Quotes from Dalton Trumbo

Well, life isn't always what one likes.

He thought if I never have anything else I will always have dawn and morning sunlight.

There ought to be at least as much common sense about living and dying as there is about going to the grocery store and buying a loaf of bread.

They feel guilty for having survived so they pretend the bad things never happened Exodus (1960) screenplay

Silence. What's this what's this oh my god can a men ever get lower can a man ever be less? Weariness and gasping convulsive exhaustion. All life dead all life wasted and becoming nothing less than nothing only the germ of nothing. A kind of sickness that comes from shame. A weakness like dying weakness and faintness and a prayer. God give me rest take me away hide me let me die oh god how weary how much already dead how much gone and going oh god hide me and give me peace.

There are lots of idealists around who will say, 'Have we got so low that nothing is more precious than life? Surely there are ideals worth fighting for - even dying for. If not, we are worse than the beasts of the field - and have sunk into barbarity.' Then you say, 'That's all right. Let's be barbarous - just as long as we don't have war.

He would be an educational exhibit. People wouldn't learn much about the anatomy from him but they would learn all there was to know about war. That would be a great thing to concentrate war into one stump of a body and to show it to people so they could see the difference between a war that's in the newspaper headlines and liberty loan drives and a war that is fought out lonesomely in the mud somewhere a war between man and a high explosive shell.

You're dead mister and you died for nothing. You're dead mister. Dead.

There's nothing noble about dying. Not even if you die for honor. Not even if you die the greatest hero the world ever saw. Not even if you're so great your name will never be forgotten and who's that great? The most important thing is your life little guys. You're worth nothing dead except for speeches.

It didn't seem like a year. It had gone by like a lifetime when you look back and think of a time so far away that you can't clearly remember what happened yet a time that has gone so quickly it seems only a minute ago it started.

If there could be a next time and somebody said let's fight for liberty he would say mister my life is important. I'm not a fool and when I swap my life for liberty I've got to know in advance what liberty is and whose idea of liberty we're talking about and just how much of that liberty we're going to have.

A man can't fight always. If he's drowning or suffocating he's got to be smart and hold back some of his strength for the last the final the death struggle.

He could almost hear the wail of pain that went up from his heart. It was a sharp terrible personal pain the kind of pain that comes only when someone to whom you have never done any harm turns on you and says goodbye goodbye forever without any reason for doing it. Without any reason at all.

The sun in its slow descent filtered great cathedral-moats of gold through latticed boughs of pine and birch and maple. It was that time of day- or afternoon- when the forest's breath, sun-stunned, yearning for night, impalpably swoons to the slow pulsations of blood and time and silence.

But he could believe anything from now on out. A million to one ten million to one there was always the one.

But whose idea of decency? And decency for who? Speak up and tell us what decency is. Tell us how much better a decent dead man feels than an indecent live one.

It was like sitting in a silent room waiting for someone very important someone for whom you have been waiting a long while and then suddenly hearing a knock on the door. For just a minute you hesitate wondering who it might be and what does he want and why did he come. For just a second you're scared because although you've waited for years you really never expected the knock.

Vergissen jullie je daarin niet wij zullen leven. Wij zullen leven en wandelen en praten en eten en zingen en lachen en voelen en beminnen en onze kinderen dragen in rust in veiligheid in fatsoen in vrede beramen jullie de oorlogen maar jullie meesters van de mensheid beramen jullie de oorlogen en wijs de weg en dan zullen wij de geweren richten.

young men should not fight in old men's wars

Nobody but the dead know whether all these things people talk about are worth dying for or not. And the dead can't talk. So the words about noble deaths and sacred blood and honor and such are all put into dead lips by grave robbers and fakes who have no right to speak for the dead.

He used to tell himself although he knew it wasn't true that the air around her house was different because it was near to her.

New nursery rhymes for new times. HIckory dickery dock my daddy's nuts from shelshock. Humpty dumpty thought he was wise till gas came along and hurned out his eyes. A dillar a dollar a ten o-clock schollar blow off his legs and then watch him holler...

Hmmmm. But what do the dead say? Did

As that great patriot Patrick Henry said" Johnny get your gun get your gun get your gun