Quotes from Herman Wouk

the winds of war have been blowing us all around the world.

about Sidney, who wants to be a writer or a forest ranger or a composer or anything except what his father is, because he's ashamed of his father being a Jew, or because he thinks he's too sensitive for business or law, whatever the damned Freudian reason may be—and he ends up in his father's business just the same. I've opened my apartment door to enough of those." Noel crooked

War has always been violent blindman's buff, played with men's lives and nations' resources. But the time for it is over. As the race has outgrown human sacrifice, human slavery, and duelling, it has to outgrow war.

Marjorie, my sweet, we've fallen in love with each other, that's all. You love me. I love you. Don't lose any sleep over it." Electric stings ran through her arms and legs. She put

They were invited to fine homes and exclusive clubs. It was a great war.

A democracy in a backward or unstable country simply gets smashed by the best-organized power gang.

enormous tragic joke in steel and concrete: half a wall.

Rose, you're good, you're like a sister." The mother expelled a long sigh, puffing out her cheeks. She looked from the girl to the old man. "I keep trying to fix everything. Why? It's God's world." She kissed them both. "Take care of yourselves. And…

The big bourgeois powers like France, England, and America built their strength and expanded their territory by actions indistinguishable from armed robbery.

By keeping back the twenty-five squadrons from the lost Battle of France, he acted toughly, wisely, and ungallantly; and he turned the war to the course that ended five long years later, when Hitler killed himself and Nazi Germany fell apart. This deed put Winston Churchill in the company of the rare saviors of countries, and perhaps of civilizations.

on having dinner with us.

I'll tell you, Margie, most of those things you say are worth having, I don't know about. You have a better education than I did. Music, books, wine, art, all that—I'll tell you, I think if you're happy they must be nice to have, but if you're unhappy they don't help much. The main thing is happiness.

our human values, our ideas of right and wrong, good and bad, evolved in simpler times, before there were machines.

Remember this, if you can—there is nothing, nothing more precious than time.

All the prophecy of Israel turns on one simple but extremely effective idea: namely that all Israel, living and dead, from Sinai to the present hour, stands in its relation to God as a single immortal individual.

assistance of France. In London, Eban fared better, receiving no such threat from Prime Minister Harold Wilson; but Wilson

To sum up: whatever fictional liberties have been taken in weaving the phantoms of my invention through real events, The Hope is presented to my readers as an honest account of Israel's early history, as true and responsible as research could make it. As to whether the tale itself pleases, only they can judge.

Nothing testified more to the evanescence of position and wealth in Beverly Hills than its architecture. There was money in abundance to put up the settings of the grand life. But land—the one true mark of stable grandeur—was not to be had. The town was an industrial compound of the temporarily well-paid.

The British criminals responsible for dropping bombs on women and little children would soon have to face the bar of justice.

I have found out what it's like to be crazy. It is to stand apart and observe ordinary life all around you with the panic of an actor on stage who has forgotten his lines and his business. What one doesn't realize in ordinary mental health is that daily life is a show. You have to put on a right costume, to improvise right speeches, to do right actions, and all this isn't automatic, it takes concentration and work and a simply amazing degree of control!

It was going to be a tough ten years, he thought, for men with grown sons. Warren

Individually the Germans were remarkably like Americans; he thought it curious that both peoples had the eagle for their national emblem. The Germans were the same sort of businesslike go-getters: direct, roughly humorous, and usually reliable and able.

Do you have a girl? No. Don't you get, well, hungry now and then? Damned hungry. What do you do? Hunger, mostly. Maas uttered a short barking laugh. My dear lad. Big and strong, and if I may say so, winning as you are? I'd rather be hungry than involved. My trouble is I don't know how to be casual. Even if it's a waitress, I have to make a goddess of her in my own mind, I don't know why.

Look at a politician, eighty years old, making a speech to a crowd in the rain. What's driving him? Not ambition. He's been a senator for forty years. He can never be anything more. But by winning this election he can have one more Hit.