“I was cruising along on Tokyo Bay, and suddenly this was the answer, looming, the heaped remains of everything that goes down and does not come again to shore, life’s giant kitchen-midden, the rubbish heap that remains after all things pass, the place that stands in testament to the futility of all ideals and intentions, good or bad, the rock that smashes values, there, signalizing the ultimate uselessness of life itself, which must one day be broken upon it, not to rise, no, never, not ever, again.”

—  Roger Zelazny, Isle of the Dead

Source: Isle of the Dead (1969), Chapter 7 (p. 154)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "I was cruising along on Tokyo Bay, and suddenly this was the answer, looming, the heaped remains of everything that goe…" by Roger Zelazny?
Roger Zelazny photo
Roger Zelazny112
American speculative fiction writer 1937–1995

Related quotes

“To depart while seated or standing is all one.
All I shall leave behind me
Is a heap of bones.
In empty space I twist and soar
And come down with the roar of thunder
To the sea.”

Koho Kenichi (1241–1316) Japanese sangha of Rinzai school in Kamakura era

Japanese Death Poems. Compiled by Yoel Hoffmann. ISBN 978-0-8048-3179-6

Frederick William Robertson photo

“Life passes; work is permanent. It is all going — fleeting and withering. Youth goes. Mind decays. That which is done remains. Through ages, through eternity, what you have done for God, that, and only that, you are. Deeds never die.”

Frederick William Robertson (1816–1853) British writer and theologian

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 119.

Howard Thurman photo

“There must be always remaining in every life, some place for the singing of angels, some place for that which in itself is breathless and beautiful.”

Howard Thurman (1899–1981) American writer

Marcus Aurelius photo

“About fame… Just as the sand-dunes, heaped one upon another, hide each the first, so in life the former deeds are quickly hidden by those that follow after.”

Marcus Aurelius book Meditations

VII, 34
Meditations (c. 121–180 AD), Book VII

Joseph Stalin photo

“I know that after my death a pile of rubbish will be heaped on my grave, but the wind of History will sooner or later sweep it away without mercy.”

Joseph Stalin (1879–1953) General secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union

Said to Molotov in 1943, as quoted in Felix Chuev's 140 Conversations with Molotov Moscow, 1991.
Contemporary witnesses

Sallustius photo

“If when matter is destroyed other matter takes its place, the new matter must come either from something that is or from something that is not. If from that-which-is, as long as that-which-is always remains, matter always remains. But if that-which-is is destroyed, such a theory means that not the world only but everything in the universe is destroyed.
If again matter comes from that-which-is-not: in the first place, it is impossible for anything to come from that which is not; but suppose it to happen, and that matter did arise from that which is not; then, as long as there are things which are not, matter will exist. For I presume there can never be an end of things which are not.”

Sallustius Roman philosopher and writer

XVII. That the World is by nature Eternal.
On the Gods and the Cosmos

Michael Moorcock photo

“All Empires fall,
All ages die,
All strife shall be in vain.
All Kings go down,
All hope must fail,
But Tanelorn remains—
Our Tanelorn remains…”

Michael Moorcock book Phoenix in Obsidian

Book 2 “The Champion’s Road” Chapter 5 “The Black Sword” (p. 365)
Phoenix in Obsidian (1970)

Nathaniel Hawthorne photo

“If mankind were all intellect, they would be continually changing, so that one age would be entirely unlike another. The great conservative is the heart, which remains the same in all ages; so that commonplaces of a thousand years' standing are as effective as ever.”

Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804–1864) American novelist and short story writer (1804 – 1879)

January 1854
Notebooks, The English Notebooks (1853 - 1858)

Amit Chaudhuri photo

“I drifted past heliotropic rubbish-heaps, elderly/white houses.’ ( The Bandra Medical Store )”

Amit Chaudhuri (1962) contemporary Indian-English novelist

St Cyril Road and Other Poems (2005)

Gustave Flaubert photo

“She did not believe that things could remain the same in different places, and since the portion of her life that lay behind her had been bad, no doubt that which remained to be lived would be better.”

Gustave Flaubert Madame Bovary

Source: Madame Bovary

Related topics