Alistair MacLean > Quotes

“This won't look so good in my obituary," Schaffer said dolefully. There was a perceptible edge of strain under the lightly-spoken words."Gave his life for his country in a ladies' lavatory in Upper Bavaria.”
― Alistair MacLean, Where Eagles Dare

“There are no brave men and cowardly men in the world, my son. There are only brave men. To be born, to live, to die—that takes courage enough in itself, and more than enough.

We are all brave men and we are all afraid, and what the world calls a brave man, he too is brave and afraid like the all rest of us. Only he is brave for five minutes longer.”
― Alistair MacLean, The Guns of Navarone

“She had the best kind of courage, or maybe the worst kind, the kind that gets you into trouble.”
― Alistair MacLean, Fear is the Key

“The point I make is simply that cruelty and hate and intolerance are the monopoly of no particular race or creed or time. They have been with us since the world began and are still with us, in every country in the world.”
― Alistair MacLean, The Last Frontier

“...the men of the Ulysses had no need to stand in shame...many had found, or were finding, that the point of no return was not necessarily the edge of the precipice: it could be the bottom of the valley, the beginning of the long climb up the far slope, and when a man had once begun that climb he never looked back to that other side.”
― Alistair MacLean, HMS Ulysses

“The Peacemaker Colt has now been in production, without change in design, for a century. Buy one to-day and it would be indistinguishable from the one Wyatt Earp wore when he was the Marshal of Dodge City. It is the oldest hand-gun in the world, without question the most famous and, if efficiency in its designated task of maiming and killing be taken as criterion of its worth, then it is also probably the best hand-gun ever made. It is no light thing, it is true, to be wounded by some of the Peacemaker’s more highly esteemed competitors, such as the Luger or Mauser: but the high-velocity, narrow-calibre, steel-cased shell from either of those just goes straight through you, leaving a small neat hole in its wake and spending the bulk of its energy on the distant landscape whereas the large and unjacketed soft-nosed lead bullet from the Colt mushrooms on impact, tearing and smashing bone and muscle and tissue as it goes and expending all its energy on you.
In short when a Peacemaker’s bullet hits you in, say, the leg, you don’t curse, step into shelter, roll and light a cigarette one-handed then smartly shoot your assailant between the eyes. When a Peacemaker bullet hits your leg you fall to the ground unconscious, and if it hits the thigh-bone and you are lucky enough to survive the torn arteries and shock, then you will never walk again without crutches because a totally disintegrated femur leaves the surgeon with no option but to cut your leg off. And so I stood absolutely motionless, not breathing, for the Peacemaker Colt that had prompted this unpleasant train of thought was pointed directly at my right thigh.
Another thing about the Peacemaker: because of the very heavy and varying trigger pressure required to operate the semi-automatic mechanism, it can be wildly inaccurate unless held in a strong and steady hand. There was no such hope here. The hand that held the Colt, the hand that lay so lightly yet purposefully on the radio-operator’s table, was the steadiest hand I’ve ever seen. It was literally motionless. I could see the hand very clearly. The light in the radio cabin was very dim, the rheostat of the angled table lamp had been turned down until only a faint pool of yellow fell on the scratched metal of the table, cutting the arm off at the cuff, but the hand was very clear. Rock-steady, the gun could have lain no quieter in the marbled hand of a statue. Beyond the pool of light I could half sense, half see the dark outline of a figure leaning back against the bulkhead, head slightly tilted to one side, the white gleam of unwinking eyes under the peak of a hat. My eyes went back to the hand. The angle of the Colt hadn’t varied by a fraction of a degree. Unconsciously, almost, I braced my right leg to meet the impending shock. Defensively, this was a very good move, about as useful as holding up a sheet of newspaper in front of me. I wished to God that Colonel Sam Colt had gone in for inventing something else, something useful, like safety-pins.”
― Alistair MacLean, When Eight Bells Toll

“Bowman turned his back on her and began to search the place methodically and exhaustively. When one searches any place, be it a gypsy caravan or a baronial mansion, methodically and exhaustively, one has to wreck it completely in the process.So, in a orderly and systematic fashion, Bowman set about reducing Czerda's caravan to a total ruin.”
― Alistair MacLean, Caravan to Vaccares

“Foster always said that education was very important, but that it didn't really matter, because intelligence was more important than that, and that even intelligence didn't count for so much, that wisdom was far more important still. He said he had no idea in the world whether you had education or intelligence or wisdom and that it couldn't matter less, a blind man could see that you had a good heart, and the good heart was all that mattered in this world.”
― Alistair MacLean, South by Java Head

“She was still doing forty knots, driving in under the guns of the enemy, guns at maximum depression, when "A" magazine blew up, blasted off the entire bows in one shattering detonations. For a second, the lightened fo'c'sle reared high into the air" then it plunged down, deep down, into the shoulder of a rolling sea. She plunged down and kept on going down, driving down to the black floor of the Arctic, driven down by the madly spinning screws. The still thundering engines her own executioners.”
― Alistair MacLean, HMS Ulysses

“I am not a novelist, I'm a storyteller. There is no art in what I do. No mystique.”
― Alistair MacLean

“Women, I thought: if they fell over a cliff and thought there was company waiting at the bottom, they'd comb their hair on the way down.”
― Alistair MacLean, Fear is the Key

“A terrified rat will swear to anything.”
― Alistair MacLean, River of Death

“Every man is what environment and heredity make him.”
― Alistair MacLean, HMS Ulysses

“The first thing I noticed was the gun in his hands, and it wasn’t the sort of gun a beginner carries around with him. A big dull black German Mauser 7.63. One of those economical guns; the bullet goes clear through three people at once.”
― Alistair MacLean, Fear is the Key

“I should have listened to Hunslett. Again I should have listened to Hunslett. And again for Hunslett's sake. But I didn't know then that Hunslett was to have time for all the sleep in the world.”
― Alistair MacLean, When Eight Bells Toll

“To all things an end. To every night a dawn. Even to longest night when dawn never comes, there comes, at last, the dawn.”
― Alistair MacLean, HMS Ulysses

“The Major Smiths of this world don't drive over the edge of a cliff. Quotation from the future Mrs. Schaffer. The Major Smiths of this world don't fall off the roofs of cable cars. Quotation from the future Mrs. Schaffer's future husband.”
― Alistair MacLean, Where Eagles Dare

“We, ironically known as the civilizados - in practically everything that matters they're a damned sight more civilized than we are - bring them so-called progress, which harms them, so-called change, which harms them, so-called civilization, which harms them even more, and desease, which kills them.”
― Alistair MacLean, River of Death

“Why didn't you shoot him?”

“I'm a changed man, boss.” Schaffer sighed. “Something splendid has just come into my life.”

“Besides, you didn't have a chance.”

“Besides, as you say, I didn't have a chance.”
― Alistair MacLean, Where Eagles Dare

“The intolerance of ignorance, not wanting to know – that is the last real frontier on earth.”
― Alistair MacLean, The Last Frontier

“The first criticism I ever read was of my first book, H.M.S. ‘Ulysses.’ It got two whole pages to itself in a now defunct Scottish newspaper, with a drawing of the dust jacket wreathed in flames and the headline ‘Burn this book.’ I had paid the Royal Navy the greatest compliment of which I could conceive: this dolt thought it was an act of denigration.”
― Alistair MacLean, The Lonely Sea: The only collection of short stories by the magnificent historical action adventure Scottish novelist

“They'll be coming for you, Mr. Jones. They'll be coming any moment now. I hate to say this, but I must. It is my duty to warn you what will happen to you, an enemy spy. You'll be tortured, Mr. Jones—not simply everyday tortures like pulling out your teeth and toe-nails, but unspeakable tortures I can't mention with Miss Ellison here—and then you'll finish in the gas chambers. If you're still alive.'

Mary clutched his arm. 'Would they—would they really do that?'

'Good God, no!' Smith stared at her in genuine surprise.

'What on earth would they want to do that for?' He raised his voice again: 'You'll die in a screaming agony, Mr. Jones, an agony beyond your wildest nightmares. And you'll take a long time dying. Hours. Maybe days. And screaming. Screaming all the time.'

'What in God's name am I to do?' The desperate voice from above was no longer quavering, it vibrated like a broken bed-spring. 'What can I do?'

'You can slide down that rope,' Smith said brutally. 'Fifteen feet. Fifteen little feet, Mr. Jones. My God, you could do that in a pole vault.'

'I can't.' The voice was a wail. 'I simply can't.'

'Yes, you can,' Smith urged. 'Grab the rope now, close your eyes, out over the sill and down. Keep your eyes closed. We can catch you.'

'I can't! I can't!'

'Oh God!' Smith said despairingly. 'Oh, my God! It's too late now.'

'It's too—what in heaven's name do you mean?'

'The lights are going on along the passage, Smith said, his voice low and tense. 'And that window. And the next. They're coming for you, Mr. Jones, they're coming now. Oh God, when they strip you off and strap you down on the torture table—'

Two seconds later Carnaby-Jones was over the sill and sliding down the nylon rope. His eyes were screwed tightly shut. Mary said, admiringly: You really are the most fearful liar ever.'

'Schaffer keeps telling me the same thing,' Smith admitted. 'You can't all be wrong.”
― Alistair MacLean, Where Eagles Dare

“Nature wanted to show mankind, an irreverent, over-venturesome mankind, just how puny and pitifully helpless a thing mankind really is…”
― Alistair MacLean, HMS Ulysses

“what would be left of it by that time—would be in the Kola”
― Alistair MacLean, HMS Ulysses

“Foster always said that education was very important, but that it didn’t really matter, because intelligence was more important than that, and that even intelligence didn’t count for so much, that wisdom was far more important still. He said he had no idea in the world whether you had education or intelligence or wisdom and that it couldn’t matter less, a blind man could see that you had a good heart, and the good heart was all that mattered in this world.”
― Alistair MacLean, South by Java Head: An epic and dramatic historical fiction war novel of courage and sacrifice

“[Smith] blew a warning blast of his town horn, twisted the wheel and slewed the bus into the side of the street. His intentions were unmistakable and the motorcycle patrol's decision to elect for discretion in lieu of suicidal valour was as immediate as it was automatic. They frantically abandoned their machines and flung themselves for their lives up the steps of Zum Wilden Hirsch.”
― Alistair MacLean, Where Eagles Dare

“With a face and a figure and an acting talent like that, she could have had Hollywood tramping a path of beaten gold to her doorstep.”
― Alistair MacLean, Where Eagles Dare

“He shivered uncontrollably and turned his back on the driving wind. ‘Anyway, I wish to God I had his job,’ he added feelingly. ‘This is worse than winter in Alberta!”
― Alistair MacLean, HMS Ulysses

“He walked the length of the gleaming torpedoes and halted before another steel door in a cross bulkhead. He opened this, and beyond, four feet away, was another such heavy door set in another such bulkhead. The sills were about eighteen inches”
― Alistair MacLean, Ice Station Zebra

“We know about this deliberate policy admittedly as effective as it is suicidal – of endless provocation, waiting for something, for somebody to break. But please, Major Sherman, please do not try to provoke too many people in Amsterdam. We have too many canals.”
― Alistair MacLean, Puppet on a Chain