Small Island Quotes
"You must understand, if this Hitler man wins this war he will bring back slavery. We will all be in chains again. We will work for no pay."
"But my son was found in an ungodly embrace with that woman."
"I wandered lonely as a cloud That floats on high o'er vales and hills, When all at once I saw a crowd, A host of golden daffodils."
"Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more."
"The only way he would be sure of recognizing his bride was by looking out for a frowning woman who stared embarrassed at the jumping, waving buffoon she had married."
"She looked so pained that I dreamed of taking his hands and making him dance."
"I was sure this house could once have been home to a doctor or a lawyer or perhaps a friend of a friend of the King."
"You are a nuisance to me, Michael Roberts."
"He is a man. She just come off the boat – you mus' show who boss."
"You will mix with white service personnel. Have you boys any idea how lucky you are? You will not be treated as negroes!"
"This surely is adventure. After all you have heard, can you imagine, can you believe, soon, soon you will meet Mother?"
"I promise it will all be different in the morning."
"I can know if a man is a Jew from his rear."
"You can kiss the idea of a banana goodbye."
"We’re all in this together, lad. We’re glad to have you here – glad to have ya."
"How can you think of being a woman alone in a house with coloureds?"
"This is a white man’s war. Why you wanna lose your life for a white man?"
"Mother has a blackened eye, bad breath and one lone tooth that waves in her head when she speaks."
"No white women there will consort with the likes of you."
"It was inconceivable that we Jamaicans, we West Indians, we members of the British Empire would not fly to the Mother Country’s defence when there was threat."
"Come, let us face it, it was curiosity that saw me walking fast down that street to where a crowd was gathering."
"It was then she took her torch to shine its searchlight beam up to the back rows of the picture house."
"The MP, carrying out his duty, fired a warning shot into the air."
"‘A joke? But, Mrs Bligh, if it had been a joke I am sure I would have laughed.’"
"So while I sweet-talk Enid’s front end, Elwood attached the cart before the back end realised."
"Careful as lifting a bomb we delicately placed these flimsy, weighty wooden boxes on to the borrowed truck."
"This was a beautiful island. As sweet with promise as the honey that would soon flow from the combs."
"The world out there is bigger than any dream you can conjure."
"I envied the pelican, I envied the crow – with wings they could fly easy from this place to rest in some other."
"Why you wan’ the whole world when ya have a likkle piece a hope here?"
"I was a giant living on land no bigger than the soles of my shoes."
"The angry bees, amassing to a black smoke, trailed the bucking mule before entirely enveloping it."
"How long did it take Enid to break down the fence? We did not hear as Auntie Corinne had just laid before us a plate of succulent, spiced fried chicken."
"There is still two hive and them bursting a honey."
"They’d be happier among their own kind."
"Putting them here really isn’t doing anyone any good."
"But it wasn’t an invasion – it was a sadder sight than that. It was a family."
"Her face not so much blank but unreadable as a corpse."
"Some clown in the butcher’s said it was because if Hitler invaded he’d want somewhere nice to live."
"It was a soggy, wet, filthy little dog or horse made out of someone’s old sock with eyes sewn on in black wool."
"I swear the attic room Mrs Newman had that family in was no bigger than our Anderson shelter."
"Mrs Newman complained to me as I left that she couldn’t let the family in the bathroom because they smelt and were too filthy."
"Breath is ripped from your lungs, your eyes bulge, your stomach squeezes its contents up or out, and your heart races so unfamiliar you think it a clockwork toy."
"I couldn’t say I heard the bang, I was just weightless for a moment, my arms swimming in air."
"I want you to know, Queenie, I do love you."
"Everyone was out to stare. Enraged at the devastation but relieved it wasn’t them and theirs."
"I can’t help everybody. There’s a war on."
"A person who has never travelled still believes their mother is the best cook."
"But as soon as I’d said it I wished I hadn’t. He reeled from me as sure as if I’d spat in his face."
"How the English treat their good material like this? In Jamaica, all the cloth is displayed neatly in rows for you to peruse the design, the colour."
"How can an Englishwoman expect me to wash myself in the same place where I must clean up the vegetables?"
"Her complexion so light, beside it paper would look soiled."
"‘Look! She’s black. Look, Mum, black woman.’"
"‘Don’t point, Georgey. She’s not black – she’s coloured.’"
"‘And if there is a puddle should I lie down in it?’"
"‘Bernard. You’ve been away a long time.’"
"‘You think you’re going to be like Biggles, don’t you?’"
"‘But I know a snake when I see one, Maxi,’ I told him."
"‘You’re a married man, then, Pop? I thought about getting married but I didn’t like the hours.’"
"‘It’s like living in an oven,’ she’d complain."
"‘It’s Japs. They’re just jittering us.’"
"‘You’ve just arrived. Don’t worry, you’ll get used to it.’"
"‘But thank God. Maybe you fellows aren’t such clots after all. Cheers.’"
"‘War over, I’ll be home by Christmas, it said. Believed it too.’"
"‘I had a stint of guard duty that night so I would’ve had to leave the meeting anyway.’"
"‘This is the man you say is your friend?’"
"‘I had to rest the air-letter on the floor to write it. Turned my back to the coolies but could still feel them straining to know what the Englishman was doing.’"
"‘Your father’s lost his mind,’ she told me."
"He watched them grow, sometimes sitting for hours, his head in his hands, waiting for the shoots to push up into the light."
"Every time he looked at me was for the first time."
"The last thing he ever said to me was, ‘Derring-do, Bernard. Your pa’s off for derring-do.’"
"Who’s going to look after him? I didn’t say a thing. What was there to say? Who’d look after him? I would."
"Then the war came and the bombs. His excreta flowed freely again."
"It was the first time I realised she could be heartless."
"I held my pen above that blue flimsy paper on that prison floor... Soon the paper was too soggy to write on."
"The inevitable result of my sexual relations with the wrong type. Syphilis!"
"Sitting there at the rails of the ship the moonlight was brighter than an English February sky."
"England disappeared so quickly. Soon there was nothing but sea."
"‘I’m so sorry,’ I told the girl. She didn’t understand."
"What would Queenie think of her husband now? Trousers round my ankles in a brothel, defiling someone’s daughter."
"I watched on deck in drenching rain as the coastline gradually slipped into the sea."
"It was there, etched on to my eyes like an afterview of the sun."
"‘I’m an Englishman,’ I explained. ‘In the RAF. Back home I was a bank clerk. It’s a very responsible position.’"
‘I thought you were dead. It’s been years. And you just turn up and say, "Brighton!"’
"Her face softening back to a girlish sweetness. I doubt she’d ever seen a Tommy cry."
"‘Johnny. Johnny. No cry, Johnny.’ It was the name that did it."
"‘Take care and be sure and write.’ But she’d shut the front door behind me before I’d got down to the last step."
"Had it always looked so exhausted? So friable? Buildings decaying and run down. Rotting sashes. Cracked plaster."
"You think it makes you better than me. You think it give you the right to lord it over a black man. But you know what it make you? You wan’ know what your white skin make you, man? It make you white. That is all, man. White. No better, no worse than me – just white."
"I have everything I will need, Gilbert Joseph, everything I will need."
"Oh, Michael Roberts, he was my cousin’s son, we grew together."
"The baby is on its way. The head is there."
"You should have told me all this before, Bernard. You should have said before."
"And I said, ‘I’m crying ’cause it bloody hurts!’"
"I never dreamed England would be like this."
"And this Michael? ‘Oh, Michael Roberts, he was my cousin’s son, we grew together.’"
"I’m sorry I haven’t been a better husband to you."