Best 49 quotes of Leon Uris on MyQuotes

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 it's a great secret.

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 won't hurt a thing. All the bastards in the world will snicker and sneer because they haven't 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.

Anyone who goes into writing has to find out somewhere along the line, he's either naive or insane.

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 soldier has one item that cannot be neglected. His feet. They are his wheels, his mechanised warfare.

Before I was nine I had learned the basic canon of Arab life. It was me against my brother; me and my brother against our father; my family against my cousins and the clan; the clan against the tribe; and the tribe against the world and all of us against the infidel.

English of course is your major tool, but it is not nearly so important as other aspects of writing for example you have to have some natural ability you can't buy it no one puts it there you're born with it

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.

I do not write for an audience

I enjoy writing, sometimes; I think that most writers will tell you about the agony of writing more than the joy of writing, but writing is what I was meant to do.

If you're lucky enough to fall in love, that's one thing. Otherwise all that was ever truly beautiful to me was boyhood. It's the meal we sup on for the rest of our lives. Love puts the icing on life. But if you don't find it...you must call on your childhood memories over and over till you do.

I have been writing for 50 years and readers still read my first book from when I was in the Marine Corps.

I have drawn inspiration from the Marine Corps, the Jewish struggle in Palestine and Israel, and the Irish

I know writers have to be crazy. But more than that that, they have to get made and stay mad. If things don't make a writer mad, he'll end up writing Flopsy, Mopsy, and Cottantail.

In order to be a good writer, you've got to be a bad boss. Self-discipline and stamina are the two major arms in a writer's arsenal.

It all begins and ends in the same place, doesn't it? Conor and me in Ballyutogue. We all come home eventually.

I was too heavy to be a jockey and too honest to be a producer, so I became a writer

I was tough. I used everything to my advantage. I could be very ruthless.

Life hinges on many factors we cannot control. Two of the most important factors, we can control. We can manage our relationships-and what is life but a series of relationships?-and we can correct our mistakes, here on earth within our life span.

Look at me, man, look at me and tell me I don't know what I'm about. I'm Conor Larkin. I'm an Irishman and I've had enough.

Love can't mature in one room. It has to come out of the full sharing of everything: joys, aspirations, downfalls, all of it. That's the only real path to love.

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 you're feeling downtrodden. And they said...I'll stand up for you. You're not lone anymore.

My first book was rejected nine times. It turned out to be a best seller, Battle Cry? in 1953.

My greatest accomplishment is Exodus. It changed a lot of peoples lives, it changed the conception of the Jewish people in the international scene.

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

One of the cheapest commodities in the world is unfulfilled genius. All of us want to be known as a unique individual, the one who broke out of the pack. So, you offer yourself up as a sacrifice and what you’re afraid of is losing and being thrown back into the pack. One question taunts you. Do you want to have, or do you want to be?

On one occasion I went to Afghanistan to look at the borders and learn something about the situation there to see if my book was there?and it wasnt.

Pride is a fool's fortress

Research to me is as important or more important than the writing. It is the foundation upon which the book is built

Talent isn't enough. You need motivation-and persistence, too: what Steinbeck called a blend of faith and arrogance. When you're young, plain old poverty can be enough, along with an insatiable hunger for recognition. You have to have that feeling of "I'll show them." If you don't have it, don't become a writer.

The ability of a person to atone has always been the most remarkable of human features.

The complete novelist would come into the world with a catalog of qualities like this. He would own the concentration of a Trappist monk, the organizational ability of a Prussian field marshal, the insight into human relations of a Viennese psychologist, the discipline of a man who prints the Lord's Prayer on the head of a pin, the exquisite sense of timing of an Olympic gymnast, and by the way, a natural instinct and flair for exceptional use of language.

The first thing you have to do is get immersed in the project, organizing yourself, knowing what you are going after and not going after. It is extremely important to know what you don't want to find. Research to me is as important or more important than the writing. It is the foundation upon which the book is built.

There is in us all that line that prevents us from fully understanding those who are different.

To be homeward bound, no matter what tragic memories you have harbored, is unlike any voyage a man can ever make.

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.

To me, a writer is one of the most important soldiers in the fight for survival of the human race. He must stay at his post in the thick of fire to serve the cause of mankind.

Who here wants to be a writer?' I asked. Everyone in the room raised his hand. 'Why the hell aren't you home writing?' I said, and left the stage.

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.

Why must we fight for the right to live, over and over, each time the sun rises?

Writing, basically breaks down to relationships between people and that is what you write about.

You can lie to your wife or your boss, but you cannot lie to your typewriter. Sooner or later you must reveal your true self in your pages.

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.

Both of them had a sad desperation about them. Lord, André thought, why do young lovers dote on misery? How nice to be an aging lover and when you walk into the room meet someone who is happy and loves in an uncomplicated way. Young people demand tragedy. He had had that with Nicole. Love for the young is a waste and a mess.

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.

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 don't see what that has to do..." Huxley: "What do you know about Gaelic history?" Bryce: "Not much." Huxley: "Then why don't you sit down one day with Gunner McQuade. He is an expert. Speaks the language, too." Bryce: "I don't..." 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 I've read Homer." Huxley: "In the original Greek?" Bryce: "No" Huxley: "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 world's knowledge? There are privates in this battalion who can piss more brains down a slit trench then you'll ever have. You're the most pretentious, egotistical individual I've ever encountered. Your superiority complex reeks. I've seen the way you treat men, like a big strutting peacock. Why, you've had them do everything but wipe your ass.

In God's 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.

They lingered over cups of ersatz coffee.

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 it's some kind of ultimate selfishness. Maybe it's 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.