Blitz Quotes

“And a ton came down on a coloured road,
And a ton came down on a gaol,
And a ton came down on a freckled girl,
And a ton on the black canal,

And a ton came down on a hospital,
And a ton on a manuscript,
And a ton shot up through the dome of a church,
And a ton roared down to the crypt.

And a ton danced over the Thames and filled
A thousand panes with stars,
And the splinters leapt on the Surrey shore
To the tune of a thousand scars.”
― Mervyn Peake, The Rhyme of the Flying Bomb

“Good. Drink your tea," he ordered. "It will make you feel better."

Nothing will make me feel better, she thought, but she drank it down. It was hot and sweet. Mr. Humphreys must have put his entire month's sugar ration into it.

She drained the cup, feeling ashamed of herself. She wasn't the only one who'd had a bad night.”
― Connie Willis, All Clear

“The towering, uniformed, blonde man demanded, rather than ordered yet another whisky. This was one of life’s luxuries exempt from rationing. To the swinging music of ‘Glenn Miller’, Lieutenant Patrick Starkey of the King’s Royal Rifle Corps drank himself into oblivion; the bloody war forgotten for now.”
― Anthony Hulse, Comrades of Deceit

“Smoke curls among the ruins of East London. Many of the buildings have burned to the ground or split like exploded rocks. Small lights bloom like a sea of candles. Even this rain will never put them all out.”
― John Owen Theobald, These Dark Wings

“Always there have been six ravens at the Tower. If the ravens fly away, the kingdom will fall.”
― John Owen Theobald, These Dark Wings

“A loud explosion followed the ricochets off the ships, and the beach was now invisible, due to the black smoke. Loud screams enhanced the terror, and Frankie almost fell over one of the bodies. Faster and faster, he waded, until he began to run towards the beach, the smoke now clearing.”
― Anthony Hulse, Comrades of Deceit

“I do so dislike H. G. Wells being accompanied by Wagner, don't you Mr. Ford?”

… he was forced to acknowledge the aptness of the phrase. Nazism combines a crassly mechanical futurism with the fuss and fume of a tawdry pseudo-Gothic misconception of the past.”
― John Strachey, Digging for Mrs. Miller: Some Experiences of an Air-Raid Warden

“On the surface, my novel The Vorbing is about vampires terrorising the village of Nocturne every night. The German Blitz on London in World War II. I was the real inspiration. I was fascinated by the idea of normality by day and then this evil, destructive power coming by night, and then the cycle repeating. I wanted to explore the kind of siege mentality that would create in a fantasy setting.”
― Stewart Stafford

“Stellen Sie sich das vor. Die Menschen sind verzweifelt, weil der Boden zu viel trägt! Zu viel Getreide, und andere haben nichts zu fressen! Wenn in so eine Welt kein Blitz fährt, dann können sich die historischen Witterungsverhältnisse begraben lassen.”
― Erich Kästner, Fabian. Die Geschichte eines Moralisten

“Farisio blieb stehen. Schauder schüttelten seinen Körper. So viel gebündelte magische Energie hatte er bislang nur einmal gespürt, in der Nähe eines großen Raumportals. Er fühlte sich, als hätte ihn ein magischer Blitz getroffen und als würden seine Füße über dem Boden schweben, doch als er an sich heruntersah, erwies sich das als Täuschung.”
― Nicole Gozdek, Die Gilde der Schatten

“A library is the only place you can go--from cradle to grave--that is free, safe, democratic and no one will try to flog you anything. You don't have to part with a penny to travel the world. It's the heartbeat of a community, offering precious resources to people in need. It's a place just to be, to dream, and to escape -- with books." And what's more precious than that? So here's to all library workers. We need you.”
― Kate Thompson

“A lot of buildings were burnt out, others badly racked and unsafe, some completely smashed. Off the main road it was worse; here and there houses were being demolished, blasting going on sometimes, traffic being cleared, here a bridge being propped up, there a loudspeaker van telling people where to go for money or food. All windows gone everywhere... everywhere was the smell of plaster and burning, everywhere this incredible mess, everywhere people trailing about with a mattress or a bundle or a few pots and pans.”
― Naomi Mitchison, Among You Taking Notes...: The Wartime Diaries of Naomi Mitchison 1939 - 1945

“It was easy for complacent centuries like the Nineteenth, which knew no overwhelming disasters, to say that the Great Fire was a blessing because it swept out of existence a vast conglomeration of insanitary streets and made way for the cleaner brick-and-stone London of Stuart and later times; but we of to-day, who have seen so much that we loved go up in flames, are probably in a better position to feel sympathy for those of our forebears who suffered the tragedy of the Great Fire.”
― H.V. Morton, In Search of London