He [Quoyle] did not want a boat, shied from the thought of water. Ashamed he could not swim, couldn't learn. - Annie Proulx

The editorial page played streams of invective across the provincial political scene like a fire hose. Harangues, pitted with epithets. Gammy bird was a hard bite. Looked life right in its shifty, bloodshot eye. A tough little paper. Gave Quoyle an uneasy feeling, the feeling of standing on a playground watching others play games whose rules he didn't know.

As he cut, the wildness of the world receded, the vast invisible web of filaments that connected human life to animals, trees to flesh and bones to grass shivered as each tree fell and one by one the web strands snapped.

The future flickered before him as a likely series of disappointments.