“All the passengers were crowded over on the landside of the ship, watching through the narrow windows the careened hulk of a freighter, visibly damaged by shellfire, which had driven ashore to beach her cargo. She lay aground, looking against the sand in that clear water like a whale with smokestacks that had come to the beach to die.”

“The coast is clear. Not a beached whale in sight.”

“You had every right to be. He raised his eyes to look at her and she was suddenly and strangely reminded of being four years old at the beach, crying when the wind came up and blew away the castle she had made. Her mother had told her she could make another one if she liked, but it hadn't stopped her crying because what she had thought was permanent was not permanent after all, but only made out of sand that vanished at the touch of wind and water.”

“And it occurred to her that she was so used to turning over everything in her mind, as if each thought were an intricate shell found at the beach, that she had never truly known the value of simply accepting things as they were.”

“She was supposed to build sand castles on the beach and put her toes in the ocean,” Madame says.”

“A prosthetic leg with a Willie Nelson bumper sticker washed ashore on the beach, which meant it was Florida.Then it got weird.”