Quotes from Herman Wouk

She had been reading sociology and was full of terms like anomy, other-directedness, acculturation, and similar jawbreakers, which she got off with athletic ease.

It was like the hate of a husband for a sick wife, a mature, solid hate, caused by an unbreakable tie to a loathsome person, and existing not as a self-justification, but for the rotten gleam of pleasure it gave off in the continuing gloom. Out

took a couple of pork slices; and by dipping them completely in mustard sauce she got them down without any trouble. Eating the pork gave her an odd sense of freedom, and at the same time, though she suppressed it, a twinge of disgust. She asked Noel for another highball.

The Kwajalein invasion, the first of these

tradition of liberation from Egypt, under a lawgiver and deliverer named Moses. We are called Jews, and our heritage Judaism, because in the political decline and fall of our nation the tribe which held out longest and became the surviving remnant in exile predicted by the Torah was named Judah.

face grew longer and grimmer as Berel

Henry wondered all through the meal whether Warren

People who can solve a lot of problems by simply dying are the ones who hang on and on.

I have a heart of gold. My only faults are that I'm totally selfish and immoral.

left to the inferior animals called older people.

Well, Hitler's a vagabond, Mussolini's a vagabond, and Stalin's a jailbird. These are new, tough, able, and clever men, straight up from the sewers. Lenin, another jailbird, was the great originator. He

The Germans were the bad children of Europe, Jastrow argued: egotistic, willful, romantic, always poised to break up faltering patterns of order. Arminius had set the ax to the Pax Romana; Martin Luther had broken the back of the universal Church; now Hitler was challenging Europe's unsteady regime of liberal capitalism, based on an obsolete patchwork structure of nations.

If you want to know, what I've studied seems to me a lot of rubbish. The rules, the lingo, strike me as comical. The idea of men spending their lives in this make-believe appalls me. I used to think it was preferable to the Army, but I'm sure now that they're both the same kind of foolishness. I don't care. I picked the Navy. I'll see this stupid war through in the Navy.

Duce, damn your whipped-cream soul, do you know anything that can clear up this crazy mess?

The two festivals have one real point of contact. Had Antiochus succeeded in obliterating Jewry a century and a half before the birth of Jesus, there would have been no Christmas. The feast of the Nativity rests on the victory of Hanuka. Chapter 8 The Prayers, the Synagogue, and the Worshippers GOD cannot be much of an Almighty, it has

food disciplines are part of every great religion. Psychologically they're almost inevitable, and extremely practical....Religious discipline is nothing but a permanent psychic shelter.

we're probably sitting on Ground Zero, right here at this table, for h-Bomb number ! table was at 57th Street and 7th Avenue NYC

What is his basic premise? That everyone on the Caine is a liar, a traitor, and a funk-off, so that the ship can only function if he constantly nags and spies and threatens and screeches and hands out draconic punishments. Now, how do you go about proving that his premise is wrong?" "You

I heard one officer say it was the turning point of the war.

The circle of gleaming green numbers on the black face of the gyroscope compass ticked steadily counterclockwise and the heading increased: 95 degrees, 100, 105, 120, 150. Queeg

Judaism has always been a strong interest of mine. My two sons speak Hebrew and are familiar with the scriptures and with rabbinic literature. This is the way we live.

... a war always ends.

Strange, isn't it, that warfare has come down to fencing with complicated toys that only a few seedy scholars can make or understand.

Some people think that all the equipment you need to discuss religion is a mouth.