2
" -- all that you left behind when you signed up. when you dropped out of that world, went out on the plains with the thousands of other eager, nervous, frightened young men to push the arms of civilization farther into the darkness, and suddenly you had everybody together, raw-boned, freckle-faced crackers and big fucking spades and tough little beaners from the east side, who knows, maybe even some crazy howling ragheads from the desert, inscrutable yellow and red skins with slanted and almond and olive eyes. It didn't matter where you came from, everybody was together, you were all crazed, laughing and shouting all this bullshit jive with reefer and booze and crystal methedrine in your veins and Independence Day going off over your head. And then a shell lands right in the middle and suddenly you're sitting in the pile of smashed cherry pie and scattered limbs screaming AAAAHHHHH! AAAAHHHHH! AAAAHHHHH! over and over again because you alone were untouched, because all those other lives and all those other voices that were laughing and shouting around you a second ago stopped, and were gone forever, and you alone kept talking into the void. "
4
" Ever seen a two-year-old tattering around a garden? There might be a poison ivy, or rose bushes or hawthorne around the edges. There might be spades or secateurs lying on the lawn. The kid doesn't care. He just wants to play with all those brightly coloured things he sees. To him, the world is a safe place. And you might want to rush out and cut back all those sharp spiky plants so they can't hurt him, and you might want to clear away all those dangerous tools just in case, he picks them up and cut himself on them, but you know you shouldn't because if you keep doing that then he either will grow up thinking the can never hurt him, or he might go the other way, and think that everything is dangerous, and he should never go far from your side. So you just watch. And wait. And if he does get rush from the poison ivy or if he does cut his fingers off with the secateurs, then you get him to the hospital as quickly as you can, in the reasonably sure knowledge the he'll never make the same mistake again. "
― Andy Lane , Slow Decay (Torchwood, #3)
7
" When several creatures, men or animals, have worked together to overcome something offering resistance and have at last succeeded, there follows often a pause, as though they felt the propriety of paying respect to the adversary who has put up so good a fight. The great tree falls, splitting, cracking, rushing down in leaves to the final, shuddering blow along the ground. Then the foresters are silent, and do not at once sit down. After hours, the deep snowdrift has been cleared and the lorry is ready to take the men home out of the cold. But they stand a while, leaning on their spades and only nodding unsmilingly as the car-drivers go through, waving their thanks. "
― Richard Adams , Watership Down (Watership Down, #1)
