War Fiction Quotes

Chamberlain raised his saber, let loose the shout that was the greatest sound he could make, boiling the yell up from his chest: Fix bayonets! Charge! Fix bayonets! Charge! Fix bayonets! Charge! He leaped down from the boulder, still screaming, his voice beginning to to crack and give, and all around him his men were roaring animal screams, and he saw the whole Regiment rising and pouring over the wall and beginning to bound down through the dark bushes, over the dead and dying wounded, hats coming off, hair flying, mouths making sounds, one man firing as he ran, the last bullet, last round. ~ Michael Shaara

As for the new world war that's waiting in the womb of time, a healthily developed foetus, who can say what will spark it, how destructive it will be? We've already played at this war in film and fiction, indicating that there's a part of us that desperately wants it. What nonsense writers and filmmakers talk when they say that their terrible visions are meant as a warning. [ ... ] It's sheer wish fulfillment. War ... is a culture pattern. It's a legitimate mode of cultural transmission ... ~ Anthony Burgess

Please, dear brother, do much more with that Bible of yours besides carry it for luck. It will bring you no such luck. But if opened, it will bring you life. ~ A.M. Heath

You must remember also that He would never make any mistake in creating you. No matter what harsh and hateful words have been said to you, no matter the wrong actions against you, those opinions are not valid. The only valid opinion in which we can place true merit is that of God, and ultimately, your own.--Olivia Worthington of River Oaks Plantation ~ Lisa M. Prysock

With the Black Company series Glen Cook single-handedly changed the face of fantasy - something a lot of people didn't notice and maybe still don't. He brought the story down to a human level, dispensing with the cliché archetypes of princes, kings, and evil sorcerers. Reading his stuff was like reading Vietnam War fiction on peyote. ~ Steven Erikson

It is remarkable that Lord Esher should be so much astray ... We must conclude that an uncontrollable fondness for fiction forbade him to forsake it for fact. Such constancy is a defect in an historian. ~ Winston Churchill

JAKE BAKER JOINING THE UNION ARMY IN NEW ORLEANS
"I'd prefer to be back in Texas, taking aim at the Rebs ... , but I just can't do that," said Jake ... "So, I'll just do what I can do, I guess."
"I suspect that goes for all of us," said the Colonel. "Maybe we should make that the unit's motto. 'The First Texas Cavalry of the United States of America: We'll just do what we can do, we guess.' It does have a ring to it, but I expect that we need somethin' a bit more inspirational and less true. ~ Charles Phillips

No one lives long in a war. ~ Sanchit Gupta

Hell is full of polite men with bone saws. ~ Miles Watson

War has been glorified by men who have never been shot at. ~ Bobbye L. Hudspeth

A novel is what you call something that won't sell if you call it poems or short stories. ~ Walker Percy

I write totally spontaneously. I actually write fiction by hand - that always seems to startle people. I think the reason I do that is to bypass the thinking part of me and get to the more unconscious part, which is where all the good ideas seem to be. ~ Jennifer Egan

We can borrow from the moneylenders in York.'
'We burned York two winters ago,' Drogo pointed out. ~ Robert Lyndon

He has entertained the thought that his neighbours like having one of him in the district, having their own Englishman, although he will insist that he is as South African as they are. But perhaps his presence is more in the nature of a provocation, and his actions: he pretends ignorance but he knows what those spindly pink and white flowers mean to men who still punish themselves with every detail of their war, picking at it like the scab of the miniature Union Jack in the middle of the flag. ~ Claire Robertson

Which would give her an ulcer first? All the aspirin and prescription pain medication she took, or Jack Carlton? Then again, that left only one cause, since he was the reason she needed the drugs to begin with. ~ Dawn M. Turner

We can't let somebody rise to the top who will pardon these war criminals. Because they need to go to prison for what they've done in this world. We can't have a pardon. They need to pay for what they've done. ~ Cindy Sheehan

You know it's funny, when it rains it pours they got money for wars, but can't feed the poor. ~ Tupac Shakur

Science fiction is not formulaic. ~ Octavia E. Butler

We had played a kid's version of gang fighting called "Civil War," and then later we had got in on the real thing, we fought with chains and we fought barefisted and we fought Socs and we fought other grease gangs. It was a normal childhood. ~ S.E. Hinton

I wasn't disturbing the peace, I was disturbing the war ~ Ammon Hennacy

Obama is not a brown-skinned anti-war socialist who gives away free healthcare. You're thinking of Jesus. ~ John Fugelsang

A flicker of someone else's memory came to Simon and he picked up Excalibur from where he had dropped it. Carefully, he laid Excalibur on Arthur's chest. A smile crossed the king's pasty face as he closed his grazed hands around the sword's hilt. The touch of something so familiar seemed to give Arthur cause to close his eyes and after a final, relieved breath left his lips, he died. ~ Sam Whitehouse

I'm a big man, sugar. When I come down on a woman, I want soft, not a bundle of sticks that I might break." - Logan ~ Cherise Sinclair

I was hoping against hope he'd refill his Prozac so we could be in love again, but, sadly, that never happened. ~ Piper Faust

I'll die of embarrassment."
"At least you'll die knowing. ~ Sandy Hall

Could I be brave enough to look lower? I could. His black tee shirt licked his hard body and I could only guess what was hidden underneath it. His faded jeans hung dangerously low, revealing a slice of his narrow hips, and I could easily imagine the rest. ~ Jennifer Loiske

The money that fueled the explosion of gluttony at the top had to come from somewhere or, more specifically, from someone. Since no domestic oil deposits had been discovered, no new seams of uranium or gold, and since the war in Iraq enriched only the military contractors and suppliers, it had to come from other Americans. ~ Barbara Ehrenreich

The living are more demanding; the dead can wait. ~ Primo Levi

Why should you take by force that from us that which you can have by Love? Why should you destroy us, who have provided you with food What can you get by war? ~ Chief Powhatan

I hardly sustain myself beneath the weight of white men's blood that I have shed. The whites provoked the war; their injustices, their indignities to our families, the cruel, unheard of and wholly unprovoked massacre at Fort Lyon ... shook all the veins which bind and support me. I rose, tomahawk in hand, and I have done all the hurt to the whites that I could. ~ Sitting Bull

... he thought Sufjan Stevens was overrated, which was basically a declaration of war, as far as I was concerned ~ Jasmine Warga

The people and the warmakers are two distinct groups. We must never say 'we' when discussing the US government's foreign policy. For one thing, the warmakers do not care about the opinions of the majority of Americans. It is silly and embarrassing for Americans to speak of 'we' when discussing their government's foreign policy, as if their input were necessary to or desired by those who make war. ~ Llewellyn Rockwell

But I was wrong. I should have known it wasn't owver, couldn't be over quite easily. No sooner was Xavier out of sight than a little cylinder of paper fell from the top of my locker. As I unrolled it, I knew I'd see black calligraphy crawling across it like a spider. Dread settled around me like a fog as the words burned into my brain:
The Lake of Fire awaits my lady ~ Alexandra Adornetto

If you are far from the enemy, make him believe you are near. ~ Sun Tzu

Making fiction for children, making books for children, isn't something you do for money. It's something you do because what children read and learn and see and take in changes them and forms them, and they make the future. They make the world we're going to wind up in, the world that will be here when we're gone. Which sounds preachy (and is more than you need for a quotebyte) but it's true. I want to tell kids important things, and I want them to love stories and love reading and love finding things out. I want them to be brave and wise. So I write for them. ~ Neil Gaiman

How various is a face; but an hour ago it was strange and it is now touched with a tenderness that comes, not from it, but from out of the night, the world and the blood, all these things seem to shine in it together. ~ Erich Maria Remarque

The future is there," Cayce hears herself say, "looking back at us. Trying to make sense of the fiction we will have become. And from where they are, the past behind us will look nothing at all like the past we imagine behind us now. ~ William Gibson

Whenever and wherever men have engaged in the mindless slaughter of animals (including other men), they have often attempted to justify their acts by attributing the most vicious or revolting qualities to those they would destory; and the less reason there is for the slaughter, the greater the campaign for vilification. ~ Farley Mowat

And now the bride begins to move. Little mechanical doll, clinging to her husband's arm, climbing into the carriage. Her white silk stocking, her elegant shoe. ~ Anne Hebert

In fiction, there happens to be a long history of creative engagement with marginality, with the very human components of society that others don't want to think about, from writers such as Dostoyevsky, Baudelaire, and Rimbaud to Genet and Sarrazin and right on up to Norman Mailer. ~ Rachel Kushner

Fiction is not fact, but fiction is fact selected and understood, fiction is fact arranged and charged with purpose. ~ Thomas Wolfe

In the dream of the planet it is normal for humans to suffer, to live in fear, and to create emotional dramas. The outside dream is not a pleasant dream; it is a dream of violence, a dream of fear, a dream of war, a dream of injustice. The personal dream of humans will vary, but globally it is mostly a nightmare. If we look at human society we see a place so difficult to live in because it is ruled by fear. Throughout the world we see human suffering, anger, revenge, addictions, violence in the street, and tremendous injustice. It may exist at different levels in different countries around the world, but fear is controlling the outside dream. ~ Miguel Ruiz

I am nothing like my father. While he prays for war, I pray for peace.
And now we go our separate ways, each believing that we are right.
My father has made his choice, and I have made mine.
I am, at last, my own man.
I can live with that. ~ Omar Bin Laden

As a fiction writer, of course, you need to take some leeway with certain aspects of history to make the story work. ~ Joseph Boyden

Ideas and philosophies change just as machines do. Religions changed because of the birth control pill. Politics changes because of the hydrogen bomb. All because of science fictional inventions. ~ Ray Bradbury

Much of the image of the amazingness of America comes from the movies into other cultures. And it's much the same thing when you reverse it. Much of Africa is presented through poverty, through drought and war. [But] you're not presenting people, you're not presenting countries, you're not presenting complexity, and so people can't care about an amorphous mass called Africa. ~ Chris Abani

Artworks, whether fiction, music, or painting, because they have the power and possibility to become truth, when repeated enough or told enough are somehow truth about what America is, whether they were or not. ~ Cynthia Daignault

(Sometimes I think prostitution and slavery may be the actual subjects of all fiction because of the way fiction exploits its characters.) ~ Fanny Howe

War is the greatest evil Satan has invented to corrupt our hearts and souls. We should honor our soldiers, but we should never honor war. ~ Dean Hughes