Nausicaa Quotes

One should part from life as Ulysses parted from Nausicaa-- blessing it rather than in love with it.

At the time, sword and sorcery stories were quite popular. There were female warriors waving swords around as well, but the genre is populated entirely with people who have absolutely no responsibility to anyone, so I knew my story would have to be completely different from any of these.

Every life-form, no matter how small, contains the outside universe within it's internal universe.

Grave of the Fireflies, Revolutionary Girl Utena, Neon Genesis Evangelion, Cowboy Bebop, The Vision of Escaflowne, Rurouni Kenshin, Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind, Trigun, The Slayers, and my personal favorite, Ghost in the Shell.

Alcinous’ daughter Nausicaa was the only one to stand firm. Athena put courage into her heart and took away the fear from her limbs, and she stood her ground and faced him.

Apollodorus, the leading classical authority on Greek myths, records a tradition that the real scene of the poem was the Sicilian seaboard, and in 1896 Samuel Butler, the author of Erewhon, came independently to the same conclusion. He suggested that the poem, as we now have it, was composed at Drepanum, the modern Trapani, in Western Sicily, and that the authoress was the girl self-portrayed as Nausicaa. None of his classical contemporaries, for whom Homer was necessarily both blind and bearded, deigned to pay Butler’s theory the least attention; and since he had, as we now know, dated the poem some three hundred years too early and not explained how a Sicilian princess could have passed off her saga as Homer’s, his two books on the subject are generally dismissed as a good-humoured joke. Nevertheless, while working on an explanatory dictionary of Greek myths, I found Butler’s arguments for a Western Sicilian setting and for a female authorship irrefutable. I could not rest until I had written this novel. It re-creates, from internal and external evidence, the circumstances which induced Nausicaa to write the Odyssey, and suggest how, as an honorary Daughter of Homer, she managed to get it included in the official canon. Here is the story of a high-spirited and religious-minded Sicilian girl who saves her father’s throne from usurpation, herself from a distasteful marriage, and her two younger brothers from butchery by boldly making things happen, instead of sitting still and hoping for the best.

We don’t even know what’s going on in the rest of the world. All we can do is-is play Scooby-Doo in the cellar.” “That’s not all we can do, Sophie,” Archer said. Whenever Archer used my first name, I knew he was serious. “What do you mean?” He backed up a few steps. “Look, you want the Casnoffs gone and these kids saved, or at least…well, put out of their misery, I guess. You don’t want anyone to raise demons ever again. There are other people who want those things, too.” “Please tell me you are not talking about The Eye.” He looked away and shoved his hands in his pockets. “I’m just saying that you and The Eye have a common goal here.” I wasn’t sure if I was stunned, or angry, or disgusted. It was kind of a mixture of all three. “Okay, is there a gas leak down here? Or did you hit your head on the tunnel? Because that’s really the only excuse for you saying something so freaking stupid.” “Oh, you’re right, Mercer,” he said. “The idea of a trying to fight an army of demons with a bunch of trained soldiers is beyond ridiculous. Maybe we can go get Nausicaa and see if she’ll give us some faerie dust to make the problem go away.” “Don’t be a jackass,” I snapped. “Then don’t be naïve,” he retorted. “This is too big for us to handle, Sophie. This is too big for Prodigium to deal with on their own. But if we could all work together, there’s a chance that-“ “What do you think, Cross? That we’ll ask The Eye to help us, and they’ll be all, ‘Sure, no problem! And once we’re done wiping out the demons, we certainly won’t kill the rest of you, even though that’s like, our mission in life!

While altering the saga of Odysseus’s Return to make my Elyman suitors serve as Penelope’s lovers, I had to protect myself against scandal. What if someone recognized the story and supposed that I, Nausicaa the irreproachable, had played the promiscuous harlot in my father’s absence? So, according to my poem, Penelope must have remained faithful to Odysseus throughout those twenty years. And because this change meant that Aphrodite had failed to take her traditional revenge, I must make Poseidon, not her, the enemy who delayed him on his homeward voyage after the Fall of Troy. I should therefore have to omit the stories of Penelope’s banishment and the oar mistaken for a flail, and Odysseus’s death from Telemachus’s sting-ray spear. When I told Phemius of these decisions, he pointed out, rather nastily, that since Poseidon had fought for the Greeks against the Trojans, and since Odysseus had never failed to honour him, I must justify this enmity by some anecdote. “Very well,” I answered. “Odysseus blinded a Cyclops who, happening to be Poseidon’s son, prayed to him for vengeance.” “My dear Princess, every Cyclops in the smithies of Etna was born to Uranus, Poseidon’s grandfather, by Mother Earth.” “Mine was an exceptional Cyclops,” I snapped. “He claimed Poseidon as his father and kept sheep in a Sican cave, like Conturanus. I shall call him Polyphemus—that is, ‘famous’—to make my hearers think him a more important character than he really was.” “Such deceptions tangle the web of poetry.” “But if I offer Penelope as a shining example for wives to follow when their husbands are absent on long journeys, that will excuse the deception.

Are broken windows a new decorating theme around here?” Archer asked, coming up behind Jenna and me and poking his head into the parlor. “So it would seem,” I said. I was still looking outside when a faint light appeared in the gloom. It took me a minute to realize that it was from Cal’s cabin. Was someone out there? Was Cal out there? But just as quickly as it had appeared, the light went out again. Frowning, I turned from the doorway, and I went to slip my arm through Archer’s. Then I remembered what Nausicaa had said earlier. Now wasn’t exactly the best time for PDA, probably. The three of us trailed behind everyone else into the ballroom. Here, at least, things looked more or less the same. Of course, the ballroom had always been one of the more bizarre rooms at Hex Hall, so that didn’t say much. Still, I was relieved to see the familiar jumble of tables and chairs and not, like, tree stumps or whatever.

Oh my God,” Jenna murmured, just as I said, “Holy hell weasel,” under my breath. I won’t repeat what Archer said. Someone in the crowd-I think it was Taylor-shouted, “But the school is closed. Everyone was saying…” Her voice trailed off, and one of the faeries piped up, her voice higher and clear. “You have no right to bring us here. The Fae are no longer in alliance with the rest of Prodigium. On behalf of the Seelie court, I demand you send us home.” Ah. That was Nausicaa. She was the only one of the faeries that talked like she was rehearsing a play. Next to me, Jenna leaned in closer and said, “The Fae broke their alliance? Did you know that?” I shook my head just as Mrs. Casnoff pinned Nausicaa with a glare. No matter how feeble she seemed, she could still throw one heck of a dirty look. “Alliances and treaties have no meaning here at Hecate Hall. Once you’ve been a student here, your allegiance is to the school. Always.” She gave a smile that was more like a grimace. “It was in the code of conduct you signed when you were sentenced here.” I remembered that, a thick pamphlet I’d barely read before scrawling my name on the dotted line. I suddenly wished I had of power of time travel so that I could go smack Sophie From A Year Ago around, and tell her to read things first.

Lezen vrijwaart je van gekooide gedachten

Only later did you learn that you can't prove anything to anyone who doesn't want to believe. So you learned to believe in yourself which silenced their voices and gave dawn to a new era which you called "Self Worth".

With twelve ships Odysseus sets sail from Troy and goes north to the town of Ismarus. When the ships and warriors arrive, what do they do? They ravage the town and ravish the women. The priest of Ismarus actually thanks Odysseus for not raping his daughter. These men were that rapacious. The gods say, “This is no way for a man to go home to his wife! This is not the proper relationship of a male to a female for a domestic existence.” So they blow those twelve ships astray for ten days. What Odysseus is going to have to do in order to get where he wants to go is to meet those three goddesses and appease them. Aphrodite, Hera, and Athena are going to appear in the forms of three nymphs Circe, Calypso, and Nausicaa.

You must know something.” “And why is Archer Cross here?” That was from Jenna. His voice had apparently changed over the summer, since he actually said the words instead of squeaking them. “He’s an Eye.” “Didn’t he try to kill you?” Nausicaa had drifted up, and she narrowed her eyes at me. “And if so, why exactly were you holding his hand earlier?” Conversations like this usually ended in pitchforks and torches, so I held my hands out in what I hoped was an “everyone just calm the heck down” gesture. But then Jenna spoke up. “Sophie doesn’t know anything,” she said, nudging my behind her. That might’ve been more effective if Jenna weren’t so short. “And whatever reason we’re here, the Council had nothing to do with it.” Jenna didn’t add that that was because the entire Council, with the exception of Lara Casnoff and my dad, was dead. “She’s just freaked out as the rest of us, so back. Off.” From the expressions on the other kids’ faces, I guessed Jenna had bared her fangs, and maybe even given a flash of red eyes. “What’s going on here?” a familiar voice brayed. Great. Like this night didn’t suck out loud enough already. The Vandy-who had been a cross between school matron and prison guard at Hex Hall-shoved her way through the crowd, breathing hard. Her purple tattoos, marks of the Removal, were nearly black against her red face. “Downstairs, now!” As the group began moving again, she glared at Jenna and me. “Show your fangs again, Miss Talbot, and I’ll wear them as earrings. Is that understood?” Jenna may have muttered, “Yes, ma’am,” but her tone said something totally different. We jogged down the stairs to join the rest of the students lining up to go into the ballroom. “At least one thing at Hex Hall hasn’t changed,” Jenna said. “Yeah, apparently the Vandy’s powers of bitchery are a constant. I find that comforting.” Less comforting was the creeptasticness of the school at night. During the day, it had just been depressing. Now that it was dark, it was full-on sinister. The old-fashioned gas lamps on the walls had once burned with a cozy, golden light. Now, a noxious green glow sputtered inside the milky glass, throwing crazy shadows all over the place.

The malicious erasure of women’s names from the historical record began two or three thousand years ago and continues into our own period. Women take as great a risk of anonymity when they merge their names with men in literary collaboration as when they merge in matrimony. The Lynds, for example, devoted equal time, thought, and effort to the writing of Middletown, but today it is Robert Lynd’s book. Dr. Mary Leakey made the important paleontological discoveries in Africa, but Dr. Louis Leakey gets all the credit. Mary Beard did a large part of the work on America in Midpassage, yet Charles Beard is the great social historian. The insidious process is now at work on Eve Curie. A recent book written for young people states that radium was discovered by Pierre Curie with the help of his assistant, Eve, who later became his wife. Aspasia wrote the famous oration to the Athenians, as Socrates knew, but in all the history books it is Pericles’ oration. Corinna taught Pindar and polished his poems for posterity; but who ever heard of Corinna? Peter Abelard got his best ideas from Heloise, his acknowledged intellectual superior, yet Abelard is the great medieval scholar and philosopher. Mary Sidney probably wrote Sir Philip Sidney’s Arcadia; Nausicaa wrote the Odyssey, as Samuel Butler proves in his book The Authoress of the Odyssey, at least to the satisfaction of this writer and of Robert Graves, who comment, “no other alternative makes much sense.

Tell me you didn’t really watch Nausicaa.” Miho tried to keep a serious face, which must have been difficult enough in her flannel Hello Kitty pajamas. But the girl was a terrible liar. She smirked. “No. Kiki just ended. So much for our Miyazaki marathon.” “We got through two movies,” Sakura said. “Tonight, that’s a marathon.” They’d wanted to watch movies tonight, just to clear their minds, and had agreed on nothing violent. All three of them loved the films of Miyazaki, who had become perhaps the most successful director in Japan while making only animated films. Kara had vetoed Howl’s Moving Castle because she’d seen it too recently, and they had all seen My Neighbor Totoro far too many times, so they had started with Spirited Away.

Zo breek je verzet, kreeg ik te horen, door het mooiste wat mensen bindt te gijzelen, hun liefde en toewijding, zorg en trouw te vermorzelen alsof het iets verderfelijks was. Door familiebanden en vriendschappen te laten veranderen in mijnenvelden. Dit alles opdat iedereen die naar vrijheid verlangt en daar iets me wil zichzelf niet anders kan zien dan een tikkende tijdbom, een permanente dreiging voor zijn naasten. Hoe menselijker je was, hoe dichter je bij schoonheid, waarheid en al hun nuances wilde komen, bij rechtvaardigheid en menselijke waardigheid, hoe groter het ontploffingsgevaar. Als je weet dat je met één woord het leven van je kind kunt ruïneren, bedenk je je wel honderd keer voordat je in een koppige verzetsbui iets zegt. Dan houdt je je mond.

Romance once more, thinks Dickson . That which has graced the slim throats of princesses in far-away Courts now adorns an elderly matron in a semi-detached villa; the jewels of the wild Nausicaa have fallen to the housewife Penelope. Mrs. McCunn preens herself before the glass. “I call it very genteel,” she says. “Real stylish. It might be worn by a queen.” “I wouldn’t say but it has,” says Dickson.

Watch me blossom in all the places you tried to poison me

deep souls need other deep souls so that they can have a place to breathe again.

- Fanciulla, non so se sei una dea o una mortale, se sei una dea certo sei Artemide con le tue ancelle. Non ho mai visto niente di così bello come te, io ho provato lo stesso stupore ammirato una sola volta, a Delo quando ho visto un giovane fusto di palma che svettava, flessuoso, diritto verso il cielo. E vedo te come se tu fossi quella palma e provo lo stesso sentimento di ammirazione stupita. Io ho visto tutto questo, ho visto la scena, il torrente, le fanciulle che lavavano la biancheria, ho visto Nausicaa. In seguito, per una gran parte della mia vita mi è successo di guardare così, quando le incontravo, le fanciulle che non conoscevo, le vedevo belle, leggiadre e giovani, mi capitava di guardarle con gli occhi di Ulisse, come se fossero una giovane palma che si leva flessuosa, diritta verso il cielo.

Sea Grapes" That sail which leans on light, tired of islands, a schooner beating up the Caribbean for home, could be Odysseus, home-bound on the Aegean; that father and husband's longing, under gnarled sour grapes, is like the adulterer hearing Nausicaa's name in every gull's outcry. This brings nobody peace. The ancient war between obsession and responsibility will never finish and has been the same for the sea-wanderer or the one on shore now wriggling on his sandals to walk home, since Troy sighed its last flame, and the blind giant's boulder heaved the trough from whose groundswell the great hexameters come to the conclusions of exhausted surf. The classics can console. But not enough.

I don't fit in because I am changeable, restless, a dreamer. I watch the sky for answers. I seek messages from the angels. Who does that? I do. Because, it seems, I am waiting for something to happen. something great to shake me up and take me home. But, it hasn't arrived yet. So, I watch and wait and pray that I survive these strange conditions with my adaptability and resourcefulness to keep me sane.

There is so much wrong with what you did to me. Please forgive me, because I am about to hand it all back to you.

The pressure you put on my back is too much. It has broken me millions of times, but every time, I get up again. Maybe life can seem hard sometimes but it doesn't have to be pure hell. Maybe, when I walk away for good, you will finally learn that for yourself.

Dear Soul, I want to be friends, but I don't want to be treated that way again anymore, ever again. I want to believe you will stop. But, the fact is that your sharp edges have cut me and they are poised to cut me again, even more deeply.  The irony of it all, is that I don't even want you to change. I think you are perfect the way you are. I just don't wish to bleed out. So, what is the answer? My soul is screaming it, but my heart just can't seem to let go...

There are some of us not meant for the public eye. We do not thrive under all consuming eyes. We live beyond the image of things. But, we still wish to be heard. We still wish to be seen. We still wish to be loved. We live outside of the world and our purpose is finding peace with that.