M.B. Dallocchio Quotes

Stigma's power lies in silence. The silence that persists when discussion and action should be taking place. The silence one imposes on another for speaking up on a taboo subject, branding them with a label until they are rendered mute or preferably unheard.

It is not enough to hope for something to happen and throw it into the universe. You, too, must also work to make it happen.

There are people who come home from war and want to talk about the pain, but no one wants to listen; there are others who want to keep silent and repress the memories, and all their family and friends want is to talk about it. I call this the war veteran reintegration paradox.

If anyone thinks interracial "anything" is a big deal, they're probably inbred.

A wave of saudade swept over me as I realized home never existed at all. The concept of home felt far from my reach, and I felt sick with longing.

There were waves of genocide that overcame indigenous populations of Oceania and do we have a library of books or films to tell our story? No. We have tourist hula shows and commercials where the "natives" tend to tourists like indentured servants with plastic, lifeless smiles. It's not such a charming picture, is it? The truth is ugly, but so is ignorance or denial of such atrocities and pain.

Home." This was my mantra, my four-letter savior.

The most insidious of our country, the greediest and highest rung of our socioeconomic ladder, line their pockets with misappropriated funds as military personnel and hordes of civilians are maimed or killed. It's not their children out there, blinded by manufactured patriotism or lured into the service with the promise of economic stability, all with the sanctimonious blessings of misguided public consent by way of corporate, state-sponsored media. It won't be their children who are terrorized by Wahabbist insurgents tearing through city blocks and rural areas as only an ever-devouring plague could. It won't be any of their loved ones watching thousands of years of civilization unraveling like an old sweater as each thread of wool is lit on fire or stolen to sell on the black market for greedy consumers with a fetish for hijacked Mesopotamian artifacts.

When you're persistently deleted from history, media, and any other channel to access information – or that information is distorted – it's far worse than physically killing someone. It, instead, induces a form of psychological death. How can you truly be alive, how can you genuinely breathe, when everyone around you believes that you either don't exist or are dead?

To my surprise, it was a place where my thoughts were the most lucid. I wasn't bogged down in random trivial details or the luxury of time-consuming over-analysis. This place forced you to live because at any moment, life could be lost. Ramadi forced me to die unto myself.

It was a frightening metaphor for what the United States was becoming – a Titanic of rich, proud dimwits heading for the iceberg of anti-colonialist backlash.

How often do the poor in the US get to stand in front of their nation's Marie Antoinette's and shove the stale, mass-produced cake of lower class reality back into their mouths?

I wasn't a person after all. I was simply this exotic thing for people to observe and investigate, an alien in any environment I was in.

With even the slightest upset, detachment soon followed. I didn't lose sleep over men, and I was too restless to be tied down. The grass didn't even have time to grow around my feet before I was planning my next escape – whether it was to another state or out of someone's life.

Indifference is the worst kind of response when love is expressed. Hate is not the antithesis of love; it's the nonexistence of feeling, a pervasive apathy. When hate is present, so is love. It's passion gone sour and fueled by pain, but, nonetheless, it's passion and love is apparently still alive. Yet when indifference seeps into our spirits, an emotional numbness and permitted scotoma takes the place of any passion – whether it's love or hate – and resigns in a new state of being.

Fine art is the discipline of breaking rules.

I really can't stress this enough. If you want to make an impact, don't simply sit idly by and 'hope' for courage. Courage is not the absence of fear, but rather the decision made in determining what is more important than fear.

A woman in combat? Yes. Since when? Since Native American warrior Buffalo Calf Road Woman knocked that prick General George Custer off of his horse. Since Pantea Arteshbod propelled herself to become one of the greatest Persian commanders during the reign of Cyrus the Great. Since Hua Mulan disguised herself as a male to engage in combat and became one of China's most respected heroines.

Someone can tell you all your life that you're inferior, but it doesn't matter until you accept it and allow for validation. Once validation takes place, it's then that the colonial malaise sets in like smallpox.

I have been cheated out of being treated like a human being. In my reflection I saw an empty vessel. They had cheated me and I was desperate to make the sharp pain in my head stop.

Adversity has the remarkable ability of introducing the real you to yourself.

The open road. Seemingly my only friend for years upon end since leaving war. The road embraced me, let me breathe, and more importantly, did not judge me.

Veterans being sent into unjust wars for corporate profit is a perversion of trust, at best. I found the emotional manipulation of both sides, the propaganda at play so incredibly revolting that I couldn't stand to idly wave a flag or flaunt yellow ribbons without asking serious questions regarding motive.