“
Fifteen men on the Dead Man's Chest Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum! Drink and the devil had done for the rest Yo-ho-ho, and a bottle of rum!
”
”
Robert Louis Stevenson (Treasure Island)
“
Seaward ho! Hang the treasure! It's the glory of the sea that has turned my head.
”
”
Robert Louis Stevenson (Treasure Island)
“
Of all the delectable islands the Neverland is the snuggest and most compact, not large and sprawly, you know, with tedious distances between one adventure and another, but nicely crammed. When you play at it by day with the chairs and table-cloth, it is not in the least alarming, but in the two minutes before you go to sleep it becomes very nearly real. That is why there are night-lights.
”
”
J.M. Barrie (Peter Pan)
“
She’d always loved the mountains, but as she turned back to face the spectacular seascape in the distance, she nearly lost her breath at the diversity of beauty to be found on this ancient, tiny island. She remembered a thought she’d had, just briefly, during her first day ever walking in Ireland, when they were going down through the forest on the way from Glenmalure to Glendalough. I could live my life doing this, she’d thought. And she’d done that, for a while.
”
”
Steven Decker (Projector for Sale)
“
Because Peter promised them adventures and happiness and then took them away to the island where they died. They weren’t forever young, unless dying when you were young kept you that way for always.
”
”
Christina Henry (Lost Boy: The True Story of Captain Hook)
“
Who would wave a flag to be rescued if they had a desert island of their own? That was the thing that spoilt Robinson Crusoe. In the end he came home. There never ought to be an end.
”
”
Arthur Ransome
“
Well, you know what grown-ups are,' said Dinah. 'They don't think the same way as we do. I expect when we grow up, we shall think like them - but let's hope we remember what it was like to think in the way children do, and understand the boys and the girls that are growing up when we're men and women.
”
”
Enid Blyton (The Island of Adventure (Adventure, #1))
“
Ithaka
As you set out for Ithaka
hope the voyage is a long one,
full of adventure, full of discovery.
Laistrygonians and Cyclops,
angry Poseidon—don’t be afraid of them:
you’ll never find things like that on your way
as long as you keep your thoughts raised high,
as long as a rare excitement
stirs your spirit and your body.
Laistrygonians and Cyclops,
wild Poseidon—you won’t encounter them
unless you bring them along inside your soul,
unless your soul sets them up in front of you.
Hope the voyage is a long one.
May there be many a summer morning when,
with what pleasure, what joy,
you come into harbors seen for the first time;
may you stop at Phoenician trading stations
to buy fine things,
mother of pearl and coral, amber and ebony,
sensual perfume of every kind—
as many sensual perfumes as you can;
and may you visit many Egyptian cities
to gather stores of knowledge from their scholars.
Keep Ithaka always in your mind.
Arriving there is what you are destined for.
But do not hurry the journey at all.
Better if it lasts for years,
so you are old by the time you reach the island,
wealthy with all you have gained on the way,
not expecting Ithaka to make you rich.
Ithaka gave you the marvelous journey.
Without her you would not have set out.
She has nothing left to give you now.
And if you find her poor, Ithaka won’t have fooled you.
Wise as you will have become, so full of experience,
you will have understood by then what these Ithakas mean.
”
”
Constantinos P. Cavafy (C.P. Cavafy: Collected Poems)
“
After lunch, they went for a walk around the island. The sun was out, but the wind was brisk, bringing a chill into their hands and faces. They arrived at the viewing point on the northwest corner of the island. The waves from the Atlantic crashed relentlessly against the rocks. They took a seat together on a large, smooth stone and gazed out at the sea and the barrier islands. Orla sat between Aideen and Dani. They all held hands. For a while, no words were spoken, but then Orla broke the silence. “What do ya’ think will happen to us in 2253?” she asked.
”
”
Steven Decker (Time Chain)
“
Life is very complicated. Filled with dreams and adventures, and disasters and broken hearts, too.
”
”
Lisa McMann (Island of Shipwrecks (Unwanteds, #5))
“
Yes, movies! Look at them — All of those glamorous people — having adventures — hogging it all, gobbling the whole thing up! You know what happens? People go to the movies instead of moving! Hollywood characters are supposed to have all the adventures for everybody in America, while everybody in America sits in a dark room and watches them have them! Yes, until there's a war. That's when adventure becomes available to the masses! Everyone's dish, not only Gable's! Then the people in the dark room come out of the dark room to have some adventures themselves — Goody, goody! — It's our turn now, to go to the south Sea Island — to make a safari — to be exotic, far-off! — But I'm not patient. I don't want to wait till then. I'm tired of the movies and I am about to move!
”
”
Tennessee Williams (The Glass Menagerie)
“
The gems are worth more on the island than off it.
”
”
Marie Montine (Mourning Grey: Part Three The Guardians Of The Temple Saga)
“
To the Hesitating Purchaser:
"If sailor tales to sailor tunes,
Storm and adventure, heat and cold,
If schooners, islands, and maroons
And Buccaneers and buried Gold
And all the old romance, retold,
Exactly in the ancient way,
Can please, as me they pleased of old,
The wiser youngsters of to-day:
-So be it, and fall on! If not,
If studious youth no longer crave,
His ancient appetites forgot,
Kingston, or Ballantyne the brave,
Or Cooper of the wood and wave:
So be it, also! And may I
And all my pirates share the grave,
Where these and their creations lie!
”
”
Robert Louis Stevenson
“
Sometimes the isle was thick with savages, with whom we fought, sometimes full of dangerous animals that hunted us, but in all my fancies nothing occurred to me so strange as our actual adventures.
”
”
Robert Louis Stevenson (Treasure Island)
“
How did one begin an adventure? Almost any road you took would lead there, if only you went on far enough.
”
”
Barbara Newhall Follett (Lost Island)
“
Perhaps the palms had been whispering warnings in the sultry breeze.
”
”
T.L. Parker (The Devil's Graveyards)
“
The young man, who does not know the future, sees life as a kind of epic adventure, an Odyssey through strange seas and unknown islands, where he will test and prove his powers, and thereby discover his immortality. The man of middle years, who has lived the future that he onced dreamed, sees life as a tragedy; for he has learned that his power, however great, will not prevail against those forces of accident and nature to which he gives the names of gods, and has learned that he is mortal. But the man of age, if he plays his assigned role properly, must see life as a comedy. For his triumphs and his failures merge, and one is no more the occasion for pride or shame than the other; and he is neither the hero who proves himself against those forces, nor the protagonist who is destroyed by them. Like any poor, pitiable shell of an actor, he comes to see that he has played so many parts that there no longer is himself.
”
”
John Williams (Augustus)
“
Come along,' she said. 'They're waiting.'
He had never felt so happy in the whole of his life! Without a word they made it up. They walked down to the lake. He had twenty minutes of perfect happiness. Her voice, her laugh, her dress (something floating, white, crimson), her spirit, her adventurousness; she made them all disembark and explore the island; she startled a hen; she laughed; she sang. And all the time, he knew perfectly well, Dalloway was falling in love with her; she was falling in love with Dalloway; but it didn't seem to matter. Nothing mattered. They sat on the ground and talked-he and Clarissa. They went in and out of each other's minds without any effort. And then in a second it was over. He said to himself as they were getting into the boat, 'She will marry that man,' dully, without any resentment; but it was an obvious thing. Dalloway would marry Clarissa.
”
”
Virginia Woolf (Mrs. Dalloway)
“
Cat," said Peterkin, turning his head a little on one side, "I love you.
”
”
R.M. Ballantyne (The Coral Island: A Tale of the Pacific Ocean)
“
The Hispaniola still lay where she had anchored; but, sure enough, there was the Jolly Roger--the black flag of piracy--flying from her peak.
”
”
Robert Louis Stevenson (Treasure Island)
“
I didn’t believe him at first, about the island, though.”
“I didn’t either,”I said. “I don’t know that anyone does. It sounds like a fantastic lie.”
“It is a fantastic lie,” Sal said, and her face was very earnest. “This isn’t a wonderful place for boys to play and have adventures and stay young for always. It’s a killing place, and we’re all just soldiers in Peter’s war.
”
”
Christina Henry (Lost Boy: The True Story of Captain Hook)
“
Ah, there," said Morgan, "that comed of sp'iling Bibles."
"That comes--as you call it--of being arrant asses," retorted the doctor.
”
”
Robert Louis Stevenson (Treasure Island)
“
Let us not disdain the ass,
”
”
Johann David Wyss (The Swiss Family Robinson; or Adventures in a Desert Island)
“
A noble mind finds its purest joy in the accomplishment of its duty, and to that willingly sacrifices its inclination.
”
”
Johann David Wyss (The Swiss Family Robinson; or Adventures in a Desert Island)
“
Then maybe growing up doesn’t always mean carving out the magic from your soul. Maybe — just maybe — growing up can be a way of letting your dreams expand, like a falling star becoming a magical island resting in the middle of a galaxy.
Maybe growing up isn’t letting you soul die but entering another adventure. -Peter
”
”
Kara Swanson (Dust (Heirs of Neverland, #1))
“
I find myself wondering how many other memories are hidden from me in the recesses of my own brain; indeed my own brain will seem to be the last great terra incognita, and I will be filled with wonder at the prospect of some day discovering new worlds there. Imagine the lost continent of Atlantis and all the submerged islands of childhood right there waiting to be found. The inner space we have never adequately explored. The worlds within worlds within worlds. And the marvelous thing is that they are waiting for us. If we fail to discover them, it is only because we haven't yet built the right vehicle - spaceship or submarine or poem - which will take us to them.
It's for this, partly, that I write. How can I know what I think unless I see what I write? My writing is the submarine or spaceship which takes me to the unknown worlds within my head. And the adventure is endless and inexhaustible. If I learn to build the right vehicle, then I can discover even more territories. And each new poem is a new vehicle, designed to delve a little deeper (or fly a little higher) than the one before.
”
”
Erica Jong (Fear of Flying)
“
We all look back at some time or other and wonder why we didn't listen to our instincts. Why did we hestiate? Why did we lose our dreams?
”
”
Diane Griffith (Chasing Dreams in Lefkas)
“
Life is very complicated,” he said with a little laugh. “Filled with dreams and adventures, and disasters and broken hearts, too.
”
”
Lisa McMann (Island of Shipwrecks (Unwanteds, #5))
“
Beyond the wall of the unreal city … there is another world waiting for you. It is the old true world of the deserts, the mountains, the forests, the islands, the shores, the open plains. Go there. Be there. Walk gently and quietly deep within it. And then —
May your trails be dim, lonesome, stony, narrow, winding and only slightly uphill. May the wind bring rain for the slickrock potholes fourteen miles on the other side of yonder blue ridge. May God's dog serenade your campfire, may the rattlesnake and the screech owl amuse your reverie, may the Great Sun dazzle your eyes by day and the Great Bear watch over you by night.
”
”
Edward Abbey
“
I stood against the wind, watching the movement of the water around the coral islands. It pushed up the shelf gently, and if it was as calm beneath the surface as it was above, I could do the dive in just minutes
”
”
Adrienne Young (Fable (The World of the Narrows, #1))
“
I had no desire to have either dreams or adventures like Alice, and the amount of them merely amused me. I had very little desire to look for buried treasure or fight pirates, and Treasure Island left me cool. Red Indians were better: there were bows and arrows (I had and have a wholly unsatisfied desire to shoot well with a bow), and strange languages, and glimpses of an archaic mode of life, and, above all, forests in such stories. But the land of Merlin and Arthur was better than these, and best of all the nameless North of Sigurd of the Völsungs, and the prince of all dragons. Such lands were pre-eminently desirable.
”
”
J.R.R. Tolkien
“
too young to live, too old to die
”
”
Jeffrey Rasley (Island Adventures: Disconnecting in the Caribbean and South Pacific)
“
If life were a sea adventure, I knew: I wouldn't be sailor, pirate, or cabin boy but more likely a barnacle clinging to the side of the boat.
”
”
Sara Levine (Treasure Island!!!)
Jonathan Swift (The Adventure Collection: Treasure Island, The Jungle Book, Gulliver's Travels, White Fang, The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood (The Heirloom Collection))
“
It is said that kids have no use for the word 'then'. It is said that only 'now' and 'this minute' count with kids. It is said that kids believe time began the day they were born. How sad if this were true. It would mean kids believe they live on a tiny, isolated island in time. It would mean that when they look back, they fail to see the fascinating human adventure that led up to that day when they were born. It would mean that when they look back, they see...nothing.
”
”
Jerry Spinelli (Today I Will: A Year of Quotes, Notes, and Promises to Myself)
“
The moral, I suppose, would be that the first requirements for a heroic career are the knightly virtues of loyalty, temperance, and courage. The loyalty in this case is of two degrees or commitments: first, to the chosen adventure, but then, also, to the ideals of the order of knighthood. Now, this second commitment seems to put Gawain's way in opposition to the way of the Buddha, who when ordered by the Lord of Duty to perform the social duties proper to his caste, simply ignored the command, and that night achieved illumination as well as release from rebirth. Gawain is a European and, like Odysseus, who remained true to the earth and returned from the Island of the Sun to his marriage with Penelope, he has accepted, as the commitment of his life, not release from but loyalty to the values of life in this world. And yet, as we have just seen, whether following the middle way of the Buddha or the middle way of Gawain, the passage to fulfillment lies between the perils of desire and fear.
”
”
Joseph Campbell (The Power of Myth)
“
Oh, they have just a bully time—take ships and burn them, and get the money and bury it in awful places in their island where there's ghosts and things to watch it, and kill everybody in the ships—make 'em walk a plank.
”
”
Mark Twain (The Adventures of Tom Sawyer)
“
He leaves his wife to manage the inn; and as she is a woman of color, a pair of old bachelors like you and I may be excused for guessing that it is the wife, quite as much as the health, that sends him back to roving J.
”
”
Jonathan Swift (The Adventure Collection: Treasure Island, The Jungle Book, Gulliver's Travels, White Fang, The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood (The Heirloom Collection))
“
As you set out on your journey to Ithaca,
pray that your journey be a long one,
filled with adventure, filled with discovery.
Laestrygonians and Cyclopes,
the angry Poseidon--do not fear them:
you'll never find such things on your way
unless your sight is set high, unless a rare
excitement stirs your spirit and your body.
The Laestrygonians and Cyclopes,
the savage Poseidon--you won't meet them
so long as you do not admit them to your soul,
as long as your soul does not set them before you.
Pray that your road is a long one.
May there be many summer mornings
when with what pleasure, with what joy,
you enter harbors never seen before.
May you stop at Phoenician stations of trade to buy fine things,
mother of pearl and coral, amber and ebony,
and voluptuous perfumes of every kind--
buy as many voluptuous perfumes as you can.
And may you go to many Egyptian cities
to learn and learn from those who know.
Always keep Ithaca in your mind.
You are destined to arrive there.
But don't hurry your journey at all.
Far better if it takes many years,
and if you are old when you anchor at the island,
rich with all you have gained on the way,
not expecting that Ithaca will give you wealth.
Ithaca has given you a beautiful journey.
Without her you would never have set out.
She has no more left to give you.
And if you find her poor, Ithaca has not mocked you.
As wise as you have become, so filled with experience,
you will have understood what these Ithacas signify.
”
”
Barry B. Powell (Classical Myth)
“
Alexander Smollett, master; David Livesey, ship's doctor; Abraham Gray, carpenter's mate; John Trelawney, owner; John Hunter and Richard Joyce, owner's servants, landsmen--being all that is left faithful of the ship's company--with stores for ten days at short rations, came ashore this day and flew British colours on the log-house in Treasure Island. Thomas Redruth, owner's servant, landsman, shot by the mutineers; James Hawkins, cabin boy--'
And at the same time, I was wondering over poor Jim Hawkins' fate.
”
”
Robert Louis Stevenson (Treasure Island)
“
Elephants of the Gun-Team
”
”
Jonathan Swift (The Adventure Collection: Treasure Island, The Jungle Book, Gulliver's Travels, White Fang, The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood (The Heirloom Collection))
“
I have a great respect for what can come out of the vagina: some wonderful kids and lots of bleeding
”
”
Pam Belluck (Island Practice: Cobblestone Rash, Underground Tom, and Other Adventures of a Nantucket Doctor)
“
In the meantime, without realising it, I had learned a valuable lesson - in the need for an author to have a total belief in their characters if they are to come alive!
”
”
Robin Rowles (The Mystery on Lighthouse Island (The Fabulous Four Mystery Series, #1))
“
She wanted love, adventure, and wild, fierce emotions that would batter her, as storms battered the island. I am thirteen, Christina thought, I am ready. I want it all.
”
”
Caroline B. Cooney (Fog (Losing Christina, #1))
“
but in all my fancies nothing occurred to me so strange and tragic as our actual adventures.
”
”
Robert Louis Stevenson (Treasure Island)
Jonathan Swift (The Adventure Collection: Treasure Island, The Jungle Book, Gulliver's Travels, White Fang, The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood (The Heirloom Collection))
“
This something sparked on a little island off the rocky coast of Maine would grow from a twinge to a hunger to a need you would spend years, a decade, a lifetime pursuing.
”
”
Heather Durham (Going Feral: Field Notes on Wonder and Wanderlust)
“
Men do not know how much they are capable of doing till they try
”
”
R.M. Ballantyne
Jonathan Swift (The Adventure Collection: Treasure Island, The Jungle Book, Gulliver's Travels, White Fang, The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood (The Heirloom Collection))
“
Solomon Island scourges, dysentery, had struck Berande plantation, and he was all alone to cope with it. Also, he was afflicted himself. By stooping close, still on man-back, he managed to pass through the low doorway. He took
”
”
Jack London (Adventure)
“
You can work it out by Fractions or by simple Rule of Three, But the way of Tweedle-dum is not the way of Tweedle-dee. You can twist it, you can turn it, you can plait it till you drop, But the way of Pilly-Winky’s not the way of Winkie-Pop!
”
”
Jonathan Swift (The Adventure Collection: Treasure Island, The Jungle Book, Gulliver's Travels, White Fang, The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood (The Heirloom Collection))
“
Neverland is always more or less an island, with astonishing splashes of colour here and there, and coral reefs and rakish-looking craft in the offing, and savages and lonely lairs, and gnomes who are mostly tailors, and caves through which a river runs, and princes with six elder brothers, and a hut fast going to decay, and one very small old lady with a hooked nose.
”
”
J.M. Barrie (The Complete Adventures of Peter Pan)
“
If sailor tales to sailor tunes, Storm and adventures, heat and cold, If schooners, islands, and maroons, And Buccaneers and buried Gold, And all the old romance, retold Exactly in the ancient way, Can please, as me they pleased of old, The wiser youngsters of to-day:
”
”
Jonathan Swift (The Adventure Collection: Treasure Island, The Jungle Book, Gulliver's Travels, White Fang, The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood (The Heirloom Collection))
“
Not so long ago, I spent a period in New York City, that teeming island of gneiss and concrete and glass, inhabiting loneliness on a daily basis. Though it wasn't by any means a comfortable experience, I began to wonder if Woolf wasn't right, if there wasn't more to the experience than meets the eye -- if, in fact, it didn't drive one to consider some of the larger questions of what it is to be alive.
”
”
Olivia Laing (The Lonely City: Adventures in the Art of Being Alone)
“
ketch all alone with a black crew from Malaita. And Romance lured and beckoned before Joan’s eyes when she learned he was Christian Young, a Norfolk Islander, but a direct descendant of John Young, one of the original Bounty mutineers. The blended Tahitian and English blood showed in his soft
”
”
Jack London (Adventure)
“
Clara shrugged and immediately knew her betrayal of Peter. In one easy movement she'd distanced herself from his bad behavior, even thought she herself was responsible for it. Just before everyone had arrived, she'd told Peter about her adventure with Gamache. Animated and excited she'd gabbled on about her box and the woods and the exhilarating climb up the ladder to the blind. But her wall of words hid from her a growing quietude. She failed to notice his silence, his distance, until it was too late and he'd retreated all the way to his icy island. She hated that place. From it he stood and stared, judged, and lobbed shards of sarcasm.
'You and your hero solve Jane's death?'
'I thought you'd be pleased,' she half lied. She actually hadn't thought at all, and if she had, she probably could have predicted his reaction. But since he was comfortably on his Inuk island, she'd retreat to hers, equipped with righteous indignation and warmed by moral certitude. She threw great logs of 'I'm right, you're an unfeeling bastard' onto the fire and felt secure and comforted.
”
”
Louise Penny (Still Life (Chief Inspector Armand Gamache, #1))
“
This book tells the story of that moment in time. It is a story of high adventure set during the age of exploration—when Francis Drake, Henry Hudson, and Captain John Smith were expanding the boundaries of the world, and Shakespeare, Rembrandt, Galileo, Descartes, Mercator, Vermeer, Harvey, and Bacon were revolutionizing human thought and expression.
”
”
Russell Shorto (The Island at the Center of the World)
“
Magic has a price... and so does paradise." - Pearl Dale, Mermaid Island #1
”
”
Alexa D. Wayne (Memory Remains (Mermaid Island #1))
“
The Song that Toomai’s Mother sang to the Baby
”
”
Jonathan Swift (The Adventure Collection: Treasure Island, The Jungle Book, Gulliver's Travels, White Fang, The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood (The Heirloom Collection))
“
He had never felt so happy in the whole of his life! Without a word they made it up. They walked down to the lake. He had twenty minutes of perfect happiness. Her voice, her laugh, her dress (something floating, white, crimson), her spirit, her adventurousness; she made them all disembark and explore the island; she startled a hen; she laughed; she sang. And all the time, he knew perfectly well, Dalloway was falling in love with her; she was falling in love with Dalloway; but it didn't seem to matter. Nothing mattered. They sat on the ground and talked - he and Clarissa. They went in and out of each other's minds without any effort. And then in a second it was over. He said to himself as they were getting into the boat, "She will marry that man," dully, without any resentment; but it was an obvious thing. Dalloway would marry Clarissa.
”
”
Virginia Woolf (Mrs. Dalloway)
“
I tumbled wildly through the air. The ground was so far away I could see the entire island: the misty stone mountains and verdant jungle surrounded by white sand and teal ocean. I was higher than a flock of birds, higher than a human had any right being. And it would have been extraordinary and beautiful had I, you might recall, not been falling to my very imminent and no doubt painful death. I did scream now, quite loudly.
”
”
Shannon Chakraborty (The Adventures of Amina al-Sirafi (Amina al-Sirafi, #1))
“
Avast there! Who are you? Tom Morgan? Maybe you thought you was the Cap'n here, perhaps. By the powers but I'll teach you better! Cross me and you'll go where many a good man's gone before you! First and last! These thirty year back, some to the yard arm, shiver my sides! Some by the board, -and all to feed the fishes. There's never a man who looked me between th eyes an' seen a good day a'terwards! Tom Morgan! -You may lay to that.
”
”
Robert Louis Stevenson (Books for Boys: Treasure Island / A Journey to the Centre of the Earth / The Adventures of Tom Sawyer)
“
And now the minister prayed. A good, generous prayer it was, and went into details: it pleaded for the church, and the little children of the church; for the other churches of the village; for the village itself; for the county; for the State; for the State officers; for the United States; for the churches of the United States; for Congress; for the President; for the officers of the Government; for poor sailors, tossed by stormy seas; for the oppressed millions groaning under the heel of European monarchies and Oriental despotisms; for such as have the light and the good tidings, and yet have not eyes to see nor ears to hear withal; for the heathen in the far islands of the sea; and closed with a supplication that the words he was about to speak might find grace and favor, and be as seed sown in fertile ground, yielding in time a grateful harvest of good. Amen.
”
”
Mark Twain (The Adventures of Tom Sawyer)
“
I clung tightly to Kwan’s mane as he propelled his great serpent body through the cloud banks. The cockatrice’s big green head dipped under the clouds, and I spotted an emerald island below, with dramatic peaks jutting up from the jungle. I asked the great cockatrice for the name of the isle, but he only laughed at me, saying that names changed faster than a century’s wind. That didn’t seem very fast to me, but I took his word for it.
”
”
Heather Heffner (Year of the Tiger (Changeling Sisters, #2))
“
Airplane Dream #13' told the story, more or less, of a dream Rosa had had about the end of the world. There were no human beings left but her, and she had found herself flying in a pink seaplane to an island inhabited by sentient lemurs. There seemed to be a lot more to it -- there was a kind of graphic "sound track" constructed around images relating to Peter Tchaikovsky and his works, and of course abundant food imagery -- but this was, as far as Joe could tell, the gist. The story was told entirely through collage, with pictures clipped from magazines and books. There were pictures from anatomy texts, an exploded musculature of the human leg, a pictorial explanation of peristalsis. She had found an old history of India, and many of the lemurs of her dream-apocalypse had the heads and calm, horizontal gazes of Hindu princes and goddesses. A seafood cookbook, rich with color photographs of boiled crustacea and poached whole fish with jellied stares, had been throughly mined. Sometimes she inscribed text across the pictures, none of which made a good deal of sense to him; a few pages consisted almost entirely of her brambly writing, illuminated, as it were, with collage. There were some penciled-in cartoonish marginalia like the creatures found loitering at the edges of pages in medieval books.
”
”
Michael Chabon (The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay)
“
The Soviets were worried that the Americans would attack their "sparkling new Mir space station, ... in a space shuttle, throw out grappling hooks, forcibly board the peaceful habitat and claim it as captured territory. To the hard-core Soviet mind-set, the American government was an unstable combination of cowboys and gangsters, unpredictable and capable of any insane action. The cosmonauts would have to be armed against outrageous aggression.
”
”
James Mahaffey (Atomic Adventures: Secret Islands, Forgotten N-Rays, and Isotopic Murder)
“
Their greatest danger was in the disbelief of their teachers. Though every one had a copy of the law, few read it; all were ready, by some excuse, to avoid this duty. Some asserted they knew it, yet never thought on it: some called these the laws of past times; not of the present. Other said the Great King did not regard the actions of his subjects, that he had neither mines nor dungeons, and that all would certainly be taken to the Heavenly City.
”
”
Johann David Wyss (The Swiss Family Robinson; or Adventures in a Desert Island)
“
As the show's executive producer, I envisioned something akin to "Gilligan's Island" meets Lord of the Flies meets Ten Little Indians mets "The Real World." "Survivor" marks a return to a core element of adventure: staying alive.
”
”
Mark Burnett (Survivor : The Ultimate Game)
“
Giordino, on the other hand, simply sighed in resignation. “Who else,” he asked no one in particular, “but Dirk Pitt could tramp off into a blizzard on an uninhabited backwater island in the Antarctic and discover a beautiful girl?
”
”
Clive Cussler (Shock Wave (Dirk Pitt Adventure Book 13))
“
All Summer in a Day” by Ray Bradbury Because of Winn-Dixie by Kate DiCamillo Big Nate series by Lincoln Peirce The Black Cauldron (The Chronicles of Prydain) by Lloyd Alexander The Book Thief by Markus Zusak Brian’s Hunt by Gary Paulsen Brian’s Winter by Gary Paulsen Brown Girl Dreaming by Jacqueline Woodson Bud, Not Buddy by Christopher Paul Curtis The Call of the Wild by Jack London The Cat in the Hat by Dr. Seuss Charlotte’s Web by E. B. White The Chronicles of Narnia series by C. S. Lewis Diary of a Wimpy Kid series by Jeff Kinney Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury The Giver by Lois Lowry Goodnight Moon by Margaret Wise Brown Harry Potter series by J. K. Rowling Hatchet by Gary Paulsen The High King (The Chronicles of Prydain) by Lloyd Alexander The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien Holes by Louis Sachar The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins I Am LeBron James by Grace Norwich I Am Stephen Curry by Jon Fishman Island of the Blue Dolphins by Scott O’Dell Johnny Tremain by Esther Hoskins Forbes Julie of the Wolves by Jean Craighead George Kidnapped by Robert Louis Stevenson LeBron’s Dream Team: How Five Friends Made History by LeBron James and Buzz Bissinger The Lightning Thief (Percy Jackson and the Olympians) by Rick Riordan A Long Walk to Water by Linda Sue Park The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood by Howard Pyle Number the Stars by Lois Lowry The Outsiders by S. E. Hinton The River by Gary Paulsen The Sailor Dog by Margaret Wise Brown Sarah, Plain and Tall by Patricia MacLachlan Shiloh by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor “A Sound of Thunder” by Ray Bradbury Star Wars Expanded Universe novels (written by many authors) Star Wars series (written by many authors) The Swiss Family Robinson by Johann D. Wyss Tales from a Not-So-Graceful Ice Princess (Dork Diaries) by Rachel Renée Russell Tales of a Fourth Grade Nothing by Judy Blume “The Tell-Tale Heart” by Edgar Allan Poe Treasure Island by Robert Louis Stevenson Tuck Everlasting by Natalie Babbitt Under the Blood-Red Sun by Graham Salisbury The Very Hungry Caterpillar by Eric Carle When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L’Engle
”
”
Andrew Clements (The Losers Club)
“
Ian Fleming
The CBC Interview, 1953
He doesn’t use Anglo-Saxon four-letter words, “I don’t like seeing them on the page.”
When asked why his novels are so popular in light of the dirtiness of the trade (of espionage), Fleming said, “The books have pace and plenty of action. And espionage is not regarded by the majority of the public as a dirty trade. They regard it as a rather sort of ah, ah very romantic affair… Spying has always been regarded as (a) very romantic one-man job, so-to-speak. A one man against a whole police force or an army.”
Regarding heroes of his time, Fleming said, “I think that although they may have feet of clay, ah, we probably all have, and all human beings have, there’s no point in dwelling entirely on the feet. There are many other parts of the animal to be examined. And I think people like to read about heroes.”
BBC Interview on Desert Island Discs
Question: Had the character of James Bond been growing in your mind for a long time?
Ian Fleming’s response: “No, I can’t say I had, really. He sort of, ah, developed when I was just on the edge of getting married, after having been a bachelor for so long, and I really wanted to take my mind off the agony. And so I decided to sit down and write a book.”
Question: How much long do you think you can keep Bond going?
Ian Fleming’s response: “Well, I don’t know. It depends on how much I, how much more I can go on following his adventures.”
Question: You don’t feel he’s keeping you from more serious writing?
Ian Fleming’s response: “No. I’m not in the Shakespeare stakes. I’ve got no ambitions.
”
”
Ian Fleming
“
Sometimes we'd have that whole river all to ourselves for the longest time. Yonder was the banks and the islands, across the water; and maybe a spark-- which was a candle in a cabin window... It's lovely to live on a raft. We had the sky up there, all speckled with stars, and we used to lay on our backs and look up at them, and discuss about whether they was made or only just happened; Jim he allowed they was made, but I allowed they happened; I judged it would have took too long to make so many. Jim said the moon could 'a' laid them; well, that looked kind of reasonable... because I've seen a frog lay most as many, so of course it could be done. We used to watch the stars that fell, too, and see them streak down. Jim allowed they'd got spoiled and was hove out of the nest.
Once or twice of a night we would see a steamboat slipping along in the dark, and now and then she would belch a whole world of sparks up out of her chimbleys, and they would rain down in the river and look awful pretty; then she would turn a corner and her lights would wink out and her powwow shut off and leave the river still again; and by and by her waves would get to us, a long time after she was gone, and joggle the raft a bit, and after that you wouldn't hear nothing for you couldn't tell how long, except maybe frogs or something.
”
”
Mark Twain (The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn)
“
And after the Lone Islands?” said Lucy.
“No one knows, your Majesty,” answered Drinian. “Unless the Lone Islanders themselves can tell us.”
“They couldn’t in our days,” said Edmund.
“Then,” said Reepicheep, “it is after the Lone Islands that the adventure really begins.
”
”
C.S. Lewis (The Voyage of the Dawn Treader (Chronicles of Narnia, #3))
“
But already this isn't quite right. The first apartment I had wasn't on the island at all. It was in Brooklyn Heights, a few blocks away from where I would have been living in the alternate reality of accomplished love, the ghostly other life that haunted me for almost two full years.
”
”
Olivia Laing (The Lonely City: Adventures in the Art of Being Alone)
“
A romance is never just a romance, there's adventure, mystery and movement.
You need a grand, dramatic setting - the Swiss Alps were always an personal favourite of mine - and a chance meeting, on a train, a cruise, or perhaps the hero and heroine find themselves shipwrecked on a desert island.
The men are normally rich, well-to-do - but never vulgar with their money. Young men lack the maturity to take control so an older man is essential to provide the reassurance the heroine's needs.
There's always a fair amount of turbulence before he sweeps in to save the day. A happy ending is an absolute must.
”
”
Ida Pollock
“
As most young candidates for the pains and penalties of whaling stop at this same New Bedford, thence to embark on their voyage, it may as well be related that I, for one, had no idea of so doing. For my mind was made up to sail in no other than a Nantucket craft, because there was a fine, boisterous something about everything connected with that famous old island, which amazingly pleased me. Besides though New Bedford has of late been gradually monopolizing the business of whaling, and though in this matter poor old Nantucket is now much behind her, yet Nantucket was her great original— the Tyre of this Carthage;—the place where the first dead American whale was stranded. Where else but from Nantucket did those aboriginal whalemen, the Red-Men, first sally out in canoes to give chase to the Leviathan? And where but from Nantucket, too, did that first adventurous little sloop put forth, partly laden with imported cobblestones—so goes the story— to throw at the whales, in order to discover when they were nigh enough to risk a harpoon from the bowsprit?
”
”
Herman Melville (Moby-Dick)
“
When I sit up I am greeted by the world. Level with the treetops I look down on sparrows swooping in and out of the branches. The tide, the new rising moon, the clouds, the wind - these greet me. These are my allies. The whole planet is laid out before me and available for whatever adventure the day will take me on.
By comparison, living in society seems to require an alarm clock. Primarily assembled from angst and fish anuses, these contraptions, regardless of your soul's whereabouts, will slap and assault you into a pitiful state of what passes for consciousness. Your first sight is the Time, an arragement of molecules on the clock's face to whom you will be enslaved for the rest of the day. You may as well call him "master." Next, a pile of dirty clothes on the floor, a knocked-over glass of water, and so forth, until you are so overwhelmed with despair that to prevent hurling yourself through the window, you must ignore your personal bill of rights, put on an acceptable frown, and go about your business, disregarding the pleas from you increasingly timid soul.
”
”
Daniel Hays (On Whale Island: Notes from a Place I Never Meant to Leave)
“
In the meanwhile Don Quixote was bringing his powers of persuasion to bear upon a farmer who lived near by, a good man-if this title may be applied to one who is poor-but with very few wits in his head. The short of it is, by pleas and promises, he got the hapless rustic to agree to ride forth with him and serve him as his squire. Among other things, Don Quixote told him that he ought to be more than willing to go, because no telling what adventure might occur which would win them an island, and then he (the farmer) would be left to be the governor of it. As a result of these and other similar assurances, Sancho Panza forsook his wife and children and consented to take upon himself the duties of squire to his neighbor.
”
”
Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra (Don Quixote)
“
selvage of gray-blue radiation from the kitchen tube fringed the bedroom door and mingled with a pale shaft of nocturnal Brooklyn, a compound derived from the halos of streetlights, the headlamps of trolleys and cars, the fires of the borough’s three active steel mills, and the shed luster of the island kingdom across the river, which came slanting in through a parting in the curtains.
”
”
Michael Chabon (The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay)
“
Now, I knew not, that there was any thing in my own appearance calculated to disarm ridicule; and, indeed, to have looked at all heroic, under the circumstances, would have been rather difficult. Still, I could not but feel exceedingly annoyed at the prospect of being screamed at in turn, by this mischievous young witch, even though she were but an islander. And, to tell a secret, her beauty had something to do with this sort of feeling; and, pinioned as I was, to a log, and clad most unbecomingly, I began to grow sentimental. Ere her glance fell upon me, I had, unconsciously, thrown myself into the most graceful attitude I could assume, leaned my head upon my hand, and summoned up as abstracted an expression as possible. Though my face was averted, I soon felt it flush,
”
”
Herman Melville (Omoo: A Narrative of Adventures in the South Seas)
“
Intense sunlight rained down on a half-submerged city. Waves crashed between buildings that stood like waterlogged tombstones. Skyscrapers of smashed glass and twisted rusting metal jutted from the churning swell as islands of broken dreams. A familiar tower with a familiar clock face…Big Ben. London stared back at Blue. What was left of it. A sea-drowned cemetery for a time and a place long dead.
”
”
Kev Heritage (Blue Into The Rip (Into The Rip #1))
“
It was in a swampy village on the lagoon river behind the Turner Peninsula that Pollock's first encounter with the Porroh man occurred. The women of that country are famous for their good looks - they are Gallinas with a dash of European blood that dates from the days of Vasco da Gama and the English slave-traders, and the Porroh man, too, was possibly inspired by a faint Caucasian taint in his composition. (It's a curious thing to think that some of us may have distant cousins eating men on Sherboro Island or raiding with the Sofas.) At any rate, the Porroh man stabbed the woman to the heart as though he had been a mere low-class Italian, and very narrowly missed Pollock. But Pollock, using his revolver to parry the lightning stab which was aimed at his deltoid muscle, sent the iron dagger flying, and, firing, hit the man in the hand.
He fired again and missed, knocking a sudden window out of the wall of the hut. The Porroh man stooped in the doorway, glancing under his arm at Pollock. Pollock caught a glimpse of his inverted face in the sunlight, and then the Englishman was alone, sick and trembling with the excitement of the affair, in the twilight of the place. It had all happened in less time than it takes to read about it.
("Pollock And The Porroh Man")
”
”
H.G. Wells (Great Tales of Horror and the Supernatural)
“
His eyes narrowed to menacing slits. “But that doesn’t mean that if you refuse my offer and stay, I’ll stand by and let you have her. I won’t. In the end you’ll lose, and you won’t even have the consolation of my gold.” He took his foot off the chair and leaned forward, planting his hands on the table as he eyed Petey with suspicion. “Why all the questions, Hargraves? You’d give up any hope of riches and adventure just to marry Miss Willis?”
“No, of course not,” Petey said hastily, before the pirate’s suspicions could be truly roused. “You can be sure I’d prefer this scepter and the chance to be off this island to Miss Willis any day.” He paused, weighing his words. “I just don’t understand why you don’t feel the same.”
Captain Horn drew himself up with the bearing of one of those nobles he so distained. “That’s none of your concern. Do you want the thing or not? Because if you don’t—” he broke off as he reached for the scepter.
Petey jerked it back. “I want it.” He wasn’t sure if he was playing this right, but it didn’t look as if he had any choice.
“I want it. I’ll be off your island tomorrow.”
For a moment, Petey could have sworn he saw relief in the captain’s face. Then the man’s expression hardened. “One more thing—you’re not to speak to her of any of this, you understand? You must promise to leave tomorrow without a word to her.
”
”
Sabrina Jeffries (The Pirate Lord)
“
We ask those who join us to march with us in a great and hazardous adventure. We ask them to be prepared to sacrifice all, but to do so for no small and unworthy ends. We ask them to dedicate their lives to building in this country a movement of the modern age, which by its British expression shall transcend, as so often before in our history, every precursor of the Continent in conception and in constructive achievement. We ask them to rewrite the greatest pages of British history by finding for the spirit of their age its highest mission in these islands. Neither to our friends nor to the country do we make any promises; not without struggle and ordeal will the future be won. Those who march with us will certainly face abuse, misunderstanding, bitter animosity, and possibly the ferocity of struggle and of danger. In return, we can only offer to them the deep belief that they are fighting that a great land may live.
”
”
Oswald Mosley
“
The young girl giggled again and Jake shook his head in amazement. Not only was the U.S. dark operative cooking pancakes, but it seemed he'd won over the timid teenager in no time flat.
"I've been entertaining this pretty girl with my vast repertoire of daring and heroic adventures from around the globe."
Jake snorted as he opened the refrigerator and pulled out the container of orange juice. "You sound like Blackbeard the pirate. Don't believe a word he says, Alyssa. He's actually Insurance salesman and lies like a rug."
"An Insurance salesman?" She narrowed her eyes at Carter as he flipped three pancackes off the electric griddle sitting on the island and onto a plate for her. "I knew you were conning me," she chastised, then rolled her eyes toward Jake. "He said he was a government spy, like James Bond."
After filling a glass, Jake smirked at his friend who shrugged his shoulders and gave the girl a sad puppy-dog expression. "Who are you going to believe, me or Jake from State Farm?
”
”
Samantha A. Cole (Topping the Alpha (Trident Security, #4))
“
I thought of Atargatis, the First, frightening and beautiful. The mermaid goddess who lived on in the soul of every woman who'd ever fallen in love with the ocean.
I thought of Sebastian, my little mermaid queen, how happy he was the day of the parade, just getting the chance to express himself, to be himself.
I thought of Vanessa, the story about how she and her girlfriends became feminist killjoys to get a women's literature core in their school, the way she'd accepted me this summer without question, gently pushed me out of my self-imposed shell. Of her mother, Mrs. James, how she'd grabbed that bullhorn at the parade and paved the way for Sebastian's joy.
I thought of Lemon, so wise, so comfortable in her own skin, full of enough love to raise a daughter as a single mom and still have room for me, for her friends, for everyone whose lives she touched with her art.
I thought of Kirby, her fierce loyalty, her patience and grace, her energy, what a good friend and sister she'd become, even when I'd tried to shut her out. I thought of all the new things I wanted to share with her now, all the things I hoped she'd share with me.
I thought of my mother, a woman I'd never known, but one whose ultimate sacrifice gave me life.
I thought of Granna, stepping in to raise her six granddaughters when my mom died, never once making us feel like a burden or a curse. She'd managed the cocoa estate with her son, personally saw to the comforts of every resort guest, and still had time to tell us bedtime stories, always reminding us how much she treasured us.
I thought of my sisters. Juliette, Martine, and Hazel, their adventures to faraway lands, new experiences. Gabrielle with her island-hopping, her ultimate choice to follow her heart home.
And Natalie, my twin. My mirror image, my dream sharer. I knew I hadn't been fair to her this summer—she'd saved my life, done the best she could. And I wanted to thank her for that, because as long as it had taken me to realize it, I was thankful. Thankful for her. Thankful to be alive. To breathe.
”
”
Sarah Ockler (The Summer of Chasing Mermaids)
“
Lowlanders who left Scotland for Ireland between 1610 and 1690 were biologically compounded of many ancestral strains. While the Gaelic Highlanders of that time were (as they are probably still) overwhelmingly Celtic in ancestry, this was not true of the Lowlanders. Even if the theory of 'racial' inheritance of character were sound, the Lowlander had long since become a biological mixture, in which at least nine strains had met and mingled in different proportions. Three of the nine had been present in the Scotland of dim antiquity, before the Roman conquest: the aborigines of the Stone Ages, whoever they may have been; the Gaels, a Celtic people who overran the whole island of Britain from the continent around 500 B.C.; and the Britons, another Celtic folk of the same period, whose arrival pushed the Gaels northward into Scotland and westward into Wales. During the thousand years following the Roman occupation, four more elements were added to the Scottish mixture: the Roman itself—for, although Romans did not colonize the island, their soldiers can hardly have been celibate; the Teutonic Angles and Saxons, especially the former, who dominated the eastern Lowlands of Scotland for centuries; the Scots, a Celtic tribe which, by one of the ironies of history, invaded from Ireland the country that was eventually to bear their name (so that the Scotch-Irish were, in effect, returning to the home of some of their ancestors); and Norse adventurers and pirates, who raided and harassed the countryside and sometimes remained to settle. The two final and much smaller components of the mixture were Normans, who pushed north after they had dealt with England (many of them were actually invited by King David of Scotland to settle in his country), and Flemish traders, a small contingent who mostly remained in the towns of the eastern Lowlands. In addition to these, a tenth element, Englishmen—themselves quite as diverse in ancestry as the Scots, though with more of the Teutonic than the Celtic strains—constantly came across the Border to add to the mixture.
”
”
James G. Leyburn (Scotch-Irish: A Social History)
“
Orange Book produced after the outbreak of war by the Russian government to justify its actions during the crisis, the editors backdated by three days the Austrian order of general mobilization so as to make the Russian measure appear a mere reaction to developments elsewhere. A telegram dated 29 July from Ambassador Shebeko in Vienna stating that an order of general mobilization was ‘anticipated’ for the following day, was backdated to 28 July and reworded to say ‘The Order for General Mobilization has been signed’ – in fact, the order for Austrian general mobilization would not be issued until 31 July, to go into effect on the following day. The French Yellow Book played even more adventurously with the documentary record, by inserting a fictional communiqué from Paléologue dated 31 July stating that the Russian order had been issued ‘as a result of the general mobilization of Austria’ and of the ‘measures for mobilization taken secretly, but continuously, by Germany for the past six days . . .’ In reality, the Germans had remained, in military terms, an island of relative calm throughout the crisis.
”
”
Christopher Clark (The Sleepwalkers: How Europe Went to War in 1914)
“
Jill had, as you might say, quite fall in love with the Unicorn. She thought- and she wasn't far wrong- that he was the shiningest, delicatest, most graceful animal she had ever met; and he was so gentle and soft of speech that, if you hadn't known, you would hardly have believed how fierce and terrible he could be in battle.
"Oh, this is nice!" said Jill. "Just walking along like this. I wish there could be more of this sort of adventure. It's a pity there's always so much happening in Narnia."
But the Unicorn explained to her that she was quite mistaken. He said that the Sons and Daughters of Adam and Eve were brought out of their own strange world into Narnia only at times when Narnia was stirred and upset, but she mustn't think it was always like that. In between their visits there were hundreds and thousands of years when peaceful King followed peaceful King till you could hardly remember their names or count their numbers, and there was really hardly anything to put into the History Books. And he went on to talk of old Queens and heroes whom she had never heard of. He spoke of Swanwhite the Queen who had lived before the days of the White Witch and the Great Winter, who was so beautiful that when she looked into any forest pool the reflection of her face shone out of the water like a star by night for a year and a day afterwards. He spoke of Moonwood the Hare who had such ears that he could sit by Caldron Pool under the thunder of the great waterfall and hear what men spoke in whispers at Cair Paravel. He told how King Gale, who was ninth in descent from Frank the first of all Kings, had sailed far away into the Eastern seas and delivered the Lone Islanders from a dragon and how, in return, they had given him the Lone Islands to be part of the royal lands of Narnia for ever. He talked of whole centuries in which all Narnia was so happy that notable dances and feasts, or at most tournaments, were the only things that could be remembered, and every day and week had been better than the last. And as he went on, the picture of all those happy years, all the thousands of them, piled up in Jill's mind till it was rather like looking down from a high hill on to a rich, lovely plain full of woods and waters and cornfields, which spread away and away till it got thin and misty from distance.
”
”
C.S. Lewis
“
My childhood dream came true, but now I have a new one. I dream that some of these young people, while they're out there clicking around, maybe they'll find out about this book and find a way to get their hands on it - and when they do, they'll know that even if you're a skinny kid from Long Island who's scared of heights, if you dream of walking among the stars you can do it. They'll know that finding a purpose, being dedicated to the service of others and to a calling higher than yourself, that is what's truly important in life. They'll be able to close their eyes and imagine what it's like in space, and when they open them again, they'll look up at the sun and the moon and the Milky Way and see them with the sense of awe and wonder that they deserve.
And those young boys and girls, whatever their space dream is, they'll go for it. Whatever hurdles are in their way, they'll get past them. When they fall down, they'll get back up. They'll keep going and going, working harder and harder and running faster and faster until one day, before they know it, they'll find themselves flying through the air. The hand of a giant science fiction monster will reach down and grab them by the chest and hurl them up and up and up, out to the furthest limits of the human imagination, where they'll take the next giant leap of the greatest adventure mankind has ever known.
”
”
Mike Massimino (Spaceman: An Astronaut's Unlikely Journey to Unlock the Secrets of the Universe)
“
Crusoe named his small island Despair, and the choice was apt. Despair—the deep, existential kind—stems from the awareness that we are each marooned on the island of our self, that we will live and die there alone. We are cut off from all the other islands, no matter how numerous and nearby they appear; we cannot swim across the straits, or swap our island for a different one, or even know for sure that the other ones exist outside the spell of our own senses. Certainly we cannot know the particulars of life on those islands—the full inner experience of our mother or our best friend or our sweetheart or our child. There is, between us and them—between us and everything—an irremediable rift.
”
”
Kathryn Schulz (Being Wrong: Adventures in the Margin of Error)
“
It was the Kojagar full moon, and I was slowly pacing the riverside conversing with myself. It could hardly be called a conversation, as I was doing all the talking and my imaginary companion all the listening. The poor fellow had no chance of speaking up for himself, for was not mine the power to compel him helplessly to answer like a fool?
But what a night it was! How often have I tried to write of such, but never got it done! There was not a line of ripple on the river; and from away over there, where the farthest shore of the distant main stream is seen beyond the other edge of the midway belt of sand, right up to this shore, glimmers a broad band of moonlight. Not a human being, not a boat in sight; not a tree, nor blade of grass on the fresh-formed island sand-bank.
It seemed as though a desolate moon was rising upon a devastated earth; a random river wandering through a lifeless solitude; a long-drawn fairy-tale coming to a close over a deserted world,—all the kings and the princesses, their ministers and friends and their golden castles vanished, leaving the Seven Seas and Thirteen Rivers and the Unending Moor, over which the adventurous princes fared forth, wanly gleaming in the pale moonlight. I was pacing up and down like the last pulse-beats of this dying world. Every one else seemed to be on the opposite shore—the shore of life—where the British Government and the Nineteenth Century hold sway, and tea and cigarettes.
”
”
Rabindranath Tagore
“
The historian Cassiodorus believed that the selective destruction of Alaric, as regards the Greek monuments, was of good effect. Alaric had some taste and was awed by really great art. The Greeks were only human, and all their work could not have been excellent. But almost all their ancient work that survived the ravages of Alaric was of unsurpassed excellence.
There is abominable and worthless ancient Greek art in Asia Minor, in Constantinople, in Thebes, in Eritrea, in the Cyclades and other islands. There is little or none of this worthless ancient art surviving in the path of the Gothic Greek adventure; not in Athens, or Megara or Corinth or Argos. Sparta does not figure in the account at all; it never had art.
It is said that Alaric destroyed half of the art of Greece. It may have been the worst half. He was a critic of unusual effectiveness.
”
”
R.A. Lafferty (The Fall of Rome)
“
The ducks of Mackinac Island are apparently not easily taken down. “Found a portion of the Lungs as large as a turkey’s egg protruding through the external wound, lacerated and burnt, and below this another protrusion resembling a portion of the Stomach, what at first view I could not believe possible to be that organ in that situation with the subject surviving, but on closer examination I found it to be actually the Stomach, with a puncture in the protruding portion large enough to receive my forefinger, and through which a portion of his food that he had taken for breakfast had come out and lodged among his apparel.” Thus reads Beaumont’s somewhat windy account of the injury. Through that puncture—and in the slop of half-digested meat and bread suddenly visible in the folds of St. Martin’s wool shirt—lay Beaumont’s ticket to the spotlight of national renown. Italian digestion experimenters had pulled food in and out of live animal stomachs, soaked it up in sponges on strings, even regurgitated their own dinners, but St. Martin’s portal presented an unprecedented opportunity to document the human juices and processes in vivo.
”
”
Mary Roach (Gulp: Adventures on the Alimentary Canal)
“
I told him he must carry it thus. It was evident the sagacious little creature, having lost its mother, had adopted him for a father. I succeeded, at last, in quietly releasing him, and took the little orphan, which was no bigger than a cat, in my arms, pitying its helplessness. The mother appeared as tall as Fritz. I was reluctant to add another mouth to the number we had to feed; but Fritz earnestly begged to keep it, offering to divide his share of cocoa-nut milk with it till we had our cows. I consented, on condition that he took care of it, and taught it to be obedient to him. Turk, in the mean time, was feasting on the remains of the unfortunate mother. Fritz would have driven him off, but I saw we had not food sufficient to satisfy this voracious animal, and we might ourselves be in danger from his appetite. We left him, therefore, with his prey, the little orphan sitting on the shoulder of his protector, while I carried the canes. Turk soon overtook us, and was received very coldly; we reproached him with his cruelty, but he was quite unconcerned, and continued to walk after Fritz. The little monkey seemed uneasy at the sight of him, and crept into Fritz's bosom, much to his inconvenience. But a thought struck him; he tied the monkey with a cord to Turk's back, leading the dog by another cord, as he was very rebellious at first; but our threats and caresses at last induced him to submit to his burden. We proceeded slowly, and I could not help anticipating the mirth of my little ones, when they saw us approach like a pair of show-men. I advised Fritz not to correct the dogs for attacking and killing unknown animals. Heaven bestows the dog on man, as well as the horse, for a friend and protector. Fritz thought we were very fortunate, then, in having two such faithful dogs; he only regretted that our horses had died on the passage, and only left us the ass. "Let us not disdain the ass," said I; "I wish we had him here; he is of a very fine breed, and would be as useful as a horse to us." In such conversations, we arrived at the banks of our river before we were aware. Flora barked to announce our approach, and Turk answered so loudly, that the terrified little monkey leaped from his back to the shoulder of its protector, and would not come down. Turk ran off to meet his companion, and our dear family soon appeared on the opposite shore, shouting with joy at our happy return. We crossed at the same place as we had done in the morning, and embraced each other. Then began such a noise of exclamations. "A monkey! a real, live monkey! Ah! how delightful! How glad we are! How did you catch him?
”
”
Johann David Wyss (The Swiss Family Robinson; or Adventures in a Desert Island)
“
Tonight, however, Dickens struck him in a different light. Beneath the author’s sentimental pity for the weak and helpless, he could discern a revolting pleasure in cruelty and suffering, while the grotesque figures of the people in Cruikshank’s illustrations revealed too clearly the hideous distortions of their souls. What had seemed humorous now appeared diabolic, and in disgust at these two favourites he turned to Walter Pater for the repose and dignity of a classic spirit.
But presently he wondered if this spirit were not in itself of a marble quality, frigid and lifeless, contrary to the purpose of nature. ‘I have often thought’, he said to himself, ‘that there is something evil in the austere worship of beauty for its own sake.’ He had never thought so before, but he liked to think that this impulse of fancy was the result of mature consideration, and with this satisfaction he composed himself for sleep.
He woke two or three times in the night, an unusual occurrence, but he was glad of it, for each time he had been dreaming horribly of these blameless Victorian works…
It turned out to be the Boy’s Gulliver’s Travels that Granny had given him, and Dicky had at last to explain his rage with the devil who wrote it to show that men were worse than beasts and the human race a washout. A boy who never had good school reports had no right to be so morbidly sensitive as to penetrate to the underlying cynicism of Swift’s delightful fable, and that moreover in the bright and carefully expurgated edition they bring out nowadays. Mr Corbett could not say he had ever noticed the cynicism himself, though he knew from the critical books it must be there, and with some annoyance he advised his son to take out a nice bright modern boy’s adventure story that could not depress anybody.
Mr Corbett soon found that he too was ‘off reading’. Every new book seemed to him weak, tasteless and insipid; while his old and familiar books were depressing or even, in some obscure way, disgusting. Authors must all be filthy-minded; they probably wrote what they dared not express in their lives. Stevenson had said that literature was a morbid secretion; he read Stevenson again to discover his peculiar morbidity, and detected in his essays a self-pity masquerading as courage, and in Treasure Island an invalid’s sickly attraction to brutality.
This gave him a zest to find out what he disliked so much, and his taste for reading revived as he explored with relish the hidden infirmities of minds that had been valued by fools as great and noble. He saw Jane Austen and Charlotte Brontë as two unpleasant examples of spinsterhood; the one as a prying, sub-acid busybody in everyone else’s flirtations, the other as a raving, craving maenad seeking self-immolation on the altar of her frustrated passions. He compared Wordsworth’s love of nature to the monstrous egoism of an ancient bellwether, isolated from the flock.
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Margaret Irwin (Bloodstock and Other Stories)
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Eight Bells: Robert J. Kane ‘55D died June 3, 2017, in Palm Harbor, Florida. He came to MMA by way of Boston College. Bob or “Killer,” as he was affectionately known, was an independent and eccentric soul, enjoying the freedom of life. After a career at sea as an Officer in the U.S. Navy and in the Merchant Marine he retired to an adventurous single life living with his two dogs in a mobile home, which had originally been a “Yellow School Bus.” He loved watching the races at Daytona, Florida, telling stories about his interesting deeds about flying groceries to exotic Caribbean Islands, and misdeeds with mysterious ladies he had known. For years he spent his summers touring Canada and his winters appreciating the more temperate weather at Fort De Soto in St. Petersburg, Florida…. Enjoying life in the shadow of the Sunshine Bridge, Bob had an artistic flare, a positive attitude and a quick sense of humor. Not having a family, few people were aware that he became crippled by a hip replacement operation gone bad at the Bay Pines VA Hospital. His condition became so bad that he could hardly get around, but he remained in good spirits until he suffered a totally debilitating stroke. For the past 6 years Bob spent his time at various Florida Assisted Living Facilities, Nursing Homes and Palliative Care Hospitals. His end came when he finally wound up as a terminal patient at the Hospice Facility in Palm Harbor, Florida. Bob was 86 years old when he passed. He will be missed….
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Hank Bracker
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In 1932 Pravda published a short story by Ilf and Petrov, titled 'How Robinson Was Created,' about a magazine editor who commissions a Soviet Robinson Crusoe from a writer named Moldavantsev. The writer submits a manuscript about a Soviet young man triumphing over nature on a desert island. The editor likes the story, but says that a Soviet Robinson would be unthinkable without a trade union committee consisting of a chairman, two permanent members, and a female activist to collect membership dues. The committee, in its turn, would be unthinkable without a safe deposit box, a chairman's bell, a pitcher of water, and a tablecloth ('red or green, it doesn't matter; I don't want to limit your artistic imagination'), and broad masses of working people. The author objects by saying that so many people could not possible be washed ashore by a single ocean wave:
'Why a wave?' asked the editor, suddenly surprised.
'How else would the masses end up on the island? It is a a desert island, after all!'
'Who said it was a desert island? You're getting me confused. Okay, so there's an island, or, even better, a peninsula. It's safer that way. And that's where a series of amusing, original, and interesting adventures will take place. There'll be some trade union work going on, but not enough. The female activist will expose certain deficiencies - in the area of due collection, for example. She'll be supported by the broad masses. And then there be the repentant chairman. At the end you could have a general meeting. That would be quite effective artistically. I guess that's about it.'
'But - what about Robinson?' stammered Moldavantsev.
'Oh yeah ..., thank for reminding me. I'm not wild about Robinson. Just drop him. He's a silly, whiny, totally unnecessary character.
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Yuri Slezkine (The House of Government: A Saga of the Russian Revolution)
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NOBEL PRIZE–WINNER, British poet laureate, essayist, novelist, journalist, and short story writer Rudyard Kipling wrote for both children and adults, with many of his stories and poems focusing on British imperialism in India. His works were popular during the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, even though many deemed his political views too conservative. Born on December 30, 1865, in Bombay, India, Kipling had a happy early childhood, but in 1871 he and his sister were sent to a boarding house called Lorne Lodge in Southsea, where he spent many disappointing years. He was accepted in 1877 to United Services College in the west of England. In 1882, he returned to his family in India, working as a journalist, associate editor, and correspondent for many publications, including Civil and Military Gazette, a publication in Lahore, Pakistan. He also wrote poetry. He found great success in writing after his 1889 return to England, where he was eventually appointed poet laureate. Some of his most famous writings, including The Jungle Book, Kim, Puck of Pook’s Hill, and Rewards and Fairies, saw publication in the 1890s and 1900s. It was during this period that he married Caroline Balestier, the sister of an American friend and publishing colleague. The couple settled in Vermont, where their two daughters were born. After a quarrel with his brother-in-law and grumblings from his American neighbors about his controversial political views, Kipling and his family returned to England. There, Caroline gave birth to a son in 1896. Tragically, their eldest daughter died in 1899. Later, Kipling’s son perished in battle during World War I. In 1907 Kipling was awarded the Nobel Prize. He died on January 18, 1936, and his ashes are buried in Poets’ Corner in Westminster Abbey.
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Jonathan Swift (The Adventure Collection: Treasure Island, The Jungle Book, Gulliver's Travels, White Fang, The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood (The Heirloom Collection))
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THE DEMANDS MADE by a work of this nature upon the generosity of specialists are very numerous, and the Editor would be wanting in all title to the generous treatment he has received were he not willing to make the fullest possible acknowledgment of his indebtedness. His thanks are due in the first place to the scholarly and accomplished Bahadur Shah, baggage elephant 174 on the Indian Register, who, with his amiable sister Pudmini, most courteously supplied the history of ‘Toomai of the Elephants’ and much of the information contained in ‘Servants of the Queen’. The adventures of Mowgli were collected at various times and in various places from a multitude of informants, most of whom desire to preserve the strictest anonymity. Yet, at this distance, the Editor feels at liberty to thank a Hindu gentleman of the old rock, an esteemed resident of the upper slopes of Jakko, for his convincing if somewhat caustic estimate of the national characteristics of his caste–the Presbytes. Sahi, a savant of infinite research and industry, a member of the recently disbanded Seeonee Pack, and an artist well known at most of the local fairs of Southern India, where his muzzled dance with his master attracts the youth, beauty, and culture of many villages, have contributed most valuable data on people, manners, and customs. These have been freely drawn upon, in the stories of ‘Tiger-Tiger!’ ‘Kaa’s Hunting’, and ‘Mowgli’s Brothers’. For the outlines of ‘Rikki-tikki-tavi’ the Editor stands indebted to one of the leading herpetologists of Upper India, a fearless and independent investigator who, resolving ‘not to live but know’, lately sacrificed his life through over-application to the study of our Eastern Thanatophidia. A happy accident of travel enabled the Editor, when a passenger on the Empress of India, to be of some slight assistance to a fellow-voyager. How richly his poor services were repaid, readers of the ‘White Seal’ may judge for themselves.
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Jonathan Swift (The Adventure Collection: Treasure Island, The Jungle Book, Gulliver's Travels, White Fang, The Merry Adventures of Robin Hood (The Heirloom Collection))