If my critics saw me walking over the River Thames they would say it was because I couldn't swim.

He [Quoyle] did not want a boat, shied from the thought of water. Ashamed he could not swim, couldn't learn.

The critics barged in to harp on every decision we made. . .Sadly, I began to doubt myself. Maybe I was too young. Maybe I wasn’t a good enough sailor.

Right then, with the shore so close, I understood that I would not do what I should do. I would not swim away from my hometown and my country and my life. I would not be brave.

Who shuns offence and holds with neither side,
Who dreads the deep and never dares to swim,
Who fears to trip and never tries to run,
May yet in walking stumble.

I gazed at that small boat and said to myself, mhh, I am a Mkwere without swimming skills. Better for Membe because he has married in Mbamba Bay. He can swim.

I may sink, but I'll be damned if I strike!

Now I felt like I was drifting, sucked down by an undertow, and too far out to swim back to the shore.

I can't swim. I can't drive, either. I was going to learn to drive but then I thought, well, what if I crash into a lake? Then I'm fucked!

Wait a moment, here I have it. This: 'Most men will not swim before they are able to.' Is not that witty? Naturally, they won't swim! They are born for the solid earth, not for the water. And naturally they won't think. They are made for life, not for thought. Yes, and he who thinks, what's more, he who makes thought his business, he may go far in it, but he has bartered the solid earth for the water all the same, and one day he will drown.

You cannot swim for new horizons until you have courage to lose sight of the shore.

You cannot swim for new horizons until you have the courage to lose sight of the shore.

No swimmer, however good, can swim beyond the rim of the world.

I am in that temper that if I were under water I would scarcely kick to come to the top.