And Then We Heard the Thunder Quotes

“the houses much smaller and meek and timid and nondescript, and even the trees were scantily clad.”
― John Oliver Killens, And Then We Heard The Thunder

“what Killens depicts in his closing chapters actually happened: Negro and white soldiers, all wearing the same U.S. Army uniform, finally turned the weapons of modern warfare on each other, and the only badge of the enemy was the color of his skin. It happened in Brisbane, Australia, and it was one of the best kept secrets of the war. “And”
― John Oliver Killens, And Then We Heard The Thunder

“what Killens depicts in his closing chapters actually happened: Negro and white soldiers, all wearing the same U.S. Army uniform, finally turned the weapons of modern warfare on each other, and the only badge of the enemy was the color of his skin.”
― John Oliver Killens, And Then We Heard The Thunder

“His novel so lacks the feel and smell of barracks and of the passion of men at war that we remain unmoved, at the close, by Saunders’s wistful wish “that whatever was left of the world would come to its senses and build something new and different and new and new and altogether different.”
― John Oliver Killens, And Then We Heard The Thunder

“and he turned his aim on another poor ignorant miserable anonymous bastard crouched behind another gun. A bastard whom he didn’t know, had never known, would never know, and couldn’t hate specifically, but kill and kill and kill and kill—and”
― John Oliver Killens, And Then We Heard The Thunder

“he hated the phony patriots, the goddamn goose-stepping flag-waving patriots, who really loved the status quo more than they loved the country and its promises unfulfilled.”
― John Oliver Killens, And Then We Heard The Thunder

“he was never really in any of these places, excepting in the place wherever pain lived”
― John Oliver Killens, And Then We Heard The Thunder

“he never meant to be a murderer. I was fighting for democracy. And I just wasn’t strong enough to fight all those bastards who made the war is what. I didn’t even know who they were. I couldn’t put my hand on them or single them out. They were omnipotent and omnipresent and omniscient and a whole lot of other omni-things, and I should have told them to go to hell and should’ve taken off for some faraway place at the other end of nowhere. But I wanted to fight for my country and for freedom. I was tricked, St. Peter, but the point is, I meant well.”
― John Oliver Killens, And Then We Heard The Thunder

“The man’s arm finally snapped at the elbow and the dagger dropped, and now Solomon Saunders held the dagger, and it was the worst way in the world to kill or be killed, and he felt his stomach erupting and scalding lava spilling over and eating up his insides as he raised his arm and hesitated, and the other soldier grabbed at him, and then Solly came down with a vengeance, and he felt the steel tear ruthlessly into human flesh like it was a chicken, and back and down, and he didn’t hate this man beneath him. “I don’t hate you, goddamn your hari-kari soul!” And down and back, down and back, and hot tears flooding Solly’s cheeks and nausea in his nasty throat and down and back, the man’s chest was a dark bloody geyser gushing blood, his pleading eyes his desperate eyes. “I don’t hate you, Tojo, damn you. I don’t hate you! I don’t even know you—damn you!” The boyish soldier gave up the ghost just as Solly’s steam gave out and he fell forward on top of this very very dead young stranger from the islands of Japan, and all was peace and all was quiet, and brotherhood and all that crap, even as the battle raged around the lucky living bastards who were dying on the strip for freedom.”
― John Oliver Killens, And Then We Heard The Thunder

“Everything either this or that and oversimplified. But life was much more complicated. Life was much more than this or that, black or white. Life was grayish. “And”
― John Oliver Killens, And Then We Heard The Thunder

“This world is much too sad a place For Fannie’s warm and happy smile. The feeling she feels far too deep For the endless heartless guile Of this unfriendly world.” He”
― John Oliver Killens, And Then We Heard The Thunder