“It was like trying to bail out an ocean of water with a teaspoon.”

“Water never stops moving. Rain falls, and runs down a mountain into a river. The river finds its way to the ocean. It evaporates, like a soul, into the clouds. And then, like everything else, it starts all over again.”

“Asking me to describe my son is like asking me to hold the ocean in a paper cup”

“You don't need water to feel like you're drowning, do you?”

“Imagine if you were the positive pole of a magnet, and you were told that under no circumstances were you allowed to touch that negative pole that was sucking you in like a black hole. Or if you crawled out of the desert and found a woman standing with a pitcher of ice water, but she held it out of your reach. Imagine jumping off a building, and then being told not to fall. That's what it feels like to want a drink.”

“Her voice was caught in the shell of my ear, as if it were the ocean.”

“There is a gulf as wide as an ocean between should and want, and I am drowning in it.”