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
“I just bonked a werewulf on the noggin. Jeez.”
― Lili St. Crow, quote from Jealousy
“You see what your mother-in-law hasn’t yet realised is that she’s the one who needs to hold out the olive branch, not you, because she’s the one who’s going to want to come around more and more in the future to see her grand-kids. SHE needs to make friends with YOU, not the other way around.”
― Karl Wiggins, quote from You Really Are Full of Shit, Aren't You?
“We are unknown to ourselves, we men of knowledge--and with good reason. We have never sought ourselves--how could it happen that we should ever find ourselves?”
― Friedrich Nietzsche, quote from On the Genealogy of Morals/Ecce Homo
“لأن أباها كان يؤمن بأن الجهل هو الضمانة لخضوع النساء والفقراء .. وكانت تعرف بمشقة مبادىء الكتابة والحساب ، فهي لم تقرأ كتابًا واحدًافي حياتها وتحسب عمليات الجمع على أصابعها - لم تكن تطرح قط - ولكن كل ماتلمسه يداها يتحول إلى ثروة ؛
ترددت على البيت مجموعة من المعلمين ؛كان عدد منهم كهنة مستعدين لتعليمي مقابل المنح السخيّة التي تقدمها جدتي لجمعياتهم الدينية .. وقد كنت محظوظة إذ تعاملوا معي بتساهل ؛لأنهم ماكانوا ينتظرون من دماغي أن يستوعب مثل أدمغة الذكور .. أما ( دون خوان ريبيرو ) بالمقابل فكان يطالبني بالمزيد لأن على المرأة كما قال " أن تبذل من الجهد أكثر ألف مرة مما يبذله الرجل لتحرز مكانة فكرية أو فنية " .”
― Isabel Allende, quote from Portrait in Sepia
“There is such joy in chaos. Stow all the world's evils behind a door and tell men that they must never, ever, open the door, and it will be opened because there is pure joy in destruction.”
― Bernard Cornwell, quote from The Pale Horseman
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