I don't believe there's anything cosmic or divine or morally superior about whales and dolphins or sharks or trees, but I do think that everything that lives is holy and somehow integrated; and on cloudy days I suspect that these extraordinary phenomena, and the hundreds of tiny, modest versions no one hears about, are an ocean, an earth, a Creator, something shaking us by the collar, demanding our attention, our fear, our vigilance, our respect, our help.

I liked books - the respite and privacy of them - books about plants and the formation of ice and the business of world wars. Whenever I sank into them I felt free.

The ocean is a supreme metaphor for change. I expect the unexpected but am never fully prepared.

The notion that love is abroad in the world has shaped my life.

It’s how I fill the time when nothing’s happening. Thinking too much, flirting with melancholy.

Wherever I went I felt like the last person awake in a room full of sleepers

People do change - individuals, families, nations - and the pace of transformation need not be geological.