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.

It is a luxury to do something that serves no practical purpose: the luxury of civilization.

You don’t think ahead in years or months: you think about this hour, and maybe the next. Anything else is speculation.

We live with the decisions we makeThat’s what bravery is. Standing by the consequences of your mistakes.

Humans withdraw to their homes, and surrender the night to the creatures that own it: the crickets, the owls, the snakes. A world that hasn't changed for hundreds of thousands of years wakes up, and carries on as if the daylight and the humans and the changes to the landscape have all been an illusion.

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

There are times when the ocean is not the ocean - not blue, not even water, but some violent explosion of energy and danger: fierceness on a scale only gods can summon.