Memorable Lines from Jims Picks:
Updated 3 days a
week
Memorable Lines 2011
Just like great scenes from the movies...here are some
passages that linger with me. Enjoy!!! (Jim Agnew)
Feb. 3:
 "In
spite of its complicated mechanics, the motion picture is the
most flexible and exciting storytelling medium in the world. Its
possibilities are enthralling."
...Dudley Nichols.
Feb. 1:
"He hath disgraced me and hind'red me half a million, laughed
at my losses, mocked at my gains, scorned my nation, thwarted my
bargains, cooled my friends, heated my enemies--and what's his
reason?"
...The Merchant Of Venice, III,i.
Jan. 30:
"Gary Cooper writes his performance in invisible ink directly
on the film."
...Charles Brackett.
Jan. 27:
 "I
have described the triumph of barbarism and religion."
Edward Gibbons.
Jan. 25:
"As empty as a iliction promise."
...Mr. Dooley.
Jan. 23:
 "The
success or failure of any picture is decided on the day you
decide to make it. The choice of subject matter is everything.
No matter how well your picture is written, directed, and acted,
if the subject is inappropriate, you will have a failure."
...Irving Thalberg
Jan. 20:
"Working class unite and fight! Tear down the slaughterhouse
of our lives'
(The actor hoists a clenced fist.)
Don't wait for Lefty, he might never come."
...Clifford Odets...Waiting For Lefty.
Jan. 18:
 "One
must not make a god of Stalin, he was too valuable."
...Anna Louise Strong.
Jan. 16:
"One must not make a god of Stalin, he was too valuable."
...Anna Louise Strong.
Jan. 13:
 "Of
all the arts, the cinema is the most important."
...Vladimir Lenin.
Jan. 11:
"I've always felt I learned a lot about film by studying art.
It's very important, for example. to use your lighting to
capture the mood of the scene...Paintings have a frame the same
as those shadows you see on the screen."
...John Huston.
Jan. 9:
 "Hell
is other people."
...Jean-Paul Sarte.
Jan. 6:
"Foxhunting is the unspeakable in full pursuit of the
uneatable."
...Oscar Wilde...
Jan. 4:
 "Reflected
from my golden eye/The dullard knows that he is mad."
...T.S. Eliot...Lines For An Old Man.
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 Enola
Gay and her two escorts taxied
to their runways. From the North
Field control tower William
Laurence, science editor of the
New York Times, and the sole
newspaperman covering the story,
watched intently, at General
Farrell's side, as Enola Gay
slowly rumbled down the runway.
She accelerated to 180 miles an
hour, but burdened by her extra
weight, seemed earthbound. The
onlookers, remembering the four
Superfortresses that had crashed
the night before, strained to
help lift the plane into the
air.
Tibbets was holding the nose
down to build up speed but his
co-pilot, Captain Robert A.
Lewis, thought it was "gobbling
a little too much runway." and
began to put back pressure on
the wheel. At last, with only a
few yards of the oiled coral
left, the huge aircraft soared
up into the darkness.
In the tower, General Farrell
turned to a Navy officer. "I
never saw a plane use that much
runway," he said. "I thought
Tibbets was never going to pull
it off."
It was exactly 2:45 a.m., August
6. It would be a day to
remember.
The Rising Sun...The
Decline and Fall of the Japanese
Empire 1936-1945 by John Toland
(Random House) page 778.
- And place all cynicism
aside. There is a mystical
and spiritual connection.
Among green champions, the
rangers, the tourists, the
guides, hunters, the
scientists, anyone who has
spent time near lions in the
wild, there is something
between humans and lions,
some special bond or
understanding, some unnamed,
unspoken covenant that all
feel when they encounter
lions in the wild.
- The Man-Eaters Of
Eden: Life and Death in
Kruger National Park by
Robert R. Frump (The Lyons
Press) page 63.
-
-
 In
Ireland the British army
found itself in an
impossible situation. With
local support for the rebels
so pervasive, the army could
not fight a guerilla war and
win. After a year morale was
exceedingly low, and army
reports back to England
suggest that many officers
were feeling hopeless. Thus
the idea of sending in
auxiliary forces to back up
the army and the police was
suggested in January 1920.
British Secretary For War
Winston Churchill was the
mastermind behind this
decision between English and
the Irish.
The Auxiliaries were a mixed
group of war veterans and
animals and were probably
unprepared for the situation
in Ireland. Whatever the
reason, they soon gained a
dubious reputation for their
brutality and ruthless
methods. Their distinctive
uniforms earned them the
nickname the "Black and
Tans."
In Search Of
Ireland's Heroes: The Story
of the Irish From the
English Invasion to the
Present Day by Carmel
McCaffrey (Ivan R. Dee)
pages 232-233.
-
 The
Top Ten List of Post-Stroke
Indignities--Institutional
Edition...
9. BEING VELCROED INTO
PLACE. The therapist built a
special tray for the
wheelchair that your arm can
be Velcroed onto. This
prevents your arm from
falling into the spokes of
the wheelchair and getting
tangled up in the works, or
jamming into doorways during
tight entries. Both problems
have risen repeatedly.
And the number one
post-stroke indignity
is...(Drum roll)
1. LISTENING TO PEOPLE SPEAK
ABOUT YOU as though you are
not in the room.
DON'T LEAVE ME THIS
WAY by Julia Fox Garrison
(HarperCollins) or when I
get back on my feet you'll
be sorry...pages 51-52.
This is the second book in which
I have attempted to set down out
of my own experience and from
the mass of historical material
that eventually became available
what happened to a great
European nation in the years
that were climaxed by the Second
World War. In the first work I
wrote of the rise and fall of
Nazi Germany and how it came
that a cultured, Christian
people lapsed into barbarism in
the midst of the twentieth
century, gladly abandoning their
freedoms and the ordinary
decencies of human life and
remaining strangely indifferent
to the savagery with which they
treated other nations, other
races.
- France, it is true, fell
as the result of one battle
that raged for six weeks in
the spring and summer of
1940. But as Montesquieu
observed: "If the hazard of
a battle, that is, a
particular cause, ruins a
State, there was a general
cause which determined that
this state had to perish
from a single battle." Yet
only a quarter of a century
before the Third Republic
had been strong enough, its
government, Army, people,
and the institutions tough
enough, to survive a
succession of bloody and
disastrous battles. In the
ensuring twenty-five years,
something happened that
sapped that strength and
toughness so that at the
first visitation of
adversity the Republic
floundered and expired. This
is the subject of most of
this book.
From the forward of
The Collapse Of The Third
Republic by William L.
Shirer (S&S) An Inquiry into
the Fall of France in
1940...pages 11 & 15.
- Do something you
really like, and
hopefully it pays the
rent. As far as I'm
concerned, that's
success.
Tom Petty (Rock
star, 55, Malibu,
California)
Esquire...August,
06...What I've Learned,
page 135.
- The third and final step
in this quasi-judicial
process was to set out the
case before the adversary
himself and ask for the
restitution of his rights.
Henry's letter to Charles VI
had taken chapter of the
biblical book of
Deuteronomy, which formed
the basis of the medieval
laws of war and commanded
that "when you draw near to
a city to fight against it,
offer terms of peace to it."
It was a quotation that
would appear repeatedly on
Henry's lips and dictate his
actions throughout the
coming war with France.
Agincourt: Henry V
and The Battle That Made
England by Juliet Barker
(Little, Brown) page 143.
- They, and the creature
who destroyed them, survive,
poor pale ghosts, flitting
on and on through dark
alleys of the mind and mean
gas-lit streets of memory,
to plague the ingenuity of
succeeding generations
seeking to supply the answer
to an overwhelming question.
An answer which, in all
probability, not even the
five victims if the sixth
ghost knew...
His name.
A Casebook On Jack
The Ripper by Richard
Whittington-Egan... London (Wildy
& Sons) pages 155-156.
 He
gave me a little lecture about
breaking a conspiracy like
Watergate. "You build
convincingly from the outer
edges in, you get ten times the
evidence you need against the
Hunts and Liddys. They feel
hopelessly finished--they may
not talk right away, but the
grip is on them. Then you move
up and do the same thing at the
next level. If you shoot too
high and miss, then everybody
feels more secure. Lawyers work
this way. I'm sure reporters
must too." I recall he gave me a
look as if to say I did not
belong in that category of smart
reporters. "You put the
investigation back months. It
puts everyone on the
defensive--editors, FBI agents,
everybody has to go into a
crouch after this."
The Secret Man: The Story of
Watergate's Deep Throat by Bob
Woodward with a reporter's
assessment by Carl Bernstein
(Simon & Schuster Paperbacks)
page 91.
- Roosevelt and Churchill
helped shape the way we live
now. Four of the turning
points of World War II--the
American decision to support
Britain in its struggle
against Germany in the
months before Pearl Harbor;
the victory over the Germans
in the North African desert
in 1942, which kept the
Middle East out of Hitler's
hands; the development and
control of the atomic bomb;
and the timing of the
liberation of Europe--were
largely products of their
personal collaboration.
Their partnership
illuminates the human
dimension of high politics
and suggests that the
unlikeliest of people--those
who are underestimated or
discounted by the
conventional wisdom of their
own era--can emerge as
formidable leaders.
Franklin and
Winston: An Intimate
Portrait of an Epic
Friendship by Jon Meacham
(Random House Trade
Paperbacks) page xiv-xv...
introduction.
- This missive was
considerably milder, less
ominous in tone, than had
been the original draft
reply that Churchill
submitted to the British
cabinet and Foreign Office
for review. With difficulty,
Eden, Deputy Prime Minister
Clement Attlee, and the
American Department of the
Foreign Office had persuaded
Churchill to "tone it down,"
weakening the first draft's
implication that if Egypt
and the Middle East were
lost, the British government
might feel forced to open
negotiations with Hitler.
FDR: The War
President 1940-1943 A
History by Kenneth S. Davis
(Random House) page 178.
 Meanwhile
Hausner also had to prepare the
legal arguments. Here, at least,
he could delegate responsibility
to members of his prosecution
team. It comprised Gabriel Bach,
an English-trained lawyer aged
thirty-four, who was seconded
from the Ministry of Justice as
adviser to Bureau 06, and Yaacov
Bar-or, the forty-five-year-old
District Attorney of Tel Aviv.
Thanks to the furor over the
kidnapping, Hausner knew he
would have to justify Israel's
right to try Eichmann at all.
And he had to anticipate that
Dr. Servatius would challenge
the legal basis of the
prosecution. When Servatius had
defended Nazis at Nuremburg he
had routinely argued that the
charges of crimes against
humanity and the commission of
genocide rested on retrospective
legislation of dubious standing.
To rebut this line of attack
Hausner drew on the venerable
talents of Dr Jacob Robinson,
aged seventy-one, who had
assisted Justice Robert Jackson
at Nuremburg. Since then
Robinson had served as legal
adviser to the Israeli
delegation to the UN, and was an
expert in international law.
Ultimately, however, the onus
fell on Hausner's shoulders and
no one else's. In desperation he
ended up locking himself away in
a Tel Aviv hotel for six weeks
'with two carloads of books and
files, working almost around the
clock in complete isolation'.
Becoming Eichmann: Rethinking
the life, crimes, and trial of a
"Desk Murderer" by David
Cesarani (Da Capo) Page 251-52.
Thanks Jim. Looks great!
-Mike Tomolonis
Great coverage, Jim! Thanks!
Caroline Howell- Amadeus Press
"Many
thanks! As always, it looks
great, and we are grateful for
the publicity."
Emily Cook, publicity,
Milkweed Editions
(On The Ice. May 2nd)
"Hello Jim,
Thanks for mentioning my
book--"To Dare and To Conquer:
Special Operations and the
Destiny of Nations, from
Achilles to al Quaeda" {May 11}
on your excellent site. You
might be interested to know that
the book has been selected as
the basis for the US Army's "Lemnitzer
Lecture" later this year, and is
also now being used within an
increasing number of
corporations for its insights on
leadership."
Derek
Leebaert
Jim --
Looks great! Thanks for getting
the word out! Best -- Tony Hiss
Hi Jim—
Your website looks great!
Thanks!
Nicole
Nicole Adamidis
Random House Audio
Publicity and Marketing
(ph.) 212.782.9464 (fax)
212.782.9484
Thanks so much, Jim! I really
appreciate all the lovely
coverage you provide for our
books. I'll definitely be in
touch with other books that I
think you'll enjoy.
Cheers,
Tara
Tara Koppel
Raab Associates Inc.
345 Millwood Road
Chappaqua, NY 10514
914-241-2117
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