“The sea is as desolate and barren as it is fertile and life-giving. It is cold and dismal, yet bold and spirited. Sometimes imperious and conquering, other times gentle and meek. But it is always m...”

“Life is like the sea. Its tides and currents sometimes take a man to distant shores that he never dreamed existed”

“Weak men cannot handle power. It will either crush them, or they will use it to crush others”

“Desperation makes men fearless”

“The sea has its moods. Sometimes it is melancholic and morose, other times fierce and feisty. But always passionate. Even when calm, one can sense the depth of the seas passion”

“It is not his body which makes a man strong, but his spirit. Nothing on the outside, but only that which comes from within.”

“Despite your best efforts, people are going to be hurt when it's time for them to be hurt.”

“At the end of the day it's about how much you can bear, how much you can endure. Being together, we harm nobody; being apart, we extinguish ourselves.”

“Life is not a PG feel-good movie. Real life often ends badly. Literature tries to document this reality, while showing us it is still possible for us to endure nobly.”

“A true philosopher must never give up.”

“...these sleepless nights, when oddly enough my concentration was high, fueled perhaps by the effort to ignore the all-engrossing threat of bombs and rockets.”

“Never, never, never give in!”

“A wise person knows that he should not allow his roots to grow too deep in this world, for the deeper they grow here, the shallower they become in spirituality.”

“Quite possibly there's nothing as fine as a big freight train starting across country in early summer, Hardesty thought. That's when you learn that the tragedy of plants is that they have roots.”

“I feel weird spilling it now but have to. Because after a while, it took root, the way shared stories do when you live with them long enough. They affect your DNA like radiation. They give birth to...”