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1 " What is the first anesthetic?Wealth.And if I take your wealth?Necessities.And if I demolish your home, burn your fields?Acknowledgement.And if I make it taboo to sympathize with your plight?Family.And if I kill your family?God.And God......Hasn't said a word in two thousand years. (136) "
― Omar El Akkad , American War
2 " Everyone fights an American war. "
3 " It seemed to Karina further proof that wartime was the only time the world became as simple and carnivorously liberating as it must exist at all times in men's minds. "
4 " Rage wrapped itself around her like a tourniquet, keeping her alive even as it condemned a part of her to atrophy. "
5 " And what she understood-what none of the ones who came to touch Simon’s forehead understood-was that the misery of war represented the world’s only truly universal language. Its native speakers occupied different ends of the world, and the prayers they recited were not the same and the empty superstitions to which they clung so dearly were not the same-and yet they were. War broke them the same way, made them scared and angry and vengeful the same way. In times of peace and good fortune they were nothing alike, but stripped of these things they were kin. The universal slogan of war, she’d learned, was simple: If it had been you, you’d have done no different. "
6 " Her anger at the young woman's stubbornness quickly prompted recollections of all the times she'd found herself on one side or another of these meaningless, bigoted demarcations; all the times she'd been made to feel alien to some stranger's expectation of what constituted the right and normal world---the color of her skin, the ethnicity of the man she'd chosen to marry, even her tomboy daughter. "
7 " All her life she'd had little interest in the workings of boys' minds, which she imagined only as a set of flimsy pinwheels turning in the direction of obvious things. "
8 " She wondered if all boys were like this, their meanness a self defense. "
9 " Even a cruel favor is still a favor "
10 " All these old men want it to be like it was when they were young. But it'll never be like that again, and they'll never be young again, no matter what they do. "
11 " It amazed her, the length at which old men could talk. She wondered if it wasn't the sound of his own voice, rather than the words themselves, that pleased him. He had small dull eyes and the only time they lit up was when he was speaking. "
12 " The sun broke through a pilgrimage of clouds and cast its unblinking eye upon the Mississippi Sea. "
13 " You fight the war with guns, you fight the peace with stories. "
14 " It seemed sensible to crave safety, to crave shelter from the bombs and the Birds and the daily depravity of war. But somewhere deep in her mind an idea had begun to fester-perhaps the longing for safety was itself just another kind of violence-a violence of cowardice, silence, submission. What was safety, anyway, but the sound of a bomb falling on someone else's home? "
15 " This country has a long history of defining its generations by the conflicts that should have killed them. "
16 " Sarat smiled at the thought. "You couldn't just let us kill ourselves in peace, could you?""Come now," said Yousef. "Everyone fights an American war. "
17 " And what she understood - what none of the ones who came to touch Simon's forehead understood - was that the misery of war represented the world's only truly universal language. Its native speakers occupied different ends of the world, and the prayers they recited were not the same and the empty superstitions to which they clung so dearly were not the same - and yet they were. War broke them the same way, made them scared and angry and vengeful the same way. In times of peace and good fortune they were nothing alike, but stripped of these things they were kin. The universal slogan of war, she'd learned, was simple: If it had been you, you'd have done no different. "
18 " Sarat thought about how easy it would be to fix the mistake, to simply redraw the stars properly. But she knew that even broken history is history. The stars, cast wrong, must remain that way. It would be more wrong to change them. "
19 " It is said in the South there is no future, only three kinds of past - the distant past of heritage, the near past of experience, and the past-in-waiting. "
20 " Katrina hated to see the widows in black. They struck her as relics of their own making, frozen in permanent deference to reckless or foolish or simply unfortunate men who were nonetheless dead and sealed away in the earth forever. Husbands never wore black. Husbands were never confined to that kind of passive declaration, were never compelled to sulk across the world for the remainder of their lives, walking signposts of mourning. Husbands were permitted rage, permitted wrath, permitted to avenge their loss by marching out and inflecting on others the very same carnage once inflicted on them. It seemed to Karina further proof that wartime was the only time the world became as simple and carnivorously liberating as it must exist at all times in men's minds. Some of the women she met never used their own names again - she knew them only as Widow This or Widow That - but she'd never met a Widower Anything. "
