“Come away with me, he said, we will live on a desert island. I said, I am a desert island. It was not what he had in mind.”

— Margaret Atwood

Last update June 3, 2021. History

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Margaret Atwood 348

Canadian writer 1939

Peter Levi (1931–2000) writer, archaeologist, sometime Jesuit priest

"To speak about the soul"

“Bod said, "I want to see life. I want to hold it in my hands. I want to leave a footprint on the sand of a desert island. I want to play football with people. I want," he said, and then he paused, and thought. "I want everything."”

Neil Gaiman book The Graveyard Book

Source: The Graveyard Book (2008), Ch. 8

“No man is an island,' said John Donne. I feel we are all islands -- in a common sea.”

Anne Morrow Lindbergh book Gift from the Sea

Source: Gift from the Sea

“Now I am not ashamed of my defeat.
One murky island with its barking seals
Or a parched desert is enough
To make us say: yes, oui, si.”

Czeslaw Milosz (1911–2004) Polish, poet, diplomat, prosaist, writer, and translator

"A Magic Mountain" (1975), trans. Czesław Miłosz and Lillian Vallee
Hymn of the Pearl (1981)

“It is human nature to want to exchange ideas, and I believe that, at bottom, every artist wants no more than to tell the world what he has to say. I have sometimes heard painters say that they paint 'for themselves': but I think they would soon have painted their fill if they lived on a desert island.”

M. C. Escher (1898–1972) Dutch graphic artist

1950's, On Being a Graphic Artist', 1953
Context: It is human nature to want to exchange ideas, and I believe that, at bottom, every artist wants no more than to tell the world what he has to say. I have sometimes heard painters say that they paint 'for themselves': but I think they would soon have painted their fill if they lived on a desert island. The primary purpose of all art forms, whether it's music, literature, or the visual arts, is to say something to the outside world; in other words, to make a personal thought, a striking idea, an inner emotion perceptible to other people’s senses in such a way that there is no uncertainty about the maker's intentions.