Quotes from Walter Lord

The Titanic somehow lowered the curtain on this way of living. It never was the same again. First the war, then the income tax, made sure of that.

It would be nice to say the rich people, the fancy people, all behaved like bastards and the poor slobs all came through like heroes. But as a matter of fact, sometimes the poor slobs behave like slobs and the great, noble, privileged characters come off very well, indeed.

It's a funny thing, but today the Titanic is probably much more - that is people are much more aware of it than they were in 1954, when I was doing my research.

I never earned a dollar that was not somehow through writing.

There were exceptions, a couple of families that just plain didn't want to even think about it, although forty years had passed but mostly the people were very interested in talking about it.

Even against the greatest of odds, there is something in the human spirit - a magic blend of skill, faith, and valor - that can lift men from certain defeat to incredible victory.

It is a rash man indeed who would set himself up as final arbiter on all that happened the incredible night the Titanic went down.

Lowe arrived just in time … took them all aboard No. 14 … then set sail again for the Carpathia, still towing D.

where a party of untrained English Territorials tried to hold them with a barricade of cardboard boxes.

In the case of the living, the Register carefully ran the phrase, 'Arrived Titan-Carpath , April 18, 1912.' The hyphen represented history's greatest sea disaster.

Why the others didn't is part of the mystery why trained men in identical situations should react so differently.

To the British, Dunkirk symbolizes a generosity of spirit, a willingness to sacrifice for the common good. To Americans, it has come to mean Mrs. Miniver, little ships, The Snow Goose, escape by sea. To the French, it suggests bitter defeat; to the Germans, opportunity forever lost.

Seen and unseen, the great and the unknown tumbled together in a writhing heap as the bow plunged deeper and the stern rose higher.

When the Third Reich swallowed one Central European country after another, this was attributed to bluff and bluster.

I look for something that is highly unusual, involving ordinary people caught in extraordinary situations.

Brilliantly lit from stem to stern, she looked like a sagging birthday cake.

You have to study the people and the ones that measure up are not always the ones you expect.

Someone once told me the one thread that runs through them all is a premium on personal courage - not intellectual courage, but just plain physical courage.

Events alone rarely provide much guide to the future.