Quotes from Nevil Shute

I was very depressed in those months, because it's not funny to lose both your feet when you're thirty years old.

I never was in such a horrid office . . . It's not very nice to be where people are being swindled all day long, is it?

When you and I are dead, and all the rest of us who served in the last war, in all the countries," she said, "there'll be a chance of world peace. Not till then.

He did not display his locomotive or his traction engine to his fellow professors, fearing that if he did so he would not be taken seriously when he spoke on mediaeval poetry.

John Osborne laughed. "It's not the end of the world at all," he said. "It's only the end of us. The world will go on just the same, only we shan't be in it. I dare say it will get along all right without us.

He searched his mind for something he could do for her to match her generosity in some small measure. "Like to go to the pictures tonight?" he said. "I see there's Cary Grant on at the Regal." Four days later he left Poole on the flying boat for Rangoon.

spend the remainder of the day in the Library of the Patent Office. He will be home at Somerset Road, Ealing, in time for tea. He will spend the evening in the workshop, working on the current model. He has achieved the type of life that he desires; he wants no other. He is perfectly, supremely happy.

Into the world of romance, of make-belief and double brandies!

I didn't wait to see her ship go off, because partings are stupid things and best got over quickly

People who spent the war in prison camps have written a lot of books about what a bad time they had, she said quietly, staring into the embers. They don't know what it was like, not being in a camp.

He met the femme de chambre upon the landing. 'I have made up my mind,' he said heavily. 'La petite Rose may come with us to England; I will take her to her father. She must be ready to start to-morrow morning, at seven o'clock.

So let them pass, small people of no great significance, caught up and swept together like dead leaves in the great whirlwind of the war.

You did not die when you were drawing public assistance money, but you certainly did not remain alive.

We are not like that, we engineers. We are men of understanding and of education, on whom is laid responsibility that men may travel in these aeroplanes as safely as if they were sitting by the well in the cool of the evening.

Finally he got up, feeling uncommonly well. It did not occur to him that this was because he had a job to do, for the first time in many months.

Mary looked at her gratefully. "Well, that's what I think. I mean, I couldn't bear to—to just stop doing things and do nothing. You might as well die now and get it over." Moira nodded. "If what they say is right, we're none of us going to have time to do all that we planned to do. But we can keep on doing it as long as we can.

A Congreve clock?' Captain Petersen was puzzled. 'It's a clock that keeps time by a steel ball running on a zig-zag track down an inclined plane,' Keith told him. 'Only it doesn't keep very good time. It takes thirty seconds for the ball to run down one way — then the plane tilts and it runs back again. It's quite fascinating to watch.

One had to live in the new world and do one's best, forgetting about the old; now it was push bikes

A little boy of five or six was standing there, in fact, utterly motionless. He was dressed in grey, grey stockings above the knee, grey shorts, and a grey jersey. He was standing absolutely still, staring down the road towards them. His face was a dead, greyish white in colour. Howard caught his breath at the sight of him, and said very softly: 'Oh, my God!' He had never seen a child looking like that, in all his seventy years. He crossed quickly over to him

A placard nailed upon a post, CHIEN MECHANT, warned him, but did not warn the children. The dog, an enormous brindled creature, leaped out at them to the limit of his chain, raising a terrific clamour. The children scattered back

It was a gambler's action, but his whole life had probably been made up of gambles; it could hardly be otherwise in the outback.

Americans are like that.' The other stared at him incredulously. 'It would cost a great deal of money to provide for a child, perhaps for years. One does not do that lightly for a foreign child of which one knows nothing.' 'It's just the sort of thing they do do,' said the old man. 'They would pour out their money in a cause like that.

For the first time Alix began to understand long-distance flying. It was not courage, or resourcefulness, or ability that counted in this game, though they were necessary subsidiary qualities. It was the capacity to work efficiently at tiring, menial tasks upon the ground that made great flights a success.

defence on the Irene.