“I love moving water, I love ships, I love the sharp definition, the concentrated humanity, the sublime solitude of life at sea. The dangers of it only make present to us the peril inherent in all existence, which the stupid, ignorant, untravelled land-worm never discovers; and the art of it, so mathematical, so exact, so rewarding to intelligence, appeals to courage and clears the mind of superstition, while filling it with humility and true religion.”

“My life which I dream will be so beautiful, so poetic, so vast, so filled with love will turn out to be like everybody else's - monotonous, sensible, stupid.”

“<...> I’venever believed there is any animal more dangerous than a human being. I never will. It’s the intelligence. It’s the mind that makes it so.”

“Human existence is so fragile a thing and exposed to such dangers that I cannot love without trembling.”

“Understanding. I was in love with Ian Aberdeen. So deeply, so incredibly. And it was true and it was sublime and it was mine.Nothing could take that away from me and that was absolutely freeing to me. I owned that love. I chose it. I owed no one for it because it couldn’t have been purchased. It belonged to me free and clear. I had never felt more empowered.”

“The life so brief, the art so long in the learning, the attempt so hard, the conquest so sharp, the fearful joy that ever slips away so quickly - by all this I mean love, which so sorely astounds my feeling with its wondrous operation, that when I think upon it I scarce know whether I wake or sleep.”