Phillip (The Cay) Quotes

“Like silent, hungry sharks that swim in the darkness of the sea, the German submarines arrived in the middle of the night.”

“There was no day or night that passed when I didn’t listen for sounds from the sky. Both my sense of touch and my sense of hearing were beginning to make up for my lack of sight. I separated the sound and each became different.”

“Soon I felt water around my ankles. Then it washed to my knees. It would go back and then crash against us again. Timothy was taking the full blows of the storm, sheltering me with his body. When the water receded, it would tug at us, and Timothy’s strength would fight against it. I could feel the steel in his arms as the water tried to suck us away.”

“Wanting to hear it from Timothy, I asked him why there were different colors of skin, white and black, brown and red, and he laughed back, “Why b’feesh different color, or flower b’different color? I true don’ know, Phill-eep, but I true tink beneath d’skin is all d’same.”

“Some of the women cried at the sight of her, and I saw men, my father included, with tears in their eyes. It didn’t seem possible that only a few hours before I had been standing on her deck. I was no longer excited about the war; I had begun to understand that it meant death and destruction.”

“My mother was right, I thought. They had their place and we had ours. He did not really like me, or he would have taken me along. He was different.”

“Something happened to me that day on the cay. I’m not quite sure what it was even now, but I had begun to change. I said to Timothy, ‘I want to be your friend.’ He said softly, ‘Young bahss, you’ave always been my friend.’ I said, ‘Can you call me Phillip instead of young boss?’ ‘Phill-eep,’ he said warmly.”

“I had now been with him every moment of the day and night for two months, but I had not seen him. I remember that ugly welted face. But now, in my memory, it did not seem ugly at all. It seemed only kind and strong.”

“Yet I could not help worrying. The thought of losing either of them was unbearable. If something bad happened on the cay, I wanted it to happen to all of us.”

“I’ll never forget that first hour of knowing I was blind. I was so frightened that it was hard for me to breathe. It was as if I’d been put inside something that was all dark and I couldn’t get out.”