The Oceans and the Stars Quotes

“Josephson had died just north of Abd al-Kuri Island, an uninhabited, mountainous desert with, on its eastern side, perhaps the world’s wildest and finest beach. To mollify Holworthy, in a moment of weakness not long after they had departed Lemonnier, Rensselaer had considered leaving a few SEALs there on the way south, to observe traffic, as on occasion irregular forces were ordered to do. But he had decided then that rather than mollify Holworthy, he would keep him down. The rendezvous point with the Puller wasn’t far, and, arriving first, Athena waited. The Puller was out of sight but in radio contact. Eventually they saw her to the west, and she came even with Athena at dusk, although in that latitude, as Josephson had learned, dusk is so short it hardly exists. With the lights of the Puller blazing despite wartime conditions, her vast superstructure, hollow and beamed like a box-girder bridge, was cast in flares and shadows. A brow was extended from a door in the side and fixed to Athena’s main deck. As a gentle swell moved the two ships up and down at different rates, the hinged brow tilted slightly one way and then another. The Iranian prisoners were escorted over the brow and to the brig in the Puller, which would take them very close to their own country, but then to the United States. They were bitter and depressed. The huge ship into the darkness of which they were swallowed seemed like an alien craft from another civilization, which, for them, it was. A gray metal coffin was carried to Athena by a detail from the Puller. This was a sad thing to see, sadder than struggle, sadder than blood. It disappeared below. Josephson’s body was placed inside it and the flag draped over it. Six of Athena’s crew in dress uniform carried it slowly to the brow and set it on deck. After a long silence, Rensselaer spoke a few words. “Our shipmates Speight and Josephson are no longer with us—Speight committed to the deep, lost except to God. And Josephson, who will go home. Neither of these men is unique in death. They are still very much like us, and we are like them: it’s only a matter of time—however long, however short. If upon gazing at this coffin you feel a gulf between you, the living, and him, one of the dead, remember that our fates are the same, and he isn’t as far from us as we may imagine. “At times like this I question our profession. I question the enterprise of war. And then I go on, as we shall, and as we must. In this spirit we bid goodbye to Ensign Josephson, to whom you might have been brothers, and I and the chiefs, perhaps, fathers. May God bless and keep him.” Then the captain read the 23rd Psalm, a salute was fired, and Josephson’s coffin was lifted to the shoulders of its bearers and slowly carried into the depths of the Puller. When he died, he was very young.”
― Mark Helprin, The Oceans and the Stars: A Sea Story, A War Story, A Love Story

“We have become a civilization that elevates idiots, prostitutes, and clowns. Am I still to defend it? Yes, for its principles. Yes, for what it was. Yes, for what it still may be.”
― Mark Helprin, The Oceans and the Stars: A Sea Story, A War Story, A Love Story

“The sea was speaking to him in silence. Its message was: as your spirit rises to fill the place of appetites and illusions, take stock and be comforted, for all time is lost in the oceans and the stars. You’ve left behind the things of life on land that shield you from a truth the sea will not let you forget—that you are first and last a spirit, that you are alone, and that this can be borne.”
― Mark Helprin, The Oceans and the Stars: A Sea Story, A War Story, A Love Story

“guessed that he had a lot of mahogany and cherry furniture, a tantalus, crystal glasses, dog-and-hunting prints, potted palms, and a marble hall. He radiated comfort, resignation, kindness, longing, and the Anglo-Saxon ability to be mildly intoxicated throughout the day, starting at just after noon. She liked him, and was tempted by his aura of relaxed oblivion, excellent tailoring, and lots of gin.”
― Mark Helprin, The Oceans and the Stars: A Sea Story, A War Story, A Love Story

“Establishments with air-conditioning were passionately sought ice islands adjacent to sidewalks like barbecue grills.”
― Mark Helprin, The Oceans and the Stars: A Sea Story, A War Story, A Love Story

“Once it is lost, youth swells in value in a way that the young are incapable of imagining.”
― Mark Helprin, The Oceans and the Stars: A Sea Story, A War Story, A Love Story

“had they left her alone she would have thought that maybe she had crossed a line of age that, despite strenuous effort and subterfuges so often marshaled in vain, cannot be re-crossed.”
― Mark Helprin, The Oceans and the Stars: A Sea Story, A War Story, A Love Story

“Taken from the greatest figure in naval history, Admiral Horatio Nelson . . . well you know it by heart, but I shall quote it anyway: ‘In case signals can neither be seen or perfectly understood, no captain can do very wrong if he places his ship alongside that of the enemy.”
― Mark Helprin, The Oceans and the Stars: A Sea Story, A War Story, A Love Story

“Taken from the greatest figure in naval history, Admiral Horatio Nelson . . . well you know it by heart, but I shall quote it anyway: ‘In case signals can neither be seen or perfectly understood, no captain can”
― Mark Helprin, The Oceans and the Stars: A Sea Story, A War Story, A Love Story

“Rensselaer interrupted. “No. This is how we do it when we go into battle. We determine on victory and survival. We take the chance. We even elevate the chance, like Cortés burning his boats.”
― Mark Helprin, The Oceans and the Stars: A Sea Story, A War Story, A Love Story

“It was to these apartments that the boys in puffy jackets returned from their shockingly expensive prep schools in Manhattan or New England.”
― Mark Helprin, The Oceans and the Stars: A Sea Story, A War Story, A Love Story

“Study that intensively. Read everything you can, take notes, engage with it until you can write about it. And then write. It will be satisfying in itself, and if you do well and publish, opportunities will likely arise. Keep at it. That’s how it works. And when you’re fully absorbed in something that’s deserving and worthwhile, you don’t have to worry about career.”
― Mark Helprin, The Oceans and the Stars: A Sea Story, A War Story, A Love Story

“But it was never my aim to be either, just to do my best at what I loved, and, when that was not available, at what I was assigned to do, like this.”
― Mark Helprin, The Oceans and the Stars: A Sea Story, A War Story, A Love Story

“we bear witness to the tens of thousands of American sailors forever at the bottom of the sea. May they smile upon us. Good luck, carry out your orders, have no fear, and fight like hell.”
― Mark Helprin, The Oceans and the Stars: A Sea Story, A War Story, A Love Story

“the period of reflection necessary to reconcile and judge the action-driven years that precede it.”
― Mark Helprin, The Oceans and the Stars: A Sea Story, A War Story, A Love Story

“War and everything like it appears differently with each advancing decade. The French word for retirement is retraite, retreat. The fight goes out of you as you age, and then the only means that allow you to continue until the light goes out, too, are the lessons of experience. But these are limited as to how far they can carry you, and Rensselaer had drawn them down so much in the recent battles that he wondered if they would still serve him. *”
― Mark Helprin, The Oceans and the Stars: A Sea Story, A War Story, A Love Story

“Until then, I can only focus on the tasks at hand. That’s what affords us the best chance of survival. No one should be a hundred percent a soldier—except in battle, when no one should not be.”
― Mark Helprin, The Oceans and the Stars: A Sea Story, A War Story, A Love Story

“They’ll think you’re grandstanding.” “They can think whatever they want, and I may never know it anyway, in which case, tell Katy I love her.”
― Mark Helprin, The Oceans and the Stars: A Sea Story, A War Story, A Love Story

“Their first priority was the more than 150 passengers and crew of l’Étoile, especially the women and children now somewhere in the interior and at the mercy of medieval psychopaths so violent and depraved that the sheltered populations of the West could not for long hold in mind the depth of their conscienceless cruelty. The men on Athena had no such luxury.”
― Mark Helprin, The Oceans and the Stars: A Sea Story, A War Story, A Love Story

“A single battle taught more than a dozen drills, and this would be the fifth. No one was nervous.”
― Mark Helprin, The Oceans and the Stars: A Sea Story, A War Story, A Love Story

“As Holworthy and the others knew from exercises and real life, fighting your way up a steep rock slope is almost the worst thing you can do. It isn’t just that the enemy has cover and a nearly perfect view, but that your every movement must struggle against gravity as it simultaneously puts you in hostile sights.”
― Mark Helprin, The Oceans and the Stars: A Sea Story, A War Story, A Love Story

“He understood simultaneously the burden of high command and how that burden could be borne only by distance from both the situation and its consequences.”
― Mark Helprin, The Oceans and the Stars: A Sea Story, A War Story, A Love Story

“Rensselaer nodded in agreement, but, still, he was almost overcome by the crosscurrents of responsibility and consequence.”
― Mark Helprin, The Oceans and the Stars: A Sea Story, A War Story, A Love Story

“Whose discretion?” Holworthy asked. “Mine. I want your advice, but the decisions are mine alone. Until Marconi, that’s the way it used to be. The Navy’s traditions and command structures were designed for exactly the kind of situation in which we find ourselves now. Those traditions should see us through.”
― Mark Helprin, The Oceans and the Stars: A Sea Story, A War Story, A Love Story

“If you catch a fish and roast it over a fire you yourself have made, it tastes better than if it’s served to you at a fancy restaurant. That’s because, without effort, enjoyment is corrupted into nothing.”
― Mark Helprin, The Oceans and the Stars: A Sea Story, A War Story, A Love Story

“In regard to sextant and chronometer, you’ll like it. You’ll see. They aren’t as precisely accurate as the electronics, but you’ll come close, which means you’ll have agency, you won’t be just a passive receiver.”
― Mark Helprin, The Oceans and the Stars: A Sea Story, A War Story, A Love Story

“You won’t be able to explain what happened to you, and you won’t dare say what you suspect. But here, in this lashing rain, with the sea we are about to cross lapping at the wharf as if to call us away, I’ll say it for you. You will have been to another world, a world in which the presence and prospect of death gives to life an intensity and illumination you’ll never again see. Be grateful for what is to come, and fight as you have never fought before—to live, and to prevail.”
― Mark Helprin, The Oceans and the Stars: A Sea Story, A War Story, A Love Story

“They don’t know what to do. Neither do we. But they’re . . . they’re just the worst, so far away from what America once was. We’ve got a simple issue here. These bastards are executing innocent people. If we can strike, we should. The French will arrive too late.”
― Mark Helprin, The Oceans and the Stars: A Sea Story, A War Story, A Love Story

“They don’t know what to do. Neither do we. But they’re . . . they’re just the worst, so far away from what America once was.”
― Mark Helprin, The Oceans and the Stars: A Sea Story, A War Story, A Love Story

“Is USS Athena, American ship of war, commanded to ignore its obligation to aid mariners in distress? By what authority if so? Clarify.”
― Mark Helprin, The Oceans and the Stars: A Sea Story, A War Story, A Love Story