quotes and quotes....

No one ever said it would be simple.
And so, on we go, blindly – as so many people do, always, in their own time – through the age of terror.
Suskind, Ron
The One Percent Doctrine

In California, Frank noticed, “east” was synonymous with certain things, like “education” or as Boyd put it, “learning shit.”
Buckley, Christopher
Boomsday: A Novel

I was frustrated as much by respect and attempts at understanding as by unfeeling ignorance. The worst were blanket accolades and thanks from people “for what you guys did over there.” Thanks for what, I wanted to ask – Shooting kids, cowering in terror behind a berm, dropping artillery on people’s homes? There wasn’t any pride in simply being there. The pride was in our good decisions, in the things we did right. I hoped that I’d done more right than wrong, hoped that I hadn’t been cavalier with people’s lives. I was learning that sometimes the only way to fight evil is with another evil, however good its aim.
Fick, Nathaniel
One Bullet Away: The Making of a Marine Officer

Staring down at the water, I measured my words, running through a justification I’d given myself a thousand times before. The good was abstract. The good didn’t feel as good as the bad felt bad. It wasn’t the good that kept me up at night.

“You sound so unprincipled,” she said, shaking her head. “Why can’t you find peace in what you and your men sacrificed so much to do? Why can’t you be proud?

I took sixty-five men to war and brought sixty-five home. I gave them everything I had. Together, we passed the test. Fear didn't beat us. I hope life improves for the people of Afghanistan and Iraq, but that's not why we did it. We fought for each other.

I am proud.
Fick, Nathaniel
One Bullet Away: The Making of a Marine Officer