Documentary television series and miniseries

"2003 season"

"Jeremy Clarkson (2002-2015)"

"Richard Hammond (2002-2015)"

"James May (2003-2015)"

"'The Stig'"

"Jason Dawe (2002)"

"Since it has absolutely nothing to do with politics or religion, only with cars, it is one of the very few programs at the Burka Broadcasting Corporation still worth seeing."

"God hates Louis Threox, God hates Louis Threox, therefore God hates America and all of his military. Don't be a faggot."

"Don't think of fags as just those guys who are taking it up the tailpipe. Think of it as people who are involved in some perverted sex act, and I'm talking about anything other than one man, one woman, in their marriage bed."

"If you see a nation or a people who have risen up with one voice to say that it's OK to be gay, you're looking at a doomed people. Those people have crossed the line. When you say "gay pride," you obviously have given over any trace or any notion that you're going to admit that you're sinning."

"The streets of this nation are full of married men having fag sex. That's adultery. So don't try to pretend that you don't come under the umbrella of adultery just because you're a fag."

"I will not have my kids call themselves dating anyone, or doing any activity that would remotely resemble what this generation calls dating. To what end would they do that? What would be the purpose? So they can fornicate?"

"Billy Graham, hell-bound false prophet. I've known Billy Graham more than fifty years, and Billy, you are headed straight and irreversibly for hell. You are a lying, money grubbing, Arminian heretic . . . At 88, Graham will soon die, and split hell wide open. And Westboro Baptist Church will picket your funeral. Amen."

"Same-sex marriage, by any name, civil union or otherwise, is the ultimate smashed-mouth in-your-face insult to God almighty, and you think he's going to let England and America and the rest of this evil world get by with it? God almighty has not joined fags in holy wedlock. God no longer keeps America safe, America is doomed. We're getting the pants beat off of us, in Iraq, in Afghanistan. God is now America's terrorist, that's who Bush is fighting, that's the terrorist that he best be afraid of. You tweaked his nose you jackass, you tweaked his nose! God put it in your earth wicked heart to start that war. That's the message we've got at the funerals of these dead soldiers. God duped you into starting a war, so he could punish you. And any preacher preaching it any other way is a lying hell-bound false prophet. So almost eighteen months now and the siege has got people eating their babies, and their small children, and each other! You're going to eat your babies! God himself duped Bush into a no-win war, and he did that by the technique of putting a lying spirit in the mouth of all his trusted advisers, to punish America."

"Shirley: Noah, do you know what fag troops are?"

"Noah (age 8 approx): Yeah."

"Shirley: What?"

"Noah: It's this nation. Of these fags. It's this nation of fags. That's what fag troops means."

"Shirley: It is the nation of fags, that's right . . . Noah, do you know what else you could be besides a fag, to be in trouble with God and be included in that sign? If you're not just a fag, but what else?"

"Noah: Erm . . . and . . . soldiers and . . ."

"Shirley: But what are you if you're not a practicing fag, what are you? What if you support fags, what does that make you?"

"Noah: A dyke?"

"Louis: I was struck by your preaching, you referred mainly to the Old Testament and it was almost as though you felt that we were living in a time of biblical prophecy. Is that accurate?"

"Fred: No, it's not accurate. If you had just a little knowledge of the Bible, you would know that what you just said is stupidity in spades. I don't know how to deal with a question like that. You're just too dumb, sorry. You've got a duty to know the Bible as well as I do."

"Louis: Why?"

"Fred: Because you're a human being, because God almighty made you, and God almighty is going to send your ass to hell."

"Louis: Did you rejoice yesterday when that church burned down?"

"Steve: You're supposed to rejoice over all of God's judgements."

"Louis: And do you rejoice when soldiers die in Iraq?"

"Steve: Absolutely, I do."

"Louis: And do you rejoice when people are knocked over by cars and they get cancer?"

"Steve: Absolutely, I love it. And I can tell you right now because it's the righteous judgement of God almighty."

"Steve: The Jews killed Christ! You're going to try to tell me that they worship the same God as I worship? They killed Christ, what more do you..."

"Louis: Newsflash, brainiac, Christ was Jewish."

"The greatest thing in history."

"Let us pray that peace be now restored to the world and that God will preserve it always."

"Zooey Deschanel - DG"

"Alan Cumming - Glitch/Ambrose"

"Neal McDonough - Wyatt Cain"

"Raoul Trujillo - Raw"

"Kathleen Robertson - Azkadellia"

"Karin Konoval - Evil Witch of the Dark"

"Anna Galvin - Lavender Eyes"

"Ted Whittall - Ahamo"

"Richard Dreyfuss - The Mystic Man"

"Blu Mankuma - Tutor/Toto"

"Callum Keith Rennie - Zero"

"Gwynyth Walsh - Emily"

"Kevin McNulty - Hank"

"Rachel Pattee - Young DG"

"Alexia Fast - Young Azkadellia"

"One day, I'm gonna be the man in the big house."

"[holds up a newspaper with the headline "Sullivan Vows NO Elvis"] Ed Sullivan says he wouldn't touch me with a ten foot pole."

"[at the Jacksonville Theater after singing "Don't Be Cruel"] I'll see you girls backstage."

"When I'm on stage, I'm a different person."

"[whilst at RCA recording a song] I don't care how many time's we done it. We're gonna keep on doin' it, till I get it the way I hear it in my head."

"Seems the higher I climb, the lonelier it gets."

"[to Larry Geller] I swear to God, man. [tearfully] No one knows how empty I feel. I mean no one knows anything about me, man, least of all me. What is this emptiness? I have no right to feel this way."

"[during his Comeback Special] Oh, wait a minute, wait a minute. [jokingly] Something wrong with my lip. [to a girl in the audience] Remember that one, baby? I done 29 pictures like that."

"The finger, that's right, the finger. I was down in Florida, and the state police decided to come and film my show. All I had to stand still, and all I could move was this little finger here. [jokingly hums and moves his finger] It got more applause than I did."

"[after performing "Lawdy Miss Clawdy"] Thank you very much."

"Before me there was no such thing as a rock star."

"I don't wanna sing another song that I don't believe in! I don't wanna make another movie that I don't care about! This TV thing has me excited for the first time in years. I'm having fun with my music and I don't wanna lose that feeling."

"[last lines] Guess what, Steve? I'm touring Vegas."

"Call me Colonel."

"Elvis and I need some privacy."

"[meeting Elvis for the first time] Young Mr. Presley. What do you want...of all this? What do you want?"

"I'm not gonna shine your brass, son. I don't get your music. I'm more of a Lawrence Welk kind of fellow. Well, it's not liking it or not, I just don't get what all the fuss is about. But there is a fuss, and I can surely understand that. And I can sell it. I can sell anything. I can sell a wino the sweat off a grape. And I know I can sell the hell out of you."

"Well, son...You got a million dollars worth of talent."

""Heartbreak Hotel" just sold a million copies. You got your first gold record."

"Boy, you ever do anything to make me ashamed of you, and we're through. Stars come and go, but a manager can work forever."

"I guarantee you that more people will see this one night of The Milton Berle Show than we'll ever see that Burt Lancaster movie. Now, c'mon, Uncle Miltie's waiting."

"It seems that Mr. Ed Sullivan has lost his ten foot pole. You're on the show."

"You're the money maker. I'm the money finder. Let's do our jobs."

"[when Elvis asks the Colonel to manage Ann-Margret] Look, son, you know where my loyalties lie. I was just talking to the director of this year's masterpiece. Have you seen how much he's putting her in the film, huh? All them close-ups of her? He's in love with the girl, I swear. Don't he understand that this is an Elvis Presley picture, and that all that extra shooting is putting us over schedule, and over schedule means over budget? That's stealing money out of our pockets."

"We started big in TV, and we can restart big in TV."

"[during an argument with Elvis] You ungrateful hillbilly! I knew you'd betray me!"

"[last lines] Think about it, son. Vegas!"

"When they first sent me that song, I thought maybe... maybe you'd be right for it. But sometimes a song and a singer don't necessarily go together. Maybe another time."

"[after Presley and his band perform "Harbor Lights"] That sounded something like Bing Crosby, the trouble is, we already got us a Bing Crosby, and the one before, well, we got us a Eddy Arnold and a Hank Snow. Son, give me... Give me some of you, give me some of you, give me some Elvis Presley."

"[while Sam, Elvis, Scotty and Bill listen to their recording of "That's All Right"] But it's different. Ah, it's something else. That there song is a hit."

"Go get 'em, Elvis."

"Are you wearin' mascara, son?"

"I set the price at nearly twice what anyone's paid for a singer before, figuring he'd just go away. I guess they think you're worth it. And you are, son. You know, I opened this studio to give coloured's a place to record, cos I truly believe their music comes from the very soul. And I believe if enough people listen to 'em, it can't help but to connect us all. And, I always knew if I found a white man who could sing it, I'd make a million dollars. Somebody else will be getting that, not me. No, first they're gonna try and clean you up, son. Then they're gonna try and slick you up. You stay true to yourself. You know what you're doing now. You stay true to yourself, you'll be okay."

"There's a spirituality deep inside the music. And inside you. You being true to yourself, son? You're doing what you love. You gotta be strong, Elvis. Vigilant. You can't compromise what your heart knows. No, sir."

"Steve Binder: [he and Elvis are walking down Sunset Strip] It's 1968. The times they're changing, man. You can change too."

"The legend you know. The story you don't."

"Jonathan Rhys Meyers - Elvis Presley"

"Randy Quaid - Colonel Tom Parker"

"Rose McGowan - Ann-Margret"

"Tim Guinee - Sam Phillips"

"Antonia Bernath - Priscilla Beaulieu Presley"

"Jack Noseworthy - Steve Binder"

"Robert Patrick - Vernon Presley"

"Camryn Manheim - Gladys Presley"

"Mark Adam - Scotty Moore"

"Clay Steakley - Bill Black"

"Jennifer Rae Westley - Dixie Locke"

"John Boyd West - Red West"

"Randy McDowell - Gene Smith"

"Dad had no interest in writing a memoir: "What good would that do?" he'd say. "My life and music are the whole of me." Of course, he was right. Film was the only way to go. His music transcends time and intensifies what the screenplay reveals in words. Enjoy."

"The True Story Of The Man And The Legend."

"The Music Was Just The Beginning."

"His Life Story And All His Music Together For The First Time."

"You've read the books. You've heard the rumors. But, you haven't seen the truth. Until now..."

"Philip Casnoff - Frank Sinatra"

"Olympia Dukakis - Dolly Sinatra"

"Joe Santos - Marty Sinatra"

"Gina Gershon - Nancy Barbato Sinatra"

"Nina Siemaszko - Mia Farrow"

"Joe Grifasi - George Evans"

"Marcia Gay Harden - Ava Gardner"

"Bob Gunton - Tommy Dorsey"

"David Raynr - Sammy Davis Jr."

"Matthew Posey - Harry James"

"Rod Steiger - Sam Giancana"

"Robert Levine - Bob Weitman"

"Vincent Guastaferro - Hank Sanicola"

"Wentworth Miller - David Scott"

"Tyron Leitso - Karl Scott"

"David Thewlis - Cyrus Crabb"

"Katie Carr - Marion Waldo"

"Jim Carter - Mayor Waldo Seville"

"Alice Krige - Rosemary Waldo"

"Colin Salmon - Oonu"

"Hannah Yelland - Romana Denison"

"Lee Evans - Zippeau (voice)"

"Terry Jones - Messenger Bird (voice)"

"Stuart Wilson - Frank Scott"

"Anna Maguire - Samantha"

"Geraldine Chaplin - Grandmother Oriana"

"We have shared the incommunicable experience of war. We have felt, we still feel, the passion of life to its top. In our youths, our hearts were touched with fire."

"By the summer of 1861, Wilmer McLean had had enough. Two great armies were converging on his farm and what would be the first major battle of the Civil War, Bull Run, or Manassas as the Confederates called it, would soon rage across the aging Virginian's farm: a Union shell going so far as to explode in the summer kitchen. Now McLean moved his family away from Manassas, far south and west of Richmond, out of harm's way, he prayed, to a dusty little crossroads' called Appomattox Court House. And it was there in his living room, three and a half years later, that Lee surrendered to Grant. And Wilmer McLean could rightfully say, "The war began in my front yard and ended in my front parlor.""

"The Civil War was fought in ten thousand places, from Valverde, New Mexico and Tullahoma, Tennessee, to St. Albans, Vermont and Fernandina on the Florida Coast. More than three million Americans fought in it. And over six hundred thousand men, two percent of the population, died in it."

"What began as a bitter dispute over Union and State's Rights, ended as a struggle over the meaning of freedom in America."

"No day ever dawns for the slave," a freed black man wrote, "nor is it looked for. For the slave it is all night — all night forever." One white Mississippian was more blunt: "I'd rather be dead," he said, "than be a nigger on one of these big plantations."

"A slave entered the world in a one-room, dirt-floored shack. Drafty in winter, reeking in summer, slave cabins bred pneumonia, typhus, cholera, lockjaw, and tuberculosis. The child who survived to be sent to the fields at 12 was likely to have worms, rotten teeth, dysentery and malaria. Fewer than four in a hundred lived to be 60."

"There was never a moment in our history when slavery was not a sleeping serpent. It lay coiled up under the table during the deliberations of the Constitutional Convention. Owing to the cotton gin, it was more than half awake. Thereafter, slavery was on everyone's mind, though not always on his tongue."

"Here before God, in the presence of these witnesses, I consecrate my life to the destruction of slavery."

"We are separated because of incompatibility of temper. We are divorced North from South, because we hated each other so."

"I, John Brown, am now quite certain that the crimes of this guilty land will never be purged away but with blood."

"John Brown, John Brown...very important person in history. Important, though, for only one episode. Failure in everything in life, except he becomes the single most-important factor, in my opinion, in bringing on the War. The militia system in the South, which had been a joke before this, before then, becomes a viable instrument, as the Southern militias begin to take a true form and the South begins to worry about Northerners agitating the Blacks to murder them in their beds."

"It was the beginning of the Confederate Army."

"The bird of our country is a debilitated chicken, disguised in eagle feathers. We have never been a nation. We are only an aggregate of states, ready to fall apart at the first serious shock."

"In your hands, my dissatisfied countrymen, and not in mine, is the momentous issue of civil war. The government will not assail you. You can have no conflict without being yourselves the aggressors. We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained, it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature."

"Let me tell you what is coming. After the sacrifice of countless millions of treasure and hundreds of thousands of lives, you may win Southern Independence. But I doubt it. The North is determined to preserve the Union. They are not a fiery, impulsive people as you are, for they live in colder climates. But when they begin to move in a given direction, they move with the steady momentum and perseverance of a mighty avalanche."

"On the day Sumter fell, the Regular Army of the United States consisted of fewer than 17,000 men, most of whom were stationed in the Far West. Only two of its Generals had ever commanded an army in the field, and both were long past their prime. Winfield Scott, the hero of the Mexican War, "Old Fuss and Feathers," was too fat even to mount a horse."

"Not by one word or look can we detect any change in the demeanor of the Negro servants. ... They make no sign. Are they ... stupid? Or wiser than we are; silent and strong, biding their time?"

"I tell you that if I were on by death bed tomorrow and the President of the United States should tell me that a great battle was to be fought for the liberty or slavery of the country, and asked my judgment as to the ability of a commander, I would say with my dying breath, let it be Robert E. Lee!"

"To preserve the Constitution, Lincoln had for three months gone beyond it: waging war without Congressional consent; seizing Northern telegraph offices; suspending habeas corpus. To keep the border states from seceding, Lincoln sent troops to occupy Baltimore and clapped the mayor and 19 secessionist legislators in jail, without trial. Chief Justice Taney ruled that the President had exceeded his power. Lincoln simply ignored him. "More rogues than honest men find shelter under habeas corpus," he said, and even contemplated arresting the Chief Justice."

"Little did I conceive of the greatness of the defeat, the magnitude of the disaster which has been entailed on the United States. So short lived has been the American Union that men who saw it rise may live to see it fall."

"December 31, poor old 1861 just going. It has been a gloomy year of trouble and disaster. I should be glad to see its going were it not that 1862 is likely to be no better."

"It was almost inconceivable that anything that horrendous could happen. [..] If we had ten percent casualties in a battle today it would be looked on as a blood bath. They had thirty percent, in several battles. And one after another, you see."

"I always shot at Privates. It was they who did the shooting and killing and if I could kill or wound me a Private, well my chances were so much the better. I always looked on Officers as harmless personages."

"Secretary of State William H. Seward hoped to replace Lincoln. Secretary of the Treasury Salmon P. Chase wanted to replace Seward. Mary Todd told her husband to get rid of both of them."

"February 9, 1862. Dear Mr. President: General McClellan has almost ruined your administration and the country. He is a do-nothing. He is thinking of the presidency in '64. He is placating the Rebels—that’s what ails him. Depend upon it."

"What shall I do? The people are impatient. Chase has no money and tells me he can raise no more. The General of the Army, McClellan, has typhoid fever. The bottom is out of the tub. What shall I do?"

"Washington. Dear Ellen: I went to the White House shortly after tea, where I found "the Original Gorilla", about as intelligent as ever. What a specimen to be at the head of our affairs now!"

"In the midst of all his troubles, the President delighted in his sons. The oldest, Robert, was away at Harvard, but Willie, 11, and eight-year-old Thomas, known as Tad, had the run of the White House. Willie was studious, liked to compose verse and memorize railroad timetables. He had raised a boys’ battalion from among his schoolmates and invaded Cabinet meetings with his "troops." In February, he developed what the doctor called bilious fever. His parents sat up night after night to nurse him. On February 20, Willie died. For three months, Mary Lincoln veered between loud weeping and silent depression and sought to communicate with her dead child through spiritualists."

"The War left Lincoln little time to mourn. He was soon back working 18 hours a day."

"From the moment those two ships opened fire that Sunday morning, every other navy on earth was obsolete."

"News stories described him coolly smoking under fire, and admirers shipped him barrels of cigars. A delighted Northern public now thought they knew what the initials in his name stood for: they called him "Unconditional Surrender Grant.""

"Once more, let me tell you: it is indispensable to you that you strike a blow...I have never written to you, nor spoken to you, in greater kindness than now, nor with a fuller purpose to sustain you...But you must act."

"Shiloh had the same number of casualties as Waterloo, and yet when it was fought there were another twenty Waterloos to follow; and Grant shortly before Shiloh said 'I consider this war practically over and they're ready to give up', and the day after Shiloh he said 'I saw this was going to have to be a war of conquest if they were going to win'. Shiloh did that, and it sobered the nation up something awful with the realization that they had a very bloody affair on their hands."

"Years afterward, a Union veteran said the most a soldier could say of any fight was "I was worse scared than I was at Shiloh." Shiloh is a Hebrew word, meaning "place of peace.""

"April 11, 1862. I firmly believe that, before many centuries more, science will be the master of man. The engines he will have invented will be beyond his strength to control. Some day, science shall have the existence of mankind in its power, and the human race commit suicide by blowing up the world."

"The Minié ball could kill at half a mile and was accurate at 250 yards, five times as far as any other one-man weapon. The age of the bayonet charge was over, though most officers did not yet know it when the war began. And some had still not yet learned it when the war was over."

"A law was made...allowing every person who owned 20 negroes to go home. It gave us the blues. We wanted 20 negroes...there was raised the howl of "rich man’s war, poor man’s fight." From this time on till the end of the War, a soldier was simply a machine: a conscript. All our pride and valor had gone and we were sick of war and cursed the Southern Confederacy."

"A worried Jefferson Davis now prepared for a siege of Richmond, relying more and more on the advice of his close military adviser, Robert E. Lee. When Davis asked Lee where Lee though the South’s next defensive line should be drawn once Richmond fell, Lee said, "Richmond must not fall. It shall not be given up." Still, George McClellan refused to attack. Though his army still outnumbered the rebels, he remained convinced the opposite was true. One observer noted that McClellan had a particular faculty for "realizing hallucinations.""

"We talk of the irrepressible conflict and practically give the lie to our talk. We wage war against slaveholding rebels and yet protect and augment the motive, which has moved the slaveholders to rebellion. We strike at the effect and leave the cause unharmed. Fire will not burn it out of us. Water cannot wash it out of us—that this war with the slaveholders can never be brought to a desirable termination until slavery, the guilty cause of all our national troubles, has been totally and forever abolished."

"He would have a man shot at the drop of a hat, and he would drop it himself."

"He who does not see the hand of God in this is blind, sir, blind."

"I have been reading so much about the Yankees, I was very anxious to see them. The whites would tell their colored people not to go to the Yankees, for they would harness them to carts and make them pull the carts around in place of horses. I asked Grandmother one day if this was true. She replied, "Certainly not!," that the white people did not want slaves to go over to the Yankees and told them these things to frighten them. I wanted to see those wonderful Yankees so much, as I heard my parents say that the Yankees was going to set all the slaves free."

"His name might be audacity! He will take more chances and take them quicker than any other General in this country, north or south."

"All but one of the battles of the Seven Days were Union victories, yet McClellan treated them as defeats, continuing to back down until he reached the safety of federal gunboats at Harrison’s Landing on the James River. Union officers urged a counterattack. Lee had lost 20,000 men. McClellan refused. One officer suggested his commander was motivated either by "cowardice or treason"."

"In just one week, Lee had completely unnerved the Union general, and demonstrated for the first time the strengths that would make him a legend. Surprise, audacity, and an eerie ability to read his opponents mind. In just seven days, McClellan had been totally out-generalled."

"He could not let himself be made a fool, the Union be made a fool, by standing up for principles that could not be vindicated on the battlefield."

"Sunday, a Soldier of Company A died and was buried. Everything went on as if nothing had happened. Death is so common that little sentiment is wasted. It is not like death at home."

"They were the dirtiest men I ever saw. A most ragged lean and hungry set of wolves. Yet there was a dash about them that our northern men lacked."

"Before the sunlight faded, I walked all over the narrow field. All around lay the Confederate dead, clad in butternut. As I looked down on the poor pinched faces, all enmity died out. There was no secession in those rigid forms, nor in those fixed eyes staring at the sky. Clearly, it was not their war."

"It had been the bloodiest day in American history. The Union lost 2,108 dead, another 10,293 wounded or missing, double the number of casualties of D-Day, 82 years later. Lee lost fewer men, 10,318 casualties. But that was a quarter of his army."

"McClellan had plenty of reserves waiting outside Sharpsburg, but he never used them. Lee, outnumbered 3-to-1, braced for a new attack all the next day. It never came. On the 18th, Lee and his army slipped back across the Potomac. McClellan could claim a victory, but he could have won the War. Lee’s invasion had been halted, he had suffered terrible losses, but his army had not been destroyed."

"You do have a big problem when you have units that are from states and counties and even towns. And one of those regiments can get in a tight spot in a particular battle, like in the cornfield at Sharpsburg. And the news may be that there are no more young men in that town. They're all dead."

"The dead of the battlefield come up to us very rarely, even in dreams. We see the lists in the morning with paper at breakfast, but dismiss this recollection with a coffee. Mr. Matthew Brady has done something to bring to us the terrible reality and carelessness of the war. If he has not brought bodies and laid them at our doorstep, he has done something very like it."

"It was no longer a question of the Union as it was, that was to be reestablished. It was the Union as it should be, that is to say, washed clean from its original sin. We were no longer merely the Soldiers of a political controversy, we were now the missionaries of a great work of redemption, the armed liberators of millions. The war was ennobled, the object was higher."

"The triumph of the Confederacy would be a victory of the powers of evil, which would give courage to the enemies of progress and damp the spirit of friends, all over the civilized world. The American Civil War is destined to be a turning point, for good or evil, of the course of human affairs."

"The dogmas of the quiet past are inadequate to the stormy present. As our case is new, so we must think anew and act anew. We must disenthrall ourselves, and then we shall save our country. Fellow citizens, we cannot escape history. The fiery trial through which we pass will light us down, in honor or dishonor, to the latest generation. We say we are for Union. The world will not forget that we say this. In giving freedom to the slave, we assure freedom to the free – honorable alike in what we give and what we preserve. We shall nobly save, or meanly lose, the last best hope of Earth."

"I lose patience with the argument that because of someone's time, that his limitations are therefore excusable, or even praiseworthy. It is not true that it was impossible in that time and place to look any higher. Think of Wendell Phillips, who, commenting on Abraham Lincoln's proposal to colonize black people out of the country, was sarcastic. He said, ‘colonize the blacks? A man might as well colonize his own hands, or when the robber is in his house, he might as well colonize his revolver.’"

"It was suicide. They came forward, one man said, as though they were breasting a storm of rain and sleet. Faces and bodies half turned to the storm, shoulders shrugged. The Irish Brigade got within twenty-five paces of the wall. The men of the 24th Georgia who shot them down were Irish too."

"They still thought that to mass their fire they had to mass their men. So they lined up and marched up toward an entrenched line and got blown away."

"More credit for valor is given to Confederate Soldiers. They were supposed to have more élan and dash. Actually, I know of no braver men in either army than the Union troops at Fredericksburg, which is a serious defeat. But to keep charging that wall at the foot of Marye's Heights after all the failures they been in, and they were all failures, is a singular instance of valor."

"In Texas, General John B Magruder captured a Union flotilla at Galveston. After the bombardment, Confederate Major A. M. Lee went aboard the badly hit USS Harriet Lane. There he found his son, a Federal Lieutenant, dying on the deck."

"January 24, near Falmouth. Daylight showed a strange scene. Men, horses, artillery, pontoons, and wagons are stuck in the mud. Rebels put up a sign, says 'Burnside's stuck in the mud'. We can fight rebels, but not in the mud."

"I wish you could hear Joshua give off a command and see him ride along the battalion on his white horse. He looked so splendidly. He told me last night that he never felt so well in his life."

"What makes it strange is that I should have gained twelve pounds living on worms."

"Those hateful gunboats. They look like they were from the lower regions. Now this is the second night that four of them have been anchored in the river opposite our house. [I] see the men crawling about on the boats like so many black snakes."

"It was no uncommon occurrence for a man to find the surface of his pot of coffee swimming with weevils after breaking up hardtack in it. But they were easily skimmed off and left no distinctive flavor behind."

"In March 1863, John Mosby’s Confederate Rangers raided Fairfax Courthouse, Virginia, capturing two captains, 30 Privates, 58 horses and Brigadier General Edwin Stoughton. "For that I am sorry," Lincoln said when told of the capture, "for I can make Brigadier Generals, but I can’t make horses." General Mosby had made life miserable for Northern commanders throughout the War. No other Confederate officer was mentioned favorably as many times in Robert E. Lee’s dispatches as John Singleton Mosby."

"The Confederacy has been done to death by politicians."

"'I make no terms', Davis once said, 'I make no compromise.' He refused to unbend in public, or to curry favor with the press. Privately, he commuted nearly every death sentence for desertion that reached his desk, explaining that "The poorest use of a Soldier was to shoot him.""

"Davis may well have been the only Southerner who understood Southern Nationality, who understood what sacrifices had to be made if the Confederacy was ever going to gel as a nation. He kept saying, "I need the kind of powers that Lincoln got. I need the kind of resources that he got in the draft laws. I need to be able to suspend the writ of habeas corpus like he did." He would have said, "We can’t live by the dogmas of the quiet past any longer." He didn’t say that, but he acted that out. He said, "I have to be given the kinds—this Confederate government needs the kind of national authority—national power that the Union had in order to win." And they didn’t get it because States’ Rights helped kill the Confederacy."

"General, I have placed you at the head of the Army of the Potomac...I have heard in such a way as to believe it of your recently saying that both the Army and the Government needed a dictator. Of course, it was not for this, but in spite of this that I’ve given you command. Only those generals who gain successes can set up as dictators. What I now ask of you is military success, and I will risk the dictatorship."

"The hen is the wisest of all the animal creation, because she never cackles until after the egg is laid."

"Winfield Scott, Henry Halleck, Irving McDowell. George McClellan, John Pope, George McClellan again. Ambrose Burnside, Joseph Hooker. Lincoln could not find the General he needed. He now knew that to win the war, the Southern armies had to be crushed. He had the men, but he needed a General with the will to use them."

"The men knew they were cut loose from their base, knew they were gonna be dependent for their supplies on a very tenuous supply line. But Grant himself gave’em confidence. They believed Grant knew what he was doing, and one great encouragement to them believing that was quite often on the march, whether at night or in the daytime, they’d be moving along the road or over a bridge, and right beside the road would be Grant on his horse. A dust covered man on a dust covered horse, saying “move on, close up”. So they felt very much that he personally was in charge of their movement and it gave them that added confidence."

"More than once during the Civil War, newspapers reported a strange phenomenon. From only a few miles away, a battle sometimes made no sound, despite the flash and smoke of cannon and the fact that more-distant observers could hear it clearly. These eerie silences were called acoustic shadows."

"In the summer of 1863 a Union warship hunting a Confederate commerce raider off Yokohama attacked a Japanese fleet for harassing the colony of Westerners there. The United States won its first naval battle against the Empire of Japan. But the Confederates got away."

"Stand firm you boys from Maine. For not once in a century are men permitted to bear such responsibilities for freedom and justice, for God and humanity, as are now placed upon you."

"General Longstreet, I think, had a good reason to worry about attacking the Union position at Gettysburg. After all it was his corps at Fredericksburg that mowed down the Union troops in front of the stonewall. He could realize what the rifled musket could do, held in the hands of determined troops."

"Lee, by the summer of 1863, had come to believe that he was invincible, and so was the Army of Northern Virginia. The record would almost invite that when you see how they had pummeled one Union General after another, and defeated, or at least fought to a draw the Army of the Potomac almost on every battle up to that point. And Lee really did think that if he asked his boys to do something, they would do it, that they would do anything. He had come by Gettysburg then to believe in his invincibility and that of his men. And it was his doom."

"Probably his finest hour was after the repulse of Pickett's Charge. He walked out into the field, met the men retreating, and said "It is all my fault.""

"Pickett was horrified. When told to rally his Division for a possible Union counterattack, Pickett answered, "General Lee, I have no division now." Pickett never forgave Lee. Years later he said, "That old man had my division slaughtered.""

"William Faulkner, in Intruder in the Dust, says that for every Southern boy, it’s always in his reach to imagine it being 1:00 on an early July day in 1863. The guns are laid. The troops are lined up. The flags are already out of their cases and ready to be unfurled. But it hasn’t happened yet. And he can go back to the time before the war was going to be lost. And he can always have that moment for himself."

"The streets grew quiet when news of Gettysburg reached Clarksville, Tennessee. The 14th Tennessee regiment had left town two years before with 960 men. When the Battle of Gettysburg began, only 365 remained. ‘‘‘By the end of the first day there were 60 men left. By the end of the battle, there were only 3."

"If this war developed some of the most brutal, bestial, and devilish qualities lurking in the human race, it has also shown us how much of the angel there is in the best of men and women."

"Sally Tomkins of Richmond and a staff of only six nursed 1,333 wounded men in her private hospital, and kept all but 73 of them alive; a record unmatched by any other Civil War hospital, North or South."

"The Confederacy was cut in two. The Mississippi had become a Union highway. “The father of waters,” Lincoln said, “again goes unvexed to the sea.”"

"We have lost the Mississippi, and our nation is divided, and there’s not enough left to fight for."

"The Fourth of July would not be celebrated in Vicksburg again for 81 years."

"No group was more outraged than the immigrant Irish of New York, who feared the Blacks, who competed for the lowest-paying jobs, and for whose freedom they did not wish to fight. Democratic politicians fanned their anger."

"Once a black Union Soldier spotted his former owner among a group of Confederate prisoners. 'Hello massa' he said, 'bottom rail on top this time'."

"On the second day of fierce fighting, Rosecrans committed a fatal mistake, ordering his troops to close a gap in the Union line that wasn't there. In the process, he opened up a real one; and Longstreet's Confederates stormed through. The Union forces broke and ran."

"The Civil War was fought in ten thousand places. At Big Bend, Big Sandy, and the Big Sunflower River. From Bunker Hill, West Virginia and Blue Springs, Tennessee, and Cairo, Illinois to Golgotha Church, Georgia, and Christianburg, Kentucky. At Citrus Point on the Cimarron River and along Cowskin Bottom. At Pebbly Run and La Glorieta Pass. And Gettysburg."

"He spoke just 269 words. He started off by reminding his audience that just 87 years had passed since the founding of the nation, and then he went on to embolden the Union cause with some of the most stirring words ever spoken."

"While Grant conferred with Meade, members of his staff described Grant’s triumphs in the West. Veterans of the Army of the Potomac were not impressed. "That may be," one said, "But Grant never met Bobby Lee.""

"In 1861, Lee refused command of the northern army and followed his state out of the Union, not because he approved of slavery or secession, but because he believed his first duty was to Virginia."

"I did only what my duty demanded. I could have taken no other course without dishonor."

"The man who stood before us...was the realized King Arthur. The soul that looked out of his eyes was as honest and fearless as when it first looked out on life. One saw the character as clear as crystal, without complication, and the heart as tender as that of ideal womanhood."

"A Union girl watching Lee ride past her Pennsylvania home said, "I wish he were ours." Early in the War, he was ridiculed as "The King of Spades" because of his fondness for entrenching and "Granny Lee" because of his gray hair and strict ways. But after he drove McClellan off the Peninsula, stopped Pope at Second Manassas, demolished Burnside at Fredericksburg and destroyed Hooker at Chancellorsville, all despite overwhelming odds, he won the unshakable confidence of Jefferson Davis, and the unqualified love of his officers and men."

"That man Grant will fight us everyday and every hour until the end of the war."

"Never before in my lifetime did I ever see such a scene as was enacted when Lee pronounced these words. A yell rent the air which must've been heard for miles around. A courier riding by my side with tears coursing down his cheeks exclaimed 'I would charge hell itself for that old man!'"

"May 7. If we were under any other General except Grant, I should expect to retreat. But Grant is not that kind of Soldier."

"Joseph E. Johnston, the Confederate commander who now faced Sherman, was heartily disliked by President Jefferson Davis, but he was very nearly worshipped by his men. "I do not believe there was a soldier in his army but would gladly have died for him. With him, everything was his soldiers. He would feed his soldiers if the country starved. Sam Watkins." Outgunned, outsupplied and outnumbered 2 to 1, Joseph Johnston could only hope to slow Sherman’s advance and perhaps lure him into making the kind of doomed frontal attack that would help swing the election against Lincoln."

"In the first years of the war, battle was bloody but sporadic. From now on it would be waged without a break. From the Wilderness to Cold Harbor, it would not stop for thirty days. It was, one Soldier wrote, 'Living night and day in the Valley of the Shadow of Death.'"

"Petersburg is a magnificent sloop to the durability of men, on both sides. It was just a rehearsal for World War I, trench warfare. And they stood up very well to it. But the Soldiers always did in that war; its to us almost an incredible bravery, considering the casualties."

"June 23, 1864. The demand down here for killing purposes is far ahead of the supply. Thank God however for the consolation that when the last man is killed, the war will be over. This war you know differs from previous wars in having no object to fight for. It can't be finished until all the men on either the one side or the other are killed. Both sides are trying to do that as fast as they can because it would be a pity to spin this affair out for two or three years longer."

"Sherman will never go to hell. He'll flank the devil and make heaven in spite of the guards."

"In less than six months, from the Wilderness to Spotsylvania, Cold Harbor to Petersburg, Grant had nearly destroyed his Army."

"July 4th 1864. The Glorious fourth has come again and we have had quite a celebration, with guns firing shot and shell into Petersburg to remind them of the day. This day makes four Fourth of Julys I have passed in the Army. The first at Camp Clark, the second at Harrison's Landing, the third at Gettysburg, and today at Petersburg."

"A man who would stay on an ironclad from choice is a candidate for the insane asylum."

"I had a good time in Washington. Lager beer and a horse and buggy, and in the evening, horizontal refreshment! Or, in plainer words, riding a Dutch gal. Had a good time generally, I tell you."

"Women who come before the public are in a bad box now. ... All manner of things, they say, come over the border under the huge hoops now worn, so they are ruthlessly torn off. Not legs but arms are looked for under hoops, and, sad to say, found."

"The news came like a flash of lightning, staggering and blinding everyone. Farewell old fella, we privates loved ya because you made us love ourselves."

"Every evening for a month during the Siege, a Georgia sharpshooter played his cornet so beautifully, that men on both sides stopped to listen."

"To avenge Sherman’s victories in Georgia, six Confederate agents slipped into New York City, armed with phosphorous, intent upon burning down the City's most fashionable hotels. They managed to light 10 fires and set P.T. Barnum's museum ablaze. Firemen put everything out. All but one of the Confederates got away. "The people of the North can't be rolling in wealth and comfort," the captured man said before he was hanged, "while we in the South are bearing all the hardship and privations.""

"I think that the North fought that war with one hand behind its back. [...] I think that if there had been more Southern successes, and a lot more, the North simply would have brought that other arm out from behind its back. I don't think the South ever had a chance to win that war."

"Dear Nat, I think well of the President. He has a face like a Hoosier Michelangelo, so awful ugly it becomes beautiful, with its strange mouth, its deep-cut crisscross lines, and its doughnut complexion. I do not dwell on the supposed failures of his government. He has shown an almost supernatural tact in keeping the ship afloat at all. I more and more rely upon his idiomatic western genius."

"Not the fall of Richmond, nor Wilmington, nor Charleston, nor Savannah, nor Mobile, nor all the combined can save the enemy from constant and exhaustive drain of blood and treasure, which must continue, until he shall discover that no peace is attainable unless based on the recognition of our indefeasible rights."

"If it hadn’t begun before, the Lost Cause was born with his words. As Davis spoke at Richmond, his audience could hear Grant’s guns at Petersburg, just 20 miles away. More and more, it was becoming a Confederacy of the mind."

"Lincoln now issued a proclamation, making the last Thursday in November a national day of Thanksgiving. In the trenches of Petersburg, 120,000 turkey and chicken dinners were served to Grant's huge Army. Only yards away, the Confederates had no feast, but held their fire all day in respect of the Union holiday."

"On the night of November 25th [1864], at the Winter Garden Theater on Broadway, Shakespeare's Julius Caesar opened. Three brothers had starring roles: Edwin, Junius and John Wilkes Booth. At one point in Shakespeare’s play, Cassius speaks of the assassination of Caesar: "How many ages hence shall this, our lofty scene, be acted over, in states unborn and accents yet unknown?""

"By the spring of 1864 Union dead completely filled the military cemeteries of Washington and Alexandria. Secretary of War Stanton ordered the Quartermaster General, Montgomery Meigs to choose a new site. Meigs was a Georgian who had served under Lee in the peacetime army, but he had developed an intense hatred for all his fellow Southerners who fought against the Union he still served. Without hesitation he picked the grounds of Robert E. Lee's home of Arlington for the new Army cemetery. [...] Now the men Grant was sending to fight Robert E. Lee were being buried in Lee's own front yard. And that yard became Arlington National Cemetery: the Union's most hallowed ground."

"We believed that it was most desirable that the north should win. We believed in the principle that the Union is indissoluble. We, or many of us at least, also believed that the conflict was inevitable and that slavery had lasted long enough. But we equally believed those who stood against us held just as sacred convictions that were the opposite of ours. And we respected them, as every man with a heart must respect those who give all for their beliefs."

"He saw from the very beginning how hard a war it was going to be. And when he said how hard a war it was going to be, he was retired under suspicion of insanity; and then brought back when they decided maybe he wasn't so crazy after all."

"We were willing to go anywhere, or to follow anyone who would lead us. We were anxious to flee, fight, or fortify. I have never seen an army so confused and demoralized. The whole thing seemed to be tottering and trembling."

"Sherman’s men were still harsher in South Carolina than they had been in Georgia. "Here is where treason began," a private said, "and by God, this is where it shall end.""

"Fondly do we hope, fervently do we pray, that this mighty scourge of war may speedily pass away. Yet if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled up by the bondsman’s 250 years of unrequited toil shall be sunk and until every drop of blood drawn with the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said 3,000 years ago, so still must be said: the judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether. With malice towards none, with charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strike on to finish the work we are in; to bind up the nation’s wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow and his orphan; to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations."

"I never saw him [Abraham Lincoln] again. Of all the men I ever met, he seemed to possess more of the elements of greatness, combined with goodness, than any other."

"The conduct of the Southern people appears many times to be truely noble, as exemplified for instance in the defense of Petersburg. Old men with silver locks lay dead in the trenches side by side with mere boys of thirteen or fourteen. It almost makes one sorry to have to fight against people who show such devotion for their homes and their country."

"The few men who still carried their muskets had hardly the appearance of soldiers. Their clothes all tattered and covered with mud, their eyes sunken and lusterless. Yet still they were waiting for Gen. Lee to tell them where they were to face the valiant fight."

"The country be damned, there is no country, there has been no country, for a year or more. You are the country to these men."

"They knew each other. Grant remembered Lee very well. Lee didn't quite remember Grant. That was understandable from the time that they were acquainted, back in the early days. But I think it was the sensitivity that the two men had, for each other, and for the moment. Grant not wanting to get to the point too quickly. Lee bringing him up shortly to the point of why they're together. Lee, dressed in his last good uniform. Grant apologizing that he was rushing from the field and didn't have time to change. The scribe being unable to hold the pen steady and having it taken by another Soldier. That, from Lee's point of view, awful moment, and from Grant's point of view, glorious moment, and yet for the two of them, a sad and quiet moment. And Lee taking his leave, and doffing his hat from Traveler, and riding back to his troops after securing those reasonable terms. It was the beginning of the unification of the country."

"If one army drank the joy of victory, and the other the bitter draught of defeat, it was a joy moderated by the recollection of the cost at which it had been purchased, and a defeat mollified by the consciousness of many triumphs. If the victor could recall a Malvern Hill, an Antietam, a Gettysburg, a Five Forks, the vanquished could recall a Manassas, a Fredericksburg, a Chancellorsville, a Cold Harbor."

"A crowd of soldiers waited in front of Lee’s tent. "Boys," he told them, "I have done the best I could for you. Go home now, and if you make as good citizens as you have soldiers, you will do well, and I shall always be proud of you. Good-bye, and God bless you all." He turned and disappeared into his tent."

"My shoes are gone. My clothes are gone. I’m weary, sick, and hungry. My family have all been killed or scattered. I have suffered all this for my country. I love my country, but if this war is ever over, I’ll be damned if I ever love another country."

"You may forgive us," a surrendering Rebel officer [Henry A. Wise] told Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain after the ceremony at Appomattox, "but we won’t be forgiven. There is a rancor in our hearts, which you little dream of. We hate you, sir."

"We are scattered - stunned. The remnant of heart left alive in us is filled with brotherly hate. Whose fault? Everybody blamed [by] somebody else. Only the dead heroes left stiff and stark on the battlefield escape."

"You, white people, are the children of Abraham Lincoln. We are, at best, only his stepchildren. Viewed from the genuine abolition ground, Mr. Lincoln seemed tardy, cold, dull, indifferent. But measuring him by the sentiment of his country, a sentiment he was bound as a statesman to consult, he was swift, zealous, radical and determined. Taking him all in all, measuring the tremendous magnitude of the work before him, considering the necessary means to ends, infinite wisdom has seldom sent any man into the world better fitted for his mission than Abraham Lincoln."

"America has no north, no south, no east, no west. The sun rises over the hills and sets over the mountains. The compass just points up and down. And we can laugh now at the absurd notion of there being a north or a south. We are one and undivided."

"Robert E. Lee swore renewed allegiance to the United States, and by so doing persuaded thousands of his former Soldiers to do the same."

"For he will smile, and give you with unflinching courtesy, prayers, trappings, letters, uniforms and orders, photographs, kindness, valor and advice, and do it with such grace and gentleness, that you will know you have the whole of him penned down, mapped out. Easy to understand. And so you have. All things except the heart. The heart he kept a secret to the end, from all the picklocks of biographers."

"Unable now to eat or speak, he sat on the front porch in the afternoon laboring over his manuscript. He finished it on July 16 and died one week later. Grant's memoirs sold half a million copies and restored his family's fortune."

"Who won the war? The Union Army obviously won the war, in the sense that they were the army left standing and holding their weapons when it was all over. So the soldiers who fought in the Union Army, the generals who directed it, the President who led the country during it, won the war. If we're not talking just about the series of battles that finished up with the surrender at Appomattox, but talking instead about the struggle to make something higher and better out of the country, then the question gets more complicated. The slaves won the war and they lost the war. Because they won freedom, that is the removal of slavery. But they did not win freedom, as they understood freedom."

"I suppose that slavery is merely the horrible statutory expression of a deeper, of a deeper rift between people based on race. And that is what we struggle still to heal. And I think the significance of Lincoln's life, and his victory, was that we will never again enshrine these concepts into law. But now let's see what we can do to erase them from the hearts and minds of people."

"The Civil War is not only the central event of American history, but it's a central event in large ways for the world itself. If we believe today in the 20th century, as surely we must, that popular government is the way to go, it is the way to the emancipation of the human spirit; then the Civil War established the fact that a popular government could survive, that it could overcome an internal secession movement that could destroy it. So the war becomes, in essence, it becomes a testament for the liberation of the human spirit for all time."

"Reliving the war in words, he began to wish he could relive it in fact. And he came to believe that he and his fellow soldiers, gray and blue, might one day be able to do just that, if not here on Earth, then afterwards in Valhalla. [...] And again to hastily don our war gear while the monotonous patter of the long roll summons to battle. Who knows but again the old flags, ragged and torn, snapping in the wind, may face each other and flutter, pursuing and pursued, while the cries of victory fill a summer day. And after the battle, then the slain and wounded will arise, and all will meet together under the two flags, all sound and well, and there will be talking and laughter and cheers. And all will say Did it not seem real? Was it not as in the old days?"

"[on his enforced retirement from the Secret Service] Reason as motive, or reason as logic, or reason as a way of life? They don't have to give me reasons—I can write my own damn reasons, and that is not the same as the half-baked tolerance that comes from no longer caring!"

"[to Peter Guillam] I'm surprised they didn't throw you out with the rest of us. You had all the qualifications for losing your job: good at your work, loyal, discreet..."

"[responding to a rumor about the Circus's deceased chief] Control died of a heart attack, after a long illness, throughout most of which he continued to work. Besides he hated South Africa. He hated everywhere except Surrey, the Circus, and Lord's Cricket Ground."

"You featherhead, Martindale! You pompous, bogus, gossiping old featherhead!"

"Roy Bland is not "red brick." He was at St Antony's College, Oxford."

"As a good socialist, I'm going where the money is, and as a good capitalist, I'm sticking with the revolution, because if you can't beat it spy on it."

"Don't look like that, George; it's the name of the game these days—you scratch my conscience, I'll drive your Jag."

"Alec Guiness - George Smiley"

"Michael Jayston - Peter Guillam"

"Ian Bannen - Jim Prideaux"

"Hywel Bennett - Ricki Tarr"

"Michael Aldridge - Percy Alleline"

"Ian Richardson - Bill Haydon"

"Terence Rigby - Roy Bland"

"Bernard Hepton - Toby Esterhase"

"Anthony Bate - Oliver Lacon"

"Beryl Reid - Connie Sachs"

"Alexander Knox - Control"

"Sian Phillips - Ann Smiley"

"Patrick Stewart - Karla"

"Democracy takes time. Dictatorship is quicker, but too many people get shot."

"Brooklyn Daily Eagle, 1846: In our sun-down perambulations, of late, through the outer parts of Brooklyn, we have observed several parties of youngsters playing "base", a certain game of ball...Let us go forth awhile, and get better air in our lungs. Let us leave our close rooms...the game of ball is glorious."

"It is played everywhere: in parks and playgrounds, prison yards, in back alleys and farmers’ fields; by small boys and old men, raw amateurs and millionaire professionals. It is a leisurely game that demands blinding speed; the only game in which the defense has the ball. It follows the seasons, beginning each year with the fond expectancy of springtime and ending with the hard facts of autumn.Americans have played baseball for more than 200 years; while they conquered a continent, warred with each other and with enemies abroad, struggled over labor and civil rights, and with the meaning of freedom.At its heart lie mythic contradictions: a pastoral game born in crowded cities, an exhilarating democratic sport that tolerates cheating, and has excluded as many as it has included. A profoundly conservative game that often manages to be years ahead of its time. It is an American Odyssey that links sons and daughters to fathers and grandfathers, and it reflects a host of age-old American tensions; between workers and owners, scandal and reform, the individual and the collective.It is a haunted game in which every player is measured with the ghosts of those who have gone before. Most of all it is about time and timelessness, speed and grace, failure and loss, imperishable hope, and coming home.The game’s greatest figures have come from everywhere: coal mines and college campuses, city slums and country crossroads. A brawling Irish immigrant’s son [John McGraw] who for more than half a century preached a rough and scrambling brand of baseball in which anything went so as long victory was achieved; and his favorite player, a college-educated right-hander [Christy Mathewson] so uniformly virtuous that millions of schoolboys worshipped him as 'The Christian Gentleman'.A mill hand [Shoeless Joe Jackson] who could neither read nor write who might have been one of the game's greatest heroes if temptation had not proved too great. A flamboyant federal judge [Kenesaw Mountain Landis] who at first saved baseball from a scandal that threatened to destroy it, but later became an implacable enemy of reform.A miner’s son from Commerce, Oklahoma [Mickey Mantle], who made himself the game’s most powerful switch-hitter despite 17 seasons of ceaseless pain. A tight-fisted Methodist [Branch Rickey], "a cross", one sportswriter said, "between a statistician and an Evangelist", who profoundly changed the game twice. And there were those whose true greatness was never fully measured because of the stubborn prejudice that permeated the nation and its favorite game.Two of baseball's best began life in rural Georgia: A swift and savage competitor who may have been the greatest player of all time [Ty Cobb], but whose uncontrollable rage in the end made him more enemies than friends; and another no less fierce competitor [Jackie Robinson] who, because he managed to hold his temper, made professional baseball a truly national pastime more than a century after it was born.And then there was the Baltimore saloonkeeper’s turbulent son [Babe Ruth], who became the best-known and best-loved athlete in American history."

"It's fun. That's what it is. It's fun. Baseball's more fun than anything else. You can watch it and just love it and enjoy it. I don't think there's anything tremendously philosophical about it. I don't think there's anything metaphysical. I just think it's so much fun to watch. You watch a player do something. You watch a second baseman go up in the air on a double play, and he throws the ball, and he's like a bird in flight. And he's watching to see what happens. You see a first baseman take a bad throw in the dirt and come up with stuff like that and sort of wander off the bag as if there's no problem at all. It's just delightful."

"One summer day in 1839 in Cooperstown, New York, on the shores of Lake Otsego, the local academy was playing a game of town ball against Green's Select School. The rules of town ball were so loose that every hit was fair, and boys sometimes ran headlong into one another. That day, an academy player named Abner Doubleday sat down and, on the spot, drew up the rules for a brand new game and called it Baseball. Abner Doubleday would eventually become a hero at the Battle of Gettysburg, and his game would become the national pastime. Or so the legend has it. Abner Doubleday really was a distinguished soldier, but he was at West Point, not Cooperstown, that summer, never claimed to have had anything to do with baseball, may never have even seen a professional game. Baseball's real history is more complicated."

"1786: a fine day. Play ball in the campus, but am beaten, for I miss catching and striking the ball."

"Of all baseball’s ancestors, townball was by far the most popular. Under its rules, the infield was square. Eight to 15 men played on a side—sometimes, as many as 50. The pitcher, or feeder, was the least important player. It was his job to lob the ball to the striker, who could wait and wait for the pitch he wanted. The runner was out if the ball was caught on the fly, or if he was soaked: hit with the ball while running between bases. By 1800, townball and its many variations were played nearly everywhere. On their way back from the Pacific Ocean, Lewis and Clark played a game of base with the Nez Perce Indians as they prepared to cross the Bitterroot Mountains. In the 1830s, on the western frontier of Missouri, ball was the favorite sport of Joseph Smith, the founder of a new religious sect called the Mormons. But back east in Cooperstown, New York, city fathers passed an ordinance restricting play after merchants complained about too many broken windows. Meanwhile, in New York City, they were starting to play a brand-new version of the game."

"By the spring of 1861, there were 62 member clubs in the National Association of Base Ball Players. Free Blacks in northern cities had established their own teams, and Henry Chadwick was trying to start a baseball club in Richmond, Virginia, when the new season was suddenly interrupted."

"Virginia, April 3, 1862. It is astonishing how indifferent a person can become to danger. The report of musketry is heard but a very little distance from us,...yet over there on the other side of the road is most of our company, playing Bat Ball and perhaps in less than half an hour, they may be called to play a Ball game of a more serious nature."

"In October 1867, as federal troops enforced civil rights laws in the South, the African-American Pythian Baseball Club of Philadelphia applied for membership in the Pennsylvania Association of Baseball Players. They were turned away. Two months later, the National Association took up the issue: "If colored clubs were admitted, there would in all probability be some division of feeling, whereas, by excluding them, no injury could result to anyone." Despite the ban, the Pythians became the first recorded all-black team to play a white team, the Philadelphia City Items: a group of newspapermen. The Pythians won: 27–17. Their captain, Octavius Catto, was later killed in a Philadelphia race riot that started when Blacks attempted to exercise their right to vote."

"On many summer day, I played baseball starting at 8 in the morning, running home at noon for a quick meal, and again with fielding and batting until it was too dark to see the ball. There were times when my head seemed empty of everything but baseball names and figures. I could name the players who led in batting and fielding, and the pitchers who had won the most games. And I had my opinions — about who was better than anybody else in the national game."

"Moses Fleetwood Walker, an Ohio clergyman's son who first played varsity ball for Oberlin College, was the first black to make it all the way to the majors. He joined Toledo of the American Association as a catcher in 1884 and immediately ran into a wall of bigotry. The Irish pitcher, Tony Mullane, ignored Walker's signals because, he said, he wouldn't take orders from a black man. Cap Anson himself tried to have Walker ejected from an exhibition game, threatening not to play if someone didn't "get that nigger off the field!" Anson backed down only when he realized he'd have to forfeit his pay if he really did walk out."

"In 1884, when diphtheria swept through his village, he [John McGraw] was a slight, eager eleven-year-old whose proudest possession was the battered baseball he had been allowed to order from the Spalding catalogue. He watched helplessly as, one by one, his mother and four of his brothers and sisters died. His father took out his grief and anger on his son, beating him so often and so mercilessly that at 12 he feared for his life and ran away from home."

"He [McGraw] supported himself at odd jobs until he won himself a place on the Olean [New York] professional team at sixteen and never again willingly took orders from any man. Although he was short and weighed barely 155 pounds, he held far bigger base runners back by the belt, blocked them, tripped them, spiked them—and rarely complained when they did the same to him."

"Once, early in his career, a shy young outfielder dared compliment a New York Giant for hitting a home run. "Nice hit," he said. The veteran answered, "Go to hell." The young player was Johannes Peter Wagner, "Honus" Wagner, on his way to becoming the greatest player in the National League."

"Now, Ban Johnson ordered his American League owners to have their stadiums patrolled to keep rowdiness down. Players and managers, as well as fans, were expected to behave. But there was one man who constantly challenged his authority. John Joseph McGraw, player-manager of the contentious Baltimore Orioles, had been one of the first National Leaguers to jump to the American League in 1901. But he had not liked it there. He could not bear to have anyone tell him how to play the game. When McGraw refused to stop the constant abuse of umpires—for which he was infamous—Johnson suspended him. McGraw never forgave Johnson. He returned to the National League as manager of the New York Giants, a job he would hold for 31 years, leading his team to 10 pennants and ending in the First Division 28 times."

"For African Americans, it remained the worst of times. Eight-hundred and fifty-eight Blacks were lynched during the decade. Separate but unequal laws held them in virtual bondage in the South, and helped drive thousands north to already dangerously-crowded cities in search of a better life. The National Pastime too had nothing to offer; Blacks were still barred from playing in organized white baseball."

"In 1901, a twenty-year-old elementary school teacher named Branch Rickey managed to scrape together enough money to enter Ohio Wesleyan University. His mother sent him a dollar bill each month to help him out, but he always returned it. Rickey was determined to make something of himself and to do it on his own. To pay his school bills, he helped coach the Ohio Wesleyan Baseball Team, urging his players on with a booming voice no one ever forgot. "Rickey is one of the noisiest men who ever played on the field," wrote a campus sportswriter. When the team stopped in South Bend, Indiana, a hotel manager refused to allow the team’s star, a catcher named Charlie Thomas [a black man], to register. The memory of the player’s humiliation never left Branch Rickey."

"The greatest ballplayer of all time? ... I pick the Detroit man because he is, in my judgment, the most expert man in his profession and is able to respond better than any other ballplayer, to any demand made on him. ... He plays ball with his whole anatomy — his head, his arms, his hands, his legs, his feet. ...I have never seen a man who had his heart more centered in a sport than Cobb has when he’s playing. ... I believe Cobb would continue to play ball if he were charged something for the privilege, and if the only spectator were the groundskeeper."

"Ty Cobb liked sentimentality in his opponents, because he had none himself. Baseball, he said, is something like a war."

"Every rookie gets a little hazing, but most of them just take it and laugh. Cobb took it the wrong way. He came up with an antagonistic attitude, which in his mind turned any little razzing into a life-and-death struggle. He always figured everybody was ganging up on him. He came up from the South and he was still fighting the Civil War. As far as he was concerned, we were all damn Yankees before he even met us."

"[Ty] Cobb got into trouble again in 1909. During a crucial August game between the Tigers and the Philadelphia Athletics, he was accused of deliberately spiking the third baseman, Frank Baker. Connie Mack, the normally courtly Philadelphia manager, even called Cobb "the dirtiest player in baseball," and Ban Johnson suggested that if he didn’t "stop this sort of playing he will have to quit the game." Cobb just went on playing his sort of game, snarling, swearing, shoving, spiking – while hitting .650 in sixteen games at home, and averaging one stolen base every afternoon."

"He never complained, never alibied. He was never known to criticize a teammate or call an opposing ballplayer 'lucky'. He accepted his great success modestly, and the many vicissitudes of his life in silence. He was easy to like, and hard to know."

"Baseball suits the character of this democratic nation. Democracy is government by persuasion. That means it requires patience; that means it involves a lot of compromise. Democracy is the slow politics of the half-loaf. Baseball is the game of the long season where small incremental differences decide who wins and who loses particular games, series, seasons. In baseball, you know going to the ballpark that the chances are you may win, but you also may lose. There's no certainty, no given. You know when a season starts that the best team is going to get beaten a third of the time; the worst team is going to win a third of the time. The argument, over 162 games, is that middle third. So it's a game you can’t like if winning is everything. And democracy is that way, too."

"Back in 1909, a rookie outfielder named Harry Hooper reported for spring training with the Boston Red Sox. He was a college man, and he began to keep a diary of the often-dreary life on the road:Thursday, March 25: Played the bench. Came near getting into game when [Tris] Speaker got hit sliding home, but stayed in the game. Harry Wolter and myself take in moving pictures in evening.Friday, April 16: Walk to top of Washington Monument with Nickerson.... Play left field in afternoon.... Get two hits in four, one single, 3 [putouts, and] one assist to plate.Monday, April 19: President Taft sees game.Monday, April 26: Doc Powers [catcher Mike Powers], who took sick at the finish of opening game, died today. We sent $25 for a wreathMonday, May 10: Rained all day. Sat around in hotel.Wednesday, May 12: We are invited to the Burlesque at the Empire. Good show—for its kind.Monday, June 28: Beat Washington. Got hit off [Walter] Johnson which scores winning run.–Harry Hooper"

"In 1919, no team played better than the Chicago White Sox, Pennant winners of the American League, and few teams were paid as poorly, or got along as badly. Players deliberately crossed each other on the field. During infield practice, no one threw the ball to second baseman Eddie Collins, Chicago’s highest-paid player, all season long. Teammate Chick Gandil had not spoken to Collins since 1915. “I thought you couldn’t win without teamwork,” Collins said later, “until I joined the White Sox, yet somehow we won 100 games and the Pennant that year.” The White Sox were heavy favorites to beat the better-paid but far weaker Cincinnati Reds in the World Series. The Chicago owner was the Old Roman, Charles A. Comiskey, himself a former player, but now among the game’s most parsimonious executives."

"In two years, he [Shoeless Joe Jackson] had risen from a poor mill hand to the rank of a player in the major leagues. The ignorant mill boy had become the hero of millions. Out on the hot prairies, teams of "Joe Jacksons" battled desperately with the "Ty Cobbs." There came a day when a crook spread money before this ignorant idol and he fell. For a few dollars...he sold his honor..."

"[Shoeless Joe Jackson] A South Carolina country boy, had learned to bat from a Confederate veteran who had learned his baseball from Union soldiers in a northern prison camp. He had hoped to be a pitcher until he broke a batter's arm with a wild pitch."

"Jackson could neither read nor write, but he could hit; .408 in his rookie year, .356 lifetime — the third highest average in history. His home runs were called Saturday Specials because most of the textile workers' games in which he got his start were played on Saturdays, and he hit them with a special 48-ounce bat, Black Betsy, made for him by a local lumberman from the north side of a hickory tree and darkened with coat after coat of Jackson's tobacco juice."

"Only at bat did Jackson evidently forget the script—he would bat .375 in the Series."

"Well I was at all the Chicago games, and Eddie Cicotte, one of our pitchers, who had won 29 games and lost 7 during the season, lost his two games, and Lefty Williams lost his two games. I’ve forgotten what his 1919 record was, but it was great, and it was just virtually impossible for those two men to lose two games each and be honest."

"Who is this Baby Ruth? And what does she do?"

"Now, at any other time, something so disruptive of tradition would've been held in check. The moguls of the game would've changed the rules, they've done it twenty times before. But, in the wake of the Black Sox Scandal and the public fascination with Babe Ruth, they simply let it happen."

"Before Ruth, pitchers were taught to pace themselves, only bearing down when someone was on base. Now, there was a danger of a run being scored at any moment. They had to bear down from the first pitch to the last. Between 1910 and 1920, 8 different pitchers won 30 or more games in a season. In the seventy-odd years since the advent of Babe Ruth, there have been just three."

"If you play against the best clubs in the land–white clubs, as you say–it'll be a case of Greek meeting Greek. I fear nobody."

"I got a letter the other day asking why I didn't write about baseball no more, as I used to write about nothing else, you might say. Well, friends, I may as well admit that I have kind of lost interest in the old game. A couple of years ago, a ballplayer named Babe Ruth that was a pitcher by birth was made into an outfielder, on account of how he can bust them. And the masterminds that control baseball says to themselves, that if it is home runs that the public wants to see, why, leave us, give them home runs."

"The Yankees were on their way to a fourth consecutive pennant in 1924, when they were stopped cold by one man: Walter Johnson."

"When we got to the ballpark, we knew we were going to win. That's all there was to it. We weren't cocky. I wouldn't call it confidence, either. We just knew. Like when you go to sleep, you knew the sun's going to come up in the morning."

"The idea of community, the idea of coming together—we’re still not good at that in this country…In moments of crisis, we’re magnificent at it—the Depression, Franklin Roosevelt lifting himself from his wheelchair to lift this nation from its knees. At those moments, we understand community—helping one another. In baseball, you do that all the time. You can’t win it alone. You can be the best pitcher in baseball, but somebody has to get you a run to win the game. It is a community activity. You need all nine people helping one another. I love bunt plays. I love the idea of the bunt. I love the idea of the sacrifice. Even the word is good. Giving yourself up for the good of the whole. That’s Jeremiah. That’s thousands of years of wisdom. You find your own good in the good of the whole. You find your own individual fulfilment in the success of the community—the Bible tried to do that and it didn’t teach you. Baseball did."

"He died two years later, mourned by many as the greatest of all baseball managers, the winner of 10 pennants. Not long after his death, his wife found among his effects a list of all the Black players he had secretly wished he could hire over the decades."

"The Depression was the worst crisis in America since the Civil War. In Harlan County, Kentucky, where the coal industry had died, whole communities tried to survive on dandelions, and blackberries, and pokeweed. Farm prices collapsed, and farm families were driven off the land. In just one day, one quarter of the entire state of Mississippi went under the auctioneer’s hammer. Banks failed, and in several bankrupt cities, the animals in the zoo were shot and the meat distributed to the poor. Hundreds of boys and men thumbed their way to Florida to try out for the big leagues, hoping not for stardom but simply for a job. Half-starved and in rags, without money, gloves or shoes, most were turned away. Some who did get a tryout collapsed on the field from exhaustion and hunger."

"How to stay young:"

"There's a catcher that any big-league club would like to buy for $200,000. His name is Gibson. He can do everything. He hits the ball a mile, and he catches so easy, he might as well be in a rocking chair. Throws like a rifle. Too bad this Gibson is a colored fellow."

"By 1934, the world economy was in ruins, and fascism was on the rise. In Germany, the National Socialists had come to power and [had] begun to institute exclusionary laws against Jews, in an eerie echo of Jim Crow statutes in the United States."

"From then on, until the day he died, Claire Ruth remembered, Ruth sat by the telephone, waiting for a call to manage that never came."

"That winter, Chester Washington of the Pittsburgh Courier sent a telegram to the manager of the struggling Pittsburgh Pirates. 'To: Pie Traynor, Pittsburgh Pirates, Congress Hotel. Know your club needs players. Have an answer to your prayers right here in Pittsburgh. Josh Gibson, catcher. Buck Leonard, first base. S. Page, pitcher and Cool Papa Bell all available at reasonable figures. Would make Pirates formidable pennant contender. What is your attitude? Wire answer, Chester Washington.' There was no answer."

"But for black baseball players in America, nothing had changed. For most, the season didn't end in October. When the weather turned cold, they headed south to Latin America, Cuba, and Mexico, where they found a warm welcome playing wintertime baseball. "Not only do I get more money playing here," shortstop Willie Wells wrote after leaving the Newark Eagles for the Mexican league, "but I live like a king. I've found freedom and democracy here, something I never found in the United States. Here in Mexico, I am a man.""

"On May 1, 1939, something that had not happened for 14 years, happened to the Yankees: Lou Gehrig took himself out of the lineup. He had played in a record 2,130 consecutive games and earned himself the nickname "The Iron Horse." But now, something was terribly wrong. He was only 35, but had begun to play like an old man: dropping balls, missing again and again at bat, sliding his feet along rather than lifting them. During batting practice one afternoon, Joe DiMaggio watched in astonishment as the Yankees' hitting star missed 10 fat pitches in a row. Gehrig could not understand what was wrong; neither could his teammates. But he could not stand the thought of letting them down. He was benching himself, he said, "for the good of the team.""

"In December 1944, a Japanese troop ship was torpedoed off the island of Formosa. Among those lost was 26-year-old Eiji Sawamura, the pitcher who had once struck out Babe Ruth and Lou Gehrig."

"What about the Satchel Paiges of the future? Will they be playing in the Big Leagues? The question becomes more pressing yearly. It has been tossed into old Judge Landis' lap more than once. And the spectacularly adroit manner in which this articulate apostle of Lincoln tosses it out the window, is a source of much marvel."

"He'd helped restore the game's integrity after the Black Sox Scandal of 1919. He'd also done all he could to keep it white. It was true that there had never been no written law banning black players, but Judge Landis had worked ceaselessly to ensure that the old "gentleman's agreement" against hiring them remained firmly in effect. When the Pittsburgh Pirates sought permission to hire slugger Josh Gibson in 1943, Landis bluntly refused: "The colored ballplayers have their own league. Let them stay in their own league." When Bill Veeck Jr. attempted to buy the 8th place Phillies, then restaff it with stars from the Negro Leagues, Landis made sure the team was sold to someone else. And when Leo Durocher told a newspaper man that he'd seen plenty of blacks good enough for the big leagues, Landis forced him to claim he had been misquoted."

"On July 6, 1944, a month after D-day, a young army lieutenant named Jack Roosevelt Robinson boarded a military bus near Fort Hood, Texas. The driver ordered him to get to the back of the bus where the "colored people belong." Robinson refused and was court-martialed. But the Army judges found him fully within his rights and acquitted him. "I had learned," Robinson wrote, "that I was in two wars: one against a foreign enemy, the other against prejudice at home." A few days after Robinson's trial, Kenesaw Mountain Landis died, at the age of 77."

"And Wendell Smith, still pressing for integration, arranged a tryout for Robinson and two other young Negro League players with the Boston Red Sox. Although Boston manager Joe Cronin was impressed by Robinson's skills, Boston passed up the opportunity to become the first major league team to integrate. Instead, it would be the last."

"I don't think there was any other ballplayer who they tried to intimidate more than they tried to intimidate Jackie Robinson. He had tons and tons of guts. Because, boy, let me tell you; when they start throwing at you, at your noggin, you get real mad, but you better be awful careful while you're doing it."

"Swung on, belted... it's a long one... back goes Gionfriddo, back, back, back, back, back, back, back... heeee makes a one-handed catch against the bullpen! Oh, Doctor!"

"I never threw an illegal pitch. The trouble is, once in a while I toss one that ain't never been seen by this generation."

"I can't honestly say that I appreciate the way in which he [Babe Ruth] changed baseball..., but he was the most natural and unaffected man I ever knew...I look forward to meeting him again some day."

"At the funeral, Ruth's old teammates had served as pall bearers. "I'd give $100 for an ice cold beer," said Joe Dugan to Waite Hoyt. Hoyt nodded. "So would the Babe.""

"It was one of the greatest times, watching Mickey, Willie, and the Duke. And you go out to the corner bar, and you would hear the arguments. [Harlem accent] "Willie's the greatest! He can do anything!" [Brooklyn accent] "You're nuts, it's the Duke! The Duke is a classic! You ever see him running with his elbows in like that?" [Bronx accent] "Guys, you are both wrong. It's Mickey and that's it! He's strong, he's blonde, he hits from both sides with power, I think you should really reconsider.""

"DiMaggio played his last game in October of 1951. I was born in March of 1952. So, my dad, and every man that I ever met from my dad's generation, would all tell me the same thing: "Mays: terrific. Mantle: hit the ball out of sight. You never saw DiMaggio, kid. You never saw the real thing.""

"That was the great tragic moment in the 50s in New York. It was the beginning of the decline we continue to observe today. Both O’Malley and Stoneham decided to pull their teams out. Both were profitable. There were just more profits to be made in California. It was a cynical, purely commercial-oriented move, which was immensely profitable in that narrow sense and ripped out the soul of New York City."

"I met Ted Williams last year, and it was like seeing John Wayne. He's a gigantic man. He has a very large, imposing head, but he's very handsome. He's very distinguished, and if you said, "Why, that's Mr. Baseball," if that was his name, you'd buy it. And I walked up to him. And I had a picture, and he signed it to me and all that stuff. And I said, "Ted, I have home movies of you striking out against Bobby Shantz, 1957, Yankee Stadium, second game of a doubleheader." He says to me, "Curveball, low and away.""

"For my money, Ted Williams is the greatest hitter of all-time. I'd take him over Ruth, I'd take him over Cobb. I'd take him over Cobb because of the combination of power and average. I'd take him over Ruth because with Ruth, you can only speculate about what he would have done in the modern era. Ted Williams hit .388 at the age of 39 in 1957. He was what few of us ever become; he was exactly what he set out to be. He said he wanted to be able to walk down the street some day and have people say "There goes the greatest hitter who ever lived". And if they don't say that, it's only because they don't know what they're talking about."

"On February 23rd, 1960, a brass band played Auld Lang Syne and 200 diehard fans watched, as a two-ton wrecking ball, painted to resemble a baseball, began to demolish Ebbets Field in Brooklyn: the home of the Dodgers, from 1913 to 1957. Roy Campanella was given an urn filled with dirt from behind home plate; his home for 10 years, before a car accident ended his career. For 44 years, since Charles Hercules Ebbets had built his park on a garbage dump called Pigtown, Ebbets Field had united the hopes of the borough of Brooklyn and had been home to Wilbert Robinson and Dazzy Vance; Red Barber, and Hilda Chester, and the Dodgers Sym-phony; Leo Durocher, and Pee Wee Reese, and Duke Snider; Larry MacPhail, and Branch Rickey, and Jackie Robinson."

"But now the pressure on Maris intensified. "Would he break Ruth's record," reporters asked again and again. "How the hell do I know," he answered, "I don't want to be Babe Ruth." He wasn't Babe Ruth, and Yankee fans never let him forget it. Even the front office tried to change the lineup to favor the more-popular Mantle. Under the relentless strain, Maris' hair began to fall out in clumps. Always taciturn, he now kept silent: refusing most interviews, keeping to himself."

"Through it all, Maris kept hitting. And in mid-September, Mantle's injuries finally forced him out the race with 54 home runs. In the locker room before the 154th game of the season, with the Yankees 1 win away from the pennant and Maris 2 home runs short of Babe Ruth's record, he broke down. His manager, Ralph Houk, consoled him in his office. "If I can help win the game with a bunt, would you mind if I bunted? It wouldn't make me look bad, would it?" Houk replied: "No; it would make you a bigger man than ever.""

"The institution of the asterisk, the most important typographical symbol in American sport, terribly unfair. To take away Ruth's record, his single season record, was to take away something that was held so close to the hearts of the baseball establishment. They couldn't see doing it. Nonetheless, Roger Maris did it. He did hit 61 home runs. And the fact that it took 162 games, well, he also did it having to play at night, having to bat against the screwball, having to travel to the West Coast for games. And to do it all with a parade, a mob of reporters following him around, I think it’s unfair."

"An amazing thing happened, which was that New York took this losing team to its bosom. Everybody thinks New York only cares about champions, but we cared about the Mets. I remember going to some games in June that year, and they were getting walloped; they were getting horribly beaten. But the crowds came out to the Polo Grounds in great numbers, and people brought horns and blew these horns. And after a while, I realized this was probably anti-matter to the Yankees, who were across the river and had won so long. Winning is not a whole lot of fun if it goes on. But the Mets were human, and that horn, I began to realize, was blowing for me. There’s more Met than Yankee in all of us. What we experience in our lives, there’s much more losing than winning, which is why we love the Mets."

"On December 9, 1965, the day Branch Rickey died, the Cincinnati Reds let outfielder Frank Robinson go. He had played magnificently for them since 1956, when he hit 38 home runs to tie the rookie record. He charged into outfield walls to make spectacular catches, hurled himself into opposing infielders to break up double plays. And in 1961, won the National League's Most Valuable Player award. In casting him off, the Cincinnati owner explained that Robinson was too old at 30. He wasn't. Robinson moved to Baltimore, where in his first season he won the American League Triple Crown and became that league's Most Valuable Player. No other player has ever won the award in both leagues. Once, early in Robinson's career, when Branch Rickey had desperately wanted him for the Pirates, the Reds general manager said, "I wouldn't give you Frank Robinson for your whole team.""

"In 1966, the Boston Red Sox wound up as they so often had before: at the bottom of the standings. Then, in 1967, they got a new manager, Dick Williams, and a new lease on life. Right-hander Jim Lonborg won 22 games, all the while serving in the Army Reserves as the Vietnam War continued to escalate. But it was the play of one man who made the difference. Carl Yastrzemski, the son of a Polish potato farmer from Long Island and Ted Williams’ replacement in left field, almost singlehandedly carried the Red Sox that year. He led the league in nearly every batting category: a .326 average; 44 home runs; 121 runs driven in; and was named Most Valuable Player. "We went from losers to winners," he remembered. "Suddenly it was a joy to go to the ballpark.""

"I often wondered what I would do if I were ever traded because it happened many, many times, and it was "part of the game." And then suddenly it happened to me. I was leaving probably one of the greatest organizations in the world to at that time what was probably the least liked and, by God, this is America, and I'm a human being. I'm not a piece of property. I'm not a consignment of goods."

"Flood did not report to the Phillies' training camp. "I am a man," he told baseball commissioner Bowie Kuhn."

"Dear Mr. Kuhn: After twelve years in the Major Leagues, I do not feel that I am a piece of property to be bought and sold irrespective of my wishes. I believe that any system which produces that result violates my basic rights as a citizen and is inconsistent with the laws of the United States. It is my desire to play baseball in 1970, and I am capable of playing. I have received a contract from the Philadelphia club, but I believe I have the right to consider offers from other clubs before making any decisions. I therefore request that you make known to all Major League clubs my feelings in this matter, and advise them of my availability for the 1970 season. Sincerely, Curt Flood."

"The Commissioner refused to exempt him from the reserve clause. Flood refused to play, and vowed to take his case all the way to the Supreme Court. The century-old struggle between the owners and the players was approaching a climax."

"My best pitch is a strike. A sinking fastball which you grip like this so you only get two seams into it, and if you turn your hand a little bit like this, it comes out, the wind pushes here, forces it down and away from a right-handed hitter. Thereby, he thinks it's a good pitch; at the last minute, it sinks, he hits the top half of the ball, and he hits a groundball to Burleson, Burleson picks it up, throws it to Yastrzemski, one away. And you do that twenty-seven times in a ball game, make perfect sinkers, then you get twenty-seven outs. Unless the hitters are smart, and then what they do is they know it's a sinker, they get up and drive the ball to right-center field between Lynn and Evans, and that's called a double, and then the pitcher has to run behind third base and back him up, and hopefully, they get the guy out at third, or it's a triple. And then, you get a runner at third and less than two outs, so they bring the infield in, and you don't want them to hit a sinker now, you gotta strike them out, so then you go to a cross-seam fastball, which I don't have."

"Brooks Robinson," Cincinnati's Pete Rose said, "belongs in a higher league."

"What was incredible about Clemente was not only how skilled he was at each part of the game, but this kind of ferocity that he played with on each play of the game — even in years when they were pitiful, and they had no chance to get into the pennant or anything like that. He would throw it in, he would pick guys off who got a single who took too much of a turn going around first; there was just something intense about this guy that was not necessarily what was going on in Baseball at that moment."

"When things look dark, void, and altogether hopeless to the colored youth of America..., when they need an inspiring thought that should urge them onward to the road of achievement despite forbidding obstacles, they will only need to read of and reflect upon the remarkable career of Jackie Robinson."

"Things happened to me, all through the three years, that I kind of erased out of my mind. I got threatening letters about kidnapping and things like this. Vicious, racist letters. I went to play in baseball parks like Chicago, Cincinnati. All these ballparks I played in, I had to slip out of the back of the ballpark with escorts, and things like this. It was terrible, terrible. It was bad times for me."

"I don't want them to forget Ruth," Henry Aaron once said, "I just want them to remember me."

"In the decades to come, the memory of the scene might blur. But the memory of the sound will remain with everyone who was here. Not the sound of the cheers, or the sound of Henry Aaron saying "I'm thankful to God it's all over," but the sound of Henry Aaron's bat when it hit the baseball tonight... At home plate, surrounded by an ovation that came down around him as if it were a waterfall of appreciation, he was met by his teammates who attempted to lift him onto their shoulders. But he slipped off into the arms of his father Herbert Sr., and his mother Estella, who had hurried out of the special box for the Aaron family near the Braves' dugout. "I never knew," Aaron would say later," that my mother could hug so tight.""

"Sportswriters called manager Sparky Anderson's Cincinnati Reds, "The Big Red Machine." And in 1975, they more than lived up to their billing, rolling past their nearest Western Division competitors by 20 games, then beating Pittsburgh in three playoff games to win the pennant. It was an extraordinary team, and its spirit was best captured by the third baseman Pete Rose, who said, "I'd walk through hell in a gasoline suit just to play baseball." Like Ty Cobb of an earlier time, Rose played with a ferocity unmatched by anyone in the game. He stretched doubles into triples, singles into doubles, groundouts into singles. "Baseball is a hard game," he said. "Love it hard, and it will love you back hard. Try to play it easy, and the first thing you know, there you are on the outside looking in, wondering what went wrong.""

"In 1975, two first-rate pitchers–Dave McNally of the Montreal Expos and Andy Messersmith of the Los Angeles Dodgers–agreed to play one year without contracts, declared themselves "free agents", and then filed a hearing for a new three–man arbitration panel. Marvin Miller voted for the players. John Gaherin, representing Major League Baseball, voted against them. The third man was a professional arbitrator named Peter Seitz. He was convinced the players were right and begged the owners to come up with a new and equitable contract. They refused. On December 23, 1975, Seitz voted with the players. "The owners were too stubborn and stupid," he said. "They were like the French barons of the 12th century. They had accumulated so much power, they wouldn't share it with anybody." The owners, claiming this would bankrupt baseball, fired Seitz the next day, and went to court to have the decision overturned. This time, they failed. The arbitration was binding; the reserve clause was dead."

"[Marvin] Miller shrewdly offered the owners what seemed, on the surface, a compromise: Players would not be eligible for free-agency until they had played 6 years. The owners gratefully agreed. At least they could still control their most valuable assets for a time. But baseball would never be the same again. The law of supply-and-demand now favored the players."

"It was the Emancipation Proclamation of baseball. When the reserve clause was overturned, it disallowed the owners from signing perpetual one-year contracts to ballplayers, thereby keeping them in the organization for eternity. So, basically, it allowed us to go from plantation to plantation based on the highest bid of the plantation owner. And the owners got very upset about that because it inflated salaries, and then ticket prices went up, and television revenue went up, and they found out they were making more money, and they found out, "Wow, we had a $1.5 million franchise, now we have a $150 million franchise." So, they made money, the players made money. The only people that got hurt were the American public, the fans, the integrity of baseball, and, eventually, the planet Earth."

"Throughout the 1970s, the Pittsburgh Pirates were a perennial National League power. They had been the first club in major league history to field an all black and Hispanic team, and they saw their team as a tight, close-knit family. In 1979, with the disco beat of "We Are Family", they won the pennant, and in the World Series, again faced their old rivals from 1971: Earl Weaver's Baltimore Orioles."

"Willie Stargell really was a good man. All the hopes that he would direct toward other ballplayers came true in his case. I remember the 1971 World Series where those teams [the Baltimore Orioles and Pittsburgh Pirates], same two teams that played seven games, and Stargell was a great player that year, and the leader, had led the League in runs batted in and did almost nothing in the World Series. He popped, struck out – same in the Playoffs. And he never complained, he never said anything, he walked back, he never threw his bat down. And I went up to him after the series, and near the end, and I said, "How can you do this? You must be dying." And his little son, Wilver Jr., Wilver Stargell Jr. was playing in the locker and Willie made a gesture toward him and he said, "The time comes when a man really has to be a man," it just came out of him like that. And that’s the kind of man he was."

"Aguilera brings it in, to Henderson. Swing...and a long one into left field...that ball might leave the park! It's a home run and Boston leads here in the 10th inning!"

"I collected baseball cards, so I could take all my Mickey Mantle and other Yankees, Moose Skowron, and I could put them on my bike, and I could ride down the hill and make me sound like I was going faster. There goes $5,200, $5,200 burning up down the highway. Kids today, they go, "How much is your baseball card worth?" And I'm going, "A plug nickel, son. A plug nickel." I'm saying, "Son, be your own person, do not collect baseball cards. It'll be the ruination of you. Maybe you'll learn economics a little bit or learn what value is, but you're being an entrepreneur. An entrepreneur takes something of no value and makes money on it." And I do not believe in that in the kids. I teach them right off the bat, "Learn the game. Do not look at Youppi, do not look at the Chicken, do not look at that, look at the groundball. Field it cleanly with both hands, be as smooth as silk. Make the nice throw at second, have the nice breaking curveball, subtract on the change-up, see the ball and hit it. Don't associate with the other things of the game. It will eventually bring you down, eat you up, and spit you out.""

"I hope we’re reaching a period where we don’t look up to the ballplayer or down at the ballplayer, but try to look at him levelly and see his gifts and his determination and his craftsmanship as heroic, but at the personal level, don’t demand more of him than we do of people in our own family, ourselves, or our friends."

"We have these unreasonable expectations of all baseball heroes. We want them to be good at life as well as good at baseball. If you think about it, it’s unfair. It’s hard enough to expect them to play baseball well. I’m convinced there is the same division in baseball that there is in life itself: of true heroes; of people of strong principle; of ordinary everyday people; of rogues; of weaklings."

"We’ve done a whole lot of things to hurt it, but it’s a type of thing that you just can’t kill it. You can’t kill Baseball because when you get ready to kill Baseball, something is going to come up, or somebody is going to come up to snatch you...I heard Ruth hit the ball. I’d never heard that sound before, and I was outside the fence but it was the sound of the bat that I had never heard before in my life. And the next time I heard that sound, I’m in Washington, D.C.,...I rushed out…and it was Josh Gibson hitting the ball. And so I heard this sound again. Now I didn’t hear it anymore. I’m in Kansas City...I heard this sound one more time that I had heard only twice in my life. Now, you know who this is? ...Bo Jackson swinging that bat. And now I heard this sound... And it was just a thrill for me. I said, here it is again. I heard it again. I only heard it three times in my life. But now, I’m living because I’m going to hear it again one day, if I live long enough."

"We respect the people of other generations in baseball perhaps more than we respect other generations in other fields in this country. We’ve been called a disposable society, but we don’t dispose of Babe Ruth. We don’t dispose of Walter Johnson. We treat them as though they are equals, and contemporaries though they’re dead. That’s a very special thing to hand onto children."

"Who in the whole country wouldn't take a pill to make more money at their job? You would. "Hey, there's a pill and you're gonna get paid like Steven Spielberg," you would take the pill. You just would."

"(Discussing Ichiro) You have to make the perfect pitch to get him. And he's going to make you throw pitches too, which we hate. Pitchers hate to throw more pitches than they should. And even if you get him to hit the ball the wrong way, he's got such great speed that you never know. You might break his bat and still, he gets a base hit."

"Bonds has certainly been singled out, but that's what happens when the results of your cheating are so lurid: It attracts attention if you hit 73 home runs. What do you expect? If some middle infielder tries to buy another year scuffling in the big leagues with performance-enhancing drugs, it doesn't get as much attention. This is not complicated."

"I think fans have been able to compartmentalize their disappointments and still enjoy it the way they used to, and I think we've built up the same sort of sieve for living experience through that we have with real people in our real lives. We don't expect them to be saints and we no longer expect our athletes to be. We expect them to be the same range of people that we see in the rest of our life. And I think that one of the reasons that baseball has not only not lost popularity but gained it, is as its flaws become apparent, it actually gains depth and humanity even as it loses its fairy tale mythic qualities."

"Is it possible the ancient world had geniuses greater than ours today? The greatest scientific discoveries involve huge leaps of imagination, but you have to leap from somewhere."

"His [Ctesibius's] goal was to invent for the first time something that would accurately tell the time. Sundials were useless at night or when it was cloudy. And for the Greeks, it was most important to measure time inside, especially in the law courts. Justice depended on giving lawyers equal amounts of time."

"Many consider this man to be the father of robotics. His name was Philon of Byzantium. He was also known as Philo, or Philo Mechanicus, because when it came to mechanics, he was thousands of years ahead of the game."

"Now we are on a quest to find the ancient Einsteins, and this journey takes us straight to the amazing library of Alexandria in Egypt. It wasn't just a library with books. It was a center of innovation and technology. It was the silicon valley of the ancient world. The ancient Greeks weren't so constrained by religion, so philosophers and inventors were free to think about how the world works. And it's because of this that what we now call science was born. So they weren't just inventing things. They were inventing the actual processes of science itself."

"So Heron was very much like a modern-day stage magician in Las Vegas, achieving what was seemingly impossible."

"We may attribute the invention of steam power to the industrial revolution a couple of hundred years ago. But like many modern inventions, it's really more of a rediscovery."

"Archimedes was a brilliant inventor and a mathematician. He says to the people around him, "Don't just live in the lap of the gods. Don't be dominated by Mother Nature. You, as a man, can take control of your own destiny.""

"According to legend, nothing could get between him [Archimedes] and his work, and sometimes he would even forget to eat. Ideas would come to him at any moment, and he would scribble them on any available surface. Famously, he was in the bath when he discovered the laws of buoyancy, leading him to run naked through the streets shouting "Eureka!" … Eureka means "I have found it," and it could be argued that Archimedes found out more than anyone else before or since."

"Tragically for all of us, he [Archimedes] was cut down by a Roman soldier because he refused to stop working. … If Archimedes hadn't been killed before his time, what could have he achieved? The industrial revolution could have happened two thousand years earlier. He might have kick-started the modern age."

"In 48 B.C., when Julius Caesar was attacking the city, it's thought that much of the great library was destroyed by fire. What other works of genius were destroyed? We'll never know. There may even have been ancient geniuses of whom we know nothing. Is it possible that one day we'll discover a new ancient Einstein? From what we do know, it's clear that the ancient Greek inventors were all extraordinary men. They began modern science over two thousand years ago. They were truly ancient Einsteins."

"Science rules!"

"We're all just a bunch of bones."

"Get a metal spoon - the bigger and shinier the better. A good soup spoon is best. Look at the back side - the side that won't hold any soup. Your nose is a little big, but you look like you. Now, turn it over so that you're looking at the scoop side. You're upside down? To see why this happens, think of lines of light traveling to the spoon and back to your eye. Since the spoon is curbed, the light hits it at an angle. That means it bounces off at an angle, too. The angle is sharp enough to make the top and bottom cross on the reflected light's way back to your eye."

"Anyway, here's the deal. All animals, including you and me, need oxygen to breathe. Animals breathe in oxygen, breathe out carbon dioxide; plants breathe in carbon dioxide and breathe out oxygen. So even if you're never going to eat my broccoli again, all animals, and that includes you, pal, need plants because we need oxygen to breathe."

"OK, the suit's pressurized, cooling water's flowing, the breathing air is pumped in. If you think about it, it's a spaceship . . . for ONE!"

"James Garner - Capt. Woodrow F. Call"

"Sissy Spacek as Lorena Parker"

"Sam Shepard as Cpl. Pea Eye Parker"

"Ned Beatty as Judge Roy Bean"

"Randy Quaid as John Wesley Hardin"

"Wes Studi as Famous Shoes"

"Charles Martin Smith as Ned Brookshire (railroad accountant)"

"George Carlin as Billy Williams"

"Alexis Cruz as Joey Garza"

"Kevin Conway as Mox Mox"

"James Gammon as Charles Goodnight"

"Tristan Tait as Deputy Ted Plunkert"

"Sonia Braga as Maria Garza"

"Miriam Colon as Estrella"

"Anjanette Comer as Beulah"

"Do not misunderstand me, but understand me fully and my affection for the land. I never said the land was mine to do with as I choose. The one who has a right to dispose of it is the one who has created it. I claim a right to live on my land and accord you the privilege to live on yours."

"It is a dream. It is what people who have come here from the beginning of time have dreamed. It's a dream landscape. To the Native American, it's full of sacred realities: powerful things. It's a landscape that has to be seen to be believed. And, as I say on occasion, it may have to be believed in order to be seen."

"The American realizes that progress is God...[the] destiny of the American people, is to subdue the continent — to rush over this vast field to the Pacific Ocean...to change darkness into light...[and] confirm the destiny of the human race...Divine task! Immortal mission! The pioneer army perpetually strikes to the front. Empire plants itself upon the trails."

"There are all kinds of people on Earth that you will meet some day. They will be looking for a certain stone. They will be people who do not get tired, but who will keep pushing forward, going, going all the time. These people do not follow the way of our great-grandfather. They follow another way. They will travel everywhere, looking for this stone, which our great-grandfather put on the Earth in many places."

"The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints, Salt Lake City. The American nation is doomed to destruction, and no power can save it. It was decreed that the measure that they had meeted unto the Saints shall be meeted unto them. And they are hastening on to their work of desolation, war, bloodshed and destruction. And woe, woe is their doom. The Spirit of Prophecy would cry, "Oh, Lord, hasten thy work. Let the wicked slay the wicked, until the whole land is cleansed.""

"The United States had envisioned an orderly expansion into the West: treaties were supposed to legitimize settlement; surveys were to map the land; then Americans would spread peacefully across it -- all under the guidance and protection of their government. But the California Gold Rush and the war with Mexico changed everything. Americans were now moving west in ever-larger numbers, ahead of their government -- searching for new treasure, clearing land, building towns and cities, starting over."

"But the new settlers brought with them their nation's oldest, and most divisive issue, slavery, and the West became a breeding ground for the bloodshed that would eventually engulf the whole country. When war finally came, the result in the West was chaos: hatred consumed entire communities; criminals led armies; and no one was safe. The federal government, engaged in a struggle simply to hold the country together, could do nothing to stop it."

"A pious New Hampshire woman [Julia Louisa Lovejoy] who moved west hoping to keep the region free of slavery, instead would watch as her Kansas neighbors wantonly killed one another. A devout Mormon [John D. Lee] who had fled west with his people to avoid persecution, would take part in the worst massacre of innocent pioneers in American history. A fanatical Methodist parson [John Chivington] would transform himself into a celebrated soldier -- and then try to build a political career based on murder. While a Cheyenne chief [Black Kettle], who wanted nothing but peace, would find no escape, as time and again his unsuspecting village became a battlefield."

"Listen to me carefully and truthfully follow up my instructions. You chiefs are peacemakers. Though your son might be killed in front of your tepee, you should take a peace pipe and smoke. Then you would be an honest chief."

"It had taken the bloodshed and sacrifice of the Civil War to reunite the nation: North and South. But when the war was over, Americans set out with equal determination to unite the nation: East and West. To do it, they would build a railroad. Its completion would be one of the greatest technological achievements of the age -- signalling at last, as nothing else ever had, that the United States was not only a continental nation, but on its way to becoming a world power. And when the railroad was finally built, the pace of change would shift from the steady gait of a team of oxen, to the powerful surge of a steam locomotive. The West would be transformed."

"May 14, 1876. General George A. Custer, dressed in a dashing suit of buckskin, is prominent everywhere...The General is full of perfect readiness for a fray with the hostile red devils, and woe to the body of scalp-lifters that comes within reach of himself and his brave companions in arms."

"On June 21st, Custer met on the Yellowstone River with Colonel John Gibbon and their superior, Brigadier General Alfred Terry. They knew nothing of Crook's retreat. Terry ordered Gibbon to march to the mouth of the Little Bighorn, while Custer and the Seventh Cavalry would try to locate the Indians and drive them down the valley toward Gibbon and annihilation. As Custer rode off, Gibbon called out to him, "Now Custer, don't be greedy...wait for us." "No," he said, "I will not.""

"June 21, 1876. I now have some Crow scouts with me. They are magnificent-looking men, so much handsomer and more Indian-like than any we have ever seen, and jolly and sportive; nothing of the gloomy, silent red-man about them....they said they [had] heard that I never abandoned a trail; that when my food gave out I ate mule. That was the kind of man they wanted to fight under; they were willing to eat mule, too."

"Fearful that Sitting Bull would elude him, Custer pushed his column hard -- 12 miles the first day, 33 the second, 28 the third. The exhausted troopers began to grumble about the man they privately called "Hard Ass.""

"As they followed the Indians' trail, they did not grasp the full meaning of the fresh pony tracks that seemed to cross and re-cross it. In the last few days, 3,000 more Indians -- Lakotas, Arapahoes and Cheyennes -- had left the reservations to join Sitting Bull. His encampment now stretched out for three miles along the Greasy Grass, a gathering of more than six thousand Indians: eighteen hundred of them warriors."

"On the evening of June 24th, Sitting Bull made his way to a ridge that overlooked the encampment, gave offerings to the Great Spirit and prayed for the protection of his people: "Sitting Bull (Tatanka-Iyotanka)Wakan Tanka, pity me. In the name of the [people] I offer you this sacred pipe. Wherever the sun, the moon, the earth, the four points of the wind, there you are always....save the [people], I beg you...We want to live. Guard us against all misfortune....Pity me. -Sitting Bull""

"The next day was June 25th: a Sunday, cloudless and hot. Custer's Crow scouts spotted the village from a distant hilltop and called Custer up to have a look. Even with a telescope, he was unable to see much more than a white blur on the valley floor. His only concern was that he had already been spotted, that unless he attacked right away, the Indians would split up and flee in so many different bands that he could never stop them."

"Custer had never yet encountered an Indian band that wouldn't run when the cavalry attacked. So he pushed to an attack as quickly as it could be mounted -- a dreadful mistake on his part because his men were exhausted. He should have bivouacked, given them a night's sleep, sent out some scouts to find out how far that village extends in this direction and that, because much of it was hidden by woods along the Little Bighorn."

"He [Custer] knew nothing of the terrain, could not tell how many Indians awaited him. But it had been a surprise attack that had allowed him to destroy Black Kettle's Cheyenne on the Washita eight years earlier. A victory here seemed just as likely."

"The shots quit coming from the soldiers. Warriors who had crept close to them began to call out that all of the white men were dead...All of the Indians were saying these soldiers also went crazy and killed themselves. I do not know. I could not see them. But I believe they did so."

"With our husbands away campaigning against the Indians, our only pleasure after the torrid day was to gather on someone's porch in the long twilight, enjoy what little music we could muster, and try to forget our worries and the devilish mosquitoes. Many among us had sweet voices and, while I played the guitar, everyone sang. Then, glancing across the parade ground, we noticed small groups of soldiers talking excitedly together. And several people came running toward us, faces set and wild-eyed. One was Horn Toad, the Indian scout. He gasped in short, sharp sentences: "Custer killed. Whole command killed." The guitar slipped from my knees to the floor. The pink ball of knitting fell out of Charlotte Moreland's hands. The letter, lying idly in Mrs. Benteen’s lap, fluttered over the rail and onto the lawn."

"It is told around for a fact that I could tell great confessions and bring in Brigham Young and the heads of the church...[But] I will not be the means of bringing troubles on my people, for...this people is a misrepresented and cried-down community. [Yes, a people scattered and peeled...] and if at last they did rise up and shed the blood of their enemies, I won’t consent to give'em up."

"And I think a decision was made, Well, if we sacrifice Lee, maybe the pressures will go away, because at the second trial, the word was sent down to the Mormons that this had to be completed, and that they should vote for conviction. He [Lee] was singled out as the perpetrator, and the Mormons even put it in their Sunday school lessons -- which bothered my family for a long time -- and he was in effect the scapegoat."

"This time, all the members of the Jury were Mormons. All voted to convict. No one else who took part in the massacre was ever brought to trial. Under Utah law, Lee was allowed to choose whether he wished to be shot, hanged or beheaded. He chose to face a firing squad. On March 23, 1877, John D. Lee was escorted to the site of the Mountain Meadows massacre, seated on a coffin and photographed. He made arrangements for each of the two wives who remained true to him to get a copy of the picture. Then he spoke to the little crowd that had come to see him die."

"I have but little to say this morning. Of course I feel that I am upon the brink of eternity...I feel as calm as a summer morn....I am ready to meet my Redeemer....I do not believe everything that is now being taught and practiced by Brigham Young. I do not care who hears it....I studied to make this man's will my pleasure for thirty years. See, now, what I have come to this day! I have been sacrificed in a cowardly, dastardly manner...What confidence can I have in such a man! I have none, and I don’t think my Father in heaven has any..."

"Then, Lee shook hands with his executioners, handed his hat and overcoat to a friend. His last words were to the firing squad: "Center my heart boys," he said. "Don't mangle my body.""

"The first white men of your people who came to our country were named Lewis and Clark. All the Nez Perce made friends with Lewis and Clark, and agreed to let them pass through their country, and never to make war on white men. This promise, the Nez Perce have never broken. It has always been the pride of the Nez Perce that they were the friends of the white man."

"Americans aren't wrong in seeing the West as a land of the future, a land in which astonishing things are possible. What they often are wrong about is that there's no price to be paid for that, that everybody can succeed, or that even what succeeds is necessarily the best for all concerned. The West is much more complicated than that."

"For the first time in the history of the United States, the government decided to exclude a group of immigrants on the basis of race. And it set a precedent, because for the first time you have this new thinking introduced. We can not only determine who could become citizens in this country, but we could determine who could come to this country."

"In California, Chung Sun set sail for home: "I hope you will pardon my expressing a painful disappointment. The ill treatment of my... [my] countrymen may perhaps be excused on the grounds of race, color, language and religion, but such prejudice can only prevail among the ignorant. In civility... [Americans] are very properly styled barbarians. -Chung Sun""

"This is a show [Buffalo Bill's Wild West and Rough Riders of the World] about the conquest of the West, but everything that the audience sees is Indians attacking whites. It's a strange story of an inverted conquest... a celebration of conquest in which the conquerors are the victims. And there's something... deeply weird about this.... It's conquest won without the guilt. We didn't plan it; they attacked us, and when we ended up, we had the whole continent."

"When I was a boy, the Lakota owned the world. The sun rose and set on their land. They sent 10,000 men to battle. Where are the warriors today? Who slew them? Where are our lands? Who owns them?"

"The West was settled without logic. People settled where they wanted to settle, with no regard whatsoever to the ecological consequences or the ability of the land to support them. Los Angeles is probably the preternatural example of a place being where it has no business being. There's absolutely nothing in the immediate environs to support it, but people wanted to live in Los Angeles. And they depleted the groundwater in Los Angeles over several decades, to the point where they had to go elsewhere for water in order to continue supporting the city that had no business being where it was."

"I’m one of the few who didn’t get into a boarding school system till I was sixteen. I grew up with a lot of the older people, listened to the stories. And those stories were inside of me. And I went into a boarding school system, and they killed those stories in that system. I came out of there totally ashamed of who I am, what I am. In the late sixties, I went back to the culture, on my own. I let my hair grow, I started speaking my language. And one of those times, I fasted. I did the vision quest, for five years.And one of those years -- it was a beautiful night, the stars were out, and it was calm, just beautiful. And it was around midnight, and I got up and I prayed. And I sat down, sat there for a while, and then all of a sudden I had these like flashbacks, of Sand Creek, Wounded Knee. And every policy, every law that was imposed on us by the government and the churches hit me one at a time. One at a time. And how it affected my life.And as I sat there I got angrier and angrier, until it turned to hatred. And I looked at the whole situation, the whole picture, and there was nothing I could do. It was too much. The only thing I could do was, when I come off that hill, I’m going to grab a gun and I’m going to start shooting. And go that way. Maybe then my grandfathers will honor me, if I go that route.I got up, and I came around, and I faced the east, and it was beautiful, I mean, it was dawn, light, enough light to see the rolling hills out there, and right above that blue light in that darkness was the sliver of the moon and the morning star. And I wanted to live. I want to live, I want to be happy. I feel I deserve that. But the only way that I was going to do that was if I forgive. And I cried that morning, because I had to forgive.Since then, everyday I work on that commitment. And I don’t know how many people have felt it, but every one of us, if you’re Lakota, you have to deal with that. At some point in your life, you have to address that, you have to make a decision. If you don’t, you’re going to die on a road someplace, either from being too drunk, or you might take a gun to your head. If you don’t handle those situations.So this isn’t history, I mean it’s still with us. What has happened in the past will never leave us. The next hundred, two hundred years, it will be with us. And we have to deal with that every day."

"Gentlemen, why in heaven's name this haste? You have time enough. [...] Why sacrifice the present to the future, fancying that you will be happier when your fields teem with wealth and your cities with people? In Europe we have cities wealthier and more populous than yours, and we are not happy. You dream of your posterity, but your posterity will look back to yours as the golden age, and envy those who first burst into this silent, splendid nature, who first lifted up their axes upon these tall trees, and lined these waters with busy wharves. Why, then, seek to complete in a few decades what the other nations of the world took thousands of years...? [...] Why, in your hurry to subdue and utilize nature, squander her splendid gifts? [...] You have opportunities such as mankind has never had before, and may never have again."

"Jeremy Clarkson"

"Richard Hammond"

"It’s a very British idea – part of me says that it’s bonkers, but it’s very British. It’s a very simple idea: The Victorians failed to build a railway along the Great Glen Way, and it was one part of the railway network in Scotland that was never built. So we had the idea of building a model railway across Scotland. It just had to be done. So we did it, along the Great Glen Way. Model railway enthusiasts are a very maligned bunch, people don’t understand them, but it was a great opportunity to get a bunch of like-minded people together. They were a very diverse group, in ages and genders and interests, all very different, but all united by a love of model railways."

"We had twelve days, to go over 70 miles from the West Coast to the east Coast of Scotland. That involved all the building, and getting the train from one end to the other. In terms of scale, you’re talking about basically half of the trans-Siberian railway built in 12 days. And some of the hills we had to go over were pretty tall – in terms of scale, one of them was the equivalent of one-and-a-half Everests."

"And Silver Lady, our little steam engine, was meant to pootle around on nice level ground, with the occasional very gentle incline of a couple of degrees. She was not built to cross Scotland. That, in its own right, was one of the big challenges. Chris, who came along from the company that actually made Silver Lady, he spent all his time keeping it on the road. We had major overhauls on a nightly basis. At one stage, we had to take the train and run it into the wee small hours of the morning, to keep it going, so we could get the miles under our belts. One coast to the other is a hell of a long way for a little engine."

"Dick Strawbridge - Himself"

"Claire Barratt - Herself"

"Kenneth Branagh as Narrator. (UK version)"

"Avery Brooks as Narrator. (US version)"

"Man does not live by rocks alone."

"Faced with this abyss of evil. I can only respond with an abyss of love."

"I will do whatever God asks."

"[to his friends on sexuality] Listen, sexuality is dear to God. As long as it is an expression of true love. It is the matter we use to give ourselves to another person. Not for fun or for a moment. But completely. Sexuality expressed in an irresponsible moment is only another way that we can dehumanise each other."

"Freedom to worship is a sacrosanct right of workers, all workers! And the fact that we are all here together demonstrates that this Catholic community is already a reality! As we stand here in the middle of Nowa Huta! There is already a church!"

"[when being asked about the Soviets removing their cross from Nowa Huta] Next Christmas, we shall put it back. We will put it back until it stays."

"[seeing Roman for the first time after years] Praise God's mercy."

"[praying] Is this what you always intended to guide me? Like me, perhaps Peter felt great trepidation. Perhaps he would prefer to remain by his lake, with his boat and his nets, like me. In you, there must be suffering ahead. The pope needs to be intimate with suffering. So, guided by you, he arrived here. And now you ask me... to leave Kraków, and my people, my friends, my beloved mountains. If this... is real. So be it. Mary, Totus Tuus. I am all yours."

"[now the new Pope, speaking in Italian] Praised be Jesus Christ. ["Always be praised"] Dear Brothers and Sisters, the eminent Cardinals have called a new bishop of Rome. They have called him from a far country... Also I don't know if... if I can make myself clear in your, in our Italian language. If I make a mistake, I know you will correct me."

"I am not a pope who will stay cloistered. I must get out. I must have contact, or I cannot be a pasture."

"I want to be your voice, the voice of those who cannot speak. The voice of those who are silenced. The voice of the worker who can no longer wait for the full recognition of his dignity as a man and the Son of God."

"We have been called to an impossible task. We can only trust in God and let him lead us."

"[First Encyclical 'Redemptor Hominis'] Man cannot live without love. He remains a being that is comprehensible for himself. His life is senseless. If love is not revealed to him. If he does not encounter love. If he does not experience it, make it his own. If he does not participate intimately in it..."

"Friendship is one of God's greatest gifts. A rare place where the truth is spoken."

"I wish to sing a hymn of praise to Divine Providence which has allowed me to come home as a pilgrim. [the crowd of people cheer] I son of polish land. I John Paul Two. I shout from all the depths of this Millennium, I cry on the vigil of Pentecost: Lord, let your spirit descend! Let your spirit descend and renew the face of the earth. The face of this land!"

"Always remember, you are polish. And music is in your soul. Let me tell you one or two things. First, I love you all. [the crowd of people clap and cheer] Second, second, allow Christ to find you. Third, I wish I could stay with you here, and climb the Tatras. [the people start chanting "Stay with us!"] Too late. It's too late! Where were you last October when I was elected? [the people laugh]"

"Forgiveness is God's might."

"[struggling to walk] I'm a sportsman! I've always been a sportsman! Now every step I take, is like a knife."

"[learning about his illness] Let's get to it. I have work to do."

"To discover your own unique person. This is a difficult undertaking. To become what you must become. You are asked to make sacrifices to bear burdens, and why you do all of this? It is a time in your life, you are asked to encounter the mystery of God. I can tell you this: When your way becomes too difficult. You must always remember, you are not alone. You are not alone. The living God walks beside you. He is, and always will be, your best friend. I also can say to you: I feel so refreshed by our celebration together this day that I believe we must repeat it next year. And the year after, and the year after that! We will call it - we will call it "World Youth Day"! It is our invention! How beautiful you are! God bless you all!"

"[to Cardinal Ratzinger] It's worth suffering for the truth. Without such will, we should not undertake that path. These words are yours, aren't they?"

"[after his last public appearance] We will try again tomorrow..."

"I leave no property behind me of which it is necessary to dispose. My personal notes are to be band. I ask that this be attended to by Father Stanislaw, whom I thank for his collaboration and help, so prolonged over the years and so understanding. As for all other thanks, I must leave them in my heart before God himself. Because it is difficult to express them."

"I believe this film constitutes the latest example of the love that the people had for Pope Wojtyla and their desire to remember him, to see him again and to feel him close."

"Watching this film has renewed in me a sense of profound gratitude to God for having given the Church and the world a Pope of such an exalted human and spiritual nature."

"Writer-director John Kent Harrison wisely finds a narrative focus... as the pope stares down the unraveling Soviets hoping to help free his native Poland. More than anything, Voight's performance... taps into John Paul's emotional life... it's a remarkable performance."

"It was wonderful to understand enough about those areas to be able to put a focus on them — protecting his sense of humor, protecting his emotional presence, his toughness."

"When you have a person who's the most recorded person in history, you have a lot of information coming at you, and it's him-not people talking about him, but him. You can look at his behavior, feel his emotion, see how he touches people, hear his own words in your language, because he spoke so many languages. It's a treasury that's a tremendous gift for all of us. I'm thinking, with all this available, why do we need a fictionalized portrait? But I found that interpreting him was a great joy for me, and I felt we did bring some things to the table that made it a responsible contribution."

"He was always on the go; he didn’t want to miss out on anything. Every person he came into contact with was a gift, and with that gift came something to be given, something to be received, something to learn."

"It has created an urgency in me, to communicate his most important lesson: We are all different, but we are all going to the same place. We are all going to God. And we must never discriminate against any one faith."

"Based on the powerful true story."

"The faith to inspire millions begins with the power of one."

"As the family goes, so goes the nation and so goes the whole world in which we live."

"Jon Voight - Pope John Paul II"

"Cary Elwes - Young Karol Wojtyła (age 18-50)"

"Ben Gazzara - Agostino Cardinal Casaroli"

"Christopher Lee - Stefan Cardinal Wyszyński"

"James Cromwell - Adam Stefan Cardinal Sapieha"

"Wenanty Nosul - Cardinal Stanislaw Dziwisz"

"Michael Caine as Narrator. (UK version)"

"Stockard Channing as Narrator. (US version)"

"Kenneth Branagh as Narrator. (UK version)"

"Edward Gero as Narrator. (US version)"

"Anthony Mackie - Sam Wilson / Falcon / Captain America"

"Sebastian Stan - Bucky Barnes / Winter Soldier"

"Wyatt Russell - John F. Walker"

"Emily VanCamp - Sharon Carter"

"Daniel Brühl - Helmut Zemo"

"Danny Ramirez - Lt. Joaquin Torres"

"Amy Aquino - Dr. Christina Raynor"

"Miki Ishikawa - Leah"

"Clé Bennett - Lemar Hoskins / Battlestar"

"Carl Lumbly - Isaiah Bradley"

"Erin Kellyman - Karli Morgenthau"

"Julia Louis-Dreyfus - Valentina Allegra de Fontaine"

"Adepero Oduye - Sarah Wilson"

"James Franco - Jake Epping / Jake Amberson"

"Chris Cooper - Al Templeton"

"Sarah Gadon - Sadie Dunhill"

"Lucy Fry - Marina Oswald"

"George MacKay - Bill Turcotte"

"Daniel Webber - Lee Harvey Oswald"

"Gil Bellows - Agent James Hosty"

"Tonya Pinkins - Mimi "Miz Mimi" Corcoran"

"Man doesn't find the truth. Man must let the truth find him."

"Yesterday I watched the storks migrate. I envied them. They always know when to leave and which direction to go. Yet, for us so hard to understand what God wants us to do"

"It's not the man who finds the Truth, but the Truth that finds the man, because the Truth is a person - it's Jesus Christ."

"I've always spoken too much. Today for the first time - listened."

"Belatedly I loved thee, O Beauty so ancient and so new, belatedly I loved thee. For see, thou wast within and I was without, and I sought thee out there. Unlovely, I rushed heedlessly among the lovely things thou hast made. Thou wast with me, but I was not with thee. These things kept me far from thee; even though they were not at all unless they were in thee. Thou didst call and cry aloud, and didst force open my deafness. Thou didst gleam and shine, and didst chase away my blindness. Thou didst breathe fragrant odors and I drew in my breath; and now I pant for thee. I tasted, and now I hunger and thirst. Thou didst touch me, and I burned for thy peace."

"Our life is just a shell: fragile, temporary. But there's something that lives within us that is not fragile, it's not temporary. We are all already living in Eternal Life, my son."

"Ambitious, lustful, narcissistic - I was all these things and still am, as we all are. As we all are, but not one of us is alone, ever, not even when we're in desperation, bitterness, darkness. God is close to us. God is more brother than any brother. He's more friend than any friend, more lover than any lover"

"A man is what he loves. If you love the earth, you will be of the earth. If you love God, you will be of God. As the Scriptures say, "We are all gods and children of God.""

"Alessandro Preziosi — Augustine of Hippo"

"Franco Nero — Augustine in old age"

"Monica Guerritore — Monica"

"Johannes Brandrup — Valerius"

"Alexander Held — Valerius in old age"

"Katy Louise Saunders — Lucilla"

"Sebastian Ströbel — Fabius"

"Serena Rossi — Khalidà"

"Götz Otto — Genseric, king of the Vandals"

"Andrea Giordana — Ambrose"

"Cesare Bocci — Romaniano"

"Francesca Cavallin — the Empress mother Iustina"

"Dominic Atherton — the child Emperor Valentinian II"

"Sonia Aquino — Blesilla"

"Michelle Trachtenberg"

"Michiel Huisman and Paxton Singleton - Steven Crain"

"Carla Gugino - Olivia Crain"

"Timothy Hutton and Henry Thomas - Hugh Crain"

"Elizabeth Reaser and Lulu Wilson - Shirley Crain Harris"

"Oliver Jackson-Cohen and Julian Hilliard - Luke Crain"

"Kate Siegel and Mckenna Grace as Theodora "Theo" Crain"

"Victoria Pedretti and Violet McGraw - Eleanor "Nell" Crain Vance"

"Annabeth Gish - Clara Dudley"

"Anthony Ruivivar - Kevin Harris"

"Samantha Sloyan - Leigh Crain"

"Robert Longstreet - Horace Dudley"

"Levy Tran - Trish Park"

"David Dimbleby: You couldn't - you couldn't set our minds at rest on the vexed question of what the Sunday Times did actually pay you for the book? Harold Wilson: No, I don't think it's a matter of interest to the BBC or to anybody else. Dimbleby: But why .. Wilson: If you're interested in these things, you'd better find out how people buy yachts. Do you ask that question? Did you ask him how he was able to pay for a yacht? Dimbleby: I haven't interviewed ... Wilson: Have you asked him that question? Dimbleby: I haven't interviewed him. Wilson: Well, has the BBC ever asked that question? Dimbleby: I don't know ... Wilson: Well, what's it got to do with you, then? Dimbleby: I imagine they have .. Wilson: Why you ask these question, I mean why, if people can afford to buy £25,000 yachts, do the BBC not regard that as a matter for public interest? Why do you insult me with these questions here? Dimbleby: It's only that it's been a matter of .. Wilson: All I'm saying, all I'm saying .. Dimbleby: … public speculation, and I was giving you an opportunity if you wanted to, to say something about it. Wilson: It was not a matter of speculation, it was just repeating press gossip. You will not put this question to Mr. Heath. When you have got an answer to him, come and put the question to me. And this last question and answer are not to be recorded. Is this question being recorded? Dimbleby: Well it is, because we're running film. Wilson: Well, will you cut it out or not? All right, we stop now. No, I'm sorry, I'm really not having this. I'm really not having this. The press may take this view, that they wouldn't put this question to Heath but they put it to me; if the BBC put this question to me, without putting it to Heath, the interview is off, and the whole programme is off. I think it's a ridiculous question to put. Yes, and I mean it cut off, I don't want to read in the Times Diary or miscellany that I asked for it to be cut out. [pause] Dimbleby: All right, are we still running? Can I ask you this, then, which I mean, I .. let me put this question, I mean if you find this question offensive then .. Wilson: Coming to ask if your curiosity can be satisfied, I think it's disgraceful. Never had such a question in an interview in my life before. Dimbleby: I .. [gasps] Joe Haines (Wilson's Press Secretary): Well, let's stop now, and we can talk about it, shall we? Dimbleby: No, let's .. well, I mean, we'll keep going, I think, don't you? Wilson: No, I think we'll have a new piece of film in and start all over again. But if this film is used, or this is leaked, then there's going to be a hell of a row. And this must be .. Dimbleby: Well, I certainly wouldn't leak it .. Wilson: You may not leak it but these things do leak. I've never been to Lime Grove without it leaking."

"As for the questions to Mr Wilson, the Governors insisted in a programme "devoted to the personal and political problems encountered in opposition, it was permissible and proper for a BBC reporter to ask Mr Wilson what money he received. ..." But that was not, apparently the view taken by the BBC hierarchy immediately after the interview on May 11. On May 12, Mr John Crawley, special assistant to Mr Charles Curran, the Director General, telephoned me to say that he had "no hesitation that the whole of that section will be destroyed, formally lost sight of and forgotten..." I still possess my original shorthand note of that conversation. And Mr Curran seemed to agree. Later in May, he sent to Mr Wilson the BBC tape of the interview saying to the best of his knowledge it was the only copy in existence. He even included an internal memo from the producer of the programme Miss [Angela] Pope, to Mr John Grist, head of BBC current affairs, which stated that the "offending question" was on "Take 240/1." That was the question deleted by the Governors at the last minute and whose transcript was subsequently leaked to the press. The undertaking I thought I had received from Mr Crawley was not the only only one: in the tape donated by Mr Curran, Miss Pope can clearly be heard answering the question whether the offending paragraph would be cut out: "Yes, of course we will.""

"Labour politicians, particularly Mr Richard Crossman in the New Statesman have adroitly succeeded in emitting such a smoke screen about the so-called misrepresentations to the participants about the nature of the programme that the truly real issue of the right of Mr Wilson to bully producers over what should or should not be included in a programme about him has been conveniently nudged into the background. The facts are that when Mr Wilson insisted that filmed material should be destroyed and that the BBC promise that no leaks about his sensitivity on this matter be leaked to the Press, the question of whether the the programme was trivial or provocative or misleading was not an issue. That came later. ... The row started because Mr Wilson insisted on personally censoring a BBC documentary about himself. Should he be given that right? Has any other citizen that right?"

"But was the BBC's posture of outraged innocence really justified? It has now admitted that the participants in Yesterday's Men should have been told of the real title beforehand: that the title and presentation changed the character of the film from that originally discussed with trusting politicians: that the theme music coloured the presentation and the participants should have known in advance that Yesterday's Men would invariably be compared with the sycophantic programme about Conservative policies the following night and steps should have been taken "to ensure that they could stand up to such comparison." Despite these damning admissions of misrepresentation and discrimination, there was ... no criticism of it in newspaper headlines. The Guardian was untypical when it proclaimed: "The BBC rejects charges by Yesterday's Men.""

"The BBC is aware of the conventions and practices relating to access to documents of former Prime Ministers and former Cabinet Ministers. The BBC accepts that Mr Harold Wilson conformed with the approved practice and acknowledges that any suggestion to the contrary would be unfounded. It has, however, been represented to the BBC that certain words used in relation to Mr Wilson in the programme Yesterday's Men broadcast on June 17 constitutes an allegation that he has made advantageous use of privileged or secret material in a unjustified fashion in relation to his new book. The BBC had no intention of conveying any such impression, but if the programme was so understood by any viewers the BBC expresses its regret."

"[Opening titles] Due to precedents set by cable networks preceding ours, our Stable & Practices department has asked us to warn you that this program may contain mature language. Historically, Standards & Practices has been employed to regulate the fairness of TV game shows. Here though, they want us to note that sexual situations may be featured in this episode. We really love our S&P for letting us make disclaimers like this, comprised of too much text, even though we still have to say things like this program may contain violence. In a second, we're going to fade out most of this. As always, viewer discretion is advised."

"Hamilton Morris: The smell of burning methaqualone brings me back to 2013 when I sat on this very couch, in the company of a gangster, a dealer, and a few white-pipe enthusiasts. I have been fascinated by psychoactive drugs my whole life. I love to study their chemistry and impact on society, and my work has allowed me to investigate extraordinary substances around the world, yet there are still mysteries that remain. But it was here that I found myself on the scent of a trail that would lead me to one of the most astonishing drug mysteries I have ever encountered. This is the story of the South African Quaalude."

"Hamilton Morris: Do you ever feel bad for these people, or think that maybe they're not bad people? Frank Lyga: No, not at all. You don't have to be a bad person to do criminal activities. We follow the rules and the laws. Nothing personal. I catch you, I catch you. If I don't catch you, I don't catch you."

"Timothy Wyllie: Everything happens intentionally. Nothing is left to chance."

"Hamilton Morris: This bouquet of flowers is for Victor Harold Maddox, the chemist who discovered PCP. It contains 25 white roses to signify the 25 hydrogen atoms, 17 black roses for the 17 carbon atoms, and one blue rose for the nitrogen atom.Vic Maddox made a scientific breakthrough when he accidentally discovered PCP, paving the way for the study of NMDA receptors and revolutionizing the history of anesthesia.E. F. Domino once said that humans, in their never-ending quest to explore and discover, may yet find a pot of therapeutic gold at the end of a spectacular and, at times, rather dismal PCP rainbow.On behalf of a world that has misunderstood your greatest discovery, I'm sorry, Dr. Maddox.I'm sorry."

"Hamilton Morris: Why don't you want people on your land picking mushrooms? Farmer: Because it's a liability. They're going there and get hurt and turn around and sue you. And I think it's a stupid thing to do. I don't use drugs, and I don't think anybody else should. I think it's a drag on society, and you get these people that are addicted, and all they want to do is to lay around and do damn drugs, and don't go to work, and collect welfare. Hamilton Morris: From mushrooms? Farmer: I don't know what it is. Maybe you start on mushrooms, and then you go to marijuana, and the next thing, you're on crack. I don't know. Maybe it's an entry drug, you know. Do something. Don't be getting out here and making mushroom milkshakes or whatever they do with it, instead of going to work. You know, it's too many good things to do in life besides that."

"Hamilton Morris: In order to expedite the unjust punishment of people who use drugs unfamiliar to judges and prosecutors, a system was devised to convert certain substances into chemically and pharmacologically unrelated cannabis equivalents. 1 g of DMT is sentenced as being equivalent to 100 g of marihuana. 1 g of DOM is equivalent to 1.67 kg of marihuana. And 1 g of PCP is equivalent to 10 kg of marihuana."

"Hamilton Morris: The night after our meeting, I received a phone call from Timothy. He told me he had a new lease on life and had decided to get married. I was astonished by his change in mood, and wished him well. But when I called him the following week, he didn't pick up. It wasn't until a month later that I received a message saying he had been hospitalized on a trip to Pennsylvania and had died from heart failure. I was also told that on his deathbed, he had left me a gift."

"Timothy Wyllie: We are all eternal beings, believe me. When you die, you just go on."

"Morris is a good presence on screen – dressed all in white, he has a sort of charming awkwardness not dissimilar to Louis Theroux (they share the same disarming smile) and he allows his subjects plenty of space to tell their stories."

"Mr. Morris has a grinning, laid-back persona, with an approach not dissimilar to Hunter S. Thompson's gonzo journalism. In person Mr. Morris, son of the filmmaker Errol Morris, is bookish and intense, speaking with a fastidious attention to word choice."