I was constantly watching myself, my secret self, as dependent on my actions as my own personality

The real significance of crime is in its being a breach of faith with the community of mankind.

Watching a coast as it slips by the ship is like thinking about an enigma. There it is before you, smiling, frowning, inviting, grand, mean, insipid, or savage, and always mute with an air of whispering, "Come and find out".

My task which I am trying to achieve is, by the power of the written word, to make you hear, to make you feel — it is, before all, to make you see. That — and no more, and it is everything. If I succeed, you shall find there according to your deserts: encouragement, consolation, fear, charm — all you demand; and, perhaps, also that glimpse of truth for which you have forgotten to ask.

It occurred to me that my speech or my silence, indeed any action of mine, would be a mere futility.

The artist appeals to that part of our being...which is a gift and not an acquisition - and, therefore, more permanently enduring.

For there is nothing mysterious to a seaman unless it be the sea itself, which is the mistress of his existence.