“War strips away the thin veneer applied slap-dash by the institutions of society and shows Man for exactly what he is.”

“The Dream by Mark BakerA man lay on his bed at the end of his life waiting to die.His dream came to pay his last respectsand bid farewell to the man who had never used it.As it entered the room the man looked down in shame."Why did you not realize me?" the dream asked."Because I was afraid," the man said."Afraid of what," said the dream."I was afraid I would fail.""But haven't you failed by not attempting to use me?"."Yes I did, but I always thought there would be tomorrow.""You Fool!" said the dream" Did it never occur to youthat there was only ever today? the moment that you are in right now?Do you think that now that death is herethat you can put it off until tomorrow?"."No", said the man, a tear gently rolling down his cheek.The dream was softer now, because it knew that there were two types of pain,the pain of discipline and the pain of regret,and while discipline weighs ounces, regret weighs pounds.Then the dream leant forward to gently wipe away the tear and said," You need only have taken the first stepand I would have taken one to meet you,for the only thing that ever separated uswas the belief in your mind that you couldn't have me".Then they said goodbye and they both died.”

“If man could apply half the ingenuity he’s exhibited in the creation of weapons to more sensible ends, there’s no limit to what he might yet accomplish”

“Carpe diem' doesn't mean seize the day--it means something gentler and more sensible. 'Carpe diem' means pluck the day. Carpe, pluck. Seize the day would be "cape diem," if my school Latin servies. No R. Very different piece of advice. What Horace had in mind was that you should gently pull on the day's stem, as if it were, say, a wildflower or an olive, holding it with all the practiced care of your thumb and the side of your finger, which knows how to not crush easily crushed things--so that the day's stalk or stem undergoes increasing tension and draws to a thinness, and a tightness, and then snaps softly away at its weakest point, perhaps leaking a little milky sap, and the flower, or the fruit, is released in your hand. Pluck the cranberry or blueberry of the day tenderly free without damaging it, is what Horace meant--pick the day, harvest the day, reap the day, mow the day, forage the day. Don't freaking grab the day in your fist like a burger at a fairground and take a big chomping bite out of it. That's not the kind of man that Horace was.”

“What I really wanted to do was linger in the tidy lines that Marcus had scored into the earth. I wanted to sit in the exact center of the spiral and wait for the plants to unfurl themselves. I wanted them to climb and rove over my limbs until I burst into bloom with them.”

“Not like me, who would have given anything to shed my cumbersome skin and bones, stripping myself down to marrow, to nothing more than a gambler's heart, which beat fast and true and still believed that somewhere out there, a deck was stacked entirely in my favor.”

“Sometimes I'll spend an hour writing a tiny email. I work on it until I've created the illusion that I've dashed it off in three minutes. If I make a typo, I let it stand. Sometimes in fact I correct the typo without thinking, and then I back up and retype the typo so that it'll look more casual. I don't know why.”