Bainbridge Island Review Quotes

Taking inspiration from her own experiences as a wife, mother, principal and teacher, Ellick creates a realistic and thought-provoking modern scenario for readers to ponder, based on a well-documented historic trend. ~ Bainbridge Island Review

You know, they ask me if I were on a desert island and I knew nobody would ever see what I wrote, would I go on writing. My answer is most emphatically yes. I would go on writing for company. Because I'm creating an imaginary - it's always imaginary - world in which I would like to live.
(Interview, The Paris Review) ~ William S. Burroughs

Apart from anything else, salt is one thing it should be pretty much impossible for Liverpool to run out of, along with uncles who used to go to school with John Lennon. We're right next door to Cheshire, which is almost entirely salt, apart from a sparse crust of WAGs and Mercedes. And we live on an island, surrounded by seawater. ~ Gary Bainbridge

Memory in these incomparable streets, in mosaics of pain and sweetness, was clear to me now, a unity at last. I remembered small and unimportant things from the past: the whispers of roommates during thunderstorms, the smell of brass polish on my fingertips, the first swim at Folly Beach in April, lightning over the Atlantic, shelling oysters at Bowen's Island during a rare Carolina snowstorm, pigeons strutting across the graveyard at St. Philip's, lawyers moving out of their offices to lunch on Broad Street, the darkness of reveille on cold winter mornings, regattas, the flash of bagpipers' tartans passing in review, blue herons on the marshes, the pressure of the chinstrap on my shako, brotherhood, shad roe at Henry's, camellias floating above water in a porcelain bowl, the scowl of Mark Santoro, and brotherhood again. ~ Pat Conroy

Arriving on Bainbridge Island is the opposite of arriving in Seattle. When you got in your car and waited to unload off the ferry in Seattle, you saw the Space Needle, cars, and a mound of urban construction. Once you exit the ferry terminal on Bainbridge, however, it's mostly trees. Pine as far as the eye can see. Well, pines, firework and coffee stands, and eventually a casino. You drive through the Port Madison Indian Reservation when you leave the island. I couldn't help but smile as I went past the casino. I didn't really get gambling, since I'd never had money to throw away, but as I passed through all the beautiful countryside that I'm sure once belonged to the tribe, I sort of hoped they would rob the white man blind. Perhaps not politically correct, but the feeling was there all the same. ~ Lish McBride

I grew up in the Bay Area until 1976, then I pretty much went all the way through primary and high school on Bainbridge, though like anybody who grows up on an island, I ran the first chance I got. ~ Jonathan Evison

Bainbridge Island could never hide its glory, even under the cover of darkness. I watched from the window as the ferry loomed into Eagle Harbor, passing the island's pebble-covered shores and shake-shingled homes that clung courageously to the hillside. Glowing orange interiors beckoned, as if the people inside were making one extra place as they gathered around fireplaces to sip wine or hot cocoa. ~ Sarah Jio

School of Rock. The best music school anywhere. This whole idea of getting kids not just taking lessons and learning notes and chords, but learning songs and playing with other young musicians, and getting out on stage ... I was so impressed that my daughter Cheyenne goes to School of Rock on Long Island. ~ Dee Snider

This Government, as promised, has maintained the closest surveillance of the Soviet Military buildup on the island of Cuba. Within the past week, unmistakable evidence has established the fact that a series of offensive missile sites is now in preparation on that imprisoned island. The purpose of these bases can be none other than to provide a nuclear strike capability against the Western Hemisphere. ~ John F. Kennedy

Most writers regard the truth as their most valuable possession, and therefore are economical in its use. ~ Mark Twain

Dear Fisher, I guess this is it, huh? After almost fourteen years together, starting a life of our own on this island, five tours of duty and countless letters I've written you through it all, I finally go out to the mailbox and see something I've always dreamed of: an envelope with your handwriting on it. For one moment, I actually thought you'd changed your mind. That all the awful things you said to me were just your way of coping after everything you'd been through. I was still here, Fisher. I was still here, holding my breath, waiting for you to come back even though you told me you never would. You always said you'd find your way back to me. Out of all the lies you've told me, this one hurts the most. Enclosed you will find the signed divorce papers, as requested. I hope you find what you're looking for. I'm sorry it wasn't me. Lucy ~ Tara Sivec

Puerto Rico is an island separated by an ocean, a language, a culture. All of that put it in a position where it's like, "What happens in Vegas stays in Vegas," but what happened in Puerto Rico never happened at all. It's not like there was a decades-long conspiracy. It's just the aggregation of all these historical forces made it difficult for this information to exist in one place. ~ Nelson Antonio Denis

If you want to earn the gratitude of your own age you must keep in step with it. But if you do that you will produce nothing great. If you have something great in view you must address yourself to posterity: only then, to be sure, you will probably remain unknown to your contemporaries; you will be like a man compelled to spend his life on a desert island and there toiling to erect a memorial so that future seafarers shall know he once existed. ~ Arthur Schopenhauer

Jess Pepper's review of the Avalon Strings:

'In a land so very civilized and modern as ours, it is unpopular to suggest that the mystical isle of Avalon ever truly existed. But I believe I have found proof of it right here in Manhattan.

To understand my reasoning, you must recall first that enchanting tale of a mist-enshrouded isle where medieval women--descended from the gods--spawned heroic men. Most notable among these was the young King Arthur. In their most secret confessions, these mystic heroes acknowledged Avalon, and particularly the music of its maidens, as the source of their power.

Many a school boy has wept reading of Young King Arthur standing silent on the shore as the magical isle disappears from view, shrouded in mist.

The boy longs as Arthur did to leap the bank and pilot his canoe to the distant, singing atoll. To rejoin nymphs who guard in the depths of their water caves the meaning of life. To feel again the power that burns within.

But knowledge fades and memory dims, and schoolboys grow up. As the legend goes, the way became unknown to mortal man. Only woman could navigate the treacherous blanket of white that dipped and swirled at the surface of the water.

And with its fading went also the music of the fabled isle.

Harps and strings that heralded the dawn and incited robed maidens to dance evaporated into the mists of time, and silence ruled.

But I tell you, Kind R ~ Bailey Bristol

We need to review the process for the election of Speaker. We've got to reform Question Time, which is really a waste of time. There are so many things that we need to do to reform our Parliament and I think it's bigger than that. It's all about the sort of leadership that people are getting at the moment. They're fed up with this sorta day-to-day bickering, not putting the national interest ahead of these narrow partisan interests. ~ Richard Di Natale

No, happily that unjust prejudice is forgotten which made the son responsible for the father's actions. Review your life, Albert ... ~ Alexandre Dumas

The oceans never stop ... the wind never finishes. Sometimes it disappears, but only to gather momentum from somewhere else, returning to fling itself at the island ... Existence here is on the scale of giants. Time is in the millions of years; rocks which from a distance look like dice cast against the shore are boulders hundreds of feet wide, licked round by millennia ... ~ M.L. Stedman

My first review for the TV movie The Bionic Showdown said I was as interesting as a bus ride. ~ Sandra Bullock

Who's Beth?" Keri asked.
"The bartender at your wedding."
"Oh, that's right. How could I forget when
my husband almost got thrown out of our own
reception for trying to hire her like a hooker or
something."
"What's a hooker?" Bobby asked.
Keri's island tan flushed pink. "Oops."
"You put it on the end of a fishing pole,
dummy," Brian explained.
Bobby frowned. "Uncle Joe tried to hire a
worm? ~ Shannon Stacey

The peaceful splendour of the night healed again. The moon was now past the meridian and travelling down the west. It was at its full, and very bright, riding through the empty blue sky. ~ H.G.Wells

Long Island is a mess anyway! No one will miss it. ~ Rick Riordan

It seems that unlike the continuous, enduring contentment that we anticipate, our actual happiness with, and in, a place must be a brief and, at least to the conscious mind, apparently haphazard phenomenon: an interval in which we achieve receptivity to the world around us, in which positive thoughts of past and future coagulate and anxieties are allayed. The condition rarely endures for longer than ten minutes. New patterns of anxiety inevitably form on the horizon of consciousness, like the weather fronts that mass themselves every few days off the western coasts of Ireland. The past victory ceases to seem so impressive, the future acquires complications and the beautiful view becomes as invisible as anything which is always around.

I was to discover an unexpected continuity between the melancholic self I had been at home and the person I was to be on the island, a continuity quite at odds with the radical discontinuity in the landscape and climate, where the very air seemed to be made of a different and sweeter substance. ~ Alain De Botton

Kids are not physical creatures, and they're not stupid. They know all about violence and power and raw emotions. What's really scary is when adults pretend that such things don't exist."

(Grossman's review of The Hunger Games in "Time" magazine, Sept. 7, 2009) ~ Lev Grossman

We were all too human then, the vast ocean surrounding us and the tiny island we inhabited. We were two small beating hearts in this world, yet what we sought now seemed enormous. What we wanted and what could be created between us, a spark of life, so small and fragile, was too overwhelming to fully comprehend. My heart beat heavily in my chest with the weight of what we were trying for. ~ Meredith Wild

Either we of the faith shall
become a small persecuted,
neglected island amid
mankind, or we shall be able
to life up at the end of the
struggle the old battle cry,
"Christus Imperat! ~ Hilaire Belloc

The brain is an island in an osmotically homogeneous sea. ~ Francis Daniels Moore

Caring for others tends to be the first cut when we review our personal time budget. It does not necessarily fulfill the goals of my ambition; it will not pave the way for my success; it takes away from my own depleted emotional resources. It is an imposition in every way. To some of us, it is an inconvenience from which we unashamedly run. We have become experts in maintaining a grand scope of friendships and amateurs in genuine intimacy and care. Unwittingly, we have sacrificed everything on the altar of self-sufficiency - only to discover that we have sold our souls to isolation. ~ Sandy Oshiro Rosen

John Steinbeck's 'The Grapes of Wrath' also speaks urgently to today's concerns: the cratered trail of dreams for Mexican immigrants seeking a promised land in the Western [United States]; the perfidy of banks in foreclosing on poor people's homes; and the insurgent urge of the book's protagonist, Tom Joad, to speak truth to police power. 'Wherever there's a cop beatin' up a guy,' Tom promises, 'I'll be there.' In Salinas, Calif., Ferguson, Mo., or Staten Island, N.Y., Tom's truth goes marching on. ~ Richard Corliss

Reached only by boat, seaplane and, with less surety, telephone-this is Fire Island, a pile of sand beneath a pile of people. ~ Al Aronowitz

Life rose around my island like a sea, and presently I was swimming. ~ F Scott Fitzgerald

The truth was that Jay Gatsby, of West Egg, Long Island, sprang from his Platonic conception of himself. He was a son of God - a phrase which, if it means anything, means just that - and he must be about His Father's Business, the service of a vast, vulgar and meretricious beauty. ~ F Scott Fitzgerald

In 1940, we knew who we were, we knew who the enemy was, we knew the dangers and the issues," he told me when I pressed him for a reading of the struggle against Islamic radicalism. "In our island, we knew we would prevail, that the Americans would be drawn into the fight. It is different today. We don't know who we are, we don't know the issues, and we still do not understand the nature of the enemy. ~ Bernard Lewis

Research has shown that we automatically assign to good-looking individuals such favorable traits as talent, kindness, honesty, and intelligence (for a review of this evidence, see Langlois et al., 2000). ~ Robert B. Cialdini