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Cher Ami and Major Whittlesey QUOTES

Cher Ami and Major Whittlesey QUOTES

1 " The name of the exhibit that my body is in, here with good ol’ Sergeant Stubby, is The Price of Freedom. "

― Kathleen Rooney , Cher Ami and Major Whittlesey

2 " The name of the exhibit that my body is in, here with good ol’ Sergeant Stubby, is The Price of Freedom. When they point from the other side of the glass, Freedom isn’t free, I hear the patriots say. Blah, blah, blah. They’re right, but not for the reasons they think they are. The Great War cost me a lot, and although it’s not a competition, on this, the eve of my centenary, I can honestly conclude that it cost Whit more. "

― Kathleen Rooney , Cher Ami and Major Whittlesey

3 " Pigeons are capable of neither hatred nor patriotism. But there on the platform I began to see that humans had difficulty understanding the war without animal metaphors. “The fighting is raging like a tiger,” someone on the platform said. None seemed to understand that the war had come from them. "

― Kathleen Rooney , Cher Ami and Major Whittlesey

4 " thrilled to the familiar happiness of being high up and homing. The voice said, as it did every time, Cher Ami! Home to your loft by the airway! Home to Wright Farm! For a moment I was flummoxed by the alien topography of the Scottish Highlands, utterly different from the gentle hills of Chipping Norton. And then I knew where I was. "

― Kathleen Rooney , Cher Ami and Major Whittlesey

5 " To call the shipboard food terrible was to overpraise it. Our meals were prepared by English cooks, evidently committed to safeguarding their reputation for awfulness. Boiled potatoes, rice, tapioca, and marmalade—no salt, no sugar, no seasoning of any kind. For lunch that day, we’d had rabbit stew, which tasted as if the cooks had left the fur on. Coffee was served from garbage cans. "

― Kathleen Rooney , Cher Ami and Major Whittlesey

6 " In every race after that, I finished in the top three. All through 1917 I raked in prize money with my clawed feet. "

― Kathleen Rooney , Cher Ami and Major Whittlesey

7 " I stood looking at the men—more my men now than ever before. Their lives, if they escaped with them, would be divided forever into Before the War, the War, and After, and between those divisions would stretch psychic no-man’s-lands as desolate as any in France. "

― Kathleen Rooney , Cher Ami and Major Whittlesey

8 " Those Yanks coming to help are going to need things,” he said. “Their General Pershing asked for two thousand homers, to be used as messengers in the army. England has offered to send five hundred directly. And not just five hundred but the five hundred best. Many of you are among the best, true and tested. So there’s no way around it. You’re off to help our boys. "

― Kathleen Rooney , Cher Ami and Major Whittlesey

9 " While our fellow pigeons did not regard bonds between hens as unnatural, the humans who kept us certainly seemed to—and in any case such a pairing could serve no human purpose, as it would yield no champion racers, no progeny at all. While I preferred to think of us as the humans’ partners and collaborators—and we were; I wasn’t wrong—we were also their property and their tools. What did I expect? "

― Kathleen Rooney , Cher Ami and Major Whittlesey

10 " Don’t take any risks over there,” he said. “Do your best, do your duty, and we’ll see you when it’s over.” I kissed them all, a quick beak-to-cheek, and John reached in, speaking low as ever. “You’re a fine, odd creature, Cher Ami,” he said. “That’s why I’ve always loved you.” He brought me close to his mouth, and his soft, soothing voice dropped to a whisper, as if to confide something he didn’t want even the other birds to hear. “Save my son,” he said. My heart beat hard against his clasping hand. I’d be a liar if I said that I wasn’t excited. "

― Kathleen Rooney , Cher Ami and Major Whittlesey

11 " I felt sure that I was approaching the brink of my destiny. I wasn’t mistaken. How was I to know that I’d never see John—or Big Tom, or Lady Jane, or Miss America, or any of the rest—ever again? "

― Kathleen Rooney , Cher Ami and Major Whittlesey

12 " My father goaded me over my disinterest, not quite calling me a coward yet wondering, “What are you afraid of, son?” He didn’t expect me to be a hunter but wanted me to hold a weapon in my hands without flinching. Silent of mouth, I would reply in my mind, This device is made to kill at worst, to maim at best. But I made myself say, “Nothing, Father. I’m not afraid.” So I learned to shoot. "

― Kathleen Rooney , Cher Ami and Major Whittlesey

13 " I inclined toward literature and poetry. I felt more at ease with girls than I did with boys, the latter discomfiting me with their crudeness and violence. For a while this preference was indulged by my parents and teachers, first with knowing sighs as natural melancholy at the loss of Annie and then laughed off. I must be, they joked, a pint-size Romeo pining for my crushes. But when at last I imagined myself as a Romeo, it was Mercutios, not Juliets, for whom I was yearning. More than anything I was alone. I took long solitary walks through the Berkshires, examining plants and watching birds. Among many other things, my time in the Argonne Forest spoiled woods for me. Everyone feels old when they’re sad, even children. Roaming the hills of western Massachusetts, I felt old much of the time. Aware in a vague way of my fundamental difference from other boys, I thought a lot about how, if not to be more like them, then to be the sort of person whom they’d like. When I matriculated at Pittsfield High, I deliberately set out to become more popular, with a grim understanding that this would amount to concealing, not expressing, my inner life. "

― Kathleen Rooney , Cher Ami and Major Whittlesey

14 " Laconic” and “sarcastic,” as the men in my regiment would later invariably describe me. Classic New England. "

― Kathleen Rooney , Cher Ami and Major Whittlesey

15 " I compensated for my athletic deficiency with an upright bearing and an impeccable style of dress that earned me the nickname “the Count”—one bestowed with affection, as I was good-humored about my own foibles. "

― Kathleen Rooney , Cher Ami and Major Whittlesey

16 " The intricacies of contracts and the evolving stringency of the rules governing banks absorbed and grounded me, even as my entanglements with men—queer men, as Felix taught me to say—gave my body and heart the occasional flight. "

― Kathleen Rooney , Cher Ami and Major Whittlesey

17 " I ceased to find the prospect of becoming a manful-man repugnant. When manifested in football and fraternity pranks, this roughhousing seemed stupid and shallow, but now that it was for ideals that I could admire, I saw the appeal. "

― Kathleen Rooney , Cher Ami and Major Whittlesey

18 " I’ve learned that everything that thinks and feels,” she said, “grows by subtraction. Detachment brings perspective. Wisdom comes from letting go. It’s true for humans, too, but most of them seem to struggle with it. "

― Kathleen Rooney , Cher Ami and Major Whittlesey

19 " Humans have no monopoly on grief. Dolphins carry their dead on their backs for days. Giraffes refuse to eat. Elephants cry. Whit carried the dead on his back for years. For life. I’ll carry him on my flightless wings always. "

― Kathleen Rooney , Cher Ami and Major Whittlesey

20 " The French children carried Baby Mine and me in our basket through the candlelit street to the church. While I was as mystified as ever by human religion and its tendency to answer simple questions with long, strange stories, that night I felt almost blessed. "

― Kathleen Rooney , Cher Ami and Major Whittlesey