“Thoughts are made of water and water always finds a way.”

“Don't listen to me. Advice so rarely finds its inteded audience. It's like the sword in the stone — you leave it there, maybe someday someone finds it useful. Sorry, people — we're driving through lativia and I can't reach for my state of mind. 1. Thoughts are made of water and water always finds a way. 2. If you can't dodge the water, run.”

“But Tom," said the moon, "the swinging of your pendulums! Everyone's a pendulum swinging, to and fro, and always you're getting hit by someone else's swinging pendulum. You're minding your own business, but someone else'e pendulum is swinging around, and pow! you get it in the head.”

“The water was not God. The water undulating slightly with the waves unformed was not spiritual. It was jagged cold water and it felt perfect when we put our hands into it, and it kissed out palms again and again, would never stop kissing our palms — and why wasn't that enough?”

“Because secrets do not increase in value if kept in a gore-ian lockbox, because one's past is either made useful or else mutates and becomes cancerous. We share things for the obvious reasons: it makes us feel un-alone, it spreads the weight over a larger area, it holds the possibility of making our share lighter. And it can work either way - not simply as a pain-relief device, but, in the case of not bad news but good, as a share-the-happy-things-I've-seen/lessons-I've-learned vehicle. Or as a tool for simple connectivity for its own sake, a testing of waters, a stab at engagement with a mass of strangers.”

“God who protects my people I call upon you to send away the murahaleen. Protect me God protect my family as they run. Oh God of the sky, keep me safe tonight. Keep me hidden, keep me quiet. Oh God of rain, let me find water. Let me not die of thirst. Oh God of the soul, why are you doing this? I have done nothing to ask for this. I'm a boy. I'm a boy. Would you send this to a lamb? You have no right.”

“Why was he alive on Earth? Very often the meaning was obscured. Very often it required some digging. The meaning of his life was an elusive stream of water hundreds of feet below the surface, and he would periodically drop a bucket down the well, fill it, bring it up and drink from it. But this did not sustain him for long.”