"Along the coast were reefs, around which the water foamed and sparkled, giving them the appearance of great white roses."  ~ Honoré de Balzac, "A Drama on the Seashore"

Poetry led me by the hand out of madness. ~ Anne Sexton

“…she also went there to escape to the seashore, to get a glimpse of the ocean, to run for miles along the Sea Wall, to wade, barefoot and curly-toed, into the foaming sheet of warm brown water when the tide rolled gently in and licked the beach. The ocean was freedom. Standing at its edge and gazing far out into the horizon, eastwards, she felt a deep, yearning ache that rose out of some unknown kernel within her, that reached out, far far out, to that distant horizon, to the unseen shores that lay beyond, and further, to the endlessness of the sky, to the endlessness of time.

...the tower room was all windows, without shade. Open the glass panes and the wind sailed through, a cleansing, vigorous wind that swept away care and uprooted disquiet. Up here you felt tall, free, strong. Up here, nothing could touch you. It was a refuge from the heat of the day, a sanctuary from the pain of living. An escape….” pg. 47, 48

"The ocean was freedom. Standing at its edge and gazing far out into the horizon, eastwards, she felt a deep, yearning ache that rose out of some unknown kernel within her, that reached out, far far out, to that distant horizon, to the unseen shores that lay beyond, and further, to the endlessness of the sky, to the endlessness of time." ~ Sharon Maas, Of Marriageable Age

"Brooding, she changed the pool into the sea, and made the minnows into sharks and whales, and cast vast clouds over this tiny world by holding her hand against the sun, and so brought darkness and desolation, like God himself, to millions of ignorant and innocent creatures, and then took her hand away suddenly and let the sun stream down." ~ Virginia Woolf, To the Lighthouse