“Unmoor the boat, we could go…downriver...History is a collection of found objects washed up through time. Goods, ideas, personalities surface towards us and then sink away and some we hook out and others we ignore. And as the pattern changes so does the meaning. We cannot rely on the facts. Time that returns everything, changes everything. ..a bundle of abandoned clothes. The end of one identity and the beginning of another. …History is a madman's museum. I think I understand some of this, But it’s all subject to the tide. Unmoor the boat. Part miracle part madness. My life is a series of set sails and shipwrecks. I run aground I cut loose, the rim is dangerously near the waterline. I feel like a saint in a coracle. Head thrown back, sun on my throat. Unmoor the boat.”

“It’s better to think of my life like that— part miracle, part madness. It’s better if I accept that I can’t control any of the things that matter. My life is a trail of shipwrecks and set-sails. There are no arrivals, no destinations; there are only sandbanks and shipwreck; then another boat, another tide.”

“Boating, my dear Mrs. Bedel, is the dullest of all things; don't you think so? Because a boat looks very pretty from the shore, we fancy that the shore must look very pretty from a boat; and when we try it, we find we have only got down into a pit and can see nothing rightly. For my part, I hate boating and I hate the water...”

“We could build a boat, you and I, and sail to the moon and back.”

“Without our artists and storytellers, we have no history, and without history your future is unmoored -- we drift. It is art, never war, that carries culture forward.”

“The sun beats down, and I feel my shoulders burning. I could stay in this boat all day. Time is suspended in a boat. I take a deep breathand try to remember this moment, the heat on my face, the grit under my feet, the strength of the waves. I run my hands through the pebblesand sand, searching for sea glass. One thing leads to another. There are tide pools between the larger rocks, tiny rivers connecting themto the sea”