Jay Garcia

“After years of watching their patrimony squandered in this way, a large percentage of the [Niger] Delta's population feels abandoned by both national and local politicians, and has settled on illegal bunkering as the most direct way to ensure that they benefit from their own oil wealth. The trouble is that what started as activism has become an industry. In the words of one activist, 'It is becoming increasingly difficult to separate greed from grievance.”
― John Ghazvinian, Untapped: The Scramble for Africa's Oil

“If you're looking for sympathy you'll find it between shit and syphilis in the dictionary.”
― David Sedaris, Barrel Fever: Stories and Essays

“We suffered failures of imagination just like everyone else, our daring was wanting, and our daily contentment too nearly adequate for us to give it up.”
― Joshua Ferris, Then We Came to the End

“The most basic barrier was language itself, very few Americans in Iraq whether soldiers or diplomats or news paper reporters could speak more than a few words of Arabic. A remarkable number of them didn't even have translators. That meant for many Iraqis the typical 19 year old army corporal from South Dakota was not a youthful innocent carrying Americas good will, he was a terrifying combination of firepower and ignorance.”
― Dexter Filkins, The Forever War