All the ingenuity, all the high-tech gear, all the jury-rigging sometimes the sea would rip it all away until there was only you, the Creator, and His mercy.

I am twelve thousand miles wiser, twelve thousand miles more resilient, and I have twelve thousand miles more faith in God.

I was so thankful that my parents trusted me enough and had enough faith in my abilities to let me follow my passion and try to do something great, even if I might fail.

Fewer people have successfully solo-circumnavigated the globe than have journeyed into space.

The things that happen on the sea take you beyond yourself, beyond human capability.

On June 10, the worst storm in the series swept across the middle of the Indian Ocean and Wild Eyes was directly in its path.

I wanted to break the record, of course, and become the youngest person to sail around the world solo and unassisted.

Wild Eyes was built for speed and I was flying down walls of water twenty and thirty feet high.

The open ocean often takes you past your physical limits and when it does, sailing becomes a mental game.

Going up the mast is one of the most dangerous things you can do as a solo sailor.

But none of that kept me from picturing what a tsunami might look like if it did rise up and roar toward my little boat like some watery blue version of the Great Wall of China.

I silently smiled at my incessant good fortune.

People should never sit alone for too long when they're crying.

I don't want to be here when my latest work of accidental art is discovered.

No philosopher's stone of a constitution can produce golden conduct from leaden instincts.

I always knew what I was doing.

Sometimes it's hard to tell what's love and what's only indigestion

Mostly what I listen to when I turn on my little iPod is opera.

That a marriage ends is less than ideal; but all things end under heaven, and if temporality is held to be invalidating, then nothing real succeeds.

I'm a huge fan of The Sopranos, and suddenly, you find yourself going one-to-one with this guy who you've been watching for years, watching every flicker in his eye and every detail on his face.

They look at me and I kind of back up in case they go for my throat.