Ash

“I think if you were Satan and you were settin around tryin to think up somethin that would just bring the human race to its knees what you would probably come up with is narcotics.”
― Cormac McCarthy, No Country for Old Men

“While we don’t know the exact numbers, we know that many American women serving in Vietnam were sexually harassed, and some raped, but afraid to report it to higher military authorities for fear of retribution. We were vulnerable and knew the Army Nurse Corps could not, or in some cases would not, protect us. Women who did report were often transferred, lost promotions, or were marked as troublemakers. Our surviving Vietnam meant keeping secrets and watching our backs.”
― Diane Carlson Evans, Healing Wounds

“His mother had walked out years before, leaving his dad to cope with Adrian and his sister. This was long before the term “single-parent family” came into use; back then it was “a broken home,” and Adrian was the only person we knew who came from one. This ought to have given him a whole storetank of existential rage, but somehow it didn’t; he said he loved his mother and respected his father. Privately, the three of us examined his case and came up with a theory: that the key to a happy family life was for there not to be a family—or at least, not one living together. Having made this analysis, we envied Adrian the more.”
― Julian Barnes, The Sense of an Ending

“He knew we were wounded. Wounded by war, wounded by the betrayal of our nation. Wounded twice, once in Vietnam, and again at home.”
― Diane Carlson Evans, Healing Wounds