Dalton Trumbo Quotes

“But when a guy comes along and says here come with me and risk your life and maybe die or be crippled why then you’ve got no rights. You haven’t even the right to say yes or no or I’ll think it over.”

“There are plenty of laws to protect guys’ money even in war time but there’s nothing on the books says a man’s life’s his own.”

“He had seen the airplanes flying in the sky he had seen the skies of the future filled with them black with them and now he saw the horror beneath. He saw a world of lovers forever parted of dreams never consummated of plans that never turned into reality.”

“Pay no attention when they tap you on the shoulder and say come along we’ve got to fight for liberty or whatever their word is there’s always a word.”

“He was the future he was a perfect picture of the future and they were afraid to let anyone see what the future was like.”

“No matter how far you are separated from other people if you have an idea of time why then you are in the same world with them you are part of them but if you lose time the others go ahead of you and you are left alone hanging in air lost to everything forever.”

“It was more of a panic it was the panicky dread of losing yourself even from yourself. It made him a little sick at his stomach.”

“He too had been taken away from his home. He too had been put into the service of another without his consent. He too had been sent to a foreign country far from his native parts. He too had been forced to fight against other slaves of his own kind in a strange place.”

“They were forcing him to be silent. They didn’t want to hear him. They weren’t interested in anything but getting him off their minds.”

“It was a hundred and twenty-five in the shade and there wasn’t any shade and he felt like he was smothering under a white hot blanket and all he could think was I’ve got to stop I’ve got to stop.”

“He would never again be able to say hello how are you I love you. He would never again be able to hear music or the whisper of the wind through trees or the chuckle of running water. He would never again breathe in the smell of a steak frying in his mother’s kitchen . . . He would never again be able to see the faces of people who made you glad just to look at them.”

“Maybe nothing was real not even himself . . . wouldn’t that be wonderful.”

“He was so cut off from them that even if they were standing beside his bed they would be as distant as if they were ten thousand miles away.”

“He was all alone with his medal.”

“It was so warm so secure so comforting to be home on christmas eve to be in a nice room with a good stove to feel somehow that here was a place in the wilderness a place forever safe a place that could never be changed could never be harmed could never be intruded upon.”

“Oh Kareen why do they have a war right now just when we find each other? Kareen we’ve got more important things than war.”

“He’d never had any particular ideas about America. He’d never been very patriotic. It was something you took without even thinking. But now it seemed to him . . . For the first time in his whole life he felt that it would be a little pleasant a little comforting to be in the hands of his own people.”

“Somebody said let’s go out and fight for liberty and so they went and got killed without ever once thinking about liberty. And what kind of liberty were they fighting for anyway? How much liberty and whose idea of liberty?”

“If you tell us to make the world safe for democracy we will take you seriously . . . we will make it so.”

“I’ve already decided that I like the liberty I’ve got right here the liberty to walk and see and hear and talk and eat and sleep with my girl. I think I like that liberty a lot better than fighting for a lot of things we won’t get and ending up without any liberty at all.”