Douglas Brinkley · 736 pages
Rating: (2.1K votes)
“Unlike the Marines, who are given macho monikers like “jarheads,” the Coast Guard had long been denigrated in military circles as fey “puddle jumpers.” But just as 9/11 brought a newfound respect to firemen, Katrina did the same for the reputation of the Coast Guard. At the peak of rescue operations they had 62 aircraft, 30 cutters, and 111 small boats stepping up in rescue and recovery operations. They did it all one person at a time.”
― Douglas Brinkley, quote from The Great Deluge: Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans, and the Mississippi Gulf Coast
“Salt Lake City has a monument to the seagulls, which in 1848 swooped down from the sky to devour a swarm of locusts, thereby saving Utah crops. They were known affectionately as the “Mormon Air Force.” Someday New Orleans should likewise honor the dragonfly. With their large multifaceted eyes, two pairs of strong transparent wings, and outstretched bodies, dragonflies frighten most people. On Tuesday dragonflies blanketed New Orleans, hovering just inches above the smelly floodwater, eating every mosquito in sight.”
― Douglas Brinkley, quote from The Great Deluge: Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans, and the Mississippi Gulf Coast
“History will remember the Superdome debacle—caused by the dearth of evacuation buses—as “Nagin’s Folly,” mayoral incompetence of the first order.”
― Douglas Brinkley, quote from The Great Deluge: Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans, and the Mississippi Gulf Coast
“John McPhee’s 1989 book The Control of Nature, for”
― Douglas Brinkley, quote from The Great Deluge: Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans, and the Mississippi Gulf Coast
“A crooked peace officer is just a damned abomination,” McCarthy wrote. “That’s all you can say about it. He’s ten times worse than the criminal.”48”
― Douglas Brinkley, quote from The Great Deluge: Hurricane Katrina, New Orleans, and the Mississippi Gulf Coast
“I have no doubt he’ll hurt me. But he’ll do it on clean satin sheets in romantic lighting.”
― Kitty Thomas, quote from The Last Girl
“I’ve spilled all my secrets. How do you make people do it?” “I don’t. People like to talk about what’s hurting them. It takes the edge off the pain sometimes.”
― Ross Macdonald, quote from The Goodbye Look
“I guess quotes make me feel more connected.”
― Carolyn Mackler, quote from Tangled
“That woman,” Bandar liked to say of the British prime minister, “was a hell of a man.”
― Robert Lacey, quote from Inside the Kingdom: Kings, Clerics, Modernists, Terrorists and the Struggle for Saudi Arabia
“No matter how many times you fall in love, it always comes at you sideways. It always catches you by surprise.”
― Christina Haag, quote from Come to the Edge
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