The Old Man and the Sea

Man can be destroyed but not defeated. Six words I've carried through three bad years.

Eighty-four days without a fish. The eighty-fifth he rows past all the other boats.

He talked to the birds and the fish and his own cramped hand. Solitude, done honestly.

The sharks ate the marlin and couldn't touch the catching. Results vs. the act itself.

Baseball and lions on the beach, the old man dreamed of being young, not of winning.

The boy brought coffee at dawn. That's the whole economy of love in ninety pages.

A fish worth five hundred dollars and a skeleton worth everything.

Hemingway cut every adjective and left the Atlantic. Restraint this strong is loud.

He sailed too far out. Every ambition I've had nodded along.

The tourist mistook the skeleton for a shark. Nobody knows what you fought. Carry on anyway.