Abruptly the poker of memory stirs the ashes of recollection and uncovers a forgotten ember, still smoldering down there, still hot, still glowing, still red as red.
– William Manchester
Actors who have tried to play Churchill and MacArthur have failed abysmally because each of those men was a great actor playing himself.
– William Manchester
An Edwardian lady in full dress was a wonder to behold, and her preparations for viewing were awesome.
– William Manchester
As she sallied forth from her boudoir, you would never have guessed how quickly she could strip for action.
– William Manchester
He was a great thundering paradox of a man.
– William Manchester
I wondered vaguely if this was when it would end, whether I would pull up tonight's darkness like a quilt and be dead and at peace evermore.
– William Manchester
It would be inaccurate to say that Churchill and I conversed. Like Gladstone speaking to Victoria, he addressed me as though I were a one-man House of Commons. It was superb.
– William Manchester
Japanese naval officers in dress whites are frequent guests at Pearl Harbor's officers' mess and are very polite. They always were. Except, of course, for that little interval there between 1941 and 1945.
– William Manchester
Men do not fight for flag or country, for the Marine Corps or glory or any other abstraction. They fight for one another. And if you came through this ordeal, you would age with dignity.
– William Manchester
Our Boeing 747 has been fleeing westward from darkened California, racing across the Pacific toward the sun, the incandescent eye of God, but slowly, three hours later than West Coast time, twilight gathers outside, veil upon lilac veil.
– William Manchester
Portly, balding, Brooks-Brothered.
– William Manchester
The coconut trees, lithe and graceful, crowd the beach like a minuet of slender elderly virgins adopting flippant poses.
– William Manchester
The colors of the underwater rock are as pale and delicate as those in the wardrobe of an 18th-century marchioness.