Then sail, my fine lady, on the billowing wave - The water below is as dark as the grave, And maybe you'll sink in your little blue boat - It's hope, and hope only, that keeps us afloat
Interpretation
This quote highlights the significance of hope in navigating life's uncertainties and challenges.
Margaret Atwood's quote reflects the idea that life is a journey filled with unknowns, depicted here as sailing on dark waters. Despite the potential dangers and the risk of sinking, it is the presence of hope that enables us to persevere and keep moving forward. The imagery of a 'little blue boat' symbolizes our fragile existence, while the 'billowing wave' represents the vast, unpredictable nature of life. Ultimately, it suggests that hope is the essential element that allows us to face adversity and explore the unknown.
In practice
During a motivational speech about overcoming challenges.
If I am good enough and quiet enough, perhaps after all they will let me go; but it’s not easy being quiet and good, it’s like hanging on to the edge of a bridge when you’ve already fallen over; you don’t seem to be moving, just dangling there, and yet it is taking all your strength.
I would like to believe this is a story I’m telling. I need to believe it. I must believe it. Those who can believe that such stories are only stories have a better chance. If it’s a story I’m telling, then I have control over the ending. Then there will be an ending, to the story, and real life will come after it. I can pick up where I left off.
What else can I do? Once you've gone this far you aren't fit for anything else. Something happens to your mind. You're overqualified, overspecialized, and everybody knows it. Nobody in any other game would be crazy enough to hire me. I wouldn't even make a good ditch-digger, I'd start tearing apart the sewer-system, trying to pick-axe and unearth all those chthonic symbols - pipes, valves, cloacal conduits... No, no. I'll have to be a slave in the paper-mines for all time.
We love each other, that’s true whatever it means, but we aren’t good at it; for some it’s a talent, for others only an addiction.
I've learned quite a lot, over the years, by avoiding what I was supposed to be learning.
Knowing too much about other people puts you in their power, they have a claim on you, you are forced to understand their reasons for doing things and then you are weakened.
In ancient times, those who followed the Way did not try to give people knowledge thereof, but kept them ignorant.
To be a Christian is a standing, a legal position. It means to be a child of God. You are or you are not, there is no try.
There are people who think that plunder loses all its immorality as soon as it becomes legal. Personally, I cannot imagine a more alarming situation.
We all have some experience of a feeling, that comes over us occasionally, of what we are saying and doing having been said and done before, in a remote time - of our having been surrounded, dim ages ago, by the same faces, objects, and circumstances.
The body can't distinguish between cleansing and punishing for the body is ignorant, and mute besides.
Mournful and Never-ending Remembrance.
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