56 Quotes by Heidi Heilig

And in that moment, I saw the horizon unbounded and I reeled with the vastness of it. What new shores would I discover if I could only travel those few inches? A storm – a tempest in the pit of my stomach – but I was the skiff tossed on the waves, and my father’s lesson like thunder in my ears: don’t get too close. Still, the temptation was there.

I was a closed book, a rolled map, a dark territory uncharted; I was surprised by my urgency, but after all, to be known was to exist.

I was written into that map as a landmark. Before I’d even known it, I’d been a part of this place, and it was increasingly hard to pretend it wasn’t a part of me. Something of it lived under my skin, indelible as a tattoo. It was the home that might have been and for the first time I felt the loss of it.

Jealousy is nothing but a fear of being abandoned.

There is something terrifying about seeing someone strong standing on the edge of the abyss, like a ship on the lip of a whirlpool where the whole sea plunges into the maw of Charybdis. There is that moment when they reach out – like a drowning man will – and if you’re within reach, they will pull you down with them. I didn’t want to stand there beside him. I didn’t want to be dragged down.

The laws of the jungle remind me of the laws of the street. When I came abroad, I had to learn a different set of laws. Everywhere we go there is a different set of laws. Most of them unwritten.

You’re no kind of captain if you keep jumping ship.

There are a lot of things that are illegal but not wrong. And probably more that are wrong, and still legal.

Mist rose around us like the souls of drowned sailors, and the only sound was the muted hollow music of waves moving along the hull.