“You are sitting here with us,but you are also out walking in a field at dawn.You are yourself the animal we huntwhen you come with us on the hunt.You are in your bodylike a plant is solid in the ground,yet you are wind.You are the diver's clotheslying empty on the beach.You are the fish.In the ocean are many bright strandsand many dark strands like veins that are seenwhen a wing is lifted up.Your hidden self is blood in those,those veins that are lute stringsthat make ocean music,not the sad edge of surf,but the sound of no shore.”

“The demon bowed his head. “There are many kinds of Hunts. It is what defines us, renews us. It is the same for you, Hunter. We are born in blood, and we will die in blood, but in the interim, we must put fire to our veins and find new paths to tread upon.” Tendrils of hair tapped his head. “Paths, up here.”

“Walking on the beach like a ventriloquist, I’ll make it sound like the ocean is calling out to you—through a conch shell.”

“All of us have in our veins the exact same percentage of salt in our blood that exists in the ocean, and, therefore, we have salt in our blood, in our sweat, in our tears. We are tied to the ocean. And when we go back to the sea - whether it is to sail or to watch it - we are going back from whence we came.”

“Everyone who’s born has come from the sea. Your mother’s womb is just a sea in small. And birds come of seas on eggs. Horses lie in the sea before they’re born. The placenta is the sea. Your blood is the sea continued in your veins. We are the ocean — walking on the land.”

“There are too many of us, he thought. There are billions of us and that's too many. Nobody knows anyone. Strangers come and violate you. Strangers come and cut your heart out. Strangers come and take your blood. Good God, who were those men? I never saw them before in my life!”