Dana

“But I am reluctant to assume maliciousness when incompetence is a better explanation”
― Robert Jackson Bennett, The Tainted Cup

“But the quickest way to make an attractive man ugly was to give him too much to drink.”
― Liz Moore, The God of the Woods

“She takes the box of matches and the pack of Bastos out of his inner pocket, pulls out two cigarettes, presses them between her lips, and lights them both, taking a deep drag with the ease of long habit, he sees the orange glow bright for a moment in the red half-light, and then, as if she’s done it hundreds of times before, she places the other cigarette between his lips, it’s still damp from her mouth like a gentle kiss. And he grows calm, he smoked with a comrade this way so often, keeping watch together at night, killing time by day, during shelling, sitting quietly as all around them the world was undone.”
― Anjet Daanje, The Remembered Soldier

“And he feels admiration for her, and tells her so, and she laughs, shy and flattered, and lets him take his first photograph, a photo of her, just tell me how you want me, she says, standing in front of the romanticized battlefield, and he issues hesitant instructions, but whatever he says, she does meekly, and he understands why she loves photography, why he used to love it too, it creates the illusion of complete control, a few square inches of the world in which no disappointment, fear, or sorrow exists.”
― Anjet Daanje, The Remembered Soldier