Mark Helprin quote

February 14, 2016 8:37 PM

Looking for a Mark Helprin quote, maybe from Winter's Tale: something like 'we are all boats in a harbour, sometimes we float together and sometimes we're pulled apart'. Google has not helped. AskMetafilter I beseech your aid!
posted by Sebmojo to Media & Arts (4 answers total)

"All rivers run full to the sea; those who are apart are brought together; the lost ones are redeemed; the dead come back to life; the perfectly blue days that have begun and ended in golden dimness continue, immobile and accessible; and, when all is perceived in such a way as to obviate time, justice becomes apparent not as something that will be, but something that is.”

(WInter's Tale)

?
posted by parki at 8:41 PM on February 14, 2016 [1 favorite]

Response by poster: No, it was definitely very close to the one I posted - I just want to get it right since it's going in a published document.

Beautiful quote though, thanks!
posted by Sebmojo at 8:42 PM on February 14, 2016

Google Books lets you search within certain books. Searching "harbor" in Winter's Tale didn't turn up any quotes like the one you're looking for, though.

Maybe it's a different book, or maybe the quotation doesn't contain the word harbor.
posted by Sleeper at 11:36 PM on February 14, 2016

This has been driving me nuts all day. I searched the ebooks of Winter's Tale and In Sunlight and in Shadow for "boats," and "harbor," and "float," and didn't find anything that looked right.

I did find this quotation on Google Books, from an 1882 book called "Our sketching tour":

[...] It is just like the world," she continued meditatively, "and we are like the leaves floating on the stream, quite powerless, carried away by circumstances. Sometimes we float together a long time happily, and then a wave or an eddy washes us apart, just as it brought us together, and we never meet again."

Good luck!
posted by teditrix at 8:02 PM on February 15, 2016