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Harry Turtledove QUOTES

Harry Turtledove QUOTES

1 " People you don't like are pigheaded. Your friends are stubborn, or hold to their purpose.~Victor Radcliff "

― Harry Turtledove , The United States of Atlantis (Atlantis, #2)

2 " He gathered enthusiasm when he thought of the goal, and not the means by which he had accomplished it. "

― Harry Turtledove , Atlantis and Other Places: Stories of Alternate History

3 " That anyone would want to be famous still mystified Colin. As TV had trained him to do, he associated the word with divorces and court appearances and rehab and jail time. He knew more than he wanted about all of those except rehab, and that was the one famous people blew off anyway. "

― Harry Turtledove , Eruption (Supervolcano, #1)

4 " You're worried I'll go back to whorin again, I reckon," she said. He could only nod. He felt his face grow red. Mollie shrugged. "Can't say for certain I won't. But it I do, Nate, then you won't have to have nothin' more to do with me, an' that'll be that." She set her hand on his arm. "I don't want it to end that way, I swear I don't."

"I don't, either. It's just-oh, hell." Caudell kicked the dirt again. Foolish to take chances, he thought-would you use a one time drunk to guard a whiskey barrel? "

― Harry Turtledove , The Guns of the South

5 " After another mile or so, he passed a gang of blacks weeding in a tobacco field. They did not notice him. Their heads were down, intent on the work. Hoes rose and fell, rose and fell, not quickly but at a steady pace that would finish the job soon enough to keep the overseer contented-the eternal pace of the slave.

He'd grown used to faster rhythms. He also remembered, from his dealings with the Rivington seen in Rivington itself, that slaves could be made to work to men and from what he'd those rhythms. But why bother? Things got done, either way. Slowing down was part of coming home, too. "

― Harry Turtledove , The Guns of the South

6 " Lee was pleased at how well both sides held to their pledges of keeping soldiers out of the disputed states. That did not mean no one invaded Kentucky and Missouri, however. Every politician, Northern and Southern, who could stand on a stump and put one word after another, or ten thousand after another ten, flooded into the two states to tell their people just why they should choose the United States or the Confederacy.
Listening to a pro-Confederate orator thunder abuse at the North at a torchlight rally one night in Frankfort, Charles Marshall made a sour face and said, "Anyone can tell he spent the war safely far away from the firing lines. Had he ever faced the Yankees in battle, he would own far more respect for their man hood than he currently displays."
"How right you are," Lee replied, as appalled as his aide at the oratory: the speaker had just called the Northerners cold blooded, fat-faced, nigger-loving moneygrubbers. Lee went on, "I confess to a certain amount of embarrassment at representing the same nation as does this eloquent fellow." To emphasize his distaste, he turned half away from the shouting, gesticulating man up on the platform.
"I know what you mean, sir." But Marshall, as if drawn by some horrid fascination, kept watching the orator. Red light from the torches flickered off his spectacle lenses. "Even if he wins votes, he also sows hatred. "

― Harry Turtledove , The Guns of the South

7 " The men of the 47th North Carolina could not actually have looked across Washington to see the burning Long Bridge from the position in which I have them doing so. Geography occa sionally has to bend just a little to serve the novelist's needs. "

― Harry Turtledove , The Guns of the South

8 " Isn't this grand? Here I am, a nobody from a nowhere town in North Carolina, and now I've seen Richmond and Washington City both. Who'd've figured I'd travel so far? Must be close to two hundred miles down to Rivington."

Caudell nodded. The army had expanded his life. Before the war, outside of a couple of trips to Raleigh, he'd spent his whole life inside Nash County. Now he'd been in several different states and even though recalling it still came hard sometimes-a for eign country: the United States.

Whether in a foreign country or not, Washington was still the source of traditions he held dear, as London once might have been to an early Carolina colonist. ...The ordinary folk of Washington City did better at taking their occupiers in stride. Their principal complaint against the rebels was that they had too little money, and that in Confederate currency. Lee had issued an order that made the locals take Southern money in exchange for goods and services, but he could not "

― Harry Turtledove , The Guns of the South

9 " You know what Forrest had the nerve to do?”

“Son of a bitch has the nerve to do damn near anything. That's what makes him such a nuisance,” Major Bradford said. “What is it this time?”

“He sent Memphis a bill for the five thousand and however many dollars Colonel Hurst squeezed out of Jackson while he held it,” Leaming said.

Bradford laughed again, this time on a different note. “He better not hold his breath till he gets it, that's all I've got to say. He'll be a mighty blue man in a gray uniform if he does. "

― Harry Turtledove , Fort Pillow

10 " Now all you two have to do is wait till the sun goes down," he said, adding mischievously, "Fool thing to do, too, if you ask me, gettin' married near the longest day-and the shortest night of the year. "

― Harry Turtledove , The Guns of the South

11 " Poor men have more to fear when the laws go down than the rich, for they are less able to protect themselves without law. You had all better shiver when you see a policeman rioting rather than putting down a riot, for he may well come after you next, or stand aside when someone else does. "

― Harry Turtledove , The Guns of the South

12 " An empty belly makes a stern taskmaster.~Victor Radcliff "

― Harry Turtledove , The United States of Atlantis (Atlantis, #2)

13 " Somewhere near the Alamo, a bugle brayed: either that or McCulloch’s men had found some reason to torture a poor, defenseless donkey. "

― Harry Turtledove , Lee at the Alamo

14 " The life of a soldier far from the cannon's roar has little glamour to it. "

― Harry Turtledove , The Guns of the South

15 " Caudell hadn't touched a firearm since he left the army. His hands, he discovered, still knew what to do. The smell of oil and metal and powder that came from the rifle, the sensuously mechanical glide of the charging handle as he pushed it back to expose the open chamber, made him see the army's old Virginia campground almost as vividly as he did the courthouse where he stood. By the murmurs that rose from his comrades, they also had memories flooding back. "

― Harry Turtledove , The Guns of the South

16 " Bullets have no chivalry "

― Harry Turtledove , The Guns of the South

17 " A horsefly can't do a horse much damage, but it can drive it wild anyway. "

― Harry Turtledove , The United States of Atlantis (Atlantis, #2)

18 " Bealeton. Another sleepy hamlet was about to have its name written down in history in letters of blood. "

― Harry Turtledove , The Guns of the South

19 " Isaac Cockrell finched but quickly gathered himself. "My friends," he said yet again, and this time was able to go on from here: "My friends, we're here tonight to show we all want Nathan Bedford Forrest to be the next President of our Confederate States of America."

Forrest's Trees raised a cheer. So did a good many men and women in the crowd; the women, of course, could not vote, but they enjoyed a rousing political spectacle no less than their husbands and brothers, fathers and sons. "

― Harry Turtledove , The Guns of the South

20 " You count snouts,” Straha said. “Whichever side can persuade most snouts to join it prevails. It does not have to be clever. It does not have to be wise. It only needs to be popular. "

― Harry Turtledove , Second Contact (Colonization, #1)