“one could drown in irrelevance.”

“Was everyone else really as alive as she was?... If the answer was yes, then the world, the social world, was unbearably complicated, with two billion voices, and everyone’s thoughts striving in equal importance and everyone’s claim on life as intense, and everyone thinking they were unique, when no one was. One could drown in irrelevance.”

“If one could drown in the grass, thought Elphie, that might be the best way to die.”

“Alas, where is there still a sea in which one could drown: thus our lament resounds – across shallow swamps. ”

“It'd be funny if one of them was called Gavin. Funny but irrelevant.”

“Huge mammals surrounded us, any one of whom could easily overturn our stupid little boat. Tripod would drown. I would drown. Joe would undoubtedly be rescued by mermaids seduced by his beauty.”