Quotes from Michael Dobbs

Neither does the British Empire for which Churchill fought with all his heart. And no one believes what they read in the newspapers any more.

We won the bloody war. Never again, we said. Then Hitler comes along and starts building his squadrons of panzers and fighter planes—purely for defense, he assures everyone, and we believe him. Even when he marches into the Rhineland we believe him. Two years later he's trampling all over bloody Austria, and now he's ripping Czechoslovakia to pieces. And still our Prime Minister says he trusts him!" His

Por qué desperdiciar la vida buscando un epitafio? «Te recordamos con cariño.» ¿Quién salvo un idiota quiere algo así cincelado sobre su cabeza? No es más que incontinencia sentimental.

Cristóbal Colón fue una gran decepción. Cuando zarpó no tenía ni idea de adónde iba y cuando llegó no tenía ni idea de dónde estaba. Si quieres joder a los nativos, es mucho mejor quedarse en casa.

these days there was little room left in Hal's life for his younger brother, and Charlie felt—what did he feel, deep down, when he allowed himself to be honest? Angry, stinking bloody one-bottle-a-time furious—not with Hal, of course, but with life. It hadn't worked out for him, and he didn't understand why.

As a Gurs inmate remarked to an American consul: "To you, we are just numbers. To us, you are the god who has the right to open the gates of the promised land or keep shut that door and condemn us to despair.

silk handkerchief that erupted out of the breast pocket, an affectation he had adopted to distance himself from the Westminster hordes in their banal Christmas-stocking ties and Marks & Spencer suits.

And even if fairies built a nest in the bottom of my garden and it should turn out that I have to live for a thousand years, there's not one of them when I'll be of a mind to trust you.

Borowczyk headed for his department, K-5, on the other side of a canal that runs through the middle of the shipyard. Rusting away in a corner of the department were piles of imported steel-welding equipment, costing millions of dollars, which nobody had learned how to put to use properly.

A lower-ranking official was served tea on a plain tray. Once he reached the rank of chief of sector, the tray suddenly sprouted a napkin. In apparatchik-speak, the promotion was referred to as 'receiving the napkin.

By the time Gorbachev came to power, alcoholism had reached epidemic proportions. Official studies showed that 70 percent of all crimes were related to alcohol. Drink was blamed for widespread absenteeism at work, a sharp increase in the divorce rate, and a dramatic drop in male life expectancy.

It was all very well growing old disgracefully and running your umbrella along life's railings, but when you'd annoyed as many people as possible and told yourself you'd thoroughly enjoyed it, you still had to return home to a cold hearth and deal with it on your own.

Churchill's mother, Jennie, had been a New Yorker who pursued life with a remarkable vitality that had encompassed three husbands and a multitude of more dubious liaisons. The first of her husbands had been Churchill's father, who had been a classic example of ducal degeneracy, and they had both neglected their son as sorely as they neglected each other, yet Churchill clung to the wreckage of their reputations like a man adrift.

These bloody holes can't offer protection from the rain let alone from fat Goering's bombs. They aren't finished and already they've begun to fill with water, sullen and brown. Typical English idiocy. Treating war like a game of cricket. Something to be called off if it rains.

You found me at my lowest ebb, Burgess. I had descended into darkness. You have helped restore me. Words will never be able to embrace my gratitude.

Some people come to the edge of the cliff and they look over, then run away in fear. They never realize it's possible to fly, to soar away, to be free. They spend their lives crawling along cliff tops without ever finding the courage. Don't spend your life crawling

There was always plenty of collateral damage; politics left a trail of pain and tortured families in its wake.

The eyes, when they came up to meet hers, were like unhammered steel. "You think I'm shallow enough to turn on an old friend just because you flash your tits at me?" An

On 14 March the Czech President, Hacha, was summoned to Berlin. He was kept waiting while Hitler watched a film. At last, in the early hours of the morning, Hacha was marched into the room and told that in a few hours' time the Wehrmacht was going to invade his country.

O'Neill jumped out into the road, jammed a note into the driver's hand, and dodged another motorcyclist as he made his way past the endless huddle of peep shows and Chinese restaurants into a narrow, Dickensian alley piled high with rubbish.

I do not believe that Nixon did order the break-in," Bob Haldeman observed many years later. "Nor that he even knew about it. But I do believe that he caused it.

La política requiere sacrificio. El sacrificio de los demás, por supuesto.

Base fear is intoxicating, overwhelming, liberating. Always stronger than respect. Always.

In an Englishwoman her abruptness would have been viewed as bad manners, but it was normal to afford Americans somewhat greater license.