Ash > Ash's Quotes

“When they referred to their soldiers killed on the battlefield, they sometimes said that they were martyred, and sometimes said they were murdered. I wondered how differently Americans would see wars if the press and the people spoke of our troops in the firing line as having died in a homicide rather than killed in action. The rain fell harder, and bullets flew wildly into the growing darkness that hid the dead ISIS bodies nearby. Hungry, untamed dogs had gouged into the skeletons almost immediately. Some had been dead for days. Some had names and others had been left nameless. Some, maculated by the creatures howling at the moon, had no faces.”
― Hollie S. McKay, Only Cry For The Living

“What is war? Most of it is time spent waiting, woven with bursts of intensity. Time seemed to slow and every second labored by, lacquered with anxiousness as the soldiers stood in a formation, surrounding one building that had been spared the chaos.”
― Hollie S. McKay, Only Cry For The Living

“People floated through the tiny waiting room looking for news of their loved ones, their eyes haunting and desperate. One aging man, dressed in his most elegant suit, pulled out his phone and started showing me photographs of smiling children. All eight of them had been missing since the morning ISIS marauded through their village two summers ago. The goats on his farm had mostly died, he said. Maybe of heartache. Maybe of dehydration. Another, younger man in farmer’s trousers stared out into the sunshine, nervously yanking at strands of hair until small chunks fell upon his plaid suit coat as he slowly went mad with infirmity.”
― Hollie S. McKay, Only Cry For The Living