“Another lesson to be learned, to continue using my oceanographic metaphor, is that while you are swimming and not sinking you should aim for rough water.”

“You can't cling to the side your whole life, that one lesson every parent needs to teach a child is "If you don't want to sink, you better figure out how to swim”

“Before you swim, you gotta be okay to sink.”

“Practice is necessary. You can't learn to swim just by reading a book about swimming. Otherwise, you will continue to look for teachers at each stop.”

“If you don't want to sink, you better figure out how to swim”

“Yes I was burned but I called it a lesson learned. Mistake overturned so I call it a lesson learned. My soul has returned so I call it a lesson learned… another lesson learned”

“The first thing every mage should learn is that magic makes fools of us. Now you may call yourself a mage. You have learned the most important lesson.”

“Courage is like—it’s a habitus, a habit, a virtue: You get it by courageous acts. It’s like you learn to swim by swimming. You learn courage by couraging.”

“Gene Ray: Another thing, did you know your father is a fish?
Interviewer: No, I did not know my… [laughter]
Gene Ray: You know how salmon swim upstream, the male fertilizes the female eggs laid in the water?
Interviewer: Yes.
Gene Ray: The sperm fish swims upstream just like the salmon fertilizes female eggs laid in the water.”

“[M]aybe the strings break, or maybe our ships sink, or maybe we're grass—our roots so interdependent that no one is dead as long as someone is still alive. We don't suffer from a shortage of metaphors, is what I mean. But you have to be careful which metaphor you choose, because it matters. If you choose the strings, then you're imagining a world in which you can become irreparably broken. If you choose the grass, you're saying that we are all infinitely interconnected, that we can use these root systems not only to understand one another but to become one another. The metaphors have implications.”