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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“Three hot chicks for three hot chicks."
"THEY'RE NOT CHICKS THEY"RE DUCKS!”
― Lauren Myracle, quote from Peace, Love, and Baby Ducks
“In old stapled problems, you can see the TB vaccine marks in the upper left corner where the staples have been removed and replaced, as the problem - even the staple holes of the problem - was copied and sent on to other departments for further action, copying, and stapling.”
― Nicholson Baker, quote from The Mezzanine
“I had stood and stared at the webbing of steel then wished for a hole to climb through. The wires had just unraveled without setting off the klaxon. I remembered thinking with a horrible kind of panic that I had somehow done withcraft, and was convinced I was the blackest kind of evil. Then I realized how ridiculous I was being, and figured it was a coincidental gift from the universe, or something.”
― Penelope Fletcher, quote from Demon Girl
“There's something about outward appearances that has always been important to me. I always thought I was so ugly. I mean, I really did. I remember... as a little kid and just staring into the mirror for hours. It was like, if I looked long enough, maybe I'd finally be handsome. It never worked. I just got uglier and uglier. Nothing about me ever seemed good enough. And there was this sadness inside me - this hopelessness. Focusing on my physical appearance was at least easier than trying to address the internal shit. I could control the external - at least, to a point. I could buy different clothes, or cut my hair, or whatever. The pit opening up inside me was too frightening to even look at.”
― Nic Sheff, quote from Tweak: Growing Up On Methamphetamines
“I wondered whether mad people would be better off if their memories could be neatened up, or taken off the shelves on which they were stored and replaced with nicer ones, and if they'd be the same person then, or completely different ones, and whether dreams were like a vandal rampaging through a library of memories, tearing out random pages and turning them into paper boats...”
― quote from The FitzOsbornes in Exile
Silver Silence
Demian
Die Seufzende Wendel...
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