An Island to Oneself by Tom Neale, r. Sep. 2015

p. 19 I chose to live in the Pacific islands because life there moves at the sort of pace which you feel God must have had in mind originally when He made the sun to keep us warm and provided the fruits of the earth for the taking…

p. 77 Almost without noticing it, I slipped into the routine that was to become my life. Early morning had a familiar sound for I was regularly awakened by a rooster just before dawn. I would lie there relaxed for a little, thinking how lucky I was to look forward to a day which was going to bring me nothing but satisfaction.

p. 141 I remember thinking, too, how vastly different their lives were going to be from mine once their pleasant cruise was over. Even when they reached Apia in Samoa there would be bright lights (of a sort), cars, busy streets, cinemas, hotels; so-called luxuries which, however desirable, exacted their own price in tensions, problems, congested humanity.

p. 215 I would get up in the morning, put on my pareu, brew my coffee and suddenly reflect that by rights I should be in a pair of long trousers, jangling a bunch of keys ready to open the store. I had escaped! That was the overwhelming sensation, that was what made those early days so unbelievably wonderful and precious: I had cheated authority, fate, life itself, and all by a miracle.

Cloud Atlas by David Mitchell, r. Sep. 2015

p. 16 Peace, though beloved of our Lord, is a cardinal virtue only if your neighbors share your conscience.

p. 54 Under a row of pear trees - once an orchard? - I laid me down and idled, an art perfected during my long convalescence. An idler and a sluggard are as different as a gourmand and a glutton.

p. 55 Vyvyan spurns praise, both giving and receiving it. He says, 'If people praise you, you're not walking your own path.'

p. 61 I notice he rarely proposes alternatives for the systems he ridicules. "Liberality? Timidity in the rich!" "Socialism? The younger brother of a decrepit despotism, which it wants to succeed" "Conservatives? Adventitious liars, whose doctrine of free will is their greatest deception." What sort of state does he want? "None! The better organized the state, the duller its humanity."

p. 75 Faith, the least exclusive club on Earth, has the craftiest doorman. Every time I've stepped through its wide-open doorway, I find myself stepping out on the street again.

p. 86 Autumn is leaving its mellowness behind for its spiky, rotted stage. Don't remember summer even saying good-bye.

p. 177 I strode on. Leaves turned to soil beneath my feet. Thus it is, trees eat themselves.

p. 225 I play Go against my sony, I said. "To relax?" he responded, incredulous. "Who wins, you or the sony?" The sony, I answered, or how would I ever improve? So winners, Hae-Joo proposed, are the real losers because they learn nothing? What, then, are losers? Winners? I said, If losers can xploit what their adversaries teach them, yes, losers can become winners in the long term.

p. 227 Purebloods, it seemed, were a sponge of demand that sucked goods and services from every vendor, dinery, bar, shop, and nook.

p. 235 the vacant (movie theater) was a haunting frame for those lost, rainy landscapes. Giants strode the screen, lit by sunlite contured thru a lens when your grandfather's grandfather, Archivist, was kicking in his natural womb. Time is the speed at which the past decays, but [movies] enable a brief resurrection. Those since fallen buildings, those long-eroded faces. Your present, not we, is the true illusion, they seem to say.

p. 265 So many feelin's I'd got I din't have room 'nuff for 'em. Oh, bein' young ain't easy 'cos ev'rythin' you're puzzlin'n'ankin' you're puzzlin'n'anxin' it for the first time.

p. 303 So, I asked 'gain, is it better to be savage'n to be Civ'lized? List'n, savages and Civ'lizeds ain't divvied by tribes or b'liefs or mountain ranges, nay, ev'ry human is both, yay. Old Uns'd got the Smart o' gods but the savagery o' jackals an' that's what tripped the Fall. Some savages what I knowed got a beautsome Civ'lized heart beatin' in their ribs.

p. 326 All revolutions are [fantasy and lunacy], until they happen, then they are historical inevitabilities.

p. 331 Few colonists live as long as upstrata consumers. They bicker, blame, and grieve as people will, but at least they do it in a community, and companionship is a fine medicine in itself. Nea So Copros has no communities now, only mutually suspicious substrata.

p. 344 My fifth Declaration posits how, in a cycle as old as tribalism, ignorance of the Other engenders fear; fear engenders hatred; hatred engenders violence; violence engenders further violence until the only "rights," the only law, are whatever is willed by the most powerful.

p. 349 As Seneca warned Nero: No matter how many of us you kill, you will never kill your successor.

p. 362 She was widely read enough to appreciate my literary wit but not so widely read that she knew my sources. I like that in a woman.

p. 363 It's true, reading too many novels makes you go blind.

p. 387 ...but it is attitude, not years, that condemns one to the ranks of the Undead, or else proffers salvation. In the domain of the young there dwells many an Undead soul. They rush about so, their inner putrefaction is concealed for a few decades, that is all.

p. 449 ...nothing is more tiresome than being told what to admire, and having things pointed at with a stick. Can scarcely recall the name of a single sight. By the itinerary's finale, the great clock tower, my jaw was hurting from all the yawns I'd suppressed.

p. 470 People are obscenities. Would rather by music than be a mass of tubes squeezing semisolids around itself for a few decades before becoming so dribblesome it'll no longer function.