The Boys in the Boat Quotes

“Standing there watching them, it occurred to me that when Hitler watched Joe and the boys fight their way back from the rear of the field to sweep ahead of Italy and Germany seventy-five years ago, he saw, but did not recognize heralds of his doom. He could not have known that one day hundreds of thousands of boys just like them, boys who shared their essential natures--decent and unassuming, not privileged or favored by anything in particular, just loyal, committed, and perseverant--would return to Germany dressed in olive drab, hunting him down.
"They are almost all gone now--the legions of young men who saved the world in the years just before I was born. But that afternoon, standing on the balcony of Haus West, I was swept with gratitude for their goodness and their grace, their humility and their honor, their simple civility and all the things they taught us before they flitted across the evening water and finally vanished into the night.”
― Daniel James Brown, The Boys in the Boat: The True Story of an American Team's Epic Journey to Win Gold at the 1936 Olympics

“The revelation that one could find free food just sitting on a stump in the woods landed on Joe like a thunderbolt. That night he lay in his bunk in the schoolhouse, staring into the dark rafters above, thinking. There seemed to be more than a schoolroom science lesson in the discovery of fungus. If you simply kept your eyes open, it seemed, you just might find something valuable in the most unlikely of places. The trick was to recognize a good thing when you saw it, no matter how odd or worthless it might at first appear, no matter who else might just walk away and leave it behind.”
― Daniel James Brown, The Boys in the Boat: The True Story of an American Team's Epic Journey to Win Gold at the 1936 Olympics

“Royal Brougham.”
― Gregory Mone, The Boys in the Boat: The True Story of an American Team's Epic Journey to Win Gold at the 1936 Olympics

“He saw the power of trust, the strength of the affection that sometimes grew between a pair of young men. Or among a boatload of them striving honestly to do their best.”
― Gregory Mone, The Boys in the Boat: The True Story of an American Team's Epic Journey to Win Gold at the 1936 Olympics

“something you couldn’t necessarily count on.”
― Gregory Mone, The Boys in the Boat: The True Story of an American Team's Epic Journey to Win Gold at the 1936 Olympics

“Her father was cold and distant, more likely to cuddle the family dog than one of his own children. He believed that hard work meant more than anything, and that no amount of it was too much.”
― Daniel James Brown, The Boys in the Boat: The True Story of an American Team's Epic Journey to Win Gold at the 1936 Olympics