“From when she was a baby, Tom has taught the girl to respect, but not fear, the forces of nature- the lightning that might strike the light tower on Janus, the oceans that batter the island.”

“Scars are just another kind of memory.”

“Your family's never in your past. You carry it around with you everywhere.”

“We can't rightly ever talk about the future, if you think about it. We can only talk about what we imagine or wish for. It's not the same thing.”

“If the war had taught her anything, it was to take nothing for granted: that it wasnt safe to put off what mattered. Life could snatch away the things you treasured, and there was no getting them b...”

“Life, thought Septimus, ... you could never trust the bastard. What it gives with one hand, it takes away with the other.”

“It seems to me that since I've had children, I've grown richer and deeper. They may have slowed down my writing for a while, but when I did write, I had more of a self to speak from.”

“It didn't matter that there was a war on our doorstep. She had things to do, places to be.”

“Stranger inside me, when you are born, I will give youa closed book and ask you never to read it, never rest, never forgive a man who wants to save you.”