The Island House: A Tale for the Young Folks

“Books are the mirrors of the soul.””

— F. M. Holmes

“Often on a wet day I begin counting up; what I've read and what I haven't read.””

— F. M. Holmes

“Empty, empty, empty; silent, silent, silent. The room was a shell, singing of what was before time was; a vase stood in the heart of the house, alabaster, smooth, cold, holding the still, distilled essence of emptiness, silence.””

— F. M. Holmes

“For I hear music, they were saying. Music wakes us. Music makes us see the hidden, join the broken. Look and listen.””

— F. M. Holmes

“Do you think people change? I meant ourselves”

— F. M. Holmes

“Suppose the looking glass smashes, the image disappears, and the romantic figure with the green of forest depths all about it is there no longer, but only that shell of a person which is seen by other people - what an airless, shallow, bald, prominent world it becomes! A world not to be lived in. As we face each other in omnibuses and underground railways we are looking into the mirror that accounts for the vagueness, the gleam of glassiness, in our eyes.””

— F. M. Holmes

“Love. Hate. Peace. Three emotion made the ply of human life.””

— F. M. Holmes

“But we have other lives, I think, I hope,’ she murmured. 'We live in others, … We live in things.””

— F. M. Holmes

“But she had nothing. She had forbidden music. Grating her fingers in the bark, she damned the audience. Panic seized her. Blood seemed to pour from her shoes. This is death, death, death, she noted in the margin of her mind; when illusion fails. Unable to lift her hand, she stood facing the audience.And then the shower fell, sudden, profuse.No one had seen the cloud coming. There it was, black, swollen, on top of them. Down it poured like all the people in the world weeping. Tears. Tears. Tears.””

— F. M. Holmes