The Things They Cannot Say Quotes

“Failure to communalize grief can imprison a person in endless swinging between rage and emotional deadness as a permanent way of being in the world.”
― Kevin Sites, The Things They Cannot Say: Stories Soldiers Won’t Tell You About What They’ve Seen, Done or Failed to Do in War – American Legacy Award Winner

“There is one other wall, of course. One we never speak of. One we never see, One which separates memory from madness. In a place no one offers flowers. THE WALL WITHIN. We permit no visitors. Mine looks like any of a million nameless, brick walls— it stands in the tear-down ghetto of my soul; that part of me which reason avoids for fear of dirtying its clothes and from atop which my sorrow and my rage hurl bottles and invectives at the rolled-up windows of my passing youth. Do you know the wall I mean? —Steve Mason, U.S. Army captain (Vietnam), poet Excerpted from the poem “The Wall Within” by Steve Mason, a decorated Vietnam combat veteran considered the unofficial poet laureate of the Vietnam War. “The Wall Within” was read at the 1984 dedication of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, DC, and was entered in its entirety into the Congressional Record.”
― Kevin Sites, The Things They Cannot Say: Stories Soldiers Won’t Tell You About What They’ve Seen, Done or Failed to Do in War – American Legacy Award Winner

“in his book Achilles in Vietnam, former Veterans Affairs psychiatrist Dr. Jonathan Shay warns about what happens, to both soldiers and society, when those stories are never told. “We can never fathom the soldier’s grief if we do not know the human attachment which battle nourishes and then amputates,” he says. “Failure to communalize grief can imprison a person in endless swinging between rage and emotional deadness as a permanent way of being in the world.”
― Kevin Sites, The Things They Cannot Say: Stories Soldiers Won’t Tell You About What They’ve Seen, Done or Failed to Do in War – American Legacy Award Winner

“As Tick writes in War and the Soul, “Our society must accept responsibility for its warmaking. To the returning veterans, our leaders and people must say, ‘you did this in our name and because you were subject to our orders, we lift the burden of your actions from you and take it onto our shoulders. We are responsible for you, for what you did and the consequences.”
― Kevin Sites, The Things They Cannot Say: Stories Soldiers Won’t Tell You About What They’ve Seen, Done or Failed to Do in War – American Legacy Award Winner

“But he’s happy to draw the distinctions between us. Within minutes of learning about our common conflict zones he tells me, without a whiff of irony, “I hate journalists.” “Get in line,” I tell him. It’s not like I haven’t heard the sentiment before.”
― Kevin Sites, The Things They Cannot Say: Stories Soldiers Won’t Tell You About What They’ve Seen, Done or Failed to Do in War – American Legacy Award Winner

“While he and his father were closer to the political right during their younger years, they’ve moderated and both agree that a two-state solution, one Jewish, one Arab, is the only chance for peaceful cohabitation in the region.”
― Kevin Sites, The Things They Cannot Say: Stories Soldiers Won’t Tell You About What They’ve Seen, Done or Failed to Do in War – American Legacy Award Winner

“I don’t tie in the Palestinian history to my father’s. Their story is about nationalism and independence and not about genocide or murdering a nation.”
― Kevin Sites, The Things They Cannot Say: Stories Soldiers Won’t Tell You About What They’ve Seen, Done or Failed to Do in War – American Legacy Award Winner

“Part of that, Tailer knows, is because of the unit’s experience. Even though reservists like him have left their civilian lives suddenly to put on their IDF (Israel Defense Forces) uniforms again after Emergency Call-Up Order 8, they are not new to Lebanon.”
― Kevin Sites, The Things They Cannot Say: Stories Soldiers Won’t Tell You About What They’ve Seen, Done or Failed to Do in War – American Legacy Award Winner

“The past is now the past—done, finished, a part of my life which has been put away as one does a completed novel. Today, I can once again breathe the cool, refreshing air of springtime. Today, I can reflect on my life and accept myself as one who has made mistakes and rectified them. Today, I have found peace of mind. Today, the grave is open and my soul and I are reunited. Tom Saal, November 2010”
― Kevin Sites, The Things They Cannot Say: Stories Soldiers Won’t Tell You About What They’ve Seen, Done or Failed to Do in War – American Legacy Award Winner

“Killing is the ultimate refutation of our own humanity.”
― Kevin Sites, The Things They Cannot Say: Stories Soldiers Won't Tell You About What They've Seen, Done or Failed to Do in War