Michael Shaara Quotes & Sayings

Longstreet stayed up talking, as long as there was company, as long as there was a fire. Because when the fire was gone and the dark had truly come there was no way he could avoid the dead faces of his children. — Michael Shaara

Jackson is gone - not entirely gone; Jackson was there today watching, and Ewell sees his eyes - but you cannot blame him for not being Jackson. You must make do with the tools God has given for the job. — Michael Shaara

The thing about the heart was that you could not coax it or force it, as you could any other disease. Will power meant nothing. — Michael Shaara

There ought to be more than just that metallic end, and then silence, then the worms, and sometimes he believed, but just this moment he did not believe at all ... there was nothing beyond the sound of the guns ... not even silence, just an end. — Michael Shaara

Everybody knows all the movements. General So and So should have done such and such. God knows we all try. We none of us lose battles on purpose. But now on this field what can we do that's undone? — Michael Shaara

Lee stopped, looked north. I twas working almost like a plan. It was possible to see Intention in it ... he gave no further directions ... it had never really been in his hands at all. And yet his was the responsibility. — Michael Shaara

It wasn't the dying. He had seen men die all his life, and death was the luck of the chance, the price you eventually paid. What was worse was the stupidity. The appalling sick stupidity that was so bad you thought sometimes you would go suddenly, violently, completely insane just having to watch it. It was a deadly thing to be thinking on. Job to be done here. And all of it turns on faith. — Michael Shaara

The great white joker in the sky dooms us all to stupidity or poverty from birth. No two things on earth are equal or have an equal chance, not a leaf or a tree. — Michael Shaara

Pickett excused himself, watchful of Longstreet. Pickett was always saying something to irritate somebody, and he rarely knew why, so his method was simply to apologize in general from time to time and let people know he meant well and then to shove off and hope for the best. He apologized and departed, curls ajiggle. — Michael Shaara

I don't really understand it. Never have. The more I think on it the more it horrifies me. How can they look in the eyes of a man and make a slave of him and then quote the Bible? — Michael Shaara

Longstreet took a deep breath. In the winter the fever had come to Richmond. In a week they were dead. All within a week, all three. He saw the sweet faces: moment of enormous pain. The thing had pushed him out of his mind, insane, but no one knew it. He had not thought God would do a thing like that ... she kept standing in the door: the boy is dead. And he could not even help her, could say nothing, could not move, could not even take her into his arms. Nothing to give. One strength he did not have. Oh God: my boy is dead. — Michael Shaara

There is one thing you can do. You can resign now. You can refuse to lead it.
But I cannot even do that. Cannot leave the man alone. Cannot leave him with that attack in the hands of Hill. Cannot leave because I disagree, because, as he says, it's all in the hands of God. And maybe God really wants it this way. But they will mostly all die. We will lose it here. Even if they get to the hill, what will they have left, what will we have left, all ammunition gone, our best men gone? And the thing is, I cannot even refuse, I cannot even back away, I cannot leave him to fight it alone, they're my people, my boys. God help me, I can't even quit. — Michael Shaara

The earth was actually shuddering. It was as if you were a baby and your mother was shuddering with cold. — Michael Shaara

In the presence of real tragedy you feel neither pain nor joy nor hatred, only a sense of enormous space and time suspended, the great doors open to black eternity, the rising across the terrible field of that enormous, unanswerable question. — Michael Shaara

I wish we could take the hill. Could flood right on over it and end the war, wipe them all away in one great motion. But we can't. No matter how much I wish ... or trust in God ... — Michael Shaara

There's nothing so much like a god on earth as a General on a battlefield. — Michael Shaara

Saw the face of Robert Lee. Incredible eyes. An honest man, a simple man. Out of date. They all ride to glory, all the plumed knights. — Michael Shaara

To be a good soldier you must love the army. But to be a good officer you must be willing to order the death of the thing you love. That is ... a very hard thing to do. No other profession requires it. That is one reason why there are so very few good officers. Although there are many good men. — Michael Shaara

Chamberlain closed his eyes and saw it again. It was the most beautiful thing he had ever seen. No book or music would have that beauty. He did not understand it: a mile of men flowing slowly, steadily, inevitably up the long green ground, dying all the while, coming to kill you, and the shell bursts appearing above them like instant white flowers, and the flags all tipping and fluttering, and dimly you could hear the music and the drums, and then you could hear the officers screaming, and yet even above your own fear came the sensation of unspeakable beauty. He shook his head, opened his eyes. Professor's mind. But he thought of Aristotle: pity and terror. So this is tragedy. Yes. He nodded. In the presence of real tragedy you feel neither pain nor joy nor hatred, only a sense of enormous space and time suspended, the great doors open to black eternity, the rising across the terrible field of that last enormous, unanswerable question. — Michael Shaara

I've been a soldier all my life. I've fought from the ranks on up, you know my service. But sir, I must tell you now, I believe this attack will fail. No 15,000 men ever made could take that ridge. It's a distance of more than a mile, over open ground. When the men come out of the trees, they will be under fire from Yankee artillery from all over the field. And those are Hancock's boys! And now, they have the stone wall like we did at Fredericksburg.
- Lieutenant General James Longstreet to General Robert E. Lee after the initial Confederate victories on day one of the Battle of Gettysburg. — Michael Shaara

A true gentleman has no vices, but he allows you your own. — Michael Shaara

He suspended thinking; his mind was a bloody vacancy, like a room in which there has been a butchering. — Michael Shaara

He bent down, scratched the black dirt into his fingers. He was beginning to warm to it; the words were beginning to flow. No one in front of him was moving. He said, This is free ground. All the way from here to the Pacific Ocean. No man has to bow. No man born to royalty. Here we judge you by what you do, not by what your father was. Here you can be something. Here's a place to build a home. It isn't the land
there's always more land. It's the idea that we all have value, you and me, we're worth something more than the dirt. I never saw dirt I'd die for, but I'm not asking you to come join us and fight for dirt. What we're all fighting for, in the end, is each other. — Michael Shaara

So it was no cause and no country he fought for, no ideal and no justice. He fought for his people, for the children and the kin, and not even the land, because not even the land was worth the war, but the people were, wrong as they were, insane even as many of them were, they were his own, he belonged with his own. — Michael Shaara

Why do there have to be men like that, men who enjoy another man's dying? — Michael Shaara

The true rain came in a monster wind, and the storm broke in blackness over the hills and the bloody valley; the sky opened along the ridge, and the vast water thundered down, drowning the fires, flooding the red creeks, washing the rocks and the grass and the white bones of the dead, cleansing the earth and soaking it thick and rich with water and wet again with clean cold rainwater, driving the blood deep into the Earth, to grow it again with the roots toward heaven. — Michael Shaara

He was one of those, like Stuart, who looked on war as God's greatest game. — Michael Shaara

In the dark of the trees he could smell splintered wood and see white upturned faces like wide white dirty flowers. — Michael Shaara

I tell you, Colonel, we got to win this war. What will happen, do you think, if we lose? Do you think the country will ever get back together again?
Doubt it. Would it too deep. The differences ... If they win there'll be two countries, like France and Germany in Europe, and the border will be armed. Then there'll be a third country in the West, and that one will be the balance of power. — Michael Shaara

Chamberlain raised his saber, let loose the shout that was the greatest sound he could make, boiling the yell up from his chest: Fix bayonets! Charge! Fix bayonets! Charge! Fix bayonets! Charge! He leaped down from the boulder, still screaming, his voice beginning to to crack and give, and all around him his men were roaring animal screams, and he saw the whole Regiment rising and pouring over the wall and beginning to bound down through the dark bushes, over the dead and dying wounded, hats coming off, hair flying, mouths making sounds, one man firing as he ran, the last bullet, last round. — Michael Shaara

Southern women like their men religious and a little mad. — Michael Shaara

If you are not affected, if you are not hurt by what we do, then you will not do anything to stop it. The war will simply continue. — Michael Shaara

And yet suddenly, terribly, he wanted it again, the way it used to be, arms linked together, all drunk and singing beautifully into the night, with visions of death from the afternoon and dreams of death in the coming dawn, the night filled with a monstrous and temporary glittering joy, fat moments, thick seconds dropping like warm rain, jewel after jewel. — Michael Shaara

Ross said, "They play even during an attack. Not very good. But inspiring. Have you heard the Rebel yell?" Fremantle nodded. "Godawful sound. I expect they learned it from Indians. — Michael Shaara

If men were equal in America, all these Poles and English and Czechs and blacks, then they were equal everywhere, and there was really no such thing as foreigner; there were only free men and slaves. — Michael Shaara

A man who has been shot at is a new realist, and what do you say to a realist when the war is a war of ideals? — Michael Shaara

Perhaps it was only that when you try to put it into words you cannot express it truly, it never sounds as you dream it. — Michael Shaara

Home. One place is just like another, really. Maybe not. But truth is it's all just rock and dirt and people are roughly the same. I was born up there but I'm no stranger here. Have always felt at home everywhere, even in Virginia, where they hate me. Everywhere you go there's nothing but the same rock and dirt and houses and people and deer and birds. They give it all names, but I'm at home everywhere. Odd thing: unpatriotic. I was at home in England. I would be at home in the desert. In Afghanistan or far Typee. All mine, it all belongs to me. My world. — Michael Shaara

It rained all that night. The next day was Saturday, the Fourth of July. — Michael Shaara