Five Quotes by Joseph Conrad

"Let them think what they liked, but I didn't mean to drown myself. I meant to swim till I sank -- but that's not the same thing." 
- The Secret Sharer and other stories

"The belief in a supernatural source of evil is not necessary; men alone are quite capable of every wickedness." 
- Heart of Darkness


"Do you see the story? Do you see anything? It seems to me I am trying to tell you a dream--making a vain attempt, because no relation of a dream can convey the dream-sensation, that commingling of absurdity, surprise, and bewilderment in a tremor of struggling revolt, that notion of being captured by the incredible which is the very essence of dreams..."
- Heart of Darkness


"Joy and sorrow in this world pass into each other, mingling their forms and their murmurs in the twilight of life as mysterious as an overshadowed ocean, while the dazzling brightness of supreme hopes lies far off, fascinating and still, on the distant edge of the horizon"

" Watching a coast as it slips by the ship is like thinking about an enigma. There it is before you -- smiling, frowning, inviting, grand, mean, insipid, or savage, and always mute with an air of whispering -- Come and find out." 

Joseph Conrad