"More than an Ocean,  the Pacific was like universe, and a chart of it looked like a portrait of the night sky.  This enermous ocean was like the whole of heaven,  an inversion of earth and air,  so that the Pacific seemed like outer space, an immensity of emptiness, dotted with misshapen islands that twingkled like stars,  archipelagos like star cluster, and wasn't Polynesia a sort of galaxy ? - Paul Theroux