The Lighthouse Quotes

Thomas Wake You're too slow - you a dullard?

Ephraim Winslow No sir.

Thomas Wake Fooled me.

Thomas Wake I seen ye sparrin with a gull. Best ye leave em be. ].

Ephraim Winslow More tall tales?

Thomas Wake BAD LUCK TO KILL A SEABIRD!

Thomas Wake Yer fond of me lobster aint ye? I seen it - yer fond of me lobster! Say it! Say it. Say it!

Ephraim Winslow I don't have to say nothin'.

Thomas Wake Damn ye! Let ] strike ye dead Winslow! HAAARK! Hark Triton, hark! Bellow, bid our father the Sea King rise from the depths full foul in his fury! Black waves teeming with salt foam to smother this young mouth with pungent slime, to choke ye, engorging your organs til ye turn blue and bloated with bilge and brine and can scream no more - only when he, crowned in ] with slitherin tentacle tail and steaming beard take up his fell be-finned arm, his coral-tine trident screeches ]-like in the tempest and plunges right through yer gullet, bursting ye - a bulging bladder no more, but a blasted bloody film now and nothing for the ] and the ] to peck and claw and feed upon only to be lapped up and swallowed by the infinite waters of the Dread Emperor himself - forgotten to any man, to any time, forgotten to any god or devil, forgotten even to the sea, for any stuff for part of Winslow, even any scantling of your soul is Winslow no more, but is now itself the sea!

Ephraim Winslow Alright, have it your way. I like your cookin’.

Ephraim Winslow You think yer so damned high and mighty cause yer a goddamned lighthouse keeper? Well, you ain't a captain of no ship and you never was, you ain't no general, no copper, you ain't the president, and you ain't my father -- and I'm sick of you actin like you is! I'm sick of your laugh, your snoring, and your goddamned farts. Your damned goddamned farts. Goddamn yer farts! You smell like piss, you smell like jism, like rotten dick, like curdled foreskin, like hot onions fucked a farmyard shit-house. And I'm sick of yer smell. I'm sick of it! I'm sick of it, you goddamned drunk. You goddamned, no-account, drunken, son-of-a-bitch-bastard liar! That's what you are, you're a goddamned drunken horse-shitting -- short -- shit liar. A liar!

Thomas Wake Y'have a way with words, Tommy.

Thomas Wake This place is a sty.

Ephraim Winslow Mornin to you too.

Ephraim Winslow If I had a steak... I'd fuck it.

Thomas Wake And if I tells ye to yank out every single nail from every molderin nail-hole and suck off every speck of rust till all them nails sparkle like a sperm whale's pecker, and then carpenter the whole light station back together from scrap, and then do it all over again, you'll do it! And by God and by golly, you'll do it smilin', lad, cause you'll like it. You'll like it cause I says you will! Contradict me again, and I'll dock your wages.

Thomas Wake How long have we been on this rock? Five weeks? Two days? Where are we? Help me to recollect.

Thomas Wake :Cf. ], "Sailor's Hymn, at Parting

Ephraim Winslow And I had ‘im handy and helpless. Alone. Too far downstream. And I wanted to do ‘im in. I admit I did. Seein’ the back of his head. One swipe of the cant hook’d be all. It was... I didn’t... but I didn’t... I did not. The day was long as hell on that drive. I was lead-tired. I admit it. But I saw him slippin’, not me. And we saw the jam comin’. And I stood and he slipped. He shouted up. And I just stood. “Tom, you dog!” And I stood, is all. Just stood and watched ‘im git swallowed down by them logs. All I thought when he was done is, “I could use me a smoke.” That’s it. So, I packed up his kit and fixins, as if they was mine. And, well, Ephraim Winslow has a spiffy clean slate. Thomas Howard, he don’t. No prospects. How else am I gonna find respectable work?

Thomas Wake Should pale death with treble dread Make the oceän caves our bed, God who hear'st the surges roll, Deign to save our suppliant soul.

Thomas Wake Why’d ya spill yer beans?

Thomas Wake O what ] forms swim up from men's minds, and melt in hot ] plunder, scorching eyes, with divine shames and horror... And casting them down to ]. The others, still blind, yet in it see all the divine graces and to ] sent, where no man is suffered to want or toil, but is... Ancient... Mutable and unchanging as the she who girdles round the globe. Them's truth.

Thomas Wake Who are you again, Tommy? I'm probably a figment of yer imagination. This rock is a figment of yer imagination, too. Yer probably wanderin through a grove of tag alders, up north in ], like a frostbitten maniac talkin to yerself, knee-deep in the snow, the blizzard overtakin ye.

Thomas Wake ]. Doldrums. Eviler than the Devil. Boredom makes men to villains, and the water goes quick, lad, vanished. The only med'cine is drink. Keeps them sailors happy, keeps em agreeable, keeps em calm…

Thomas Wake I'm damn-well wedded to this here light, and she's been a finer, truer, quieter wife than any alive-blooded woman.