Dig Doug

“Truth is, only the useless get to the top in this country.”
― Carlos Ruiz Zafón, The Angel's Game

“It is not trivial to lie in a report. . . . At the time I wrote it I actually believed what I wrote to be true, fervently. . . . Yet, when I wrote it, I also knew it wasn't true. I call this the lie of two minds.

"I" convinced "myself." The I that did the convincing was the one who needed desperately to justify the entire experience, to make it sane and right and okay and approved. Myself was convinced as the moral self, the part of me I would want to be a judge in a legal system. This moral part of us, however, in these extreme situations, is vulnerable to the overwhelming force of that part of us that needs to justify our actions. . . With this lie I'd lost myself. Perhaps this too adds to the shame.”
― Karl Marlantes, What It is Like to Go to War

“Thinking you might be crazy can drive you crazy.”
― Karl Marlantes, What It is Like to Go to War

“Today a soldier can go out on patrol and kill someone or have one of his friends killed and call his girlfriend on his cell phone that night and probably talk about anything except what just happened. And if society itself tries to blur it as much as possible, by conscious well-intended efforts to provide “all the comforts of home” and modern transportation and communication, what chance does your average eighteen-year-old have of not becoming confused?2”
― Karl Marlantes, What It is Like to Go to War