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21 " Maybe we can’t barter our feelings away, trading good deeds for bad ones and expecting to become whole. "
― Monica Hesse , Girl in the Blue Coat
22 " And you don't have to cry about that boy. Boys are silly. The first thing you need is a best friend. "
23 " Fear. That’s right. That was the odor I couldn’t place before. That’s the smell of my beautiful, breaking country. "
24 " But I suppose love doesn't stop, even in wars. There's only so much time a day that you can spend being terrified of something before your instinct to feel natural human emotions would kick in. "
25 " What's the minimum expectation I have for human decency in a war that was entirely inhumane? "
― Monica Hesse , They Went Left
26 " We need girls who are pretty so the soldiers don’t notice that they’re also smart and brave and working against them "
27 " This was not the story of Accomack. This was the story of America. In 1910, back in the peak of the Eastern Shore’s wealth, more than 70 percent of Americans lived in rural counties. It was the norm, it was the standard. Now, rural counties contained only 15 percent of the nation’s population. "
― Monica Hesse , American Fire: Love, Arson, and Life in a Vanishing Land
28 " It is the greatest tragedy and the greatest beauty of a relationship: that at some level, the person you are closest to will always be a total friggin' mystery. "
29 " Can I understand? Was leaving enough? Was deserting enough? What would I consider enough? Would I have asked him to shoot his superior officers before he deserted? Go into hiding rather than enlist at all? Try to spy for the Allies? What's the minimum expectation I have for human decency in a war the was entirely inhumane? "
30 " They’re having a march, another one, a chance for rows of them to peacock through the streets in their helmets and black boots. "
31 " ...and then we walked to get ice cream, in a relationship at its beautiful beginning, in a world that was closer to the end than we ever knew. "
32 " The trouble with being the type of person who would do anything for love was that you would do anything for love. "
33 " You can't change endings by going back and changing beginnings. "
― Monica Hesse , The War Outside
34 " It doesn't matter why people do things. It doesn't matter because sometimes things are wrong, completely wrong, no matter why they were done or what justifications people try to give. "
35 " in a relationship at its beautiful beginning, in a world that was closer to the end than we ever knew. "
36 " We must love the people in front of us. We must forgive ourselves for the things we did to survive. The things we broke. The things that broke us. "
― Monica Hesse
37 " It ended. Of course it did, it finally did, and like a lot of things, by the time it actually ended, people were starting to become a little less aware of the fact that it was still going on at all. "
38 " As economies change, as landscapes change, nostalgia is the only good America will never stop producing. We gorge on it ourselves and pass it down to generations. "
39 " And now we're supposed to live with people who either wished for our deaths or looked the other way while it happened. "
40 " The county would grow used to hearing the wail of sirens in the middle of the night, the sound of engines and tankers crunching over gravel. The county would see landmarks go up in flames and neighbors eye one another with suspicion at the grocery store. At night, the roads would transform into a sea of checkpoints and cop cars; citizens trying to get home while Accomack turned into a police state and the county lit up around them. The county went about its business. The county burned down. "