“Being over there changes a man. Right and wrong don't look so different anymore to some.”

“Then he remembered Ralph's words--"no point in fighting your war over and over until you get it right.”

“Here in a place where there's just wind an waves and light, and the intricate machinery that keeps the flame burning and the lantern turning. Always turning. Always looking over its shoulder.”

“There are still more days to travel in this life. And he knows that the man who makes the journey has been shaped by every day and every person along the way. Scars are just another kind of memory....Soon enough the days will close over their lives, the grass will grow over their graves, until their story is just an unvisited headstone.”

“Humans withdraw to their homes, and surrender the night to the creatures that own it: the crickets, the owls, the snakes. A world that hasn't changed for hundreds of thousands of years wakes up, and carries on as if the daylight and the humans and the changes to the landscape have all been an illusion.”

“It occurs to him that there are different versions of himself to farewell—the abandoned eight-year-old; the delusional soldier who hovered somewhere in hell; the lightkeeper who dared to leave his heart undefended. Like Russian dolls, these lives sit within him.”

“There are times when the ocean is not the ocean - not blue, not even water, but some violent explosion of energy and danger: fierceness on a scale only gods can summon.”