126 Quotes by Herman Wouk

He was just head over ears in love, with a young woman as near as his hand and as remote as a star, and for the moment it was enough to be where she was.

I almost died, and I realized that all I regretted was you.

Aye aye, sir.” Willie saluted and emerged into the sunlight, through the one loophole that military wisdom can never quite button up – the sympathy of the downtrodden for each other.

It was like the hate of a husband for a sick wife, a mature, solid hate, caused by an unbreakable tie to a loathsome person, and existing not as a self-justification, but for the rotten gleam of pleasure it gave off in the continuing gloom. Out.

It’s not money, but what you can buy with it. Money is power. Money is security. Money is freedom.

Life is a dream, a little more coherent than most.

You can’t assume a goddamned thing in this Navy.

By keeping back the twenty-five squadrons from the lost Battle of France, he acted toughly, wisely, and ungallantly; and he turned the war to the course that ended five long years later, when Hitler killed himself and Nazi Germany fell apart. This deed put Winston Churchill in the company of the rare saviors of countries, and perhaps of civilizations.

South Wind had been, in Marjorie’s visions, a new clear world, a world where a grimy Bronx childhood and a fumbling Hunter adolescence were forgotten dreams, a world where she could at last find herself and be herself – clean, fresh, alone, untrammelled by parents. In a word, it had been the world of Marjorie Morningstar.