John Hersey Quotes

On this page you can find the TOP of John Hersey's best quotes! We hope you will find some sayings from Writer John Hersey's in our collection, which will inspire you to new achievements! There are currently 20 quotes on this page collected since June 17, 1914! Share our collection of quotes with your friends on social media so that they can find something to inspire them!
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  • To my great surprise, I never heard anyone cry out in the disorder, even though they suffered in great agony. They died in silence, with no grudge, setting their teeth to bear it. All for the country!

    John Hersey (1985). “Hiroshima”, Vintage
  • When the writing is really working, I think there is something like dreaming going on. I don't know how to draw the line between the conscious management of what you're doing and this state. . . . I would say that it's related to daydreaming. When I feel really engaged with a passage, I become so lost in it that I'm unaware of my real surroundings, totally involved in the pictures and sounds that that passage evokes.

  • The crux of the matter is whether total war in its present form is justifiable, even when it serves a just purpose. Does it not have material and spiritual evil as its consequences which far exceed whatever good might result? When will our moralists give us an answer to this question?

    War  
    John Hersey (2015). “Hiroshima [Illustrated Edition]”, p.31, Pickle Partners Publishing
  • The writer must not invent. The legend on the license must read: NONE OF THIS WAS MADE UP.

  • My two major faults are that I row too long and pick up too many women

  • The final test of a work of art is not whether it has beauty, but whether it has power.

    John Hersey (1974). “The writer's craft”, McGraw-Hill
  • To be a writer is to throw away a great deal, not to be satisfied, to type again, and then again and once more, and over and over.

  • Events are less important than our responses to them.

  • At exactly fifteen minutes past eight in the morning, on August 6, 1945, Japanese time, at the moment when the atomic bomb flashed above Hiroshima, Miss Toshiko Sasaki, a clerk in the personnel department of the East Asia Tin Works, had just sat down at her place in the plant office and was turning her head to speak to the girl at the next desk.

    John Hersey (1946). “Hiroshima”
  • Learning starts with failure; the first failure is the beginning of education.

    John Hersey (1960). “The Child Buyer”
  • What has kept the world safe from the bomb since 1945 has not been deterrence, in the sense of fear of specific weapons, so much as it's been memory. The memory of what happened at Hiroshima.

    "Hiroshima's fate, 70 years ago this week, must not be forgotten" by Andrew Anthony, www.theguardian.com. August 2, 2015.
  • There, in the tin factory, in the first moment of the atomic age, a human being was crushed by books.

    Hiroshima ch. 1 (1946)
  • To be a writer is to sit down at one's desk in the chill portion of every day, and to write; not waiting for the little jet of the blue flame of genius to start from the breastbone - just plain going at it, in pain and delight. To be a writer is to throw away a great deal, not to be satisfied, to type again, and then again, and once more, and over and over...

  • The reality is that changes are coming... They must come. You must share in bringing them.

    John Hersey (1970). “Letter to the alumni”, Not Avail
  • The third stage was the reaction that came when the body struggled to compensate for its ills - when, for instance, the white count not only returned to normal but increased to much higher than normal levels.

    John Hersey (2015). “Hiroshima [Illustrated Edition]”, p.17, Pickle Partners Publishing
  • Do not work primarily for money; do your duty to patients first and let the money follow; our life is short, we don't live twice; the whirlwind will pick up the leaves and spin them, but then it will drop them and they will form a pile.

    John Hersey (1946). “Hiroshima”, Knopf
  • I thought of God as being able to talk big and write *very* small.

    John Hersey (1960). “The Child Buyer”
  • Journalism allows its readers to witness history; fiction gives its readers an opportunity to live it.

  • It's a failure of national vision when you regard children as weapons, and talents as materials you can mine, assay, and fabricate for profit and defense.

    John Hersey (1960). “The Child Buyer”
  • The second stage set in ten or fifteen days after the bombing. The main symptom was falling hair. Diarrhoea and fever, which in some cases went as high as 106, came next.

    "Hiroshima".
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We hope you have found the saying you were looking for in our collection! At the moment, we have collected 20 quotes from the Writer John Hersey, starting from June 17, 1914! We periodically replenish our collection so that visitors of our website can always find inspirational quotes by authors from all over the world! Come back to us again!
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