Nevil Shute

“You know," he said, "now that I've got used to the idea, I think I'd rather have it this way. We've all got to die one day, some sooner and some later. The trouble always has been that you're never ready, because you don't know when it's coming. Well, now we do know, and there's nothing to be done about it. I kind of like that. I kind of like the thought that I'll be fit and well up till the end of August and then - home. I'd rather have it that way than go on as a sick man from when I'm seventy to when I'm ninety.”

“It's not the end of the world at all," he said. "It's only the end for us. The world will go on just the same, only we shan't be in it. I dare say it will get along all right without us.”

“Security was now a thing of the past though it took a conscious effort to remember it; with no enemy in all the world there was little but the force of habit in it.”

“If what they say is right we're none of us going to have time to do all that we planned to do. But we can keep on doing it as long as we can.”

“She looked at him in wonder. "Do people think of me like that? I only did what anybody could have done." "That's as it may be," he replied. "The fact is, that you did it.”

“You can only do a thing for the first time once, and that goes for falling in love.”

“I'm glad we haven't got newspapers now. It's been much nicer without them.”

“You cannot argue stupidity, you just have to accept it patiently as one of those things.”

“I know you've taken risks to do these things. Do Please be careful.""Don't worry about me," he said. "You've got enough troubles on your own plate, my word. But we'll come out all right, so long as we just keep alive, that's all we got to do. Just keep alive another two years, till the war's over.”

“There's no dignity, no decency, or health today for men that haven't got a job. All other things depend on work today.”

“The thing most worth doing in this modern world [is to] create jobs that men can work at, and be proud of, and make money by their work.”

“Without work men are utterly undone.”

“I never was in such a horrid office . . . It's not very nice to be where people are being swindled all day long, is it?”

“Here they go cruising for a fortnight up in parts where everyone is dead of radiation, and all that they can catch is measles!”