Islands Quotes

“No man, proclaimed Donne, is an Island, and he was wrong. If we were not islands, we would be lost, drowned in each other's tragedies. We are insulated (a word that means, literally, remember, made into an island) from the tragedy of others, by our island nature, and by the repetitive shape and form of the stories. The shape does not change: there was a human being who was born, lived, and then, by some means or another, died. There. You may fill in the details from your own experience. As unoriginal as any other tale, as unique as any other life. Lives are snowflakes—forming patterns we have seen before, as like one another as peas in a pod (and have you ever looked at peas in a pod? I mean, really looked at them? There's not a chance you'd mistake one for another, after a minute's close inspection), but still unique.”
― Neil Gaiman, American Gods

“When Cupid takes aim, the stupid of us don’t know to duck.”
― Patricia D'Arcy Laughlin, Sacrifices Beyond Kingdoms: A Provocative Romance Torn Between Continents and Cultures

“…I once found a list of diseases as yet unclassified by medical science, and among these there occurred the word Islomania, which was described as a rare but by no means unknown affliction of spirit. There are people…who find islands somehow irresistible. The mere knowledge that they are on an island, a little world surrounded by the sea, fills them with an indescribable intoxication. These born “islomanes”…are direct descendents of the Atlanteans”
― Lawrence Durrell, Reflections on a Marine Venus: A Companion to the Landscape of Rhodes

“Every island to a child is a treasure island.”
― P.D. James, The Lighthouse

“The crying sounded even louder out of doors. It was as if all the pain in the world had found a voice. Yet had I known such pain was in the next room, and had it been dumb, I believe—I have thought since—I could have stood it well enough. It is when suffering finds a voice and sets our nerves quivering that this pity comes troubling us. But in spite of the brilliant sunlight and the green fans of the trees waving in the soothing sea-breeze, the world was a confusion, blurred with drifting black and red phantasms, until I was out of earshot of the house in the stone wall.”
― H.G. Wells, The Island of Dr. Moreau

“... everyone knew that all islands were worlds unto themselves, that to come to an island was to come to another world.”
― Guy Gavriel Kay, Tigana

“The physique of a Messiah. But too clever to believe in God or be convinced of his own mission. And too sensitive, even if he were convinced, to carry it out. His muscles would like to act and his feelings would like to believe; but his nerve-endings and his cleverness won't allow it.”
― Aldous Huxley

“Why slum it where people were burdened by yesterday, and the day before, and the day before that? By history? Here, on the Island, they had learnt how to deal with history, how to sling it carelessly on your back and stride out across the download with the breeze in your face.”
― Julian Barnes, England, England

“Islanders too
are for sculpting.”
― Seamus Heaney, Death of a Naturalist

“Without the story - in which everyone living, unborn, and dead, participates - men are no more than 'bits of paper blown on the cold wind . . .”
― George Mackay Brown, Winter Tales

“French Polynesia embraces a vast ocean area strewn with faraway outer islands, each with a mystique of its own. The 118 islands and atolls are scattered over an expanse of water 18 times the size of California, though in dry land terms the territory is only slightly bigger than Rhode Island. The distance from one end of the island groups to another is four times further than from San Francisco to Los Angeles. Every oceanic island type is represented in these sprawling archipelagoes positioned midway between California and New Zealand. The coral atolls of the Tuamotus are so low they’re threatened by rising sea levels, while volcanic Tahiti soars to 2,241 meters. Bora Bora and Maupiti, also high volcanic islands, rise from the lagoons of what would otherwise be atolls.
”
― David Stanley, Moon Tahiti

“High altitude professional astronomy took me to the Canary Islands, Hawaii, Arizona and Mexico.”
― Steven Magee

“Tropical islands will be the lifeboats of humanity in a climate changed world.”
― Steven Magee

“From here, to the south and west, one island leads to another, all the way to Frenchboro and Swans Island and Isle au Haut, as this landscape toys with the idea of islands until the sea says enough and there is only water”
― Christopher Camuto, Time and Tide in Acadia: Seasons on Mount Desert Island

“I sent a box from Hawaii to the Canary Islands and it took six months for it to get there with an expensive import fee!”
― Steven Magee

“The "Suicide Belt" is a name given to the high suicide rates around the high altitude “Rocky Mountain” states. You can see the same thing in the highest islands in the Canary Islands and Hawaii.”
― Steven Magee

“There is something going on in Kauai which seems to be more toxic than the other Hawaiian islands.”
― Steven Magee

“The island of La Palma in the Canary Islands is really steep.”
― Steven Magee

“Mauna Kea is the tallest mountain in the Hawaiian Islands.”
― Steven Magee

“The higher the island, the higher the suicide rate is.”
― Steven Magee

“It was common in professional astronomy to live at altitude.”
― Steven Magee

“Some of the Florida islands in the hurricane Ian disaster looked like war zones!”
― Steven Magee

“The Florida hurricane Ian disaster showed that small islands had the largest destroyed areas and loss of life.”
― Steven Magee

“Climate change is well underway in Hawaii!”
― Steven Magee

“I live in the formerly British Sandwich Islands!”
― Steven Magee

“The joys of hot Hawaiian coffee!”
― Steven Magee

“It’s Hawaii time!!!”
― Steven Magee

“Live Hawaiian style!”
― Steven Magee

“And so we entered the country of Saint Vincent and the Grenadines on the tiny island of Bequia with entry stamps given as if twisting through a turnstile to enter an amusement park.”
― Laurie Perez, The Power of Amie Martine

“I loved driving over the ocean, watching all the shrimp boats and the seagulls flying around them looking for a snack. Many people find them annoying, but I'd always been struck by the beauty of their white wings gently flapping against the bright-blue sky. It was low tide now, and I could see the sandpipers pecking around the oyster shells that dotted the marshlands, hoping to get lucky. It was a privilege to coexist with these wild creatures in their natural habitat.”
― Victoria Benton Frank, My Magnolia Summer