Islands In The Stream Hemingway Quotes

Being against evil doesn't make you good. Tonight I was against it and then I was evil myself. I could feel it coming just like a tide... I just want to destroy them. But when you start taking pleasure in it you are awfully close to the thing you're fighting.

You roll back to me.

And you treat me wonderfully and keep all your promises.

But perhaps he had enough animal strength and detached intelligence that he could make another start.

You never understand anybody that loves you.

- What happens to people that love each other? - I suppose they have whatever they have, and they are more fortunate than others. Then one of them gets the emptiness forever.

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.

And chase hard and good and with no mistakes and do not overrun them.

He thought that he would lie down and think about nothing. Sometimes he could do this. 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 knew too what it was to live through a hurricane with the other people of the island and the bond that the hurricane made between all people who had been through it. He also knew that hurricanes could be so bad that nothing could live through them.

You have to make it inside of yourself wherever you are.

Practice any faith you wish. Got a ball field up the island where you can practice. I'll give the Deity a fast one high and inside if he crowds the plate.

They are not sorrows, so much as terrible things.

Nobody likes to life anchors.

I don’t have to be proud of it. I only have to do it well." – Thomas Hudson

Why do they have to be such damned fanatics? We chased good and we will always fight. But I hope we are not fanatics.

If the wind rises it can push us against the flood when it comes.

We’re no kin,” Thomas Hudson said. “We just used to live in the same town and make some of the same mistakes.

What are you made of?" "What you love. And steel added.

Ma di cosa sei fatta, tu?" "Di quello che ami" disse lei. "Più l'acciaio.

This is a bad life for good children

Just two so far,” Roger said. “My counselor and I.” “My counselor and me,” Johnny said. “How the hell do you write books?” “I can always hire someone to put in the grammar.

Grief doesn't split.

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 go around making themselves and everyone else miserable. He had never found happiness dull. It always seemed more exciting than any other thing and capable of as great intensity as sorrow to those people who were capable of having it. This may not be true but he had believed it to be true for a long time and this summer they had experienced happiness for a month now and, already, in the nights, he was lonely for it before it had ever gone away.

My Latin is very beat up,” Thomas Hudson said. “Along with my Greek, my English, my head, and my heart. All I know how to speak now is frozen daiquiri. ¿Tú hablas frozen daiquiri tú?

I do feel better, Thomas Hudson thought. That is the funny part. You always feel better and you always get over your remorse. There’s only one thing you don’t get over and that is death.

You have anything else eating you?” “Just in general.” “How?” “Well I’m half crazy and you’re half crazy and then we’ve got this crew of half saints and desperate men.” “It isn’t bad to be half saint and half desperate man.

He did not know what made him feel as he did. But

I think I understand, Willie,” he said. “Oh shit,” Willie said. “You never understand anybody that loves you.

They’re funny people,” Thomas Hudson said. “They’re all brave and some of them are so damned admirable. Then they have mean ones like this.

Ara went down and Thomas Hudson was alone with the night and the sea and he still rode it like a horse going downhill too fast across broken country.

There is a time to break all your rules. Maybe not all.

Just as she goes and watch for that no-good Minerva. Keep well inside of that and outside the sand-spits.

How are you? You old love-house of always.

And I know old songs such as the loss of John Jacob Astor on the Titanic when sunk by an iceberg and I would be glad to sing them rather than that no peas no rice song if you so wish.

I’ve been very happy with women. Desperately happy. Unbearably happy. So happy that I could not believe it; that it was like being drunk or crazy. But never as happy as with my children

Think about after the war and when you will paint again. There are so many good ones to paint and if you paint as well as you really can and keep out of all other things and do that, it is the true thing. You can paint the sea better than anyone now if you will do it and not get mixed up in other things. Hang on good now to how you truly want to do it. You must hold hard to life to do it.

Come aboard easy,” Thomas Hudson said to them. “Keep away from the stern. We got a Kraut dying on the stern that I want to have die easy. What did you find?” “Nothing,” Henry said. “Absolutely nothing.

Those damn .357’s are hard to get now because draft-dodging FBI’s have to use them to hunt down draft-dodgers,” the man said. “But a man has to fire a shot sometime or he doesn’t know how he is shooting.

Here he was, settled on the island, when he could as well be in Africa. Hell, he thought, I can always go there. You have to make it inside of yourself wherever you are. You are doing all right at that here.

The biggest boy was long and dark with Thomas Hudson’s neck and shoulders and the long swimmer’s legs and big feet. He had a rather Indian face and was a happy boy although in repose his face looked almost tragic.

Are you less sad now?” Honest Lil asked “Yes.” “Tell me, Tom. What are you sad about?” “El mundo entero.” “Who isn’t sad about the whole world? It goes worse all the time. But you can’t spend your time being sad about that.” “There isn’t any law against it.” “There doesn’t have to be a law against things for them to be wrong.

If I find any Krauts, can I kill them?” “The Colonel said all but one,” Thomas Hudson said. “Try to save a smart one.” “I’ll give them all IQ tests before I open up.” “Give yourself one.” “Mine’s goddam low or I wouldn’t be here,” Willie said, and he set out. He walked contemptuously and he watched the beach and the country ahead as carefully as a man could watch.

than those damn—Oh hell, I can’t even remember the name of them.” “You’re not supposed to swear when we are around,” Thomas Hudson corrected. “I’m sorry, papa,” the small boy said. “I can’t help it that I’m so damn young. I’m sorry again. I mean so young.

— Тъжен ли сте? — полюбопитствува тя. — Не. — Замислен? — Може би малко. Не зная. — В ден като днешния не заслужава изобщо да се мисли. — Съгласен съм. Няма да мисля. Мога ли да наблюдавам вълните? — Вълните са волни. — Искате ли да влезем още веднъж? — По-късно. — Кой ви е учил да плувате? — Вие.

Now the boy was gone and the kitten had grown into an old cat and had outlived the boy. The way he and Boise felt now, he thought, neither one wanted to outlive the other. I don't know how many people and animals have been in love before, he thought. It probably is a very comic situation. But I don't find it comic at all.

Tom,” Ara said. “All a man has is pride. Sometimes you have it so much it is a sin. We have all done things for pride that we knew were Impossible. We didn’t care. But a man must implement his pride with intelligence and care. Now that you have ceased to be careful of yourself I must ask you to be, please. For us and for the ship.

The good, brave, worthless son of a bitch, Thomas Hudson thought. Old Willie. He made up my mind for me when I was starting to put things off. I would rather have a good Marine, even a ruined Marine, than anything in the world when there are chips down. And we have chips down now. Good luck, Mr. Willie, he thought. And don’t drop dead.

There is no way for you to get what you need and you will never have what you want again. But there are various palliative measures you should take. Go ahead. Take one.

lumpenproletariat.

You have to make it inside of yourself wherever you are. You are doing all right at that here.

— Скажи мне, Том. Что тебя так огорчает? — El mundo enterо (Весь мир).

Нужно находить главное в себе самом, где бы ты ни был.

Make me a Tom Collins with coconut water and bitters to take. Put it in one of the cork holders.

I don't care if he kills me, the big son of a bitch,' David said. 'Oh hell. I don't hate him. I love him.

I know how you feel, Dave," Andrew said when he brought the Coke. "Nobody knows how I feel," David said.

We're no kin," Thomas Hudson said. "We just used to live in the same town and make some of the same mistakes.

But why did I ever leave Tom’s mother in the first place? You’d better not think about that, he told himself.

No. Hieronymus Bosch. Very old-timer. Very good. Pieter Brueghel worked on that too.

I want it to be rugged,” Roger had said. “I’m going to start new again.” “How many times is it now you’ve started new?” “Too many,” Roger had said. “And you don’t have to rub it in.

Antonio said, “Do you have any other orders?” “Just keep your bowels open and try to lead clean lives. We’ll be back in a little while. Come on, you two gentlemen bastards. Let’s go.

Just take that beautiful body down below, will you?” Wilson said. “I’m sure you’ll get the lady to sleep.” “You swine,” the man said. “You rotten swine.” “Can’t you think up any other names?” Frank said. “Swine’s getting awfully dull. You better go down below before you catch cold. If I had a wonderful chest like that I wouldn’t risk it out here on a windy night like this.

On the eastward crossing on the Ile de France Thomas Hudson learned that hell was not necessarily as it was described by Dante or any other of the great hell-describers, but could be a comfortable, pleasant, and well-loved ship taking you toward a country that you had always sailed for with anticipation. It had many circles and they were not fixed as in those of the great Florentine egotist. He had gone aboard the ship early, thinking of it, he now knew, as a refuge from the city where he had feared meeting people who would speak to him about what had happened.

For a part of a day it would be pleasant to have the house neat and to think alone and read without hearing other people talk and look at things without speaking of them and work properly without interruption and then he knew the loneliness would start. The three boys had moved into a big part of him again that, when they moved out, would be empty and it would be very bad for a while.

The east wind is blowing all the water out.” “The hell with the east wind,” Thomas Hudson said. As he said the words, they sounded like a basic and older blasphemy than any that could have to do with the Christian religion. He knew that he was speaking against one of the great friends of all people who go to sea. So since he had made the blasphemy he did not apologize. He repeated it.

A plan was a plan and a decision was truly a decision and knowing all this and having been well educated in the usages of divorce, Thomas Hudson was happy that a compromise had been made and that the children were coming for five weeks. If five weeks is what we get, he thought, 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.

She had the morals of a vacuum cleaner and the soul of a pari-mutuel machine, a good figure, and that lovely vicious face, and she only stayed with Roger long enough to get ready for her first good step upwards in life.

Tommy is a friend of Mr. Joyce.” “Boy, I’ll say I am,” said young Tom. “Papa, we never knew Balzac, did we?” “No. He was before our time.” “Nor Gautier? I found two swell ones by them at home too. The Droll Stories and Mademoiselle de Maupin. I don’t understand Mademoiselle de Maupin at all yet but I am reading it over to try to and it’s great. But if they weren’t friends of ours I think they would expel me sure if I read them to the boys.

Ever since they had grounded he had felt, in a way, reprieved. When they had grounded he had felt the heavy bump of the ship as though he were hit himself. He knew it was not rocky as she hit. He could feel that in his hands and through the soles of his feet. But the grounding had come to him as a personal wound. Then, later, had come the feeling of reprieve that a wound brings. He still had the feeling of the bad dream and that it all had happened before.

I'm sorry we haven't been friends." "Everybody is friends when things are bad enough." "I'm going to be friends from now on." "We're all going to do a lot of things from now on," Thomas Hudson said. "I wish from now on would start.

It looks almost as blue in there as it is out here. What makes the Gulf water so blue?” “It’s a different density of water. It’s an altogether different type of water.” “The depth makes it darker, though.” “Only when you look down into it. Sometimes the plankton in it make it almost purple.” “Why?” “Because they add red to the blue I think. I know they call the Red Sea red because the plankton make it look really red. They have terrific concentrations of them there.

Tell me about some more of those friends of mine, papa,” young Tom said. “I know I knew them and I know we used to be around cafés together but I’d like to know some more definite things about them. The sort of things I know about Mr. Joyce, say.” “Can you remember Mr. Pascin?” “No. Not really. What was he like?” “You can’t claim him as a friend if you don’t even remember him,” Andrew said. “Do you think I won’t be able to remember what Mr. Davis was like a few years from now?

How do you know that? he asked himself. Going away can be final. Walking out the door can be final. Any form of real betrayal can be final. Dishonesty can be final. Selling out is final. But you are just talking now. Death is what is really final. I wish Ara and Willie would get back. They must be rigging that hulk up like a chamber of horrors. I’ve never liked to kill, ever. But Willie loves it. He is a strange boy and very good, too. He is just never satisfied that a thing cannot be done better.

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. He had never found happiness dull.

There are whole villages in Extremadura in Spain that are built of rock that has very high grade wolfram ore and the stone fences of the peasant’s field are all made of this ore. Yet the peasants are very poor. At this time it was so valuable that we were using DC-2’s, transport planes such as fly from here to Miami, to fly it over from a field at Nam Yung in Free China to Kai Tak airport at Kowloon. From there it was shipped to the States. It was considered very scarce and of vital importance in our preparations for war

You truly think we will have a fight?” “I know it. Do not think about that. Think about details. Think about all the things you should do and how we should be a happy ship until we fight. I’ll think about the fight.” “I will go and do my duty as well as I can,” Henry said. “I wish we could practice the fight so I could do my part better.” Thomas Hudson said, “You’ll do it all right. I do not see any way that we can miss it.” “It’s been so very long,” Henry said. “But everything is long,” Thomas Hudson told him. “And pursuit is the longest.

It was her. No one else got out of a car that way, practically and easily and beautifully and at the same time as though she were doing the street a great favor when she stepped on it: Everyone had tried to look like her for many years and some came quite close. But when you saw her, all the people that looked like her were only imitations. She was in uniform now and she smiled at the doorman and asked him a question and he answered happily and nodded his head and she started across the sidewalk and into the bar. There was another woman in uniform behind her.

Oh, in Hong Kong the millionaires had scouts all through the country. All over China. It was just like the Brooklyn Dodgers’ baseball team looking for ballplayers. As soon as a beautiful girl was located in any town or village their agents bought her and she was shipped in and trained and groomed and cared for.

No,” the girl said. “My father spent his money and lost his money after he married mother and none of my stepfathers ever made any provision for me.” “You don’t have to have money,” Andrew said to her. “Why don’t you live with us?” young Tom asked her. “You’d be fine with us.” “It sounds lovely. But I have to make a living.” “We’re going to Paris,” Andrew said. “You come along. It will be wonderful. You and I can go and see all the arrondissements together.” “I’ll have to think it over,” the girl said. “Do you want me to make you a drink to help you decide?” David said. “That’s what they always do in Mr. Davis’s books.

Thomas Hudson had studied tropical storms for many years and he could tell from the sky when there was a tropical disturbance long before his barometer showed its presence. He knew how to plot storms and the precautions that should be taken against them. He knew too what it was to live through a hurricane with the other people of the island and the bond that the hurricane made between all people who had been through it. He also knew that hurricanes could be so bad that nothing could live through them. 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.

So I wasn’t feeling so good about tonight. There’s a lot of wickeds at large. Really bads. And hitting them is no solution. I think that’s one reason why they provoke you.” He turned over on the bed and lay face up. “You know evil is a hell of a thing, Tommy. And it’s smart as a pig. You know they had something in the old days about good and evil.” “Plenty of people wouldn’t classify you as a straight good,” Thomas Hudson told him. “No. Nor do I claim to be. Nor even good nor anywhere near good. I wish I were though. 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.

Thomas Hudson had the feeling that this had happened before in a bad dream. They had run many difficult channels. But this was another thing that had happened sometime in his life. Perhaps it had happened all his life. But now it was happening with such an intensification that he felt both in command and at the same time the prisoner of it.

Really I don’t. And you know if you get so you can’t see you won’t be able to write.” “I’ll dictate,” Roger said. “Like Milton.” “I know you dictate beautifully,” young Tom said. “But this morning when Miss Phelps tried to take it off the machine it was mostly music.” “I’m writing an opera,” Roger said. “I know you’ll write a wonderful opera, Mr. Davis. But don’t you think we ought to finish the novel first? You took a big advance on the novel.” “Finish it yourself,” Roger said. “You ought to know the plot by now.” “I know the plot, Mr. Davis, and it’s a lovely plot but it has that same girl in it that you had die in that other book and people may be confused.” “Dumas did the same thing.

Thomas Hudson had gone in there to fill water, the dogs from the shacks were huddled with the pigs that had burrowed in the mud and dogs and pigs both were gray from the solid blanket of mosquitoes that covered them. It was a wonderful key when the east wind blew day and night and you could walk two days with a gun and be in good country. It was country as unspoiled as when Columbus came to this coast. Then, when the wind dropped, the mosquitoes came in clouds from the marshes. To say they came in clouds, he thought, is not a metaphor. They truly came in clouds and they could bleed a man to death. The people we are searching for would not have stopped in Romano. Not with this calm. They must have gone further up the coast.

After he and this girl split up in Paris, Roger was on the town; really on the town. He joked about it and made fun of himself; but he was very angry inside for having made such a profound fool of himself and he took his talent for being faithful to people, which was the best one he had, next to the ones for painting and writing and his various good human and animal traits, and beat and belaboured that talent miserably. He was no good to anyone when he was on the town, especially to himself, and he knew it and hated it and he took pleasure in pulling down the pillars of the temple. It was a very good and strongly built temple and when it is constructed inside yourself it is not so easy to pull down. But he did as good a job as he could.

He had been successful in almost every way except in his married life, although he had never cared, truly, about success. What he cared about was painting and his children and he was still in love with the first woman he had been in love with. He had loved many women since and sometimes someone would come to stay on the island. He needed to see women and they were welcome for a while. He liked having them there, sometimes for quite a long time. But in the end he was always glad when they were gone, even when he was very fond of them. He had trained himself not to quarrel with women anymore and 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.

Maybe this time you will get these characters. You did not destroy their undersea boat but you were faintly instrumental in its destruction. If you can round up the crew, it will be extremely useful. Then why don’t you care anything about anything? he asked himself. Why don’t you think of them as murderers and have the righteous feelings that you should have? Why do you just pound and pound on after it like a riderless horse that is still in the race? Because we are all murderers, he told himself. We all are on both sides, if we are any good, and no good will come of any of it. But you have to do it. Sure, he said. But I don’t have to be proud of it. I only have to do it well. I didn’t hire out to like it. You did not even hire out, he told himself. That makes it even worse.

Now I don't give a shit I lost him," David said. "I don't care about the records. I just thought I did. I'm glad that he's all right and that I'm all right. We aren't enemies." "I'm glad you told us," Thomas Hudson said. "Thank you very much, Mr. Davis for what you said when I first lost him," David said with his eyes still shut. Thomas Hudson never knew what it was that Roger had said to him.

He held them in his hand and looked at them as a man who was panning for gold, expecting only flakes, would look at four nuggets in his pan. The four bullets had black noses. Now the meat was out of them, the short twist rifling showed clearly. They were 9mm standard issue for the Schmeisser machine pistol. They made the man very happy. They picked up all the hulls, he thought. But they left these as plain as calling cards.

But the happiness of the summer began to drain out of him as when the tide changes on the flats and the ebb begins in the channel that opens out to sea. He watched the sea and the line of beach and he noticed that the tide had changed and the shore birds were working busily well down the slope of new wet sand. The breakers were diminishing as they receded. He looked a long way up along the shore and then went into the house.

Gee, Mr. Davis, I can’t remember much about that time. I think it was about Italian writers and about Mr. Ford. Mr. Joyce couldn’t stand Mr. Ford. Mr. Pound had gotten on his nerves, too. ‘Ezra’s mad, Hudson,’ he said to papa. I can remember that because I thought mad meant mad like a mad dog and I remember sitting there and watching Mr. Joyce’s face, it was sort of red with awfully smooth skin, cold weather skin, and his glasses that had one lens even thicker than the other, and thinking of Mr. Pound with his red hair and his pointed beard and his nice eyes, with white stuff sort of like lather dripping out of his mouth. I thought it was terrible Mr. Pound was mad and I hoped we wouldn’t run into him. Then Mr. Joyce said, ‘Of course Ford’s been mad for years,’ and I saw Mr. Ford with his big, pale, funny face and his pale eyes and his mouth with the teeth loose in it and always about half open and that awful lather dripping down his jaws too.

My friend Mr. Joyce has words and expressions I’d never even heard of. I’ll bet nobody could outswear him in any language.” “Then after that he made up a whole new language,” Roger said. He was lying on his back on the beach with his eyes closed. “I can’t understand that new language,” young Tom said. “I guess I’m not old enough for it. But wait until you boys read Ulysses.” “That’s not for boys,” Thomas Hudson said. “It isn’t really. You couldn’t understand it and you shouldn’t try to. Really. You have to wait till you’re older.

That something I cannot yet define completely but the feeling comes when you write well and truly of something and know impersonally you have written in that way and those who are paid to read it and report on it do not like the subject so they say it is all a fake, yet you know its value absolutely; or when you do something which people do not consider a serious occupation and yet you know, truly, that it is as important and has always been as important as all th things that are in fashion, and when, on the sea, you are alone with it and know that this Gulf Stream you are living with, knowing, learning about, and loving, has moved, as it moves, since before man and that it has gone by the shoreline of that long, beautiful, unhappy island since before Columbus sighted it and that the things you find out about it, and those that have always lived in it are permanent and of value because that stream will flow, as it has flowed, after the Indians, after the Spaniards, after the British, after the Americans and after all the Cubans and all the systems of governments, the richness, the poverty, the martyrdom, the sacrifice and the venality and the cruelty are all gone as the high-piled scow of garbage, bright-colored, white-flecked, ill-smelling, now tilted on its side, spills off its load into the blue water, turning it a pale green to a depth of four or five fathoms as the load spreads across the surface, the sinkable part going down and the flotsam of palm fronds, corks, bottles, and used electric light globes, seasoned with an occasional condom or a deep floating corset, the torn leaves of a student's exercise book, a well-inflated dog, the occasional rat, the no-longer-distinguished cat; well shepherded by the boats of the garbage pickers who pluck their prizes with long poles, as interested, as intelligent, and as accurate as historians; they have the viewpoint; the stream, with no visible flow, takes five loads of this a day when things are going well in La Habana and in ten miles along the coast it is as clear and blue and unimpressed as it was ever before the tug hauled out the scow; and the palm fronds of our victories, the worn light bulbs of our discoveries and the empty condoms of our great loves float with no significance against one single, lasting thing - the stream.

Maybe we better knock off talking,” Roger said. “I’m liable to start thinking about the novel. Tommy, why is it fun to paint well and hell to write well? I never painted well. But it was fun even the way I painted.” “I don’t know,” Thomas Hudson said. “Maybe in painting the tradition and the line are clearer and there are more people helping you. Even when you break from the straight line of great painting, it is always there to help you.” “I think another thing is that better people do it,” Roger said. “If I were a good enough guy maybe I could have been a good painter. Maybe I’m just enough of a son of a bitch to be a good writer.

That’s good,” young Tom said. “I told the headmaster neither papa nor Mr. Joyce had dirty minds and now I can tell him about Mr. Davis if he asks me. He was pretty set on it that I had a dirty mind. But I wasn’t worried. There’s a boy at school that really has one and you can tell the difference all right. What was Mr. Pascin’s first name?” “Jules.” “How do you spell it?” David asked. Thomas Hudson told him. “What ever became of Mr. Pascin?” young Tom asked. “He hanged himself,” Thomas Hudson said. “Oh gee,” Andrew said. “Poor Mr. Pascin,” young Tom said in benediction. “I’ll pray for him tonight.” “I’m going to pray for Mr. Davis,” Andrew said. “And do it often,” Roger said.

Think about after the war and when you will paint again. There are so many good ones to paint and if you paint as well as you really can and keep out of all other things and do that, it is the true thing. You can paint the sea better than anyone now if you will do it and not get mixed up in other things. Hang on good now to how you really want to do it. You must hold hard to life to do it. But life is a cheap thing beside a man's work. The only thing is that you need it. hold it tight. Now is the true time you make your play. Make it now without hope of anything. you always coagulated well and you can make one more real play. We are not the lumpenproletariat. We are the best and we do it for free.

I think fairies are all awfully sad,” she said. “Poor fairies.” “This was sort of funny though,” David said. “Because this worthless man that taught Tommy backgammon was explaining to Tommy what it meant to be a fairy and all about the Greeks and Damon and Pythias and David and Jonathan. You know, sort of like when they tell you about the fish and the roe and the milt and the bees fertilizing the pollen and all that at school and Tommy asked him if he’d ever read a book by Gide. What was it called, Mr. Davis? Not Corydon. That other one? With Oscar Wilde in it.” “Si le grain ne meurt,” Roger said. “It’s a pretty dreadful book that Tommy took to read the boys in school. They couldn’t understand it in French, of course, but Tommy used to translate it. Lots of it is awfully dull but it gets pretty dreadful when Mr. Gide gets to Africa.” “I’ve read it,” the girl said. “Oh fine,” David said. “Then you know the sort of thing I mean. Well this man who’d taught Tommy backgammon and turned out to be a fairy was awfully surprised when Tommy spoke about this book but he was sort of pleased because now he didn’t have to go through all the part about the bees and flowers of that business and he said, ‘I’m so glad you know,’ or something like that and then Tommy said this to him exactly; I memorized it: ‘Mr. Edwards, I take only an academic interest in homosexuality. I thank you very much for teaching me backgammon and I must bid you good day.

was a disappointment. It had many of the inventions that lonely people use to save themselves and even achieve unloneliness with and he had made the rules and kept the customs and used them consciously and unconsciously. But since the boys were here it had come as a great relief not to have to use them. It would be bad, though, he thought, when he started all that again. He knew very well how it would be. For a part of a day it would be pleasant to have the house neat and to think alone and read without hearing other people talk and look at things without speaking of them and work properly without interruption and then he knew the loneliness would start. The three boys had moved into a big part of him again that, when they moved out, would be empty and it would be very bad for a while.

Tommy," Willie said. "I love you, you son of a bitch, and don't die." Thomas Hudson looked at him without moving his head. "Try and understand if it isn't too hard." Thomas looked at him. He felt far away now and there were no problems at all. He felt the ship gathering her speed and the lovely throb of her engines against his shoulder blades which rested hard against the boards. H elooked up and there was the sky that he had always loved and he looked across the great lagoon that he was quite sure, now, he would never paint and he eased his position a little to lessen the pain. The engines were around three thousand now, he thought, and they came through the deck and into him. "I think I understand, Willie," he said. "Oh shit," Willie said. "You never understand anybody that loves you.

hardening steel, yet anyone could go out and dig up as much of it in the hills of the New Territories as he or she could carry on a flat basket balanced on the head to the big shed where it was bought clandestinely. I found this out when I was hunting wood pigeons and I brought it to the attention of people purchasing wolfram in the interior. No one was very interested and I kept bringing it to the attention of people of higher rank until one day a very high officer who was not at all interested that wolfram was there free to be dug up in the New Territories said to me, ‘But after all, old boy, the Nam Yung set-up is functioning you know.’ But when we shot in the evenings outside the women’s prison and would see an old Douglas twin-motor plane come in over the hills and slide down toward the airfield, and you knew it was loaded with sacked wolfram and had just flown over the Jap lines, it was strange to know that many of the women in the women’s prison were there for having been caught digging wolfram illicitly.