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" Whether a man sings or paints, writes or dances some piece of his art should be his confessional, of what he did and what he saw. He should create out of what seems unspeakable and incommunicable to the world until there isn’t a need to do it any longer, until he feels peace away from the most inhumane part of himself. If he only trained his hands for destruction, he must train them in techniques of construction. He should be possessed to produce even if he can’t replace a single thing that he destroyed; he must learn how to bring good into the world out of the strange places where he chose his exile, and the strange people who chose to love him, or the people he hated, shunned, injured or even killed. Every man who knows the snake knows the sword, fire, banishment and a gate that shut forever. He is only damned if he doesn’t choose to control his destiny with his experiences and knowledge. "
― Michael Kurcina , We Fight Monsters: Wisdom and inspiration that speak to the warrior's soul
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" Every man lives confusedly in darkness until he is willing to enter into light by exiting the womb of his life and leaves the safety of that environment. He has to make mistakes, he has to take chances, he has to be willing to be cut down by critics and applauded by praisers even at times ignoring what they say, while he finds out for himself what is true and false, and even then he'll never really know a thing until he leaves comfort behind.
He must disregard everything told to him in all the safe passages he's traveled, and those tubes and tunnels. It's only when he's free of 'back there' will he understand what he left behind. Men will always be strangers to one another and themselves unless each learns by trial and error and ascertains the truth, that what he believed was only theory, and until he applied it, he was but a theorist and not a realist. Truth has a way of cutting through nonsense.
He must make his bones, and sometimes he must pay some very big dues, but in the end, he'll know truth. What he knew before may have been right but it wasn't until he questioned it, and applied it will it sink in and make sense. The cause of any man's confusion is that he never found himself but finding means searching, and a halfhearted attempt often comes from halfhearted men who in the end are just kidding themselves. "
― Michael Kurcina , We Fight Monsters: Wisdom and inspiration that speak to the warrior's soul