M.L. Stedman

“Very slowly, he turned a full circle, taking in the nothingness of it all. It seemed his lungs could never be large enough to breathe in this much air, his eyes could never see this much space, nor could he near the full extent of the rolling, roaring ocean. For the briefest moment, he had no edges.”

“Sometimes life turns out hard, Isabel. Sometimes it just bites right through you. And sometimes, just when you think it's done its worst, it comes back and takes another chunk.”

“There are still more days to travel in this life. And he knows that the man who makes the journey has been shaped by every day and every person along the way. Scars are just another kind of memory....Soon enough the days will close over their lives, the grass will grow over their graves, until their story is just an unvisited headstone.”

“Or I can forgive and forget...Oh, but my treasure, it is so much less exhausting. You only have to forgive once. To resent, you have to do it all day, every day. You have to keep remembering all the bad things...we always have a choice.”

“Sometimes it's good to leave the past in the past.”

“Here in a place where there's just wind an waves and light, and the intricate machinery that keeps the flame burning and the lantern turning. Always turning. Always looking over its shoulder.”

“When it comes to their kids, parents are all just instinct and hope. And fear.”

“That's how life goes on - protected by the silence that anesthetizes shame.”

“It is a luxury to do something that serves no practical purpose: the luxury of civilization.”

“I can leave myself to rot in the past, spend my time hating people for what happened, like my father did, or I can forgive and forget.""But it's not that easy."He smiled that Frank smile. "Oh, but my treasure, it is so much less exhausting. You only have to forgive once. To resent, you have to do it all day, every day. You have to keep remembering all the bad things...”

“Know that you have always been beloved.”

“You only have to forgive once. To resent, you have to do it all day, every day. You have to keep remembering all the bad things. I would have to make a list, a very, very long list and make sure I hated the people on it the right amount. That I did a very proper job of hating too.”

“He’s lived the life he’s lived. He’s loved the woman he’s loved. No one ever has or ever will travel quite the same path on this earth, and that’s all right by him.”

“It occurs to him that there are different versions of himself to farewell—the abandoned eight-year-old; the delusional soldier who hovered somewhere in hell; the lightkeeper who dared to leave his heart undefended. Like Russian dolls, these lives sit within him.”

“Her bond with the couple who raised her is fierce and beyond questioning. She cannot name the sensation of losing them as grief. She has no word for longing or despair.”

“The oceans never stop ... the wind never finishes. Sometimes it disappears, but only to gather momentum from somewhere else, returning to fling itself at the island ... Existence here is on the scale of giants. Time is in the millions of years; rocks which from a distance look like dice cast against the shore are boulders hundreds of feet wide, licked round by millennia ...”

“You don’t think ahead in years or months: you think about this hour, and maybe the next. Anything else is speculation.”

“History is that which is agreed upon by mutual consent.”

“No one ever has or ever will travel quite the same path on earth...”

“Perhaps when it comes to it, no one is just the worst thing they ever did.”

“The law's the law, but people are people.”

“Then he remembered Ralph's words--"no point in fighting your war over and over until you get it right.”

“Scars are just another kind of memory.”

“When he wakes sometimes from dark dreams of broken cradles, and compasses without bearings, he pushes the unease down, lets the daylight contradict it. And isolation lulls him with the music of the lie.”

“Being over there changes a man. Right and wrong don't look so different anymore to some.”

“Humans withdraw to their homes, and surrender the night to the creatures that own it: the crickets, the owls, the snakes. A world that hasn't changed for hundreds of thousands of years wakes up, and carries on as if the daylight and the humans and the changes to the landscape have all been an illusion.”

“You only have to forgive once. To resent, you have to do it all day, every day.”

“Our own star! Like the world's been made just for us! With the sunshine and the ocean. We have each other all to ourselves.”

“They [the stars] just kept shining, no matter what was going on. I think of the light here like that, like a splinter of a star that's fallen to earth: it just shines, no matter what is happening.”

“There are times when the ocean is not the ocean - not blue, not even water, but some violent explosion of energy and danger: fierceness on a scale only gods can summon.”