“Men really do need sea-monsters in their personal oceans”
“An ocean without unnamed monsters would be like sleep without dreams.”
“You've seen the sun flatten and take strange shapes just before it sinks in the ocean. Do you have to tell yourself every time that it's an illusion caused by atmospheric dust and light distorted by the sea, or do you simply enjoy the beauty of it?”
“The bank is something more than men, I tell you. It's the monster. Men made it, but they can't control it.”
“Sure, cried the tenant men,but it’s our land…We were born on it, and we got killed on it, died on it. Even if it’s no good, it’s still ours….That’s what makes ownership, not a paper with numbers on it.""We’re sorry. It’s not us. It’s the monster. The bank isn’t like a man.""Yes, but the bank is only made of men.""No, you’re wrong there—quite wrong there. The bank is something else than men. It happens that every man in a bank hates what the bank does, and yet the bank does it. The bank is something more than men, I tell you. It’s the monster. Men made it, but they can’t control it.”
“The tide goes out imperceptibly. The boulders show and seem to rise up and the ocean recedes leaving little pools, leaving wet weed and moss and sponge, iridescence and brown and blue and China red. On the bottoms lie the incredible refuse of the sea, shells broken and chipped and bits of skeleton, claws, the whole sea bottom a fantastic cemetery on which the living scamper and scramble.”
“The ship started a school of fliers that skipped along the wave tops like shining silver coins."These are the ghosts of treasures ost at sea," the cook went on, "the murder things, emeralds and diamonds and gold; the sins of men, committed for them, stick to them and make them haunt the ocean. Ah! It's a poor thing if a sailor will not make a grand tale about it."Henry pointed to a great tortoise asleep on the surface. "And what is the tale of the turtles?" He asked."Nothing; only food...”