home - contact - credits - new - links - history - maps - art - story
Started 28 June 2007
Quotes Basket

---

"If you can't take a joke, you shouldn't have joined!"
(via Trevor Inman, "A Seagoing Saga", at the website: Merchant Navy Nostalgia)

---

"...'It makes you feel quite superior to a seat-of-the-pants pilot like me.
But I'll take an airplane, a road map on my knee, a couple of
temperature gauges and a magnetic compass on my dash,
and I'll fly where I'm going when I want to.'...."
(Skid Payton's piloting principles, in Unreported by William O'Sullivan,
Five-Novels Monthly, May 1941)

---

"It's queer what a uniform will do to the man who has to salute
the braid on your sleeve, but I'd rather be what we are --
members of an army that wears no insignia or braid."
(Sturgis 'Pieplate' Sands, in Savoias out of Sapporo, by Arch Whitehouse, Sky Fighters, January 1940)

---

" ...'He told me to count him out,' the youth answered impertubably.
He leaned forward from the hips, lifted Skid easily and gently passed him up
into the (Consolidated Amphibian's) cabin. He followed later as the amphibian
waddled onto the runway like an overly clumsy duck and gathered speed...."
(Skid is shanghaied by Richard MacMurtagh, in Unreported by William O'Sullivan,
Five-Novels Monthly, May 1941)

---

"He turned back to the Radio. It was a conventional send-receive set
of the type that is good for perhaps 300 miles. Maybe less... He knew the type.
You clicked down a lever switch and held it down while you spoke into it.
Then you released it and it became a receiving unit while the other fellow talked."
(At the abandoned Malong Island airport, in Unreported by William O'Sullivan,
Five-Novels Monthly, May 1941)

---

"Skid walked nearer, saw a lean, powerful youth with incredibly hard blue eyes
and a hard, humorous mouth. His hands were large and were poised on
slim hips. He wore a white pongee jacket over a round-necked silk shirt,
and full-length linen slacks. His feet were bare."
(Richard MacMurtagh, in Unreported by William O'Sullivan, Five-Novels Monthly, May 1941)

---

Possibly the first in-flight radio message -- in 1910, from the dirigible airship,
 AMERICA, during its attempt to cross the North Atlantic Ocean:
"Roy, come and get this goddamn cat!"
(Discussing 'Kiddo', a stowaway in the airship lifeboat.)

---

" 'Haven't the last few nights been beautiful?' Moira said.
'The moon, I mean? I was hoping you'd fly over to see me.
Us, I mean.' She laughed slightly. 'You must think me very bold, Skid.' "
(Unreported by William O'Sullivan, Five-Novels Monthly, May 1941)

---

"The food was hot and clean and tasty,
the drinks were cool and clean and tasty,
and the mooring lagoon glowed with the mooring lights
from the score of large and small planes that were anchored there."
(Unreported by William O'Sullivan, Five-Novels Monthly, May 1941)

---

"The sun had set when the big plane twisted away... A boom-swish-boo-o-oom
drew his eyes to white-crested rollers breaking on the coral reef
alongside the lagoon. The water slithered up the hard-packed beach,
its phosphorescent lights making it a magic carpet...."
(Pilot Skid Payton arrives on Malong Island, in Unreported by William O'Sullivan,
Five-Novels Monthly, May 1941)

---

"...'Someone who is clever enough and good pilot enough to last out
whatever is wrong there at Malong. Maybe,' she said, her eyes large
on Skid, 'it will be you.' ...She was as dark as a gypsy's reverie, her deep coloring
set off by the candy-striped silk shirtmaker waist she wore
with matching sandals and white, heavy-silk shorts...."
(Moira MacMurtagh recruits pilot Skid Payton, in Unreported by William O'Sullivan,
Five-Novels Monthly, May 1941)

---

"A bookcase crammed with texts on flying and navigation and aircraft maintenance.
Wall charts of repair operations, of plane performance in varying winds of
varying speeds. Maps of the section. Radio-control-airports regulations
for incoming and outgoing (aircraft). A blueprint (for) the two-way radio hookup.
A long work table, a smaller table, three straight chairs, two easy chairs, a desk.
And the radio itself, alongside the desk.
An unfinished cigarette had burned a groove in the desk...."
(Skid Payton checks out the Operations Room, in Unreported by William O'Sullivan,
Five-Novels Monthly, May 1941)

---

"...Pieplate's hair was tucked under a Basque beret and
she looked very refreshed. 'I've borrowed a pair of your tennis shorts,
a clean shirt and that lovely chain-stitch sweater,' she said,
smiling at Hallerton. 'I was beginning to feel clammy
in that (Japanese) uniform. I hope you don't mind.'...."
(Sturgis 'Pieplate' Sands, in Savoias out of Sapporo, by Arch Whitehouse, Sky Fighters, January 1940)

---

"Captain Ezra Triplett was a hard-bitten mariner. In fact, he was,
I think, the hardest-bitten mariner I have ever seen.  He had been bitten,
according to his own telling, man-and-boy, for fifty-two years,
by every sort of insect, rodent and crustacean in existence."
(Cruise of the Kawa by Walter E. Traprock {with George S. Chappel})

---

"They did not know they had bodies; they only leaped, danced,
flung themselves in and out of the sea, part of a large,
happy, and harmonious universe.
(White Shadows in the South Seas by Frederick O'Brien {with Rose Wilder Lane})

---

"Fresh from the flower spathes of the coconut-tree, namu tastes like
a very light, creamy beer or mead. It is delicious and refreshing,
and only slightly intoxicating."
(White Shadows in the South Seas by Frederick O'Brien {with Rose Wilder Lane})

---

"...Isnessbay ouldcay ebay etterbay!"
(Chief of the Ookabolaponga, Ping Pong - Kurtzman & Elder, MAD magazine)

---

"Night fishing has its attractions in these tropics, if only for
 the freedom from severe heat, the glory of the moonlight or starlight, and
the waking dreams that come upon the sea, when the canoe rests tranquil,
the torch blazes, and the fish swim to meet the harpoon."
(White Shadows in the South Seas by Frederick O'Brien {with Rose Wilder Lane})

---

"...Haabunai and Song of the Nightingale again evoked
the thrumming beat of the great drums, and the dance began.
This was a tragedy of the sea, a pantomime of danger
and conflict and celebration."
(White Shadows in the South Seas by Frederick O'Brien {with Rose Wilder Lane})

---

" ...'Dr. Funk,' a drink known to all the South Seas.
Its secret is merely the mixing of a stiff drink of absinithe
 with lemonade or limeade.... Its particular merits are claimed
by experts to be a stiffening of the spine when one is all in;
an imparting of courage to live to men worn out by doing nothing."
(White Shadows in the South Seas by Frederick O'Brien {with Rose Wilder Lane})

---

"Her quickly indrawn breath tightened her silver evening gown
over the rounded fullness of her bosom."
("Riddle In Silk" by Thodore Tinsley, Crime Busters, December 1938)

---

"...where I stood the precipices were a mass of wild trees, bushes,
and creepers. From black to lightest green the colors ran,
from smokey crests and gloomy ravines to the stream
singing its way a hundred feet below the trail"
(White Shadows in the South Seas by Frederick O'Brien {with Rose Wilder Lane})

---

"The Ookabolaponga!"
"Hugga-bugga...Hugga-bugga...Hugga-bugga...Hugga-bugga!"
(Ping Pong - Kurtzman & Elder, MAD magazine)

---

"...I believe it might be better if you continued to serve as ballast officer
and quartermaster. There is a a long tradition of women auxiliaries
serving in this capacity aboard His Majesty's vessels
 that dates back to the reign of George V. "
(Captain Everett, of His Majesty's Airship The Flying Cloud R-505 [Episode 15])

---

"Get that one, Dragging Lady!"
(Half-Shot Charlie in Teddy and the Pirates! - Kurtzman & Wood, MAD magazine)

---

"Ooh, I say! How ineffable!"
(Lady Moneybaggs, Gilbert Rachet comic strip, VIZ comics)

---

"...As you know our company runs a GOOD, CLEAN, HONEST
business selling opium to the natives!... Some dirty rotten crooks
have been hi-jacking our opium shipments!"
(Pat O'Bryan in Teddy and the Pirates! - Kurtzman & Wood, MAD magazine)

---

"Air piracy is not a crime! It's just a rude way of saying:
<Wealth Redistribution Aviator>!"
('Allabaster' at Fur Affinity archive) http://www.furaffinity.net/user/allabaster/

---

"A tug at her tweed skirt disclosed the gleam of an
automatic pistol in a special garter holster"
-("Riddle In Silk" by Thodore Tinsley, Crime Busters, December 1938)

---

"She rode the air alone, sky-victor in a riddled ship."
(Dizzy Malone, in "The Jane From Hell's Kitchen"
by Perry Paul, Gun Molls Magazine, October 1930)

---

"Try this," said Miss Elfoot, hauling a half-pint flask
out of her pocket. "It's the real McCoy."
(Murder By Mail by Frederick Nebel, Dime Detective Magazine, June 1936)

---

"...and recover the silk stockings that she stole. They may mean
the difference between peace and war in Europe -- if they're
sold to a certain air power on the Continent."
("Riddle In Silk" by Thodore Tinsley, Crime Busters, December 1938)

---

"What happens at the Marleybone, stays at the Marleybone...
Unless of course, you forget to tip the Bellboy."
(Casino Island saying, as heard by Rusty Haller)

---

"Cigarette tables on tall, slender legs flanked the divans;
a massive radio was half-concealed by an exquisite Spanish shawl,
worked with intricate mauve embroidery and surmounted
by a silver vase holding a gigantic spotted orchid....
...Dizzy's purple paradise was, indeed, an institution."
(The Jane From Hell's Kitchen by Perry Paul, Gun Molls Magazine, October 1930)

---

"We'll NEVER find the island of the ferocious Ookabolaponga!"
(Ship's Crewman, Ping Pong - Kurtzman & Elder, MAD magazine)

---

"This black, daringly-cut creation, backless and with halter-neck,
was the identifying costume of the mysterious Domino Lady!
...with a domino mask of shining black silk, and with a
tiny black, snub-nosed automatic in her right fist,
Ellen switched off the light...."
(The Domino Lady Doubles Back by Lars Anderson, Saucy Romantic Adventures, June 1936)

---

"(Dizzy Malone) shot the moon to warm her guns, quivering with
a throb of power at their chattering death-talk....
The sun settled slowly behind her. The Boeing roared on into the East."
(The Jane From Hell's Kitchen by Perry Paul, Gun Molls Magazine, October 1930)

---

"...and get the guy who double-crossed me. But I want to do it legal.
All I ask is a plane, a fast one, with a machine gun on it,
and your say-so to go ahead."
(Dizzy Malone in The Jane From Hell's Kitchen by Perry Paul, Gun Molls Magazine, October 1930)

---

"Think cubistically," Virtue prompted."
(Mountain-of-Virtue, in Murder, Chop Chop by James Norman, 1941)

---

"A rigid airship was not flown by any one man;
it was commanded."
(William F. Althoff, author USS Los Angeles -2004)

---

"Now back to the sewers,
where we join the dashing Masked Lizard!!"
(The Masked Lizarď by Vaughn Bodé)

---

"My Love is in Kalua, Little Heaven of the Seven Seas!"
(Jack Scholl & music by M.K. Jerome - 1937)

---

"Quickly, Assassins, we must desecrate
the Masked Lizard's supposed grave..."
(Anonymous Lizard Assassin, The Masked Lizarď by Vaughn Bodé)

---

"It is very important for China's bite to be strong."
(Mountain-of-Virtue, in Murder, Chop Chop by James Norman, 1941)

---

"He was wearing a white flying suit, & a white helmet,
with large square-cut green goggles. Even to us he looked a bit
like an artist's conception of a man from Mars."
(New Guinea expedition member about their pilot, circa 1930s,
via The Bush Pilots, Time-Life Books)

---

"My poorly offered snails have wings," he murmured in Chinese.
I beg of you to overlook their waywardness."
(Gimiendo Hernandez Quinto, in Murder, Chop Chop by James Norman, 1941)

---

"Dear Diary: Oh My."
(Amelia Bourne-Phipps, student of Songmark Academy - 26 September, 1934)

---

"To prove (the pony) really flew, he had his picture taken
wearing a pair of goggles as he alighted."
("AE" Earhart, airline vice-president, circa 1929, via The Sky's the Limit by Wendy Boase)

---

"I can't tell the police you are an anarchist.
You can't tell the anarchist I'm a policeman."
(Gabriel Syme in The Man Who Was Thursday by G.K. Chesterton - 1908)

---

"Calling Barranca! Calling Barranca!"
(Tex Gordon in Only Angels Have Wings - 1939)

---

"But the Great Pirates couldn't see what was going on
in the vast ranges of the electro-magnetic reality."
(R.Buckminster Fuller, Operating Manual for Spaceship Earth - 1969)

---

"Well, I tell you I'm glad we bumped tha damn frog,
but where do we go from here?"
(Anonymous Lizard Assassin, The Masked Lizarď  by Vaughn Bodé)

---

"Here on Cranium Island, Progress and Science go paw-in-paw."
(Mr. L.D. Forrester in Sinnessteuersymphonie by E.O. Costello)

---

"As the engine was stalled in mid-air, and the radio
won't--wouldn't--work, doesn't it sound like a secret ray
of some kind? I've read stories about them."
(Bruce Allen, pilot, in The Missing Monoplane by John Creasy)

---

"...The Island...it agrees with you?"
(Mr. L.D. Forrester in Sinnessteuersymphonie by E.O. Costello)

---

"Chaos is dull."
(Gabriel Syme in The Man Who Was Thursday by G.K. Chesterton - 1908)

---

"Three weeks in Tahiti is too long, and three months is too short."
(from TAHITI - by Barnaby Conrad - 1962)

---

"...No man should leave in the universe
anything of which he is afraid."
(Gabriel Syme in The Man Who Was Thursday by G.K. Chesterton - 1908)

---

"No one expects the Hispano-Suiza engine inspection!"
(Moon Island RINS maintenance shop Syndic Whitefang - 1927)

---

"...there are bugs, giant moths, spiders, lizards of every hue,
mosquitoes, and big land crabs all over the place,
generally in one's bedroom."
(from TAHITI - by Barnaby Conrad - 1962)

---

"The finest island in the world...where the allurements
of dissipation are beyond anything that can be conceived."
(Capt. Bligh, as quoted in TAHITI - by Barnaby Conrad - 1962)

---

"...Trist had broken a fundemental rule of bush piloting --
'no see, no fly.' "
(New Guinea, in The Bush Pilots Time-Life editors 1983)

---

" '...Tip us the wink said Iron Staff Li
Then I'll cheat you and you'll cheat me....' "
(From Murder, Chop Chop by James Norman, 1941)

---

"As we hit the treetops, jump out of the plane quickly!"
(Pilot Peter Manser in New Guinea, giving jungle crash-landing instructions,
 in The Bush Pilots, Time-Life editors, 1983)

---

"This can of spices is not totally stale! Tell me, Doctor, do you smell... Pies?"
(Ptomkin, assistant Pharmacognosist - strip 335 of Dr. Barnacle and the Banana Fiends)

---

"...One more night of this and I shall be ready for the madhouse.
These South Sea Islands aren't all what they're made out to be."
(Algy, in Biggles in the South Seas by Captain W. E. Johns, 1940)

---

"Great minds think in the same volcano craters."
(Osgood Weems, 1927)

---

"They are ill discoverers that think there is no land,
when they can see nothing but sea."
(from The Advancement of Learning, by Francis Bacon)

---

"...Jacques Schneider's original wish to promote interest
in seaplaning had degenerated into a madcap struggle for
speed supremacy using planes built only for racing
and good for nothing else."
(from 'The Story of the Schneider Trophy Race' in This Was Air Travel
by Henry R.Palmer, Jr. - 1962)

---

Q: "How do you find out when there is a pilot in the room?"
A: "She will make sure to let you know."
(Old airport joke, via Mauricio Tavares, 2008 - with a modification)

---

"The roar that poured from the clipped exhaust stacks
mixed with the blat of the props as they bit into the spray
and created a din that could be heard for miles, a long, high pitched howl
that sent shivers of delight through the crowds lining the shore."
(from 'The Story of the Schneider Trophy Race' in This Was Air Travel
by Henry R.Palmer, Jr. - 1962)

---

"The Italian planes, blowing black smoke from their exhausts,
their engines screaming, cut the pylons wide, while the Americans
in their more maneuverable ships banked vertically around them."
(1926 from 'The Story of the Schneider Trophy Race' in This Was Air Travel
by Henry R.Palmer, Jr. - 1962)

---

"In honor of the Tai Erh Chwang victory, he wore his full-dress
uniform. On one lapel was pinned a CIO Transit Workers button
which had somehow gotten into China."
(From Murder, Chop Chop by James Norman, 1941)

---

"The students zigzagged across the field on foot,
elbows extended like wings and dipping from side to side."
(From Murder, Chop Chop by James Norman, 1941)

---

"Her," said Nevada. "She's a coyote if I ever seen one!"
(Nevada in Murder, Chop Chop by James Norman, 1941)

---

"...I've not had the slightest desire to return to Europe.
It's not easy to explain.  You'll grant that a satisfactory life
must be based on reality? I find reality here."
(Dr Kersaint in The Hurricane by Charles Nordhoff & James Norman Hall, 1936)

---

"I am always careful, that's why I'm here on
the damn Island with the ukeleles and the grass skirts
 and not back home where I belong."
(Mr. Maddock, in Think Fast, Mr. Moto, by J.P. Marquand)

---

"...And security is not enough: far from it! The people of these
islands have been taught better. They live in the present, enjoying
the simple occurrences of each day as it comes."
(Dr Kersaint in The Hurricane by Charles Nordhoff & James Norman Hall, 1936)

---

"Wild flowers, including many species of orchids,
grew in luxuriant profusion among giant maidenhair ferns,
and hung in garlands from tree-ferns. Thousands of guinea-pigs
scampered away in front of them."
(Biggles in the South Seas by Captain W. E. Johns, 1940)

---

"The fronds of the palms clattered in the steady trade winds
above their heads like the flapping wings of unseen birds."
(Think Fast, Mr. Moto, by J.P. Marquand)

---

"He puts the famous in blasphemous."
( Mauser, on his Whiteboard )

---

"Amuse yourself, please, after this. Bathe in the warm seas.
See the other pretty girls. Listen to the lovely music.
Sit in the sun and think, but not about this affair, Mr. Hitchings.
You are out of it now."
(Mr. Moto, in Think Fast, Mr. Moto, by J.P. Marquand)

---

"You're a palpable fact, Miss Hitchings, and I have
always been told to stick close to palpable facts."
(Wilson Hitchings in Think Fast, Mr. Moto, by J.P. Marquand)

---

"Anyone that animals speak to, or offer aid to, wins."
(Joseph Campbell)

---

"Kokovoko - an island far away to the South and West.
It is not down in any map; true places never are."
('Ishmael' in Moby Dick, via Herman Melville)

---

"The Island had changed from
a distant, pagan paradise of gods and drums to
an outpost of a nation that was half a fortress, half a garden."
(Think Fast, Mr. Moto, by J.P. Marquand)

---

"Annual Earnings [USA circa 1933]: Stenographer/bookkeeper, $936;
Registered Nurse, $936; Doctor, $3382; Railroad Exectutive, $5064;
Airline Stewardess, $1500; Airline Pilot, $8000."
(This Fabulous Century 4: 1930-1940, Editors of Time-Life Books)

---

"Always make the game interesting for the referee,
or he'll make it interesting for himself."
(D.L. Arneson)

---

" Tour Book - The Ireland of Dr. Moreau "
( Mauser, on his Whiteboard )

---

"Everyone talks about the rich, but nobody eats them!"
(Billiam Goodfellow, circa 1930)

---

"Well, your heart's in the right place. That'll make it easier to hit."
( Mauser, on his Whiteboard )

---

"A little well gotten will do us more good
Than lordships and scepters by Rapine and Blood."
( R. Saunders, his Almanac )

---

"Never play pool with a man who brings his own table."
( Erik Baker, quoted in the WORDS WORDS WORDS blog )

---

"<Homing in on your destination by radio bearings>
always sounded very reassuring in publicity releases.
We pilots knew better and wondered if our superiors did."
(Horace Brock, Pan Am seaplane pilot, in Flying the Oceans, his autobiography)

---

"It will only take three or four days, unless it takes longer."
(From the Casino Island Clinic -- as reported by D.L.Arneson)

---

"After the feast the young men, decked with flowers,
appeared with guitars, ukuleles, and a kerosene drum...."
(from My Samoan Chief by Fay G. Calkins)

---

"Golly!"
(Miss Amelia Bourne-Phipps, as heard by several reputable witnesses, circa 1936.)

---

"Tillamooka feasting & folkways may account for the arrival of
"Potlatch Claws"and her visiting canoe fleet during Winter Solstice."
(from "A Plausible Relation of the Spontoonie Isles"  by Walter E. Traprock, F.R.S.S.E.U.)

---

 "It's not their fault: They were banana bred."
(Tally Time At the Banana Boat by Dr. Morris Barnacle, Pharmacognosist)

---

 "A couple of moments more and the big bird settled in the water,
"Impossible People: The aviator who said, 'Jump!'
when asked what was the last word in aeroplanes."
(Elizabeth Hayklan, cartoonist, Impossible People (by JERI), circa 1934)

---

"Be careful! The ancient pyramids are rife with secret traps!"
(Myra Foxworthy, Aridia's Minister of Culture in a Tale Spin episode)

---

"Impossible People: The man who thanked the pilot
for the two flights--his first and last."
(Elizabeth Hayklan, cartoonist: Impossible People (by JERI ), circa 1934)

---

"But those guns had been put on only to cope with
Chinese bandits and bong-piaus -pirates- who endangered
peacetime commercial flying."
(The Three Mosquitos by Ralph Oppenheim - circa 1940)

---

"A man making his first Transpacific hop as chief pilot
should tend to his knitting, particularly if his work on this hop
would decide his superiors to keep him on."
(Transpacific Plunder by Frederick Painton, in Argosy magazine 12 September, 1936 )

---

"The Clams! The Clams in the walls!"
(At the Minneapolis of Madness by J.Maxwell Young)

---