Quotes from Laura Hillenbrand

When Louie was in his sixties, he was still climbing Cahuenga Peak every week and running a mile in under six minutes.

Phil was a deeply religious man, carrying a faith instilled in him by his parents. "I had told Al several times before to always do his best as he knew how to do it," Phil's father once wrote, "and when things get beyond his skill and ability to ask the Lord to step in and help out." Phil never spoke of his faith, but as he sang hymns over the ocean, conjuring up a protective God, perhaps rescue felt closer, despair more distant.

Thorbjørn Christiansen

They bowed their heads together as Louie prayed. If God would quench their thirst, he vowed, he'd dedicate his life to him. The next day, by divine intervention or the fickle humors of the tropics, the sky broke open and rain poured down. Twice more the water ran out, twice more they prayed, and twice more the rain came. The showers gave them just enough water to last a short while longer. If only a plane would come.

He stowed a bottle of a local rotgut called Five Island Gin—nicknamed Five Ulcer Gin—in radioman Harry Brooks's gas mask holster. When an MP tapped Brooks's hip to check for the mask, the bottle broke and left Brooks with a soggy leg. It was probably for the best. Louie noticed that when he drank the stuff, his chest hair spontaneously fell out. He later discovered that Five Island Gin was often used as paint thinner. After that, he stuck to beer.

Am I ever happy," he wrote to Louie. "I have to go around with my shirt open so that I have enough room for my chest." Louie

In the distance, the bomber swung around and began flying at the rafts again. Louie hoped that the crew had realized the mistake and was returning to help them. Flying about two hundred feet over the water, the bomber raced at them, following a path slightly parallel to the rafts, so that its side passed into view. All three men saw it at once. Behind the wing, painted over the waist, was a red circle. The bomber was Japanese.

Only the Laundry Knew How Scared I Was

Louie never saw a Chong diner finish his meal.

In 1943 in the Pacific Ocean Areas theater in which Phil's crew served, for every plane lost in combat, some six planes were lost in accidents. Over time, combat took a greater toll, but combat losses never overtook noncombat losses.

Askim was notorious for his kleptomania; the Zamperinis lived above a grocery, and the dog made regular shoplifting runs downstairs, snatching food and fleeing. His name was a clever joke: When people asked what the dog's name was, they were invariably confused by the reply, which sounded like "Ask him.

In the morning he rose to run again. He didn't run from something or to something, not for anyone or in spite of anyone; he ran because it was what his body wished to do. The restiveness, the self-consciousness, and the need to oppose disappeared. All he felt was peace.

With only hook latches for locks, Louise took to sitting by the front door on an apple box with a rolling pin in her hand, ready to brain any prowlers who might threaten her children.

actress Esther Williams on the wall. The note that Louie had left on the locker was gone, as was the liquor. Among Louie's things, Krey found photographs that Louie had taken inside his plane. In some of them, Louie

Every airman was given a "Mae West" life vest,*3 but because some men stole the vests' carbon dioxide cartridges for use in carbonating drinks, some vests didn't inflate.

They were alone on sixty-four million square miles of ocean. A month earlier

the athletes were treated to a thunderous show that culminated in the release of twenty thousand doves. As the birds circled in panicked confusion, cannons began firing, prompting the birds to relieve themselves over the athletes. With each report, the birds let fly.

Zamperini looked toward his crewmates. They were too weak

Who hit you in the butt with a saddle and told you you could ride?" a starter hissed before a race. "The same S.O.B. that hit you in the butt and told you you could start!" he shot back. Pollard had found the one place on earth that could hold his interest. He was broke, hungry, and, according to his sister Edie, "happy as heck.

He grasped for hope in Emerson's vision of natural polarities, in which all things are balanced by their opposites—darkness by light, cold by heat, loss by gain.

Everyone thinks we found this broken down horse and fixed him. But he fixed us. Every one of us.

On Kwajalein, Louie and Phil leared a dark truth known to the doomed in Hitler's death camps, the slaves of the American South, and a hundred other generations of betrayed people. Dignity is as essential to human life as water, food, and oxygen.

I come away from this book with the deepest appreciation for what these men endured, and what they sacrificed, for the good of humanity. It is to them that this book is dedicated. Laura Hillenbrand May 2010

You don't throw a whole life away just because it's banged up a little bit.