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1 " Superficially my war was a comfortable exercise in futility carried out in a grand Scottish hotel amongst the bridge players and swillers of easy-come-by whisky. My chest got me out of active service and into guilt, as I wrote two, or is it three of the novels for which I am now acclaimed. "
― Patrick White , Three Uneasy Pieces
2 " If we are to survive, I must start and end my war this same day. "
― Heather Day Gilbert , Forest Child (Vikings of the New World Saga, #2)
3 " My wife is alone in our full bed too. Her husband, the father of her children, never came back from Iraq. When I deployed the first time she asked her grandmother for advice. Her grandfather served in Africa and Europe in World War II. Her grandmother would know what to do.“How do I live with him being gone? How do I help him when he comes home?” my wife asked. “He won’t come home,” her grandmother answered. “The war will kill him one way or the other. I hope for you that he dies while he is there. Otherwise the war will kill him at home. With you.” My wife’s grandfather died of a heart attack on the living-room floor, long before she was born. It took a decade or two for World War II to kill him. When would my war kill me? "
4 " My war had been so long, my winter so cold. But i had made it home. And for the first time in a long time, i was not afraid. "
― Ruta Sepetys , Salt to the Sea
5 " And I Said To My Soul, Be LoudMadden me back to an afternoonI carry in menot like a woundbut like a will against a woundGive me again enough manto be the childchoosing my own annihilationsTo make of this severed limba wand to conjurea weapon to shatterdark matter of the dirt daubers' nestsgalaxies of glassWhacking glintsbash-dancing on the cellar's fireI am the sound the sun would makeif the sun could make a soundand the gasp of rotstabbed from the compost's lumpen living deathis meO my life my war in a jarI shake you and shake youand may the best ant winFor I am come a whirlwind of wasted thingsand I will ride this tantrum back to Goduntil my fixed self, my fluorescent selfmy grief–nibbling, unbewildered, wall–to–wall selfwithers in me like a salted slug "
― Christian Wiman , Every Riven Thing: Poems
6 " The war was between the Danes and Wessex. My war was with Odda the Younger, and I knew I was driven by pride. The preachers tell us that pride is a great sin, but the preachers are wrong. Pride makes a man, it drives him. It’s the shield wall around his reputation and the Danes understood that. Men die they said, but reputation does not die. What do we look for in a lord? Strength, generosity, hardness, and success. And why should a man not be proud of those things? Show me a humble warrior and I’ll see a corpse. Alfred preached humility, he even pretended to it, loving to appear in church with bare feet and prostrating himself in-front the alter, but he never possessed true humility. He was proud, and men feared him because of it, and men should fear a lord. They should fear his displeasure and fear his generosity will cease. Reputation makes fear, and pride protects reputation, and I marched North because my pride was endangered. "
― Bernard Cornwell , The Last Kingdom (The Saxon Stories, #1)
7 " I never killed anybody and I never developed an intense level of hatred for the enemy. Because my war ended before I ever put on a uniform "
8 " I almost wish I had cancer. Then I’d either beat it or die from it. But my disease, even if successfully treated, will never go away. And it might not kill me. But it will hang over me like the blade of a guillotine; more threatening inert than if the blade suddenly slips and mercifully turns out my lights. This is my war to end all wars. "
