More on this book
Community
Kindle Notes & Highlights
There’s no god waiting to judge us when we die. This is our heaven or hell, the here and now, the pain or the fond memories we leave behind with the living. But I don’t want the forgiveness of society, or Mendez, or even to forgive myself. I just want to do what’s right for these men and women, whose lives I used. Theirs is the only forgiveness that can absolve me.
The humans don’t have this problem. Clever little vermin. Backward, small, and not the best at anything. But good enough at everything. Survivors.
It seemed that the more rules a religion laid down, the more precise its strictures, then the more devious its adherents felt obliged to become. The gods had laid down the law: but frequently that law was inconvenient, so the only way to break it without incurring damnation was to argue over what humans called the small print.
“Heroes never die, and neither do their flawed ideals. So you must both kill and discredit them.”
Kids still loved even the most abusive parent.
“Win the war, and nobody says a word about that kind of stuff until you’re dead,” he said. “Lose the war, and you end up at Nuremberg.”
I have no soul. I know that. But that lets me think the unthinkable and create the things that enable decent, feeling people to survive. That’s the price—for all of us.
learn to think like the enemy, but understand the ways they’re unlike you.
It’s not the enemy’s intentions that you have to consider. It’s their capability.
FOR US, THE STORM HAS PASSED, THE WAR IS OVER. BUT LET US NEVER FORGET THOSE WHO JOURNEYED INTO THE HOWLING DARK AND DID NOT RETURN. FOR THEIR DECISION REQUIRED COURAGE BEYOND MEASURE—SACRIFICE, AND UNSHAKABLE CONVICTION THAT THEIR FIGHT, OUR FIGHT, WAS ELSEWHERE. AS WE START TO REBUILD, THIS HILLSIDE WILL REMAIN BARREN, A MEMORIAL TO HEROES FALLEN. THEY ENNOBLED ALL OF US, AND THEY SHALL NOT BE FORGOTTEN.
Children don’t have the power or awareness that their adult conscience tells them they had at the time.
