Blue Dolphins Quotes & Sayings

Why do I write historical fiction? Johnny Tremain, The Witch of Blackbird Pond, Island of the Blue Dolphins-that's why. I'll never forget how it felt to read those books. I want to write books with the same power to transport readers into another time and place. — Jennifer Armstrong

Under private property, each tries to establish over the other an alien power, so as thereby to find satisfaction of his own selfish need. The increase in the quantity of objects is therefore accompanied by an extension of the realm of the alien powers to which man is subjected, and every new product represents a new potentiality of mutual swindling and mutual plundering. — Karl Marx

The vast blue ocean is waiting for her, and this is only the beginning of her story. — Gill Lewis

Aegean Islands 1940-41

Where white stares, smokes or breaks,
Thread white, white of plaster and of foam,
Where sea like a wall falls;
Ribbed, lionish coast,
The stony islands which blow into my mind
More often than I imagine my grassy home;

To sun one's bones beside the
Explosive, crushed-blue, nostril-opening sea
(The weaving sea, splintered with sails and foam,
Familiar of famous and deserted harbours,
Of coins with dolphins on and fallen pillars.)

To know the gear and skill of sailing,
The drenching race for home and the sail-white houses,
Stories of Turks and smoky ikons,
Cry of the bagpipe, treading
Of the peasant dancers;

The dark bread
The island wine and the sweet dishes;
All these were elements in a happiness
More distant now than any date like '40,
A. D. or B. C., ever can express. — Bernard Spencer

Soon there would be a final morning, a final afternoon, a final sunrise. She measured her life by these thoughts and then reprimanded herself for not simply enjoying such pleasures while she still could. — Alastair Reynolds

I've never been drunk, but often I've been overserved. — George Gobel

His eyes are wild, psychotic slits that bat-dance in your soul looking for good things to crush or bad elements to identify with. — Irvine Welsh

More than anything, it was the blue dolphins that took me back home. — Scott O'Dell

The Atlantic is a stormy moat, and the Mediterranean,
The blue pool in the old garden,
More than five thousand years has drunk sacrifice
Of ships and blood and shines in the sun; but here the Pacific:
The ships, planes, wars are perfectly irrelevant.
Neither our present blood-feud with the brave dwarfs
Nor any future world-quarrel of westering
And eastering man, the bloody migrations, greed of power, battle-falcons,
Are a mote of dust in the great scale-pan.
Here from this mountain shore, headland beyond stormy headland plunging like
dolphins through the grey sea-smoke
Into pale sea, look west at the hill of water: it is half the planet: this
dome, this half-globe, this bulging
Eyeball of water, arched over to Asia,
Australia and white Antarctica: those are the eyelids that never close; this
is the staring unsleeping
Eye of the earth, and what it watches is not our wars. — Robinson Jeffers

How do I love thee? wondered Orion. "Let me see. I love thee passionately and eternally ... obviously eternally-that goes without saying." Holly blinked sweat from her eyes. "Is he serious?" she called over her shoulder to Foaly. "Oh, absolutely," said the centaur "If he asks you to look for birthmarks, say no immediately." "Oh, I would never." Orion assured her. "Ladies don't look for birthmarks; that is work for jolly fellows like the Goodly Beast and myself. Ladies, like Miss Short, do enough by simply existing. They exude beauty, and that is enough." "I am not exuding anything." said Holly, through gritted teeth. Orion tapped her shoulder. "I beg to differ. You're exuding right now, a wonderful aura. It's pastel blue with little dolphins." Holly gripped the wheel tightly. "I'm going to be sick. Did he just say pastel blue?" "And dolphins, little ones," said Foaly. — Eoin Colfer

Cultures have long heard wisdom in non-human voices: Apollo, god of music, medicine and knowledge, came to Delphi in the form of a dolphin. But dolphins, which fill the oceans with blipping and chirping, and whales, which mew and caw in ultramarine jazz - a true rhapsody in blue - are hunted to the edge of silence. — Jay Griffiths

Now, suddenly, I was the kind of girl who felt true physical pain when asked to put down a book at the dinner table, who asked friends over and ignored them to finish Island of the Blue Dolphins for the fifth time. — Lizzie Skurnick

Problem with attempting to live up to other people's expectations was that you were destined to fail before you even began. I — Denise Grover Swank

I am not exuding anything," said Holly through gritted teeth.
Orion tapped her shoulder. "I beg to differ. You're exuding right now, a wonderful aura. It's pastel blue with little dolphins. — Eoin Colfer

I have a notion that gamblers are as happy as most people - being always excited. — Lord Byron

Writers write to influence their readers, their preachers, their auditors, but always, at bottom, to be more themselves. — Aldous Huxley

Americans are artisans in freedom. — Derrick G. Jeter