Islands In The Stream Quotes
"It was a safe and fine place to bathe in the day but it was no place to swim at night."
"The house felt almost as much like a ship as a house."
"Sometimes he would put the lamp out and lie on the rug on the floor and watch the edges of color that the sea salt and the sand in the wood made in the flame as they burned."
"If five weeks is what we get, that is what we draw. Five weeks is a good long time to be with people that you love and would wish to be with always."
"He had learned how not to get married. These two things had been nearly as difficult to learn as how to settle down and paint in a steady and well-ordered way."
"He was a big man and he looked bigger stripped than he did in his clothes."
"He had long ago ceased to worry and he had exorcised guilt with work insofar as he could, and all he cared about now was that the boys were coming over and that they should have a good summer."
"The true hurricane months have fine weather when there are no storms."
"He always thought, though, that if there was ever one that bad he would like to be there for it and go with the house if she went."
"He believed he had made something there that would last and that would hold him."
"Being against evil doesn’t make you good. Tonight I was against it and then I was evil myself. I could feel it coming in just like a tide."
"You’re a strong son of a bitch," he said to the man. "Who the hell ever told you you could fight?"
"You think you’ve learned not to talk to people?" he asked the man.
"There’s an awful lot of real bastards loose," Roger said. "That guy was no good, Tom."
"I’m the only guy here still likes to have any fun," Frank said. "All you big overgrown religious maniacs and social workers and hypocrites—"
"You know evil is a hell of a thing, Tommy. And it’s smart as a pig."
"You’ve been going around with awful people, too."
"I think maybe you taught him a hell of a lesson."
"No. I don’t think so. It was the same thing out on the coast."
"Happiness is often presented as being very dull but, he thought, lying awake, that is because dull people are sometimes very happy and intelligent people can and do go around making themselves and everyone else miserable."
"I’ve been a fool and I do not like fools. But that was over now and the boys were here and they loved him and he loved them."
"But you could not have them any more than you could have the children; nor that who you loved could be alive if who you loved was dead or gone out from your life."
"Out of all the things you could not have there were some that you could have and one of those was to know when you were happy and to enjoy all of it while it was there and it was good."
"There is no substitute for talent either and you don’t have to keep them in a chalice. The one is inside you. It is in your heart and in your head and in every part of you."
"But Roger must start now to use what he has blunted and perverted and cheapened and all of it is in his head. But au fond he has something fine and sound and beautiful."
"I wish that I could help him. Maybe I can, he thought, and then he was asleep."
"You’d never make a rummy. You like to work too well."
"It would be pretty easy to be a rummy, wouldn’t it, Eddy?"
"It’s a fine stream. Look at the little curl of the whirlpools along the edge."
"It’s a different density of water. It’s an altogether different type of water."
"I loved it. It was awfully hot but you never saw such wonderful reefs and it’s full of fish on the two monsoons."
"It’s just one of those things you have to take. I don’t think anyone likes school, do they, that has ever done anything else?"
"Sometimes it’s a pretty close thing, though."
"Nobody in our family’s ever caught a broadbill."
"He’s the one has the hook in his goddam mouth. He isn’t giving me a beating. I’m giving him a beating."
"I’m sorry I called him the names. I don’t want to say anything against him. I think he’s the finest thing in the world."
"Thank you very much for going overboard," David said. "Thank you very much, Eddy."
"Hell," Eddy said. "What else was there to do?"
"In the worst parts, when I was the tiredest I couldn’t tell which was him and which was me."
"Then I began to love him more than anything on earth."
"I loved him so much when I saw him coming up that I couldn’t stand it," David said, his eyes still shut. "All I wanted was to see him closer."
"Now I don’t give a shit I lost him," David said. "I don’t care about records. I just thought I did. I’m glad that he’s all right and that I’m all right. We aren’t enemies."
"What a miserable, selfish way to be thinking about people that you love," he thought.
"Go to bed now," he told himself, "and make yourself sleep. The hell with anything else."
"Remember you want them to be happy tomorrow."
"I kept waiting for truth and right to win and then somebody new would knock truth and right right on its ass."
"I hurt but I ain’t hurt. Hell, you ought to have been there, Tom."
"Hell, I don’t give a damn about the eye. I can see out of it fine."
"I think he was through. I think he’d decided to give up."
"It’s going to be awfully hard to paint the underwater part."
"You couldn’t paint him jumping, too, could you?"
"It's probably too rough for a stingray to lie in the sand anyway."
"We’re not big kings of underwater like he is."
"I take only an academic interest in homosexuality."
"Nobody ever plays backgammon unless they have nothing else to do."
"All right. Let's not think. Is it all right if I watch the waves?"
"You relax awfully well, Boy, and you sleep good."
"I wish you could have seen us come into the mouth of the harbor with the sea breaking over the Morro."
"That was the great thing about pictures; you could love them with no hopelessness at all."
"You're always drinking against something or for something now."
"I drink against poverty, dirt, four-hundred-year-old dust."
"Be thankful that you are going out on her again and thank her for being your home."
"Let’s not even make a list of what we will not think of about it. Let’s not think of it at all."
"It is a hell of a thing to do. I ought to look at it closely and do something about it."
"I suppose he could warm up by walking his post."
"By spring, I probably will not recognize him."
"I would like to take my cross and stick it up the culo of a lot of people I know."
"It is necessary to take things with calm and patience."
"You cannot conceive of how hard life is now for us Cubans."
"Sometimes, even on a day such as today, I believe it is."
"You always liked a norther and you bought me this coat to wear when we have them."
"But there is no saddlery on a ship and the tweeds are impregnated with the dead pipe smell."
"Telling never did me any good. Telling is worse for me than not telling."
"The happiest day I ever had was any day when I woke in the morning when I was a boy and I did not have to go to school or to work."
"Desperately happy. Unbearably happy. So happy that I could not believe it; that it was like being drunk or crazy."
"You simply dig up the dirt and haul it away."
"The fish market was wonderful in the early morning when the fish were brought in shining and fresh caught."
"There are whole villages in Extremadura in Spain that are built of rock that has very high grade wolfram ore."
"There’s only one thing you don’t get over and that is death."
"What percentage of water are we composed of?" "Eighty-seven and three-tenths."
"You always feel better and you always get over your remorse."
"To the party," the Alcalde Peor said. He raised his glass.
"I know now why people eat at wakes and before funerals."
"It’s all right, Boise," he said. "I’ll be back before we shove."
"All a man has is pride. Sometimes you have it so much it is a sin."
"Nothing proves anything except that those two boats were seen on the course we are on three days ago."
"They fixed up those people back on the key nice, too."
"There isn’t any proof. Somebody will claim it is a stiff they pushed out that we picked up."
"You saw the squalls over Romano yesterday. She is going into the south."
"It is as though she were saying we are all friends now and there will never be any trouble nor any wildness again."
"Why is she so dishonest? A river can be treacherous and cruel and kind and friendly."
"It’s nice to wake up in the morning and steer with the sun behind you."
"There’s no sense our carrying them around with us."
"What would you think if you were a German, Ara?"
"The day was all gentle promise and the sea lay smooth and clear."
"But the ocean always has to lie to you before she does it."
"Sometimes he could think about the stars without wondering about them and the ocean without problems and the sunrise without what it would bring."
"He had traded in remorse for another horse that he was riding now."
"He slept and he dreamed that the cabin was burned and someone had killed his fawn that had grown into a young buck."
"All you have now is a basic problem and your intermediate problems. That is all you have so you better like it."