Quotes from Brian Turner

It should make you shake and sweat, nightmare you, strand you in the desert of irrevocable desolation, the consequences seared into the vein, no matter what adrenaline feeds the muscle its courage, no matter what god shines down on you, no matter what crackling pain and anger you carry in your fists, my friend, it should break your heart to kill.

each twist of the round spun deeper, because here, Bullet, here is where the world ends, every time.

The scar said—that which is written in the flesh is irrefutable. This is the mark of a man. This is what it takes.

Believe it when you see it. Believe it when a twelve-year-old rolls a grenade into the room.

because here, Bullet, here is where the world ends, every time.

In a very short time, a few days at most, America disappears. Its streets and cities drift and fade away; they are replaced by orchards and date groves and the Tigris, by an Iraqi countryside in a time of violence.

Has this year made me a better lover? Will I understand something of hardship, of loss, will a lover sense this in my kiss or touch? What do I know of redemption or sacrifice, what will I have to say of the dead - that it was it worth it, that any of it made sense? I have no words to speak of war.

It is a condition of wisdom in the archer to be patient because when the arrow leaves the bow, it returns no more. —SA'DI