Day One: A Novella
Jennifer Arnett
Top 10 Best Quotes
“The mind is weak, and it must be mastered, controlled. The body, it knows no master save for instinct and, unfortunately, it is built for terminal suffering.”
“Every few days the sea delivers us gifts, and I am convinced that there is something of the divine nature in this process. Often I have prayed for a jacket, a bucket, or a handsaw, but instead I find one single flip-flop. Many times it has left my heart bitter, but then I find some useful purpose for my found treasure. Maybe the sea doesn’t give me what I want, but what I need.”
“But every tomorrow has led to today— to us being alone, hungry, and cold on an unknown island somewhere in the South Pacific.”
“What they say about lawyers being useless isn’t entirely true.”
“I refuse to sit and wait for salvation. Every day I have looked to the sky for the white streak of a plane making its way across the Pacific, but I have not seen any.”
“We don’t vanish without a trace. We are not like animals, content with burrows in the ground. We are not very skilled at survival without clothing or tools. Our feet are soft, our skin is easily cooled, and our stomachs are too weak to drink water straight from a stream. We must create in order to survive. We build cities, aqueducts, and shields, for we must in order to have an edge over the beasts of the field. And so, wherever humans have tread their covered feet, their path never vanishes without a trace.”
“This island is a hard place to survive and I fear that it has made everything resistant to the cruel hand of death.”
“Maybe they died of disease or lived on this island into old age, but no matter which, someone was the last man standing.”
“I once watched a small hermit crab crawl out of its shell and into a larger one nearby. Maybe we are no different. There were those before us and there will be some after us. All we can do is cultivate what is given to us. Maybe our lot in this life is to leave our shells better than when we found them so that the next soul will flourish here.”
“I can’t help but imagine what that would be like—to be all alone on this island with eternity taunting me with loneliness. To say goodbye to the last human you will ever see—there is no crueler hand of fate.”
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