Quotes from Laura Hillenbrand

The post-war nightmares caused my life to crumble, but thanks to a confrontation with God through the evangelist Billy Graham, I committed my life to Christ. Love replaced the hate I had for you. Christ said, "Forgive your enemies and pray for them.

Non correva via da qualcosa o verso qualcosa, non correva per qualcuno o a dispetto di qualcuno: correva perché era quello che il suo corpo desiderava fare. L'irrequietezza, l'insicurezza e il bisogno di contrapporsi scomparvero. Tutto quello che sentiva era pace.

Louie and Phil's hope displaced their fear and inspired them to work toward their survival, and each success renewed their physical and emotional vigor. Mac's resignation seemed to paralyze him, and the less he participated in their efforts to survive, the more he slipped. Though he did the least, as the days passed, it was he who faded the most. Louie and Phil's optimism, and Mac's hopelessness, were becoming self-fulfilling.

The fatal poison of irresponsible power.

With arms shrunken to little more than bone and yellowed skin, the castaways waved and shouted

teeming with inebriated ants. In

Howard then made Seabiscuit's entry for the Santa Anita Handicap. He left the jockey space blank.

The autos alone remained to conquer space.

We just sat there and watched the plane pass the island, and it never came back," he said. "I could see it on the radar. It makes you feel terrible. Life was cheap in war.

When Louie was in his sixties, he was still climbing Cahuenga Peak every week and running a mile in under six minutes. In his seventies, he discovered skateboarding. At eighty-five, he returned to Kwajalein on a project, ultimately unsuccessful

Dignity is as essential to human life as water, food, and oxygen. The stubborn retention of it, even in the face of extreme physical hardship, can hold a man's soul in his body long past the point at which the body should have surrendered it. The loss of it can carry a man off as surely as thirst, hunger, exposure, and asphyxiation and with greater cruelty.

McMullen came out of Japan racked by nightmares and so nervous that he was barely able to speak cogently. When he told his story to his family, his father accused him of lying and forbade him to speak of the war. Shattered and deeply depressed, McMullen couldn't eat, and his weight plunged back down to ninety pounds. He went to a veterans' hospital, but the doctors simply gave him B12 shots.

When Bad Eye asked Marvin to teach him English, Marvin saw his chance. With secret delight, he began teaching Bad Eye catastrophically bad English. From that day forward, when asked, "How are you?," Bad Eye would smilingly reply, "What the fuck do you care?

the record for inflated raft survival appears to have been set in 1942, when three navy plane crash victims survived for thirty-four days on the Pacific before reaching an island, where they were sheltered by natives.

As he walked over the bridge, Louie glanced back. Some of the guards and camp officials stood in the compound, watching them go. A few of the sickest POWs remained behind, awaiting transport the next day. Fitzgerald stayed with them, unwilling to leave until the last of his men was liberated.*

So long, Charley."24 He had coined a phrase that jockeys would use for decades.

the little horse had drawn more newspaper coverage in 1938 than Roosevelt, who was second, Hitler (third), Mussolini (fourth), or any other newsmaker. His match with War Admiral was almost certainly the single biggest news story of the year and one of the biggest sports moments of the century.

2 As Halloran parachuted over Tokyo, the Zero that had shot him down sped toward him, and Halloran was certain that he was going to be strafed, as so many falling airmen were. But instead of firing, the pilot saluted him. After the war, Halloran and that pilot, Isamu Kashiide, became dear friends.

We figure he is the people's horse, and we propose to train him in the open.

Louie, declared dead more than sixty years earlier, would outlive them all.

To pilot a racehorse is to ride a half-ton catapult. It is without question one of the most formidable feats in sport.

the AAF surgeon general suggests that in the Fifteenth Air Force, between November 1, 1943, and May 25, 1945, 70 percent of men listed as killed in action died in operational aircraft accidents, not as a result of enemy action.

It's easy to talk to a horse if you understand his language," he once said. "Horses stay the same from the day they are born to the day they die...They are only changed by the way people treat them." (said about Thomas Smith)

alive.3 Johnny found myriad avenues of