624 pages
Rating: (1.1K votes)
“When General George Patton tried to convince Eisenhower to make a push to conquer the city first, Eisenhower blithely asked, 'Well, who would want it?”
“Enjoy the war,' read the graffiti left on Berlin's walls. 'The peace will be terrible.”
“Eventually, a Soviet general sat down in the empty seat next to Howley. Rank-conscious, the Russian visibly shuddered when he realized he was sitting next to someone of much lower position. 'I see you're a colonel,' he said through an interpreter. Howley looked up from his plate and grumbled, 'I see you're a general. Here, have some salami.”
“World War II ended in a battle for a single buildng, Germany's Reichstag...7,000 German troops defending the building...Nearly 5,000 men died in a battle for the building.”
“Ad they entered Berlin, while still killing off the last of its German defenders, The Russians indulged in an orgy of rape and rage beyond the bounds of human Imagination. Over the course of ten days, about 130,000 women were raped---”
“The Russians would lose 305,000 troops in the last 42 miles approaching Berlin---about the number of American army soldiers who died in all of World War II. Of the 125,000 of Berlin's civilians who died in the Russian attack, 6,400 were suicides;”
“Five thousand boys and girls under the age of sixteen were estimated to have fought in the defense of Berlin. Five hundred survived.”
“The president didn't ask me any questions. But I'm glad he didn't, because I was so shocked watching him that I don't think I could have made a sesible reply.' He turned to look Byrnes squarely in the eye. 'We've been talking to a dying man.”
“The agreement,' the colonel announced, 'says thirty-seven officers, fifty vehicles, and one hundred seventy five men.'
'What agreement?'
'The Berlin Agreement,”
“As the concert goers left the hall, the music of the end of the world still ringing in their ears, they filed out past children dressed in their Hitler Youth uniforms who had been assigned to helpfully hold out baskets filled with cyanide capsules for the crowd.”
“Doctors in 1945 would report that one of Berlin's children's favorite games was 'rape.' When they saw a man in uniform--even a Salvation Army uniform--they would start screaming hysterically.”
“Of babies born alive and in hospitals during that month of July 1945, 92 percent would die within then days.”
“Hell, I'll be safest pretending I'm a boy the rest of my life. The frontier ain't for the faint of heart, and it certainly ain't kind to women. Sometimes I think the whole world's 'gainst us.”
“You’ve been thinking with your head for a very long time. While that makes for a very safe existence, we sometimes inadvertently inhibit our true happiness when we do this. Life choices shouldn’t always be about the end result. People fail to realize that the small adventures in the middle are sometimes more important. When you’re old, you’re going to reflect on your life and everything is just going to be one big ball of memories anyway. Why not have something worthwhile to look back at?” I hated that this bitch was making a point.”
“Graham had a lot of trouble with taste. Often his thoughts were not tasty. There were no effective partitions in his mind. What he saw and learned touched everything else he knew. Some of the combinations were hard to live with. But he could not anticipate them, could not block and repress. His learned values of decency and propriety tagged along, shocked at his associations, appalled at his dreams; sorry that in the bone arena of his skull there were no forts for what he loved. His associations came at the speed of light. His value judgments were at the pace of a responsive reading. They could never keep up and direct his thinking. He viewed his own mentality as grotesque but useful, like a chair made of antlers. There was nothing he could do about it.”
“We only get to be in our bodies for a limited time, why not celebrate the journey instead of merely riding it out until it’s over?”
“The rooster has a funny little paper hat over its head, like an ice-cream cone upside down, and my dad is pointing to it proudly and saying, ‘Stroke him. Go on, stroke him. Do anything you like to him. He won’t move an inch.’ The rooster starts scratching”
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