“Just because it's common doesn't make it less powerful.”

“Cursed, I was cursed, and my mother said shed given up magic for good, said it was a terrible thing, but she wasnt above using it to keep me at her side, and shes a hypocrite, a liar, a fraud and p...”

“I stretched out on the carpet, eyes glazed over, my heart whirring with frustration and fear, and as my mothers curse slowly, firmly, pushed my eyelids closed, my body went still. But on the inside...”

“I am going to be murdered.It wasnt any easier to face in the daytime.”

“This will be the night I escape. The thought repeated in my mind like a refrain, over and over, and I believed it so hard that I whispered it aloud: This will be the night I escape!”

“The sky would be clear, colorless, mist blending together the air and the ocean, the waves whispering against the rocks.”

“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...”

“the cocoon like water, the labored trance and rhythmic breath of lap swimming had done their work, had unwound the restless feeling into nothingness.”

“Water was something he loved, something he respected. He understood its beauty and its dangers. He talked about swimming as if it were a way of life.”

“Water was something he loved, something he respected. He understood its beauty and its dangers. He talked about swimming as if it were a way of life.”

“Like any stage of the hydrologic process, we have our own peculiarities, our organs making us nothing more than water pools or springs of bizarre shape, filled with pulsing tubes and chambers.”

“When the water is calm, take as much distance as possible with your boat!”

“The world beyond the water was a blue of green and stone and blue. A moment later Yoshi pushed through, the water pouring down in sheets so smooth it looked like glass, and stepped into the calm [p...”