The Hunt for Red October (Jack Ryan, #3)

by Tom Clancy

A ship becomes more than a machine to her crew. Each of a hundred ships, built by the same men at the same yard to the same plans, will have her own special characteristics—most of them bad, really, but after her crew becomes accustomed to them they are spoken of affectionately, particularly in retrospect.

It was the old navy game, up or out: just when you got something that you were really good at, something you really liked, it was gone.

the real fun was driving the boats, and officers only got to do that at New London. After that all they got to do was walk around and look important.

what else were chiefs for but to protect officers from their mistakes?

man had to have something, he reasoned, to lose his mind in, at least once a day.

A man who had changed countries once could do it again.

He had come away with the gut suspicion that shrinks didn’t really know much of anything, that they got together and agreed on random ideas they could all use…

each defector had to be treated as an individual, handled carefully by a sympathetic case officer who had both the time and inclination to look after him properly.