“To say that the first casualty of war is truth is to miss the rather more important point that a principal weapon of war is lies.”

“The first casualty when war comes is truth.”

“Ornate language tended to unsettle him. Passages from nineteenth-century novels might glow like hot coals or squirm like heaps of snakes. In fact, he tried not to read anything written before the First World War. Hemingway made a good cutoff point. Hemingway's sentences were a nice deep blue, and they mostly held still, like stalks of wheat on a windless day.(p18)”

“The tragedy of Central Appalachia is that it is becoming more marginalized in American life just when the country needs more than ever what it has to offer. At a time when the bonds of community and family are visibly failing and people feel more alone than ever, and as they are bombarded from all sides with more demands, and with more "data" that they can possibly digest, Appalachia offers a model for a less frenetic and more measured way of life. People of Appalachian descent elsewhere in the nation-and they number many millions-still feel deep ties to some Appalachian hamlet or hollow as to an ancestral homeland, though they may never have even visited it. As they make their way in the big world of getting and spending they know that something valuable has been lost for all they may have gained. That less frenetic way of life is deeply embedded in Appalachian culture, which has proved incredibly tough and enduring. Yet Appalachia has now been so thoroughly bypassed and forgotten that it cannot give, because the rest of America will not take, what could be it's greatest gift.”

“Experience has shown how deeply the seeds of war are planted by economic rivalry and social injustice.”

“Die Frage, was nun eigentlich war zwischen ihnen, würden sie später erörtern, wenn all die Tage in ihrer Erinnerung zu einem einzigen, für immer unvergeßlichen Tag zusammengeflossen sein würden. Auch die Griechen, wußte Onno, die die Grundlage für die westliche Kultur gelegt hatten, besaßen kein Wort für „Kultur“. Die Wörter entstanden erst, wenn die Sache verschwunden war.”

“In der Morgensonne schlenderte er über den Kurfürstendamm, kaufte sich an einem Kiosk einen Baedeker und nahm ein Taxi zum verwüsteten Reichstag, wo man emsig an der Restaurierung arbeite. Das Gebäude war barhäuptig: die große Mittelkuppel – Bismarcks Helm – war verschwunden, und als er sich umdrehte, sah er am anderen Ende der großen Wiese im Tiergarten das neue Kongreßzentrum, das exakt die Form von Hitlers Mütze hatte.”