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"True riches cannot be bought...There is no buying the night flight with its hundred thousand stars, it's serenity, it's few hours of sovereignty."

"To be truly challenging, a voyage, like a life, must rest on a firm foundation of financial unrest. Otherwise, you are doomed to a routine traverse, the kind known to yachtsmen who play with their boats at sea… 'cruising' it is called. Voyaging belongs to seamen, and to the wanderers of the world who cannot, or will not, fit in. If you are contemplating a voyage and you have the means, abandon the venture until your fortunes change. Only then will you know what the sea is all about. I've always wanted to sail to the south seas, but I can't afford it." What these men can't afford is not to go. They are enmeshed in the cancerous discipline of "security." And in the worship of security we fling our lives beneath the wheels of routine – and before we know it our lives are gone. What does a man need – really need? A few pounds of food each day, heat and shelter, six feet to lie down in – and some form of working activity that will yield a sense of accomplishment. That's all – in the material sense, and we know it. But we are brainwashed by our economic system until we end up in a tomb beneath a pyramid of time payments, mortgages, preposterous gadgetry, playthings that divert our attention for the sheer idiocy of the charade. The years thunder by, The dreams of youth grow dim where they lie caked in dust on the shelves of patience. Before we know it, the tomb is sealed. Where, then, lies the answer? In choice. Which shall it be: bankruptcy of purse or bankruptcy of life?"

"You've got it in you, alright, everyone's got it in them, it isn't a special dispensation from a selective Providence. It is just a question of whether you have the guts to apply it. It struck me that I must be pretty dumb, for most people come by it naturally, but I had to sail across thousands of miles of ocean to find out that courage is the key to living."

"Part of seamanship is making good decisions, and as we all know, at sea you don't get too many bad decisions."

"I am tormented with an everlasting itch for things remote. I love to sail forbidden seas and land on barbarous coasts."

"There was no hurry now, Joshua was to spend the winter in Casablanca, where the local yacht club had provided us with a safe mooring in extremely pleasant and gay company. The club members are really keen sailors who go out every weekend even if a howling gale whistles through the rigging, and many of them perform quite admirable feats of seamanship in leaving their moorings under sail alone, without a hitch and as though it were the most natural thing in the world. A real pleasure to watch."

"If you're going to build anything that endures, it's got to have a really clear purpose, a really great sense of belonging, and a sense of belief as well."

"In anything at all, perfection is finally attained not when there is no longer anything to add, but when there is no longer anything to take away, when a body has been stripped down to its nakedness."

"I don't think there is one answer to heavy weather. I think every tactic that there is has got a very good argument for why it should be used and a very good argument for why it shouldn't be used. And there's success and disaster stories of I would say all of them. And every storm is different, every skipper is different, every crew is different, every boat."

"The single most important thing you can do, by far and bar none, to become a safe and happy offshore cruiser is to go to sea as crew with an experienced skipper on a good boat. No amount of inshore sailing or reading replaces this vital step on the road to becoming a competent offshore sailor."

"Success is a dangerous element in any endeavor. Embrace the struggle. Beware the achievement. For it steals your caution even as it leads you down the next unknown pathway."

"Cause without the bitter, baby, the sweet ain't as sweet."

"That's how you succeed doing crazy stuff, right? You gotta be conservative in your day-to-day, even though the overall plan is not conservative, it's kind of crazy. But stay in the middle, man."

"The 3 most important things are attitude, attitude, and attitude. Because if the attitude is right, you survive and you learn everything you don't need to learn."

"People really don't truly understand what real life is until you experience being that far offshore away from land. And it is unbelievably the best feeling on the planet. And I would do anything to be back every day."

"It's called wayfinding, princess. It's not just sails and knots. It's seeing where you're going in your mind. Knowing where you are, by knowing where you've been."

"You can just look at the globe and just see you can cross oceans from where you are now, and that's like a mind-blowing thought for me."

"Being able to give and receive good critique is as important a skill as any ship handling you're going to learn to do."

"Ships are the nearest things to dreams that hands have ever made, For somewhere deep in their oaken hearts the soul of a song is laid; A soul that sings with the ship along through plunging hills of blue, And fills her canvas cups of white with winds that drive her through."

"I knew that weather can turn concrete plans into vague abstractions, but that's no reason to forgo the pleasure of laying them."