Islands in the Stream

“Mr. Davis and I are always scared,” Andrew said. “It’s possibly our superior intelligence.”

“I’m liable to start thinking about the novel. Tommy, why is it fun to paint well and hell to write well? I never painted well. But it was fun even the way I painted.”
“I don’t know,” Thomas Hudson said. “Maybe in painting the tradition and the line are clearer and there are more people helping you. Even when you break from the straight line of great painting, it is always there to help you.”
“I think another thing is that better people do it,” Roger said. “If I were a good enough guy maybe I could have been a good painter. Maybe I’m just enough of a son of a bitch to be a good writer.”

When a man lives in a house by himself he gets very precise habits and they get to be a pleasure. But it felt good to have some of them broken up. He knew he would have his habits again long after he would no longer have the boys.

“What do you boys do?”
“I’ve been doing it all day.”
“But you were here before. What did you do then?”
“Swim, eat, drink. Tom works, read, talk, read, fish, fish, swim, drink, sleep-”
“No womens?”
“Still no womens.”
“Sounds unhealthy to me. Sort of unwholesome atmosphere.

He stood there, holding the long, pleasantly bitter drink, tasting the first swallow of it, and it reminded him of Tanga, Mombasa, and Lamu and all that coast and he had a sudden nostalgia for Africa. Here he was, settled on the island, when he could as well be in Africa. Hell, he thought, I can always go there. You have to make it inside of yourself wherever you are.

Of course Thomas Hudson could not think that he knew Queen Mary except through the papers and in pictures and a profile of her in The New Yorker but the fact that she liked conch pearls made him feel that he knew her better than he knew many other people he had known for a long time.

I’m educated way beyond my means.”