Rodman Philbrick Quotes

If you get hungry enough, they say, you start eating your own heart.

Some days I would go without any fire at all, and eat raw frozen meat and melt snow in my mouth for water.

In '73 I photographed the cannibals in New Guinea. They treated me OK but they didn't make you feel relaxed... I managed to escape unscathed though, I'm pretty good at that.

Anyway, I lived on the streets and did pretty good until I got caught stealing, what was it? I kicked in a restaurant window, went in and took all the food that I wanted, and while coming out I was grabbed.

If you look at people that have survived crashing in the mountains and lived up in the snow for 40 days - it's possible to do extraordinary feats.

Don't eat me. I have a wife and kids. Eat them.

I might survive a few days at sea. Probably not as long as Pi.

What would it take for me to eat human flesh? If that was the only way to stay alive, I would. I would eat anything.

A more shocking scene cannot be imagined, than that witnessed by the party of men who went to the relief of the unfortunate emigrants in the California Mountains. The bones of those who had died and been devoured by the miserable ones that still survived were lying around their tents and cabins. Bodies of men, women and children, with half the flesh torn from them, lay on every side. A woman sat by the body of her husband, who had just died, eating out his tongue; the heart she had already taken out, broiled, and eat! The daughter was seen eating the flesh of the father - the mother that of her children - children that of father and mother. The emaciated, wild, and ghastly appearance of the survivors, added to the horror of the scene. Language cannot describe the awful change that a few weeks of dire suffering had wrought in the minds of these wretched and pitiable beings. Those who but one month before would have shuddered and sickened at the thought of eating human flesh, or of killing their companions and relatives to preserve their own lives, now looked upon the opportunity by these acts afforded them of escaping the most dreadful of deaths …

People ate all their beasts of burden, and the Caliph had only three horses left. Next they set on their dogs and cats. Finally…people began to eat human flesh…Men stood on their terraces and caught passersby using hooks on the end of ropes.

Bread did not have its usual nourishing power and strength because the grain was not nourished by the warmth of summer sunshine. Hence those who ate it, even in large quantities, were hungry again after a little while. There can be no doubt that the poor wasted away when even the rich were constantly hungry.... Four pennies worth of coarse bread was not enough to feed a common man for one day. The usual kinds of meat, suitable for eating, were too scarce; horse meat was precious; plump dogs were stolen. And, according to many reports, men and women in many places secretly ate their own children....

If the government will not do something to keep the Utes from starving, then they will have to steal.

I need your help. I am injured, near death, and too weak to hike out of here. I am all alone. This is no joke. In the name of God, please remain to save me. I am out collecting berries close by and shall return this evening. Thank you, Chris McCandless.

The physical and emotional qualifications to survive an apocalypse are naturally equalizing.

'The Dovekeepers' is a compelling, beautifully written novel that combines history and fiction into a timeless story of survival and heroism.

I wanted to write 'In Harm's Way' from the young men's point of view of being in a raft, or hanging in a life vest with just their nose poking above the water.

Losing a game is not a tragedy after experiencing border raids and having to eat beetles because you are out of rations.

Do you think there’s anything to eat in this forest?” “Yes,” said the wizard bitterly, “us.

If you were a U.S. Cavalry guy and you thought you were going to be captured by the Apaches, you might kill yourself. If they were with their wives and they thought they were going to be captured, they would shoot their wives for fear of the Apaches getting them.

If you're going to risk dying, there's no sense doing it wet, cold and hungry unless absolutely necessary.

Desperation will allow you to do incredible things in the name of survival.

Zuleika, on a desert island, would have spent most of her time in looking for a man's footprint.

Eating any of these things, goat testicles or what have you, isn't going to be nice, but you get into that zone, you become focussed and you do what you need to do. It's all about one thing: coming home in one piece.

Now I understand why King Stannis let the wildlings through the Wall. He means for us to eat them.

My past is my shadow, it follows me everywhere I go. Well, all those things come from when I had no other choice. They put my back against the wall. I do what I gotta do.