“First, he realized that the sea was blue and that there was an enormousquantity of it, and that it roared and roared-really all the banalitiesabout the ocean that one could realize, but if any one had told him thenthat these things were banalities, he would have gaped in wonder.”

“He realized the things he had left behind were already hiding inside him; now, for the first time, his life had a past, a past that would not get any bigger, that would always be shrinking but would never disappear. Something else: he had always assumed there was only one way for his life to happen. Now he realized there were alternatives. A feeling, an object, a person could seem like one thing but be another; an action could seem as if it were taking one turn, but veer off another way. Anything could happen at any time. He was not on tracks.”

“He wondered how it could have taken him so long to realize he cared for her, and he told her so, and she called him an idiot, and he declared that it was the finest thing that ever a man had been called.”

“We all have a sea inside us; can you hear it? Can you hear the ocean roaring?”

“It was like that class at school where the teacher talks about Realization, about how you could realize something big in a commonplace thing. The example he gave--and the liar said it really happened--was that once while drinking orange juice, he'd realized he would be dead someday. He wondered if we, his students, had had similar 'realizations.'Is he kidding? I thought.Once I cashed a paycheck and I realized it wasn't enough.Once I had food poisoning, and realized I was trapped inside my body.”

“We roared. We were one big animal throat, roaring.”