Mainland Quotes & Sayings

Hawai'i is the only place in the fifty states where you can see the stars of the entire northern and southern hemispheres. Here, stars that can't be seen from the mainland are visible, along with stars that aren't visible from Australia. — John Richard Stephens

Italy police arrest 8 in Mafia wind farms plot. Operation "Aeolus," named after the ancient Greek god of winds, netted eight suspects, arrested in the Trapani area of western Sicily [and on the Italian mainland]. Police in Trapani said the local Mafia bribed city officials in nearby Mazara del Vallo so the town would invest in wind farms to produce energy. (Associated Press, 2009 [Google hosted]) — John Etherington

You cannot invade mainland United States. There would be a rifle behind each blade of grass. — Isoroku Yamamoto

Unlike some mainland black groups, Tasmanian Aborigines now have no traditional tribal culture left. It was taken from them with great violence and great rapidity. — Richard Flanagan

Most of those coming from the mainland are very destitute, almost naked. I am trying to find places for those able to work, and provide for them as best I can, so as to lighten the burden on the Government as much as possible, while at the same time they learn to respect themselves by earning their own living. — Harriet Tubman

There was no bombing of the U.S. mainland, no civilian casualties, no destruction of millions of homes. Indeed, while the standard of living plummeted for the vast majority of Britons during the war, many if not most Americans lived better than ever before. — Lynne Olson

Under Kingsley Shacklebolt, Azkaban was purged of Dementors. While it remains in use as a prison, the guards are now Aurors, who are regularly rotated from the mainland. There has been no breakout since this new system was introduced. — J.K. Rowling

As fog moved to the mainland I heard a flock of birds fly over. They sounded like a dress rustling, a dress being unfastened and dropping to the floor. Fog came unpinned like hair. On the beach cliffs, great colonies of datura - jimson weed - with their white trumpet flowers, looked like brass bands. — Gretel Ehrlich

They didn't incarcerate the Japanese-Americans in Hawaii. That's the place that was bombed. But the Japanese-American population was about 45 percent of the island of Hawaii. And if they extracted those Japanese-Americans, the economy would have collapsed. But on the mainland, we were thinly spread out up and down the West Coast. — George Takei

Despite its convict history, the Australian state of Tasmania is no longer associated only with austerity and privation. Nowadays it's a sybarite's nirvana surrounded by some of the most untouched nature on the planet. "Mainland Tassie," as the Tasmanians who live on the outer islands call it, covers 35,000 square miles, and 45% of that is preserved in bio-reserves, national parks or World Heritage sites. On the other 55%, there are just 515,000 people. — Anonymous

You have to ask what the end game is here - when 25 percent of Palo Alto homes are sold to overseas buyers as investments while the mainland Chinese property market tanks, when Palo Alto schools are known for their suicide rates as much as their academics, when the city that gave birth to the technology industry now can't even house startups because of its sky-high commercial rents, when Latino and black communities are being wiped from the Western side of the San Francisco Bay Area and Oakland out into the exurbs of the East only to be called back by smartphone to deliver laundry or drive people around. — Anonymous

The avian influenza found in mainland British Columbia poses no significant threat to human health. — John Clifford

[We should] set our eyes on the future. The political differences between the Chinese mainland and Taiwan should eventually be solved step by step, and [we] can not let these problems hand on from generation to generation. — Xi Jinping

An astronomer once explained to me that the galaxy we live in, the Milky Way, is vast, too vast to be understood without metaphor, so he gave me one. He said if you picture the Milky Way as being the size of mainland Europe, our solar system - that's Mars, Venus, Saturn, us here on Earth (you remember from school) - in a Milky Way the size of Europe our solar system would fit inside a single teacup somewhere in Belgium. He paused for my amazement, which I duly offered. But really what can you say? "Ooh, a teacup." "Blimey, Belgium." "Cor, it makes you think, doesn't it?" Then he added, clearly sensing I was at a bit of a loss for words, having just been reduced to a dot on a speck in a teacup in a continent: "Russell, there are 400 million KNOWN galaxies in our universe. — Russell Brand

In Taiwan during the 1960s and mainland China in the 1980s, conceptualism played a role similar to that of Dada, that is, as a vehicle for upsetting conventions - aesthetic, social, and political. Almost all Chinese conceptual artists proclaimed an allegiance to Dada. On the mainland, they also embraced traditional Chan Budhism, wich encourages an ironic sensibility and rejects the privileging of any one doctrine in the search for enlightment. Combined, Dada and Chan Budhism became a potent weapon in the Chinese avant-garde's assault on business as usual. — Gao Minglu

On the one hand, these filmmakers are the descendants of the May Fourth movement at the beginning of the century. One of the important ideological components of the May Fourth movement was its radical antitraditional stance, exemplified by its famous slogan: "Smash the Confucian Temple" (zalan kongjiadian). — Tonglin Lu

At low tide, much of the sea changes to land, and then more than seven hundred islands can be counted. People come here to hide, to find something they can't find on the mainland, to get religion through solitude. From June till September, nearly every day is perfect, with the 10,778-foot volcano of Mount Baker rising from the tumble of the Cascades to the west, blue herons and bald eagles crowding the skies, killer whales breaching offshore. The water is exceptionally clear, the result of a twice-daily shift-change in tide, when it sweeps north toward the Strait of Georgia, then back south toward the Strait of Juan de Fuca. In some places, the rip tides create white water like rapids on a foaming river. Being is bliss. But then the winters come and the tourists all go home and clouds hang on the horizon and unemployment doubles and the island dweller is left with whatever it is that led him to escape the rest of the world. — Timothy Egan

Audiences in mainland China know how to discuss movies. — Andrew Lau

Three big islands, Kyushu, Shikoku, and Honshu? And thousands of little ones. There's another island far to the north - some say it's the mainland - called Hokkaido, but only hairy natives — James Clavell

A shrewd notary from Extremadura, turned colonist and adventurer, and a one-armed ex-privateer from Limehouse, in the county of Middlesex. Eighty-seven years separate the expeditions, led by Hernan Cortes and Captain Christopher Newport receptively, that laid the foundation of the empires of Spain and Britain on the mainland of America. — J.H. Elliott

Regardless of how successful the Fifth Generation and New Taiwan cinemas have been in the international film milieu, this (limited) recognition usually is based on two aspects: the formal or the exotic. Their works are praised as highly formally innovative (in other words, how well the have mastered the new-wave visual language of the West -- thus, our modernist language) or exotic (as revealing the mystery of an inscrutable Other). This may explain why in the United States, mainland, Hong Kong, and Taiwan cinemas are still perceived as a homogeneous entity called Chinese cinema, though they are products of the vastly different cultures of three geopolitically segregated regions. — Tonglin Lu

Shetland is the most remote place in the U.K. It's a part our country, but completely unique. It might be British, but it's closer to Norway than to Edinburgh, and it feels very different from the mainland. — Ann Cleeves

The human species does not necessarily move in stages from progress to progress ... history and civilization do not advance in tandem. From the stagnation of Medieval Europe to the decline and chaos in recent times on the mainland of Asia and to the catastrophes of two world wars in the twentieth century, the methods of killing people became increasingly sophisticated. Scientific and technological progress certainly does not imply that humankind as a result becomes more civilized. — Gao Xingjian

The revolt in Asia Minor was snugged out in 494, and the Athenians realized that they had acquired a dangerous enemy. Darius I's first attempt at invasion in 492 was abortive: a huge storm wrecked his fleet. In 491 the Persians demanded 'earth and water'
signs of submission
from the Aegean islands and mainland cities. Many submitted. Athens and Sparta not only stood firm but murdered the Persian ambassadors. The Athenians put them on trial and killed both the ambassadors and their translator for offenses against the Greek language; the Spartans simply thew them down a well. — Alan Ryan

As I remarked before, the Asiatic elephant is smaller than the African, which is frequently twelve feet high, and its tusks are in proportion. In the island of Ceylon a certain number of animals are found deprived of these appendages, but "mucknas," which is the name given them, are rare on the mainland of India. Behind — Jules Verne

The moment the first American soldier sets foot on the Japanese mainland, all prisoners of war will be shot. — Hideki Tojo

During my lifetime most of the problems the world has faced have come, in one fashion or other, from mainland Europe, and the solutions from outside it. — Margaret Thatcher

There are still some terrible cliches in the presentation of Indian fiction. The lotus flower. The hennaed hands. In mainland Europe, people still slap these images on my books and I go bananas. — Hari Kunzru

It's the big new bridge," said Serge. "Takes you right across Lake What-the-Fuck." "Is that another real name?" "No," said Serge. "That's what I call it. It's really named Lake Surprise. But surprise is usually something good that provides delight, like winning the lottery or reaching in the back of the fridge and finding an unexpected jar of olives. But this lake got its name because it pissed people off." "How'd it do that?" "Another funny story. When Henry Flagler started the Overseas Railroad down the Keys, he looked for the route with the most land, because bridges over water cost more. So he sent out surveyors, and they began laying tracks south from the mainland of Florida, across some little islands and an isthmus to Key Largo. And I can't believe they built that far before realizing that right in the middle of a big chunk of land was this giant lake, and now they have to build an extra bridge that wasn't in the budget. — Tim Dorsey

I would love mainland Chinese to read my book. There is a Chinese translation which I worked on myself, published in Hong Kong and Taiwan. Many copies have gone into China but it is still banned. — Jung Chang

I have great respect for the Taiwanese. They have done an extraordinary job. But it was not a sustainable position to say that the legitimate government of China resides in Taiwan, which at that time didn't have much contact with the mainland. — Henry A. Kissinger

The problem is that in order to publish a book in mainland China, you have to agree to be subject to censorship. That's the nature of the system. I don't challenge that system on its face. It's their system. But as an author, I have a choice to make whether I'll participate or I won't. — Evan Osnos

The mainland Chinese tend to take a Chinese mainland point of view on controversial issues, and the Taiwanese take another the Taiwanese viewpoint. — Jimmy Wales

On two separate occasions he's told people in Los Angeles that he's from Canada and they've asked about igloos. An allegedly well-educated New Yorker once listened carefully to his explanation of where he's from - southwestern British Columbia, an island between Vancouver Island and the mainland - and then asked, apparently in all seriousness, if this means he grew up near Maine. — Emily St. John Mandel

If you donate to the mainland, it's not as simple as giving money. You need a lot of psychological resilience. — Ronnie Chan

The most important thing to keep in mind is the incredible diversity of talent that's out there - there are so many great actors from all over Asia, from Singapore and Hong Kong to the Philippines and Mainland China, not to mention many great Asian-American actors who are eager for fun and challenging roles. — Kevin Kwan

This is a difficult question, because it is quite impossible to say how time does wear on in the Neverland, where it is calculated by moons and suns, and there are ever so many more of them than on the mainland. — J.M. Barrie

I forgave her, of course. I always did; I had to, because there were only the two of us. The two of us on our thorn-encircled island, waiting for rescue; and, on the mainland, everyone else. — Margaret Atwood

I think there's a large segment of the mainland population that does not really understand the number of territories that are part of the United States. — Sonia Sotomayor

Many of the Kuomintang elite in Taiwan have relatives among the ruling elite here on mainland China. — Rebecca MacKinnon

The proof given by Wright, that non-adaptive differentiation will occur in small populations owing to "drift," or the chance fixation of some new mutation or recombination, is one of the most important results of mathematical analysis applied to the facts of neo-mendelism. It gives accident as well as adaptation a place in evolution, and at one stroke explains many facts which puzzled earlier selectionists, notably the much greater degree of divergence shown by island than mainland forms, by forms in isolated lakes than in continuous river-systems. — Julian Huxley

As a condition for entry into the Chinese market, Apple had to agree to the Chinese government's censorship criteria in vetting the content of all iPhone apps available for download on devices sold in mainland China. — Rebecca MacKinnon

I left Beijing in the late 1980s to live in Hong Kong because, having been blacklisted by the government, I couldn't publish my works on the mainland. — Ma Jian

The wide-ranging birds that visit islands of the ocean in migration may also have a good deal to do with the distribution of plants, and perhaps even of some insects and minute land shells. From a ball of mud taken from a bird's plumage, Charles Darwin raised 82 separate plants, belonging to 5 distinct species! Many plant seeds have hooks or prickles, ideal for attachment to feathers. Such birds as the Pacific golden plover, which annually flies from the mainland of Alaska to the Hawaiian Islands and even beyond, probably figure in many riddles of plant distribution. — Rachel Carson

Like tiny islands on the horizon, they can vanish in rough seas. Even in calm weather, their coral gradually erodes, pickled by salt and heat. Yet they form the shoals of a life. Some offer safe lagoons and murmuring trees. Others crawl with pirates and reptiles. Together they connect a self with the mainland and society. Plot their trail and a mercurial past becomes visible.

Memories feel geological in their repose, solid and true, the bedrock of consciousness. — Diane Ackerman

Time since my escape ticked by and the voices came to me. God Almighty and the Devil coaxed me onwards and stated that the edge of the forest was close at hand. The voices told me that they would search for me by air and put screws on the points and docks where there was access to the mainland. The voices also told me that the three prisons on the island would go on lock down until I was caught or wasn't. — Stephen Richards

The sleek, white Gulfstream jet cruised at forty thousand feet above the Tyrrhenian Sea west of the Italian mainland. The luxuriously-fitted and technologically-advanced aircraft showcased a cozy interior with windows that permitted ample sunlight to brighten the cabin. Though the plane could accommodate eighteen people, only one passenger was aboard the flight. — S.S. Segran

All of Europe is tremendously integrated now; perhaps from all those years of colonization. Everybody that they've colonized has come to the mainland, so you'll have a racially diverse audience as well. You'll have many Middle Easterners, Asians, Africans, from seven to ninety sitting in the audience, and the really incredible thing is that they all know the music. I don't mean they just know a song here and there. They know the music. They are a very educated audience. — Patti Austin

To call someone a navel gazer on the mainland is to say that they're narcissistic, self-absorbed in their introspective pursuits. This perspective, I realize, might be the very reason I've come to think of a spiritual life as some sort of luxury. I'm suddenly struck by the irony of a culture that seems to point to personal spiritual quests as somehow selfish when, in the end, those journeys, like the discredited belly button, are ultimately a search for connectivity. — Leigh Ann Henion

In mainland China, there are many good theaters - sometimes better than Hong Kong. — Andrew Lau

One of my goals is to have a base near mainland China. I think Hong Kong would be a good match for me. I like being in Hong Kong. — Nicolas Cage

Dover's cliffs call to mind the Roman invasion; the Battle of Britain; our proximity to, yet difference from, mainland Europe; and international trade and exploration, both fair and exploitative. — Julian Baggini

Innovators and creators are persons who can to a higher degree than average accept the condition of aloneness. They are more willing to follow their own vision, even when it takes them far from the mainland of the human community. Unexplored places do not frighten them- or not, at any rate, as much as they frighten those around them. This is one of the secrets of their power. That which we call genius has a great deal to do with courage and daring, a great deal to do with nerve. — Nathaniel Branden

let us start by picturing the Japan archipelago lying in the sea by the Chinese mainland. If its proximity allowed it to become part of the Sinosphere and acquire a written culture, its distance benefited the development of indigenous writing. The Dover Strait, separating England and France, is only 34 kilometers (21 miles) wide. A fine swimmer can swim across it. In contrast, the shortest distance between Japan and the Korean Peninsula is five or six times greater, and between Japan and the Chinese mainland, twenty-five times greater. The current, moreover, is deadly. . . . Japan's distance from China gave it political and cultural freedom and made possible the flowering of its own writing. — Minae Mizumura

My wife's brother has a little house on a small island in the Baltic Sea, and we go there at Christmas. The 30-minute crossing from the mainland to this island is the most terrifying cruise you'll ever take. They give you a barf bag when you walk on board. — Nick Frost

I know people have swum the 3.5 mile stretch of the Solent from the Isle of Wight to the mainland for charity, and some just for the hell of it in the Cross Solent Swim, but this was at night, in the dark and without the help of a nearby boat to haul me in to safety. I didn't have the benefit of tidal maps, accompanied swimming mates in near perfect conditions or the likes. I only my strength of determination and the beckoning lights on the mainland to aim for. — Stephen Richards

In the interval from about February to May 1609, there was considerable material progress in and about Jamestown. Perhaps forty acres were cleared and prepared for planting in Indian corn, the new grain that fast became a staple commodity. A "deep well" was dug in the fort. The church was re-covered and twenty cabins built. A second trial was made at glass manufacture in the furnaces built late in 1608. A blockhouse was built at the isthmus which connected the Island to the mainland for better control of the Indians, and a new fort was erected on a tidal creek across the river from Jamestown. — Charles E. Hatch

The best place for puffin watching is Sumburgh Head, at the south end of the Shetland mainland. There used to be a lighthouse there, but it's now a visitor centre and gallery; they run a webcam, so you can check on the puffins in advance. — Ann Cleeves

As dawn saw the lights of the mainland go out, I swam harder, pulling out all the stops in my swimming repertoire, even using my head to push the water aside. My tired muscles screamed at me to stop, but I took no notice and there, a few hundred yards away was what I could see was the shoreline, my pace doubled. — Stephen Richards

That's what they call you, on the mainland. Witches. That's what my father says that you are. Monsters. Beasts. But you are not a monster." "No," she says quietly. "And neither are the rest — Kendare Blake

It is in the province of home and society that woman has fashioned the customs. Here, women's approval and disapproval, wishes and wants, have been quite as formative and reformative as the action of the sea on the mainland. — Ellen Key

Six months after that, I left Taiwan, first for Hong Kong and then for mainland China, where I spent another three months studying still more Chinese and generally kicking around the country. — Eric Allin Cornell

Moshup made this island He dragged his toe through the water and cut this land from the mainland. He went on then, with much animation, to relate a fabulous tale of giants and whales and shape-shifting spirits. I let hi speak, because I did not want to vex him, but also because I liked to listen to the story as he told it, with expression and vivid gesture. Of course, I thought it all outlandish. But ... it came to me that our story of a burning bush and a parted sea might also seem fabulous, to one not raised up knowing it was true. — Geraldine Brooks

People who live on continents get into the habit of regarding the ocean as journey's end, the full stop at the end of the trek. For people who live on islands, the sea is always the beginning. It's the ferry to the mainland, the escape route from the boredom and narrowness of home. — Jonathan Raban

For the young Turks, soon to assume power and build a nation-state on the ruins of the Ottoman Empire, Japan provided clear inspiration. These envious outside observers of Japan's progress did not see the extreme violence of the country's makeover. Nor did they notice the trends towards conformity, militarism and racism that were later to make Japan a ominously successful rival to Europe's imperialist nations- by 1942, Japan would occupy or dominate a broad swathe of the Asian mainland, from the Aleutian Islands in the north-east to the borders of India, after booting out almost all the European masters in between. For many Asians in the late nineteenth century, the proof of Japan's success lay in the extent to which it could demand equality with the West; and, here, the evidence was simply overwhelming for people who had tried to do the same and had failed miserably. — Pankaj Mishra

The mainland can stretch until it breaks at the weakest points, and those weaknesses are called faults. Each island represented a victory and a defeat: it had either pulled itself free or pulled too hard and found itself alone. Later, as these islands grew older, they turned their misfortune into virtue, learned to accept their cragginess, their misshapen coasts, ragged where they'd been torn. They acquired grace. — Anne Michaels

Facebook is blocked in mainland China, but is used heavily by the rest of the Chinese-speaking world, including Hong Kong, Singapore, and Taiwan. — Rebecca MacKinnon

It is really so nice here-country-busy-busy with so many different kinds of things- ... I must say I feel far away in another world here- ... always we go to a new place ... the people have a kind of gentleness that isn't usual on the mainland. — Georgia O'Keeffe

The doctor from the mainland came and went. Silence settled over the island again, like a displaced curtain falling back in thickened, heavier folds. For there was a different quality in the silence now. It had tasted something, rich food on which it had long been thinly rationed. Shadowy things were trooping up, called by that scent of blood, like flies that smell carrion. They were not strangers to the old house; they had been ill-fed and at a distance, now they were hungry and avid and near. — Evangeline Walton

Gabe crouches over the radio, trying to get it to pick up one of the mainland music stations, which only works when the weather is just right and the appropriate slain sacrifices have been made. — Maggie Stiefvater

I am a vigilant monarchist. I want to see things evolve. The direction the monarchy seems to be moving in - towards a more mainland-European model - is one I would feel sympathetic about. — Andrew Motion

In my lifetime all our problems have come from mainland Europe and all the solutions have come from the English-speaking nations across the world. — Margaret Thatcher

On the mainland, a rain was falling. The famous Seattle rain. The thin, gray rain that toadstools love. The persistent rain that knows every hidden entrance into collar and shopping bag. The quiet rain that can rust a tin roof without the tin roof making a sound in protest. The shamanic rain that feeds the imagination. The rain that seems actually a secret language, whispering, like the ecstasy of primitives, of the essence of things. — Tom Robbins

African leaders should not turn the continent into a giant collector of donations and loans from wealthy nations - they must find other plausible means to help established their economic security so as to minimize poverty. This incoherent blunder on the mainland must be scrutinized. — Duop Chak Wuol

And so, I mean, he declared war right there and then in so many words and Alex says later in the book, nobody in the White House from that point on had any doubt that we were going to bomb the mainland of Asia. — James Stockdale

I don't see America as a mainland, but as a sea, a big ocean. Sometimes a storm arises, a formidable current develops, and it seems it will engulf everything. Wait a moment, another current will appear and bring the first one to naught. — Jacques Maritain

Safeguarding the interests of our Taiwan compatriots and expanding their well-being is the mainland's oft-repeated pledge and solemn promise of the new leaders of China's Communist Party central committee. — Xi Jinping

But surely the purpose of - I mean, wouldn't it be nice if you ended up with some creature that started to think about the universe - ?" "Good gravy, I don't want anything poking around!" said the god testily. "There's enough patches and stitches in it as it is without some clever devil trying to find more, I can assure you. No, the gods on the mainland have got that right at least. Intelligence is like legs - too many and you trip yourself up. Six is about the right number, in my view. — Terry Pratchett

If Sawtooth could put words to the brambled knot forming in his throat, he would tell her: Girl, don't go. I am marooned in this place without you. What I feel for you is more than love. It's stronger, peninsular. You connect me to the Mainland. You are my leg of land over dark water. — Karen Russell

Looking from afar - from present to past, from exile to homeland, from island back to mainland, mountain-top at lowland - results notin vision's diffusion but in its sharpening; not in memory's dispersal but in it's plenishment. — Robert Macfarlane

If you donate overseas, it's a simple matter. In mainland China, there are so many headaches. — Ronnie Chan

Mainland Wales, was somewhere before us but only dimly visible, an inky smudge squatting along the far horizon. — Ransom Riggs

The election of the nationalist Chen Shui-bian as president in 2000 and his re-election in 2004 was a nadir in the relationship between Taiwan and the mainland. — Martin Jacques

November
with uncanny witchery in its changed trees. With murky red sunsets flaming in smoky crimson behind the westering hills. With dear days when the austere woods were beautiful and gracious in a dignified serenity of folded hands and closed eyes
days full of a fine, pale sunshine that sifted through the late, leafless gold of the juniper-trees and glimmered among the grey beeches, lighting up evergreen banks of moss and washing the colonnades of the pines. Days with a high-sprung sky of flawless turquoise. Days when an exquisite melancholy seemed to hang over the landscape and dream about the lake. But days, too, of the wild blackness of great autumn storms, followed by dank, wet, streaming nights when there was witch-laughter in the pines and fitful moans among the mainland trees. What cared they? Old Tom had built his roof well, and his chimney drew. — L.M. Montgomery

If you are black, the only roads into the mainland of American life are through subservience, cowardice, and loss of manhood. These are the white man's roads. — Amiri Baraka

More and more of the Taiwanese economy is connected with the mainland. There are more and more exchanges taking place. There's no reason to doubt that over a period of ten years or so, or maybe more, the conditions of life on the two sides of the Taiwan Strait will become more comparable, and the dialogue on the political level therefore easier. — Henry A. Kissinger

I grew up in Pittwater, north of Sydney; Elvina Bay, Scotland Island area. I had to go to school by boat. To get to the mainland, we had to go by boat, so it was just a way of life. — James Spithill

Back in eighth grade, I'd seen nothing but small-town Georgia when I left the U.S. for the first time and went to Hong Kong, Taiwan and Mainland China. — Chandler Massey

The Everglades are on fire on my final drive down to the Keys. On the curve of the turnpike where the pineapple groves end and marshland begins, I watch the green horizon burn with helicopters bobbing overhead, fighting the flames. It's too late in the season to be a wildfire. The radio says some thrill-torcher is responsible.

I don't believe in omens. I believe we choose our own signs, so I take this one as my own: with this blaze, I leave my old life up here on the mainland in ashes. — Patricia Engel

So we rowed, our only hope that we could reach the mainland before nightfall reached us. — Ransom Riggs

We decided to play the NEC because we were asked to, and because we actually rather like the place: we've always enjoyed doing it before. We don't often get sensible offers to play in the UK, so most years we just play on the mainland, with the occasional exotic detour. — Andrew Eldritch

Zhang Yimou is one of the best directors on mainland China. — Jet Li

But if the Chinese mainland, the PRC, attacked Taiwan, we'd be obligated to come to their aid. — Fred Thompson

One thing I more and this is all I have to say...High School is not a separate unit from you. We are apart of you. Every man, woman, and child in this community is a part...Your ways of life in your homes and your town reflect here in the school. You can help us or you can hurt us. Our success depends largely on you. I used to think when I first started teaching school that it was all up to the teachers and the pupils. I have changed my mind. The little island of humanity that is each one of you must unite with other islands and become a mainland if we are to have a successful school. — Jesse Stuart

A trip to the mainland was a big event and happened maybe once a year, although now you can get across in a speed boat in seven minutes but then it was a long way away. — Jeremy Irons

After the Tiananmen Massacre, I felt compelled not only to continue writing but to actively resist the restrictions placed on freedom of speech. I set up the publishing company in Hong Kong, with offices in Shenzhen in mainland China, and managed to publish works of fiction, philosophy, and politics by unapproved authors. — Ma Jian

When the sea goes down, there will come from the mainland boats and men. And they will find ten dead bodies and an unsolved problem on Indian Island. — Agatha Christie

Whether it is in the United States or in mainland Europe, written constitutions have one great weakness. That is that they contain the potential to have judges take decisions which should properly be made by democratically elected politicians. — Margaret Thatcher

An island, on the other hand, is small. There are fewer species, and the competition for survival has never reached anything like the pitch that it does on the mainland. Species are only as tough as they need to be, life is much quieter and more settled [..] So you can imagine what happens when a mainland species gets introduced to an island. It would be like introducing Al Capone, Genghis Khan and Rupert Murdoch into the Isle of Wight - the locals wouldn't stand a chance. — Douglas Adams

Buddhists and Taoists of the mainland, Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan share the same roots and instructions and have always maintained sound exchanges. — Jia Qinglin