Quotes from Alistair MacLean

Major Rutledge of the Buffs, Eton and Sandhurst as to intonation, millimetrically tooth-brushed as to moustache, Savile Row as to the quite dazzling sartorial perfection of his khaki drill, was so magnificently out of place in the wild beauty of the rocky, tree-lined bluffs of that winding creek that his presence there seemed inevitable.

the only thing I had so far learned with any certainty about the film world was that back-biting, hypocrisy, double-dealing, innuendo and character assassination formed so integral a part of its conversational fabric that it was quite impossible to know where the truth ended and falsehood began. The only safe guide, I'd discovered, was to assume that the truth ended almost immediately.

There was such a thing as luck, but to acknowledge its existence was to hold two fingers up to fate.

I hope you know what you are doing,' van Gelder said. He sounded grave. 'You hope,' I said. 'How do you think I feel?' Neither of them said how they thought I felt, and as it seemed that the line of conversation was taking an unprofitable turn we all kept quiet until we arrived at our destination.

I suppose, too, that the moment when a man hears that a girl's fiance has died only that day is the last moment that that man should ever begin to fall in love with her, but I'm afraid that's just how it was. The emotions are no respecters of the niceties, the proprieties and decencies of this life...

Foster always said that education was very important, but that it didn't really matter, because intelligence was more important than that, and that even intelligence didn't count for so much, that wisdom was far more important still. He said he had no idea in the world whether you had education or intelligence or wisdom and that it couldn't matter less, a blind man could see that you had a good heart, and the good heart was all that mattered in this world.

Tallal, Lawrence relates, gave a moan like a hurt animal. Then he rode off to higher ground and remained there for some moments, shivering violently and staring after the retreating Turks. Lawrence moved to speak with him, but Auda caught his rein and stopped him. In one blow, in one moment, Tallal had lost every person in the world who mattered to him. and the older Auda, wiser in this matter than lawrence, realized that Tallal now had nothing left to live for.

Smith climbed down from the driver's seat, went to the front doors, unbolted both, top and bottom, and pushed gently. The doors gave an inch, then stopped. 'Padlocked,' Smith said briefly. Schaffer surveyed the massive steel plough on the front of the bus and shook his head sorrowfully. 'Poor old padlock,' he said sorrowfully.

Kind of a treble agent, see?" Schaffer said in a patient explaining tone. "That's one better that double.

Kind of a treble agent, see?" Schaffer said in a patient explaining tone. "That's one better than double.

After some time it was borne in upon him that he could shake the colonel's shoulder all night and that would be all he would have for it.

Dr. MacDonald was a big heavily-built man in his late forties, with that well-leathered and spuriously tough look you quite often find among a certain section of the unemployed landed gentry who spend a great deal of time in the open air, much of it mounted on large horses in pursuit of small foxes. He

the engineer, and of his fireman turning

At various times during the 1950's and 1960's attempts were made by leaders in Iraq, Egypt, Jordan, and Syria to unite as a single Arab nation, but due to the famous independent streak ingrained in the Arab personality, nothing came of those efforts. In fact, the Middle East has suffered from numerous uprisings, wars, and violent revolutions since the end of World War I right up to the present day.

He would have made an excellent politician or statesman but had unfortunately been cursed from birth with an unshakable incorruptibility and moral integrity. The

We know about this deliberate policy admittedly as effective as it is suicidal – of endless provocation, waiting for something, for somebody to break. But please, Major Sherman, please do not try to provoke too many people in Amsterdam. We have too many canals.

I'd had my professional successes that, considered by themselves, totted up to a pretty impressive list but a list that, compared to the quota of failures, paled into a best-forgotten insignificance.

the hilly wilds of Cork and Kerry…That was as far

I was warm and dry and fed, the jonge Genever was happily chasing the red corpuscles in a game of merry-go-round, all the coloured threads were weaving themselves into a beautiful pattern and by day's end it would be over. I had never felt so good before. I was never to feel so good again.

unspecified exhortation, when translated into practice, is always liable to a certain amount of executive misdirection

In all, the crew of the St Laurent picked up and took to safety over eight hundred survivors, an astonishing feat almost without parallel in the lifesaving annals of the sea, almost enough to make one forget, if even only for a moment, the barbed wire and the thousand men who died. Almost, but not quite.

The Guns of Navarone

He must have courage, not the physical courage required on a battlefield but the moral courage to make and carry out decisions that might directly counter to the wishes of his superiors. He must have great willpower. and, perhaps above all, he must have the gift of leadership.

a patrician face vaguely reminiscent of one of the better-fed Roman emperors