352 pages
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“I'm not ready to let the youthful part of myself go yet. If maturity means becoming a cynic, if you have to kill the part of yourself that is naive and romantic and idealistic - the part of you that you treasure most - to claim maturity, is it not better to die young but with your humanity intact?”
― quote from Emergency Sex (And Other Desperate Measures): True Stories from a War Zone
“The problem is that no matter how good your intentions, eventually you want to kill someone yourself.”
― quote from Emergency Sex (And Other Desperate Measures): True Stories from a War Zone
“If blue helmeted UN peacekeepers show up in your town or village and offer to protect you, run.”
― quote from Emergency Sex (And Other Desperate Measures): True Stories from a War Zone
“Iwent to school with African-American girls during my entire adolescence in Michigan and never noticed them as potential girlfriends, never even wanted to meet them. How did that happen? I'm nine thousand miles from home and a pernicious wall of segregation I never noticed in high school suddenly materialises. A young man should travel.”
― quote from Emergency Sex (And Other Desperate Measures): True Stories from a War Zone
“At daybreak on the first day, thousands of Cambodians are already calmly waiting outside my polling station. They squat on the ground, silent and patient. We didn't expect this at all. We thought they would fail to understand how democracy works. We thought they would be afraid of the Khmer Rouge. We thought they would passively accept their fate. We were wrong.”
― quote from Emergency Sex (And Other Desperate Measures): True Stories from a War Zone
“I was hell-bent on being an effective humanitarian in Cambodia and Somalia. But a naïve fog is finally lifting. Revealed is a train wreck of illusions, the depravity of someone else's war, the futility of a competence stillborn there. To understand this you have to become this.”
― quote from Emergency Sex (And Other Desperate Measures): True Stories from a War Zone
“I'm not convinced that it's worth it. How many Cambodians ever asked for a $2 billion election? Nighty percent of them are rice farmers. I lived with them, watched them die at the hospital, and never was the word "election" mentioned. That money would repair hundreds of roads and bridges and pay for tons of seed and fertilizer. And clear a lot of landmines.”
― quote from Emergency Sex (And Other Desperate Measures): True Stories from a War Zone
“Israelis are a mix of North African, Levantine, and Eastern European, which inflames the politics but does amazing things for the women.”
― quote from Emergency Sex (And Other Desperate Measures): True Stories from a War Zone
“Meanwhile she's coldly interrogating me with her eyes. She's definitely in charge of this house and this moment. This must be Chloe.
She escorts me to a table full of people and presents me. She introduces them briefly. This one's from Morocco, that one from Italy, he's Persian--I'm not exactly sure what that means--this one's from "the UK." They're all in their twenties, poised and dismissive. They don't know or care who I'm supposed to be at home or where I went to school. They're measuring something else I can't see and don't understand.
They nod and turn back to each other. They seem to be waiting for a cue from Chloe to release them from having to feign interest. She introduces herself at substantially more length. Her father is Chinese and her mother is Swiss; she grew up in Hong Kong and "in Europe."
I grew up in Michigan and in Michigan. But she didn't ask.”
― quote from Emergency Sex (And Other Desperate Measures): True Stories from a War Zone
“If blue-helmeted U.N. peacekeepers show up in your town or village and offer to protect you, run. Or else get weapons. Your lives are worth so much less than theirs.”
― quote from Emergency Sex (And Other Desperate Measures): True Stories from a War Zone
“Be careful, he says, the official US position will be that they refuse to negotiate for hostages, but they may try to enlist the U.N. to do it.”
― quote from Emergency Sex (And Other Desperate Measures): True Stories from a War Zone
“He did well, but he couln't afford the blood for a transfusion.”
― quote from Emergency Sex (And Other Desperate Measures): True Stories from a War Zone
“No pain that we suffer, lass, no trial that we experience is ever for naught. Hardships teach us qualities we can get in no other way. Like patience, faith, fortitude . . . and humility.”
― Jeff Wheeler, quote from The Hollow Crown
“He said my name. He knows what my name is. He spoke it out loud and used it in a sentence.”
― Michelle Knudsen, quote from Evil Librarian
“We've all heard the stories. It's just that some people don't want to believe them. 'He shall rise from the green' doesn't have to mean coming from the Blood Forest or Ruthgar. It could mean he starts out drafting green. One of the first glimmers of Breaker's magical genius showed whyen he went green golem in the Battle of Garriston - he'd never even heard of going green golem. He intuited it on the spot. His will was so strong, he drafted a green that stopped musket balls, Teia. 'He shall kill gods and kings'? He already done both. 'He'll be an outsider'? How much more outsider can you be than a mixed-blood bastard from Tyrea? Each of those things offend the luxiats, and all of them together make their blood boil - as it makes them furious that a Lightbringer would be necessary to put their worship right - but hasn't Orholam's work always offended those in power? I won't put myself on the wrong side of Orholam. 'In the darkest hour, when the abominations come the sores of Big Jasper, when Hope himself has died, then shall he bring the holy light and banish darkness.' 'Hope himself,' Teia. That's Gavin Guile. He's dead. our darkest hour is coming. We have to pick a side.”
― Brent Weeks, quote from The Blood Mirror
“Their friends had got so old that whenever Connie bought a get-well card she also bought a sympathy card at the same time, to save herself the trouble of going back to the newsagent when they didn’t ‘get well’.”
― Liane Moriarty, quote from The Last Anniversary
“...while the sun is asleep and the moon somnambulant, while the stars bathe us in their glow from eons ago and light-years away, while you are comfortably nestled in your blankets and I am hunched over in my chair by your bed, while we are warm and safe and still for the moment in this bubble of incandescent light cast by the pearl held up by the mermaid lamp, you and I, on this planet spinning and hurtling through the frigid darkness of space at dozens of miles per second, let's read.”
― Ken Liu, quote from The Paper Menagerie and Other Stories
Homeland and Other S...
Me
The Pit and the Pend...
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