“Nature was neither fair nor unfair. Those terms belonged to the world of men.”

“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.”

“To die will be an awfully big adventure.”

“Go outside. Dont tell anyone and dont bring your phone. Start walking and keep walking until you no longer know the road like the palm of your hand, because we walk the same roads day in and day ou...”

“To fall in love with God is the greatest romance; to seek him the greatest adventure; to find him, the greatest human achievement.”

“Madness is freedom and some may only perceive its Insanity.”

“Happy. Just in my swim shorts, barefooted, wild-haired, in the red fire dark, singing, swigging wine, spitting, jumping, runningthat's the way to live. All alone and free in the soft sands of the b...”

“Doing what you love is freedom. Loving what you do is happiness.”

“At such times, under an abated sun; afloat all day upon smooth, slow heaving swells; seated in his boat, light as a birch canoe; and so sociably mixing with the soft waves themselves, that like hea...”

“Down dropt the breeze, the sails dropt down, 'Twas sad as sad could be; And we did speak only to break The silence of the sea! All in a hot and copper sky, The bloody Sun, at noon, Right up above t...”

“When Rachel Carson accepted the National Book Award, she said, 'if there is poetry in my book about the sea it is not because I deliberately put it there but because no one could write truthfully a...”