“The desert is not an island: the island is not enchanted: and the desert is no habitation for men.”
"To speak about the soul"
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Peter Levi 3
writer, archaeologist, sometime Jesuit priest 1931–2000Related quotes
“Alone dwells every man and everyone mocks everyone else, and a deserted island is our pain.”
Le livre de ma mère [The Book of My Mother] (1954)
“Zuleika, on a desert island, would have spent most of her time in looking for a man's footprint.”
Source: Zuleika Dobson http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext99/zdbsn11.txt (1911), Ch. II
"A Magic Mountain" (1975), trans. Czesław Miłosz and Lillian Vallee
Hymn of the Pearl (1981)
Gramophone
Context: I think that if I were required to spend the rest of my life on a desert island, and to listen to or play the music of any one composer during all that time, that composer would almost certainly be Bach. I really can't think of any other music which is so all-encompassing, which moves me so deeply and so consistently, and which, to use a rather imprecise word, is valuable beyond all of its skill and brilliance for something more meaningful than that -- its humanity.
