Kennedy

“When next this happens (and it will happen, again and again, because a people remain under occupation and because the relative compelling powers of both revenge and consequence warp beyond recognition once one has been made to bury their child), this same framing can always be used. The barbarians instigate and the civilized are forced to respond. The starting point of history can always be shifted, such that one side is always instigating, the other always justified in response. (p. 24)”
― Omar El Akkad, One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This

“She forgot the red and white flag which flew out bright in the morning sky against the chimney pots, and she forgot the hurried conversations, the shouts, the frightened beating of her own heart. She forgot for one precious moment the screams, the blood, the waiting terror. She forgot Germany and the slow stain that was creepy and cross it to the south, to midsummer, to her own heart.

Somewhere beyond her at lay, waiting, unchallenged, forgotten behind the mountains. At any moment she might become frighteningly aware it: at any moment it might awake and remember her and surge towards her, touching her, carrying her with it. (p. 313)”
― Sally Carson, ‎Crooked Cross

“You will forget whoever it was that said never trust a thought that doesn't come while walking. But clutch at it. Apartments can shrink inward like drying ponds. You will gasp. Say: I am going for a walk. When he follows you to the door, buzzing at your side like a fly by a bleeding woman, add: alone. He will look surprised and hurt and you will hate him.”
― Lorrie Moore, Self-Help

“One day this will end. In liberation, in peace, or in eradication at a scale so overwhelming it resets history. It’ll end when sanctions pule up high enough, or the political cost of occupation and apartheid proves debilitating. When finally there is no other means of preserving self-interest but to act, the powerful will act. The same people who did the killing and financed the killing and justified the killing and turned away from the killing will congratulate themselves on doing the right thing. It is very important to do the right thing, eventually. (p. 182)”
― Omar El Akkad, One Day, Everyone Will Have Always Been Against This