“Walter Parmenter sometimes seemed to his daughter a restless subterranean force held together by rituals.”

“Walter loves the sea, and I need it in some elemental way that I cannot even come close to verbalizing. I become dim and shriveled somehow at my very core if I am away from the sea too long. When I return to it I seem to fill up and overflow with it, soaking in the vast, sighing wetness of it like a parched vine in a long, soft spring rain.”

“On a night of icy silver radiance, when the very sea and stars seemed on fire with light.”

“...and I thought I might take him home and see how he works. It's really neat the way all those little bone things fit together, like a zipper.”

“Sometimes I could scarcely breathe with the knowledge that for the rest of my life, whenever we wanted, Peter and I could lie down and do whatever we wished.”

“I think that sometimes the great changes in our lives, the ones that divide time, happen so deep down and silently that we don't even know when they occur......It frequently happens that the seasons of the greatest change are the times that feel the most tranquil, the most suspended, the most...timeless.”

“...and turned his eyes the color of a winter sea.”