The Stairway Press Collected Edition of The Last Detail and Cinderella Liberty Quotes

“The messenger says, as he approaches him, “Look, Baggs, it didn’t happen on my watch.” The Navy theme song. “Yes?” “Somebody down below in the offices…” “Yes?” “Well, what they did is lose all your records.” Baggs can only close his eyes and wonder what sin it was that now consigns him to limbo.”
― Darryl Ponicsan, The Stairway Press Collected Edition of The Last Detail and Cinderella Liberty

“Fisher arrives with papers in his hand. His color is no better than Wertz’s. He was the duty yeoman last night and evidently is in the middle of something. Fisher is an owlish seaman from Dubuque who tries his best to please. Whenever the old man calls down for a NAVPERS 16045 dated 2-8-70, Fisher searches diligently. When the captain calls twenty minutes later wondering where in the hell it is, Fisher says, “Sir, would you settle for a NAVOPS 2172 dated 6-3-70?” Sometimes the old man screams.”
― Darryl Ponicsan, The Stairway Press Collected Edition of The Last Detail and Cinderella Liberty

“By the time they were free to scrap her, she had a tradition and champions, hundreds of officers and men who had served aboard her and counted those months as the worst of their lives, yet with a perversity of human nature better left unexamined they did not want to see her dismantled. She was like so many Norfolk bargirls: too old and ugly to love, but too many laughs to junk.”
― Darryl Ponicsan, The Stairway Press Collected Edition of The Last Detail and Cinderella Liberty

“To the left of center, a row of four shower heads, three of which work, again never the same three. The showers are, against design, also footbaths, because the one feeble drain is too slow a sucker and three inches of dirty, tepid water remain at one’s feet until all showers are turned off.”
― Darryl Ponicsan, The Stairway Press Collected Edition of The Last Detail and Cinderella Liberty