Pat Frank > Quotes

“I love you. I worry about you. I wonder whether I tell you enough how I love you and want you and need you and how I am diminished . . . when you are not with me and how I am multiplied when you are here.”
― Pat Frank, Alas, Babylon

“If Man retained faith in God, he might also retain faith in Man.”
― Pat Frank, Alas, Babylon

“He was tough as an antique ivory figurine, which has withstood the viscissitudes of centuries and can accept more.”
― Pat Frank, Alas, Babylon

“It was a surprise, and a delight, to see children devour books. Without ever knowing it, they were receiving an education.”
― Pat Frank, Alas, Babylon

“ 'Legs are for men's pleasure, breasts are for babies'.' " - Lib McGovern”
― Pat Frank, Alas, Babylon

“It was strange, she thought, pedaling steadily, that it should require a holocaust to make her own life worth living.”
― Pat Frank, Alas, Babylon

“ 'I think you ought to go to New York or Chicago or San Francisco or any city with character and vitality. You should go to work. This place is no good for you, Randy. The air is like soup and the people are like noodles. You're vegetating. I don't want a vegetable. I want a man.' " - Lib McGovern”
― Pat Frank, Alas, Babylon

“The white flashed back into a red ball in the southeast. They all knew what it was. It was Orlando, or McCoy Base, or both. It was the power supply for Timucuan County.

Thus the lights went out, and in that moment civilization in Fort Repose retreated a hundred years.

So ended The Day.”
― Pat Frank, Alas, Babylon

“When he reached the last hole he saw, far to the west, a series of rockets bloom in the sky. He watched their green and yellow and red petals arch across the horizon, and fade into the gloom of the earth. It was very beautiful, but he recognized them for Chinese rockets.”
― Pat Frank, Hold Back the Night

“none of this talk. A week or so later, thinking about Mark’s words, Randy had decided to go into”
― Pat Frank, Alas, Babylon

“Small nations, when treated as equals, become the firmest of allies.” It”
― Pat Frank, Alas, Babylon

“This disaster was perfectly predictable, Randy realized. He had been a fool. Instead of buying fresh meat, he should have bought canned meats by the case. If there was one thing he certainly should have foreseen, it was the loss of electricity.”
― Pat Frank, Alas, Babylon

“I don’t want money. What the hell’s money good for? You can’t drive it and you can’t eat it and it won’t even fix a flat.”
― Pat Frank, Alas, Babylon

“Now at this hour, when the cirrus clouds stretched like crimson ribbons high across the southwest sky, in such a hush that not even a playful eddy dared stir moss or palm fronds, the day died in calm and in beauty.”
― Pat Frank, Alas, Babylon

“Out of death, life; an immutable truth”
― Pat Frank, Alas, Babylon

“One calling for optimism, pragmatism, and a belief that all problems might be solved, with enough courage, determination, good”
― Pat Frank, Alas, Babylon

“Throughout the following era, while we struggled with our institutions, with one another, and with our own moral flaws, one of the things that kept many of us going was a sense of privilege. Only the very fortunate get to struggle. Only the living may improve.”
― Pat Frank, Alas, Babylon

“I love you. I worn’ about you. I wonder whether I tell you enough how I love you and want you and need you and how I am diminished and afraid when you are not with me and how I am multiplied when you are here.” His”
― Pat Frank, Alas, Babylon

“Censorship and thought control can exist only in secrecy and darkness.”
― Pat Frank, Alas, Babylon

“Our whole raison d’être was deterrent force. When you don’t deter them any longer, you lose.”
― Pat Frank, Alas, Babylon

“It was during this terrible night that the three wounded died, and the jeeps froze solid.”
― Pat Frank, Hold Back the Night

“With the use of the hydrogen bomb, the Christian era was dead, and with it must die the tradition of the Good Samaritan. And yet Randy stopped...The incident was important only because it was self-revelatory. Randy knew he would have to play by the old rules. He could not shuck his code, or sneak out of his era.”
― Pat Frank, Alas, Babylon

“The bell announced that there was food on the table and a women in the kitchen.”
― Pat Frank, Alas, Babylon

“[He was disgusted] at the beasts who in callous cruelty had dragged down and maimed and destroyed the human dignity of this selfless man. Yet it was nothing new. It had been like this at some point in every civilization and on every continent. There were human jackals for every human disaster.”
― Pat Frank, Alas, Babylon

“Since The Day, he had lived in the imperative present, not daring to plan beyond the next meal or the next day. This bit of paper tacked on peeling white paint abruptly enlarged his perspective, as if, stumbling through a black tunnel, he saw, or thought he saw, a chink of light. If Man retained faith in God, he might also retain faith in Man.”
― Pat Frank, Alas, Babylon

“You react to crisis the right way. You remember what Toynbee says? His theory of challenge and response applies not only to nations, but to individuals. Some nations and some people melt in the heat of crisis and come apart like fat in the pan. Others meet the challenge and harden. I think you're going to harden.”
― Pat Frank, Alas, Babylon

“There’s an old saying that anyone can make colonel on his own, but it takes a wife to make a general.”
― Pat Frank, Alas, Babylon

“His ears were attuned for the steady firing of Couzens' heavy machine guns, which he knew should now commence, and the thud of his carefully sited mortars, but he did not hear them and he realized, suddenly and sickeningly, that the Chinese had not attacked across the spit of land. They were pouring across the ice, and had taken Dog Company in the rear.”
― Pat Frank, Hold Back the Night

“Some nations and some people melt in the heat of crisis and come apart like fat in the pan. Others meet the challenge and harden. I think you’re going to harden.”
― Pat Frank, Alas, Babylon

“There is a new crisis in the Middle East. A report from Beirut, via Cairo, says that Syrian tanks of the most modern Russian design have crossed the Jordanian frontier. This is undoubtedly a threat to Israel. At the same time Damascus charges that Turkish troops are mobilizing….” Florence”
― Pat Frank, Alas, Babylon