Michael Dobbs · 384 pages
Rating: (2.5K votes)
“The captain of the Lowry tried a new approach. He assembled the destroyer’s jazz band on deck, and told them to play some music. Strains of Yankee Doodle floated across the ocean, followed by a boogie-woogie number. The Americans thought they could see a smile on the face of one of the sailors. They asked if there was any particular tune he would like to hear. The Soviet sailor did not respond. The”
― Michael Dobbs, quote from One Minute to Midnight: Kennedy, Khrushchev and Castro on the Brink of Nuclear War
“The most enduring lesson of the Cuban missile crisis is that, in a world with nuclear weapons, a classic military victory is an illusion. Communism was not defeated militarily; it was defeated economically, culturally, and ideologically. Khrushchev’s successors were unable to provide their own people with a basic level of material prosperity and spiritual fulfillment. They lost the war of ideas. In the end, as I have argued in Down with Big Brother: The Fall of the Soviet Empire, communism defeated itself.”
― Michael Dobbs, quote from One Minute to Midnight: Kennedy, Khrushchev and Castro on the Brink of Nuclear War
“JFK's great virtue, and the essential difference between him and George W. Bush, was that he had an instinctive appreciation for the chaotic forces of history.”
― Michael Dobbs, quote from One Minute to Midnight: Kennedy, Khrushchev and Castro on the Brink of Nuclear War
“Bismarck defined political intuition as the ability to hear, before anybody else, “the distant hoofbeats of history.”
― Michael Dobbs, quote from One Minute to Midnight: Kennedy, Khrushchev and Castro on the Brink of Nuclear War
“The closest contact they had with the enemy was a playful sign that boasted: “Worldwide delivery in 30 minutes or less—or your next one is free.” Nuclear apocalypse was as mundane as delivering pizza.”
― Michael Dobbs, quote from One Minute to Midnight: Kennedy, Khrushchev and Castro on the Brink of Nuclear War
“Khrushchev had been ready to settle for a”
― Michael Dobbs, quote from One Minute to Midnight: Kennedy, Khrushchev and Castro on the Brink of Nuclear War
Michael Dobbs
Born place: in Belfast, The United Kingdom
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“You might have started out with a clever plan in mind, but you fell in love with her somewhere along the way, didn't you?"
Iain refused to answer him. Douglas wouldn't let it go. "Do you love Judith?"
Iain let out a sigh. Judith's brother was turning out to be one hell of a nuisance. "Do you honestly believe I would marry a Maclean if I didn't love her?"
Laird Maclean let out a snort of laughter. "Welcome to the family, son.”
― Julie Garwood, quote from The Secret
“I was thinking of Anna. I make myself think of her, I do it as an exercise. She is lodged in me like a knife and yet I am beginning to forget her. Already the image of her that I hold in my head is fraying, bits of pigments, flakes of gold leaf, are chipping off. Will the entire canvas be empty one day? I have come to realise how little I knew her, I mean how shallowly I knew her, how ineptly. I do not blame myself for this. Perhaps I should. Was I too lazy, too inattentive, too self-absorbed? Yes, all of those things, and yet I cannot think it is a matter of blame, this forgetting, this not-having-known. I fancy, rather, that I expected too much, in the way of knowing. I know so little of myself, how should I think to know another?”
― John Banville, quote from The Sea
“And it occurred to me that friendship was a lot more dependable, not to mention long-lasting, than love.”
― Lisa Kleypas, quote from Blue-Eyed Devil
“A maiden was imprisoned in a stone tower. She loved a lord. Why? Ask the wind and the stars, ask the god of life; for no one else knows these things. And the lord was her friend and her lover; but time passed, and one fine day he saw someone else and his heart turned away. As a youth he loved the maiden. Often he called her his bliss and his dove, and her embrace was hot and heaving. He said, Give me your heart! And she did so. He said, May I ask you for something, my love? And she answered, in raptures, Yes. She gave him all, and yet he never thanked her. The other one he loved like a slave, like a madman and a beggar. Why? Ask the dust on the road and the falling leaves, ask life’s mysterious god; for no one else knows these things. She gave him nothing, no, nothing did she give him, and yet he thanked her. She said, Give me your peace and your sanity. And he only grieved that she didn’t ask for his life. And the maiden was put in the tower. . . .”
― Knut Hamsun, quote from Pan
“Just be prepared," she said. "When you do come back to live with me, you are SO GROUNDED for calling me the chicken that crossed the road.”
― Jennifer Echols, quote from Forget You
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