Shalene

“One morning in Saigon she'd asked what it was all about 'This whole war,' she said, 'why was everybody so mad at everybody else?'

I shook my head. 'They weren't mad exactly. Some people wanted one thing, other people wanted another thing.'

'What did you want?'

'Nothing,' I said. 'To stay alive.'

'That's all?'

'Yes.”
― Tim O'Brien, The Things They Carried

“When the sound of victorious guns burst over London at 11 a.m. on November 11th, 1918, the men and women who looked incredulously into each other's faces did not cry jubilantly: " We've won the war! " They only said: " The War is over.”
― Vera Brittain, Testament of Youth

“Only, I felt, by some such attempt to write history in terms of personal life could I rescue something that might be of value, some element of truth and hope and usefulness, from the smashing up of my own youth by the war.”
― Vera Brittain, Testament of Youth

“Unlike the animals, who knew only the present, Man had acquired a past; and he was beginning to grope toward a future.”
― Arthur C. Clarke, 2001: A Space Odyssey