Liam || Books 'n Beards

“Unlike the huge majority of the current generation in the West, the men on both sides at Dien Bien Phu did not live at a time or in places where they enjoyed the luxury of disregarding [that war is what human beings do]; and we, who are lifelong civilians, have not earned the right to sit in judgement over them.”
― Martin Windrow, The Last Valley: Dien Bien Phu and the French Defeat in Vietnam

“Ultimately, saying that you don't care about privacy because you have nothing to hide is no different from saying you don't care about freedom of speech because you have nothing to say.”
― Edward Snowden, Permanent Record

“For 56 days they had given everything, endured everything; they had achieved the impossible, not once but again and again. They deserved to win; and if they were now being robbed of victory, then the real thieves weren't the People's Army, the 'rats of the Nam Youm', or anyone else in the filth of this last valley, but men who slept between clean sheets far away.”
― Martin Windrow, The Last Valley: Dien Bien Phu and the French Defeat in Vietnam

“There was something very special, but it wasn't inside Josie. It was inside those who loved her.”
― Kazuo Ishiguro, Klara and the Sun