“His reading suggested a man swimming in the sea among the wreckage of his ship, and trying to save his life by greedily clutching first at one spar and then at another.”

“I read the way a person might swim, to save his or her life. I wrote that way too.”

“Reading, his therapist had suggested, had likely been his first drug.”

“If anger were money, only a fool would greedily save it up. And a wise man would let it slip out of his heart like change slips out of his pants pockets.”

“There was a man here, lashed himself to a spar as his ship went down, and for seven days and seven nights he was on the sea, and what kept him alive while others drowned was telling himself stories like a madman, so that as one ended another began. On the seventh day he had told all the stories he knew and that was when he began to tell himself as if he were a story, from the earliest beginnings to his green and deep misfortune. The story he told was of a man lost and found, not once, but many times, as he choked his way out of the waves. And the night fell, he saw the Cape Wrath light, only lit a week it was, but it was, and he knew that if he became the story of the light, he might be saved. With his last strength he began to paddle towards it, arms on either side of the spar, and in his mind the light became a shining rope, pulling him in. He took hold of it, tied it round his waist, and at that moment, the keeper saw him, and ran for the rescue boat.”

“You see that one man will give a reward for the recovery of his tup, while another will only give thanks for the rescue of his wife. I suggest to you that one need not read the articles in the newspaper at all, for here - in the humble notices - all humanity is laid bare.”