The Dead Isle Quotes

“Trains are beautiful. They take people to places they've never been, faster than they could ever go themselves. Everyone who works on trains knows they have personalities, they're like people. They have their own mysteries.”
― Sam Starbuck, The Dead Isle

“Do you always try to upset the world as much as possible?" Clare asked.

He gave her a surprised look. "Of course. Otherwise how does anything change?”
― Sam Starbuck, The Dead Isle

“We [artists] aren't people, not the way most people are. We're just...carriers. Little boats bringing goods from foreign lands.”
― Sam Starbuck, The Dead Isle

“I mean it. Aside from the old coastal cities, which in Australia are still very young themselves, what you have is a vast stretch of wilderness, wholly natural, with all the horror that nature brings to the table when she dines."

"You make it sound like we'll barely survive," Clare said.

"Oh, I'm sure we will, at least the journey to Port Darwin. From there we won't have to struggle with anything more lethal than a train carriage, I hope. My point is that this is a young country in an old land. And those who don't walk with respect in the wilderness do have a tendency to get eaten.”
― Sam Starbuck, The Dead Isle

“The backfire, my dear boy, of exiling the cleverest criminals of the nation to one place and requiring them to use their ingenuity is that they will -- and you can't control what they do with it.”
― Sam Starbuck, The Dead Isle

“He was raised by wolves", she said, "wolves with pressing engineering diagrams to draw.”
― Sam Starbuck, The Dead Isle

“Electricity," Purva said, rolling the strange new word around in her mouth, giving it at once an Australian and a French inflection.

"Sir William was playing around with it when we met, do you remember?" Jack said to Clare. "He was storing charges in boxes."

"I remember he was blowing things up," Clare replied.

"Six of one..." Jack grinned. "Nobody really knows how it works, but down here it powers most of the lights in the big cities and parts of the automobiles and the stoves in the train kitchen. You can store the power in blocks, then hook it up to anything you might otherwise run on a boiler. It's cooler, and the blocks last longer than coal. I think I can reproduce it when we get home, if I can take enough schematics with me."

"He is going to kill himself," Purva said, but her tone was casual, not overly worried.

"I'm not going to kill myself," Jack answered, equally casual. "Just because it can cause your heart to stop doesn't mean it always does.”
― Sam Starbuck, The Dead Isle

“Life," Graveworthy said, when he saw Jack was awake and staring at him, "is a series of desperate gambles and boxing matches for the wits, bookended on the one side by events in which one is shot at, and on the other end by mornings like this.”
― Sam Starbuck, The Dead Isle

“You say great artists sell their souls for their art?"

"Maybe," she ventured.

"That's true, I suppose. If you're doing it right, anyway. I've probably sold mine. Jack's certainly sold his. And you, I imagine."

"I have not!" she said, anger showing clear in her eyes.

"Not literally," he said hastily. "But we give up being a person to be an artist, don't we?”
― Sam Starbuck, The Dead Isle

“He looked down at the desk, at his notebook resting there with the pen on top. He had never thought of engineering as a way to escape the world; after all, engineers didn't build stories or other worlds.

Or, well, perhaps they did; perhaps, late at night, huddled around the boiler with the driver and the conductor, they told their own stories. Famous robberies in the west, derailments, perhaps even ghost trains or passengers long dead who still prowled the carriages.

Either way, Jack had turned his profession into his escape, which Ellis could respect.”
― Sam Starbuck, The Dead Isle

“You must live a very free life."

"Me?" she laughed. "I am not who swoops out of the sky to rain fire on pirates!"

"Yeah, but before this I never did much. I mean I did a lot, but...I lived in a room at a university, and my whole world was in that little room. There was this world inside my head."

De la Fitte studied his head as if she could see through his skull to a little globe inside it somewhere.”
― Sam Starbuck, The Dead Isle

“Do Engineers have stories, Jack?" he asked.

"What?" Jack said, without moving.

"Stories. Myths. Things to keep the boredom out on a long shift."

"I think they play cards, mostly," Jack answered. It was a lie, but he told it with surprising deftness; not a waver in his voice or a hesitation in his words. Only the tightening of his shoulders told Ellis he was lying.”
― Sam Starbuck, The Dead Isle

“Miss Fields," said a servant, stepping into the room and closing the door, "There is a visitor for you. Are you in?"

Clare blinked. "Yes, obviously."

"Ah. Miss Fields, I should advise -- you may be in without being 'in', if you prefer," he said, offering her a tray. There was a calling card on it; Arthur Conan Doyle, Edinburgh.”
― Sam Starbuck, The Dead Isle