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Blood on the Tracks (Sydney Rose Parnell, #1) QUOTES

Blood on the Tracks (Sydney Rose Parnell, #1) QUOTES

1 " For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. "

― Barbara Nickless , Blood on the Tracks (Sydney Rose Parnell, #1)

2 " The bad guys don't wear signs. And all of us are only human. "

― Barbara Nickless , Blood on the Tracks (Sydney Rose Parnell, #1)

3 " It's your job, Marine, to stay alive. If that means getting comfortable with your inner darkness, then that's what you do. "

― Barbara Nickless , Blood on the Tracks (Sydney Rose Parnell, #1)

4 " We are part of what society can't bear to remember. Because if they really think about it, if they really look at us and realize the cost we've paid to keep them safe. They can't live with the guilt. "

― Barbara Nickless , Blood on the Tracks (Sydney Rose Parnell, #1)

5 " I've spent too much of my life trying to leave the past behind. But the past is a leech. Digs its head into you and sucks your blood until it leaves you dry. "

― Barbara Nickless , Blood on the Tracks (Sydney Rose Parnell, #1)

6 " Do not call us heroes. Not if you are calling us that in order to absolve yourself of guilt over sending us off to an unwinnable war. Some of us are heroes. But some of us never had the chance. And some of us got slammed face-first into the fact that when we looked inside, we found nothing heroic at all. —Corporal "

― Barbara Nickless , Blood on the Tracks (Sydney Rose Parnell, #1)

7 " The videos that show the coffins coming back. People don’t want to know. And you and I? We’re part of what society can’t bear to remember. Because if they really think about it, if they really look at us and realize the cost we’ve paid to keep them safe? They can’t live with the guilt. They put up their ribbons and they give us fucking discounts at stores and they say, ‘Thank you for your service’ so they can go home and feel good about themselves. But if they really looked at what war does to us? Hell. They’d never let us come home.” “Stop "

― Barbara Nickless , Blood on the Tracks (Sydney Rose Parnell, #1)

8 " Normal is whatever we’ve gotten used to in our own private universe. It’s war or cancer or poverty. Hopelessness or pain or fear. It’s the cigarette burns on the coffee table and bone-deep exhaustion and the stink of booze and the black eye from—you tell everyone who asks—running into a door. Normal is the devil-ridden quiet of three a.m. when you’re eyeball-to-eyeball with God, and you know you won’t win because the deck is stacked. Best you can do is fold. —Sydney "

― Barbara Nickless , Blood on the Tracks (Sydney Rose Parnell, #1)

9 " One man’s sin is—by quirk of fate or need or desperation—another man’s necessity. —Sydney "

― Barbara Nickless , Blood on the Tracks (Sydney Rose Parnell, #1)

10 " In a moment of crisis , your body takes over . It knows what it needs to do to keep you alive, and that's what it does. This instinct for survival comes from your reptilian brain- most basic, simplistic part of who you are. Your reptilian brain breathes for you. Digest and defecates for you . Watches out for you. And if it deems the threat high enough - it kills for you. "

― Barbara Nickless , Blood on the Tracks (Sydney Rose Parnell, #1)

11 " War is a drug; it’ll call you back until it kills you. —Corporal "

― Barbara Nickless , Blood on the Tracks (Sydney Rose Parnell, #1)

12 " War is a drug; it’ll call you back until it kills you. —Corporal Sydney Rose "

― Barbara Nickless , Blood on the Tracks (Sydney Rose Parnell, #1)

13 " Could be your worst self is also your best. "

― Barbara Nickless , Blood on the Tracks (Sydney Rose Parnell, #1)

14 " Do not call us heroes. Not if you are calling us that in order to absolve yourself of guilt over sending us off to an unwinnable war. Some of us are heroes. But some of us never had the chance. And some of us got slammed face-first into the fact that when we looked inside, we found nothing heroic at all. "

― Barbara Nickless , Blood on the Tracks (Sydney Rose Parnell, #1)

15 " My body was so filled with pain that I could not separate the hurt within from that without. And I was tired. Tired in Cohen’s way, tired with the weight that makes your bones two inches shorter. I was tired of killing. Tired of death. Exhausted from scraping up against the kind of hatred that makes a man slap a little girl, slaughter a woman, shoot a dog. All I wanted was to lie in the snow and the dark and think about Clyde and Dougie and Cohen until I ran out of thoughts. Ran out of feelings. Until the wind abraded my skin to nothing and I was only disarticulated bones. "

― Barbara Nickless , Blood on the Tracks (Sydney Rose Parnell, #1)

16 " In ancient times, soldiers called it going amok—a descent into the battle craziness that took you out of yourself and dropped you into the warrior’s world of blood and darkness. Going amok was a form of insanity prized by the Greeks and Spartans and Vikings—it made for great warriors. Thus did Achilles slay Hector, Beowulf defeat Grendel. But unless you bring your heroes back to themselves—with a ritual purification or with a journey of some sort, like Odysseus’s long struggle home or World War II vets taking weeks to sail back across the sea together—there is a price to pay when the bloodied warrior returns. These days, soldiers return from Iraq and Afghanistan alone and in a matter of hours. We drop them back into society as if they were widgets that have simply gone missing for a while. But a lot of the widgets are bent hopelessly out of shape. "

― Barbara Nickless , Blood on the Tracks (Sydney Rose Parnell, #1)

17 " We are defined by family before we are defined by anything else; they are our first and primal debt. "

― Barbara Nickless , Blood on the Tracks (Sydney Rose Parnell, #1)

18 " Normal is the devil-ridden quiet of three a.m. when you’re eyeball-to-eyeball with God, and you know you won’t win because the deck is stacked. Best "

― Barbara Nickless , Blood on the Tracks (Sydney Rose Parnell, #1)

19 " In modern warfare, people disappear. Not because they run off, or go native, or get taken prisoner. I don’t even mean that they’re gone because they’re dead. I mean they vanish. One second they’re right there, standing next to you, as bright and alive as they will always remain in the eyes of their parents, wives, children. Maybe they’re talking about how the Broncos just put some whup-ass on the Raiders or how they’re going to start a computer repair business when they get home or maybe just about how sweet that first post-dawn cigarette tastes and would you like one, too? And then they take a few steps and the bomb goes off, and when the pink mist is done soaking into the dust, all you’re left with is a single boot and the guy’s hand. Or maybe just his rucksack spewing his med pack and his lucky rabbit’s foot and his last clean pair of underwear across the field. And there you stand, scared all to shit and grieving like you’ve never grieved. But fuck if you aren’t happy, too. Because part of you is like, sweet Jesus, that could have been me. —Sydney Parnell. Personal journal. Cohen "

― Barbara Nickless , Blood on the Tracks (Sydney Rose Parnell, #1)

20 " Nietzsche said that whoever fights monsters should be careful not to become one. I say, sometimes that’s all you’ve got. —Sydney Parnell. "

― Barbara Nickless , Blood on the Tracks (Sydney Rose Parnell, #1)