"Tomorrow I am to visit my parish for the first time. On the great ordnance map which hangs above my desk I have traced and retraced the outlines of my islands until I know the distinctive shape of each of them. Rhodes might be a flint arrowhead; Cos a sperm whale; Leros an octopus; Patmos a seahorse; Symi an expended meteor rubbed smooth with air; Kalymnos a mussel."

~ Lawrence Durrell,
Reflections on a Marine Venus