The Shell The sea fills my ear with sand and with fear. You may wash out the sand, but never the sound of the ghost of the sea that is haunting me.
Ted HughesThe inmost spirit of poetry, in other words, is at bottom, in every recorded case, the voice of pain โ and the physical body, so to speak, of poetry, is the treatment by which the poet tries to reconcile that pain with the world.
Ted HughesThat's the paradox: the only time most people feel alive is when they're suffering, when something overwhelms their ordinary, careful armour, and the naked child is flung out onto the world. That's why the things that are worst to undergo are best to remember. But when that child gets buried away under their adaptive and protective shellsโhe becomes one of the walking dead, a monster.
Ted HughesFishing provides that connection with the whole living world. It gives you the opportunity of being totally immersed, turning back into yourself in a good way. A form of meditation, some form of communion with levels of yourself that are deeper than the ordinary self.
Ted Hughes