“and it seemed to me that we was like seafarers, and the tober was the ocean. We was passing the landlubbers by. We gawped at each other, us from our ships, and them from their shores, but the gap between us was so big we couldn’t cross it. It was high tide or low tide, or whatever tide would prevent us from dropping anchor and rowing out to them, to exchange gifts and brides, gods and diseases”

“The feelings we live throughin love and in lonelinessare simply, for us,what high tideand low tide are to the sea.”

“Nature knows that people are a tide that swells and in time will ebb, and all their works dissolve ... As for us: We must uncenter our minds from ourselves. We must unhumanize our views a little and become confident as the rock and ocean that we are made from.”

“Droplets, droplets: We are all identical drips and drops of people, hovering, waiting to be tipped, waiting for someone to show us the way, to pour us down a path....He has tipped us over, all of us in our teetering expectancy, and now we are pouring toward him, coursing on a wave of sound, of roaring shouts and applause....They are the moon; we are a tide, their tide, and under their direction we will wipe clean all the sickness and blight from the world.”

“Waves are the voices of tides. Tides are life," murmured Niko. "They bring new food for shore creatures, and take ships out to sea. They are the ocean's pulse, and our own heartbeat.”

“What our closest friends do for us is to teach us true selflessness. We learn that while it might be safer for them if we keep them out, true friendship means letting them in. We cannot decide for them what they are willing to suffer with us and for us. While we certainly don't want to see our friends suffer, friendship isn't about protecting each other from pain so much as it is about helping each other to become what God has called us to be.”