“Warm are the still and lucky miles,White shores of longing stretch away,A light of recognition fillsThe whole great day, and brightThe tiny world of lovers' arms.Silence invades the breathing woodWhere drowsy limbs a treasure keep,Now greenly falls the learned shadeAcross the sleeping browsAnd stirs their secret to a smile.Restored! Returned! The lost are borneOn seas of shipwreck home at last:See! In a fire of praising burnsThe dry dumb past, and weOur life-day long shall part no more.”

“How clear, how lovely bright,How beautiful to sight Those beams of morning play;How heaven laughs out with gleeWhere, like a bird set free,Up from the eastern sea Soars the delightful day.To-day I shall be strong,No more shall yield to wrong, Shall squander life no more;Days lost, I know not how,I shall retrieve them now;Now I shall keep the vow I never kept before.Ensanguining the skiesHow heavily it dies Into the west away;Past touch and sight and soundNot further to be found,How hopeless under ground Falls the remorseful day.”

“The road lay long and black ahead of them and the heat was coming now through the thin soles of their shoes. There were young beans pushing up from the dry brown fields, tiny rows of green sprigs that stretched away in the distance.”

“It never takes longer than a few minutes, when they get together, for everyone to revert to the state of nature, like a party marooned by a shipwreck. That's what a family is. Also the storm at sea, the ship, and the unknown shore. And the hats and the whiskey stills that you make out of bamboo and coconuts. And the fire that you light to keep away the beasts.”

“It is vey difficult to draw away from the face of God—it is like a warm fire, it is like dear sleep, it is like a great anthem, yet there is a stillness all about it, a stillness full of lights.”

“Being in his arms made her feel like the sea finding its shore, like a traveler returning after a long, hard, distant trip - finally returning home.”