Quotes from The Isle of Blood

“But hope is no less realistic than despair. It is still our choice whether to live in light or lie down in darkness.”
― Rick Yancey, quote from The Isle of Blood

“There are those who labor in the darkness, that the rest of us might live in the light.”
― Rick Yancey, quote from The Isle of Blood

“She hated him and loved him, longed for him and loathed him, and cursed herself for feeling anything at all”
― Rick Yancey, quote from The Isle of Blood

“Have you fallen in love, Will Henry?"

"That's stupid."

"What is? Love, or my question?"

"I don't know."

"You don't know? You've tried that trick once. What do you suppose it will work better the second time?"

"I don't love her. She bothers me."

"You have just defined the very thing you denied.”
― Rick Yancey, quote from The Isle of Blood

“Please, do not leave me, Will Henry. I would not survive it. You were nearly right. What Mr. Kendall was, I am always on the brink of becoming. And you - I do not pretend to know how or even why - but you pull me back from the precipice. You are the one... You are the one thing that keeps me Human.”
― Rick Yancey, quote from The Isle of Blood

“Perhaps God waits for us to be empty, so he may fill us with himself.”
― Rick Yancey, quote from The Isle of Blood

“You are the nest. You are the hatchling. You are the chrysalis. You are the progeny. You are the rot that falls from stars. You may not understand what I mean.

You will.”
― Rick Yancey, quote from The Isle of Blood

“And red is not the color of apples or roses or the dresses that pretty girls wear in the summertime.

That is not the color of red at all.”
― Rick Yancey, quote from The Isle of Blood

“He stiffened and said with great dignity, "I am a natural scientist. We are accustomed to dealing with shit.”
― Rick Yancey, quote from The Isle of Blood

“Just because a man is a homicidal maniac doesn't make him wrong.”
― Rick Yancey, quote from The Isle of Blood

“What of men? I can't think of anything more banal. I have no doubt — no doubt whatsoever — that once it has obtained the means to do so, the species will wipe itself off the face of the earth. There is no mystery to it; it is our nature. Oh, one might delve into the particulars, but really, what can we say about the species that invented murder? What can we say?”
― Rick Yancey, quote from The Isle of Blood

“To show mercy is not naïve. To hold out against the end of hope is not stupidity or madness. It is fundamentally human. Of course... We are all doomed; we are all poisoned from our birth by the rot of stars. That does not mean we should succumb...to the seductive fallacy of despair, the dark tide that would drown us. You may think I'm stupid, you may call me a madman and a fool, but at least I stand upright in a fallen world.”
― Rick Yancey, quote from The Isle of Blood

“Is it any wonder the power this man held over me - this man who did not run from his demons like most of us do, but embraced them as his own, clutching them to his heart in a choke-hold grip. He did not try to escape them by denying them or drugging them or bargaining with them. He met them where they lived, in the secret place most of us keep hidden. Warthrop was Warthrop down to the marrow of his bones, for his demons defined him; they breathed the breath of life into him; and without them, he would go down, as most of us do, into the purgatorial fog of a life unrealized.”
― Rick Yancey, quote from The Isle of Blood

“Miss Marks, you see, makes her living by...entertaining young, and not so young, sailors...or any other members of the armed forced, or civilians, who enjoy...being entertained by ladies who...entertain.”
― Rick Yancey, quote from The Isle of Blood

“Dr. Warthrop chopped off my finger with a butcher knife.”
― Rick Yancey, quote from The Isle of Blood

“Spring. Blooms break forth from the startled earth. The sky laughs. The trees, abashed, dress themselves in verdant green. And the heavens are lush with starts. Redeem the time, the stars sing down. Redeem the dream.

And the boy waking in the land of broken rocks, the dry land wet with spring rain, waking in the place where two dreams cross--the dream where seeds grow into trees of gold and the dream of the box that he cannot open.”
― Rick Yancey, quote from The Isle of Blood

“It is a very thin line between us and the abyss, Will Henry,' he said. 'For most it is like that line out there, where the sea meets the sky. They see it. They cannot deny the evidence of their eyes, but they never cross it. They cannot cross it; though they chase it for a thousand years, it will forever stay where it is. Do you realize it took our species more than ten millennia to realize that simple fact? That the line is unreachable, that we live on a ball and not on a plate? Most of us do, anyway. Men like Jacob Torrance and John Kearns ... Those kinds of men still live on a plate. Do you understand what I mean?'

I nodded. I thought I did.”
― Rick Yancey, quote from The Isle of Blood

“It is exceedingly odd to see a piece of yourself apart from yourself.”
― Rick Yancey, quote from The Isle of Blood

“Adolphus is not at his desk. That means he is somewhere in the Monstrumarium, has gone home for the day, or is dead.”
― Rick Yancey, quote from The Isle of Blood

“It is a dark and dirty business, Will Henry. And you are well on your way." He patted my knee, not to congratulate, I think, but to console. His tone was sad and bitter. "You are well on your way.”
― Rick Yancey, quote from The Isle of Blood

“What is it? I remembered thinking in panic. What is it? Why did I want to follow this man? What was it about the monstrumologist that consumed me? What demon of the pit chewed and gnawed upon my soul like Judas’ in the innermost circle of hell? What did it look like? What was its face? If I could name the nameless thing, if I could put a face upon the faceless thing, perhaps I could free myself from its ravenous embrace.”
― Rick Yancey, quote from The Isle of Blood

“He had noticed my bandaged hand.

"An accident," Warthrop said tersely.

"Dr. Warthrop chopped off my finger with a butcher knife."

Von Helrung's brow knotted up in confusion. "By accident?"

"No," I answered. "That part was on purpose.”
― Rick Yancey, quote from The Isle of Blood

“Afterward I told his widow, "Your husband is dead, but at least he died laughing.' I think she took some comfort in that. It is the second-best way to die, Will Henry." He did not say what the best way was.”
― Rick Yancey, quote from The Isle of Blood

“There is nothing left when you reach the center of everything, just the pit of bones inside the innermost circle.”
― Rick Yancey, quote from The Isle of Blood

“You could see the smile coming a year before it arrived.”
― Rick Yancey, quote from The Isle of Blood

“A man lies upon the floor, spreads his arms, and transforms himself into a ship of a thousand sails.”
― Rick Yancey, quote from The Isle of Blood

“I left them there for the flies and the birds and the sun and the wind. In the silence outside the Tour du Silence, I left them. Where the faceless dead faced the sky, I left them there at the center of the world.”
― Rick Yancey, quote from The Isle of Blood

“Oculus Dei, the eyes of God.”
― Rick Yancey, quote from The Isle of Blood

“England is home to one of the most unattractive people on earth!" He glared at Walker. "You are the perfect example.”
― Rick Yancey, quote from The Isle of Blood

“Will isn't my little bastard assistant. Will is Pellinore Warthrop's little bastard assistant.”
― Rick Yancey, quote from The Isle of Blood

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Popular quotes

“It was she made me acquainted with love. She went by the peaceful name of Ruth I think, but I can't say for certain. Perhaps the name was Edith. She had a hole between her legs, oh not the bunghole I had always imagined, but a slit, and in this I put, or rather she put, my so-called virile member, not without difficulty, and I toiled and moiled until I discharged or gave up trying or was begged by her to stop. A mug's game in my opinion and tiring on top of that, in the long run. But I lent myself to it with a good enough grace, knowing it was love, for she had told me so. She bent over the couch, because of her rheumatism, and in I went from behind. It was the only position she could bear, because of her lumbago. It seemed all right to me, for I had seen dogs, and I was astonished when she confided that you could go about it differently. I wonder what she meant exactly. Perhaps after all she put me in her rectum. A matter of complete indifference to me, I needn't tell you. But is it true love, in the rectum? That's what bothers me sometimes. Have I never known true love, after all? She too was an eminently flat woman and she moved with short stiff steps, leaning on an ebony stick. Perhaps she too was a man, yet another of them. But in that case surely our testicles would have collided, while we writhed. Perhaps she held hers tight in her hand, on purpose to avoid it. She favoured voluminous tempestuous shifts and petticoats and other undergarments whose names I forget. They welled up all frothing and swishing and then, congress achieved, broke over us in slow cascades. And all I could see was her taut yellow nape which every now and then I set my teeth in, forgetting I had none, such is the power of instinct. We met in a rubbish dump, unlike any other, and yet they are all alike, rubbish dumps. I don't know what she was doing there. I was limply poking about in the garbage saying probably, for at that age I must still have been capable of general ideas, This is life. She had no time to lose, I had nothing to lose, I would have made love with a goat, to know what love was. She had a dainty flat, no, not dainty, it made you want to lie down in a corner and never get up again. I liked it. It was full of dainty furniture, under our desperate strokes the couch moved forward on its castors, the whole place fell about our ears, it was pandemonium. Our commerce was not without tenderness, with trembling hands she cut my toe-nails and I rubbed her rump with winter cream. This idyll was of short duration. Poor Edith, I hastened her end perhaps. Anyway it was she who started it, in the rubbish dump, when she laid her hand upon my fly. More precisely, I was bent double over a heap of muck, in the hope of finding something to disgust me for ever with eating, when she, undertaking me from behind, thrust her stick between my legs and began to titillate my privates. She gave me money after each session, to me who would have consented to know love, and probe it to the bottom, without charge. But she was an idealist. I would have preferred it seems to me an orifice less arid and roomy, that would have given me a higher opinion of love it seems to me. However. Twixt finger and thumb tis heaven in comparison. But love is no doubt above such contingencies. And not when you are comfortable, but when your frantic member casts about for a rubbing-place, and the unction of a little mucous membrane, and meeting with none does not beat in retreat, but retains its tumefaction, it is then no doubt that true love comes to pass, and wings away, high above the tight fit and the loose.”
― Samuel Beckett, quote from Molloy, Malone Dies, The Unnamable

“The right thing at the wrong tme is the wrong thing.”
― Joshua Harris, quote from I Kissed Dating Goodbye: A New Attitude Toward Relationships and Romance

“Cooking wasn’t so bad, I thought. In fact, it was a lot like sex. Sometimes it didn’t seem like such a good idea in the beginning, but then after you got into it …”
― Janet Evanovich, quote from Hot Six

“Speak only to those who listen. Anything else is a waste of breath. The answers to your questions were there, if you listened for them.”
― Jim Butcher, quote from Captain's Fury

“Can we get on with this?" Father Laggan cried out. "In the name of the Father…"
"I'm inviting my aunt Millicent and uncle Herbert to come for a visit, Iain, and I'm not going through the council to get permission first."
"… and of the Son," the priest continued in a much louder voice.
"She'll be wanting King John next," Duncan predicted.
"We can't allow that, lass," Owen muttered.
"Please join hands now and concentrate on this ceremony," Father Laggan shouted, trying to gain everyone's attention.
"I don't want King John to come here," Judith argued. She turned to frown at Owen for making such a shameful suggestion. "I want my aunt and uncle. I'm getting them, too." She turned and had to peek around Graham in order to look up at Iain. "Yes or no, Iain."
"We'll see. Graham, I'm marrying Judith, not you. Let go of her hand. Judith, move over here."
Father Laggan gave up trying to maintain order. He continued on with the ceremony. Iain was paying some attention. He immediately agreed to take Judith for his wife.She wasn't as cooperative. He felt a little sorry for the sweet woman. She looked thoroughly
confused.
"Judith, do you take Iain for your husband?"
She looked up at Iain before giving her answer. "We'll see."
"That won't do, lass. You've got to say I do," he advised.
"Do I?"
Iain smiled. "Your aunt and uncle will be welcomed here."
She smiled back.
....
Judith tried not to laugh. She turned her attention back to Father Laggan. "I will say I do,"
she told him. "Shouldn't we begin now?"
"The lass has trouble following along," Vincent remarked.
Father Laggan gave the final blessing while Judith argued with the elder about his rude comment. Her concentration was just fine, she told him quite vehemently.
She nagged an apology out of Vincent before giving the priest her attention again. "Patrick, would you go and get Frances Catherine? I would like her to stand by my side during the ceremony."
"You may kiss the bride," Father Laggan announced.”
― Julie Garwood, quote from The Secret

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