Oh, but my treasure, it is so much less exhausting. You only have to forgive once. To resent, you have to do it all day, every day. You have to keep remembering all the bad things.

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.

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

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

Such a mysterious business, motherhood. How brave a woman must be to embark on it.

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

Every end is the beginning of something else.