Quotes by Leon Uris

“Often we have no time for our friends but all the time in the world for our enemies.”

“[She said the book that changed her life was] Exodus ... a sense of identification.”

Miss Abigail, I want to be an author because writers know when a person is lonely. I mean, when Molly read me some books, those writers reached out and said, Look Gideon, we know about your loneliness and we know youre feeling downtrodden. And they said...Ill stand up for you. Youre not lone anymore.

Talent isnt enough. You need motivation-and persistence, too: what Steinbeck called a blend of faith and arrogance. When youre young, plain old poverty can be enough, along with an insatiable hunger for recognition. You have to have that feeling of Ill show them. If you dont have it, dont become a writer

I know writers have to be crazy. But more than that that, they have to get made and stay mad. If things dont make a writer mad, hell end up writing Flopsy, Mopsy, and Cottantail.

A novel takes the courage of a marathon runner, and as long as you have to run, you might as well be a winning marathon runner. Serendipity and blind faith faith in yourself wont hurt a thing. All the bastards in the world will snicker and sneer because they havent the talent to zip up their flies by themselves. To hell with them, particularly the critics. Stand in there, son, no matter how badly you are battered and hurt.

This was what I came to found. The conquest of loneliness was the missing link that was one day going to make a decent novelist out of me. If you are out here and cannot close off the loves and hates of all that back there in the real world the memories will overtake you and swamp you and wilt your tenacity. Tenacity stamina... close off to everything and everyone but your writing. That s the bloody price. I don t know maybe its some kind of ultimate selfishness. Maybe its part of the killer instinct. Unless you can stash away and bury thoughts of your greatest love you cannot sustain the kind of concentration that breaks most men trying to write a book over a three or four year period.

For an instant he was able to cross the line and understand this strange loyalty of Jew to Jew. Those Jews who lived free in England were only there due to some quirk of fate instead of Aushwitz and every Jew knew that genocide could have happened to his own family except for that quirk of fate.Yet, as time stood suspended, Gilray was all gentiles who never quite understood Jews. He could befriend them, work with them, but never totally understand them. He was all white men who could never quite understand black men and all black men who could never quite understand whites. He was all normal men who could tolerate or even defend homosexuals...but never fully understand them.There is in us all that line that prevents us from fully understanding those who are different.

Who is left in the ghetto is the one man in a thousand in any age, in any culture, who through some mysterious workings of force within his soul will stand in defiance against any master. He is that one human in a thousand whose indomitable spirit will not bow. He is the one man in a thousand whose indomitable spirit cannot bow. He is the one man in a thousand who will not walk quietly to Umschlagplatz. Watch out for him, Alfred Funk, we have pushed him to the wall.

Today a great shot for freedom was heard. I think it stands a chance of being heard forever. It marls a turning point in the history of the Jewish people. The beginning of the return to a statues of dignity we have not known for two thousand years. Yes, today was the first step back. My battle is done. Now I turn the command over to the soldiers.

In Gods scheme what is a few billion years here and there. Perhaps there have come and gone a dozen human civilizations in the past billion years that we know nothing about. And after this civilization we are living in destroys itself, it will all start up again in a million years when the planet has all its messes cleaned up. Then, finally, one of these civilizations, say five billion years from now, will last because people treat each other the way they ought to.

Huxley: Tell me something Bryce, do you know the difference between a Jersey, a Guernsey, a Holstein, and an Ayershire?Bryce: No.Huxley: Seabags Brown does.Bryce: I dont see what that has to do...Huxley: What do you know about Gaelic history?Bryce: Not much.Huxley: Then why dont you sit down one day with Gunner McQuade. He is an expert. Speaks the language, too.Bryce: I dont...Huxley: What do you know about astronomy?Bryce: A little.Huxley: Discuss it with Wellman, he held a fellowship. Bryce: This is most puzzling.Huxley: What about Homer, ever read Homer?Bryce: Of course Ive read Homer.Huxley: In the original Greek?Bryce: NoHuxley: Then chat with Pfc. Hodgkiss. Loves to read the ancient Greek.Bryce: Would you kindly get to the point?Huxley: The point is this, Bryce. What makes you think you are so goddam superior? Who gave you the bright idea that you had a corner on the worlds knowledge? There are privates in this battalion who can piss more brains down a slit trench then youll ever have. Youre the most pretentious, egotistical individual Ive ever encountered. Your superiority complex reeks. Ive seen the way you treat men, like a big strutting peacock. Why, youve had them do everything but wipe your ass.

Anything to declare? the customs inspector said.Two pound of uncut heroin and a manual of pornographic art, Mark answered, looking about for Kity. All Americans are comedians, the inspector thought, as he passed Parker through. A government tourist hostess approached him.Are you Mr. Mark Parker?Guilty.

A novelist must know what his last chapter is going to say and one way or another work toward that last chapter. ... To me it is utterly basic yet it seems like its a great secret.

Talent isnt enough. You need motivation-and persistence too: what Steinbeck called a blend of faith and arrogance. When youre young plain old poverty can be enough along with an insatiable hunger for recognition. You have to have that feeling of Ill show them. If you dont have it dont become a writer.

You can try to reach an audience, but you just write what comes out of you and you just hope that it is accepted. You do not write specifically to a generation.

I am very proud of this work because it is more about the meaning of the Easter Rising and its relationship to what this whole century has been about, people liberating themselves, freeing themselves.