“[The waves] move across a faint horizon, the rush of love and the surge of grief, the respite of peace and then fear again, the heart that beats and then lies still, the rise and fall and rise and fall of all of it, the incoming and the outgoing, the infinite procession of life. And the ocean wraps the earth, a reminder. The mysteries come forward in waves.”

“The devices meant to float at sea and capture the waves' power have been destroyed in short order by . . . the waves. "they've all been smashed up in storms," Challenor said, shaking his head.”

“Twill be the end of us all when it comes...The moon will devour the sun...The sea will rise in a great wave and drown the world...The Realms will fall...Evil will crawl across the land.”

“No one knew exactly why the seals ate stones, but maybe, some thought, it was for ballast. Or to help digestion. Or to stave off hunger. Or, as Brown had written in the journal, 'maybe they're just weird.”

“It's human nature to set a point in our minds when we feel triumphant and to measure everything that comes after it by how far we fall or rise from that point.”

“Strong-willed heart, always makes me feel so touched. It reminds me about some 'fall and rise again' in my life.”

“For now she knew he had been right--the fields might fall to fallow and the birds might stop their song awhile; the growing things might die and lie in silence under snow, while through it all the cold sea wore its face of storms and death and sunken hopes...and yet unseen beneath the waves a warmer current ran that, in its time, would bring the spring.”