War Novel Quotes

War and Peace is many things. It is a war novel, a family saga, a love story. But at its core it is a book about people trying to find their footing in a ruptured world. It is a novel about human beings attempting to create a meaningful life for themselves in a country being torn apart by war, social change, and spiritual confusion. Russian ~ Leo Tolstoy

Getting shot wasn't an issue of skill; it was an issue of chance. And Justice had a bullet-sized issue of chance lodged in her shoulder. ~ Ashley Nikole

'The Man in the High Castle' was not the first alternative history novel, nor even the first Nazis-win-the-war novel, but it is still probably the most influential book in the genre. ~ Adrian McKinty

With The Good Lieutenant, Whitney Terrell has unwound the myths of one of our most encrusted literary forms - the war novel - and remade it to be humane and honest, glowingly new and true. Terrell knows his facts on the ground, but this is emphatically, triumphantly a work of imagination and literary ingenuity. It opens in conflagration - everything having gone wrong for Lieutenant Emma Fowler in one explosive instant - and from there the mystery of how we got to this disastrous moment unfolds backwards, Memento-like, as we watch Emma become more innocent, her life more full of hope and possibility, with each day less of war that she has experienced. This is brilliant, bold, heartbreaking storytelling for material that demands nothing less. ~ Adam Johnson

Not contentment, but more power; not peace at any price, but war; not virtue, but efficiency (virtue in the Renaissance sense, virtu , virtue free of moral acid). ~ Friedrich Nietzsche

I can tell you this: If I'm ever in a position to call the shots, I'm not going to rush to send somebody else's kids into a war. ~ George H. W. Bush

When you have a peace movement that has an actual war, it's different from one that has wars that our country is not totally involved in. During the war in Vietnam, and to a lesser degree the wars in Central America where our country was directly involved, it was easier to organize. ~ Grace Paley

There are times when I have had to make peace with the fact that I am at war. ~ Ann Powers

Freedom cannot be trifled with. You cannot surrender it for security unless in a state of war, and then you must guard carefully the methods of so doing. ~ Arthur Hays Sulzberger

Men were made for war; designed to struggle and strive to protect and provide. ~ James MacDonald

I often think of it this way: The 21st century is going to be a war on the attention of humanity. Where civilization focuses its attention, I mean, that's what defines what the civilization cares about. ~ Jesse Schell

You know what I did after I wrote my first novel? I shut up and wrote twenty-three more."
("The Castle") ~ Michael Connelly

The first two Prime Ministers whom I served, Ted Heath and Margaret Thatcher drew strikingly different lessons from the Second World War. ~ Douglas Hurd

The United States is so powerful that the only country capable of destroying her might be the United States herself, which means that the ultimate terrorist strategy would be to just leave the country alone. That way, America's ugliest partisan tendencies could emerge unimpeded by the unifying effects of war. The ultimate betrayal of tribe isn't acting competitively - that should be encouraged - but predicating your power on the excommunication of others from the group. ~ Sebastian Junger

The corporate approach to agriculture or manufacturing or medicine or war increasingly undertakes to help at the risk of harm, sometimes of great harm. And once the risk of harm is appraised as "acceptable," the result often is absurdity: We destroy a village in order to save it; we destroy freedom in order to save it; we destroy the world in order to live in it. ~ Wendell Berry

I knew by experience and by observing many of my friends the baneful, destructive effect which participation in a war has on almost every man.
(from 'The Specter of Alexander Wolf') ~ Gaito Gazdanov

When my first novel was published, I went in great excitement round bookshops in central London to see if they had stocked it. ~ Antony Beevor

I learned a lot from Vietnam veterans, especially as some of them turned against their own war. ~ Robert Jay Lifton

Every government has as much of a duty to avoid war as a ship's captain has to avoid a shipwreck. ~ Guy De Maupassant

In Japan if you say "the war," people know you mean World War II, because that was the last one that Japan fought in. In America it's different. America is constantly fighting wars all over the place, so you have to be more specific. ~ Ruth Ozeki

It is good that war is so terrible, else we should grow too fond of it. ~ Tom Clancy

what does being a dragonheart mean to you? surviving / having flames in your veins / never-ending loyalty / powerful alone & with like-hearted people / loving fiercely / strong-spined / dangerous / celebrating yourself / celebrating others / magic even without spells / protective / gentle but armored / light-giver / reigning supremely / what fairy tales are made of / queen of your own life / no doubts about your own worth / forever valiant / tower-breaker / kingdom-shaker / standing up for others / resisting over & over / taking charge of your narrative / bravery beyond measure / not giving negativity a seat at your table / facing the fire head-on / prioritizing yourself / story-hungry / made of gold / dream-chaser / sea storm courage / voice-reclaimer / war-hearted / flower-hearted / RELENTLESS ~ Nikita Gill

It's really fascinating. I've never spent time in a place where they lost the wars, so it was interesting and I didn't know much about the history of the country. I didn't know they were under communist rule until the nineties. It's this whole attitude of being defeated, and frowning on optimism and American way of thinking. If we were laughing, Hungarian kids would be like "You're so American." ~ Evan Jones

Writers block: when I get it, it's because my subconscious spotted that I'd make a huge structural mistake in constructing a novel before my conscious mind became aware of it, and threw on the brakes. So I've learned not to sweat it: take two days off, then back up a chapter, read through, and try to work out why I'm suddenly uneasy about continuing. ~ Charles Stross

I have no pity for them, but no hatred either ~ Michael Morpurgo

During the war crimes trials after World War II, Nazi scientists cited American eugenics programs as the foundation for their own plans for racial hygiene. ~ Jodi Picoult

The most important thing in our war preparations is to teach all our people to hate U.S. imperialism. Otherwise, we will not be able to defeat the U.S. imperialists who boast of their technological superiority. ~ Kim Il-sung

War never ends: It sends shock waves down through the generations that follow. #MemorialDay
- ~ James Aura

It then became intolerable that while I was not in any way interested in the world's affairs the world should have decided to interfere so spectacularly in mine. [ ... ] I am tired of offering my services as a smokescreen when there is a good chance of my being dismembered in the process and when I don't approve of what's being screened anyhow. ~ Bernard Wolfe

I had never before spent a night with a woman, had someone lying by my side in the quietness of the dark, hearing her breath and feeling her warmth beside me.
It is a sin, and it is a crime. I say it frankly, for I have been taught so all my life, and only madmen have said otherwise. The Bible says it, the fathers of the church have said it, the prelates now repeat it without end, and all the statues of the land prescribe punishment for what we did that night. Abstain from fleshly lusts, which war against the soul. It must be so, for the Bible speaks only God's truth. I sinned against the law, against God's word reported, I abused my family and exposed them even more to risk of public shame, I again risked permanent exclusion from those rooms and books which were my delight and my whole occupation; yet in all the years that have passed since I have regretted only one thing: that it was but a passing moment, never repeated, for I have never been closer to God, nor felt His love and goodness more. ~ Iain Pears

The undeserver may sleep when the man of action is called on. ~ William Shakespeare

Nothing remained to be defended now, only a nation to avenge, and he had been trained to that from his first step. With his mother's gift at his throat and his father's sword in his hand, with the ring branded on his heart, he had fought from his sixteenth nameday to avenge Malkier. But never had he led men into the Blight. Bukama had ridden with him, and others, but he would not lead men there. That war was his alone. The dead could not be returned to life, a land any more than a man. ~ Robert Jordan

Society was ruled by narrow-minded, profoundly incurious people, predatory business men, dull squires, bishops, politicians who could quote Horace but had never heard of algebra. Science was faintly disreputable and religious belief obligatory. Traditionalism, stupidity, snobbishness, patriotism, superstition and love of war seemed to be all on the same side; there was need of someone who could state the opposite point of view. ~ George Orwell

Please don't be upset. The last thing in the world I want is to see you upset and that too with me. It's terrifying to see your beautiful eyes turn red with anger. ~ Vivek Pereira

A flower falls, even though we love it; and a weed grows, even though we do not love it. ~ Dogen

I rationalize out, well, how much help could you really be, you know? And maybe if people saw this, they'd realize the brutality of war and figure out there's got to be some better way than killing human beings who are just trying to farm a field. ~ Haskell Wexler

Those things which are precious are saved only by sacrifice. ~ David Kenyon Webster

The royal Mongol women raced horses, commanded in war, presided as judges over criminal cases, ruled vast territories, and sometimes wrestled men in public sporting competitions. They arrogantly rejected the customs of civilized women of neighboring cultures, such as wearing the veil, binding their feet, or hiding in seclusion. ~ Jack Weatherford

Let us once again be clear: if we oppose violence, then we must oppose all forms of policing. If we oppose violence, then we must call for an end to war, an end to occupation. We must oppose sexual assault, and prisons as institutions that wield it as a strategic tool. If we abhor violence to bodies, families, and communities, then we should abhor all these systems and call for their immediate abolition. As Ta-Nehisi Coates said so perfectly in his Atlantic piece "Nonviolence as Compliance," "When nonviolence is preached by the representatives of the state, while the state doles out heaps of violence to its citizens, it reveals itself to be a con."

In Support of Baltimore; or, Smashing Police Cars Is Logical Political Strategy ~ Benji Hart

I love it when Muslims go to war with each other, as I do when the Christians do, because it shows there's no such thing as the Christian world and the Islamic world. That's all crap. ~ Christopher Hitchens

A battle is a terrible conjugation of the verb to kill: I kill, thou killest, he kills, we kill, they kill, all kill. ~ Thomas Carlyle

And so, pointing fingers become pointing guns, because nobody listens to fingers. ~ Jeff Shaara

I'm the most sampled and stolen. What's mine is mine, and what's yours is mine, too ... I got a song about that ... But I'm never gonna release it. Don't want a war with the rappers. If it wasn't good, they wouldn't steal it. ~ James Brown