King Mike

“Beautiful ideals were painted for our boys who were sent out to die. This was the “war to end wars.” This was the “war to make the world safe for democracy.” No one told them that dollars and cents were the real reason. No one mentioned to them, as they marched away, that their going and their dying would mean huge war profits. No one told these American soldiers that they might be shot down by bullets made by their own brothers here. No one told them that the ships on which they were going to cross might be torpedoed by submarines built with United States patents. They were just told it was to be a “glorious adventure.”
― Smedley D. Butler, War Is a Racket: The Antiwar Classic by America's Most Decorated Soldier

“There seemed to be three choices: to give up trying to love anyone, to stop being selfish, or to learn to love a person while continuing to be selfish.”
― Lydia Davis

“They are a strange northern people who came to this mountain peninsula an ice age ago and have kept their bloodlines intact through a thousand invasions. Their language is unrelated to Chinese or Japanese, closer, in fact, to Finnish and Hungarian. They don’t like anyone who isn’t Korean, and they don’t like each other all that much, either. They’re hardheaded, hard-drinking, tough little bastards, “the Irish of Asia.”
― P.J. O'Rourke, Holidays in Hell: In Which Our Intrepid Reporter Travels to the World's Worst Places and Asks, "What's Funny About This?"

“Under all this dirt the floor is really very clean.”
― Lydia Davis, Can't and Won't