“.. they look like they've escaped from a nursing home. Everywhere I turn I see puffy skin & radiant expressions, crinkles & pearls, broad smiles & high hair... Collectively they all lean forward, like bamboo in the wind. Their postures may be cruelled by age but their excitement is adolescent. Cackling & wheezing with laughter the elderly hordes squeeze into the waiting vans & shuffle about...”

“... a slipstream of darkness so complete it helps illuminate the evening sky. It's like somebody dropped a dome over the ocean & lit it up with Christmas lights. ...Sans moon, Norfolk is wrapped in a mantle of pure, unadulterated blackness, leaving the stars to twinkle in harmony above. It thoroughly disorientates me.”

“Behind Nat someone chuckled. Nat turned. Dr. Bentley was looking at him with a twinkle. "Is this a political argument?"Nat shrugged. "No argument at all. Ben's got an article there that talks against the President. I said I didn't want to hear it. I said that sort of thing ought to be stopped."To Nat's amazement, Dr. Bentley shook his head. "No, Nat. We can't have freedom—unless we have freedom."Nat stiffened. "Does that mean right to tell lies?"Dr. Bentley smiled. "It means the right to have our own opinions. Human problems aren't like mathematics, Nat. Every problem doesn't have just one answer; sometimes you get several answers—and you don't know which is the right one.”

“Even now, as I write this, I can still feel that tightness. And I want you to feel it--the wind coming off the river, the waves, the silence, the wooded frontier. You're at the bow of a boat on the Rainy River. You're twenty-one years old, you're scared, and there's a hard squeezing pressure in your chest.What would you do?Would you jump? Would you feel pity for yourself? Would you think about your family and your childhood and your dreams and all you're leaving behind? Would it hurt? Would it feel like dying? Would you cry, as I did?”

“The style sounded like I look. What good would it do if I sounded like Sinatra? People would look at me and look at him and choose him.”

“Together we understood what terror was: you're not human anymore. You're a shadow. You slip out of your own skin, like molting, shedding your own history and your own future, leaving behind everything you ever were or wanted to believed in. You know you're about to die. And it's not a movie and you aren't a hero and all you can do is whimper and wait. ”

“Shandy looked ahead. Blackbeard, apparently willing to get the explanation later, had picked up his oars and was rowing again. 'May I presume to suggest,' yelled Shandy giddily to Davies, 'that we preoceed the hell out of here with all due haste.' Davies pushed a stray lock of hair back from his forehead and sat down on the rower's thwart. 'My dear fellow consider it done.”