Most people go to the office and sit at a desk. When firefighters go to the office, we might birth a baby in the morning, save a drowning surfer in the afternoon, and run into a fire at night. What could be more interesting than that?

Anyone with an inbox knows what I'm talking about. A dozen emails to set up a meeting time. Documents attached and edited and reedited until no one knows which version is current. Urgent messages drowning in forwards and cc's and spam.

That first CS class I took, I felt like I was drowning. It's like being taught how to swim by being thrown off deck. The continual self-talk that I have had with myself while I've been here is, pull yourself together and get this done.

My mom told me that even as a toddler I wasn't afraid of anything. She thought something was wrong with me. I didn't know how to walk or swim, but that didn't stop me from crawling into the ocean and almost drowning over and over again.

There have been times when things get stuck in my throat, but you just work it up or down. Like how a swimmer probably can't imagine drowning - their bodies are so used to being in the water. I'm so used to shoving things down my throat.

In a world where families are drowning on beaches to escape war, leaving the church because of sexual abuse, or denied access because of sexual orientation, the utopia that Pope Francis desires may be impossible for the church to attain.

We are drowning in information, while starving for wisdom. The world henceforth will be run by synthesizers, people able to put together the right information at the right time, think critically about it, and make important choices wisely.

Rather than numbing or drowning out the difficult-to-describe but urgently sensed feelings that are part of being human, poetry invites us to tease them out, to draw them into language that is rooted in intricate thought and strange impulse.

I always thought Jon Stewart was an extremely good surgeon with his scalpel. He would have Republicans on who, I guess, were unclear about what Stewart was up to, and while Jon Stewart was being nice, he was building a case for drowning them.

I've died so many times. I'm 65. On my 40th birthday, my girlfriend gave me a reel with ways I had died, whether it was by knife, or electrocution or drowning or being thrown off a building or whatever it might have been. I've died a lot of times!

I wanted to play around with the format, really tear it to pieces and shake it up. For example, if Mitch saves someone from drowning, and that person then goes out and releases a virus that kills a million people. Imagine the moral implications of that.

Let me put it this way, if you were drowning, you wouldn't really be in a place to lend a hand as far as being rescued. You'd be at the mercy of the lifeguard. Once pulled out, you may be a little out of it, not sure where you are, but safe nonetheless.

After I was cast, I decided to read 'Sharp Objects'. I ended up drowning it in sticky notes, highlighter and pen. It became my little diary I could refer to. I took little quotes out of the book and transferred them onto this scrapbook I kept about Amma.

Corporate America is drowning in meetings. To make one thing clear, I am not against communication. Quick one-on-ones can be extremely effective. I am talking about those hour-long recurring meetings, devoid of a clear agenda, and attended by many. I dread them.

Since the 1970s, I have asked students if they would first try to save their drowning dog or a drowning stranger. And for 40 years I have received the same results: One third vote for their dog, one third for the stranger, and one third don't know what they would do.

Without question, we need to be informed of the happenings in the world. But modern communication brings into our homes a drowning cascade of the violence and misery of the worldwide human race. There comes a time when we need to find some peaceful spiritual renewal.

Describing passive violence in this culture is kinda like someone who is drowning in the middle of the ocean giving you the low-down on water. The only way you can really understand passive violence is by going somewhere far, far away from phones, news, TV, the Internet.

Only the wise know just where predestination ends and free will begins. Meanwhile, you must keep on doing your best, according to your own clearest understanding. you must long for freedom as the drowning man longs for air. Without sincere longing, you will never find God.

If I'm walking down the riverbank, and a man is drowning, even if I don't know how to swim very well, I feel this urge that the right thing to do is to try to save that person. Evolution would tell me exactly the opposite: preserve your DNA. Who cares about the guy who's drowning?

One of my inspirations, Harry Houdini, remains an icon of the art because he defied our primal fears. His demonstrations in the early 20th century, especially his escape from the Chinese water torture cell, represented triumph over suffocation, drowning, disorientation and helplessness.

It was less in pity than in anger that the world was moved by the photograph of little Alan Kurdi, that dead three-year-old Syrian refugee boy whose name we're all remembering now on the first anniversary of his drowning, along with his five-year-old brother Galip and their mother Rehanna.

Usually, turkey burger recipes result in something so lifeless and tasteless that drowning one in ketchup (that most perfect and delicious of condiments) doesn't help much. Part of the problem is calling this food a 'burger' at all, because it's never going to satisfy the way juicy, salty, medium-rare beef will.

',Alive' stems from emotional growth and contentment. Before writing the song, I was swimming in a pool of hurt, guilt and spiritual discomfort. Instead of drowning, I decided to embrace these feelings and express gratitude for the lessons learned. With this new-found sense of life, I am stronger and happier than ever.

I once wrote a short story called 'The Best Blues Singer in the World,' and it went like this: 'The streets that Balboa walked were his own private ocean, and Balboa was drowning.' End of story. That says it all. Nothing else to say. I've been rewriting that same story over and over again. All my plays are rewriting that same story.

My room is like an antique shop, full of junk, and weird stuff. There's a big sword in there. And a taxidermy bird, and a couple of birdcages. And a lot of newspaper cuttings. I used to have a weird thing about cutting out morbid headlines from newspapers, and collecting them. I was fascinated with drowning, which is kind of strange.

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