“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...”

“A flock of small birds took off from the wall of the fort. They moved like a length of dark silk caught by the breeze as they headed out to sea. Behind them, the sky was the colour of forget-me-not...”

“He noticed that he felt calmer now she was here, still in that grey dress with her dowdy hat, the air around her redolent with orchid oil. Perhaps all women in England had this effect. Perhaps they...”

“A vision of the little house in Soho flickered across his minds eye, his mother at a desk, writing in her journal, with hazy sunlight streaming through the morning windows. The woman inhabited a wo...”

“There was something indomitable about Maria like Britannia. Hed heard that she kept her head during a Chilean earthquake the year before when men of greater age and experience had panicked. Afterw...”

“I pride myself on making my own decisions, sir," she said. "I do not welcome gentlemen making them for me.”

“Today I want to belong. I want to feel safe and at home. I want to be aware of what it is like simply to be, without defenses or desires. I will appreciate the flow of life for what it is-my own tr...”

“Nature reflects the moods of the wizard.”

“My calling ties me to no office, makes me no man's slave, compels me to no action which my soul condemns. It sets me free from town life, which I loathe; and allows me to breathe clean air, to exer...”

“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...”

“She enjoyed the sights and sounds of the dockside ports were places of freedom.”

“Her eyes betrayed no shock at the sights of the quay as they unfolded not the sweating deckhands, the prostitutes crowding the ship, the hubbub of stalls, including one where three slaves were for...”

“She loved the sea. She liked the sharp salty smell of the air, and the vastness of the horizons bounded only by a vault of azure sky above. It made her feel small, but free as well.”