Quotes from Leon Uris

Who here wants to be a writer?' I asked. Everyone in the room raised his hand. 'Why the hell aren't you home writing?' I said, and left the stage.

So writing is a very, very difficult position to obtain... and retain.

I was too heavy to be a jockey and too honest to be a producer, so I became a writer.

There's a curse on me as there's a curse on the Larkin name. The curse comes back, again and again, to taunt me! Ronan! Kilty! Tomas! And now me! What are the Irish among men? Are we lepers? Are we a blight? Will there ever be an end to our tears?

All men have a measure of cowardice in them. I learned that love of one's mates can overcome your fears. I learned that every survivor of this horror must try to live a good life because he lives for many men.

Both of them had a sad desperation about them. Lord, André thought, why do young lovers dote on misery? How nice to be an aging lover and when you walk into the room meet someone who is happy and loves in an uncomplicated way. Young people demand tragedy. He had had that with Nicole. Love for the young is a waste and a mess.

In God's scheme what is a few billion years here and there. Perhaps there have come and gone a dozen human civilizations in the past billion years that we know nothing about. And after this civilization we are living in destroys itself, it will all start up again in a million years when the planet has all its messes cleaned up. Then, finally, one of these civilizations, say five billion years from now, will last because people treat each other the way they ought to.

Karen Hansen Clement sank deep in melancholy. She heard till she could hear no more. She saw until she could see no more. She was exhausted and confused, and the will to go on was being drained from her blood. Then, as so often happens when one reaches the end of the line, there was a turning upward and she emerged into the light. It

So before I was nine I had learned the basic canon of Arab life. It was me against my brother; me and my brother against our father; my family against my cousins and the clan; the clan against the tribe; and the tribe against the world. And all of us against the infidel.

Sin? What is sin inside the dynamic of family relationships? It is a mystery that began with man. No one can solve it except through his own unique experience. How you feel is human. But do not think it will leave you alone. We are never free of our blood.

Polish prisoner Dr. Wladislaw Dering performed castrations and ovariectomies ordered by his German masters as part of their insane program to find a way to sterilize the entire Jewish race.

They lingered over cups of ersatz coffee.

I've not been right for any man or myself since I met you.

Until a man is struck in his own face he does not want to believe the attack on his brother concerns him.

Know from where you come. Before you know who you are and where you are going, you must know from where you come.

Shoshanna, the first kibbutz in Palestine, seemed to be the long-awaited answer for Zionism.

And one day a great thing happened. Dov Landau smiled again.

Almost everything that Jesus taught, all His ideas, had been set down before in the Old Testament. Then came the largest riddle of all. If Jesus were to return to the earth she was certain He would go to a synagogue rather than a church. Why could people worship Jesus and hate His people?

THE MOMENT OF DECISION is the loneliest in human life. It must be come upon in stillness and darkness and brooding thoughts and doubts torn out from the deep reaches of the soul.

France was the first country in Europe to grant Jews the full rights of citizenship without qualification.

Truth is what people want to believe and nothing more.

The true guilty draw a curtain on the past. The most innocent assume the guilt. Unfortunately there are too few Germans like that girl.

Prologue Summer, 1962 MARSH MCKITTRICK'S BUICK WAS passed through the gates of the vast Government complex outside Langley. He eased onto the turnpike, then sped toward Washington, touching his briefcase nervously and looking into the rearview mirror. Two cars filled with heavily armed guards followed closely. Sanderson Hooper beside him and Michael Nordstrom in the rear seat remained speechless.

Acudieron de setenta y cuatro naciones diferentes. Los dispersados, los exiliados, los repudiados se congregaban en el único rincón de la Tierra donde la palabra «judío» no era un insulto.