“As the Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel warned years ago, to forget a holocaust is to kill twice.”
“Almost all people have this potential for evil, which would be unleashed only under certain dangerous social circumstances.”
“The Rape of Nanking did not penetrate the world consciousness in the same manner as the Holocaust or Hiroshima because the victims themselves had remained silent.”
“Looking back upon millennia of history, it appears clear that no race or culture has monopoly on wartime cruelty. The veneer of civilization seems to be exceedingly thin – one that can be easily stripped away, especially by the stresses of war.”
“The heroic efforts of the Americans and Europeans during this period are so numerous (their diaries run for thousands of pages) that it is impossible to narrate all of their deeds here.”
“In 1996 I began an investigation into the life of John Rabe and eventually unearthed thousands of pages of diaries that he and other Nazis kept during the Rape. These diaries led me to conclude that John Rabe was “the Oskar Schindler of China.”
“Perhaps the most fascinating character to emerge from the history of the Rape of Nanking is the German businessman John Rabe. To most of the Chinese in the city, he was a hero, “the living Buddha of Nanking,” the legendary head of the International Safety Zone who saved hundreds of thousands of Chinese lives.”
“You only have to enforce boundaries where they’re being imposed,”
“I like to think of myself as a coworker with lots of experience rather than a boss,” Franklin said.
I like to think of myself as a boss more than a slave but mostly I prefer to not think about it at all because when I think about it, I can’t stop.”
“Who am I? The shell-selling Lace girl, the attendant of Lady Arilou, Mother Govrie’s other daughter, the thing of dust, the victim, the revenger, the diplomat, the crowd-witch, the killer, the rescuer, the pirate?
I am anything I wish to be. The world cannot choose for me. No, it is for me to choose what the world shall be.”
“Max is going through my overnight bag when I get back to Wink Hotel. My favorite part about this is that he doesn't stop when I walk in the room.
"Hey," he says. He pulls out my black Hugo Boss dress hirt, then holds it up to his nose and sniffs loudly.
"Dude. Stop." I pull the shirt from his hands and toss it on the bed.
"I just love your scent," he says in a chick voice.
"You and everyone else, my friend.”
“I felt hopeless. I was never going to get better. All I was doing was spending time that was really wasted since I was ultimately going to get done what had to be done. Put your finger in a bucket of water and pull it out. The hole left is how much I’d be missed. Killing myself was my job, my responsibility. (131)”
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