Doug Stanton · 339 pages
Rating: (15K votes)
“Where does a man go when there are no more corners to turn, when he's running out of hope, out of luck, out of time?”
― Doug Stanton, quote from In Harm's Way: The Sinking of the USS Indianapolis and the Extraordinary Story of Its Survivors
“They’d been afloat now without food, water, shelter, or sleep for over forty hours. Of the 1,196 crew13 members who’d set sail from Guam three days earlier, probably no more than 600 were still alive. In the previous twenty-four hours alone, at least 200 had likely slipped beneath the waves or been victims of shark attack. Since the sinking, each boy had been floating through the hours asking himself the same hard question: Will I live, or do I quit?”
― Doug Stanton, quote from In Harm's Way: The Sinking of the USS Indianapolis and the Extraordinary Story of Its Survivors
“McCoy, drained and hollow-eyed, couldn't take his eyes off the life vest belonging to the boy who'd slipped away from the group during the night. The empty vest spooked McCoy. All its straps were still tightly tied-it looked like some trick that Houdini might've played. Then McCoy peered into the water and got another shock: the boy was floating below him, spread-eagled, about fifteen feet below the surface. He lay motionless until a current caught him; then it was as if he were flying in the depths. Jesus, McCoy thought, Mother of God. He started saying the rosary over and over. McCoy had never been overly religious; his mom was the spiritual one in the family. But now he began the process of what he'd later call his purification; he'd started asking God to forgive him of his sins. He was resolved to live but he was getting ready to die.”
― Doug Stanton, quote from In Harm's Way: The Sinking of the USS Indianapolis and the Extraordinary Story of Its Survivors
“The sharks had, in fact, remained a constant presence throughout the men's ordeal, even during the daylight hours. Not long after [navy pilot] Gwinn showed up, a massive shark attack--involving an estimated thirty fish--had, in about fifteen minutes, taken some sixty boys perched on a floater net.”
― Doug Stanton, quote from In Harm's Way: The Sinking of the USS Indianapolis and the Extraordinary Story of Its Survivors
“For the survivors, the disaster of the Indy is their My Lai massacre or Watergate, a touchstone moment of historic disappointment: the navy put them in harm's way, hundreds of men died violently, and then the government refused to acknowledge its culpability.
What's amazing, however, is that these men, unlike contemporary generations who've been disappointed by bad government, are not bitter. Somehow, a majority brushed aside their feelings of rancor and went on to help build the booming postwar American economy of the fifties.”
― Doug Stanton, quote from In Harm's Way: The Sinking of the USS Indianapolis and the Extraordinary Story of Its Survivors
“. . . the sun set . . . with guillotine-like speed this close to the equator.”
― Doug Stanton, quote from In Harm's Way: The Sinking of the USS Indianapolis and the Extraordinary Story of Its Survivors
“Accurate data on shark attacks on World War II servicemen may never be known since medical records did not note them. In fact, the navy was sufficiently concerned about loss of morale that it discouraged public mention of the menace.”
― Doug Stanton, quote from In Harm's Way: The Sinking of the USS Indianapolis and the Extraordinary Story of Its Survivors
Doug Stanton
Born place: The United States
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“I don't pay much attention to the distinction between fantasy and science fiction–or between “genre” and “mainstream” for that matter. For me, all fiction is about prizing the logic of metaphors-which is the logic of narratives in general–over reality, which is irreducibly random and senseless.
We spend our entire lives trying to tell stories about ourselves–they’re the essence of memory. It is how we make living in this unfeeling accidental universe tolerable. That we call such a tendency “the narrative fallacy” doesn’t mean it doesn’t also touch upon some aspect of the truth.
Some stories simply literalize their metaphors a bit more explicitly.”
― Ken Liu, quote from The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories
“People only believe in heroes when they win.”
― K.M. Weiland, quote from Dreamlander
“Although relatively speaking the right hemisphere takes a more pessimistic view of the self, it is also more realistic about it.457 There is evidence that (a) those who are somewhat depressed are more realistic, including in self-evaluation; and, see above, that (b) depression is (often) a condition of relative hemisphere asymmetry, favouring the right hemisphere.458 Even schizophrenics have more insight into their condition in proportion to the degree that they have depressive symptoms.459 The evidence is that this is not because insight makes you depressed, but because being depressed gives you insight.”
― quote from The Master and His Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World
“When does it stop-the longing to be mothered?”
― Emery Lord, quote from The Names They Gave Us
“Children don’t need to have their feelings agreed with; they need to have them acknowledged.”
― Adele Faber, quote from How to Talk So Teens Will Listen and Listen So Teens Will Talk
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