Corfu Quotes

“My childhood in Corfu shaped my life. If I had the craft of Merlin, I would give every child the gift of my childhood.”
― Gerald Durrell, My Family and Other Animals

“Gradually the magic of the island [Corfu] settled over us as gently and clingingly as pollen.”
― Gerald Durrell, My Family and Other Animals

“Attempts to locate oneself within history are as natural, and as absurd, as attempts to locate oneself within astronomy. On the day that I was born, 13 April 1949, nineteen senior Nazi officials were convicted at Nuremberg, including Hitler's former envoy to the Vatican, Baron Ernst von Weizsacker, who was found guilty of planning aggression against Czechoslovakia and committing atrocities against the Jewish people. On the same day, the State of Israel celebrated its first Passover seder and the United Nations, still meeting in those days at Flushing Meadow in Queens, voted to consider the Jewish state's application for membership. In Damascus, eleven newspapers were closed by the regime of General Hosni Zayim. In America, the National Committee on Alcoholism announced an upcoming 'A-Day' under the non-uplifting slogan: 'You can drink—help the alcoholic who can't.' ('Can't'?) The International Court of Justice at The Hague ruled in favor of Britain in the Corfu Channel dispute with Albania. At the UN, Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko denounced the newly formed NATO alliance as a tool for aggression against the USSR. The rising Chinese Communists, under a man then known to Western readership as Mao Tze-Tung, announced a limited willingness to bargain with the still-existing Chinese government in a city then known to the outside world as 'Peiping.'

All this was unknown to me as I nuzzled my mother's breast for the first time, and would certainly have happened in just the same way if I had not been born at all, or even conceived. One of the newspaper astrologists for that day addressed those whose birthday it was:

There are powerful rays from the planet Mars, the war god, in your horoscope for your coming year, and this always means a chance to battle if you want to take it up. Try to avoid such disturbances where women relatives or friends are concerned, because the outlook for victory upon your part in such circumstances is rather dark. If you must fight, pick a man!

Sage counsel no doubt, which I wish I had imbibed with that same maternal lactation, but impartially offered also to the many people born on that day who were also destined to die on it.”
― Christopher Hitchens, Hitch 22: A Memoir

“He glanced about him to make sure we weren't overheard, leaned forward, and whispered, 'He collects stamps.'
The family looked bewildered.
'You mean he's a philatelist?' said Larry at length.
'No, no, Master Larrys,' said Spiro. 'He's not one of them. He's a married man and he's gots two childrens.”
― Gerald Durrell, My Family and Other Animals

“Ah, you may sit under them, yes. They cast a good shadow, cold as well-water; but that's the trouble, they tempt you to sleep. And you must never, for any reason, sleep beneath a cypress.' He paused, stroked his moustache, waited for me to ask why, and then went on: 'Why? Why? Because if you did you would be changed when you woke. Yes, the black cypresses, they are dangerous. While you sleep, their roots grow into your brains and steal them, and when you wake up you are mad, head as empty as a whistle.' I asked whether it was only the cypress that could do that or did it apply to other trees. 'No, only the cypress,' said the old man, peering up fiercely at the trees above me as though to see whether they were listening; 'only the cypress is the thief of intelligence. So be warned, little lord, and don't sleep here.”
― Gerald Durrell, My Family and Other Animals

“The Daffodil-Yellow Villa

The new villa was enormous, a tall, square Venetian mansion, with faded daffodil-yellow walls, green shutters, and a fox-red roof. It stood on a hill overlooking the sea, surrounded by unkempt olive groves and silent orchards of lemon and orange trees.

... the little walled and sunken garden that ran along one side of the house, its wrought-iron gates scabby with rust, had roses, anemones and geraniums sprawling across the weed-grown paths ...

... there were fifteen acres of garden to explore, a vast new paradise sloping down to the shallow, tepid sea.”
― Gerald Durrell, My Family and Other Animals

“It was no half-hearted spring, this: the whole island vibrated with it as though a great, ringing chord had been struck. Everyone and everything heard it and responded.”
― Gerald Durrell, My Family and Other Animals

“So I went instead and tasted Taki's new white wine. Spiridion! what a wine...like the blood of a dragon and smooth as a fish...”
― Gerald Durrell, My Family and Other Animals

“I open it, feel the rush of steam leaving the bag and smell the unmistakable aroma of Corfu.
Loukoumades. Drizzled with honey and dusted with a flourish of cinnamon. Sugared perfection in the form of golf-ball sized fried dough.”
― Jenny Gardiner, Slim to None

“Corfu lies off the Albanian and Greek coast-lines like a long rust-eroded scimitar.”
― Gerald Durrell, Birds, Beasts and Relatives