All You Need Is Kill

There is what we desire to do, and what we are able to do. When those two things don’t coincide, which path should we pursue to find happiness?

Your mother must have been disappointed when the abortion only killed your conscience.

Is it true the green tea they serve in Japan at the end of your meal comes free?

Death comes quick, in the beat of a heart, and he ain't picky about who he takes.

In war, fear is the woman your mother warned you about.

If there’s a heaven, it’s a cold place. A dark place. A lonely place.

They say people who die in dreams are supposed to live forever.

Our lives should be written in stone. Paper is too temporary— too easy to rewrite.

There’s not a drop of hero’s blood in my whole body, so spare me the praise. I’m just an ordinary guy, and proud of it. I’m here because I put in the time. I have the blisters on my fingers to prove it. It had nothing to do with coincidence, luck, or the activation of my Wonder Twin powers. I reset the game hundreds of times until my special attack finally went off perfectly. Victory was inevitable. So please, hold off on all the hero talk.

The human body is a funny machine. When you want to move something - say, your arm - the brain actually sends two signals at the same time: "More power!" and "Less power!" The operating system that runs the body automatically holds some power back to avoid overexerting and tearing itself apart. Not all machines have that built - in safety feature. You can point a car at a wall, slam the accelerator to the floor, and the car will crush itself against the wall until the engine is destroyed or runs out of gas. Martial arts use every scrap of strength the body has at its disposal. In martial arts training, you punch and shout at the same time. Your "Shout louder!" command helps to override the "Less power!" command. With practice, you can throttle the amount of power your body holds back. In essence, you're learning to channel the body's power to destroy itself.

At the end of the day, every man has to wipe his own ass.

But even as the fear racks my body, it soothes me, comforts me. Soldiers who get washed away in a rush of adrenaline don't survive. In war, fear is the woman your mother warned you about. You knew she was no good for you, but you couldn't shake her. You had to find a way to get along, because she wasn't going anywhere.

Drink and be merry, for tomorrow we die.

My body never changed, but the OS that ran it had seen a total overhaul.

Generals were early to bed, early to rise, always brushing their teeth after every meal, never skipping a morning shave. All they had to do was sit back in Nagano drawing up their battle plans. One order from them and us mortals on the front lines would move like pawns across a chessboard to our grisly fates. I’d like to see just one of them here with us in the mud. We had our own rules down here. Which is probably why they stayed away. If one of them showed, I’d see to it a stray bullet put them on the Killed In Action list.

Of course, there were only three kinds of battle to begin with: fucked up, seriously fucked up, and fucked up beyond all recognition

All I could hear were screams, sobbing, and “Fuck!” Fuck! Fuck! Fuck! The profanities were flying as thick as the bullets.

Is cooking dangerous?" Most would answer no. But what is a gas range but a short - range flame thrower? Any number of flammable materials might lie waiting beneath the average kitchen sink. Shelves lined with pots could weaken and fall in an avalanche of iron and steel. A butcher's knife could kill as easily as a dagger. Yet few people would consider cooking a dangerous profession, and indeed, the actual danger is remote. Anyone who has spent any time in a kitchen is familiar with the inherent risks, such as they are, and knows what can be done safely and what can't. Never throw water on an oil fire, keep the knife pointed away from your carotid artery, don't use rat poison when the recipe calls for parmesan cheese.

You shouldn’t assume everything you don’t understand is a message,

We’d never trained together, but we moved like twins, veterans of countless battles at each other’s side. She really was a master. In less than five minutes, she’d learned to work in tandem with me. When she realized I could use a free arm or leg to knock her clear of an attack, she turned and faced the next enemy head on, without any intent of dodging. A Mimic foreleg came within a hand’s breadth of her face and she didn’t even flinch.

Who knows? Maybe something will change. Or maybe, I’ll find a way to take this fucking world and piss in its eye.That’d be just fine by me.

How many loops is this for you?

They ate earth and shat out poison, leaving behind a lifeless wasteland. The alien intelligence that had created them had mastered space travel and learned to send information through time. Now they were taking our world and turning it into a facsimile of their own, every last tree, flower, insect, animal, and human be damned.

Food is like war. You have to experience it for yourself.

It was like a software if/then routine: If checkflag RitajoinsPT =true, then end. Else continue routine: FuckingIsoPush-Ups

Well, anyway Rita, I have to run, some, uh, Bechdel tests on your jacket.

and all who trained, slept, and shat within its walls.

At the end of the day, every man has to wipe his own ass. There’s no one to make your decisions for you, either.