“She was the dawn and the sea and the sky, and every color ever seen by every sailor ever sailed.McBeth Johnson, the day he fell in love.”

“We who live in the civilized world are accustomed to a background roar that never goes away. It is the pounding of our machinery in the chest of the city, and it is the incessant blood of traffic rushing through the streets.Here the silence never goes away. It is the foundation of all sound. One can hear into the jungle through the silence much farther than one can see into it through the trees.”

“There before me, staring back from bottomless blackness, was I without my self. On all fours, I stared into my eyes. I came closer, and we kissed. Who knows me best? I am only water.”

“But no one knows anything about you, and Washington keeps telling everyone you are what you say you are. That's impossible. No one here is what they say they are.”

“After they had explored all the suns in the universe, and all the planets of all the suns, they realised that there was no other life in the universe, and that they were alone. And they were very happy, because then they knew it was up to them to become all the things they had imagined they would find.”

“I'm gonna cry all over your hair.”

“My room was in one of those turrets and at night I could hear the sea and the faint rustle of eelgrass in the soft wind. The weather was perfect that summer. No storms. Blue skies and just the right amount of wind every day. The sailors were in heaven.”