“I'll be inside the one who holds you. And then I won't be. ”

“...It felt like they were telling each other secrets. Everything they said felt like thatwhispered, tender, full of other meanings, like when you tell someone a dream or talk about your astrologica...”

“She wasnt crying at all. This was what scared him the most. Where had she locked up the things hed seen her feeling that day when she heard? She wasnt that big a girl to hold all of itto hold her b...”

“I always wondered what it must be like to lose a twinif somehow Mary felt it like it was happening to her. If she felt physical pain.”

“It was like when we were little kids and we played games on the ivy-covered hillside in the backyard. We were warriors and wizards and angels and high elves and that was our reality. If someone sai...”

“Nightingale"Did I wound you, mutilate. Take away your voice. Did I cut something from you. Leave you locked in silence?This is what you do: you sing. Every part of you. Your locks of hair sing, you...”

“I cannot express how lordly and transfigured I felt at that moment. I was a prince of that harbor, a porpoise king - slim among the buoys and the water traffic.”

“This [sand-dollar hunting] had become one of our rituals together, and though she would search for other varieties of shells when I was out of town or unable to see her, she would wait until I appe...”

“Over the drop, a luminous pond lay below them like a pale magic lantern. It was as if the moon had plummeted into the water and smashed open. Engulfed in darkness, with only a scatter of stars abov...”

“If pinpointing God's presence were really that simple, then he supposed the beaches would be more crowded in the mornings. They would be filled with people on their own quests, instead of people jo...”

“You have powerful storms in your mind? Visit the silent beaches to calm your storms! You have excessive silence in your mind? Find some powerful storms to awaken your mind!”

“After supper they saw Kaluka to the boardwalk, and then strolled back along the beach to Asbury. The evening sea was a new sensation, for all its color and mellow age was gone, and it seemed the bl...”

“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...”