Quotes from book
Killing Rommel

Killing Rommel
Steven Pressfield

Killing Rommel is a 2008 historical fiction novel by Steven Pressfield set in North Africa during World War Two. The book follows the actions of the British Long Range Desert Group .

Steven Pressfield photo

“Nothing relieves Irish despair. The Irishman's complaint lies not with his circumstance, which might be rendered brilliant by labour or luck, but with injustice of existence itself. Death! How could a benevolent Deity gift us with life, only to set such a cruel term upon it? Irish despair knows no remedy. Love fades; fame is fleeting. The only cures are booze and sentiment. That's why the Irish are such noble drunks and glorious poets. No one sings like the Irish or mourns like them. Why? Because they're angels imprisoned in vessels of flesh.”

Steven Pressfield book Killing Rommel

Zachary Stein, p. 27
Killing Rommel (2008)

Steven Pressfield photo

“I could be counted upon to perform the mission they had assigned me, or, if that was unworkable, to improvise and turn my men's exertions upon a secondary undertaking as good as or better than the first.”

Steven Pressfield book Killing Rommel

Richmond Chapman, p. 175, the first criteria for an able commander
Killing Rommel (2008)

Steven Pressfield photo

“One act I will never stand for is leaving our fellows behind. Bugger military protocol, or lofty notions of honour. I can't live with running out on a pal, and I won't let any of you do it either.”

Steven Pressfield book Killing Rommel

Major Mike Mallory, p. 60
Killing Rommel (2008)

Steven Pressfield photo

“These are armed enemy, who have hastened to this site with one object only: to take the lives of my comanions and me. I must take theirs first. No truth could be plainer. Yet at the same time nothing can alter the fact that beneath the fascist insignia of their uniforms, these men are fathers, husbands, sons.”

Steven Pressfield book Killing Rommel

Richmond Chapman, p. 204
Killing Rommel (2008)

Steven Pressfield photo

“You English are loath to embrace the virtues of the warrior. Such an act embarrasses you. You prefer to see yourselves as civilians summoned reluctantly to arms, as-what is the word?-'amatuers.' But you are warriors, you English. You are, Chapman. Trust me, who has faced you in the field.”

Steven Pressfield book Killing Rommel

Oberleutnant Ehrlich, wounded German POW, p. 237
Killing Rommel (2008)

Steven Pressfield photo

“The Mammoth we attacked was not Rommel's after all. […] Rommel himself, we'll learn later, was not in that camp and never had been. At the time of our raid, he was with the 15th Panzer Division, somewhere west of Kidney Ridge, in the thick of the fighting at El Alamein.”

Steven Pressfield book Killing Rommel

Richmond Chapman, p. 177
Killing Rommel (2008)

Steven Pressfield photo

“I had become someone they could look to for leadership and direction, who would shield from meddling from above, and would ask no act of them that he wasn't prepared to perform himself. I provided for my men a framework within which they were freed to use their own qualities of courage, resourcefulness and tenacity.”

Steven Pressfield book Killing Rommel

Richmond Chapman, p. 175, the second criteria for an able commander
Killing Rommel (2008)

Similar authors

Steven Pressfield photo
Steven Pressfield 70
United States Marine 1943
John F. Kennedy photo
John F. Kennedy 469
35th president of the United States of America
Franklin D. Roosevelt photo
Franklin D. Roosevelt 190
32nd President of the United States
George S. Patton photo
George S. Patton 77
United States Army general
Donald J. Trump photo
Donald J. Trump 904
45th President of the United States of America
Eleanor Roosevelt photo
Eleanor Roosevelt 148
American politician, diplomat, and activist, and First Lady…
Ben Carson photo
Ben Carson 191
17th and current United States Secretary of Housing and Urb…
Arthur Miller photo
Arthur Miller 147
playwright from the United States
Dwight D. Eisenhower photo
Dwight D. Eisenhower 173
American general and politician, 34th president of the Unit…
Winston S. Churchill photo
Winston S. Churchill 601
Prime Minister of the United Kingdom