Leon Uris Quotes

All you have the right to ask of life is to choose a battle in this war, make the best you can, and leave the field with honor.

After all, the only thing that is going to save mankind is if enough people live their lives for something or someone other than themselves.

To me, a writer is one of the most important soldiers in the fight for survival of the human race. He must stay at his post in the thick of fire to serve the cause of mankind.

My first book was rejected nine times. It turned out to be a best seller, Battle Cry? in 1953.

Often we have no time for our friends but all the time in the world for our enemies.

Why must we fight for the right to live, over and over, each time the sun rises?

I was too heavy to be a jockey and too honest to be a producer, so I became a writer

You aren't a true husband/man until you've done the work of a wife/women

The ability of a person to atone has always been the most remarkable of human features.

I enjoy writing, sometimes; I think that most writers will tell you about the agony of writing more than the joy of writing, but writing is what I was meant to do.

A novelist must know what his last chapter is going to say and one way or another work toward that last chapter. ... To me it is utterly basic, yet it seems like it's a great secret.

A soldier has one item that cannot be neglected. His feet. They are his wheels, his mechanised warfare.

To be homeward bound, no matter what tragic memories you have harbored, is unlike any voyage a man can ever make.

You can try to reach an audience, but you just write what comes out of you and you just hope that it is accepted. You do not write specifically to a generation.

I do not write for an audience

I have drawn inspiration from the Marine Corps, the Jewish struggle in Palestine and Israel, and the Irish

Writing, basically breaks down to relationships between people and that is what you write about.

Research to me is as important or more important than the writing. It is the foundation upon which the book is built

I know writers have to be crazy. But more than that that, they have to get made and stay mad. If things don't make a writer mad, he'll end up writing Flopsy, Mopsy, and Cottantail.

Anyone who goes into writing has to find out somewhere along the line, he's either naive or insane.

Pride is a fool's fortress

You can lie to your wife or your boss, but you cannot lie to your typewriter. Sooner or later you must reveal your true self in your pages.

I have been writing for 50 years and readers still read my first book from when I was in the Marine Corps.

It all begins and ends in the same place, doesn't it? Conor and me in Ballyutogue. We all come home eventually.

Love can't mature in one room. It has to come out of the full sharing of everything: joys, aspirations, downfalls, all of it. That's the only real path to love.

I was a terrible English student.

I essentially write for myself.

I've not been right for any man or myself since I met you.

So writing is a very, very difficult position to obtain... and retain.

I was tough. I used everything to my advantage. I could be very ruthless.

Usually a good part of the people trying it end up not making it.

You usually dont know what you are going to write about so you go to the places and talk to the people who were identified with the events.

In order to be a good writer, you've got to be a bad boss. Self-discipline and stamina are the two major arms in a writer's arsenal.

On one occasion I went to Afghanistan to look at the borders and learn something about the situation there to see if my book was there?and it wasnt.

The first thing you have to do is get immersed in the project, organizing yourself, knowing what you are going after and not going after.

It is extremely important to know what you don't want to find.

There is in us all that line that prevents us from fully understanding those who are different.

Who here wants to be a writer?' I asked. Everyone in the room raised his hand. 'Why the hell aren't you home writing?' I said, and left the stage.

Look at me, man, look at me and tell me I don't know what I'm about. I'm Conor Larkin. I'm an Irishman and I've had enough.

My greatest accomplishment is Exodus. It changed a lot of peoples lives, it changed the conception of the Jewish people in the international scene.

A novelist must know what his last chapter is going to say and one way or another work toward that last chapter. ... To me it is utterly basic yet it seems like it's a great secret.