12 quotes
There comes a time in the history of all bureaucracies when they must inevitably parody their own functions.
Isle of the Dead (1969)
Then I could turn around and justify that, by saying that it isn’t really paranoia if there really are people out to get you.
Isle of the Dead (1969)
The stars blazed like the love of God, cold and distant.
Isle of the Dead (1969)
Symbols, by their very nature, conceal as well as indicate, damn them!
Isle of the Dead (1969)
I watched the spinning stars, grateful, sad and proud, as only a man who has outlived his destiny and realizes he might yet forge himself another, can be.
Isle of the Dead (1969)
The dead are too much with us.
Isle of the Dead (1969)
“Everything that’s miserable in the world,” Nick the dwarf once said to me, “is because of beauty.”
“Not truth or goodness?” I’d asked.
“Oh, they help. But beauty is the culprit, the real principle of evil.”
“Not wealth?”
“Money is beautiful.”
Isle of the Dead (1969)
I’d lived far too long, and with every day that passed the odds kept growing against my lasting much longer. Although they didn’t put it quite that way when giving the sales pitch, my insurance company’s attitude is reflected in the size of the premiums involved.
Isle of the Dead (1969)
Earth grates on my nerves. It gives me a big pain these days. That’s why I live out here. Earth is overcrowded, bureaucratic, unhealthy, and suffering from too many mass-psychoses to bother classifying.
Isle of the Dead (1969)
I had wanted to go after her, to explain my part in what had happened. But I knew it would do no good, so why lose face? When a fairy tale blows up and the dream dust settles and you find yourself standing there, knowing that the last line will never be written, why not omit any exercises in futility?
Isle of the Dead (1969)
Dwelling beside a body of water is tonic for the weary psyche. Sea smells, sea birds, seawrack, sands—alternately cool, warm, moist and dry—a taste of brine and the presence of the rocking, slopping bluegraygreen spit-flecked waters, has the effect of rinsing the emotions, bathing the outlook, bleaching the conscience.
Isle of the Dead (1969)
Nick swore he’d die with this boots on, on some exotic safari, but he found his Kilimanjaro in a hospital on Earth, where they’d cured everything that was bothering him, except for the galloping pneumonia he’d picked up in the hospital. That had been, roughly, two hundred and fifty years ago. I’d been a pallbearer.
Isle of the Dead (1969)