Barbara Nickless > Quotes

“You get to the point where you're just empty. Empty of feelings and thoughts. Of bone and flesh and blood. Empty of hope and despair. You aren't dead. But you aren't living, either.”
― Barbara Nickless, Dead Stop

“What fools we mortals are to think that the plans we make are anything more than a soap bubble blown against a hurricane, a frail and fleeting wish destined to burst.”
― Barbara Nickless, Ambush

“Do not call us heroes. Not if you are calling us that in order to absolve yourself of guilt over sending us off to an unwinnable war. Some of us are heroes. But some of us never had the chance. And some of us got slammed face-first into the fact that when we looked inside, we found nothing heroic at all. —Corporal”
― Barbara Nickless, Blood on the Tracks

“One man’s sin is—by quirk of fate or need or desperation—another man’s necessity. —Sydney”
― Barbara Nickless, Blood on the Tracks

“The only way you feel safe in a relationship is if you feel free to leave it.”
― Barbara Nickless, Ambush

“In a moment of crisis , your body takes over . It knows what it needs to do to keep you alive, and that's what it does. This instinct for survival comes from your reptilian brain- most basic, simplistic part of who you are. Your reptilian brain breathes for you. Digest and defecates for you . Watches out for you. And if it deems the threat high enough - it kills for you.”
― Barbara Nickless, Blood on the Tracks

“We are part of what society can't bear to remember. Because if they really think about it, if they really look at us and realize the cost we've paid to keep them safe. They can't live with the guilt.”
― Barbara Nickless, Blood on the Tracks

“I've spent too much of my life trying to leave the past behind. But the past is a leech. Digs its head into you and sucks your blood until it leaves you dry.”
― Barbara Nickless, Blood on the Tracks

“The videos that show the coffins coming back. People don’t want to know. And you and I? We’re part of what society can’t bear to remember. Because if they really think about it, if they really look at us and realize the cost we’ve paid to keep them safe? They can’t live with the guilt. They put up their ribbons and they give us fucking discounts at stores and they say, ‘Thank you for your service’ so they can go home and feel good about themselves. But if they really looked at what war does to us? Hell. They’d never let us come home.” “Stop”
― Barbara Nickless, Blood on the Tracks

“A war in five senses. Blood, sweat, tears, dust, pain.”
― Barbara Nickless, Ambush

“Normal is the devil-ridden quiet of three a.m. when you’re eyeball-to-eyeball with God, and you know you won’t win because the deck is stacked. Best”
― Barbara Nickless, Blood on the Tracks

“You can do everything for the right reasons, and still fuck it up.”
― Barbara Nickless, Ambush

“In ancient times, soldiers called it going amok—a descent into the battle craziness that took you out of yourself and dropped you into the warrior’s world of blood and darkness. Going amok was a form of insanity prized by the Greeks and Spartans and Vikings—it made for great warriors. Thus did Achilles slay Hector, Beowulf defeat Grendel. But unless you bring your heroes back to themselves—with a ritual purification or with a journey of some sort, like Odysseus’s long struggle home or World War II vets taking weeks to sail back across the sea together—there is a price to pay when the bloodied warrior returns. These days, soldiers return from Iraq and Afghanistan alone and in a matter of hours. We drop them back into society as if they were widgets that have simply gone missing for a while. But a lot of the widgets are bent hopelessly out of shape.”
― Barbara Nickless, Blood on the Tracks

“I had not known how much of me belonged to Clyde, how much room he had claimed in my heart. He was the one good thing, the one living thing, that had come back with me from Iraq. Clyde had held me together as we shared our grief over Dougie, our relief at leaving the war zone, and eventually our sense of purpose—muted though it was-—when we returned to work.”
― Barbara Nickless, Blood on the Tracks

“My body was so filled with pain that I could not separate the hurt within from that without. And I was tired. Tired in Cohen’s way, tired with the weight that makes your bones two inches shorter. I was tired of killing. Tired of death. Exhausted from scraping up against the kind of hatred that makes a man slap a little girl, slaughter a woman, shoot a dog. All I wanted was to lie in the snow and the dark and think about Clyde and Dougie and Cohen until I ran out of thoughts. Ran out of feelings. Until the wind abraded my skin to nothing and I was only disarticulated bones.”
― Barbara Nickless, Blood on the Tracks

“Normal is whatever we’ve gotten used to in our own private universe. It’s war or cancer or poverty. Hopelessness or pain or fear. It’s the cigarette burns on the coffee table and bone-deep exhaustion and the stink of booze and the black eye from—you tell everyone who asks—running into a door. Normal is the devil-ridden quiet of three a.m. when you’re eyeball-to-eyeball with God, and you know you won’t win because the deck is stacked. Best you can do is fold. —Sydney”
― Barbara Nickless, Blood on the Tracks

“In modern warfare, people disappear. Not because they run off, or go native, or get taken prisoner. I don’t even mean that they’re gone because they’re dead. I mean they vanish. One second they’re right there, standing next to you, as bright and alive as they will always remain in the eyes of their parents, wives, children. Maybe they’re talking about how the Broncos just put some whup-ass on the Raiders or how they’re going to start a computer repair business when they get home or maybe just about how sweet that first post-dawn cigarette tastes and would you like one, too? And then they take a few steps and the bomb goes off, and when the pink mist is done soaking into the dust, all you’re left with is a single boot and the guy’s hand. Or maybe just his rucksack spewing his med pack and his lucky rabbit’s foot and his last clean pair of underwear across the field. And there you stand, scared all to shit and grieving like you’ve never grieved. But fuck if you aren’t happy, too. Because part of you is like, sweet Jesus, that could have been me. —Sydney Parnell. Personal journal. Cohen”
― Barbara Nickless, Blood on the Tracks

“We always say live for today and don't waste time worrying about tomorrow. But what keeps us up at night is knowing that tomorrow is roaring down on us like a tsunami, and a lot of us don't know how to swim.”
― Barbara Nickless, Ambush

“Wisdom is earned trench by trench, street by street, from one battle line to the next.”
― Barbara Nickless, Ambush

“God teaches forgiveness. But he first cleaned house.”
― Barbara Nickless, Ambush

“But if Clyde had given a false alert, the error wasn’t his. It was mine for not keeping up with his training.”
― Barbara Nickless, Blood on the Tracks

“tenth. But his woman loved him. Loved him even with this face. Loved him even when he called her dumb and crazy and all the other shit he’d thrown at her when she said she loved him still, loved him before”
― Barbara Nickless, Blood on the Tracks

“The ravens of war always come home to roost.”
― Barbara Nickless, Blood on the Tracks

“But here’s my theory: every human is just one good reason away from committing murder. All it takes is the right push.”
― Barbara Nickless, Dark of Night

“Her husband had come home a hero. But he'd also come home with memory issues, a limp, PTSD, and a huge ration of cynicism that he hadn't had before.”
― Barbara Nickless, Ambush

“For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction.”
― Barbara Nickless, Blood on the Tracks

“Don't apologize for what you do to survive. Anyone would do the same.”
― Barbara Nickless, Ambush

“off with the pixies”
― Barbara Nickless, Play of Shadows

“Guilt is a useless emotion. It cuts you off at the knees and offers nothing in return.”
― Barbara Nickless, Dead Stop

“Come home soon,”
― Barbara Nickless, Blood on the Tracks