Herman Wouk Quotes

Quotes about:

• Income tax returns are the most imaginative fiction being written today.

  Herman Wouk

  Book, Income, Fiction

  47 Copy quote

• I try to write a certain amount each day, five days a week. A rule sometimes broken is better than no rule.

  Herman Wouk

  Writing, Broken, Trying

  41 Copy quote

• Human life cannot be formless. We live by patterns. We move in comradeships. Conformity is evil when it distorts, flattens, and erases fruitful ways, strong ideas, natural identities; it is evil when it is a steamroller. But a man cannot escape being part of a milieu - and a recognizable part - unless he flees naked to a cave, never to return. The sensible thing is to use hard thinking to find the right way to live and then to live that way. What matters is living with dignity, with decency, and without fear.

  Herman Wouk

  Strong, Moving, Men

  14 Copy quote

• The door available to everyone that can lead to happiness & success is the modest door of the public library. I found it to be so in my own life and work.

  Herman Wouk

  Doors, Library, Found

  16 Copy quote

• Peace, if it ever exists, will not be based on the fear of war, but on the love of peace. It will not be the abstaining from an act, but the coming of a state of mind.

  Herman Wouk

  War, Mind, States

  Herman Wouk (1986). “Winds of War”, Pocket

  12 Copy quote

• When in trouble or in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout.

  Herman Wouk

  Running, Circles, Doubt

  Cory Doctorow (2013). “Homeland”, p.224, Macmillan

  66 Copy quote

• This life is slow suicide, unless you read.

  Herman Wouk

  Suicide, Life Is, This Life

  Herman Wouk (1980). “The Caine mutiny”, Pocket

  10 Copy quote

• Write a page a day. It will add up.

  Herman Wouk

  Writing, Add, Pages

  8 Copy quote

• About the nicest thing God ever invented was alcohol. He's proud of it, too. The Bible's full of kind remarks about booze.

  Herman Wouk

  Alcohol, Proud, Kind

  HERMAN WOUK (1955). “MARJORIE MORNINGSTAR”

  5 Copy quote

• The Navy is a master plan designed by geniuses for execution by idiots. If you're not an idiot, but find yourself in the Navy, you can only operate well by pretending to be one.

  Herman Wouk

  Finding Yourself, Navy, Genius

  Herman Wouk (1980). “The Caine mutiny”, Pocket

  11 Copy quote

• Let us fill a cup and drink to that most noble, ridiculous, laughable, sublime figure in our lives... The Young Man Who Was. Let us drink to his dreams, for they were rainbow-colored; to his appetites, for they were strong; to his blunders, for they were huge; to his pains for they were sharp; to his time for it was brief; and to his end, for it was to become one of us.

  Herman Wouk

  Dream, Strong, Pain

  5 Copy quote

• Some people think that all the equipment you need to discuss religion is a mouth.

  Herman Wouk

  Thinking, People, Religion

  HERMAN WOUK (1955). “MARJORIE MORNINGSTAR”

  19 Copy quote

• The Talmud is to this day the circulating heart's blood of the Jewish religion. Whatever laws, customs or ceremonies we observe-whether we are orthodox, conservative, reform or merely spasmodic sentimentalists-we follow the Talmud. It is our common Law.

  Herman Wouk

  Heart, Blood, Law

  9 Copy quote

• Illusion is an anodyne, bred by the gap between wish and reality.

  Herman Wouk

  Reality, Wish, Gaps

  Herman Wouk (1988). “War and Remembrance”, Pocket

  8 Copy quote

• ... talk, not sex, constitutes most of the intercourse between a man and his wife.

  Herman Wouk

  Sex, Men, Wife

  Herman Wouk (1986). “Winds of War”, Pocket

  5 Copy quote

• The only true non-conformists are in the asylums; the only radically free spirits are in the death house awaiting the chair. We live by patterns.

  Herman Wouk

  House, Free Spirit, Patterns

  Herman Wouk (1970). “This is my God: the Jewish way of life”, Touchstone

  12 Copy quote

• War is a business in which a lot of people watch a few people get killed and are damn glad it wasn't them.

  Herman Wouk

  War, People, Watches

  Herman Wouk (1951). “The Caine mutiny: a novel of World War II.”, Garden City

  8 Copy quote

• The Navy is a master plan designed by geniuses for execution by idiots. If you are not an idiot, but find yourself in the Navy, you can only operate well by pretending to be one. All the shortcuts and economies and common-sense changes that your native intelligence suggests to you are mistakes. Learn to quash them. Constantly ask yourself, "How would I do this if I were a fool?" Throttle down your mind to a crawl. Then you will never go wrong.

  Herman Wouk

  Mistake, Common Sense, Finding Yourself

  "Herman Wouk to publish first memoir aged 100" by Claire Armitstead, www.theguardian.com. May 27, 2015.

  10 Copy quote

• Some hours weigh against a whole lifetime.

  Herman Wouk

  Time, Hours, Whole Life

  5 Copy quote

• A leader can't dash ahead around the bend out of sight.

  Herman Wouk

  Leadership, Sight, Leader

  5 Copy quote

• I regard the writing of humor as a supreme artistic challenge.

  Herman Wouk

  Writing, Humor, Challenges

  Book-of-the-Month Club News, May 1985.

  6 Copy quote

• A writer is nothing but a gray dirt-covered root. The works he sends up into the sunlight are his fruits, and only those are worthy of attention.

  Herman Wouk

  Roots, Attention, Dirt

  6 Copy quote

• I think it's a bit like coming to the end of a book. The plot's in its thickest, all the characters are in a mess, but you can see that there aren't fifty pages left, and you know that the finish can't be far off.

  Herman Wouk

  Book, Character, Thinking

  HERMAN WOUK (1955). “MARJORIE MORNINGSTAR”

  10 Copy quote

• We are in the black theater of nonexistence. In an eye blink the curtain is up, the stage ablaze, for the vast drama of ourselves.

  Herman Wouk

  Drama, Eye, Black

  New York Times, June 2, 1985.

  9 Copy quote

• The films of The Caine Mutiny and Marjorie Morningstar always seemed to me mere thin skims of the story lines, and I never did see a meager Hollywood caper called Youngblood Hawke, vaguely based on my 800-page novel. So it was that I opted for television, with its much broader time limits, for The Winds of War.

  Herman Wouk

  War, Wind, Mutiny

  4 Copy quote

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