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Bill Carter QUOTES

Bill Carter QUOTES

1 " Grief produces an abundant energy that must find a way to burn itself up. And that is the fundamental problem, one that can take a lifetime to exhaust. "

― Bill Carter , Fools Rush in: A True Story of Love, War, and Redemption

2 " If there was a bad guy we could appeal to the people because, like it or not, we, the huddled masses, want our public figures to be good or bad but rarely allow them to mix the two. Not good an bad. We place people in these categories, which then creates a smooth story-line but also a dichotomy. It's why we like our male movie stars to be either bad boys or heroes, our leading ladies sluts or soccer moms. We like our politicians to be tough guys or saints. What we don't like are any signs of actual humanity, a mixture of the two. So we are left with the question: who is the bad guy? And is the bad guy in control of all that is bad? "

― Bill Carter , Fools Rush in: A True Story of Love, War, and Redemption

3 " It's my experience that people want to do something, but become confused by an overwhelming sense of hopelessness, not knowing what to do, and in the end do the only thing they believe they possibly can: nothing. "

― Bill Carter , Fools Rush in: A True Story of Love, War, and Redemption

4 " War is always more complex. Economics, history, religion all have a role, but not for the ones dodging the bullets. They just get blown around like seeds in the wind until the city folk with calculators and Swiss bank accounts stop talking rot from a bunker under a mountain. "

― Bill Carter , Fools Rush in: A True Story of Love, War, and Redemption

5 " Expats of any country are quick to lose their sense of humour, beaten down by a lifetime of defending the land they no longer live in. "

― Bill Carter , Fools Rush in: A True Story of Love, War, and Redemption

6 " It was not our war, but it would be our disgrace, our shame. The West was filling to declare a war over the price of oil, but when it came to the wholesale slaughter of human beings we folded our hands across our chests and tapped our heels, with great anticipation that Sunday's sporting events would be wonderfully entertaining "

― Bill Carter , Fools Rush in: A True Story of Love, War, and Redemption

7 " Surely, when looking back, our lives can, for the most part, be accounted for in our interactions with others. That is where memories are stored, in one another. And yet each person is unique enough in his or her own thoughts that no two people are going to remember the same experience in the same way. "

― Bill Carter , Fools Rush in: A True Story of Love, War, and Redemption

8 " Religion didn't matter to the city drunks but they knew it mattered to the village people. What the city people wanted was land. Power. But because that all sounds rather greedy and a bit crass, they made it religious and ethnic. "

― Bill Carter , Fools Rush in: A True Story of Love, War, and Redemption

9 " Someone who spoke English had been listening to his speeches of promised freedom and would have realized they were the drunken lies of men who have titles of power but no authority to exercise it. "

― Bill Carter , Fools Rush in: A True Story of Love, War, and Redemption

10 " That week we tried everything to bury our heads in the sand. But the problem remains the same world over; the sand is never quite deep enough. "

― Bill Carter , Fools Rush in: A True Story of Love, War, and Redemption

11 " In this journey we call life, we are all ultimately alone. "

― Bill Carter , Fools Rush in: A True Story of Love, War, and Redemption

12 " I watched the refugee kids swim. They are easy to spot. They are the ones whose mothers stand on the shore watching the horizon instead of their child. "

― Bill Carter

13 " Or, said another way, Native Americans, unlike the people of more modern cultures, don't believe talking is the same thing as thinking. "

― Bill Carter , Red Summer: The Danger, Madness, and Exaltation of Salmon Fishing in a Remote Alaskan Village

14 " Two years outside the country, and not much had changed. Still, more people watched the Super Bowl than voted; budgets for defense outweighed education, medicine, and everything else combined.... "

― Bill Carter , Red Summer: The Danger, Madness, and Exaltation of Salmon Fishing in a Remote Alaskan Village