There are times when the ocean is not the ocean - not blue, not even water, but some violent explosion of energy and danger: ferocity on a scale only gods can summon. It hurls itself at the island, sending spray right over the top of the lighthouse, biting pieces off the cliff. And the sound is a roaring of a beast whose anger knows no limits. Those are the nights the light is needed most.

When he wakes sometimes from dark dreams of broken cradles, and compasses without bearings, he pushes the unease down, lets the daylight contradict it. And isolation lulls him with the music of the lie.

Every end is the beginning of something else.

When it comes to their kids, parents are all just instinct and hope. And fear. Rules and laws fly straight out the window.

That's how life goes on - protected by the silence that anesthetizes shame.

No one ever has or ever will travel quite the same path on earth.

Years bleach away the sense of things until all that's left is a bone-white past, stripped of feeling and significance.