Island Quotes

“We are all wanderers and travellers, refugees and pilgrims until we return once more to the stars.”
― David Almond, Island

“The world will be our oyster. We'll be wandering stars. We'll be footloose and free.”
― David Almond, Island

“You should be worried," says Hassan. "I have seen worse monsters than you, Anderson. I have seen what nobody should see. I have felt what nobody should feel. I know what nobody should know. What would it be to me to see this knife in your throat? Nothing. What would it be for me to see you as dead as this deer? Nothing. What would it be to me to see you lying dead among the jetsam on the beach?”
― David Almond, Island

“Death is hungry and Destruction is determined and it does not like its intended victims to get away.”
― David Almond, Island

“I am happy. I am a baby, a toddler, a girl, a woman. I am Island. I am Lindisfarne. Everything comes together inside me. I know that I will go to Palmyra one day when peace has come, just as people come to Lindisfarne, just as Coral will go to Vietnam. War is not for ever. Peace will come. Civilisation will endure. The destroyers will overcome. The human heart will love and thrive.”
― David Almond, Island

“The photograph that will help this moment and this day live for ever more.”
― David Almond, Island

“Don't despair. Despair is what the barbarians want. Never give it to them.”
― David Almond, Island

“That's what civilisation is. It keeps on being recreated. Monsters like you can't hold it back.”
― David Almond, Island

“I am a thing of earth just like this sand.”
― David Almond, Island

“The world is dangerous, has always been and always will be dangerous. How can it be otherwise when there are human beings in it?”
― David Almond, Island

“I think there has always been death and destruction,' says Dark Star. 'Civilisation is always about to fall. So there has been a shooting and a bomb. But how many car crashes have there been today? How many people have been killed by cancer? And why do we talk only about the bad things?'
'That's right,' says Dad. 'The news is skewed. It doesn't tell us how many babies have been born today.' He puts his arm around the woman's waist. 'It doesn't tell us how many women and men have fallen in love today.”
― David Almond, Island

“Why are you here?'
'That is the question we all must ask ourselves. That is the question for which there is no answer.”
― David Almond, Island

“He exposes the star tattoo at the centre of his chest. He points to it.
'This is the star at the centre of the universe,' he says. 'Wherever I go in the tent of my skin, I am at the centre.”
― David Almond, Island

“Do you know we come from stars?'

He laughs at my silence.

'Every atom in your body was born in a dying star. Truly we are stardust. That is how far we come. We are young and we are as ancient as the universe. Our particles will return again to the universe when we are gone and new children will be made from them. We are all wanderers and travellers, refugees and pilgrims until we return once more to the stars. That is true history. That is true magic.”
― David Almond, Island

“The world is balanced between the bad and the good, between the bitter and the kind. The good and the kind are the strongest, even though they have fewer bombs and swords.”
― David Almond, Island

“And I also will write about the city of Palmyra, how the roads from it lead back through time, and forward to the whole world, to Lindisfarne and to Louise. I will teach children that they must be very careful in the way they grow up. They must not stop being children even when they are adults. They are the ones who must change the world.”
― David Almond, Island

“I listen to the night. I look out at the stars and sickle moon. The firmament is blazing. The Longstone Lighthouse turns and turns. Darkness then light. Darkness then light. The sea rises, falls, rises, falls. Mind moves and shifts through memories, facts, imaginings and gathering dreams. The time of the night, the condition of the mind, where what is real and what is dream seem to merge into each other, confuse each other.”
― David Almond, Island

“I am Dark Star. I am free. I wander the world at will. I go where I wish. Who is there to stop me?”
― David Almond, Island

“Do you know the city of Palmyra?'
'No.'
'Once it was a major city of the world. A place of temples to the sun and moon and of great archways curving against the desert sky. A place of trade, where all races lived as one. Then it fell as all civilisations can sem to fall. It was destroyed, its people were put to death.'
'That's terrible.'
'The destroyers were the Romans, those thought to be the great civilisers of the ancient world.”
― David Almond, Island

“What would a life be without wounds and scars?”
― David Almond, Island

“It's like a body,' I say suddenly, surprised myself at the thought.
'What is?' asks Coral.
'The book. The Gospels. They're made of skin. The skin of calves. And the words and pictures were marked on the skin. The book is like a body with writing on it. The words are like tattoos.”
― David Almond, Island

“Maybe all civilisations are destined to end,' she says. 'Maybe the destroyers are always waiting for their chance to move in.”
― David Almond, Island

“And I get this brand-new weird sensation: I am the island, the island is me. The harbour mouth is my mouth and the sea is turning inside me. And there are fish swimming in me, and seals, and seabirds flying through me.”
― David Almond, Island

“And that weird feeling comes, the one I always get when I'm here, like I'm me as I am now, but I'm also every age I've ever been - a baby, a toddler, a girl, a teenager. Then the other feeling comes, the one that sometimes stops me in my tracks, the one about the simple weirdness of being me. Why am I me, Louise Brooks, and not somebody else? Why am I not Dark Star or the woman in the garden? Why am I a human being and not a bird or a fish or a seal? Why am I alive, not dead? Why am I not a wave of water, or a rock or an anything?
…
But why? Why does the sun shine and the wind blow and…
No answers.
Such questions have no answers.
So don’t ask them, Louise.
But I can’t stop asking them.
I’ll never stop asking them.”
― David Almond, Island

“I go into the depths of the shed, where the keel curves down to the pointed prow, and there it is, the pencil drawing I made when I was four, the three of us in an upside-down boat surrounded by moons and stars. I'm wearing my favourite red-and-white polka dot dress. Dad calls it my cave painting, created in a distant past, at the very birth of the world. I coloured it in with crayons and it was very bright, almost luminous. I trace it with my fingers. I brush away some dust. Each year it's there, but each year a little more dull, more faded. How old will I be when at last it’s gone?”
― David Almond, Island

“Hair like a dark jagged gleaming star. Blurred birds on his pale skin. He comes from nothing, from nowhere.”
― David Almond, Island