Tales Of The South Pacific Quotes
"The way it actually was. The endless ocean. The infinite specks of coral we called islands."
"I wish I could tell you about the sweating jungle, the full moon rising behind the volcanoes."
"But whenever I start to talk about the South Pacific, people intervene."
"The old savage who wanted more than anything else in the world to jump from an airplane and float down to earth in a parachute."
"Take the other night up in Detroit. Some of us were waiting for a train."
"A sweeping thrust toward the open land south of Paris."
"You rotted on New Caledonia waiting for Guadalcanal. Then you sweated twenty pounds away in Guadal waiting for Bougainvillea."
"I was only a paper-work sailor, traveling from island to island."
"The old man saw Fry's TBF with twelve beer bottles painted on the side."
"They, like their victories, will be remembered as long as our generation lives."
"The battle we fought there will be in their history books for some time."
"The water in the bay was warm, and the nights were filled with stars."
"We huddled in the sweating earth and waited for the 'garummmph' of the bombs."
"He had a sharp mind. In almost any group he was outstanding."
"He might bitch about the fact that he could progress no faster than farm boys from Iowa."
"It was too bad. In the Army Bill would surely have been a lieutenant-colonel."
"Bill found that he had to work about half an hour a day and censor letters for about twenty minutes."
"He thought he was getting pretty good until one day the Old Man couldn't play."
"Patiently and with great skill the Old Man would push the ball high and near the net."
"The news made Bill restless. He wanted to be doing something."
"Tormented by the inchoate drives of a healthy young man who has left a beautiful wife at home."
"You're in the Navy now. You'll be called to action when you're needed."
"He missed breakfast because he wanted to stay slim."
"Each week he read Time, Life, the Denver Post, and at least two good books."
"Bill's main contributions to LARU-8 were his splendid personal appearance."
"Bill particularly liked the manner in which many of the girls wore bandanas."
"He wrote a long letter to his wife every other day."
"I was the unlucky guy. One lousy Jap hit all day, and it had to be me that got it."
"So there I was, at seven-thirty in the morning, with no raft, no nothing but a life belt."
"My buddies saw me go in, and they set up a traffic circle around me."
"I judge it was about 1400 when thirty new F4U's took over."
"I can't tell you much more. A couple of savvy Japs were waiting with field pieces."
"We lost a P-40 and a PBY. We wasted the flying time of P-40's, F4U's, and F6F's like it was dirt."
"It was a preposterous decision. Our forces at that moment were more than a thousand enemy-held miles from Kuralei."
"Alligator was a triumph of mind, first, and then of muscle."
"Sometimes a month. And all that time you had to work, just the same."
"The unreality of the comparison overwhelmed him."
"A girl he had never seen. A funny town he had never visited."
"One of the officers had said, when the lieutenant's court-martial was read for selling government property to the bootleggers, 'I'd commit suicide!'"
"She was almost as if she were standing at attention."
"That afternoon he would write to his mother... and to the junior at Bryn Mawr."
"I'm sitting in my tent as usual thinking of you. I am in my shorts and as I have had a haircut today, there are streaks of my hair all over my shorts which looks very funny I can tell you."
"You may return to your quarters as soon as the doctor releases you, Hewitt," Harbison said to the perplexed sailor. "Goodnight!"
"And when we were married... Well, you're sort of a doctor, but this is hard to say. Well, Bingo wouldn't sleep with me very much, if you know what I mean."
"I just didn't give, if you'll excuse the expression, I just didn't give a good goddam, if you'll excuse me, sir."
"I'll tell you what, Hewitt," he said. "You mail all of your letters right here from now on, will you? I'll trust you not to send any military secrets. That is, information of any kind."
"But I think I am doing no harm if I say that Liat can marry almost whom she wishes. Many Tonkinese want to marry her, for she is an industrious girl."
"Dr. Benoway picked the letter from the table, sealed it, wrote his initials on it, and stamped it with his little inked censor's circle."
"I'll trust you, Hewitt. But I may censor one now and then to make sure."
"Only if you show her letters to anyone else."
"Passion! By heaven! The Lord certainly dispenses uneven quantities of it to different people."
"The ship passed us by, and I thought my heart would break."
"When I think of what the others have gone through, I'm a little bit ashamed."
"You are staked out unwillingly to your own little troubles."
"I think there must be something ennobling in this vast and timeless waste."
"The fact that he was not a regular Navy man kept him from certain supercilious traits of caution that one expects in Annapolis graduates."
"You watch how he goes about it! He'll steam and swear and curse, but all the time he'll love that gully."
"But when a fellow crawls ashore on Konora at night to dig three holes five feet deep, he's not 'little people.' He's damned big, brother!"
"Sometimes out here I've had a longing that almost broke my guts in two."
"Her old man was the planter I told you about. Quite a character."
"This Pacific will be the center of the new world. This is our future."
"Suspicious, charged with heavy responsibility, eager to see the fleet go forth well armed but knowing the men of the fleet were a gang of robbers, you worked yourself dizzy."
"Had he stayed in the regular line of the Navy, he would surely have become an admiral in command of a task force."
"The Navy ashore is too lenient," the captain told us one day at dinner.
"I was the only man at the Depot who was sure where the strike was headed!"
"I used my discovery as only a mean man would."
"A great movement is on. I have been sent here to bring some kind of discipline into this organization."
"Details entrusted to the agitators and debaters might go awry, but not the fine-spun responsibilities of the dry, uninterested supply men."
"I'll follow your advice, sir! Save my efforts for the enlisted men."
"It's a Navy of laws, Polikopf. You have rights that even I can't trespass..."
"The American public won't stand for it. Mark my words. They won't stand for it."