A Rift in the Earth Quotes

“think I was less mature but more sure of myself then,” Lin replied. “As you get older, you get more reflective and possibly question more. What protects you when you are young is the belief that you are right. There is a naivety of youth. One loses that naïve certainty when getting older. You understand that life is more complicated.”
― James Reston Jr., A Rift in the Earth: Art, Memory, and the Fight for a Vietnam War Memorial

“She founded a memorial that was to be without form. Called “What Is Missing?” it is a Web-based celebration of the natural world: what it is now, what it used to be, how wonderful the things are that remain, and how many wonders have been lost.”
― James Reston Jr., A Rift in the Earth: Art, Memory, and the Fight for a Vietnam War Memorial

“James Watt, a Wyoming lawyer, would become a central player in the Vietnam Memorial saga. Before Watt resigned under pressure nearly three years later, he gained a reputation as the most hostile steward of the environment in history, pushing for aggressive drilling and mining on public lands and significantly reducing the number of endangered species under federal law.”
― James Reston Jr., A Rift in the Earth: Art, Memory, and the Fight for a Vietnam War Memorial

“I did not want to civilize war by glorifying it or by forgetting the sacrifices involved,” she wrote later. “The price of human life in war should always be clearly remembered.”
― James Reston Jr., A Rift in the Earth: Art, Memory, and the Fight for a Vietnam War Memorial

“if you can’t accept death, you’ll never get over it.”
― James Reston Jr., A Rift in the Earth: Art, Memory, and the Fight for a Vietnam War Memorial

“Indian name, Maya, the name of Buddha’s mother, that means illusion and evokes emptiness. In Hinduism, Maya is a sobriquet for goddess.”
― James Reston Jr., A Rift in the Earth: Art, Memory, and the Fight for a Vietnam War Memorial

“The following Monday, May 4, Ohio National Guard soldiers opened fire on war protesters at Kent State University, killing four, only two of whom were demonstrating.”
― James Reston Jr., A Rift in the Earth: Art, Memory, and the Fight for a Vietnam War Memorial

“So, it was left to a stocky ex-Marine with curly red hair to express an unqualified love of country. “The key thing that’s been missing is simply according to the people who served, the dignity of their experience,”
― James Reston Jr., A Rift in the Earth: Art, Memory, and the Fight for a Vietnam War Memorial

“By early 1971, only 28 percent of those polled supported the war, and 72 percent favored withdrawal.”
― James Reston Jr., A Rift in the Earth: Art, Memory, and the Fight for a Vietnam War Memorial

“Of the 26.8 million men of the Vietnam generation, the majority—15.4 million men—received deferments or exemptions.”
― James Reston Jr., A Rift in the Earth: Art, Memory, and the Fight for a Vietnam War Memorial

“The rift pitted soldiers against protesters, sons against fathers, citizens against politicians, friends against friends, veterans against veterans, all in the context of a war that should never have been fought and that involved terrible loss, not only of the soldiers who were killed, maimed, or driven crazy but to the moral standing of the nation before the world.”
― James Reston Jr., A Rift in the Earth: Art, Memory, and the Fight for a Vietnam War Memorial

“replied. “Our nation lost its will for the war, and yet didn’t have the courage to stop it; so, we left them on the battlefield, we left the men in the prisoner-of-war camps. … We brought these men home not as heroes, as they should have been brought home, but we neglected them and abused them after we brought them home.” The Vietnam veteran deserved a great memorial. Cut to Scruggs: “The veterans”
― James Reston Jr., A Rift in the Earth: Art, Memory, and the Fight for a Vietnam War Memorial