This is an excellent martini — sort of tastes like it isn't there at all, just a cold cloud.

The American people are not cowardly. But, living in prosperous isolation, they have been the spoiled children of modern history.

A leader can't dash ahead around the bend out of sight.

The films of The Caine Mutiny and Marjorie Morningstar always seemed to me mere thin skims of the story lines, and I never did see a meager Hollywood caper called Youngblood Hawke, vaguely based on my 800-page novel. So it was that I opted for television, with its much broader time limits, for The Winds of War.

The only true non-conformists are in the asylums; the only radically free spirits are in the death house awaiting the chair. We live by patterns.

War is a business in which a lot of people watch a few people get killed and are damn glad it wasn't them.

When in trouble or in doubt, run in circles, scream and shout.