War Zone Quotes

“Minding his own business had been his motto living in a strange foreign country with a world-recognized social issue of failing morals.”
― Vann Chow, The White Man and the Pachinko Girl

“Reporters go through four stages in a war zone. In the first stage, you’re Superman, invincible. In the second, you’re aware that things are dangerous and you need to be careful. In the third, you conclude that math and probability are working against you. In the fourth, you know you’re going to die because you’ve played the game too long. I was drifting into stage three.”
― Richard Engel, And Then All Hell Broke Loose: Two Decades in the Middle East

“Each day had the same bloody rhythm: mortars at dawn, car bombs by 11: 00 a.m., drive-by shootings before tea, and mortars again at dusk. At night the death squads went to work.”
― Richard Engel, And Then All Hell Broke Loose: Two Decades in the Middle East

“He asked us what we were doing, and our smuggler said, “Oh, nothing. We’re just hanging out”—as if lots of Americans in ninja suits loitered around Syria in the middle of the afternoon. We asked him if he had a cell phone. He didn’t, which meant we had twenty or thirty minutes to get back across the Turkish border.”
― Richard Engel, And Then All Hell Broke Loose: Two Decades in the Middle East

“I kept seeing turning points. First the uprising. Then the creation of the Free Syrian Army, the FSA. Now a big assassination bombing in the heart of Assad’s government. But the turn never came. It just got worse and worse.”
― Richard Engel, And Then All Hell Broke Loose: Two Decades in the Middle East

“We were meat to be bought and sold. Speaking Arabic made me a curious and unusual product. I didn’t want to be special. I didn’t want them to be curious about me.”
― Richard Engel, And Then All Hell Broke Loose: Two Decades in the Middle East

“You cannot rely on information coming out of a war zone.”
― Steven Magee

“The people that visited the Lahaina wildfire disaster area were making statements of ‘it looks like a war zone’, ‘it has all gone’ and ‘it looks like it has been bombed’!”
― Steven Magee