Amber

“Mr. and Mrs. Johnson in Omaha or San Francisco or Manhattan will watch the films and weep and decide once and for all that war is inhumane and terrible, and they will tell their friends at church and their family this, but Corporal Johnson at Camp Pendleton and Sergeant Johnson at Travis Air Force Base and Seaman Johnson at Coronado Naval Station and Spec 4 Johnson at Fort Bragg and Lance Corporal Swofford at Twentynine Palms Marine Corps Base watch the same films and are excited by them, because the magic brutality of the films celebrates the terrible and despicable beauty of their fighting skills. Fight, rape, war, pillage, burn. Filmic images of death and carnage are pornography for the military man; with film you are stroking his cock, tickling his balls with the pink feather of history, getting him ready for his real First Fuck.”
― Anthony Swofford, Jarhead: A Solder's Story of Modern War

“It is a common saying that women are delicate creatures, flowers, eggs, anything that may be crushed in a moment's carelessness. If I had ever believed it, I no longer did.”
― Madeline Miller, Circe

“Perfection has never been about the body, or even the mind. Perfection is a state only the soul can achieve, and, my poor, ignorant brother, there is such perfection in rage.”
― Ian St. Martin, Angron: Slave of Nuceria

“I can still so distinctly recall the moment when I came to terms with that fact—when I knew unequivocally that I did not possess the same faith that my mother and father held. It was a truly frightening moment. Not only was I different from the children around me, but I was decidedly different from the people who raised me. I felt like an alien—an otherworldly creature that should be studied. In my despair, I realized what I wanted more than anything—I wanted to connect with something. I wanted to make a connection and form a bond that would last a lifetime. That desire—that indescribable itch to connect with someone, something—is fixed at the very heart of Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke and Other Misfortunes. Though the stories in this collection are decidedly different from one another, they are tethered by the human need to connect with someone, something else. In the collection’s titular novella, the character Agnes is desperate to find companionship in another. The novella is essentially about the lengths a person might be willing to go in order to satisfy their loved one, in order to keep their beloved from leaving.”
― Eric LaRocca, Things Have Gotten Worse Since We Last Spoke and Other Misfortunes