“Water is friendly to man. The ocean, a part of Nature furthest removed in the unchangeableness and majesty of its might from the spirit of mankind, has ever been a friend to the enterprising nations of the earth. And of all the elements this is the one to which men have always been prone to trust themselves, as if its immensity held a reward as vast as itself.

From the offing the open estuary promises every possible fruition to adventurous hopes…”

– Joseph Conrad, “The Mirror Of The Sea,” chapter 30

I’ve been reading Conrad lately, on trains and things–I got his complete works for the Kindle app on my Ipod. This is from the nonfiction, although you wouldn’t know it. I like pretending that I can hear the Polish underneath the English, and I find his example very inspiring, in terms of a writer becoming comfortable in another language.