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Blood on the Tracks
Barbara Nickless
Top 10 Best Quotes
“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”
“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”
“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.”
“One man’s sin is—by quirk of fate or need or desperation—another man’s necessity. —Sydney”
“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”
“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.”
“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.”
“it’s better to light a single candle than to sit and curse the dark.”
“We are defined by family before we are defined by anything else; they are our first and primal debt.”
“War is a drug; it’ll call you back until it kills you. —Corporal”
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Book Keywords:
war, freedom, cost, blood, veterans, past, cost-of-freedom, remember, leech