Geraldine Brooks Quotes

People aren't universally heroic.

The reason that war is such a fascinating subject for writers is because it's a revealer. Put a bunch of people in an adrenaline-fuelled, life-or-death situation and their fundamental behaviours are exposed, the scrim is taken away and the motivations behind each personality come out to play.

Battle is the most magnificent competition in which a human being can indulge. It brings out all that is best; it removes all that is base. All men are afraid in battle. The coward is the one who lets his fear overcome his sense of duty. Duty is the essence of manhood.

The best way to meet a woman is in an emergency situation - if you're in a shipwreck, or you find yourself behind enemy lines, or in a flood.

War makes strange giant creatures out of us little routine men who inhabit the earth.

For a lot of people, Superman is and has always been America's hero. He stands for what we believe is the best within us: limitless strength tempered by compassion, that can bear adversity and emerge stronger on the other side. He stands for what we all feel we would like to be able to stand for, when standing is hardest.

There's no better way to test a person than to put them in the middle of a war. That's clearly going to show what kind of a character you're telling a story about.

I think on some level, that's a fear that exists in everybody, that if we're tested, we won't make the courageous choice. We won't make the decision that would make us heroic. We make the decision that would reveal us to be all too human.

Mankind at its most desperate is often at its best.

In war, people find themselves in extraordinary circumstances, and in those circumstances, they act in extraordinary ways. In war, you see people at their very best and their very worst, acting in ways you could never imagine. War is human drama at its most epic and most intense.

We come to know best what men are, in their worse jeopardizes.

Natural disasters are terrifying - that loss of control, this feeling that something is just going to randomly end your life for absolutely no reason is terrifying. But, what scares me is the human reaction to it and how people behave when the rules of civility and society are obliterated.

When it comes to the pinch, human beings are heroic.

For all men would be cowards if they durst.

In extreme danger, fear feels no pity.

Necessity, which even makes cowards brave ...

I believe that courage is morally neutral. I can well imagine wicked people being brave and good people being timid or afraid. I don't consider it a moral virtue.

… there are times of moral danger when the hardest virtuous resolution to form is flight, and when the most heroic bravery is flight.

Fear brings out the best in some people and the worst in others. It's a test of character, for individuals and nations.

Certainly, hunger can bring out the worst in us. But it can also bring out the best.

If bingeing on bad emergency-room-themed television has taught me anything, it's that crisis situations bring out the best and worst in people.

My only fear is doing something contrary to human nature - the wrong thing, the wrong way, or at the wrong time.

Times of heroism are generally times of terror, but the day never shines in which this element may not work.

Man is almost always as wicked as his needs require.

When danger is far off we may think of our weakness; when it is near we must not forget our strength.