Quotes from William Manchester

He was a great thundering paradox of a man.

An Edwardian lady in full dress was a wonder to behold, and her preparations for viewing were awesome.

I try to be as ruthless as possible. I ask myself of each sentence, "Is it clear? Is it true? Does it feel good?" And if it's not, then I rewrite it.

But there are no loners. No man lives in a void. His every act is conditioned by his time and his society.

Japanese naval officers in dress whites are frequent guests at Pearl Harbor's officers' mess and are very polite. They always were. Except, of course, for that little interval there between 1941 and 1945.

An Edwardian lady in full dress was a wonder to behold, and her preparations for viewing were awesome.

I wondered vaguely if this was when it would end, whether I would pull up tonight's darkness like a quilt and be dead and at peace evermore.

I realized that the worst thing that could happen to me was about to happen to me.

A man's task is to find himself, and if he fails in this, it doesn't much matter what else he finds.

Actors who have tried to play Churchill and MacArthur have failed abysmally because each of those men was a great actor playing himself.

As she sallied forth from her boudoir, you would never have guessed how quickly she could strip for action.

He [Gen. Douglas MacArthur] never went to church, but he read the Bible every day and regarded himself as one of the world's two great defenders of Christendom. (The other was the pope.)

Men do not fight for flag or country, for the Marine Corps or glory or any other abstraction. They fight for one another. [And] if you came through this ordeal, you would age with dignity.