Daniel Ischay

“A civil war is, may we say, the prototype of all war, for in the persons of fellow citizens who happen to be the enemy we meet again, with the old ambivalence of love and hate and with all the old guilts, the blood brothers of our childhood. In a civil war – especially in one such as this when the nation shares deep and significant convictions and is not a mere handbasket of factions huddled arbitrarily together by historical happen-so – all the self-divisions of conflicts within individuals become a series of mirrors in which the plight of the country is reflected, and the self-division of the country a great mirror in which the individual may see imaged his own deep conflicts, not only the conflicts of political loyalties, but those more profoundly personal.”
― Robert Penn Warren, The Legacy of the Civil War

“Because I was happy upon the heath,
And smiled among the winter’s snow,
They clothed me in the clothes of death,
And taught me to sing the notes of woe”
― William Blake, William Blake : Songs of Innocence, and Songs of Experience

“Let us remember that a traitor may betray himself and do good that he does not intend. It can be so, sometimes”
― J.R.R. Tolkien, The Lord of the Rings

“I was a passive aggressive coward. That sort of thing clung to your flesh like a smell, rot turned inside out. People could sense it on you; it caused them to be distrustful. It was hard to make friends when you had the smell, hard to keep them when you did make them. You held back from them and they held back from you, an even trade of nothingness.”
― Tarryn Fisher, Atheists Who Kneel and Pray