Nathan

“Sensible men, however, really had very little to do with it. The war itself did not make very much sense, which may have affected the way it was directed. It was being fought because emotion had been evoked to deal with a crisis that called for intelligence. There had been the great argument between men and sections, with many old values endangered, and on each side there had arisen men with blazing eyes and hot hearts to arouse their fellows to imminent peril. Fear had been called forth (because it is thought that men are most surely to be aroused by fear), and then came the anger that goes with fear, and finally the great unreason that goes with both had come out to take control of things—a situation deeply lamented by all who had created it.”
― Bruce Catton, Mr. Lincoln's Army

“As he fell, Leamas saw a small car smashed between great lorries, and the children waving cheerfully through the window.”
― John le Carré, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold

“He looked like a kid who just realized he’d jumped in the deep end of the pool and was trying to figure out whether he should embarrass himself by shouting for help or drown with a little dignity.”
― James S.A. Corey, Babylon's Ashes

“In population losses on this scale, the toll is usually a composite of figures from one or more of four closely connected sources: (1) murder; (2) starvation, exhaustion, and exposure; (3) disease; and (4) a plummeting birth rate. In the worst period in the Congo, the long rubber boom, it came in abundance from all four:”
― Adam Hochschild, King Leopold's Ghost: A Story of Greed, Terror, and Heroism in Colonial Africa