“And when he came to, he was flat on his back on the beach in the freezing sand, and it was raining out of a low sky, and the tide was way out.”

“When the tides change, you have two choices. You can either stand there, letting the water wash over you and your feet sink deeper into the wet sand... or you can get out of the way. You can move up the beach - or off the beach, if you want. The point is to not get stuck.”

“Bird boy kept us out there in the freezing rain while he yammered about the Red One this and Red One that. Darius got Zoey in here despite his help".”

“He never went out without a book under his arm, and he often came back with two.”

“Somewhere int he flesh of the earth the dreadful earthquake shuddered, the tide walked to and fro on the leash of the moon, rainbows formed, winds swept the sky like giant brooms piling up clouds before them, clouds which writhed into different shapes, melted into rain or darkened, bruised themselves against an unseen antagonist and went on their way, laced with forking rivers of lightning, complete with white electric tributaries. Out of this infinite vision an infinity of details could be drawn, but Sonny had settled on one, and from the endless series a particular beach was chosen and began to form around Laura - a beach of iron-dark sand and shells like frail stars, and a wonderful wide sea that stretched, neither green nor blue, but inked by the approach of night into violet and black, wrinkling with its own salty puzzles, right out to a distant, pure horizon.”

“When he playsall the flowers swap colorsand years and decades and centuriesof rain pour back into the sky”