50 Important Quotes You Should Pay Attention to in Past the Shallows

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#11: “He had been drifting for a lifetime and his mind had lost its way. It was dissolving and he had forgotten about Harry, forgotten about all the things that came before.”

• Characters: Miles
• Technique: Motif of water, symbolism of the sea
• Chapter 39 

#12: “This is for you,” he said, and he put the tooth in his hands. “For luck.” Miles looked up at George, his eyes full of tears. “You found him,” he said. “Harry.”

• Characters: Miles and George
• Technique: Symbolism, situational irony
• Chapter 42

#13: “You remember, don’t you?“…Dad pulled Miles in close, so close that his face was all Miles could see. And it made him sick the way Dad’s face was. The way he looked like he was crying. Like someone had done something terrible to him.”

• Characters: Dad and Miles
• Technique: Irony, rhetorical question
• Chapter 29

#14: “He let the tooth go. He stared down at Harry. “She was leaving, because of him. Because of you”

• Characters: Dad and Harry
• Technique: implication that Harry is Uncle Nick’s biological son, truncated sentence, anaphora
• Chapter 29

#15: “Because the bank owned the boat now. Because the bank owned everything.”

• Characters: Dad and the three brothers
• Technique: Alliteration
• Chapter 2

Trauma, Memory and Grief Quotes from Past the Shallows

#16: “Harry picked up an abalone shell, the edges loose and dusty in his hands. And every cell in his body stopped. Felt it. This place. Felt the people who had been here before, breathing and standing live where he stood. People who were dead now. Long gone.”

• Characters: Harry 
• Technique: Truncated sentence, tactile imagery
• Chapter 1

#17: “He used to feel sorry for the abs when he was young. The way they pulsed and moved in the tubs, sensing the bright light and heat. But he couldn’t think about them like that now. He was only careful not to cut or bruise them, because once abs started to bleed, they kept on bleeding until all the liquid inside was gone. They just dried up and died.”

• Characters: Harry 
• Technique: Descriptive language, symbolism, foreshadowing
• Chapter 5

#18: “But Harry stayed where he was. He stayed among the piles of Granddad’s things left on the lawn—all the things that were no longer needed, no longer useful—and he wished that Joe would stay.”

• Characters: Harry
• Technique: Emotive language, visual imagery
• Chapter 14

#19: “Maybe that’s why Joe and Miles liked it so much. And he knew that Granddad would have taken him. It was just that he was too little, too small to go, when Granddad had been alive. And if Granddad hadn’t died then he definitely would have taken Harry fishing, too. And it would have been good, like this was.”

• Characters: Harry, Miles, Joe and Grandad”
• Technique: Anaphora, symbolism of the sea
• Chapter 17

#20: “A shark’s tooth, cold and sharp – a perfect blade everything that a shark was rotted and disappeared, everything but its jaw and its teeth. That was all a shark could ever leave behind”

• Characters: Miles
• Technique: Symbolism, foreshadowing, allegory for Dad’s behaviour

#21: “And the man turned in his seat. He reached over and stroked Harry’s cheek. He looked at Miles. It was Uncle Nick”

• Characters: Miles, Uncle Nick, mother
• Technique: Dramatic irony 
• Chapter 15

#22: “It was fully formed, more than half a yard long, maybe only days away from being born. It would have survived if Jeff had just let it go, let it slide off the back of the boat”

• Characters: Jeff and Miles
• Technique: Arbitrary cruelty, descriptive language
• Chapter 9

#23: “And they never found him./Not one bit./ Not his boots./ Not his bones.”

• Characters: Miles, regarding Uncle Nick
• Technique: Truncated sentences, paragraphs, tricolon
• Chapter 2

#24: “Harry tried to listen to the talking so that he didn’t have to think about the road. It was a long drive and the worst bit was still to come… that was where his ears usually popped and where he usually got carsick”

• Characters: Harry
• Technique: Sensory language
• Chapter 3

#25: “Harry noticed that Miles was holding his hands strangely. They were red and swollen. They looked bad.”

• Characters: Harry and Miles
• Technique: Anaphora
• Chapter 4

Responsibility 

#26: “First day of school holidays. First day he must man the boat alone while the men go down. Old enough now, he must take his place. Just like his brother before him, he must fill the gap Uncle Nick left.”

• Characters: Miles
• Technique: Anaphora
• Chapter 2

#27: “He listened to Joe talk about all the places they would go, the tropical islands and clear warm water, the big bright lights of new cities. The free open space of ocean.”

• Characters: Joe and Miles
• Technique: hope, visual imagery
• Chapter 41

#28: “And he knew that Joe was going to take him with him, now.”

• Characters: Joe and Miles
• Technique: Definitive language
• Chapter 41

Nature’s Wrath and Nature’s Nurture

#29: “Miles let the rip that ran with the bluff carry him. He enjoyed the ride, felt his hands slipping through the cool water, body floating free. And there was this feeling in him like when it had all just been for fun, the water.”

• Characters: Miles
• Technique: Symbolism of the sea
• Chapter 42

#30: “It had made it this far, battling its siblings, killing and feeding off them. Waiting. It would have been born strong, ready to hunt, ready to fight.”

• Characters: Jeff and Miles
• Technique: Allegory
• Chapter 9

#31: “Everything was clean and golden and crisp, the sky almost violet with the winter light and he wished that he wasn’t afraid”

• Characters: Harry, watching Miles and Joe in the water
• Technique: Fricatives, imagery
• Chapter 1

#32: “They were always in groups, cormorants. Huddled together in groups on the cliffs and rocks, long necks reaching up to the sun. Sometimes they stayed like that all day. Together. Waiting and watching. Resting.”

• Characters: Harry
• Technique: truncated sentences, symbolism for the brothers 
• Chapter 1

#33: “Miles knew exactly how dark it was that night, the sky blacked out by cloud so thick that nothing came through – no stars or moon or anything.”

• Characters: Miles
• Technique: Symbolism, foreshadowing
• Chapter 2

#34: “Miles watched the surface change colour – come to life. And even though they were still out deep, away from land, there was places where the water rose like it was climbing a hill, places where the water was angry”

• Characters: Miles
• Technique: Imagery, the symbolism of the sea
• Chapter 2

#35: “The cliffs behind were like giant guardians standing tall.”

• Characters: Miles
• Technique: Symbolism
• Chapter 4

#36: “Below in the murky darkness, in the swirling kelp, all you had to guide you was one hand touching the rock wall while your legs kicked you down blind. And that’s where they were, the abalone.”

• Characters: Miles
• Technique: Imagery
• Chapter 4

Quotes from Past the Shallows about the Ocean

#37: “There were things that no one would teach you—things about the water. You just knew them or you didn’t and no one could tell you how to read it. How to feel it. Miles knew the water. He could feel it. And he knew not to trust it.”

• Characters: Miles
• Technique: Truncated sentence, symbolism of the sea
• Chapter 2

#38: “But ultimately it wasn’t up to you. This ocean could hold you down for as long as it liked, and Miles knew it.”

• Characters: Miles
• Technique: Allegory for dad’s behaviour
• Chapter 37

#39: “Water that was always there. Always everywhere. The sound and the smell of the cold waves… he knew the way he felt about the ocean would never leave him now. It would be there always, right inside of him.”

• Characters: Harry
• Technique: Repetition, sensory language, symbolism of the sea
• Chapter 1

#40: “There was only this vastness, the swing of a giant pendulum—water receding then flooding back. And he was part of it. Part of the deep water, part of the waves. Part of the rocks and reefs along the shore.”

• Characters: Miles
• Technique: Anaphora, symbolism of the sea
• Chapter 39 

#41: “It made the dark water sparkle, turned the white spray golden—made the ocean a giant mirror reflecting the sky. Even the leaves on the crack wattle shone in the light. It made everything come to life”

• Characters: Miles
• Technique: Imagery
• Chapter 43

#42: “Miles knew the water. He could feel it. And he knew not to trust it”

• Characters: Miles
• Technique: Tricolon, truncated sentences
• Chapter 2

#43: “The paddle was easy. The waves were easy. The ocean was at peace.”

• Characters: Miles
• Technique: Tricolon
• Chapter 6

Quotes about Time from Past the Shallows

#44: “Harry understood it, right down in his guts, that time ran on forever and that one day he would die” 

• Characters: Harry
• Technique: Foreshadowing
• Chapter 1 

#45: “And if you didn’t know better, you’d think that no one lived here anymore. That all these places were abandoned. But people were in there somewhere, hidden and burrowed in. They were there.”

• Characters: Joe and Miles
• Technique: allegory, foreshadowing
• Chapter 7

#46: “He lived for this, for these moments when everything stops except your heart beating and time bends and ripples—moves past your eyes frame by frame and you feel beyond time and before time and no one can touch you.”

• Characters: Joe and Miles
• Technique: Water motif, run-on sentence
• Chapter 22

#47: “Out past the shallows, past the sandy-bottomed bays, comes the dark water – black and cold and roaring. Rolling out the invisible paths. The ancient paths to Bruny, or down south along the silent cliffs, the paths out deep to the bird islands that stand tall between nothing but water and sky. Wherever rock comes out of deep water, wherever reef rises up, there is abalone. Black-lipped soft bodies protected by shell. Treasure.” 

• Characters: third person narration
• Technique: anaphora, foreshadowing, imagery, descriptive language
• Preface 

#48: Out past the shallows, past the sandy-bottomed bays, comes the dark water – black and cold and roaring. Rolling out an invisible path, a new line for them to follow. To somewhere warm. To somewhere new.”

• Characters: Third person narration
• Technique: Cyclical structure, alludes back to the preface
• Chapter 42

#49: “And harry understood, right down in his guts, that time ran on forever and that one day he would die.”

• Characters: Harry
• Technique: Foreshadowing
• Chapter 1

#50: “Joe made a sound but he wasn’t really listening. He was somewhere else, maybe still out there in the water with Miles”

• Characters: Joe
• Technique: Symbolism of the sea
• Chapter 1