“They program you to have no emotion – like if somebody sitting next to you gets killed you just have to carry on doing your job and shut up,‘ Steve Annabell, a British veteran of the Falkan War … ‘When you leave the service, when you come back from a situation like that, there’s no button they can press to switch your emotions back on. So you walk around like a zombie. They don’t deprogram you. If you become a problem they just sweep you under the carpet.”

“If we really saw war, what war does to young minds and bodies, it would be impossible to embrace the myth of war. If we had to stand over the mangled corpses of schoolchildren killed in Afghanistan and listen to the wails of their parents, we would not be able to repeat clichés we use to justify war. This is why war is carefully sanitized. This is why we are given war's perverse and dark thrill but are spared from seeing war's consequences. The mythic visions of war keep it heroic and entertaining…The wounded, the crippled, and the dead are, in this great charade, swiftly carted offstage. They are war's refuse. We do not see them. We do not hear them. They are doomed, like wandering spirits, to float around the edges of our consciousness, ignored, even reviled. The message they tell is too painful for us to hear. We prefer to celebrate ourselves and our nation by imbibing the myths of glory, honor, patriotism, and heroism, words that in combat become empty and meaningless.”

“The failure to dissect the cause of war leaves us open for the next installment.”

“Can you go back inside and have a drink while you wait? I don’t like the idea of you sitting outside in your car by yourself. You are by yourself, aren’t you?”“Yes, I’m alone. But I’ll be fine. I just—”“Olivia, I really don’t like it. Can’t you just go back inside? Consider it a favor.”When he puts it like that… “Okay. I’ll go back inside. Just call me when you get here.”

“I sit here very respectfully to listen to you. If what you want to do is put on a show and giggle every time I talk, well then I have no interest in answering your question. So if you'd like to conduct a respectful conversation, I'm happy to do it. If you don't, sit down and I'll answer the next question. What's your choice?”

“Sex to a woman can be like a bad emotion or imbalanced hormones, if you can't get a handle on it, it'll have you walking around mixed up and messed up, happy one moment and inthe next plotting to kill somebody--value ypur goodies and know who you giving them to.”

“looks like i'm gonna do everything myselfmaybe i could use some help but hell,you want something done right you gotta do it yourselfmaybe life is up and down but my life's been (what?)till now i crawled up your butt somehow and that'swhen things got turned around i used to be alivenow i feel pathetic and now i get it what's done is done you just leave it aloneand don't regret it but sometimes,some things turn into dumb thingsand that's when you put your foot down.why did i have to go and meet somebody like you (like you)why did you have to go and hurt somebody like me (like me)how could you do somebody like that?(like that) hope you know that i'm never coming back (never coming back)”