In total silence he perceived a distant melody. It could be coming from the stars, from the bottom of the sea or from the night itself... It was not like any other, not even like the purring of the sea on tranquil nights before the storms... Juan sang drawn by the music that reached him, and, like the night, his song made him brother to the trees, the seagull, the mollusks, the wild flowers that spring up in the sand. "This melody is the murmur of the sea that covers all humankind."
Another fall, another turned page: was something of jubilee in that autumnal beginning as if last year's mistakes had been wiped clean by summer?
~ Wallace Stegner in ANGLE OF REPOSE