The Island of Last Things Quotes

“My generation, we're like animals born in captivity: we accept the state of things because it's pretty much all we've ever known. Sailor was old enough to have experienced a better world. And that knowledge was a sadness she could never shake.”
― Emma Sloley, The Island of Last Things

“I had always thought there wasn’t time for beauty anymore. That there was something frivolous about it—the pursuit of it, the mindless worship of it as laid out in the old movies we liked to watch. I had thoroughly internalized the notion that usefulness was the only metric of whether something had value. A carabiner was useful. A multitool was useful. Schedules were useful, as were cages and bars. Tranquilizer darts were regrettable but useful. A flower could be useful but only because it might provide food or diversion for a bird or animal, not because it was beautiful. Its beauty was incidental and easily dismissed. But then Sailor arrived, and I realized that even the smallest sliver of beauty matters and can be useful. Not because it makes a difference on some cosmic level, but because it quiets our restless hearts for a moment. It whispers to us that joy is still possible.”
― Emma Sloley, The Island of Last Things: A Novel

“Much as I'd always enjoyed the balm of the plants and flowers, it had never occurred to me to aspire to work in here. I suppose I've been so single-mindedly committed to the animals, with their flesh-and-blood needs and their inescapable demands, that these other gentler living things have been obscured to me. I regret that now. There was always so much more than I have allowed myself to see.”
― Emma Sloley, The Island of Last Things

“So many of the animals are sensitive, exquisitely attuned to the emotional state of those around them. They can pick up the smallest frequencies of distress or anger, and it can make them act in ways that clueless keepers disapprovingly call "erratic." It's not erratic, though, to be influenced by the mood of someone close to you. Humans do it all the time.”
― Emma Sloley, The Island of Last Things

“If her years at the zoo had taught her anything, it was that no creature was as dangerous as a man being laughed at.”
― Emma Sloley, The Island of Last Things

“I had never been alone in a room with Mr. Pinkton before, and when he entered, my only thought was that for such a slim man, he took up a surprising amount of space. Was it surprising, though? Power is expansive.”
― Emma Sloley, The Island of Last Things

“It's so weird the way people started smoking again," said Sailor. "You might not know this, but everyone stopped smoking for years and years. And then, boom."

"What's your theory?" Again, I knew she'd have one. We loved our theories.

"My theory is people decided everything else was fucked, so it didn't even matter anymore. They might as well kill themselves in the manner of their own choosing.”
― Emma Sloley, The Island of Last Things

“Seeing how scared the elephants were forced him to consider how fragile they were. Of course, I had always known this. Having a thick hide doesn't shield you from the terrible things the world has in store.”
― Emma Sloley, The Island of Last Things

“It's just that the animals matter in a way that's hard to define. They matter not only because a particular species will die out if we don't lock its last members away in here, but because they belong to us, to the whole story of this Earth, and without them the story would not be as beautiful or as profound. Anyone who has ever stopped to watch a hummingbird beat its tiny wings to a stillness as it draws the nectar out of a flower with its long, curled tongue will know what I mean. The natural world is beautiful even when it is terrible, even when it is engaged in ritual slaughter. Any antelope who has ever felt the hot breath of a lion on its neck will know what I mean. In that last moment of its life, the antelope surely regrets that it will never again experience the thrum of the savannah under hoof, the generous shade of the acacia tree, the smell of water running over smooth white rocks. It wishes not to have to leave this beautiful world.

The natural world and the nonhuman beings in it are part of what makes this life worth living. If we kill all the beauty around us, we kill a part of ourselves. These thoughts whirl around pointlessly in my head, never resolving, just coming back to their starting point like a snake devouring its tail.”
― Emma Sloley, The Island of Last Things

“No one had told me what a heady stimulant not caring was.”
― Emma Sloley, The Island of Last Things

“I wanted it to be true more than just about anyone, but there's a lot of country between what you want to be true and how the world is.”
― Emma Sloley, The Island of Last Things

“I just preferred living day to day: the only strategy I'd found to successfully immunize myself against both the past and the future.”
― Emma Sloley, The Island of Last Things

“I had thoroughly internalized the notion that usefulness was the only metric of whether something had value. A carabiner was useful. A multitool was useful. Schedules were useful, as were cages and bars. Tranquilizer darts were regrettable but useful. A flower could be useful but only because it might provide food or diversion for a bird or animal, not because it was beautiful. Its beauty was incidental and easily dismissed. But then Sailor arrived, and I realized that even the smallest sliver of beauty matters and can be useful. Not because it makes a difference on some cosmic level, but because it quiets our restless hearts for a moment. It whispers to us that joy is still possible.”
― Emma Sloley, The Island of Last Things

“Everyone starts off enthusiastic but then, I don't know. They just sort of give up."

Sailor nodded. "I saw it in Paris too. That doomer mentality. It's a virus that takes hold when a generation feels like there's no future.”
― Emma Sloley, The Island of Last Things

“Staring at the photo, something sputtered awake in her, a bright and terrible flame whose oxygen was hope.”
― Emma Sloley, The Island of Last Things

“I was happy like I always was when existence was reduced to completing a single task or series of tasks. When I ceased to be a mind in charge of a body and became just the body itself.”
― Emma Sloley, The Island of Last Things

“She hadn't been born, as some of her compatriots had been, with the Gallic zeal for burning down the institutions of oppression. But it was becoming too stark to ignore. There was no better world just waiting for them: they were going to have to go out and make it for themselves.”
― Emma Sloley, The Island of Last Things

“What kind of billionaire ever did anything for the public good?”
― Emma Sloley, The Island of Last Things

“There's also an advisory board that's very into"--I made air quotes--"'optimal productivity.' Some theory about how productivity increases when workers don't know what their work is going to be each day. Switching from one task to another helps employees adapt and become more nimble? Something like that."

"Well, that's completely psychotic," Sailor said, but in an unsurprised way. "Wonder how many members of this illustrious advisory board own sweatshop empires, am I right?”
― Emma Sloley, The Island of Last Things

“Her face was stony. I wasn't surprised: I could already tell she was someone who knew how to keep potentially dangerous emotions concealed.”
― Emma Sloley, The Island of Last Things

“The bombing was new but the amorphous rage that sought a target was not. Sailor could feel it constantly vibrating beneath everything, like an approaching train that sets the rails humming. Soon it would come for them too.”
― Emma Sloley, The Island of Last Things

“Feliz is our lone jaguar. The last jaguar we had before him died of despair. That wasn't the official cause of death, of course not, but we all knew it. The rumor goes that the zoo's owners, the Pinkton family, paid an obscene amount to acquire another jaguar, probably the only one on Earth, given the state of the countries in which the creature's natural habitat once existed. Feliz was plucked out of the last few acres of the Amazon as the bulldozers waited, like customers impatiently hovering while a buffet is prepared. So Feliz is kind of a big deal. He doesn't appear cognizant of this fact, however. If anything, he looks to be on a mission to wear away the floor of his enclosure until he drops right through the earth and out of this life. He paces without cease. His nails are worn to stubs and his mouth hangs open in a perpetual rictus that wrecks your heart. He longs to forget all this, and to be forgotten.”
― Emma Sloley, The Island of Last Things

“With her fingers pressed against mine, a jolt of recognition went through me, recalling the very first day we met, when we had spontaneously clasped hands watching Titan’s arrival. Except her hands had been warm then, and this time they were cold. It felt like several decades had passed since that day instead of only a year.”
― Emma Sloley, The Island of Last Things: A Novel

“Oh, sister, I’ve been there. You know what really helps, though?
Realizing none of us are important in the slightest. Not me, not you.”
“Thanks, that’s really reassuring.”
― Emma Sloley, The Island of Last Things

“I didn’t grasp exactly what she meant, but there was a flattering intimacy
to her banter that made me feel like I was on a date. Not that I’d ever been
on a date—what Joseph and I had didn’t really rise to the level of dating—
but I’d heard about them and seen them in movies.”
― Emma Sloley, The Island of Last Things