Island in the Sun (1957)

Harry Belafonte: David Boyeur

Photos 

Quotes 

• Mavis Norman : Do you care what stupid, prejudiced people think?

  David Boyeur : You've never had to fight stupidity or prejudice.

• [last lines] 

  Mavis Norman : You're right and I'm wrong. I'm wrong and you're right.

  David Boyeur : And that's the end, is it?

  Mavis Norman : Yes, that's the end.

• David Boyeur : Mr. Fleury speaks as if traditions belong only to him. We have ours too.

  Maxwell Fleury : I'd be the last to deny him his traditions.

  David Boyeur : Which ones, Mr. Fleury? The ones we got on the slave ships - or in the cane fields working like beasts? Or, the ones we have now, the ones we're making every day, despite the slave ships *and* the cane fields?

• Bradshaw : What would you say is the most important problem on the island?

  David Boyeur : Color, Mr. Bradshaw. Color.

• Maxwell Fleury : Your father, if I remember correctly, worked on my father's plantation.

  David Boyeur : Till the day he died.

  Maxwell Fleury : He was taken care of, whether he was sick or not, whether he worked or not.

  David Boyeur : That was charity, Mr. Fleury. What we want is equality.

  Hilary Carson : What I want is a drink.

• Mavis Norman : Do you think of me as an enemy.

  David Boyeur : No.

  Mavis Norman : What are you thinking?

  David Boyeur : That you feel you're lost. But, you're not. Because, you're looking for something real. And as long as you're looking for something real, you're not lost.

• Mavis Norman : Do you still feel that anyone whose skin is different from your's is an enemy?

  David Boyeur : Do you think I do?

  Mavis Norman : I don't know. At carnival time my brother-in-law's car was damaged, his telephone wires cut. You hate Maxwell, don't you? You think of him as an enemy.

  David Boyeur : I think of him as a snob! As an arrogant plantation owner.

• Mavis Norman : It was destroyed during a slave uprising in 1843 during the French rule. I wonder what could have caused it?

  David Boyeur : A many number of reasons: a single insult, a whipping, a girl. Who knows?

• David Boyeur : The only reason you want to be black is because you're afraid that the white world won't let you be white any more?

• David Boyeur : Here's my world. These are my people and this is where I belong. If I went to England, who would I be? What would I be?

  Mavis Norman : David Boyeur.

  David Boyeur : No. I'd be an exile in a bowler hat, sipping tea, carrying a rolled umbrella, talking with all the other exiles about how much we could do if we were only there. But, I'm here. I don't have to go.

• David Boyeur : I'd be a fool.

  Mavis Norman : Why?

  David Boyeur : Because it would be inevitable.

  Mavis Norman : What would be?

  David Boyeur : That night that she'd forget herself and - call me a nigger.