22 quotes found
“Loss was a night that never ended.”
“An unused conscience is no conscience at all.”
“Nature was neither fair nor unfair. Those terms belonged to the world of men.”
“That's the strange thing about a good story. No pleasure if you can't share it.”
“Now I remembered a captain's honor and his only duty: to bring his crew back alive.”
“As long as our voiced were in harmony, it didn't matter that our accents were at war.”
“They were probably scared of him and so they did what boys do around any object of fear: they went up close, pointed a finger, gave it a nickname, and masked their terror with roaring laughter.”
“They all lived so steeped in fear that the losses they had yet to suffer had already consumed them.”
“Take the sailor," he said. "he signs on to a new ship. He's surrounded by nothing but strangers. Not only do they come from other towns and parts of his own country, but often from completely diffe...”
“To Ejinar that cannonball was a monster with a will of its own. It showed him what war was: not a battery that exploded and sent matchstick soldiers fleeing, but a dragon that breathed hot fire on ...”
“There was plenty for the eye to feast on, but nothing for the soul. He had a hunger for something that no sky could satisfy. Somewhere on the planet there had to be a different kind of light.”
“Your roots aren't to be found in your childhood so much as in your child. It's he who provides your link to the world, and home is wherever he is.”
“We were familiar with the line that separates grief from madness, and we know that sometimes the only way to stay on the right side of it is to scream.”
“Her grief was a burden so heavy, he came close to collapsing under it, and yet he couldn't lay it down.”
“With no other choices open to us, we'd turned our gaze seaward. The oceans were our America: they reached farther than any prairie, untamed as on the first day of creation. Nobody owned them.”
“He felt Miss Kristina's presence like something poisonous and something infinitely sweet mixing together in his blood. Inside him, a lack of willpower and a colossal tension battled it out. He felt...”
“Is there anything more heartbreaking than drowning in sight of land? Is there a single one of us who hasn't at least once felt haunted by the fear of slipping away within sight of a safe haven?”
“Without discussing it with his mother, Anton went up to his teacher, Miss Katballe, and informed her that after seven years he was now quitting school. It was the best day of her life, she replied....”
“Their eyes persecuted him everywhere, eventually following him all the way into the darkness around his bed and into his dreams, like a madness that threatened to overpower him.”
“Though I had no respect for Jack Lewis, I respected the hole in his chest. He was dying, and you owe the dying your attention.”
“She still held back her tears, as if subjecting herself to some terrible endurance test.”
