping and floundering and pulled her to shore. "Why didn't you say something?" they wanted to know, and she said, "I'm not a screamer." "Jesus," said one of them, "couldn't you have made an exception this one time?" "Apparently not," she said.
When she was eighteen years old she had almost drowned in the Kennebec River, not because of the pummeling current, but because she couldn't come up with a casual phrase with which to call for rescue. "Help!" was such a cliche. By the time she was willing to scream, she had no breath left, and it was just blind luck that somebody saw her gasping and floundering and pulled her to shore. "Why didn't you say something?" they wanted to know, and she said, "I'm not a screamer." "Jesus," said one of them, "couldn't you have made an exception this one time?" "Apparently not," she said.
Jincy Willett Quote
Related Quotes
Very often the test of one's allegiance to a cause or to a people is precisely the willingness to stay the course when things are boring, to run the risk of repeating an old argument just one more tim…
Tags:
history, politics, humour, commitment, loyalty, irony, communism, boredom, generosity, dissent
Many things in this period have been hard to bear, or hard to take seriously. My own profession went into a protracted swoon during the Reagan-Bush-Thatcher decade, and shows scant sign of recovering…
Tags:
faith, politics, religion, science, truth, humanism, enlightenment, literature, atheism, irony
Actually—and this was where I began to feel seriously uncomfortable—some such divine claim underlay not just 'the occupation' but the whole idea of a separate state for Jews in Palestine. Take away th…
Tags:
religion, irony, europe, colonialism, britain, land, israel, palestine, jews, israeli palestinian conflict