“That's what people do who love you. They put their arms around you and love you when you're not so lovable.”

“It starts so young, and I'm angry about that. The garbage we're taught. About love, about what's "romantic." Look at so many of the so-called romantic figures in books and movies. Do we ever stop a...”

“You've got to have someone who loves your body. Who doesn't define you, but sees you. Who loves what he sees. Who you don't have to struggle to be good enough for.”

“It's good to let God pick a man for you. We don't do so well when we pick them ourselves. They end up lipsticks in a drawer, all those wrong colors you thought looked so good in the package.”

“Sometimes love is a surprise, an instant of recognition, a sudden gift at a sudden moment that makes everything different from then on. Some people will say that's not love, that you can't really l...”

“When what you want is a relationship, and not a person, get a dog.”

“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...”