“Living aboard one's sailboat and having neither house nor vehicle nor job, and needing none, would be hubris—the most arrogant presumption—and therefore suitable punishable by the gods. One would be drowned by Poseidon early on and die extremely happy.”

“One takes what the river offers, both good and bad. The joy of living by running water far outweighs the sorrow.”

“I can go years thinking that it seems impossible that I will ever satisfy that appetite again and then it is easy to satisfy and no one notices or cares, nor does it make me happy, when loneliness surrounds me like water I've already drowned in without dying.”

“Be patient with your boaters and let them rant. Most of them will get over it come December.”

“People no longer live by sun and moon, by wind and stars, but by some slyly contrived conventions known as clocks and calendars.”

“Those are the things in the water that keep the moon in orbit. I've never quite understood just how they work. You mostly can't see the moon during the day, so they can't be very efficient.”

“What is time to a water rat? What is time to the river? Only we humans obsess over days and minutes, hours and seasons.”