Islands Quotes - Page 38

• Architectural kitsch is most common in the commercial pop vernacular - typified by the Big Duck of 1931 in Flanders, New York, a Long Island roadside poultry stand resembling a duck, which Venturi and Scott Brown made a cult object through their writings.

  Martin Filler

  New York, Writing, Ducks

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• I think because we're ourselves, we tend to think we're unique. 'I have problems that are just specific to me.' Then you connect with one of your parents and you realize, 'Oh yeah, we had all that stuff, too.' You're not that original. I mean, in a good way, because it makes you feel like you're connected and a part of the world and not an island.

  Chris Hardwick

  Mean, Unique, Thinking

  Interview with Nathan Rabin, www.avclub.com. March 7, 2013.

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• Charm is the great English blight. It does not exist outside these damp islands. It spots and kills anything it touches. It kills love; it kills art; I greatly fear, my dear Charles, it has killed you.

  Evelyn Waugh

  Art, Doe, Charm

  Evelyn Waugh (1958). “The world of Evelyn Waugh”

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• The most merciful thing in the world, I think, is the inability of the human mind to correlate all its contents. We live on a placid island of ignorance in the midst of black seas of the infinity, and it was not meant that we should voyage far.

  H. P. Lovecraft

  Ignorance, Thinking, Sea

  The Call of Cthulhu ch. 1 (1928)

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• Thus sharply did the terrified three learn the difference between an island of make-believe and the same island come true.

  James M. Barrie

  Believe, Differences, Three

  "Peter Pan (Peter and Wendy)".

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• A man sets out to draw the world. As the years go by, he peoples a space with images of provinces, kingdoms, mountains, bays, ships, islands, fishes, rooms, instruments, stars, horses, and individuals. A short time before he dies, he discovers that the patient labyrinth of lines traces the lineaments of his own face.

  Jorge Luis Borges

  Horse, Stars, Men

  Jorge Luis Borges, Andrew Hurley (2004). “Aleph and other stories”, Penguin Classics

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• No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main. If a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friend's or of thine own were: any man's death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind, and therefore never send to know for whom the bells tolls; it tolls for thee.

  John Donne

  Inspirational, Friendship, Death

  Devotions upon Emergent Occasions no. 17 (1624)

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• After a while I understood that, talking this way, everything dissolves: justice, pine, hair, woman, you and I. There was a woman I made love to and I remembered how, holding her small shoulders in my hands sometimes, I felt a violent wonder at her presence like a thirst for salt, for my childhood river with its island willows, silly music from the pleasure boat, muddy places where we caught the little orange-silver fish called pumpkinseed. It hardly had to do with her. Longing, we say, because desire is full of endless distances.

  Robert Hass

  Distance, Silly, Hands

  Robert Hass, “Meditation At Lagunitas”

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• Dreams were the worst. Of course I dreamed of food and love, but they were pleasant rather than otherwise. But then I'd dream of things like slitting a baby's throat, mistaking it for a baby goat. I'd have nightmares of other islands stretching away from mine, infinities of islands, islands spawning islands, like frogs' eggs turning into polliwogs of islands, knowing that I had to live on each and every one, eventually, for ages, registering their flora, their fauna, their geography.

  Elizabeth Bishop

  Dream, Baby, Eggs

  Elizabeth Bishop (2015). “Geography III: Poems”, p.15, Macmillan

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• Being with him made her feel as though her soul had escaped from the narrow confines of her island country into the vast, extravagant spaces of his. He made her feel as though the world belonged to them- as though it lay before them like an opened frog on a dissecting table, begging to be examined.

  Arundhati Roy

  Country, Space, Soul

  Arundhati Roy (2002). “The God of Small Things”, p.245, Penguin Books India

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• We have great cities to visit: New York and Washington, Paris and London; and further east, and older than any of these, the legendary city of Samarkand, whose crumbling palaces and mosques still welcome travelers on the Silk road. Weary of cities? Then we’ll take to the wilds. To the islands of Hawaii and the mountains of Japan, to forests where Civil War dead still lie, and stretches of sea no mariner ever crossed. They all have their poetry: the glittering cities and the ruined, the watery wastes and the dusty; I want to show you them all. I want to show you everything.

  Clive Barker

  New York, War, Lying

  "Galilee". Book by Clive Barker, February 3, 1999.

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• Small islands, not capable of protecting themselves, are the proper objects for kingdoms to take under their care; but there is something absurd, in supposing a continent to be perpetually governed by an island.

  Thomas Paine

  Supposing That, Care, Kingdoms

  Thomas Paine (1830). “The Political Writings of Thomas Paine: To which is Prefixed a Brief Sketch of the Author's Life”, p.40

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• Am going to cross Pacific on a wooden raft to support a theory that the South Sea islands were peopled from Peru. Will you come? I guarantee nothing but a free trip to Peru and the South Sea islands and back, but you will find good use for your technical abilities on the voyage. Reply at once.' Next day the following telegram arrived from Torstein: COMING. TORSTEIN.

  Thor Heyerdahl

  Next Day, Sea, Support

  Thor Heyerdahl (1990). “Kon-Tiki: Across the Pacific by Raft”, p.33, Simon and Schuster

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• As I went walking I saw a sign there And on the sign it said "No Trespassing." But on the other side it didn't say nothing, That side was made for you and me. This land is your land, this land is my land From California to the New York island From the Redwood forest to the Gulf Stream waters This land was made for you and me.

  Woody Guthrie

  New York, Journey, California

  "This Land Is Your Land" (song) (1956)

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• They can't hurt me. Sure, they can crush you and kill you. They can lay you out on 42nd and Broadway and put hoses on you and flush you in the sewers and put you on the subway and carry you out to Coney island and bury you on the Ferris wheel. But I refuse to sit here and worry about dying.

  Bob Dylan

  Crush, Hurt, Worry

  Bob Dylan (2005). “Bob Dylan: Inspirations”, p.67, Andrews McMeel Publishing

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• His mouth opens. From inside him comes a slow stream, without breath, without interruption. It flows up through his body and out upon me; it passes through the cabin, through the wreck; washing the cliffs and shores of the island, it runs northward and southward to the ends of the earth. Soft and cold, dark and unending, it beats against my eyelids, against the skin of my face.

  J. M. Coetzee

  Running, Dark, Skins

  J. M. Coetzee (2017). “Foe: A Novel”, p.149, Penguin

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• I preferred to set off and perish in search of my own kind than to live a lonely half-life of physical comfort and spiritual death on this murderous island.

  Yann Martel

  Spiritual, Lonely, Comfort

  Yann Martel (2012). “Life Of Pi, Illustrated”, p.401, Canongate Books

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• People are islands,' she said. 'They don't really touch. However close they are, they're really quite separate. Even if they've been married for fifty years.

  Ian Fleming

  Relationship, Years, People

  Ian Fleming (2002). “Casino Royale”

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• When I see the blind and wretched state of men, when I survey the whole universe in its deadness, and man left to himself with no light, as though lost in this corner of the universe without knowing who put him there, what he has to do, or what will become of him when he dies, incapable of knowing anything, I am moved to terror, like a man transported in his sleep to some terrifying desert island, who wakes up quite lost, with no means of escape. Then I marvel that so wretched a state does not drive people to despair.

  Blaise Pascal

  Atheist, Mean, Sleep

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• Willows whiten, aspens quiver, little breezes dusk and shiver, thro' the wave that runs forever by the island in the river, flowing down to Camelot. Four gray walls and four gray towers, overlook a space of flowers, and the silent isle imbowers, the Lady of Shalott.

  Alfred Lord Tennyson

  Running, Wall, Flower

  Alfred, Lord Tennyson, Professor Norman Page (2013). “Tennyson: Selected Poetry”, p.20, Routledge

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• I thought of a high school report I did on the Belgian artist Rene Magritte and a quote I once read from him, something about his favorite walk being the one he took around his own bedroom. He said that he never understood the need for people to travel because all the poetry and perspective you're ever going to get you already posses. Anais Nin had the same idea. We see the world as we are. So if it's the same brain we bring with us every time we open our eyes, what's the difference if we're looking at an island cove or a pocket watch?

  Sloane Crosley

  School, Eye, Artist

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• Although you may not stumble across a Martian in the garden, you might stumble across yourself. The day that happens, you'll probably also scream a little. And that'll be perfectly all right, because it's not every day you realize you're a living planet dweller on a little island in the universe.

  Jostein Gaarder

  Garden, May, Littles

  Jostein Gaarder (2003). “The Solitaire Mystery”, p.108, Macmillan

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• Sourmelina's secret (as Aunt Zo put it): 'Lina was one of those women they named the island after.

  Jeffrey Eugenides

  Aunt, Secret

  Jeffrey Eugenides (2003). “Middlesex”, p.86, A&C Black

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• Hy gododin catann hue Hud a lledrith mal wyddan Gaunce ae bellawn wen cabri Varigal don Fincayra Dravia, dravia Fincayra (Talking trees and walking stones, Giants aare the island's bones. While this land our dance still knows, Varigal crowns Fincayra. Live long, live long Fincayra.

  T.A. Barron

  Talking, Long, Tree

  T. A. Barron (2011). “The Seven Songs”, p.187, Penguin

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• There's no one on the island telling them they're not good enough, so they just go ahead and sing and paint and write.

  Eric Weiner

  Writing, Not Good Enough, Paint

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