Blitz In London Quotes & Sayings

As the streets that lead from the Strand to the Embankment are very narrow, it is better not to walk down them arm-in-arm. — Virginia Woolf

AN ESTIMATED 1,100 Londoners were killed during the April 16 raids - the most devastating night of the Blitz thus far. But it held that distinction for only three days; on April 19, German bombers hit London again, killing more than 1,200 persons. Almost half a million London residents lost their homes in the two attacks. The — Lynne Olson

Those who romanticize war often like to think of it, at least in areas of mortal peril, as nothing but "guts and glory." Those who are inclined to pacifism, by contrast, often think of it as an unbroken sequence of horrors. Actually, however, people in wartime still fall in love, do the laundry, worry about pimples, drink beer, and do most of the same things that they do in times of peace. The patterns of daily life may be mundane, but they are remarkably tenacious.
But, while people in wartime still go about their daily routines, the prospect of imminent death can give even quotidian chores a heightened intensity. When the first bombs were dropped on London in autumn of 1940, the population bore adversity better than almost anybody had expected. The danger was mixed with excitement, and the terror had a sort of apocalyptic magnificence. — Boria Sax

I was brought up in the War. I was an adolescent in the Second World War. And I did witness in London a great deal of the Blitz. — Harold Pinter

Perhaps in actions I'm less of a man - but, oh the words - such lovely words ... — John Geddes

To rebel or revolt against the status quo is in the very nature of an artist. — Uta Hagen

1944 - Exploring London in wartime, a city with stiff upper lip, gritted teeth, clenched fists, makes you realize that Paris is a bit of whore.

Every day and every night for weeks now, London has been bleeding and hiding its wounds with impressive dignity. A 'don't show off' attitude prevails. From time to time a sputtering doodle-bug (a VI) shatters the torpor of the overcast sky. One second, sometimes two ... at most three ... of silence. Visualizing that fat cigar with shark fins as it stops dead, sways, idiotically tips over, then goes into a vertical dive. And explodes. Usually it's an entire building that's destroyed.

Apparently the Civil Defense rescue teams observe a very strict rule of discretion and restraint. You never see any panic. In this impassive city detachment is the expression of panic. — Jacques Yonnet

The author describes the attitude of some on the frontier at Rome's twilight as exhibiting a kind of London-in-the-blitz determination to carry on being more Roman than usual. — Peter Heather

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

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

Sure you do. Everyone wants to play. They're just afraid of looking stupid. But you know what's stupid? Not trying. So just ... try. — Victoria Scott

Always there have been six ravens at the Tower. If the ravens fly away, the kingdom will fall. — John Owen Theobald

England in the late 1940s was famously grim. As I remember it, London back then was a very dirty place, from coal dust and smoke, from the grit stirred up every day by the jackhammers still clearing out rubble from the Blitz. — Alexander Cockburn

People who try to tell you what the blitz was like in London start with fire and explosion and then almost invariably end up with some very tiny detail which crept in and set and became the symbol of the whole thing for them. . . . "It's the glass," says one man, "the sound in the morning of the broken glass being swept up, the vicious, flat tinkle." ... An old woman was selling little miserable sprays of sweet lavender. The city was rocking under the bombs and the light of burning buildings made it like day. . . . And in one little hole in the roar her voice got in - a squeaky voice. "Lavender!" she said. "Buy Lavender for luck."

The bombing itself grows vague and dreamlike. The little pictures remain as sharp as they were when they were new. — John Steinbeck

In the earliest days of World War II when London was undergoing the blitz but the United States had not yet been drawn into the hostilities, the US ambassador walked the streets during the hottest of the bombing and ask people at every level of British society what he could do to help. What a picture of our role as ambassadors of Christ's coming Kingdom! — Lynne Olson

We wore headlamps and the sight of us bobbing up the hill or zipping perilously down it had the look of busy stars, as if the night sky had come down to join us in our play. — Benjamin Percy

Times were very hard if you were a poor, politically correct Jewish girl living in the east end of London during the Blitz and you were trying to eke out a living as a hairdresser. — Linda Grant

In February, 1945, American bombers reduced this treasure to crushed stone and embers; disemboweled her with high-explosives and cremated her with incendiaries. The atom bomb may represent a fabulous advance, but it is interesting to note that primitive TNT and thermite managed to exterminate in one bloody night more people than died in the whole London blitz. — Kurt Vonnegut

During World War II, a few years after Norma Jeane's time in an orphanage, thousands of children were evacuated from the air raids and poor rations of London during the Blitz, and placed with volunteer families or group homes in the English countryside or even in other countries. It was only postwar studies comparing these children to others left behind that opened the eyes of many experts to the damage caused by emotional neglect. In spite of living in bombed-out ruins and constant fear of attack, the children who had been left with their mothers and families tended to fare better than those who had been evacuated to physical safety. Emotional security, continuity, a sense of being loved unconditionally for oneself - all those turn out to be as important to a child's development as all but the most basic food and shelter. — Gloria Steinem

My musical background is like almost every non classical musician in the world. One day a special record was heard and that was it. I was hooked, started trying to play various instruments and was off to bar land to become a rock star. What else? — Kevin Johnson

God must be allowed the right to speak unpredictably ... We must find him in our enemy, or we may lose him even in our friend. We must find him in the pagan or we will lose him in our own selves, substituting for his living presence an empty abstraction. — Thomas Merton

Hyperbole expands in societies where articulateness atrophies. — George Will

The headwaters of Shit Creek are a cruel and treacherous expanse. — Roger Zelazny