John Hersey Quotes

“Do not work primarily for money; do your duty to patients first and let the money follow; our life is short, we don't live twice; the whirlwind will pick up the leaves and spin them, but then it will drop them and they will form a pile.”

— John Hersey

“Journalism allows its readers to witness history; fiction gives its readers an opportunity to live it.”

— John Hersey

“There, in the tin factory, in the first moment of the atomic age, a human being was crushed by books.”

— John Hersey

“The crux of the matter is whether total war in its present form is justifiable, even when it serves a just purpose. Does it not have material and spiritual evil as its consequences which far exceed whatever good might result? When will our moralists give us an answer to this question?”

— John Hersey

It's a failure of national vision when you regard children as weapons, and talents as materials you can mine, assay, and fabricate for profit and defense.

— John Hersey

This private estate was far enough away from the explosion so that its bamboos, pines, laurel, and maples were still alive, and the green place invited refugees-partly because they believed that if the Americans came back, they would bomb only buildings; partly because the foliage seemed a center of coolness and life, and the estate's exquisitely precise rock gardens, with their quiet pools and arching bridges, were very Japanese, normal, secure; and also partly (according to some who were there) because of an irresistible, atavistic urge to hide under leaves.

— John Hersey

Their faces were wholly burned, their eyesockets were hollow, the fluid from their melted eyes had run down their cheeks.

— John Hersey

“Green pine trees, cranes and
turtles ...
You must tell a story of your
hard times
And laugh twice.”

— John Hersey

“Dr. Wyman preached a God I couldn't quite see in my mind, and certainly couldn't love. I dimly pictured some kind of Grandfather, who dealt out to bad people their awful "just deserts," which I thought must be poisoned food at the end of delicious meals.”

— John Hersey

“The price one pays for having a kind man at one's elbow.”

— John Hersey

“I thought of God as being able to talk big and write *very* small.”

— John Hersey

“It seems logical that he who supports total war in principle cannot complain of a war against civilians.”

— John Hersey

“What has kept the world safe from the bomb since 1945 has not been deterrence, in the sense of fear of specific weapons, so much as it's been memory. The memory of what happened at Hiroshima.”

— John Hersey

“The second stage set in ten or fifteen days after the bombing. Its first symptom was falling hair. Diarrhea and fever, which in some cases went as high as 106, came next.”

— John Hersey

“The doctors realized in retrospect that even though most of these dead had also suffered from burns and blast effects, they had absorbed enough radiation to kill them. The rays simply destroyed body cells - caused their nuclei to degenerate and broke their walls.”

— John Hersey

“Learning starts with failure; the first failure is the beginning of education.”

— John Hersey

“Many people who did not die right away came down with nausea, headache, diarrhea, malaise, and fever, which lasted several days. Doctors could not be certain whether some of these symptoms were the result of radiation or nervous shock.”

— John Hersey

“All morning they watched for the plane which they thought would be looking for them. They cursed war in general and PTs in particular. At about ten o'clock the hulk heaved a moist sigh and turned turtle.”

— John Hersey

“The first stage had been all over before the doctors even knew they were dealing with a new sickness; it was the direct reaction to the bombardment of the body, at the moment when the bomb went off, by neutrons, beta particles, and gamma rays.”

— John Hersey

“The third stage was the reaction that came when the body struggled to compensate for its ills - when, for instance, the white count not only returned to normal but increased to much higher than normal levels.”

— John Hersey

“And, as if nature were protecting man against his own ingenuity, the reproductive processes were affected for a time; men became sterile, women had miscarriages, menstruation stopped.”

— John Hersey

“To be a writer is to sit down at one's desk in the chill portion of every day, and to write; not waiting for the little jet of the blue flame of genius to start from the breastbone - just plain going at it, in pain and delight. To be a writer is to throw away a great deal, not to be satisfied, to type again, and then again, and once more, and over and over ...”

— John Hersey

“The final test of a work of art is not whether it has beauty, but whether it has power.”

— John Hersey

Events are less important than our responses to them.

— John Hersey

“The reality is that changes are coming ... They must come. You must share in bringing them.”

— John Hersey

“The writer must not invent. The legend on the license must read: NONE OF THIS WAS MADE UP.”

— John Hersey

“To my great surprise, I never heard anyone cry out in the disorder, even though they suffered in great agony. They died in silence, with no grudge, setting their teeth to bear it. All for the country!”

— John Hersey

“When the writing is really working, I think there is something like dreaming going on. I don't know how to draw the line between the conscious management of what you're doing and this state ... I would say that it's related to daydreaming. When I feel really engaged with a passage, I become so lost in it that I'm unaware of my real surroundings, totally involved in the pictures and sounds that that passage evokes.”

— John Hersey

“My two major faults are that I row too long and pick up too many women”

— John Hersey

“At exactly fifteen minutes past eight in the morning, on August 6, 1945, Japanese time, at the moment when the atomic bomb flashed above Hiroshima, Miss Toshiko Sasaki, a clerk in the personnel department of the East Asia Tin Works, had just sat down at her place in the plant office and was turning her head to speak to the girl at the next desk.”

— John Hersey